Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[renton]

11 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

It's down from 0.7-1.0 to 0.6-0.8

With those being estimates there is a chance it could have been anywhere between 0.7-0.8 and still be there and both estimates be right.

Well, presumably its a gaussian probability distribution, so take the medians and its dropped from 0.85 to 0.7. Or even look at it this way- previously there was a chance the virus was endemic, now we are far more positive it is receding.

It's not going to be a quick process, but its not linear either, so subsequent drops should be faster. We know that for a given base of infection vectors, and a given level of connectivity between vectors and susceptible populations that so long as that connectivty is low, recovery will outstrip new cases, the virus dies off, the R value decreasea further.

If, in three to four weeks we are still stuck at phase 1, and R is stubbornly hovering around 0.8, then by all means, crank it open and devil bugger the hindmost, but presently I think there is merit in trying to stomp on it now as far as possible.

Edited June 16, 2020 by renton

[Gaz]

17 minutes ago, bendan said:

Can't remember that at all. Are you sure you're not mixing me up with someone else? 

My utmost apologies. I've just had a look back and it would seem that you made a couple of posts about R-numbers around the same time as there were a few posters (Steven W, the aforementioned Oaksoft) who were up in arms at the prospect of teachers being paid if they're asked to do extra work. I recognised your name from then but fully accept you were not part of that argument. Apologies again!

[bendan]

15 minutes ago, renton said:

Well, presumably its a gaussian probability distribution, so take the medians and its dropped from 0.85 to 0.7. Or even look at it this way- previously there was a chance the virus was endemic, now we are far more positive it is receding.

It's not going to be a quick process, but its not linear either, so subsequent drops should be faster. We know that for a given base of infection vectors, and a given level of connectivity between vectors and susceptible populations that so long as that connectivty is low, recovery will outstrip new cases, the virus dies off, the R value decreasea further.

 

I still don't get how at a given level of connectivity, R would fall, unless the susceptible population was declining significantly. At low case numbers that's not happening, so R is entirely driven by contact (and thus measures/behaviour). If R really is falling in Scotland right now it can only be through better management of hospital and care environments, probably due to more PPE and more testing.

[Jacksgranda]

12 hours ago, Thereisalight.. said:

Someone mentioned the vaccine earlier, would we be injected with covid to make us “immune”? Sounds a bit like heard immunity under a different guise 

There's nobody listening to that sort of chat.

[renton]

5 minutes ago, bendan said:

I still don't get how at a given level of connectivity, R would fall, unless the susceptible population was declining significantly. At low case numbers that's not happening, so R is entirely driven by contact (and thus measures/behaviour). If R really is falling in Scotland right now it can only be through better management of hospital and care environments, probably due to more PPE and more testing.

R effective, not R0 remember. Most analyses use a variant of the S-I-R model (susceptible, Infective, Removed) basically for a given R0 you can modulate two things: contact, which acts to shield susceptible populations and case load, which controls the number of infectives/Removed.

Basically R0 is working to keep new infections moving, trying to create new vectors. Each susceptible so contacted becomes Infective. The disease has a finite pathology so in order to move through the population it needs more infectives. If the level of infectives drops by moving to the Removed category, the less vectors are available to the disease and therefore R effective drops.

To put it another way, the less active cases, the smaller the probability of coming into contact with the disease, the lower the probability of passing it on. If there were no active cases and no new cases R effective would be 0. 

[bendan]

2 minutes ago, renton said:

R effective, not R0 remember. Most analyses use a variant of the S-I-R model (susceptible, Infective, Removed) basically for a given R0 you can modulate two things: contact, which acts to shield susceptible populations and case load, which controls the number of infectives/Removed.

Basically R0 is working to keep new infections moving, trying to create new vectors. Each susceptible so contacted becomes Infective. The disease has a finite pathology so in order to move through the population it needs more infectives. If the level of infectives drops by moving to the Removed category, the less vectors are available to the disease and therefore R effective drops.

To put it another way, the less active cases, the smaller the probability of coming into contact with the disease, the lower the probability of passing it on. If there were no active cases and no new cases R effective would be 0. 

But if one person is infected in the whole country and he passes it on to one contact, R=1. If he doesn't infect anyone it's zero. Or am I misunderstanding something? Obviously as more people recover (or die) and are no longer susceptible, R would fall if all other factors remained the same, but our case numbers are too small to influence that.

[ICTChris]

600,000 people have lost their jobs during lockdown.  For all the chat about the benefits of home working, which I've probably been guilty of myself on this forum, there are a lot of people who are going to experience real hardship in the fall out of this crisis.

[Bairnardo]

1 hour ago, pandarilla said:

Is the correct answer.

The only issue i can see is that a lot of folk have put hours and hours into creating plans for their schools and councils.

When this happens, there's often strong resistance to just binning it (understandable). The Scottish govt will need to be clear and firm - and that might lead to a fall out with the unions.

Hopefully not, though.

What will the arguments be for keeping the 2 metre rule? We will be told "the science" allows it, and given the WHO are recommending 1 metre along with numerous countries faring better than us, nothing other than "but you said...." can be presented against. 

Fucking Stockholm syndrome tbqh

[renton]

1 minute ago, bendan said:

But if one person is infected in the whole country and he passes it on to one contact, R=1. If he doesn't infect anyone it's zero. Or am I misunderstanding something? Obviously as more people recover (or die) and are no longer susceptible, R would fall if all other factors remained the same, but our case numbers are too small to influence that.

No, thats right for a trivial case. R effective = R0 multiplied by x, and in x is the multitude of complexity in modelling not just the pathology of the disease but human behaviour in a given urban environment (which is where the super computers come in).

I don't think our case numbers are too low. We are generating in the range of 20-30 new cases per day, based on a ScotGov estimate of about 4,500 infectives in the entire populace. With a fully open, non locked down economy that would be more than enough vectors to push R back up to its pre lockdown value. Once we stop generating new cases altogether the base case load will start to plummet.

[mizfit]

600,000 people have lost their jobs during lockdown.  For all the chat about the benefits of home working, which I've probably been guilty of myself on this forum, there are a lot of people who are going to experience real hardship in the fall out of this crisis.

Must admit we’re a bit cautious about my girlfriends job in dentistry at the moment. I’ve suggested she touches up her CV just now so she’s prepared for the worst case scenario, however a glance on the usual job sites shows how little there is at this moment.

[renton]

4 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

What will the arguments be for keeping the 2 metre rule? We will be told "the science" allows it, and given the WHO are recommending 1 metre along with numerous countries faring better than us, nothing other than "but you said...." can be presented against. 

Fucking Stockholm syndrome tbqh

Its a case of managing risks. No social distancing to 1M social distancing is a drop in infection risk to something like 2.6%, at 2M its down to 1.3%, so 1M is effectively doubling the risk, but from a small start. Presumably then it depends on a number of factors including overall case loads and R value, right? Like how many extra new cases  can you afford to generate without tipping your R value back up? 

I think they will insist on 2M through phase 2, then drop it to 1M going into phase 3. I suspect beyond the technical risks, there is a lot of behavioural management going on as well, to try and temper expectations some folk will have by moving into new phases.

[Todd_is_God]

3 minutes ago, mizfit said:

Must admit we’re a bit cautious about my girlfriends job in dentistry at the moment. I’ve suggested she touches up her CV just now so she’s prepared for the worst case scenario, however a glance on the usual job sites shows how little there is at this moment.

 

 

This is the big problem here. The hardest impacted sectors will have little to no opportunities available for people to get back in to

[Todd_is_God]

11 minutes ago, renton said:

No, thats right for a trivial case. R effective = R0 multiplied by x, and in x is the multitude of complexity in modelling not just the pathology of the disease but human behaviour in a given urban environment (which is where the super computers come in).

I don't think our case numbers are too low. We are generating in the range of 20-30 new cases per day, based on a ScotGov estimate of about 4,500 infectives in the entire populace. With a fully open, non locked down economy that would be more than enough vectors to push R back up to its pre lockdown value. Once we stop generating new cases altogether the base case load will start to plummet.

Of course, but we are miles away from that.

The evidence from countries across Europe has shown that new case numbers can continue to fall despite resteictions being eased. Why do we need to be so much more cautious than everyone else? The benefits of doing so are negligible at best, but the damage they cause is much greater.

[hk blues]

3 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

This is the big problem here. The hardest impacted sectors will have little to no opportunities available for people to get back in to

No shit Sherlock!

[Bairnardo]

Its a case of managing risks. No social distancing to 1M social distancing is a drop in infection risk to something like 2.6%, at 2M its down to 1.3%, so 1M is effectively doubling the risk, but from a small start. Presumably then it depends on a number of factors including overall case loads and R value, right? Like how many extra new cases  can you afford to generate without tipping your R value back up? 
I think they will insist on 2M through phase 2, then drop it to 1M going into phase 3. I suspect beyond the technical risks, there is a lot of behavioural management going on as well, to try and temper expectations some folk will have by moving into new phases.

Whilst I agree with the behaviour management bit, we need to fall back onto the systems in place to prevent a second spike, that's what they are there for. At this current point, theres no point in doing mass testing at all. It's getting us nothing. We know the measures in place work.

We will undoubtedly see a rise in infections when we move back to normal, we need to rely on test and protect to squash them.

Kids might pass it about at school, we need to rely on the vigilance of families not to spread it further.

That's what the whole test and protect thing is for. Lockdown gets the numbers down, Tracing keeps them down. We are very much reaching the "we've did our part and made our sacrifices" phase here and are now being asked to sacrifice more for one of two reasons IMO.

Either the govt are scared to trust the systems designed to replace these extreme measures, or they know something we dont re the readiness of these systems. Either way is a failing of the govt

[madwullie]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but did most other countries not wait until they had sustained low levels of infection / hospital admittance / r rate before opening up (slowly). It seems to be that England is unusual in getting low and then very quickly opening up, and Scotland is doing what many other places did in that they are trying to ensure everything is low and has been for a while before opening. 

I mean the poster in Malaysia (sorry I can't remember who it is) seemed to suggest that only recently has he been enjoying freedoms that can be considered pretty normal, while the country as a whole has been out of the woods for quite some time. 

Re Devi Srindhar seeming to advocate completely stamping out the virus before opening up quickly, it does seem like that is what she thinks is best, but is it not a rather glaring issues that we have a wide open border to the worst effected country in Europe? 

[renton]

2 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

Of course, but we are miles away from that.

The evidence from countries across Europe has shown that new case numbers can continue to fall despite resteictions being eased. Why do we need to be so much more cautious than everyone else? The benefits of doing so are negligible at best, but the damage they cause is much greater.

Of course it does, so long as R is below 1, eventually case loads drop. The differences in strategy come down to managing the slope. There are merits to both approaches, do you hammer it down very low, then release? Or keep R just below 1 and move as fast as possible to get everything open?

The former involves a lot of pain in the short term, but possibly also allows a more sustainable return to proper normal quicker. The latter allows more freedoms sooner and gets the economy moving sooner, but probably entails a longer tail of infections that require some degree of social distancing, and staying in each phase longer.

The latter route eases pressure on the economy sooner, but there is also merit to having a nominal covid case load by the time flu season comes around and Test and Protect gets swamped trying to differentiate people's flu symptoms with Covid...

[Todd_is_God]

 

1 minute ago, renton said:

Of course it does, so long as R is below 1, eventually case loads drop. The differences in strategy come down to managing the slope. There are merits to both approaches, do you hammer it down very low, then release? Or keep R just below 1 and move as fast as possible to get everything open?

The former involves a lot of pain in the short term, but possibly also allows a more sustainable return to proper normal quicker. The latter allows more freedoms sooner and gets the economy moving sooner, but probably entails a longer tail of infections that require some degree of social distancing, and staying in each phase longer.

The latter route eases pressure on the economy sooner, but there is also merit to having a nominal covid case load by the time flu season comes around and Test and Protect gets swamped trying to differentiate people's flu symptoms with Covid...

This is a great political answer. Lot of 'detail' but avoids actually answering the question asked.

So i'll ask it again.

Why does Scotland need to be much more cautious in easing restrictions, despite evidence from across Europe showing that restrictions can be eased and cases continue to fall?

[dirty dingus]

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3089187/beijing-reports-new-local-coronavirus-cases-testing-xinfadi?utm_content=article&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1592283933

Beijing seeing an outbreak over the last few days.

[WhiteRoseKillie]

2 hours ago, Tynierose said:

She sticks with it for two weeks, slavers some pish about R numbers and the Science then backtracks when prolonged criticism takes place.

Maybe a wee idea to take cognisance of how our European neighbours have managed the situation, what's been successful and do it.

All we're doing at this point is wrecking children's education, fucking the economy and destroying the health service long term.

 

 

 

I'm not as clued up on the situation in Scotland as most on here, although it appears from down here to be more considered and health-based than Johnson's flailing around.

Your second sentence hits the nail on the head, though - obviously being tied to the rUK kind of retricts decision making, but surely it would make more sense to look at what's worked elsewhere, rather than try to mitigate the effects of the WM clusterfúck.