Corona Virus main thread

[Essjayess 307]

33 minutes ago, ricardo said:

Well, they are now entering the southern hemisphere winter

Here is an example ricardo of why i fear for a continent like S. America, even though they have not had an immediate Italy type explosion to deal with. You can see that 1st Coronavirus cases happened much later down there, but in a shorter time span  cases there have increased faster than they did in the UK, over an equilavent period.

UK....1st case 30 Jan. Thru much of Feb new cases were very slow, until the Italy effect happened.

Brazil...1st case 24 Feb...cases now 3477...nearly 100 deaths.

Chile...2 March..................1909...............6 deaths.

Ecuador...28 Feb..............1828............48 deaths.

Peru..........5 March............750..............11 deaths.

Colombia..5 March............539.............6 deaths.

I have no idea  to how much testing is being done down there, but i can see the potential already there for huge problems, as in Europe.

[ricardo 7,339]

No straws to clutch at then.

😞

[Barbe bleu 812]

1 hour ago, Essjayess said:

Its now been officially confirmed by leading World Health authorities  ricardo that the virus  is unaffeced by temperature, be it hot or cold 

 

I must have missed that.  Do you have a link.

This really is not promising for anyone in the world.  The big hope was that this disease has a season and will stay away from the hotter nations. With that gone we better hope it doesn't mutate easily.

I guess that it'll be a return to a controlled build up of herd immunity soon...

[sgncfc 1,221]

1 hour ago, T said:

The healthcare system works better in Germany. I have professional and personal experience of both as I work internationally. They do spend more. Medics and medical equipment and testing matters. And In this instance ICU and ventilators do matter so Germany is better placed than the UK. They are also more willing to follow expert instruction. 
 

I’m not trying to make a political point.  I’m not particularly left or right wing. The current government and former health secretary agree with me as they had already decided to spend more on healthcare. It was a point on different societies have different cultures and priorities. In this case Germany is in a better position to deal with this. More about society rather than government or politics as far as I’m concerned rather than politics. 

It's very difficult to compare health systems, and almost impossible to say which one is better day to day. Even the care you get under the NHS varies from region to region. In every single medical claim I dealt with every citizen always wanted to be treated in their home country - even when the medical evidence suggested otherwise - for instance, being evacuated from Singapore or Hong Kong often made no medical sense, but people wanted to be home. There is no doubt that our own NHS has as much expertise as anywhere but there will always be pockets of planning which will not be at as high a standard as somewhere else.

Every developed healthcare system has had pandemic planning in place for many years - if I had one criticism to make of the UK response it would be that we should have paid more attention to what the Asian countries did, as they are the ones with the most recent experience of dealing with fast spreading viruses. Following the science, as the UK have done, only makes sense if there is little practical experience to call on. It's almost like the Asian experience doesn't count.

But it could be worse - we could live in the US.....

[Surfer 1,547]

4 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

I guess that it'll be a return to a controlled build up of herd immunity soon...

Which is the only way the human species has survived over the millennia. It's an unavoidable outcome for every illness. The trick, as has been said many times, is to not allow hospitals to be overrun with cases while that natural defence kicks in. 

[Aggy 752]

1 minute ago, Surfer said:

Which is the only way the human species has survived over the millennia. It's an unavoidable outcome for every illness. The trick, as has been said many times, is to not allow hospitals to be overrun with cases while that natural defence kicks in. 

Exactly this. As I said earlier, a bunch of otherwise healthy thirty year olds catching it and getting over it is no bad thing, if you can guarantee they won’t pass it on to ‘high risk’ people all at once. The move to lock down isn’t because the “herd immunity” idea has been scrapped. It’s to slow the effect on the high risk people to limit the strain on the NHS at any one particular time and/or until we have a vaccine.

 

[Icecream Snow 761]

Breakdown of UK cases from the BBC - looks like the virus is everywhere now.

[Van wink 2,994]

On 27/03/2020 at 10:41, ron obvious said:

One factor that hadn't really occurred to me before yesterday is the size of the dose of virus you get. I'd naively thought that once you'd got it, you'd got it, but I suppose if you only get attacked by a few cells your immune system has time to react before it gets overwhelmed. My knowledge of how the immune system works is sketchy, but if it works something like that then it explains why health workers & others who are under constant heavy attack have a much higher rate of serious infection than others who get it less severely.

Obviously health, age, strength of immune system & many other factors are at play.

 

FYI

Blood donated by patients who have recovered from Covid-19 will imminently be used as part of efforts to treat victims of the disease in NHS hospitals, The Telegraph can disclose.

Senior officials said the health service will start giving hospital patients plasma from those who have recovered from coronavirus, "in the very near future", after the move was approved by the UK's medicines watchdog.

The disclosure comes days after the US Food and Drug Administration approved a similar move in America, where doctors can now carry out "convalescent plasma" transfusions for patients with serious infections.

[Herman 9,710]

Very interesting move, but no need to shout.😀

[Van wink 2,994]

8 minutes ago, Herman said:

Very interesting move, but no need to shout.😀

Telegraph quotes always seem to do that....must be a Tory thing 😀

[ron obvious 1,498]

Hmm. I wonder if managed infection was ever considered?

 

[KiwiScot 1,436]

1 hour ago, ron obvious said:

Hmm. I wonder if managed infection was ever considered?

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-vaccine-quarantined-volunteers-test-virus-uk-a9389231.html

[ron obvious 1,498]

17 hours ago, KiwiScot said:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-vaccine-quarantined-volunteers-test-virus-uk-a9389231.html

My idea was more to infect healthy volunteers on a managed basis around the country then release them back into the wild so to speak   :- )

You'd need a lot of volunteers though. The logistics would be a bit of a mare.

[Essjayess 307]

Latest local virus update for today 29 March.

Norfolk 107 confirmed cases, 10 deaths (5 at N&N, 4 at QE, 1 at James Paget.)

87 cases confirmed in Suffolk.

Nationally 135 have recovered, but this was at 22nd March, 1 week ago.  A new process of collecting data for recovered patients is in development.

[dylanisabaddog 4,865]

6 minutes ago, Essjayess said:

Latest local virus update for today 29 March.

Norfolk 107 confirmed cases, 10 deaths (5 at N&N, 4 at QE, 1 at James Paget.)

87 cases confirmed in Suffolk.

Nationally 135 have recovered, but this was at 22nd March, 1 week ago.  A new process of collecting data for recovered patients is in development.

https://covid.joinzoe.com/

This app has been developed to help 

[Essjayess 307]

21 hours ago, Barbe bleu said:

I must have missed that.  Do you have a link.

This really is not promising for anyone in the world.  The big hope was that this disease has a season and will stay away from the hotter nations. With that gone we better hope it doesn't mutate easily.

I guess that it'll be a return to a controlled build up of herd immunity soon...

I saw this from BBC news  sometime on Saturday, it was info from the ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control). I no time for link hunting but im sure its out there if you need it.

[Essjayess 307]

Interesting that Germany and Japan,  both with some of the most advanced health care systems in the world, found ways to lessen or lower  confirmed cases and deaths by moving a certain % into other  certain defined categories. There has been much info about how Germany has fudged the numbers, but Japan to adopted  a similar strategy, especially before Abe announced the Olympics were off. They had testing capacity for 7,500 a day but only used 15% of that daily, in addition adopted a policy of only testing a person after having things like a continuous high fever for 4 straight days before being tested. Interesting that since the Olympics were called off the new confirmed daily cases in Japan is increasing a fair bit.

Does not seem to affect people still being out and about, even at 3am at the busy world famous Shibuya Crossing right now. Was watching this last night and it was Snowing heavily...quite rare for Tokyo at end of March i would imagine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_11BYUkE5Rk

 

[Barbe bleu 812]

1 hour ago, Essjayess said:

I saw this from BBC news  sometime on Saturday, it was info from the ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control). I no time for link hunting but im sure its out there if you need it.

The following appears on the ecdc website

Unfortunately, it is not possible to predict how long the outbreak will last and how the epidemic will unfold. We are dealing with a new virus and therefore a lot of uncertainty remains. For instance, it is not known whether transmission within the EU/EEA will naturally decrease during the northern hemisphere summer, as is observed for seasonal influenza.

 

 

[CANARYKING 634]

Government scientists are now saying minimum six months of this, reckon it will be Christmas before normality 

[Creative Midfielder 1,985]

22 hours ago, Aggy said:

The move to lock down isn’t because the “herd immunity” idea has been scrapped. It’s to slow the effect on the high risk people to limit the strain on the NHS at any one particular time and/or until we have a vaccine.

 

I think the herd immunity idea in the form that Johnson (or Cummings??) originally proposed it has definitely been scrapped because it was a very stupid idea, i.e. that we could create effective herd immunity against such a dangerous virus by simply letting sufficient people catch it. Vaccines are the usual way of creating herd immunity and in the case of this virus the only way unless we are prepared to accept a truly massive death toll (which according to a number of reports Cummings was, as clearly is Trump).

[Indy 3,283]

15 minutes ago, CANARYKING said:

Government scientists are now saying minimum six months of this, reckon it will be Christmas before normality 

No they said it’s an ongoing process and could be anywhere from 3 months to 6 months or longer before we get back to a level of normality! This is what pisses me off, the worst off people to exaggerate the actual statements.

 

[Van wink 2,994]

1 hour ago, Essjayess said:

Interesting that Germany and Japan,  both with some of the most advanced health care systems in the world, found ways to lessen or lower  confirmed cases and deaths by moving a certain % into other  certain defined categories. There has been much info about how Germany has fudged the numbers, but Japan to adopted  a similar strategy, especially before Abe announced the Olympics were off. They had testing capacity for 7,500 a day but only used 15% of that daily, in addition adopted a policy of only testing a person after having things like a continuous high fever for 4 straight days before being tested. Interesting that since the Olympics were called off the new confirmed daily cases in Japan is increasing a fair bit.

Does not seem to affect people still being out and about, even at 3am at the busy world famous Shibuya Crossing right now. Was watching this last night and it was Snowing heavily...quite rare for Tokyo at end of March i would imagine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_11BYUkE5Rk

 

Germany are reporting deaths from Corvid19 pretty much in the same way as we are, see this from Andrew Neil who has been investigating the figures

”I have investigated further how Germany records Covid-19 deaths and concluded its methodology does NOT explain lower level of German Covid-19 fatalities. In previous tweets I suggested international comparisons eg with UK, might not be comparing apples with apples. But we are.”

There are a few things we need to consider about Germany, firstly don’t look at reported cases as they are testing more, the only comparable figure is the death rate. It is thought their initial infected population was younger than most so that could explain the lower number of deaths and also they may well be behind us on the curve so watch their figures for the next couple of weeks.

Edited March 29, 2020 by Van wink

[Aggy 752]

23 minutes ago, Creative Midfielder said:

I think the herd immunity idea in the form that Johnson (or Cummings??) originally proposed it has definitely been scrapped because it was a very stupid idea, i.e. that we could create effective herd immunity against such a dangerous virus by simply letting sufficient people catch it. Vaccines are the usual way of creating herd immunity and in the case of this virus the only way unless we are prepared to accept a truly massive death toll (which according to a number of reports Cummings was, as clearly is Trump).

Lots of people don’t have flu vaccines despite ‘normal’ flu strains being potentially deadly. Vaccines help create herd immunity but the majority of the population is left to create it itself. The difference being that if you can vaccinate people most at risk of serious complications, then it matters less if you just leave the otherwise healthy people to go out and catch it. The issue with coronavirus is that we can’t vaccinate the most vulnerable people and so therefore need to try and slow the spread until we can.
 

If we can’t get a vaccine for 18 months, would you suggest we continue with full lockdown until summer 2021?

Edited March 29, 2020 by Aggy

[ricardo 7,339]

11 minutes ago, Van wink said:

Germany are reporting deaths from Corvid19 pretty much in the same way as we are, see this from Andrew Neil who has been investigating the figures

”I have investigated further how Germany records Covid-19 deaths and concluded its methodology does NOT explain lower level of German Covid-19 fatalities. In previous tweets I suggested international comparisons eg with UK, might not be comparing apples with apples. But we are.”

There are a few things we need to consider about Germany, firstly don’t look at reported cases as they are testing more, the only comparable figure is the death rate. It is thought their initial infected population was younger than most so that could explain the lower number of deaths and also they may well be behind us on the curve so watch their figures for the next couple of weeks.

 

A better comparison is the time from the 50th death.

Looks like we a doing as well as can be expected.

[T 190]

6 minutes ago, Van wink said:

Germany are reporting deaths from Corvid19 pretty much in the same way as we are, see this from Andrew Neil who has been investigating the figures

”I have investigated further how Germany records Covid-19 deaths and concluded its methodology does NOT explain lower level of German Covid-19 fatalities. In previous tweets I suggested international comparisons eg with UK, might not be comparing apples with apples. But we are.”

There are a few things we need to consider about Germany, firstly don’t look at reported cases as they are testing more, the only comparable figure is the death rate. It is thought their initial infected population was younger than most so that could explain the lower number of deaths and also they may well be behind us on the curve so watch their figures for the next couple of weeks.

Yes the Robert Koch Institut who are the official body in Germany have always said that they  expect the long term death rate to be similar as  the vulnerable are exposed regardless of medical care.  And that they expect escalation beyond capacity in the next few weeks as it passes through the population. Greater testing and ICU capacity have helped them to keep on top of this so far but no system is prepared for the extent of this. As I’ve said before it always good to read the original source  

it has always been the case that we will be following some kind of social distancing until it has passed through population or vaccine developed so that is not new today. 
 

The concept of herd immunity is open until widespread antibody testing performed

[Indy 3,283]

2 minutes ago, Aggy said:

Lots of people don’t have flu vaccines despite ‘normal’ flu strains being potentially deadly. Vaccines help create herd immunity but the majority of the population is left to create it itself. The difference being that if you can vaccinate people most at risk of serious complications, then it matters less if you just leave the otherwise healthy people to go out and catch it.. 
 

If we can’t get a vaccine for 18 months, would you suggest we continue with full lockdown until summer 2021?

No the idea will be to knock it back hopefully around beginning of May, keep those at high risk locked down while slowly bringing back the rest of society into some form of normality over the summer months. We shall see if this works out and if we get the testing in place to knock it back and keep it there.

[Van wink 2,994]

1 minute ago, T said:

Yes the Robert Koch Institut who are the official body in Germany have always said that they  expect the long term death rate to be similar as  the vulnerable are exposed regardless of medical care.  And that they expect escalation beyond capacity in the next few weeks as it passes through the population. Greater testing and ICU capacity have helped them to keep on top of this so far but no system is prepared for the extent of this. As I’ve said before it always good to read the original source  

it has always been the case that we will be following some kind of social distancing until it has passed through population or vaccine developed so that is not new today. 
 

The concept of herd immunity is open until widespread antibody testing performed

You really are full of contradictions T. Last time we had a short discussion you were telling me how Germany’s amazing health care system was going to result in less deaths, now you quote a source stating the exact opposite.

[Van wink 2,994]

3 minutes ago, Indy said:

No the idea will be to knock it back hopefully around beginning of May, keep those at high risk locked down while slowly bringing back the rest of society into some form of normality over the summer months. We shall see if this works out and if we get the testing in place to knock it back and keep it there.

Yep, widespread testing is the answer to get those with acquired immunity back into the economy, what social problems that might create however are another matter.

[Aggy 752]

5 minutes ago, Van wink said:

Yep, widespread testing is the answer to get those with acquired immunity back into the economy, what social problems that might create however are another matter.

Fewer social problems than keeping full lockdown for months.

I think we’re more likely to go with Indy’s approach than yours though VW - slight difference between the two.  You say that we’d only let people back into society who have already had coronavirus. I’d argue that’s counter productive. If you’re going to put measures in place where you’re going to have to somehow govern/record who has had it and who hasn’t, then why not instead just go for a situation where you record who is at high risk and who isn’t?

The money involved in testing people to see if they’ve had it, and then re-testing people every time they have any sort of symptoms, would be huge. And you’d end up with loads of healthy people who could be working sat at home when they are only likely to get fairly mild flu like symptoms anyway. If you’re not in a high risk group, then it’s probably not going to do you or society any harm if you catch it anyway, so long as the high risk people are still in lockdown. 

[sonyc 5,489]

I understand that one reason testing hasn't taken place unless people have symptoms is that you have to have a certain level of the virus in your body for it to register positively. As reportedly some scientists suggest some carriers might be asymptomatic then it's possible a test might not find enough virus. It's not straightforward. Same issue applies to antigen testing...you'd have to have enough antibodies in your system to produce a positive test.

Edited March 29, 2020 by sonyc