Are you worried yet.

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MarkMas

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More misinformation from Wattie and the fear-mongering websites he loves.

The two medics in Worthing caught it from the British guy who caught it in Singapore, not because of some sort of NHS failure, and not because they were treating people 'suited and booted up' and the virus ate its way through protective suits, but because they went on a skiing holiday with the guy from Singapore. These two medics only interacted with a handful of patients before they were diagnosed and sent home, so tracing them will have been a piece of cake.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51470342
65551
 

Scaf

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Have always enjoyed walking in London, especially early morning. Much more pleasant than the tube, surprising how much ground you can cover.

As an aside, living in a very rural area, I'm accustomed to saying 'good morning' to people... despite being quite an introvert. At that point, people react as if I'm Crocodile Dundee when he says G'day in New York. All very odd. I like London a lot (in small doses), but it is like a foreign country in many respects.
Walking from London bridge to Euston wh
stop it !
 

Wattie

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More misinformation from Wattie and the fear-mongering websites he loves.

The two medics in Worthing caught it from the British guy who caught it in Singapore, not because of some sort of NHS failure, and not because they were treating people 'suited and booted up' and the virus ate its way through protective suits, but because they went on a skiing holiday with the guy from Singapore. These two medics only interacted with a handful of patients before they were diagnosed and sent home, so tracing them will have been a piece of cake.
Well that’s quite insulting- even though I’m correct.
Markmas you’re normally on point. Not in this case.
if you class my misinformation and fear mongering as exposing the flaws in the current system checks - that’s fine.
Two medical staff, went on hols, with a guy that had been temp tested on his various travels. They themselves were presumably temp tested and returned to work...infecting how many?
Useless temp tests!

I’m glad they only interacted with a handful....says who? You’ve no idea who they interacted with and with who they interacted with.....why has your diagram stopped with the dozen that they interacted with..it should go on and on....there could be hundreds more on it.

Glad you think it’s a piece of cake. Perhaps you can start baking some for the hundreds of cases the Uk will have in a week or so.
 

MarkMas

Chief pedant
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Well that’s quite insulting- even though I’m correct.
Markmas you’re normally on point. Not in this case.
if you class my misinformation and fear mongering as exposing the flaws in the current system checks - that’s fine.
Two medical staff, went on hols, with a guy that had been temp tested on his various travels. They themselves were presumably temp tested and returned to work...infecting how many?
Useless temp tests!

I’m glad they only interacted with a handful....says who? You’ve no idea who they interacted with and with who they interacted with.....why has your diagram stopped with the dozen that they interacted with..it should go on and on....there could be hundreds more on it.

Glad you think it’s a piece of cake. Perhaps you can start baking some for the hundreds of cases the Uk will have in a week or so.

You are right that someone with the virus can certainly pass it on before anyone realises that is what they have. This is totally normal with many infectious diseases. Temperature tests are not perfect, but they are very useful, in that they can detect people who have an infection fairly early, but they are not going to catch the very earliest stages of infection-and-transmission, it's true.

The NHS says that these two doctors only interacted closely with a few patients (I think one doctor only saw 1 patient and the other saw 8, but I may be wrong about that). And I choose to believe this because I know how much record-keeping gets done, and tend to generally believe reputable organisations. They will also have interacted with other non-patients, and doubtless tried to make a list of most of these people. Now, of course they may have interacted with and infected various other people, and of course it may have not been possible to track and isolate them all, and of course some of those people might become ill. That is literally how infectious diseases work. But what you do to manage an outbreak like this is try to contain as many infections as you can as fast as you can, even though some will almost certainly get away from you. In this way the spread is slowed (it may still be a spread and still might be more rapid than you want, but you aim to stop it being exponential). This way, you buy time for treatment facilities to not be overwhelmed and for the vaccine-creators to make progress.

So the UK may indeed have hundreds of cases in a week or so. But that is better than many thousands, due to the sensible work of health professionals. And maybe (and these are very speculative estimates) this means there will be only 2,000-200,000 cases by the end of the year rather than, say, 1-5m, which implies maybe 20-5,000 deaths (compared with 600-13,000 per year from normal flu annually).
 

Wattie

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“But what you do to manage an outbreak like this is try to contain as many infections as you can as fast as you can, even though some will almost certainly get away from you. In this way the spread is slowed (it may still be a spread and still might be more rapid than you want, but you aim to stop it being exponential)”

This is where we differ. I see a constantly moving target that cannot be managed- China now.

The only way to manage it and eradicate it is to.
  1. Lock down borders.
  2. Self isolate the entire population for 21 days to discover who has it (never gonna happen- economy!) and treat those that are revealed.
Option 3 is what China/ everyone else will do and that’s extend and pretend- medical services will get swamped and thousands will be infected through cross contamination.
Uk included.
Option 3 will ultimately cost more than 21 days for option 2.
 
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MarkMas

Chief pedant
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8,795
....The only way to manage it and eradicate it is to.
  1. Lock down borders.
  2. Self isolate the entire population for 21 days to discover who has it (never gonna happen- economy!) and treat those that are revealed.
Option 3 is what China/ everyone else will do and that’s extend and pretend- medical services will get swamped and thousands will be infected through cross contamination.
Uk included.
Option 3 will ultimately cost more than 21 days for option 2.

And why would we do 1 or 2 for a virus that has a death rate of 2%, mostly among people who already have a pre-existing condition? Should we have done this for SARS and MERS .....
 

MarkMas

Chief pedant
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8,795
Here’s some fear mongering for you....sky news.
London Underground could be a hotbed for coronavirus, doctors say

No **** Sherlock.The tube in rush hour is like sardines.

Yes, indeed. Any journalist can find a few doctors to say that "yes, viruses infection is more likely on the London Underground than on the plains of Montana" and then turn that into fear mongering.
 

Felonious Crud

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Yes, indeed. Any journalist can find a few doctors to say that "yes, viruses infection is more likely on the London Underground than on the plains of Montana" and then turn that into fear mongering.

Yeah, it's a statement of the abundantly ******* obvious, isn't it.

"New terrors stalk the streets as it is revealed that letting an INFECTED person LICK your EYEBALLS will increase your chances of BECOMING UNWELL", shriek the press, who are clearly bored of Prince Andrew, Harry, Megan, Brexit, Boris' countless illegitimate sprogs and whatever the **** other shite they've been peddling.
 

Wattie

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And why would we do 1 or 2 for a virus that has a death rate of 2%, mostly among people who already have a pre-existing condition? Should we have done this for SARS and MERS .....
Well that’s a very good question.

1. Because I’ll bet you the mortality rate in China ain’t 2%......far far higher. Oh and i’m sure those with “pre-existing conditions will feel comforted by your words. The 34 year old Dr didn’t.
China has already been caught massaging data, there maybe thousands dead.

400,000,000 locked down in China for the few deaths we know about.....totally normal. Chinese crematoriums are said to be working around the clock dealin with this.

2. If you don’t then as is being touted just now, 1/3 to 2/3rds of the Uk population will become infected with a virus that is clearly debilitating and very very nasty.....deadly at worst. No health service anywhere In the world has the ability to deal with this.....it will be chaos.
People require isolation and there isn’t the capability to deal with the thousands who may get it.

We seem to know so little about this illness that if you catch it and are cured, is there anything to stop you catching it again?

3if the Uk approached this as per my suggestion above then it would be very damaging to the economy but after 21 days the number of cases would reveal itself. They could then be treated and hopefully cured. Borders remain closed indefinitely.

The figures in the rest of the world at that point would be far far higher and spreading.

Where do you think we will be globally with this in 21 days?

At that point the Uk would potentially be the only “virus free” population on the planet and as such could take huge steps forward to utilise that position for the benefit of the economy to start to repair what was lost by the shutdown.
 

Wattie

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Yeah, it's a statement of the abundantly *** obvious, isn't it.

"New terrors stalk the streets as it is revealed that letting an INFECTED person LICK your EYEBALLS will increase your chances of BECOMING UNWELL", shriek the press, who are clearly bored of Prince Andrew, Harry, Megan, Brexit, Boris' countless illegitimate sprogs and whatever the **** other shite they've been peddling.
“It may be a statement of the abundantly obvious” but everything that has been done just now has been incorrect.
14 day quarantine- wrong
Temp testing- wrong
Self isolation- if you don’t know you’ve got it how can you...wrong
Continued travel through airports- virus entry/ access points wrong
Tracing those discovered to be infected- good luck, wrong.

Result, growing problem and unknown cases potential gets higher and higher.
 

CatmanV2

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48,547
And why would we do 1 or 2 for a virus that has a death rate of 2%, mostly among people who already have a pre-existing condition? Should we have done this for SARS and MERS .....

Do give Wattie his due, it could put a **** of a strain on the NHS if ever gets a decent foothold (I think about 15% of people that get it get it seriously, so probably need to be in hospital) The biggest issue I see with that is if front line staff get infected you get a sort of cascade effect i.e. fewer staff to look after more sick people. One way of trying to reduce the impact is the kind of measures we're seeing in China. Of course that does have an impact on productivity and other things.

Should we have done it with SARS? Maybe, not really sure but it might have reduced the severity of the outbreak at the expense of impact elsewhere.

One of the biggest issues we have, as ever, the social media echo bubbles which (as with so many others) may well push the govt to err on the side of caution and over react to (try) and ensure that they are not later accused of not reacting to a threat which is only truly clear with hindsight (no matter how the clairvoyants hold up the odd example as proof of what should have been done all along)

C
 

Felonious Crud

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“It may be a statement of the abundantly obvious” but everything that has been done just now has been incorrect.
14 day quarantine- wrong
Temp testing- wrong
Self isolation- if you don’t know you’ve got it how can you...wrong
Continued travel through airports- virus entry/ access points wrong
Tracing those discovered to be infected- good luck, wrong.

Result, growing problem and unknown cases potential gets higher and higher.

But am I worried? No. Why? Because to worry is pointless.
 

2b1ask1

Special case
Messages
20,220
I seem to remember my kids playing a game on their phones about a killer virus and its rapid spread around the world a couple of years ago. The game was a strategy game where they set parameters and then let it play out across the 7 billion...
 

MarkMas

Chief pedant
Messages
8,795
“It may be a statement of the abundantly obvious” but everything that has been done just now has been incorrect.
14 day quarantine- wrong
Temp testing- wrong
Self isolation- if you don’t know you’ve got it how can you...wrong
Continued travel through airports- virus entry/ access points wrong
Tracing those discovered to be infected- good luck, wrong.

Result, growing problem and unknown cases potential gets higher and higher.

14 day quarantine - right
- Seemed like a sensible and proportionate incubation period for this sort of virus based on evidence to date. Now some evidence emerging that some people may incubate without symptoms for a little longer - still wan't the wrong thing to do.

Temp testing - right
- A useful and quick way to non-invasively check if someone was likely to be already infected. Trying to do a full viral test on, well, everyone would have been wildly impractical, slow and costly.

Self isolation - right
- If you might have been exposed to a mostly non-lethal but infectious virus, then sitting at home and not infecting anyone else seems like a sensible and proportionate precaution. I have tended to send my employees home when they have a cold.

Continued travel through airports- virus entry/ access points - right
- To almost close down the global economy, just because of a virus of unproven virulence and lethality, would risk a global recession with significant economic and well-being harms including unnecessary or premature deaths.

Tracing those discovered to be infected - right
- Obviously worthwhile trying to trace these people who might be infected in order to slow (if not contain) the spread, especially where it is incredibly easy, like 'who else did you go on holiday with?' or 'show me the list who else this doctor treated that day'.

Lock down borders - wrong
Self-isolate the entire population - wrong
- Wildly disproportionate in the face of a mostly non-lethal but quite infectious virus. You would be having to do this a couple of times a year whenever there was a scare.
 

Wattie

Member
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14 day quarantine - right
- Seemed like a sensible and proportionate incubation period for this sort of virus based on evidence to date. Now some evidence emerging that some people may incubate without symptoms for a little longer - still wan't the wrong thing to do.

Temp testing - right
- A useful and quick way to non-invasively check if someone was likely to be already infected. Trying to do a full viral test on, well, everyone would have been wildly impractical, slow and costly.

Self isolation - right
- If you might have been exposed to a mostly non-lethal but infectious virus, then sitting at home and not infecting anyone else seems like a sensible and proportionate precaution. I have tended to send my employees home when they have a cold.

Continued travel through airports- virus entry/ access points - right
- To almost close down the global economy, just because of a virus of unproven virulence and lethality, would risk a global recession with significant economic and well-being harms including unnecessary or premature deaths.

Tracing those discovered to be infected - right
- Obviously worthwhile trying to trace these people who might be infected in order to slow (if not contain) the spread, especially where it is incredibly easy, like 'who else did you go on holiday with?' or 'show me the list who else this doctor treated that day'.

Lock down borders - wrong
Self-isolate the entire population - wrong
- Wildly disproportionate in the face of a mostly non-lethal but quite infectious virus. You would be having to do this a couple of times a year whenever there was a scare.
I guess we could go on and on eh.
Let’s see where we are in a month.

By the way, the world’s already in recession.

Off to bed fellas, hope you all have a happy Valentine’s Day.
Love to all, Wattie
 
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