I'm so angry...

[MaryShelley1818]

We are in an area with local restrictions so high transmission rates in the North East of England.

Someone I know had her 40th at the weekend and photos on FB of her having a party in a pub, cake presents, her and kids, her parents, her sister who works at a local University in a very high position, and about 4-5 friends. No Social Distancing, drinking, cuddling, shots, photos.
How are people just carrying on as normal??!! How can you be so bloody thick as to post all the photos on FB. Am I missing something?? I'm furious.

We've followed every single rule but seems I'm in the minority and the longer people just do whatever they want for, the longer I'll have to go without seeing my friends and family.

@LangClegsInSpace

Dr Mike Ryan in the most recent WHO press conference on why Africa appears to be doing surprisingly well:

There are many other reasons but I think I would point you back to some of the positive reasons. I remember again speaking with Chikwe and others during the week and people were asking, in terms of Africa's first reaction how did you manage to keep a lid on this?

I think Chikwe said, we just treated this like any other outbreak, we went after the virus, we investigated, we detected the cases, we identified the contacts, we isolated the cases, we asked the contacts to stay at home, we tracked and traced because we've had lassa here, we've had cholera here, we've had monkey pox here, we've been doing this for years and years and years and years.

What it probably demonstrates is that in many countries in Africa there is a very well-practised, well-trained core of public health people. It may not be a huge army of people but if we take polio eradication, something again which in Africa has generated huge numbers of individuals who know how to investigate cases, they know how to respond to clusters of disease.

So paradoxically countries in Africa may actually be well ahead of countries in the rest of the world in terms of their instinctive response to how to deal with an epidemic and countries in the industrialised west and north may have lost that muscle memory.

That all makes sense. We seem eons behind them in reality in many ways.

I know this is one of the reasons most given for South Koreas control of the situation in the early days. (I chose to ignore the intrusiveness on privacy and such issues, and just focus on their immediate response and actions in setting up tracing centres and suchm mainly so I manage a post thats not full of fucking doom. Today has not bee a good day)

If it was a recent sage thing you read then you probably didn't misread, they probably reframed what was said.

It does take time and effort and money to do right but when you look at the alternative it's an absolute bargain.

I think the problem with our government is basically arrogance. We had Jenny Harries saying in March that we didn't need to follow WHO advice because it was for poor countries. We've seen time and again throughout this that our government likes to try and reinvent things from scratch - big, centralised, grand gestures - 'world beating' systems, 'moonshots' etc. when we've got so much local expertise and resources going to waste, e.g. LA public health departments, smaller labs that could test locally.

Sometimes I suspect Boris is trying to run this pandemic like it's the London Olympics - it's all about the big, splashy display.

But it [lockdown] was only ever sold as a temporary measure, to get things under control, flatten the curve and so on.

No it was not. Right from the start we were told this could go on months, years even, with a possibility of rolling lockdowns. We have been told this right from the very first daily briefings

Lockdown (or semi Lockdown) as a way of life, lasting potentially years is a totally different proposition - and not one that people thought they were signing up to in March.

In March this is exactly what we were told. I do wonder ig anyone actually listened to what was being said

We are in a different position now

Sadly we are not. The infections, hospitalisations and deaths are rising again.

*We are in a different position now

Sadly we are not. The infections, hospitalisations and deaths are rising again.*

The message repeatedly given where I live is that it is not the same position as March but we need to obviously stop it getting that way. We are in a different position to 100000 cases a day.

In March this is exactly what we were told. I do wonder ig anyone actually listened to what was being said

We really weren’t. We were flattening the curve. Do post material that suggests we were in this for years (if you can find it, lol)

We are not. The infections, hospitalisations and deaths are rising again.

Death rates/hospitalisations are not rising in line with case numbers and that is the case across all of Europe, including countries that have been rising a lot longer than the U.K.

I’m in Ireland. Our CMO has come out and said that FR among over 65s has dropped from 20% in April to 5% now. Our numbers have been rising since end of July before you pull out the ‘lag’ card.

But I meant this more generally as well. We know that shopping (with SD and masks) is relatively low risk. Crèches/nurseries have been back for months without much incident. Outdoors is relatively safe, particularly with SD.

Our understanding has developed significantly since the ‘rabbit in the headlights’ moment in March. How silly to suggest it hasn’t.

I think when you are in certain professions eg teaching , nursing etc where social distancing can't happen , You have a different attitude. If I can cuddle a stranger I can cuddle my sister not saying it's right btw but a balance has to be sought. Life does have to go on mental health is equally important.

I do remember a lot of noise about possible intermittent lockdowns before the first one. Not sure if that was official or not though. Quite sure after this all that was repeated was that it was to flatten the curve, would be short term, and that we would get only one shot at it. The one shot at it is something I heard repeatedly so know that was defnitely said and not misremembered. It doesn't really mesh with multiple lockdowns..but as I said, the multiple thing was mentioned at some early stage, though quite where/when I am not sure.

NRatched really appreciated your multiple 😬 contributions which are very interesting. So much recognisable truth in how people have moved from 'then' up to 'now'. Hope you get some sleep!
LangClegsInSpace yes Africa is encouraging and it is no bad thing for us to see a strategy that clearly appears to be working - hopefully strengthens the case to prioritise fixing our own (although the 'excel spreadsheet' story is not encouraging). Having had a career in business tech there are no words to describe my own opinion of the governments arrogance to procurement, specification and contracts - but I absolutely hope they all rot in hell.

Ive found this thread very useful to help myself understand more and challenge my own thinking. Knowledge is power and all that when I imagine we are all feeling a bit powerless. Its hard not to be despondent at the moment. We can at least be grateful that the virus is not worse, and we have at least bought us some time to understand it more, we are presumably closer to a vaccine (although that is not the only solution). Will be interesting to see what the First Minister has to say this aft.

@annabel85 are universities and offices open where you are? I work for a uni in Scotland and all teaching is online, plus the vast majority of us staff are wfh.

Currently, yes, and it's a high risk area in England. I've seen this morning some universities in England are starting to go online but Covid is ripping through universities and the halls across the north in particular.

I'm currently working from home most of the time but the office is open and people are encouraged to go in (although numbers are restricted).

@BikeTyson

I know, but the problem is the household restrictions are brought in to stop people taking the piss (house parties and the like) when cases start getting out of hand, rather than designed to stop someone going to see their Mum.

That’s my point. If the problem is illegal raves and house parties then focus on policing them, rather than imposing ever more draconian rules on everyone. If the problem with pubs is those having illegal lock ins and not following precautions then focus on them, not shut down the entire hospitality sector. As you say, those who didn’t give a shit before don’t give a shit now, and the goodwill of people who do give a shit is fading fast. If it’s illegal to sit in a friend’s garden then it’s a short step to say, fuck it, we’ll sit inside. And then it’s a short step to 3 friends sitting inside, then 4. The local lockdown rules are setting people up to fail, and then we get blamed.

I agree. I've said many times the key is enforcement. And when I say enforcement I don't mean for really petty things but for any big gatherings and blatant piss taking. But if people think they'll get away with doing what they want then they will.

That pub (OP reference) should be closed down and the people in that group should all be fined.

[quote annabel85]@annabel85 are universities and offices open where you are? I work for a uni in Scotland and all teaching is online, plus the vast majority of us staff are wfh.

Currently, yes, and it's a high risk area in England. I've seen this morning some universities in England are starting to go online but Covid is ripping through universities and the halls across the north in particular.

I'm currently working from home most of the time but the office is open and people are encouraged to go in (although numbers are restricted).[/quote]
Ah it’s nice to hear of a bit of semi-normality! I’d love to be back in the office

@LangClegsInSpace

“We've seen time and again throughout this that our government likes to try and reinvent things from scratch - big, centralised, grand gestures - 'world beating' systems, 'moonshots' etc. when we've got so much local expertise and resources going to waste, e.g. LA public health departments, smaller labs that could test locally.

Sometimes I suspect Boris is trying to run this pandemic like it's the London Olympics - it's all about the big, splashy display.”

I completely agree with this.

The Government are obsessed by spin and PR and catchphrases rather than just explaining things clearly and logically.

They obviously think this is what we want to hear. They couldn’t be more wrong in my case anyway.

www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/

This has been shared a good bit. Long but interesting.

It would suggest that our approach to T&T is flawed anyway.

I read an interesting article (which, annoyingly, I now can’t find) about the fact that covid spread is clumpy, in that most people don’t pass it to anyone but a small number pass it to loads of people - so the average giving the r number isn’t necessarily that helpful. It argued we should be focusing harder on backwards contact tracing than forwards - ie focus on finding where that infected person became infected, because the chances are others will have become infected at the same time/place. But our focus seems to be forward tracing - ie finding and isolating those who that infected person may (but probably won’t) infect and that’s much less effective.

That was it Keating what a coincidence!

I’ve probably summarised it totally wrong

@LangClegsInSpace

“Scrap serco and that dildo woman.“

🤣

Agree this has been a disaster.

That’s what I just posted

It’s very interesting. The idea of super spreaders fascinates me. What makes a person a super spreader?

That is a hugely interesting article indeed. I found Scotlands jump from very few cases to large numbers in such a short space of time quite odd. There could be many reasons for that, but the 'few superspreaders' along with some bad luck seem as good an explanation as any.

Thinking about it, could also potentially explain (well as it says) why some countries (or areas as it were) seemed hit horrendously in the early stages, where others escaped it totally when I kind of doubt that if it was so widespread in Wuhan quite early on, the majority of 'imported' cases all seemed to go to largely the same areas? And stay there for so long too, London suffering so badly while much of the UK was unscathed always confused me a bit as I know loads who travel very long distances, some on a daily basis to work in London. So you would think, once London was hit, IF it was spread even kind of equally by each person it would have worked its way into many other areas quickly. I live in the North east, and while at the peak there were a fair few ill, it was nowhere near on the scale of London. Again, there could be other reasons for it, or a combo of other reasons but it is indeed correct that this could explain a lot of the most debated points about the spread.

Yes. I knew that Lombardy was hit hard, but I had no idea it accounted for such a huge proportion of Italy’s total fatalities.

@GregariousMountains hasn't got a clue. Once this shit show is over, they'll be a boom in festivals, concerts etc. This is temporary.

Yes we should be backwards contact tracing. This is the point of 'checking in' to venues I assume, so if two, three, more cases all say they were in the same pub then the tracers can look at everyone who was there at the time to work out if there was a superspreading event.

We need to do both though ideally. There's no telling which particular person with a positive test could be a superspreader themself.

I thought the checking in thing was about knowing how many had been around a later identified positive case the informing them. So all forward tracing. With a bit of luck both are going on, but this is the first I have seen mentioned of backwards tracing

Indeed, as Kucharski and his co-authors show mathematically, overdispersion means that “forward tracing alone can, on average, identify at most the mean number of secondary infections (i.e. R)”; in contrast, “backward tracing increases this maximum number of traceable individuals by a factor of 2-3, as index cases are more likely to come from clusters than a case is to generate a cluster.”

While both would be ideal, if there was a reason for one taking precendence it does appear backtracing would be more useful. If the way previous similar pathgens have behaved is any indication on this one, which looks to have a fair bit of evidence behind it anyway. IF even half of what this article states is right, then why on earth has the focus/modelling been on influenza spreads, which appears to be a massively different way?! This is taking the article on faith of course, have only checked a couple of the links and am not a sciencey person by any stretch of the imagination but it does look to be quite well referenced with regards to studies and stuff.

This is a well needed 'good thing' to me, so thaks a lot for that. My night/day has been awfully negative, and this suggests we could potentially be moving closer to actually understanding it all more, and potentially lowering numbers.