Generic Virus Thread

[Genie]

Scheme was only initially for 3 months wasn’t it, I’d see anything beyond that (even at 60%) as a bonus.

[blandy]

8 hours ago, snowychap said:

It's the stories about 'networks of underground barbers' that rather got me.

People getting smuggled in to other people's houses to have a short back and sides?

If they get caught, they get a clip round the ears.

[sne]

8 hours ago, snowychap said:

It's the stories about 'networks of underground barbers' that rather got me.

People getting smuggled in to other people's houses to have a short back and sides?

The Underground Nailroad,

Nice to see the spirit of the abolitionists lives on 

[sharkyvilla]

I live 15 miles from Gatwick and the recent news about airlines is going to have a big impact on local people, my brother included as he is a taxi driver there.  The ironic thing is that West Sussex seems to have got off quite lightly in terms of the actual virus considering it's got a massive airport and loads of London commuters living here.  A lot of people I know did seem to get a nasty bout of flu around Christmas, I just wonder if covid did start at the end of last year round here and loads of cases have gone uncounted.

[mikeyp102]

I live alone and obviously am not enjoying lockdown. I haven’t seen or spoken to anyone in person (apart from nodding hello at ransoms on my daily walk). I want to see family and friends, to do something different etc. But I don’t want the lockdown to end, purely for the fact that people are selfish, stupid and ignorant. Any relaxing of rules will just be carnage (as we’ve seen from kfc queues etc). 

[Jareth]

19 minutes ago, sharkyvilla said:

A lot of people I know did seem to get a nasty bout of flu around Christmas, I just wonder if covid did start at the end of last year round here and loads of cases have gone uncounted.

With the confirmation that it was in France earliest mid to late December, and a result of human to human transmission at that point - with no obvious clue as to where it came from - then I am quite convinced on this theory that it has been here for a while. In Feb the wife had what we thought was flu, not too serious but aches and pains, cough, and fever - the fever part was odd because she never gets one and we always give her no sympathy as she cannot prove illness. She had been a weekly traveller to London up till that point too. We really need this anti body test when it comes made freely available to the public. 

[Genie]

Christian Purslow coming up next on TalkSport

[mottaloo]

2 hours ago, blandy said:

If they get caught, they get a clip round the ears.

 

[HanoiVillan]

I have to admit I laughed at that one.

[HanoiVillan]

Hmmmm

On 30/04/2020 at 13:29, HanoiVillan said:

Have a few quibbles with the other points in your post, but I think this part is clearly correct. The government won't want Cabinet members to have to resign, so they will naturally line up one or more of the Strangeloves to take the fall for them.

Too conspiratorial?

[ml1dch]

8 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Hmmmm

Too conspiratorial?

I don't think there's any doubt that in the inevitable enquiry the only answer that any politician will give is "we just followed what the scientists advised us to do"

[HanoiVillan]

2 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

I don't think there's any doubt that in the inevitable enquiry the only answer that any politician will give is "we just followed what the scientists advised us to do"

I would bet my house on it, if I had one.

[StefanAVFC]

[chappy]

45 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Hmmmm

Too conspiratorial?

Also front page news at the same time they announce the scaling back of the furlough scheme. You have to dig much deeper than the headline to find out that he had already had the symptoms and completed his isolation too.

Just noticed that article also includes the completely unnecessary embedded clause ‘a left-wing campaigner’

Edited May 6, 2020 by chappy

[villa89]

Spectator

Quote

Herd immunity may only need 10-20 per cent of people to be infected

Since mid-March there has been an assumption that herd immunity against Covid-19 would not be achieved until around 60 per cent of the population has been infected. It is a figure which gave rise to the now-famous paper by Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, which claimed that a herd immunity policy (which the government denies ever following) would result in the deaths of 250,000 people in Britain. That figure has been challenged by scientists who have questioned some of the assumptions behind it – for example, it assumed a mortality rate of 0.9 per cent which Imperial College itself has since revised downwards to 0.66 per cent, and some believe is lower still.

...

Very interesting article.

 

[snowychap]

 

29 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

31 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

I don't think there's any doubt that in the inevitable enquiry the only answer that any politician will give is "we just followed what the scientists advised us to do"

I would bet my house on it, if I had one.

 

[Kuwabatake Sanjuro]

Looking at the UK gutter media front pages today and you can't help but think of Caroline Flack again. At least the Express just stuck to its usual xenophobia though.

[snowychap]

LA Times:

Quote

Scientists have identified a new strain of the coronavirus that has become dominant worldwide and appears to be more contagious than the versions that spread in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The new strain appeared in February in Europe, migrated quickly to the East Coast of the United States and has been the dominant strain across the world since mid-March, the scientists wrote.

In addition to spreading faster, it may make people vulnerable to a second infection after a first bout with the disease, the report warned.

The 33-page report was posted Thursday on BioRxiv, a website that researchers use to share their work before it is peer-reviewed, an effort to speed up collaborations with scientists working on COVID-19 vaccines or treatments. That research has been largely based on the genetic sequence of earlier strains and might not be effective against the new one.

...

Scientists’ reaction to the study were mixed Tuesday.

Charles Brenner, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Iowa who has conducted research on how cells defend themselves against viruses, called the Los Alamos report a useful paper.

...

Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, called the new study “noteworthy” but said its conclusions require further investigation.

“There is a lot of speculation here,” Hotez said. “They have no experimental verification.”

...

The Los Alamos study does not indicate that the new version of the virus is more lethal than the original. People infected with the mutated strain appear to have higher viral loads. But the study’s authors from the University of Sheffield found that among a local sample of 447 patients, hospitalization rates were about the same for people infected with either virus version.

Even if the new strain is no more dangerous than the others, it could still complicate efforts to bring the pandemic under control. That would be an issue if the mutation makes the virus so different from earlier strains that people who have immunity to them would not be immune to the new version.

If that is indeed the case, it could make “individuals susceptible to a second infection,” the study authors wrote.

...for more see link

Obvious proviso as mentioned in para 4, it is work that has not been peer-reviewed.

[VILLAMARV]

25 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

Privilege

Quote

Etymologically, a privilege (privilegium) means a "private law", or rule relating to a specific individual or institution.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privilege_(law)

It only applies to us proles.

 

[chrisp65]

As long as the scientists are judged by the same moral requirements as our Prime Minister, I’m fine with it.