Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

I think you have to take into account that to know each persons status you really need to test every day and at some point decisions have to be made without perfect information. It may be that the officialdom is incompetent but on the other hand it may be that medical staff are just trying to achieve a damage limitation exercise without having all the information - that is usually the way medicine works even in the best of situations.

 

I am genuinely worried that the UK govt are not taking it seriously in any way. I have not seen any notices in newspapers nor on TV about importance of prevention or the fact people should stay at home and call 111 instead of just going to their A&E or doctors surgeries. There’s no information campaign. I was telling my boyfriend about it and he still thinks it’s just like a flu, because if it was serious the govt would have said or done something.

then the fact that I really cannot see the UK govt putting entire towns into lockdown, the way Italy has rightly done. I think complacency may be the norm here. I’ve read reports in newspapers from doctors/nurses who work on the NHS saying the govt and central information is being really complacent about the outbreak and things aren’t put into place that should have been when they’ve been on the frontline. I hope, I really hope I will be proven wrong though if things get worse.

 

Yes - I thought afterwards that’s what you meant. Yes I’m glad about that too.

 

We are not dominated by evidence based policy formulation or considerations, as a general statement, so I share that concern.

 

There is this scene from the movie "Contagion" going around:

"We need to make sure nobody knows until everybody knows"

I'm not saying health officials are doing this on purpose but at least here in Germany the public statements don't match the situation as many people perceive it at all.

Everything seems slowly and reluctant.

 

Yes, but there are dangers in taking pragmatic decisions if one conceals information from, or misleads, others who might be affected. You have to hope that all turns out well.

 

The statements that face masks are ineffective don't ring true to me. Insufficient, perhaps. Of no effect, not true.

That's preemptive panic reduction PR IMO. People running around with masks reduces the 'feel food factor' economically, with timing that doesn't bode well for economic pressures already impinging on some states.

 

Here's what PROMed mail has to say about the Diamond Princess people in UK:

Arrowe Park Hospital is a large hospital on the edge of a public open space (Arrowe Park), and just across from lots of housing. The people who live near by were freaked out enough by the first 2 lots of people who arrived there. I imagine they'll be even more worried now. Anyone who gets sick will be taken to Royal Liverpool University Hospital to a high level infectious diseases unit.

 

The effect of seeing hospital staff with face masks was that of making me very aware of a risk of infection. So I kept a distance to other people and washed my hands. In that sense face masks work. They might also work by making people not touch their face. Limit droplet spread is probably useful even if it's not perfect.

 

This morning they reported four deaths. Now there are six. The last one had cancer which was presumably a large factor. They were all relatively old too.

 

So the WHO still doesn't want to call it "pandemic" stressing that every country has to do their own risk assessment.

I understand the word can cause panic.

But does anybody know what else comes with it? Can there be provided more international funding, can state officials impose more draconian measures etc.? Or does it really not matter what the WHO calls it?

 

According to the telegraph: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www....mic-coronavirus-outbreak-economic-impact/amp/

“Is the coronavirus a pandemic? Given that the virus has now spread to 31 countries, across multiple continents, it satisfies the World Health Organisation’s definition of a pandemic. At the moment, WHO has only declared the outbreak to be a public health emergency.


What happens if WHO declares a pandemic?
If WHO declares a pandemic, it could have serious consequences.

According to WHO’s pandemic preparedness plan, a response to a pandemic would require national governments to action the “full mobilisation of health systems, facilities, and workers at national and subnational levels”, to “distribute personal protective equipment” and to “distribute antivirals, and other medical supplies in accordance with national plans

As such, a pandemic designation can be a significant challenge to some countries. When the WHO declared a pandemic for the H1N1 influenza outbreak in 2009, the decision was criticised by some countries who felt that it caused unnecessary panic. Furthermore, the declaration forced many countries to spend a fortune on H1N1 vaccines but the strain of flu proved to be mild and relatively easy to contain. The language from WHO has been darker in recent days. On Friday, the director-general said that the “window of opportunity is narrowing” to contain the coronavirus.“

 

Really interesting dive into some of the earliest cases:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0A0LyMru3I

What it seems is that in some cases other organs are affected, including attacking the heart. It could be entirely unrelated and pure chance with those specific cases. This is a seriously weird virus. Most people are fine, barely a mild cold. Some people are severely affected but end up fine as long as they are medically monitored. A small fraction seem to go completely sideways. And there's no way of telling, so far.

It's weird how so much of the focus is still on "getting" the virus, when by far the major impacts will be economic and political. It's starting to unravel but large areas of what is basically the manufacturing center of the world have stopped operating for weeks and supply chains impacts are slow to propagate but once the flow stops it just shuts down. The mediocre leadership of some countries will cause them to not prepare and overreact the worst possible way when things tip over, itself making the problem far worst than the disease itself.

 

You might find this interesting - stock markets down already.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2020/02/24/the-chance-of-a-global-downturn-is-growing/

Further to my previous post, the 4 people ill from the latest repatriation from the Diamond Princess have been sent to Royal Liverpool University Hospital (1), Royal Hallamshire in Sheffield (2) and Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle (1). (Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51606368)

Forgot to say in my previous post, I know Arrowe Park quite well. It was my parents' main hospital, and they both died there. We spent a lot of time visiting there.

 

There is a economic hit in the works here that they are pricing in. Global supply chains are being hit hard, and demand is certainly not encouraged by yet more economic uncertainty. At least this uncertainty isn't man-made this time. How substantial the hit is may depend on the wider politics....

 

New study on 70.000 cases of Covid 19 with comparisons drawn to SARS and MERS.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1231988520815878144

 

8% mortality rate for my age!

 

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp....-schools-if-there-was-uk-coronavirus-outbreak

According to the Guardian, the UK govt may potentially close schools if needed but would *not* close travel routes or cut towns off like Italy did, as “Shutting down movement within the UK is seen as counterproductive, according to the official plan being followed by the department.“

Also..”Public gatherings are also unlikely to be restricted because there is “very limited evidence that restrictions on mass gatherings will have any significant effect on influenza virus transmission”. Crowded places “are an important indicator of ‘normality’ and may help maintain public morale during a pandemic”.”

So.. yeah..
I’m pretty much terrified. So crowds and mass gatherings don’t have an effect on virus transmission? Are they joking? :/

According to the WHO’s own recommendations on coronavirus:
https://apps.who.int/iris/rest/bitstreams/1269109/retrieve

Introduction
Mass gatherings are highly visible events with the potential for serious public health consequences if they are not planned and managed carefully. There is ample evidence that mass gatherings can amplify the spread of infectious diseases. The transmission of respiratory infections, including influenza, has been frequently associated with mass gatherings.1 Such infections can be transmitted during a mass gathering, during transit to and from the event, and in participants’ home communities upon their return.

.... So what “evidence” is the UK govt basing this on? According to the WHO, it’s not “very limited evidence”, there is “ample evidence”. It’s not cool for the UK to say something is based on evidence when it’s basically based on the opposite of that.. Judging by this, I don’t feel like the UK govt is going to take steps needed to keep people safe or infact do any of the measures other countries are doing. I’m horrified and it’s worrying.

 

Oh my god... I've been flushing the toilet wrong my whole life