Corona-virus - Impact of the Health Situation worldwide

[JSpencer]

8 hours ago, Bernard Lamb said:

For crying out loud you still do not get it.

You should not take public transport and you should not mix in groups.

What we are all being asked to do is perfectly simple.

A 70% reduction in social contact will eventually lead to one person passing on the virus to less than one other person. Is that maths beyond you? I do not care about how many of your customers go bust. The government is putting in place action to help with this.

The bottom line is that your selfish action is putting many lives, including mine as I am in a vulnerable group, at risk.

We have no option but to do what the government and its medical advisors tell us to do. Please give up your rants and hiding behind freedom of speech and just man up to the fact that we are in a crisis. We can get through it if we all pull together.

We can shut down for a year if we have to. If people all sing the same tune we might just turn the tide by mid summer. I repeat you are not helping. I am no fan of Boris, but we have no option.

Bernard

 

Hi Bernard, My thoughts were for after the we have passed this period of no social gatherings, no flying, no public transport etc.

The plan is to maintain that until the virus drops to a managable level (several weeks at best). The question is what to do after that to prevent it flaring up again ? (as it looks unlikely we'll be able to kill it given it is world wide now).

 

I am not selfish, I have been following these rules and more and was following them even before governments started telling us to do so because I saw them being applied with effect in other countries. I've been stuck home over a month even though Isolation only happened this week.

 

But equally, realistically, there is no end in sight and businesses will collaspe having to shut down for several weeks probably every few months,  old or people with health problems may need to constantly stay at home for a year at this rate. There is no easy strategy in this but we can observe why in some countries this is managed really well and others not so.

(I know the WHO says an explosion in Asia is about to happen, but Asia is huge and every country is unique in culture, India and Japan are complete opposites to each other. I'd expect an explosion in India given cities like Delhi cannot isolate people at all while Japan has extrodinary disapline).

 

Anyway I see Johnson just asked for all pubs, theatres etc to be closed, I suggested days earlier in the thread that UK go into isolation right away which it has not done yet but will doubtless be next - I just don't get the delay. Italy delayed and are overwhelmed, France is few days from being overwhelmed too dispite being in isolation since tuesday. 

 

[spikey]

Forgive me if this has already been posted here, but it's just been suggested to me that some who haven't yet seen it may find it thought-provoking.  It's from Imperial College London ...

 

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

Edited March 20, 2020 by spikey
the inevitable typo

[JSpencer]

23 minutes ago, spikey said:

Forgive me if this has already been posted here, but it's just been suggested to me that some who haven't yet seen it may find it thought-provoking.  Its from Imperial College London ...

 

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

 

Thought provoking and looks like we are in for a long drag. Thanks for sharing.

[Gwiwer]

2 hours ago, Reorte said:

avoiding the usual Friday night pub crowd to grumble with.

 

Boris has just outlawed the last bastion of fun we had.  Pubs, cafes, restaurants to not open tonight and to stay closed except for takeaway (and, presumably, delivery since he seems keen on us having stuff delivered).  Cinemas, clubs and theatres to close.  

 

The first social unrest within my sphere of influence occurred today.  A gang of around 20 late-teens, some apparently the worse for alcohol already, piled off a train at around 9am and made a thorough nuisance of themselves.  Kicking pigeons, vandalising vending machines, swearing, spitting, tussling with each other (I wouldn't call it fighting - it wasn't really aggressive) and then playing football through the station subway.  They went on their way only to return a half-hour later perhaps having found nothing of interest to do.  And the performance was repeated whilst they awaited the train back to where they came from.  

 

Of course there are no police around when they might be needed.  And I wasn't about to tackle them single-handed.  You can boost their numbers all you like but they are no help if they're not there.  Result?  Twenty or so bored "yoof" roaming the rail network, upsetting and perhaps threatening other passengers, totally disregarding any advice to stay apart and only make essential trips.  And two broken vending machines.  I'm sure the pigeon population will eventually recover from a couple of losses though.  

[Torper]

So dystopia is here. A society where there will be virtually no scope for human interaction and normal social intercourse. Where families will be shut up together for 24 hours, unable to go to work, to school, to the pub, even to the library. Want to keep fit through it all? The gyms will be closed and there is no organised sport. Shopping has become a nightmare with people queuing for necessities. Transport and travel will increasingly become pointless if not forbidden. Semi-feral gangs of youths may well terrorise urban areas, with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Old people will be totally isolated with even families unable to visit them, far less give them a hug.  Millions of children are having their education and exams seriously affected and there is no indication as to when it will all end. Economically, millions likely to be unemployed with the misery that that brings and thoiusand of businesses likely to cease trading.

 

And for what? For an ill-judged attempt to delay a disease that isn’t really all that serious. It’s not polio or smallpox or ebola or plague. It’s a flu virus that up until yesterday had been diagnoed in 3269 people in the UK. That is in itself misleading because the only people tested seem to be those ill enough to have had to go to hospital, and they amount to 0.005% of the population (66.4 million).   Of these 3269 serious cases, 144 have died, the vast majority old people with underlying health issues.  That’s 4.4% of these hospitalised cases, or a percentage of UK population so small that my calculator can’t work it out. Of course, there are without doubt far more cases in the country but they are almost all so mild that they don’t need medical intervention and can usually be treated by paracetamol (provided you can get any).

 

I know what the medical scientists have been saying but, quite frankly, they haven’t had a tremandous record in previous health scares. Remember Edwina Currie and salmonella in eggs? We had millions of hens slaughtered and an industry briought to the edge of collape after she had warned, with the support of experts from Public Health England and the Chief medical Officer, that most eggs contained salmonella. It came to Nothing.

 

Then there was BSE in 1996 where the lead government scientist predicted an epidemic of the related Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease of 500,000 cases. Millions of cattle were destroyed and the beef industry brought to its knees. In the event, 177 died.

 

More recently, there was SARS. The experts told us that that in a worse case scenario we could expect 61000 deaths, in a best case scenarion 3100 deaths. No drastic steps were taken to close the country down.. In the event we had les than 400 deaths.

 

Add to that the fact that for 40 years were told that saturated fats, red meet and butter were all bad for us, only to now learn that that was not correct and that a bit of satuaretd fat and red meat and quite a lot of butter is good for us and that it’s sugar we have to worry about. Most people I know gave up paying attention to government health warnings about food a long time ago.

 

IMO, the government has got it wrong and if pursued its current strategy will be an utter disaster for society at large. It’s not just me saying that. Anthony Costello, a UK paediatrician and former director of the World Health Organization (WHO), said he had personally written to the chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, asking for testing to continue in the community. The Guardian quotes him as saying: “The key principles from WHO are intensive surveillance.....You test the population like crazy, find out where the cases are, immediately quarantine them and do contact tracing and get them out of the community. This deals with family clusters. That’s the key bedrock of getting this under control.” That, he said, was how South Korea, China, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan had brought their case numbers down. “You can really take people out of the population and make sure they are quarantined. That is vital – before you get to social distancing. Yet the UK government was stopping tests outside of hospital. For me and the WHO people I have spoken to, this is absolutely the wrong policy. It would mean it just lets rip,” he said.

 

DT

Edited March 20, 2020 by Torper

[Dunsignalling]

Maybe Covid-19 is nature's way of saving the planet.....

 

Even if the consequences of the pandemic don't turn out as badly as feared, some of the world-wide government debt burden will still be around for our great-grandchildren to pay off.

 

Stand by for a hefty dose of hyper-inflation to write most of it off when this is all over.

 

I was thinking of getting out of money asap but they are shutting the pubs...

 

John

Edited March 20, 2020 by Dunsignalling

[APOLLO]

Not sure if you're right there Torper - not dissing you but I'm honestly just not sure. I'll go with the government advice (as far as I can). I agree re testing though - it needs to be done along with isolation etc.

 

Twins been home from UNI for a week and finding plenty to do - studies, odd jobs round the house (like tidying up !!!). They going to decorate their own rooms next week (that will be fun !!)

 

One is at Lancaster Uni in a flat on campus, we brought her home last Saturday. The Uni stated this week that there will be no live lectures / labs etc for the remainder of the year, everything now on line. So we decided today to nip up there (40 miles) and completely vacate her flat (she still has to pay for the next semester but that's a different thing). Get it done now while we can - as the situation changes daily, witness the closing of all pubs restaurants etc today. Maybe in a couple of weeks we would not be able to go up there.

 

She brought her food from the flat - (along with two precious toilet rolls). Just had some pre prepared  "student food" for tea - I nearly got clouted when I quoted Crocodile Dundee - "Well it tastes like **** but you can live off it" !!!! (actually it was quite good).

 

Those with younger kids will need to tackle things differently and I'm sure most - hopefully all will rise to the occasion.

 

Stay safe.

 

Brit15

 

 

Edited March 20, 2020 by APOLLO

[RJS1977]

4 hours ago, TomE said:

Just as it has the model railway exhibition calendar, the effects of the virus are now burning through the airshow calendar. Duxford May show, RIAT and Farnborough now cancelled for 2020, others to follow soon I expect. 

 

Many of the bigger events contribute millions of pounds to multiple charities every year, something I haven't seen much discussion around but could have catastrophic implications for some vital services reliant on this money. 

 

Tom.  

 

Though of course the 'public' side of Farnborough had already been cancelled - permanently - owing to the need to fly over built-up areas.

[spikey]

43 minutes ago, Torper said:

 It’s a flu virus ...

 

OK ... when it gets you, you just keep on telling yourself that.  Meanwhile, please do the decent thing and comply with the Government's instructions.

[APOLLO]

48 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

The first social unrest within my sphere of influence occurred today.  A gang of around 20 late-teens, some apparently the worse for alcohol already, piled off a train at around 9am and made a thorough nuisance of themselves.  Kicking pigeons, vandalising vending machines, swearing, spitting, tussling with each other (I wouldn't call it fighting - it wasn't really aggressive) and then playing football through the station subway.  They went on their way only to return a half-hour later perhaps having found nothing of interest to do.  And the performance was repeated whilst they awaited the train back to where they came from.  

 

Of course there are no police around when they might be needed.  

 

Maybe time to station a couple of Gurkhas in every town centre. One instruction - No prisoners.

 

Brit15

[Dunsignalling]

23 minutes ago, spikey said:

 

OK ... when it gets you, you just keep on telling yourself that.  Meanwhile, please do the decent thing and comply with the Government's instructions.

Most of us are expected to get it, though it won't "get" most of us.

 

Our government's idea (if it works) is to stretch the process out to keep the numbers whose lives are at risk at any one time to a level they think the NHS can cope with.

 

They've evidently decided that the measures that appear (for now) to be working in various far eastern nations can't be sustained and they will experience a resurgence of infection.

 

It'll be "interesting" to see who turns out to be right.

 

John

 

 

 

 

Edited March 20, 2020 by Dunsignalling

[boxbrownie]

59 minutes ago, Torper said:

 

 

And for what? For an ill-judged attempt to delay a disease that isn’t really all that serious.
 

DT

‘Tell that to my Son who we (and his young family who are SI with us for the duration) just spoke to via whatsup, he just finished an 18 hour shift at a West Midlands hospital COVID-19 ward, he was in tears having lost two patients to this disease and one being  young and healthy before getting struck down by this “not at all serious” disease.......

 

Actually you had better not tell him to his face, he may well forget his oath......

 

For fear of being banned....that’s it.

[AY Mod]

1 hour ago, Torper said:

For an ill-judged attempt to delay a disease that isn’t really all that serious.

 

Why make such stupid, stupid statements?

 

I'll remove access to the topic for you, I'm not spending my time on you.

[plarailfan]

I work in a supermarket. Until around ten days ago / mid March 2020, deliveries more or less kept pace with customers wants and needs. 

The first thing to run out was sanitiser, swiftly followed by the dispenser bottles of hand wash and bars of soap.

The whole thing leaves me completely bewildered. Yesterday morning there must have been over 500 people at the store door when it opened at 6am. There have been so many customers during the night, that they ended up closing the store so the shelf stackers could get on with their work. One angry customer swore at a colleague for the store being closed. I could only get part way round the store with the floor scrubbing machine, as no customers were willing to let me proceed along aisles, while they were shopping and the poor till cleaning colleague only managed to clean about five of the tills and by lunch time, most of the bread had gone, only a few bits of store baked bread items were on the shelf, no loo rolls, no kitchen rolls, no nappies or dog food. We have four double deck trailers of stock coming in every day, plus bread deliveries, so there's no need for anyone to panic buy.

It's been even worse today. It was pensioners hour , with the younger customers saying "well we always come at this time on a Friday so we should be allowed in" along with chavs shouting off at security. The baby milk had all gone by 10am, along with most of the fuit and veg. Finally, the customer cafe has closed indefinitely and cleared of food (it all went to the canteen to provide workers with breakfast and lunch, as a thankyou gesture for all the struggle we've had this week) still everyone panic buying when there's no need, as the deliveries are still coming through at the present time. I just hope the factories can get hold of the raw material and ingredients for everything they produce because the supply chain is not endless somewhere food has to be planted and grown to produce tinned and plastic packed long life items.

[boxbrownie]

6 minutes ago, plarailfan said:

I work in a supermarket. 

‘Thank you for trying at least, we can only order online deliveries now (not that we have been able to from the big four with any success).....it truly is a crazy and stupid situation, caused by crazy and stupid people.

[Dava]

1. The epidemic in Italy and Spain is  resulting in a massive number of cases of fatal bilateral interstitial pneumonia. Now it's here. That IS serious. Even those who recover will have lung scarring.

 

Mrs Dava is involved in clinical trials for cures for COVID19 so she's a key worker. I look after the house & cats. 

 

Dava

[298]

I edited this graphic a few days ago when it seemed ok to joke about it. But today 11yr old came out of school upset because it was probably his last day before moving up to secondary school. The most optimistic I can tell our 6yr old is we might be able to go out for her birthday in June. 

 

Last week when I had six straight hours of modelling time when they were at school, isolation for a few weeks wouldn't have seemed like a problem. I hope everyone sticks to the plan so it works.

 

 

Edited March 20, 2020 by 298

[Bernard Lamb]

How ironic that ASLEF, usually one of the more militant unions, is at the forefront in stating that the voluntary social distancing is not working and asking the government to take further action and that now the government is taking their advice. I did say some time ago that the policy was not working but some people still tried to argue. Now will any doubters please take note that this is serious.

Bernard

[LBRJ]

I would hate to say too much cos it night be deemed a bit naughty (and overall I agree that things have to be done)

but the level of pure anger amongst the average guy in the Sheffield Street about closing pubs down is seriously scary to witness.

 

If you go out and deliberately wind that many people up that far, its never going to end in a good way.

[Nearholmer]

Can I test some doomy, mathematical stuff on people?

 

Fatality rates:

 

If you look at the curve of growth of confirmed cases, growth of fatalities, and growth of numbers of people who have recovered for Italy ( see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Italy  which graph is using reputable numbers), you can see how deaths and recoveries (naturally) lag confirmed cases, but there is something in it that really has me thinking:

 

It looks as if the recoveries are not increasing a great deal faster than the fatalities. Now, that may be because it takes a lot longer to recover than to die from it, but it does seem to suggest that, when projected forward to an end point (using the colours on the wikipedia graph, when only black and pale-blue are left) the fatality rate for confirmed cases could be very high indeed, several times higher than the percentages usually mentioned.

 

Even if it assumed that the 'confirmed cases' are only the tip of the iceberg, the ones bad enough to need hospital treatment, so maybe 20% of actual cases, to me it still looks as if the fatality rate will end much higher than the 1- 2% usually mentioned in UK briefings, and possibly much higher than the c3.5% global average cited by the WHO.

 

In short, to me, the numbers seem to point in a dour direction, to the conclusion that this disease is nastier, not nicer, than we have been led to believe.

 

Views on whether I'm reading these numbers correctly?

 

(Torper just got 'sent on holiday' for appearing to trivialise the disease; I hope I don't get a similar holiday for scaremongering!)

[LBRJ]

I dont think you are scaremongering in the least - Some reading and  some rational"deduction"* lead me to think the worst possible outcome is potentially  far worse than is being said.

But there is no need to scare peopled just yet.....

 

* I have a habit of having a beer etc next door to one of the finest medical schools in the country - so not all I hear is rubbish

Edited March 20, 2020 by LBRJ

[AY Mod]

13 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I hope I don't get a similar holiday for scaremongering!

 

You're trying to make sense of data and even seeking challenges to it so there's no problem. A long way from fatuous and delusional statements which, as an attitude, if translated into real-world (in)actions risks exacerbating the problem.

 

It's now evident that every single person needs to do every single thing they can to break the chain reaction. Sticking a head in the sand does not give immunity.

[Andy Hayter]

Nearholmer

There are some things you have to appreciate.

1.  recovery rates are very slow for identified cases.  The UK has only 65 recoveries from nearly 4000 identified cases - as of today

2.  It is 14 days to recover for a mild dose of the virus (supposedly) but if you are hospitalised it looks more like 4-6 weeks before release.  The lag on recoveries is therefore very big compared to new cases.

3.  In Italy it seems that some areas have been forced to apply primary triage.  Above a certain age or with certain conditions and you will not be taken to hospital so that resources are available for those with a chance of survival*.  If you are older you are likely to die quickly and in distress at home.  Death rates therefore tend not to have a big lag behind the identification of new cases.

 

* This is very much verbal tradition with little authoritative back up to confirm it, but when you see the conditions in some of the hospitals you can certainly believe it.  There was also a SKY news report from Bergamot hospital and some of the comments I saw against it was the number of younger patients that could be seen - which could have any number of reasons but might point to ageist triage.

 

Nevertheless we should be acutely warned by the Italian experience.  A lot of people have died.  A lot more will die.  If we ignore the warnings we (as in countries not individuals) could all go the same way.

[Reorte]

36 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Can I test some doomy, mathematical stuff on people?

 

Fatality rates:

 

If you look at the curve of growth of confirmed cases, growth of fatalities, and growth of numbers of people who have recovered for Italy ( see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Italy  which graph is using reputable numbers), you can see how deaths and recoveries (naturally) lag confirmed cases, but there is something in it that really has me thinking:

 

It looks as if the recoveries are not increasing a great deal faster than the fatalities. Now, that may be because it takes a lot longer to recover than to die from it, but it does seem to suggest that, when projected forward to an end point (using the colours on the wikipedia graph, when only black and pale-blue are left) the fatality rate for confirmed cases could be very high indeed, several times higher than the percentages usually mentioned.

Looking at the Chinese figures recoveries didn't really start accelerating until fairly close to the peak. Mind you Italy's figures do seem to be looking a bit worse than China's. There certainly seems to be quite significant differences between countries on those numbers.

 

The confusing bit though is that I've not heard exactly how the diagnose a recovery, including how long it normally takes. I think the only way to make a good comparison is by comparing deaths and recoveries from cases identified at the same time, long enough ago for them to resolve on way or the other, otherwise you're comparing deaths from recent cases (a time when there are more new cases anyway) with recoveries from a time when there were fewer cases anyway. At least I hope that's what it is.

 

edit: Post above mine means I now have heard some numbers about how long it takes to recover.

Edited March 20, 2020 by Reorte

[robert17649]

The problem is simple really.If you only test people admitted to hospital,you can have no idea as to the number of actual cases and therefore no idea as to the recovery rate. dealing with an out break of any virus depends on knowing what is going on. I lived in Uganda during one of the not infrequent Ebola out breaks , which was held in check by identification , isolation and treatment of victims and keeping the rest of us away from the epicentre. Note that the disease was not sent packing it is still there , just quiescent.

 

Seasonal flu is controlled, sort of , by vaccination , it never goes away.

 

Viruses are living things and if evolutionary theory is correct they compete to survive as well.

 

It is by the way an Hippocratic aphorism that a disease identified is a disease on its way to a cure (for cure read control).

 

Whatever the rights or wrongs we is where we is and the best thing we can do is what we are advised by the people who advise us, so stay away.

 

Living in Cornwall  , which at the moment has few cases,I find myself wishing that the second homers and potential  isolation holidaymakers would stay away, Our hospitals can only just cope with the standing populations needs