Covid-19 pandemic

[Lang Spoon]

Yeah elguapo, the fuckin vintners and the hospitality lobby group in general will be the death of us (the Irish Times must have had a dozen articles giving sympathetic coverage to the fuckin general manager of Fire restaurant, who was brazenly going to break the 2m rule before the politicians gave in anyway).

And still no cunt masked up on buses. The Sligo cluster just the beginning.

[pebblethefish]

I've just been told that our company are back in the office from 13 July for three days a week. Except for anyone who relies on public transport, or who is classed as high risk. So, I'm staying home on two grounds.

[delicatemoth]

The terrific mental health writer Seaneen Molloy has a piece on the BBC website - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/disability-53092833

[Moonlight Shadow]

Here in Ireland, some pubs were allowed to open yesterday under certain conditions

1) Table service only, and tables had to be pre booked

2) Maximum 4 people per table, and each person has to order a substantial meal.

3) Maximum time allowed in pub, 105 minutes

Here's what happened ( one case, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't typical behaviour)

Around 7 PM last night, I got a text from a friend with a picture of a pint and "great to be back "

Around 11 PM, I got a second text "still here, place is hopping like new year's eve.

We're fucked, back in lockdown in a week.

It's going to be carnage on Saturday, police and A&E will be swamped and 'new rules' will be forgotten within minutes. If there aren't a large numbers of major incidents of public disorder in pubs and also in hospitals, I will be very surprised. Unlike in normal circumstances when sensible types dilute the moronic element vibe, the crowds will be made exclusively of that moronic element as no one with half a brain will go near a pub on Saturday...

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/DWUhlfelderLaw/status/1277968750851977217?s=20

[Nocturnal Submission]

I was on a Zoom call with a couple of friends last night. One of them had his son, the son's girlfriend and their 9-month-old baby daughter with them. The latter is rather clingy and a bit wary of everyone apart from her parents. It struck me that this was yet another of the many, many negatives that has arisen out of the pandemic and the reaction to it. Very young children, deprived on the chance to play or at least inter-react with same-age individuals, are missing out on an important part of their development. I mentioned this to my wife and she said that her best friend, who works at some sort of nursery school, has seen similar issues with the slightly older year group (3- and 4-year-olds) that she deals with.

[Incandenza]

I was on a Zoom call with a couple of friends last night. One of them had his son, the son's girlfriend and their 9-month-old baby daughter with them. The latter is rather clingy and a bit wary of everyone apart from her parents. It struck me that this was yet another of the many, many negatives that has arisen out of the pandemic and the reaction to it. Very young children, deprived on the chance to play or at least inter-react with same-age individuals, are missing out on an important part of their development. I mentioned this to my wife and she said that her best friend, who works at some sort of nursery school, has seen similar issues with the slightly older year group (3- and 4-year-olds) that she deals with.

It's definitely one of the main things that makes me hope that our schools will have some hybrid model. Our oldest had already established a group of friends and they talk on the phone a lot. Not to say that it's the same, but at least she has that. For our 7-year olds, they have new friends in their room every year, and they really need to see each other in person in order to have that social connection. But on the other hand, I wouldn't want them to be right next to each other and playing like they would have before all of this. I fear that a lot of children are going to have a lasting social impact with this.

[Diable Rouge]

Where there were 24 new cases in Ireland yesterday, that has more than halved to 11 today, though regrettably one death. A spike has been recorded in Sligo however (13 cases in 2 day), related to travel from Iraq.

[Incandenza]

In Arizona, health officials reported on Monday that 88 per cent of the state’s ICU beds were occupied. Qaali Hussein, a trauma surgeon and critical care specialist who works in Phoenix, said ICU units at several hospitals in the city were already full and they were refusing to admit patients arriving by ambulance to the emergency room. “We’re essentially saying we’ve reached capacity. When we reach that limit, patients who should be in the ICU are held in the [emergency room] and we cannot accept any new patients,” she said. Dr Hussein said hospitals were trying to recruit ICU nurses but that there was a statewide shortage. She added that some patients who should be in an ICU were being treated in other parts of the hospital, such as wards that are intended for people who are recovering from surgery. The stress and exhaustion is really taking its toll and we are going to be in this situation for a while Cindy Zolnierek, Texas Nurses Association The Houston-based Texas Medical Center, the largest hospital system in the US, said its ICU system was running at 95 per cent capacity.

https://www.ft.com/content/98e611f5-...f-045d14a525d7

[Fussbudget]

Interesting article in the FT today about how the regional and local authority level data on new cases published by Public Health England (here, and reported by various papers in those 'how many cases are there in your area' style articles) is useless at detecting regional outbreaks as it only includes hospital cases, which now only make up a tiny proportion of total cases.

The data on community cases (pillar 2) isn't shared publicly, which is why Leicester officials didn't know there was a local spike as they were only aware of less than 10% of the cases in their area until they were shown the data on 25 June.

[Balderdasha]

10.5 million cases worldwide.

[Fussbudget]

Actually I've just seen that our good friend John Burn-Murdoch has a thread about it:

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1277960112691273728

[Antepli Ejderha]

Interesting article in the FT today about how the regional and local authority level data on new cases published by Public Health England (here, and reported by various papers in those 'how many cases are there in your area' style articles) is useless at detecting regional outbreaks as it only includes hospital cases, which now only make up a tiny proportion of total cases.

The data on community cases (pillar 2) isn't shared publicly, which is why Leicester officials didn't know there was a local spike as they were only aware of less than 10% of the cases in their area until they were shown the data on 25 June.

That's frightening stuff, thanks for explaining what it meant.

That's also why there was confusing information put out over the weekend.

Now if they'll do the same for the whole country we might see some interesting developments.

[ad hoc]

The comments under that thread make it clear that the figures available in Wales are pillar 1 and 2. Once again it's England which is bollocksing this up

[Fussbudget]

Yes it's England only. In other suspiciously missing data, PHE seems to have stopped updating hospital admission figures (they used to be updated daily but the latest figures on their dashboard are two weeks old.)

[Antepli Ejderha]

Make masks compulsory in public in UK, says virus expert

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...idApp_WhatsApp

Horse stable door bolted but it's progress

[Balderdasha]

Eswatini and Libya have over 800 cases.

[ad hoc]

Fuck America. I don't mean fuck Americans, I just mean fuck the concept. Fuck the exceptionalism. Fuck the lack of cooperation.


US buys up world stock of key Covid-19 drug
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...y_to_clipboard

[San Bernardhinault]

Do the fucking morons realise that doing this pisses everyone else off and means that if a vaccine is developed outside of the US, the US will basically be the last to get it?

[Moonlight Shadow]

The last part of the article does reveal a solution to the issue mind.

[S. aureus]

Yes, but getting additional production set up will still take time.

[Balderdasha]

Africa now has over 400,000 cases and over 10,000 deaths reported. The worst affected countries, or the ones doing the best reporting, are South Africa and Egypt.

[ursus arctos]

California has been added to the New York State travel advisory, which is likely to be of interest to San Bernardhinault

[San Bernardhinault]

It is no surprise. And we were already going through a number of banned states. We will be transiting NY and CT but that’s probably permitted under quarantine rules. And, I think, how we behave in MA might not be far from quarantine rules. (Although in MA there is no quarantine yet)

[Balderdasha]

The world has had 8 straight days with more than 160,000 new cases each day.