Please be careful and prepared my friends ...

[Osi Osgood]

OK, this doesn't have anything to do with film but, as we all pretty much know, the average age of the super 8 and 16MM film collector is above 50, so, it would be wise, with this potential Carona virus situation coming ...

1. To have at least two months of food supplies, networks are saying one month. No two months, as there WILL be a rush on the supermarkets if this virus becomes a major event, which it may well become. These worldwide virus's bring out the worst in people, sadly.

2. Have a goodly supply of Zicam or other major cold/flu medicine. I have personally used Zicam in the past and I can vouch for it's good.

Please note that i don't make this post to scare people, but i just want you folks to be prepared. I would hate to lose any of you!

Best wishes

OSI

[Dominique De Bast]

Israelis may have found a vaccine https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE...vaccine-619101

[Mathew James]

great news Dom!

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

The problem is that even if this vaccine works, and I hope it does, and it gets regulatory approval in Israel, it will be at least a year before it becomes readily available and even longer in other countries, as each nation has it's own regulatory authorities that would have to approve it prior to any manufacturing to begin in each nation.

Here in the US.of.A, the FDA regulations make it such of pain to import vaccines from other countries, that most foreign manufactures do not even try for approval unless they already have manufacturing plants here.

[Osi Osgood]

Let us then hope, that every country will take into account the lives that they will be saving, and make the process for the cure very quick!

[Graham Ritchie]

Osi

I do hope they find a way, however every year we are subjected to a flu virus as one example. In that case we can get vaccination to prevent a full blown case of it, even then it does not always work, but I would recommend still getting it. Virus have been with us for millions of years and are very tricky in how they can invade our cells without our immunity system picking picking them up as invaders, for a while at least, that's why we get worse before we can get better. The only defense we have regarding a virus is our immunity kicking in or we are dead. Every year people thousands die from the flu worldwide, its not the virus that gets us, its the secondary infections caused by it and that in itself can kill us very quickly.

Anyway I don't think this one will stop spreading, remember the 1918 flu as an example, back then there was no air travel etc, but it still managed to spread to be a killer world wide. A virus can also change so they are not easy things to deal with, it all comes down in the end to our own immunity, and how we can hopefully help it to deal with it.

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

I note that other than The Jerusalem Post story linked above, no other media outlet has picked up the story. There is a problem that actually pre-dates the internet, where corporate press releases are sent out to the news media with the intention of the media presenting it as a new story. Now, in the internet age, the problem has gotten worse as these "fake" news stories going viral (no pun intended) around the world. I don't know if that is the case with this story, but I tend to be skeptical of these kind of stories until they are verified. As I said in my post above, I hope it is true, but I will not get my hopes up until more is known.

[Tom Photiou]

While this is a problem, i cant help think this,
Flu kills tens of thousands a year with hardly a mention, with this, four out five people will get over it, as always, and very sadly, it is the elderly most at risk along with people such as my own Daughter who are diabetic etc. The press are blowing this out of all proportion and are turning people into absolute idiots. My Daughter went to the supermarket earlier today and the shelves are empty.
People need to calm down. Supermarkets need to put restrictions on how many items people can buy at one time if there going to act like the idiots that many are.

Moderator's note: I have deleted two comments in this post.

[Ed Gordon]

How deadly is seasonal flu?

Seasonal flu refers to several strains of the disease influenza A, B, C and D.
Nevertheless, the disease comes with a low mortality rate of roughly 0.13 percent...

How deadly is coronavirus?

A corona virus tracker developed by Johns Hopkins University found cases of 2019-nCoV now number 20,704.
Their dashboard revealed most cases – approximately 20,492 – were detected in mainland China.

Of those who contracted the infection, 427 have died, giving it a fatality rate of 2.07 percent.

The quote above is from here.

[Paul Adsett]

The stark facts of Corona Virus Vs Influenza:

Influenza death rate = 0.1%
Corona virus death rate = 2.0 to 5.0%

No one is over-exaggerating anything. The Chinese haven't quarantined whole cities for no reason. A 2% death rate among the general population is huge, that would mean 4 million deaths in the USA alone!

[Dominique De Bast]

It was said on tv that figures for the Coronavirus are not as reliable as those for the flu since it's a new disease. The death rate is based on identificated patients but it seems that some people ( the point is that we don't know how many) don't show any evidence of Coronavirus. So the percentage of letal cases may be lower than the announced 2 or 3 % (on French and Belgian medias, so far I never heard more than 3 %. Let's hope the worst scenario won't happen. One single dead is one too much.

[Panayotis A. Carayannis]

[Mark Todd]

Sadly 2%-%5 is only while there is care provision. For most people that won`t be available so it will be much higher once on the move. 2% + is huge itself as said.

In 1918 they barely had anything to deal with it, if this had been the one then !!! plus the spread will of been a lot slower, you had people then who never went further than the next village in a lifetime even and so on.

It bother`s me when people say mainly older or already ill people !!!! so its not so bad.

The main way to stop its spread is to get people to stop licking thier fingers when touching, money, bags, tickets, forms, food wrapping, the post man getting letters out of thier satchel, all sorts of reasons by habbit without thinking etc etc and its Oddly not being addressed.

My youngest son was always worried about climate change and I told him don`t worry there are many many thing`s we need to look at before that. IE

Oddly they are still having ralllies etc at the moment to do with it.

We knew this was coming soon, if only we had put the time effort and cash in to preparing for this.

I think this is going to be a how life is lived changer, working, eating out, shopping etc etc nothing is going to be the same for a long time sadly.

Lets hope we will be OK. This forum is like a great little group of friends you feel you know.

Best Mark.

[Brian Fretwell]

I have a feeling that the Older/already ill part is mainly to stop the majority, who aren't either, panicking.

[Chip Gelmini]

Taa daaaaaa