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I wonder about the key worker thing. There are key workers such as people working in health who seem at high risk. But there are those whose risk would be much lower such as those working in food production or power plans (depending on who they meet in the factory). Keeping all the children...

One concern is that the funders will be pushing money into pandemic research rather than into things like ME. However, one argument for increasing ME research is that a pandemic could trigger many more cases (based on studies that report a percent of cases after an infection). Which could put ME...

One of the things they did was a test and track process where people were tracked by their phones and if they walked near someone who was later tested to have the virus they would be tested and quarantined. I think south Korea also had a massive test program which helped them get things under...

I think that is a very simplistic view. The spread rate will depend on what mitigations are in place to prevent spread and the death rate depends both on demographics and the ability of the hospital system to cope. For example, people are saying Italy has an aging population hence the high...

Yes but people are also largely confined to their homes. To me that was an argument that was falling back to having a cordon and claiming people inside would be stigmatized rather that the lock down that seems to be happening where people are largely confined to their houses and in large...

This one from Wessely is very poor and certainly not evidence just opinion. He seems to think quarantining happens to a whole area rather than house by house in a lock down. Also talks of stress of being quarantined but no concept of the stress of government inaction...

I assume fatality rates will vary hugely with population health and demographics. Given the death rate with older people is worse then if you have an ageing population then you would expect a higher fatality rate.

I would have thought that it isn't as simple as a 14 day peak with lock down as if one person in a family (locked down together) has it then it is likely to spread to others in the family. So I would have thought there could be increases as lockdown happens beyond the detection of those that...

I think there is a more fundimental issue in how they are using the modelling. They should be running over a number of permutations so that they know when the model is reliable in its prediction and where the model is sensitive to the assumed parameters. I've not heard anyone talking about doing...

My impression is that they will carefully choose who is on the advisory group so they get people who will agree. I also suspect Cochrane are a group that talk about patient involvement view this as patient support and don't realize that patients have the ability to reason and understand science.

And advisors tell them that they think they want to hear.

I wonder if they were simply listening to the wrong people. We've seen how many senior people in health in this country don't seem capable of coherent thinking and will go out of their way to cover for other academics. Perhaps we are suffering from the effect of 'experts' who don't have a clue.

On newsnight they are saying one of the advisory panel (Neil Ferguson from imperial) had done some modelling and was predicting >250000 deaths so the government had to listen and change direction.

Is there a risk of picking up the virus from touching surfaces. For example, lift buttons, hand rails etc. I was assuming this was the bigger risk when going to places with people.

Sometimes I wonder if there is a problem with peoples understanding when they say that they are following 'science'. It suggests that they think science has a single correct answer rather than being a methodology. The problem here is there are a lot of uncertainties. People can build models and...

This is something I've been wondering about. Is it that if someone comes into a lot of the virus (high dose) then it starts having an effect sooner and the body doesn't have the chance to start any reaction?

The problem comes if everyone is trying to shop when no one is shopping and going at quiet times. Then perhaps peak times will be quiet.

With any modelling task you can include a mix of strategies (sometimes they can interact in strange ways). But I think the visualizations help bring what people are talking about to life. What I assume they do in real models is run the models many times to look at how the results range...

This looks like an interesting article visualizing spread patterns etc https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/

I was wondering if people are self iscolating and avoiding shops (basically living off food that lasts well) then perhaps supplements may be worthwhile due to a limited diet?