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

When you have the facilities for testing and contact tracing, ideally getting the infection levels as low as possible in the mean time to facilitate that.
So if you open childcare or schools for instance you know from testing what effect its having. Maybe you expect the infection rate is going to be pretty bad but for whatever reason its not and it lets you know you can widen the lifting of restrictions. Or you realise its far worse than you expected and you reinstate the lock before it gets out of control and you have nationwide lockdown again and find an alternative way to manage.
There'll probably be a bit of back and forth and experimenting for a while - but you'll have dozens of countries testing different strategies and i think we'll figure out a way to manage it before too long.
This seems the most sensible approach. But the UK need to flatten their curve first, which is seemingly at least 3 weeks more. Maybe if people would buy into it then it may happen sooner
 
How about you stop talking down to people about putting on their grown up pants?

you disagree with many here but try to treat people with respect. No-one has been through this before, many think they have an answer but no one knows for sure. everything is a gamble. So, let’s show some respect eh?

I was talking about 'We' As in society. Not anybody specific just to clarify.
 
The problem is when you actually sit down and think about things, and this is going to be negative ... but people are fecked as in seriously fecked.

everything is actually a lose lose situation. It's like a script from a saw movie.

Say we go for 'gradual lockdown release' if we loosen restrictions, no mass gatherings etc. yeah sure kids are back in school, some businesses open up again. But then what about all the businesses that require 'mass gatherings' to basically function .
The businesses that require huge numbers of staffing levels, what happens to these staff members when the furlough inevitably stops and if it doesn't, who is paying for it?

There's a gigantic domino effect - less people spending money - less revenue- staff cuts. You're talking thousand upon thousands of working class people left jobless and unable to feed their families.

If you come out of lockdown and go for Belarus mode. People are gonna drop like flies. Nhs will be fecked.

Other option, completely restrict the elderly and those with health conditions from leaving their home.
You're basically imprisoning a large portion of the country.

Or option four, Pogues theory of the human race being wiped out.

Yeah we're fecked. But at least Liverpool probably won't win the league. And even if they do there'll be no fans there to see it.
Love this post, I got to the second to last paragraph completely depressed then that last paragraph brought me right back. :drool:
 
My brother-in-law owns a couple of barber shops and lockdown has crippled him. He is paying 6 staff out of his own pocket currently and his landlord is being a nightmare. Lease is due to soon with a fairly big payment due on renewal and when he asked for some co-operation the landlord said that tenants that are difficult during this period won’t get their leases renewed. My sister found various websites on how to commit suicide including videos on his laptop after he was acting funny. I can imagine this is far from an isolated case as it stands and it’s put huge strain on the family. I’m probably going to need to give them a big chunk of my house deposit just to get through this period as I’m quite fortunate with my position/employer at the minute and not at risk. Hope this virus fecks off soon.

Similar situation with my brother, he's an optician who closed his practices down a week before lockdown. They have got over 20 people on payroll so stuck everyone on furlough but he's still paying rent on four properties with hardly any money coming into the business now. Spoke to him a few days ago after the extension was put into place and he reckons they will be okay until June, at that point he will have put his own money into the business and I think that's when it's going to go wrong for so many self employed people out there.
 
Even if this virus ran free 250k out of a population of 66.6m in the UK were projected to die. Even in those circumstances the odds are still in any one person's favour.
Tell you what, Chelsea fans can go first then. Step up there big man
 
Similar situation with my brother, he's an optician who closed his practices down a week before lockdown. They have got over 20 people on payroll so stuck everyone on furlough but he's still paying rent on four properties with hardly any money coming into the business now. Spoke to him a few days ago after the extension was put into place and he reckons they will be okay until June, at that point he will have put his own money into the business and I think that's when it's going to go wrong for so many self employed people out there.
Hate to say it, but 4 sites aren’t gonna survive. He’d be better consolidating 1 or 2
 
Good to see the papers starting to turn, they need to continue with the pressure though for weeks if not months.

They're literally only turning because of social media and public opinion, they just go with whatever stories are going to be a hit with the public, been like that for years. Aslong as someone is to blame the public lap it up.
 
I heard it is getting pretty bad now there.

Myanmar has like about 107 as of right now. About 50-60 of them were from a super spreader who came back from Singapore then he went into some religion event and spread it pretty badly. The country had about 23 before that and it was a week ago.
This is happening too often. It’s about time religious leaders took responsibility and closed down.
 
Is anyone else a little concerned by how things such as an NHS app is being developed tracking our movements to see our contacts , which although useful right now, could become permanent after?
We’re all very compliant & obedient which again is brilliant right now.

Just a bit uneasy about it all,

Privacy concerns are legitimate.

However given we are in the midst of a pandemic of this magnitude, the issue it is seeking to address seems a far more pressing concern.

As we have already seen, there will be negative consequences to pretty much every measure put in place, as well as a trade off between rights around freedom/privacy and the right to be protected as much as is possible from grave public health threats. These apps will just be an extension of that reality.
 
I was talking about 'We' As in society. Not anybody specific just to clarify.
Maybe that may be true in the post I responded to but I’ve had to warn you in another specific post because you directed it at the other member
 
it’s not impossible, the Chinese did it. Why do British people assume that a hard lockdown isn’t on the cards IF absolutely necessary?

Comparing China to the UK is a nonsense sorry,

China is an Authoritarian state. The UK isn't.

China is a one party state, doesn't have a free press and controls the internet. It imprisons dissenters and locks up thousands of Muslims in 're-education camps'. On the other hand the UK has a free press, a functioning political system and a civic society.

So comparing how China and the UK implement a lockdown, is akin to comparing apples to a combine harvester.
 
The UK is doing OK I think, Like I said above we aren't behaving in some insane relaxed way...we're in lockdown and people are picking fault with whether it should have been a week or two earlier. Some countries aren't even in lockdown!
People may not be able to work, but the "exercise" bit of the UK's restrictions is pathetic. People can be out and about all day for no reason if they feel like it. It's hardly being enforced and there are no penalties except being told to go home by a police officer.

Most people in the UK won't get asked about their movements at all, from start to finish of this pandemic.
 
Privacy concerns are legitimate.

However given we are in the midst of a pandemic of this magnitude, the issue it is seeking to address seems a far more pressing concern.

As we have already seen, there will be negative consequences to pretty much every measure put in place, as well as a trade off between rights around freedom/privacy and the right to be protected as much as is possible from grave public health threats. These apps will just be an extension of that reality.
Yep. Also I’m a great believe in if you have done nothing wrong why would you worry about it?
 
Comparing China to the UK is a nonsense sorry,

China is an Authoritarian state. The UK isn't.

China is a one party state, doesn't have a free press and controls the internet. It imprisons dissenters and locks up thousands of Muslims in 're-education camps'. On the other hand the UK has a free press, a functioning political system and a civic society.

So comparing how China and the UK implement a lockdown, is akin to comparing apples to a combine harvester.

ALL governments have it in their locker IF it’s necessary. You said it’s impossible to lock down
if the people don’t want to be. I’m saying it’s NOT impossible even if you choose to believe it would never happen in the UK.

the UK have done far worse in their history so don’t discount it
 
Only have anecdotal information about West Africa, but my family & friends have said that in Ghana & Nigeria - people who flew into the international airports were being screened for high temperature/fever as early as February
Was screened when I went to Nigeria at the end of January.
Nigeria has been carrying out contact tracing from the very first index case. Don't know how accurate the numbers are but it has been able to limit the spread to 540 with a population of over 200 million.
I was scratching my head when I heard officials in the US and UK say they didn't have the capacity to contact trace in the beginning.
 
Sorry, are you suggesting WHO have it wrong and you know better?

Almost every country has been working on the understanding that the virus confers some degree of immunity. The countries actually treating patients and seeing how the virus progresses. Are they wrong? If so, where are the confirmed reinfections? How are patients clearing the virus on their own? Why are numerous countries working on serological tests?

Or is it the WHO, the organisation that has been stumbling through this and making mistakes at every turn? They're just protecting themselves at this point because they know when this is all over a lot of difficult questions will be asked of them.


It's raging in Singapore. I really don't see how the weather affects it

Mostly in the foreign worker dormitories with their cramped conditions. As with anything to do with Singapore, take their information with a pinch of salt. It's only a free and open country as long as their image remains good.

There is very little evidence of how seasons affect it because we haven't hit summer yet in most of the hard hit countries, but there is a small bit of evidence appearing in Spain that it might slow it down.
 
People may not be able to work, but the "exercise" bit of the UK's restrictions is pathetic. People can be out and about all day for no reason if they feel like it. It's hardly being enforced and there are no penalties except being told to go home by a police officer.

Most people in the UK won't get asked about their movements at all, from start to finish of this pandemic.

yeh, well I certainly have been out and about most days with the lovely weather. I’ve been walking and biking isolated areas. The risk of that to me and others is close to zero.
 
My brother-in-law owns a couple of barber shops and lockdown has crippled him. He is paying 6 staff out of his own pocket currently and his landlord is being a nightmare. Lease is due to soon with a fairly big payment due on renewal and when he asked for some co-operation the landlord said that tenants that are difficult during this period won’t get their leases renewed. My sister found various websites on how to commit suicide including videos on his laptop after he was acting funny. I can imagine this is far from an isolated case as it stands and it’s put huge strain on the family. I’m probably going to need to give them a big chunk of my house deposit just to get through this period as I’m quite fortunate with my position/employer at the minute and not at risk. Hope this virus fecks off soon.
The bad news is a lot of people are learning to cut their own hair or their partner's learning. Younger people will go back when the barbers re-open but the number of over 40s will drop quite a bit.
Good on you for being willing to help out though.
 
ALL governments have it in their locker IF it’s necessary. You said it’s impossible to lock down
if the people don’t want to be. I’m saying it’s NOT impossible even if you choose to believe it would never happen in the UK.

the UK have done far worse in their history so don’t discount it

Well nothing is impossible. It's not impossible that we'll all be confined to our homes for 18 months and the army will deliver rations to our front door. Can't see it happening though.

I think it's impossible for the UK to impose a strict lockdown on a population who don't support one, but as the population currently overwhelming support the lockdown the government don't have to worry about it.

However it is impossible for a UK politician to appear on the media without being pressed about an exit strategy. So in my view, the UK lockdown is much more likely to relaxed than tightened in three weeks time.
 
Was screened when I went to Nigeria at the end of January.
Nigeria has been carrying out contact tracing from the very first index case. Don't know how accurate the numbers are but it has been able to limit the spread to 540 with a population of over 200 million.
I was scratching my head when I heard officials in the US and UK say they didn't have the capacity to contact trace in the beginning.

Yep, it was incredibly apparent early on that the Government weren't doing all that it could do to minimise the spread of this early on - whether to try and keep the nation calm, or whether because Boris truly is as much of a buffoon as I think he is, it doesn't really matter at this point.
It's unforgivable.
 
Love this post, I got to the second to last paragraph completely depressed then that last paragraph brought me right back. :drool:

It's important to keep a positive outlook on things. Main one being our children on the whole are safest from this thing. That's my takeaway.

However, for that last paragraph I would urge caution to you and @Leroy The Red . Remember it's not covid that kills. It's not even always the resultant cytokine storm. It's the hope.

:p
 
Well, a lot of that in the US is due to underlying factors relating to poverty and access to healthcare. You can see this in New Orleans and Detroit.

But...there is a lot to unpack there, so you can forgive me if I don’t take it all on at the moment.
Yes, agreed. But there would have to be a few leaps of faith to start games. Are there any risk factors we haven't thought of? Could players become superspreaders in their communities? All so we can watch a game.
 
Yep. Also I’m a great believe in if you have done nothing wrong why would you worry about it?

Aye, personally I have no particular issue with my extremely dull interactions forming a small part of a mass of data. There's little there that's of interest to me, let alone anyone else.

Plus the reality is I carry a very traceable phone with me at all times, have a mass of apps which already record a lot of information, regularly volunteer information to social media platforms and fitness apps myself and have all my financial transactions recorded in such a way that any schlub who works for my bank could look them up on a whim if they were minded too. Adding another app to that is hardly a stake through the heart of my precious privacy.

I realise some people are more anxious about this type of thing than I am, mind.
 
It's important to keep a positive outlook on things. Main one being our children on the whole are safest from this thing. That's my takeaway.

However, for that last paragraph I would urge caution to you and @Leroy The Red . Remember it's not covid that kills. It's not even always the resultant cytokine storm. It's the hope.

:p
:lol:
 
Yep. Also I’m a great believe in if you have done nothing wrong why would you worry about it?

I think it's because it's a first step to monitoring everything and controlling what people do. Especially with how our government leave laptops on trains with confidential info and lose usb sticks. I wouldn't trust them knowing my every move.

Them monitoring movements will then lead to more, monitoring what websites you can go on and can't (didn't they try to do that with porn recently?)

Monitoring who you're talking to, when it's none of their business tbh. It'll end up being abused somehow.

I would imagine a shit ton of annoying alerts too. It would be some half arsed app which isn't secure anyway. All government websites and technology is a shambles :lol:

Edit: also, they'd probably snoop on your spending in the end, maybe limit your gambling habits, that type of thing I'd expect and they'd put it down to "mental health help" or something.
 
yeh, well I certainly have been out and about most days with the lovely weather. I’ve been walking and biking isolated areas. The risk of that to me and others is close to zero.
Maybe the risk is zero as far as you're concerned, that's true - but other people aren't going to isolated areas. My point really was that it's not a "lockdown" - you can basically be out of the house all day if you choose to do so, because there's no enforcement.

Most people complaining about being locked-down are talking rubbish in the UK. The folk it's affecting are people not getting paid or losing their jobs/businesses and people who've actually got sick or have loved ones who've got sick. If you're working from home, not infected and being paid, not being able to go out for a meal or to the pub or football is absolutely nothing.
 
It's amazing just how poor journalism is, this whole pandemic is showing the journalists to be pretty much amateurs. They're just taking any interview they do as truth, not getting sources verified, or quotes, and they're always bending their articles to their own thoughts.

As for 'taking every interview as truth', all you can do as a journo is present the different views, say on the spread of Covid- do you expect them to do a Phd on the subject?

You guys here are more trustworthy than they are, well apart from the religious nutjob.
Papers have a house view, so if you work for the Mail as a journo then you have to tow the line.

I remember when the swine flu was breaking out, there were some wild claims in the media.

Third of the world would be infected.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/12/swine-flu-report-pandemic-predicted

65,000 could die
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jul/16/swine-flu-pandemic-warning-helpline

392 died in the UK
You realise that 'wild claim in the media' was just reporting of the chief medical officer's report, hardly some journo plucking a figure from the air.
 
My brother-in-law owns a couple of barber shops and lockdown has crippled him. He is paying 6 staff out of his own pocket currently and his landlord is being a nightmare. Lease is due to soon with a fairly big payment due on renewal and when he asked for some co-operation the landlord said that tenants that are difficult during this period won’t get their leases renewed. My sister found various websites on how to commit suicide including videos on his laptop after he was acting funny. I can imagine this is far from an isolated case as it stands and it’s put huge strain on the family. I’m probably going to need to give them a big chunk of my house deposit just to get through this period as I’m quite fortunate with my position/employer at the minute and not at risk. Hope this virus fecks off soon.
Poor guy. Tell him to fold if he needs to. He's not responsible for keeping his staff employed during this time from his own pocket. If the business can't pay them then you have to let them go. Keep the money he has the get the business back up and running and paying people wages when its possible to open. Re the landlord, maybe its time to look at changing premises? Would that be a nightmare scenario?
Hes not responsible for the financial security of everyone he has any dealings with. Terrible situation to be in and i dont envy him in the slightest, he just needs to keep taking the least shitty option available and find a route out the other side.
People will still want haircuts and business will be booming again one day.
 
Yep. Also I’m a great believe in if you have done nothing wrong why would you worry about it?


Then you haven't looked closely at the US justice system where innocent people are locked up and even executed often enough to make it a huge concern. Then there are all the incidences of police brutality, illegal shootings by cops, false arrests, evidence tampering, and conspiracy that frequently impact innocent people.

More power leads to abuse of power.
 
People just dont get it.

This is a civilization ending event.

The Economy is never getting back to the levels we had before, social distancing is not going away.

Some jobs are going to be lost forever.

The options are, carry on as normal and watch the economy crash and burn, people slowly becomming ill, some dying.

Or,

Try to carry on with some restrictions, pray and hope we can keep levels down but still tbousands dying a becomming seriously ill with possible long term health issues.

Facts are,

Under lockdowns we are still seeing close to a thousand deaths per day and thousands infected. Thousands ill and thousands seriously ill.

Start to lift restrictions and that figure begins to rise.

We cant win, thus this virus which I believe came from a lab is doing its job, ending our civilization as we know it.

We still do not even know the long term effects for those recovered, are they immune from the virus, what damage it has already done to their bodies and so on.
 
People just dont get it.

This is a civilization ending event.

The Economy is never getting back to the levels we had before, social distancing is not going away.

Some jobs are going to be lost forever.

The options are, carry on as normal and watch the economy crash and burn, people slowly becomming ill, some dying.

Or,

Try to carry on with some restrictions, pray and hope we can keep levels done.

Facts are,

Under lockdowns we are still seeing close to a thousand deaths per day and thousands infected. Thousands ill and thousands seriously ill.

Start to lift restrictions and that figure begins to rise.

We cant win, thus this virus which I believe came from a lab is doing its job, ending our civilization as we know it.

We still do not even know the long term effects for those recovered, are they immune from the virus, what damage it has already done to their bodies and so on.
Is this a poem?
 
My brother-in-law owns a couple of barber shops and lockdown has crippled him. He is paying 6 staff out of his own pocket currently and his landlord is being a nightmare. Lease is due to soon with a fairly big payment due on renewal and when he asked for some co-operation the landlord said that tenants that are difficult during this period won’t get their leases renewed. My sister found various websites on how to commit suicide including videos on his laptop after he was acting funny. I can imagine this is far from an isolated case as it stands and it’s put huge strain on the family. I’m probably going to need to give them a big chunk of my house deposit just to get through this period as I’m quite fortunate with my position/employer at the minute and not at risk. Hope this virus fecks off soon.

On the last day that my team admitted patients, we got a guy that tried to commit suicide via organophosphate ingestion. Even though I’m not psych, I usually still talk to these people and try to find out what pushed them to this. This particular guy, in his 30s or so, said that he simply had no money remaining, no money coming in, nothing, so he tried to commit suicide.

Locking things down is very essential, but there is the dark side of it, things like this, and I think it will get more frequent the longer this goes on.
 
Regarding the anti-body discussion earlier :

1. Studies have between 25-60% asymptomatic cases.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/01/europe/iceland-testing-coronavirus-intl/index.html
https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s...ut-those-who-can-pass-corona-without-symptoms
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ases-wuhan-china-symptoms-study-a9424686.html

2. Studies shows many recovered from Covid-10 has low levels of antibodies or none at all. Here is one article about that:

https://www.jwatch.org/fw116548/2020/04/13/sars-cov-2-antibodies-undetectable-some-recovered

3. The antibody test (blood test) will only detect infections after the immune system has produced antibodies that recognise the virus. This happens approx. 7-10 days after symptoms develop.
Antibody tests need to be accurate to help us. That means 3 criterias must be reached:

a) If some people do not produce detectable amounts of the antibody used in the test after infection, or if antibody levels wane with time, the test will be insufficiently sensitive, missing too many infections (false-negative results) to be useful.

b) The test must be specific enough to give high confidence that a positive test result is correct (not a false positive). This is especially true if past infection is uncommon among those who are tested, as in the general population.

c) before an antibody test can be used to indicate that someone is immune to further infection, the level of protection must be demonstrated in experimental trials. While there is a clear link between the presence of the antibody and protective immunity for many common viral infections, this has not yet been confirmed for the new coronavirus. It is possible that people are temporarily protected against reinfection but the protection wanes with time, or that protection operates agains current but not future strains of the new corona virus.

https://coronavirusexplained.ukri.org/en/article/vdt0006/

4. It is possible that the antibodies that someone develops against the virus could actually increase the risk of the disease becoming worse," he said, noting that the most serious symptoms come later, after the patient had formed antibodies.
For the moment, it is also unclear whose antibodies are more potent in beating back the disease: someone who nearly died, or someone with only light symptoms or even no symptoms at all. And does age make a difference? Faced with all these uncertainties, some experts have doubts about the wisdom of pursuing a "herd immunity" strategy such that the virus - unable to find new victims - peters out by itself when a majority of the population is immune. "The only real solution for now is a vaccine," Archie Clements, a professor at Curtin University in Perth Australia, said.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/recovering-from-the-coronavirus-may-not-make-you-immune-experts-warn

There are many other elements to this also, but at the moment we do not know if anti-bodies tests will be accurate, we know that propably many will not HAVE any antibodies, we do not know if everyone gets immune, and for how long, we do not know if the antibodies even are good for us, and maybe even the disease can lay dormant for a while and "reinfect" a person already recovered as South Korean studies shows. In some diseases, antibodies can even cause problems where you can easier get other infections and have immune problems etc.

I think it is safe to say that herd immunity seems like a big gamble, and indications is it will not work well, and will propably not last long. Vaccine seems like the only option besides natural mutation into a less harmful virus, like the spanish flu into H1N1 for example. Also anti body testing might not be accurate and may not be the tool governments wants it to be, like WHO tried to say. Everyone can draw their own conclusions, but in reality we do not know much yet. It is all indications and too early to conclude on anything right now. We do not even know if a vaccine will work permanently or will have to be given at certain intervals of time. If we get a fully functioning vaccine.
 
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