Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Gordon EF]

29 minutes ago, madwullie said:

I don't think it's fair to suggest that people wmat lockdown at any cost. People want lockdown until they personally feel safe to come out. It's really down to the govt to provide that safety, be it TTI, messages regarding stats or whatever. 

Something else that has to be said about the economy. There seems to be some who think that opening the economy will be like a switch and it will be business as usual. But again, if the public don't feel safe, they're not going to be rushing out to crowded shopping centres or restaurants or whatever to spend their money. Again, the govt need to make people feel safe before this happens. 

Pointing out on twitter and getting into debates about  the most likely to die being in their 80s is all very well, but until society feels that this is an acceptable risk to take, and they feel generally safe to be out and about, people are going to stay in. And I imagine if people venture out and infection rates rise rapidly, people will take the desicion to bolt back to the safety of their homes again

Imo this is why the "good old British common sense what ho" approach won't work. It's only really the govt, through actions and words, that can make people feel safe enough to come out. But of a problem that no c**t believes a word that comes out a tory mouth now too, but that's their problem not mine. 

Appreciate that response and mostly agree with you.

And I'd like to point out, I'm absolutely not on the government side of some kind of government vs public debate.

The Tories attempt to ease the lockdown in England was handled as incompetently and ham-fistedly as it was possible to be.

A huge part of this is absolutely informing the public about the risks and getting them to buy into a sensible strategy.

[beefybake]

2 hours ago, ICTChris said:

Not sure if this has been shared, some interesting observations on teaching in lockdown, pertinent to discussion on here.

https://amp.economist.com/britain/2020/05/16/why-teachers-are-doing-so-little-teaching?__twitter_impression=true

- 40% of teachers are working less than five hours a day.
- 50% of primary and 64% of secondary pupils are working less than three hours a day
- Only 6% of state schools have attempted a video lesson.
- Private schools are utilising video lessons at more than ten times the rate of state schools.
 

Teachers and head of departments at state schools spend rather a lot of time fighting for budgets to introduce stuff into the curriculum

for the benefit of their students/pupils. 

Generally speaking, private schools, and their staff, have much more leeway moneywise to introduce new things, new methods...,

and quickly.

 

Edited May 17, 2020 by beefybake

[bennett]

5 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

9 deaths and just 90 new cases in Scotland in last 24 hours

 

 

 

[coprolite]

1 hour ago, Todd_is_God said:

I think a wider study would be needed to see if the results of a small sample were representative of the wider population, but that if it is it would make sense.

I don't think a wider study is needed to identify the sampling bias that appears to be inherent by only covering private residences.

I was just wondering whether there was anything in the study which tried to adjust for the bias or take it into account in conclusions. 

It does look like the study's conclusions are of limited application to the whole population. 

[Highland Capital]

18 minutes ago, Dee Man said:

People who choose to watch Judge Judy over Judge Rinder deserve to die of Covid-19 IMO.

[O'Kelly Isley III]

It was neither flippant or childish.  Making that accusation is a poor attempt at deflection.
The Tories have an agenda here that puts people’s safety and well-being in second place.  The lockdown and furloughing cannot last indefinitely but, like Trump in the U.S., Johnson has his priorities wrong.
 

If anyone was in any doubt about that I'd refer them to the bizarre briefing last week from UK Housing Minister Jenrick in which he droned at length about a subject no-one was exercising themselves, unless of course you were a Director or shareholder of a major builder which donates serious money to the Tories.

[Todd_is_God]

3 minutes ago, coprolite said:

I don't think a wider study is needed to identify the sampling bias that appears to be inherent by only covering private residences.

I was just wondering whether there was anything in the study which tried to adjust for the bias or take it into account in conclusions. 

It does look like the study's conclusions are of limited application to the whole population. 

Why does where a person lives matter when it comes to whether or not their age increases or decreases the likelihood of being infected?

So a wider study involving different areas and types or residency would be of limited application?

When there is limited data available, dismissing studies on the basis they produce results you do not like is ridiculous behaviour.

[throbber]

58 minutes ago, Gordon EF said:

Nothing I'm saying is remotely right-wing or pro-government. As a society, we're only capable of holding a government to account if we're capable of critically evaluating different viewpoints like adults.

I'm not saying give the government an easy ride. I'm saying don't expect to be treated like an adult if you can't act like one. 

I wouldn’t worry too much about this accusation from GD considering:

1 - His idea of right wing = anyone who didn’t wish Boris Johnson dead when he had Corona.  
 

&

2 - He started drinking at around 11 o clock this morning and will be drenched in his own urine by now. 

 

[Steven W]

17 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

9 deaths and just 90 new cases in Scotland in last 24 hours

 

Do you know how that compares to previous Sundays?

[Todd_is_God]

5 minutes ago, Steven W said:

Do you know how that compares to previous Sundays?

Deaths down but only really in the sense its single digit on a Sunday.

Cases very much down. 50% plus on previous Sundays. The last time new cases were less than 100 was Tuesday, 24th March

Edited May 17, 2020 by Todd_is_God

[bendan]

7 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

Down and very much down

case numbers are down but deaths are pretty much the same.

[s_dog]

On 16/05/2020 at 01:01, SoapMactavish said:

I’m not the one with the answers. I’m not paid for that.

However I am frontline NHS staff working within an Emergency Department.

I have seen countless patients over the last 2 months who I know aren’t going to make it, and they are scared, they are alone, they are often fully aware they are dying. I’m pretty hardened to death, but this is slowly wearing me out. 

We came incredibly close to being overwhelmed in some areas and if the NHS is overwhelmed, thousands will die because we will not have the beds, staff or medicine for them. 

As it stands Lockdown is everything at the minute, we have limited ability to control the spread of this, no treatment and no vaccine. 

Just wanted to quote this as I think it's probably the best post on this thread to date. People can argue all they want, and we'll all have various opinions about how things should be done and how good or bad we think our politicians have dealt with it up to now, but this is the important reality.

 

On 16/05/2020 at 11:14, Snobot said:

Here’s a fairly searing critique from the BMJ

https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1932

 

Just quoting this because it doesn't appear to have gathered much attention on here.  The British Medical Journa's editorial on the "Too little, too late, too flawed" response to Covid-19. It's scathing, and well worth a read, and I'd interested to find anyone who can disagree with much of what is said it in.

 

 

4 hours ago, Paco said:

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/coronavirus-scotland-despite-8500-people-22039844.amp?__twitter_impression=true

Is this true then? Hard to see a way out of lockdown for us until the contact tracers are there. The much maligned Westminster government has 17,000 hired, apparently.

The Scottish Government definitely need to do more to increase their testing capability, they are still testing far to few people, and still have a long way to go to increase the capacity to the required levels (and yes, they are doing better with testing numbers down South than we are), but because they decided early on to not stick with the test, trace & isolate strategy, they've been scrambling to deal with the pandemic and now they've accepted and changed their decision on testing, they can't just conjure up the capacity and staff to do it in a couple of weeks.

That Daily Record article even mentions in it "13 days after the initial strategy document was published the Scottish Government has admitted that nobody has been given a job". Ignoring the fact that they didn't start advertising for contact tracers until after the document was published, and that who in their right mind would think they'd manage to advertise and employ staff in the space of a week or so?!  It might sound good in theory that the UK Gov has already hired staff, are they a bit further forward in setting up contact tracing, are all these already employed actually working yet or are they still trying to set up the infrastructure to do the job?

 

Also as we're all so interested in the statistics of the pandemic, nice to see that the Scottish Gov (Welsh too) gets a wee nod from an article by the UK Statistics Authority ( an independent organisation who promote and safeguard the publication of official statistics).  https://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/the-armchair-epidemiologists/

  "Let’s end with the area where we’ve made our strongest interventions. Statistics cannot do their job to inform people’s understanding and to be a source of trustworthy insight if they are not publicly available. One of our core principles is that when information is used in public discourse – by Ministers, for example – it should be fully, openly and freely available. By and large Governments in the UK have sought to comply with this (the Scottish Government stand out here for their open approach to publishing management information)".

 

Edited May 17, 2020 by s_dog

[Granny Danger]

1 hour ago, Dee Man said:

People who choose to watch Judge Judy over Judge Rinder deserve to die of Covid-19 IMO.

People who would watch either deserve to die twice over.

[s_dog]

48 minutes ago, Steven W said:

Do you know how that compares to previous Sundays?

9 deaths and just 90 new cases this Sunday. That compares to 10 deaths and 181 new cases last Sunday & 12 and 170 the Sunday before.

There's always a dip at the weekend, but there is a clear trend in the number of new infections going down from figures in the 300's each day near the end of April, to 200's a day in May and last week we've been in the 100's. The death rate isn't going down quite the same and those figures are still very up and down.   But we've had over a month of there being well over 100 people in ICU beds in Scotland ( and over 200 at its peak) and its heartening to see that figure dropping down regularly. There were still over 100 in ICU at the start of this month, and today its dropped to 59.

Edit to add: Travelling Tabby travel blog is the place to look for Scotland's Coronavirus stats - https://www.travellingtabby.com/scotland-coronavirus-tracker/

Edited May 17, 2020 by s_dog

[Gaz]

38 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

I'm not sure how to make my question simpler to be honest.

You don't understand why words like "North" and "South" would appear in a trig class?

[Fullerene]

1 hour ago, Dee Man said:

People who choose to watch Judge Judy over Judge Rinder deserve to die of Covid-19 IMO.

You know what she would say to that

 

Judge Judy Idiot.mp3

[Granny Danger]

35 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

That fear will be temporary.

Within a couple of weeks of restrictions being lifted, most people will get back to some sense of normality.

We are already seeing it in England and in our supermarkets up here. People are gradually moving away from being strict about the 2m gaps.

You post that as if it’s a good thing whilst all the experts agree that it’s still still one of the most important things folk can do.  

[coprolite]

21 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

Why does where a person lives matter when it comes to whether or not their age increases or decreases the likelihood of being infected?

So a wider study involving different areas and types or residency would be of limited application?

When there is limited data available, dismissing studies on the basis they produce results you do not like is ridiculous behaviour.

Because a disproportionate number of people with coronavirus are in care homes or hospitals which aren't covered in the study.

I haven't dismissed the study but I am trying to understand what it says. 

Does the care home/ hospital number need added to the 148k in the general population or is it already included in the 148k? If already included how was it estimated? 

You quoted the study and drew inferences from its conclusion so i thought you might have understood the conclusion. 

[coprolite]

55 minutes ago, throbber said:

I wouldn’t worry too much about this accusation from GD considering:

1 - His idea of right wing = anyone who didn’t wish Boris Johnson dead when he had Corona.  
 

&

2 - He started drinking at around 11 o clock this morning and will be drenched in his own urine by now. 

 

Thought i'd just bypass the ignore function to be a dick. 

[madwullie]

Fear will only be temporary if we don't see a move towards exponential infection rates again once the 2-3 weeks are up imo

Edited May 17, 2020 by madwullie