Generic Virus Thread

[KentVillan]

I enjoyed this, and opened my eyes a bit to some of the nuances on the ventilator debate.

[blandy]

On 24/06/2020 at 14:47, KentVillan said:

Which points do you think are bad?

 

Quote

“By mid-April it was clear that lockdown made no difference to the spread of the virus”

Thats simply untrue, for example. Further the article is critical of SAGE for what the author says it got wrong, but not critical of the government for not acting on advice it got right. FWIW I think the SAGE team is a bit too “native”, a bit too timid, a bit too knowing that their roles and pay is dependent on not falling out of favour with Johnson and Cummings. 

[wazzap24]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53061288
 

Quote

Volunteers have begun being immunised with a new UK coronavirus vaccine. 

About 300 people will have the vaccine over the coming weeks, as part of a trial led by Prof Robin Shattock and his colleagues, at Imperial College London.

Tests in animals suggest the vaccine is safe and triggers an effective immune response.....
 

Many traditional vaccines are based on a weakened or modified form of virus, or parts of it, but the Imperial vaccine is based on a new approach, using synthetic strands of genetic code, called RNA, which mimic the virus.

 

[ml1dch]

Well, that was a weird three months. All good now though.

 

 

[Genie]

The scenes on the beaches today absolutely boils my piss. It’s a bloody Thursday too, the British taxpayers are paying a large percentage of these people to go an rub shoulders with strangers on a beach and risk virus spreading. Then they leave a mountain of rubbish for someone else to pick up 

 

[Xela]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

The scenes on the beaches today absolutely boils my piss. It’s a bloody Thursday too, the British taxpayers are paying a large percentage of these people to go an rub shoulders with strangers on a beach and risk virus spreading. Then they leave a mountain of rubbish for someone else to pick up 

 

Good old British "common sense"

[chrisp65]

10 minutes ago, Xela said:

Good old British "common sense"

Barry Island

 

Llangranog 

 

 

Still can’t travel more than 5 miles for non-essential stuff here.

 

 

[Xela]

It would seem to be a south coast issue. Probably due to the population size. Lincolnshire / Norfolk from Twitter pics looks to be fairly quiet.

[blandy]

On 24/06/2020 at 15:43, KentVillan said:

Good points.

Yes, I think the 20% thing is still a big puzzle, definitely not something that has been conclusively answered.

The strongest argument I've seen for the existence of this lower level of herd immunity (i.e. 20-30% rather than 60-80%) is that London's Covid outbreak (which was weeks ahead of the rest of the UK) slowed down before the other regions - whereas if lockdown was the primary driver of reductions, all the UK's regional outbreaks should have hit a turning point at roughly the same time, as a result of lockdown. Instead they all seem to have followed similar, staggered epidemic curves (with varying levels of intensity).

That suggests the virus hit some kind of natural barrier to transmission that wasn't purely lockdown-related - e.g. population immunity. But of course, if it was population immunity, we don't know how durable that population immunity is.

I'm not fully in with the lockdown sceptics, but I tend to think that recent weeks have seen fear overtaking rationality.

Just as an example of something that baffles me: we're pretty sure, anecdotally, that lockdown has led to an increase in mental health and domestic abuse problems. Surely that suggests that we need some kind of emergency "tracking" system for these problems? I'm surprised the opposition haven't proposed this.

The debate needs to be broadened out now, so that we're talking about "overall health and wellbeing", rather than this laser focus on one medical condition.

There's a few interesting points coming out of these types of articles.

Going back slightly, the movement of hospital patients into care homes to free up bed spaces - I haven't gone back and re read the guidance or meeting minutes, but I'd be utterly staggered if the scientists said "do it but don't bother testing the people you move" - At the time (and before the media leapt on it) I pointed out in this thread that the Gov't guidance on moving people without testing was absolutely mental. The WHO and scientists were saying "test, test, test" Our Government sort of just binned that advice.

The next thing is people were being moved during lockdown and thus spreading the virus to vulnerable people who were at much more risk of becoming seriously ill or dying from it.

The London thing and this 20% herd idea. The stats don't back up what you say at all. The peak for London for cases was early april (1st to 6th) in terms of number of cases, with deaths obviously lagging - the same timing as for the UK generally. And this tallies with  what you'd expect from bringing in lockdown. Lockdown started 24th or 23rd March, you'd expect at that point the number of people infected to be towards the peak, and those people showing up at hospital ill (where they were treated and identified as having it) to follow shortly after, as the effects of catching it grew, given the first few days are apparently milder.

The data I've seen doesn't show notably different patterns following lockdown. Obviously up to lockdown different areas experienced their first cases and growth at different times.

Now we've pretty much unlocked, I imagine that the number of cases will start to climb again. You're right that we don't know what else is affecting how fast it spreads, or who may be immune and so on, but the virus is still around, and people mingling will spread it. Maybe the warmer weather, maybe people being inside less (where it spreads more easily), maybe the numbers of people who have it already has reduced the number of future potential victims assuming some immunity at least in the short term is present one you've had it.

If lockdown had been done when it should have been, it would have meant far fewer cases, far fewer deaths, a shorter lockdown, less economic damage, less adverse consequences of lockdown. The same applies to PPE availability failings, testing failings...it's been handled appallingly.

London Covid (deaths) peak 7 - 22 April

 

UK Covid (deaths) same peak 7 - 22 April, same shape to graph.

[Davkaus]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

The scenes on the beaches today absolutely boils my piss. It’s a bloody Thursday too, the British taxpayers are paying a large percentage of these people to go an rub shoulders with strangers on a beach and risk virus spreading. Then they leave a mountain of rubbish for someone else to pick up 

 

Really feels like I'm the biggest fool in the world for staying home and not seeing anyone for the best part of 3 months.

Should have just done what the **** I wanted, it's the British way.

[KentVillan]

10 minutes ago, blandy said:

There's a few interesting points coming out of these types of articles.

Going back slightly, the movement of hospital patients into care homes to free up bed spaces - I haven't gone back and re read the guidance or meeting minutes, but I'd be utterly staggered if the scientists said "do it but don't bother testing the people you move" - At the time (and before the media leapt on it) I pointed out in this thread that the Gov't guidance on moving people without testing was absolutely mental. The WHO and scientists were saying "test, test, test" Our Government sort of just binned that advice.

The next thing is people were being moved during lockdown and thus spreading the virus to vulnerable people who were at much more risk of becoming seriously ill or dying from it.

The London thing and this 20% herd idea. The stats don't back up what you say at all. The peak for London for cases was early april (1st to 6th) in terms of number of cases, with deaths obviously lagging - the same timing as for the UK generally. And this tallies with  what you'd expect from bringing in lockdown. Lockdown started 24th or 23rd March, you'd expect at that point the number of people infected to be towards the peak, and those people showing up at hospital ill (where they were treated and identified as having it) to follow shortly after, as the effects of catching it grew, given the first few days are apparently milder.

The data I've seen doesn't show notably different patterns following lockdown. Obviously up to lockdown different areas experienced their first cases and growth at different times.

Now we've pretty much unlocked, I imagine that the number of cases will start to climb again. You're right that we don't know what else is affecting how fast it spreads, or who may be immune and so on, but the virus is still around, and people mingling will spread it. Maybe the warmer weather, maybe people being inside less (where it spreads more easily), maybe the numbers of people who have it already has reduced the number of future potential victims assuming some immunity at least in the short term is present one you've had it.

If lockdown had been done when it should have been, it would have meant far fewer cases, far fewer deaths, a shorter lockdown, less economic damage, less adverse consequences of lockdown. The same applies to PPE availability failings, testing failings...it's been handled appallingly.

London Covid (deaths) peak 7 - 22 April

 

UK Covid (deaths) same peak 7 - 22 April, same shape to graph.

You can’t compare London peak with the UK peak if most of the UK peak consists of London deaths. This is a common mistake people make with subgroup comparisons.

The correct comparison is London vs UK (exc London). I’ll see if I can put it together. It will show a later peak for rest of country, I believe, although I could be wrong.

[blandy]

1 minute ago, KentVillan said:

if most of the UK peak consists of London deaths

It doesn't. it's about a sixth. But I'll be interested to see your graph. I'd wager it will be the same shape and timing in the middle. The very left hand end will be different, mind, though the numbers are so small it won't show up particularly clearly.

[Demitri_C]

3 hours ago, Genie said:

The scenes on the beaches today absolutely boils my piss. It’s a bloody Thursday too, the British taxpayers are paying a large percentage of these people to go an rub shoulders with strangers on a beach and risk virus spreading. Then they leave a mountain of rubbish for someone else to pick up 

 

Send everyone  back to bloody work.  We better off taking our chances than having idiots like this

[mjmooney]

I've just realised, I haven't used cash at all for well over three months. 100% contactless card or pay by phone. 

[Seat68]

6 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

I've just realised, I haven't used cash at all for well over three months. 100% contactless card or pay by phone. 

Paid the window cleaner but am in a similar position, maybe the entire year. 

[OutByEaster?]

Regular cash use might be one of the long terms victims of CV19

[mjmooney]

41 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

Paid the window cleaner but am in a similar position, maybe the entire year. 

We're paying the window cleaner by bank transfer now. 

[Stevo985]

56 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

I've just realised, I haven't used cash at all for well over three months. 100% contactless card or pay by phone. 

Same. I used some at the petrol station this week as I had £100 in my wallet from a poker win months ago that had just been sitting there (I asked very nicely and made sure they were ok with taking cash payment and that I was happy to use card if they preferred)

But that was the first time I've used cash since early March.

[chrisp65]

...trying to get involved in a community programme thing to preserve access to cash for that last stubborn 10 / 20% of society that have problems with cashless society for all manner of reasons.

Me personally, spent my first actual cash since lockdown this week.

 

[Genie]

I’m getting pre-annoyed for tonight’s Liverpool fans behaving like idiots celebrating their title win.