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

Tesco and Marks and Spencer allocating specific early morning shopping days to NHS staff.

Handy as the word from my corner shop is that the local cash and carry’s are now emptied too.

Thanks for this - a more helpful rundown the govs own sites which direct you to 3 external sites to choose from. In our case only one of us earns (the other is full time home ed/childcare - which may present its own issues like 'mrs cyoa needs to look for a job first') and our savings were wiped in a bank fraud a few months ago so maybe we're quids in : )

Be nice if that was to encompass over 70's too..

They get separate days so they aren't mixing

My wife chose an excellent day to start her career in the NHS, it seems. First day on Monday.

god yes. keep the olds away from the NHS for as long as possible!

Oh! Where did you hear this?

Shit man, sorry to hear about your savings!

I'm not sure quids in is the right phrase but hopefully they'll be able to help!

Instagram M&S

https://www.instagram.com/p/B96ZxZog4_G/

https://www.bicesteradvertiser.net/news/18319535.tesco-introduces-special-shopping-hour-nhs-workers/

Spare rooms thread already showing how quickly this is ruining people's lives.

Cough suppressants are generally not great

You going to be alright? Will you still have things to deliver?

BBC: Boris Johnson says coronavirus is "proceeding in a way that does not seem yet to be responding to our intervention".

RANT INCOMING:

Guess what THERE ARE NO INTERVENTIONS AT ANY MEANINGFUL LEVEL

People are interacting everywhere. Infection vectors anywhere you look. In school playgrounds. On the bus. In panic buying queues. Pensioners everywhere. There is effectively no testing.

PLUS there is up to a 2-week incubation period - 2 weeks ago, were they even telling us to wash our hands?

These clowns have absolutely no idea what is happening in the real world. We are going to be worse than Italy :(

I reckon it was here months ago

Work is moving further out to get to wfh people but seems to for now. Got enough savings for 3 months I think, who knows after that.

My hospital (UCLH) will shortly have a second dedicated infectious diseases ward and ICU capacity at UCH is more than doubling from 35 to 76 beds *in the first instance *

That was already one of the biggest in the country and more than doubling it may not be enough.

How are admissions currently?

There is effectively no testing.

True, but until testing can be done at scale (and with faster turnaround) there's little point of doing any kind of widespread testing.

At the current capacity of 4,000 tests a day it would take about 18 weeks to test all of the NHS frontline staff, at which point a significant number of those would need to be retested as they were negative first time round and need retesting.

At 100,000 tests a day (25 times the current capacity) it would take nigh on 2 years to test everyone in the UK.

There's also two different tests:
a) Does the person have the specific coronavirus present in a nasal swab (i.e. are they possibly contagious)?
b) Does the person have the associated antibodies in sufficient quantities to demostrate immunity?

A person could be positive for (a) and also possess the antibodies for (b), but be completely asymptomatic. How long do you quarantine them for? They might be 14 days away from being non-contagious or just a day or so. Impossible to tell.

A person could be negative (a) because they've only just contracted the virus and it hasn't had time to multiply enough for a positive test. (b) would be negative. Would you let them work despite the fact that in a few days they'll be contagious and not displaying symptoms (if at all) for another 5 days?

It's more complicated than "just faaaaking run abaaat and do some testing".

Hopefully that will be enough

2 weeks ago, were they even telling us to wash our hands?

Think the 'two-times happy birthday' thing was about two weeks ago, though it seems longer somehow.

From a friend “I've decided that this week proves the theory that times goes quicker as we get older because we're having less novel experiences. Seems to be dragging on forever”

Just a perhaps dumb thought: when they roll out this test to say if people have had the virus, how will we/they signify that the person is 'clear' to the public, would there be a use in doing so? i.e people wear a badge etc.

yeah, the football season announcement seems months ago now!

Canada is sliding into lockdown. More stores closed day by day, daycares, cannabis stores closing on Friday.

Friend of mine have it (coronavirus, not COVID-19), and apparently people in Victoria BC going about their day like nothing bad gonna happen, much like the Briton I guess.

Been WFH this week (I’m finance) so nothing current. The takeaway from news last week was that people who are already terminally ill will show up in the COVID stats as they will have tested positive, but they are not the “excess deaths”. So we may not even be at the beginning of the beginning.