Strange, every country seems to claim that. Of course it’s just one of those trite platitudes which are accepted as meaning something.

It’s a load of crap.

Which country or countries are using these?

The UK has apparently ordered 10 thousand of these things.

Meanwhile, for the people who find that Dyson branded equipment is out of their price range, there's this crazy contraption that some guy in Califonia without any experience in making medicinal products cobbled together:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52251286

This is the kind of can-do spirit that is lacking in the UK!

866 Deaths (in hospitals) in England reported on 10/04 of which about 125 were on 09/04, about 350 on 08/04, about 150 on 07/04 the rest from earlier dates.

An analysis from 12/04 is here
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-...te-12th-april/
It is fairly obvious that deaths have plateaued in England. Deaths are also reported to have plateaued for Scotland. It seems unlikely that deaths will exceed 800 on any day in England, UK population is 66 million of which 55 million are English. On a pro rata basis it is unlikely total daily deaths in hospital for the UK will exceed 900 for any day. Like every other country the counting of community deaths has more of a lag, 2 weeks for E&W. You can see here registered deaths up to week 27/03 from the beginning of the year.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...tfg/edit#gid=0
Also the expected mortality is given based on weekly average over the last 5 years, there is an excess over predicted of 1% in the last week for which figures are available. This is significant, but lower than one sees associated with winter flu. It is likely to get worse.

Well someone is building parts for the Dyson Covent, and has been doing so for about a week.
https://www.buxtonadvertiser.co.uk/b...lators-2532159

And are these being double-counted? For axample, were the 350 that actually occurred on 08/04 also counted on some other day? If not, this point you've made a number of time now is actually pretty pedantic.

Allowing epidemic run it's course should be plan Z, not plan B. We are not in middle ages, FFS.

Newsflash: argument like "everyone else sucks too" does not help your case.

My intention is to force you to wonder if government and politicians that you support are actually worth supporting. Personal experience can cure one from being mindless follower.

Yes, ****** ventilator made by people without medical expertise is better than no ventilator.

You know what would be even better? Ventilator made by actual medical company.

Some people make astonishing arguments. Someone would think Dyson personally bribed them, not just politicians that they like. :rolleyes:

I am being pedantic, the meaning of which is educational, (putting the e in jref as was). I do hope if I make the point a sufficient number of times we will stop seeing people posting there were x deaths in the last 24 hours. Clearly the message is getting through! So I'll stop.

The message didn't need to 'get through'. People were happily using the shorthand and repeatedly being reminded by you that it was just shorthand. But if you want to claim it as a 'win', that's grand.

I at least argue based on facts that I reference.

Bribery is a crime in the UK if you have any evidence that James Dyson has bribed any member of the government then I would encourage you to report it to the police. If this is just a fantasy fact then it just reflects on the quality and basis of your argument. If you had any real justification you would not resort to making slanderous comments against other people or indeed against me. A principle of arguments here is we do not resort to ad hominems.

Perhaps your case would be sounder if you could identify the current UK manufacturers of ventilators who are twiddling their thumbs. The alternative sources that could make up the global shortfall without getting new manufacturing capability on line.

Your argument against the ventilator seems to be that you disagree with the political views of the owner of the company. I have no idea what James Dyson's views on politics are. I do know he does a lot to promote engineering and science.
https://www.jamesdysonfoundation.co.uk

I don't really understand why you're trying to hammer this point home. Italy will have had reporting issues, too, as will all other countries. And it's entirely irrelevant to the point, which is that there is a massive gulf between how the situation in the UK is perceived and how the situation in Italy a couple of weeks prior was perceived, despite the two being directly comparable. That the figures aren't 100% accurate, that they don't literally give the figures from a single 24 hour period, and that different official sources list slightly different figures doesn't really change any of that.

Wasn't that pretty much what his gran said in her speech?

Thanks for the timeline.

So far, so good.

Which is exactly what Canada did. In the USA, the state of California, which has a population slightly larger than Canada's and a significantly higher population density, did very much the same thing with very similar outcomes. In fact, as of yesterday California was doing better than Canada on infections and deaths per million population. But I'm not sure how close together the two areas are on the growth curve.

That's what I'm finding to be the most curious part of all this. The politicians in the UK were listening to the scientists and taking their input seriously, unlike a certain North American country with an orange haired buffoon as its leader. And yet it appears the UK fumbled the ball. By all accounts Canada is faring far better than both countries. Although as of today our death counts are increasing at a faster pace: yesterday Canada's death count was up +10% from the day before, compared to the USA at 7.3% and the UK 6.8%. The bad news is 7.3% of 20,454 deaths and 6.8% of 10,612 deaths is still more deaths in one day than Canada has seen in total (717 as of yesterday.)

The UK went into lockdown on the day after there were 5,683 confirmed cases and 281 deaths.

In Canada, health care is the role of provinces, so it's the provinces that declare public health emergencies and set regulations for reducing the spread. Therefore the response across Canada differed slightly in each province. Quebec declared the first state of emergency on 12 March, followed by Prince Edward Island on the 16th, Alberta and Ontario on the 17th, six provinces on the 18th, and the remaining three on 19, 20 and 22 March. One can say that by 18 March most of Canada was under a state of emergency, because by that time all of the most populous provinces had declared one. Canada's numbers as of the end of 17 March were 598 cases and 8 deaths. So most of Canada was "in lockdown" (under a state of emergency) far sooner on the curve than the UK was.

With regard to "less than a week difference," when the number of infections in an open (that is, not locked down) population doubles every two days, six days means three full doublings. That's a fairly hefty head start to the epidemic when every day counts.

No need - the numbers speak for themselves.

Compare Sweden - 10m pop, 961 deaths, 465 new cases yesterday, with:

Australia - 25m pop, 61 deaths, 46 new cases yesterday, or,

NZ - 5m pop, 5 deaths, 19 new cases yesterday.

Which of those countries look like they're well on the way to eradicating Covid-19?

Because the UK was running, for a damaging amount of time, with the wrong ball; the ball of 'mitigation' and rapidly acquired 'herd immunity'.

A Tale of Two Countries
 

I have an interesting perspective. I developed covid-17 symptoms on Sunday March 15, after a trip to Paris, my wife developed symptoms a couple of days later.

My first symptoms was a persistent dry cough, this soon turned into a painful cough, a low level fever, and feeling weak and rundown. We used the UK NHS 111 online tool, which told us to stay home in isolation for 7-14 days. No test was done. My wife never developed anything more than fever and pain in the lung area, which eventually went away, but she was exhausted for 3 weeks.

I got every single symptom. I lost my sense of smell and taste, I lost weight, I had pain when coughing, I had diarrhoea, and one day I had difficulty breathing. At no point was I offered a test, and even when my breathing got bad I was not offered any medical attention, stay at home was the only advice.

Symptoms went away and came back, during the third week I had chest pain and I was taken to the hospital after a call to 999. They did not test me as it was week 3, and they were running out of tests, but everyone assumed I had covid-19 and I was taken to the "Red Zone" with other infected patients. My heart results and x-ray came out fine, and I was released the same day.

The problem is that I was allowed to go out even though I was still not well, and had I been irresponsible I might have infected more people. Now I am feeling 100% back to normal, but it was quite scary, and I wasn't even as sick as other people.

The lack of testing in the UK is criminal, no doubt it will make things worse in the long run.

Now for the comparison. As luck would have it, my brother developed symptoms in Costa Rica in March 17. Costa Rica has been doing a very good job so far, him and his family were immediately tested, and all came positive. They were all isolated and the people they had contact with were told to isolate as well. He eventually was taken to the ICU and put in oxygen, but not a ventilator. He was eventually released, but he has not been allowed out of isolation until he has two negative tests, and as of two days ago he still had virus in his system.

Costa Rica has only had 3 deaths, and over 500 confirmed cases. That is how you flatten the curve. The UK is set for more pain until we get our act together and get testing done properly, this current strategy of flying blind is madness.

I spent an unpleasantly large part of my childhood in an oxygen tent. I can think of better ways to go...

I guess we have the 'best' leadership we could hope for then.

Based on those numbers alone it is impossible to tell. No doubt Aus and NZ are currently doing well but trends can only be determined over time.

When?

Covid-19 and Politics
 

One of the issues is that we weren’t doing confirmation testing and contact tracing.

ETA hadn’t read andiun’s post before posting that, but I had a colleague who had pretty much the same experience.

When you say plateaued you mean the acceleration in the rate rate of deaths has plateaued?

Excellent post, thanks, and pleased to hear you all made it through!

Sure, it's early days and we're still not testing enough people to be sure, but it's unquestionably more evidence that shutting down society knocks the virus out of major circulation.

I'll be able to tell you for sure if it was successful one month from now, as our shutdown is due to end 29 April and it looks pretty likely that restrictions will be lifted and if it doesn't break out, after that, we will have won.

No guarantees that's how it will be, though.

I'm guessing that means you will not be publishing a scientific paper of your findings then.

Belgium

Population - 11,515,793
Covid-19 deaths - 3,903

Sweden

Population - 10,333,456
Covid-19 deaths - 919

If only the Belgians had followed Sweden's lead...

One day, I trust you'll realise what an idiotic post that is.

This is a discussion forum, not the BMJ.

I mean if you look at the graph in the last few days it is flat but high; like a plateau in geography. See link.

Your line of reasoning wouldn't even be acceptable in a high-school essay. I expect better standards here than that.

Your crap gets deeper with every post. You "expect"? Have you bought the forum?

It's quite notable you haven't bothered trying to refute the actual point I made and continue posting snide snot.

Please do continue, or alternatively, show where countries with rigorous lockdown and testing regimes are faring worse than countries without them.

Meanwhile;

Quote:

Coronavirus: Greater Manchester Police warning after 660 parties shut down Greater Manchester Police has warned people not to breach lockdown rules over Easter after it had to break up 660 parties during the pandemic. Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said "each and every one of us need take this seriously". There were 1,132 coronavirus-related breaches reported between 25 March and 7 April, the force said. That included 494 house parties - some with DJs, fireworks and bouncy castles - and 166 street parties. One woman in Bury became the first person in Greater Manchester to be charged under the Coronavirus Act 2020 after police had to repeatedly shut down one of the gatherings. The force, which has released updated figures, also had to deal with 122 different groups gathering to play sports, 173 more gatherings in parks and 112 incidents of anti-social behaviour and public disorder

.

If I can respond to this. What difference would a test have made. You were diagnosed with covid-19 on clinical grounds there and then. That is it you have it. If the test was done and came back positive a day or two later you still had it, but the diagnosis was delayed by a couple of days. If the test came back negative does that mean you don't have it? 30% of tests are false negative; given your history and symptoms the test would have been a false negative perhaps providing false reassurance that you can go out and about.

I don't know exactly what advice you were given, it should have been;
So if this was a new onset of symptoms you should have self isolated for seven days and your wife for 14! If it was felt to be a continuation of your initial illness then you were beyond the infectious period. It is unclear whether a persistent positive swab represents infectivity.

The difference in action between the UK and Costa Rica for the symptomatic person and household is none. The individual with covid-19 isolates as does the family. I am not sure who are regarded as contacts in costa rica, early on contact tracing was done in the UK, but once the number of cases rose it became impractical. The initial policy in the UK of identifying isolating and contact tracing all cases failed.

It is good that Costa Rica has sufficient resources to allow testing of contacts, and retesting of known cases at frequent intervals. Unfortunately the UK does not have sufficient testing ability. This includes not just a lack of laboratory space, but also a lack of swabs. (Only EU manufacturer is in North Italy.)
https://www.ft.com/content/86efe246-...d-da70cff6e4d3

The reality is that however much anyone in the UK wanted to do more tests it was not possible. Similar issues for instance are seen in France. South Korea could do better because it had stockpiled and because it has a larger in country manufacturing resource than the UK. The fault lies not with the current government who were only elected weeks before the pandemic, but their predecessors over years. The lack of UK manufacturing capacity is an issue, but relates to long term policy decisions, and there clearly needs to be a review of stockpiling critical kit. Engineering and manufacturing is not something the UK does well, a good example is the criticism that Dyson has had in trying to respond by developing new manufacturing capacity and a new design for a ventilator. Some people who post here think that trying to respond in this way is criminal. It may be a similar attitude that limited involvement of the industrial sector in testing, but even with increased laboratory space a shortage of swabs is still limiting.

Not sure they have, I think the order will only come once they are being made.

Most up to date summary appears to be this
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...rs-coronavirus
The Red Bull / Renault ventilator is deemed not suitable, the parapac ventilator has been ordered, but this is a transport ventilator and not one that would be used longterm on ITU. Others awaiting approval.

This is a "skeptic" forum, not a "faulty reasoning forum". It's even in the name. I'm surprised you didn't notice.

Edit: To be as informative and pedantic as possible, what are the things that can and do make "correlation means causation" lead to incorrect conclusions? Can you think of any?

Gosh, if only I'd thought of that before:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com...d.php?t=343171

Covid-19 and Politics
 

You missed out one major thing in the account given, no contact tracing. The reason SK has been so successful is down to 4 things, reacting quickly, testing, contact tracing and enforced quarantine.

The major irresponsibility in the UK was the lack of rigorous contact tracing and enforced quarantined. That was a matter of political will so the failing for that rest solely at the governments’ feet.

What we haven’t seen from any Dyson ventilators is that the design has been approved. We were initially told that the approval (based on the prototype) would be something like a week away.

You seem to be spreading disinformation deliberately:



The one woman returning from Wuhan was allegedly isolated successfully: "The case was fully isolated and there are no reports of further spread." And that appears to have been the last thing Sweden did right.

You should have chosen to compare Belgium with any other Scandinavian country - and you know it! There is no reason why any country should follow Sweden's example.

Boris Johnson is recovering at Chequers but he won't be returning to work because he needs Hancock or someone to get as much of the blame for the ******** as possible

Next he'll be calling you a communist. That's what he considers good standards!

From what I have read, someone who gets it as bad as Boris can require a good deal of time to fully recover.

Some interesting statistics being reported by the BBC:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52278825

If I understand that correctly, stripping out the Coronavirus fatalities, deaths in the UK were 25% higher than expected. I wonder if:

• It's just a statistical fluctuation - nothing to worry about
• It's an indication that there are a lot of Coronavirus deaths not being recorded as such
• It's an indication that there are people dying because they cannot or choose not to seek treatment - for example, I understand that some cancer patients are having their chemotherapy postponed
• Coronavirus is having knock-on healthcare effects - for example I've read reports that heart attack deaths are through the roof in New York for no easily understandable reason

Or maybe it's a combination of things.

IMO it does fly in the face of the idea that it's not worth worrying about Coronavirus because the people who have died were about to pop their clogs anyway.

And then thousands of infected people came back from their ski vacations in the Alps and readily spread the disease over days before a few ended up in the hospital.

Relatively shortly after that point a decision was made, that since Sweden lacked the ability to follow up a significant portion of people who were potentially infected, and that there was no way to change that without severly compromising the functioning of the healthcare system, that the least bad response was to try and keep the infection in check by a combination of voluntary and mandatory measures.

The fact that Belgium, a country with comparable population that has instituted far more sever mandatory measures than those that apply in Sweden, experienced far more deaths is quite clear evidence that reducing the difference in deaths between Sweden and the other Nordic countries to one single thing is completely faulty.

The only major difference is that Swedish politicians have not faced any significant pressure to jump on the band-wagon and adopt the most extreme measures simply out of a fear of looking like they are not doing enough. Meanwhile BJ and Macron are acting like they are fighting a war. Like what the ****!?

I’m not sure which thread I posted it in but I am pissed off that his girlfriend was not only allowed to breach the new essential travel only law but was helped to do so by the police and security services!

Wonder if it is probably people with “fragile” health either not seeking help or being triaged and not receiving it?

My mother is not dying from her health issues, she is stable, but her health is fragile, so a severe cold could quite easily move her from being stable to being at death’s door in a matter of hours. (One did do about 18 months ago). If people like her can’t receive prompt treatment they will die sooner than they would have done if the health system was working as usual.

So there is broad agreement among the political parties in Sweden about the chosen path? I haven't read Swedish media lately so I don't know. Here in Norway there is little disagreement. The economic rescue package was hammered through in our parliament with only one of the tiny parties not voting for it.

Sweden: 22 Scientists Say Coronavirus Strategy Has Failed As Deaths Top 1,000

Have you achieved herd immunity yet?

There is pretty much no political controversy about the current course of action. They know as much as anyone that the problem is systemic and that trying to score political points is more than likely going to bite them in the ass because everyone shares part of the blame for the current situation.

Region Stockholm has seen something like half of the deaths of the entire country. Healthcare, as well as care for elderly, are the responsibility for the regional and municipal governments there and they have been under the control of the right-wing parties for a long time.

From what I've read, the fact that so many more people have died in Sweden compared to Norway or Finland has been to a large degree caused by the disease finding its way into care homes for the elderly. Something like half of the care homes in Stockholm have cases of infected people. Of those who have died, at least 40% have died there.

I love how they think. The politicians who have caused this situation are to disregard the experts and professionals and somehow solve the problems on their own using... what exactly? Politics! That's what we really need!

The cows in the field next to us have :p