I agree there are more unknowns that knowns and that everything is conjecture. HIV takes a rather more intimate level of contact than just being within a few feet of someone. The “safe distance” is a bit of a myth – see link below. Almost certainly every single person on the ship (OK, 90%+) was exposed before anyone became symptomatic, or at least before the quarantine was implemented.
I agree that makes 0.3% but then this was a fairly vulnerable population. I think we can at least agree that the UK figure of 0.5M was just pure ill-informed sensationalism and panic mongering. (The same “expert” is now down to 5700 – where does he get this level of precision from? And why would anyone ever believe anything he says ever again?)
Quoting from the chinese article linked above:
China requires closed circuit television cameras to be installed on all long-distance buses, which provided valuable footage for researchers to reconstruct the spread of the virus on the bus, whose windows were all closed.
“It can be confirmed that in a closed environment with air-conditioning, the transmission distance of the new coronavirus will exceed the commonly recognised safe distance,” the researchers wrote in a paper published in peer-review journal Practical Preventive Medicine last Friday.
Sure. It’s a known fact that a/c in an enclosed environment is a fantastic way to spread disease. Sitting closely together on a bus doesn’t help either. Frankly, I don’t think that has much bearing on the general ‘safe distance’ rule. This rule, however varies quite considerable: I believe it to be 1m / 3ft in Europe whereas in the US it’s 6ft / 1.8m.
Ibra wrote:
Or there are other stuff that the models can’t show yet
Like apps on every phone tracking people and showing it to everyone else. If you know where infected people are, and where they have been, you are not that likely to catch the disease yourself. Korea use these apps. Not sure about China, but my guess would be yes 
I don’t think the models include such a thing? or maybe they do?
Here, we are not that likely to use such apps, except in a much less intrusive forms. Lots of data is already there though, used by Google etc, and also by health authorities.
The other thing is testing, testing, testing. From Iceland (who have done lots of testing), it is clear that lots of people with no symptoms whatsoever, and who themselves will never get any symptoms later, still carry the disease. Are such things modeled? (only those with symptoms are usually isolated, not those without symptoms).
Then there is the widespread testing now of “alternative” medicine (AIDS, malaria, ebola and so on). In Norway, they are used now in all hospitals as an experimental treatment. No hard results yet as far as I know, but it looks promising.
There are also different kinds of exposure. Getting a big “dose” of it seems to be much more deadly than simply being infected in the usual sense, in particular for younger people. Are these things modeled? The virus attacks the lungs, and getting lots of it in a short time is really bad. While getting a big “dose” is bad, the infected will be very sick, very fast, and therefore not very likely to spread it.
Airborne_Again wrote:
The Swedish recommendations have lead to massive changes in behaviour.
This article shows pictures from central Stockholm the past Saturday, a few days after payday.
Headline: “An almost deserted town. You’ve never seen Stockholm like this.” Well, maybe just after the terrorist attack four years ago.
Further down a picture from the roads into Stockholm this morning in the rush hour. But where’s the rush? There is more traffic a regular Sunday morning.
I believe it to be 1m / 3ft in Europe whereas in the US it’s 6ft / 1.8m.
That would be the difference between the metric Reynolds Number and the traditional British Reynolds Number.
[ quote fixed – see the Posting Tips ]
The same “expert” is now down to 5700 – where does he get this level of precision from?
1) The projection was that if the UK social distancing measures were as effective as the Chinese, which they won’t be, then we might stabilise with that number of deaths
2) He isn’t particularly precise. He gives a range of 4700-7100 with 5700 the most likely number within the range.
I’m afraid I can’t agree that we know that everyone on the ship was effectively exposed. There are other ships where only a few people tested positive after the disease was recognised so if it didn’t run its course on them, how can we be sure it’s run its course on the Diamond Princess? The herd immunity threshold is 1 – (1/R0) with initial estimates for R0 being in the region of 2-3 so you would expect the majority of people to become infected if you let the disease run its course. The exception would be if a large proportion of people aren’t susceptible to the virus for some reason, which is possible.
I would expect everybody on a bus to get infected.
I was planning a ski trip in February and by the start of Feb the writing was already on the wall on this virus, and I was going to do it only by flying in the TB20 and using a taxi, not a bus. And I was going to stay in a self catering apartment where you don’t interact with others on the way in or out. In the end the bad wx and Italy’s obviously impending shutdown stopped that trip.
The cruise ship was a good experiment but I wonder if anyone researched where the infected people stayed on the ship, and published the data. It would reveal if e.g. aircon ducts were obviously responsible. I suspect it was people going around the rooms and leaving food and stuff by the door, with reportedly zero hygiene precautions. The ship operator was probably unwilling to co-operate in the research; hygiene on cruise ships is generally dreadful.
kwlf wrote:
There were 3700 people on the ship, so 11/3700 would be 0.3% and not 0.1%.
The problem is that you don’t know how many people were exposed. In epidemiology, exposure has a specific meaning. e.g. if you shake hands with someone with HIV you have not been exposed to the virus. Not all the people on the Diamond Princess will have been exposed to the virus as there was an attempt made to quarantine them after the outbreak was recognised.
I happen to work regularly on offshore rigs. There are two oft heard phrases regarding colds/flu etc “if you’ve got it, we’ve all got it” and “its just rig flu”. I remember many of us a few months ago discussing the Cruise Ship in Japan and the one thing we all said to each other was “why are they keeping everyone aboard, they will all get it” before it dawned that that was the point… Ladies & Gentlemen, right there you had a little test with 3700 people all exposed in a confined space.
skydriller wrote:
Ladies & Gentlemen, right there you had a little test with 3700 people all exposed in a confined space.
Let say they happens every year, if it is not something with food it is something in the air
https://abcnews.go.com/US/270-cruise-ship-passengers-sickened-norovirus-royal-caribbean/story?id=60291868
kwlf wrote:
My Zimbabwean colleague showed me some text messages sent between the shocked local elite, that have gone viral. “Sadly you are asked to bring in your own ventilator from SA and bring your own oxygen”; “There are apparently only 16 working ventilators in the whole of Zimbabwe!”. Who knew.
I was referring beds % of population in relative terms (e.g. doctors/beds % Diamond princes vs France) but who would expect we are doing these comparisons on absolute numbers, yes who knew…
