He was just repeating what was already the general advice.

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We can but pray... that Bozo catches it too. And all his cabinet.

 

 

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12 new cases in the UK according to Matt Hancock total now 51 from 39 yesterday.

I can just imagine the response in here if someone like me posted:

"We can but pray... that Corbyn catches it too. And all his shadow cabinet."

Not appropriate Saint.

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I wouldn't touch  any of that old Corona now - used to swig it in the 70s ,   but must be well beyond its sell by now - still, he might be able to get a deposit back on the bottle !

 

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There's an excellent piece on the Italian situation in the Guardian:

Italy’s large elderly population bearing brunt of coronavirus

Many have underlying conditions, making fight against Covid-19 more complex

Tue 3 Mar 2020 12.54 GMTLast modified on Tue 3 Mar 2020 13.14 GMT

Italy’s large elderly population poses a challenge in slowing the number of coronavirus deaths in the worst-affected country in Europe, a health specialist has said.

The virus has killed 52 people in Italy, all aged between 63 and 95 with underlying serious illnesses.

The death toll, provided by officials on Monday night, marked an increase of 18 in 24 hours. Twenty-three per cent of the Italian population is over 65, making it the oldest in the world after Japan.

“Italy is a country of old people,” said Prof Massimo Galli, the director of infectious diseases at Sacco hospital in Milan. “The elderly with previous pathologies are notoriously numerous here. I think this could explain why we are seeing more serious cases of coronavirus here, which I repeat, in the vast majority of cases start mildly and cause few problems, especially in young people and certainly in children.

“Our life expectancy is among the highest in the world. But unfortunately, in a situation like this, old people are more at risk of a serious outcome.”

 

There are 1,835 people infected in Italy, and the increase in new cases slowed to 272 between Sunday and Monday. Health workers have carried out 23,345 swab tests, significantly dwarfing the number undertaken in other European countries.

Those tested include Pope Francis, 83, after he was forced to cancel engagements this week because of a cold. He returned a negative result, Il Messaggero newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The majority of cases – 1,254 – are in the northern Lombardy region, where 10 towns have been under lockdown for more than a week. The virus has spread to more than half of Italy’s 20 regions, including Tuscany, Puglia, Sicily and recently Sardinia.

Authorities say the majority of people who tested positive in other regions were travelling from Lombardy or had been in the north for a few weeks before the outbreak.

Of those infected, 742 are in hospital – 166 in intensive care – and 927 are recovering at home. The number of people who have recovered from the illness has more than doubled to 149.

Researchers at Sacco hospital last week isolated a strain of the virus from an Italian patient, which suggests Covid-19 may have circulated in northern Italy for weeks before it was detected.

Galli said: “It has been claimed that the so-called Italian virus is very different from the Chinese one. These are simply rumours. We are currently mapping out the sequences and only afterwards can we know.

“Obviously, since it is an RNA virus, it is expected to be at least a little different from the Chinese one. RNA viruses typically change: between each viral copy and its template there will be a few differences, like a single nucleic acid mutation. But only once we have the sequences can we begin to make comparisons.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/03/italy-elderly-population-coronavirus-risk-covid-19

 

 

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426 more tests were carried out in the 24 hours to 9am today of which 12 are positive.

The locations of the 12 new cases have not been released.

 

Some interesting stuff there ,Brian, especially the  take on demographics and analysis of  who it has killed.

I also note the growing notion that the virus is  materially changing as it spreads to different parts of the world.  Part of me wonders if we are picking up, related, existing, viruses with the screening.  Certainly the deaths reported to date could easily be attributed to seasonal colds and flu  if we hadn't  become sensitised to the Chinese  outbreak, especially given the Italian demographics .

 

 

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On this:

“Obviously, since it is an RNA virus, it is expected to be at least a little different from the Chinese one. RNA viruses typically change: between each viral copy and its template there will be a few differences, like a single nucleic acid mutation. But only once we have the sequences can we begin to make comparisons.”

I was reading about Spanish Flu the other night and part of the mystery is why it more or less suddenly stopped. Here is one explanation:

"Pandemics end when the virus doesn't have enough susceptible people to infect. 

The catastrophic 1918 Spanish flu pandemic is thought to have infected 500 million people worldwide, many of them soldiers living in close quarters fighting in World War I. Once the war ended and people dispersed, the spread slowed as people had less contact. But the flu was ultimately halted in part because those who survived it had immunity and the virus didn't hop as easily as it did at the beginning. 

If the virus comes into contact with another person but that person isn't susceptible to the disease, then that chain of transmission is snuffed out. If one person infects two, those people together infect four and so on, and eventually, the virus runs out of susceptible people to infect, said Joshua Epstein, a professor of epidemiology at New York University. "What happens typically is that enough people get the bug that there just aren't enough susceptible people to keep the chain going.""

From here:

https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-outbreak-end.html

Viz: once sufficient people have been infected, herd immunity starts to kick in.

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This is interesting, from the WHO in China

Bruce Aylward, World Health Organization Joint Mission to China:

"I think the key learning from China is speed — it’s all about the speed. The faster you can find the cases, isolate the cases, and track their close contacts, the more successful you’re going to be. [...]

People keep saying [the cases are the] tip of the iceberg. But we couldn’t find that. We found there’s a lot of people who are cases, a lot of close contacts — but not a lot of asymptomatic circulation of this virus in the bigger population. And that’s different from flu. [...]

China got patients in treatment early and have highly sophisticated health care treatment procedures. They are really good at keeping people alive with this disease. They have a survival rate (with a mortality rate of just under 1% outside of Hubei province) for this disease I would not extrapolate to the rest of the world. What you’ve seen in Italy and Iran is that a lot of people are dying”.

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China may be doing very well. Saying that the youngest death in Italy is currently 63 I think. They've obviously had far fewer cases at this point than China but statistically I would have thought at least a few younger people would have died.

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He actually said he shook hands with everyone working there, not patients. Do you think they would expose him to actual patients?

If only

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Yes, thanks to the 21,000 cuts from YOUR bloody government

And yes, I know they won the election, so the plebs cannot complain. 

In fact, feck em, this country deserves everthing thats coming to it. Either this or Brexit. Whichever does most damage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The first of many ....

https://japantoday.com/category/business/kobe-cruise-ship-operator-goes-bankrupt-due-to-virus-cancellations

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Ironic if China emerges from this relatively unscathed whilst America, Britain and much of Europe suffer for the next few years because they were not willing to take extreme measures now

 

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The Chinese can do stuff, because they don't have to pay lip service to so called "human rights" and they don't have an army of human rights lawyers and judicial activists to prevent the government from doing what it feels needs to be done. Now, what about those Uyghurs being re-educated in China? I don't hear that much bleating about it from the left in the West, the same lefties who go beserk if Greece or the UK or Trump attempt to defend the people's borders.

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Every European that has died has been over 80 and/or had underlying health conditions.

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Indeed. The sample size is of course still small. It's also possible we'll see big spikes in France and Italy today. I'm certainly not being complacent!

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Fair enough but it is still far too early to make comparisons between China and other countries. 

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Glasgow restaurant promises free curry for anyone who catches COVID-19

(Hope they include a bottle of beer with it - corona, of course)

If they offer the same down here I'll be right up for it

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Well put, Q. You don't need to know you are evolving in order to evolve, of course. A virus just propagates and the significant evolutionary pressure is to keep the receiving host alive long enough to do more of that. "I infect, therefore I am." You don't necessarily reproduce better in a sicker host do you? Certainly you get longer in hosts with mild symptoms. To coin a proverb: Dead hosts butter no parsnips.

The issue that interests me is whether this covid-19 line will become part of the "epidemiological landscape" and how it will achieve that.

R.

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Some awful scenes down on the Greek border with mobs on one side, and a trigger happy police on the other. Saw footage of one migrant being shot by the Greek police, but also saw footage of what was clearly a largely hostile group of migrants throwing rocks and other weaponry at the Greek police and acting just a bit too aggressively at the border fence. My natural sympathies for these people is being 'tried' just a little after viewing such scenes I have to say. 

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interesting breakdown of the latest 12 UK cases all travel related 8 from Italy and one each from Japan, Singapore,  Iran and Germany.  UK total now 51

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Of the 12 new cases announced today

8 travelled from Italy
1 travelled from Germany
1 travelled from Iran
1 travelled from Singapore
1 travelled from Japan

The patients are from; London, Hampshire, Northamptonshire, Bury, Wirral, Greater Manchester, Humberside & Kent