Professor Gerd Gigerenzer…has estimated…
That that quote does not support the statement that ‘far more additional people died on the roads in the U.S. post-9/11, due to not flying, than in the disaster itself’, (he calculated 1,595 extra deaths, about half of the direct deaths).
In the context of 40,000 road deaths, an increase by 1,595 is more plausible than ‘far more than 3,000’, although I hazard a guess that the error bars on that one are quite large.
Factually speaking, and only for myself, I have yet to meet anybody who has met anybody who has had Coronavirus and I’m acting reasonably to keep it that way.
Same here, and I would add that we don’t need “help” or advice from government to keep it that way.
I think death rates of 0.5% to 1% are way too high
I am well aware of the “alternative camp” which holds this POV 
but I don’t believe it. These numbers come from the current scientific consensus in the UK, with many thousands of antibody tests, plus some vast number of direct virus tests (including some random ones) having been done.
The “alternative POV” hangs its “0.1% mortality coat” on the proposition that far more of the population (than is supported by antibody tests done to date, showing max of 20% and even that’s in the populations which are (a) the most dense and (b) the youngest e.g. large cities in the 1st World) is infected.
They may turn out to be right eventually but I see no current evidence for it. If say 80% of the population already had it, that would be blindingly obvious in any antibody study. The virus would also be dying out rapidly with that much herd immunity, which it clearly isn’t; we are seeing a halving every few weeks.
FWIW I was chatting to some people on a walk today and it seems clear that there is quite a lot of “cross-household socialising” going on. They probably keep the 2m inside the houses which is basically totally pointless. Together with lots of people in their 20s visibly hanging out in groups, passing it to each other (probably asymptomatically) but giving it to their parents, it’s no wonder the thing is hanging around for a lot longer than the lockdown should have achieved.
I still don’t personally know anybody who has got it. I have heard rumours that X or Y “had it”, where X or Y are people who I have at some point met, but no evidence of a CV19 test. But then where I live (countryside) this is perhaps to be expected, with such miniscule numbers of infections being found here today (post above).
Same here, and I would add that we don’t need “help” or advice from government to keep it that way.
That may be true for Ayreshire, but locally we would have had tens of thousands of elderly caravan and second-home owners come in from Birmingham and Wolverhampton had they not been stopped from doing so. As they are COVID hotspots and our local hospital is one of the smallest in Britain, I’m very glad that they were sent back.
I know a couple of people socially who have been infected. Some friends of my mother (one is a lawyer who went on a business trip to London in March and took a number of underground and train journeys. His wife then became ill. They are in their mid 60s and managed to skip hospital but are still recovering, two months down the line.
Then a few colleagues and patients. One of my colleagues lost an uncle who was a bus driver in London.
As a p.s. there was serious talk of restarting caravan burning in North Wales so arguably we don’t need the government to sort these things out for us, as we are capable of managing the risks for ourselves in the traditional manner. On balance I think it was altogether better that the police had a quiet word with people and sent them back.
Peter wrote:
that would be blindingly obvious in any antibody study.
There are two different immune system mechanisms, involving antibodies and T-cells. There is some indication that the antibody mechanism isn’t activated in some people with Covid-19 while the T-cell mechanism always is. (Source for the latter claim: a paper to appear in “Cell”. I read a preprint but lost the link — sorry.) It is much more complicated to detect specific T-cells than specific antibodies.
Peter wrote:
They may turn out to be right eventually but I see no current evidence for it. If say 80% of the population already had it, that would be blindingly obvious in any antibody study. The virus would also be dying out rapidly with that much herd immunity, which it clearly isn’t; we are seeing a halving every few weeks.
Daily deaths in England appear to be halving in a little over a week based on the NHS numbers based on day of death. Friday (more accurate than yesterday as most deaths seem to take two days to be reported) saw fewer than 100. Obviously still terrible for those concerned but I would suggest not enough to continue shutting down a country of 66mn people.
Today’s Telegraph cartoon is rather apposite:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/telegraph-cartoons-may-2020/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_em
Out of interest if the holiday and tourist industry dies off in your area will it have much of an impact on the local economy?
It would be really interesting to know with more detail how the transfer goes, from what I pick up, it seems to be internal spaces with higher numbers of people are the biggest problem. Being outside seems to be very low risk.
I would suggest not enough to continue shutting down a country of 66mn people.
You may be right at this point, but I would suggest that a country of 66M people has never been shut down, or anywhere near it. Most of the UK continued to work – which is why the lockdown did so little. A complete lockdown would have totally eliminated the virus in a few weeks.
Out of interest if the holiday and tourist industry dies off in your area will it have much of an impact on the local economy?
Yes, huge. As an aside I think in the longer term we might benefit from it as we get far more UK tourists than overseas tourists so when local tourism increases (e.g. after the BREXIT vote) we started to do really well. Tourism changed from people from the midlands with a caravan by the beach, to people staying in holiday cottages and outdoor activities such as mountain biking and hiking.
You might not think it from my posts, but I am very sympathetic to the economic arguments. My partner is a musician and used to have something of an inferiority complex about the contrast between saving lives (TIC) and nailing a solo. I used to point out that hospitals were full of sick people wishing they could go to a good concert, but that audiences were hardly full of people who wished they could be sick in hospital. Therefore her job was ultimately more important than mine. I truly believe this.
I also am accustomed to seeing elderly (and sometimes younger) people die and have more acceptance than many that sometimes people have lived their time. I have little truck with the ‘save lives at any cost’ argument’. The concerns about poverty increasing suicide rates and causing early deaths are well founded, and I am very bothered about children’s mental health and development as they are off from school. My son is an only child (8) and has not played with other children for months.
That said, the death toll that we need to be considering is not the death toll we are seeing now, but the toll of death and long-term ill-health that we would be seeing should we do nothing. To my mind it’s still surprising that this far into the crisis, it remains difficult to know what this would be.
