Coronavirus outbreak

[Ming the Merciless]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Important supporting evidence that steroids significantly reduce mortality in patients with severe COVID. This is true of hydrocortisone as well as dexamethasone. Safe, cheap, well known drugs and available everywhere. <br><br>Thank you to those who took part in these trials. <a href="https://t.co/1lthgTQulk">https://t.co/1lthgTQulk</a></p>&mdash; Professor Chris Whitty (@CMO_England) <a href="
View: https://twitter.com/CMO_England/status/1301216189461540869?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
">September 2, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

Figures not looking good. Are we just following the European path? (first graph Scotland then UK)

 

[DCLane]

Looks like we're at take-off point again for another big increase.

 

[classic33]

Absolutely, the virus doesn't care who it infects. If I'm in the pub with the virus, and you are a few feet away and high risk, you might well cop a dose of it from me. However, I don't see why I should not go about my business as normal, because a small minority of people might react badly to the virus. The sick minority are the ones who need to take the necessary steps to keep away from the rest of the population, not the other way round. The sooner the majority of the healthy population have caught it and become immune, the safer it will be for those in high risk groups to intermingle normally as the virus will have burned itself out in the general population and won't be circulating freely.
Many of those in high risk groups are economically inactive, and them isolating to keep themselves away from everyone else would be far less disruptive and economically damaging, than having destructive lockdowns and restrictions on doing business which affect everyone.

May not be as true as you seem to believe. Rare but no guarantee of immunity against getting it a second time.
A few readers have asked us whether you can catch Covid-19 twice. This follows reports at the end of February that a Japanese woman had tested positive a second time. A recent article in the Daily Mail and two articles in the Sun also suggested in their headlines and their early paragraphs that this might be the case.

The evidence so far shows that catching the disease twice is very rare, and that most infected people recover and develop immunity against it. However, it is not yet clear how long this immunity will last."

https://fullfact.org/health/coronavirus-catch-twice/

I say shut the pubs again, or at the very least hold the landlord responsible for ensuring their patrons stick to the regulations. Don't do it, they shut the pubs.

 

[DRM]

I think the problem is that you don’t become infected with the same strain of Covid-19 twice, but a newer mutated variation of it, there’s a podcast on the BBC sounds app that had a virologist saying that we will one day have a huge pandemic of a corona virus, as it is constantly mutating, the podcast was discussing SARS, and, was several years old, the virologist was absolutely spot on with his prediction

 

[kingrollo]

Looks like we're at take-off point again for another big increase.

Damm rotten luck - we've tried so hard to stop the 2nd wave - but it looks like it's coming....

 

[fossyant]

Damm rotten luck - we've tried so hard to stop the 2nd wave - but it looks like it's coming....

Watching BBC news now and opinion is its not as severe as it was, all back. The sickness levels are going to be incredible and employers won't be able to cope with many staff off ill. Add in the false alerts when someone develops similar symptoms then is off until test results come back. Going to make things very difficult.

 

[tom73]

Watching BBC news now and opinion is its not as severe as it was, all back. The sickness levels are going to be incredible and employers won't be able to cope with many staff off ill. Add in the false alerts when someone develops similar symptoms then is off until test results come back. Going to make things very difficult.

We had a chance post lock down to really target areas at risk, build up local public health, bring in freely widely available testing and to integrate the whole thing with primary care. To put in place and maintain a well informed, consistent targeted public health message.
Basically a plan so we can really go in hard and eliminate the virus or even at best get it to manageable, easy to control levels.
But we've blown it.

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

We had a chance post lock down to really target areas at risk, build up local public health, bring in freely widely available testing and to integrate the whole thing with primary care. To put in place and maintain a well informed, consistent targeted public health message.
Basically a plan so we can really go in hard and eliminate the virus or even at best get it to manageable, easy to control levels.
But we've blown it.

Any guesses who Hancock will scapegoat now?

 

[kingrollo]

Any guesses who Hancock will scapegoat now?

The under 25's , Dinghy people, the bbc , and the lead singer from Echo and the bunnymen.

 

[pawl]

I would be cautious making the comparison, average life expectancy at the beginning of the last century was mid to late 40’s. A hundred years later it was about 80. going forward the key will not simply be who dies but the long term health implications. In various pandemics this only becomes clear later on , in the case of Spanish flu reducing people’s life expectancy significantly.

With a bit of luck and care I will reach reach that average in Feb next year.

 

[mjr]

[...]
I don't see why I should not go about my business as normal, [...]

So you feel your "business" of going to the pub unchanged is more important than the lives of others? Remember, you can still go to a pub, but you just need to sit in a beer garden and accept table service. I'm fine with that if it helps reduce the death toll and cannot fathom the level of lust for the oddly British experience of bundling others at a busy bar required to conclude otherwise. Is it because the pub bar is one place where Brits don't queue fairly?

Many of those in high risk groups are economically inactive, [...]

That depends what you call "many" and "high risk groups" but it's probably misleading. For example, among disabled people, the majority are economically active. There are plenty of people with serious life-altering illnesses still working.

The mortality rate has more than halved, and to anyone without other underlying medical issues, the risk of death from the virus is negligible..

That's another misleading one, of course. If you test more and detect more asymptomatic and minor cases, then of course the confirmed case mortality rate falls. The actual mortality rate remains whatever it always was.

 

[tom73]

Any guesses who Hancock will scapegoat now?

If the interview yesterday is anything to with it's younger people calling round to see granny. Over and over again he said it together with go back to work "we've put in a lot of work making placers covid secure". AKA stick up the cut and keep certificate and covid runs away. Given perfect chance to do clear public health message the best he came up with was how vital social distancing is.
Other counties see a few new cases and come out fighting but Hancook when asked about biggest increase to date came out with "worrying"

 

[Ming the Merciless]

That's another misleading one, of course. If you test more and detect more asymptomatic and minor cases, then of course the confirmed case mortality rate falls. The actual mortality rate remains whatever it always was.

Plus of course the greater the sample size the better the confidence interval. We are now starting to see numbers closer to the real mortality rate.

 

[roubaixtuesday]

We are now starting to see numbers closer to the real mortality rate.

Depends how you define "mortality rate": case fatality rate, infection fatality rate or population fatality rate being just three different definitions.

It's certain that the change in mortality rate is in part down to the skew in new cases to the younger, who it's well known have much lower mortality. It may well be that a population adjusted mortality is unchanged.

There's also an interesting theory that social distancing has driven evolution of the virus to more transmissible but less fatal strains. That's a nice thought, but I'm somewhat sceptical myself.

These fatality rates are very hard to pin down exactly, as we know neither exactly how many people are killed by COVID-19 and even more so, how many people have been infected.