COVID-19/Coronavirus Information and Support Thread (see OP for useful links)

  • Thread starter baldgye
  • 13,285 comments
  • 645,725 views
Dotini
In my state, positive tests now run at 3.2% and falling.
Click to expand...

Yet cases/day and, more worryingly, deaths/day are rising in WA, according to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/washington-coronavirus-cases.html


Biggles
Where I live there is a high proportion of older people - people in their 60's - 90's. Nobody is going out & partying! I would say that a sensible approach is to limit the capacity of restaurants & (especially) bars & pubs & shut them down if they don't comply. Ban large gatherings. Mandate masks & social distancing. In this way, cases can be kept under some degree of control & most of the economy can continue to function reasonably efficiently. Provide financial support for the most vulnerable businesses. Lurching from complete closure to complete opening seems like the worst possible option.
Click to expand...

I don't know what rules have been in place where you are, so I'm speaking more generally and of course with more knowledge about the UK. Limiting capacity of cafes, restaurants etc is what we have, and in some ways it's hurting them more than being shut down, since there is less financial assistance available for them and takings are down 40% or more.

"Where I live" - are we talking complex, street, village, town, ...? Do these older people where you live ever interact with anyone outside that age range? Go anywhere outside your area? I mean, you surely can't be that isolated that what younger people do even elsewhere can't affect you by some route.

It isn't that I don't agree that more nuance would be good, if it was possible. Take our recent edict to "return to working from home where possible" for example, IMO not needed for most of the country. But, where people would go to work by public transport it does make sense, as that is more likely where transmission will occur than in an office where a boss has to ensure precautions are followed. It also follows that working from home hurts cafes etc due to loss of passing trade.

Not really sure where I'm going with this, but I did wonder when lockdown happened whether it was really needed. Turns out that even restricting just one or two aspects of modern society has countless knock-on consequences, so I think that a nuanced approach could be almost as damaging overall, financially. And then there's whether people will manage to stay informed of which restrictions are in place, and that a lot of people won't follow them anyway. It's extremely hard to say how much is enough.
 
Outspacer
Yet cases/day and, more worryingly, deaths/day are rising in WA, according to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/washington-coronavirus-cases.html




I don't know what rules have been in place where you are, so I'm speaking more generally and of course with more knowledge about the UK. Limiting capacity of cafes, restaurants etc is what we have, and in some ways it's hurting them more than being shut down, since there is less financial assistance available for them and takings are down 40% or more.

"Where I live" - are we talking complex, street, village, town, ...? Do these older people where you live ever interact with anyone outside that age range? Go anywhere outside your area? I mean, you surely can't be that isolated that what younger people do even elsewhere can't affect you by some route.

It isn't that I don't agree that more nuance would be good, if it was possible. Take our recent edict to "return to working from home where possible" for example, IMO not needed for most of the country. But, where people would go to work by public transport it does make sense, as that is more likely where transmission will occur than in an office where a boss has to ensure precautions are followed. It also follows that working from home hurts cafes etc due to loss of passing trade.

Not really sure where I'm going with this, but I did wonder when lockdown happened whether it was really needed. Turns out that even restricting just one or two aspects of modern society has countless knock-on consequences, so I think that a nuanced approach could be almost as damaging overall, financially. And then there's whether people will manage to stay informed of which restrictions are in place, and that a lot of people won't follow them anyway. It's extremely hard to say how much is enough.
Click to expand...

According to my daily newspaper, the Seattle Times, cases/day have been falling steadily since 8/1, yet there is a slight uptick the last few days, yes. Deaths /day has a lot of variability for some reason. Yet on a 14 day average, they are far below the terrible record month of April.

You ask some good questions and make some good observations. In particular, you bring in the financial/economic factor, which is a great concern for many, but not for the fortunate who can avoid pretty much all human contact if they want to.
 
Dotini
According to my daily newspaper, the Seattle Times, cases/day have been falling steadily since 8/1, yet there is a slight uptick the last few days, yes. Deaths /day has a lot of variability for some reason. Yet on a 14 day average, they are far below the terrible record month of April.

You ask some good questions and make some good observations. In particular, you bring in the financial/economic factor, which is a great concern for many, but not for the fortunate who can avoid pretty much all human contact if they want to.
Click to expand...

Here's the data. If you're going to see more deaths out of the recent surge in cases, I'll be in a week or two. Not yet.

91-DIVOC-states-Washington.png
91-DIVOC-states-Washington (1).png
 
Outspacer
"Where I live" - are we talking complex, street, village, town, ...? Do these older people where you live ever interact with anyone outside that age range? Go anywhere outside your area? I mean, you surely can't be that isolated that what younger people do even elsewhere can't affect you by some route.
Click to expand...

Where I live is a very affluent small town. Many of the older people are retired & well-off. They have the luxury of physical space. They don't have to go to work & have no need to interact with younger people, except in the grocery store, bank, post office where mask wearing is mandatory. So it is quite easy for them to limit the risk factor. This is different from the older people who died in the first wave in various countries, many of whom were in assisted care facilities & were infected before anybody clearly understood what was going on. I'm pretty sure socio-economic status will emerge as possibly the primary factor in who has been vulnerable to Covid.
 
Biggles
Where I live is a very affluent small town. Many of the older people are retired & well-off. They have the luxury of physical space. They don't have to go to work & have no need to interact with younger people, except in the grocery store, bank, post office where mask wearing is mandatory. So it is quite easy for them to limit the risk factor. This is different from the older people who died in the first wave in various countries, many of whom were in assisted care facilities & were infected before anybody clearly understood what was going on. I'm pretty sure socio-economic status will emerge as possibly the primary factor in who has been vulnerable to Covid.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a fairly specific situation you're in there, and quite unusual. Since you're seemingly able to do all you need to do, which restrictions are you finding too much?

Outbreaks in care homes etc rightly got a lot press, and particularly here where many appear to have been caused by sending people there from hospitals. That said, as far as I know, most care homes didn't have an outbreak, and most deaths from covid weren't people in care homes.
 
Outspacer
Sounds like a fairly specific situation you're in there, and quite unusual. Since you're seemingly able to do all you need to do, which restrictions are you finding too much?
Click to expand...

Yes - it's a specific situation. It's like Ontario's version of the Cotswolds. I haven't been into the big city - Toronto - since February, where the situation is obviously very different, with hundreds of thousands of people living in condo buildings. There has been an explosion of property buying in my area & other exurban areas as the well-to-do look to increase their physical space by moving out of the city. Again, not an option for the less well-off.

I don't find any restrictions "too much" in my daily life. I put a mask on when I go into stores - that's about it. The pandemic has been devastating for my business however, which depends on my access to the US.

The area I live in is normally heavily touristed with visitors from the US, Europe & Asia. There are none of those tourists this year. However, since the initial lockdowns, the area seems as busy as ever with tourists from Canada. The local vineyards & restaurants are packed with visitors & even though there is an effort at physical distancing, I suspect it is not as disciplined as it should be, here & elsewhere in Ontario, and as a consequence transmission rates of Covid have been creeping up steadily. I suspect more restrictive measures will be put back in place very shortly.
 
The Dutch Internist Association claims that it seems that people don't get as sick as during the first wave. IC care has been cut by a third, 16 days vs 22 days. People that need IC care has been cut in half.

They think it's because of better treatment early on.
 
Dennisch
The Dutch Internist Association claims that it seems that people don't get as sick as during the first wave. IC care has been cut by a third, 16 days vs 22 days. People that need IC care has been cut in half.

They think it's because of better treatment early on.
Click to expand...
Do you know if that is based on a like-for-like age group e.g. I would expect fewer and shorter hospital stays if the average age of those being infected is lower now than it was in the first wave.

I also wonder if the fact that so many people are wearing masks is reducing the number of severe cases due to people being exposed to lower levels of the virus... wearing a mask may not prevent one from getting the virus, but it should reduce the 'dose' which in turn could make the infection less severe.
 
For those who think the vulnerable in care homes are now safer, a warning...

My gran is in a care home in England. They test all staff weekly and patients every 2 weeks and say they have a good stock of test kits. That definitely is a huge improvement from where we were in March 👍

3 weeks ago they had 6 positive cases. 3 of those were asymptomatic. My gran wasn't involved luckily, and I hope the 3 with symptoms have recovered ok (they haven't provided further details other than to say, no further cases identified to date).

My guess is the 3 asymptomatic cases were staff as they tend to be relatively young. My guess, again, is that one of the staff was infected outside and unknowingly brought the virus into the home and then infected others, even with the measures they have in place.

I believe that the care home is being ultra vigilant and taking high precautions.

Another improvement, I believe, on where we were in March, is that they have been able to control the outbreak.

However, that first person got infected somewhere, somehow outside the home. Who's to say where... a child they had at school picking up the virus, someone in a store not wearing a mask, visiting another household, or one of a hundred other ways.

Please, please do what people ask you to do, wear a mask, social distance and wash those hands. The person next to you in Tesco's might work in a care home for all you know.

There are many things I'm not happy with Matt Hancock about, but one thing we both agree on, don't kill someone's gran! :cheers:
 
Touring Mars
Do you know if that is based on a like-for-like age group e.g. I would expect fewer and shorter hospital stays if the average age of those being infected is lower now than it was in the first wave.

I also wonder if the fact that so many people are wearing masks is reducing the number of severe cases due to people being exposed to lower levels of the virus... wearing a mask may not prevent one from getting the virus, but it should reduce the 'dose' which in turn could make the infection less severe.
Click to expand...

They're working on the exact data now, we should see those numbers in a week or 2.

And as for the masks. No one here wears them. I see on average maybe 2 or 3 people wearing one when I'm shopping for groceries. And I shop at one of the largest markets in the region.

I think that the government can't enforce a mask rule because of our laws, so they ask shopkeepers etc. to enforce it.
I'll do my duty and wear one with every shop visit, and instead of going every day I'm limiting the visits as much as possible again.
 
Biggles
Yes - it's a specific situation. It's like Ontario's version of the Cotswolds. I haven't been into the big city - Toronto - since February, where the situation is obviously very different, with hundreds of thousands of people living in condo buildings. There has been an explosion of property buying in my area & other exurban areas as the well-to-do look to increase their physical space by moving out of the city. Again, not an option for the less well-off.

I don't find any restrictions "too much" in my daily life. I put a mask on when I go into stores - that's about it. The pandemic has been devastating for my business however, which depends on my access to the US.

The area I live in is normally heavily touristed with visitors from the US, Europe & Asia. There are none of those tourists this year. However, since the initial lockdowns, the area seems as busy as ever with tourists from Canada. The local vineyards & restaurants are packed with visitors & even though there is an effort at physical distancing, I suspect it is not as disciplined as it should be, here & elsewhere in Ontario, and as a consequence transmission rates of Covid have been creeping up steadily. I suspect more restrictive measures will be put back in place very shortly.
Click to expand...

Right, I can appreciate the need for some exceptions to general restrictions on travel, and hadn't thought how having a border there might affect your business. But that has more to do with where you (or other staff) might go, and by what mode of transport, than where you are now, surely? The risk appears to be more that you might bring it back to your community (albeit that in your case it would then have a hard time spreading)... I'm just thinking it's hard to formulate a general rule for exceptions, especially across borders.
 
Last edited:
Biggles
Yes - it's a specific situation. It's like Ontario's version of the Cotswolds. I haven't been into the big city - Toronto - since February, where the situation is obviously very different, with hundreds of thousands of people living in condo buildings. There has been an explosion of property buying in my area & other exurban areas as the well-to-do look to increase their physical space by moving out of the city. Again, not an option for the less well-off.

I don't find any restrictions "too much" in my daily life. I put a mask on when I go into stores - that's about it. The pandemic has been devastating for my business however, which depends on my access to the US.

The area I live in is normally heavily touristed with visitors from the US, Europe & Asia. There are none of those tourists this year. However, since the initial lockdowns, the area seems as busy as ever with tourists from Canada. The local vineyards & restaurants are packed with visitors & even though there is an effort at physical distancing, I suspect it is not as disciplined as it should be, here & elsewhere in Ontario, and as a consequence transmission rates of Covid have been creeping up steadily. I suspect more restrictive measures will be put back in place very shortly.
Click to expand...
I'm going to throw it out there with only the info on this post and say you live in Stratford or Niagara-on-the-Lake.
 
I made a plot of new cases of SARS-CoV-2 in Scotland...

As you can hopefully see, cases are rising exponentially...

kUh5Bp2.jpg


Black line is the 7-day moving average... red dotted curve is an exponential curve. Red bars are the 7 day average.
 
@Touring Mars, has there been more research done to validate some of the reports that the virus is mutating to become more contagious (& causing the current surge), BUT also possibly losing its lethality as a result?

I've seen this shared recently, but I remember it also being shared maybe around a month or so ago as well originally.
 
McLaren
@Touring Mars, has there been more research done to validate some of the reports that the virus is mutating to become more contagious (& causing the current surge), BUT also possibly losing its lethality as a result?

I've seen this shared recently, but I remember it also being shared maybe around a month or so ago as well originally.
Click to expand...
I have heard the same thing. In many locations there is an uptick in positivity but at the same time, there isn't a surge in new deaths. Granted, it's hard to say that we are 100% past that from occurring.
 
I think the lower mortality rate has to do with more younger people being infected and that we have a better understanding of how to treat and provide supportive care to patients. I don't have anything to back this up at the moment, but it seems like the most logical answer to the falling death rate.
 
Joey D
I think the lower mortality rate has to do with more younger people being infected and that we have a better understanding of how to treat and provide supportive care to patients. I don't have anything to back this up at the moment, but it seems like the most logical answer to the falling death rate.
Click to expand...
I've seen variations on that theory too. But I've also seen warmings that we (in some places) may still in the lag period between the spike in cases and the spike in mortality.
 
Blitz24
I have heard the same thing. In many locations there is an uptick in positivity but at the same time, there isn't a surge in new deaths. Granted, it's hard to say that we are 100% past that from occurring.
Click to expand...
Right now the media in general are associating the rise in cases to reopening of universities. This sort of ties in with Joey’s theory of young people getting infected more.

We’ll just have to wait for the research to come out I suppose. Correlation doesn’t imply causation.
 
Haven't we had musings popping up that the virus is mutating to a less deadly form almost since the start? Sure I remember it being said that China and Italy possibly got a worse strain and the rest of us might be less affected... that hasn't aged well.
 
McLaren
@Touring Mars, has there been more research done to validate some of the reports that the virus is mutating to become more contagious (& causing the current surge), BUT also possibly losing its lethality as a result?

I've seen this shared recently, but I remember it also being shared maybe around a month or so ago as well originally.
Click to expand...
The link between contagiousness and lethality is extremely difficult - if not impossible - to ascertain at this point, not least because there are so many other variables at play. But I agree with @Joey D - the apparent downturn in lethality is probably down to fewer vulnerable people getting infected, but that may change as and when the virus becomes more prevalent.

@x3ra It's vitally important that people maintain social contact, but thankfully that is now more possible thanks to modern technology. Sadly, loneliness is a killer indeed... but that was the case with or without Covid-19. Fortunately, even those who used to be disenfranchised from the internet age (e.g. my parents) are now able to access social media and free communication tools like WhatsApp and Zoom, in order to keep in touch with friends. Yes, it's not the same as getting together for dinner, drinks etc., but it is far, far better than nothing...
 
I rather like that I no longer have to attend "work outings" and when there is a get-together, I can just log into the Zoom and proceed not to pay any attention. We had a baby shower for a co-work a couple of months back. I would've probably been "encouraged" to attend if we'd been in the office. Since we weren't and did a virtual baby shower, I just contributed some money and then had Zoom up on my computer to make it look like I was involved. The same goes for our monthly team building activities. I don't mind doing stuff here and there, but if I'm at work, I want to work instead of goof around with some activity.

Still, since I have no idea how COVID would affect me, I think I'd rather just be cut off from people since I know exactly how to deal with that and prefer it for the most part.
 
Joey D
I rather like that I no longer have to attend "work outings" and when there is a get-together, I can just log into the Zoom and proceed not to pay any attention. We had a baby shower for a co-work a couple of months back. I would've probably been "encouraged" to attend if we'd been in the office. Since we weren't and did a virtual baby shower, I just contributed some money and then had Zoom up on my computer to make it look like I was involved. The same goes for our monthly team building activities. I don't mind doing stuff here and there, but if I'm at work, I want to work instead of goof around with some activity.

Still, since I have no idea how COVID would affect me, I think I'd rather just be cut off from people since I know exactly how to deal with that and prefer it for the most part.
Click to expand...
Slacker. I'm telling.
 

Similar threads

Famine
  • Locked
PSN outage/restoration - latest news from PS Blog
Replies
0
Views
10K
Famine
Famine
amar212
Pre-release GT5:Prologue Thread Firmware 2.17 mandatory for GT5:P? (and Pictures)
106 107 108
Replies
3K
Views
387K
Beerz
Beerz
Sauc3
The reasons why Bush's government is corrupt
2
Replies
38
Views
2K
Solid Fro
Solid Fro

Latest Posts

Back