Coronavirus - Covid-19 - Boris Johnson falling down on the job - Page 15

The of course we have this:

Stev Hjioff

15 March at 10:04

My views on COVID-19...

I am trained as an epidemiologist and a communicable disease physician. I have also worked in predictive modelling in healthcare and in international health systems development. I am not, however, claiming to be an expert, but I would like to make an few observations...

1... it is unwise to draw parallels from one country to another. Many factors will be different from place to place, population age structure, population density, breadth of healthcare coverage, reliability and breadth of testing facilities, reliability and breadth of contact tracing capability, stage of spread when control measures were first introduced, population mobility, and many other things.

2... epidemic curves are a base case estimate and bear little comparison with real world spread. The more a disease spreads, the less reliable they become and the more complex a situation is, the less predictive they will be.

3... In the UK, the actual experts on this sort of thing are known as "Consultants in Communicable Disease Control". In other countries there are different arrangements. While others, such as intensive care specialists, microbiologists, virologist, mathematicians, journalists, acute physicians, behavioural psychologists have a contribution to make, they are not experts on disease spread in the community and should not be regarded (or present themselves) as such

4... Almost everything that I have seen on social media is misleading and inaccurate. Some of it is extremely dangerous. If you want high quality information, you can get it from the health ministry, public health authority or health system of the country you are in. If you don't want to rely solely on government information, look at the official statements from reputable health orientated universities and departments. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Johns Hopkins and the TH Chan School of Public Health at Harvard are a good place to start. The World Health Organisation has good information, but it has to work in a range of very different countries and so may not be the most practically useful for a particular country.

5... we are not testing everybody in the world, so we can't reliably measure death rates. A simple totting up of the numbers will be a massive overestimate. In addition to this, the way people are tested varies massively from place to place. A low number of cases could mean not much disease or not enough testing.

6... There are only two meaningful strategies for managing an emerging infection. The first is containment, where you isolate cases and trace and test their contacts. If spread within a community becomes too great, this strategy becomes ineffective. The second strategy is herd immunity. The basis of this is that when a certain proportion of people have become immune to an infection, it can no longer spread and so people who are not immune are protected. This is why we vaccinate children. Part of a herd immunity strategy is to protect people at particular risk of harm until lots of low risk people are immune, so the disease can't spread to the vulnerable. A herd immunity strategy is not about culling the vulnerable, it is about protecting the vulnerable. This is a new infection and we are learning about it and our immune responses over time. Strategies will change and develop as knowledge grows

7... in many outbreaks, more people die (usually of things like heart attacks and strokes) because they can't get access to healthcare than die of the infection itself. It is extremely important to make sure that health services are not overwhelmed so that people can get the help they need.

8... there are three key ways we can protect health services. Firstly we need to ensure that, if we don't need to seek healthcare we stay away. Secondly, we "flatten the curve" to stretch out the number of people getting the infection over a longer time period, so they don't all arrive at hospital at the same time. Finally we need to ensure that we have enough people to staff our health and care services. If people can't get childcare, they may not be able to work, so we must be very cautious about closing schools etc.

9... nothing is simple and every action will have risks of negative consequences that we may not initially be aware of, so if something that is obvious to you is not happening, it doesn't necessarily mean that others are stupid or wicked, it is more likely that you are missing part of the picture...

10... social isolation can do a great deal of harm to people, particularly older people and the more vulnerable. As containment and delay measures increase it will be really important that our friends, families and neighbours are supported. If we all check in on those around us, no one will suffer unnecessarily. Now is a good time to start sharing phone numbers.

11... wash your hands

Very very interesting, thanks for that Andy.  At first look it does appear your common or garden conspiracy theory but ... what if?

going against it is the assumed credentials of the supposed Author.  He says he has stripped out all details that may identify him to obviously protect him, but says that he is
a) A high ranking Chinese intelligence officer : Narrows the pool a bit
b) Has a Doctorate from a leading UIniversity in a Western Country : OK, narrows the possible suspects even further
c) Acknowledges he "Without going into detail, I worked on that project" ....

OK, so we have someone trying to hide his identity who claims he is a high ranking party official,, a senior intelligence officer who has a Doctorate from a Western university and who worked on a secret project that seems to have lead to CV-19.

Now call me suspicious, but I'd be thinking if this were all true, the information above is sufficient for the Chinese Intelligence services to start looking at a very VERY small pool of people ........

Much much more informative and useful.  

Having read now all the way through the other story, I found further incidences of information that would certainly point to the author if this was legitimate - that his superiors sent him then to Huoshenshan, and that his son had contracted the "virus" .... taking everything into account, I think this would now totally identify him ... if he existed.  What I think sealed it for me was when he claimed their "agent" has now escaped into the world and all governments are involved in a massive cover-up.... to the extent obviously that deaths by the method this "agent" purportedly causes remain unreported by anyone anywhere .... that would involve a cover-up on a scale that is as impossible as it is unlikely in these days of electronic information ... not one doctor ANYWHERE has reported the symptoms / deaths that the high ranking intelligence officer claims.  Nope.  I'm calling BS on the Wushan secret virus story.

Definitely 😊

I believe in freedom of speech .

I believe in democracy .

Lets work  together and resolve this using our collective skills. 

Cut the negativity of the media.

We all tend to get tribal but this is an opportunity for all of us including politicians to forget our differences 

If Formula 1 racing car & JCB engineers can help to produce respirators surely there is a message there?

Andymac1951 and Andy49 - I'm getting confused. I forgot that Andymac1951 called me a "prat" (sticks and stones etc and I've been called much worse).

Andy49 is making some good suggestions. The Covid-19 situation is going to get considerably worse and I believe we can all help each other. The press is playing its part too (well mostly!!!!). And I know James didn't really mean  to have me banned. If Carol invites him, I look forward to meeting him. Bring your baseball caps though.

Easily confused it seems Mathew, 49 v 51 now that is a difficult one.  That aside Andy49 does indeed make some good points and without having to insult the British PM or 52% of the voting British public as you have been known to do on numerous occasions on various discussions.  Take a leaf out of Andy49s book and try to be objective and keep your well know political leanings and hatred to one side.