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I can't help seeing some similarity in the bullish optimism in the face of medical evidence of Johnson and Trump though Trump is way out in front for unplausibility. At least Johnson gave us 12 weeks to beat the virus, Trump has been stating much more ridiculous time scales.
 
Well, I know the guy's an absolute bell and talks shite a lot of the time, but if this is genuine then fair fucks to him I guess.

In a private twitter exchange with Irish Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe, published by McGregor,

Such a selfless hero.
 
I agree, the USA looks unprepared, states are bidding prices up for PPE kit against each other, celebrities are donating money for medical supplies because the states are not funding enough, and federally Trump isn't providing adequate leadership.

I believe the worst areas in terms of infection are New York and California, I believe CA is on some level of lock down but I don't know what is happening in NY. There are also other states that are highly infected.
 
I agree, the USA looks unprepared, states are bidding prices up for PPE kit against each other, celebrities are donating money for medical supplies because the states are not funding enough, and federally Trump isn't providing adequate leadership.

I believe the worst areas in terms of infection are New York and California, I believe CA is on some level of lock down but I don't know what is happening in NY. There are also other states that are highly infected.

Yes a totally inadequate healthcare system and a government who are in total denial and completely at a loss as to what to do. It could be worse in the US than its going to be in India and its going to be bad in India.
 
Bill Gates is somewhat of a hero at the moment having predicted a flue like pandemic some years ago and also for throwing resources at it from his foundation. He was interviewed recently for a TED talk, which is well worth a watch.
 
It seems NY is perhaps a centre for covid-19 there are lots of stories on the net:
Every hospital in New York has been ordered to increase its bed capacity by 50% because at the moment the city is about 90,000 beds short of what they predict they might need.

Governor Andrew Cuomo is calling for more PPE from federal government.
New York now has over 25,000 confirmed virus cases and at least 210 deaths.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday the US has the potential to become the new epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic.

The warnings come as President Donald Trump said he hoped the US would reopen for business next month.
Trump rather out of step with reality. Surely it must be so obvious how out of touch he is, this must mean it is possible he won't get reelected no?
 
This theory seems to be gaining some traction. Any informed thoughts? I certainly had those symptoms a while back but that probably means nothing.

Now that we’re all hyperaware of the new coronavirus, you might be thinking back on the last time you were sick. More specifically, you may be reflecting on that cold or respiratory illness you experienced back at the beginning of the year. Is there a chance that was actually COVID-19?

The main symptoms of COVID-19 include a cough, shortness of breath and a fever. Additionally, you might have digestive problems ― like nausea or diarrhea ― a headache and a sore throat. At the onset of the illness, you may experience a loss of smell or taste.
These symptoms can be mistaken for a bad cold or the flu, especially if you have a “mild” case of COVID-19. It’s also very possible to have the virus and not even notice, as some cases can be asymptomatic or negligible.
There’s evidence the coronavirus started spreading in America earlier than people were really tracking it. Some experts suspect that the first U.S. cases began in January. Lee Riley, chair of the division of infectious disease and vaccinology at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Public Health, told Medium that it’s safe to assume the virus has probably been spreading in your community for about two weeks before there’s a confirmed death.
Combine all of these facts, and the theory that some people may have already been infected with the virus and recovered isn’t an outrageous one. That may be slightly comforting, especially since some experts believe you may have some level of immunity once you get COVID-19.
Unfortunately, there’s no effective way yet to know if you’ve had the virus in the past and recovered.
“At this point, we don’t have a test to tell that,” William Hillmann, an associate inpatient physician director at Massachusetts General Hospital, told The Guardian.

 
Where I work is absolutely prime Territory for infections of this kind and I'm amazed there have been no formal reports of cases among the thousands of staff and clients there with a constant stream of people from all over the world.
I myself caught something insanely intense this time last year that it took me months to recover from - totally atypical for me.

I wonder if we ultimately they'll be able to "sequence" antibodies and spot these viruses repeatedly emerging, petering out and then mutating successfully....
 
I wonder if we ultimately they'll be able to "sequence" antibodies and spot these viruses repeatedly emerging, petering out and then mutating successfully....

Antibody tests are really to tell us things like what proportion of the public have had it.

In terms of tracking the evolution of the virus, many genome sequences are being obtained and shared all the time, since the early days of this outbreak, and that should continue.
 
This theory seems to be gaining some traction. Any informed thoughts? I certainly had those symptoms a while back but that probably means nothing.

Two parts to this really:

The big picture - same stuff that we have been talking about here in the past and quite intensely more recently. All the stuff about antibody tests and the true number of very mild and asymptomatic cases, that Oxford model that suggested a high percentage of the population might already have it, and related matters. No way to know without the data or sufficient time passing.

The personal - Certainly it has not been possible for me to categorically say that no illness I got since mid January could possibly have been Covid-19. But the chances of that possibility have changed massively since then, its almost hard to overstate this point because of the way the number of cases starts small and then, via doubling every so many days, eventually starts to get very large and to carry on getting much larger more quickly. I haent done the maths, but if I got ill right now then it would be much more likely to be Covid-19 than it would have been a month ago, and a month ago would have been much more likely than a month earlier still.
 
I suppose it's needles in haystacks.

Last year taught me a massive lesson about "House MD" vs. reality ... They were never going to actually diagnose what I had ...

They fortuitously spotted insulin resistance that left me short of energy and presumably may have slowed recovery through what others label as "ME", but not the initial virus ....

I imagine whoever I caught it from may have had a similar experience....
 
Without the antibody test it seems anyone's guess. I have had a dry cough on waking and another time I awoke in a muck sweat with what seemed like a temperature. None of these symptoms were sustained though however what is a very mild case? Apparently they can be so mild that one does not even feel ill at all and hardly notices.

This mildness does suggest the position could be somewhere between current model and the Oxford study, but we won't know until testing establishes it.
 
(CNN)There were over 74,000 cases of coronavirus in the United States as of Thursday midday. About half were in New York -- almost 10 times more than any other state.
Why has the outbreak hit New York so much harder than other places?
Health experts said the answers are largely specific to the New York metropolitan area -- its density and population, primarily -- but they are also a warning to other states that think they may be spared.
New York is the epicenter for now, but Covid-19 will not stop there.

As the United States records the most detected cases of coronavirus in the world, the president, who had questioned the need for additional ventilators, pushes industry to make more. States are pleading for supplies as shortages of protective gear endanger health workers the world over.

Right Now
The House passed the $2 trillion stimulus package by voice vote, sending it to President Trump for his signature.

Despite the claims of high density in NY these two articles (what you can see of them) don't really seem to offer a viable explanation as to why NY is the most heavily infected city in the USA at the moment. Perhaps the infection arrived there first and they are just days or a week or two further down the path which so many cities seem to have travelled down around the world.

What seems a common experience - from everywhere - is that NY hospitals don't have enough PPE and not enough ventilators and as such seem woefully inadequately prepared. And uniquely to the US, states still have to bid for the gear, in competition with other states. The Mayor's plea for Trump to establish federal distribution channels seems at the moment to have fallen on deaf ears.
 
There is a BBC report that New Orleans, which recently did hold it's Mardi Gras celebrations with many out of state visitors, is also now showing many infections.

The Louisiana city has around 1,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and, according to one academic study, saw the world’s fastest growth rate in terms of how quickly cases rose in the first fortnight after detection.

Suspicion has fallen on the city’s famous Mardi Gras festivities which ran throughout February before reaching a climax on the 25th, around a month ago. It attracted an estimated 1.4 million tourists.
 
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Yes xes how can China's numbers be true? Worldometers reports that China had 81,000 infections and 3,292 deaths. Italy with a tiny fraction of the Chinese population has 86,000 cases and 9,134 deaths. Unless China did something really exceptional, I accept that once the virus was identified China did respond big time but can their actions really explain the vast difference in their experience compared to Italy's experience?
 
Yes xes how can China's numbers be true? Worldometers reports that China had 81,000 infections and 3,292 deaths. Italy with a tiny fraction of the Chinese population has 86,000 cases and 9,134 deaths. Unless China did something really exceptional, I accept that once the virus was identified China did respond big time but can their actions really explain the vast difference in their experience compared to Italy's experience?

Indeed, something doesn't add up. I did see a picture from inside one of the hospitals in Wuhan, someone working in a hospital lab put out a written message. (photo of a bit of paper, dated, with something identifiable from inside the hospital next to it) Said all the usual about how much worse it was, also said that they weren't counting the 'sudden deaths' which accounting for at least 30% of deaths in the hospital. They said entire wards were being emptied and refilled in the same day.

I dread to think what the real numbers are. But on that first weekend when it exploded. (around the 20th of Jan) there were a couple of videos of doctors pleading for help saying that there are at least 100000 people infected and trying to get treatment. I read some time later that on that weekend, roughly 150,000 people got sent home as the hospitals were full. And the number of videos of the dead being taken out of homes. You have to wonder how many of those people went home and died, infecting their families, and anyone on the bus ride home.

This has been massively down played. It really is the only explanation to the global reaction.


And were the Tencent numbers that got shown for a moment, the real numbers?
 
Just chatting online with a friend in Pakistan. Apparently they are using a non alcohol based sanitizer, though he doesn't know what it's made with. Would that be possible? He genuinely believes that God will save them. Looks like they are managing some social distancing but there are also chaotic scenes. Religious belief seems to be having a negative impact in a lot of places.

Is it possible that we will be in a position to offer help to countries which lack the health and communication infrastructure, as well as funds to deal with this in time to limit the spread.



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Massive new restrictions in Ireland starting at midnight tonight for two weeks. All stay at home and exercise within 2km of house.
Only leave house for groceries, household equipment, medical appointment and family business.
Continue to practice distancing when out. They really upping the game to isolate and contain infections. Infections and deaths still rising. This is surreal times now..
 
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Is it possible that we will be in a position to offer help to countries which lack the health and communication infrastructure, as well as funds to deal with this in time to limit the spread.
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We will be obliged to out of a sort of international comradeship but also and more relevantly out of pure self interest, if we sat back and permitted countries like these to be massive viral hot spots we would never return to the sort of world order we knew in our past.
 
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