Coronavirus

[BigAl]

Mmm, getting a bit close to home.

 

Confirmed case in Kilmarnock and a sheltered housing scheme in lock down.

 

Testing centre set up at Crosshouse Hospital.

 

Cue the cranking up of panic.

 

Still astounded that some folk need told they should always wash their hands after going to the toilet 

[rocket_scientist]

This whole Coronavirus issue stinks. Ok, it's been hard to believe anything the government and the globalist agenda tells us and there is always the crying wolf thing to be aware of but what's really happening here? I don't trust the media either but the same pattern of spreading fear is again in operation and we know what happens when austerity is imposed and economic slowdown is given as the reason. The gap has been getting wider but when will the majority revolt, assuming they're still able to, if their processed foods, their obesity and their engineered divisions haven't disqualified them from doing anything at all?

[Kowalski]

Supposedly a case in Aberdeen.

 

Lots of folk keen on reality checks - not as serious as other health issues, etc... it’s all blown out of proportion etc...

 

However surely the point is that as there’s no vaccine it’s only going to put a strain on a countries health service, as each person on average passes it on to 2.5 people, and the mortality rate is higher than influenza. So it does need to be nipped in the bud pretty sharpish.

 

Can see Olympics being pulled.

[TheDeeDon]

Costco in Aberdeen was rammed full this morning with people panic buying due to Coronavirus.

 

 

[rocket_scientist]

The wife just said that Asda had sold out of soap today. The wifie working there told her that some wifie shopper came in and bought 10 x Dettol liquid soaps earlier. Now what sort of moron does that and did these people never wash their hands before? Fucking panic-buying and fear abounds, unsurprisingly. as people are mostly morons.

 

But I still can't work out the underlying agenda. The report in the Times this morning - that Parliament was considering shutting at the end of this month - has been disputed by the government but there's something going on.

[Tyrant]

Supposedly a case in Aberdeen.

 

Lots of folk keen on reality checks - not as serious as other health issues, etc... it’s all blown out of proportion etc...

 

However surely the point is that as there’s no vaccine it’s only going to put a strain on a countries health service, as each person on average passes it on to 2.5 people, and the mortality rate is higher than influenza. So it does need to be nipped in the bud pretty sharpish.

 

Can see Olympics being pulled.

 

 

False. What paper do you buy? 

 

Symptoms and mortality rate of Coronavirus significantly less severe than influenza. 92,000 people worldwide have it. On a planet of 7 billion. It's hardly affecting children and the only people dying are those that would die if they caught influenza anyway. So like Rocket I'm asking myself why is it exactly that every media outlet on earth (seemingly) is trying to make us shit ourselves over this? It hasn't worked on me. 

[rocket_scientist]

The announcement (by WHO possibly) that 12 billion is being made available to combat this is interesting. Who thinks every dollar of this will be properly spent? Who thinks it will even be audited? There's another 11 figure sum (10 bn+) of public funds getting misappropriated, big pharma, private and public health organisations, new quangos and support groups including consultancy fees and focus groups all getting hand outs. Not to mention the individuals in public office who will benefit directly and indirectly.

[Kowalski]

 

False. What paper do you buy? 

 

Symptoms and mortality rate of Coronavirus significantly less severe than influenza. 92,000 people worldwide have it. On a planet of 7 billion. It's hardly affecting children and the only people dying are those that would die if they caught influenza anyway. So like Rocket I'm asking myself why is it exactly that every media outlet on earth (seemingly) is trying to make us shit ourselves over this? It hasn't worked on me.

 

Clearly you do not understand what mortality rate means.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/03/yes-worse-than-flu-busting-coronavirus-myths-covid-19

[Ten Caat]

It's already too late to stop this becoming a pandemic. What's more...it's a bloody godsend to the world.

 

Nature always finds a way of reducing the earth's population when it soars to unmanageable levels. The 2 world wars killed off  many millions.. and just over 100 years ago Spanish flu wiped out 50 million

 

Modern medicine ( particularly better control of coronary heart disease/ hypertension and effective treatments for most cancers) has allowed the average life expectancy to rise rapidly in the past 40 years. In the UK it's went up from roughly 72 to about 80 for men and frm about 74 to 84 for women. But in doing so has caused a dementia crisis and there just isn't the infrastructure to properly care for all  these extra frail people. Covid-19 could prove the answer to a headache that successive governments have failed to address.

 

 

[tom_widdows]

It's already too late to stop this becoming a pandemic. What's more...it's a bloody godsend to the world.

 

Nature always finds a way of reducing the earth's population when it soars to unmanageable levels. The 2 world wars killed off  many millions.. and just over 100 years ago Spanish flu wiped out 50 million

 

Modern medicine ( particularly better control of coronary heart disease/ hypertension and effective treatments for most cancers) has allowed the average life expectancy to rise rapidly in the past 40 years. In the UK it's went up from roughly 72 to about 80 for men and frm about 74 to 84 for women. But in doing so has caused a dementia crisis and there just isn't the infrastructure to properly care for all  these extra frail people. Covid-19 could prove the answer to a headache that successive governments have failed to address.

 

Not to mention the impact it is having on pollution what with China shutting down lots of factories, streets of several major cities seeing significant decrease in number of vehicles, and of course the number of poeple cancelling their holidays abroad.

 

I might start getting worried when the nurses & paramedics I know start to act concerned but then again I might not. After all Im contributing to the destruction fo the planet just by living my current life so should Death/ Mother nature see fit to have another crack at taking me down and actually succeed this time (7th times a charm) then so be it.

[scotfree]

An interesting site  https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

 

 

[Madbadteacher]

Just a thought.....

With some UEFA second leg games being played behind closed doors who do we think the first team to claim that as an “unfair sporting disadvantage “ having had the away leg in front of “hostile” fans?

[Ten Caat]

Just a thought.....

With some UEFA second leg games being played behind closed doors who do we think the first team to claim that as an “unfair sporting disadvantage “ having had the away leg in front of “hostile” fans?

 

I'm not at all convinced that many...if any...second leg games will actually take place. The situation is rapidly evolving and we already know that 2 first round games are not going ahead in Milan and Sevilla. UEFA have an absolute nightmare to sort this out.

 

I also have a feeling that our game against 'Well on Friday along with the rest of the weekend games will be the last we see of football taking place in Scotland till early April at the earliest. The only sensible decision I can see is for UEFA to postpone the Euro Championships until summer 2021. This might allow a bit of breathing space for the Champions and Europa Leagues to complete and allow domestic competitions to extend into June if necessary. Perhaps with a stipulation that once a team are mathematically champions and also team(s) at the bottom are mathematically relegated that the competition stops at that point. Of course it could well conspire that the full programme might need to be played to reach one or both of these ( the relegation battle in the SPL here does look like it might go all the way to the last day even if Hearts lose tonight and start looking a bit isolated)

[RicoS321]

Exactly, we should stop right now and relegate hearts, with our game against Motherwell on Friday being allowed to go ahead as a third place decider. Although given that we have also been given a cup win under this scenario, based on the alphabet, then maybe we can allow the Motherwell tinks their third place trophy.

[LA-Don]

My school has closed starting Monday, spring break in two weeks, I expect to be off at least a month. Other schools doing the same. Youths sporting events, leagues etc shutting down. I expect a full lock down coming. 1000 known cases in a country of 330 million, form your own opinions....

[scotfree]

That's the Australian GP cancelled.

It was also the start of the rugby league and Australian rules this week. I would take it that these will be cancelled soon as well.

My wife is a nurse at the local hospital so that's going to make it interesting. I'm not worried about myself as such, but my mum is in her 70's now and she has had problems with chest infections in the recent past. My wife's mum and dad are well up there in age-wise as well (75/83).

Interesting days...

[rocket_scientist]

The football postponements in most European countries now, the golf events being cancelled and everything else is in the last couple of days are massive moves which are going to have huge impacts on the economies of every country. The restrictions on travel are last resort measures which are going to have deep impacts very quickly. The poor monkeys in Thailand are having gang wars amongst each other because there aren't the daily streams of tourists there to give them their daily food. THAT is how serious this is.

 

Here in the UK, we know nothing. We must be in the relegation zone of the league table of preparedness and that guy on Question Time and the audience were coming out with amazing examples of our government's ineptitude, particularly to our lack of testing in the early days and over the last five weeks. Now our PM is telling us that we WILL lose loved ones. And what the fuck is he doing about it? What the fuck has he done about it?

 

My wife is waiting for redeployment, not because she has been told this but because she has forty years experience of healthcare and knows how fucking pathetic our response has been. We won't have the staff. Close the schools and who's going to look after the kids? Simple critical thinking hasn't been done. There's been zero due diligence and forward planning done and we are reacting the whole time, on a minute-by-minute basis.

 

The panic buyers make me vomit. We expect everyone to be selfish, that's human nature but we are seeing the sickness of our Tory-managed UK being acted out on a grand scale currently. It's going to get a whole lot worse real quick, at an accelerating pace.

[rocket_scientist]

https://mobile.twitter.com/JasonReidUK/status/1237830209904283648

[rocket_scientist]

This was my daughter answering one of my questions: -

 

It jumped over from an animal to us through close contact/ maybe consumption of the meat which is something viruses (specifically RNA viruses) are known to do. HIV, Ebola, SARS, swine flue and bird flu are all the same. There have been warnings for years from viral epidemiologists about the possibility of this happening, and studies estimating how quickly it could spread/ mutate and cause a pandemic - they’ve been publishing papers and talking about it, but few have been interesting/ listening. If anything, we are lucky covid isn’t more deadly (but being so new in humans, the odds of it continuing to change and possibly become more deadly is worryingly high). This is an area of research that’s been chronically underfunded. Big pharma don’t love vaccines cause once a disease is eradicated no more money can be made (though almost everyone has to take it for it to work, so certainly CAN make money) but, more importantly, investors are short sighted here. The success story/ money spinner is “look at this disease we cured/ reduced rates of” not “look at this disease we prevented from happening.” If you put money into preventing a global pandemic, did your investment work or was it never going to happen anyway? That quote I used in my Max P essay: when you do things right, people aren’t sure you haven’t done anything at all

 

As someone with first class honours in virology and stratified medicine and a Ph.D. in public health, she's working in this field so is at least qualified to know a bit about it.

[rocket_scientist]

This may be of interest too: -

 

After the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s research for a vaccine started. It was much more deadly so symptoms were more severe and it was easier to track and quarantine cases/ reduce spread which is why it ultimately exhausted itself. The thing is, once SARS died out, no one cared to keep funding this research. The only other human coronaviruses at the time caused mild/ self-limiting colds - no interest or money to be made in that. So this area of virology had been relatively untouched/ with much less attention and vaccines left half-developed. I don’t know specifics for covid, but I know it can be tricky to target. Often viruses enter Human cells via receptors and “live” inside the human cell. (Whether or not viruses constitute living things is another debate haha). When you’re a virus, hiding in a cell, it’s very hard for the immune system to recognise the infected cells and kill them appropriately. Developing a treatment has to be a trade off between identifying and killing infected cells while limiting damage to healthy/ uninfected cells. Vaccines are better than treatments because they limit the number of viruses that ever enter your cells in the first place but they’re hard to develop because they’re “training” your immune system - but immune systems are complex. If we understood them, there would be no allergies/ asthma/ rheumatoid arthritis/ Crohn’s disease etc. If you train the immune system to recognise an antigen/ marker with too little specificity, you risk a) it does nothing b) you accidentally train it to target itself and you end up dying by your own cells attacking you. You can also have problems even when the target is right: in an early Dengue fever vaccine, it was specific enough to the virus, but instead of making the immune system appropriately respond to and kill the virus, it caused the body to go into anaphylactic shock, essentially over reacting to the virus and causing death. Covid isn’t a virus that we seem get lasting immunity to (unlike chicken pox which you catch once - it’s more like norovirus. Your immunity to noro wanes after about one year)

[rocket_scientist]

She lost me here (in the family chat): -

 

Mum is right! RNA is a bit like DNA - genetic information. But in human cells RNA kind of ‘copies’ DNA and transmits information from your genome to the parts of the cells that makes proteins/ perform other tasks (that’s maybe a bit simplistic, there are lots of types of RNA that do lots of things). DNA is very highly regulated because if there’s a mistake in your genes, it can have dire consequences. RNA is less regulated cause the occasional mistake/ incorrect protein to come out of it isnt likely to have a noticeable effect. Some viruses have RNA genomes which means they can mutate much more quickly than those with DNA ones

[Kowalski]

It’s all quite something. I think I can understand the current UK “plan” if it is all about trying to minimise the effect this will have on the NHS.

 

But I did find this to be a good read:

https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

[rocket_scientist]

My daughter posted up that article last night, well, at 1 a.m. but I hadn't got round to reading it until now. Having glanced through some of the comments that the article attracted, I'm going to be interested in her take on it. The thing I took from it the most is the need for swift action, like immediately.

[rocket_scientist]

As there's no live sport to gorge on tonight, I recommend the Channel 4 News Special starting at 8 pm. Are we doing enough?

[rocket_scientist]

I didn't understand this post when she said it;

 

Boris is wrong about his herd immunity take, it will put more people at risk and we have no evidence to suggest that people have lasting immunity to it so unlikely to be effective

 

Now that they're talking about this exact subject on Channel 4, I'm inclined not to believe the balloon on TV just now who's job it is to know about this shit.