Almost a generation of people is being wiped out in some places. My contact in Milan was telling me that the psychology of many people is now being affected more and more and there is more panic buying than ever. Their only last remaining measure is a Wuhan like lockdown with nobody allowed outside and forced testing and quarantine.

Let's hope that it's just a case of longer time scales being involved (that wouldn't be good for us though!) and they will manage to turn this around by the end of March.

Anecdotally plenty of Londoners have come down here to their summer caravans. Just what Sheppey needs (not), as they've been adding to the pressure on the local supermarkets.

Still, if they come down ill they'll find out just what a bad idea it was to leave a metropolis: our local A&E is half an hour away.

Cheer up everyone, we can still go for shopping therapy!

Yes this is correct. This is so worrying.

A week ago we were reporting 10 deaths. A week ago number of new cases was around 250 on average. 

This week has seen cases surge. The lag affect is going to be producing some worrying numbers in the next few days.

The Governor of Lombardy (he is from Salvini's party, although others were not much better):

Late Feb: "President Trump is right, this is a little more than normal flu and we cannot let it change the Italian way of life"

A month later: "This is an absolute catastrophe, I am doing everything possible to stop it".

The National Health Service (NHS) England has said it struck a major deal with independent hospitals to boost the organisation's capacities in tackling the coronavirus outbreak.

"Nearly 20,000 fully qualified staff will be joining the NHS response to the pandemic, helping manage the expected surge in cases," it said in a statement.

"The extra resources now secured by the health service will not only be available to treat coronavirus patients, but will also help the NHS deliver other urgent operations and cancer treatments.

"The deal - the first of its kind ever - includes the provision of 8,000 hospital beds across England, nearly 1,200 more ventilators, more than 10,000 nurses, over 700 doctors and over 8,000 other clinical staff."

It said that in London, the deal includes over 2,000 hospital beds, and over 250 operating theatres and critical beds.

People still out and about. Once numbers are in their hundreds they might wake up. Sadly I fear the damage is done now

And that was the problem , it was taken too lightly and not just by the Italians 

Wasnt one of the hospitals that declared an emergency in NW London

Has anyone seen this? You think it was an April fool 

What planet is these people on?!

https://twitter.com/NRA/status/1241418470341980167

Unfortunately there will still be plenty of people who will ignore it even when we have hundreds of deaths daily. 

Again the UK seems one step behind the curve. My view is we need to go Wuhan now.

Yes, but it lasted less than 24h.

I don’t think the message has got over to the younger generation not exclusively so but we had this trouble with VD years ago I never took much notice then

perhaps a adverts on tv with teenager on life support or a picture of nan and grandad in real struggle  would do the trick not nice I know.

anything to get message home.

https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/1241423928754688001?s=19

It's the USA; that culture is deeply entrenched and defended vigorously by the NRA and the Republican Party.

But I agree it's a weird response. Probably your best defence in the US is a large sign on the door saying the occupants have Coronavirus.

This is definitely without a doubt a situation to prepare for the worst but hope for the best.

John you are right re. pandemics. I guess the difference is that 100 years ago we only found out about it much later. Now we know the facts and the misinformation and fears almost instantly.

Maunder posted this in the last thread last night:

The Italians showed a bit of gumption early on when they stopped all direct flights to and from China. Did them a power of good however, since they are in Schengenland and any Chinese tourist in January/February could land in Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Amsterdam, or Geneva or anywhere and either get on a connecting flight to Milan or get a rail journey there. So long Italy!

Then, when the Italian outbreak occurred and became knowledge, Slovenia, Austria, Switzerland and France should have immediately closed their land borders with Italy, but the EU pompously stated "a virus does not respect borders". Well no, a virus doesn't, but it is passed  on by people, people who cross borders, so Austria, Germany, France and Spain are in corona Hell now, along with the rest of Europe.

Finally the UK. Someone please tell me me, what was the freaking point of Brexit if we did not take advantage of it to close our freaking borders? We should have suspended all flights to China at the outset. When Italy broke out, we should have suspended all flights to and from Milan and told people "sorry people, but your ski holidays are cancelled for the common good!". When the government were introducing domestic restrictions, they were still allowing infected people to come here from every shitshow infected country in Europe! Insane!

Then we come to the WHO - a complete up the arse of China shitshow from the outset! The WHO were late to declare a PHEIC, were late to get in on the ground in China, should have called a halt to cruises in the Far East in early January and everywhere else by February and the WHO were like Comical Ali over declaring a Pandemic, when it was as plain as your nose to a blind man on  a dark night that it was a Pandemic! Also, the WHO refuse to recognise Taiwan, the one freaking country in the World who treated the contagion seriously from the outset!

So take the piss out of Trump by all means - he is a brain dead moron - but the one sensible thing he did was to stop all flights to and from Shitshow Europe!

Plus, it is a Chinese virus caused by their disgusting wild animal eating habits - bat->pangolin->Chinaman!

Well said, that man! So much expertise, but so much incompetence as well from so many governments.

That will never happen

Just one study of course, but very interesting. The Imperial team's (refined) modelling also suggests that aggressive social distancing can bring the R0 to 1 or less and stop the epidemic. Yet the govt took (and is still taking) its time to do this.

Woman in her 40s has died of coronavirus at the Princess Royal, Telford. Relatively young but had serious underlying conditions apparently.

Edit: seems that she died on the 15th but a press release has been put out now.