Coronavirus - potential Black Swan?

[NoHPCinTheUK]

Just now, slawek said:

You forget that many here prefers to "commit a suicide" than work with others, especially in the EU.  

This virus will cost around 10-20m lives in Europe if not contained,  a number comparable to all deaths in WWI. 

At some point they will need to come up with reality. The social cost of your scenario is huge. No gov in the world will be able to sell to the public that 500k is a nice number when something could have been done. 

[scottbeard]

17 minutes ago, Neapolitan said:

God only knows what’s going to happen to the UK when countries will start lowering food production at the peak of the outbreak. We cannot let this happen.

We cannot avoid some reduction in food production if 20-50% of the world's workers are either off sick or self-isolating.

You can do some work from home, but you can't grow and deliver food working from home.

However, there should be enough food around for everyone in the UK to get the calories they need to survive 2020.  It just may need a bit more careful rationing by supermarkets etc than they're doing now.

[MancTom]

2 minutes ago, scottbeard said:

We cannot avoid some reduction in food production if 20-50% of the world's workers are either off sick or self-isolating.

You can do some work from home, but you can't grow and deliver food working from home.

However, there should be enough food around for everyone in the UK to get the calories they need to survive 2020.  It just may need a bit more careful rationing by supermarkets etc than they're doing now.

and maybe people will have to go back to seasonal vegetables we can grow nearby, rather than avacodos from Chile etc!

[solentmuppet]

2 hours ago, Riedquat said:

The only reason there have been any supply problems is thanks to people such as you.

Now....maybe. 5-6 weeks ago, absolutely not, reason being the normal variation in buying habits, like special offers, bogof etc. Hell, I've been in Tesco's and or sainsburys in the pasg and loaded up on stuff I would normally by in weekly amounts just cos it's been on special offer. Going to the supermarket NOW and demanding 50 bog rolls and 20 kg of pasta is bad behaviour. Sheesh.

[luvadealme]

2 hours ago, markyh said:

Small claims court, win, straight to high court, ruling in your favour, recovery warrant, give warrant to debt recovery company, then watch it play out on channel 5’s “can’t pay we will take it away”. 

Thanks, i might have to look into this procedure more.

[markyh]

4 minutes ago, scottbeard said:

We cannot avoid some reduction in food production if 20-50% of the world's workers are either off sick or self-isolating.

You can do some work from home, but you can't grow and deliver food working from home.

However, there should be enough food around for everyone in the UK to get the calories they need to survive 2020.  It just may need a bit more careful rationing by supermarkets etc than they're doing now.

Back in early to mid Feb when prepping for this along with all the basic dried foods now all gone from the shelves I also started accumulating 6 months worth of multi vitamins and omega 3 etc to supliment the rice, pasta, oats, bread flour, oats, tinned soups and beans etc. On the assumption fresh fruit and veg could disappear from the stores for at least a few months until our summer stock is grown. 

[kzb]

41 minutes ago, slawek said:

No, they don't know what they are doing. If they had a plan they would be prepared to execute it. They now scramble to get more ICU beds, which should have been done a month ago.

The scientific advice was prepared by a bunch people who spent their life playing with some toy models with a lot of assumptions they are not even prepared to show because it is completely worthless. I've listened to interviews with them and they don't seem to know much. They sound as third specialists pull out from some long forgotten lab that enjoy the spotlight in an exchange for providing cover to BJ/Cummings.   

The toy models and the ICU beds are not really connected.   Providing spare ICU capacity for little return is basically a business decision taken by NHS Trust management.  It does not pay to have much overcapacity in a business.  On the contrary you sweat the assets.

The modelling is an academic exercise paid for out of the CMO budget or possibly university research grants.  What do you think epidemiologists actually do all day?  Some of them will have built their careers on these models.

[Orb]

31 minutes ago, Neapolitan said:

God only knows what’s going to happen to the UK when countries will start lowering food production at the peak of the outbreak. We cannot let this happen.

We'll curtail a dangerous obesity epidemic and prolong a few lives. 

[markyh]

4 minutes ago, solentmuppet said:

Now....maybe. 5-6 weeks ago, absolutely not, reason being the normal variation in buying habits, 

Actually up to a lot later than that, 90% of Uk people walk around in a cloud, unaware of any danger to their lives. I was in Costco on sat 29th of Feb with the wife stocking up on 2 big packs of toilet tolls, big pack of kitchen rolls , cleaning stuff and some more non bulk stock up items. No panic, stock a plenty, no one worried apart from lots of extra hand sanitiser use. For me it was surreal. I said to the wife then within 2 weeks this place will be a carnage death pool of potential infected people scrabbling for everything. A local friend who facebooks everything went to that Costco last Saturday 14th match. 30 long trolly queues to get in. Same length or longer queues at every till. Fights over toilet rolls , rice and pasta etc.

i fell very very smug right now, just pottering in with family life, still shopping twice a week. Prepping stocks won’t be touched until we are hungry and food is still not in the stores. 

[Peter Hun]

19 minutes ago, MancTom said:

and maybe people will have to go back to seasonal vegetables we can grow nearby, rather than avacodos from Chile etc!

Eating no meat would solve much of UK food shortfall

[slawek]

16 minutes ago, kzb said:

The toy models and the ICU beds are not really connected.   Providing spare ICU capacity for little return is basically a business decision taken by NHS Trust management.  It does not pay to have much overcapacity in a business.  On the contrary you sweat the assets.

The modelling is an academic exercise paid for out of the CMO budget or possibly university research grants.  What do you think epidemiologists actually do all day?  Some of them will have built their careers on these models.

They are connected they were playing with the models for 1-2 months and they knew what load on NHS to expect but they haven't done anything about ICU beds until now. 

Best is to listen to them, they are not very clued up. They have no idea what is the impact of children on the outbreak but they don't recommend closing schools just because they don't what is the impact.   

[solentmuppet]

5 minutes ago, markyh said:

Actually up to a lot later than that, 90% of Uk people walk around in a cloud, unaware of any danger to their lives. I was in Costco on sat 29th of Feb with the wife stocking up on 2 big packs of toilet tolls, big pack of kitchen rolls , cleaning stuff and some more non bulk stock up items. No panic, stock a plenty, no one worried apart from lots of extra hand sanitiser use. For me it was surreal. I said to the wife then within 2 weeks this place will be a carnage death pool of potential infected people scrabbling for everything. A local friend who facebooks everything went to that Costco last Saturday 14th match. 30 long trolly queues to get in. Same length or longer queues at every till. Fights over toilet rolls , rice and pasta etc.

i fell very very smug right now, just pottering in with family life, still shopping twice a week. Prepping stocks won’t be touched until we are hungry and food is still not in the stores. 

Probably right, I admit to picking 5-6 weeks out of thin air, certainly when I went to Tesco's on the 8th March to stock up following our return from 8 weeks in Spain, the only two items I couldn't get were wet wipes and tinned chopped tomatoes...still can't, come to that, not even premium brands and I really like my bolognese!! We made 3 lots while in Spain and they were fab.  if I say so myself

[slawek]

Brits in Spain vs coronavirus, Darwinism in action

 

[kzb]

7 minutes ago, slawek said:

They are connected they were playing with the models for 1-2 months and they knew what load on NHS to expect but they haven't done anything about ICU beds until now. 

Best is to listen to them, they are not very clued up. They have no idea what is the impact of children on the outbreak but they don't recommend closing schools just because they don't what is the impact.   

Wrightington hospital near Charnock Richards services on the M6 has been re-purposed from hip replacements to Covid-19.  This must've been planned weeks ago.  Only heard this by word of mouth from someone who lives near it.

[slawek]

1 minute ago, kzb said:

Wrightington hospital near Charnock Richards services on the M6 has been re-purposed from hip replacements to Covid-19.  This must've been planned weeks ago.  Only heard this by word of mouth from someone who lives near it.

They were desperate for someone to produce ventilators yesterday. They should have known how many they needed a month ago and should have started production then.

[Peter Hun]

5 minutes ago, kzb said:

Wrightington hospital near Charnock Richards services on the M6 has been re-purposed from hip replacements to Covid-19.  This must've been planned weeks ago.  Only heard this by word of mouth from someone who lives near it.

St Thomas in London is serving the same purpose

[kzb]

3233 new cases in Italy for 15 March. 

The Italian death rate is actually going up over the last week or so, when normally you see a steady decrease as more people are recorded as "recovered".

On the positive side the new cases are only marginally up from Saturday.  The lockdown must surely be having an effect.

 

[kzb]

33 minutes ago, markyh said:

Actually up to a lot later than that, 90% of Uk people walk around in a cloud, unaware of any danger to their lives. I was in Costco on sat 29th of Feb with the wife stocking up on 2 big packs of toilet tolls, big pack of kitchen rolls , cleaning stuff and some more non bulk stock up items. No panic, stock a plenty, no one worried apart from lots of extra hand sanitiser use. For me it was surreal. I said to the wife then within 2 weeks this place will be a carnage death pool of potential infected people scrabbling for everything. A local friend who facebooks everything went to that Costco last Saturday 14th match. 30 long trolly queues to get in. Same length or longer queues at every till. Fights over toilet rolls , rice and pasta etc.

i fell very very smug right now, just pottering in with family life, still shopping twice a week. Prepping stocks won’t be touched until we are hungry and food is still not in the stores. 

Where I work they were all oblivious on Friday.  Someone booked a holiday in Crete in May at lunchtime.

Today noticed a change of attitude.  Probably they've seen the state of the supermarkets over the weekend.

 

[slawek]

2 minutes ago, kzb said:

3233 new cases in Italy for 15 March. 

The Italian death rate is actually going up over the last week or so, when normally you see a steady decrease as more people are recorded as "recovered".

On the positive side the new cases are only marginally up from Saturday.  The lockdown must surely be having an effect.

 

It is going to take 2 weeks for any lock down to show up in the numbers, incubation period + close family infections.  Death are delayed by additional 2-3 weeks.

With 10-20k cases now in the UK, if they apply aggressive social distancing now the total number of infections will be 10 times bigger 100-200k (assuming doubling every 5 days) , with a few thousand deaths.     

[kzb]

12 minutes ago, slawek said:

They were desperate for someone to produce ventilators yesterday. They should have known how many they needed a month ago and should have started production then.

Not sure what was behind that.  Showboating to make it look like they're doing something?  They must realise they have not got the staff for them even if they can get some.

[debtlessmanc]

This idea is not going to be popular here but it seems That the uk’s policy is shared by switzerland and Japan. Could it be that these countries are less paranoid about social unrest and regime change than eg france, Italy, Spain etc and that these countries have chosen their approach out of terrror of the inevitable mass deaths and societal reaction. Macron is speaking tonight and there are rumours circulating in France that he may declare martial law.

Edited March 16, 2020 by debtlessmanc

[slawek]

1 minute ago, kzb said:

Not sure what was behind that.  Showboating to make it look like they're doing something?  They must realise they have not got the staff for them even if they can get some.

They don't have much clue what they are doing. Their decision not to close schools is another example. I am not going even to explain again what is wrong with their herd immunity idea. 

[markyh]

14 minutes ago, kzb said:

3233 new cases in Italy for 15 March. 

The Italian death rate is actually going up over the last week or so, when normally you see a steady decrease as more people are recorded as "recovered".

On the positive side the new cases are only marginally up from Saturday.  The lockdown must surely be having an effect.

 

I heard on the radio a high number of multi generational households in Italy, Grandparents, Parents and grandkids all together. That’ll be grandkids obliviously infecting all killing their Grandparents just living. Will take a month for lockdown to filter through to less deaths in this scenario. 

[slawek]

3 minutes ago, debtlessmanc said:

This idea is not going to be popular here but it seems That the uk’s policy is shared by switzerland and Japan. Could it be that these countries are less paranoid about social unrest and regima change than eg france, Italy, Spain etc and that these countries have chosen their approach out of terrror of the inevitable mass deaths. Macron is speaking tonight and their are rumours circulating in France that he may declare martial law.

Any evidence? 

[Peter Hun]

13 minutes ago, slawek said:

if they apply aggressive social distancing now

 They are hinting at it. Once the law comes in they can make it compulsory.

Bruce will get his bullet between his eyes.