Coronavirus Pandemic

[KlaxonCow]

Ah, yeah, here's a BBC News article on South Korea's "attack it early" approach, and its "drive-thru" testing centres:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-51836898

[F-ZeroOne]

I'm not sure theres ever been a more Trumpian statement than "foreign virus".

[RiK]

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.

My primary income is my martial arts school, which also happens to be based in a local school gym...

[PFVA]

As of the latest news all schools are being closed as of Monday here. There will be some additional measures to that too. What happened is that yesterday the temperatures reached 30ºC and the students of the institutions closed due to already having had cases and the students being technically in quarentena decided to fill up the beaches. Now people are being explained that quanrentena is not to be spent at the beach.

It wouldn't be so bad on my opinion if they were in the ocean salt water which even helps to clean but they were on the sand, on top of each other.

Now there is even talk of closing the access to the beaches.

Note: 78 cases as of this morning.

[PFVA]

Edit: yeahp schools closed as of Monday, restaurants and café have whatever people capacity they have reduced by 1/3, discos and bars closed, limitation of number of people who can go into shopping centers, and cruise ships not allowed to disembark passengers in our ports even though they can still stop by if they wish.

Measures such as school closing were recommended by the European Union to all member countries.

[PFVA]

Don't they all need to go on quarentene?

Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has undergone a test for the new coronavirus after a top aide contracted the disease following a trip on which both met with Donald Trump, his son said Thursday.

https://news.yahoo.com/brazils-bolsonar ... 41601.html

[Ratsoap]

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.

My primary income is my martial arts school, which also happens to be based in a local school gym...

Redundancies have been announced at my workplace. Even if I keep my job, I'll lose some bloody good team members.

[(o)(o)]

Don't they all need to go on quarentene?

Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has undergone a test for the new coronavirus after a top aide contracted the disease following a trip on which both met with Donald Trump, his son said Thursday.

https://news.yahoo.com/brazils-bolsonar ... 41601.html

Would be a real blow if Bolsonaro and Trump got bad cases..

[Deckard]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/worl ... e=Homepage

[Deckard]

Two weeks ago, Italy had 322 confirmed cases of the coronavirus. At that point, doctors in the country’s hospitals could lavish significant attention on each stricken patient.

One week ago, Italy had 2,502 cases of the virus, which causes the disease known as COVID-19. At that point, doctors in the country’s hospitals could still perform the most lifesaving functions by artificially ventilating patients who experienced acute breathing difficulties.

Today, Italy has 10,149 cases of the coronavirus. There are now simply too many patients for each one of them to receive adequate care. Doctors and nurses are unable to tend to everybody. They lack machines to ventilate all those gasping for air.

[KlaxonCow]

Boris appears confused.

In announcing the UK's move from the "containment" phase to the "delay" phase, he mentions this:

The PM said suspending major public events such as sporting fixtures was still under consideration, but it would be a measure primarily to protect public services, rather than delay the spread.

So, for the "delay" phase, he's not actually seeking to delay the spread. Rather he wants to protect public services.

Even though protecting public services is somewhat the whole entire point of the "delay" phase, as Obama neatly illustrated by tweeting this graphic:



By "flattening the curve", you slow and delay the peak of the virus, so that it remains within the capacity of your public services to deal with.

It's not "either... or", Prime Minister. You shut the schools and cancel sporting events and such, to free your public services AND delay the spread. Which delays the peak, keeps it within the capacities of our public services (by both freeing them to concentrate on this AND slowing the rate of spread, so that doctors and hospitals have the time to cope with each patient).

And what Deckard's just posted about Italy there is exactly what a "delay phase" and "flattening the curve" is supposed to be about avoiding, as far as possible. If more critical cases all show up at the same time, there are only so many ventilators owned by any particular health service.

We are further along than where Italy was two week ago now. We should not be squandering this "head start", as it were, and should be bringing in our "social distancing" policies now. Cancelling sporting events and closing the schools.

The average time to begin showing symptoms is about 5 days. The UK has almost 600 confirmed cases, but health experts are reckoning it could really be 5,000-10,000 out there, but we don't find out for at least 5 days, up to two weeks, due to the "lag" of its incubation period. Note that the upper estimate there of 10,000 is roughly Italy's confirmed cases right now. We could already be inevitably facing what Italy's going through right now, but it's just being currently hidden by the "lag" that the long incubation period for this one brings.

I didn't expect to ever be agreeing with Jeremy Hunt, but I'm agreeing with Jeremy Hunt:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51865915

He added that the evidence from countries who appeared to have been successful in turning back the virus showed they "moved very early" on introducing social distancing.

Exactly.

[(o)(o)]

60%+ infection rate is WHAT THEY WANT.

The Tories are willing to kill your parents in an experiment to see if herd immunity spontaneously emerges. Not thst that’s how herd immunity normally works!

Genocide and Eugenics - from the Death Cult

PS ICU is at 94% capacity

[phattslagg]

Yeah, there’s simply no other explanation at this point. It feels like literal insanity to allow events like Cheltenham to go ahead.

The people have to start taking the initiative, and start refusing to send kids to school, or go to work from next week.

[Little stoned kiwi]

I was reading an article about about the Spanish Flu and why it was more lethal in some places than others. Complications killed 2/3rds of the population in some New Zealand towns. The premise was the remaining survived due to exposure to the first wave and better immunity to the second. In 1918 the world wasn't as well connected so communities could go dozens of years before exposure to a virus novel to them (such as a corona strain, for example).
It seems apparent there is no way to stop this, just manage it. If a country closes it's borders and avoids it, it will still be exposed to it at some point in the future. They'd have to isolate until a vaccine becomes available. The same would apply to people isolating from their communities. The virus isn't going to just disappear, the mass populous will become more immune to it.

Not that I'd advocate proactively spreading the virus. That's just retarded. The correct way to create herd immunity is vaccination.
Speaking of which, flu vaccinations are going to be unrolled a couple of months early here to head off a combined flu and corona season. Hopefully the uptake is higher than usual.

[KlaxonCow]

The Premier League has suspended all matches until April 3rd. The Scottish football season has been suspended indefinitely. The Welsh FA has called off all football until the 4 April.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/51867989

England's Sri Lanka cricket tour has been cancelled. France's football league has been suspended. Formula E has been suspended. The Player's Golf Championship has been called off.

So, where the government is failing to act, the sports authorities themselves seem to be stepping up to the plate themselves.

I mean, it certainly makes sense for international sport - with everyone else cancelling sporting events and locking themselves down, who would there be to play against anyway? And with various sports stars succumbing to the coronavirus, who would play? And if they did play and they caught coronavirus, sports stars have a lot of money to start suing people. Taken to courts for your decision to continue, when you clearly shouldn't have. Not to mention, you know, basic human decency and having a conscience.

And, as the numbers rise, with people doing their own "social distancing" and "self-isolating", will the fans even be there? And if you're not selling tickets, then what's paying for these events? And if Cheltenham goes ahead, then there's a spike in cases and people die on the back of their indecision, will the organisers or the government be forgiven?

(My mate works at a university. They're already sorting out everyone working from home next week. The government might not be closing schools, but they're clearly planning to go ahead with shutting things down anyway. Because there's a duty of care to your employees. More over, if you send people to work from home, where possible, some work gets done. If they come in and get ill - and do so en masse, because this is a contagion, after all - then, suddenly, you've got no employees able to do any useful work. You're pragmatically shut down anyway - with the prospect of getting sued for your indecision on top of it.)

You get the gist.

Everything will pragmatically get cancelled and shut down anyway - and all these cancellations will put pressure on more sports authorities and other institutions to realise that they cannot go ahead either. As folks increasingly know other folks who're "self-isolating" and businesses find they can't operate at full capacity and all the rest of it, they'll personally choose to at least "semi-self-isolate" and "social distance" anyway - if it's not absolutely necessary, then stay in.

Boris was dumb. It'll necessarily happen anyway - simple pragmatics - and, instead of the glory of being a "bold leader", he'll be the bumbling buffoon that made shit worse by clearly making the wrong call, when the shit really goes down.

And, hey, younger people - who're least effected by this - are less likely to vote Tory than the older folks who're most vulnerable.

It is impossible for us to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law.