Coronavirus

[Simon_CSK]

3 hours ago, Daan said:

I reckon she is an improvement, If recent press of Alex Salmond are anything to go by.

This isn't an improvement just same drivel in a skirt. 

[Bowie69]

3 minutes ago, mad_pete said:

Your mask is for other people (and theirs for you) as if you are infected stops the distance on aerosol virus.  Indoors masks are the way to go. Gloves don’t buy you much your skin can’t do but help remind you to be careful touching your face.

I appreciate that, but if properly distanced, there is little benefit. Once the '1m plus' comes in, then it is obviously a different situation.

[monkie]

The gloves thing is a bit of joke in my opinion based on the fact people who work in labs have to be reminded how to use them properly in terms of how to change them and when to change them, so I have no hope for the general public using them properly. 

If only people would wash their hands properly and often, stop hugging eachother plus stay away from other people if they don't feel well, we might manage to avoid a second wave. 

Having said that, in the line of business I'm in, STI testing usually is big business. Social distancing is hampering people from passing on their STIs. I guess you can't have it all. 

[reb78]

BBC news just now showing pictures of liverpool fans celebrating in the streets. No social distancing whatsoever.... what is up with these people?!

[Dave W]

I just had a phone call from a group of "off roaders" wanting some advice...

Apparently they picked up a route around Otley that takes 2-3 days and covers around 100 miles of tracks/lanes with some B roads. They'd not researched any of the routes themselves but it was someone's birthday and him and a bunch of his mates wanted to spend a few days driving and camping in the area having driven up from Wisbech. When they got there they couldn't find any of the routes so phoned up the local off road club for help.

I pointed out that they are breaking the law in terms of the lockdown and intending to break the law further by driving routes that aren't legal rights of way. He said they must be legal because someone had published the route on the internet so they didn't need to research them. He was surprised when  I told him that if you drove all the legal unsurfaced rights of way around Otley you'd be done in around 45 minutes and asked me to supply a route for him... which I declined to do.

On the lockdown, his response was, oh well I'm only 40 so it doesn't apply to me... so him and his group of mates are camping together, driving any route that takes their fancy regardless of legal status and no doubt leaving piles of rubbish and carp across the countryside while they are doing it. The ONLY saving grace IMV is that none of them are driving Land Rovers.

[Dave W]

4 hours ago, Daan said:

I reckon she is an improvement, If recent press of Alex Salmond are anything to go by.

They can't replace her at the moment, they have run out of fish related surnames so will have to stick with her until they get a new SMP with a fishy surname. The only alternative would be to change the theme but that would be seen as a U turn by the unofficial opposition.
 

20 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

1/6000 of death, what's the stats for people who don't die but whose lungs will never be the same again?

If someone said "there's a tiger escaped from the zoo, but don't worry, there's only 1/6000 chance it'll eat you" I'd still avoid unnecessary trips out of the house thanks!

I'd get some better trainers, as they say, you don't have to run fast when being pursued by a Tiger... just faster than at least one other person.

[mad_pete]

6 hours ago, Bowie69 said:

I appreciate that, but if properly distanced, there is little benefit. Once the '1m plus' comes in, then it is obviously a different situation.

If you are infected you are spewing out virus with each breath and that’s before any coughs and sneezes. It’s going to be more and go further without a mask and be hanging around in the air.  Inside, masks are way the to go. Everybody just keep their current germs to themselves. 

[David Sparkes]

I appreciate this

yd83de58[1]

[Bowie69]

17 hours ago, mad_pete said:

If you are infected you are spewing out virus with each breath and that’s before any coughs and sneezes. It’s going to be more and go further without a mask and be hanging around in the air.  Inside, masks are way the to go. Everybody just keep their current germs to themselves. 

Totally agree.

My approach is:

- I work from home

- I shop once a week

- I only shop later in the evening when the shops are dead (5 people in a supermarket)

- no other trips out except for walks/bike/essentials like propane cylinders (ran out yesterday!)

- no contact unless necessary to deliver stuff to shielding people or brief social calls handled outside at a distance.

These measures are not something I made a big effort to do, but with work being the same as home, minimising risk is very easy, and probably worthwhile.

So, chances that I have 'it' are absolutely minimal, I am shielding by any other name except my weekly shop.

So, with a minimal risk of me having it coupled with a 2m+ distance policy a mask is not going to affect the overall chance of me passing it on to someone else.

I explain all this to ensure people are not under the impression I am blasé, and nor should anyone else be. 

Each person must weigh the risk to them and to others and make sure they don't cross any moral threshold. 'everyone must wear a mask' is somewhat unhelpful, as you must take anything said in context, and I hope this post has given that.

P.s. spellcheck seems to be going bananas today, sorry for any typos/missing words.

 

[reb78]

4 minutes ago, Bowie69 said:

Totally agree.

My approach is:

- I work from home

- I shop once a week

- I only shop later in the evening when the shops are dead (5 people in a supermarket)

- no other trips out except for walks/bike/essentials like propane cylinders (ran out yesterday!)

- no contact unless necessary to deliver stuff to shielding people or brief social calls handled outside at a distance.

These measures are not something I made a big effort to do, but with work being the same as home, minimising risk is very easy, and probably worthwhile.

So, chances that I have 'it' are absolutely minimal, I am shielding by any other name except my weekly shop.

So, with a minimal risk of me having it coupled with a 2m+ distance policy a mask is not going to affect the overall chance of me passing it on to someone else.

I explain all this to ensure people are not under the impression I am blasé, and nor should anyone else be. 

Each person must weigh the risk to them and to others and make sure they don't cross any moral threshold. 'everyone must wear a mask' is somewhat unhelpful, as you must take anything said in context, and I hope this post has given that.

P.s. spellcheck seems to be going bananas today, sorry for any typos/missing words.

 

Pretty much exactly the same as me. 

[Ex Member]

I wear a mask when in any shops.  It is no big deal.  It is common to wear a mask at work all day long.  People can manage for 15 minutes.

[geoffbeaumont]

I wear a mask and gloves in the supermarket - they may not make as much difference as other measures, but it all adds up. Though masks and gloves, as others have observed, only work if you're sensible with them - if you handle the mask all the time and handle things that definitely aren't clean with the gloves then you'd be better off without them.

[landroversforever]

On 6/26/2020 at 12:54 PM, monkie said:

The gloves thing is a bit of joke in my opinion based on the fact people who work in labs have to be reminded how to use them properly in terms of how to change them and when to change them, so I have no hope for the general public using them properly.

Likewise. I deal with surface contamination with both tritium (radiation) and beryllium. As you say, people still can need reminding to do a glove change that use them every day. Let alone joe-public who simply doesn't understand surface contamination of stuff. It amazes me the number of people I see with gloves etc on still touching their face and eating etc.

[Snagger]

Gloves tend to give people false confidence and discourage them from washing their hands.  They are directly contributing to the spread of the virus in public spaces.

[western]

I don't use a disposable mask or gloves even in the supermarket, at work we are operating a 2m rule & any work that needs the guys to be inside 2m is mask on,

hand washing is much more effective than gloves & sanitiser..

[Snagger]

On 6/26/2020 at 10:22 PM, mad_pete said:

If you are infected you are spewing out virus with each breath and that’s before any coughs and sneezes. It’s going to be more and go further without a mask and be hanging around in the air.  Inside, masks are way the to go. Everybody just keep their current germs to themselves. 

That’s the point - a lot of people complain that masks don’t prevent the wearer from catching the disease, so are pointless, but the idea is to reduce the the chance of an unwitting (or uncaring) carrier transmitting it in the first place.  They’re not to protect the wearer; they’re to protect everyone else.  Some masks work better than others for trapping droplets from coughs and sneezes, single layer cotton (washable) masks or covering by bandanas  and scarves being the least effective, but since those are more comfortable and more likely to be worn continuously, their efficacy may be better overall than a good filter only partially worn.  But distancing is still required in conjunction with the masks, especially the cotton types, and hand washing is still critical.

Face masks and gloves were made mandatory in the UAE in March for any time anyone was outside their home.  For quite a while, that included driving alone in your own car, but that has been dropped.  Thankfully, they also saw the error of the gloves, but a lot of shops here, including all supermarkets, still insist on customers wearing gloves (their security staff supply them as they check your temperature).  They have security guards at mall and many shop entrances (all supermarkets, even when you have already been screened entering the mall) check each shopper’s temperature as you enter, refusing entry to anyone with elevated temperatures (probably calling health officials to have the individual tested).  That is also done at large workplaces like my employer’s HQ.  It has been working, even though it’s irritating to wear a mask.  The communities that did have outbreaks here were quickly isolated, with any vehicles and individuals going in and out needing good reason to do so and all being sanitised with fogging booths for the people and disinfectant spraying arches for the vehicles.

[steve b]

So , despite the spin and science fiction spouted over the last 3 months here we all are waiting for BoJo to spout more carp while we wait for effective regular testing and some sort of vaccine...................

So many U turns .....

[Bowie69]

Would you rather no changes in direction, based on the path the disease is taking?

 

[steve b]

That was not my point , sorry if it was not clear. 

Summer by it's very nature was a window of opportunity to get mass testing under way but it did not happen .

I'm all for the change in stance , could have been much tougher all through in my opinion , NO air travel off island at all would have  made sense to me . The quicker it is suppressed and properly monitored the quicker business will be able to work...

Without £'s flowing around the whirlpool we are somewhat screwed are we not ?  

[Gluv]

Rather a shame the governments own statistics don't seem to portray the doom n gloom oppression they are trying to force down our necks .

Incidentaly , if masks work where are all these large numbers of non deaths coming from ?

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/latest#main-points

Gluv🇬🇧

[monkie]

Again, please let me shed some light on the true situation regarding testing in hospital labs by removing any current politics. I work for one of the largest clinical diagnostics companies in the PCR section.

The virus is detected (from swabs taken from the nose and throat) by PCR. Not all hospital labs are set up to do this specialist test. Let me assure you that the company I work for (and others) and NHS England have been putting additional capacity for this type of testing in place all throughout the summer as well additional biomedical scientist staff being retrained from other areas of pathology to do this testing.

Most labs can only process a few thousand tests a day - a limitation of the technique of PCR. The PCR test is not quick but it is highly sensitive and specific. It can take anywhere between 6 and 2 hours from sample in to result out. This is because the sample itself can not undergo PCR straight away. Firstly the sample must be deactivated by heat or chemical treatment so it is safe for the lab staff to handle. This deactivated sample must be extracted - that is the virus (if present) chemically broken open (lysis) to release the RNA and then purified to remove it from substances that may interfer with the test. This "extracted" sample then can undergo the PCR test. If an analyser goes down (they are not designed to run 24/7 for months on end doing just one type of test) then the lab find it very difficult to catch up. They cannot accept more samples and therefore if you require a test you will not be able to get swabbed during this period, other than being offered a swab potentially miles away from your home.

This is what happens at the moment when a hospital lab needs more equipment:

NHS England decide if that lab in that geographical area needs the additional capacity over another area (the instruments and tests are in very limited supply as global demand is massive). The order is placed and it takes between 4-6 weeks to get the instrument shipped, delivered, alteration work to the lab (additional power supply, IT network points, moving walls, shelves benches etc) completed and the instrument placed in the lab. A further week or maybe 2 elapses whilst an engineer (in between dealing with breakdowns elsewhere) to install, calibrate and comission the instrument ready for use. Lab staff then take about 1 week to be trained and evaluate the test (to prove it works in their lab by testing known panels). They then get the green light to use the instrument for clinical diagnostic use. Fortunately it is not possible for any old idiot to set up a lab and start turning our tests, it is quite rightly a heavily regulated environment and a lab cannot just start a new type of test without providing evidence the test is reliably working without contamination or producing false results as a result of the lab staff not using the test and handling the sample correctly.

To run the test, the instruments use >95% Ethanol, lysis buffers, wash buffers, elution buffers, RNase free water, SARS-CoV-2 primer/probes, control material, 1,000s and 1,000s and 1,000s of disposable pipette tips and loads more other consumable plasticwear. If any one of these items is in limited supply then the testing can not run at full capacity and decisions have to be made as to where to send the limited consumables as to best serve the hardest hit areas where testing demand is needed most.

PCR is the gold standard of testing because it looks directly for the viral RNA (or DNA for some other viruses), it can detect as little as <100 bits or copies of viral RNA in 1ml of sample. The rapid tests that are talked about are starting to come through but so far the sensitivity of these tests lags far behind that of PCR which is why they are not being used. Antibody testing is different and is not used to diagnose a current infection. At the moment we don't know what having antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 means exactly so this testing has dropped off. Some people thought if they tested positive for antibodies they were immune so went back to life as normal, making the problem worse.

I hope this illustrates that no matter what your political opinion and no matter who was running the country - nothing regarding testing would be different today in the middle of this pandemic. NHS pathology labs have been shaped by years of policy across several governments to consolidate testing to a few specialist labs (which in many ways makes sense and saves the NHS a lot of money). It is called the Carter review if you are interested and outlined how the NHS could save £0.2 billion by consolidating pathology.

[reb78]

Its a shame this thread was ever started on here. Its not the place for it.

[davie]

1 hour ago, monkie said:

Again, please let me shed some light on the true situation regarding testing in hospital labs by removing any current politics. I work for one of the largest clinical diagnostics companies in the PCR section.

The virus is detected (from swabs taken from the nose and throat) by PCR. Not all hospital labs are set up to do this specialist test. Let me assure you that the company I work for (and others) and NHS England have been putting additional capacity for this type of testing in place all throughout the summer as well additional biomedical scientist staff being retrained from other areas of pathology to do this testing.

Most labs can only process a few thousand tests a day - a limitation of the technique of PCR. The PCR test is not quick but it is highly sensitive and specific. It can take anywhere between 6 and 2 hours from sample in to result out. This is because the sample itself can not undergo PCR straight away. Firstly the sample must be deactivated by heat or chemical treatment so it is safe for the lab staff to handle. This deactivated sample must be extracted - that is the virus (if present) chemically broken open (lysis) to release the RNA and then purified to remove it from substances that may interfer with the test. This "extracted" sample then can undergo the PCR test. If an analyser goes down (they are not designed to run 24/7 for months on end doing just one type of test) then the lab find it very difficult to catch up. They cannot accept more samples and therefore if you require a test you will not be able to get swabbed during this period, other than being offered a swab potentially miles away from your home.

This is what happens at the moment when a hospital lab needs more equipment:

NHS England decide if that lab in that geographical area needs the additional capacity over another area (the instruments and tests are in very limited supply as global demand is massive). The order is placed and it takes between 4-6 weeks to get the instrument shipped, delivered, alteration work to the lab (additional power supply, IT network points, moving walls, shelves benches etc) completed and the instrument placed in the lab. A further week or maybe 2 elapses whilst an engineer (in between dealing with breakdowns elsewhere) to install, calibrate and comission the instrument ready for use. Lab staff then take about 1 week to be trained and evaluate the test (to prove it works in their lab by testing known panels). They then get the green light to use the instrument for clinical diagnostic use. Fortunately it is not possible for any old idiot to set up a lab and start turning our tests, it is quite rightly a heavily regulated environment and a lab cannot just start a new type of test without providing evidence the test is reliably working without contamination or producing false results as a result of the lab staff not using the test and handling the sample correctly.

To run the test, the instruments use >95% Ethanol, lysis buffers, wash buffers, elution buffers, RNase free water, SARS-CoV-2 primer/probes, control material, 1,000s and 1,000s and 1,000s of disposable pipette tips and loads more other consumable plasticwear. If any one of these items is in limited supply then the testing can not run at full capacity and decisions have to be made as to where to send the limited consumables as to best serve the hardest hit areas where testing demand is needed most.

PCR is the gold standard of testing because it looks directly for the viral RNA (or DNA for some other viruses), it can detect as little as <100 bits or copies of viral RNA in 1ml of sample. The rapid tests that are talked about are starting to come through but so far the sensitivity of these tests lags far behind that of PCR which is why they are not being used. Antibody testing is different and is not used to diagnose a current infection. At the moment we don't know what having antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 means exactly so this testing has dropped off. Some people thought if they tested positive for antibodies they were immune so went back to life as normal, making the problem worse.

I hope this illustrates that no matter what your political opinion and no matter who was running the country - nothing regarding testing would be different today in the middle of this pandemic. NHS pathology labs have been shaped by years of policy across several governments to consolidate testing to a few specialist labs (which in many ways makes sense and saves the NHS a lot of money). It is called the Carter review if you are interested and outlined how the NHS could save £0.2 billion by consolidating pathology.

Wont pretend to understand all of that but its one of the best internet posts on this i have seen to date and clarifies a lot of stuff.

 

[landroversforever]

Thanks @monkie

[monkie]

8 hours ago, reb78 said:

Its a shame this thread was ever started on here. Its not the place for it.

I know what you mean Richard, but I guess its only natural that people want to talk about it and have a view/vent frustration. I hope to add a little fact to this subject where I'm able to rather than opinion or political view.