COVID-19

[Bird on a Fire]

If any airlines are still in operation.

National governments may bail them out if the whole sector is facing bankruptcy. But very likely not all of them.

I'm wondering whether the "iconic" bankruptcies will be in the Cruise Ship industry, rather than airlines.

They've certainly offshored a lot of jobs to countries that couldn't afford to bail them out, along with having their ships registered under flags of convenience, and probably don't pay much in the way of taxes. But do they donate to political parties?

[Gentleman Jim]

Apologies if this has been asked before but since there has not been routine testing for coronavirus infection before (that I know), what is the likelihood of cases being diagnosed now that previously would just have been registered as "viral pneumonia" without all the ensuring panic?*




Sainbury's, yesterday - empty of dried pasta, toilet rolls, hand soaps/sanitisers, and, weirdly, tomato ketchup

[Matatouille]

Sainbury's, yesterday - empty of dried pasta, toilet rolls, hand soaps/sanitisers, and, weirdly, tomato ketchup

sorry, I'm soon to be enjoying a diet predominantly based on rat on a stick meals, and need ketchup for it.

[Gentleman Jim]

Sainbury's, yesterday - empty of dried pasta, toilet rolls, hand soaps/sanitisers, and, weirdly, tomato ketchup

sorry, I'm soon to be enjoying a diet predominantly based on rat on a stick meals, and need ketchup for it.

Surely the fact that all "unknown" meat, "tastes like chicken" should have meant that the mayonnaise stock would have sold out?

[shpalman]

Apologies if this has been asked before but since there has not been routine testing for coronavirus infection before (that I know), what is the likelihood of cases being diagnosed now that previously would just have been registered as "viral pneumonia" without all the ensuring panic?*

The most recent numbers I saw only had about 10% of swabs being positive for CoVid-19 in Italy and that's testing people with relevant symptoms and/or contact with a known case, so I'd estimate less than 10%.

[Opti]

Out here the shelves are all neatly stacked, faced properly, and there's no panic buying. Mind you, lots are just pissing away their pensions. Still, alcohol aisles are well stocked.

edit: And there's certainly no panic buying of herb.

[Woodchopper]

I'm wondering whether the "iconic" bankruptcies will be in the Cruise Ship industry, rather than airlines.

Maybe so. A governments have in the past argued that airlines are a strategic sector of the economy and needs to be protected. Its much harder to make that argument about cruise liners full of holidaymakers.

[JQH]

Apologies if this has been asked before but since there has not been routine testing for coronavirus infection before (that I know), what is the likelihood of cases being diagnosed now that previously would just have been registered as "viral pneumonia" without all the ensuring panic?*




Sainbury's, yesterday - empty of dried pasta, toilet rolls, hand soaps/sanitisers, and, weirdly, tomato ketchup

Sainsbury's today: empty of rice, pasta, baked beans, tinned tomatoes, sugar, peanut butter, orange juice, cat food, paracetamol, ibuprofin and bog paper.

[Bird on a Fire]

Sainbury's, yesterday - empty of dried pasta, toilet rolls, hand soaps/sanitisers, and, weirdly, tomato ketchup

sorry, I'm soon to be enjoying a diet predominantly based on rat on a stick meals, and need ketchup for it.

Surely the fact that all "unknown" meat, "tastes like chicken" should have meant that the mayonnaise stock would have sold out?

I have no experience with smaller mammals, but can attest that neither goat nor kangaroo taste much like chicken, and have been told that fox and otter are even more decidedly unchickeny. In the case of fox I'm not sure that even ketchup would help.

Rat is probably ok, flavourwise - various rat species are popular around the world. Small and fiddly, though. If I were a dog or cat I'd be getting pretty worried about now

[Herainestold]

I'm wondering whether the "iconic" bankruptcies will be in the Cruise Ship industry, rather than airlines.

Maybe so. A governments have in the past argued that airlines are a strategic sector of the economy and needs to be protected. Its much harder to make that argument about cruise liners full of holidaymakers.

There might be a lot of restructuring and mergers in the airline industry, all of those planes are still out there and I expect people will still want to fly.
It will take longer to get people enthusiastic about cruising again, but public memory is short.

[dyqik]

I'm wondering whether the "iconic" bankruptcies will be in the Cruise Ship industry, rather than airlines.

Maybe so. A governments have in the past argued that airlines are a strategic sector of the economy and needs to be protected. Its much harder to make that argument about cruise liners full of holidaymakers.

There might be a lot of restructuring and mergers in the airline industry, all of those planes are still out there and I expect people will still want to fly.
It will take longer to get people enthusiastic about cruising again, but public memory is short.

Quite a few will want to fly less, and a lot of companies will be less willing to pay to fly people in the future, when they realize that they can save flight and hotel fees in favor of a Skype subscription.

[lpm]

So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!

[Bird on a Fire]

Maybe so. A governments have in the past argued that airlines are a strategic sector of the economy and needs to be protected. Its much harder to make that argument about cruise liners full of holidaymakers.

There might be a lot of restructuring and mergers in the airline industry, all of those planes are still out there and I expect people will still want to fly.
It will take longer to get people enthusiastic about cruising again, but public memory is short.

Quite a few will want to fly less, and a lot of companies will be less willing to pay to fly people in the future, when they realize that they can save flight and hotel fees in favor of a Skype subscription.

Yes, dependence on flights (and on people being physically present in general) is revealing itself to be a highly fragile strategy. The ability to physically move staff can change rapidly and unpredictably with costly consequences.

Given the ongoing contemporaneous increases in antibiotic resistance, environmental pharmaceutical pollution, habitat loss, habitat fragmentation and climate-induced shifts in parasite and disease vectors, having your business dependent on long-distance movements of staff is increasingly reckless.

Novel zoonotic epidemics/pandemics may yet force the kind of restructuring that voluntary greenie-points never will.

[Woodchopper]

So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!

Amazing, you seem to inhabit all my social media feeds.

[Herainestold]

So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!

Back of envelope calculation: UK has 68 million people, 30% are infected with coronavirus, 1% die that is 200 000 deaths.

[Herainestold]

Maybe so. A governments have in the past argued that airlines are a strategic sector of the economy and needs to be protected. Its much harder to make that argument about cruise liners full of holidaymakers.

There might be a lot of restructuring and mergers in the airline industry, all of those planes are still out there and I expect people will still want to fly.
It will take longer to get people enthusiastic about cruising again, but public memory is short.

Quite a few will want to fly less, and a lot of companies will be less willing to pay to fly people in the future, when they realize that they can save flight and hotel fees in favor of a Skype subscription.

Yes, I think there will be residual effects, but who knows how much and for how long? Also a world wide recession, as seems likely, will have a lingering effect. We should book mark this and look at it again next year.

[calmooney]

Apologies if this has been asked before but since there has not been routine testing for coronavirus infection before (that I know), what is the likelihood of cases being diagnosed now that previously would just have been registered as "viral pneumonia" without all the ensuring panic?*
Sainbury's, yesterday - empty of dried pasta, toilet rolls, hand soaps/sanitisers, and, weirdly, tomato ketchup

Sainsbury's today: empty of rice, pasta, baked beans, tinned tomatoes, sugar, peanut butter, orange juice, cat food, paracetamol, ibuprofin and bog paper.

Sainsburys Metro by my work near London Bridge at lunchtime had all of these things in good supply, the only thing that's disappeared from the shelves there is hand gel.

[Woodchopper]

So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!

Back of envelope calculation: UK has 68 million people, 30% are infected with coronavirus, 1% die that is 200 000 deaths.

If 30% of the UK population is infected the case fatality rate will be much higher than 1%. The country will rapidly run out of hospital beds, doctors and nurses (many of whom will will also be seriously ill).

[Herainestold]

So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!

My guess is Trump is going to pivot from "don't worry be happy" to "Apocalypse Now" and implement strict border controls and various xenophobic polcies. Watch out!

[Herainestold]

So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!

Back of envelope calculation: UK has 68 million people, 30% are infected with coronavirus, 1% die that is 200 000 deaths.

If 30% of the UK population is infected the case fatality rate will be much higher than 1%. The country will rapidly run out of hospital beds, doctors and nurses (many of whom will will also be seriously ill).

Yes. If the case load is spread out over 6-8 months it might be manageable. Over a month or two it would be a disaster.

[Trinucleus]

Apologies if this has been asked before but since there has not been routine testing for coronavirus infection before (that I know), what is the likelihood of cases being diagnosed now that previously would just have been registered as "viral pneumonia" without all the ensuring panic?*




Sainbury's, yesterday - empty of dried pasta, toilet rolls, hand soaps/sanitisers, and, weirdly, tomato ketchup

Sainsbury's today: empty of rice, pasta, baked beans, tinned tomatoes, sugar, peanut butter, orange juice, cat food, paracetamol, ibuprofin and bog paper.

Worst ever episode of Ready Steady Cook

[mikeh]

New paper in The Lancet, few choice quotes below from the press release. Nothing too much that is obviously surprising, but that's a good thing, to have practice and existing knowledge confirmed with new data.

Seems that the paper will be shifted to a new hyperlink in next 24 hours, so try either of
https://www.thelancet.com/lancet/articl ... 20)30566-3
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanc ... 3/fulltext
(Or if all else fails, its called 'Clinical course and risk factors for mortality of adult inpatients with COVID-19 in Wuhan, China: a retrospective cohort study')

The new study is the first time researchers have examined risk factors associated with severe disease and death in hospitalised adults who have either died or been discharged from hospital. In the study of 191 patients, 137 were discharged and 54 died in hospital. The authors note that interpretation of their findings might be limited by the study’s sample size.

In addition, the authors present new data on viral shedding, which indicate that the median duration of viral shedding was 20 days in survivors (ranging from 8 to 37 days), and the virus was detectable until death in the 54 non-survivors.

On average, patients were middle-aged (median age 56 years), most were men (62%, 119 patients), and around half had underlying chronic conditions (48%, 91 patients)—the most common being high blood pressure (30%, 58 patients) and diabetes (19%, 36 patients; table 1). From illness onset, the median time to discharge was 22 days, and the average time to death was 18.5 days.

Compared with survivors, patients who died were more likely to be older (average age 69 years vs 52 years), and have a higher score on the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) indicating sepsis, and elevated blood levels of the d-dimer protein (a marker for coagulation) on admission to hospital (table 1 and 3).

Additionally, lower lymphocyte (a type of white blood cell) count, elevated levels of Interleukin 6 (IL-6, a biomarker for inflammation and chronic disease), and increased high-sensitivity troponin I concentrations (a marker of heart attack), were more common in severe COVID-19 illness (figure 2 and table 3).

The frequency of complications such as respiratory failure (98%, 53/54 non-survivors vs 36%, 50/137 survivors), sepsis (100%, 54/54 vs 42%, 58/137), and secondary infections (50%, 27/54 vs 1%, 1/137) were also higher in those who died than survivors (table 2).

[shpalman]

So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!

Back of envelope calculation: UK has 68 million people, 30% are infected with coronavirus, 1% die that is 200 000 deaths.

In Italy it looked like the doubling time before containment measures took effect was only about 2 days. You're at 244 cases as of yesterday morning. To get to around 20 million is a month or so.

[shpalman]

Or to put it another way, Italy was at 229 total infections on the 25 of February and as of yesterday was at 7375 total infections with 650 in intensive care.

What's the UK's ICU capacity, roughly?

[Bird on a Fire]

Or to put it another way, Italy was at 229 total infections on the 25 of February and as of yesterday was at 7375 total infections with 650 in intensive care.

What's the UK's ICU capacity, roughly?

Little over 4,000 - and there are other problems with ICU capacity...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -hospitals