BristolUK

I was about to respond that I meant slowing down as long as we can, meaning until a reassessment is needed but balance point is the same thing.
The entire economy - some businesses have thrived. Supermarkets have increased revenues, with some having increased (covid) costs, admittedly (but many only temporary like screens), while others have increased profits. Football stadiums around the world have ordered bloody great big tarps or whatever (to cover their seats) and there is still money pouring into some industries. Spread around a bit - in a more socialist way - might help us all in the wait a bit longer.

For the moment I see life as important. We can have occasional economy boosts and circuit breakers when necessary. I see that as preferable to letting the virus run its course because I don't see there's a course to finish for the reasons stated.

Pulaski

Oh there's an end, as there was with previous pandemics going back to the black death and bubonic plaue, and presumably back into the mists of time - a certain percentage will die, and the rest live on, suffering moderate to minimal ill effects. This is exactly what happened a century ago with the flu. The pandemic ran its course in about 2 years, and ended without a vaccine for another 20+ years. The US military developed the first flu vaccine during WWII, but it was decades later before vaccines became widely avialble and to this day they are not entirely effective and have to be readministered annually.

The current data is suggesting that the fatality rate is now about 1/250, so a very small number with 6% having significant symptoms, but in most cases surviving. The philosophical question is whether it is worth greatly reducing the quality of life for 99.6% of people to save 6% from illness and 0.4% from death - almost all of whom have significant other illnesses or conditions?

In a paper published last December, it was reported that the WHO estimates that an average of about 400,000 people die each year from the flu (within an uncertainty range of about 300,000-500,000), so the same order of magnitude as the current covid-19 statistics of 1.2 million in 9 months, and the flu number are only an "average" - some years are much worse. ..... The 1918-1920 flu killed 50million, so the current pendemic is nowhere near as bad, especially when you consider that the population of the world is about 5 times as large as it was 100 years ago, therefore a similarly serious pandemic today would kill 250million people!

BristolUK

You are forgetting the world is a smaller place with a far greater life expectancy.
If a plague is killing people off when life expectancy is 24-33 there's not much of the population left to spread it. With life expectancy now over 80 and a European population ten times what it was in the 14th century, together with travel everywhere there's a never ending source of transmission.

scrubbedexpat091

BC will announce the weekend cases at 3pm, will include Friday, Sat, Sun.

Health Minister has warned the numbers are significantly higher than we have seen, especially in metro Vancouver which includes both Vancouver Coastal Health and Fraser Health.

Seems private parties and gatherings are still the primary source of spread, really would a lock down do much to prevent the spread in our case? Can realistically police private homes, and requires neighbors reporting neighbors, not enough police and by-law officers to possible check every street in every city.

Dix said a bigger problem is house parties and private gatherings, which are not visible on social media but are fuelling the province's rising case numbers.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...-dix-1.5786155


And like this weekend showed on Halloween, how do you even realistically police a large crowd like downtown Vancouver saw when police have to deal with regular police stuff and responding to 800+ calls on one day.

They seem to have a very good idea through contact tracing as to where and how it's spreading and they keep saying its parties and gatherings at private homes.

I guess for places without effective contact tracing they have no real idea where the spread they have to go more extreme.

If we even had an Ontario style lock down in BC, I know we probably couldn't survive it financially if my wife lost her employment or even couldn't work for a few weeks.

abner

You seem to be off by an order of magnitude, considering the most recent overall UK figures from Johns Hopkins' website:
- 1,038,054 confirmed cases
- 46,807 deaths

That's roughly 1/22.

And yes, I get that the confirmed case and deaths figures are both likely undercounted, and that improvements in case management have improved survival outcomes since the pandemic first took hold in the UK.

But I haven't seen a figure anywhere like your 1/250 anywhere else. What was its source?

abner

So if you asked the average Briton whether or not they'd cop a 10 -15% drop in income for a year or two, in order to preserve their elderly relatives from a huge, often fatal health risk, what do you think the response would be?

Pulaski

It's not "10%-15% drop for a year or two". .... As per my post above above, we are on the edge of a precipice that will last a life time, not a career-length 35-40 years, actually 60-80 years, and the longer we try to lock-down the economy, the worse the damage and the longer it will take to "recover". And we are talking a "great depression" style economic implosion, acute unemployment and proverty that could last a decade or more, or potentially indefinitely.

And so far as asking "the average Briton", I think you should ask the businessman who has had his business shuttered by the government, the restaurant worker who has been thrown out of work despite taking all the SD, masking and screening requiements, because of idiots throwing house parties, and the homeowner who had a good job 8 months ago but is now hanging on by a thread, on the whim of the government and the end of the mortgage holiday.

Pulaski

Do you know what "current" means? You are citing cumulative figures.

The liklihood of death has fallen by a massive amount in the second wave compared to the first. If my maths is correct, per the chart below (5 folder increase in infections with simultaneous 75% fall in the death numbers), to 1/20th of of what it was in the spring (aggregate from the "first wave") when it was about 10%, so 1/20 x 10% = about ½% or 1/200, which is pretty much what I cited above.

abner

I haven't found the post of yours that you reference, though I confess it wasn't an exhaustive search.

But I must say, it seems you've seriously overcooked the egg--unless you're assuming there will never be an effective, widely available vaccine. A pandemic restricts workforce participation, and consumer demand, while the health risk persists, perhaps 9 - 18 months from here. And at that point there will be a huge upside in economic growth potential: untapped labour, uncorked demand, and low interest rates to fund the expansion.

I can't think of *any* recent modern event, since the advent of industrialisation, that has created a negative economic outcome "that will last a life time", "actually 60-80 years". Even the blight of communism on Soviet Russia (and bearing the brunt of WWII on top of that), still produced significant growth from start to finish of a "lifetime".

But I'm probably inadvertently misrepresenting an argument of yours that I didn't find.

What was it?

abner

Nice theory, but the death count ramp up follows the case count ramp up by 4 - 5 weeks. Nobody dies on Day 1 of catching Covid-19.

No doubt there will be somewhat better case management in this second wave.

Unless the NHS gets overwhelmed, which is still not off the table yet.

printer

What about the other outbreaks? and i quote from another news source:
There have been three new healthcare outbreaks declared, at the Good Samaritan Delta View Care Centre, Hamilton Village Care Centre, and Rotary Manor retirement home in Dawson Creek.
Why oh why are we still seeing outbreaks at care homes, did we not learn anything first time round?

abner

Repost those charts as of December 1st, and try making your argument again...

scrubbedexpat091

The weekend was bad, mostly in Fraser Health region as expected.

1,120 new cases confirmed over the weekend in total.

2,945 patients with active cases, 90 in hospital with 19 in ICU.

830 in the Fraser Health

234 in the Vancouver Coastal Health region

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...-dix-1.5786155

Pulaski

I'd be happy to - there are multiple reasons why the analysis isn't going to change much.

abner

The death rate curve, as a following indicator, will unfortunately have started spiking up rather nastily by then. The only way for your numerical analysis to remain unchanged ("1/250", or "1/200", or whatever you're holding to now) would be an absolutely catastrophic explosion in new case counts by December.

Fortunately, we have BoJo on the job. Oh wait ... oh, dear.