How to finish lockdown

[papasmurf]

 There's nothing obvious about a 'Covid death'.

There is, black lungs when the corpse is X-rayed. (Unless there is a lot of old fashioned coal mining going on no-one is aware of.)

[Scott777]

 when they excavated the Mary Rose, did they look to see if any of the skeletal remains of the sailors showed they had died of drowning ? No, it was bloody obvious.

That's a silly comparison.  How many people had gone down on the Mary Rose and survived?  There MUST be other factors in the so called 'Covid deaths', because most people pass it off easily.  There's nothing obvious about a 'Covid death'.



PS.  Shall we ask someone who got hit by a bus: how deadly is crossing the road?

[Hyperduck Quack Quack]

I see Boris Johnson is now suggesting that face masks would be useful when we come out of lockdown.  I'm sure that's true, but in that case why not  come straight out and say they'd actually be useful now?



I can just imagine the scenario in a confrontation at a supermarket . . .



"Why you wearin' a mask, pal?   We ain't even out of £^%&ing lockdown yet."

[papasmurf]

it's very deadly. ask the dead.

John you may be interested in this, it will be on Iplayer in the near future, why Prof. John Edmunds has not done a program on British television like this one makes me wonder. (Other than he and other experts have been expecting a pandemic for a long time and it would embarass the government.



https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/directtalk/20200430/2058634/">https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/d ... 0/2058634/">https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/directtalk/20200430/2058634/



A Once in a Century Pandemic: John Edmunds / Professor of Infectious Diseases

April 30, 2020



Professor John Edmunds has dedicated his career to studying the spread of infectious diseases, and is one of the scientists advising the UK government on how to control the pandemic of coronavirus.

[johnofgwent]

More importantly, how deadly it is

it's very deadly. ask the dead.



I know, I know, you mean how many people it kills, compared to crossing the street.



But this sort of comparison is meaningless. How many people died of smallpox ? How many people died of ebola ? Would you go wandering through a shanty village where the tin shacks are full of the dead and about to be dead during an ebola outbreak ? would you participate in the song and dance routine that is the funeral practice that ensures for every victim in a coffin there are a thousand more.



Look, I'll put this as simply as I can. You get flu, it strips the lining off your nose. It makes you feel like shit.



You get COVID19, it strips the lining off your lungs. They fill with pus and shit.



It is pointless banging on about how "few" died of Covid19 or how many were falsely certified to have died of Covid19 because the authorities allow you to certify a death "on the balance of clinical probabilities" without running a test. And F@@@ me isn't that a pedant hanging on to a straw in a bloody gale. when they excavated the Mary Rose, did they look to see if any of the skeletal remains of the sailors showed they had died of drowning ? No, it was bloody obvious. Nobody bothered to TEST dad to see if he died of prostate cancer, they bloody knew he had it and they bloody knew it had migrated to the lungs and was causing him to drown in the fluid it created in the alvaeoli just lik COVID19 does. Should they recertify his death in 2005 as caused by Covid19 because he showed the exact same external symptoms ?



I really wonder how many people repeating this sort of bullshit have ever reached the point where they have had to pick up a death certificate yet.

[Hyperduck Quack Quack]

Lockdown mustn't be lifted too early.  When it was introduced on 23rd March we were getting around 1000 new cases confirmed each day.  The numbers continued to rise until we were getting about 5000 a day.  That seems to have dropped a little but we're still getting 4 times as many new cases per day as when lockdown began.  



Even if we wait until new cases drop to 1000 a day, we're only back where we were when lockdown was introduced. Lifting lockdown at that stage could just lead to a repeat of what we're going through now.



As for people who still doubt the seriousness of the situation, over 26,000 people have now died from covid-19 in UK, and over 23,000 of those deaths have been in the last month alone.

[Scott777]

The way forward is to find out for real

More importantly, how deadly it is, which so far has absolutely not been determined, and the lack of investigation and cost/benefit analysis of lockdown has been appalling.

[papasmurf]

Oh balls. I am two years older than you, have a bad heart, diabetes and my knees are so bad that I spend more time falling arse over tea kettle than I do upright. Plus I have two sister in laws who are nurses. I love them both dearly but they ought to be arrested for spreading hypocondria.



But I have no intention of dying and nor should you. Now get outside and get some sun before you go down with the scurvy.

I don't have any intention of dying either, but there are still far to many lock-down breakers. (Foolishly The local plod just emailed me with a link to a survey about the lockdown. Asking my opionion is a risky business.)

Nothing wrong with my vitamin D intake either, the patio and barbecue I built last year are coming in very useful.

[Javert]

The way forward is to find out for real



1) can you spread it after you have recovered.



2) are there covid19 john and jane doe's (like typhoid mary)



and finally

3) who the hell has actually had it for real, using a test that works for real all the time, or at least only fails in the direction of saying you have not, when you have. A test that says you have had it when you have not, and on whose result you return to "normality", is a death warrant while any live carriers exist.

Well one interesting question I haven't heard covered in any of the stuff I've read or listened to.  Let's say the test is 95% accurate.  Can you improve the accuracy by testing each person twice, or is it more that it's the biology or genetics of that person that makes the test fail on them in particular?



I suspect it's a bit of both, but my first instinct when told that the test has a lot of false negatives was to say, why don't we just test each person twice up front to dramatically improve the accuracy?  I suspect it's not that simple as the people who do this for a living are probably knowing more about it than me and I'm sure they already thought of that.

[Borchester]

It would be for me if I catch it, given the list of factors on who has carked it so far, (age and pre-existing conditions,) I saw this morning.

Oh balls. I am two years older than you, have a bad heart, diabetes and my knees are so bad that I spend more time falling arse over tea kettle than I do upright. Plus I have two sister in laws who are nurses. I love them both dearly but they ought to be arrested for spreading hypocondria.



But I have no intention of dying and nor should you. Now get outside and get some sun before you go down with the scurvy.

[papasmurf]

 is a death warrant while any live carriers exist.

It would be for me if I catch it, given the list of factors on who has carked it so far, (age and pre-existing conditions,) I saw this morning.

[johnofgwent]

Perhaps the way forward is to ask people 'have you had it?'  If folk are confident that they have then they could go back to work. Perhaps that's what is actually happening today with the increase in numbers travelling etc. Do we really need mass testing to prove something that most individuals would already know. It would take some organising by all the organisations like schools etc but on an individual basis it is surely possible to organise around their own workforce etc.  Retailers etc could with a bit of effort apply distancing, the same with leisure organisations on the whole. It might involve applying longer hours for shifts in some cases but isn't the time approaching when responsibility returns to us rather than a nanny state trying to act for all?



Having said all that, there will be  malingerers, those with no symptoms who simply wouldn't know and the gung ho lot that don't care. If pockets of infection start up then those areas would need action.  I guess it is much easier organisationally for the government to treat us all with blanket rules but perhaps we should be allowed to grow up and be responsible for ourselves and each other.



Would it work?

The way forward is to find out for real



1) can you spread it after you have recovered.



2) are there covid19 john and jane doe's (like typhoid mary)



and finally

3) who the hell has actually had it for real, using a test that works for real all the time, or at least only fails in the direction of saying you have not, when you have. A test that says you have had it when you have not, and on whose result you return to "normality", is a death warrant while any live carriers exist.

[T00ts]

Also compulsory wearing of face masks in public places seems rational. Yes, we know masks by no means guarantee protection from covid-19 but it's generally agreed that infected people will spread the virus less if they wear a mask.  It's also agreed that a non-infected person is protected, but to a lesser degree, from incoming virus if they wear a mask.



Add together the protection if an uninfected person comes into contact with an infected person when they're both wearing masks. Apply that to everyone and surely that would accelerate the reduction in the number of new cases - and compared to developing vaccines or treatments, it's so cheap and low-tech. Research on vaccines and treatments is still essential though, obviously.  



Some say that wearing masks will give people a false impression of immunity.  I can't see that happening - after all I don't cycle more dangerously when I'm wearing a cycle helmet!

My main concern about wearing a mask is the danger of touching the face/eyes/nose etc if adjusting it during wear. It is also a potential risk when putting it on and off. Washing hands must be confirmed as really important before touching the mask.

[Hyperduck Quack Quack]

Also compulsory wearing of face masks in public places seems rational. Yes, we know masks by no means guarantee protection from covid-19 but it's generally agreed that infected people will spread the virus less if they wear a mask.  It's also agreed that a non-infected person is protected, but to a lesser degree, from incoming virus if they wear a mask.



Add together the protection if an uninfected person comes into contact with an infected person when they're both wearing masks. Apply that to everyone and surely that would accelerate the reduction in the number of new cases - and compared to developing vaccines or treatments, it's so cheap and low-tech. Research on vaccines and treatments is still essential though, obviously.  



Some say that wearing masks will give people a false impression of immunity.  I can't see that happening - after all I don't cycle more dangerously when I'm wearing a cycle helmet!

[Hyperduck Quack Quack]

As far as cornavirrus is concerned, most countries 'closed the stable door after the horse was gone'.  The UK was more behind the curve than most other European countries. Is it any coincidence that the UK and the USA, with their right-wing populist gung-ho administrations, are now paying the highest price for trying to tough it out in the early stages?  Boris Johnson's own experience has probably ensured that our government is now taking things very seriously, not sure the same can be said of the US administration.



Let's see if the UK can get it right as far as coming out the other side of the crisis goes.  That would mean continuing lockdown as long as it's needed - certainly until after the number of confirmed cases is significantly below the number at the time lockdown was introduced.



One idea might be to end lockdown for island communities when they have no more confirmed cases.  Places like the Western Isles or Orkney - although I believe those places do have a few cases at the moment.