Corona Virus

[Vlad the Fox]

2 hours ago, Unabomber said:

Anyone else having issues with recycling collection? They aren’t collecting our cardboard or garden waste where I am. 

I’m in Charnwood and they’re taking everything except the garden bin. Which is a problem as it appears that everyone is competing for the best kept front garden competition this year. 

[whoareyaaa]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/science-environment-52318539

[Costock_Fox]

58 minutes ago, Vlad the Fox said:

I’m in Charnwood and they’re taking everything except the garden bin. Which is a problem as it appears that everyone is competing for the best kept front garden competition this year. 

My front garden is a right mess at the minute.

[StanSP]

Positive news for UK?

 

Few regions seeing reverses in their numbers of people with COVID19, or at least slower increases...

 

Could we be about to reach our peak (if not already)? Lockdown measures working...?

[Guest Fktf]

6 hours ago, BKLFox said:

There are 195 UN recognised countries in the world & everyone is different its not as simple as looking over the fence & saying they doing ok why didn't we do what they did because in the main the answer is because we couldn't.
Lets take testing as that seems to be the beating stick, Germany did test test test whilst UK tested hospital cases & using the above Q. why didn't we test test test A. we couldn't.
Germany has the 2nd largest Pharmaceuticals company in the world to call on in the Roche group & coupled with the other major players such as Bayer & Qiagen already had a diagnostics industry set up with over a 100 test labs, the UK has 3.

Roche has a machine that can churn out 1000 tests a day, thats a single machine they have more than 1, they can do 500k tests per week the UK would struggle to do 50k, so when Cv19 hit the UK it washed over us so fast like a tidal wave that it was then pointless to continue containment style testing it was already everywhere & threrefore different measures were then put in place with the gradual lockdown etc.
Now the hunt is on to get the immunity testing done but again it takes time to source these & then implement the rollout, again countries like SKorea & Germany that have inhouse manurfactures can get this done quicker, both Raab & Hancock have stated its not an issue of cost its an issue in supply & demand, same with PPE.

Ok so why weren't we ready, why didn't we learn from MERS or SARS?
Well my guess is the UK played the numbers game those numbers being:
UK cases of MERS 5 with 3 deaths with 858 Global deaths in 27 countries
UK cases of SARS 4 with 0 deaths with 775 Global deaths in 24 countries
but when you put these numbers against CV19  
Globally 2,173,432 cases, 146,291 deaths, UN recognised Countries affected 195

Those figures show this is a different beast altogether the only lesson that hasn't been learnt & actioned on by the wider world is their origins & the clamping down on wet markets etc, it probably has a baring on places like Japan & S/Korea as they are countries closer to the previous virus origins & therefore ramped up their testing capability but for somewhere like the UK, thousands of miles from Ground Zero, it probably didn't make financial sense to create such a large testing facility & then to run it given the names i mentioned earlier as neighbours it would be like Admiral going up against Umbro & Adidas, it would just become another money pit until it collapsed due to lack of funding.

 

Therefore can we all agree to stop looking for blame, at the end when this is beaten yes there should be a wash up & lessons learnt with all 195 countries providing input on what they did/didn't do & what worked & what didn't, what facilities they had or didn't etc  but look at those numbers again nobody could have predicted how this would take hold of the whole world by looking at the MERS/SARS viruses because this has jumped so many levels.
 

We had a choice at the beginning of the outbreak in the UK of what strategy we were going to follow. It shouldn't have been a choice based on sars or past dieseases, but on what we could see happening in Italy, and the fact Spain and France were following a similar trend, in terms of spread and deaths of Covid-19. 

 

We chose to follow the same path as those countries, rather than getting on top of the virus like Denmark, Poland, New Zealand. The first move of the successful countries (if you count death rate) has been stop the spread of the virus, and keep cases low. 

 

Any debates on how we've handled the virus post the first few deaths are a bit meaningless in my opinion. Having allowed mass spread earlier than this, we were locked to a similar course to Italy, Spain, France. Sure, we might differ by a few thousand deaths compared to these countries, but we're always going to differ by 10s of thousands to other countries that have managed to stop the spread earlier. 

Edited 17 April 2020 by Fktf

[Kendal Fox]

This was part of a test run for what to do in the event of a "Coronavirus" pandemic, held last year on October 18th.
Interesting that several hypothetical dilemmas such as medical staff complaining about a lack of PPE, stockpiling, "Fake News/Misinformation" and economic collapse are all included here.
It's creepy to say the least...

 

Edited 17 April 2020 by Kendal Fox

[Vlad the Fox]

54 minutes ago, Costock_Fox said:

My front garden is a right mess at the minute.

It’ll stand out, you may just win. 

[Jon the Hat]

53 minutes ago, Fktf said:

We had a choice at the beginning of the outbreak in the UK of what strategy we were going to follow. It shouldn't have been a choice based on sars or past dieseases, but on what we could see happening in Italy, and the fact Spain and France were following a similar trend, in terms of spread and deaths of Covid-19. 

 

We chose to follow the same path as those countries, rather than getting on top of the virus like Denmark, Poland, New Zealand. The first move of the successful countries (if you count death rate) has been stop the spread of the virus, and keep cases low. 

 

Any debates on how we've handled the virus post the first few deaths are a bit meaningless in my opinion. Having allowed mass spread earlier than this, we were locked to a similar course to Italy, Spain, France. Sure, we might differ by a few thousand deaths compared to these countries, but we're always going to differ by 10s of thousands to other countries that have managed to stop the spread earlier. 

It would simply not have been possible to stop it.  London is a global travel hub.  Once it was in the community it’s then a game of balancing ICU capacity and lockdown.  No other approach.

Also herd immunity is the only game in town.  Hopefully with a vaccine, but if not, then naturally.  There is no other way to beat a virus. 

[Guest Fktf]

38 minutes ago, Jon the Hat said:

It would simply not have been possible to stop it.  London is a global travel hub.  Once it was in the community it’s then a game of balancing ICU capacity and lockdown.  No other approach.

Also herd immunity is the only game in town.  Hopefully with a vaccine, but if not, then naturally.  There is no other way to beat a virus. 

Disagree it wasn't possible to stop it spreading as wide as it has. We could have controlled it better by acting sooner (e.g cancel the huge horse racing and football events) 

 

Agree herd immunity is the viable option out of this. But personally, hate the approach we've taken to achieve this. Would much prefer to keep cases low, test, trace, isolate, and wait for vaccine. 

 

The higher we ride the curve, the longer we must wait to return to normal. I think those countries that stopped the spread of the virus early will be better off in terms of health (less deaths) and economy (businesses opening earlier) 

Edited 18 April 2020 by Fktf

[leicsmac]

7 hours ago, MattP said:

Then why not just say that instead of adding a little political bias to the post like you did with a mention it would be different with the colour of the rosette?

 

I'm finding these country comparisons absolutely ridiculous, from all sides.

To be fair that is what I should have done rather than taking the very obvious bait that had been laid out.

 

But in my defence, it had been a long day and a long week. Most people never stopped working over here.

[WigstonWanderer]

1 hour ago, Jon the Hat said:

It would simply not have been possible to stop it.  London is a global travel hub.  Once it was in the community it’s then a game of balancing ICU capacity and lockdown.  No other approach.

Also herd immunity is the only game in town.  Hopefully with a vaccine, but if not, then naturally.  There is no other way to beat a virus. 

If herd immunity is to be a achieved without a vaccine it will likely take ~ 5 waves similar to the current one to get there as Prof Anthony Costello has said.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8229009/Britain-faces-TEN-waves-coronavirus-population-achieves-herd-immunity.html

 

If test and trace (current government policy AFAICT) can’t be made to work it sounds most unfortunate.

[leicsmac]

https://coronaboard.kr/en/

 

A useful number resource, if anyone is interested in one.

[Sly]

I read an article this morning, that 120 odd people in South Korea have got it again. It’s more of a re-activation, rather than a second strain. 
 

This would seem to indicate that the virus remains in the system, and your immune system learns to suppress it. 
 

Like over viruses, such as herpes etc, it flares up, maybe under stress, depression, etc

 

Just food for thought.

[Nick]

Anybody else want to see some actual UK numbers?

 

We are on the same curve as Italy - near exact in fact.... except that we are ONLY recording deaths in hospitals.

 

So what do we reckon our actual numbers really look like... 20k plus? 

 

[Strokes]

6 hours ago, Fktf said:

Disagree it wasn't possible to stop it spreading as wide as it has. We could have controlled it better by acting sooner (e.g cancel the huge horse racing and football events) 

 

Agree herd immunity is the viable option out of this. But personally, hate the approach we've taken to achieve this. Would much prefer to keep cases low, test, trace, isolate, and wait for vaccine. 

 

The higher we ride the curve, the longer we must wait to return to normal. I think those countries that stopped the spread of the virus early will be better off in terms of health (less deaths) and economy (businesses opening earlier) 

I do agree with a lot of what you say but I disagree that those that locked down early are in an economically better position. Until a vaccine is found, and goes through extensive testing (very worrying if not) then taking this at maximum hits is moving towards herd immunity faster each time. Obviously more testing would be great but we just haven’t got the infrastructure right now for it.

Hopefully, if and when the second wave hits we will have more facilities for that.

The real issues are with the so far Unknown’s, if those immune can still carry and transmit, then our plan is doomed to fail like everybody else’s and we are all left at the mercy of a vaccine.

[leicsmac]

12 minutes ago, Strokes said:

I do agree with a lot of what you say but I disagree that those that locked down early are in an economically better position. Until a vaccine is found, and goes through extensive testing (very worrying if not) then taking this at maximum hits is moving towards herd immunity faster each time. Obviously more testing would be great but we just haven’t got the infrastructure right now for it.

Hopefully, if and when the second wave hits we will have more facilities for that.

The real issues are with the so far Unknown’s, if those immune can still carry and transmit, then our plan is doomed to fail like everybody else’s and we are all left at the mercy of a vaccine.

It's also possible that the virus might mutate to a less virulent and lethal form as the 1918 H1N1 influenza virus is theorised to have done and that would solve the problem, but that would be entirely down to chance.

 

As you say, there are an awful lot of unknowns here and as such a lot of educated guesswork.

Edited 18 April 2020 by leicsmac

[reynard]

59 minutes ago, Swan Lesta said:

Anybody else want to see some actual UK numbers?

 

We are on the same curve as Italy - near exact in fact.... except that we are ONLY recording deaths in hospitals.

 

So what do we reckon our actual numbers really look like... 20k plus? 

 

Well impossible to really say. But I think double the number declared so far would be too many but who knows. Did people die of the virus or with it or of something different but they had a cough so the doctor just put corona virus as one of the causes of death. Don't think your 20k would be far off.

What looks certain is that we will surpass the governement's official 20k target to have done well sometime within the next 10 days. Hard to see the official death's recorded, just in this first phase as being below 30k and maybe even higher.

[StanSP]

Think it was @MattP that mentioned weird dreams but just had my own.

 

Phone was cracked so instead of leaving it, I peeled it a bit more and made it worse. Frantically looked for phone places that were open online. There was one in town so I went there but it was packed like the tube trains we saw a couple weeks ago. The only other place that fixed it? McDonald's. So went there, got it fixed and got myself some food as well. 

 

Oh and I had no shoes on. Obviously. 

[Guest MattP]

47 minutes ago, reynard said:

Well impossible to really say. But I think double the number declared so far would be too many but who knows. Did people die of the virus or with it or of something different but they had a cough so the doctor just put corona virus as one of the causes of death. Don't think your 20k would be far off.

What looks certain is that we will surpass the governement's official 20k target to have done well sometime within the next 10 days. Hard to see the official death's recorded, just in this first phase as being below 30k and maybe even higher.

When did the government set an official death target?

 

I remember Whitty or Vallance saying 20k would be a good outcome, but never read it was an official government target.

[whoareyaaa]

9 hours ago, Kendal Fox said:

This was part of a test run for what to do in the event of a "Coronavirus" pandemic, held last year on October 18th.
Interesting that several hypothetical dilemmas such as medical staff complaining about a lack of PPE, stockpiling, "Fake News/Misinformation" and economic collapse are all included here.
It's creepy to say the least...

 

Bill gates Foundation funded it and he is now the main backer for WHO since US pulled out but he's got **** all to do with it, yea right.

[Spudulike]

Well it was only a matter of time before 'you'll never walk alone' is released as a charity single. 

 

Such a cliche. 

[Crinklyfox]

Just seen a pretty scary study in New York.

 

Women entering a maternity hospital were tested for Covid-19.  Approx. 2% were showing symptoms and tested positive.  However over 10% more also tested positive but had no symptoms.  This suggests that there are a lot more infected people out there who have the virus than the official infection figures suggest.

 

There is nothing to suggest that the virus is behaving any differently in New York than other parts of the world so it is possible that there is a significant percentage of the UK population that has, or has had, Covid-19 without being aware and that they either are or were contagious for a period of time.  This makes social distancing even more critical.

 

The article was in the New England Journal of Medicine.

 

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2009316?query=featured+coronavirus

[murphy]

Iran claim to have a hand-held coronavirus detector that can test for infection from 100m.  Just to add a further dollop of ignominy to their foolishness, the devices are a re-imagining of fake bomb detectors that they were scammed into buying.

 

[Jaspa]

Received a letter from my GP telling me that I'm 'extremely vulnerable', thing is I'm late 20's with no underlying health issues and haven't even been to see a GP in a few years. Infact I've never seen this current one after being reassigned because my previous Doc retired.

 

Abit scary really, I'll have to call on Monday to see what's up.

 

[yorkie1999]

10 hours ago, StanSP said:

Positive news for UK?

 

Few regions seeing reverses in their numbers of people with COVID19, or at least slower increases...

 

Could we be about to reach our peak (if not already)? Lockdown measures working...?

I would have thought so 

Edited 18 April 2020 by yorkie1999