Vancouver, such a lovely city. — Hanover

When I visited Vancouver in the 1980's with my family from Seattle, I noticed how far more cleaner the city was to US cities. And even Seattle was quite nice too.

Lockdown for thee but not for me.

London (CNN)A leading epidemiologist who advised the UK government on its coronavirus response resigned from his government post on Tuesday, after the Telegraph newspaper revealed he broke the lockdown rules he helped shape by allowing his reported lover to visit his home.

Professor Neil Ferguson, who is based at Imperial College in London, is one of the architects of the UK government's stay-at-home strategy and was a prominent member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) which has been spearheading the country's coronavirus response.

The Telegraph reported Tuesday that a woman whom it described as his married lover had visited Ferguson's home in London at least twice despite social distancing guidelines.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/05/uk/neil-ferguson-imperial-coronavirus-sage-gbr-intl/index.html

I live in the capital of British Columbia, Canada. The rules here are not as hard elsewhere in the country. — NOS4A2

I would hope so, look what they do to stormtroopers in Alberta...

Back to the subject, Rick Bright's whistleblower story tells, and this is all too usual now, just how inept and bad the Trump administration is.

And I feel it's simply getting worse as many in the administration start to think about the elections and life after the Trump administration. The cronies have to make their buck now!

When I visited Vancouver in the 1980's with my family from Seattle, I noticed how far more cleaner the city was to US cities. And even Seattle was quite nice too. — ssu

That whole area is nice. It's really rainy, but really green. I prefer the mountains of the northwest, until winter.

Anyway, at the barber now. Been a long time since a haircut, but they're opened back up finally. Gonna ask that they use dirty scissors to help build my immunity.

That whole area is nice. It's really rainy, but really green. I prefer the mountains of the northwest, until winter. — Hanover

The Puget Sound archipelago seems at first like in Finnish lake district, except it's the sea (I once saw a group Killer whales from a ferry, it was awesome!) and the pine trees are different, which instantly you can notice (I cannot describe the difference, but there is one).

Give me the ol' tractor-trodden cut. I want my hair to taste the dirt.

Straight from the horses' mouths. Suppression vs. Mitigation (Herd immunity). The two sides of the debate.

Ferguson: "If we can move case numbers down then we can look to the Korean model of how we sustain control of transmission long term [after lockdown]... It's not certain we can achieve it but... it's something we certainly need to try." [until we get a vaccine].

What I'm saying.

Would Trump not be so ignorant and totally inept, he would have, just to further his agenda of getting the economy back to normal and him getting re-elected, opted to talk in a smart way of the mitigation / herd immunity option now that the US health care system could be argued to be prepared (which it naturally isn't, but still). Many countries are likely looking at that now when easing restrictions from the lockdown and understanding that the economy cannot be in a quarantine for a year or so.

But the incoherent rambling moron doesn't do that and here is one great example of how clueless he actually is:


So try after that to talk about mitigation. But of course with Trump, first he lays rules and then he's enthuastic about breaking them, so... :brow:

Anyway, what is totally lacking is a genuine strategy, a long term plan and a road map how to tackle the pandemic when vaccines are way in the distant future. And that is truly a political decision which simply cannot be just be given to medical officials and epidemiologists to decide as it has quite a lot of moving parts than washing hands and social distancing. This is the problem that all countries are now facing, but unfortunately with the US, this planning is now totally absent with Trump.

There simply is no coherent strategy now, just states doing their own thing.

WHICH COUNTRIES DO BEST IN BEATING COVID-19?

Not a good reference actually.

First of all, it's far too early to say that. This hasn't ended yet...at all.

Secondly, when you really look at those countries it seems that what is only thing that has been looked at is the graph without any reference to the actual number. Is it REALLY so that Singapore has done worse than Iran and should take example from the Islamic Republic??? I don't think so, with 3/million deaths compared to 77/million, the obvious Trumpesque response of the mullahs plus totally unreliable stats I wouldn't say that Singapore has done it bad and Iran has made better response. What that site (perhaps unintentionally) paints as the picture is that the pandemic has been beaten. Several of those "covid-19 beating" countries are scaling back their quarantine measures, so that will have implications.

But needless to say what the best action for a government is: DON'T GIVE ACCURATE STATISTICS. Try hiding every fatality that you can as death due to other causes. Doesn't matter if historians later will argue that the deaths were multiple times higher.

In the UK, the hawks and the rightwing media are gunning for lifting the lockdown.



With over 600 deaths yesterday, the curve has not come down much. The five tests which the government has identified as necessary for the lockdown to be relaxed are nowhere near being met. With more and more calls for a relaxation and worries about the economy being aired. It's beginning to sound like some people are beginning to think that a few hundred or thousand extra deaths are worth the cost to reduce the economic damage. The government messages are vague and keep changing. Johnson is apparently going to announce the way forward on Sunday the day before the current end of the lockdown period. With an excuse that not all the information is in yet. There is speculation that there is no plan and the government is in chaos.

Banks, governments, corporations, investors, individuals - part of the problem is that everyone owes each other and uses debt to pay for debt and because money has been so cheap (credit is - or was - so massively available) it's gotten easier and easier to think this bonanza can just keep going. — StreetlightX

I understand that it's not really a bonanza, at least for the vast majority, but a Ponzi scheme. A scheme too big to collapse but doomed to a gradual decline. Despite Trump's best efforts, he wasn't able to deliver the promised 4-5% GDP growth, for instance.

Getting a better picture of all this lately, it's remarkable how governments can continue on this course with so little safeguards in such a fragile system. Corona has shown how abruptly it can collapse and at just about any time.

An interesting piece in The Lancet.

The Invisible Pandemic

Many countries (and members of their press media) have marvelled at Sweden's relaxed strategy in the face of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic: schools and most workplaces have remained open, and police officers were not checking one's errands in the street. Severe critics have described it as Sweden sacrificing its (elderly) citizens to quickly reach herd immunity.1 The death toll has surpassed our three closest neighbours, Denmark, Norway, and Finland, but the mortality remains lower than in the UK, Spain, and Belgium.2

It has become clear that a hard lockdown does not protect old and frail people living in care homes—a population the lockdown was designed to protect.3 Neither does it decrease mortality from COVID-19, which is evident when comparing the UK's experience with that of other European countries.
• View related content for this article

PCR testing and some straightforward assumptions indicate that, as of April 29, 2020, more than half a million people in Stockholm county, Sweden, which is about 20–25% of the population, have been infected (Hansson D, Swedish Public Health Agency, personal communication). 98–99% of these people are probably unaware or uncertain of having had the infection; they either had symptoms that were severe, but not severe enough for them to go to a hospital and get tested, or no symptoms at all. Serology testing is now supporting these assumptions.4

These facts have led me to the following conclusions. Everyone will be exposed to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, and most people will become infected. COVID-19 is spreading like wildfire in all countries, but we do not see it—it almost always spreads from younger people with no or weak symptoms to other people who will also have mild symptoms. This is the real pandemic, but it goes on beneath the surface, and is probably at its peak now in many European countries. There is very little we can do to prevent this spread: a lockdown might delay severe cases for a while, but once restrictions are eased, cases will reappear. I expect that when we count the number of deaths from COVID-19 in each country in 1 year from now, the figures will be similar, regardless of measures taken.

Measures to flatten the curve might have an effect, but a lockdown only pushes the severe cases into the future —it will not prevent them. Admittedly, countries have managed to slow down spread so as not to overburden health-care systems, and, yes, effective drugs that save lives might soon be developed, but this pandemic is swift, and those drugs have to be developed, tested, and marketed quickly. Much hope is put in vaccines, but they will take time, and with the unclear protective immunological response to infection, it is not certain that vaccines will be very effective.

In summary, COVID-19 is a disease that is highly infectious and spreads rapidly through society. It is often quite symptomless and might pass unnoticed, but it also causes severe disease, and even death, in a proportion of the population, and our most important task is not to stop spread, which is all but futile, but to concentrate on giving the unfortunate victims optimal care.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31035-7/fulltext#%20

Well we will know soon as Pakistan is going to unlock tomorrow and their death rate is still increasing. Also India will be an interesting example, the numbers are starting to surge there now. I heard that there were 75,000 cases confirmed as of today which is rising rapidly. India is densely populated and most are poor, so they won't be able to social distance effectively.

The author suspects that there is no stopping the virus, and any lockdown is simply kicking the can down the road so to speak. He speculated that in a year no matter what the measures taken the figures will be similar.

We may have multiple waves, but we'll have a vaccine hopefully within the year. Then the issue will be getting it to the most vulnerable people, somebody mentioned India.

Basically a repeat of side 1 of the debate I posted a video of just above your post. Not surprising seeing as it's the same person who wrote this paper.

Neither does it decrease mortality from COVID-19, which is evident when comparing the UK's experience with that of other European countries.

Piffle. He picks the country who tried herd immunity/mitigation first, just like Sweden, as a comparison. That failed attempt is why they locked down too late and are in a worse position than any other European country now.

Measures to flatten the curve might have an effect, but a lockdown only pushes the severe cases into the future —it will not prevent them

Because he has a crystal ball and knows we won't get a vaccine in time? Because he thinks China has hundreds of millions secretly infected? Because he's absolutely sure NZ will go from 0% cases to herd immunity levels despite everything they've done? Because SK never happened; we can't effectively track and trace etc?

Loads of presumptions and sweeping statements. Unless there really are huge numbers of asymptomatic cases (like nothing even imagined until recently) this is trash. Otherwise, it's just misleading.

Well we will know soon — Punshhh

We won't know for absolute sure until after a year or so or unless there's a vaccine, whichever comes first. And Gisecke laid out a simple way for us to know. We compare Swedish mortality rates when they reach herd immunity and no longer are getting infections to everywhere else. Waiting for those magic millions of cases in China to show up. The CCP may be talented but not enough to hide that many COVID victims.

In a small NYC sample, about 25% had antibodies, which is encouraging.

"Measures to flatten the curve might have an effect, but a lockdown only pushes the severe cases into the future —it will not prevent them..."

Because he has a crystal ball and knows we won't get a vaccine in time? — Baden

It seems like one of the basic ideas of the lockdown program is that it will both flatten the curve, and push severe cases into the not distant future. Pushing some cases into the future allows the always limited health care system to handle the flattened curve now. As the resources of the health care system are expanded, more future cases -- severe and not so bad -- can be managed. There's no guarantee that this will work indefinitely, but it seems to be working in many states. Yes, the number of cases is growing; yes the number of hospitalizations is growing; yes the number of cases in ICU is growing. It's all growing, but it remains manageable within the constraints of always-limited resources. So far.

Lockdown logic didn't work so well in New York City, where there are about 175,000 cases, about 44,000 hospitalized, 14,000 confirmed Covid-19 deaths, and an additional 5,400 deaths presumed to be from Covid-19. (I rounded off the numbers) Moreover, a very high proportion of the cases in the rest of the country appear to have resulted from the New York City ground zero (using genetic similarities in the virus found elsewhere). A few people from Indiana went to New York City and picked up the virus and brought it back to Indianapolis--early on.

NYC instituted its lockdown on March 20--waaaay too late. It isn't that they didn't care. I suspect that the virus was present in NYC--and lots of other places--before March and February. Probably it arrived in January, or maybe even December. While it is highly contagious, we know that few people promptly drop dead from Covid 19--or even get very sick. That feature allows the virus to spread, undetected.

By the time the cases started showing up, the virus had already built up a good sized base of cases.

My personal guess (based on various casting of auspices like analyzing the guts of freshly slaughtered lambs), looking into my crystal balls (I use 105, averaging the results) and utilizing the Cover-19 Tarot deck, is that the virus won't be going away anytime soon, that the people will suffer for quite time from infections and a very bad economic situation, and that Donald Trump will be dumped in November. I want Donald to take many more risks with infection -- whatever he can manage, like licking the White House door knobs, visiting Covid-19 ICU wards and inhaling deeply every time one of the poor folk coughs, and whatever else he can do.

Yes, it is. In fact, the figure was specifically mentioned in the second vid and as Ferguson mentioned fits with his calculations of a 0.66% mortality rate for NYC. This was based on 11,000 deaths in NYC at the time of the study. It's more now. And the mortality rate varies depending on the age of the population. His estimate for the UK as a whole, for example, is 0.8-9%. Anyhow, Gisecke reckons there's only a 0.1% mortality rate and bases his argument on that. If that were the case though then 120% of NY State must be infected already (and that's with no further deaths)! Go figure. (26,000/0.001 = 26,000,000).

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Maybe the subway causes people to take on a larger viral load, so they get sicker before their immune systems kick in? The big question continues to be: why is Germany's mortality rate so low?

Maybe the subway causes people to take on a larger viral load, so they get sicker before their immune systems kick in? The big question continues to be: why is Germany's mortality rate so low? — frank

The viral load question is interesting. I reckon that's why Boris got it so bad, running around rubbing his hands on every COVID patient he could get a hold of. And Germany, huge. Really don't know. Haven't had time to look into it.

The fact that Ferguson's data led the UK to take actions that made it hard for the dude to get jiggy with it, if anything, makes him more credible. Working against his own interests. :lol:

New Banksy artwork:

Anyway, what is totally lacking is a genuine strategy, a long term plan and a road map how to tackle the pandemic when vaccines are way in the distant future. And that is truly a political decision which simply cannot be just be given to medical officials and epidemiologists to decide as it has quite a lot of moving parts than washing hands and social distancing. This is the problem that all countries are now facing, but unfortunately with the US, this planning is now totally absent with Trump.

There simply is no coherent strategy now, just states doing their own thing. — ssu

That's not fair. Trump has a clear plan.

Phase 1: Send people back to work
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Profit!!!

Basically a repeat of side 1 of the debate I posted a video of just above your post. Not surprising seeing as it's the same person who wrote this paper.

Yeah I didn’t see that. You outlined the opposing ideas accurately, I think, and it’s a very interesting dichotomy. It’s just a bloody shame the stakes are so high.

I just think the unintended consequences could be far greater with the lockdown approach, for instance they are predicting an extra 1.5 million TB deaths due to lockdown (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-lockdown-could-lead-nearly-15-million-extra-tb-deaths/), and famines of “ biblical proportions.