The Coronavirus thread.

[trueblue]

Loss of smell or taste have been added to the UK's list of coronavirus symptoms that people should look out for and self-isolate with.

Yet again our government are one step behind. According to the expert on tonight's BBC 6 o'clock news that could mean 100,000 case may have been missed they may have been circulating and infecting others. Sheer incompetence.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Yet again our government are one step behind. According to the expert on tonight's BBC 6 o'clock news that could mean 100,000 case may have been missed they may have been circulating and infecting others. Sheer incompetence.

Easy for you to say in hindsight - what experience have you got in managing infectious disease?

The fact is that even the WHO (at the time of writing) list loss of taste or smell as a minor symptom, along with "aches and pains", "diarrhoea", "headache" and so on. Should people with those be self-isolating?

I imagine what's changed the thinking is...science, in the form of last week's paper from King's with the results of a symptom-tracking app where 65% of those with a positive test result had reported a loss of taste or smell - but so had 22% of those with a negative result. So incorporating loss of taste/smell into the requirements for self-isolation leads to greater sensitivity (picks up more of the infected) but with lower specificity (self-isolating more people that test negative).

It's complicated...

 

[obscure]

I do a C&C from sainsburys where you are asked to open your boot then remain in the car. They come out with shopping load your boot and ask you then to close the boot. No contact but very friendly as us irish talk to nick the devil but what gets up my goat is the amount of plastic bags, about 50 of the buggers majority of which have single items..

I know the feeling Im getting Tesco delivery’s and the policy now Is that they leave it in bags on your door step knock and then stand far back. Hence everything is bagged, typically maybe twenty bags per order. And due to the plastic bag leave while they are not charging for them all the bags are the ‘bag for life’ ones so by the time this is done I am going to have several hundred of them in the garage.

 

[trueblue]

Easy for you to say in hindsight - what experience have you got in managing infectious disease?

Of course I have no experience I am only going by what the expert said an the BBC news.
I also read this quote on the BBC news web site,


Lead researcher Prof Tim Spector said: "We list about 14 symptoms which we know are related to having a positive swab test.

"These are not being picked up by the NHS. This country is missing them all and not only underestimating cases but also putting people at risk and continuing the epidemic.

"There's no point telling people to be alert if they don't know the symptoms."

I just keep thinking we constantly seem to one step behind whatever needs to be done. Our politicians keep saying they are following the science and I would like to think we have top scientist but it seems to going wrong somewhere.

 

[Joust]

Delivery is not an option here, unfortunately.

My Tesco shop today was a good 2.5 hours.
Still no flour. But there was yeast for the first time.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Of course I have no experience

In which case, might I gently suggest you have no basis to judge whether we're seeing "sheer incompetence"?

We're looking at complex, incomplete science, which often points the scientists in different directions, let alone the people who have to make policy. I'm no great fan of those making UK policy right now, but I have got a bit of personal experience in the science which leads to a minister choosing between Policy A and Policy B. and even if we're not seeing "perfect" policy, it's not been "terrible" either, given the information available.

Lead researcher Prof Tim Spector said: "We list about 14 symptoms which we know are related to having a positive swab test.

Spector led the team that produced the paper I linked above. What he neglects to mention is that his team had data from the US and UK :

"All ten symptoms queried (fever, persistent cough, fatigue, shortness of breath, diarrhea, delirium, skipped meals, abdominal pain, chest pain and hoarse voice) were associated with testing positive for COVID-19 in the UK cohort, after adjusting for multiple testing (Fig. 1a). In the US cohort, only loss of smell and taste, fatigue and skipped meals were associated with a positive test result."

So which symptoms do you go for? Do USians not get coughs and the shits from Covid? Are Brits better at self-diagnosis? Is there a problem with the UK or US tests? Was it just a sample size effect? Or was there some other flaw in the study that they haven't allowed for? Spector's work is far less definitive than he makes out in the media, despite the large sample size, it would be nice if the journos called him out on that.

More generally - how do you choose which symptoms do put in the advice before people get locked up for 14 days? Do you rely on random anecdote (as the US President appears to)? Or do you "listen to the science" and only act on peer-reviewed science (as in this case with the smell/taste thing) for fear that the newspapers will call you incompetent for locking up people who aren't sick?

In reality policy will be made based on various points in between those extremes, sometimes it's more important to do "something" based on an educated guess and incomplete science than doing nothing whilst waiting for perfect data. But sometimes those educated guesses will be wrong - and sometimes even the "proper science" will get things wrong.

It's complicated.

 

[trueblue]

I do appreciate you are providing various scientific evidence but my opinion and I stress it is an opinion is something seems to be wrong in the way this country is handling it in compared to others with New Zealand being the shining light. I know NZ is a small country with different demographics but we surely could have learnt more from the way they handled it.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

London at one point was the by far the worst place for spreading/catching the virus, tube trains were packed no masks were being worn and that was after the government told us all to keep 2 meters apart, you cannot blame the government for peoples stupidity.

 

[trueblue]

London at one point was the by far the worst place for spreading/catching the virus, tube trains were packed no masks were being worn and that was after telling us all to keep 2 meters apart, you cannot blame the government for peoples stupidity.

Of course not but they were late in imposing the lockdown, they allowed people into the country with no checks whatsoever and amongst other things our glorious leader boasted about shaking hands with corvid patients I think a degree of blame can be laid there.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Of course not but they were late in imposing the lockdown,

People keep posting this, Sweden didn't lock down at all!

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Why is Sweden still faring BETTER in coronavirus crisis than Britain - despite having NO lockdown? Case backs claim social distancing and hand-washing was enough to flatten curve

• Sweden's average daily rise of 53 coronavirus cases per million people is lower than UK's current figure of 66
• Sweden has emphasised 'individual responsibility', arguing people will accept voluntary distancing for longer
• UK coronavirus cases may have stalled before the lockdown when government was taking similar approach

Sweden is piling up coronavirus cases more slowly than Britain - without the need for an economically crippling lockdown.

Over the last three days, Sweden added an average of 53 cases per million people, whereas Britain's figure was 66 despite a shutdown which has now been in place for a month.

Britain's three-day average has been consistently higher than Sweden's since March 28, five days after Boris Johnson ordered the lockdown.

The death rates have also been similar despite the UK's far more drastic restrictions. Britain's average was higher yesterday but Sweden moved ahead today.

Sweden has not imposed a lockdown and has emphasised taking 'individual responsibility', arguing that voluntary social distancing measures are a more durable strategy because people will accept them for longer.

Shops, bars and restaurants remain open even in worst-hit Stockholm, unlike in Britain where such businesses have been thrown into crisis.

There was less welcome news for Sweden today as its daily infection count reached 751, its highest yet. The daily death toll fell sharply to 84, but that was enough to take the overall tally past 2,000.

Professor Carl Heneghan of Oxford University says the UK epidemic started falling from its peak as early as mid-March, when Britain was taking a similar approach to Sweden by encouraging hand-washing and social distancing rather than ordering a lockdown.

The medic has warned that 'the damaging effect now of lockdown is going to outweigh the damaging effect of coronavirus' in the UK.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ow-slowly-Britains-despite-lack-lockdown.html

 

[trueblue]

People keep posting this, Sweden didn't lock down at all!

No they didn't but they have been far more effective at implementing social distancing, They seem more confident in trusting their citizens. Their bars had to make sure customers were kept apart unfortunately when our own PM shakes patients hands what does that convey to the UK public.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I do appreciate you are providing various scientific evidence but my opinion and I stress it is an opinion is something seems to be wrong in the way this country is handling it in compared to others with New Zealand being the shining light. I know NZ is a small country with different demographics but we surely could have learnt more from the way they handled it.

It's a lot easier when you're 2500 miles from the nearest major country, with no equivalent of 20 million passengers travelling by ferry, no tunnel with 20 million passengers travelling through it, no direct flights to Wuhan, an entire country with half the air passengers of Heathrow and 10% of UK airports, no real intercity passenger trains, 15x lower population density than England and so on.

To mention just a couple of factors in their favour.

And NZ were not mentioning loss of taste/smell a few weeks ago, well after the lockdown had begun so would have been too late to catch many of these 100k missing cases. Or however many it is - this morning he was saying 50-70k, on the 10 o'clock news it's 100-200k. I smell an academic who is rather enjoying the attention of the media and the opportunity to put the boot into someone he's not a great fan of.

And that's the kind of mixing politics and science that I despise, as it really doesn't help to convey the message when you're doing it in a way that makes half your audience switch off. I may not be a Johnson fan but it really depresses me when people try to play petty politics with this stuff. Which is why I generally avoid the politics thread here....

It's complicated.

 

[marshbrewer]

may not be a Johnson fan but it really depresses me when people try to play petty politics with this stuff.

Are you my twin? Well, my scientifically aware twin; I'm a dunce.

That's exactly how I feel at the moment. I swing from being slightly disappointed with some sections my own countrymen to massively disgusted. It's a national emergency for goodness sake. Leave the politics at the door, listen to the science. And as you say, it's complicated.

 

[terrym]

No they didn't but they have been far more effective at implementing social distancing, They seem more confident in trusting their citizens. Thie bars had make sure customers were kept apart unfortunately when our own PM shakes patients hands what does that convey to the UK public.

It is also entirely possible that the Swedes have a little more gumption and a sense of personal responsibility compared to the average dozy Brit who seemingly has to be told what to do at every tiny step forward as opposed to adopting a measure of common sense regarding their own welfare or that of others, with many still apparently believing they have the right to do their own thing.
And irrespective of what BJ did weeks ago regarding hand shaking, as you repeatedly remind us ad nauseam, the world has moved on and those whose job it is know about these things are a lot wiser about this virus and its effect on us all, but the fundamental message is still basically the same. So its whether and how people respond to that message that matters to ensure that the threat is contained as far as practicable, given all the social, economic and health pressures that need to be balanced. But as far as the UK is concerned, I have even less faith in the great British public's ability or desire to respond over the coming weeks and months as they get increasingly complacent, than you apparently have in BJ's ability to manage them.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

No they didn't but they have been far more effective at implementing social distancing,

They were not more effective they put the same rule in place and their citizens obeyed their request where those especially in London didn't.

You have just repeated what I said you cannot make idiots follow rules, can we stop the anti Boris rhetoric do you honestly think his shaking hands back in the beginning of this was the reason idiots crammed on the tube last week.

 

[foxy]

I just keep thinking we constantly seem to one step behind whatever needs to be done. Our politicians keep saying they are following the science and I would like to think we have top scientist but it seems to going wrong somewhere.

For what it is worth I would much sooner be one step behind, usually a good stance to take, let the foolhardy lead, learn by their mistakes.

 

[MyQul]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52717161
Cant see that going wrong as loads of Americans copy him

 

[Linalmeemow]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52717161
Cant see that going wrong as loads of Americans copy him

Fingers crossed he's taking lots of it.

 

[MyQul]

Fingers crossed he's taking lots of it.