Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[mongers]

The wheels seem to be falling off the lock-down here, County officials and police have said Dorset was inundated with 100,000s of visitors over the weekend, crazy scenes ensued at beauty spots like Durdle Door on the Purbeck coastline.

7pm Sunday evening, there were multi-mile long traffic queues heading East out of the county along the A31 into Hampshire and beyond / London.

I went into the national park here for the first time proper, and saw groups of RV/large camper vans parked up in the Forest, so despite the car parks being closed, those wankers had decided to drive across the forest grasslands to get to where they chose to park up. 

edit:
Durdle Door, three people jumped from the rock arch, seriously injuring themselves so air ambulances had to land and in doing so forces all the people on the beach into an even small area.



This was the scene before the accident, that small steps in the cliff are pretty much the only way to access the beach for the thousands who turned up:



Also Bournemouth beach near the pier on Sunday, as packed as I've ever seen it:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-52875612

[Zanza]

Before Corona, a reservation was optional in virtually all restaurants although necessary in more popular ones. Now, it is mandatory by government decree. That might skew the before/now comparison.

What's the relationship between corona and restaurant reservations?

They are only allowed a certain number of customers. This way, they can limit it up front.

That and it supports in the now mandatory registration of customers. You have to leave name and contact of one member per household when sitting down in a restaurant. 

[celedhring]

Spain's unemployment data for May is surprisingly non-catastrophic. As in, it's still a record unemployment figure for this particular month, yet better than expected.

Fingers crossed.

[Tamas]

The delayed report into into why black, Asian and minority ethnic groups have been disproportionately affected by coronavirus has just been published.

It says, after accounting for the effect of sex, age, deprivation and region: "People of Bangladeshi ethnicity had around twice the risk of death when compared to people of White British ethnicity. People of Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Other Asian, Caribbean and Other Black ethnicity had between 10 and 50% higher risk of death when compared to White British."

Crucially, it says the analyses did not account for the effect of occupation, comorbidities or obesity. There has been particular concern that BAME people are more exposed because of their occupations. For example, the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that a third of all working-age Black Africans are employed in key worker roles, 50% more than the share of the White British population.

Shockingly, minority people are more affected by the pandemic because they are disproportionately stuck in shitty, exposed jobs.

[Josquius]

Durdle Door, three people jumped from the rock arch, seriously injuring themselves so air ambulances had to land and in doing so forces all the people on the beach into an even small area.

I've heard about similar incidents up here.
Is this a new tik tok trend or something?

[garbon]

The delayed report into into why black, Asian and minority ethnic groups have been disproportionately affected by coronavirus has just been published.

It says, after accounting for the effect of sex, age, deprivation and region: "People of Bangladeshi ethnicity had around twice the risk of death when compared to people of White British ethnicity. People of Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Other Asian, Caribbean and Other Black ethnicity had between 10 and 50% higher risk of death when compared to White British."

Crucially, it says the analyses did not account for the effect of occupation, comorbidities or obesity. There has been particular concern that BAME people are more exposed because of their occupations. For example, the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that a third of all working-age Black Africans are employed in key worker roles, 50% more than the share of the White British population.

Shockingly, minority people are more affected by the pandemic because they are disproportionately stuck in shitty, exposed jobs.

That blurb you just posted said that nothing was done to look into whether occupation, comorbidities or obesity played a role.

[Tamas]

The delayed report into into why black, Asian and minority ethnic groups have been disproportionately affected by coronavirus has just been published.

It says, after accounting for the effect of sex, age, deprivation and region: "People of Bangladeshi ethnicity had around twice the risk of death when compared to people of White British ethnicity. People of Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Other Asian, Caribbean and Other Black ethnicity had between 10 and 50% higher risk of death when compared to White British."

Crucially, it says the analyses did not account for the effect of occupation, comorbidities or obesity. There has been particular concern that BAME people are more exposed because of their occupations. For example, the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that a third of all working-age Black Africans are employed in key worker roles, 50% more than the share of the White British population.

Shockingly, minority people are more affected by the pandemic because they are disproportionately stuck in shitty, exposed jobs.

That blurb you just posted said that nothing was done to look into whether occupation, comorbidities or obesity played a role.

It did not account for it in the results ergo it ha to be what pushed it away from the average.

[garbon]

The delayed report into into why black, Asian and minority ethnic groups have been disproportionately affected by coronavirus has just been published.

It says, after accounting for the effect of sex, age, deprivation and region: "People of Bangladeshi ethnicity had around twice the risk of death when compared to people of White British ethnicity. People of Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Other Asian, Caribbean and Other Black ethnicity had between 10 and 50% higher risk of death when compared to White British."

Crucially, it says the analyses did not account for the effect of occupation, comorbidities or obesity. There has been particular concern that BAME people are more exposed because of their occupations. For example, the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that a third of all working-age Black Africans are employed in key worker roles, 50% more than the share of the White British population.

Shockingly, minority people are more affected by the pandemic because they are disproportionately stuck in shitty, exposed jobs.

That blurb you just posted said that nothing was done to look into whether occupation, comorbidities or obesity played a role.

It did not account for it in the results ergo it ha to be what pushed it away from the average.

So they accounted for 4 variables and didn't account for 3, so we know that it must be occupation?

[DGuller]

It did not account for it in the results ergo it ha to be what pushed it away from the average.

Woah, way too far the other way.  Not controlling for obvious potential confounding variables makes the results potentially questionable (but maybe not, if the conclusion is such that you're okay not questioning it), but you can't just assume that any unexplained variance can be chalked about to what you didn't control for.

[Sheilbh]

Where's that story from Tamas? Because that seems to describe the initial ONS research on this, but I thought this review by Public Health England definitely was also looking into other factors. I don't know if profession is part of that but, from memory, they definitely were looking at obesity.

[Tamas]

Where's that story from Tamas? Because that seems to describe the initial ONS research on this, but I thought this review by Public Health England definitely was also looking into other factors. I don't know if profession is part of that but, from memory, they definitely were looking at obesity.

It's from the Guardian live coverage

[Tamas]

Bit of a reminder for Sheilbh on whom the government's change of narrative worked quite effectively

Boris Johnson told Italian PM he wanted 'herd immunity', Italy's health minister says
Boris Johnson told his Italian counterpart, Giuseppe Conte, in early March that the UK was aiming for "herd immunity" as part of its approach to coronavirus, a TV documentary claims.

Channel 4's Dispatches spoke to the Italian health minister, Pierpaolo Sileri, who said this is what was said in a conversation between Johnson and Conte on 13 March. Sileri told the programme:

I spoke with Conte to tell President Conte that I'd tested positive [for coronavirus]. And he told me that he'd spoken with Boris Johnson and that they'd also talked about the situation in Italy. I remember he said, 'He told me that he wants herd immunity'.

I remember that after hanging up, I said to myself that I hope Boris Johnson goes for a lockdown.

In late February and early March the government's scientific adviser were relatively open about saying that they thought it would be impossible to entirely suppress coronavirus and that there were advantages from allowing "herd immunity" to build up. Sir Patrick Vallance, the government's chief scientific adviser, said this publicly, including in a Today programme interview on 13 March (the day the Johnson/Conte conversation took place). But very soon afterwards the government abruptly changed policy, in response to modelling saying that anything other than a policy aimed at full suppression of coronavirus would led to the NHS being overwhelmed.

Subsequently ministers became averse to being associated with the "herd immunity" concept, because that implied toleration or even support for people dying from coronavirus in manageable numbers, and now they insist it was never part of their policy.

[Sheilbh]

Where's that story from Tamas? Because that seems to describe the initial ONS research on this, but I thought this review by Public Health England definitely was also looking into other factors. I don't know if profession is part of that but, from memory, they definitely were looking at obesity.

It's from the Guardian live coverage

Okay - weird. Link below - I thought this was going to be a review of BAME deaths in particular but it's actually a look at all sorts of different factors (including ethnicity) but then doesn't seem to look at how they all interact. So it did cover comorbidities, but that's not controlled for in, say, the ethnicity section:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/889195/disparities_review.pdf

Hopefully there'll be more research done on this.

Bit of a reminder for Sheilbh on whom the government's change of narrative worked quite effectively

My view, based on the SAGE papers and minutes, is their goal was just suppression and herd immunity would be a positive side effect - like in the pandemic playbook. Now our idiot PM may have gottne fixated on one part of that policy (and not the main one), but

[Admiral Yi]

I just got a $30 corona virus gift from my car insurance company. 

[Malthus]

I just got a $30 corona virus gift from my car insurance company. 

How much of the virus is $30 worth of virus, though?