COVID-19 — Coronavirus

[lust overlord]

Bike shops are open.

Ha.
I know my son and he's more terrified of actual physical exercise than he is of catching a virus.:)

 

[M18CTID]

Mr O'Leary says
Any passenger whose flight has been cancelled as a result of these Government shutdowns, will over the next week or two, receive an email outlining their options. At the same time as we are dealing with unprecedented numbers of flight bans, we have had to reduce office staff by 50% for social distancing reasons and we ask customers to be patient and bear with us; you will receive email communications in due course. Please do not call our phonelines as the reduced staffing will be unable to accommodate anything but the most urgent of cases, which over the coming days, will be rescue flights.

They should be offering a refund to all customers who are impacted by cancelled flights. It seems some airlines, however, are trying to get people to change their dates to later on in the year (and having to pay any difference in flight price on top), yet who's to say those airlines won't go bust in the meantime and people who have changed their dates are left high and dry and worse still have had to effectively fork out double bubble for the privilege?

 

[Marvin]

Sorry to bang on about this, but I am just really, really puzzled as to WTF has gone on here in the UK.

One month ago or more, we could see this coming. We had our original plan A which was to allow it to swiftly move through the population with a fucking humungous peak and widespread carnage. Quickly replaced by the plan B which everyone else in the world is following, of trying to suppress the virus as much as possible in order to save lives. Thank God!

But my point is that both plans anticipated a fucking great big peak. Either the first humungous one, or the one we are facing now. We saw how China had to build hospitals in 1 week to try to provide capacity. And we saw that 2 months ago.

Why are we only hearing over the last day or so about plans for makeshift hospital facilities at Excel London and elsewhere? Why did we not ask Dyson and others to get ventilators made and fucking sharpish, back in February? How come we didn't say to the supermarkets "In March, you are going to need 10x your online delivery capacity, so get ready". The supermarkets are all fucked, because they had zero notice of all of this. All of this smacks to me of too little, too late and a complete lack of foresight, or at the very least of pro-active, preparatory actions.

We've all banged on about the utter insanity of not shutting airports, allowing uncontrolled numbers into the UK without checks, of mass events still taking place etc. But that's really a seperate point. All of that make this impending surge in demand even more nailed on, and even bigger. And yet we seem to have little to prepare for it. I just cannot get my head around it.

Possibly the plans for temporary hospitals have been in place and only came to light recently?

The virus could be suppressed to a much greater extent than it is in the UK by extending isolation across wider sectors. That is a self-evident truth so why aren't we doing it?

Forensic testing could also have a role. The explanation is that we don't have the resources. Well re-direct resources. There's a lot sitting idle at present.

The only explanation for not taking more aggressive action is that they think what has been proposed is enough. Extra suppression comes at a cost. They seem satisfied with their trade-off. If your objective is only to protect lives then there is an awful lot more that can be done.

There are no doubt huge logistical challenges such as sourcing a limited amount of ventilators, manufacturing them, obtaining testing kits (why haven't central governments taken this function on - who is profiting from the sale of these kits?) but stopping none-essential activity is relatively straightforward.

Perhaps the government can see their strategy working and are confident that inside a fortnight the UK epidemic will peak and are content to do it 2 weeks rather than 10 days?

 

[johnnytapia]

Sorry to bang on about this, but I am just really, really puzzled as to WTF has gone on here in the UK.

One month ago or more, we could see this coming. We had our original plan A which was to allow it to swiftly move through the population with a fucking humungous peak and widespread carnage. Quickly replaced by the plan B which everyone else in the world is following, of trying to suppress the virus as much as possible in order to save lives. Thank God!

But my point is that both plans anticipated a fucking great big peak. Either the first humungous one, or the one we are facing now. We saw how China had to build hospitals in 1 week to try to provide capacity. And we saw that 2 months ago.

Why are we only hearing over the last day or so about plans for makeshift hospital facilities at Excel London and elsewhere? Why did we not ask Dyson and others to get ventilators made and fucking sharpish, back in February? How come we didn't say to the supermarkets "In March, you are going to need 10x your online delivery capacity, so get ready". The supermarkets are all fucked, because they had zero notice of all of this. All of this smacks to me of too little, too late and a complete lack of foresight, or at the very least of pro-active, preparatory actions.

We've all banged on about the utter insanity of not shutting airports, allowing uncontrolled numbers into the UK without checks, of mass events still taking place etc. But that's really a seperate point. All of that make this impending surge in demand even more nailed on, and even bigger. And yet we seem to have little to prepare for it. I just cannot get my head around it.

It's tantamount to the signing of death warrants. Utter shambles.

 

[Gabriel]

Germany reporting a significant drop in the number of new cases today, I think: 4,332 to 1,286.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Tough you don't live in leve anymore oh and she's a rag haha.

Never lived in Leve, mate - just visited plenty of times - and my sincere commiserations!

 

[sir baconface]

I like the sound of your missus!

Sounds the type who’d soon have you under the jack boot....

Whoops, that’s gone and done it.

 

[DRINKLEVEDRY]

Sounds the type who’d soon have you under the jack boot....

Whoops, that’s gone and done it.

Not half.

 

[give it to gordon]

It's tantamount to the signing of death warrants. Utter shambles.

I know when BJ spoke the other day me like lots of people thought the uk was going into lock down with only front line workers going to work ... NO.....what he said was if you can you from home do. If not go to work as normal ! Builders, window cleaners, grass cutters , litter picking, plumbers, etc ...At best it's a clear as mud !

 

[jay_mcfc]

Germany reporting a significant drop in the number of new cases today, I think: 4,332 to 1,286.

Incredible that. I saw that the low death rate can be partly explained by the younger age of the people that have had it in Germany but not sure how that also equates to the number of cases reducing drastically. You’d think the younger people were the more they’d travel, work, take public transport and spend time in larger gatherings. If the numbers continue in Germany then they’ll be a lot of countries looking at what they’ve done when the next virus comes around.