Corona Virus

[Dahnsouff]

People need to remember that what may work for one country just would not be possible in the UK.

If the PM said stay in doors for 4 weeks leaving only to get food, there would be pandemonium, if he does not say that others will moan.

Our liberal, hippy, sense of entitlement is wonderful, but it prevents more draconian measures except in more last gasp scenarios.

 

[yorkie1999]

14 minutes ago, adam1 said:

They have had time to prepare and yet they havent.

 

Last night - will last 12 weeks.

 

This morning - SAGE: will last a year.

 

They have the right information, and refuse to disclose it so that they can come out with their spaff.

What if the right information is.. there’s an airborne virus  going round that kills 50% of the people that catch it and it doesn’t matter how old you are , you just delay the inevitable if your younger because your immune systems a bit stronger.

Kind of like if there was an asteroid heading towards the planet and it’s going to blow the whole world up, it’s  not the sort of information the government really wants to announce is it. 
 

 That’s not true by the way, just a reason why the government wouldn’t tell us everything we didn’t need to know.

Edited 20 March 2020 by yorkie1999

[nnfox]

2 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

What if the right information is.. there’s an airborne virus  going round that kills 50% of the people that catch it and it doesn’t matter how old you are , you just delay the inevitable if your younger because your immune systems a bit stronger.

Kind of like if there was an asteroid heading towards the planet and it’s going to blow the whole world up, it’s  not the sort of information the government really wants to announce is it. 

But at the same time if the virus had a 50% mortality rate and it was normally healthy people in their 20's dropping dead, I suspect the government's response would look very, very different.

[Sol thewall Bamba]

15 minutes ago, deejdeej said:

Excuse my ignorance here, but can anyone explain what Korea and Japan have done to stem the spreading of the virus so well? 

People there do as they're told. 

[adam1]

4 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

What if the right information is.. there’s an airborne virus  going round that kills 50% of the people that catch it and it doesn’t matter how old you are , you just delay the inevitable if your younger because your immune systems a bit stronger.

Kind of like if there was an asteroid heading towards the planet and it’s going to blow the whole world up, it’s  not the sort of information the government really wants to announce is it. 
 

 That’s not true by the way, just a reason why the government wouldn’t tell us everything we didn’t need to know.

But it is announced next morning. Not like its released in 6 months time.

[Wymsey]

Noticed a child in a crowded supermarket coughing like anything without covering their mouth.

Really felt like saying something to the Mother..

Edited 20 March 2020 by Wymsey

[Lionator]

21 minutes ago, deejdeej said:

Excuse my ignorance here, but can anyone explain what Korea and Japan have done to stem the spreading of the virus so well? 

Japan - Lying so that the Olympics don't get cancelled and they'll owe a billion pound compo to the IOC and sponsors.

 

South Korea - Extensive testing and quarantining of anyone who may have come into contact with a person with the virus. Test results come back immediately, the person goes into quarantine before they're symptomatic and can infect other people. They also have a government run app which uses GPS data to inform you if you've been close to an infected person. If you have, then you quarantine for two weeks, simple. They're also a compliant society, they have kept their levels low due to everybody taking this seriously from day one. They've also done most of this without any sort of lockdown or social distancing, the only social distancing they did was after a large outbreak in Daegu where they locked down the area until they traced every single person they could find with the virus. 

Edited 20 March 2020 by Lionator

[Leicester_Loyal]

Just now, Lionator said:

Japan - Lying so that the Olympics don't get cancelled and they'll owe a billion pound compo to the IOC and sponsors.

 

South Korea - Extensive testing and quarantining of anyone who may have come into contact with a person with the virus. Test results come back immediately, the person goes into quarantine before they're symptomatic and can infect other people. They also have a government run app which uses GPS data to inform you if you've been close to an infected person. If you have, then you quarantine for two weeks, simple. They're also a compliant society, they have kept their levels low due to everybody taking this seriously from day one.  

Lets go down the South Korea route if possible, if it works it's worth a try, otherwise people aren't going to self isolate or social distance themselvs from others.

[brucey]

It’s started. 

[filbertway]

I don't see how restrictions and social distancing can last more than a month or two. How does our country and others not just collapse?

 

The sooner we have information on how younger/healthy people react after having the virus is massive surely?

 

If you get it once then recover and can't get it again and therefore can't pass it on to others, surely the best thing to do then would be to catch it, recover and develop immunity? Obviously if you are high risk then you don't go out, same as if you live with someone that is high risk.

 

I must be missing something though as that idea seems to be met with a lot of negativity. Educate me.

[Lionator]

1 minute ago, Leicester_Loyal said:

Lets go down the South Korea route if possible, if it works it's worth a try, otherwise people aren't going to self isolate or social distance themselvs from others.

We are now. The commitment to increase testing and the openness to the development of an app indicates this (Oxford Uni are supporting this). However, this will be incredibly difficult given the fact that we've let it get to the stage we have. It's rife in our communities. 

 

For a bit of context, we're testing 5,000 people per day. Germany are testing 25,000 people per day. We have 4,000 (with the possibility of increasing to 12,000) ICU beds. Germany have 28,000. We currently have a mortality rate of 5.5%, Germany has a mortality rate of 0.3%. It isn't a coincidence, testing is the key. While we were farting around with our Big Ben Brexit chimes in January, the Germans were preparing for this. If you test lots of people then you get the true scale of the issue (the German mortality rate is closer to the overall one, because they're finding all of the mild cases and a lot of the symptom less cases). You can quarantine contacts confidently if you know who's had the virus and who hasn't. I suspect we'll be hearing much more about the 'German response' in the next few weeks when faeces hits the fan here, and it doesn't in Germany.  

[brucey]

4 minutes ago, Leicester_Loyal said:

Lets go down the South Korea route if possible, if it works it's worth a try, otherwise people aren't going to self isolate or social distance themselvs from others.

Everyone will comply with a shutdown for however long it takes, once London has turned into Lombardy and they see the chaos and deaths. But it will come too late for thousands.

[MattFox]

Topshop have sacked all their staff apparently.

 

Been an absolute bloodbath in retail/hospitality this week.

 

[Lionator]

4 minutes ago, filbertway said:

I don't see how restrictions and social distancing can last more than a month or two. How does our country and others not just collapse?

 

The sooner we have information on how younger/healthy people react after having the virus is massive surely?

 

If you get it once then recover and can't get it again and therefore can't pass it on to others, surely the best thing to do then would be to catch it, recover and develop immunity? Obviously if you are high risk then you don't go out, same as if you live with someone that is high risk.

 

I must be missing something though as that idea seems to be met with a lot of negativity. Educate me.

This is basically the herd immunity approach. The issue with this is that there's a lot of excessive deaths, even of young people once the system is overwhelmed. 

 

The key will be serology tests, which tell you how many people have actually had the disease without knowing. It would be positive if there's high numbers of asymptomatic cases, although this would also mean that people are spreading it without knowing. 

[nnfox]

1 minute ago, Lionator said:

We are now. The commitment to increase testing and the openness to the development of an app indicates this (Oxford Uni are supporting this). However, this will be incredibly difficult given the fact that we've let it get to the stage we have. It's rife in our communities. 

 

For a bit of context, we're testing 5,000 people per day. Germany are testing 25,000 people per day. We have 4,000 (with the possibility of increasing to 12,000) ICU beds. Germany have 28,000. We currently have a mortality rate of 5.5%, Germany has a mortality rate of 0.3%. It isn't a coincidence, testing is the key. While we were farting around with our Big Ben Brexit chimes in January, the Germans were preparing for this. If you test lots of people then you get the true scale of the issue (the German mortality rate is closer to the overall one, because they're finding all of the mild cases and a lot of the symptom less cases). You can quarantine contacts confidently if you know who's had the virus and who hasn't. I suspect we'll be hearing much more about the 'German response' in the next few weeks when faeces hits the fan here, and it doesn't in Germany.  

It's a lot lower than that. 

[BKLFox]

51 minutes ago, adam1 said:

The Gov has been v v poor in handling all of this.

 

They knew months ago that it was spreading and yet have taken little action:

 

1) have not ordered more ventilators. Still.

2) protective clothing for NHS staff

3) testing kits - as the WHO say, test, test, test.

 

 

On top if this it is very poor leadership. No clear messages, no action being taken (see above), and what action they have taken (to save businesses) does not go far enough and will not work in the majority of cases.

 

It is literally as follows, common sense being ignored for a make do attitude. This is deadly.

 

 

 

In addition to the above I have noticed a pattern across social media. Brexit supporting accounts support and the govs approach yet say we are over acting. Remain accounts v critical and are saying more action is required....

 

 

I take it you haven't tuned into the daily brief then?

[Lionator]

Just now, nnfox said:

It's a lot lower than that. 

184 deaths for 3269 cases according to Worldometer https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

 

Of course most of our cases are severe. Isn't the real estimate about 10-20x higher than the actual number? Which would make our realistic mortality rate about 0.5% (which is reflective of the Diamond Princess, aka the most accurate data we have so far). 

[Xen]

29 minutes ago, nnfox said:

But that's the thing isn't it.  He didn't say it would be over and done with in 12 weeks he said about the tide turning.  To me that means just past the peak, not gone away.

Exactly.

 

Think of it as a big hill you have to walk up and over. It's going to get steeper and tougher at first until you're about 2/3rds up, then the gradient will start to lessen (although you're still going up). This is the 'tide turning' point when the growth of the pandemic starts to slow. You've then got the last 3rd to get to the peak, then the same length of time again for everything to come back down to ground level. That'd be 12*3=36weeks. 24 weeks if you want to consider the 'tide turning' point as the absolute peak instead. Both of which we'll need to keep up social distancing and higher levels of hygiene/care for the duration of, plus extra at the end as a buffer. That gets us up to the half/three-quarter year range, at least, before things start to seem somewhat normal again.

 

And thats all assuming the growth and decay of the virus will follow a normal-ish-distribution, which is far from a given.

 

The two statements can and do make sense in tandem - but a lot of people will take them at face value and think either Boris is lying and incompetent, or these other authorities are overstating the impact.

 

I'm not a fan of Boris at all and I do think there's a lot of room for improvement in the government's handling of this, but he's absolutely on to a no-win scenario here and whatever he says is going to get criticised from all different directions for all different reasons. I don't envy his job one bit.

[The Fox Covert]

Donald Trump was lambasted last week for labelling Coronavirus the 'chinese disease'.

His motivation for his statement was racist bigotry, ignorance and general lack of intelligence.

But this crisis should be a serious wake-up call for the Chinese regime.

SARS is another variant of coronavirus and started in China. It is believed to have originated in a 'wet market' where live animals kept in appalling conditions are sold for food. The Chinese authorities reacted by closing down wet markets.

Covid-19 is believed to have originated in a wet market in Wuhan, where a virus which was previously only found in pangolins migrated to humans. Once again the Chinese closed down the wet markets.

In the late 80s there was the terrible disaster at Chernobyl. A cataclysmic event like this was always most likely to happen in the Soviet Union because the regime protected itself with a cloak of secrecy and lies, and allowed malpractice to flourish unpunished, as long as people toed the official government line.

Three years later the Soviet regime collapsed and the Berlin wall fell.

I confidently predict that the current crisis will have political consequences across the world and quite likely its effect will be most felt by governments which don't respond effectively and decisively.

Most likely in China but probably also in North Korea and the USA.

 

 

 

[brucey]

1 hour ago, nnfox said:

It's a lot lower than that. 

It's about 1% or less with optimal medical care, (which is the figure the government are working off); but 3-5%+ in overwhelmed medical systems (Hubei, Italy, London in 2 weeks) 

 

Edited 20 March 2020 by brucey

[nnfox]

5 minutes ago, Lionator said:

184 deaths for 3269 cases according to Worldometer https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

 

Of course most of our cases are severe. Isn't the real estimate about 10-20x higher than the actual number? Which would make our realistic mortality rate about 0.5% (which is reflective of the Diamond Princess, aka the most accurate data we have so far). 

It isn't fair to describe the deaths to confirmed cases ratio as "mortality rate".

 

From the same website, you'll see that yesterday was Germany's 11th day after their first death. As of yesterday they had recorded 44 deaths in total.  At the same spot on our timeline, our deaths were at 55.

 

I agree that Germany's method appears from that tiny dataset to be performing better, but the actual mortality rate, i.e. the total deaths by population, won't be anywhere near 5% different.  

[lildave3]

Did our usual Costco trip today and they have plenty of everything in stock. Only issue is the toilet rolls are being sold in packs of 48 only and kitchen rolls in packs of 8 - felt like a right c bomb coming out with that much but literally no other choice since we have ran out 😂 

[Lionator]

1 minute ago, nnfox said:

It isn't fair to describe the deaths to confirmed cases ratio as "mortality rate".

 

From the same website, you'll see that yesterday was Germany's 11th day after their first death. As of yesterday they had recorded 44 deaths in total.  At the same spot on our timeline, our deaths were at 55.

 

I agree that Germany's method appears from that tiny dataset to be performing better, but the actual mortality rate, i.e. the total deaths by population, won't be anywhere near 5% different.  

I agree with that last bit. It'll end up being 1% or less. There's some interesting research out which indicates it might not actually be that much higher than the flu.

 

The difference in figures is because of the testing numbers, Germany can be more confident of the actual cases than we can within their population, because they're picking up the mild cases. That has all kinds of impact on future measures and how it'll effect the economy.  

[adam1]

30 minutes ago, BKLFox said:

I take it you haven't tuned into the daily brief then?

I have....

 

[String fellow]

So the closure of pubs etc. is going to happen tonight.