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 A Town Called Malus wrote:

This. How many times has Trump said something stupid Y, people came out and said he meant X, and then Trump comes out and says he did mean Y.

At this point, giving Trump the benefit of the doubt seems a bit naive.

The problem is his ego wont let him admit that he misspoke. So even when he does mean X he cant admit it and doubles down on Y.

Big Brothering worries aside, at the same time I can see the possible advantages of a tracking app. I've heard theories about one being planned where if you end up in the hospital or test positive for the virus, the app can backtrack your movements and list others with the app that you were in close contact within a certain window of time, so they can be alerted. Essentially a halfway-test for the virus for the people who were close to you.

Taken in a vacuum that is an excellent idea for helping contain the spread of this pandemic. It would take tracking outbreaks to the next level and remove a lot of the guesswork. But....there are serious downsides of the app being used as a Watchdog, or for commercial uses.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I had a very scary time last night.

My daughter was coming home from a walk in the evening. SHe said there was a bus parked outside, with one passenger in it who was unconscious.

We looked out of our front window. The bus was there. The driver was outside, talking on his smartphone. He had blue gloves but no mask.

We didn't know what to do. I want to go and help, maybe offer him a cup of tea, but my wife forbade me.

After a while the ambulance arrived. Two paramedics got out. Ther had masks, gloves and aprons, but no face shields.

They got the casualty out of the bus. She was a middle-aged woman, it looked like. They took her into the amulance on a folding trolley stretcher.

The ambulance, then the bus drove off.

All this happened about 30 yards from my front door.

I'm very sorry to hear that, KK . That sounds like something that might be from another medical condition, though, right? Did they explain what happened?

 RiTides wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I had a very scary time last night.

My daughter was coming home from a walk in the evening. SHe said there was a bus parked outside, with one passenger in it who was unconscious.

We looked out of our front window. The bus was there. The driver was outside, talking on his smartphone. He had blue gloves but no mask.

We didn't know what to do. I want to go and help, maybe offer him a cup of tea, but my wife forbade me.

After a while the ambulance arrived. Two paramedics got out. Ther had masks, gloves and aprons, but no face shields.

They got the casualty out of the bus. She was a middle-aged woman, it looked like. They took her into the amulance on a folding trolley stretcher.

The ambulance, then the bus drove off.

All this happened about 30 yards from my front door.

I'm very sorry to hear that, KK . That sounds like something that might be from another medical condition, though, right? Did they explain what happened?

Going lay good money down it wan another medical condition. If she actually had the virus that's going all out she wouldn't have made it to the bus stop let alone out of bed.
As for Trump gaffe(s) all past PROTUS has made them. GW Jr mixed up his left hand with his right hand comment. Though I will say when Trump makes a gaffe or being not informed it does take the mind off the Corona virus for a bit.

I'm hearing southern Italy is now Mafia territory.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Big Brothering worries aside, at the same time I can see the possible advantages of a tracking app. I've heard theories about one being planned where if you end up in the hospital or test positive for the virus, the app can backtrack your movements and list others with the app that you were in close contact within a certain window of time, so they can be alerted. Essentially a halfway-test for the virus for the people who were close to you.

Taken in a vacuum that is an excellent idea for helping contain the spread of this pandemic. It would take tracking outbreaks to the next level and remove a lot of the guesswork. But....there are serious downsides of the app being used as a Watchdog, or for commercial uses.

The one being planned by Apple and Google is a nightmarish blend of stupidity, ineffectiveness and at best a lot of false positives.

It requires:
Everyone involved have a phone, the app, have it on, on their person, and running, accurately enter if they have the virus or not (and remove themselves if they recover and are no longer infectious), registers anonymously if you come 'close enough' (by what criteria is unclear) and will send out alerts if you at some point contract the virus, are diagnosed with the virus and actually enter that information into the app. Then it alerts people (again anonymously) that they've been 'in close proximity' to someone that now has the virus in the past... unknown number of days, based on the likely unknown number of days you've been infectious.

For actually tracking real contact and not every random Joe who passed close by on the street but likely not close enough to infect (in either direction), it sounds amazingly useless. A good tool for making people paranoid about everyone around them, but it doesn't sound like its actually worth spit for tracing real infectious contact between individual people.

It also can't even vaguely track if you came along in a public place and touched a surface with infectious traces left behind by a person five minutes ago. Someone sneezed on a counter or door handle (or their hand, and then manipulated said surface)? App can't track that. Picked up a cereal box that someone thought about buying an hour ago? Can't track that.


Even if it is useful in some small way, it requires a level of buy-in, meticulousness and carrying your phone at all times that most people just don't seem capable of. Most people I know routinely leave their phones at home, in their cars or at their desks. It isn't in their pocket for 90% of their day, even when they are out of the house. If its actually charged for more than half the day, its a minor miracle.

At least here people do have phone generally so there's that.

And surface thing isn't much of worry. Has there yet been single confirmed case of surface infection?

I concur with Voss. a useless app thats a pointless waste of storage at best, and a poorly disguised potential further creep into peoples privacy at worst.

We're not going to 'app' our way out of this one.

Yep. Some people will find it incomprehensible that there are members of the general population that don't have a smart phone - and not just those at the bottom rung of society, some chose not to. Add in the fact that it needs to be carried, installed and on it seems a waste of resources. China made it work but that's because I assume that not having the app/phone meant you were counted as 'Red'. But did the app help in a meaningful way beyond the general lockdown?

MarkNorfolk wrote:
China made it work but that's because I assume that not having the app/phone meant you were counted as 'Red'. But did the app help in a meaningful way beyond the general lockdown?

I didn't think China used any apps to help - they did track the phones of people confirmed infected and phoned them regularly to check they had it with them and hadn't snuck out and left it at home. Obviously this isn't feasible in countries without the overarching powers of the Chinese government.

As I understand it, the main shining case study in the success of a tracing app was in South Korea.

MarkNorfolk wrote:
Yep. Some people will find it incomprehensible that there are members of the general population that don't have a smart phone - and not just those at the bottom rung of society, some chose not to. Add in the fact that it needs to be carried, installed and on it seems a waste of resources. China made it work but that's because I assume that not having the app/phone meant you were counted as 'Red'. But did the app help in a meaningful way beyond the general lockdown?

Well these days here the price difference between non smart phone and smart phone is so cheap not many don't have.

And you don't have to have it on everybody to have use. That's like saying you need to ask everybody for poll to have polls to be any use. It's not silver bullet but any tool helps. Masks aren't silver bullet that fixes everything either yet should we abandon masks because they don't provide 100% solution?

tneva82 wrote:
At least here people do have phone generally so there's that.

And surface thing isn't much of worry. Has there yet been single confirmed case of surface infection?

A confirmed case? Not really sure. If you can't get it from surfaces, people and governments have wasted billions on some pointless cleaning routines. (Though every time I see images of teams disinfecting streets, I roll my eyes).

And you don't have to have it on everybody to have use. That's like saying you need to ask everybody for poll to have polls to be any use.

No it isn't. A poll is trying to extrapolate a general feeling about very strictly limited options. A contact trace is actually trying to identify specific people an infected person has been in contact with and may have infected. The methodology is completely different- 'select approve/disapprove/indifferent' is completely unlike identifying which of potentially hundreds (or thousands in a big city) of people you were really physically close to and not just in the same general area at roughly the same time

----

In other news, Spain has decided to loosen restrictions. I guess someone had to be the test bed for how quickly a resurgence can happen.

One potentially nice thing about Covid is nature recovery - when you look about news about clear Venetian channels, endangered turtles in Brazil surviving hatching in much greater numbers thanks to empty beaches, and other stories that would be impossible a year ago because powerful lobby funded by rich screamed MUH ECONOMY when someone proposed temporary limits to give animals some space when they are most vulnerable I hope we can repeat that in next years even without prompting. Humans can live with beach closed for a week when turtles need to lay eggs, forests being off limits in mating season. But who I am kidding, greed and lack of empathy will probably mean business as usual in 2021 and following, better cut every single tree down and concrete every last single bit of ground, think of profits and the economy, eh?

Hell, just look at this:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/11/positively-alpine-disbelief-air-pollution-falls-lockdown-coronavirus

Simple comparison between these two photos shows how insane we are - literally killing ourselves under the dictando of oil and car lobbies spending billions to arrest changes each year, even thought simple alternatives exist (see Dutch cities, closing centers for traffic except on bike or electric, well developed public transportation, and foot friendly infrastructure aren't new concepts, and they work well if introduced in every example I looked at, even though conservative propaganda predicted collapse and desertion of cities before trials started).

And the funny/sad part is, if we introduced clean measures earlier, we would have easier fight with Covid too. I live in relatively clean city, and I found the difference in air quality with big, polluting cities that don't care about it (like Krakow, London, or Glasgow) to be pretty staggering - and we apparently have infection ratio below national average thanks to the fact our air doesn't damage lungs making them much more vulnerable to infection, even though my home town still has a way to go before reaching truly green, sustainable standard. Maybe seeing what we're missing will finally prompt some change?

 Azreal13 wrote:
feth me I'm the last one to defend the bloke, but you're trying to hard to manufacture outrage here. assuming the quote is accurate, he's talking about how adaptable microorganisms can be, and using how bacteria constantly outpace the efficacy of antibiotics as an example. Bacteria adapting to antibiotic treatments is not the same as a virus mutating, but it is analogous enough that I'll concede I understand his point and don't fundamentally disagree with it, rather than raging about the minute inaccuracies in how he's expressed himself and holding it up as an example of how big an idiot he is. There's already plenty of examples of that.

What? You know you're defending a dude who made up story about hydroxychloroquine being drug for Covid (spoiler alert: it's useless), causing shortages threatening lives of people who really have diseases treated by it, causing multiple deaths as people ran to obtain it in false hopes of protecting themselves and guzzled it without supervision:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/24/coronavirus-cure-kills-man-after-trump-touts-chloroquine-phosphate

And is now threatening economic war with India if they don't release all their supplies immediately (again, ignoring people who need it and India has big malaria problem)?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/07/india-releases-hydroxychloroquine-stocks-amid-pressure-from-trump

If someone wrote about president of the country threatening others with retaliation just to protect his ego after spreading story he heard on Fox Lies ten years ago I'd think the author is crazy or on drugs. Alas, here we are now.

I would imagine that if surfaces were a truly high risk, the numbers of infection rates would be much, much higher.

Cleaning surfaces is just an overreaction, but overkill is a good thing in a pandemic because you can't tell if you UNDERreacted until after the fact.

It's the condom theory from Aliens vs. Predator. It's better to have one than not need it, than to need one but not have it.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Just saw a video by Dr. Ezek Emanuel saying that a 12 to 18 month lock-down is the time table we should be looking at. I dont disagree with the strategy working the way he says it would. Basically don't leave your house until we have a vaccine in 18 month...Yeah that would be the least possible deaths. What I disagree with is even the notion that locking down the public for 12 months to a year should even be entertained. In the long run a 12-18 month international lockdown kills more people than you'd save from Covid deaths. International famine from food shortages due to lost production / inevitable conflicts arising from such things / suicides from social depression.

Any sort lockdown short of that isn't going to save many lives at all and without vaccine the numbers will look the same. Eventually nearly everyone will be exposed to the virus. So I think the initial 1 month lockdown to give health services a chance to catch up on required materials and learn how to treat the patient was good. Now It is time now to get back to work. 12 - 18 lockdown is so absurd. Clearly that is not happening.

I don't think you fully comprehend how this whole thing works. A 1 month lockdown doesn't mean that suddenly health services can treat the virus and everything is going to be okay, there is still an absolute 100% risk of our health system collapsing if we go back to work.

 Ghool wrote:
In 12-18 months when a vaccine is available, it would seem that at the current rate of infection, herd immunity will have developed.
And locking people in their homes for a year? It’s only been a few weeks and already people are getting stir crazy. Not going to happen.

Math I crunched a dozen or so pages ago indicated that it would be more like 24-36 months to develop herd immunity, the number would have to be revised to account for the additional impact of tighter social distancing measures, but that revision would shift the timeline to the right, social distancing makes the process of developing herd immunity take longer as a result of fewer people getting infections.

Don't disagree with any of that. What we are seeing right now is the result of the virus spreading unimpeded. The Virus has about a 2 week incubation period and can survive on surfaces in 2-3 day and it takes about 3+ days to kill it's victims. You will see the number of deaths per day start to fall now if lockdown is effective.

These numbers are a bit off. It has a ~5 day incubation period and on average it takes 9-15 days for it to kill you (though I've seen examples of up to 20+ days) after you become symptomatic. What we are seeing right now are deaths from infections that probably occurred almost a month ago, it may have been unimpeded at the time but it was far from widespread. The number will likely keep increasing for a while yet before it starts falling.

How effective is lockdown anyways with people still congregating in grocery stores/ gas stations/ and doing "essential" work.

Very effective. Projected deaths fell from 2.2 million down to 60 thousand. Thats quite a bit.

Realistically the lock down does not reduce total deaths in the long run a society like the UK or the USA. All it does is spread them out and reduce the rate at which people get infected.

In and of itself, no it doesn't reduce the number of deaths, but it buys you time to develop a vaccine or effective treatment, or at the very least expand your ability to treat and triage victims so that the healthcare system isn't overwhelmed.

This could be effective if we had a vaccine right around the corner but it is 12 months away at the absolute earliest.

Then we wait. For all 12-18 months.

The planet can not shut down for that long

Sure it can. Mind you, that 12-18 month wait will not necessarily look exactly like this, but I expect that the economy will be "half open" for most of that time (if we consider its current state "closed") - movie theaters and restaurants operating at a fraction of their full capacity, gathering sizes limited, etc.

Gotta be realistic even the most grim projections from coronavirus (which honestly can't be accurate because we aren't even close to knowing the total number of people already infected with the virus)

Its unlikely that a large number of people have already been infected based on the comparative data with countries that have been more aggressive about testing, the numbers are likely fairly accurate.

pale in comparison a global shutdown causing WW3. WW3 could potentially end life on earth...I'd really like to avoid that one.

Wut.

What about this is going to cause WW3?

I believe they have (or are close to having) a test for the antibodies. So we might get a situation where people who have had it, (and survived) and have the anti-bodies can return to a more normal life.

That would require something like an ID that shows you're immune or something, which if this thread is any indication, will be met with shouts of "stasi", "gestapo", "dictatorship", "big brother", etc.

The latest news is that people who recover tend to keep very few antibodies and are easily reinfected. Some of the reinfected died from their second bout. Coronavirus is not so straight forward as the flu, it seems.

Is there a source for this? I'm still seeing a lot of speculation about this, but very little in the way of hard data or fact that confirms one way or another what the prospects for reinfection are.

According to that article, it’s fairly common for Coronaviruses to reinfect people.

"Long-term immunity", in the case of that article, refers to a period greater than 5-10 years. The other 4 coronavirus strains do produce post-infection immunity, but it only lasts for a period of 1-3 years on the low end and 3-5 on the high end. This is considered "short term".

The point is, people getting reinfected has been a thing since it was still largely confined to Wuhan. No new information has really come forward to change the thinking since that time. Yes, reinfection has possibly happened, but then it could be misdiagnosis, premature discharge, unknown contributory issues, mild immune response being overwhelmed by a much heavier viral load etc etc.

The fact is all people can do is play percentages, and the historic information suggests that assuming immunity is the right call. I mean, people can only get chicken pox once, except sometimes people get it again, but nobody is particularly worried about chicken pox reinfection rates, because, percentage wise, it isn't worth too much concern.

This. Until we have something that indicates widespread patterns of reinfection, its best to consider these examples as isolated one-off instances of it occurring for various reasons. 50-60 people out of 100k+ infections worldwide is statistically insignificant and much ado about nothing. Even for the ~10k or so in South Korea that number is essentially meaningless.

If you look whole europe vs US then US should be losing like 2-3 times as much per day and still be off easy...Spain, Italy, France, Germany, UK, Belgium, Swiss and Netherlands amount to about 4k plus other countries.

US with just 2000 deaths with population over 5 times say Italy which is worst suffering but even at worst was around 1000 deaths shows US is suffering lot less than there was potential. Especially with the extremely slow and half assed response US had to begin with. Suspiciously low numbers.

You have to keep population density in mind, most of our cases and deaths are coming from a handful of locations with a fraction of the population of Europe, while much of the rest of the country is much less densely populated and far more rural. The virus is spreading nationwide, but its spreading more slowly in those areas as the population is naturally distanced as a result of geography and the population distribution. Unfortunately, a lot of those areas have not been very active in imposing measures to combat the virus, and will likely see continued growth in cases and deaths for some time as a result, the flip side is that these are the areas where we have a slight excess in healthcare capacity, so they will be better able to endure as a result.

As someone was mentioning before, we really will not be able to make a call on the US peaking until the end of April, because of Easter. We may have a 'double peak' where the 'natural' one occurs then we get a secondary due to large numbers of people violating social distancing orders to attend Easter services in densely seated, enclosed structures.

It goes deeper than that - we can't make the call on the peak because half the country has either had little or no social distancing/curve flattening measures in place or are only now basically just starting to implement them - as I said, they are less densely populated so they had some degree of baked-in protection to begin with but its still going to spread through. The current peak isn't really the "American peak" so much as it is the "New York peak". In truth, its possible that they are synonymous just by virtue of how aggressive the viral threat was to the NYC/NJ region, but it really comes down to how bad the non-coastal states get nailed by this thing.

What -actually- makes the US great is a certain optimism and 'can-do' attitude underlining our culture. Unfortunately that works against us here.

I really don't feel like this is something exclusive to Americans, the optimism and "can-do"-ness I mean. What I think actually is underlying modern American culture which is working against us at this point is a lack of public trust (particularly with regards to the government), anti-intellectualism, and a seemingly bottomless appetite for conspiracy theories.

There's a very large Italian-American population in New York City, and many of them retain very close ties with family in 'the old country'.

I don't feel thats true. Off the top of my head I think I know maybe 2 or 3 Italian-Americans who have ever been to Italy, let alone still have familial ties with the old country, and like another 100+ (my family included) who think that "gabbagool", "ricott", "mozarell", etc. are how actual Italians speak and that chicken parmigiana is a real Italian dish.

Unfortunately some other pastors across America are stubborn. God may protect us, but he still wants us to use our heads!

Seems the trend has been the bigger the church/congregation, the more stubborn and self-important the pastor. Unfortunately, this seems to mean that when they flaunt social distancing, etc. its not a dozen people at the small neighborhood church, but hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands showing up at what is better described as an arena.

This would set a precedent that the government can just "declare an emergency" and then proceed to ignore any rights they choose. That is a terrible idea. Its the line of thinking that led to the Japanese Internment Camps in WW2.

Theres something like 136 specific statutory powers that the President has in the event of a declared national emergency (a list which didn't exist in the 1940s), so I think this is a bit of a non-issue to begin with. From what I understand about the legal debate, I think its generally agreed that the states *do* have the legal authority to impose quarantine measures however.

From everything I've gathered, the total number of deaths attributable to the virus is less than what we could have expected from other causes over the same time period (at least in the US.) It's debatable and not meant to sound callous.

The total number of deaths attributable to the virus would be pretty damned high, and would happen within a relatively short 3 month window if left unchecked. Thats not really debatable. It would certainly kill more people in that 3 month span of time than heart disease kills over the course of an entire year. Thats not really deabatable at all.

- Public opinion seems to be wildly in favor of protecting all life instead of the economy. There doesn't appear to be a recognition of the long term consequences of keeping the economy shut down, which also involves mortality. The comparative metrics for economic instability aren't available to the public (nor should they be.) A lot of the people chiming in on what should be the next steps are very short sighted, and that's kind of dangerous.

If you go back a dozen pages there was a link to an economic study done which concluded that the virus if left unchecked would be far more economically disastrous than the impact of social distancing. While the study didn't necessarily include the long term impacts of things, its fair to assume that the result which imposes a 26 trillion dollar hit to our economy (the cost of doing nothing) would be far worse in the long term than the course of action that only imposes a 5 trillion dollar hit (the cost of distancing).

You're assuming that the Patriot act is Constitutional. Its definitely not.

The only true arbiter of Constitutionality is the Supreme Court, while SCOTUS has found parts of the law unconstitutional and struck down those provisions, on the whole the law still stands. A lot of people have personal opinions as to what is and isn't Constitutional, but the only word that matters on that subject is the judicial branch. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Don't know about other parts of the country, but in the northeast the courts basically are at a standstill, so any decision about constitutionality will probably have to wait until well after this all blows over.

If terrorists used Mosques to meet and plot their schemes, then it would be relevant to shut them down for public safety. Its the same justification being used here. Temporarily or permanently makes no difference.

I think the difference you're missing here is that in your scenario you're shutting down the mosque and banning religious practices of a single targeted religion entirely. In the real world we are only banning physical gatherings for all purposes, both religious and otherwise, for the purposes of public safety, but are allowing religious practices to continue uninterrupted through alternative means (phone/skype/zoom, etc.). In any case, slippery slopes such as yours are logically fallacious, it would be best for you not to hang your hat on this.

Instead, we have projections. One rubric that's getting tossed about is 97% of the economy can restart if we get back to work by April 15, 92% of the economy can restart if this goes to May 1. No way to tell you how accurate either number is, projections are an attempt to influence behavior more than provide an accurate gauge of the future.

Haven't seen this, have a source? I feel like something is being lost in translation here, 100% of the economy can restart regardless of what date we go back to work on, we don't magically lose the ability to restart some portion of the economy because we took to long - we do however lose employers as a result of financial strain forcing them to close up permanently, in this case yes we would be slightly less economically productive than we were beforehand as a result. This, of course, is the point of the stimulus bills we have enacted, in order to prevent employers from going under and allow for as close to a full restart on "emergence day" as possible.

Its worth noting however that these numbers, however, don't tell the whole story. If we went back to work on April 15th, for example, we might have only "lost" 3% of the "economy", but if the virus is still out there then the follow-on impact of the virus ravaging the population while business is still attempting to remain in operation will be much more severe and result in further economic losses after the fact, considerably greater if estimates are to be believed.

USS Nimitz crew that self quarantine had news go out of infection. One sailor was on leave but caught it and was locked down in his state before self isolation went into effect. The other had symptoms and they removed him to the pier along with his section and now in quarantine. There is a medical barge by it and isolation tents on the pier.

Poor scotland not getting masks and other PPE from english companies as they are focusing only to england now. Hardly surprising.

 Irbis wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
feth me I'm the last one to defend the bloke, but you're trying to hard to manufacture outrage here. assuming the quote is accurate, he's talking about how adaptable microorganisms can be, and using how bacteria constantly outpace the efficacy of antibiotics as an example. Bacteria adapting to antibiotic treatments is not the same as a virus mutating, but it is analogous enough that I'll concede I understand his point and don't fundamentally disagree with it, rather than raging about the minute inaccuracies in how he's expressed himself and holding it up as an example of how big an idiot he is. There's already plenty of examples of that.

What? You know you're defending a dude who made up story about hydroxychloroquine being drug for Covid (spoiler alert: it's useless), causing shortages threatening lives of people who really have diseases treated by it, causing multiple deaths as people ran to obtain it in false hopes of protecting themselves and guzzled it without supervision:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/24/coronavirus-cure-kills-man-after-trump-touts-chloroquine-phosphate

And is now threatening economic war with India if they don't release all their supplies immediately (again, ignoring people who need it and India has big malaria problem)?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/07/india-releases-hydroxychloroquine-stocks-amid-pressure-from-trump

If someone wrote about president of the country threatening others with retaliation just to protect his ego after spreading story he heard on Fox Lies ten years ago I'd think the author is crazy or on drugs. Alas, here we are now.

So what's your point? I qualified my statement with both a comment that I'm not in anyway a Trump sympathiser, and also that I there are many things he deserves criticism for, and your response is to point out to me things he almost certainly justifies heavy criticism for? Frankly it reads as though you're just looking for a chance to rant and found my post a useful jumping off point, but I'm sure that's not the case because politics is banned.

Speaking of Trump, after weeks spent insisting that the states are responsible for responding to the crisis individually/on their own (a talking point echoed by a few here on dakka), Trump is now arguing that he is the sole decision-maker when it comes to re-opening the economy: https://www.axios.com/trump-coronavirus-reopening-governors-states-3ce510ff-cd94-4b4a-89b8-58d8bca5d69f.html

tneva82 wrote:
Poor scotland not getting masks and other PPE from english companies as they are focusing only to england now. Hardly surprising.

Scotland has a devolved government who are constantly trying to gain independence, but soon as it goes south they want special treatment.

that is based off your evidence-less point though. I'd be surprised if that was actually the case.

 Jihadin wrote:

I'm hearing southern Italy is now Mafia territory.

That isn't anything new. Southern Italy has long had a strong mafia presence.

tneva82 wrote:
Poor scotland not getting masks and other PPE from english companies as they are focusing only to england now. Hardly surprising.

You have to make sacrifices.
If you can't help everyone then you have to help someone.
I'd rather 100 deaths isolated to Scotland than 1000 to the entire UK.
It's gak... But its maths.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Poor scotland not getting masks and other PPE from english companies as they are focusing only to england now. Hardly surprising.

Scotland has a devolved government who are constantly trying to gain independence, but soon as it goes south they want special treatment.

that is based off your evidence-less point though. I'd be surprised if that was actually the case.

I dont know anything about this source, but this is what google gave me: https://www.thenational.scot/news/18376682.companies-providing-ppe-nhs-prioritising-england-scotland/

Seems there isn't really any concern about "special treatment" here, rather its that the PPE manufacturers are prioritizing one region or state or whatever you lot call yourselves over another for sales/supply (if anything, that means that England is getting the special treatment), which is causing supply shortages in Scotland. The sensible thing to do would be to take Scotlands orders and find a way to allocate supply proportionately between the two regions.

I went to Lidl in Wallingfor today, a regular haunt of Dakka colleague Queen Anne's Revenge.

There was no queue to get in, but inside there were couplesm and a serious degree of anti-social distancing. I got really scared, the way people were behaving. Complete selfishness and stupidity.

At least I was able to get nearly everything I wanted. Out of the absolute basics, only eggs and flour were out of stock.

But the queues at the checkouts were so long! They only had two tills open. Everyone wasn't obeying distancing rules in the queues.

I decided I never want to go back there unless it's a very quick dive to get prunes and smoked salmon. I can't get them at Aldi where the social behaviour is much better.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Poor scotland not getting masks and other PPE from english companies as they are focusing only to england now. Hardly surprising.

Scotland has a devolved government who are constantly trying to gain independence, but soon as it goes south they want special treatment.

that is based off your evidence-less point though. I'd be surprised if that was actually the case.

Dr Donald McCaskill, chief of Scottish Care (that's the voice of the private care sector, nothing to do with the SNP [quite the opposite!] or the Scottish NHS) said this morning on BBC radio Scotland that the four largest UK PPE suppliers are refusing to sell them PPE.

Rather than the Scottish government wanting special treatment, they've stepped in to sort it out.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I went to Lidl in Wallingfor today, a regular haunt of Dakka colleague Queen Anne's Revenge.

There was no queue to get in, but inside there were couplesm and a serious degree of anti-social distancing. I got really scared, the way people were behaving. Complete selfishness and stupidity.

At least I was able to get nearly everything I wanted. Out of the absolute basics, only eggs and flour were out of stock.

But the queues at the checkouts were so long! They only had two tills open. Everyone wasn't obeying distancing rules in the queues.

I decided I never want to go back there unless it's a very quick dive to get prunes and smoked salmon. I can't get them at Aldi where the social behaviour is much better.

Honestly the Aldi we shop at has been doing really well. Line outside is neat and orderly and everyone generally keeps 2m or greater away from each other. In the heat of Thursday they even walked down the line offering waterbottles for those waiting (being very sure to clarify that things were wiped down before being handed out). They also advanced someone for the medical profession forward to the front when they spotted them in the line with their ID badge on. Inside they've got one way stickers on the floor, but they've also left the gaps between aisles open. Which honestly is quite practical. If you're only in there for one or two things there's no point prolonging exposure of you to others and others to you in having you go the whole way around.

Tills have their screens up and they generally open every other till and wave you forward from the main line. The only downside is that the line can get very long and back up a bit, but everyone generally keeps distance during that.

I think the lines are longer because I generally see less staff around, I figure with having one or two on the front washing trollies and monitoring the line; coupled to likely staff lost to self isolating etc.... or jsut other duties; they might not have the staff to call on to keep more lanes open. That said staff at Aldi are generally super-fast at processing stuff through = though they do now have it that instead of bagging at the tills you basically throw everything back into the trolly and do your bagging at the car, which is fair and it does help a lot in speeding things up.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nfe wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Poor scotland not getting masks and other PPE from english companies as they are focusing only to england now. Hardly surprising.

Scotland has a devolved government who are constantly trying to gain independence, but soon as it goes south they want special treatment.

that is based off your evidence-less point though. I'd be surprised if that was actually the case.

Dr Donald McCaskill, chief of Scottish Care (that's the voice of the private care sector, nothing to do with the SNP [quite the opposite!] or the Scottish NHS) said this morning on BBC radio Scotland that the four largest UK PPE suppliers are refusing to sell them PPE.

Rather than the Scottish government wanting special treatment, they've stepped in to sort it out.

Are they specifically refusing Hospitals in Scotland or hospitals that happen to be within Scotland. I can see that it might be the PPE is being pushed toward places like London and Manchester etc.... - ergo the very big urban centres that already have a massive spike in cases. Ergo that Scotland isn't being pushed out, but rather its there with other regions that have currently got lower pressures.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Speaking of Trump, after weeks spent insisting that the states are responsible for responding to the crisis individually/on their own (a talking point echoed by a few here on dakka), Trump is now arguing that he is the sole decision-maker when it comes to re-opening the economy: https://www.axios.com/trump-coronavirus-reopening-governors-states-3ce510ff-cd94-4b4a-89b8-58d8bca5d69f.html

He says that, and he may or may not believe it (he probably does), but ultimately he doesn't have the final say - the state Governors do.

Should be interesting times in the USA soon...

 Overread wrote:

nfe wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Poor scotland not getting masks and other PPE from english companies as they are focusing only to england now. Hardly surprising.

Scotland has a devolved government who are constantly trying to gain independence, but soon as it goes south they want special treatment.

that is based off your evidence-less point though. I'd be surprised if that was actually the case.

Dr Donald McCaskill, chief of Scottish Care (that's the voice of the private care sector, nothing to do with the SNP [quite the opposite!] or the Scottish NHS) said this morning on BBC radio Scotland that the four largest UK PPE suppliers are refusing to sell them PPE.

Rather than the Scottish government wanting special treatment, they've stepped in to sort it out.

Are they specifically refusing Hospitals in Scotland or hospitals that happen to be within Scotland. I can see that it might be the PPE is being pushed toward places like London and Manchester etc.... - ergo the very big urban centres that already have a massive spike in cases. Ergo that Scotland isn't being pushed out, but rather its there with other regions that have currently got lower pressures.

Said they were prioritising English hospitals and English carers. Very little detail.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I went to Lidl in Wallingfor today, a regular haunt of Dakka colleague Queen Anne's Revenge.

There was no queue to get in, but inside there were couplesm and a serious degree of anti-social distancing. I got really scared, the way people were behaving. Complete selfishness and stupidity.

At least I was able to get nearly everything I wanted. Out of the absolute basics, only eggs and flour were out of stock.

But the queues at the checkouts were so long! They only had two tills open. Everyone wasn't obeying distancing rules in the queues.

I decided I never want to go back there unless it's a very quick dive to get prunes and smoked salmon. I can't get them at Aldi where the social behaviour is much better.

Why I started stocking up in early Jan when we became aware of Wuhan. Since we had the SARs, West Nile, and a few other outbreaks I start to slowly build up knowing its going to empty shelves soon. . When that Aussie who brought it to Seattle was confirmed I left work earl and brought (conservative here) meat products that would fit in my freezer and dry goods. So Im good for 6 months and will only go to the store if I really need it.
I wasn't and still not concern with the virus. Its the people that scares me like you mention by piling up on two checkout lines (tills)

My last purchase was ammo. Don't freaking ask how much

Now the goldening star of a buy....a Dehydrator to make jerky. That thing has paid itself off already lol

Tips.
- Hydrogen Poroxide to clean kitchen counters
- As above if needed cupful to wash cloths
- I mix bleach and water in a spray container to also clean counters and spray my hands.
- When I do go out. Latex gloves...I've a lot due to airbrushing...and surgical masks. FFFS ensure you have the ,metal strip on top and conform around your nose. Also in a glad bag that has soak Isopropyl alcohol wash cloth for the shopping cart handle and basket itself.
- I also brought dehydrated eggs powder (damn the Army ) and powdered milk from Amazon. Same as Flour. I crap you not. I know how to make bread
- Instant mash potato and beef veggie soup stock up
- Bullions (I've quite a bit)
- Seeds (yes seeds and cannot remember what US state said they are non essential) I've a nice little plot that has been tilled and planted with 8 ft fence to prevent deer going in.

I can go on with tips and advice from experience (Anyone remember when USA(somethingsomething) and me went at it when we found a village in Afghanistan that was not inoculated from Small Pox quite awhile back?) I am not Hijacking this thread.

Edit 1

For cuts and stuff. Use vinegar instead of Isopropyl alcohol. Works as well still today as did back in the Roman Legions

Considering that California's governor has already said he'll do what he wants and help other states as well i wouldnt be shocked by any non trump governor following the white houses direction.

Minnesota is going to do what it wants and thinks best. Same with Texas. Trump can say what he wants but states will do what they do. You dont get to start leading once all the hard work and decisions already got done.

 ValentineGames wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Poor scotland not getting masks and other PPE from english companies as they are focusing only to england now. Hardly surprising.

You have to make sacrifices.
If you can't help everyone then you have to help someone.
I'd rather 100 deaths isolated to Scotland than 1000 to the entire UK.
It's gak... But its maths.

As a Scot, I find your comment highly offensive, with its inference that Scots are somehow more disposable.

I shall hold my tongue now.