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Bedknobs and Boomsticks

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Posts posted by Bedknobs and Boomsticks

    Midlands Regional Discussion 17/06/2020 Onward

    in Regional

    Posted

    44 minutes ago, DiagonalRedLine said:

    Feels like one of those situations if only everything was a little further South. Well done to those of you who have seen some white stuff so far. Not much happening in Solihull. Almost considered taking a train trip to Matlock (but don’t think would have been allowed being in Tier 3)

    I wouldn't bother. I'll be taking a drive up to Buxton tomorrow morning though.

    • Like 1

    Hurricane Laura

    in Hurricanes, Cyclones and Extreme weather worldwide

    Posted

    17 minutes ago, Lauren said:

    I was in Cuba when Michael hit. Bearing in mind we were hundreds of miles away from Havana we still experienced strong winds for 48 hours. Strong enough to down some trees. I knew at that point Michael was going to be a lot bigger than was being suggested. Rest of the time the weather was glorious. Flying home at night, it was odd to see large swathes of Florida in darkness from the power cuts. Very eerie.

    Was looking about Michael earlier. If you go into Street View via Google Earth (not Maps) at Mexico Beach in Florida, all the imagery was taken in Oct 2018 immediately after the hurricane. 

    COVID-19 Pandemic

    in Space, Science & nature

    Posted

    2 minutes ago, Spikecollie said:

    Germany about to close borders with France. Feels like WW2 all over again! Not that I lived through that but I know enough about it to feel that it's similar.

    Where are we going...

    From what I've read, WWII was all about Germany wanting to open up its border with France. 

    • Like 9

    COVID-19 Pandemic

    in Space, Science & nature

    Posted

    16 minutes ago, Azazel said:

    The data out of Italy doesn’t support that though. Only one death under the age of 40. Infact only 2 deaths under the age of 50.

    CE546548-8095-4F7C-9A8D-F3F468EF1874.jpeg

    This says to me that there are a good 10,000 undetected cases in the lower age cohorts. Probably need to double the number of cases at least

    • Like 4

    COVID-19 Pandemic

    in Space, Science & nature

    Posted

    I'm sad to say that people aren't getting it when they say that we could end up like Italy if we aren't careful. Even if we assume that tens of thousands are infected in Lombardy, that is still less than 1% of the population.

    Assuming that it can't be contained, as everyone seems to think, then the virus will only die off when many tens of percent of the population have become infected (say 40 to 80%). Unless we want to go into full lock down mode for the next 12 to 18 months while a vaccine is sorted, we can pretty much guarantee that something far worse than Italy is already inevitable. 

    To mix my metaphors, the debate is do we want to try to fight the rising tide in the hope of a life raft, or cut people adrift and get through it as quickly as possible. If Lombardy is already drowning under less than 1% infection, is there any point in dragging that situation out for many months until we hit herd immunity?

    Who'd want to lead at times like this. We're effectively in wartime levels of descision making. 

    And on a linked note about the lack of action at the moment, it's all very well talking about flattening the curve, but if you zoom out to take in the entire likely outbreak, the bit we are on right now already looks flat. 

    None of this is what I expected to think, but I'm wavering between thinking that the response is genius or lunacy. Only time will tell.

    • Like 2

    Novel Coronavirus – China

    in Space, Science & nature

    Posted

    19 minutes ago, Sky Full said:

    If this is true, then perversely our best policy is to try and infect as many low-risk people as possible, and as fast as possible, so that they recover on their own, become immune, and then the virus has nowhere to go.  In this case gatherings like Cheltenham races are just what is called for so the virus can be passed around as many people as possible!  The elderly, infirm and sufferers from chronic illnesses will have to be isolated as much as possible in the meantime to keep the number of fatalities to the minimum, but these are the very people who will find it easiest to keep their distance from other people until the danger of infection has passed.

    Not sure if there is any scientific basis to this theory and it's likely there is a flaw in the argument somewhere that I'm not seeing.   I'm sure there are people on here who will correct me if I have completely misunderstood the way a virus behaves?

    Absolutely brutally correct. The only way to control it is for about 40 to 80% of the population to have been infected (I have a model). That's 25 to 50 million people: 2.5 to 5 million needing hospital treatment over the course of a few months. 

    Feeling pretty bleak TBH. 

    • Like 2

    Novel Coronavirus – China

    in Space, Science & nature

    Posted

    2 minutes ago, kold weather said:

    Agreed, but I think anyone would have to admit that is a HUGE disparity between Germany and Italy and the numbers of people who for example are being hospitalised. Surely we aren't saying that Italy's health services is many many times worse than Germany, or that the population of Italy is many times older than Germany? FWIW the median age of Germany is actually a touch older than Italy (45.9 vs 45.4) so that is not the reason either.

    Its just hard to see any logical reason there can be such a huge difference, other than a variation of the strain of virus?

    But your right, no one really knows!

     

    Or that Italy has missed an awful lot of cases. A lot of the European cases seem to have stemmed from Italy, suggesting both that they should be the same strain, and that there are a hell of a lot of Italians infected for travellers to catch it off. 

    I hope so anyway. 

    • Like 1

    Novel Coronavirus – China

    in Space, Science & nature

    Posted · Edited by Polar Maritime
    To remove a big blank space.

    New poster here; came for Storm Ciara but stayed for the Corona virus.

    For people talking about modelling, its actually very easy to do. Open up an excel sheet. Start on say row 10, and manually set B9 =1, C9 = 1, D9 = 0, F9 = date of start of outbreak

    Column A: R0 number = ? (4 works well for current European outbreaks, reducing rapidly once serious control measures kick in for places like Italy, S Korea and China)

    Column B: Total infected = C10+B9

    Column C : Total infected per incubation period = A9*C9*(1-D9)

    Column D : Proportion of population infected = B10 / 65,000,000 (for UK)

    Column E: Incubation period = ? (again, 4 works well for current European outbreaks)

    Column F: Date = F9 + E10

    Now drag Row 10 down for a terrifying demonstration of the power of exponential growth, plus an interesting demonstration of how herd immunity can stabilise infection at below 100%.

    • Like 5
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