Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

Email this morrow from Chinese Ebay shop selling bike parts: "our government have released the closed road because of the corona virus has been effectively controlled in our country.
, and we can ship off the items as normally begin from March 18.
If you still want to items, please give us a reply."

Delusional propaganda

Richmond Park busier than a Bank Holiday weekend this morning on my commute to work. Hundreds of WFH Cyclists enjoying morning laps. Good to see a sense of perspective prevailing in London cyclists.

Bike shop(s) I work in have been busier last week mon-fri with all the WFH dudes popping in for little bits. Also anecdotal but my flatmate who has face-to-face meetings with clients in local cafes etc during the week noted last week she couldn't get a table in her usual spots for all the WFH people on their laptops (she's moved everyone over to Skype sessions now)

That's good to hear. Hopefully people can keep doing this and we don't need a full shutdown like Spain.

Delusional propaganda

The WHO must be just a cog in the CCP propaganda machine then.

Paywall: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/health/china-lessons-aylward.html

Donald McNeil´s reporting has been linked to on this thread before. Here´s a longer piece, published two weeks ago, on Aylward´s findings:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/health/coronavirus-china-aylward.html?searchResultPosition=3

To sum it all up, the key is enormous testing and tracking capabilities and fever clinics (complete with CT machines) so that new outbreaks are quickly found and the infected isolated away from their homes. Oh, and hospitals that have more kit than Swiss clinics do.

Regarding propaganda claims:

"I know there’s suspicion, but at every testing clinic we went to, people would say, “It’s not like it was three weeks ago.”"

"I didn’t see anything that suggested manipulation of numbers. "

"Journalists also say, “Well, they’re only acting out of fear of the government,” as if it’s some evil fire-breathing regime that eats babies. I talked to lots of people outside the system — in hotels, on trains, in the streets at night.
They’re mobilized, like in a war, and it’s fear of the virus that was driving them. They really saw themselves as on the front lines of protecting the rest of China. And the world."

I'm a massive extrovert so wfh is as painful as it sounds. I agree on the human contact. And best to start early to get used to it. First couple days will feel like a holiday but soon it'll become a chore.

You're not the first person who's suggested that! Is quite good.

UK approach continues to be an omnishambles:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/17/there-is-a-policy-of-surrender-doctor-on-uks-covid-19-failures

I still have not seen any adequate explanation of why we can't scale testing. Other than there is no will to do so.

My reply was a bit flippant. This is the chat thread after all.

But given China has just expelled US journalists and attempts to shut down doctors that speak out. I'd still say, delusional propaganda is strong.

.

Also, Neil Ferguson, one of the few people who seems to have any sort of grip, has now got Covid - 19 symptom.

Apparently it's capacity

From another guardian article:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/17/testing-for-coronavirus-what-being-done-in-uk

Why are people with symptoms not being tested? It appears to be a
capacity issue, although the Department of Health and Social Care
failed to respond to repeated requests for explanation. So far there
have been about 44,000 tests in England, which the government’s chief
scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, told the health select
committee put it in “the top three or four countries in terms of
testing”. PHE has a capacity of about 4,000 tests per day, he said,
although last week NHS England put out a press release saying it was
scaling up to 10,000 a day. Vallance said 4,000 a day “is clearly not
going to be enough going forward” and said there was “a very big
effort going on to try and ramp that up”.

He said healthcare workers were among the “key workers” they wanted to
be able to test – but it is clear that will not happen very soon.
Asked if the UK should have mass testing on the scale of South Korea,
which has tested more than 250,000 people out of a population of 51
million, and is bringing infections down, Vallance said: “I think we
need a big increase in testing. That’s what I’m pushing for very hard.
Everyone is working hard to try and make that happen.”

This is going to be a huge test of relationships, I am working from home now with my girl friend and 2 house mates. Exercise and booze will be the only thing that keeps me sane, I’m already bored and missing my work pals and I wouldn’t even be at work yet.

I’ve got a busy schedule of making various bone broth at the moment that I don’t usually have time for which will be nice, ramen and pho for days.

Bone broth

Escalated quickly

But given China has just expelled US journalists and attempts to shut down doctors that speak out.

Fuck, really? Linkies on kicking out journos?

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing-source-data

Here are per country reports on tests. The UK is actually higher than I would have guessed.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-bill-what-it-will-do/what-the-coronavirus-bill-will-do#contents-of-the-bill

Contents:

3/ containing and slowing the virus – by reducing unnecessary social contacts, for example through powers over events and gatherings, and strengthening the quarantine powers of police and immigration officers

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/business/media/china-expels-american-journalists.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/business/china-coronavirus-doctor-death.html

Announced last night - banned from working in mainland China and HK/Macau, will be interesting to see how that could possibly be enforced...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/17/china-to-expel-more-us-journalists-in-latest-tit-for-tat-move

Someone on my wechat earlier was saying ... actually I can't even face typing it out here life is too fucking short, let's just say it was racist shit and I'm over it.

Oh I agree with you.
I just thought it funny an ebay seller was banging the drum. That is what i saw as delusional propaganda.

Guessing that the private test is antibody presence, PHE test is rtpcr
China has massive genome sequence programs huge.
Scaling up/moving machinery isn't an issue.

To your previous point, the part about JCs being appointed would, at a gurss, be the one tjatbis ripe for abuse.

Serious bit of tit for tattery for sure, but still hard to discount the previous reporting that seems to have a top WHO official confirming China´s (alleged) success. China obviously tried to cover up first and the regime is plainly evil, generally speaking.

I see my elderly neighbour 75+ leave her house every day.