nudge

Yes. I tried to get Karsten join the forum too but the silly old bastard won't do it.

It can go airborne in certain specific settings; so far it has only been observed in medical care facilities during aerosol-generating procedures. Under normal every day conditions it mainly spreads via droplets. It's also mandatory here now since last week.

Now I know where the UK got the idea for their herd immunity strategy!

I personally think that it spread undetected since some time in November, then some local doctors started noticing unusual patterns and grew suspicious of it at around mid-December and reported it publicly later that month (they inaccurately identified as SARS at first), local authorities then tried to downplay it and censor the outgoing reports until late December/early January. There was definitely a delayed response and suppression of information (at the very least in Wuhan/Hubei) which contributed a lot to the uncontrolled spread of the virus in the rest of China and also abroad.

Good to hear! Take care

I didn't say anything about China's lack of wrongdoings though, did I? The point was that Europe still had almost three months to react and try to contain the outbreak as much as possible but failed miserably. Look at how South Korea, Japan or Singapore managed to keep it under control despite having much less time due to being the first countries to be affected heavily - and that without having to go into a lockdown and ruin their economies. All thanks to aggressive testing from the very start, contact tracing and isolation, and thorough implementation of social distancing (and mask wearing) by a society that is mature and disciplined enough to follow the guidelines.

A new virus is reported, China puts millions of people under quarantine. Eastern Asia (a week later and with few own cases): this is serious, let's implement containment measures early on, even if it's restricting personal freedoms. Europe (two and half months later and with hundreds if not thousands infected in their own countries): let's gather in thousands for a Smurf festival, go on a holiday because it's cheap now, oh and don't forget to get that last cheeseburger before they close the joint because my non essential personal needs are obviously more important than anything else. We had plenty of time and there was enough information to react in order to contain it. Both the politicians and the general public screwed up completely. The former for downplaying the threat and failing to implement the required measures early on, the latter for being ignorant and unwilling to make small personal "sacrifices" for the benefit of society.

Omg it's so good.

Finally started watching 12 Monkeys. The original movie is one of my favourites and I always meant to check the series out but somehow never did... glad I did today. Watching Episode 1; fantastic. The theme might be a bit uncanny given the current situation but at least it's relevant haha. Knowing it's currently in Season 4 gives me hope too. @Bluewolf

The ones I posted aren't mine either I had to stop with my own updates as it was taking way too much time once it spread everywhere and I just couldn't keep up with it anymore...

That's pretty much the reason why Germany (and some other countries probably) are looking into carrying out mass testing for antibodies in order to find out who had the virus and developed antibodies so that the lockdown can be gradually lifted and people can start returning to their normal lives. But more accurate tests are desperately needed...

Many mild or asymptomatic cases definitely go unnoticed and the actual number of infected could be a few times higher but essentially they aren't the main problem (especially under a lockdown) - the biggest issue are those that require medical attention and hospitalisation as that's what makes the healthcare system break so as long as the testing levels stay approximately the same it is still a good enough stat to evaluate the general trend. What's encouraging in Italy's case is that they're carrying out more tests every day and the number of new cases still seems to be stable (in fact a somewhat larger increase in daily cases a few days ago was attributed to adding the backlog into the total count) - also the number of new cases in ICU seems to have stabilised at around 100 per day too. Those two are the main factors that make me cautiously optimistic - but it's definitely too early to tell. The situation seems to be slowly stabilising and improving in Lombardy only though so it's quite likely that the numbers will shoot up again as South Italy (with much worse standard of medical care) reaches the peak. As for trusting the numbers to be accurate; that's always a difficult one... You can only work with and make your observations from what you're given by the authorities. A lot depends on the way the cases are counted and the way those numbers are then reported so you're definitely right that it can be misleading. Even the number of deaths in Italy is a questionable one because of the way it's reported - it essentially shows the number of people who passed away WITH the virus - but that doesn't necessary mean that the virus was the cause of death. In other words, you could die of an unrelated chronic (or accute) disease and have no or just mild symptoms of Covid-19 but if you test positive, you are automatically included in the total count of the virus fatalities.

It seems they have reached the peak and plateaued in the last 6 days so I'd be carefully optimistic and say that the trend indicates a slow improvement.

Well yeah; I think that's also a naked lady in the house Could be a man too. Hard to tell

Yeah. Somehow completely ignored that

Stan just struggles with animals a bit

It's not the Koala either That's a naked lady

Click on the image to open in a new tab and then zoom in

Signing autographs at the left bottom corner.

I struggle to find Bottas

Nah that's a helmet Pretty sure the guy is Alonso too

Can you find them all?

Average age of cases in Germany: 45 years. Average age of cases in Italy: 63 years That might be one of the reasons. Another potential reason is that Germany's healthcare system is not overloaded yet so they have enough ICU beds, enough qualified staff and enough protective equipment for them. They are also testing in high numbers so many of those are bound to be mild cases that don't get tested in many other countries. Contact tracking and quarantine measures are apparently very thorough too. There are probably many factors that differ between countries. Overall, the mortality rate in Germany (approx. 0.4%) is similar to that in South Korea (approx. 1%) and Singapore (approx. 0.3%) so it's not as if t's a complete outlier.

A Swiss immunologist is testing the vaccine on himself. https://www.20min.ch/wissen/news/story/Forscher-testet-Corona-Impfstoff-an-sich-selbst-18463459

Germany is also preparing to carry out mass testing to find out who has already developed antibodies and is immune to allow those to return to normal activities and reduce the strain on economy. But they'll need more accurate tests than what they've got now.