613 replies to this topic

[Wolfstone]

Worth a read and provides some real context to the challenges of getting Brits home. Links well with my post above.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52093009

Edited by Wolfstone, 03 April 2020 - 08:39 AM.

[TheRealVXed]

There is only one point at from a preservative society we will be safe to reopen from the lockdown, the successful implementation and administration of a vaccine.  

 

To put this into context from a scientific point of view, the common cold is of the same type (corona virus (RNA virus)).  Scientists have been looking for a vaccine against the common cold since the 80s, to no avail.

 

So, there may be some benefit in "herd immunity" but what does this mean?  We have managed complete herd immunity in 2 ways, 1 - vaccination, smallpox being the first and measles being a more recent example.  However measles is also an example of where successful herd immunity has been curtailed and reversed by social media hearsay in the MMR jab causing autism.  (FYI, autism has been around in pretty much the same volume for millennia, its just only recently we have started diagnosing with a name any social difficulty, no matter how small, as somewhere on the "spectrum" (aren't we all, after all, that is how a spectrum works).) or 2 - Everybody gets it and those that can deal with it at the time survive,  chickenpox is a good example of this, where there is not a vaccine required or administered as the fatality rate, yes people die from chicken pox (20-25 people per year in the UK), is so low.

 

Coronaviruses where effective (there are many which are harmless) are awful and the effects truly harrowing, however there is very little at this time science can do to prevent them spreading.  Isolation is merely a slowing of the spread, allowing those who do become infected at this reduced rate to be able to obtain the necessary attention and treatment in order that they may survive, be immune, and increase the chance of reaching herd immunity where the odds of a vaccine are so slim (we have yet to discover one for MERS or SARS or the common cold (all coronaviruses)).  The sad thing is that the NHS is unable to cope today even with this reduced number of cases on top of other pressures, and even more sad that a number of people of all backgrounds and age groups will lose their lives.  

 

It is still important, however, to contextualise this loss and pain experienced.  Every year, globally, 500,000 to 600,000 people's live are lost to influenza, flu, I'm sure you have all had it at one time or another.  Whilst there is a "flu jab" available this is not a guaranteed vaccine, but a best guess effort as to the mutation of the virus that will likely materialise, and at worst a there-or-there-abouts quasi immunity to the flu virus flying around that particular winter.  For context, we are currently at around 50,000 corona virus deaths.  Whist this is a loss, we must be rational in our response.  

 

The measures that we are under today are perfect for reducing a virus spread where a vaccine horizon is predicted.  "Stay apart until it can be made safe" is a great strategy, however this comes with many pitfalls as soon as you add an indefinite time span to this.  The release, or "exit strategy" as it is coined in the media, of the lockdown is extremely important.  Release it too fast, without a vaccine program available, and you risk flooding the heath systems and succeed only in moving the impact further down the road, hopefully with a well prepared health service to deal with it.  Release it too slow and you end up in another recession, with multiple small, medium and even large businesses failing, quantitive easing only being able to go so far and plunging the country into a deep recession for an unpredictable period which is arguably equally damaging to the health of the nation and the global population.

 

Thus we are in an extremely difficult situation, and I would urge everybody to follow the guidance of social distancing, whilst attempting to maintain your economic, professional and personal lives as close as is possible to before this outbreak commenced.

 

Personally, I am lucky enough to have a job which enables me to work from home pretty much business as usual, however I feel I am in a minority, and after everything that has happened since June 2016 i really feel for anyone who has had to live that uncertainty followed immediately by a much more real, and uncertain threat.

 

Stay safe out there VXers.  Hopefully a clear path comes soon

Edited by TheRealVXed, 04 April 2020 - 12:11 AM.

[ICD]

......etc

 

Stay safe out there VXers.  Hopefully a clear path comes soon

 

Very well versed, and the answer is in the timing, and be damned if we do, be damned it we dont.

 

WHo would want to have to make that decision?

 

Stay safe, stay at home,
 

[jonnyboy]

Interesting stuff

 

 

Yes unfortunately options are limited. There will be no vaccine before 2021. Vaccines typically take 10 years to develop and test there is a huge effort going on including the labs that developed the Zika virus vaccine but they say 18 months would be nothing short of a miracle. 

 

Shorter term options are: 

 

Finding an already approved medicine that works for the virus

 

Research into why the virus is a mild infection for one person but kills the next and taking action based on that. 

 

Sadly there will be an element of letting it run it's course through the population but just in a managed way somehow. We can only thank our lucky starts that this although very bad is not Spanish flu which was completely devastating and attacked much younger people in bigger numbers too. Ultimately we have a couple of months to steady the ship and after that there simply must be a return to some kind of normality. It will probably start happening before then. 

[Foxy]

insightful

Flippin' heck, did you write that? A man of hidden depths. 

[hairy]

 

insightful

Flippin' heck, did you write that? A man of hidden depths. 

 

 

I thought that too :clap:

 

[TheRealVXed]

 

insightful

Flippin' heck, did you write that? A man of hidden depths. 

 

 

I did indeed, was a little bit pissed as well

[Foxy]

 

I did indeed, was a little bit pissed as well

 

Good work!  

[Zoobeef]

The only thing really realistic that I can see is a staged reduction of restrictions while keeping the most vulnerable isolated.

Letting the virus run its cause. As much as people think that we should save lives at any cost it's just not reality.

It's going to be a press field day against the government when they reduce restrictions while there are still people dying though.

There will be plenty of scientists and doctors (not economists) putting their opinion out that we should still be locked down.

[jonnyboy]

Agreed the Government will be vilified in the press but they have done the best job they could. It will still be interesting to see how the slightly differing systems in each country perform. Sweden are on a very loose lockdown NL are on somewhere in between what we and Sweden are doing. Germany is deciding by county. Italy contrary to reporting over here is not in some huge lockdown they are similar to us in that a lot of industry is still running. 

 

We can only be kept up for a finite amount of time though the financial pressure and just not used to being deprived of our freedom will start to build in the next couple of weeks. We are due a review a week Monday I would imagine another short extension and after that a phased de restriction.  It looks like they need to be keeping London/Birmingham/Manchester under tighter controls than other areas but not sure if that's how Government think will they look to have the same restrictions nationally? Can they think of the country in any other terms than that it's London with some fields tagged on? 

 

One of the post crisis scandals I think will have deep ramifications will be China and Russia's complete disregard for reporting correctly. How many people have China lost really? 100k? More? Their figures are ludicrous and not really doing anything to help. I would expect large scale boycotting of Chinese products if not more formal embargos. 

Edited by jonnyboy, 05 April 2020 - 07:53 AM.

[ICD]

Agreed the Government will be vilified in the press but they have done the best job they could. It will still be interesting to see how the slightly differing systems in each country perform. Sweden are on a very loose lockdown NL are on somewhere in between what we and Sweden are doing. Germany is deciding by county. Italy contrary to reporting over here is not in some huge lockdown they are similar to us in that a lot of industry is still running. 

 

....etc

 

Greece, had a very early and tight lockdown and curfew

 

Their deaths are only 10% in comparison to a country like Belguim or Netherlands. Although they do not have as many transits around the country, but in Athens this approach has worked as well

 

Although they have limited health service and not many beds per head of population, its efficiency is second to none, so you could say this approach has worked for them

[jonnyboy]

Interesting I wasn't sure what measures Greece had taken. I guess they are also helped by being dispersed across many islands with just a couple of heavily populated big cities. They probably just caught a lot of people about to return to the coast & hotels for the holiday season too.

[coldel]

There is a frontline doctor on the 350 zed forum I frequent, he paints a very different picture to the one our government is portraying - this is for them as much about protecting the public view of Boris the leader as it is about saving lives. The NHS are getting constantly changing advice on what is classified as PPE - funny enough it correlates very precisely with what supplies the government has gotten hold of. The short of the long is our government acted WAY too late to get the right equipment, they are hugely behind the curve in securing testing capabilities and they give advice that aligns with what they happen to be able to supply. The things I am hearing from the NHS are not that the government is doing a good job, mostly the opposite. 

[TheRealVXed]

Absolute numbers don't tell a full story.  In a population of 10,000 for instance 1,000 deaths is a not inconsiderable number.  In a population of 1,000,000 it is almost an irrelevance, statistically speaking.  We should refrain from measuring this is absolute numbers.  That is a tabloid tactic for headlines and does not provide any quantifiable or useful data in the pandemic.  At the moment the global death rate is less than 1% of cases (~1,213,200 cases reported, ~65,600 deaths, ~253,500 recovered, ~894,000 active cases (of which 5% are considered serious or critical).  All that being said, we do not yet have enough information on mild or a-symptomatic cases and will be missing a huge number of non-serious/critical cases in the stats. Both my mother, and my sister and her husband have had mild symptoms of COVID-19 and have not been tested, but have almost certainly had the virus.  That is 50% of my immediate family, with COVID-19, not reported or tested.

 

Perspective is required here to make sure we do not make rash decisions.  I sympathise with all of the NHS staff having to deal with this, and with the government, all of whom are in a very difficult position in an unprecedented situation.  

 

Additionally, the sensationalist media have not helped the situation whatsoever by effectively causing unnecessary hysteria.  I note SARS & MERS combined received 99.4 million mentions in the media.  COVID-19 has received 2.1 BILLION.  Considering both SARS and MERS were more acute, more deadly coronaviruses based on the current information we have about COVID-19, this seems a little out of proportion....

 

Couple of verified resources for those interested;

 

https://www.worldome...fo/coronavirus/

https://informationi...aphic-datapack/

 

As a footnote - there is no hard/published evidence that either Russia, or China have falsified or masked results of Coronavirus. There is only a US "intelligence" report alluding to this in China, no facts have yet been offered to the media/pubic.  Secondly, this is a classic US administration tactic of strong arming counterparts.  I note specifically that US & China have been engaged in a trade war for some time, and this could provide useful leverage to the US.  How convenient... https://www.bloomber...telligence-says

 

Edited by TheRealVXed, 05 April 2020 - 10:46 AM.

[Foxy]

You been on the juice again, Robin? 

 

 

 

[coldel]

Absolute numbers don't tell a full story.  In a population of 10,000 for instance 1,000 deaths is a not inconsiderable number.  In a population of 1,000,000 it is almost an irrelevance, statistically speaking.  We should refrain from measuring this is absolute numbers.  That is a tabloid tactic for headlines and does not provide any quantifiable or useful data in the pandemic.  At the moment the global death rate is less than 1% of cases (~1,213,200 cases reported, ~65,600 deaths, ~253,500 recovered, ~894,000 active cases (of which 5% are considered serious or critical).  All that being said, we do not yet have enough information on mild or a-symptomatic cases and will be missing a huge number of non-serious/critical cases in the stats. Both my mother, and my sister and her husband have had mild symptoms of COVID-19 and have not been tested, but have almost certainly had the virus.  That is 50% of my immediate family, with COVID-19, not reported or tested.

 

Perspective is required here to make sure we do not make rash decisions.  I sympathise with all of the NHS staff having to deal with this, and with the government, all of whom are in a very difficult position in an unprecedented situation.  

 

Additionally, the sensationalist media have not helped the situation whatsoever by effectively causing unnecessary hysteria.  I note SARS & MERS combined received 99.4 million mentions in the media.  COVID-19 has received 2.1 BILLION.  Considering both SARS and MERS were more acute, more deadly coronaviruses based on the current information we have about COVID-19, this seems a little out of proportion....

 

Couple of verified resources for those interested;

 

https://www.worldome...fo/coronavirus/

https://informationi...aphic-datapack/

 

As a footnote - there is no hard/published evidence that either Russia, or China have falsified or masked results of Coronavirus. There is only a US "intelligence" report alluding to this in China, no facts have yet been offered to the media/pubic.  Secondly, this is a classic US administration tactic of strong arming counterparts.  I note specifically that US & China have been engaged in a trade war for some time, and this could provide useful leverage to the US.  How convenient... https://www.bloomber...telligence-says

 

I think it was literally on page one that we mentioned the death rate percentage is going to be much lower than published due to unmeasured tests. 

 

The question is, do we actively try to save millions of mostly older people globally at the expense of the economy or not? If we go on with life normally and say worst case scenario 250k people die in the UK, what government wants that on their hands if it did come to pass?

 

And yes, given the US president has called it 'the Chinese virus' and refused to take any accountability for right leaning attacks on oriental people in the US, what else do we expect from US 'intelligence' - the same US intelligence that thought there were WMDs in Iraq and used it as a reason to illegally invade a country resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians, many displaced and in poverty to this day. The US leadership and media are one of the least trustworthy nations on the planet of recent years.

[casino]

 Xi Jinping needs to admit responsibility. Much as Trump pokes his fingers at oriental nationals the Chinese leader could at least shoulder blame on behalf of all those wet market traders. 

 

 

[Zoobeef]

The worlds media has built this up into a frenzy out of proportion to the actual threat.

You only have to listen to the cleaners at my work, she said "oh well, if I get it then it's just my time". That's the fear the media have put in people, get it and you will die.

 

Even if they lift restrictions, business owners will have a hard time making people go back to work.

[coldel]

Yes the media have been behaving appallingly, but then whats new? They exacerbate anything to generate views/clicks/subscriptions - its all they care about, regardless of the collateral damage. If you dare to question them you are a 'commie' for daring to challenge the 'freedom of the press' which is a democratic right. Of course when they are actually called out legally to apologise for misinformation, lying etc. they apology doesn't make the front page does it...at the moment a lot of the media are pretty immoral people and need to take a long hard look at themselves in the mirror. 

[jonnyboy]

I think I posted earlier in the thread that it's the first such pandemic under the social media era. Some of the shite begin spewed on local FB groups my god.

Countless examples of people berating others for being out... whilst they are out. One chap moaning about how many cars were out and about....whilst on his way to work in a completely none essential job.

Mark re people returning to work I think their empty bank accounts and stomachs will be motivation enough.

Interesting that people think China haven't reported correctly. Im not a 5G mast burner far from it but their infection rates just don't add up. Look at this. Pure BS.