Covid - coming out of Lockdown 3 - no politics, less opinion and more facts and information.

[hayfield]

55 minutes ago, EddieB said:

Another date to add into the timeline was this letter published in The Lancet, 19th February 2019: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext

 

Even at that early stage, those signatories were saying that any suggestion of a non-natural origin should be dismissed as a conspiracy theory.

 

Why?

 

Its author (PD) heads up a charitable organisation that helped to fund gain of function (look it up) research into bat coronaviruses in the Wuhan research centre.  He was to become the only western scientist accepted by the chinese to join the WHO “investigation”.

 

 

 

The BBC is reporting today that the WHO is not ruling out the possibility the virus originated from the lab in Wuhan.

 

Rather than this (conspiracy) theory slowly dying away, the WHO seems to think differently (as reported last week or so

[Hobby]

17 minutes ago, hayfield said:

So are you saying the headlines were inaccurate?

 

To me this virus acted differently to anything our public health advisers had experienced and differently to what was expected and planned for. 

 

 To be fair I feel Nearholmers summary quite accurate of what was going on in January-March 2020, it was a complete mess, caused, as you say, that people didn't think it would become the major pandemic it did.

[Nearholmer]

19 minutes ago, hayfield said:

So are you saying the headlines were inaccurate?

Selective.

 

But, that in the nature of headlines, and all ‘news’, they/it are extracts or selections from “the whole truth”, and it was really illustrative how the different ‘papers made different selections, and billed the report differently. The starkest difference was The Telegraph, which gave it tiny billing, almost as if it would rather not have to mention it at all.

[EddieB]

39 minutes ago, Hobby said:

I suspect, therefore, that whilst the UK (and other European Govs - I am fed up of people singling ours out when everyone else in Europe was doing the same) had the same information they thought that history would repeat itself. I also suspect that the Chinese grossly played down their infection and death figures so it didn't look as serious as it actually was.

As far as I'm aware, ours was the only country in Europe who tried to implement a strategy aimed at "herd immunity", until the truth dawned that it would result in hundreds of thousands of excess deaths (and overwhelm the NHS).  I suspect that it was seen as "making the best of a bad job" as the PM was out of the country on holiday when the infections first started to reach Europe and it appears no one else in Government took responsibility - until the PM returned and it was already too late.  (Of course other measures - such as taken by Australia - would also have helped to contain the spread).

 

There were several of us questioning the wisdom of this approach at the time - see the previous (locked) thread from last February/March.

 

In truth we will perhaps never know the extent to which China played down their own incidents and obfuscated attempts to discover the source - but we do know that they implemented a severe and total city lockdown which was largely successful at containing the spread within their country.

[Oldddudders]

54 minutes ago, Hobby said:

Monkey's post clearly shows that they were taking things far more seriously than Europe and the Americas, as someone else pointed out many posts ago they'd had experience of previous outbreaks of similar diseases and knew that they could cause major issues if they got loose.

All true. And it was that level of careful, experienced preparation that enabled Sydney to disembark 2700 passengers from Ruby Princess in mid-March without any testing or limitation on their travel movements. The cruise had been cut short, as NZ told them they weren't welcome, so there were clues. In fact they dispersed across Oz to go home, or flew to many points of the globe. More than 130 passengers subsequently tested positive, making it at that time Oz's biggest single source of  infection. 

[Hobby]

9 minutes ago, EddieB said:

As far as I'm aware, ours was the only country in Europe who tried to implement a strategy aimed at "herd immunity", until the truth dawned that it would result in hundreds of thousands of excess deaths (and overwhelm the NHS). 

 

In truth we will perhaps never know the extent to which China played down their own incidents and obfuscated attempts to discover the source - but we do know that they implemented a severe and total city lockdown which was largely successful at containing the spread within their country.

 

Several other countries tried t, Sweden and Switzerland for starters, but at the time it was a valid response, only later when it became clear that the effects of Covid was very different to what they thought would happen was it ruled out, for the reason you mention. That's not to say in the early days that it wasn't a valid response, just the wrong one in this case.

 

I suspect we'll never know the full extent of how the virus spread in China but I suspect it was far worse than you think it was. By the time they did full lockdown in Wuhan it had already got out and had even reached Europe, so hardly successful at all!

[Nearholmer]

7 minutes ago, EddieB said:

There were several of us questioning the wisdom of this approach at the time - see the previous (locked) thread from last February/March.

Indeed.

 

The maths were very scary from a very early stage, and preliminary mortality figures from China were in the public domain, and easy to find by a quick Google, from as early as January. Back of a fag packet calculations based on those figures, and with a range of assumptions about how many people each person passed it on to (I didn’t know it was called R at that stage), and how quickly, gave a range of outcomes, even the ‘softest’ of which made my hair stand on end.

 

Interestingly, Angela Merkel has talked about having her own ‘lightbulb moment’ when she herself ran the numbers, which to me shows the value of having leaders who have at least some basic ability in science and maths ….. it equips them to have sensible conversations with their advisers.

 

 

[alastairq]

53 minutes ago, Neil said:

have foresight and to make the right decisions at the right time.

Aaah, but we only know if those decisions were the 'right' decisions , afterwards.

 

Rightly or wrongly, at least the Government had the 'balls' to change policies on a frequent basis, and [unlike the WHO, initially,] not be tied up with dogma.

 

I think [thinking back over the past 18 months or so] that the biggest problem wasn't so much prevarication on the part of government, but the time lag between instituting a particular policy, and the advent of evidence as to whether that policy was the 'right' one or not?

Voters in the UK weren't patient enough [or, the media weren't?] to await evidence of outcome.

 

We needed rapid changes f policy as the thing progressed.

 

Yet I recall, we didn't want rapid changes of policy as the thing progressed.

It appeared we  wanted a solid path and solid leadership.

Which was the last thing needed to help us survive the assault.

 

What we got was, actually, rather than leadership, we got decent government management...which meant we got the vaccines, and a vaccination program, in situ and running, at the earliest possible opportunity.

 

Or should we have had the sort of situation as per Brazil?  Would that have been preferable, for the current crop of boris-bashers?

[EddieB]

2 minutes ago, Hobby said:

I suspect we'll never know the full extent of how the virus spread in China but I suspect it was far worse than you think it was. By the time they did full lockdown in Wuhan it had already got out and had even reached Europe, so hardly successful at all!

Yes, knowing when the infection was first detected through to the apparent building of a new hospital within a week, there's a lot missing from what is known.  However (as much as you can ever know accurately) it does seem that the spread was contained within China.  As for it reaching other countries, there's plenty of speculation that I'd rather not go into. 

[monkeysarefun]

15 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

All true. And it was that level of careful, experienced preparation that enabled Sydney to disembark 2700 passengers from Ruby Princess in mid-March without any testing or limitation on their travel movements. The cruise had been cut short, as NZ told them they weren't welcome, so there were clues. In fact they dispersed across Oz to go home, or flew to many points of the globe. More than 130 passengers subsequently tested positive, making it at that time Oz's biggest single source of  infection. 

 

We've  had three stuff ups, each of which subsequently caused on outbreak - 

1/ The Ruby Princess being allowed to disembark passengers without testing them,

2/  Victoria relying on private security contractors to do security on their quarantine hotels rather than use the police or armed forces and

3/ NSW having  guidelines rather than hard laws  stating that drivers ferrying overseas air crews must be masked and vaccinated. 

 

Edited October 14, 2021 by monkeysarefun

[Hobby]

28 minutes ago, EddieB said:

However (as much as you can ever know accurately) it does seem that the spread was contained within China. 

 

Or figures suppressed! But to be fair it's one time when a totalitarianism regime comes into it's own, the masses are kept in the dark and they have no choice in what they are allowed to do... 

[beast66606]

 

23 minutes ago, EddieB said:

Yes, knowing when the infection was first detected through to the apparent building of a new hospital within a week, there's a lot missing from what is known.  However (as much as you can ever know accurately) it does seem that the spread was contained within China.  As for it reaching other countries, there's plenty of speculation that I'd rather not go into. 

 

People were quite literally sealed in their homes in China - using screws and nails. My son was there at the outbreak (and indeed still is) - the CCP quickly shut down any conversations about the virus - phone calls were disconnected, websites blocked etc., read into that what you will.

[Hobby]

37 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Interestingly, Angela Merkel has talked about having her own ‘lightbulb moment’ when she herself ran the numbers, which to me shows the value of having leaders who have at least some basic ability in science and maths ….. it equips them to have sensible conversations with their advisers.

 

If that's a veiled dig at Johnson then I'd suggest you check up his background. Whilst he comes across as a buffoon at times his academic record suggests otherwise... 

[EddieB]

1 hour ago, hayfield said:

To me this virus acted differently to anything our public health advisers had experienced and differently to what was expected and planned for. 

A few years ago I completed a PGCE to teach Science in secondary schools.  Part of my practical training was teaching a module to Year 8 students about a bacterial outbreak, that became a pandemic (but with a largely happy ending - these were Year 8s after all).  The scenario was accessible to students of that year group. 

 

I'm not a virologist, but those experienced in this field ought to have had enough expertise to understand how this infection was transmitted, its transmissibility and the resulting incidence of severe illness/mortality: if not through personal involvement, then findings from similar SARS type illnesses were widely reported from SE Asia.  A lot of this is down to mathematics - irrespective of the actual type of virus or its vectors.

[EddieB]

3 minutes ago, beast66606 said:

People were quite literally sealed in their homes in China - using screws and nails. My son was there at the outbreak (and indeed still is) - the CCP quickly shut down any conversations about the virus - phone calls were disconnected, websites blocked etc., read into that what you will.

Yes, I also heard first-hand to that effect.

[EddieB]

5 minutes ago, Hobby said:

If that's a veiled dig at Johnson then I'd suggest you check up his background. Whilst he comes across as a buffoon at times his academic record suggests otherwise... 

Well, at least he might be able to translate the Latin name for the virus...

[APOLLO]

Just now, Hobby said:

 

If that's a veiled dig at Johnson then I'd suggest you check up his background. Whilst he comes across as a buffoon at times his academic record suggests otherwise... 

 

I was watching a video about China the other day. The Chinese senior Politburo was shown, the handful directly under President Xi. I was actually gobsmacked - They are ALL qualified engineers. No wonder China races ahead !!!

 

 

Brit15

 

 

 

 

Edited October 14, 2021 by APOLLO

[boxbrownie]

11 hours ago, John M Upton said:

All we got in the UK was advice to wash our hands whilst singing Happy Birthday, twice....

Probably because those that would pass the virus on without caring cannot count to twenty. 

[Ohmisterporter]

Sticking to the covid-19 theme. our granddaughter's partner has been ill with covid for the last week. He is a strong, fit young man made very ill by the virus although still at home in bed. Granddaughter repeatedly tests negative with pcr tests although she has to stay off work for ten days. Her nine year old son still goes to school; though that will stop as his last pcr test came back positive today. None of them had a vaccine. 

[boxbrownie]

I heard on R4 yesterday it has been discovered that the LFT has turned out to be better than 90% accurate now.

 

 

Edited October 14, 2021 by boxbrownie
Corrected error

[Oldddudders]

1 minute ago, boxbrownie said:

I heard on R4 yesterday it has been discovered that the PCR has turned out to be better than 90% accurate now.

Measured against what? I thought the good news was that Lateral Flow tests had proved more accurate than expected? 

[boxbrownie]

10 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Measured against what? I thought the good news was that Lateral Flow tests had proved more accurate than expected? 

Sorry got my tests mixed up there…..

 

Well I assume against the same criteria that measured them at 50-60% accurate in the early stages of testing.

 

It was just a NIB not a long scientific piece.

 

Edited October 14, 2021 by boxbrownie

[lapford34102]

43 minutes ago, Ohmisterporter said:

our granddaughter's partner has been ill with covid for the last week. He is a strong, fit young man made very ill by the virus although still at home in bed. Granddaughter repeatedly tests negative with pcr tests

The number of times I've heard that where one in a household gets it and other(s) don't for some reason, it happened in our family. Something at work here we haven't yet figured out ?

Our daily positive figures seem very high compared to other similar countries but I haven't yet found any comparison of the amount of testing countries do. Has anyone seen any ?

Stu

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, Hobby said:

If that's a veiled dig at Johnson then I'd suggest you check up his background. Whilst he comes across as a buffoon at times his academic record suggests otherwise...

It’s a pretty overt criticism of our ‘political class’, and might be a criticism of the emphasis of our educational system if MPs’ educations are reflective of the whole population.

 

Just over 100/617 MPs have either a STEMM-based education and/or some background in a STEMM-based work environment, and that is too small a proportion for the world we live in. It’s not a party issue, it’s an issue across the piece - we need a good mix of MPs from all sorts of backgrounds, and we are simply under-supplied with STEMM- focused ones.

 

I’ve never for a minute thought that BJ lacked intelligence, but his education was solidly humanities-focused, and that shows in his approach at every turn.

 

One person who I think has shown the value of having STEMM-focused people, and people with some genuine background outside of politics come to that, in the room is Nadim Zahawi, and the fact that he is now Education Minister gives me some hope.

[Oldddudders]

1 hour ago, boxbrownie said:

Sorry got my tests mixed up there…..

 

Well I assume against the same criteria that measured them at 50-60% accurate in the early stages of testing.

 

It was just a NIB not a long scientific piece.

 

This gives us more background - and a vid from the engaging Laura Foster! I suspect this vid is actually quite old, so the advice about positive tests may not be current.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58899612