Games off in Italy due to Coronavirus

[upthemaggies]

Inter Milan's game among those called off due to the Coronavirus. Bit worrying, this could cause a serious fixture pile up for us if it spreads over here......

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/51599748

[jackal2]

Another massively overblown public health panic. By all means take sensible precautions like you would to avoid any infection, but also realise that this is primarily a media 'event'.

As one doctor on the radio put it the other day: if you're sitting there worrying about the Coronavirus, you should be more worried if you haven't had a flu jab. A GP friend of mine also told me the other day that for most people the effect of Coronavirus would be akin to a very mild dose of flu. The only reason for the fuss is that we haven't got a recognised antidote to Covid-19 so our only defence is our own immune system, which is the vast majority of cases is enough.

There have been just under 2450 deaths from Coronavirus in China and two in Italy. The population of China is more than 1,400,000,000 and Italy's is just over 60,000,000.

[upthemaggies]

Another massively overblown public health panic. By all means take sensible precautions like you would to avoid any infection, but also realise that this is primarily a media 'event'.

As one doctor on the radio put it the other day: if you're sitting there worrying about the Coronavirus, you should be more worried if you haven't had a flu jab. A GP friend of mine also told me the other day that for most people the effect of Coronavirus would be akin to a very mild dose of flu. The only reason for the fuss is that we haven't got a recognised antidote to Covid-19 so our only defence is our own immune system, which is the vast majority of cases is enough.

There have been just under 2450 deaths from Coronavirus in China and two in Italy. The population of China is more than 1,400,000,000 and Italy's is just over 60,000,000.

Very true, unfortunately - in terms of football - the Italian gesture will set a precedent. If the virus does take hold here, the Premier League and FL will be under pressure to cancel fixtures.

[drillerpie]

There is an element of panic to this (where I am there's been a rush on hand sanitiser, staple foods etc and some supermarket shelves were bare this morning) but I think cancelling the games is the prudent thing to do (not that they had any choice, the regional president has ordered them to do it). It's easy to say it's only media hype but when your job is to protect the public you'd be negligent to just say "it'll be alright on the night".

The schools and universities have been closed for the next week and a lot of carnival celebrations have been cancelled. Some towns are under Wuhan style lockdown and Corona-mania is generally taking hold.

It's not totally unjustified though. It apparently has got a mortality rate of about 2% which sounds quite low but is higher than flu and if it spreads to the whole population, 2% of 60 million is about a million deaths if I'm not mistaken. There is no vaccine and next to nothing is known about the virus.

The 'patient zero' in Lombardy is a 38 year old whose main hobby is running, in other words a healthy adult, and he's seriously ill in intensive care, so it's dangerous for everyone.

They're trying to trace anyone who has been in contact with this person as he's already infected his running partners. You can you imagine that's quite a hard job and if you send potentially infected people to the San Siro with 80,000 others it obviously becomes impossible.

[drillerpie]

Also from a purely statistical point of view the deaths to population ratio is a red herring as the virus has literally just arrived in Italy so only a minute fraction of those 60 million people have been exposed to it. You obviously need to look at deaths to cases of Coronavirus to see how dangerous it is.

[BigFatPie]

Correct Driller.

This thread is a nice little insight into how and why reactionaries think what they do and how and why progressives think what they do.

I’ve seen warnings about the consequences of Brexit being likened to the Y2K virus. That didn’t turn out too badly because of the time and money spent on expertise making sure that it didn’t turn out too badly.

I hope as much expertise and money is similarly spent on trying to limit the casualties of this virus. Why do right wing people always try to downplay the risks of everything?

[jackal2]

Correct Driller.

This thread is a nice little insight into how and why reactionaries think what they do and how and why progressives think what they do.

I’ve seen warnings about the consequences of Brexit being likened to the Y2K virus. That didn’t turn out too badly because of the time and money spent on expertise making sure that it didn’t turn out too badly.

I hope as much expertise and money is similarly spent on trying to limit the casualties of this virus. Why do right wing people always try to downplay the risks of everything?

Ironically enough because they can see through the tactics used by a bunch of capitalists to create a mass panic and make a lot of money.

[BigFatPie]

Ironically enough because they can see through the tactics used by a bunch of capitalists to create a mass panic and make a lot of money.

Really? That sounds like conspiracy theory to me.

As Driller said, we know next to nothing about this virus. We don’t know how much about how easily it’s transmitted, we don’t much about its fatality rate, we know little about its origin. But according to you, it’s all a ‘media event’. What do you base that on? Why would you not expect the relevant authorities to plan for a worst case scenario?

[jackal2]

Really? That sounds like conspiracy theory to me.

Well it would, wouldn't it?!

I'm not claiming for one moment that things like Coronavirus, global warming, the Y2K bug or any other 'emergency' you care to mention don't have some basis in fact. Of course they do.

But you would need to be naïve in the extreme not to see that these things are also exploited and often exaggerated by those who quickly spot an opportunity to make a lot of money from them in a whole variety of ways, be that private companies seeking to make a fast buck or public organisations seeking to justify an increased need for taxpayer funding to 'solve' the problem. Both have a vested interest in creating as much hype and fear as possible, as indeed do journalists in the modern day 24-hour news culture where there is a constant need to for big stories to keep them in jobs.

That's not so much a conspiracy. More a recognition of basic human nature, be that a good or bad thing.

[drillerpie]

Haha I think the tinned sardine and UHT milk lobby is behind all this!

Joking aside I can't imagine any competent public health official prioritising a potential fixture backlog over the spread of a disease with a 2% mortality rate for which there is no vaccine or cure. In fact I would put that down as one of those things you can only read on NCM!