#Coronavirus: Page 11 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

#Coronavirus

Mirth

UK Health Minister Nadine Dorries has told the BBC that a member of her parliamentary staff has also been infected with the virus.

Ms Dorries was confirmed as having Covid-19 yesterday.

She didn't name the staff member, but according to the parliamentary register of MPs' staff she employs three people - one of whom is her daughter.

This morning Ms Dorries posted in a WhatsApp group of Tory MPs that if any of them had sat next to her last week in the "tea room or library etc", to please let her know, because it was "hard to remember" everyone she had come into contact with.

This afternoon she told the BBC: "Contact tracers have full list of everyone I have been in contact with."

She apparently started experiencing symptoms on Thursday, but afterwards attended an event at Downing Street hosted by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and held a constituency surgery attended by dozens of members of the public.

Labour MP Rachael Maskell met Ms Dorries last week, and has now been told to self-isolate after feeling unwell.

Ricky1985

jones wrote:
Stronger measures in China have led to the number of daily new infections go down to low double digits, lower than in any other major epicenter. It might be impossible to remove it altogether but it's certainly still possible to affect the degree to which it'll be in our lives.

It is going to be interesting to see what happens when the people of China begin to work, travel and gather again. I suspect we will see a second wave, especially as evidence indicates warmer weather will not reduce the transmissibility of the virus.

I think Mirth makes a good point regarding containment measures not being a quick fix, but I think governments knows that and are attempting to break it to people slowly and gently that their normal lives are going to change radically for more than just a couple of weeks.

My view is that these measures are coming anyway, the softly softly approach means more people are infected, more people are dying and greater preventative measures should have been taken. Don't compund that by waiting for the NHS to fall to its knees before taking action to limit the spread.

Ricky1985

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-outbreak-declared-pandemic-by-who-11955521

Speaking about the worldwide situation, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: "We are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction.

"We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterised as a pandemic."

The WHO finally declare this outbreak a pandemic.

Clrnc

No way sports can continue anymore. Expect it to be postponed by this month.

I don't think they will take Liverpool's title away but it will be so sad for their fans

Ricky1985

You really care about their fans?

I must be a cold hearted bastard then because I think it'd be hilarious.

Mirth

I think Liverpool not winning the league is the only good thing to come out of this.

Clrnc

"so sad"

😆

Or if there's a way to deem the season invalid...

QuincyAbeyie

Clrnc wrote:
"so sad"

😆

Or if there's a way to deem the season invalid...

And then they just have to give next season's CL spots to the four English teams with the highest UEFA coefficient except for City, namely Liverpool, us, United and Tottenham.

Claudius

Uefa likes tournaments. We should just have a quick summer tournament of the top 9 times minus City. The best four go through. Do that as your American tour. Record box office at the gates and on TV. Claudius accepts payment in single malt

MistaT

I've decided to bail on some upcoming sporting events, but struggling on whether or not to keep play footy.

Thinking I'll be ok with it, but will pack sanitizer for pre and post game. Avoid the handshake line.

Claudius

MistaT wrote:
I've decided to bail on some upcoming sporting events, but struggling on whether or not to keep play footy.

Thinking I'll be ok with it, but will pack sanitizer for pre and post game. Avoid the handshake line.

You should pitch up wearing your Darth Vader mask, complete with heavy breathing

jones

Mirth wrote:
jones wrote:
Stronger measures in China have led to the number of daily new infections go down to low double digits, lower than in any other major epicenter. It might be impossible to remove it altogether but it's certainly still possible to affect the degree to which it'll be in our lives.

It definitely has - and it's inevitable at this stage but what I'm trying to say is that in addition to managing the outbreak, we'll need to manage the psyche of the people as well. Even in Italy, despite the crisis, there were riots in the prisons because the country was locked down- who knows how people will react the longer this progresses and the initial solidarity frays? We're in uncharted territory really.

The thing is people will act like this is a nuisance which could be handled in stride as long as dumb governments continue to treat it that way. Tell people this is a serious fucking disease, send everyone working home for two or three weeks, organise staggered returns to work and explain to them that's the only way its going to not get worse. No need to point to China and their authoratitve government, look at Taiwan who've dealt with it excellently they even had a presidential election during this outbreak and while in all models they were expected to have been hit the worst they have just 40 infections in March. Keep on procrastinating and suffer the same consequences as Italy.

Claudius

Jonesy, one of thee worries is this fragmented approach globally. Progress in countries like Taiwan and Singapore can be undone by slower countries like Italy and Iran.
Hopefully, the world learns from this for future pandemics. We need WHO / UN to be able to have a protocol that locks down disease spread in a coordinated way across countries.

jones

Claudius wrote:
Jonesy, one of thee worries is this fragmented approach globally. Progress in countries like Taiwan and Singapore can be undone by slower countries like Italy and Iran.
Hopefully, the world learns from this for future pandemics. We need WHO / UN to be able to have a protocol that locks down disease spread in a coordinated way across countries.

Reason Singapore and Taiwan have had success is because they were prepared and have been for decades, they're pragmatic enough to fund appropriate institutions for years and to actually hold out enough budget for cases where their contingency plans kick in. Whereas the entire Western hemisphere follows an approach of treating national health budgets like their underlying nations and populations were publicly listed entities. Meaning it's more economical to not pay shit and keep expenses to an absolute minimum because for all those years where nothing happens and hospitals operate at 100% capacity you make a good buck, for those years like 2020 is shaping up to be oh well tough fucking luck.

Iran is a different case, a country that's barred from trading with any other while the rest of the world is watching them die due to lack of medicinal supplies and devices even masks.. well what else is left to say.

frusciante

i actually work as an infectologist at university hospital in slovakia. so far we had just one confirmed case in our hospital. altogother it is 10 confirmed in slovakia. for the last 3 weeks the most of the patients we had were coronavirus suspects. they are really bloating the number of patients we are dealing with (and significant part of that are obvious nonsense cases because of the panic). during the last night shift i spent 6 hours without any break in the special suit examinating suspects that were constantly brought by ambulance cars. and this is only the beggining and we havent started dealing with the real disease yet, but it is already quite exhausting. tough times ahead

Claudius

Thanks for being on the frontlines, Frusciante. Stay safe.

Mirth

jones wrote:
Claudius wrote:
Jonesy, one of thee worries is this fragmented approach globally. Progress in countries like Taiwan and Singapore can be undone by slower countries like Italy and Iran.
Hopefully, the world learns from this for future pandemics. We need WHO / UN to be able to have a protocol that locks down disease spread in a coordinated way across countries.

Reason Singapore and Taiwan have had success is because they were prepared and have been for decades, they're pragmatic enough to fund appropriate institutions for years and to actually hold out enough budget for cases where their contingency plans kick in. Whereas the entire Western hemisphere follows an approach of treating national health budgets like their underlying nations and populations were publicly listed entities. Meaning it's more economical to not pay shit and keep expenses to an absolute minimum because for all those years where nothing happens and hospitals operate at 100% capacity you make a good buck, for those years like 2020 is shaping up to be oh well tough fucking luck.

Iran is a different case, a country that's barred from trading with any other while the rest of the world is watching them die due to lack of medicinal supplies and devices even masks.. well what else is left to say.

Should add that both Singapore, Vietnam and Taiwan were prepared for this because of the SARS outbreak which was a near miss so its embedded in the psyche of the nation. I don't think Europe has had a similar outbreak since 1918 and I don't think North America has ever had to deal with this in their entire history.

I agree that at some point people will have to not be molly coddled and told what to do but this isn't going to be the only outbreak this year, we'll have to repeat this cycle a few times oner the coming months until the whole world brings the case numbers back doen

I also can't help wonder whether we'd show the same urgency if it was the young that suffered the most rather than the elderly

jones

Mirth wrote:
jones wrote:
Reason Singapore and Taiwan have had success is because they were prepared and have been for decades, they're pragmatic enough to fund appropriate institutions for years and to actually hold out enough budget for cases where their contingency plans kick in. Whereas the entire Western hemisphere follows an approach of treating national health budgets like their underlying nations and populations were publicly listed entities. Meaning it's more economical to not pay shit and keep expenses to an absolute minimum because for all those years where nothing happens and hospitals operate at 100% capacity you make a good buck, for those years like 2020 is shaping up to be oh well tough fucking luck.

Iran is a different case, a country that's barred from trading with any other while the rest of the world is watching them die due to lack of medicinal supplies and devices even masks.. well what else is left to say.

Should add that both Singapore, Vietnam and Taiwan were prepared for this because of the SARS outbreak which was a near miss so its embedded in the psyche of the nation. I don't think Europe has had a similar outbreak since 1918 and I don't think North America has ever had to deal with this in their entire history.

That's certainly true but entire health committees including heads of WHO and other supranational institutions health ministers etc have all called for the creation of reserves for instances like these. Truth is even if it were not a virus but some natural disaster ie earthquake this would've happened because hospitals all over Europe (the rest of the world too, but for different reasons) lack any meaningful buffers to handle a spine in diseases or injuries. I'm betting good money that even after all this abates there will be no preparations for anything of the sort happening again. The need to stay unprepared is dogmatic in nature, just like the GFC in 08 changed nothing this won't do anything to change the neoliberal urge to deplete and drain public institutions.

Agree 100% with your last paragraph. The amount of times I've heard or read a variation of "oh well it's just the old who'll face this" was unreal, only good thing about it is their children will treat them like absolute dogshit as soon as they get old too.

Mirth

jones wrote:
That's certainly true but entire health committees including heads of WHO and other supranational institutions health ministers etc have all called for the creation of reserves for instances like these. Truth is even if it were not a virus but some natural disaster ie earthquake this would've happened because hospitals all over Europe (the rest of the world too, but for different reasons) lack any meaningful buffers to handle a spine in diseases or injuries. I'm betting good money that even after all this abates there will be no preparations for anything of the sort happening again. The need to stay unprepared is dogmatic in nature, just like the GFC in 08 changed nothing this won't do anything to change the neoliberal urge to deplete and drain public institutions.

Can't argue with that - seems like stockpiling and excess capacity is only for the military.

Oh well - the only thing left in this timeline is for us to develop a vaccine and then the anti-vaxers don't use it.

Claudius

jones wrote:
Claudius wrote:
Jonesy, one of thee worries is this fragmented approach globally. Progress in countries like Taiwan and Singapore can be undone by slower countries like Italy and Iran.
Hopefully, the world learns from this for future pandemics. We need WHO / UN to be able to have a protocol that locks down disease spread in a coordinated way across countries.

Reason Singapore and Taiwan have had success is because they were prepared and have been for decades, they're pragmatic enough to fund appropriate institutions for years and to actually hold out enough budget for cases where their contingency plans kick in. Whereas the entire Western hemisphere follows an approach of treating national health budgets like their underlying nations and populations were publicly listed entities. Meaning it's more economical to not pay shit and keep expenses to an absolute minimum because for all those years where nothing happens and hospitals operate at 100% capacity you make a good buck, for those years like 2020 is shaping up to be oh well tough fucking luck.

Iran is a different case, a country that's barred from trading with any other while the rest of the world is watching them die due to lack of medicinal supplies and devices even masks.. well what else is left to say.

Jonesy, Iran and USA are interesting contrasts. Iran, as you say, is suffering from mostly-American sanctions. The USA with all the resources in the world spurned WHO testing assistance because they likely viewed it as demeaning support for developing countries, and in the process failed to get a grip on disease growth rates for the past week.

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