SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

Jesus Christ, the government announce an extended lockdown and the first thing Laura Kuennesberg asks when is the lockdown ending? Why the feck is she asking that, everyday she asks shite questions. Stealing a living in journalism and that nob end Peston.
She's a fecking idiot, waste of a question. Raab even gave her the chance to come back with another question.
 
It’s an interesting idea but I’d say it’s unlikely. We know covid spread hasn’t stopped completely during lockdown, just reduced dramatically. So it’s the same with all these others.

What’s kind of fascinating is that if we could somehow keep absolutely everyone inside their own home 24/7 for just a few weeks then that would be the end of the coronavirus, permanently.

Did China not eventually reach zero mainland cases?
 
Jesus Christ, the government announce an extended lockdown and the first thing Laura Kuennesberg asks when is the lockdown ending? Why the feck is she asking that, everyday she asks shite questions. Stealing a living in journalism and that nob end Peston.

She did the same fecking thing about schools closing.

She doesn't have a brain.
 
Is it really about that though? The legality? I mean let’s ask ourselves, is him filming that incident necessary at all? The woman wasn’t having her head kicked in.
Is the guardian going to run a story of ‘female arrested in park and walked to van by officers’ ?

I get the fascination with filming absolutely everything under the sun and posting it online out of context but could people just not do this whilst the country is being ravaged by a virus?

People need to take some fecking responsibility sometimes. In these times, act like an adult. You don’t need to film that, onlookers and people nearby don’t know he’s a journalist, they’ll see that and they’ll think something is going on and in turn they too will start gathering and pulling out cameras. We don’t need martyrs encouraging this sort of behaviour, especially as I’ve already said it’s completely unnecessary. Are officers now supposed to check on everybody filming them to see if they’re legitimate journalists? Just because they said they were. How about you just not film?

That video was shot in Finsbury Park, where I worked for a day about two weeks ago and during the day there were groups of people repeatedly going there to socialise and have beers and pretty much everyone we spoke to greeted us with snobby, sarcastic remarks. Thats probably why a TSG unit are there because to put it bluntly they tend to be a bit more “assertive” and less customer friendly.

And expecting Police to be able to socially distance themselves when out and about is absurd. It is encouraged but in reality it is completely unrealistic.

People are deluded. People are whinging and moaning about people not respecting the lockdown and somehow think these same people will simply obey and adhere to instructions to go home from an officer standing two metres away and politely asking “can you go home please”?
What planet are these people living on?

There’s a complete lack of personal responsibility in this country. But I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise when you have government officials putting out the most insincere apologies known to man when asked about their response to the coronavirus. Why would the citizens behave any different?

Well siad. I thought the bloke was being a prick. Just because you post some shit on twitter you're not a journalist. If he is a jobbing journo then he's a shit one because there is clearly no story there.
 
Havent there been several cases? We probably dont know unless we test for antibodies.. find it in someone and then have them get infected again.. Till then, I guess any reinfection could just be a case of someone not recovering and just having a false negative.

That said, I searched for Covid reinfection and saw these two articles from yesterday..
https://qz.com/1837798/why-some-covid-19-patients-might-have-tested-positive-twice/
and more importantly
https://www.thelcn.com/news/local/l...cle_f4255ff3-71df-572a-af8a-23785a8eeffb.html

So the person tested positive 3 weeks after he/she initially stopped showing symptoms.. Probably 2+ of those weeks symptom free as well.
I can't read the second article from the EU, but every case of reinfection so far seems to be based on shaky ground. Dodgy testing, early hospital discharge, things like that.

 
On the topic of how long-term the social restrictions stay in place for in the UK, give us your guess for when we next see Old Trafford at max capacity. I.e. the date you think is closest to being 50:50.

I'm still thinking. Although unlikely I don't even think 2022 is an unreasonable guess.
 
That’s what I was wondering the other day since I seem to have picked up the common cold. How did it get into my cocoon? The responses were that it must be hay fever, but I regularly get hay fever and I know it’s not

It sounds like you were just desperately unlucky. A globule of someone’s sneezed out spittle must have got caught on an up-draft, wafted over your garden fence and up your nose. Shite luck but there you go. If that other person hadn’t been out and about your home would still be germ free.
 
It sounds like you were just desperately unlucky. A globule of someone’s sneezed out spittle must have got caught on an up-draft, wafted over your garden fence and up your nose. Shite luck but there you go. If that other person hadn’t been out and about your home would still be germ free.
That would be like my luck alright
I just found out that my next door neighbour thought that she had Covid too
 
I have a question hopefully someone on here can answer...

Say we come out of lock down 3 weeks from now but have no Vaccine, how are we in a more advantageous position to before we entered lock down? Does a virus' potency decline over time? If so, do you have any sources to explain this?
 
Obviously they can't give a date for lock down to be over, that's pretty pointless at best, and risky at worst.

But they "could" give some idea of what the first measures for easing the lockdown would be. But I suppose again that's not wise, as if things change, they'll just be hassled with "you said....."
 
I have a question hopefully someone on here can answer...

Say we come out of lock down 3 weeks from now but have no Vaccine, how are we in a more advantageous position to before we entered lock down? Does a virus' potency decline over time? If so, do you have any sources to explain this?

You've stopped it spreading massively out of control and obliterating the NHS system, and having a much higher death toll.

We won't be out of total lockdown for a long way into the future, 3 weeks is the minimum, which might be extended, and after that would gradually be reduced.
In that time, social distancing continues, and gradually that key "R" figure, the amount of people that are being infected off an individual reduces.

How does it buggar off completely? Who knows. Short of everyone staying inside for a month, or everyone getting it, then who knows.
 
I have a question hopefully someone on here can answer...

Say we come out of lock down 3 weeks from now but have no Vaccine, how are we in a more advantageous position to before we entered lock down? Does a virus' potency decline over time? If so, do you have any sources to explain this?

Stopped everyone going to hospital at the same time, bought is 3 weeks to get closer to finding a possible vaccine, stopped the spread at a high rate.
 
You've stopped it spreading massively out of control and obliterating the NHS system, and having a much higher death toll.

We won't be out of total lockdown for a long way into the future, 3 weeks is the minimum, which might be extended, and after that would gradually be reduced.
In that time, social distancing continues, and gradually that key "R" figure, the amount of people that are being infected off an individual reduces.

How does it buggar off completely? Who knows. Short of everyone staying inside for a month, or everyone getting it, then who knows.
Surely you would have to keep the majority of lock down rules in place until a Vaccine is available? We all saw how quickly this fecker can spread.
 
Surely you would have to keep the majority of lock down rules in place until a Vaccine is available? We all saw how quickly this fecker can spread.

I would not be injected with a vaccine this side of 2023.

A vaccine is the only absolute solution, but nobody is going to be queuing up to get one immediately.
 
Surely you would have to keep the majority of lock down rules in place until a Vaccine is available? We all saw how quickly this fecker can spread.

Not sure it's realistic to keep things too locked down for a year. People will eventually revolt.

I guess we'll find out from other countries and see how their reduction of lockdowns go.
Maybe not China, as people don't trust their figures or transparency, but definitely the France/Italy/Spain types, who are a few weeks ahead.
 
And influenza right? As far as my understanding goes influenza didn't even exist 120 years ago. Right?
I've seen this being a common misunderstanding. H1N1 started in 1918 (though there are theories that it might have been even earlier) and that virus is one of the most common influenza viruses that make people sick. However, there are dozens of influenza A viruses (the flu shots protect you only against H3N1 and H1N1), many strains of type B virus (which also makes people very sick and the flu shot gives protection against 1 or 2 influenza B strains) and influenza C viruses (milder, but present only in humans), and also type D which at the moment does not infect people.

I think that it is believed that type B and C have been with us for thousands of years.
 
Obviously they can't give a date for lock down to be over, that's pretty pointless at best, and risky at worst.

But they "could" give some idea of what the first measures for easing the lockdown would be. But I suppose again that's not wise, as if things change, they'll just be hassled with "you said....."


Good summary. I hate the Tory government and how they've handled it but they can't give a date, it'd only cause hassle. But at the same time, Labour are right in what they say - other countries are setting dates and time-lines for certain things, which is giving people something to be hopeful for an work towards mentally. They simply cannot keep saying 'another 3 weeks' indefinitely and repeating the same glib PR they're doing every day now. Show us there's a plan and the people are far more likely to comply.

To your later post about people revolting if it continues too long, you're right. But it won't even need to be a revolt, its just a matter of numbers. I just went hiking for 1.5hrs after WFH. I live in a reasonably small rural-ish town in South Wales, about 40miles from Cardiff. The town is made up of 4-5 different villages more or less. I do a hike every day. I have NEVER seen one police officer since lockdown started, and that's having gone hiking for 21-22 days on the trot. Not a single one.

By my calculations, if they tried forcibly imposing a lockdown, the military and police would be obviously involved. This small, humble town and it's surrounding areas would - by my estimate - need approximately 15-20 cops in total, 24hrs, patrolling and driving around. Where are those cops coming from? Nowhere. The police force will be focused on major cities along with the military, so there would be no way to impose it in these smaller towns. People would just start going about their regular business and the police might be able to nab like 5% of them.
 
Obviously they can't give a date for lock down to be over, that's pretty pointless at best, and risky at worst.

But they "could" give some idea of what the first measures for easing the lockdown would be. But I suppose again that's not wise, as if things change, they'll just be hassled with "you said....."

Exactly, and swear it's only the media asking if the lockdown was going to be lifted after the first three weeks like it was even a question that needed asking, they were certainly not asking for anyone in the country with only the slightest hint of having a brain.

Personally I think these daily briefings are getting a bit silly now, yes give us the info, but it doesn't change so much on a daily basis that they need to wheel out three people everyday for 45 mins +, and then spoon feed the media the same answers to the questions they asked yesterday, and why does Laura Kuenssberg always get to go first like she's media royalty.
 
Good summary. I hate the Tory government and how they've handled it but they can't give a date, it'd only cause hassle. But at the same time, Labour are right in what they say - other countries are setting dates and time-lines for certain things, which is giving people something to be hopeful for an work towards mentally. They simply cannot keep saying 'another 3 weeks' indefinitely and repeating the same glib PR they're doing every day now. Show us there's a plan and the people are far more likely to comply.

To your later post about people revolting if it continues too long, you're right. But it won't even need to be a revolt, its just a matter of numbers. I just went hiking for 1.5hrs after WFH. I live in a reasonably small rural-ish town in South Wales, about 40miles from Cardiff. The town is made up of 4-5 different villages more or less. I do a hike every day. I have NEVER seen one police officer since lockdown started, and that's having gone hiking for 21-22 days on the trot. Not a single one.

By my calculations, if they tried forcibly imposing a lockdown, the military and police would be obviously involved. This small, humble town and it's surrounding areas would - by my estimate - need approximately 15-20 cops in total, 24hrs, patrolling and driving around. Where are those cops coming from? Nowhere. The police force will be focused on major cities along with the military, so there would be no way to impose it in these smaller towns. People would just start going about their regular business and the police might be able to nab like 5% of them.

I suppose your reasoning there is why the government have been so "kid gloves" in their approach.

All that "advice" early on and then the politest ever instruction of the lockdown.
Other countries that are run with more of an iron fist could afford to be more brutal with their approach.

All i know is that my company depend on a lot of sectors like hotels restaurants and cinemas for their business.

So those need to be back up to speed before our co is back to capacity..and we have to be up to capacity until furlough ends.

Gonna be a long long haul!
 
Exactly, and swear it's only the media asking if the lockdown was going to be lifted after the first three weeks like it was even a question that needed asking, they were certainly not asking for anyone in the country with only the slightest hint of having a brain.

Personally I think these daily briefings are getting a bit silly now, yes give us the info, but it doesn't change so much on a daily basis that they need to wheel out three people everyday for 45 mins +, and then spoon feed the media the same answers to the questions they asked yesterday, and why does Laura Kuenssberg always get to go first like she's media royalty.

Yep totally agree. It was a novelty when fresh but now it's pointless unless something major has changed. Like today's confirmation.

All the questions are simply
When will lockdown/the peak end?
Why are we worse than others?
Where's the PPE/testing?

The journos have their questions and still ask them even if the briefing has covered it already.


I always wonder what the point of that transport use graph is as well.
 
Feel like this clapping stuff is the new poppy.

Saw a clap for the queen's birthday next week. Absolute bin suggestion.
 
I suppose your reasoning there is why the government have been so "kid gloves" in their approach.

All that "advice" early on and then the politest ever instruction of the lockdown.
Other countries that are run with more of an iron fist could afford to be more brutal with their approach.

All i know is that my company depend on a lot of sectors like hotels restaurants and cinemas for their business.

So those need to be back up to speed before our co is back to capacity..and we have to be up to capacity until furlough ends.

Gonna be a long long haul!


Yeah, every country is different isn't it. Sorry to hear of your own predicament man, all the best and let's hope it's not as long a haul...

Having lived in a major Chinese city, and seen how the majority of the population (even relatively rich people) live in tower blocks due to lack of space.....its easy to lock down a city like that. All you need really is 2-3 armed police officers per tower block, at the entrance/exit, and you're literally quarantinining a good 500-1000 people in one easy swoop. Repeat that for every tower block in the city and you've quarantined millions of people with a few hundred police officers, give or take.

To do the same in the West with sprawling neighbourhoods, housing areas, is next to impossible unless you're deploying hundreds of officers to each town. They'd have to be 'on the move' non-stop in cars (main roads) and on foot (elsewhere). Not feasible.
 
Feel like this clapping stuff is the new poppy.

Saw a clap for the queen's birthday next week. Absolute bin suggestion.


It feels like satire at times. 'Brasseye's new 3hour feature-length special episode. Segments such as the PM (who looks like Matt Lucas in character) telling the nation to sing Happy Birthday while washing their hands. It's almost surreal.
 
It feels like satire at times. 'Brasseye's new 3hour feature-length special episode. Segments such as the PM (who looks like Matt Lucas in character) telling the nation to sing Happy Birthday while washing their hands. It's almost surreal.
"It's corona virus! People are bursting with corona virus"
 
Yeah, every country is different isn't it. Sorry to hear of your own predicament man, all the best and let's hope it's not as long a haul...

Having lived in a major Chinese city, and seen how the majority of the population (even relatively rich people) live in tower blocks due to lack of space.....its easy to lock down a city like that. All you need really is 2-3 armed police officers per tower block, at the entrance/exit, and you're literally quarantinining a good 500-1000 people in one easy swoop. Repeat that for every tower block in the city and you've quarantined millions of people with a few hundred police officers, give or take.

To do the same in the West with sprawling neighbourhoods, housing areas, is next to impossible unless you're deploying hundreds of officers to each town. They'd have to be 'on the move' non-stop in cars (main roads) and on foot (elsewhere). Not feasible.

Ta chap. To be honest in my situation im ok. Gives me a spell to concentrate on my passion of running (adhering to the rules of course!)

Interesting insight into the differences. I suppose on top of that people in China are more used to being dictated to as well. Communist type countries etc. ( won't go too deep totally out of my knowledge zone here!)
 
Yep totally agree. It was a novelty when fresh but now it's pointless unless something major has changed. Like today's confirmation.

All the questions are simply
When will lockdown/the peak end?
Why are we worse than others?
Where's the PPE/testing?

The journos have their questions and still ask them even if the briefing has covered it already.


I always wonder what the point of that transport use graph is as well.

I got the impression that the transport graph was a pat on the back to show how well we are doing at the lockdown, as quite understandably public transport must have been a great way of spreading it, and the drop off on the graph is quite a dramatic visual to display, but to show it every time, and to then follow it up with the all important hospital admissions graph seems odd.

I think if they did these briefings every 4-5 days they'd be really worth watching, and would stop people getting jaded with them, which quite possibly means missing some important new information, I'd also stop them asking the media if they 'want to follow up'.
 
Feel like this clapping stuff is the new poppy.

Saw a clap for the queen's birthday next week. Absolute bin suggestion.

I got shot down in the first week after my other half (NHS worker) said she'd rather have PPE than people's claps. Now we're past the romance phase, we're now starting to see the signs of people questioning approach. Which is only a good thing. The care home sector is quite frankly a scandal waiting to be uncovered, but hopefully people clapping put the energy into getting the right policy sorted/government held to account.

Clapping for the queen is laughable though, i'd probably prefer clapping for that 99 year old who managed to raise £15m with a bit of creativity.
 
We are starting to lift restrictions in Poland!

It's phased:

  • Monday 20th April: 4 people per cashier in stores (now 3), for larger markets 1 person per 15 sqm, you will be able to go for walks, parks and forests will open, people between 13-18 will be able to leave home without an adult
  • Monday 27th April: hotels, libraries and museums will reopen
  • Monday 4th May: restaurants to reopen with limited capacity, hair saloons and beauty parlors will reopen, shopping centers will open, sporting events with up to 50 participants to be allowed (behind closed doors only)
  • Monday 11th May: gyms, cinemas and theaters to reopen with limited capacity
Masks will be obligatory until vaccine is available. Mass gatherings likely to be banned until vaccine as well. Limited capacity to continue. If cases go up significantly, lockdown will return with immediate effect.
 
We are starting to lift restrictions in Poland!

It's phased:

  • Monday 20th April: 4 people per cashier in stores (now 3), for larger markets 1 person per 15 sqm, you will be able to go for walks, parks and forests will open, people between 13-18 will be able to leave home without an adult
  • Monday 27th April: hotels, libraries and museums will reopen
  • Monday 4th May: restaurants to reopen with limited capacity, hair saloons and beauty parlors will reopen, shopping centers will open, sporting events with up to 50 participants to be allowed (behind closed doors only)
  • Monday 11th May: gyms, cinemas and theaters to reopen with limited capacity
Masks will be obligatory until vaccine is available. Mass gatherings likely to be banned until vaccine as well. Limited capacity to continue. If cases go up significantly, lockdown will return with immediate effect.

Interesting to read this, especially the priority given to hotels, libraries and museums.

I'm not close to the data, but is Poland seeing a reduction in cases/deaths now?
 
Surely you would have to keep the majority of lock down rules in place until a Vaccine is available? We all saw how quickly this fecker can spread.

Well stuff like Cheltenham and Liverpool-Atletico Madrid mass gatherings won't be happening anytime soon or indeed perhaps not early next year either although I hope we'd have had some sort of medical breakthrough by then.

I can only go by my experience but mass gathering hotspot is between 5-6pm at Birmingham new Street and you can factor in the same at Manc Piccadilly/Victoria, Leeds, Sheffield, Bristol and all the London terminals (and the tube).

Once you ease lockdown you need to come up with some sort of action plan which will continue to stop unneccesary trips into the office if you can do the work at home. If you are in the office then perhaps more flexible start and finish times. Add in general less trips into major cities for leisure given many restuarants and pubs could well be closed and we should be getting somewhere if they trial that through June.

Not sure what the plan is for Winter though, that's going to be a big problem.
 
I've seen this being a common misunderstanding. H1N1 started in 1918 (though there are theories that it might have been even earlier) and that virus is one of the most common influenza viruses that make people sick. However, there are dozens of influenza A viruses (the flu shots protect you only against H3N1 and H1N1), many strains of type B virus (which also makes people very sick and the flu shot gives protection against 1 or 2 influenza B strains) and influenza C viruses (milder, but present only in humans), and also type D which at the moment does not infect people.

I think that it is believed that type B and C have been with us for thousands of years.
Ah, thanks!
 
We are starting to lift restrictions in Poland!

It's phased:

  • Monday 20th April: 4 people per cashier in stores (now 3), for larger markets 1 person per 15 sqm, you will be able to go for walks, parks and forests will open, people between 13-18 will be able to leave home without an adult
  • Monday 27th April: hotels, libraries and museums will reopen
  • Monday 4th May: restaurants to reopen with limited capacity, hair saloons and beauty parlors will reopen, shopping centers will open, sporting events with up to 50 participants to be allowed (behind closed doors only)
  • Monday 11th May: gyms, cinemas and theaters to reopen with limited capacity
Masks will be obligatory until vaccine is available. Mass gatherings likely to be banned until vaccine as well. Limited capacity to continue. If cases go up significantly, lockdown will return with immediate effect.

That's promising. Interesting on the masks. If you go without one, will you be fined or just warned. I'm struggling to understand why U.K is being so dismissive of them apart from of course not having many of them to distribute!

Anyway you staying indoors until 2021 just to make sure Sarni?;)
 
Ta chap. To be honest in my situation im ok. Gives me a spell to concentrate on my passion of running (adhering to the rules of course!)

Interesting insight into the differences. I suppose on top of that people in China are more used to being dictated to as well. Communist type countries etc. ( won't go too deep totally out of my knowledge zone here!)


No it's true, basically. It's the perfect storm for their government because they've got a very manageable population in terms of they live in these singular buildings plus those same people have been more or less indoctrinated since birth to obey everything they are told without question. Very easy population to manage which to be honest, in a situation like this it's probably for the best.
 
Interesting to read this, especially the priority given to hotels, libraries and museums.

I'm not close to the data, but is Poland seeing a reduction in cases/deaths now?

Nope it’s rising every day.
 
That's promising. Interesting on the masks. If you go without one, will you be fined or just warned. I'm struggling to understand why U.K is being so dismissive of them apart from of course not having many of them to distribute!

Anyway you staying indoors until 2021 just to make sure Sarni?;)

I plan to work from home for the next 3 months anyway, let’s see after that. I’m actually spending at least 2 hours outside everyday even now.
 
We are starting to lift restrictions in Poland!

It's phased:

  • Monday 20th April: 4 people per cashier in stores (now 3), for larger markets 1 person per 15 sqm, you will be able to go for walks, parks and forests will open, people between 13-18 will be able to leave home without an adult
  • Monday 27th April: hotels, libraries and museums will reopen
  • Monday 4th May: restaurants to reopen with limited capacity, hair saloons and beauty parlors will reopen, shopping centers will open, sporting events with up to 50 participants to be allowed (behind closed doors only)
  • Monday 11th May: gyms, cinemas and theaters to reopen with limited capacity
Masks will be obligatory until vaccine is available. Mass gatherings likely to be banned until vaccine as well. Limited capacity to continue. If cases go up significantly, lockdown will return with immediate effect.



Of course, as is to be expected.
But this is brilliant news man. Love seeing other countries around us getting light at the end of the tunnel and planning ahead. Go on Poland.