Yes but if you think you had food poisoning and just a fever why would you think you had Corona virus?. I am talking about people with THE symptoms as being spelt out to us. UNCONTROLLABLE DRY COUGH, FEVER, FATIGUE and BREATHING PROBLEMS are the things to look out for. Now it is true I didn't notice fatigue or much breathlessness but many did from what I have read.

Originally Posted by: fairweather 

Hancock had a sore throat and a runny nose as I pointed out earlier. He tested positive for Corona virus. All I would say is there are clearly still unknowns about it. However, if it had been widespread a few months ago hospitals would have been filling up in a way that is only now happening. The Nightingale hospitals would been needed well before now.

Originally Posted by: Brian Gaze 

People in the UK are allowed to go out for exercise so why wouldn't they visit their local park?

Originally Posted by: westv 

Hancock had a sore throat and a runny nose as I pointed out earlier. He tested positive for Corona virus. All I would say is there are clearly still unknowns about it. However, if it had been widespread a few months ago hospitals would have been filling up in a way that is only now happening. The Nightingale hospitals would been needed well before now.

Originally Posted by: Brian Gaze 

Thanks for that, DrM. We used to have a nickname for such sloppy nonsense - we called it the "natural arbitrary line". Says it all. The other phrase sometimes used was "Which toe shall I shoot off?"

My wife keeps quoting that TV advert: "I don't know. Nobody knows..." 

I find it depressing that so many people are quite so ignorant of scientific facts, unaware that there is a scientific method and that prediction inevitably carries the possibility of being wrong - an valuable stepping stone to being right.  "I might be wrong" makes many folks uneasy. Happily, most weather-orientated folks are more than aware of that issue!

Roger

Originally Posted by: Roger Parsons 

The thing has a spectrum from no symptoms to death.  How do we know Hancock wasn't exhibiting no symptoms but at the same time got an unrelated throat infection ?

I'm also mystified by the contradicting option ranging from "it's spread like wildfire" to "it's difficult to catch and there was no evidence of it on surfaces in a house  with people infected".

Originally Posted by: Bugglesgate 

Just trawling through my back catalogue of emails to my MP.

I wrote to her on 7th February about border controls and port screening - I included the following:

"It is shocking that these passengers were not screened on return, or given leaflets and advice on what to do if they fall ill. "

• that was what elicted that complacent response from the Home Office:

"The actions we are taking in response to the unprecedented threat from COVID-19 are in line with advice provided by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and Public Health England (PHE).  At present, we do not intend to introduce port screening measures such as temperature checks, as the scientific advice suggests that they simply do not work.   However, flights arriving from Category 1 countries have been subject to checks on board with the crew identifying passengers of concern.  Any passengers identified will have been subject to further health screening on arrival in the UK. 

During the containment phase, an enhanced monitoring process was implemented by PHE, to monitor direct flights and identify any ill passengers from affected countries.  On 12 March 2020, we moved from the containment phase to the delay phase.  This has been initiated as there is now community transmission of the virus in the UK, i.e. transmission not directly related to travel; so this has made interventions in ports of less relative importance.

..."

- they clearly had no clue what they were dealing with, but if Quantum and I could see the danger at the start of February, why couldn't they? Not closing borders and port screening arrivals was a dereliction of duty - if they had stopped people taking their half term breaks to go skiiing or for winter sun, it would have had far less impact on the economy than what is being experienced under a lock-down, plus many lives would have been spared serious illness or a fatal outcome.

Originally Posted by: Maunder Minimum 

Yes borders should have been closed and testing and contact tracing initiated in January when it was clear to many of us what was coming.

But HMG’s record with the pandemic has been and continues to be catastrophic.

Originally Posted by: Justin W 

Same here in Croydon. Chavs hanging around in groups as normal, the coppers nowhere to be seen, but probably harassing a middle aged lady driving to a shop

The cops go for easy targets. They don't care if your house is burgled, but if you ignore a parking fine....

This country is finished. I know I always say that, but this time its true!

Originally Posted by: The Beast from the East 

The problem is that people who caught the virus early on, would most likely have been younger fitter people who had been travelling to Asia on business or holiday. If any of them caught the virus, it is quite likely it would have been missed - they may have been asymptomatic, or just had something they put down to a winter cold or the flu. The early cases which were uncovered, tended to be those who had passed on the infection to someone who then had a more serious reaction. So we will never know how many cases could have been in the country prior to the problem becoming all too apparent. But I think we are agreed that much more serious border controls should have been introduced weeks earlier with port screening measures in place.

I wrote the following to my MP on 6th March - I have not yet had a response:

"One of the important reasons for containing the outbreak is that China is interviewing all infected people nationwide about their contact persons and then test those. There are 1,800 teams in Wuhan to do this, each with at least 5 people. But the effort outside of Wuhan is also big. In Shenzhen, for example, the infected named 2,842 contact persons, all of whom were found, testing is now completed for 2,240, and 2.8% of those had contracted the virus. In Sichuan province, 25,493 contact persons were named, 25,347 (99%) were found, 23,178 have already been examined and 0.9% of them were infected. In the province of Guangdong, 9,939 contacts were named, all found, 7,765 are already examined and 4.8% of them were infected. That means: If you have direct personal contact with an infected person, the probability of infection is between 1% and 5%

This also correlates perfectly with Taiwan's response. They suspended links to China and they had to cook up their own system, which is close to this (I suspect the Chinese may have copied it, Taiwan did it in early January as the first in the world when they became suspicious of a viral outbreak in their neighbour).

Europe have messed up - they should have taken events in Italy very seriously from the outset and closed borders.

P.S. Taiwan really is the role model for how to deal with this."

Originally Posted by: Maunder Minimum 

 And for the 4th time ………….not enough drivers and not enough vans , there has been a 400% increase in demand ………..theory and practice Im afraid , tell me where the extra drivers and vans are coming from .

Its not rocket science , are you  expecting the logistics to be set in place ………….not going to happen

Originally Posted by: Gooner 

It's all academic anyway and the supermarkets probably know best, but adding many more drivers and vans should be feasible in a month or so esp if there is help from the govt.  It's not rocket science as you say. 

Originally Posted by: xioni2 

 Yes, that was my thought - social distancing in a park, breathing fresh air, is going to be orders of magnitude safer than shopping of any kind.

Originally Posted by: Gandalf The White 

I've posted this before on here, elsewhere and even emailed some epidemiologist professors but I am still amazed that it generates little interest. I am talking about the extended dry continuous hacking cough that I had a the end of December that lasted three weeks accompanied by a short fever. Almost everybody round here had it and judging by what I keep reading on social media so did thousands if not millions of others from November onwards. Some even said they were hospitalised. I've never had  bronchitis or any other respiratory disease. People keep enmphasising no cold or flu symptoms. It crops up on every social media thread when Covid -19 Symptoms table is displayed.

Surely this should be subject of some research to eliminate it or otherwise. It was a massive event after all, before we had even heard of Corona virus.

Originally Posted by: fairweather 

Depends on the park. There's a popular cycleway/footpath in Chichester (a converted old railway line)and it'll be crammed full over the weekend. I went there for my exercise two days ago, and it was well used even then. The tarmac strip is just about two metres wide.....

For weekend exercise I'm heading elsewhere in the city to a location which is much less well known (Havenstoke Park for those that know the city) but I shall return immediately if my guess is wrong.

Originally Posted by: DEW 

PS: Here's the first piece of genuinely good news I've seen wrt the UK outbreak. Hospital admissions in London have fallen in the last couple of days.  

Originally Posted by: Brian Gaze 

Just trawling through my back catalogue of emails to my MP.

I wrote to her on 7th February about border controls and port screening - I included the following:

"It is shocking that these passengers were not screened on return, or given leaflets and advice on what to do if they fall ill. "

• that was what elicted that complacent response from the Home Office:

"The actions we are taking in response to the unprecedented threat from COVID-19 are in line with advice provided by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and Public Health England (PHE).  At present, we do not intend to introduce port screening measures such as temperature checks, as the scientific advice suggests that they simply do not work.   However, flights arriving from Category 1 countries have been subject to checks on board with the crew identifying passengers of concern.  Any passengers identified will have been subject to further health screening on arrival in the UK. 

During the containment phase, an enhanced monitoring process was implemented by PHE, to monitor direct flights and identify any ill passengers from affected countries.  On 12 March 2020, we moved from the containment phase to the delay phase.  This has been initiated as there is now community transmission of the virus in the UK, i.e. transmission not directly related to travel; so this has made interventions in ports of less relative importance.

..."

- they clearly had no clue what they were dealing with, but if Quantum and I could see the danger at the start of February, why couldn't they? Not closing borders and port screening arrivals was a dereliction of duty - if they had stopped people taking their half term breaks to go skiiing or for winter sun, it would have had far less impact on the economy than what is being experienced under a lock-down, plus many lives would have been spared serious illness or a fatal outcome.

Originally Posted by: Maunder Minimum 

In my view, if the government had taken the actions that you suggest 2-3 months ago, it would very likely have made the task of trying to control the spread of the virus through the UK a bit easier to do that has proved to be the case. Doing so would have been no more than exercising a bit of plain old common sense.

Even if one accepts, as I think most people do, that it was never going to be possible to keep the virus out of the UK for the duration, it was surely incumbent on the government to do all they humanly could to mitigate the effect it would have on this country as much as they could as the earliest opportunity. If the government had raised the alarm as soon as the first case of Covid-19 was diagnosed in England at the end of January and taken appropriate action at that time, we might, just might have been in a less bad place now.

Originally Posted by: David M Porter 

If I remember rightly there  was a  lot of talk about herd immunity doing the rounds at that time i.e they wanted the thing to take off at a certain level to prevent "a second peak".  Haven't heard  herd immunity mentioned in the Govt daily briefings for a while now

Originally Posted by: Bugglesgate 

There are no rules any more.

Huge scandal all over German news today: US govt steals 200,000 masks paid for and destined fo Berlin police dept. Seized on their way to Germany from airport in Thailand. Berlin senator Andreas Geisel: "An act of piracy". Is this going to be on US news ?? https://t.co/8oaM5Hb3N5

— Alexander Lindner (@alexxdesignn) April 3, 2020

Originally Posted by: Ulric 

I've posted this before on here, elsewhere and even emailed some epidemiologist professors but I am still amazed that it generates little interest. I am talking about the extended dry continuous hacking cough that I had a the end of December that lasted three weeks accompanied by a short fever. Almost everybody round here had it and judging by what I keep reading on social media so did thousands if not millions of others from November onwards. Some even said they were hospitalised. I've never had  bronchitis or any other respiratory disease. People keep enmphasising no cold or flu symptoms. It crops up on every social media thread when Covid -19 Symptoms table is displayed.

Surely this should be subject of some research to eliminate it or otherwise. It was a massive event after all, before we had even heard of Corona virus.

Originally Posted by: fairweather 

It might still be on the agenda but under the radar now as public opinions fuelled by the media and social media wouldn't be forgiving - these outlets are still pumping out worst case fear inducing crap. 

Current restrictions are buying up time to create more hospital facilities whilst allowing for a slower spread of the virus - its still being allowed to spread just at a slower rate. Also flu season is coming to an end, and the season for a lot of the other common respiratory virus are also beginning to slow so this will ease burdens on hospitals.

The reluctance to mass test now i believe is not only because of ability issues, but also a deliberate postponement. If they were to mass test now then the death/infected ratio would be much much lower and i believe this would make it harder for them justify the lock down restrictions as the press and social media would clock on. Such pressure to lift would not be a good thing whilst the NHS is still not ready to deal with this even if the death/infected rate was low as the health service would be swamped. 

Lets assume though that come May the death rate curve should be leavening off, and by then the government are ramping up tests into the 10's of thousands a day (anti body test hopefully), and its now that the true infected numbers begin to show. Its then that they maybe able to sell the easing of restrictions.

Originally Posted by: picturesareme