Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[John MacLean]

I get right fed up by people who reference the restrictions we've been under in terms of intervention by a nanny state. 

It's just utter libertarian nonsense. Not least because we're looking at approaching 70 years since we last had anything like a functioning nanny welfare state designed to protect the most vulnerable in society.  

A fit for purpose welfare state wouldn't have prevented the virus arriving here but we might have had a healthier country, better equipped to deal with it. 

We could have avoided the severity of the first Lockdown because our NHS wouldn't have been in danger of being overwhelmed. How good would it have been if we had had a well funded, state of the art National Health Service that instead of banging pots and pans for we could look at with genuine pride. 

People would be less afraid of losing their jobs because the state would be there to protect and not punish. 

Typically it is invariably the people that decry the nanny state that are also the people who cite Sweden as a great example of how to deal with Covid-19 but ignore the fact that their welfare state allowed them to take the approach they did. 

It's the libertarian, let the market decide and don't impinge upon people's 'freedom' approach that left us so vulnerable and it is the same libertarian, don't need face masks, open things up and just look after yourself approach that makes recovery so fucking difficult. 

It's not been too much state intervention that we've had over the last couple of generations but not enough. 

Ach, I'm just a grumpy old man fed up to the back teeth of all of this and the levels of utter selfishness that I encounter on a daily basis. And to think I was told that this was no longer a public health crisis. 

 

Edited October 6, 2020 by John MacLean

[Squirrelhumper]

23 hours ago, invergowrie arab said:

What a mewling pile of shite.

Nobody said opening the schools would be safe.  It's managed risk.

 

 

They are managing very badly, just ask any teacher.

SG promised the world to education sector and have delivered very little.

Dress it up however you want.

[Squirrelhumper]

23 hours ago, Honest_Man#1 said:

To then cancel this with a circuit breaker that’s weeks too late, just so that it means schools aren’t affected (whilst still pretending schools aren't an issue), would be a huge slap in the face to everyone involved.

Think most folk with a brain can understand the irony here.

Arab obviously missing one.

[Squirrelhumper]

21 hours ago, eindhovendee said:

You'll do what the fucking Tories tell you do, you won't need to plan for anything.

You'll like what afterthoughts they come up with for Scotland because not enough of you decided you could run your own country and would rather be run by someone who couldn't give a f**k for anyone outside Greater London.
 

Preaching to the wrong person here. pal.

[LongTimeLurker]

1 minute ago, s_dog said:

What's the point? Because the alternative is doing nothing different and just letting the numbers of infections continue to grow,....

They are almost certainly going to do that again once any temporary circuit breaker measures are lifted and things revert to doing nothing different. There is no quick easy fix on this other than reaching herd immunity either by letting things run their natural course (keeping schools, pubs, workplaces open means that will almost certainly be what unfolds over the next few weeks) or through a vaccine (which may be a very long way off).

[Have some faith in Magic]

When pubs were closed before they were all on payment holidays for sky sports and the likes. 

Not much chance of this happening this time. That is a huge expense to many pubs, 

[DeeTillEhDeh]

They are managing very badly, just ask any teacher.
SG promised the world to education sector and have delivered very little.
Dress it up however you want.

I won't start another argument but the experience will undoubtedly differ from school to school.

The experience I've faced on Dundee - and others might confirm - despite the apprehension of returning - is of a relatively controlled and safe environment.

I would suspect that some of our pupils general hygiene has improved as a consequence of this - more conscious of wiping down, clean hands etc than before.

It would be interesting to know what others have experienced.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

They are almost certainly going to do that again once any temporary circuit breaker measures are lifted and things revert to doing nothing different. There is no quick easy fix on this other than reaching herd immunity either by letting things run their natural course (keeping schools, pubs, workplaces open means that will almost certainly be what unfolds over the next few weeks) or through a vaccine (which may be a very long way off).

Until we get a vaccine I can only see a tightening of more practical measures being effective - temperature checks, face masks outdoors possibly etc.

[Squirrelhumper]

19 hours ago, madwullie said:

Is there evidence that schools are "major contributors to spread"? 

This is England for last week. Assume we'll be very similar.

[renton]

1 minute ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

5 minutes ago, LongTimeLurker said:

They are almost certainly going to do that again once any temporary circuit breaker measures are lifted and things revert to doing nothing different. There is no quick easy fix on this other than reaching herd immunity either by letting things run their natural course (keeping schools, pubs, workplaces open means that will almost certainly be what unfolds over the next few weeks) or through a vaccine (which may be a very long way off).

Until we get a vaccine I can only see a tightening of more practical measures being effective - temperature checks, face masks outdoors possibly etc.

How about permanent social bubbles? A fixed combination of households designed to prevent too much mixing between people once they allow social interactions indoors again. Not sure how you police that, right enough.

Try and limit people to one hospitality venue per outing? Again, probably more trouble than it's worth...

[renton]

Just now, Squirrelhumper said:

This is England for last week. Assume we'll be very similar.

That's number of incidents though, it doesn't say anything about how large the clusters in each incident was, or what demographics were showing up positive in each cluster.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, school age children were contributing only 8% of total positive cases.

[Squirrelhumper]

8 minutes ago, Have some faith in Magic said:

When pubs were closed before they were all on payment holidays for sky sports and the likes. 

Not much chance of this happening this time. That is a huge expense to many pubs, 

If pubs are forced to close again, plenty just won't open back up.

My after work local, The Admiral in Glasgow hasn't opened since March and it was a busy, busy pub. Just no passing trade now with no live music, no offices open and no way to attract custom.

Viable business gone overnight.

[LongTimeLurker]

Just now, DeeTillEhDeh said:

Until we get a vaccine I can only see a tightening of more practical measures being effective - temperature checks, face masks outdoors possibly etc.

Things were so messed up back in March that there's a good chance there is relatively little pain left on getting to herd immunity. Time will tell basically. The science is far from definitively settled on that. Doing all the sensible things is the best way to look after numero uno and those closest to you through all of this.

[Squirrelhumper]

1 minute ago, renton said:

That's number of incidents though, it doesn't say anything about how large the clusters in each incident was, or what demographics were showing up positive in each cluster.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, school age children were contributing only 8% of total positive cases.

Many of their parents have positive cases?

How many teachers?

[Guest Bob Mahelp]

5 minutes ago, s_dog said:

We haven't, we've went from a two week spell of 9-16k new people tested down to around 5-6k. Partly because the reason for the high testing was when the kids had all been back at school for a week or so and everyone caught the cold. Once that tailed off and along with being impacted by the lab capacity issues that have plagued the UK testing, the figures have fallen back. The only question is, how much is the lab capacity affecting it, because you would have expected the numbers to increase with all the university student testing, and it hasn't. 

 

What's the point? Because the alternative is doing nothing different and just letting the numbers of infections continue to grow, knowing that the more the numbers grow, the quicker the infection rates go up. And that in turn will lead to more people in hospital and ultimately more deaths. It is about the Government recognising that a blanket lockdown as we had previously not being an answer, knowing that people still have to live their lives, but try and introduce measures that limit the amount of interactions they are having with others, as that's the only way we have of stopping the virus spreading.

 

That in itself is a complete contradiction in terms. I'm not for the 'do nothing and let the virus take its course' approach, but what we have at the moment are half-baked plans to contain something that simply can't be contained without complete isolation. 

Simultaneously, the plans are devastating the economy. The fall-out hasn't even begun, as hundreds of thousands of jobs are hanging by a thread in the hospitality, travel and various other sectors....and by the looks of it Sturgeon is going to hit the restaurant and pub sector again this week. 

That's without even beginning to consider the cost to people's mental and physical health, as forced isolation leads to anxiety and depression issues, and the NHS seems incapable of prioritising any other illness other than covid-19.

Instead of looking at other countries and copying best practice in testing, tracing, furlough and everything else, the UK (and I include Scotland in this) has bounced between not giving a f**k and introducing the world's most draconian measures. We're reacting to events, not being pro-active, and we're failing drastically. 

Sturgeon's announcements are looking every more desperate. Stating that there won't be more serious lockdown measures, and then (as looks likely) hitting the hospitality sector once again looks like a political decision based on the easiest way out. 

For restrictive measures to work, people have to believe in them. IMHO both Johnson and Sturgeon are a few weeks away from completely losing the trust of the populace, and at that point they'll either have to get more draconian, or change tack completely. 

[Michael W]

3 minutes ago, renton said:

How about permanent social bubbles? A fixed combination of households designed to prevent too much mixing between people once they allow social interactions indoors again. Not sure how you police that, right enough.

Try and limit people to one hospitality venue per outing? Again, probably more trouble than it's worth...

Too hard to police just about sums the restrictions up, to be honest. You're essentially policing what was ordinarily everyday regular behaviour and humans have just about complete autonomy in meeting their mates, visiting a relative or whatever if they want to. You'd have to be quite unlucky to get caught doing this, albeit you might get grassed up by a neighbour. From this point of view, I do feel sorry for the government as it's on a hiding to nothing. 

However this is exactly why it's key for Governments to be winning trust so people will abide by them, even though they think the restrictions are shit. Lose that trust and you're struggling to win it back. 

Instead we are treated like children and have restrictions hinted at us for days before they are finally implemented. Just be honest with us about what you're doing and why, and stop the hints - we all know they're coming and if there is a genuine problem it isn't going to get better in the four days the new restrictions are dangled over us before introduction. There is no engagement at all and even the non-cabinet politicians have been sidetracked as well. 

 

[renton]

3 minutes ago, Squirrelhumper said:

Many of their parents have positive cases?

How many teachers?

Impossible to tell from the Scottish Government dash board.

Looking through the literature of what is an admittedly limited data set, it appears that children as index cases are quite rare. The PHE study based on English schools that did reopen in June suggested 50% of all school linked cases were staff infecting other staff, and another 25% of staff infecting kids, so 75% total of staff passing it on. 23% were from kids infecting adults, although the age of the kids doing the infecting are not mentioned and only 2% from students passing it to other students, an important metric in the ability of classrooms to form hubs of community transmission to other households.

The Dutch study on the previous page, again operating under more constrained environments still suggested a very small percentage of people who's index case was someone under 18.

The thing is, there really isn't a great data set, and no one has the spare capacity to just go and take swabs of a big enough sample of schools to see how well it's circulating around those places.

However, it'd surely be apparent in Track and Trace whether schools were being easily linked. Hell, even if it was all from asymptomatic children then T&T would have a bunch of unrelated, untraceable cases in a local vicinity. You could start to see the shape or the infection by the contrast of infected parents vs no discernable traceable line of infection from other sources.

[renton]

https://www.rcpch.ac.uk/resources/covid-19-research-evidence-summaries

Pretty decent summary of the studies done to date on child transmission.

Quote

The importance of children in transmitting the virus is difficult to establish, particularly because of the number of asymptomatic cases,46 47 but there is some evidence that their role in transmitting the virus is limited and older ‘index case’ age has been associated with an increased rate of secondary infections.26 48 Precise details regarding paediatric transmission cannot be confirmed without analysis of widespread sero-surveillance, but trends are emerging. Studies of multiple family clusters have revealed children were unlikely to be the index case, in Guangzhou, China, Israel and other countries.37 49 50 51 52 53 54 A SARS-CoV-2 positive child in a cluster in the French Alps did not transmit the virus to anyone else, despite exposure to more than 100 people.55 

In the Netherlands, separate data from primary care and household studies suggests SARS-CoV-2 is mainly spread between adults and from adult family members to children, this is supported by a similar Greek study.15 27 

An epidemiological study where 1155 contacts of six COVID-19 positive cases in an Irish school were screened, there was no evidence of secondary transmission of COVID-19 from children to other children or adults, with the findings mirrored in a study from Singapore.56 57 

However, viable SARS-CoV-2 virus has been isolated from symptomatic children with COVID-1958 and there is some evidence of transmission from asymptomatic children to others.13 37 Analysis of a large outbreak of COVID-19 disease in a summer camp was unable to differentiate between transmission from adults to children and between children themselves, but up to 50% of exposed children contracted the virus.59 

It is likely that multiple chains of contact account for the high infection rates and supports the notion of limiting contact outside classrooms and having “bubbles” for schools, to reduce the exposure of individuals to the virus. This is supported by an Israeli study into a secondary school outbreak of two separate cases of COVID-19 in students, 13.2% of students and 16.6% of staff subsequently tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Untangling the modes of transmission (increased community spread due to loosening of lockdown restrictions vs school contact) was not possible but avoiding poorly ventilated closed spaces, crowded areas and close-contact settings was recommended.60 

An Australian study in secondary schools shows a low rate of child to child transmission (0.3-1.2%), with adult to child (1.5%) and adult to adult (4.4%) transmission being more common.61 Low community prevalence levels in combination with effective contact tracing enabled a rapid response, which may explain why the levels of onward infection appear to be much lower in this study.

Public Health England collected data on transmission related to school settings during June 2020, when a limited number of school years were invited to return to school. Nationally there were 198 confirmed cases related to educational settings and 1.6 million (mainly primary school aged) children were reported to have returned to school. When the index case was a child the maximum number of secondary cases was two, compared to nine when the index case was a staff member. When outbreaks were reported this was significantly associated with increased rates of regional prevalence.62 Overall this is very reassuring for children returning to school but ongoing surveillance as class sizes increase and all year groups attend schools will be needed

 

[Paco]

We seem to have the same discussions periodically but Test & Protect would pick it up if kids were bringing the virus home from school, and even the schools themselves would notice pretty easily - I’m sure a primary school teacher might just be a bit concerned by ten kids isolating due to unwell parents.

Secondary schools are a bit different, it seems that quite simply the older you get with this the more likely you are to pass it on. I’m quite sure none of the ‘OpEN uP LiKe SWeDeN’ brigade will have any idea that our secondary schools and colleges/unis are far more open than theirs - kids over 16 haven’t been allowed in educational settings since March, but primaries have never closed.

We won’t even consider anything like that though. Good old British common sense tells us it’s ridiculous that the wee man can go to school but his big sister cannae.

[Scary Bear]

42 minutes ago, Chairman Mao said:

All cause mortality in Sweden this year continues to be similar to previous years, lower than 2015, despite there being a pandemic and no lockdown. 2019 was a record low for mortality after very light excess winter deaths. 

Is Sweden a good country for us to compare ourselves too? We used to fight the Albanians for the title of sick man of Europe. When did we get on a par with Sweden?