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You meant to then say "in the first wave" didn't you?

Hospital deaths will go well over 15,000 tomorrow. So over 20,000 in what? 6-10 more days. In the first wave.

I dont have anything in mind in regards subsequent waves, hopefully the future approach means there wont be anything in the future that I would describe as a wave again, although there will be ongoing deaths.

The 20,000 claim is about a month old now and I didnt think much of it when it was first made, it was a stupid thing for them to say. I do need to go back at some point and see what the exact wording of their claim was, I dont remember if waves were involved for example. Whatever the detail, they arent going to live up to it, and contrary to some peoples understandable fears some weeks back, I dont think they are going to be able to try to blame the public for that.
 
I dont have anything in mind in regards subsequent waves, hopefully the future approach means there wont be anything in the future that I would describe as a wave again, although there will be ongoing deaths.

The 20,000 claim is about a month old now and I didnt think much of it when it was first made, it was a stupid thing for them to say. I do need to go back at some point and see what the exact wording of their claim was, I dont remember if waves were involved for example. Whatever the detail, they arent going to live up to it, and contrary to some peoples understandable fears some weeks back, I dont think they are going to be able to try to blame the public for that.

FYI

It was Stephen Powis, NHS England medical director, who first said,

If we can keep deaths below 20,000 we will have done very well in this epidemic

It was 27/28 March and deaths had just gone over 1,000. As you can see there was no reference to a 'wave' but he did say 'epidemic' not 'pandemic'.
 
Is there a good dashboard for UK figures now?

I was using the gov.uk one, but they've changed it in a way that looks like a transparent attempt to hide the numbers (though I expect it is just common or garden incompetence).
 
In case anyone is interested it seems Trump's press conferences are relayed on YouTube. Yesterday's is here:



I don't think they are standing so close together in the actual video.
 
South Korea

Why the UK could still learn from South Korea on how to tackle Covid-19
The political class may be wrong to assume that the British public are opposed to a more intrusive approach.
..
One reason why the debate over how the United Kingdom navigates the age of Covid-19 should be held in public is that the country might well have a different view of the measures adopted in South Korea than the government thinks.
from 16/04/2020 Why the UK could still learn from South Korea on how to tackle Covid-19

Not a very in depth article, the main issue, UK population may not mind more intrusive measures.
 
South Korea

'In South Korea, patients cured of Covid-19 have tested positive later,' FM tells FRANCE 24
In an interview with FRANCE 24, South Korea's Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha discussed her country’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic
..
However, Kang warned that some patients in South Korea who had been cured of Covid-19 have "tested positive" a few days later.
..
Asked if she feared a second wave of the virus, she admitted that "(of) those fully cured and released, many of them have been found to test positive a few days after", stressing that the nature of the virus was still not fully known.
..
Kang said the idea of a mandatory lockdown would not be acceptable to South Koreans and that the country did not impose one even when there was an early outbreak of the virus in February. "The idea of a mandatory blockade would be contrary to our principle of openness," she explained.
She hailed the World Health Organization as "a very collaborative and very helpful partner" during the crisis, refusing to endorse US President Donald Trump's criticism of the organisation.
from 13/04/2020 The Interview - 'In South Korea, patients cured of Covid-19 have tested positive later,' FM tells FRANCE 24
 
In case anyone is interested it seems Trump's press conferences are relayed on YouTube. Yesterday's is here:



I don't think they are standing so close together in the actual video.

They took the photo, though. And there's an intruding shoulder on the left, almost exactly 2 imperial meters away from Trump :hmm:
 
More on South Korea and these reinfections.

In South Korea, A Growing Number Of COVID-19 Patients Test Positive After Recovery
By Friday, Korean health authorities had identified 163 patients who tested positive again after a full recovery. The number more than doubled in about a week, up from 74 cases on April 9. Those patients — just over 2% of the country's 7,829 recovered patients — are now back in isolation.
..
To find out reasons for relapse, South Korean health authorities are running a range of tests and vetting various scenarios. The World Health Organization said last week that it is investigating the issue. While a fuller analysis will take at least a few weeks, early findings suggest there can be more than one cause.
Top KCDC officials said in recent briefings that the most likely possibility is reactivation of remaining viruses in patients' systems. If a patient had not developed sufficient immunity against the virus or if a patient's immune system weakens after recovery, the previously undetectable level of virus concentration could rebound. Or the novel coronavirus may be capable of staying dormant before reactivating.
..
Another possibility is that tests are picking up dead virus particles that are no longer infectious or transmissible.
from 17/04/2020 NPR Choice page
 
They took the photo, though. And there's an intruding shoulder on the left, almost exactly 2 imperial meters away from Trump :hmm:
They are now distancing both the presenters and journalists, I have just been looking at that video (from yesterday) and they are being more careful. eta scratch that, they are still very close together .. dummies

The jist of the press conference is that states can start phased openings of their economies, with guidelines provided by the federal government.
 
Hmmm, not good:



Also possible brain involvement.

 
Germany

Coronavirus 'under control' in Germany, as some countries plan to relax lockdowns
Health minister says Germany will produce 50m face masks a week by the summer
..
Germany has declared its coronavirus outbreak under control as it prepares to take its first tentative steps out of lockdown next week, while several European countries unveiled contact-tracing mobile apps aimed at facilitating a gradual return to a more normal life.
..
Smaller shops in Germany are due to reopen from Monday with some pupils set to return to school on 4 May, although other restrictions will remain in place including bans on gatherings of more than two people in public and on large public events.
..
Spahn said Germany, which has recorded 138,000 cases and nearly 4,100 deaths, would be producing up to 50m face masks a week by August, which the public would be “strongly recommended” to wear, adding that a contact-tracing app would be available for download within three to four weeks.
from 17/04/2020 Coronavirus 'under control' in Germany, as some countries plan to relax lockdowns

And

Germany says its outbreak is 'under control'
Germany's health minister says the month-long lockdown has brought his country's coronavirus outbreak under control.

Jens Spahn said that since 12 April the number of recovered patients had been consistently higher than the number of new infections.
..
In Germany 3,868 have died of Covid-19 - fewer than in Italy, Spain or France.

However, the number of fatalities is still rising in Germany, as is the number of infected health care workers.
..
On Wednesday Chancellor Angela Merkel announced tentative steps to start easing the restrictions.
But Mrs Merkel warned there was "little margin for error" and that "caution should be the watchword". Sports and leisure facilities, as well as cafes and restaurants, will remain closed indefinitely.
from 17/04/2020 Germany coronavirus outbreak 'under control'
 
A disagreement on German fatalities across the two articles above.

So Germany will be producing 50m face masks per week - that sounds like a good idea, I bet UK could have such an initiative, anyone heard of such an initiative?
 
Last edited:
Coronavirus Might Attack the Brain, Too
Strange gets stranger as Covid-19 now appears to invade more than the respiratory and digestive systems

Robert Roy Britt
Robert Roy Britt

Follow
Apr 9 · 4 min read


1*lCjH2IFrc2PB2G_ij-c90A.jpeg

1*lCjH2IFrc2PB2G_ij-c90A.jpeg
 
Early analyses of Covid-19 patients in January told of the most common symptoms: fever, cough, and difficulty breathing. More diagnosed cases and research revealed less common symptoms, such as vomiting and diarrhea, indicating that in some people, the coronavirus was disrupting the digestive system, not just the respiratory tract.

By late February, we learned of mysterious cases involving no symptoms at all — silent super-spreaders of a deadly disease who didn’t even know they had it and felt nothing. Then, last month, things got stranger, as reports emerged of diagnosed Covid-19 cases in people who had lost their sense of smell yet showed few or no other symptoms of the disease. Along the way, physicians reported some people with Covid-19 experiencing mild cold- or flu-like symptoms, ranging from sniffles to fatigue.

And yet it’s still getting stranger. SARS‐CoV‐2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, appears to be attacking people’s brains.

It’s not yet clear how SARS-CoV-2 might be affecting the brain, but experience with other viruses, including the flu, suggests it certainly could make its way there.
Evidence so far, however, involves only anecdotes from physicians telling of Covid-19 patients initially experiencing confusion, headaches, and other symptoms that may be caused by inflammation of the brain, along with early studies involving small numbers of patients — sometimes just one.

Meanwhile, it’s not clear whether or to what extent the coronavirus attacks the brain directly versus Covid-19’s respiratory effects robbing the brain of oxygen.

“It is very difficult to separate the two,” says Chethan Rao, MD, a practicing physician and associate professor of neurology and neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine Medical Center.

Rao suspects both factors are at work. And things can deteriorate quickly. He has seen otherwise healthy Covid-19 patients go from talking normally while receiving a small amount of oxygen to being put on first a ventilator and then a more serious heart-lung support system, all in the space of four hours.

Multiple cases reported
The possibility that Covid-19 is invading the brain directly emerged back in February in a study out of Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the initial outbreak. Then, in March, researchers raised the possibility in the Journal of Medical Virology, stating that this coronavirus, SARS‐CoV‐2, is similar to others that “are not always confined to the respiratory tract and… may also invade the central nervous system inducing neurological diseases.”

Recently, a woman in her late fifties who had experienced three days of cough, fever, and “altered mental status” was tested for flu, which she did not have. Turns out she had Covid-19. Brain scans showed unusual swelling, and physicians diagnosed it as acute necrotizing hemorrhagic encephalopathy, which is “a rare central nervous system complication secondary to influenza or other viral infections which is characterized by altered mental status and seizures, and often this further leads to profound disability or death.”

Other tests were done on the woman to eliminate some other viruses that might cause the diagnosed condition. (Influenza is known to cause, in some cases, encephalitis and its neurological consequences, such as strokes and seizures, Rao says.)

“This is the first reported case of Covid-19-associated acute necrotizing hemorrhagic encephalopathy,” the physicians, from the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, concluded on March 31 in the journal Radiology. “As the number of patients with Covid-19 increases worldwide, clinicians and radiologists should be watching for this presentation among patients presenting with Covid-19 and altered mental status.”

In another case, a 74-year-old man with preexisting neurological conditions had suddenly lost his ability to speak. He was ultimately diagnosed with Covid-19. “Since Covid-19 affects the elderly more and those with preexisting conditions, patients with prior neurological conditions and acute respiratory symptoms are at an increased risk of encephalopathy on initial presentation,” his physicians wrote.
 
Getting into the brain
It’s not yet clear how SARS-CoV-2 might be affecting the brain, but experience with other viruses, including the flu, suggests it certainly could make its way there, Rao and others say.
SARS-CoV-2 is rather sneaky, a new study in the journal Nature suggests. The virus enters human cells through a certain type of cell receptor. It appears to often hold initially in the upper respiratory system, mainly in the throat, without typically causing many symptoms there.
Then, in cases destined to become more severe, the virus migrates into the lungs and/or the stomach.
The cells with the right receptors for SARS-CoV-2 are found extensively in the lungs, Rao tells Elemental, explaining why breathing problems are common in severe Covid-19 cases. But those receptors are also found in blood vessels in the blood-brain barrier and in nerve endings, he explains.
“It is definitely possible that the nervous system is being invaded through these means,” Rao says.
Until more definitive research can be done, Covid-19’s mysterious ways are an ever-moving target, says Peter Gulick, DO, an oncologist and infectious disease specialist at Michigan State University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine. And he’s not ready to accept the case studies as proof of what might be happening.
“Acute encephalitis is not a known presentation of Covid-19, even though it has presented with other coronaviruses,” Gulick says by email. “But we will have to continue to follow cases to see if any neurological conditions do occur as a result of Covid-19.”


 
So it seems Lady Gaga is producing a concert or some kind of online event

One World Together At Home

Which will take place this Saturday and seems in part or main to be a fund raiser.

 
Sure I read somewhere on here mention that Trump has hinted recently about the virus originating from a lab.

Anyway, it may have originated from some leaked (intelligence) cables according to this:

 
Sure I read somewhere on here mention that Trump has hinted recently about the virus originating from a lab.

Anyway, it may have originated from some leaked (intelligence) cables according to this:


Trump probably used his world class understanding of generic sequencing and analysis of virus mutations to prove this story is true.
 
Sure I read somewhere on here mention that Trump has hinted recently about the virus originating from a lab.

Anyway, it may have originated from some leaked (intelligence) cables according to this:


No.
This is not true.


If you follow the links for this story it’s all Fox, the Daily Mail, and the rest of the predicatable jerk circle partisan prejudiced scaremongers.


There is no credible evidence for this story.


New diseases have emerged throughout human history, and we have seen two major coronavirus outbreaks in the last two decades: SARS and MERS. So we shouldn’t be surprised by the arrival of the covid-19 virus.

However, rumours on social media suggest that the outbreak was human-made. Some say the virus leaked from a Chinese lab studying coronaviruses. Others suggest the virus was engineered to spread among humans.

Even the most secure laboratories do sometimes have accidents, and a human-engineered pandemic has been identified as a possible risk to our civilisation, but there is no good evidence that either has happened.

Many similar viruses are found in wild bats, and it seems likely that is the origin of this one, probably via an intermediate host. Similarly, we know that both SARS and MERS came from bats, so there is no reason to invoke a laboratory accident.

Researchers led by Shan-Lu Liu at the Ohio State University say there is “no credible evidence” of genetic engineering (Emerging Microbes & Infections, doi.org/dpvw). The virus’s genome has been sequenced, and if it had been altered, we would expect to see signs of inserted gene sequences. But we now know the points that differ from bat viruses are scattered in a fairly random way, just as they would be if the new virus had evolved naturally.
 
Sure I read somewhere on here mention that Trump has hinted recently about the virus originating from a lab.
..
There have been a number of articles mentioning this as a possibility, even though dna analysis suggests strongly that the virus originated in bats. Of course it could have originated in bats and still have been released from a lab, the two are not mutually exclusive.
 
No.
This is not true.


If you follow the links for this story it’s all Fox, the Daily Mail, and the rest of the predicatable jerk circle partisan prejudiced scaremongers.


There is no credible evidence for this story.


New diseases have emerged throughout human history, and we have seen two major coronavirus outbreaks in the last two decades: SARS and MERS. So we shouldn’t be surprised by the arrival of the covid-19 virus.

However, rumours on social media suggest that the outbreak was human-made. Some say the virus leaked from a Chinese lab studying coronaviruses. Others suggest the virus was engineered to spread among humans.

Even the most secure laboratories do sometimes have accidents, and a human-engineered pandemic has been identified as a possible risk to our civilisation, but there is no good evidence that either has happened.

Many similar viruses are found in wild bats, and it seems likely that is the origin of this one, probably via an intermediate host. Similarly, we know that both SARS and MERS came from bats, so there is no reason to invoke a laboratory accident.

Researchers led by Shan-Lu Liu at the Ohio State University say there is “no credible evidence” of genetic engineering (Emerging Microbes & Infections, doi.org/dpvw). The virus’s genome has been sequenced, and if it had been altered, we would expect to see signs of inserted gene sequences. But we now know the points that differ from bat viruses are scattered in a fairly random way, just as they would be if the new virus had evolved naturally.

Im not discounting the info you’ve posted from the new scientist and appreciate it.

But going back to your first paragraph regarding the credibility of the sources of this story - according to Fox, this story originated from The Washington Post.

U.S. Embassy officials warned in January 2018 about inadequate safety at the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab and passed on information about scientists conducting risky research on coronavirus from bats, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
 
[QUOTE="Marty1, post: 16502450, member: 7870]
Im not discounting the info you’ve posted from the new scientist and appreciate it.

But going back to your first paragraph regarding the credibility of the sources of this story - according to Fox, this story originated from The Washington Post.
[/QUOTE]


I can’t read that article because it’s behind a paywall; have you read it Marty1 ?

The quote in your post says that there were concerns in 2018 about safety and risky research. It says nothing about a leak.

It’s just wrong to extrapolate “there was a leak in 2019” from “there were concerns in 2018”.
 
[QUOTE="Marty1, post: 16502450, member: 7870]
Im not discounting the info you’ve posted from the new scientist and appreciate it.

But going back to your first paragraph regarding the credibility of the sources of this story - according to Fox, this story originated from The Washington Post.


I can’t read that article because it’s behind a paywall; have you read it Marty1 ?

The quote in your post says that there were concerns in 2018 about safety and risky research. It says nothing about a leak.

It’s just wrong to extrapolate “there was a leak in 2019” from “there were concerns in 2018”.
[/QUOTE]

No, same as you, it’s locked behind a paywall.

May just be a load of shit but thought it of note, especially the ‘leaked cables’ angle. Last time leaked cables hit the news was the whole WikiLeaks thing iirc.
 
India - Mumbai

Anita Jain: Covid-19—lockdown in Mumbai
Mumbai has over twice the population of New York or London, with a land area less than half that of London. Over 18 million people inhabit this city. This is about a third of the population of Italy with less than 0.02% of its land area. The fear of spread of disease in Mumbai’s slums and likely impact on the population and health services is very real.
..
I gather the situation is similar to lockdown elsewhere, based on news and reports. We are staring at economic challenges, equally urgent but unattended medical needs, mental health challenges of living under lockdown and learning to live with each other in families, and more.
..
Municipal workers, police personnel, and health workers who often go unnoticed, and not infrequently bear the brunt of public angst and criticism, are finally being given due recognition for their relentless service in a crisis. It was a sight to behold when residents in Mumbai’s towering skyscrapers clapped and clanged utensils to make some noise for these services while those in adjoining slums responded with equal vigour in unison. Yes, we are united in this fight, as humans. And one thing helps us go day after another day. Hope.
from 15/04/2020 Anita Jain: Covid-19—lockdown in Mumbai - The BMJ
 
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