2019–20 Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) Thread

[SitTwizzle]

1 hour ago, Murieleirum said:

Tbh, covid-19 has ruined one thing in the small list of things that relaxed me and kept me passionate thorought the year, skating. No real international competitions, no Yuzuru Hanyu, no nothing. I am so bummed. This year has to be deleted, skating wise. 

This year, from the end of 4CC at least. Because this 4CC have broken the curse of 4CC Silver (well, in 2011 I guess he didn't view it as a curse), and have given back Yuzuru Hanyu an underscored World Record in the new score system, beating Nathan Chen's last hyper-overscored World Record. And for a while. And a glimpse at a new Seimei, and a beautiful and joyful gala... A preventive watering for the drought.

[SitTwizzle]

This article from The Economist is quite interesting because it shows that not only in France people are confused as to what they should do to prevent spreading CoViD, and have been relaxing the most essential measures this summerbetween April and September.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/06/pandemic-fatigue-may-be-setting-in-across-much-of-the-world

There is really a huge, huge problem in communication towards people, and, as in France I know it was voluntary from the beginning and am now suspecting again a strong will of spreading both the virus and dictature (after an ill-judged relief this summer), I wonder what it is elsewhere.

And how it can be tackled. Because, if the virus have become less dangerous than this spring thanks to mutations, it remains rather deadly and with frequent sequels (though I guess several other diseases, less surveyed, can let sequels too). And the consequences of useless dictatorial measures are growing too, quite as deadly.

[barbara]

16 minutes ago, SitTwizzle said:

This article from The Economist is quite interesting because it shows that not only in France people are confused as to what they should do to prevent spreading CoViD, and have been relaxing the most essential measures this summerbetween April and September.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/06/pandemic-fatigue-may-be-setting-in-across-much-of-the-world

There is really a huge, huge problem in communication towards people, and, as in France I know it was voluntary from the beginning and am now suspecting again a strong will of spreading both the virus and dictature (after an ill-judged relief this summer), I wonder what it is elsewhere.

And how it can be tackled. Because, if the virus have become less dangerous than this spring thanks to mutations, it remains rather deadly and with frequent sequels (though I guess several other diseases, less surveyed, can let sequels too). And the consequences of useless dictatorial measures are growing too, quite as deadly.

Is there any national testing strategy in France?  (Or any other EU countries?) We are all fatigued with the virus - the virus is not fatigued.  But controlling it is so stunningly simple, if only people would follow the guidelines.

[rockstaryuzu]

How...how on earth can a tubby 74-year-old be 'cured' of the virus in less than 4 days from start of treatment? There's no bloody way. What a lie. What a liar. 

 

I look at that guy and all I can think now is, "Pride goeth afore a fall."

 

And what a fall it will be...

[barbara]

1 hour ago, rockstaryuzu said:

How...how on earth can a tubby 74-year-old be 'cured' of the virus in less than 4 days from start of treatment? There's no bloody way. What a lie. What a liar. 

 

I look at that guy and all I can think now is, "Pride goeth afore a fall."

 

And what a fall it will be...

He is totally jacked up on steroids (and was a madman before he got Covid) and unhinged.  He won't let anyone know when he last tested negative so it's possible he was infected many days before the presumptive date.  He said he was tested daily and that's been walked back (not by him).  He may be patient zero for all the recent infections at the White House.  He's lied something like 22,000 times in less than four years.  He is insane.

[princeyuzu]

4 hours ago, SitTwizzle said:

This article from The Economist is quite interesting because it shows that not only in France people are confused as to what they should do to prevent spreading CoViD, and have been relaxing the most essential measures this summerbetween April and September.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/06/pandemic-fatigue-may-be-setting-in-across-much-of-the-world

There is really a huge, huge problem in communication towards people, and, as in France I know it was voluntary from the beginning and am now suspecting again a strong will of spreading both the virus and dictature (after an ill-judged relief this summer), I wonder what it is elsewhere.

And how it can be tackled. Because, if the virus have become less dangerous than this spring thanks to mutations, it remains rather deadly and with frequent sequels (though I guess several other diseases, less surveyed, can let sequels too). And the consequences of useless dictatorial measures are growing too, quite as deadly.

Here in Brazil at least (i don't know about the others south america countries) the situation is not good at all, we are trying to do tests but we don't have the amount of tests we need, people are trying to maintain social distance and to use masks but with a madman as our president we are lowkey losing hope. 

[barbara]

5 hours ago, princeyuzu said:

Here in Brazil at least (i don't know about the others south america countries) the situation is not good at all, we are trying to do tests but we don't have the amount of tests we need, people are trying to maintain social distance and to use masks but with a madman as our president we are lowkey losing hope. 

Brazil is like the US, and a bit like the UK, in that the leaders of our countries are a big reason the virus is not under control.  Still, we do what we can.

[rockstaryuzu]

6 hours ago, princeyuzu said:

Here in Brazil at least (i don't know about the others south america countries) the situation is not good at all, we are trying to do tests but we don't have the amount of tests we need, people are trying to maintain social distance and to use masks but with a madman as our president we are lowkey losing hope. 

Brazil has been really unfortunate this time. My sympathies, and just do what you can. This will one day pass. Hopefully soon 

[Lunna]

15 часов назад, SitTwizzle сказал:

There is really a huge, huge problem in communication towards people, and, as in France I know it was voluntary from the beginning and am now suspecting again a strong will of spreading both the virus and dictature (after an ill-judged relief this summer), I wonder what it is elsewhere.

The problem is some measures are borderline stupid. Like now a head of Moscow states that 30% of personnel must work remotely (I think those who can work remotely as it is, at least part time) and now every Monday employer should send some paper to Moscow portal about such workers (the form is ridicules too). There's also 2-weeks holiday in schools So some don't trust politics, some don't follow rules (and it's not like for now here's a lot of checks from what I saw and it's not like most people will follow rules without checks here). I don't think there's any testing policy here, mostly testing is done in big and government companies, medical stuff, maybe military stuff etc., though you can get tested in public clinic if you wish or should if you're returning from other country (but I can only say for Moscow, dunno how things are going in other regions - situation may be very different).

I'd say there's not any clear policy, also no real public info what's going on in hospitals, if now virus is more aggressive or not, just statistic numbers of tests.

[SitTwizzle]

18 hours ago, barbara said:

Is there any national testing strategy in France?  (Or any other EU countries?) We are all fatigued with the virus - the virus is not fatigued.  But controlling it is so stunningly simple, if only people would follow the guidelines.

It has been refused until end of April (I knew it was to spread the virus further but I have learnt since my message that to get more deaths they had furthermore given criminal orders to hospitals for CoViD-patients, still in place by the way, but now they don't kill anymore because doctors managed to overturn them but it fills uselessly ICU units), that is, until the end of the epidemic in France. Only when the epidemic was finished (but the disease is still endemic) they started massive testing, and now there are 100.000 tests per day, which is nearly sufficient (while the 300.000 tests per week proposed in February to the government, would have largely sufficed had they been accepted immediately, because they would have spared France an epidemic). But they wouldn't test people arriving in the country until very recently! That was clearly too, to the purpose of getting the so-awaited "second wave".

While in Germany where I live, tests have been available from the beginning of the epidemic, with a medical prescription usually easy to get, as I don't really speak German I am not sure but I am under the impression there have been less fearmonging and more sensible practical advice than elsewhere (panic is very bad, prudence is good), and no useless measure leading to economical death, such as general confinement. This makes that there have been much less deaths, and actually, on a statistical point of view, there have been no excess of mortality at all in the two German Länder participating in the EuroMoMo (euromomo.eu) network, Berlin and Hesse.

In Spain, at the beginning the government wilfully ignored the threat, and they did so even longer than the French government (on March 7th, while hospitals were already getting overwhelmed, French president publicly showed-off in an unmasked theatre representation (without distancing either, of course) and encouraged French people to do the same because they saw they were starting to do social distancing). Then they switched to terror, and a deadly general confinement (but there have been a survey, showing that people exempted from confinement were less likely do catch the disease than confined people). I don't know exactly the policy today, but they do test massively since a few months.

For other countries, I don't really know.

 

13 hours ago, princeyuzu said:

Here in Brazil at least (i don't know about the others south america countries) the situation is not good at all, we are trying to do tests but we don't have the amount of tests we need, people are trying to maintain social distance and to use masks but with a madman as our president we are lowkey losing hope. 

I don't want to interfere with a country which is not mine (though it is somehow in my heart), but though I haven't followed the most recent developments, I did follow Brazilian media when situation was most worrying, and from what I understood, it was the Tribunal supremo federal which, in opposition to federal government and other institutions, abusing of their powers in what I would call a putsch, held the Sistema Único de Saúde (the national health program, like NHS in UK) under threat if they dare cure positive people, so practically it meant that either you were well-off and could afford testing and care in the private sector (and medicine is great in Brazil, except maybe for natural births), or you could not be cared for (testing itself was in fact on the responsibility of the states, though federal government chose to provide for part of the testing costs, of course an audit would be useful to know what could each institution afford and what they actually did, at the moment everybody say they did their best of course). It is not because a head of state is antipathetic and one don't like him, that one must accuse him of others' wrongdoings. I will go as far on the political thing as to say I am not an admirer of Angela Merkel's, but when I see how she managed the crisis, well it could have been better of course, but at least compared to other countries, she did well. I have to admit it.

 

As a whole, we are completely overwhelmed by nonsensical assertions, and while my character is to search for (hard) facts, research, try to see methodology too, and in politics and others try to see who did exactly what, I know it is "abnormal" and most people react "as desired" (that is, either with a kind of craze to compliance or with an indistinct rebellion). How can we get out of that?

 

EDIT : Welcome @princeyuzu !

[princeyuzu]

6 hours ago, SitTwizzle said:

It has been refused until end of April (I knew it was to spread the virus further but I have learnt since my message that to get more deaths they had furthermore given criminal orders to hospitals for CoViD-patients, still in place by the way, but now they don't kill anymore because doctors managed to overturn them but it fills uselessly ICU units), that is, until the end of the epidemic in France. Only when the epidemic was finished (but the disease is still endemic) they started massive testing, and now there are 100.000 tests per day, which is nearly sufficient (while the 300.000 tests per week proposed in February to the government, would have largely sufficed had they been accepted immediately, because they would have spared France an epidemic). But they wouldn't test people arriving in the country until very recently! That was clearly too, to the purpose of getting the so-awaited "second wave".

While in Germany where I live, tests have been available from the beginning of the epidemic, with a medical prescription usually easy to get, as I don't really speak German I am not sure but I am under the impression there have been less fearmonging and more sensible practical advice than elsewhere (panic is very bad, prudence is good), and no useless measure leading to economical death, such as general confinement. This makes that there have been much less deaths, and actually, on a statistical point of view, there have been no excess of mortality at all in the two German Länder participating in the EuroMoMo (euromomo.eu) network, Berlin and Hesse.

In Spain, at the beginning the government wilfully ignored the threat, and they did so even longer than the French government (on March 7th, while hospitals were already getting overwhelmed, French president publicly showed-off in an unmasked theatre representation (without distancing either, of course) and encouraged French people to do the same because they saw they were starting to do social distancing). Then they switched to terror, and a deadly general confinement (but there have been a survey, showing that people exempted from confinement were less likely do catch the disease than confined people). I don't know exactly the policy today, but they do test massively since a few months.

For other countries, I don't really know.

 

I don't want to interfere with a country which is not mine (though it is somehow in my heart), but though I haven't followed the most recent developments, I did follow Brazilian media when situation was most worrying, and from what I understood, it was the Tribunal supremo federal which, in opposition to federal government and other institutions, abusing of their powers in what I would call a putsch, held the Sistema Único de Saúde (the national health program, like NHS in UK) under threat if they dare cure positive people, so practically it meant that either you were well-off and could afford testing and care in the private sector (and medicine is great in Brazil, except maybe for natural births), or you could not be cared for (testing itself was in fact on the responsibility of the states, though federal government chose to provide for part of the testing costs, of course an audit would be useful to know what could each institution afford and what they actually did, at the moment everybody say they did their best of course). It is not because a head of state is antipathetic and one don't like him, that one must accuse him of others' wrongdoings. I will go as far on the political thing as to say I am not an admirer of Angela Merkel's, but when I see how she managed the crisis, well it could have been better of course, but at least compared to other countries, she did well. I have to admit it.

 

As a whole, we are completely overwhelmed by nonsensical assertions, and while my character is to search for (hard) facts, research, try to see methodology too, and in politics and others try to see who did exactly what, I know it is "abnormal" and most people react "as desired" (that is, either with a kind of craze to compliance or with an indistinct rebellion). How can we get out of that?

 

EDIT : Welcome @princeyuzu !

What happened here was actually a disagreement between the president and the health minister, both of them where defending completely different sides, the president was saying that we shouldn't have had lockdown and everything should've stayed open for the sake of the economic situation and the minister was trying to follow what the World Health Organization was saying, also the president was viewed many times not wearing masks or attending to campaigns rallies what was the completely opposite of what his own minister was saying, this whole situation confused many people and was the reason of why a lot of people started not using masks or disrespect the social distancing. That was why I was saying we are lowkey losing hope, not of the pandemic situation get better in global level but the politics situation get better. I don't think we should blame a head of state for people bad decisions but when that head of state influence many people to start having this bad habits I don't think he should remain unbothered, the way he is now.

 

Also this is a place for discussion so it's ok to comment about my country i don't mind 

 

And thank you for the receptionヾ(•ω•`)o   

[SitTwizzle]

1 hour ago, princeyuzu said:

What happened here was actually a disagreement between the president and the health minister, both of them where defending completely different sides, the president was saying that we shouldn't have had lockdown and everything should've stayed open for the sake of the economic situation and the minister was trying to follow what the World Health Organization was saying, also the president was viewed many times not wearing masks or attending to campaigns rallies what was the completely opposite of what his own minister was saying, this whole situation confused many people and was the reason of why a lot of people started not using masks or disrespect the social distancing. That was why I was saying we are lowkey losing hope, not of the pandemic situation get better in global level but the politics situation get better. I don't think we should blame a head of state for people bad decisions but when that head of state influence many people to start having this bad habits I don't think he should remain unbothered, the way he is now.

 

Also this is a place for discussion so it's ok to comment about my country i don't mind 

 

And thank you for the receptionヾ(•ω•`)o   

Oh, thank you. Confusing messages are really to avoid, and there are everywhere I see. Yet I say confusing, I wouldn't say confused for most of them. And WHO have not been always bright... They look a bit like ISU! 

As to complete lockdown, it proves rather pro-CoViD than anti-CoViD and when the epidemic hit Brazil, this info was already available from the Spanish survey (plus common sense) but if he really wanted everything to go along as usual, that was quite as irresponsible... But at least on the prophyllaxy of the positive, he (or they) had it right, and the TSF have blood on their hands. Less than French government though (who, by the way, is now promoting new tests which have only a 60% sensitivity, that is, 40% of the positive are announced as negative!)

If you knew how I love your country... and its inhabitants.

Oh, and there is a Portuguese language thread in the International section, but as a whole the international section is not very active.

[princeyuzu]

51 minutes ago, SitTwizzle said:

Oh, thank you. Confusing messages are really to avoid, and there are everywhere I see. Yet I say confusing, I wouldn't say confused for most of them. And WHO have not been always bright... They look a bit like ISU! 

As to complete lockdown, it proves rather pro-CoViD than anti-CoViD and when the epidemic hit Brazil, this info was already available from the Spanish survey (plus common sense) but if he really wanted everything to go along as usual, that was quite as irresponsible... But at least on the prophyllaxy of the positive, he (or they) had it right, and the TSF have blood on their hands. Less than French government though (who, by the way, is now promoting new tests which have only a 60% sensitivity, that is, 40% of the positive are announced as negative!)

If you knew how I love your country... and its inhabitants.

Oh, and there is a Portuguese language thread in the International section, but as a whole the international section is not very active.

Yes confusing messages are everywhere and the fact that not many articles talking about the situation have been translated to english it is normal to not know what to trust.

 

About the French situation all the things I know so far are due to the fact that I can speak english, since the media in Brazil are not covering the europe situation at all, but the thing you say about the tests in French is really worrisome if 40% of the positives are announced as negative maybe the government start losing up the restrictions since the real number of infected people is gonna be camouflaged.

 

Aww I didn't actually think i was going to talk that much when i first created this account, but people seem so nice that i'm gonna try to be more active  

 

And also I didn't know about the the portuguese language thread, I'm gonna give a look thanks for the information     

[SitTwizzle]

Hidden because I am on politics as well as CoViD.

Spoiler

 

As to the new tests in France, the general attitude of the government at present (they have had different narratives along the epidemic) is to maximise the number of positive announced, to the point of promoting PCR tests with more than 35 cycles, while it is known that a sample which becomes positive only after 36 cycles or more cannot have any virus in it, so all are false positive.

So, the promotion of those antigen tests looks weird. I think, either they want to use both, the PCR with too high cycle threshold to maximise numbers to announce, and the antigen so that the virus continues being spread (by the false negative); or, there have just been a bribe somewhere, or a "good lobbying". For instance, our last prime minister has been named an administrator in a company making radars, after having lowered the limit speed on normal roads and instituted speed controls by private companies... So simple...

What is the weight of a human life?

 

Spoiler

 

 

[SitTwizzle]

At last I have found it! French official data such as the number of tests everyday (rarely reported on worldometers.info), the number of positive, some numbers by département (sort of big county)...

https://www.cascoronavirus.fr/test-depistage/france

I think they are understandable for English speakers but if any translation is needed, I would be pleased to do it.

There are some strange elements (for instance, a research-oriented centre which has never changed its policy since the beginning of the epidemic, has no recent rise in contamination, but they are in a town where it is still summer so maybe there will be a rise when there is less sun). Of course, the government has started recently a "recentering" upon people most likely to be infected, hence a rise in rates. But there may also be a tendency to rise the cycle threshold. Anyway I do think there is a  rise in contaminations, but probably not as much as one could think at first sight, and it seems the virus is less dangerous now, after the mutations of last months.