Covid-19 pandemic

[Nocturnal Submission]

So the majority of infected people actually do not spread the disease any further. It would be interesting to find out why.

Yes, that is interesting, isn't it.

Conversely there have been individuals that seem to have infected dozens of people at every casual encounter.

The answer would seem to be that either some people incubate particularly infective strains of the virus or certain environments are particularly conducive or restrictive to its spread, likely connected to temperature, humidity or ventilation.

[Patrick Thistle]

So the majority of infected people actually do not spread the disease any further. It would be interesting to find out why.

Are they the people who self isolate?

[San Bernardhinault]

In Massachusetts, where everything had come under control pretty well in the summer and we were down to 100 or so new cases a day, numbers have been creeping up slowly and gradually over the last 2 and a half months to around 1000 a day now. Up until the last few days the line was looking pretty, er, linear. But in the last week there's been a dramatic change, from 600 to 1000, and suddenly it looks like exponential growth again. We're not seeing any change in the mortality stats yet, but that's obviously a lagging indicator. Anyway, I'm worried that we're really accelerating the way that other parts of the country are.

[Jimski]

Yes, this does seem a disease predominantly spread by so-called super-spreaders. As said above, nobody yet seems sure whether this is something inherent in the person themselves, or whether it's do with their actions (the number of people they meet, etc.).

[ursus arctos]

The nature of spaces in which one encounters also seems to play a role.

Singing in closed spaces, be they churches or karaoke bars, has been the source of a number of serious outbreaks

[laverte]

A question for those of you (ie, everyone) better with data than i am:

Are we being given information about where and among whom the new cases and deaths are emerging? It seems that deaths in care homes are rising quickly again. If i've read it correctly more than 60% of people who have died from covid-19 in October in the UK were over 80. Are we looking at the same demographic pattern as the first wave? i'm at risk, so would it be as unwise for me now to take the bus and enter shops as (i was led to believe) it was in the spring?

[Jimski]

Another article about the Great Barrington declaration. Gotta love the responses from a couple of scientists who signed it about exactly how shielding the vulnerable would work:

"I don’t know exactly how it would work".

"Specific control measures for preventing coronavirus transmission are not my area of expertise."

A pipe-dream, in other words...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/19/h...arrington.html

[S. aureus]

I don't think your risk of ill effects if you catch it will have improved enough to not make you high risk, and seeing as community spread appears to be widespread again in the UK I think it would be unwise of you to put yourself in enclosed areas with other people, if you can avoid this.
Though I'm not an expert.

Edit: to laverte

[San Bernardhinault]

I think it was AP who posted a fascinating link on how the disease is usually traceable back to super-spreader events in particular. That it's not just that a lowish proportion of the infected transmit the disease, but even those who do tend to do it in particular environments. Crowds, loud voices, extended periods in company, and enclosed spaces seem to be the three big triggers.

That means that going to the shops, for example, is actually a pretty low risk behaviour because few people shout in the shops, and you tend not to spend 10 minutes hanging around with the same 30 people staring at the sliced ham. Even though it is indoors, it doesn't appear to be particularly risky. Ironically, farmers markets - because of the crowding - may be more risky despite being outdoors.

Anyway, the learning seems to be that we should have fewer politicians and fewer political rallies.

Also, sadly for OTFers, we shouldn't be going to pubs, sport or gigs. Or church, but that's less of an OTF fetish.

[Patrick Thistle]

50,000 signatures on the petition to let people buy non-essential stuff in supermarkets. Fucking snowflakes. Surely you can get by for 2 weeks without buying a shit t-shirt from Tesco.

[elguapo4]

1,025 new cases in Ireland, back over 1,000 again but thankfully no deaths or increases in ICU admissions.

[S. aureus]

US Department of Health and Human Services scraps plan to fast track vaccination of Santa Claus impersonators as essential workers.
Worth clicking through for the recordings of the conversation between Michael Caputo of the HHS and Ric Erwin, chairman of the Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas, though you'll probably have to get there via Google:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/health-...ld-11603630802

[San Bernardhinault]

The Mark Meadows thing is absolutely astonishing. "1,000 people dying every day. Whatevs, man, we've got treatments that are working and those 1,000 people are just in your imagination. And anyway, we'll have a vaccine soon-ish, which means that we'll only have 1,000 people dying every day for a year or two while we get everyone vaccinated."

[anton pulisov]

the majority of infected people actually do not spread the disease any further.

Yeah, there's an article up on the Atlantic about how the Japanese realised this back in the spring and adjusted their tracing accordingly.

For example, the R value is based on the mean transmission, but a mean value is of no use in the case of highly heterogeneous transmission. If the R for ten different people is 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0. 0, 0, 6, 6, then yeah, they have a mean R of 1.2, but that doesn't tell you much.

Europe is just faffing about and not getting this shit done. They have no excuses of being caught by surprise any more. We had all summer to prepare Project South Korea.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

The new infection numbers in France are absolutely horrific. 52,010 new cases today. That's in one day. Not so hugely far off 0.1% of the population. The trend is bad too of course.

[Fussbudget]

The number of daily deaths and hospitalisations seems about the same in France and the UK at the moment though, despite France reporting twice as many cases as the UK each day since at least August. More targeted testing maybe?

[Sporting]

We're in curfew here, from midnight to 6 in the morning, which makes bugger all difference to me.

https://english.elpais.com/spanish_n...d-cant-do.html

[Sporting]

One of the returning restrictions is that we are not allowed to drink at the bar. We have to be seated. But given the general movement of people in and around these establishments this rule seems daft, a sticking plaster, an irrelevance.

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/Jane_Samuels/status/1320633295663759361?s=20

[DCI Harry Batt]

Thanks Nef.

[pebblethefish]

That is actually quite a phenomenal site. More so because it seems to be just a random individual who is collating all the data and presenting it in a way that even I can understand.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Agreed, thanks Nef.

[Moonlight Shadow]

Well, this is a sobering read...

JohannesBorgen (@jeuasommenulle) Tweeted:
Last Friday, Macron floated the idea of a new general lockdown in France. Ouch. And because I’m fed up with reading so much garbage and contradictory stuff on Covid, I decided to have a hard look at the French data. A (long but important) thread. https://twitter.com/jeuasommenulle/s...973858816?s=20

[ursus arctos]

That is an extremely good distillation of really concerning data

[Fussbudget]

A thing I meant to mention about comparing the first and second wave, is that although there's a consensus that the real number of cases in the first wave was probably ten times as high as was reported because of the lack of testing, the profile over time for a lot of northern places looks like this:



...so even assuming that the April peak should be ten times as big on that chart, we must be in the same ballpark now in those areas. And indeed hospitalisation levels in the North West and North East are back to early May levels: