Quote from Navid

I just heard that a study showed that of 30k senior living center excess deaths in the UK (not sure in what timeframe) --

10k died of Covid.

20k died of isolation (couldn't get medical care, medicine etc) the quarantine killed them.

We should be ashamed of ourselves, and I include myself for not speaking up louder and educating more people.

Perhaps you could link your source? I have not myself heard what you are saying, and would think it unlikely. There have been a lot of people dying (of COVID) and because of no testing, and GPs certifying death having no information but what they are told by managers, whether COVID appears on the death certificate of those who die in homes of COVID is a bit hit or miss.

I have been interested (and appalled) by the UK situation. Care homes, with many elderly patients, have done particularly badly here because:

• Initially the political imperative was to prevent hospital over-run. We had not enough testing. patients were pushed back to care homes when clinical signs indicated there was no COVID but without explicit testing. It is not yet clear how significant this was, since the decisions were clinical, but we know COVID is good as asymptomatic transmission, and even hospitals had limited PPE, so anyone coming from hospital is a risk.
• Care homes have been under-resourced for decades, and many are very, very, under-resourced now. The poor ones (not enough private patients) had no PPE.
• Care homes, due to bad pay and conditions, have high staff turnover even without COVID, and rely on agency workers who move between homes. These workers were not tested and were a source of asymptomatic transmission. In some cases given that they are badly paid it is possible that they would not isolate given mild symptoms. In fact the UK advice on symptoms did not classify loss of smell and taste as a COVID symptom for 3 weeks after this was known to be a common and diagnostic symptom, so maybe they were following government advice not self-isolating! We had no testing for these people.

The UK is worst in the world for COVID deaths because:

• We let the epidemic tear through our care homes, and had not enough PPE or testing - the two tools that can help limit transmission in institutions.
• We were relatively slow to impose lockdown, initially thinking we would use an epidemic peak to establish herd immunity to case reduction is irrelevant.
• We let many asymptomatic cases from Italy and other places through without quarantine or meaningful checking long after this was known a high risk

Basically, we followed advice along the lines of those who suggest this is just like Flu, and we should let it run, until such time as this was shown to be disastrous. By that time we had a very high infection rate, and so a high overall rate of infections.

I'm still unsure why our death/infection rate has been so high - except maybe because of care home infection exposing old people. I think we can only make guesses now, but we will eventually know.

Now, coming out of lockdown, we are at high risk of a higher second peak:

• Track and Trace relies on private firms who have never done this before training new staff in call centres, and is centralised.
• Testing is still very flaky, with a target respose of 24 hours but rumoured typical response of 3-5 days. I'm not sure of the exact figures here, but 3-5 days is useless, and even 48 hours is bad, for effective contact tracing.
• We have got some 25K (new) contact tracers but the infection rate we have now needs much more than that
• Local public health officers (who have specialised knowledge) have not been consulted, are not integrated into track and trace
• The app is a UK special "better than other countries world beating system" which currently is too buggy to release. The UK went for a more risky centralised system after the other countries trying this abandoned it as too difficult.
• Scientists, not keen in the Uk to make these difficult decisions, are coming out warning they think our infection rate is now too high
• We have no sanctions on self-isolation relying on people's public spiritedness. However sick pay is not available to all and at very low levels, making this a tough decision. Dominic Cummings, clearly caught breaking regulations, unlike any other special advisor in this situation, has not resigned and he and the government have claimed he did no wrong. Everyone can see this is a political decision, and wrong, and it breaks the trust needed to get high compliance with difficult measures. In lockdown trust has been high, as we come out the message is much more difficult to make stick: don't be afraid, go to work, but self-isolate rigorously when somone asks you to do this. The Cummings fiasco just makes this difficult message even harder to make stick.

Sorry, but I'm pretty upset. We have had 3 years plus of disastrous political leadership in this country and look, coming out of lockdown, to have another 4 years of the same with no way to change government.

Quote from Alan Smith

World class apparently. We are currently Europe's very own death camp.

Actually the reasons are fairly clear.

Lockdown too late. Discharge of still infectious 'walking sick' people from hospitals into care homes that did not have PPE or internal quarantine in place. Lack of an effective testing programme, failure to let people know the results, failure to inform GP's of infectious clusters in their area since the testers could not always link those tested to particular locations, Stopping any kind of a tracing programme in March only to restart it badly and belatedly last week. confused messages about every aspect of social distancing.

You can probably think of a few more.

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Death rate high - all those apply.

Death/infection rate so high - less clear. Except for the care home disaster. Maybe that explains all, but care homes have been badly hit in other places too.

Excess mortality in Switzerland only in April but...The influenza 2015 produced more or less the same peek (Feb.-Mar.). But the slope is different! Without the lock-down it potentially would have had skyrocket like in UK. Now we have extreemly low case figures but in a week we willl know more as currently people do more or less nothing (not even wearing masks) for protection.

The UK:

Government censors release of scientific advice

https://www.theguardian.com/wo…to-censor-covid-19-advice

Behavioural scientists on advisory group say backing dominic cummings will reduce compliance

https://news.sky.com/story/sci…dominic-cummings-11994132

Scientists (extraordinarily) come out in public saying decision to ease lockdown now is against their advice

https://news.sky.com/story/cor…g-eased-too-soon-11996946

An actual drug summary working against CoV-9:

https://www.cureus.com/article…f-novel-covid-19-a-review

Very good beside Iveremctin: Tocilizumab

There are some indication that nikotin can be used avoiding getting the covid 19. The theory is that nikotine binds to the same receptors as covid and blocks it. Studies is underway. In sweden 20% uses nikotine. either as smokers or 'snusare' the latter is a wet nikotine powder that is formed to a 'prilla' and put under the lip used by 20% of the men here.

Quote from Alan Smith

Lack of an effective testing programme, failure to let people know the results, failure to inform GP's of infectious clusters in their area since the testers could not always link those tested to particular locations,

Based on what the Japanese experts say, I think the biggest problems are the parts I underlined. Failure to let people know the results, specifically, people who may have been infected. Failure to inform the medical establishment. This is the "case tracing" I have been talking about.

It isn't enough to test people. It isn't enough trace cases back to their cause, or to gather a list of people who may have come in contact with the patient. You have to act on this information. Otherwise it is all a waste of time. Some U.S. leaders have been saying "we have administered many tests." It makes no difference how many you administer if you are not going to use the results to reduce the infection rate by warning people and quarantining them. A health official in Georgia wants to test every person in the state. That would be a waste of time, money, and the time and skills of nurses who administer the tests. Even if you find everyone who has the virus on the days you do the tests, there will soon be other people. In Japan, they have not done many tests, either as a percent of population or in absolute numbers. They have done well directed tests of those who want them, and of people who may have been exposed. Only 5% of their tests are positive, whereas in the U.S. about 10% are positive. I think it is 10%. The numbers are hard to establish in the U.S. In Japan they are published by the Health Min. Anyway, in that sense they are doing more tests than the U.S. Needless to say, we need about 1000 times more tests than they do, since we have about 1000 times more daily new cases and deaths.

They now have more people dying from automobile accidents per day than from COVID-19. There has been a slight increase in cases lately, but they are mostly from single point sources such as a particular hospital, or a point of entry (an airport -- people infected in other countries).

Its frustrating to see the blaming done. Few voices seam to say hey we error d. Lets make sure not to do that again. Hmm Japan managed well. Lets see what we can learn and implement? No the game is to say we did well and why the heck didn't china prevent this? I do not lookup to China as a system. What I value is persons taking responsibilities and make sure to admit and learn from mistakes. Japan et all simply has done the lessons from before where west was spared. This time I consider us lucky. Not overly deadly and my kids seam to be safe. Not spreading like the meassles. Sure nasty but not unbearably nasty. So where are the real men and women that does the right thing? well as you know so well by now the whole show is run by mice. I have a sentence in memory that I learned in the literature history in school that keep popping up again and again. "det är synd om människan" or it is a pity for men

Scientists pour doubt on hydroxychloroquine study that pushed WHO to ban its use for Covid-19

The peer review after the peer review can be savage..

The Lancet editor is now crafting an excuse.. it might take some time.. more than the initial peer review.

https://www.theguardian.com/wo…witter#Echobox=1590732855

http://www.rfi.fr/en/science-a…irus-lancet-mandeep-mehra

Quote from Shane D.

IMO, it won't get enough participation to be very effective.

Well, it is doing great in Alaska, which is supposedly the land of rugged individualists. It is a GOP state. It is working well in New Zealand, which is not exactly a nation of conformists.

Most people are willing to do a lot to avoid getting an illness with a 20% chance of putting you in the hospital at any age. Most people realize that is serious, even when you are only about as likely to die as you when you go skydiving (according to one expert). Mind you, I wouldn't go skydiving.

You don't have to have 100% participation for the technique to work. Actually, 100% is impossible in any country. Even if everyone cooperated with good intentions, many people have no idea where they were infected, and many have no way to keep track of who they came in contact with. All you have to do is keep the R0 well below 1, and the epidemic fades away to minimal levels.

Quote from JedRothwell

All you have to do is keep the R0 well below 1, and the epidemic fades away to minimal levels.

Yes. If the uncontrolled R0 is say 2, all that is needed is for EVERYONE to interact with half the number of people each week as they normally do. But in the real world everyone does not care about others.

Quote from Shane D.

you neglected to address how it would work in the inner cities

exactly. Can you name everyone you were within 6 feet of in a nyc subway, much less everyone gthat miht have touched the same railing?

London too. the Subways in Sydney have a similar distancing culture

but the subway world is not who 'we' are..

As the Mayor of Atlanta says,, "We are better than that...."