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Bahnhof Strasse said:
Cos the company might well go bust?
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I know it's terrible for the workers, and it'll be an highly unpopular view, but I do feel that unfortunately loads of this stuff needed to go anyway. The travel industry as it is is totally unsustainable and has all sorts of other negative impacts. It obviously would have been much better to softly transition away from it with a cultural and social shift, but this more brutal way might be the only chance we have in reality.

Most of the travel industry, huge chunks of the hospitality industry, some of the entertainment industry, all of the fashion industry, and a whole load of other stuff that's collapsing we'll be better off without longer term. What we should be doing is not trying to re-establish those (and other similar areas) but re-shaping our whole economy and productive capability and put the effort in there instead.
 
LynnDoyleCooper said:
I know it's terrible for the workers, and it'll be an highly unpopular view, but I do feel that unfortunately loads of this stuff needed to go anyway. The travel industry as it is is totally unsustainable and has all sorts of other negative impacts. It obviously would have been much better to softly transition away from it with a cultural and social shift, but this more brutal way might be the only chance we have in reality.

Most of the travel industry, huge chunks of the hospitality industry, some of the entertainment industry, all of the fashion industry, and a whole load of other stuff that's collapsing we'll be better off without longer term.
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Probably right, but how far do you go? Banning all live music would be fabulous for the planet, same with theatres that droves of people travel from all over to visit, often the theatre itself tours. Closing the museums and galleries would prevent a lot of needless journeys too. All this shit can be enjoyed online, as we have done the past few months...
 
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Bahnhof Strasse said:
Probably right, but how far do you go? Banning all live music would be fabulous for the planet, same with theatres that droves of people travel from all over to visit, often the theatre itself tours. Closing the museums and galleries would prevent a lot of needless journeys too. All this shit can be enjoyed online, as we have done the past few months...
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I wouldn't go full Mao myself, but it'd be easy to start with some of the worst and most problematic stuff l mentioned, and museums and live music wouldn't be that, infact we could and should have more of that when everyone has more time for creative pursuits. These shifts would all need to be financially supported though so most people personally don't lose out, and accompanied by a massively pushed campaign to explain why it's happening.

<Early morning coffee fueled benevolent dictator musings.>
 
LynnDoyleCooper said:
I wouldn't go full Mao myself, but it'd be easy to start with some of the worst and most problematic stuff l mentioned, and museums and live music wouldn't be that, infact we could and should have more of that when everyone has more time for creative pursuits. These shifts would all need to be financially supported though so most people personally don't lose out, and accompanied by a massively pushed campaign to explain why it's happening.

<Early morning coffee fueled benevolent dictator musings.>
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Re live music; my eldest was due to see My Chemical Romance in Dublin and Billie Elish in Paris in May and July this year, how could she do that if the travel industry is dismantled? How indeed could those acts get to Europe from the US?
 
Bahnhof Strasse said:
Re live music; my eldest was due to see My Chemical Romance in Dublin and Billie Elish in Paris in May and July this year, how could she do that if the travel industry is dismantled? How indeed could those acts get to Europe from the US?
Click to expand...

I'm not suggesting no travel at all, but I do think traveling to see gigs by planes twice in 3 months (if I get you?) is something that's a ridiculous situation that's a result of the way society is set up now, and is easily within the ability of humanity to sort out. More local venues, fewer but longer tours to play these, whatever...

But yes, I think the uncomfortable position is there are some things we're going to have to stop doing (or do much, much less) but the positives we'll gain in return will far outweigh the things we'll give up. And I don't think people should feel bad or be told off for doing them now at all, we all do things like that (or similar) but we do need to move away from that to something better, and maybe this catastrophe is the best chance we have?

Anyway, sorry it's a bit of a derail, probably should go in the coronavirus remaking our economy thread or somewhere like that.
 
Plane to Dublin, Eurostar to Paris.
Smaller venues will encourage more travelling though, if My Chemical Romance played Wembley Stadium she may have been able to get a ticket, but they were booked in to a smaller gaff in Milton Keynes and the tickets were all gone within minutes (tours are another issue) so she could only get a ticket for their Dublin show...
 
Bahnhof Strasse said:
Plane to Dublin, Eurostar to Paris.
Smaller venues will encourage more travelling though, if My Chemical Romance played Wembley Stadium she may have been able to get a ticket, but they were booked in to a smaller gaff in Milton Keynes and the tickets were all gone within minutes (tours are another issue) so she could only get a ticket for their Dublin show...
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Like I said, not beyond the ability of humanity to come up with solutions. And that the music and the entertainment industry might have to change, but let's deal with the bigger stuff first; food production, work patterns, local and regional travel, healthcare, education, defence, etc.
 
return of caleb said:
Oof. Hasn't aged well in only a few hours. Four new cases in New Zealand from no known source.

The reality of the suppression vs. eradication debate as it's been played out in the Antipodes is that coronavirus wasn't really 'here' the first time around; I think that context is often lost when New Zealand or - until recently - Australia's success is compared to the criminal handling of the pandemic by the British government.

New Zealand claimed eradication, but this seems to have come at the expense of actually building up public health systems to track and trace new cases. Now unless you're going to close down your borders entirely, 100%, which no country is going to do - and I'm sure you'll agree, is not defensible - you have to live with the possibility that new cases may pop up. You can't close your border 95% of the way and claim eradication; if you do that, you have to have controls in place to identify where cases have arisen from immediately.

I'm not a 'reopen the economy' nutter by any means: I lost a member of my partner's family to coronavirus recently, I know how serious this is. But anybody touting NZ as a model needs to be serious about the social implications of such an 'eradication' strategy to be successful (as NZ's has now proven not to be).
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I don't think 4 or 5 new cases invalidates New Zealand's model. They've still saved a lot of lives and their economy is still nowhere near as depressed as ours. I imagine they'll re-open Auckland again and be back to normal long before us.

The 'social implications' you vaguely alude to seem to me to be much lower than the UK - New Zealanders have been living normal lives until this Auckland lockdown.

I don't know about their ability to track and trace new cases but I imagine they're doing better than the UK or they would be having cases pop up all over. Have they been proven to be bad at this?

It's true that NZ never really had it in a widespread way, but that was partly due to implementing border quarantine quite quickly, while the UK took literally months to come up with any border quarantine process. It wasn't outside the control of governments whether they got widespread community transmission - with the exception perhaps of Italy, which was the canary in the coalmine.
 
Bahnhof Strasse said:
Cos the company might well go bust?
Click to expand...
They're mainly paying by credit card and expect to Section 75 it. Which is what they successfully did back in March when the company was refusing refunds.

Payment by cheque, transfer, etc. is way down, even from the people who usually like to show off that they bank with Coutts.
 
Brainaddict said:
I don't think 4 or 5 new cases invalidates New Zealand's model. They've still saved a lot of lives and their economy is still nowhere near as depressed as ours. I imagine they'll re-open Auckland again and be back to normal long before us.

The 'social implications' you vaguely alude to seem to me to be much lower than the UK - New Zealanders have been living normal lives until this Auckland lockdown.

I don't know about their ability to track and trace new cases but I imagine they're doing better than the UK or they would be having cases pop up all over. Have they been proven to be bad at this?

It's true that NZ never really had it in a widespread way, but that was partly due to implementing border quarantine quite quickly, while the UK took literally months to come up with any border quarantine process. It wasn't outside the control of governments whether they got widespread community transmission - with the exception perhaps of Italy, which was the canary in the coalmine.
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I think it invalidates New Zealand's model in the sense that there is no such thing as eradication until a vaccine is developed - no man, or nation, is an island unto himself and all that, and the NZ experience - even if the numbers remain low - shows that the possibility of the virus being totally eradicated within national borders is incredibly fragile.

Remember, I was quoting you saying you now think NZ might have had it right all along and that might be the way to go, so when I talk of 'social implications' I'm referring to the social implications of implementing such a strategy now, in countries that aren't small islands with five million people at the end of the world. It's not just about political will: such a strategy could only be pursued and enforced with incredibly punitive measures internally and externally, for potentially a long period of time (until a vaccine is developed).
 
frogwoman said:
They think it came in on an infected frozen package dont they?
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That's what they're saying at the moment. It seems a bit far fetched but the connection is that the first case identified was a guy who worked in frieghting - the thing is, we know from the nature of that work that it's an environment where the virus spreads easily.

Nine cases now. They're opening up tests to the wider community.
 
return of caleb said:
I think it invalidates New Zealand's model in the sense that there is no such thing as eradication until a vaccine is developed - no man, or nation, is an island unto himself and all that, and the NZ experience - even if the numbers remain low - shows that the possibility of the virus being totally eradicated within national borders is incredibly fragile.

Remember, I was quoting you saying you now think NZ might have had it right all along and that might be the way to go, so when I talk of 'social implications' I'm referring to the social implications of implementing such a strategy now, in countries that aren't small islands with five million people at the end of the world. It's not just about political will: such a strategy could only be pursued and enforced with incredibly punitive measures internally and externally, for potentially a long period of time (until a vaccine is developed).
Click to expand...
I think everyone knows that no suppression strategy can be perfect and that the virus will pop up here and there whatever you do. That's a lot better than accepting a constant stream of deaths because you think you can avoid economic damage (you can't, as the UK has shown).

I suspect the rate in the UK is low enough that we could do proper suppression without going back into full lockdown, just doing a few area-specific ones. It would require extremely good tracing by a well-trained, non-privatised workforce, rapid testing, enforceable quarantining (punitive but very selectively so rather than across whole population), and - the one they want to avoid - proper quarantining at the border. I don't think this latter is too high a price to pay myself. International holidays=higher death rate at the moment. We can live without them for a bit longer.

I don't think most people would feel the impact of a proper suppression regime except for actually having to register their presence in pubs, trains etc - which is stupidly optional at the moment. If you had been in a room with someone who had covid then you would feel the full extent of the regime, but remember that's only those who've met a thousand or so people a day and would drop very quickly once proper tracing was happening.
 
Brainaddict said:
I think everyone knows that no suppression strategy can be perfect and that the virus will pop up here and there whatever you do. That's a lot better than accepting a constant stream of deaths because you think you can avoid economic damage (you can't, as the UK has shown).

I suspect the rate in the UK is low enough that we could do proper suppression without going back into full lockdown, just doing a few area-specific ones. It would require extremely good tracing by a well-trained, non-privatised workforce, rapid testing, enforceable quarantining (punitive but very selectively so rather than across whole population), and - the one they want to avoid - proper quarantining at the border. I don't think this latter is too high a price to pay myself. International holidays=higher death rate at the moment. We can live without them for a bit longer.

I don't think most people would feel the impact of a proper suppression regime except for actually having to register their presence in pubs, trains etc - which is stupidly optional at the moment. If you had been in a room with someone who had covid then you would feel the full extent of the regime, but remember that's only those who've met a thousand or so people a day and would drop very quickly once proper tracing was happening.
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I think we're possibly talking at cross purposes here because for the most part... I agree. The difference is you're talking about NZ as an example of successful 'suppression strategy', whereas here (in the Antipodes...) it's being touted as something else -- as an eradication strategy, i.e. what can happen if we completely lockdown again for an undisclosed period of time, and lock our borders indefinitely. There are Australian commentators who are saying 'no, look, our suppression strategy is wrong - it's complete eradication or nothing, like NZ'. Perhaps that's the context that's missing.

I personally disagree on the borders thing -- I think it's more complex; particularly living Down Under with a very hard border closure, when my immediate family are in the UK and Ireland. My partner and I were meant to be boarding a flight to visit my family and go to her sister's wedding in Greece tomorrow: not happening. And many other families are in the same position, and there's no answer on when international travel will be allowed again. I certainly don't think it should be a free for all! but that kind of thing does take its toll - particularly in a country where 3/10 people are born abroad.
 
Apologies if we've had this already; it's a pre-print paper from May, which seems like a long time ago, now. Pre-prints are not yet peer reviewed, but it seems like a reasonable study in my non-expert* opinion.

www.biorxiv.org

Systemic and mucosal antibody secretion specific to SARS-CoV-2 during mild versus severe COVID-19

Background Infection with the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes an acute illness termed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Humoral immune responses likely play an important role in containing SARS-CoV-2, however, the determinants of SARS-CoV-2-specific...
www.biorxiv.org www.biorxiv.org

The researchers tested for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in the blood, snot, tears and saliva of:
  • covid-19 patients with mild or severe disease
  • healthcare workers who had been riskily exposed to patients with confirmed covid-19.
The healthcare workers either reported having symptoms or having none.

I think two of their results were especially interesting. The researchers found that:
  • some people had antibodies in their mucous even though none could be found in their blood
  • the antibody response in mucous decreased with age.
They think this could be why children have mild or no symptoms: they fight it off in the eyes, nose and throat, so it doesn't have a chance to get into the rest of the body.

This is also interesting to me personally as I had a negative blood test result today, but still think I may have had it, confined largely to my eyes. (And was looking for evidence that I am correct! :oops: )

* Spotted my "nob-expert" typo just in time! :thumbs:
 
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frogwoman said:
They think it came in on an infected frozen package dont they?
Click to expand...

I posted this on another thread but looks like it may be worth dropping in here as well.

spitfire said:
*reply to Yu Gi Oh * I appreciate you aren't in the UK but just going to latch onto this post for some input.

I manufacture food for a living and get the Food Standards Agency emails that recall (potentially) dodgy food. I haven't seen any that have been recalled because they are COVID infected. Normally they recall food just on the off chance it is contaminated or has foreign bodies in it. If it was going through the food supply chain we'd be surely looking at many times the magnitude of cases we currently have?

Just been sent this which is also interesting. It refers to small cafes etc. but the principle is the same.

www.food.gov.uk

FSA launches campaign to help food sector adapt to the 'new normal'

The Here to Help campaign provides a practical guide for food businesses on how to register, re-open and adapt to the way they trade safely during the COVID-19 pandemic.
www.food.gov.uk www.food.gov.uk

"Our advice is clear that it remains very unlikely that people can catch COVID-19 from food. COVID-19 is a respiratory illness and not known to be transmitted by exposure to food or food packaging. We are continuing to work closely with industry and other partners to ensure the UK food supply remains safe."

But I am very open to any other information if anyone has it and do not present this as case closed.
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Mr.Bishie said:
Have we had this yet?

www.independent.co.uk

Scientists say social distancing 'isn't helpful' as evidence mounts that coronavirus is airborne

'For aerosol-based transmission, measures such as physical distancing by six feet would not be helpful in an indoor setting'
www.independent.co.uk www.independent.co.uk
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That all kind of makes sense to me. It fits with what we know about high risk things such as pubs etc. Really good ventilation seems so important to me and that is the worry going into Autumn and Winter.
 
frogwoman said:
The virus.
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Fair enough.
It doesn’t make me happy to say, but my feeling, based on the way this virus seems to snap back to a fairly typical propagation model in general, regardless of measures (with perhaps a few exceptions so far), is that it is likely to do what it does, with any measures only having a slowing effect.

Time will tell. I’d be very happy to be wrong. It’s a bit of a depressing thought.

On the bright side: I’m not a virologist..
 
Supine said:
Modelling has been very useful so far. If you expect all models to be perfect you've set your expectation too high.
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Modelling has failed on many counts so far. I work in the area and am well aware of the limitations, as well as how seductive it can be to those looking for pat answers.
 
8ball said:
Modelling has failed on many counts so far. I work in the area and am well aware of the limitations, as well as how seductive it can be to those looking for pat answers.
Click to expand...

The one instance I saw (after the fact rather than modeling) was the virus being spread being virtually all along the air flow in the office, with very little on other floors of the building despite people touching same bannisters, lift buttons etc. That sort of modeling would seem valuable?
 
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