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fraz65

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Everything posted by fraz65

  1. This is an awful period for everyone but Dundee United not getting promoted would be hilarious.
  2. I'm working for seven of the next ten days as an intensive care specialist at Australia's main infectious disease hospital. We're probably one of the best prepared units in the world to manage this, with 42 individual side rooms, all with negative pressure capability. We cover the CBD, airport and many of the poorer suburbs. Australia has 2,000 ICU beds. We have increased this to 4,000 beds by cancelling elective surgery and using private facilities. I expect that things will start to increase over the next week or two. I have a mixture of trepidation, fear and weird excitement. It's going to be a tough period for everyone.
  3. Absolutely right. The problem is that at least 60% of people have to get the virus before it recedes (we think/guess). The issue is how we do this without overwhelming the health system. We know what works but how long can we implement a lockdown for and what happens when it is ceased? This will take months, not weeks. Football resuming in September is an optimistic outlook. The financial ramifications will be huge. A global recession similar to, if not worse than 2008. We have nowhere to go with interest rates this time. I think I might have been underplaying rather than overplaying this over the past couple of weeks.
  4. It'll be interesting to see the number of public health experts who are admitted to the House of Lords for towing the party line over this. It's beyond my understanding that anyone with medical knowledge and expertise in epidemiology could recommend a herd immunity policy, rather than strict social distancing. Herd immunity means that 60% of the population at a minimum need to be infected to stop the virus. This means around 300,000 deaths and a massive strain on the health system (beds in corridors, a lack of personal protective equipment, reverse triage of the over 65s). We don't even know whether contracting and recovering from COVID-19 confers long-term immunity. The overwhelming priority should be strict social distancing and widespread lockdowns, probably for the next few months. This will have to be combined with a controlled spread of the virus.
  5. The Old Firm were my main reason for leaving.
  6. My family arrived in Melbourne today, via Dubai. They weren't screened once during the journey. They're now in self isolation for two weeks.
  7. Is there not already a mass genocide taking place in China, prior to Corona?
  8. This post by my old colleague Adam is worth a read.
  9. A wonderful infographic on the importance of social distancing. Hopefully the UK government will finally take some action to slow the spread. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/
  10. Expressing an opinion that differs to yours is hardly lecturing.
  11. If China hadn't radically slowed the pandemic, they would currently have cases in the millions if January's growth rate had continued. They've either falsified data on millions of patients, without the WHO knowing despite several visits, or the reported rates are true.
  12. It's not something than can just be set up overnight though, which was a point I thought I had raised earlier. Pandemic preparation takes years. The SARS countries (Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan) had this in place to some extent prior to COVID.
  13. Mobile clinics not located in hospitals. Anyone can perform a nasopharyngeal swab after some training.
  14. How's your wager going that no games would be called off? They're closing the additional hospitals and isolation facilities and allowing people to return to work.
  15. I was basing it on a rough calculation I did of average attendances for Old Firm games this season compared with last season. It came out at 11,800.
  16. Not necessarily, as China and South Korea have shown.
  17. I can appreciate all of these arguments. However, there's no getting away from the fact that we would be in a better position financially to deal with the shutdown if we had sold an additional 11,000 (by my estimate) tickets to home games. Why is nobody advocating for reducing the allocation to the top tier of the Chadwick Stand? That way there would be less chance of pitch invasions and club property being damaged. There seems to be a uniformity of opinion that has stifled debate on this issue.
  18. But I can see your point, if you take the view that giving the Old Firm two stands is essentially conceding the stadium to them.
  19. I don't think so. We've allocated two stands to the Old Firm for the time we've been back in the SPL.
  20. Whenever anyone uses the phrase "herd immunity" be mindful that this is just government spin and designed to give the impression that there's some sort of plan to completely losing control of the COVID-19 pandemic. I hope the Cheltenham Gold Cup was worth it.
  21. It won't just be this season that is affected, but next season as well. Add in the fact that supporters will have significantly less disposable income and the club (and every club) will be facing a massive financial hit. Killie should hopefully be OK as we only have a handful of players under contract and we should be able to sell Brophy and Findlay at knock down prices in a worst case scenario. I don't know whether administration is an option in order to sack backroom staff.
  22. I've supported Killie for over thirty years. During that period there have been times when but for a goal either way (v Falkirk) or a fortunate signing (Kevin Kyle) we could have faced financial insolvency through relegation. I want the club to do everything we can to maximise match day revenue. We have an 18,000 seat stadium and we should be using this to our advantage. This doesn't mean giving the whole ground to the Old Firm, but continuing with the same policy on away ticket allocation that we've had for 25 years doesn't seem unreasonable to me. It's a fans forum and there should be a range of opinions.
  23. A complete global lockdown on international travel seems inevitable. My family arrive in Australia from Scotland this morning so they've only just made it. It's not just this football season that will be affected. I would be surprised if next season starts on time.
  24. I'm not sure about the higher temperature argument. That's certainly not the opinion of experts here in Australia. You're correct that some sort of social distancing can slow the virus. I worry that this is little more than a rearranging deckchairs approach though. If you don't separate family members and adopt widespread surveillance and testing, you don't control the virus and you don't stop the health system from being overwhelmed.
  25. Here was I thinking that I had an outside chance of post of the day.
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