Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Threviel]

Sweden 170, Denmark 10.

Obviously the Swedish trend is downward.

[Tamas]

IIRC Denmark was pretty quick to react to the appearance of cases in their midst. Further evidence that the UK should not have tried to outsmart an unknown pandemic using a crack team of political PR advisors.

[FunkMonk]

My Trump money has arrived. Thank you President Ttump!

[Caliga]

My Trump money has arrived. Thank you President Ttump!

He thanks you in advance for your vote.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Russia is under the radar for now, but they've been on pure exponential trend for two weeks, doubling every five days.  They may yet emerge as the next disaster story.

I wonder how many people there think the whole thing is a hoax.

[Habbaku]

Well, it ain't exactly laisez faire, is it

No it's not.  Is that the point, all those people over there who have been supporting absolutely no role for governmemt, have been proven wrong?

Socialism is anything government does.

[Threviel]

Sweden 170, Denmark 10.

Obviously the Swedish trend is downward.

Can't really find a better picture, but here the downward trend can be seen. The green parts are where today's 170 should be spread out.

[DGuller]

Russia is under the radar for now, but they've been on pure exponential trend for two weeks, doubling every five days.  They may yet emerge as the next disaster story.

I wonder how many people there think the whole thing is a hoax.

It's hard to know where the Russian bots on a mission stop, and real Russians begin, but that was definitely a popular and possibly prevailing take at least not too long ago.  I've been watching the videos of one popular Russian-speaking blogger in NYC area, and the comments he was often getting was of the "nicely staged and produced, but where are the bodies?"  He was trying to get through to his Russian listeners that this shit is real, the running refrigerators outside of all the hospitals are a thing, and that this was coming to Russia sooner or later, but it was often falling on dumb ears.  The prevailing stated view is that this is a plot for the governments to use an insignificant illness (that does kill some people, yes, but so does the flu) to seize power.

[DGuller]

One sobering take on the numbers that struck me yesterday:  I was told to work from home indefinitely on March 13, and apparently that was the date for most office workers in NY area.  It's a month later now, and the number of diagnosed people is 500 times the number it was when this call was made.  A factor of 500!  It doesn't matter how well you understand exponential growth mathematically, and get the classic grains of rice riddle, it will still boggle your mind sometimes.

[Admiral Yi]

I think the point was that you are perceived to be among those people (like me, to be fair).

That's not clever.  It's the opposite of clever.  It's boneheaded.

[The Brain]

Russia is under the radar for now, but they've been on pure exponential trend for two weeks, doubling every five days.  They may yet emerge as the next disaster story.

I wonder how many people there think the whole thing is a hoax.

It's hard to know where the Russian bots on a mission stop, and real Russians begin, but that was definitely a popular and possibly prevailing take at least not too long ago.  I've been watching the videos of one popular Russian-speaking blogger in NYC area, and the comments he was often getting was of the "nicely staged and produced, but where are the bodies?"  He was trying to get through to his Russian listeners that this shit is real, the running refrigerators outside of all the hospitals are a thing, and that this was coming to Russia sooner or later, but it was often falling on dumb ears.  The prevailing stated view is that this is a plot for the governments to use an insignificant illness (that does kill some people, yes, but so does the flu) to seize power.

One advantage for Russians is that they don't have to fear evil forces seizing power.

[Sheilbh]

IIRC Denmark was pretty quick to react to the appearance of cases in their midst. Further evidence that the UK should not have tried to outsmart an unknown pandemic using a crack team of political PR advisors.

Yeah - Denmark and Norway locked down very quickly, I think before they had any deaths. As I say, they really need to be crack political advisors if they've managed to convince the SNP, the Welsh Labour Party, the DUP and literally Sinn Fein to go along with PR for this Tory government

Given that governments of all parties took the same approach in the UK (it is alway worth remembering that Hancock and Johnson are only actually responsible for the English measures), I think it's more likely it was on the advice of the scientists. I think my query would be whether that advice was coming from a broad enough base or if they were placing too much reliance on some parts of the advice/some of the scientists and whether the governments were asking enough questions or constraining their responses - ie when did they ask the scientists to look at the impact of different measures - why wasn't the South Korean model looked at?

My main criticisms of the government would be about preparedness. Why are we still not escalating testing despite this being a priority for ages and a key way of getting out of lockdown? Why are they still not delivering on PPE despite it being a priority for ages? Why have they still not got their hands around the care sector (which is more difficult and complex because there are tens of thousands of small businesses in this sector) despite this being raised for ages? And why was there minimum spec for new ventilators not fit for purpose - wouldn't it have been better to just issue a liberty ship style design "this is a design that works please make it, if you can't please make the components you can"?

The one bit they seem to have managed is increasing capacity in the NHS which is key, but the rest of this stuff seems basic competence to me.

I don't particularly care about the current focus on where the government's exit strategy is because that still seems way too early. But they should be getting drilled on these competence questions because whatever the exit strategy is, it will need to be delivered competently.

[Josquius]

One sobering take on the numbers that struck me yesterday:  I was told to work from home indefinitely on March 13, and apparently that was the date for most office workers in NY area.  It's a month later now, and the number of diagnosed people is 500 times the number it was when this call was made.  A factor of 500!  It doesn't matter how well you understand exponential growth mathematically, and get the classic grains of rice riddle, it will still boggle your mind sometimes.

It does.
Found this a nice early explanation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOn9e8LNMo8
And then this was excellent
https://twitter.com/i/status/1242036256399294465

But sad albeit ironic news on Russia's ignorance mongering biting them in the arse.

[Sheilbh]

UK numbers today are good (as in there wasn't the usual up-tick after the weekend), but I don't believe because they still seem suspciously low given the numbers of daily fatalities we were seeing last week. I suppose it makes sense that there might be more of a lag after a bank holiday weekend than a normal weekend? But normally we've been seeing a big up-tick a couple of working day's after the weekend so I thought we'd see the same here.

Or maybe the numbers peaked last week not this week - and are now plateauing at about 750 deaths a day? That doesn't seem likely (but I think last week wound have been days 14-21 since full lockdown which is I think how long it took for a peak in other countries like Spain?). Hopefully that was the peak last week.

[Josquius]

I do think the UK will be worse than many other countries for finding a lot of deaths long after the fact as bungalows start to smell.