finowns
Member
Why? they've never been great to the UK (though neither has china or russia.)
Never been great to the UK?! I have to hear this.
Why? they've never been great to the UK (though neither has china or russia.)
Arguably the best indicator of the wulhan virus impact (some of it is indirect, e.g. caused people not going to see a doctor fearing to get infected): increase in the number of deaths. Official figures are close to real:
EU is a weak counterbalance to Russia, but that "poor southern nations" is getting annoying.
The whole "apologies, Italy" was pandering to a successful PR campaign.
It was about weeks, when C19 suddenly become scary and NONE of Italy's neighbors was sure it wouldn't hit them the same way WITHIN DAYS.
What kind of leader would send out medical equipment/medics in this situation?
Arguably the best indicator of the wulhan virus impact (some of it is indirect, e.g. caused people not going to see a doctor fearing to get infected): increase in the number of deaths. Official figures are close to real:
EU is a weak counterbalance to Russia, but that "poor southern nations" is getting annoying.
The whole "apologies, Italy" was pandering to a successful PR campaign.
It was about weeks, when C19 suddenly become scary and NONE of Italy's neighbors was sure it wouldn't hit them the same way WITHIN DAYS.
What kind of leader would send out medical equipment/medics in this situation?
Note the difference in scale.But if we look at the Numbers, we see that Deaths went down in southern Italy. And in some cases like Rome, even by 9,7%.
So Italy is hit surprisingly hard, seemingly out of blue, surely nobody expected it, everyone around it is scared and expects to get hit within days... exactly what kind of "solidarity" was missing, let alone from "Northern states" specifically?Where was the solidarity from the Northern states?
You are mixing EU and Euro zone, Poland, for instance, is in EU, but not in Euro zone.The ECB sets its financial policies for Germany, not for the south, which can do nothing to ameliorate its debt problems.
Note the difference in scale.
Numbers fluctuate from year to year.
When it went down it was by 10%. When it went up it was by hundreds.
So Italy is hit surprisingly hard, seemingly out of blue, surely nobody expected it, everyone around it is scared and expects to get hit within days... exactly what kind of "solidarity" was missing, let alone from "Northern states" specifically?
You are mixing EU and Euro zone, Poland, for instance, is in EU, but not in Euro zone.
Greece was spending more than it could afford, it's Greek government fucking up things up not some mystical greedy bastards in the north being guilty of not gifting them money.
The rest is just slogans from anti-EU camp, better than BoJo red bus slogans, which was outright lies, but still cheap.
Naturally, when someone goes from acting on his own to acting as a group, things stop being tailored for a single person. Ignoring the other side of it, such as zero currency risks for business and much more efficient cross border activities, could present it in negative light.
Coronavirus: 'Game-changing' antibody test gets green light for widespread use
A test to tell whether someone has had Covid-19 has passed Public Health England checks in a long-awaited development that Boris Johnson previously said would be a "game-changer".
The blood test detects antibodies in patients who have been exposed to the virus, even if they never developed symptoms. The approval paves the way for it to be used as part of a mass NHS antibody testing programme.
This will allow officials to gauge how extensively the virus has spread and could give those who test positive more freedom under mooted plans for "immunity passports". Experts expect those who have had Covid-19 to be immune for two or three years.
There is a chance that it could lead to the lockdown being lifted earlier if it shows that large swathes of the population have been unknowingly infected.
"The great thing about having a test to see whether you've had it, is suddenly a green light goes on above your head and you can go back to work safe and confident in the knowledge that you are most unlikely to get it again," Mr Johnson said of the test in March. "So for an economic point of view, from a social point of view, it really could be a game-changer."
Edward Argar, a junior health minister, told BBC Breakfast: "It's only just gone through the Public Health England assessment as being reliable, as doing the job, and therefore we are having discussions. But we are keen to get as many as quickly as we can and get them out, primarily to the front line first, the NHS, social care and then more widely. Because this really will be — as the prime minister said — this has the potential to be a game-changer."
Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical company, is talking to the government about how its test will be incorporated into the country's testing programme but it has indicated that it can supply hundreds of thousands of kits a week.
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, added last week that the UK was in talks with Roche about a "very large-scale roll-out" of the antibody tests.
John Newton, the national co-ordinator of the programme, said: "Last week, scientific experts at PHE Porton Down carried out an independent evaluation of the new Roche SARS-CoV-2 serology assay in record time, concluding that it is a highly specific assay with specificity of 100 per cent. This is a very positive development because such a highly specific antibody test is a very reliable marker of past infection. This in turn may indicate some immunity to future infection, although the extent to which the presence of antibodies indicates immunity remains unclear."
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Social Care said: "We are exploring the use of antibody testing across the NHS and ultimately the wider public. We are delighted that devices are progressing through validation, and are actively working on our plans for rolling out antibody testing and will make announcements in due course."
A specificity of 100 per cent means that there are no false positives, so no one is identified as having the antibodies who actually does not. Previous antibody tests ordered in mid-March failed to pass accuracy tests. The new Roche antibody kit also received emergency approval in the United States last week.
Dr Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organisation's health emergencies programme, said that no one could predict when the disease would disappear. "We have a new virus entering the human population for the first time, and therefore it is very hard to predict when we will prevail over it," he told a digital conference run by the Financial Times.
"And it is important to put this on the table: this virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities. And this virus may never go away. HIV has not gone away; we've come to terms with the virus and we have found the therapies and we found the prevention methods, and people don't feel as scared as they did before and we're offering long healthy life to people with HIV."
Jeremy Hunt, chairman of the health and social committee, said that the government's response to the pandemic had been impaired by "too much secrecy" over the scientific advice it received.
He said that there should be questions as to why Sage, the government's scientific advisory group for emergencies, did not model the South Korean approach of test, track and trace, telling the Today programme: "Had we been much more public, as the Bank of England is with interest rate decisions, those oversights wouldn't have been made."
Mr Hunt accepted some responsibility for the lack of testing capacity at the beginning of the outbreak, admitting that when he had been health secretary "we were over-focused on pandemic flu and not on Sars-like viruses".
UK is too dependent on China for critical goods, Tories warn
Britain is too dependent on China for imports that are key to critical national infrastructure and the economy, a conservative think tank has concluded.
Active pharmaceutical ingredients needed to make painkillers, antibiotics and anti-viral drugs are among the 71 critical goods for which the UK relies heavily on Beijing for supplies, according to the Henry Jackson Society. Industrial chemicals, metal products and consumer electronics including mobile phones and laptops are also on the list of items.
More than 20 Conservative MPs are seeking an amendment to the trade bill going through the Commons in the wake of the reports' findings, The Times can reveal. They have written to Liz Truss, the international trade secretary, calling on the government to conduct an annual audit of the imported goods for which it is strategically dependent on authoritarian states such as China, and to prioritise new trade deals that reduce this dependency.
The letter was written by Bob Seely, who also leads a group of MPs critical of Huawei, and has been signed by the former cabinet ministers Iain Duncan Smith, David Davis and Owen Paterson. The 22 MPs believe that the Covid-19 pandemic has prompted all nations to reassess their approach to trade and supply security. Britain is among those that have placed restrictions on the export of crucial goods, as it has struggled to source personal protective equipment and other kit.
The Henry Jackson Society, which has long taken a hawkish stance on China, said that the Chinese Communist Party's handling of the coronavirus crisis, in which it has attempted "to avoid responsibility and accountability by deflecting blame and suppressing criticism", should call into question the country's reliability.
The think tank has analysed international trade data to identify the categories in which the UK is a net importer, relies on China for more than 50 per cent of imports, and in which China has a greater than 30 per cent market share of global trade.
The report concluded that Britain was "strategically dependent" on China in 289 categories of the internationally-recognised "harmonised system" of product classification. Of these, 71 were categories crucial to critical infrastructure and the economy. The think tank repeated the exercise for the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — the other nations in the Five Eyes alliance, the closest intelligence-sharing group in the world. Collectively, the five powers were dependent on China in 5,910 categories of goods, of which 319 were essential for critical industries.
The think tank concluded that this left all of these states vulnerable to Beijing's influence, as it accused China of increasingly resorting to "wolf warrior diplomacy" based on crude bullying and threats. The five nations should urgently prioritise "decoupling" trade from China in goods linked to critical industries, it said.
Public attitudes towards China appear to be hardening in the UK, according to a Survation poll commissioned by the think tank last month. In light of the Covid-19 crisis, 63 per cent of Britons said that they supported the idea of the government adopting a tougher trade, investment and security policy towards China. Sixty-two per cent said that they supported the government bringing back manufacturing of medical supplies from China.
In an article for The Times Red Box today, Mr Seely said: "Those that govern us need to wake up to the new reality and stop clinging to a future consigned to history. We need to reduce our dependency on China and collectively negotiate a new future with Beijing that respects our economic, ethic and political values, not undermines them. That is the best way for us, and for the Chinese state."
Let me assume, that solidarity is about being part of some block and not just being a neighbor.Consider the failure to provide any kind of material support
Refusal to have rules as loose as someone in southern states, that tend to spend more than they earn, has requested....refusal to run coronabonds as needed by the southern states...
Greece was spending left and right and not only on pension schemes, they have hordes of people doing nothing "working for the government". Greek government was LYING about finances for years.Greece was spending too much, undoubtedly, with its overly-generous pension schemes but the point is that the way it was dealt with was utterly inhumane. Still, I'm glad you think that causing hundreds of deaths is just an anti-EU slogan.
Discussion is not about agreeing, but about arguments. questions and answers. When basic question is asked 3 times and gets no answer, there is no discussion.I sense there is more chance of the pope converting to Buddhism than of us agreeing on this so I'll leave it here and maybe we can shit up some other thread.
What is this BS? Japan is NOT under lock down. My friend in Tokyo is going to the park everyday. Says it feels not much has changed.![]()
Japan suicides decline as Covid-19 lockdown causes shift in stress factors
April’s 20% drop compared with a year earlier may be the result of delays to start of school year, less commuting and more time with familywww.theguardian.com
Turns out lockdowns do not lead to more suicides then they save in prevented infections after all.
Asked about the concept being applied to the Covid-19 pandemic, the WHO said "no-one is safe until everyone is safe" and it is "dangerous" to think that countries can "magically reach herd immunity".
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WHO: Herd immunity for the coronavirus is a 'dangerous concept'
Herd immunity is an epidemiological term usually reserved to describe how the population as a whole is protected from a diseasewww.telegraph.co.uk
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Japan suicides decline as Covid-19 lockdown causes shift in stress factors
April’s 20% drop compared with a year earlier may be the result of delays to start of school year, less commuting and more time with familywww.theguardian.com
Turns out lockdowns do not lead to more suicides then they save in prevented infections after all.
So the President of my country alluded to extending the lockdown for certain regions based on Corona numbers last night, with official word coming soon. Today my company sent out notifications of retrenchments.
I think I'm fine based on what my manager says, but until I get the official email I'll be anxious.
Fun times, but I live in commercial heart of my country and we're second in number of infected due to population density. Kinda saw it coming.
The WHO are fucking useless. There's nothing 'magical' about herd immunity, it's how immunisation programs have worked for decades. Absolute fuckmuppets of the highest order - it's like they're deliberately giving bad advice so China can kerbstomp the west.
The WHO are fucking useless. There's nothing 'magical' about herd immunity, it's how immunisation programs have worked for decades. Absolute fuckmuppets of the highest order - it's like they're deliberately giving bad advice so China can kerbstomp the west.
The City of Los Angeles is lying to us.
These restrictions are going to be DRAGGED out. No matter what we do, no matter how much the curve flattens, it just keeps going on.
The mayor of Los Angeles said we will be able to loosen restrictions within the next few months.
Well, he then joined Good Morning America and now he is claiming the city will never be fully opened until there is a cure for COVID-19.
I'd figure the UK is probably around 8 to 12% already/currently infected.![]()
Coronavirus: Frontline workers first to get ‘game‑changing’ antibody test
A test to tell whether someone has had Covid-19 has passed Public Health England checks in a long-awaited development that Boris Johnson previously said would be a “game-changer”.The blood test detects antibodies in patients who have been exposed to the virus, even if they never developed symptoms.www.thetimes.co.uk
Previously we tried to get tests but found them not up to the job (and this has been an ongoing issue throughout the pandemic - lots of suppliers incapable of producing quality product especially in the field of PPE but importantly in testing too). Quoting due to paywall.
It is an essential component of the herd-immunity strategy, and vital to the government having adequate data given it has been flying blind for much of this crisis with insufficient information.
And in a sign that the government is going to put some effort into breaking China's stranglehold and bring critical infrastructure home (or at least not depend on a single hostile state)..
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UK is too dependent on China for critical goods, Tories warn
Britain is too dependent on China for imports that are key to critical national infrastructure and the economy, a conservative think tank has concluded.Active pharmaceutical ingredients needed to make painkillers, antibiotics and anti-viral drugs are among the 71 critical goods for which the UK rewww.thetimes.co.uk
I'd figure the UK is probably around 8 to 12% already/currently infected.
Herd immunity strategy is a hard sell when you still got so long to go.
They're afraid of the term "herd immunity" because that reminds "them", the professional medical community, that they're not the ones wielding the power over life or death, Darwinism is, - survival of the fittest. (read immune system)
Herd immunity will be established whatever WHO think of concepts or not. Let's hope it is done through a vaccine, but you know if not.........................let's roll.
This is way easier said than done though. Many younger people live with older families. Much of the workforce and a large portion of the economy is driven by people 50+.Not such a hard sell if you get all the low-risk people out there spreading it hard and fast to each other while shielding the rest - if you go for the under-25s only being out there, with a VERY low death rate (https://www.neogaf.com/threads/coro...n-got-you-all-in-check.1521975/post-258168144) you can get a good kick-start, then let the 25-30s out and so on up to such a point as you have bloody good immunity and the virus has nowhere to go. With corona-parties for the young you could get this done pretty quickly.
This is way easier said than done though. Many younger people live with older families. Much of the workforce and a large portion of the economy is driven by people 50+.
I have absolutely zero confidence a government could properly facilitate such a strategy.
I feel it's more likely that by the time you get herd immunity there is already a vaccine, and a bunch of people died for no real reason.
On the other hand there probably isn't a whole lot you can do unless you are willing to take super draconian measures.
Micrograms. You know what I mean.
In late April, the United Nations World Food Program reported that 250 million people may face starvation as a result of the economic impact of Covid-19. In America, local food banks are already congested with record wait times. There are other serious consequences of continuing stay-at-home orders and prolonging economic disruption. Deferred medical care, mental health problems, domestic violence and one of the biggest pre-Covid-19 public health problems in the United States — loneliness — are all magnified by in-home sheltering. The economic and public health harm associated with sheltering is yet to be fully measured.
I don't agree with herd immunity strategy but also don't expect vaccine to be available for the next 2 years and even it its available the ideq of vaccinating the entire world is a logistical nightmare so its seems an impossible task as well.
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Japan suicides decline as Covid-19 lockdown causes shift in stress factors
April’s 20% drop compared with a year earlier may be the result of delays to start of school year, less commuting and more time with familywww.theguardian.com
Turns out lockdowns do not lead to more suicides then they save in prevented infections after all.
I love how people are arguing that certain areas should be opened up because they're not reporting a lot of cases. As if the concept of transportation doesn't exist. Opening up an area that isn't hit hard by corona is just going to cause people in surrounding areas to drive to that opened area and most likely increase the case counts in the opened areas.
Edit: I'm listening to the Jim and Sam Show and they had a phone interview with Trump Jr and he mentions how the part of upstate New York he's in has little to no cases and wondering why things are closed. How much of a simpleton do you have to be to not understand people travel?
I love how people are arguing that certain areas should be opened up because they're not reporting a lot of cases. As if the concept of transportation doesn't exist. Opening up an area that isn't hit hard by corona is just going to cause people in surrounding areas to drive to that opened area and most likely increase the case counts in the opened areas.
Edit: I'm listening to the Jim and Sam Show and they had a phone interview with Trump Jr and he mentions how the part of upstate New York he's in has little to no cases and wondering why things are closed. How much of a simpleton do you have to be to not understand people travel?
All you're doing is making an argument that things can literally never be opened again until the virus is somehow magically eradicated.
We need to be very careful - this is going to be a 2-3 year thing. I think people are going to be surprised at the way life will change because of this. Opening up needs to be done gradually and distancing and mask protocol needs to be enforced heavily.
The only strategy is herd immunity. A lot of people don't seem to realize this, but when it became evident that China and WHO colluded and were not forthcoming with valid and correct information, there has never been any other strategy. It will be by natural exposure / selection AND vaccination. Anyone who tells you otherwise is feeding you unicorn poop with sprinkles.
I love how even when scores of professional experts are stating completely opposite points of view, everyone is a fucking expert on this thing because of their trusted sources.
You can safely take 50 mcg, which is 2000 I.E vitamin D.
Well, this was kind of created by the President when you create a COVID group and then continually counter things they've said and created a lot of confusion, what do you expect.
Or, just be realistic, and focus on protecting vulnerable populations while sensibly opening things up for the rest of the world and recommending things like masks indoors, etc. We need to find a way to live with this thing and locking people up in their homes and killing the economy is simply not the answer.
Or, just be realistic, and focus on protecting vulnerable populations while sensibly opening things up for the rest of the world and recommending things like masks indoors, etc. We need to find a way to live with this thing and locking people up in their homes and killing the economy is simply not the answer.
Fuck... didn't expect this to be another TDS goober.
Yeah, it's almost like no one knew a goddamn thing about this disease and premiere experts around the world have seen their recommendations/opinions on the matter "evolve" over time.
TDS?
Trump Derangement Syndrome. Everything is always Trump's fault.
Hardly. If you don't see the issue with how Trump handled this thing, sweet mother. The best thing Trump wanted to do was close flights to China and he got stumped on that but as we found out, the virus was in the states already. The issue is with China and their bullshit lying.