Finally think about the general effects on society. Policing the streets, providing an ambulance service, looking after school children, young adults looking after elderly relatives, bus and train services, the financial system etc etc. Our society is complex, it doesn't take much ( heavy rain, leaves on the line, 1cm of snow on the roads) to destroy the equilibrium and cause chaos.'"

If all games were switched to Huddersfield there would be no need for close contact between fans.

Christ, go and light a candle at church, while you are it..

the nba suspended its season last night

Due to spectators dieing of boredom.

I think people are being a bit complacent with this 'most of the time its just like the flu' in the WHO reports from China where they say 80% were 'mild', the definition of mild meant anything that didn't involve needing oxygen in hospital. It includes getting pneumonia. The 14% 'severe' meant needing oxygen or a ventilator and 5% 'critical' meant 'respiratory or multi organ failure' https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/heal ... lward.html https://www.who.int/docs/default-source ... 6768306d_2 As Winslade says, Italy is a test case of what happens when a country is complacent and caught off balance and their healthcare has been quickly overrun. They have better critical care than the UK does and they have already had to make tough rationing decisions. A lot of people probably think, meh, I get colds every year, if I get it it will be a case of the sniffles and watching box sets in Netflix, and if things get really bad I'll just get taken in to hospital and looked after there. The reality might be somewhat different, as is happening in Italy. The actions that governments are taking are unprecedented and they aren't doing this because they think people are going to get a bit of a sniffle. They didn't do all this with swine flu in 2009 because for most people it was just the flu, so they could just let it run its course.

I think people are being a bit complacent with this 'most of the time its just like the flu' in the WHO reports from China where they say 80% were 'mild', the definition of mild meant anything that didn't involve needing oxygen in hospital. It includes getting pneumonia. The 14% 'severe' meant needing oxygen or a ventilator and 5% 'critical' meant 'respiratory or multi organ failure' https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/heal ... lward.html https://www.who.int/docs/default-source ... 6768306d_2 As Winslade says, Italy is a test case of what happens when a country is complacent and caught off balance and their healthcare has been quickly overrun. They have better critical care than the UK does and they have already had to make tough rationing decisions. A lot of people probably think, meh, I get colds every year, if I get it it will be a case of the sniffles and watching box sets in Netflix, and if things get really bad I'll just get taken in to hospital and looked after there. The reality might be somewhat different, as is happening in Italy. The actions that governments are taking are unprecedented and they aren't doing this because they think people are going to get a bit of a sniffle. They didn't do all this with swine flu in 2009 because for most people it was just the flu, so they could just let it run its course.

'It includes getting pneumonia'... can you just add 'in some cases'?

What about the woman who said it was just like jet lag and hardly any issue??... I get the feeling that experience isn't being publicised that much because it doesn't fit the media agenda of wanting to scare people to death??...

It is a problem. On the radio today they interviewed an Italian Doctor. There, because there are so many cases of this mild, non-problematic for most people illness that there are hospitals in some regions that are over capacity. So they've had to rate the % chance of survival when people arrive and treat or not treat them accordingly. He admitted those in the highest risk categories aren't being treated at all and are being 'stored respectfully'. He said what will happen if the numbers continue to grow and staff numbers fall further because they've contracted it, is that the hospitals will collapse. That means not only will people with Corona die when they might not have, but normal hospitral services will suffer massively and A&E patients will also die who wouldn't have otherwise. Sounds fanciful, but they are already on the verge of it in Italy, a developed and sophisticated country, right now.

There's no need to blindly panic with coronavirus, but it's serious enough to need to take action to prevent it spreading. It might not be the worst illness but if enough people get it and develop serious symptoms it could quite easily cause enormous issues for the NHS, schools, emergency services and supply chains. People just need to do what they're advised to do and not be arrogant and cocky because they think they know better or that it won't kill them so it doesn't matter.

Hello was on about your mob earlier..where have you been hiding.not heard a peep since you lost to Huddersfield. Welcome back

Because its an outlier. If this was a jet lag type issue, it wouldn't be causing such problems for health care systems.

Governments aren't responding to a 'media agenda'. The media always hypes stuff up and governments aren't going to make decisions that are very disruptive and unpopular unless they have to.

They are responding to what they are observing from the spread of the disease. When SARS started they were worried too but they didn't need to take these measures because it was contained, which they hoped would have happened with this when it first broke in China.

They've seen how things are developing in other advanced countries like Italy and realising, we have a duty to prevent that from happening here so have to take whatever measures we need to to do it.

It's not about panicking or being scared by it, just responding to risk. Like when there's a volcano with an ash cloud, and they stop planes flying.

Saddened makes probably the most relevant point here. In Italy they've had to go all hands on deck, pulling in doctors from every speciality to try and get on top of this. In that situation there's no health service for anything else, its just a coronavirus service, rationing treatment on who has the highest chance of survival (which is sensible).

If it hits the UK like it hits Italy, there will be a rapid pivot in public opinion, from saying "all this hype is ridiculous" to saying "how did the government let it get to this".

With average gates of 8,221 during 2019 and over 6,000 pass holders this season I would hardly call Hull KR
very,very small. I feel sure there are several clubs who wish they could match those numbers.

Strange all this wales are playing Scotland in union on Saturday that game is on(is it behind closed doors)yet on Sunday Cardiff's home game is off..bonkers if you ask me

Pretty sure the RFL will hold out till Sunday then suspend the games for 2 weeks.

I wouldn't be so sure of that now that the Premier League has suspended all games until at least April, it sets a precedent. In any case, the Leeds / Catalan game is already off due to a Leeds player going into isolation. This seems to be something of a ‘political’ move rather than being based on scientific evidence as other countries may be seen as doing more.

As to the virus itself, the severity of the effects vary tremendously from patient to patient. Research continues but it would seem that the virus is most harmful where the patient has other health issue which may weaken the immune system. We won’t now the true death rate until much later as it a) lags behind the infection rate and b) many cases are unreported. The death rate itself may not be altogether different from seasonal flu, and certainly not on a level experienced with Spanish Flu in 1918/19, but the problem is that this is a new virus to which we have no immunity. That means that the infection rate will be high and the spread rapid which is why health services are, or will, struggle to cope.

Surely a practical move, as Mikel Arteta and Calum Hudson-Odoi have it, and before long there will be more players coming down with it and in isolation.

It's not worth playing fixtures with decimated teams trying to patch matchday squads together out of Academy players and recalling people from loans. Especially when fans will be worried about being in large gatherings.

I think duckie is right, the suspension will come in next week. Probably short term initially and then they will decide whether to extend later.

The challenge will be that when these initial fixture suspensions come to an end, the country may have many more cases going on and there will be pressure to start introducing wider closures, so sports leagues may not restart for a while.