COVid19-What's wrong with UK?

[MJMcCready]

Oh and also something about tea being served in polystyrene cups at train stations. Pot noodle was mentioned, I think the flavour mentioned was boiling water flavour.

[soheil_hooshdaran]

Have you also wore mask during this time or just limited gathering and kept social distancing of 2 meters?

[David Sedgwick]

Have you also wore mask during this time or just limited gathering and kept social distancing of 2 meters?

I live in Croydon, a suburb of London.

Initially few people were wearing masks, not least because they were difficult to obtain. Now about 50% - 60% are doing so.

[Matt Mackenzie]

They are, in many places, still not as easily available as they should be.

[soheil_hooshdaran]

They are, in many places, still not as easily available as they should be.

even home-made, cloth ones?

[Matt Mackenzie]

Home made ones can vary in quality and effectiveness.

[NickFaulks]

Home made ones can vary in quality and effectiveness.

In terms of effectiveness, I doubt that they vary very much. Some do look quite nice.

[Kevin Thurlow]

My local pharmacist sold me some - I think the primary function is to prevent the wearer infecting anyone else, rather than the other way round. It is quite difficult to breathe in them, and if you're wearing glasses, they get steamed up. The local fishmonger/grocer complained of the same thing, so he acquired a face-shield, which probably is better protection for him and his customers.

I'm informed that in the absence of their usual meetings, some embroidery clubs are frantically making masks, and my old school's technical staff have been making face shields for local GPs and Care Homes. (Doubtless others are too.)

[NickFaulks]

In February, an eon ago, I was heading off to the FIDE Congress in Abu Dhabi and asked my helpful pharmacist whether I could buy a mask.

HP : You mean the ones that actually help to control the spread of the coronavirus? Sorry, they are unobtainable.

Me : No. I just want something that is useless but looks as though I am doing something responsible.

HP : Sorry, we're sold out of them too.

Three months later, no change. It is just as well that the virus seems to have packed its bags and left the streets of London for the summer.

It will presumably be back in November, around the time when we are finally emerging from lockdown and the weather suits it, to coincide with the normal flu season. That's why our experts are paid the big bucks.

[soheil_hooshdaran]

In February, an eon ago, I was heading off to the FIDE Congress in Abu Dhabi and asked my helpful pharmacist whether I could buy a mask.

HP : You mean the ones that actually help to control the spread of the coronavirus? Sorry, they are unobtainable.

Me : No. I just want something that is useless but looks as though I am doing something responsible.

HP : Sorry, we're sold out of them too.

Three months later, no change. It is just as well that the virus seems to have packed its bags and left the streets of London for the summer.

It will presumably be back in November, around the time when we are finally emerging from lockdown and the weather suits it, to coincide with the normal flu season. That's why our experts are paid the big bucks.

Iranian health authorities warn that fall will see Covid 19 re-emerging, as with Spanish influenza pandemic, this time co-morbid with flu, and much more dangerous; So there is only a summer window.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Spanish influenza"

Can I just comment that "Spanish influenza" probably started in USA, then moved to UK, both of those governments kept quiet about it, and it was in Spain, that they actually admitted there was a problem. So we should maybe call it American influenza...

[John McKenna]

"Spanish influenza" probably started in USA...

Possibly not -

The origins of this influenza variant is not precisely known. It is thought to have originated in China in a rare genetic shift of the influenza virus. The recombination of its surface proteins created a virus novel to almost everyone and a loss of herd immunity. Recently the virus has been reconstructed from the tissue of a dead soldier and is now being genetically characterized.

The name of Spanish Flu came from the early affliction and large mortalities in Spain (BMJ,10/19/1918) where it allegedly killed 8 million in May (BMJ, 7/13/1918).

However, a first wave of influenza appeared early in the spring of 1918 in Kansas and in military camps throughout the US. Few noticed the epidemic in the midst of the war. Wilson had just given his 14 point address. There was virtually no response or acknowledgment to the epidemics in March and April in the military camps.

It was unfortunate that no steps were taken to prepare for the usual recrudescence of the virulent influenza strain in the winter. The lack of action was later criticized when the epidemic could not be ignored in the winter of 1918 (BMJ, 1918). These first epidemics at training camps were a sign of what was coming in greater magnitude in the fall and winter of 1918 to the entire world.

https://virus.stanford.edu/uda/

Furthermore -

With the dead piling up and recruitment targets falling short, commanders needed every able body they could muster to man the front lines.

Yet by the war’s third year, there were simply not enough hands available for other tasks: trench digging duties, road maintenance, or even just filling sandbags. While fresh fighting men were hard to come by, the war effort also needed labourers… and it needed them fast.

Desperate, Allied commanders eventually did what plantation owners in the Caribbean and railway barons in North America had been doing for decades: They hired Chinese hands to do the dirty work — more than 140,000 of them.

https://militaryhistorynow.com/2013/12/ ... our-corps/

[Simon Rogers]

The Spanish Flu of 1918 to 1919 killed an estimated 50 million people in 6 months. More than the people killed as a result of the fighting during the First World War.
Pandemic flu targets the young fit and healthy.
We are overdue another flu pandemic.
The latest research and science is saying this will come from Avian Influenza.
There has been many cases of Avian Influenza in China recently about 200 miles south of Wuhan.
Avian Influenza has a current death rate of 60%.
Apparently it only needs a couple of mutations before it is easily transmissable.

[Mick Norris]

I have been for a test today, interesting experience

My first visit to the Etihad since we had the Rapidplays a few years ago

[Simon Rogers]

The only time I've been to the Etihad was when I had tickets for the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games.
Do you think you've got the virus? I hope not.