Figure that UK residents can be fined for gathering in a group of three in the park across the road, but can legally travel to Tehran or Moscow if they reckon it’s essential (though the Russians might not let you in). Coronavirus is raging in Moscow but Russians can fly to Heathrow for a bargain next week.
For seven weeks of lockdown people have been flying straight in without even a temperature check. Though Healthrow just announced it will trial some thermometers and ask people to wear masks. Bravo, eh?
The idea of keeping people in their homes but letting planes come and go is so bizarrely strange it didn’t even occur to me.
The US appears largely the same
The good news is this explains why the UK is stuck in Viral-Neverland, with cases not declining, despite the lockdown. It’s something that can be fixed. The bad news is that Brits have been wasting weeks in lockdown running to stand still, instead of crushing the curve.
The awful news is that it says something dreadful about the health advice Boris is getting. The rot run deeps in the hallowed institutions.
In the UK, 18 million people arrived from Jan 1st to March 22. Of those only 273 people were quarantined. That explains, right there, why the UK dug such a huge hole for itself. Since then, flight traffic has continued, albeit at only 1% or so of normal levels, because nearly every other country on Earth closed borders, and most passengers don’t want to fly. That is still 10,000 people arriving every day in the UK with no mandatory quarantine at all. Like four Ruby Princesses cruise ships every single day. This alone explains why the UK is stuck in the same hole week after week.
UK Travel advice recommends not travelling unless it’s essential (as decided by the traveller) and advises travel insurance (which possibly no one is selling). On return it asks people to stay home for 7 days and “and only go outside for food, health reasons, daily exercise or work if you absolutely cannot work from home.” In Australia everyone flying in is escorted to a hotel, prevented from leaving, and fed and monitored for two weeks. That’s a quarantine.
Sir Patrick Vallance wanted Herd Immunity for the UK, but officially that suicidal policy was junked, so what gives — is the UK on a “silent Herd Immunity” plan?
UK government under fire after ‘big influx’ of Covid-19 cases from Europe revealed
Jamie Grierson, The Guardian
Vallance said that studying the genomics of the virus had allowed them to determine the origin of cases brought into the UK.
Arrivals into the UK have plummeted by as much as 99% on some routes but the country has been described as an “outlier” in its approach to border controls during the crisis. The only measures being taken at the border are the use of posters, digital displays and leaflets with information about the measures in place.
The Home Office has insisted that the scientific advice showed that placing restrictions at the border would not have had a significant impact on the spread of the virus in the UK.
“Scientific Advice” is the great abrogation of responsibilities. Once the virus had spread and it was too late to stop it — then it’s possible that the extra infections might not make much difference, but when the nation is in lockdown at great expense, surely priority one is to limit the flow. And not just because of its a soul destroying symbolism. The extra cases keep the tally stubbornly flat, looking like a failure, demoralizing and disincentivizing, and making the lockdown longer…
UK Daily new cases stuck. | Worldometer.
The open borders madness explains why the United Kingdom wallows in an extended constant infection rate. Why pay the pain of the lockdown while allowing people to bring back the virus? It’s as if London is dooming itself to lockdown until the whole world clears the virus first.
The places with open borders will be the last places on Earth to get rid of the virus
According to the BBC on May 5th “When will the lockdown end and how?” the UK lockdown has dropped the Ro from nearly 4 down to about 0.7 (as eyeballed of the graph below from the much maligned Imperial College. A college headed by the even more maligned Neil Ferguson, Grade A hypocrite, caught for visiting his lover while telling the nation not to). Assuming that the R0 calculation of Imperial College is correct (below), the UK Daily Infection rates ought to be falling and “tracking to zero” like most of the rest of the world. Any number below one is a winner.
Though I can’t find the source document for this graph, and it is suspiciously, unnaturally, square, with a very modeled look about it, despite the headline.
Ro infection in the UK, Coronavirus spread and the effects of lockdown.
But how important are the flights?
The additional load of new incoming passengers with infections could easily be the difference between the UK daily infections shrinking or not.
If 1% of passengers are infected on take-off as they head toward the UK, by the time they land, that may be 3% infected on touchdown (I can’t find any data on flight Ro — can anyone else?) So that would mean 300 new infections arriving every day in the UK. It doesn’t sound like much when there are 5,000 new infections reported every day, but those 300 could infect 200 more in the next 5 days (let’s assume they adopt the lockdown practices and same Ro of the UK as soon as they arrive, so an Ro of 0.7, as per the graph above). Those 200 will infect another 140 and so on. In the end, the 300 infected passengers arriving each day will cumulatively add a load of around 900 cases before the chain extinguishes itself. It could be a lot more if flights are mainly coming from countries with poor infection control (like the US, Brazil or Russia). And flights, by definition, will be coming from places with poor infection control. All the nations that are trending to zero will have closed their borders, and they won’t want flights from the UK.
And if a city should really go pear shaped, there aren’t too many places a person would want to escape too. London might be too infected for most of the world to want to fly to, but in the worst hot-spots on Earth, it might still look better…
As infections spread in the poorly controlled parts of the world, the load will increase. (And if flight traffic is 3% of normal as suggested by some, then overseas infections will be bigger).
In other words, 67 million people are living under expensive and strict lockdown conditions, and the thing stopping that from eliminating the virus are the 10,000 or so people who arrive daily without quarantine. How does any science advisor justify flying in new cases daily? How does any policy-maker explain holding the nation to extended ransom week after week just so a few people can arrive without the hassle of a two week mandatory quarantine?
For people who want strong borders, this is the biggest chance to get them since WWII. Where are the sovereign battlers who want border controls?
After searching, I found readers in the UK didn’t need medical degrees to be baffled at why flights were still arriving at Heathrow.
But where were all the medical advisors?
Save the economy, set up proper quarantines.
If we get rid of the virus — everyone can get back to work.
In fact Ferguson was caught welcoming his lover, Antonia Staats, to his own house. He was unlikely to visit hers as she is married.
161
PS Antonia Staats works for Avaaz, the leftwing clicktivist website that is deeply concerned with climate change. The Daily Telegraph newspaper found tweets of Ferguson’s opposing Brexit and supporting the LibDems, who are as Left as Labour today. Look to Private Eye for information that Ferguson modelled the foot-and-mouth outbreak of 2001 and that his predicted curve fell to zero just when Blair et al needed it to.
251
The Ro graph is indeed suspicious. There is a decided lag between infection and showing the first symptoms, so the fall would not occur as soon as the lockdown was put in place – unless the data have been manipulated or there was more testing than has actually occurred.
40
The lag has been m=noted and known about since the initial outbreak in Wuhan,
It’s what this viral disease does.
No manipulation of data is needed.
03
The UK was not dong enough testing then for this to be data rather than model results. The Oxford modelling suggests it was more widespread and there are analyses suggesting the decline (slight as it was there) commenced before Professor Pantsdown’s model results persuaded Boris to loc=k the country down.
31
Perhaps I read far too many dystopian novels in my youth, yet I remember in George Orwell’s ‘1984’, Britain (aka the UK) was called Airstrip One. Surely a mere coincidence in 2020 hindsight.
In the super-state of Oceania, the UK was the USA’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier”, ie, the #1 airstrip. Have to keep ‘Healthrow’ Airport OPEN no matter what – coincidentally on the day after Queenie’s televised, patriotic, uber blabber-speech.
Talk about a cluster fork in the road!
20
Those are only the legal arrivals. Here are the illegal ones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR_lhVxXJt8
Instead of turning boatloads of illegal migrants back, the UK Border Force picks them up after detecting them and then taxis them to ports.
220
That’s his second expose.
The other was about a group who got off their boat on an isolated southern sandy beach, kissed the sand and got into waiting vehicles.
170
Why boat when you can fly https://flightradar.live/en/
40
Thanks for that !
Usefull !
33
It appears that unless they create a vaccine soon, the Antipodes will remain in a virtual bubble whilst the rest of the planet interacts with the infection.
[ Seems all comments at the #3 spot are off topic , Jo can these be moved over to unthreaded ? , please everyone stay on topic in a threaded post .]AD
111
The Maldives also is in a bubble:
Trapped In The Drowned Maldives Paradise
The New York Times says that a honeymooning couple is trapped in paradise by Coronavirus.
The Maldives has had no Coronavirus deaths, and according to the United Nations they have been underwater for two years.
https://iowaclimate.org/2020/04/05/trapped-in-the-drowned-maldives-paradise/
wikipedia: The COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed to have spread to the Maldives on 7 March 2020 from an Italian tourist who had returned to Italy after spending holidays in Kuredu Resort & Spa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_Maldives
62
Yes, that is an interesting one. An antipodean bubble is all very well but how to reintegrate back into the wider world? Will it have to wait until there is a vaccine or allow others in and stamp down hard on any new infection?
82
Who wants to be killed or made sick
By all those bloody foreigners
Spreading this deadly virus
And bringing it here to Australia or New Zealand ?
No thanks
Thats NUTS !
717
[ Off Topic ]
05
[ Off Topic ]
12
Tony, Jo seems unaware of just how bad the government is screwing us.
Not closed any borders.
Not quarantined anybody other than the first Diamond Princess passengers.
Not enough track & trace of COVID-19 patient contacts.
Not recommended masks, glasses & gloves.
Only recommended washing your hands and not your face.
Kept us locked in doors when we should be getting fresh air and sunshine.
Banned non Clinically trialled drugs like HQC.
Not recommended Vitamins C, D, B12 and Zinc.
Recommended people with COVID-19 symptoms stay at home until they get very ill ie probably got pneumonia.
Not protected our NHS and Care workers with PPE.
Insufficient ICU beds.
Not enough tests.
Ignored all the best practices generated by countries with earlier experience of COVID-19 and previous epidemics.
Placed COVID-19 patients in hospitals with non COVID-19 patients, thus jeopardizing the non COVID-19 patients.
Taking over the Private Health system and not using it.
Creating 1000 bed temporary hospitals and only using one with 50 COVID-19 patients.
If you really wanted to spread a desease that list would be a good one to start with.
92
Which governments ?
Where ?
When ?
I suggest by the way that jo has a very good idea of what has gone wrong here in Australia at both state & Federal level and among the various governments in other countries. So that part of your comment is plainly false.
13
Bill, use your nous.
A C Osborn is clearly in the UK.
That’s what Jo is writing about.
Sheez!
32
But not apparent in his comment S S.
That makes it difficult to make a sensible response.
And that actually is a significant problem.
Commentators here live in a large number of countries.
And the circumstances vary greatly from one place to another even within countries.
So comments reflect a local reality
But if we do not say where we live,
How can we know what that local reality is ?
I have said time & time again, I live in South Australia.
And I have am interested and have lived in a number of other places: Victoria, and in
The UK, the Philippines, the USA, Argentina, and more remotely in time Malaysia & Indonesia.
03
Topic: “Like sabotage? The UK has locked down its people but still has open borders”
The onus is thus upon non-UK citizens to disclose their nationality when commenting.
(Hides behind sofa. ☺)
10
Agreed.
But I was born in Liverpool. UK
02
A Liverpudlian and an Aussie?!
I am not worthy even to gather up the crumbs under your table.
20
You couldn’t make THAT up. …. and of course, our wee Fishie Sturgeon has to gold plate the nonsense. Scotland will be the first or greatest or daftest or…. whatever …
10
Yes A C Osborn,
The UK government’s stance appears to be all about controlling the public, and not using best practice (like South Korea) to control the virus.
The fact that they allow flights into the country without testing or quarantine shows this. Also what is ignored is the relevance of publicizing that it is crucial the public maintain their health with vitamins, minerals through supplements and healthy eating. Also missing is the lack of availability of any prophylactic medications such as chloroquine. The great lie is that the UK government is worried about how many will die or end up with lifelong disabilities — they’re not worried. They enjoy the elevated amount of control they have over the public!
In the old days people who where infected, or suspected of having a life threatening disease would be isolated away from the general public. These people were isolated and treated away from the rest — infected and suspected infected were put in locked-down. From historic times of plagues, leprosy, etc., up to the more recent (pre-antibiotic) days when TB sufferers were treated in special (away from the public) sanatoriums. As much as was possible ordinary life for uninfected went on as close to normal.
However in these modern times with all the public surveillance and monitoring (in the UK), and high tech medical facilities, everyone must be locked-down. Everyone must endure being locked-out of their normal lives.
As all the countries that have effectively implemented the Test, Track and Isolate (TTI) strategy have shown it is the best for the country — economically, and for better outcomes in public health. The UK government will not go down this route because they are driven by the enormous amount of public control this crisis gives them, and they justify it by the absurdity of stupid ‘science’ of unvalidated modeled outcomes.
How far will the death count be allowed to ratchet up before the UK government sees the light?
40
[ Off Topic ]
05
Morning Jo,
My Oh My!!
Boris, great guy – Tories, great party (esp. Thatcher) – but Great Britain, looks like stuffed!
Looks like they are getting their COVID-19 responses from the same experts they are getting their climate emergency experts!
(By the way, definition of an expert … an ex is a has-been, and a spirt is a drip under pressure!!)
This is what happens when you let the patients run the asylum!!
Clearly the swamp in Westminster is every bit as putrid as it is in Washington/Brussels/Canberra! – If not worse/if that were possible!
I hope, for their sake, they wake up sooner rather than later?!
Kind regards, Reformed Warmist of Logan.
260
The British are great traditionalists. It’s been 355 years since the last great epidemic: The Great Plague of London in 1665, which was successfully sterilised by the Great Fire of London the following year. With the ban on wood as a material for construction since that time, the British efforts to display the wonders of Global Warming in the reconstruction of St Pauls and maybe some other `great’ buildings, haven’t gone amiss. The Great Epidemic of 2020 is going establish their desired Herd Immunity thoroughly but the final sterilisation of the UK is not going to happen, at least not in the traditional fashion.
Instead, they will become the reservoir for future global outbreaks. They have all the machinery for it stockpiled at Heathrow and Gatwick. All we have to fear is it finding and mixing with Mad Cow Disease. But their great annual sport of cleansing the elderly from those isles will be able to continue unabated, but they won’t need to rely on influenza — a Chinese sourced illness — any longer.
</sarc>
40
I’ve been woke ( meaning AWAKE) for ages .. but I am nobody. despite been taught to a high level on how to maintain Animal and Crop health – NO ENTRY to Strangers is really Quite Simple .. seems too simple for Modern Britz
50
[…] Jo Nova has flagged a bizarre situation in Britain where people are locked down but a door to the country is open. […]
100
For heavens sake jo, the ‘experts’ have said itts ok for tens of thousands to come in to the country, use public transport to get to their destination, shop in local shops then spread the virus in their households.
ust as the experts said 500,000 would die and thereby caused panic in the govt who acted before thinking. Experts have also said it was ok to decant elderly people with possible cv into old people’s homes. Experts also said their tracking app was better than the proven one used on the continent.
I am so glad we have all this expertise otherwise we might have had a few problems.
Which perhaps goes to show that expertise is not the same as common sense
390
Well, don’t the elderly vote conservative excessively? This herd desperately needs culling. There’s your motive for the ridiculous advice, or how did you pit it, Jo? Stealth herd immunity. What bollocks!
What’s the mad ‘benign’ rationale? As the leading international world city, we cannot control our borders. Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore? Screw them, we have nothing to learn from their success!
And that drop in infections? Surely modelled or otherwise Platonistically massaged and idealised.
It’s sad. The PM contracts the virus just when proper oversight needs doing. Yet no one else mans up to the task.
No controls whatsoever. I’m surprised the Guardian covers this at all.
Someday, this will be in textbooks on how to fail in fighting an epidemic, case study, UK, 2020.
250
Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy, is worried people aren’t preparing for the possibility of a fall wave of infections — which some experts fear will be bigger than what we’ve seen so far — because they expect a vaccine will be at hand.
“I’ve actually heard higher education experts say, ‘Well, you know, we’re kind of counting on the vaccine maybe by September because we keep hearing about that.’ And of course, in their mind, they’re equating [that to mean] colleges and universities will have the vaccine,” he told STAT.
Osterholm and other experts make clear that there will not be enough vaccine for college-age students in that time frame, even in the best-case scenario. It’s likely any supplies that will be available — if any of the vaccines prove themselves to be protective by the fall — will be designated for health care workers and others on the front line of the response effort.
“I don’t think we’re communicating very well at all with the public, because I keep having to tell these people, you know, even if we had a vaccine that showed some evidence of protection by September, we are so far from having a vaccine in people’s arms,” Osterholm said.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/06/mounting-promises-on-covid-vaccines/
80
The UK R value is IMO stubbornly close to 1, the gov. has widened the lower error band to make it sound better and justify talking about relaxations.
It’s clear the lockdown had little effect on the initial fast growth and it probably abated more naturally. The vast majority of new infections would have occurred by day 6-10 after lockdown (yes longer incubation is possible, but in minor numbers) and the effect should have been seen dramatically then, it was not, it continued ~2 weeks longer.
The CV19 death curve is similar form to the curve for the 2015 flu season, fast growth, plateau, long tail off – clearly a shutdown did not stop exponential flu growth, so why, without substantial evidence, would anyone believe it slowed CV19?
People and journalists are beginning to wake up and and use words like baffled, confused etc. with the gov. strategy. The daily press conferences are farcical and the talking heads are clearly increasingly uncomfortable with their position. The government is stuck in the logic trap I predicted. They cannot extradite themselves from the lockdown strategy without admitting it was a disastrous mistake – the situation will never be better than it was when it was bad enough to ‘need’ the lockdown (in a realistic time frame). If it worked/was necessary there is 99% of the population waiting for the virus whenever – so you solved nothing – a fresh surge is inevitable, if it was a waste of time then that has been an economic disaster for nothing.
Remember this was all based on models that grossly erred (said 40,000 dead?) on the situation in Sweden with their strategy, and if reports are true, comes from a model which is a monolith of undocumented garden shed hobby programming spaghetti code repeatedly fiddled with over a decade, and the chief programmer has an eco extremist for a ‘girlfriend’ – the question arises what are his politics/motivations?
Never mind the passport holders flying in, the illegals are still arriving in force across the English Channel, and because it would be unfair to keep them in a hotbed of CV infections, by all accounts the detention centers have been all but emptied into the community!
201
This is just WRONG. The lockdown in the UK was implemented on 24 March when the number of cases was doubling every 2 to 3 days and had reached 14k. Lets have a look at data rather than your factless nonsense:
17 March 1950 total cases reported
18 2626 35% increase
19 3269 up by 24%
20 3983 22%
21 5118. 28%
22 5683 11%
23 6650 17%
24 8077. 21%
Lockdown
28 March 17k
29 19k 12%
30 22k 16%
31 25k 14%
1 Apr 29k 16%
2 34k 17%
3 38k 12%
4 42k 10%
5 48k 14%
6 53k 9%
7 55k 6%
So percentage daily increase went from mid 20s before the lockdown to single digit within two weeks of lock down. The peak in daily cases occurred on April 10. But unlike countries that have closed borders, the UK has not got the daily cases much below the peak. The reproductive rate remains close to 1.
All countries that have implemented lockdowns show the same trend in daily cases. Spain locked down on 14 March peak new cases was 26 March. France locked down on 16 March, peak daily cases on 3 April.
From infection to hospitalisation is usually 12 days. For example, Boris was symptomatic on 27 March so he probably contracted it around 24 or 25 March. He was hospitalised on 6 April; 12 days after contracting it. So it is obvious to most that there would be at least 12 days between any action to slow down the spread and cases presenting at hospitals.
116
Arithmetic Rick ?
It is such a challenge to many here.
But thank you anyway.
410
Rick
Whilst the lockdown in law started on the 25th March the effective lockdown had started way before that. I note from my diary that we debated hard about whether to go to a pre-booked event on feb 14th, my wife’s hairdresser cancelled all appointments from 26 february and we went out the next day for a walk where everyone was social distancing and had our last coffee out then, but insisted on sitting outside. by then social distancing, hand washing etc was very well established.
So the legal lockdown had little impact and the cases had been working their way through the syste3m for a fortnight at least prior to that. The plateau in deaths can be seen to be due to the measures before march 25th not afterwards.
It was not helped by mass transit in London on the tube nor decanting the elderly with cv from hospitals to care homes nor, as jo points out, allowing in tens of thousands of people through our airports every day without even basic tests.
30
We were also social distancing long before the lock down started officially in Australia
I stopped going to the gym & dancing tango at the start of March.
But the rate of infection here in Australia only started to decline in early April 2-3 weeks after the borders were closed and the Official lock down had started.
The UK has on the other hand continued importing and exporting this disease willy nilly the whole time.
What could possibly go wrong ?
32
Pubs and crowded eateries are significant source of infection. When were they closed in the UK? Large crowded spectator sports are likely the most significant source of spread. When was the last football match with spectators?
My wife was telling friends in February that they should not go on a planned cruise in early March but our pubs, clubs and casinos were still open then. I am certain that if Lewis Hamilton had not been so vocal about the need to abandon the F1 GP in mid March, Australia would be a basket case as well now. That single event, with expected crowd 200k+ would have caused mass infection that would be impossible to trace.
42
rick
many restaurants were closed by Valentines day-a very big earner for them. It was very difficult to find any restaurant open from around that date. Cafes with takeaways may have been open a week or two later who had takeaways or outside seating but with few customers.
Our pubs round here also closed around February 14th.The last very big crowd (of elite establishment race goers ) was the Cheltenham festival -to howls of incredulous anger.
Yes, the grand prix would have been a disaster for Oz
30
Nothing closed in South Australia until the official lock down
No cafes
No pubs
No restaurants..
It was our traditional Mad March with the Adelaide Festival, the Adelaide Womadelaide ( 150,00 people present over 4 days) The Adelaide Fringe Festival and the V8 Supercars event in Adelaide.
Tens of thousands of people show up in Adelaide from interstate for these events every March. And it was clear to me that our state government did not want to act until Mad march was finished. But then ScoMo forced their hand. And the ‘Party’ stopped dead.
If what you say about England is true then the ordinary people were taking measures to protect themselves off their own bat.Certainly I was long before the official lock down here. here and telling friends who did not believe me.
12
Rick
I note this about football
“The government’s deputy chief scientific adviser Angela McLean said the suggestion, made by a reporter, that allowing the football game to go ahead in the north-west English city of Liverpool on March 11 contributed to the spread of the coronavirus was “certainly an interesting hypothesis”.
Most matches had ground to a halt at least a week earlier
I note the Cheltenham race festival was 10-13th March which attracted a lot of people and controversy. S0 the UK was effectively locked down some 3 weeks before the official lock down
Generally UK homes are quite small and stopping people going outside and instead confining them to their home, with inmates going to work or to the supermarket5 and spreading the virus when they return, seems pretty silly as being outside is far better than being inside
20
It’s clear the lockdown had little effect on the initial fast growth and it probably abated more naturally.
There is no evidence at all that there is a natural peak. All nations that slowed did some form of quarantine, even in Sweden where traffic numbers are down to 30% of normal.
The secondary cluster outbreaks which rise rapidly show there is little herd immunity.
It’s just criminal that the UK would do the expensive hard part of a lockdown without doing the easy cheaper (and popular) part. If I wanted to ensure a lockdown didn’t work, and looked ineffective, then fining people for walking in the park but letting infected people fly in from Rio would be a good way to achieve that.
147
As I stated to this same silly comment yesterday – find the last flu season when the country was locked down and compare that season with CV19 in 2020.
Also find any flu season when there was a global list of dead medical workers that marches the 26 pages here:
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/927976?src=wnl_tp10n_200508_mscpedit&uac=362613SR&impID=2373561&faf=1#vp_26
And by the comments, this list is not comprehensive. Also remember this has happened in just 4 months.
81
A curvaceous “curve” perhaps..?…there are curves that are substantially ‘curvaceous’….
11
This curve has been around for over six months..a heck of a long time in the life of a virus.
11
IMNEO…(in my non expert opinion.)
01
Non expert commentary
01
I had not got to that one on Medscape Rick.
But it needs to be remembered and pondered
By anyone who wants to foolishly think this is just a flu.
And by those who even more foolishly think it is just another scam
Like the Global warming scare
13
Preparing for the worst
They said government officials should stop telling people the pandemic could be ending and instead prepare citizens for a long haul.
Three scenarios are possible, they said:
Scenario 1: The first wave of Covid-19 in spring 2020 is followed by a series of repetitive smaller waves that occur through the summer and then consistently over a one- to two-year period, gradually diminishing sometime in 2021
Scenario 2: The first wave of Covid-19 is followed by a larger wave in the fall or winter and one or more smaller waves in 2021. “This pattern will require the reinstitution of mitigation measures in the fall in an attempt to drive down spread of infection and prevent healthcare systems from being overwhelmed,” they wrote. “This pattern is similar to what was seen with the 1918-19 pandemic.”
Scenario 3: A “slow burn” of ongoing transmission. “This third scenario likely would not require the reinstitution of mitigation measures, although cases and deaths will continue to occur.”
States and territories should plan for scenario 2, the worst-case scenario, they recommended.
“Government officials should develop concrete plans, including triggers for reinstituting mitigation measures, for dealing with disease peaks when they occur,” they advised.
Lipsitch and Osterholm both said they are surprised by the decisions many states are making to lift restrictions aimed at controlling the spread of the virus.
“I think it’s an experiment. It’s an experiment that likely will cost lives, especially in places that do it without careful controls to try to figure out when to try to slow things down again,” Lipsitch said.
Plus, he said, some states are choosing to lift restrictions when they have more new infections than they had when they decided to impose the restrictions.
“It is hard to even understand the rationale,” Lipsitch said.
A vaccine could help, the report said, but not quickly. “The course of the pandemic also could be influenced by a vaccine; however, a vaccine will likely not be available until at least sometime in 2021,” they wrote.
“And we don’t know what kinds of challenges could arise during vaccine development that could delay the timeline.”
https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/06/mounting-promises-on-covid-vaccines/
80
Sorry.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/30/health/report-covid-two-more-years/index.html
60
It is certainly a black picture you paint for the UK and I cannot disagree.
The UK government is not handling the situation at all well in my view.
Compare their results with those of Germany.
GeoffW
70
The comparison between the graph of new daily infections and that of the infection rate does not look right. Also the fact that so many flights are arriving daily into Heathrow Airport unchecked is also wrong and shows that Boris and his government are controlled by big bussiness and the regard for the ordinary citizen seems to be given a back seat.
Dissapointed that UK is run this way.
GeoffW
80
“Where are the sovereign battlers that want border controls?”
They are imprisoned in their own home by the very state that allows the porous border! Mark Steyn has been following the British situation on regular podcast with his “Brit w**ker copper of the day” where “everything is policed but crime”.
Most recent example was Nigel Farage, confronted by authorities when making non essential travel to the Surrey coast to report yet another landing of illegal immigrants (aka ”refugees”). The typical scenario, being met by border force officials who ferry and transport them in to town. If you are an actual citizen of the UK, your right to know what’s going on in that respect is deemed “non-essential”!
270
Jo I posted a comment about this UK madness about a week ago
Yes about 15,000 arriving at Heathrow each day with no quarantine.
( got 5-6 red thumbs for that BTW )
But it is Utter bloody madness !
Where’s John Cleese to make is show about it ?
And the experts who want this to happen
I suspect that the UK would be better off
Locking them up in complete permanent isolation
As dangerous subversives.
1613
Well…looking at the wef.ch web site, its clear they have fore-ordained a vaccine in the whole plandemic.
Ergo….
Without open borders, you cant have an pandemic
Without a pandemic you cant have sick and frifghtened people
Without sick and frightened peopke, you cant have a cry for a vaccine
Problem – Reaction – Solution at work….
142
By the way, SPIKED would normally make a great noise on this
But SPIKED has decided that this pandemic is bollocks
So it’s not following the story
It too has betrayed the British people.
🙁
317
Back to Australia….Andrew Probyn on ABC,
Lets us know about the bloody killer idiot expert Prof Levitt.
It’s actually plain common sense for once.
Though my red thumbing enemies will of course disagree
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-08/coronavirus-government-spending-costly-but-saving-lives/12226152
518
Matches, check. Fuel, Check. But I think it maybe an oxygen deficient area.
You continually hang Sh#t on your ABC.
You continually post links as fact from your ABC.
Which is it, it can’t be both !
[Snip] AD
132
From the file of Unintended Consequences:
https://www.justfacts.com/news_covid-19_anxiety_lockdowns_life_destroyed_saved
91
The people in the USA have a choice
They can maybe die ‘fearing’ they will get the virus
Or
They can die because they ‘get’ the virus.
BS beat up frankly !
415
At least they have a choice
42
Funny how the more the Establish ment try to suppress alternative views, the harder people look for it….
Why is it people are questioning the official narrative so hard?
In the market place of ideas, what are they so afraid of?
Throw it out there – if its true, it will survive, if its a lie, it will die…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/07/plandemic-youtube-facebook-vimeo-remove/
“Facebook and other companies are removing viral ‘Plandemic’ consp racy video
“Social media companies including YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook are removing a viral conspi racy th eory video because of its claims regarding the coronavirus pandemic.
122
Don’t believe everything you read.
Most of the US is away from the clusterduck that the media lives in and reports on.
We are opening.
With or without permission. I am baffled by the report on Britain tho, because the biggest casulty here has
been the airlines. They are not open, and where they are they are flying empty planes, with passenger counts in the low teens.
The US airlines cash burn is like 10MM a day. So who is flying to and from Britain, and, perhaps more important, why are
people on the planes? If business is shut down, why does one travel? If Australia is the model for control, why does the Island of Britain
do the opposite. There is something at work here that is very disconcerting, and probably relates back to the side that lost the Brexit vote not being
thrilled with the outcome.
I feel there is a perception here in the states building that we have been lab animals in a big social experiment done by people who really don’t know what they
were/are doing, and resentment is building. Is some areas, the reopening is leaders chasing a public that has clearly decided “it’s time!”.
Boris has unusual credibility as a major leader who has had the illness, but on wonders in the British population will reach frustration max all at once,
and simple break out of the queue and call BS on the whole affair. Stories such as this give the lie to to a competent government working in folks best interests.
51
Seems to me that Britain has reached the point where people arriving in Britain are less likely to have the virus than those in Britain already. Where exactly are these sources where the infection rate is higher than in Britain? (OK, New York but where else?)
People leaving Britain are more likely to be spreading the disease than those arriving.
81
Not true Brad, I’ve tracked the UK spread discontinuously to see which way it’s trending, this is what has occurred in the data.
UK Daily Spread Percentage:
Date | % daily increase in new active cases
30th March … 13.4
31st March … 13.6
1st April … 17.2
2nd April … 14.4
3rd April … 13.2
4th April … 9.8
5th April … 14.1
6th April … 8.0
7th April … 7.0
8th April … 9.9
9th April … 7.2
10th April … 13.3
11th April … 7.1
19th April … 5.6
21st April … 3.9
22nd April … 3.9
23rd April … 3.9
24th April … 4.4
25th April … 3.8
28th April … 2.9
1st May … 4.1
2nd May … 3.1
3rd May … 2.7
4th May … 2.5
5th May … 3.0
6th May … 3.6
7th May … 3.2
UK spreading is lower then most countries, if there were no imported virus the UK active cases should have flattened.
They haven’t. So something is going very badly wrong in the UK and it’s likely Jo has identified a part of the reason why.
On other thing, people keep saying the UK NHS is doing OK and coping well. Well no, it isn’t.
This is the UK’s % Died of TOTAL known cases:
UK | % Died
30th March … 6.36
31st March … 7.11
1st April … 7.98
2nd April … 8.66
3rd April … 9.45
4th April … 10.29
5th April … 10.32
6th April … 10.41
7th April … 11.15
8th April … 11.69
9th April … 12.26
10th April … 12.15
11th April … 12.50
19th April … 13.38
21st April … 13.43
22nd April … 13.56
23rd April … 13.57
24th April … 13.60
25th April … 13.69
26th April … 13.56
28th April … 13.45
29th April … 15.60
1st May … 15.50
2nd May … 15.43
3rd May … 15.24
4th May … 15.08
6th May … 14.96
7th May … 14.81
That is almost but not quite the worst on Earth. The UK NHS has failed. It is not “coping”, it has nothing left to give. People need to wake-up from this nonsense that the NHS is still functioning OK. The incredibly high death percent and the low number of recoveries, a number so low the UK doesn’t dare publish that data, indicates that the UK’s health system COVID-19 response was overwhelmed and completely collapsed in the 2nd week of April.
The UK NHS is in the same situation northern Italy’s hospitals were in during late-March.
145
What you will find is that countries with effective contact tracing have much lower death rates. They are finding most of the infective people before they need medical attention. Australia’s death to resolved ratio is 1.6%. NZ is 1.5%. South Korea 2.5%.
By contrast, the countries that have very high death to resolved, US 27%, Sweden 38%, are really not too effective at contact tracing. The cases they report are mostly hospital arrivals knocking on deaths door.
The UK does not report resolved cases but the death to resolved is probably around 30%. Spain is 14%. Germany is 5%.
So the death ratio to number of cases or resolved cases is more a function of the strategy adopted not the level of health care. You would need to look at hospital presentations versus death to assess the effectiveness.
None of the last 62 cases in Victoria have presented at hospital as far as I know. All related to one person at a meat processing factory spreading it from early April. Hence if any were going to die you would expect them to be in hospital. By contrast if there 60 new cases reported in Sweden you could expect about 20 of them to die as they would already be seriously ill. Sweden does has not bothered looking for cases that are not serious. That could change if they start testing staff at aged care facitilities.
42
Yes Rick the NHS in the UK has stuffed up completely.Here is a heart wrenching post by Dr Malcolm Kendrick from the 21st of April.
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/04/21/the-anti-lockdown-strategy/
In essence any elderly person with COVID 19 was sent to an aged care center.
The aged care sector was overwhelmed completely
And there the sick elderly died uncounted.
The facile justification for this extraordinary & stupid behaviour ?
That the NHS hospitals had to be kept clear for the wave of COVID sick needing intensive care.
There will be a reckoning in Britain over what has happened.
The ‘expert’ blundering elites have stuffed things up completely.
My own particular suggestion of what to do with them ? Send all these bloody experts to work for a month in a COVID disease ward. Maybe the imminent threat of personal infection & death will cleanse them of their idiocy.
85
Failing to trace the source of a case is not what kills cases, it is not what produced a 15.6% died number. Insufficient medical care, fatigue and depleted resources is what does this. Hospital admissions do not tell you anything about those sorts of factors.
New Cases | Country | Active Cases | % New v Active | % Died
5,614 … UK … 175,756 … 3.2 … 14.81
About 40 to 50% of that 175,756 current active cases today will be in a hospital, and 2/3rd of them will be close to death. The serious/critical number remains low at any point (and also gets much lower as the % Died rises) simply because when people enter the crisis stage, it happens in hours, and then they tend to die very fast, mostly under 24 hours. The smaller number that linger for longer may recover, but mostly they don’t.
More than 2,000 of those 5,614 new cases today will become serious hospital cases. The UK is avoiding publishing closed-cases numbers for good reason. They would not be doing that if the numbers looked good. Even Iran, China and Russia aren’t doing that. Only the UK and Netherlands declined to publish closed-cases result data. Both countries have collapsed hospital systems, both have had a period of terrible % Died numbers, which have exceeded Italy’s (the UK very much still does).
They did not get to these numbers via having properly functioning health care systems, the rise in the died % may be correlated with a lack of capacity to trace cases, but it has nothing to do with people dying from the disease. It is just another sign of a completely overwhelmed system.
83
20% go to hospital,5-10% are serious ,the stats on this are compelling
21
I know I keep flogging this but why, why, why, are people in the UK not demanding access to HCQ + Zinc + Azithromycin?
The empirical evidence is that it is very efficacious especially if taken early in the infection and under medical supervision (presumably to monitor the risk of any extended Q T interval in the ECG that may lead to cardiac issues). Zev Zelenko in New York has his death rate down to 0.5%. Didier Raoult in Marseilles has been onto this for well over a couple of months now and is getting very good results. Ban Truong, ditto.
Even the Italians are waking up to the success of the drug as a prophylactic and front line staff are using it – but unofficially. Sotto voce.
Boris banned the export of HCQ as I understand it. Why is it not being prescribed?
40
Is the word “flogging” now a banned word Mod?
Or is it something else equally as benign that I’ve inadvertently said?
12
what open-source intell uncovered by UK reveals vis-a-vis Shi Zhengli
https://balance10.blogspot.com/2020/05/what-open-source-intell-uncovered-by-uk.html
40
“Sorry, the page you were looking for in this blog does not exist. “
10
Its working now….
30
me falling asleep at key point of the drama.mmtry this though:
https://balance10.blogspot.com/2020/05/too-chinese-virologists-praise-gain-of.html
10
Ohhh how jolly !
Genetically engineering viruses in China !
What could possibly go wrong ?
12
China – and the US and Switzerland.
Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research
Lab-made coronavirus related to SARS can infect human cells.
Declan Butler
12 November 2015
Excerpt:
In an article published in Nature Medicine on 9 November
https://project-evidence.github.io/auth-info-2.png
scientists investigated a virus called SHC014, which is found in horseshoe bats in China.
The researchers created a chimaeric virus, made up of a surface protein of SHC014 and the backbone of a SARS virus that had been adapted to grow in mice and to mimic human disease.
The chimaera infected human airway cells — proving that the surface protein of SHC014 has the necessary structure to bind to a key receptor on the cells and to infect them.
It also caused disease in mice, but did not kill them.
–
Although almost all coronaviruses isolated from bats have not been able to bind to the key human receptor, SHC014 is not the first that can do so.
In 2013, researchers reported this ability for the first time in a different coronavirus isolated from the same bat population.
–
Although the extent of any risk is difficult to assess, Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, points out that the researchers have created a novel virus that “grows remarkably well” in human cells.
“If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,” he says.
–
Editors’ note, March 2020: We are aware that this story is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered.
There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.
And the band played believe it if you like.
30
UN-chairperson wisdom circa 2009 that
climate change[global warming] was killing 300,000 people/year — not in the future, but the present tense — but now we *know* what 200,000 bodies look like, they’ve quietly dropped that myth?2009: Story Highlights
. Report says 300 million vulnerable to climate change, number set to double
. Developing countries expected to suffer worst affects as temperatures rise
. 300,000 lives are lost each year due to malnutrition, diarrhea and malaria
. Kofi Annan: “Climate change is not something waiting to happen”
https://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/05/29/annan.climate.change.human/index.html
Global warming causes 300,000 deaths a year, says Kofi Annan thinktank
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/may/29/1
2020: “Among other things, the time scale is vastly compressed compared with climate change: the consequences of global warming will take many decades to play out, giving fossil-fuel interests plenty of time to take the money and run, but we’re already seeing catastrophic consequences of virus denial after just a few weeks.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/opinion/coronavirus-trump-response.html
h/t: climate nuremberg on twitter (@BradPKeys)
70
I didn’t have high hopes for the current faux-conservative government in the UK, but they have managed to disappoint me nevertheless.
But, then again, there is no such thing as a conservative party in the UK any more, only parties distributed along the political spectrum left of centre, so perhaps we should say the Conservative party is the ‘least left’? I’m not even sure of that …
It doesn’t matter any more though, because real government lies in the hands of faceless, permanent, non-elected, senior public service figures, another institution long ago captured by the Left. Along with the ‘experts’ in pretty much all domains – health, science, climate, industry, economics, etc – what we get, no matter who is elected – is essentially leftist governments as determined by their actions rather than their rhetoric.
This is a case in point. A supposedly conservative government based its pandemic response designed by leftists, resulting in a disaster that will be blamed on ‘conservatives’ for decades to come.
190
I saw this video on television recently. It is a simulation from Purdue University made for Boeing of droplet spread on a 767 aircraft:
https://youtu.be/_VSHxkyppFU
The air circulates locally as well as through filters so the droplets hang around for a long time.
I have been infected a few times during plane travel. Almost inevitable if someone in the row behind has the flu and is coughing. You know it is likely and a day or two later you get the symptoms.
110
I’ll try again and hope that this will not be lost in moderation for 2 days
https://twitter.com/IngrahamAngle/status/1257754348395864068
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-tanzania/tanzania-suspends-laboratory-head-after-president-questions-coronavirus-tests-idUSKBN22G295
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30251-8/fulltext
When the protein sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding site was analyzed, an interesting result was found. While SARS-CoV-2 is overall more similar to bat coronaviruses, the receptor binding site was more similar to SARS-CoV.
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30262-2?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867420302622%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
Both SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV use the same host cell receptor. It also found that, for both viruses, the viral proteins used for host cell entry bind to the receptor with the same tightness (affinity).
50
Was “healthrow” deliberate?
32
Only music can save us now…i have been saying this for a while now in view of the nEws & enDlESs keRfUFfle… 🙂
“Coronavirus Rhapsody (based on Bohemian Rhapsody)…”
2,327,772 views
•Mar 28, 2020
From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Eo9M4-BrJA
31
We had a brief moment of Democracy that wasn’t full of skimming and pilfering.
Can we fix it, or perhaps, It is Never to Return.
https://m.youtube.com/results?search_query=john+john+festival+selly+galley++banks#searching
Best live, but.
KK
21
Sorry, wrong link to Ye Banks and Braes
01
Jo I no longer respect the Moderation happening on the blog
Why ?
The moderators role is to check all comments to see if they are abusive or infringe on the law in Australia. It is not the moderator’s job to interpose his/her own opinion about the comments.
Yet that is exactly what has been happening recently.
Another issue with moderation is that traditionally there has been wide latitude when a commentator makes an off topic comment – one unrelated to your post. However we now have a number of comments being deleted simply for being “off topic” while others equally ‘off topic’ are allowed to stand..
I’ve come to the view that increasingly this reflects the moderators’ ‘opinion’ on the comment. So again we have an unknown person supposedly ‘moderating’ but directing the conversation on the blog.
I know that moderators are unpaid volunteers.
But I hold to the view that moderators should be neutral as regards the views expressed…If they wish to express their own views they should do so via ordinary comments along with the rest of us.
As this is of course ‘Off Topic” and will probably be deleted I have copied this and will send a copy to you direct by email.
519
Now I hear of a push to ban all visitors from aged care homes. Great – that about removes their last reason to live. They have already been told(where possible) that they won’t be getting a new knee/liver/kidney anytime. If they can still think they will know that their only way out of there is a trip to the morgue and you can see it in their faces. We have taken, or they have lost their ability to plan, choose, as well as any kind of independence. They see their fellow residents drop off with frequency and they know they are just marking time and are really just technically alive. There are no big medical interventions planned for these guys, it’s generally palliative. This is why my folks were ready to go when their time came – however it came. In short these are not the most uplifting places and I hope I’m not making the news at 94 just because I died. The Covid-19 doomsters are hiding behind these very stats.
121
Matty where have you heard aged care facilities are closing doors ? Are you in Australia ? The Aussie PM came out and said that this should not happen. If it does there should be tough questions asked.
I am totally confused now as there is so much conflicting information out there.
I think the best thing to do is just ignore the news and watch goofy dog videos instead.
The Human world has now lost its mind.
62
The PM does not have any constitutional authority to direct Aged Care homes.
They are a state issue for the premiers to deal with – not the PM.
Meanwhile the Aged are sector has received legal advice that it has an absolute
DUTY OF CARE
To protect the residents and their staff from infection by persons who visit their aged care homes.
The existing State & Commonwealth laws all are clear about this duty of acre.
So Scomo backed off on that one.
24
The Commonwealth government is responsible for the aged care system in Australia.
21
It finances it.
Continued financing is subject to review by Commonwealth Health officials.
But it is the states which have the legal authority
For governing them.
The same is true for schools & universities.
Hence Dan Tehan ( Federal Minister for Education ) backing off last week when he tried to make schools open in Victoria.
And Victoria told to “fly off’.
13
The Commonwealth government is responsible for the aged care system in Australia.
41
While you are looking at the Constitution, (salute) Does it say anywhere anything about,
Freedom of movement.
Freedom of association.
Freedom of religion.
Freedom of expression.
Right to an opinion.
Right to privacy.
I seem to of misplaced my copy, along with all the above.
42
Bill
I never said the PM has any authority over the states. I simply paraphrased his public statement on this issue.
Your strawman is stymied by a lack of support… it falls down
Back to watching goofy dogs now.
01
Doors of all aged centers in SA
Have been closed for 6 weeks.
On legal advice.
Some are allowing limited visitation from this weekend.
Because of the drop in new cases in SA
Zero again today.
01
I Live in an aged care facility that closed its doors to all visitors, including hair dresser, pedicurist in March. They still allow someone, any someone, to come in and mow the lawn!
I know, or rather knew six residents that died alone!
Crazy things are happening here. All activities were stopped in March, some well distanced activity has recommenced this month.
The reasons given for this was the Social Distancing rules, yet the staff have continued to hold group meetings in small enclosed offices packed around small tables, shoulder to shoulder.
Complaints about this are ignored!
30
All ready read it 🙂
[Great just remember the message stay on topic early in the thread ]AD
11
How could Fauci know so precisely?
https://www.healio.com/infectious-disease/emerging-diseases/news/online/%7B85a3f9c0-ed0a-4be8-9ca2-8854b2be7d13%7D/fauci-no-doubt-trump-will-face-surprise-infectious-disease-outbreak
“Fauci: ‘No doubt’ Trump will face surprise infectious disease outbreak
“Healio.com
“Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said there is “no doubt” Donald J. Trump will be confronted with a surprise infectious disease outbreak during his presidency.
“Fauci has led the NIAID for more than 3 decades, advising the past five United States presidents on global health threats from the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s through to the current Zika virus outbreak.
“During a forum on pandemic preparedness at Georgetown University, Fauci said the Trump administration will not only be challenged by ongoing global health threats such as influenza and HIV, but also a surprise disease outbreak.
51
Maybe. Maybe not. Given that there is a disease outbreak of some sort every few years, it could be a guy pumping the importance of his own committee. If he’d said this before SARS, Ebola, Bird Flu, Swine Flu, it would also appear to be prescient.
Interesting but not proof.
74
Steve, you could also base the statement on the fact that there is an outbreak every two years in the US (the world) so he gets an get out of jail card for that. Just so happens its every election year.
Then I read Jo’s, so as above
20
Listening to interview with Dr. Judy Mikovits
If even 5% of it is true….jeepers…we are being done over big time…
61
I fully expected this to be moved on.
31
It’s been months now…6 months is a very long time for viruses…are we there yet?
11
Reminds me of the movie ‘Moon’, directed by David Bowies son…The virus conundrum is getting to past its ‘use-by’ ; date…6 months is a long time.
IMNEO (in my non expert opinion.
From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPpGk9NN6KQ
“Sam Bell is nearing the completion of his 3-year-long contract with Lunar Industries, mining Earth’s primary source of energy on the dark side of the moon. Alone with only the base’s vigilant computer Gerty as his sole companion, Bell’s extended isolation [my bolding] has taken its toll. He longs to return home, but a terrible accident on the lunar surface leads to a disturbing discovery that contributes to his growing sense of paranoia and dislocation so many miles away from home.”
11
Aaand you were correct. Less than 24h.
00
From the footnotes in yesterday’s post:
•Quarantines work: 12 days after lockdowns, quarantines and isolation, Coronavirus slows. This is text book microbiology.</em>
(My Bold)
This is the danger. Textbooks are not the real world. Textbooks by definition exist to explain concepts directly related to the topic. Influences outside of the topic are abstracted or ignored in order to clarify the topic explanation. The plus side is that in attempting to analysis the method/process/theory from a learning point of view there is no distraction. The down side is when you attempt to transfer such knowledge into a real world working example many of those extra influences that were casually hand waved into ill-relevantness come back and start asking if they can still go down to the shops to buy food.
Life is not a petri dish. You cannot isolate and apply textbook solutions because the textbook assumes controlled conditions.
In the real world there is no Safe. There is ‘Low Risk’. These are literally the terms you are instructed to use and the mind set you are instructed to get into. There is also As Far As Is Reasonably Practical. This is how the real world LEGALLY works when it comes to product safety and risk reduction.
We all ‘ethically’ claim that every human life is important, which gives the extension that ‘everything’ MUST be done to save lives. But also protect the economy… and the hospital system…
Problem is that you can’t save everyone and everything because it is not reasonably practical and eventually something or someone has to take one for the team. There is no easy answer to who or what has to suffer for the benefit of the group, but there are no perfect answers either.
You can, and probably should, look for perfect solutions, but you also need to be pragmatic. In context, what is more important? Dead people? Or homeless and jobless slums?
31
I strongly suspect the UK’s Science Industrial Complex, its Bureaucracy Complex and perverse “Higher-Education” complex more or less wish to destroy the UK’s economy and undermine it, to re-‘create’ the UK into a utopia of a watermelon-dominated failed-state. The self-destructive Extinction Rebellion fools had many sympathizers in those groups, even the police allowed them to do almost anything until the general public finally gave up on the hopeless UK police and physically went after the ER lunatics.
I see this same sort of treachery inside the USA, except in the US case there is also a vast sea of strongly drug-affected urban anarchist lunatics, who pretend to be ‘Libertarians’, but who want to make the USA as dysfunctional, lawless, ungovernable and ineffectual as possible. They’re all throwing wrenches into the machinery of modern society, daily, while mouthing empty platitudes about Principle, and Freedom, and Liberty, but are thoroughly misanthropic at that same time.
Then there are the civilization-hating ‘Green’ drop-kicks in both countries, constantly doing things which are roughly allied to those of these fake ‘libertarians’, both are determined to make sure anything a government does fails. And the government Agencies themselves are infested with these despisers of modern civilization.
We have a confluence of self-hating subcultures that are determined to make western society play Russian Roulette with COVID-19, with the destruction of State and sovereign borders as their aim. And the so-called ‘Libertarians’ are just as demented and allied to the cause of as the watermelons are.
And all the while they talk about reopening now, not tomorrow, not in two weeks, but today, to “save the economy”, while proposing to do the very things which will predictably backfire and ensure most of the economy is terminally damaged via a massive multiplication of COVID-19 cases.
Dr John Campbell made the point over 1 week ago that he seen nothing presently that will prevent 70 to 80% of the UK catching COVID-19, as there is nothing to stop that occurring. He gives a high percentage because the disease is so highly contagious an there are so many a-symptomatic and pre-symptomatic cases, that unless total isolation stops it now, it will infect about 4/5th of the UK. If Campbell is about right about that, and ~80 of the UK population catches COVID-19, and 20% of that 80% are symptomatic, that’s 13.6 million symptomatic cases. Both the observed Global death-rate plus the “% Died” in the most affected countries are converging on ~16% die. In other words, about 3.2% of all the total COVID-19 infections die (both those with symptoms and those without).
Which for the UK means 2,172,375 people would die of COVID-19 — the current UK deaths are 30,615.
Which means the UK has experienced 1.4% of the scale of death that is still to come in the UK, from COVID-19.
It’s a similar situation for all other countries, which have an infection which they can’t, or rather won’t bother to go all-in to crush it. It’s likely Brazil and UK will end up in the same quagmire, both will become examples of what not to do in a deadly pandemic.
The UK’s political ‘leaders’ and bureaucracy do not care. The intellectuals don’t care at all and the academics are who you should never call if you have any sort of serious physical emergency. The radical left and greens both see a golden-opportunity to destroy the economy and industry, while the hard-right react stupidly to this fact via imagining that re-opening the economy is viable without creating a much worse outcome in the process, if they don’t crush and eliminate the virus first.
But they obviously aren’t that bright, they’re just driven by green and papering over this is a lot of soppy stupid talk about spiral suicide and “dah children”! Those poor struggling family businesses can be “saved”, if we re-open now. Which is completely false hogwash because large numbers of those families will sicken and many will die and the economy will be holed and breaking up on the rocks in the COVID-19 storm they will unleash anyway.
So they’re all phonies, they’re all offering this fantasy of a fake recovery, now, where COVID-19 just somehow goes away.
Meanwhile the virus gets imported everyday with no quarantine while media pundits and blog commentaries laud the useless blithering idiot, Boris Johnson, for doing such a “great job” thus far with the handling of the COVID-19 crisis. Oh, how lucky you are, England.
They’re stuffed, the UK and USA are both stuffed.
So Australia needs to realize these two countries are going to fail to recover, they’re too unable to even help themselves, so what help can they be to us? None. We’re on our own or soon will be, and we’re going to face a much more unstable international environment, by the end of 2020. China may enter (or partially already has) a similar economic, social and political dysfunction and domestic upheaval situation, at the same time. We’ll need to get closer to our (highly diseased) SEA and East Asian powers, plus India because the USA may become a shadow of what it was, still an important country but not reliable or particularly functional or cohesive. The UK seems set for a similar loss of stature and most of it’s already long gone. We’ll need to adjust our focus greatly as COVID-19 takes down the least politically, socially and economically cohesive western countries.
If there’s a potential for their sooner recovery I’d say its with the people, but looking at the level of discussion occurring today I’d say it’ll take a decade of calamity at least just to clear the ideological BS from their system.
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Thanks for that WXC.
Yes I fear that this is exactly what the future holds for the USA & the UK.
Their university trained elites have been indoctrinated in the virtue and blessedness or a world with open borders.
And so have ours here in Oz. It was the opposition of this elite which delayed the closing of our borders until mid March. But finally Morrison saw what was coming and discovered a bit of backbone.
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He followed Trump by a day if I remember correctly.
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One difference: we rabble in the US are well armed.
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Niall Ferguson’s lockdown model’s code is broken.
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Neil. Niall is the economics/history professor.
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Hi Jo
Where did this 14 day quarantine number come from? Was it based on past experience with corona viruses or did an “expert” pluck it from mid air? No one seems to question it so I suppose there is a scientific reason for the number.
I ask because the new case in South Australia yesterday was a bit strange. A 70 year old bloke who had been overseas 7 weeks ago, came home and did his 14 days quarantine and has now been tested positive after showing mild symptoms. He was only in contact with 3 other people since leaving quarantine. Is it possible that some folk can carry this virus around for a lot longer than suspected before showing symptoms?
It might explain some of the variations in the success of lockdowns around the world. If places like New York and parts of Europe had a large number of infections present before cases were seen in hospitals then the lockdown may have been too late. While in Australia and New Zealand we had enough warning to lockdown, slowly, in time to prevent a wide community exposure. This virus might be more slippery than we have so far reckoned on.
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It’s not based on nothing Don, it’s based on a lot of early research.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-incubation-period/
Note that there are reports the Chinese are using a 28 day quarantine period along their border with Russia, for Chinese citizens returning from Russia. They either know something or are trying to discourage something.
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Don that is a very good question.
I too have puzzling how this came to be.
This 70 year old ‘Migrant’ arrived in Adelaide on march 20th
And was in quarantine for 14 days
So presumably he was all OK on the 4th of April.
But then he develops symptoms last week
No sense of smell or taste
And decides to get tested, and is positive on the 7th of May.
How can this be ?
And i note that in the UK the quarantine period is only 7 days.
I suspect that this short quarantine period
Is the other reason why the UK has wound up in the disaster it is in now.
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Well thats not going to happpen…that horse has bolted.
Watch cases rise as restrictions are relaxed… the second wave will be worse I think.
In a short space of time the virus will mutate to become more contagious and less virulent… myxomatosis and calici are two prime examples. At the same time the host population develop immunity as per the examples give.
Eventually this corona virus will take its place with the other five corona virus that infect humans. It will cause a contagious mild disease.
A little less hyperbole would be appreciated Jo but I do not expect it anytime soon. You seem to be stuck on presenting the worst and least likely outcomes. Your intentions are good but your methodology is flawed IMO.
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Have a look at the third graph down the UK’s page.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
There is no indication the first wave is going to end in either the UK or the USA. And a lot of reason to think it will greatly accelerate in the USA if reopening occurs now.
So how can they get a “second-wave” if they don’t end the first-wave? Before being tempted to write “second-wave” again, first look at the actives graph in the country, or the actives graph for the entire world.
Italy can actually (theoretically) get a second-wave, simply because their active graph shows they made their lock-down sufficiently strict for long enough for it too work and for their actives graph to start falling quickly.
But for the UK or USA it is impossible for them to get a second wave until well after the first one stops, and there is no sign yet of that occurring in May, or June. It’s more likely their first wave will not end like Italy’s now is, because the USA and UK are much too weak willed to make sure the lock-downs work.
Failure, upon failure, upon failure … with many more failures to come, I suspect.
But most ‘critics’ get around this by claiming the data is useless, and was not randomized in a perfect imaginary world that exists only in their head, so it signifies nothing and can be safely ignored. Good luck to them.
In the meantime …
How about you criticize yourself more.
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I’m not sure if an increase in infections after opening up after a lockdown is what epidemiologists refer to as a second wave. My understanding (which may be flawed) is that the second wave is a second season, or effectively a second epidemic, after the first one has abated.
Perhaps someone with some serious medical knowledge could comment.
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You can’t get a second ‘wave’ if the first never finished. I’m rapidly losing respect for people who keep waffling garbage about ‘second-waves’. They seem to have no clue what the data is showing and don’t reference it either to support their claims.
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A reort three days ago of a cluster of 8 seriously ill children, all in ICU. Suspected of being covid19 related. This morning a report from the US of the same occuring in four or five states. The children, mostly 5 years old or younger are experiencing severe cardiac issues with a few experiencing cardiac arrest. The report from the US said that the affected children, also mostly 5 yo or younger were in areas where there was a high incidence of covid19.
I’m sorry I don’t have a link, both reports were on radio. 6PR this morning on their US report. There may be a podcast.
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So……add young kids to the ‘warriors’ that
Trump wants to be warriors fighting this infectious disease.
The other USA disease fighting warriors are the elderly,
The sick, the infirm and the Blacks !
Is there anyone else here who thinks that this is appalling ?
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Moderator again imposing his views
By putting a comment of mine in moderation
No links
No foul language
Just stating the truth
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Hyperinflammatory shock in children during COVID-19 pandemic
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Well done Analitik, good clarification on my rather vague post. That was the first report from the UK. The second report which was from the US was (I think), 164 children from four or five states.
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Mystery Inflammatory Syndrome In Kids And Teens Likely Linked To COVID-19
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At least 85 kids across U.S. have developed rare, mysterious COVID-19-linked illness
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Even better.
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WTF… look to this country as well… I can’t travel from WA Mandurah to Waroona without a pass and yet the only case we’ve had in the last 8 days is some [snip crass] coming in from international routes.
This whole thing is definitely one rule for the masses and another rule for other people
Like Sydney I think it was no more than 5 people at a gathering and yet Aa 30 strong Muslim wedding.. it’s a police attendance then they just turn around and walk away again
One rule for one group and another rule for another group and you can see who’s in favour
[Needs links. Please stay polite. – jo]
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Here is a medical doctor’s opinion of the Corona virus pandemic in the USA. And not just any old medical doctor, It’s the opinion of Dr. Eric J. Topol, MD, the editor-in-chief of Medscape. He’s one of the top 10 most cited researchers in USA medicine
Just the final paragraph :
“The handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States will go down as the worst public health disaster in the history of the country. The loss of lives will make 9/11 and so many other catastrophes appear much smaller in their scale of devastation. Perhaps what we in the medical community will remember most is how our country betrayed us at the moment when our efforts were needed most.”
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/927811?src=wnl_tp10n_200508_mscpedit&uac=286880BT&impID=2373561&faf=1
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You know the US has a problem when you see heavily armed old, obese men out in the streets and in crowded buildings protesting against quarantine. As if exercising rights to bear arms and freedom of association are going to scare the blip out of CV19.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=zXXFf0Q2bcU&feature=emb_logo
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And these are Trump’s people ?
I wonder if, in 3 – 4 weeks time, will anybody do a ‘body count’ of those who were at the demo and now infected and in hospital.
As you say Rick, the virus just want new bodies to infect. It does not give a brass razoo about the politics of the human bodies.
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Yes it definitely is a problem.
Don’t those heavily armed old men know
That they can’t shoot the virus ?
More Mad Hatter’s Tea Party stuff !
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[Duplicate]
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A doctor acquaintance returned from Australia recently and was flabbergasted to see no health checks at the UK airport. He immediately put himself into 14 days self-imposed quarantine, and is now back at work.
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@Don, you asked about the length of the quarantine period and why it was 14 days.
And you asked about the English migrant who arrived here in SA on the 20th of March
And became symptomatic in early May..
Well there are others like this as noted in the BBC on line report.
An architect in Bristol with mild flu symptoms 7 weeks ago…
But Now is still ill with COVID 19
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52548843
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Over 30,000 dead in the UK
The BBC is remembering them
A few at a time each day
Here are 7 of those Brits remembered..
Just ordinary people killed by this virus
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52463735
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There is NO herd immunity.
Based on the statistics here (updated daily for each country as new figures are published):
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Bearing in mind that the figures depend on the level of testing in each country, look at the column “Tot Cases / 1M pop”. There isn’t a single country with an infection rate as high as 2%! Hard-hit countries such as Spain and Italy have rates of 0.56% and 0.36%, respectively. The U.S., with almost 1.3 million cases, still corresponds to an infection rate of 0.39% of the total population.
Another interesting calculation is to divide the number of deaths by the number of cases, which gives the mortality rate. This varies considerably, for example Canada has a mortality of 6.66% but Sweden has over 12%. In both countries the outbreak has especially targeted nursing homes for the elderly and infirm.
These figures need to be extrapolated from the % of the population that have actually been tested, which in most countries is limited to those who present with symptoms. The only way to know the true percentage would be to mass-test the population.
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The issue is whether any of this really has made a difference. This article at Watts Up With That points to models are, perhaps, worse than coin tossing:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/08/predictive-models-rarely-are-predictive/
And, recall, there is no proof at the scientifically verifiable level that after-the-fact lock down, etc., have any meaningful effect.
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The UK still has deaths per million lower than other countries.
The NHS is not overwhelmed as a whole. The extra beds provided in the Nightingale Hospitals are being mothballed.
The NHS has been highly successful in extending the lives of our old and frail so it is inevitable that the UK will suffer more from a new disease that attacks the old and frail. This is a case where a greater mortality from the disease is a reflection of greater past success in caring for our people.
There are two reasons why the UK currently shows a plateau in numbers:
i) In recent weeks testing has been hugely ramped up so more are being found that do not require hospital treatment. Despite that there has been no increase in the rate of infections found because the underlying rate of infection has been dropping in parallel with the increase in testing.
ii) The death rate numbers were recently changed from hospital deaths alone to deaths in all situations. The hospital alone figure is about a third of what it was about a month ago.
Interestingly, the main effect on the infection rate appears to have been from the change in hygiene practices that began on the 16th March and not from the lockdown on the 23rd March. In the UK, people with symptoms who did not require assistance with breathing were advised to self isolate at home so the arrival at hospitals of those who did require such help was deferred for about a week. Combining that with the 12 to 14 day incubation period means that the UK numbers involve a 21 day lead time rather than 12 to 14 days. Thus the peak of infections around the 8th April followed the changes from the 16th March and not the lockdown on the 23rd March.
There is ongoing discussion of that aspect here:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8294507/New-study-reveals-blueprint-getting-Covid-19-lockdown.html
It appears that improved hygiene, closing schools and reducing mass gatherings are the most important factors whereas closing businesses, using face masks and banning cross border movements once there is domestic transmission are of lesser importance.
Given that schools cannot be closed indefinitely the continued transmission is basically unstoppable in the absence of a vaccine or general population immunity.
Since the UK had to give up contact tracing and testing in early March due to the speed of domestic spread and thereafter only severe cases went to the hospitals it seems that a proportion of the population will now have acquired some immunity via mild or asymptomatic infections. The extent of that spread and the duration of any immunity have yet to be ascertained. It is likely that the UK, along with Sweden, have now acquired greater population resistance than nations with a more effective containment strategy so that eventually those other nations will catch up via a more long term battle with the virus.
To put it all in some proportion consider the 1968/69 Hong Kong Flu pandemic:
https://www.aier.org/article/woodstock-occurred-in-the-middle-of-a-pandemic/
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The UK has become a major center for importing
And exporting this infectious virus.
The Corona Virus is greatly pleased with the assistance in this process
By the UK government.
People flying in and out is exactly what the virus needs to thrive and survive.
Hint : Sarc/
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beggars belief really
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beggars belief really. How extraordinarily stupid.
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Interesting BBC NewsNight video short which explores UK Government policy ‘based’, note the quote marks, upon scientific expert opinion. Some experts clearly questioned the lock down decision when evidence was available suggesting it may not have the impact predicted and expected by Imperial College (both initial and revised versions).
The BBC has been long past its best and deteriorating for a long time and I have not watched it or listened to it on the radio regularly as I did maybe a decade ago. but occasionally does produce something worthwhile.
This clip furthers my belief that lock down is the wrong option provided you have the right health policy and resources in place even for something like SARS-CoV-2. Our Government has failed us before the virus arrived and continues to do so even now.
(And apologies to misspelling Neil Ferguson’s name as someone has pointed out to me in my last post)
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Qld has set a roadmap for opening up again.
Does not seem to be any requirement for wearing respiratory protection, which is just bizarre when this spreads primarily by respiratory droplets. Respiratory hygiene seems to be limited to refraining from coughing on people.
Apparently Queensland’s secret weapon is… ordinary politeness??
Total cases has been nearly plateaued for two weeks, so I guess we may as well try a smattering of liberation. Restaurants and clubs are partly reopening at the end of next week. Is it just me or does anyone else feel like they are a lab rat in a giant experiment? When the waiter asks what you want, just say cheese!
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Not in Qld Andrew
So I cannot make an informed comment
But you have my sympathies,
SA has been far gentler I think.
Walking out always allowed for example.
The absence of masks has always disturbed me.
But the authorities told the people not to wear them
And now if one wears . a face mask,
Others assume you are infected
And should not be out & about doing shopping
Bizarre !
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And on the BBC news today I learn that we are to start quarantining people entering the UK by air for fourteen days (not by boat?). Someone must have read this blog.
Of course, we have to allow time for this to be organised, so we won’t start until the end of the month. Smacks head.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52594023
Meanwhile we could be closing down half of one our nice, reliable, cheap, CO2-free nuclear plants to allow in the wind and sun because the demand is so low, with us mostly locked in at home. One of those power stations that provides power 24/7 and inertia for free. Not a problem currently with our 23GW of wind turbines producing barely 1GW for most of the last 3 days.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-52566082
Truly mad.
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I comment from my perspective in the US as a retired (read vulnerable population) engineer, not a health care specialist.
In March, the projected number of hospital beds required to meet Covid-19 demand exceeded available beds. The economy was shut down to allow hospitals to treat all Covid-19 patients by reducing the rate at which people got infected; the shutdown was never sold as a means of reducing the number of people infected or number of deaths; with that logic, at the end (2021?) just as many people would have had the virus with or without shutdowns. With few exceptions, the goal of “flattening the curve” has been achieved, and continuing the shutdown is “mission creep.” I read of hospital layoffs because, although they do not have near the expected number of Covid-19 patients, all elective surgery has been cancelled, emergency rooms are empty, and beds are empty.
Calls to maintain shutdowns fly in the face of insufficient data to prove that shutdowns have been effective. New York, despite having one of the strictest shutdown, has a quarter of all US cases and a third of all deaths. Sweden, without shutting down their economy, schools, or border, is not an outlier. You can make an argument either way but there is insufficient data to prove your argument.
I assume your comment “This is textbook microbiology” applies to the original study which prompted shutdowns. That study said in the US, without intervention, there would be 2.2 million deaths and, with intervention, there would be 1 million deaths. The intervention of choice has been shutdowns. Don’t know where we will be next year but as of now the curves are bending down and there are less than 10% of forecast deaths. According to the CDC website, they confirm approx. 39,000 Covid-19 deaths, the 77,000 (or whatever) is an estimate, just as is number of flu deaths. As the number of reported Covid-19 deaths go up reported deaths from flu, pneumonia, etc., go down. Although I can’t prove it, just as you can’t prove the contrary, I think that due to flawed and changing reporting methodology, reported Covid-19 deaths are inflated.
Choosing the economy vs. Covid-19 is a false choice; the economy can be opened and vulnerable populations still protected. The shutdown has consequences beyond economic. In the US, ER rooms are not seeing the normal number of heart attack, stroke, and other medical emergency patients; where are they? In the US over 30 million people (read families) have been laid off and deprived of income. Many small businesses are expected to declare bankruptcy. Suicides are expected to increase, physical spousal abuse is rising, poverty rate will climb, and arguably poverty is the leading cause of death.
Extraordinary action, and shutting down an economy is extraordinary action, requires extraordinary proof. There is argument but no proof. The shutdown is supported by those whose income is not affected. Those who live paycheck-to-paycheck or customer-to-customer are primarily not in the vulnerable population. They are, however, being sacrificed: I wonder if they concur that the shutdown is a good idea?
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There is never going to be time to get the data that a lot of us would prefer. Sometimes in life the urgency is such that we have to act on incomplete information. My suggestions now wouldn’t be much different from what they were two months ago.
At the time, knowing an unknown new disease with a high death rate was coming the best option was to shut the door. Quarantine.
Text book microbiology means we understand the basic principles of exponential growth and infection of a novel deadly disease and we know the only way to stop it is to stop feeding it fresh bodies. It is a complex chemical with no legs.
Sorry can’t expand right now.
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Whilst keeping the airports open to such an extent seems extremely short-sighted (and reportedly now going to be addressed…well done for bringing it to the worlds attention!), it may not be the root cause of the plateau.
The UK has really ramped up testing since end of April:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-covid-19-tests-per-day?country=AUS+FIN+NOR+GBR
It is quite likely that there was much wider community spread than was counted (I recall Dr John Campbell suggest 10x or even as high as 20x) and as a result the higher levels of testing are now revealing that the spread.
This would seem, to me, to be backed up by the number of daily deaths falling
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-deaths-covid-19?country=AUS+FIN+NOR+SWE+GBR
whilst the new case numbers are plateaued per your article
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-cases-covid-19?country=AUS+FIN+NOR+SWE+GBR
If the number of new cases was genuinely flat (~R0=1) then the death rate should also be roughly flat, should it not? Unless, of course by chance, only those that ultimately experience mild symptoms are the ones out and about being infected. I don’t think it likely that we’re able to self-select like that.
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I was in China in 2003 during the SARS crisis. This poor country managed to check the temperature of everyone in the huge crowds going in and out of its train stations. It’s probably gotten better since then. The current anti-China hysteria has some slight basis, in that it is a ‘denial’ culture in which the police will suppress bad news, but it’s mostly envy of a decadent, dying culture for the future of civilization.
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Well Jo. I agree with a lot of whay you say about the current situation in the UK.
You have far too much faith in the numbers as far as UK cases go, and I have recently spotted chunks of confirmation bias in your posts. You try to deflate Flu death numbers, while boosting C-19 ones. In the UK both are a mess due to lack of testing. The Flu death numbers in the UK (in England at least) are usually stated as Flu/pneumonia combined. Lets face it how would you know, they don’t test. An old person dies with a respiratory illness, flu often ends in pneumonia. Over 30k have died with this classification this season that is ending now – that’s on top of C-19. Even so we are only just above average deaths for this time of year. You show the Worldometer graph of cases – how would they know? They have turned old people away from hospitals and back to care homes – no testing. People told if you have symptoms stay at home- save the NHS – they are not even counting. I ask you again how would we know. The whole thing is a shambles.
Since the UK government is a big investor in the vaccine push and is advised by those funded by the Gates Foundation – we are waiting for a vaccine Jo.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/05/09/who-controls-the-british-government-response-to-covid-19/
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Read my posts again. I’m the one who pointed out the inflated Flu numbers. On Covid — if the numbers are inflated why does the all cause mortality show deaths in major covid cities are far higher than expected? (If people smooth those numbers across whole countries — where most people aren’t infected — they can minimize the obvious truth that where Covid is rampant, deaths are far above normal, and even above the covid deaths. )
I discuss “Daily New Cases” and Excess all Cause Mortality because they are the most reliable numbers we have in a Fog of uncertainty. I don’t rely at all on the death certificate data other than to count 1 body as 1 death.
Since I discuss the views of those who disagree and explain why they are wrong, and your criticisms apply to arguments I don’t use, the confirmation bias could be the lens you are looking through.
As for vaccines, I have said from the beginning — 60 posts ago — we can solve this without a vaccine. I continually point to other solutions. Are you just catching up to me?
The one point we may both agree on is the question about why the US and UK response seems “as if” they are aiming at being dependent on an expensive vaccine, rather than to find the cheapest and fastest solution to the virus.
Let’s try to be scientific and disspassionate.
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