Off Topic Coronavirus

Auckland airport is down 13%
people will be allowed travel again
price will go up again

 

There you go, just drink your handwash, seemples...

 

A virologist on Radio 5 earlier explained that there are already 4 strains of Coronavirus, this is just a new one and it's spreading more quickly because of its 'newness'. He believes it will settle down relatively quickly and become just another strain of 'seasonal flu', no more dangerous than existing strains.

 

Sssh. If people go on thinking it’s going to lead to some kind of zombie apocalypse it might inadvertently destroy capitalism.......

 

Great. Could someone tell the rest of the world?

 

We're doomed I tell yer!

Keep calm and carry on, Col. Take the dem out of pandemic and what do you get?

 

I'm not the one panicking.

 

Are you not? There's way too much panic, fed by the sensationalist media and scandalous lack of information from the government and our part-time Prime Minister.

 

The PM deciding it’s not a big enough deal to do some work on a Saturday has reassured me so I shall be at the game tomorrow.

 

Not such a case of panicking - more one of heeding warnings and learning. In modern history China saw an outbreak of bubonic plague between 1910 and 1912 (what gave us the Black Death in the middle ages) - this has never really died out there, with Yumen sealed off for that reason in 2014. They have also given us Asian Flu (1956), Hong Kong Flu (1968-69), had Hand Foot and Mouth disease between 2008 and 2017. All along with SARS in 2002-4 and H7N9 ten years later. Why do so many epidemics come out of China ? The Chinese have a love of fresh meat and eat more different animals than anyone else - these are sold at unsanitory markets, where mutations of diseases can hop between many species - couple that with a reliance on medicine such as acupuncture and herbal cures, a densely populated country and a further combination of misinformation, secrecy and censorship and you have one potentially big problem. 20 years ago these things would have stayed in China. Those countries which see China as their biggest trading partner - such as Germany, now have a problem because trade means human visits in both directions.

 

Sorry, no more from me I promise apart from this uplifting clip from the Telegraph

 

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Panic buying after one case here
I'd better get down there before the beer aisles empty

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Queues at supermarkets as virus panic-buying ramps up

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Watch: Queues at supermarkets as virus panic-buying ramps up
Newshub0:55

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Panic-buying appears to have kicked in, with confirmation the coronavirus COVID-19 has arrived in New Zealand.

Lines at a Pak'nSave supermarket in Auckland were out the door on Friday evening, following the confirmation of New Zealand's first case.

A man who'd recently been to Iran arrived on an Emirates flight on Tuesday, feeling sick. His family called Healthline, and testing showed he was positive for the virus, which has killed nearly 3000 people worldwide.

The 60-year-old New Zealand citizen is currently being cared for at Auckland City Hospital.

Newshub visited the Pak'nSave in Botany on Friday night and saw people with trolleys lined up on the footpath outside, some wearing masks.

Staff were reportedly only letting in a few people at a time.

There were also reportedly massive queues at supermarkets in Albany, on Auckland's North Shore, and Remuera.

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a man and a woman taking a selfie
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told NZME they showed up to the Henderson Pak'nSave in west Auckland after 9pm, only to find there were no trolleys available. It reportedly took him half an hour to get through the queues, when all he wanted was onions for a sausage sizzle.

The Ministry of Health insists chances of an outbreak in the community remain low.

Professor Michael Baker of the Department of Public Health at the University of Otago said health officials' handling of the first case has been "exemplary".

"This case is a warning to New Zealand that we cannot be complacent about the global Covid-19 pandemic that will affect most countries this year.

"It shows that we are now entering the next stage of our pandemic plan, which is the ‘stamp it out’ stage of identifying and controlling cases and their contacts, and investigating and controlling chains of transmission.

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© Newshub. People line up at an Auckland Pak'nSave after the virus made its landfall in New Zealand.

"Fortunately, both Australia and NZ have so far not seen community transmission. But we must prepare for this eventuality."

Virus expert Professor Miguel Quiñones-Mateu of the University of Otago said people need to "continue with their daily lives", but pay "extra attention to normal hygiene" and try to avoid touching their faces with "uncleaned hands".

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Well done Daily Telegraph, headlining (tomorrow) that 1 in 10 will end up in hospital due to Coronavirus. They won’t because that would require over 6 million hospital beds, and we have 240,000. And most of those have already got someone in them. Plus charming stuff like new laws to enable rapid disposal of bodies and Hyde Park turned into a giant morgue. George Osbourne, in the Mirror of all places, calling for the country to go on a war footing.

The media in this country is a ****ing disgrace. Probably the same everywhere else.

 

i just came back from Italy tonight. Arrived there last Saturday and was met by a team of medical people in Rome Airport looking at everybody to see if they could identify anybody who might be sick. The whole of Italy is panicking over this thing. The TV stations are showing non-stop coverage 24 hours a day. Tonight on the flight home, at least half the passengers were wearing surgical masks. On the trains, they have teams of cleaners who are parading up and down the train cleaning any possible surface that a passenger might have touched.

Everybody should continue living their lives as they normally do.

 

I take it you won't be staying in bed doing two weeks of self quarantine
Everyone always says they need a holiday when they finish a holiday
Perfect

 

We need to find a balance Finglas. There appear to be 2 extremes circulating - the one which says we are on the edge of armageddon, and the other which says 'just ignore it, it's no worse than the flu'. For those on here who are old enough ie. anyone who went to school in the 1960's, or was born in the 50's - we can all remember the polio vaccine being given to us on a sugar lump at school - there were many other things around in those days - Rubella, measles, mumps, and a lot worse (Tuberculosis had not been completely eradicated). That was the first generation of mass innoculations (we felt like pin cushions growing up !) and it was not unusual for whole towns, or parts of them, to be in isolation - nore was it unknown for football matches, or large gatherings of people, to be postponed as a result. I think that Blackpool didn't play at home for about 4 months as a result of some outbreak or another (something similar in Coventry). People were, very definitely, alert to the potential dangers - but in a realistic way, and without too much panic. I am well prepared to believe that this is no worse than the flu (most people want to believe that) - but the fact remains that there is no innoculation, and no treatment for the disease itself, and hits some people very badly. There is also the chance of a mutation occuring. The Chinese death rate of around 3% is probably because it broke out in a city of 11 million people where there are a high proportion of people already suffering from respiratory problems - I wouldn't expect the same here.

 

I work with a very rational scientist who is in the "End is nigh" camp. 5 million dead in this country alone. Then I see the clip UTR put up of the couple from the cruise ship, who are being isolated and actually are "untreated" and allowed to wash it out of their system.Interestingly from their report Coronavirus allows other infections to happen, such as Pneumonia.

Panic and false information may actaully be worse than the infection in the first place

 

Just a point of fact. The death rate in China is about 2.6% of those infected. That’s because the death rate in Hubei, where information and action was suppressed for weeks, and where the majority of cases are, is over 4%. The overall fatality rate for those infected in China excluding Hubei, where they actually took some measures to prepare for the spread, is less than 0.5%.

If you trust any data coming from China.