New coronavirus in/from China

[Stumuz2]

Another hopeless briefing from the PM.

Subjective interpretation. I saw a man in anguish. Telling the customers something they did not want to hear, and which goes against every fibre of his genuine liberal beliefs.

I liked the way he said only 20% of food comes through Dover and stressed a few times the majority was unaffected. Sure - but there is ~zero slack in the system.

Agreed. One of the reasons i voted Brexit. It will force TPTB to make the UK's food system more resilient.The sooner we get salads growing where they are consumed, the quicker we can reduce environmental degradation and modern slavery.
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2019 ... reenhouses

Losing anything like 20% of supply for more than a day or two will lead to significant shortages.

But that 20% is mostly bags of salad/peppers/soft fruit. Hardly going to lead to starvation.

Christmas is also a relatively inefficient time of year, with people buying more than they need, increased food waste and probably worse than usual this year thanks to the last minute change of plans due to lockdown.

Agreed. But as power switchers, we have carrots, beetroot, garlic, onions, cabbage, sprouts, kale, swede, turnips, potatoes, oca, lambs lettuce, in the plot, with tomatoes, chillis, peppers,beans,peas, courgette,apples,etc in the pantry/ freezer, don't we?

You have often stated that with resource limits, resources will not suddenly run out. There will be a societal slow collapse and a quicker financial collapse will occur first.

[Little John]

Our economic system in this country is predicated on financial economic activity, not primary economic activity. That financial economic activity gives us the money we need to import around 60% of the food we need to feed the population. If the financial system collapses, a majority portion of the food supply chain will collapse immediately thereafter.

Fine. Bring it on. Let's find out how poor we really are.

[Little John]

This latest twist in the fearmongering narrative is just yet one more piece of pseudo scientific drivel. They have isolated this 'new strain' and somehow figured out in just a few days it 'spreads faster' have they?

It's an exercise in finding out how much bullshit and magical thinking some people will believe if authority figures tell them. It is now clear that if the government told some people Santa was making a vaccine as a Christmas present for all the good people there is a hardcore of idiots who would believe it and call those who didn't 'conspiracy theorists'.

We have a few such idiots on here.

[Stumuz2]

Our economic system in this country is predicated on financial economic activity, not primary economic activity.

I would disagree with that.

Finance is defined as the management of money and includes activities such as investing, borrowing, lending, budgeting, saving, and forecasting.

Economics is a social science concerned with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.

That financial economic activity gives us the money we need to import around 60% of the food we need to feed the population. If the financial system collapses, a majority portion of the food supply chain will collapse immediately thereafter.

We do not import 60% of the food we need as a nation. At the moment the current food supply for the UK is from : UK 50% EU 30% RoW 20%, within two years it will be UK 60% EU 10% RoW 40%.

However, the 50% we import tends to be exotics, bulk animal feed, and fine foods such as cured meats, cheeses, wines, etc. There is no question of the nation running out of food. Running out of Nigella's afghan mung bean maybe, but not stables.
Also, Finance means allocating money, to buy actual necessaries. We know know Money (fiat currency) does not exist. Therefore other ways will be found to provide for the allocation of actual necessaries (furlough scheme?)

Fine. Bring it on. Let's find out how poor we really are.

Poor is relative. We are not poor compared to Eritrea.

[Little John]

This country suffered major interruptions to international food supply chains between 1939 and 1945. At the time, the population was 35 million. This country came perilously close to running out of food on several occasions during these years and, as a consequence, rationing became necessary.

We now have 66 million or more, import over 50% of our food and rely on massive inputs of hydrocarbons (largely imported) into our own domestic farming system to produce the remainder.

You are talking dangerously naive bollocks.

Not that it matters much. We will get to find out, in any event, in the not too distant future, how naive that bollocks is.

[Little John]

The lie of asymptomatic spread laid bare in a massive Chinese study.

Abstract

Stringent COVID-19 control measures were imposed in Wuhan between January 23 and April 8, 2020. Estimates of the prevalence of infection following the release of restrictions could inform post-lockdown pandemic management. Here, we describe a city-wide SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening programme between May 14 and June 1, 2020 in Wuhan. All city residents aged six years or older were eligible and 9,899,828 (92.9%) participated. No new symptomatic cases and 300 asymptomatic cases (detection rate 0.303/10,000, 95% CI 0.270–0.339/10,000) were identified. There were no positive tests amongst 1,174 close contacts of asymptomatic cases. 107 of 34,424 previously recovered COVID-19 patients tested positive again (re-positive rate 0.31%, 95% CI 0.423–0.574%). The prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Wuhan was therefore very low five to eight weeks after the end of lockdown.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467- ... ECNqk9KZNM

[Stumuz2]

This country suffered major interruptions to international food supply chains between 1939 and 1945. At the time, the population was 35 million. This country came perilously close to running out of food on several occasions during these years and, as a consequence, rationing became necessary.

You forgot to mention that we had the German imperial navy blowing up and sinking every food ship on its way to Britain.

We now have 66 million or more, import over 50% of our food and rely on massive inputs of hydrocarbons (largely imported) into our own domestic farming system to produce the remainder.

Again you are mistaking food and food stables. Yes we do import most of our champagne, truffles, Belgian chocolate. One of the benefits of Brexit will be a more robust food system.
And as we go into the future it will become self evident that we don't need hydrocarbons for food production.

You are talking dangerously naive bollocks.
Not that it matters much. We will get to find out, in any event, in the not too distant future, how naive that bollocks is.

I've heard that many, many, many, times in my life. Still waiting

[Little John]

Not long to wait now...

[clv101]

Agreed. But as power switchers, we have carrots, beetroot, garlic, onions, cabbage, sprouts, kale, swede, turnips, potatoes, oca, lambs lettuce, in the plot, with tomatoes, chillis, peppers,beans,peas, courgette,apples,etc in the pantry/ freezer, don't we?

You have often stated that with resource limits, resources will not suddenly run out. There will be a societal slow collapse and a quicker financial collapse will occur first.

Indeed, all of the above - except we finished the potatoes last week, don't grow oca, or preserve courgettes. The rest are on hand.

And yes, we are well into the 'societal slow collapse', Brexit and especially Covid are unexpected accelerants for the UK and the west in general. But even if the referendum had gone the other way, and the viral pandemic hadn't emerged in 2019, the trajectory is the same. It's worth stepping back from the day to day, year to year detail/noise and look at the bigger picture sometimes.

[adam2]

The French are partialy lifting the border closure, subject to various caveats. I expect ongoing disruption. There seems to be a fairly general view that the closure was politicaly motivated with covid being a handy excuse.

Mean while a neighbour of mine whom is a retired doctor* was one of the "guinea pigs" on whom the vaccine was tested, he suffered a high temperature for 24 hours, but nothing serious. After the conclusion of the test he was told that he was given the actual vaccine, not the placebo.

He is of the view that the virus is very widespread but only moderatly dangerous. It has killed tens of thousands, but out of a population of tens of millions.
He is a strong believer in frequent MODERATE excercise, but not in "pushing the human body beyond its design limits" He says that competive athletics and the like can be as bad as no exercise.

*A research doctor of medicene, not a GP.

[PS_RalphW]

One government minister is proposing an increase in the areas at Tier 4 from boxing day. Whatever the cause, the rate of positive tests and hospital admissions is going up very fast. Rumours that the South African strain also causes serious disease in more younger people. My more scientific acquaintances are going into personal lockdown voluntarily.

The government may be over reacting, but it would be first for this pandemic.

The rate of serious side effects in the US deployment of the vaccine is higher than that reported in the UK. My guess is that PEG is more widely used in US medicines, and that the body gets primed the first time it encounters it, ready to trigger an immune system over reaction the second time.

The wide spread prediction is for several US states to reach health systems collapse in January with extensive use of Triage to select which patients to treat.

[Little John]

......the rate of positive tests and hospital admissions is going up very fast......

Hospital admissions are not "going up very fast"

Hospital ICU admissions and current bed capacity is at or below the yearly average for this time of year.

[Little John]

Another fun fact in nice, easy, graphical form for the hard of thinking and hysterical of demeanor.



Indeed, I'd say those numbers are more than "suspicious". It’s downright impossible for there to be, as claimed, a pandemic of a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus ‘ripping through the country’, yet to have far fewer deaths than you’d expect from a SARS-Cov2 virus

[PS_RalphW]

......the rate of positive tests and hospital admissions is going up very fast......

Hospital admissions are not "going up very fast" you hysterical bullshitter.

Hospital ICU admissions and current bed capacity is at or below the yearly average for this time of year.

UK Covid admissions have gone up from 1371 per day to 1909 per day (7 day average) since the beginning of December.

So the rate of admissions is going up, at a rate of about 150 per day per week.

Rate of positive tests has gone from 14,500 to 28,800 in the same period, Doubled in under 3 weeks.
Admissions lag cases
Deaths lag admissions
Deaths average has dropped from 460 to 400 in that period. The rate of decline is much slower than after the first wave.

I am not hysterical. I am reporting facts

[PS_RalphW]

Another fun fact in nice, easy, graphical form for the hard of thinking and hysterical of demeanor.

Indeed, I'd say those numbers are more than "suspicious". It’s downright impossible for there to be, as claimed, a pandemic of a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus ‘ripping through the country’, yet to have far fewer deaths than you’d expect from a SARS-Cov2 virus

This of course has nothing to do with the lockdown, which is designed to protect the population from airbourne respiratory disease like covid and influenza, the latter having far fewer serious cases as a result. The lockdown is doing what it was designed to do, If we didn't have it we would have patients dying in ambulance queues at a&e and triage to see who gets treated and who are left to die, as we have in California.

That may yet happen in this country.

Oh, and are you certain that those figures include covid, or are those listed under a separate category?