COVID-19/Coronavirus Information and Support Thread (see OP for useful links)

  • Thread starter baldgye
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Famine
There's a couple of issues with this idea.

Firstly, it's bollocks. Not actual complete bollocks, but pretty much a whole set of testes. In principle, if you have business interruption cover, and the insurers classes COVID-19 as a definable risk within the terms of the insurance agreement (which is by no means assured; a sudden pandemic won't make it into most lists), then a business could claim in the event of a government or local authority shut-down of access to the premises. There's a lot of stumbling blocks in there, and it's not contingent on Boris saying he's going to close pubs.

Secondly, the Government introduced an absolute flotilla of protective measures for businesses affected by COVID in the Budget literally last week.


In short, it's goose barf.
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Perhaps you need to address this to the pubs around the uk... from the bbc live thread:


UK pubs demand clarity over closures

In the UK, a group representing the pub industry has warned that thousands of pubs and jobs could go if the government does not take "immediate and decisive" action.

On Monday, PM Boris Johnson advised people to stay away from pubs, clubs and theatres, but did not order businesses to close.

The British Beer and Pub Association says this is the worst possible compromise, as it leaves the industry facing an "existential crisis" as they will not be entitled to insurance payouts.

They say they want a "meaningful support package" - tax breaks, to keep them afloat.

The government is set to announce more financial measures to help the economy later today.



(of course, I don’t know how you would. But it seems as though it’s a legitimate concern)
 
baldgye
I work for a medium sized business and we wouldn’t even have considered spending the money to replace all our tower PC’s with laptops... and even then, due to the software we use, you need two screens... so it was never even considered.
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In the office I use two monitors and my laptop display, its more than possible to do so.
 
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/im...-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

A 20 page report on how dealing with the corona virus in different fashions will impact health services.


Scaff
In the office I use two monitors and my laptop display, its more than possible to do so.
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We’re currently sending people home with two 24” screens attached to huge desk clamps and their towers.
I’m not saying it isn’t possible, just that no medium sized business can really cost for a pandemic outbreak. And given how downplayed it was very few who matter (in the uk anyway) have really taken it seriously until recently. Only this week have I had serious discussions about the disruption it’s going to cause and a phrase from The Wire is now haunting me “doing more with less”...

My partner to contrast works for a Fortune 500 company and everyone was given a brand new fully equipped laptop and accessories to work from home and has that jazzy vpn connection and remote support
 
Oh scumbag season has started - just 5 minutes ago I get a call. Alarm bells start ringing as the guy is speaking German, but it ain't a German, Swiss, or Austrian accent, and then he tries to sell me "Natural Remedies against the Corona Virus" while loading on the fear aspect.

Utter... well you know what.


Scaff
In the office I use two monitors and my laptop display, its more than possible to do so.
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With the VPN I can remote back to my work computer, and then I can do pretty much anything I need to do from my bed with an iPad. If I need more then I'm well sorted for IT in my own personal home office with multiple monitors on both my iMac and PC.

My GF had to bring her work machine home, but she only need to bring just the mac mini as I already had a couple of old monitors that I could hook up to it.
 
Someone should have told socialist communist terrorist Barack Hussein Obama that he only had to clear the hurdle of "he's at least doing a better job than Communist China." He probably would have been able to leave office without all of his hair turning grey.
 
baldgye
To my mind, they should have lead with a plan to save people and not the economy.
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The two are not mutually exclusive - the Government's response has to address both... in short, saving the economy is saving people - or at the very least, if the economy collapses, then a bad situation will be made a hell of a lot worse.

As for the way the virus is behaving/affecting the population, that was always going to be an unknown to a large extent. Even the best modelling available cannot account for unknown properties of a novel virus - it can only give a wide range of possibilities, making striking a balanced response very difficult.

-

This report (from Imperial College) shows how modelling can be used to predict the relative effectiveness of various social distancing and other non-medical interventions could have on mortality and healthcare demands... the graphs on P.10 are pretty scary to say the least...

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/im...-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

What that shows is that school and university closures would have a huge impact now... but would only delay a huge spike in the future. Unfortunately, there is no scenario where a peak lasting 3-4 months is avoided - but the current action sounds like it is best placed to deliver the lowest peak, albeit in a second wave that will be much worse than the first. It also means social distancing measures until next year... :ill:
 
Touring Mars
The two are not mutually exclusive - the Government's response has to address both... in short, saving the economy is saving people - or at the very least, if the economy collapses, then a bad situation will be made a hell of a lot worse.

As for the way the virus is behaving/affecting the population, that was always going to be an unknown to a large extent. Even the best modelling available cannot account for unknown properties of a novel virus - it can only give a wide range of possibilities, making striking a balanced response very difficult.

-

This report (from Imperial College) shows how modelling can be used to predict the relative effectiveness of various social distancing and other non-medical interventions could have on mortality and healthcare demands... the graphs on P.10 are pretty scary to say the least...

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/im...-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

What that shows is that school and university closures would have a huge impact now... but would only delay a huge spike in the future. Unfortunately, there is no scenario where a peak lasting 3-4 months is avoided - but the current action sounds like it is best placed to deliver the lowest peak, albeit in a second wave that will be much worse than the first. It also means social distancing measures until next year... :ill:
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We shared the same link! :dopey:

Yeah I know what your saying, but it’s hugely frustrating as someone who has to manage people and then report to people who only see a bottom line.

At the moment we’re in the worst of both worlds as we can’t send everyone home, but we have to send some home.... it’s just a mess and the message from the top isn’t cut and dry.
 
baldgye
Perhaps you need to address this to the pubs around the uk... from the bbc live thread:


UK pubs demand clarity over closures

In the UK, a group representing the pub industry has warned that thousands of pubs and jobs could go if the government does not take "immediate and decisive" action.

On Monday, PM Boris Johnson advised people to stay away from pubs, clubs and theatres, but did not order businesses to close.

The British Beer and Pub Association says this is the worst possible compromise, as it leaves the industry facing an "existential crisis" as they will not be entitled to insurance payouts.

They say they want a "meaningful support package" - tax breaks, to keep them afloat.

The government is set to announce more financial measures to help the economy later today.



(of course, I don’t know how you would. But it seems as though it’s a legitimate concern)
Click to expand...

As someone who works in the pub industry for a small, independent (in fact community-run) pub I can tell you yesterdays announcement from Boris shocked everyone yet wasn't fully expected. We had a phone call off of a brewery representative yesterday who said from his sources a mandated, enforced shut-down isn't being considered due to the fact the government can't actually afford to fund it and fund businesses - the pubs need to remain open as they help with high tax rates funding NHS etc.

Yet there's the extreme irony in advising people to stay at home and then telling businesses such as pubs that rely on getting people out of home into their establishments to remain open, basically government is advising corporate suicide so they don't have to pay anything out.

It's a disgrace but honestly to be expected from a government who've done little to act on things. I'm off the personal view this virus is severe but grossly over-exaggerated in media. Rather than government saying weeks ago "this is what could happen, this will be the plan" and acting proactively, instead they've acted reactively to mass hysteria, internet and newspaper-pushed chaos and fallen way behind with the curve.

The economic fall-out from this is going to be much greater than human costs.
 
Furi
As someone who works in the pub industry for a small, independent (in fact community-run) pub I can tell you yesterdays announcement from Boris shocked everyone yet wasn't fully expected. We had a phone call off of a brewery representative yesterday who said from his sources a mandated, enforced shut-down isn't being considered due to the fact the government can't actually afford to fund it and fund businesses - the pubs need to remain open as they help with high tax rates funding NHS etc.

Yet there's the extreme irony in advising people to stay at home and then telling businesses such as pubs that rely on getting people out of home into their establishments to remain open, basically government is advising corporate suicide so they don't have to pay anything out.

It's a disgrace but honestly to be expected from a government who've done little to act on things. I'm off the personal view this virus is severe but grossly over-exaggerated in media. Rather than government saying weeks ago "this is what could happen, this will be the plan" and acting proactively, instead they've acted reactively to mass hysteria, internet and newspaper-pushed chaos and fallen way behind with the curve.

The economic fall-out from this is going to be much greater than human costs.
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Could the pubs shift to a delivery and take-out business plan?
 
Dotini
Could the pubs shift to a delivery and take-out business plan?
Click to expand...

Firstly depends on the nature of the business alcohol licence (tied to a particular owner or member of staff). An "on-licence" is to sell booze for consumption on the premises, an "off licence" is required for consumption off the premises. Plenty of shops already have an off-licence (that's one of the things that hurts pub trade) and do deliveries. The other big selling points for pubs are food and TV, again there's a big network of businesses that already supply plenty of both for home delivery.

In short a pub's USP is the social element, without that they're just competitors in an already saturated market.
 
Furi
Yet there's the extreme irony in advising people to stay at home and then telling businesses such as pubs that rely on getting people out of home into their establishments to remain open, basically government is advising corporate suicide so they don't have to pay anything out.
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No part of this, already announced in the Budget, is contingent on government closing pubs:
https://assets.publishing.service.g...e/871900/Covid-19_Budget_fact_sheet_FINAL.pdf

Does your establishment have business interruption cover? Will it pay out for COVID-19 as a defined cause?
 
Furi
As someone who works in the pub industry for a small, independent (in fact community-run) pub I can tell you yesterdays announcement from Boris shocked everyone yet wasn't fully expected. We had a phone call off of a brewery representative yesterday who said from his sources a mandated, enforced shut-down isn't being considered due to the fact the government can't actually afford to fund it and fund businesses - the pubs need to remain open as they help with high tax rates funding NHS etc.

Yet there's the extreme irony in advising people to stay at home and then telling businesses such as pubs that rely on getting people out of home into their establishments to remain open, basically government is advising corporate suicide so they don't have to pay anything out.

It's a disgrace but honestly to be expected from a government who've done little to act on things. I'm off the personal view this virus is severe but grossly over-exaggerated in media. Rather than government saying weeks ago "this is what could happen, this will be the plan" and acting proactively, instead they've acted reactively to mass hysteria, internet and newspaper-pushed chaos and fallen way behind with the curve.

The economic fall-out from this is going to be much greater than human costs.
Click to expand...

Not disagreeing with anything you're saying mate, but I have to laugh when I see local pubs posting on Facebook... "The well being and health of our staff and customers is our top priority"... I think, no it isn't, staying in business is... at least lets be honest about it. I have two friends that have a brewery and own two town pubs, a friend with a country pub and restaurant, and we've got a trendy music venue as a sister company to the business I work for... and they're all going to be in deep **** if people stop going in.

I'd bet the number of business with suitable BIC is probably pretty small.
 
Pre peer-reviewed science has been criticized as little better than a steaming pile of horse manure, so hold your nose while you read this abstract:

Abstract
OBJECTIVE To investigate the relationship between the ABO blood group and the COVID-19 susceptibility. DESIGN The study was conducted by comparing the blood group distribution in 2,173 patients with COVID-19 confirmed by SARS-CoV-2 test from three hospitals in Wuhan and Shenzhen, China with that in normal people from the corresponding regions. Data were analyzed using one-way ANOVA and 2-tailed χ2 and a meta-analysis was performed by random effects models. SETTING Three tertiary hospitals in Wuhan and Shenzhen, China. PARTICIPANTS A total of 1,775 patients with COVID-19, including 206 dead cases, from Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, Wuhan, China were recruited. Another 113 and 285 patients with COVID-19 were respectively recruited from Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan and Shenzhen Third People's Hospital, Shenzhen, China. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Detection of ABO blood groups, infection occurrence of SARS-CoV-2, and patient death RESULTS The ABO group in 3694 normal people in Wuhan showed a distribution of 32.16%, 24.90%, 9.10% and 33.84% for A, B, AB and O, respectively, versus the distribution of 37.75%, 26.42%, 10.03% and 25.80% for A, B, AB and O, respectively, in 1775 COVID-19 patients from Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital. The proportion of blood group A and O in COVID-19 patients were significantly higher and lower, respectively, than that in normal people (both P < 0.001). Similar ABO distribution pattern was observed in 398 patients from another two hospitals in Wuhan and Shenzhen. Meta-analyses on the pooled data showed that blood group A had a significantly higher risk for COVID-19 (odds ratio-OR, 1.20; 95% confidence interval-CI 1.02~1.43, P = 0.02) compared with non-A blood groups, whereas blood group O had a significantly lower risk for the infectious disease (OR, 0.67; 95% CI 0.60~0.75, P < 0.001) compared with non-O blood groups.In addition, the influence of age and gender on the ABO blood group distribution in patients with COVID-19 from two Wuhan hospitals (1,888 patients) were analyzed and found that age and gender do not have much effect on the distribution. CONCLUSION People with blood group A have a significantly higher risk for acquiring COVID-19 compared with non-A blood groups, whereas blood group O has a significantly lower risk for the infection compared with non-O blood groups.
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https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096v1
 
Famine
Firstly, it's bollocks. Not actual complete bollocks, but pretty much a whole set of testes. In principle, if you have business interruption cover, and the insurers classes COVID-19 as a definable risk within the terms of the insurance agreement (which is by no means assured; a sudden pandemic won't make it into most lists), then a business could claim in the event of a government or local authority shut-down of access to the premises. There's a lot of stumbling blocks in there, and it's not contingent on Boris saying he's going to close pubs.
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But don't take my word for it. Here's the Association of British Insurers:

business-insurance1.png
​
Meanwhile that Budget provision for small businesses experiencing loss of earnings through closure, paying SSP, and so on, is literally exactly what the pub people are asking for.
 
As far as NY goes they've already waived some of the restrictions for to-go drinks from bars and it seems like a lot of restaurants, bars, and breweries around here are shifting to to go orders and take out. Already seen people making "quarantinis." Regardless I know a number of small business owners around here who are going to be in trouble, so I'm hoping some sort of hold is put on rent and certain expenses for these businesses until normal hours and service resumes.
 
The UK only realised "in the last few days" that attempts to "mitigate" the impact of the coronavirus pandemic would not work, and that it needed to shift to a strategy to "suppress" the outbreak, according to a report by a team of experts who have been advising the government.

The report, published by the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team on Monday night, found that the strategy previously being pursued by the government — dubbed "mitigation" and involving home isolation of suspect cases and their family members but not including restrictions on wider society — would "likely result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and health systems (most notably intensive care units) being overwhelmed many times over".
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https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/coronavirus-uk-strategy-deaths
 
The speed at which vaccines and treatments are coming continues to surprise me. Kaiser Permanente started clinical trials of Moderna's vaccine yesterday.

Coronavirus vaccine test underway as U.S. volunteer gets first shot

It's really interesting to see how the vaccine works too. It's not like the traditional vaccine with an inert virus in it, instead, it works to uses COVID-19's genetic code against it. From the article:

Researchers at the NIH copied the section of the virus’ genetic code that contains the instructions for cells to create the spike protein. Moderna encased that “messenger RNA” into a vaccine.

The idea: The body will become a mini-factory, producing some harmless spike protein. When the immune system spots the foreign protein, it will make antibodies to attack — and be primed to react quickly if the person later encounters the real virus.

That’s a much faster way of producing a vaccine than the traditional approach of growing virus in the lab and preparing shots from either killed or weakened versions of it.
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Touring Mars
Controversial opinion time:

Debate is raging in the UK about closing schools - many countries have already closed schools and gone into lockdown, while the UK is continuing to resist this policy for the time being.

The argument is fairly sound - school closures would cause more parents to miss work (including crucial health workers) and also increase the care burden on the most vulnerable group, the elderly. Thus, schools may not be closed in the UK for some time.

However, there is a problem facing this policy - holidays. What happens over the school holidays?

Putting 2 and 2 together leads me to one (probably very unpopular) opinion - instead of less school, should the government be looking at more school i.e. summer school programmes? This would take a huge amount of pressure off parents and, more importantly, their parents.

Coupled with social distancing recommendations/orders for parents, kids would only be able to mix with their own closed groups, which could have the knock-on effect of containing the spread of the virus between adults and thus slowing down the spread.

Does this make sense to anyone else?
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Yea, school closures here have resulted in people bringing their kids to supermarkets to stand in line with the elderly, and sending their kids to their elderly parents for childcare. This is my soap box, and I'm sticking with it - we should have been focusing quarantine on the elderly instead of everyone. It would have caused less panic, fewer layoffs, more availability of items, and a much smoother process.

My kids are at home with me today, so I'm trying to squeeze a few hours of work in. Denver just closed restaurants for 30 days, so I imagine that I have to try to work nights, weekends, here and there for the next month to stop myself from taking all of my vacation to try to save boomers (that's a little tongue-in-cheek) that won't save themselves.


eiriksmil
What seems to be lost on you is that this staff is also responsible for testing, i.e. the less statistics we get here the worse we are. The same staff is also unable to attend regular ER cases like traffic accidents, heart attacks, strokes, ODs, you name it. That's why quarantining only those at imminent risk is a dangerous solution.
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It's not lost on me. I get it. The important part is trying to keep that staff, who is building an immunity to the virus, from being overwhelmed by the vulnerable morons of the world that won't protect themselves. If we postponed elective operations, and corporations ramp up telework, and people voluntarily travel less, and if the people who are going to be hospitalized from this take their situation seriously and isolate (and we can support that with people who are still working!), then we can keep hospitals from being overloaded.

But instead, nobody has any common sense. So the vulnerable and elderly are out in full force, having been pumped full of their invulnerability from years of social engineering, currently stoked by puffery from Trump and others, ready to clog our hospitals when they're proven wrong. So the next best thing, since these people won't take care of themselves, and we don't target them specifically with quarantine rules, and we won't just let them die at the hospital when they show up hat in hand, is that we shut down all of society, and make the millennials (again, tongue in cheek here) take it on the chin to save the boomers from themselves.

The irony is that when some of those people have been saved, they'll laugh at young people for getting so worked up over nothing.
 
Danoff
The important part is trying to keep that staff, who is building an immunity to the virus, from being overwhelmed by the vulnerable morons of the world that won't protect themselves. If we postponed elective operations, and corporations ramp up telework, and people voluntarily travel less, and if the people who are going to be hospitalized from this take their situation seriously and isolate (and we can support that with people who are still working!), then we can keep hospitals from being overloaded.
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This is pretty much the NL strategy at the moment. Government has accepted that everyone will get this at some point in time so we won't go for a full lockdown, only a partial one to slow down the rate of infection so our hospitals can keep up. NL infection rate is also low compared to other countries in EU, even if adjusted for lack of detection. This gives us an advantage over other countries. Guess we'll have to see if this works out or not. We can still have total lockdowns as 'circuit breakers' but these would have limited impact as opposed to a total lockdown. At least, that's the theory.
 
Joey D
It's really interesting to see how the vaccine works too. It's not like the traditional vaccine with an inert virus in it, instead, it works to uses COVID-19's genetic code against it.
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You want zombies? Because that is how you get zombies.

Edit.

I was driving past a football club that has open fields for kids to play on, and it seems that the message in Dutch didn't get through to our people of different colours. Hordes of coloured kids playing as if it was a normal sunny day. Highly irresponsible parenting
 
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Microsoft have had to increase capacity in its Teams platform by 800% on the back of increased remote working. There were some outages some part of the world a few days ago but it really shows the potential of public cloud platforms. Had my company needed to do this in isolation to our on-premise infrastructure it would be weeks or months I suspect.

Dennisch
You want zombies? Because that is how you get zombies.

Edit.

I was driving past a football club that has open fields for kids to play on, and it seems that the message in Dutch didn't get through to our people of different colours. Hordes of coloured kids playing as if it was a normal sunny day. Highly irresponsible parenting
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"Coloured kids"

Have you time travelled from the 1970s?
 
Danoff
A really high percentage of cases may be completely asymptomatic.
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That would be something of a relief, as it would imply that the growth curves we are seeing may not be as severe in terms of the final number of deaths/hospitalisations.

It is also bad because it means that shielding and quarantine measures are made more difficult and would justify/require testing of the entire population to help protect the vulnerable - and that probably ain't happening any time soon.
 

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