benjii

"A 2018 survey revealed that more than 78% of Belgian couples openly practice wife swapping, a cultural trait that became common practice in the 19th century under the rule of King Leopold II." Is this right? Asking for a friend.

Luxembourg looks ****ed.

Yes, speaking to my friend yesterday and his parents live in France - they need the bit of paper too. I've just heard on the radio that in London and Manchester, public transport is operating at 35% of typical volumes still. In Paris, Madrid etc. it is more like 0 - 5%. To be honest, I'm not sure case rates are particularly relevant due to the differences in testing rates from country to country. The key metric is death rate and we look to be mirroring Italy fairly closely on that. Of course Italy did impose quarantine on some towns quite quickly, whereas we have not so I would not be surprised if our death trajectory ends up being steeper than theirs.

The FT had some graphs showing death rates by country. Our trajectory, time adjusted, is at least as steep as Italy's. Same in the US and lots of other countries. Whilst the government's financial measures are being praised now, the two-week "contain and delay" phases before anyone actually bothered doing anything useful to try to stop this may end up looking like tragic folly (but they certainly won't be alone in that).

High quality private healthcare?

Italy apparently does post-mortem Covid-19 tests and if the test is positive then Covid-19 is the recorded cause of death. Apparently other countries don’t do that - Germany, perhaps - so if you die before you’ve been tested then no one knows if you had it or not and it won’t be recorded as the cause of death. Not sure what the best approach is but consistency would be useful.

#stablegenius

Friends are just a social construct, man. **** the system!

What was funny was someone sending clips of the Italian balcony singers to Cheryl Cole and telling her they were signing "Fight for this love" and her believing it.

It has been suggested, because I saw the suggestion on Twitter yesterday

I think he was asked about that and he said he takes no responsibility at all for that.

Of which hardly any are in the UK so what relevance does this have to the UK? You might as well post how many people die of malaria or rabies, mush.

So there are literally a few hundred severe acute respiratory admissions each year due to flu and vaccination uptake in the over 65s is around 70%. So in the UK, hardly anyone is admitted to hospital or killed by flu. Funnily enough, that might have something to do with flu having been around for thousands of years and a vaccine being available. Anyone who compares this to flu, henceforth, should be given a kicking.

Do you think many clubs will be willing to buy players during an indefinite period of suspension? Can’t see it. There won’t be many deals done until this has passed. Bad summer to be a free agent.

GM’s got his best men on it, but they are focusing their efforts on flu for now.

And when you’re finished with that you can scroll down and hear about how Shariah law is set to “control the USA”.

Indeed. If we accept it's lock-down now and ride it out as best as possible then, to some extent, that's the easy part. The real issue now is how to avoid material adverse societal damage and economic ruin and how to get effective vaccine to people ASAP. And by "people" we need to consider the whole world or this will decimate sub-saharan Africa and South America which, mercifully, seem to have largely escaped so far.

ISIS issued travel advice against going to Europe.

https://amp.ft.com/content/249daf9a-67c3-11ea-800d-da70cff6e4d3?__twitter_impression=true

He did, so it's quite an extreme set of circumstances, but it illustrates the danger to immuno-suppressed people, not just elderly folk.

Good luck!

It seems the “delay” phase actually applied to the government’s issuing of timely advice......

I don't know but he looks like the offspring of Chris Grayling and Ian Hislop.

[Francisco Garcia death: Spanish football coach dies from coronavirus aged 21] http://va.newsrepublic.net/al/FRFxxe