Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Tamas]

Still very vague on whether we should expect some new measures.

[Sheilbh]

True. But I think he says there's a lot of overlap to begin with and said there wouldn't be a "step change" in measures being taken.

[Tamas]

Germany has reported 109 new cases in 24 hours, an almost 50% increase.

[Syt]

37 confirmed cases in Austria, 2 of which have recovered. The health minister says that an efficient person to person infection is extremely unlikely in Vienna at this point.

There are currently some fever checks at the airport for flights from South Korea, but otherwise no major steps are being taken.

[celedhring]

42 new cases here, but with 16 extra ones awaiting confirmation.

That would be around 30% increase from yesterday.

[Sheilbh]

Multiple firms in London sending their staff or departments home because they've had people with confirmed cases. So far I think Deloitte have sent home a departement, HSBC have sent home a floor of their HQ and Chevron have sent home 300 people.

Last week Baker MacKenzie sent home their entire office (about 1000) because someone who'd been on holiday in Northern Italy felt ill and called in sick - I think they've now re-opened but people are still working from home.

Anecdotally I'm hearing lots of people I know are being asked to help out with like all remotely logging on at the same time to test the resilience of different companies' working from home systems.

[jimmy olsen]

I find this interesting on dealing with misinformation on social media. I've noticed a lot of it seems to be well intentioned, with people going "there's too much bad advice about Coronavirus being put out there by people who don't know what they're talking about, BUCKLE UP FOR SCIENCE-BASED FACT TIME" and then getting everything wrong

I will say I'm not as pessimistic as I was in the beginning when the initial statistics out of China indicated basically a Spanish Flu type of pandemic. Don't get me wrong a 1% mortality rate is still very bad but we are extremely fortunate that children under 10 seem to be spared for instance.

WHO raised their fatality estimate from 2.3% to 3.4% a few days ago

[mongers]

I find this interesting on dealing with misinformation on social media. I've noticed a lot of it seems to be well intentioned, with people going "there's too much bad advice about Coronavirus being put out there by people who don't know what they're talking about, BUCKLE UP FOR SCIENCE-BASED FACT TIME" and then getting everything wrong

I will say I'm not as pessimistic as I was in the beginning when the initial statistics out of China indicated basically a Spanish Flu type of pandemic. Don't get me wrong a 1% mortality rate is still very bad but we are extremely fortunate that children under 10 seem to be spared for instance.

WHO raised their fatality estimate from 2.3% to 3.4% a few days ago

A WHO chief advisor, Dr Bruce Alywood (sp?) said the 1% figure bandied about was the result of cherry picking data, whereas the 3.4% figure was for the overall Chinese epidemic from the start to now.

What he left unsaid was the possibililty it could go higher depending on how different health service respond. 

[Sheilbh]

Interesting because the UK Chief Medical Officer repeated the 1% today. He said the WHO number doesn't include people who got only mild cases of coronavirus and he has a "reasonably high degree of confidence" that the overall mortality rate is 1% or lower.

[garbon]

Multiple firms in London sending their staff or departments home because they've had people with confirmed cases. So far I think Deloitte have sent home a departement, HSBC have sent home a floor of their HQ and Chevron have sent home 300 people.

Last week Baker MacKenzie sent home their entire office (about 1000) because someone who'd been on holiday in Northern Italy felt ill and called in sick - I think they've now re-opened but people are still working from home.

Anecdotally I'm hearing lots of people I know are being asked to help out with like all remotely logging on at the same time to test the resilience of different companies' working from home systems.

My company's current guidance is watch and wait + barring travel to certain countries.

[Legbiter]

A few extra cases reported today here. All from travel to Italy/Austria. Almost 400 people are in quarantine. We on Languish have excellent survival odds, but this thing has a 14% death rate in the over-80 demographic and is more infectious than the regular flu. It'll be hell in old folks homes and health care facilities. I worry about my 90 year old grandfather and my aunt who has type-1 diabetes and is in her 60's.

[Grey Fox]

A few extra cases reported today here. All from travel to Italy/Austria. Almost 400 people are in quarantine. We on Languish have excellent survival odds, but this thing has a 14% death rate in the over-80 demographic and is more infectious than the regular flu. It'll be hell in old folks homes and health care facilities. I worry about my 90 year old grandfather and my aunt who has type-1 diabetes and is in her 60's.

So already at risk of dying of almost anything at any moment?

[Legbiter]

Yes. But play around with the math on the age proportion, number of potential infections, the mortality rate and what the daily numbers will look like in 5 month's time and it could be rather grim. Not saying it will happen but the risk is there.

[Sheilbh]

One other thought on that which is scary is that the health system has sort of deep pools of expertise it can pull on. So the NHS is looking at getting support from military medics if staff become ill and have to self-isolate, they're also looking at retired doctors and nurses being used which I can see happening.

There's no equivalent pool in social care - so if staff at a care home (which in the UK are mostly private and mostly small businesses) have to self-isolate or are ill, I'm not sure how those care homes can operate.

And the care home issue is huge for our healthcare system because a lot of "bed blockers" are elderly people who are medically better, but whose family won't take them in, or won't help them in their own home and they aren't in a care home. If the care system itelf whether care homes, or assisted living, is under pressure that could cause a huge knock-on blockage on the healthcare system as well.

I've not seen any talk about this in the media, but hopefully someone in government is thinking about it.

[Tamas]

So are we not getting a British numbers update today as per the new policy of waiting 24 hours because of... reasons?