Coronavirus

[Witton Park]

Interesting. I didn't watch the press conference, so may not be in the best place to comment here, but (that doesn't normally stop me)...

Could it be that the conversation went something like:
Scientists: You really will have to do some sort of lock-down
Politicians: OK we agree, but people won't believe us unless we scare them a bit. Can you show them that graph you showed us last week?
Scientists: But that's already out of date and it's not tracking any more
Politicians: That doesn't matter, no-one will look at the details. We just need a headline of 4000 a day, then we can justify the lock-down

I think it was March 15th Sage minutes (not Government) that talked of using shock or fear. It's been mentioned before on here.

It is a Sage tactic.

They recently highlighted socially shaming as acceptable and desirable.

But the buck stops with the Government.

I listened to Jenrick doing the rounds this morning. He was awful. He sounded like a robot, given a few pre-recorded answers to questions they would have liked to have been asked.

How about Liverpool Mr Jenrick, where cases were dropping a week befire they went in to Tier 3?

I'm sorry but that just isn't true, I don't know where you get that information from.

It's from the Governments own Covid data on their website now.

stoney silence.

Reality Noel - there will always be a small rump of the population who will not follow the law. They do their own thing.
Drink driving has not been eliminated despite the laws and checks against it and that it is extremely socially unacceptable.

By trying to manipulate data, scare the population, blame the population, they are turning more against what they want to achieve.

[Muddy Retriever]

Deaths doubled in a week.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...g23october2020

Where does it say that deaths have doubled in a week?

Of the deaths registered in Week 43, 978 mentioned “novel coronavirus (COVID-19)”, accounting for 9.1% of all deaths in England and Wales; this is an increase of 308 deaths compared with Week 42 (when there were 670 deaths involving COVID-19, accounting for 6.4% of all deaths).

I make that a 46% increase.

[Flem]

People under estimate exponential growth

Very often to a very large degree. Which, of course, was exactly what Patrick Vallance was trying to address in his press conference in September, when he used very simple (but reasonable) numbers to try to illustrate to the general public the possible consequences of exponential growth for Covid-19 cases and deaths.

So, not scaremongering, then. Just trying to improve people's understanding of accelerating growth.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2...ehind-covid-19

A spate of studies has shown that people who are susceptible to the exponential growth bias are less concerned about Covid-19’s spread, and less likely to endorse measures like social distancing, hand washing or mask wearing.

[...]

Surprisingly, a higher level of education does not prevent people from making these errors. Even mathematically trained science students can be vulnerable, says Daniela Sele, who researchs economic decision making at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. “It does help somewhat, but it doesn't preclude the bias,” she says.

This may be because they are relying on their intuition rather than deliberative thinking, so that even if they have learned about things like compound interest, they forget to apply them. To make matters worse, most people will confidently report understanding exponential growth but then still fall for the bias when asked to estimate things like compound interest. [my emphasis]

[..] has recently shown that small changes in framing can matter. Emphasising the short amount of time that it will take to reach a large number of cases, for instance – and the time that would be gained by social distancing measures – improves people’s understanding of accelerating growth, rather than simply stating the percentage increase each day.


https://www.pnas.org/content/117/28/16264

Particularly, those who have least knowledge about exponential growth and consistently apply linear thinking have particularly strong confidence in their erroneous forecasts

[Flem]

surely we do not want more than the NHS can reasonably cope with?

And one of the (many) problems we have is that there's obviously quite a delay between someone getting infected and either showing symptoms or testing positive, and their being admitted to hospital. So if you wait until case numbers are large before taking action then you've probably left it too late, because the pipeline has already been well stoked.

[Witton Park]

Action was taken in July. We hadn't even come out of lockdown measures properly.
It started with local lockdown in Leicester and we know that what followed where a range of local lockdowns that put 30% of the population in to some special measures.
We then had the Tier system announced in mid October. It became a bidding war as if they were going after city status or something.
Can we go in Tier 3 please Boris?

The Positive Case stats (people on here know my reservations on case numbers but let's treat them as a good measure) look like they probably peaked for England over a week ago and they were dropping in areas like Liverpool and Manchester before the Tier system was even put in place.
Notived my old town of Rossendale has started to drop as well.

Cases lead to infections lead to admissions and then deaths.

The current situation would suggest that without lockdown on Thursday, by the end of November the NHS in terms of Covid should be looking better.
In fact in Manchester and Liverpool they are probably already seeing that come through.

The NHS could even help itself, by reducing the number of people catching covid in hospital.

[Wheeze]

I cannot comprehend why NHS hospitals are not kept covid-free. Surely that's why the Nightingales were created? Anyone with covid goes there so we can keep the hospitals functioning normally. Staffing issues you say? That was all worked out during first wave. The vast majority of the trained up volunteer force for the London Nightingale were never mobilised. And if they get overwhelmed, we have over 100,000 regular and reserve troops in the army alone.

[molehill]

I'm with Wheeze on this, I automatically presumed that the obvious next step in the event of a second outbreak would be to utilize the nightingale hospitals for all covid cases. Try and keep cases out of the nhs hospitals, which seems logical to me, also the nightingale staff would specialize in one thing only with no distractions, surely a more efficient use of recourses?
It would mean patients travelling further etc. but that is a minor hurdle to overcome. They may still fill up this winter!

[Fellbeast]

I think the main problem with the nightingale hospitals is the lack of available staff to man them

[Dave_Mole]

I think the main problem with the nightingale hospitals is the lack of available staff to man them

we have over 100,000 regular and reserve troops in the army alone

a good reason to stay out of them

[molehill]

a good reason to stay out of them

Worried about matron being replaced by the RSM? Shouting "Present Arms" every morning when it is time for injections.

I'll get my coat