Do people actually realise how few are dying from coronavirus now?

[Mrschickpeabody]

It’s all still doom and gloom on the news as normal regarding coronavirus. Loads about cases going up, local lockdowns, negativity regarding schools going back but nothing about the fact that hardly anyone is actually dying from coronavirus or being admitted to hospital. Can we not hear about positive things for once?

We can't get the economy going with this virus running , tough. More haste less speed, you will fuck things up a lot worse if you pretend there is no longer a problem

[quote BostonCalling]@midgebabe

We don’t have a daily case count for cancer, heart disease, suicide or any other cause of death. The scaremongering about covid cases is completely unhelpful when have have very few in hospital and very few deaths.

We need to be putting all our energy now into the economy and getting education and treatments for other conditions back up and running.

Our young people have suffered enough and we cannot afford for them to lose anymore of their life chances.[/quote]
Cancer, heart disease, suicide etc isn't contagious and doesn't grow exponentially.

We NEED detailed information so that people can make informed decisions, especially the millions of vulnerable who have to go to work, take their kids to school, look after family members etc.

It's only by knowing local numbers that the vulnerable can decide whether it's relatively safe to live normally in their area or whether they need to lock themselves in, with the knock on effects on their workplace, children's education, etc etc.

Yes, when do we start the influenza lockdown? Flu kills more according to the figures.

@Susan1961

Yes, when do we start the influenza lockdown? Flu kills more according to the figures.

What figures?

@Susan1961

Yes, when do we start the influenza lockdown? Flu kills more according to the figures.

Oh for God's sake. Covid death numbers are low BECAUSE OF the lockdown, ongoing restrictions etc. If we'd carried on ignoring it, we'd probably have hundreds of thousands of deaths. It was growing exponentially, out of control. The restrictions are keeping a lid on it.

Back in March, schools and hospital wards were closed due to staff shortages (staff with covid who were unlikely to die but obviously had to be off work).

@Alex50

You make valid points but there are some that will only focus on the very worse possible and ignore the actual possibility of death, actual numbers of people who have fully recovered and yet recount the one or two high profile who have longer term effects. Some people do look for the negatives and the worse case scenario in Covid - perhaps it's their nature to be negative/glass half full type/extremely fearful who knows.

I would just let them get on with it, no amount of facts/statistics and actual research detail will stop some people from thinking in terms of 'lots of children in ICU'. 'mass deaths', 'hundreds of people with long term health destroyed' (these things have been said on here recently) etc.... it's their mindset

[quote JulieHere]@Alex50

You make valid points but there are some that will only focus on the very worse possible and ignore the actual possibility of death, actual numbers of people who have fully recovered and yet recount the one or two high profile who have longer term effects. Some people do look for the negatives and the worse case scenario in Covid - perhaps it's their nature to be negative/glass half full type/extremely fearful who knows.

I would just let them get on with it, no amount of facts/statistics and actual research detail will stop some people from thinking in terms of 'lots of children in ICU'. 'mass deaths', 'hundreds of people with long term health destroyed' (these things have been said on here recently) etc.... it's their mindset[/quote]
That was the real situation back in March before the lockdown though, wasn't it? Who can guarantee we won't be back there again within weeks if too many people ignore social distancing and other precautions? It's the nature of exponential growth -

Exponential growth. Every so many days, cases double. The higher the transmission rate, the less days to double. Before lockdown, it was about every 3 days. It's much slower now, but if you don't stop those little numbers, they become bigger numbers pretty quickly.

1
2
4
8
16 Why are we worrying about this, more chance of getting struck by lightning
32
64
128
256
512
1024 I can't believe people are making this much fuss over such a tiny percentage of the population
2048
4096
8192
16384
32768 - stop me when you think we have a problem
65536
131072 - getting some pretty big jumps here, aren't we?
262144
524288 - maybe we should have done something a bit earlier....
1048576
2097152

We don’t have a daily case count for cancer, heart disease, suicide or any other cause of death.

We did during the biggest Ebola epidemic.
We have when there are large measles outbreaks, particularly with deaths.
We do when there are meningitis outbreaks.
Remember all the discussions about Zika?

What do they have in common? Infectiousness. And death tolls.

But this is bigger and it's affecting the West too.

To be fair there are many scientists who suggest the massive rise of deaths won’t halpen because the most at risk of dying (not infection) have already died

To be fair there are many scientists who suggest the massive rise of deaths won’t halpen because the most at risk of dying (not infection) have already died

Who are these “many scientists”?

Given that 95% of the 2.1 million “shielded” people have said they have fully or mostly adhered to the shielding guidelines, and ‘only’ 30% of care homes have had outbreaks (I say ‘only’ as it’s a huge number but still a minority), the idea that those most at risk of dying have largely already died is ridiculous.

There is no sign that there will an exponential growth in Covid death rates - or hospital admissions

The problem also is that for many people the only acceptable number for cases, hospital admissions and deaths is zero. They will never be satisfied enough until the virus has been eliminated - by which time we’ll all be skint, unemployed, homeless and suffering from a whole host of other physical and mental ailments...

But ditch a lot of the rest of the quite ridiculous rules like no getting changed for PE at school

Yes I agree. Plus DS came back from school on his first day with a bag of work books that nearly broke my arm all because they don't want them in school where they could have the virus on them..so it's ok to bring it back home with him then apparently

@Vinoonasunnyday

To be fair there are many scientists who suggest the massive rise of deaths won’t halpen because the most at risk of dying (not infection) have already died

How do you work out that "most" people at risk have already died?

There are millions of vulnerable and "only" 45k deaths so far.

There are parts of the UK which havn't really had any outbreak at all, so those "at risk" in those areas havn't been exposed to it YET - there is virtually no herd immunity in those areas, so it's highly likely to spread very rapidly if it gets a hold in those areas.

@AlecTrevelyan006

There is no sign that there will an exponential growth in Covid death rates - or hospital admissions

The problem also is that for many people the only acceptable number for cases, hospital admissions and deaths is zero. They will never be satisfied enough until the virus has been eliminated - by which time we’ll all be skint, unemployed, homeless and suffering from a whole host of other physical and mental ailments...

There was "no sign" back in January either and then it's growth caught everyone by surprise with how quickly it was spreading, not just in the UK but in other European countries too. That's what exponential growth does.

@AlecTrevelyan006

There is no sign that there will an exponential growth in Covid death rates - or hospital admissions

The problem also is that for many people the only acceptable number for cases, hospital admissions and deaths is zero. They will never be satisfied enough until the virus has been eliminated - by which time we’ll all be skint, unemployed, homeless and suffering from a whole host of other physical and mental ailments...

There's no sign????

We know as a scientific fact that Covid can spread exponentially.

Just because it isn't happening today doesn't mean in six weeks it won't be.

There's no sign the pear on the table is mouldy... yet.

Countries have been doing their best to keep their R at or below 1.
If they can maintain it, there won't be exponential growths.
But... with no measures in place, it will go up and the current average 8 deaths per day in the UK will go up. Fast.

your eloquence (bollocks bollocks bollocks etc) is a wonder to witness. Might you at some point manage to put a coherent argument together? Or are you going to be channelling Ade Edmondson circa 1984 for much longer?

🤣🤣🤣

Yes, COVID can spread exponentially at the beginning of the pandemic but the big question is how soon it runs out of fuel and hits the natural ceiling.

The Manaus case (no lockdown, limited social distancing) definitely offers food for thought:

Manaus was once a symbol of the threat that the virus might pose to the developing world. Drone images of mass graves caused alarm around the world four months ago as Covid-19 ravaged the city and burials were running at five times their normal rate.

Yet last week, despite no formal lockdown having been imposed, and tests suggesting only 20 per cent of its population has been infected by the disease, “excess deaths” were listed at close to zero. The city’s field hospital has been closed for a lack of patients.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/manaus-amazonian-city-with-no-lockdown-may-have-reached-herd-immunity-hmvnzm9xh

Clearly what happened in Manaus is very tragic (Brazil has never been able to flatten the curve so its health system got overwhelmed very quickly). However we should absolutely try and understand what has slowed down the pandemic. One thing is pretty certain - it was not the lockdown.

@ChanceEncounter - I said there is no sign of exponential growth in Covid death rates and I stand by that

Tbh it matters not if cases rise exponentially so long as hospital admissions and deaths don’t follow suit

[quote AlecTrevelyan006]@ChanceEncounter - I said there is no sign of exponential growth in Covid death rates and I stand by that

Tbh it matters not if cases rise exponentially so long as hospital admissions and deaths don’t follow suit[/quote]
As long as admissions, deaths and long term symptoms don't follow suit.

USA reporting long covid in children now, similar percentages to adults.

@ChanceEncounter do you have a link for long term Covid in children?

Not sure I trust info from someone who thinks Portugal is an island to be honest

[quote AlecTrevelyan006]@ChanceEncounter - I said there is no sign of exponential growth in Covid death rates and I stand by that

Tbh it matters not if cases rise exponentially so long as hospital admissions and deaths don’t follow suit[/quote]
It matters because we know that there's a period of 2 weeks between detection and death.

You shouldn't wait for deaths to rise exponentially, but impose control measures before it.

The issue is that the case death rate is much lower now in most European countries, due to better testing coverage and improved treatment strategies.
The main question is how much should we let cases rise before it reaches a number that will end up with unacceptable deaths?
Not sure we know at the moment.
And what will be the acceptable number of deaths?

Not to hand.

It was a news article I read, said 8-9% symptoms over three weeks iirc.

They are seeing a much larger proportion of new cases are now in younger people, which is same as Europe.

@SnugglySnerd

Not sure I trust info from someone who thinks Portugal is an island to be honest

As far as we are concerned, it would be worse if thought as part of Spain.