It looks as if the tabloids, with their cheery headlines, e.g., "lockdown freedom", were trying to push the govt to release the lockdown. I suspect a lot of people don't want to, and today's news conference was informed that the R number has been creeping up. It also seems distasteful to have such headlines while people are dying. But big business wants its pound of flesh.
It looks as if the tabloids, with their cheery headlines, e.g., "lockdown freedom", were trying to push the govt to release the lockdown. I suspect a lot of people don't want to, and today's news conference was informed that the R number has been creeping up.
I'm not sure 'R is high' makes much sense when applied to a small number of people -- and the amount of people who work in multiple care homes must be fairly limited.
For some of us, pubs where social distancing prevents crowds sound wonderful.
I hear you. A nice pub, with a few people scattered around chatting, and proper draft beer that you just can’t get from a can or bottle. To be around people, but at the same time to be completely on your own if you want. To hear happy conversations going on, but to not have to join in if you don’t want to.
The pubs of my youth were good for darts and dominos as well as beer. As an 18 year old I was allowed to play both provided I 'listened and learned' to the adult political chat. There used to be a lot of that in NE pubs. Anyway, I got good at dominos, not so much at darts. And learned what made miners blazing angry. Happy days!
For some of us, pubs where social distancing prevents crowds sound wonderful.
I hear you. A nice pub, with a few people scattered around chatting, and proper draft beer that you just can’t get from a can or bottle. To be around people, but at the same time to be completely on your own if you want. To hear happy conversations going on, but to not have to join in if you don’t want to.
Heaven.
I'm with you there. The heaving scrimmage which is the after-work pub scene in London - particularly The City - is one of my all-time loathes. Beer gardens could be big this summer.
For some of us, pubs where social distancing prevents crowds sound wonderful.
I hear you. A nice pub, with a few people scattered around chatting, and proper draft beer that you just can’t get from a can or bottle. To be around people, but at the same time to be completely on your own if you want. To hear happy conversations going on, but to not have to join in if you don’t want to.
Heaven.
Heaven indeed, but rarely to be found this side of heaven, IYSWIM.
My son owns a bar/restaurant in Sedro Wolley, WA. He bought and fixed it up last year. He has invested a lot of money in the establishment. He was just beginning to get his sea legs when, BAM, Inslee closed down all bars and restaurants. He really felt he could not make it and was ready to close shop.
But then locals encouraged him to continue with carryout meals. He has been able to hang on, barely. Today, the liquor board has allowed bars in Washington State to sell cocktails, provided they buy a meal as a carryout. The drinks are to be in a sealed container and kept away from any driver.
He really hopes by May 31, they will begin to allow limited capacity at the bars. I think his capacity is over 200, so if they allow 25%, that is 50 people at a time.
I'm not sure 'R is high' makes much sense when applied to a small number of people -- and the amount of people who work in multiple care homes must be fairly limited.
Models for which R is defined are models with a uniform population, for whom R describes their collective behaviour. This is obviously a gross simplification of the way that people actually behave, particularly in the current lockdown conditions. There's a reasonable case that what we have at the moment might be a number of small populations with larger R weakly connected to a larger population with small R.
That said, fits to a model with a single R probably aren't a bad way of describing the global picture.
I'm not sure 'R is high' makes much sense when applied to a small number of people -- and the amount of people who work in multiple care homes must be fairly limited.
Models for which R is defined are models with a uniform population, for whom R describes their collective behaviour.
I do not think the average care home is large enough to consist of a meaningful 'uniform population' in the sense of measuring R, because they'll tend to exist in a fairly binary state re the virus. I think what they actually meant was 'lots of cases in care homes' but at the moment they are back to briefing like the virus has its own news cycle and can be faked out by a gesture in the direction of science.
For some of us, pubs where social distancing prevents crowds sound wonderful.
I hear you. A nice pub, with a few people scattered around chatting, and proper draft beer that you just can’t get from a can or bottle. To be around people, but at the same time to be completely on your own if you want. To hear happy conversations going on, but to not have to join in if you don’t want to.
I'm not sure 'R is high' makes much sense when applied to a small number of people -- and the amount of people who work in multiple care homes must be fairly limited.
Models for which R is defined are models with a uniform population, for whom R describes their collective behaviour.
I do not think the average care home is large enough to consist of a meaningful 'uniform population' in the sense of measuring R, because they'll tend to exist in a fairly binary state re the virus. I think what they actually meant was 'lots of cases in care homes' but at the moment they are back to briefing like the virus has its own news cycle and can be faked out by a gesture in the direction of science.
There's probably some value in a qualitative assessment of R in different populations or contexts. If there's data to show that the virus spreads more rapidly in some contexts than others then that will indicate where efforts to limit viral spread could be more effective, and conversely if there are contexts where spread is very low then those indicate where current steps to limit spread are effective, or indeed where some easing of restrictions may be acceptable. Context includes not just the relative R values, but also the size of the population (you may need to maintain greater restrictions to limit R in a large population whereas in a small population you can accept higher rates of spread because your total number of cases will still be smaller) and the severity of infection (eg: where the average response is more severe you may want to maintain restrictions).
I'm not sure 'R is high' makes much sense when applied to a small number of people -- and the amount of people who work in multiple care homes must be fairly limited.
Models for which R is defined are models with a uniform population, for whom R describes their collective behaviour.
I do not think the average care home is large enough to consist of a meaningful 'uniform population' in the sense of measuring R, because they'll tend to exist in a fairly binary state re the virus. I think what they actually meant was 'lots of cases in care homes' but at the moment they are back to briefing like the virus has its own news cycle and can be faked out by a gesture in the direction of science.
There's probably some value in a qualitative assessment of R in different populations or contexts.
The average care home has 20 beds, only a small number have much more than 50-60, a larger number have five or fewer beds.
That doesn't seem to be a sufficient population where degrees of social distancing that are short of complete isolation and perfect PPE will make much of a difference. You would be able to guess R fairly quickly given a small number of factors.
United Arab Emirates - 16,240 (12,503 / 3,572 / 165)
Austria - 15,752 (1,445 / 13,698 / 609) 4.3%
Japan - 15,477 (9,982 / 4,918 / 577)
Poland - 15,047 (9,430 / 4,862 / 755)
Romania - 14,499 (7,467 / 6,144 / 888)
Ukraine - 13,691 (10,955 / 2,396 / 340)
Indonesia - 12,776 (9,465 / 2,381 / 930)
Bangladesh - 12,425 (10,316 / 1,910 / 199)
South Korea - 10,822 (1,082 / 9,484 / 256) 2.6%
Philippines - 10,343 (8,040 / 1,618 / 685)
Denmark - 10,083 (1,858 / 7,711 / 514) 6.2%
The listings are in the format:
X. Country - [# of known cases] ([active] / [recovered] / [dead]) [%fatality rate]
Fatality rates are only listed for countries where the number of resolved cases (recovered + dead) exceeds the number of known active cases by a ratio of at least 2:1.
Italics indicate authoritarian countries whose official statistics are suspect. Other country's statistics are suspect if their testing regimes are substandard.
If American states were treated as individual countries twenty-two of them would be on that list. New York would be ranked at #2, between "everywhere in the U.S. except New York" (#1) and Spain (#3). New Jersey would be between Turkey and Iran.
Denmark has joined the 10,000 case club since the last compilation. Denmark is the first country to whose resolved-to-active ratio is high enough to list a fatality rate on the day it made the 10k known cases list.
For some of us, pubs where social distancing prevents crowds sound wonderful.
I hear you. A nice pub, with a few people scattered around chatting, and proper draft beer that you just can’t get from a can or bottle. To be around people, but at the same time to be completely on your own if you want. To hear happy conversations going on, but to not have to join in if you don’t want to.
Heaven.
The Everlasting Arms.
See you there!
😁
Err, I thought the Everlasting Arms were, um, underneath...
I'm not sure 'R is high' makes much sense when applied to a small number of people -- and the amount of people who work in multiple care homes must be fairly limited.
Models for which R is defined are models with a uniform population, for whom R describes their collective behaviour.
I do not think the average care home is large enough to consist of a meaningful 'uniform population' in the sense of measuring R, because they'll tend to exist in a fairly binary state re the virus. I think what they actually meant was 'lots of cases in care homes' but at the moment they are back to briefing like the virus has its own news cycle and can be faked out by a gesture in the direction of science.
There's probably some value in a qualitative assessment of R in different populations or contexts.
The average care home has 20 beds, only a small number have much more than 50-60, a larger number have five or fewer beds.
That doesn't seem to be a sufficient population where degrees of social distancing that are short of complete isolation and perfect PPE will make much of a difference. You would be able to guess R fairly quickly given a small number of factors.
What's been shown is that within such a community the R value is relatively large, such that if the virus gets into the community it will spread widely and affect a large proportion of the people there. A care home is, of course, more than just the residents - there is also a large number of staff, who don't stay within the home but have families of their own, go to the supermarket for their family etc. The evidence I've seen appears to suggest that stringent social distancing measures within a home has little impact, slowing the spread through a home but ultimately not stopping a large proportion of people there contracting the virus. However, what seems to make a big difference are steps to more effectively isolate the home from the wider population - we've all seen examples of carers moving into the homes where they are working, often leaving their families for the duration, even to the extent of setting up tents in the gardens. Steps to reduce the rate at which the virus can get into a home, and if it does get into a home to minimise the chances of that being a hotspot that spreads the virus back into the surrounding population.
There are some care homes which are very much larger than others. I know someone at a local care facility (and, the mother-in-law of a colleague is also there) which has 435 apartments and cottages (1 or 2 beds).
For some of us, pubs where social distancing prevents crowds sound wonderful.
I hear you. A nice pub, with a few people scattered around chatting, and proper draft beer that you just can’t get from a can or bottle. To be around people, but at the same time to be completely on your own if you want. To hear happy conversations going on, but to not have to join in if you don’t want to.
Heaven.
The Everlasting Arms.
See you there!
😁
Err, I thought the Everlasting Arms were, um, underneath...
I'm not sure 'R is high' makes much sense when applied to a small number of people -- and the amount of people who work in multiple care homes must be fairly limited.
Models for which R is defined are models with a uniform population, for whom R describes their collective behaviour.
I do not think the average care home is large enough to consist of a meaningful 'uniform population' in the sense of measuring R, because they'll tend to exist in a fairly binary state re the virus. I think what they actually meant was 'lots of cases in care homes' but at the moment they are back to briefing like the virus has its own news cycle and can be faked out by a gesture in the direction of science.
There's probably some value in a qualitative assessment of R in different populations or contexts.
The average care home has 20 beds, only a small number have much more than 50-60, a larger number have five or fewer beds.
That doesn't seem to be a sufficient population where degrees of social distancing that are short of complete isolation and perfect PPE will make much of a difference. You would be able to guess R fairly quickly given a small number of factors.
What's been shown is that within such a community the R value is relatively large, such that if the virus gets into the community it will spread widely and affect a large proportion of the people there.
Given the levels of PPE available and the intensive nature of the care that might often be involved it seems to be fairly obvious that were a particular care home to encounter a case of the virus it would rapidly spread, conversely if it didn't it wouldn't (and R would have been low).
Steps to reduce the rate at which the virus can get into a home, and if it does get into a home to minimise the chances of that being a hotspot that spreads the virus back into the surrounding population.
There are some care homes which are very much larger than others. I know someone at a local care facility (and, the mother-in-law of a colleague is also there) which has 435 apartments and cottages (1 or 2 beds).
Lots of arguments about where the "happy Monday" headlines came from, which seem to have prompted the govt to put the brakes on, no, we are not releasing the lockdown. Suggestions include the govt itself, and various right wing MPs who want business back. They want your money and your life.
A doleful example of the saying 'nothing propinks like propinquity'? So far as discharging hospital patients into care homes goes, presumably any infected care home can say 'closed for new entrants for the time being'? They aren't forced to say yes. And if they aren't infected I'm not sure I see a problem. Provided proper testing care is taken. Every care home may be potentially vulnerable but that doesn't mean that specific care homes actually are.
Going to the other end of the R scale and accepting that greatly increased identification by testing makes a difference, global figures of confirmed cases are increasing at a steady rate of an additional million about every 11 days. Russia has become a national hot spot for new cases (second highest in the world over the past few days) though the reported mortality rate is very low. And Brazil is the South American hot spot, with what look like rapidly rising new case and mortality numbers. The stupidity of the Brazilian President hasn't helped.
Given its huge population and the fact that it has a number of cities with huge and densely populated cities, the figures from India remain pretty low. As do the figures from Africa. I've got an uncomfortable feeling that the pandemic will become more significant in most parts of the world. From that point of view as well, it may be considered to be in its early stages.
I heard a USA commentator, using a baseball analogy, describe the USA as being at "the top of the third". The overall global position looks somewhat behind that.
A doleful example of the saying 'nothing propinks like propinquity'? So far as discharging hospital patients into care homes goes, presumably any infected care home can say 'closed for new entrants for the time being'? They aren't forced to say yes.
I understand that in a number of cases it was existing residents who had gone into hospital -- so the alternative would have been to make them homeless (and it doesn't look like proper tests were being provided).
Ah, that is different. I thought the default position was that if any home isn't safe, the hospital has to keep the patient. Part of the "bed blocking" problem for hospitals. But these are unusual times. I can well imagine some harassed administrator negotiating over which is the relatively least dangerous place.
If a care-home resident is hospitalised because of covid19, and when they're well enough sent home then in principal they shouldn't be contagious, and hence present a small risk to the care home (their personal possessions will need to be cleaned to make sure they're not a vector for transmission of the virus). And, they're probably immune and so at reduced risk of contracting the virus again.
The bigger issue is people who are hospitalised for non-covid related conditions, who may have contracted the virus in hospital but not showing symptoms when they're sent home.
I don't know what's been happening everywhere, but here the local hospice adapted to take covid patients from the hospital (the hospice itself is located in the grounds of the local hospital), which involved moving existing residents around so that a wing could be cleared and equipped with extra cleaning stations and as far as possible make sure the rooms were more easily sterilised, and additional staff training - this wing could then take some covid patients not needing ICU, in particular those with other primary conditions who had also contracted the coronavirus. It hasn't been used and has now been returned to normal hospice use. This was an attempt to ease "bed blocking" issues around the pandemic, a smaller scale version of NHS Louisa Jordan set up in the SECC building in Glasgow.
If a care-home resident is hospitalised because of covid19, and when they're well enough sent home then in principal they shouldn't be contagious, and hence present a small risk to the care home (their personal possessions will need to be cleaned to make sure they're not a vector for transmission of the virus). And, they're probably immune and so at reduced risk of contracting the virus again.
The reality seems to be that this is best practice that is far from universally observed.
I admit to having been bothered for years about care standards in care homes, and the extent to which they are monitored. Most of our peers have lived with having parents in care homes and their experiences have provided a very mixed picture. My brother and his wife sang the praises of the care home which looked after her mum. A number of our local friends have had very different experiences, even with places charging more than £1k a week.
A lot seems to depend on the standards set by managers and the extent to which these are supervised. COVID-19 has probably shone a more intense light on the underlying mixed picture.
I guess something similar may be said about NHS hospitals, but our experiences there have been much more in the 'heroes managed by donkeys' category.
I don't really care if the government says "you can go back to work if your employer says it's fine" and my employer says "you can come back into the office" - if the schools are still closed or there are no suitable childcare arrangements over the summer holidays (like holiday clubs / camps) then I can't go back to the office (much as I'd like to...)
And, that doesn't even answer the what if your employer says it's fine, but you don't consider it to be? There will be people forced by their employers to return to work, the alternative being dismissal, who will know that their working conditions put them at risk. And, those people in that position will be disproportionately the poor.
I don't know how accurate this is, but the Welsh govt estimates the R number to be 0.8, and predict 800 deaths by August. If R rises to 1.1, deaths are predicted to be 7200. The power of exponential growth laid bare.
And, that doesn't even answer the what if your employer says it's fine, but you don't consider it to be? There will be people forced by their employers to return to work, the alternative being dismissal, who will know that their working conditions put them at risk.
Except for the small number of businesses (shops, pubs, leisure centres etc) that were mentioned in the covid-19 emergency laws, all other businesses were already allowed to remain open. It was left to your employee to decide whether or not your work could be carried out from home, or whether you had to continue to go to your place of work.
There were no laws in place to protect the employment rights of people who were sacked or had pay withheld because they had concerns about coming into work. If you were in a vulnerable group your employee had the ability to furlough you, but whether they did so or not was up to their own discretion.
So basically there are already plenty of people in this situation right now under the current 'stricter' lockdown.
We've got everyone working off site. There's 536 cases in this province of 1.1 million, 158 active cases. Most of them in the north, in indigenous communities. It took just a couple of oil workers returning from Alberta.
Schools are announced as closed for certain at least until the fall. Universities too. The government owned cell phone company continues to provide free high speed internet and computers are being given away so that education is online for all. The province provides internet via cell phone for remote areas.
Re employment: it was passed into provincial law that not wanting to work because of COVID-19 fears or living with a vulnerable person or basically anything related like childcare you may not be let go. You may be laid off (which I think is the same as furlough), and will collect the emergency benefit for 3 months initially. We had only 1 person who did that. Everyone else is at home using the free internet.
Our numbers and model is obviously far more disease worried that many places.
Have you entertained the idea that CNN might have an editorial agenda too? It's hard to find a news outlet in any country that doesn't regularly play the "look at how much worse everybody else is doing" card.
" And there is a faint unwillingness to dwell on official missteps, of which there have been plenty. “The BBC does have a responsibility to provide what the nation needs,” says one senior journalist. “It needs to know what’s being done about testing [for covid-19]. It doesn’t need a great bust-up about what’s gone wrong in the recent past.” It is a fine balance, but “the bosses are keen that we come out of this with the sense that we looked after the interest of the nation, not just our journalistic values.”"
A doleful example of the saying 'nothing propinks like propinquity'? So far as discharging hospital patients into care homes goes, presumably any infected care home can say 'closed for new entrants for the time being'? They aren't forced to say yes. And if they aren't infected I'm not sure I see a problem. Provided proper testing care is taken. Every care home may be potentially vulnerable but that doesn't mean that specific care homes actually are.
The problem with this was it was predicted in the 2016 pandemic exercise, Exercise Cygnus (Guardian link to the document on that page), where the fourth set of recommendations were all around care home capability in the case of a 'flu pandemic.
I did read an article that suggested that hospitals requesting transfers to the Nightingale were being asked to provide a levy of staff - but can't find the reference right now.
This article in the Cdn Medical Association journal compared 144 locations around the world. Clear and strong data that closing schools and businesses, restricting large gatherings, social distancing reduces infection rates. Also that climate (humidity, temperature etc) does not affect infection rates.
United Arab Emirates - 16,793 (12,782 / 3,837 / 174)
Israel - 16,436 (4,962 / 11,229 / 245) 2.1%
Austria - 15,774 (1,324 / 13,836 / 614) 4.2%
Japan - 15,575 (9,839 / 5,146 / 590)
Poland - 15,366 (9,406 / 5,184 / 776)
Romania - 14,811 (7,465 / 6,423 / 923)
Ukraine - 14,195 (11,128 / 2,706 / 361)
Bangladesh - 13,134 (10,827 / 2,101 / 206)
Indonesia - 13,112 (9,675 / 2,494 / 943)
South Korea - 10,840 (1,016 / 9,568 / 256) 2.6%
Philippines - 10,463 (8,033 / 1,734 / 696)
Denmark - 10,218 (1,769 / 7,927 / 522) 6.2%
Colombia - 10,051 (7,199 / 2,424 / 428)
The listings are in the format:
X. Country - [# of known cases] ([active] / [recovered] / [dead]) [%fatality rate]
Fatality rates are only listed for countries where the number of resolved cases (recovered + dead) exceeds the number of known active cases by a ratio of at least 2:1.
Italics indicate authoritarian countries whose official statistics are suspect. Other country's statistics are suspect if their testing regimes are substandard.
If American states were treated as individual countries twenty-four of them would be on that list. New York would be ranked at #2, between "everywhere in the U.S. except New York" (#1) and Spain (#3). New Jersey would be between Brazil and Turkey.
Columbia has joined the 10,000 case club since the last compilation.
A doleful example of the saying 'nothing propinks like propinquity'? So far as discharging hospital patients into care homes goes, presumably any infected care home can say 'closed for new entrants for the time being'? They aren't forced to say yes. And if they aren't infected I'm not sure I see a problem. Provided proper testing care is taken. Every care home may be potentially vulnerable but that doesn't mean that specific care homes actually are.
The problem with this was it was predicted in the 2016 pandemic exercise, Exercise Cygnus (Guardian link to the document on that page), where the fourth set of recommendations were all around care home capability in the case of a 'flu pandemic.
Rather like a lot of other missteps, the fact that the challenges were foreseen and the subject of sensible recommendations didn't persuade the government to spend money on advance protection and advance guidance. And that really does need both highlighting and correcting. There is zero guarantee that this won't happen again in the near future with another virus. And so far as this pandemic is concerned, a second wave after a lull is very likely. We need to be better prepared for that.
I don't know if other shipmates have been through the anxieties of wondering if they have the virus. I have developed a very sore throat this weekend and general body aches, so I guess I will have to report for testing. All very alarming as I have been vigilant in isolating and all the health precautions we are required to practice. I don't mind admitting that I am scared.
I don't know if other shipmates have been through the anxieties of wondering if they have the virus. I have developed a very sore throat this weekend and general body aches, so I guess I will have to report for testing. All very alarming as I have been vigilant in isolating and all the health precautions we are required to practice. I don't mind admitting that I am scared.
My worry is about how many people had some kind of cough or fever earlier this year and wrongly assume they've had COVID-19 and are now immune.
What a savage irony that yesterday, many people were celebrating the old guard who fought in the war, yet decades of neglect have ensured that they are dying in droves in care homes and their own homes. Some people call it a cull, others a harvest, a bitter bitter harvest. I hope we don't forget.
I don't know if other shipmates have been through the anxieties of wondering if they have the virus. I have developed a very sore throat this weekend and general body aches, so I guess I will have to report for testing. All very alarming as I have been vigilant in isolating and all the health precautions we are required to practice. I don't mind admitting that I am scared.
I am very sorry to hear this. I will be praying for you. Keep us up to date, if you can.
I don't know if other shipmates have been through the anxieties of wondering if they have the virus. I have developed a very sore throat this weekend and general body aches, so I guess I will have to report for testing. All very alarming as I have been vigilant in isolating and all the health precautions we are required to practice. I don't mind admitting that I am scared.
My worry is about how many people had some kind of cough or fever earlier this year and wrongly assume they've had COVID-19 and are now immune.
I had a particularly brutal one than knocked me out for a week or more a few weeks before lockdown, but I don't think it was Covid-19.
I don't know if other shipmates have been through the anxieties of wondering if they have the virus. I have developed a very sore throat this weekend and general body aches, so I guess I will have to report for testing. All very alarming as I have been vigilant in isolating and all the health precautions we are required to practice. I don't mind admitting that I am scared.
My worry is about how many people had some kind of cough or fever earlier this year and wrongly assume they've had COVID-19 and are now immune.
I had a particularly brutal one than knocked me out for a week or more a few weeks before lockdown, but I don't think it was Covid-19.
There is no basis for any assumption at all. You might or might not have had it. We have to presume ALL symptoms which intersect with the COVID-19 symptoms are. Full stop.
We must physically isolate with any symptoms. Which are the rules here: a negative test NEVER means you 100% don't have it. The testing ONLY confirms you have it.
Without testing, there are two assumptions we all need to make:
1. Any symptoms that are even remotely like those listed for covid19 are covid19, and thus while showing those symptoms and for a few days afterwards self-isolate on the assumption that we have covid19 and are contagious.
2. If you've recovered from something with symptoms similar to covid19, assume that you didn't have it and thus are not immune.
Comments
I'm not sure 'R is high' makes much sense when applied to a small number of people -- and the amount of people who work in multiple care homes must be fairly limited.
I hear you. A nice pub, with a few people scattered around chatting, and proper draft beer that you just can’t get from a can or bottle. To be around people, but at the same time to be completely on your own if you want. To hear happy conversations going on, but to not have to join in if you don’t want to.
Heaven.
The pubs of my youth were good for darts and dominos as well as beer. As an 18 year old I was allowed to play both provided I 'listened and learned' to the adult political chat. There used to be a lot of that in NE pubs. Anyway, I got good at dominos, not so much at darts. And learned what made miners blazing angry. Happy days!
I'm with you there. The heaving scrimmage which is the after-work pub scene in London - particularly The City - is one of my all-time loathes. Beer gardens could be big this summer.
Makes me ridiculously happy!!
Heaven indeed, but rarely to be found this side of heaven, IYSWIM.
But then locals encouraged him to continue with carryout meals. He has been able to hang on, barely. Today, the liquor board has allowed bars in Washington State to sell cocktails, provided they buy a meal as a carryout. The drinks are to be in a sealed container and kept away from any driver.
He really hopes by May 31, they will begin to allow limited capacity at the bars. I think his capacity is over 200, so if they allow 25%, that is 50 people at a time.
Models for which R is defined are models with a uniform population, for whom R describes their collective behaviour. This is obviously a gross simplification of the way that people actually behave, particularly in the current lockdown conditions. There's a reasonable case that what we have at the moment might be a number of small populations with larger R weakly connected to a larger population with small R.
That said, fits to a model with a single R probably aren't a bad way of describing the global picture.
I do not think the average care home is large enough to consist of a meaningful 'uniform population' in the sense of measuring R, because they'll tend to exist in a fairly binary state re the virus. I think what they actually meant was 'lots of cases in care homes' but at the moment they are back to briefing like the virus has its own news cycle and can be faked out by a gesture in the direction of science.
The Everlasting Arms.
See you there!
😁
The average care home has 20 beds, only a small number have much more than 50-60, a larger number have five or fewer beds.
That doesn't seem to be a sufficient population where degrees of social distancing that are short of complete isolation and perfect PPE will make much of a difference. You would be able to guess R fairly quickly given a small number of factors.
The listings are in the format:
X. Country - [# of known cases] ([active] / [recovered] / [dead]) [%fatality rate]
Fatality rates are only listed for countries where the number of resolved cases (recovered + dead) exceeds the number of known active cases by a ratio of at least 2:1.
Italics indicate authoritarian countries whose official statistics are suspect. Other country's statistics are suspect if their testing regimes are substandard.
If American states were treated as individual countries twenty-two of them would be on that list. New York would be ranked at #2, between "everywhere in the U.S. except New York" (#1) and Spain (#3). New Jersey would be between Turkey and Iran.
Denmark has joined the 10,000 case club since the last compilation. Denmark is the first country to whose resolved-to-active ratio is high enough to list a fatality rate on the day it made the 10k known cases list.
Err, I thought the Everlasting Arms were, um, underneath...
There are some care homes which are very much larger than others. I know someone at a local care facility (and, the mother-in-law of a colleague is also there) which has 435 apartments and cottages (1 or 2 beds).
Umm....
The Lamb and Lion??
🙂🙂
Given the levels of PPE available and the intensive nature of the care that might often be involved it seems to be fairly obvious that were a particular care home to encounter a case of the virus it would rapidly spread, conversely if it didn't it wouldn't (and R would have been low).
In the population as a whole R is still just at the threshold of exponential growth.
Which is all very well as a strategy -- except it seems to coincide with hospitals continuing to discharge covid patients back to care homes.
Figures from a care homes database.
Going to the other end of the R scale and accepting that greatly increased identification by testing makes a difference, global figures of confirmed cases are increasing at a steady rate of an additional million about every 11 days. Russia has become a national hot spot for new cases (second highest in the world over the past few days) though the reported mortality rate is very low. And Brazil is the South American hot spot, with what look like rapidly rising new case and mortality numbers. The stupidity of the Brazilian President hasn't helped.
Given its huge population and the fact that it has a number of cities with huge and densely populated cities, the figures from India remain pretty low. As do the figures from Africa. I've got an uncomfortable feeling that the pandemic will become more significant in most parts of the world. From that point of view as well, it may be considered to be in its early stages.
I heard a USA commentator, using a baseball analogy, describe the USA as being at "the top of the third". The overall global position looks somewhat behind that.
I understand that in a number of cases it was existing residents who had gone into hospital -- so the alternative would have been to make them homeless (and it doesn't look like proper tests were being provided).
The bigger issue is people who are hospitalised for non-covid related conditions, who may have contracted the virus in hospital but not showing symptoms when they're sent home.
I don't know what's been happening everywhere, but here the local hospice adapted to take covid patients from the hospital (the hospice itself is located in the grounds of the local hospital), which involved moving existing residents around so that a wing could be cleared and equipped with extra cleaning stations and as far as possible make sure the rooms were more easily sterilised, and additional staff training - this wing could then take some covid patients not needing ICU, in particular those with other primary conditions who had also contracted the coronavirus. It hasn't been used and has now been returned to normal hospice use. This was an attempt to ease "bed blocking" issues around the pandemic, a smaller scale version of NHS Louisa Jordan set up in the SECC building in Glasgow.
The reality seems to be that this is best practice that is far from universally observed.
I admit to having been bothered for years about care standards in care homes, and the extent to which they are monitored. Most of our peers have lived with having parents in care homes and their experiences have provided a very mixed picture. My brother and his wife sang the praises of the care home which looked after her mum. A number of our local friends have had very different experiences, even with places charging more than £1k a week.
A lot seems to depend on the standards set by managers and the extent to which these are supervised. COVID-19 has probably shone a more intense light on the underlying mixed picture.
I guess something similar may be said about NHS hospitals, but our experiences there have been much more in the 'heroes managed by donkeys' category.
Certainly it's going to be hard (harder?) for families with school-age children, especially if school hours have to be staggered.
As a single person, retired, and living alone, I've had it easy in comparison with most people, I think.
Except for the small number of businesses (shops, pubs, leisure centres etc) that were mentioned in the covid-19 emergency laws, all other businesses were already allowed to remain open. It was left to your employee to decide whether or not your work could be carried out from home, or whether you had to continue to go to your place of work.
There were no laws in place to protect the employment rights of people who were sacked or had pay withheld because they had concerns about coming into work. If you were in a vulnerable group your employee had the ability to furlough you, but whether they did so or not was up to their own discretion.
So basically there are already plenty of people in this situation right now under the current 'stricter' lockdown.
Schools are announced as closed for certain at least until the fall. Universities too. The government owned cell phone company continues to provide free high speed internet and computers are being given away so that education is online for all. The province provides internet via cell phone for remote areas.
Re employment: it was passed into provincial law that not wanting to work because of COVID-19 fears or living with a vulnerable person or basically anything related like childcare you may not be let go. You may be laid off (which I think is the same as furlough), and will collect the emergency benefit for 3 months initially. We had only 1 person who did that. Everyone else is at home using the free internet.
Our numbers and model is obviously far more disease worried that many places.
As a followup to this, I should note that the news of Italy going past 30K deaths did make the breaking news on the BBC. Italy's death toll from the coronavirus passes 30,000, the highest in the EU.
There's an interestingly revealing article on the Economist on their approach to reporting in the pandemic:
" And there is a faint unwillingness to dwell on official missteps, of which there have been plenty. “The BBC does have a responsibility to provide what the nation needs,” says one senior journalist. “It needs to know what’s being done about testing [for covid-19]. It doesn’t need a great bust-up about what’s gone wrong in the recent past.” It is a fine balance, but “the bosses are keen that we come out of this with the sense that we looked after the interest of the nation, not just our journalistic values.”"
Emphasis mine.
The problem with this was it was predicted in the 2016 pandemic exercise, Exercise Cygnus (Guardian link to the document on that page), where the fourth set of recommendations were all around care home capability in the case of a 'flu pandemic.
Presumably because they were made as an emergency ventilation area rather than somewhere for patients to spend any length of time, and they suffer from a lack of staff.
I did read an article that suggested that hospitals requesting transfers to the Nightingale were being asked to provide a levy of staff - but can't find the reference right now.
https://www.cmaj.ca/content/early/2020/05/08/cmaj.200920
The listings are in the format:
X. Country - [# of known cases] ([active] / [recovered] / [dead]) [%fatality rate]
Fatality rates are only listed for countries where the number of resolved cases (recovered + dead) exceeds the number of known active cases by a ratio of at least 2:1.
Italics indicate authoritarian countries whose official statistics are suspect. Other country's statistics are suspect if their testing regimes are substandard.
If American states were treated as individual countries twenty-four of them would be on that list. New York would be ranked at #2, between "everywhere in the U.S. except New York" (#1) and Spain (#3). New Jersey would be between Brazil and Turkey.
Columbia has joined the 10,000 case club since the last compilation.
Rather like a lot of other missteps, the fact that the challenges were foreseen and the subject of sensible recommendations didn't persuade the government to spend money on advance protection and advance guidance. And that really does need both highlighting and correcting. There is zero guarantee that this won't happen again in the near future with another virus. And so far as this pandemic is concerned, a second wave after a lull is very likely. We need to be better prepared for that.
My worry is about how many people had some kind of cough or fever earlier this year and wrongly assume they've had COVID-19 and are now immune.
I am very sorry to hear this. I will be praying for you. Keep us up to date, if you can.
I had a particularly brutal one than knocked me out for a week or more a few weeks before lockdown, but I don't think it was Covid-19.
There is no basis for any assumption at all. You might or might not have had it. We have to presume ALL symptoms which intersect with the COVID-19 symptoms are. Full stop.
We must physically isolate with any symptoms. Which are the rules here: a negative test NEVER means you 100% don't have it. The testing ONLY confirms you have it.
1. Any symptoms that are even remotely like those listed for covid19 are covid19, and thus while showing those symptoms and for a few days afterwards self-isolate on the assumption that we have covid19 and are contagious.
2. If you've recovered from something with symptoms similar to covid19, assume that you didn't have it and thus are not immune.