Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[mongers]

I have never seen it referred as that at all. I suspect this wording we see on the internet nowadays all stem from a single (English) source (whether Wikipedia itself, or amplified by Wikipedia). It was always called "the fair at Beaucaire" (la foire de Beaucaire, or by the name of its patron saint, "The Madeleine fair of Beaucaire". The current "medieval fairs of Beaucaire" is a yearly reenactment if the fair in costume (it's quite fun, and the town is lovely).

I didn't understand from what i read that there were, in fact, two fair (the actual one and the re-enactment).  My understanding was that it was all one big fair, referred to by the reenactment types differently.  It makes sense, I suppose, to keep them separate.

Fair enough.

[jimmy olsen]

All I know is that if the rest of the country is reacting like California on the first two days of May then the next bloom is about...2 weeks away.

It is as if everyone thinks it is suddenly over.

We're still consistently hitting 30-35k cases and 1700-2300 dead on weekdays and 25-30k cases and 1000-1500 dead on the weekend. And that's with the lock down. People deciding to go out and about like things are normal and those numbers are going to balloon quickly.

[mongers]

I think it's too soon to tell. The figure that matters is all cause excess mortality over the duration of this pandemic.  I don't think we'll know who has done "well" or "badly" for a year or two. At the minute we've clearly got probably the worst outbreak in Europe - but I think it'll be a while before we really know how bad it is here or elsewhere.

I don't think lockdown's a solution it's a policy failure because your initial plan failed. We seem to be going down the testing plus contact tracing route, which may be right - but it could be Sweden's right (hospital rates are now decreasing in Sweden, they seem to have peaked as well), if you have enough capacity - we didn't. So the real issue, I think is why the initial plan failed - which also depended on testing. The biggest issue to me seems to have been the failure to take advantage of an early lead on testing (which we had with Germany) and the reason for that from what I can tell is we centralised all testing until this month into a few hospitals and Public Health England, while Germany involved the private sector, universities, hospitals and are federal. That might have been a political decision, but over-centralisation strikes as too much the default position of the British state to rule out it just being an administrative decision taken by Public Health England or civil servants.

PPE I blame squarely on a decade of Tory policies - I also blame that (and their reorganisation of the NHS under Lansley) for the initial lack of capacity and fragmentation in the NHS. I suspect the decision to increase capacity by moving people to care homes (which is generally done but was sped up) when testing wasn't in place I feel was probably a political decision (it seems like they would have had to get sign off from the Health Secretary at least) and is probably the biggest failing. Aside from those I don't know what's the scale of mistake or where responsibility lies, with the politicians or the state/establishment - as I say I've not seen anything suggesting ministers were going against the advice they received and so many of the things I think went wrong were centralised and secretive and non-transparent, which is basically a description of the British state in general for the last 100+ years.

Shelf, these guys don't seem willing to kick the can down the road:

A group of experts put together by former government chief scientific adviser Sir David King will look at how the lockdown could be eased. Sir David said the group was designed to act as an alternative to the government's own advisers

Article here, go to bottom of page:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52519340

[Valmy]

And, in an utterly predictable move,

Huh. I guess that was pretty predictable to make a crisis killing tens of thousands of Americans all about himself. Still kind of amazing.

[Syt]

Masks, after a brief moment of acceptance during the peak of the lockdown, are becoming very unpopular in Austria. Hardly anyone in the streets using them. Lots of online comments against them that a) they're useless anyways b) it just feeds the exaggerated fear campaign c) muh freedooooom.

Over the weekend there were several protests across Austria, each numbering a few hundred, against the "draconic measures" of the government and esp. having to wear masks in shops/public transport. The usual assorted Q-anon and other conspiracy theorists, plus far right-wingers were present, of course.

Though the crackpots aren't all united. In an article where a journalist writes about her uncle who thinks that 5G and Covid-19 are linked and who is a climate change denier you have surprisingly many comments who say:
- Corona is real, but climate change is a hoax
- Climate change is real, but Corona is a hoax
- "So everyone who has a differing opinion to the mainstream propagated by the system's media is a conspiracy theorist??"

[Admiral Yi]

It's a buffet of retard.  You can pick what you like and leave the rest.

[The Brain]

Is Corona change real?

[Monoriu]

No need to worry if other people wear masks.  Just wear one yourself. 

[Syt]

It's a buffet of retard.  You can pick what you like and leave the rest.

Even considering the cesspool that comment sections on news sites are, it seems worse than usual at the moment, even on sites that are normally not as bad.

[Oexmelin]

And, in an utterly predictable move,

Huh. I guess that was pretty predictable to make a crisis killing tens of thousands of Americans all about himself. Still kind of amazing.

Yup. Everything that isn't him, and that threatens to steal the spotlight from him, is something to insult and demean. I suppose the good thing is that it drops the pretense that his enablers care at all about the sort of "presidential" speechifying the media longs so much to return to.

[The Brain]

https://twitter.com/thebushcenter/status/1256607729151619073?s=12

Dubya.

And, in an utterly predictable move,

Trump rips George W. Bush after he calls for unity amid coronavirus outbreak:
n an early morning tweet on Sunday, Trump called out Bush for his failure to support him as he faced an impeachment trial earlier this year over his alleged dealings with Ukraine. He cited apparent comments from Fox News anchor Pete Hegseth, who asked why Bush didn't push for "putting partisanship aside" amid the trial.

"He was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax in American history," Trump said.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/495843-trump-rips-george-w-bush-after-he-issues-call-to-unite-amid?fbclid=IwAR0hNzGU3dHJtxylKBuJOZu2MzpwASeTjX2bzJp7UQT50DDsBHnfoCLA1cE

It's weird to think that there was a time when the US had a president who, while full of problems, wasn't 100% despicable and retarded.

[Maladict]

It's weird to think that there was a time when the US had a president who, while full of problems, wasn't 100% despicable and retarded.

We kind of thought he was at the time. We just didn't know how much worse it would get.

[celedhring]

Hilarious first world problem of the day: people complaining on my twitter feed that their phones' facial recognition doesn't work with a face mask on.

[Tamas]

Hilarious first world problem of the day: people complaining on my twitter feed that their phones' facial recognition doesn't work with a face mask on.

[celedhring]

The first small-scale serological studies are not giving particularly encouraging news. Barcelona's largest hospital tested all their personnel and found just 11% positives, which they say is much less than they expected, given their level of exposure to the virus. Barcelona's general population should score even lower than that.

If true (i don't know how reliable those serological tests are at the moment) we're far, far from herd immunity. We'll see what the large-scale and more serious survey being carried out by the Spanish health institute says.