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Corona / Covid-19 Virus - General Discussion (politics go to the Off Topic / Politics thread)

The data from Iceland is yet another data point which dispenses with the various theories that the virus is widespread and therefore this is a government takeover of civil liberties etc etc.

Herd immunity is therefore a very long way away and – even if it happened gradually so the health services did cope – huge numbers would die along the way to achieving it.

So the only early exit route will be getting the R well below 1, which means social changes. I think this is why H1N1, SARS, MERS or even Ebola didn’t spread all over the world. AFAIK none achieved herd immunity – not even the H1N1 one in 1918-1919. SARS would have killed 10%, MERS would have killed 30% and Ebola maybe 95% to achieve herd immunity. These died out (as a global threat) because the density of carriers fell below a certain level – R0 became less than 1.

In the long run it will be a vaccine.

It doesn’t mean a lockdown, though. Lockdowns are aimed at people who are too stupid to work out how the thing spreads, or who don’t care about spreading it, or catching it, because they think it won’t affect them or their contacts.

What this means for GA is a good question. Probably foreign travel will not come back anytime soon.

Pilots in the US will come out a lot better than Europeans.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Mooney_Driver wrote:

In one radio commentary today someone theorized that the huge mortaility figures in Italy and China may well be the result of the omnipresent air pollution in both places.

I’m not sure I would put Italy and China in the same bucket. China did a great job containing the outbreak and stopping at 2 deaths per million citizens. Deaths/cases also better than in many European countries. I know a lot of graphs have been posted, but anyway, this is the one I use to tell how a country is doing.

LPFR, Poland

Peter wrote:

What this means for GA is a good question

There has to be some tracing and testing thing. Or else, flying with instructors will not be possible in a couple of years (until a vaccine). Everything will just stop while waiting for the vaccine.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

loco wrote:

China did a great job containing the outbreak and stopping at 2 deaths per million citizens.

China stopped nothing! They have indeed contained the spread AFTER the horse well and truly bolted. The cynic in me thinks they are easing the lock down slowly so they remain at the bottom of the chart waiting for people to forget both how this appears to have started, and how not enough effort was applied to contain it when it was possible.

Until we have a realistic reliable cure or vaccine, we will need to work out how to balance the destruction from the disease and the destruction to our live hoods and the lives we have remaining. Will society happily live indoors doing very little for 2 years? There seems a complete vacuum on how to move forward.

Last Edited by Ted at 06 Apr 12:23
Ted
United Kingdom

R0 is best understood when comparing the flu with corona. Many people claim they’re similar. Well they’re not.

Flu:
R0 = 1,3. One infected person infects on average 1,3 others. After 10 iterations, there will be 1,3 ^ 10 = 14 people infected.

Corona:
R0 = 2-3, and 4 in populated areas. Lets take 3.
After 10 iterations, there will be 3^10 = 59.000 people infected. If R0 = 4, this number is 1,05 Million.

That’s the difference.

Safe landings !
EDLN, Germany

China stopped nothing! They have indeed contained the spread AFTER the horse well and truly bolted.

Personally I think the criticism of China is overdone. They didn’t have any warning what was happening, and they had little idea what they were dealing with.

Yes, they didn’t handle it well in the beginning (like trying to silence the whistle blower doctor). But once they know what was going on, they implemented very strict measures and did get their cases to zero internal cases in a few weeks. As I understand it all the case they have now are from people entering the country, which must go through 14 day quarantine anyway.

While I do think they could have done more initially and which might have prevented it spreading, once they decided to act, they acted decisively.

Then if we compare their actions to our own, we in the west have been hopelessly lacking.

We were forewarned. We saw what was happening in China for a number of weeks and should have been preparing for the danger. Then it took hold in South Korea and Iran and we still did little and thought we’d be immune.

Then Italy got it, and we all held back from decisive action.

Now Europe (and the USA) have way surpassed the infection numbers and deaths of the Chinese, yet we have still not brought into place the same kind of restrictions that they did.

If we’re not willing to bring in those restrictions now, how can we criticise China when they brought in far more draconian restrictions at an earlier stage of infection?

Do as I say, not as I do? They did more than we are doing, and they did it earlier.

EIWT Weston, Ireland

Dublinpilot – a lot of sense BUT as much as we acted slowly, so did China, and from what I have seen it is doubtful whether they have been open (even now). If China had done an adequate job, and everyone else hadnt reacted, more fool everyone else, but I dont think this was the case.

Also, I find it just about impossible to believe the data now coming out of China. Is it really creditable that they could possibly be trending in such a different way – what have they / could they do differerent that would support that view?

Last Edited by Fuji_Abound at 06 Apr 13:04

dublinpilot wrote:

If we’re not willing to bring in those restrictions now, how can we criticise China when they brought in far more draconian restrictions at an earlier stage of infection?

Because the horse has already bolted. I think draconian measure are wrong, and are both unsustainable and won’t stop it. If we look to history is there anything in history that suggests those measures will succeed?

Actually I think the solution will be in diversity of humankind, ingenuity and science! Totalitarian measures will fail IMHO.

Ted
United Kingdom

dublinpilot wrote:

did get their cases to zero internal cases in a few weeks.

This is easy for any country to do if you just refuse to test.

No testing, no confirmed cases, no new cases

I cannot believe the Chinese numbers (3k dead, etc) can be trusted at all. They could be 10x bigger and nobody outside would have the slightest idea. Look how Italy and Spain went straight past that number. It makes no sense. If you do a total lockdown you still have about 3 weeks of it propagating in the population so you cannot escape some big numbers, in a large population.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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