China Coronavirus

[Eamonnca1]

People need to stop taking it as an absolute fact that standing 2m apart, leaving at 14 minutes and the virus dies at exactly 20 hours on stainless steel.

Theses are not strict rules. Like everything they are open to variation. Some people will spread droplets further than 2m. Some people will infect people within one minute of contact. The virus will live for over 20 hours on some steel surfaces and live less on others.

Exactly. The precautionary principle applies here. When I venture out to the shops I throw on a mask. I don't know if it does much good or not but I'm taking no chances. The wife takes the wee one out a few times a day for walks, and I make sure they both wash their hands when they get in. I also throw the baby's trousers straight into laundry because she has a tendency to drop to the ground (she's just started walking).And I wash my own hands after touching their clothes or anything that's been outside. Letters in the post? Amazon packages? All of it gets a wipe. Even last week I was scared to send a Mother's Day card back to Ireland, so we moistened the envelope with a sponge rather than my tongue, and we put it in the freezer overnight before posting it.

[Fear Bun Na Sceilpe]

https://www.derryjournal.com/news/uk-news/eastwood-urgent-clarity-needed-support-border-workforce-2519393

This could be a big issue here in Derry, it will feck me anyway. I think there are at around 5k Derry folk working in Donegal and living in Derry(1.3k in my work alone)

[larryin89]

Is it one metre or two ?

There are so many different governing bodies saying different things , in construction you have Unite trade union saying all sites should close , Siptu say nothing , ICTU have called on definition of essential sites and don't get me started on CIF and partland , horrible cookers who we the workforce pay a substantial amount of money to every week for a shitty pension

[Itchy]

One piece of advice we are getting is to avoid the elderly over 70. So on social media we are seeing images of people talking to their parents through the window or standing at the open back door and talking to them who are standing inside the door
Can anyone explain to me why anyone cannot not enter the house, touch absolutely nothing while inside, speak to their elderly parents from a distance of more than 2 metres and leave the house again without touching anything? Surely this is safe or am I missing something?

Its all about risk. If you do that then the risk is very low (if  you can be as disciplined as you say). However, if you were outside, coughed into your hand and touched a door handle inside well then that is a different matter. The 2 meter rule is risk vrs cost measurement. Particles from a sneeze can travel much more than 2m but if the government said 6m then that would be just unworkable in places that need to keep working. None of  this is exact science. I am sure they have developed some formula that says 2m covers 95% of scenarios and it wasnt just dreamed up.

Adding to that, no matter how disciplined people are you will always slip up and make a mistake, take your eye of the ball and the mind drifts and before you know it you've been touching something. That is why the advise is to avoid people if at all possible. I think regarding your own elderly parents, that is a call you need to make yourself, but remember if they are over 80 and get this virus they are at an extremely high risk of death.

Average age of the 19 people in  the republic is 79 (81 in Italy). Seems to be 70% men in Ireland and 75% men in Italy. So those stats are very close and I think it is reasonable to assume Italy is not an outlier and is reality if we dont do what we should be doing.

[seafoid]

One piece of advice we are getting is to avoid the elderly over 70. So on social media we are seeing images of people talking to their parents through the window or standing at the open back door and talking to them who are standing inside the door
Can anyone explain to me why anyone cannot not enter the house, touch absolutely nothing while inside, speak to their elderly parents from a distance of more than 2 metres and leave the house again without touching anything? Surely this is safe or am I missing something?

Its all about risk. If you do that then the risk is very low (if  you can be as disciplined as you say). However, if you were outside, coughed into your hand and touched a door handle inside well then that is a different matter. The 2 meter rule is risk vrs cost measurement. Particles from a sneeze can travel much more than 2m but if the government said 6m then that would be just unworkable in places that need to keep working. None of  this is exact science. I am sure they have developed some formula that says 2m covers 95% of scenarios and it wasnt just dreamed up.

Adding to that, no matter how disciplined people are you will always slip up and make a mistake, take your eye of the ball and the mind drifts and before you know it you've been touching something. That is why the advise is to avoid people if at all possible. I think regarding your own elderly parents, that is a call you need to make yourself, but remember if they are over 80 and get this virus they are at an extremely high risk of death.

Average age of the 19 people in  the republic is 79 (81 in Italy). Seems to be 70% men in Ireland and 75% men in Italy. So those stats are very close and I think it is reasonable to assume Italy is not an outlier and is reality if we dont do what we should be doing.

Italy is just ahead of the curve

[Keyser soze]

I would say touching post, door handles of public places, bin handles, petrol pumps, money handling etc are the main sources of contamination, rather than airborne issues as all these things are touched by multiple thousands of people.

Something as simple as going shopping for the groceries gives so many opportunities to pick up the virus it is unbelievable, you need to have a very regimented routine of wiping your hands every single time you touch an item in the shop before you have the chance to touch your face and sanitising each item when you get it home before you put it away or use it.

[Solo_run]

I would say touching post, door handles of public places, bin handles, petrol pumps, money handling etc are the main sources of contamination, rather than airborne issues as all these things are touched by multiple thousands of people.

Something as simple as going shopping for the groceries gives so many opportunities to pick up the virus it is unbelievable, you need to have a very regimented routine of wiping your hands every single time you touch an item in the shop before you have the chance to touch your face and sanitising each item when you get it home before you put it away or use it.

Not to lead people into a false sense of security but I have found going into supermarkets lately that people just aren't coughing much. Maybe it's because of the stigma that is now attached to it but I for one like it - an open coughi s one of those noises that irritates me because you know somewhere a person has made no attempt to cough into their arm/sleeve even their hands.

[JohnDenver]

Boris has confirmed that he has tested positive

https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1243496858095411200?s=20

[Taylor]

Boris has confirmed that he has tested positive

https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1243496858095411200?s=20

That'll be the advice he gave about shaking hands and how he was continuing to do it with everyone he met in hospital 

[armaghniac]

I would say touching post, door handles of public places, bin handles, petrol pumps, money handling etc are the main sources of contamination, rather than airborne issues as all these things are touched by multiple thousands of people.

Something as simple as going shopping for the groceries gives so many opportunities to pick up the virus it is unbelievable, you need to have a very regimented routine of wiping your hands every single time you touch an item in the shop before you have the chance to touch your face and sanitising each item when you get it home before you put it away or use it.

Not to lead people into a false sense of security but I have found going into supermarkets lately that people just aren't coughing much. Maybe it's because of the stigma that is now attached to it but I for one like it - an open coughi s one of those noises that irritates me because you know somewhere a person has made no attempt to cough into their arm/sleeve even their hands.

We are coming out of the cold and flu season anyway and of course the social distancing reduces the transmission of these also.

[Rossfan]

Boris has confirmed that he has tested positive

https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1243496858095411200?s=20

Any chance he'd visit and shake hands with the pile of shite in the White House?

[tbrick18]

See below from Eamon Mccann.
Still think Robin Swan is doing a good job? I don't.
We are under prepared and not doing enough to get prepared for this surge.


The Tories ordered 10,000 ventilators from Dyson. The North is to get only 600. Nurses and health workers here said our health service was one of the least prepared to deal with this crisis. We need thousands of ventilators not hundreds.

Last week Minister of Heath Robin Swann said he'd ordered 40 for a total in the North of 179. Pathetic!

Yesterday he announced 650 were being ordered. There's clearly no understanding of the threat people face and no clear leadership coming from Westminster or the Stormont Executive. This will cost lives. And this is made all the more disastrous given there is one of the biggest ventilator manufacturers in the world making them in Galway.

Another clear example of how an integrated all-Ireland public health strategy could save lives.

We need to keep shouting very loud for urgent action.

We need thousands of ventilators and we can get them.

Look I'm by no stretch of the imagination his biggest fan but he took the role 10 weeks ago after years of neglect & your expecting him to have been prepared for the biggest health crisis we've ever faced?

I dare say T Brick he'd gladly swap places with you!

Also do you expect the NI Executive to be seeking out Dyson? And if they got these 1000's of ventilators where will they put them - the ICU room capacity is not there to accommodate them!

The scale of this is incomprehensible - you've the NHS trying to source 40,000sq meters of space in numerous locations around the country!

The public sector here is not dynamic to deal with this hence all the pleas with private business to work together - and that's the only way we're all going to get through this - everyone working as one!

I think Robin Swann is out of his depth completely, though I don't necessarily mean that in a detrimental way. I think most people would be out of their depth currently, but personally I hardly ever heard of him before this crisis so not sure he'd have been the right person to steer our response on this issue.

This is what I said yesterday. After posting there were quite a few posts on here saying they thought he was doing a good job. Eamon McCann's article adds some weight to my view (though Eamon can be blinkered in his views).

My point was not meant to be one to lambast Swann at a personal level. I simply think its a post that a more seasoned and experienced minister should be doing and perhaps we'd have a better response as a result and ultimately more people would survive.
I absolutely appreciate he's under a lot of pressure here that is unprecedented, however, a more experienced minister should be able to handle that better and as a result make better decisions.

If our experts, nurses and doctors, are saying we are under prepared, I'd be expecting our health minister to do everything in his power to prepare us. Not waiting to see what Westminister are going to do for us. Why not buy ventilators of a supplier in Galway? Why not source their own PPE? Why not do more testing in line with WHO recommendations? You ask where we'd put these ventilators....well there are field hospitals on their way to each trust area in NI. We have several hospitals that were "closed", Dungannon, Magherafelt, Omagh (I think). They could all be re-designated as Covid centres.
I've seen some talk about us not having the ability to process tests here and that's part of the reason we are not testing more. In ROI, the government has engaged the universities and other private companies with the facilities to process tests. Why are we not doing the same?
It's either negligence or lack of ability. The cost will not be his career, it will be the lives of the people here.

Our health service was already on its knees here, so we are already playing catch up on the rest of the UK. This means we have more work to do, but instead it looks and feels like we are doing less than everyone else to prepare.

I must admit, I was impressed that he said he'd accept help from the Irish armed forces. That at least shows capacity to put aside party politics to accept help from wherever it is offered. That's the approach that needs to be taken. Lets look at all the resources we can access, along with what ever BoJo decides is best for England.

Swann has now said that he doesn't know what our health service will look like in a week. That is very honest, however, it is very worrying too. He should have some idea of what we are doing and what we are going to go through.

[delgany]

There are no minimum qualifications to be a politician. Robin Swann has a maths degree , so he has a capability to crunch numbers . Health expertise= none.  Is Boris any different?

[tbrick18]

There are no minimum qualifications to be a politician. Robin Swann has a maths degree , so he has a capability to crunch numbers . Health expertise= none.  Is Boris any different?

Don't start me on that clown.
Swann seems to be a decent chap and has showed some integrity....couldn't say the same for BoJo.

[lurganblue]

One piece of advice we are getting is to avoid the elderly over 70. So on social media we are seeing images of people talking to their parents through the window or standing at the open back door and talking to them who are standing inside the door
Can anyone explain to me why anyone cannot not enter the house, touch absolutely nothing while inside, speak to their elderly parents from a distance of more than 2 metres and leave the house again without touching anything? Surely this is safe or am I missing something?

Heard someone say the living space can keep the virus up to 72 hours, so by speaking or breathing you could potentially spread it around the room.

There's more experts on that to inform you better

Research suggests If someone coughs or sneezes without covering then the Infected droplets can stay suspended in the air for 3 hours. When we sneeze or cough the droplets travel at 100 mph and reach a distance of 6ft.

Coronavirus can live on cardboard for 24hrs.

Coronavirus can live on plastic/metal etc for 3 days.

Coronavirus can live on fabrics for 4 hours.

Coronavirus can live on skin/hair for 20 minutes.

All of this is at room temperature of course.

Reading that, what chance do you really have of not coming into contact with it!  Scary