COVID-19

How is stopping people meeting family or friends in homes stopping the spread suddenly? If you can spend time with people in pubs/restaurants etc who you don’t know and the virus may be at large there. Point being my question is why do the government think that is stopping the spread when you can do everything else you want? Go to work, go to the pub, get your haircut etc etc

 

This nonsense is being regurgitated all over the place. It's a complete logic fail. In the second half of June, deaths by age group per day were roughly 40-59 3 deaths, 60-79 18 deaths, 80+ 25 deaths. A month later it was roughly 1,4 and 5. Latest week is about 0.5, 2 and 3. Daily deaths for all three age groups have fallen 80-90%. (Under 40s barely registered.) We have media telling us mortality rates might not be falling because more young people are going out and ignoring spacing? How does more young people going out and getting infected now - which should make the virus spread more quickly to everyone - lead to an 80-90% fall in daily deaths in old people in 2 months if the virus has not weakened!? It's complete nonsense. Deaths are falling because it's not killing old people much now at a time when many have come out of shielding. Don't even consider young people. Old deaths are down dramatically over 2 months as many old have come out of shielding and we've continued to unlock. What does that tell us? Engage logic mode before answering.

(Click on Age Breakdown)

http://covidtracker.uksouth.cloudapp.azure.com/

 

I honestly don't think this is particularly hard.

Isnt it simply that you behave differently with people that you know well rather than people you don't?

You're more likely to hug, kiss, touch, sit close to, etc, people in your family or friendship group than you are strangers in a pub.

Also there is nobody to enforce or set out the social distancing parameters or hygiene precautions in peoples homes but there are in shops, pubs, hairdressers, etc.

So therefore they are happier for people to go to places that should have social distancing/hygiene precautions in place with a large number or people gheg will naturally distance from rather than a smaller number of people who they are more likely to get close to in a setting with no set precautions. I honestly don't see what it difficult about that.

Even if the two things were completely equal.....so you were just as likely to catch it in a busy pub as you were from hugging friends then while the outlook is to control the outbreak, rather than stop it completely, the action that they would take would be the one with least impact on the economy and jobs.

 

You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.

My point is still how can they feel one person meeting another family who have a small chance of having the virus, and then going back to their own family, is the way this virus is spreading now? It’s a load of rubbish. It’s out in the community and has been for months and months as we know now from testing.
These local lockdowns cannot be doing anything to halt the spread when you can literally be anywhere else with other people. I don’t think any other country is doing it this way where you can’t mingle with other households only but can do other things. It’s backward.

Get the local track and trace data, find who’s got it and stop them. Simplest way

 

I didn't think I was telling you anything new to be honest. As I said it's so simple it surprises me when anybody compares pubs and family environments.

Well yeah, it is out in the community but it's only spreading from person to person where theres close contact so limiting those exposures must have an effect. If everyone is only in close contact with 50% (for example) of the people they were in March then it must have an effect on transmission surely?

Are you saying that they should basically abandon the restrictions and rely on tracking and tracing those infected?

 

With the incompetence of our track and trace system I wouldn’t advocate it. If we had good strong local track and trace experts, which we got rid of years ago, then yeah I’d do it that way. We are finding tiny amounts of infected people now in local areas. We should find those people and when we do we isolate them and their families etc for 14 days. Supply food etc. You are not allowed to leave your homes. We do that in every area much like we did or do with a legionnaires outbreak then that is how we get rid of this. It has to transmit to stay alive and it will probably be transmitting currently in shops/pubs etc in these areas in local lockdowns

Like I said from the start, I don’t have any idea what they think it will achieve by stopping families meeting in a home. Stop the people who have it. We should have the testing capacity now to do that

 

I don't think you can get 100% compliance with a track and trace system though. You cant force people to tell you everyone they've been near - even if they actually know their details - or enforce 100% compliance of isolation within the parameters of freedom of information. Its unworkable, especially for large numbers where the number of people falling through the cracks would be more significant.

Given those natural limitations then you also have to stop the actual spread at source. Putting some limitations on peoples interactions with others is the only way to do that surely?

 

Allowing for a little variation in where they chase the hotspots from day to day (like introducing compulsory testing in food factories recently), the hit rate on UK testing has now been crudely flat for two months at 0.6% give or take a little (so rising cases has mainly just been rising testing and not a rise in prevalence). In that two months, daily new hospitalisations and deaths have both fallen 80-90% - all as we have continued relaxing lockdown rules in the main. Fewer and fewer people are getting ill. English hospitals reported only 2 deaths in the last 3 days. (There would be about 12 die from each of car accidents and suicides in 3 days).Though this is one of those figures that will likely get added to, but it means deaths In English hospitals in every age range have almost hit zero.

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&minPopulationFilter=1000000&time=2020-05-04..latest&country=~GBR&positiveTestRate=true&interval=smoothed&aligned=true&hideControls=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc

Http://covidtracker.uksouth.cloudapp.azure.com/

 

This bloody virus has a lot to answer for.

 

The second half of that is pretty interesting. The guys at 18 minutes makes my head hurt though!

 

I know this will come across as really lazy but could anyone provide a brief synopsis. I cant listen at themoment but it sounds very interesting

 

Cancel that. Link working now

 

I'd missed your reply previously but I think this is the most simple explanation for the death rate fall. Even if the rules have relaxed, people's attitudes haven't and if anything have become more cautious and thoughtful around people they consider to be higher risk. I'm not sure that is a soloution long terms but it makes sense currently

I know from my own situation that in the last couple of weeks I've almost returned to my normal level of socialising with people in my own age group or younger but I'm still limiting visits to my parents or older relatives. People are taking extra precautions if they themselves, or people that they know, are considered to be in a higher risk category without it necessary coming down to "rules"

I'm kinda hoping for something concrete that the virus is weakening but there very little scientifically that is coming out in that regard.

 

Everyone should give themselves a pat on the back.