Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[renton]

19 minutes ago, Ron Aldo said:

I don't disagree with that approach in principle but surely the SG have to take more into account than just the daily death/infection figures?

If their plan is to suppress figures to almost 0 then fair enough but that shouldn't be at the expense of education/the economy as we're then very much into the territory of the cure being worse than the disease.

Presumably eduction would be better off, the closer to normality it can be before August 11th, and presumably the economy will have a more robust recovery the fewer social restrictions there is, and the higher consumer confidence is.

[Todd_is_God]

8 minutes ago, Paco said:

Think it means twenty active cases in total, rather than being uncovered every day.

 

Ah ok.

Personally I think that is an incredibly low bar to be setting, but that's just me.

Agree also with your other points.

[renton]

1 minute ago, Michael W said:

Coronavirus came to UK at least 1300 times

The above made the news last week but didn't gain much traction due to some other event (probably Johnson loosening restrictions in haste). A complete and utter failure, showing only too well the consequences of not closing the border and quarantining arrivals. 

Then there's the care holes fiasco, which was about the most fucking obvious thing in the world - old and sick people will die if exposed to the virus yet it was allowed to happen anyway. 

It is of course too late to undo these decisions and we have to live with them, but they also inform the way that we now respond to getting ourselves out the lockdown. Aiming for suppression now seems foolish and undeliverable. You need to take that approach from the start. 

All approaches are about suppression - that's the natural outcome of maintaining an R value below 1. Even England's. It's managing the slope of downwards infections that is the current debate.  

Try and push R very low under severe restrictions now, to open up more normally later, or try and manage the slope at or near 1 with a longer tail on infections, but have more open sooner under some restrictions?

[Todd_is_God]

6 minutes ago, Michael W said:

Then there's the care holes fiasco

Bit harsh on @Boo Khaki

[Boo Khaki]

[Michael W]

1 minute ago, Todd_is_God said:

Bit harsh on @Boo Khaki

FFS 

Well there's no point in correcting it now. 

Edited June 17, 2020 by Michael W

[Todd_is_God]

8 minutes ago, renton said:

All approaches are about suppression - that's the natural outcome of maintaining an R value below 1. Even England's. It's managing the slope of downwards infections that is the current debate.  

Try and push R very low under severe restrictions now, to open up more normally later, or try and manage the slope at or near 1 with a longer tail on infections, but have more open sooner under some restrictions?

Is there any evidence the restrictions are driving R down, though, versus just maintaining it?

If it was as effective as you suggest, based on how restrictive ours are, we should be seeing new cases (and R) continue to fall at a greater rate than they are. But they don't appear to be.

Based on the data we have for Scotland to date, it looks like we are seeing the same tail as other European nations who have removed a lot of restrictions.

 

 

Edited June 17, 2020 by Todd_is_God

[renton]

23 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

Is there any evidence the restrictions are driving R down, though, versus just maintaining it?

If it was as effective as you suggest, based on how restrictive ours are, we should be seeing new cases (and R) continue to fall at a greater rate than they are. But they don't appear to be.

Based on the data we have for Scotland to date, it looks like we are seeing the same tail as other European nations who have removed a lot of restrictions.

 

 

R must drop as caseload drops, as more people recover.

Bear in mind that comparisons internationally will be different based on where on the curve they locked down, how severe their lockdown was (ours never really was), how robust their testing regimes are, how their behavioural and infrastructure and connectivity varies from ours.

I think full suppression is to absolute 0 is obviously not going to happen, however, you could argue that a more complete suppression than that currently underway down south has merit. Trying harder to get the virus suppressed now means retail and hospitality operating on more normal rules sooner after they reopen, which is surely a more robust and sustainable way of keeping them open. It means less restrictions on capacity at the football, less closed door games. Importantly, the lower the Covid case load after the Summer, the more margin you have going into Flu season, so that you don't risk a second wave starting to get loose when it is camouflaged by a high degree of over lapping symptoms.

Edited June 17, 2020 by renton

[expatowner]

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.

I have friends living in various parts of China and they all say places have been in lockdown and the COVID death numbers are being suppressed. NEVER trust the Chinese.

[Todd_is_God]

10 minutes ago, renton said:

R must drop as caseload drops, as more people recover.

Bear in mind that comparisons internationally will be different based on where on the curve they locked down, how severe their lockdown was (ours never really was), how robust their testing regimes are, how their behavioural and infrastructure and connectivity varies from ours.

I think full suppression is to absolute 0 is obviously not going to happen, however, you could argue that a more complete suppression than that currently underway down south has merit. Trying harder to get the virus suppressed now means retail and hospitality operating on more normal rules sooner after they reopen, which is surely a more robust and sustainable way of keeping them open. It means less restrictions on capacity at the football, less closed door games. Importantly, the lower the Covid case load after the Summer, the more margin you have going into Flu season, so that you don't risk a second wave starting to get loose when it is camouflaged by a high degree of over lapping symptoms.

A lot of words to say "no"

[vikingTON]

10 minutes ago, renton said:

I think full suppression is to absolute 0 is obviously not going to happen, however, you could argue that a more complete suppression than that currently underway down south has merit. Trying harder to get the virus suppressed now means retail and hospitality operating on more normal rules sooner after they reopen, which is surely a more robust and sustainable way of keeping them open. It means less restrictions on capacity at the football, less closed door games. 

You don't seriously expect any of that to happen, do you? There's absolutely nothing to suggest that the SG is going to suddenly steam ahead at a faster rate than the rest of the UK based on keeping more restrictions now. Rather than jam tomorrow it'll be more shite tomorrow, for longer because political caution has been its watchword throughout.

[Guest JTS98]

1 hour ago, Tynierose said:

More utter drivel. 

While I don't agree that there's 'no point' in suppressing the virus in Scotland, I think this response was a bit OTT since there is a kernel of a point in the post you quoted.

Scotland is different to other countries in Europe that people want to compare us to in that it cannot close its borders to its neighbour. We've seen the virus reappear in New Zealand due to people coming into the country, and Scotland has less control over its borders than New Zealand.

It's fair to point out that even if Scotland stamps out the virus, England could quite easily send it back.

[welshbairn]

3 hours ago, Jacksgranda said:

Your treatment is totally different from mine! Good that you're coming near the end of your treatment, it will be December before mine finishes. (Well, the first part of it, at least.)

Not really sure what happens next, 6 monthly hormone blocking injections and regular blood tests anyway. I guess it will depend on the PSA count.

[renton]

46 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

A lot of words to say "no"

We'll see how the R value changes as we monitor it over the next few weeks. See if it keeps going down or starts to hover.

[vikingTON]

1 hour ago, renton said:

Presumably eduction would be better off, the closer to normality it can be before August 11th, and presumably the economy will have a more robust recovery the fewer social restrictions there is, and the higher consumer confidence is.

Except that we could have 95% of 'normality' back right now by just binning social distancing as an obligation (particularly given that public transport already gets a free pass on that anyway), by continuing to encourage home working wherever possible and by making face masks obligatory in public spaces. There's no evidence that these measures would lead to an increase in cases, in the same way that there's no evidence that continuing to trash the economy and the public's general wellbeing for an indefinite period of time is ever going to suppress the virus. 

[BFTD]

4 hours ago, Jacksgranda said:

I think most banks keep those hours, maybe close for an hour for lunch.

ETA: A lot of Post Offices act as sub bank branches nowadays, you can lodge cash and cheques to your account. The cheques take a bit longer to clear is the only deawback. I use our local post office all the time for lodging cheques. (Not that there have been many of them lately.)

Further ETA: Post Offices have already been mentioned...

I've got an elderly uncle who lives in one of the Ayrshire mining towns; all of the banks have gradually closed branches, citing that locals would be able to use the Post Office for basic transactions on their existing accounts. Only they're now closing the Post Offices too.

Civilisation gradually being rolled up in Ayrshire before they finished rolling it out, it seems.

[WhiteRoseKillie]

3 minutes ago, BigFatTabbyDave said:

I've got an elderly uncle who lives in one of the Ayrshire mining towns; all of the banks have gradually closed branches, citing that locals would be able to use the Post Office for basic transactions on their existing accounts. Only they're now closing the Post Offices too.

Civilisation gradually being rolled up in Ayrshire before they finished rolling it out, it seems.

Cumnock and Auchinleck never really got the hang of steam power, let alone electricity. tbf. At least now HMS Gannet's only flying when necessary the locals aren't throwing all their bread away as food for the helicopters...

[Todd_is_God]

On the schools being normal point, NS appears to be falling in to the trap of comparing what other places are doing right now, with what we are planning to do in 8 weeks time.

I don't think anyone is particularly bothered about the schools remaining closed now until after summer.

It's more a question of why, after 7 weeks of falling cases / deaths etc, we are effectively ruling out normal schooling after what will hopefully be 15 weeks of falling numbers, which are already low half way through.

Not returning to full time schooling until there are no new cases of Covid-19 seems incredibly unrealistic, but that appears to be the direction.

Given the knock on effect on people's ability to work if they also have to home school children, coupled with the expected opening up of unrestricted tourism from what is currently the worst affected country in Europe in just 4 weeks time, it just doesn't make too much sense to me.

 

Edited June 17, 2020 by Todd_is_God

[Thereisalight..]

3 hours ago, Bairnardo said:

Agree with all of this, but would add that IF the virus takes off again, given that it would be doing so in a much more aware and diligent population (yes I do think so, with some exceptions obviously, this is clearly no longer going to be treated like just some "ach it wont come here mind SARS" type thing ) and given the tracing, extra beds, extra ventilators, CPAP machines, and the new steroid treatment, does a "second wave" ever look anything like the first?

We have no fucking excuse not to be able to ride out any uptick in infections now alongside a fully functioning society.

If we were to have a “second wave” there should be no reason why we’d have to have a lockdown like we had in March. We’ve got the hospital at the SEC sitting there and it’s never saw a patient. 

[renton]

NRS numbers are out, total deaths dropped by 19 from 89 to 70.  Definitely shallowed out a bit into the tail. Looks like being week 30 before total deaths is 10/ week