kwlf wrote:
I suspect our governments would have done much the same as the Chinese government. Even in Britain there are some pretty draconian powers hidden away in the legislation about communicable disease.
Possibly could – the question is if they would.
Not sure that many European governments would weld doors together to trap people inside…
According to this logic AIDS is not lethal because the HIV virus itself doesn’t kill you – you die because of deteriorated immune system.
That’s a very different logic.
LeSving wrote:
That’s a very different logic.
No, it’s exactly the same one you used.
What I said was:
It’s still debatable what is the actual cause of death. Is it a virus or is it a deteriorated immune system or general poor health (due to old age or some other illness)
I used “OR” 
So, different logic. But, it’s a good example. Lets say you have AIDS, and then get the Corona virus. The outcome is death within a few days. Without Corona, you would have lived for many years. Without AIDS you would have survived Corona. What killed you? According to AIDS statistics it will be AIDS. According to Corona statistics it will be Corona. The only logical result is that the combination killed you. This doesn’t show in the Corona statistics, and not in common flu statistics.
In a way they do. Lots of data is being supplied about the importance of comorbidities on mortality.
The biggest factor in mortality is age.
One of our friends is case # 3 in Slovenia
The UK seems to be doing well so far with 160 known cases of which 145 are accounted for in terms of travel (anecdotally it’s been reported they had mostly been on ski trips but the patronising UK Govt approach is to not publish such useful info ).
The 15 cases of “community transmission” looks very encouraging, obviously.
There are however numerous indications that this low number is due to a bizzare procedure which the NHS is running and which is described in this social media post (the illiteracy of the writer is normal these days)
The way to get tested if you have clear symptoms but have not travelled to some “obvious” place is to tell them you have been on a ski trip to Italy…
There are however numerous indications that this low number is due to a bizzare procedure which the NHS is running
Indeed. It’s hard to detect something if your not testing for it!
As soon as there’s a single case of community transmission where the source is not known, it’s a sign that you have a big problem.
I agree that they are not over-eager to investigate coughs where there is no clear source, and not finding any cases is therefore likely to be expected. I suspect this is largely logistical. Each test costs a lot, not least because they have to be couriered a few hundred miles individually (I find myself wondering quite how necessary this is) and there are probably not enough masks and aprons to test the millions of people at the moment who have coughs that are not coronavirus.
There are 100 GP surgeries which I understand are testing anyone with a cough, however minor. I suspect this may miss quite sizeable outbreaks in areas where they are not testing. They are also going to test everyone in intensive care with pneumonia which will be a less scattershot approach to finding out how bad the community problem is. However, there will be a bit of a lag because it takes time between catching it and becoming unwell enough to need ICU.
