The virus. PPE. Part 1

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Mr Badger said:
Remember it well, and according to the advert, every bubble had passed its Fizzical. :) Happy days.
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About the same time, early 70's, there was an advert for R White's lemonade, he was a secret lemonade drinker.
My first serious bike accident involved a Mrs R White in the early 70's, the connection helps me remember her name all these years later.
 
Box Brownie said:
The point I am making is nothing to do with pedantry but all about accuracy.....................having said that you are right in that the average person will be unlikely to differentiate.

However that does not excuse the continued mis-use of the correct "name" for something that then leaves those of the uninformed in ignorance and their incorrect assumption that a viral infection will need/be cured by anti-biotics.

On this forum which is a public one and can be read by anyone it is possible that the Google bots will bring this thread up in searches about infection and if lacking in accuracy will simply cause the issue to propagate! As a person that knows the difference you do yourself a dis-service by your improper use of the difference between viral & bacterial :(
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That was interesting work you did.

After I contracted the virus which I ..and now my wife..currently have I went to the doctor when the chest mucus turned yellow/green assuming ,as a layman and from what all other laypersons have said, that this is an indication of an infection rather than a virus and could be treated with antibiotics. The doctor said it was a virus and antibiotics would do nothing to help. Thing is ,a couple of years ago my wife had a similar infection and her doctor said the same,then it got worse so she returned and was given amoxicillin. My doctor did give me a course of the same antibiotic..500mgs..just a week’s supply and suggested that if I wasn’t any better after another 5 days after my visit then take them which I’ve done. It’s improved a bit but maybe it would have done so anyway. I’m still coughing up coloured mucus but the time period between bouts is lengthening. As I mentioned above,this one is a nasty bit of work. No muscle aches or pains nor headaches so I assume not a variety of ‘flu.

So..re your first paragraph would the amoxicillin albeit just three a day for 5 days...have helped ?

Just did a Google..I was wondering what type of ‘flu it is, if that’s what it is, .it might be. I’m none the wiser,though.

https://assets.publishing.service.g...kly_national_influenza_report_week_2_2020.pdf
 
I see some guy in Birmingham has been rushed away for testing, will be interesting to see the outcome.

Meanwhile, anyone else playing Plague Inc. again? I'm sure I previously read that it's actually based on real and pretty advanced models.
 
These comments I 100% agree with.

Quarantine means quarantine. Why on earth should we evacuate these people out of a health hazard zone and potentially spread the virus further.


Not too sure if it’s a good idea to get people back from China until we see how the virus develops, I understand people wanting to get back home however if the virus is so easily transmittable and seems to be more dangerous than first thought, maybe we should put more thorough travel controls in place, best thing for UK to do for UK citizens in China is help pay for hotel and food.
 
Mr Badger said:
No, but I'm thinking about buying a box set of the 70s TV series 'Survivors' to get some tips! ;)
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Gordon Bennett ~ talk about that old series popping up again, I had forgotten about that one :) ..................though as I recall it, it was a manmade 'agent/infection' that 'got out' and was spread globally! Was that the one where the blood turned to dust? Ooops no, now I think on it, that was another one....scratches head now :thinking::thinking::thinking:
 
Mr Badger said:
No, but I'm thinking about buying a box set of the 70s TV series 'Survivors' to get some tips! ;)
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Written by Terry Nation, who created the Daleks (credited with writing over 60 episodes of Dr Who) also wrote for Tony Hancock. Was one of the main writers for Blakes 7 and many other programmes.

I know all this (and more) about Terry Nation, having been an avid fan of Survivors.
 
Box Brownie said:
Gordon Bennett ~ talk about that old series popping up again, I had forgotten about that one :) ..................though as I recall it, it was a manmade 'agent/infection' that 'got out' and was spread globally! Was that the one where the blood turned to dust? Ooops no, now I think on it, that was another one....scratches head now :thinking::thinking::thinking:
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Here you go, just found this one on YouTube:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH6us7DLaRk&list=PLPabZTJwSik956ryLgZKvaKLCcc9769WV
 
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munch said:
Written by Terry Nation, who created the Daleks (credited with writing over 60 episodes of Dr Who) also wrote for Tony Hancock. Was one of the main writers for Blakes 7 and many other programmes.

I know all this (and more) about Terry Nation, having been an avid fan of Survivors.
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Talking of old series from the 70s this one was pretty good too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beasts_(TV_series) Written by Nigel Kneale of Quatermass fame. The episode 'Baby' frightened me half to death as a kid!
 
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gman said:
I see some guy in Birmingham has been rushed away for testing, will be interesting to see the outcome.

Meanwhile, anyone else playing Plague Inc. again? I'm sure I previously read that it's actually based on real and pretty advanced models.
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Pfft…...Birmingham is further from here than Paris :)

And in one of the more rambling of threads, I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Elvis Costello yet...................
 
JohnC6 said:
Are you sure...re gays. ?. To the best of my knowledge there are none in our road....:D
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I have a coworker who is gay but both her and her girlfriend seems to be healthy.
 
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Yeah! It's part of the "BIG" group - Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Al...
 
It will be fine, there is a 98% survival rate and that is if you can find someone who has it and catch it.

If a doctor tells you that the chance of survival from the operation is 98%, you take it every day of the week.

unless you are going to China, don’t worry about it. The flu killed 59,000 people in the US alone last year and it didn’t make the news. This Coronavirus has a long way to catch up.

sure we need to do something about it but be logical about it.
 
See the Ozzies are isolating their repatriated people 1200 miles off the mainland.
 
Raymond Lin said:
It will be fine, there is a 98% survival rate and that is if you can find someone who has it and catch it.

If a doctor tells you that the chance of survival from the operation is 98%, you take it every day of the week.

unless you are going to China, don’t worry about it. The flu killed 59,000 people in the US alone last year and it didn’t make the news. This Coronavirus has a long way to catch up.

sure we need to do something about it but be logical about it.
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Those numbers are potentially much more disturbing than you are suggesting. Case fatality rates are notoriously hard to pin down, particularly in the early stages of developing epidemics (as here) and especially for diseases where there may be large numbers of cases with mild symptoms that don't get counted (which may also be true here). But if we take 2% case fatality at face value, it's only a little lower than the ~2.5% figure that is often quoted for the 1918 flu pandemic, and considerably higher than estimates for seasonal flu (which are usually <0.1%). Current estimates of nCoV transmissibility are also higher than we'd expect from seasonal flu. And we don't yet know if it will be possible to contain the epidemic within China (there is already evidence of transmission from patients who appear to have been in the asymptomatic phase, including in Germany).
 
Retune said:
Those numbers are potentially much more disturbing than you are suggesting. Case fatality rates are notoriously hard to pin down, particularly in the early stages of developing epidemics (as here) and especially for diseases where there may be large numbers of cases with mild symptoms that don't get counted (which may also be true here). But if we take 2% case fatality at face value, it's only a little lower than the ~2.5% figure that is often quoted for the 1918 flu pandemic, and considerably higher than estimates for seasonal flu (which are usually <0.1%). Current estimates of nCoV transmissibility are also higher than we'd expect from seasonal flu. And we don't yet know if it will be possible to contain the epidemic within China (there is already evidence of transmission from patients who appear to have been in the asymptomatic phase, including in Germany).
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sure, potentially.

but I am looking at what is known right now, potentially we can all catch it and potentially I might die choking on my curry later.

statistically, 2% mortality rate. Unless someone can prove me wrong, that’s true so far isn’t it?

then it’ll be fine, and I got to actually catch it first.

Let’s say the odds so far in the UK would be number of carrier in the UK/population x 0.02.

even if there are 2000 infected in the UK (2000 being the number of passenger came back last week and presume every one of them is infected, as opposed to 3 out of the 300 or Japanese returned this week was....I am being massively pessimistic and say all of them are), in a population or 60million; the odds of dying is 0.000000006%

i like those odds.
 
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Raymond Lin said:
even if there are 2000 infected in the UK (2000 being the number of passenger came back last week and presume every one of them is infected, as opposed to 3 out of the 300 or Japanese returned this week was....I am being massively pessimistic and say all of them are), in a population or 60million; the odds of dying is 0.000000006%
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The problem is that the number wouldn't stay at 2000 unless we successfully blocked the chain of infection. In China, it's estimated that (on average) every case is giving rise to 2 or 3 more cases, and each of these can in turn infect 2 or 3 more, unless this exponential growth of infections can be halted. At the beginning of last month, there was only one known case in the world. Now we know about nearly 8000, and models predict that the true figure is much higher, in the tens or possibly hundreds of thousands. The risk is that the new virus will become endemic in the human population. This has happened before. Four coronaviruses, that today usually just cause cold symptoms, are very common all over the world. It's likely that you have already been infected by one or more of them at some point. The first of them probably entered the human population centuries ago, so we've no way of knowing whether it has always caused mild infections, or whether it has evolved to become less virulent over time. If 2019-nCoV becomes truly pandemic (with sustained transmission in multiple regions), and we are really dealing with something that's as infectious as a common cold but with a 2% case fatality rate (plus >20% of cases with very serious symptoms that require hospitalisation), then that becomes an enormous public health challenge. Of course that fatality rate may well be a significant overestimate (we really can't be at all confident about it at this point, as we have little idea how many potentially mild cases are being missed), and international efforts to contain the epidemic may still succeed. We'll just have to wait and see.
 
I know the number won’t stay at 2000, and that was worst case scenario, the likely number would probably be similar percentage of the Japanese plane.

I merely gave a worst case scenario to illustrate my point but it is clear that isn’t bad enough for you. I was thinking before they post that I’m more a glass half full kind of person and you are glass half empty.

No matter how I trying to say it, you are going to look on the pessimistic side. That I can’t change no matter what I say.
 
Retune said:
The problem is that the number wouldn't stay at 2000 unless we successfully blocked the chain of infection. In China, it's estimated that (on average) every case is giving rise to 2 or 3 more cases, and each of these can in turn infect 2 or 3 more, unless this exponential growth of infections can be halted. At the beginning of last month, there was only one known case in the world. Now we know about nearly 8000, and models predict that the true figure is much higher, in the tens or possibly hundreds of thousands. The risk is that the new virus will become endemic in the human population. This has happened before. Four coronaviruses, that today usually just cause cold symptoms, are very common all over the world. It's likely that you have already been infected by one or more of them at some point. The first of them probably entered the human population centuries ago, so we've no way of knowing whether it has always caused mild infections, or whether it has evolved to become less virulent over time. If 2019-nCoV becomes truly pandemic (with sustained transmission in multiple regions), and we are really dealing with something that's as infectious as a common cold but with a 2% case fatality rate (plus >20% of cases with very serious symptoms that require hospitalisation), then that becomes an enormous public health challenge. Of course that fatality rate may well be a significant overestimate (we really can't be at all confident about it at this point, as we have little idea how many potentially mild cases are being missed), and international efforts to contain the epidemic may still succeed. We'll just have to wait and see.
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Worst case scenario -
It wipes out 10's of thousands of humans, possibly millions, been coming for quite a while (since at least 1919 or thereabouts)
That'll do a lot more for greenhouse gases and over population than us buying a few electric cars etc.
It'll wipe out lots of old/sick people or those that have pre-existing conditions and as sad as that is years ago those people wouldn't have reached the age they have and quite frankly been a burden (along with the rest of us) on the planet.
However, I doubt very much it will come to that.
 
MatBin said:
Worst case scenario -
It wipes out 10's of thousands of humans, possibly millions, been coming for quite a while (since at least 1919 or thereabouts)
That'll do a lot more for greenhouse gases and over population than us buying a few electric cars etc.
It'll wipe out lots of old/sick people or those that have pre-existing conditions and as sad as that is years ago those people wouldn't have reached the age they have and quite frankly been a burden (along with the rest of us) on the planet.
However, I doubt very much it will come to that.
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Thanks, glad I'm expendable!
 
Raymond Lin said:
I know the number won’t stay at 2000, and that was worst case scenario, the likely number would probably be similar percentage of the Japanese plane.

I merely gave a worst case scenario to illustrate my point but it is clear that isn’t bad enough for you. I was thinking before they post that I’m more a glass half full kind of person and you are glass half empty.

No matter how I trying to say it, you are going to look on the pessimistic side. That I can’t change no matter what I say.
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I think the difference is in whether we are talking about current or (near) future 'worst case' scenarios. Right now, there's very little risk of being infected in the UK. Perhaps a handful of those 2000 people are infected, perhaps none. I will happily get on the Tube in London tomorrow! It's just that a highly transmissible virus that appears to be infectious before symptoms appear, and perhaps causes only mild nondescript symptoms in the majority of cases, has the potential to spread very easily once it gets here, and we are bound to see cases sooner or later.

On the optimistic side, we are better prepared than at any other time in history to tackle a threat like this. The last few weeks have shown than we now have the tools to identify, sequence and test for a novel virus incredibly quickly, and China is prepared to take absolutely unprecedented steps to attempt to shut the epidemic down. 20 years ago we wouldn't have seen this coming until it was far too late to intervene.
 
48dd0ffee79149028566c66809cda3b9.jpg

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...xit-day-being-britains-quarantine-day-cartoon
 
At what point would the wearing of PPE to protect against all your fears lead to a fear of PPE.

All that plastic, and chemicals, and fibres and made in sweatshops and laced with chems to bring forth the new world order and and...
 
simon ess said:
At what point would the wearing of PPE to protect against all your fears lead to a fear of PPE.

All that plastic, and chemicals, and fibres and made in sweatshops and laced with chems to bring forth the new world order and and...
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The asbestos suit market hasn't aged very well.
 
Marc said:
Thanks, glad I'm expendable!
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We all are. Can we really afford to keep increasing our numbers. We really need to start rationing our numbers and that means horrible choices, do we reduce the numbers we keep alive, do we reduce how many babies are born? I don't know the answer but I do know we can't keep expanding our population.
I'm not making this statement lightly, I am at an age where I will become a burden so it's a comment that affects me as much as anyone else. Past generations sacrificed themselves in war for a brighter future for the following generation, perhaps it's time to think along those lines?
Anyway, wildly off topic now, sorry.
 
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Whilst there is the pragmatic side of acceptable losses, I'm not sure it would be so readily acceptable were one's whole family part of these statistics. I feel this could have been contained better in the early days, but what with so many factors I suppose it's easier said than done. I do have an underlying feeling that the UK has been a touch too slow and casual about it.

Whilst it's still quite isolated outside of China, how long will it stay that way? When looking at the exponential growth within China it's unlikely to slow down any time soon unless we find a vaccine or implement some serious quarantine measures, although the latter is probably too late now due to a combination of incubation period and people being stupid and going to work/school etc whilst unwell.

It's not so much the current state of this virus which is of concern to me, it's the potential; especially if it has the potential to mutate into something far more dangerous and is still spreading at an increasing rate. Personally, I wouldn't be panicking, but I wouldn't be so flippant either.

Interestingly, there are no reported cases of Coronavirus in two of China's closest allies; Russia and North Korea. Now there's a gap for a good conspiracy theory! :eek::D Although I suspect it's probably more a case of them either not realising or not wanting to admit that they've got it as well.
 
China's reaction to any negative news is always been

1 - Deny deny deny
2 - Silence any critic and arrest them
3 - Put on a massive show to prove they are right. - They put on a banquet for 100,000 people like a week before they lock the city down…that was a big mistake.
4 - Cover up more
5 - Accept it but will control the PR and limit the real numbers

No. 3 was a massive mistake, at this point they already knew of the existence of it, but the state put on this show anyway.

Put it this way, about 2millio people left Wuhan before the lock down to go back to their families for Chinese New Year, even at 1% infection rate, there are 10,000 people out there carrying the virus around China/world.

With 2 weeks incubation period, we are only like a week since the Chinese New Year, I expect a spike in the next 7 days.
 
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MatBin said:
We all are. Can we really afford to keep increasing our numbers. We really need to start rationing our numbers and that means horrible choices, do we reduce the numbers we keep alive, do we reduce how many babies are born? I don't know the answer but I do know we can't keep expanding our population.
I'm not making this statement lightly, I am at an age where I will become a burden so it's a comment that affects me as much as anyone else. Past generations sacrificed themselves in war for a brighter future for the following generation, perhaps it's time to think along those lines?
Anyway, wildly off topic now, sorry.
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"but I do know we can't keep expanding our population"

Correct - that is the elephant in the room that is not being addressed. However, it is inescapable that it will need to be addressed before very long.
Global population is far outstripping the ability of the planet to support it. The choice is either to have a managed population or take the consequences which will bring a drop in population (in a most unpleasant way, I suspect).
 
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