dublinpilot wrote:
I wonder if we’re also seeing the effect of the lockdown, not so much on separating people, but on their attitudes. I imagine that many more people will be concentrating on keeping their distance from others and hand washing, than otherwise would have been if we’d not have a lockdown. The lockdown makes more people realise the danger and be more cautious.
Absolutely. Full agreement.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
- Then we have the Ischgl bar, which needs no further explanation. Inside, hot, people blowing into whistles of infected waiters. Darwin at work.
- Public transport such as trains and busses with standing room and people doing a good impression of sardines. Darwin yet again.
How are these Darwin at work? That is rather judgemental.
Peter wrote:
The UK gets ridiculed by the mainland, as is popular nowadays. Brits don’t care but if one did the same to say German politicians there would be big trouble
Much of the ridiculing is coming from within the UK too, not sure if these stats are real, if they are some of the ridicule might be deserved…
AFAIK airliners have an air conditioning system that moves the air from above to below in the cabin, and it takes some 3 minutes to move it all. And a large proportion of the air is fresh and not recirculated. And the recirculated air goes through pretty good filters.
I have heard this too. Not sure how much actual data there is on virus transmission though. I haven’t seen actual studies. But the Chinese have done studies of bus transmission and got some really interesting results. The air flows all the way along the bus so one person sitting in the back can infect the whole bus. And most people getting off a ski flight get straight onto a bus. They are long journeys too, with 3hrs being common. The same long journey on the way back to the airport. They don’t usually get onto a bus on the way home from the airport though, because their car is parked at the airport…
How is all this affected by wearing masks for the protection of others? Is it realistic? I mean, at a soccer game? Or in a disco?
Wearing a mask in a disco (they are called clubs over here nowadays 
) is an interesting research opportunity. One may be more likely to get lucky. There must be an EU research grant for this, surely? Would have to be done carefully because of the false positive rate: I have known a couple of guys who used to ask every girl “do you or don’t you” and they got roughly 10% Yes. This saved them a whole lot of work, and trying to get a taxi at 4am.
not sure if these stats are real,
That’s typical for twitter, FB and social media generally. As if the head of the govt is responsible for much of what happens.
Same criticisms are going on in every country. There are pretty big uprisings in some places around Europe against the lockdowns. They just don’t get posted on EuroGA by people from those countries.
Those numbers are totally fake, like most commentary on social media. Add up some here. Just a few:
It is also generally believed unlikely that all countries are adding up the numbers anywhere near correctly. Some stick “covid” on more or less every death certificate, some do the opposite. The UK numbers swelled by some 1.3 to 1.5x in one go when they started including care home deaths, but a normal flu epidemic will wipe out a few tens of k in care homes in one flu season, but doesn’t make the news at all.
Twitter is a complete and total waste of time IMHO. FB isn’t much better; I have 97 friends of FB and don’t follow perhaps 75% of them because they post total garbage.
JasonC wrote:
How are these Darwin at work? That is rather judgemental.
The first one: This was in the middle of the flu season first of all, but generally, this kind of behaviour does favour the spread of any kind of disease. So in that bar the waiters had whistles hanging around their necks and people who wanted something needed to blow into that whistle, as would the waiters. What kind of hygiene is that? None in my impression. Who goes into a place like this and takes part in such goings on will contract the flu at least with a high likelyhood and in this case something much more serious. Darwinian in the sense that it should be a no brainer to stay away from such disgusting events.
Overfilled trains are imho a huge problem anyhow. They are responsible for loads of infections, people know it and still nobody cares because they “need” to use them. Well, the Darwinian aspect of this is a society who has deemed fit to pressure people into using a kind of mass transport which defies the most basic hygiene and personal space invasion. I avoid trains like the plague for that reason, particularly at rush hour times. Darwinian yet again as people still used this means of transport DESPITE knowing a deadly virus was circulating. That in my view added by the reluctance of the authorities to do something about it is quite proof of a society which puts personal survival below getting to work at 8am.
The big question is why. And they better find an answer because otherwise a lot of ignorants will pipe up and claim all the lockdown was unnecessary in the first place, something which some countries who did wait too long have found out to be very much untrue. The question on how to continue fighting this will also strongly depend on how people will accept the “new normal”, in particularly hygiene which all of us should have known to be a good thing since kindergarten, wash your hands, don´t caugh into other peoples faces, e.t.c. will stay alive once people start to gather again. It may well be that a renewed lockdown at the scale we have seen won´t be necessary at all as long as people know how to keep safe and carry on. That is something I would not have tought possible a while ago, but it appears that the few ignorants have not managed to nullify the effort of the responsible population.
There is a report on Sky News today that an Italian medic is reporting in Italy they are seeing far fewer (if any) serious cases. The suggestion is the virus has mutated to a more benign strain. I dont know how creditable the report or the science is.
It is possible. It is also possible such a progression would result in far fewer people being tested, which would also suggest the rate of infection has abated.
There is sound theory that most pathogens will mutate to a less virulent form, for the obvious reason that a successful pathogen doesnt “want” to kill its host, or even, for the matte,r incapacitate its host to the extent it cant spread the virus. Of course that isnt true of every virus – Ebola is a good example.
I believe mutations in the RNA are being tracked, although I had understodd the RNA of COVID was relatively stable.
It will be interesting to see if the Italian reports lead further.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
The suggestion is the virus has mutated to a more benign strain. I dont know how creditable the report or the science is.
It’s more than obvious that the virus exists in many different strains so far. It appears that symtoms and speed of the illness in America is different from Europe, at least that is what some reports from NY suggest.
Yes; also the strain which Spain has doesn’t exist in the rest of Europe, from what I read. Interesting stuff, but all plausible given that the transmission is obviously via travel. The virus doesn’t have legs.
