Phathamster

Covid 19 now around 11500


This was posted just over four days ago....


Covid 19 has eclipsed ebola in a little over two and a halve months...


I would not be overly surprised to see cases exceed 1 million within a week -10 days and I mean active cases not total...


This is serious it's about time everyone started taking notice...

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macliam

Why don't you just suggest a law that nobody be allowed to leave their own village?
You seem to object to the movement of anyone (apert from you) and your answer is "Stop them coming!"
Maybe, just once, putting yourself in the shoes of those moving might help - but this would suggest you develop empathy.......

carcajou

I know, it's crazy.

Where I am, people are taking it seriously, though I know that's not the case in a lot of places. It doesn't help when WA's Chief Medical Officer comes out in the West Australian this afternoon and tells everyone to go to the pub. We had pizza last night (take-away) but that's probably the last meal we will do out for a while. Still too many questions on how it spreads and cases are now mushrooming here. We'll do all home-cooked for a while, and only fruit/veg from the shops that comes in a bag or container. On the positive side, some of the local farms around us have converted their production into making hand sanitiser and they are delivering, so my area is covered now regardless of what happens at Woolies or Coles. I am told there is now Australian slang for hand sanitiser, "sanny."

There's still people in high government positions, like Gladys Berejiklian and Mark McGowan and even Morrison, who I feel are just crossing their fingers on both hands and hoping it goes away miraculously without them having to do any drastic steps. Western Australia it came out today has a different definition of "community transmission" than most people. "Community transmission" just means they don't know the source of the infection. So they are still saying there is no "community transmission" in WA even though it is now being spread person-to-person here. They know where all 90 cases of infection came from so no "community transmission." A semantics game to try and fool the public into thinking everything is still coming from overseas so maybe they won't panic and lock themselves away and stop spending.

macliam

I agree - where the virus came from, what caused it and what caused it to go pandemic are irrelevant to the fact that it is here - and, unlike the numbers suggested by politicians, the potential impact is vast....

In the UK, there was a government suggestion that the top-end for deaths is 250,000....... which is a lot, but nothing like the 1-1.2 million that results from the current motality rate extrapolated across the population. However, even this figure of 250,000 is too much for the UK government to accept, so they now quote 20,000, which is a mortality rate of 0.1% of those likely to be infected.

This virus has showed how ill-prepared the world has been for this pandemic - even though it has supposedly been war-gamed for decades. Like mortality estimates, the requirements to combat pandemic have been "massaged down" by successive governments, unwilling to spend the sums required for true preparation.

Phathamster

It's still a lot of guess work from not a lot of data.


I'd be interested to know what extra preparations could be done?

el collado kid

Oh yeah i can do that even a walk down to the post box even sunbath but and it is a big but.It has been raining and cloudy since sunday last.From middle of january till sunday it has been hot and sunny what a bummer .I do not know if you all heard they shut bondi beach because it was packed and nobody was practicing social spacing.Here in spain my wife has shown me footage of brit woman in hotel pool with a police officer asking her to get out she refused,So he stripped off got in and dragged her out kicking and screaming handcuffed her and taken away in a van while all the brits who were drinking at the pollbar were cheering her on which they also cleared,i am trying to think of a word that comes at the end of bunch?????

moneypenny20

Governments should have jumped onboard weeks ago. The Australian government are still pretty much saying 'She'll be right'. The other day Scomo said borders wouldn't be closed. It's fairly obvious to a blind man that borders will be closed. Northern Territories have decided to close their borders to interstate - On the 24th. As we saw in Italy, prewarning of area closures caused stacks of possibly/probably/definitely sick people getting out before closure. They're now saying flights will possibly stop late March. Do it now, why wait? Why give people the chance to move about? Someone told me it was so people could get back to their families from wherever they are. Why are we concerned about keeping people happy? Why are countries so concerned about getting aliens out or nationals back? Lock it down now.

macliam

Perhaps you should consider the current scrabble for respirators and for PPE for front-line staff.....
Perhaps also the serious shortage of beds and isolation facilities leading to normal treatments being delferred (law of secondary effects).
Epidemic modelling is not new, the likely numbers involved and the rate of infection is known..... so the failure to anticipate the peak load is telling.

Chatter Static

It's funny how the English speaking countries are the slowest to react having watched it unfold everywhere. I really dread to think what happens when it takes hold in places like Mexico City, Africa etc lack of cleaning routines due to water shortages people living on top of each other and the 1st world countries will knee deep in their own issues so little to zero aid from the outside.

macliam

In the UK there is much discussion of the aid for companies and workers.... now focussing on the "losses" of the self-employed. Oddly, in my time in IT, I worked with many contractors - one-person companies, who delighted in mocking employees for their comparitively low earnings and were quite happy to forego security, pensions, sick leave, holiday entitlement, etc in order to chase the buck. I recall listening to their tales of offsetting taxes and paying themselves company dividends in order to duck social security payments, etc. How ironic that these people are now holding out their hands for support from the system they chose to avoid......

I appreciate that not all self-employed fall into this camp - we all know that smart-ass companies have forced "employees" to declare as self-employed in order to save themselves costs..... but I'd argue that those affected by this will tend to be at the low-end of the earnings scale, so earnings protectionlevels do not need to be high. It will be interesting to see what the response is to calls for support......

BristolUK

I'm so glad you said that because due to misreading I was wondering what a car had to do with shedding ginger hair.

Ingles

Yes - Super size reality check

macliam

That's what exponential expansion means.....
Without intervention the number of infections by a virus against which we have no protection has been calculated as rising from 1-100,000,000 in 61 days. That's the reason for the (late) knee-jerk restrictions worldwide.
This is serious - stupid comments from self-serving deniers and politicians eager to save face are not helpful.

Ingles

Whereas a Expresso in Portugal cost 0.60 cents off a euro

macliam

Shhhhh! Everyone will want one! (make mine a galão..... e torrada de pão de forma com muita manteiga!!)