Coronavirus Thread

[Leicester_Loyal]

 

[Nalis]

3 hours ago, zorro en españa said:

Well, having been openly critical of the Regions’ responses here in Spain since being passed the authority to deal with the pandemic, I find the following measures being imposed by Andalusia.  Needs to be administered by the police now and if they go about it with the zeal they did during the national lockdown the coffers will be filling up.
 

“Andalusia’s regional government on Tuesday approved a set of fines for residents who are found to have infected others with the coronavirus, as the southern region struggles to contain virus outbreaks at social gatherings.

Andalusia’s Junta government has green-lighted steep fines for people who don’t respect the social distancing measures in place in the southern region and are found to have infected others with the coronavirus as a result. 

For infractions deemed minor such as infecting 15 people with the virus, not wearing a face mask properly or not wearing one at all, the fines go from €100 to €3,000.

For more serious infringements such as spreading Covid-19 to anywhere between 15 and 100 people or refusing to collaborate with authorities, the fines will be between €3,001 and €60,000. Andalusia residents who have tested positive for Covid-19 and break the two-week self-isolation period also fall within this category.

And for ‘superspreaders’ who infect more than 100 other people with the virus as a result of their negligence, the fines rocket up to anywhere between €60,001 and €600,000.

 

Establishments such as nightclubs, supermarkets and shops that surpass the maximum capacity and lead to mass infections would also be forced to shut for up to five years apart from being handed a steep fine.

Andalusia’s Health Council will have the final word on the amount to be fined for serious breaches whereas municipal police will handle penalties for the more minor offenses.

The penalties are part of a larger decree which imposes stricter regulations for businesses and citizens in the region of 8.4 million inhabitants.

The regional government’s decision is also aimed in particular at young people as it's been found that 70 percent of new infections in Andalusia constitute people between the ages of 20 and 55”

 

Insane. 

 

Though saying that, I think anyone with symptoms who has gone for a test but gone about their every day life while waiting for results only to find they tested positive when they got them should face either fines/legal action depending on want businesses had to close due to them.

[Strokes]

21 hours ago, Sampson said:

60k is the excess deaths which is higher than the official death statistic.

Lots of people will have died because of lockdown too.

[worth_the_wait]

Here's a surprisingly well-balanced account from the BBC, about how things are perhaps not quite as bad as they appear:

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53656852

 

[Nalis]

52 minutes ago, worth_the_wait said:

Here's a surprisingly well-balanced account from the BBC, about how things are perhaps not quite as bad as they appear:

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53656852

 

Came here just to post this. It's promising, well promising as in the trend is not as bad as we might currently think.

[WigstonWanderer]

1 hour ago, Strokes said:

Lots of people will have died because of lockdown too.

Such as....?

[StanSP]

1 hour ago, Nalis said:

Insane. 

 

Though saying that, I think anyone with symptoms who has gone for a test but gone about their every day life while waiting for results only to find they tested positive when they got them should face either fines/legal action depending on want businesses had to close due to them.

This I agree with.

Heard quite a few stories of those who said they had no symptoms so thought it'd be fine while waiting for a test result, yet decided to go to a pub or a crowded place, especially earlier on in lockdown.

[Lionator]

24 minutes ago, Nalis said:

Came here just to post this. It's promising, well promising as in the trend is not as bad as we might currently think.

The way cases are growing, it's like the r rate is just above 1, like 1.05 and not the 4+ we saw in march/april. The Aberdeen pub thing is an example of how out of control it can get though. 1 case, and before you know it 50+ are infected.

[CosbehFox]

The context of those laws in Spain have been to young persons holidaying on the south coast (predominately nationals). There’s a video of a Spainish bar owner drinking a spirit from a bottle and then spraying it from his mouth over the party. From then on, he proceeds to pour the bottle to other party goers. 
 

Appalling hygiene on the average day, let alone in a pandemic 

[Jon the Hat]

17 minutes ago, WigstonWanderer said:

Such as....?

All the people with cancer who haven’t had a referral I expect.

[WigstonWanderer]

2 minutes ago, Jon the Hat said:

All the people with cancer who haven’t had a referral I expect.

I’d say that was a side effect of the virus. Either people were too scared to seek normal treatment, or it wasn’t safe to perform in hospitals as it is a recognised co-morbidity, or it is due to insufficient services being possible in hospitals which had been cleared to provide for incoming Covid patients.
 

All of these effects would be arguable (much) worse if there had been no lockdown, and Covid cases were allowed to increase exponentially.

[Strokes]

31 minutes ago, WigstonWanderer said:

Such as....?

Such as people not going to hospital appointments, such as the excess suicides for people who are isolated and alone.

[StanSP]

31 minutes ago, Cardiff_Fox said:

The context of those laws in Spain have been to young persons holidaying on the south coast (predominately nationals). There’s a video of a Spainish bar owner drinking a spirit from a bottle and then spraying it from his mouth over the party. From then on, he proceeds to pour the bottle to other party goers. 
 

Appalling hygiene on the average day, let alone in a pandemic 

Yeah but when Triple H does it it's quality.

[Jon the Hat]

12 minutes ago, WigstonWanderer said:

I’d say that was a side effect of the virus. Either people were too scared to seek normal treatment, or it wasn’t safe to perform in hospitals as it is a recognised co-morbidity, or it is due to insufficient services being possible in hospitals which had been cleared to provide for incoming Covid patients.
 

All of these effects would be arguable (much) worse if there had been no lockdown, and Covid cases were allowed to increase exponentially.

Nonsense.  COVID has a death rate of less than 1% - show me any cancer with anything like.

[zorro en españa]

5 hours ago, Lionator said:

I have massive issues with that, what if someone is asymptomatic and infects others? Furthermore that can not possibly be enforced, you can’t prove that somebody has infected another person. 

I understand fully your view especially in genuine cases.

 

However you are looking at this from a UK perspective.  The police here have now been given the authority to deal with this and if they want to they will, often unceremoniously.  I would hope some common sense would prevail as to a person’s culpability but at the coal face it is left to a wide interpretation and, in my experience, you do not play games with the police.  You get the fine, then defend yourself if you believe in your innocence.

 

I would imagine the real impact of this announcement will be to enforce mask wearing throughout.  It is reasonably well respected but should there be 40 or 50 fines of €100 for the minority that don’t care (with apologies to those who have got exemptions) it will have an immediate impact.

 

2 hours ago, Nalis said:

Though saying that, I think anyone with symptoms who has gone for a test but gone about their every day life while waiting for results only to find they tested positive when they got them should face either fines/legal action depending on want businesses had to close due to them.

 

33 minutes ago, StanSP said:

This I agree with.

Heard quite a few stories of those who said they had no symptoms so thought it'd be fine while waiting for a test result, yet decided to go to a pub or a crowded place, especially earlier on in lockdown.

I would hope that the region would be able to produce evidence to uphold severe fines.  There is some evidence that some establishments have been a tad lax, shall we say.  If as you both say there is proven culpability of an individual what respect are they showing for those around them.  This is not a game (sorry, cheap shot I know).

 

33 minutes ago, Cardiff_Fox said:

The context of those laws in Spain have been to young persons holidaying on the south coast (predominately nationals). There’s a video of a Spainish bar owner drinking a spirit from a bottle and then spraying it from his mouth over the party. From then on, he proceeds to pour the bottle to other party goers. 
 

Appalling hygiene on the average day, let alone in a pandemic 

Illustrates the point.  This establishment has now been closed for two weeks (I think it is two weeks).  Arguably the individual who spat at the party goers could be exempt from the new decree as it happened before the recent announcement.  But really .... WTF.  

[brucey]

30 minutes ago, Jon the Hat said:

Nonsense.  COVID has a death rate of less than 1% - show me any cancer with anything like.

The point isn’t the death rate, it’s the hospitalisation rate which is about 10%. If the exponential curve had continued, the numbers of people needing to be hospitalised would be massive.
 

If we had to convert all the wards in the hospital to Covid wards / temporary ICUs and then filled them up with Covid patients who couldn’t breathe otherwise, that means people coming in acutely unwell with appendicitis etc can’t get beds, much less people needing routine cancer treatment.

[WigstonWanderer]

1 hour ago, Jon the Hat said:

Nonsense.  COVID has a death rate of less than 1% - show me any cancer with anything like.

I don’t really understand what you’re saying and I think you may have misunderstood what I was saying.

Edited 5 August 2020 by WigstonWanderer

[WigstonWanderer]

1 hour ago, Strokes said:

Such as people not going to hospital appointments, such as the excess suicides for people who are isolated and alone.

I’ve already mentioned the people not going to appointments, and as I say, without the lockdown this would likely have been much worse.

 

Suicides and mental health generally is a real and tragic issue I believe, though again, if there had been no lockdown and consequently raging infection, greater morbidity, etc, I doubt that that would have been good for anyone’s mental health either.

 

Nevertheless, you are referring to people being isolated and alone as a direct result of the lockdown, and I accept that there would be some who have taken their own lives as a result. No doubt eventually there will be a breakdown of statistics to quantify this effect. As tragic as individual suicides (and murders due to mental health issues) are, in the absence of data (unless you have some sources) I’d suggest that actual numbers are unlikely to be more than a tiny fraction of the excess deaths reported. Once again, I am not trying to minimise the impact of these individual tragedies.

 

In 2018 there were about 130 suicides per week, so over a 10 week period say 1,300. Even if this figure doubled or trebled as a direct result of lockdown, it would not account for anything approaching the excess deaths reported.

 

Weighed against this there are undoubtedly many other lives saved by lockdown due to reductions in car accidents or other trauma. Also, The reduction in Flu infections as a result of Covid restrictions has no doubt saved more lives.

[Strokes]

1 hour ago, WigstonWanderer said:

I’ve already mentioned the people not going to appointments, and as I say, without the lockdown this would likely have been much worse.

 

Suicides and mental health generally is a real and tragic issue I believe, though again, if there had been no lockdown and consequently raging infection, greater morbidity, etc, I doubt that that would have been good for anyone’s mental health either.

 

Nevertheless, you are referring to people being isolated and alone as a direct result of the lockdown, and I accept that there would be some who have taken their own lives as a result. No doubt eventually there will be a breakdown of statistics to quantify this effect. As tragic as individual suicides (and murders due to mental health issues) are, in the absence of data (unless you have some sources) I’d suggest that actual numbers are unlikely to be more than a tiny fraction of the excess deaths reported. Once again, I am not trying to minimise the impact of these individual tragedies.

 

In 2018 there were about 130 suicides per week, so over a 10 week period say 1,300. Even if this figure doubled or trebled as a direct result of lockdown, it would not account for anything approaching the excess deaths reported.

 

Weighed against this there are undoubtedly many other lives saved by lockdown due to reductions in car accidents or other trauma. Also, The reduction in Flu infections as a result of Covid restrictions has no doubt saved more lives.

All true, however until we get all statistics available it’s pointless blaming all excess deaths on covid. There are way too many alternatives. Not least that death rates do fluctuate quite dramatically year by year.

[ealingfox]

 

[reynard]

2 hours ago, ealingfox said:

 

Sadly I'm not surprised by any of this. What a waste of our money.

[st albans fox]

6 hours ago, ealingfox said:

 

 

4 hours ago, reynard said:

Sadly I'm not surprised by any of this. What a waste of our money.

As someone who tried to supply the govt with PPE in April/may, I can confirm that the procedure was anything but clear and open !  applying online was pretty easy but from then on it seemed they weren’t interested ......... the prices quoted in the Twitter thread are much too expensive for the volumes being discussed, even in April when there was enormous global demand.  

 

[brucey]

 

[foxile5]

9 hours ago, reynard said:

Sadly I'm not surprised by any of this. What a waste of our money.

Must have it wrong mate. Tories are salt of the earth, bloody good chaps, look out for the people, wouldn't do wrong by us. Just look at their funny hair and accents.

 

What borderline fraud perpetuated in-party...nothing to see here.

[Leicester_Loyal]

Politicians in making money scandal. Is anyone else surprised? It's happened for decades and will always continue to happen.

 

I saw a video earlier on Twitter that the Nightingale hospital in London was being taken down? Surely must be fake news?