Latest Govt Statement and impact on professional rugby

[Hymenoptera]

[/quote]


As someone cleverer than me wrote.

Covid spread is mostly based on two things:
1. How dense the population is.
2. How dense the population is.
[/quote]

And this, are you actually aware how densely populated cities are out here.... There isn't a magic number for this argument, you only have to be densely populated enough for it to be a problem.

[Hymenoptera]

So back to my original statement before everyone got all political.
Given the US has a huge % of ludites, has all its restaurants, bars, cinema's...basically everything is open and has been for months, no restrictions in place anywhere, 50-100k students all converging, allows tens of thousands into sports venues..you'd expect the difference to be exponential and rising, when in fact its neither, cases have trended down and flattened at around 49k per day.
My point is, whats the point of all the pain to only be back where you started next time you open up, its a vicious circle with no winner. Is the alternative that much worse to the present, the above tells me its not.

Sadly it's not that simple. Numbers alone don't tell you anything. You need to take into consideration population age, ethnicity mix, density, lifestyle and more. The fact that the UK and the US have figures anything like close is a damning indictment of the US policies as we are vastly more densely confined than them.

I'm not quoting stats, i'm merely explaining that here life is going on and I can go watch my local team with 24K others, having gone to the restaurant earlier and grab a few beers on the way home. The virus is here, it aint going anywhere, understand you have to adapt to live with it, not put half your country out of business only to be in the same situation a few months later.
What is the UK's end goal, unless it's total irradiation it needs to change it's view.  When half the premiership doesn't exists in six months time and the UK hasn't progressed in any way, what will have been achieved.

[Shugs]

I do take your point Hymoneptera. We aren't suppressing the virus, we're simply avoiding it. It hasn't gone away. So until we get a vaccine it looks like an inevitable cycle of lockdown - emerge - lockdown - emerge. That way economic ruin lies as was the initial point of this thread, albeit pertaining to rugby. Politically it will never fly to throw caution to the wind and re-open everything so we're truly between a rock and a hard place. Hope for a vaccine - soon!

[Raggs]

Thats a long winded way to divert from your original statement, The US model has them with basically the highest death rate in the western world Its just incorrect. Also, given even using your dataset, showing a difference +6 cases per million to the UK, its a crazy statement to stand behind. It matters not how any country lands where it has, that isn't the point of this thread. The fact that the US, France, Sweden etc..are just getting on with it, accepting its with us, deal with it, that's the point. This virus isn't going away any time soon if ever, the sooner that's accepted the better the strategy put in place. Will the UK open and shut every 6 months? They'll be nothing left of it.

And using the worldometers data, my point stands.

France? Getting on with it? Really? This is a country where you needed a permission paper to leave your house. USA is not getting on with it, just managing it badly, and has suffered a record breaking drop in GDP as well as high deaths.

Sweden, the poster boy for getting on with it, has suffered just as much in GDP as Norway, Finland and Denmark (useful equivalent nations to compare them to), but far worse than them in terms of dead. On top of that, despite "pushing through" are now looking likely to go into lockdown in Stockholm again, which in theory should be the closest place to be fully pushed through, given it's been their strategy the entire time.

[wasps]

Surely the aim is purely to not overwhelm the hospitals until such time as there is suitable medication available to either limit the increase in infections or to reduce the time required in hospital.

This start / stop approach is a way of living with it for the short term only.
It requires light at the end of the tunnel - that light being a vaccine or some other functional medication.


It's a disaster the world over. There's no good way to handle it. Everyone is just doing their best - some are just more incompetent than others, and some others are bigger gamblers.


Ultimately though, we need to keep the hospitals functioning otherwise people also start dying from other ailments because they can't get adequate treatment

[BG]

As someone cleverer than me wrote.

Covid spread is mostly based on two things:
1. How dense the population is.
2. How dense the population is.
[/quote]

And this, are you actually aware how densely populated cities are out here.... There isn't a magic number for this argument, you only have to be densely populated enough for it to be a problem.
[/quote]

I might be wrong be Raggs might be quoting someone who used the other definition of "dense".. someone who is a lot more cleverer.

[westwaleswasp]

Would help if the UK took a more 'learn to live with it approach', much like France, US etc... They locked down once, it worked, they patted themselves on the back and several weeks later they are back at ground zero. They must realize that this is not going away and adjustments in life need to be made not blanket rulings, otherwise these clubs and businesses will disappear and in 6 months having patted themselves on the back again they'll be a ground zero.

I'm currently living in the US and for all its problems, its decided that restrictions don't work and people will be people and we need to accept where we are. This weekend my local college football season starts with a reduced gate of 24k, acknowledging that ruin follows no income yet the virus situation won't change. We also just started the college year, with 50k students! Having done very little the US count is still stable..

I'm seriously worried now, Wasps business model is the anti of our current situation.

I think we are going to have to learn to live with this.  We can't put our lives and our livelihoods on hold indefinitely.

Some of the rhetoric from the government this week has been alarmist and is not borne out by their own figures.  50K cases a day by October was what we were told if we continue to double every 7 days, but we are NOT currently doubling every 7 days, more like every 18-19 days, but inevitably this is the headline that all the media outlets lapped up.  And we are being taken for fools if we are expected to believe that significantly increased testing is not a major factor in an increase in confirmed cases.  Testing is currently at more than 10 times the level it was in April yet we are still finding fewer cases than at the spring peak.  Estimates put the true peak daily figure from April in excess of 100K, had sufficent testing been in place at the time to detect more of them.  The familiar curve we keep being show with current levels approaching those of early April fails to make any adjustment for this.  If this was factored in then the curve for cases would be far more closely aligned with that for hospital cases and deaths, and far less cause for alarm.  Data by region still shows that urban areas of Northern England, the Midlands and Wales account for a significant proportion of the increase, while much of the South remains stable or even in decline, yet these measures are now being rolled out nationwide.   I fear that when we reflect on this period in years to come we may see that the long term impact on social and economic well being, education and health will far outweigh any short term health benefits we may see in the coming months.

If only 10% (and that's a very high estimate) of the population have had this, just living with it, likely means another 100k+ dead before we get close to herd immunity. On top of that, it means an enormous number of long term sufferers. This is nasty. Embolisms, blood clots, long term neurological issues, athletes with heart damage.

Even "mild" cases can come with some really serious longer term effects.

I very much agree with Raggs. I would not want to dismiss (or smite) those who are lockdown- sceptic, but I feel a lot of the anti-lockdown attitudes and somewhat selective data in the press is being written by journalists who simply have not studied science since GCSE, eager to stir up the public. In some cases you can look up their backgrounds. Many show that they have no basic understanding of how science works, or peer review, and seem to imply that scientists are "changing their mind" when the body of evidence on transmission, face masks etc. has simply evolved- because that is how science works- its changing is not its weakness but its strength. There will be very debatable and incorrect decisions made, of course.

 There are areas that are low level- my parents in Essex being in one, and for that I am thankful, but the mainstream scientific view points towards the idea that shielding the vulnerable and getting on with it is just not an option, and politically it won't fly anyway. There will be outlying voices, but by and large there is a degree of consensus;  all four UK nations have very different political governments, and yet have a broadly similar approach.

 The best we can hope for is some government dosh for Rugby, and hopefully a lockdown that keeps schools, hospitals etc. functioning a bit better than last time.

[Neils]

Would help if the UK took a more 'learn to live with it approach', much like France, US etc... They locked down once, it worked, they patted themselves on the back and several weeks later they are back at ground zero. They must realize that this is not going away and adjustments in life need to be made not blanket rulings, otherwise these clubs and businesses will disappear and in 6 months having patted themselves on the back again they'll be a ground zero.

I'm currently living in the US and for all its problems, its decided that restrictions don't work and people will be people and we need to accept where we are. This weekend my local college football season starts with a reduced gate of 24k, acknowledging that ruin follows no income yet the virus situation won't change. We also just started the college year, with 50k students! Having done very little the US count is still stable..

I'm seriously worried now, Wasps business model is the anti of our current situation.

I think we are going to have to learn to live with this.  We can't put our lives and our livelihoods on hold indefinitely.

Some of the rhetoric from the government this week has been alarmist and is not borne out by their own figures.  50K cases a day by October was what we were told if we continue to double every 7 days, but we are NOT currently doubling every 7 days, more like every 18-19 days, but inevitably this is the headline that all the media outlets lapped up.  And we are being taken for fools if we are expected to believe that significantly increased testing is not a major factor in an increase in confirmed cases.  Testing is currently at more than 10 times the level it was in April yet we are still finding fewer cases than at the spring peak.  Estimates put the true peak daily figure from April in excess of 100K, had sufficent testing been in place at the time to detect more of them.  The familiar curve we keep being show with current levels approaching those of early April fails to make any adjustment for this.  If this was factored in then the curve for cases would be far more closely aligned with that for hospital cases and deaths, and far less cause for alarm.  Data by region still shows that urban areas of Northern England, the Midlands and Wales account for a significant proportion of the increase, while much of the South remains stable or even in decline, yet these measures are now being rolled out nationwide.   I fear that when we reflect on this period in years to come we may see that the long term impact on social and economic well being, education and health will far outweigh any short term health benefits we may see in the coming months.

If only 10% (and that's a very high estimate) of the population have had this, just living with it, likely means another 100k+ dead before we get close to herd immunity. On top of that, it means an enormous number of long term sufferers. This is nasty. Embolisms, blood clots, long term neurological issues, athletes with heart damage.

Even "mild" cases can come with some really serious longer term effects.

I very much agree with Raggs. I would not want to dismiss (or smite) those who are lockdown- sceptic, but I feel a lot of the anti-lockdown attitudes and somewhat selective data in the press is being written by journalists who simply have not studied science since GCSE, eager to stir up the public. In some cases you can look up their backgrounds. Many show that they have no basic understanding of how science works, or peer review, and seem to imply that scientists are "changing their mind" when the body of evidence on transmission, face masks etc. has simply evolved- because that is how science works- its changing is not its weakness but its strength. There will be very debatable and incorrect decisions made, of course.

 There are areas that are low level- my parents in Essex being in one, and for that I am thankful, but the mainstream scientific view points towards the idea that shielding the vulnerable and getting on with it is just not an option, and politically it won't fly anyway. There will be outlying voices, but by and large there is a degree of consensus;  all four UK nations have very different political governments, and yet have a broadly similar approach.

 The best we can hope for is some government dosh for Rugby, and hopefully a lockdown that keeps schools, hospitals etc. functioning a bit better than last time.

I wake up and I find I agree with this fully. As a parent living in said county I can agree it is lowish but growing like everywhere else unfortunately.

The last para = yes please but can't see it.

[Lwasp]

I'm not quoting stats, i'm merely explaining that here life is going on and I can go watch my local team with 24K others, having gone to the restaurant earlier and grab a few beers on the way home.

To stick to the sport, how do they do this Hymenoptera? MLB is being played behind closed doors. Are there different state rules or different rules for different sports? Or just no rules at all and MLB has made one decision and your local sport/team has made another?

[bournender2]

https://docs4opendebate.be/en/open-letter/

Another POV?

[Raggs]

https://docs4opendebate.be/en/open-letter/

Another POV?

Doesn't help their case when number of new cases in Belgium have tripled since they wrote that.

First massive red flag for me is this bit: The WHO originally predicted a pandemic that would claim 3.4% victims, in other words millions of deaths, and a highly contagious virus for which no treatment or vaccine was available.

I'm 95% sure that the WHO didn't predict that, they stated that it was the case fatality rate, which is very different from the infection fatality rate. Even early on (imperial paper from way back when) they were looking at ifr of a little below 1% (0.65% was used by Imperial if I recall correctly, read it a few times but some time ago). That 3.4% figure is pushed a lot in strawman arguments I've seen.

Next up they compare it to Flu. You can see in any country where the disease has taken hold, that this has by far and away exceeded any flu season.

Annnnnnnd I'm done.

They're talking about it failing Koch's postulates. Koch's postulates were formed before viruses were known about. You cannot grow a virus in pure culture like you can bacteria. They're basically denying the existence of virus's (except of course when they want to use the flu as another strawman). There are updated criteria (since 1884) that take this into account. Whoever wrote this is not a health expert, not a professional, but a pure crank, and I'm not wasting more time on it.

[DGP Wasp]

I assumed Koch's postulates were a gift from Nigel Wray when he signed for Sarries to get round the salary cap!  Didn't know what postulates were, but figured they must be worth having!

[Vespula Vulgaris]

First massive red flag for me is this bit: The WHO originally predicted a pandemic that would claim 3.4% victims, in other words millions of deaths, and a highly contagious virus for which no treatment or vaccine was available.

I'm 95% sure that the WHO didn't predict that, they stated that it was the case fatality rate, which is very different from the infection fatality rate. Even early on (imperial paper from way back when) they were looking at ifr of a little below 1% (0.65% was used by Imperial if I recall correctly, read it a few times but some time ago). That 3.4% figure is pushed a lot in strawman arguments I've seen.

Next up they compare it to Flu. You can see in any country where the disease has taken hold, that this has by far and away exceeded any flu season.

Professor Neil Ferguson was interviewed on The Life Scientific this week, it's well worth a listen back if you are interested in the stats.  He said that the original estimage of 0.6-0.7% fatality was based on Wuhan, and as the UK has a significantly older population he expecetd it to be closer to 0.9% here. which is roughly 10x a really bad flu year. He also stands by his estimate of 500,000 deaths with no lockdown, and that we are definitely heading into a second wave.

It's also worth pointing out to those who don't think this is as serious as the first time round that while the majority of current infections are people from lower age brackets, with the R Number nearing 2 in places then it is not going to stay that way.  Also that there is roughly a 3-4 week delay between infection and hospitalisation, and then anouther 2-3 weeks before death occurs if it does.  We are between 3-4 weeks into the second wave of infections, so hopsitalisation will be starting to increase, and death rates swill likely follow in another 2-3 weeks.