CoronaVirus ==> Empty Shelves

[Simplicity]

One of my friends died last week from Covid-19. In the UK.

Regards from Perth

Derek

My condolences Derek.

Cheers Matt

[doug3030]

There was a health care worker who died of Covid-19 last week in Melbourne. I knew his wife, Jools used to work with her.

[FenceFurniture]

Sorry to hear that about your friend Derek.



I'm currently watching the White House briefing live. Trump has just announced that he is suspending funding to WHO, and has gone on a long diatribe condemning the organisation. There will be a very lively q&a session at the end...especially after yesterday when he declared that the president has absolute power in a situation like this.

[BobL]

Similar to Bobl watching the Italian situation closely I have been reading the Dutch papers and news.
Today I found out that the Dutch statistics only cover the infection rate and death numbers of those tested for the virus, anyone dying that only saw a GP and not tested, was not counted.
Very few were tested because of lack of tests available so I do not trust the figures from Netherlands. I presume that is the same for a lot of countries.

In the UK and Italy many people dying in aged care facilities are not being counted. Some 90 care facilities in the UK are apparently rife (staff and residents) with COVID19. Estimates for the UK is that the death rate is bout 20% too low.

[Kuffy]

Derek, the actual problem is that the virus is real and the decisions to tackle it head on via my preferred method of eradication or the bad method of herd immunity both come with a cost that is more than anyone make a decision on. So "essential workers" like me are needed to continue doing there thing which will likely bring about the decision of herd immunity being forced upon us.

[NeilS]

One of my friends died last week from Covid-19. In the UK.

Sorry to hear of your loss, Derek.

[Tonyz]

report on Adelaide news a D...head tried off loading $10.000 worth of TP and sanitiser on ebay..had that shut down so dipstick returns to supermarket and they told him to store it in a safe place.

[bueller]

report on Adelaide news a D...head tried off loading $10.000 worth of TP and sanitiser on ebay..had that shut down so dipstick returns to supermarket and they told him to store it in a safe place.

Hopefully that safe place is somewhere the sun doesn't shine. What a tool.

[NeilS]

This ...thing... keeps getting worse.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/bior...06213.full.pdf

As explained to me by an immunologist in simple language that I might understand...

"Viruses hitting the human host for the first time" behave in very different ways to when it's in its reservoir host/s.

When a virus is new to a host population its variants become more or less successful at keeping the host alive and active enough to pass the code on to more individuals. Until then some variants are more or less contagious, others are more or less debilitating (thus reducing transmission rates) and other strains are so debilitating it result in an earlier death and higher mortality rates in the new host population.

A more deadly variant isn't necessarily more successful for the virus (and definitely not for us humans), but that virus 'experiment' can emerge from the mutations at any time. Slowing the rate of transmission also has the advantage of slowing down the rate of mutation (I think I understood that). If you throw the dice less often you get less variation. Some viruses also throw off more mutations than others.

We don't know yet where the Covid-19 mutations will take us with all of that. Dampening its spread will give us time to understand it and do things like develop effective and safe vaccines for the most prevalent strains.

The reference H1N1-1918 flu virus demonstrates how a virus can quickly mutate when the spread is rapid and how the variants can have very different impacts on us, but also that (other than its initial success) it hasn't been one of the more successful viruses, only achieving one significant return so far. However, any one of the flu types could come back with a vengeance for which Covid-19 will be a good drill.

One of the most successful viruses has been the 200 variants of the common cold that just keep mutating a little bit each season so that we don't develop immunity, making us miserable with the symptoms but not enough to stop us spreading it.

[Tonyz]

Hopefully that safe place is somewhere the sun doesn't shine. What a tool.

I think the reporter would have loved saying that but it was on ABC after all.

[poundy]

report on Adelaide news a D...head tried off loading $10.000 worth of TP and sanitiser on ebay..had that shut down so dipstick returns to supermarket and they told him to store it in a safe place.

From news.com.au the video response by the exec was awesome Supermarket boss’s blunt reply to toilet paper hoarder wanting refund
This is apparently an earlier ditty the guy did.... YouTube (NSFW)

[NeilS]

If you asked someone in the small community of NW Tassie 10 days ago if they knew anyone with Covid-19 the chances are they would have almost all answered no.

NW Tasmania cv-19 cases.jpg
Source

Today there are over 100 cases there. Ask them again now and I expect many in that NW Tassie community will know somebody who has it and if not already then they will in the coming days as the numbers grow.

The percentage of those tested (targeted at those who were though to be at high risk of contracting it) have returned a 10% positive result. Source

The two regional hospitals are now closed. If you end up in hospital or an ICU for any reason you are going to be a long way from your local community, ie if they manage to get you there in time. Not a nice prospect having spent a few stints in hospital myself and with others that were seriously ill.

[GraemeCook]

report on Adelaide news a D...head tried off loading $10.000 worth of TP and sanitiser on ebay..had that shut down so dipstick returns to supermarket and they told him to store it in a safe place.

Similar story doing the rounds down here.

Allegedly, someone tried to sell 5,600 rolls of toilet paper on eBay and Gumtree, and was promptly delisted. Then tried to sell it back to major supermarkets:

• One declined as they could not be sure that the product was "virus free", and
• Other offered to buy it all - at wholesale prices.

Probably an urban myth.

[poundy]

If you asked someone in the small community of NW Tassie 10 days ago if they knew anyone with Covid-19 the chances are they would have almost all answered no.

NW Tasmania cv-19 cases.jpg
Source

Today there are over 100 cases there. Ask them again now and I expect many in that NW Tassie community will know somebody who has it and if not already then they will in the coming days as the numbers grow.

The percentage of those tested (targeted at those who were though to be at high risk of contracting it) have returned a 10% positive result. Source

The two regional hospitals are now closed. If you end up in hospital or an ICU for any reason you are going to be a long way from your local community, ie if they manage to get you there in time. Not a nice prospect having spent a few stints in hospital myself and with others that were seriously ill.

Could not agree more, this kind of escalation is why the approach, that might seem heavy handed, is the only way to have this really addressed. The other example is the person in Western Sydney who exhibited minimal symptoms but still went to work, now there are a total of 10 confirmed cases and several other people in isolation in case they come down with it.

[GraemeCook]

News media routine states that Australia is not doing as well as New Zealand but a lot better than USA and UK in the battle against coronavirus but it is difficult to compare figures because od the very different population sizes of the countries.

I tried to standardise the comparisons by looking at daily new cases per million of population. All coronavirus and population figures were sourced from worldometers at 12 noon today. But some massaging was needed. First the daily new cases for Australia from raw data.

COVID Australia 1dma.jpg

The spikes and troughs in the data are not really what one would expect. My guess is that they reflect imperfections in the clerical process of assembling the data. For example, front line medical staff may not see the statistics as a high priority and my send yesterday's data off to HQ today, or tomorrow. Some data may arrive after the stats clerk goes home. etc. So I decided to smooth the data somewhat using simple three and five day moving averages: see next post.