Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge • Hacker News Board

Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#101

Post by ubercow13 » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

uncledave wrote: post #81

ubercow13 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unclear how cancer and mental health patients would be any better off with less sacrifices, that would lead to the health care system being more overwhelmed, not less.

I think you need to look at the future not just now. The overall side effects of burning care now may have a higher body count than covid. Case in point if you look at the austerity policy attributed deaths as a reference. I know someone who just got handed a guaranteed poor cancer outcome because her preventative surgery will only be done when it’s an emergency later on. These will be easy to write off as incidental…

All of that is bad, but I don't think avoiding lockdown or other measures would help with it. The images in the media of people dying in the street outside hospitals would just lead to more social/political pressure to deprioritise those cancer patients.

Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#102

Post by gnusty_gnurc » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

f6v wrote: post #100

gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, here we go: procreation is a fundamental human instinct. Do you want to legalize rape? This is non-sequitur. A better comparison is like legally enforcing abstinence to eradicate HIV. If you can't get the idea that isolation is counter-intuitive to humans and damaging to their health and psychology, and therefore bound to be hard to get compliance, I'm not sure what to say. This is why jail is jail. Isolation…

Individual’s comfort can’t be a number one priority in a times of crisis. Sitting at home in a digital age when video calling anyone in the world is absolutely free, it’s the least you can do. Also all the entertainment which is available nowadays. How hard can it be to make this sacrifice so that someone’s grandma doesn’t die? > isolation is counter-intuitive to humans 20 million cities are counterintuitive, and so…

> How hard can it be to make this sacrifice so that someone’s grandma doesn’t die?

This is where things go wrong.

You're shaming people for feeling natural human instincts to socialize.

As though it's selfish to not want to be locked in your house indefinitely.

There is a striking resemblance here of the tactics used by abusers and emotional manipulators.

> But not the biggest sacrifice you can imagine. And it’s definitely manageable.

That's a completely presumptuous personal view - for a very large and underappreciated segment of the population, the ongoing lockdown measures to combat coronavirus are absolutely devastating.

Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#103

Post by iridium_core » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

flagrant wrote: post #89

jeofken wrote: post #47

Uncountable seeds of friendship and love never take root, due to meeting people being banned. Untold numbers of ideas and plans never made between entrepreneurs. All due to people with power over government arms or mass media being caught up in a mass hysteria. Governments will print money Weimar-style to fund their debts and liabilities in the 2020s, as they kill commerce and free life. In my country we were spared…

The citations do not support what you say. Citation [0] says only that excess mortality in specifically the third quarter of 2020 was not higher than previous years. It says nothing about the excess deaths for all of 2020. Citation [1] is data for 2019, before COVID-19. Why did you cite these articles and pretend they say something they don't?

Look at the data directly: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#z-scores-by-country

Difficult to see much excess death in the UK in the past few months beyond levels seen in the 2018 and 2017 flu seasons.

New lockdowns also seem to be coordinated across the global right now, independent of local conditions. This absolutely seems like a coordinated global action to achieve some kind of strategic aim.

Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#104

Post by djsumdog » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #27

Hopefully the two vaccines currently being rolled out in the U.S. and Europe will largely eliminate the need for future lockdowns. Once the most vulnerable populations are immune, it's just a matter of weeks or months before herd immunity among the general population is achieved and life can pretty much go back to normal.

Even with a vaccine this virus will not go away for at least 10 years. It took 185 years to eradicate SmallPox (mostly from the WHO push of 20 years in the 60s/70s). Vaccine manufactures are claiming 95% efficacy, but that's honestly not a comforting number. It leaves lots of room and since Challenge trials are unethical (they shouldn't be, but they are) we don't know how accurate that number really is.

We still haven't eradicated Polio. This virus may be with us for another 100 years honestly. The next generation will grow up with it and likely won't be affected at all by it. Who knows, maybe the common cold Rhino and Coronaviruses killed millions in human pre-history and now they just give us the sniffles.

Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#105

Post by qeternity » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

cygx wrote: post #92

qeternity wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tried and attempted in multiple places Really? Where was this tried at scale? Where did we spend a fraction of the cost that we incur locking down an entire population. This just isn't true. > Maybe, just maybe, the experts (and I mean the people who have spent their lifetimes studying the transmission of respiratory diseases) have already weighed in, their answers don't look that different from when things started…

I'm always surspised that we're still arguing about this. Look at the excess mortality in Belgium: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... Supposedly, that's with the percentage of Covid cases still in the single digits. It seems obvious that if you do not get a handle on this, your healthcare system will be overwhelmed eventually. No sane person wants to see that happen, hence the drastic mea…

> I'm always surspised that we're still arguing about this.

Ignoring the fact that Belgium is one of the worst affected countries, I'm not even sure what you're arguing? Yes, covid is bad and yes it kills people. Did people in Belgium die who otherwise wouldn't have? Yes. Can we move on to the real issue?

> If you do not get a handle on this, your healthcare system will be overwhelmed eventually, and no sane person wants to see that happen.

Ignoring this ridiculous strawman attack (if I disagree, I'm insane) I'm very unclear where I suggested we shouldn't get a handle on it. Did I suggest that I want out healthcare to be overwhelmed? What is this? You're just throwing up charts an screaming about how bad covid is. We already know this.

Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#106

Post by Silhouette » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:17 PM UTC

qeternity wrote: post #40

chacha2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hospitals are quickly filling up, young people need hospitals as much as anyone. What's your suggestion, allow elderly covid patients to die at home?

No they aren't. NHS occupancy in 2020 was lower than in 2019. We are currently 50% below our peak ventilator usage in April and the 7 day trend is very flat. This is just not true. Go look at the data instead of parroting headlines. EDIT Lol again downvotes but no replies. Does anyone want to bother educating me on this topic and showing me where hospitals are filling up? I would love to see it, because the NHS figur…

Go look at the data instead of parroting headlines.

Or, even better, talk to anyone who works in a front-line NHS role, particularly in areas like A&E/intensive care. People who understand the context of the statistics and how they translate to real standards of patient care do not think everything is OK right now.

As it happens, I've spent some time over the past few days travelling to and from various medical facilities. Every single one of them had heavy precautions in place. And on the radio in the car this afternoon, there was a whole series of medical and public health professionals talking about not only the current situation with the virus but also how damaging it is when people do exactly what you're doing right now.

Remember, if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, they probably know something you don't.

Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#107

Post by djsumdog » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:17 PM UTC

open-source-ux wrote: post #15

Everything seems so last minute and ad hoc with this Conservative government. Their announcement of another level 5 lockdown (which hadn't existed until today) and the u-turn on school closures makes it clear they are simply making things up as they go along. The goverment's level of incompetence is simply off the scale. How has this nasty, rotten government gotten away with some much? (No doubt helped by our nasty r…

I agree. It's a power grab and security theater. It's like the TSA at airports. Let's show we're doing something for the people who keep screaming at the government to do something. It's like trying to stop a hurricane or an asteroid impact. Everything is for show and most of it is just going to make things worse.

Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#108

Post by flagrant » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

jeofken wrote: post #97

flagrant wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The citations do not support what you say. Citation [0] says only that excess mortality in specifically the third quarter of 2020 was not higher than previous years. It says nothing about the excess deaths for all of 2020. Citation [1] is data for 2019, before COVID-19. Why did you cite these articles and pretend they say something they don't?

In [0] it states that 2020 is an average year in deaths, but only writes exact numbers for different quarters. In [1] it shows averages for the previous years in numbers summing while years up. I’m getting HTTP error 500 (iOS safari from a Swedish domestic IP) when going to the statistics database - idk if it’s just me or if they deployed something buggy recently. Can therefore only find articles atm, but they are st…

> In [0] it states that 2020 is an average year in deaths

It does not.

> In [1] it shows averages for the previous years in numbers summing while years up.

This still has no relation to deaths in the year 2020. You cannot tell anything about deaths caused by coronavirus from data that only goes up to 2019.

> "The growing spread of Coronavirus in the community is not year showed any change in the number of deaths in Sweden"

My translation is "The increasing spread of the coronavirus in society is not yet visible in the number of deaths in Sweden", meaning, "there may be more coronavirus cases than we can tell from just looking at deaths". A significantly different meaning to "coronavirus did not cause any change in number of deaths", which is in any case flatly contradicted by the same article which describes increases in excess deaths in the second quarter.

For what it's worth, I am willing to believe that despite the massive increase in excess deaths in the second quarter, it could be offset by reductions in excess deaths in other quarters. So if you do have data that specifically compares excess deaths for the last few years feel free to share it. Currently you haven't got anything to support your statement.

Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#109

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

f6v wrote: post #22

sonotmyname wrote: post #2

Woohoo - more inconsistent and unscientific policies! * Restaurants can continue to offer delivery for food, but takeaway alcohol will be banned __ So alcohol spreads COVID? Good thing restaurants don't count on alcohol sales to stay afloat. * Amateur team sports are not allowed, but elite sport such as Premier League football can continue __ 'Elite' athletes, as is the case for the rest of the 'elites', should not h…

> So alcohol spreads COVID? This always gets me. Isn’t it obvious that alcohol consumption is a social activity? Not all of it, but to a large degree. Limiting the consumption seems logical. Of course, you can’t assess the impact of individual measures at the moment, as you need a controlled experiment and proper statistics. But is this measure really something to be that upset about?

[deleted]

Re: Covid: New lockdown for England as cases surge

#110

Post by djsumdog » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

rusk wrote: post #75

djsumdog wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is complete and total arbitrary nonsense. You're taking a conclusion and trying to walk back a path of logic to some type of justification. Let's see this for what it is: arbitrary decisions that curtails the human rights of all human beings by politicians who are figuratively drunk with power. They are banning things for the common people while they leave their regions, have expensive $1k dinners for their poli…

Sorry but this is derived from actual contact tracing (not the UK where they haven’t really bothered but a culturally similar neighbour) - but of course you’re so outraged that’s what matters more. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overloo... This article is about 6 months old, and we’ve moved on even more since then. It’s so saddening to see so many bright people unable to keep up. Tell me again a…

Can you post a link on the evidence for contact tracking in the UK and the data analysis please? I genuinely want to see it.

Edit: the poster updated the post with an article rather than adding a comment. It wasn't there when I commented. Also an article from The Atlantic isn't data analysis.