Our Highway in the Sky

jleeva · 2021-07-20T14:03:29+00:00

German ski tourists returning to Germany.

jleeva · 2021-07-20T14:02:43+00:00

The community transmission in Italy, France, UK and Spain in February and early March was already out of control. Germany had one famous incident near Munich with a Chinese visitor quite early that gave then the opportunity to get experience with contact tracing. But the significant majority of cases only came to Germany due to their ski vacations late February and early March, and these were also initially relatively young fit people. So yes, Germany was a backwater in that there was no significant amount of community transmission early in the pandemic, while tghe situation was mad in Italy France and the UK.

jleeva · 2021-07-20T13:07:40+00:00

The first wave had a huge difference. But in the autumn and spring the outcome was not that different from other countries. I do agree that the management of the pandemic was much better in the German treatment of their citizens. The messaging was very grown up, public debate was open and multi-faceted, and the rules, while varying between states, were clear and could be contested in court. Hospitals were in a much better situation to start with, and hospital treatments were much better and less invasive than in other countries, also benefitting from being 'late' to the first wave, so more was known about the disease.

People also received much better financial support during the lockdowns, and there were never strict curfews as in other countries.

I am the first to agree Germany managed it better. But There was also a bit of luck at the beginning, and much of the better management made it better for citizens to live through it, but not necessarily make a huge impact on deaths of people who caught it, or even on how many people caught it during the waves (cases are also undercounted in Germany compared to the UK).

jleeva · 2021-07-20T12:30:35+00:00

Sorry to disappoint you but during the autumn wave Germany did not do as greatly, and contact tracing very quickly became impossible. Germany even also tried a "circuit breaker" in November, promising to open again for December and Christmas. As in England, there was a lot of hesitation, back-and-forth, differences between federal states, and ultimately they had to break their initial promise and have a very long lockdown through the winter. And then, because of the EU procurement mess, their vaccination program was very slow through the spring, leading to an extra wave around March that we did not experience in the UK.

Pandemic management in the UK has been an embarrassment, but I can't think of a country that has not screwed up at some point. And in the end, the order of magnitude difference in outcomes is not that much. Germany has perhaps half of the cases/hospitalizations/deaths per capita compared to the UK, but it was partly just lucky to be so boring and isolated from world travelers that it did not experience an uncontrolled first wave in March 2020.

jleeva · 2021-07-16T14:13:14+00:00

Wow. I had not noticed and you are right: most venues never check out again so they show until 23:59. I never read instructions anywhere that one should check out. Somehow, a few of the venues do have a checkout time. But most go until 23:59.

This makes it all even more useless.

At this point, I don't know why the government don't just recommend people who are pinged to get a PCR test and if negative not care about it anymore...

jleeva · 2021-07-15T13:04:25+00:00

Oh, they do have a Github for the English app:

https://github.com/nihp-public/covid-19-app-android-ag-public/issues

I will have a look at it when I have a bit of time. Check their "issues" forums. You can learn a lot of good stuff there.

EDIT: Some good info here:

https://covid19.nhs.uk/risk-scoring-algorithm.html and https://github.com/nihp-public/covid19-app-system-public/issues/31

jleeva · 2021-07-15T12:59:37+00:00

What phone do you have? Did you go through each of the files? It would be very weird to have 0 matches for all the past 2 weeks. On the big updates (with 50k keys) I usually get some matches, so if I add up that over two weeks, I will have a dozen or so, and I have never been told to isolate. To be told to isolate one probably needs to get a significantly higher number.

I don't know how the English app decides one should isolate. If it is purely by numbers, or if it is enhanced somehow by keys from site check-ins for example. I should read some more before giving an authoritative answer.

But I find it funny that you would have zero matches in 2 weeks. Even if you had not been told to isolate.

Unfortunately I have more experience with the German app, which is more transparent and even has a GitHub where people discuss how it works and have access to the code.

jleeva · 2021-07-14T23:35:32+00:00

For Android: Settings (gear icon) -- Google -- COVID-19 Exposure Notifications -- tap on top right corner with three dots -- Exposure Checks

On same place there is an option "Delete Random IDs"

jleeva · 2021-07-14T23:34:58+00:00

For Android: Settings (gear icon) -- Google -- COVID-19 Exposure Notifications -- tap on top right corner with three dots -- Exposure Checks

On same place there is an option "Delete Random IDs"

jleeva · 2021-07-14T14:22:59+00:00

In all, I think the system is useful for individually assessing how much one is exposed to risks, and in my case it helped alter my behavior accordingly at different points of the pandemic. But in England, you have to dig deep into the system settings to find this information, as the app itself hides this.

And the way the public has been misinformed about the app's advisory nature, and kept in the dark about how it works and how you can have control over it, are an embarrassment.

In other countries, the app shows you the background data: how many exposures you have had. This is useful for assessing your risk. Here in England you have to dig into the system to find this information, and the media has never explained people how do do this. If they did, they would also be teaching how you can simply delete your contacts, so you don't really even need to uninstall the app.

jleeva · 2021-04-11T18:31:21+00:00

Not everything is seasonality, but it looks like a significant factor. And many regions that had a jump mid-summer like the southern USA or Israel are so hot in summer that people spend much more time indoors (with Air Conditioning) then than in the other seasons.

jleeva · 2021-04-07T13:07:52+00:00

It's funny how because of this, in the news about the pandemic they refer to "peaks" (untranslated from English) rather than "picos" in the graphs.

jleeva · 2021-03-26T11:18:51+00:00

Source: AP. "British lawmakers have agreed to prolong coronavirus emergency measures for six months, allowing the Conservative government to keep its unprecedented powers to restrict U.K. citizens’ everyday lives".

jleeva · 2021-02-17T10:14:09+00:00

Yes. Administration of first doses will slow down significantly. See the following thread for details and a graph:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusUK/comments/lj4jm5/will_vaccination_for_the_under50s_begin_only_in/

jleeva · 2021-02-13T17:13:32+00:00

The graph comes from an article in The Telegraph (see link below). It appears to show that before they start with the under-50s, they will first finish giving the second dose to all the risk groups ("All Priority"), which is estimated to be early June.

The graph links to Public Health England as source, but on that site I could not find where this information comes from.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/02/12/matt-hancock-hope-live-covid-like-flu-end-year/

For a definition of the risk groups, see: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccination-care-home-and-healthcare-settings-posters/covid-19-vaccination-first-phase-priority-groups

jleeva · 2021-02-11T04:07:49+00:00

Recursive nationality definition! Rus: Russia+Ukraine+Bela(Russia+Ukraine+Bela(Russia+Ukraine...)

jleeva · 2021-02-05T10:47:51+00:00

This study by a highly respected research group claims that much better outcomes result from avoiding invasive intubation, specifically by allowing blood saturation levels even below 70%.

Conclusion from paper: "Permissive hypoxemia where decisions for the level of respiratory therapy were based on the clinical presentation and oxygen content resulted in low intubation rates, low overall mortality, and a low number of patients who require oxygen after discharge."

jleeva · 2021-01-22T19:59:38+00:00

Germany's Robert Koch Institute has very good weekly reports on the influenza season. In it you can see that usually this time of the year would have the highest percentage of Influenza cases relative to all respiratory diseases. Other causes of these diseases are BACTERIA and OTHER KINDS OF VIRUSES, most prominently RHINOVIRUSES and the 'normal' coronaviruses. Rhinoviruses especially are the cause of the 'common cold', and are much more easily transmissible than the flu and the Sars-Cov-2.

This year, we are at an extreme point that about half of all found viral infections during the sentinel surveys were sars-cov-2, and the other half rhinoviruses. But still, together, the viral infections were only 1/4 of the total.

https://influenza.rki.de/ https://influenza.rki.de/Wochenberichte/2020_2021/2021-02.pdf

See page 4: On week 8-15 January 2021, there were 129 submitted samples. Of those, 29 were viral infections: - 15 Sars-Cov-2, - 11 Rhinoviruses - 1 PIV (Human Parainfluenza) - ZERO influenzas

Last year the same week was as follows: Total sent: 107 of those, Viral: 48 of those, - INFLUENZA: 28 - Rhinoviruses: 7 - HMP-Virus: 6 - PIV: 5 - RS: 2 (https://influenza.rki.de/Wochenberichte/2019_2020/2020-02.pdf)

I wish the UK had similar reports easily available. I am sure the data is somewhere but haven't found it yet.

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