Herd Immunity vs Lockdown

[richard_smith237]

9 minutes ago, BKKBike09 said:

I'm not misunderstanding anything. The well being and continuing function of a community is inextricably tied to employment, particularly in economies where State assistance for the less fortunate in society is minimal.

 

Saying "We ARE all in lock down together (nothing to do with comfort or privilege)" is akin to the directors of a company saying to rank-and-file employees "we're hurting just like you; look, I've taken a 25% pay cut (from 350K a year)". If you can't see how personal circumstances are hugely relevant to this issue, then I will fire your "absolute and total ignorance of a real issue" comment straight back at you.

 

Professor Graham Medley, who chairs the UK GOV Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (which oversees mathematical models for the Government) said it well yesterday:

 

"The measures to control [the disease] cause harm. The principal one is economic, and I don’t mean to the economy generally, I mean to the incomes of people who rely on a continuous stream of money and their children, particularly the school closure aspect. There will also be actual harms in terms of mental health, in terms of domestic violence and child abuse, and in terms of food poverty. If we carry on with lockdown it buys us more time, we can get more thought put into it, but it doesn’t resolve anything - it’s a placeholder.”

 

Regardless of our personal views on these issues, I hope you would agree that the critical action now has to be mass testing, because that is the only way that the true spread of this virus can be determined. Without that information, how can any policy maker know when to end lockdown? 

 

[Regardless of our personal views on these issues, I hope you would agree that the critical action now has to be mass testing, because that is the only way that the true spread of this virus can be determined. Without that information, how can any policy maker know when to end lockdown? ]

 

Absolutely agree with this. I would hope improved faster testing methods are being rolled out and distributed as we type. 

 

If only half of us follow the isolation protocols they wont mean anything - thus we all have to isolate - We ARE all in this together, without unified response (to isolate) the ideology of isolation fails - it takes everyone (or over a certain threshold) for isolation to be effective. 

 

 

At some point (perhaps another 3 - 4 weeks of isolation) the case load will have dropped to no more new cases, no more deaths in hospitals, no existing cases - or at least very tolerable levels. Then isolation can be lifted to ’some extent’ 

 

It’s inevitable that those who have not already caught the virus will catch it and spread it. Thus there is a risk of a strong second wave which also needs to be ‘flattened’. Thus, work from home measures and social distancing measures will still need to be encouraged. 

 

Those in high risk groups will only be safe once a vaccine or effective treatment has been established, thus it may be recommended that self isolation continues for them, perhaps it can be put down to their choice. 

 

If the numbers start to escalate once more as a second wave approaches we will have better data to model that spread and predict how the health services will be impacted. Those who have had the virus can continue working etc (needs antibody testing) and those in high risk groups advised to isolate. 

 

One of the key issues is to know if those who have had covid-19 can contract it and become contagious with it a second time. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Logosone]

1 hour ago, richard_smith237 said:

 

Who will they catch it from if everyone has been in lockdown and passed the stage of being contagious?

 

I know, thats a naive question. There will inevitably be a next wave - I don’t think that is avoidable, what I believe is avoidable is that the ’transmission rate’ of this ’next wave’ will be reduced, hopefully to within limits whereby the hospitals are not overwhelmed with serious cases. 

 

Our release back into the wild will have to be controlled somehow - people will still have to work from home, social distancing measures will remain the norm while we go on with our lives.

 

The issue of course is that a localised outbreak at the local Witherspoons will spread fairly quickly again, but by then most will have had the virus or we will have medication and vaccines (thats a hope anyway).

 

The end result is a year from now the deaths will have been minimised significantly than had we done nothing - thats the theory anyway. 

 

 

Obviously not everyone will have passed the stage of being contagious.

 

On whichever day the lockdown is lifted the odds are that some people will still be contagious.

 

This study in the Lancet showed that the virus persists in a patient even after the symptoms are gone, the length of time varies with each person and in some it can be five weeks.

 

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30566-3/fulltext#bib33

 

The real concern would be however if there are large number of asymptomatic carriers, how long would they be contagious? Nobody really knows. I think the reinfection risk should be small, more of an exception because immunity should be the rule.

 

The theory of minimising the deaths, how will it ever be proven right, how can you determine how many would actually have died? If that Chinese study was unable to determine the exact effect in reduction of transmission each measure caused, how would we even know the difference? Assuming there were one?

 

 

Edited April 5, 2020 by Logosone

[chessman]

1 hour ago, frantick said:

cause science peeps initial models were way off, and now they wish to proceed as if those models are still accurate.

Which models are you talking about? Imperial College? The really high death rate in that that made all the headlines was (as they said at the time) never going to happen because it showed what would happen if nothing was done. But no country would see the cases and deaths rise exponentially and do nothing.

[richard_smith237]

1 hour ago, Logosone said:

The theory of minimising the deaths, how will it ever be proven right, how can you determine how many would actually have died? If that Chinese study was unable to determine the exact effect in reduction of transmission each measure caused, how would we even know the difference? Assuming there were one?

Thats the difficult part to handle when in 6 months or even 12 months time there is a bitter media backlash against this quarantine and isolation, with dumb reporters questioning if it was even necessary because they don’t understand the modelling; which I’ll very crudely try to outline below using basic historical information and current Covid-19 data. 

 

To start off with I’ll use 1918 Spanish Flu (which everyone has now heard of) as an example to show the impact on the global population, then, and project to now. 

Spanish Flu in 1918 infected 27% of the worlds population and killed ±50 million (reports suggest between 17 million up to 100million).

 

To place the Spanish Flu in perspective:

27% of the worlds 1.8 Billion population = 486 Million infected / 50 Million died (estimates vary)

A Case Fatality Rate of 10.3%

 

Projecting those numbers onto todays population:

27% of the worlds 7.8 Billion population = 2.106 Billion

A Case Fatality rate of 10.3% = 216 Million Deaths

 

To present this '216 million' number from another perspective: If one person died every second it would take nearly 7 years to reach that number of 216 Million. 216 Million people could fill 2400 Wembley football stadiums, or placed head to toe stretch 9.16 times round the earth (which for the benefit of some forum members who may not like these stats isn’t flat by the way), or if placed head to toe, very nearly reach the moon (for the benefit of the tin-foiled hat conspiracists, we’ve been there before !).

 

Hopefully, Covid-19 is nowhere near as deadly as Swine Flu was back in 1917-18 and we now have far greater medical facilities and understanding of viral spread and illnesses. 

 

The potential is clearly devastating. SARS and MERS appear to have higher CFR’s but lower transmission rates (thankfully) - Covid-19 seems to have higher transmission rate and lower CFR.

 

Based on these numbers (which are obviously debatable) anything less than Millions of deaths is a win. 

 

The real potential will be modelled somewhere with a better input of variables. No one knows for sure if the models are correct, but we have to go with the science over soothsayers, naysayers, conspiracists and claimants of a con and this modelled data clearly shows devastating numbers otherwise the world would never have been left with no other choice but to respond in the manner it has. 

 

Even the most basic of projections below based on current data present a devastating potential. 

 

Thus, once again, anything less than Millions of deaths has to be a win. 

 

In the form of basic projection, when we look solely at the growth in deaths over the last couple of months - the figures / projection is also highly overwhelming.

Based on data from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?utm_campaign=homeAdvegas1?

The average increase in death rate is 12% per day and has been for the past 20 days, since about 15th March (this data is repeated and confirmed in numerous sources)

Today 64,691 deaths, tomorrow, 6th April 72,454 projected deaths, 7th April 81,148 projected deaths - if the 12% continues and the curve does not start to flatten as a result of isolation methods. 

 

At the current (12%) rate of increase the projection is 2.1 million deaths by May 5th and 72.8 million by June 5th - Devastating (I am hoping I’ve made a mistake and when someone challenges this my error is highlighted)

 

Any improvement on these atrocious numbers is a win for Isolation and the methods taken globally to reduce the potentially devastating impact to life. 

 

As a direct result of Social Distancing and Isolation methods this rate of increase will drop and the numbers quoted above (by 5th May and 5th June) will be far lower - this is primarily how we can tell what a success these measures have been. 

 

Naturally this information will not be well received by some on this forum who are unable to comprehend the overwhelming nature of the numbers and probably still think its ok to risk going to their bar, some people just don’t accept what the statistics show - fortunately the worlds governments do and we are in global lock down.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 5, 2020 by richard_smith237

[thaibeachlovers]

On 4/5/2020 at 12:46 AM, richard_smith237 said:

they still have time to spend with their grandchildren and a quality of life to continue on with - why risk that so that a ‘certain number’ of selfish people can enjoy their life?

You obviously don't get that it's not about continuing a privileged life, it's whether we'll have any sort of life other than poverty after.

How many people is it worth reducing to penury so grandparents can spend more time with grandchildren? People die of poverty too.

What happens when people with normal health problems can't be treated because the health services will be broke after this ends?

[thaibeachlovers]

4 hours ago, richard_smith237 said:

 

Edited 4 hours ago by richard_smith237

To be of real use that graph should, IMO, have another line of people that would have died anyway. IMO many deaths that would have occurred anyway are being used to inflate the Corona death total. Delete the number expected from the Corona total would give the number caused solely by Corona.

[scubascuba3]

Wordmeter is showing Thailand as having done 25,071 tests, that's hard to believe

[elgenon]

I think it was Sweden that tried herd immunity. When many people dies they change to social distancing.

 

In South Korea businesses stayed open but Korea had kept their epidemic infrastructure in place and did social tracing. I think some Westerners would say they were too intrusive but it worked.

 

 

[UbonThani]

Models are always wrong. Often by big margins

 

However social distancing and hand wShing is good to prevent flus. Good idea going forward.

 

Wais are good. Why hug and kiss people? Why shake their hands?

[GinBoy2]

Ugh, there is no good answer to this.

 

I've got an old college bud who works for CDC.

 

In talking to him he describes it like this.

 

The virus is like a forest fire, and needs fuel, of which we humans are the fuel.

 

Now if you contain the fire but there is still fresh fuel around, it only takes one spark for it to flare up again.

 

I thought that was a pretty apt analogy for the virus.

 

We either let it infect enough of us so there is no more 'fuel', or we lock ourselves down but when we come out it'll only take one infected person to restart the whole deadly cycle again.

 

Neither are very palatable choices

Edited April 5, 2020 by GinBoy2

[RJRS1301]

1 hour ago, UbonThani said:

Models are always wrong

Evidence please. Generalisation. Modelling from (reliable academic and health source) done during the HIV epidemic was mostly accurate, and I am sure many other models used in health, infrastructure planning, drought efects, bushfires,  , and business relatively accurate

Edited April 6, 2020 by RJRS1301

[Skallywag]

11 hours ago, Roy Baht said:

Letting the virus run its course is not an option--so all you "let's just go back to normal" people are morons--because when all the hospital beds are full with COVID-19 sufferers and you (moron) have one of your "hold my beer" moments and are rushed to the ER, they will not be able to treat you. Get it? Moron?

Trouble with the "hospitals will be overrun" rationale is there is no proof we are running out of ventilators .... in New York city on March 30, Governor Cuomo saying "we need 30,000 ventilators" yet NY Times reported less than 2350 people on ventilators in NY city hospitals. There is no "anti-viral", there is no "treatment" for those who are not suffering from pneumonia. Hospitals therapy for severe sufferers of coronavirus are just 2 things; a fever reducer (paracetamol) and oxygen therapy (ventilator).  14% are currently considered severe.  https://www2.hse.ie/conditions/coronavirus/coronavirus-treatment.html   So up to hospitals to triage patients and only let those in that can be treated.  214 hospitals in the New York City area, with 22,000 hospitals beds, you do the math.  News media keeps posting the number of coronavirus "patients" filling hospitals, but there is no logical reason to allow a patient in unless they have pneumonia and can be treated IMO. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/nyregion/coronavirus-new-york-update.html       

 

Edited April 6, 2020 by Skallywag

[PatchinExPat]

Very clear the bar stool warmers don't like the curfew.. 

[jimmjam]

Only the old and sick should be self isolating. 12 weeks at the most, let everyone else go about their business as usual. This planet needs a culling anyway.

[RJRS1301]

1 minute ago, jimmjam said:

Only the old and sick should be self isolating. 12 weeks at the most, let everyone else go about their business as usual. This planet needs a culling anyway.

Need increased testing to identify those who are infected.

[PatchinExPat]

3 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

You obviously don't get that it's not about continuing a privileged life, it's whether we'll have any sort of life other than poverty after.

How many people is it worth reducing to penury so grandparents can spend more time with grandchildren? People die of poverty too.

What happens when people with normal health problems can't be treated because the health services will be broke after this ends?

Oh, I think your bar stool is safe until this is over

[Logosone]

8 hours ago, richard_smith237 said:

Thats the difficult part to handle when in 6 months or even 12 months time there is a bitter media backlash against this quarantine and isolation, with dumb reporters questioning if it was even necessary because they don’t understand the modelling; which I’ll very crudely try to outline below using basic historical information and current Covid-19 data.

 

The real potential will be modelled somewhere with a better input of variables. No one knows for sure if the models are correct, but we have to go with the science over soothsayers, naysayers, conspiracists and claimants of a con and this modelled data clearly shows devastating numbers otherwise the world would never have been left with no other choice but to respond in the manner it has. 

 

Even the most basic of projections below based on current data present a devastating potential. 

 

Thus, once again, anything less than Millions of deaths has to be a win. 

 

In the form of basic projection, when we look solely at the growth in deaths over the last couple of months - the figures / projection is also highly overwhelming.

Based on data from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?utm_campaign=homeAdvegas1?

The average increase in death rate is 12% per day and has been for the past 20 days, since about 15th March (this data is repeated and confirmed in numerous sources)

Today 64,691 deaths, tomorrow, 6th April 72,454 projected deaths, 7th April 81,148 projected deaths - if the 12% continues and the curve does not start to flatten as a result of isolation methods. 

 

At the current (12%) rate of increase the projection is 2.1 million deaths by May 5th and 72.8 million by June 5th - Devastating (I am hoping I’ve made a mistake and when someone challenges this my error is highlighted)

 

Any improvement on these atrocious numbers is a win for Isolation and the methods taken globally to reduce the potentially devastating impact to life. 

 

As a direct result of Social Distancing and Isolation methods this rate of increase will drop and the numbers quoted above (by 5th May and 5th June) will be far lower - this is primarily how we can tell what a success these measures have been. 

 

Naturally this information will not be well received by some on this forum who are unable to comprehend the overwhelming nature of the numbers and probably still think its ok to risk going to their bar, some people just don’t accept what the statistics show - fortunately the worlds governments do and we are in global lock down.  

 

 

 

 

Okay, first of all, journalists, at least in the UK, are not that dumb. It was in fact the British press which analysed the models of Imperial College, had no trouble at all in understanding them and protested heavily in print about the number of deaths "herd immunity" would entail, this LONG BEFORE Boris Johnson did an about turn and then abandoned the herd immunity approach and opted for suppression instead, and long before Neil Ferguson came up with a second paper.

 

Whether it was the media pressure that made Boris Johnson do a U Turn and Neil Ferguson go back and revise his paper, who knows, but it is clearly not the case that the British press, or anyone with half a brain has any difficulty understand the models.

 

It is also a misreprensation to say "this modelled data clearly shows devastating numbers otherwise the world would never have been left with no other choice but to respond in the manner it has".

 

The world very much had a choice, as we saw with Sweden, which has not opted to follow the extreme social distancing the UK favours.

 

Sweden's leading epidemiologist has said: "“Locking people up at home won’t work in the longer term,” he said. “Sooner or later people are going to go out anyway.”

 

In fact it has become clear that Danish epidemiologists also advised AGAINST the closing of borders and support Sweden's approach behind the scenes:

https://www.thelocal.com/20200331/the-nordic-divide-is-denmark-norway-sweden-right-or-wrong-on-coronavirus

 

So clearly there was a choice. Of course the huge numbers of what 'could happen' pre-suppose that nothing is done, which was never a viable option. Nobody at all is advocating that nothing is done, so these huge numbers are really strawman numbers, and of course if you recall, Neil Ferguson, who equally postulated a huge 'worst case scenario' figure of 490,000 deaths in the UK if nothing is done, has now said there will be less than 20,000 deaths.

 

The real question is not between, will there be 2,16 billion deaths or x number of deaths, obviously there won't be 2.16 billion deaths and that was never likely. The real question is which method is more likely to defeat the pandemic, mass testing and isolating the infected or social distancing.

 

What we see wherever a country successfully reduces mortality is that it has ramped up testing and isolated the infected. China also isolated early, but by all accounts it was unsuccessful and it was mass testing that succeeded in halting the pandemic.

 

Of course there are all kinds of errors with the numbers you quote. I appreciate the difficulty, since it is easy for me to say that the actual case number is higher, but you need to go with evidence case numbers. In terms of total numbers of dead and increase, naturally the linear increase does not happen. We saw with China already that the new cases do not increase indefinitely, deaths do not increase indefinitely, there is no lineal progression.

 

For you to claim a reduction in numbers as a "win for isolation" is not credible because there is no evidence for that. On the contrary, wherever we've seen reduction in numbers of dead that has been preceded by mass testing, it is more likely to be a win for testing and isolating the infected.

 

However, you can not untangle the effect each measure has (and there are only 3, testing & isolating, clinical management and sd) had, the Chinese tried this and were unable to, because all measures are thrown at the virus simulatenously. I would suggest that the causative factor in reducing the numbers is disproportionately mass testing and isolating the infected, rather than sd.

 

So the reduction in numbers could have been achieved without a lockdown, or with a more targeted short term lock down.

 

 

 

 

 

[PatchinExPat]

3 hours ago, GinBoy2 said:

Ugh, there is no good answer to this.

 

I've got an old college bud who works for CDC.

 

In talking to him he describes it like this.

 

The virus is like a forest fire, and needs fuel, of which we humans are the fuel.

 

Now if you contain the fire but there is still fresh fuel around, it only takes one spark for it to flare up again.

 

I thought that was a pretty apt analogy for the virus.

 

We either let it infect enough of us so there is no more 'fuel', or we lock ourselves down but when we come out it'll only take one infected person to restart the whole deadly cycle again.

 

Neither are very palatable choices

Well no, they are working very hard on vaccines, and I hope I live long enough to

have one, then I can relax some, knowing I have pretty good odds of not having it 

and return to some things I enjoy.

For me a better option than dying.

With out vaccines I could have very well been dead of many diseases long ago. 

Edited April 6, 2020 by PatchinExPat

[Kinnock]

On 4/4/2020 at 1:38 PM, Guderian said:

The lockdown will only be needed until a cheap, effective vaccine is available. The world has a lot of experience at developing vaccines, including against coronaviruses (think of the annual flu cocktail). Given the size of the prize, I should imagine that every government, commercial and academic lab in the world capable of working on this is doing so right now. Having said that, SARS-COV-2 is a novel virus and because it blew over relatively quickly and there was no incentive, nobody bothered to develop a vaccine against SARS-COV-1. If they had, we'd probably be halfway there already. Numerous experts have said they believe a viable vaccine should be ready to start trials in people by June, or even earlier. So fingers crossed, society might not have to allow its weak and elderly to be thrown to the wolves (or to the virus in this case) after all.

Flu vaccine is only around 50% effective, assuming they predict the right annual strains, and uptake globally is very low.

 

TB has had an effective vaccine since 1921, yet there were 1.3 million deaths from TB last year.

 

Factor in virus mutation and religious objections plus the anti vaccination tinfoil hat brigade, and vaccination could take years to have any impact.

 

[Kinnock]

3 hours ago, GinBoy2 said:

Ugh, there is no good answer to this.

 

I've got an old college bud who works for CDC.

 

In talking to him he describes it like this.

 

The virus is like a forest fire, and needs fuel, of which we humans are the fuel.

 

Now if you contain the fire but there is still fresh fuel around, it only takes one spark for it to flare up again.

 

I thought that was a pretty apt analogy for the virus.

 

We either let it infect enough of us so there is no more 'fuel', or we lock ourselves down but when we come out it'll only take one infected person to restart the whole deadly cycle again.

 

Neither are very palatable choices

Or if enough people wash their hands and maintain good social distances, plus enough other people who can't or won't do this catch it and become (temporarily?) immune, then the R0 will fall below 1.0 and it will fade out.

 

Like SARS, MERS and The Osmonds.

[UbonThani]

2 hours ago, RJRS1301 said:

Evidence please. Generalisation. Modelling from (reliable academic and health source) done during the HIV epidemic was mostly accurate, and I am sure many other models used in health, infrastructure planning, drought efects, bushfires,  , and business relatively accurate

Economic forecasts

Co2

Stock market forecasts

Sars forecasts

Swine flu markets

 

Blind freddy could find evidence if one looked

[UbonThani]

19 minutes ago, Kinnock said:

Flu vaccine is only around 50% effective, assuming they predict the right annual strains, and uptake globally is very low.

 

TB has had an effective vaccine since 1921, yet there were 1.3 million deaths from TB last year.

 

Factor in virus mutation and religious objections plus the anti vaccination tinfoil hat brigade, and vaccination could take years to have any impact.

 

How do you explain people not getting the flu for 17 years? No vaccine

 

Others get the  vaccine and still get it

[BKKBike09]

27 minutes ago, PatchinExPat said:

Well no, they are working very hard on vaccines, and I hope I live long enough to

have one, then I can relax some, knowing I have pretty good odds of not having it 

and return to some things I enjoy.

For me a better option than dying.

With out vaccines I could have very well been dead of many diseases long ago. 

If you've made it past 65 you're already doing well in global terms:

 

"Everyone aspires to live to old age but in 1960 only 48 per cent of all people born in the world survived to their 65th birthday. A higher percentage of surviving persons to age 65 marks signi cant progress in socioeconomic development and preventing premature deaths. In 2019, the percentage of persons surviving to 65 years reached 77 per cent worldwide, up from 66 per cent in 1990-1995. This achievement mostly re ects progress in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia, in Latin America and the Caribbean and in Northern Africa and Western Asia where the percentage of persons surviving to age 65 reached 84 per cent, 79 per cent and 80 per cent, respectively in 2019. Australia and New Zealand had the highest share of persons surviving to 65 years with 91 per cent in 2019, rising from 85 per cent in 1990-1995, followed by Europe and Northern America where the share was around 77 per cent in 1990-1995 and 84 per cent in 2019."

 

Global Total Deaths: 58.4 million @ 7.6/1,000

Thailand: 542,000 @ 7.8/1,000

 

https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/mortality/WMR2019/WorldMortality2019DataBooklet.pdf

[richard_smith237]

4 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

To be of real use that graph should, IMO, have another line of people that would have died anyway. IMO many deaths that would have occurred anyway are being used to inflate the Corona death total. Delete the number expected from the Corona total would give the number caused solely by Corona.

All of them would have die anyway at some point in the future. 

So what is your acceptable timeline on premature death due to Covid-19 ???? Die 1 month early, 2 months, 6 months, a Year?

 

Information of the deaths per day including Covid-19 cases and deaths per day pre-Covid-19 would be extremely useful as a comparison.

 

Taking New York as an example: In 2015 there were 153,623 deaths in New York (state), 421 deaths per day.

 

On April 5th Bloomberg reported that the New York State is reporting its first daily decline in death rates with 594 on Sunday 5th, compared to 630 deaths on Saturday. 

 

Note: these numbers quoted are deaths attributed to Corona-19 and not deaths on a whole yet are still 140-150% of the daily average for New York. Due to the higher population density of New York state the statistics are likely to be higher than other lesser populated areas. 

 

It would be interesting to find the same information nationwide and world wide for other countries. 

 

Your argument seems to be that 'these people' will die anyway so the Corona-19 does not cause any more (or many more) deaths than we would see anyway.

 

 

[thaibeachlovers]

Just now, richard_smith237 said:

Your argument seems to be that 'these people' will die anyway so the Corona-19 does not cause any more (or many more) deaths than we would see anyway.

No, that's not what I was saying. I want to know how many died that would have died soon anyway, and how many Corona killed that would have lived many years but for it.

2 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

So what is your acceptable timeline on premature death due to Covid-19 ???? Die 1 month early, 2 months, 6 months, a Year?

We die when we die and none know the hour of our passing. We should all live each day as if it were our last.

Millions of young fit people died years before their time in wars, car accidents, drowning, climbing accidents etc, but we haven't stopped war, driving cars, swimming and climbing. Seems somewhat strange to me that Corona is singled out as worthy of destroying the world economy to attempt to stop. I don't understand what is so different to that than other causes of premature death.

 

Anyway, listening to radio it does seem as though alarm bells are ringing in the chambers of the elites, and more voices are calling for a return to economic activity before it's all destroyed for good. I expect/ hope more will join the chorus in the days to come till the politicians are forced to relent.

[thaibeachlovers]

1 hour ago, Kinnock said:

We either let it infect enough of us so there is no more 'fuel', or we lock ourselves down but when we come out it'll only take one infected person to restart the whole deadly cycle again.

Governments are being extremely quiet about that. IMO only because they know what the reaction would be if they told us we'd be locked up on and off for up to or longer than a year. We were told only 4 weeks but now they are dropping huge hints that it may be longer, but no estimates are given. Methinks we are being treated like mushrooms.

[richard_smith237]

4 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

No, that's not what I was saying. I want to know how many died that would have died soon anyway, and how many Corona killed that would have lived many years but for it.

How many Corona has killed that would have lived many years for it... at what cut off is acceptable?

Coldness aside - it would be extremely useful information. 

 

 

4 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

We die when we die and none know the hour of our passing. We should all live each day as if it were our last.

Millions of young fit people died years before their time in wars, car accidents, drowning, climbing accidents etc, but we haven't stopped war, driving cars, swimming and climbing. Seems somewhat strange to me that Corona is singled out as worthy of destroying the world economy to attempt to stop.

We started wearing seatbelts in cars that are much safer, the drowning numbers are less in developed nations (higher safety standards), climbing is a leisure activity and a choice - quite different from contracting a virus which is indiscriminate in who it infects. 

[Seems somewhat strange to me that Corona is singled out as worthy of destroying the world economy to attempt to stop] 

Maybe if you were a key decision maker (i.e lead politician, CEO of a major influencing company, leader of industry etc) and you were privy to more information and modelling you would agree with the Lockdown and distancing measures. 

 

4 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

I don't understand what is so different to that than other causes of premature death.

The potential numbers. If the spread of this virus continues unmitigated the numbers could be devastating. Fortunately we won't see these numbers as mitigation measures are already in place. 

 

4 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Anyway, listening to radio it does seem as though alarm bells are ringing in the chambers of the elites, and more voices are calling for a return to economic activity before it's all destroyed for good.

I expect/ hope more will join the chorus in the days to come till the politicians are forced to relent.

 

There will become a time where it makes sense to return to work for all etc. 

Essential activities have continued to operate and many are working from home etc. However as you have mentioned before, there will be a huge economic hit and once this virus shows signs of slowing a path forwards can be planed to mitigate the impact to the economy. 

 

 

[snowgard]

I real ask myself why now all this virus experts and hospitals don't do a fast research about all different face masks (DIY too). From more as one million infected people they can find enough who they can put in two rooms (one room for infected people with masks, the other room with infected people without masks) and place breathable dummies with all kind of different mask between they.

Next step were to do it with probands. I am sure they will find enough for some thousand dollars. It not will need one week to know which kind of mask will help the world to live a normal life again.

Perhaps the result would be undesirable if it were found that most of the masks would be helpful.

Edited April 6, 2020 by snowgard

[UbonThani]

9 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Governments are being extremely quiet about that. IMO only because they know what the reaction would be if they told us we'd be locked up on and off for up to or longer than a year. We were told only 4 weeks but now they are dropping huge hints that it may be longer, but no estimates are given. Methinks we are being treated like mushrooms.

They want everyone to act like sheep.

[UbonThani]

5 minutes ago, snowgard said:

I real ask myself why now all this virus experts and hospitals don't do a fast research about all different face masks (DIY too). From more as one million infected people they can find enough who they can put in two rooms (one room for infected people with masks, the other room with infected people without masks) and place breathable dummies with all kind of different mask between they.

Next step were to do it with probands. I am sure they will find enough for some thousand dollars. It not will need one week to know which kind of mask will help the world to live a normal life again.

Perhaps the result would be undesirable if it were found that most of the masks would be helpful.

Flu vacvine sales thru the roof this year big pharma delighted