Corona Virus

[brucey]

4 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

 

What's your source for that info?

 

Multiple media outlets are using those figures for Italy as a whole. They'd surely not quote figures for "Italy" and exclude the region where the outbreak is worst? 

Lombardy updates their figures later in the day I believe.

[reynard]

46 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

Almost 1000 new infections & 168 deaths in Italy since yesterday: https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-fatalities-in-italy-rise-to-631-with-10-000-cases-now-confirmed-11954715

 

But we knew about Italy. This shows figures for all countries - and the trajectory in Spain, France & Switzerland, in particular, is a concern, not to mention Iran further afield: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

 

This seems to support @Jon the Hat's graphic projection

- 443 new cases & 5 deaths in Spain since yesterday

- 194 new cases in France

- Even higher figures in Iran (though less impact from Iran on UK, presumably). 

 

A lot of people have probably returned from France and Spain in the last couple of weeks, so given the tendency for this virus to spread despite many people having few or no symptoms when infected....

 

I wonder why the increase is much slower in Japan in Jon's graph? Social differences? Fewer visitors from other countries? Better response?

Seems a bit of a puzzle why their figures seem apparently low. Some reports that the testing has not been very efficient, possible cover ups (the Olympics are a massive deal and they won't want to cancel those). However, they have cancelled quite a few events like the Tokyo marathon, J league football etc. Even smaller sproting events such as the ITF tennis tournaments have been cancelled. I think some schools have been closed.

[String fellow]

Could it be that meat eaters are to blame for the corona virus? After all, if you rearrange the letters of 'corona virus', you get 'carnivorous'!

[SpacedX]

9 hours ago, Cujek said:

Just because something is incomprehensible to you does not make it untrue, 

 

How do you know that it is necessarily incomprehensible to me? Any examples? Why the indignation? I say again, almost invariably those that manufacture and perpetrate conspiracy theory are ironically frequently more dishonest and agenda driven than the governments and authorities that they distrust. 

 

9 hours ago, Cujek said:

im just saying if some of conspiracies are to be believed, i try to read everything i can, whether that be mainstream media, or more... unusual streams of information

 

..."Or more"? "Unusual streams of information"? I suspect that you are not referring to objective science and independently verifiable information? Appreciating that baseless lay You Tube conspiracy videos, clickbait cherry picked confirmation bias, quote mining, self-referencing pseudoscientific websites, social media bubbles and vacuous online echo-chambers are utterly worthless, could you present an example of the 'unusual streams of information' that you are referring to? Thanks.

 

9 hours ago, Cujek said:

I genuinely do not know what to believe in this scenario now,  all i see is a lot of people in power having no real clue what to do, in previous epidemics there has been a measure of control, in this one there is very little, its almost like there is a hit and hope policy going on

 

The world is chaotic...nature doesn't give two shits about fleeting homo-sapiens. That is tough to legislate for...for some conspiracy theory in contrast is almost comforting, purporting to assign reason to the inexplicable in an otherwise indifferent reality.

 

9 hours ago, Cujek said:

What I do know is that a first world European country does not quarantine 60 million of its citizens for the flu.

It does however in the case of a rapidly mutating novel strain of corona virus.

 

9 hours ago, Cujek said:

i think we wont know what the situation is for at least 2 to 3 weeks, until then there will be uncertainty and anxiety.

 

As i keep saying, just keep looking after your selves and your friends, be excellent to each other, we as the British people can get through this.

Agree. 

 

9 hours ago, joachim1965 said:

It's not like theres even a facility such as a bio lab in the area of the initial outbreak.  Madness .

And it's not like there's even a facility such as a livestock wet market in the area of the initial outbreak of a zoonotick disease, selling live bats - a source of four previous pandemics - alongside intermediary hosts such as pigs, civets, and pangolins. Madness. 

Edited 10 March 2020 by Line-X

[Captain...]

1 hour ago, Lionator said:

A log scale really isn't the best way to measure this and graphs like this can be manipulated to make things look a lot better or worse depending on a person's intention. If you used an exponential or lineal curve you'll see that we're below where Italy were at this stage by quite a long way. We have more thorough testing than Italy did at this stage and crucially those 13.5 give us more time to test and prepare in comparison to Italy. A lot of accounts from Italy indicate that people weren't taking government recommendations seriously AT ALL at the start, whereas I feel that people in this country are a lot more aware of self-isolation advice as well as public health advice (hand washing does work) even though there are still a number of it's only flu bro morons. 

 

I could be wrong but I would be surprised if it got as bad as Italy, that's not to say that it won't be bad. 

I have no idea, how bad it's going to get but drawing parallels with Italy is wrong, they had a few concentrated incidents that they failed to control, we have had hundreds of isolated incidents that we seem to have controlled but the concern is the spread of these isolated incidents.

[bmt]

3 hours ago, MPH said:

they might be getting it from relatives... of the 350+ cases ( so far) o my 6 have died so there’s lots of people beating this and lots who don’t have the underlying issues you mention

Only 18 people have been recovered and discharged though. Excluding people who are still ill, of those who no longer are ill (recovered or died) - the death rate is 25%. Obviously that is grossly overestimated due to unreported cases, those who are better but not yet been discharged, and the fact our hospitals will be cautious with discharging people, plus the delay on reporting people as recovered. But still, paints a bleak picture.

[Alf Bentley]

1 hour ago, martyn said:

Italy does not include Lombardy figures yet

 

1 hour ago, brucey said:

Lombardy updates their figures later in the day I believe.

 

I was disbelieving about this, I must admit, as the Italian authorities would hardly announce national figures that didn't include the most critical region - and reputable media would hardly report such figures as "national data" without pointing this out.....

 

I don't really speak Italian but can often get the gist via knowledge of Spanish. Looking at a couple of Italian papers online, it seems that the national figure quoted DOES include Lombardy, BUT it is a provisional figure - which will be finalised later. No doubt that's the info you both saw).

 

That's actually (comparatively) good news as things would have looked much worse if the national figure had risen so sharply, without it even including any data for the worst-hit region!

[bmt]

2 hours ago, Lionator said:

A log scale really isn't the best way to measure this and graphs like this can be manipulated to make things look a lot better or worse depending on a person's intention. If you used an exponential or lineal curve you'll see that we're below where Italy were at this stage by quite a long way. We have more thorough testing than Italy did at this stage and crucially those 13.5 give us more time to test and prepare in comparison to Italy. A lot of accounts from Italy indicate that people weren't taking government recommendations seriously AT ALL at the start, whereas I feel that people in this country are a lot more aware of self-isolation advice as well as public health advice (hand washing does work) even though there are still a number of it's only flu bro morons. 

 

I could be wrong but I would be surprised if it got as bad as Italy, that's not to say that it won't be bad. 

I agree with all of this except your final conclusion.

 

Unless we take drastic steps here we won't be able to contain this virus. Yes, we have done better than Italy but subduing the growth rate of cases (IMO) only delays the inevitable and we will end up in a far worse situation than Italy is now. Despite the fact our health system is good and people individually are relatively good at obeying advice, we are also in a society where there is so much pressure for it to be BAU (from the govt onwards).

 

My prediction is that the lack of coordination between responses and the ridiculousness of allowing travel between other high risk countries and here will lead to a large spike in numbers and deaths starting next week. 

 

Italy telling everyone they were going to quarantine them a day before doing it was absolutely ridiculous. People are stupid and scared. There will have been a large amount who left Lombardy and the North and went to where their family live, and that will mean that people from across Europe now fleeing Italy in fear will be carrying the virus and it will spread much quicker.

 

Although not a mathematician my understanding of numbers is decent and I think this is going to be far, far worse than almost anyone realises. Furthermore the death rate will fly up when we run out of ICU capability, which will happen.

[Raj]

Going Malta in Easter.

Being a tight git no way I'm cancelling!!!!

See what happens to Europe by then!!

[Paninistickers]

3 minutes ago, bmt said:

I agree with all of this except your final conclusion.

 

Unless we take drastic steps here we won't be able to contain this virus. Yes, we have done better than Italy but subduing the growth rate of cases (IMO) only delays the inevitable and we will end up in a far worse situation than Italy is now. Despite the fact our health system is good and people individually are relatively good at obeying advice, we are also in a society where there is so much pressure for it to be BAU (from the govt onwards).

 

My prediction is that the lack of coordination between responses and the ridiculousness of allowing travel between other high risk countries and here will lead to a large spike in numbers and deaths starting next week. 

 

Italy telling everyone they were going to quarantine them a day before doing it was absolutely ridiculous. People are stupid and scared. There will have been a large amount who left Lombardy and the North and went to where their family live, and that will mean that people from across Europe now fleeing Italy in fear will be carrying the virus and it will spread much quicker.

 

Although not a mathematician my understanding of numbers is decent and I think this is going to be far, far worse than almost anyone realises. Furthermore the death rate will fly up when we run out of ICU capability, which will happen.

The business as usual thing for UK is soooo UK. We didn't even have a day off for Diana's funeral. 

 

That said, I think the government have been pragmatic in taking a statistical approach to any phased lockdown. 

 

Coming is self isolation for anyone a bit poorly. 

 

Then self isolation for all the frail regardless of illness

 

Then it will be selective in who may obtain an ICU bed. (In nastier terms, selecting who lives and dies)

 

 

The thing is, I don't see how even if there's one carrier it can be eradicated. The best and quickest way possibly to see this off is for people to catch it and become immune. Like chicken pox as kids.  Which in reality means a possible 150k deaths (how many die of heart attacks each year? Gotta be that sort of number) 

[FoxesDeb]

5 minutes ago, Raj said:

Going Malta in Easter.

Being a tight git no way I'm cancelling!!!!

See what happens to Europe by then!!

If it's any comfort they have a fabulous fairly new hospital which is the pride of the Maltese people 

[Sly]

46 minutes ago, String fellow said:

Could it be that meat eaters are to blame for the corona virus? After all, if you rearrange the letters of 'corona virus', you get 'carnivorous'!

About as likely to blame as people that drink Corona.

[bmt]

17 minutes ago, Paninistickers said:

The thing is, I don't see how even if there's one carrier it can be eradicated. The best and quickest way possibly to see this off is for people to catch it and become immune. Like chicken pox as kids.  Which in reality means a possible 150k deaths (how many die of heart attacks each year? Gotta be that sort of number) 

See if we went for this approach and everyone got infected or say 50 mil excluding those who are very vulnerable and some lucky people, and you believed the estimates on mortality then it’s going to be at least a million people dying not 150k. What we should be doing (again IMO) is locking things down as much as possible, accepting it’s going to be a shit year and vaccinating people when we have a tested vaccine as soon as possible (which I think will be the start of next year). Unfortunately economic concerns stop that from happening.

Edited 10 March 2020 by bmt

[Paninistickers]

52 minutes ago, String fellow said:

Could it be that meat eaters are to blame for the corona virus? After all, if you rearrange the letters of 'corona virus', you get 'carnivorous'!

Someone at my work today wondered if Isis members may deliberately catch the virus and then start walking around London old.folks homes shaking people's hands. 

 

What a thought!

[Raj]

15 minutes ago, FoxesDeb said:

If it's any comfort they have a fabulous fairly new hospital which is the pride of the Maltese people 

Yeah nice one....makes me feel alot better that does!!! LOL

[yorkie1999]

29 minutes ago, Paninistickers said:

The business as usual thing for UK is soooo UK. We didn't even have a day off for Diana's funeral. 

 

That said, I think the government have been pragmatic in taking a statistical approach to any phased lockdown. 

 

Coming is self isolation for anyone a bit poorly. 

 

Then self isolation for all the frail regardless of illness

 

Then it will be selective in who may obtain an ICU bed. (In nastier terms, selecting who lives and dies)

 

 

The thing is, I don't see how even if there's one carrier it can be eradicated. The best and quickest way possibly to see this off is for people to catch it and become immune. Like chicken pox as kids.  Which in reality means a possible 150k deaths (how many die of heart attacks each year? Gotta be that sort of number) 

You're not immune if you catch it and recover and personally i doubt this country will be able to cope with a pandemic, it's not as though we currently have shedloads of nhs capacity and i doubt we have the ability to quickly set up temporary hospitals. The nhs is already starting to run short of ppe and the government are on about releasing pandemic supplies to cater for what we currently require and, because most of our equipment comes from china and not made in this country we are struggling to buy more as china are reluctant to release equipment from their own country.

[Paninistickers]

7 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

You're not immune if you catch it and recover and personally i doubt this country will be able to cope with a pandemic, it's not as though we currently have shedloads of nhs capacity and i doubt we have the ability to quickly set up temporary hospitals. The nhs is already starting to run short of ppe and the government are on about releasing pandemic supplies to cater for what we currently require and, because most of our equipment comes from china and not made in this country we are struggling to buy more as china are reluctant to release equipment from their own country.

Surely a survivor would automatically be immune. At least this strain.

 

Or are you suggesting this is likely to become like flu or a cold virus, constantly mutating?

[CosbehFox]

5 hours ago, ClaphamFox said:

Where are all these old folk with 'serious underlying health issues' getting it from? It's not like they're more likely to be on public transport or in offices, theatres, football games, etc. Is it because it is being spread by huge numbers of people who already have it but have either no symptoms or symptoms so mild that they haven't been to the doctors or self-isolated? If that's the case, the mortality rate is likely to be much lower than currently reported.

This is increasingly my thoughts, the man from Brighton an example - I suppose the problem is if the virus alters like flu or a common cold. It maybe there are multiple strains now which have different levels of potency. Or it may be static in its make up but there’s a link elsewhere in terms of who it attacks worse, a persons genetics possibly
 

It’s only time which tells us this with research as seen by estimations it’s a 5 day gap between catching it and symptoms. This is the main issue, that delay. It’s too late by the time it’s taken hold. Doctors and testers exposed each time. People already visited other people in that 5 day gap 
 

It’s quite sad really that it appears there’s been no link from the observations made by WHO to other countries for advice. China and Korea appear on the wane - what can be confirmed from that? Equally, appears other European countries are taking the advice of Italy now. 

Edited 10 March 2020 by Cardiff_Fox

[stripeyfox]

43 minutes ago, Paninistickers said:

Someone at my work today wondered if Isis members may deliberately catch the virus and then start walking around London old.folks homes shaking people's hands. 

 

What a thought!

Ah-choo Akbar?

[yorkie1999]

23 minutes ago, Paninistickers said:

Surely a survivor would automatically be immune. At least this strain.

 

Or are you suggesting this is likely to become like flu or a cold virus, constantly mutating?

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-risk-of-reinfection-2020-2%3famp

 

apparently the anti bodies don’t last very long

[yorkie1999]

5 hours ago, ClaphamFox said:

Where are all these old folk with 'serious underlying health issues' getting it from? It's not like they're more likely to be on public transport or in offices, theatres, football games, etc. Is it because it is being spread by huge numbers of people who already have it but have either no symptoms or symptoms so mild that they haven't been to the doctors or self-isolated? If that's the case, the mortality rate is likely to be much lower than currently reported.

They’re more likely to be in places like doctors waiting rooms and hospitals though where there would have been other people who have left the virus behind thinking they just had the flu. I think it’s too early to tell and people just haven’t realised the possible seriousness of it yet.

[Wrighty22]

Been told it’s likely the Government will shut universities by the end of next week. Not sure in what capacity ‘shut’ but they won’t be fully operational. 

[SpacedX]

2 minutes ago, Wrighty22 said:

Been told it’s likely the Government will shut universities by the end of next week. Not sure in what capacity ‘shut’ but they won’t be fully operational. 

Told by who? 

[Lionator]

If anybody is interested in COVID-19 aside from just wanting to make it through alive/virus free, then what's happening in South Korea is really, really interesting.

 

Decline in new cases for the past few days WITHOUT draconian measures such as Wuhan and Italy. They have a low mortality rate as well. 

 

Reasons are pretty much for two reasons, testing of everyone who is at risk, they're smashing through 10,000 tests a day in South Korea (similar population size to us). We're currently at about 2,000 a day, other countries even less. The second reason is an incredibly effective and efficient use of technology, informing the population of exactly where a coronavirus positive case is and where that person has been over the past few days. That way people can work out whether to self-isolate or not. Expensive in terms of resources and technology but certainly not in lives. This is more likely to be the model case moving forward I believe and really hope our epidemiologists are taking note.

Edited 10 March 2020 by Lionator

[yorkie1999]

3 minutes ago, Wrighty22 said:

Been told it’s likely the Government will shut universities by the end of next week. Not sure in what capacity ‘shut’ but they won’t be fully operational. 

What’s the point of that, all of a sudden we’re going to have millions of students wandering the nation. Wouldn’t locking the doors but keeping everyone inside be a better solution.