All Covid-19 measures are permanent, don't be a boiling frog!

Fighting Tao

ThunbergsAreGo wrote: »

As callous as this sounds, people die. It is one of the few constants in people lives.

Over 9,000 people a year die from Cancer - and average of 24 per day and a figure likely to increase due to lockdowns etc. Why are people dying from Covid more important?

Yes very callous. Why is sentencing people to death because it inconveniences you ok in your mind?

Timberrrrrrrr

ThunbergsAreGo wrote: »

As callous as this sounds, people die. It is one of the few constants in people lives.

Over 9,000 people a year die from Cancer - and average of 24 per day and a figure likely to increase due to lockdowns etc. Why are people dying from Covid more important?

If you have cancer and walk into a room of say one hundred people, there is zero chance of you passing your cancer on to anyone in that room and potentially killing some of them.

The same cannot be said about Covid.

ThunbergsAreGo

Fighting Tao wrote: »

Yes very callous. Why is sentencing people to death because it inconveniences you ok in your mind?

How is it sentencing them to death?

And by the way I am not anti lockdown.

But how does me travelling 6km to swim on a beach kill someone? Do all drivers contribute to road deaths?

King Mob

ThunbergsAreGo wrote: »

How is it sentencing them to death?

And by the way I am not anti lockdown.

But how does me travelling 6km to swim on a beach kill someone? Do all drivers contribute to road deaths?

Why does your desire to swim trump other people's desire to do other things?

If you did this, what measure would you take to ensure that you don't potentially come into contact with the virus and/or spread it on?
Do you trust all people to do the same measures all of time?

Why, if you care so much about certain people dying, do you not just adhere to the lockdown rules?
They aren't perfect, but it seems much better than your alternative of "****'em, let'em die. It's only 2.3 million people."

ThunbergsAreGo

King Mob wrote: »

Why does your desire to swim trump other people's desire to do other things?

If you did this, what measure would you take to ensure that you don't potentially come into contact with the virus and/or spread it on?
Do you trust all people to do the same measures all of time?

Why, if you care so much about certain people dying, do you not just adhere to the lockdown rules?
They aren't perfect, but it seems much better than your alternative of "****'em, let'em die. It's only 2.3 million people."

I do actually adhere for the most part and minimize risk where I am not. I am for operating in a tiny bubble.

I am also not in the **** em camp. Very much see the need for a lockdown at present


The question is if COVID is here to stay, and it seems like it is, are we looking at an indefinite lockdown?

What number of deaths are acceptable?

People are out of jobs, that has all sorts of permutations and effects
People are losing a year minimum of education

What is the end game here, the vaccines are not some sort of magic bullet

King Mob

ThunbergsAreGo wrote: »

I do actually adhere for the most part and minimize risk where I am not. I am for operating in a tiny bubble.

I am also not in the **** em camp. Very much see the need for a lockdown at present


The question is if COVID is here to stay, and it seems like it is, are we looking at an indefinite lockdown?

What number of deaths are acceptable?

People are out of jobs, that has all sorts of permutations and effects
People are losing a year minimum of education

What is the end game here, the vaccines are not some sort of magic bullet

Ok, so according to you, what's the real reason behind the lockdowns?
Why word they be permanent?

CalamariFritti

King Mob wrote: »

So no, you can't provide more accurate numbers.

Fair enough. Could have just said that.

And yes, you are suggesting mad conspiracy stuff.
Claiming that there is a global effort to exaggerate the numbers is a conspiracy theory.
Claiming this with no evidence or even a coherent theory behind it is a bit mad.

"Fair enough"

Thats very gracious. Apparently the whole world doesnt know the numbers. How am I supposed to know them?
WHO estimates them to be the reported number multiplied by 10.

And pointing out that nobody makes an attempt at getting these numbers is CT and a bit mad?

runawaybishop

ThunbergsAreGo wrote: »

How is it sentencing them to death?

And by the way I am not anti lockdown.

But how does me travelling 6km to swim on a beach kill someone? Do all drivers contribute to road deaths?

You personally make take reasonable precautions in your excursion and be very low risk, but thicko damo down the road isn't so sensible. We can't all have nice things because simply put we can't trust everyone to be sensible, so we all get painted with the same brush. It's pretty annoying that even though I wasn't daft around Xmas I am still locked down due to the actions of others, but what's the realistic alternative?

runawaybishop

CalamariFritti wrote: »

"Fair enough"

Thats very gracious. Apparently the whole world doesnt know the numbers. How am I supposed to know them?
WHO estimates them to be the reported number multiplied by 10.

And pointing out that nobody makes an attempt at getting these numbers is CT and a bit mad?

Case numbers just inform the response, once they go over a certain point they are less important as we know the virus is rampant in the community. That's why there is such a focus on hospitalisations and ICU numbers. Once case numbers drop they increase in importance as we can then trace the spread more easily and test asymptomatic people and ask them to isolate.

This all seems reasonable to me. What's the issue with it?

CalamariFritti

runawaybishop wrote: »

Case numbers just inform the response, once they go over a certain point they are less important as we know the virus is rampant in the community. That's why there is such a focus on hospitalisations and ICU numbers. Once case numbers drop they increase in importance as we can then trace the spread more easily and test asymptomatic people and ask them to isolate.

This all seems reasonable to me. What's the issue with it?

Go back in thread. Not typing it down again. No issue anyway.

ThunbergsAreGo

King Mob wrote: »

Ok, so according to you, what's the real reason behind the lockdowns?
Why word they be permanent?

Fear and Incompetence

ShatterAlan

Timberrrrrrrr wrote: »

If you have cancer and walk into a room of say one hundred people, there is zero chance of you passing your cancer on to anyone in that room and potentially killing some of them.

The same cannot be said about Covid.

If you have an STD and go to a club and pick up a guy / girl and have sex with them you have every chance of transmitting that STD to them.


Now while medicine has improved to the point where HIV can be successfully treated and in some cases the patient can register as being free of the disease back in the 80's and 90's HIV/AIDS was practically a death sentence. There were no such measures then to halt its spread such as lockdowns, banning sexual activity, etc. You could also walk into a shop or a bar or a restaurant and be a cold, flu or TB carrier and spread it.

ShatterAlan

ThunbergsAreGo wrote: »

How is it sentencing them to death?

And by the way I am not anti lockdown.

But how does me travelling 6km to swim on a beach kill someone? Do all drivers contribute to road deaths?

Precisely. People here are adamant that in their expert opinions a 5k travel limit is required yet if the limit was set at 4k they would be up in arms about anyone exceeding that.

ShatterAlan

runawaybishop wrote: »

You personally make take reasonable precautions in your excursion and be very low risk, but thicko damo down the road isn't so sensible. We can't all have nice things because simply put we can't trust everyone to be sensible, so we all get painted with the same brush. It's pretty annoying that even though I wasn't daft around Xmas I am still locked down due to the actions of others, but what's the realistic alternative?

Here's a suggestion. How about those who are so shit-scared of contracting the virus, they stay indoors 24/7 under the bed with a gas-mask on and those who aren't paralyzed with fear be allowed to go about their daily lives?

runawaybishop

ShatterAlan wrote: »

Here's a suggestion. How about those who are so shit-scared of contracting the virus, they stay indoors 24/7 under the bed with a gas-mask on and those who aren't paralyzed with fear be allowed to go about their daily lives?

Welcome to mid 2020, when the UK tried that. Resulting in the worst death rate in the world and them having to massively row back.

There's a reason no one is doing this any more, it's a terrible idea. Something like 40% of the hospitalised cases were under 60. Allowing unchecked spread would be disastrous.

ShatterAlan

ThunbergsAreGo wrote: »

As callous as this sounds, people die. It is one of the few constants in people lives.

Over 9,000 people a year die from Cancer - and average of 24 per day and a figure likely to increase due to lockdowns etc. Why are people dying from Covid more important?

I'm curious to know why Belarus who apparently didn't have a lockdown registered half the number of covid deaths as Ireland despite having twice the population.


And what did China do that caused them to only have 4 or 5 thousand deaths in a population of 1.5 billion?


Cuba has a population of 11 million yet only 249 covid deaths. What are these countries doing?

Timberrrrrrrr

ShatterAlan wrote: »

If you have an STD and go to a club and pick up a guy / girl and have sex with them you have every chance of transmitting that STD to them.

Ridiculous analogy, STD's are not spread just by being in the same.room as an infected person.

Now while medicine has improved to the point where HIV can be successfully treated and in some cases the patient can register as being free of the disease back in the 80's and 90's HIV/AIDS was practically a death sentence. There were no such measures then to halt its spread such as lockdowns, banning sexual activity, etc. You could also walk into a shop or a bar or a restaurant and be a cold, flu or TB carrier and spread it.

Again, HIV is transmission through sexual contact, covid is passed just by being in the same vicinity of an infected person.

PintOfView

CalamariFritti wrote: »

Lets just go there for a moment. Numbers. No mad conspiracy stuff, just observations.

Testing strategy varies wildly. Gets changed all the time. Number of tests. Who qualifies. Scope of mass testing. Scope of contact tracing. Testing goes up and down like a fiddlers elbow.

So how in gods name are we ever going to compare one number in a timeline against another number on a different date?

But yet we come up with these case number on which apparently everything hangs. But they are arbitrary to a large degree if you keep changing all the time.

The only thing we know is that whatever way we test we never get everyone. I assume we can agree that the true number of infections is smaller than the reported number?

So what is the true number? You would have to do representative testing to find out. Which for some reason we havent done in a year now.

Then there is the number of asymptomatcis. The pre-existing immunity crowd. Another very important figure that only could be gotten to by representative testing.

All that is vital information to assess the seriousness of the situation and also for health service planning. All the IFRs and CFRs and Rs and whatnot depend on it.

But nobody seems to care about these pieces of information when to me it seems you couldnt really do anything with substance before you know these numbers. A year into this ignorance of this can no longer be explained by overwhelmed or we didnt get to it yet. A year into it its clear they dont want to know.

You're right, testing is not consistent, and we saw that up to December we had a reasonable handle on test & trace, but when the numbers exploded they couldn't keep up and then only those with symptoms were tested, and asymptomatic close contacts weren't. Now that numbers are decreasing the test and trace may resume.

We can't compare numbers in January with November, because even though the numbers in Jan were high, we were missing a lot of covid positive people due to lack of capacity to test, and not testing close contacts, so we can expect the real numbers of covid positive were much higher In Jan, whereas in Nov it was probably more representative.

I agree with you on the representative testing, and I don't see why we couldn't pick a 1,000 people at random every month and see how many are covid positive, and also test for anti-bodies. Perhaps there are logistical reasons, or other reasons that are not apparent (it's easy for us to be armchair experts!).

As regards assessing the seriousness of the situation, there is the following:
- If a lockdown is successful the number of infections, and excess deaths, will fall
- Ironically this success will give some people the impression there was no issue to begin with!
- As testing doesn't tell the whole story, we need another way to assess the seriousness of the situation.
- One way is to look at excess deaths in our population, and in other countries.
- Our own experience is that approx 3,500 people died in Ireland last April, compared with an avg of 2,500 in each of the prev 5 years (we can't assess Jan yet).
- One country that has good data is the US, so by looking at https://public.tableau.com/profile/dataviz8737#!/vizhome/COVID_excess_mort_withcauses_01272021/WeeklyExcessDeaths we can get another good feel for what the virus can do (and this is even with US lockdowns, though perhaps they're not as observed as our own).
- The US picture clearly tells me there are a significant number of people dead that would not be dead but for the virus
- Just because we did better doesn't mean we would not have had the same picture if we didn't lockdown, etc.

As regards not being able to do "anything with substance before you know these numbers" I don't agree. In any venture where all relevant number are not immediately available you don't wait to act, you act on what you've got, and in this case there was enough information to make it fairly apparent what the choices were?

So given that backdrop, what do you say? Are there enough numbers to see what the choices are?

arccosh

ShatterAlan wrote: »

I'm curious to know why Belarus who apparently didn't have a lockdown registered half the number of covid deaths as Ireland despite having twice the population.


And what did China do that caused them to only have 4 or 5 thousand deaths in a population of 1.5 billion?


Cuba has a population of 11 million yet only 249 covid deaths. What are these countries doing?

lieing

PintOfView

ShatterAlan wrote: »

I'm curious to know why Belarus who apparently didn't have a lockdown registered half the number of covid deaths as Ireland despite having twice the population.


And what did China do that caused them to only have 4 or 5 thousand deaths in a population of 1.5 billion?


Cuba has a population of 11 million yet only 249 covid deaths. What are these countries doing?

Re Belarus, they seem to have a bit of trouble going on at the moment, so the covid numbers may not be realistic.
What are the excess deaths in that country?

What did China do to have only a few thousand dead?
They had a lockdown that made our lockdowns look like a party. For example, people returning to china from abroad had to quarantine at home, with their doors sealed shut with tape and a signature. Food was delivered and the door resealed. If the seal was broken the occupants were sent to a quarantine hotel for two weeks.
That's why they got back to normal so quickly.

Cuba, I don't know, but look up the excess death rate and tell us what it is? If covid in in the country it will be a similar story, either lockdown or have many excess deaths.

PintOfView

ShatterAlan wrote: »

Here's a suggestion. How about those who are so shit-scared of contracting the virus, they stay indoors 24/7 under the bed with a gas-mask on and those who aren't paralyzed with fear be allowed to go about their daily lives?

And who do you think will be spreading the virus?
Those who are not scared, and who are going about their daily lives.
Then more people will die.

That's the thing, I want all this to be a hoax too, I don't want to be locked down. but what is the choice? It's either
1) take our chances, and the younger you are the better, and never mind the dead people, or
2) lockdown and try to minimise the virus transmission, and deaths, while the vaccine is on the way.

ShatterAlan

Timberrrrrrrr wrote: »

Ridiculous analogy, STD's are not spread just by being in the same.room as an infected person.




Again, HIV is transmission through sexual contact, covid is passed just by being in the same vicinity of an infected person.

The cancer analogy was just as inane.


And I brought up cold, flu, tuberculosis. They're airborne transmitted too, are they not?

ShatterAlan

Timberrrrrrrr wrote: »

Ridiculous analogy, STD's are not spread just by being in the same.room as an infected person.




Again, HIV is transmission through sexual contact, covid is passed just by being in the same vicinity of an infected person.

And yet HIV was a lot deadlier.


In 1997 there were 30 million estimated to have been infected with deaths around the 3 million mark.



Now would you class that as a pandemic/epidemic/plague?



People are very quick to demand numbers. Well, in the 1980's and 1990's if you contracted HIV what were your chances of survival or even recovery in comparison to contracting covid-19 or any other airborne disease?

ShatterAlan

arccosh wrote: »

lieing

What language is that?

ShatterAlan

PintOfView wrote: »

Re Belarus, they seem to have a bit of trouble going on at the moment, so the covid numbers may not be realistic.
What are the excess deaths in that country?

What did China do to have only a few thousand dead?
They had a lockdown that made our lockdowns look like a party. For example, people returning to china from abroad had to quarantine at home, with their doors sealed shut with tape and a signature. Food was delivered and the door resealed. If the seal was broken the occupants were sent to a quarantine hotel for two weeks.
That's why they got back to normal so quickly.

Cuba, I don't know, but look up the excess death rate and tell us what it is? If covid in in the country it will be a similar story, either lockdown or have many excess deaths.

So according to you, China had very strict measures. According to arccosh they are "lieing"


Perhaps you could both get together and come up with something upon which you both agree.

PintOfView

ShatterAlan wrote: »

So according to you, China had very strict measures. According to arccosh they are "lieing"

Perhaps you could both get together and come up with something upon which you both agree.

So do you not think China had strict measures?
What's your theory as to how they supressed the virus?

Have a read of this
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30800-8/fulltext

ShatterAlan

GT89 wrote: »

Do you seriously believe that China only had 4 or 5k deaths if you believe this pandemic is as severe as been made out by the media. China are well known for lying and cover ups look at what they are doing to the Uyghur people at the moment. We are not talking about a free, democratic society

I get it.


The Chinese are a pack of liars. After all they are a repressive regime that are "known for coverups".


Are Saudi Arabia fudging the numbers? They have a population of 34 million and a covid death rate of 6,400. They too are a repressive regime. Should their numbers be believed? The UK has twice the population of Saudi Arabia yet are approaching 20 times the deaths. Is that lying regime lying even more?



Mongolia has a modest population of 3.3 million. Covid deaths? 2 people. Are they lying?


Except this map shows that Japan with a population of 126 million have had 6,700 deaths


But don't take my word for it. I'm just quoting the W.H.O.


So, are the Chinese liars or the World Health Organisation?


Funnily enough Laos and Cambodia have not had a single death, again according to the WHO. Vietnam, with a population of 96 million have had 35 deaths.....incredible.


https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/cn

ShatterAlan

PintOfView wrote: »

So do you not think China had strict measures?
What's your theory as to how they supressed the virus?

Have a read of this
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30800-8/fulltext

Well instead of wearing masks and cowering inside maybe we should all move to Cuba. Same population as Belgium except that Cuba has had 249 deaths. By comparison Belgium has had over 21 thousand.



Better still, move to Laos or Cambodia. ZERO death (according to the WHO).


Maybe the vaccine is built in to the noodles and pho soup.

King Mob

Alan, you're doing a lot of ranting, but nowhere in those rants is an answer to the actual question of the thread.
Which measures are going to be permanent?

ShatterAlan

King Mob wrote: »

Alan, you're doing a lot of ranting, but nowhere in those rants is an answer to the actual question of the thread.
Which measures are going to be permanent?

And there are others who haven't once mentioned elements of the thread title. So if I and another discuss matters and issues then if you are not au fait then why not stay out of it?


Unless you are a moderator in training. I'll put you back on ignore.