Since we can’t like posts here, you get iunderstoodthatreference.gif

Country may be restarting but i'll give it another month+ before i step into another crowded setting or restaurant.

Those 4,000 deaths tacked on really muddy things up. I suppose if you don't get much of a Tuesday spike it's looking good. If you do get a spike it might be difficult to know what's going on until you have the data for the next three days.

Correct. Last week's Tuesday - Friday had right around 2500 deaths/day (that's how many was on 4/16 if we subtract the 4k extra retroactive deaths added). So we need to compare tomorrow through Firday with that. It will actually.be a good sign if the numbers are again only around 2500/day, since we can say then that these two weeks combined were when we peaked, and hopefully we'll start to see an overall reduction the following week. But if the numbers start to be like 3k/day then we're still on the way up.

No, not really. I was just wondering what you were arguing about. If you want to make the point the oil price is low then I agree with you.

Basically you're doing what I call a "Johnson", the idea is you find a number that suits your position anyway (in this case the low oil price), and you exaggerate it (in this case by picking the price for a futures contract that most people have already rolled out of), and rather than just moving on (as they would if you gave the best number), people on the other side suddenly start arguing about which of the numbers is correct, but it doesn't really matter because all the numbers people are discussing prove your point.

I call it the Johnson because he has pulled it off a couple of times in recent years (in 2016 getting remainers to spend time arguing about the correct 9 figure sum the UK sends to the EU and in 2019 getting the Labour party to spend time discussing the correct five-figure number of nurses the Tories elsewhere claimed to be planning to hire).

What position does your febrile imagination think I am Johnsoning about?

I said I think its a bad sign in a very light throw away post, im not making some kind of huge ideological point.

Misleading to conflate a futures contract with the spot price. Seems like Booker was saying he was seeing people doing that to make it seem more dire, as far as I can tell no one was really disagreeing with that. Crisis averted.

What does this have to do with anything?

Interested in hearing people analyse this guy's take. He seems to have some good credentials and the interviewer seems fairly unbiased. His prediction of a 0.1% mortality rate though, doesn't seem to fit the data from countries that have done extensive testing. I.e. SK mortality rate slowly climbing and looking like settling at above 1%.

Apologies if this has been posted before and apologies if it's a bit Euro-centric for some of you yanks!



Professor Johan Giesecke, one of the world’s most senior epidemiologists, advisor to the Swedish Government (he hired Anders Tegnell who is currently directing Swedish strategy), the first Chief Scientist of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, and an advisor to the director general of the WHO, lays out with typically Swedish bluntness why he thinks:

- UK policy on lockdown and other European countries are not evidence-based
- The correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only
- This will eventually lead to herd immunity as a “by-product”
- The initial UK response, before the “180 degree U-turn”, was better
- The Imperial College paper was “not very good” and he has never seen an unpublished paper have so much policy impact
- The paper was very much too pessimistic
- Any such models are a dubious basis for public policy anyway
- The flattening of the curve is due to the most vulnerable dying first as much as the lockdown
- The results will eventually be similar for all countries
- Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people.
- The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%
- At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available

Well, the main benefit is that you expect most virus will be trapped by the mask. There is actually some evidence that the very small airborne particles are propelled further as air rushes out of the small gaps with greater velocity. But the large droplets are mostly contained.

That’s awesome!

These three are all interrelated and are where the dispute lies. In order for the death rate to be near 0.1% there would have to be huge numbers of asymptomatic cases and somewhere near half the population already infected. The problem is that all of these views are outside the consensus of almost all the experts. The best case scenario most scientists believe is probably more like 35% of the population infected and an IFR of around 0.25%

This is why accurate sampling for antibody tests is such a hot focus right now. It will narrow the range of possible outcomes and I think will prove him wrong. But it would be awesome if he’s right.

I do agree that:
1) We’re making up public policy as we go along and don’t have a ton of evidence one way or the other
2) The imperial college paper was too pessimistic, much as I think the U Washington was too optimistic

The consequences of a policy like Sweden’s being wrong are much worse than the consequences of other countries’ policies being wrong.

What is the logic then for why it's more important for sick people to wear masks than healthy people? (Or was there never much logic to that in the first place?)

Because most transmission is from droplets (the things that only travel very short distances) and masks block almost all of those. Masks are undeniably effective at blocking most transmission from sick people.

Masks are likely effective at blocking incoming virus transmission for healthy people although the evidence for that is not conclusive.

Agreed if we are looking at it from a purely epidemiological perspective. Especially if the mortality rate ends up being on the higher side of the estimates.

But economically and socially you could argue the other way. I won't provoke a utilitarian discussion about the monetary value of life because it's been talked about ITT already. I would hate being in any high ranking policy informing position right now - they are damned if they do and damned if they don't!

Also agreed that his 50% already infection estimates seem absurdly high...

That the oil price is low.

I don't disagree, it's just rare to see a Johnson pulled off with such finesse on these boards in a throwaway post. We're still talking about it

I know.

That it's a very thin market and not representative of much, particularly not of the oil market in general. It's just a few people left playing chicken with each other. The actual market has moved on as have the people using the market to hedge real world business.

Otherwise we could equally say that "oil" (also the May future) has rocketed more than 30 dollars today.

So far, the NYC data are fitting better to a symmetrical curve, which would be extremely good news if it holds. The long tail does no one any good.

The problem with being wrong is that you potentially get both an epidemiological disaster and an economic one. If they are right, they clearly face fewer economic consequences. Sweden also has the advantage of a very strong health care system, so they are less threatened by an Italian-style hospital collapse.

I do agree with your broader point that these are horrible choices to face as a decision-maker responsible for the fates of millions.

Also, in response to a PM, I’d modify my comments on transmission on surfaces to add that even if that method of transmission is uncommon, it is still very likely to happen sometimes. The only downside to washing your hands obsessively is that they get irritated, the downside to not washing after touching a contaminated surface is obviously far more tragic. I’m in no way advocating that people shouldn’t be washing their hands often.

Slovakia's coalition has agreed the reopening plan to work according to a mechanical formula. There are 4 phases (so the current state would be like phase zero).

We move to phase 1 tomorrow with a review every two weeks.

The basic plan is that if, in the week up to the review, there are fewer than 100 new cases per day then we move to the next stage. If there are more than 150 we move back to the previous stage. if there are 100-150 cases then we stay at the same phase. Moving to stage 4 might need more than two weeks of good results though.

(for this purpose new cases detected in returnees from abroad in quarantine, nursing homes and closed-off gypsy ghettos don't count - although they are counted in the stats for Slovakia generally).

TLDR list of what is in each phase:
1. (22 April)
Shops and services up to 300 m2, (food shops were already open)
bars and restaurants serving through a hatch,
outdoor sportsgrounds if non-contact, no showers or toilets,
long term accommodation e.g. workers' hostels (no food)
outdoor markets subject to conditions
vehicle sales

2. (6 May at the earliest)
short term accommodation with conditions
hairdressers, manicures, pedicures
outdoor tourist attractions
taxis (with conditions)
clubs for the under 10s (with conditions)
religious services and weddings (with conditions)

3. (20 May at the earliest)
Shops and services up to 1000 m2
Outdoor bar/restaurant terraces/pavement cafes
Massage, sports, rehabilitation (dry procedures only - whatever that means).
Museums, galleries, libraries and exhibitions (conditions)

4. (Not before 3 June but probably later)
Everything else, including schools, cinemas, theatres, shopping malls.

This seems like a swell idea, maybe everyone will take the subway to get there.

And what if you can get COVID again and again? Then herd immunity is impossible.

Then it's the end of the world. Nor really but a total 5 week lock down will be needed.

Not to be a wet blanket, because this is supposed to be funny, but this kind of meme is terribly unfunny. You take a group, in this case preppers, who of course you don’t like and will mock at every turn. You do this because in America we should all be alike and subject to ridicule if you have off the wall ideas. But then you take another group, lockdown protesters, who in my estimation includes people who have lost their jobs and want to get back to work so they can support themselves and their families, but also those who might be a little goofy, and simply equate them all. The common thread is not that preppers are also the protestors, the common thread is that you don’t like either group so you lump them together to come up with a nonsensical and unfunny meme. For the record, I could care less about either group, I just observed how dumb and non sensical the meme is and that this is just another example of how the internet causes IQ loss.

Anyhow, that ^4% is the lowest so far. Things are starting to look better.

And I'm ready for all the takes in a week or two when everything is open (before it hits us again) that there was no reason for us to be shut down like that, it was just the flu.

anyone else think that we should lock down indefinitely until a vaccine is made, no matter how long it takes?