COVID-19 Pandemic

[cheeky_monkey]

NHL has been postponed in North America for all you ice hockey fans

[kold weather]

2 minutes ago, Ross90 said:

They need to be careful that in trying to delay it beyond the flu season that they don't delay it into the next season.May/June would be the best time to peak, if it's Sept/Oct when it starts getting colder again then it could have the same effect as if it had peaked now.

I think they are trying to aim for June as a peak, but obviously being a curve, it will likely be getting progressively worse from early May and then hopefully easing up throughout July.

I suspect it will blow through quicker than that if they aren't going to bother to even attempt any sort of lockdown however.

[snowdog]

1 minute ago, kold weather said:

I think that more counts for when we are getting towards the peak and the numbers of people self isolating is too high to really deal with in that way (realistic of course)

What the CMO said is now they will test anyone who presents symptoms, regardless of whether they have been abroad. An acknowledgement that we have sustained community spread now.

I understand this to mean they will only test people with the severe symptoms that are in hospital now and not the people that self isolate for 7 days. If this is the case then the UK figures will not be true

[cyclonic happiness]

6 minutes ago, kold weather said:

Point is still a good one though.

So yesterday had about 330 deaths, or roughly the same as what how many are killed by meningitis each day. You'd assume as cases mount up globally, that total per day will increase. 

I'm sure all the medical experts have taken this into consideration before suggesting measure in other countries, that could crash the world's economies.

I have a gut feeling that this is so much worse than we are being allowed to know. 500 million plus, people on lockdown....?????

[emax]

1 minute ago, Sky Full said:

I haven't seen anyone suggesting that we are ALL going to die but 67,000,000 x 80% x 1% doesn't seem like an impossible number of fatalities given the stats we have already seen so it's not paranoia.  We have to discuss these issues in order to make decisions on how to try and avoid being one of the casualties.....

But over what time frame is that? People are making assumptions of an assumption. How is that any different to saying this is no deadlier than the flu?

Yes, and extra 500,000 deaths is not good by any means, but if thats spread across several years, suddenly not so bad. But its all assumptions, so just seems a bit silly to me to be basing opinions on assumptions.

[kold weather]

1 minute ago, Snipper said:

My take the medical experts know as much as they can at this stage and weren’t holding back on the grave situation.

Agreed, whether you personally agree with their conclusions or not, I think they were quite open on why they doing what they are doing. I think the public badly needed this sort of conference, as I feel people were starting to lose some trust in it.

Looking at the moment like globally this lands somewhere between the Hong Kong Flu outbreak, and the Spanish Flu of 1918-1919. I was hoping we could keep it below the million mark worldwide, bu I'm starting to think thats going to be a long shot.

[Summer Sun]

Spain have announced 782 new cases and 31 new deaths so far today

The official total currently stands at 3,059 cases and 86 deaths

[BornFromTheVoid]

5 minutes ago, AWD said:

Just seen this doing the rounds on Social Media..... 

Think it's out of date now though. 

Health systems are designed to manage these problems, but only barely. All it takes is a sudden influx of patients from a new illness to overwhelm the whole thing.

It's like someone living paycheck to paycheck, say £250/week. They have enough to cover rent, food, bills, etc., with only some change to spare. If they unexpectedly have to pay an extra £20 bill each week, for several months, then something else has to give. Food? Bills? Rent? Doesn't matter if the £20 a tiny amount compared to their rent costs, it will still break them.

[northwestsnow]

1 minute ago, Summer Sun said:

Spain have announced 782 new cases and 31 new deaths so far today

The official total currently stands at 3,059 cases and 86 deaths

Not a good day.

TBH i am now resigning myself to contracting it - its all going to be about the individuals immune system.

[kold weather]

4 minutes ago, emax said:

But over what time frame is that? People are making assumptions of an assumption. How is that any different to saying this is no deadlier than the flu?

Yes, and extra 500,000 deaths is not good by any means, but if thats spread across several years, suddenly not so bad. But its all assumptions, so just seems a bit silly to me to be basing opinions on assumptions.

I think based on what we have heard:

20% ill at the same time (based on 1/5th being off work) with a mean period of 7-10 days of people being off work.

Take the 80% figure, then drill that down and you will get roughly 105,000 deaths within probably a 2-3 week period at the peak period in a worst case scenario. Many times more severe than flu.

I've only used data that the CMO has already put out in this and the last briefing and the 1% CFR rate mentioned. If it hits that hard, no way the CFR stays as low as 1% given the huge cases that would be dealt with, as we have seen in Italy.

Edited March 12, 2020 by kold weather

[Snipper]

1 minute ago, kold weather said:

Agreed, whether you personally agree with their conclusions or not, I think they were quite open on why they doing what they are doing. I think the public badly needed this sort of conference, as I feel people were starting to lose some trust in it.

Looking at the moment like globally this lands somewhere between the Hong Kong Flu outbreak, and the Spanish Flu of 1918-1919. I was hoping we could keep it below the million mark worldwide, bu I'm starting to think thats going to be a long shot.

Which other country have been having such clear and considered discussions up front for people to consider?

[Summer Sun]

 

[Robbie Garrett]

3 minutes ago, swebby said:

Yes, hopefully so. 

The 3.3% is confirmed figures however and so can be directly compared to the 5-15% that has been suggested for Wuhan and Lombardy.

3.8% of influenza per 100,000 people end up in ICU in the UK.    Roughly 380 people per 100,000.

Must mean we have a less deadly strain floating in the UK?  With flights going near empty and nothing to Italy/Iran now.  This must be why they are going with the science.  If 5000-10000 is correct that's an ICU admission far less than flu at 0.2 - 0.4% per 10,000.   

[Snowy L]

42 minutes ago, Summer Sun said:

If we do have 5,000 to 10,000 cases already that points to fact it is indeed very mild for the vast majority.

Fatality rate would be about 0.5% in that event, equivalent to severe strains of flu such as Hong Kong.

[Methuselah]

Hot off the Press...FTSE has worst day since 1987:

 

UK shares suffer worst day since 1987

WWW.BBC.CO.UK

---

Markets are facing their worst ever daily loss after shares around the world plunged.

 

[kold weather]

2 minutes ago, Robbie Garrett said:

3.8% of influenza per 100,000 people end up in ICU in the UK.    Roughly 380 people per 100,000.

Must mean we have a less deadly strain floating in the UK?  With flights going near empty and nothing to Italy/Iran now.  This must be why they are going with the science.  If 5000-10000 is correct that's an ICU admission far less than flu at 0.2 - 0.4% per 10,000.   

Again, remember most people won't go straight to hospital, so the cases we have now from this week, most won't have got to that immune damage phase yet and so won't be hospitalised YET (that counts for probably 75% of the cases we have offically confirmed)...and probably quite a few of those 5-10000 cases are in the incubation phase as well at this point, given how exponential curves work.

We will know more probably this time next week of the true situation.

Edited March 12, 2020 by kold weather

[markyo]

Getting this bad feeling that the Irish Government has got this badly wrong,closing schools,colleges etc at this stage when the infection is already in the country makes not a lot of sense. They seem to be trying to win a battle not realising that it is a war. After 2 weeks of lockdown then what,the peak is still nowhere near? They haven't got this right at all sadly

[feb1991blizzard]

1 minute ago, BornFromTheVoid said:

Health systems are designed to manage these problems, but only barely. All it takes is a sudden influx of patients from a new illness to overwhelm the whole thing.

It's like someone living paycheck to paycheck, say £250/week. They have enough to cover rent, food, bills, etc., with only some change to spare. If they unexpectedly have to pay an extra £20 bill each week, for several months, then something else has to give. Food? Bills? Rent? Doesn't matter if the £20 a tiny amount compared to their rent costs, it will still break them.

Yes, although you couldn't expect the government to massively over prepare and then end up under prepared for normal day to day situations, my criticism of the government is based on not implementing preventative measures regarding the spread earlier, not suggesting they should spend billions every year on stupid amounts of beds like in a war time setting that are likely to be empty for the majority of a century then just used on the odd occasion, the criticism they would get for that when for instance there is 50000 homeless people would be justified if they did that.

[alexisj9]

48 minutes ago, emax said:

He must be ill then, cause I'm sure they're all getting 8hrs sleep and having an easy day .......

I'd say by his speech he's been crying. 

[kold weather]

1 minute ago, markyo said:

Getting this bad feeling that the Irish Government has got this badly wrong,closing schools,colleges etc at this stage when the infection is already in the country makes not a lot of sense. They seem to be trying to win a battle not realising that it is a war. After 2 weeks of lockdown then what,the peak is still nowhere near? They haven't got this right at all sadly

I think we have gone very heavily into the behavioral science element of it, far more so than other countries have.

Time will tell if that was the correct approach, they must be very confident in their modelling. Maybe all my years weather watching has made a little skeptical of modelling! Who knows!

[kold weather]

Brazil president has been confirmed with coronavirus. Probably a good time for a leader to get ill funnily enough!

[alexisj9]

46 minutes ago, cyclonic happiness said:

Basically.....'it's just a cold....nothing to see here'

Boris didn't even say that. 

[Wiltshire_snow_lover]

 

[Methuselah]

3 minutes ago, alexisj9 said:

I'd say by his speech he's been crying. 

IMO, Boris has been the recipient of a lot of unjustified criticism, these past weeks?

[feb1991blizzard]

2 minutes ago, General Cluster said:

IMO, Boris has been the recipient of a lot of unjustified criticism, these past weeks?

Some of it yes, if he has being crying it probably because he has now realised the magnitude of this event.