At his press conference yesterday, Johnson was asked about shaking hands and he said that he would continue to do so, in fact he had just been at a hospital where there were Coronavirus patients and he shook hands with all of them. He had been at Kettering hospital, where there are no Coronavirus patients.
Probably because the outbreak is in wuhan and lots of migrants from wuhan/visitors work/live in the bigger cities live beijing, shenzhen, shanghai. These can then be exported internationally. You only needed to look at the case for the guy in brighton who got it in Singapore and sent it everywhere. The west of china is relatively poor and tightly controlled. Unless you were a tourist you probably wouldnt even going west as a chinese person i imagine. As corona isnt really in the west part of the country, anyone crossing the border probably doesnt have an infection. Likewise i cant imagine india/Pakistan etc being a place if travel for poor or rich chinese.
I wouldn't go that far. But some of them can be rather ill-informed at times about the world beyond their national borders
I believe the CMO, overall, but then what he said plays to my bias and my reading of the numbers, so I would. It’s pretty obvious that fatality rates will be higher in poorer countries. Looks bad in Iran, where I’m assuming a lot more people have been infected than is reported, but Italy is genuinely strange. I think we are going to get as bored of this as we did of Brexit. It’s going to go on for several months, and the media will keep up its barrage of comment for every second of it. But it does offer a fantastic way to get out of stuff you don’t want to do. “Sorry, I’m self isolating”.
Where did you get that story from Goldie? Reuter’s says Corona sales are up in the US for February compared to February 2019. Sales are down in China, because no one is going out and buying beer, sales of all brands are down.
It'll be interesting to see what the fatality rates are in the US, a rich country but with scant healthcare for many.
The numbers that have been reported is probably just the tip of the iceburg Stan. I mean how many people actually go to the doctor when they have the flu ? Most just stay at home and rough it out. The way that figures are actually calculated tells us a lot and may eplain why some countries fatality rates are higher than others. Also we rarely see figures on those who have recovered fully from this. The latest (changing by the hour) figures for Germany show 240 reported cases, which sounds dramatic compared to the UK. but Germany is testing a much broader selection of the population than anywhere else. The problem is that once you get onto that list of 240, you stay on it even if you come out the other end in a healthy and non infectious state, and so the figure keeps rising. The turning point is when the rate of healing overtakes the rate of new infections, and we are getting close to that. Like you I cannot understand the situation in Italy - it's not a poor country, the health system is quite good, and they don't appear to have extensive ties with China.
Can't remember, Stan, but it's quite widely reported. Here's the NY Post: https://nypost.com/2020/02/27/ameri...-beer-amid-coronavirus-outbreak-survey-finds/
Encouraging figures coming out here: Removing deaths and recoveries from the figures we are left with 38,875 active cases Worldwide - this is down from 58,747 on the 17th of February. Yesterday (March 3rd) there were 2,572 reported new cases and 2,836 new recoveries. In all 50,944 people have been cured Worldwide. The figures are different from different countries but the Worldwide trend is moving in the right direction. These are obviously the reported figures but there is no reason to assume that the unreported ones are not following the same trend. Also there appears to be a time lapse between being 'recovered' and being totally free of carrying the virus. It is not known how long after recovery people can still act as carriers.
Though it seems that I am more relaxed about this virus than many, I would treat these numbers with a huge amount of caution. They are driven almost entirely by China, where the outbreak has been ongoing since (they reckon) last November. I don’t put much faith in any information put out by the Chinese government, but even if what they say is reasonably accurate, the rest of the world is weeks if not months away from the epidemic really reaching its peak, we are simply further behind in the spread.
You are right to be sceptical about any figures coming out of China Stan, but the facts behind the German figures are also starting to become encouraging. Of their 240 registered cases 104 come from the same municipality (they were the first to get it in Germany) many of these are now leaving quarantine free of symptoms, though subject to further checks. The rate of recovery may well be nearly as high as the rate of new infections here (therefore moving in the right direction) - the problem is that this side of it is not being reported very well.
The local chemist has run out off face masks and recommend that I try Boots. I’m not keen. please log in to view this image
There is no cure, they've simply survived thanks to their own immune system being healthy enough. I think the numbers will increase rapidly as it spreads through other countries...
