Coronavirus

[LMcD]

I wonder what proportion of 'pensioners' have upgraded their smartphones (if they have them) in the past 5 years?

Apparently 79% of all UK adults have access to a smart phone, but the figure for those aged 65+ is only 40%.

[Dave2002]

Well I never!

https://bylinetimes.com/2020/04/22/p...titive-tender/

Clearly fake news, or is it a case of one of these - https://www.bing.com/images/search?q...mageBasicHover

[johnb]

Although I have a new smartphone I am still using my 6 yr old one for most purposes.

[Bryn]

Although I have a new smartphone I am still using my 6 yr old one for most purposes.

And that 6 yr old one is unlikely to be up to handling this new app. Your situation appears to basically duplicate mine.

[Dave2002]

Some bright spark had the idea of using smartphones as keys for cars. That'll work fine until the day when the battery in the phone runs down, and the key card or key fob has been left at home. Modern living!

[oddoneout]

I wonder what proportion of 'pensioners' have upgraded their smartphones (if they have them) in the past 5 years?

Even if cost isn't a bar, there will be the ingrained 'Is it necessary' mindset to such changes. If something still does what is wanted, and keeping up with trends isn't of interest, why bother spending to change. There is another issue as well, not confined to that generation, which is the environmental cost of changing phones.

[Dave2002]

The answer is you need an immunisation fraction of 1-1/R where R is the expected number of infections from any 1 individual - if R is very high then this approaches 1 ie 100% immunisation - if R = 3 then you need 66% - the maths is just based on the probability that an infected person will find a non-immunised person to infect

In the event that the R value drops to one, then that formula suggests that there is no need for immunisation at all, whereas if might still be a good idea to have a vaccine in order to depress the virus further. For R values less than one, the interpretation of that formula actually becomes meaningless, with negative values.

[Cockney Sparrow]

I'm going to look into the criteria of this new App. Can I rely on the 2 metre proximity criteria - what if it proves to be unreliable and it could be 4 metres? I presume that the 15 minute criteria should be reliable, as the timer function is inherent within the mobile system.

Per the Times today one in three people told to isolate will be a false positive but clinicians express they are ino unduly concerned " .....They are all still people who have been close to people with confirmed coronavirus, so their risk is still higher.”

I wonder if this is a scatter gun approach, pitching excess numbers into isolation whilst the numpties out there merrily carry on super spreading......

[Frances_iom]

For R values less than one, the interpretation of that formula actually becomes meaningless, with negative values.

with R less than 1 the virus dies out exponentially.

[Dave2002]

I wonder if this is a scatter gun approach, pitching excess numbers into isolation whilst the numpties out there merrily carry on super spreading......

I thnk that super spreaders do exist, though there are still questions about that. Do we now know - or is it merely hearsay - that most spread is by such super spreaders? I rather think not - but I'm only guessing. My guess is that transmission is now largely due to people with low levels of infections, or asymptomatic spreaders.

However, with around 6000 cases mentioned yesterday, if that trend continues at about that level (not increasing significantly) it would take around 20 years to get so-called herd immunity. A quick and dirty calculation suggests that to get the job done quickly (i.e. within a year or two) there would need to be around 100,000 cases per day, which is perhaps something I don't want to contemplate.

Even now there is still an enormous amount of confusion.

[Dave2002]

with R less than 1 the virus dies out exponentially.

Indeed - though with R close to 1, it still takes a long time, and as we have seen biology or other factors can intervene. The maths is only modelling - which is often a very good first cut at tackling a problem, but doesn't work if significant factors aren't included in the abstraction process, or assumptions are not met.

[Anastasius]

Underwhelmed is my first take. Loaded it up yesterday (Android). At home all day. This morning, early trip to the tip then to the garage to get petrol. Phone inside the car all the time. When I got back into the car after paying for the fuel, I noticed that I had some notifications. Although I didn't have my reading specs, habit made me drag the screen down to see amongst the notifications a heading - Exposure Notification. But when I went to try and read it, it promptly disappeared (no...not fat finger syndrome). Nowhere in the app can I call it back up which seems to me a design oversight.

[french frank]

I thnk that super spreaders do exist, though there are still questions about that.

There are various studies that speak of 'super spreader events' rather than individual 'superspreaders'. I took it to mean that there is little evidence that a super spreader is in some way biologically different from others, merely that their social behaviour results in the spread. So if one infected person goes into a pub and ten people develop symptoms, then ten people breathed in the virus, or at some point came in contact with it, touched a counter, picked up a glass and drank from it?

[Dave2002]

This is quite "fun" though deals specifically with England and BJ's team, I think. https://www.politico.eu/article/how-...e-has-changed/

I wonder if there are similar articles which have timelines for Scotland, Wales or Ireland.

[Dave2002]

There are various studies that speak of 'super spreader events' rather than individual 'superspreaders'. I took it to mean that there is little evidence that a super spreader is in some way biologically different from others, merely that their social behaviour results in the spread. So if one infected person goes into a pub and ten people develop symptoms, then ten people breathed in the virus, or at some point came in contact with it, touched a counter, picked up a glass and drank from it?

From some previous illnesses - going back a century or more - there does (arguably) seem to be evidence that some people are capable of infecting very many people, and at a significantly greater rate than most "normal" people. I'm not sure about the evidence within the coronavirus context.

Also, for historical "super spreaders", it doesn't look as though mechanisms were investigated very thoroughly, but investigations were rather more of the post hoc ergo propter hoc variety.

Events certainly seem to be one initiator of many infections, for example nightclubs and choirs. These have been well documented in the coronavirus context, though it's not certain whether those were "simply" due to many people meeting, or due to the presence of one or two "super spreader" individuals in those locations at those events.