Trump's brain seems to be growing as Boris' shrinks. Just watching the press conference from the White House. Like yesterday it is far more impressive than the shambles in London.

Either this or screen (test) everyone coming back from Italy. There were more factors in play:

• the timing of the half term holidays


• fashion week in Milan


• N.Italy is en economic centre of Europe and there is an amazing number of people moving constantly to and from neighbouring countries

European governments (including ours) have messed up and we'll pay the price. The important thing though is what we do now to prevent a bad situation from becoming a catastrophe. The European lockdowns are desperate and unsustainable in the long term, but they might the only solution right now! We have to slow down community transmission as quickly as we can!

You have to seriously question now the impact of the widespread music gigs, Cheltenam and the Liverpool v Althetico leading into the weekend and all the transmission that are yet to present themselves.

The weekend just gone should never have been business as usual

I think you'll find that the Chinese will soon start accusing us of endangering them. The government of Singapore has already accused the UK of undermining the global response to the pandemic.

Yes. An absolute disgrace.

Been out here and there are quite a lot of people about getting odds and ends. There was a big queue at the petrol station, not sure if i have seen that before.

Have thought before about heading back to my parents if I could just work from home. Given their age though am more worried about giving them the virus either straight away or at some point down the line - not had full clearance to completely work from home yet although i think it is inevitable

I have so much sympathy and admiration for the NHS stuff.

Another example of our stupid and complacent approach.

Porsche and BMW stop production in Europe and first town in Bavaria to have a curfew.

They tested an entire town in N Italy.

More than half had it

More than half of those that had it had no symptoms.

Peopple must be socially conscious. It may well be in most people this thing is a nothingburger but it's a roll of the dice. No one is safe from the worst effects, even if you are young and have no comorbitities.

Not sure I would agree with your 'Chinese propaganda machine' rhetoric, but I will agree about the animals. A few weeks ago I saw footage from China that showed open markets of live animals being brutally slaughtered 'on demand' and treated with unspeakable abject cruelty beforehand. Words cannot express the instant hatred I felt, and still feel, for the people who partake in this barbaric practice. In some way, I am glad I do not hold any great global power, for if I did, I would not think twice about publicly executing these savages. 

I think people should just be anti-social and avoid other people.

You and I both Chunky!

Interesting from a frontline virologist in Germany:

Almost all infected people we interviewed (>100), and this applies to a good two thirds, described a loss of smell and taste lasting several days. It goes so far that a mother could not smell the full diaper of her child. Others could no longer smell their shampoo, and food began to taste bland. We cannot yet tell exactly when these symptoms will appear, but we believe a little later in the infection.

Diarrhea also occurred in our infected people in 30 percent of the cases, which is more common than previously thought.

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/gesundheit/coronavirus/virologe-hendrik-streeck-ueber-corona-neue-symptome-entdeckt-16681450.html

I wouldn't be surprised if we hear at today's news conference that more extreme measures are going to be introduced.

This is interesting.

Differences in levels of testing/diagnosis and reporting make comparisons between countries very difficult. I read that in cases which resulted in death, the median time between diagnosis and death was 14 days which places a parameter on the lag.

What is very difficult to resolve is what the asymptomatic infection (and recovery?) rate is.

• 2/3 of patients had severe loss of smell and taste


• 30% diarrhoea


• Sars-2 enters its host cell through the ACE-2 receptor. Many tissue cells have this receptor, including, for example, the testicles, which, it is said, could also be attacked. You can actually imagine this in individual cases, but there is no confirmed knowledge to date. In any case, we have not found the pathogen in the blood or plasma in any of our Covid-19 cases examined. The diarrhoea suggests that the gastrointestinal tract is attacked

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/gesundheit/coronavirus/virologe-hendrik-streeck-ueber-corona-neue-symptome-entdeckt-16681450-p2.html

This is very concerning , we now have 6 off in isolation 

Also of concern are the effing idiots who continue to visit pubs etc , I saw a table of OAP's out for a lunch today 

Boris HAS TO get to bloody grips with this and ENFORCE hard measures 

I think you probably had it now Q, you are probably the first one here to go through it.