draxen
3655
… only for the short term. I think that’s what has shaped UK policy. In countries enacting containment strategy they expect a 2nd wave to occur after social isolation restrictions are lifted.
Timex
3656
I don’t believe containment can work at all in the Western world at this point.
Well see in the next few days, but Italy might be close to an inflection point:
Based on what? restrictions have been lifted in several Chinese regions and we have seen no second spike. They are blocking flights from countries with infections, though. That measure is probably to stay there and perhaps in all Europe after all is done.
draxen
3659
No idea - sorry. I’m just a poor layman.
I have been reading/listening to a lot of epidemiologists recently and there appears to be no consensus on whether a 2nd wave could occur. I can only assume some predictive models show a high chance of it. I don’t know if our scientists are right - I don’t think anyone does.
Soma
3660
Well, social distancing and cough etiquette will have to continue for some time in order to prevent transmission. And cleaning hands. Other than social distancing (no more kiss kiss), all the other practices have been recommended by public health officials already before this pandemic.
I know in Hong Kong, they fundamentally changed the way they eat in restaurant after SARS in 2003. In the past, people use their own chopsticks to rifle through a communal plate of food. That pretty much means people’s saliva is all mixed up in the communal plate, and infection can spread. Nowadays the communal plate of food has its own public chopstick, and people use the public chopstick to put food back to their own plate. Then they return the public chopsticks and use their own chopsticks. No mixing of saliva any more.
Here is more:
So my point is, people can change their social behaviour, if there is a will.
Btw, this is very up to date data on Italy:
https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/covid-19-infografica_eng.pdf
Under 18 years old do not only not suffer much heavy consequences, they seem no not get infected at all.
Also, only 7% of cases found to be asymptomatic (which is obviously an underestimation but seems to throw away the scenario where 90% of cases are asymptomatic. We knew that from China, though).
newbrof
3662
regarding the brits, maybe they are onto something
jsnell
3664
I don’t think we can read much into either of those. People with symptoms are much more likely to be tested, and the more severe the symptoms the more likely it is. So kids and asymptomatic cases will be under-represented, critical ones over-represented.
The holy crap number in that presentation is the number of infected health care workers. I hope that’s another sampling artifact.
Spain reached 6000 cases already. This is why 5-6 days ago I was saying we were not taking things seriously. It seems politicians don’t know what geometric growth is, nor how there is a delay between implementing measures and the really affecting the numbers.
People say we had the example of Italy and we didn’t act. I will say more, we had the example of China and we didn’t act. I’m not sure what people was thinking. Maybe they thought the virus would put a nice tie and hat and be more educated with us Europeans, that the disasters would only apply to faraway places like China. Well, it doesn’t work like that.
Hell, when they were building two hospitals in 10 days, I remember thinking “maybe we should start building a pair, as we won’t do it as fast”.
Teiman
3666
I will we will surpass Italia. The italians are taking this seriusly. We don’t care if we live or not, but we will not change our customs. Or many people is like that.
Lets hope something become the awakening call for spaniards.
To an extent yes, they are underrepresented, but Italy has performed 60k tests (1 per thoushand people, the equivalent to the Us performing, say 327k tests), so the under representation is likely not several orders of magnitude. People were saying just a week ago that maybe 90% of cases could be asymptomatic. This is not true.
South Korea has performed 1 test per 250 people and their under 18 year olds infection rates are still at 5% or so.
All data points towards true asymptomatic cases being very, very rare.
If somehow the UK elected a bounder, a cad, an amoral gambler, a man with a history of bad, off the cuff decisions made for no other reason as to try and increase his fame and power or enrich his friends then perhaps choosing something that was risky and glorious if it succeeded would happen.
Normally we dont make them PM, usually we put this type in charge of Light Brigades.
I am (still) waiting for Iberia and Emirates to decide they won’t be flying in and out of Madrid in two weeks, so they will cancel my flights. If I do it myself now, I can get a rebook credit only from Iberia (no refund), and I pay a 20% penalty on Emirates for a refund.
I thought a lot of airlines we waiving rebooking fees.
jsnell
3671
If they’ve done 60k tests and found 16k cases, it implies that at this point they’re basically only doing tests on people who are already showing symptoms, not the people who might have been exposed to the virus. (With the possible exception of health-care workers.)
Yeah, and their testing strategy is clearly going to have a lot less bias on the symptomatic / asymptomatic axis. An age-based bias still seems quite plausible though.
Does it not also say that the 7% asymptomatic is only available from 6 thousand cases, not all they have tested. Seems like a small sample size there.
Yes, I can rebook without a fee, but I don’t know when to rebook for, and generally they restrict how far out you can rebook. Same with a voucher. Basically I have to rebook the trip for this year. I don’t know if I’m going to make this trip this year. Nobody knows if I’m going to make this trip this year.
Yeah, but these asymptomatic cases can also develop symptoms and the number go go (pre-symptomatic vs asymptomatic).
China reported less than 1% asymptomatic cases. Same caveats, but the number will be higher, but clearly it does not seem, given the evidence, that there are more asymptomatic cases than symptomatic (which does not bode well for overall death rate). Anybody saying there are probably many more asymptomatic cases than cases with symptoms is clearly talking without data at this point.
The WHO is reporting truly asymptomatic cases are extremely rare, for what it’s worth.
Also: https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.10.2000180
