Dr Balls

It’s not a difficult calculation. 60 million population. 80% catch the virus. 1% die. I am still amazed that people don’t understand the concept of exponential growth. If every person who catches this virus gave it to 3 people over 5 days that they were infectious, then in 100 days, 3.5 billion people would have the virus. That’s the point of isolating and quarantine. Stop the spread. Look at what happened in South Korea, Taiwan, Hong King and Singapore. If you want to stop the spread you have stop people giving it to each other, which means staying home. I know there will be sceptics who ignore this advice and say I am doom-mongering and indulging in panic. Many on this forum will be in the high risk categories of age, sex, BMI and less than good general health. You do not want to catch this virus. If this is you, the chances of you needing intensive care and dying are high. Please take care and take the risks seriously. This has a long way to go yet. We aren’t even 1 week into Boris’s overoptimistic 12 week time frame yet.

No. That won’t have be Covid-19 at Christmas/New Year. More likely actually influenza. There are about 6 major types of respiratory viruses (RSV, Adenovirus, Rhinovirus, Influenza, Parainfluenza and Human Metapneumovirus) all of which occur at varying stages during the autumn and winter, with a fairly predictable pattern. Currently Hunan Metapneumovirus is the most common, and can be pretty severe on its own.

Comparisons are a bit irrelevant. That said this is the the biggest since then and ultimately will be bigger than 1918. It’s what we have been fearing for some time. My quick calculation a couple of weeks back was at least 60 million deaths worldwide by the end of this, so we are only really at the very beginning. The estimates for the UK vary but 250,000 dead over a year or so is at the lower end. If 80% of the population catch it and 1% die that’s roughly 450,000 dead. There are no clear game changers on the near horizon. Antiviral drugs are months away at best and a vaccine even further than that. The important thing is to limit the numbers ill at any one time to stop the health service being overwhelmed, otherwise the number of deaths will be even greater. Since Wednesday, I have been out as little as possible. I have been at home or walked the 5 mins to work and back again that’s it. I must be washing my hands 20+ times per day even on non-clinical days, plus alcohol gel in between. As soon as I get in the house, I wash my hands. Today I had to go to the shops for essentials but even though a few other people were trying to keep an appropriate distance, I was amazed how few were. And there were a lot of people out on the Downs, although to be fair most were in separate family groups. I know it’s going to be hard to keep kids inside on sunny days, but if you have a garden keep to that. My garden will hopefully be looking fantastic this summer, plus I am hoping to grow some vegetables in case things get really tough!

For Boris, read King Canute. This is not a tide it’s a tidal wave!

Only if you place the whole country on lock down for at least 6 weeks. No evidence Boris is willing to do that.

Sorry but I think you can expect this to continue into next year. Hence my pessimism about any of us seeing a live football game before 2021. I am just waiting for the IOC to bow to the inevitable that the Tokyo olympics will need to be postponed by at least a year.

As someone who for once is “in the know” there are potential antivirals that may mitigate the worst of the disease. One has been developed for Ebola and is only just undergoing human trials. It says it can be used for “compassionate release”, which means if we are desperate we can ask the drug company for some even though it hasn’t completed trials. However there is very little if any available and the evidence so far suggests using early in the disease rather than late when the person is rally sick. The second is a combination of 2 antiretroviral drugs (for HIV) but again there are issues with this. There are a couple of other drugs suggested, one of which is very commonly used as anti malarial but there is no evidence that they work. As for a vaccine, if anything appears for general availability before the end of the year, I would be amazed.

Quantitative easing. Governments just print more money. They did it during the Financial crisis of 2008. That’s going to look like small beer compared to this. And the usual rules of inflation don’t apply when you are attempting to stave off a depression. I got taken to task a few days ago for saying that we needed universal income, where the government pays us all an amount to just keep going. Strangely enough a few days later even seasoned economists are saying the same thing. These are the most abnormal times many of us will ever go through. There has been nothing like it since the Second World War and some of the solutions to helping as many people survive as possible will have to be as radical and draconian as they were during wartime. I was never very nostalgic for the supposed “blitz spirit” and I am even less so now. You only have to go to your local supermarket to already see some of the worst of human behaviour. Thankfully there are good people out there and the vast majority are acting appropriately but this definitely going to be a marathon not a sprint and we are all going to be personally tested in different ways. As for the football, common sense says scrap next season and just somehow finish the fixtures from this one before summer 2021. However, vested interests, particular TV and betting, make me think that there will be a lot of pressure to start playing games again even if they all have to be behind closed doors.

The political ramifications of this pandemic are going to be huge either way. Politicians will eventually be judged on how they managed this. We are only a couple of weeks in to it and it has got a long, long way to run, so life is not likely to be quite the same again. The comment about having just lived through the summers of 1914 and 1939 seems very apt. You may not like or want my prescriptions but enormous financial and political interventions will be needed and many countries have already started to make them. As for Bojp, I don’t feel sorry for him at all. He has spent most of his life bluffing his way through and looking after No. 1. Suddenly he is in the biggest worldwide crisis of the last 75 years and there is no easy way out of facing up to his responsibilities as prime minister, unlike his usual personal modus operandi with wives, lovers and children. No wonder he looks tired and is aging rapidly before our eyes. There really is nowhere to hide any more. No more disappearing off to the Caribbean for a couple of weeks. With great power comes great responsibility, or did no one tell him that?! At least he seems to have wisely decided that experts are a good idea after all...

The pandemic will cause more chaos in the world than any event since the Second World War and it will be more universal. The loss of life may well be of a similar order once the virus hits the third world, which is saying something considering how many died during that conflict. Out of 8 billion people, with 75% catching it, even with only a 1% mortality rate that equates to 60 million deaths worldwide. If that doesn’t call for somber contemplation nothing will! Radical solutions will be needed. Forget Universal Credit for those laid off from their jobs or whose business collapse. Also there is no point just bailing out big businesses in the way that the banks were in the financial crash of 2008, where all the money went to the richest, and all the pain was borne by the rest of us for years to come, this time we need a universal income at least in the short term. The money needs to go to the people not the “fat cats”. In the meantime, we need funds, so taxing Facebook, Amazon and Google fair amounts across all countries has to come too. This will truly be a shock to the neo-liberal Western financial system, one for which it is ill-prepared, as it hates market intervention. However only governments working for their populations and working together can sort this out. As for food, considering as a country we import 50% of it from overseas (mostly from the EU that we left 6 weeks ago) we are in big trouble if the supply lines start drying up. Rationing may be a last resort but it’s no longer unthinkable if this situation continues until next year. We are in truly unprecedented times, and as I mentioned before, Boris should have been more careful about what he wished for. He might have hero worshipped Churchill but now he is being asked to deal with something which is potentially far more difficult and complex. And all because he wanted to be “World King” as a kid...

As always it will be those at the bottom who are more adversely affected, certainly financially. Except it would seem Deliveroo on the evidence of yesterday at a certain fast food chain. More deliveries for them than those actually ordering and eating there! As for players having to take a pay cut or break in payments, that may be essential for many EFL clubs. However even in the Premier League, the profit margins are tight and once income dries up a bit, a few of those will struggle. Could we even see FFP rules loosened or abandoned for a year to save clubs from extinction?

The problem is that the previous Coronavirus outbreaks (SARS and MERS) burnt out before a vaccine was really needed as the mortality rate was so high. There are specific issues about Coronaviruses as a group that may make it more challenging to develop vaccines, but as I understand it the current lines of development build on the work done for SARS and MERS. However it will be next year before we see a vaccine, if at all. It’s unlikely to be that helpful for this outbreak but may help if Covid-19 becomes endemic and keeps coming back at regular intervals, which is quite possible. Swine flu is still out there and we still isolate it from sick patients from time to time despite the annual flu vaccine.

We aren’t at war but countries will be arguing and competing over other things. Ventilators have suddenly become a “must buy” for every health service worldwide. And where is most of our medical equipment manufactured? Europe. Also since we have pulled out of the European Medicines Agency as part of Brexit (an agency we used to host in London) we will be behind every EU country in getting access to a vaccine, because of the change in our regulations. Read into that what ever you want from a political point of view but the law of unintended consequences comes to mind.

The health service is busy making preparations but it’s like watching for a tsunami. We know it’s coming, the tide has gone out, but we really have no idea exactly how big the wave that’s due to come crashing our way will be. All we can hope is that we can cope with it. And the reality is no one quite knows exactly the best way to deal with this pAndemic anyway. China has pretty much limited the infection to Wuhan by closing it down for a few weeks. However at some point the virus will spread back through the rest of China and then a whole new vulnerable population will be at risk. The herd immunity idea is a reasonable theory (it’s the same as vaccinating 90-95% of a population and keeping pretty much everyone safe) as is trying to spread the peak of the outbreak, but still having it occur during our summer months, when the NHS will be more able to cope. However no one knows for certain if this plan will work. The one thing I can tell you is don’t go hoping for a vaccine any time soon. As it stands, we have never managed to develop a vaccine against any Coronavirus.

There is not much on the horizon I’m afraid. We can support patients and their organ systems but there are actually very few antiviral treatments. One potential is a drug that was developed against Ebola and is apparently already in trials in China but that is at least months away at best. The concern I have is that people don’t realise how long this is going to last. We are talking months not days. Keep calm, but do not just carry on. Wash your hands much more than you did, especially before eating, and if you have potential symptoms self isolate, including as much as possible from your own family members. And if you get really sick (and I mean properly sick, not just feeling a bit rubbish) then go to hospital. The vast majority of us will get through it but it’s going to be a difficult time, and to be honest football, as much as it’s a great diversion most of the time, really doesn’t feel that important right now.

Getting up close and personal in sport is more likely to spread the virus than sitting near someone as long as they take the appropriate precautions. Closing schools is an interesting one. Children get infected with Coronavirus but all the evidence so far suggests that they aren’t as affected by symptoms, which is almost unlike every other virus that the medical profession has to deal with it. It’s frankly bizarre and unlike my own experience as a paediatrician. Children spreading it amongst themselves therefore seems less of a risk. The issue is keeping them away from their grandparents and other older people who appear to be very susceptible to the worst symptoms.

Because whilst players likes Hudson-Odoi and coaches like Arteta test positive, and the aim is to slow the spread, just stoping spectators is of little use in itself.

The issue is that this outbreak is going to go on for most of the rest of this year, if not into next year. This current phase is trying to slow down the spread of the virus, so that the health services can cope with the numbers of the sickest cases. Limiting the size of gatherings of people might make a bit of difference but it’s not the only issue. Sitting in your seat at AG is less likely to be a cause of spread compared to cramming into a pub or bar before or after the game, so how long the situation continues with sporting events is unclear. Of course if members of the teams or coaching staff are infectious then that even stops teams playing behind closed doors. That could put a lot of smaller clubs in Leagues 1 and 2 into financial difficulty. Given all of that, I would suggest the positions of the clubs at present should be taken as their finishing positions with just those in the automatic positions going up taking the place of the equivalent number of clubs at the bottom of the league above. However you can never count against the greed of both Sky and football club owners, so common sense may not prevail. If the sensible option was followed, it’s unlikely that any more football would be played before next season, and even the start of that may be delayed. It’s not the end of the world and neither will the virus be the end of it either. People just need to stay calm and sensible, wash their hands frequently and properly, self isolate if they display the symptoms of a viral illness, and stop panic buying everything from toilet rolls to eggs. Only a small percentage of people will die, most will be old (over 70) and this will be very sad for the families affected, but this is not Ebola or SARS which kill 30% of all those infected. This outbreak will have long lasting effects on the world, just as others have done in the past. Some may take years to play out, and are unpredictable at this stage, unlike football, which by this time next year should be looking forward to another set of champions, promotions and relegations and probably Euro 2021.

Agreed. Although we have had recent scares about SARS, Swine flu, MERS & Ebola, the worry is that this virus has the perfect combination of being novel, so no one has immunity or has been vaccinated, highly infectious and with what seems a long incubation period with minimal symptoms, so many people will catch it, and lethal enough to kill a significant percentage, but not so many that people die before spreading it. Out of 7 billion people on the planet, if even only 1 billion are infected, a 1% mortality rate equals 10 million deaths worldwide. The reality is that many more people will catch this virus in the next year, because of the virus characteristics and the fact that the world is so interconnected these days. And although many deaths will be among the older and less well, there have been plenty of reports of younger people dying, especially health workers or anyone who has had potential multiple exposures. The NHS is taking this very seriously indeed, and the risk of hospitals being swamped with cases is not a scare tactic. It is a genuine concern. Realistically the season is unlikely to be cancelled, but there is likely to be an impact on anything where large numbers of people meet, particularly sporting fixtures, which will either be postponed (such as 6 Nations games), played behind closed doors, or even in some cases, like the Chinese Grand Prix, cancelled. On that basis, both Euro 2020 and the Tokyo Olympics are at serious risk of just not taking place, because if the virus still spreads as readily in warmer temperatures, as per the other coronaviruses that infect humans, then the summer could be the start of the peak infective period running into next winter and beyond..

There were moves to get rid of teams before WW2 because there was a feeling from many that they got in the way of the traffic, through the narrow streets and main roads here, in contrast to the avenues that you find in places like Liverpool or Birmingham, while buses are part of the traffic. Plus in Bristol we made our own buses in those days so there was thought to be little economic loss from getting rid of them. The bombing of the Electricity Station was a convenient excuse to get rid of the trams. Of course, being electric they would now be much more environmentally friendly too, although back then it would have all been coal powered generation. Where we really missed out in Bristol was not becoming a metropolitan authority with a transport executive, unlike say Newcastle, which was able to recycle its abandone railway lines from the 60s into a metro system in the 70s and 80s. Bring Bristol, we did nothing much and ended up with cycle tracks instead. Fair play to those who developed them but it just about says it all really of what happens in this city. Not forward-looking and dependent on people getting on with things themselves on the cheap as local politicians bicker amongst themselves and achieve nothing. Now we have a mayor we have just got rid of the bickering but still achieved nothing!!

So that’s £3 million per year. There must be some gate receipts, they keep selling at least one half decent player every year for a few hundred thousand, plus they get something for just being in League 1. Their outgoings can’t be that big as they can’t be paying their players much. £3k per week would be a big earner for them. They bought the ground for next to nothing, and other than a trip to “Go Outdoors” to buy their biggest tent, they’ve spent no money on it, so where is the money going? We all know Wally doesn’t have 2 Dhiram to rub together, but the numbers still don’t seem to add up.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/31/death-of-bury-fc-not-only-thing-rotten-in-game-of-football Another interesting read putting Bury’s demise into a wider context in what is happening to football globally.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2019/aug/28/bury-expulsion-efl-regulations-meaningless https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/aug/29/bury-cva-investigation Both articles are worth a read and back up much that has been written on this thread already. And while the Champions League undertakes its group stage draw and where money of £2bn is going to shared out this season, mostly to the clubs that are already the richest, you can see how a “free market” in football really works. Like many parts of capitalism, those with the most would actually like a monopoly on the commodity, so as to become even richer, whether it be stitching up the competitions to ensure that they always qualify, or enduring that they make the most from the TV rights. Sport thrives on unpredictability, witness last weekend’s test match. And although last season’s Champions League semi-finals, and Ajax’s run to the semi-final were a throw back to more unpredictable times of the European Cup (finalists from Greece, Belgium and Sweden for instance) in the main, it’s the same predictable few clubs who make it to the last few rounds. And after a while if you don’t support one of those teams, it all gets just a bit boring.

Bury have been finished off by 2 sharks. The first one loaded the debts of his failing business onto the football club. The second one, on the basis of no personal investment at all (£1) is looking to make a quick million or two from the club going bust and selling off its assets to the creditors, which alledgely include a close family member, who apparently bought some of the debt at a knockdown price. Neither of these 2 “businessmen” should have been let anywhere near a football club, but only in the EFL could you also have one of the Oystons previously act as an advisor for others club owners on behalf of the EFL itself. As long as club owners have control over the EFL, this situation will not improve, and the risk is that more clubs could go to the wall, thanks to poor decisions and dodgy dealings, plus what appears to be a complete lack of appropriate governance from those supposedly running the leagues.

It’s a wider societal problem in this country. Huge amounts of money sloshing around a few large clubs, some of which is of at least dubious origins, or the club has been mortgaged to the hilt to make the owners a profit (the Glazers), while the values of community and camaraderie that are the lifeblood of most of the clubs in the EFL count for nothing, especially when you see some of the people allowed to own them, a significant proportion of whom have had previous rulings against them in terms of business activities outside football. IF (and it’s an enormous if) the EFL had any gumption, it would run a much tighter rein over clubs, including real “fit and proper” assessments of owners, plus direct supporter involvement at a high level. Any decent investigation into what has happened at Bolton & Bury would likely make similar recommendations, but I won’t hold my breath on it happening. Instead it will be the usual guff and hand-wringing about particular unfortunate circumstances etc, rather than dealing with the real substance of the problem. If it means some EFL clubs going semi-professional to survive, so be it. A Bury-Bolton derby amongst semi-pros in the third tier of English football is infinitely preferable to a competition containing “Man Utd B” v “Man City B”, however much that might suit Guardiola.