On Tue 13 Oct at 11:16am Tom Pain wrote:
"We do not advocate lockdown as the primary means of control" Dr. David Nabarro of the WHO in The Spectator."Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer"
On Tue 13 Oct at 11:55am Dreamer wrote:
100% correct. Lockdowns are not the *primary* means of control.
Lockdowns should be the very last means of control.
Look at the countries with SARS experience and you can see what the primary means of control should be:
Distancing and possibly light contact restrictions along with proper test and trace (proper meaning that it works, is complete and that both backward and forward tracing are done) and isolation of infected people.
Next is the wearing of simple face coverings and proper hygiene.
Only when those elements prove insufficient (or more likely are not properly implemented) do lock downs become a must.
What I have been saying the whole time: what we are seeing is a complete failure of government. The whole idea that there is a trade-off between economy and public health is a straw man at best.
On Tue 13 Oct at 2:22pm Tom Pain wrote:
It's not a trade off,or a strawman as you ought to be well aware. Our economy as constituted is the life blood of the country, no money~no trade~no food. Unless you are completely self sufficient you'll starve. If you had the interest to find out the rest of what Dr Navarro said you might learn some things about the effect on the poorer parts of the world of lockdown that would shake you out of your Little England mentality. You might see that lockdown's only use is to ease pressure on health services. There is none and never has been.
On Tue 13 Oct at 4:22pm Dreamer wrote:
Please read what I wrote. You will find we are actually in surprising agreement.
I said "the whole idea that there is a trade-off between economy and public health" is wrong. There is indeed no trade off. That claim that a government needs to decide between one or the other is made for purely to mislead and distract (more of a red herring, than a straw man, I admit, but in this case the difference is a nuance and depends on how the lie is used).
A responsible government reacts early, preventing the spread of an infection using the measures I mentioned above. In doing so, they protect public health and the economy.
I already posted a link to the relevant Our World in Data dataset in another thread. If there is any connection between economy and mortality in this pandemic, it is that countries with high mortality rates are seeing massive economic damage, irrespective of lock down measures.
On Tue 13 Oct at 4:45pm Dreamer wrote:
And thanks. Having lived and paid taxes in three countries on two continents, put three transatlantic moves behind me before I was thirteen and holding two nationalities while living in a third country at the moment, I never thought I would be accused of "Little England" mentality. I will wear that as a badge of honour. :-D
On Tue 13 Oct at 5:28pm Basil wrote:
'Little Englander' was once an honourable title. It was originally used to describe those members of the 19th century Liberal party who opposed the Tory policy of extending the British Empire 'wider still and wider'. It is ironic now to hear Liberal Democrats - among others - use it as an insult.
On Tue 13 Oct at 7:26pm Tom Pain wrote:
It's the lockdowns and fearmongering that are ruining the economies. Twice as many died in the Hong Kong flu epidemic and it had little economic effect how's that for a nuance. The government was advised by it's scientific advisors that there was no big risk in April, I think it was. They were following The Science. I t was before the prime Muppet did his volte face after the mendacious prophecies of a serial lunatic from IPC. If you can't smell the bovine excreta you need one of those tests because your olfactory system is seriously compromised.
Well Bas, the liberals got one thing right.
On Tue 13 Oct at 7:44pm Dreamer wrote:
Which is why Sweden (no lockdown) has seen a 25% drop in FDP?
This is another one of you "theories".
You need to accept basic facts: this is the most lethal pandemic since 1918. Last week's ONS data clearly show that.
On Tue 13 Oct at 7:53pm Dreamer wrote:
But I get it Tom. I was mistaken when I thought you were a troll. This a religion for you. And that requires "belief". And for that facts don't matter: You will bend over backwards, ignore primary literature in favour of anecdotal statements and blog posts. To the point of fantasising that a document focused on comorbidities is about preexisting conditions. Even when that word doesn't occur once in the entire document (I note that you never were able to produce a quote from that CDC document that contained the word "preexisting"). Which is OK. Believe what you want to believe.
But the vast majority of the rest of the world accepts that this is a dangerous disease that common sense, considerate behaviour (masks, keeping a distance), responsible governance, (sadly lacking here) and above all patience, are the best way to deal with.
On Tue 13 Oct at 9:33pm Tom Pain wrote:
Very sweet dreamer, but the covid creed of fear is your religion, I'm the heretic. Just like a true adept you'll shoot yourself in the foot to try and convert the unworthy. What's this co~morbidity nonsense? Nothing to do with me but I'll run with it. If you've got cancer and a bad heart they could be co~morbidities, if you die; would it concern you which came first, was pre~existing? Maybe they came at the same time. Shoot down as many strawmen as you like, it's nothing to do with me. You're quite welcome to believe blog posts and anecdotes you heard from the BBC but don't drag me in there, I'm not looking at them
I looked up FDP~ filho da puta? No, there's hundreds but oh! Fighting Dreamers Productions! Whatever you meant, do you think Sweden would not suffer from their trading partners being out of action? You've got to try a bit harder than that to convince anyone but yourself. Are you getting paid for this propaganda rubbish?
On Wed 14 Oct at 1:36pm Green Sleeves wrote:
Sweden lost thousands of lives (so far, around 6k), while the other 3 most similar scandinavian countries (Norway, Denmark and Finland) combined, lost around 1000. Even factoring in population and density, the outcome for Sweden can hardly be hailed as a success.
Not sure what the economic hit comparison between Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries is, but I'd be willing to suggest whatever the difference is, wouldn't be worth the loss of thousands of lives. Although they would have been mainly older and vulnerable people, so who cares eh? 
On Wed 14 Oct at 1:48pm Tom Pain wrote:
Sweden has a larger population. I suggest you check your old posts pancetta where you use the word old as a term of abuse before using it so sanctimoniously.
On Wed 14 Oct at 2:24pm Green Sleeves wrote:
Sweden's population is 10.3m, the 3 other countries combined is 16.2m. I'd say 6000 deaths in 10m vs 1000 deaths in 16m isn't an indicator of a successful strategy.
On Wed 14 Oct at 6:34pm Dreamer wrote:
Pulling up the actual data, first I need to correct myself: Sweden equals the USA and UK in terms of per capita mortality, but only the USA in terms of economic damage - the UK was even worse.
Trading partners are of course important, but we can check how important by looking at the data. Low and behold: it's far from the main reason. Indeed, Sweden's neighbouring countries mostly saw less economic damage than Sweden. Seems that despite a proper lockdown and having the similar trading partners, Norway and Finland saw less economic decline than Sweden and far less deaths.
Let's go further and take a look at highly export oriented countries such as Taiwan or South Korea. Most of the EU was shut down, the largest economies in the USA were shutdown, China was shutdown... So trading was far from easy. But they still managed to have the smallest economic decline globally in the second quarter, while seeing some of the lowest death rates. So trading partners being shutdown really doesn't explain much at all.
And that is the data I based my initial statement on: there is no need to choose between lives or economy. Instead, taking the disease seriously, isolating positive cases, testing and tracing (forwards and backwards), keeping distance to others and wearing masks allow responsible countries to do both: protect lives and the economy.
As always: contradict me, argue against it, but please for once provide actual evidence. Primary literature and data.
On Wed 14 Oct at 6:43pm Dreamer wrote:
Tom is right: the death rates need to be normalised to the population Green Sleeves... But he fails to do that.
Let's remove the uncertainty of reporting and look at excess deaths. Based on that, Norway had 4 percent more deaths than usual, Denmark 5 percent and Sweden 20 percent (data publicly available, just needs a calculator). Now, lockdoens and restrictions could lead to excess deaths, which would mean that Covid deaths in Norway and Denmark might be lower...
It would seem that Sweden did indeed fair much worse than her neighbours.
On Wed 14 Oct at 6:54pm Dreamer wrote:
And Tom, my reference to comorbidities and your conflating those with preexisting conditions referred to your outlandish claim in the "Even MoreStatisticsbecausec" thread that a CDC report on causes of death and comorbidities in Covid patients referred to preexisting conditions, which were not mentioned once in the report. Your post was Sept 3, at 11:40 pm. Just in case you can't find it. I then posted a verbatim quote of the text section you pulled your numbers from and asked you to show me the word preexisting in there. Which, not surprisingly, you were not able to do.
And before you claim that "comorbidities" are the same thing as "preexisting conditions", they are not. As any (clinical) dictionary will tell you.
And I appreciate that none of this will convince you or change your mind. Frankly, I don't care about that. My sole motivation is to show up your unfounded beliefs to be just that. To stop the spread of this utter hogwash.
On Thu 15 Oct at 10:00am Green Sleeves wrote:
@dreamer, the excess deaths figure in the Scandinavian countries is very telling, thanks for sharing that, and the fact that Swedens economy took a harder hit than the other 3, as well as significantly more deaths, does suggest that those that are continually praising the "Swedish Strategy" are fooling only themselves and anyone credulous enough to lap up conspiracy theories.
On Thu 15 Oct at 3:31pm Tom Pain wrote:
Has ferret got a few days off? We just seem to have a two man propaganda team. I don't know the statistics but if the customers of my business were locked down and the market closed I wouldn't be selling much would I? I'm sure dreamer could disprove that theoretically in his dreamworld though. I've just found a video of the PM, saying the tests are only 7% accurate. That was to explain why there was no airport testing. Speaking of which Denmark stopped flights from China in January. I remember at the beginning of this sorry charade, the progressives calling it racist when it was suggested here. It's strange how some people are aware of the biggest withdrawal of human rights in history going on in the country, and all the fans of the Rights of Man are in favour of it.
On Thu 15 Oct at 4:08pm Ferret wrote:
No, Tom. I'm here, and taking a back seat as you continue to spout nonsense, as is your right. You have descended into direct trolling these days, and quoting Johnson is the low point in your argument so far. Well done.
On Thu 15 Oct at 9:12pm Tom Pain wrote:
Back on shift eh? Direct trolling? You have a monopoly? Surely you could get "conspiracy theory" in there somewhere. Latest from the CDC~ virus survival rate, 0~19is 99.997%, 20~49is 99.98%, 50~69is 99.5%, 70plus is 94.6%. I'll take those odds on any day.
A huge number of the deaths were in care homes when the government ordered hospital patients sent there. I believe even those infected. Now that's criminal negligence and I think those responsible should face trial.
Curfews, lockdowns, emergency powers, Paine must be turning in his unknown grave.
On Thu 15 Oct at 11:53pm Ferret wrote:
Tom, do you realise that there are over 10 million people aged 70 or more in the UK. If 94.6% would survive, that's 5.6% would die. What is 5.6% of 10 million? Well it is 560,000 people. That's how many would die if the virus is allowed to infect everyone. What number of deaths would be acceptable to you?
On Fri 16 Oct at 2:00pm Green Sleeves wrote:
ONS stating UK now up to around 28k infections per day. Not quite the 50k suggested it could rise to by mid October that Whitty and Vallence said on 21st September....but they may only be a week or so out given the sharp rise in the past week and these are just the positive cases we are aware of.
But 28k isn't 50k right, so they are clearly fraudsters and have no credibility anymore, so let's all go out and kiss each other and start licking door handles. 
On Fri 16 Oct at 2:44pm Tom Pain wrote:
Let's see, what number would be acceptable? Hmm, good gracious, it seems the cuddly toy ferret is being a little underhand here, perhaps I should ask him how many he thinks should die first,then I can claim the high moral ground by naming a lower number.
Too much detail pancetta, the thought of what you might kiss or lick is too gross for me. You are right though 28 isn't 50, they have no credibility and never had.
On Fri 16 Oct at 3:45pm Green Sleeves wrote:
28k isn't 50k, but its still a fairly staggering 28k today, and probably a lot more daily next week (perhaps even 50k), given the trend of the past few weeks. Even if we conservatively suggest it just lingered at 30k daily, thats over 200k cases every week.....hospitals won't can't cope if that new infections rate isn't reduced, and we will be back into the hundreds of daily deaths again (already we are on around 130 deaths yesterday) even with ICU capacity from Nightingales etc. This would mean thousands of people dying every week. But just carry on downplaying serious figures because previous worst-case predictions were off.
So with that in mind, back to Ferrets original question, what number of deaths do you deem as acceptable? Wasn't there a reported 60k+ excess deaths during the first lockdown phase (and maybe beyond)? Surely not all of these were down to suicides, domestic murders or people not showing up for cancer treatments due to lockdown, as the covid-deniers keep insinuating.
On Fri 16 Oct at 5:03pm Ferret wrote:
Too many have died from the virus already. It's not a question of "high moral ground". Every one of these deaths was preventable.
On Fri 16 Oct at 7:33pm Tom Pain wrote:
I mentioned the dumping of patients into nursing homes, which is inexcusable but "every one" is going a bit far. The whole country seems to be suffering a psychosis of doom stoked up by the government, the media and your good selves. We haven't the casualty rate of the Hong Kong flu,which most people didn't notice,so why the hysteria? I know what's going on because I've studied books and articles by the major international players and organisations. This has been on the cards for years, it's just the virus excuse that's the surprise. You're going to get a lot more in the next few years as they drag us into the new subnormal.
On Fri 16 Oct at 7:51pm Tom Pain wrote:
I notice Sweden now has the lowest death rate in Europe.
On Fri 16 Oct at 8:32pm Marco wrote:
Death Rates per 100k
Belgium 90.15
Spain 71.49
United Kingdom 64.96
Italy 60.26
Sweden 57.77
France 49.43
Netherlands 38.67
Ireland 37.48
Romania 29.23
Luxembourg 21.66
Portugal 20.71
Bulgaria 13.49
Germany 11.72
Denmark 11.66
Czechia 11.55
Hungary 11.1
Austria 10.09
Malta 9.12
Poland 8.71
Croatia 8.44
Slovenia 7.35
Finland 6.34
Norway 5.22
Estonia 5.13
Greece 4.49
Lithuania 3.94
Cyprus 2.85
Iceland 2.8
Tinterweb is great isn’t it.
On Fri 16 Oct at 10:27pm Ferret wrote:
Sweden is at a different stage of the pandemic. Numbers of new cases are rising rapidly, so death rates will inevitably increase in the coming weeks, although I am sure they will do a far better job of protecting their old and vulnerable this time round. They still have the sixth worst death rate due to the virus of European countries (not counting San Marino), and it is a myth that they had no lockdown. They had similar rules to everyone else, just not imposed by law. Swedes are probably a much more cooperative people than we are. I'm not sure why pandemic deniers like Mr Pain are so convinced the Swedish way would have been so much better for us.
On Fri 16 Oct at 11:18pm Tom Pain wrote:
Marco, I'm talking about TODAY, not overall.
Ferret,they had NO lockdown. There's a big difference between voluntary and forced. A difference you might not recognise but I have a feeling Paine was aware of. It is ALL the difference in the Rights of Man. I get the idea that a totalitarian government like China's would suit you and looking at the future it looks like you'll be the happy bunny. I see you've picked up on the "denier" routine from you're little friend, do I need any more evidence of your complete slave mentality? Brzynzky was right when he said that soon people would rely on the media to do their reasoning for them.
On Fri 16 Oct at 11:44pm Ferret wrote:
When is a lockdown not a lockdown? Rules limiting travel, numbers in pubs and restaurants, restrictions on visits to care homes, social distancing, masks, working from home, quarantine. Which of these measures didn't Sweden adopt? Of course it's true the didn't order a lockdown on the scale that most countries did, but they certainly didn't just carry on as normal. It was the countries that imposed strict lockdowns very quickly that did best.
On Sat 17 Oct at 10:41pm Tom Pain wrote:
Lock down the fit and healthy. Can you guess why that's never been done before? Isolate the vulnerable if they want to. This government despotism has to be nipped in the bud. Power is a big high and very addictive. They're only human (just). Don't forget ~ the virus was downgraded as a contagion on march 19 2020. It's no more dangerous than seasonal flu. You can see the man who invented the PCR test saying it's not made for diagnosis and still you refuse to put two and two together. Oh yes, have you heard of hydrogel? Look it up, you wouldn't believe me, but it's in the vaccine kit. It's pure sci fi, nano bots that can be controlled from outside and be assembled in different combinations like Transformers. I'm not sure if I believe it. Best of luck with the jab that might protect you from a virus that your immune system has a 99.9% chance of protecting you from, and will put a nano terminator robot inside you.
On Sun 18 Oct at 8:13am Green Sleeves wrote:
LOL. Beware of Bill Gates' nanobot vaccines!!
Humanity is doomed. Hopefully though we will be saved by the long awaited return of Godzilla, to defeat our global overlords forcing us to wear masks in shops.
On Sun 18 Oct at 11:05am Ferret wrote:
@Tom Pain It is getting more difficult to humour you, and understand what you are trying to achieve with your paranoid ravings. Just remind yourself that you are pandering to the extreme right wing libertarian faction of the Tory Party, and speaking the language of the arch-capitalist shareholding wealthy when you advocate opposition to the measures being adopted in almost every country in the world to limit the spread of the virus. Trump would love you, no-one else does.
On Sun 18 Oct at 5:29pm Dreamer wrote:
After a needed break I decided yo drop in and check.
Tom has brought one set of data from a primary source, the CDC fatality numbers. Which do clearly show that Covid is over an order of magnitude more lethal than seasonal influenza. Thanks for sharing and finally agreeing.
Other than that he has failed to support any of his outlandish claims with evidence (no, a quote from the PM does not count as a primary source, all the more as it was taken out of context).
Tom has no (obvious) even basic training in molecular biology, (bio)statistics, cell biology, virology, epidemiologogy or any advanced medicine. Which says nothing about his level of expertise in other fields, general intelligence or anything else. It just says something about how outside of his depth he is with some of the claims he is making.
Don't get me wrong: I also didn't train massively in all that. I'm a (cell and neuro) biologist by training with modelling and data analysis background. Which means I have a basic understanding of the concepts at play here and I know how to read scientific publications and data. Beyond that I too rely on the scientific consensus and try to stay on top of it.
If I suspect I have a heart problem, I don't ask a carpenter or phycisist (clever and experts in their field as they may be), I also don't go to a plumber ("it's all just tubes and flow") or even to a gynecologist (a medical expert, after all). No, I go see a cardiologist. And for the same reason we all sometimes need to accept what experts in a given matter have to say. Even if they don't always agree. And just like in a medical diagnosis, if 9 doctors tell me I need bypass surgery and one tells me "it's just indigestion", at least I would trust the 9.
On Sun 18 Oct at 5:33pm Dreamer wrote:
The ONS data are excellent (I know I keep saying this). We just need to remember they are a week delayed. But they line up very well with the Covid Symptom Study (Join Zoe), so the latter gives a good estimate at where we are at right now. So. Around 32k new cases per day. About a quarter of where we were in early April.
On Sun 18 Oct at 8:21pm Tom Pain wrote:
Thanks for the puff piece ferret but you don't need to try and humour me,you're already hilarious. I can just see you in a home made hazmat suit,fulminating against the gammon and the Murdoch press who lie about everything except covid. I couldn't figure out why you're so crazy for the covid doom scenario, but from your post I see~ it's political. All those crocodile tears for the vulnerable, political grandstanding. Are you deluding yourself into thinking Trilateral Starmer could have done anything different?
You're overdosing on the jazz woodbines again pancetta, I know the signs.
I'm very glad you know who to go to for what dreamer, I'm sure it'll do you good. How many tests have you had done this week? Can't be too careful. The propaganda parrot choir put in a good effort today, keep in lockstep lads.
On Sun 18 Oct at 8:23pm Green Sleeves wrote:
I've heard the ONS figures have a few days delay in reporting so we are probably up to that 50k daily infections rate, and it's mid October now as was predicted (it was 27k on 10/10). The testing won't of course capture every infected person either.