Chinese "Devil Virus" - anyone worried?
- Thread starter manwithnoname
- Start date
- Latest activity Latest activity:
Yes, I think it was regarding Boris being in hospital. Shame, I like Portly and I hope he returns.
Went to my wife's friend's Vietnamese restaurant in Vienna's museum quarter today - only take-aways or outside dining. The downtown parks were choca with only maybe 1% wearing masks, maybe 5% on the streets, virtually everyone on public transport.
The pubs were full. McDonald's was 50% full (only half the tables open perhaps - I didn't go inside). The fountain pool opposite the spectacular St Charles Church looked like full on tourist season with maybe 20 skateboarders (all mask-less) skating up / down and around everyone and the whole pool surrounded by groups every few metres.
Bar the tourist attractions, hotels & swarms of tourists, Vienna looks back to normal. We'll see how the figures respond (last week has been under 100 new cases per day for the whole country).
The pubs were full. McDonald's was 50% full (only half the tables open perhaps - I didn't go inside). The fountain pool opposite the spectacular St Charles Church looked like full on tourist season with maybe 20 skateboarders (all mask-less) skating up / down and around everyone and the whole pool surrounded by groups every few metres.
Bar the tourist attractions, hotels & swarms of tourists, Vienna looks back to normal. We'll see how the figures respond (last week has been under 100 new cases per day for the whole country).
Last edited:
Some fair questions there.
I have a good deal of sympathy for the "why bother for just a month this side of the summer holidays" argument, and if we were looking at things purely from the schools' point of view I'd consider it pretty hard to counter. However, a number of kids are being adversely affected in various ways by not being in school, either (a) by missing their friends and contact with the outside world generally and getting pretty antsy over that or (b) for pretty much the opposite reason, namely that they're getting altogether too accustomed to a relatively cushy number at home and are likely to find it harder to readjust to their return the longer they're out of school meanwhile. There's also the pressure on parents, which looms very large indeed at the school where I'm a governor, because that's a special school which takes a lot of the pupils with the most profound special needs of all and it's a monster of a job for parents to have them at home 24/7, though the school staff are doing a great deal of outreach work with parents (and with some pupils) via telephone and Skype.
I don't yet have fully detailed knowledge of the pre-return discussions taking place at that school because we're due an update on them when we have our next Governing Body meeting via Zoom in due course. Funnily enough I know a bit more about the discussions which have taken place at the primary school where I'm a reading volunteer, because I know some people who work there through my parish church. It's in a relatively modern building but, as a primary school, it doesn't have space in which to spread out like we've got at our much more light and airy special school, so they know they're going to have to be extremely careful and their discussions have been correspondingly thorough. Hygiene (an obvious biggie with young kids around) and space are being looked at in particular detail, as are things like staggering arrival/lunch/departure times, without neglecting issues like the syllabus and Year 6's impending departure to High School.
I'm not saying, because no-one's saying, that any of this is obvious or easy to resolve. Care will be necessary, most likely for quite a while yet. The underlying question seems to me to be whether we're going to decide to take no steps at all, not even baby steps, until every last conceivable risk has been eliminated. My own view is that such an approach will probably do more harm than good overall, not least to the children themselves.
Here, everyone is going back tomorrow ...
masks the whole day, kids can go out to 'breathe' but no 'group' games during breaks ... etc etc ...
I sincerely hope that after dealing with this shit really well, we're not opening up the doors to a really bad second wave.
Oh well, wishing everyone much health ...
I'd love to know what those who think they're doing a 'bad job' think doing a 'good job' was, and who would be able to pull it off? I presume Labour would have pulled fully costed ventilators and PPE out of their magic arseholes, there would be no need for any lockdown of any sort, and there wouldn't have been a single carehome death on their watch. Oh, and schools wouldn't have to go back until 2042.
It didn't matter what party was in, they're both cunts and would both make mistakes.
Oh, perfect, we found one. Yeah, I think a starting point for a decent response that would have cost less money and killed fewer people would have been stay at home orders a week or two earlier, when it was blindingly obvious and hundreds were dying. That and that alone would have reduced the need for ppe and Ventilators, and cut the death toll in half. It would have been cheaper too.
The UK just watched what was happening and did absolutely nothing to fight an exponential threat... If you don't think government can do better, it should pack it in.
Last edited:
I’m intrigued by these “magic arseholes”.
What type of magic do you think they might be? Rabbit out of a hat, or think of a number? Maybe bending spoons?
Fucking hell, mors. You do realise that the UK government is literally handling this crisis worse than every other country on the planet besides the US? There are nearly 200 examples of how to do better.
Please don't answer or respond to me, though. I can't be arsed.
Please don't answer or respond to me, though. I can't be arsed.
It depends where you are in the usa. The USA had no federal response at all. California had ama better initial response than the UK, for instance.
Let's not confuse him further.
CA, Oregon, Washington appears to have done a decent job until now.
I'm not even going to bother going chapter and verse on this back to the start.
However take todays press conference as an upto date example.
I'm paraphrasing the below. You can search for the exact quotes yourself.
Question - How are the UK doing on their 5 targets? Specifically the two that the UK government can control I.e. PPE and tests
Response - We are getting more PPE, however international procurement is a problem.
Right.. so two months ago, we had the exact same problem. The government at the time said they would look to get UK companies manufacturing it. Please help...your country needs you kind of bollocks.
UK companies came forward in their droves, offering all the PPE we as a country would need. They rang all the numbers provided.
Yet, only a fraction were called back (if any actually got any orders).. and they stick to this 'International procurement problem' bullshit that you seem to think is acceptable?
There are countless examples of this kind of shithousery.
So yeah, the tories have done a fucking shit show of a response. The only one who has enhanced his reputation is Sunak.
Does it need to be new or can it be second hand?
Now now, behave.
Probably the only country that's done an exceptional job is Taiwan.
They didn't close anything down, everyone has to wear a mask in public. If you have the virus, you have to go into quarantine.
But they were proactive. When medical officers in Taiwan heard of their colleagues in Wuhan becoming infected, they saw that as a sign that human to human transfer was possible.
So they took action. This was at the end of December.
Taiwan is a small island with a lot of mountains making much of the land uninhabitable. They have 24 million citizens with over 2 million Chinese tourists every year.
They have about 400 cases.
That's impressive.
They didn't close anything down, everyone has to wear a mask in public. If you have the virus, you have to go into quarantine.
But they were proactive. When medical officers in Taiwan heard of their colleagues in Wuhan becoming infected, they saw that as a sign that human to human transfer was possible.
So they took action. This was at the end of December.
Taiwan is a small island with a lot of mountains making much of the land uninhabitable. They have 24 million citizens with over 2 million Chinese tourists every year.
They have about 400 cases.
That's impressive.
I see Johnson's popularity and handling of this crisis is plummiting in the polls.
What does Cummings spin do ??
Right on queue Headline grabbing announcement.. That really deep down doesn't confirm much..
The Oxford trial they are talking about apparently pretty much failed in monkeys..
https://www.forbes.com/sites/willia...eys-not-really/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
They’re pinning their hopes on it working in humans. Most scientific commentators say it’s highly unlikely. Half of Britons are more likely to get Covid in months rather than a jab
Bleach anyone ?
What does Cummings spin do ??
Right on queue Headline grabbing announcement.. That really deep down doesn't confirm much..
The Oxford trial they are talking about apparently pretty much failed in monkeys..
https://www.forbes.com/sites/willia...eys-not-really/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
They’re pinning their hopes on it working in humans. Most scientific commentators say it’s highly unlikely. Half of Britons are more likely to get Covid in months rather than a jab
Bleach anyone ?
Last edited:
They also have around 700,000 Taiwanese living in Shanghai - most will have gone home. It's pretty damn amazing how it didn't explode there. But there are also interesting corollaries, look at Shanghai where I usually live. It didn't have a Wuhan-like shutdown, more like that in the UK, yet still had very very few cases/deaths for a city of 25 million, more than twice the size of Wuhan.
Some will shout cover up, but that clearly isn't the case even if the figures are mildly under-reported. None of the many expats living in Shanghai reported anything untoward and very few areas were closed off (just a few of the old lane-house districts where the homes are cheek-to-jowl).
HK is another one - possibly even more impressive than Taiwan (even fewer deaths - just 4) and again without the need for a massive Wuhan-style lockdown but their proximity to China and huge daily numbers of commutes between them before the lockdown meant far greater exposure.
One could theorise that there are as yet undiscovered factors that influence it's spread (no not bat soup).
Last edited:
I read somewhere that there are maybe 30,000 labs around the world working on a vaccine - I guess they have little else to do and the potential rewards are astronomical (even though some US pharmaceutical companies, at least maybe others too, said they'd distribute the formula for free if they discovered it).
Was talking to someone that works in pharmaceuticals over the weekend, they said it's logistically impossible to have anything out within 6 months, not only the length of time it takes to test and verify, but logistically getting it mass produced once it has been. A year would be good, 6 months would be unheard of. Anyone suggesting that it's any sooner is essentially just doing PR, trying to affect share prices, or just doesn't understand how it works.
Last edited:
Or doing damage limitation PR exercise..
This kinda confirms what you say.. Friends I know from pharmaceutical companies I've worked are saying the same too..
[Article]
Vaccine not likely to be widely available until next year, professor says
Professor Robin Shattock, head of mucosal infection and immunity at Imperial College London, said he thought a vaccine was not likely to be widely available until next year.
He told Today: “I think we have a very high chance of seeing a number of vaccines that work because we know a lot about this target and I think there’s good scientific rationale to say it’s not such a hard target as others.
“My gut feeling is that we will start to see a number of candidates coming through with good evidence early towards next year - possibly something this year - but they won’t be readily available for wide scale use into the beginning of next year as the kind of most optimistic estimation.”
[/Article]
Sadly people again, will believe what they read in the Daily Fail this morning..
Wasnt the Daily Mail who said it first though.. it was Sharma yesterday.
However, the sound bite has been twisted.
Sharma's words were to the effect of
'30m doses will be ready to be manufactured by October. Of which the UK will have first access to'
At no point did he say that the UK would have access to all 30m, or indeed how many of the the 30m. Just that we'd have some.
Typical twisting of words.
Including you ... on a daily basis from the amount of quotes you give them. If you don't (find what they write credible) why bother quoting them at all ?
Last edited:
Yeah, these things take ages. In normal times, for a factory which produces medicines to just get a licence to produce something like insulin takes fucking ages. Normally you have to show that you've the capabilities to produce a medicine that won't kill people and actually does what it says, is stable enough so it doesn't expire prematurely etc. Mrs Athens does stuff like this in her job, stability trials and all that. This was one of the worries about medicines and a no deal Brexit as there aren't any labs in the UK that produce it and if there had been no deal then supplies might have been fooked until a factory in the UK got up to speed.
Don't want to enter the political argument, not got the energy for that, but do have some insight on the vaccine work going on.
They will produce the 30m doses, they are already ramping up to do it now. More likely Q4 for supply, the government is already underwriting the risk. They will use Astra Zeneca facilities so already approved for drug production in all probability, but money already being poured in to build new facilities and to ramp that up. The technology available and speed they can work is actually quite inspiring. The monkey story is a bit of misnomer, animal trials never provide a real guide, more to confirm the product isn't toxic.
The initial trial Oxford have going in Phase 1, was worked up in record time, and orders already being placed to replicate at scale in record time.
Circa 80 different trials happening around the world.
I work for a critical supplier to the Pharma industry, our products are being used in the Oxford trials amongst most others, we are seeing huge demands all around the world for scale up products. Quite cool to see our stuff on BBC news a couple of weeks ago. A lot of it built in the UK as well.
They will produce the 30m doses, they are already ramping up to do it now. More likely Q4 for supply, the government is already underwriting the risk. They will use Astra Zeneca facilities so already approved for drug production in all probability, but money already being poured in to build new facilities and to ramp that up. The technology available and speed they can work is actually quite inspiring. The monkey story is a bit of misnomer, animal trials never provide a real guide, more to confirm the product isn't toxic.
The initial trial Oxford have going in Phase 1, was worked up in record time, and orders already being placed to replicate at scale in record time.
Circa 80 different trials happening around the world.
I work for a critical supplier to the Pharma industry, our products are being used in the Oxford trials amongst most others, we are seeing huge demands all around the world for scale up products. Quite cool to see our stuff on BBC news a couple of weeks ago. A lot of it built in the UK as well.
I’d be interested to hear a solid argument for having a blanket approach to reopening of schools. Or lockdown restrictions full stop.
Surely it makes much more sense to vary it geographically. If the easing of lockdown is indeed based on science and data, that data varies hugely across the land, so....