Corona-virus - Impact of the Health Situation worldwide

[melmerby]

10 minutes ago, EddieB said:

 

 Most other “experts” see otherwise...

Like the ones in Italy?

[57xx]

I've just had "the call" from the boss. Don't bother coming in to work tomorrow, working from home until further notice.  Also been told not to attend a course in central London due next week. Ah well.

[EddieB]

22 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Like the ones in Italy?

Taking that as a serious comment, the consensus is that we’re roughly in a similar position to where Italy was four weeks ago.  Other European nations are in intermediate stages.  Italy was slow to react at first, but then made some quite drastic decisions - probably too late.

 

We have had greater opportunity to learn from examples around the globe.  Our strategy does not appear to be based on experience from elsewhere - good or bad.

[Free At Last]

On this page you can find information regarding the current status of all areas of Hattons during this phase of the COVID-19 outbreak in the UK.

 

"Until further notice the physical Hattons store in Widnes will be closed to the public."

 

Will other model shops with a larger footfall be closing their doors?

Edited March 12, 2020 by Free At Last

[Ozexpatriate]

5 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

The truth of the matter probably is that we do not know for sure how this thing will pan out but that it seems to have reached a natural peak and abated in China as fast as it arose.  

...

So I wonder if the natural course of a viral infection - any viral infection in theory - follows the same course.  We instinctively wish to protect and preserve but are only limited in our efforts to do so.  The natural spread produces a peak of infection and mortality then abates seemingly as quickly as it began. 

Yes, but this exacerbates mortality rates.

 

The key is in "flattening the curve". Unabated, the peak of infection is reached quickly and far beyond the ability of our medical systems to respond. There is a strictly finite number of ventilators and hospital rooms - though the efforts of the Chinese to "quick-build" additional hospital rooms in Wuhan was quite impressive.

 

Had the Chinese not responded with their draconian but medically useful quarantines, it is hard to imagine what the current COVID-19 infection rates would look like now.

 

The "social distancing" concept is partly about reducing total infections, but is mostly about reducing the rate of infection in the population, hopefully to keep it within a window where we have the medical facilities to treat those infected.

 

It may be that these approaches will extend the duration of the epidemic, but hopefully maximize survivors.

 

Edited March 12, 2020 by Ozexpatriate

[Ian Abel]

4 hours ago, sharris said:

I just saw this snippet of news on The Guardian's covid-19 rolling news:

 

It strikes me as somewhat foolish that the US administration should put itself in a situation where both the President and Vice President might simultaneously succumb to the same disease. 

 

Do any US experts on here know whether there is normally a protocol that should minimise this risk? 

 

Wouldn't say I'm an "expert" exactly, simply live here in the US.

The only known/defined safeguard is the "Designated Survivor" (NO, NOT the TV series, though that's what it's based on) wherein;

" a designated survivor (or designated successor) is a named individual in the presidential line of succession, chosen to stay (at a secure and undisclosed location) away from events such as State of the Union addresses and presidential inaugurations."

There are no other specific events that appear to generally require a specific separation, though they often don't travel together. Other than that, they seem to happily mingle in spite of some sensibly held beliefs that in the current situation they probably shouldn't.

 

Editorial comment: Given the current sanity/stable genius level of those concerned it's not surprising they're not taking any special precautions - the Orangutang is after all well up on all this and knows more than the WHO/CDC combined if you listen to any speeches

 

[Ian Abel]

2 hours ago, woodenhead said:

a fat bloke with white hair and a beard delivers presents to all the children in a 24 hour period once a year

WAIT - you're NOW telling me he doesn't  well, there goes my chance for a Hornby Rocket

 

[Ozexpatriate]

12 minutes ago, Ian Abel said:

there goes my chance for a Hornby Rocket

Don't worry Ian, the Easter Bilby will bring you one (if he didn't get burned up in the bushfires).

[Paperlad]

For those interested in statistics, I found this......

 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?fbclid=IwAR3xD7yl9tEbGRIUyciDN_UHCAY9SFshvNcAaFuxNBla93G9GmQ7_eZsIms#countries

 

interestingly it shows the number of recoveries (by country) which I’ve not seen in any of the mainstream media.

 

PL.

[BoD]

12 minutes ago, Paperlad said:

 

interestingly it shows the number of recoveries (by country) which I’ve not seen in any of the mainstream media.

 

I would imagine  Recoveries = Cases - Mortalities

[Paperlad]

9 minutes ago, BoD said:

I would imagine  Recoveries = Cases - Mortalities

Not quite,  there are still a number undergoing treatment but not yet fully recovered (or deceased!).

 

PL

[sharris]

4 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

 

EDIT - afterthought

 

Were it a list of the instantaneous infected total, it would also go down by the "recovered" amount - tens of thousands now.

I'm quite curious too about the exactness of the 'recovered' count. Is every one of the 134,000 or so tested worldwide and found to be infected being rigourously and continually monitored to determine when they are symptom-free and clear of the virus, including those with mild symptoms who are self isolating at home? I would think it wouldn't be hard for a lot of mild case recoveries to simply fall off the radar.

 

Or more a case of counting who has initially tested positive and hasn't turned up at hospital with severe symptoms or died in within the expected time-course of the illness? Added to those in hospital who have been monitored closely and recovered.

Edited March 12, 2020 by sharris
Added a 'too' after noticing other people thinking about the issue at the same time

[Ozexpatriate]

1 hour ago, Paperlad said:

Not quite,  there are still a number undergoing treatment but not yet fully recovered (or deceased!).

Yes the data you shared has four categories for people who tested positive:

1. Active case / mild condition
2. Active case / serious or critical condition
3. Closed case / Recovered / Discharged
4. Closed case / Died

The data (understandably) does not include undiagnosed cases and only includes people who test positive.

 

A very interesting statistic is the infection rate per million of population. The US is quite low, but the low availability of testing factors in to this.

 

Graphs of cured, infected (active) cases and serious/critical cases condition can be found here.

 

Edited March 13, 2020 by Ozexpatriate

[Gibbo675]

Hi Folks,

 

It would seem to me that the real story in all this is that among other things, the Federal Reserve has pumped $1.5T into the stock market to support share prices, an action that has failed to bolster the situation thus far. Bearing in mind that Boeing has taken advantage of its $13.85m revolving credit facility as have some other major corporations it looks as though there will be a credit crunch to make 2008 look like a drop in the ocean.

Severe travel restrictions, blockages and freezes in trade and currency exchanges, dislocations in just in time manufacturing system, corporate bank runs, unpaid debts etc, will cause far more trouble than the Corona Virus/Covid-19 might cause.

All the time this is going on the price of oil is around $33 per barrel which is somewhat below what most producers are able to supply at cost with the exception of Russia and Saudi Arabia at $7 and $3.5 respectively, this may well cause an insurance derivatives bust on North American shale producers adding to the trouble so far mentioned. Also the WHO has lost out on cashing in its pandemic derivative bonds by calling the pandemic at the time that it has done so.

 

As the curse goes, "May you live in interesting times !"

 

Gibbo.

[Pacific231G]

7 hours ago, sharris said:

I just saw this snippet of news on The Guardian's covid-19 rolling news:

 

It strikes me as somewhat foolish that the US administration should put itself in a situation where both the President and Vice President might simultaneously succumb to the same disease. 

 

Do any US experts on here know whether there is normally a protocol that should minimise this risk? 

 

The writers of the original US constitution and later ammendments seem to have worried about that possibility quite a lot and they worried about it quite a lot more after 11th September 2000 .

 

Their presidential system effectively put the the president in the same position of power that the British monarch had before we cunningly moved to  a consitututional monarchy. In our system there is an effectively unlimited line of succession to the monarchy and an almost unlimited  ability for new heads of government to be chosen for them to appoint. That would make it very hard to decapitate our government. That's also largely true of most European republics such as Ireland and Germany where the head of state is not the head of government (In commonwealth countries that share our monarchy the actual consitutuonal role of the monarch is effectively held by the Governor General) 

 

In the US the succession beyond the president and vice-president goes first to the speaker of the House of Representatives, then the  "president pro tempore" of the Senate (the VP is technically the president of the Senate) then the Secretary of State followed by the heads of federal executive departments who form the president's Cabinet. The VP has had to take over nine times in US history but the succession has never had to go beyond that. In the event that it did, the person taking over would only be acting president so no doubt the Supreme Court etc. would all tie themselves up in knots trying to figure out what that would mean in practice.

 

The US system is also based on the assumption that the country is so vast that, what with  the fastest communication being a horse,  it would be quite impossible to organise elections outside the normal two and four year pattern (How could Smallville Washington State possibly know what was happening in Washington DC until weeks or even months after it had happened) That's also part of why the President isn't directly elected but appointed by an electoral college. 

[Ozexpatriate]

4 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

In the US the succession beyond the president and vice-president goes first to the speaker of the House of Representatives, then the  "president pro tempore" of the Senate (the VP is technically the president of the Senate) then the Secretary of State followed by the heads of federal executive departments who form the president's Cabinet.

That's a pretty long line of succession. There are exceptions. During the Clinton administration the Secretary of State (Madeleine Albright) was ineligible to become President as she was not born in the US. The State of the Union address is one of the few times most of those people are assembled in one place - hence the TV show.

 

4 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

The VP has had to take over nine times in US history but the succession has never had to go beyond that. In the event that it did, the person taking over would only be acting president so no doubt the Supreme Court etc. would all tie themselves up in knots trying to figure out what that would mean in practice.

The appropriate successor would be sworn in as President for a term lasting until the previous President's four year term expired. They would not be an "acting President". I don't see any constitutional issues. Lyndon Johnson was sworn in on the aircraft carrying Kennedy's body back from Dallas. (At the moment Johnson was sworn in the flight became Air Force 1.)

 

4 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

The US system is also based on the assumption that the country is so vast that, what with  the fastest communication being a horse,  it would be quite impossible to organise elections outside the normal two and four year pattern (How could Smallville Washington State possibly know what was happening in Washington DC until weeks or even months after it had happened) That's also part of why the President isn't directly elected but appointed by an electoral college. 

First of all Washington was not a state (or even part of the territory of the US) in 1787 but the geography is a big part of the reason for the interregnum between election day and inauguration on January 20th. The framers anticipated the time it would take to count votes and for a new President to travel to the capital.

 

Geography is not the reason for the electoral college. The framers did not entirely trust a direct election by the voters. In a way they were right - but for the wrong reasons. The original idea was to have congress elect the President but the framers decided this was a violation of separation of powers. A direct vote was mooted but was complicated by slavery and the three-fifths compromise. Originally the "electors" were chosen by State Legislators but this gradually changed to following a direct vote in each state.

 

Edited March 13, 2020 by Ozexpatriate

[Neil]

The first bit of news that caught my eye this morning is that former health secretary Jeremy Hunt is concerned that his government's approach to tackling corona virus 'doesn't go far enough'. In some respects I'm not surprised that the current government seem to be taking a less prescriptive stance than other European countries. They are at heart more libertarian than others and instinctively anti 'nanny state' (supreme irony in the case of Jacob Rees Mogg here).

[jjb1970]

I think two things are worth keeping in mind:

 

• Very few people know what scientific and other advice the government has considered; and
• In terms of government response, this is not just a health issue, they have to consider the damage to society, the economy etc as a result of both the health issue and possible responses and balance conflicting demands.

 

It is easy to be a back seat driver but I think one of the more telling bits shared yesterday was that the probable infection rate is probably massively higher than the recorded number of cases. That is something I think most already suspected anyway given that viral infections are a part of life but I suspect the government were probably holding off stating the obvious because of concerns over how people would react.

 

This may sound heartless but the reality is we have already got to a point where the hardship and negative impacts on society as a result of societal reactions to the virus are probably going to be more severe than the virus itself. That is not to say it is not a serious issue or that we should do nothing, but I suspect that the government is very aware of a need to balance short term response with minimising avoidable long term damage.

[Chamby]

5 hours ago, Neil said:

The first bit of news that caught my eye this morning is that former health secretary Jeremy Hunt is concerned that his government's approach to tackling corona virus 'doesn't go far enough'. In some respects I'm not surprised that the current government seem to be taking a less prescriptive stance than other European countries. They are at heart more libertarian than others and instinctively anti 'nanny state' (supreme irony in the case of Jacob Rees Mogg here).

 

I take Jeremy Hunt’s intervention with a pinch of salt.  Former ministers have a very long track record of openly criticising their replacements.  We should all be pulling together, whatever your political persuasion.  Sniping from the sidelines is the last thing we need in this situation.

Edited March 13, 2020 by Chamby
Corrected name

[Neil]

4 minutes ago, Chamby said:

 

I take James Hunt’s intervention with a pinch of salt.  Former ministers have a very long track record of openly criticising their replacements.  We should all be pulling together, whatever your political persuasion.  Sniping from the sidelines is the last thing we need in this situation.

 

I'm not sniping from the sidelines. It's a serious problem we face and I feel it's well worth pointing out that we are deviating from the response of other, similar European countries and that one of the Conservative Party's own, a former health minister, is concerned that the governments response is insufficient.

['CHARD]

6 minutes ago, Neil said:

 

I'm not sniping from the sidelines. It's a serious problem we face and I feel it's well worth pointing out that we are deviating from the response of other, similar European countries and that one of the Conservative Party's own, a former health minister, is concerned that the governments response is insufficient.

 

I think he was referring to Mr Hunt sniping from the sidelines, rather than yourself.

[Legend]

I do broadly get the Governments approach on this one . I think it is being honest and open . The PM telling families that loved ones will go before their time was chilling but probably needed to be said to prepare the country . I get the overall approach of trying to lower the peak, I get the not closing schools as children will tend to congregate and who will look after them if off - the grandparents?  But where I do take issue is them not advising against large meetings or congregations of people .  I don't mean put the country in lockdown but to avoid these large groups . As everyone is now admitting the virus is already in society (possibly up to 10000). Surely it makes sense to limit exposure.  In that respect for once I agree with Nicola Sturgeon who has advised against such meetings .  In terms of sport closing down the Govt is irrelevant , they are going to be overtaken by events as members of teams get it and self isolate , so I really think the league will end early.

 

But there's govt action  and actions you can take yourself . So I'll certainly be avoiding nights out, cinemas etc for the time being .  A sensible limiting of interactions where not needed .  No way would I go to a football match or race meeting  amd I'm sorry to say it but Model Railway Exhibitions or Swapmeets . Instead I'll get up to the loft and play trains or get in the car and go for a drive in countryside . Limited Interactions .

Edited March 13, 2020 by Legend

[Oldddudders]

I believe Mr Hunt was not universally popular during his time in that post, even - or perhaps especially - with health insiders. This may somewhat water down his cred as an observer. 

[Giles]

 

Make of it what you will.

[melmerby]

4 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

 

Geography is not the reason for the electoral college. The framers did not entirely trust a direct election by the voters. In a way they were right - but for the wrong reasons. The original idea was to have congress elect the President but the framers decided this was a violation of separation of powers. A direct vote was mooted but was complicated by slavery and the three-fifths compromise. Originally the "electors" were chosen by State Legislators but this gradually changed to following a direct vote in each state.

 

With the electoral college system you can end up with a president that the majority didn't vote for. (e.g. Trump)

The Republican states were won, on average with less majorities than the Democrat states but the the electoral college awards all the votes to one or other*. As there were more Republican majority states Trump won but more people voted for Hillary Clinton. She had the largest ever majority for a losing candidate.

*(It's actually less straightforward than that as the number of EC votes varies from state to state)

 

Back to Covid-19

Edited March 13, 2020 by melmerby