Coronavirus General Discussion

The R rate would rise markedly if schools fully reopen, not just because of asymptomatic transmission being taken into homes but because of how the impact of that drives general mobility and mixing. they would have to reverse all of the leisure openings to get anywhere near. So, it would be an ‘all work, no play’ lockdown, I guess that’s not going to go down well for the millions who don’t have school age children.

Rationale spreading at home from contact tracing is a leap as we do not have a normal distribution of contacts.

If I become infected the people I report are all likely to be close friends, relatives, neighbours. The person in the queue, the person I passed going to the Toilet in the pub, the person who coughed near me in the street..... are all strangers and would not be able to provide details to the tracker.

Statistically there will be infected people in my extended bubble but there is no correlation that I caught it from that person. 

I’ve been voluntarily shielding as I’m undergoing some investigations at the moment, and had planned to venture out for the first time properly since March tomorrow. I am gutted but not surprised judging by the lack of face masks and social distancing my partner has seen when out recently around here.

We didn't get any feedback how the limited reopening affected cases wheb schools went back on 1st June. A lot could depend what happens in Scotland as their bairns go back about 3 weeks prior to England, we'd have early data from that although I don't think Nicola Sturgeon will go blindly into a full reopening and hope for the best, she'll have some stricter measures in place over the next week or so I'd figure.

The problem with that is the, now, very large difference in transmission between Scotland and England. I’d say that their approach has given them a couple of months on us, so by the time England reopens them there will be no clear rise coming from Scottish schools. The low level prevalence simmering away in is just the worst way to tackle the whole thing, anything that simmers can get out of hand quickly. One very useful result of the Swedish experiment is seeing how far the number of cases fell when schools went on holiday, from both transmission and behaviour changes. It was a very large, and accurately timed, drop.

There is poverty in Glasgow (and in Scotland in general), but if you look at the UK's most densely populated areas, none of them are in Scotland. In fact, I read something about Glasgow, Scotland's most densely populated area being in the region of the 75th most densely populated local authority area in the UK, and the ONS figures show most excess deaths in the most densely populated areas. 

It's just one factor, and the density stats depend in part on where you draw the boundary, but it seems to be pretty vital. While the most poor people in Glasgow are very poor, the wealthy of London live in smaller houses/flats and are forced into using public transport to get to work and so on. There is a fair sized Asian, and especially Bangladeshi (who seem to be particularly vulnerable) population in Glasgow too, and across the cities, but as a percentage, there are three times as many Asian people in England, and five times as many black people in England. That said, Glasgow and the wider Glasgow conurbation had much higher rates of infection than less densely populated Scottish cities, and another big gap when compared with the rural areas, which is ultimately my point.

Sturgeon has talked a good talk and given the impression of a very successful response to those who don't check the small print. It's amazing how many people mock the Tories for claiming to have done a good job, but just nod and agree when the SNP do the same. While excess deaths aren't as bad as England, they are still worse than everywhere else in Europe bar Spain. We're much worse than Wales and more so than Northern Ireland. Some Scots might see 'not as awful as England' as the only comparison that counts, but there are still some of us who think we all deserve better.

Ironic that indoor events could carry on today but Sporting Events outside with a similar percentage capacity now have to be cancelled.

Education or Entertainment was said as the stand off. Sorry kids you'll enjoy the time off I'm sure.

Something I don't think is being covered enough in the media is the mental health aspect of all this. People not having physical contact for almost half a year now, no hugs, and for how much longer?

Other reporting makes it a bit clearer. Not on strict age but on age+covid risk+workplace risk. A 65 year old working with one or two people versus a 55 year old working alongside hundreds is not reducible to a strict age demarcation, for example. Given this government I also imagine it comes with a waiver; if you want to take the risk then you own the risk (also fits with their 'nothing to do with us' approach so far). 

I think I’ve worked my “personalised risk rating” out for myself and I’m behaving accordingly. It would be nice if everyone else could be relied upon to do the same. However it seems we’ve got a nation of people who constantly need to be told what to do so that they can then complain about the instructions and defy them.

There's a problem there, in that where do you get the people to enforce it? You can't force ordinary staff to take on enforcement responsibilities where they're at risk of violence, the police have ordinary policing work to do and can't be everywhere, the armed forces are limited in number (but might send a strong "we mean it" message, which would be good), and if you fast-recruit extra enforcement staff from among the general public you'll attract entirely the wrong sort of person.

One thing that could be done is to step up the fines for repeated non-compliance massively. When the lockdown started the fines were a small fraction of a parking fine, which is the wrong impression to give. If the fine for refusal was a week's salary then people might pay more attention.

I think a large part of the problem is poor education. I'm staggered by the number of people who simply don't understand the role they play in disease transmission. They think "I'm healthy enough to be safe so why should I care?" and appear to be completely incapable of appreciating the consequences of that way of thinking, which is that they are precisely the reason why pandemics are so difficult to get under control. And there's also a strong element of denial: the idea of hundreds of thousands of people dying is so unthinkable that some people genuinely can't think it, and if it "can't possibly happen" they don't have to worry about the fact they're playing a part in causing it. I don't think there are many people in the UK who reject the whole thing as a hoax but there seem to be quite a few who are completely blind to just how serious a problem it is.