Coronavirus: Please use this thread for all COVID19 talk!

Yeah, I think that Kuwait has totally binned the rapid tests. I don’t know if anyone having had one since April or May when the health ministry got ripped by the rest of the government for buying a bunch that didn’t work at all and then a study here found that the ones they had were giving 50% detection at best. I think the idea of using it for schools is sound and we definitely looked into it in the summer as a route for us to reopen but it entirely depends on reliability. If it’s not reliable then you’re actually taking a greater risk.

The big game changer here was first a three week national lockdown, with curfews on either side of that. That cut positive rates massively during the first spike and got it relatively under control. They went from over a thousand positives a day to about 150 during that time. There’s an old saying in Arabic that is something like “cauterisation is cure”, meaning in any crisis you first stop the bleeding before you try to find your way out. The next was when it started to spike again, they introduced a home quarantine system based around facial recognition with unbelievably harsh penalties. They have an old infectious diseases law which has seen people deported, fined or jailed for up to ten years. At the same time they made masks mandatory everywhere. I can look out my window right now and see people walking alone outside and they are all wearing masks. It’s overkill for sure, but it’s effectiveness is indisputable at this point.

There’s also several jobs (non-healthcare, mostly delivery drivers and popular restaurant chains) where part of the agreement for them to open was random testing of their workforce. Testing, isolation, tracing and masks. It works. It’s exhausting, but until vaccines are widely available everywhere, what else do we have?

 

This is the Kuwait scorecard as of today. 161,777 cases since the first discovered in February. Just under 1,000 deaths. I think the other good thing they do here is in their daily update they also announce numbers in ICU and daily recoveries. So today there are 49 in ICU, 505 new cases and 537 people who have tested negative following medical treatment or home isolation. It’s encouraging to see the number of currently active cases fall over time and see the in/out flow. In May on my birthday we had 20,000 active cases. It’s down to 6,022 now.

 

100,000 not far away

 

1,631 deaths yesterday, UK total now 100,162.

 

From recollection, when the story of Covid first broke last January, the scientists were predicting that, as a worst case scenario, deaths could reach 120,000. Whilst this statistic is absolutely shocking, it is the fact that the total has more than doubled since the autumn that horrifies me. Granted that the new strain is more contagious, it is still a really difficult statistic to accept. There were too many bad decisions in the autumn and the relaxation over Christmas would appear to have come at a tragic cost. Not too hard to imagine what the situation had been had Boris's initial proposal for relaxation over Christmas been adhered to.

I also wondered after yesterday's press conference how tenable Johnson's position as Prime Minister remains. Have to say that he is not unique in the poor leadership he has shown and I can't say I've been impressed by Starmer either.

 

I think they said a “good outcome” would be 20000 deaths. I may have missed the comment about the 120000 figure though.
I read this morning that one Johnson’s first actions as PM was to disband a group of ministers whose job was to plan for pandemics.

Johnson’s leadership has been appalling right from the start, constantly being reactive rather than proactive. Even now, with the faster spreading variant, the lockdown is not as hard as the first one, so more people are going to work at a time when they maybe shouldn’t be.

Starmer hasn’t impressed me either. I think he has given Johnson too easy a ride and needs to get down in the dirt from time to time and hammering home the disastrous leadership instead of always trying to be seen as playing a supportive role. Maybe he is playing to the media and doesn’t want to be crucified in the way Corbyn was.

 

New symptoms to do with the tongue, hands and feet.

https://www.thelocal.es/20210127/co...HCYGeyDy3sjejUSap8eQmmp46TN0HoYEvscAOWqQFEpys

 

Fascinating article today on the BBC website. UK Covid deaths: Why the 100,000 toll is so bad - BBC News

What I like about it is it dares to delve into this in ways which seem to have become taboo. Lockdowns might not actually work. The death rate is up, but compared to the last twenty years on average it is still down! We are a really old country with a - SORRY OLD TIMERS - surplus of geriatrics. Too many people here are fat and don't look after themselves. That "poor people " are fat cos... society make them that way is absolute BS in my eyes. I grew up in St. Mary's in charity housing and my mum made everything from scratch because IT IS CHEAPER.

My point? I don't have one. I feel lockdown is right at this moment in time. Mainly because the NHS is underfunded and understaffed and cannot cope. But then it never could in Winter anyway! However, long term lockdowns? If these vaccines are not effective we will have to get on with life as best we can. That or submit to Asian style restrictions on our lives most of us could not abide.

DEATH RATES ARE CONSIDERABLY LOWER THAN THEY WERE IN 2005 and I don't remember that lockdown!

Lots of shouting in there. Apologies. Had enough of totally one-sided rhetoric when I know all stories have two sides. Also, watched some old man on television at the weekend saying his life was not as important as a young person who was then ripped to shreds by an indignant BBC journalist. Idiocy. Who would save their father's life before their son's? Let's get real.

Discuss.

 

Lots to discuss there mate, blimey.

I certainly think it’s legitimate to question the orthodoxy that only ever stricter lockdowns will get us out of this. Do they work? Maybe? But at what cost?

Regarding your last point; For what it’s worth, I’m 60 this year, overweight, and my lungs are ****ed after years of smoking. Do I want young people’s lives totally disrupted, to protect me from a virus that may or may not carry me off should I be unlucky enough to contract it? No I ****ing don’t.

 

Excess deaths always seem to be counted against the average of the previous five years, so you’re right, a steady downward trend followed by a sharp uptick like last year will always look worse than it really is. This graph from the ONS shows it clearly:

On the other hand, I always counter this argument with the obvious point that the pandemic has, in the main, seen the most vulnerable among us die earlier than they otherwise would, so the graph is therefore shifted to the left. A lot, possibly the majority, of the 100,000 may have died of some other cause within a year or so, but they have been deprived by the virus of valuable time with their families, and in many cases died without being able to say goodbye. That’s probably what upsets me most about the whole sorry business. I still can’t get over hearing about the 13 year old boy whose family couldn’t even attend his funeral, quite early on in the pandemic.

I agree entirely that we have to make the best of things. There are a lot of things which I miss, and who knows when we’ll be able to go to the pub, attend a concert or a festival, or a bloody football match, but we have no choice but to live within the restrictions for as long as it takes.

 

I agree with h everything except for the final 'no choice'. There is always choice and we should be constantly weighing up the pros and cons. Right now this is the right approach, but it may not be later.

 

A very important philosophical question and the answer would be culturally dependent.

Let us suppose my mother, my wife and my daughter fell in a river and I could only save one from drowning who should I save?

For me it would be my mother. I could always remarry and have another child but I have only one mother.

Letting my wife and daughter drown would also be sensible in terms of reducing population growth.

They would both live longer than my mother and consume more very scarce world resources.

In the short term letting my mother drown would benefit me as I wouldn't have to care for her in her old age and I would inherit lots of resources.

Society would also benefit as they would not need to pay her a pension nor would there be the expensive medical cost the elderly demand which puts a drain on resources.

The best bet is euthanasia the minute people stop being economically active for that way young people will be wealthier and would be able to have lots more techy thing, a better phone and laptop and more money for other consumer things like expensive holidays and superfast cars.

Why waste money and resources looking after old people? It doesn't make economic sense.

 

Funnily enough, I was at a finance conference many years ago (mid 90s I think) where the keynote speaker presented an “interesting” theory (it was, as I discussed with him after, somewhat tongue in cheek) about the world’s ageing population, the cost of pensions being much higher than the amounts paid into the pension pots and the potential for “someone” to say “maximum age should be 70, 80, 90 ..... then euthanasia”.
It was really well presented (I wish I could remember his name) and well argued. It certainly “sounded” a valid theory - though he did finish the presentation with “but what government would dare bring that in?”
It’s quite scary that this can be mooted and that the Johnsons and Rees-Moggs of this world are, potentially, in support of something similar.
What are we headed towards? A kind of “Logan’s Run” type of world? Or “Soylent Green” for more food resources? A bit of a concern ......

 

There is, of course, always an implicit assumption that the person expounding such a theory won’t themselves be subject to the chop, but will be preserved to a ripe old age for their wisdom and leadership.

 

Killing the young, not the old, is the way to stop population growth.

 

There bloody well should have been a lockdown in 2005. Football season should have been abandoned, all double agent managers sacked and the season started again!! Maybe have all games finish 3 minutes earlier too. We’d have stayed up then.

 

But think of the journey we would have missed....

 

I was. Rochdale away. M6 shut. Traffic a nightmare. Sh1t performance and we lost 2-0.