Coronavirus

[spinba11]

Interestingly the daily cases on Saturday and yesterday were lower than the previous day but they’ve gone back up today but still lower than Friday.

 

[ringo]

Interestingly the daily cases on Saturday and yesterday were lower than the previous day but they’ve gone back up today but still lower than Friday.

There’s an unfortunate chance It’ll be higher tomorrow as the latest data will include any deaths that haven’t happened in hospital.

 

[Jb85]

This didn't come from a wet market in my opinion. They've existed for decades and are found in other asian countries too arent they?

There is definitely more to this virus than we have been told. The whistle blower being found dead in China will be made into a film no doubt soon.

I’ve had that thought from the start - I have a theory it was a weapon gone wrong. Maybe to control Hong Kong ? Who knows

The rumours of 40k In wuhan are probably true. I remember the l hi to early on of body bags stacked high. And why build a new hospital just for 3000 people ? At least our government is honest enough to say they are preparing for worse. I suspect China has actually had cases in the millions with a death rate of around 5%

Still - they are keeping us out now - if only they did that early on

Finally today all symptoms including cough have gone.

How’s everyone coping with lockdown ?


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[Rojo]

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/

Probably one of the best written articles on the USA response to the Coronavirus. Full of some incredible information and some jaw droppingly bad decisions.

Definitely some worrying times ahead for the USA and for a country that likes to be number 1, it's scary to think they'll achieve the top figures that nobody wants.

Below are some snippets that I think might cover some of the topics and questions asked earlier in the thread. I'd fully recommend reading the full article in order though.

With little room to surge during a crisis, America’s health-care system operates on the assumption that unaffected states can help beleaguered ones in an emergency. That ethic works for localized disasters such as hurricanes or wildfires, but not for a pandemic that is now in all 50 states. Cooperation has given way to competition; some worried hospitals have bought out large quantities of supplies, in the way that panicked consumers have bought out toilet paper.

Partly, that’s because the White House is a ghost town of scientific expertise. A pandemic-preparedness office that was part of the National Security Council was dissolved in 2018. On January 28, Luciana Borio, who was part of that team, urged the government to “act now to prevent an American epidemic,” and specifically to work with the private sector to develop fast, easy diagnostic tests. But with the office shuttered, those warnings were published in The Wall Street Journal, rather than spoken into the president’s ear. Instead of springing into action, America sat idle.

The second is that the virus does what past flu pandemics have done: It burns through the world and leaves behind enough immune survivors that it eventually struggles to find viable hosts. This “herd immunity” scenario would be quick, and thus tempting. But it would also come at a terrible cost: SARS-CoV-2 is more transmissible and fatal than the flu, and it would likely leave behind many millions of corpses and a trail of devastated health systems. The United Kingdom initially seemed to consider this herd-immunity strategy, before backtracking when models revealed the dire consequences. The U.S. now seems to be considering it too.

Existing vaccines work by providing the body with inactivated or fragmented viruses, allowing the immune system to prep its defenses ahead of time. By contrast, Moderna’s vaccine comprises a sliver of SARS-CoV-2’s genetic material—its RNA. The idea is that the body can use this sliver to build its own viral fragments, which would then form the basis of the immune system’s preparations. This approach works in animals, but is unproven in humans. By contrast, French scientists are trying to modify the existing measles vaccine using fragments of the new coronavirus. “The advantage of that is that if we needed hundreds of doses tomorrow, a lot of plants in the world know how to do it,”

Years of isolationist rhetoric had consequences too. Citizens who saw China as a distant, different place, where bats are edible and authoritarianism is acceptable, failed to consider that they would be next or that they wouldn’t be ready. (China’s response to this crisis had its own problems, but that’s for another time.) “People believed the rhetoric that containment would work,” says Wendy Parmet, who studies law and public health at Northeastern University. “We keep them out, and we’ll be okay. When you have a body politic that buys into these ideas of isolationism and ethnonationalism, you’re especially vulnerable when a pandemic hits.”

Much about the coming years, including the frequency, duration, and timing of social upheavals, depends on two properties of the virus, both of which are currently unknown. First: seasonality. Coronaviruses tend to be winter infections that wane or disappear in the summer. That may also be true for SARS-CoV-2, but seasonal variations might not sufficiently slow the virus when it has so many immunologically naive hosts to infect. “Much of the world is waiting anxiously to see what—if anything—the summer does to transmission in the Northern Hemisphere,” says Maia Majumder of Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital.

 

[Error]

If I panic buy Easter eggs, does that make me a bad person?

 

[speedy]

I’ve had that thought from the start - I have a theory it was a weapon gone wrong. Maybe to control Hong Kong ? Who knows

The rumours of 40k In wuhan are probably true. I remember the l hi to early on of body bags stacked high. And why build a new hospital just for 3000 people ? At least our government is honest enough to say they are preparing for worse. I suspect China has actually had cases in the millions with a death rate of around 5%

Still - they are keeping us out now - if only they did that early on

Finally today all symptoms including cough have gone.

How’s everyone coping with lockdown ?


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If China wished to tighten its grip on Hong Kong (or anything else) it would use military force. Intentionally unleashing a virus on Hong Kong, and subsequently it making its way back to China, would be a huge own goal. Poor food hygiene feels logical.

 

[Benzin]

My Asda had a sign saying no limit on the amount of Easter Eggs being purchased (everything else is the max 3 items).

Plus selling some for 75p. Mad times we live in.

 

[rob666]

Interestingly the daily cases on Saturday and yesterday were lower than the previous day but they’ve gone back up today but still lower than Friday.

As stated a few pages back, hard statistics tend to soften at weekends.
Always happens with raw data.
The statistics on deaths are about to be changed anyway...missed the details.

 

[Rojo]

As stated a few pages back, hard statistics tend to soften at weekends.
Always happens with raw data.
The statistics on deaths are about to be changed anyway...missed the details.

Current figures only include confirmed deaths at hospitals and the figures are only updated once next of kin have been informed. The new figures will include deaths outside the hospital and expect the figure to rise quickly as there is lag in the data.

Grim times, hope you're all doing ok

 

[Jb85]

Question - ones this is all over (and I fear it may never be truly over) - what will the NEW normal be?


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[pluk]

Question - ones this is all over (and I fear it may never be truly over) - what will the NEW normal be?


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The same as the old normal, but many people will have fewer Christmas cards to buy.

In the shorter term there may be flare ups which necessitate rolling periods of lockdown, but the herd immunity thing does actually work (source - no pandemic, and there have been many, has ever destroyed humanity) and I can't see why this would be any different.

 

[rob666]

Different to the current normal.

 

[Jb85]

Different to the current normal.

Lol
But do you not see the 2m rule becoming a ‘thing’ in this country? We react pretty poorly to change here and overreact as a nation - I can see fights over a sneeze, people arguing about the distance between them I queues.

This is affecting us now as it has happened but culturally I think the effect will last generations


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[GaryH]

The 2m rule is a waste of time, anyway studies have proven that droplets from a sneeze can travel around 6m. We should ideally be wearing masks to reduce the amount of droplets we put into the air. I'm really surprised masks are not used more widely in the UK. They do help reduce transmission. Even surgical masks.

Anyway as for what will be the new norm after this..... I think HUGE queues at Alton as everyone scrambles to get in to the park when it's back open!

Oh and prices will go up on everything as companies try and recoup their losses. Cheap flights and holidays next year? Forget it!

 

[DiogoJ42]

Bless. People are still clinging to the hope that this may end one day.
Cute.

This IS the new normal, kids, get used to it. We are here until they come for us. Then we die.

 

[jon81uk]

The 2m rule is a waste of time, anyway studies have proven that droplets from a sneeze can travel around 6m. We should ideally be wearing masks to reduce the amount of droplets we put into the air. I'm really surprised masks are not used more widely in the UK. They do help reduce transmission. Even surgical masks.

There has been a lot said as well that masks don't help, you end up touching your face more often to fiddle with the mask so anything you pick up on your hands is more likely to get into your system. They also give a false sense of security and people may then not wash hands often enough or take other sensible measures.
If you are sneezing often then stay at home and don't go out infecting others is far better advice (and we probably should do that more outside of Coronavirus too as would reduce the amount of cold and flu going around)

 

[Rick]

B&M's new Social Distancing trains are ready for when the worst is over

 

[pluk]

The 2m rule is a waste of time,

It absolutely isn't. Noone says that the virus cannot be transmitted by keeping that distance, but it certainly does reduce the likelihood. They've worked out that's the distance of optimum inconvenience Vs reward based on expertise and evidence that you do not have, they haven't just pulled a number out of their arses. It also creates a just out of arms length buffer against physical contact, which where the huge risk lies.

A few people thinking they know better will be the downfall of us all...

 

[jon81uk]

It absolutely isn't. Noone says that the virus cannot be transmitted by keeping that distance, but it certainly does reduce the likelihood. They've worked out that's the distance of optimum inconvenience Vs reward based on expertise and evidence that you do not have, they haven't just pulled a number out of their arses. It also creates a just out of arms length buffer against physical contact, which where the huge risk lies.

A few people thinking they know better will be the downfall of us all...

Yep, it would be great if we could stay 6m away from people and get grocery shopping done, but that isn't practical. Better to stay at home, tens of metres away from strangers inside your own house and then on the occasion you need to go shopping or something else then stay 2m or ideally more apart.

 

[James]

There aren't enough masks for the NHS, let alone the whole population...

The government have made it quite clear the social distancing measures aren't there to eliminate the virus, they are there to reduce the spread. Same goes for staying at home.

If you sneeze, 'Catch it, bin it, kill it' still applies, coronavirus or not.

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