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Coronavirus - the new strain IX

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I must apologise to pfm for giving a sinophobic shitposter an opportunity to go on a full-fat racist screed.
The practices outlined are truly barbaric, however. And I don't believe they are made up.

I know they are not confined to China, but there is surely an argument that we should not let accusations of Sinophobia inhibit fair criticism (and positive action) intended to put an end to such practices? Your post does read, somewhat, like an attempt to suppress discussion; not unlike the way antisemitism has been weaponised against the Labour Party (which is not, before you ask, to dismiss the validity of the accusations, or that party's ineffectiveness in dealing with them).
 
A wall of othering text that piggybacks a simple point that c19 might have been seen in the EU a full 9 months before being dubbed “Wuhan Flu”, so perhaps China is not the only problem here is also a great way to shut down discussion by uncentering.

Non-vegans lecturing about animal abuse in China while simultaneously drawing a blind eye to industrialised meat processing and abattoirs in the EU & the USA is a kind of cognitive dissonance I need to learn how to factor in when reading this website; likewise the ‘I don’t believe racists are being deliberately racist’ comments by ppl with clear racist undertones are similarly problematic.
 
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Yesterday Gavin Williamson yesterday announced that schools would definitely open fully in September, parents of absent pupils could be fined and maximum class sizes increased to 30.

A class size of 30 would mean a reduction of class sizes for most schools, so will there be extra money to fund reduced class sizes?

Also, getting 30 kids in most rooms will be a tight fit. So if schools will definitely open and class sizes of 30 will not be possible within existing social distancing measures, is Gavin Williamson actually announcing a further relaxing of the rules at some point before September?

Or is Williamson demanding that schools do not follow government guidelines?
 
Today’s Times reports that Thursday’s guidance will advise teachers to stay 2 metres away from pupils as much as possible and stand at the front of the class (!).
However it also reports headteacher will be required to scrap ANY social distancing measures that are incompatible with getting every child back into school.

Then Frank Spencer says he was shocked at the resistance he met in trying to reopen schools.

The lack of awareness in this cretin is staggering.
 
Near the end of February, after the discovery of a single case of COVID-19, the entire town of Vo in northern Italy was locked down really hard for a fortnight - roads closed, police patrols, masks, army, serious stuff. The majority of the population were tested twice for the virus. The results of these tests have now been published in Nature here. One of the interesting discoveries was that children are hard to infect, even if they live with people who have it. The experience of Vo influenced subsequent strategy in the Veneto, where the heavy emphasis on masks, social distancing, and testing and tracing seems to have had a really good outcome.
 
I believe the report that the virus was found in effluent samples in Spain in March 2019 is under scrutiny. AIUI it's an isolated sample, and false-positives and/or contamination of the sample can't, at this stage, be ruled out. Probably not wise to stake too much on the basis of one test result.
 
<moderating>

I’ve removed some ad hominem, but left the original post. Not because I agree with it, but because I am an animal-rights campaigner and WWF/turtle sponsor (get yours here). I suspect that content at least is true and humans eating meat anywhere is unnecessary, violent and repugnant at the best of times, but the conditions in parts of China for many animals is pretty much as bad as it gets. That alone means the post stays.
 
Today’s Times reports that Thursday’s guidance will advise teachers to stay 2 metres away from pupils as much as possible and stand at the front of the class (!).
However it also reports headteacher will be required to scrap ANY social distancing measures that are incompatible with getting every child back into school.

Then Frank Spencer says he was shocked at the resistance he met in trying to reopen schools.

The lack of awareness in this cretin is staggering.

A one metre distance would be impossible in most schools without the capacity to reduce class sizes or go into larger rooms.

It would also be impossible to teach any practical class like art or DT from the front of the class.

Williamson clearly has no idea whatsoever how schools work or what teaching involves.

Education Secretaries who have such little care or consideration for schools and teachers is a major reason why there is a looming crisis in Education. Williamson appears to be the worst of a very bad bunch
 
Interesting piece on the BBC World Service the other week about Nipah Virus. Thank goodness COVID 19 isn't as deadly as Nipah, they were saying. Terrible mortality rate. Loggers clearing forests for palm oil production forced flying foxes (bats) to emigrate from Sumatra to Malaysia. Specifically, to an area in Malaysia where pigs were intensively reared. Bats carried the virus and through their faeces transferred it to humans via their pig stock. Because the pigs were so densely farmed and the human population tightly integrated, large proportions of the local population were killed. Luckily, the individual villages were quite distinct and so the outbreak was contained.
This was twenty years ago. The virus is still out there and there is no vaccine. The bats are immune.
The perils of farming, intensive livestock and dense communities.
 
We had flying foxes all along in Malaysia, I see them around my condo from time to time to feed on the betul nut palms. They are close to humans in SE Asia all the time, nothing to do with oil palm. They are attracted to any fruit trees. I have other insectivorous bat species roosting in my loft.
Fortunately Nipah virus is not a good human to human spreader yet.
 
As far as I understand it (and I could have misunderstood it) this is the situation in Leicester

1. 11 days ago someone in Westminster noticed that there was a flare up in Leicester.
2. Central government went into the city 11 days ago with "targeted measures."
3. The targeted measures didn't work so yesterday the city was severely locked down.

Does anyone know what the targeted measures were?

The mayor of Leicester is saying that it would have been better if he had more information sooner. I think he's suggesting that if he'd have known the numbers of people who had tested positive, their addresses and their ethnicity, he could or would have done something which wasn't done by Westminster. And he also seems to suggest that this early local involvement would have got the flare up under control better. I can't work out what he would have done if he'd have had this information, he might explain it and I've just missed it, of course.

The government protocol seems to be: identify flare up centrally -- send in a team to implement "targeted measures" -- monitor for 10 days (say) -- if it's not working, lockdown.

At first glance that seems like not a bad protocol to me, but I'm hardly an expert.
 
As far as I understand it (and I could have misunderstood it) this is the situation in Leicester

1. 11 days ago someone in Westminster noticed that there was a flare up in Leicester.
2. Central government went into the city 11 days ago with "targeted measures."
3. The targeted measures didn't work so yesterday the city was severely locked down.

Does anyone know what the targeted measures were?

The mayor of Leicester is saying that it would have been better if he had more information sooner. I think he's suggesting that if he'd have known the numbers of people who had tested positive, their addresses and their ethnicity, he could or would have done something which wasn't done by Westminster. And he also seems to suggest that this early local involvement would have got the flare up under control better. I can't work out what he would have done if he'd have had this information, he might explain it and I've just missed it, of course.

The government protocol seems to be: identify flare up centrally -- send in a team to implement "targeted measures" -- monitor for 10 days (say) -- if it's not working, lockdown.

At first glance that seems like not a bad protocol to me, but I'm hardly an expert.
Back to the beginning non essential shops, business shut. Non essential travel also apparently, not quite sure how they implement that on a local level.
 
As far as I understand it (and I could have misunderstood it) this is the situation in Leicester

1. 11 days ago someone in Westminster noticed that there was a flare up in Leicester.
2. Central government went into the city 11 days ago with "targeted measures."
3. The targeted measures didn't work so yesterday the city was severely locked down.

Does anyone know what the targeted measures were?

The mayor of Leicester is saying that it would have been better if he had more information sooner. I think he's suggesting that if he'd have known the numbers of people who had tested positive, their addresses and their ethnicity, he could or would have done something which wasn't done by Westminster. And he also seems to suggest that this early local involvement would have got the flare up under control better. I can't work out what he would have done if he'd have had this information, he might explain it and I've just missed it, of course.

The government protocol seems to be: identify flare up centrally -- send in a team to implement "targeted measures" -- monitor for 10 days (say) -- if it's not working, lockdown.

At first glance that seems like not a bad protocol to me, but I'm hardly an expert.

The Public Health teams in local government have access to minimal data like hospital reports. Having the pillar 2 data gives more detail so that they can spot clusters and do something about it. The data they had did not suggest there was a problem which is why they were shocked when the Health Secretary said that Leicester had to go into special measures. Now the cat is out of the bag about the existence of the pillar 2 datasets, it will be interesting to see where this story goes especially if more areas have to go on lockdown.
 
ooooo Piggy Bridgen on C4 News saying that the Leicester problem is due to sweatshops in the area not obeying the lockdown rules. Blame the immigrants :rolleyes:
 
@triggers I disagree. From Reuters: “Spanish virologists have found traces of the novel coronavirus in a sample of Barcelona waste water collected in March 2019, nine months before the COVID-19 disease was identified in China,

So when people say Wuhan flu Or point the finger at China, it’s an assumption that it originated there but C19s origins are by no means set in stone — it’s been all around the world before breaking out due to bridging species, population density, mutation or reassortment to a more transmissible form... so these “Oh the Chinese” arguments aren’t even certain and is usually a front for xenophobia.

The 1918 H1N1 was the same, it’s been argued reasonably convincingly that it originated in Kansas and definitely not Spain.

Junk science I'm afraid.

https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1276732776918724609?s=20

Prof Francois Balloux said:
The evidence for #SARSCoV2 being in circulation in Barcelona in March 20019 is shaky. The detection method (RT-PCR) can be error-prone. The methods are poorly explained in the preprint and the study lacks any negative control.

The work does not include any attempt to confirm that the RNA detected by the RT-PCR is from #SARSCoV2 rather than some other coronavirus in circulation. Such confirmation is essential and would have been fast, easy and cheap to do through (partial) genome sequencing.

PS It's also been reasonably convincingly argued that the 1889-1890 Russian Flu pandemic wasn't actually flu, but was a bovine coronavirus making a species jump into humans. (It's now one of the common cold coronaviruses OC43.) Apparently it was COVID-19 bad too and continued killing people for 5 years judging from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889–1890_flu_pandemic
 
The way its kicking off everywere globally now or is it because there testing more would using common sense we need to be very careful whose flying into this country. Are more checks being done at airports now.
 
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