Coronavirus Pandemic

[F-ZeroOne]

Damn. Always thought it would be the cockroaches.

[Harlequin]

Worldometers's UK page is going to need a bigger graph:

Another 393 people have died after contracting coronavirus - taking the UK total to 1,808.

The latest increase is a sharp increase from yesterday's rise of 180.

[Also, regarding figure accuracy:]
…
In Scotland, 1,993 people had tested positive for the virus as of 9am on Tuesday, up 430 on the previous day.

Nicola Sturgeon said the sharp rise was partly because 108 of these positive tests came from a lab which was unable to submit data over the weekend.

And:

An additional 40 previously unreported coronavirus deaths occurred in England and Wales earlier this month, according to new official backdated figures that suggest almost one in four coronavirus deaths are occurring outside hospitals.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures, which are based on death certificates, show there were 210 deaths where Covid-19 was listed as a cause by 20 March, 40 more than the 170 announced by the NHS at that stage.

The figure is higher because it includes deaths outside hospitals, including those in homes and care homes, and includes patients who have not tested positive for the virus but are suspected of having the disease. It suggests that almost 24% of coronavirus deaths have been going unreported in government figures.

[Ollie]

Even with an empty shop and no queues I can see why my wife generally has our shopping delivered.

Well worth the £4 to have someone sort that for you...

By all accounts, though, the substitutions can be unpredictable even when general stock levels are good... I dread to think what they'll be like now...

(and it's academic in any case because there ain't no slots available.)

[merman]

Even with an empty shop and no queues I can see why my wife generally has our shopping delivered.

Well worth the £4 to have someone sort that for you...

By all accounts, though, the substitutions can be unpredictable even when general stock levels are good... I dread to think what they'll be like now...

(and it's academic in any case because there ain't no slots available.)

Tesco's allow you to say "no substitution" on an item so you don't get daft replacements.

Of course that's when you can get a slot. My mum pays up front to get a cheaper slot (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) but can't get one for the next two weeks presently.

[PFVA]

The goats are raiding Llandudno's empty streets:

Awwwwwwwww. Lockdown made easier by having fluffy ones to watch out of the window.

[Deckard]

https://www.mediaite.com/news/yale-epid ... -reporter/

Same here bud.

[KlaxonCow]

Awwwwwwwww. Lockdown made easier by having fluffy ones to watch out of the window.

They are nibbling on the hedges and people's garden plants and flowers, mind you. Which I'm sure is not making them universally appreciated. But, otherwise, yeah.

[PFVA]

Aww, those goats are just helping to keep the yards nicely trimmed.

Here they're extending the state of emergency for another 2 weeks. They go in 2 weeks increments but they have said since the beginning to expect it to last longer as they expect the peak to be around April 15th.

For now they are specially working towards keeping everybody from travelling during Easter.

There was some confusion with the totals of cases by municipality but they seem to have resolved it. We have 81 cases in mine.

[Ollie]

Aww, those goats are just helping to keep the yards nicely trimmed.

We could do with some here, then; the last couple of days, I've seen two different professional gardeners outside nearby houses with the hedge trimmers and leaf blowers, tidying up front gardens that weren't especially in need of tidying. But I'm sure it must be "essential work," or they wouldn't be doing it, right?

[Harlequin]

Aww, those goats are just helping to keep the yards nicely trimmed.

We could do with some here, then; the last couple of days, I've seen two different professional gardeners outside nearby houses with the hedge trimmers and leaf blowers, tidying up front gardens that weren't especially in need of tidying. But I'm sure it must be "essential work," or they wouldn't be doing it, right?

Is any work other than in some kinds of enclosed public spaces deemed non-essential?

[Deckard]

Usually a solitary job and zero people outside so whats the harm ? If I hear another obese cornish person say "stay safe" I will scream....perhaps I can say back "lose weight as the chances of that killing you are a 1000 x greater?"

Quite a good article and the Beeb were talking about "normal" death rates yesterday....

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/The ... s-we-think

The simplest way to judge whether we have an exceptionally lethal disease is to look at the death rates. Are more people dying than we would expect to die anyway in a given week or month? Statistically, we would expect about 51,000 to die in Britain this month. At the time of writing, 422 deaths are linked to Covid-19 — so 0.8 per cent of that expected total. On a global basis, we’d expect 14 million to die over the first three months of the year. The world’s 18,944 coronavirus deaths represent 0.14 per cent of that total. These figures might shoot up but they are, right now, lower than other infectious diseases that we live with (such as flu). Not figures that would, in and of themselves, cause drastic global reactions.

[Harlequin]

Quite a good article and the Beeb were talking about "normal" death rates yesterday....
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/The ... s-we-think

The simplest way to judge whether we have an exceptionally lethal disease is to look at the death rates. Are more people dying than we would expect to die anyway in a given week or month? Statistically, we would expect about 51,000 to die in Britain this month. At the time of writing, 422 deaths are linked to Covid-19 — so 0.8 per cent of that expected total. On a global basis, we’d expect 14 million to die over the first three months of the year. The world’s 18,944 coronavirus deaths represent 0.14 per cent of that total. These figures might shoot up but they are, right now, lower than other infectious diseases that we live with (such as flu). Not figures that would, in and of themselves, cause drastic global reactions.

The death rates in most countries appear to be accelerating, though. There are currently 2,352 deaths linked directly to C19 in this country, starting from the 5th of March. 4.6% extra deaths is not trivial and we can expect a hugely higher death rate this month as we follow the curves of Italy and Spain. Consider that the vast majority of deaths in these countries have occurred after various mitigation strategies including lockdowns, without which the figures might presumably have been many times higher.

[Deckard]

What does directly mean ?

But there’s another, potentially even more serious problem: the way that deaths are recorded. If someone dies of a respiratory infection in the UK, the specific cause of the infection is not usually recorded, unless the illness is a rare ‘notifiable disease’. So the vast majority of respiratory deaths in the UK are recorded as bronchopneumonia, pneumonia, old age or a similar designation. We don’t really test for flu, or other seasonal infections. If the patient has, say, cancer, motor neurone disease or another serious disease, this will be recorded as the cause of death, even if the final illness was a respiratory infection. This means UK certifications normally under-record deaths due to respiratory infections.

Now look at what has happened since the emergence of Covid-19. The list of notifiable diseases has been updated. This list — as well as containing smallpox (which has been extinct for many years) and conditions such as anthrax, brucellosis, plague and rabies (which most UK doctors will never see in their entire careers) — has now been amended to include Covid-19. But not flu. That means every positive test for Covid-19 must be notified, in a way that it just would not be for flu or most other infections.

In the current climate, anyone with a positive test for Covid-19 will certainly be known to clinical staff looking after them: if any of these patients dies, staff will have to record the Covid-19 designation on the death certificate — contrary to usual practice for most infections of this kind. There is a big difference between Covid-19 causing death, and Covid-19 being found in someone who died of other causes.

Making Covid-19 notifiable might give the appearance of it causing increasing numbers of deaths, whether this is true or not. It might appear far more of a killer than flu, simply because of the way deaths are recorded.

If we take drastic measures to reduce the incidence of Covid-19, it follows that the deaths will also go down. We risk being convinced that we have averted something that was never really going to be as severe as we feared. This unusual way of reporting Covid-19 deaths explains the clear finding that most of its victims have underlying conditions — and would normally be susceptible to other seasonal viruses, which are virtually never recorded as a specific cause of death.

Let us also consider the Covid-19 graphs, showing an exponential rise in cases — and deaths. They can look alarming. But if we tracked flu or other seasonal viruses in the same way, we would also see an exponential increase. We would also see some countries behind others, and striking fatality rates. The United States Centers for Disease Control, for example, publishes weekly estimates of flu cases. The latest figures show that since September, flu has infected 38 million Americans, hospitalised 390,000 and killed 23,000. This does not cause public alarm because flu is familiar.

[Misfit]

What does directly mean ?

That you can read stats in many ways?

That it all sounds very dramatic and yes, it is really bad, but actually it'll be alright for virtually all of us?

[Deckard]

Absolutely but its still bad. I am reading Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot and funny enough he was talking about how and what might cause our planet to unify as tech will either kill us or save us in the end.