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Corona / Covid-19 Virus - General Discussion (politics go to the Off Topic / Politics thread)

I think this is one case where all the extreme rumours are very unlikely to be true. The virus is an RNA virus and the sequence well established. If it had been artifically engineered there would be more tell tale indicators. Outside of China, there is already a reasonable about of evidence of its communicability and its typical course and the prognosis of those infected. I suspect the concern is its ability to mutate (RNA viruses are particularly adept at doing so) and becoming more dangerous. I also suspect that because there is no herd immunity there is considerable concern at the disruption that will be caused to any society if it takes hold. We are already aware it is having a very serious impact on China’s economy. There may be question marks over how well many other countries health services would respond as well. Even ours is over stretched most of the time and there is little surplus capacity. If it were to spread rapidly in our population, I suspect, desite the Governmenet’s assurance to the contrary, the NHS would be over whelmed quite quickly – I guess it could cope, but at the expense of a lot of its routine work being postponed, with all the consequences that would follow on.

“Any hospital that stayed open to treat a large pandemic would run out of oxygen within a day or two.”
Would industrial oxygen be used in an emergency? Possibly available in more than adequate quantity of industry use dropped.

Maoraigh
EGPE, United Kingdom

I thought most hospitals have large bulk evaporators supplied by BOC, and so it is effectively industrial liquid oxygen. Home generators for patients with COPD and such like are designed for much smaller volume.

Most hospitals do have largeish tanks. Let’s say 5g a minute average requirement, 5g x 60 = 300g an hour per patient; 7kg per day. Daily O2 production is apparently 9000 tons a day in the UK, so you could supply that amount of oxygen to a million patients, if you can physically get it to them. Some patients need 15L a minute, so you could manage about a third of a million really sick patients. Less sick patients might do with 2L a minute.

There might be other issues such as how much Oxygen the tanks can warm up – there are always nests of tubes covered in ice next to the oxygen tanks – or how much can be physically delivered by lorries rather than being piped to whatever industry needs it. Or how much boils off during delivery. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s someone on the forum who knows far more about this industry than me, but it seems plausible to me that a really large epidemic could cause shortages.

The most impressive result of this virus: it shows the Chinese population the true face of its government, and that virus is spreading much faster than Covid19 itself.
Safe landings !
EDLN, Germany

A strange thread to which there is always a ‘new’ invisible post.

The most detailed discussion on the virus that I’ve seen (or half seen) so far:
https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/news/covid-19-expert-update-doctors

Someone posted a link to some thread on twitter (which I looked at and it didn’t seem to be of any particular consequence – just another one of a million social media threads on this topic) and then deleted the post.

That’s a 2hr video

You definitely don’t want to go on a cruise ship now… the treatment of those 3000 people off Japan is disgusting. I am not doing any airline flights either anytime soon.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I am appalled by the response of the UK government to the cruise ship strandees. It seems to me the cost of repatriating them would be a drop in the ocean in terms of Foreign Office spending (and being cynical a wonderful PR excercise) and yet we have been slow in making any arrangements to bring them back to the UK (assuming we are now eventaully doing something about it). The suggestions is arrangements have been underway for sometime – BUT I simply cant imagine it is all that difficult. Apparantently the FO cant even be bothered to communicate with the family to let them know what is taking place (or not).

It is a truly appalling state of affairs, and would lead me to have very little confidence in the Government to protect its own citizens – which, as we are often reminded, is the first job of Government.

Personally, had I been one of these passengers, I wouldn’t have rushed to get on a flight back home. My intuition would have been that you would be more likely to catch the virus on a an aircraft, than sitting it out in the liner. I am beginning to suspect my intuition is wrong, but that would have been my starting point.

The next problem is that whichever aircraft you use to evacuate them, will probably have to be put out of action for 2 weeks to be sure that it has been decontaminated. I suppose you might use it to transport more suspected cases, sooner than that. But for any reasonably modern airliner that downtime would be expensive.

In the second half of the 2 hour video, I got the impression that there is considerable curiosity to see how many of these passengers become infected. A floating laboratory, as it were.

I had an option of going to the Amazon for a few weeks this summer, but have decided against.

Last Edited by kwlf at 18 Feb 12:02

They used converted cargo 747s Screwed some seats to the floor, and constructed a separate section for the known-positive ones, from what I’ve read.

The latest I have from the internet is that this stuff lives up to 3 days on a dry surface and up to 9 days on a damp one. So there is some concern over goods arriving from China. Sea freight will be fine (25 days’ sailing time) but courier maybe not?

Of course, for every loser there is a winner and a lot of European fast-turnaround PCB firms are rubbing their hands at JLCPCB being out of business right now.

I think this will peak in the 1st World a lot later than in China (unless we get an epidemic when the chinese students come back en masse, anytime now) so you would need to stay in the Amazon for a lot longer than a few weeks. But, surely, Wales would do? A Greek island much more so… but you would need to pick one of the ones the Chinese don’t visit, so avoid the trendy spots like Santorini, Mykonos…

Re that cruise ship, this is interesting (especially 4 mins in)



Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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