Holien

Ok so getting to grips with this... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/06/peter-navarro-fauci-hydroxychloroquine If it can be proven to work then all good but it does not look like it has been proven. The list of side effects don't seem particularly great and if it doesn't work for you having the side effects on top of Covid doesn't seem to be a fun option. https://www.drugs.com/hydroxychloroquine.html "Common hydroxychloroquine side effects may include: headache, dizziness, ringing in your ears; nausea, vomiting, stomach pain; loss of appetite, weight loss; mood changes, feeling nervous or irritable; skin rash or itching; or hair loss."

I think I was factually correct. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/idiot "a foolish person, esp. someone who has done something stupid" Shaking hands with those infected with a contagious disease that we have known about since January to me fits that definition and I would have no problems people calling me an idiot for doing that. IMO just an observation, and why we need to socially distance so we don't over burden our health care system.

This chap is leading our response and he's caught it... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52177125 Our idiot in chief https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/coronavirus-boris-johnson-positive-test-health-advice-shaking-hands-hospital-hancock-a9430231.html Despite knowing what was happening in China... Wonder if he took it seriously enough?

Should be fine if he fights it off... Hope he does fight it off...

BBC has a report on how SA is dealing with it. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-52125713 Just stumbled on it. Interesting reading....

Let's hope it does not kick off there. Maybe the lock down for SA got ahead of the curve and you did not have too many carriers spreading it.

Not sure how they will mass evacuate? Where will they house them? I guess plenty of empty hotels and offices? What a cluster uck.... How is SA managing we don't get any insight here on your situation?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-52164358 So the world over has nutters... You would think with a bit of education they would know better. As for the poorer countries and slums let's hope their immune systems are better equipped than us western softies.. They certainly are screwed with lack of ventilators.

This has made UK headlines and shows the same concerns about Chinese government use of data and even Russian government surveillance. If the people can be persuaded that it is a benefit then it will be accepted. I personally am very wary as you can't always trust any government...

Nice find... Let's hope that is making the rounds in America, he seems to have earned the respect of his crew if not the senior leadership above him.

That train incident is truly crazy, lots of nutters the world over. Luckily the tracks did not go far enough and risk management worked as they put in place measures in case train could not stop... Simple work out the risk and then prepare or think through what you can do to mitigate the risk... Let's hope the carrier captain gets some support for his courageous decision. I see Russia and China are coming to the rescue of the west... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52137908 Nik Mond interesting to see who gets the Antibody test up and running 1st. I am seeing some concerns that it might have negative consequences if not carefully rolled out. I will try and get article link when I can. But the gist is that it will encourage people back on to streets too early and will create a 2 tier system which could cause social problems. I.e worker A is allowed back because he has had it, so worker B has incentive to get the virus to be allowed back to work to earn a living. Needs some thought. Don't disagree that we need scientifically to know the extent of the spread but maybe not give the public the knowledge?

That Captain has now been sacked... "He exercised extremely poor judgement" said Acting US Navy Secretary Thomas Modly." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-52130552 Hmmm someone trying to protect his crew and hung out to dry... Governments the world over try to keep things quiet...

And down the hole we go....

We only have to look back to our favourite period of history to see how extreme situations are used by populist politicians to whip people up into stupidity that can wreck entire countries... Let's hope we just have a pandemic and nothing else... I am all for holding the politicians accountable no matter which country...

Erwin, sounds a bit like you have a case of "whatboutism"... So let's try and keep this on track and about Covid. We could disappear down a deep dark rabbit hole on the difference between America and China... Any how back on Chinese government misinformation.... I saw a press briefing where the UK government was specifically asked what they meant by Chinese government not being helpful. The question was ignored and not answered. I am keen to see / understand what accusations are being made. Sure we all know they screwed the pooch by initially trying to suppress the junior doctors warnings. This was soon rectified and they seem to have learnt, but maybe there have been other deceit? Anyone got specific information? I knew of the seriousness of the situation around the 25th January as I was concerned about a close friend and his planned trip to China from SFO. So I was watching the situation with concern for him. And me as I was spending a couple of weeks with him after his trip... The logical leap I failed to make was potential impact to the rest of the world. Fair enough for me as I had not been part of the simulations dealing with such an event. But for those who said this was a tier 1 threat to the UK January should have been the start of some serious actions... In fact serious planning should have happened after the exercise showed how poorly the NHS was able to cope. PPE was noted as an issue at that time....

BBC have just put out an interesting page on stats. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-51235105 Just to add some further thoughts... The world knew we were going to be hit again at some stage with something like this. It was inevitable, just like it will be inevitable that places built on fault lines will get hit with earthquakes. We dodged bullets like Ebola and SARS but did not heed the warnings made by the scientists. Some countries took the threat seriously like South Korea and are keeping on top of it, I bet we will find out they were prepared. Others were too busy to take warnings seriously and prepare hoping to wing it... We are angry and it is all too easy to look for easy blame games, rather than accept that as humans we are vulnerable to viruses and need to prepare to fight them. Risk management is what we should have had in place and preparation to deal with the risk if it happens.

Well let's see if the level of misinformation was substantive to delay our preparation. I would like to know exactly is being claimed. I feel that China will be used as a political smoke and mirrors scheme to take heat off our own failures. We have to distinguish between the government and the people who are subject to the government. Personally I might not like the current American Government but that does not mean I paint all Americans with the same brush. It helps as I know plenty of Americans and our countries have had a long relationship. Too often just lately I see Chinese bashing and we need to be smart in what we say (type) and how we deal with people who are stuck with a regime. So cynical me will be watching closely as to the actual facts...

Trump seems to have finally understood the potential impact to America. Very different press briefing than a week ago. Leadership comes from the top and filters down, I have seen that 1st hand working with many CEO's in powerful FTSE 100 companies and you need the right leadership giving the right message. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52115584 "The number of deaths, based on current projections, is between 100,000 and 200,000. On 15 April, for instance, 2,214 Americans are expected to die." As for China's figures I guess we will never really know as they are not exactly open to scrutiny. The UK still has not got testing sorted as it should be and after this it will become a national scandal (unless somehow it gets buried....) Poor leadership affects the poor as they get shafted. The countries showing great leadership are South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan (a country in my eyes). Hats off to South Korea and they have acted on the warnings the world was given, Ebola etc....

Hmmm maybe I am misunderstanding you but you seem to be thinking this is not real? Maybe a language translation issue?

Gents thanks for the links...

Thanks Wicky I have had a quick scan and it is clear the world leaders on the whole have just ignored this. We have had some serious near misses like Ebola but as it was a "African" issue it was easy for western leaders to dismiss. Too late now, but what is shameful is the current leadership failure to respond once we started to see what happened in China. The lock down of Wuhan was a massive red flag and I think was not taken seriously enough. Like Ebola ohhh that is a "Chinese" problem it won't bother us... It is also clear from the pdf this fitted the warnings and if we had prepared we could have saved lives, the UK had even undertaken simulations and then the current leadership buried the report as it did not fit their need to reduce costs and close down wards... Arrrggghh "Get Brexit Done" "Protect the NHS" lovely slogans that mask the realities from the average Joe public....

2016 the UK government undertook an exercise showing what would happen. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/28/exercise-cygnus-uncovered-pandemic-warnings-buried-government/ Looks like Telegraph are digging. Another article but I guess based on Telegraph. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/03/28/cygn-m28.html The UK have dropped the ball on this unlike South Korea and Singapore who took this seriously.

Hi Wicky thanks for the wry smile I got tonight with the image. Last year I spent August through to just after Christmas seeing the critical care pathway followed for my Dad and it was sobering to get to grips with... He in an odd way, dodged a bullet bowing out early on this debacle and even last year watching with the staff un stretched with the virus, it was not a smooth process. My hat's off to those in service trying to deal with this nightmare. I think there was some exercise more recent that highlighted what we needed to do, those are 15 years old comments. I will do some more digging to see what was told to the government. Anyway Boris unlike Mr T is on the whole dodging criticism with his better daily TV performance. But as noted by those in the know we have wasted time since January at least a month which could have been better used. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-uk-cases-john-ashton-nhs-hospital-covid-19-budget-a9396211.html As for Brexit as an "Economically inactive adult" I await my call up to serve in the fields. Interesting times just got a whole lot more interesting and all I wanted was a quite retirement. Stay safe...

https://thebulwark.com/warnings-ignored-a-timeline-of-trumps-covid-19-response/ So tonight I have been digging to understand what we knew when and why we (UK / Europe / America) failed to prepare. While the above article obviously has a target in its sights it gives a timeline in America of what was known when, and it is not a liberal hippy dippy site doing the analysis. I will keep digging to see if a similar timeline analysis has been done for the UK / Europe. I seem to remember the UK ran some exercises several years ago and it showed how badly prepared we were. If anyone has any links I would be interested. Obviously here (UK) we have been a tad preoccupied with Brexit and it has become all consuming for those in power. I guess many other important issues have been missed due to Govt bandwidth being totally consumed on one issue.

What confuses me is that China and other countries have developed decent testing regimes and surely could share the expertise? It seems like each country is reinventing the test process and test kits. I guess the WHO don't co-ordinate this expertise and once a design is proven the technical blueprint should be shared and rolled out? The only news on this I saw is that America shipped a large number of kits from Italy to America via a military transport. I guess maybe Italy did not need them? https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2020/03/us-air-force-flew-half-million-coronavirus-test-kits-italy-tennessee/163879/ This virus has been known about since January what have countries been doing, testing is just basic common sense surely for those experts in the know?