Latest Chinese export - coronavirus COVID-19

[papasmurf]

@ Cromwell, that seems we have very poor ICU cover.



I hear that Nadine Dorries has got it and has been in meetings in Number 10 in the last few days!  

She met the Queen in the few days as well.

[Borchester]

Blimey! You deal with one Covid-19 thread, only to turn around and see another 5 or 6 have broken out in the meantime!



At least they are currently all contained in one sub forum. Hopefully this quarantine will hold them and we wont see them running out of control through all the other forum areas.....

   

[cromwell]

I'm not stocking up at all, I book a Tesco online delivery slot every week on Tuesday for a Thursday delivery. Today tried to do the same and no slots available until Saturday, so Saturday it is.

Never put aside in my life Greg but this is different,I might need to hibernate for personal reasons and I suppose some might say past my best before date.



I plan on staying around a while yet but if not well that's life,or not as the case may be.  

[GregB]

I have just returned from Lidl. Just inside the door were packs of 18 Andrex toilet rolls for £6.99. A young woman came in after us and said "Alleluya, I've found some toilet rolls," and put two packs in her basket. We were stocking up on non-perishable food items. Looking at other people's baskets and the shelves, so is everyone else, they nearly all had these Andrex rolls. People already know restrictions are coming.

The government admit they are losing count of the infected as so many are asymptomatic and contagious now.



@Nick - You need to take precautions for the spread of the virus to protect the vulnerable people. That's if you care about them. If your parents are still alive they will be at risk. Whether you think you have had it or not is irrelevant, really. Your actions can save the lives of older ladies and gents.

I reckon schools will close as early as Friday this week. Closing schools has been a great help in Japan, where the disease has spread far more slowly. Italy acted too late. We need to act now.

I'm not stocking up at all, I book a Tesco online delivery slot every week on Tuesday for a Thursday delivery. Today tried to do the same and no slots available until Saturday, so Saturday it is.

[Nick]

I have just returned from Lidl. Just inside the door were packs of 18 Andrex toilet rolls for £6.99. A young woman came in after us and said "Alleluya, I've found some toilet rolls," and put two packs in her basket. We were stocking up on non-perishable food items. Looking at other people's baskets and the shelves, so is everyone else, they nearly all had these Andrex rolls. People already know restrictions are coming.

The government admit they are losing count of the infected as so many are asymptomatic and contagious now.



@Nick - You need to take precautions for the spread of the virus to protect the vulnerable people. That's if you care about them. If your parents are still alive they will be at risk. Whether you think you have had it or not is irrelevant, really. Your actions can save the lives of older ladies and gents.

I reckon schools will close as early as Friday this week. Closing schools has been a great help in Japan, where the disease has spread far more slowly. Italy acted too late. We need to act now.

That is a different narrative than people buying bog rolls and pot noodles like I am Legend. But I'm not going to not continue my normal work day because of the virus. Yes both my parents are alive and I didn't visit for 2 weeks after coming back from Italy but stopping people working and locking down schools is madness, vulnerable people should isolate them selves and society should not retreat.

[Barry]

@ Cromwell, that seems we have very poor ICU cover.



I hear that Nadine Dorries has got it and has been in meetings in Number 10 in the last few days!  

[cromwell]

I found this an interesting article on how a democracy, Italy, is handling the virus outbreak restrictions.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/03/italy-coronavirus-covid19-restrictions-democracy/607729/">//https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/03/italy-coronavirus-covid19-restrictions-democracy/607729/

Yes very illuminating,I saw figures that per capita we have half the ICU beds Italy has and a quarter of Germany.

[Barry]

I found this an interesting article on how a democracy, Italy, is handling the virus outbreak restrictions.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/03/italy-coronavirus-covid19-restrictions-democracy/607729/">//https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/03/italy-coronavirus-covid19-restrictions-democracy/607729/

[Barry]

In Italy they are only letting a few people into supermarkets at a time. This is to avoid crowding. I would imagine the same happening here and reduced opening hours as much for the staffing sake as anything. We are led to believe we are 2 weeks behind Italy - the shops will be a nightmare in the coming days or until definite plans are revealed.

I have just returned from Lidl. Just inside the door were packs of 18 Andrex toilet rolls for £6.99. A young woman came in after us and said "Alleluya, I've found some toilet rolls," and put two packs in her basket. We were stocking up on non-perishable food items. Looking at other people's baskets and the shelves, so is everyone else, they nearly all had these Andrex rolls. People already know restrictions are coming.

The government admit they are losing count of the infected as so many are asymptomatic and contagious now.



@Nick - You need to take precautions for the spread of the virus to protect the vulnerable people. That's if you care about them. If your parents are still alive they will be at risk. Whether you think you have had it or not is irrelevant, really. Your actions can save the lives of older ladies and gents.

I reckon schools will close as early as Friday this week. Closing schools has been a great help in Japan, where the disease has spread far more slowly. Italy acted too late. We need to act now.

[cromwell]

Can't remember who it was quoting a 5% mortality rate but there could be 100's of thousands if not millions of people got it / had it and not counted in the reported stats therefore substantially lowering that 5%.



As I posted previously I was in Northern Italy last month, flew back on the 15th Feb and I had an itchy nose, cough and sneezing for maybe 3 days but it wasn't a cold so I think that I have had it.

As far as I am aware there hasn't been a death reported of anyone under 70 years old. I haven't checked that but every case I've heard of has been 80+ with underlying medical conditions.



The link shows the % chance of dying if you get the virus by age. For the vast percentage of the population it is 0.2% which is the same as flu so that's why I'm not worried.



https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/">https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... ographics/">https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/

I quoted the 5% figure based on official figures given at the time,people do compare this to a cold or the flu,Italy had its worse flu epidemic in 2017,30 people died in total today in Italy 168 have died in the last 24 hours,so it's the same is it?  :?:  https://www.thelocal.it/20180119/italy-worst-flu-season-in-14-years">//https://www.thelocal.it/20180119/italy-worst-flu-season-in-14-years

[johnofgwent]

This is no time to play the alpha-signalling tough guy.  Look at the statistics and see for yourself the alarming way things are going in Italy.  Lockdowns in China and South Korea seem to have resulted in drastic reductions of new cases.  Now Italy is in lockdown, although one would expect the trends in new cases and deaths to lag behind the measures.  Our government is telling us to expect 'many thousand' cases of COVID19.  Now is the time, surely, to be preventing the spread by bringing some kind of lockdown.  The longer its left, the more people will become seriously ill or die.  Also the longer a lockdown is delayed, the longer it will probably have to be imposed for.



The first SARS was serious but it was brought under control.  The same is true of the ebola outbreaks, at least as for as most of the world is concerned.  Edwina Curry's egg scare might well have been hysteria and thankfully not many people developed CJD as a result of BSE beef either.  But COVID19 is out of the box, it's everywhere on the planet now, just about.  And the full name of the disease caused by COVID19 is 'SARS-CoV-2'.  SARS stands for sudden acute respiratory syndrome.

Well, to repeat myself:-



The biggest, indeed from my position as a guy who graduated with a degree in biochemistry, the ONLY REAL problem with this virus is the long period during which you can infect others without yourself showing any symptoms at all.



Are you by any chance familiar with an outfit called the Center for Disease Control.



They have some interesting things to say. Not about this but about flu in general. Here's their very public statement regarding their analysis of 2018-2019.



https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html">https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html



CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2018–2019 season included an estimated 35.5 million people getting sick with influenza, 16.5 million people going to a health care provider for their illness, 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths from influenza (Table 1). The number of influenza-associated illnesses that occurred last season was similar to the estimated number of influenza-associated illnesses during the 2012–2013 influenza season when an estimated 34 million people had symptomatic influenza illness



Lets run those numbers again



They say 35,000,000 people actually caught the flu. They think. They don't know because that is a guess based on the thing they DO know which is that 16.5 million, or just over half of their guesstimate, actually rocked up at some form of healthcare provider and asked for help. I'm not sure what that figure entails but I'm bloody sure that if I were to ask the American CDC they would clarify exactly what it means because they are not run by the people who run censored communist china.



So of those 16.5 million recorded cases of sufferers seeking professional help of some form, almost half a million, or one in 30, actually ended up being hospitalised, and 34,000 people died in a way that a medical professional found they could say the flu killed them on their death certificate.



That's ABOUT one in a thousand of those they THINK got the flu, or one in five hundred of those they KNOW got the flu.



I have tried hard to analyse the flu surveillance figures for the UK for the equivalent time period but I have concluded they have been created by a civil service hell bent on obfuscation. Feel free to read it for yourself



https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/839350/Surveillance_of_influenza_and_other_respiratory_viruses_in_the_UK_2018_to_2019-FINAL.pdf">https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/839350/Surveillance_of_influenza_and_other_respiratory_viruses_in_the_UK_2018_to_2019-FINAL.pdf



In the UK right now, 373 people have coronavirius and six died of it. https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/mar/10/coronavirus-update-latest-italy-shutdown-lockdown-who-pandemic-outbreak-quarantine-uk-cases-usa-america-australia-live-news-updates">https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/ ... ws-updates">https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/mar/10/coronavirus-update-latest-italy-shutdown-lockdown-who-pandemic-outbreak-quarantine-uk-cases-usa-america-australia-live-news-updates



So the death rate per confirmed case in the UK is six in 373, or eighteen per thousand. Which makes it about nine times as lethal as the ordinary flu BUT how many are actually going to catch it ? The current predictions in that guardian link above suggest a peak will occur in about a fortnight if it follows the pattern in china, whereas bog standard flu goes on being a significant pain in the arse until week 15 ...



And I have seem the "alarming way" things are going in italy.



https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/">https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... try/italy/">https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/



NINE out of ten of the people confirmed to have the disease are considered to be in a mild condition, one in ten is serious / critical and so far 631 out of 10,149 who caught it have died as a result. That's 63 in a thousand. Rather more than us.



I have no intention of being panicked into anything, for reasons I have already stated

[johnofgwent]

This is no time to play the alpha-signalling tough guy.  Look at the statistics and see for yourself the alarming way things are going in Italy.  Lockdowns in China and South Korea seem to have resulted in drastic reductions of new cases.  Now Italy is in lockdown, although one would expect the trends in new cases and deaths to lag behind the measures.  Our government is telling us to expect 'many thousand' cases of COVID19.  Now is the time, surely, to be preventing the spread by bringing some kind of lockdown.  The longer its left, the more people will become seriously ill or die.  Also the longer a lockdown is delayed, the longer it will probably have to be imposed for.



The first SARS was serious but it was brought under control.  The same is true of the ebola outbreaks, at least as for as most of the world is concerned.  Edwina Curry's egg scare might well have been hysteria and thankfully not many people developed CJD as a result of BSE beef either.  But COVID19 is out of the box, it's everywhere on the planet now, just about.  And the full name of the disease caused by COVID19 is 'SARS-CoV-2'.  SARS stands for sudden acute respiratory syndrome.

Well, to repeat myself:-



The biggest, indeed from my position as a guy who graduated with a degree in biochemistry, the ONLY REAL problem with this virus is the long period during which you can infect others without yourself showing any symptoms at all.



Are you by any chance familiar with an outfit called the Center for Disease Control.



They have some interesting things to say. Not about this but about flu in general. Here's their very public statement regarding their analysis of 2018-2019.



https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html">https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html



CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2018–2019 season included an estimated 35.5 million people getting sick with influenza, 16.5 million people going to a health care provider for their illness, 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths from influenza (Table 1). The number of influenza-associated illnesses that occurred last season was similar to the estimated number of influenza-associated illnesses during the 2012–2013 influenza season when an estimated 34 million people had symptomatic influenza illness



Lets run those numbers again



They say 35,000,000 people actually caught the flu. They think. They don't know because that is a guess based on the thing they DO know which is that 16.5 million, or just over half of their guesstimate, actually rocked up at some form of healthcare provider and asked for help. I'm not sure what that figure entails but I'm bloody sure that if I were to ask the American CDC they would clarify exactly what it means because they are not run by the people who run censored communist china.



So of those 16.5 million recorded cases of sufferers seeking professional help of some form, almost half a million, or one in 30, actually ended up being hospitalised, and 34,000 people died in a way that a medical professional found they could say the flu killed them on their death certificate.



That's ABOUT one in a thousand of those they THINK got the flu, or one in five hundred of those they KNOW got the flu.



I have tried hard to analyse the flu surveillance figures for the UK for the equivalent time period but I have concluded they have been created by a civil service hell bent on obfuscation. Feel free to read it for yourself



https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/839350/Surveillance_of_influenza_and_other_respiratory_viruses_in_the_UK_2018_to_2019-FINAL.pdf">https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/839350/Surveillance_of_influenza_and_other_respiratory_viruses_in_the_UK_2018_to_2019-FINAL.pdf



In the UK right now, 373 people have coronavirius and six died of it. https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/mar/10/coronavirus-update-latest-italy-shutdown-lockdown-who-pandemic-outbreak-quarantine-uk-cases-usa-america-australia-live-news-updates">https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/ ... ws-updates">https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/mar/10/coronavirus-update-latest-italy-shutdown-lockdown-who-pandemic-outbreak-quarantine-uk-cases-usa-america-australia-live-news-updates



So the death rate per confirmed case in the UK is six in 373, or what is that fourteen ??  per thousand. Which makes it about seven times as lethal as the ordinary flu BUT how many are actually going to catch it ? The current predictions in that guardian link above suggest a peak will occur in about a fortnight if it follows the pattern in china, whereas bog standard flu goes on being a significant pain in the arse until week 15 ...



And I have seem the "alarming way" things are going in italy.



https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/">https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... try/italy/">https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/



NINE out of ten of the people confirmed to have the disease are considered to be in a mild condition, one in ten is serious / critical and so far 631 out of 10,149 who caught it have died as a result. That's 63 in a thousand. Rather more than us.



I have no intention of being panicked into anything, for reasons I have already stated

[Nick]

This is no time to play the alpha-signalling tough guy.  Look at the statistics and see for yourself the alarming way things are going in Italy.  Lockdowns in China and South Korea seem to have resulted in drastic reductions of new cases.  Now Italy is in lockdown, although one would expect the trends in new cases and deaths to lag behind the measures.  Our government is telling us to expect 'many thousand' cases of COVID19.  Now is the time, surely, to be preventing the spread by bringing some kind of lockdown.  The longer its left, the more people will become seriously ill or die.  Also the longer a lockdown is delayed, the longer it will probably have to be imposed for.



The first SARS was serious but it was brought under control.  The same is true of the ebola outbreaks, at least as for as most of the world is concerned.  Edwina Curry's egg scare might well have been hysteria and thankfully not many people developed CJD as a result of BSE beef either.  But COVID19 is out of the box, it's everywhere on the planet now, just about.  And the full name of the disease caused by COVID19 is 'SARS-CoV-2'.  SARS stands for sudden acute respiratory syndrome.

And as with Brexit, where is your proof that this is going to be a disaster?

[Nick]

Fair enough don't agree,but with nearly every other country on the planet taking precautions why other than a gut feeling do you think you are right?

Can't remember who it was quoting a 5% mortality rate but there could be 100's of thousands if not millions of people got it / had it and not counted in the reported stats therefore substantially lowering that 5%.



As I posted previously I was in Northern Italy last month, flew back on the 15th Feb and I had an itchy nose, cough and sneezing for maybe 3 days but it wasn't a cold so I think that I have had it.

As far as I am aware there hasn't been a death reported of anyone under 70 years old. I haven't checked that but every case I've heard of has been 80+ with underlying medical conditions.



The link shows the % chance of dying if you get the virus by age. For the vast percentage of the population it is 0.2% which is the same as flu so that's why I'm not worried.



https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/">https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... ographics/">https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/

[cromwell]

This is no time to play the alpha-signalling tough guy.  Look at the statistics and see for yourself the alarming way things are going in Italy.  Lockdowns in China and South Korea seem to have resulted in drastic reductions of new cases.  Now Italy is in lockdown, although one would expect the trends in new cases and deaths to lag behind the measures.  Our government is telling us to expect 'many thousand' cases of COVID19.  Now is the time, surely, to be preventing the spread by bringing some kind of lockdown.  The longer its left, the more people will become seriously ill or die.  Also the longer a lockdown is delayed, the longer it will probably have to be imposed for.



The first SARS was serious but it was brought under control.  The same is true of the ebola outbreaks, at least as for as most of the world is concerned.  Edwina Curry's egg scare might well have been hysteria and thankfully not many people developed CJD as a result of BSE beef either.  But COVID19 is out of the box, it's everywhere on the planet now, just about.  And the full name of the disease caused by COVID19 is 'SARS-CoV-2'.  SARS stands for sudden acute respiratory syndrome.

 :hattip