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regarding policing, we're actually seeing crime numbers rising in the downtown areas here because the shops are all closed and no one is about.

Reading in between the lines, it sounds like previous viruses, such as influenza, weren't cost-effective to use far-UVC?

Of course, like masks, we shouldn't get a false sense of security from any policy or technology. Lemme know any info about the practical effectiveness of far-UVC in a public area.

“Far-UVC light has the potential to be a ‘game changer,’” said David Brenner, professor of radiation biophysics and director of the center. “It can be safely used in occupied public spaces, and it kills pathogens in the air before we can breathe them in.”

The research team’s experiments have shown far-UVC effective in eradicating two types of airborne seasonal coronaviruses (the ones that cause coughs and colds). The researchers are now testing the light against the SARS-CoV-2 virus at Columbia in a biosafety laboratory, with encouraging results, Brenner said.

The team previously found the method effective in inactivating the airborne H1N1 influenza virus, as well as drug-resistant bacteria. And multiple, long-term studies on animals and humans have confirmed that exposure to far-UVC does not cause damage to the skin or eyes. ...

Far-UVC, which has a very short wavelength, cannot reach or damage living human cells. But the narrow band wavelength can still penetrate and kill very small viruses and bacteria floating in the air or on surfaces.

Far-UVC lamps are now in production by several companies, although ramping up to large-scale production, as well as approval by the Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency, will take several months. At between $500 and $1000 per lamp, the lamps are relatively inexpensive, and once they are mass produced the prices would likely fall, Brenner said.

https://news.columbia.edu/ultraviolet-technology-virus-covid-19-UV-light

 mekkiah wrote:

nfe wrote:
Priti Patel has just used the daily briefing to boast of the policing successes during lockdown. Heavy stress placed on the fact that 'burglary, car crime, and shoplifting are all down on the same period last year'.

So that's where we are.

or it could be shes taking a leaf out of johnsons book and using his dead cat strategy to distract from passing 20.000 hospital deaths today.

It's like people are really determined not to read between the lines in this post

For clarity the 'where we are' is 'in a farcical world where government seeks to distract from their failures by heralding the results of the virus as political successes like the tone deaf disinterested rats they are'.

 mekkiah wrote:

nfe wrote:
Priti Patel has just used the daily briefing to boast of the policing successes during lockdown. Heavy stress placed on the fact that 'burglary, car crime, and shoplifting are all down on the same period last year'.

So that's where we are.

or it could be shes taking a leaf out of johnsons book and using his dead cat strategy to distract from passing 20.000 hospital deaths today.

Oh 20k was broken long time ago. But now even the made to look better numbers broke 20k with daily count going up again despite weekends usually being slower days in death count reporting followed by spikes in start of weeks.

And trump shows what a crybaby he is cancelling press conference and blaming surprise surprise press.

tneva82 wrote:

 mekkiah wrote:

nfe wrote:
Priti Patel has just used the daily briefing to boast of the policing successes during lockdown. Heavy stress placed on the fact that 'burglary, car crime, and shoplifting are all down on the same period last year'.

So that's where we are.

or it could be shes taking a leaf out of johnsons book and using his dead cat strategy to distract from passing 20.000 hospital deaths today.

Oh 20k was broken long time ago. But now even the made to look better numbers broke 20k with daily count going up again despite weekends usually being slower days in death count reporting followed by spikes in start of weeks.

Sorry i meant 20,000 uk hospital deaths. On the 17th March Sir Patrick Vallance told the commons health select committee that keeping hospital deaths under 20,000 would be a good outcome. Now we've passed that in just 39 days.

Wellp, that is not good no matter how you slice it.

To be fair when the '20k would be a good outcome' statement was made they were talking absolute best case scenarios. It wasn't ever presented as a likely achievement.

They'll spectacularly miss their only actual stated target for anything on Thursday, however, when they're still nowhere near 100k tests a day.

nfe wrote:
To be fair when the '20k would be a good outcome' statement was made they were talking absolute best case scenarios. It wasn't ever presented as a likely achievement.

They'll spectacularly miss their only actual stated target for anything on Thursday, however, when they're still nowhere near 100k tests a day.

Too few tests available or just a personel bottleneck`?

Not Online!!! wrote:

nfe wrote:
To be fair when the '20k would be a good outcome' statement was made they were talking absolute best case scenarios. It wasn't ever presented as a likely achievement.

They'll spectacularly miss their only actual stated target for anything on Thursday, however, when they're still nowhere near 100k tests a day.

Too few tests available or just a personel bottleneck`?

Both. We haven't exceeded 24,000 in a day thus far. Government claim there's capacity to do double that (and have now switched to talking about capacity rather than tests performed at all times) but appointments are running out daily in an hour each morning.

Nb. I say 'we' but these are all England and Wales numbers. Scotland is doing better, though still only meeting half of their target. I don't know the situation in NI.

See the problem is they opened up the test line things the other day, and they ran out within 30 minutes, which I believe is because they just said any 'key worker' can apply for them, which is a massive percentage of the population, and with that population mostly in a state of fear, they have bumrushed the test website. They should be taking a more targeted approach, putting the tests where they are actually needed.

Just a quick public note - Now that the daily press conferences are (or will soon be) canceled, hopefully we can focus this thread on the coronavirus and not general political "theater".

We've given a lot of leeway the last several days, as what was said about disinfectant obviously just could not be ignored. But the further we go down the general politics rabbit hole, the harder it will be to keep this useful thread not a proxy for general political debate - and thus, open.

So, I'd ask folks to please consider this and try your best to remain on the topic of coronavirus, and not get into the "theater" of general politics whenever possible. That way, we can keep discussing this here.

Thanks everyone!

I don't know much about new zealand, but this looks interesting.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120889393/coronavirus-new-zealand-isnt-just-flattening-the-curve-its-squashing-it

Yeah, from what I have read both NZ and Aus are crushing it compared to projections. Awesome

Aye, we are doing pretty well for ourselves so far. The real test is going to be on tuesday when we go from level 4 (total lockdown) to level 3 (limited reopening and freedom of movement). As it stands all of our infenctions can be traced to specific instances and all of our fatalities are linked to those, however with many shops reopening and greater movement of population we will see how the limits of social distancing and "necessary" shopping are tested.
just the one month that we were in total lockdown has crushed our economy though and unemployment is set to rocket to almost 18% from the 4% it was previously.

Thinking about how different people are or aren’t coping well with Lockdown.

I think on the whole, us Nerds are pretty lucky. Barring the game side of things, we’re actually pretty used to this being a hobby with solo elements.

Building, painting etc? Good ways to while away the hours with something to show at the end of it.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Thinking about how different people are or aren’t coping well with Lockdown.

I think on the whole, us Nerds are pretty lucky. Barring the game side of things, we’re actually pretty used to this being a hobby with solo elements.

Building, painting etc? Good ways to while away the hours with something to show at the end of it.

Agreed. People have asked me how I am doing and my response is along the lines of 'this is more of an excuse than a restriction to me'.

Yeah, co workers asked for advice on how to make it through this and i gave the advice of getting a hobby where you make something.

It's definitely going to affect folks whos life revolves around drinking and partying the most. Hopefully they will see that there more to life than all that.

For me it has actually had some positive affects. I've been able to buy some new power tools with the money I'm not spending on lunches and days out at the weekends with the family, and we've replaced those with going out for walks in the Oxfordshire countryside, so it's not all bad.

There are pros and cons of the new conditions for both singlys and those with families I think.

I’m definitely missing the pub and the staff.

But, it has drastically cut my booze intake, so on the whole it’s a postive!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Thinking about how different people are or aren’t coping well with Lockdown.

I think on the whole, us Nerds are pretty lucky. Barring the game side of things, we’re actually pretty used to this being a hobby with solo elements.

Building, painting etc? Good ways to while away the hours with something to show at the end of it.

It’s harder to find hobby it time with the kid at home. Fortunately, he’s more than happy to sit down and do three pages of math problems at a stretch...

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Thinking about how different people are or aren’t coping well with Lockdown.

I think on the whole, us Nerds are pretty lucky. Barring the game side of things, we’re actually pretty used to this being a hobby with solo elements.

Building, painting etc? Good ways to while away the hours with something to show at the end of it.

I'm a very outdoors person who loves to go for bimbles into the countryside as far away from people as possible, I also love this hobby so thankfully I'm ok. If I couldn't get my alone time then working for the local clinics and hospitals would be a nightmare as they are always buzzing with activity even without the Wuhan SARS2 virus causing such problems.

You know there's nothing stopping you going for walks in the countryside right?

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
You know there's nothing stopping you going for walks in the countryside right?

As long as you don't drive there to do it. Sort-of.

You're allowed to drive to do it. Check the laws, the police cant stop you, as long as you're walking longer than you're driving (like they can prove that?!)

I drove to Warburg nature reserve yesterday. Had a delightful walk with the family. Even saw a snake... Couldnt tell if it was an Adder or Grass snake.

Some possibly good news to leaven out the D&G...

https://www.newsweek.com/countries-coronavirus-vaccine-trials-covid-19-before-end-year-1493362

I'm not surprised that china is taking a lead in vaccination research given the chinese have an unlimited supply of human test subjects to experiment on with absolutely no regard for human rights or lives. I'm sure thousands of dissidents and malcontents have been used as subjects already.

Hopefully other countries are taking a slightly more humane approach.

Let's just hope there IS vaccine to be found. Just because there's virus doesn't mean vaccine can be found and so far nobody has come up with vaccine for previous corona viruses so whether one can be made for this one is another thing.

There's still the "nuclear" option, of starting to help states singular to isolate them and basically curb any and all cases, if we can manage to focus enough tests in one point. So that we can eliminate it out of one cluster of nations after the other, HOWEVER you can start to imagine how devastating such isolations would be for the economy and how slow recovery would be, overall, due to the lack of non healthy traiding partners.

The big vaccine risk is that everyone gets so hooked on it being the solution that we rush one through that is later found to have significant side effects.

Even if we don't develop a vaccine, improved containment, testing, treatment, early identification etc.... will all come into play to help reduce the severity of suffering and increase the rate and result of recovery as well as contain the virus.

Not Online!!! wrote:
There's still the "nuclear" option, of starting to help states singular to isolate them and basically curb any and all cases, if we can manage to focus enough tests in one point. So that we can eliminate it out of one cluster of nations after the other, HOWEVER you can start to imagine how devastating such isolations would be for the economy and how slow recovery would be, overall, due to the lack of non healthy traiding partners.

Except viruses have bad habit of coming back anyway. You can try to get rid of it completely but odds are you won't get rid of it permanently and it will just come back.

Not Online!!! wrote:
There's still the "nuclear" option, of starting to help states singular to isolate them and basically curb any and all, if we can manage to focus enough tests in one point. So that we can eliminate it out of one cluster of nations after the other, HOWEVER you can start to imagine how devastating such isolations would be for the economy and how slow that would be, overall, due to the fact of lacks of tests and the recovery would be severly stinted due to the initial lack of non healthy trade partners.

Considering its worldwide spread now I think such a policy could work but would take a monumental amount of good will and global unity as well as open and honest governance and a lot of reliable test kits and containment measures. It could be done - in theory. The big risk is that there are multiple nations that might try to "hide" it up; or which have populations in isolation which manage to still get infected but not inform the rest of the nation. Leading to invisible infection pockets from where infection can start up again.

Right now I think the testing kits aren't necessarily good enough and they certainly aren't available in a global supply volume.

A focused "country by country" approach might work, but runs the risk that unless you cease all travel to "cleared" countries you could clear a nation and then a week or two later one person travels in and it all kicks off again.


The real issue is the week long incubation. If you've a tracking system like China has for the majority of the population, you can at least quickly trace, inform and lockdown the population potentially infected. I think without such a rapid response system track and trace can be hindered. Remember its not just tracking, its also informing everyone who was there to lockdown. People can easily forget that they were at such-and-such a station for 5 minutes when changing connecting trains etc... Otherwise even from one or two cases entering a population it can spread very quickly through before you identify it.


If it had a much shorter incubation or a much more overt incubation period then containment would be a lot easier.