Coronavirus Pandemic

[Little stoned kiwi]

Someone asked if I'd done any 'doomsday prep shopping'. After a little consideration I decided that if things get that bad I'll just join the looting.

[Deckard]

If its Doomsday 3 months of toilet rolls won't help that much

[VNVObit]

inevitable hospital issue in London

https://www.hsj.co.uk/news/hospitals-cr ... 89.article

[Ratsoap]

Pubs, cafes, gyms etc to close.

Govt to pay 80% wages for anyone who needs it.

The mint are going to be busy...

[Harlequin]

On another note, anyone know if/when the streaming reductions are gonna hit us? Youtube and Netflix have both responded to a request from the EU that they'll drop bitrates by at least 25%. Any idea if we're included in their view of the EU during this transition period?

Pretty sure they already have. I definitely saw a reduction in quality on Netflix last night.

I thought I felt a drop in general Net speed a couple of days ago. I put it down to probably more people at home in my area doing more online.

[PFVA]

I ran out of yoghurt last night and this morning i just went to the local store and i got 4, leaving a few there. I also got 4 bananas. And as it was raining off an on there was no line, just one other person was there. People here seem to be as much afraid of rain as of the coronavirus.

Officially 1020 cases, 6 people died.

And i saw the 2nd of those discarded in the street :

Covid19

[skab]

Over here voluntary lockdowns don't work that well, we Germans seem to be a lot more stubborn and a lot less obedient as everybody thought. Tons of young people still meeting and partying outside, with a loud and clear "fuck it, we won't get infected anyway and we don't care about all the others" attitude. Slightly disappointing. This is obviously not the Fridays for Future faction...

More serious lockdown measures are inevitable, by the looks of it.

[Cloudane]

It's a hell of an ask for most humans. In any other circumstances with this level of "oppression" over the citizens there'd be riots before there was mere disobedience

If I had a tinfoil hat, I'd dream up stupid stuff about it being a project to slip extreme authoritarianism under the radar.

Can't see it lasting for long. Hopefully it's just long enough that the NHS can manage.

Interesting to think what things will be like if they go as planned - potentially pubs closed for a year or more - some day maybe some reopen, new staff, half the people you looked forward to seeing again have died or moved on....

[KlaxonCow]

Tons of young people still meeting and partying outside

Yes, there's been insufficient emphasis, I feel, to point out that whilst this virus is most dangerous to vulnerable groups - the old or those with certain health conditions - it can and has killed people in their 20s and 30s.

The only group without fatalities are the under 10s. No-one quite knows why yet, but they do seem to be magically immune to being killed off by this.

But every other age group has fatalities.

And, of course, this is a virus - a contagion - so, even if you'll be fine, you're still a dangerous transmission vector for your grandparents.

But I get why young people are getting the wrong message, because politicians are giving out that impression, I'm afraid.

Watching Boris's briefings, he rightly talks about "the vulnerable groups" and he has mentioned the point that, even if you don't die from it yourself, you could still be easily carrying to infect others, who could die from it. So the young should be "social distancing" too - not for themselves, but for everyone else and just the general cause of helping to "flatten the curve".

Sure, 0.2% for 10-39 year olds is good odds. But it ain't zero. If your big party has 500 people, then someone there will die from this.

Only under 10s, so far, fully dodge the fatalities.

But I get why the youth might think themselves invulnerable to this, as that's the kind of language everyone - including politicians - have been using. Plus, well, kids always do naturally think themselves invulnerable anyway - so if we're not actively disabusing them of this notion either, but almost reinforcing it in how we speak, no wonder they're thinking their bulletproof and this is someone else's problem.

[Deckard]

It’s less than 0.2 as they just the ones who got sick enough to be tested and most at that age it will so mild they will barely notice. No-one Young thinks about death tbh so why would they worry about this. I still don’t know anyone with it and I’m in the “right” demographic for it to impact. We won’t know any true rates of death till we can start testing en mass in which case I wouldn’t be surprised if the death rate dropped by a magnitude.

[KlaxonCow]

It’s less than 0.2 as they just the ones who got sick enough to be tested and most at that age it will so mild they will barely notice. No-one Young thinks about death tbh so why would they worry about this. I still don’t know anyone with it and I’m in the “right” demographic for it to impact. We won’t know any true rates of death till we can start testing en mass in which case I wouldn’t be surprised if the death rate dropped by a magnitude.

Yeah, totally.

We obviously have no idea about the unknown quantity of totally asymptomatic sufferers - because if truly asymptomatic, then not even those people themselves likely don't know that they've had it. Much less anyone else knowing.

Which is why the antibody test will prove so useful, as we can then start putting actual numbers on these things. Directly identify who's had it, to find out if that unknown quantity is actually big or small. And, of course, just the simple pragmatics that you can then also "clear" people - such as hospital workers and care home staff - to return to the frontline of the fight, to help the vulnerable, as they'll have immunity to it.

And, yes, if that unknown quantity turns out to be large - that there's heck of a lot more people getting this asymptomatically than we ever realised - this will very much push those death ratios way down. And let's hope that's actually true.


But, nonetheless, I feel my point still holds. Because it still remains true that "non-zero" isn't zero.

0.2% means 1 in 500 people. 0.1% pushes that down to 1 in 1000 people. 0.01% would be 1 in 10000 people.

Individually, those seem like good odds. But, collectively, if we're talking about, say, a billion young folks globally, then 0.1% still comes out as 1 million deaths.

So, personally, I feel there remains a serious cause for concern for everyone in all age ranges.

(Except, oddly, under 10s, as their ratio has so far literally been zero - although, I'd still have human concerns, if not mathematical ones, simply because we are talking about young children and babies, plus the concern of not knowing exactly why they seem immune to fatalities is a worry, because if we don't know exactly why that's happening, we don't know if it might stop happening at some point. Let's hope not. But until we know, we don't know.)

We're the grown ups here. We do still retain a duty of care to remind young people that human beings are not actually immortal, in my opinion.

[tufty]

I wouldn’t be surprised if the death rate dropped by a magnitude.

Sure, but only by revision upward of the number of people infected by the virus. The number of actual deaths remains the same.

In parts of Lombardy, there aren't enough crematoria to deal with the number of deaths.

"Yeah, but that's Italy", you say. "Italy's got it worse than us", you say. Italy is on the same curve as the UK, merely ahead by 2 weeks. The most affected parts of Italy have been shut down, totally, for pretty much 2 weeks. Guess where the UK will be in 2 weeks?

I used to live off Pitfield Street, N1. "Pitfield" because it was where, in the 1600s, the plague pit was located (and which might have explained the lingering smell in some of the pubs). How long before we have "Corona Square"?

[Deckard]

Yeah the number of deaths is a pretty fixed number - the ratio of deaths is not. Asda today was back to normal today with only pasta and hand gels out. I note they've put all their restaurant staff on the shop floor so much quicker at refilling.

[PFVA]

Our PM clearly said that we can expect this to go on till the end of May. Our peak is expected for mid-April.

1280 cases and the number of deaths doubled to 16, all people with prior conditions or elderly.

[gilesgoat]

Fooking hell, I read now that in Lombardia things are still SO BAD ( people keeps dying ) that now there's 5000 Eur fine if you are outside "for not valid reasons", you can go shopping only 300M away from your place and that's it.

They tell me, from Italy, the number of dead people keeps rising