Coronavirus (COVID-19) Outbreak

[Bluebird Hewitt]

1 hour ago, Stan said:

Only 2000 tested out of a total 1.3m NHS workers. (not sure if this includes all NHS staff in any field or not). 

That sounds like all NHS staff in England as I think the overall workforce in the UK is a little bit more. I don't know about Scotland and Northern Ireland but Wales is just below 80k last I heard. 

44 minutes ago, Inverted said:

Called in sick from work today. Was up all night with a splitting headache and a cough and slept most of the day. If I hadn't been homeworking I would have been given a week off.

But, since I'm already homeworking I'm back to work as soon as I feel better. 

Sounds horrible. Hope you feel better soon. 

Funnily enough, my mate said similar the other day, though it only lasted a day. 

Edited April 1, 2020 by Bluebird Hewitt

[IgnisExcubitor]

Not only have Tablighi Jamaat successfully increased the spread of the disease in this country, the cunts are now attacking cops in some states while others are spitting at medical workers. And government won't take harsh action on these unevolved creatures. 

 

[MUFC]

 

[Bluewolf]

Thought this is a fairly decent gesture on bonuses for staff still going in to work in stores... 

Aldi: "Aldi has announced enhanced pay for its amazing colleagues, who have been working tirelessly throughout this extremely busy time. Store and distribution colleagues will receive a 10% bonus on hours worked, effective from 9 March 2020."

Sainsbury's: "As a small thank you for all their efforts, we will be giving colleagues a payment of 10% of the hours they have worked since March 8. The 10% additional pay will be awarded in May to hourly paid colleagues in Sainsbury's and Argos retail, Sainsbury's transport and warehouse teams, Argos distribution and all Retail contact centres."

Tesco: "Tesco will be giving a 10% bonus on the hourly rate for hours worked to colleagues across its stores, distribution centres and customer engagement centres. all permanent colleagues who are currently in work will receive the increased hourly pay rate till Friday 1 May, when we will review the situation."

Asda: "There will be an extra week's pay in June to our colleagues in recognition of their extra efforts to protect the health of their colleagues who needed to step away during this time."

Lidl: "Our teams are playing a crucial role in serving communities across the country and their incredible commitment and hard work is hugely appreciated. As a token of our gratitude, Lidl colleagues across the business are being given a £150 voucher each."

Co-op: "It's important to reward our colleagues for working through these difficult times. That's why we've given them a bonus, money to spend and extra time off."

Waitrose: "We are looking at a number of options to ensure we find a suitable way to recognise our partners who have shown incredible professionalism and dedication."

M&S: "Our frontline colleagues across stores and supply chain who continue to work will receive an additional 15% pay reward in recognition of the work they are doing to support their teams and the national effort to help customers access the products they need during these unprecedented times."

Morrisons: Waiting for a response from the company, but Morrisons staff have started a petition for a 10% bonus after staff say they were offered just 0.75%.

 

[Fairy In Boots]

On 31/03/2020 at 17:51, Bluewolf said:

I do worry when the Government still can't answer a simple direct question from the press... Gove was just asked why it was that Germany are able to test 70,000 people a day and yet over here we are only managing roughly 10,000 and after bouncing it between 3 of them not one of them actually had an answer to that question and avoided it altogether.. this was despite just saying earlier that the NHS was in a strong position... I do hate politics and politicians art of ducking a direct question by dragging the conversation all round the houses until the point has been lost... 

There’s a global shortage of chemical components for of the kits, because some countries have brought them all. The  NHS are hard pressed as we’re climbing into our peak so now we test incoming traffic to hospitals rather than just randomly stopping people in the street or setting up testing points like the states. If you have symptoms we test as an incoming patient. 

Drive is to start testing isolating nhs staff to get them back to work first but you need NHS staff to do this. 
Army are in from tomorrow to relieve NHS by managing logistics into hospitals of PPE etc so that NHS staff are freed up to concentrate on front line care and testing. Huge logistical operation is afoot
 

On 31/03/2020 at 17:53, Stan said:

Some journalists need to be a bit persistent in this scenario too. I know they're on time limits but push them a bit more instead of just accepting any old answer. 

Some are blatantly trying to grind their brexit axes now, I turned off QT the other night was complete horseshit 

20 hours ago, RandoEFC said:

This is happening on an almost daily basis, politicians coming out with some facts or vague plans that they're putting in place and it being proven wrong by the industries they've been "talking to" within minutes.

Honestly now that the social distancing/lockdown/school closure rules are no longer being reviewed on a daily basis I think they can stick a pin in the daily news conferences for a couple of weeks until they have something tangible to tell us.

They’ve built 3 makeshift hospitals in 3 weeks, remortgaged the country and its blatantly obvious at this point that China have lied about the severity of this pandemic. I just don’t know what your on about here, they’ve been remarkably open and honest about it we get unfiltered access to the science 

6 hours ago, Harvsky said:

Ever since yesterdays press conference there has been a flurry of articles about testing. 

None of which make SAGE look good. Lockdown was the result of backlash against SAGE putting pressure on the government and testing will go down the same path.

I think based on a conference call we were apart of discussing supply chain for ventilators with some of these Sage guys, NHS managers, Government officials and manufacturers  that a lot of decisions we’re based on initial WHO report out of Wuhan which they increasingly feel is utter bullshit. Germany are taking French & Italian patients specifically to test as they don’t trust that initial WHO report. 

Also credit to Johnson he was in a conference call gone 11pm while he’s got it and his words to my colleague (I wasn’t on it sadly)  we’re “do whatever it takes, cash is available now, we have no time to waste here” they’ve paid cash for everything to speed it up supply. They don’t want days while cheques clear money is there. 

we had an account opened and an order in excess of £700k placed and paid same day. We were cutting metal within 1 hour of the account being opened

6 hours ago, Stan said:

Links to the Peston tweets I brought up yesterday. UK firms not being asked by government for testing kits so they'll take their business elsewhere.

It's like the government choosing Dyson to make/produce ventilators for use when there are apparently UK-based companies who make ventilators for a living not being asked to produce them for NHS use...

read below re ventilators Dyson

5 hours ago, Harvsky said:

538 more deaths today in the UK.

Gone from being a week or so behind France on daily deaths to suddenly being a day behind.

Why the sudden and sharp increase?

We now switched to a policy of “save what you can, don’t attempt the impossible and send them to smaller hospitals to die“. As they do in Italy and Spain, we have to last the month now it’s going to be attritional for NHS frontline staff. 

All outpatient specialist hospitals have cancelled scheduled operations. The beds have been repurposed as makeshift ICU units without ventilators as this will be where elder patients with comorbidities are sent to die on morphine drops as they won’t be given ventilators as we really focus our ICU efforts on those more likely to survive in General hospitals & the surge hospitals. 
These outpatient staff from these specialist  hospitals are being retrained and reallocated to the Nightingale, NEC & Manchester to work ventilators. My mate was a battlefield medic in Iraq he was infantry that fell into it treating a colleague, specialised as an anaesthetist for hip operations when he left the army after his service. He’s been reallocated to the NEC 5,000 bed hospital to work ventilators. The local ice rink is preparing to store bodies. 
 

we will be around about 40-50k dead by the end of April guys theirs no getting away from it. It’s been apparent that it’s damage limitation now for the foreseeable future. 
 

they’re will be a long standing mental toll to this, PTSD for doctors & nurses. 

1 hour ago, Stan said:

Did Alok Sharma say there's no government plans for mass testing? 

Thought Boris and others were saying about 10k a day and 25k a day ? 

loads of my works kit in on all these ventilator projects so I’ll tell you all in detail who’s doing what in a couple of days once contracts are all signed and it’s made public knowledge but the ventilators are on the way we’ve (UK Government) spent millions and we’ve sorted out the commonwealth in the deal. It’s about a million ventilators by year end from several teams, some specifically designed to be made affordably and mass produced quickly so can be placed in small field hospitals in poorer countries like  the Sub continent and Africa. 

No ip has been protected on some I know we shared spec with Australia & New Zealand as they’re about a fortnight behind us in terms of RO to give them a head start with their own builds. We won’t make the start of our own peak in significant numbers but we’ll have them coming through to get mid peak going into nightingale type hospitals. 

from a supply chain point of view there’s been a few mistakes from the government but it’s down to ignorance of the technicalities of manufacturing rather than design they’ve literally moved mountains it’s a staggering effort, from them I’m genuinely impressed. 

I see lots of comments online about where’s the equipment etc, people just don’t understand supply chain in our country, for our manufacturing infrastructure we’ve gone faster than I believed possible. No government will ever admit it but we just don’t have the manufacturing capacity of Germany, China, US, Japan or Korea to dig us out the shit quickly, as we once had. 
What we have done though is innovate, We’ve got some brilliant engineers in this country.

regarding the cheap solution it’s here, it’s brilliant for what it is, it genuinely looks like it will save hundred of thousands if not millions of people worldwide. It’s been designed by oxford uni and doctors from king’s college London 

https://oxvent.org

Dyson are building to print for a medical professional outfit that have designed it. It’s a full ventilators not like what I’ve just linked. 

automobile manufacturing companies are mass producing ventilators for existing ventilator manufacturers who aren’t set up to produce hundreds of ventilators a month. One I know made 100 a month, they’re putting out 25,000 this month by subbing manufacturing to a car company that is building to print. There’s physically no way they could have done this without government pairing them up and providing the capital to get it moving. 

it’s monstrous we have Europe’s largest bank of a specific type of manufacturing machinery and it’s now running 24/7 for the next month to meet demand. This is a monstrous ramping up for us. 

there’s literally nothing that can be done that isn’t, being done I predicted end of May originally 2 weeks back  and they’ve done it by the 4-5th of April they’ve probably saved tens of it not hundreds of thousands of lives now it’s a huge effort. 
 

globally it will be millions, I know they worked 20 hour days not just the government but senior civil servants in the NHS and Sage to, tbh fuck the BBC journalists I think they’ve done brilliantly 
 

 

[RandoEFC+]

1 minute ago, Fairy In Boots said:

I just don’t know what your on about here, they’ve been remarkably open and honest about it we get unfiltered access to the science 

What? Hancock said weeks ago that he was in discussions with supermarkets and retailers up and down the country about dealing with the panic buying situation and the body that acts as a spokesperson for those industries came out and said there had been absolutely no contact from the government. Then there was the EU procurement scheme fiasco where Hancock said he expected us to be involved and a week later the government were like "oh lol sorry we found the emails in our spam folder" and that's why we didn't join in before it also came to light that we had representatives at meetings where it was discussed in person. Now we have Gove making claims about the reactives or whatever they're called being unavailable and saying he's been in touch with the appropriate people and they're saying the complete opposite.

They've done some things well, provided the appropriate financial support (not that they had any choice because I don't know what viable alternative there was if they want people to follow the restrictions without vast swathes of the country going destitute) and yes the extra hospitals are obviously a good move but just because they've got some basic things right doesn't mean you cant question their decisions and statements elsewhere. I think most sensible people have a certain amount of sympathy and patience with the government because nobody could get all these calls right in such an unprecedented crisis as this but I'd feel much more comfortable if they were willing to admit the occasional misstep rather than try and pretend every u-turn is all part of the plan.

Anyway, what the fuck is this all about?

 

[Fairy In Boots]

6 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

What? Hancock said weeks ago that he was in discussions with supermarkets and retailers up and down the country about dealing with the panic buying situation and the body that acts as a spokesperson for those industries came out and said there had been absolutely no contact from the government. Then there was the EU procurement scheme fiasco where Hancock said he expected us to be involved and a week later the government were like "oh lol sorry we found the emails in our spam folder" and that's why we didn't join in before it also came to light that we had representatives at meetings where it was discussed in person. Now we have Gove making claims about the reactives or whatever they're called being unavailable and saying he's been in touch with the appropriate people and they're saying the complete opposite.

They've done some things well, provided the appropriate financial support (not that they had any choice because I don't know what viable alternative there was if they want people to follow the restrictions without vast swathes of the country going destitute) and yes the extra hospitals are obviously a good move but just because they've got some basic things right doesn't mean you cant question their decisions and statements elsewhere. I think most sensible people have a certain amount of sympathy and patience with the government because nobody could get all these calls right in such an unprecedented crisis as this but I'd feel much more comfortable if they were willing to admit the occasional misstep rather than try and pretend every u-turn is all part of the plan.

Anyway, what the fuck is this all about?

 

The body that acts as spokesperson said they hadn’t spoken to them not the retailers themselves. We’ve got a body for our industry, they came straight past and spoke direct to us to save time. 

regulatory bodies that are basically an index and an annual exhibition with a bit of governmental lobbying aren’t the industry. 

food supply can recover, the problem is that it’s not getting chance it needs a week to recover. 
toilet paper for example we’re actually a net exporter of we have 10 years supply. 

globally their is a reagents shortage, the CDC’s trial fucked it and the US brought millions. Ireland has the same problem. 
 

We probably fucked it by not testing and initially trying to slow the epidemic based on that WHO report out of Wuhan, Italy showed the Chinese have lied so we reversed strategy but by that point the suppression horse had bolted so it’s testing when coming in with symptoms. I reckon we probably have 150,000 cases now

 

[IgnisExcubitor]

48 minutes ago, MUFC said:

 

I hope when the cops catch him, he is tried for murder. 

[MUFC]

1 minute ago, IgnisExcubitor said:

I hope when the cops catch him, he is tried for murder. 

Am a Muslim myself but these guys have taken the biscuit. They need a twatting and think they're above and beyond the law. These groups love to argue and are hard to reason with.

[Honey Honey]

Some tweets worth sharing.

 

 

[MUFC]

Stupid question here. If a vaccine isn’t created soon. Do we just hope more people catch it so we all become immune? Then just hope it goes away? I mean what is the short and long term plan?

[Honey Honey]

7 minutes ago, MUFC said:

Stupid question here. If a vaccine isn’t created soon. Do we just hope more people catch it so we all become immune? Then just hope it goes away? I mean what is the short and long term plan?

Sir Patrick Vallance would love that. He's probably modelling how soon it would all be over if he knock's on everyone's door under the age of 60 and breaths on them 

Seriously though it's too early to say but anything less than test and trace is a recipe to getting screwed.

[RandoEFC+]

17 minutes ago, MUFC said:

Stupid question here. If a vaccine isn’t created soon. Do we just hope more people catch it so we all become immune? Then just hope it goes away? I mean what is the short and long term plan?

I think the early research is showing that recovering from it once makes you unlikely to contract it again but there have been a few cases of people getting it twice. 

Some have said that life can't truly go back to normal until a vaccine is developed. 

[Dr. Gonzo]

18 minutes ago, MUFC said:

Stupid question here. If a vaccine isn’t created soon. Do we just hope more people catch it so we all become immune? Then just hope it goes away? I mean what is the short and long term plan?

Short term plan: stay quarantined for a period of time to prevent the spread of the disease

Long term plan:  - a vaccine could take a year (or more). I think with how infectious this is and with it's not insignificant mortality rate for people of certain ages... I think a vaccine is obviously a priority for the people who make vaccines for diseases. If there are other coronaviruses out there in animals we haven't caught yet, I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing "coronavirus vaccines" like we've got with "flu vaccines."

[Fairy In Boots]

24 minutes ago, Harvsky said:

Sir Patrick Vallance would love that. He's probably modelling how soon it would all be over if he knock's on everyone's door under the age of 60 and breaths on them 

Seriously though it's too early to say but anything less than test and trace is a recipe to getting screwed.

I just don’t know how feasible testing in tracing is we don’t have the manpower to do that and we are already full blown pandemic  mode I will probably say we’ve got within the region of 100-250,000 suspected cases we just can’t test on track that. We can’t fucking test & track 10,000 fucking terrorists let alone 100,000 people with flu like symptoms. 

Edited April 1, 2020 by Fairy In Boots

[Mpache]

5 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

I think the early research is showing that recovering from it once makes you unlikely to contract it again but there have been a few cases of people getting it twice. 

Some have said that life can't truly go back to normal until a vaccine is developed. 

Do you reckon travel restrictions domestically will be lifted at some point before a vaccine is developed?

I plan on staying at home but my new dog is waiting in Northern Ontario and we're just waiting for restrictions to be lifted so it can be brought to us and join the family.

If I were to assume anything, they might be lifted when things calm down again before a possible 2nd wave.

[Fairy In Boots]

Just seen the spectator report that the US now has over 200,000 cases

[RandoEFC+]

42 minutes ago, Inti Brian said:

Do you reckon travel restrictions domestically will be lifted at some point before a vaccine is developed?

I plan on staying at home but my new dog is waiting in Northern Ontario and we're just waiting for restrictions to be lifted so it can be brought to us and join the family.

If I were to assume anything, they might be lifted when things calm down again before a possible 2nd wave.

I honestly have no idea. My knowledge only comes from experts and the news second-hand. I think it's going to have to really die down before countries start to come out of lockdown but if there's still a small handful of undetected cases I don't know what's stopping the virus from spreading all over again if immunity from recovering once isn't guaranteed. I think you can only call it 100% safe when you can supply a vaccine to the majority of the population.

[Dr. Gonzo]

1 hour ago, Inti Brian said:

Do you reckon travel restrictions domestically will be lifted at some point before a vaccine is developed?

I plan on staying at home but my new dog is waiting in Northern Ontario and we're just waiting for restrictions to be lifted so it can be brought to us and join the family.

If I were to assume anything, they might be lifted when things calm down again before a possible 2nd wave.

I think different countries have different rules on travel restrictions - so that's not going to be something other than other Canadians can ask. And even then, Canada's got states/territories (right?! lol) so they might have their own rules.

[Carnivore Chris]

It's hitting slums in Brazil and India now 

Also the number of deaths per cases confirmed in Spain and Italy is scary really, as we will probably see just as many in England once we catch up. This is the first time ever in my life where you can truly say that the world is United as one to battle the same enemy rather than each other.

I do think the mortality rate isn't exactly what it seems, as a country confirming 100,000 cases could well have closer to 200,000, although 1,000s of people dying is always terrible however many recover. 12,000 Italians, 10,000 Spaniards, 2,500 Brits, 1 German(), 4,000 French, 3,000 Iranians, 3,000 Chinese, etc, have had their lives cut short, whether already ill, old, or neither.

[Tommy]

2 minutes ago, Carnivore Chris said:

1 German()

I think we have 800ish deaths so far. A big tragedy but still relatively mild compared to other countries. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe Germans are superior after all.  

[Carnivore Chris]

3 minutes ago, Tommy said:

I think we have 800ish deaths so far. A big tragedy but still relatively mild compared to other countries. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe Germans are superior after all.  

Or maybe you created it in an attempt to wipe out the world again and vaccinated all Germans beforehand 

On a serious note, people don't give Germany enough credit for how advanced you are as a nation. It's not really surprising that you have coped with it better. It's still shit to lose 800 people though but not all can be saved unfortunately.

 

[Harry]

7 hours ago, IgnisExcubitor said:

Cases popping up in slums here, thanks to the idiots who returned from the Tablighi Jamaat and hid in slums. Which means we are fucked. Cause it will spread rapidly like hell in slums. A massive jump to 181 cases in two days in the city here. The coming fortnight is going to be nasty for those poor folks. All because of the idiots who held a large congregation in Delhi and spread everywhere in the rest of the country and then hid from the authorities.

Assume it's 20 times that number already mate and doubling every 3 days. The actual confirmed case data is a real lag indicator

[Rucksackfranzose]

2 hours ago, Tommy said:

I think we have 800ish deaths so far. A big tragedy but still relatively mild compared to other countries. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe Germans are superior after all.  

One reason is we have 29.2 ICU per 100k inhabitants: In comparison  Italy have 12.2, France 11.6, Spain 9.7 and the UK have 6.6. Germany are at the moment even capable to provide intensive care to patients from other countries, ie Italy and France.

[Harry]

Data starting to emerge supporting a Wuhan death toll of more than 40,000. Not 2500 as reported by the CCP