UKH

https://mobile.twitter.com/DHSCgovuk/status/1235207174407802880

This is madness... the best way to generate panic is to hide information. Do the government seriously expect the population to believe providing location information is so difficult, now we have 30+ new cases every day, that it needs a IT solution (as a health minister said on BBC news at 7.40am) or it is so difficult that a weekly consolidation is the best solution. This is either incompetence or an outright lie on a major public health issue. 

This worried me.  You don’t have to look far to find experts saying that openness is the most effective policy with information.

Then again a lot worries me.  Institutions only just starting to work on policy now, as if there hasn’t been 6 weeks advanced notice, for example.

The text for those who won't use Twitter:

"Department of Health and Social Care @DHSCgovuk

As of today, due to the number of new cases, we will no longer be tweeting information on the location of each new case. Instead, this information will be released centrally in a consolidated format online, once a week. We are working on this now and plan to share on Friday.

2:15 pm · 4 Mar 2020·Twitter Web App"

I think they are walking it back: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/mar/05/coronavirus-live-updates...

"UK government to provide updates after 24 hours delay

British health authorities “may have had a communications fumble” when they announced on Wednesday that they would not be providing daily updates on new coronavirus cases, the UK government’s chief medical officer has told MPs.

They are intending in the medium term to provide more detailed updates with what Chris Whitty described as “a proper dashboard” but they would be having a delay of 24 hours to make sure details were correct."

Either that or there is a pattern emerging and they don't want the rest of us to know what it is because they think we'd change our behaviour in a way they don't want if we had the information.

They'd quarantine a regional city in a second but if London gets first it they'll just let it spread to everywhere else because cutting off London would remove power from the people who live there.

The Coronavirus Outbreak

The recent COVID-19 outbreak has stimulated mass fear and mass hysteria across the planet, in spite of the fact that there have only been 93 deaths (at the time of this writing on February 29th, 2020) outside China, with 2835 of the deaths 17 and 99 percent of infections occurring within China. 18

In fact, the highest death rates outside of China have been in places already implementing 5G technology, South Korea and Italy, for example. The exception is Iran, which at present has 978 cases, and 54 deaths, is officially not implementing it, but very well may secretly be trialing it given the reason why

on December 1, 2018, at the request of the US government, Meng Wanzhou — Huawei’s CFO and daughter of its founder — was arrested in Canada on allegations she participated in a conspiracy to defraud banks in connection with Iran sanctions violations, 19

was indeed because Huawei was working to sell their 5G technology to the Iranians. In fact, Iran — in a joint operation between Irancell and Ericsson — had started trialing the technology back in September of 2017. 20 In the article, titled “Irancell, Ericsson Test 5G Systems,” (2017) it is stated that

the technology will be available by 2020 and become globally accessible a year later.
During the event at Irancell headquarters, the company’s CEO Alireza Dezfouli said “We are aiming to keep pace with the international operators. Iran will not be left behind again.”

Furthermore, a number of articles in the media, have stated that Iran has carried out “preparations” and is ready to launch 5G. 21 22 23 Well, preparations usually include trialing. Hence, it is easy to believe that Iran already has the 5G infrastructure set up and they have been secretly trialing it.

Belgium, on the other hand, — which had decided not to even trial 5G, let alone implement it, due to radiation concerns 24 — has had only one case so far of the coronavirus (recovered) and no deaths.

In fact, for the majority, the symptoms of patients outside of China, (especially with those away from the 5G), for the most part, have seemingly been relatively mild, as one would most likely see with a regular cold or flu virus, and with many of those infected not showing any symptoms at all.

Wow, that is one crazy post/cut and paste. Manages to unite a few conspiracies in one go, pretty impressive. Shame that there is no mention of the faked moon landings though.

I really think you need to have a lie down. This is getting very silly.  

Please go and talk to your GP about your 5G concerns Paul.

jk

I'd suggest calming down.  Not Tweeting the location of every case seems reasonable to me once there are tens or more a day.  Similarly presenting the information in another form online makes perfect sense in this case.

What would you do with the information? Why is it important to anyone not directly connected to each case? It takes a few days for the virus to incubate surely weekly updates give a better picture. 
 

Aren’t we suffering from information overload already with armchair experts on Twitter all chiming in to the mass confusion and spreading of mis-information?

Some data on the WHO visit to China.  I think in comparison we are woefully underprepared so I expect a worse outcome if numbers continue to grow here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/comments/fbt49e/the_who_sent_25_internat...

This includes 5% who needed respirators and 15% more needing days on oxygen to recover.

My expectations on how the UK population will react in the face of inevitable fear if this becomes major are much less optimistic than those being pedalled on the news so far. My fingers are multiple crossed for mutation or seasonal influence.

Maybe too much info could be too revealing?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51733145

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/2/21161067/coronavirus-covid19-china

From the WHO expert

"Your population is your surveillance system. Everybody has got a smartphone, everybody can get a thermometer. That is your surveillance system. Don’t rely on this hitting your health system, because then it’s going to infect it. You’ve got this great surveillance system out there — make sure the surveillance system is primed. Make sure you’re ready to act on the signals that come in from that surveillance system. You’ve got to be set up to rapidly assess whether or not they really have those symptoms, test those people, and, if necessary, isolate and trace their contacts.

Here, again, is where I’ve seen things starting to break down. What I’ve been told is if you think you’ve been exposed and have a fever, call your [general practitioner]. We’ve got to be better than that. If we are going to use our GPs — do they have an emergency line where you can get through? Do they know what to do?

In China, they have set up a giant network of fever hospitals. In some areas, a team can go to you and swab you and have an answer for you in four to seven hours. But you’ve got to be set up — speed is everything.

So make sure your people know [about the virus]. Make sure you have mechanisms for working with them very quickly through your health system. Then enough public health infrastructure to investigate cases, identify the close contacts, and then make sure they remain under surveillance. That’s 90 percent of the Chinese response."

"Think about the virus. Where is the virus, and how do you contain the virus? You know the virus is in the cases and in the close contacts. That’s where the majority of the virus is; that’s where the majority of the focus should be. China did a whole bunch of things, and other countries may have to do them, too, as they go forward. But the key is public information and having an informed population, finding those cases, rapidly isolating them. The faster you isolate them is what breaks the chains. Making sure close contacts are quarantined and monitored until you know if they’re infected. Somewhere between 5 and 15 percent of those contacts are infected. And again, it’s the close contacts, not everyone."

"China took a whole bunch of steps when they realized they had to repurpose big chunks of their hospital systems to [respond to the outbreak]. The first thing is, they said testing is free, treatment is free. Right now, there are huge barriers [to testing and treatment] in the West. You can get tested, but then you might be negative and have to foot the bill. In China, they realized those were barriers to people seeking care, so, as a state, they took over the payments for people whose insurance plans didn’t cover them. They tried to mitigate those barriers."

The issue isn't the medium of presentation it's the rate and quality of information. The DHSC  proposed weekly updates in that tweet and have seemingly backtracked within hours on that decision. If you read the expert reports I've linked it's important to know what to look for and to identify areas where risks are higher as speed of and quality of response are crucial.

I'd suggest the WHO itself is the best place to gain information

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019

Fine.  But I don't see how Tweeting hundreds of cases will be very helpful.  A Tweeted summary maybe, as might a more accessible way of presenting detailed data online.   

The bit being challenged was the "once a week" as opposed to tweeting individually (which does make less sense as numbers increase).

The data I Ilinked was published on the report from the  WHO investigation in China and the interview was from a WHO expert involved in that. Try and find them quickly on the WHO site (like many official sites, navigation and search is less than ideal).

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/italys-response-to-corona...

This. Why create a pointless twitter storm of information thats pretty much useless, other than causing panic as its retweeted and shared and re-shared ad infinitum across social media?

It is pure insanity, the undeniable truth is of the spread of Covid19 is the rise of the Lizard people's underground power network. They don't care about us because their genes make them Covid19 resistant. They tried eliminating us back in 9/11 by trying to start a global war, but Bush moved too fast and didn't find the WMD which the Lizard people were supposed to have planted there, this collapsed support for an extended war. They completely control North Korea and it is why NK is so desperate to make Nukes, if Covid19 doesn't bring the collapse of humanity the Lizard people's control over NK and their Nukes surely will. 

So they're stopping crowing it from the rooftops?

stop raven about it

I agree, but the original tweet suggested a weekly dissemination of location information which is arguably far to infrequent.  A daily update seems reasonable given the apparent exponential growth, and I'd far rather see it on a .gov.uk page than going through Twitter.  This use of Twitter to communicate basically anything but cat pictures brings out my inner grump.

There is one critical piece of information that isn't clearly presented at the moment which I would like to see - the number of existing and daily new cases in the UK for non-travellers where the source is unknown.  To me, this is the key number that indicates when all hell is about to break loose, and is also the context for why the 30% day-over-day increase rate in the UK is not yet reason to really panic...

Apologies... autocorrect and bad eyesight were the caws.

You have to dig in to it but quite a lot of detailed information here, particularly in the source comments.  WHO Situation Reports also good for showing growth rates by region (not exponential in Europe....yet).

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Well, they’re probably well choughed 

They are scared that if they give out detailed geographic information people will run away from the hotspots.

I've been digesting the WHO Situation Reports and the Worldometer for the last three weeks.  The WHO were doing a useful graph of a breakdown of the non-Chinese cases by the source of infection (china/local/undetermined) in the reports but they've recently dropped that.  

"They" really are a terrible lot aren't they!?  Doubtless if "they" were Scots there would never be a foot put wrong and we'd have had a vaccine by last Tuesday.

Would you humour me and tell which other theories (which could fall under the conspiracy banner) you believe in?  Just to help us paint a picture.

eg

Chemtrails

Hollow moon

Faked moon landings

Flat earth

Paul Mccartney being dead

...

etc

I can't see how this would practically happen on a scale large enough to cause an issue.

Potentially someone's picked up that South Korea have been criticised about their coverage not realising that South Korea have been naming people, posting pictures, listing which pay by the hour hotel they've been to...

Did you see the BBC story last week on cases where flight crews completely tripped out - running around with towels on their heads shoving crisps through their oxygen masks and passing out on the controls etc?

It turns out they put nerve agents - organophosphates - into the engine oil and it sometimes gets into the engine bleed air used to pressurise the cabin with some undesirable results.

So, much like a broken clock, the chemtrail people may occasionally be right...

Trump and Boris's crowd are a horrible lot. 

As for vaccines, there was a professor testified in congress yesterday that his centre had a vaccine for corona virus developed in 2016 but the program got cancelled before clinical trials due to lack of interest in funding it.  Trump fired the CDC team responsible for global cooperation and cut CDC budget 20%.

Boris is already saying Coronavirus won't be delaying Brexit and talking about 'taking it on the chin' and just letting folk get infected to get it over with.

The reason the hospitals have no excess capacity is Tory austerity.

I think the Scots would do a better job in this kind of crisis making decisions in Edinburgh with support and advice from EU institutions than will be the outcome with London running the show.  

They had a vaccine for the corona virus 19 before it emerged? So a universal vaccine for all corona viruses? Tell me more about this please.

They had a vaccine for *a* coronavirus.  They started to develop it in response to SARS and by the time it was ready nobody wanted to fund it.   People like Trump don't have the brains to think 'OK, maybe SARS is over but we got lucky and it wouldn't be a bad idea to keep going with a vaccine for this class of virus just in case.'  If he'd been funded, we'd have been a lot further forward and, if we had been lucky maybe the SARS vaccine would have given cross-protection against this virus.

"Dr Hotez said the vaccine his team created in response to SARS may provide patients with cross-protection from the new strain of coronavirus."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus-vaccine-cure-...

I thought the organophosphates contaminating cabin air was an old story, maybe even 5-10 or more years ago it was incorporated into one of those R4 evening programmes about OPs generally - might have been "Costing The Earth"?  Certainly from a time before R4 was taken over by the mad and deficient.

on the subject of the BBC you might find "Now The Chips are Down" interesting, now available to watch- Horizon from the late 80s introducing us to the ideas of microprocessors and their social implications.   It put the government of the time into such panic they started various microelectronics education initiatives like MEP and MFA and eventually the computer literacy project from the BBC

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01z4rrj/horizon-19771978-now-the-chi...

The programme dates from 1978 (I realise that was probably just a typo on your part).  The BBC computer literacy project started in 1980.  I made a living for couple of years up until late 1984 programming modified BBC micros to display financial market information.  What fun we used to have.

You can see all the programmes from the BBC computer literacy project here: https://clp.bbcrewind.co.uk

I missed it back then but it’s back in the news - https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/stories-51633897

I’ll check out the Horizon.  I never did like the BBC and it’s 6502, always preferred the Z80 and it’s separate IO space,

Bit of a thread derail, but you are right - a friend of mine has died due to this. However there's not enough evidence ... no surprises there.

yes, it was supposed to be 70s!  Very early the following year, 1979, I encountered the Apple II and my world changed.

yes, I've come to regard the 6502 as an "if only it had .." chip.  A bit of an 8 bit sportscar to program but you drive it in a strait-jacket on A class roads.

I did z80 cp/m programming in the oil industry, but only using the 8080 subset and was quite amazed by the versatility of that old instruction set after the 6502, a sedate limousine but capable of going anywhere quite easily.