So many "experts"...

[Borg Refinery]

Boris Johnson's lockdown easing measures 'dangerous' and more epidemics inevitable, Independent Sage warns



https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-coronavirus-lockdown-covid-19-nhs-sage-independent-david-king-a9510106.html">https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/p ... 10106.html">https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-coronavirus-lockdown-covid-19-nhs-sage-independent-david-king-a9510106.html



If we are asked to trust experts by the guys in govt who said don't trust experts, then presumably we should trust this indy sage group announcement, and ignore the loud mouthed blue ignoramuses who dribble when they talk..

[Javert]

In the most recent "more or less" (the same show we discussed previously), there was a mathematician on who explained how I was wrong when I posted here a couple of weeks back that the timing of the reduction in the deaths in hospital, seemed to indicate that the lockdown was already being effective a week before it was made a fully legal lockdown.



What he explained is that if you actually look into all the data and the distriibutions (which is available apparently), you have to take into account the type of average you are using when you talk about the spread of deaths.



The average (mean) period between someone getting Covid-19 is about 21 days.



BUT - the distribution is not a normal distribution it is skewed - there are a lot more people who died in less than that amount of time, and the mean is being skewed by a small number of people who were in ICU for many weeks.



The "mode" which is the most common number of days before death is much shorter.



What this basically means is that contrary to what I posted before, it's completely plausible that the official legal lockdown was the cause of the peak deaths (when measured by the date of death rather than the date of registration of death) being around April 8th.



He used another example to illustrate how this works in reverse - the average (mean) age of death in the UK is about 79, but most people can expect to live into their 80s.  That sounds counterintuitive, but it's because almost nobody lives above 105 or so, whereas there are some people who die as children or at a young age - these outliers skew the overall mean figure to a lower number, whereas in fact, most people could expect to live to about 81 or so.

[Barry]

Another expert. This time a statistician.

[Borchester]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8302055/Bail-billions-anaesthetise-reality-economy-tatters.html">https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... tters.html">https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8302055/Bail-billions-anaesthetise-reality-economy-tatters.html



And...another "expert"

To be fair, he does have a point..



"That's why he will advise those whom the statistics show to be most vulnerable to Covid-19 — the over65s, the obese, or people with underlying health conditions — to assume responsibility for their own health by 'sheltering' themselves if they wish, including those living in multi-generational homes. "



I tick all the above boxes and reckon that Doc Lee might have a point. I don't know if I have this bug or something less fashionable, but I reckon the best idea is to quarantine me and all the other oldies on allotments or in pubs where we can spray snot over each other and wait for this Coronavirus (why did they name it after a soft drink?) to die out. The only cure for this current outbreak of the Chinese flu is to make the cotton tops 20 years younger and that ain't going to happen.



I got on the bus yesterday and there was an announcement asking if my journey was really necessary and someone screamed that of course it was fucking necessary or did the dozy bastard think that my parsnips were going to plant themselves and then I realised that it was me. But I don't suppose that Transport For London took any notice.

[DeppityDawg]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8302055/Bail-billions-anaesthetise-reality-economy-tatters.html">https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... tters.html">https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8302055/Bail-billions-anaesthetise-reality-economy-tatters.html



And...another "expert"

[papasmurf]

That is another unknown that you can throw into the soup of half truths and half facts.

It isn't unknown, there has been a fair amount about it on news bulletins today. It is far more than those who have carked it.

[Barry]

It isn't the people who are dying, that are the problem, (from the government and DWP point of view.) It is the those who recover who are left with long term serious illness problems and unable to work.

That is another unknown that you can throw into the soup of half truths and half facts.

[papasmurf]

..Should we just let people die instead or what?

It isn't the people who are dying, that are the problem, (from the government and DWP point of view.) It is the those who recover who are left with long term serious illness problems and unable to work.

[Borg Refinery]

Correct on all counts, duck.



They should be getting on with it, and preparing the massive amounts of screening stations, test kits, biocontainment centres, beds, ventilators etc that we'll need for the second wave already; south korea instituted this in 2003 after they learnt their lesson from the SARS outbreak. They came prep'd.



It's an even more monumental task than what you've said so far.



..Should we just let people die instead or what?



What's your solution?

[Hyperduck Quack Quack]

CCTV.

Identifying and tracing each passenger on a train or standing on a crowded platform would be a major investigation. Tracing cars using a motorway services might be easier but still a huge task - and you'd need to do that sort of thing for thousands of people per day for each of 4000+ confirmed cases.

[papasmurf]

Except the South Korean solution would only have had any chance of working when there was just a small number of cases here. How would you set about contact-tracing everyone who'd been on a particular Central Line underground train during the evening rush-hour or everyone who'd been at Heston Services on the M4 between 12.30pm and 1.30pm on Tuesday the previous week?

CCTV.

[Hyperduck Quack Quack]

Then why is Sweden doing better than us? It's not that.



The problem is that the govt thinks lockdown and a few nightingales will cure C19, and they are wrong.



Only a south korean solution would imho fix yhings at any pace.

Except the South Korean solution would only have had any chance of working when there was just a small number of cases here. How would you set about contact-tracing everyone who'd been on a particular Central Line underground train during the evening rush-hour or everyone who'd been at Heston Services on the M4 between 12.30pm and 1.30pm on Tuesday the previous week?



And I don't know if you've been following the statistics but Sweden's covid-19 death rate, while lower than ours, is not hugely lower - 314 deaths per million of population compared to 451 for the UK, 398 for France etc.  Where a country is in the spread of the pandemic makes a difference to this figure.  The situation is deteriorating rapidly in Russia with big numbers of new daily cases and almost as many total confirmed as UK.  Yet their deaths per million of population are only 12.  Russia's population a bit more than twice ours, so even allowing for that, the death rate is low but sadly that's only because most of the deaths are yet to happen.

[DeppityDawg]

I expected your usual brand of angry twaddle and so I wasn't disappointed.



The fact that lockdown hasn't obliterated coronavirus doesn't mean it hasn't worked. We'd be in a much worse situation now if it hadn't been introduced at all and we'd be in a better situation now if it had been introduced earlier and / or it had been stricter.  You only need to look at the graphs for other countries to see this.

Angry? At you, Quack Quack? Don't make me laugh. You're just irritating, like listening to the same track on a CD over, and over, and over again. In the end, the words just keep repeating ad infinitum, rather like reading one of your posts. You know what its going to say, but some kind of inexplicable wish to self harm makes me do it anyway



As for "other countries", the study was based on other countries, not just the UK. So tell them they didn't look at "other countries graphs"?

The success of these measures, along with other social distancing policies across 30 European countries, were studied by the UAE scientists, who wanted to see which were the most effective at controlling the disease.

Otherwise, if you can provide some actual, hard data to support the statement that "We'd be in a much worse situation now if [lockdown] hadn't been introduced", then go ahead and post it. Careful with "hard data" though. All these studies by "experts" (including this one), now carry a caution not to take them too seriously as, like the rest of us, they don't really know for sure. They are just pinning the tail on the donkey, probably to be seen to doing something vaguely useful, before the full financial impact of the governments policies hit and everyone in the public sector will be rushing around trying to prove how "indespensible" they were during the crises.



Meanwhile, it will be the bin men, power and sewerage workers, supply chain and a list of other essential services too long to write, without which society can't function who will find themselves looking at unemployment, and the home they've worked their whole lives to own being repossessed. Somehow, I doubt Dr Strangelove and the rest of the public purse paid circus will find themselves in this position.

[Borg Refinery]

The fact that lockdown hasn't obliterated coronavirus doesn't mean it hasn't worked....We'd be in a much worse situation now if it hadn't been introduced at all

Then why is Sweden doing better than us? It's not that.



The problem is that the govt thinks lockdown and a few nightingales will cure C19, and they are wrong.



Only a south korean solution would imho fix yhings at any pace.

[Hyperduck Quack Quack]

I expected your usual brand of angry twaddle and so I wasn't disappointed.



The fact that lockdown hasn't obliterated coronavirus doesn't mean it hasn't worked. We'd be in a much worse situation now if it hadn't been introduced at all and we'd be in a better situation now if it had been introduced earlier and / or it had been stricter.  You only need to look at the graphs for other countries to see this.