Coronavirus COVID-19 Thread

NaffNaffBobFace

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COVID Catharsis Corner - Reports from around the world from today, Friday 9th of October:

- World: 36,669,238 confirmed cases and 1,063,863 confirmed deaths.

- World: China officially joins the COVAX world vaccine cooperative.

- Europe: The bloc sees 100,000 confirmed daily cases for the first time with multiple countries seeing record numbers.

- UK: Estimates suggest between one in 170 and one in 270 people in public are carrying the virus.

- US: The presidents doctor has advised he is now able to return to public life, a week after being treated for COVID-19, with rallies being considered as soon as this weekend.

- UK: Furlough scheme changed slightly - now on top of the 22% offering in return for working a third of hours, employees of businesses which are forced to close will have 66% of their wage covered by the government.

- US: Trump tweets stimulus relief talks are moving along but leader of the Republicans in the Senate states the chances of another stimulus package being approved in the next three weeks before the election are, in his opinion, minimal.

- UK: Outbreak of 40 confirmed cases at Bristol University puts 300 students in Quarantine.

- Canada: Adds 378,000 more jobs, bringing it within only 720,000 jobs of where it was before the pandemic came. During the first wave, 3 million positions were closed.

- Germany: Ultimatum put before the people: If infections don't fall within 10 days, new restrictions will be implemented.

- Slovakia: Approves up to 1,500 troops to help out as cases continue rise.
 

Montoya

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I watched this last night. It's incredibly relevant to this thread.

The algo screwed up today! My phone recommended an article about the best hairstyles for women over 50.
 

NaffNaffBobFace

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The algo screwed up today! My phone recommended an article about the best hairstyles for women over 50.
They say any technology advanced enough is indistinguishable from magic - but it is well know Magic relies on the viewer not knowing how the trick is performed for it to work as intended by the magician.

How do you know, now you know how the trick is being performed, that they simply no longer see the point in delivering it to you and you are now seeing any old toss? Or worse, they are now intentionally showing you any old toss to lul you in to a sense of "Oh, perhaps it's not actually working after all?" and will only show you the magic when they need to rather than bombarding you with it...?

And verily, this is how conspiracy theories are borne.
 

NaffNaffBobFace

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COVID Catharsis Corner - Reports from around the world from today, Saturday 10th of October:

- World: 37,003,414 confirmed cases and 1,069,782 confirmed deaths.

- World: Confirmed cases pass 37 million, we passed 36 million on Thurday, meaning 1 million more cases in the last 3/4 days.

- UK: Queens Honors List dominated by staff battling on the front line of the UKs COVID pandemic response.

- Indonesia: People caught not obeying COVID rules are being made to dig graves if they refuse to pay a fine - the Community Service involves being issued with a High-Viz jacket with Violator written on the back, and taken to a cemetery with a group of others to dig graves and clean. The bus that takes them there has speakers which advise anyone nearby of the violators actions.

- US: Trump to hold first public event since COVID-19 diagnosis last week. Will address a crowd at the White House from a balcony, to remain distanced while being able to speak in person. Although the president has announced he is no longer showing symptoms, it is unclear if he is still shedding viral spores (think the difference between drinking a Lemsip and not feeling like you have a cold, and not having a cold.)

- UK: Local leaders in the north of the country criticize the new Furlough system indicating the brunt of the rising cases and new lockdowns are in the north, the restrictions and limitations of the new Furlough system risking the area being "Leveled down" when national leaders in Westminster won votes in December General Elections by promising to "Level up" the north to spread London's prosperity across the country as a whole rather than just centralizing it in the southeast.

- Scotland: Bar staff in Glasgow, in the Scotland central area where pubs, bars and clubs have been closed due to COIVD-19 cases spiking, protest by dumping all unused ice in their venues into the street creating large piles.

- Brazil: President Bolsanaro dismisses COVID-19 as a "little flu" and that people should suffer it "like a man, not a little boy" and that self isolation to not spread the virus while infected was "for the weak". Brazil's death count stands at over 147,000. Critics point out how insulting the words are to those who lost their lives to the crisis.

- China: To hold first classical music festival since the beginning of the pandemic, featuring musicians from Wuhan where the virus originally emerged and took hold, having contained the virus with no local transmissions for over two months.

- Australia: Police in Melbourne discover Birthday party of 20 people breaching gathering rules, some flee but 13 attendees are issued fines of $1,650 each.

- Myanmar: Sees new record high number of new daily cases.

- Portugal: Sees new record high number of new daily cases.

- Poland: Sees new record high number of new daily cases.

- Russia: Sees new record high number of new daily cases.
 
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NaffNaffBobFace

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COVID Catharsis Corner - Reports from around the world from today, Sunday 11th of October:

- World: 37,278,481 confirmed cases and 1,073,955 confirmed deaths.

- US: Sean Conley, White House physician, announces President Trump no longer a transmission risk and no longer needs to isolate.

- UK: Scientists have started testing a vaccine which was first developed in 1921 called BCG which was made for turburculosis, to see if it generates an immune response for COVID-19.

- US: President makes first public appearance since COVID diagnosis.

- Australia/World: Research from Australia's National Science Agency suggest COVID-19 can last up to 28 days on phones and cash money - much, much longer than was previously thought at two to three days on bank notes and glass, and up to six days on plastic and stainless steel.

- UK: Council leaders of the county of Lancashire have publicly announced they no longer have confidence in the Governments response to the pandemic, among their criticisms being that it is London-centric, there is no proof provided for measures apparently being enacted at random, and the local councils are not being provided the resources or being invited to assist in performing countermeasures at a local level leaving it only to the national level restrictions and systems in place.

- France: Sees new record high number of new daily cases.

- Russia: Sees new record high number of new daily cases.

- India: confirmed cases pass 7 million.

- Brazil: Passes milestone of 150,000 deaths.

- Scotland/UK: Scottish MP who contracted and tested positive for the virus in London then traveled the length of the country by taking a train to Scotland while knowingly infected, has in an interview with a newspaper claimed the virus "makes you act out of character". Considering other high profile infected chief aid to the government Domenic Cummings drove 261 miles across England to isolate somewhere that wasn't his own home, then decided to drive around the local area to test his eyesight which could be argued as a very poor way to test ones sight, there appears to be some evidence to suggest this is indeed the case and COVID-19 is able to disable rational thought to spread the contagion. There are some conditions which cause their hosts to become modified and act irrationally, such as a fungus which effects ants... A worrying mutation in COVID-19 if it is starting to be able to hyjack a humans ability to act rationally, however it would explain a great many acts of bravado and stupidity by the infected which would otherwise be hard to explain.
 

PeppaPigKilla

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Scotland/UK: Scottish MP who contracted and tested positive for the virus in London then traveled the length of the country by taking a train to Scotland while knowingly infected, has in an interview with a newspaper claimed the virus "makes you act out of character". Considering other high profile infected chief aid to the government Domenic Cummings drove 261 miles across England to isolate somewhere that wasn't his own home, then decided to drive around the local area to test his eyesight which could be argued as a very poor way to test ones sight, there appears to be some evidence to suggest this is indeed the case and COVID-19 is able to disable rational thought to spread the contagion. There are some conditions which cause their hosts to become modified and act irrationally, such as a fungus which effects ants... A worrying mutation in COVID-19 if it is starting to be able to hyjack a humans ability to act rationally, however it would explain a great many acts of bravado and stupidity by the infected which would otherwise be hard to explain.
lol
 

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- Scotland/UK: Scottish MP who contracted and tested positive for the virus in London then traveled the length of the country by taking a train to Scotland while knowingly infected, has in an interview with a newspaper claimed the virus "makes you act out of character". Considering other high profile infected chief aid to the government Domenic Cummings drove 261 miles across England to isolate somewhere that wasn't his own home, then decided to drive around the local area to test his eyesight which could be argued as a very poor way to test ones sight, there appears to be some evidence to suggest this is indeed the case and COVID-19 is able to disable rational thought to spread the contagion. There are some conditions which cause their hosts to become modified and act irrationally, such as a fungus which effects ants... A worrying mutation in COVID-19 if it is starting to be able to hyjack a humans ability to act rationally, however it would explain a great many acts of bravado and stupidity by the infected which would otherwise be hard to explain.
You laugh but this is how zombie movies start out. A mutation that makes people act irrationally. Soon will start hearing rumors of people biting each other.
 

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Bambooza

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And back to the whole mask debate.


“There’s a lot more we would like to know,” says Vos, who contributed to the analysis. “But given that it is such a simple, low-cost intervention with potentially such a large impact, who would not want to use it?”
“There’s a lot of information out there, but it’s confusing to put all the lines of evidence together,” says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. “When it comes down to it, we still don’t know a lot.”
For now, Osterholm, in Minnesota, wears a mask. Yet he laments the “lack of scientific rigour” that has so far been brought to the topic. “We criticize people all the time in the science world for making statements without any data,” he says. “We’re doing a lot of the same thing here.”
All of this continues to support my stance and as Vos already said wear it as its a low-cost intervention with potential but don't be lulled into thinking it is protecting you as the research is still ongoing and there is a lot of unknowns. Especially since most of these studies are only looking at a very specific possible infection vectors and not how it factors into the spreading of a virus on a whole.
 

NaffNaffBobFace

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COVID Catharsis Corner - Reports from around the world from today, Monday 12th of October:

- World: 37,606,333 confirmed cases and 1,078,097 confirmed deaths.

- UK: Government announces a 3 tier Lockdown system, with level 1 being "Medium Risk", Level 2 being "High Risk" and Level 3 being "High Risk". The level any particular area is set to will define what restrictions people in that area have to abide to. This is to avoid a wider national lockdown, targeting the hotspots.

- UK: More people are now in hospital with COVID-19 than during the first wave when the national lockdown was implemented. Three of the UK's temporary "Nightingale" hospitals which were set up then mothballed in and at the end of the first wave have been instructed to stand-by as cases continue to climb.

- UK: National Health Service director puts out a statment asking citizens to still use the health service even though COVID is on the rise again. In the first wave many people did not seek out medical help and suffered or did not receive timely intervention as a result, the NHS is determined that this does not happen in Wave 2 and implores people not to ignore issues.

- China: To test the 9 million people over 5 days, the population of the Qingdao area, after 12 cases of COVID are discovered.

- Vatican City: Four of the Swiss Guard, the Popes personal security force, succumb to COVID symptoms.

- US: Pandemic expert Fauci has to release statement indicating that a quote used in a Presidential Election Campaign Advert was about himself, not about President Trump. The quote used said "I can't imagine that under any circumstances that anybody could be doing more" however the full the full quote was: "I have been devoting almost full time on this. I'm down at the White House virtually every day with the task force. It's every single day. So, I can't imagine that under any circumstances that anybody could be doing more."

- WHO: Advises todays number of new infections is again the highest on record. Advises Herd Immunity is problematic: "Herd immunity against measles requires about 95% of a population to be vaccinated. The remaining 5% will be protected by the fact that measles will not spread among those who are vaccinated. In other words immunity is achieved by protecting people from the virus, not by exposing them to it. Never has herd immunity been been used as a strategy for responding to an outbreak, let alone a pandemic. It is scientifically and ethically problematic."

- Austria: Report describes Ski Resort of Ischgl as the “ground zero” of the first wave in Europe, as "health authorities had been informed that a waiter at one of the town’s après-ski bars had been tested positive for Covid-19 and eleven staff members had served tourists for a week while displaying flu-like symptoms. Yet bars in Ischgl were not ordered to shut down until 10 March and the skiing season not declared over until 12 March" which was described as “a wrong decision, from an epidemiological perspective”.

- Italy: Police block 60 websites which were found to be selling fake COVID-19 cures and treatments.

- Iran: Sees new record high number of new daily cases and daily deaths.

- Malaysia: Announces it will put restrictions put in place between capital city and nearby areas.
 

NaffNaffBobFace

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And back to the whole mask debate.


All of this continues to support my stance and as Vos already said wear it as its a low-cost intervention with potential but don't be lulled into thinking it is protecting you as the research is still ongoing and there is a lot of unknowns. Especially since most of these studies are only looking at a very specific possible infection vectors and not how it factors into the spreading of a virus on a whole.
That's a decent article, worth a read. It really highlights how long confirmed science knowledge can take to get and how rigorous a test has to be to be able to be considered conclusive evidence for or against something.

I feel the new 3 tier system is a watered-down and less severe version of the old 5 levels
The Prime Minister is doing a press conference outlining exactly what it involves right now (Started 7pm UK, currently 7.40pm and apparently he's still going). I'm not watching because it's tea-time and I feel after the whole Barnard Castle viewing expiriance I'm benefiting much more from the TL;DR's that come later than the tossnami of live announcements these days.
 

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That's a decent article, worth a read. It really highlights how long confirmed science knowledge can take to get and how rigorous a test has to be to be able to be considered conclusive evidence for or against something.


The Prime Minister is doing a press conference outlining exactly what it involves right now (Started 7pm UK, currently 7.40pm and apparently he's still going). I'm not watching because it's tea-time and I feel after the whole Barnard Castle viewing expiriance I'm benefiting much more from the TL;DR's that come later than the tossnami of live announcements these days.
My interpretation from the tldl is that its some businesses in hospitality will be shut in tier 3 areas. Thats the only difference between whats going on now and whats to come.
 

NaffNaffBobFace

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My interpretation from the tldl is that its some businesses in hospitality will be shut in tier 3 areas. Thats the only difference between whats going on now and whats to come.
I haven't looked yet, but the Memes trending on Twitter suggest some numpty forgot to include Weatherspoons in the list of Pubs, Bars and Clubs to close in Liverpool which is going into Tier 3.... something about this is what a quater of a million pounds buys you, or something like that?

The one city in the country that has the nuts to hand someone their own nuts on a plate if they mess about with them (Ask Rupert Murdoch about the 30 year and counting boycott of The Sun newspaper).

EDIT - I've looked now and agree, there doesn't seem to be any substantial difference other than it has a new name and there is now no "No" or "Low" risk tier, they are just gone leaving the Medium, High and Extra High.


[from the above article:]
Areas with the lowest rates of infection will be placed in Tier One. They will face the basic national rules currently in force including:
  • Pubs, bars and restaurants will have to close at 22:00 BST
  • The rule of six (number of people who can meet up) applies both indoors and outdoors
[...]

Areas in Tier Two face an extra level of restrictions:
  • No mixing between different households indoors
  • The rule of six only continues outdoors
[...]

The highest level of restrictions are in Tier Three. Areas where transmission is rising most rapidly will be placed in this category.
The government said it would work with local councils on the additional measures for each area. The prime minister said the Liverpool City Region (Liverpool, Knowsley, Sefton, Wirral, St Helens and Halton) - currently the only area facing Tier Three restrictions - will have the following restrictions from Wednesday 14 October:
  • Pubs and bars will be closed, except where serving substantial meals
  • Households cannot mix indoors or outdoors
  • Gyms, leisure centres, betting shops and casinos will also close
  • Shops, schools and universities will remain open
[end of excerpt from above article]

There are some early reports emerging the SAGE scientists advice group have just released notes from meetings on September 21st indicating the above measures are not very close to what was advised... Early days on those reports though I'd have to wait for more details before being able to deride/vilify that.
 
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