The virus. PPE. Part 1

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Cobra said:
Don't get me wrong, I never wrapped either of my kids up in cotton wool but the world just seems a less hygienic place these days.
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I honestly think the opposite is true.
Remember "No Spitting" signs on buses?

Unwashed veg, no sanitary plastic wrapping and runny noses were what sleeves were for.
No "kills 99% of germs", and dropped dummies were stuffed back into little mouths.
I think people are losing natural defences.
 
simon ess said:
I think people are losing natural defences.
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I agree that is part of it.
However There is nothing wrong with Potatoes or carrots etc with mud on them.
It comes off when they are peeled. and of course cooked at a high temperature.
Although there is nothing like chomping into a raw one (y)
I still buy "fresh" as much as possible.

simon ess said:
No "kills 99% of germs"
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And its the 1% that concerns me ;)
 
Cobra said:
What baffles me is, the fact that anyone with even the basic school boy knowledge of virology or immunology,
could even consider the fact that this could have been contained.
It was already "too late" by the time it was detected.
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Not necessarily. The closest thing we've seen to this before, SARS, was successfully contained, though it took longer to identify the virus, there were over 8000 cases in the initial outbreak, and transmission occurred as far away as Europe and North America. Of course we're now well beyond the scale of the SARS epidemic with COVID-19.
 
Retune said:
Of course we're now well beyond the scale of the SARS epidemic with COVID-19.
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Exactly!
There are probably only a handful of people on here looking at this from a totally different angle.
Experience and training teaches us ....
Eh? Richard ? @sphexx
 
Cobra said:
Exactly!
There are probably only a handful of people on here looking at this from a totally different angle.
Experience and training teaches us ....
Eh? Richard ? @sphexx
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Yes, but not for the reason you think :(. If COVID gets here it’ll probably carry me off due my age, Leukaemia (CLL, much chemo over the last 15 years) and therefore compromised immune system :). Smiley because I shouldn’t still be here.
Oh and did I mention Brexit. The treatment that I’ve been getting monthly to battle infections stopped 10 months ago due to ‘world shortage’, but there’s been a ‘world shortage’ forever (it’s a blood product so we can’t produce it here because of BSE) so I suspect it’s shortage of money partly due to NHS spending on stockpiling and possibly being held to ransom by suppliers. My consultant said “you are one of the ones that might be alright” :) so pity the other poor buggers :(.
 
sphexx said:
Leukaemia (CLL, much chemo over the last 15 years) and therefore compromised immune system
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Bugger :(
I lost a sister to Leukemia many many years ago, there was nothing like the knowledge back then than there is now.
I'm just happy that I "Helped" in some small way. (y)

sphexx said:
:). Smiley because I shouldn’t still be here.
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I'm glad you are still hanging in there.
 
arclight said:
Why does the UK not have substantial travel restrictions in place ?
There are now 35 countries with restrictions (including outright bans).
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...e-countries-airlines-restrict-travel-to-china

There are currently about 100 daily flights from China into the UK and the only precaution taken is to hand out leaflets.
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Our flights towards the end of march to Shanghai were cancelled on us at the start of the week. all BA and virgin flights are cancelled to china until the end of march at the earliest.
seems Vietnam has now started to quarantine villages and theres reports of it being bad in North Korea, but obviously there even more secretive than china.

I expect the death toll is also a lot higher as a lot of people have stated they would rather die at home than visit one of these hospitals, as they are so bad.. theres a reports from a Chinese woman about how they took her father home after the uncle went in sick, they had no heating or hot food for two days and when they went to see him he had died over night and known even knew.

It's now causing a lot of political backlash in china especially after the doctor died. The people are not happy with the way it was handled or the transparency from the start.
The state has started restricting information/news and posts regarding it even more over the past week and one of the two main Chinese reporters, sending information out of the country illegally has disappeared.

Xi seems to be distancing himself and placing more people between him and the mess, I doubt the people will realistically be able to do anything though.

my wife was saying that even online the Chinese people are criticising and angry at the people that are leaving , who may knowingly have it.. she said the last (9th) uk case of the Chinese woman who left and came straight to a hospital in the uk has caused a lot of backlash online.. they were very angry about it and were saying we should let her die...abit harsh.. but they believe these people will tarnish the Chinese reputation and make westerners be more hateful and racist than they already are towards Chinese.


One of the Chinese supermarkets here had the windows smashed and walls spray painted with things like "go home"
 
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arclight said:
I doubt if that will have any impact unless they develop symptoms then test positive.
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Actually the report I read neither of them claimed to have temperature or other symptoms, I felt they may be just attention seeking ;).
 
If they truly feel they may have been in contact with a carrier/infecter, shouldn't they self isolate for a fortnight rather than just cancel public appointments for a week?
 
Nod said:
If they truly feel they may have been in contact with a carrier/infecter, shouldn't they self isolate for a fortnight rather than just cancel public appointments for a week?
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Yes, that was one the things I thought odd. Of course, you shouldn’t believe all you read in the media;).
 
sphexx said:
Actually the report I read neither of them claimed to have temperature or other symptoms, I felt they may be just attention seeking ;).
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I hope they will be OK, but some other attendees may have caught the virus, and possibly spread it further. My understanding is the conference was about a week ago so that's long enough to become infectious.
 
It's because the conference was about a week ago that they only have to self-isolate for another week. The incubation period starts at the time of potential infection, so there's no reason to isolate for more than a week at this point.
 
sphexx said:
Yes, but not for the reason you think :(. If COVID gets here it’ll probably carry me off due my age, Leukaemia (CLL, much chemo over the last 15 years) and therefore compromised immune system :). Smiley because I shouldn’t still be here.
Oh and did I mention Brexit. The treatment that I’ve been getting monthly to battle infections stopped 10 months ago due to ‘world shortage’, but there’s been a ‘world shortage’ forever (it’s a blood product so we can’t produce it here because of BSE) so I suspect it’s shortage of money partly due to NHS spending on stockpiling and possibly being held to ransom by suppliers. My consultant said “you are one of the ones that might be alright” :) so pity the other poor buggers :(.
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Immunoglobulins? Best wishes for the future, and long may you continue to post here!
 
Retune said:
Immunoglobulins? Best wishes for the future, and long may you continue to post here!
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1. Yes. 2. Thanks. 3. Careful what you wish for ;)
 
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Seems to be a bit of a growing problem on the Diamond Princess in Yokohoma. It had 3,700 passengers (some have been taken off). 450 have been diagnosed as having the infection. Having a lot of people on a ship is got to be high risk in respect of spreading the virus. News report this morning stated that whilst passengers are confined to cabins they have contact with crew members bringing food etc.
 
arclight said:
Seems to be a bit of a growing problem on the Diamond Princess in Yokohoma. It had 3,700 passengers (some have been taken off). 450 have been diagnosed as having the infection. Having a lot of people on a ship is got to be high risk in respect of spreading the virus. News report this morning stated that whilst passengers are confined to cabins they have contact with crew members bringing food etc.
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Yes, it puzzled me that they kept them on the ship, it seemed a good way to spread it throughout. The cabins must share an air conditioner system and it’s not certain how the virus spreads or lasts in air. I thought they should have taken them all off to a place like we have used in U.K. But the Japanese can be brutal about some things and see things differently from us. However the result is that as people develop the disease they are taken off and are then in Japan anyway.
 
sphexx said:
Yes, it puzzled me that they kept them on the ship, it seemed a good way to spread it throughout. The cabins must share an air conditioner system and it’s not certain how the virus spreads or lasts in air. I thought they should have taken them all off to a place like we have used in U.K. But the Japanese can be brutal about some things and see things differently from us. However the result is that as people develop the disease they are taken off and are then in Japan anyway.
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Not all that uncommon for passengers on cruise ships to be struck down by bugs that rapidly spread throughout the vessel resulting in everyone being kept on board. NHS say that there is not yet conclusive evidence how this virus spreads, but similar viruses spread through cough/sneeze droplets. There are differing opinions as to how long the virus can survive outside of a host.
 
arclight said:
Not all that uncommon for passengers on cruise ships to be struck down by bugs that rapidly spread throughout the vessel resulting in everyone being kept on board. NHS say that there is not yet conclusive evidence how this virus spreads, but similar viruses spread through cough/sneeze droplets. There are differing opinions as to how long the virus can survive outside of a host.
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But most often those are food poisoning bugs where it would work. I seem to remember there used to Legionaire’s disease outbreaks on cruise ships where clearly it wouldn’t work.
 
Box Brownie said:
Yes, sad & tragic for those directly affected by those losses........................but the % is still about the same, approx 2.7% of the total confirmed.
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A simple ratio of those numbers doesn't necessarily give the fatality rate, since (e.g.) the epidemic is growing very fast and some death dates may be a couple of weeks after the patients' diagnosis dates, when the size of the outbreak was perhaps a quarter of its current size:

https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/the-virus-ppe.706383/post-8624148

But in fact ~2% may not be far off, though there's still quite a lot of uncertainty ("The upshot: the widely quoted 2% fatality for China is calculated incorrectly, because it's based on data that is under-reported and doesn't account for delays. But, confusingly, these errors may actually cancel out, leading to an estimate that is right for the wrong reasons."):

View: https://BANNED/AdamJKucharski/status/1229708001243795458


2% is also the figure the WHO is going with for now, but I don't find that at all reassuring - it's perhaps 20x higher than seasonal influenza (closer to the 1918 pandemic) and I'm sure we all know people who would fall into high-risk categories (older, or with existing conditions) should the virus become widespread here. And although over 80% may get only mild symptoms, the rest become extremely ill, which would put massive pressure on health services anywhere the virus is freely transmiteed in the community:

“More than 80% of patients have mild disease and will recover, 14% have severe disease including pneumonia and shortness of breath, 5% have critical disease including respiratory failure, septic shock and multi-organ failure, and 2% of cases are fatal,” [WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus] said in Geneva. “The risk of death increases the older you are.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ild-disease-in-four-in-five-patients-says-who
 
Retune said:
A simple ratio of those numbers doesn't necessarily give the fatality rate, since (e.g.) the epidemic is growing very fast and some death dates may be a couple of weeks after the patients' diagnosis dates, when the size of the outbreak was perhaps a quarter of its current size:
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And as has already been pointed out you could make the data do almost what you want. for example, there is no data available on those who would have likely have died regardless of the virus. We don't know how many people have got/had the virus but have not been diagnosed. I could go on. So taking the WHO figures as a baseline isn't to bad.
 
Well, as with most rapidly developing outbreaks you can probably only get harder numbers in retrospect, following each known case individually from diagnosis to recovery (or death) and estimating numbers of subclinical or other undiagnosed infections using (e.g.) antibody surveillance of the affected population (a test that's not yet available). But 2% is not a low case fatality rate for a respiratory infection with pandemic potential, especially when so many other cases are likely to be serious or critical. If that's a good estimate and it goes everywhere, we won't have seen anything like this in a century.
 
Retune said:
Well, as with most rapidly developing outbreaks you can probably only get harder numbers in retrospect, following each known case individually from diagnosis to recovery (or death) and estimating numbers of subclinical or other undiagnosed infections using (e.g.) antibody surveillance of the affected population (a test that's not yet available). But 2% is not a low case fatality rate for a respiratory infection with pandemic potential, especially when so many other cases are likely to be serious or critical. If that's a good estimate and it goes everywhere, we won't have seen anything like this in a century.
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Outside of China it is hardly rapidly developing.
 
I think it‘s going to break out in Japan. The accounts of what has gone on with the ship sound to me like it was still spreading and they are releasing everybody into the community today.
Just seen Japanese expert (who had worked on Ebola in Africa) saying the conditions onboard are chaotic and he felt safer in Africa than on the ship as he could not tell where the virus was and where it wasn’t.
 
sphexx said:
I think it‘s going to break out in Japan. The accounts of what has gone on with the ship sound to me like it was still spreading and they are releasing everybody into the community today.
Just seen Japanese expert (who had worked on Ebola in Africa) saying the conditions onboard are chaotic and he felt safer in Africa than on the ship as he could not tell where the virus was and where it wasn’t.
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Ships are never a good place to be when a virus breaks out. Just look at what happened in WW1 with the Americans coming over to Europe and the spread of the "Spanish flu"
 
sphexx said:
I think it‘s going to break out in Japan. The accounts of what has gone on with the ship sound to me like it was still spreading and they are releasing everybody into the community today.
Just seen Japanese expert (who had worked on Ebola in Africa) saying the conditions onboard are chaotic and he felt safer in Africa than on the ship as he could not tell where the virus was and where it wasn’t.
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if the Japanese have the same hygiene standard practice then I think they will but between strangers Japan don’t have human contact much.

coming up is pollen season and every other person wear a mask in any given year, so this will slow the spreading (yes I know masks are not 100%, I said slow, not prevent), when you sit down to eat, they give you a hand wipe so your hands are clean before you eat. At every store and shop front now has a hand sanitiser for anyone to use.

when you pay are some places like Suikiya, you are asked to wave your receipt with a bar code at the machine, which then you out in cash and it gives you change. The staff don’t even touch the money.

every staff member at every shop are wearing face masks, every hotels (I stayed in 2), it has a sign asking all customers feeling unwell to report to the front desk.

ps I was there 4 days ago.

I am right now in Korea and they are even more on it than the Japanese. My hotel reception give you a face mask if you ask, there is a camera scanning all persons entering for high temperature, I see signs on what to do to prevent it everywhere, face masks are sold in vending machines and alcohol sanitiser at every shop front for anyone to use. Tannoys at station telling you the numbers to ring should you feel unwell in Korean, Japanese, Chinese and English. I would say 80% of the population is wearing a mask, even out in the open with no one else close by.

Lotte World Tower has closed its door linking to the underground entrance asking people to enter via the ground floor entrance instead, I guess they don’t want the air from the underground to get in.

I think if the west has an outbreak, it will blow up a lot faster, we do not do half the stuff these Japanese or Koreans do in terms of social interactions (or lack thereof), we think masks wearers are walking virus. There is a bigoted mindset to begin with and all the hugging and kissing faces when you meet a friend is going to spread it faster than you can say Hello.
 
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Well, we had cancelled Venice city break for the weekend crossing Feb/Mar, my parents agreed to babysit so we can go out for the first time in 2 years. Wife, who is also Chinese but different to me, she consumes Chinese media. She would not listen to logic, so we are cancelling the trip out of fear getting infected.

The logical thing to do is to monitor the situation, only consider cancellation if there were new confirmed cases in that area of Europe. Otherwise the risk of infection is very very low.
 
munch said:
True and this is where any statistics will fall down. There may also be people who have died of the virus, who have not been diagnosed. That still doesn't detract from the information we do have and how we use that. We can say based on the information we have corono virus has a current fatality rate of 2.37% NOT 20%
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and a recovery rate so far of just over 9%.
 
wyx087 said:
Well, we had cancelled Venice city break for the weekend crossing Feb/Mar, my parents agreed to babysit so we can go out for the first time in 2 years. Wife, who is also Chinese but different to me, she consumes Chinese media. She would not listen to logic, so we are cancelling the trip out of fear getting infected.

The logical thing to do is to monitor the situation, only consider cancellation if there were new confirmed cases in that area of Europe. Otherwise the risk of infection is very very low.
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Wow..... how do you leave the house at all?
 
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