New coronavirus in/from China

[kenneal - lagger]

A BBC article on how covid-19 has affected carbon emissions.

[Potemkin Villager]

Thanks for that one Ken very interesting.

"I guess something to think about is that we shut down the entire city and got a reduction of 10% in the CO2 emissions," said Prof Róisín Commane from Columbia University in New York.

"We are still emitting more than 80% of our previous CO2 emissions. That is a massive number. So personal behaviour really isn't going to fix the carbon emission problem. We need a systematic change in how energy is generated and transmitted."

[vtsnowedin]

Or when they let you out you could use your brain and maintain social distancing and mask wearing and not expose yourself or any frail acquaintances or loved ones to unnecessary risks.
While out to buy seed potatoes today I was listening to the BBC world news. One professor was comparing UK extra deaths to official government Covid-19 deaths and finding his real number to be on the order of 42,000 vs, the official 29,500. I think "extra deaths" is the final and best way to measure the effects of Covid-19 and even though he used the term preliminary several times he never mentioned that we are only looking at a three month period of data and not the whole year and deaths that would have happened later this year may well have got moved up into this data set. It may well take a couple of years to properly access the true impact of Covid-19 and we will never be able to separate the disease deaths from ones caused (or prevented by) the lockdowns.

[Vortex2]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cB_DEbXrhE

bursting hysteria bubbles

I would love to believe his proposition ... but ...

* He has a NZ world view.

* He comes across as yet another smug academic. A NZ version of our British friend. If he is correct he will make a big show of his superiority, but if he fails then he will slink away with some sort of 'explanation' whilst maintaining tenure.

* The excess death curves are real. People are dying. Perhaps he should visit a British or Italian ICU?

* The damage with just 5% exposure in the UK has been significant - another 95% to come! Oh joy!

* I don't fancy spending time in hospital which is likely at my age/health status. I could well survive ... but in what state? This is NOT a flu.

* Even if he is 100% correct, the economic damage has already been done.

TBH I'm sick of the pundits and politicians. I have a business/future to rebuild ... whilst staying alive.

[Initiation]

A review of the code behind the Imperial model that probably pushed us into lockdown at the end of March. It's not exactly an endorsement...

https://lockdownsceptics.org/code-revie ... ons-model/

[kenneal - lagger]

I'm glad that I'm not a government Minister. There's a vociferous minority saying that they are incompetent and should go because they locked us down two weeks too late and another vociferous minority saying that they should go because they shouldn't have locked us down at all.

Then there is the great majority in the middle who are keeping schtum and just getting on with being locked down. The two minorities have one thing in common though; they just hate the government.

[kenneal - lagger]

Thanks for that one Ken very interesting.

"I guess something to think about is that we shut down the entire city and got a reduction of 10% in the CO2 emissions," said Prof Róisín Commane from Columbia University in New York.

"We are still emitting more than 80% of our previous CO2 emissions. That is a massive number. So personal behaviour really isn't going to fix the carbon emission problem. We need a systematic change in how energy is generated and transmitted."

Meanwhile Paris has had, from memory, a 70% reduction. Is New York still driving or is their heating bill just a lot bigger and more carboniferous? Paris does have the advantage of mostly nuclear powered heating so their carbon use was a few decades ago when the power stations were built and a few decades in the future when some poor sod has to decommission them.

[Vortex2]

A review of the code behind the Imperial model that probably pushed us into lockdown at the end of March. It's not exactly an endorsement...

https://lockdownsceptics.org/code-revie ... ons-model/

I've taken a good look at that site.

As might be expected from the name they tend to slant all analysis towards their pet grievance.

Somewhat tiresome.

[clv101]

I'm glad that I'm not a government Minister. There's a vociferous minority saying that they are incompetent and should go because they locked us down two weeks too late and another vociferous minority saying that they should go because they shouldn't have locked us down at all.

Balance? Like the BBC's historic coverage of climate science? You know better than to present those two view as having equal merit.

[Vortex2]

HMG data as at 6 May

As of 9am 6 May, there have been 1,448,010 tests. There were 69,463 tests on 5 May.

1,072,144 people have been tested and 201,101 tested positive.

As of 5pm on 5 May, of those who tested positive for coronavirus in the UK, 30,076 have died. This new figure includes deaths in all settings, not just in hospitals. The equivalent figure under the old measure would have been 25,148.

7-day average daily deaths still going down.
7-day average daily cases suspiciously level.

[Little John]

I'm glad that I'm not a government Minister. There's a vociferous minority saying that they are incompetent and should go because they locked us down two weeks too late and another vociferous minority saying that they should go because they shouldn't have locked us down at all.

Then there is the great majority in the middle who are keeping schtum and just getting on with being locked down. The two minorities have one thing in common though; they just hate the government.

A mischaracterisation, as usual Ken

There is a significant minority who think the government locked down too late and should have locked down more intelligently.

Hey, but don't let subtlety of argument stand in the way of false dichotomies and Aunt Sallys Ken.

[clv101]

A review of the code behind the Imperial model that probably pushed us into lockdown at the end of March. It's not exactly an endorsement...

https://lockdownsceptics.org/code-revie ... ons-model/

Ha! That's great. In previous lives I've been a software developer in both industrial and academic environments, what he describes of the Imperial code is of no surprise AT ALL. In my experience most software developed by academics is just as described. Software engineering is not taken seriously in academia outside the actual computer science departments. This generally isn't a huge problem as the software is just an environment for playing around, trying to understand a system better, just a low stakes tool. But, it's a big problem if you start using such code to directly advise government policy at the highest level. Oops.

That said, it is starting to look like government is searching for a fall guy, Ferguson could be it. All along their narrative has be 'science led' etc. But, Chief Scientific Advisor said yesterday, that not once have they told what to do - their advice as always been along the lines of - if we do this, that is likely to happen but if we do this than that I'd more likely. They provide scenarios, likelihoods etc, ALL decision making is left with government.

[Little John]

What I took from fuzzy's contribution was that lower density areas have less covid-19 and deaths than high density areas such as London and New York. What you are doing with a lockdown is artificially producing low density areas. Also the Professor is putting a lot of weight on serology tests which are known to be highly unreliable, ergo his stats are highly unreliable as are his conclusions.

What we know from Spanish flu is that there was a second wave which produced even greater mortality and affected a greater proportion of the population than the first wave and this despite the fact that there was widespread contact among the population with people who had the disease in the first wave. That would suggest that there was not much immunity established in the first wave. So, to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed and even more staff dying perhaps we should head government advise and stay locked down until they let us out and when they lock us up again, and they are almost certain to, we should head their advise again.

Wrong

Read the history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

Deadly second wave

American Expeditionary Force victims of the Spanish flu at U.S. Army Camp Hospital no. 45 in Aix-les-Bains, France, in 1918
The second wave of the 1918 pandemic was much more deadly than the first. The first wave had resembled typical flu epidemics; those most at risk were the sick and elderly, while younger, healthier people recovered easily. By August, when the second wave began in France, Sierra Leone, and the United States,[101] the virus had mutated to a much more deadly form. October 1918 was the month with the highest fatality rate of the whole pandemic.[102]

This increased severity has been attributed to the circumstances of the First World War.[103] In civilian life, natural selection favors a mild strain. Those who get very ill stay home, and those mildly ill continue with their lives, preferentially spreading the mild strain. In the trenches, natural selection was reversed. Soldiers with a mild strain stayed where they were, while the severely ill were sent on crowded trains to crowded field hospitals, spreading the deadlier virus. The second wave began, and the flu quickly spread around the world again. Consequently, during modern pandemics, health officials pay attention when the virus reaches places with social upheaval (looking for deadlier strains of the virus).[104]

The fact that most of those who recovered from first-wave infections had become immune showed that it must have been the same strain of flu. This was most dramatically illustrated in Copenhagen, which escaped with a combined mortality rate of just 0.29% (0.02% in the first wave and 0.27% in the second wave) because of exposure to the less-lethal first wave.[105] For the rest of the population, the second wave was far more deadly; the most vulnerable people were those like the soldiers in the trenches – adults who were young and fit.[106]

[Vortex2]

A review of the code behind the Imperial model that probably pushed us into lockdown at the end of March. It's not exactly an endorsement...

https://lockdownsceptics.org/code-revie ... ons-model/

Ha! That's great. In previous lives I've been a software developer in both industrial and academic environments, what he describes of the Imperial code is of no surprise AT ALL. In my experience most software developed by academics is just as described. Software engineering is not taken seriously in academia outside the actual computer science departments. This generally isn't a huge problem as the software is just an environment for playing around, trying to understand a system better, just a low stakes tool. But, it's a big problem if you start using such code to directly advise government policy at the highest level. Oops.

That said, it is starting to look like government is searching for a fall guy, Ferguson could be it. All along their narrative has be 'science led' etc. But, Chief Scientific Advisor said yesterday, that not once have they told what to do - their advice as always been along the lines of - if we do this, that is likely to happen but if we do this than that I'd more likely. They provide scenarios, likelihoods etc, ALL decision making is left with government.

Quasi academics also screw up.

I was hired to rework the UK software modelling the Chernobyl plumes ... I had to give up ... 1000s of lines of bad FORTRAN in huge files.

[clv101]

I was hired to rework the UK software modelling the Chernobyl plumes ... I had to give up ... 1000s of lines of bad FORTRAN in huge files.

Was that the NAME model by any chance?