Italian medical officer has died *edited by MNHQ*

[NellyGrace]

www.standard.co.uk/news/world/italy-medical-chief-dies-death-toll-coronavirus-covid19-a4386356.html

@onalongsabbatical WHO exists all the time and have no teeth. I am talking more like a WHO cobra meeting in which a collective international action plan is agreed.

Yes, I see. You're right of course. But international cooperation tin on the ground at the mo.

thin fucking keyboard.

I'm glad to hear more people are working from home, but surprised more people are not using technology
(e.g. skype, laptops etc) instead of cancelling meetings. Must be greener too, as well as more economical, particularly those meetings which are long-distance - just not as much fun.

Hi @NellyGrace we've amended the title after receiving a number of reports.

@EmNetta

The meetings we've had cancelled are team meetings (sat around chatting about weekend plans for 20 mins, 10 mins talking about actual work), big business briefings etc. Smaller briefings instead, no more than 10 people & keeping our distance.

Any meetings which actually need to happen are calls using Teams.

My company is taking it really seriously luckily.

Wow - that news from Italy is grim. This is why the UK has taken the position of trying to spread out the infection rate so the NHS doesn't get overwhelmed by everyone getting sick at once.

@BookMeOnTheSudExpress
The Italian govt has NOT said it is not intubating people or that its hospitals can't cope. It has said "may come a time when".

I know you have stated this several times but where is the current source that confirms this. I can believe it as DH's Italian office have stated the same thing - its bad but just coping.

However, the Italian press and subsequently world press have presented that the intubation rationing has already begun in some hospitals. Maybe this sells more papers/ more adverts being sensationalist but there are apparent reports from different nurses and doctors stating the same thing.

And secondly if Not intubating was already happening - I could see why a governement would want to play this down for many reasons.

I'm not saying you're wrong but I question what's really going on out there.

Italian doctors are all very clear that every single one of us is at risk. This virus is potentially lethal to all of us - young, hold, sick, healthy.

It's almost as if you're purposely trying to whip a frenzy of panic @NellyGrace what with the misleading thread title and the other hyperbole.

Are you concerned that people aren't worried enough? Do you think that creating further panic will help?

It's the translation that is wrong. Big difference between "is doing" and "will be doing" or "may consider doing"

Any of the video links (actual verified sources, not some random audio sent by someone who has a friend in Italy who has received it on WhatsApp) use hypothetical terminology. And almost all the "listen to this audio from a doctor" have been debunked as fakes. As have some of the videos that people were taking as real.

There is no doubt the situation is very serious, and yes, in some intensive care units they probably already are having to choose who gets intubated first. But it's not a blanket situation as presented by the clickbait hunters.

Today production of ventilators was raised to five times its usual monthly production. A news reader was moved to tears talking to a doctor. Some parts of Italy are on their knees. They've said the south should be spared what's happened in the north because of the lockdown. Facts from todays lunchtime news.

RIP, good man trying to save other people. The sudden outbreak took Italy by surprise. Our government has no such excuse.

@BookMeontheSudExpress

Thank you for explaning. It does echo what I heard via DH.

Did this man have health issues before hand or did he contract Coronavirus and that killed him off the bat?

repeated exposure may get it worse, which might be why the young Chinese whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang died too.

Doesn't this contradict what Bozza is saying about heard immunity? Surely the idea is you catch C-19, you then have immunity and if exposed to it again you should be more immune and less ill? But maybe not the case?

Jaxhog, the UK is currently doing literally nothing to spread out the infection rate.

I think he got it from repeated exposure. Nothing in the press mentioned any underlying problems.

talking potato

That's exactly what he is.

@muchtoosoon - there's a difference between getting exposed to a virus, developing disease, that running its course and your immune system being prepared to deal with the same virus if it encounters it again, vs getting exposed to lots of the virus several times in quick succession. Think of it as you being exposed to a massive dose of virus over the course of an eight hour shift working directly with sick patients, rather than a tiny dose from a fleeting encounter with an unwashed door handle.

givenmushypeasachance oh doh of course that makes sense!!Ps I love your user name

I don't understand this either.
How can doing nothing help? Other countries have done nothing [Italy] and look at them now. When will the government WAKE UP TO THIS???They are letting us get it. Pure and simple. They cant stop it so they are letting us all get infected by it in the hope of becoming immune to it!! There is zero research to say that you cant catch it again.
Again like everything the Tories do, its business driving this. :(

Herd immunity has fuck all to do with this in all honesty.

Look at chicken pox - ok we have 'herd immunity' to that. Everyone gets it eventually, but we don't have epidemics.

But the plan with this, is to let it run to an epidemic, so we don't get an epidemic in future? That's nonsense.

And the problem is clearly the number of cases at one time

We KNOW what percentage of CV19 patients need intensive care, and we KNOW damn well the NHS can't manage that if a lot of infections happen at once.

So compressing the epidemic into a lot of cases in a short space of time, is going to cause a hell of a lot more deaths than it needed to.

What do you think to what these Two are putting forward?.

Who no doubt told Boris what to say?.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51874084

I don't think aiming to reduce the peak of the epidemic by 20% as quoted in that article is nearly enough.

We have half the intensive care beds of Italy apparently, if we peak at only 20% lower than them we're going to be in a lot of trouble.

So what do you think we ought to do?.

I don't get this herd immunity bollocks, we immunise against diseases. We are called names if we don't immunise our kids against every mentionable disease.
So how will we get herd immunity when we can't immunise.
It just doesn't make sense.