Corona Virus

[reynard]

2 hours ago, Sampson said:

Nothing to do with a Spanish beach holiday.

 

Many people have families and friends in other countries they are desperate to go and visit when all this is over.

 

If it's a low risk country and you're staying inside with friends/family most of the time it shouldn't be too much of an issue once you're actually there.

 

The issue is more the social distancing at airports on on planes. It's definitely doable if aeroplanes use empty seats and passport control has the same queueing methods as supermarkets and hand sanitizer is available throughout the airport. Things like checked luggage might be a no go, but I could easily see international travel back up to the rest of the EU, Norway, Switzerland and Iceland starting to get back up and running by the end of the summer/early autumn. Eurostar and ferries might be even more doable - so long as people don't get out their cars when on board.

Obviously there are a lot more reasosn to travel as you say. The question is though what is a safe country? Add to that would a safe country want people travelling to it from an unsafe country? As for air travel you would essentially be asking airlines to fly each plane at a loss if you restricted travellers to staying 2 metres apart or charging very high prices.Ferry operartors are very strict about travellers not staying in their cars, at least every time I've used one. I can't see them relaxing that.

I hope you are right and that travel is back up and running in some way by early autumn.

[reynard]

3 hours ago, Alf Bentley said:

 

On Newsnight last night, both Andy Burnham (Labour, Manchester Mayor) and Andy Street (Tory, West Midlands Mayor) opposed the idea of restrictions being lifted in some areas ahead of others.

 

As Burnham said, he just couldn't see the Manchester public accepting a situation where they saw, say, pubs in London opening, but pubs in Manchester staying shut.

 

As you say, there might be more potential to try it out with less populated regions, like the Scottish Highlands. But that might require controls on cross-country travel, as you suggest - and I'm not sure how practical that would be (police on key roads north of the Scottish central belt, stopping all traffic to check whether people lived in the Highlands or had a bona fide reason for going there?). There were a lot of complaints a few weeks back about English people heading to the north of Scotland with caravans to escape coronavirus down South - and similar in Devon/Cornwall this weekend.

 

In a few weeks, relaxing restrictions based on age, health vulnerability and/or nature of establishments might be more feasible: e.g. asking the elderly and vulnerable to stay at home, but allowing others to return to work and allowing more shops and restaurants to open up, with social distancing measures - but not pubs, cinemas or theatres (or football ?) where it's harder to avoid large concentrations of people who don't know one another in close proximity? 

 

Re. Spanish beaches: I was thinking about this already, as I was hoping to go wandering around Europe this summer. I wouldn't want to go on a beach holiday as that's not my thing, but if the infection rate had subsided to a low level, I suspect that I would still like to go wandering around the continent - just taking a few precautions and accepting the slight risk. Even beach holidays might be viable as inevitably, there'd be a lot fewer people so maybe social distancing would be feasible?

All good points.

I think a lot of people will be looking at Austria. Whilst a small country it is at least one where we should be able to have more faith in the figures for the virus. They are starting a graduated lift in a couple of days. Hopefully it will work and we will be able to draw some lessons from it.

Agree on these. the RSC in Stratford has now closed one of its theatres until the end of September. The trouble with all big sporting events is not only the event itself but also the travelling to get there. Surely we couldn't allow thousands of away fans to travel all over the country until things are far more under control.

 

Still seems obvious that the key will be mass testing and the question remains how fast our government can get there?

[Lionator]

If we had a 'league table' of testing then it can explain why and how some countries are having more success than others. 

 

Those in the top half will be able to resume societal functioning a lot faster than those in the bottom half. Testing is vital both scientifically and economically.

 

Per thousand per day

Iceland 95.05

Norway 22.21

Switzerland 20.59

Germany 15.97

Italy 14.43

Austria 14.38

Australia 13

New Zealand 11.52

Denmark 10.73

Canada 9.98

South Korea 9.6

Ireland 8.69

USA 7.12

Sweden 5.4

UK 3.62

France 3.41

South Africa 1.09

India 0.02

 

 

 

 

[StanSP]

Just now, Lionator said:

If we had a 'league table' of testing then it can explain why and how some countries are having more success than others. 

 

Those in the top half will be able to resume societal functioning a lot faster than those in the bottom half. Testing is vital both scientifically and economically.

 

Per thousand per day

Iceland 95.05

Norway 22.21

Switzerland 20.59

Germany 15.97

Italy 14.43

Austria 14.38

Australia 13

New Zealand 11.52

Denmark 10.73

Canada 9.98

South Korea 9.6

Ireland 8.69

USA 7.12

Sweden 5.4

UK 3.62

France 3.41

South Africa 1.09

India 0.02

 

 

 

 

By that reckoning we're 93,000 away from 100k by the end of April.

 

20 days to get there. I somehow doubt that will happen. I'd love to know on what scale and calculations the government worked out we could get to such high testing figures by the end of the month. We hadn't reached initial targets of 10k/day let alone 25k/day by the time the next obscene target came out.

[Lionator]

1 minute ago, StanSP said:

By that reckoning we're 93,000 away from 100k by the end of April.

 

20 days to get there. I somehow doubt that will happen. I'd love to know on what scale and calculations the government worked out we could get to such high testing figures by the end of the month. We hadn't reached initial targets of 10k/day let alone 25k/day by the time the next obscene target came out.

They were already backtracking within a day or two of that. It went to 'that is our aim'. They know they wont be able to. Just set realistic targets and be honest with the public, the majority don't care. 

[StanSP]

866 death toll for England today.

 

10 for NI.

 

29 for Wales.

 

48 for Scotland.

[StanSP]

 

 

[Innovindil]

40 minutes ago, stix said:

What is it you do? Sounds like Engineering of sorts. I’m a Toolmaker and my firm is business as usual. Claiming they’re part of a supply chain that’s essential for RR. No chance they’ll furlough us. 
 

Just as an aside, having been furloughed for three weeks now, are you not climbing the walls. I booked the two weeks off after boris’ lockdown announcement on that Monday night, and to be honest I was gagging to get back to work, just for the social(distancing) really. 

Absolutely correct on both counts. Made a couple a of posts throughout the weeks saying I'm struggling sitting idle. Not built for it at all. Reckon I've decided to get back to it, my boss is a hardass but he's fair enough, if things don't feel right in any way I'm sure he'd understand if I wanted to bail.

[yorkie1999]

40 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Don't worry about it! The points here are salient.

 

Personally I'm not looking to criticise the UK government for their response, but pointing out that the Korean response has been, so far in terms of results, better than the vast majority of other places in the world.

 

NB. Incheon Airport is almost as big a "hub" for onward travel as Heathrow is.

They have been in a situation of being prepared for it, both from the threat of North Korea and from the sars epidemic. Still a shit hole of a country though.

[st albans fox]

19 minutes ago, StanSP said:

866 death toll for England today.

 

10 for NI.

 

29 for Wales.

 

48 for Scotland.

As was commented yesterday, these numbers are revealed as being a total of new deaths recorded over the past couple weeks ...... which makes comparisons from day to day pretty worthless and means that a graphical representation of total/days since the first death is of any analytical value .... you would expect the govt to have more detailed/up to date figures to work from or decisions about ending this will be based on historical data rather than current ........

[leicsmac]

12 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

They have been in a situation of being prepared for it, both from the threat of North Korea and from the sars epidemic. Still a shit hole of a country though.

I'd be interested in the reasoning behind this sentence.

[StanSP]

 

If this is legit and possible to be done, then brilliant. 

[st albans fox]

Apparently 91 people in s korea have tested positive having previously tested positive some time ago.  this raises a lot of questions ....... one theory being that previous positive tests were incorrect ..... I find that a struggle to believe across 91 people unless they were all asymptomatic...

[String fellow]

Could the deaths total in England be approximated by using the figures from the other 3 home nations, and basing the calculation on the overall populations of each country? 

[Innovindil]

17 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

Apparently 91 people in s korea have tested positive having previously tested positive some time ago.  this raises a lot of questions ....... one theory being that previous positive tests were incorrect ..... I find that a struggle to believe across 91 people unless they were all asymptomatic...

Doesn't raise that many questions. You can have the virus, test positive without showing any symptoms and catch it again. This has been known for some time now surely? Some people will have got infected with such a low dose the first time their bodies wouldn't have built up an immunity, some people's bodies won't be able to build up an immunity, or they may have encountered a mutated strain of it.

 

Hardly shocking or mind boggling surely.

[Guest Kopfkino]

47 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

I'd be interested in the reasoning behind this sentence.

Cos it's foreign innit

[leicsmac]

3 minutes ago, Kopfkino said:

Cos it's foreign innit

Or East Asian at least, so exactly like those Chinese devils that eat everything that flies, walks or crawls in the mud. Not like civilised places.

[rachhere]

47 minutes ago, StanSP said:

 

If this is legit and possible to be done, then brilliant. 

Just see a tweet from my work place (a university) saying we are going to be running 10000 tests per day! So sounds like it could be legit. 
 

the technique they will use will only take 5 hours to get the result as well. 

[Crinklyfox]

59 minutes ago, StanSP said:

 

If this is legit and possible to be done, then brilliant. 

If we seriously want to get the death toll down this should be extended to staff working in care homes asap.

[Blue ROI]

Ireland lockdown extended by 3 weeks. Would have been 2 but the May Bank Holiday could not be ignored. Had to be done really.

[st albans fox]

1 hour ago, Innovindil said:

Doesn't raise that many questions. You can have the virus, test positive without showing any symptoms and catch it again. This has been known for some time now surely? Some people will have got infected with such a low dose the first time their bodies wouldn't have built up an immunity, some people's bodies won't be able to build up an immunity, or they may have encountered a mutated strain of it.

 

Hardly shocking or mind boggling surely.

Well it’s certainly a problem moving forward re antibody testing and relaxation of the social distancing on the basis of that testing  ....... previous examples of re infection were not overly common and seemed to raise questions as to whether they had actually ever not been positive since initially tested.  These 91 - depends how far  and wide they are spread and over what timescale ........ 

[l444ry]

Today Britain's daily death toll has exceeded the worst day in Spain, and is 18 short of Italy's. BBC News is leading with a story about good weather creating risks the public will break the lockdown this Sunday. Failing that it's full of crap about Johnson. Newspapers are no better. The Establishment certainly know how to massage the nation's masses.

 

 

[Sampson]

14 minutes ago, l444ry said:

Today Britain's daily death toll has exceeded the worst day in Spain, and is 18 short of Italy's. BBC News is leading with a story about good weather creating risks the public will break the lockdown this Sunday. Failing that it's full of crap about Johnson. Newspapers are no better. The Establishment certainly know how to massage the nation's masses.

 

 

**** me. Have a day off with this edgy conspiracy "establishment" shit. The death statistic is inaccurate as it is and we already know how bad it is - and these death numbers are mostly people who caught the virus a month ago, not anything we can do about the daily death figures now. Bashing people over the head with death numbers that were already baking their cake weeks agp everyday is not of much use.

People breaking quarantine and warning people police have greater powers so don't go out for bank holiday absolutely should be the biggest piece of news and biggest warning for this individual day - this will directly affect deaths weeks down the line and that's what it's important to get hold of right now.

[davieG]

Yes but.......

 

 

 

[z-layrex]

1 hour ago, st albans fox said:

Apparently 91 people in s korea have tested positive having previously tested positive some time ago.  this raises a lot of questions ....... one theory being that previous positive tests were incorrect ..... I find that a struggle to believe across 91 people unless they were all asymptomatic...

One of my colleagues is off sick with what is probably the virus when she definitely seemed to have it over a month ago.