Coronavirus Pandemic

[PFVA]

Sanofi doesn't have a vaccine yet. Their statement sounds to me like one made to attract share buyers of the U.S. to invest on the company. A kind of "ow, if we develop it the americans will have access to it, please invest in our company."

Here in the last week 2 very important things have dominated the news and people interest this last few days: the rules for the football deconfinement and the rules for the reopening of the beaches. In the beaches is specially how to assure people keep the distances. For example towels and the people on them have to be 2 meters apart. There is all kind of suggestions like having the 2 square meters separated by cords, have a extra flag system at the entrances showing how close to the limit the beach is, or if it has reached no vacancy already. A kind like a parking lot for people. The enforcement apparently will be done not only by the municipalities but the navy will be asked to help patrol the beaches.

As for me for the first time in my life i had an hair cut with a mask on. The 4 hairstylers and 1 barbershop in the area having already taken care of the emergencies i manage to get myself an appointment. It was unusually quiet in there. Just me, the hairstyler, and someone doing a client's nails. It was done right by the big window, with the daylight coming in, front door open for air circulation.

[Ollie]

So far none of the 2m markings that I've seen on various bits of pavement and shop floors have allowed for the fact that if the lines are 2m apart, the people standing behind them will only be separated by, I'm guessing, about 1.5-1.6m on average (depending on the size of the people).

[gilesgoat]

So far none of the 2m markings that I've seen on various bits of pavement and shop floors have allowed for the fact that if the lines are 2m apart, the people standing behind them will only be separated by, I'm guessing, about 1.5-1.6m on average (depending on the size of the people).

40cm in USA ?

[Harlequin]

So far none of the 2m markings that I've seen on various bits of pavement and shop floors have allowed for the fact that if the lines are 2m apart, the people standing behind them will only be separated by, I'm guessing, about 1.5-1.6m on average (depending on the size of the people).

I ignore the markings. I was queuing before they existed and still remember that two yards is roughly the length of a tallish dead relative.

[(o)(o)]

The results for all national Covid testing has gone missing

[WiteWulf]

That headline of yours is not what the article states.

[(o)(o)]

Actually not my headline but that of editor of HSJ but yes seems wrong

[merman]

And guess what? The UK's R rate is going back up closer to 1.

The Government didn't even consult teachers before saying the schools should re-open.
A relative who is a teacher told me they had decided on the early June date even before the lockdown actually started, so have pushed for it to happen.

The doctors say it's not safe.
The teachers say it's not safe.
The unions say it's not safe, with one union polling its members to discover 92% feel it would be "unsafe" for them and the children.

And there are three schools - currently only open to the children of key workers - that now have to close for a deep clean because a teacher there tested positive.

Yesterday the academy/free schools were told they had to follow the same advice as all local education authority schools. But of course one of the commercial academy chains has already caved and said it will re-open.

[KlaxonCow]

Mainly for (o)(o), as they also had the same kind of "re-activation" symptoms that I experienced, ratsoap dropped this into the other coronavirus thread:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... aul-garner

It seems that, yeah, a certain percentage of people get "long tail" symptoms like we had. That it comes back repeatedly.

I now feel lucky, as I'm only in the #30plus-days group and there are actually some out there reporting an inability to shake it off 60 days later.

As is always the case with this virus, no-one knows why, for some people, it's this long and protracted thing that takes forever to go away. The article suggests one theory is immune over-reaction, but I prefer the virus-driven theory - from my own experience - because, in my case, these were three distinct episodes, where I went right back to feel normal again in-between. It wasn't symptoms all the way through, but three "bursts" of it, separated by a week to two weeks of being fine in-between. I wasn't ill the whole time, but just couldn't shake it off, as it kept coming back. Also, "immune over-reaction" just doesn't feel right, as all the symptoms I'd describe as "mild" throughout. Even the first time, which was definitely the worst and fatigued the fuck out of me like I've never felt before. But, like, it wasn't severe - as some of these symptom descriptions sound like - but just annoyingly persistent. It just wouldn't fuck off.

I can definitely sympathise with the Prof in the article about wanting to Google something, but just being too fatigued and unwell to do it. Same thing. As I suffered in bed, thoughts of "maybe I should check with Google what all this might be" but, nope, trying to get up to do it and concentrate long enough for a Google search? No chance. Back to bed.

One thing I'm now wondering is that, if I really did have Covid - in its "long tail" form - then I now have to wonder about the reliability of the antigen tests.

The reason being that the most likely source of where I got it is that one of my work colleagues went on a skiing holiday to France (no, I didn't ask her where exactly, or I could confirm with tufty if it was anywhere near where he works). Now, she came in on the Monday. But I was not working that day myself. She then went off sick - and "self-isolated" with her family, as per the government instructions.

I came in on the Tuesday to be told, as the first thing the boss said to me upon arriving at the office, "stay back, as there's a possibility I've got the coronavirus". I'm still, to this day, slightly annoyed at him that he let me come in and then told me when I was already there and it's likely too late. But, fuck it, what's done is done and you can't rewind time.

Now, the thing is, my work colleague got ill and went into self-isolation BEFORE the government switched policies to only do testing in hospitals. In fact, that policy changed while her results were being processed - but there's usefully a "I've started, so I'll finish" thing and she did get her results.

And they came back negative. Oh, she must have caught something else - the 'flu or a cold - and it was just a false alarm. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief and we carry on.

But, nonetheless, on the weekend, I requested to work at home and the boss granted it. Because we'd had this "close call" and he fully appreciated the point that I've also made in this thread about "re-opening the economy".

So, you see, when I've talked about the possibility of one employee walking into the office and being a "virus bomb" that then potentially knocks out the entire office and could knock out the entire business... yeah, not theory. That almost was us. Trust me, it's a very real possibility that one employee wanders in, infects everyone and then the whole office is taken out.

This is why, as keen as everyone might be to return to work, if it's not done right - and, as I say, my trust that it will be is very low for some companies that barely acknowledge their staff are human beings already - then what'll happen is that one employee or a customer or even a cleaner or someone walks in with Covid - and, of course, they won't necessarily know, as they're in the "asymptomatic" phase but are still as infectious as hell, so you can't blame them, as they'll have no idea that they're the problem - this thing can spread like wildfire throughout that office and essentially take everyone out simultaneously.

So, in the eagerness to get the business back up and running, you could then get knocked out by the virus in one fell swoop, with all your employees going into "self-isolation" at the exact same time. At least when they were working from home, they could get some work done. Now no-one's doing any work at all, because they're all simultaneously off sick - and, well, with no employees, you're going to have to close the office and the business again anyway.

This is why, when I asked to work from home - because what I do is, with websites and such, is all entirely do-able from home - then he agreed it made sense, because then the virus can't take us all out simultaneously. Maybe I'd get it. Maybe the boss would get it. But if we're getting it from different places at different times then, hopefully, there's no overlap (because, at this time, no-one knew about the "long tail" version of this existing, so it was imagined by us as being a week off only) and there'd remain at least a few of us still functioning to keep the business going.

But now, in hindsight, this is all to be re-interpreted. Because if I did get "long tail" Covid - and, as I said before, one has to consider what else fits this description that it could otherwise be, when this persistence of symptoms is, indeed, "weird as hell" and a rather unique trait for any illness - then the obvious place I got it was from the boss, who'd got it from the work colleague who went into self-isolation after returning from a skiiing trip in France.

But we have a big problem there. Because she was tested and it came back negative. Did they test too early / too late? Are the antigen tests as reliable as we're all believing them to be?

I could have got it somewhere else. We're not the only business in the building and the toilets - which I'd used - are shared. Though they'd also put alcohol hand sanitiser in all the bathrooms and I was already being perfectly OCD with hand washing.

It could have come via another route - this is the problem with tracing this invisible virus that has this nasty "stealth mode" for at least 5 days, isn't it? - but you can exactly see why I'm suspecting the work colleague who went into self-isolation, after returning from a skiing trip in France (where shit has been known to go down and I bet tufty can supply all the details on that).

Because, come on, it's the obvious "prime suspect" here. If not for her test coming back negative, then it'd be pretty much a fait accompli that it was her - via my boss, as I never actually directly met her on that Monday - which passed it to me.

Thing is, just to confuse matters, I have been talking with the boss, as I'm working from home, and he'd be the vector of how it got to me - if it came from my work colleague, who usually sits next to me in the office, by the way - but he's been reporting that he's all fine and dandy throughout. So, possibly an asymptomatic carrier?

One thing is for sure. This virus is definitely "weird as hell". I think we can now safely say we know that about this virus. It's weird as hell, and seems have such a ridiculously wide range of different effects on people.

Some are totally asymptomatic. Some are "mild symptoms". If you've got symptoms, you might be "long tail" and unable to shake it off or not. Some people get it more severely and need oxygen (like Boris). While those who go as far as ventilation seem to have, according to the numbers, about a 50 / 50 chance of not dying (and survival, if you ever got that far, can mean extremely long recovery time and even permanent damage, with folks who have holes punched through their lungs and will need breathing apparatus, possibly for the rest of their lives, even if this didn't kill them).

So, quite frankly, against this enemy, governments really need to stop fucking about. We need data. Far, far more data. We need international cooperation - with everyone working together - to make sense of this confusing mess of a picture. This thing is "weird as hell" and I'm increasingly not happy that "re-opening the economy" is remotely wise, until this is better understood.

I'm now gaining great confidence that, yeah, I had it in its "long tail" form, albeit "mild symptoms" throughout. And the most likely candidate for who I got it from is another problem - because she was tested and that test came back negative. But if that's where I got it - and, timing-wise, it does exactly fit, as it was the week after that Boris declared lockdown and I got sick in the following days after that - the test must have been wrong. And that's a whole new can of worms to be opening, if the tests are actually capable of getting it wrong like that, our current numbers and the policies derived from them might not actually be entirely correct.

Re-opening the economy is based on R. But if our measurements of R aren't, in fact, reliable?

The rabbit hole is appearing to be far deeper than originally imagined.

I wasn't previously saying that we were fucked. I'm now very tempted to say we're fucked.

[gilesgoat]

.. I think I am starting to get into a "profund crisis" ...

After all day of working on stuff I was hoping to "sit down in front of TV and watch something and have fun" ..

.. ended up spending almost 1 hour browsing around Netfilx / YT / Amazon Video trying to find "that something" ..

.. I haven't ..

I think I'll go soon in bed.

[Cloudane]

I'm not at all surprised the UK is heading rapidly towards R1 again (if not there already). I know (in hindsight) I was part of the problem going out for a bit of extra exercise today despite staying well away from people and actually genuinely wanting more exercise - it still adds to the overwhelming number of people who were out and about - but yeah the roads, pavements and parks were absolutely heaving today and with very few people bothering to distance from each other. There's very much a feeling that "it's over", I think largely thanks to Boris's "well done everyone, you've protected the NHS and you've saved lives" victory speech earlier in the week while letting everyone loose to go back to any work that vaguely has a sniff of manufacturing to it and to drive wherever for unlimited "exercise" (in quotation marks due to the sheer number of people coming to the Lakes for it). This is dangerous and I have a horrible feeling we'll end up back in March again with nothing to show for the past 2 months of lockdown and impending economic catastrophe.

[tufty]

This is dangerous and I have a horrible feeling we'll end up back in March again with nothing to show for the past 2 months of lockdown and impending economic catastrophe.

Oh, there'l be plenty to show for it.

For starters, the death toll and economic catastrophe will no longer be the government's fault for dropping the fucking ball in the first place.
Next up, they'll be able to claim that lockdown has failed and they should go for the herd immunity they've always wanted
This will lead to collapse of the NHS, which they can then hand over to their friends in the private sector
There will be an economic catastrophe, but it will blot out the effects of Brexit
Tories and their friends will pick over the bones of UK PLC.

I'm not suggesting that any of this is deliberate, but that's he way I see it playing.

[Dio]

For a more positive reference, yesterday's bike ride took in Tynemouth and Whitley Bay seafronts. Tynemouth was pretty much deserted; Whitley Bay was much busier, including a few nearly full car parks, but everyone seemed to be being quite careful on the distance, it wasn't even slightly difficult to thread a bike through the limited throng on the prom and still keep plenty of space. Otherwise, obviously, I wouldn't have been in that area on a bike in the first place.

So from where I'm sitting the plan still seems to be working OK, everyone is being very sensible.

[Ollie]

So far none of the 2m markings that I've seen on various bits of pavement and shop floors have allowed for the fact that if the lines are 2m apart, the people standing behind them will only be separated by, I'm guessing, about 1.5-1.6m on average (depending on the size of the people).

40cm in USA ?

No, in the UK. Even so I may have underestimated the average front-to-back measurement of a person.

Presumably in the USA the lines are 6ft apart, so that's another 17cm knocked off the distance.

[F-ZeroOne]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52685487

Of course, I'm sure Mr. Trump knows the Manhattan Project took pretty much four years, based upon decades of prior research. Not to mention that the delivery system (the B-29 bomber) took nearly as long to develop.