Coronavirus Pandemic

[gilesgoat]

Ok keeps getting worse in Italy

From tomorrow they are closing all schools and universities, up to 15 March at least.

Ryanair is saying :

Ryanair has been forced to cancel up to 25% of all Italian short haul flights for a three week period from the 17th March to 8th April, in response to the Covid19 virus. All impacted customers have been notified by email and SMS and given the option to request a refund, rebook or re-route their journey.

And so I heard other countries have done, travelling to/from Italy could be a bit of a problem it seems.

Apparently so far about 80 people died in Italy, which I don't know "does not sound like a really huge number" however it would appear this virus is nearly 30 times more deadly than the standard ones.

I read some advice some doctors sent around, apart the usual they seems to say this virus would appear to be quite sensitive to heat, they reccomend to drink tea/hot stuff and/or even just hot water "to reduce the possibility it enters in the lungs from the trachea".

Anyway Italy is a bit in a state of panic, the cases are still NOT decreasing/stable so everyone is in alert.

[gilesgoat]

Flights are already being stopped but the word is currently that it's due to (lack of) demand rather than official cancellations.

Crossing my fingers it all goes ahead. TBH still mildly excited about going to somewhere like Rome when there's few other tourists around

In fully honesty after all is happening I'd "suggest" you re-consider your trip to Italy, it's up to you but you may not be visiting it when Italy is at its best conditions

Could be a bit of a weird experience maybe not so worth remembering.

[(o)(o)]

I think it's obvious.

This virus has been out in the wild for some time.

It appears to incubate for as much as a month.

Probably huge numbers are infected worldwide, by asymptomatic carriers.

The few cases we see are outliers.

The tip of the iceberg metaphor has need seemed so apt!



Except, as above, it's usually depicted as a finite object of limited depth with large projection, whereas COVID19 is potentially never ending and persistent, and we may be barely past the tippyest most tippy point!

Next few weeks will give a measure of how severe this pandemic is going to be. If the virus is well established already numbers should ramp up exponentially by the week ending. It might not, of course.

I'm pretty optimistic :

Social disorder and chaos beckon.

This is a full scale pandemic IMO.

Global disruption to food supplies and services seem probable.

Martial law, as we've seen in China.

But I don't think this is going to be the apocalypse. Containment of the type you are describing Giles :

no more kisses, no more hugs, no more hands shaking, people should stay 2 metres from each other, every person over 65 should be better not go outside home, as soon as you have fever of any kind stay home, no more manifestations/public things for 1 month, etc. etc. etc

IMO.. the human spirit is incredible when the going gets hard! Ebola containment was extraordinary. I'm humbled by those people who risked self-sacrifice for the greater good. Death rate of 50-90% !!! The lengths that people went to, to contain Ebola were amazing. Covid19 OTOH is far less lethal and only poses a risk to elders and some subgroups.

What we need (whilst getting the vaccines together) is a national plans to mobile the low risk younger people, and to keep elderly from being exposed to Covid19. That will mean a lot of unpleasant isolation, and very much a lot of continual attention to hygiene, endless washing and containment behaviours eg wrt food handling.

The Tory idea of deploying retired nurses and doctors, is of fucking ridiculous... It's a wonder they still know how to breathe.

[gilesgoat]

The Tory idea of deploying retired nurses and doctors, is of fucking ridiculous... It's a wonder they still know how to breathe.

.. except that is also what they are actually trying to do NOW in Italy .. as well as recruiting lot more NEW doctors/nurses in ..

[edit] this is NOT "what *I* describe" .. those actually ARE the "recommendations from a panel of scientists/experts" the Italian government asked about "so what we should do then ?" and they set out a number of "rules" including ALL of those !

Restaurants now can host no more than 30 people at time and they all have to be some meters away from each other, my mum was telling me queues in some post office and they don't let enter more than 5 people at time, this stuff IS really happening in Italy, NOW not "could happen".

[Deckard]

A sense of scale would be a nice thing to see in the media currently. I have zero interest in this news story at the mo. Seasonal flu and car deaths piss all over this virus currently and this is just the new kid on the block getting all the attention. Plus if I am being ageist and flippant I am not over 60 and I am fit so the odds are in my favour...

As of 4 March 2020, more than 3,200 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19. According to China's NHC, most of those who died were older patients – about 80% of deaths recorded were from those over the age of 60, and 75% had pre-existing health conditions including cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.[

https://www.ameinfo.com/industry/health ... proportion

[Cloudane]

This is actually is a case where the bigger the hidden part of the iceberg the better. People still bandying confirmed case death rates around in this still emerging pandemic and applying them to infection death rates in the entire world population - but since we don't know how many people are silently infected (the hidden iceberg) and not documented, it's meaningless to apply it like that yet unless you work for a newspaper and like to spread fear as we don't know what the actual percentage will be. We might not have a good idea for years. The bigger the hidden iceberg then it follows logically the lower the percentage of deaths per infection.

Apparently swine flu was like this, looked like few % when it was going on, calculated at a fraction of a % a few years later when it'd blown over.

Still wise to keep up good hygiene and to try and stop it spreading so much (especially if you have elderly loved ones) but again pretty sure it's not the apocalypse. It's always possible, but I doubt it. It's just how we have chosen to react to it risks extreme economic problems which is interesting as indeed we don't bugger up the economy and shut down the world when it comes to cars or alcohol or cancer or....

[PFVA]

The Tory idea of deploying retired nurses and doctors, is of fucking ridiculous... It's a wonder they still know how to breathe.

.. except that is also what they are actually trying to do NOW in Italy .. as well as recruiting lot more NEW doctors/nurses in ..

France is having medical students answer their emergency number calls with doctors there too. It's not a bad idea. Their cases are increasing quite a lot too.

We have one more official case today, this time a music teacher, and as a result the school of music in Porto is closed as of tomorrow, and yes he was recently in Italy.

However coronavirus and covid took back stage on today's news and people worries because a major surprise investigation happened with agents entering the offices of the 5 biggest football clubs and ceasing all kinds of material from them. And it's being done together with France and Spain investigators. Even though they didn't disclose the details it appears it has to do with money laundering and tax evasion. That of course is a lot more important than a virus going around making people sick and killing a few.

[Ratsoap]

The economic impact could be the thing that screws us.

I work in tourism, in a sector where people tend to book well in advance. We're already about half a million quid behind where we should be, and if it keeps up for a couple on months, we could be in real trouble.

Take into account airlines, tourist attractions, people who run hotels or AirBnBs, and there could be some pretty nasty fallout from this.

And if places are put on lockdown like in Hubei, then we are well fucked.

[phattslagg]

It’s potentially gonna fuck up all manner of non-essential industries. As a music teacher, I’m prepping my students for the eventuality of Skype/FaceTime lessons if we all end up on lockdown.

[(o)(o)]

It’s potentially gonna fuck up all manner of non-essential industries. As a music teacher, I’m prepping my students for the eventuality of Skype/FaceTime lessons if we all end up on lockdown.

We had music education presentations at Musikmesse and an engineer going to live broadcast it, Musikmesse was postponed this morning.

[Little stoned kiwi]

Tourism, farming, and forestry are taking a hit already in NZ. As well as import/export being fucked, local services are taking a hit as people stay home.
We don't even have the actual virus in wide circulation yet.

[Rhythm]

The economic impact could be the thing that screws us.

In one week my core pension pot has lost 11% in value. We'll get over this hump, of course, but it's gonna be damaging for so many people. I've still got ~22 years to build it back up but there will have been people who retired within the last week who have just lost a huge chunk of what they hoped/planned to retire on.

[gilesgoat]

Now it's official, this is the text of the official government decree about safety measures in place :

( use Google Translate ) : http://www.governo.it/it/articolo/coron ... 2020/14241

Basically "they are suspending all possible public activities they can", they are restricting social contacts to absolute minimum, suspended all manifestations, reunions, sports events, everything, forbidden for people with other pathologies that could lead to wakened immune system to get out of the house unless strick necessities, etc. etc. etc.

This is a government decree so it means it been approved by majority at the parliament and it's "two steps away to be a law" so fundamentally is "a temporary law in place".

Well I don't know, at least they are taking some measure I guess.

But yeah the message is "avoid Italy if you can" for a while at least.

[gilesgoat]

The economic impact could be the thing that screws us.

In one week my core pension pot has lost 11% in value. We'll get over this hump, of course, but it's gonna be damaging for so many people. I've still got ~22 years to build it back up but there will have been people who retired within the last week who have just lost a huge chunk of what they hoped/planned to retire on.

Still keep consider yourself very lucky ... pensions ... what a word .. people like me will never see one at this rate, we'll all die before we'd be even able to THINK about claiming anything ...

[Rhythm]

Still keep consider yourself very lucky ... pensions ... what a word .. people like me will never see one at this rate, we'll all die before we'd be even able to THINK about claiming anything ...

Yeah, I know I'm lucky to have a pot in the first place. TBH I'd have never thought about paying in had my company not practically forced it on us. A rep pointed out that "when your employer offers to match your pension contributions (as is common in many British companies) then you're basically throwing salary away by not paying in". That was enough to convince me. In the last 5 years it's grown at 18% p/a so it bodes well for the future but this virus outbreak has shown it's all very volatile.

But yeah the message is "avoid Italy if you can" for a while at least.

Yeah, the ATOL protections we have won't kick in unless the FCO agrees with the Italian officials and puts out a statement saying "don't travel to Italy". GF's mum is in mad panic mode that we're still thinking of going, of course :-/