Coronavirus

[Bryn]

Presumably the garden/allotment will still be within limits so cabin fever may be avoided. No neighbourly chats though.

Depend how wide the allotment is. One is supposed to keep at least 2 metres from the boundary.

[Dave2002]

Very much to the point. Re the ridiculous bulk-buying of toilet tissue, what's wrong, when at home, of a bowl of warm soapy water and a 'facecloth', followed by a second, dry, facecloth for drying?

Apart from the obvious ....

We could go back to Roman times, and use a sponge on a stick.

[Pulcinella]

Apart from the obvious ....

We could go back to Roman times, and use a sponge on a stick.

Soaked in vinegar (was it white?).

[LMcD]

Very much to the point. Re the ridiculous bulk-buying of toilet tissue, what's wrong, when at home, of a bowl of warm soapy water and a 'facecloth', followed by a second, dry, facecloth for drying?

Perhaps those who are panicking when out shopping are simply following the example of the government who have very rapidly moved from a 'light-touch' monitoring of the virus to something more Draconian - just as I was wondering whether to feel proud about living in the only country in the world that had the right approach. I wonder whether Matt Hancock is trying to shield everybody else FROM we pesky 'older' folk rather than t'other way round.

[Bryn]

Apart from the obvious ....

We could go back to Roman times, and use a sponge on a stick.

If only I had a handy swan whose neck to use.

[ardcarp]

See latest Norway bulletin under Tourist Office. More drastic measures there than here.

[MrGongGong]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/15/epidemiologist-britain-herd-immunity-coronavirus-covid-19?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR0rzveR_scUcBHHWu0eHILObh_QLbYtvHbuaR_w1YzE4NmoMkPEabPeWFU

[ardcarp]

Gongers, you might like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whNICyl_et0

[MrGongGong]

Gongers, you might like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whNICyl_et0

Indeed

it's been doing the rounds a bit

Love a bit of Kurtag

[Simon B]

...basing any decision on simply age is facile.

On an individual basis, yes. On a population sample, no. Customising advice (or even enforced rules in the worst case) for each individual's circumstances is neither scientifically possible nor a sensible use of resources at this time.

Pragmatism demands that their duty is try to make the best of a bad job by targeting the predictor that gives the greatest benefit first. All available evidence currently has age as the massively strong predictor of outcome. It has way more predictive power than any other measure.

Who is more likely to develop complications ? A hale and hearty 70year old with no medical condition or a 30 year-old obese individual with hypertension and diabetes?

Ballpark figures point to the former. The data to properly estimate it is in the public domain.

It is still just a conjecture, but one hypothesis for which evidence is at least accumulating is that Cytokine Storm is associated with many bad outcomes. This (Cytokine Storm in response to COV-19) in turn appears well correlated with age, regardless of underlying health. Underlying health is then correlated with chances of withstanding this phenomenon. The inverse (unlikelihood of Cytokine Storm in response to COV-19 regardless of other factors except youth) is a possible explanation of the near-zero risk of bad outcomes in the youngest.

NB I'm categorically neither endorsing nor opposing what the govt is doing.

[LMcD]

On an individual basis, yes. On a population sample, no. Customising advice (or even enforced rules in the worst case) for each individual's circumstances is neither scientifically possible nor a sensible use of resources at this time.

Pragmatism demands that their duty is try to make the best of a bad job by targeting the predictor that gives the greatest benefit first. All available evidence currently has age as the massively strong predictor of outcome. It has way more predictive power than any other measure.



Ballpark figures point to the former. The data to properly estimate it is in the public domain; you could start with the Lancet paper linked by Bryn above.

It is still just a conjecture, but one hypothesis for which evidence is at least accumulating is that Cytokine Storm is associated with many bad outcomes. This (Cytokine Storm in response to COV-19) in turn appears well correlated with age, regardless of underlying health. Underlying health is then correlated with chances of withstanding this phenomenon. The inverse (unlikelihood of Cytokine Storm in response to COV-19 regardless of other factors except youth) is a possible explanation of the near-zero risk of bad outcomes in the youngest.

NB I'm categorically neither endorsing nor opposing what the govt is doing.

Does that mean you actually understand what they're doing? I'm not sure they do, and I'm damned sure I don't, and that goes for most of the people I've discussed this with recently.

[teamsaint]

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...NmoMkPEabPeWFU

And the government is planning to protect the most vulnerable, whilst keeping the NHS functioning.

[Simon B]

[/U][/B]

Does that mean you actually understand what they're doing? I'm not sure they do, and I'm damned sure I don't, and that goes for most of the people I've discussed this with recently.

If the objective is to quickly bring about the largest minimisation of a) The absolute number of people dying as a direct result of COV-19 and b) Reduce the number of people ill enough to need (if any capacity is left to provide it) invasive treatment in hospital at any one time whilst not bringing the entire country to a standstill then: At the very least the proposal is logical, yes.

If the proposed isolation of what is clearly and by a wide-margin the most at-risk group results in virtually no members of that group contracting the virus then surely it is clear that this achieves the above goal?

How practical it is and whether it'll really work is clearly a different question.


Equally, how practical and effective is the total shutdown in many other nations already enacted? It seems very likely to stop the spread in the short term, thus eventually reducing the overwhelming we see of the Italian healthcare system.

Then what? There's only so long this can be kept up. Anytime soon you a) Still don't have a vaccine b) Still don't have any antiviral drugs or superior treatment regime c) Virtually nobody has acquired natural immunity.

Unless you have reduced cases to actually 0 at this point, why won't it just start up again and back around the loop we go?

China may now provide an answer as they appear to be at that point. In their case it will surely involve the sort of draconian measures that only a command and control state with a compliant population can institute.

Disclaimers: My medical expertise is zero. Statistical expertise - a lot less than zero, in an entirely unrelated hard-science field. Interest: My mother is 86, housebound and dependent on me. I fairly recently watched my father die (i.e. drown) slowly of bacterial pneumonia secondary to cancer. I'd rather not repeat that experience anytime soon, particularly amid scenes like a zombie apocalypse, if rationality and evidence based decision making can reduce the probability.

[Simon B]

The thrust of a graph like this can surely be interpreted well by almost everyone:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic#/media/File:Illustration_of_SARS-COV-2_Case_Fatality_Rate_200228_01-1.png

That's not a small correlation with age. It's a massive one.

[Sir Velo]

I look forward to seeing how these measures will be enforced. Somehow I cannot see 8-10 million people agreeing to be effectively imprisoned in their own homes indefinitely. The sight of militant geriatrics desperate for fresh air and exercise being frogmarched back to their own homes will surely be one to behold!