Day: 8 August 2020

by Sue Denim A Covid-safe classroom There's a new paper out in the Lancet called "Determining the optimal strategy for re-opening schools" by Panovska-Griffiths et al. It predicts a large wave of infections and deaths if there isn't a big step up in contact tracing and isolation (house arrests) of PCR-positive cases. The model has been getting traction in the media, like in this segment by Sky News: "it's just a model but clearly, that would be disastrous". Unfortunately, people are being misled once again. The modelling conclusions are unsupportable. The papers. There are two papers we'll be looking at. One is the UK specific instantiation of the model looking at school re-openings (henceforth "the schools paper"), and the second describes the Covasim simulation program that was used to calculate the results (henceforth "the Covasim paper"). Both papers come from substantially the same team. The model. The schools paper says the "approach is similar to that in the study by Ferguson and colleagues, which informed the implementation of lockdown measures in the U.K.". Covasim is a simulation structurally quite similar to the COVID-Sim program by Imperial College London we have previously looked at in part one, two and three of this series. It simulates individuals in a population as they pseudo-randomly get sick, infect contacts and sometimes die. Indeed, Covasim is so similar to COVID-Sim that a quick perusal of the ...

Sunseekers Ignore Official Guidance on Britain's Hottest Day of the Year Lifeguards look out over Bournemouth Beach yesterday Seeing pictures like this of the beach in Bournemouth yesterday, it's hard to believe the opinion polls about the extent of public support for continuing lockdown restrictions. Looks to me as though the great British public is aware that the virus has all but disappeared and their chances of catching it outside is virtually zero. The Mail has compiled a handy round-up of comments from paranoid bedwetters. Beaches across the south coast were already packed by mid-morning on Friday, further stoking fears among police and local councils that tourists will ignore coronavirus social distancing rules and cram onto packed seafronts.The scenes could be repeated on Saturday and Sunday, with the scorching weather set to continue.Furious critics took to social media to slam beach-goers and accuse them of 'undoing the hard work of lockdown'.One wrote: 'Here they are again, all the idiots on Brighton beach putting all of us at risk, they just keep on coming.'A second said: 'Government: 'Stay away from beaches today. It's hot, but no amount of heat is surely enough to risk your health and the health of loved ones by breaking social distancing rules, and undoing all the hard work of the last 4 months of lockdown.'While a ...