IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 17, 2020 10:54:41 GMT
Others see lockdown as just delaying the inevitable whilst causing more harm in the process (not saying they are right, am giving the argument). On the civil liberties front, it would seem that a public health campaign can reduce R below 1 without making it a criminal matter (Sweden has an estimated R of 0.7 last I read). We have learnt that people change their behaviour without needing to infringe civil liberties, and indeed the adherence to social distancing measures has been much higher and enduring than was estimated beforehand. And if you are elderly, the risk is a 1000 fold more for you than others. At what point do you say you can make an informed choice yourself about harms? Many harms we allow people to pursue could conceivably but very rarely cause harm to others. We are entering a stage where, perhaps understandably, half the population is in a state of fear and anxiety and doesn't want to restart life (indeed argues for even more restrictions) until the risk is zero (which it never will be). That will become an increasing problem and we have to understand and deal with it. As ever there is a tension between managing risk and abolishing risk.
I certainly dont envy the government and the decisions they have to make. My main concern is that this Virus is starting to look a lot more serious than initially thought and has unknown long term consequences. Personally I am going to avoid it at all costs until more is known about it, if I thought catching it just meant a 1 in 100 I would just get on with life and take the risk.
For most people it is well under 1 in 100, and probably under 1 in 1000
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 17, 2020 10:52:08 GMT
Perhaps those who catch this virus should be allowed to sue those who broke lockdown and those who will not follow basic instructions in the name of "civil rights" (rather than civic responsabilities), class action anyone? If they just increased the fines to a sensible level (£1,000 should be a suitable deterrent) it would have the desired effect. Perhaps we can sue those who went to the pub because there is a risk that people who go to the pub will drink and drive (or beat their partner etc)? Or sue people who swim in the sea, or go caving, or any other risky hobby, for endangering the lives of rescuers? Or sue those selling unhealthy food for endangering the health of those eating too much of the product? Or sue parent who smoke at home for the damage they cause to their children? Or sue those who didn't wash their hands during the flu season, given that handwashing is hands-down the most evidence based intervention we have against infection (pun intended) Etc. I think people put too much store on the very small number of "lockdown breakers". The policy has been FAR more widely adhered to than any policy maker expected.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 17, 2020 9:45:15 GMT
Going into a care home, or just getting old are both a one way ticket, and once we hit a big age and need looking after every year is a bonus. My mother in law wasn't in a care home and I wonder if she would have been happier at the end if she had been. She missed her husband and seemed rather lonely, although she did have a brother locally and some friends, we did what we could from a few hundred miles away (she refused to leave her house and come to us). Growing old is a s**tshow. Still, its better than the other alternative. And eternity lasts a long time - especially towards the end
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 17, 2020 9:44:15 GMT
Some people seem to see the lockdown as an infringement of their civil liberties. Maybe you could argue that people should have the right to risk getting the virus if it only affected them but one person could go on to infect others some of who might either die or have life altering damage.
Others see lockdown as just delaying the inevitable whilst causing more harm in the process (not saying they are right, am giving the argument). On the civil liberties front, it would seem that a public health campaign can reduce R below 1 without making it a criminal matter (Sweden has an estimated R of 0.7 last I read). We have learnt that people change their behaviour without needing to infringe civil liberties, and indeed the adherence to social distancing measures has been much higher and enduring than was estimated beforehand. And if you are elderly, the risk is a 1000 fold more for you than others. At what point do you say you can make an informed choice yourself about harms? Many harms we allow people to pursue could conceivably but very rarely cause harm to others. We are entering a stage where, perhaps understandably, half the population is in a state of fear and anxiety and doesn't want to restart life (indeed argues for even more restrictions) until the risk is zero (which it never will be). That will become an increasing problem and we have to understand and deal with it. As ever there is a tension between managing risk and abolishing risk.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 15, 2020 14:52:30 GMT
This shows the Government has not been following the science closely since Day 1, wasted too much time making decisions. Period. The results, many deaths, more confusion & huge economic damage. Some might also question the modelling the government has relied on.
Telegraph has an article written about a recording they've obtained from Professor Medley (according to the Telegraph "oversees mathematical modelling for the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies") giving an online lecture he gave to around 100 Cambridge University students on Monday.
"At the moment, we're having to do it by making educated guesswork, and intuition and experience, rather than being able to do it in some kind of semi-formal way,” Prof Medley told his audience.
“But a half good answer given before the decision is made, is infinitely more useful than a perfect answer given after the decision is made.”
but is half a bad answer infinitely less useful?
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 15, 2020 9:52:44 GMT
Lots of interesting figures, e.g. R rate in London shown as 0.4 (0.36-0.43, 95% CI). Haven't read yet how they determined this figure (I'd guess modelling not measurement).
Also, IFR (Infection Fatality Ratio): rises with age, e.g. 0.018% for ages 25-44 but 16% (!) for ages 75+.
i.e. nearly 1000 times more fatal in the older age group. Which is why shielding the elderly and sick was indeed the right priority that we and others got so badly wrong. We spent tons of money on intensive care beds due to doomsday forecasts that we needed 10 fold or more higher ITU provision, when we should have gone all in on protecting the elderly - on real evidence on relative mortality that was available at the time. The elderly don't survive ITU, which is a highly invasive treatment, so usually aren't admitted - ITU beds are predominantly for the younger ages. Instead the priority HAD to be stopping the elderly getting the infection. Indeed that was rightly the stated priority prior to the U-turn after the (flawed) Imperial paper. History will tell us the outcome of having lost sight of this fundamental fact about mortality rates from SARS-CoV-2.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 14, 2020 18:32:14 GMT
There is no such thing as "the" science. It's convenient both for the government and for the government's opponents to say that there is.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 14, 2020 14:39:35 GMT
IF the elderly and vulnerable can be properly shielded, and the health service not over run, then mortality will be/would have been low - that's the theory anyway. I agree but the reality is that they can't - just look at the situation across Europe and North America. There's nothing I want more than to shield/protect the vulnerable and allow elements of society to get back to near normality (whatever that is). People want lots of alternative realities - that we could track and trace like South Korea (without having the government look into your bank accounts, publish your details publicly, and trace you by CCTV etc like they do in South Korea), that we were geographically isolated from the rest of the world so had very few cases to deal with (like New Zealand), that we could forcibly isolate all infected arrivals or locals in rudimentary barracks (like Kerala, Hong Kong), that we were't one of the most busy international hubs in the world receiving cases from the major Asian & European outbreaks before we quite knew what had hit us, that locking down a week earlier somehow solves the problem (see our neighbour Belgium, that locked down early and has higher deaths per capita, and also see what happens when you release lockdown). We had our own style outbreak, with multiple seeds that soon far exceeded our track and trace capacities, without a culture that would allow Asian style intrusions, close to the epicentre and a major international hub - but the one thing we could have done is ruthlessly protect our care homes and other vulnerable groups. We didn't. In my alternative reality we did, and our death rates were halved. I agree everywhere in Europe has failed here - but protecting the vulnerable WAS our declared strategy (not so called "herd immunity") so we should have at least done that. As it was we didn't do one thing or the other, and are looked at with disbelief by the rest of the world. This excellent piece by Sir Lawrence Freedman looks in depth at what was known and why we ended up where we did - without a trace of hindsight anywhere - it is based on contemporaneous documents.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 14, 2020 11:42:59 GMT
IF the elderly and vulnerable can be properly shielded, and the health service not over run, then mortality will be/would have been low - that's the theory anyway. How old is 'elderly'? Outside those already in hospitals and care homes, there's the question of whether they want to be "properly shielded" if that came down to them being expected to stay indoors for months longer. Which is where the whole debate on voluntary versus enforced shielding/lockdown comes in. Can people be allowed to make their own decision on risks to themselves (assuming they aren't notably harming others)?
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 14, 2020 11:20:01 GMT
Median IFR from here is 0.63%. UK population 66mil, herd immunity low threshold at 60%, therefore mortality 250,000. World population 7.8billion, therefore mortality 29.5million. It's not rocket science. Nor is it scare tactics, it's simply reality. But those numbers also assume no improvement in our ability to treat the disease. And that you infect everyone equally - most of that 0.63% is in the old and sick, and if you protect them, then overall IFR is much lower.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 14, 2020 11:17:43 GMT
Look, neither of the two differing strategies, that of letting the virus spread and accepting the accompanying mortality, and attempting to eliminate (as distinct from eradicate) the virus, are wrong. The former is not psychopathic or callous and the latter does not destroy the economy. But, if we're going to let the virus spread then we have to accept very high mortality figures.Median IFR from here is 0.63%. UK population 66mil, herd immunity low threshold at 60%, therefore mortality 250,000. World population 7.8billion, therefore mortality 29.5million. It's not rocket science. Nor is it scare tactics, it's simply reality. IF the elderly and vulnerable can be properly shielded, and the health service not over run, then mortality will be/would have been low - that's the theory anyway.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 14, 2020 9:21:32 GMT
dan1 A number of the charts I've seen used in the UK daily press conferences compare deaths across countries using a start point of the date 50 deaths were passed.
Worldometers shows the UK passed 50 deaths on Mar 16, when 65 deaths were recorded. For Sweden it was Mar 25, 62 deaths. Hence, Sweden could be said to be running 9 days behind the UK.
UK on May 4 had a total of 28,734 deaths. Wikipedia lists UK population as 66.02m, Sweden's as 10.33m, giving UK:Sweden ratio of 6.391:1. With that ratio and Sweden running 9 days behind the UK, we might expect 28734/6.391, i.e. 4496 deaths in Sweden by May 13, but we see 'only' 3496. Sweden appears to be doing better than the UK.
If (and that's a massive if) Sweden comes out of this better than the UK, there are going to be a huge number of questions asked here.
One would hope that when the dust settles there will be a level headed look at all the statistics to see what lessons can be learned for the greater good.
I think it was previously pointed out that a disproportionate number of Swedish people live alone, which helps.
Did you say - "level headed"?!
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 14, 2020 9:20:51 GMT
dan1 A number of the charts I've seen used in the UK daily press conferences compare deaths across countries using a start point of the date 50 deaths were passed.
Worldometers shows the UK passed 50 deaths on Mar 16, when 65 deaths were recorded. For Sweden it was Mar 25, 62 deaths. Hence, Sweden could be said to be running 9 days behind the UK.
UK on May 4 had a total of 28,734 deaths. Wikipedia lists UK population as 66.02m, Sweden's as 10.33m, giving UK:Sweden ratio of 6.391:1. With that ratio and Sweden running 9 days behind the UK, we might expect 28734/6.391, i.e. 4496 deaths in Sweden by May 13, but we see 'only' 3496. Sweden appears to be doing better than the UK.
If (and that's a massive if) Sweden comes out of this better than the UK, there are going to be a huge number of questions asked here.
The Swedes predict that everyone will come out about the same in the end, unless they maintain lockdown until there is a vaccine, which they maintain you can't in a Western democracy. i.e. as soon as countries lift lockdowns, there will be second, third waves etc. You can spread it out and delay further via track and trace, but it will still keep coming back if people aren't immune. The gamble we and other European countries are taking is that there will be a vaccine and we can keep infection rates sufficiently low until then. The gamble also depended on protecting the elderly and we failed that - instead we preferentially protected the young who didn't need so much protection - so death rates are higher than they might otherwise have been.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 13, 2020 21:20:41 GMT
<snip> In reality, the public finances are screwed, the new normal will be debt levels close to Japan, the pound will devalue, that will import inflation, and we will inflate the debts away over 20-30 years. As the £ devaluing (further) is one of my least favourite things..... Whilst that logic seems fair, doesn't it also depend on what everyone else is doing? The Eurozone and US are also going to be incurring huge debts that they'd perhaps like to inflate away, but we can't all have a devalued currency. Is there a reason you think the UK will do notably worse than everyone else?Above said, I'm not saying it won't. We still have the culmination of the Brexit talks to add a layer of delight to the situation too. I perhaps see that more as the differentiator as to whether GBP will strengthen or weaken. It seems at least a possibility to me that the powers that be might try to find a smoother path through those waters, given the backdrop. Though, we've already seen "we'll reject extensions even if EU ask for it" type talk, so only a slim chance it seems. edit: I forgot the other major factor. GBP's fate seems inextricably tied to the stock market. When we hit the recent bottom, we also hit GBPUSD 1.15. If, as the world and his dog believe, we are going to see further lows, then IMV we will almost certainly see Sterling plummet again. edit2: deposits on Revolut -> exchange currency -> send to Starling History, dear boy, history. Well, that and our huge current account deficit, and Brexit. I've even put a small amount in crypto in case you are right and everyone in the world devalues at the same time. Gold would be the other option, but I just can't seem to bring myself to do it.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on May 13, 2020 21:17:09 GMT
<snip> In reality, the public finances are screwed, the new normal will be debt levels close to Japan, the pound will devalue, that will import inflation, and we will inflate the debts away over 20-30 years. As the £ devaluing (further) is one of my least favourite things..... Whilst that logic seems fair, doesn't it also depend on what everyone else is doing? The Eurozone and US are also going to be incurring huge debts that they'd perhaps like to inflate away, but we can't all have a devalued currency. Is there a reason you think the UK will do notably worse than everyone else? Above said, I'm not saying it won't. We still have the culmination of the Brexit talks to add a layer of delight to the situation too. I perhaps see that more as the differentiator as to whether GBP will strengthen or weaken. It seems at least a possibility to me that the powers that be might try to find a smoother path through those waters, given the backdrop. Though, we've already seen "we'll reject extensions even if EU ask for it" type talk, so only a slim chance it seems. edit: I forgot the other major factor. GBP's fate seems inextricably tied to the stock market. When we hit the recent bottom, we also hit GBPUSD 1.15. If, as the world and his dog believe, we are going to see further lows, then IMV we will almost certainly see Sterling plummet again. edit2: deposits on Revolut -> exchange currency -> send to Starling I have done a lot of that! Only works for Euros unfortunately. So Swiss Francs, Yen and Aussie Dollars are kept on Revolut, which leaves me sightly uneasy given lack of FSCS. Anyone have a recommendation for a cheap and convenient foreign currency account with FSCS?
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