SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

Wibble said:
Because the time to act is while stability exists. By the time you suspect stability is in danger it is usually far too late.

And there is nothing like a health service being overwhelmed to cause instability.
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So what happens after say eight weeks of lockdown @Wibble? Is the virus gone? The answer is no, and remember how fast this spread from one market in China to the entire globe.

Stable is what everyone needs right now. you act when the curve starts to take a drastic upwards turn otherwise all you are doing is kicking the can down the road for when you let people out again and this virus goes mental.

I’m sure the Swedish experts expect that cases in Norway may start to slow more than Sweden, but they are also expecting that once Norway starts to relax again the spike will come back.
 
Robbo's Shoulder said:
I've never really understood that. I've 2 girls who I love like you can't believe. I've been there for and supported them in all their
development, good times and bad (just like most kids) . But we've been there for each other during some horrific times the last few month. Real families share the load and support each other. I know I would have struggled without their love and support these last 6 months and vice versa and this stubborn thing (pride, selfish take your pick) men think they have to portray annoys me greatly.
My own Dad an ex para even see's the value of self isolation and even though he's bored shitless he knows the benefit.
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Different generations.
Previously, men were supposed to be the bread winner of the family and were not supposed to show their feelings and certainly not cry.

Luckily times have changed and there is much more equality.
 
mu4c_20le said:
Like if the entire population were to be infected?
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The population needs to be infected in a controlled manner while ensuring the health system's ability to act and protecting the higher-risk groups. That's what every virologist seems to be suggesting. Otherwise this whole situation cannot be managed.

The alternative would be locking everything down for months until a vaccine is available which is no alternative at all. I think @Regulus Arcturus Black explained everything perfectly.
 
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Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Time will tell I guess but I just don’t see Scandinavia having the problems of Spain & Italy, our society and wilderness is just on a completely different scale altogether. We have more lakes than people :lol:

Slamming on the brakes might be a great idea, But remember this virus came from one market in China, when you take the brakes off again what happens? You basically just kick the can down the road.
Unless of course you think you can keep those brakes on for a year until a vaccine is found.
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There’s plenty of middle ground before you reach Spain or Italy. And trust me, I know that there's a world of difference considering the desolation, I'm an area that's a logistical nightmare on the west coast of Norway.

The problem is that the first cases started popping up in January, and who the feck knows how many asymptomatic people, or people who confused this with their biannual bout of the flu, have been running around and infecting people? This wasn't really taken seriously in Scandinavia until March, that's plenty of time for it to have spread relatively unchecked.

Of course it will start spreading again, but the thing is that we don't have a handle on it, we have NO idea how widely spread it is. And with the addition of incubation time before you start seeing severe symptoms, the health systems currently don't know what they're in for, which is what the lock-downs are supposed to help with.

I hope you're right and that Norway is overreacting, but I expect you guys are in for a bit of a rude awakening with (what may well be) half-measures at this stage.

Edit: for the record, I'm not looking to win an argument here... call it neighbourly concern. Stay safe, RAB :)
 
Eriku said:
There’s plenty of middle ground before you reach Spain or Italy. And trust me, I know that there's a world of difference considering the desolation, I'm an area that's a logistic nightmare on the west coast of Norway.

The problem is that the first cases started popping up in January, and who the feck knows how many asymptomatic people, or people who confused this with their biannual bout of the flu, have been running around and infecting people? This wasn't really taken seriously in Scandinavia until March, that's plenty of time for it to have spread relatively unchecked.

Of course it will start spreading again, but the thing is that we don't have a handle on it, we have NO idea how widely spread it is. And with the addition of incubation time before you start seeing severe symptoms, the health systems currently don't know what they're in for, which is what the lock-downs are supposed to help with.

I hope you're right and that Norway is overreacting, but I expect you guys are in for a bit of a rude awakening with (what may well be) half-measures at this stage.
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But mate the question is once you ease the lockdown again how do you know that you have a handle on it then? You don’t! It came from one market, it only needs a couple of people in Norway to take down the entire system again.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
So what happens after say eight weeks of lockdown @Wibble? Is the virus gone? The answer is no, and remember how fast this spread from one market in China to the entire globe.

Stable is what everyone needs right now. you act when the curve starts to take a drastic upwards turn otherwise all you are doing is kicking the can down the road for when you let people out again and this virus goes mental.

I’m sure the Swedish experts expect that cases in Norway may start to slow more than Sweden, but they are also expecting that once Norway starts to relax again the spike will come back.
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It won’t be gone but at least the number of active infections will have been lowered enough that it’ll take another month till the next big lockdown would be necessary.
I think the only 3 options right now are:

- Continuous switching between opening everything with people keeping social distancing up and going back into full lockdowns for a while.
- some company magically invents something that stops the virus or finds existing medication that stops it from causing pneumonia.
- letting it infect everyone (that’s not really an option though)

I don’t see any other solutions than one of the first two basically.
 
Pagh Wraith said:
The population needs to be infected in a controlled manner while ensuring the health system's ability to act and protect the higher-risk groups. That's what every virologist seems to be suggesting. Otherwise this whole situation cannot be managed.
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It's what a handful have suggested, but unless there is a sudden recent trend of medical professionals suddenly u-turning towards that, then I must have missed it. If the general population cannot even be trusted to follow something as simple as social distancing, how on earth can they be infected in a controlled manner? They cannot even be trusted not to visit their mums and grandparents during this time!
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
But mate the question is once you ease the lockdown again how do you know that you have a handle on it then? You don’t! It came from one market, it only needs a couple of people in Norway to take down the entire system again.
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We're currently figuring out the fall-out from when it went around unchecked, before ANY measures were taken. After the lock-down when you ease restrictions, you still have in place measures that we didn't have a few weeks ago, which will help make sure it doesn't spread too fast that it'll be too late once the system experiences strain again. You see the difference, I hope?
 
mu4c_20le said:
It's what a handful have suggested, but unless there is a sudden recent trend of medical professionals suddenly u-turning towards that, then I must have missed it. If the general population cannot even be trusted to follow something as simple as social distancing, how on earth can they be infected in a controlled manner? They cannot even be trusted not to visit their mums and grandparents during this time!
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I can only speak from a German perspective but here it seems to be mainly the politicians that push for stricter measures whereas medical experts in the media are much more cautious and have warned against long-term lockdowns as they are not justified. I think this temporal lockdown is a good move for the simple reason that it buys us time. But it seems clear to me that this cannot be the strategy going forward. Social and economic consequences would be catastrophic but most importantly, it does not solve the problem.
 
Pagh Wraith said:
The population needs to be infected in a controlled manner while ensuring the health system's ability to act and protecting the higher-risk groups. That's what every virologist seems to be suggesting. Otherwise this whole situation cannot be managed.

The alternative would be locking everything down for months until a vaccine is available which is no alternative at all. I think @Regulus Arcturus Black explained everything perfectly.
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And how would you achieve this in modern Western society without putting the high-risk groups at risk?
 
Pogue Mahone said:
The testing criteria aren’t consistent though. They vary, from country to country, and change over time. To be honest, I think the main reason governments focus on cases rather than deaths is a combination of not wanting to make the problem seem smaller than it is and not wanting to seem too morbid.

Here’s a good graph on deaths. Uk trending towards being possibly slightly worse than Italy but not as bad as Spain.

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The absolute number isn't what governments are focusing on. Testing criteria may change but you can control that and understand it. Deaths you cannot, it's random because nobody yet understands how exactly the virus kills people.

If you know your testing criteria and have 10 cases today, 20 tomorrow and 30 the day after, you can see a trend. If the day after that you have 35 cases or 45 cases, you can see a change in the trend and react accordingly. That's what everybody is looking to see. They don't care if the absolute number of cases is 40 or 400, they accept that number is inaccurate.

Look at the way the UK report, the focus is on cases. Deaths are listed second and are not always recorded over a consistent time period. In Italy too deaths are the third thing they focus on after active cases and total cases.
 
freeurmind said:
And how would you achieve this in modern Western society without putting the high-risk groups at risk?
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That's the difficult bit for the governments to figure out while we are in lockdown. We have to come up with a strategy that allows young, healthy people to work and develop herd immunity while at the same time flatten the curve and slow down the infection rate (or rather the rate of cases that require hospitalisation) enough to make sure the healthy system is able to act at all times. This is the most important thing obviously. I just hope there is some truth in that Oxford paper and a large part of the population has already been infected and herd immunity is already happening.
 
Went to bed last night at 20 800 something deaths worldwide. Its now 21 300.

Madness
 
freeurmind said:
And how would you achieve this in modern Western society without putting the high-risk groups at risk?
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1- Keep everyone home until the health system has recovered
2- Slowly rollback a few measures, allowing more people to work - start with the young and healthy, speciallfy ones who've already been infected. You do this very slowly, because cases will rise again and you need your health system to cope. Meaning for each rolled-back-measure you'll need to wait a few weeks to gauge if it's safe to progress
3- And on and on

If in the middle of this process you get a vaccine or a method of detecting who is already immune, you see a way out.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
How would you police that in Sweden for 12 months?

The experts here are fairly confident that we can remain stable by having social distancing in place and the financial incentives to stay off work with the even the tiniest sign of a symptom, that then our health services will not get overwhelmed. Especially so if we have the time to build the field hospitals were trying to build, recruit the way were trying to recruit, and bring in supplies the way we’re trying to bring in supplies.

If it becomes the case that it looks like they might get overwhelmed then yes of course stricter measures will be put in place.

My question to you is what is the point of lockdown when a country is in a stable situation?
Because make no mistake care all Europe is searching for now is stable situations, not to get rid of this virus.
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I've been trying to argue the same point with no luck. People in here want lockdowns!
 
Pagh Wraith said:
That's the difficult bit for the governments to figure out while we are in lockdown. We have to come up with a strategy that allows young, healthy people to work and develop herd immunity while at the same time flatten the curve and slow down the infection rate (or rather the rate of cases that require hospitalisation) enough to make sure the healthy system is able to act at all times. This is the most important thing obviously. I just hope there is some truth in that Oxford paper and a large part of the population has already been infected and herd immunity is already happening.
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Part of the problem is the definition of healthy. Yesterday, in Norway, several people aged between 20-45 without known diseases were admitted to hospital and put on life support.

In terms of herd immunity, we still don't understand the immune response.
 
Fiskey said:
I've been trying to argue the same point with no luck. People in here want lockdowns!
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Yeah I’m well aware that I’m in the minority on the forum regarding this.
I’d be all for a Wuhan type lockdown, as locking down an entire city with Chinese military might and drones is possible and can work to possibly even eradicate this virus from that city.
Locking down entire countries though? Simply not feasible or possible so the virus will continue to spread, there’s no doubt about that at all once you know how incredibly contagious this is. All locking down will do is to possibly slow it down and buy some time.
But it’s short term, this virus is simply not deadly enough to make long term lockdowns of countries even remotely possible.
So the question all the desperate lockdowners have to ask themselves it what they hope it will achieve. If the answer is “a few weeks to slow it down and get more prepared”, fair play. Any other answer is simply fantasy stuff.

Which is why I’m pleased that Sweden is waiting with drastic measures until we desperately need to “slow it down and buy some weeks”. That might be 2 days, 2 weeks or 2 months away, but better to save it till it’s required.
 
Landlord trying to move someone new into the house during this. :rolleyes:. What;s worst is he's a PT and started offering home visits to people instead of abiding to social distancing and lockdown.
 
There's little point in acting as if working life can stop beyond what's strictly and immediately life sustaining. For a week (for most people) life's about food and water, but that's not enough for long.

We're already starting to get used to how dependant we are on a massive infrastructure that deals with health, education, food production and distribution, utilities.

Stop collecting rubbish for a couple of weeks and we'll realise how dependant we are on that. Same with the chemical industry and engineering firms who underpin the rest of it, including health services and food production.

Same with a whole army of jobbing builders, roofers, plumbers and electricians who fix all the stupid stuff that goes wrong in people's houses - ironically often in the homes of the old, and the vulnerable who don't have the money/energy to deal with routine maintenance or replace a boiler until it actually fails completely.

As time goes on, shoes for growing kids are a necessity. So are lots of things.

Complaining about people going to work is pointless. Lots of people need to be working to support our lives, at different times the numbers will be different. Right now the priority is to avoid destroying the health service.

People getting infected in this period is inevitable, and that'll continue to happen until we have a safe, proven vaccine. It's going to be a balancing act - and yes, that does mean people will die, the balance comes when you look at the alternative. We also want the farms to get their annual influx of labour and pick the soft fruit, or the builders to take the cladding off the tower block and install sprinklers, and that the suppliers need to be open to support it.

What we can also try to do, is remember the lessons. Working from home, social distancing in the workplace (flexible working hours, less crowded cafeterias - anything that makes queues shorter). Those can continue as well. Meanwhile, home delivery for the most vulnerable, could be become more of a routine, and less of a crisis. Balance is a big deal.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Yeah I’m well aware that I’m in the minority on the forum regarding this.
I’d be all for a Wuhan type lockdown, as locking down an entire city with Chinese military might and drones is possible and can work to possibly even eradicate this virus from that city.
Locking down entire countries though? Simply not feasible or possible so the virus will continue to spread, there’s no doubt about that at all once you know how incredibly contagious this is. All locking down will do is to possibly slow it down and buy some time.
But it’s short term, this virus is simply not deadly enough to make long term lockdowns of countries even remotely possible.
So the question all the desperate lockdowners have to ask themselves it what they hope it will achieve. If the answer is “a few weeks to slow it down and get more prepared”, fair play. Any other answer is simply fantasy stuff.

Which is why I’m pleased that Sweden is waiting with drastic measures until we desperately need to “slow it down and buy some weeks”. That might be 2 days, 2 weeks or 2 months away, but better to save it till it’s required.
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Who on here is arguing for nationwide lockdowns for a year plus? Everybody you’ve been arguing with is talking about buying time, nobody is saying this is about hunkering down till vaccine time, or that we can eradicate the virus this way.

You and Fiskey are fighting straw men.
 
Arruda said:
1- Keep everyone home until the health system has recovered
2- Slowly rollback a few measures, allowing more people to work - start with the young and healthy, speciallfy ones who've already been infected. You do this very slowly, because cases will rise again and you need your health system to cope. Meaning for each rolled-back-measure you'll need to wait a few weeks to gauge if it's safe to progress
3- And on and on

If in the middle of this process you get a vaccine or a method of detecting who is already immune, you see a way out.
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The hard part isn't what to do, but how to do it.

You really can't control people. You can tell them to stay at home, but eventually people need to come out for a good reason (replenish supplies, work, ets). If we're talking about 2 weeks people will be cooperative, but when we talk about long term it really is a different story.

Obviously nothing short of vacinne can clear this mess, the only problem right now is how to save the most lives until vacinne day.

I don't envy governments making decisions, it's a tough call.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Yeah I’m well aware that I’m in the minority on the forum regarding this.
I’d be all for a Wuhan type lockdown, as locking down an entire city with Chinese military might and drones is possible and can work to possibly even eradicate this virus from that city.
Locking down entire countries though? Simply not feasible or possible so the virus will continue to spread, there’s no doubt about that at all once you know how incredibly contagious this is. All locking down will do is to possibly slow it down and buy some time.
But it’s short term, this virus is simply not deadly enough to make long term lockdowns of countries even remotely possible.
So the question all the desperate lockdowners have to ask themselves it what they hope it will achieve. If the answer is “a few weeks to slow it down and get more prepared”, fair play. Any other answer is simply fantasy stuff.

Which is why I’m pleased that Sweden is waiting with drastic measures until we desperately need to “slow it down and buy some weeks”. That might be 2 days, 2 weeks or 2 months away, but better to save it till it’s required.
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Eminently sensible.
 
Shakesey said:
I've been following your crazy escape for days! Godspeed!
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Thanks mate. Just got home! And despite not being as exotic as Phuket, immediately feels like the right place to be, especially as Thailand starts military rule and curfews today.

Flight with Qatar passed without incident. Have to commend them their staff and general service - was outstanding Was only 75% full so people were spaced apart.

Landed @ Heathrow and through baggage and immigration in 20 mins (a record!) at 7.30am. Normally the arrivals terminal would be jam packed at this time, but was literally empty. It's going to close very quickly. However, I had to me my taxi outside departure terminal, and that terminal was JAM PACKED with foreign nationals desperately trying to get back their own country before borders close.

Taxi took M4 and M25, 2 very busy motorways which should be packed during ‘rush hour’ - again virtually empty like Sunday mornings. Never ever seen London like this, esp listening about struggles of NHS on radio news - feels like a dystopian movie!

Got home, threw worn clothes straight into hot wash in machine, and immediately jumped into 20 min long hot shower. Now feeling more relaxed as I enjoy my tea and starting my self isolation. Time will tell if I picked it up en route!
 
Apparently Dyson almost have the go ahead to make 10000 ventilators available by mid April. 5000 to be donated to the international relief effort, not sure it that’s out of the 10000 or as well as.
 
Eriku said:
Who on here is arguing for nationwide lockdowns for a year plus? Everybody you’ve been arguing with is talking about buying time, nobody is saying this is about hunkering down till vaccine time, or that we can eradicate the virus this way.

You and Fiskey are fighting straw men.
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You don't want lockdown until your health service is at the absolute brink of capacity. I've spoken with three people who have gone into London hospitals in the past two days (people who have to be in hospital quite regularly) and they've all said it's eerily quiet.

If you lockdown too early you cause damage to the economy that didn't need to be caused and are left in pretty much the same situation when you relax (hopefully with more ventilators).
 
Arruda said:
2- Slowly rollback a few measures, allowing more people to work - start with the young and healthy, speciallfy ones who've already been infected. You do this very slowly, because cases will rise again and you need your health system to cope. Meaning for each rolled-back-measure you'll need to wait a few weeks to gauge if it's safe to progress
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Germany's head of the chancellery said yesterday that is what they are planning to do. They'll be using the next two weeks to monitor the situation and then "let young people back on the street" in combination with lots of testing and identifying infected people to stop the virus from spreading exponentially again. Seems sensible to me.
 
Eriku said:
Who on here is arguing for nationwide lockdowns for a year plus? Everybody you’ve been arguing with is talking about buying time, nobody is saying this is about hunkering down till vaccine time, or that we can eradicate the virus this way.
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You see, that's where the argument becomes completely pointless though then.

If you're not bunkering down until a vaccine, buying time is simply kicking the can down the road. There's a huge chance that countries instead explode after a lockdown rather than it slowly, steadily, infecting a population whilst not overwhelming the health service.

Obviously stricter rules should come in once you see the curve start to take a big upward turn.
 
Why do so many people think they’ll be going back to normal lives as soon as the peak is reached?
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Yeah I’m well aware that I’m in the minority on the forum regarding this.
I’d be all for a Wuhan type lockdown, as locking down an entire city with Chinese military might and drones is possible and can work to possibly even eradicate this virus from that city.
Locking down entire countries though? Simply not feasible or possible so the virus will continue to spread, there’s no doubt about that at all once you know how incredibly contagious this is. All locking down will do is to possibly slow it down and buy some time.
But it’s short term, this virus is simply not deadly enough to make long term lockdowns of countries even remotely possible.
So the question all the desperate lockdowners have to ask themselves it what they hope it will achieve. If the answer is “a few weeks to slow it down and get more prepared”, fair play. Any other answer is simply fantasy stuff.

Which is why I’m pleased that Sweden is waiting with drastic measures until we desperately need to “slow it down and buy some weeks”. That might be 2 days, 2 weeks or 2 months away, but better to save it till it’s required.
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Most, if not all, countries that have gone for lockdowns, did so when they discovered the virus had spread quicker than anticipated.

"Pleased" is a bit weird, Sweden (like most countries) are gambling on the solution that their medical experts believe is the best route of action. The experts in Norway still maintain that they would've preferred that we lifted some of the restrictions and then monitored it for 3 weeks to see the consequences.
 
Fiskey said:
You don't want lockdown until your health service is at the absolute brink of capacity. I've spoken with three people who have gone into London hospitals in the past two days (people who have to be in hospital quite regularly) and they've all said it's eerily quiet.

If you lockdown too early you cause damage to the economy that didn't need to be caused and are left in pretty much the same situation when you relax (hopefully with more ventilators).
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Who do you think went into lockdown too early? Lockdown is necessary to control an outbreak, simple as that. Nobody suggested we stay in lockdown for over a year, not even China would do that.
 
Fiskey said:
I've been trying to argue the same point with no luck. People in here want lockdowns!
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We've been in lockdown for 2 days, and I'm already feeling like a prisoner in a cell.

I'll obviously continue to do it, because it's the right thing to do. But wars have been fought to gain the kinds of personal freedoms that we've lost. I'm sure there'll come a breaking point within the wider population as things drag on. And once it does, a second lockdown with be many times harder to enforce. So this one better be enough to last us the next 12-18 months.
 
Fiskey said:
You don't want lockdown until your health service is at the absolute brink of capacity. I've spoken with three people who have gone into London hospitals in the past two days (people who have to be in hospital quite regularly) and they've all said it's eerily quiet.

If you lockdown too early you cause damage to the economy that didn't need to be caused and are left in pretty much the same situation when you relax (hopefully with more ventilators).
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People seem to really struggle with this.

If you have 1000 ICU beds, and only 130 being used. Why are you locking down? You surely lockdown when you see 130 double two days running to 520. If you do it at 130 with 200 new cases a day and 15 into ICU, it's just a waste of time and money.
 
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