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30th March 2020, 02:58 PM
#61
Re: UK - Three Week Lockdown
Ny wife and i got a big laugh at this one Des. It will be widely shared. Thank you.
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31st March 2020, 05:36 AM
#62
Re: UK - Three Week Lockdown
We are lucky here in the big island we have space, plenty of it bucket loads in fact.
The main problem with the Virus is in the cities, in the bush they appear to be a lot freer of it.
Unlike so many parts of the globe such as UK, Spain, Italy we do not have so many 'dog box' style accommodation with so many crammed into one very small building.
Where we live, just like you Vernon, we can got on the freeway and be well way from it all in very short time.
Just now sure is the lucky country.
Happy daze John in Oz.
Life is too short to blend in.
John Strange R737787
World Traveller
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1st April 2020, 11:17 AM
#63
Re: UK - Three Week Lockdown
Originally Posted by
Ivan Cloherty
Early morning milk deliveries in the UK were banned by an EU Directive as the working hours contravened regulations and no other EU countries at that time had doorstep deliveries, the start time came under the 'Unsociable Hours Directive'. Most milkman had two jobs and they liked the 5 a.m. starts as the could start their other jobs at 8.a.m. Came into force late 1970's therefore not too long after joining.
That one has been given a Nelson eye by my Milkman, still Wiltshire have never really accepted the EU.
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1st April 2020, 11:20 AM
#64
Re: UK - Three Week Lockdown
Still happening here also, noisy b----s 5am clanking bottlesj
Last edited by Chris Allman; 1st April 2020 at 03:17 PM.
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2nd April 2020, 05:57 AM
#65
Re: UK - Three Week Lockdown
The lock down is causing some disquiet amongst the people.
The Premier says one thing, the police something else and then the Federal gov have their say.
We are told we must exercise and no more than two people together.
One guy said he wanted to go fishing on his own in the bay.
Premier said no, Police said as he is on his own that is fine.
They have now closed all the Brothels across the country saying they are not an essential service.
Well that may be fine in NZ where they have some beautiful sheep, but not here!!
Happy daze John in Oz.
Life is too short to blend in.
John Strange R737787
World Traveller
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2nd April 2020, 08:26 AM
#66
Re: UK - Three Week Lockdown
Conflicting advice and imposing the rules are ripe here. In Devon one Garden Centre has refused to close his outlets as he was told that he could sell spades/forks etc but he could not sell plants, but the Supermarket just less than a 100 metres down the road can sell plants. The Council called the police to shut him down, but the police said that they could do nothing as it was a Civil Matter and had to go through the Courts. If a garden Centre cannot sell plants why should a Supermarket be allowed to, doesn't make sense.
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2nd April 2020, 09:15 AM
#67
Re: UK - Three Week Lockdown
I think the problem was that this is something completely new, and the rules were made on the hoof, and there will always be the odd discrepancies , but i still say that they are doing the best they can under the circumstances . There was an interesting article on the local news, and advice from a ex nuclear submarine skipper , who had once spent nearly 300 days under the ocean without seeing daylight. He made some good observations on long periods of isolation, kt
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Sorry, link to the above
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-eng...cial-isolation
R689823
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2nd April 2020, 11:41 AM
#68
Re: UK - Three Week Lockdown
I once spent 6 weeks in a 12 berth cabin aboard a p&o immigrant ship on the lowest deck. Isolation it weren't but I wished it had of been.
Gilly
R635733
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3rd April 2020, 05:19 AM
#69
Re: UK - Three Week Lockdown
Found this article on the net yesterday, explains why the toll is so high in Italy and Spain.
Could apply to many other countruies as well.
ROME—The coffins are lined up in rows inside the church of San Giuseppe in the northern Italian city of Bergamo. There are 80 in all, many made hastily of rough pine that will never be varnished. Signs with handwritten numbers taped to the floor identify who is in what box, like some sort of grim lottery.
Funerals have been prohibited all across Italy since March 10, so the most the dead will get is a sprinkling of holy water and a group prayer before being sent to the crematorium. Many of the victims had underlying health conditions that gave COVID-19 a lethal edge, but they all share a striking similarity: they all died in isolation and their final farewell will be silent.
Father Mario Carminati, who leads the local parish in the one of the hardest hit areas of Italy’s corner of the COVID-19 pandemic, greets each coffin as it is wheeled into the church from a funeral parlor, a hospital morgue, or a private home. A ban on public gatherings means there are no family members to mourn. No tears are shed publicly.
Carminati told a local television station that his basilica is now a cemetery. There are more coffins in the store room and adjacent school gym, idle now that schools are closed. They will all be cremated because the local cemeteries are closed for burial and, anyway, there are just too many bodies and not enough burial space for them all.
More than 12,400 people have died with the coronavirus since the pandemic started gutting this country last month, making Italy’s mortality rate around 10.2 percent in comparison with 4.2 percent or less elsewhere, based on World Health Organization figures.
People have tried to justify the deaths by pointing to Italy’s large elderly population; 23 percent of people are 65 or older. The median age of death in the Italian cluster of the pandemic so far is 78, and more than three-quarters of those who have perished had one or more underlying pathologies, from cancer to diabetes to heart problems.
But the real explanation for Italy’s staggering mortality rate is more complicated than that. Dr. Massimo Galli, who heads the infectious disease unit at Sacco Hospital in Milan, says it is because Italy’s more than 105,000 cases of coronavirus infection merely scratch the surface. The real figure, he says, is “much, much more,” and if the true number of infections were known the percentage death rate would be more in line with other countries.
Italy’s Civil Protection Department agrees and says the total number of cases is likely 600,000 or more.
In the beginning, long before the novel coronavirus spread across Europe and through the United States, almost anyone in Italy with a COVID-like symptom or who had been north of Florence got a test. That quickly changed as the number of serious cases multiplied in the wealthy northern provinces, putting pressure on the health care systems there and making it dangerous for symptomatic people to go to emergency rooms.
The fear was that if tests were too easy to get, everyone would rush to their doctors for them, potentially infecting scores along the way. Now, anyone with a fever or other symptoms is just told to stay home and quarantine for 14 days, even if they have come in contact with a COVID-positive person. Only if they need hospitalization will they be tested by technicians who make house calls in full hazmat gear.
Another reason Italy’s mortality rate seems so high could come down to how Italians count their dead. The scientific adviser to Italy’s health minister said last week that Italy counts anyone who died with the coronavirus as a COVID-19 death. “Only 12 percent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus,” he said, meaning their true cause of death was a result of their underlying condition and pneumonia caused by the virus simply sent them over the edge.
Spain, which has the second highest mortality rate in the pandemic so far, also counts anyone with the virus at the time of death as a COVID-19 fatality. Many other countries with relatively low mortality rates, like Germany and France, have not made public just how they count their far fewer dead.
But experts also warn that the death count, like the number of total infections, could actually be much higher than what is being reported since many people who die at home or in nursing care facilities are not tested if they were asymptomatic.
“It is plausible that deaths are underestimated,” Silvio Brusaferro, head of Italy’s National Health Institute, said Tuesday at the daily civil protection press conference. “We report deaths that are signaled with a positive swab. Many other deaths are not tested with a swab.”
Several authorities in Italy have pointed to a surge in mysterious pneumonia cases that swept northern Italy in December and early January before testing for COVID-19 was underway. Italy’s Ministry of Health points to a lighter-than-normal flu season that spared so many elderly people who might normally have died, instead leaving them vulnerable to the ravages of the coronavirus.
Happy daze John in Oz.
Life is too short to blend in.
John Strange R737787
World Traveller
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3rd April 2020, 06:15 AM
#70
Re: UK - Three Week Lockdown
we went to the cancer clinic yesterday we overheard nurses saying there was only three masks between all the staff on that clinic that is the first time we have been out of the house in nearly a month? true jp
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