COVID-19 — Coronavirus

[jitsubluedan]

I am still working at the moment and what struck me was just how much more rigourously we are taking the social distancing than places such as supermarkets are. I went to a supermarket on the way home from work last week and while there was spacing outside once inside everyone was mingling.

^^^^ This all day long.

I’ve commented to store staff on this point on more than one occasion. What’s the point of observing the 1m distancing whilst queuing outside the store when some people don’t observe inside?!

 

[Deleted member 77198]

I am still working at the moment and what struck me was just how much more rigourously we are taking the social distancing than places such as supermarkets are. I went to a supermarket on the way home from work last week and while there was spacing outside once inside everyone was mingling.

Yep, Tesco in Alty was exactly the same.

Distancing outside in the queue to get in, but what I noticed was that they were letting people in with far too much frequency. They’d let someone else in every ten seconds or so. By the time I got in the place was heaving and there were easily half a dozen people in every aisle; many stood side-by-side or were passing each other side-by-side. This was on every aisle.

They should be waiting at least a minute between letting people in, two minutes even.

 

[BlueRockape]

Got a phone call from my brother early this morning to say a close friend of ours passed away last night through this bastard virus, he was 59 with no underlying health issues, a taxi driver working out of Manchester Airport I'm really reeling at the moment.

Sorry mate for your loss

 

[jitsubluedan]

Got a phone call from my brother early this morning to say a close friend of ours passed away last night through this bastard virus, he was 59 with no underlying health issues, a taxi driver working out of Manchester Airport I'm really reeling at the moment.

Sorry to hear that. It’s a shock when someone you know has passed away because of this virus and it really brings it home how serious it is. I heard of an old family friend that died from it last week who was in his early 60’s.

My condolences to your friends’ family.

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

I am still working at the moment and what struck me was just how much more rigourously we are taking the social distancing than places such as supermarkets are. I went to a supermarket on the way home from work last week and while there was spacing outside once inside everyone was mingling.

You can’t blame the supermarkets though as, presumably, the people who are ‘rigorously practising social distancing’ are the same people who are going into the supermarkets?

 

[johnnytapia]

Our local fruit and veg shop might as well hand out the death certificates with the bags of potatoes. "Max 6 shoppers" says the sign, plus the 4 people working in the shop, people stood, cheek by jowl, all touching the same product, bags, each other; I've sent the shop a letter and asked (pleaded) with them to change the policy. Should be one customer at a time; this isn't a time for fucking about and taking chances.

 

[carlosthejackal]

I would imagine after all the fucking idiots ignore the stay at home advice today, then by tomorrow night it will be a total lockdown .

 

[davek1808]

Sorry mate for your loss

Thank you.

 

[davek1808]

Sorry to hear that. It’s a shock when someone you know has passed away because of this virus and it really brings it home how serious it is. I heard of an old family friend that died from it last week who was in his early 60’s.

My condolences to your friends’ family.

Thank you.

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

You know,, you possibly could be onto something here.

I have totally dismissed herd immunity as any kind of viable strategy because to achieve the necessary density of infections across the entire population would mean 40m+ infected and the NHS totally overwhelmed and countless thousands of needless deaths due to lack of capacity.

However what I had not considered was the possibility of herd immunity only in certain sectors. Or even allowing 100% infection rates across certain sectors.

Now consider this: The overall death rate from COVID-19 is perhaps somewhere around the 1% mark. Of course the headline rate is much higher but we all know now that many, many more people are infected and not included in the figures. And the 1% is across all age groups and all levels of fitness and health. The rates amongst the young are much much lower. Like 0.2% of headline figures and even lower as a percentage of all infections. Let's say it's 0.1% for those under 60 fit and healthy. Still a shocking figure if 40m people get it.

But what about just across NHS workers? I don't know how many front line staff work in the NHS but let's guess at 500,000. Even if we allowed all of them to get infected, that might mean fewer than 500 deaths. Possibly far fewer than that. The NHS would continue to function pretty much as normal if it lost say 500 staff.

Of course the government could never admit that this was part of the thinking. But I am wondering. It seems incredible that we should have been prepared to spend hundreds of billions on bailing out people and businesses, build new hospitals in less than a fortnight, coordinate manufacturing of moderately complex ventilator equipment. Yet sfter many weeks, we still cannot supply enough face makes and plastic aprons. It really does make me wonder if something else is going on.

A bit conspiracy theory I know...

There’s a huge problem with that though, and I appreciate you’re not being entirely serious, but you could never have enough control to ‘kill only 500’. What’s clear about this virus, like most others to be fair, is that the viral load exposure is the biggest threat to people who are otherwise in good health. Like influenza, SARS and MERS, there is no reason to not think that, for Covid-19, the bigger the viral load you’re exposed to the more serious the infection will be. This is why unprotected medics are at greatest risk as they can be exposed to huge amounts of virus on a daily basis, as can any of the key workers, of course.