Hygiene at supermarkets during Coronavirus epidemic

[Reorte]

1 minute ago, Lantavian said:

 

China is different because it was the first country to be hit, and it did nothing at first other than suppressing information, rather than acting on it.

 

In which case it should be possible to point at the time where the curve turned sharply due to mask-wearing.

[Reorte]

An argument based on the assumption that they do indeed make a difference. I don't find the chicken  particularly relevant either, and could just as easily use it to say the opposite of what you're saying, other than trying to use it as an example of "do everything suggested unless there's a good reason not to," a position I've never found much time for. To use the clearly absurd for the sake of clarity, you could apply the same argument for standing in a bowl of cold porridge every morning.

 

The place to look at for effective measures seems to be Germany - the high number of cases quite probably being down to simply being able to detect more, but a relatively low number of deaths.

Edited April 14, 2020 by Reorte

[adb968008]

2 hours ago, Lantavian said:

 

 

 

Plus disinfecting feet, mass testing, mandatory cleaning communal surfaces every hour, widespread use of temperature checks not just in government and transport, but restaurants, hotel, retail, frequent changing clothes... I saw it all in 2003 in HK... I felt invincible and still ended up with suspected sars, I described the symptoms on here, which people laughed. I described that the UK could end up isolated and locked down, shops closed, I was told I was hysterical.  So I just withdrew,  but kept on reading... I see now people are not laughing any more..

 

ultimately there’s no point wasting forum words.

 

What makes Asia’s response even more mark able ...is even crowded HK, Singapore and South Korean cities are too, which makes it even more remarkable.

 

 But this is all alien to the west.... they don’t understand it and don’t listen to it... no one alive remembers the last great pandemic in Europe. Brits don’t even listen to each other. Politicians here already think its nearly over. Health professionals are under intense pressure to bow to economic needs.

 

Europe just doesn’t understand it, and holds self belief In their powers of control, but sadly they will after the second wave.. if like others in history, will be much worse than the first...

 

food for thought.. there’s more than one country in North America.. no one talks of 37m Canadians on one of earths largest land masses, on a border with the worlds largest cluster of cases.. just 25k cases... the biggest mitigator to this virus is distance...and anything you can do to block or increase that distance... that’s why it’s called social distancing, that’s why London is empty.. open it back up and it just comes right back at you.

 

if masks don’t work.. then why are healthcare professionals using them and millions spent sourcing them ?

 

anyway we’re a good social distance from Supermarkets... and risk infecting this thread.

 

Edited April 14, 2020 by adb968008

[Reorte]

13 minutes ago, Lantavian said:

 

You can believe what you want. As adb968008 says, if masks don't work, why do medical professionals use them?

 

I assume they do work in the situation medical professionals find themselves in, in a generally far more controlled environment. What's appropriate for a doctor who has to be very close to a patient for possibly some time doesn't necessarily translate as going to make a difference around the supermarket.

 

I'll believe what good evidence suggests is worth believing, not what I want.

 

Quote

Far fewer people are dying here in East Asia than in the UK. Learn from us. We went through SARS in 2003-4.

 

And it's worth really exploring why rather than just picking one correlation. Better to figure out what works than divert a lot of time and effort on whatever happens to be visible.

 

The solution to a medical issue has to be scientific evidence-based, and that applies at all levels, from what goes on in hospitals to personal behaviour. You're arguing for "don't question", which is the exact opposite of that.

Edited April 14, 2020 by Reorte

[adb968008]

1 hour ago, Reorte said:

 

The place to look at for effective measures seems to be Germany - the high number of cases quite probably being down to simply being able to detect more, but a relatively low number of deaths.

I think that’s misguided.

 

Ive not seen any science that suggests speaking German gives immunity to Coronovirus, or that sniffing the odours of the oder proffers immunity, or that  German ventilators world better than ours, or even that really strong curry wurst is a cure.

but based on today’s figures..

 

I’d wager that when Germany says they have detected 125k cases and approximately 2% have died, that Germany really had an infection rate close to 125k cases as they tested as many as possible to detect it, and 2.5% of that - 2,500 died.

The “field” testing says what’s happening on the street today or recently.. Hospital testing only occurs after 5 -14 days symptomless spreading and 7 days illness (still spreading it) that’s suddenly got so bad you’ve gone to hospital.

 

But conversely in the UK, when they say 12107 have died, that it represents 2.5% of the infection rate, of which 20% ended in hospital - 80,000  (we have 88k cases today), indicating the  infection rate was around 650,000 cases in the UK 3 weeks ago.. much greater than Germany’s test results today.

The difference being testing.. which is only done upon desperate cases arriving at the hospital doors... not mild cases detection in the community. Germans community testing is finding and shutting it down (reducing the R multiplier by taking even mild undetected cases off the streets), much sooner, and so keeping the scale down and the exit strategy much easier to predict... 0 cases today and for 2 weeks after then your clear.

 

its not that the UK is badly prepared, it’s that our outbreak is much larger than Germany’s.

Therefore the climb down from lockdown will be much longer, as the litmus test is the % of the 20% cases arriving at hospital... when it falls to c20 a day cases at hospital, and c2 deaths a day... that’s a sign of c100 infections a day in the wider community, 3 weeks ago...

But without community testing, you don’t know if a cluster is developing, until the cases arrive at hospital 3 weeks later, by which time an R3 multiplier could take 10 cases to 800 cases by the time you find it, and 7200 cases before you stall it.

Edited April 14, 2020 by adb968008

[Nearholmer]

Isn’t the point that the German outbreak is smaller because they tested heavily and have therefore been able to contain it more effectively?

 

The UK outbreak does indeed seem to be a whole lot bigger, perhaps (not to prejudge) because the regime of test and trace wasn’t sufficiently rigorous in the early stages.

 

It may, on the other hand, be thatbthe UK outbreak is bigger simply because the number of ‘seed cases’, infected people who arrived in the UK, and then blithely went about their business infecting others, at the outset, before thing was really understood, was greater.

 

If I was to put money on it, I’d guess that the long-term analysis will show that the UK “lost it” at school half-term in February, when typically a lot of prosperous people take a short overseas holiday. We may actually have “lost it” even earlier, by being too liberal about air travel from China during January, allowing (IIRC) people to come in without a quarantine period unless they already had very overt symptoms*.

 

Does Germany have fewer travellers from China than the UK does?
 

*Wikipedia says that c2000 people arrived in the UK direct from Hubei in January before even the most basic medical screening was introduced at Heathrow, followed by a period when three flights a week were arriving to very basic “are you feeling poorly?” Medical checks.

 

Edited April 14, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Reorte]

More cases in the UK than Germany is of course a possibility, although with the limits of testing it's hard to know for sure. If it's correct - which may well be the case, it both raises the question about why Germany overall numbers are in reality lower, and what to do about it now. But the point is that Germany has got it right. Now we can't magic up testing capability (although it's concerning that it doesn't seem to be growing at all), but what can we do similarly? Is Germany testing random people with no symptoms, and getting results back before they develop them? If so then we're not in a position to follow their approach, although we should be working on getting there ASAP. If it is along those lines then I'd ask if we're not being strict enough about any sort of cough - get one at all an isolate. Personally I think that is one of the mistakes we made, asking anyone with any flu-like or even cold-like symptoms to isolate too late, and being a bit blase about people returning from certain key areas. However that's history now. Can we learn anything useful for now?

Edited April 14, 2020 by Reorte

[adb968008]

4 hours ago, Reorte said:

More cases in the UK than Germany is of course a possibility, although with the limits of testing it's hard to know for sure. If it's correct - which may well be the case, it both raises the question about why Germany overall numbers are in reality lower, and what to do about it now. But the point is that Germany has got it right. Now we can't magic up testing capability (although it's concerning that it doesn't seem to be growing at all), but what can we do similarly? Is Germany testing random people with no symptoms, and getting results back before they develop them? If so then we're not in a position to follow their approach, although we should be working on getting there ASAP. If it is along those lines then I'd ask if we're not being strict enough about any sort of cough - get one at all an isolate. Personally I think that is one of the mistakes we made, asking anyone with any flu-like or even cold-like symptoms to isolate too late, and being a bit blase about people returning from certain key areas. However that's history now. Can we learn anything useful for now?

Germanys cases started with a cluster in a more remote part of western Germany, which coincidentally started with a cluster in Frances Eastern border.. which just so happen to be next to each other, so are probably related.

The region is less dense, than London with 8million people, never the less it’s slowly spread, but the testing in France and Germany is a chalk and cheese comparison of what to do and what not to do and results are clear.

 

London was always going to grow much faster, whilst an R-number of 2 or 3 is often touted as the virus average, it is an average.. one sneeze in a tube carriage in rush hour, could infect dozens at once and dozens more touching the handles during the day... London is very weak to defend from the virus... by counter a sneeze in the outer Hebridean isles is likely to affect little.

 

That’s why this proposed mobile phone app based plan is doomed to fail if implemented in isolation... its honesty based, probably only on 20% worst case detections arriving in hospital, and so people will be isolating themselves in droves 3 weeks after exposure... and only 20% of those exposed will then go on to be detected at hospital...and then theres those infected by the tube carriage surfaces for the rest of the day after the infected passenger has exited the train... long out of Bluetooth range, and again detected 3 weeks later...

 

They will need to be able to tests hundreds of thousands daily in London alone to be successful in this approach, even then unless it’s random testing they are waiting 5-14 days for people symptoms to show and come in for a test....unless they rely on the herd becoming immune over time.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 14, 2020 by adb968008

[Nearholmer]

17 minutes ago, Reorte said:

More cases in the UK than Germany is of course a possibility, although with the limits of testing it's hard to know for sure.

I’m convinced that ‘ADB’ is correct that the UK outbreak is far bigger than the ‘confirmed cases’, because (a) UK only tested at hospitalisation until very recently, and even since introducing key-worker testing hasn’t covered-off huge numbers, (b) our government scientific advisers, and those in the US etc, have said many times that hospital cases are only a fifth to a tenth of the total in an outbreak, and (c) it appears to be running rampant through elderly care homes, and it can only have got into them by being carried in by unwitting staff, visitors, medical, or delivery personnel, which implies that it is widely “out and about”.

 

 

[Reorte]

10 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I’m convinced that ‘ADB’ is correct that the UK outbreak is far bigger than the ‘confirmed cases’, because (a) UK only tested at hospitalisation until very recently, and even since introducing key-worker testing hasn’t covered-off huge numbers, (b) our government scientific advisers, and those in the US etc, have said many times that hospital cases are only a fifth to a tenth of the total in an outbreak, and (c) it appears to be running rampant through elderly care homes, and it can only have got into them by being carried in by unwitting staff, visitors, medical, or delivery personnel, which implies that it is widely “out and about”

Oh definitely, I think it's beyond doubt that the UK outbreak is far bigger than confirmed cases, although that number is still useful for tracking the progress of the outbreak. It's crucial to know how it's getting spread and it's a big problem IMO that we don't really know, or be trying to find out. Even with the limited testing capacity it might be worth using some of it for some random testing.

 

Care homes are a problem due to both the closed environment and for containing the people most at risk.

[Reorte]

22 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

Germanys cases started with a cluster in a more remote part of western Germany, which coincidentally started with a cluster in Frances Eastern border.. which just so happen to be next to each other, so are probably related.

 

Makes me wonder how much that plays a part - should be easier to deal with if it's a cluster, I get the distinct impression there was no real localisation to the UK's initial cases.

[Nearholmer]

1 minute ago, Reorte said:

it might be worth using some of it for some random testing.

 

Yep, I suggested that weeks ago, in the thread that AY locked.

 

Random dip-sampling, if done widely enough (and therein may lie the problem: not enough capacity) would give a dimension to the thing.

 

But, it wouldn't show how many people had already had it, unless there was testing for both infection and antibodies.

 

It does feel as if we are living in a country that:

 

- has only the crudest indicator (hospital admissions) of how big the outbreak is; 

 

- possibly (too early to tell really) an above best-achievable fatality rate for those who are admitted to hospital; 

 

- a significant proportion of really serious cases never getting as far as hospital (some of that may be individual choice, or individual deep-frailty dictated, of course); and,

 

- an immense unsolved conundrum about how to steer back towards any semblance of normality.

 

But the, I may simply be being negativistic.

 

 

[Sprintex]

1 hour ago, adb968008 said:

anyway we’re a good social distance from Supermarkets... and risk infecting this thread.

 

 

Way too late for that it seems, thread has gone massively off-topic due to the usual endless debating of over-inflated opinions where no-one can actually "win" . . . 

 

Paul

[Nearholmer]

I think it’s called ‘conversation’, the exchange of thoughts and opinions with no intent to ‘win’.

 

It used to be quite common years ago.

[Reorte]

3 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I think it’s called ‘conversation’, the exchange of thoughts and opinions with no intent to ‘win’.

 

It used to be quite common years ago.

Quite. I don't agree with everything that's been said but it's had me pondering over some numbers and what various places are doing, which is all good stuff. Fair point about going off-topic though.

Edited April 14, 2020 by Reorte

[AY Mod]

29 minutes ago, Sprintex said:

debating of over-inflated opinions

 

You contaminated a previous topic. Agitating two captures my attention. A third will be the last.

[Ozexpatriate]

14 hours ago, adb968008 said:

if masks don’t work.. then why are healthcare professionals using them and millions spent sourcing them ?

The primary application of a surgical mask is to prevent germs from the surgical team infecting a patient during surgery.

 

Having said that, in the case of a respiratory disease, and particularly in combination with face shield, gloves and gowns, surgical masks (respirators even better) will impart a much higher level of protection to the healthcare worker treating someone with a respiratory disease.

 

Clearly the use of masks by the population as a whole will greatly reduce ejected particles from infected people wandering about in public. The whole 2m distancing rule is about the normal maximum trajectory of ejected spittle under gravity and normal air conditions. Have a conversation outdoors on a sunny day and if you pay attention you will observe it. Sneezing and coughs can project further but won't if they are covered, particularly by a mask.

 

It's an obvious notion that the wearing of masks is an important mitigation technique. To anyone who says the WHO or <your favourite health authority here> said "masks don't help", I suggest that this was a deliberate disinformation attempt to prevent the panic buying of masks the way the hoi polloi in the west panic bought disinfecting wipes, sanitizing gel and toilet paper, and to try to make sure that health care workers still had *some* access to the PPE they desperately need.

[Joseph_Pestell]

I would add to that. There is widespread misunderstanding of the purpose of masks in this context.

 

People are used to seeing people wearing masks to protect themselves and make their decision about wearing one accordingly. But, as you so rightly point out, in this case wearing a mask is about protecting other people from you. That message has not got across.

[Nearholmer]

The other ‘mask point’ that seems not to have been discussed is that if we are all wearing them, there is not one mask between my lungs and yours, but two.

 

 

Edited April 15, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Nick Holliday]

 

On 14/04/2020 at 07:14, Nick Holliday said:

And, to me at least, even more ridiculous to drive around with the windows open. Isn't that going to give some impetus to the air they breathe in, and even wider distribution of whatever they may have breathed out in the vortices left behind?  I know it has been inclemently warm, but most cars have air conditioning.

 

22 hours ago, Reorte said:

I'd be surprised if the effect wasn't negligible, if it exists at all.

 

Looking at this aerodynamic analysis of air flow around a moving car, I would hardly describe the effect as negligible.

As you can see there are flows rising up along the side of the car which have the potential to pull the air from within the car, including any contamination, and send it upwards some distance, and impart additional horizontal velocity to it. Surely this will have the effect of potentially spreading any contamination far further than 2m, making it possible that someone perhaps crossing the road a few seconds after the car has passed could be at risk. Perhaps a qualified aerodynamicist can adjudicate.

 

 

[Reorte]

6 hours ago, Lantavian said:

 

My goodness. You are right. Masks have little or no value. How could I have been so stupid? You've won this argument. Well done.

 

If you're unable to have a discussion politely don't bother at all.

[kevinlms]

20 hours ago, Lantavian said:

 

China is different because it was the first country to be hit, and it did nothing at first other than suppressing information, rather than acting on it.

 

 

 

 

 

Some Chinese have worn masks for several years,  much of it to do with air pollution. It seemed to start off around the time of the Beijing Olympics. With the closing down of much heavy industry then, they realised how bad the atmosphere got.

[Nearholmer]

Lantavian

 

The previous Coronavirus thread got shut-down due to a combination of things, including the provocative use of language, and very pointed sarcasm is definitely a provocative use of language, as well as being "the lowest form of wit".

 

Are you trying to get this thread shut-down too, or are you, as a professional communicator, unaware of the power of language?

 

(For the avoidance of doubt, that isn't a "J'accuse!"; its a fag-paper short of one, because I'm allowing for the possibility of a lack of self-awareness.)

 

Kevin

[Phil Parker]

44 minutes ago, Lantavian said:

My apologies, everyone.

 

Just the facts then (interpret them as wish)

 

People in London, on the whole, do not wear masks. Almost everyone in Hong Kong does.

 

Covid deaths:

LONDON:           >2,500

HONG KONG:    4

 

 

London population: 8.9m. Hong Kong: 7.5m.

 

 

And from these "facts", you expect us to draw a conclusion? Are you aware that there are other variables?

 

Current UK advice, based on science, is that face masks are unnecessary for most of the population. There is an argument that people who are infected should wear one to avoid infecting others, but even this isn't the end of it. You have to wear one correctly and handling a contaminated mask can be worse than not wearing one.

 

So, my interpretation is that I was correct to put you on moderation.

 

 

[Nearholmer]

It really would be educational to understand the HK- UK difference, whether it be about masks or some other factors, because it is quite remarkable that the HK outbreak has been so small.

 

Trying to pick out the details, it may be that HK, despite apparently close links to China, actually cut-off entry of people from Wuhan earlier in the process and more decisively than did the UK.

Edited April 15, 2020 by Nearholmer