Coronavirus Part V - 34 cases in ROI, 16 in NI (as of 10 March) *Read warnings in OP*

Lord TSC wrote: »

I'll be honest, my head is struggling to wrap around it.

But while I agree a healthy dose of fear is responsible, I find myself getting so annoyed with the utter doomsday panic that I whip against it a bit.

I'm fully aware of how bad it could potentially get. But I also don't think that we can just shut the entire world down for the months it would need to stamp this all out.

I personally believe that there's a lot more than the reported cases, simply because I believe this has been around for a lot longer than a week since our first case was reported. I think it's probably been around for at least weeks (if not months), but that given it doesn't display symptoms for many people, and is only a very mild dose for most other people, then life has continued for the vast majority. I think that's going to massively skew the death rate figures too, because not everyone who has it will be offically diagnosed. I think there's many people have probably already died from it, and it was hand waved away because (as callous as this sounds) people die from flu and other such illness all the time.

(I had a grandmother who died a few months ago. Was in a nursing home, picked up a really bad flu and passed on shortly after. It was attributed as "Natural causes" because of her age).

I appreciate that the 3% death rate is awful. At the same time, I hate that there's some who nearly are trying to spin it as if 3% of all people will die, when it's actually 3% of infected in a worse case scenario.

The figures are already bad enough but there's some, both individuals and in the media, who are exaggerating it in a bid to envoke mass panic, which is never helpful at all.

I think people need to be more vigilant; washing hands, etc.

I also think the virus, such as it is, will be around for a lot longer than a few weeks, and the entire world cannot grind to a halt for the next 6-18 months.

(and I say that as someone with some minor health issues, with a family who'd have some major health issues too).

I agree to a large degree, I’m actually exhausted from this. Been following it pretty much since the start. Gone from being treated like I said I saw aliens , to somebody family listen to when discussing this. But I’ve gone over board i keeping up with things. Partially in an effort to keep ahead of the curve and to be honest partially because I don’t trust people in general or the authority’s to do what must be done “proactively”.

People are stupidly ignorant , you can see that in this thread and even keeping your mouth shut when idiots in the real world are talking through their asses on this. We have absolutely no logical reason to think that what happened in Italy wont happen here. There are good parallels between Italy and ourselves (people spreading for days after being infected, continuing to take mass numbers in from a country with a red zone).

Any reputable authority will admit we don’t know enough about this virus yet to predict anything with confidence. As such , surely it’s more prudent to err on the side of caution (which amounts to scarier predictions) then to presume the best.

Countries like South Korea have shown you don’t have to shut everything down if you are on top of this. I think it’s reasonable to presume that The country’s that adapt the quickest will be the ones who probably suffer the least economically and socially. This why if the virus is going to be around for longer we should aggressively make long term plans.

Seems like working from home is going to be the new norm for many. Schools should prob close for a month or so simply because it buys us time to see how this pans out. Even if schools were closed until next September, by that stage we would hopefully know a lot more about what to expect and how to manage this. Might even see things like mid term breaks cancelled with intention of maybe having (for example) December off school if that’s when the next wave of this might hit.

Like the thing is, if one of my children (young boys) gets it, the odds of everybody in my family getting it are high. So no amount of hand washing or me being careful is going to mitigate whatever happens in a school class/yard. Effectively speaking , one child has close contact with potentially hundreds of people (a child and their family and the people that family have been in close contact). I can’t see how schools are not one of the first steps we take when children appear to be considered to be their own sort of super spreaders.