Of course, I’d forgotten with everything going on that the equinox has arrived. Let’s hope that things progress smoothly in the Southern Hemisphere.
Yep damn right Paul. It has appeared to me for the last 2 weeks, he was just pulling figures out of his thatched head. The strategies of his experts did just not make sense early on, and now U turned in reality. But that’s by the by just my opinion.
I have been watching the graphs progress from this.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
As it seems the only thing I can find to remotely compare country to country and the escalations. Obviously you would have to believe some of it has to have been reported properly. We know for sure that the UK reported infected numbers are nowhere near - the government admitted it.
The graphs show that we were not 4 weeks behind Italy, but in fact 16 days, and have remained so for the 2 weeks i have been following the rise. We are 9 days behind Spain according to the same graphs.
Yet we know the UK infected numbers are not correct, so in fact you can probably take a couple of days off of those figures.
Several misconceptions here.
The idea of lock-down is not to stop the virus although it would be the only way possible at the moment (keep transmission rates low enough until it fizzles out) but to keep from swamping the health system.
The rough figures are 80% mild disease, 20% needing hospitalisation, 5% needing ITU (of whom 60% mortality).
It’s the 15% who need hospital but not ITU - they have a good survival rate if supported - Oxygen or CPAP (continuous positive airways pressure - helps reduce the effort needed to breath as simply being exhausted causes a lot of the deterioration and CPAP also helps the lungs work by keeping the alveoli inflated not bunged up with fluid).
If the case load is low you can get the 15% into hospital and out again recovered, if the system is swamped they might not even get to hospital and mortality will be much, much, higher.
Viruses do, indeed, mutate and mutations have already been identified in SARS-Cov-2, but mutations do not necessarily weaken the virus - they could just as easily make it more lethal.
As for your immune system a) there isn’t anything you can do with diet or exercise, or even “de-stressing” to “improve” your “immune function” from a healthy normal baseline1 and b) as much of the damage in SARS/Covid is actually due to the immune system over-reacting and targeting the lungs I’m not sure it would be a good idea anyway.
Finally, while it is true that an early vaccine trial was started in the US it is a phase 1 study (basically checking the vaccine does not cause severe toxicity in humans) with a small number of participants - it is way too early to talk of any results as far as protection from the infection is concerned. Have you been swallowing Trump’s bullshit?
1] There are drugs that can, however, they would not help in the case of a viral infection and might even make things (much) worse.
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Only a couple of areas have extensively tested those without symptoms - so it is a safe bet that many more are infected than the figures show.
On the one hand their presence means the actual %age of cases needing hospitalisation and the case mortality are probably, in reality, lower than the headline figures - maybe significantly so.
On the other hand they act as a huge reservoir of infection making it very difficult to eliminate new cases without draconian measures.
But it does not really matter if it is 20% of cases which are “serious” or 5%, if the health system can only cope with 1%
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No Dan, I am not ‘trying’ to justify the PM’s stance, I am justifying and explaining it.
I am sure that you would be the first to jump all over the PM were he to try and do something for which there is no lawful backing. Whether the relevant enabling legislation should have been put in place earlier is a different debate, but one has to accept that at present it is not in place, and thus the Coronavirus Bill is to be put before Parliament.
Seems to me that the man is doing his best within the legal framework available at the time.
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Utter bollocks.
The man has the biggest parliamentary majority in modern times - all of them sworn to do what ever he (or the cretin Cummings) demands and he could poke camel shit through the eye of a needle in an instant if he needed (wanted) to!
When will you stop defending the indefensible?
The idiot is seriously out of his depth and the Country is doomed under his incompetent handling of the crisis.
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Just because one does not care for the colour of the Government of the day, or for some of the individuals involved therein, it is surely unreasonable to expect said Government to have a crystal ball with which to foresee the future.
The UK is a democracy and therefore the principles of that need to be followed lest there be a slide towards government by totalitarian dictat.
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I did read that during January when there was much discussion about Big Ben Bongs at the time when China was issuing warnings.
The graph of infection rates continue to offer a very good prediction of what is to come so in effect are a crystal ball.
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what, like governance by an unelected cretin like Cummings for example?
Don’t make me laugh.
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Well that is in part why the Government has to put the Coronavirus Bill before Parliament where it will be debated, and possibly amended, in a public forum.
While tens if not hundreds of thousands of people become infected. Don’t forget you are talking about the man who prorogued parliament because he didn’t want the House of Commons to debate vital Brexit legislation.
You are more blinkered than just about any other poster I’ve ever come about.
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Nice to see you got in a sailing term there. 
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That’s interesting. I didn’t know it was a sailing term. I associated it with hippisme? Is there a link about being blindsided?
I’m afraid that I agrees with Peter; white horses on the racetrack not on the sea.
I think Tim may have been referring to the term ‘Come About’ which I believe is used to indicate a reversal of course.
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I bethought myself, a day or two ago, that my interest in what is happening in the UK is largely misplaced. I don’t live in UK. I have no family there [nor anywhere else]. British friends have sent me personal reports of how things are with them. Sadly, disgraceful stripping of supermarket shelves, complete with photos, are the principle features.
I was moved by this video, published by BBCi. It reflects what my friends have been telling me.
But the generality of this situation, as it affects UK, is irrelevant, surely, to any on this forum who don’t have close personal links to UK? Bojo, may he rot, is the PM of a country whose legislation barely impinges on my life.
That’s not to say that I don’t take any interest in the UK as I would any other country, other than the one I live in, but above this comment there is a great deal of heat being expressed about a country and administration which is, to all intents and purposes, a waste of time and effort. And possibly, as I have seen, the source of rancour between contributors.
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I’ve just got back from shopping, first time I have been out for a week, to Grand Frais for fresh vegetables and fruit and eggs, (they have fantastic young ginger rhizomes at the moment by the way) and there were maybe half a dozen other people in there. New perspex screens to protect the cashiers, who are also wearing gloves and masks. The shop is as well-stocked as ever.
I thanked them for continuing to do their job, they are heroines.
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Closer than usual. The term to go about is often used to mean to tack, to change direction through the wind. Hardly a reversal.
They are indeed, as are all in the provisions supply chain.
And none of this disgraceful revelation of greed and stupidity?
or this?
My local smkt looks like normal apart from the amiable queue outside and the 1m spacing shown by stripy tapes.
More specifically, a change of tack, enabling a sailing vessel to make progress against the prevailing wind by following a zigzag course.
. . . . which seems to be pretty much what the UK government is doing!