Coronavirus Pandemic

[zip accident]

So, Boris's "millions" now has a stated number: the UK government has purchased 3.5 million of the antibody tests.

Each person will need to be tested multiple times. There are 60 million to 70 million people in the UK. In the long run 3.5 million tests is totally inadequate, it may be a good start in the short term but...

[(o)(o)]

Latest conorovirons updates;

Operation Cygnus pandemic simulation exercise has been revised in light of the current outbreak. It showed that the government was woefully unprepared for a pandemic. Tory officials congratulate themselves in retrospect for a successful operation, as it has proven to be correct.

Bicycle shops are key workers, government claims. Construction workers also, must die.

Supermarkets are opening their doors between 8-9am for elderly vulnerable people to shop, alongside NHS workers who are dealing with coronavirus with a lack of adequate protective clothing.

Meanwhile the government is mobilising the home guard and army volunteers to deliver food to the vulnerable, at no cost to the government.

Millions of employees have a change of heart, and conclude that benefit recipients are not scroungers after all, as they submit applications to become one.

The Tories have called for a cross party government to share the blame for thousands of unnecessary deaths, a government spokesman has claimed.

Further news as it develops..

[gravy]

Supermarkets are setting aside 8-9am for elderly vulnerable people to mix with NHS workers who lack adequate protective clothing.

They've separated the vulnerable people and NHS timeslots0 at Tesco now. I'd be surprised if the other shops hadn't followed suit

[gilesgoat]

Latest conorovirons updates;

Operation Cygnus pandemic simulation exercise has been revised in light of the current outbreak. It showed that the government was woefully unprepared for a pandemic. Tory officials congratulate themselves in retrospect for a successful operation, as it has proven to be correct.

Bicycle shops are key workers, government claims. Construction workers also, must die.

Supermarkets are opening their doors between 8-9am for elderly vulnerable people to shop, alongside NHS workers who are dealing with coronavirus with a lack of adequate protective clothing.

Meanwhile the government is mobilising the home guard and army volunteers to deliver food to the vulnerable, at no cost to the government.

Millions of employees have a change of heart, and conclude that benefit recipients are not scroungers after all, as they submit applications to become one.

The Tories have called for a cross party government to share the blame for thousands of unnecessary deaths, a government spokesman has claimed.

Further news as it develops..

In short ... SNAFU ?

[edit] - hang on haven't they said 'for safety reasons' YOU CAN NOT cycle around ?

[gravy]

No, you can still cycle

[Deckard]

I cycled to the beach this morning - zero issues in fact nice as so little traffic - there were about 10 people on the beach including some dog walkers and fellow swimmers. Heaven to be honest in the sun.

[tufty]

It's over here in frogland that you're not allowed to cycle. Which is pretty fucking stupid, really, as the roads are far safer now than they have been for years - there's pretty much no cars around.

Meanwhile, as I type this, the TV news are talking about whether it's safe to take public transport...

[KlaxonCow]

So, Boris's "millions" now has a stated number: the UK government has purchased 3.5 million of the antibody tests.

Each person will need to be tested multiple times. There are 60 million to 70 million people in the UK. In the long run 3.5 million tests is totally inadequate, it may be a good start in the short term but...

Agreed.

But, in context, the antibody test is brand new. I think the UK government are the first to buy these - they only got approved last week - and that first purchase is probably simply as much as they've been able to scale up their manufacture thus far.

And, also in more context, South Korea has been praised for its pro-active "test, test, test" approach - that they jumped on early cases fast, trace contacts, isolated folks, etc. - to flatten their curve, and they had 270,000 tests. An order of magnitude more testing than any other country. So, in fairness, 3.5 million is, like, 13 times more than the current world leader for testing. Ideally, there needs to be much more and, hopefully, it can be scaled up further going forward (maybe license other manufacturers to produce it?).

But, admittedly, we do have to caveat that South Korea's test was the one to detect covid-19 itself, while these antibody tests detect if you have antibodies to the virus.

So the comparison is a bit "apples and oranges" - though it's the only one you can make, as these antibody tests are brand new - but in a good way, because the antibody test can be scaled up into the millions, it seems, and - to quote Boris - "it's like a pregnancy test, except it's a prick of blood, not urine", so this one should also hopefully be much easier to deploy and give results quickly. As the COVID-19 test can take days (though South Korea's triumph was scaling it up into a production line of testing to actually get through those 270,000 tests rapidly) and needs to go back to the lab and all that.

So, we're talking an order of magnitude more testing than South Korea, who themselves tested an order of magnitude more than anyone else on the planet.

And, basically, right now, the blunt truth is that we have no useful tools in our toolbox, save the test for COVID-19 itself. So anything that adds to the fight is good - and this diagnostic measures something that the other test leaves as a "known unknown", how big is the constituency of asymptomatic / "mild symptoms" sufferers out there? This could start putting some accurate numbers on that, better trace how the outbreak is spreading and help us to start "clearing" people safely back to the front line and back into key work, to keep the boat afloat.

I also want to see this ubiquitously available that we could actually start screening the entire nation, possibly multiple times, as that would be the ideal. 3.5 million isn't that, but it's the closest anyone in the world has got to it - once, indeed, the government actually, you know, does the logistics of getting these out there to start making a difference.

[gilesgoat]

It's over here in frogland that you're not allowed to cycle. Which is pretty fucking stupid, really, as the roads are far safer now than they have been for years - there's pretty much no cars around.

Meanwhile, as I type this, the TV news are talking about whether it's safe to take public transport...

I think it's the same in Italy and no in Italy I think they already ruled out public transport ? The message is YOU DO NOT MOVE OUT OF YOUR PLACE WHATSOEVER *

* Except of course to get food, medicines and such but you have to do it in the more possible swift manner.

[Deckard]

If you need something to help occupy the time -

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[Orava]

Meanwhile in Italy

https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11273213

[Chontler]

Meanwhile in the UK

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus- ... 9-11963451

I just took the kid to the beach for her exercise and a quick trip to Tesco on the way back. It is lovely, not just the weather. I really wish this teaches us to chill the fuck out more often, or at least make it an annual event

[Deckard]

The fact it headlines shows how rare it is..... no disrespect to the story or family but she was very very very unlucky at a 0.03% death rate for her age. And as a comparison

Death from measles was reported in approximately 0.2% of the cases in the United States from 1985 through 1992.

In South Korea, for example, which had an early surge of cases, the death rate in Covid-19 patients ages 80 and over was 10.4%, compared to 5.35% in 70-somethings, 1.51% in patients 60 to 69, 0.37% in 50-somethings. Even lower rates were seen in younger people, dropping to zero in those 29 and younger.

Unfortunately there are always anomalies.

[KlaxonCow]

"UK Coronavirus mass home testing to be made available within days":

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... ithin-days

This confirms that the 3.5 million antibody tests purchased by the government is just a "first shipment", and they have ordered millions more. Amazon have agreed to deliver the tests to self-isolating homes, and they will also be available from high street pharmacists for a "nominal fee" as well.

(Other countries in Europe and Asia are ordering and purchasing them too.)

You take a prick of blood and then the device will give you a result in 10 to 15 minutes. People will be able to do this themselves at home.

They're doing final testing on it this week - presumably testing the reliability of results, by using it on known positive and recovered patients, known positive and known negative patients, and so forth, to confirm that it really does report reliably - and then it's expected be rolled out and become available from next week.

The priority for the government tests will, of course, be trying to "clear" NHS staff and key workers in self-isolation to return to the fight. But I expect it to then be given to those self-isolating at home and who've recovered to confirm that it was covid-19 - rather than a seasonal flu or something - and they now have the antibodies to it, so those people can then return to some normality.

What we really need are effective drug treatments that can attack covid-19, and bring down that mortality rate. These are being worked on and looked at, but treatments are different to diagnostic tests - with a test, you only need it to report reliably, but with treatments you've absolutely got to do all the safety testing in full. Then, ultimately, we hope to have the vaccine to be able to effectively give people the antibodies and create "herd immunity" the non-insane way.

Yes, I'm charting the optimistic path here. There's still lots about this virus that we just don't know for sure yet, and the world is a chaotic place. But there are enough people out there who'll tell you all about the pessimistic path, so the optimistic path could do with the encouragement, I feel.

[gilesgoat]

Meanwhile in Italy

https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11273213

Luckily there's not just that .. someone in Italy - made the whole project available - invented something ( that been tested and approved by some doctors ) - that via 3D printing of certain pieces can convert certain scuba dive masks into masks to give air and save people :

https://video.repubblica.it/dossier/cor ... 717/357282

They use new sub maks that gets then sterilised and prepared for medical use, so far they manage to receive 500 masks that will be distributed to Italian and out of Italy hospitals.