Interesting interview with a German expert

An interesting read, thanks.

The graph shows that we're doing slightly better than Germany and pretty much tracking France.

I thought this was noteworthy: "...humanity will be immune to the next Sars-related coronavirus, having been exposed to this one."

It is completely different to the WHO statement recently which suggested there was nothing to suggest that being infected with SARS-Cov2 prevented you from catching it again. This says that not only do you get immunity from SARS-Cov2 but also from other Coronviruses in the SARS family.

So the unionist rag that is the Daily Ranger (sorry Record) has in trying to score a hit on the Scottish Government revelled that the noise the other week about Boris missing COBRA meetings was a fabrication by the printed press. These meetings from February were intended to deal with the issue as a health issue and was lead by the respective Health Ministers. So the meetings the Daily Record claim Nicola and Boris missed, neither were supposed to be there, so the notion that Boris bunked of from meetings he was due to be at is bogus. 

If one good thing comes out of this crises it will be if its the permeant demise of the printed press MSM in the UK - they are the fake news. 

A lesson from history?

 In 1720 Marseille allowed a ship from plague-ridden Cyprus into port, under pressure from merchants who wanted the goods and didn’t want to wait for the usual quarantine. More than half the population of Marseille died in the next two years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plague_of_Marseille

What fresh lunacy is this?

Most but not all. Nervous coughs, throat clearing etc. I should probably have said spontaneous though, some you get a few seconds warning, some you don't, especially sneezes.

Interviews with most Germans (both scientists and politicians) tend to be refreshing. You can easily spot the humility and contrast it with the arrogance and spin of our lot (mainly politicians). There are many exceptions of course. 

Thanks for that, I needed something to lighten my mood. 

I’m not sure I would be confident about SARS-Cov2 resulting in immunity more widely to coronaviruses but it will be interesting to see.

One other random question that has occurred to me is, will there be a (temporary) large decrease in other communicable diseases in the coming weeks as a result of the social distancing measures. It would be a logical conclusion but I guess the data may not be collected so it might be unprovable beyond anecdotal evidence.

I think it's not just the size but how representative it is of the population as a whole. It's no good extrapolating numbers from a particular group that have been tested. You would probably need less than 100,000 to get a god idea what was going on if they were a genuine cross section.

Earlier today we tweeted about a new WHO scientific brief on "immunity passports". The thread caused some concern & we would like to clarify:

We expect that most people who are infected with #COVID19 will develop an antibody response that will provide some level of protection. pic.twitter.com/AmxvQQLTjM

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) April 25, 2020

It’s quite a nice thought, that at present it’s virtually impossible to catch a cold. 😃 The thought occurred to me the other day. 

When it comes to sneezes, I'm the type where an itch in the nose builds and builds until aaaaaatchoooo!

No, Caz - I'm in tune with what you were saying, but the wider issue was to get a view of how far the virus has spread as my sense that we have missed an important "resource" by failing to test care home residents and their carers. This would not only give us useful additional information on the distribution, but it would also highlight the implications for the care sector. I was also rather hoping that some of our statisticians would come up with their take on a sample size. I've had a few comments.

Got my daily exercise mowing the lawn today!

Roger

Whatever rules you make they will always get broken by some ignorant or stupid people. That is why they would be better defining the reasons behind the rules and then at least the intelligent people can interpret them accurately with a better overall result. So the foundation for the rules is to prevent the NHS being burdened unnecessarily and to maintain social distancing to prevent transmission. So they should explain the reason for not driving distances is to limit the chance of RTAs (these have dropped), to not create large gatherings in popular places and to not increase the load on NHS services in other areas. The other rules are simply to limit transmission and are obvious like washing hands, keeping distance, cleaning surfaces, isolation if infected.

So an individual should be able to work out the optimum way for them to minimise risk to themselves and others. 

So for me, being slightly higher risk at 70, I have changed my exercise routine to doing less. So I go in the garden and do a bit. I walked up the road  to post a letter and wasn't happy having to walk in the road and cross it a couple of times to avoid dog walkers, passers by, people in their driveway washing cars. We are blessed with a number of very large nature reserves and woods within a mile of here. (Population approx 300,000). As a wildlife photographer I know the paths better than the "nouveau" walkers as I call them. So twice a week I drive up there (5 mins) and walk along these relatively quiet paths for an hour. I generally hear people before they hear me and make myself scarce and have only really seen a couple of people when I stand two metres off the path to let them by in case they don't. 

I'm confident this has not broken any rules and it certainly hasn't caused me or anybody else a problem.

Since we are talking about other illnesses i am not sure if this story got linked the other day. A child who had covid-19, the flu and a common cold virus at the same time (!!!) passed on the flu and cold to other people but not the covid-19.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/boy-with-covid-19-did-not-transmit-disease-to-more-than-170-contacts

Just a thumbs up to support a request for some data to substantiate a point, Justin. Why is that mad?

R.

Wouldn’t that mean roughly half of the common colds would be cured too?

If the govt asks us to nominate 10 people each who we can socialise with, I believe we should all be charitable and nominate Quantum.

This is going to cause arguments between friends and families across the land!

Dog walkers and Guardian readers need not apply.