COVID-19 — Coronavirus

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inbetween said:
The measures taken so far include the education element which is more important than anything else.

Our office never had alcohol hand sanitisers but it does now. Our company never considered home working but now it is.

Really healthy people are only doing the above to stop the spread to others and not to stop themselves getting it.

If we close everything down then the spread will slow which is great. But, the virus will resurface as soon as the doors are reopened which makes it pointless.

The only reason for a lockdown at the moment is to slow infections so that the NHS can gain control but unlike in Italy the NHS has not lost control nor is it swamped.

In an ideal world we'd infect everyone who is healthy on purpose, give them 2 weeks isolation and then that would probably get rid of this thing for good.

If a vaccine becomes available then that will do the exact same thing, it will give you the virus so your body can fight it and in the future not become infectious to others again.
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Good to read a nicely balanced post.

So many people just seem to want to find fault - some maybe simply because of their political bias and others driven by frustration to a simple desire to find fault without offering any sensible alternative actions - but this is/should be way beyond that. I do not read many constructive posts like this one.

As you sensibly say:

"If we close everything down then the spread will slow which is great. But, the virus will resurface as soon as the doors are reopened which makes it pointless."

So is closing schools a sensible step? To isolate the generations that are the most likely to be unharmed and cause a major challenge to the other, more vulnerable, generations? As parents still need to work - often it will be grandparents taking up the task of caring for the kids and therefore being in greater risk

There are not easy answers - hard decisions will have to be made - and perhaps our government actually is just following the recommendations of the medical and scientific experts? - rather than just falling to the temptation to just 'pull stunts' - which may be the case in other countries that have closed schools in a seemingly 'knee-jerk' reaction.

In these countries that have closed schools - when do they reopen? - what would be the criteria that needs to be achieved for such an opening to be justified? It surely be a long time before related deaths and infections are less than currently.
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inbetween said:
The measures taken so far include the education element which is more important than anything else.

Our office never had alcohol hand sanitisers but it does now. Our company never considered home working but now it is.

Really healthy people are only doing the above to stop the spread to others and not to stop themselves getting it.

If we close everything down then the spread will slow which is great. But, the virus will resurface as soon as the doors are reopened which makes it pointless.

The only reason for a lockdown at the moment is to slow infections so that the NHS can gain control but unlike in Italy the NHS has not lost control nor is it swamped.

In an ideal world we'd infect everyone who is healthy on purpose, give them 2 weeks isolation and then that would probably get rid of this thing for good.

If a vaccine becomes available then that will do the exact same thing, it will give you the virus so your body can fight it and in the future not become infectious to others again.
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I think the idea behind an initial slowing of it means that they do expect a peak once everything re-opens but they’ll be more prepared for it. Plus it won’t be a massive quick spike, more of a gradual one which won’t put as much strain in health services
 
Tricky_Trev said:
Sky News did a poll yesterday and 25% of the country are refusing to change anything. I don’t know how many of them are not changing because of weak messaging and how many are just bellends. Probably mostly stupid twats that have their heads in the sand.
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Saw that myself. It does seem to correlate with people I know my age too (27). The general feeling among the select few I’ve spoken to is that of “well, it’s relatively bad but there’s not much we can do about it”. This is merely an observation, but it’s becoming apparent that this is going to require a collective effort to contain it and the government puts far too much faith in us as individuals to do this. I don’t think we need end up at a stage where authorities are welding doors shut, but I do think we should consider potential legislation that restricts movements, even banning mass gatherings is a step forward in some sense.

If laws are passed and they give a timescale on them, then the vast majority of people will follow them.
 
Iran's data has been questioned. Some will be sceptical. Their new cases are around 1,200 again (just announced) and have been for a a week now.

Here's a country that is without medicines doing everything that it can to survive, and here we are as a so called advanced nation refusing to commit resource to fight it.

The UK and US number of tests is very telling. The isolation policy was WHO policy but the UK and the US followed it in name only. That is the evidence from the tests.
 
mcfc1632 said:
Good to read a nicely balanced post.

So many on here just seem to want to find fault - because of their political bias and simple desire to find fault - but this is/should be way beyond that. I do not read many constructive posts like this one.

As you sensibly say:

"If we close everything down then the spread will slow which is great. But, the virus will resurface as soon as the doors are reopened which makes it pointless."

So is closing schools a sensible step? To isolate the generations that are the most likely to be unharmed and cause a major challenge to the other, more vulnerable, generations. As parents still need to work - often it will be grandparents taking up the task of caring for the kids

There is not easy answers - hard decisions will have to be made - and perhaps our government actually is just following the recommendations of the medical and scientific experts rather than just 'pull stunts' - which may be the case in other countries that have closed schools in a seemingly 'knee-jerk' reaction.

In these countries that have closed schools - when do they reopen? - what would be the criteria that needs to be achieved for such an opening to be justified? It surely be a long time before related deaths and infections are less than the coming couple of weeks.
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China had their clamp down at the end of Jan and here we are 6 weeks later and they have it completely under control.

(Very worryingly, they had less cases than we do now, when they saw the train coming and went full on clamp down.)
 
mcfc1632 said:
Good to read a nicely balanced post.

So many on here just seem to want to find fault - because of their political bias and simple desire to find fault - but this is/should be way beyond that. I do not read many constructive posts like this one.

As you sensibly say:

"If we close everything down then the spread will slow which is great. But, the virus will resurface as soon as the doors are reopened which makes it pointless."

So is closing schools a sensible step? To isolate the generations that are the most likely to be unharmed and cause a major challenge to the other, more vulnerable, generations. As parents still need to work - often it will be grandparents taking up the task of caring for the kids

There is not easy answers - hard decisions will have to be made - and perhaps our government actually is just following the recommendations of the medical and scientific experts rather than just 'pull stunts' - which may be the case in other countries that have closed schools in a seemingly 'knee-jerk' reaction.

In these countries that have closed schools - when do they reopen? - what would be the criteria that needs to be achieved for such an opening to be justified? It surely be a long time before related deaths and infections are less than the coming couple of weeks.
​
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It doesn't make it pointless if the infections go to near zero. They may reemerge later but you buy time for a vaccine.

Plenty of scientists disagree. See comments above.
 
To understand the exponential function this example is quite good:

Germany has 3,675 cases on worldometer (and the true number will be significantly higher),

when we double every 3 days we will have 3,675 x 2^10 = 3,763,200 tested cases in 4 weeks,
but when we double every 6 days we will have 3,675 x 2^5 = 117,600 tested cases in 4 weeks.

The difference are 182,280 critical cases (5%) in 4 weeks from now - even our well funded German NHS couldn't cope
(the army is more and more involved in preparing help for the tough times ahead).

Simple maths, but exactly what all of us are responsible for,
also those 25% in the poll who see no reason to change.
 
Marvin said:
It doesn't make it pointless if the infections go to near zero. They may reemerge later but you buy time for a vaccine.

Plenty of scientists disagree. See comments above.
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Absolutely agreed. Look at the rest of China (outside Hubei). They have completely eradicated it. The only new cases are coming from visitors, e.g. from the UK. But they get tested and isolated.

Were this a 20 year strategy, it would be unsustainable, but it is not. We just need to keep it under control until next year and then vaccinate.
 
havefaith said:
This makes for pretty frightening reading, feels like were at the start of Hollywood natural disaster movie where at least theres a glimmer of hope at the end.

What I cant get my head round in terms of the herd mentality is if this is the way forward then why self isolate, surely large events mixing with people is the way forward.

Isolate those most at risk whilst the rest of us crack on and come out the other side.

The fact this isn't being advocated says to me they're playing at this with the lives of those most vulnerable.

Something doesn't add up or have I completely misread what's going on.


https://www.independent.co.uk/voice...s-hospital-symptoms-italy-china-a9397736.html
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The most chilling thing from that is us having 4000 ICU beds in the country, 3200 of which are already occupied even before the virus hits big time. Next week only 600 will be free and the week after we’ll be short by 200. The week after that we’ll be short by 4200, more than our actual number of beds in total. Even a doubling of our capacity only gives us an extra 5 or 6 days of being able to care for the dying.

So in just 2 weeks we have to decide whose grandparent to leave for dead and whose to try to save. 2 weeks.

And one of my nans still wants to go out shopping. I’ll chain her to the table if I have to! So stubborn. If you need some bread and milk, let me get it ffs! I’ll leave it on the doorstep, ring the bell and do a runner so I don’t risk spreading the virus.
 
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Tricky_Trev said:
I know. It’s important to increase the numbers wherever possible but the stark reality is it’s still not anywhere near enough.

Has there been any talk of what numbers England could increase it to with a bit of a reshuffle? I haven’t heard anything. I’ve heard them say the NHS is “flexible” but I’ve not seen any numbers to go with it.

EDIT: just seen this on BBC which is relevant:

Germany and Italy are ramping up production of medical ventilators to meet expected peak epidemic demand. They cost $17,000 each.

According to Reuters, Germany has ordered 10,000 ventilators, Italy has ordered 5,000.

Factories in overdrive in Europe. Italy is getting the army involved in helping the production line.

As far as I’m aware, the UK has one small manufacturer of ventilators that has 40% market share.
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I watched an interview on the BBC with the head of the anaesthetists professional body on Germany he said, we have part assembled ICU units and ventilators but can't get the parts to finish them because....they are made in China!
 
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