Off Topic Coronavirus

Just heard the new governor of the Bank of England, a man with several chins more than he strictly needs, appeal to the speculators who are shorting the markets to ‘think about the ethics of what you are doing’.

I nearly spat my wine out with bitter, ironic laughter. Speculators and ethics, for ****’s sake you must be kidding us, fatso. Bring back the Canadian.

£ hits its lowest level for 35 years as we are no longer a ‘safe haven’ in times of trouble. Not such an issue as none of us are hopping on a plane to catch some sun in the foreseeable future.

 

74 new cases over here today bringing us to a total of 366. They are warning of possibly 15,000 cases before the end of the month. The figures are going up really quickly.

I packed in driving my taxi yesterday until it all passes on the basis that it is becoming too dangerous to the health of my family - 82 year old Mother in poor health especially. I was watching the passengers getting in my car touching all the surfaces and I just said, this is not worth the risk anymore. Filled out the forms for the emergency covid19 payment of 205 euros per week today and sent them off. That will only last 6 weeks. After that, I will have to sign on. It is not a lot but it means I wont starve. Think they said something like 350,000 people over here have lost their jobs in less then 2 weeks.

As regards shopping, I went food shopping and it was much better than I expected. Most stuff in stock including bog roll. There was a bit of a shortage of frozen foods. It appears people are storing a lot of frozen stuff in extra freezers they are buying. I went to Boots to get some toothpaste and paracetamol and I was surprised they had both in stock. They were only allowing 4 customers in the shop at a time. If you had told me a few weeks ago that all this would happen, I would have suggested you attend an asylum. Absolutely mental what is going on and every single country on this continent and beyond are all in the same boat.

Glad to see schools and pubs over there about to shut. The penny has finally dropped.

 

And I thought it was just me

 

A wise move Fingy, as you say the risk just isn't worth it. My work had dropped off massively last week and, like you, seeing people getting in sniffing, wheezing and coughing was disconcerting to say the least so I finished last Friday and don't intend going back in the near future. I'm lucky to have my pensions so I can take a break without too much of a hit. My only concern for people such as yourself is what you will come back to in the aftermath, I fear a long slow return to anywhere near normal. Stay healthy and good luck...

 

Thanks a lot Soops. The comeback will be slow and painful but the health of all of us is more important than monetary things. I am diabetic so I can't take a big risk by continuing to work. Our own personal health and the health of our loved ones is far more important than money.

Best of luck in your semi-retirement.

 

Breaking
Government considering tonight to lock down London and close certain shops and keep people off streets. Measures may include restricting travel.

 

Looks like we ARE heading for a lock down by the weekend

 

28 cases here so far
6 only on Monday
No deaths so far
Borders closed to pesky foreigners in four and a half hours
Max gatherings 100 people
Panic buying is mental
Even seedlings have started to sell out and most kiwis won't know what to do with them
Glad I did mine two weeks ago
Down to 180 rolls of toilet paper though
Might have to go on an expedition over the weekend

 

With respect mate, it's not a case of the 'penny dropping'.
Our strategy has been different, led by medical experts.
Everyone is doing their best.

Stay safe matey.

 

I haven't dared look at my drawdown pension pot since it lost around 10 grand over a couple of weeks.
I genuinely fear that it will disappear completely and I have no idea what to do about it!!

 

My sympathies Col.

My wife put a big lump sum into her pension a few weeks ago and it, plus more, disappeared sharpish. Now I tell her not to look at what’s left, it’s not worth the stress and you can’t do anything about it.

This is what we get when essentially our retirement is in the hands of stock market gamblers. I suspect a lot of us, me included, will end up working for longer than we had anticipated in order to be able to afford retirement.

But it could be that things bounce back really quickly. The Dow Jones is only down to the level it was at when Trump went into the White House - its fallen a lot , but it won’t take a lifetime to get back. The markets are important for pensions (I wish I had an alternative to this which did not require a revolution) but it’s those companies and jobs which will disappear permanently which are equally concerning. Pretty fragile thing capitalism.

 

To be honest Col once this is all sorted, which it will be eventually, it will go back up. As long as you ain’t drawing on it within the next year you should be fine.

 

That's what I keep telling myself mate.
I've used some, but was planning on leaving the majority alone for a few years.
Trouble is, I may need to access it soon just to pay bills etc.
****ing nightmare!

 

It's a really dreadful situation to be in at the moment as the pensions 'revolution' allowing people to dip into their pensions is such an open temptation and many people never considered 'what if'. The erosion of company pensions often raided by the companies themselves is an absolute scandal and successive governments have let down so many people, especially allowing scammers to help themselves to those not up-to-speed with how to invest. As Staines says, these things tend to go back up once the crisis is over as many are market trackers. Whatever you're in I hope it works out for you...

 

No new cases reported in Wuhan yesterday and the rate of new cases in Italy fell also.

Glass half full.

 

Just about to say that. Strange or is it actually true?
8k die of flu every year in the U.K. and no one bats an eyelid. That’s 700. A month. Corona virus kills 100 in 6 weeks and it’s Armageddon. Not saying it’s not serious but I find it all very bazaar.

 

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John Stevens
@johnestevens
London will NOT be locked down, says Downing Street No10: "There is zero prospect of any restriction on travelling in or out of London... it is not happening"

 

The situation in Lombardy is really rough. Big mistakes made early on - the 600 family doctors in Bergamo weren’t given masks and continued making home visits (remember them?). 110 of these doctors were tested positive, and they had been out spreading the disease to the most vulnerable. Tragic.

However, from friends I have in Milan and Florence, though people are of course very worried, the discipline in isolation is strong and there is no sense of panic, rather communities are pulling together. I hope we can get over the current feverish atmosphere and emulate them. I love the communal singing, people leaning out of their apartment windows in street long singalongs.

I don’t trust any statistics from China, but hope it’s true. What happens when they raise the lockdown will be interesting.

It hasn’t started yet Ellers. The numbers at the end may be like a bad year of flu (if we are lucky) but the pressure on health services in a very short space of time will make it look and feel like a war zone. Patients will be dying in corridors, bodies will be cremated without funerals simply because of the volume of deaths in a concentrated period. This is why the government is trying to spread the peak of infection over a longer period, it’s all about NHS capacity.

We will know if current social distancing policies have made a difference in 2 weeks time. Fingers crossed. Evidence from Italy shows that there are large numbers of people who have the virus have no symptoms but can infect others. That’s why it’s important that we ALL do the social distancing stuff.

I was accused of being crass and flippant about this virus early on. Those accusations were probably right, I was ignorant (no crowing please Col). I’m still not scared for myself, but very aware of our collective role around keeping the vulnerable safe.

 

Following Stroller’s glass half full mode, in addition to all the public health activity, two strands of work in the medical research/pharmaceuticals world.

The first is to develop a vaccine. This is likely to take a bit of time, as it needs to be tested on healthy patients and large scale production demands worked out. But work is well underway. Mid next year probably. Then the vaccine will be tinkered with every year to cover mutations in the virus, just like flu.

The second is to develop a cure/treatment for those with a serious case of the illness. Work on this is flying. My company, working with a smaller specialist firm, started in earnest 18 days ago. We have a range of antibodies isolated and expect to start trialling in early summer. This is simply incredibly fast, I’ve never heard of anything like it in 20 years in this industry. If it works it would be used widely even if it’s not gone through the traditional number of trials because the alternative would possibly be death, it would be unethical not to prescribe it. There are dozens of other companies working along the same lines, some repurposing existing drugs which is the best and quickest thing to do because we know the safety profiles. Some Chinese doctors saying a Japanese drug which they have tried in about 200 patients seems to alleviate symptoms and lead to faster negative status for infection (ie cure). Shares in the company that makes this drug (Fuji Film believe it or not) have gone up 15%.

We need to see the next couple of months through, calmly and sensibly, following the public health guidance. Then hopefully some technology will kick in. Capitalism might have ****ed up your pension, but it might also have saved some lives at the end of this.