Coronavirus

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Martin Kyte on 01/06/2020 15:07:05:

I suspect the root cause in the UK was shortages, particularly ventilators and the staff needed to run them.

Are you making this up as you go along? Can you point me to a documented case where a patient was not put on a ventilator because none were available?

I may as well add that it will probably never be over because obesity is a major risk factor and therefor the Fat Lady may never sing. Quite happy with your post until you got to "Why ?"

regards Martin

This article in the Daily Telegraph lays out the NICE Triage Policy.

I explained in another post the reason the 'why' question has to be answered. Next time it might be one of us who is assessed 'Critical Care Not Considered Appropriate'.

Dave

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

On the face of it, the ratio indicates the effectiveness of the health service, ie the likelihood of an unsuccessful outcome after a patient tested positive.

On the Face of It yes. However all it actually does, is tell you how many saves each health service managed with their set of patients. You have to normalise for age, sex, co-morbidity, fitness and ethnicity at least before you can make any kind of comparison.

regards Martin

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Posted by SillyOldDuffer on 01/06/2020 16:28:35:

Posted by Martin Kyte on 01/06/2020 15:07:05:

I suspect the root cause in the UK was shortages, particularly ventilators and the staff needed to run them.

Are you making this up as you go along? Can you point me to a documented case where a patient was not put on a ventilator because none were available?

I may as well add that it will probably never be over because obesity is a major risk factor and therefor the Fat Lady may never sing. Quite happy with your post until you got to "Why ?"

regards Martin

This article in the Daily Telegraph lays out the NICE Triage Policy.

I explained in another post the reason the 'why' question has to be answered. Next time it might be one of us who is assessed 'Critical Care Not Considered Appropriate'.

Dave

None of that is based on ventilator availability but what is best for the patient. If you are assessed to be frail and dying with no great expectation of recovery in critical carewhich in Covid19 infections means sedation and ventilation you die without the chance to say goodbye to family albeit by electronic means. It's based on when treatment stops being kind and starts to be invasive.

regards Martin

[Steve Skelton 1Participant @steveskelton1]

Dave,

I disagree. In the early days tests, in the majority of the UK, were only carried out on hospital admissions and therefore those needing medical care. This was due to the inability of the UK to carry out large numbers of tests at the time – I am aware of people who were not tested, although they asked to be, and are very likely to have had the CV (they holidayed in Austria at the time of the outbreak there and were poorly at home with the expected symptoms) .

Other countries in Europe and Asia were testing far more people who were not hospitalised and therefore who were counted as cases but probably much milder who recovered. We were not doing that to any great extent. So it is not a like for like comparison.

Thus, it is not a reflection on the effectiveness of the UK health service. Other countries who were testing at a far higher rate than we were will then obviously have a much better death/cases ratio.

Steve

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

One of the things that puzzled me about this most 'dangerous' virus, was the government advice, that if you had the symptoms, you should stay at home, NOT go to hospital and NOT go to your doctor.

Can someone please explain?

 

Martin.

Edited By blowlamp on 01/06/2020 19:21:38

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Do a lot of dog walking and was struck by the social disparity tonight in the park on an almost perfect evening

Loads and loads of youngsters, almost zero oldies

It looked like one of those dystopian films where everyone over 30 gets sent away

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Posted by blowlamp on 01/06/2020 19:21:08:

One of the things that puzzled me about this most 'dangerous' virus, was the government advice, that if you had the symptoms, you should stay at home, NOT go to hospital and NOT go to your doctor.

Can someone please explain?

Martin.

Edited By blowlamp on 01/06/2020 19:21:38

A virus that is very infectious but has a mortality rate of say 1% has the potential to kill 666,000 people (1% UK population) directly if left unchecked. No-one has immunity and everyone can be infected. Given that a huge swathe of the population would also go down with symptoms sufficient to keep them off work that drives a steamroller through essential services causing more death and hardship. As most people will have a relatively mild illness they don't require treatment. The advice was that if symptoms worsen the hospitalisation may be required so seek help. The stay at home directive is to protect the general poulation from unrestricted spread of the virus.

Does that help?

regards Martin

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

If the virus did have the potential to kill 666,000 people in the UK, then it seems like dangerous advice to ask the public to self diagnose in this way. It's dangerous in another way too, in that other illnesses with similar symptoms will fail to be diagnosed by doctors, with potentially tragic consequences for anyone following that advice.

I think the current number of deaths in the UK hovers around the 40,000 mark, with a very large proportion being classed in either the 'corona related' or 'covid-19 related' category, rather than the actual cause of death category.

This ~ 40,000 figure also places the the chance of being struck down by the virus in the UK at less than 0.1% which is comparable to some other viruses, which, as a nation, we don't 'lock down' for.

If it's true that large numbers of people in care homes have succumbed to the virus, then it suggests to me that being locked up and off the streets isn't really of any benefit, but reinforces the idea that the older & weaker members of society are the ones most vulnerable. From my own knowledge, these care homes are also the places which doctors will NOT visit to manage their patients.

Martin.

[Danny M2ZParticipant @dannym2z]

I have refrained from commenting about this pandemic for a while as I am fortunate? to be living in Australia but as I have friends and family living in the U.K. and the U.S.A this is getting a bit to close to the heart.

What prompted this post was a TV program that I viewed recently that reviewed the history of the Spanish Flu epidemic of just over 100 years ago in Australia and the lessons that can be learned from tha t outbreak.

There are many similarities in the mechanism of the spread of Covid-19, in the case of Australia it was maritime and apparently a shipload of troops that were recalled en route to Europe when WW1 ended was instrumental.

On return to Australia, the ship berthed to refuel in New Zealand and although only officers and medical staff were allowed to disembark, that was enough to permit at least one individual to return to the ship and spread the virus.

Once the ship reached Australia (flying the yellow flag) the flu virus was not effectively contained and so slowly spread around the country Australia 1918

Now in 2020, Australia has (apparently) learned this lesson from history and a strict maritime lockdown has been implimented again, even using the same quarantine stations dating back to over 100 years ago. This did not however prevent the Ruby Princess **LINK** from slipping through the ropes, just like the troopship in 1918

100 years ago international air travel was not an issue but nowadays it is under the same lockdown and isolation measures as maritime restrictions. Only Australian air passengers returning to Australia from overseas are permitted to land and they are immediately isolated to selected locations.

The scary part of the program was that (just like discovered in Sorth Korean nightclubs nowadays) one has to be very vigilant when relaxing restrictions as it only takes one person, the so called 'Super Spreader' **LINK**

So lessons to be learned – Stay home, stay safe and be sensible and be careful all my fellow model engineering friends and your families.

The pandemic has not ended, just the goalposts are being moved to get the economy of all countries moving a bit but we are all just as vulnerable as we were last week.

Regards from Australia * Danny M *

Edited By Danny M2Z on 02/06/2020 05:21:33

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

It's the sort of thing all generations have to live with at some point but "times have changed" where life expectancy is concerned

My grandparents would be in the spanish one in the 20s and my mother caught the asian one in the 50s which decked her for a while

c'est la vie

Edited By Ady1 on 02/06/2020 06:37:31

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Posted by blowlamp on 02/06/2020 00:41:24:This ~ 40,000 figure also places the the chance of being struck down by the virus in the UK at less than 0.1% which is comparable to some other viruses, which, as a nation, we don't 'lock down' for.

Martin.

No. The infection rate is lower because of the lockdown not because of the virus. That's the whole point. You reduce the spread by reducing contact between people. If you allow the virus to infect the entire nation you would expect 1% of the population to die which is 660,000 people. Maybe you should do a little background reading on epidemiology.

regards Martin

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

Posted by Martin Kyte on 02/06/2020 09:36:15:

Posted by blowlamp on 02/06/2020 00:41:24:This ~ 40,000 figure also places the the chance of being struck down by the virus in the UK at less than 0.1% which is comparable to some other viruses, which, as a nation, we don't 'lock down' for.

Martin.

No. The infection rate is lower because of the lockdown not because of the virus. That's the whole point. You reduce the spread by reducing contact between people. If you allow the virus to infect the entire nation you would expect 1% of the population to die which is 660,000 people. Maybe you should do a little background reading on epidemiology.

regards Martin

I understand the theory of the lock down – what other things do you propose we get locked down for to keep us safe?

I just used your percentage rate. You said 666,000 could die from this (or 1%) , so I took the 'actual' number of deaths in the UK of ~ 40,000, which is less than 66,600 (1/10th of your number) and so equates to less than 0.1%.

There is no proof this lock down has had any beneficial effect, in fact, our immunity to other infections is likely impaired due to our immune systems not being excercised sufficiently for weeks on end. It's more likely that many people have been infected and recovered regardless of the lock down.

Why have UK airports remained open with no checks or restrictions over these weeks?

Martin.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Steve Skelton 1 on 01/06/2020 19:02:37:

Dave,

I disagree. In the early days tests, in the majority of the UK, were only carried out on hospital admissions and therefore those needing medical care. This was due to the inability of the UK to carry out large numbers of tests at the time – I am aware of people who were not tested, although they asked to be, and are very likely to have had the CV (they holidayed in Austria at the time of the outbreak there and were poorly at home with the expected symptoms) .

Other countries in Europe and Asia were testing far more people who were not hospitalised and therefore who were counted as cases but probably much milder who recovered. We were not doing that to any great extent. So it is not a like for like comparison.

Thus, it is not a reflection on the effectiveness of the UK health service. Other countries who were testing at a far higher rate than we were will then obviously have a much better death/cases ratio.

Steve

Hi Steve,

That's true, but surely ability to test is a major part of Health Service effectiveness?

The NHS depends on having sufficient numbers of trained, well-motivated staff. It also depends on those staff having the tools to do the job. Health Service effectiveness drops if there aren't enough bandages, surgeons, nurses, drugs, beds or cleaners. And effectiveness drops when services are overwhelmed by too many patients arriving at the same time. And that's very likely if sufficient tests weren't available when needed to trace and isolate early patients. As you say: 'I am aware of people who were not tested, although they asked to be, and are very likely to have had the CV (they holidayed in Austria at the time of the outbreak there and were poorly at home with the expected symptoms' Exactly!

If other countries were more effective by testing on a large scale, why didn't the UK do the same?

I'm not criticising the NHS as an organisation or it's staff. Both are wonderful. Both occasionally drop the ball, and both are limited by resource availability.

Almost the worst thing that can be done after an event like this is failing to learn from the experience. Recommended reading: 'Better' by Atul Gawande

Dave

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Why have UK airports remained open with no checks or restrictions over these weeks?

It's partly politics, partly economics, partly helping the system to cope with infection rates

At the end of the day our leaders are trying to herd cats, trying to please everyone at the same time with a weather eye on the future economy

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

I suggest you don't understand the theory of the lockdown.

The reason for lockdown is to restrict the spread.

The reson for shielding is to prevent the individual getting infected.

The lockdown was there to reduce the infection rate and therefor the number of infections in the population.This it successfully did. Which indirectly kept the majority of us safe. The death rate is fatalities divided by infections. You have just divided fatalities by the entire population, 90% at least of which have never been infected.

The estimated death rate for the virus is estimated at 1% accross the whole population.

If it infects the whole population that is 1% of 66.6 million = 666,000. We managed to stop that happening by the lockdown.

The number of actual deaths stands at 40,000 whic would give you 4,000000 infections or around 6% of the population which is in line with the antibody surveys currently being carried out.

Thus the effectiveness of the lockdown is seenby dividing the actual deaths with lockdown by the estimated deaths without lockdown which woud be 40,000/666,000 = 0.0006 or 0.6%.

Put it another way because of the lockdown, so far we have had 0.6% of the deaths we could have had if we had carried on as normal which is a pretty good argument for doing as we did.

The reason for lockdown is to restrict the spread.

The reson for shielding is to prevent the individual getting infected.

regards Martin

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Martin Kyte on 01/06/2020 16:47:34:

Posted by SillyOldDuffer on 01/06/2020 16:28:35:

Posted by Martin Kyte on 01/06/2020 15:07:05:

I suspect the root cause in the UK was shortages, particularly ventilators and the staff needed to run them.

Are you making this up as you go along? Can you point me to a documented case where a patient was not put on a ventilator because none were available?

I may as well add that it will probably never be over because obesity is a major risk factor and therefor the Fat Lady may never sing. Quite happy with your post until you got to "Why ?"

regards Martin

This article in the Daily Telegraph lays out the NICE Triage Policy.

I explained in another post the reason the 'why' question has to be answered. Next time it might be one of us who is assessed 'Critical Care Not Considered Appropriate'.

Dave

None of that is based on ventilator availability but what is best for the patient. If you are assessed to be frail and dying with no great expectation of recovery in critical carewhich in Covid19 infections means sedation and ventilation you die without the chance to say goodbye to family albeit by electronic means. It's based on when treatment stops being kind and starts to be invasive.

regards Martin

In normal times one would hope so! But these are not normal times: Metro, Vox Political, Daily Mail. Daily Express Guardian. (A mix of Left and Right opinion, I'm not making a political point.) In the USA, where President Trump has assured the nation there is no shortage of ventilators: BuzzFeedNews.

Telling relatives not being ventilated is kinder isn't a lie. But it's not the whole truth either. It also makes the ventilator and staff available for someone who has a better chance. And some of the people taken off ventilators to say goodbye would have survived. Medical shortages always cause difficult decisions to be made.

Another twist, there have been many Covid deaths in Care Homes, where ventilators aren't available. Who decided these people wouldn't be hospitalised? Was the decision kind or informed by practicalities? Both I expect.

Personally I don't have a moral problem with people being triaged in an emergency. It's a fact of life. But I would prefer triage to be unnecessary if possible. Quite happy if the authorities made reasonable efforts to supply PPE and Ventilators and failed due to shortages. Not happy if it turns out an official gave the contract to an incompetent supplier in exchange for a brown envelope. It happens.

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 02/06/2020 11:26:35

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

You are reading more into this than is there. The UK never got close to running out of ventilated beds. Treatment is allways based on assessments. Treatments of all kinds are terminated when further treatment will do no good. Either because the life cannot be saved by it or because the patient is dying of something else.

You speak of care homes. In many care homes and nursing homes people are at end of life many with late stage altzheimers. What are you saving them for? Decisions to admit are made by clinicians.

regards Martin

[Steve Skelton 1Participant @steveskelton1]

Hi Dave,

Sorry to disagree again, but the ability to test for a speculative one-off (but may repeat again) pandemic is not what I would consider to be a part of the NHS which struggles to fund the day-to-day operation of a national health operation.

Without wishing to start a political debate, the cost of preparing for a pandemic that could never be forecast with any probability is part of the management of the country. Disaster planning on this scale should be separately funded and not part of the NHS. If, however the NHS has been asked to provide this service and funded appropriately then I would agree with you. I believe the health service has been doing the best with what it had.

I would repeat again that I believe the death/cases ratio is not something we should be measuring based on the flawed data we have available and is certainly not a reflection on the effectiveness of the UK health service

Steve

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

Posted by Martin Kyte on 02/06/2020 11:00:39:

I suggest you don't understand the theory of the lockdown.

The reason for lockdown is to restrict the spread.

The reson for shielding is to prevent the individual getting infected.

The lockdown was there to reduce the infection rate and therefor the number of infections in the population.This it successfully did. Which indirectly kept the majority of us safe. The death rate is fatalities divided by infections. You have just divided fatalities by the entire population, 90% at least of which have never been infected.

The estimated death rate for the virus is estimated at 1% accross the whole population.

If it infects the whole population that is 1% of 66.6 million = 666,000. We managed to stop that happening by the lockdown.

The number of actual deaths stands at 40,000 whic would give you 4,000000 infections or around 6% of the population which is in line with the antibody surveys currently being carried out.

Thus the effectiveness of the lockdown is seenby dividing the actual deaths with lockdown by the estimated deaths without lockdown which woud be 40,000/666,000 = 0.0006 or 0.6%.

Put it another way because of the lockdown, so far we have had 0.6% of the deaths we could have had if we had carried on as normal which is a pretty good argument for doing as we did.

The reason for lockdown is to restrict the spread.

The reson for shielding is to prevent the individual getting infected.

regards Martin

It seems like you didn't read the first line of my previous post or you don't believe me.

Yes, I know that's the story we've been fed, but you have no proof, just assertions as you certainly have no idea how many people have been infected. I'm saying it doesn't stand up to scrutiny and so should be taken with a pinch of salt – you know, like all the officials that have been found doing so all along.

Martin.

[Kiwi BlokeParticipant @kiwibloke62605]

I broadly agree with Martin Kyte's posts. Here is some more confounding stuff.

Arguments about the efficacy or wisdom of lockdown are, at present, not likely to be rational. The data simply isn't there yet. Comparison between countries is also unhelpful, because of the wildly different counting strategies used, and the amount of testing, to name just two problems.

When a novel infective disease appears to be spreading, it is naturally the worst cases that get identified. Those infected, but who just have a sniffle, will be overlooked. Therefore, it is a natural tendency to think that the disease is more dangerous than it will turn out to be. I think this is called 'ascertainment bias'. It was this that made the death rate seem scarily high at first, in some locations.

Pehaps governments were alerted to Bill Gates' TED talk of 2005, in which he pointed out that the world was completely unprepared for the next pandemic. SARS and 'bird flu' had been scares. This lack of preparation, and the human desire to 'do something' might partly explain governments' apparent panic over-reaction, although some countries chose to wait and see what would happen.

Three public health priorities are pretty obvious: 1, protect the population as a whole; 2, protect the individuals; 3, protect the health service from being swamped. Essentially, 1 involves the isolation of infective people, 2 involves people staying away from infective people, and 3 involves slowing down the rate of spread of the disease. Lockdown and quarantine clearly attack 1 and allows 2 and will help with 3, but it isn't as simple as that.

It has become clear that this disease is tricky because it is very easily transmitted and perhaps the majority of people who become infected have no, or minimal symptoms. Unfortunately, infected people appear to be most infective a few days before symptoms develop. Naturally, asymptomatic people don't seek medical help, and generally won't get tested, unless a screening programme is in operation. Therefore, if they are allowed to, they will, unknowingly, infect other people, and may be the major vector. Ill people typically don't stagger around infecting others, but take to their beds. So it is clear that aggressive testing is of little use, unless the population is locked down.

Relying only on the isolation or quarantining of infected people after they become symptomatic therefore removes only a proportion of the spreaders from the vulnerable population. Therefore, lockdown is, perhaps somewhat accidentally, a very good idea. It is a specious argument that lockdown is pointless because it's too late (it should have been sooner and more aggressive in UK and elsewhere) – everything helps.

Infectious disease epidemics have a tendency to fizzle out, apparently even without sophisticated medical or social intervention. The development of herd immunity (and the assumption that there is a high proportion of asymptomatic infected people) is a component of this fizzling out, but there are other mechanisms. Natural selection favours less lethal strains of infective agents, and many viral epidemics seem to have followed this, with the population of viruses becoming less dangerous with time. At present, it is not clear whether herd immunity is, or will develop for this virus. It's not safe to rely on it. We will see what happens in Sweden…

If transmission continues, because isolation of, or avoidance of spreaders isn't successful, the proportion of the population which becomes infected may reach the level it would have done without any social limitation measures. This is not a reason to abandon lockdown, etc., because it ignores the possible explosion of severe cases leading to health care overload.

There's more – much more – of course, and one thing's sure – it ain't simple. Governments had to make tough decisions when the hard science was deficient. Epidemiologists are taught that they should be very cautious about making predictions, however 'good' their mathematical models appear to be. In retrospect, many decisions will prove to have been poor, but we may be very grateful for others. In cases of life or death, it seems to me to be better to err on the side of caution.

UK's figures are distorted because the prevelance of the disease isn't known, partly because testing has been so limited. Death certification mechanics have been changed, and it seems that deaths are frequently registered as being because of Covid-19 when, in fact, there is only a suspicion. I may be wrong, but I believe that a large number of people have been registered as dying from Covid-19 without having been tested.This seems to be common in residential homes. So the number of deaths is inflated, and the number of cases is too low, so the 'death rate' in UK appears artificially high. It isn't surprising that the disease has spread rapidly in UK – people are so highly 'connected' and there have been many persisting infection 'hot spots', eg the tube continuing to operate makes a mockery of lockdown.

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Posted by blowlamp on 02/06/2020 12:01:06:

Posted by Martin Kyte on 02/06/2020 11:00:39:

I suggest you don't understand the theory of the lockdown.

The reason for lockdown is to restrict the spread.

The reson for shielding is to prevent the individual getting infected.

The lockdown was there to reduce the infection rate and therefor the number of infections in the population.This it successfully did. Which indirectly kept the majority of us safe. The death rate is fatalities divided by infections. You have just divided fatalities by the entire population, 90% at least of which have never been infected.

The estimated death rate for the virus is estimated at 1% accross the whole population.

If it infects the whole population that is 1% of 66.6 million = 666,000. We managed to stop that happening by the lockdown.

The number of actual deaths stands at 40,000 whic would give you 4,000000 infections or around 6% of the population which is in line with the antibody surveys currently being carried out.

Thus the effectiveness of the lockdown is seenby dividing the actual deaths with lockdown by the estimated deaths without lockdown which woud be 40,000/666,000 = 0.0006 or 0.6%.

Put it another way because of the lockdown, so far we have had 0.6% of the deaths we could have had if we had carried on as normal which is a pretty good argument for doing as we did.

The reason for lockdown is to restrict the spread.

The reson for shielding is to prevent the individual getting infected.

regards Martin

It seems like you didn't read the first line of my previous post or you don't believe me.

Yes, I know that's the story we've been fed, but you have no proof, just assertions as you certainly have no idea how many people have been infected. I'm saying it doesn't stand up to scrutiny and so should be taken with a pinch of salt – you know, like all the officials that have been found doing so all along.

Martin.

You mean the bit where you say you do understand the lockdown but then go on to show you don't.

You openly admit you don't believe anything you have been told (and I assume that means anyone on here as well) So you are either omniscient or you just make up your own reality.

regards Martin

[Enough!Participant @enough]

I was going to post this link in the current macro thread but I didn't want to regurgitate this conversation in that thread. So ….

**LINK**

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

Martin Kyte Said:

"The number of actual deaths stands at 40,000 whic would give you 4,000000 infections or around 6% of the population which is in line with the antibody surveys currently being carried out.

Thus the effectiveness of the lockdown is seenby dividing the actual deaths with lockdown by the estimated deaths without lockdown which woud be 40,000/666,000 = 0.0006 or 0.6%.

Put it another way because of the lockdown, so far we have had 0.6% of the deaths we could have had if we had carried on as normal which is a pretty good argument for doing as we did."

So if 40,000 deaths equals 0.6% of the official estimate then that estimate must have been 6,666,666 deaths because 100/0.6 = 166.666… Therefore 40,000 * 166.66 = 6,666,666 predicted deaths in the UK alone. At the moment there aren't even that many confirmed cases worldwide and with only 371,000 deaths worldwide.

Your argument implies 6,666,666 – 40,000 = 6,626,666 lives saved in the UK because of lock down restrictions, which would be phenominal if true, but this estimate is a guess and if it's the best guess of Prof Neil Ferguson then don't expect it to be anywhere near reality. His guesses are so inaccurate even he doesn't heed them, hence his departure from the scene.

I admit I don't know how 6,666.666 people were predicted to die in the UK if the population wasn't locked up for more than ten weeks. Maybe I don't understand the theory of lockdown.

Martin.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by blowlamp on 02/06/2020 10:26:55:

There is no proof this lock down has had any beneficial effect,

I agree to the extent that the UK's lockdown has clearly been less effective than those implemented by most otehr countries.

Many other countries locked down earlier and implemented tracking and tracing sooner.

As has been said elsewhere, it's not about blame it's about learning from others.

Neil

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

I don't think anyone predicted that because no-one was planning to allow the virus to run riot. All I did was a worst case sum of everyone being infected with a death rate of 1%. All it does is give you an upper limit to how many coud die. It will clearly be less than that provided there is some kind of immunity generated by having had the virus and no doubt if the infections really took hold people would isolate themselves of their own volition.

Fires rage untill they run out of fuel, lockdown deprives the outbreak of fuel (us) and damps the fire down. Rates of infection vary with population density which is why urban areas fare worse than rural. Simply less contacts, less likelyhood of catching anything.

I hope you are getting a better understanding, it does help to talk things out. I don't neccessarily take everything at face value but it's a good place to start and then ditch anything that doesn't fit with all the other bits of data you pick up.

As to the claim that there is no evidence that the lockdown has had a benifit just look at the graphs. We have gone from an exponential increase to an exponential decline.

regards Martin

Edited By Martin Kyte on 02/06/2020 18:11:58

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