UKH

Is it me or does it seem like we are making a little too much of a mountain from a mole  hill? The BBC app only has Coronavirus stories on it and it's being rammed down our throats on the BBC news channels.

I'm beginning to think people are going slightly mad.

We're all going to die!!!!!!!!

youtube.com/watch?v=HcwTxRuq-uk&

Counter-productive too.

We'd run out of soap in the bathroom, popped into Wilkos to get some and the shelves were empty except for some (admittedly nice) Imperial Leather stuff. People have just been stocking up on hand-soap as they're no so fervently washing their hands. 

The trouble being, as people have no bulk-bought loads of it, there's none left for other people - meaning they potentially can't wash their hands, therefore making it more likely to spread.

Le sigh.

The Government has announced that as many people in the UK have died from Coronavirus as have been found dead in Michael Barrymore’s swimming pool.

A spokesman said, “This is a milestone for this virus in the UK. Earlier today a person died from Coronavirus. That brings the total number of deaths in the UK to 1. To put that in context  that’s equal to the number of people found floating dead in Michael Barrymore’s swimming pool. It is also equal to the number of people that have been shot dead by Oscar Pistorius.”

There are fears that deaths from the virus could increase over the coming weeks. “We’re preparing for the worst. In the coming days we expect it to equal the mortality rate of Princess Diana’s car crash. By next week it could be as lethal as lorry drivers and next month you’re looking at something as lethal as Iain Duncan Smith, the Royal Family and Jim Jones.”

A young boy we interviewed to pad this article out a bit told us, “I’m really scared. I’ve never heard of Michael Barrymore but I’ve watched My Kind of People and was genuinely shocked and saddened. That show spawned Charlotte Church and the X Factor. If Coronavirus is worse than that who knows where it might lead.”

We tried to interview Coronavirus but it declined to meet us. Shame, we fancied 2 weeks in isolation.

It is a molehill that can turn into a mountain very quickly.  If every case infects two more and there is no immunity in the population it goes:

1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536,....

and keeps going until a sufficient fraction of the population have already had it that new cases don't infect two more.

A reminder that we are a species, and if we insist on millions of us living cheek by jowel this is going to happen. Nature has a knack of finding balance.

I disagree. It is an incredibly difficult balance for government and individuals to make. Do too little and it could be very bad indeed. With luck we'll end up in a sort of millenium bug situation where people like you will be asking what all the fuss was about (to stop it being bad by the way).

8 deaths at a single care home and there are thousands of care homes in the UK.

https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/feds-investigating-kirkland-nursing-facili...

I'm getting really frustrated with people who have no idea about infectious disease telling everyone to calm down.

It's not the media telling schools to shut and people not to fly, it's the WHO, public health England etc.

If they are taking it seriously then I really think we all should. We shouldn't panic but we also shouldn't compare it to normal flu and get complacent.

Agreed. 
But the answer is quite simple. 

DON'T CLICK ON THE ARTICLE. 
Take it a step further and don't go on their website for a while. 

It's a loop, we click so they know/think we 'like' these stories, so they print more of them. If the story didn't sell then they would write about it less.

Stop clicking, they will see traffic goes down so they will print less and make up their clicks with stories about Justin Bieber's gender identity or whatever else we are interested in at the moment. 

It being all over the media constantly does not mean people have gone mad or even panicking. It merely means the 24 hour news cycle is filling its output/ pages etc as it always needs to.

I don’t think people buying hand gel, toilet rolls etc is panic buying either - shelves are empty because of an increase in demand (which is not panic). It also seems sensible to accept that any of us may have to self isolate for 2 weeks and ensure we have the resources at home to cope. Again not panicking.

I do wonder if the general mortality rate will go down.  10000 deaths this last flu season and 180000 hospitalized and now due to C19 everyone is washing their hands etc.  Also I saw a joke picture commenting on the fact scientists have said wash your hands and people have stopped flying and travelling, stopped going into work.    Scientists say global warming could kill millions and damage the planet and we should fly less and so on, reaction... nah thanks.

Interesting times.

Cheers

Toby

If the mortality rate is anything like the 3.4% which has been suggested (the corresponding figure for influenza is 0.1%), and if 20% of the population contract it (indeed, 80% as has been suggested for Scotland) then it could be very bad. Nobody knows yet. However, at this stage, a cautious approach makes sense to me.

We're really screwed!!!!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51764225

With Matty on the case, even if the Coronavirus don't get ya, you'll probably starve to death!

I agree, China and Italy both had a death rate of 3.4%

America seems to be 6.7%. Maybe they're shooting the ill over there

We've seen nothing in comparison yet but I think it's only a matter of time, especially if people don't take it seriously.

The US administration seems to have been in denial about the problem, and also(/accordingly) they have a shortage of test kits ready. Add in to it that medical attention in the US is very expensive and you probably end up with a situation that the only people who get tested are the ones who are ill enough for medical assistance to be unavoidable.

So the overall fatality rate is probably the same as everywhere else, it's just they aren't identifying as many of their infected.

Speaking as an OAP who has had a history of respiratory problems since childhood it seems to me that we are grossly over-reacting. Yes, coronavirus can be fatal but at present in  very small numbers.

Yes, the Reasonable Worst Case Scenario numbers are frightening (esp if you an OAP with a long history of respiratory problems) but they always are and do not represent the likeliest scenario. For example, an article I read yesterday  (sorry can't find it now to link to)  reported that during the swine flu pandemic ten years ago the  official RWCS was 65,000 deaths in the UK. The actual figure was around 260. Partly, of course that was thanks to measures taken to contain it so, of course, we have to take sensible precautions but let's not go daft.

Politicians and public authorities will always over-react because it's a one-way bet for them. It makes them look  decisive and in control and if the predicted disaster fails to materialise they can take the credit. If they play it down they are accused of being complacent and ineffectual and eventually one of these scares may prove not to be a scare after all but actually the real deal.

But as a member of the group most at risk, I will keep washing my hands and coronavirus can get in line behind Mad Cow Disease, bird flu, swine flu, that bloody great asteroid the Daily Express says is going to wipe out life on earth next month and all the other things that were going to kill me but then didn't.

Italy.  France, Germany, Spain.  Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, United Kingdom.  All are seeing close to exponential rises in cases numbers on a daily basis, at 3 different scale points, largest with Italy.  Fatality rates are nudging 4% in China and Italy, and are still rising daily - the quotes of 1% were a lowball made by inappropriately dividing (total dead) by (total infected including ongoing infected).   Odd for the media to de-sensaitionalise something but I guess basic maths isn't there thing. 

China has apparently slowed the spread well below exponential, but then again China has entire cities designed and built to help lock the population down, as well as a population afraid of disappearing or being reeducated.

The asymptote on the death rate is perhaps 5%.  If the growth rate in the UK does not slow in the way it has in China we could be looking at a majority of people infected in 40 to 100 days, with in excess of one million deaths.

Perhaps we will do better at containment.  Perhaps critical care will improve with lessons learnt at home and abroad.  Perhaps something will weaken the virus.  Perhaps warm weather will knock it on its head.  Perhaps.

The people who have said things like "only 51 people are infected in the UK" or "only 1 person has died so you don't need to worry" are I think quite misinformed.  It was only a few weeks ago that the same could be said in Italy, and a few weeks before that in China.  What's special about us in the UK?  What is different?  What means we won't end up where Italy is now, and beyond?

It is too early to tell which way things are going to go in the UK , but if it goes south, by the time we can tell that that is the case, it will be to late to prepare and respond accordingly.  So we must prepare now.

Are you pining for Brexit stories?  

Or more Harry/Megan?

That is not really the death rate of the virus but of the situation at this precise moment .   Looking at today's figures for Italy on Worldometer

• 3858 cases
• 148 deaths
• 414 recoveries
• 2666 active cases

The live/die outcome of the 2666 active cases is  currently undecided.  The final death rate could be anywhere between that associated with all active cases living (148 / 3858 = 3.8% ) or all active cases dying ((148 + 2666) / 3858 = 72%).

I'm not saying it will be anywhere near 72% but making the point that 3.8% is the absolute lower bound for a death rate in Italy as estimated today, and that it can only go up to an absolute upper bound of 72%.

For China, I get an absolute lower bound of 3.8% and an absolute upper bound of 33%.

The absolute lower bound for China is currently rising by about 0.05% per day as more deaths and new cases come in.  It's starting to get to the point with the Chinese outbreak that enough information is available to model the statistics of infections to get a final death rate - but this is applicable to a population with a much smaller proportion of people in the advanced age ranges where Coronavirus is most lethal. 

The absolute lower bound for Italy rose by over 1% yesterday.  So I don't think it's going to stabilise anywhere near 3.8%.

You have to remember though, your case numbers are the reported ones.
From what I've heard, many of us may well get it and not even know it.

This doesn’t change the fact that the death rates from reported cases that I was replying to are lowballs for the reporter numbers.

Although at the moment there is extensive contact tracing and testing going on, and the WHO are saying as categorically as they can that there is no large asymptomatic reservoir at work in Chiba. 

I think you are complacent. Read this summary of the WHO investigation in China and think on how well we in the UK can respond in comparison. We are currently increasing cases by 30% daily with the infections being a couple of weeks back.

https://www.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/comments/fbt49e/the_who_sent_25_internat...

I don't find the humour around the one death so far very funny, when if you read between the lines experts are now talking hundreds if we are lucky. It is only luck that will save us from things being even worse now... mutation or seasonal changes (albeit the spread in warm countries isnt leading me to optimism). I will always raise a glass to luck.

Bloody Hell! Maybe this really is the Big One after all. I have just seen that the Lake District Marmalade Festival has been cancelled. This is the End of Civilisation As We Know It (unless of course it's a smokescreen to cover up the fact that Brexit meant there were no foreign fruit pickers to work in the orange groves of Helvellyn and the crop rotted on the trees)

There is however some regional variation. South Korea has had 5766 cases and only 35 deaths, which is considerably less alarming than the Italian cases. I am sure the epidemiologists will be investigating these differences.

However, it seems to me that these preliminary numbers, from whichever region, have limited statistical significance, since there still many unknowns - unreported cases, under-reporting of cases, likelihoods of outcomes, and so on. What we do know is that this virus has the potential to be very serious, and that serious measures will probably be needed to reduce harm to our communities. Those who try to downplay the potential impacts are not, to my mind, being helpful. 

Once again we are in the event.  The use of past case "has had" is incorrect.  South Korea has 97% of those cases ongoing, and Italy has 85% of its cases ongoing.  It is likely - although not yet known - that the death rate in South Korea will be comparable, it's just that it's hiding in the 12% difference in the reported closure rate of cases - the people who will raise it to ~4% haven't died yet.  This reflects in an absolute upper bound calculation for deaths in South Korea giving 97% - which is clearly preposterous but shows that it's not at all valid to draw conclusions or extrapolate from their data.  It only becomes meaningful to do so when the two bounds start to converge - which can't happen during an ongoing exponential growth phase.  The only way to draw valid conclusions during such a phase is a high level longitudinal analysis - limiting your analysis to specific cases for which the outcome is in the past and so is known to be either "death" or recovery.  Those conclusions become lowballs if critical care is overwhelmed.  

A lot of people are being drawn in to making very incorrect conclusions using data on cases for which there is no outcome yet.  

People get very complacent about disasters that only happen "once in a lifetime" or less, they get used to hearing warnings over and over, then they don't happen, and they get a false sense of security.

Epidemics that kill lots of people aren't imaginary, they happen every so often throughout human history (actually, the history of life, I imagine). There will be more of them, and this looks as if it will probably be one.

It's all fine and well thinking you'll be OK because you aren't in the high risk group - you're probably right, you'll likely only get a cold or a dose of "the 'flu". But there's a very real chance that tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of people will die of this in the UK.

If it infects half of the UK's 66 million people, and one percent of them die, that's 330,000 human beings dying in this country alone. That isn't a wildly pessimistic outcome either, it could well infect more than that, or have a higher mortality rate.

Yes, they'll probably mostly be older people and those with existing health problems - but I'd gently suggest that they are still people who matter, and they can't really afford the bravado many younger or healthier people are exhibiting just now.

And that's without considering the possibility of the virus mutating into something deadlier, and maybe less selective. The more people infected, the more of the virus there is, and the greater the chance of new variants popping up.

So, overall, no - I don't think it's getting too much media coverage.

And panic is always bad, but sensible preparation, for what has a real chance of being a devastating disaster for many, is not.

In the post-brexit world the fresh berry sector is going to get in a jam.

Yes and no. Most of us will be fine disease wise but some of us will die. If it runs wild and is anywhere near the reasonable worst case predictions it's going to be something none of us have lived through with profound social, economic and political ramifications. It could potentially directly kill 0.5M+, mostly elderly in Britain, god knows how many more indirectly through economic shock and broken services... once it's passed that changes our world radically from supply of property and capital to voter demographics and the attitudinal, social and employment changes it leaves in its wake.

Thinking about the consequences for me of say a year long lock-down starting soon: The disease potentially threatens my health and more pressingly that of my pregnant wife and our ageing overseas relatives. It means they may not be able to travel to meet their grandchild and if they get ill we may not see them again. If it overwhelms the hospitals before my wife gives birth that's happening at home potentially with no fall back for complications, a return to pre-20th century risk. Hoping all that goes well it threatens my job which will be our sole source of income so also threatens our home. We make things and can't work from home if travel bans are implemented plus we are already piling up orders we can't export to Chinese clients because the supply chain is broken by closures and restrictions their end. China is just a few weeks ahead of the curve we're all on. More banal but socially important, our local pubs, clubs and leisure facilities potentially don't survive as social contact becomes risky or restricted. My city's economy leans toward tourism, socialising, retail and entertainment, meeting and footfall, that is likely to suffer badly, probably through what would be peak season. Will our food supply hold up? The 'killer foreign disease' and the recession it triggers that 'borders could have prevented' (bollocks but it'll sell) potentially stokes a wave of ultra-nationalist sentiment weakening our ability to tackle global issues like climate change with very dangerous consequences, that's on top of a government which will have taken and will be reluctant to relinquish emergency controls, that's a new and dangerous political landscape. Or we go totally the other way facilitated by the changed demographic.

Most of that bad stuff probably won't happen but all of it and worse could and it's not that unlikely.

It's our reaction to it that could easily shake the foundations of our civilisation as we know it, there are no good choices, all we can do is try to find a balance of bad choices which minimises the harm. One outcome which now looks very unlikely is it fizzles out or we get ahead of it technologically.

jk

My general question on this is: why has the Covid-19 coronavirus spread so rapidly and internationally as compared to the SARS coronavirus of 2003? What's different in these two cases?

If it infects half the UK population the NHS will be overwhelmed and mortality rates will be very high. The WHO data from china states that about 5% of those infected need critical care in ITU on a respirator that helps them breathe and another 15% have very serious symptoms and need oxygen. This is not like seasonal flu. This is not like what our PM Boris is saying that almost everyone will be OK. Even the chief medical officer is being a bit economical with the truth talking 1% mortality, as that is only where infection rates don't overwhelm the system (in medical capacity terms or in terms of some secondary factor like social unrest)

Given the way people and organisations will react I suspect we will be under emergency marshal law and economic collapse well before any worst case scenario becomes obvious. At least we have one of the most competent looking governments ever to help us if the worst does come to pass (that last bit was sarcasm).

I agree entirely with your every part of your post as a reasonable set of possible outcomes towards the worse side of the possibilities that we face.

I have been particularly upset about a couple of people I have little choice but to interact with repeatedly asking me about the number of foreign people at my work - they're not the problem, they're already here.  The biggest mechanisms importing it to the UK seem to be residents and nationals returning from work and leisure trips, but the racist/xenophobic scapegoating is already building.

That does seem to be a possible scenario, yes, especially given that healthcare workers themselves will suffer huge exposure and probably fall ill in large numbers.

However, the scale of such a disaster might be reduced significantly by slowing the spread of the virus, so that the problem lasts longer but fewer people are critical at the same time. And that's a big part of why we should be taking it seriously.

This is based only on news stories, but I think the biggest reason is that covid-19 is very infectious before any obvious symptoms, whereas for SARS, the symptoms were apparent at a much earlier stage.

It's also worth thinking about what the death rate could actually mean.

About a fifth of the UK population is over 60.

It currently looks quite likely that the vast majority of deaths will be in that group.

So 1% of the population dying could really mean about 5% of over 60s dying, that's one in twenty.

2% of the population could mean about one in ten over 60s dying.

No, it’s simply our survival instincts kicking in.

People detect multiplicative risk instinctively quite well, but are not very good at detecting them through logical thinking - as it involves thinking mathematically which is hard.

Panic is a problem if it becomes paralysing. But if channeled usefully it’s a powerful survival mechanism, if paranoia makes people wash their hands more, avoid unnecessary contacts, etc etc then it’s proven that this will save tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives.

Thanks - that would make sense. So the little bastard has evolved to get sneakier.

Exactly. Most of us will probably know someone who will die from it  This is a saddening reality - unless we find a magic treatment, or can stop it, both looking unlikely just now.

But the good news is the we know from scientific evidence that there are many thing we can do to keep the % of the population infected down. It will take a lot of effort and lot of sacrifices, i suspect.

Increase in demand?  OK, I have half a bottle of handwash by my kitchen sink.  I'm fairly comfortable this will last me more than 2 weeks.  But only two rolls of loo paper.  Because I live on my own I think maybe I ought to go and get a pack of 20 loo rolls just in case to cover that 2 weeks...

I am not panicing but I am very worried about it, but then both us us are in the 65-70 bracket (though healthy) and I don't feel ready to die yet!

The big concern is that we know nothing about it, fear of the unknown, none of us know what it feels like to be infected, have friends that have recovered or died from it. We simply don't know so fear the worst, possibly.

It may turn out to be similar to flu in % fatalities - if you took away flu vaccine, which most vulnerable oldies have so they generally escape - other worry is if taken ill at the height of the infections there may not be the necessary hospital care available, either beds or staff to give the care.

Yea, worrying year ahead and I,m not looking forward to it.

Don't know about Italy but Chris Whitty the other night on PM was saying the Wuhan figure of 3.4 was of diagnosed case - i.e. people who have tested positive. As he put it, 3.4% of the small amount of the visible iceberg above the water. Fortunately it seems most mild cases aren't tested for so aren't included in the figures, that's the majority of the iceberg out of sight under the water, and unlike for the Titanic - that's a really good thing!

You think the World health organisation is over-reacting? How does being an OAP make you an expert on viral diseases, infection rates and economic effect of a global pandemic?

But the same would apply to any disease. Everyone quotes the flu as being about 0.2% death rate, that's 0.2% of those known about. So we can probably correlate that Covid-19 is at least 10 -17 times more deadly than flu?

For perspective, on average, 1,600 people die in the UK every day. 25,000 a day in China. 

Since this made the news, about 100,000 people have died in the UK and about 1,500,000 in China.

In the UK 1 person has confirmed to have died due to it and about 3,000 in China. If the news is accurate, these are mainly older people with multiple existing conditions. Some may well have died anyway of the other conditions or a standard common cold type virus without C19 being a factor.

As it stands at the moment, any small changes in behaviour acting on huge populations could well make more significant change than the actual condition itself. 

In China, 700 people die everyday 'just' in road accidents. 

Your Whataboutery doesn't help prevent the disease from spreading. 

It doesn't, which is why , as I said, I am taking the precautions the experts have advised. However, having already survived several other 'tabloid killer' epidemics (AIDS, CJD, BSE, scrapie. SARS, bird flu, swine flu  - to name just the ones I can remember) unscathed, I am not at this stage getting overly excited about this one either. The authorities quite rightly have produced and are planning for a RWCS. I agree those numbers  sound terrifying. The news organisiations have pounced on those same worst case figures for their 'We're all going to die'  headlines but it is worth remembering  these are 'reasonable WORST case scenarios. They are not the most likely scenarios.

Should I end up being tipped into a mass grave  with all the other OAPs please feel free to re-post this with a little 'This has not aged well, has it?' attached

Absolutely not. I'm not attempting to trivialise it at all. 

I'm just saying the impact of small changes in behaviour could have other positive benefits. If everyone actually washed their hands in the uk and were more considerate in their impact on others, it would possibly help prevent the general spread of flu, common colds and other infections. Particularly, for the imuno-suppressed populations, e.g. someone using a bus to go and get cancer treatment. 

All bets are off if it overwhelms our health service. Cliff edge in the other direction. 

My only frame of reference with respect to the other diseases is the WHO and public health England didn't seem to be quite as concerned about them ones. 

Can I use "He said he was ill" as well?

Feel free. I won't care. I'll be dead

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51769184

I rest my case!

Balls...

Panic: sudden uncontrollable fear or anxiety, often causing wildly unthinking behaviour.

I've never been in a dangerous, or even mildly serious situation, where the outcome would have been improved by uncontrolled fear or unthinking behaviour. But I suppose some people just love to ramp up the drama. 

I think your model is pessimistic.  In the early stages 2^n might be OK but once there are sufficient people walking around infected but not diagnosed some of the passed on potential "infection" will be people who aready have it so the increase would not progress at that rate.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/commuters-spotted-wearing-boxes-bags-...

Oh dear!

Less travel, less air pollution. Much relief for asthma sufferers and those with respiratory problems who don't catch corona.

Less social events, less mass alcohol consumption, healthier livers, less violence, less drink drive, much less pressure on a&e and police services, potentially staff freed up to deal with the virus. 

It is all swings and roundabouts.

That's normal death rate though, which the health systems are geared up for.  Many of those people don't ever go on ventilators or need oxygen, they've just got cancer and died in a hospice, had a heart attack in their sleep, or run over by a bus.  A medical professional was on the radio last saturday saying that 50% of beds in NHS A&E / ICU at this time of year are due to flu-related illnesses (pneumonia etc.). Covid -19 is estimated to create ten times the number of flu patients.  Are our hospitals going to cope with a demand 5x their capacity? When all their staff will invariably get it at some point?  As an example, my local hospital serving 65k people only has 3 infection control rooms, each with 1 bed. This is patently not enough to cope with demand should the virus become established in the island.  You and I might be young and fit enough to not be badly affected by it, but what if we have an accident and all the hospital resources are in use? What if we manage to get a bed but then get infected and our bodies can't fight off the virus in our weakened state?

I don't tend to believe any of the tabloid headlines. A lot of them are staged.

Last week a mate of mine who works for the Port Of London Authority reported that someone had called the police saying a boat had turned up with infected Chinese people on board. The police found the caller was a tabloid journalist who was trying to get photos of the police boarding the boat so he could basically say "Police storm boat load of infected Chinese immigrants."

Read the link I put up Toby, it fully disects the chinese data. Included in that was the following statement

"The vast majority of those infected sooner or later develop symptoms. Cases of people in whom the virus has been detected and who do not have symptoms at that time are rare - and most of them fall ill in the next few days."

They explain the 3.4% was due to poor intial response to the outbreak. 1% seems to be the rate if the health system is not overwhelmed. The mortality rate for over 80 is 15% and 8% for 70 to 79.

This is an interview with one of the WHO experts involved in that visit.

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/2/21161067/coronavirus-covid19-china?utm_campaig...

Fear is a very useful and powerful survival mechanisms.

Which is why the last line of my post was

"and keeps going until a sufficient fraction of the population have already had it that new cases don't infect two more."

but that's not going to kick in until the series gets well past 65,536.

All I was trying to do is illustrate how quickly you go from nothing to totally f*cked under exponential growth because there's a ton of people posting stuff like 'there's only one person died and that's less than the number who get  <some not particularly scary thing>'.

My view is that it is very encouraging that the Chinese have managed to pretty much stop the spread in China by confining it to Wuhan city and are even talking about reopening schools and so on in other areas.   They did it by extreme actions and our government is so far showing no signs of that type of concerted effort.   If you multiply out our government's numbers you get far more people needing to be hospitalised for coronavirus during the three week peak than there are beds in the NHS, and of course the beds the NHS has are already full without coronavirus.

The Tories spent £4.4Bn preparing for Brexit, they talk about £20 Bn bridges to Ireland but if they wanted to deal with this they would be spending a billion or two right now training people and getting ready to quarantine cities and build and equip temporary fever hospitals like the Chinese did.  If they were responsible, rational people they'd be stopping all their pet projects and giving this 100% focus until we are through it.   

Sometimes collective safety requires excessive individual risk avoidance (which some will call « panic ») even if it conflicts with an individual own benefit and interests.

For example, the risk of you getting hit by a car is currently far higher than your risk of getting Coronavirus because you didn’t wash your hands. From your own individual perspective washing hands every hour might seem « panicky » or « irrational », but actually it’s perfectly rational and sensible for the collective.

Yes and if the reasonable worst case scenario comes to pass (80% infection, rapid exponential spread over in a year, 1-3% mortality) the average daily deaths jump to ~4500 as a direct result of the disease plus normal mortality, most of those focused in a period of weeks not spread out over a year so peaking at significant multiples of that. That's not accounting for excess mortality arising from the breakdown of normal services. For perspective that's well into mass grave territory.

jk

Yep. Even the milder scenarios don’t look too pretty.

I like UKC because of it variety of posters it gives you a good pulse on the « collective psyche. »

It seems from many of the comments that we are still in a bit of a stage of denial from parts of the population, which I suspect is going to subside pretty soon.

Yes, if only there was a catchy metaphor, like a video of a cat that looks like hitler doing a sumersault into a snowdrift that gets millions of views on youtube in just a few days... 

Yes but WHO and Public Health England tell us once and the media tell us over and over again and it seems like it's every 5 minutes, 24 hours a day.  Listening to the new you would think that there is nothing else happening in the world and you can see the presenters wetting their knickers with the excitement of  all this bad news.

Al

How would that be known? If they exist, most with no symptoms won't have been tested, certainly to date.

You can opt out of the 24-hour rolling tv/radio news cycle, and still keep adequately informed. I recommend doing so.

For similar advice, listen to: youtube.com/watch?v=F2lild9nfps&

What are the snp doing... healthcare is devolved, are they training people and building hospitals? 

Yeah, quarantine is weak compared to China, but it's a different government and population mentality here. Folk would ignore it. 

Of course, because education, transport and the police are also devolved, the superior leadership of Scotland must be already doing more than the inferior Westminster led countries? I presume you are on lock down there, schools closed, no flights, only virtual working etc.? 

Currently the UK government has tested ~ 125x as many people as have returned positive tests.  I naively assume they're doing this in a targeted and not random way, so unless there are entire clusters of infection arising not from links to known infected then I assume there's a reasonable statistical lid on the number of unknown infected in the UK.  But I don't know.

Even in times of crisis you can’t help but finding a reason to make cheap political points against devolution.

Unlike Westminster the Scottish Government have a fixed budget.  Only Westminster is allowed to borrow money to deal with an event like this.   

Also, as a practical matter they wouldn't be allowed to do anything radically different from Westminster, there's no point in trying to seriously diverge in policy from London.

Yes, I was thinking more of China. The mortality rate in Korea appears much lower - a result of better data? The low number of deaths on the  cruise ship strikes me as odd. Lots of old people i would guess who should be at risk. I think we simply dont knkw currently 

If you're tracing the contacts and find the portion those who test positive but are asymptomatic you can follow up over the coming days and weeks with checks to see how their illness progressed. That'd give you a pretty good estimate of the fraction infected who remain asymptomatic.

jk

Look more closely at the Worldometer numbers by country - South Korea has almost no closed cases with a final outcome yet - 97% are "ongoing" vs "dead" or "cured".  For comparison, 85% of cases in Italy are "ongoing" with the rest having recovered or died.  I suspect a lot of the difference in mortality rates is waiting to happen and/or be disclosed in the difference in fraction of cases not yet closed.  Why people are taking longer to die is very interesting and gives hope that fewer will die, but it's too soon to draw conclusions I think from any mortality rate in Korea.

Indeed, that stands out.  The other one that stands out to me is the low growth rate in Japan - what are they doing differently to Western Europe?

I have to disagree, the number of times I have been saved by sphincter tightening fear and panic (or should that be loosening?) allowing me to leap many metres away from large house spiders near my feet before doing my special spider dance.

Cheers

Toby

Not really Rom, I've been washing my hands properly for years, I get through blue nitrile gloves by the shed load and hand sanitiser has always been a normal part of my work kit.

Crack on mate, patronising keyboard warriors such as yourself are always there to bring laughter to even the most serious of topics. You'd better run along to Asda now and top up your stockpile of Andrex

This is interesting - UK government stats on Flu for the past 5 or so years. Lots of nice graphs, and gives a baseline for predicting C19 effects.  It looks like we should be past the winter flu peak by now, but some years the peak comes late.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/...

No. 

TiE is criticising Westminster, for not doing something, which devolved snp led Scotland also isn't using their devolved powers to do. It's hypocrical.

Crisis? 

So has the snp asked Westminster if they can enforced Chinese style measures?

Why would they need to borrow to close schools and airports? 

Blimey, you must be the most unlucky / careless / double hard bastard in the world!

Moot. Nobody is talking about you.
Unless you hadn’t noticed most people are pretty shit at washing hands, or do it very ineffectively.

As usual you totally missed the point, which wasn’t even about washing hands anyway. 

So you’re doing the same as him just the other way around. Bravo.

Just clocked a facebook post which says "ever since I read 'Covid19' to the tune of 'Come On Eileen', I can't read it any other way".  

Now I can't either.

I'll be more precise: in their research summary WHO say nearly all those who tested positive in the tracking exercises in China, who didn't at that time display symptoms, soon  after did display symptoms.

The Guardian have produced a myth busting page

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/05/has-covid-19-mutated-into-a-m...

Apparently your meant to sing "Happy birthday to you" whilst washing your hands.

Don't know why. The bloody virus isn't even a year old yet...

yes, I should have read more carefully.

One thing that worries me is that people will say, correctly, "But washing my hands is unlikely to stop me getting it ...." but forgetting that if everyone else does the same there will certainly be quite a lot people who don't get it as a result of the consequent interruptions in the chain because of those precautions exercised by many.   And that the consequent flattening of the peak infection rate will mean that there are more resources available to treat those who are.

That may well be a reasonable worst case. I’ve got no real idea what’s going to happen. I was just exploring the possibility of unintended positive consequences. 

Consider normal mortality in the U.K. is 0.9% per year anyway. The majority of which are people dying from old age and ill health conditions. It’s not correct to just add the mortalities together. These people are the most likely to be killed by the virus. 

If the other 90-odd% of people change their behaviours in such a way that they decrease their own short-term mortality it could be an interesting side effect.

If working from home gets a serious trial during this, it may change peoples general way of life considerably. Massive changes in transport and quality of life. 

I agree – simply adding the mortality rates is nonsensical as it ignores the different transmissibility and infection rates. Which is why I also consider it inappropriate to use the mortality rate of an influenza virus that spreads less well and against which many of the most susceptible people are immunised in the way some have...

Twice apparently. It’s taken me bloody ages to learn the lyrics..

. youtube.com/watch?v=6t1vaF50Ks0&

If you want to see a possibility of what might be coming in the next two weeks, Italy is a possible indication as they were a couple of weeks ahead in the infection spreading locally. Note the large numbers hospitalised (about 50%) and in intensive care (about 10%).

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/06/this-is-surreal-italian-towns...

Edit.. the Guardian article has just been edited, deaths up to nearly 200 and the numbers in hospital have been removed.

Blimey. We're going to be getting through a hell of a lot of water!

From you article below, which suggests an overeaction and people unnecessarily hospitalised. I dont this doomongering is helpful at all. Its may be bad, even very bad, but not the end of thr world. 

"Stefano Lovisetto, a 58-year-old from Vo’ Euganeo, the only quarantined town in Veneto, was dismissed from hospital on Monday after being given the all-clear.

“I had no symptoms, not even a cough,” he said. “People are saying this is the plague, but it isn’t. At least for me, it was only slightly more aggressive than a normal flu. The hospital staff were so kind and reassuring, despite having to deal with so many cases.”

I'm not doommongering. BBC news just reported the WHO data I linked above (which was available two days ago). I think the biggest threat is complacency, as demonstrated by some on this thread. Most experts are saying accurate information is important. I never mentioned any 'end of the world'.

I’d assume no Italian children were run over coming home from school this evening. Or their parent(s) injured at work because they had to take the day off to look after them.

I think msuggesting a need for 50% hospitalisation is. 

Id say the civil service are on top of things. The flu pandemic plans are well developed and being used

Yes

It's a phrase and implied in your various postswhich come over as almost gleefully anticipating a disaster 

That's why we've had an inordinate amount of rain recently.
It's all part of God's plan, for what, I don't know, he operates in mysterious ways.

I'm not sure how much you can do, Covid-19 seems fairly easy to spread and most of the effective ways of reducing that require individuals to behave sensibly: I have had an employee whinge almost constantly about the risk of spreading Corona virus and why the company hasn't done more to get sanitizer but can you get them to actually wash their hands, or stop putting a used spoon back in the coffee can you heck.

Short of getting police out on the streets tazering people for not covering their mouths when they sneeze or beating people who don't spend enough time washing their hands after going to the toilet there isn't a lot you are going to do.

The Italian experience is that 10% of those testing positive are ending up in intensive care. If 0.1% of the population were infected in a short space of time, all available intensive care beds in the UK would be taken up. There would be very difficult decisions - like stopping all hospital admissions from affected residential care and nursing homes and allowing infections in them to burn themselves out. People involved in major accidents may be allowed to die if someone with coronavirus was more likely to survive.

https://www.esicm.org/covid-19-update-from-our-colleagues-in-northern-italy...

I think it is worth being concerned (but not buying 1000s of loo rolls and antiseptic soaps).

Just do a quick back of the enveloppe calculation and you’ll realise that no health system can cope with it unless it is very aggressively contained an delayed. Hence the extraordinary measures we are seeing being applied.

This is rather obvious in other countries with good health systems where the infectious has just barely started to spread more rapidly.

He is right, there is no time for complacency. WHO was very clear about that in fact.

They've consistently fence sat and underestimated it. Not calling it severe at first, then epidemic and pandemic, when it was clearly escalating rapidly. For a global organisation I feel they've been pretty weak. After sars, mers or even Ebola, they should have known containment was key, especially with an unknown virus leaping from one species to species. They should have been calling for global travel ban etc 2 months ago. 

True. The world is much better prepared for nuclear warfare than it is for this.
Despite the fact that experts have been saying this was only a matter of time before something like this hit us for years - and we had plenty of warnings.

My understanding is that washing your hands definitely does reduce the risk of catching it yourself. The virus can survive for a while on hard surfaces. If you are out and about, you will touch hard surfaces that have been touched by people with Covid-19 and transfer the virus to your hands. I'm pretty sure the risk of absorbing a virus through your skin is small but it is a good idea to wash or disinfect your hands before you touch your mouth or eyes.

I don't think it's absorbed through the skin at all. The skin is a very effective membrane. 

Washing hands is of course key, but if people touch their clothes, mobile phone, hand bags, car steering wheel, wallets etc either side of touching an area on their face then hand washing is far left effective. What percentage of the population could use public transport and not touch their mobile phone until they'd exited and washed their hands? 

I have been cleaning my mobile phone and door handles daily for some time...  

Despite practicing an enhanced hygiene since mid January I’ve caught my first case of conjunctivitis since childhood.  I did wonder if that’s related to using the door handle and taps on the bathroom - where the sink is - at work far more than normal.  I’ll be taking a disinfectant spray to work with me on Monday...

From that link:

"We have seen a very high number of ICU admissions, almost entirely due to severe hypoxic respiratory failure requiring mechanical ventilation.  [...] We are seeing a high percentage of positive cases being admitted to our Intensive Care Units, in the range of 10% of all positive patients."

I have only a rough idea of what a mechanical ventilator is, but I'd imagine that one can't easily get hold of lots more of them in a hurry (leaving aside trained staff to operate them).

The military have a supply of mechanical ventilators although I don’t know how many.

It’s well recognised in the medical field that demand for more ventilators and trained operators is important in some situations.  There are examples of remote training and guidance being provided “live” over mobile phones, and of large scale human operation of manual ventilators when needed.  This paper looking at ad hoc ventilators built from industrial components is a good starting point - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2044.2009.06207.x

I think the "concern" isn't that lots of people will die but that lots of people will fall ill and take time off work and that would be bad for business.

Of course having a mass panic is also bad for business so it's a lose lose situation

Have they declared it a pandemic now?

I'm not actually seeing much panic. I'm seeing a lot of people vehemently protesting that we shouldn't panic but not an awful lot of actual panic.

What we seem to have is some sort of meta-panic where people rush around in a panicky way saying that we shouldn't panic. Like Corporal Jones in Dad's Army. 

Lack of ventilators and trained staff to operate them is the concern.

Plans will involve things like stopping all non-emergency surgical operations and re-purposing areas where people come round from anaesthetics as makeshift intensive care units. Beyond that, private hospitals may be requisitioned as emergency facilities.

The professor of epidemiology on Today yesterday said that it is impossible to be sure of the mortality, but sophisticated modelling seemed to be converging on about 1%.

Your absolute lower bound for Italy is not correct, because they're is no way to know how many people have been infected; those without symptoms haven't been counted. While we can be fairly sure we will know the numerator of your fraction, nobody knows the denominator. 

Having said that, the professor said we will know the mortality rate eventually, once an antibody test is developed as we'll be able to randomly test people and tell whether they've had it or not.

That would suggest > 4x as many cases circulating as detected which is at total odds with WHO reports.  Then again I don’t know how much to trust the WHO given their kowtowing to the Chinese government.

You are right.  I should have qualified better - I was giving the limits of bounds that can be inferred from the data to make the point that taking different instantaneous rates from an in progress exponential phase is meaningless.  Although the consistent message from the WHO in China is that there wasn’t a significant circulation of the diseases - based on testing - outside of the victims and their close contacts.

Agree.  Other wild card factors are the vast difference in aged population fractions between different affected countries given that’s where most deaths are, and the change in mortality rates if/when intensive care is overwhelmed.

On single cubicles I always unlocked and open the door slightly before I wash my hands, then i can just nudge it open after.

Isn't that just closing the stable door. Better to consider what things will become and stop that local cluster, then epidemic in Italy becoming a pandemic in Europe and so on. China contained it eventually through harsh measure which Europe is reluctant to administer, because it's more concerned about the economy than a few thousand deaths. 

All water under the bridge now, it's here and probably to stay. 

That was the number from Italy in the article (before it was edited). I think the Italians have got things right: they are not being complacent.  They have a proportionately much older population than China. On a risk basis, especially for the elderly, you don't want someone who has the virus falling critical at home. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/world/europe/coronavirus-italy-elderly.h...

I think you are deluded if this goes big. It's not the flu and the advice to follow is that from WHO. The government lead them and ministers are not doing so well at present. Matt as Health secretary said yesterday he had been in discussions with supermarkets about ensuring food supply .... news to them!! He then said they will secure food deliveries to those quarentined... not possible on a major scale they said.

The latest news on the Milton Keynes death shows the gap between reality and "being on top of things"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/06/coronavirus-britons-quarantin...

Blimey..   you need to calm down.

The containment in China was in all reality a small city in Chinese terms.hardly worth them worrying About

I would consider it’s easily possible for the supermarkets to restructure their home deliveries. All they need to do is prioritise those who have self isolated. With the sophisticated delivery systems they have it should be relatively easy. 
 

just those of us who use such home delivery services normally will have to venture forth into supermarkets. 
 

 fortunately  home delivery is widely used in the U.K. so there is an infrastructure in place. 

I agree to a point, but that wasn't strictly speaking the issue... Google it and look at what they said compared to what Matt said: these are serious times and he is already looking like an embarrassment. Are you not concerned with the bigger issue of our Health Secretary being 'economical with the truth' about non existant discussions, in such times as we face?

https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/health-and-care/illnesstreatments/news...

Of course, every country is different in terms of how we travel, work, socialise. 

One thing is certain is that it has spread rapidly via Italy. There must be a tipping point in the UK, where you have so many sporadic cases, that you have shut down otherwise everyone will be exposed to it. 

It has spread in certain parts of ItalyAfyer all what is the overall population and the number of cases so far. 

Must admit I would prefer it if Hunt was still there.  At least he was battle hardened to the N H S etc. 

How serious you think it is, is probably relative to if you were or are related to one of 200 deaths so far. The more cases there are mild or severe, the greater the chance of mutation. 

Faint praise? I respected Hunt, especially how he was fully in control of his breif and often seen on the front line of delivery of services ... Roy Lilley, my favorite health commentator was often impressed as well. If you had a Health Secretary competence unit of a Hunt I'm yet to be convinced Matt would make it to a deciHunt.

https://ihm.org.uk/roy-lilley-nhsmanagers/

Definitely the worlds going mad. Its a variant of flu FFS.

I would not be surprised if in a couple of weeks a role has been found for him to guide Hancock.

Many cases especially the mild ones will go unreported. Therefore the mortality rate will be lower than quoted, probably similar to that of normal flu.

Just wash your hands frequently ..... xx

You should probably email the WHO and PHE and tell them not to worry about it.

You're in good company

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/05/trump-coronavirus-who-global-...

The Dr heading up some organisation trying to control it on C4 news -

'many many times more lethal than flu'

'This is the most frightening disease I've ever encountered in my career, and that includes Ebola, it includes MERS and it includes SARS. " 

That's a bit like dismissing Honnold's solo of El Cap as just a variant of the common Spring evening solo of 20-foot crack. It's just ambling over rocks without a rope; I really don't know what the fuss is all about.

That is why I worded what they might say carefully.   "unlikely to stop me getting it".   In other words they can probably see that it reduces the risk but that in all probability it will get through eventually "by the law of averages", so that it will not "stop" them getting it.  They need to be made to understand that the situation changes when everyone else is washing their hands as then everybody is reducing the risk of transmission and therefore in that reduced risk scenario the impact of handwashing is that much greater.  And even by the "law of averages" the number of people who are indeed stopped from getting it will increase appreciably.

I've put a sign up at our back door to remind all (I'm just as likely to forget as anyone else) in this house to wash hands on entry and I'm treating money I bring back with me as being like handling dog shit.  I was handed my receipt and change yesterday by someone who wiped her nose with her hand (for an itch) before handling my stuff.  I washed it all on getting home and the change sat on the floor of the car.

The interface between home and  the wider world, in the words used in FMD as the front line meandered through our area needs to become a "Biosecurity Intensification zone" If we are to have any chance of affecting our own chances of infection.

Is that so unlikely? Genuine question, don't know much about the situation in China. But from what they say about the UK, it's very likely that for every diagnosed case here there are currently many (dozens?) of undiagnosed cases out there.

Ok, interesting.

Yes, agreed - tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives in this country friends on the way the government handle this and how we respond. At least the decision-makers do seen to be listening to the experts again.

Another 42 in the U.K. diagnosed today. In China a hotel used as a quarantine place has just collapsed too. Awful news.

No, it isn't.

The symptoms are flu-like, but it is not an influenza virus, it's a coronavirus.

Thats strange because WHO estimates 3.4% last time I checked, and the earlier reports was still 2.2%. Higher mortality than  spanish flu

Read the links from reddit etc above. WHO say 3.4% is the percentage deaths for those who tested positive so far... not quite the same thing as a mortality rate. WHO also said that nearly all who tested positive already had or soon after developed symptoms (so far I've not seen evidence of the contrary, despite plenty of commentators saying there may be large numbers going undetected). In China the mortality rate was initially over 3% due to a lack of early coordinated response but after China got its act together the mortality rate is estimated to have dropped to about 1%. WHO praised China's response (after the initial problems)  which indicates if we do as well we may keep things as low as 1% but in the 3rd world things could easily be a lot higher than 3%. The virus is changing (BBC Click today showed some kind of  DNA change map) and there may be seasonal changes.

The thread about whether you would still work if you got Corona-virus seems to have been archived for some reason. However if the symptoms are anything like real 'flu, there is no way you would be able to get out of bed, let alone work. Having said that it seems that some people are getting very mild symptoms, whilst others are dying, so there seems to be a very big range of just how seriously anyone will get it. 

The chances of getting it seem to be very high if you are exposed to it, but how severe it is seems to be a lottery.

That just depends how bad the symptoms you happen to get from it are, as you go on to say they vary a lot. And the same is true of 'flu.

Many people who aren't suffering from anything too bad (for them) will no doubt carry on going to work.

My employer doesn't pay sick leave, and I've heard several people say they'll be coming in to work as long as they can manage, as they can't afford not to. Like it or not, since nothing has been set up nationally to pay people properly or reimburse employers for doing so, lots of people are going to do this.

I think the state needs to go well beyond that level of protection, for example to prohibit or punish any employer who fires anyone or makes someone redundant within six months of self isolation.  Too many people feel - with good cause - insecure in their job and it’s not just the money that will drive them in to work.

Given that those with pre-existing conditions are most vulnerable, mortality rates 'might' reflect the percentage of population with high blood pressure, diabetes, heart problems etc. Which could cause global variation, regardless of quality of healthcare. 

Edit. As the wise doctor said; there has never been a better time to give up smoking (or words to that effect). 

Yeah, I fear it needs the kind of attention and action that it just isn't going to get. This isn't the sort of scenario that's best left to individuals and companies to sort out, it needs serious co-ordination at government, and inter-government, level.

I will be pleasantly surprised if I'm wrong, and they do sort something like this - but they're fast running out of time to do so.

It is awful news. Unfortunately the Chinese have a recent history of poor (or poorly-policed) building standards. Witness e.g. collapsed schools in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Lessons need to be learned - and fast.

I fear the lesson is that quality control in a non-democratic, authoritarian state is much more difficult than it could otherwise be.

I live in the Veneto...in the last few minutes, the Italian government has just placed our, and a number of other Provinces (Treviso), under total lockdown...no one in, no one out (except for work)..how's that for panic stations! In force immediately, until April 3rd! Am curious to see if they erect roadblocks...will find out tomorrow I guess.

PS Treviso airport has been closed.

I think in such a state that it actually should be easier - in principle. The suggestion however is that corruption plays a malevolent part. But I don't want to derail this thread, so I think we should drop the subject.

Grenfell??

Only news I could find on this was on an intalian football website, https://www.football-italia.net/150936/lombardy-total-lockdown. 

It's bloody frightening to think that 2 weeks ago Italy was approximatly where we are now, It still feels quite distant and 'what is happening to somewhere else' if you speak to folk, but I can't see any reason we won't be in the same position in 2 or 3 weeks time.

I wasn’t holding us up as a shining beacon - we haven’t had the problems China has in big project QC but it’s getting worse - and not I think coincidentally the strength of our democracy is eroding.  Corporate power rather than authoritarian government but the same effects.  

Which, when you follow it to its logical conclusion, says to me that we should shut our schools, airports, universities, football matches and so on right now to slow the inevitable as every day gained is more intensive care beds free and a slower growth rate.  

I think, panic won't help. All we need to know is that we should address a doctor at once in case we have the symptoms of flu. The most dangerous thing is complications.

I don't think trotting down to your local surgery or A&E with your potential covid 19 virus is really the wisest thing to do. In fact unless you're in danger of losing life or limb, if I had the choice, for the foreseeable I'd be avoiding all venues where sick people congregate like the plague.

If you know how long it takes from detectable infection to presentation of noticeable symptoms and you're tracing contacts of the infected and identifying those that are also infected and asymptomatic it's relatively simple to follow up outside that time-frame with an interview/survey to determine the infected fraction which remained asymptomatic. If you know the symptomatic number in a society you can then calculate a reasonable estimate for the total infected in it. Caveats apply obviously, mostly around whether delectably infected and infected are the anywhere near same thing but since we appear to have very little innate immunity and assuming contacts of the infected receive multiple tests over time I think we could safely assume they're in the same ball park.

jk

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-51787238

With Northern Italy now locked down I'd expect the government will move from containment phase to delay phase, either tomorrow or Monday at the latest. On the upside, the daily commute is about to get a lot easier.

One week ago we had 4 or 5 new cases per day. 

Now we have about 45 new cases per day.

That's a phenomenal rate of growth.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51768274

Its about a constant rate of growth if expressed as a day-on-day fractional growth.  Which is how an infection spreads when the number of infected is small compared to the uninfected population.  Which is why so many people who 4 days ago were saying things like “why are you worried when there are only 51 people infected in a population of 70 million?” were so wrong.  There’s about 20.5 doublings between those two numbers and our current doubling time is 2 days.

A bit of ancient Islamic scholarship is highly relevant - the story of grains of rice and the chessboard - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem

With 200 known infected today, an estimated 10% of infected needing intensive care beds, and with between 1000 and 5000 such beds able to be free in the UK, we have between 5.5 and 8 doublings to go before medics have to choose who gets the beds and incubators and who dies.  If a young person suffers a burst appendix for example they’ll probably have to pull an older person off the bed and consign them to death.  

Yet upthread a highly liked post jokes that in the UK coronavirus is now as deadly as a certain swimming pool.  Many people just don’t get exponentials - hence the shift to a largely credit based society.

Edit: Hello Disliker.  Perhaps you disagree with me.  I hope to be proved to be completely wrong, to be the crazy person shouting from the rooftops.

Excellent post.

A really good way of seeing the advantage of slowing the spread (washing hands, social separation etc) is to consider that if every infected person potentially infects two others then the rate of new infections starts to drop when half the population has been infected (since one of the two potentially infected people has already had the illness so in fact only one person is infected). For three potential infections it is when 2/3 of the population has had the illness, for 4 potential infections 3/4, for 5 potential infections 4/5 etc. So, the fewer precautions taken, not only is the rate of new infections greater (putting more pressure on hospitals), but more people will be ill before the pressure starts to ease. It will make a huge difference if each ill person infects, say, 2 rather than 3 other people.

The hospital beds in the very early stages of the epidemic (when there is still a surplus of hospital beds) are much less important of a resource than the later-early stages though, so I can see a case (if you want to care about the economics - which I can only guess must be staggering for every day of lockdown) for holding off slightly until the number of spare beds is much less.

Good thread all, just in case anyone finds it helpful here is that John Campbell bloke again - does daily rounds ups of the global situation  youtube.com/watch?v=UVTyl7Y4IMo&, I messaged my wife yesterday to say "Seems now we are all probably going to get it, I just hope we all come out the other side". 

That sounds completely reasonable to me. Presumably that feeds into the modelling process?

Thanks for that, it seems obvious in hindsight but I hadn't realised the actual relationship.

One thing, though - how is this affected if it transpires that it's widely possible to be reinfected with the virus after recovery, following a period of being free of it?

I’m almost certain that isn’t the case. If it is then we are going to spend the rest of our lives in the grips of this pandemic. I might be wrong here but I’m assuming all viral infections can only be caught once.

Vaccine?

Common cold?

Check this out - just data without any media spin!

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740...

You can certainly get the same viral illness more than once, at least through similar new variants that arise from the mutations that happen as it circulates in the population.

Not really, we have plenty of viruses in permanent circulation - if it gets less dangerous over time it could end up as just another 'cold' in future years. And it -might- be possible to vaccinate against, too.

Nicely put. Thought: should we try and infect young people who aren't that affected by the virus to get to a lower infection rate more quickly!? 

Definitely not. We want to spread the epidemic out over as long a period as possible in order to minimise the pressure on the NHS at any given time. It is ALL about reducing infection rates.

Yes, I think the current prediction is that Covid19 will become endemic, circulating in the population indefinitely like the 1919* flu does now.

* I think most flu viruses circulating now are variants of the 1919 flu.

Unfortunately flu is a diverse and moving target so it's not eliminatable by vaccination like smallpox.

According to todays Times, the government are expecting a UK death toll of around 100,000. A scary looking figure until you factor in that that's one person in 680. Of course that 100,000 death toll is highly speculative, but what's absolutely certain is that the next couple of weeks are going to see a great many vulnerable OAPs with serious health issues, actually risking their lives by  being forced to bus pass their weary arses from supermarket to supermarket, desperate to secure a four pack of bog roll and a couple of tins of spam. What's also certain is that the NHS are going to be inundated with healthy neurotics making it harder to respond when said OAP keels over in aisle 4 of Asda.

The health service is doing it's best to prepare for what's coming, everybody else could help enormously by not ramping up the fear, not clearing the shelves, not treating the NHS like their Mummy and maybe offering to get the shopping in for sweet old Ethel down the road.

Another 64 cases for us today.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

I suspect we’ll be on lockdown by the end of the week.

This twitter thread is good.  It explains why washing with soap is so effective against Coronavirus.  I completely didn't understand the mechanism, it isn't just washing virus off your hands and down the sink the soap dissolves the lipids on the exterior of the virus and breaks it apart.  It also explains why the virus can stay active on some surfaces much longer than others.

https://twitter.com/PalliThordarson/status/1236549305189597189

How bizarre, I post something uncontroversial, it sits there quite happily for a couple of hours accruing no dislikes than gets a big handful over the space of 20 minutes or so. Not the first time I've noticed this pattern either. It's almost as if there's a very sad case out there with a grudge and a handful of fake UKC profiles. I wonder who that could be?

Up thread I was reckoning today or tomorrow for the delay phase, not sure about full lockdown though.

I didn’t spot the timescale but did wonder about the dislikes given that your post was, as you say, uncontroversial. 
 

Now I see what you mean. Let’s see how many I get for this post!

He's dropped the dislikes from 6 to 4 now, perhaps he realised he's over egged it a bit.

This is hilarious and sad. Tragicomic 

How do you know it's a fella 🤔

I don't know about just you but I don't agree.  I think it's going to be really bad and a lot of people will die.

The planning for the well-regarded hospital I work with is including the "minimum staffing" required for a ward (not "safe staffing"); the trigger points for things like requisitioning private sector hospitals, cancelling all elective and outpatient work, dividing ITU, etc; NHSSE/I is developing the protocols that will make the life/death choices between patients where only one ITU bed is available.

Italy has locked down 14 million people.

Pretty serious molehill.

How often have you had a cold?

The problem with cold and flu viruses is they change over time.  Whilst you only tend to get flu once per season, you get a slightly different strain arrive next time round and catch it again.

I agree with what you are saying, but this isn't a flu virus, it's corona. It's also just made the leap between species and could in time be quite easy to vaccinate against and pretty much disappear. It may also mutate into something nasty, prove difficult to vaccinate against and the body may not build long term resistance. Only time will tell. 

There is a good.series on Netflix called pandemic which follows scientists who are attempting to introduce a vaccine to eradicate flu.

Even though coronavirus looks to have mutated into two strains apparently a vaccine should be generic enough to cover both strains... But whether the immune system in the meantime will recognise one from the other is debatable with some reports suggesting people have had coronavirus twice. 

Good point. I'm thinking a virus that gives you flu is a flu virus but in terms of vaccine development it could be completely different.

Assuming cases growing at a similar rate over the next couple of weeks, we'll probably start getting significant restrictions to try and slow down the exponential increase soon. Otherwise (assuming +30% increase per day) we'll run out of intensive care beds within 3 weeks:

8/3 - 273

15/3 - 1807

22/3 - 11,964 

29/3 - 79,202

5/4 - 524,317

I’m well aware who it is, which makes it even funnier. 😂

I’ve been pondering since yesterday, if more and people are advised to stay home from work, what will be the effect on “infrastructure” services such as electricity, water and telecommunications, all of which need people to physically be taking care of “hub maintenance”? 

Is that assuming that all cases need to be hospitalised though?

The people who need to be out doing stuff will just crack on. It'll be fun seeing if the highly paid, who consider themselves absolutely indispensable, maybe have a rethink. Finance sector for instance:

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/we-can-all-get-by-quite-well-w...

https://cointelegraph.com/news/do-we-even-need-banks-ireland-didnt-for-most...

...or politicians, given the news that one case in Westminster will trigger a 3 month shutdown.

https://www.france24.com/en/20191210-no-government-no-problem-say-belgians

But if the binmen disappeared for a couple of months, we'd all be up to our eyeballs in consequences.

Here's a very good thread from Twitter on the science of virology, how the corona virus is transmitted and why washing your hands with soap and water is better than washing them in Jack Daniels.

https://twitter.com/PalliThordarson/status/1236549305189597189

As others have said upthread, health services throughout the world could become overwhelmed very quickly.

I had a wander round Edinburgh city centre today. It was a ncie Suny afternoon and it should have been a rugby international weekend so normally you'd expect Embra to be packed. In fact it was closer to being deserted, not just the shops but the pubs as well. I think that's the right thing for people to do...unless of course they were all in supermarkets fighting over the last packet of bog roll.

Looks like it's about to run away exponentially in Italy. 

Well, asssuming 5% become unwell enough to require ITU care (note Italy is close to 10%), there'll be 3500 new people needing this by the end of the third week from now, not including the 500 from the week before. 

The UK has about 6000 ITU beds. ITUs run at about 80-90% capacity, so there's at most 1200 available beds currently.

I think there's plans to increase capacity by 2-2.5x by using all available spaces/equipment in hospitals, but this will go within days, as there'll be 26,000 needing ITU the following week

This is why it's so important to slow down the transmission rate, to avoid this kind of apocalyptic scenario

Hope you are wrong too, although worried you might not be. Although, was it you who had months of food prepared for a no deal Brexit a year ago? If so I imagine having a stock of food like that home now is nice, and even if you don't need it in the next few weeks, there's always a years time when the transition period ends!

Yup, when the government were playing silly buggers with negotiation we stocked up 3 months of non perishables.  Now I just replace stock when I use it and we keep a rolling 3 month buffer.   It’s not just Brexit though, but a looming doom and gloom over the direction of the government, other governments, weather events and pandemic potential, multiplied by an understanding of how fragile our food supply chains are.  I maintain I’m actually investing though by buying early as I save money given retail price inflation - so I’m not a crazy prepper, honest.

It’s amazingly handy to be in the habit of maintaining stocks - times of illness or unexpected work pressure no longer get complicated by having to do shopping and unexpected guests are never a problem.

I’ve been thinking of a charity/business idea where sealed boxes of long life food are sold to people at cost, delivered and then collected and replaced 2 years later when they’re close to their shelf life.  The old boxes are then given to food banks.  This way people can sit on a 3 month supply whilst (eventually) donating to food banks.  After 2 years the donations are steady state.  This avoids the hassle of keeping an inventory so that you don’t waste food as it goes out of date.  A way of doing charitable giving that also gives insurance.  Although it’s an affront to my British identity that food banks are a thing and I’d sooner see the eliminated through lack of need.
 

You were asking about Coronavirus and pregnancy in a previous thread which I'm unable to find now. The royal college of obstetricians and gynecologists are publishing a detail document on it soon.

https://www.rcog.org.uk/coronavirus-pregnancy

Thank you, thoughtful to remember. 

Jk

I've been doing more or less the same - stocking up on non-perishables. I've been doing this slowly over a few weeks, just one or two items per shopping trip in addition to ordinary shopping. I also have a portable power generator, recharged by the mains or solar panels (superb) so that I can keep working on my laptop if there's a very long electrical power cut. And even, but only for extreme emergencies (I might never have to use it!), a v good value small petrol generator set up in the back yard. This could be used to charge up the power generator battery, keep my fridge running, plus all lights on, laptop/desktop computers running etc.. I don't think it'll manage the microwave or the electric kettle. But there's always the gas hob. Failing that, if gas fails ... camping gaz. I've got it all systematised, so that all the correct leads will be to hand, plus torch. So, far from being a crisis and an extreme drag, a prolonged power-cut will actually be quite fun here, I think.

yes you are correct , good at tech stuff , phone technology etc ,but there civil engineering is questionable. How long will that hospital they built recently last ?  

I can assure you that if things have got bad enough to take the grid down for long enough to rely on a petrol generator and the possibility or the gas supply failing then there will be more to worry about than keeping working on your laptop.....

The mains gas supply is fairly robust, but the electricity grid isn't. You'd need a significant failure in conjunction with a lot of key staff laid up with Cov-19, but it's not an insignificant risk.

Are you saying that “just crack on” is a smart and admirable course of action ? 

If you’re delivering food, fuel or pharmaceuticals, if you’re ensuring we all have power, communications and transport links, if you’re keeping our communities safe or looking after the sick and injured? 
I wouldn’t describe it as smart or admirable. I’d describe it as cracking on with your job.

If you live downwind from me, you may well suffer consequences from the continual plumes of f*ck knows what spewing from my burner flue.  We're talking industrial levels of dirty nappies here.

Maybe I wasn’t clear enough.

Do you think that “cracking on with your job” because it is less dispensable than others (whilst not indispensable), whilst brushing any signs and symptoms aside and claiming you are “essential” in the face of “only essential work” travel restrictions, is good? 
 

The term “crack on” inherently implies a sort of “admiration” for a blindly no-nonsense “Blitz spirit” and I am sure you are smarter than that hence my querying your use of the term

Isn’t your work currently writing a book, something that people managed without laptops for hundreds of years?
 

Is that a word?
 

Does that go for everyone in your town ?! 

I see my earlier post about shill dislikes got 11 dislikes! Do I win something ?! 

Does that go for everyone in your town ?! 

It's the old spirit of the Blitz days!

I'm not saying soldier on with a combination of symptoms that would flash 'corona' in big red lights, but neither would it be sensible if every healthcare worker, policeman or engineer expieriencing a mild headache rang in sick. From the WHO report...

Symptoms of COVID-19 are non-specific and the disease presentation can range from no symptoms (asymptomatic) to severe pneumonia and death. 

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint-missio...

The same report also notes a very low transmission rate amongst healthcare workers, with most of those contracting the virus having picked it up in the domestic setting. This would tend to indicate that PPE and infection control measures are proving effective in protecting both clinicians and patients. Other sources are reporting up to 80% of carriers as asymptomatic.

Dunno about that. My use of the phrase has always been more along the lines of buckling down to a mundane, unpleasant or arduous task that just has to be completed with as little fuss and drama as possible.

ok thanks, this was my main issue and it looks like just a matter of dialect now 

I see I've picked up a handful of dislikes again. In the total absence of anyone actually disagreeing with what I've written, I'll just continue assuming it's all the work of the ball less wonder.

I like that each time I reply to you, I get at least one 

and when we seem to be disagreeing you get 6 likes

I will put you down as a glass-half-empty kind of chap though!

7 days without power for us in Essex back in ‘87 after the great storm.  I have a lab full of kit running 24x7 all year round - I spend some time staring at outage maps; kit failures across the network are a daily event with ongoing repairs.   In the last year we’ve had about a dozen outages ranging from sub-second to an hour or so.  It wouldn’t take much to start a backlog from growing; not wholesale failure but little bits dropping off here and there and it taking longer to get them back on.

Not likely, there’s one thing I still had to panic buy this weekend and now that job’s jobbed.  I’m not going to suffer a half empty glass any time soon...

Well, it is International Women's Day...

Posts complaining about dislikes always get dislikes.  If you can't ignore them, it'd be best to turn them off.

There are many, many more registered users on here than actually say anything, I wouldn't be at all surprised if there are a fair few who press the buttons but never post. 

I doubt the dislikes are a 'shill' thing, fwiw, registering a bunch of sockpuppet accounts would be a lot of effort to go to just for that.   I think it's more likely a few lurkers pressing your buttons.  Once you actually mention them in a post though all bets are off - nothing gets dislikes like whingeing about dislikes.

I wasn't complaining about them. 

I returned from skiing in the French alps today with a cold and cough ( over the worst of it) .... Spent all of 10 minutes In the office before being sent home.

Corona virus panic... Yes. But after leaving the dog for a week with the parents it's nice to be able spend some time with her! 

Nor did I really, but they do violate the first rule of dislike club.

If his theory about the nameless aggrieved poster with the sockpuppet accounts is correct that's really quite funny, but also rather sad.

It would be good if likes and dislikes were attributed here though and the data summarised  (as karma and negative karma is on UKB). On dislikes you could then tell if its just someone who is commonly childish, or (as as happened before), when everything someone posts suddenly gets dislikes in a short rush, that someone does indeed have a sad dislike stalker, going down their posts lists in their profile. I bet the use of that button would plummet if anonymity was removed. It's not the biggest negative from this site use though, I've also spoken to women who were more widely stalked, starting from their initial use of this site.

Sockpuppets and other nefarious posting have been outed here and on UKB. One well known BMC critic was caught used his sons account to attack the BMC

I suppose if that were true it means we must be missing loads of cases because we don't know to test them. That might mean the actual mortality rate is lower than we think and we may more quickly reach the stage where the disease can't transmit much because a large % of the population has resistance. Downside is there would be more infectious carriers around than we imagine.

That is probably very overoptimistic.  I know very little about the subject however.

Amazed that you even went to work.........

No, no, please, I beg you, no!

A few years ago we had a five day power cut due to flooding. By the time the flood peak hit us the sun was shining again and it was nice and warm, close to 30°C. We still have gas for cooking, so every morning we made coffee for all the neighbours. The whole area was nice and quiet, interrupted only by the occasional drone of a petrol generator when someone was charging everyone's mobiles. Otherwise there was a continuous smell of BBQ in the air, as everyone used up their freezer contents.

That was indeed a nice few days of enforced holidays (even though every day I cycled to work for a briedf check up, in shorts and bare feet to cross an area flooded about knee deep).

Being holed up at home for fear of infection, in a cold and rainy February, really sounds like the shit version.

CB

I'd love to see those other sources. The WHO data on China is very clear... nearly everyone who tests positive already does or will soon show symptoms,

I don't actually have a company any more but if you had come onto the premises with those symptoms straight from spending time in a known risk area I'd have been apoplectic. To be fair, I'd have emailed you while on your trip to ensure that you took precautions regarding any symptoms, which would have made your attendance unlikely but also a disciplinary matter.

The shock is that you seem to think your behaviour is amusing. Have you called NHS 111 to arrange a test. Are you self-isolating?

I could understand that if you had clearly communicated your position in advance to your workforce but how do we know la benya had such a communication?

From the WHO report dated March 6th:

While the range of symptoms for the two viruses is similar, the fraction with severe disease appears to be different. For COVID-19, data to date suggest that 80% of infections are mild or asymptomatic, 15% are severe infection, requiring oxygen and 5% are critical infections, requiring ventilation. These fractions of severe and critical infection would be higher than what is observed for influenza infection.

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/2020...

Telecoms needs virtually no maintenance, and the other utilities would be little different.  What will happen is engineers will be assigned to different parts of the networks so there's no cross-infection. Anyone who drives a computer can probably do so from home. It would be no problem for someone to go to work if they're well enough to from an isolation point of view, if they're the only person there.

Actually the "other sources" might have been about carriers asymptomatic at the time of testing. As you say they might all have developed symptoms later.

I doubt he/she did receive one and I did acknowledge that mild "get-out" in  my post. But it shouldn't be necessary given the media coverage. And don't tell me it won't have been talk of the town in the ski resort.

I am with you 100% on this.

I had one of my employees off ill today with symptoms, so rang him he said I will be in work in a couple of days. I bluntly pointed out the he needs to check on NHS helpline first and clear it with me.He was surprised.Why the surprise??

FFS I have employees with diabetes etc.

Come on people get real, this is not a f###g joke anymore.

And as for people not washing their hands.. Do not get me started.

I'm beginning to wonder if the virus hasn't already done the rounds here at work because coming up to Christmas several colleagues had fever, nagging dry coughs and difficulty breathing at night, feeling they couldn't fill their lungs. It's perfectly possible that 99.99 percent of healthy people just shrugged it off and the few victims were those who already had weakened systems - the poor chap who died yesterday in North Manchester Hospital after returning from Italy, for example. 

On the subject of washing hands: I don't think 20 seconds sounds a very long time at all. I'm sure I normally take about 30-40 seconds. But I suppose they mean 20 seconds at a minimum.

I think that they should explain that poor handwashing combined with a shared/communal towel is creating an infection point where there should be a infection prevention point.  Good handwashing prevents this.

Probably not as why would it grow in China but wait 3 months here in the UK before spreading?

Most people aren't cardiac surgeons or Lady Macbeth

Its true that that figure is compatible with "up to 80% being asymptomatic". But on the same basis it could be interpreted as "up up to 80% have mild symptoms". I think its easy to get the wrong idea the further one gets from the original information.

While I applaud your approach, as far as I'm aware the current official advice in the UK is that you should only self-isolate if you are returning from a high risk area, and as far as I can find (and it isn't very easy), the only part of the French Alps considered high-risk just now is Haute Savoy. And France isn't even mentioned at all on the official advice page for returning travellers:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-information-for-the-public...

Overall, I think it's much harder than it should be to get hold of good information and advice.

It is up to the company who have a perfect right to insist their staff self isolate given current circumstances. In the absence of any instruction, people will normally expect to turn up to work (although I'd hope those at risk would have the common sense to seek medical advice and advice from their employer). Any owner 'going bonkers' at someone coming to work with a cold (who had not been provided company instruction in advance) would clearly be in the wrong.

I don't disagree with any of that - it's just not clear that anyone returning from a skiing holiday in the French Alps with a cold is higher risk than someone returning from, say, a long weekend in London, with a cold.

The official advice does not currently appear to say that either should self-isolate, so in the absence of a clear workplace policy, either of the above going back to work isn't doing anything that's obviously wrong.

In terms of your original question: "I suppose if that were true it means we must be missing loads of cases because we don't know to test them." We don't have the capacity to test everyone with a recent, mild cough or a 24 hour history of a slightly sore throat. Without the discriminator of recent contact with a confirmed case or travel to a high risk area, anyone with mild symptoms may as well be asymptomatic as they'll be invisible to the health system in any case.

If you present to A&E or your GP with a two day history of a tickly throat, what do you reckon the chances are that they're going to immediately rush your samples down to the lab?

Or if a mild asthmatic presents with slight breathing difficulties and a cough?

For me, it's going to require a temperature to separate it from stuff that's fairly normal at times.

Mike Tilsley an Associate Prof from Warwick was on BBC news just before 2.00pm saying there may be a significant number who are asymptomatic and some taking 2 weeks after infection to show the disease (again contradicting the WHO China analysis). Has anyone got any references for any of this as it completely changes the required response mechanisms.

Nice allusion to Lady Macbeth there.

If you sent me home to self-isolate for two weeks just because I rolled up with a cough, I'd be demanding full pay.  SSP can go where the sun don't shine.

Quite right. Cough and sore throat symptoms have a list of non-infectious causes as long as your arm. That's why NHS advice is to call 111 or your GP before considering self isolation. Clinicians don't diagnose on the basis of isolated symptoms, they look at the patient's particular circumstances and history and basic observations. Obviously this whole process is hugely complicated when it's a relatively new and unknown strain.

Indeed... except here:

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/technical-g...

If it had been around and a significant number of people had already had it wouldn't the testing they are doing be finding a lot more positives? They've tested 24,960 and found 319 cases.  I'm not sure if the test if for antibodies or for the virus DNA itself.

If your employer sends you home as a precaution, then you are simply following the reasonable instruction of your employer and should get your normal pay.

It's not an allusion if they actually name Lady Macbeth, is it Gordon? I think you mean, simply, "reference". 

An interesting question is whether, for someone who is entitled to SSP only for sick, whether it counts as being sent home ill or as suspension with pay, particularly if asymptomatic, i.e. precautionary self isolation.

And zero hours contract people are of course stuck.

I read somewhere, forget where, that the currently available test isn't very effective, which is why it has to be repeated multiple times on people in quarantine.

They also aren't testing the population at random, they're testing those who report with suspicion of it.  And thus far, I think in the UK only one person has been diagnosed with it who couldn't be connected with someone who has been to an affected area (and that could be that that person had forgotten the connection, e.g. a colleague met only occasionally).

Indeed, his "allusion" is an illusion.

It depends, being sent home doesn’t necessarily mean you are off work either. 

In the situation where you are able and willing to work but your employer sends you home by precaution, then my understanding of the law is that you should receive normal pay.

Indeed not.  Assuming I get it, and I still take the view that there is a very high chance I will, I will only not be able to work if I am too ill to get out of bed, as I work near 100% remotely.

This is the reason why I've had only about 3 sick days in 18 years of "proper" work, and it was none at all until about 5 years ago.  Even in one case when I was working mostly on site abroad (weekly commuting) I woke up one Monday morning at 0330 for my flight feeling like death, so I took my phone, changed the flight to the next day and rolled over and went back to sleep, got up at 9am and did a (slightly snotty) day's work.

It's this capability (and there are plenty of office based jobs where it's possible, just not currently done) that will do a lot to protect the economy from *too much* damage.

FWIW, if companies do move this way, I doubt the genie will go back in the bottle - and that will do a world of good for the cost of running our overcrowded transport networks as well as carbon emissions.

Why? I haven't been to an at risk area. 

People realise you can still get common colds while corona virus is around? 

Most people (very bad asthmatics aside) don't get breathing difficulties[1] from a common cold, and they don't tend to give me much of a temperature (if at all) either.  Indeed, I know them quite well, they always follow the same pattern of symptoms over about 5 days for me.

[1] A snotty nose isn't "breathing difficulties" in terms of COVID19 - with a cold you can still breathe properly through your mouth.  Ask any asthmatic what "breathing difficulties" really means.

Some WFH advice: youtube.com/watch?v=co_DNpTMKXk&

What are you talking about?

The French alps is not a high risk area. I did indeed do the 111 (online) test before and it didn't even suggest I call for more information. 

As I said... You can still get common colds while corona virus does the rounds.

Well done for jumping to the wrong conclusions and adding to the hysteria.

I did not. I did the 111 test. I was told not to worry. 

won't someone think of the children!! 

Jesus. You think people were talking about it while skiing? You've fallen for the MSM bubble. 

I think you misspelled wORk

A sensible response. 

Do people think that if I returned from holiday and unilaterally decided to self isolate I would have a job? As it is my boss (who wasn't in. Her second told me to go home) was a bit miffed for the very reasons you mentioned. 

but how many of them will die?

Is it not really just the flu??

That's a good point. I'm working from home as we have the IT to do so. But if I'm being sent home 'sick' am I obliged to work or should I be resting and recuperating? 

No, it isn't actually, as the experts have explained. It's quite a bit worse, which is why governments world wide have been taking it so seriously. Though there are two other strains of the Corona virus (the Sars and the ?Pers) that are much worse again.

You're inventing things. 

I never mentioned a temperature or breathing difficulties. Do you need to sit done an take a minute? 

If you worked for me you'd get it. As hundreds have in the past 25 years. 20 days sick pay per annum and no questions asked.

But I would steer you towards NHS 111 and insist on a test before you go home (possibly) to self-isolate on full pay.

Glad to hear you did the online test. While you were away, a number of alpine ski resorts were declared risk areas by various national authorities, including, just to show some solidarity, the Austrian one I returned from a month ago only to develop the mother of all chest infections, breathing difficulties etc, which I strongly suspect is the infection responsible for the other thread.

Did you ponder contacting your office before presenting yourself, symptoms and all? On reflection, do you think that might have been more prudent, if only for the mental well-being of colleagues?

I'm fully aware of the current corona situation. The French alps are fine. I had completed everything the actually authorities wanted me to do. My symptoms alone are not enough to suggest corona let alone that I haven't been licking subway poles in China. I had no reservations about going in to work. Similarly, I had no reservations in going home as ordered. They're paying me, they can tell me where to sit. That's their choice, as silly as it is. 

I hope you're right.  People who can effectively work from home probably should have been doing so for years by now anyway.  A decrease in unnecessary commuting might be something good to come out of all of this.

For fairly obvious reasons I think people writing here tend to overestimate the numbers (and relative importance) of people who sit in front of a computer for a living.  And conversely, underestimate the numbers and relative importance of people who need to turn up on site and actually do stuff for a living.  Their not doing so is not without consequences, so an overzealous approach to staying home in self-imposed quarantine may be no more desirable than an inadequate one.

Rom's assertion that people being sent home will be on normal pay is just showing his 'privilege' I'm afraid, many won't be.  I fear a fair bit of my work will be cancelled or indefinitiely postponed over the next few months, whether I'm at all unwell or not.  (Fortunately for me, I'm in a better position to go without pay for a while than many of my colleagues, I'm a bit worried about how a few of them will get by.)

I have a friend who does some freelance consultancy work for a company who've just told her not to show up for the foreseeable future.  (I don't pretend to understand the exact nature of the work but assume it's something pedagogical as she has a background in teaching.)  The company have just brought in a policy of not allowing 'external contractors' onto their premises.  They're not keeping their own employees on site and not letting them out of course, so how that policy benefits them is unclear.  But hey, it's more important to be seen to be doing something than for it to actually make sense right? 

She's no more likely to have been exposed to the virus than any of their full-time employees, has no symptoms at all, and as a self-employed sub contractor she'll be getting paid nothing while they're dispensing with her services.

No expert has replied so far but I'm pretty sure its a test for the viral RNA. 

Can you stop your childish and misplaced class vendetta for a bit ?

I’ve simply said that people who are sent home on the reasonable request of their employer should be receiving normal pay. 

Just as per the CIPD states : « If an employer sends people home as a precaution: Employees are following the reasonable instruction of their employer and should get their normal pay. »
https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/fundamentals/emp-law/health-safety/coronav...

How on Earth restating the legal advice given to employers is « showing my privilege » ?

You are certainly showing that you have set out to interpret every single thing I’ve said through the lens of your own prejudice.

It's not silly at all. Despite being possessed of up to date knowledge of Covid19 and the levels of concern worldwide, it appears you hadn't adequately contemplated the disastrous impact on productivity of your presence amongst colleagues, who would feel they need to keep a constant eye on your exhalations and personal hygiene for the next fortnight, or the possibility of alienation, if not recrimination, from amongst them. Your colleagues would lose sleep over the risk of infection with a deadly disease (however ill-conceived) while the owners of the business would be left dreading the possibility of a total wipe-out of capacity and potential ruin as the entire workforce succumbs.

You being comfortable with the risk is not the whole issue and you had only to send an email over the weekend to your manager/HR/whomever in order to explain the precautions you had taken and invite their instructions as to your return to work (or not), which would give them the opportunity to manage your rehabilitation (on full pay) without alarming colleagues and without you enduring the inconvenience of travel to the office.

Given your apparent awareness of the crisis, I'm genuinely bewildered that you did not do so. But I'm not your boss so you can tell me to piss off

Jesus. 

And people wonder why it seems as if everyone is going mad over nothing. 

Recriminations! Would they have pitch forks? I really hope no one at your gaff gets a cold otherwise you'll have to shut down for good. 

Because that legal advice isn't worth the electricity powering it's pixels. You do understand that in legal documents 'should' simply denotes a recommendation while 'must' indicates a solid obligation?

When Deepsoup writes "Rom's assertion that people being sent home will be on normal pay is just showing his 'privilege' I'm afraid, many won't be" he's simply stating a fact.

As another business owner 100% support what you are saying.It is spot on.

Even a phone call before turning up would have been better.

No. It's you that's over-reacting and the fact you aren't acknowledging your misstep only highlights it. All I'm saying is that I'd expect a worker to have the courtesy, forethought and concern for the well-being of colleagues, not to mention the integrity of the company's revenues, to contact me before returning to work with, by your own account, identifiable symptoms of infection. That would be the case irrespective of the threat of Covid19, but all the more so today.

I'd love to work for you ...
"Morning Boss." cough, cough, cough, splutter, sneeze, cough.
"Sorry Dave, you have to go home for two weeks."
"Is that on full pay?"
"Yes."
"Bugger, see you in two weeks, Boss!"

I agree... having watched the recent BBC documentaries on Universal Credit I hate to think what will happen to the armies of UK workers just getting by, especially those on ZHCs. The staff in the job centres are doing their best but the system seems fundamentally flawed by driving people into debt up-front. Will they even keep the job centres open during the next phase (we are a week way from the delay phase at most... I'd argue we maybe should be in it now, as Rory Stewart did today)? They clearly can't close food banks or homeless hostels.

I thought your name was Archy? If we're going to work together I need to get that straight.

No you wouldn't, your attitude would have already been sussed out and you probably would not be working there.....but that is a different story.

Report from an Italian Doctor about what its like in his hospital.  Don't understand why UK is not moving faster if this is in store.

https://twitter.com/silviast9/status/1236933818654896129

 I'd predicted on here that they'd start the delay phase, thought it'd make sense to start easing into it and postpone some large, high profile events, if only as a PR exercise to underline how seriously the public should take infection control measures. 

You're inventing things again.