Winning the Covid-19 war

[Paul H (admin)]

In reply to Steve's link:

Lockdown stories and conspiracy theories will be told by our children for decades. There was talk once that China had too many old people.

Moving swiftly on, Dilys checked UK mortality figures for the start of 2020. January 50,000 and February 40,000. January's was probably higher due to seasonal influenza, but didn't appear on the news cycle.
The mortality for 2019 was about 500,000 or 1400 per day, again that wasn't in the news cycle. If (a big if) we are near the peak, C-19 has taken fewer than life does in a "normal" year.

Some of the old folk that die from C-19 would have died from something else - we simply do not know the full statistics yet and might not know until 2021.

If 1% is the worst case C-19 mortality, and its inevitable the whole world will get infected before a vaccine is available, then 50 million in the UK will get it leading to 500,000 worst case C-19 deaths.
That's still no worse than what life takes in a "normal" year.

Ok double in the first year, which is very sad, but with herd immunity, vaccines and no confirmed mutation of C-19, subsequent years should be better due, I'm sorry to say, a lack of vulnerable people.

However economically there will be a glut of houses for sale and very limited cash from buyers, some of them in negative equity. Who wants to live in a densely populated city like London with sky-high prices, and transport based on tightly packed petri-dishes. Guess what all that does for house prices?

Happy Days, sunny here. Stay well for 18 months (t&c apply)
Paul

[Timmo]

You can look up the meaning of Wet Wang in the first book. Though you may have fun creating your own definition. it was my first introduction to The Meaning of Liff.

On 13 Apr 2020, at 10:47, Port-Na-Storm [via UK HBBR Forum] <[hidden email]> wrote:

Way back in time, actually on April 11th but it seams a lifetime ago, CW casually threw in a reference to The Meaning of Liff.  (Ah; The Meaning of Liff!)
These things don't go unnoticed.

For those unfamiliar with this work it is a tomb written by the late Douglas Adams, of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame and John lloyd of QI and many other important cultural works such as Blackadder, Not The Nine O'Clock News and Have I got News for You.

The basic premise of the book is that there are many things in life which have no names and a vast number of place names which could be better employed.

I don't have "The Meaning of Liff" on my bookshelf but I do have "The Deeper Meaning of Liff" so from that volume I will give this example.  

There is a small hamlet in Lanarkshire called Elsrickle.  
This is described as "A bead of sweat which runs down your bottom cleavage".

I come from the beautiful Scottish Borders town of Peebles and was rather dismayed to discover it was described as "Small carefully rolled pellets of Skegness."  
If you want to know what Skegness is, you'll have to read the book.

Well what else were you going to do?
 

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[Grldtnr]

Whilst I have no doubt Covid-19 IS a serious threat ,I do think this panendemic is more a 'panicdemic', , specially when you look at the statistics involved over the trending statistics of seasonal deaths.
Is a 1% attributed death rate to this virus , does it warrant all this hype and worry, no I don't think so.

Yes , regulations should have been bought I to stem the spread of infection, but so should widespread testing been bought in to map the diesease.


 , Then we might have an idea where to pitch our resources, to my uneducated mind ,I am thinking it is all overhyped. Especially when seasonal flu deaths are routinely accepted.

[Jeremy]

This might seem a bit harsh, but I don't believe that the number of deaths is that significant.  The core problem seems to be that, if we had done nothing the NHS would have been overwhelmed in a short period of time, leaving us with virtually no health care system.  We saw just how close Italy (which has around twice the number of hospital beds per head of population than we have) came to this, with people lying on the floor in corridors being treated.  Had we had the same volume of hospital admissions that Lombardy had then our hospitals would have been brought to their knees pretty quickly.

The infection rate now seems to be under a degree of control; over the last few days the number of daily new cases hasn't risen at anything like the rate that it was before lockdown.  It seems that the lockdown measures are working to just about allow the hospitals to cope, but I don't know how much longer they can carry on working the way they are at the moment.  There's only so long that people can work 12 hours on, 12 hours off, before fatigue starts to really impact on their ability to work safely.

[Port-Na-Storm]

I wouldn't be complacent about the numbers. The UK death rate attributable to influenza in 2017/18 was 23,408.

And you are right, these numbers didn't make many headlines.

But they are results for an infection which we have a vaccine , with a high take up amongst vulnerable people and which behaves in a way that is pretty well understood.

Covid19 is a whole new ball game.

The 11,000 or so deaths so far are in addition to the normal flu figures.

Early estimates were projecting a 1% mortality rate. That is circa 500,000 people in the UK alone.

Herd immunity doesn't start to kick in until 80% of the population has been infected, by my dubious maths that means over 400,000 people have to die.

Neither Social Distancing nor The Lockdown are a cure, they are simply a method of slowing down the infection rate so the NHS can just about cope.

If the number of infected people goes up or the NHS starts to crumble through sheer exhaustion we are in even deeper shit.

Flattening the curve doesn't make it go away.

A vaccine is a year away, then we need mass compulsory vaccination for it to work. And who knows whether the virus will start to mutate.

I would invite you to read this article, outlining how we got to where we are and what the consequences of doing nothing would be. It is very well researched and comes straight from reuters.

It's a bit long and you really need to read it all the way to the end, but then what else have you got to do?

Stay Safe People.

Grum.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-britain-path-speci/special-report-johnson-listened-to-his-scientists-about-coronavirus-but-they-were-slow-to-sound-the-alarm-idUKKBN21P1X8?il=0

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---- Jeremy [via UK HBBR Forum] wrote ----

This might seem a bit harsh, but I don't believe that the number of deaths is that significant.  The core problem seems to be that, if we had done nothing the NHS would have been overwhelmed in a short period of time, leaving us with virtually no health care system.  We saw just how close Italy (which has around twice the number of hospital beds per head of population than we have) came to this, with people lying on the floor in corridors being treated.  Had we had the same volume of hospital admissions that Lombardy had then our hospitals would have been brought to their knees pretty quickly.

The infection rate now seems to be under a degree of control; over the last few days the number of daily new cases hasn't risen at anything like the rate that it was before lockdown.  It seems that the lockdown measures are working to just about allow the hospitals to cope, but I don't know how much longer they can carry on working the way they are at the moment.  There's only so long that people can work 12 hours on, 12 hours off, before fatigue starts to really impact on their ability to work safely.

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[Paul H (admin)]

Regarding testing, I downloaded the NHS C-19 app. It nudges you each day with 2 questions - have you been tested? do you have C-19 symptoms?

With over 2 million users it gives the epidemiology modelling a good idea of new infections, based on location, age, gender.

If we all used it accuracy of the modelling would improve, allowing resources to be focused better.

https://covid.joinzoe.com/

-Paul

[simplesimon]

    The map associated with that website is interesting - I wonder on what they have based their data - possibly on the results from their app alone?
    Looking at East Anglia, there appear to be hot-spots of infection around Gt Yarmouth (very much a deprived area) and Mildenhall (military bases with hospital facilities/onsite medical staff?), but nothing much around where we are (N Norfolk), Norwich, nor Cambridge (where a lot of the really serious cases are being sent to Addenbrookes/Papworth hospitals).
    Interestingly the fens (sparsely populated) are medium-high. (Sheila who was brought up there says it would likely be because they ignored social distancing as something invented in/for London and therefore ignorable!). I do wonder whether its an artifact of the stats though. (30 cases in a population of 1000 has a greater impact than 100 cases in a population of 5000.)

Simon

[Alan]

Skegness: Nose excreta of a malleable consistency.
Ely: The first tiniest inkling that something, somewhere has gone terribly wrong.
It's a shame that Liffwords didn't become a more common part of everyday speech.

[Paul H (admin)]

We are lucky to have the Queen at the helm.