Furloughed till October now,along with 7 million other Brits.
That's 7 months paid leave and I'll still have my 6 week holiday entitlement to take before April 2021.
Bonkers..
Furloughed till October now,along with 7 million other Brits.
That's 7 months paid leave and I'll still have my 6 week holiday entitlement to take before April 2021.
Bonkers..
From the Beeb. And this is what a dictatorship can do, along with China.
Questions mount over Russia's low mortality rate
Staff at an intensive care unit in Moscow
Questions are mounting over Russia's extraordinarily low reported mortality rate - only 2,305 deaths with 252,000 infected. Moscow's department of health says it does not include most deaths of Covid-19 patients in official statistics because they had other potentially lethal illnesses. St Petersburg has reported an unexplained spike in deaths from pneumonia - five-and-a-half times the usual number and 10 times the official number of Covid-19 deaths in the city.Meduza, an independent Russian website, says official statistics are doctored and Russians are effectively “not allowed to die from coronavirus”. Many of those who find official numbers hard to believe keep their own tally.
Medical workers have their own list of colleagues they say have been killed by coronavirus. Even Orthodox priests have launched their own list "because official statistics are incomplete". Earlier, the Financial Times said Russia’s Covid-19 death toll could be 70% higher than official figure, but officials in Moscow dismissed such reports as "fake".
....and the Western democracies are handling it quite well, as we can see.
Well at least their numbers are likely painting a truer picture.
Last edited by HuangLao; 14-05-2020 at 08:48 PM. Reason: groovy, baby....
Wouldn't believe it, nothing like normal but quite a few planes over Europe right now, and I can't see that they're all emergency flights; crossing over the pond those hundreds must be mainly domestic flights, not sure that's good in a lockdown.
Flightradar24: Live Flight Tracker - Real-Time Flight Tracker Map
^ Cargo flights the majority of them.
It's funny how our resident snivelling chinky sycophant will use any means to try and distract from points being made by others, even quibbling over irrelevant words.
He isn't likely, or possibly or even probably a silly snivelling sycophant, he is definitely one.
And yes, Russia is trying to paint its Covid dead as victims of something else, usually pneumonia, and as I reported earlier has even beaten and jailed the good doctor who tried to report it and tried to give PPE to one of the swamped provincial hospitals.
Don't ask me why hoho always wants to try and hide all this shit, and it doesn't really matter because he's rubbish at it.
Last edited by harrybarracuda; 15-05-2020 at 03:14 AM.
Kidney problems, I read few times before, and the problem that there are not enough dialysis, and the treatment is not cheap - many coming better to Thailand. One of the reasons the figures are so high...
- and somewhere else again not so high...
Kidney injury seen in more than a third of hospitalized COVID-19 patients -U.S. study
Thursday, 14 May 2020 07:00 GMT
CHICAGO, May 14 (Reuters) - Over a third of patients treated for COVID-19 in a large New York medical system developed acute kidney injury, and nearly 15% required dialysis, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
The study was conducted by a team at Northwell Health, the largest health provider in New York state.
"We found in the first 5,449 patients admitted, 36.6% developed acute kidney injury," said study co-author Dr. Kenar Jhaveri, associated chief of nephrology at Hofstra/Northwell in Great Neck, New York, whose findings were published in the journal Kidney International.
Acute kidney injury occurs when the kidneys fail and become unable to filter out waste.
Of those patients with kidney failure, 14.3% required dialysis, Jhaveri said in a phone interview.
The study is the largest to date to look at kidney injury in COVID-19 patients. It may be helpful, Jhaveri said, as other hospitals face new waves of patients with the disease caused by the novel coronavirus that has infected more than 4.3 million people and killed over 295,000 globally.
Several groups have noted increased rates of kidney failure among patients with COVID-19. Jhaveri and colleagues set out to quantify it by combing through medical records of 5,449 COVID-19 patients hospitalized between March 1 and April 5.
They found that kidney failure occurred early on, with 37.3% of patients arriving at the hospital with failing kidneys, or developing the condition within the first 24 hours of being admitted.
In many cases, the kidney failure occurred around the time severely ill patients needed to be placed on a ventilator, Jhaveri said.
Among the more than 1,000 patients who needed to be placed on a ventilator, about 90% developed acute kidney failure. That compared with 21.7% of the 925 patients who developed the condition but did not need mechanical breathing assistance.
Very ill patients often develop kidney failure as their conditions becomes more and more severe, Jhaveri said.
"It's not specific to COVID-19. It's more related to how sick you are," he said.
Nevertheless, knowing the proportion of patients at risk for this condition could help hospitals as they plan equipment and staffing needed for future coronavirus surges, he said. (Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen Editing by Bill Berkrot)
Kidney injury seen in more than a third of hospitalized ...
It does raise an issue....
Every fucker and their aunties are going to want to take their holidays as soon as they get the opportunity.
Which means excessive demand on hotels, flights, ferries, etc.
Be a good chance for these companies to claw some of their losses back.
EU top diplomat wants independent probe into coronavirus origins - ReutersBERLIN (Reuters) - The European Union’s foreign policy chief called on China on Thursday to contribute significantly to the fight against the coronavirus pandemic and said there should be an independent scientific investigation into the origins of the pandemic.
In a guest column in Friday’s edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, Josep Borrell said China should act to help protect the world from future pandemics.
“An independent scientific investigation of the origin of this pandemic is also necessary,” he wrote.
The virus emerged in Wuhan, China, in December and some countries, including the United States and some European states have criticised its handling of the outbreak. China says it has been open and transparent in its approach.
Borrell also said China should take on its responsibilities “commensurate with its weight” in tackling the pandemic, vaccine research and boosting the global economy, including playing its part in a major debt relief effort for developing countries particularly hard hit.
Back on Topic
USS Theodore Roosevelt: Sailors who had returned to pandemic stricken aircraft carrier test positive for coronavirus - CNNPolitics
Sailors who had returned to pandemic stricken aircraft carrier test positive for coronavirus By Barbara Starr and Ryan Browne, CNN
Updated 2001 GMT (0401 HKT) May 14, 2020
(CNN)At least five sailors who had returned to the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier have tested positive for coronavirus despite extensive efforts by the US Navy to prevent another outbreak on the ship, according to a US defense official.
More than 1,000 members of the ship's nearly 4,900 member crew had tested positive following the outbreak aboard the ship in March.
The Navy had instituted several screening procedures to enable those who had recovered to return to the ship following two negative tests.
The official said that one of the sailors suddenly started experiencing symptoms when they returned and the other four that tested positive had been in close proximity to that sailor.
Now this is pretty bad news. I fully expect that the military would pull out all stops concerning verification that their personnel were cured, or, recovered/non-infected and the vessel was as thoroughly cleaned as you could.
So, the reappearance of Covid bodes badly for our hopes of both herd immunity and a viable preventive vaccine.
Herd immunity is a bullshit path anyway . . . and there isn't a vaccine yet, so we can't say whether it's viable or not.
Today NZ is in an almost normal state again . . . took my daughter to Subway, ice cream . . . still adhering to social distancing rules, but ti's almost business as usual
How about this - say, 250,000 cases within a few weeks/month?
This article is interesting, and note the very last line...
...
France slams pharma giant Sanofi for saying US will get first access to coronavirus vaccine
The French government warned Thursday that it would be "unacceptable" for pharmaceutical giant Sanofi to give any COVID-19 vaccine for the United States first, after the firm's chief said he would give preference to the American market.
"To us, it would be unacceptable for there to be privileged access for such and such country for financial reasons," deputy finance minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher told Sud Radio.
The French government official reacted to Sanofi's British CEO Paul Hudson statement on Wednesday that if its efforts to find a vaccine pan out, he would supply the US government first because "it's invested in taking the risk," after it expanded a partnership with his company earlier this year.
"That's how it will be because they've invested to try and protect their population, to restart their economy," he told Bloomberg News.
But Hudson's comments drew outrage from French health associations, not least since Sanofi has benefited from tens of millions of euros in research credits from the French state in recent years.
Pannier-Runacher said she had immediately contacted the group after the comments from Hudson, a British citizen who took over as Sanofi's chief last year.
"The head of Sanofi's French division confirmed to me that a vaccine would be available in every country and obviously (..) to the French as well, not least because it has production capacity in France," she said.
https://www.thelocal.fr/20200514/fra...cine-to-the-us
Keralan common sense....seems to have been more effective than the British brand that Boris seems to love so much.
Oh I forgot....everywhere with better numbers than Britain just isn't testing and reporting accurately.
The coronavirus slayer! How Kerala's rock star health minister helped save it from Covid-19 | World news | The GuardianOn 20 January, KK Shailaja phoned one of her medically trained deputies. She had read online about a dangerous new virus spreading in China. “Will it come to us?” she asked. “Definitely, Madam,” he replied. And so the health minister of the Indian state of Kerala began her preparations.
Four months later, Kerala has reported only 524 cases of Covid-19, four deaths and – according to Shailaja – no community transmission. The state has a population of about 35 million and a GDP per capita of only £2,200. By contrast, the UK (double the population, GDP per capita of £33,100) has reported more than 40,000 deaths, while the US (10 times the population, GDP per capita of £51,000) has reported more than 82,000 deaths; both countries have rampant community transmission.
As such, Shailaja Teacher, as the 63-year-old minister is affectionately known, has attracted some new nicknames in recent weeks – Coronavirus Slayer and Rockstar Health Minister among them. The names sit oddly with the merry, bespectacled former secondary school science teacher, but they reflect the widespread admiration she has drawn for demonstrating that effective disease containment is possible not only in a democracy, but in a poor one.
How has this been achieved? Three days after reading about the new virus in China, and before Kerala had its first case of Covid-19, Shailaja held the first meeting of her rapid response team. The next day, 24 January, the team set up a control room and instructed the medical officers in Kerala’s 14 districts to do the same at their level. By the time the first case arrived, on 27 January, via a plane from Wuhan, the state had already adopted the World Health Organization’s protocol of test, trace, isolate and support.
^^ Good idea to test it on the yanks first, starting now, if it's good it'll be available to the rest by Christmas.
Christian Drosten – The Leading Light
Christian Drosten is one of the world's most influential virologists and was responsible for the discovery of the infectious agents during the Sars epidemic of 2003. He is appreciated for his transparency and rigor, as well as an innate ability to communicate clearly. A respected figure, he has quickly established himself as one of the key scientific advisors of the crisis. When he speaks, Germans, including Angela Merkel, tend to listen.
Christian Drosten is head of the Institute of Virology at the Charité Hospital in Berlin, a public health research center that has become the leading university laboratory for coronavirus research. The 48 year old is the German government’s most trusted Covid-19 consultant. He is now a pre-eminent figure in the fight against the pandemic and has become a much sought-after expert by those in high office. He has also taken the time to establish a direct link with the German public via his daily podcast, which began in late February. The podcast, Das Coronavirus-Update, is the most listened to podcast in the land.
Discipline and pragmatism
After his team was the first to identify the Sars virus in 2003, Drosten immediately made his research public, even before it was published in the scientific press. As a member of the Covid-19 taskforce, he advocates an approach based on transparency. His major contribution to the national crisis management plan is widely recognized. In early January, before the first case occurred in Germany, his team developed a Covid-19 screening test in record time that was made available worldwide in mid-January.
Despite being one of the most affected countries in Europe, Germany has a particularly low case to fatality ratio. The rapid availability of the test and the massive screening campaign have been the pillars of German crisis management, with the Institute of Virology as its cornerstone.
Germany's health response is considered exemplary and public opinion is beginning to discover who Christian Drosten is. He is on every front. He is clarifying, anticipating, advising and above all demystifying and rectifying matters. He was also the one to advocate a slow and cautious deconfinement at a time when many were calling for a rapid resumption of activities. Although very little media emphasis is placed on the virologist in Germany, he is described there as a "guide" and a "national hero".
The German Chancellor's expert opinion is sought from him, and his words sway public opinion. Through this crisis, he has demonstrated his propensity to simultaneously inform the federal government and the public at large. Everyone, from ordinary citizens to the highest authorities, has access to common, transparent and rigorous information. His commitment against the virus' lethality makes him extremely concerned about a rapid deconfinement. Rushing a deconfinement, as in the case of several German states, could result in the country facing "the risk of being completely out of control against the disease."
The Prevention Paradox
Christian Drosten was the first to define "the prevention paradox" during the current phase of the crisis: "With the decline in statistics and the lack of saturation of the hospital system, people feel that the system has done too much. There is great political and economic pressure to get back to normal." He advocates a very gradual deconfinement based on his belief that this is "theoretically the safest method". He expresses his doubts about restoring economic life, which he considers to be too premature. The virologist continues to advocate maintaining the restrictions until the virus "disappears". Given its federal constitution, the sixteen German states have powers to decide locally on precautionary measures, even if they are regulated by a national plan. There is now a call to challenge the precautionary approach defended by the scientist. Several regional governments have decided on an accelerated timetable for the resumption of activities and Drosten's position has been heavily criticized by certain media and political factions in recent days. Faced with criticism, he stated: "I am not a politician, I am a scientist. I can explain things as a virologist. There are other matters beyond my area of expertise. I have no political mandate." His role has propelled him in recent weeks to the rank of one of the major scientific figures of the crisis, both in Germany and internationally.
Style and content
Christian Drosten directed the research leading to breakthroughs during the 2003 Sars epidemic and his university institute was the first to develop a Covid-19 screening test in Europe. Not only are the innovations present, but he also introduced his ability to communicate with the public. For him, discoveries must be shared with as many people as possible so that everyone can get an idea of the situation. In late February, he launched a daily podcast called Das Coronavirus-Update in collaboration with the public radio station NDR, which is now followed by tens of thousands of Germans. There, he breaks down the latest information, comments on developments and gets to the heart of the issues affecting humanity in a simple and objective way. Two episodes were sufficient for it to become the most popular Apple podcast in Germany. Throughout this daily 30-minute programme, the virologist answers questions asked by science journalists and listeners alike.
His approach is that of a meticulous scientist who knows all the latest research, who formulates hypotheses and who constantly questions the current state of knowledge on this virus. His honesty is praised because he never hesitates to acknowledge the unknown. He knows that his intellectual honesty does not always receive positive feedback: "Some say I am the merchant of doom and gloom ruining the economy," he says.
Cautious by nature
Christian Drosten is a scientist firmly rooted in a fact-based approach. He believes that risk management depends on a country's ability to contain an inflationary rise in the indicators of pandemic virulence. Faced with the "prevention paradox", he is in favor of a very gradual deconfinement and fears a second pandemic wave. He believes that rapid economic resumption is likely to cause a second pandemic wave that will be disastrous for the country. So far, the virus has not been defeated and no one can foresee the challenges that lie ahead for not only Germany, but for the whole world. The government has great confidence in the virologist's advice. Christian Drosten has undeniably become one of the most eminent scientists involved in this crisis.
As the pandemic has taken a heavy toll on Germany and caused general astonishment, information overload and heated debate, Christian Drosten's singular and outspoken honesty has certainly played a decisive role in ensuring that the Germans respected the confinement measures and maintained a sustained national debate.
Heroes & Zeros: Christian Drosten – The Leading Light - Leaders League
Prof. Dr. Christian Drosten: Award for outstanding achievements in science communication
https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-04/c-ub-pdc042020.php
Christian Drosten, Germany’s covid-19 explainer-in-chief
https://www.economist.com/europe/2020/04/30/christian-drosten-germanys-covid-19-explainer-in-chief
Looks like your French Frankenstein didn't get the result and the TD idiots have struck again
Trump didn't see improvements - study
Patients given the malaria drug touted by President Donald Trump as a potential treatment for COVID-19 did not improve significantly over those who did not, according to two new studies.
By REUTERS MAY 15, 2020 03:58
Patients given the malaria drug touted by US President Donald Trump as a potential treatment for COVID-19 did not improve significantly over those who did not, according to two new studies published in the medical journal BMJ on Thursday.Neither trial was placebo controlled, generally considered the gold standard for clinical data.
In a randomized, controlled trial of 150 patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 in China, researchers found that patients on hydroxychloroquine did not get better significantly faster than those not treated with the drug. Adverse events were also higher in patients receiving the malaria drug.
An observational study of patients in France found that the drug did not significantly reduce admission to intensive care or death in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 pneumonia who required oxygen. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Demand for hydroxychloroquine surged after Trump touted it in early April, and U.S. regulators have since authorized its emergency use for coronavirus patients..........
COVID patients given drug touted by Trump didn't see improvements - study - The Jerusalem Post
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