The Coronavirus Discussion Thread.

I’m at a loss with WTAF she was thinking. The mind truly boggles if she/people like her can’t see the risk. As a minimum, you’d wait till the weekend to see if anything came to be before visiting him.

I’ve just had a conversation with a friend who was doing the full on family Mother’s Day, despite his elderly mother being immune system compromised due to recent treatment. Took a few calls (no shouting) to convince him to at least wait ‘till his kids had been isolated form their school friends for a while first. The advice is not getting through to people, and that is mostly because last week’s government ‘message’ has not been undone by this week’s actions.

Next door to me is a retired couple who don’t keep particularly well.

We’ve texted them to let them know we are here to help out if needed. We are helping them out with groceries and other bits and pieces.

I don’t think we need to be overly alarmist about what we are facing, but we do need to pull together and look out for people where we can. Helping out a neighbour is hardly heroic compared to some of the sacrifices people are making, but if everyone does a little then we will all be in a better place.

Tricky to pull together when the countries been split for 3+ yrs innit.

Africa deosn’t have much to worry about. Given the age demographic:

https://ourworldindata.org/age-structure

And the fact they aleady have much worse epidemics running in the background for example Malaria.

The ECB will just print as much money as is needed to press pause for a while. Germany is one of the most affected countries, they won’t be dragging their feet this time.

It’s all manageable, anti-viral treatments initially and then a vaccin. It just needs good management over the next six months… anyone but Trump or Boris.

/Start Rant

Don’t get me started. Has it occured to those accusing some of us of spreading panic that it may actually be the other way round? It’s genuinely concerning to see everyone carrying on as normal. I’ve been distancing since last Tuesday when I got a cold. Apparently I’m over-reacting and have been told by many normally sensible people that ‘life has to go on’, ‘it’s just flu’, ‘we don’t need to do anything yet because it’s not compulsory’ and ‘you only need to distance if you have symptoms’.

If it’s done anything though I’ve now got the hygiene thing down to an artform if I venture outside. I think I’ve even managed to crack the not touching your face thing until I’ve had a chance to wash my hands. Not sure others have, I got a very funny look from the shop assistant in Morrisons last night when I stepped away from her when she was verifying my age at the auto-checkout.

when she was verifying my age at the auto-checkout.

???????????

Tricky to pull together when the countries been split for 3+ yrs innit

To be honest I think most people will happily put all that behind them and pull together.

(But it is slightly worrying that parliament is half empty already and everyone’s eye is off the Brexit ball while a deadline still approaches fast)

I got a very funny look from the shop assistant in Morrisons last night when I stepped away from her when she was verifying my age at the auto-checkout.

It’s tricky – if you are further away, you’ll look smaller, so she’ll assume you are a child and not authorise your booze.

It’s all manageable, anti-viral treatments initially and then a vaccin. It just needs good management over the next six months

Agree but it will more likely be a year rather than 6 months mainly due to teh numbers of people involved. For example, be great to have an anti body blood test avaiable in 4 weeks time but actually do the blood tests on millions of people is another thing.

I got a very funny look from the shop assistant in Morrisons last night when I stepped away from her when she was verifying my age at the auto-checkout.

It’s tricky – if you are further away, you’ll look smaller, so she’ll assume you are a child and not authorise your booze.

Best reply EVER !! ^^^^ 😀 😀

If it’s done anything though I’ve now got the hygiene thing down to an artform if I venture outside.

Cobblers! When I saw you on Saturday, you and your nackered new bike were caked in filth! As you strolled around the quite large gathering we were at

Super-spreader!!!! 😛

my wife now has the enviable task of ringing round nursery parents asking them if they could pay their bill even though the nursery is shut :/ Can’t see this ending well.

the government is going to have to do more to ensure cash flow at a worker level.

We all got Grippe A H1N1 vaccinated fairly smoothly in 2009/2010. We all got a convocation depending on our priority. A letter arrived in the post with a date, time and place.

Whilst I get that generally you have to cater for the average moron when giving national advise, it is frustrating when I wandered over to the shop to pick up some essentials last night, to see the town pretty much dead, apart from Prezzo, which was stuffed full, of olds.

But also:

I’m struggling a bit with some of the overly negative and fearful comments on here which seem to suggest that being incredibly afraid is somehow the only logical conclusion for this set of events

But also this. The doom mongering mentalists on here are as bad as the above Prezzo morons. i’m astounded some people can manage to function as fully fledged adults in some cases. Depressing.

But it is slightly worrying that parliament is half empty already and everyone’s eye is off the Brexit ball while a deadline still approaches fast)

And the PM refused to answer questions on it, saying only that there was legislation in place that he had no intention of changing.

Cobblers!

You may not have noticed though that I didn’t shake anyone’s hand and quietly kept my distance when talking to anyone. That’s the only time I’ve been out other than to go to the shops though. (and it was definitely a head cold I had last week, not CV)

Well if I get it, I know who I’ll be holding responsible

quietly kept my distance when talking to anyone

Schoolboy error there.

Surely the further away you stand, the louder you need to talk?

I will now never be able to read any of Daz’s posts without having that mental image of what he looks like.

I preferred the old, pre-apocalypse Daz..

While that’s all well and good GrahamS, it does looks like the US has dispensed with all the dithering and is prepared to do just about anything going forward to look after it’s people.

Just like Boris said he was going to do a few days ago.

There is no hope

When you read this kind of stuff. How stupid are people??

I got a very funny look from the shop assistant in Morrisons last night when I stepped away from her when she was verifying my age at the auto-checkout.

It’s tricky – if you are further away, you’ll look smaller, so she’ll assume you are a child and not authorise your booze.

This deserves greater publicity ^^
Top work.

🤪

I too am getting sick and tired of the Doom Slayers, wish they’d all wallow in another pit somewhere.

Thankfully after getting rid of a lot of mass speculation and idiot speak, we now seem to all understand the fundamentals of how to manage yourself and those around you.

All it needed was a clear head and clear communication.

my wife now has the enviable task of ringing round nursery parents asking them if they could pay their bill even though the nursery is shut :/ Can’t see this ending well.

Our nursery sent out a similar email yesterday, depressingly predictable reactions on FB.

‘Their insurance should cover it!’ – Already debunked in numerous headlines recently

‘Why should we pay if our kids aren’t in nursery??’ – So that there’s still a nursery in 3 months time?

‘I can’t afford to stay home and look after my child while also paying nursery fees’ – The letter made it quite clear, numerous times, that if your income is affected, they will review their fees.

I think the most corrosive aspect of social media is that you go away thinking that majority of the population are pig-thick cretins. I just have to hope there is a silent majority of reasonable, considerate people who actually read things and just think occasionally.

Spanish Flu burned itself out… and social distancing where it was adopted was effective

re “burned itself out” wikki says (why paraphrase when you can quote?):

After the lethal second wave struck in late 1918, new cases dropped abruptly – almost to nothing after the peak in the second wave.[49] In Philadelphia, for example, 4,597 people died in the week ending 16 October, but by 11 November, influenza had almost disappeared from the city. One explanation for the rapid decline in the lethality of the disease is that doctors became more effective in prevention and treatment of the pneumonia that developed after the victims had contracted the virus. However, John Barry stated in his book that researchers have found no evidence to support this position.[11]

Another theory holds that the 1918 virus mutated extremely rapidly to a less lethal strain. This is a common occurrence with influenza viruses: there is a tendency for pathogenic viruses to become less lethal with time, as the hosts of more dangerous strains tend to die out[11] (see also “Deadly Second Wave”, above).

…but I’ll go with “burned out”. It wasn’t the radical measures we’re seeing now that ended it. People were just a lot more phlegmatic about death from disease in those days, not a strategy I’d propose we adopt.

Thankfully after getting rid of a lot of mass speculation and idiot speak, we now seem to all understand the fundamentals of how to manage yourself and those around you.

Ye think? Town centre was full of pensioners going about their business as normal this morning, some with grandkids.

They’re not getting it at all.

And the barber’s was busy too. wtaf?

Granted. But. It’s a lot better than “not having a clue” surely?

Its not. You still need to self isolate the negatives because 1:5 are positive (and people may be less rigorous at doing so because they think they are probably safe). You have no different treatment to offer the positives. All it does is make you feel like you are doing something.

IF the current testing has a 99% Sensitivity (and a useful specificity) then it MIGHT be worth doing that with its typical 2 day turnaround; BUT I doubt there is absolutely robust data on how many of the negatives are truly negative? How many days after infection before its detectable, how robust is the sampling method (and training) etc – these things all have huge impact on the accuracy of testing.

Has this been shared yet? https://www.boredpanda.com/coronavirus-outbreak-stages-italy-jason-yanowitz/

I too am getting sick and tired of the Doom Slayers,

Bikebouy, earlier.

Doom Eternal out tomorrow, fellow self-isolationists!

How stupid are people??

You’ve read the rest of this thread, right? And seen the hysterical, headless chicken nonsense the media are putting out?

Our mate, who’s a nurse, came round last night (yes, we let someone in our house), rolled her eyes when asked about it and put all this hysterical nonsense in some perspective. She pointed out that in the north west of England there are literally a handful of confirmed cases in any given area. Large areas have no confirmed cases at all*. One person in the Manchester area has died and he was 75 with serious existing medical conditions anyway

As a medical professional I’m going to go with her attitude towards it, rather than Daz’s

I’ve just had a look and where I live, there are 15 confirmed cases in Lancashire, out of a local population of 1,210,053

Get a ****ing grip!🙄

* people running screaming indoors and barricading themselves in their homes is very different from a confirmed case

My local chip shop is open, F&C anyone?

Our nursery sent out a similar email yesterday, depressingly predictable reactions on FB.

‘Their insurance should cover it!’ – Already debunked in numerous headlines recently

‘Why should we pay if our kids aren’t in nursery??’ – So that there’s still a nursery in 3 months time?

‘I can’t afford to stay home and look after my child while also paying nursery fees’ – The letter made it quite clear, numerous times, that if your income is affected, they will review their fees.

I haven’t looked at our contracts with the nursery(s) yet. Typically is it by term or month? Or longer?

If we don’t need the care and we’re not legally obliged to pay, we won’t be paying.

We have a terrific relationship with both settings but we’re talking about substantial sums of money here.

*If* the Nursery(s) wanted to charge a holding fee to keep the place open (10pc or something) we’d do that for sure.

(Most likely we’ll still need the care, but in the event we don’t…)

I’m just about to get my hair cut too..

#washcutblowdry

OK – so what am I missing. China has had about 4000 deaths. Italy wll have more, but hints that the crisis is near peaking. Imperial predict 250,000 in the UK. Eh ??

You are missing the containment and contact tracing work done in other countries. We’ve let it spread. The end result is more deaths. For us it’s about trying to slow that spread to keep the death count lower. We haven’t tried to contain it properly, because it was decided by the government and their chosen experts that we could not, so we did not even try.

Oh, Binners, please try harder to do you bit as regards spreading this. Yes, panic and alarmism is to be avoided and derided. But action to limit and slow the spread is the responsibility of us all.

OK – so what am I missing. China has had about 4000 deaths. Italy wll have more, but hints that the crisis is near peaking. Imperial predict 250,000 in the UK. Eh ??

We don’t know how many deaths China will have because they hit the pause button.

Italy, they’re on 2978 deaths currently. Progress of the bug is exponential so maybe 250k isn’t that far away for them.

…and the media routinely quote the worst case estimates as ‘the estimates’ ‘cos that sells well.

So I dunno, I’m just following the guidelines and hoping for the best. 🙂

ou’ve read the rest of this thread, right? And seen the hysterical, headless chicken nonsense the media are putting out?

Personally, I’ve just been looking at the death toll rising in Italy, the triage they’ve had to perform, and thought, good luck to the elderly here, its been nice knowing you. It’s not hysterical to look at the facts and numbers of what is going on there.

Also, epidemiologists, worldwide, seem rather worried about it. Maybe they know something the nurse doesn’t, like the exponential function, and have a fair amount of expert knowledge on pandemic transmission and so forth.

Or, you could look at it another way, they’re the professionals at this sort of thing, maybe we should go with their attitude toward it.

Italy hit 100 deaths – the same as the UK today – around 4th of March. That was just 15 days ago.

Progress of the bug is exponential so maybe 250k isn’t that far away for them.

Technically, and to correct my own post as well, it is the logistics function. Looks exponential, until it hits the inflection point half way through, then the increase slows (looking like a reverse of the first exponential rise).

Oh, Binners, please try harder to do you bit as regards spreading this. Yes, panic and alarmism is to be avoided and derided. But action to limit and slow the spread is the responsibility of us all.

Like I said, couldn’t you just summarise the best way to address this as ‘don’t be a dick’?

Is going to a busy pub advisable? nope! If I was in that there Laaaandan I wouldn’t be going anywhere near the tube. But I’m still going into the office where I’m working at the moment and will continue to do so because I only really see two other people all day.

I think the people doing trolley dashes around Aldi and self-isolating because someone sneezed within 50 yards of them are absolute ****ing morons!