Home » Posts tagged 'pandemic'
Tag Archives: pandemic
New COVID Variants, Various Lockdown Measures, Gradual Vaccine Rollout, Twice-Weekly COVID Testing; But Are We Winning or Losing the Coronavirus Battle?
There’s a lot happening in the UK with regards to the ongoing Coronavirus battle: The question is; Are we winning or losing the battle to this disease?
The good news is that 47.2% of Britons have received at least one dose of (any kind of) COVID-19 vaccine, and fatalities have fallen to 35 persons per (7-day) week, according to the latest JHU CSSE COVID-19 Data presented on April 3, 2021.
People in England who wish to be tested for COVID-19 are able to access twice-per-week testing, which should allow better tracking of potentially infected persons or sooner treatment for already infected persons.
And some people are still abiding by the various Lockdown measures. Thank you for doing your civic duty!
But is the UK Winning or Losing the Battle to this Disease?
Some 4.36 million Britons have contracted COVID-19 and 127,000 have (so far) died from the novel Coronavirus.
Although in the early days before it was well understood, cause of death statistics didn’t include a virus, that back then, hadn’t been identified. I think it’s likely that the official UK COVID death toll will eventually turn out to be approximately double the presently accepted death toll, as many cases were (via forensic analysis) retroactively found in France, Iran and Southeast Asia as far back as August 2019. All the places that Britons and others travel to and from on a regular basis.
And people are continuing to die from this disease at a rate of 35 per week, and worse, new variants of COVID-19 are reported to be more transmissible.
We could be one Coronavirus mutation away from a much more serious pandemic.
Yet some people still AREN’T abiding by the various Lockdown measures. There will be no ‘Thank You’s’ for endangering every unvaccinated person in the country!
It’s Likely to Get Worse Before it Gets Better
More than anything, an improvement in the COVID statistics depends upon how willing Britons are to follow the regional plethora of Lockdown regulations, and much less depends upon the speed of vaccinations up and down the country, as virus retransmission (which boasts an exponential growth rate) can easily outpace the rate of vaccination (which has a geometric growth rate, at best).
And that’s assuming there’s no more delay in obtaining the vast quantities of Coronavirus vaccine required to inoculate the (as yet unvaccinated) 36-million people TWICE (for a total of 72-million individual doses).
It’s a lot to assume that the UK’s COVID pandemic won’t get worse — and perhaps much, much, worse — before it gets better. Because at this point, more could go wrong than right.
The UK is only one COVID variant, or one major vaccine delivery shortfall, (or both), away from utter social, healthcare and economic catastrophe. Respectfully, govern yourselves accordingly and remember ‘Murphy’s Law’ — if something can go wrong, it will.
Number of coronavirus (COVID-19) deaths in the United Kingdom (UK) 2021
Published by Conor Stewart, Mar 31, 2021 at STATISTA.com
On March 6, 2020, the first death as a result of coronavirus (COVID-19) was recorded in the United Kingdom (UK). The number of deaths in the UK has increased significantly since then. As of March 30, 2021, the number of confirmed deaths due to coronavirus in the UK amounted to 126,670. On January 20, 2021, 1,820 deaths were recorded, which is the highest total in single day in the UK since the outbreak began.
Number of deaths highest in Europe
The UK has had the highest number of deaths from coronavirus in Europe. In terms of rate of coronavirus deaths, the UK has the fourth-highest rate compared to the countries in the EEA. As of March 21, the UK has recorded 189 deaths per 100,000, which is only lower than the mortality rates in Belgium, Slovenia, and Czechia.
Cases in the UK
The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK was 4,341,736 as of March 30, 2021. London has the highest number of confirmed cases of the virus in the UK with 711,083 cases, while the North West and the South East have 598,512 and 533,519 confirmed cases respectively. As of March 29, the UK has had 55 new cases per 100,000 in the last seven days.
For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.
Finally, check out the COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) here.
Written by John Brian Shannon
Will Copper Help Prevent the Next Pandemic?
According to experts, if railings and doorknobs were copper-coated, viruses and bacteria would be killed on contact, as copper kills germs almost instantly. Copper image courtesy of Serge Averbukh
It’s a little-known fact that the element copper kills viruses and bacteria upon contact, in less than a minute; It’s less-known that the typical Western diet is lacking in this crucial micronutrient.
Therefore, in the context of the Novel Coronavirus known as (COVID-19) shouldn’t we be manufacturing our subway handholds, turnstiles, railings, door handles and other commonly touched surfaces from this interesting and useful metal? Not to mention that we should eat the recommended daily allowance of this vital nutrient in case it helps to protect us in a general way from killer viruses and bacteria.
I’m not saying that copper is some kind of panacea and that we’ll never catch another cold or virus as long as we live, but you should read what an expert on the topic says here.
However, those studies didn’t include copper cooking utensils, copper thread woven into fabric or copper toilet handles or any other way of using copper to kill germs of all kinds — it only focused on 10% of the most commonly touched surfaces in hospitals.
Imagine a hospital where all handrails, doorknobs, the siderails on hospital beds and countertops/washbasins were made from copper, or even brass, which has a significant amount of copper in it.
Getting Proactive About Making Life Difficult for Viruses and Bacteria in Public Areas
What if we coated everything from countertops, to car door handles, to handrails and more in copper, and it decreased the infection rate by pathogens by ‘only’ 50 per cent? (Including COVID-19)
Think what that would do to lower NHS costs, not to mention saving thousands of lives and reducing trauma for people, businesses, and governments. Seen what Coronavirus is doing to people’s lives, small business, and to society these days?
We’re told that it’s going to get worse before it gets better, although China, after expending Herculean effort seems to have COVID-19 under control. Let’s hope that Western healthcare systems fare the same or better as more information about how to fight this Coronavirus variant comes to light.
At least Prime Minister Boris Johnson is taking it seriously, as are the leaders of the devolved territories of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
In America, President Trump finally got on the bandwagon and is doing more than any Western leader to slow the spread of COVID-19 in his country although some have termed the steps the United States is taking as ‘draconian’ — yet, they’re the same sort of people who would sue the U.S. government for any subsequent illness had he not ordered strong measures to protect Americans. And in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken far-reaching steps to prevent the spread of Coronavirus.
After missing the boat initially, Western politicians have now ramped-up to meet the threat posed by this novel coronavirus.
Of course, it’s too late to install copper coatings on every subway car railing or handhold, turnstile, or ATM, and on every park bench armrest and every public building doorknob.
Or is it? Maybe now, during the present Coronavirus event maintenance workers could be doing the work in a timely fashion!
A great thing about copper is that any metal fixture can be electroplated with copper, or it can be hydrostatically applied (electo-painted) to surfaces by spraying a special copper emulsion onto the surface where it magnetically attaches and cures. Both electroplating and hydrostatic coating methods result in a very strong and permanent bond to the substrate metal. However, these methods result in a copper coating only a few microns thick which means heavily-used surfaces (like subway handrails) might need to be recoated every year or two. Still, both electroplating and hydrostatic coatings are a realistic way to cover metal surfaces with a metal that kills every kind of pathogen almost instantly — whether virus or bacteria.
Similar could be done using either brass (which contains plenty of copper) or silver (which also kills germs of any kind but is more expensive than brass or copper) and gold (which is even better at killing viruses and bacteria, although costly) and none of these metals tarnish as copper does. Therefore, the choice of metal (copper, brass, silver, gold) would depend upon the application. Even automotive steering wheel buttons could be made from copper, brass, silver, or for Rolls Royce owners, gold; Remember, each time you touch one of the buttons, you’re killing the germs on your fingertips.
While this suggestion won’t help much in the present COVID-19 crisis, it could reduce infections in the future that are transmitted by touching contaminated surfaces, especially on public transit, in public areas (think: stairwell railings, park benches, ATM machines, etc.) and in hospitals, senior citizen homes and other areas of high usage.
‘An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure’
One day, governments, healthcare systems, and citizens will finally realize that the old phrase, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is among the most-valuable wisdom ever passed down from your ancestors. So take that advice and run with it for your own good and the good of future generations, by incorporating copper, brass, silver, or gold on commonly touched surfaces, and inside of the now ubiquitous water bottles. Interestingly, if you fill your pure copper water bottle with clean water and leave it overnight in the fridge, you’ll benefit because some tiny amount of the copper will dissolve into the water and you’ll thereby gain a small amount of copper in your diet over a few weeks.
(Caution: Don’t fill your copper water bottle with citrus juice and leave it overnight in the fridge, as you can ingest too much copper because the acid in the citrus will dissolve a small amount of the copper and it will leach into the liquid. Remember, it’s a micronutrient. We don’t get enough of it, but high-ish doses from any source including leachate from copper water bottles full of acidic drinks will make you feel dizzy and tired if you use your copper water bottle improperly over a period of weeks)
And for 24/7 germ-killing action on coins; Why not ensure that all future coins are manufactured with high copper or silver content — high enough to kill germs in seconds? Seems a simple way to prevent the spread of one of the most handled surfaces of all.
Related Articles:
- The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What’s Coming (Wired.com)
- Copper kills coronavirus. Why aren’t our surfaces covered in it? (FAST COMPANY)
Letter to Britain 