Person diagnosed with Coronavirus next town over from me...aibu?!

[JuniperNet]

Just seen this in the local news that a school has closed in the next town over from me as one of the pupils parents has had a case of Coronavirus confirmed yesterday.

AIBU to be a bit freaked by this?! Too close to home for my liking!

Very true. As I said earlier, my mum who is relatively young and healthy suffered very badly with pneumonia a few years ago.

@renegadeoffunk i am in the same situation as you, except at nearly 47 i suppose i should just accept the inevitability of death.

this thread veers between ‘buck up! it’s only the weak and old that will be picked off and they should expect this anyway!’ and utter bollocks like ‘it’s just a variant of the flu’.

the reality is somewhere in the middle. in a situation like this education and realism are key. or, you could get in the cupboard under the stairs with 100kg of dry pasta and a tea light til christmas.

meantime, i’ll catch up with Holby City and await the sweet release of death. what larks.

aWeaponCalledtheWord it’s as if people are going to see ‘ah cool, that’s ok then, it’s only the vulnerable/old/ill who die. That includes me/my mother/my brother/my 6 year old child, but as long as it’s only them who are at risk then all is ok’.

@Witchofzog

You've said something is fact and then reiterated that it is fact and that the information is available freely online.

Please can you share links?

Otherwise it's unfair to say such things that panic people who are vulnerable to contracting contagious diseases.

So please share the online sources you have mentioned.

Genuinely, as someone at risk I want to be armed with as much information as possible.

Yep aweapon, according to this thread you were going to die soon anyway, so who gives a toss?
It is utter bollocks. I am not like those spreading bollocks about what is happening. But coronavirus does have a high mortality rate, so of course those of us at risk or with loved ones at risk are worrying.

I luve in Buxton, it was DS' junior school and my Dr's Surgery that have been closed. I'm not too worried about corona itself, I am concerned though that if there's a localised outbreak the town may be shut down for a few weeks I've done a massive shopping order with plenty of wine just to be on the safe side!

Re the death rates you can only calculate this from outcome cases. The current death rate in outcome cases i.e. was the outcome that the patient died or that they recovered is 8% died, 92% recovered. But 20% of cases are serious or critical and circa 45% require hospitalisation. This would cripple the NHS.

The figure of 2-3% for the death rate is the rate the WHO think it will eventually settle at - partly because they believed that there were a lot more cases in china than had been disclosed. However - following their inspection of china they now think that china has detected most of its cases and has used technology and information to a very high standard to track cases.

If you look at the deaths as a percentage of overall cases its meaningless because there is no outcome yet in the bulk of cases.

Also the situation in some Provinces in China is stabilising. No new cases for 8 days in my city and my province has lowered the response level from 1 to 2.
This is Jiangsu province.

This seems to be official figures, updated very often:
www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Not sure where people are getting some of the numbers quoted in this thread from.

My numbers are all from worldometer too. Its a good site and updates very regularly (although its been lagging on the news section for the past couple of days)

Yes, the UK numbers were updated minutes after the BBC's "breaking news" on the NI case.

Looking on the bright side, for anyone in the at risk groups, if everyone follows the good hygiene practise of washing hands thoroughly, not coughing all over everyone, disposing of tissues and washing hands again, it will reduce the risk of getting all the other illnesses that are around all the time and could also cause you serious issues.

I imagine most ‘at risk’ people already do, frumpety.

Yep but if everyone else joins in , its a win win for those with a suppressed immune system HoffiCoffi13

Good point!

I think it is perfectly reasonable to want my 6 year old to grow up without losing a parent. I think it is perfectly reasonable to hope my elderly parents continue to live.

I am not at all happy at the idea that young doctors and nurses, young smokers, young friends and relatives with diabetes may die by pneumonia without hospital care because if one million people in this country catch this and 80% barely feel ill there are still not going to be enough intensive care beds for 2 to 3 weeks per patient for 200,000 people.

I have looked at the Los Alamos epidemiological analysis, Imperial College and J-IDEA covid-19 Coursera and the Royal College of Physicians webinar amongst other things.

The Kings Fund say this “. Critical care beds:
The NHS maintains critical care beds for patients who are seriously ill and require constant support. These are measured on a different basis to other beds described in this section.1 Unlike most other categories of hospital bed, the total number of critical care beds has increased in recent years. In 2011/12 there were around 5,400 critical care beds, by 2016/17 this had risen to 5,912 – an increase of around 9.5 per cent (NHS England 2017b).2 Of these, around 68 per cent are for use by adults and the remainder for children and infants.

A recent government review of critical care services showed substantial variation in the number of critical care beds maintained per 100,000 of population across advanced health systems (Monitor 2014, p 17). In a comparison of eight advanced European systems, the UK was shown to maintain the joint second-lowest number of critical care beds relative to the population (Bittner et al 2013).3 “

So with , say 6,000 beds
6,000x2 weeks means as long as the 200,000 spaced themselves out evenly they could all have an intensive care bed for a fortnight for about 33 x 2 weeks and only 2000 of them might die so only
One and a quarter years with about 30 people a week dying. Obviously no one else would be needing an intensive care bed because of traffic accidents, cancer, stroke or flu.

I’m completely aware that all these figures are vast underestimates for the actual predicted number of cases etc but if there was a virus causing more than 6000 intensive care beds to be needed for several weeks or months it would be quite difficult wouldn’t it?

Why do you think I million people in the uk will be infected?
Hubei has nowhere near this number and my province of Jiangsu (population of 70 million) has 600 cases and we have been dealing with this situation since 23rd January.

So if we not too worry as it's only the old and ill, I should be happy I'm in my 40's and reasonably healthy.

But hang on, my mum.is 74 and has had phenomena twice. But I'm ok. Mum can pop her clogs. I will be ok so why should I care if she dies or if everyone on the oncology ward dies, the poor in the third world die. I will be ok. So those deaths will not touch me.

Surely it's ok to be a bit worried? By the end of the year we might see people we know get extremely sick. I dont like the mantra of "it's only the old and sick" because were all going to get old. We can look forward to being dependable on the next epidemic in another few decades..

I will worry about my mum because it seems wrong not to. But you should stress over what you cant control

What freaks me out more than anything is the prospect of schools closing for weeks or even months tbh. How would that work on practice with parents having to stay off work to look after them? Will people still get paid? What about agency workers, people who are self-employed or on ZHC's? Will the schools send out homework / provide materials for home-schooling? Who is going to stop people when they are fed up self-isolating and gather in parks, etc.? What will shops, gyms, restaurants and the like do if no one is allowed to go out? So many questions, but it all seems a bit of an overreaction to me by the media and governments. It's likely that more people will die in the UK this year because of delayed cancer diagnoses, austerity, illegally high levels of air pollution and so on than from corona virus.

This is exactly the situation for my dd- school closed for the Chinese New Year holiday on 23rd January and yet to reopen. School is emailing work to the students. Dh’s company office workers were home for a couple of weeks (back now) and were paid as normal.

Why do you think I million people in the uk will be infected? Hubei has nowhere near this number and my province of Jiangsu (population of 70 million) has 600 cases and we have been dealing with this situation since 23rd January.

Yes but china is way more efficient than we are. The WHO have been full of praise for the facilities, the technology and the tracking methods plus they have used extreme measures to restrict the spread. We are not doing that and are highly unlikely to do that. Plus we do not have the facilities or the ability to pull people in from different areas to assist with staffing in hospitals

The imperial college study is worth looking at to see their projections as to the potential impact on the UK.

News from HK

Hong Kong’s construction industry grinds to halt, and union says coronavirus has left 50,000 workers jobless

Construction Industry Employees General Union blames supply chain issues caused by shutdown of factories in mainland China
Bosses say another 80,000 workers have had their hours slashed to just one or two days a week

We’ll either be alright (likely) or we won’t (unlikely) and there’s nothing to be done about it except take the necessary precautions.