I see that Ireland will follow the WHO guidelines and the examples set by Asian countries and will introduce a large contact tracing programme with more than a thousand civil servants redeployed.

What a very disappointing post. In these times I cannot believe there are still political comments being made, where politics, Brexit etc doesn't mean anything. A very insensitive post. Yes there will a post morteum after the country controls this horrible virus, just as I am sure there will be in every other country.Beggars belief you can bring politics up but since you have whilst there are already mistakes to learn from, I am just so grateful Corbyn and Labour are not at the helm. It does not bear thinking about.

Surprised there has been no comment, unless I have missed it on the BBC leaving the update Q&A just before six for the weather. Bearing in mind they were showing their 'News Special' from 3.45 as a build up to the update. Yes it was late but to leave it then and not let it go into the six o'clock news was unbelievable. Any inquests on that?

 

Yes, when the basic ingredient   for something (reagents)  or commodity items (face masks)   are subject to massive international   demand  it's hardly the Govt's   fault that they struggle to get the quantities they want immediately "off the shelf".

I'm far from being a Tory but I've been quite impressed by some of the things this Govt has done - putting up hospitals in that time frame and   putting in measures to bolster  the economy  to try and stave off the kind of economic meltdown we are now seeing in the US for instance.

In all honesty I haven't currently got the mindset to inclination to engage in petty political bullshit  .... or to listen to those who have !

 

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That's the plan, at least. I suppose that that is what we need to do not just to deal with the current situation but for the next phase too. The number of cases will be down substantially by the end of this month. Hopefully, there can be some easing back of restrictions at that point. However, it will be essential that a lid is kept on all new cases, even if the numbers are (hopefully) much smaller. 

Our testing needs improvement, though. Very variable with 2,500 today but 1,500 on some days recently having been higher again other days.

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Doesn't this assume a person sneezes or coughs directly into the air without using a sleeve or tissue? You would like to think that hardly anybody would do that.

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I know its comparing gas against heavier droplets but when you see someone vaping and the outflow from this like a steam train, makes you wonder just what's blowing around further than expected.

found this

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/heres-how-far-and-how-fast-a-sneeze-carries-contagious-germs

They found the average sneeze or cough can send around 100,000 contagious germs into the air at speeds up to 100 miles per hour.

 

Indeed.  If  the thing was relying on people sneezing  / coughing directly at one another to  propagate, I don't think it would spread very far or fast. I still think picking the thing up from surfaces is the main way it's spreading  but I'm keeping an open mind about  it being carried  on breath at close quarters.

 

 

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There's a lot of conflicting information about this at the moment.It is hard to know what to believe.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/02/no-proof-coronavirus-can-spread-shopping-says-leading-german/

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In the cumulative chart of deaths, we have now passed Italy at the same point of the outbreak.

 

And yet, South Korea, Germany, Italy (belatedly) and other countries have all been running massively more tests than us.

Germany 10x as many.

One major problem for the NHS is the management/bean-counter mentality of just foing enough to cope and keep it from collapse; allowing no slack during normal times. 

When stress is exerted, it is unable to cope properly, and only kept afloat by the dedication of staff to work unpaid hours and without even basic equipment. I appreciate this current crisis is exceptional, but we witness the we witness the very same problems, on a smaller scale, every recent winter.

So whilst you might not want to look at how we can address the core problem for the future, because it is political, I'm aghast that people are shrugging their shoulders and letting this band of lying  opportunist shysters continue their programme of ineptitude. 

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Just watching the White House briefing.

And you got the President and the Vice President standing next to each other! Unbelievable.

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I also wouldn't be too optimistic about the economic impact. I went cold today when reading the economic forecast by the credit insurance division of Allianz. 

I'm just hoping the government uses QEesy money to fund its bailout measures and doesn't load it onto the national debt. I'd be prepared to take a few years hit of big inflation; at least it would decrease the real value of my mortgage. 

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Indeed. Has there been a breakdown by occupation of people affected? If a lot of shopworkers/hairdressers (to use the occupations listed before the paywall appears) are affected then that may give us clues about the risks of different activities/contact. With a lot of shopworkers using face masks/having protective screens between themselves and the customers, that might make the stats harder to analyse for cases arising from the current time onwards.

Have seen a couple of cases where choirs have been involved. I guess that involves standing close to a lot of people and taking deep breaths which is a good way to catch airborne particles from someone else. (although also just the meeting of a lot of people would likely be a factor too)

Edit: Of course, sadly we have had some breakdown by occupation - healthcare staff are some of the people most likely to get a serious case of coronavirus - 15% of people in intensive care in Spain are front line healthworkers/medics.

 

Perhaps they hit the supply chain before us and that's why there's a shortage?

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So their governments had better foresight?

That's not really it. Germany has devoted huge resources to testing labs; that's why they're able to test so many. Meanwhile here, it's always about penny-pinching.

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Angela Rayner is out of bed today about a week after being struck down with coronavirus.

I would be very curious to know whether shop workers have a higher infection rate than the general public. It's an important question. If they're not more infected than the rest of us, surely that's a commentary on modes of transmission?

On a related topic, where I live, nearly all shops now have a perspex screen between the customer and the shop assistant. These all seem to have been installed more or over a single weekend, the weekend before last. I am curious to know if this has been put in in other areas. 

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The bloke at the end of my road was jet washing his driveway the other day when I walked past on the other side of the road. I could hear him coughing and then the mist of spray from his jet washer drifted over me. Probably quite an effective way of increasing your spreading range!

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The experts have been saying we will not follow Italy. They may well be right but at the moment the plot says otherwise. Very worrying.

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UK coronavirus test centre sits empty as NHS trusts send swabs to GERMANY — because results come back quicker

Public Health England (PHE) facilities can take up to four days to test samples, say sources.

But German labs are flying in and processing swabs on the same day. NHS staff then get their results just two days later.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11316235/uk-coronavirus-tests-going-to-germany/

 

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One thing I am curious about with the death stats is the overall number of deaths from any cause. How much is that going up? Surely that is a better measure of the seriousness of the outbreak: the “excess death rate”?

A bit of googling suggests that the average death rate in the UK is about 600,000 a year which is about 1,650 per day. So a naive reading of the current COVID-19 death toll is that it’s an extra third on top of the normal death rate, which sounds horrendous. But of course a significant proportion of those deaths would likely have happened from other causes anyway.

I suspect the true picture won’t be known until the annual mortality figures are collated.

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Can see weekly total deaths at the link below - last completed week is the one up to 20 March. The table 'Weekly figures 2020' has a row showing the 5 year average for each week.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales

The deaths from covid in the week up to 20 March 2020 were 103 so there will be a bigger effect in the coming weeks - 10,000 is the approximate number of deaths per week.

Although some people may have died in the coming weeks, there may well be others who are relatively fit and well before suffering covid-19 who don't die of it but end up in a very poor state after it and end up dying later on from another illness which they may otherwise have shrugged off. No idea of the numbers on that though.