Coronavirus Pandemic

[Cloudane]

I'm wondering if some people are a bit thick?

I mean, an awful lot of people voted to have Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, so yes, I'd say it's a good bet.

Worse than that, they want to clap for the fucker tomorrow night. The recent solidarity will be going right out of the window if they try it around here

[Little stoned kiwi]

I'm probably in a fortunate position because New Zealand has more food than we need. We export most of it.
People panic buying has made surges in the supply chain, creating some price and availability issues. That's mostly settled down.
It's not the only reason prices are a little higher. Supermarkets have been accused of price gouging. They kind of are - nothing is on special.

[snaff]

Thought the whole planet was in lockdown by now but looks like Sweden didn't get the memo - 00:00 and 18:40

[F-ZeroOne]

Actually found some hand sanitiser in my local Co-Op this week, apparently first shipment they've had for weeks. Had to queue for nearly half an hour to get into my local pharmacy; I got there just before they opened and there was a small queue then. Shorter wait to use the Post Office (I was picking up and posting a relatives prescription). Streets are quiet but fair number of people walking dogs. I live in a small town in the countryside so its a bit easier to keep your distance and to get some exercise thats relatively isolated from others. Looked over the dual carriageway that runs past the town today and it was deserted; a car every so often but normally its near constant traffic.

[(o)(o)]

In Madrid they have run out of respirators, this is what's happening :



The government continue to make wreckless decisions - including appointing a vac manufacturer to get designing respirators. Existing respirator manufacturers cannot understand why they haven't been called on.

The NHS could have prevented “chaos and panic” had the system not been left “wholly unprepared for this pandemic”, the editor of a British medical journal [The Lancet] has said.

At what point are our politicians accountable for avoidable deaths.

PS Want to know how much the Tories hate the NHS? In 2017 NHS England was mandated to report how many avoidable deaths occurred under it's care. Meanwhile they refuse to publish figures on avoidable deaths relating to government policy decisions - the number of people euthenized by austerity is estimated to be around 200,000: 10 times the figure of deaths that this epidemic 'they' say will cause.

[PFVA]

Officially 5170 cases and 100 people dead. Still the problem of the nursing homes.

So it's a sunny day and what a ton people decide to do? To leave Lisbon to go south to the coast beaches. Police blocked the bridges and send everybody back who didn't live in the south margin.

Here a sound car came by in the afternoon telling people to stay at home following the rules.

On the plus side i got 6 packs of my cigarrettes this morning at the news agents. they had been sold out when i last tried.

For the ones of you that found post apocalyptical to get out there to shop, believe or not with time you get into the new routine and you feel the impact a lot less. The first days here i experienced that but afterwards it becomes semi-normal. It's like your body and mind adapt to it.

On a positive note when doing my 40minutes late afternoon walk i notice that more and more the sky is clean and beautiful, the pollution is going down a lot.

[zip accident]

All (UK?) supermarkets now shut at 8pm, where it was 10pm except Aldi on Tuesday.

[Harlequin]

Has anyone ventured out shopping under the lockdown yet?
…
Folks in face masks, scarves over their noses and mouths or some wearing gloves, standing behind lines marked on the floor, 2 metres apart. Queuing outside was the same, as they'd only let a certain number of people into the shop at one time. One entrance and one exit, to keep the flow moving in the same direction.

But, hey, absolutely no-one there was treating it as a national holiday. Not remotely, as frightened kittens darted past one another to dare not be within 5 metres of anyone else for more than 19 milliseconds, grasping tightly to the scarves over their faces.

Only a handful of people I noticed were wearing face protection in my part of NW London, myself included. Indeed, in my gloves, a loosely flowing long brown leather coat reminiscent of something from Firefly, not my usual stetsonish hat but something more bowlery and a scarf covering my lower face, I should perhaps not have been surprised that the bank teller seemed to treat me a little oddly.

People did not appear overly panicked to me. One young man was so nonchalant in the queue outside the Tesco Express that he irritatingly kept trying to stand only a yard behind me. I am hoping that the high street experience will reinforce the message for many people.

Thought the whole planet was in lockdown by now but looks like Sweden didn't get the memo - 00:00 and 18:40

I have read that public transport in London is similar. Most people not working in buildings open to the public are still going to work while the buses and tube are running reduced services.

On a positive note when doing my 40minutes late afternoon walk i notice that more and more the sky is clean and beautiful, the pollution is going down a lot.

It appears to be visually doing so around much of the world. In the U.S., however, environmental protections have been suspended. Meanwhile, over here, HS2 contractors are apparently using the lockdown as an opportunity to illegally fell trees with nesting birds.

[Ollie]

All (UK?) supermarkets now shut at 8pm, where it was 10pm except Aldi on Tuesday.

Source? Local Tesco still open until 10pm afaics.

[Harlequin]

Worse than that, they want to clap for the fucker tomorrow night. The recent solidarity will be going right out of the window if they try it around here

Is there really a campaign to give the BJ the clap on Sunday?

[silentshark]

So.. what do you lot think about the chloroquine stories? (No, I'm not a Trump fan, but the stories are interesting anyhow).

I *think* Chloroquine might be the stuff which I took back in the 1990's for a trip to Indonesia, and it made be feel very weird. But didn't kill me.

Keep safe everyone.

[zip accident]

If you don't stop going about your "normal life", you stand more chance of catching the damn thing. OK, no big deal, you'll probably survive. But you'll spread it to other people as well, and one or more of the people in the chain of infection *your* selfish wankerism started off may well die. Yes. Your fault.

This has been annoying me more and more as time goes on.



Is more or less my status. I don't go out much at all. I still get more than my fair share of colds, but I haven't had a serious flu in must be about 20 years (possibly partly because recently I've been getting the vaccine), I remember it because that one was a humdinger. What I'm mainly saying is that this is probably not going to work, it may slow the spread but it won't stop it. I am not under ten years old, so I don't feel invulnerable to this virus.

There was a photo of an article allegedly quoting Dominic Cummings saying that next year there would be a repeat of this infection with higher lethality, that's very silly, if this was a bioweapon, any next version would obviously be designed to use a different base virus so no immunity carried over (although, that's assuming it wasn't UK or USA designed).

Scrolling through the daily stats, the UK just seems not to be officially reporting "recoveries", as it's been stuck on 135 for a good few days, and we've only got 2 non-zero "bumps" in the past 10 days. The UK's non-standard testing policies seem to cut both ways - they're not actively tracking "recovered", as well as not testing outside hospitals.

It's fishier than that Jim. The USA's figures on Wikipedia count recovered and infected together, "dead" being the other category. It looks as if our Tories are coordinating with the Republicans in the USA to not show the "recovered" figure.

[Harlequin]

So.. what do you lot think about the chloroquine stories? (No, I'm not a Trump fan, but the stories are interesting anyhow).

I would refer people to the link posted by F-ZeroOne. From what I've read, treatment with hydroxychloroquine, possibly along with azithromycin, might have an outside chance of being at least temporarily effective. Much more research would need to be done, though, as the studies so far appear to have been small, quite sloppy, and had conflicting results.

… What I'm mainly saying is that this is probably not going to work, it may slow the spread but it won't stop it.…

Is slowing the spread so as not to overwhelm hospitals not the main stated objective?

Scrolling through the daily stats, the UK just seems not to be officially reporting "recoveries", as it's been stuck on 135 for a good few days, and we've only got 2 non-zero "bumps" in the past 10 days. The UK's non-standard testing policies seem to cut both ways - they're not actively tracking "recovered", as well as not testing outside hospitals.

It's fishier than that Jim. The USA's figures on Wikipedia count recovered and infected together, "dead" being the other category. It looks as if our Tories are coordinating with the Republicans in the USA to not show the "recovered" figure.

It would appear that the base figures all over the world are inaccurate. I recommend prefixing any of them with "at least". Even where there are no deliberate efforts to suppress numbers (and I would hesitate to assume conspiracies by any but the most authoritarian regimes), there is not enough testing to know actual infection rates, numbers take varying amounts of time to make it to public statistics and there appear to be different definitions of what counts as a death due to C19 or of someone who had a SARS-CoV-2 infection. At this point, I think, all the base figures should be considered only absolute minimums.

[Harlequin]

We might now, perhaps, have the first known death from C19 of someone under ten years old:

Public Health Officials Announce the First Death of an Infant with Coronavirus Disease

[Little stoned kiwi]

There was a photo of an article allegedly quoting Dominic Cummings saying that next year there would be a repeat of this infection with higher lethality, that's very silly

Not exactly my area of expertise or understanding, but a second wave is not uncommon. The most vulnerable to it is people who weren't exposed to the first.