As we’re told the lockdown is about to ease, our local hospital is, for the first time, reported today to have 14 patients and 19 staff infected. The town population is 8k, with ~6k in nearby villages. My GP practice has 2 surgeries, one attached to that hospital. It may be become interesting.
As Scotland has decided to keep their lockdown for a bit longer I wonder why you’ve had this increase.
I’m becoming less convinced now about the effectivness of lockdown. Sensible distancing and minimising interactions where possible seem to do the bulk of the work.
If you are NZ or St Lucia what do you do over the coming months IF there is no vaccine or improved treatment?
That to me is the big problem for these places. Sure, if you have managed to contain it, and you’re a small-ish island, you can keep it out with draconian quarantine rules and essentially no out-of-island travel. But if your economy depends on tourism or other physical trade, then you are hosed.
From an economical perspective, better to be like NY or SE England. Keep the hump to a level where the medical services aren’t overwhelmed, get it over with, and revert to life somewhat like normal. Now, whether those places have anything like herd immunity at this point… who knows? Given that all testing at this point seems hopelessly flawed, there’s only one way to find out. Gently, gently relax the lockdown – never turn the knobs faster than the needles can move. And see what happens.
johnh wrote:
From an economical perspective, better to be like NY or SE England. Keep the hump to a level where the medical services aren’t overwhelmed, get it over with, and revert to life somewhat like normal. Now, whether those places have anything like herd immunity at this point… who knows? Given that all testing at this point seems hopelessly flawed, there’s only one way to find out. Gently, gently relax the lockdown – never turn the knobs faster than the needles can move. And see what happens.
Well, that of course was the justification in the UK. Protect the NHS was the point. The idea being not to overwhelm NHS capacity and hence have unnecessary deaths. Now hospitals can cope, we have to get this thing unlocked and hope that testing and tracing will be done to deal with the inevitable flare ups.
Silvaire wrote:
we are now finally starting to see the legality of quarantining people who are not sick being
I’d start asking the legality of speed limits for people with no incidents record.
55mph in the emptiness of your highway is government authoritarianism.
ormazad wrote:
I’d start asking the legality of speed limits for people with no incidents record.
55mph in the emptiness of your highway is government authoritarianism.
he he. Some people confuse law and justice with truth. The thing is that a virus don’t give a rats a$$ about any of it. For the virus we are simply a reproduction vessel, a blob of biological matter that by coincidence fits it’s needs. It can only be fought on it’s terms, not ours. Lots of people even believe that God will protect them also. People are strange
Well said, LeSving. The virus doesn’t care about any of our petty human disagreements.
As we’re told the lockdown is about to ease, our local hospital is, for the first time, reported today to have 14 patients and 19 staff infected. The town population is 8k, with ~6k in nearby villages. My GP practice has 2 surgeries, one attached to that hospital. It may be become interesting.
I wonder if you got one of those “super spreaders” who infected half the UK in December after a ski chalet holiday in Italy
The idea being not to overwhelm NHS capacity and hence have unnecessary deaths.
It would also have been terrible PR for the govt, to have people dying in the hospital corridors like all those videos from Italy.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
China’s wet markets, and their secrecy are recipes for future repeats, and must be dealt with otherwise a time will come when the virus will be many multiples worse, and it will be a real threat to our species as we know it. That is a very real possibility.Other changes and lessons hopefully will be learnt, but these things need to be stopped at the outset, that much is clear, it is I suspect like a stroke, there is a golden hour, miss the opportunity and you may already have lost the battle.
Absolutely!
Fuji_Abound wrote:
St Lucia survives economically almost wholly from tourism. A two week quarantine, and almost no one will come. New Zealand is not that dissimiliar.
Well. As long as the virus is active, tourism is dead. Being a save haven having proven no viral activity is the first and foremost thing which eventually will restore tourism, once other countries are also safe.
This is interesting.
Separate ONS data today revealed infection rates are not higher among health and care workers, despite results of a sample taken at an earlier date and published last week that showed they were six times more likely to be infected.
I find this unsurprising, looking at the number of deaths of NHS workers, and how many people work in the NHS. It is well below the population average although obviously NHS workers will not include the older people. But they do include lots of people who are otherwise in the high risk groups (obesity mainly) and this is obvious from any visit to a UK hospital.
It is going to be hugely controversial, given the “hero” status of NHS workers, the massive amount of political ammunition created out of the lack of PPE, etc.
It is good news of course for the workers.
I have had a quick look on the ONS website because anything is better than the Daily Trash but as usual finding the source is harder. Most newspapers are behind paywalls now, and the BBC is so dumbed down as to be almost worthless.
