Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart; According to the BBC, University of York in Britain advised students who are self isolating because of Covid-19 to wait in their rooms for a minute if they hear a fire alarm, to minimise the risk of healthy people being infected as they flee the burning building.
Covid: York self-isolating students told ‘wait behind in fire’
Students self-isolating at the University of York have been told to wait in their room in the event of a fire and let others out first.
The university’s Health and Safety Services told students to wait for a minute before leaving “to allow non-isolating individuals to exit”.
In total 288 staff and students at the university have tested positive for coronavirus.
The university said it had since “updated and changed” its guidance.
However, it has not yet made it clear if the advice to self-isolating students is still applicable.
…
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-54551789
I’m personally deeply concerned about Covid-19, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of this nasty virus. But compared to the risk to life of lingering in a burning building? Seriously University of York, grow a sense of proportion – you shouldn’t have had to be told that this is a stupid idea.
Correction (EW): h/t Melvyn Dacombe, saveenergy Corrected the image – University of York (UK), not York University (CA).
The proper response to the health and safety nutters is in this case, up yours!
Ok wait 60 seconds…….
Now PANIC
Not sure I believe that this is true. But, if it is… not a surprise: “Hey, new policy. If you’re sick, stay and die so someone better than you can live. kthxbye.”
Yeap.
Fire wardens now care more about social distancing then protecting their fellow employees from actual fire and smoke harm.
There was a fire in South Australia in an industrial area last month where an unoccupied building from other site was blowing large clouds of smoke across the fence into a completely different business.
Due to smoke risks the decision was to evacuate the nearest buildings and move the employees to the evacuation areas a greater distance from the source of the smoke.
And then, over the fire warden’s radio network:
“They are not social distancing in the evacuation areas!!!”
So yes, all fire action plans MUST also be COVID Safe. I kid you not.
Those that are self-isolating should certainly have a mask at hand. They should wet it, put it on, and go, even if that doesn’t take a full minute to do. If there’s smoke and super heated air to pass through, they’ve just significantly increased their chances of survival over those without a wet mask, for a few seconds delay. Just pretend it’s a minute.
The administration doesn’t need this enlightenment.
Those that are self-isolating should certainly have a mask at hand. They should wet it, put it on, and go, even if that doesn’t take a full minute to do. If there’s smoke and super heated air to pass through, they’ve just significantly increased their chances of survival over those without a wet mask, for a few seconds delay. Just pretend it’s a minute.
The administration doesn’t need this enlightenment.
Feel free to delete the duplicate.
The authors of this policy are clearly part of the essential intellectual wealth of modern society. When the time comes we should ensure they board Arc 2 along with the telephone sanitizers, beauticians and astrologists as we send off the human race to find a new home. We will need their valuable insights when the rest of us land.
Jump from a window.
Be the first out AND avoid the crowd.
3rd story or higher preferred. Ground floor jumping not allowed, you must first go up the stairs to find an appropriate high window to dive from. Make it Grand.
Have our woke universities reached peak stupidity yet?
Every time I think they have, they prove me wrong, so I’ll go with “no”
I know the phrase “ as daft as a snooze button on a fire alarm” but this is stupider is right up there with Mikey Mann,Greta Thunberg et al
Oh good godfrey – do they want a repeat of 9/11? “It’s ok, stay at your desk”
Abstract
Objectives
When SARS-CoV-2 prevalence is low, many positive test results are false positives. Confirmatory testing reduces overdiagnosis and nosocomial infection and enables real-world estimates of test specificity and positive predictive value. This study estimates these parameters to evaluate the impact of confirmatory testing, and to improve clinical diagnosis, epidemiological estimation and interpretation of vaccine trials.
Methods
Over one month, we took all respiratory samples from our laboratory with a patient’s first detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA (Hologic Aptima SARS-CoV-2 assay or in-house RT-PCR platform), and repeated testing using two platforms. Samples were categorised by source, and by whether clinical details suggested COVID-19 or corroborative testing from another laboratory. We estimated specificity and positive predictive value using maximum likelihood-based approaches.
Results
Of 19,597 samples, SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected in 107. 52 corresponded to first-time detection (0.27% of tests on samples without previous detection); further testing detected SARS-CoV-2 RNA ≥1 time (“confirmed”) in 29 (56%), and failed to detect SARS-CoV-2 RNA (“not confirmed”) in 23 (44%). Depending upon assumed parameters, point estimates for specificity and positive predictive value were 99.91%–99.98% and 61.8%–89.8% respectively using the Hologic Aptima SARS-CoV-2 assay, and 97.4%–99.1% and 20.1%–73.8% respectively using an in-house assay.
Conclusions
Nucleic acid amplification testing for SARS-CoV-2 is highly specific. Nevertheless, when prevalence is low a significant proportion of initially positive results fail to confirm and confirmatory testing substantially reduces false positive detections. Omitting additional testing in samples with higher prior detection probabilities focuses testing where clinically impactful and minimises delay.
https://www.clinicalmicrobiologyandinfection.com/article/S1198-743X(20)30614-5/fulltext
I just can’t shake the feeling that those that advise politicians to take such destructive and counter productive actions have a vested financial or career interests in keeping the fear level high, the media certainly do.
There is a bit of class struggle to this. Corporate types and the subordinates can all work remote, can get paid without loss of income, the media too, have less restrictions and writing also can be done anywhere, academics who don’t need to “go to work” and those well off, actors and so on who only have to suffer very minor inconveniences who are all screaming at the people who need to work to eat, to not do so.
The former refuse to even recognise that they still get paid and refuse to recognise the suffering caused by what they are demanding, calling for more lockdown.
I note the hypocrisy about the protests, any left wing protest is OK and not a super spreader but at least there is the silver lining, these protests are ballooning herd immunity 🙂
If we take the Swedish result of 30% T cell immunity (makes sense given how many people don’t even show symptoms in every other country)prior to the outbreak + the immunity from those surviving the infection itself, there is just no reasonable argument for a vaccine except to those who are most vulnerable.
Helsinker we finally agree on sonething. The partial lock down became worse than the disease after a few months and politicians, especially leftists, never let a crisis “go to waste”.
I can’t tell you how happy some Dumbocrats were when Trump caught COVID … and how disappointed they were when he quickly recovered. I am sponsoring a Congressional bill to deport all US leftists who hate Trump to Finland. They make good pets.
Lets not forget, you were completely wrong with your initial rant. Lets not overlook that. Glad you agree with at least one thing you got arse about face
The Irish government calls bullshit on the “experts” hitting the panic button
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8808043/Irish-government-IGNORES-experts-demands-new-national-lockdown.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailUK
Ireland has 27 cases in ICU and 2 deaths a day rate (it was 2 a day a week ago too) and the “experts” told them “LEVEL 5 LOCKDOWN” which is pretty much economic suicide, 4 or 5 die every day from heart attacks
Trust the experts?
To Mark from Hellstinki:
I don’t mind you calling my comment a rant, but the conclusions were correct. “You were completely wrong ” is just your meaningless generic character attack — a “debate” style typically used by smarmy leftists.
There are many nations with good COVID results that may have done the right things, or maybe just got lucky.
Sweden and the US, especially the US, are not among them.
Meanwhile, the pandemic is still in progress so traditional methods of virus containment are still useful to actually REDUCE the number of infections. Herd immunity just means no more GROWTH of tbe total number of infections, which would be good, but far from a COVID pandemic “victory”.
There are no COVID experts yet, a point I have made repeatedly in my on line comments, especially towards people speculating about specific percentages related to COVID herd immunity.
Perhaps we will find something else to agree on in the future, although that would be a reat disappointment — Al Gore invented the internet mainly for anonymous vicious arguments. Being polite is strictky forbidden.
The goobermint over reaction to COVID is yet another reason why I’ve been a libertarian since 1973. Yet another reason for supporting LESS government and MORE freedom.
I’m not sure why you keep calling out Sweden – it appears to be doing a lot better than many other countries: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/
As for the US, you really can’t take the country as a whole, since every state had its own response. NY and NJ being the worst, three to four times the national rate: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/
Tony G
For deaths per million US and Sweden are not far apart. And I don’t data mine to exclude NY and NJ to make the US look better. Lots of Chinese people flew into NYC (and Italy tool) and NY had wrong policies to protect nursing homes, Sweden too.
It’s not “data mining” to separate the US by state. It’s acknowledging that every state had its own policies on dealing with the virus. With your approach, you might as well just lump all of Euorope together, all of South America, etc.
I am not sure most posters are doing an appropriate Baysean analysis here. I have been out of college for a looong time now, but when I was living in the dorm, I am pretty sure that the ratio of actual fires to fire alarms was substantially lower than the IFR for COVID 19.
The purpose of any drill is to train people how to accomplish a task whether it is a fire or action stations or abandon ship. Practicing otherwise is a waste of time.
If it is not a fire drill criminal charges will be in order for the nonsense of having people wait while the building burns.
A university education is to train people how to live better and be useful. The logic would be understandable if it applied to witches or warlocks. Do I have to say sarc?
My daughter is at York University and because she was a first year student she had to stay in a hall of residence. In the last academic year she and her boyfriend found that they were the only ones left in their rooms, security and cleaning services were withdrawn (though their accommodation fees were not) and the groceries we had bought for them were disposed of by the university a few days later.
We were fortunate, we managed to rent them a small house (for less than the cost of their two rooms) so they were able to look after themselves safely.
The feedback that I get is that universities are far more interested in maintaining rental fees from the students rather than looking to their safety or providing education.
One can only speculate about the decision-making process that went into this. At what point did common sense become short circuited? If only we had a recording where the initial pronouncement was decided on so it could be analyzed.
Has the Babylon Bee done this story yet?
The Babylon Bee now has a website “Not The Bee” for stories that should be satire, but are not.
University of York in Britain advised students who are self isolating because of Covid-19 to wait in their rooms for a minute if they hear a fire alarm, to minimise the risk of healthy people being infected as they flee the burning building.
That reminds me of the tragic incident in Saudi Arabia some years ago when a school caught fire. Some girl pupils were blocked from leaving the building because their clothing did not meet religious requirements for being outside in n the streets. A number of them died in the fire 🔥 .
they have officially jumped the shark with this one. pathetic. criminal.
The problem with “public health” experts is that – unlike doctors and surgeons – you can’t even tell the most awful ones from the decent ones by watching them perform everyday.
It’s more like “being crushed by German army proved our generals were not that great” level of late realization.
I find it impossible to comprehend the level of idiocy we (as a species) have reached in our response to this virus. And we seem to be trying to apply it to everything else as well.
Civilization is weakining humanity to a point we will no longer be able to survive.
Law Suits Law Suits Law Suits Law Suits…Felony Arrest…go ahead make that call..AND LOSE IT ALL