Portugal recorded its worst daily coronavirus death toll on Sunday, with more than 85,000 infections and almost 1,500 deaths reported in the past week.
That is the highest rate worldwide in proportion to its population of more than 10 million, according to an AFP tally based on government figures.
So, here I am, sitting here, in the worst affected country in the middle of a pandemic respiratory virus.
Yes, a damn cold. It’s not a ‘flu, not a covid, a cold. Given that I’ve not been anywhere nor met anyone quite how is a mystery. But there we are…..
The cold virus floated in through the open window that governments are telling us we should have open for the fresh air.
Most symptomatic covid is like a cold.
Isnt portugal one of the countries clamouring for “vaccine passports”? You know, one of those many things we were written off as conspiracy theorists for predicting as recently as last Thursday?
Ditto. My wife and I have both been sneezing like mad, with runny noses and itchy eyes. Absolute classic winter cold. Like you, we’ve not been anywhere or met anyone without six feet of air or a perspex barrier between us.
If the Portug govt is as big a pack of liars as the UK–and I think that likely so–most of the stats you quote will be the usual deceitful shite .
Mass testing of cowardly mugs =vast false positive PCR casedemic of not-ill people.
Everybody going in hosp gets a PCR test-lots of false positives-if 1 false pos then regular tests-each FP counted as a new covid case. Deaths mostly old-ill, with not from, everyone who dies gets PCR test and large numbers of false pos get recorded as covid deaths even if a crocodile bit them in half etc.
Standard lying bullshit in the Blojob Johnson mould.
It’s not a new phenomenon either, the pack of medical liars in charge still can’t account for how virions actually transfer.
The below completely destroys all the socialist distancing, muzzle wearing and rabbits foot waving of the faithful:
“An outbreak of common colds at an Antarctic base after seventeen weeks of complete isolation BY T. R. ALLEN Medical Officer, British Antarctic Survey AND A. F. BRADBURNE, E. J. STOTT, C. S. GOODWIN AND D. A. J. TYRRELL Clinical Research Centre, Harrow, England {Received 28 February 1973) SUMMARY Six of 12 men wintering at an isolated Antarctic base sequentially developed symptoms and signs of common cold.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/66c1/3279cc82515c66bc883daf6b383ab602154f.pdf
@BiG – the UK government is funding 8 schemes for the vaccine passports ministers have repeatedly said they won’t introduce.
Someone with absolutely no credentials to pronounce on the matter might suggest this gives us some idea on how effective the precautions against contracting Coronavirus, the experts are determined to foist on us, actually are.
Looking at the data, Portugal missed the epidemic in Spring last. The virus, like ‘flu, went to ground during Summer, then re-emerged in more favourable weather that Winter brings. So now you are getting your first wave, because plenty of vulnerable individuals still alive… elderly people are now 6 to 10 months older, and the sick ones deteriorate significantly in just a few months… plus rest of the population have not acquired immunity from prior exposure.
Why it did not happen in Spring may be climate related. It is a coastal Country. Brittany also seems to have missed the worst stuck out there on the Atlantic Coast.
Respiratory virus are spread by contact with things infected people have touched or breathed/sneezed/coughed over. They can carry some distance depending on air currents, people sneezing, coughing, blowing their nose and talking.
The recent so-called scientific advice has pretended certainty about how these virus spread… stay a metre apart, wear masks (but virus can enter via the eyes), how long they can survive on surfaces, stay indoors, mostly airborne, but true science is about uncertainty, and these factors are by no means completely understood. Virus have had billions of years to evolve to be successful at reproduction.
If you have touched anything recently which came from outside your home, or been in the vicinity of others or where others have been, that’s where you got it. Virus can land on your skin, clothes, food, drink, then transfer into the respiratory tract.
I’ve got a told in the node too. I assume rhinoviruses are so strong they can charge their way through any obstacle.
It’s the exponential growth nature of viruses, isn’t it? If someone sneezes on you, you get millions of virions and you’ll be sick within a few days. If you acquire just one virion, and the numbers double every day*, it’ll take three weeks to reach a million.
(*No idea what the actual replication rate is; but the principle stands.)
Covid and the common cold are just bundles of RNA in a lipid wrapper. Outside the human body, ambient activity causes the virus to degrade and fall apart. Like any chemical reaction, this will happen much faster in warm weather than cold.
In the case of the Antarctic base, it’s plausible that the virus was introduced on a frozen surface, where it wasn’t naturally degraded in the heat.
As to our host’s sniffle, it was either a passing contact three weeks ago, or a grocery store worker transferred some virions to the frozen food containers. (The truly paranoid could soap-wash all shopping before putting it away.)
You failed to take your vitamin D3 regular like. Best and cheapest viricide around.
Locally flu has apparently disappeared, like nothing they have ever seen say the local CDC who put it down to the Covid restrictions (and wonder then if we shouldn’t do this every winter) despite explaining why they are obviously not as effective against Covid, a clue maybe in how little testing they are doing for flu vs Covid but that doesn’t seem to have occurred to them.
Given the way that the Covid test picks up and amplify fragments I assume it’s very possible to have flu and actually test positive for Covid, once tested you are Covid and nothing else matters. As symptoms are identical for most so not easy to tell I doubt anyone is double checking Flu vs Covid in patients
“You failed to take your vitamin D3 regular like. Best and cheapest viricide around.”
I’ve been taking 3,000 IU a day since March. And yet I’ve got a cold.
P.S. There’s a notion that too low an absolute humidity suits the virus and therefore people who live in centrally-heated houses should instal humidifiers. I dare say that the absolute humidity is low in Antarctic huts.
Ah Rhinovirus… To get rid of those beauties you’d need to sterilise and UV-radiate everything in sight, including yourself. About 1/3rd the size of WuFlu, and not using a lipid layer. They be sturdy..
Do-able for an operating theatre. Not so much for a supermarket.
Especially since the Washing of the Hands, and even hand sanitiser after does not impress a fair number of the varieties much. Bleach works, but weeeellll……
“Locally flu has apparently disappeared, like nothing they have ever seen say the local CDC who put it down to the Covid restrictions (and wonder then if we shouldn’t do this every winter) despite explaining why they are obviously not as effective against Covid, a clue maybe in how little testing they are doing for flu vs Covid but that doesn’t seem to have occurred to them.”
We’ve just been discussing that in the sailing forum. Having looked at the data BniC has a point. They don’t appear to have been testing for it this year but it is still getting included on death certificates according to the ONS data.
Also, if Covid is more infectious won’t it become dominant anyway, especially as it has a longer symptom free infections period? One for BiG, methinks.
Things I’ve learned in the last 12 months:
-long flu is a thing
-flu can be transmitted in the pre-symptomatic phase, approx 1 day
-devi worship is a cult
BiND,
One part of the “disappearance” of the ‘flu actually is because of the CoVid measures…:
pre-CoVid: Most places you generally had to come into work while sick with the ‘flu (Boss/HR/Sickdays/Pay), until you got so sick even the Boss had to admit that maybe it was a good idea to stay at home.
Which, of course, meant that in ‘flu season an awful lot of people ended up spraying viruses everywhere at work, because well…. people be stupid, but the “work ethic” was so ingrained there was no way fighting it.
Que CoVid measures, with Staying Home With Sniffles, and Working From Home. Could easily be a 80-90% reduction in exposure in Season. Flu hasn’t disapppeared, it simply doesn’t get passed around like an unwanted b’day present anymore. And as such gets more or less the same chance of getting to you as CoVid itself.
The other bit is more tricky, because the more “polite” variants of the coronavirus are generally more like backdoor burglars that co-infect after a body has been weakened already.
The original WuFlu was ( as far as I can tell from the Literature ) not particularly more infectuous than the old varieties. The pain lay more in the symptoms it causes ( upper and lower lung infection.. Double Whammy..) and the complications like microthrombosis/cytokine storm rather than its infectuousness.
Whether “classic” CoVid also primarily hitched a ride with ??? is hard to tell, given that there hasn’t been large-scale testing in that area.
As people already noticed testing has been entirely focussed on CoVid, not on anything else that may or may not have been present, including the “less harmless” viruses like Rhino. There’s simply no, or not enough data to tell. Flu + CoVid does not strike me as a particularly ..pleasant.. combo.., though.
Either can kill the elderly/infirm.
Both? Would ravage even the sturdiest of us..
Gets logged as “CoVid”, because testing. Only a negative CoVid test would get the “Flu (+ complications) as a result.
As for “prevalence”.. That’s a population dynamics question with some really hard to figure out variables.. Other than more infectuous = “you’ll see it around more, and it’ll out-compete the “old” virus”… Ummmm… I could spend next week building a reasonably accurate model, including differences in lockdown approach. But it’ll be about as accurate as the 5-day weather forecast for the 5th day… And that’s cuttin’me’own throat…
And I’d like some parallel processing capacity to do it, plz. My PC would simply flip the finger if I’d even try.