[pilowsky]

Just for info, here is an advisory from the Australian government about 10 minutes ago. It's interesting (to me) that despite the lack of any effective treatment or vaccine and the continuing trickle of cases since the first wave, as the country is now rapidly reopening. As an aside, I wonder how DT would cope on the Forum given his recent stoush with Twitter .

[awm]

y66, on 2020-May-30, 18:42, said:

From The Economist:

I think the reading that this is going similarly in the US and Europe is a bit misleading. To compare a few countries:

US Cases per million: 5,489 Deaths per million: 319 Active Cases: 1,176,025 Peak Active Cases: 1,176,025
Italy Cases per million: 3,848 Deaths per million: 551 Active Cases: 43,691 Peak Active Cases: 108,257
Spain Cases per million: 6,124 Deaths per million: 580 Active Cases: 62,225 Peak Active Cases: 100,106
Germany Cases per million: 2,188 Deaths per million: 103 Active Cases: 9,794 Peak Active Cases: 72,865

It's true that Italy and Spain look worse than the US in terms of deaths per million (Germany is quite a bit better). If you look at Europe as a whole the overall counts look broadly similar to the US.

But if you compare the active cases to the peak active cases, you can see that in all three European countries (and in fact most European countries) the disease has passed its peak. These countries see relatively few additional cases per day and arguably have the virus under control. The US is at its peak now and is reopening businesses! This is a very dangerous place to be.

[pilowsky]

I think the critical point is that as far as medical management goes, there isn't any. The same problem was faced back in 1918. Doctors were called to see patients but could offer very little of substance. Reading the stories about the pandemic then is quite an eerie experience (see post above). Exactly the same social problems were faced because of a lack of scientific and medical expertise. Without effective treatment or an effective vaccine, only palliation (ventilation and similar support) is available. Currently, Social distancing IS the vaccine. What the graph in the image shows is that the number of cases has fallen because of social distancing. Not because of effective treatment. If people rush to return to mingle together then the problem will return. Just as it did with influenza. This stuff is not new. Displaying numbers in different formats will not change this. The other huge problem is that an enormous proportion of the population seem to believe that the virus will go away by magic, with prayer. I do not fall into this group, but I enough people do to destroy our chance to keep the disease suppressed until an effective way of managing it can be devised.
I have absolutely no idea why I am writing this on a Bridge forum. I suppose it's so that somebody will improve my spelling and grammar! I suspect that I have just about reached an equilibrium point where I am about as good a Bridge player as Trump is a President. That would be ~40%. On average. Not very edifying.

[FelicityR]

Nigel's forum header, "Coronavirus. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it" is succinctly defined in this easy-to-read and short article from USA Today by a Distinguished Professor of The History of Medicine.

https://eu.usatoday....umn/5283023002/

[y66]

awm, on 2020-May-31, 05:37, said:

I think the reading that this is going similarly in the US and Europe is a bit misleading. To compare a few countries:

US Cases per million: 5,489 Deaths per million: 319 Active Cases: 1,176,025 Peak Active Cases: 1,176,025
Italy Cases per million: 3,848 Deaths per million: 551 Active Cases: 43,691 Peak Active Cases: 108,257
Spain Cases per million: 6,124 Deaths per million: 580 Active Cases: 62,225 Peak Active Cases: 100,106
Germany Cases per million: 2,188 Deaths per million: 103 Active Cases: 9,794 Peak Active Cases: 72,865

It's true that Italy and Spain look worse than the US in terms of deaths per million (Germany is quite a bit better). If you look at Europe as a whole the overall counts look broadly similar to the US.

But if you compare the active cases to the peak active cases, you can see that in all three European countries (and in fact most European countries) the disease has passed its peak. These countries see relatively few additional cases per day and arguably have the virus under control. The US is at its peak now and is reopening businesses! This is a very dangerous place to be.

Perhaps more than a bit misleading for the reason you gave. The MIT COVID Analytics Team's current projected deaths per million population for July 15th and relative to Germany = 1.0 are:

Germany 112 1.0
Switzerland 229 2.0
Canada 295 2.6
Netherlands 354 3.1
US 395 3.5
Sweden 552 4.9
UK 642 5.7

[Zelandakh]

kenberg, on 2020-May-17, 11:48, said:

Fwiw, I just checked my email. It was on Wednesday March 11 that I cancelled plans to play at the club on Friday March 13.

Here is the message I sent to my partner:


My partner agreed.

My point is that ordinary people were starting to understand the dangers, so it is reasonable to expect that those with political responsibility, having substantial staff and advice, could have moved at least a bit sooner.

Ordinary people were "starting to understand the dangers" on March 11^th?!! Wow! Here is a copy of an email I sent to my line manager on February 28^th:-
--
As you may have heard there has now been a confirmed case of Coronavirus in Erlangen. It seems clear that it is only a matter of time before it reaches Nuremberg, and probably rather sooner than later. Has <the company name> produced some reaction to this? What is the current state of play for employees, particularly those of us that need to use public transport? At what point do we have the right to say that the risks are too high to travel? The last communication specifying China and Italy seems to be hopelessly behind the curve on this so a more current assessment taking account of the current risk-assessment would be appreciated.
--

I think the risks were already more than clear in the middle of February for anyone that has either some knowledge of mathematics or a sense of history. The question was merely which countries would be able to contain it and avoid the full effects. Anyone who thinks that the US does not have experts that were advising the POTUS about this many weeks before it took hold there (and almost certainly already in January) is naive in the extreme.

[hrothgar]

Zelandakh, on 2020-June-02, 06:32, said:

I think the risks were already more than clear in the middle of February for anyone that has either some knowledge of mathematics or a sense of history. The question was merely which countries would be able to contain it and avoid the full effects. Anyone who thinks that the US does not have experts that were advising the POTUS about this many weeks before it took hold there (and almost certainly already in January) is naive in the extreme.

FWIW, Akamai instituted lockdown procedures and WFH orders in late February
The other large tech companies did the same.

The information was available to make the right decisions

[kenberg]

Zelandakh, on 2020-June-02, 06:32, said:

Ordinary people were "starting to understand the dangers" on March 11^th?!! Wow! Here is a copy of an email I sent to my line manager on February 28^th:-
--
As you may have heard there has now been a confirmed case of Coronavirus in Erlangen. It seems clear that it is only a matter of time before it reaches Nuremberg, and probably rather sooner than later. Has <the company name> produced some reaction to this? What is the current state of play for employees, particularly those of us that need to use public transport? At what point do we have the right to say that the risks are too high to travel? The last communication specifying China and Italy seems to be hopelessly behind the curve on this so a more current assessment taking account of the current risk-assessment would be appreciated.
--

I think the risks were already more than clear in the middle of February for anyone that has either some knowledge of mathematics or a sense of history. The question was merely which countries would be able to contain it and avoid the full effects. Anyone who thinks that the US does not have experts that were advising the POTUS about this many weeks before it took hold there (and almost certainly already in January) is naive in the extreme.

Yes, I am more than willing to admit I was a bit slow. I had been thinking about it, but not for all that long. The club where I play was still open, my partner's response to my suggestion that we stop was something like "Whichever you prefer", so I was not alone in being slow on the uptake.
It's a data point, what I was thinking when.
I have made various choices at various times in my life. Sometimes I realized later I was lucky, sometimes I think I was ahead of the curve. True of everyone, or almost so.
In this case I would rate myself slow but not ridiculously slow. Not as bad as playing someone for the Q after he has already shown out of the suit.

[shyams]

Coronavirus: [UK] Contact-tracing head quizzed [by UK Parliament Health Committee] over test accuracy
https://www.bbc.co.u...health-52906909

Quote

...the swab tests carried out can deliver false negative results - suggesting someone does not have coronavirus when they are actually positive. During her evidence session at the select committee, Baroness Harding [the Head of Test & Trace service in England] said estimates of the proportion of tests that gave false negative results ranged between "two and 20-odd per cent.

She said the issue of why those with a negative result were not retested was "a medical/science question", adding "my job to take Sage and chief medical officers' guidance".

[Winstonm]

The Swedish model fails:

Quote

The man responsible for Sweden’s unique anti-lockdown coronavirus strategy has admitted that too many people have died and the country should have done more to prevent the spread of the disease.

[helene_t]

There was a debate on the website of leftwinged Danish newspaper about whether it was appropriate to label lockdown-skepticists as "rightwing". Apparently, the newspaper had published an opinion piece which used the word "rightwing" in that sense.

This is just ridiculous identity politics. A part of my leftwing echo chamber apparently thinks that eating sh!t meets the definition of "rightwing". If "rightwing" is just an umbrella term for everything one is against, then we could retire the words "left" and "right", and just say "good" and "bad" instead.

But I must admit I am somewhat infested by this identity nonsense myself. I mostly keep my opinion about Covid for myself since I don't want to be associated with the wrong side. If there was a calm, non-politicized discussion about the most practical response then maybe I would say something.

[cherdano]

So, if we believe the estimates from https://covid.joinzoe.com/data, the R-value in the UK for the month of May was on average slightly above 0.9. (Happy to explain how I arrived at that number in case anyone is interested - my method is crude but should be reasonably accurate given the long time frame. Uncertainty essentially just comes from the uncertainty of the Zoe/KCL data.)

That doesn't leave a lot of room for opening up. Meanwhile, the government is not exactly making an effort to be transparent about its own numbers. Every day, it publishes a graph on https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ showing the daily number of lab-confirmed cases in England (but that number excludes probably more than half of all positive tests, only including those carried out by the NHS directly; that's because for those tests carried out in "Pillar 2", the government is "unable" to assign them to England/Wales/Scotland). It could tell us how many people have been told to self-isolate with the new test & trace system, help us estimate its effectiveness - but it chooses not to. It hasn't published the daily number of people tested in weeks - and before that, it often published highly misleading figures. (No one reasonable would count "sending out a testing kit that doesn't get returned" as having tested someone.)

It all looks like the UK government is happy to keep the infections at current levels, let deaths settle at 100/day until the autumn (when there might well be a second wave the virus does indeed turn out to be seasonal), and just hopes it fades out of being the number one news story.

[Trinidad]

Trinidad, on 2020-May-29, 12:28, said:

Update for the Netherlands:

I (and all other members of the Dutch bridge league NBB) just got an email from the bridge league that the government has decided that from July 1st bridgeclubs are allowed to open again. This is under the provision that there is no increase in Covid-19, leading up to that date. Local authorities will have to approve the venues and the measures taken to see if they meet the criteria. Bridge clubs are encouraged to talk with local authorities before investing in plexiglass, etc.

Transfer of the virus through bridge playing materials has been studied at the University of Rotterdam: The risk is considered small, but not zero.

I think that in practice this means that bridge will start again in the new season that starts September 1st, unless...

Rik

New update:
My bridge club is indeed planning to open in September. They have measured the location and concluded that they have room for 17 tables when keeping people at a distance of 2 m. This is about half of the amount that they will normally have. They decided to rent the place for two evenings per week instead of one.

Rik

[blackshoe]

barmar, on 2020-May-25, 14:58, said:

However, I agree with you that his term for the virus labels him as a racist.

Or ignorant. Possibly both.

[cherdano]

Zelandakh, on 2020-June-02, 06:32, said:

Ordinary people were "starting to understand the dangers" on March 11^th?!! Wow! Here is a copy of an email I sent to my line manager on February 28^th:-
(...)

Zel, you clearly are many things, and many more that we don't know about. But you are not an "ordinary people"

[pilowsky]

blackshoe, on 2020-June-04, 15:45, said:

Or ignorant. Possibly both.

ignoratio Juris non excusat
Of course, not many people seem to know that.
Ignorantia juris non excusat^[1] or ignorantia legis neminem excusat^[2] (Latin for "ignorance of the law excuses not"^[1] and "ignorance of law excuses no one"^[2] respectively) is a legal principle holding that a person who is unaware of a law may not escape liability for violating that law merely because one was unaware of its content.

European-law countries with a tradition of Roman law may also use an expression from Aristotle translated into Latin: nemo censetur ignorare legem (nobody is thought to be ignorant of the law) or ignorantia iuris nocet (not knowing the law is harmful).

[Elianna]

cherdano, on 2020-May-26, 04:30, said:

My view: it is more likely that the majority of clubs world-wide will not reopen in either 2020 or 2021.

- Even if we have a vaccine by then, it likely won't suppress the virus completely, at least not quickly. (Some only mitigate the symptomes, don't prevent transmission; will take a while to immunize a sufficient number of people; a non-trivial percentage of the population will refuse to be immunized; for some the vaccine may be too dangerous.)
- Most of the danger to containment comes from potential superspreading events, which happen when you enclose a large number of people in the same room for hours.
- It is most dangerous for older people.

Does anyone here expect otherwise? Are bridge clubs open in New Zealand?

The two main bridge clubs in Zuerich are opening this coming week. They've laid out new rules, and are limiting number of tables, but they are opening.

[Zelandakh]

cherdano, on 2020-June-04, 16:22, said:

Zel, you clearly are many things, and many more that we don't know about. But you are not an "ordinary people"

Thanks for this Arend - you literally made me laugh out loud. Yes, people have called me "special" in various ways since I was a child...but most of them were not exactly positive.

[FelicityR]

cherdano, on 2020-June-04, 02:41, said:

So, if we believe the estimates from https://covid.joinzoe.com/data, the R-value in the UK for the month of May was on average slightly above 0.9. (Happy to explain how I arrived at that number in case anyone is interested - my method is crude but should be reasonably accurate given the long time frame. Uncertainty essentially just comes from the uncertainty of the Zoe/KCL data.)

I am sure you're method of calculating is as accurate as possible, and I am no whizz with statistics, but I read today that up to 20,000 of all covid-19 cases deaths happened in a care or social home environment. (Daily Mirror Online) Tragic, yes, but if this figure is factored in to R-value it distorts it greatly - surely?

I think most of us will agree that the government has handled this badly, but the need to get the country up and running again is paramount now. If anything, the best way to control the further spread of covid-19 is to concentrate on the pockets of infections in the country where the R-value is increasing.

The problem as I see it is that if cases are increasing when there are far more stringent safeguards to protect the most vulnerable in place as there are now - finally! - then there is the potential for a second wave to occur. Social distancing has effectively gone out of the window for many sections of society, and whilst in the early days we made a valiant effort to adhere to the 2 metre rule and not invite the neighbours for tea, etc. that seems to have disappeared with the warmer weather. I am guilty myself

There's a big difference if the social distancing guidelines are changed to only 1 metre, and confined environments like restaurants and public houses may well be the places that further cases occur despite all the safety measures touted. All in all, very difficult to know what is right and what is wrong.

[Cyberyeti]

FelicityR, on 2020-June-07, 02:35, said:

I am sure you're method of calculating is as accurate as possible, and I am no whizz with statistics, but I read today that up to 20,000 of all covid-19 cases deaths happened in a care or social home environment. (Daily Mirror Online) Tragic, yes, but if this figure is factored in to R-value it distorts it greatly - surely?

I think most of us will agree that the government has handled this badly, but the need to get the country up and running again is paramount now. If anything, the best way to control the further spread of covid-19 is to concentrate on the pockets of infections in the country where the R-value is increasing.

The problem as I see it is that if cases are increasing when there are far more stringent safeguards to protect the most vulnerable in place as there are now - finally! - then there is the potential for a second wave to occur. Social distancing has effectively gone out of the window for many sections of society, and whilst in the early days we made a valiant effort to adhere to the 2 metre rule and not invite the neighbours for tea, etc. that seems to have disappeared with the warmer weather. I am guilty myself

There's a big difference if the social distancing guidelines are changed to only 1 metre, and confined environments like restaurants and public houses may well be the places that further cases occur despite all the safety measures touted. All in all, very difficult to know what is right and what is wrong.

The R-value is nothing to do with deaths, it's to do with cases of infection which are so many times (>100x) the number of deaths that what's going on in care homes is a small blip. In care homes a much higher proportion die because they tend to be old and/or vulnerable. It's also extremely difficult to calculate because of insufficient testing, the disease looks much more dangerous than it is because most cases are mild and never get tested. Icelandic data suggests the real number of cases is 15-20 times the number you pick up if you only test people with symptoms.