COVID-19 — Coronavirus

[Blue Maverick]

On the flip side, numerous grows up and down the land will be allowed to carry on largely unfettered.

Not with a curfew mate they won’t be able to check on them, hopefully :)

 

[Blue Maverick]

For me travel companies etc are been a bit snide here, got an email from Ryanair who are through the goodness of their hearts dropping their rebooking fee so you can move your flight. However if you do that and you still can’t fly your travel insurance wouldn’t cover it as after 13 March Covid was not covered and food luck getting OLeary to refund you. I’d say to anyone with plans wait until they say you can’t go and get a refund, save the money for a holiday of a lifetime next year.

 

[Chippy_boy]

As someone who hasnt panic bought I do wonder how long it is before I run out of soap, loo rolls, food. Should that happen I might have to stay away from work as I wouldnt have much energy due to the lack of food, or being able to wash my hands , so hopefully all these horders will keep the country going.

Things will calm down for sure. We're seeing a blip right now following the sudden ramp up of measures and people panicking.

Some people are trying to buy much more than they need, and then others who find there is none left, try to buy more than they need, because they couldn't get any last time. A vicious circle.

But there's only so many times you can wipe your arse. It's not like everyone suddenly needs 10x the number of big rolls... or anything else for that matter.

Give it a week and the shops will be back to normal.

 

[Uffa]

Glad to hear that also your government is taking economical measures to support you. It's strange becoming used to hear daily that 300+ new people have died from the virus, it's almost like the weather forecast now. I guess it's one of the downsides/perks we have to being able to adapt quickly to situations.

On a lighter note, days ago the police managed to catch a 'ndrangheta boss thanks to the lockdown rules, so there's been some good things these days, along with less pollution and more wild animals around.

I think with Trump using the term "Chinese virus" there are a few angles you can look at it from with them all being correct and wrong at the same time.

Is it a "Chinese virus", certainly it originated there due to political calls in the 1970's. If Jeff at the pub refers to the virus in such terms those listening will know Jeff and how he means it; namely that of a regular bloke with little interest in politics and medical science, the context and nuance is vital i think. When a politician uses it given the current context (China vs USA) the connotations can carry a deeper more accusatory meaning. Suddenly it is not just the virus that originated from china but a virus "from China" which if given the right push can insinuate malicious intent. It certainly adds to an us v them mentality.

For myself this is just political jostling, not race related in the traditional sense but a political one. China should be shunned until they bring in responsible farming however. We are an interconnected world like never before now as evidenced by this situation with our responsibilities growing to each other. This policy of China's allowing such items at wet markets needs to be immediatly halted by themselves with a program to introduce sustainable safe farming with traditional animals. To the few old chinese not wanting to give this up, tough cookies.

This entire economy of wild animal farming in China is a rash decision as a result of a Chinese dictatorship culminating in the 1970's rushed, ill considered, catastrophic agriculture and farming policies. It has now crept into south east asian culture in general on a large scale as a delicacy. Not exclusively but they have a strong influence across the area, some countries have thier own wet market culture developed entirely independent of any Chinese influence. They need to ban this practice or reduce it to a very few heavily monitored places that have hygene as an absolute priority.

Americans are masters of naming diseases after other countries *cough* Spanish flu that didn't originate in Spain *cough*.
I do agree that China should do something about the wet markets, hopefully their leaders will realise the major risks they pose compared to their minimal benefits, and shut them down themselves. Or at least heavily regulate and monitor farming. I don't know how well they'd respond to foreign pressure though. If it was an international organisation like WHO, maybe, but not a country like the US.

 

[inbetween]

I think with Trump using the term "Chinese virus" there are a few angles you can look at it from with them all being correct and wrong at the same time.

Is it a "Chinese virus", certainly it originated there due to political calls in the 1970's. If Jeff at the pub refers to the virus in such terms those listening will know Jeff and how he means it; namely that of a regular bloke with little interest in politics and medical science, the context and nuance is vital i think. When a politician uses it given the current context (China vs USA) the connotations can carry a deeper more accusatory meaning. Suddenly it is not just the virus that originated from china but a virus "from China" which if given the right push can insinuate malicious intent. It certainly adds to an us v them mentality.

For myself this is just political jostling, not race related in the traditional sense but a political one. China should be shunned until they bring in responsible farming however. We are an interconnected world like never before now as evidenced by this situation with our responsibilities growing to each other. This policy of China's allowing such items at wet markets needs to be immediatly halted by themselves with a program to introduce sustainable safe farming with traditional animals. To the few old chinese not wanting to give this up, tough cookies.

This entire economy of wild animal farming in China is a rash decision as a result of a Chinese dictatorship culminating in the 1970's rushed, ill considered, catastrophic agriculture and farming policies. It has now crept into south east asian culture in general on a large scale as a delicacy. Not exclusively but they have a strong influence across the area, some countries have thier own wet market culture developed entirely independent of any Chinese influence. They need to ban this practice or reduce it to a very few heavily monitored places that have hygene as an absolute priority.

China could save the world if it gets off its feet because it can manufacture and supply all of the equipment and stuff we need to recover from this.

Trump is just a d*ckhead who is playing politics when he shouldn't be. He is the kind of tit who would put tariffs on China at a time like this.

At least here the division and political gaming has generally been put aside.

 

[BlueRockape]

Things will calm down for sure. We're seeing a blip right now following the sudden ramp up of measures and people panicking.

Some people are trying to buy much more than they need, and then others who find there is none left, try to buy more than they need, because they couldn't get any last time. A vicious circle.

But there's only so many times you can wipe your arse. It's not like everyone suddenly needs 10x the number of big rolls... or anything else for that matter.

Give it a week and the shops will be back to normal.

After the big panic here it's all ready settling back to normal in fact there are not as many in the SM as normal

 

[AlgarveBlu]

No worries, I’ll start a thread, lol.

I was thinking about starting one on tips for self isolation but I can see the threads are starting to fragment and duplication of information questions/answers has started so don’t want to split the threads anymore. I’m on day 4 with two kids and still working from home and my heads done in already and thankfully unlike the blues across the border we still have freedom of movement till tonight’s presidential decrees at least but not much to do with it. I can’t get my head around doing this for months.

The logistics are really hard with getting the balance for the online education the kids are doing, physical exercise, everyone getting their own space, online social connections just so the shock of the isolation isn’t too great on them and generally keeping everyone’s spirits up to deal with the periodic bouts of anxiety.

I suspect BM will end up with a covid19 tab of its own with lots of subsections if Uk gets lockdown, @SebastianBlue has called this a couple of times earlier in terms of the increasing reliance people will have on BM and other online communities which he’s right about.

 

[Chippy_boy]

According to the stats, Germany has 5 times the number of cases we have yet only one third of the deaths. I.e. 1/15th of our mortality rate.

This is puzzling and I am wondering what they are doing so much better than us.

I do not doubt that under normal day to day service they have better healthcare than us. But what that means is more doctors, nurses, beds and capacity per head of population than us and correspondingly lower waiting times etc. I didn't think they provided better treatment per se, than we do. Known treatments exist for different conditions and broadly speaking all healthcare systems deploy them.

And we are not in normal day to day service. I am unaware that the NHS is overloaded, unable to provide appropriate care or ICU treatment for anyone yet. This will doubtless come, but we are not there yet. People "lucky" enough to catch COVID-19 early, are getting the treatment they need at the moment, are they not?

So why are so many more people dying here in the UK compared to Germany? Any ideas? I could understand if there was some minor variation, but 15x? There must be a big influencing factor and we could do well to know what it is.

One possibility is that we have 15x more unregistered infections compared to them. But they will have unregistered infections too, so us having 15x is not really plausible. Something else is going on.

 

[denislawsbackheel]

Email form Sainsbury’s.
Note they are shutting fresh meat and fish counters among other measures.


I wrote to you last week to tell you about some of the steps we are taking to support increased demand for food and other essential items.

After I wrote to you last week, many of you replied. You wrote to share your concerns about our elderly and vulnerable customers and to ask if we can do more to restrict the number of items each person can buy. I have listened to feedback from you and from Sainsbury's colleagues across the country and wanted to share some of the extra steps we are taking to make sure everyone has access to the items that they need:

A number of you suggested that we reserve an hour in stores for elderly and vulnerable customers. In response to this request, we will set aside the first hour in every supermarket this Thursday 19th March, for elderly and vulnerable customers. I hope that you can respect this decision and will work with us as we try our best to help those that need it the most. If you or an elderly family member, friend or neighbour would like to shop during this hour, please check online for your local supermarket opening hours.

We will also help elderly and vulnerable customers access food online. From Monday 23rd March, our online customers who are over 70 years of age or have a disability will have priority access to online delivery slots. We will contact these customers in the coming days with more details.

For any online customer who can travel to our stores, from Monday 23rd March, we will operate an expanded 'click and collect' service. We are significantly increasing the number of collection sites across the country over the coming days in preparation for this. Customers can place their order online as usual and pick it up from a collection point in the store car park. We believe this will also work for people who are self-isolating.

As we work to feed the nation, we are also focusing all of our efforts on getting as much food and other essential items from our suppliers, into our warehouses and onto shelves as we possibly can. We still have enough food for everyone - if we all just buy what we need for us and our families.

To help us get more essential items onto the shelves, from this Thursday 19th March, we will be closing our cafes and our meat, fish and pizza counters in supermarkets. This means we can free up warehouse and lorry capacity for products that customers really need. It will also free up time for our store colleagues to focus on keeping the shelves as well stocked as possible.

I mentioned last week that we had put limits on a very small number of products. Following feedback from our customers and from our store colleagues, we have decided to put restrictions on a larger number of products. From tomorrow, Wednesday 18th March, customers will be able to buy a maximum of three of any grocery product and a maximum of two on the most popular products including toilet paper, soap and UHT milk. We have enough food coming into the system, but are limiting sales so that it stays on shelves for longer and can be bought by a larger numbers of customers.

 

[cibaman]

According to the stats, Germany has 5 times the number of cases we have yet only one third of the deaths. I.e. 1/15th of our mortality rate.

This is puzzling and I am wondering what they are doing so much better than us.

I do not doubt that under normal day to day service they have better healthcare than us. But what that means is more doctors, nurses, beds and capacity per head of population than us and correspondingly lower waiting times etc. I didn't think they provided better treatment per se, than we do. Known treatments exist for different conditions and broadly speaking all healthcare systems deploy them.

And we are not in normal day to day service. I am unaware that the NHS is overloaded, unable to provide appropriate care or ICU treatment for anyone yet. This will doubtless come, but we are not there yet. People "lucky" enough to catch COVID-19 early, are getting the treatment they need at the moment, are they not?

So why are so many more people dying here in the UK compared to Germany? Any ideas? I could understand if there was some minor variation, but 15x? There must be a big influencing factor and we could do well to know what it is.

One possibility is that we have 15x more unregistered infections compared to them. But they will have unregistered infections too, so us having 15x is not really plausible. Something else is going on.

It has been claimed that they don’t count patients who were close to death before catching the virus

 

[Uffa]

According to the stats, Germany has 5 times the number of cases we have yet only one third of the deaths. I.e. 1/15th of our mortality rate.

This is puzzling and I am wondering what they are doing so much better than us.

I do not doubt that under normal day to day service they have better healthcare than us. But what that means is more doctors, nurses, beds and capacity per head of population than us and correspondingly lower waiting times etc. I didn't think they provided better treatment per se, than we do. Known treatments exist for different conditions and broadly speaking all healthcare systems deploy them.

And we are not in normal day to day service. I am unaware that the NHS is overloaded, unable to provide appropriate care or ICU treatment for anyone yet. This will doubtless come, but we are not there yet. People "lucky" enough to catch COVID-19 early, are getting the treatment they need at the moment, are they not?

So why are so many more people dying here in the UK compared to Germany? Any ideas? I could understand if there was some minor variation, but 15x? There must be a big influencing factor and we could do well to know what it is.

One possibility is that we have 15x more unregistered infections compared to them. But they will have unregistered infections too, so us having 15x is not really plausible. Something else is going on.

This is about the difference between SK and Italy, but it might be a factor for other countries too:

Why South Korea has so few coronavirus deaths while Italy has so many

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/16/...oronavirus-survivability-sepkowitz/index.html

Also yeah, as cibaman said, Germany might have different standards for considering a death to be caused by COVID-19.

 

[AlgarveBlu]

Things will calm down for sure. We're seeing a blip right now following the sudden ramp up of measures and people panicking.

Some people are trying to buy much more than they need, and then others who find there is none left, try to buy more than they need, because they couldn't get any last time. A vicious circle.

But there's only so many times you can wipe your arse. It's not like everyone suddenly needs 10x the number of big rolls... or anything else for that matter.

Give it a week and the shops will be back to normal.

not the experience we are having here and we are 1 phase ahead of you but 1 phase behind Italy/Spain the pattern I’ve seen is massive spikes on shopping trips every time there is speculation that we are moving from shutdown to lockdown but they keep dithering and drip feeding restrictions before the Italian option is deployed. Another surge today here as president is doing an update tonight which people think is the big one, too many people here have now seen scenes from Italy of police cars/army on the street and special passes needed to leave your front door.

 

[jay_mcfc]

https://www.manchestereveningnews.c...b_vfF7JLRj22MgqpNlU3BJcx4hPA4B2dVczfsjHn8l82s

 

[Indaparkside]

If the numbers of deaths the government are now saying they would like is under 20,000
this would be a great outcome compared to what we were originally
led to believe

 

[Manc Born & Bred]

This is about the difference between SK and Italy, but it might be a factor for other countries too:

Also yeah, as cibaman said, Germany might have different standards for considering a death to be caused by COVID-19.

I think everyone is reporting different stats so it's hard to extrapolate or compare figures. In the last week infected people in Spain has risen nine fold, here it is five fold and Italy which everyone talks about being in a dreadful state only three fold. WHO still says that the chances of catching the virus are low which if you look at population stats is probably correct if all cases were being reported. I can't believe there are only circa 1,500 cases in the UK out of a total population of 67m. There are about 5 people on this site who have it. I reckon upwards of 100k have been infected which is still only around 0.15% of UK population

 

[goalmole]

I was thinking about starting one on tips for self isolation but I can see the threads are starting to fragment and duplication of information questions/answers has started so don’t want to split the threads anymore. I’m on day 4 with two kids and still working from home and my heads done in already and thankfully unlike the blues across the border we still have freedom of movement till tonight’s presidential decrees at least but not much to do with it. I can’t get my head around doing this for months.

The logistics are really hard with getting the balance for the online education the kids are doing, physical exercise, everyone getting their own space, online social connections just so the shock of the isolation isn’t too great on them and generally keeping everyone’s spirits up to deal with the periodic bouts of anxiety.

I suspect BM will end up with a covid19 tab of its own with lots of subsections if Uk gets lockdown, @SebastianBlue has called this a couple of times earlier in terms of the increasing reliance people will have on BM and other online communities which he’s right about.

I'm in the same boat as you. I'm in total lockdown and isolation and we're establishing a daily routine much the same as you describe in your post, and I'm quite happy to keep this up for a sustained period.
I have however, started wondering about an exit strategy to all this. It would be pointless to isolate now only to emerge and be infected by a second wave. Do we keep this up until a vaccine is found , however long that might take?

So when would the right time be to safely rejoin society?

 

[Uffa]

not the experience we are having here and we are 1 phase ahead of you but 1 phase behind Italy/Spain the pattern I’ve seen is massive spikes on shopping trips every time there is speculation that we are moving from shutdown to lockdown but they keep dithering and drip feeding restrictions before the Italian option is deployed. Another surge today here as president is doing an update tonight which people think is the big one, too many people here have now seen scenes from Italy of police cars/army on the street and special passes needed to leave your front door.

Yeah what they should realise is that they aren't special passes. They're just self-certificates everyone has (if you don't have it on you police will give you one for you to fill when they stop you) that says you're going shopping or to the pharmacy or buying a newspaper or walking the dog, and not going clubbing or playing cards with friends etc. Once you have that piece of paper signed it means you're aware of the consequences of lying; if they catch you going around without heading to one of the allowed destinations they can fine you or even jail you. So shopping is allowed as usual, you won't be shut at home to starve.

 

[Centurions]

I think everyone is reporting different stats so it's hard to extrapolate or compare figures. In the last week infected people in Spain has risen nine fold, here it is five fold and Italy which everyone talks about being in a dreadful state only three fold. WHO still says that the chances of catching the virus are low which if you look at population stats is probably correct if all cases were being reported. I can't believe there are only circa 1,500 cases in the UK out of a total population of 67m. There are about 5 people on this site who have it. I reckon upwards of 100k have been infected which is still only around 0.15% of UK population

I think you're way, way under there, admittedly with absolutely nothing to back it up. I think we're more along the lines of The Walking Dead where most people are actually carrying it (or a form of it perhaps) but it's just not showing signs.

 

[Ban-jani]

Wise move and you get to keep the stash:)

It was on Saturday, not as of Monday though!

 

[jay_mcfc]

I'm in the same boat as you. I'm in total lockdown and isolation and we're establishing a daily routine much the same as you describe in your post, and I'm quite happy to keep this up for a sustained period.
I have however, started wondering about an exit strategy to all this. It would be pointless to isolate now only to emerge and be infected by a second wave. Do we keep this up until a vaccine is found , however long that might take?

So when would the right time be to safely rejoin society?

It will go exactly as you said. It will be under some kind of control in the developed world meaning life will go back to some kind of normality. Then a second wave will hit and it will be lockdown again. Repeat 3/4 times until a vaccine is readily available in a year.