Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

I guess Boris read the paper on a winter coronavirus crisis and decided to do what he could to help out

'It'll all be over by Christmas' has previous as a failed slogan.

In England, we count all those that have died who had a positive COVID-19 test at any point, to ensure our data is as complete as possible.

On the face of it that seems completely bonkers

Woops my mistake!

From wikiquote: Politicians use statistics in the same way that a drunk uses lamp-posts—for support rather than illumination.

1910 Speech, quoted in Alan L. Mackay The Harvest of a Quiet Eye (1977), as reported in Chambers Dictionary of Quotations (2005), p. 488.
Variant: He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts—for support rather than illumination.
Widely attributed to Lang (e.g. in Elizabeth M. Knowles, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Oxford University Press; and in Robert Andrews, The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations, Columbia University Press).

A Department of Health and Social Care source said: “You could have been tested positive in February, have no symptoms, then hit by a bus in July and you’d be recorded as a Covid death.”

Which is strange as it's exactly what the authors wrote too.

It is not really ideal but how far off ideal isn't clear either. I suppose somebody somewhere is re-running the England stats with 28 days (if the data is finegrained enough) to work out how far out it is.

I wish newspapers would go into that sort of detail :)

I haven't read the original report but I think it has been suggested there might be 1,000 extra deaths that might have been assigned to Covid-19. Doesn't seem all that significant to me.

A school friends father died of Covid-19 although from what I've heard it was more like with Covid-19. 8 years of cancer, admitted to hospital for reasons related to cancer, tested 3 times and was positive on the third test. Died but wasn't expected to live very long when admitted. Is that a Covid-19 death? His Wikipedia page says so.

Not like the excess deaths numbers are going to change is it?

This is true, but it’s useful to know why they are what they are. Unintended consequences of ‘lock-down’ for example could be contributing to them or something else. Having a clearer picture of what was going on could mean better decisions in the future.

Yep - the first sniff of an over estimate/calculation and there is an "urgent review".

Has a minister ever acknowledged or quoted the total excess deaths statistics over the formal covid numbers? I doubt it, as surprise surprise, thats a bigger but more accurate figure of the impact of this pandemic.

I think it’s pretty stupid that the experiments compare sneezing with a mask on and sneezing fully into someone’s face from point blank. I don’t know about anyone else but no-one has ever sneezed fully into my face from point blank in Tesco. Other than my child possibly.

I was on a short webinar with David Spiegelhalter earlier in the week, in which (if I'm remembering this correctly) he suggested that non-Covid deaths in hospital are down by about 14K over the lockdown period, but at-home deaths were up by about 15K. Which suggests that there is an effect from untreated heart attacks etc, but that it's still small overall compared to Covid deaths.

Someone sneezed into their hand before giving me my change the other day in a shop, I was so shocked I took it and then disinfected everything. The change was in the hand that they sneezed into.

The guy at the next self checkout over* in Aldi had a good sneeze on me a few days ago.

(* it was just before closing time and they only had two machines open, right next to each other, because of course)

Wearing a mask just became mandatory in Valencia everywhere outside except the beach and the pool, and when seated at a table to eat/drink. Hoping sport is also included otherwise my 8-a-side football is gonna be horrible.

Was expected by most, mainly because so many tourists arrived without masks and were not following the rules we’ve had here since lockdown began, which were based on common sense. i.e. “wear them inside, and outside when you can’t maintain a safe distance please”.

99.9 percent of viruses as in up to 99 of a list of 100 more common viruses. Not 99.9 percent of viral gubbins in your office/house/boat.

Decoding marketing bullshit is a dubious gift. Why couldn’t I be 7w/kg instead :(

My daughter always wanted to go here, so we went on the 6th... be interesting to see if I get a Track n Trace call, or is 12 days past considered ok?

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/trafford-golf-centre-dino-falls-18621359

1 Attachment

I’m still freaked out by 60% of A&E attendances disappearing overnight and just not coming back. The NHS has been dominated by A&E related performance stats for decades and overnight it’s just gone away.

UCLH just completed a huge expansion of A&E last year as the A&E built in 2005 that had capacity to double attendances based on 2005 rates was swamped.

Wasn't a huge part of it alcohol related?

We had a funeral in the family in Thailand in an area that had 0 covid cases. They had a team in place to check the temperature and take personal details of all the people attending. I though this was quite impressive.

1 Attachment

Guess theres that + the usual cohort of people that would attend A+E for unnecessary reasons who chose not to risk it due to covid

I'm sure there will also be some people with legitimate issues who should've gone in but chose not to aswell

Oxford vaccine results being reported everywhere as breaking news, but this is basically a necessary but not sufficient requirement for a workable vaccine, right?

Still a long way to go to find out if it will work as a vaccine. Even further before they know if it is safe or not.

We're not going to be back to normal by Christmas with that kind of attitude

Only normies desire normal.