Flattening the curve hopefully buys time to get organized and get the suppies you need.

South Korea had a mask for every citizen.

Tawian monitored chinese social media and sent 2 doctors to investigate very early on. Their hospitals always have 1 month worth of medical supplies 
.
Iceland is doing a lot of testing and finding a lot of asymptomatic carriers.

We are not the worst but we are also not the best.

BTW we have a lot of Abbott machines in our hospitals to test blood sugar levels. I really hope that is the same machine and that behind the scenes we are getting our act together.

Oh I most certainly knew what you were alluding to Zef….

And I was agreeing with you regarding Trump. He was fairly cavalier in his approach and now faces the music.
With Boris, I don't think his idea was completely flawed. The problem with it is that it would result in a sharp and high death rate and it is only effective if the rest of the world follows suit. The fact that no one followed his approach met he has on a hiding to nothing.

As bad as the situation is in Italy and Spain, you'll find that they will come out of this with immune population much quicker than the "flatten the curve" countries 

Your last 2 sentences answered pretty much summed it up.
Its an availability thing - where the intention is to have them available for medical staff as priority and the general populous second.
But you also right in that the use of masks, certainly adds protection from known or unknown cases.

The advice re the wearing of masks is a little confusing.  The Federal Department of Health says they are only helpful in preventing those with the virus spreading it to others. If you are well you do not need to wear a mask.  On the Diamond Princess over 46% of those testing positive had no symptoms at the time of testing. Indeed over 17% never developed any symptoms.  This has since been backed up by other studies.  The point being how do asymtomatic people know they should be wearing a mask.  should we not err on the side of caution or is the advice influenced by the availability of masks.  In those countries touted as being the most successful in flattening the curve wearing of masks is quite common.

Yes, there are promising developments on both screening and treatment, the ideal combination being screening which results in early detection and treatment for most patients.
The right early treatment will result in much better outcomes for most but not all.
But effective mass screening will pick up a lot more cases earlier, resulting in earlier isolation and fewer downstream cases.
That plus good hygiene standards and some PPE for all as needed, but particularly medical staff, policy, ambulance and emergency staff, teachers, and customer service staff is more or less essential....

All of that takes time and money but there is only one alternative "lockdown" and we know "lockdown" costs a fortune and is a blunt instrument currently there is little choice.

Newer tests included 15 min antibody test which can be rolled out to GPs, and 5 min positive  13 min negative Abbott tests which can be rolled out the Hospital Emergency wards. 

The Abbott Machines are quite common int he US as they test for many things, the problem we might have is they may not be common here and I imagine the US currently wants every one Abbott can make..

So "lockdown" might be the only alternative for us until we can get all of the tests and gear we need, but we should look at making some of this stuff ourselves, also look at what countries like South Korea and Taiwan are doing, don't be afraid to admit they are much smarter and better organised than we are, that is because they have had similar viruses in the past.

We are on a steep learning curve, but we can't afford to bumble along not unless we are prepared to pay the price of being locked down  for a long time. 

There's plenty of other places with comparable financial districts Hong Kong, Singapore (excepting to NY I'd say), but even if not directly comparable, on a scale of population (inc visitors) to infections don't come anywhere close to the U.S or Britain.

So that's not what I was suggesting they had in common.

I'll give you a clue - One has a leader who decided to go disastrously for herd immunity for about two weeks before completely changing track to home isolation. The other has Trump.

Now do you see what they're got in common?

What will come quicker than a vaccine (which btw may NEVER come, they've never found one for a corona-virus before) is a means for rapid and mass testing. Along with a treatment (NOT a cure, a treatment) that gets most people through it, which hopefully will come this year - then that's when things will open up and we'll get back to normal.

But until they get either or both, the restrictions will stay with perhaps some fiddling around the edges.

Correct! 
They both have the 2 most important financial districts in the world.

I know what you mean....
The reality is, even if we come out of this better than others, we cant resume global business activities until these super powers also recover.

It's truly a global problem.
Much much worse than climate change will ever be - coz its simultaneous 

I don't believe it matters...
It doesn't look like it will matter much if our cases remain steady 75% of ICU capacity or at 100% at ICU capacity. Whilst we have unknown cases, the country will not be able to re-open for business and our only hope will be to all catch it and collectively build immunity to it.

The other hopeful option is a vaccine to be deployed to the entire population but needs to developed in the first place. That could be 12months or more....

By then, my honest belief is that this thing will go through our entire population or close to it.

Britain is an island.

And probably gonna be 2nd only to The U.S as the worst effected countries when this is all over.

And what is it that they have in common? I wonder, I wonder...................

He's done alot of good things Trump but I have to agree he has had some missteps on this issue.

He's not alone. It's a crisis not faced by a western nation before and they are a large dense population so naturally their numbers will be bad and can easily spiral out of control. 

But I think they could have prepared themselves a little better in the earlier stages and that's where their fault lies.....

We still have two of the larger International cities in Sydney and Melbourne with the population to match. And with international air travel we're an island in name only when it comes to non-symptomatic spreading virus's.

So don't sell us short, we're doing a good job of it.

Yes but offset by a higher percentage of yobbos.

We are in the unique position with our large land mass, island, large distance between cities and low population density to be better than any other country with exception of maybe Greenland or Madagascar or something

Bob cares:I loved his song about the Titanic ("Tempest") and this is  good..a whisker under 17 minutes...not as good as Tempest though not bad....Bob should stick to historical pieces

Greetings to my fans and followers with gratitude for all your support and loyalty across the years. This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting. Stay safe, stay observant and may God be with you. - Bob Dylan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NbQkyvbw18

Trust you to bring alcohol into it.

There is talk of old republicans playing golf shaking hands afterwards and claiming the virus is a leftist hoax.
What we are seeing is Darwin's theory of natural selection in place.
The capabilities of a country's leadership, their ability to communicate a clear consistent and timely message and the ability of the populace to take that on board and respond accordingly all help.
A well organised well resourced medical system helps.
I think testing and treatment will soon help.
What we know doesn't help is assuming it is all a hoax.

We were just slow to act

I hope that doesn't include debate between me and the old girl or I'm gone

By the operators.

Meanwhile the Governor allowed their beaches to be flooded shoulder to shoulder for spring break while his state and federal medical advisers were telling him that he was being criminally negligent for allowing it.

Well all the Florida tourist attractions closed early March.

The problem I can see exploding on The U.S, apart from Trump's incompetency (actually it's part of his incompetency) is there's still, STILL, 10 states without a "stay at Home" directive. And they're exactly the states you would expect - the bible belt, Trump is Jesus, nobody will take my freedom states - Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma etc. Two others Kentucky and Tennessee have a limp advisory with no enforcement so they may as well have nothing

This along with more of the same type of states like Florida for eg who only implemented stay at home directives over the last week or so and much too late shows there's still a massive surge to come.

Our curve as of 3/4/20 is looking very much like Sth Korea's. And even though we have more cases our curve (which represents new cases %) is now better than Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong.

It shows the measures are working but also emphasises there is no room for complacency. Japan (esp) and even the best model Sth Korea are experiencing a "2nd wave" and all predictions are that every country (inc ours) will experience 2nd and even 3rd and beyond waves. How that works I don't know but it's pandemic norm apparently.

But still, I think we're handling it better than just about anyone else who has it in the community. We may even become the new model.

As for The U.S - thank f*** we don't have Trump!

But they must adhere to the electronic social distancing rules ....

You cant debate more than 2 times with another poster on a topic!

As long as they agree with me.....its no problem!

The more the merrier says I... 

Well I've certainly flattened the curve....
My Samsung Health app indicates my Steps have reduced to an average of around 900 most days....

This is at the expense of of my waistline...

I might be totally off the track here but from time to time the site gets a little slow. There are however usually quite a number of guests.  Should the guests be actively encouraged to become members and participate in debate. I realise some may be other club supporters but that doesn't matter. By being guests they are showing an interest. A diversity of opinion can't hurt.  After all we have plenty here that can give as good as they get

what if the girl OK and CHN shagged was named Caroline...?
And what if she was sweet?

Good example...total lack of success at Canterbury...underwhelming is being kind