It is a really good article, but the brutal reality is that for public health authorities to really use the anti-cluster approaches implied, they have to be on the front foot. In my area, the public health authority is straightforward about the fact that they are explaining (by way of test and trace) the origin of only about 70% of the cases, and the remaining 30% is just too large of a number.
Water testing here has shown that the viral count in wastewater jumped in the range of 3-6x from October 6 to October 13. The water authority is now working on trying to localize some of that testing to see if there is any kind of variance.
Sort of tempting to flee back to the country, we came down just in time for this second wave.
Deaths is a lagging indicator, and once it gets high you’ve baked in maybe about a month of terrible data before even the best efforts can alter that trajectory. Given the exponential nature of these increases though, it’s also the sort of thing you need to be concerned about long before deaths become a problem because of how quickly it can go from looking manageable to completely overwhelming your response capabilities, which in turn makes the mortality data get even worse.
I think one of the best indicators has become ICU capacity because once we you start trending towards full capacity, things start getting bad really quickly. There are several places in the UK now we’re pretty close to that.
That’s not an immediate expense though. Finding money to fund a further nationwide furlough scheme is. Although, as I’ve said elsewhere, I’d cancel HS2 in the current climate; direct those funds to other infrastructure projects such as hospitals, icu capacity, training more nurses and doctors, improve the existing transport and communications infrastructure etc.
That is true but it is a financial commitment some of which will have to be paid for this year. That includes works already done to identify the problem they have now. That apparently is not a problem.
I dont think cancelling HS2 is financially a brilliant idea either. You’ve got a lot of contractors and consultants already locked into to deliver their own little contracts within the scheme as a whole. Standing them down probably means you end up paying for all of that staff for an undetermined period. (Varies within each contract and what overhead levels are etc.) I bet you’d eat up that £800m pretty fast doing that as well.
Plus a Tory party is never going to direct funds from private entities into the public realm. It’s pretty clear they happy let people die first.
A couple of weeks ago or so, I wrote in here that the situation seemed largely under control in my country. Now, we have a R rate of 15, and more than 3k new cases per day. The hospitals are starting to feel the strain, although they aren’t overfilled yet.
A little anecdote regarding the k rate: one small canton of central Switzerland, which had been largely spared so far (Schwyz), held a yodel festival with 600 people a couple of weeks ago. That’s where the k factor comes in. A large majority of these people were infected during that manifestation, probably by one or max two people (a lot of people singing together in a closed room leads to a massive transmission rate). Result: the hospital in Schwyz is suddenly hopelessly overfilled, and many patients have had to be transported to other hospitals in the country.
15 or 1.5 as 1.5 from what I have observed here in the south of France is a real bummer. I am glad we haven’t struck 3 but the r factor 2 was reached easily.
Not funny, but I can’t help grinning a bit myself…
But it’s a very interesting case illustrating the importance of the k factor. With that event only, the amount of infections in Schwyz has gone from a stable 3-4 per day in the last few months to now 125 per day. For a total population (mostly rural) of 155k.
Yeah, I think it’s actually a superb example of the various dynamics in play.
It is the perfect choice of the sort of activity that can result in a super spreader event and so illustrates the meaning of the K value
It also illustrates the psychological and behavioral aspect that makes people predict a sine wave trajectory for this…things are bad so we take precautions, things get better so we relax, we then have a fucking yodel festivals and things get bad again so we have to start taking precautions again.
Yeah, it’s a good showcase. During our ‘first wave’, Schwyz was largely spared, being a rural area. They had max 20 cases per day in March, for a short time, then it went down rapidly. So, for most people there, covid-19 will have been an abstraction. People went on with their lives, and the yodel festival is sacred there. A bit like Anfield at Liverpool. So they went on with it, and one or two infected people were enough to start the super spreading.
That being said, as I wrote a few weeks ago, our country has been relaxing very much lately. As I wrote, people can go to football and ice-hockey games (with masks, but that is all theory, most people don’t wear it correctly anyway). We can go to concerts, exhibitions etc. So, that explains the sharp acceleration in cases we experience right now at national level, a bit everywhere.
Yes, the same was noted in Norway. We had a women’s choir outside Bergen, who socially distanced a bit more than 1 meter apart. But it’s a choir, they were singing, so not enough of course. End result ? We had a massive R spike and everyone but 2 in the choir was infected. By one person. But yeah, singing.
That figure of 15 worried me so much I google searched and found this. https://ncs-tf.ch/en/situation-report
they call it Re it seems to be the same as the anglo-saxon R0 or plain straight R for us common folk. from that it’s over 1.5 which is worrying in it’s self. 15 would give me real cause for alarm.
Ah cheers. Yeah, it’s certainly worrying. Especially as the authorities haven’t taken any further measures so far. So, it will continue at that rate for a while.
R approached 2 (probably depassed it at some point) in Marseille at the end of the summer.If you start approaching 3 your in big trouble. Without drastic measures the spread would become uncontrollabe.
It’s a shame so many made such an effort to get it down to 0.6/7 just for this. Were those holidays really worth it?
Anyway more and more big towns going to level 3 here inFrance (what level 3 means is that the hospitals are struggling. The measures to be imposed seem to change everday. Once again no preparation from the government despite calls from the hospitals since the summer.
So they went on with it, and one or two infected people were enough to start the super spreading.