OT Coronavirus

[Neils]

Jurgen Klopp's response on being asked about the virus is worth looking out for on the web.

[Raggs]

If you have the illness, then you are a great danger to others.

It's either far more deadly, and a fair bit more contagious than flu. Or if the number of people with it is drastically under reported, then it's extremely contagious, and still more deadly.

There's also been reports of people being reinfected.

[Old Geezer]

My passing will not help the homeless.  I have provided in my Will that my house is not to be sold but instead to be conerted into a shrine to me with the rest of my estate used to fund the maintenance/ upkeep etc.  An effigy of me will be mounted on the gas fire stove in the lounge hearth.  I have set all this up as a charity so we can avoid Inheritance Tax.

[NellyWellyWaspy]

My passing will not help the homeless.  I have provided in my Will that my house is not to be sold but instead to be conerted into a shrine to me with the rest of my estate used to fund the maintenance/ upkeep etc.  An effigy of me will be mounted on the gas fire stove in the lounge hearth.  I have set all this up as a charity so we can avoid Inheritance Tax.

 

[Heathen]

My passing will not help the homeless.  I have provided in my Will that my house is not to be sold but instead to be conerted into a shrine to me with the rest of my estate used to fund the maintenance/ upkeep etc.  An effigy of me will be mounted on the gas fire stove in the lounge hearth.  I have set all this up as a charity so we can avoid Inheritance Tax.

That's why your are a Legal Eagle

[Hymenoptera]

NWW - i'd say your views are fine if you live on a remote island by yourself and are responsible for a count of one. If you choose to live in a society with others, whom themselves may be classed as 'at risk' or them themselves have family members that are 'at risk' then you views will not be as well received as you suspected they would be.

While you may have the luxury of deciding to go to a rugby game and perhaps stop for a nice pub lunch along the way, by the time this virus spreads through 3rd world countries to families and societies where immune systems are already in red status and don't have the luxury of basic food for nourishment let alone facilities of a life that will let them self isolate, they would probably not be as relaxed on the matter as you.
Media hyperbole today, who know's? time will tell as the virus spreads and lives are lost to those that are not contemplating which cheese board to have with their nutty toned IPA.

[NellyWellyWaspy]

NWW - i'd say your views are fine if you live on a remote island by yourself and are responsible for a count of one. If you choose to live in a society with others, whom themselves may be classed as 'at risk' or them themselves have family members that are 'at risk' then you views will not be as well received as you suspected they would be.

While you may have the luxury of deciding to go to a rugby game and perhaps stop for a nice pub lunch along the way, by the time this virus spreads through 3rd world countries to families and societies where immune systems are already in red status and don't have the luxury of basic food for nourishment let alone facilities of a life that will let them self isolate, they would probably not be as relaxed on the matter as you.
Media hyperbole today, who know's? time will tell as the virus spreads and lives are lost to those that are not contemplating which cheese board to have with their nutty toned IPA.

IF I knew I had the thing, of course I would not go out. For example, I have recently missed going to 4 rehab sessions after my recent heart attack, solely because I had a cold, and it would not have been a good idea to spread that to follow recovering souls.

That is entirely different from not going out if I have no symptoms and having not knowingly come in to contact with someone who was confirmed as having it.

My issue is, there will be some who have it, with no symptoms, unwittingly spreading it, right now, at large in the UK.

My guess is that thousands in the UK already have it. Virologists have been interviewed on the news who have said this is likely to be the case, and that 'containment' is no longer an option.

If we all self-isolate due to 'possible' contact (and not as a result of test confirmation that we actually have it), very soon the whole UK will be self isolating, as each of us knows or comes into close contact with hundreds or thousands of people a week.

Your assumption is IF people will get it. My assumption is, most people WILL get it, it is just a matter of timing. This virus is just so contagious for it to not spread, and quickly.

I do NOT believe that the Chinese have successfully contained it to mainly that one region. Look at how fast a more open government (Italy) has been forced to expand their efforts to all of the country. It is the nature of our society to move around and mix.

[Neils]

My passing will not help the homeless.  I have provided in my Will that my house is not to be sold but instead to be conerted into a shrine to me with the rest of my estate used to fund the maintenance/ upkeep etc.  An effigy of me will be mounted on the gas fire stove in the lounge hearth.  I have set all this up as a charity so we can avoid Inheritance Tax.

Love it😁😁

[Lwasp]

NWW when it comes to the rugby chat I have greatly enjoyed your posts, but I don't understand this thread.

No-one is being told to self isolate for no reason. People being advised to self isolate have either come in to contact with known carriers or recently returned from high risk areas. Now the Mako situation is interesting from this perspective. There seems to be no suggestion he has come in to contact with infected persons so we have to assume the stop off in HK is the cause of concern. The RFU decided not worth the risk, against stated governmental advice, and then massively mishandled the communication. The RFU seems to have no power to control Sarries once the player is released. Maybe they should have isolated, but not released the player. Does that limit ability to call up replacement???

Anyone can challenge the statistics, of course if there are millions of unknown infected people and all deaths are known the mortality rate will be lower, but why should you assume there are the former and then believe the accuracy of the latter?

*sorry posted before finished*

" As best as can be estimated, under 1% die from it" as best as can be estimated by whom? I have seen nothing from any source estimating 1% die from it. Where do you get this from?

In short, why would you bother attempting to convince people what is being reported on this subject is wrong? At best people waste some time washing their hands at worst things are much worse. Interestingly you claim the only reason Italy has such a high infection rate is that they are testing people no-one else has, old people in care facilities you give as an example, and yet they are still reporting a 3.46% fatality rate. How does that equate with your 1% claim? Your use of "" to refer to your "views" suggests you do not believe they are views but facts that no-one else is accepting yet.

In this country no-one is panicking. Official advice is to take extra hygiene precautions. Events have not been cancelled yet. I really don't understand what would lead you to challenge the current thinking?

[NellyWellyWaspy]

... or recently returned from high risk areas ...

I suppose what I am saying is, this is the bit I struggle with. It is too tenuous. It is almost like saying that I should self-isolate because my next door neighbour's dog's dog walker's next door neighbour has the virus.

The same with VV at the match. What if that had been me? My wife would not have been able to contact me, as I switch off my phone (always) during the match. IF his wife had the virus, but she had not. She had been a 'contact' of a confirmed case. On that type of basis, that one confirmed case probably had thousands of contacts, and if PHE were then asking contacts of those contacts, that could amount to, maybe a hundred thousand secondary contacts. Should all the people in the madstad now self isolate, as VV was there with them? Where do you stop in this?

For me, it should be immediate contacts only. The health 'professionals' have decided to be far more cautious. Well, they would, as they don't want the blame. But, at this rate, we will very quickly all be self-isolating. You only have to model it using some maths to see how it gets rapidly out of proportion. But, we are talking about fear and panic here.

It is all about probabilities. What is the probability that a secondary contact will actually infect a tertiary contact and that someone would die as a direct results of that ONE contact? Very, very small. So small that if I let that govern my life, I wouldn't drive a car for fear that this day I would run someone over. Those sort of odds.

As soon as a decent number of folk in the UK actually get this virus (and that may be as low as thousands), a person without the virus will have multiple opportunities over a very short timescale to come into contact with someone who is infectious. Which of those contacts would be to 'blame'? I suspect that, already, the UK has the needed number to make this outbreak beyond the control that isolation might bring.

For me, I object to fear being the factor that rules my life.

[Lwasp]

The same with VV at the match. What if that had been me? My wife would not have been able to contact me, as I switch off my phone (always) during the match. IF his wife had the virus, but she had not. She had been a 'contact' of a confirmed case. On that type of basis, that one confirmed case probably had thousands of contacts, and if PHE were then asking contacts of those contacts, that could amount to, maybe a hundred thousand secondary contacts. Should all the people in the madstad now self isolate, as VV was there with them? Where do you stop in this?

But VV made it quite clear in his post, PHE did NOT consider him a risk and has advised/imposed no restrictions on him. So that is where you stop in this. It appears his wife is self isolating as a direct contact of an infected person and he is not as a contact of a contact.

Where does the 1% estimated mortality rate come from?

I don't want to sound confrontational. Yes over-hype is annoying, but so is flippant, ill informed dismissal of simple advice, especially on the basis of unfounded "statistics". The "" do mean what I suggested above.

Ironically on my PC this thread is littered with the kind of banned face mask ads promising "Corona protection". I suggest you ignore those too.

[Vespula Vulgaris]

The same with VV at the match. What if that had been me? My wife would not have been able to contact me, as I switch off my phone (always) during the match. IF his wife had the virus, but she had not. She had been a 'contact' of a confirmed case. On that type of basis, that one confirmed case probably had thousands of contacts, and if PHE were then asking contacts of those contacts, that could amount to, maybe a hundred thousand secondary contacts. Should all the people in the madstad now self isolate, as VV was there with them? Where do you stop in this?

I left the match for a combination of reasons.

1) I did not know the infected contact at that point, only that my wife had been contacted by PHE who were slowly but surely contacting everyone they could trace.  I could have been a 1st degree contact, I could have been a 2nd. I didnt know and so erred on the side of caution.
2) My wife was extremely upset and I figured getting home to her quickly was both wise and helpful.
3) She is 32 weeks pregnant and so the standard advice may well not have applied and having other children I would need to be there should she have to go to hospital.
4) At 25 minutes in it looked like we were heading for a stuffing.

(That last one is not strictly true.)

It turns out I have not been in contact with a sonfirmed case as far as I know, and so I dont have to self isolate. However my wife has and does.  Which leaves me to clean the house (much more than we usually do - when was the last time you bleached a toaster?), look after 3 kids, do all the shopping etc, and also try to run a business.

It sucks massively, but if it prevents a single death I'm ok with it.

[NellyWellyWaspy]

The same with VV at the match. What if that had been me? My wife would not have been able to contact me, as I switch off my phone (always) during the match. IF his wife had the virus, but she had not. She had been a 'contact' of a confirmed case. On that type of basis, that one confirmed case probably had thousands of contacts, and if PHE were then asking contacts of those contacts, that could amount to, maybe a hundred thousand secondary contacts. Should all the people in the madstad now self isolate, as VV was there with them? Where do you stop in this?

I left the match for a combination of reasons.

1) I did not know the infected contact at that point, only that my wife had been contacted by PHE who were slowly but surely contacting everyone they could trace.  I could have been a 1st degree contact, I could have been a 2nd. I didnt know and so erred on the side of caution.
2) My wife was extremely upset and I figured getting home to her quickly was both wise and helpful.
3) She is 32 weeks pregnant and so the standard advice may well not have applied and having other children I would need to be there should she have to go to hospital.
4) At 25 minutes in it looked like we were heading for a stuffing.

(That last one is not strictly true.)

It turns out I have not been in contact with a sonfirmed case as far as I know, and so I dont have to self isolate. However my wife has and does.  Which leaves me to clean the house (much more than we usually do - when was the last time you bleached a toaster?), look after 3 kids, do all the shopping etc, and also try to run a business.

It sucks massively, but if it prevents a single death I'm ok with it.

As you say, it sucks, and our lives are very different. Had I been you, I would have done the same. Actually, looking back when I was at that point in my life, there is no way my wife would have let me go to any distant event whilst she was pregnant! She insisted I stay within easy reach. All my fault, as she say. The pain, the suffering ....

And yes, by then, and for at least a year after birth, I was doing the housework. Come to think of it, she still doesn't do much of that. 21 years later. still, happy is as happy does.

I truly hope that neither you, your family, nor anyone I know, suffers from this virus. Keep well and safe.

[Skippy]

At this stage of an outbreak it’s very hard to get a handle on fatality rates.

Firstly is that infection rates could easily be massively understated because we don’t know how may people only get low level or no visible signs of infection. This will only be known in something like 18 months time when a sufficiently large and statistically significant population sample can be tested for covid 19 antibodies. So the risk here is the fatality rate looks high, simply because we’re dividing by too small a number in the equation.

The other problem is that we could actually be under estimating the fatality rates because the cause of death may have been misattributed in already poorly people. So at this stage fatality rates are a bit finger in the air. But as that is all the evidence we have, we are seeing policy decisions taken on that basis.

The critical stages at the moment are contain and delay. The point of contain is twofold. First it might be the only measure you need (as was pretty much the case with SARS and MERS). Secondly, it buys time before we hit delay (delaying delay in other words). Delay is massively important because even if you only end up flattening the infection curve (so that the area under the curve stays the same), it can transform fatality rates. At the moment the medical profession is on a steep learning curve but it looks as though they’re making progress on survival rates. At the same time, existing antiviral meds are being tested for the efficacy against covid19. Delay gives time to complete these test and then ramp up production of any meds that are proven to work.

It’s also important that we get to summer in as best shape we can. Then the higher temperatures, the higher UV levels and drier atmosphere will all help to drive down infection rates, which will all help buy critical time — time that helps us get to a vaccine.

Now, typically, the lead time for viral vaccines is 18 months, but the current thinking is that, because of the rapid progress so far, this will probably be done in 12. My own guess is that it will be quicker than that, and that the Chinese will do it in 8-9 months. If that’s the case it will likely have less to do with their technical advancement and could have more to do with their willingness to accelerate clinical trials via their dubious practice of conducting tests and experiments on prisoners.

[Hymenoptera]

NWW the whole point is you don't know you have it until you know you have it, it doesn't come with a neon sign....so why not do your upmost to help not spread it.
Whilst today us privileged living in the western society can be somewhat flippant about it if we feel the need, there is a danger that in 6 months time this flippance could be a major error of judgement to those less fortunate than ourselves.
Anyway..said my piece on this, moving on.