New Zealand begins to normalise. Will they be able to keep the virus out? 

In the UK (and probably other countries) I suspect boredom with the corona virus outbreak is starting to grow. Consequently people could become increasingly careless in the coming days and weeks as lockdowns are eased. Will cases of the virus begin to spike again? 

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I drive in to work at 5am. Recently almost no traffic. Today a significant increase

Worrying news from Germany. This was posted on BBC Live a page so cant post the link:

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Last week, Germany was optimistic it was on the path out of lockdown. And a handful of measures were lifted, with small shops allowed to reopen and some students returning to class.

But on Tuesday, officials warned the infection rate was increasing - and was now at 1 again.

This means 10 infected people will infect another 10 people. Last week, the rate had dropped to 0.7, meaning ten infected would pass the virus to only seven people.

In order to beat the pandemic, the infection rate has to be below 1.

In the past day, Germany recorded 1,144 new infections and 163 new deaths.

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Robbie Gibb on Ferrari discussing what questions to ask Hancock. What a joke sections of the British media are.

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Not just careless but irritable. Reported on Radio Sussex this morning, cases of shopworkers and especially pharmacists being sworn at and even spat at by customers having to queue or otherwise delayed, staff marshalling queues at particular risk

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Whitty apparently estimates the dreaded R is at 0.75. That sounds very bad to me given where we are in the lockdown.

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I think this is the nub of the issue, Brian. Governments are elected on issues that mean something to the electorate. They then attempt to deliver, for better or worse. We get the governments we deserve.

I cannot recall any election where matters of Public Health were at the core of the manifestos. Can you? Perhaps at the peak of the AIDS crisis.

Yet pandemics are deeply ingrained in our history and culture. We can all cite the Black Death, The Plague, Malaria, Cholera, Polio, the childhood diseases, and pandemic Influenza. We know about "vectors" like the rat flea and mosquito, and about hygiene, immunisation and hospital acquired infections. So we are not clueless. We can even explain the origins of the nursery rhymes "Ring a ring o Roses" and "Coughs and Sneezes...".

So why are we so willing to launch into criticism of government failures when we have been so nonchalant about making public health and preparedness a political issue. That was our failing because we knew all this, just as we know what could well happen if we relax our present controls on Covid-19. We are in the middle of an outbreak and we are bored and becoming careless? Who's to blame for that? Not just politicians or the media.

After we have enjoyed the bloodsport of criticising our politicians, perhaps we should put Public Health, surveillance and preparedness on the agenda for the next election.

Roger

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I’m not sure that an R0 value at this stage is very bad or indeed unexpected. What is the number in other European countries currently?

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Indeed. Outside our local shop, people take a rota  to make sure there is compliance with the 2M rule. They don't get paid to do this, they do it as a public service.  Apparently they are regularly being verbally abused

There is an element, even in a relatively genteel village,  of  people who think they are exceptional and  shouldn't be included in any type of restrictions.  They think they can do what they want, what they want  and woe betide anyone that says otherwise.

This whole episode has bought home to me  how decadent, undisciplined  and downright selfish  a certain section of society has become.  This attitude certainly isn't confined to any one particular class, but if anything, I would say it is  more prevalent  within the middle classes - at least around here !

 

 

 

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If the above is correct , that is exactly what Boris and co want to avoid 

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To be fair even the Chinese lockdown was only estimated to reduce R to 0.55-0.6

One of the things money can buy is convenience: you can pay to skip the queues at airports, pay to skip the queues at theme parks, pay to be in a less crowded area on trains, in the cinema etc.

Money can't buy queue-skipping to get into shops! (And as you say, I think some people are finding out that they're not special snowflakes after all, they're just another member of our society).

 

 

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Just listening to Radio Sussex whose presenter FWIW has quoted a survey which has a figure of 8% of the population who are ' resisters' i.e. think the rules are absurd and/or don't apply to them. The majority of the 8% are young men.

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Good morning Roger

 

You are absolutely right and it’s something upon which I’ve commented before. We have had several decades of being largely protected as a society from most of the illnesses you list and perhaps many have become complacent.

Yesterday an acquaintance mentioned that he’d lost two former team mates and then a close friend. That’s made it suddenly more real for those in the WhatsApp group in which he shared the news.

Does Covid-19 need to be affecting many more before everyone gets the message? It would be perverse if the relative success of the efforts sowed the seed for another, worse outbreak.

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When you have all these young footballers having their parties despite lockdown it’s no wonder these young men flout the rules.

Footballers are ‘role’ models. I use that term very loosely.

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It’s very likely to be the outcome because the characteristics of the SARS-Cov2 virus haven’t changed: it’s contagious; it’s contagious before symptoms appear and there are asymptomatic carriers.

If greater contact between individuals is allowed there will be a second outbreak - and more.  Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to look at history.

We are in limbo until there’s a vaccine. If there’s no vaccine this will just run. If catching it really doesn’t confer immunity we’re in serious trouble.

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’All’?  I’m only aware of a couple of incidents?  I’ve seen no evidence that ‘young footballers’ are disproportionately worse than sone other sections of society. Have you?

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We will not be safe until those around us are immune or dead.  Until then we play the %s.

"Wha's like us? There's nane like us. They're a' deid, and nae wonder."

Roger

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An article in The Times confirms what some of us have been saying for some time - the Nightingale Hospitals are really there for the inevitable second wave in the autumn and their purpose is to free general hospitals to do the normal autumn/winter stuff without COVID patients, both to free the capacity and to reduce the risk of cross infection from COVID patients to other patients:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/nightingale-plan-to-keep-hospitals-free-from-coronavirus-6fsxr6kvb

"Britain’s Nightingale hospitals are being lined up to become the primary centres for treating Covid-19 patients as ministers announced that parts of the NHS would start reopening for routine care from this week.

Under proposals being discussed in government and the NHS the ten new hospitals would aim to care for as many coronavirus patients as possible allowing hospitals to be “Covid-free zones”.

When they are all completed they could have the capacity to treat about 13,000 patients, freeing up beds and space to allow other hospitals to take on routine operations again.

..."

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It would be really, really useful at this point, just to know exactly how much transmission can take place from asymptomatic carriers.  

It could be that people without symptoms pass this virus on in a very limited way.

Is there any reliable data out there? All the focus is quite rightly on a vaccine, but I still feel there are significant, game changing, unanswered questions about this virus. 

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That's an interesting point. I'd assumed they'd got it significantly lower before easing the lockdown which in Wuhan was much stricter than the UK's. As I've repeatedly said I'm a "pleb" on these matters. Nonetheless, I am very fearful of where things are heading in the UK. I also have grave reservations about other parts of Europe. Just finished reading today's Times and it seems the tourist industry thinks it will be gradually reopening through the rest of the year. Unless infection rates have been much higher than most scientists think (a view held by some, especially a section of the nationalist Brexitier community it would seem) or the virus for whatever reason just fades away, we are in very serious trouble. To compound the problems we are reading various reports about the long term damage SARS-CoV-2 can cause and the possibility it is responsible for very serious illness in a small number of children. 

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Don’t think that is bad. Germany had an R of 0.7 when they began to relax their restrictions, however, within a couple of days it had risen to 0.9. 

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Yes, but.  

The rush to get the Nightingales built reflected the genuine and valid concern that this first wave might be worse than it has been.

We’re still left with the lack of staff to run these huge new hospitals, not to mention the PPE.

I’m increasingly troubled by the stance of some of our politicians: either there’s a worrying level of ignorance of epidemiology or a more worrying willingness to trade tens of thousands of lives to ‘get back to normal’.  Apparently we do get the leaders we deserve. 

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Well actually I think that is VERY bad and illustrates the point I am making perfectly. 

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Quite. I suspect some of those criticising the Nightingales never have a positive word to say about anything. The fact is they were well intentioned and could still come into their own.  

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