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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.

Technology offers solutions to some of these problems. Online conferencing may well become the norm while this pandemic works through. But even with that, I can not see any trade negotiations anywhere being high on the list of things to do for the next few months. If as predicted, up to 20% of the world's workers being off sick and closures of public spaces kick in, there will be far more important issues pressing on economic and supply issues. In many ways, a pandemic is like a world war, in terms of the disruption to supply lines and resources. Everything will change, even if we do not know to what degree as yet. I don't think Boris will lose any face either by seeking extension to the 'transition' in these conditions.

If someone has been in contact with a person carrying the virus, an assessment is made on testing based on how long and how close that contact was with the infected person. We passed the 'only testing those with links to travel' a couple of weeks ago. Having said that, testing anyone who has had even the most fleeting contact with an infected person would make more sense, so yes, I think cost is a factor. And that is a concern.

This is a really good overview of what is going on and the challenge we face. https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

WRONG Thunderblue. Seasonal flu has a mortality rate of 0.1% and half a million die from it annually worldwide. THIS virus has a mortality rate of 3%. That is a huge difference. It makes it comparable to Spanish Flu, which was left to spread unchecked, quickly overwhelming existing health services and killed 100 million worldwide in just 12-18 months. Spanish Flu at the time, spreads easily and had no vaccine. See what the problem is now? COVID19 has the same potential if left to do its worst. The risk is very real. This is not just some jolly by health experts and epidemiologists. Ordinary people downplaying it as though it is, is extremely dangerous. This is one time that we must defer to expert opinion, of which Dan Calladine has none. He is not even a doctor for heaven's sake.

This is why containment has had so many resources thrown at it. The worst case scenario is health services being overwhelmed to the point that people who could recover with treatment, start to die. Bear in mind that it seems ten per cent plus need hospital intensive treatment. The UK response so far has been to test anyone coming into contact with someone who presents with the virus. The idea behind this is to take the heat out of the spread by getting to those infected quickly enough to get them to isolate. But for that to work as an approach requires every country in the world taking that approach. One country doing very little to test people is the USA. And that is where I think we are going to see a real crisis unless something changes soon.

Yes those are interesting points Keano. I did pick up on the scramble emerging as different members make demands on what they want in any trade deal. We still have to remember, that we are the first nation to ever leave, and sorting the trade agreement is new territory. The French want their fishing rights protected. The Germans their car exports protected. And it goes on. It is a lot easier to negotiate something new than let it go of something that already exists. If another global financial crisis comes off the back of Coronavirus it will be more brutal this time. Banking has nowhere to go on interest rates and economies still recovering from 2008 will be in real trouble.

Grove....stop trolling. You only ever post (from your posting history) to insult people, usually based on class and because they voted remain. You are determined to ruin any debate and pick a fight with someone (literally). Just stop it.

Yes, I am inclined to think that the Coronavirus matter may well give him the get out he needs. The problem though is that he is surrounded by hard Brexit impatience. These things have a funny way of panning out often. In many ways, Boris has been extremely lucky with timing. This is true of populism in general. It requires certain crisis to in place to thrive. Personally, I think Boris absolutely wants a deal with the EU and can see the dangers in not securing one. What he won't accept though, is that a comprehensive trade deal probably needs around four years to be completed. Getting to the end of his term as PM with a trade deal still in negotiation and the UK still technically in 'transition', is not going to work for him. But, resorting to WTO with a global recession threatening from the impact of COVID19, is a very poor place for the UK economy to be in. We have no leverage to get good and favourable trade agreements in such a scenario.

I agree rahrah. The political declaration is what Parliament voted for. It is also the platform on which the Government fought the election. But now, that same government has no regard for it. Everything those fighting it warned about, is now coming plainly true. The hedged bet by the ERG that in supporting the Withdrawal Agreement, that they would still be able to get their desired no deal, is also coming true. Having said all of that though, it is still very early days in any trade talks. All we have seen so far, are the opening shots across the bows. Those pushing for the Leave side, promised we could have our cake and eat it, and that seems to be what they are going to demand. The EU on the other hand, are bound by their own concerns. Something will have to give if anything is to move forward. Ironically, the EU may well be forced to change some of the very things exploited by the Leave side because of external events anyway.

And now we have gone from what was a civil conversation about the coming trade talks to some kind of pseudo class warfare led by obvious trolling. As for taking this forum seriously or not, who cares? Only those that took the time to login to run a good discussion into the gutter of abuse it seems. How ironic.