COVID-19 (The artist formally known as Coronavirus)

[Emerald Emblem]

I never would have thought when I booked the these two weeks off last year that they would coincide with a nationwide lockdown (I had to work Monday and Tuesday). Otherwise, my workplace has stayed open (I work at a DIY Distribution centre). Let's just say many employees there were pissed off the company considered itself an essential service, but since we sell masks, hand sanitiser and certain food and drink items I honestly don't see why they were surprised. Rumour Mill seemed to indicate that the company would ask employees to take two weeks off work as holiday when the holiday allowance renewed or take it unpaid.

[Helmsly]

My local Lidl has started putting security at the doors and only letting 5 people in at a time, as well as limiting the number of each item you can buy. This has been a huge help as I can actually get buy stuff like Bread, Milk and Eggs just like in the olden days.
 

[Rummy]

Johnson visited a Covid-19 ward or something. Shook hands you'll be pleased to know. He shook hands with everybody.

Covid-19 now has Johnson. It's just so hard to believe we could be living in a 'nation if idiots who can't follow simple advice' isn't it? 🙄

[Glen-i]

In an ideal world, this would get people to maybe start taking it a little seriously.

In reality though, the moment he recovers, the usual subjects will print stories of him "triumphing" over the disease which will further reinforce the notion that it's not a big deal.

[Rummy]

1 hour ago, Glen-i said:

In an ideal world, this would get people to maybe start taking it a little seriously.

In reality though, the moment he recovers, the usual subjects will print stories of him "triumphing" over the disease which will further reinforce the notion that it's not a big deal.

Me and a few friends been speculating this is all just for the angles as he will get any and all priority treatment as needed and be very unlikely to die even in a worst case scenario. It's rather irksome he shakes hands gets tested yet our NHS frontliners are all being left out there to rot and fester if they get infected(genuinely got an nhs worker friend who 111'd last night with symptoms and got told the hospital wouldnt admit her so shes possibly just at home suffering with covid now but when now can she return to work...)

[Ashley]

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Assistant Chief Constable Vanessa Jardine from West Midlands Police chairs the Strategic Co-ordination Group (SCG) which oversees the multi-agency response

So that's what @S.C.G stands for!

[Rummy]

Me being me and enjoying paying a lot of attention to the world and its crises(and ranting on fb :p) I've been trying to get whatever perspectives on this I can. Been chasing a front line doctor for a while and finally heard back - ofc its mixed etc but thought some may appreciate the perspective(no idea if they're actually allowed to be letting me know or that i can share this btw)

 

Quote

Hey mate, sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner, have been fairly busy recently as you can probably imagine! 
Where I am at the moment things are still in the heating up phase - my hospital has done a lot of preparation in terms of emptying wards and making plans for how potential Covid 19 cases will flow through and at the moment this is working quite well. The main challenge right now is staff either self isolating or going off sick and this is likely to worsen as things get busier too. 
The no BS summary I guess is that this is pretty scary, the fact that not everybody gets very sick and that people are contagious before they get symptoms a lot of the time means it can spread easily. Fortunately the majority of people have relatively mild symptoms and will recover so that’s a good thing but the people who get severe disease (which is definitely not limited to the ill and old) often need a lot of support and unfortunately from what we are seeing once people get past the point that CPAP (the plastic hoods in the Italian videos - they allow us to provide air + added oxygen at pressures higher than normal atmospheric (sorry if that is patronising - I know you are very well read in a number of subjects but not sure if you are medical!)) can turn it around they are unlikely to survive. 
Main issues that I am seeing at the moment are 
1. People being knobs (will always exist I know but some people still seem to think wandering around in hospital trying to shake other patients hands and cough on them is cool.) and spreading it! I would say that I have been surprised by the majority of people being legends, supportive and sensible though (definitely more than the 48% of the population I was expecting!!)
2. Ventilators - The main issue here is that it is one of the only things we can do to keep someone alive after CPAP fails and it requires somebody to intubate and sedate the patient and then an area, machinery and most importantly a nurse who knows what they are doing to operate it. The statistics of mortality in ventilated patients due to Covid 19 are pretty shocking and it also affects young and healthy people so things are going to get more and more full and in demand as more and more people end up needing this but then cant get off of it again. 
3. And probably the main one at the moment would be the PPE issue and staff numbers. When things first started here we were advised on full PPE - ie protective splash proof outerwear, double gloves, FFP3 mask, eye protection as we are seeing in most of the rest of the world and in line with WHO guidance and then all of a sudden the UK changed its guidance to an apron, gloves and a standard surgical mask that is not sealed and does not have the ability to filter aerosols. This was apparently due to some research they had done showing that in normal settings covid 19 was transmitted with droplets alone. I don’t mean to sound overly cynical but this evidence seemed to appear very neatly around the time we started running low on equipment and the honest truth is that people are a little scared of it given that we know that some healthcare workers who were wearing full PPE in Italy and Spain etc have contracted this and died from it. I’m kinda consoling myself with the thought that it doesn’t take that much foresight to realise that if you expose all of your frontline medical staff to a potentially deadly pathogen without decent protective equipment you are very soon going to find yourself without many doctors and nurses but at the same time I don’t have a huge amount of faith that the tories won’t be trying to save a few pennies where they can, it’s not a party famous for splashing out! And you do feel a little exposed after seeing videos of italian or US hospitals with doctors and nurses in full respirators and splashproof everything and you are standing there in a shitty yellow apron and a mask that a builder wouldn’t be allowed to even go near a bit of plaster with! 
The lockdown/social distancing does seem to be having a positive impact in terms of numbers but I reckon things will get a lot worse before they get better! 
Sorry for the essay, figured if I’m going to answer I should answer properly!! Hope you are well and staying safe and hope we can have a beer or 2 at some point once this shitstorm has passed!

 

[Nicktendo]

 

[Hero-of-Time]

Thanks for the video, @Nicktendo. It was an interesting watch but also quite horrifying.

It's crazy what China gets up to and with zero accountability. I'd love to think that the governments of the world will kick off with them after this has sorted itself out and then take their business elsewhere but who am I kidding. Sadly, I imagine many countries and businesses will continue to work with them as if nothing has happened, despite all of this.

It still boggles my mind the amount of lives that have been lost during this whole thing and how many could have been saved if the people in charge weren't so arrogant and slow to react. The story of the 13 year old dying yesterday was heart breaking. I also read a story about an elderly woman in her 90's who refused the breathing apparatus and instead asked for it to be used on someone young because she felt she had lived her life and it would be better used elsewhere. She ended up dying.  In fact, there have been quite a few stories similar to this one that have come out during of all of this. Elderly people sacrificing their own lives in order for the younger generation to live. And to think, the amount of abuse the older generation were getting during the whole brexit fiasco and yet here they are laying down their lives for a generation who were calling them awful things just a couple of years ago.

[Nicktendo]

7 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

It's crazy what China gets up to and with zero accountability. I'd love to think that the governments of the world will kick off with them after this has sorted itself out and then take their business elsewhere but who am I kidding. Sadly, I imagine many countries and businesses will continue to work with them as if nothing has happened, despite all of this.

I think it depends on how long this thing carries on for and how many people are affected. I think Western governments need to hit home that this problem was made in China. Not a “Chinese virus”, but the fact that the CCP actively made sure the infection wouldn’t be contained and disappeared those who spoke out needs to be pushed. It’s still happening. Critics on social media are still going missing. CCP virus is what it should be called. The fact they’ve sent faulty aid to Italy, Spain and the Netherlands is absolutely disgusting and the CCP know exactly what they’re doing. This is on top of them scouring Western countries for medical supplies in January and February. There are countless videos on YouTube with Chinese citizens buying boxes of masks and other things from the US and Australia, which is why there are so few out in the wild now. They know we can’t lock people in their homes like they did and I’m sure they’re now loving the chaos they’ve created. 

Seems like my mum has it. I knew this was going to happen with her being in a supermarket, but thankfully she seems to be over the worst now. She’d not told me anything as she didn’t want me to worry but she’s had all the symptoms and still has a tight chest and light muscle fatigue. Her fever is gone and she has more energy than she did last week and she’s spent the last 10 days at home. She can’t get tested because she’s not in hospital. Just have to hope that no-one else in my family has got it. 

Your point about the older people and Brexit is true, and I hope this mess is one thing that can serve to unify people a little more and get those on the extremes back into some kind of coherent reality. China lied and people died. We’d do well to not forget that fact in any upcoming election. Anyone who wants to be friends and do business with the CCP will never get my vote. They need to be cut off from the West just like the USSR was and Huawei needs to be removed from all government level infrastructure projects. 

Edited April 2, 2020 by Nicktendo

[sumo73]

The bottom line is business is business and politics comes second. According to the WHO (don't mention ROC) Italy has a higher number of COVID-19 cases than China.  Something doesn't seem right here.

Something has to change through all of this but I wonder if it will. The UK still imports about half of it's food from overseas and yet about 1/3 of all food bought at supermarkets is thrown away. The UK depends too much on importing food and other things from various parts of the world. If you want to buy a face mask it's probably better to make one yourself than wait a month to get one from half way around the world. Being more self reliant as a country isn't about resurrecting nationalism but successive governments have allowed us to be far too reliant on others because it was cheaper and more expedient to do so.

I know quite a few East Asian people and a few of them have had some issues from other people because of all this mess. It's not their fault (look higher up) and the blame must not be put on them. I won't get on the China bashing train.

Edited April 2, 2020 by sumo73

[Nicktendo]

4 minutes ago, sumo73 said:

The bottom line is business is business and politics comes second. According to the WHO (don't mention ROC) Italy has a higher number of COVID-19 cases than China.  Something doesn't seem right here.

Something has to change through all of this but I wonder if it will. The UK still imports about half of it's food from overseas and yet about 1/3 of all food bought at supermarkets is thrown away. The UK depends too much on importing food and other things from various parts of the world. If you want to buy a face mask it's probably better to make one yourself than wait a month to get one from half way around the world. Being more self reliant as a country isn't about resurrecting nationalism but successive governments have allowed us to be far too reliant on others because it was cheaper and more expedient to do so.

I know quite a few East Asian people and a few of them have had some issues from other people because of all this mess. It's not their fault (look higher up) and the blame must not be put on them. I won't get on the China bashing train.

There’s a difference between bashing China and bashing the CCP. They need to be called out, and people who bash China and the Chinese people should be shut down.

Self-reliance is not really possible in the modern world. Mutual respect and co-operation is, so that’s what we should aim for. And people need to be aware of how important this is. The media in Europe and the US is failing us. Why is a YouTuber who happened to live in China doing the work the media should be doing? 

The WHO are in bed with the CCP and published information on the 14th January that there was no human-to-human transmission.

It’s little wonder the rest of the world have handled this badly when only a month before outbreaks started, we were being told not to worry about it. Information is power, and when it is misleading, conflicting or downright fake, there is very little people, or governments, can do. 

The WHO should be ignored. Listen to your local scientists and virologists. They should be boycotted for this alone. Reprehensible. 

 

[Londragon]

And even before the WHO started towing the CCP line, Taiwan was closing down all travel to and from WuHan because their own experts had seen all that was necessary to show that it was being transmitted between humans. Why couldn’t the WHO ‘see’ the same evidence? The Director General of the WHO is from Ethiopia, a country that has been accepting massive amounts of economic and infrastructure money from China. He has shown where his loyalties lie, and he needs to go.

[Ganepark32]

Went out for shopping on Sunday morning, which proved fruitful as there were no queues and plenty of stocked shelves bar a few things. The only issue was a 25 minute walk to the supermarket and then having to walk back again as I don't drive and the buses up here are on what is essentially an evening/sunday service so it would've been a half an hour to wait as opposed to getting up the road home before the bus arrived.

Did mean I didn't jump on public transport but that walk in the cold ended up giving me a sore throat which has been niggling me since Sunday. Been tracking temp in case that goes up but I seem to be fine there and any coughing feels more like trying to shift something in my throat than a dry cough. Had some lemsip at hand and that's helping soothe it but the sore throat is sticking around which does have me slightly worried. Didn't come into close contact with anyone shopping as it was quiet and I've been exclusively going to the same supermarket to minimise exposure if its going about. But with colds still going about, it's hard to tell what's happening and whether I've got something or not. At the very least, my cough isn't persistent and seems to be intermittent, more or less an extension of the coughs I already get from my reflux issues but I'm keeping an eye on it to say the least and staying home.

Have noticed that it's impossible to get an online shop up here though. Sainsbury's is prioritising vulnerable people going by a government list so if you're not on it, you have to go in store to get your shopping. Asda has now gone to only having a weeks worth of time slots available as they've got too many bookings and even then, you can't get anything for the next 2 weeks. As soon as a new days worth of time slots are made available they're gone within seconds. 

So at the moment if i need anything from the shops in the coming days I'll have to go out which I'd rather not do while I've still got a slight niggle in my throat but I'll have no choice soon as my partner works night shifts in an EMI care home which hasn't been provided their PPE by the government and I can't risk her catching anything (though she doesn't seem to have caught the sore throat from me so that's a plus and makes me hopeful it isn't any serious). If she gets this, she's off with only statutory sick pay for 2 weeks (£90 odd for each week) which is shocking given what she has to deal with in there but that's private care.

As I say, hopefully my throat will settle in the next day or two but I'm keeping an eye out given how vague a lot of the advice is and how much cross over there is with other winter flu/colds.

[Ashley]

Regarding food delivery I think a few places (Morrisons and M&S come to mind) are offering a non-customisable box to be delivered and I think delivery times are shorter. Might be worth looking at those if you need some stuff but aren't too fussy about what. Hope you feel better soon.

Adam Schlesinger died yesterday following complications from COVID-19. Most of you may know him as being one of the founders of Fountain of Wayne but he was also the executive music producer (and one of the songwriters) for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. He was only 52.

[Eenuh]

4 hours ago, Ganepark32 said:

Have noticed that it's impossible to get an online shop up here though. Sainsbury's is prioritising vulnerable people going by a government list so if you're not on it, you have to go in store to get your shopping. Asda has now gone to only having a weeks worth of time slots available as they've got too many bookings and even then, you can't get anything for the next 2 weeks. As soon as a new days worth of time slots are made available they're gone within seconds. 

I've somehow been able to get a delivery slot with Sainsbury's last week and tomorrow. You have to check every day for slots, as they are only releasing some after people on their vulnerable list have got theirs booked. I managed to book mine on Tuesday morning, and there were slots available for a few hours at least. So definitely check back regularly. 

[MindFreak]

My wife's colleague has been diagnosed with covid19. Medical doctor, 60 years old, just became granddad for the first time a few months ago. He's in the intensive ward, been there for a week now, and now being moved to Copenhagen Hospital where they take those who are really bad. It's really sad to think of, and I hope he makes it but I can't help but think that he doesn't. He's been exposed to the virus several times, I think, and it seems to be a factor in how serious the illness becomes. :/ 

[killthenet]

Pretty grim day for my family, first my Uncle (70 year old with Parkinson's) was admitted to hospital with suspected coronavrius and then we got the news that my Granny has it too. That's the most worrying and upsetting of the two, she is 91 and has been struggling with her health for much of the past year. She's been suffering from heart failure which has had a profound effect on her entire body, she's gone from being relatively healthy to being constantly in and out of hospital since last June. She signed a DNR a while ago so they won't even put her on a ventilator which, given her underlying health issues, would likely be necessary pretty soon.

The worst thing about it all is that nobody can go and see her to comfort her, she has 9 children and only one person is allowed to go and visit her - a one time visit of 10 minutes where they have to wear a gown & mask and won't be able to touch her. It's such a sad way for her life to end, instead of being surrounded by her loved ones she will only have the doctors and nurses to comfort her. She's a devout Catholic and the hospital won't even let a priest visit to give her the last rites. It's all so sad.

Edited April 2, 2020 by killthenet

[Ganepark32]

On 02/04/2020 at 1:38 PM, Ashley said:

Regarding food delivery I think a few places (Morrisons and M&S come to mind) are offering a non-customisable box to be delivered and I think delivery times are shorter. Might be worth looking at those if you need some stuff but aren't too fussy about what. Hope you feel better soon.

I've passed on to the in laws about the box thing from the likes of Morrisons. My partner and I are vegan so they might not be great for us but they'll definitely be handy for the in laws as they also work in social care so can give them some piece of mind for some of the basics at least. Thanks Ashley, after speaking with some people it seems most likely that I've got a bout of sinusitis as my cheekbones have been hurting a lot the last couple of days and my sinuses have seemed stuffy so that's at least a potential positive. Still staying in doors for the time being to be safe in case especially as up here in Dundee l, the older generations are reported just going out for walks through town as if everything was normal so better safe than sorry. Look after yourself as well.

On 02/04/2020 at 5:56 PM, Eenuh said:

I've somehow been able to get a delivery slot with Sainsbury's last week and tomorrow. You have to check every day for slots, as they are only releasing some after people on their vulnerable list have got theirs booked. I managed to book mine on Tuesday morning, and there were slots available for a few hours at least. So definitely check back regularly. 

Yeah, I managed to get a Sainsburys shop last Saturday before they put in the measures to prioritise vulnerable people (we put it in at 7:30am on last Friday and by 10am that day they were saying that only those considered vulnerable were eligible for delivery) but half of what we'd put in the shop was missing so we've just been trying to get another big shop sorted so that we're set for the next week and a bit but no luck so far. Have had my partner trying Sainsbury's in the early hours as she works night shift as well as Asda, Morrisons and Tescos but there's been no luck. Have heard that Tescos are adding more delivery slots through the start of next week because of the influx of new staff so fingers crossed for then.

In the mean time, I have managed to find a few local grocers and stores that are doing home deliveries. One local new cafe that was set to open last week was selling off stock so we managed to get a bunch of pasta and sauces and vegan stuff and we managed to get fruit and veg in (sister in law ordered it and ended up ordering 4 kilos of pears when she only meant to order 4 pears ) so managing to get stuff. Just wish I could get a big shop in as with not driving and buses being infrequent, walking 30 mins with a full shop isn't fun. Hopefully manage in the coming days.

[Rummy]

I will eventually keep up with some of this thread but I gotra say the govt doublethink and gaslighting right now is crazy. 'lockdown possibly to relax by may' is another soft sell for the immediate follow up of 'lockdown may last longer if citizens dont abide by our draconion nanny state rules' because here it is - lockdown IS longer term and it IS inevitable; but if they told you all that right now - lets be honest in evaluating this:- how would YOU react??

[Goafer]

1 hour ago, Rummy said:

how would YOU react??

Probably shake my fist at the sky (during my government dictated 1 hour exercise session of course), curse China and then remain indoors.

 

Most of my local Facebook groups have turned into witch hunts. Kicked off in my village one when a person who had been doing their exercise in a dinosaur costume to entertain local kids had the audacity to sit on the local playset for a photo. Sure, they probably shouldn't have, but I could practically hear people in the village giving the ol' lynching rope a few test tugs.

Remember, we're all in this together, unless you're assumed to be doing something non-essential, then you'll be lynched like the plague rat you are.

[Sméagol]

 

[EEVILMURRAY]

Thrice more weeks of lockdown, how y'all feeling?

As someone who still has to leave the house, it's going to be less weird for myself. The amount of adulting I've done already is blowing my mind.

[Charlie]

Hey team, it's been a while!

Loving being forced to work from home, hoping I never need to go into the office again.

Hating my wedding being postponed and honeymoon cancelled. I should be in Bali right now!

[killthenet]

"Where do you want to go?"

"Bali"

"Where do you not want to go?"

"Burnley"