That would only work if the whole world subscribed to it, or Norway would permanently isolate itself. I suspect that will not be sustainable in the long run.
Hence, bananas 
But then again, I don’t know. Japan seems to be doing just fine, and several vaccines are coming along, and all that is needed is to wash your hands and don’t kiss strangers. It should be manageable. If it doesn’t work, then it ends up in plan B.
hmng wrote:
If from the beginning, those numbers had been presented in three columns as:
a) people who died with respiratory illness,
Looks like I’m wrong about that number being available for reporting, at least in the UK:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/The-evidence-on-Covid-19-is-not-as-clear-as-we-think
“One pretty clear indicator is death. If a new infection is causing many extra people to die (as opposed to an infection present in people who would have died anyway) then it will cause an increase in the overall death rate. But we have yet to see any statistical evidence for excess deaths, in any part of the world.
(…)
But there’s another, potentially even more serious problem: the way that deaths are recorded. If someone dies of a respiratory infection in the UK, the specific cause of the infection is not usually recorded, unless the illness is a rare ‘notifiable disease’. So the vast majority of respiratory deaths in the UK are recorded as bronchopneumonia, pneumonia, old age or a similar designation. We don’t really test for flu, or other seasonal infections. If the patient has, say, cancer, motor neurone disease or another serious disease, this will be recorded as the cause of death, even if the final illness was a respiratory infection. This means UK certifications normally under-record deaths due to respiratory infections.
Now look at what has happened since the emergence of Covid-19. The list of notifiable diseases has been updated. This list — as well as containing smallpox (which has been extinct for many years) and conditions such as anthrax, brucellosis, plague and rabies (which most UK doctors will never see in their entire careers) — has now been amended to include Covid-19. But not flu. That means every positive test for Covid-19 must be notified, in a way that it just would not be for flu or most other infections.
(…)
The moral debate is not lives vs money. It is lives vs lives. It will take months, perhaps years, if ever, before we can assess the wider implications of what we are doing. The damage to children’s education, the excess suicides, the increase in mental health problems, the taking away of resources from other health problems that we were dealing with effectively. Those who need medical help now but won’t seek it, or might not be offered it. And what about the effects on food production and global commerce, that will have unquantifiable consequences for people of all ages, perhaps especially in developing economies?
(…)
John Lee is a recently retired professor of pathology and a former NHS consultant pathologist."
@MedEwok I have not been talking about the measures themselves, it naturally follows that IF the new virus is not a bigger threat than all other similar virus (note the IF) then all these measures are just pointless.
And since the measures are unprecedented and the consequences disastrous, it is not unreasonable to ask for actual evidence. In my professional environment I often hear that “In God we trust, all others must bring data”
I’m not a Doctor, nor a Statistician, nor one of those fancy ‘Data Scientists’ and I surely don’t play one on internet forums. I’m nearly looking at available, public numbers, in the media and asking where is the evidence.
These are questions worth asking but few people can answer them because the data is not out there, or not out in a clear form.
The economic damage is huge, for sure. But a modern civilised country (most of Europe, perhaps) cannot just let say 10M get infected and see 1% or so of them (100k) die. There would be an uproar – as well as probably riots and a collapse of law and order. And it would be a lot more than 1% if no medical care was available, which would be the case if you got 10M infected all within a month or two.
But we have yet to see any statistical evidence for excess deaths, in any part of the world.
You probably won’t because e.g. in the UK 600k people die annually anyway, most of them are (obviously) old, and until some epidemic kills say 100k who would not have died anyway during that year it won’t show up in the numbers. Especially if the epidemic kills mostly “old” people, like this one does.
I don’t understand how some can still pretend/believe that COVID-19 is just another flu
If the infections get out of control, I fear Peter is right about the riots
Death is an emotional topic.
This is from 2017: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jan/11/nhs-crisis-20-hospitals-declare-black-alert-as-patient-safety-no-longer-assured
I am relatively certain that we could have found people who can present this in a slightly less neutral tone under tears.
I’m collecting anecdotal data as best I can from my friends and family in the UK, mainly the south east. Based on that I would say that at least 50% and probably closer to 100% are exposed, i.e. either they have been symptomatic or they are in close contact with someone who has. Would be interesting to try and get comparable data for other areas. The UK may be ahead of (or behind?) the curve because they were so slow to do lockdown. But most people seem to be talking about several weeks ago.
The problem is with trying to use a fraction to forecast the future, when you know neither the denominator nor the numerator. There are only three numbers that are known with even the slightest (order of magnitude) certainty: the number of deaths, the number of hospitalizations, and the population. Everything else is guesswork, supported by whatever statistics favour your case.
ICUs and hospital beds run close to capacity much of the time – because otherwise the Daily Fail would be saying what a terrible scandal it is to have all these expensive empty beds. So it takes very little for them to be “overwhelmed”.
Based on the early data, when it looked like there were very few infections and 10% of them were very nasty, it made sense to do the lockdown etc. But as the data becomes clearer it all looks like a massive over-reaction which needs to get fixed fairly rapidly before the consequential damage goes too far.
Hi John for comparative data,
I live in the south east as do much of my family and friends.
My work colleagues are scatteted across the south east and together with me, daily rotate around about 30 to 40 different buildings in London.
Across this spectrum we collectively are aware of 1 person who was highly suspected ( no test result information that we were made aware of) to have symptoms.
He was a permanent worker in another discipline at one building.
I don’t want to make reference against your input but it did kinda read like the south east is a no-go area.
All of that said, I prefer to be off work, out of London and avoiding contact where possible for the time being, despite being in a financial loophole.
I also don’t know of anyone directly. Spoke to the postman this afternoon and no known cases at the post office (~200 people) although many tens of them are off work for self isolation reasons (somebody in the family with a cough, or just feel like a holiday).
The poor man has not been issued any protective equipment. The Post Office will not even pay for gloves. He has to buy his own. I gave him a load… There are a lot of really sh1tty companies around.
At work we have two non overlapping shifts. I am there on my own in the afternoons.
However London is “south east” and London is in a very bad state.
From the above it sounds like both Italy and Spain are not ventilating anyone over 65. If that’s true, how can that be justifed in modern society? Can’t they take one look at the person’s health status? The UK has stated they would never do triage based purely on age.
In UK, lot of medic preparation is converted conference buildings near airports (Excel centre near City airport and Brize linked by A400Ms, then now Birmingham’s Excel Centre near airport), not sure how this goes with airports being closed?
In Paris, health officials are pushing to link their buildings by trains (TGV) or air (CN-235/A400M) to military field and countryside hospitals, no idea how “via air” will work, except using helicopters? or trains?
I noticed this which I probably shouldn’t be surprising . China supplies faulty test kits . Presumably this makes the reported figures even more unreliable.
