SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

VorZakone said:
The news has slipped me for a while, has the lockdown in Italy helped or not?
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Yes but there is still some way to go. The increase of new cases has been flat for about a week now and the number of new active cases and hospital admissions is decreasing.

The one negative is deaths are still high and probably will get worse as all these cases progress.
 
Everybody knows that lockdowns can't go on in the long run, but the initial phase is absolutely necessary in order to buy some time, analyze the data and figure out: "What kind of disease are we dealing with here? How can we tailor the next phase to fit in with our society and demographics?" In an ideal world, we would have locked every at-risk person inside a hotel with doctors and nurses for three months while the rest of us actively tried to get infected, but that ship has already sailed.
 
Hansa said:
Everybody knows that lockdowns can't go on in the long run, but the initial phase is absolutely necessary in order to buy some time, analyze the data and figure out: "What kind of disease are we dealing with here? How can we tailor the next phase to fit in with our society and demographics?" In an ideal world, we would have locked every at-risk person inside a hotel with doctors and nurses for three months while the rest of us actively tried to get infected, but that ship has already sailed.
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Totally agree. I also see the main purpose of a lockdown as buying us time to figure out how we are going to deal with this long-term.
 
sullydnl said:
The problem with the "herd immunity" approach was never that it wouldn't be useful to have a large percentage of the population become immune.

The issues were:

1) We had and maybe still have little reliable information on how likely people are to become infected a second time, which is a pretty huge issue if you're desperately depending on them not doing so.

2) Even countries that were trying their best to suppress the virus were seeing their healthcare systems get overwhelmed, so a more laissez faire approach with the specific aim of building herd immunity would have been a disaster in the short/medium term.

I mean it's fine for whatever scientists to point out that herd immunity would be very useful if immunity works that way in this particular case but I'm not sure what impact that idea is supposed to have on current policy given a health system like the UK's is about to get overrun as is. Of all the problems you're facing right now, a lack of infected patients really isn't one.
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Pretty much, the only scenario where I could see this herd immunity malarkey have sense, is if when people are tested positive to Covid19 we leave them alone, some will die while others won"t. But if you decide to try to treat everyone then your health system is doomed.
 
Pagh Wraith said:
Totally agree. I also see the main purpose of a lockdown as buying us time to figure out how we are going to deal with this long-term.
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Sorry to be awkward but I'm somewhat confused by your posts. One minute you seem to be against a lockdown and the next in favour. I can understand the Germans being against a Chinese style total lockdown that hopes to eradicate the disease, but what about a British style one that is intended just to slow down the spread?
 
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TMDaines said:
Young people dying are still statistical outliers. If you're young and you have no underlying health issues, I'm not sure what there is to "shite scared" about. Do you live your life in fear of all improbable events? Respect the situation, take all necessary and proportional precautions, but don't become irrational. We are going to require young, healthy people to lead the volunteering effort.
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See above
 
People won't put up with lockdowns for long. If the weather continues like this and with the longer evenings there will be a collective "Feck this" sooner rather than later.
 
arnie_ni said:
Can someone explained to me how every person under 70 with no underlying health issues getting infected stops those elderly or with health conditions from dying?

Will the virus suddenly just disappear?
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The logic seems to be that you get everyone "safest" from it to get it.
They'll then have it for 10-14 days or whatever the lifespan is, and then they are immune.

The more immune people out there, the fewer chances for at risk people to pick it up. It's almost like engineering the effect of a vaccine in a way.

This does though rely on the sudden massively higher amount of people carrying it staying away from people while they are contagious.

At the moment we're all staying in. The risk is that while short term this reduces cases what happens when we're all unleashed back out there with so few people immune? It most likely starts up again.
 
TMDaines said:
Young people dying are still statistical outliers. If you're young and you have no underlying health issues, I'm not sure what there is to "shite scared" about. Do you live your life in fear of all improbable events? Respect the situation, take all necessary and proportional precautions, but don't become irrational. We are going to require young, healthy people to lead the volunteering effort.
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That’s what statistics seem to imply indeed. There are tragic cases among the younger patients as well but much less frequent, the issue is even if mortality is 1 in 500 you are still sacrificing many lives if you just allow all of them to get sick. How many people between 20 and 40 die for any reasons during the year, 1% or less? Then giving them extra 0.2% is a material change to that likelihood.
 
TMDaines said:
Young people dying are still statistical outliers. If you're young and you have no underlying health issues, I'm not sure what there is to "shite scared" about. Do you live your life in fear of all improbable events? Respect the situation, take all necessary and proportional precautions, but don't become irrational. We are going to require young, healthy people to lead the volunteering effort.
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I guess some look beyond their own personal health and can be scared for others. Snowflakes eh
 
sullydnl said:
The problem with the "herd immunity" approach was never that it wouldn't be useful to have a large percentage of the population become immune.

The issues were:

1) We had and maybe still have little reliable information on how likely people are to become infected a second time, which is a pretty huge issue if you're desperately depending on them not doing so.

2) Even countries that were trying their best to suppress the virus were seeing their healthcare systems get overwhelmed, so a more laissez faire approach with the specific aim of building herd immunity would have been a disaster in the short/medium term.

I mean it's fine for whatever scientists to point out that herd immunity would be very useful if immunity works that way in this particular case but I'm not sure what impact that idea is supposed to have on current policy given a health system like the UK's is about to get overrun as is. Of all the problems you're facing right now, a lack of infected patients really isn't one.
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Your first point is currently my great concern - we currently don’t understand enough about the way this virus behaves in different environments to take the chance on ‘herd immunity’ before we give ourselves the best chance possible of being able to accurately trace its path - which we cannot do without a lockdown of at least a month or two.
 
711 said:
Sorry to be awkward but I'm somewhat confused by your posts. One minute you seem to be against a lockdown and the next in favour. I can understand the Germans being against a Chinese style total lockdown that hopes to eradicate the disease, but what about a British style one that is intended just to slow down the spread?
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I agree with a temporal lockdown of a few weeks but only if that time is used to come up with a plan to keep the health care system functional and protect higher-risk groups. Anything beyond that seems to be counter-productive according to experts like the one in the article I quoted. The more I read about it, the more difficult it becomes to justify keeping young and healthy people off the streets.
 
Pagh Wraith said:
I agree with a temporal lockdown of a few weeks if that time is used to come up with a plan to keep the health care system functional and protect higher-risk groups. Anything beyond that seems to be counter-productive according to experts like the one in the article I quoted. The more I read about it, the more difficult it becomes to justify keeping young and healthy people off the streets.
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And what about the other more numerous experts that disagree with the one in the article?
 
Sarni said:
That’s what statistics seem to imply indeed. There are tragic cases among the younger patients as well but much less frequent, the issue is even if mortality is 1 in 500 you are still sacrificing many lives if you just allow all of them to get sick. How many people between 20 and 40 die for any reasons during the year, 1% or less? Then giving them extra 0.2% is a material change to that likelihood.
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http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html

That's from 2005 but :

Mortality rate for 25-34 year old men was 1 in 1215 and women it's 1 in 2488 so about 0.0008% for men and 0.0004% for women.
 
JPRouve said:
And what about the other more numerous experts that disagree with the one in the article?
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I would listen to all of them (much more than to anyone on a football forum) but keep in mind where there are from. What is right for Germany, doesn't have to be right for England or Italy. Clearly we have to prevent the health care systems from being overrun which is what happened in Italy. Though the social and economic impact of lockdowns will be similar for everyone. I have an opinion as everyone does but I'm no expert so I am loath to commit in any direction. I just think it's imporant to discuss these alternative views and what I have noticed is that they aren't coming from politicians or economists but (leading) virologists and epidemologists.
 
Harries currently making the same point I made two days ago about a necessary time lag with the death count for a whole multitude of reasons. Can’t just have a body and then add a notch to the tally chart.

Edit: Harries, not Parris or Harris!
 
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Organic Potatoes said:
Daily US update (useful interactive map after the jump): https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS-USA/0100B5K8423/index.html
123,329 from midnight this AM.

Chicago is racing ahead to join New Orleans and Detroit as new hotspots. I don’t know what happened in Detroit, with Chicago it just seemed like it was a matter of time.

Colorado has a fairly high number relative to population. They had some risk factors like people hitting the ski slopes one last time. Texas is still relatively low; I don’t know if the oil industry going into a tailspin at the start of this helped with people staying at home, but I don’t think that would explain all of it.
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Michigan, Illinois, and Florida recently had elections.
 
Pagh Wraith said:
I agree with a temporal lockdown of a few weeks but only if that time is used to come up with a plan to keep the health care system functional and protect higher-risk groups. Anything beyond that seems to be counter-productive according to experts like the one in the article I quoted. The more I read about it, the more difficult it becomes to justify keeping young and healthy people off the streets.
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Thanks for replying. I got the impression earlier that you were totally against a lockdown but I may have misunderstood. The British plan seems to be to keep reviewing and react according to scientific advice, which seems logical to me.
 
2cents said:
Your first point is currently my great concern - we currently don’t understand enough about the way this virus behaves in different environments to take the chance on ‘herd immunity’ before we give ourselves the best chance possible of being able to accurately trace its path - which we cannot do without a lockdown of at least a month or two.
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I remember you posted a link about the virus coming back in cleared patients. Do you know if anything more has come out of that? If those people are asymptmatic/ fight it better// fight it worse, it will explain a lot I think.
 
Skills said:
http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html

That's from 2005 but :

Mortality rate for 25-34 year old men was 1 in 1215 and women it's 1 in 2488 so about 0.0008% for men and 0.0004% for women.
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I think you have your decimals wrong. That’s 0.08% for men and 0.04% for women. So basically having 0.2% to die from coronavirus once contracted beats that. If you assume 40% chance of contracting it annually, then you are as likely to die from coronavirus at a young age as you are to die for all other reasons combined. So while it’s still unlikely, it’s a big statistical change. Even if 0.2% is overestimated (it probably is considering how few deaths there were among young patients in Italy and Korea, and the fact that we haven’t picked up all symptomless patients), it’s still going to be material. If you let all of them get sick, you will likely have more people die from coronavirus than any other cause in young adults.

I imagine those deaths will include suicides too which you have obvious impact on. So it’s even worse than that when it comes to natural causes/accidents vs COVID-19.
 
Paul Brand from ITV News asks Dr Harries if current measures in place will continue beyond three weeks.

She points out the UK has only had one week of the measure and that the prime minister said the situation would be "reviewed" after the three weeks.

But she adds it would be "quite dangerous" to then revert to normal life.

"If we stop then all of our efforts will be wasted", she adds.

She says that measures may be reduced gradually over time.

Dr Harries says it might be two or three months before we see the longer-term impact, and about three to six months before to see "at which point we can actually get back to normal".

"And it is plausible it could go further than that", she adds.
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Snafu17 said:
Couple of zeros too many on those percentages surely? 0.08% and 0.04% makes more sense.
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Sarni said:
I think you have your decimals wrong. That’s 0.08% for men and 0.04% for women. So basically having 0.2% to die from coronavirus once contracted beats that. If you assume 40% chance of contracting it annually, then you are as likely to die from coronavirus at a young age as you are to die for all other reasons combined. So while it’s still unlikely, it’s a big statistical change. Even if 0.2% is overestimated (it probably is considering how few deaths there were among young patients in Italy and Korea, and the fact that we haven’t picked up all symptomless patients), it’s still going to be material. If you let all of them get sick, you will likely have more people die from coronavirus than any other cause in young adults.

I imagine those deaths will include suicides too which you have obvious impact on. So it’s even worse than that when it comes to natural causes/accidents vs COVID-19.
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You are of course right. I cocked up :nervous:
 
Sarni said:
I think you have your decimals wrong. That’s 0.08% for men and 0.04% for women. So basically having 0.2% to die from coronavirus once contracted beats that. If you assume 40% chance of contracting it annually, then you are as likely to die from coronavirus at a young age as you are to die for all other reasons combined. So while it’s still unlikely, it’s a big statistical change. Even if 0.2% is overestimated (it probably is considering how few deaths there were among young patients in Italy and Korea, and the fact that we haven’t picked up all symptomless patients), it’s still going to be material. If you let all of them get sick, you will likely have more people die from coronavirus than any other cause in young adults.

I imagine those deaths will include suicides too which you have obvious impact on. So it’s even worse than that when it comes to natural causes/accidents vs COVID-19.
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On the other hand that percentage only reflects deaths while the healthcare system is overwhelmed. If you get infected once the pandemic is somewhat under control your chances of survival might increase dramatically. It's also likely that a significant portion of infected haven't been identified which would bring the case fatality rate even further down. Your chances of death also increase if you have a preexisting condition. There's a lot of variables to consider and we don't know a large portion of them this early in the pandemic.
 
So many threads I could have put this.
We are a special kind of stupid.
 
In the U.K., the key decision in terms of rolling back the lockdown is going to be when they allow the pubs to be reopened. Once they are, as the government should know, they are going to to absolutely rammed.

When do we think this is going to be? (Asking for a friend)
 
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TMDaines said:
Young people dying are still statistical outliers. If you're young and you have no underlying health issues, I'm not sure what there is to "shite scared" about. Do you live your life in fear of all improbable events? Respect the situation, take all necessary and proportional precautions, but don't become irrational. We are going to require young, healthy people to lead the volunteering effort.
Click to expand...

I think this is the right approach. Take the right actions to protect yourself and others but there's no evidence at the moment that healthy relatively young people should be overly concerned.

Sarni said:
That’s what statistics seem to imply indeed. There are tragic cases among the younger patients as well but much less frequent, the issue is even if mortality is 1 in 500 you are still sacrificing many lives if you just allow all of them to get sick. How many people between 20 and 40 die for any reasons during the year, 1% or less? Then giving them extra 0.2% is a material change to that likelihood.
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Even if it is 0.2% it's likely many of the people contributing to that number in the younger age group have existing health problems. I'm not buying the current media narrative of all these healthy young fit people dying. They're loving it at the moment! The Daily mail posted a story about a 65 year old clearly massively overweight women claiming she had no prior problems, it's ridiculous!

Sarni said:
I think you have your decimals wrong. That’s 0.08% for men and 0.04% for women. So basically having 0.2% to die from coronavirus once contracted beats that. If you assume 40% chance of contracting it annually, then you are as likely to die from coronavirus at a young age as you are to die for all other reasons combined. So while it’s still unlikely, it’s a big statistical change. Even if 0.2% is overestimated (it probably is considering how few deaths there were among young patients in Italy and Korea, and the fact that we haven’t picked up all symptomless patients), it’s still going to be material. If you let all of them get sick, you will likely have more people die from coronavirus than any other cause in young adults.

I imagine those deaths will include suicides too which you have obvious impact on. So it’s even worse than that when it comes to natural causes/accidents vs COVID-19.
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I think nobody wants to contract this disease even the young, but if you are young and healthy there isn't any reason to be overly concerned at the moment. Most of the deaths in the young age group will be due to underlying disease. There will always be the odd statistical outlier though.
 
fergieisold said:
I think young people should show a level of concern but not panic and certainly not read too much into the media loving the narrative of 'another young fit and healthy person dead' headlines. On further investigation most of those articles are likely inaccurate in my opinion.



A quick google and you might be right. the condition actually is caused by an over active immune system, so a cytokine storm might be the explanation!
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He died of septic shock I think.

@OnlyTwoDaSilvas is right, he was doing Prednisolone.

Judging by the rumours I think he lived in a crowded house with a very low socioeconomic status, so he was extremely vulnerable. I think the health system must have failed him somehow, an immunossuppressed child should either have stopped the treatment temporarily during this crisis (if possible) or placed in a more controlled environment.
 
berbatrick said:
I remember you posted a link about the virus coming back in cleared patients. Do you know if anything more has come out of that? If those people are asymptmatic/ fight it better// fight it worse, it will explain a lot I think.
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Haven’t heard anything. But there’s so few of those types of reports that I’m hoping they’re reflective of procedural failures rather than re-infection. I’m still pinning my hopes on the summer slowing this thing down, although news from Florida and Louisiana is not encouraging in that regard.
 
nimic said:
Some Norwegian doctors have been prescribing it to themselves and their families and friends, which is a big no-no, particularly after the authorities made it a more restricted prescription to safeguard the supplies in case the trials turn out well (and obviously for people who actually already need it for other conditions). Some of them will hopefully be in a little bit of trouble.
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I would hope so, what a ridiculously stupid thing to do, especially when the current evidence (unless something new has popped up in the last few days) is not conclusive in the slightest.
 
fergieisold said:
I think this is the right approach. Take the right actions to protect yourself and others but there's no evidence at the moment that healthy relatively young people should be overly concerned.



Even if it is 0.2% it's likely many of the people contributing to that number in the younger age group have existing health problems. I'm not buying the current media narrative of all these healthy young fit people dying. They're loving it at the moment! The Daily mail posted a story about a 65 year old clearly massively overweight women claiming she had no prior problems, it's ridiculous!

I think nobody wants to contract this disease even the young, but if you are young and healthy there isn't any reason to be overly concerned at the moment. Most of the deaths in the young age group will be due to underlying disease. There will always be the odd statistical outlier though.
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Well I agree, I was just pointing out that it’s not a complete insignificant risk. I’m 31 and mostly healthy save for high cholesterol, I am more concerned about possibly passing it to someone more vulnerable rather than contracting this myself.
 
Sarni said:
Well I agree, I was just pointing out that it’s not a complete insignificant risk. I’m 31 and mostly healthy save for high cholesterol, I am more concerned about possibly passing it to someone more vulnerable rather than contracting this myself.
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Yeh, it's definitely something to take seriously. I just don't want to worry too much. I have been a bit nervous because I drink way too much and probably have high blood pressure but at the same time I do crossfit so I count myself as pretty fit! Sounds like the high blood pressure association might actually be the meds rather than the condition!

I'm 32.
 
No longer looking forward to the week. Staying at home is killing me.
 
Sandikan said:
The logic seems to be that you get everyone "safest" from it to get it.
They'll then have it for 10-14 days or whatever the lifespan is, and then they are immune.

The more immune people out there, the fewer chances for at risk people to pick it up. It's almost like engineering the effect of a vaccine in a way.

This does though rely on the sudden massively higher amount of people carrying it staying away from people while they are contagious.

At the moment we're all staying in. The risk is that while short term this reduces cases what happens when we're all unleashed back out there with so few people immune? It most likely starts up again.
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Why does flu pop up again and again then? Because it slightly mutates? Who knows this wouldnt?
 
Pagh Wraith said:
The argument is that with no vaccine in sight, lockdowns merely postpone the problem. As soon as the restrictions are lifted, people will get infected again. Developing immunity through infection is key to dealing with this, this is what experts seem to agree on. So young, healthy people may as well get infected now in a controlled way and then go back to work. Because if they don't, the economic impact will be disastrous and cause many more people to die.
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I can see the economic benefit of it, if it doesnt slightly mutate and all those that are "immune" then come crashing down with it
 
If this continues into June and I’m feeling secure about my job (I’m a manager in financial planning so I’d think my job should be fairly secure all things considered, we are going to be needed in the upcoming months I guess) I will be looking out for any of my friends or relatives who need some financial help. One of my friends is running a food truck business and they are on the verge of a collapse already, it’s going to get even worse with time so I’ll probably try to subside him for a while. Maybe buy a share of business but without any profit (e.g. a share of his profit after he’s back functioning but only until debt is paid off). I almost feel guilty that I’m still making good salary while so many are struggling.
 
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