Covid-19 the second wave.

[Covrich]

I was going to get my xmas day food shopping tonight actually, decided to not go into the crammed shops of decimated shelves.

I ordered eveything off amazon. and it turned up within 2 hours.. result

 

[simon12]

Just went to Waitrose, theres a queue to get in for the 1st time since lockdown 1 but only a few mins. Fairly quiet inside but no vegetables left at all except onions and a few of the tiny packs of mini corn and green beans. Most fruit is still there but a few things have run out. Theres plenty of everything else including toilet paper.

 

[dad_of_jon]

Panic buying perishable food. Their stupidity knows no ends.

Oh, and it looks like the French will lift the blockade later today.

Hope they are all left with a fridge full of sprouts they don't need!

The gas from those should terminate those numpies. We can only hope

 

[marshbrewer]

Fairly quiet inside but no vegetables left at all except onions and a few of the tiny packs of mini corn and green beans. Most fruit is still there but a few things have run out.

That's hilarious. The things that they recon will be affected are salad leaves and fruit (and broccoli). Winter veg is mostly sourced from the UK and in the event of a blockade would probably become cheaper due to there being no export market. So they've left the fruit, but taken all the cabbages.

Sainsburys have already said that all the Christmas dinner stuff is already in the country. People really can be daft sometimes.

 

[Leon103]

It could be the case that some people have been working up to Xmas and today is their first day off to do shopping. This week is one of the busiest of the year.

 

[An Ankoù]

Panic buying perishable food. Their stupidity knows no ends.

Oh, and it looks like the French will lift the blockade later today.

Hope they are all left with a fridge full of sprouts they don't need!

Blockade? There's no blockade. A blockade is something different. France, most of Europe, Turkey, Israel, Canada and I think the USA have said it is too dangerous to admit people from a country where a new variant of the virus is officially "out of control" (Hancock). It was a 48 hour freeze on RORO freight (only) until it could be decided what to do. I understand talks have progressed and the 48 hours probably won't be needed after all.
As for blockades, I fear they're coming whether or not agreement can be reached on fishing. Together with rammings, cutting of nets, loss of life and general spitting in the general direction of the other's fishermen.
There were four bags of sprouts left in Super U this morning and I panic bought two of them. Didn't see any in Lidl.

 

[The Baron]

It's not panic buying where I am just that a high number of people have already finished for Christmas. When I travelled to work at 5,30am I usually see loads of vehicles on the road but this morning hardly any but the numbers that came in shopping(I work in a Super) where up but just doing normalish Christmas shopping no panic buying from the people I served through the tills IMO just the usual extras and alcohol of course not masses of toilet roll buying or tinned /packet store cupboard stuff its just the usual media hype to make a story in the press in other words they are creating a panic not the shoppers

 

[Appleyard]

Blockade? There's no blockade. A blockade is something different. France, most of Europe, Turkey, Israel, Canada and I think the USA have said it is too dangerous to admit people from a country where a new variant of the virus is officially "out of control" (Hancock). It was a 48 hour freeze on RORO freight (only) until it could be decided what to do. I understand talks have progressed and the 48 hours probably won't be needed after all.

Correct. Not a blockade. However, it's too late to stop whatever strain has been detected here (it could have come frome somewhere else, who knows), because it's been detected all over the place. It's already global, just like the first thing.

The media have a lot to answer for.

 

[Drunkula]

Today getting the turkey I saw a guy who I used to hang around with who my mam use to joke "I got at a car boot sale" because I bought a top box for a motorbike off him at one and we ended up being friends. One of my other friends ended up calling him "Prick Tony" because we were all mad into taking the **** out of each other and he used to get upset about it and sulk. He was loads older than us, though.

I hadn't seen him for years, then I realised I could recognise him because he was the only one in the shop not wearing a mask. Then I did sort of think oh god.... yeah, he's a prick.

We had great times together, though. He suspected his girlfriend was cheating on him and I gave him a voice activated dictaphone which he hid on top of the kitchen cupboards where the phone was and we found out she was shagging Phil the Taxi Driver : a man who hand painted his car green with a paint brush. Yes it looked appalling. Yes the paint was not for cars. This all sounds like some mad sitcom now and I've barely scratched the surface.

Anyway, there's probably something related to covid in all that tripe so I'm hitting that reply button.

 

[Covrich]

Today getting the turkey I saw a guy who I used to hang around with who my mam use to joke "I got at a car boot sale" because I bought a top box for a motorbike off him at one and we ended up being friends. One of my other friends ended up calling him "Prick Tony" because we were all mad into taking the **** out of each other and he used to get upset about it and sulk. He was loads older than us, though.

I hadn't seen him for years, then I realised I could recognise him because he was the only one in the shop not wearing a mask. Then I did sort of think oh god.... yeah, he's a prick.

We had great times together, though. He suspected his girlfriend was cheating on him and I gave him a voice activated dictaphone which he hid on top of the kitchen cupboards where the phone was and we found out she was shagging Phil the Taxi Driver : a man who hand painted his car green with a paint brush. Yes it looked appalling. Yes the paint was not for cars. This all sounds like some mad sitcom now and I've barely scratched the surface.

Anyway, there's probably something related to covid in all that tripe so I'm hitting that reply button.

That almost deserves its own thread and regular entries

 

[Northern_Brewer]

it's too late to stop whatever strain has been detected here (it could have come frome somewhere else, who knows), because it's been detected all over the place. It's already global, just like the first thing.

I think there are strong odds - like 90+% - that it originated in Kent, if it is as transmissible as they say then any country that had it earlier would also be seeing it at >50% prevalence, and even with much lower levels of genomic sequencing they would have picked it up.

And even if it is global, it is still smart to do everything you can to stop multiple introductions.

 

[Justin Dean]

I think there are strong odds - like 90+% - that it originated in Kent, if it is as transmissible as they say then any country that had it earlier would also be seeing it at >50% prevalence, and even with much lower levels of genomic sequencing they would have picked it up.

And even if it is global, it is still smart to do everything you can to stop multiple introductions.

Maybe it is spread by birds? Did it not originate from bats? No idea. If anyone did know wouldn't they keep that secret to prevent panic? Just a thought.

 

[Appleyard]

And even if it is global, it is still smart to do everything you can to stop multiple introductions.

The only way that a country will stop it is to prevent it getting in, as was the case with places like New Zealand, although they came close to disaster. Once it's in, it will have to be dealt with by the same measures we and others currently employ, and the success of those depends entirely on observance of the rules by the population (hollow laugh). Let's hope for large-scale availability of suitable vaccines, quick.

 

[Tanglefoot]

From what I've read the new covid variant originated from Danish mink farms
Back in November this was reported and then it was known to have already been spread to amongst other places Spain by returning workers.


https://www.who.int/csr/don/06-november-2020-mink-associated-sars-cov2-denmark/en/


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...cull-17-million-danish-mink-to-halt-new-covid

 

[simon12]

From what I've read the new covid variant originated from Danish mink farms
Back in November this was reported and then it was known to have already been spread to amongst other places Spain by returning workers.


https://www.who.int/csr/don/06-november-2020-mink-associated-sars-cov2-denmark/en/


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...cull-17-million-danish-mink-to-halt-new-covid

I think thats a different variant to the latest one 1st found in Kent

 

[simon12]

I just made this just to test some software to see if it works. It was only a test but shows the spread of covid in the southeast since early September

 

[jof]

You do know one of the reasons we know about variants is that the UK is quite good at genetic sequencing & has the capacity to decode a lot of samples.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

The only way that a country will stop it is to prevent it getting in

But if the epidemic that is started by one person is "bad" and eg we impose tier 2 with around 1 person in 1000 infected, then letting in 4 people means you effectively end up with 4 separate epidemics as it's still rare enough that someone is unlikely to encounter more than one of the epidemics.

So you end up doing the reverse of flattening the curve, by a multiple of 4.

From what I've read the new covid variant originated from Danish mink farms

No, that's not right, it's not originated in mink. It does share one important mutation with the "mink strain" (the 69-70 deletion) but that seems to be one of the "weak points" where mutations often happen, so it seems to arise independently in several strains and is reasonably common these days.

You do know one of the reasons we know about variants is that the UK is quite good at genetic sequencing & has the capacity to decode a lot of samples.

Of course, it's a real strength of UK science (whereas we're much weaker in eg diagnostics which is why our test & trace has lagged places like Germany). But other countries are still doing *some* sequencing (and eg NZ may not have many positives but is sequencing every one), and if what we are hearing about transmissibility is true then you'd expect anywhere that had this variant before the UK, to have similar levels of prevalence by now. And there's lots of countries doing enough sequencing that a variant at 50+% prevalence would be detected.

 

[VW911]

Sod the panic buying.
I'll go and pick my sprouts, dig my parsnips and carrots on Christmas Eve, as I always do...

 

[Rodcx500z]

It's now on every continent in the world, Covid cases recorded in Antarctica for first time – reports | Antarctica | The Guardian and we were talking of a Christmas break a virus doesn't take a break nor should we