Scrutable

bob sterman wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 11:08 am

sTeamTraen wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 10:59 am 3. A political risk: At some point a vaccine, or perhaps a credible antiviral treatment, will come along.

My hunch (vain hope?) is that before we get a vaccine we might get a treatment protocol that can have a significant impact on mortality (assuming facilities are available).

E.g.if the ability to accurately forecast who will deteriorate and an effective protocol could reduce the CFR from say 3% to 1% that would be huge.

Wishful thinking?

There are hints already.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32074550/

but I haven't looked at this beyond the abstract

I know a biochemist who works at the Christie cancer clinic doing research and she is really surprised that they aren't yet working from home, given the number of patients with compromised immune systems.

Does anyone have sufficient expertise to interpret the results of this preprint, which suggests that a human monoclonal antibody called 47D11 (which could presumably be synthesised or harvested into a Tx) is effective against SARS-CoV-2?

OneOffDave wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 9:20 pm I've not been able to lay in stocks of anything as I've been living in hotels most of the last few weeks and will be at for least 4 nights a week for the foreseeable future. It will be interesting to how busy the train into London is tomorrow

Take care of yourself: we need your expertise to help others.

And sympathies re: hotel living. For about 3 years of my life I was spending 3 weeks a month (including weekends) in foreign hotels. They were in nice locations, but my expenses account was parsimonious, and needing to do everything UK-related in the week I was back didn't make for a restful time.

You will need a break, so whoever is planning your time needs to take that into account. Working until you break is not a good strategy - even soldiers in time of war got leave.

I'm piggy backing off a tweet by nefi; this is astonishing, but raises a number of questions.

It's estimated that 80% of South Korea's infections are due to 1 person who didn't self isolate (claims was not advised to).

https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEAL ... index.html

If 1 slip can cause this sort of spread, is there any realistic way to contain the spread?

I'm piggy-backing off a tweet by nefi; this is astonishing, but raises a number of questions.

It's estimated that 80% of South Korea's infections are due to 1 person who didn't self isolate (claims was not advised to be tested).

https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEAL ... index.html

First question is "If 1 slip can cause this sort of spread, is there any realistic way to contain the spread?"

Since the governor announced that all stores will be limited to 25 people maximum earlier, I can report that Americans are terrible panic shoppers.

All the granola, gone, granola bar section full.

dyqik wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 1:26 am Since the governor announced that all stores will be limited to 25 people maximum earlier, I can report that Americans are terrible panic shoppers.

All the granola, gone, granola bar section full.

Tesco on Thursday - no soap, loads of shower gel

Jesus f.cking CHRIST!!!!

https://twitter.com/stereophonics/statu ... 80065?s=21

Gfamily wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 11:08 pm I'm piggy-backing off a tweet by nefi; this is astonishing, but raises a number of questions.

It's estimated that 80% of South Korea's infections are due to 1 person who didn't self isolate (claims was not advised to be tested).

https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEAL ... index.html

First question is "If 1 slip can cause this sort of spread, is there any realistic way to contain the spread?"

Yes. Patients 31 was only able to have such a large effect because they went to a church service and a buffet lunch while they were contagious.

A shocking tweet from a Tory MP.

https://twitter.com/AdamAfriyie/status/ ... 95329?s=19

The famous UK model must surely have had an output of "number of ventilators". This could have been done 2 months ago. Why was it ignored till 15 March? What else was ignored?

Too late now, but they should have thought about words.

Self isolation conjures up images of... well, isolation. People resist it. Should be "family protection", or for the more macho inclined "chain breakers".

Herd immunity was such a terrible thing to say. We live on in infamy, in every history text book.

How to stop the spread of coronavirus



source: https://creazilla.com/nodes/18821-stop- ... rms-vector

Does the face mask work at reducing infections in other people?

bagpuss wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 4:45 pm Ocado has shut down their app and is closed to new customers. I thought I'd just go and edit the order I already have for next Saturday and got this. Think I'll be doing this week's order in the early mornings.

Yeah, we got that yesterday too. We put an order through this morning instead - first delivery slot was Friday 27th. We got it anyway (and will amend it nearer the time) but for now we'll have to do a big shop. Le sigh.

Pucksoppet wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 7:12 pm

Gentleman Jim wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 3:35 pm Just been there - it's even worse now
No washing up liquid; hardly any frozen food of any type etc; no biscuits. I could go on

No biscuits!!! I hardly dare ask...what about cake?

Only if you wanted the big, birthday type cakes. All the boxes of cake bars etc, were gone

Gentleman Jim wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 1:35 pm

Pucksoppet wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 7:12 pm

Gentleman Jim wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 3:35 pm Just been there - it's even worse now
No washing up liquid; hardly any frozen food of any type etc; no biscuits. I could go on

No biscuits!!! I hardly dare ask...what about cake?

Only if you wanted the big, birthday type cakes. All the boxes of cake bars etc, were gone

Bugger, I knew there was something else I wanted to add to the Ocado order. It's my birthday next week so I was going to buy ingredients for my cake. Never mind, I should be able to get everything I need from my local shop (which was pretty well stocked when I popped in for bread just now), so will give them my custom during the week.


I just went to the pharmacy to collect a prescription for the bagkitten and the staff were saying that they can't get hold of paracetamol for love nor money. And they sold their very last tub of baby formula to the woman in front of me, who was clearly desperate to get hold of some. I'm so glad we're well past that stage, it must be horrendously worrying.

They still had Panadol in my work-local Sainsburys, but if you're struggling to find some I've seen some stores cleaned out of obvious paracetamol and ibuprofen but having Solpadeine and Beechams Flu plus (both less obviously paracetamol) still in stock.

My anxiety is such that I bought my daughter a birthday card today even though it's not until mid-June.

We took a calculated risk (in conjunction with my dad) in going up to see him last weekend as it's likely to be the last time for several weeks/months (he's in his late 70s). Had a lovely weekend and stocked his supplies up too, but was awful saying goodbye.

bjn wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 12:18 pm Does the face mask work at reducing infections in other people?

Here's my reasoning. It may be bollocks:

Yes, wearing a mask protects others. That's why your dentist wears one when she's scraping plaque off your teeth. It keeps a lot of the droplets in, so when you sneeze or cough only a certain amount of the virus gets out. But it doesn't help much with incoming viruses because once the other person's sneeze phlegm is sitting on your mask, you're sucking air in through it and the viruses go through the holes.

How did I do, subject-matter experts?

calmooney wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 1:56 pm They still had Panadol in my work-local Sainsburys, but if you're struggling to find some I've seen some stores cleaned out of obvious paracetamol and ibuprofen but having Solpadeine and Beechams Flu plus (both less obviously paracetamol) still in stock.

My anxiety is such that I bought my daughter a birthday card today even though it's not until mid-June.

We took a calculated risk (in conjunction with my dad) in going up to see him last weekend as it's likely to be the last time for several weeks/months (he's in his late 70s). Had a lovely weekend and stocked his supplies up too, but was awful saying goodbye.

Fortunately, we have some paracetamol - I always have some in anyway as I get a lot of headaches, some of which just don't respond to ibuprofen, so I'm not trying to buy more as we have at least 3-4 days' worth for one person at max amounts, and I could probably find some more if I rummage in old handbags . We even have some calpol melts for the bagkitten, so we're lucky. But 3 people came in asking for paracetamol in the <10 minutes I was in there waiting for the prescription to be filled.


Edit - just found 2 more days' max supply in an old handbag, as predicted. I'll let local friends and neighbours know I have some to spare if they need.

Can someone explain to me why ibuprofen is bad and paracetamol is good?

The latter doesn't work for me as a painkiller.

I find that to lower a temperature, ibuprofen is better, plus it reduces inflamation.

I do not normally get headaches.

Things are breaking because we are all clinging to normal too long. For example, "normal" is that we can choose a convenient supermarket delivery slot, click whatever items we want, and get the delivery we ask for.

Can't be done. Sainsburys has no slots for three weeks, Ocado has closed to new customers, Waitrose is off line. Presumably everyone is buying huge quantities

So the idea that ill people can self-isolate and get supermarket deliveries left on the doorstep is wrecked already. The elderly cannot isolate because nothing has been done to control food delivery services.

The only way to get things working is to recognise we don't live in the United Kingdom any more. We live in a new country where everything is done differently and all is foreign and strange. We now live in the Pandemic Kingdom. Thank god we don't live in the even worse country: the United States of Pandemica.

We don't even need to nationalise the supermarket chains, can just regulate them, though nationalisation is probably easiest.

Just popped into my local corner shop and he had some paracetamol. Wouldn't give anymore than one packet of 16. He said that yesterday it was crazy in the cash and carry with paracetamol. Anyway, at least he is only giving out one packet per customer.

Our small local shop was nearly out of bread when I last looked, but not doing too bad overall - smaller shops seem to be best bet - at least until posted on Bookface and then ransacked (as happened to small shop in the next village over).

There's loads of fresh food.

All shops are stocked with Easter Eggs though... so no shortage of chocolate.

purplehaze wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 3:19 pm Can someone explain to me why ibuprofen is bad and paracetamol is good?

The latter doesn't work for me as a painkiller.

I find that to lower a temperature, ibuprofen is better, plus it reduces inflamation.

I do not normally get headaches.

In the trial here, patients who took ibuprofen for respiratory tract infections (not COVID-19) were more likely to require a second consultation later for possibly related complications.
There was little difference between the groups re symptoms during the initial progression of the disease