[Dave Rice]

Never let a good crisis go to waste. I see Brexit negotiations are still in full swing with Mr Gove taking time off from our health planning  to organise the precise details of an additional economic shock. Still they can then blame the virus and not the ideology. I believe the idea is that the EU will be detracted, desperate and Barnierless and so will roll over.

Whenever there is a crisis of any sort our civil liberties always take a step backwards “for the common good” to be reviewed later…

 

[Ed P]

If VFM ever lurks here, he may be interested in this blog of a New York MD successfully treating his Covid-19 patients with a cocktail of hydroxychloroquine, zinc sulphate plus Z-pak. His stats show it all, of his 699 patients treated, zero patients died, zero patients intubated (last ditch ventilation), and only four hospitalizations.

The zinc stopped the cytokine storm – “decreases the morbidity of lower respiratory tract infection in pediatric patients”

So if ever our medical mafia get off the fence on chloroquine and zinc, BoJo may well get his ‘success in three months’ story.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Do i sence a degree of blowing hot and cold above ?

One the one hand the government should be given unlimited emergency powers to track our every move and on the other they can’t be trusted not to exploit the situation 🤔

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

In my opinion the corona virus will pass but the tracking powers would remain forever.

[Ed P]

I agree, and that is why it would have been better to have been tacked on to the Emergency Powers – I’m sorry to say, but our Government (of all political shades) is basically untrustworthy when it comes to basic freedoms.. Every year the politicians nibble away at our rights. In my youth I would not have been troubled by feral pigeons or seagulls on my roof, the airgun would have seen to that!

[Ed P]

A bit of perspective on Covid-19 deaths. The linked Government spreadsheet gives total deaths of all causes each week and the corresponding covid-19 numbers.

link

[Ed P]

At last Governments are starting to acknowledge that Covid-19 is spread asymptomatically and is both contagious (hence wash hands) AND infectious (aerosols from sneezing). The US Center for Disease control now recommends that everyone use face masks (if you can get them!). I guess our Government will not release this info until they manage to get all the health and emergency workers, police etc fully kitted out.

“… Those concerns were reflected on Tuesday by Robert Redfield, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who said in a rare interview that as a many as one in four cases have no symptoms.

As a result, the CDC was now “aggressively reviewing” its recommendations on use of face masks, potentially extending their use based on the assumption that more people in “high transmission zones” were already infected but without symptoms.

(For the UK read London, Birmingham and north Hampshire as high transmission zones – I’m not sure which part of Hertfordshire is in this red zone)

The US have at last also approved the BoJo wonder drug – chloroquine. I wonder when our NHS will follow.

 

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

The red zone for Herts is probably Watford (its in Hertfordshire you know) 😁

[Ed P]

The major red zones seem to equate to areas of wealth where people took overseas holidays during February, and not, as I would have thought, around the major airports.

The Government has the detailed location data, why can’t they make it available as it is in the better prepared countries such as South Korea and Singapore?

[Ed P]

Wear a mask if you are going to be within *6 metres of anyone outside your family group. (*distance a sneeze can travel)

As the original 1918 advice states ANY mask is better than none, but obviously you need to treat it as a contaminated object when you get home, spray it with IPA/Dettol/Antibacterial fluid then wash any simple cloth masks. (AB spray is OK as it has a detergent action). OK it will not be as effective as an N100 mask, but it will reduce the infection odds.

Many people are now starting to follow this advice and mask wearing is now becoming quite common.

link

[Ed P]

Just in case anyone thinks that chloroquine kills the Covid-19 virus – it probably does not except at life threatening doses. It probably acts in the same manner as it does with SARS it helps stop the virus replicating and buys time for the body to fight the virus.

[Dave Rice]

“The major red zones seem to equate to areas of wealth where people took overseas holidays during February”

That doesn’t really explain South Wales and The Valleys especially. You would have thought Bristol would be a hot spot and it isn’t, yet similarly sized Sheffield is 5x has many.

[The Duke]

I’d put Bristol down to rail links.

[Ed P]

Due to the Beeb censoring someone from WHO discussing why face-masks should be worn, they flipped to a Welsh discussion of covid-19 in Wales. Someone asked about the very high numbers for the Aneurin Bevin Health District, and the remark was made that most of the cases were in East Gwent in close proximity to England. i.e. The Wye Valley, the rich Bristol commuter strip.  With that info I revert to my original comment about many hot spots being associated with wealth!

[Dave Rice]

But Bristol ISN’T a hot spot and neither is the commuter belt around it (where I live), which where most commuters come from, not South Wales. Chepstow and the M4 corridor to Newport is the main area for live in South Wales work in Bristol people, not the Valleys.

South Gloucestershire, which is my area and home to major manufacturers like BAE, Airbus, Rolls Royce etc. and is the transport hub of north to south and east to west (M4-M5 and the rail lines) is even less. So I’m afraid the wealth thing doesn’t stack up at all in our area, nor does the commuter theory.

[Ed P]

Background data pulled together by Ars Technica which goes some way towards explaining why the US has done an about-face on mask wearing, and why the WHO (and almost certainly belatedly the UK) will also probably recommend the same.

The primary reason is that even relatively crude cloth masks cut down the transmission from covid-19 carriers. Something that has become increasingly important as it becomes recognised that 50+% of carriers do not know that they are ill.

[RSB]

That’s what I thought with my dust masks

No way are big particles with an attached virus are going to get through if your coughing.

Americans: Over Sexed, Over Payed and Over here, Wat Wat!

[Ed P]

Google data from their tracking of UK mobile phones.

Link

Incidentally I probably misheard the Welsh commentary on the Aneurin Bevin Health Authority. It came up again last night on the Beeb and apparently the patient zero was probably the worst one possible, she was a nurse at a Newport Hospital (Royal Gwent?) and infected both patients and staff. Similar in some ways to the Lombardy origins of Italy’s cases, however there they traced and quarantined all the Vo cases, and the original town is apparently now virus-free.

[Dave Rice]

Re the nurse, that makes sense.

It would be interesting to see Google take London out and show it separately. I suspect the results would be very different for London vs the rest especially on the commuting stats. Bristol is pretty much a ghost town even in the rush hour, the scenes from the tube stations are quite appalling.

[JayCeeDee]

They’ve been wittering on about the uptick in private car journeys on the graph representing all journeys, but surely there’s a correlation when you’ve been told to stay off public transport, and various aspects of that system have been shut down or severely restricted, so those numbers have decreased, then surely it comes as no surprise that you’ll choose your own private, un-infected, non-germ spreading mode of transport to go out for shopping, meds or exercise, against the mass transit offerings.

Now I know they’re justified in moaning about the weekend trips to the coast or country, but surely they realise that statistically, if nothing else, when public transport journeys decrease, despite the lockdown and without breaking the rules, private car journeys will increase.

Or am I wrong??

[Author]

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