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Coronavirus - the new strain VI

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glancaster said:
There is some truth in Trump's criticisms of the WHO, but his defunding of it is deeply unhelpful at this time. Not just because they need the money, but because, as everyone else is pushing back against him so hard, they are ignoring the things he is right about.
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Have you actually seen some of his earlier statements? Trump was more effusive about his pal Xi than the WHO until he needed a scapegoat. His outpourings have been utterly contemptible nonsense and corrupt to boot, peddling his fake cure that he seeks to further enrich himself with and so on. An utterly disgusting cretin.
 
ghostbusters said:
It may be the genetics if you consider the ethnicity of those NHS worker who are dying.
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It is possible that modern Europeans are descendants of a population that were the survivors of a previous SARS family epidemic. These variations happen.
Some families have turned out to be extremely vulnerable to COVID-19, several siblings died in just a couple of days. We had one group like this in Kuching. One odd thing about this virus is that the elderly with co-morbidities last weeks in ICU, young people die overnight.
 
Malaysia is now down to 69 new case yesterday and 2 deaths. Much of the country zero new infections for several days.
The new cases are from screening residential schools and some migrant workers quarters.
 
glancaster said:
It's far too soon to be handing out grades to any government over their handling of Covid-19. This is a marathon, not a sprint. One thing we do know is that it spreads like wildfire (worse than we originally thought) so if you relax your restrictions without isolating all cases it will flare up again. No ifs, not buts.

In this context, all the talk of relaxing restrictions (and actually doing it) in other countries is deeply worrying and the UK is actually being one of the sensible ones by holding off.

The other point I want to make is that even if one country were to effectively eradicate Covid-19, unless they close their borders entirely they will soon be importing new cases. In a sense, each country can have Covid-19 tactics, but only the world acting together can plausibly have a Covid-19 strategy. Whilst we need to look at what has worked and what has not, it has to be done in a constructive fashion: all this criticism and blame is making it harder to engender the co-operation that is necessary.

Kind regards

- Garry
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Indeed. If you go to South Korea now on a short term visit now you have to do 14 days supervised Government quarantine (and pay for it yourself). By doing this, domestic businesses there are running fairly normally.

This does seem the correct approach whilst medical science catches up, but it seems most of the West lacks the political will and/or operational capability to execute this type of strategy. Seems there's an attitude of "it couldn't work here".
 
davidsrsb said:
It is possible that modern Europeans are descendants of a population that were the survivors of a previous SARS family epidemic. These variations happen.
Some families have turned out to be extremely vulnerable to COVID-19, several siblings died in just a couple of days. We had one group like this in Kuching. One odd thing about this virus is that the elderly with co-morbidities last weeks in ICU, young people die overnight.
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I remember that a prominent Chinese film director, his sister and both parents died early on in the Wuhan outbreak, really tragic.
 
SteveG said:
Sweden's is pretty high (into double figures) and still climbing steadily. It's currently about the same as in Scotland.

Where Sweden does look really bad is compared to the other Scandinavian countries - although without knowing what the countries are reporting in terms of deaths it's difficult to rely too much on the available stats for comparison.
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Sweden is very diligent in recording CoVid death in care homes, which anecdotal evidence suggests not all countries are.
 
Seanm said:
Nurse having beard justifies government's failure to get PPE to frontline staff.
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My point entirely, extract some words, add to some new words and create a bat to bash government.
If you ask at the HSE you will find my point is factually correct.

I thought you might have pointed to the latest useful news which shows how 'disposable' N95 masks can be decontaminated and reused.
Note the article mentions PPE shortages in the US, despite their healthcare spending per head of population being the highest in the world.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/health/n95-masks-decontaminated-coronavirus.html

With personal protective equipment in short supply at many overwhelmed hospitals, some front-line workers, including doctors and nurses, have complained that masks were rationed.
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So either a small step in the right direction or the perfect opportunity to blame Trump for something.
 
SteveG said:
There is definitely a question to be answered however given some of those dying have been NHS doctors (and therefore presumably not in poverty) then it could be there is a genetic element to it.
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I don't think it can be dismissed so easily. The Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre found that 35 percent of almost 2,000 patients were “non-white” - nearly three times the proportion in the population as a whole...
 
Heckyman said:
Indeed. If you go to South Korea now on a short term visit now you have to do 14 days supervised Government quarantine (and pay for it yourself). By doing this, domestic businesses there are running fairly normally.
...
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Brunei have already got to this point, Malaysia should be following soon.
A future of no tourism and business travel until a vaccine works
 
SteveS1 said:
Have you actually seen some of his earlier statements? Trump was more effusive about his pal Xi than the WHO until he needed a scapegoat. His outpourings have been utterly contemptible nonsense and corrupt to boot, peddling his fake cure that he seeks to further enrich himself with and so on. An utterly disgusting cretin.
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I understand why it is hard to take anything he says seriously, but even a stopped clock and all that. (I reckon his estimate of the Covid-19 fatality rate (< 1%) is far better than that of a lot of epidemiologists too, but we will see.)
 
Heckyman said:
Indeed. If you go to South Korea now on a short term visit now you have to do 14 days supervised Government quarantine (and pay for it yourself). By doing this, domestic businesses there are running fairly normally.

This does seem the correct approach whilst medical science catches up, but it seems most of the West lacks the political will and/or operational capability to execute this type of strategy. Seems there's an attitude of "it couldn't work here".
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This does seem sensible, but even quarantine can 'leak'. And what about fomite transmission e.g. on imported goods? They will still need to be vigilant in other ways.
 
misterdog said:
https://www.euractiv.com/section/co...-transparency-explains-high-virus-death-toll/
So some complaints that including figures of 'possible Covid 19' cause of death is misleading...

As you have stated we are too busy with a media/PFM feeding frenzy of Boris bashing to take a balanced view based on world wide events. We only wish to look at figures from Germany and heap praise on them.

We complain that lockdown was introduced too late, and that BJ should be strung up as a result, yet look at the approach Sweden has taken.
https://www.ft.com/content/5eb0a90b-ceb5-4441-9456-e30f9a2a7028

And to a lesser extent Japan.
https://inews.co.uk/news/coronaviru...vid-19-lockdown-measures-why-measures-2521139

Large numbers are jumping on the bash the government boat including a male nurse on C4 news last night complaining that he had not been given the 'correct' face mask. Yet he should have known that with his full beard and moustache that a silicone face mask cannot seal correctly.
Everyone has become an expert in science, even though the scientists themselves still know little of this virus.
The lack of PPE is being experienced by every country with a large scale outbreak.
The lack of testing, Spain bought in thousands of test kits early on only to find they were only 30% accurate.

We look aghast at the figures and say that most death should be preventable yet in 1999/2000
20,000 people died from the flu virus, a very bad flu season admittedly. Should the country have gone into lockdown that year, and saved lives ? Should the then Labour government have been crucified by the media/PFM as is happening now ?
Were those figures even accurate, did they include community based deaths ?
There was little media frenzy in that year as most were more concerned on how to celebrate the new millenium, and whether the Y2K bug would signal the end of the world.

Then there was the swine flu pandemic of 2009, again with no lockdown.




https://www.independent.co.uk/life-...-virus-that-actually-saved-lives-2149751.html

With the WHO calling this out as a pandemic and the world death toll 'only' reaching 18500 did this lead to countries becoming blase over the use of the term.
I know I did.



Anyway that's enough perspective, back to the myopic blame frenzy.
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Rubbish. You are entirely missing the pont that CV is a NOVEL virus to which nobody has any immunity. Set that against the assorted flu pandemics which many had some immunity to, many were (at least partially) vaccinated against and which in any event did not spread any thing like as quickly.

As for defending Johnson . His Premiership and the political skullduggery which led to it is indefensible, with or without his totally inept handling of CV.
 
russel said:
Sweden is very diligent in recording CoVid death in care homes, which anecdotal evidence suggests not all countries are.
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We are never going to get clean mortality data now. The figures the U.K. seems to be reporting are confirmed Covid deaths in hospital and confirmed Covid cases admitted to hospital, with a 13% mortality rate in hospitalised cases. A consultant said to me yesterday, ‘being admitted to hospital is a bad indicator’. Community and care homes/other institutions are a black hole. What’s worrying is that those admitted to hospital are likely to be those seen as having a realistic chance of recovery and such a large proportion, 13%, of those are dying.
 
SteveG said:
There is definitely a question to be answered however given some of those dying have been NHS doctors (and therefore presumably not in poverty) then it could be there is a genetic element to it.
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To my mind it just highlights the evidence that Covid 19 severity is largely dose/viral load related. The heartbreaking list of NHS workers upthread who have died having no doubt been exposed to a large extent, as are many ethnic minorities who have a combination of now dangerous public-facing jobs often combined with a fairly high-density multi-generational family housing scenario. Exposure risk and viral load has to be the key factor here, which I suspect is why the blow-hards blathering incoherently about releasing lockdown in right-wing papers tend to be very wealthy and no doubt living in very small family groups in large detached houses situated on acres of private land. A whole different level of risk/exposure.
 
Another possibility is that many of the BAME community have a genetic immunity to another SARS family virus. Unfortunately similar but not similar enough to COVID, so they get the lung shredding and quickly fatal reaction.
 
What’s dispiriting about Hancock’s performance in front of the Select Committee is that he glibly bats off most questions with “yeah we’ve thought of that”.
 

On a totally different topic good to see the ‘right to repair’ lobby getting involved in centralising ventilator repair manuals and demanding ventilator manufacturers release keys, data etc to ensure these essential machines are widely field-serviceable at this moment of need.
 
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