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Coronavirus


Bjornebye

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1 hour ago, Lario said:

Strangely, it seems to be affecting China's biggest economic rivals the most.

Also strangely, the same countries happen to be China's biggest markets.

Seems a rather strange policy; world domination by decimating your market

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3 minutes ago, mattyq said:

Also strangely, the same countries happen to be China's biggest markets.

Seems a rather strange policy; world domination by decimating your market

I'm not being in any way conspiracy theorist.

 

Just playing Catchphrase.

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3 hours ago, Vincent Vega said:

How much money have these Tory pricks wasted? But supposedly they are the party of economic competence.

 

 

2 hours ago, Section_31 said:

It went into dominic Cummings' mate's pocket didn't it?

 

Don't forget, the cornerstone of their ideology is that private sector knows best and that money can buy anything. We don't need the state to make our own gowns and ventilators we can just buy them and I'm sure they'll do the trick. If they don't work we'll pay a bit more and they'll be better, that's how it works.


Aye, £250m to one of Cummings pals to design an app that swathes of people weren’t going to use even if it was shown to work. 

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14 minutes ago, TK421 said:

This is not borne out by reality. The Czechs have had compulsory face masks for a long time now.  Same for Austria.  Those two countries have a minimal amount of infections and deaths compared to European countries with no masks, e.g. the UK. 

It’s not my argument, just relating how the Australian government is “following the science”.

As always with science if you get more data then the conclusion can change. But following the science seems to be working ok down here.

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8 minutes ago, Jose Jones said:

It’s not my argument, just relating how the Australian government is “following the science”.

As always with science if you get more data then the conclusion can change. But following the science seems to be working ok down here.

 

Australia's science < TK's Austro-Czech reality.

 

Simple.


Sorted.

 

 

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3 minutes ago, Jose Jones said:

It’s not my argument, just relating how the Australian government is “following the science”.

As always with science if you get more data then the conclusion can change. But following the science seems to be working ok down here.

Yes, impressive stuff from Australia and New Zealand.  

 

As for the science, I just think that if these negative effects of mask wearing were true there would be an increase in cases and deaths in these countries commensurate to the level of risk.  

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21 minutes ago, TK421 said:

Yes, impressive stuff from Australia and New Zealand.  

 

As for the science, I just think that if these negative effects of mask wearing were true there would be an increase in cases and deaths in these countries commensurate to the level of risk.  

A fair point.

I guess also there are never the same conditions in any two countries, so very hard to compare as like for like comparisons.

Another thing to consider might be societal ability and acceptance of mask wearing. Perhaps the south East Asian countries have better mask protocol because it’s more generally used there and they have more practice? Therefore better outcomes from mask wearing.

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1 hour ago, TK421 said:

Yes, impressive stuff from Australia and New Zealand.  

 

As for the science, I just think that if these negative effects of mask wearing were true there would be an increase in cases and deaths in these countries commensurate to the level of risk.  

Yeah, but Australia* and New Zealand are islands, and the UK is....ah balls!

 

* - Technically Australia is a continental landmass, but the point still stands.

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1 hour ago, TK421 said:

Yes, impressive stuff from Australia and New Zealand.  

 

As for the science, I just think that if these negative effects of mask wearing were true there would be an increase in cases and deaths in these countries commensurate to the level of risk.  

It's no surprise that there has been a face-mask conspiracy theory...because if everyone wanted one, there wouldn't be enough to go round.

Also, it's hard for everyone to catch it, like Cummings wants, if people are wearing face-masks.

Also, it's hard to re-open shopping centres, pubs and cinemas if some dickheads are wearing face-masks and making other people nervous. 

 

Just look back over the comments made by Cummings and Johnson other unattributed sources, have a look at the Led By Donkeys timeline article, and then re-think the idea that face masks don't 'work', or don't 'help'.

 

They very obviously work, they very obviously help, I still remember the Chinese scientists coming over to Europe to help in March and immediately saying "why the fuck aren't you all wearing face masks?".

 

The original 'worst case scenario' was estimated at 500,000 deaths in the UK in order to get to herd immunity.  Make no mistake, this is still the aim, and we're 50,000 deaths closer to it now. 

 

No, face masks won't make people want to hug each other.  I wear a face mask to handle calcium hypochlorite, but I don't put my face to it and try to take a deep breath.  The mask is a reminder to be alert for risks, and hopefully it saves your, or someone else's, life when some cunt coughs as they walk past you.

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17 minutes ago, Lario said:

Nearly two thirds of people approve of Boris? Fucking hell.

Put no stock in those things. 

None. 

 

The dust hasn't settled on this yet, stopping furlough payments will decimate his public support, and a 2nd wave of c19 will finish him politically. 

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I see they are pushing the capacity line again in todays briefing.

 

Despite not hitting the govt target for testing for 6th day in a row, there is nothing to worry about as the capacity is there.

 

There are still stories of people who want a test not being able to get them, however, not to worry. There will always be localised fluctuations in availability, but we have the capacity.

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17 minutes ago, Anubis said:

Welcome your new robot overlords. Call Me Kenneth v1.0.

 

 


Equip it with some tasers, machine guns and a flamethrower, and this could displace the Indian Police in the No1 slot.

You've got to give it an Ed-209 voice from Robocop.

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4 hours ago, Sugar Ape said:

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That Brazilian bloke is almost as hilarious as Trump, the way he rocked up to that anti-lockdown protest and then coughed all the way through was comedy gold. 
 

At least BoJo’s approval rating is declining. I bet the initial uplift was sympathy. Hopefully people are starting to wise up.

 

Trump remaining largely neutral is beyond belief. 

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This is really chilling- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/08/care-home-residents-harvested-left-to-die-uk-government-herd-immunity

 

There should be prosecutions when this is over.

 



Harvesting' is a terrible word – but it's what has happened in Britain's care homes
Richard Coker
Epidemiologists use the term to describe tragic excess deaths – but for Covid-19 it seems to be the de facto government policy


Tregwilym Lodge care home in Newport where 15 residents died last month. ‘It is the most vulnerable people who were sacrificed to an unacceptable, unarticulated strategy.’ Photograph: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images
There’s a term we use in epidemiology to capture the essence of increases in deaths, or excess mortality, above and beyond normal expectations: “harvesting”. During heatwaves, or a bad season of influenza, additional deaths above what would be normally seen in the population fit this description. Harvesting usually affects older people and those who are already sick. Generally, it is viewed as a tragic, unfortunate, but largely unpreventable consequence of natural events. It carries with it connotations of an acceptable loss of life. It is, in a sense, what happens as part of a normal life in normal times. But the word also has darker connotations: those of sacrifice, reaping, culling. As such, while it may appear in textbooks of epidemiology, it doesn’t occur in national influenza strategic plans or national discourse. The concept of harvesting is restricted to epidemiological circles.


But what if politicians promote the notion of harvesting (while declining to use the term) where it is not a “natural” consequence of events but a direct consequence of government policy? What if the medical and nursing world do not accept harvesting in these circumstances? What if a policy that results in harvesting cannot be articulated because it is unacceptable to the broader population? This is where we have got to with the coronavirus pandemic. Nowhere better exemplifies this tension between a policy and its popular acceptance than the effects of coronavirus in nursing homes.

Coronavirus is tearing through our nursing home population in the UK. Even if official statistics are opaque, we know this anecdotally. More than 400,000 people live in UK care homes. We are only now beginning to see the statistics in terms of confirmed cases. Estimates that more than 3,000 people had died in care homes by mid-April are likely to be gross underestimates. We can see this when we look at national excess mortality numbers. These statistics, especially when we look at the elderly, paint a horrifying picture. Enormous numbers of deaths among our most frail citizens are the result, both directly and indirectly, of the coronavirus crisis. The UK is leading Europe in this most awful of league tables. When more data about care home deaths becomes available, I predict that we’ll see how care homes have taken the full force of this epidemiological tsunami. We have to predict, because the numbers aren’t yet available to inform us.


Have we arrived at this predicament because the government’s strategy went awry? And if so, why? My guess – which can only be provisional, as Sage’s minutes aren’t publicly available – is that scientists gave policymakers a scenario in February that the pandemic could be allowed to spread largely unhindered in the wider community. But if this approach were promoted, islands of elderly and vulnerable people would need to be created, and the residents on these islands would need to be protected. This strategy makes sense if we acknowledge comments about “herd immunity” from Boris Johnson and the chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, alongside the initial decision not to roll out testing in the community. Remember, too, Matt Hancock’s assertion that care homes “have been a top priority from the start”.

If herd immunity was the initial strategy outlined by advisers, they would have known that harvesting older people could not be part of the equation. This isn’t about science or politics – it’s a simple question of humanity. If the government’s strategy was to allow the virus to spread through the wider population, albeit at a slowed pace, residents in nursing homes would need to be protected.

But this is not what happened. The initial strategy of allowing herd immunity to develop in the wider community was pursued, but the most vulnerable people were not protected. Though harvesting may not have been the government’s intention, it became the de facto policy in the absence of adequate protections for older and vulnerable people. Had the government monitored care homes, supplied adequate PPE, rolled out testing in care homes and reduced the exposure of their residents to visitors and other carers, the islands of vulnerable and elderly people would have been protected.


The government’s initial strategy, therefore, was herd immunity and harvesting. Operational implementation follows a strategy, not the other way round. Only belatedly did the government’s strategy morph into one that sought to protect the elderly and reverse the harvesting, through widespread testing and contact tracing. But by then it was too late. Operations could not catch up.

In the discipline of public health, we often use what are known as “lenses” to explore how health systems function. Lenses are ways of looking at a health system that offers insights into its strengths and its weaknesses. I’ve spent over 30 years analysing the intersection between health systems and infectious diseases in my research. During this time, I’ve drawn upon influenza, Sars, tuberculosis, and HIV to examine health systems’ frailties around the world.

Today, if you need a lens to examine any country’s response to coronavirus, look to its nursing homes. To understand the scandal of the UK’s response to Covid-19, consider that it is the most vulnerable people who were sacrificed to an unacceptable, unarticulated strategy. Look to the hidden populations residing in nursing homes, those falling through the gaps between the NHS and the social support function of the state; look at what our government has done in our name, without our agreement. If you want to understand why older people had to “take it on the chin”, look to Boris Johnson’s government.

• Richard Coker is emeritus professor of public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

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1 minute ago, Scott_M said:


That Brazilian bloke is almost as hilarious as Trump, the way he rocked up to that anti-lockdown protest and then coughed all the way through was comedy gold. 
 

At least BoJo’s approval rating is declining. I bet the initial uplift was sympathy. Hopefully people are starting to wise up.

 

Trump remaining largely neutral is beyond belief. 


I don’t think it’s really possible for Trump to fall (much) below that. If all the other shit he’s done to date hasn’t put those people off then nothing will. That’s his base. 

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On 07/05/2020 at 11:47, 3 Stacks said:

Thought you were being mocking with your "racist virus" line. 

African Americans in parts of New York City are being arrested for violating social distancing rules at a far higher rate than white people, according to data from the Brooklyn district attorney.

Adam Gabbatt reports that data showed that between 17 March and 4 May, 40 people were arrested in Brooklyn for breaking social distancing rules. One was white, four were Hispanic and 35 were black.

 

Who knew??

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