Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[pandarilla]

The conversation late last night about how to weigh up deaths in this crisis is an interesting one.

Personally, taking Scottish football as an example, i don't think it's worth losing a dozen or so clubs for this virus. Scottish football is important to our lives and to our communities.

If there is a genuine risk that a serious number of clubs won't survive if we continue lockdown in the long term, then i think that's too much of a price for us to pay (this is not a species altering virus, which theoretically it could be of the death rate was much higher).

That might seem incredibly callus of me - but i think it's easy to lose perspective about the serious consequences of long term lockdown.

(just to be clear, I'm not in favour of the lockdown ending at the next opportunity - but I'm talking about short term versus long term)

[Wee Willie]

I copied this from FaceBook…

 

Litres and litres of oxygen  (See why I got sick below)... The notorious liar is clapping for himself again. WHY are people still believing him ??? I have given up on England, and I feel sorry for all my english friends and the sober people having to live there. At least Mrs Windsor is not clapping .. I think she would do a better job ruling this country than the Johnson baggage .. and I am a stout republican . Scottland's Independence is an imperative, now more than ever.

Johnson's propaganda machine is working as efficient as disputable but necessary as Churchill's ( which was helpful then, but I am fed up to watch the war movies every Weekend on ITV now) , only there are no Nazis around to fight now ... does anyone believe Johnson's made up heroic legend of fighting the Coronavirus ..he was 2d on ICU and then discharged after just another 2d ... ALL our real ICU patients which were on the verge to be incubated were not able to leave ICU for another 1 to 2 weeks ... Maybe the betrayed english and welsh people are happy to hear another fairy tale ... Haven't you seen Boris, fighting the Coronavirus with his bare fists .. that is our saviour, our Lord protector, and his succession is also secured now, fruit of his seed, every sperm is sacred ....for me he is a confabulating notorious liar , but the saddest thing about the UK is that many people still believe his fairy tales .. now with all this clapping and this false sympathy I rather work on our ICU than watching BBC ... I hope Scotland can get out of this web of lies and betrayals asap

 

[Aufc]

During the lockdown, ive started doing more running. Been enjoying doing 5km at a time and trying to get my time down. One of my mates started following me on strava and then suddenly i have been nominated to run a 5k via social media (sent to my wife as i dont have social media). I have to run a 5k, donate to the NHS and then nominate 5 other people to do the same.

What is this pish? I just want to run on my own

[bennett]

1 hour ago, Snafu said:

Coronavirus: David Icke's channel deleted by YouTube

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52517797

That'll put an end to the conspiracy nonsense.

 

 

[Paco]

Scotland’s testing levels are now pretty poor, having been reasonable at the start, and anyone hiding behind the political landscape is kidding themselves. For starters 4000 of the capacity here is in a UK Government funded lab! The claim is the total capacity is over 8000 and will go over 10k next week but we’re sitting at about half of capacity used at the moment. That’s either because the test centres are too difficult to get to or people don’t know how to access a test. That’s entirely the job of the Scottish Government.

Sturgeon has had a few missteps in recent days. Starting a ‘grown up conversation’ that didn’t say a great deal and then virtually going back on it after Johnson said we were over the peak looked like she was just making some cheap points. I doubt she was but that’s how it looked.

[Suspect Device]

3 minutes ago, Snafu said:

Football clubs, businesses etc are replaceable entities, people aren't.

 

Yes they are. We've been replacing people for our entire history.

 

Edit. Unless everyone dies. 

 

 

Edited May 3, 2020 by Suspect Device

[Jacksgranda]

7 hours ago, Speroni*1 said:

What arbritary number is worth the economy being screwed then? 10? 20? 100? 1000? When does it become worth it?

What's the human value here?

I'm not saying this as a 'rebuttal' because it's quite clearly not. I'm genuinely curious as to the figure people have in their heads of being worth it as opposed to not worth it.

The number is irrelevant. As long as those dying aren't related/known to them it doesn't matter.

[welshbairn]

The lockdown was never about saving lives per se, it's about keeping the infection rate down enough for the NHS to cope. Otherwise we'd close the economy down every winter.

[renton]

One of the things to remember here in any conversation of trading off deaths vs. The economy is that the lockdown is not really about stopping people dying from this illness. The primary function of the lockdown is to stop lots of people dying all at once.

That's why the government built those pop up hospitals in a hurry, that's why the aerospace industry got co-opted into delivering thousands of new ventilators. To build up ICU capacity not just for the immediate crisis but so that there was slack in the system to cope with higher hospitalization rates after lockdown is eased off.

The government has transitioned to focus on the r0 transmission rate as it's lodestar. Well and good, by focusing on that as an output in a contact-trace-isolate strategy they can make sure that infection rates never get to the point where hospitals breakdown under the strain. If the r0 value drops to such a level that the virus is smothered out of existence like SARS was, then that's a happy accident. 

So long as the government can provide proper facilities for anyone contracting the illness, then that is their exit strategy. Not a cessation of deaths.

Edited May 3, 2020 by renton

[Jacksgranda]

4 hours ago, JTS98 said:

Aye. It could easily swing back the other way.

Apparently ventilator use in Malaysia is at 30% and leave for front-line health workers is being approved again. In that regard the relatively strict measures put in place here seem to have had the desired effect and this is buying the government the benefit of the doubt.

But the view of the medical bodies is that this will shove the numbers back up. The government seem happy to accept that and deal with whatever comes next.

Not much to do but wait.

The problem is it takes about a fortnight to see if any measure is a good/bad idea in terms of new cases, which takes another week or more to translate into deaths.

You can only judge if some measure was "right" by seeing the result. And in order to see the result somebody else's government has to introduce said measure. If it works - well done government, let's do it here. If it doesn't - why the f*** did they do that.

[renton]

22 minutes ago, Paco said:

Scotland’s testing levels are now pretty poor, having been reasonable at the start, and anyone hiding behind the political landscape is kidding themselves. For starters 4000 of the capacity here is in a UK Government funded lab! The claim is the total capacity is over 8000 and will go over 10k next week but we’re sitting at about half of capacity used at the moment. That’s either because the test centres are too difficult to get to or people don’t know how to access a test. That’s entirely the job of the Scottish Government.

Sturgeon has had a few missteps in recent days. Starting a ‘grown up conversation’ that didn’t say a great deal and then virtually going back on it after Johnson said we were over the peak looked like she was just making some cheap points. I doubt she was but that’s how it looked.

Have to agree here. The Scottish government has been reactionary rather than proactive at every point, and it's been majorly disappointing to see. Part of it is that Scot Gov receives the same professional advice from the same pool of civil service advisors, the other part of it is that Sturgeon is a naturally  careful politician who really lacks a bit of imagination and who is very much a centralising influence in her government in terms of decision making.

It feels very much like no one at any point in this whole debacle has tried to get in front of this thing, to focus on building up test capacity. 

[Melanius Mullarkey]

1 hour ago, Snafu said:

Coronavirus: David Icke deleted 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52517797

One day.

[Melanius Mullarkey]

39 minutes ago, Aufc said:

During the lockdown, ive started doing more running. Been enjoying doing 5km at a time and trying to get my time down. One of my mates started following me on strava and then suddenly i have been nominated to run a 5k via social media (sent to my wife as i dont have social media). I have to run a 5k, donate to the NHS and then nominate 5 other people to do the same.

What is this pish? I just want to run on my own

Similar situation here.
 

Except I was nominated to do the three drink challenge. 

[pandarilla]

Football clubs, businesses etc are replaceable entities, people aren't.
 

I think that's throwing the baby out with the bath water.

As has been mentioned, we all die. And one important factor here is that a long term lockdown is preventing people from living fulfilling lives - and for some their time is very precious.

I have a shielding letter but I'm refusing to follow it (it points out that this is my free choice on the letter). I'm following the lockdown and being careful, but I'm not willing to shut myself down entirely for 12 weeks (which will almost certainly be extended) for this virus. I took this decision in full discussion with my wife, who fully supports it. One curious thing is that i got the letter last week and it said the 12 weeks were to begin from the date on the letter, completely ignoring the 5 weeks I'd already spent on lockdown. That's pretty shit.

There will be many people with terminal illnesses and an extended lockdown is literally robbing them of life. And then there's a lot of old folk who are perfectly willing to take the risk because they realise how precious their time is.

A short term lockdown was absolutely necessary, and probably should've been done earlier. But this can't be extended until next year, until a vaccine or effective treatment is found. It's too high a price to pay.

We need to get as prepared as we can, work out what is manageable in terms of reducing risk, and try to create a new normal which prevents our health service from being overwhelmed.

[DiegoDiego]

Being over 17,000 islands certainly helps reduce the spread, especially when the ferry services were stopped a while back. The Chinese tourists would mostly be concentrated on Bali and Lombok.

However, the lack of a truly functioning healthcare system is much more to do with the low numbers in Indonesia, the inability to test, to collect data and corruption are more key factors to the low numbers.

The stats for Indonesias healthcare system are frightening and can put a lot of our gripes into perspective and this is after heavy investment.

There are circa 2800 hospitals in Indonesia (17K islands), only 20 to international standard (most of these in Jakarta and Bali). They have just over 300,000 beds (population circa: 270m). 0.2 Physicians to 1000 people and 1.2 nurses and midwifes.

Hospitals in the provinces are grim places, usually open buildings with a handful of beds and a best an (singular) oxygen tank. Everything you need to provide for yourself.

Getting sick in Indonesia isn’t a good idea.

They will have huge numbers of infections and deaths that will never come to light.

Although, as said the number of islands also helps in their defence.

That still doesn't explain why a survey of Bali crematoria showed no increase in death. Bali should have been riddled with the virus with five weekly flights from Wuhan until February.

[Dunning1874]

16 hours ago, oaksoft said:

That might well be the sentiment at your work but it's not a view shared across society.

Most people have jobs they enjoy and will be very keen to get back to their offices.

[Moomintroll]

52 minutes ago, bennett said:

That'll put an end to the conspiracy nonsense.

 

 

Well played benny.

[Moomintroll]

13 minutes ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

Similar situation here.
 

Except I was nominated to do the three drink challenge. 

Wait, that's a thing? Please nominate dear readers.

[Todd_is_God]

26 minutes ago, Snafu said:

How many of us would willingly die for our football club?

This is a ridiculous question.

For the vast majority on here, catching Covid-19 would not be a death sentence.

For any 1 individual of working age, the chances of catching it in the first place is fairly low atm (around 270 cases per day and falling, from a population of 5.5m).

Early figures indicated around 20% of symptomatic cases required hospitalistation. If we assume all 270 of those were symptomatic, that means 54 people going to hospital.

Early figures again indicated that, of those hospitalised, 20% would require intensive care. In this example that's 11.

Once in intensive care, your chances are around 50/50. So 6 would die.

The chances of any 1 person contracting and subsequently dying of Covid-19 in Scotland at the moment are incredibly small. Wanting football matches to return to prevent your club going to the wall is a million miles away from saying "i'm willing to die for my club."

I understand there is a risk of passing the virus on to others who are perhaps more vulnerable to serious infection, but that wasn't your point.

 

[Suspect Device]

29 minutes ago, Snafu said:

How many of us would willingly die for our football club?

Very few and probably none but that wasn't the point. The human race is very good, some would say too good at replacing itself. 

This pandemic is a minor blip in our population growth. If we extend the lockdown  for too long the resulting deaths from other causes could be far worse. How many undiagnosed cancer or heart disease cases will there be? How many suicides?