Some have been talking about how the Rnaught has been reduced in some areas. I would like to see how it is doing in the US, but I have yet to find a link showing the current rate of infection here. Does anyone have a link for it in the US.
I note Washington State is below the new case estimates, though it exceeding 1000 deaths this weekend. My county got a variance on Friday and is now in Stage 2 which means restaurants can open up at 50% and businesses can offer curbside pick up; but at least around here, the city is surveying how comfortable the residents are with the pace of reopening. Only two restaurants that I know of were able to have a partial reopening.
And there's the fact that people with EDS and asthma just naturally have a lot of those freaking symptoms ALL the time. (I got my results back--negative. So I have to assume it was mostly my normal EDS/asthma.)
I have other issues (like CFIDS/ME), and "have a lot of those freaking symptoms ALL the time", too--have had for decades. I decided that I'm not going to worry about whether I've caught the virus unless I get severe breathing problems, and they don't seem to be bronchitis or a bad cold/flu. (In my experience, those are wet coughs, and COVID-19 causes a dry cough (when there is one).)
One worry that I'm mostly putting way at the back of a mind shelf: whenever I go out or am around people, I tend to catch whatever is going around, and get sick within a few days. CFIDS/ME can be caused by various things, since it's a syndrome. Sometimes, a person gets very sick from something, and never really gets well. Then a cascade of problems from that. That's me. I'm on various meds, including anti-virals. They help, but somewhat slowly. Plus sometimes they seem like they don't always work.
Anyway: given that my CFIDS/ME was triggered by catching something, I'm a little worried about catching the current virus on top of what I've already got.
But I'm following the rules: home, except for urgent, essential trips; mask and gloves; social distancing. And mostly keeping my personal worries at a low level, or simply shelved.
United Arab Emirates - 23,358 (14,626 / 8,512 / 220)
Bangladesh - 22,268 (17,567 / 4,373 / 328)
Poland - 18,529 (10,153 / 7,451 / 925)
Ukraine - 18,291 (12,661 / 5,116 / 514)
Indonesia - 17,514 (12,237 / 4,129 / 1,148)
Romania - 16,871 (5,874 / 9,890 / 1,107)
Israel - 16,617 (3,403 / 12,942 / 272) 2.1%
Japan - 16,285 (4,388 / 11,153 / 744) 6.3%
Austria - 16,242 (1,050 / 14,563 / 629) 4.1%
Colombia - 15,574 (11,249 / 3,751 / 574)
South Africa - 15,515 (8,245 / 7,006 / 264)
Kuwait - 14,850 (10,645 / 4,093 / 112)
Philippines - 12,513 (9,054 / 2,635 / 824)
Dominican Republic - 12,314 (6,039 / 5,847 / 428)
Egypt - 12,229 (8,427 / 3,172 / 630)
South Korea - 11,065 (898 / 9,904 / 263) 2.6%
Denmark - 10,927 (1,153 / 9,227 / 547) 5.6%
Serbia - 10,610 (5,667 / 4,713 / 230)
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-nine 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. New Jersey seems to be perpetually stuck at just below Turkey's number of known COVID019 cases.
No countries have joined the 10,000 case club since the last compilation.
I do recognise that children in poverty or in less than ideal circumstances are a real concern though, though many of these are being catered for already through the present school provision for the children of key workers, those with care plans, those with social workers, at risk, etc.
I imagine the proportion being catered for is quite small, since the majority of children in poverty aren't SEN or "known to social services", they're just poor.
May we please volunteer Eric to go work in a hospital that's over-flowing with corona patients? Cleaning bedpans, emptying trash, etc. Properly outfitted with safety gear. Might help him see a little more clearly.
I do recognise that children in poverty or in less than ideal circumstances are a real concern though, though many of these are being catered for already through the present school provision for the children of key workers, those with care plans, those with social workers, at risk, etc.
I imagine the proportion being catered for is quite small, since the majority of children in poverty aren't SEN or "known to social services", they're just poor.
I agree that numbers are fairly low, approximately 15% where I’m a governor. However, the teachers, this is a primary school, are still picking up food from Tesco’s every week (under their ‘food for life’ scheme, I think it’s called), packing it into bags and delivering them to our struggling families. A long term and on going damning testament to 10 years of austerity, maybe? It’s a systemic, political issue that the pandemic is beaming a spotlight on, not a new one. We’ve also given out IT resources as much as possible to those who haven’t got it, and I know several members of staff are supplementing this out of their own pockets. The staff are also particularly keeping in touch and providing extra support for families who are struggling in a raft of different ways, financial, mental health, domestic abuse, and so on. The school has been open throughout the Easter holiday period and Bank Holidays as well. There are Zoom lessons, online activities and paper packs delivered to those needing them. So much for Gove’s only slightly veiled implication that ‘teachers need to step up to the mark and start doing their bit instead of enjoying their prolonged holiday’ trope! I accept not every school will have been so proactive, but I suspect it is not in a minority!
May we please volunteer Eric to go work in a hospital that's over-flowing with corona patients? Cleaning bedpans, emptying trash, etc. Properly outfitted with safety gear. Might help him see a little more clearly.
Oh, yes please, along with a few others, both sides of the Atlantic, that I can think of!
I've done a lot of work with Victorian school archives, although I have never specifically collated absentee figures. And the archives are closed so I can't do a recce now.
I do know however, that absentee rates were high. For some illnesses (measles?) if one child in a family had measles, all the children in the family had to be kept off school. A child could easily miss six weeks as measles worked its way through a large family. For other illnesses, parents would keep their children off if there were rumours that there was a case in the school. Long before the NHS, all the children in a school would be swabbed if they came into contact with diptheria.
High levels of school attendance only became possible with antibiotics and vaccinations. The current school situation seems to be a return to the Britain of 100 years ago, but with the internet making it possible for schools to continue to provide teaching materials, to children whose ability to access these materials will vary.
So we’re talking the period post war, post 1944 Education Act then? Am
I right in thinking that antibiotics only became widely available then, although they were known and in limited supply during the war years?
My academic area is Victorian / Edwardian. I don't know about anything later than 1920. Education became compulsory in Scotland in 1872, and the truancy officers followed up absences rigorously, so school log book reports of absentee rates tended to reflect absences for illness fairly accurately.
And, of course, all school registers carried a "reason for leaving school" column in which "Dead" appeared all too often.
Sulphonamides were the first widely used anti-microbial drugs, I think, and became available in the 1930s. Penicillin first became available in usable form in the early 1940s (becoming widely available just in time to treat my father for potentially fatal osteomyelitis).
There can be no one-size-fits all policy that will suit the transmission rate in every locality and the circumstances of every family. I have three adult children, each with responsibility for a youngster. My eldest daughter's stepson, whose care she shares with his mother, is autistic and has been back at his special school for some weeks now, without apparent ill-effects. She lives in Sussex. Daughter Number 2 lives in Hampshire, she is divorced and her ex-husbad who is jointly responsible for their son lives some distance away with his new wife and baby daughter. Daughteer 2 is currently working part-time as a cook in a local care home. Her son is currently resolutely refusing to do any school work on line, and my daughter is at her wits' end how to cope with the situation. He is in his first year at secondary school. Daughter 3 lives with he husband and 2 daughters aged 5 and 7 in a flat in north London. She is currently working from home for an American company. Her husband is an electrician but cannot go out to work. Every morning at 10 my daughter must log in on her laptop for a videoconference with her manager - not easy in a small flat with lively children. Under the Government plans, the 5-year old will be returning to school some time after June 1st. Her elder sister must stay at home. Not an easy situation, as has already been pointed out.
I've found some figures in my notes. Here's an example from Kittybrewster Primary School, Aberdeen (the state school Michael Gove attended before winning a scholarship to Robert Gordon's College)
Measles took hold in November 1911. By 17 Nov, only 127 out of 260 children in the Infants Department were still at school, the rest either having measles, or being quarantined with a sibling with measles. The situation continued to deteriorate until by mid December two-thirds of the pupils were absent. The school remained open throughout but didn't return to normal levels of attendance until the start of the 1912 school year.
Seven years later, the whole school was closed from 16 October-11 Nov 1918 because of Spanish flu. Several months later, 12% of the Infant Department were off with chickenpox, and then in Nov 1919 other illnesses (including whooping cough) meant that 75 were off ill amongst the infants alone.
A child born in 1906, starting at Kittybrewster school in Aug 1911, would have experienced at least four lots of disrupted education by the time they left school aged 14.
Let the egregious Gove be sent back to Kittybrewster Primary School forthwith, to Show Them How To Do It (assuming that the school is still in existence...).
Let the egregious Gove be sent back to Kittybrewster Primary School forthwith, to Show Them How To Do It (assuming that the school is still in existence...).
It is, but thankfully far enough from London to be able to evade Gove's eldritch tentacles.
Let the egregious Gove be sent back to Kittybrewster Primary School forthwith, to Show Them How To Do It (assuming that the school is still in existence...).
It is, but thankfully far enough from London to be able to evade Gove's eldritch tentacles.
Also, with the school being the better side of the border he'll get turned back by the police for attempting to drive around the country without a good reason. And, "Boris says it's OK" doesn't count as a good reason here.
There can be no one-size-fits all policy that will suit the transmission rate in every locality and the circumstances of every family.
….
Every morning at 10 my daughter must log in on her laptop for a videoconference with her manager - not easy in a small flat with lively children. Under the Government plans, the 5-year old will be returning to school some time after June 1st. Her elder sister must stay at home. Not an easy situation, as has already been pointed out.
Yes, though a certain level of flexibility to cover off people in this situation (presumably expanding the scheme for children of key workers) would in some way be better than a countrywide policy to send certain years back (which is the current trailed policy).
Let the egregious Gove be sent back to Kittybrewster Primary School forthwith, to Show Them How To Do It (assuming that the school is still in existence...).
It is, but thankfully far enough from London to be able to evade Gove's eldritch tentacles.
Also, with the school being the better side of the border he'll get turned back by the police for attempting to drive around the country without a good reason. And, "Boris says it's OK" doesn't count as a good reason here.
He won't need to drive. He'll be flown into Scotland on the wings of Hideous Eyeless Rubbery Beings whose proper name I've forgotten...
There can be no one-size-fits all policy that will suit the transmission rate in every locality and the circumstances of every family.
….
Every morning at 10 my daughter must log in on her laptop for a videoconference with her manager - not easy in a small flat with lively children. Under the Government plans, the 5-year old will be returning to school some time after June 1st. Her elder sister must stay at home. Not an easy situation, as has already been pointed out.
Yes, though a certain level of flexibility to cover off people in this situation (presumably expanding the scheme for children of key workers) would in some way be better than a countrywide policy to send certain years back (which is the current trailed policy).
Yes, flexibility would be appropriate, but doesn't seem to be part of this government's policy (if, indeed, they have such a thing).
Interesting point being raised across social media, not sure how accurate it is, that the Government's children are all in private schools, and no private school is planning to return before September.
Interesting point being raised across social media, not sure how accurate it is, that the Government's children are all in private schools, and no private school is planning to return before September.
Sounds quite plausible.
Public schools mostly traditionally break up for the summer a few weeks before state schools. Many (most?) public schools were scheduled to break for the summer in late June or the first few days of July.
If I was a school considering the possibility of going back for a month before the summer break, I wouldn't bother. It wouldn't be productive.
State schools, by contrast, were mostly scheduled to break for the summer in late July, so it's more worth going back. It's probably also true that school-as-daycare is more important for parents of state school children than for parents of public school children.
I'd be surprised if there were many Conservative MPs who had children in state schools.
Interesting point being raised across social media, not sure how accurate it is, that the Government's children are all in private schools, and no private school is planning to return before September.
I keep seeing caustic remarks about Eton, Harrow going back soon, I mean, not. It's kind of a laaf, but omits the substantive arguments about schools and covid. Like, where is this science, they keep talking about. The govt are sure that schools are safe, just like care homes are.
Interesting point being raised across social media, not sure how accurate it is, that the Government's children are all in private schools, and no private school is planning to return before September.
Interesting point being raised across social media, not sure how accurate it is, that the Government's children are all in private schools, and no private school is planning to return before September.
Well, the schools most people are referring to are effectively secondary schools, so I suppose the government's point would be that it isn't a fair comparison - though some year 10 and 12s are going back also.
Interesting point being raised across social media, not sure how accurate it is, that the Government's children are all in private schools, and no private school is planning to return before September.
(Also, many public schools are boarding schools. Without putting to much thought in to it, it strikes me that it might be harder to safely re-open a boarding school than a day school, because there are so many more opportunities for infectious contact. Dormitories, for example, would seem quite challenging.)
Interesting point being raised across social media, not sure how accurate it is, that the Government's children are all in private schools, and no private school is planning to return before September.
(Also, many public schools are boarding schools. Without putting to much thought in to it, it strikes me that it might be harder to safely re-open a boarding school than a day school, because there are so many more opportunities for infectious contact. Dormitories, for example, would seem quite challenging.)
Do any boarding schools have other than en-suite private rooms these days?
Why are we talking about boarding schools/public schools (English type) here when the thread is about Coronavirus?
Because we were discussing the re-opening of different kinds of schools in the face of the Coronavirus? There are material differences between UK public and state schools that could potentially lead the same dispassionate observer to make a different choice about re-opening one vs the other before the summer holiday.
I don't know if anyone is publishing fits for R for the US. But you can eyeball it yourself. Look at the number of new cases per day for your state or region as a function of time. If the number is about constant, R is about 1. If it's dropping, R is less than 1. If it's going up - well, you get the idea.
(Also, many public schools are boarding schools. Without putting to much thought in to it, it strikes me that it might be harder to safely re-open a boarding school than a day school, because there are so many more opportunities for infectious contact. Dormitories, for example, would seem quite challenging.)
The flip side is that there are also vastly less contacts to the outside. If you could be reasonably confident of each kid going in (how?), Then there won't be anything for them to be infected with.
Plus the demographics are such that there probably wouldn't be too many immediate tragedies from a few failures (note probably,few and immediate)
Yes, the Rnaught appears to be going down in Washington State, obviously less than one now. I just thought there was some link that shows the differences.
Washington State University is discussing how it will reopen this fall. It is looking at making all dorm rooms single occupancy, but many students live off campus in rentals which can have upwards of four unrelated people living together (officially--though there are probably more living together). No one knows how that is going to impact our stay home orders.
Why are we talking about boarding schools/public schools (English type) here when the thread is about Coronavirus?
Primarily because whether or not some primary aged children in the UK should be sent back to school on June the 1st is being elevated to the status of culture war by the government.
Teaching unions want the evidence around the decision to be made available and an open discussion about the possible impacts and the possible protective measures that may need to be taken in order to open schools on that date, the government is insisting that its safe to do so and that they are following the best scientific advice.
Remember, the R value doesn't change unless the level of social distancing changes - reduce the contact between people and R decreases, reduce restrictions so that more people come into contact then it increases ('contact' here referring to chance to transmit diseases, so a nurse treating someone without proper PPE will have a greater deal of contact than the same treatment with proper PPE). If the number of cases is decreasing then R is <1, it doesn't automatically follow that as the number of cases decreasing then R also decreases (infact it's possibly the opposite, as the number of cases decreases people feel safer and don't adhere as strictly to social distancing and then R increases).
Now, I think that R has decreased during the lockdown (up to the point where the restrictions were eased) because people have become better at social distancing, and most significantly the provision of PPE to those most likely to encounter coronavirus infected people has improved). If we implement a decent test and track system then we can keep R down by segregating those who are infected until they're no longer contagious while allowing significant easing of the restrictions on everyone else. Once the number of people concerned is reduced to a manageable number - which is certainly not the case in the UK at present.
Yes - this is the refuge of the charlatan. Actual scientists publish their work and expose it to peer review. This is how science works. We believe it because there's a logical chain of reasoning that leads from the data to the conclusion - not because Professor Eminent-Scientist says that it's true.
I'd suspect that much of the advice that governments are getting from their scientific advisors is not of publication quality, though - it's a thin tissue of data strung together with gut feeling and guesswork. If you have good people doing the guessing, then there are good odds that it'll be reasonable advice, but it's a rather different quality of statement from one that you'd be happy to subject to peer review.
From my limited reading, there are conflicting arguments about schools and covid, or whether children can transmit. I suppose the govt is loath to say this.
From my limited reading, there are conflicting arguments about schools and covid, or whether children can transmit. I suppose the govt is loath to say this.
Yes, that's my impression too. There is a rather good article in The Financial Timeshere*.
Reopening schools may or may not be right but I don't think it's as self-evidently stupid as some people seem to be implying.
I think it is different from other parts of the lockdown. At the risk of being smug, I think most of the lockdown is a first-world problem. But closing schools does have a demonstrable detrimental effect on children, which puts it in a different category from the 'reopen the economy' type of arguments.
* I can read it without subscribing. I've never quite understood how FT articles work in this respect.
What I'm trying to get at is that there isn't such an obvious default option in the case of uncertainty.
E.g. if you're not sure about the risks of reopening pubs, then don't open them, because keeping pubs closed doesn't pose a particularly serious detriment. But the balance of consequences isn't quite the same for closing schools.
May we please volunteer Eric to go work in a hospital that's over-flowing with corona patients? Cleaning bedpans, emptying trash, etc. Properly outfitted with safety gear. Might help him see a little more clearly.
Nepotism. Dull, defective children of rich, entitled people employed into positions of influence is both stupid and evil. With the emphasis titling to evil currently.
E.g. if you're not sure about the risks of reopening pubs, then don't open them, because keeping pubs closed doesn't pose a particularly serious detriment. But the balance of consequences isn't quite the same for closing schools.
It's certainly a fair comment that an interruption to someone's education has a longer-term effect than an interruption to their ability to go for a beer and a game of darts with their mates. And it's true that trying to do schoolwork at home (this isn't home schooling. What schooled kids are doing at home now is not at all like home schooling.) doesn't work well for all children.
If you're the publican, it's less obvious that missing a couple of months of schooling is worse for you than not being able to operate your business for a few months.
But it's not actually obvious what the long-term effects of missing a few months of education are - not, at least, if you assume that everyone misses it, and syllabuses are adjusted to account for this, rather than just blindly assuming kids learned something this year that they didn't.
Kids who have done "academic" preschool and those who haven't are indistinguishable after a year or two in school. I'd guess that you can absorb younger kids missing education fairly easily. It's more of a challenge for those who are let's say in year 10, in the middle of their GCSE work at the moment. Or at least it seems to me.
One problem for me is that I trust this govt about as much as the local conman selling "gold" watches.
We do seem to be stuck with a government intent on making sure the lock-down is in place for as long as possible, at the greatest possible cost in lives, money and the simple sanity of the population.
It's becoming increasingly clear that there is a route out of lockdown that doesn't depend on either a vaccine or any new technology.
First, you need to maintain strict lockdown until you've knocked the virus down to a very few individuals within the population - and, that includes supplying PPE and testing for health care and nursing homes etc so that where there is necessary personal contact this isn't a route to maintain high levels of infection. The government seems intent on relaxing lockdown too early to achieve this, and has repeatedly refused to obtain sufficient PPE and testing capacity.
Second, you need rapid testing capacity. At present the tests take 3-4 days, sometimes significantly longer. Part of that delay in results is that tests are conducted at a few centres, so you need at least a day to get the test to the lab, and then the labs have a large backlog to work through. Many hospitals have labs that should be able to process tests without that shipping delay, and if they have the capacity to avoid the backlog results could be back in hours rather than days (it takes about 5h to run the PCR stage of the test, a colleague at Fukushima used to run PCR tests day in day out, the rest is shipping and processing). It doesn't take any new technology to recruit and train a load of technicians to run lots of testing labs close enough to the point where they're needed to give results within a few hours, or even to set up mobile laboratories that can be taken to where they're needed.
Third, you need on the ground tracing staff. The processes of tracing who people have had contact with are well known, without relying on any mobile phone technology although this might make things quicker or simpler. Again, you need these staff in locations where they can rapidly respond to each detected case - which means dispersed around the country rather than centralised, at the very least regional (NW England, Southern Scotland sort of scale) but preferably at local authority level or even NHS Trust. The current government plan seems to be very centralised - the Isle of Wight trials trace people by phone, from a London call centre. Centralisation may be marginally cheaper, but you lose out on the benefits of local knowledge, and boots on the ground approaches can be more readily linked directly to testing (you can't test down the phone, you need someone on the ground to take the sample).
Here's my outline scheme for return to normal without relying on any new technology development: maintain lockdown for now; establish local capability for testing and tracing that can respond rapidly to contain each new outbreak. It's not a radical idea, it's what many nations far less wealthy than those most of us live in are doing very effectively. Why the government doesn't simply do what's been shown to work is beyond me - unless they actually want us all to suffer as much as possible.
"normal" will include some changes:
we'll need to make sure anyone in high risk activities (nursing staff etc) have good PPE
we'll have to get used to being tested regularly, anytime anyone shows symptoms will need to self-isolate until a test shows they're clear, there needs to be convenient testing options (establish means of self administered tests through the post, accepting the delay in results that will incur, or a window at local pharmacies or GP surgeries where someone can be tested without entering the building)
we'll be able to travel, but if where we've been has an outbreak we'll need to self-isolate and be tested (as above for showing symptoms). Likewise attending events like concerts or sports matches. It's relatively easy to have a web based system where you get home, enter where you've been and if there's a case there in the following 2 weeks you get an alert
we'll be more conscious of social distancing - we'll probably all be wearing masks a lot more, washing hands and won't be shaking the hands of strangers
there'll be more working from home, and more staggered work patterns to spread out commuting and leave less people in buildings at any one time
And, our normal will include accepting that there will be times when some form of more restrictive measures may need to be imposed on a regional level.
Put simply, if we suppress this wave of disease to very low levels and we set up an effective testing and tracing system with people self-isolating properly when required we can return to something very similar to our lives today (and, that includes playing cricket). That won't happen if we ease the lockdown too soon or fail to invest in testing and tracing capability.
Of course, if there's a vaccine or a cheap and simple test that gives a result in minutes, or an antibody test to confirm immunity from a prior infection, then we have additional levels of security in our return to normal. Our government seems to be betting on a technological fix and gone all-in on a vaccine when there's a safer (but perhaps less glamorous) route.
United Arab Emirates - 24,190 (14,389 / 9,577 / 224)
Bangladesh - 23,870 (18,936 / 4,585 / 349)
Poland - 18,885 (10,321 / 7,628 / 936)
Ukraine - 18,616 (12,805 / 5,276 / 535)
Indonesia - 18,010 (12,495 / 4,324 / 1,191)
Romania - 17,036 (5,986 / 9,930 / 1,120)
Israel - 16,643 (3,114 / 13,253 / 276) 2.0%
South Africa - 16,433 (8,849 / 7,298 / 286)
Japan - 16,305 (3,992 / 11,564 / 749) 6.1%
Colombia - 16,295 (11,800 / 3,903 / 592)
Austria - 16,269 (1,026 / 14,614 / 629) 4.1%
Kuwait - 15,691 (11,234 / 4,339 / 118)
Egypt - 12,764 (8,679 / 3,440 / 645)
Dominican Republic - 12,725 (5,678 / 6,613 / 434)
Philippines - 12,718 (9,158 / 2,729 / 831)
South Korea - 11,078 (877 / 9,938 / 263) 2.6%
Denmark - 10,968 (1,119 / 9,301 / 548) 5.6%
Serbia - 10,699 (5,669 / 4,799 / 231)
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. Russia seems to have rocketed to the #2 spot, completing their transition from "it's just a bad season for pneumonia" to "OMG COVID-19!!!" Former cautionary tale Italy has now reached the point where there are more than twice as many resolved cases of COVID-19 as there are active ones.
If American states were treated as individual countries twenty-nine 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.
No countries have joined the 10,000 case club since the last compilation.
Alan, excellent post on contact tracing. It's a well established method, and as you say, has to be done locally, and the virus can be eradicated. But I think it's beyond the competence of this govt.
I don't know the details of how they do contact tracing, but the techniques would be similar to those used to track people who came into contact with Alexander Litvinenko after he was poisoned with 210Po or the Skripals were poisoned with Novichok. Also, probably quite similar to the methods used by epidemiologists interviewing large numbers of people to identify what lifestyle factors might affect disease development (a long time ago when I started my current job we were just finishing some work with the Leukaemia Research Fund studying whether there were correlations between where people spent their time and local natural radiation variations - previous studies were inconclusive for where people lived with regional variations, so this study included where people worked, shopped, where they spent leisure time; that's the same sort of questioning needed for contact tracing). Almost certainly these methods would be very similar to contact tracing for other infectious diseases - TB, cholera etc. STDs would be a subset of that, but has a number of additional challenges (confidentiality and reluctance of people to admit to having had unsafe sex) but also simplifications (generally you're not going to pass on an STD by being in the crowd of strangers at a concert).
It appears that many of the nations which have very effectively contained this pandemic through a rigorous tracing programme are those where diseases like cholera are endemic, and so they already have the infrastructure for tracking diseases. And, these are often the poorer nations or regions which shows that this doesn't need a lot of expensive high-tech - though, usually a lot of people (in our wealthier nations staff costs would be much higher, which might explain our governments tendency to look for a high-tech solution, on the other hand employing a lot of people is something our economies need at the moment).
Comments
I note Washington State is below the new case estimates, though it exceeding 1000 deaths this weekend. My county got a variance on Friday and is now in Stage 2 which means restaurants can open up at 50% and businesses can offer curbside pick up; but at least around here, the city is surveying how comfortable the residents are with the pace of reopening. Only two restaurants that I know of were able to have a partial reopening.
I have other issues (like CFIDS/ME), and "have a lot of those freaking symptoms ALL the time", too--have had for decades. I decided that I'm not going to worry about whether I've caught the virus unless I get severe breathing problems, and they don't seem to be bronchitis or a bad cold/flu. (In my experience, those are wet coughs, and COVID-19 causes a dry cough (when there is one).)
One worry that I'm mostly putting way at the back of a mind shelf: whenever I go out or am around people, I tend to catch whatever is going around, and get sick within a few days. CFIDS/ME can be caused by various things, since it's a syndrome. Sometimes, a person gets very sick from something, and never really gets well. Then a cascade of problems from that. That's me. I'm on various meds, including anti-virals. They help, but somewhat slowly. Plus sometimes they seem like they don't always work.
Anyway: given that my CFIDS/ME was triggered by catching something, I'm a little worried about catching the current virus on top of what I've already got.
But I'm following the rules: home, except for urgent, essential trips; mask and gloves; social distancing. And mostly keeping my personal worries at a low level, or simply shelved.
{{{{{{{Everybody}}}}}}}
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-nine 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. New Jersey seems to be perpetually stuck at just below Turkey's number of known COVID019 cases.
No countries have joined the 10,000 case club since the last compilation.
I imagine the proportion being catered for is quite small, since the majority of children in poverty aren't SEN or "known to social services", they're just poor.
Eric Trump said in an interview on Fox News that the virus and lockdown are a hoax by the Democrats.
Here's the WaPo article.
And here's Raw Story's version, including some response tweets.
May we please volunteer Eric to go work in a hospital that's over-flowing with corona patients? Cleaning bedpans, emptying trash, etc. Properly outfitted with safety gear. Might help him see a little more clearly.
I agree that numbers are fairly low, approximately 15% where I’m a governor. However, the teachers, this is a primary school, are still picking up food from Tesco’s every week (under their ‘food for life’ scheme, I think it’s called), packing it into bags and delivering them to our struggling families. A long term and on going damning testament to 10 years of austerity, maybe? It’s a systemic, political issue that the pandemic is beaming a spotlight on, not a new one. We’ve also given out IT resources as much as possible to those who haven’t got it, and I know several members of staff are supplementing this out of their own pockets. The staff are also particularly keeping in touch and providing extra support for families who are struggling in a raft of different ways, financial, mental health, domestic abuse, and so on. The school has been open throughout the Easter holiday period and Bank Holidays as well. There are Zoom lessons, online activities and paper packs delivered to those needing them. So much for Gove’s only slightly veiled implication that ‘teachers need to step up to the mark and start doing their bit instead of enjoying their prolonged holiday’ trope! I accept not every school will have been so proactive, but I suspect it is not in a minority!
Oh, yes please, along with a few others, both sides of the Atlantic, that I can think of!
I do know however, that absentee rates were high. For some illnesses (measles?) if one child in a family had measles, all the children in the family had to be kept off school. A child could easily miss six weeks as measles worked its way through a large family. For other illnesses, parents would keep their children off if there were rumours that there was a case in the school. Long before the NHS, all the children in a school would be swabbed if they came into contact with diptheria.
High levels of school attendance only became possible with antibiotics and vaccinations. The current school situation seems to be a return to the Britain of 100 years ago, but with the internet making it possible for schools to continue to provide teaching materials, to children whose ability to access these materials will vary.
I right in thinking that antibiotics only became widely available then, although they were known and in limited supply during the war years?
And, of course, all school registers carried a "reason for leaving school" column in which "Dead" appeared all too often.
Measles took hold in November 1911. By 17 Nov, only 127 out of 260 children in the Infants Department were still at school, the rest either having measles, or being quarantined with a sibling with measles. The situation continued to deteriorate until by mid December two-thirds of the pupils were absent. The school remained open throughout but didn't return to normal levels of attendance until the start of the 1912 school year.
Seven years later, the whole school was closed from 16 October-11 Nov 1918 because of Spanish flu. Several months later, 12% of the Infant Department were off with chickenpox, and then in Nov 1919 other illnesses (including whooping cough) meant that 75 were off ill amongst the infants alone.
A child born in 1906, starting at Kittybrewster school in Aug 1911, would have experienced at least four lots of disrupted education by the time they left school aged 14.
It is, but thankfully far enough from London to be able to evade Gove's eldritch tentacles.
BTW, I have NOTHING WHATSOEVER against the Fair City of Aberdeen and its denizens.
Yes, though a certain level of flexibility to cover off people in this situation (presumably expanding the scheme for children of key workers) would in some way be better than a countrywide policy to send certain years back (which is the current trailed policy).
He won't need to drive. He'll be flown into Scotland on the wings of Hideous Eyeless Rubbery Beings whose proper name I've forgotten...
Yes, flexibility would be appropriate, but doesn't seem to be part of this government's policy (if, indeed, they have such a thing).
Sounds quite plausible.
Public schools mostly traditionally break up for the summer a few weeks before state schools. Many (most?) public schools were scheduled to break for the summer in late June or the first few days of July.
If I was a school considering the possibility of going back for a month before the summer break, I wouldn't bother. It wouldn't be productive.
State schools, by contrast, were mostly scheduled to break for the summer in late July, so it's more worth going back. It's probably also true that school-as-daycare is more important for parents of state school children than for parents of public school children.
I'd be surprised if there were many Conservative MPs who had children in state schools.
I keep seeing caustic remarks about Eton, Harrow going back soon, I mean, not. It's kind of a laaf, but omits the substantive arguments about schools and covid. Like, where is this science, they keep talking about. The govt are sure that schools are safe, just like care homes are.
No surprise there.
🙄
Well, the schools most people are referring to are effectively secondary schools, so I suppose the government's point would be that it isn't a fair comparison - though some year 10 and 12s are going back also.
Meanwhile it looks as if there are some effects from the French return to school policy and the number of cases in the UK doesn't seem to be trending downwards in the same way as elsewhere in Europe.
(Also, many public schools are boarding schools. Without putting to much thought in to it, it strikes me that it might be harder to safely re-open a boarding school than a day school, because there are so many more opportunities for infectious contact. Dormitories, for example, would seem quite challenging.)
Do any boarding schools have other than en-suite private rooms these days?
I asked for a link for the current Rnaught figures and have not had a response. Please share if there is such a link.
Because we were discussing the re-opening of different kinds of schools in the face of the Coronavirus? There are material differences between UK public and state schools that could potentially lead the same dispassionate observer to make a different choice about re-opening one vs the other before the summer holiday.
I don't know if anyone is publishing fits for R for the US. But you can eyeball it yourself. Look at the number of new cases per day for your state or region as a function of time. If the number is about constant, R is about 1. If it's dropping, R is less than 1. If it's going up - well, you get the idea.
The flip side is that there are also vastly less contacts to the outside. If you could be reasonably confident of each kid going in (how?), Then there won't be anything for them to be infected with.
Plus the demographics are such that there probably wouldn't be too many immediate tragedies from a few failures (note probably,few and immediate)
Washington State University is discussing how it will reopen this fall. It is looking at making all dorm rooms single occupancy, but many students live off campus in rentals which can have upwards of four unrelated people living together (officially--though there are probably more living together). No one knows how that is going to impact our stay home orders.
Primarily because whether or not some primary aged children in the UK should be sent back to school on June the 1st is being elevated to the status of culture war by the government.
Teaching unions want the evidence around the decision to be made available and an open discussion about the possible impacts and the possible protective measures that may need to be taken in order to open schools on that date, the government is insisting that its safe to do so and that they are following the best scientific advice.
Now, I think that R has decreased during the lockdown (up to the point where the restrictions were eased) because people have become better at social distancing, and most significantly the provision of PPE to those most likely to encounter coronavirus infected people has improved). If we implement a decent test and track system then we can keep R down by segregating those who are infected until they're no longer contagious while allowing significant easing of the restrictions on everyone else. Once the number of people concerned is reduced to a manageable number - which is certainly not the case in the UK at present.
Yes - this is the refuge of the charlatan. Actual scientists publish their work and expose it to peer review. This is how science works. We believe it because there's a logical chain of reasoning that leads from the data to the conclusion - not because Professor Eminent-Scientist says that it's true.
I'd suspect that much of the advice that governments are getting from their scientific advisors is not of publication quality, though - it's a thin tissue of data strung together with gut feeling and guesswork. If you have good people doing the guessing, then there are good odds that it'll be reasonable advice, but it's a rather different quality of statement from one that you'd be happy to subject to peer review.
Yes, that's my impression too. There is a rather good article in The Financial Times here*.
Reopening schools may or may not be right but I don't think it's as self-evidently stupid as some people seem to be implying.
I think it is different from other parts of the lockdown. At the risk of being smug, I think most of the lockdown is a first-world problem. But closing schools does have a demonstrable detrimental effect on children, which puts it in a different category from the 'reopen the economy' type of arguments.
* I can read it without subscribing. I've never quite understood how FT articles work in this respect.
What I'm trying to get at is that there isn't such an obvious default option in the case of uncertainty.
E.g. if you're not sure about the risks of reopening pubs, then don't open them, because keeping pubs closed doesn't pose a particularly serious detriment. But the balance of consequences isn't quite the same for closing schools.
Nepotism. Dull, defective children of rich, entitled people employed into positions of influence is both stupid and evil. With the emphasis titling to evil currently.
It's certainly a fair comment that an interruption to someone's education has a longer-term effect than an interruption to their ability to go for a beer and a game of darts with their mates. And it's true that trying to do schoolwork at home (this isn't home schooling. What schooled kids are doing at home now is not at all like home schooling.) doesn't work well for all children.
If you're the publican, it's less obvious that missing a couple of months of schooling is worse for you than not being able to operate your business for a few months.
But it's not actually obvious what the long-term effects of missing a few months of education are - not, at least, if you assume that everyone misses it, and syllabuses are adjusted to account for this, rather than just blindly assuming kids learned something this year that they didn't.
Kids who have done "academic" preschool and those who haven't are indistinguishable after a year or two in school. I'd guess that you can absorb younger kids missing education fairly easily. It's more of a challenge for those who are let's say in year 10, in the middle of their GCSE work at the moment. Or at least it seems to me.
It's becoming increasingly clear that there is a route out of lockdown that doesn't depend on either a vaccine or any new technology.
First, you need to maintain strict lockdown until you've knocked the virus down to a very few individuals within the population - and, that includes supplying PPE and testing for health care and nursing homes etc so that where there is necessary personal contact this isn't a route to maintain high levels of infection. The government seems intent on relaxing lockdown too early to achieve this, and has repeatedly refused to obtain sufficient PPE and testing capacity.
Second, you need rapid testing capacity. At present the tests take 3-4 days, sometimes significantly longer. Part of that delay in results is that tests are conducted at a few centres, so you need at least a day to get the test to the lab, and then the labs have a large backlog to work through. Many hospitals have labs that should be able to process tests without that shipping delay, and if they have the capacity to avoid the backlog results could be back in hours rather than days (it takes about 5h to run the PCR stage of the test, a colleague at Fukushima used to run PCR tests day in day out, the rest is shipping and processing). It doesn't take any new technology to recruit and train a load of technicians to run lots of testing labs close enough to the point where they're needed to give results within a few hours, or even to set up mobile laboratories that can be taken to where they're needed.
Third, you need on the ground tracing staff. The processes of tracing who people have had contact with are well known, without relying on any mobile phone technology although this might make things quicker or simpler. Again, you need these staff in locations where they can rapidly respond to each detected case - which means dispersed around the country rather than centralised, at the very least regional (NW England, Southern Scotland sort of scale) but preferably at local authority level or even NHS Trust. The current government plan seems to be very centralised - the Isle of Wight trials trace people by phone, from a London call centre. Centralisation may be marginally cheaper, but you lose out on the benefits of local knowledge, and boots on the ground approaches can be more readily linked directly to testing (you can't test down the phone, you need someone on the ground to take the sample).
Here's my outline scheme for return to normal without relying on any new technology development: maintain lockdown for now; establish local capability for testing and tracing that can respond rapidly to contain each new outbreak. It's not a radical idea, it's what many nations far less wealthy than those most of us live in are doing very effectively. Why the government doesn't simply do what's been shown to work is beyond me - unless they actually want us all to suffer as much as possible.
"normal" will include some changes:
we'll need to make sure anyone in high risk activities (nursing staff etc) have good PPE
we'll have to get used to being tested regularly, anytime anyone shows symptoms will need to self-isolate until a test shows they're clear, there needs to be convenient testing options (establish means of self administered tests through the post, accepting the delay in results that will incur, or a window at local pharmacies or GP surgeries where someone can be tested without entering the building)
we'll be able to travel, but if where we've been has an outbreak we'll need to self-isolate and be tested (as above for showing symptoms). Likewise attending events like concerts or sports matches. It's relatively easy to have a web based system where you get home, enter where you've been and if there's a case there in the following 2 weeks you get an alert
we'll be more conscious of social distancing - we'll probably all be wearing masks a lot more, washing hands and won't be shaking the hands of strangers
there'll be more working from home, and more staggered work patterns to spread out commuting and leave less people in buildings at any one time
And, our normal will include accepting that there will be times when some form of more restrictive measures may need to be imposed on a regional level.
Put simply, if we suppress this wave of disease to very low levels and we set up an effective testing and tracing system with people self-isolating properly when required we can return to something very similar to our lives today (and, that includes playing cricket). That won't happen if we ease the lockdown too soon or fail to invest in testing and tracing capability.
Of course, if there's a vaccine or a cheap and simple test that gives a result in minutes, or an antibody test to confirm immunity from a prior infection, then we have additional levels of security in our return to normal. Our government seems to be betting on a technological fix and gone all-in on a vaccine when there's a safer (but perhaps less glamorous) route.
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. Russia seems to have rocketed to the #2 spot, completing their transition from "it's just a bad season for pneumonia" to "OMG COVID-19!!!" Former cautionary tale Italy has now reached the point where there are more than twice as many resolved cases of COVID-19 as there are active ones.
If American states were treated as individual countries twenty-nine 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.
No countries have joined the 10,000 case club since the last compilation.
Are they starting with strategies they use for tracing STD spread?
It appears that many of the nations which have very effectively contained this pandemic through a rigorous tracing programme are those where diseases like cholera are endemic, and so they already have the infrastructure for tracking diseases. And, these are often the poorer nations or regions which shows that this doesn't need a lot of expensive high-tech - though, usually a lot of people (in our wealthier nations staff costs would be much higher, which might explain our governments tendency to look for a high-tech solution, on the other hand employing a lot of people is something our economies need at the moment).