Coronavirus Impact

[Lightning]

Guardian agony aunt column. Some good may come out of all this.

I’ve craved a slower pace of life – and want to make it permanent | Dear Mariella

When lockdown has ended, we must continue to live simpler lives to benefit both us and the planet, says Mariella Frostrup

www.theguardian.com

 

[Gruff Evans]

Austria gives travellers the option:
1. Two weeks quarantine
2. Two hundred Euros for a test

Over time testing will be cheaper. Is there a possibility of testing before boarding, and results on arrival for a clean getaway? What would happen if 149 passengers were C19 free and 1 infected?

The weakness of tests looking for the presence of the virus is that they do not become positive straight away. Evidence seems to show that they become positive approximately 2 days before people become symptomatic which on average is 7-8 days after contracting the virus (but is quite variable). In your scenario, the current tests would not detect the people who had been infected on the plane, so in that sense, they might as well be done before boarding.

 

[Lightning]

Greeks marvel at Britain's Covid chaos as their lockdown lifts after 150 deaths

Emerging resilient after a tough, early lockdown, Greece looks forward to a summer tourist season beginning in July

www.theguardian.com

 

[T6 CFO]

Guardian agony aunt column. Some good may come out of all this.

I’ve craved a slower pace of life – and want to make it permanent | Dear Mariella

When lockdown has ended, we must continue to live simpler lives to benefit both us and the planet, says Mariella Frostrup

www.theguardian.com

How minds have been changed and where we go from here is probably the most important debate.



Mike

 

[Borris]

Guardian agony aunt column. Some good may come out of all this.

I’ve craved a slower pace of life – and want to make it permanent | Dear Mariella

When lockdown has ended, we must continue to live simpler lives to benefit both us and the planet, says Mariella Frostrup

www.theguardian.com

Gosh, an up beat article from the Guardian!!!

 

[Vagophile]

Greeks marvel at Britain's Covid chaos as their lockdown lifts after 150 deaths

Emerging resilient after a tough, early lockdown, Greece looks forward to a summer tourist season beginning in July

www.theguardian.com

It's the first time for a long time the the Greek government have got it right and the population at large are supporting them.

 

[Amarillo]

Gosh, an up beat article from the Guardian!!!

Back to the usual doom and gloom:

Covid-19: isolated and alone, Britain has become the sick man of Europe | Foreign policy | The Guardian

The disasters of Trump, Brexit and coronavirus have been made all the worse by our weak and incompetent leaders

amp.theguardian.com

 

[WelshGas]

It's the first time for a long time the the Greek government have got it right and the population at large are supporting them.

Pity this comic article didn’t compare like with like, eg: population and population density, average life expectancy etc:, and no mention of the refugee camps and how they have been affected.
A comic that has to beg for cash contributions.

 

[Lightning]

To be able to announce today that we have received financial support from more than 1 million readers around the world in the last three years is such a significant step. This model of being funded by our readers through voluntary contributions, subscriptions to the Guardian, the Observer and Guardian Weekly, membership or as part of our patrons programme is working.

Katharine Viner: 'The Guardian's reader funding model is working. It's inspiring'

The Guardian’s editor-in-chief reflects on the state of media today and explains how the support of 1 million readers has enabled us to report and investigate the most important stories of our time

www.theguardian.com

 

[Vagophile]

Pity this comic article didn’t compare like with like, eg: population and population density, average life expectancy etc:, and no mention of the refugee camps and how they have been affected.
A comic that has to beg for cash contributions.

The gist of the article is correct, comic or not.

 

[WelshGas]

To be able to announce today that we have received financial support from more than 1 million readers around the world in the last three years is such a significant step. This model of being funded by our readers through voluntary contributions, subscriptions to the Guardian, the Observer and Guardian Weekly, membership or as part of our patrons programme is working.

Katharine Viner: 'The Guardian's reader funding model is working. It's inspiring'

The Guardian’s editor-in-chief reflects on the state of media today and explains how the support of 1 million readers has enabled us to report and investigate the most important stories of our time

www.theguardian.com

Lots of comic readers want their daily fix. So 0.3333333333333333million/year. Impressive.

 

[Lightning]

Tracking covid-19 excess deaths across countries

In many parts of the world, official death tolls undercount the total number of fatalities

www.economist.com

 

[Lightning]

Italians are looking on aghast at the UK's coronavirus response | Antonello Guerrera

Boris Johnson’s government watched as Covid-19 hell unfolded in my country – and then failed to heed the warnings, says La Repubblica’s UK correspondent, Antonello Guerrera

www.theguardian.com

 

[GrannyJen]

This now seems to be nothing else but a collection of newspaper cuttings, war by newspaper. if they could ever be called that.

 

[Amarillo]

No new Coronavirus cases in London

London records no new coronavirus cases for full 24 hour period

London has recorded no new cases of coronavirus for a full 24 hour period, the latest official data shows.

www.standard.co.uk

But now is not the time to return to your pied-à-terre in London from your cosy home by a Cornish beach or cottage in the Derbyshire Dales. London is closed to people from outside the capital. Gangs of NIMBYs are on the prowl ready to slash your Land Rover's tyres. Keep your viral ridden hands off our capital city.

 

[calibeach76]

Back to the usual doom and gloom:

Covid-19: isolated and alone, Britain has become the sick man of Europe | Foreign policy | The Guardian

The disasters of Trump, Brexit and coronavirus have been made all the worse by our weak and incompetent leaders

amp.theguardian.com

Britain has been in terminal decline for years. Sadly I feel the country in many regards is finished in more ways than one.

 

[calibeach76]

No new Coronavirus cases in London

London records no new coronavirus cases for full 24 hour period

London has recorded no new cases of coronavirus for a full 24 hour period, the latest official data shows.

www.standard.co.uk

But now is not the time to return to your pied-à-terre in London from your cosy home by a Cornish beach or cottage in the Derbyshire Dales. London is closed to people from outside the capital. Gangs of NIMBYs are on the prowl ready to slash your Land Rover's tyres. Keep your viral ridden hands off our capital city.

 

[Big Ron]

This now seems to be nothing else but a collection of newspaper cuttings, war by newspaper. if they could ever be called that.

Britain has been in terminal decline for years. Sadly I feel the country in many regards is finished in more ways than one.

It does feel like it’s on the slide but UK is a magnificent geography, with potential to be a First class nation(s) once again.
Unfortunately we have people in Leadership roles who seem mainly intent on improving their own position not the position of Mr/Mrs Average. We have 18th/19th Century politicians once more.

No attempt at being Party political here, but we do need better Leaders. Johnson and most of this remaining cabinet are simply not up to the task facing them. (Nor would Corbyn et al either.)

Perhaps it has to get worse before enough people react to make it better. Populism doesn’t seem to function very well, but His ratings seem to be holding up.
I really don’t understand it.

 

[Amarillo]

Perhaps it has to get worse before enough people react to make it better. Populism doesn’t seem to function very well, but His ratings seem to be holding up.
I really don’t understand it.

It does seem odd that the Prime Minister's ratings are holding up so well after such a public display of gross incompetence. The only way I can rationalise it is by looking at him as a cult leader and his followers blinded to his faults by his boundless optimism.

There is an article in today's Guardian suggesting that if lockdown was imposed on 16 March instead of 23 March, 30,000 lives would have been saved. There is no way to verify this claim, so it should be treated with caution.

The UK government was ready for this pandemic. Until it sabotaged its own system | George Monbiot

We were second in the world for preparedness. Then Boris Johnson et al deliberately de-prepared us, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

www.theguardian.com

 

[pjm-84]

Wiki George Monbiot. Seems to be a theme.

If I told you last months lottery numbers you might have won the lottery.

 

[Velma's Dad]

The James Annan analysis* referred to in the Monbiot article and also in Today's Telegraph mirrors (almost precisely, but that's probably just luck) my own fag-packet calcs some weeks ago: that if the UK lockdown had been started 7 days earlier than it was, the total number of deaths over the modelled period would have been one fifth of what it has been.

I've suspected for ages that that one simple factor, the precise timing of the lockdown, will turn out to explain quite adequately the biggest part of the excess deaths in the UK - and to a lesser extent for France and some others. We have become fixated on factors like demographics, ethnicity, behaviours during the lockdown (chicken collecting et al) but really it mostly boils down to the decisions taken by the government during the crucial couple of weeks from late Feb.

On C4 news this evening I watched a bemused reporter wandering around Copenhagen's open cafes and restaurants, quizzically wondering how they can do that, what is their secret sauce? Well it's not so hard if you never let the disease get out of control in the first place - only 11,000 confirmed cases in Denmark, and just 1,000 cases currently active. Makes track/trace/isolate realistically doable to keep a lid on while allowing more or less normal life to resume.

We threw away that opportunity in the 'lost week' between 16 and 23 March, and if Annan's (and my) calcs are anyway near correct, that may well have cost 30,000 lives.

* https://bskiesresearch.wordpress.com/2020/05/12/the-human-cost-of-delaying-lockdown/

 

[Velma's Dad]

On a slightly parallel tack, I found this an excellent and very insightful article:

We’re all in the big numbers now | Alistair Haimes | The Critic Magazine

It is the end of the affair. We are no longer at epidemic levels of covid-19 prevalence in the UK (0.27% of the population infected, where 0.4% is the low end required to be “epidemic”)…

thecritic.co.uk

It basically argues that there is mounting evidence that the virus has a definite 'life span' epidemiologically and that the issues now are going to be about unwinding the lockdown eg persuading teachers etc most of whom are at negligible risk to come out of the bunkers.

They also argue that SAGE and the government employed a deliberate policy of frightening the population into obeying the lockdown, which if it turns out to be true (publication of the actual SAGE advice still seems to be unconscionably coy) would be unfortunate, given that large sections of the media are quite capable of terrifying the population without the government's help.

 

[Amarillo]

We had quite a detailed, if not well-written, letter from school on Monday about the proposed readmission of Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 pupils.

Basically, the school intends to keep classes in "bubbles" of 15 children and one teacher. The bubble doesn't need to maintain social distance from one another, but the bubbles need to maintain social distance from other bubbles.

I ca see this working in areas of low infection, but not all English regions are areas of low infection. Perhaps by 1 June they will be, but it does appear that in the same way that the virus spreads most rapidly in urban areas, it also fades most rapidly from urban areas.

 

[Big Ron]

We had quite a detailed, if not well-written, letter from school on Monday about the proposed readmission of Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 pupils.

Basically, the school intends to keep classes in "bubbles" of 15 children and one teacher. The bubble doesn't need to maintain social distance from one another, but the bubbles need to maintain social distance from other bubbles.

I ca see this working in areas of low infection, but not all English regions are areas of low infection. Perhaps by 1 June they will be, but it does appear that in the same way that the virus spreads most rapidly in urban areas, it also fades most rapidly from urban areas.

Daughter#1 is a primary teacher, and their instructions are just as above. They tested it with the key worker children they have now....apparently chaos as kids just ran amok when they saw each other and forgot every 15 mins that “you can only be with your ‘team‘’” etc... Might be different in different types of areas (our family in Denmark say that their children do understand and behave well) but the general concensus here was “unworkable, I predict a riot.....I predict a riot”.....
So maybe consider that social distancing won’t necessarily/always work at primary level?

 

[Velma's Dad]

Daughter#1 is a primary teacher, and their instructions are just as above. They tested it with the key worker children they have now....apparently chaos as kids just ran amok when they saw each other and forgot every 15 mins that “you can only be with your ‘team‘’” etc... Might be different in different types of areas (our family in Denmark say that their children do understand and behave well) but the general concensus here was “unworkable, I predict a riot.....I predict a riot”.....
So maybe consider that social distancing won’t necessarily/always work at primary level?

No, social distancing probably won't work in a primary school. I've never been a teacher, but I've had kids.

I have no idea what the prevailing views of teachers are, but I did have my head in hands a couple of days ago watching a teacher shown on TV wandering round her classroom with a tape measure - presumably aiming to make go/no-go decisions based on the now-sanctified 2-metre yardstick. "See, this corridor isn't two metres wide", she exclaimed under furrowed brow.

We seem now to be gripped by a logical fallacy that says that if some prescribed model of social distancing can't be achieved in schools, then schools can't re-open. But of course, they can and I would say should all re-open at this point, on a basis of sensible balance of benefits and risks to children, teachers, families, and the economy. I assume that will require strong leadership from head teachers, which I hope they can and will provide.