Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

Florida finally had a day with fewer than 10,000 new cases, 9,344. We also had *only* 77 new deaths reported. Orange County had 421 new cases and 5 more deaths. This is part of a pattern of weekly dips in reporting. I expect numbers to go up by midweek.

There have been 872 deaths reported in a week, an average of 124 per day.

Somebody should realize that averaging over 100 deaths a day will rapidly put you in major-league territory. The state, which now has close to 6,000 deaths (5,972), could add 10,000 before election day, something which should concern even politicians.

I'm still waiting to see what is going to change this.

BTW: Texas is showing us what happens when a hurricane hits a region with a runaway pandemic, but the results won't be in for a week or two. Florida is also subject to hurricanes.

 

That's rather the sort of amount the entire UK (I think, not just England?) has been averaging

 

Now.

At one point we were losing over 1000 people a day.

ETA - with around 8000 'confirmed' new cases a day.

 

Welllll.....

Government finds out R value in Spain is 'high' so decides to implement a 14 day quarantine on those returning to the UK from Spain.

Do they do this in a sensible manner, given the situation was/is that anyone coming back from when they found out the R value was higher than they found acceptable, by deeming everyone returning as potentially infected and needing to be quarantined?

No, they don't.

What they do do is give everyone time to change flights and rush back to 'defeat' the imposition of quarantine.

So people, that are no more likely to be uninfected than they are today, loads of them in packed planes, rushing back, so as to get back before midnight.

...and the news seems to be praising these people for their ability, ingenuity, and foresight, in working around the quarantine rules.

The rules which are in place to try and stop people coming back from Spain infecting people.

Is it just me.......

 

No it isn't just you, @Wonko.

The level of incompetence here is breathtaking.
What is equally sad is that even the more intelligent news outlets seem to be incapable of seeing the reality.

What none of these complaining holidaymakers seems to get is that it is not just a matter of R values or rates of infection. It is the process of mixing people around by long distance travel that is the real problem. If people stay in their local area the infection pathways will naturally burn out through what one might call micro-herd immunity. If a husband infects a wife then the wife cannot infect the husband, so R goes from 1 to 0. If they go on holiday she can infect 100 people on a plane.

And someone needs to tell the airline CEOs that the only way they are going to have a job in five years time is if they shut down flying completely until the virus has been cleared. It is all their own fault.

 

In hopes of improving my own mental hygiene, I'm going to stop posting daily results for Florida, unless it serves some other purpose. This state is now outpacing entire countries and continents in infections and deaths. No one should infer that my absence is at all ominous.

Please note the importance of social context in the discussion of R values by Jonathan Edwards. This is not simply a characteristic of the virus or the infected individual. It is an abstraction, which many people have great difficulty using. The positive aspect is that this abstraction can be affected by a wide range of policies and behaviors that do not depend on a magical cure or perfect vaccine. Changing a statistical abstraction can have important real-world consequences, even if the absolute guarantees individuals want are absent. The kind of guarantee we can provide is that those who fall ill will get our best efforts toward their health and survival. This is not quite a simple as some imagine.

I happen to think airlines can operate, for those willing to take a risk, with appropriate measures to reduce risk, and zero tolerance for those who defy these measures. What they cannot do is turn a profit. This will require subsidies, and that means the travel they offer will need to serve some shared national purpose beyond having a fling in Iberia or providing a return on investment by party donors. This is apparently a novel concept in several nations.

The important principle which the pandemic is trying to teach is that you cannot simply write-off the lives of some fraction of your population and remain a civilization. The minimum lower bound for civilization is living together without killing each other.

Here in Florida, we have moved beyond the "breathtaking incompetence" noted above. It is not even clear our governor has any plan beyond claiming his actions have always been appropriate for the challenge, despite numerical evidence to the contrary. Tussles over providing timely, accurate and comprehensible numbers continue, and I currently suggest those interested use Florida's Community Dashboard instead of the official one. It has problems, but it is not trying to hide the severity of the pandemic.

 

DONALD TRUMP'S national security adviser Robert O'Brien has tested positive for COVID-19, the White House has said in a statement.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/worl...obert-obrien-white-house-coronavirus-outbreak

 

It seems possible that having an invading enemy force, (we, and the US, are seemingly at war with the virus after all) or billions of them, inside the US national security adviser, is a threat to US national security that cannot be tolerated.

It probably could also be seen as indicating a certain lack of moral rectitude, and may mean that he is now an agent of the Chinese state.

Dunno, it's difficult to know which particular version of lunacy will be employed, but it is possible that air strikes may be called for to weaken the enemy strongholds in Robert O'Brien.

 

Swedish chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell has a different opinion...

Source: Aftonbladet: "Oro för en andra våg när smittspridningen ökar i Europa"
Google Translate, English

Still no masks/facecoverings either, despite WHO's recommendations

 

- Our assessment is that travel is not what is driving this.

So presumably the virus got in to Sweden via one of Harry Potter's friends doing teleportation?

But then of course he may well be right since then. If nobody does anything to stop the virus then air traffic may not be such a big factor!! After all air traffic is not such a big factor in the USA.

 

https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2752.full?ijkey=90DKkLzBD1ca2TU&keytype=ref&s=09

 

From @Amw66's link

 

Sweden and its neighbors are not used to making a big deal out of borders. A friend in Sweden whose business involves work on ferries told me customs stopped him for a check when he came back to Sweden from Denmark. (He routinely carried his electronic tools with him when he went on service calls. They thought he might be a smuggler.) He told me "None of the people I know could believe this." That particular ferry is briefly in international waters, and thus can serve alcohol without the heavy duties. Swedes he knows would ride back and forth for parties, and sometimes get off in the wrong country.

Three people doing work on satellite electronics were at the far north of the country where some rockets are launched and accidentally wandered across the border into Norway (a NATO country) carrying strange equipment. Anywhere else this could have become a major incident, because one of them was born in Iran and another was an Israeli. Scandinavian authorities sorted this out promptly without publicity.

The border between Finland and Russia is more serious, but there have been a number of people who fled Russia via bicycle or rowboat. Similar stories apply to the three Baltic states, which depend on ferries to connect them to the non-Russian world. Any epidemic in Saint Petersburg, Russia will soon be seen in Estonia, and move from there to the rest of Scandinavia. There were plenty of cases in Saint Petersburg before Russia officially said there was an epidemic.

Copenhagen is a city where I've seen waiters speaking five languages. It is hard to imagine how they coped with isolation, except that they have an attitude of coping with anything reasonably. How Denmark and Sweden went such separate ways in this crisis is a mystery.

 

Could have had this thing under control by March if not last December for a fraction of the cost.

This is our chance to learn for the next one that kills 5x, 10x, 100x as many people. It seems that too many people are either not understanding the lessons or inventing totally lunatic ones.

Not sure what you do about that if you're in the position of trying to address the next big one.

 

Absolutely gobsmacking!!! I'm finding it hard to believe that anyone would say anything so damned STUPID.

 

It seems that it is hard for us to absorb that this 'anyone' is just the Cochrane Collaboration PR machine.
The first author, Moynihan, was a journalist who did a PhD with our old friend Paul Glasziou - the one who writes reviews on how to do research with Iain Chalmers, but also a positive review of GET with Larun.

A bit from his University home page:
Dr Moynihan is active in research translation, and his work has recognition and impact. He’s a founding member and co-chair of the scientific committee for the highly successful international Preventing Overdiagnosis conference, coming to Sydney in 2019. In 2017 he chaired the planning committee for the Australian National Summit on Overdiagnosis, and has forged links with key professional and consumer organisations.

Ray also hosts the popular podcast – The Recommended Dose – produced by Cochrane Australia, featuring compelling conversations with the world’s leading thinkers in healthcare, including BMJ editor-in-chief Dr Fiona Godlee, JAMA Internal Medicine editor-in-chief Professor Rita Redberg, and Cochrane founder, Sir Iain Chalmers.

 

I’m sure we all know of people who have had their ‘unnecessary’ chemotherapy stopped...
A family friend who suspects he has a recurrence of skin cancer was told by the GP surgery that he could not have an appointment, and he must not turn up at the doctors. He was offered a phone consult....
But hey - its much more important to make sure that no unnecessary tests get done.