Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

They do infect most of the population, it just takes more time than you think. As I keep saying, it can take many years before "herd immunity" is achieved.

You are also rescuing the young who are not yet diseased with post-viral complications!!!!!

 

That's plausible but I would say this.

The first case identified in Italy was in Rome on 31st Jan. By then even a single case in Lombardy that resembled respiratory infection should have rang some alarm bells.
It wasn't until 21st Feb that 16 cases in Lombardy were confirmed.

I have read here and other places about a strong link between China and Northern Italy due to the textile industry. I don't know how true that is but if true, I assume anyone living in Lombardy is very aware of that link, so any doctor who sees a case of respiratory illness after the Wuhan outbreak would be on high alert.
I remain skeptical.

 

I wonder if the idea of behavioural fatigue came from this paper (co-authored by Wesseley and on SAGE’s evidence list):

The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: rapid review of the evidence

They also advised against having “an overly precautious approach” to quarantine/lockdown (“keep it as short as possible”). And they suggested that a long Wuhan-style lockdown “might be more detrimental than strictly applied quarantine procedures limited to the period of incubation”

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30460-8/fulltext

 

It's been interesting to learn over the last couple days how our health ministry here in NZ had strongly advised the government at the beginning to close our border until measures were in place. Excellent advice was given from our health ministry but it wasn't taken.

Those measures would have been setting in place appropriate quarantine conditions.

The appropriate quarantine measures weren't implemented until a couple of weeks into Alert 4 lockdown.

 

I wasn't sure if the South China Morning Post was likely to be a useful source, and then googling the doctors name led to complaints that the Chines government had been twisting his words. I've not looked into the details of this, but thought I'd add a warning to anyone reading those articles

Could be. There's not much of substance there to justify delaying social distancing measures, but what little substance there is around the government's concerns about 'behavioural fatigue' seems to relate to Wessely's work - or maybe it was just utterly empty speculation from Whitty? What sort of evidence would be needed to justify not even considering an extended period of substantial social distancing - maybe just a few people's hunches?

I just saw Wessely is one of the contributing editors of this site: https://coronavirusexplained.ukri.org/about/

Most of the others seem to be amongst the government's Covid-19 'top advisors'.

 

Just saw that Wessely's 2014 CV says:

EXPERIENCE IN WORKING WITH UK GOVERNMENT
I am or have been a member of the following committees...

2009- Scientific Advisory Group (SAGE): Cabinet Office,
restricted

https://nanopdf.com/download/professor-2_pdf

 

No, this is not already clear.

Clear may be that many more have just now died, but to look at only one or two months doesn´t give any clue, as they may have died anyway in the next half year or so (and listening to forensics, this is not unlikely).


When lifting the lockdown, other countries (especially when having no excess deaths for now) may experience more deaths as well.

But maybe you want to stay in lockdown for the rest of the year and longer (this will have huge side effects), or want to eradicate the virus (this will not succeed).


The Swedish will have far less side effects from measures (it´s not that they havn´t implemented measures). It will be interesting to see what other health issues will become elevated, for different reasons.

What I have a problem with, is that there will be data that can support their skewed interpretation.

 

I am sorry for myself here, but the prevalence is low.

I will keep an eye on this issue. Thanks for your input.

 

Was just looking at the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Emergency Preparedness and Response website: http://epr.hpru.nihr.ac.uk/

Wessely is the unit director.

Fiona Fox from the SMC is on their 'independent' advisory group:

http://epr.hpru.nihr.ac.uk/sites/default/files/advisory_group/Biographies for advisory group members.doc

Wessely's current bio in that document says "He has served on numerous governmental committees in these areas and continues to serve on the Defence Scientific Advisory Council (MOD), SAGE and the Behavioural Science Advisory Group for the Cabinet Office."

I don't know that the "Behavioural Science Advisory Group for the Cabinet Office" is. Googling turned up this in an article on 'behavioural fatigue', but I don't think Wessely is directly connected to BIT:

https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-how-the-uk-government-is-using-behavioural-science-134097

 

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/co...t/news-story/ec3482dd38c5187c9e8a41deaa7a13a1

An excerpt from a letter in yesterday's Australian newspaper. I had heard things in the UK were bad, but this is simply mind-boggling.

 

FT has updated excess deaths info and placed it with main stats . Link below

https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest

 

Thanks, @JaneL for the list of articles. This one coauthored by Wessely is sort of the COVID version of "Air travel will never catch on".

The psychological effects of quarantining a city
https://www.med.uminho.pt/pt/covid19/Sade Mental/Rubin 2020 The psychological effects of quarantining a city.pdf

Not a single piece of research is referenced. Why use references - we can surely just rely on the high esteem in which the authors are held?

According to the piece, one must avoid quarantining because it makes people nervous and trapped, and these upset feelings can causes all sorts of illnesses, you see, because the mind and the body are SO heavily intertwined.

Instead, trust people to do it themselves.

Edit: I see @JaneL has already commented on this study.

 

This has already been shown to be incorrect. I wrote this post about it earlier. On average more than 10 years of life are lost for each COVID death, and much more than 10 years for some.

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...rate-uk-hospital-symptoms-study-a9491346.html

Coronavirus: Third of those hospitalised with virus in UK dying, study suggests

 

Preparations may be in hand for a change of strategy. Someone I know, who is no more vulnerable today than two months ago, has just received a letter notifying of the vulnerable status and told to remain indoors for three months and, if sharing accommodation, to isolate from the other person. An announcement as to relaxation of lock down measures for the remainder cannot be far away.

 

What I’ve been hearing recently is that you cannot compare death rates in countries like the U.K. with other countries because of how “large” the U.K. population is.

Prof Karol Sikora is an Oncologist and ex director of the WHO cancer programme. Throughout this whole crisis, he has been posting saying things were “improving”, “looking positive” and so on. Now he says this. The reason I’m posting is because I would like to discuss this here. Is it true that we cannot compare the U.K. to other countries? Because that seems to be the latest defence that I’m hearing.

Yet there’s so much that can change the number of deaths, including govt policy. Surely it’s up to the govt and policy makers to stop pockets of outbreaks where they occur and stop it from reaching other parts of the country, even if the country is larger, (as Alyson Pollock put it, Cordon Sanitaire.) Therefore surely the actual population size shouldn’t matter as much, if govt policy did enough to stop the spread.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1255128456200744966


https://twitter.com/user/status/1249610812815298560


https://twitter.com/user/status/1255536567378153474