COVID-19 Coronavirus Thread

[kamkar]

That should not be a surprise, but it is to me.
They will take all our benefits, and then burn us on the tax, it is pretty normal here.
Companies like MC Donald - Nestle ASO they make money here but don't pay a dime in tax or very little in tax, tax haven countries should burn or be heavily sanctioned to submission.
And it always made me wonder, we can sanction some countries pretty easy, but other countries about just as nasty, well they go free of charge cuz money talk and BS walk.

Though i also know the UK system are very beneficial for some.

The US failing to buy Greenland have opened a office up there, and are preparing a economic aid package to aid the Greenland economy,,,,,,, so they are trying to grease their way in

"It is our wish to cooperate with the entire Danish Empire to promote entrepreneurship and innovation and thus stimulate sustainable economic growth in the Arctic "
"The US government is preparing a substantial package of financial support that can provide renewable energy for growth in Greenland, Carla Sands writes. "

USA vil give økonomisk støtte til Grønland

USA har åbnet et konsulat i Grønland og vil nu også give økonomisk støtte. Folketingsmedlemmer er skeptiske.

translate.google.dk

Many Danish politicians are not happy,

 

[Dashmellow]

Surly it is up to the tax haven to decide that, not the Danish government!

BTW Nigel, at first I just thought you misspelled the word surely but then again, maybe not?

sur•ly
(ˈsɜr li)

adj. -li•er, -li•est.
1. sullenly rude or bad-tempered.

2. unfriendly or hostile; menacingly irritable

3. dark or dismal: a surly sky.

4. Obs. lordly; arrogant.

 

[country_hick]

Also on N95 masks, you shoot your own arguments down on protections they offer when you say the medical heros need them yet somehow they won't do the same thing for humans in other endeavors.

Phil

I may have misspoken. I meant to say when the medical people can not get the N95 (or N100) masks and other PPE when they are first in line to get them how can anyone who is not a medical professional get a good mask or gloves to protect themselves? We really need the N100 masks to stop all viruses.

 

[kamkar]

Yeah. while settling are sort of a innate thing for me personally as a Dane, we should strive for the best, for ourself and our people.
And while many people over the history have done great deeds with nothing, and gone way beyond what can be asked of a man, really today in this day and age we should not ask that of people nor should it be needed, i would be so ashamed if i had to ask something like that of people.
And like i said before if i was a politician today, with the things they have done in good faith to battle this, really i would have to resign as soon as this blow over, actually if we don't get a new election in Denmark, it would not do good for my already extremely low esteem of politicians here.

TBH i remember a long time ago seeing Bill Gates first ted talk about a situation like this, and i also recall my stone cold thoughts about what Bill said.
And scientists was also saying it before Bill, but nooooo we got something more important to do, build a bridge, get new fighter jets, move people half way around the world to help them here, and what have you.

I do not like the people that say we are in war with this virus,,,,,,,,, using the war word is a blank check for unlimited spending's and inhibiting peoples rights, and i suspect for our glorious leaders to look as heroes when we come out on the other side.

 

[country_hick]

99% of Those Who Died From Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says

More than 99% of Italy’s coronavirus fatalities were people who suffered from previous medical conditions, according to a study by the country’s national health authority.

www.bloomberg.com

Suicides outpacing coronavirus deaths in Tennessee, data says - Washington Examiner

More people died of suicide in a single Tennessee county last week than of the coronavirus across the entire state, according to one local official. Knox County Regional Forensic Center examined nine suspected suicides in under 48 hours last week, Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs said, according...

www.washingtonexaminer.com

U.S. crude oil futures for May plummet to minus $37 — lowest price in history

With demand at near-paralysis, oil and fuel tanks around the world are close to brimming.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[kamkar]

Yeah i heard about those oil prices for American oil, instead of going Duuuuude as i normally do when i get surprised i went Cruuuuude
They ( OPEC ) did lower production last week or the one before that, but gas price here in Denmark are still at very sensible prices,,,, of course still not as dirt cheap as other places, but for Danish conditions its pretty nice.

I am also wondering how they ( the Danish government ) will artificially get prices up again, so they can make some of that sweet gasoline and Co2 tax.
I am not sure but i assume 1/3 to 1/2 of the price on gasoline and oil products here are tax, by which as you can then deduct Denmark have much cleaner air than any other country, and our roads are paved in gold, and potholed get filled with diamonds....... end irony.

 

[Dashmellow]

how can anyone who is not a medical professional get a good mask or gloves to protect themselves? We really need the N100 masks to stop all viruses.

@country_hick, As you are probably aware many people around the country are making their own DIY cloth surgical style face masks to protect from coronavirus. You'll find zillions of DIY video instructions on YouTube (plus a couple I'm posting below).

Plain cotton cloth masks have been shown to be reasonably protective for COVID-19 in that they can lower the viral load you might end up inhaling and they are particularly good at helping infected people from contaminating their environment and transmitting the disease to others.

If you are concerned about obtaining a much higher level of protection that can meet or even possibly exceed the capabilities of a medical N95 mask there are some things you can do.

Firstly, you need a DIY cloth mask with a filter pocket built into it. Then there are various options using readily available household items that can offer enhanced virus protection that you can insert into the mask pocket.

Those options range from cheap, easiy replacable cone shaped #4 coffee filters which give you two layers of mild paper filter protection in an already perfect shape and size (good) to material from high filtration harvested fron MERV level furnace filters (excellent) to HEPA rated high filtration vacuum filters (the gold standard).

N95 respirators filters out at least 95% of very small (0.3 micron) particles. N95 FFRs are capable of filtering out all types of particles, including bacteria and viruses and this includes coronavirus.

HEPA vacuum filters can also filter out particles as low as .3 microns. A single package of HEPA vacuum bags can produce quite a few disposable face mask filters when you cut them up.

Furnace filters and air conditioning filters use the MERV index. Filters with a MERV index of 11 to 13 can be very effective against viruses. If you buy a furnace filter and cut it up into face mask filters you will get quite a few out of a single filter. You want MERV 13 if you can find them.

Be careful if you try this. Some of these filters can produce fine particles that can damage your lungs and some of them contain harmful chemicals as they were never designed to be worn over your mouth. If they are behind a protective layer (the pocket in the face mask) they should be fine as far as fine particles are concerned. Make sure you buy filters that do not contain toxic chemicals.

For more thorough, detailed information about all this check out the following two articles. If you're gonna try this you need to check them out.

What’s the Best Material for a Mask?
Scientists are testing everyday items to find the best protection from coronavirus. Pillow cases, flannel pajamas and origami vacuum bags are all candidates.

The Best Materials For DIY Face Masks And Filters
Paper towels, coffee filters and other household materials can be used for coronavirus face masks. But which are most effective?

Furnace filters.

Finally, to answer your question about gloves you should be able to find a good selection of both Nitrile and Latex gloves on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=latex+gloves&ref=nb_sb_noss

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=nitrile+gloves&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

 

[country_hick]

I am not sure but i assume 1/3 to 1/2 of the price on gasoline and oil products here are tax, by which as you can then deduct Denmark have much cleaner air than any other country, and our roads are paved in gold, and potholed get filled with diamonds....... end irony.

It looks like you paid $2.95 a gallon in taxes in 2013. The USA then was about $0.53 a gallon as state fuel taxes vary. The tax paid could be higher or lower today.

How High are Other Nations’ Gas Taxes?

The U.S. federal government funds infrastructure projects through the highway trust fund. This trust fund receives revenue from mainly the excise taxA tax is a mandatory payment or charge collected by local, state, and national governments from individuals or businesses to cover the costs of...

taxfoundation.org

 

[SawMaster]

Taxes, UGH! Can't we just talk about something more pleasant like the Corona virus? Fuel taxes here are some of the lowest anywhere, but a raise was enacted a couple years ago which is being implemented at the rate of two cents more per gallon annually to a total of ten cents more which about doubled it. Gasoline prices here are also very low, currently well under $2 per gallon and still dropping

Phil

 

[Nigel]

Yeah i heard about those oil prices for American oil,

You would think that with oil, you could turn off the supply, so no reason for prices to go negative?
Or someone could build a huge tank and make a huge profit when demand returns.

Bit different with the electricity, yesterday in the UK, at the peak of demand, we had too much electricity, a third was from solar, which we can't turn down, a third was from wind, which we can turn down, but we have to pay for it anyway, a sixth was from nuclear, which we can't easily turn down, it takes weeks to turn our nuclear plants off and the fuel is of insignificant cost anyway so you don't save much by doing so, and the last sixth was from gas, which we couldn't turn down any more because then there would be insufficient instant backup power if a major power line / transformer / power source failed. So the commercial price for our electricity dropped to £-11 / MWh even though it was at the highest demand of the day. Normally when that happens we export it to France, but France had an even bigger overload and it's price was €-23, so being cheaper than our electricity we were actually importing theirs to add to our issues, and then Belgium was at €-28, more negative than it normally is positive, so we were importing that too. All our extra electricity, including the imported stuff was being exported to Ireland, where a quarter of the Irish Republic's electricity was sourced from GB and nearly half of Northern Ireland's electricity. Even though we were selling it at £-11, we were making 100% markup on the French electricity and even more on the Belgium!

I guess in future, even in normal times, these big negative electricity prices will become common due to the amount of wind and solar power being installed. Makes nuclear power even less attractive, not only is it expensive to produce but you will often have to sell it at negative price because you can't turn it down. We need more storage. The Danish price only got down to €-1, but it seems you didn't have much sun or wind yesterday, more cables between countries will also help.

 

[Nigel]

There is limited guidance and clinical research to inform on the use of reusable cloth face masks for protection against respiratory viruses. Available evidence shows that they are less protective than surgical masks and may even increase the risk of infection due to moisture, liquid diffusion and retention of the virus. Penetration of particles through cloth is reported to be high. In one study, 40–90% of particles penetrated the mask.

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/Cloth-face-masks-in-case-shortage-surgical-masks-respirators2020-03-26.pdf

 

[SawMaster]

"Limited guidance" is essentially saying "We don't know" differently The moisture in a mask is also what helps it retain (and thus not pass) contaminants, but there's a point where saturation occurs, and then it becomes a liability. Very widespread and long-term empirical evidence shows them to work, and one or two limited studies aren't enough to change things. Nobody is claiming they're perfect or even good, but only that they're usually better than nothing. If they're not used correctly (such as continued use when saturated) then you can't expect them to work correctly. The same goes for the materials they're made of- that choice is so widespread and so different in it's behavior that you can't really use a 'paintbrush stroke' to judge them all like that.

With oil, it's not so much the stopping of prodiction, but the re-starting of it which is expensive. Same as with our rusted and useless steel mills, if a refinery sirs unuses too long it has to be extensively refurbished before you can put it back online, and since the process requires different specific stable heats throughout, it also takes several days to restart them from idle. Also they are not very efficient unless they're being run at near 100% of their capacity. On storage, that's designed mostly as a buffer for production output and a strategic reserve to cover temporary interruptions. Crude oil stores most cheaply when you just leave it in the ground where you found it until you need it

Phil

 

[country_hick]

The reason oil prices went negative was because of traders who never wanted the oil just to make profits from paper trading. After a certain point in time delivery must be accepted. When traders have no place to put the oil they will do anything not to take delivery. In this case doing anything meant paying a big price not to be covered in an oil slick.

 

[kamkar]

I never liked paper pushers, and they come in all shapes and every one is more bad than good.

 

[Nigel]

Captain Tom Moore, who has raised more than £27m for the NHS by completing 100 laps of his garden, has been sent more than 25,000 birthday cards ahead of his 100th birthday on 30 April. Stephen James, manager at the South Midlands Mail Centre, said: "None of the team have ever known one person receive so much mail."

Meanwhile, British Formula 1 driver Lando Norris has spoken to Capt Moore via a video chat and offered him a tour around the McLaren F1 factory. "Nothing would give me more pleasure - it would be absolutely phenomenal to go around McLaren because I've always been a McLaren fan and still am," said Capt Moore.

Royal Mail will be using a special postmark wishing Capt Tom a happy 100th birthday. It will appear on all stamped mail across the UK starting next week.

I wonder how long it will take him to find the one from the queen

A little perspective on Covid-19 in England and Wales from the death certificate data rather than just hospital counts:

 

[Dashmellow]

A little perspective on Covid-19 in England and Wales from the death certificate data rather than just hospital counts:

The "perspective" seems more than a bit misleading at this point in time. Here on April 21, 2020 we are only 15 weeks into the year.

The chart states 10,350 UK death registrations from COVID-19 on April 10th. Reported UK deaths on April 21, some 5 days later are now 17,337. There is likely a lag between reported and registered deaths so previous registration numbers will jump at some point.

"The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle predicts 66,000 UK deaths from Covid-19 by August, with a peak of nearly 3,000 a day, based on a steep climb in daily deaths early in the outbreak."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ropes-worst-hit-by-coronavirus-study-predicts

66,000 + 174,718 (5 year average) = 240,718. Of course, after August there will still be another 4 months to go until the end of the calendar year so the total all cause mortality rate in the UK will certainly show a significant spike.

It could well be worse than that! A recent paper published by Imperial College London estimated that the true number of people who had been infected with the coronavirus in the U.K. as of March 30 was somewhere between 800,000 and 3.7 million— as compared to a reported case count through that date of just 22,141.

 

[Nigel]

"The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle predicts 66,000 UK deaths from Covid-19 by August, with a peak of nearly 3,000 a day, based on a steep climb in daily deaths early in the outbreak."

Seattle can predict what they like, but the BBC is reporting in relation to the above chart:

experts believe this period could well be when virus deaths peaked.

They point to a separate analysis by NHS England which showed since 8 April the number of deaths in hospitals have been falling when you look at the date of death.

We never reached 1000 deaths per day at peak, nowhere near Seattle's 3000!

 

[country_hick]

A recent paper published by Imperial College London estimated that the true number of people who had been infected with the coronavirus in the U.K. as of March 30 was somewhere between 800,000 and 3.7 million— as compared to a reported case count through that date of just 22,141.

If the number of people being infected is correct (millions) then the death rate would be very low and the undeniable serious complications including deaths would be a rare result of being infected. I hope this virus is not eventually determined to be similar to the flu regarding the typical expected number of deaths and sickness considering all of the measures taken to defeat it and the cost involved.

 

[Nigel]

If the number of people being infected is correct (millions) then the death rate would be very low and the undeniable serious complications including deaths would be a rare result of being infected. I hope this virus is not eventually determined to be similar to the flu regarding the typical expected number of deaths and sickness considering all of the measures taken to defeat it and the cost involved.

Currently it looks like about matching the 99-00 year flu epidemic for deaths when the flu vaccines didn't work well, seems very unlikely it will reach the normal level for flu back in the middle of last century before flu vaccines. The big difference is that it spreads a lot faster than flu if unrestricted, and so action did need to be taken to avoid hospital overload in large cities.

 

[Dashmellow]

Seattle can predict what they like, but the BBC is reporting in relation to the above chart:

We never reached 1000 deaths per day at peak

Not yet......

Time will tell despite wishful thinking. 3000/day is a projection going forward based on the current data.

As for what you dismissively refer to as "Seattle", The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington is one of the most respected organizations of its type in the world.

Excess all cause mortality is certainly showing up in UK data as well, which is another reason the BBC happy talk chart you posted seems misleading. Fact is, that mortality rates are spiking all over the world and we don't yet know how this will all play out when everything is said and done. My hope is for the least number of deaths possible ---- EVERYWHERE!

https://assets.publishing.service.g...ortality_surveillance_week_16_2020_report.pdf