COVID-19 — Coronavirus

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inchy14 said:
I remember watching it at the time and thinking then how crazy it is, the rate it can/will travel round the country is scary. We either start taking it seriously and stop ll movement for a couple of weeks or we just let it run it's course, all these half-hearted measures, looking at playing football behind closed doors for example is a complete waste of time, it has to be all or nothing.
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To an extent I agree, but actually rather than "all or nothing" I would say it's more a case of "every little helps".

Little things will make a big difference to how quickly this spreads: Wash your hands more (obviously) and especially after e.g. pushing the supermarket trolley. Stay in a bit more. Don't go to that meeting in London - have a conference call instead. Cancel your restaurant booking and eat in. Shop once a week, not twice a week. etc etc etc.

All of things things done in combination would make a big difference. If you have a 0.00x percent chance of getting it whilst doing the shopping then if you shop half as many times, that's halved your chances.

The problem is we are doing too little. We are not as a nation grasping just how serious this is and making those changes. Not enough anyway.
 
idahoblues said:
Whether it be a cold, flu or other...I'm personally in a dilemma of whether I fly to Spain for three weeks in April. Not concerned that much with the illness itself, just don't want to find myself quarantined in an area and unable to get home
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I have a similar dilemma - in reverse.

I have just completed my ESTA application for a trip to Myrtle Beach in April.

Just starting to get anxious about how the US government progress their policies on entry to the US

Perversely, I might be might be relieved to just hear that flights are cancelled - although I doubt that will happen.

Discussing this with friends who are on the trip at the weekend - the biggest concern is getting some test on arrival in the US and getting quarantined there at huge expense
 
Chippy_boy said:
Not really. Unless it started in the Outer Hebrides or something equally daftly remote (which is very unlikely), then whether it starts in Hazlemere or the middle of London makes little diference. The numbers end up the same, but it might delay things by a week. Neither here nor there really.

The one crumb of comfort is this is what would happen, UNLESS significant changes are made - some trivial - like washing our hands very frequently - others more draconian, as we've seen in China. How China have managed to achieve such success is a bit of a mystery, but they have managed to get the rate of new infections right down from the perilously high levels they were at previously. So it is possible, there is "hope".
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I was just thinking about that. China has a total population of 1.4bn. 1,437,611,143. Total cases in China are around 80,700. So 0.005% of the Chinese population have caught the virus. UK has 67m population so if we were as successful at containing the virus that would mean less than 4,000 cases.
 
inbetween said:
My girlfriends sister lives in northern Italy (Lake Garda) and she isn't at work but things are still quite normal because the risk is small. If she travelled to Lombardy or the Venice area then it'd be a different story...
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Well one part of Lake Garda is in Lombardy, an other in Veneto... ;)
The problem is knowing for sure which people are infected and which are travelling or came in contact with someone infected but it's not simple at all, especially for this virus that can have a long incubation period.
 
Saddleworth2 said:
I was just thinking about that. China has a total population of 1.4bn. 1,437,611,143. Total cases in China are around 80,700. So 0.005% of the Chinese population have caught the virus. UK has 67m population so if we were as successful at containing the virus that would mean less than 4,000 cases.
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well we're in the hundreds in a couple of weeks and the government maybe, might do something if it gets "bad".
 
Chippy_boy said:
To an extent I agree, but actually rather than "all or nothing" I would say it's more a case of "every little helps".

Little things will make a big difference to how quickly this spreads: Wash your hands more (obviously) and especially after e.g. pushing the supermarket trolley. Stay in a bit more. Don't go to that meeting in London - have a conference call instead. Cancel your restaurant booking and eat in. Shop once a week, not twice a week. etc etc etc.

All of things things done in combination would make a big difference. If you have a 0.00x percent chance of getting it whilst doing the shopping then if you shop half as many times, that's halved your chances.

The problem is we are doing too little. We are not as a nation grasping just how serious this is and making those changes. Not enough anyway.
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Agreed. But using the football as an example, instead of the ground they'll go to the pub, if we can't go to the ground why can we go on a bus, tram, train? Why can we go to the cinema and as @BlueHammer85 pointed out the supermarkets and shopping centres are probably even worse places to go, banisters, escalators, baskets, trolleys, picking up and putting back food.......
 
Saddleworth2 said:
I was just thinking about that. China has a total population of 1.4bn. 1,437,611,143. Total cases in China are around 80,700. So 0.005% of the Chinese population have caught the virus. UK has 67m population so if we were as successful at containing the virus that would mean less than 4,000 cases.
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But the daily mail said we are all going to die?
 
BJL_City said:
well we're in the hundreds in a couple of weeks and the government maybe, might do something if it gets "bad".
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Yeah, apparently talk of cancelling sporting events is “very premature”. Guess they are waiting for 100k cases before they do anything.
 
BJL_City said:
well we're in the hundreds in a couple of weeks and the government maybe, might do something if it gets "bad".
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Pro-active testing interrupting chain of transmission. It works - see South Korea. At moment we wait until people get the symptoms and phone 111 to arrange a test.
 
Another random stat from your resident foreteller of doom ;-)

2 weeks ago - Monday 24th Feb - Italy has less cases than the UK has today.
 
inchy14 said:
I remember watching it at the time and thinking then how crazy it is, the rate it can/will travel round the country is scary. We either start taking it seriously and stop ll movement for a couple of weeks or we just let it run it's course, all these half-hearted measures, looking at playing football behind closed doors for example is a complete waste of time, it has to be all or nothing.
Click to expand...
Doing a bit of back of a fag packet maths. There are ~300 confirmed cases right now. I think I heard that the incubation period is 5-7 days (there is also a couple of days delay between symptoms appearing and getting test results), and the number of cases is doubling roughly every 3-4 days. So we can probably safely assume there are already at least 1000 people who already have the virus and are yet to be confirmed. And then there are the ones who are not tested, anyone's guess but maybe a conservative estimate is the same number again so maybe at least 2000 already have it. Double that every 3-4 days and you get to 32,000 in 2 weeks time. Scary stuff and definitely agree that it's time to take drastic action.
 
Chippy_boy said:
Another random stat from your resident foreteller of doom ;-)

2 weeks ago - Monday 24th Feb - Italy has less cases than the UK has today.
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Makes sense. 14 days is almost 5 doublings. So:

Day 0 - 278 cases
Day 3 - 556
Day 6 - 1,112
Day 9 - 2,224
Day 12 - 4,448
Day 15 - 8,896

7,161 confirmed cases in Italy. Fits with our projections.
 
Cheer Up Peter Reid said:
Doing a bit of back of a fag packet maths. There are ~300 confirmed cases right now. I think I heard that the incubation period is 5-7 days (there is also a couple of days delay between symptoms appearing and getting test results), and the number of cases is doubling roughly every 3-4 days. So we can probably safely assume there are already at least 1000 people who already have the virus and are yet to be confirmed. And then there are the ones who are not tested, anyone's guess but maybe a conservative estimate is the same number again so maybe at least 2000 already have it. Double that every 3-4 days and you get to 32,000 in 2 weeks time. Scary stuff and definitely agree that it's time to take drastic action.
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Agreed. It's exponential growth right now, with rates in the 25% to 40% per day range.

Do the maths.

280 (today) x 1.25 ^^ 14 = 6,366 confirmed infections by Monday 23rd March
or worse,
280 (today) x 1.35 ^^ 14 = 18,699 confirmed cases by Monday 23rd.

My guess is (hopefully) nearer the former. But as I implied above, we are essentially 2 weeks behind Italy right now. They have what, 7,000 cases as of today? Seems about right.
 
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