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Coronavirus discussion thread

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TeeBee Oct 2020 1:05pm, 30 Oct 2020 6,899 posts	Quote Pin TeeBee My brother who has lived in Japan since 1990 says similar TMW and larkim, but also points out that they are, in general, a healthier as a population than the UK.
LindsD Oct 2020 1:55pm, 30 Oct 2020 41,995 posts	Quote Pin LindsD Totally agree about translation. I made that point at the beginning.
larkim Oct 2020 2:50pm, 30 Oct 2020 12,462 posts	Quote Pin larkim It's an interesting point that many find difficult to articulate in case it gets turned into "it's the fault of the XZY community in our town". Nonetheless, is the translation thing potentially overstated now? Given the last 7 months, even if you lived in a household with very little English spoken or understood, the worldwide nature of the pandemic would make it quite hard for someone living in the UK to be blinkered about how they should currently be living their lives? Not every northern town that has had significant lockdowns has clear and distinct communities that could potentially be a source of infection spread due to lack of clear communication and translation; the best example being Liverpool I suppose, which is 91% "white", compared to say Manchester at 67%.
Spideog Oct 2020 3:32pm, 30 Oct 2020 815 posts	Quote Pin Spideog Or is any other country having similar issues that they are blaming on non native speaking pockets of population? Does Spain have problems in their English speaking towns where nobody speaks Spanish or absorbs the local media?
jda Oct 2020 3:41pm, 30 Oct 2020 8,723 posts	Quote Pin jda There are certainly pockets of Japan where Japanese is far from universally spoken. OTOH it is inconceivable to me that information would not also be made available in English and Portuguese there which would cover most bases pretty well.
Too Much Water Oct 2020 3:58pm, 30 Oct 2020 7,736 posts	Quote Pin Too Much Water I based my post on 6 years of working in a Japanese company, although I’ve never visited Japan many colleagues had and of course a few were Japanese! I must have worked with over 100 Japanese expats on 2-3 year assignment and only one seemed to be overweight. There was something on the BBC website about the Pakistani community in Bradford not engaging with testing and there a myriad of reasons for this and most of them probably pre-date Covid. As larkim says it’s not an excuse or a finger pointing exercise, more an example of the different challenges the UK faces. bbc.com
swittle Oct 2020 4:09pm, 30 Oct 2020 69,312 posts	Quote Pin swittle BBC radio 4 'Today' prog. [early, so my faculties were still powering up]. A p[ice suggested that 'Wave 2' was carrying a different, more aggressive mutation of cv19, with its origin in Spain and now spreading to much of western Europe. medrxiv.org
LindsD Oct 2020 4:55pm, 30 Oct 2020 42,005 posts	Quote Pin LindsD Just to be clear, I was not blaming. I am a translator.
Wriggling Snake Oct 2020 5:17pm, 30 Oct 2020 28,661 posts	Quote Pin Wriggling Snake I saw that swittle, a tad worrying, as I assume it can mutate again.....
DeeGee Oct 2020 6:38pm, 30 Oct 2020 19,979 posts	Quote Pin DeeGee It's not necessarily "the translation thing". Where I live, we go from Tier 1 to Tier 2 tomorrow. It's a simple descriptor, used all over the media. Nowhere in the NHS app has the word "Tier" been used to explain this. We move from "medium risk" to "high risk". Use the simple terminology and encourage the media to do so as well. Uniformity of terminology helps keep the message simple.