BeechBaby wrote:
Does anyone know anyone, who has symptoms, who has died, or any names of victims?
A friend is a bizjet pilot in central Europe (30 something). He went with a colleague (late 50s) to return a plane from a heavily infected area pre-lockdown. That was last week. This week the older guy is seriously ill with C19, the younger pilot is symptom free and was getting tested today. I should have been flying with him last week but we cancelled because of the uncertainty. I consider that a bullet dodged though if you have any sense you will consider this an urban legend. Beware of these FOAF stories. They will be everywhere.
It does not surprise me that those of us who have spent a lifetime being scammed by scaremongers will be skeptical about this one but from now on I am taking this at face value.
It isn’t even Monday yet on this crisis but the quarterbacking is already omnipresent. Apart from some folks who still believe it is all a hoax to go after them.
“EVERYTHING WE DO BEFORE A PANDEMIC WILL SEEM ALARMIST. EVERYTHING WE DO AFTER WILL SEEM INADEQUATE”
– Michael Leavitt
However, what must be brutally clear by now:
Europe has failed to stop the pandemic, primarily because there was an attempt to limit economical damage but also because there was too much emphasis on the democratic nature and what people would accept and what not.
Only the Virus does not care about any of this. It does not distinguish between good and evil, nor will it say thanks for the good intents, just the opposite, it will punish everyone who does not take it seriously enough to either be self disciplined enough to protect themselves by volontary isolation or obey the emergency measures imposed. Every one who unwittingly spreads this thing because he does not follow what started as recommendations will be responsible for people dying and getting hurt.
Complaining about civil rights….yea well…. the right for health and live outweighs all of them.
Our governments have let us all down. Not being capable to mass test like in Asia, not being willing to impose lockdowns when they still would have stopped this thing and give us a maybe 2 week period of discomfort, not having enough stockpiles of essential materials.
Peter wrote:
EuroGA is NOT going to be a host site for anti vaxxers
I am not an Anti Vaxxer. Far from it. What I am witnessing is a human rights grab undercover of a Pandemic.
In Scotland where our rules and structures were fundamentally different to England we have a thing called CONSENT. That means one must consent to a vaccination. This bill takes that fundamental right away. This is wrong. That is where my growing angst and ire is based.
Whilst the media discuss a run on toilet rolls people can be held, detained, and medically altered. That is a total infringement of all your rights.
But hey, lap it up. You will come to regret this.
@Silvaire, So you clearly understand exponential growth, but yet don’t grasp how 2000 deaths grow at a 33 percent growth rate per day?
If deaths lag infected by two weeks, we have already 200,000 deaths to reckon with, and if diagnosed lags infected by another week, that is two million
Fortunately these numbers are hugely sensitive to the growth rate, and if the curve flattens it might not be that bad, but it could be worse depending on how long it goes up
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Complaining about civil rights….yea well…. the right for health and live outweighs all of them.
I don’t have a “right” to be protected from nature by government, nor do I want one. I do have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I’ve got to agree with Silvaire on this one. There is no such thing as a right to health. Plague, famine, war, etc are all risks that exist. What we are seeing in Italy is that there is no right there, when they are deciding who to give care to and who to leave and turn away.
I’m becoming more convinced at the moment it’s best to just look after yourself and close /vulnerable people as much as possible and avoid contributing to the rapid spread.
Having seen the utterly selfish behaviour of the ski industry (the industry and its customers) right up to the very last moment when it all got shut, and continuing beyond that point which then obviously resulted in large numbers geting stranded, I would not blame governments for this fiasco.
Is part of the problem that the Far East isn’t quite so far nowadays?
In other words, is our airline industry as much to blame for the death toll outside China as the political system which punished healthcare workers for raising the alarm while allowing live bats and pangolins to be sold at a market?
Perhaps we should just let the airlines go bust and be rid of them?
Once the virus – one untracked case is enough – makes it through the border, closing the border / travel route makes no difference, it will burn out of control.
The major medieval diseases (plague, typhoid, smallpox etc) all made it around the world (minus the Americas, where they all arrived by boat in bulk) without flying, it just took a bit longer. The 2018 influenza made it around the world by boat.
I don’t think that’s the case – othewise we would all be dead of Ebola now.
Whether a virus will spread and eventually take over the whole population (or population in a given area), or just fizzle out and disappear, depends on the various parameters e.g. incubation time, travel patterns, population density.
It is obvious that if you could achieve satisfactory social distancing, it must die out, and in this case it would be gone within not many weeks. The first problem is that one cannot achieve satisfactory social distancing, partly for practical reasons (e.g. most people cannot work far enough away from others, have to look after others, etc) and party because some % of people don’t give a toss about anybody but themselves.
AIUI the parameters of this one are not known to the required precision to make the above assessment.
