COVID-19 — Coronavirus

[Crouchinho]

Same thing seen in the USA. That's not cultural. That's poverty. Plus black and Asian people are more likely to work in the most exposed jobs. The poor always get hit hard in disasters and immigrant families are more likely to be poor.

Yep and I wouldn't fancy being a blue collar American working without benefits or health insurance. No doubt it will spread through a family quicker because they can't afford to put themselves on a 2k bed per night

 

[Tim of the Oak]

Same thing seen in the USA. That's not cultural. That's poverty. Plus black and Asian people are more likely to work in the most exposed jobs. The poor always get hit hard in disasters and immigrant families are more likely to be poor.

Plus an older generation of Asian and black clinicians have a very strong allegiance to the NHS, with examples of retired people returning to the front line and paying the ultimate price.

 

[cleavers]

where do you get that from?
There have been no Virgin flights to Europe or the UK for days.

Virgin flights in and out of the UK and France are largely repatriation flights, of citizens trapped abroad 2 flights came back from India last night.

 

[cleavers]

The Sub-continent community’s greater propensity to go to large religious gatherings must also be a factor. I understand the recent spike in cases in Wolverhampton was linked to a temple.

Not just that, but they don't like not seeing family, so are in many cases carrying on doing so.

 

[1.618034]

Talking of being warned and taking a risk, I read this morning that unlike for other viruses such as h1n1 type of flu viruses, for example, there were no vaccines at all for any kind of Coronavirus.

Why? Because since SARS had died down anyway and since the r&d was expensive and proving difficult, everyone just gave up and moved on to other things.

The key word there is "expensive".

 

[AlgarveBlu]

Bill Gates is in my opinion one of the only people that has the experience, respect and vision to head up a global committee to give us all the best chance of coming out of this situation as quickly and safely as possible. Put him in charge of a global task force to get the best scientists, firms, tech firms and backed by all politicians from the G20, WHO and IMF.

1) Miles in front of the curve a always - Nations/politicians all plodding along behind the curve running multiple strategies which only fix the issue in specific regions. Understandable short term policy but a hopeless strategy for an end game.

2) Has invested fortunes in this area and was almost prophet like in his analysis of the dangers of a pandemic years ago, as usual people with this level of intellect and foresight are shunned due to our necessity to only fix issues once they are on our doorstep when it is far too late.

3) He has the respect of powerful leaders across the globe and carries significant credibility to unify a global policy due to his experience in the soft tech and infectious disease fields. He has no immediate drives in terms of political/financial persuasion.

4) He sincerely cares about making a positive difference for everyone and has the proven this over the last decade, one of the few people that has understood for a long time that the solution requires a global strategy. He is looking at this on a panoramic basis rather than a national/regional basis as he has the intelligence to realise that fixing issues in isolated areas around the world does not get us out of the medical and economic situation.

5) He already has solutions! To be fair he's been working on them for years before the virus even jumped to humans.

If this were to happen I would for the first time start to be very optimistic of our chances of defeating this and resuming to a semblance of normality by this time next year. I suspect global myopic nationalist policies will continue to hamper the arrival towards the end game solution we need.

 

[Eds]

A friend of my niece has just cycled 40 miles to have lunch with her.

Both have self isolaled before lockdown due to fever, cough etc.

Both recovered and presumably feel immune.

Cycling that far is surely against the rules.

This sort of attitude comes from the top.

Lots of recommendations. No laws.

They may have recovered they may be immune, nobody knows, but both are stupid. Maybe you should have a word with her.

 

[hgblue]

A friend of my niece has just cycled 40 miles to have lunch with her.

Both have self isolaled before lockdown due to fever, cough etc.

Both recovered and presumably feel immune.

Cycling that far is surely against the rules.

This sort of attitude comes from the top.

Lots of recommendations. No laws.

The stats I saw this morning suggested Britain is second in terms of observing the social distancing guidelines behind Spain.

 

[BlueAnorak]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52255863

‘Coronavirus: Ethnic minorities 'are a third' of patients’

Cultural factors must be having an impact, e.g multi generational households.

Possibly but as a high number of UK cases are in London and a London hospital is used as an example in that report I would expect those numbers. Ethnic minorities well over 40% in London.

Over-representation of BME has been an issue in places outside of London.

With regards to the figures, definitely. It's a scare mongering headline where numbers are pretty much proportionately what should be expected, particularly in larger city environments.

Same thing seen in the USA. That's not cultural. That's poverty. Plus black and Asian people are more likely to work in the most exposed jobs. The poor always get hit hard in disasters and immigrant families are more likely to be poor.

The main reason in this case is population density. The higher the population density, the more likely you are to catch it. Between 30 and 40% of our nation's cities are ethnic minorities - even more so in densly populated city centres - so proportionally they will be hit harder.
The second reason is underlying medical conditions - especially diabetes (both type1 and type 2) and high blood pressure. This is why men are being hit proportionally harder as more of them have these conditions than women. Especially those over 60. Lifestyle and poverty come in here. High sugar diets are cheaper and this leads to people being overweight. Hence the poor and unfit will have proportionally more of these conditions.
The third reason is genetics. I'm afraid the Asian community will be hit the hardest here - twice as heavily as other communities in the same environments. Even healthy people in this community have a propensity for diabetes. Twice as much as any other ethnicity.

 

[blue b4 the moon]

We're in a good position for want of a better phrase to see how the easing the lockdowns in different countries works, let's hope we use this data to our advantage rather than doing our own thing again.