Originally Posted by nonthaburi

Yeah. Not a great situation. Just sitting it out for now. I'm hoping things open up by October. Someone in government said flights will begin when numbers are in the hundreds. They've just gone below 1000 two days in a row. Lowest numbers in over 4 month , and that's with a lot more testing. So maybe when it's below 500 a day consistently there may be some good news.

On the plus side , saved a lot of money since all this started. Finished an extension to the house in Thailand . School fees put away ahead of schedule. Savings are up. Money to burn when I do eventually travel . 😊

Originally Posted by co durham boy

....when they're bladdered on a weekend and hanging out of each others hoops .

Originally Posted by Scamp

I think we're discussing different things.

Testing is good for as long as you're in the test centre. As soon as you leave (and let's pretend you get an immediate 'clear' result) you are now touching things, meeting people, being coughed on and running a covid gauntlet in exiting the location with the most infected people.

On the way out you brush past someone with Covid who's going to find out if their cold is a cold or if they've got the germ. You get infected. 2 days later you get told you're clean but you're in the process of getting sick, but you can't have it? You got the all clear? You go out, you party, you do what you want....which is why I say it'a bit pointless. If people were tested to see if they'd had it, it might be of more interest if the thinking is still correct that you get it once and fight it off, you're probably good.

Originally Posted by weasel decentral

Originally Posted by csdf

I'm not saying that you can't get infected after taking a test, I'm saying that the chances of getting infected are very small, and you have to go a long time before the cumulative probability of catching the disease are high enough that you would deem the test invalid. If I had taken a test on day 1 of lockdown, then that negative test result would still be correct as of today (or if you want to be pedantic, as of my last negative test result 15 days ago). That means that with hindsight, that theoretical test was correct and valid for over 4 months. This is the point - the chances of catching the virus are low, so the chances of your negative test result becoming invalid are low.

Taking a negative test means (ignoring false negatives) that you don't have the virus. From that point on, the probability of catching the virus slowly accumulates day on day, hour on hour. But at a very low rate.

I'm arguing in favour of testing (and trusting the test results), because the chances of catching the virus are low. But they're only low because people are practicing social distancing. Opening everything up would increase the chances of catching the virus, and so reduce the validity of testing and the trust you can put in a negative result. McKinsey issued a report recently saying that it wasn't lockdowns per se that were killing the economy, it was people's lack of trust in the government's ability to control the virus. In countries where the virus was tackled robustly and comprehensively (e.g. New Zealand), economic participation is much higher than in countries that fannied around (e.g. United Kingdom).

Originally Posted by Scamp

So cases are now almost as high as the peak of lockdown, we're certainly banging in numbers that compete with just before and after the high of 998 in a day........yet we're being pushed to come back to the office even more and the city seems busier than ever.

Have we just given up?
Is it because of school tests? Although I imagine they're done and accounted for already
Is it because of tourism?
Is it because numbers are just rising?

Originally Posted by csdf

I think it's something else. Back at the "peak", we were probably missing 50-80% or more of the cases, so the numbers in reality were at least double what we actually recorded and hence why the hospitals were rammed full. Now, testing is widespread, vulnerable people are shielding themselves and we're probably missing 10% or fewer of the cases, so the case counts are more accurate and hospitalisations are lower.

The remaining big issue to be addressed is whether Long Covid is really a thing, because if it is, and treating it is materially expensive (directly through medical care, or indirectly through lost productivity), governments will have to decide on the cost-benefit analysis of tackling it vs ignoring it.

Originally Posted by co durham boy

Camp accommodation with cross infection and transmission plus the cultural demographic of multiple generational co habitation make this place an absolute hotbed mate . People have to take away the fear and learn to mitigate some of the risks.

You may get local lockdowns but this town wont be shutting its doors again , it's on life support now .

Originally Posted by Millhouse

Average number of suicides per day in the U.K. : 18
Average number of covid deaths per day in September: 6
Average number of U.K. car crash deaths per day: 5

Originally Posted by Scamp

I don't think there's even a debate on the cost-benefit analysis any more.

Originally Posted by Scamp

I also read that a lot of the cases in the UK (for example) at the moment are younger people, so hospitalisation is very low. Probably ties in with the lower numbers reported before as well as you say.

Originally Posted by csdf

I was talking about long covid (the issue that seems to affect some non-tiny % of people for months after the main illness has vanished). Agreed that on covid19, nobody cares as long as they can keep the hospitals relatively empty.

Yes - the interesting thing though is that in the UAE, the population is already young (avg age of 27 or something) so there's no room here for the death rates to go stay low relative to the May peak because the people who are catching the virus now can't be statistically much younger than the people who were catching it before (bar the shielding effect I mentioned above).

Originally Posted by csdf

I was talking about long covid (the issue that seems to affect some non-tiny % of people for months after the main illness has vanished). Agreed that on covid19, nobody cares as long as they can keep the hospitals relatively empty.

Yes - the interesting thing though is that in the UAE, the population is already young (avg age of 27 or something) so there's no room here for the death rates to go stay low relative to the May peak because the people who are catching the virus now can't be statistically much younger than the people who were catching it before (bar the shielding effect I mentioned above).

Originally Posted by weasel decentral

I'm convinced - ban suicide and car crashes and especially suicide by car crash