Generic Virus Thread

[VILLAMARV]

7 minutes ago, limpid said:

that talk of 18,000 people being recruited to do that works out - I hope it's being coordinated by medical professionals.

Couldn't help notice the prefix "promised" in the bbc article.

I think we all know where that ends up in reality.

Quote

The government has also promised to recruit 18,000 people to do manual contact tracing, as it pursues a track-and-trace strategy with a view to lifting the lockdown.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52521526

8 minutes ago, limpid said:

widespread public testing, with tracking.

This, thisety this this.

People are being told that outsourcing this function to AI is the only way out of this.

What they mean is, the other option is really, really expensive and time consuming/labour intensive. 

That we need a recruitment drive in the first place begs the question of why another provision of a healthcare system running on fumes seems so utterly underfunded in the first place. Imo.

[Awol]

1 hour ago, limpid said:

this looks like incompetence rather than anything malicious.

Reminds of the apocryphal story of a young man in WW2 on his way to an interview. Walking down Whitehall he stopped a passerby: ‘excuse me sir, which side is the Treasury on?’ ‘Ours. I hope.’ 

The inadequate stocks of PPE rest squarely on the shoulders of Osborne and Hammond. If the inquiry concludes otherwise I’ll be amazed. 

[Dodgyknees]

App being trialed on the Isle of Wight this week. Anybody who lives there is a freak. 

[blandy]

35 minutes ago, Awol said:

Reminds of the apocryphal story of a young man in WW2 on his way to an interview. Walking down Whitehall he stopped a passerby: ‘excuse me sir, which side is the Treasury on?’ ‘Ours. I hope.’ 

The inadequate stocks of PPE rest squarely on the shoulders of Osborne and Hammond. If the inquiry concludes otherwise I’ll be amazed. 

More than just those 2. The whole cabinet for the last 10 years. Treasurers still act on PM and cabinet set policies. Given pandemic has long been the number 1 threat to the UK according to the guvmint, then various memebrs of the cabinet, particularly, well, all of them should have been arguing agains the cuts in the preparedness and PPE areas. Words removed, the lot of them.

[Brumstopdogs]

 

 

[bickster]

5 minutes ago, Brumstopdogs said:

 

 

There was me thinking it was because Royal Mail dont deliver on Sundays

[chrisp65]

I was going to ask my regular question, why do the perpetually feel the need to lie about stuff there really is no need to lie about.

Then I remembered the 60% approval rating.

[blandy]

33 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

perpetually feel the need to lie about stuff there really is no need to lie about

That's unfair. Addicts can't help themselves, they need help, they need support, not judgement. We need to help them join lying bastards anonymous, where they can get treatment and therapy. Being an utterly shameless word removed isn't a lifestyle choice, it's a medical condition. #Supportc**ts

[Jareth]

1 hour ago, Awol said:

The inadequate stocks of PPE rest squarely on the shoulders of Osborne and Hammond. If the inquiry concludes otherwise I’ll be amazed. 

Sajid Javid, under Boris, was chancellor last year when recommendations were made re the stockpile of PPE. Agreed on how this began, but this cannot be allowed to be blamed on history and nobody held accountable. 

[Awol]

50 minutes ago, blandy said:

More than just those 2. The whole cabinet for the last 10 years. Treasurers still act on PM and cabinet set policies. Given pandemic has long been the number 1 threat to the UK according to the guvmint, then various memebrs of the cabinet, particularly, well, all of them should have been arguing agains the cuts in the preparedness and PPE areas. Words removed, the lot of them.

Sure, but ultimately someone will have to take responsibility. As the architects of austerity it lands on one or both of those two. Can’t see Cameron and May offering themselves up, and Osborne really was the driver of relegating security issues to the bottom of the in tray - see your babies circa 2010...

[PaulC]

Yes Osborne was on QT talking about more austerity and the poor will have to pay after all this is over 

[VILLAMARV]

Thing is guys and girls, the game is still to keep us distracted enough to keep getting away with this shit. And I'm not getting on my soapbox to deliver a political rant. That's part of the game. Hey, remain crowd, see how you could see the current lot's ****ery coming a mile off and yet gammons call you names ... and hey leave crowd, see how the ****ery of the eu was why you voted out even though everyone keeps falling back to default calling you racists... and all you abstainers in the middle see how the ****ery is what drove you to not getting involved anymore... and the anti-trident brigade rubbing the forces people up the wrong way and the tories and the Labour and the liberals and the greens and yadda, yadda, yadda.

I think we maybe have a chance with all this to right all those wrongs. Don't get me wrong, I'm not holding my breath. But it would be quite marvellous to take a Boris sound bite and make him actually follow through on something for once... Let the healing begin.

Is there anyone, anyone amongst us in vt, regardless of gender, denomination, background, ideology etc that wants this country to move to a private healthcare system? Hasn't that always, throughout our lives been the one thing we can come together on and agree? Even with the bluenoses? If not, then don't worry about it. But if it is we need to focus on what we want. Not spend pages and pages of nonsense on saying who should or shouldn't get treatment, or being the ones to put the other guy in their place to make a good point better, or argue about clapping or not clapping. Or deciding which politician should carry the can so we can get back to how it used to be.

Provide the care or don't. It's complicated, but also that simple.

Nothing can stop us if we truly united behind a common cause. Not drones or nukes or whatever Boston dynamics have created this week. Or the Chinese or the Americans or the Russians. 

We, as a society, have lost sight of some important fundamentals. And we all know it. Like the v for vendetta bit says there's something very wrong in this country. 

I feel we're genuinely at a turning point and history will be the judge of us in the end. I'm scared, because historically, the leaps forward our species have made in terms of humanism usually come after a huge and bloody price has been paid. 

It genuinely doesn't have to be like this. Technology connects us in ways unimaginable when most of us were born. Opportunity, so often the Bastian of the rich, is easier to make available to people all over the world from all walks of life on a level unfathomable 50 years ago. And yet we're seemingly heading in the wrong direction. Progress is finally, theoretically, available without a massive price tag.

Or does it genuinely keep most of you happy at night knowing some kid in indonesia is making your shoes in a sweatshop or bring a warm glow in your heart that we're backing civil war in africa still... STILL?

Yet we simply allow people with a vested interest to continually back us into a corner and present us with binary options of different levels of shitness. Doesn't there have to come a time when we do things to make life fairer for all? Can't we all agree on something as simple as treating each other with the respect we want for our grandparents, our children, ourselves?

If not now, then when?

Unless the answer is never, in which case, let's just let Gove et al do whatever they want and wave the NHS goodbye.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, Awol said:

see your babies circa 2010..

Indeed. 8 billion quid squandered. Utter words removed.

[Awol]

Remember the discussion here about the filthy winter flu bug that went on for weeks, but couldn’t be Covid because people weren’t dying from it then? 

 

[snowychap]

12 minutes ago, Awol said:

Remember the discussion here about the filthy winter flu bug that went on for weeks, but couldn’t be Covid because people weren’t dying from it then? 

 

I think there needs to be caution about the claim, surely?

What was the test, how certain are they about the accuracy of it (if it produces one positive out of a vast number of negatives could it just be an error), was there any chance of cross-contamination of the blood, &c.?

If it was the case that it was around in Europe earlier, could it then be that the recent stuff is the second wave of infections and deaths (and that may fit in with the kind of data and graphs that Whitty used in the video I linked to yesterday when he talked baout that being a common occurence in epidemics)?

A difficulty about relying upon the memory of the symptoms that people had (and their own self-diagnosis on the basis of these memories) is that it's quite (or more) likely that, subconsiously, the symptoms as now described will be impacting upon these memories and hence drawing a target after the arrow has been shot.

 

[Stevo985]

Yeah I know a few people who had a bad case of flu over the christmas months so anecdotally it would make sense.

But surely if it had been in Europe that early we would have seen it spreading far earlier and a massive amount of deaths, even if they weren't being recognised as Covid-19 deaths.

IIRC deaths from flu were actually lower than average this year (as in if the deaths went down as normal flu deaths you'd expect it to be higher if the virus had got here that early)

[HanoiVillan]

The chances of that being cross-contamination or a testing error are extremely close to 100%.

[LondonLax]

There has been speculation about this from other countries as well. Here is an article from Italy discussing a spike in Covid like hospital admissions and deaths in November last year.

Quote

MILAN (Reuters) - Italian researchers are looking at whether a higher than usual number of cases of severe pneumonia and flu in Lombardy in the last quarter of 2019 may be a signal that the new coronavirus might have spread beyond China earlier than previously thought.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-timing/italian-scientists-investigate-possible-earlier-emergence-of-coronavirus-idUSKBN21D2IG

It’s possible that we are currently experiencing the ‘more deadly’ second peak that gets talked about in these pandemics. Unfortunately we won’t be able to know until we get a better handle on antibody testing.  

[Awol]

36 minutes ago, snowychap said:

I think there needs to be caution about the claim, surely?

I’m not making a claim, just throwing in some fresh meat for speculation! 

[Jareth]

20% of people in New York city have antibodies - I have a feeling its going to prove higher than that in London.