Coronavirus outbreak

[marinyork]

You are stating the bleeding obvious. But what is the solution to deal with this behaviour?

It'll settle down when the deaths are 300 or 400 a day. Of course that doesn't help London, the west midlands, hampshire, bits of wales, glasgow, hertfordshire but may have an impact on other areas.

 

[wafter]

I hope you're wrong. I don't believe he's a sociopath, he's a manipulative bastard who hides behind the persona of a bumbling fool.
I think the enormity of this will weigh very heavily on him indeed.

Trump on the other hand doesn't have the imagination or emotional intelligence required to empathise with others. I would view him as sociopathic rather than psychopathic, but either way he has zero capacity for empathy.

Well, for our sake so do I.

I totally agree that the "affable baffoon" is a largely constructed persona to hide his true focussed and self-serving Machiavellian intentions; I guess from where we're standing it's anyone's guess how deep that hole goes.

Regardless these are not desirable traits to have in a leader (from a citizen's perspective) and personally I think he's an extremely dangerous individual; a wolf in sheep's clothing and not at all to be trusted.

I would label Trump a psychopath, however I think psycopathy is often characterised by high intelligence... which would apparently rule him out.

EDIT: Apparently that's a myth about psycopathy and intelligence, so yeah - maybe he is a psycho. Either way he's an comically-narcissistic scumbag of the highest order..

We're doing fewer tests per day than the Italians than at the same deaths were. On the other hand we have done more tests in total by quite a way (around 25-40% more than Italy) depending what day you want to make comparisons for. DCMO Dr Jenny Harries has got annoyed at this point in press conferences quite a few times. If you take the latter point and adjust, which is not what I'm recommending we do, then our death rate would be worse than Italy's! Unfortunately I don't have how many ICU coronavirus patients there are to make a more intelligent comparison.

So it's all a bit up on the air then! Either way it's not looking to splendid is it.. I guess well all just have to hang on, do what we can and hope for the best.

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

Police officers in Aberdeenshire are hunting a teenager who deliberately coughed on a healthcare worker and told her she would catch coronavirus. The incident happened in Banchory at about 13:40 on Friday. The woman had been driving on the road from Inchmarlo golf course to Brathens Wood after finishing a shift when she saw someone sitting on the ground and waving to attract her attention. When she stopped, the teenager came towards her and coughed in her face. Police say he then ran off into nearby woods laughing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-52078488

Stories like this will inflame public opinion to the point where we see support for troops patrolling the streets and curfews.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

It'll settle down when the deaths are 300 or 400 a day. Of course that doesn't help London, the west midlands, hampshire, bits of wales, glasgow, hertfordshire but may have an impact on other areas.

Surrey and lots of other counties it won’t help either. Proximity to large centres of population ,and people commuting in and mixing will have been a factor in the earlier seeding of some counties.

 

[marinyork]

So it's all a bit up on the air then! Either way it's not looking to splendid is it.. I guess well all just have to hang on, do what we can and hope for the best.

It's very up in the air. It's not even totally clear what is happening in Italy (yes, really). 889 deaths just announced today. However the variations from day to day in the regions make it difficult to gauge what's happening. What's happening outside around six regions of Italy is very relevant to large bits of the UK, and it's not clear where those regions are going at all. As testing isn't really keeping up with virus growth rates from 2-4 weeks ago, the death rates in Italy today are obviously extremely high indeed. Of course that doesn't represent reality as close as that.

 

[MarkF]

The hospital has gone into lockdown now, not only are visitors not allowed in but I am not allowed out at any time in my uniform. No shortage of PPE this week. What is strange though is that I have noticed that the 3 testing pods have not been used for days, whereas a couple of weeks back cars were regularly pulling up. Hospital eerily quiet, everybody just waiting.......

Not seeing any change in confirmed virus patients, the elderly & poorly, maybe things will change next week.

Be interesting to see the 19/20 report and then see what affect the virus has on the annual flu attributed deaths.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/annual-flu-reports

 

[marinyork]

Surrey and lots of other counties it won’t help either. Proximity to large centres of population ,and people commuting in and mixing will have been a factor in the earlier seeding of some counties.

Probably true. This is the worry I have about London (maybe that was already a factor for Hertfordshire as that had a cluster early on or maybe near to airports who knows), Madrid, New York. In Italy if you exclude Turin and it's not clear what's going on in Rome or Naples, then on the whole in Italy it appears that it might have just about avoided being wildly out of control in the bonkersly dense population centres. Bergamo is near Milan but it's not as dense as other places by a long way.

My point was what was said around here was that this area is 10 days behind London. Similar things will have been said elsewhere (the lucky areas) so as the deaths mount up, sadly, you'll find as in Italy people will start staying in more. Too late for many areas . Not quite too late to have a moderate impact on other areas.

 

[Mo1959]

One of my concerns at the moment is how patients that are not Covid19 related are almost getting overlooked and struggling to get treatment. One of my ex-colleagues posted on Facebook last night that she was extremely concerned about her 77 year old grandfather. Not long had heart surgery and was in agony with his leg which was swollen to twice the size. She had to really struggle to get them to take it seriously and kept asking if he had breathing difficulty which he didn’t so they weren’t interested. Thankfully, she eventually managed to get him admitted by 2am and it was thrombosis. Could have been a poor outcome if they hadn’t taken him in.

 

[Johnno260]

Do they? Why do you think that?

It's a balancing act. Obviously if the test is only around a quarter or a third then that's no better than chance and complete junk as the case the spanish had (although the bad batch seems to be smaller and small nos now). If the test was 80% accurate which is what Spain wants that would be a gigantic leap forward.

Sickness rates at many employers are 25 or 30%. An 80% antibody test kit, or better still a so called antigen one would be awesome. As long as you use medical and common sense for those testing negative for people with symptoms alongside the test.

People still need to behave in exactly the same way taking broadly the same precautions even if they think they are immune.

I would’ve thought accuracy and ease of use are obvious, it means we know who are better protected and it could help with planning.

 

[Pale Rider]

Seems you’re out of step with the public.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/a...irus-gives-boris-johnson-s-political-immunity

I am among the 72 percent herd who think Boris and the scientists used by his government are doing pretty well.

Using the economist's theory of alternative cost, is there any reason to think having Boris at the helm has denied us a far better operator?

I doubt any other politician could do a significantly better job, and the scientists, who are not political appointments, would likely be the same.

Blaming austerity doesn't work.

Had we spent lots more money on the NHS in those years, is there anything to suggest the NHS would now be better prepared for the virus?

Quite rightly, the extra money would have been spent on giving better care to patients at the time - there would have been no lingering benefit of huge surplus capacity waiting to be deployed against a threat, the nature, scale, and timing of which could never have been predicted.

That also plays into any reforms we might wisely make after this virus is dealt with.

It's often said the army always prepares for the battle it has just fought, rather than the battle it is about to.

In other words, making ourselves better able to deal with a virus threat in future is unlikely to be of much use because the next big health emergency will be entirely different.

 

[tom73]

AGRGRGHRGHRGHRGH
What is wrong with people, how can they not get it through their thick skulls?!

Not the only one across the road we have a guy who still going to his dads everyday. for most of the day they even pulled up in the same car yesterday well he went and got something. His dad must be at least 70. It can't be for work he will have closed his chip shop. They most likely think they will be ok. As they don't talk to anyone as it is. But how do they know the guy GF is a hospital pharmacist.
The guy on the other side to me went out shopping he at risk no idea why the daughter only dropped off some a few days ago.
I'd say now having had time to think about out of our bit of the street (9 homes) we've only got 4 house inc us. (ofter 3 in total lock down)
Who look to be playing by the rules. Mrs 73 is hopping mad about it.

 

[marinyork]

I would’ve thought accuracy and ease of use are obvious, it means we know who are better protected and it could help with planning.

PCR is difficult to implement to swab and ferry around to test. On ease of use for a kit, I think you are worrying too much there.

Accuracy is for a virus that we have no idea what percentage of patients have 'no' symptoms. It only helps with planning if you do it before everyone has died or on the way to dying.

Although I think there will be a 2nd wave in the winter, so it'd help fantastically with that. However that wasn't a point you made.

 

[RecordAceFromNew]

Not wearing masks to protect against coronavirus is a "big mistake" - Head of CDC, China

"The big mistake in the U.S. and Europe, in my opinion, is that people aren’t wearing masks. This virus is transmitted by droplets and close contact. Droplets play a very important role—you’ve got to wear a mask, because when you speak, there are always droplets coming out of your mouth. Many people have asymptomatic or presymptomatic infections. If they are wearing face masks, it can prevent droplets that carry the virus from escaping and infecting others."

So the benefit is to protect others - this is interesting, because the common arguments against their use in the West are that their protection is uncertain for the wearer.

But if it protects others, and everybody wears them, everybody gets protected, right?

I guess such an extraordinary thought was considered either unpopular, like strict isolation / lockdown, or would in any case never be followed by the free people in the West!

 

[Johnno260]

PCR is difficult to implement to swab and ferry around to test. On ease of use for a kit, I think you are worrying too much there.

Accuracy is for a virus that we have no idea what percentage of patients have 'no' symptoms. It only helps with planning if you do it before everyone has died or on the way to dying.

Although I think there will be a 2nd wave in the winter, so it'd help fantastically with that. However that wasn't a point you made.

true I didn’t make that point.
Still part of me thinks home testing is a bad idea, people may see they have had it think they can do as they please and the police have a harder time enforcing things, easier to take the assume everyone will do the dumb thing approach

 

[kingrollo]

Not wearing masks to protect against coronavirus is a "big mistake" - Head of CDC, China

"The big mistake in the U.S. and Europe, in my opinion, is that people aren’t wearing masks. This virus is transmitted by droplets and close contact. Droplets play a very important role—you’ve got to wear a mask, because when you speak, there are always droplets coming out of your mouth. Many people have asymptomatic or presymptomatic infections. If they are wearing face masks, it can prevent droplets that carry the virus from escaping and infecting others."

So the benefit is to protect others - this is interesting, because the common arguments against their use in the West are that their protection is uncertain for the wearer.

But if it protects others, and everybody wears them, everybody gets protected, right?

I guess such an extraordinary thought was considered either unpopular, like strict isolation / lockdown, or would in any case never be followed by the free people in the West!

It must be spreading in a way that they hadn't previously thought - the numbers just aren't going down. Maybe masks are more useful than we thought.
......not we have enough to wear. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't become more common in future winters though.