The Corona Pandemic

Yeah, I’m guilty of being a bit rash on posting the number without actually knowing the flu figures.

Lesson learned, but still a horrible figure, and we’re not done yet.

Viral myositis. A condition I’m sadly rather familiar with :disappointed:

There isn’t much to be gained from trying to compare infection numbers between the two diseases, given that Flu numbers are calculated differently than we’ve been producing our figures for Covid, and we’ve taken fairly significant measures to try to limit transmission this year that we dont normally take for Flu season.

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One of the biggest positives of lockdown has been the effect on the flu.

In Australia just 135 cases has been detected in 2020, compared to 131,000 in 2019.

In New Zealand the Flu has not been detected since April and we have effectively eliminated it (like Covid)

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I’m not but there are unfortunately those that do. My comment was a swipe at those people.

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I said to my wife the other day that I can’t remember going a longer period of time without even a mild cough. This is down purely to people wearing masks and me not allowing people outside my family near me. My wife’s taken it even further in not even allowing me near her.

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Yeah, we’ve seen something similar here for this year compared to last year, but I think we (at least here) need to be careful with that given we’re still early in Flu season and last year we got hit hard early. So even under non-covid conditions I would expect us to be way down compared to this point last year in Flu.

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It’s about time Jezza had a word with his crackpot brother …

About as newsworthy as Johnson’s dad shopping without a mask.

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I’m not on Twitter but I had to dig this out when I heard about it.

Well, it isn’t a silver bullet. But if a system is not tracing at least 70% of all cases to origin, there is really no measure short of a full lockdown available. Our test and trace system has been holding in that range for a while, but has slipped down close to 60%. It feels like a lockdown is not far away.

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Anybody want to play a game? That Times article Noo Noo is referring to is obviously behind a paywall, but the article stops at quite an opportune time:

Is it:
a) Eating more British grown vegetables?
b) sucking it up and ‘taking it on the chin’?
c) registering a new business name and getting chummy with the Conservative inner circle?

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Out of interest, when she refers to test and trace, is she referring to the app? Or the whole system of identifying close contacts and isolating?

If it’s the former, I can understand that as there aren’t too many truly successful applications.

If it’s the latter, then this woman needs to take a long walk off a short pier.

We talked about this already a while ago, hopefully it will make a difference in our schools etc.

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Track and trace figures in the UK have been falling steadily over the last months.

A big part of that is undoubtedly due to the infection numbers rising faster than the system is able to react. However, to me it smacks of an enormous lack of foresight i.e. the increase was predictable and obvious.

Agree that a lockdown becomes the only affective measure but I doubt that happens in England either. I don’t buy the we’re skint excuse.

Nice to get your excuses in early.

What the heck is going on in Derry? All of a sudden, one of the worst spots in the UK - and by far the worst in Ireland.

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The UK’s numbers are too high for anything but a truly remarkable system firing on all pistons to be tracing. No one in the world has one that good. It had to be in place during the lower numbers of the summer to have any real chance.

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Level 4 plus to be implemented in Ireland this evening for a period of 6 weeks.
Not too sure just what Level 4 plus entails as yet but can see us going to level 5 before the end of the month.

Probably the right move, but grim for life in Ireland for a while. Had my annual Dublin board meeting last week, nominally ‘in’ Dublin again though that condition has been waived this year. People over here forget how much less personal living space most Europeans have, and how tough this all is as a result.

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Test and trace isn’t perfect, even in the best of times. The common masks aren’t a perfect protection. Ventilation systems in closed spaces aren’t either. Apps might only contribute small success. Even vaccines most likely will not be the perfect ‘silver bullet’. So what, everything contributes a little bit. I’ll never understand this logic, I see it everywhere though.

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