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I don't quite know how to react to this - I mean, y'know...

It'd be kind of hilarious if Pence and Bloomberg got the virus - but Mike Pence is 60 and presumably very clean-living, and Bloomberg is rich enough to have any failing body parts replaced with fresh ones extracted from Olympic athletes, so even if they were infected, they would most like recover and go around telling people the coronavirus is nothing to worry about as long as you have faith in God and/or money.
 
When the first epidemic wave of swine flu began, they stopped trying to test everyone and started relying on a range of indicators to estimate number of cases. I dont know exactly what the plan is this time, but I expect some change compared to the current system of testing at some point.

It will probably change to diagnostic criteria ie CT scan with blotches and symptoms, as China did for a while.
 
Australia:

20m ago 00:16
In Australia, Victorian health minister Jenny Mikakos says she is “flabbergasted” that a doctor who had flulike symptoms presented to work in the state this week. She says the ministry will be reminding doctors across the state not to present to work should they display any symptoms. The doctor in question came into contact with around 70 patients.

13m ago 00:24
The latest case is a doctor from Toorak in his 70s, who displayed mild symptoms on a flight from the United States. He is now recovering in home isolation. It was confirmed positive last night following a series of tests. The doctor recently travelled to Denver and Bali Colorado, via Los Angeles, and was there for several days before onset. He most likely acquired his infection in the United States. He became unwell with a runny nose on an internal flight from Denver to San Francisco on February 27, US time, then flew from San Francisco to Melbourne on a United Airlines flight, arriving at approximately 9:30am Saturday the 29 February. The doctor, from the Toorak clinic in Malvern Road consulted approximately 70 patients for five days, between Monday the 2 March and Friday the 6 March.

A fine example of how the initially mild and familiar symptoms, along with assumptions about which locations carry infection risk, can contribute to individuals making errors of judgement. Our attitude towards 'colds' in normal times is one of the reasons we may be forced into dramatic measures, since even some people who really should know better are going to make these kinds of mistakes and spread the virus.

Something I might place in a similar realm is the sort of 'lets make uneasy jokes about your cold' stage some people are at right now, eg the end of this article:


Cobra stands for Cabinet Office briefing room A, but in reality it describes a system for handling any national crisis. In fact, key meetings tend to take place in room F, the largest, which sits about 20 people, surrounded by screens for presentations or remote attendees. Sometimes gallows humour can take hold, even in the worst situations, as happened at a meeting on Friday last week, where other participants noted wryly that Whitty, the most senior doctor in England, appeared to have a cold.
 
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I am definitely too obsessed with this virus business. I'm just with a couple, one of which works in a school and the other works in Central London, neither of them seem particularly worried about covid-19.

What do we have, some 160 cases and one death out of a population of 66 million, I can't work out the odds but it seems very unlikely I'm going to bump into an infected person anytime soon.

Even assuming massive growth in the number of infected people, the risks will still be quite low. It seems quite a long way from where we are now now to the potential infection of 60 to 80 percent of the population. Will it run riot in the population? In weeks or months, who can know the answer to such questions?
 
I feel sorry for the 3,500 trapped on the latest ship of doom, the Grand Princess moored off San Francisco, out of just 46 tested so far, 21 are positive.

Pence said 21 positive results had been recorded – 19 crew members and two passengers – and that “those that will need to be quarantined will be quarantined. Those who will require medical help will receive it.” He urged elderly Americans to consider carefully taking future cruises during the crisis.

The US government plans to take the Grand Princess to a “non-commercial port” where all the passengers and crew would be tested, however, President Donald Trump said on Friday he would prefer not to allow the passengers onto American soil.

“I like the numbers being where they are,” said Trump, who appeared to be explicitly acknowledging his political concerns about the outbreak: “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.”

There're loads of Americans on-board, and it's no surprise that Trump couldn't give a flying fuck about them, because of the forthcoming election & he doesn't want the increased number of cases on US soil. . :mad:

 


Makes for grim viewing, but it’s also corrected my assumption that this situation might be with us for the rest of the year then fade away. What he’s saying about the vaccine hit home - even if it’s available in a record breaking time, it will be limited in dose quantities, so basically only rich people and those most vulnerable will be able to get hold of it for some time after it comes out. In other words, we could easily be facing two years of this, whatever the reality of living with this turns out to be. No wonder the politicians hesitate to lock down everything. Can we all stay home for two years, really?


Interesting. The doctor in his 70s apparently experienced a runny nose as his first symptom,yet we’ve been told time and again that runny nose is NOT a symptom of covid-19? Fever, weakness, dry cough gets repeated over and again.

There was also the link @sihhi posted with a detailed description of the progression of a mild form of the illness in two patients who both had sore throat as initial symptoms. I understand the authorities don’t want everyone with a sore throat or runny nose to jump to the conclusion that they have coronavirus, but wouldn’t it be better to give people accurate info?

This may have been posted, I've not been following this thread for a couple of days. Worth a repost if it has, in case it hasn't. (that made sense to me 🤷‍♀️)

A GIS dashboard showing global cases etc. from the John Hopkins University Corona Virus Resource Centre


It’s a good link. Can be posted to this thread every few days as far as I’m concerned! :thumbs:

I feel sorry for the 3,500 trapped on the latest ship of doom, the Grand Princess moored off San Francisco, out of just 46 tested so far, 21 are positive.

They’re almost as screwed as the marketing team at Princess cruises. Seriously, who will be booking their cruise trips next year after such awful publicity? Another company going under probably.

Wherever that ship ends up moored, let’s hope the quarantine is managed better than the Japanese example.
 
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What do we have, some 160 cases and one death out of a population of 66 million, I can't work out the odds but it seems very unlikely I'm going to bump into an infected person anytime soon.

Even assuming massive growth in the number of infected people, the risks will still be quite low. It seems quite a long way from where we are now now to the potential infection of 60 to 80 percent of the population. Will it run riot in the population? In weeks or months, who can know the answer to such questions?
Compound growth is faster than you think, once it gets going. I would listen to the epidemiologists.
 
Mike Pence is in charge. Everything is going to be fine.
It's OK, he's urged elderly Americans to consider carefully taking future cruises during the crisis.

Given the huge publicity around the first cruise ship in Japan, I'm amazed that these things are still operating, or that anyone who has already booked a place would even consider going. I can't think of a single worse place to be ATM
 
Even though the vaccine is probably a year away therapeutic drug combos are showing great promise in China and I hope we will have some powerful tools available in double-quick time. Focusing on the positive is going to be really important for our mental health.

 
In other words, we could easily be facing two years of this, whatever the reality of living with this turns out to be. No wonder the politicians hesitate to lock down everything. Can we all stay home for two years, really?
I suspect China even Hubei province will not be at home for 2 years. At least 4 provinces are back to pretty much normal except with masks schools expected to open in the next 2 weeks
 
..
Interesting. The doctor in his 70s apparently experienced a runny nose as his first symptom,yet we’ve been told time and again that runny nose is NOT a symptom of covid-19? Fever, weakness, dry cough gets repeated over and again.
..
I was in my GP surgery last week and they had a poster which said the first symptom is a runny nose.
 
I was in my GP surgery last week and they had a poster which said the first symptom is a runny nose.

Ok, maybe I was just wrong about that. I was sure I’d seen posters saying runny nose is not a symptom, but could have been mistaken.
 
Ok, maybe I was just wrong about that. I was sure I’d seen posters saying runny nose is not a symptom, but could have been mistaken.
There is definitely some misinformation around one of the guys at work said categorically that a runny nose meant you have got a cold not coronavirus. I prefer to trust the NHS.
 
I am definitely too obsessed with this virus business. I'm just with a couple, one of which works in a school and the other works in Central London, neither of them seem particularly worried about covid-19.

What do we have, some 160 cases and one death out of a population of 66 million, I can't work out the odds but it seems very unlikely I'm going to bump into an infected person anytime soon.

Even assuming massive growth in the number of infected people, the risks will still be quite low. It seems quite a long way from where we are now now to the potential infection of 60 to 80 percent of the population. Will it run riot in the population? In weeks or months, who can know the answer to such questions?

While this crisis has been going on roughly five people a day have been dying in road accidents in the UK as per usual.
 
There is a lot of internet noise about this being a 'magic bullet' for all viruses. No doubt Jazzesque though....


The bit about indiegogo crowd funding does not augur well for the legitimacy of this.

I don't like the proposed mechanism either, as it claims to kill off any cells expressing long chain mRNAs. Whilst it's true that most mRNAs produced in healthy mammalian cells are short, IIRC there are some proteins whose expression requires longer mRNAs to be produced, including stuff of trivial importance like, um, haemoglobin.

e2a: I wrote a novel about a failed attempt at curing viral infections in a simillar manner to this. The end result is that nearly everyone on Earth dies when the 'cure' decides that healthy bone marrow is a legitimate target.
 
As of December 2015, research related to DRACOs had ground to a halt, for obscure reasons described variously as "murky" and "due to the extreme novelty of its mechanism". :hmm:
 
The list of symptoms isn't a black and white issue. At the moment the spectrum of symptoms observed in percentages of patients is being determined.

Are we likely to see a UK-specific study using the clinical data from the first 100 UK cases do you think?
 
Are we likely to see a UK-specific study using the clinical data from the first 100 UK cases do you think?

I’d imagine the clinical data will be under constant review for quite some time. It’ll be based on the thousands of test results rather than just the fatalities.
 
The bit about indiegogo crowd funding does not augur well for the legitimacy of this.

I don't like the proposed mechanism either, as it claims to kill off any cells expressing long chain mRNAs. Whilst it's true that most mRNAs produced in healthy mammalian cells are short, IIRC there are some proteins whose expression requires longer mRNAs to be produced, including stuff of trivial importance like, um, haemoglobin.

e2a: I wrote a novel about a failed attempt at curing viral infections in a simillar manner to this. The end result is that nearly everyone on Earth dies when the 'cure' decides that healthy bone marrow is a legitimate target.

Oh dear, he looks like his work would grace the annal's of Crocels Research.

 
I’d imagine the clinical data will be under constant review for quite some time. It’ll be based on the thousands of test results rather than just the fatalities.

I found a name for what I was on about with previous outbreaks - First Few Hundred (FF100).
 
Reading on Reddit about the cancellation of various conferences, and the knock-on effects it is having on all sorts of industries, from vendors and hospitality to dog-walkers not having clients going away any more.
 
We're all fucked. elbows what do you make of this thread?
 
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