Coronavirus - how is it/has it affected you?

SwingsitlikeHogan said:
I'll guess instant total lockdown of anyone infected and their recent contacts. Then lockdown of neighbourhoods and then lockdown of towns. I recommend watching the BBC News documentary on the Wuhan lockdown to see what total lockdown of a city of 11m looks like as implemented by an authoritarian state.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000gj5f/our-world-wuhan-life-under-lockdown
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That was really interesting thanks for that. That from a country that controls it's people, the western world will struggle to manage that.
 
HappyHacker1 said:
That was really interesting thanks for that. That from a country that controls it's people, the western world will struggle to manage that.
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I found it very scary as could see that given this sort of lockdown - and if this is what lockdown means is there any other sort?...there is IMO not a hope in hades that an airtight lockdown could be implemented and maintained in the UK :(
 
Can the guys on here who know about precision manufacturing tell me how the heck JCB and RR (or their ilk) are going to be able to build ventilators, seems to me to be just pie-in-the-sky. Great if we could do it - but how? Or is this just an idea to make us all feel a little bit better with a little bit of hope - and (cynically thinking) simply something that Matt Hancock can go on TV and radio and fill minutes talking about - talking about something that is practically unachievable. :(

I'm finding this a bit scary - reminiscent of On The Beach where the people of Melbourne and surrounds try to keep living as near to normal as possible as the radiation from a Northern Hemisphere nuclear holocaust head the way of Victoria - the final outpost - knowing they were all going to die. That isn't going to happen to us - but when, a couple of years back, I read the book and watched the (brilliant) film I never, ever thought for one moment that I could be in a situation that would resonate so...
 
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our parent company are running a buddy scheme with those working alternate weeks.
my part of that firm are not but we have colleague call update at 1.30.
there are many people here who haven't got the ability to log in from home (me) or check emails on a company phone so if we are sent home I am not sure what will happen to our clients
 
I wanted to take a step back and give my overall perspective. My background is as a medical doctor who is trained in public health and epidemiology, although I have worked in the pharma industry, mostly R&D for the last 20 years or so.

I am on a doctors social media site which has much discussion on Covid. The general tone is grim. Doctors are very, very worried about this and how the NHS will cope. Correction, how badly it will fail to cope. For the vast majority of younger people, Covid will be a brief and only mildly unpleasant irritation. It will pass over in a week or so and leave no residual damage. But for a small minority, increasing with age, some but not all of whom have co-morbidites such as diabetes or heart disease which make it worse, it will be much more severe and require hospitalisation or even intensive care. This is where it gets ugly. The NHS is already under provided for intensive care beds. Successive Govts, mostly Tory but also Labour, have drastically reduced hospital beds and allowed staffing to become ever more parlous. No lessons were learned from SARS or MERS. Little structural pandemic planning exists. So what would be a huge resource crisis becomes an existential one.

Some estimates are that with expected infection rates and critical care cases, the ICU facilities of the NHS will be overwhelmed by several orders of magnitude (10- 50x). I am a middle aged bloke, lets just say that if I wasn't a crap golfer I would be eligible for the Seniors Tour. If I get severe Covid disease, I have no chance of getting an ICU bed. Not even close. I am therefore rubber ducked. Reports from Italy, which has better ICU provision per capita, suggest the cutoff age for ICU at the peak is less than 40, and only then for fit and healthy.

I walked around a supermarket this morning, seeing empty shelves and people picking over what was left. My reaction was that they are missing the plot. People aren't going to be besieged in their homes, their illness will be reasonably short, whatever the outcome. They should be worried about the NHS instead of Tesco supply of pasta and bog roll. We can provide pasta and bog roll for everyone, we just can't supply healthcare.

The herd immunity plan, now being backed away from, is, in my view a massive gamble. We don't know if exposure confers durable immunity, or whether to is possible to get 60% infected, or whether the cost of at least a quarter of a million lives is worth it. Protecting the most vulnerable sounds like a noble gesture, but it only comes at the expense of more people in my age group. If you need 40m cases, and you protect one age group, you necessarily increase the proportion of other age groups that must be infected. And how do we know when we have hit this plausible but unproven threshold if we are not testing? The argument that taking severe measures now will only result in a second wave is possible, but the second wave would be more controllable and severe measures are needed not now to allow the peak to become a catastrophe. The UK Govt says it is taking best scientific advice. It clearly isn't taking it from the WHO or the European organisations, who think the UK is crazy not to step in much more aggressively. All the other major countries are running away from this. The UK seems to be running towards it.

So what have I been doing. I haven't been stockpiling, but I have been updating my will and figuring out who will take our kids if we both get severe disease. Sorry, it all sounds rather grim, but trust me, a lot of doctors are thinking and doing the same.
 
Bit of joint up thinking that won't work ofc or Is just too far fetched

All the people from virgin etc who are being told 8 weeks unpaid leave

Could they not be offered work to help the NHS? Like talks of NHS taking over hotels and private hospitals they will need cleaners, food prep..dishing out to rooms etc

Surely better than nothing?
 
I suppose that I am lucky in that my day to day involves almost self isolation. I park at work, go into my office where everything is used just by me, head home to a rural community and so have little outside contact. Only hot spot is the gym and that is only small with staff keeping a close eye for symptoms and with plenty of cleaning product by the machines.

I am OK with how this has been dealt with so far. From what I understand, and I do not understand a huge amount, to build up any national immunity, a large percentage of us have to get it and the plan is that we try and stop everyone getting it at the same time to keep essential services free. I am pretty much going along the lines that I am going to get it at some stage but the idea of the game is to try and avoid getting it for as long as possible.
 
SwingsitlikeHogan said:
Upside (I guess) for my wife of commuter train into Waterloo and Underground being very quiet is that she can separate from other passengers, indeed she may start walking from Waterloo to Tower Bridge.

As she works on a Breast Cancer charity Helpline in the city near Tower Bridge station she can't do that from home (if they shut the office they'd probably redirect calls to one of the Helpline most senior nurses). The charity will be deluged with calls for support and advice if BC patients can't get through to their own nursing team, and so they'll want to keep their Helpline open as much as possible.
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Highly recommend the walk, great sites and atmosphere. Always did it from UJ to Tower Bridge when I had work down there.
 
williamalex1 said:
Once you have the virus or think you have it, is there anything that a person can do to reduce its severity to survival levels ?
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Not really. There is no specific treatment. A lot depends on your background state of health. If you are not immunocompromised through medication or illness, and your lungs and heart are in decent condition, chances are you will be fine. Much of the added risk of older age is filtered through added risk factors.
Supportive treatment, mostly to reduce fever or other symptoms are fine. I wouldn’t overdo the NSAIDs though. There are reports they may worsen aspects of the disease. Some evidence that viral load (the quantity of virus you ‘catch’) has an influence. This means that getting the illness from really suck people may be worse. This is more of a concern for healthcare workers and first responders. Unfortunately dumb luck also plays a part.
 
SwingsitlikeHogan said:
I have read that Cummings is chairing the Cobra meetings. Now I am pleased that he is apparently working closely with the Chief Scientific Adviser - and that s great - but it is for me unfortunate that this individual is at the heart of government decision making given his history of manipulation of the truth and the news. If he were not there I would happily give my complete trust in the government - but with him there I lose some of that trust and he adds a little bit of uncertainty to my good faith that Johnson is making all decisions purely on a best for the country basis.
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Highly unlikely, don't believe all you read.
 
Ethan said:
I wanted to take a step back and give my overall perspective. My background is as a medical doctor who is trained in public health and epidemiology, although I have worked in the pharma industry, mostly R&D for the last 20 years or so.

I am on a doctors social media site which has much discussion on Covid. The general tone is grim. Doctors are very, very worried about this and how the NHS will cope. Correction, how badly it will fail to cope. For the vast majority of younger people, Covid will be a brief and only mildly unpleasant irritation. It will pass over in a week or so and leave no residual damage. But for a small minority, increasing with age, some but not all of whom have co-morbidites such as diabetes or heart disease which make it worse, it will be much more severe and require hospitalisation or even intensive care. This is where it gets ugly. The NHS is already under provided for intensive care beds. Successive Govts, mostly Tory but also Labour, have drastically reduced hospital beds and allowed staffing to become ever more parlous. No lessons were learned from SARS or MERS. Little structural pandemic planning exists. So what would be a huge resource crisis becomes an existential one.

Some estimates are that with expected infection rates and critical care cases, the ICU facilities of the NHS will be overwhelmed by several orders of magnitude (10- 50x). I am a middle aged bloke, lets just say that if I wasn't a crap golfer I would be eligible for the Seniors Tour. If I get severe Covid disease, I have no chance of getting an ICU bed. Not even close. I am therefore rubber ducked. Reports from Italy, which has better ICU provision per capita, suggest the cutoff age for ICU at the peak is less than 40, and only then for fit and healthy.

I walked around a supermarket this morning, seeing empty shelves and people picking over what was left. My reaction was that they are missing the plot. People aren't going to be besieged in their homes, their illness will be reasonably short, whatever the outcome. They should be worried about the NHS instead of Tesco supply of pasta and bog roll. We can provide pasta and bog roll for everyone, we just can't supply healthcare.

The herd immunity plan, now being backed away from, is, in my view a massive gamble. We don't know if exposure confers durable immunity, or whether to is possible to get 60% infected, or whether the cost of at least a quarter of a million lives is worth it. Protecting the most vulnerable sounds like a noble gesture, but it only comes at the expense of more people in my age group. If you need 40m cases, and you protect one age group, you necessarily increase the proportion of other age groups that must be infected. And how do we know when we have hit this plausible but unproven threshold if we are not testing? The argument that taking severe measures now will only result in a second wave is possible, but the second wave would be more controllable and severe measures are needed not now to allow the peak to become a catastrophe. The UK Govt says it is taking best scientific advice. It clearly isn't taking it from the WHO or the European organisations, who think the UK is crazy not to step in much more aggressively. All the other major countries are running away from this. The UK seems to be running towards it.

So what have I been doing. I haven't been stockpiling, but I have been updating my will and figuring out who will take our kids if we both get severe disease. Sorry, it all sounds rather grim, but trust me, a lot of doctors are thinking and doing the same.
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Very good insight,

This weekend it suddenly became real for me. I'm in a whatsapp group with mates from N Ireland, and one of my friends, who is a GP and normally not one to share big opinions, suddenly went off on one, saying how concerned he was, along with his contacts in infectious diseases in Scotland. He assured us that this is very very serious. He explained that, if there was a strategy of herd immunity, it is thought that 85% of the population (1.9 million N Ireland) would need to get it, of which 9% would become seriously ill (170,000) and 2.5% need ICU ventilation (47,000). To put that in perspective the entire of Ireland has 277 ICU ventilators. So, if these figures were correct, in England over 5 million people would get seriously ill, and 1.4 million people need ICU ventilation.

I then had a chat to my aunt yesterday, a nurse practitioner at a minor injuries unit. That has been closed, and all staff are now being tasked in this fight against the virus. The phone call lasted 55 minutes, and she was very very worried. She actually said if anything, she hopes she gets it now whilst there may be an ICU ventilator available. Because, not far down the line, there may be nothing available to help the critically ill get through this.

And, we can't just say that, if we are young (relatively), fit and healthy, we don't need to worry about ourselves. Unfortunately, although rare, I believe some young people around the world have passed away, who were not unwell previously. However, it is not just coronavirus. If we are very unlucky, we could be involved in an accident, get an infection or some sort of illness, and need ICU support. If we are doubly unlucky to have this happen to us in the coming weeks, there may simply be no way to treat us unless someone else is kicked out of ICU?

The government responses have seemed so vague up to now. Seems incredible that, the rest of Europe is shutting down, industries are closing down and risking going bankrupt and staff losing jobs, yet the government seem to be saying to simply wash your hands and perhaps avoid crowds. As such, I reckon a lot of the population are not really taking it seriously at all, because at the moment most of us do not know anyone directly effected. I appreciate that the government do not want to cause a panic, but at same time, maybe a little bit of panic will get peoples attention.
 
williamalex1 said:
Once you have the virus or think you have it, is there anything that a person can do to reduce its severity to survival levels ?
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Over here the recommendation is get plenty of paracetamol in to try and manage the headaches and fever. Plenty of cough mixture, both the expectorant version and the 'soothing' version. Menthol crystals, and create a steamy atmosphere. Stay warm, hydrated and away from people. Stick your head between your legs and... I might have made the last bit up.
 
Hobbit said:
Over here the recommendation is get plenty of paracetamol in to try and manage the headaches and fever. Plenty of cough mixture, both the expectorant version and the 'soothing' version. Menthol crystals, and create a steamy atmosphere. Stay warm, hydrated and away from people. Stick your head between your legs and... I might have made the last bit up.
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not to be confused with Crystal Meth!
 
My partner works in ICU, she said that ICU is filled to the gunnels, day in day out and has been all the time she has been a nurse 15+ years. Her opinion is, if things get as bad as possibly suggested, a lot of people are going to die, she never gave a number but her words were, a lot.
 
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