Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

Si.

Never loose a trace, even if it may seem unlikely. Salt in the air from the sea would be the same idea, or some air pollution.

I admit that the conventional idea of the spread of a virus may turn out to be the main or whole thing.

The list (put by @Adrian) of different behaviour of different countries may well turn out to tell a lot.

AGILE - Started mass testing quickly: Korea, Singapore, Hongkong, Germany, Denmark
BEYOND - No equipment
CHOKE - Overwhelmed before able to act: Iran, Italy, Spain
DELAY - Deliberate policy not to test: France, Switzerland, UK, Netherland, Sweden

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1245365546562072577

 

Article by Tom Chivers (who once wrote a good article on ME/CFS and the lightning process):
https://unherd.com/2020/04/how-likely-are-you-to-die-of-coronavirus/

Not much in there that’s not been discussed on this thread (perhaps he’s been reading it) but well written.

One important point that I thought he missed was that Neil Ferguson’s figure of 510,000 predicted UK deaths in the “worst-case scenario” did not account for “the potential negative effects of health systems being overwhelmed on mortality.” (See Imperial paper and Simon’s blog).

I also thought it was a shame that he didn’t write anything about the political dimension in the decision making processes. Scientific models can make predictions with varying degrees of accuracy about what will happen given certain inputs and assumptions. But they can’t tell you what your objectives should be or what to prioritise (eg economy or mortality rate). The UK does not have access to different scientific data and yet – particularly in the early stages – it chose to adopt a different strategy to most of other countries. That must have been at least in part a political decision and it is disingenuous for any politician to pretend that all their decisions in response to the pandemic have been determined entirely by science.

(NB Mindful of the forum rules, I am not trying to start a party political discussion. I am just making the general point that there is always a political dimension to public policy, whether it’s pertaining to ME/CFS, climate change, or Covid-19.)

Also some interesting stuff on Covid-19 in the week’s edition of More or Less on BBC Radio 4, which I would recommend:https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000h7st

Again, nothing particularly new or taxing, but clear and well presented, as ever. (I recommend checking out the More or Less archive on the BBC Sounds app.)

[Edited to add – just seen this is my 500th post. Don’t I get a trophy or something? I’m devastated!]

 

An excellent 'blow by blow' account of the UK response to date in the New Statesman that rather contradicts the prevalent narrative in some circles :

https://www.newstatesman.com/politi...ursued-herd-immunity-and-why-it-was-abandoned

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1245302403336998918

 

The author seems to have no insight at all into what was really going on. He also appears to miss the point that the advice he says the scientists were giving was unbelievably stupid and could not possibly work. Maybe they were that stupid but surely an investigative journalist is there to consider such a state of affairs rather than suggest that it was all a matter of fine tuning.

The 'second wave' is a complete myth based on a graph from an epidemic of a different sort decades ago as far as I can see. AQs the hammer and dance chap pointed out it bears no relevance to a serious policy.

 

The overall death rate from covid-19 has been estimated at 0.66%, rising sharply to 7.8% in people aged over 80 and declining to 0.0016% in children aged 9 and under.

That looks very plausible to me - it falls within all the bits of evidence for maximum and minimum I have seen from various sources. It seems to imply that for my wife and I the chances really are that if either of us catches it (meaning the other probably will too) there is about a one in fifteen chance of one of us dying - almost certainly me*. We will keep well distanced.

* I think we can assume that for men the overall figure will be about 0.9% and for women 0.4%.
That is totally different from influenza where the rate is well down and even then the vast majority of deaths are in people who were already too frail to live for very long with any quality of life.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1245355870629826562

 

I believe - and have done for some weeks - that this is at the heart of why so many people, governments and health scientists alike, have been (and still are) getting this so very badly wrong. Health scientists, of all people, should be able to see beyond the end of their linear noses to the horrifying implications of exponential growth. Or should have the guts to stand up to those doubters in power who need convincing.

I think people instinctively perceive change as being linear, and have great trouble seeing beyond that; certain world leaders' great instincts are completely screwed when it comes to perceiving exponential growth it seems.

When things accelerate slowly the changes still seem linear; the early stages of exponential growth are like that, so the 'experts' and the power-brokers reinforce their straight-line beliefs with that as apparent evidence. Not realising they are witnessing the early stages of what is effectively a disease explosion, the consequences of which will be mainly borne by those whose well being they are responsible for.

 

Given that he references government documents, now a matter public record, I'm more convinced by that version of events than those of outside commentators.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1245398157632180224

 

The author of that piece is mates with Wessely. To me, it reads like the Establishment trying to find a way to excuse itself.

Isn't the second wave concern legitimate if you assume that they're going to drop social distancing policies before medical advances (vaccine? treatment?) mean it's safe to do so... it's just that doing that seems a bad idea.

 

Southend Hospital staff have today threatened to withdraw care from Covid patients unless they have better PPE.

 

Figures from UK today look worse than that, total cases approx 30000 and 2350 deaths, about 8% and that's lagging.


I assume there are far more cases, but taking a lag of 10 days for deaths, for a 1% death rate that would mean there were 235,000 cases 10 days ago but the official figures on 22 Mar were 5683.

Is my math bad or are the no. of cases really out by that much.

 

Do you really think these documents reflect what went on?
I would have thought they could be guaranteed to be the most manipulated.

 

Dropping social distancing would obviously produce a second wave, and the next time a third wave and on for ever. The 'second wave' though, seems to be based on some graphs from a historic flu epidemic where there was a second wave for reasons that probably had nothing to do with containment measures.

I agree that the decision making may have been as stupid as is portrayed. I guess my main point was that why does a journalist present it as a finely judged decision rather than using common sense and seeing that the whole approach was b****cks.

 

Yes. I'm not paranoid.

 

It does seem as if they were trying to be so clever in the way they managed an infection they had little understanding of that it meant they were completely stupid. Not surprising given the way we seem to promote people for pretending that they know more than they do.

Not to defend British journalism, especially not on this topic, but Freedman is not a journalist. He's 'emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London' and a mate of Wesselys.

 

I agree that the UK figures push thing towards thinking of a higher figure but the trouble is that there is every reason to thin that they are particularly poor on picking up incidence. Testing was only allowed if you were bad enough to go to hospital as far as I can see.

I was working for a time on a 10 to 20 fold underdetermination, which I think would be about right based on the proportion of Chinese cases needing hospital. I think 10 days to death may be a bit long. I suspect quite a lot of people die within five days of diagnosis - some die within 24 hours. I would guess at a 7 day lag figure. That might begin to match up with a 10-20 fold underreporting.

So I think your maths are fine but I would allow for slightly more optimistic data input. And I am not saying I think the quoted figures are absolutely right. I just think that they fall within the limits that really seem hard to go outside. The German figures make it hard to see how the overall death rate can be much above 2-3% I would say.

 

That figures. But professors are supposed to partake of critical thinking as well, if I remember rightly.