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Coronavirus

dingdongo said:
Is there any small chance things will calm down, schools and shops will open and normal service will be resumed anytime soon? Or is it for sure that we are in this for the long haul?
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I'd say a best case scenario is that a backward-looking test reveals that masses have already had it & barely knew it. That would obviously be a huge relief, and might lead to at least a partial unwinding of things. But that's pure speculation on my part.
 
johnola said:
Although I cannot resist the idea that like original SARS, this could blow itself out or effective therapies and or vaccines are found post haste.
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People tend to forget that there was also quite a panic around swine flu in spring/summer 2009. That was also declared a pandemic I think, but turned out to be absolutely nowhere near some of the predictions that were being made. We're clearly at a far deeper stage into this crisis than swine flu ever got, but it's still worth remembering that things looked pretty hairy at one point back then, too.
 
My Mrs had aches and pains in her back today and went to bed early, feeling rough... she has a slight ticklish cough.

I'm not sure whether to kick the bedroom door in and flamethrower the room for a few minutes... or just wait it out 'til morning and see if she comes out of there alive.
 
We’ve been told to work from home, and do not go to an office or to a customer site.
Instructions are to stay healthy, take advantage of the extra time to be with the family at home, stay fit and exercise etc. All very positive and mature, aided by the availability of good video conferencing tech.

That said, the boss has used said tech to arrange a twice weekly vid-con “virtual pub”, for us all to dial in, chat brick and drink on the job.
Sounds a tinkle take, but it’s actually pretty smart if you take the long view...

Glad I work for a good company now.
 
scaramanga said:
Still you assume that the virus is the only bad thing that can happen. Mitigating this virus will lead to life changing situations and possibly death for large swathes of the country.

Doing nothing to stop the virus is a bad option, killing the entire economy is a worse one.
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No one is talking about killing the economy. I'm certainly am not
 
Parklaner81 said:
People tend to forget that there was also quite a panic around swine flu in spring/summer 2009. That was also declared a pandemic I think, but turned out to be absolutely nowhere near some of the predictions that were being made. We're clearly at a far deeper stage into this crisis than swine flu ever got, but it's still worth remembering that things looked pretty hairy at one point back then, too.
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This isn't no Swine Flu nonsense.
The reproductive number(number of people each infected person infects on average) for Covid19 is on average 3.3. Swine Flu's was 1.47.

Swine Flu is the reason it took the WHO so long to proclaim Covid 19 a pandemic.
The WHO now are very cautious about using the term.

"In January 2010, Wolfgang Wodarg, a German deputy who trained as a physician and now chairs the health committee at the Council of Europe, claimed major firms had organized a "campaign of panic" to put pressure on the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a "false pandemic" to sell vaccines. Wodarg said the WHO's "false pandemic" flu campaign is "one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century." He said that the "false pandemic" campaign began in May 2009 in Mexico City, when a hundred or so "normal" reported influenza cases were declared to be the beginning of a threatening new pandemic, although he said there was little scientific evidence for it. Nevertheless, he argued that the WHO, "in cooperation with some big pharmaceutical companies and their scientists, re-defined pandemics," removing the statement that "an enormous amount of people have contracted the illness or died" from its existing definition and replacing it by stating simply that there has to be a virus, spreading beyond borders and to which people have no immunity."​

https://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c3033

The Council of Europe has heavily criticised the World Health Organization, national governments, and EU agencies for their handling of the swine flu pandemic.

The parliamentary assembly of the council—the international organisation that protects human rights and the rule of law in Europe—published a draft of a report that reviewed how the H1N1 pandemic was handled.

National governments, WHO, and EU agencies had all been guilty of actions that led to a “waste of large sums of public money, and unjustified scares and fears about the health risks faced by the European public,” says the report.

The conclusion came in the parliamentary assembly’s social, health and family affairs committee report published on 4 June.

The report was prepared by Paul Flynn, socialist member of the assembly and Labour MP for Newport West and approved by the committee ahead of a plenary debate at the end of this month. It says there was overwhelming evidence that the seriousness of the pandemic was vastly over-rated by WHO, which led to a distortion of public health priorities.

Presenting his report at a committee meeting in Paris, Mr Flynn said, “This was a pandemic that never really was.”

The committee said there were “grave shortcomings” in the transparency of decision making about the outbreak, which generated concerns about the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on decisions taken.

In particular, WHO and European health institutions were not willing to publish the names and declarations of interest of the members of the WHO emergency committee and relevant European advisory bodies directly involved in recommendations concerning the pandemic, the committee said.​
 
P.D. said:
That Whitty guy is widely acknowledged as one of the worlds top epidemiologists.

As of yet no one has any other long term alternative to herd immunity (obviously looking to exclude those at risk groups) apart from waiting for a mystery vaccine that won't be here until after next winter. How long realistically can you keep a total lockdown in place for before the public get restless and decide to take their chances?

No one can say what strategy is realistically correct at this point in time, supposedly austerity led to approx 40K deaths per year in the UK for instance. Add into the mix general stress and mental wellbeing adding further work for the NHS and it's a big problem.

I should add I don't have a solution either :)
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Exhausting testing existing safe therapies (for other illnesses) is a better option.

If were seriously considering herd immunity then what we should have done first is found out if it is possible. By extensively testing the population to find those infected and find volunteers to see if they can be re-infected.
 
Modric THFC said:
This isn't no Swine Flu nonsense.
The reproductive number(number of people each infected person infects on average) for Covid19 is on average 3.3. Swine Flu's was 1.47.

Swine Flu is the reason it took the WHO so long to proclaim Covid 19 a pandemic.
The WHO now are very cautious about using the term.
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I wasn't comparing the ferocity of the two epidemics. I'm in no way qualified to do that. I was simply pointing out a somewhat comparable situation in which predictions had been dire, but thankfully turned out to be far less severe than feared.
 
I got tested today. Got a long needle-ish thing up my nose, not very pleasant, but happy to have gotten tested, finally. I'm sort of hoping for it to be positive, since I've been in isolation since getting the symptoms anyway - and hopefully I'll be immune (yes, I know we don't know that for certain yet) and can just get on with things.
 
johnola said:
Prepare for the worst. Hope for the best.

We have seen peaks and falling caseloads elsewhere of course but we have a fortnight at least of increasing infections and months of deaths as the virus does its worst to those infected.

Then we have second waves and remodelling to influence policy around those wave which are for the birds for the time being.

Although I cannot resist the idea that like original SARS, this could blow itself out or effective therapies and or vaccines are found post haste.
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There were quite a few developments on this today - reported in the better print media but not on TV who, to me, seem to be focusing solely on selling a completely negative angle. This is somewhat understandable, but they are ignoring progress which is being made quite quickly now by doctors and scientists.

Mind you, looking at the continuing ridiculous behaviour of some of the general public re this virus, maybe they are right to be trying to scare the bejeesus out of them.

Jon said:
We’ve been told to work from home, and do not go to an office or to a customer site.
Instructions are to stay healthy, take advantage of the extra time to be with the family at home, stay fit and exercise etc. All very positive and mature, aided by the availability of good video conferencing tech.

That said, the boss has used said tech to arrange a twice weekly vid-con “virtual pub”, for us all to dial in, chat brick and drink on the job.
Sounds a tinkle take, but it’s actually pretty smart if you take the long view...

Glad I work for a good company now.
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Our Deputy Head sent a fantastic email this evening along similar lines. Great job by him.
 
Bullet said:
My Mrs had aches and pains in her back today and went to bed early, feeling rough... she has a slight ticklish cough.

I'm not sure whether to kick the bedroom door in and flamethrower the room for a few minutes... or just wait it out 'til morning and see if she comes out of there alive.
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Both I would say.
 
Been under quasi lockdown since Monday here in Austria. All non essential shops closed, gatherings of more than 5 banned and most businesses are working from home but businesses that are producing can stay open but most building sites have closed. We can go out for a walk but with the weather being good a lot of people are taking the tinkle. Been lucky in that I have not been laid off the government here have introduced a short term work (Kurzarbeit) program. This means we don't get let go and the company only pays for the hours we do and the government pays the rest. We won't get full pay, we were told 15-20% less, but it's better than SSP.
Not overly worried about the Virus but what comes after scares the fudge out of me. The whole of Europe is gonna be economically fudged. Hopefully some good will come of it, either we change our system completely or we start producing all that cheap brick we like in our own countries and stop being so reliant on one dodgy country
 
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