CORONAVIRUS 2020: RHYTHM OF THE DEATH III

[NoSleep]

I'm pretty sure most news outlets use web publishing platforms that auto-generate the URL based on the story headline.

This is definitely not true of the Guardian, as they would carefully edit URLs to spell doom for Corbyn, even when the story and the webpage headline were the opposite.

[sambwel]

This is definitely not true of the Guardian, as they would carefully edit URLs to spell doom for Corbyn, even when the story and the webpage headline were the opposite.

Having looked at a few opinion pieces as examples, you're right, they don't seem to be fully automated. I see a mix of URLs that are basically an abbreviated version of the headline with perhaps the author name added, and some that seem to be composed of keywords mostly (but not exclusively) taken from the headline and subheading. I'd guess whoever publishes a given article gets to edit a list of suggested keywords and phrases down to a fit a set length and the URL is then automatically created from that, stripping out any less-sexy parts of speech and punctuation that remains. Add to the mix a wildly varying level of technical competence from authors and sub-eds (if any still exist) and perhaps it's not so difficult to imagine that a misleading 13 in a URL is not actually a nefarious plot.

I can't believe I am going to this much effort to defend the bloody guardian I should probably stop procrastinating and write this essay now

[Zetetic]

It's practically meaningless if you don't already know the rough total number of tests/people tested anyway.

I'm presented with my country's several times every day during the week[nb]Since I made a bit of code print it every time we update a particular thing, so it's slightly more likely we'll notice a massive fuck-up earlier rather than later.[/nb], and trying to guess England's (the UK's? I don't even know) I was out by quite a lot.

[fat_abbott]

I don't know if this has been posted before, apologies if it has, I haven't been following this thread. Some quite interesting info at this link regarding the latest reported rates and other bits and pieces.

https://digital.nhs.uk/dashboards/progression-full-width

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Ta, will take a closer look later.

Is there anything you have picked out so far?

[fat_abbott]

Was just interested in the surrounding area really. And how the North East still has a relatively low infection/population than the places that went back into lockdown.

Middlesbrough 18 / 100k
Oldham 89 / 100k

Don't know what it means, maybe it means nothing.

What it does seem to show, from a recent outbreak in Middlesbrough is that it doesn't take much to send you rocketing up the charts.

[BlodwynPig]

Hancock: No evidence that virus is passed on in offices - GET BACK TO OFFICES

No evidence because no-one was in offices (well they were and they have died). CUNT GASLIGHTING CUNT

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

If you can catch colds from other people in the office I'm pretty sure you can catch Covid. This is the fucking health secretary! Absolute scum-sucking cunt.

[BlodwynPig]

If you can catch colds from other people in the office I'm pretty sure you can catch Covid. This is the fucking health secretary! Absolute scum-sucking cunt.

As the gulf breeze passes swiftly across the low dunes, so the actions of Matt Hancock pass uncontested by the British media.

[sambwel]

Hancock: No evidence that virus is passed on in offices - GET BACK TO OFFICES

Crikey.

[BlodwynPig]

THE CHANCE TO CHANGE SOCIETY FOR THE BETTER, TOILETED through lack of imagination, a sprinkling of corporate evil and an adherence to the free market mantra.

Assassination of these actors would not work.
Democracy will not work.

VOTE BLODWYN PARTY

[Fambo Number Mive]

R number is up:

The R number - the rate of reproduction - of coronavirus in the UK has risen to between 0.9-1.1, according to the Government Office for Science and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).

The figures suggest there is a risk that the overall coronavirus epidemic in the UK is growing, government scientists say.

The latest growth rate for the whole of the UK is between minus 3% to plus 1%, a slight change from between minus 4% to minus 1% last week.

[BlodwynPig]

that's one of the tests for easing or tightening lockdown measures.

Get stocking up on toilet rolls once more.

[TrenterPercenter]

Hi just want this down for prosperity

It has been noted that when Birmingham has got lots of a virus it is the only time the press refer to it as UKs second biggest city.

Something that isn't even taken into consideration on the weather forcast.

CUNTS.

[Fambo Number Mive]

The Mirror reports it has a list of government contracts signed by the Cabinet Office for "consultancy services", "intelligence" and "media analysis" related to the Covid-19 epidemic from May to August 2020.

The newspaper claims "Many deals were handed out without any competition, under "urgent" procurement arrangements to react to the pandemic."

London-based start up Signal AI was paid almost £100,000 to perform "media analysis" on the Government's Covid-19 communications, while accountancy giant Deloitte was paid £3 million for "urgent" consultancy services...

...Another contract was handed to Tussell Ltd, a firm owned by Angus Tugendhat, the cousin of Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, and former Tory minister and peer Lord David Young.

They were paid £29,000 for an analysis of Government contracts handed out in relation to Covid-19.

The firm has a system which aggregates contracts and invoices from multiple data sources across government and provides analysis of spending by all departments.

Mr Tugendhat told the Mirror his cousin had no input into the business.

He added that the contract had been awarded directly because his firm offered a service the Government needed, and no other company could provide...

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/michael-goves-department-alone-spent-22559150

Perhaps we need a separate thread looking at all the government spending around Corona and who got what.

[BlodwynPig]

Dissonance (BBC)

Illegal rave brought 'bit of normality' to my life

Police 'can't win' after breaking up child's birthday party

Scientists report 'first confirmed re-infection'

Boris Johnson says it is 'vitally important' children return to class

[Alberon]

So that about wraps it up for herd immunity.

A Hong Kong man who was initially infected with covid-19 in April and made a full recovery was reinfected more than four months later after a trip abroad, a new study reports.

The study, by a team at the University of Hong Kong and accepted by the international medical journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, purports to be "the world's first documentation" of a patient who recovered from covid-19 being reinfected. The fact that the man had no symptoms the second time suggests his immune system protected him from disease.

Physicians at first thought he might be a persistent carrier of the virus, the study's authors write, but they sequenced the genome of his first and second infection to show the virus strains were different, indicating he had been reinfected.

If the man's reinfection is confirmed, it may suggest that the level of immunity after an infection may be lower than many had hoped, or it could simply indicate that immunity occurs on a spectrum and while the man had no signs of illness — a sign of partial immune protection — he did test positive.

"Many believe that recovered Covid-19 patients have immunity against reinfection because most developed a serum neutralizing antibody response," a news release announcing the study noted. "However, there is evidence that some patients have waning antibody levels after a few months."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/08/24/coronavirus-reinfection-hong-kong/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_reinfection-220pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans

No big surprise, really, but it would have been nice to have permanent immunity.

[BlodwynPig]

No big surprise, really, but it would have been nice to have permanent immunity.

I'm reading that George Romero book.

[Cuellar]

So that about wraps it up for herd immunity.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/08/24/coronavirus-reinfection-hong-kong/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_reinfection-220pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans

No big surprise, really, but it would have been nice to have permanent immunity.

YES!! GET IN

[steveh]

No big surprise, really, but it would have been nice to have permanent immunity.

It's good though that the immune system responded exactly as expected and they went from having no detectable antibodies to having sufficient to stop them getting symptoms from the second infection. There will always be a range for how long people retain antibodies for.

[pancreas]

The FT has done a reasonably in depth piece on declining fatality.

https://www.ft.com/content/c011e214-fb95-4a64-b23c-2bd87ebb29d7

It's not entirely obvious how to process this in the context of school & university reopening. We may be getting rather close to the point at which the lockdown is killing more people than it is saving.

[BlodwynPig]

The FT has done a reasonably in depth piece on declining fatality.

https://www.ft.com/content/c011e214-fb95-4a64-b23c-2bd87ebb29d7

It's not entirely obvious how to process this in the context of school & university reopening. We may be getting rather close to the point at which the lockdown is killing more people than it is saving.

What lockdown?

[Zetetic]

We may be getting rather close to the point at which the lockdown is killing more people than it is saving.

I've been wondering about this quite a lot, and professionally trying to get at it as best I can (around other stuff).

I think lockdown might be killing some people (and causing others to end up under chemical restraint or worse) but for all sorts of the reasons the balance doesn't seem to be clearly tipping back towards excess deaths.

I'm guessing road traffic accidents are back to normal. I'm guessing all sorts of infections are still down, and maybe not just respiratory. We're still not quite seeing the untreated cancers and so on turn into a death wave, yet.

For a bunch of stuff - MIs, strokes, suicides, accidental overdoses - I wonder if lockdown might not be changing the overall figure much one way or the other, but might be changing who's dying.

However, I'm at least a month or two behind reality, so...

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I counted 29 countries with populations of 30 million+ who haven't really had it 'full blown' (I set a conservative threshold of under 50 deaths per million) so there remains huge headroom for the virus to pick off more vulnerable people, a good few billion there... and of course winter is coming for those countries who have already been relatively badly affected.

I guess we can hope the covid jab is effective and can make it to those countries in good time, and/or it has mutated in some regions such a way that it isn't as life-threatening.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/27/coronavirus-reinfection-what-it-actually-means-and-why-you-shouldnt-panic

Some stuff about reinfection

[Cloud]

1522 today.  That's one sharp rise - hoping and praying it isn't a sign of it going exponential again...

[Fambo Number Mive]

That leaked Sage report predicting we could see another 85,000 deaths - it feels all the government has in place to avoid a second peak much higher than the first is local lockdowns. Just utterly terrifying.

[olliebean]

Supposedly they had some plan ("plan" is probably too strong a word, let's call it an "idea") to test everyone in the country on a weekly basis starting in October, but I don't see how anyone who's been paying attention could possibly believe they're capable of managing it.

[Chairman Yang]

I wonder if, when we stumble through the other side of this, there will be any reckoning for the horrifying fatality rate suffered here? Obviously BoJo is a hero prince who did his Best for Britain, but it'd be nice to imagine a few of the cabinet being summarily excited by faring squid.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Well, discharging patients from hospitals into care homes without testing them was criminally negligent and the government are directly responsible for tens of thousands of avoidable deaths.