Manxberry Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 The US is sending hospital ships to New York, which is prudent enough and FEMA is activated at the highest level. Might as well use them. Lots of people will be saying this means panic, but really it's just good sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheTeapot Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 Bill Gates has done an AMA on reddit if anyone is interested Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P.K. Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 (edited) Our government decided to only test folks in hospital. Big bad mistake. It seems there are a lot of asymptomatic carriers spreading the virus. Scientists say mass tests in Italian town have halted Covid-19 A study in Vò, which saw Italy’s first death, points to the danger of asymptomatic carriers. The small town of Vò, in northern Italy, where the first coronavirus death occurred in the country, has become a case study that demonstrates how scientists might neutralise the spread of Covid-19. A scientific study, rolled out by the University of Padua, with the help of the Veneto Region and the Red Cross, consisted of testing all 3,300 inhabitants of the town, including asymptomatic people. The goal was to study the natural history of the virus, the transmission dynamics and the categories at risk. The researchers explained they had tested the inhabitants twice and that the study led to the discovery of the decisive role in the spread of the coronavirus epidemic of asymptomatic people. When the study began, on 6 March, there were at least 90 infected in Vò. For days now, there have been no new cases. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/scientists-say-mass-tests-in-italian-town-have-halted-covid-19 Edited March 18, 2020 by P.K. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinahand Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 Imperial College London is leading the efforts to understand how the epidemic might develop. They've just published their latest research. If you want to read the whole thing go here, while a general summary is here. It is sobering. For the first time the "flatten the curve" graphs have some figures on them: The black line shows the unmitigated epidemic. Green shows a suppression strategy incorporating closure of schools and universities, case isolation and population-wide social distancing beginning in late March 2020. The orange line shows a containment strategy incorporating case isolation, household quarantine and population-wide social distancing. The red line is the estimated surge ICU bed capacity in GB. The blue shading shows the 5-month period in which these interventions are assumed to remain in place. (B) shows the same data as in panel (A) but zoomed in on the lower levels of the graph. (Source: WHO collaborating Centre / MRC GIDA / J-IDEA) Everyone needs to work hard to keep us on the green curve. The red line is when critical care beds saturate. The blue period is when we are all under quarantine ... the technical phrase is Non Pharmaceutical Impacts - they do help, but when the quarantine ends the virus returns. That is the dilemma humanity has always faced - in order to get herd immunity a large proportion of the population has to have caught it and survived, but for that to have happened a certain proportion of the population will have caught it and died. Death is a part of the process. But now, humanities ingenuity has offered us an alternative ... vaccines. Wish the scientists well in their work to develop a vaccine, many many lives depend upon them. Oh ... and certain posters on this forum express very strong opinions on Boris. This is a man staring into the abyss. He is facing the deaths of 1,000s of people and being asked to make decisions where death occurs if he makes one choice and deaths occur if he makes another choice. It's easy to paint him as some pantomime villain. I see a man fully aware of his responsibilities and trying to lead a country into a place it wishes it could avoid. Not an easy task ... one worthy of some sympathy if you were to ask me. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P.K. Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 It's a position he has always coveted. So "beware of what you wish for" has never been more true. Personally I think he is completely out of his depth. Right now Newsnight are painting a very bleak picture of poor decisions, lack of proper equipment due to financial restraints on the NHS and a very uncertain future including deploying the military. Those 92,153 tory party members who voted him in have a great deal to answer for... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wrighty Posted March 18, 2020 Share Posted March 18, 2020 15 minutes ago, P.K. said: It's a position he has always coveted. So "beware of what you wish for" has never been more true. Personally I think he is completely out of his depth. Right now Newsnight are painting a very bleak picture of poor decisions, lack of proper equipment due to financial restraints on the NHS and a very uncertain future including deploying the military. Those 92,153 tory party members who voted him in have a great deal to answer for... How do you think we’d be getting on if Jeremy Corbyn had been PM for the past 3 months? The same probably. You can say lots about Boris, but this crisis isn’t down to him, and I doubt much else can be done right now. Remember when government stockpiled Tamiflu for an epidemic that never came? They were roundly criticised for wasting money. As I’ve said before, emergency planning is impossible to get right. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P.K. Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 24 minutes ago, wrighty said: How do you think we’d be getting on if Jeremy Corbyn had been PM for the past 3 months? The same probably. You can say lots about Boris, but this crisis isn’t down to him, and I doubt much else can be done right now. Remember when government stockpiled Tamiflu for an epidemic that never came? They were roundly criticised for wasting money. As I’ve said before, emergency planning is impossible to get right. Not really an argument though, is it? What Corbyn may or may not have done is completely irrelevant. So why bother? What is relevant is that I keep hearing how we are three weeks behind Italy when we are three MONTHS behind China, who appear to have it under control. It's also very striking that Germany have had a lot of cases but relevantly few deaths. I can't help thinking their 600 hospital beds per 100k population compared to the UK's 200 might just have something to do with it. Thanks tories. The NHS are running out of PPE. Thanks tories. The UK have been pilloried for only testing those in hospital. It turns out that the Italians have found that asymptomatic carriers are a major source of infection and they can only be detected by widespread testing. Thanks Boris. A major leadership quality is never, ever, be afraid of questioning the experts. They are only people and as we all know people fuck up. But Johnson is completely out of his depth. So he's left clutching at straws.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quilp Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 You really are the worst kind of divisive and cowardly lefty chump. Still reeling over Brexit with your charmless, empty and pointless diatribe. What an absolute embarrassment you've become. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P.K. Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 Coronavirus: NHS staff 'at risk' over lack of protective gear One doctor told the BBC that frontline healthcare workers felt like "cannon fodder" as they do not have access to equipment such as face masks. Health workers also expressed concerns that not enough of them were being tested for the virus. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the UK had "stockpiles" of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden, from lobbying group the Doctors' Association, said she had heard from doctors who had not got access to PPE - or it had expired or run out. "All these doctors are worried that that's increasing their likelihood of contracting the virus and then ultimately spreading it to patients," she said. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51950276 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freggyragh Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 (edited) Quilp, Johnson was very late getting to grips with the situation - he’s been dealing in opinion, prejudice, half-truths and outright lies all his adult life. Much as I think Brexit was stupid, I’d admit that Johnson played the political game involved well and he has a gift for manipulating situations and winning people over. However, he has no substance and no analytical rigour. Before politics he got a very expensive education and was then employed to turn out click-bait nonsense for laughable papers. Somehow he thinks he is Churchill, but Churchill had seen the world, been in battles, lived through a world war, commanded armies and navies and lost as well as won terrible battles long before finding himself as leader. Johnson has no meaningful experience of life besides adultery, journalistic nonsense and political ambition. Faced with a real crisis he is showing himself to be a weak, scared and shallow individual. I respect him for the awful situation he is in, but really this should be in the hands of someone with a bit of character who has made life and death decisions before that weren’t girlfriends’ abortions. And don’t play whataboutery with Corbyn - of course he wouldn’t have been any better, but there are substantial people in both big parties who could be doing a far more reassuring job. Edited March 19, 2020 by Freggyragh 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quilp Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 Who is playing "whataboutery with Corbyn"? Not I. He's not even on my radar. Nobody saw this coming nor how it should be handled until the rubicon was crossed. Government were slow off the mark, I'll grant you but the expertise was there to advise and collate the information available at the time, any delay in taking action must also be laid at their door. The speed at which this contagion travelled the globe was under estimated, and now it has to be faced head-on, it's a fluid situation, a burgeoning international emergency that no country was prepared for. At least we're now seeing appropriate contemporary measures taken and even then, those actions introduced now may have to be adapted in the near future as more is known about the pathology of this virus. This is a situation that couldn't be planned for. Your post is chock-full of contradiction and like the damned Corporal is just another pointless attack on Johnson. Remove that element and what you've posted is just the same old socialist drivel. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freggyragh Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 You’re stuck in a left-right loop, just as bad as PK. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheTeapot Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 I don't even pretend to understand international financial markets so could someone explain why the the US dollar is so strong right now, especially against the euro and pound? The US is about to get hammered by this virus, like really really hammered. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Non-Believer Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 Terrible situation on BBC News last night reporting how the virus has infected nursing homes in Madrid. No guesses as to how that's ending. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woolley Posted March 19, 2020 Share Posted March 19, 2020 28 minutes ago, Freggyragh said: You’re stuck in a left-right loop, just as bad as PK. Much of what you say of Johnson is true but as the former head of public health said last night, you simply cannot plan for a pandemic because the characteristics and therefore the requirements are different in every case. PK has descended into caricature through blind hatred of the Tories to such a degree he cannot see that this would be no better and might even be worse whoever had been in government for the past decade. Johnson has his Churchill moment. We have a war. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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