Coronavirus

[SasaS]

6 hours ago, Audrey Witherspoon said:

If you have to distance by any amount .5m to half a km, then we can extrapolate from this that masks must work in reducing the amount of bollocks that emanates from ones mouth and nose into the vicinity of another, otherwise why look to social distance? Or do you think it could be spread by nits, with vast leaps from human to human?

the fact masks work in reducing the spread is indubitable, the only question is by how much.

the case study has been set in Asia for the previous SARS outbreak along with this one.

walk around melbourne and it’s rare as rocking horse shite to see someone who appears ethnically East Asian to not have a mask on.

I am not the resident expert on masks, the fact of the matter is, the experts are not sure if they (the types widely accessible to the general public) work or not or how much they work, hence they are not (yet) obligatory everywhere, which was my point.

[Dr Arthur De Sabre]

18 minutes ago, SasaS said:

I am not the resident expert on masks, the fact of the matter is, the experts are not sure if they (the types widely accessible to the general public) work or not or how much they work, hence they are not (yet) obligatory everywhere, which was my point.

I got your point and went on to discuss it further with Jose, citing my references, and came to the conclusion, I was probably right.

 

[Vincent Vega]

How much money have these Tory pricks wasted? But supposedly they are the party of economic competence.

 

[Scott_M]

Maybe that crazy MILF from a few pages back should read this...

 

[Scott_M]

21 minutes ago, Vincent Vega said:

How much money have these Tory pricks wasted? But supposedly they are the party of economic competence.

 

Given Apple is the leader the smartphone field, making it work with their phones seems somewhat fundamental. 
 

Dip shits. 

[Section_31]

20 minutes ago, Vincent Vega said:

How much money have these Tory pricks wasted? But supposedly they are the party of economic competence.

 

It went into dominic Cummings' mate's pocket didn't it?

 

Don't forget, the cornerstone of their ideology is that private sector knows best and that money can buy anything. We don't need the state to make our own gowns and ventilators we can just buy them and I'm sure they'll do the trick. If they don't work we'll pay a bit more and they'll be better, that's how it works.

[Lario]

27 minutes ago, Vincent Vega said:

How much money have these Tory pricks wasted? But supposedly they are the party of economic competence.

 

Hang on.

 

They developed an app that wasn't compatible with iOS?

 

Christ on a bike.

[aRdja]

Intriguing.

[Elite]

I saw an heroin addict wearing a face mask a few days ago. I'd love to pay a penny for his thoughts.

 

"I don't mind injecting a few bags of smack into my veins a few times a day using a needle that's dirtier than a tramps underpants but I'm taking no chances with that Covid."

[Bobby Hundreds]

Rupert Murdoch is not claiming his bonus this year. So spare a thought.

 

When you remove politicians, world leaders. This guy has to be one of the most malignant nasty influences in modern history. The world a far worse place with this prick being born.

[Jairzinho]

9 minutes ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

Rupert Murdoch is not claiming his bonus this year. So spare a thought.

 

When you remove politicians, world leaders. This guy has to be one of the most malignant nasty influences in modern history. The world a far worse place with this prick being born.

You don't have to remove politicians and world leaders. 

 

[Dougie Do'ins]

How are places like the townships in South Africa and areas of densely populated India etc, getting on ?  There were some reports a few weeks ago that the virus would ravage them but not heard anything since. Did the virus not just have the effect the reports said or i it being unreported ?

[cloggypop]

7 hours ago, Audrey Witherspoon said:

90’s Gabba fuck right off.

That's happy hardcore not gabber. This is gabber. 

 

 

[Anubis]

18 minutes ago, Dougie Do'ins said:

How are places like the townships in South Africa and areas of densely populated India etc, getting on ?  There were some reports a few weeks ago that the virus would ravage them but not heard anything since. Did the virus not just have the effect the reports said or i it being unreported ?

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/98d0d7c6-9bfb-4a64-bcab-19e0854a3b4d

[Lario]

24 minutes ago, Dougie Do'ins said:

How are places like the townships in South Africa and areas of densely populated India etc, getting on ?  There were some reports a few weeks ago that the virus would ravage them but not heard anything since. Did the virus not just have the effect the reports said or i it being unreported ?

Strangely, it seems to be affecting China's biggest economic rivals the most.

[Dr Arthur De Sabre]

34 minutes ago, cloggypop said:

That's happy hardcore not gabber. This is gabber. 

 

 

I got the first 2 bars, then off, I gave up hardcore when it went happy.

SL2 were good, Billy Bunter and all that shite, nah. Think we went the drome when Coxy was still in the more hardcore zone.

[Dr Arthur De Sabre]

38 minutes ago, cloggypop said:

That's happy hardcore not gabber. This is gabber. 

 

 

You ever go to a Gabber club? Is it just 20 e’s and munch yer eyebrows?

[Oh Buoy]

20-22c tomorrow.

 

 

[Dougie Do'ins]

42 minutes ago, Anubis said:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/98d0d7c6-9bfb-4a64-bcab-19e0854a3b4d

Cant see that. Behind a paywall.

[cloggypop]

9 minutes ago, Audrey Witherspoon said:

You ever go to a Gabber club? Is it just 20 e’s and munch yer eyebrows?

Fair few squatted warehouses and the like playing that and mad tekno. Usually free in, dirt cheap beer, drugs everywhere. Much less pretentious than the Goa trance shite that still seems to be going. 

 

Seems to be a massive crossover between the Goa trance wankers and 5G conspiracy theory going from Facebook recently. 

[johnsusername]

1 hour ago, Dougie Do'ins said:

How are places like the townships in South Africa and areas of densely populated India etc, getting on ?  There were some reports a few weeks ago that the virus would ravage them but not heard anything since. Did the virus not just have the effect the reports said or i it being unreported ?

There was a feature on BBC Newsnight last week about South Africa - SA and the UK were in similar trajectories until something like the 26th March. They then acted very quickly on the lockdown, had army on the streets, banned sale of alcohol, and have an existing "army" of 30,00 (iirc) community health volunteers doing loads of testing. 

 

One of the chief SA health fellas didn't understand how the UK had got it so wrong. 

[Pureblood]

8 hours ago, Jose Jones said:

I was listening to a talk a little while back from someone who is very involved in the Australian response and he reckons that "the science" is in fact very much mixed when it comes to face mask use.

Whilst proper masks properly applied obviously have a good effect in preventing spread, once you get the public using face masks they are often badly applied - so stuff escapes out the sides or whatever, or made out of homemade material that doesn't work at all.

 

Wearing face masks is also proven to have people touch their face more often when fiddling with the mask - and therefore getting potential infection on their hands, which can then be spread to other surfaces.  Also there is evidence that when people are wearing face masks they feel more confident to go out of the house, more likely to be closer to other people and so are then more likely to help spread the disease.

 

So it's kind of like a freakonomics type situation where what you would expect to have a good effect actually when you look at all the data is the opposite.

 

The difficulty in explaining to the public the nuances of that and how to only use effective masks in effective ways, is why the Aussie government has not recommended face mask use. 

 

This is not borne out by reality. The Czechs have had compulsory face masks for a long time now.  Same for Austria.  Those two countries have a minimal amount of infections and deaths compared to European countries with no masks, e.g. the UK. 

[Anubis]

25 minutes ago, Dougie Do'ins said:

Cant see that. Behind a paywall.

Sorry. It wasn’t when I first looked at it.

[Anubis]

27 minutes ago, Dougie Do'ins said:

Cant see that. Behind a paywall.

 

Quote

South Africa has used a combination of mass screening, targeted testing and a draconian lockdown to control the early stages of a coronavirus outbreak that threatened to overwhelm the country if left unchecked in its densely populated townships.

 

In the past month President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government has mobilised 28,000 health workers to screen over 7m people, more than one in 10 South Africans.

 

Known as active case finding, the use of community health workers to identify patients with symptoms draws heavily on South Africa’s experience battling tuberculosis and HIV. It differs from the approach of most European governments that have relied on citizens coming forward for tests and then tracing their contacts.

 

John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has lauded South Africa’s aggressive strategy but has warned that Africa overall needs to test more.

 

 

South Africa has increased its level of testing to more than 10,000 tests a day. All the while the number of positive tests has remained consistent at about 3 per cent, a sign that while infections are growing they are not outpacing efforts to find them. 

 

“Incredible, that much testing for that return,” Michael Ryan, head of the World Health Organization’s emergency operations, said last month. 

 

Now the strategy faces a critical test. South Africa imposed one of the world’s strictest lockdowns before it had recorded a single death but began a phased lifting of the most severe restrictions last week. 

 

The country has had more than 7,200 cases and 130 deaths, and in some townships testing is now picking up a faster spread of the virus. Tough measures, including a nightly curfew, remain in force, and public frustration is rising, particularly after allegations of police violence.

 

“We have not nearly reached the peak of infections in South Africa,” Mr Ramaphosa said on Monday. “All the scientific models show that the infection rate will continue to rise at a much faster rate in the next few months.” 

 

The South African approach to date has relied heavily on an army of community health workers. Whereas other countries need to hire thousands of people to conduct screening and contract tracing — the US would require at least 100,000 contact tracers at a cost of $3.6bn, according to one estimate — South Africa already had teams in place, detecting tuberculosis, a national killer, and bringing drugs to the millions of South Africans living with HIV.

 

“We have been on the front lines for many years . . . we were there to fight HIV, we were there to educate communities about TB,” said Tshepo Matoko, secretary of the Gauteng Community Health Care Forum, a body representing workers.

 

So far about 3 per cent of tests referred from community screening have come back positive, similar to the proportion of positive results among patients tested at health centres. That suggests the government’s community health workers have successfully identified many cases that might have otherwise slipped through the net.

 

But although the screening programme has been extensive, wide variations exist in the approach and the number of tests administered in each of the nine provinces.

 

The Western Cape, which contains Cape Town, for example, has tested a higher percentage of its population than other parts of the country and overtaken Gauteng, the most populous region, as the province with the most active infections. About 6 per cent of tests have returned a positive result in Western Cape, compared with the 3 per cent average nationally. For the tests administered in the province on Monday that figure jumped to 13 per cent.

The province has detected an especially large rise in cases in the sprawling township of Khayelitsha, just outside Cape Town.

 

The findings are “based on our active case-finding approach, where we purposely follow the ‘bush fires’ — the pockets of infections within communities — to ensure that every person who has been infected by Covid-19 is identified as quickly as possible,” said Alan Winde, the Western Cape premier.

 

Community screening cannot identify asymptomatic cases. But it can point to emerging clusters, and help later contact tracing to find asymptomatic carriers, health experts said.

 

South Africa has also taken a different approach to contact tracing than many western countries, which are largely placing their faith in voluntary smartphone apps.

 

Under lockdown regulations, subject to regular review by a former constitutional court judge, the state has the power to access data from mobile phone companies on the movements of possible coronavirus contacts.

 

“The major difference in South Africa is that it is not an opt-in app, as it is in Singapore and Australia,” said Livia Dyer, a partner at Bowmans, a South African law firm. “It is reflective of the way mobile phones are used in this country,” she said, since the poorest citizens do not have smartphones.

 

View the table

 

Mr Ramaphosa’s warning that South Africa is still early in its epidemic means it will have to keep up these screening, testing and tracing efforts for many months to come. His government has said that different forms of a lockdown could be in force for at least six months and public health experts have predicted a possible peak in the number of infections in September.

 

That will add to the pressure on the thousands of community health workers on the front line who have battled for years to be recognised as permanent government employees and are now central to the state’s response, said Mr Matoko.

 

“[The government] never saw the importance of these workers until . . . Covid-19,” he said.

 

 

 

[Jose Jones]

2 hours ago, Scott_M said:

Maybe that crazy MILF from a few pages back should read this...

 

I quite like Lawrence Arabia’s Singles Club record.

Good kiwi music shit.