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London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

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Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#271

Post by smcl »

matz1 wrote: post #266
smcl wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really not sure how to perform that comparison. How do we equate one death vs one "suffer", and how do we count the "suffers" of people who take ill of covid in the free-for-all scenario? I think the ball is in your court on this one but, frankly, good luck

So not sure then do lockdown anyway?

Well we actually have a very good idea of how many people would die of Covid if the entire population of the UK got Covid.

We don't know how many people have ... whatever you are proposing we compare that against.

So faced with the options of "prevent the deaths of over a million people" and "matz1 doesn't like lockdown but doesn't want to talk about or quantify it" I think the choice is pretty clear. Unless you want to elaborate further?

Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#272

Post by usaphp »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #208
polote wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if we let the virus lives its life, maximum 2% of pop will die, 90 more % will live normally and a few percent will have covid related health issues. so we sacrifice a few percent of population for the future of the others

Congratulations on totally missing the point. [ EDIT: the number I originally used for "requiring hospitalization" were way off. I've edited to reflect data from September provided by the CDC. The 20% -> ICU figure comes from the NYC experience in May, but seems roughly correct from other global hotspots ] Roughly 0.4% of those who catch COVID19 will require hospitalization. Of those, 20% will require ICU treatment.…

> Roughly 20% of those who catch COVID19 will require hospitalization. Of those, 20% will require ICU treatment.

Where do you get these numbers from? California has about 50k new cases per day, with probably another 50k cases that were not tested. According to your stats 20k people will require hospitalization and 5k will require an ICU bed per day.

Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#273

Post by okl »

alimw wrote: post #241
oxfordmale wrote: post #197

Looking at COVID models, the hospital admission peak is around the 10th of January UK wide. Cases have already started to level in London. Lockdown has been implemented too late to make any significant difference to that. Not the most reliable source, but confirmed by other sources which are unfortunately behind a paywall. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9115357/amp/Coronav...

> Cases have already started to level in London. Lockdown has been implemented too late to make any significant difference to that. This is a common claim and I have seen it made about various periods of lockdown in various countries. "Look, rate of increase started to slow within a week of lockdown, but it should take two weeks to see the effect, so it can't be that lockdown has made any difference." There is usuall…

Add to that additional delays because of the holidays.

Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#274

Post by intended »

Aeolun wrote: post #215
jpxw wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that this would be effective against most people. But when this happened in Italy, a large number of the conspiracy crowd just said the photos were faked.

Life was easier when it wasn’t so easy to fake a photo...

Modern conspiracy has nothing to do with facts, but entirely to do with the shape, rate and self forming nature of modern human communication networks.

I'll argue, strongly, that right now - everything regarding Social Media misinformation is an epiphenomena of those factors.

To illustrate -

Misinformation based communication travels differently than "Fact" based information https://www.pnas.org/content/113/3/554.full.

People assign truth value based on heuristics, one of which is how many times information is repeated. If you self select a network of people who believe the same things and repeat it, with slight modifications - you can ensure people will believe conspriacies.

With the ability to self select nodes/people who tend to be conspiracy inclined you will easily cross the number of people needed to make an idea seem socially valid.

The pace and size of our information networks naturally supports the evolution of highly viral content - not truthful content.

Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#275

Post by dan-robertson »

lrossi wrote: post #41

Here is a video filmed in London this Christmas: https://youtu.be/Yz7wJZln6Kw Plenty of people outside. In fact, I would call it lightly crowded, although less than other years. Many people don’t wear masks. It’s not a surprise that transmission has increased. Nevertheless, London looked absolutely beautiful. Not sure if this was worth the risks though.

Obviously it doesn’t look great but I think the experience with the various protests over the summer (despite looking, I think no one found significant increases in cases due to big protest marches in the US) suggests that this is reasonably benign, though maybe it’s worse with the new strain. In particular these people outside where the ventilation is good are not huddled together in bars or restaurants or sitting rooms with their friends/family which is a much more reliable way to spread the virus.

Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#276

Post by simonbarker87 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #208
polote wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if we let the virus lives its life, maximum 2% of pop will die, 90 more % will live normally and a few percent will have covid related health issues. so we sacrifice a few percent of population for the future of the others

Congratulations on totally missing the point. [ EDIT: the number I originally used for "requiring hospitalization" were way off. I've edited to reflect data from September provided by the CDC. The 20% -> ICU figure comes from the NYC experience in May, but seems roughly correct from other global hotspots ] Roughly 0.4% of those who catch COVID19 will require hospitalization. Of those, 20% will require ICU treatment.…

How is this comment getting down voted, the 20% and 20% they used might be a bit off but the overall message is solid

Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#277

Post by LandR »

stogxx wrote: post #89
adadtttt wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heart disease isn't contagious

HIV is but we don't force carriers to self isolate

We do ask them to put a "mask" on their penis if they are having sex though, and most do. Yet still there are people that can't put a mask on their face.

Incredible.

Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#278

Post by plutonorm »

mikepurvis wrote: post #32
jiggawatts wrote: post #9

If a mutant strain of COVID-19 becomes twice as deadly, this "merely" doubles the pressure on hospitals. A constant factor like this can be dealt with. However, an increased rate of spread (R factor) is a change in the parameter of the exponential curve, and cannot be dealt with by any sub-exponential response. The only thing that could possibly work is to change the factor. Rapid vaccination or lockdown. It's imposs…

I agree, but I think there is now a non-trivial group who are either a) in total denial about the virus or believe it's a conspiracy, b) overwhelmed by news of it and unable/unwilling to process anything new, or c) believe in herd immunity and might even welcome a faster spread on that basis. Arguments about exponentials mean nothing to anyone in any of these buckets— they'll be flaunting a lockdown up until and perh…

I'm shocked that many of the comments here are dismissive of the seriousness of the situation. I thought the HN crowd would be more rational.

Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#279

Post by nitrogen »

dandellion wrote: post #259
nitrogen wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprise surprise, amplifying division just further amplifies division. We're hearing this: A: "I'm dying inside because of lockdown. I can't work and I'm this close to the end of my rope." Should the response be this? B: "People are dying outside because of COVID. I don't care about your pain. You are an idiot." A: [storms capitol] Or this? B: "This sucks all around for sure. Your pain is real, and I feel it too. Th…

Of course, some people can't be reasoned with and others will just go off the handle because they're crazy. There's no point in being nice to those, but people forget about all the others that are not far gone and we could help them to understand. That's never going to happen if we start every sentence by calling them idiots right off the bat.

Even the unreasonable and the crazy are likely to have better outcomes if treated with some dignity rather than open rudeness. I'm not saying I'm great at it, but "I think you're wrong, here's why, maybe we can find the root of our disagreement in either differing values or differing/incomplete data" probably works better than "you are an idiot" or "your views are idiotic".

Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing

#280

Post by tomatocracy »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #213
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In general hospitals will experience capacity pressures at lower overall occupancy rates than would previously have been the case. Why?

Hospital capacity has had to be organised in new ways as a result of the pandemic to treat COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients separately and safely in meeting the enhanced Infection Prevention Control measures. This results in beds and staff being deployed differently from in previous years in both emergency and elective settings within the hospital. Literally from the link.

Do we know how effective those measures have actually been in practice? There's been some reporting that large numbers of people have caught it in hospital (and indeed I have a personal interest here as a close relative of mine caught it in hospital just before Christmas, though a very minor case and now fully recovered).

It makes sense to try to stop spread in hospitals but unless I've missed something there seems to have been very limited work done on if any of the protocols as actually implemented (ie not just in a theoretical world where they were designed) - and especially the costlier ones in terms of bed space - have worked, or at least worked enough to offset their cost in health terms.

Does anyone know if there's any data on this?

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