Covid-19 Virus

It seems my point has gone over your head.

I know what it's like to be fighting for breath...I wouldn't wish it on anyone, therefore am I hysterical for not wanting anyone to suffer the symptoms of severe pain when breathing, breaths so shallow you risk hyperventilating and fluid in the lungs so bad it feels like Martin Samuels is permanently sitting on your chest.

It's nasty, so if you've never experienced that panic and distress then you shouldn't call it hysterical.

 

The recovery rate from intensive care is about 50% I believe. So clearly this is taking people close to death whose time was not up (not that this in itself would be a reason for inaction).

Without strict measures the virus would have overwhelmed the NHS’s ability to provide critical care for all, 50% or no. More deaths of 13 year olds, 19 year olds, 85 year olds, all of those inbetween and more besides whose bad luck pitches them into a compromised NHS during a pandemic for something else.

If it looks like a big fuss by June, then it’s a result!

 

Indeed. If the measures are effective then historically it will be judged an over reaction as people will never the know the alternative universe I guess.

 

Agree completely. I have never experienced that & I feel for your circumstances, but all that you say is already a given.

It won't happen in the way I think you're trying to portray it will, i.e that if he does X, Y will happen.

 

They will because they can see the unfolding disaster in the US and the misery in Italy and Spain compared to South Korea and Singapore.

 

But this is no different really gags than if I was to say I felt the whole country's response to the death of Diana in 1997 was hysterical and then someone popping up and saying, "Yeah but how would you feel if that was someone you knew that died?"

It looks very much now like the government lurched into the lockdown phase without first ensuring we had the testing capability to justify coming back out of it again. We've jumped into a massive hole without a ladder and yeah, while we're safer in the hole, we're also seemingly going to have to wait weeks for the ladder to reach the bottom to let us work out if it's safe to get out again.

 

I don’t quite understand the scale of the media clamour for more testing.

Yes it would help maximise available health workers currently isolating who could work.

No it isn’t going to mean allowing the general public out lockdown in a phased approach because people are stupid and won’t follow the rules, once some are out everyone will go out, and how do the police control know who is and isn’t clear? It’s so unworkable it has to be all or nothing.

 

That isn’t the point they were making. You have a respiratory condition which is unfortunate, but what is that got to do with somebody young potentially having an unknown underlying condition?

 

The media are just latching onto anything and as the testing numbers are tangible and produced daily it's an easy thing to look at.

I think it's fair to say though the mortality rate looks a lot worse than it almost certainly is because testing has pretty much been limited to the worst cases so far. Putting that into proportion would go a long way to calming public fears.

 

I think you're confusing animal rights with the cause of a flu-like virus which crosses over to humans every so often, as with avian flu (wild birds) or swine fever (pigs). Yes, by all means tackle animal rights overseas if that's what bothers you, but the constant search for some scapegoat to 'blame' is a bit rubbish to be honest.

It could just as easily come from UK domestic cats and dogs. How handy that it is dirty foreigners who are to 'blame'.

Have a look at the Wiki page on xenophobic attacks against oriental people around the world precisely because of clowns bleating foolishness about 'the Chinese virus' and markets.

 

I'm not confused at all. I'm going by the prevailing theories. If they're wrong, they're wrong, but I am not ignoring them out of hand for political reasons.

 

Surely you understand it’s about odds and nothing else? Birds and much more so bats are reservoirs for a number of horrible diseases. Aids, Ebola, rabies and various strains of corona virus.

The bigger the range of animals you choose to eat the greater the chance that one of them has been bitten by a bat, or eaten a it’s droppings as an example. It stands to reason the chance of this happening increases massively if you choose to eat wild animals that inhabit the same space as the bats.

Now let’s chuck hygiene into the mix, let’s keep all these different animals together, alive and dead, wild and domesticated. Completely different species from different continents that are never meant to come in contact with each other. Now let’s slaughter some of them at the market in proximity to all these other animals, so that they go into acute distress weakening their immune systems and their blood is flung everywhere.

Now as I’m sure you’d imagine. It’s actually quite difficult for a virus to leap from a bat, to a different species to a human. A number of different things have to happen, but as we now know to our cost it is possible. If you want to give yourself the best possible chance of it happening then all you need to do is follow the Chinese wet market model.

The theory is that coronavirus leapt from bats to Pangolins to humans, this is based on traces of the virus found in pangolins being almost identical to the strain of Covid-19 found in humans. Now pangolins are both illegal to hunt and eat in China, yet they still do it and you still find them in markets.

Its no different to playing the lottery, the more lines you buy the greater the chance you have of winning the thing!

 

But what you're saying is everyone should return to, on a daily basis, of being followed at high speed through a Parisienne tunnel whilst over the limit, because that's the norm.

What I am saying is regardless of the competence or incompetence of the government (delete as appropriate), containment is the only thing we're in control of, that's not hysteria. VoR's attitude is why Italy has over 10,000 deaths.

It's only hysteria if you haven't been infected or haven't seen anyone affected. The argument that they might have died anyway is not really a credible one.

 

I'm in the office today, (can't physically install a new server from home), and the people in here today are taking the social distancing measures way more seriously than they were last week. I think the message is getting through.

 

I fear for Africa.

South Africa is behind other countries (only 1300 reported cases to date) but CV will have serious consequences on the poor.

For example in the squatter and informal housing settlements in the Cape Flats (pop 1m) near Cape Town tens of thousands of people live 4-6+ to a shack with limited sanitation and whose income is for example informal stalls selling food etc for cash.
The government has a 3 week citizen lockdown so they can’t move.

Many years ago I took part in a project on TB in Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, Mitchell’s Plain townships.
TB is already rife as a communicable disease (and HIV) and wet weather, poor conditions and generally poorer health of people living in close proximity and now with a Govt lockdown with little citizen support will cause terrible hardship for people living hand to mouth.

Unfortunately if CV gets hold I foresee the medical services being overwhelmed and a terrible tragedy looming in the poor townships of Africa.

For any criticism of how the Govt is handling CV here, we must just be grateful we are in a first world country with resources and an educated and compliant citizenship.
The fear of looting here is nothing compared to what scared dissatisfied hungry people can do in Africa.

 

I'm not going to spend ages defending a TVOR post but some of what he says rings true.

People in the vulnerable / sheltered group clearly have every reason to fear Covid-19. Of that I have no doubt. But society as whole needs to figure out a better response than us all just hiding. It will do us all more harm than good in the long run.

 

Not being funny, but I'll take the advice of doctors over VoR.

 

How can the culture of wet markets, combined with the Chinese governments efforts to hide the outbreak, including threatening the whistle blower doctor, not be to blame?

No it can't come from UK dogs as they have been proved not to be able to carry the virus.

You are the only person to bring up the word 'dirty'.

Shouting 'racism! leave China alone!' isn't going to do the world any favours. Root cause needs calling out and China needs to be made to act. We can't do that militarily but the people of the world can do that through where we spend our money.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...cloud-china-s-european-outreach-over-covid-19

 

Or you’ve let it go in lockdown and whiff a bit.

 

No one is ‘hiding’. That implies there is a foe we should pop outside and simply face off. Do that and thousands will have an unnecessary stay in intensive care.

 

Dr TVOR will see you shortly. He's likely to prescribe a quick course of emojis to get you up and running again

 

Yes, but he has a TERRIBLE BESIDE MANNER.

 

But when deaths and case numbers inevitably start to decline in the next couple of weeks, there needs to be some sort of clear endgame rather than the current situation.

 

The endgame is the vaccine. China relaxing their restrictions is going to bite them hard.

 

Yes, a strategy of contact testing, isolation, heat scanners and restricted large events until eradication. Hopefully that doesn’t take so long in the summer. The tricky thing (one of the tricky things) is reestablishing international travel.

We will be able to relax restrictions quite soon, maybe June imo. But ending them will depend on the international situation.

 

That isn’t viable though, waiting a year for the vaccine. Why haven’t the Government agreed to pay wages until the vaccine is developed rather than for three months? The vaccine is the ultimate end game, but what we’re doing at the moment isn’t a viable strategy in the interim.

 

I must admit, even though it may well change again (like it did here) I do like the situation in Sweden where bars and restaurants are open, but they won’t serve people standing up and seating needs to be appropriately placed. That seems a sensible half way house that would enable a bit of normality alongside helping to keep the spread in check.

 

I have a feeling we're heading for a cycle of heavy lockdown followed by temporary release, maybe weekly or fortnightly for most of the rest of the year from midsummer onwards. The only issue is even the relaxed periods won't resemble real life from before, as you can't just reopen pubs, cinemas, football stadiums etc on a short term basis without the staff/stock etc ready to go.

 

Hopefully this period is used to get infections down to relatively low levels, then it’s aggressive contact tracing for as long as possible until we reach some sort of key metric they’ll use to trigger another lockdown, and so on and so forth.

 

If a vaccine is a year away then nope, it was obvious it never was.

 

We are collectively hiding Moose. The reason why is largely irrelevant - it's an accurate way to describe the current stance we've taken. And we're doing it because essentially we're impotent in the face of this thing. All the talk from our leaders is about facing it off...but not now because we don't have the means to do so.

To expand on my tortuous hole/ladder analogy from early, we jumped into the hole without a ladder because our town up top was on fire. It's still on fire and we're no longer in immediate danger from the flames. Trouble is our town is going to burn down and we'll have nothing left to come back to unless we come up with a plan to get out of the hole pronto.

 

I mentioned this recently, and I accept that this is probably just a lack of understanding on my part, but why is intensive testing becoming the be all and end all?

I understand the benefits of testing NHS staff and other fringe benefits, but how does it help reduce the spread when, even if we tested at 70,000 a day, it would take 2.5 years to test the population, and everybody could get infected the day after testing. So how does it work?

I can see why social distancing will work if the vast majority of our population stuck with it. I also like the antibody test, as the benefits are pretty clear, too. but I'm stuck on this testing idea.

 

If you look at places like South Korea and Singapore I think it’s generally useful when used alongside a strategy of contact tracing. If you can test somebody, quarantine them, then trace everyone they’ve been in contact with and test them as well, you can quarantine them before they spread it even more. Just randomly testing people isn’t much use on its own, but if you have the means to test as many people as you need to then it’s a useful means to control the spread. You can’t successfully contact trace of you haven’t got sufficient tests available nationally.