JasonC wrote:
Switzerland is to re-open all shops, restaurants, bars, and museums from 11 May.
Yes and I think it is totally bonkers. I fully expect us to be back at full lockdown 2 weeks later, if not earlier. A few days ago, garden centers and hobby markets opened up and people went totally bananas, queuing up for hours and apparently total mayhem inside. Combined with the lack of an order to wear masks in these shops, I expect to see numbers soar by the end of next week, which will hopefully then stop the May 11 madness.
It strongly appears as if the Swiss council of ministers has finally bowed to pressure from the finance side. The price will be to be determined, I expect it to be catastrophic.
Add to that: There are indications that children are under much higher risk than previously thought. Several cases of a Corona triggered Kawasaki syndrome seem to be popping up all over the world. And now they want to reopen schools and day care centers? These things are even under normal circumstances the worst bacteria and virus distribution places. They should be shut down indefinetly at least until they know what is going on.
172driver wrote:
What you are advocating would, if you cared to think it through, iPhones for the Swiss market to be produced in Switzerland, for the UK market in the UK (perhaps even split between England, Wales and Scotland….) and so on
The US example came from the fact that Apple is a US company. So at least the phones they sell in the US should be produced there. I would also not be surprised if Apple and others who set way too heavily on the Chinese horse will try to diversify following this debacle. Produce in Europe for the European market, e.t.c.
However, I don’t regard Iphones as the measure of all things, (as for starters I’ve never used one and never will support a monopolist) but the situation with medical supplies such as masks, protective gear, medicines has shown that the current situation where most of the world depends on China for this is totally unacceptable.
172driver wrote:
The problem are not ‘the Chinese’, but their communist, criminal and in many aspects downright depraved government.
Of course and I agree that formulation was off par. What needs to be killed for the lack of a better word is Chinese dominance and monopolies in certain areas. But it also has to be clear that in the current status quo that criminal government is actually protected and even given more power by those who buy from China regardless. The fact that they did sit on the information about this crisis for way too long should now give a clear handle on this: That government has to be taken to responsibility. The only way that works however is from within: So if people stop buying from China, their own people will eventually rise up against the government. That has to be the goal here.
It is also clear that there always will be imports and there should be of stuff which can not be produced locally or regionally. But there is definitely room for improvement about what gets made where and under what conditions. Obviously there won’t be Iphones or whatever assembled in Switzerland but they could well be assembled in Europe rather than Asia for the European market, in the US for the US market and so on.
Cobalt wrote:
I would guess an operating system developed by CERN would not be that bad.
Yep, Cern has not done too badly with the Internet either I’d say :). I had the huge pleasure of having a met instructor who is one of their big stars, he does meteorology as a “hobby” but he is darn good at it. Lunch time talks with that guy is something I won’t forget in a hurry.
It may need to mutate to overcome resistance outside East Asia.
Mutations are random. Which ones ocurr are unaffected by which are needed. Selection favours any which are useful in their environment.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
JasonC wrote:Switzerland is to re-open all shops, restaurants, bars, and museums from 11 May.
Yes and I think it is totally bonkers. I fully expect us to be back at full lockdown 2 weeks later, if not earlier. A few days ago, garden centers and hobby markets opened up and people went totally bananas, queuing up for hours and apparently total mayhem inside. Combined with the lack of an order to wear masks in these shops, I expect to see numbers soar by the end of next week, which will hopefully then stop the May 11 madness.
I bet you aren’t reversing it. Governments just don’t do it and certainly not that fast when the incubation period is at least that long.
It strongly appears as if the Swiss council of ministers has finally bowed to pressure from the finance side. The price will be to be determined, I expect it to be catastrophic.
There is an argument they are doing the right thing. The finance side is not necessarily wrong.
Add to that: There are indications that children are under much higher risk than previously thought. Several cases of a Corona triggered Kawasaki syndrome seem to be popping up all over the world. And now they want to reopen schools and day care centers? These things are even under normal circumstances the worst bacteria and virus distribution places. They should be shut down indefinetly at least until they know what is going on.
That news story is unclear. Many test negative for Covid-19.
Jacko wrote:
The Chinese Communist Party has never seemed to be as squeamish as we are about killing Chinese people. Now, whether deliberately, recklessly or negligently, it has caused the death of a quarter of a million souls – and counting.
Right. So why should we want to add to that number?
@Jacko although I think it was a democratic president, it was not that long before 1989 that US troops opened fire on their own people. Remember the “Kent 4”
@ Mooney Driver the people rising up against its own government and being saved by the west has not worked particularly well over recent times. If I understand correctly the war in Syria goes on.
Abstract
Objective: To characterize the clinical features of patients with severe COVID-19 in the UK. Design: Prospective observational cohort study with rapid data gathering and near real-time analysis, using a pre-approved questionnaire adopted by the WHO. Setting: 166 UK hospitals between 6th February and 18th April 2020. Participants: 16,749 people with COVID-19. Interventions: No interventions were performed, but with consent samples were taken for research purposes. Many participants were co-enrolled in other interventional studies and clinical trials. Results: The median age was 72 years [IQR 57, 82; range 0, 104], the median duration of symptoms before admission was 4 days [IQR 1,8] and the median duration of hospital stay was 7 days [IQR 4,12]. The commonest comorbidities were chronic cardiac disease (29%), uncomplicated diabetes (19%), non-asthmatic chronic pulmonary disease (19%) and asthma (14%); 47% had no documented reported comorbidity. Increased age and comorbidities including obesity were associated with a higher probability of mortality. Distinct clusters of symptoms were found: 1. respiratory (cough, sputum, sore throat, runny nose, ear pain, wheeze, and chest pain); 2. systemic (myalgia, joint pain and fatigue); 3. enteric (abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhoea). Overall, 49% of patients were discharged alive, 33% have died and 17% continued to receive care at date of reporting. 17% required admission to High Dependency or Intensive Care Units; of these, 31% were discharged alive, 45% died and 24% continued to receive care at the reporting date. Of those receiving mechanical ventilation, 20% were discharged alive, 53% died and 27% remained in hospital.
Yeah… I really do want to catch this thing.
Graham wrote:
The thing behind the potato picking issue is that the farmers want to ‘pay’ their workforce partly (or possibly mostly) by providing on-site accommodation in a mouldy old caravan
Also a large proportion of the workers are students looking for a bit of cash and a small adventure in a foreign country. There are schemes like this that UK students go into – I remember looking into one myself once (in the USA) – it wasn’t farm work but it was similar low skilled labour/mouldy caravans in the US (the US had a special visa for these kind of ‘student summer work camps’).
The Kent 4. Yes. Four unarmed protesters in Ohio, Richard Nixon. Wasn’t he the socialist who offered China the keys to the West’s economy in 1972?
Right. So why should we want to add to that number?
China’s 2020 tally of a quarter of a million is shocking, but they’re not done yet. The problem is that some of our fellow European citizens are so desperate to draw a moral equivalence between the Chinese regime and the USA that they close their eyes and ears to the most brutal and effective mass-murdering regime the world has seen since European socialists stopped making people into soap and lampshades.
I would like to thank the forum for giving me early warning and perspective of what was really happening about this pandemic. I am grateful to everyone who warned us in March. It allowed us to take measures for our safety, even if it meant taking risks with my job (company took a long time to approve working at home).
We were reminded how information from the media is oriented when a friend told us how her 78-yo mother died from the COVID :
she was in great shape early March, when all nursing homes were locked down.
The staff got infected and infected most of their residents, as they had zero PPE.
Families got no contact with their elders during weeks, not even a plone or skype call. The nursing-home physician (working from home) said “everything is fine”.
After a few weeks of efforts in high places, they could at last see their mother. She was extremely weak and skinny, having not eaten for days, dehydrated and infected. They managed to transfer her to a hospital. The hospital took good care of her, but she was already very weak.
After a few days in ICU (but with no respirator), she was transfered in … palliative care ! They still couldn’t see her until their mother died. It was Good Friday.
Thousands of families have a parent dying in a nursing home with no mean to get to them, to help them, until they are told to organize the funerals (in daring conditions). Funerals companies are as overwhelmed as ICU units. They are not even sure sometimes if the rights families get the right body. Scary.
Those families are getting organized to ask how our medical system abandonned so many people to the virus, not offering them any chance of survival.
Everything written above comes from one of the most trustworthy peopke I know. I wouldn’t take the time to write this otherwise.
Physicians are now in a system that manages numbers and statistics, are encouraged to work from home etc….
People in the medical field know that elders are not treated the same way than others. If the family doesn’t insist, they are just told that the person was weak, her body didn’t resist etc…" while they just didn’t treat the person, just let her sink with her disease. We have had this in the family in the early 2000s and were able to make the person survive. With COVID, it takes another dimension.
Media don’t get access to hospital and nursing homes, so they write article about people having drinks with their friends on skype and companies preparing the return of their employees. But thousands of people are abandonned to the virus and treated as numbers. I hope this will get known and lead to a radical change of our medical system. But I am not optimistic, with the economic collapse happening, and probably another sovereign debts crisis.
