Coronavirus

Just on RTE Radio - UV light and being out in the fresh air advised to avoid the virus, they said caravan and camping holidays in Ireland will be popular this summer.
Always knew campervanning was good for you

We were thinking the same thing.... although the holiday to France is cancelled, we can still avail of plenty of Ireland breaks. The benefit of a motorhome holiday is that the van is, in effect, a mobile self-isolation unit.
We're all virtually self-sufficient when away, and can decide how much, or how little, we contact others!
Obviously, the same would apply in France, but we were more concerned about the possibility of a virus outbreak during the 18 hour voyage.... imagine being quarantined for two weeks on the Oscar Wilde?

I think it’s a waiting game at the minute. We will wait until closer to the time and see what the situation is then. It might have fizzled out, or, it might be so rampant that it won’t matter where you are or where you go

True David but it might be better to have it at home than somewhere in Europe where you aren't fluent in the lingo

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ne…1583788608

Great to see leadership with Balls for a change

There is a reason why TV shows choose motorhomes or RVs as the vehicle of choice when there is a zombie apocalypse or need to isolate yourself from society like in the Walking Dead or Breaking Bad! 6 months of toilet roll would not eat into your payload much .

True Martin but it is a pity it took them a month or so to grow them, then again hindsight is a great thing. On the other hand people here on the site weren’t taking it serious only a few days ago, any Government taking it serious wouldn’t be very popularly when the citizens of the country aren’t taking it serious and supporting them.

This is worrying

It's a thread on twitter, for those who cannot see it, It's pasted below. It does go on to 20 posts.

1/ I may be repeating myself, but I want to fight this sense of security that I see outside of the epicenters, as if nothing was going to happen "here". The media in Europe are reassuring, politicians are reassuring, while there's little to be reassured of. #COVID19 #coronavirus

2/ This is the English translation of a post of another ICU physician in Bergamo, Dr. Daniele Macchini. Read until the end "After much thought about whether and what to write about what is happening to us, I felt that silence was not responsible.

3/ I will therefore try to convey to people far from our reality what we are living in Bergamo in these days of Covid-19 pandemic. I understand the need not to create panic, but when the message of the dangerousness of what is happening does not reach people I shudder.

4/ I myself watched with some amazement the reorganization of the entire hospital in the past week, when our current enemy was still in the shadows: the wards slowly "emptied", elective activitieswere interrupted, intensive care were freed up to create as many beds as possible.

5/ All this rapid transformation brought an atmosphere of silence and surreal emptiness to the corridors of the hospital that we did not yet understand, waiting for a war that was yet to begin and that many (including me) were not so sure would ever come with such ferocity.

6/ I still remember my night call a week ago when I was waiting for the results of a swab. When I think about it, my anxiety over one possible case seems almost ridiculous and unjustified, now that I've seen what's happening. Well, the situation now is dramatic to say the least.

7/ The war has literally exploded and battles are uninterrupted day and night. But now that need for beds has arrived in all its drama. One after the other the departments that had been emptied fill up at an impressive pace.

8/ The boards with the names of the patients, of different colours depending on the operating unit, are now all red and instead of surgery you see the diagnosis, which is always the damned same: bilateral interstitial pneumonia.

9/ Now, explain to me which flu virus causes such a rapid drama. [post continues comparing covid19 to flu, link below]. And while there are still people who boast of not being afraid by ignoring directions, protesting because their normal routine is"temporarily" put in crisis,

10/ the epidemiological disaster is taking place. And there are no more surgeons, urologists, orthopedists, we are only doctors who suddenly become part of a single team to face this tsunami that has overwhelmed us.

11/ Cases are multiplying, we arrive at a rate of 15-20 admissions per day all for the same reason. The results of the swabs now come one after the other: positive, positive, positive. Suddenly the E.R. is collapsing.

12/ Reasons for the access always the same: fever and breathing difficulties, fever and cough, respiratory failure. Radiology reports always the same: bilateral interstitial pneumonia, bilateral interstitial pneumonia, bilateral interstitial pneumonia. All to be hospitalized.

13/ Someone already to be intubated and go to intensive care. For others it's too late... Every ventilator becomes like gold: those in operating theatres that have now suspended their non-urgent activity become intensive care places that did not exist before.

14/ The staff is exhausted. I saw the tiredness on faces that didn't know what it was despite the already exhausting workloads they had. I saw a solidarity of all of us, who never failed to go to our internist colleagues to ask "what can I do for you now?"

What country is this referring to? I don’t use Twitter, can it be trusted, we are getting so much information from ever direction and not sure what to believe anymore, but what I do believe it is spreading at a phenomenal rate and we need to pull our heads out of the sand, take it seriously and take every precaution we can.

or... the internet

Italy Pat. They recorded 168 deaths in a single day. Shocking.

Not gone by May according to the BBC and I would trust that source more than any. Models suggest there may be a second peak in the Autumn and then it may just keep circulating like other Flu.

Ever since this bloody virus I used to cough in public to hide a fart, now I'm farting to hide a cough

That can be your next signature John

Cheers for that Martin. I do think the myth about drinking water has been busted however. We need to be careful about misinformation and fake news especially at this time.

Another Angry Voice: https://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.com/

Yesterday ITV reported that the favoured Tory Covid-19 strategy was to allow the British public to develop "herd immunity".

In the absence of a Covid-19 vaccine this is a terrifying proposal: Mass exposure to the virus so people develop immunity to the strain, in the hope that it doesn't just keep mutating into new strains like the flu and common cold do (incidentally - the more people who get exposed, the more likely Covid-19 mutates into a new strain that's immune to previously acquired resistance).

Mass exposure undoubtedly means mass death (not just from the virus itself, but amongst other critically ill people who are crowded out of the health system), and Johnson was shockingly upfront about it when he warned the British public about the loss of their loved ones later in the day.

If the virus is allowed to spread to the point that the public acquire herd immunity, that would have to mean something like 90% exposure. With a death rate of somewhere around 2%-4%, that would require somewhere between 1.2 to 2.4 million deaths!

This strategy is completely out of step with the Asian countries that have contained the exponential spread of the virus, and with all of our European neighbours who have brought in measures like school closures, travel restrictions, and sports shut downs.

What the Tories are doing is playing another massive high stakes public policy gamble with potentially even more serious ramifications than their 2016 Brexit gamble.

If their gable pays off it means the virus will continue spreading across the world, with mass deaths in every country, but Britain will have avoided some of the more severe economic disruption experienced by other countries with stricter containment strategies.

If the gamble fails and Britain suffers mass deaths, while other countries manage to contain the crisis, or at least delay the worst of the carnage until after a vaccine is developed, then the losses will be extraordinary.

First of all hundreds of thousands of people will have needlessly died as a result of this Tory "herd immunity" strategy, but the economic losses could be absolutely enormous too.

Imagine other countries manage to contain the virus, but it runs wild in the UK and a few other nations led by hard-right 'let the vulnerable die' eugenicists.

It would obviously be in the other countries interests to prevent virus riddled British people keep reinfecting their populations.

We'd be looking at a travel ban to keep the virus in Britain and the other countries that decided to let the virus run wild.

And amazingly this isn't even the worst case scenario. The worst case is that by letting the virus run through the population in an effort to develop herd immunity, the nation is turned into a breeding ground for mutant strains of the virus that can potentially reinfect everyone all over again, making the UK an absolute pariah-state.

Combined with the economic impact of all the deaths, the implications of becoming a virus-ridden pariah state are obviously far worse than the potential economic savings of delaying/avoiding economically disruptive containment measures.

In gambling terms it looks like the Tories are staking a vast sum on a bet with extremely short odds, meaning if they win they profit by a tiny fraction of the stake, but if they lose, they deliver not only mass deaths and NHS breakdown, but an economic crisis vastly larger than the economic disruption they're seeking to avoid.

The really sad thing about this is that we all knew something like this was a possibility with the Tories in charge.

We know the Tories are prepared to let tens of thousands die as a result of their policies after their wanton cuts to the NHS and social care systems pushed huge numbers of people into early graves over the last decade.

We also know that they're prone to taking massively risky public policy gambles, because of the way they allowed a Brexit referendum when the Brexiteers hadn't even drawn up a plan for how to leave if they actually won.

We knew dangerous gambling, economic chaos, and unnecessary deaths were very serious risks when we reelected the Tories once again, but presumably those of us who voted for them considered these risks "a price worth paying" in return for whatever (probably imaginary) benefit they thought they'd be getting from Tories continuing to run the country.

I don’t think the government made the decision, more so the highly qualified scientists but in any case it may be a wrong or right decision