[Devongone]

So Plymouth can't play at Morecambe, where an attendance of 1500 is okay. Plymouth Theatre Royal is open and it could accommodate that entire crowd and they could sit in the dark being air-conditioned whilst fellow punters nestle beside them in the warm sometimes eating and drinking and coughing.

After sitting through Coronanewsnight last night it struck me that if this infectious virus passed like vampirism or diseases in disaster movies we don't need to worry at all. It's already all over. We should compress the football season into the remaining two and a bit weeks we have left. Players train every day. They could obviously play every day. If they survive the virus they've got the rest of their lives to recover from their exertions. All the titles and promotion and relegation could be settled in three weeks.

Anyways last night I started jotting down the figures on the back of a discarded shopping list - sad I know! So if 30 people have the virus and pass it to just two people each before being isolated we have 60 infected and 30 isolated. Next day those 60 infect two people each and are then found and isolated. So it's 90 isolated and 120 out there. That 120 infect two more each before being isolated, so there's 240 out there and 210 in isolation and so on. By the end of just three weeks over 75 million will have just been infected and be out searching for their two people each to infect ……. but almost the entire population of these islands will already be being held in isolation by whoever is able to hold us all in isolation.

Now the only flaw in the disaster movie scenario is that most people don't notice they're really ill at all. After all it's March, it's raining and you never feel like getting up for work once the radio alarm has given you the new Coronastats anyway. It's not really producing any dramatic leading roles is it? Gary Oldman and Daniel Day Lewis are hardly going to be clamouring to be cast as chief medical advisors and if Nadine Dorries doesn't die Emma Thompson needn't book another flight back from LA.

Personally I'm knitting a balaclava and building a pig sty in the garden to fatten a couple up, that's if the Germans don't confiscate 'em. Or is that the war?

Away at Dover FFS, cue Vera Lynn! No one wants to go to Dover at the best of times. Even illegal immigrants don't hang around. I bet our players will be going out there with just the right attitude. Mind you if Carsick doesn't want us to play, that's one good reason for the match to be on.

[Dancingwilldoit]

Was thinking earlier today "What have the Chinese ever done for us ?"

Every few years they manage to give the world an exciting new virus that quickly spreads Chicken Flu, Chinese Flu, Sars, Covid 19 etc etc.
Why is it always China? What have we ever done to them? Do they have the world monopoly on new Flu viruses? I cant think of one that ever started anywhere else.
Is it because they are crap at football and cant stand the thought of the rest of the world enjoying themselves watching it? We enjoy a beer or 2 with it, the Chinese dont even have decent beer.
So apart from The Terracotta Army, The Great Wall of China, Takeaways and a new Flu virus every couple of years what else have they done? Why the f**k do we trade with them. Cancel all the flights and dont import anything Chinese. That'l stop the bastards developing flu viruses. Let them keep them in China.
The smug bastards are now offering to give Italy a hand in dealing with the crisis. Er excuse, me its your f**king fault have we heard you say "Sorry World"?
At least you could see what Hitler was trying to do but the Chinese just keep releasing sneaky viruses that are getting stronger and stronger to test on us.
My Grandad always said the Chinese will end up ruling the world. Was he right?

Before anybody gets on their high horse, this post was intended to be tongue in cheek but as I was typing I got myself wondering.

[SaltergateBorn]

If you want to know what we`ve ever done to the Chinese, Dancing, read up on the Boxer Rebellion. It all came about because they (totally unreasonably) objected to the West (mainly us Brits) trying to get half their population addicted to opium for financial gain (to us, obviously); we controlled the supply of the stuff and made a lot of dosh out of it for a long time.

By the way, I was in China a few years ago; ther beer`s okay, as it happens.

[Devongone]

Ebola, Green Monkey Disease weren't very Chinese.

Do you think maybe we make them the source of mysterious diseases because they are furthest away and have a reputation for inscrutability? A sick bat sold in a market way out in the midst of China ……… forgive me but it sounds like the cigarette in the plastic cup beneath the Bradford stand. Given a need for an explanation we make sense of the world with a believably unlikely bit of bollocks.

Salts is spot on with the Boxers, but I don't think they are out to get us back.

As we spent years investing in Porton Down researching diseases and chemicals which might add to our "defences" I don't think we've much room to be critical of accidentally produced viruses sourced to faraway countries.

You seem to have forgiven Spain for Spanish Flu which killed more people than the 1st World War ……….. and wasn't the last flu' outbreak which spread around world known as Australian Flu.?

[Devongone]

It seems to me that as panic is now more endemic than Corvid-19, which sounds like a bad science fiction planet anyway, is pandemic, the League season is effectively over as regards Football. We should declare leagues in which crowds might be tempted to attend OVER. As teams will have played different numbers of games positions should be decided by the rate at which a team has been accumulating points. In the National League the only controversy this would cause is that Barnet would take Stockport's current play-off place, but as they are currently only 4 points behind with 4 games in hand Stockport wouldn't have much of a case.

All play-offs and finals could be scheduled for mid to the end of May, by which time we'll have had the sense to follow South Korea's lead, which has cut infection rates and created one of the world's lowest fatality rates, after Corvid-19 had looked as though it was going to be absolutely rampant. They haven't gone into lockdown, but have implemented mass, even drive-through, testing, social distancing and voluntary working from home where possible. More controversially they used technology, GPS data from phones and cars, CCTV footage, and card transactions of those confirmed to be infectious to track the at-risk. Their mass-testing regime is free for those suspected of being infectious and those who opt for testing and turn out to be positive. If you ask to be tested and turn out only to be one of the worried well you have to pay, but you've had good news!

So even if it infuriates my good friend Dancing there's the best solution I can come up with. Stop all big football till mid-May which will effectively end Chesterfield's season and copy a successful country, so stop talking about being weeks behind Italy and start transforming ourselves into South Korea. AND sensibly for once we could start the cricket season once the pitches are ready in MID MAY too, rather than freezing-cold early April!

[Dancingwilldoit]

Ah yes but the Chinese had run out of names they had that many viruses so had to be a bit more inventive and deflect the criticism.

On another planet, we are about to ban gatherings of more than 50 people and footballs a dead zone. Tomorrow morning a few thousand people will travel into offices on the tube, Buses and trains will run with a higher number of passengers than 50 and hundreds of people will still get on a long silver thing called an plane (if they can find anywhere to land).
It also seems the over 70's are about to be locked up for 2 months. You are closer than me Dev but SGB's had it. My mums 93 and in sheltered accommodation, Matt Hancock wants to try telephoning her to explain in detail WTF's going on because I know for a fact my life is going to be hell and the phone wont stop ringing.

[Devongone]

A welfare state is meant to ensure the WELFARE of its citizens. Currently citizens of this welfare state are facing demands to protect the inadequate institutions apparently designed to protect them. Don't contact doctors or hospitals, or surgeries and clinics in case you make them poorly. Then they are surprised that having given this advice they have no idea how many people are actually suffering from Corvid-19. YOU JUST TOLD THEM NOT TO BOTHER CONTACTING YOU, YOU BLITHERING IDIOTS!!! If you want to know the size of the problem then you obviously have talk to, and test people.

If you model a scenario based on misleading data you are pretty much bound to reach the wrong conclusions, and at the moment we are deliberately excluding much of the data and guessing instead. China got testing to results down to just 4 hours! Why aren't we learning how they did that?

We've done extensive modelling ………………………………………………….. but so did Claudia Schiffer and Jean Shrimpton!