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London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

bloomberg.com

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Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#331

Post by maxerickson »

FreakyT wrote: post #287
LandR wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since this is the US, we have no public transport What do you mean you have no public transport? Is it cancelled because of covid?

Public transport doesn't really exist in the US, outside of major cities. In non-urban areas, if there's a bus at all, it'll be like one token bus route that takes a roundabout path to nowhere in particular and comes once every 3 hours.

There's often a service providing rides on demand:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_responsive_transport#Un...

(typically with subsidies or other provisions for paratransit)

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#332

Post by adamcstephens »

FreakyT wrote: post #287
LandR wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since this is the US, we have no public transport What do you mean you have no public transport? Is it cancelled because of covid?

Public transport doesn't really exist in the US, outside of major cities. In non-urban areas, if there's a bus at all, it'll be like one token bus route that takes a roundabout path to nowhere in particular and comes once every 3 hours.

And covid is devastating the fare income for public transit. The systems need more money because of it, but will obviously get less.

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#333

Post by thebruce87m »

factsonly wrote: post #11

Seems the hospitals are still less busy than last year https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9043583/NHS-data-su...

I don’t think you can infer how busy hospital staff are from this article even though hospitals may have fewer patients in them.

Not all hospital beds are equal. Can you put a covid patient in a bed next to a covid-free patient? Probably not.

How many staff are off ill or self isolating?

Can the covid staff treat non-covid patients? If so, is there a PPE robing/disrobing overhead to this?

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#334

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

timr wrote: post #294
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is also a lot of reason to believe they are not nearly as effective as was sold to people in the early summer. Mayeb you can post some (preferably peer-reviewed) literature links that show "a lot of reason" to believe this.

The only peer-reviewed RCT ever conducted for Covid-19 and masks found no statistically significant protective effect: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817

Here's the CDC:

---------------

Data regarding the “real-world” effectiveness of community masking are limited to observational and epidemiological studies.

    * An investigation of a high-exposure event, in which 2 symptomatically ill hair stylists interacted for an average of 15 minutes with each of 139 clients during an 8-day period, found that none of the 67 clients who subsequently consented to an interview and testing developed infection. The stylists and all clients universally wore masks in the salon as required by local ordinance and company policy at the time.

    * In a study of 124 Beijing households with > 1 laboratory-confirmed case of SARS-CoV-2 infection, mask use by the index patient and family contacts before the index patient developed symptoms reduced secondary transmission within the households by 79%.

    * A retrospective case-control study from Thailand documented that, among more than 1,000 persons interviewed as part of contact tracing investigations, those who reported having always worn a mask during high-risk exposures experienced a greater than 70% reduced risk of acquiring infection compared with persons who did not wear masks under these circumstances.

    * A study of an outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, an environment notable for congregate living quarters and close working environments, found that use of face coverings on-board was associated with a 70% reduced risk.

    * Investigations involving infected passengers aboard flights longer than 10 hours strongly suggest that masking prevented in-flight transmissions, as demonstrated by the absence of infection developing in other passengers and crew in the 14 days following exposure.
Seven studies have confirmed the benefit of universal masking in community level analyses: in a unified hospital system, a German city, a U.S. state, a panel of 15 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. as well as both Canada and the U.S. nationally. Each analysis demonstrated that, following directives from organizational and political leadership for universal masking, new infections fell significantly. Two of these studies and an additional analysis of data from 200 countries that included the U.S. also demonstrated reductions in mortality. An economic analysis using U.S. data found that, given these effects, increasing universal masking by 15% could prevent the need for lockdowns and reduce associated losses of up to $1 trillion or about 5% of gross domestic product.

------------

Taken from: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/masking-scien...

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#335

Post by willyt »

LatteLazy wrote: post #148
djaychela wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Supermarkets continue to be rammed, but staff aren't required to wear masks. I don't think this has been the case since September. Admittedly too late, IMO, but I think it has been the law since then.

I was literally in Dagenham Morrisons 30 minutes, only 2 staff had masks, one was wearing his around his neck.

Dagenham is quite a right-wing area? People with right-wing views seems to have been targeted with anti-mask and anti-lockdown misinformation on social media.

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#336

Post by exmadscientist »

MaulingMonkey wrote: post #259
dboreham wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Here in deepest Republican middle America mask wearing by _staff_ in supermarkets is universal. Customers around 90% if you count "nose-slingers" as non compliant. Pretty much nobody just swanning around with no mask these days. Costco has heavy mask enforcement -- they will hunt down and eject anyone with their nose out. Where masks are not worn here is in smaller family owned businesses. Some have notices requ…

Here in the liberal northwest, where we at least have a token amount of public transport, I see the bus signs alternating between their usual route number + description and "masks required". Haven't been on one to verify use by ridership, or to see what the driver's reaction to noncompliant riders is. The higher staff-to-rider ratio might help? Outdoor mask use is limited (50%?) but at least quite sparse and distant…

> Haven't been on one to verify use by ridership, or to see what the driver's reaction to noncompliant riders is.

Compliance is very high (>95%?), but the people who do not comply are basically the same people who were problems in the Before Times: belligerent, mentally ill, or both. The drivers almost always let them get away with it, again just as in the Before Times, probably because it's a risk to even interact with these people. I, for one, try very hard not to make eye contact with them or even look in their general direction; treating them like the Bugblatter Beast of Traal is at least moderately effective.

I do wish they wouldn't flash the stupid "Masks Required" on the route signs so often, though. It makes it a lot harder to tell which bus is actually arriving. And showing it on the route indicator on the _back_ of the coach is just spiteful.

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#337

Post by Symbiote »

mprovost wrote: post #160
lend000 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And islands. Australia may be a continent, but its low population density and lack of roads connecting it to more populous regions is certainly a contributing factor. All of the countries doing best are either authoritarian or effectively political islands (Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, China).

Great Britain is an island...

It is probably the most connected not-tiny island.

(One of the world's biggest airports, several of Europe's busiest, frequent direct rail connection to the continent, frequent ferries on many routes, fully integrated free trade + work zone.)

"According to Getlink, the company which operates the Channel Tunnel, 1.64 million trucks traveled between the UK and the EU using the crossing last year. More than 2.5 million cars made the crossing, as did 51,229 buses and 2,012 freight trains.

Added to the even greater volumes of truck crossings made on ferries — the Port of Dover handled a record 2.6 million trucks in 2017, according to its own figures — it accounts for a massive annual volume."

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#338

Post by kergonath »

tobylane wrote: post #18
jon889 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boris just says stuff day to day. best just to ignore him completely because the next day he’ll be saying something different.

Three days ago he said it would be inhumane to cancel Christmas. Today he said the data from the last 72 hours forced a change. Johnson is an oaf, but covid has kept him fairly serious. His waffling bumbling act was dropped.

Not a moment too soon...

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#339

Post by burkaman »

timr wrote: post #294
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is also a lot of reason to believe they are not nearly as effective as was sold to people in the early summer. Mayeb you can post some (preferably peer-reviewed) literature links that show "a lot of reason" to believe this.

The only peer-reviewed RCT ever conducted for Covid-19 and masks found no statistically significant protective effect: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817

That is not an accurate summary of the study. Emphasis mine:

> Limitation: Inconclusive results, missing data, variable adherence, patient-reported findings on home tests, no blinding, and no assessment of whether masks could decrease disease transmission from mask wearers to others.

> The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50% in a community with modest infection rates, some degree of social distancing, and uncommon general mask use. The data were compatible with lesser degrees of self-protection.

I don't think any public health experts are saying "wear a mask and you'll be safe", they're saying "if everybody wears a mask, that will slow the infection rate". A study of a community with "uncommon general mask use" does not dispute this.

Finally, I don't think it's clear that a randomized controlled trial is the best method to answer this question. Aside from ethical concerns, you can't give someone a placebo mask. Shouldn't we assume that people will behave differently when they're wearing a mask?

Re: London put in emergency lockdown as U.K. fights new strain

#340

Post by bjourne »

DenisM wrote: post #302

Apropos of other comments. What do we think about the mask “issue”? Some people vehemently refuse to wear them, others take “just go with flow” attitude, yet others approach it with outsized religious zeal, hounding the heretics or at least giving them the stink eye. It also seems some people take great comfort on the mask, wearing it even inside their cars or waaay out in the open. Are we witnessing a religious schi…

There is still no evidence showing that mask usage reduces spread. Worse, people think that mask usage entails fail-safe protection. Like condoms against pregnancy. I know of IT-companies that enforces mask usage in their offices but still does not allow employees to work from home.
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