Corona-virus - Impact of the Health Situation worldwide

[Craigw]

In Australia we seem to have half the population buying up toilet paper, tissues, hand sanitisers and (now) rice. The other half of the population is sitting here, shaking their heads and wondering what on earth is happening. This picture sums up the thoughts of the latter part of the population rather nicely.

 

Craig W

Edited March 6, 2020 by Craigw

[Chamby]

4 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

 

It may be blunt but at some point people are going to ask the question whether it is sensible to pursue policies and behaviours which will cause serious hardship to a huge number of people in response to a virus which for most people is a nasty flu and where the real risk is to the old, infirm and people with pre-existing health conditions who are already far more at risk of dying from any number of conditions. 

 

The majority of “old, infirm and people with pre-existing health conditions” will be much-loved family members of the young, fit and able.  I don’t want my vulnerable 88 years old mother to catch this nasty thing from me, so I will do my best to avoid getting it myself.  I won’t attend exhibitions even if they are held, or visit cinemas even if they are open, once this virus becomes rampant.

 

Remember that you can catch this thing and spread it for up to two weeks before displaying symptoms yourself.  People are genuinely frightened and social behaviour is already changing as a result.   So ‘normality’ won’t exist for a while, whatever you might want to do individually.

[Gilbert]

If it is of any comfort there was a discussion on Radio 4 (I've given up on the rest of tabloid radio) that suggested that if you needed to choose a country to have Covid 19 in the UK was probably one of the best in the world...there is a strong feeling the US is heading for a fubar situation- nobody wants to pay to be quarantined... their leader does not believe scientific facts...and they are not able to do any decent level of testing as they don't have the kits...

Edited March 6, 2020 by Gilbert

[Oldddudders]

I think lockdown, Chinese-style, only really works in a nation that is used to being 'told'. I am not certain much of the West would be half as compliant, irrespective of the demonstrable success of the policy. Far too many dissidents and nihilists who would seek to flout measures, plus 'Entitlement' is watchword for far too many. 

 

But if your granny, or even a friend on RMweb, perishes in circs you feel the Government could have avoided, your view at the ballot box next time may be coloured. Boris will not be missing this point. 

[runs as required]

2 hours ago, Lantavian said:

Where did you get this information from, please?

Is that $50m figure an average for individual global corporations, or a total for all of them? 

Is the suggestion of "buy outs" your own speculation, or does it come from elsewhere?

 

This, including the speculation about percentages in my earlier post, I heard aired among fellow bellringers in the pub after our Practice Night.

The process of testing and approval of new pharmaceuticals is well known (and benefitting professionals as Brexit has added to the complexities). Advantages are increasing to Big Pharm dominance, and against smaller Pharmacologists' inspirations. 

Haemorrhaging per day through loss of Chinese production was from just one corporation, not a total.

Bellringers historically have often been thought of as untrustworthy and heretical anarchists. 

 

I've picked up some more info since:

that the UK outbreak is expected to peak in between 3-9 weeks ... A vaccine isn't likely within the UK outbreak 

We have already had news of Bill Gates taking the lead

Biggest perhaps is your assertion:

Quote

I suspect that the Communist Party will be out of power before October 2024 -- which is 75th anniversary of the founding of People's Republic of China.

Where did you get this information from, please?

[jonny777]

1 hour ago, Lantavian said:

Great website

https://hub.jhu.edu/novel-coronavirus-information/

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

 

 

 

 

 

One thing which surprises me on that map, is the lack of cases in Africa. 

 

Given that China was said to have $$multibillions invested in African infrastructure projects, in return for their natural resources;

 

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/chinas-investments-in-africa-whats-the-real-story/

 

I would have thought travel between the continents would have been very high, and yet there are hardly any known cases of the virus at all. 

[APOLLO]

Correlation between the number of cases and the general temperature ?  Just a thought.

 

The cold (coming out of winter) northern latitudes seem suffering most, hotter countries seem to fare better. There is a big question re the small number of cases in Thailand V the  number of Chinese there (mostly on holiday - a rapidly reducing number though still a lot there). I have read that the Singapore spike COULD be due to everyone living in a cooler air conditioned environment - and that COULD account for spikes in Korea etc.

 

Thailand is now advocating two weeks quarantine (home or hotel) for all travellers arriving from countries with high infection rates - Italy being one. This is news from yesterday, what the situation is on this is tomorrow is anyone's guess.

 

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30383452?utm_source=homepage_hilight&utm_medium=internal_referral

 

This from the Bangkok post - confusing at the least. Six places (countries) now danger zones - (and I thought Thailand WAS a danger zone).

 

https://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/easy/1872379/six-places-now-dangerous-zones#cxrecs_s

 

Stay safe everyone.

 

Brit15

 

 

[jjb1970]

I think people need to take a step back and consider the world in which we live. Do a web search for avoidable premature deaths resulting from engine emissions such as particulate matter. The technology to make all road and rail transport free of PM, NOx, SOx etc emissions has been there for decades but society has decided they’d rather not pay for it and accepts several million deaths a year as an acceptable price for affordable transport and to avoid the hassle of making a technology transition (it is interesting that even now the anti-ICE car movement is primarily motivated by GHG fears, not the huge number of premature deaths from local emissions).

 

Societies as currently configured (and some countries, quite literally) face an existential threat from climate change. The science around climate change has been pretty clear and generally accepted for over 30 years. People are already doing as a result of a heightened prevalence of extreme weather events etc yet many people in the developed economies would rather accept the consequences of continuing to emit GHG pollutants than make the personal sacrifices necessary to accelerate decarbonisation and slash GHG emissions. And the developed world certainly has no right to point fingers at emerging economies as we have avoided doing enough and are still not doing enough (and we made the problem).

 

Millions of people a year die from entirely preventable malnutrition and disease but it’s cheaper and easier for us all to just accept it. Bizarrely, the slow down in economic activity and consequently reduction in pollution are probably preventing more deaths than are being caused by the virus but I don't expect people will be anxious to continue an economic slowdown on that basis.

 

So to pretend that our whole society does not make cost/benefit decisions based on risk every day is a denial of the world we live in. Rightly or wrongly we have accepted many millions of preventable deaths on an ongoing basis because we don’t think it worse the effort of preventing them or prefer the arrangement which results in those deaths. Certainly, so far coronavirus is barely even a rounding error in a table of preventable premature deaths.

 

And that is before the whole issue of lifestyle induced morbidity and mortality, how many of those panicking about coronavirus smoke, drink alcohol, are obese etc?

 

Yes, take precautions, but the medical advice is actually quite commonsensical.

[jjb1970]

3 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Some countries however are completely protecting their citizens above all else.. Israel, Australia etc.. even China put people above its economy, as they realised there come a point where you have no choice but to.... simply deaths will overwhelm your abilities to dispose of them, forget hospital beds.

 

 

 

If Australia was preventing their people above all else they'd be addressing GHG emissions and not valuing coal, LNG exports and extractive industries above climate change mitigation. And lets not consider the response to the bush fires which were killing and injuring people as well as wildlife. And Israel is a country where in large areas people have bomb shelters in their homes and where it is not uncommon for dinner to be interrupted by rocket attacks and people there are quite sanguine about the risk (although I did notice that the time I accepted an invitation to dinner and the klaxons went that my host sent the children to the shelter while assuring me "don't worry they never hit anything" and suggesting we observe whether we could see any rockets outside). 

Edited March 6, 2020 by jjb1970

[Andy Hayter]

I think that governments now have only two options:

treat it as a bad case of flu as suggested

or

continue to try and isolate/request self isolation those who may have the virus.

 

Option 1 will give most likely a peak of infections in around 9 weeks, will probably last for four weeks and then infection rates will drop off very quickly.  We just don't know what proportion of the population would contract the virus, not what proportion would severely contract the virus, but from te situation in Wuhan prior to lock down, Northern Italy and Iran it does look as if a significant proportion of the population would require hospitalisation.   There is no health service in the world that will cope with this - and despite all of the IMO justified criticism of NHS funding, it is probably better placed than many.   There are just not the ventilators, oxygen bottles and delivery masks.  The death rate  will be high, probably horrendously high.  Remember Wuhan lost around 2-2.5k lives and for part of the time they were in "total" lock down. By extrapolation the UK would lose  around 20k to the virus in 3-4 weeks.  Many of those would be lost at home, in the absence of hospital equipment or beds.

 

Option 2.  You hopefully decrease the peak and slow down the spread of infection.  You can hope for a slow down in the summer months as happens with many virus infections - but note the Spanish flu of 1918/19 built up over the summer of 1918 and had its first peak at the end of the summer - so no guarantee.    The key point is that by slowing down the spread, more victims will be able to receive professional care and more are likely to survive as a consequence.

 

Unless a vaccine can be developed before the end of the outbreak it is likely that the number of people who eventually contract the virus will be the same.  It is only the timescale that differs and the ability of stretched resources to provide adequate care that will be different.

[APOLLO]

29 minutes ago, Andy Hayter said:

Many of those would be lost at home, in the absence of hospital equipment or beds.

 

Dare I say it Home for me, self isolated in my shed running the last train to San Fernando !!

 

 

Brit15

[Reorte]

1 hour ago, jjb1970 said:

So to pretend that our whole society does not make cost/benefit decisions based on risk every day is a denial of the world we live in. Rightly or wrongly we have accepted many millions of preventable deaths on an ongoing basis because we don’t think it worse the effort of preventing them or prefer the arrangement which results in those deaths. Certainly, so far coronavirus is barely even a rounding error in a table of preventable premature deaths.

 

My view on it is that I look at it from an individual perspective - "Is this a hazard I'm OK with living with?" It's easy to dismiss that as selfish, but on the other hand I often feel that appealing to the "this affects lots of others" approach is just trying to use other people to try to push your (generic "your", not you personally) opinion anyway. And it's not saying "you should put up with things I'm not prepared to put up with." With so many people in the world even very low risks will regularly affect fairly large numbers.

 

At the end of the day I often find that I'd rather take my chances than live in a world with a lot of the solutions to those risks that are proposed. Not always of course. But often.

[jonny777]

I would not put MPs as much at risk as a couple of members of the Royal Family, i.e. The Queen and Prince Philip. 

 

Both are in their 90s, and the D o Edinburgh is 98. I genuinely fear for the result if anyone in the royal palaces contracts the virus. 

[beast66606]

3 hours ago, Gilbert said:

their leader does not believe scientific facts

 

To correct this fake news - what he claims is the number of actual cases of the virus is far higher than those reported as a lot of people will not have symptoms bad enough to report and therefore the death rate is skewed viz :

 

1000 people report, 40 die = 4%

10000 people have the virus but only 1000 report, 40 die = 0.4%

 

Whether he's right is arguable - I suspect he's at least in the right direction, even the BBC were until recently saying the same general thing.

 

[AY Mod]

7 minutes ago, jonny777 said:

the D o Edinburgh is 98

 

I think they've got him in isolation anyway these days, from everyone. :p

[Gilbert]

16 minutes ago, beast66606 said:

 

To correct this fake news - what he claims is the number of actual cases of the virus is far higher than those reported as a lot of people will not have symptoms bad enough to report and therefore the death rate is skewed viz :

 

1000 people report, 40 die = 4%

10000 people have the virus but only 1000 report, 40 die = 0.4%

 

Whether he's right is arguable - I suspect he's at least in the right direction, even the BBC were until recently saying the same general thing.

 

I simply quoted an academic from Harvard who was  being interviewed.

[AY Mod]

3 hours ago, AY Mod said:

 

I think they've got him in isolation anyway these days, from everyone. :p

 

From the BBC, some Gallic irony:

 

Quote

"We must avoid visiting our elderly relatives as much as possible," Emmanuel Macron said on a visit to a retirement home in Paris.

 

Harry and Meghan think it's a good idea.

[Reorte]

33 minutes ago, beast66606 said:

 

To correct this fake news - what he claims is the number of actual cases of the virus is far higher than those reported as a lot of people will not have symptoms bad enough to report and therefore the death rate is skewed viz :

 

1000 people report, 40 die = 4%

10000 people have the virus but only 1000 report, 40 die = 0.4%

 

Whether he's right is arguable - I suspect he's at least in the right direction, even the BBC were until recently saying the same general thing.

 

 

It all makes it very hard to get meaningful numbers for the risks, or to compare it to other diseases such as seasonal flu. That'll have the same effect but not the headlines, which would suggest more cases of seasonal flu go unreported than of Covid-19. How many more though, I wouldn't know how to begin to estimate.

 

Is More or Less on at the moment? It would be a good one for them to look in to.

[StuartMc]

26 minutes ago, beast66606 said:

 

To correct this fake news - what he claims is the number of actual cases of the virus is far higher than those reported as a lot of people will not have symptoms bad enough to report and therefore the death rate is skewed...

 

 

...assuming that the medical experts with decades of experience of the realities of disease infections, reporting levels and clinical outcomes are not smart enough to avoid that schoolboy error.

The WHO estimates reported by the BBC are stated to take exactly that factor into account, so no Trump is not a genius with an insight that the medical profession has overlooked, he's just a clueless but charismatic clown.

 

 

[adb968008]

8 minutes ago, Lantavian said:

 

But China suppressed early reports, and so the virus wasn't contained quickly enough. Police Bulleid the doctor who first raised the issue into a retraction. He later died of Covid-19. 

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51364382

 

 

 

 

 

I’m not defending that, but the mistake was costly...

however they rectified it, at their cost.

 

 

Question is will we make the same mistake...namely: ignorance for too long.

[Gilbert]

"this forum seems to auto-correct it to Bulleid."

 

Quite right too....

Edited March 6, 2020 by Gilbert

[runs as required]

18 minutes ago, Gilbert said:

"this forum seems to auto-correct it to Bulleid."

Quite right too....

You could create a fair bit of moral panic spreading Fake News around about another cross-over virus named 

OVS-BULLEID 

[adb968008]

28 minutes ago, runs as required said:

You could create a fair bit of moral panic spreading Fake News around about another cross-over virus named 

OVS-BULLEID 

Is the WHO Virus ID .. for Bulleid Virus  21C123 by any chance ?

 

https://www.bulleidsociety.org/21C123/Pictures/Preservation/21C123_OVS_Nameplate.jpg

 

looking at my layout I think I’ve had Bulleid virus, pacific strain for quite sometime and its spread to all areas of my layout. Do class 33’s cure it ?

 

 

Edited March 6, 2020 by adb968008

[BoD]

2 hours ago, adb968008 said:

......  then the UK will be in lock down tomorrow and virus gone before weekend.

 

 

That’s brilliant news, given that today is Friday.

 

Seriously though, what makes you think it would so easily be dealt with.

[APOLLO]

4 hours ago, APOLLO said:

Correlation between the number of cases and the general temperature ?  Just a thought.

 

The cold (coming out of winter) northern latitudes seem suffering most, hotter countries seem to fare better. There is a big question re the small number of cases in Thailand V the  number of Chinese there (mostly on holiday - a rapidly reducing number though still a lot there). I have read that the Singapore spike COULD be due to everyone living in a cooler air conditioned environment - and that COULD account for spikes in Korea etc.

 

Thailand is now advocating two weeks quarantine (home or hotel) for all travellers arriving from countries with high infection rates - Italy being one. This is news from yesterday, what the situation is on this is tomorrow is anyone's guess.

 

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30383452?utm_source=homepage_hilight&utm_medium=internal_referral

 

This from the Bangkok post - confusing at the least. Six places (countries) now danger zones - (and I thought Thailand WAS a danger zone).

 

https://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/easy/1872379/six-places-now-dangerous-zones#cxrecs_s

 

Stay safe everyone.

 

Brit15

 

 

 

And just to illustrate the fluid, ever changing situation the above quarantine has been "changed" in the last hour or so.

 

https://news.yahoo.com/no-compulsory-quarantine-visitors-thailand-health-ministry-084154185.html

 

Thailand WHO site

 

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/searo/thailand/20200306-tha-sitrep-15-covid-19-final.pdf?sfvrsn=660fff98_0

 

The above will probably have changed again by Monday as events worldwide develop.

 

I think (well I intend to) just use common sense, wash hands etc as recommended, and after the Wigan beer festival on saturday isolate myself from the "public" a little more. (Wigan Beer will kill any virus !!)

 

We were about to book air tickets to Thailand for July - now on indefinite hold (hence why I'm watching the situation there). Booking nothing nowhere at the moment.

 

Brit15