Blah Blah

I was thinking today that the government should create an official Pandemic Volunteer Organisation. But it needs to come from government.

DF, the problem for the government is in not sending small business to the wall. In other words, this government still hasn't yet got a full pandemic head on. It is hoping that people will follow advice and reduce the need for more draconian measures. That approach clearly did not work in France however, so some might say it is only a matter of time. The other thing is that government is also stretched to think of every impact of every decision and find solutions - things are moving so fast. The very idea we can be thinking of trade negotiations with the EU at this time for example, is bonkers. And thank goodness we are still in transition and part of the single market, and able to access all the food and other imports we are going to need over the coming months. So stop referencing idiotic social media mouthpieces and start understanding the facts. This pandemic (and it IS a pandemic) has the potential to push the world into war levels of debt. The best chance we have of getting through it and getting back to normal, is to slow the spread and buy time, for either a vaccine or combination drug treatments that work to emerge. Understand why, understand that COVID19 is 30 times more lethal than seasonal flu, understand what an 18 percent hospitalisation rate means for the NHS and do your part to help make sure we don't get anywhere near to that worst case scenario.

Depending on where this goes, how many people can not go to work, how many companies go bust, the supply lines of plenty that we have all been used to, might begin to falter. It is all very well the government saying, there is plenty of food etc, but that is not what people see when they go to a supermarket with bare shelves. Something has to give.

No, because it only addresses the operational considerations of health services. This is not a plan of action for addressing things like food shortage, civil unrest, and all the things that those not in hospital or under a care package may face. I would like to see a dedicated logistic approach and plan for those things. We are only at the beginning of this journey and the shops are already stripped bare. Some vulnerable people are already starting to struggle to just get a normal daily or weekly shop. The time for action on that is now, even if that means talking directly to supermarkets that are not already rationing the quantities people can buy.

Good point on the child care for essential workers and should be entirely doable. We need to hear local councils now make statements around action plans and see them lobbying government for the extra help they will need. And to add that it is going to have to be local authorities guiding government on what is needed here, because we are being governed by those sheltered from the lives of ordinary people by privilege and antiquated ideas from the past around 'Dunkirk spirit' and all that. Boris Johnson is completely out of his depth.

It is not rocket science. The council are about to have a lot of vulnerable people getting ill with no means of buying food and toiletries because the shelves have been stripped bare by those in a better resourced situation. The council needs to stop all non essential services and start focusing on a strategy to make sure people have everything they need to get through the next few months and stay well. I will be communicating that to my local councillors and advise everyone else does the same.

Maybe those with cars could offer to get a good shop in for those who are vulnerable groups with no means of transport, who have to risk going shopping every few days, in the hope there might something on the shelves left for them? Because at this rate, we are going to have to call in the Red Cross, just to make sure some people can still eat and stay well. Utterly ridiculous.

Yes cost is a factor for a lot of people. Small shops can be twice the cost of own brands in big supermarkets. So not the answer for some people.

We are down to our last four rolls of toilet paper and I seriously am imagining having to queue outside the door of a supermarket an hour before it opens this week just to get some damn loo roll for normal everyday use. If supermarkets don't start enforcing rationing, the government will have to. This can not go on like this for months and quite frankly, emails from supermarket managers appealing to customers better side won't cut it. When people panic, they listen to no-one.

TE44 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Blah Blah you seem to have understanding of > scientific language, can you explain in laymans > terms the safety concerns of live vaccines, sorry > I cannot put up whole link, i have phone and don't > know how to. It would be interesting to hear in > laymans terms an explaination on antigen > shift/drift. In simple terms, when the virus mutates in a small way (ie a small change to the genetic makeup), that is referred to as antigenic drift. When the change to the genetic makeup is major, that is referred to as antigenic shift. Antigenic shift is the mutation that usually leads to pandemic and happens less frequently than antigenic drift. What defines a minor vs a major mutation is this. Drift (minor) mutation naturally happens over a long time to known forms of virus, in an evolutionary way. Shift (major) mutation is when two strains of the same virus, or mutation between strains of two different viruses happens (so a major transformation), and the result is a mix of surface antigens from both strains. Influenza is the best known virus that works in this way. Drift happens in all influenza types, but shift only happens in influenza A, because that one infects animals too and it is that crossover between humans and animals that gives antigens the conditions for major realignment. A virus that lives only in ones species has less opportunity to rewrite itself in any major way, if that makes sense. I will come back to you to answer your question on vaccines. That answer depends on what the vaccine is trying to do, so needs some context, and right now I am being called to peel potatoes :D

Not difficult at all Penguin. Herd immunity only works as part of a vaccination programme, the idea being that those most at risk are protected behind a wall of a vaccinated majority. The term herd immunity was completely misused in that press conference. You do not achieve herd immunity by experimenting with a new virus for which there is no vaccine. On football games, given that the FA has cancelled all games til the end of march in the higher leagues, it surely should have sent a message to all other clubs to cancel theirs too.

I second that. A service to help get food and other supplies to those having to self isolate with no resources to call upon for help. That can be just about anyone in genuine need, and not currently under any Adult Social Care package.

Just some interesting news to share. Whilst a vaccine may take some time, immunologists are carefully testing some of the drugs we currently use to fight other viral infections. It appears that both Remdesivir (used to treat Ebola)and combo Ritonavir/Lopinavir (used to treat HIV) kill the COVID19 virus. And two anti-inflammatories - hydroxychloroquine and tocilizumab seem to help reduce lung inflammation (the latter has just been licensed for use in China on COVID19 patients). These need further testing of course, but it might just be that our way out of the immediate crisis is with already approved drugs. Also promising are aspects of the work done towards a vaccine for SARS CoV. For those of you interested in the science of that and the stage it is at... https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.987958v1.full.pdf

Herd immunity is not a straightforward thing, especially when considering virus that regularly mutate, like influenza. Herd immunity also is more usually achieved when some kind of mass vaccine programme is in place. Nothing should be ruled out, and everything should be considered, at this stage. As for southern hemisphere rates of infection and warm weather, we are not seeing that correlation in Latin America or the West coast of Africa (where infection rates are still two or three weeks behind us). Iran is also a case in point. This is not a flu virus. It is a respiratory virus. It is too early to say if warm weather will affect infection rates. The whole idea behind pushing our exponential rates of infection out to the summer is purely to be hitting a peak at a time of year when the NHS is not dealing with the seasonal flu infections. We do not know yet if warm weather will impact this Coronavirus in itself. There is some prior evidence of mild Coronavirus being suppressed by warm weather, but this could not be said of SARS CoV. In short, it is just too early to know or say, and we also have to be careful of not attributing decreasing rates of infection through public behaviour and government action to a coincidental change in season. The optimistic thing to add though, is that if all the measures being taken by various governments work to lessen the impact of the virus, then we will be in a better place to act as soon as it reappears (as no doubt it will) over the next 18 months. This is not something that will be gone by the summer (as some are signalling). This is something we have to 'manage', until a working vaccine is doing that job for us, and the flattening of peak approach is the right one. Things are going to be tricky for some time yet.

This crazy behaviour needs to stop, and supermarkets could do more than they are doing to stop it. They could start with limiting customers to two packs of anything being panic bought. That most of them haven't done this yet is baffling. Happy to cash in on the extra sales it seems.

Quite likely he was after the rodent heading for it (or in it). But you are right. Using traps to deal with one kind of animal can injure others. So some care needs to be used when considering where to place traps.

That 10K figure for the UK is just guesswork. There is never any way of knowing who gets mild symptoms, recovers at home, and never presents themselves for testing. Mortality rates have always been measured from known cases and in the case of pandemics, are finally made at the end of the pandemic. There is little point in offering unknowns as mitigating factors on known figures. It just encourages complacency. All that we know for sure, is that people are getting ill, and significant numbers are needing ICU treatment, with others ending in death. The details are changing every day, as scientists race to understand the virus and its pathway better. But we are too early in the process to know enough to say with any certainty, what awaits us.

Went to four supermarkets yesterday. No toilet paper, no flour, no ginger and only found carrots in the third one. What is the deal with carrots ffs? The shelf clearing is getting worse imo, not better.

We really just don't know what a major outbreak would look like in terms of mortality. China is the only insight we have at present and they built two new hospitals in just 10 days to accommodate all the patients needing ICU care that would recover. Without those hospitals, the death rate would have been higher. Italy is experiencing a mortality rate double that of China. But whatever the final mortality rates will show themselves to be, a mass outbreak affecting 60% of the population is going to need millions of hospital beds. We don't have them.

Lots of points. Trying to go for herd immunity is incredibly risky with a virus that has no vaccine or known cure. SARS CoV is also a coronavirus and we still have no working vaccine for that! Even if a working vaccine is developed, we are at least 18 months away from human use. It has to go through animal testing first, before human trials can begin. The other danger is that once a virus is established, it can mutate. This is what happened with Spanish Flu. The second and third waves simply learned how to get around any herd immunity from the first wave. Those waves were also more deadly because, where the first wave only killed younger people, the second wave began to kill other age groups and the final wave would kill anyone. NO OTHER COUNTRY is going for herd immunity. The very idea that you let 60% of the population get infected with a 3% mortality rate in play is crazy. Any idea that you can stop the most vulnerable becoming infected in that scenario is also crazy. One source says they are planning for 300k deaths! This is almost eugenic in thinking. Remember when Boris said one theory is that you just let it go through until there is no-one left to infect and take it on the chin? Well THAT is what I think is happening here. The question is why? Suddenly the elderly and ill have become expendable? We just don't know enough about this virus yet to take that risk.

Sadly this is just one of many events cancelled in March. But it is the sensible thing to do. We are in a unique situation and we can all make up for it next year hopefully.

Sounds like a good idea marie, but there would have to be guidelines in place as the virus can be passed on through touching things as well as other people. Not quite sure how it could be guaranteed that volunteers are free from infection, but in principle, the idea of local communities helping others unable to get out and about is a good idea.

This is the sign of a healthcare system being overwhelmed. Decisions are then made on who to save first. Italy has 12,470 declared cases. And it has a mortality rate twice that of elsewhere. Why? Because it just does not have enough ICU beds. On those case figures it needs at least 3000 ICU beds. It doesn't have them. Here is an article from the USA perspective. It is going to be dire. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/upshot/coronavirus-biggest-worry-hospital-capacity.html For the record, the UK has around 7000 ICU beds, which is about 1 in 1000 people. We would need ten times that in a full outbreak. How much can be scaled up is limited, not just on facilities and equipment, but also medical staff. And to be blunt, that ICU treatment requires anaesthetists, ventilators, tubes, for every person admitted with serious symptoms, who can recover. Not just those in high risk groups with underlying conditions.

Ireland closing schools now and banning gatherings of more than 100 people.

Yeah, there is a reason why most countries do not trade on WTO terms solely. To lose our biggest export market on top of a global economic meltdown around this virus would be very foolish. In any case, there is likely to be a global readjustment depending on the economic impacts, which may run deeper than the 2008 crash. I don't see how any good trade deal can be agreed in the middle of such volatility.