Coronavirus

Some interesting statistics about excess deaths by age in Spain (one of the countries worst affected by the pandemic) in 2020:

>90 26k
80-89 33k
70-79 18k
60-69 7.6k
50-59 2.1k
40-49 0.66k
<40 0.06k (i.e. 60 excess deaths)
 
The United States is on track to pass 500,000 total COVID deaths today, still the highest count of any country on Earth.

Woo-hoo, we’re #1! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
 
The United States is on track to pass 500,000 total COVID deaths today, still the highest count of any country on Earth.

Woo-hoo, we’re #1! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

Death rate per million population is a much accurate measure of the impact pf the pandemic and you are definitely lagging behind the UK there. You colonials still need to learn how to be world-beating! ;)
 
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Don't get me started. Fantastic that vaccines have arrived and being rolled out so fast, it's just also worrying that almost all the effort is going into the first shot and they have no obvious plan for delivering the second within even their own time limit. Also not happy that certain clinically vulnerable people (self included) have been ditched from the current priority vaccine list and are potentially going to be in the same lottery for it as 100% healthy people under 30 who aren't in frontline services. Apparently we're still thought to be at some sort of elevated risk with Covid, but it's not backed up by death stats.

Given today's repeat performance of mindless optimism (part Blackadder quote there) I wonder how long it'll be before some kind of new lockdown or tier system emerges. Nationally the reduction in cases is dramatic, especially London and the South East, considering how grave things were in January. The disease is still very much on the go in all areas, though, and it doesn't take much for it to get out of control. It takes 2-3 weeks to see it when it happens, too. Locally, cases are very stubbornly refusing to go down quickly. I think it's a combination of too many people not giving a monkeys, high rates of school attendance, multiple occupancy housing and large extended households, workplace outbreaks, and heavy reliance on taxis.
 
Although I strongly support getting kids back to school now, I worry about all these dates provided for the next phases of this “return to normality”.

We know that Boris Johnson has a somewhat flexible interpretation of the truth whenever he talks (to almost a Trumpian level). With his boosterish attitude there is a significant risk (and one just has to read comments online and even the press outside of the UK) that people would think that freedom would come on 21st June!

Let's hope we would not end up back to square one after the summer.
 
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It's a wrong thought if people think that once they have been vaccinated they're free and they can reunite all together without mask filling the pubs, making parties everywhere… We're totally free when we know how to win the virus and the variants. I'm afraid that we will be vaccinated every year or 2 times per year according the mutation of the virus. But meanwhile we have to have the responsible behavior of wearing masks, wash hands and keep the distance…

In Spain rules the communities/ regions/departments… because the government let them the power to manage the restrictions whatever the high or low levels of covid and each one do what they want. I can see people without masks filling the pubs and bars terraces, talking, smoking even shouting in front of others… the covid curve is going down but there are over 500 deads everyday and the British, southafrican and Brazilian variants has landed and spreading slowly and it's the 80% of covid infections in some parts of the country. But they are thinking in how to raise the tourism and the economy, opening bars and restaurants. I'm afraid that the 4th and worst wave is coming and nobody is seeing it yet. I read the other day that the German minister said that the 4th wave that is coming with all this variants is going to be the worst and more lethal that the previous ones filling the hospitals of the country with over 100 K of infected people everyday. Terrible and scary.

Schools: each class is done with the doors and windows opened with the kids with the coats and masks. The ventilation and the fresh air is very important and the incidence is very very low. In the work offices and industries there are a lot of infected people.

Vaccines: Almost 3% of the whole population vaccinated.( elders in nursery residencies and their workers, sanitary people, doctors, nurses…) The vaccines of several companies are coming and the Pfzier is planned to be used for the elder people over 65 years old. The first ones to be vaccinated will be the people over 80 and going down, but the AstraZeneca will be used for people between 45 and 55 so when it arrived these people will be called.
 
Although I strongly support getting kids back to school now, I worry about all these dates provided for the next phases of this “return to normality”.

We know that Boris Johnson has a somewhat flexible interpretation of the truth whenever he talks (to almost a Trumpian level). With his boosterish attitude there is a significant risk (and one just has to read comments online and even the press outside of the UK) that people would think that freedom would come on 21st June!

Let's hope we would not end up back to square one after the summer.
Schools could be a heck of a lot better if they did something to alleviate overcrowding in schools. There's absolutely no way some schools can genuinely have any kind of distancing. Four day weeks for each year group to begin with could be an excellent compromise. Best work on that ventilation too, though. Someone suggested Nightingale schools rather than hospitals, to get class sizes down. It would be very hard to set up at short notice though. If FE colleges go back too, there are going to be absolutely heaving buses going in and out of our town centre every morning and evening. There's basically one sixth form for the whole town.
 
If you look at the statistics, a state doing quite well so far is Vatican City, with zero deaths.
That might be due to the lack of public transport, registered political parties, or a national lacrosse team.
I'm sure a trained statistician would be capable of finding the vital magic ingredient.
 
If you look at the statistics, a state doing quite well so far is Vatican City, with zero deaths.
That might be due to the lack of public transport, registered political parties, or a national lacrosse team.
I'm sure a trained statistician would be capable of finding the vital magic ingredient.

Would you believe any data coming from that place? :lol:
 
We have more than 0.1% of the population getting tested positive daily now. For example, Estonia has around 1.35 million people and last night there were over 1500 positive tests. My question is, how do they not run out of people already? It feels like every Estonian has tested positive already.
 
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