Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

[Nymzee]

It is very convenient for him to have supposedly contracted this disease just as we’re in the peak and his government’s underfunding of the Heath services along, with his general incompetence, will not have to be answered for.

Close to death days ago but out giving interviews today/last night.

Very convenient indeed.

We're not in the peak.

 

[Minimeister]

If this doesn't teach the public and politicians that the NHS staff are a crucial investment and not a millstone nothing ever will. All of them heroes beyond my ability to quantify it properly, lets hope they get the support many will undoubtedly need after this is finally over

 

[roydo]

It is very convenient for him to have supposedly contracted this disease just as we’re in the peak and his government’s underfunding of the Heath services along, with his general incompetence, will not have to be answered for.

Close to death days ago but out giving interviews today/last night.

Very convenient indeed.

He wasnt close to death though. You prove with every post that you havnt a clue what actually happens in an ICU.

He needed to have his sats level monitored all the time. That means he would be on oxygen, hooked up to a machine, that ICU (CARE) nurses would monitor ALL THE TIME. Once he could maintain a sat level on his own, probably circa 96/98, he was dumped into (probably) a respiratory ward for less INTENSIVE care.

Once they were happy, back home. With a discharge letter and scripts being mainly vits and stomach lining stuff.

But of course, you knew all that.

 

[witchdoc187]

FWIW I think there's plenty that's not right (other than 1000s dying) about this situation and how it has been handled mate.

I'm just not fully 'it was a bio-weapon' etc yet.

China lied. The WHO were useless. They got their act together, governments didn't heed the advice quickly enough. Some governments decided to go their own way (South Korea a success, gonna have to see how it plays out in Sweden but their deaths are rising).

How there wasn't a more collective response to this in January is beyond me but we are where we are now.

I just find it hard to believe anything the leaders say. Not saying it is necessarily lies or I know what the truth is, but I have no faith or trust in anything they say. Quite a lot of stuff seems a bit weird in my eyes, but what do I know? I'm pretty sure they aren't the sort of people to put your trust in.

 

[evilwebby]

No, but neither did he. You put it beyond the Tories to lie to the public?

If only you could listen to yourself.
You’d probably believe Boris would fake his own death if it gave you an excuse to hate the Tories even more than you already do.

 

[Minimeister]

He’s taken out of the spotlight because he’s a blundering fool who’d make gaffe after gaffe. It was only weeks ago he was saying it’s okay to shake everyone’s hands.

Intensive care yet he was never on a ventilator but apparently, so he claims, it was ‘touch and go’. Pull the other one.

Throw a line, reel those Tories in my good man.

 

[LouReedwalkonthewildside]

Because the narrative has completely changed from his Government’s incompetence, to the media giving us daily updates on what spirits he is in. Also, he is now at Chequers ‘resting’ not Downing Street.

I think people are more worried about the total number of deaths there are each day being reported by the media than the media reporting on how 'Boris is feeling' mate.

 

[tsubaki]

It still doesn’t matter mate, my colleague could have caught it off bobo the clown at a children’s birthday party. They may have caught it in their clinical role. Once they are positive or get an alert from the app they become patient zero and you test, contact trace and so on until you break the chain.

So if you get an alert you won’t know where you got exposed, on the train, asda or of a neighbour, you become patient zero and you need to isolate and be tested before you give it to your nan or your parents for example. It attempts to break the chain, not tell you who gave it you.

From a practical point of view it would be gift, it’s a hard job contact tracing, the investigating, tracking down and importantly explains to people and their family that they may or may not have been exposed. It takes huge resources out of health care that can be better spent, based on my experience above. Data from an app would have been a god send.

If it happens at work though and everyone gets an alert, that is every one of those people self-isolating and waiting for a test. Some of the buildings in London that house government departments, the emergency services, the military and so on have hundreds / thousands of people working there, many of whom who could concievably get alerts.

Without an idea who has generated the alert, you'd have loads of people self-isolating at the same time which could wreck those departments at a time when we really need for that not to happen. It would also generate vast amounts of tests and further work that might never need to have been done.

 

[ForeverBlue92]

'How China muzzled its Bat Woman: Beijing authorities hushed up the findings of a scientist who unlocked the genetic make-up of the coronavirus within days of the outbreak - which is vital for tests and vaccines'

A Chinese scientist who is the one of the world's leading experts on coronaviruses was 'muzzled' after unravelling the genetic composition of the new disease, which is crucial for developing diagnostic tests and vaccines.

The revelation will fuel fresh concerns over China's cover-up of the pandemic after it erupted in the city of Wuhan. Critics argue that Communist Party chiefs frustrated efforts to contain the outbreak before it exploded around the world.

At the centre of the new claims is Shi Zhengli, known as China's 'Bat Woman' after years spent on difficult virus-hunting expeditions in dank caves that have led to a series of important scientific discoveries.

The virologist was called back to her highsecurity laboratory in Wuhan at the end of last year after a mysterious new respiratory condition in the city was identified as a novel coronavirus – and within three days she completed its gene sequencing.

Her team's work, and several other breakthroughs in subsequent days, indicated the virus was linked to horseshoe bats found more than 1,000 miles away in Yunnan, a region of southern China.

Their findings showed it was similar to SARS, a respiratory disease that sparked an epidemic in 33 countries after emerging from China in 2002.

View attachment 83361
Shi Zhengli is known as China's 'Bat Woman' after years spent on difficult virus-hunting expeditions in dank caves that have led to a series of important scientific discoveries

Gao Yu, a Chinese journalist freed last week after 76 days of lockdown in Wuhan, said he spoke to Shi during his incarceration and revealed: 'We learned later her institute finished gene-sequencing and related tests as early as January 2 but was muzzled.'

The Mail on Sunday has learned that on that same day, Yanyi Wang, director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, sent an email to staff and key officials ordering them not to disclose information on the disease.

She warned, according to a leak on social media confirmed by activists and Hong Kong media, that 'inappropriate and inaccurate information 'was causing 'general panic' – thought to refer to eight whistle-blowing doctors whose warnings to local citizens had led to their arrest.

Wang said the National Health Commission 'unequivocally requires that any tests, clinical data, test results, conclusions related to the epidemic shall not be posted on social media platforms, nor shall [it] be disclosed to any media outlets including government official media, nor shall [it] be disclosed to partner institutions.'

Eight days later, a team led by a professor in Shanghai who received samples from an infected patient, published a genome sequence on an open access platform.

His laboratory was closed for 'rectification' two days later.

At the time, the public was being told that no new cases had been reported in Wuhan for more than a week and there was no clear evidence of human transmission, although dozens of health workers were starting to fall ill with the disease.

In an online lecture last month, Shi Zhengli said her team found on January 14 that the new virus could infect people – six days before this fact was revealed by China.

On the same day, the World Health Organisation issued a tweet backing China's denials of human transmissions.

Shi's team released its data identifying the disease on January 23 on a scientific portal before publication the next month by the journal Nature.

It said the genomic sequence was 96 per cent identical to another virus they found in horseshoe bats in Yunnan.

Shi is a specialist in emerging diseases and has earned global acclaim for work investigating links between bats and coronaviruses, aided by expeditions to collect samples and swabs in the fetid cave networks of southern China.

She was a key part of the team that traced SARS to horseshoe bats through civets, a cat-like creature often eaten in China.

Bats have been linked with seven major epidemics over the past three decades.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology, based ten miles from the wildlife market blamed as the source of Covid-19, developed a £30million high-security laboratory after the SARS outbreak with French assistance.

It was the first laboratory in China with P4 status – denoting highest global biosafety levels – and contains the largest virus bank in Asia.
It was this fact that sparked now discounted conspiracy theories that Covid-19 was man-made.

Shi, the laboratory's deputy director, admits that when summoned back from a conference to investigate the new disease, she wondered at first if a coronavirus could have escaped from her unit.

She has warned about the danger of epidemics from bat-borne viruses. But she says she did not expect such an outbreak in Wuhan, in the centre of China, since her studies suggested subtropical areas in the south had the highest risk of such 'zoonotic' transmission to humans.

Shi told the respected science journal Scientific American last month of her relief when, having checked back through disposal records, none of the genome sequences matched their virus samples.

'That really took a load off my mind. I had not slept a wink for days,' she said.

For 16 years, she has plunged into caves and crevices filled with roosting bats in areas such as Yunnan and Guangdong, where SARS first erupted.

Her team took blood, saliva and fecal samples while also testing local people for antibodies.

There were initial suggestions that pangolins may have hosted the virus before it started infecting people in Wuhan five months ago, just as civets 'amplified' the SARS virus, but a study last week suggested human versions are closer to bat samples.

Wuhan's wildlife market was closed the day after China notified the WHO about a new pneumonialike virus.

However, party chiefs seemed more focused on the success of a key Communist Party meeting and looming New Year festivities, when millions move around the country. Lianchao Han, a pro-democracy activist based in Washington, said the Chinese government tried to block news about the virus.
He said: 'They thought it could be controlled, and also President Xi Jinping demanded not to spoil the Chinese New Year.'

As the disease spread and deaths mounted in China, one report appeared in the Beijing News identifying a researcher at the institute as 'patient zero' – the first person to be infected.

Shi was subjected to savage attacks on social media as the 'mother of the devil' and responded with a furious denial on her WeChat social media account, saying the new virus was 'nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilised living habits'.

'I swear with my life – [the virus] has nothing to do with the lab,' she declared, telling those spreading false rumours to 'shut their stinking mouths.'

Shi has worked alongside many of the world's top experts on infectious diseases. 'She is a superb scientist and very nice person,' said James LeDuc, director of the Galveston National Laboratory, a high-security biocontainment centre in Texas.

Anyone with 2 eyes can see China has been covering up all sorts but no one can say it as apparently its either racist and/or some western created conspiracy theory.

 

[GwladysBlue]

He wasnt close to death though. You prove with every post that you havnt a clue what actually happens in an ICU.

He needed to have his sats level monitored all the time. That means he would be on oxygen, hooked up to a machine, that ICU (CARE) nurses would monitor ALL THE TIME. Once he could maintain a sat level on his own, probably circa 96/98, he was dumped into (probably) a respiratory ward for less INTENSIVE care.

Once they were happy, back home. With a discharge letter and scripts being mainly vits and stomach lining stuff.

But of course, you knew all that.

If he wasn’t close to death then what the hell does ‘touch and go’ mean? Please enlighten me, you seem to know it all.

 

[Nymzee]

If he wasn’t close to death then what the hell does ‘touch and go’ mean? Please enlighten me, you seem to know it all.

If you type into Google "Boris Johnson touch and go" absolutely nothing comes up regarding the virus so I'll need to see where that line has come from.

 

[zzr45]

Proof, if it was ever needed, that Twitter users are thick as syrup. Loads using it as a source.

 

[GwladysBlue]

I think people are more worried about the total number of deaths there are each day being reported by the media than the media reporting on how 'Boris is feeling' mate.

Oh, the people are, for sure, but the media feel that how Johnson feels is far more newsworthy.

Thankfully other people with a larger audience notice it, too

 

[roydo]

If he wasn’t close to death then what the hell does ‘touch and go’ mean? Please enlighten me, you seem to know it all.

It means that IF his sats had dropped, suddenly, (they dont generally drop slowly), he would have been in the right place to be vented/CPRed.

And having spent best part of 2 1/2 months in one, I dont know it all, but I certainly know more than you.

 

[summerisle]

If you type into Google "Boris Johnson touch and go" absolutely nothing comes up regarding the virus so I'll need to see where that line has come from.

Same thing :

Coronavirus: Boris Johnson says 'it could have gone either way'

After being discharged from hospital, the PM singles out two nurses for staying by his bedside for 48 hours.

www.bbc.co.uk