COVID-19 — Coronavirus

[SWP's back]

Slavic is an ethnicity not a race.

I’m of Polish/Slavic descent but my race is white.

Racism, as per the CPS guidelines, can be based on race, ethnicity, religion or nationality.

 

[sir baconface]

Tune!

You hum it and I’ll play it.

 

[kevin horlocks wand]

This will be one of THE big scandals to come out of all this once it's over. Utter madness on a monumental scale.

yep another press conference will pass today with not a single question on it from our poor journalists

 

[Marvin]

US press conference highlights:

1. The 5 minute "quick tests", or "Point of Care" tests are being rolled out around the States this week. 50,000 a day being produced. For those that don't know they test for the antigen in 5 to 13 mins. They are like toasters, and will go initially to every hospital and care home. There are other testing platforms too. Something called Cepheid was mentioned. (Use your imagination with what a rapid 5 minute test can do - you could quarantine the infected instead of sitting back and waiting with a nationwide lockdown. You could clear clusters.)
2. They have dropped Trump's by Easter plan. They say that the do nothing strategy would have led to 1.6 million to 2.2 million deaths. They are working to June 1st recovery with 100k to 200k deaths. This is not Trump, this is their public health officials. It's their national plan.
3. On PPE and masks they intend to sterilise and reuse masks (at the moment they are thrown away each day) but this technology isn't quite there yet.
4. 1,100 hydroxychloroquine trial underway in New York

I forget the rest. That's all that comes to mind.

In Europe, Germany has also rejected the lockdown and wait strategy that 'we' have adopted. Now the US has too. It is only a matter of time before the UK gets onboard. I predict a much more aggressive testing strategy that will see an end to this, although the timing of the peak is not good for us. All our resources are going to get swallowed by the effort to keep people alive as UK healrth service is swamped. We'll be in fire-fighting mode, but thereafter there will at last be a mass-testing strategy that will end this. It will take the UK government time to get on board but they will. I don't blame the UK cabinet. They've taken advice from the herd immunity brigade but this approach has been decisively rejected by first Germany, the leading European nation, and by the USA, the leader of the Western world. The UK will follow. It has no choice. It will take some time though.

 

[Walking on the blue moon]

Up to that point they couldn’t rule out it wasn’t from produce from the market though rather than H2H.

It was January 20th that they confirmed H2H. They started going into lockdown three days after that. Bear in mind this was a new virus and they were the first country impacted, everyone else was able to see what happened post lockdown (a far stronger one than the west is capable of) and the subsequent spread.

I think you trusted the words of the Chinese government too much. There had been many reports coming out of Wuhan on how hospitals were overwhelmed by mid-January on Weibo (Chinese equivalent of Facebook and Twitter) with an alarming number of family clusters. And Wuhan is a big city with relatively good infrastructure. Anyone who is not blind or a CCP-fanatic could see that human-to-human transmission was extremely likely.

Obviously the Daily Mail is now trying to shift the blame but the Chinese government is far from innocent and definitely not the poster child it purported itself to be.

 

[Vic]

To loosely paraphrase Hitchens...

Religion makes otherwise intelligent people do extraordinarily stupid things.

Wetherspoons boss causes outrage after insisting he will keep chain open as ‘virus doesn’t spread in pubs'

Religious revival in the pubs last weekend, was it? Or the great God Profit?

 

[jay_mcfc]

This will be one of THE big scandals to come out of all this once it's over. Utter madness on a monumental scale.

I think it was 8. But that's sill 8 from NY and 3 from Madrid per day plus however many other flights from America, Spain and the rest of the world. This is the kind of thing that will allow this to go on deep into 2020.

 

[Marvin]

"only" - is that the official line? They lost fewer than that in Vietnam !!

The official US line is 100k to 200k deaths by June 1st. June 1st is their return to normality date.

 

[i8rags]

Airlines are holding our cash to ransom, easyJet another airline to ground until June and remove refund button from booking site.
Ryanair ground til June. Still asking for my balance in full even though I’m going in may.
Government should announce solidly no flight til at least June if not longer and under law should automatically refund customers.
Clear guidelines and a cash injection back to many who are struggling.

 

[Chippy_boy]

US press conference highlights:

1. The 5 minute "quick tests", or "Point of Care" tests are being rolled out around the States this week. 50,000 a day being produced. For those that don't know they test for the antigen in 5 to 13 mins. They are like toasters, and will go initially to every hospital and care home. There are other testing platforms too. Something called Cepheid was mentioned. (Use your imagination with what a rapid 5 minute test can do - you could quarantine the infected instead of sitting back and waiting with a nationwide lockdown. You could clear clusters.)
2. They have dropped Trump's by Easter plan. They say that the do nothing strategy would have led to 1.6 million to 2.2 million deaths. They are working to June 1st recovery with 100k to 200k deaths. This is not Trump, this is their public health officials. It's their national plan.
3. On PPE and masks they intend to sterilise and reuse masks (at the moment they are thrown away each day) but this technology isn't quite there yet.
4. 1,100 hydroxychloroquine trial underway in New York

I forget the rest. That's all that comes to mind.

In Europe, Germany has also rejected the lockdown and wait strategy that 'we' have adopted. Now the US has too. It is only a matter of time before the UK gets onboard. I predict a much more aggressive testing strategy that will see an end to this, although the timing of the peak is not good for us. All our resources are going to get swallowed by the effort to keep people alive as UK healrth service is swamped. We'll be in fire-fighting mode, but thereafter there will at last be a mass-testing strategy that will end this. It will take the UK government time to get on board but they will. I don't blame the UK cabinet. They've taken advice from the herd immunity brigade but this approach has been decisively rejected by first Germany, the leading European nation, and by the USA, the leader of the Western world. The UK will follow. It has no choice. It will take some time though.

We've long since abandoned the ridiculous herd immunity strategy mate.

Right now we are doing broadly the right things, although not strict enough. But along the right lines at least.

What's lacking is our plan for when we come out of the other side of lock down. (Which will take longer than it needed to because of our flawed strategy initially and inadequately strict measures at present.) But once numbers are really low again and we have the opportunity to ease off and start to get back to normal, we will need mass testing capacity so we can rapidly identify infections, contact trace and isolate. We are not doing anything like enough testing.

 

[Chippy_boy]

BBC News - Coronavirus: Mercedes F1 to make breathing aid
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52087002
Looks like CPAP is a way forward after all..

What do you mean "after all"? It was always the case and never in doubt. What did you think we needed the ventilators for, room perfume?

EDIT: LIstening to the news, seems I am mistaken. My apologies.

I had thought a CPAP machine was a ventilator. Seems not, although I have no ideas what the difference is.

 

[Blue Hefner]

Ridiculous if true

That can’t be true.

 

[Fernster]

My GP told me to go to hospital. Its really not the time to be on immunosuppressents and be in hospital. What a time to have a flare up.

If I start going dizzy and seeing stars then I will get myself to hospital. Until then I am going to grind it out at home.

I'm sorry to hear this.

I work in a school and last week, whilst keeping the kids occupied, I went arse over tit and broke my finger and smashed my knee. I wanted to stay but was ushered off to the hospital.

As usual, the hospital staff were amazing. I kept apologising for disturbing them during this busy time but they told me that they are not expecting a rush until about 2 - 3 weeks time. The X-Ray operator said this period is his best time he has ever had in the hospital because stupid people are staying away and it is running smoothly as it should be. It did seem eerily quiet, I was at stepping hill.

Back at work today and the kids are giving me a ribbing, you just have to laugh!!

 

[Marvin]

"All brought to you by Marvin" is very Trumpian - a lie and self-centred.

It was a light-hearted joke but that comment really p'sses me off. I'm not a liar, nor am I self-centred. I'm out.

 

[meltonblue]

I think you trusted the words of the Chinese government too much. There had been many reports coming out of Wuhan on how hospitals were overwhelmed by mid-January on Weibo (Chinese equivalent of Facebook and Twitter) with an alarming number of family clusters. And Wuhan is a big city with relatively good infrastructure. Anyone who is not blind or a CCP-fanatic could see that human-to-human transmission was extremely likely.

Obviously the Daily Mail is now trying to shift the blame but the Chinese government is far from innocent and definitely not the poster child it purported itself to be.

They said that too, they didn't have clear confirmation of it until then though (and the WHO also didn't have confirmation of H2H transmission outside of China until around that date too). Bear in mind this was a brand new virus - I don't think declaring it after 200 cases and 20 deaths is that late in the cycle, particularly given the vast majority of those could have got it from meat from the market rather than being physically there themselves.

I absolutely don't trust China, particularly how they acted during the first few weeks of it, and I do think their end numbers are too low to be realistic (although I don't think it's as high as some others do either) and I've already said they absolutely deserve a lot of blame. It still doesn't change the fact that some other countries wasted some of the prep time and didn't grasp the severity of the situation despite it causing China to go on lockdown very early in the cycle. Gove yesterday intimating about our testing strategy being wrong due to China was spin at it's finest, for example.

 

[BlueHammer85]

That can’t be true.

twitter with no proof.
Must be true.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Thinking of changing my name to Dominator

Not sure how well it would be received in here though...

Do you want to kiss yourself?

 

[Vic]

I'm sorry to hear this.

I work in a school and last week, whilst keeping the kids occupied, I went arse over tit and broke my finger and smashed my knee. I wanted to stay but was ushered off to the hospital.

As usual, the hospital staff were amazing. I kept apologising for disturbing them during this busy time but they told me that they are not expecting a rush until about 2 - 3 weeks time. The X-Ray operator said this period is his best time he has ever had in the hospital because stupid people are staying away and it is running smoothly as it should be. It did seem eerily quiet, I was at stepping hill.

Back at work today and the kids are giving me a ribbing, you just have to laugh!!

Lest you think they are kicking their heels there is a lot of training going on (normally ventilators have one nurse for one patient so a lot more will need to know what to do). Presumably radiologists will be doing fewer broken bones and more chest x-rays.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

To loosely paraphrase Hitchens...

Religion makes otherwise intelligent people do extraordinarily stupid things.

I assume that's Christopher you’re paraphrasing and not Peter!

 

[Djibrilshairdo]

That can’t be true.

just have a look at the Heathrow flight arrivals board. Many are code shared flights so appear as multiple flights, still too many in the current climate.