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

How will the news that reinfection is possible effect the crisis? Does it mean that the virus morphs more than we initially thought making it more like other corona virus types that hard to make effective vaccines for? Will it make lockdowns pointless as people can reactivate and then infect at any time?

Worrying development that might make all our measures much less effective if you are susceptible to the virus in a really bad way.
 
Carolina Red said:
Not to mention that same population was thrown from the Great Depression straight into WWII... and many also had lived through WWI.
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Again: that stat comes from Germany, after it seems like the country will avoid a health care collapse. I think it's quite a stretch to assume people would feel the same if the situation was closer to what's unfolding in the UK or what happened in Italy. If similar questions get similar answers in certain other countries then fair enough.
 
horsechoker said:
I reckon this is the real slow down and not China's supposed slowdown. With that said, Italy might see another upsurge next week or the week after because of Easter.
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There's a quarantine in effect, so there shouldn't be one. If anything you'd think most new infections are related with people that are still going to work.
 
horsechoker said:
I reckon this is the real slow down and not China's supposed slowdown. With that said, Italy might see another upsurge next week or the week after because of Easter.
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Is this news? There were cases of reinfection back in February, doesn't seem to have altered anyone's methods of tackling the virus?
 
Dwazza Gunnar Solskjær said:
We're so fecking weak we almost deserve to be annihilated by this virus.

Imagine how people handled WWII. Six years of struggle and we can't even manage three weeks without getting tied of it and having trouble coping.

I guess I can take comfort in the fact that no matter what the circumstances people will invariably make me sick, the pathetic fecks.
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I imagine that if the virus was shooting people in the face they would be more likely to stay inside. There's a lot less of a visible and an immediate threat with COVID. It's a pointless comparison.
 
I feel for people living in busy cities/towns. Living in a rural village it's easy for us to go out for a nice walk and maybe only come across one other person, we don't have to worry about peak times and things like that.
 
Carolina Red said:
Not to mention that same population was thrown from the Great Depression straight into WWII... and many also had lived through WWI.
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Of course, folks back then also had their own issues with self-restraint and viral diseases. Even with a concrete understanding of the risks and a simple solution to avoid them, syphilis got around rightly. Personally I think people throw a bit too much morality into discussions about self-restraint, overlooking the often overwhelming biological impulses it's in contest with.
 
Snafu17 said:
There's a quarantine in effect, so there shouldn't be one. If anything you'd think most new infections are related with people that are still going to work.
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The quarantine has worked in slowing down abd reducing the numbers from the peak but its not a complete isolation, people still go shopping and interact with each other. Moreover, asymptomatic can still spread the virus especially if they haven't been tested. Italy was always going to suffer because people typically live with their families even in their 30s and 40s.

Unfortunately I expect 25k deaths by the end of this lockdown.
 
Pexbo said:
Are you joking? These people are politicians and are accountable for their actions and decisions. The cabinet is made up of rabid Brexieers who have made it an incredibly uncomfortable place for immigrant workers to ply their trade.


Here is the warning 4 years ago that they chose to ignore:
Brexit 'will make NHS staff shortages worse'

Here is the reality:
More than 22,000 EU nationals have left NHS since Brexit referendum, figures show

If now, during a crisis, when we are building emergency hospitals that we do not have enough staff to actually service is not the time to hold these people accountable for their statements and their decisions that have lead to this farcical level of unpreparedness, when exactly do you think that time will be?

Let them crack on with blaming footballers for earning too much money, NHS staff for frivolous use of PPE equipment and while mortality figures are smashing ahead as #1 in Europe, we should all be using this as a time to celebrate Boris's sudoku spirit instead.

You can feck right off if you expect me to be OK with that attitude.
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Ok, firstly what did hancock blame footballers for? Im not sure he blamed them for anything, certainly not in relation to the coronavirus.

Regarding staffing numbers, i think its true to say that most countries are struggling with skilled trained icu doctors and nurses at this time. From whats been reported its a very skilled and specialist job for someone to intubate someone with coronavirus.
Now i dont know if thats the sort of person that has left the NHS as you have alluded to or not.
I do come back to my original point though that the governments imigration policy should not be debated at this time.
I see Germany have been taking patients from Spain and italy, i also see china have sent doctors to other countries.
As other people have pointed out, no western country has been able to contain this pandemic without resorting to measures unheard of in all our lifetimes.
You accused matt hancock of 'blaming' footballers in your post, it seems to me that people want to blame all sorts of things for our situation. Blame china, blame Trump, blame Tories, Blame idiots not following the guidelines.
Truth is as far as i can see, this has been a perfect storm brewing for years helped by so many things, international travel, secretive governments covering up, high density of population, wet markets, etc etc etc. You seem keen to blame government cuts but in my opinion there are so many more facets to this
 
Skills said:
It's the same test from everything I know. The test kit is what you use to to preserve the sample you take from someone.

The sample is then tested in a lab in a PCR. Funnily enough, my friends company in the middle are looking at supplying the kits from South Korea in different countries in the middle east. He sent me the sales pack for it
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do.ob said:
I've seen a small article in German where the director for the institute for virology of the university clinic Leipzig put the certainty at 99.9% and the director of the institute for virology of the technical university of Dresden is quoted with "more than 97%". All assuming that swabs are taken correctly I guess.
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senorgregster said:
@worldgonemad

Here's a summary of serology tests to date. There's actually a lot more, in different states of crappiness. Don't trust the data for accuracy, sensitivity or specificity but it will give you a sense of where we are heading.

http://www.centerforhealthsecurity....rology/Serology-based-tests-for-COVID-19.html
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Thanks guys for replies
@senorgregster thats some reading, i will take a look later
 
Prometheus said:
But do we really have any reason to believe that the initial government approach was based on any real science?
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This chap is one of the advisers to the government and this thread details how the government makes decisions in times like this



This was his response to the herd immunity business



I do think that the initial response was based on some real science.
 
Oldham said:
The big difference in the countries response has been timing of the restrictions, for instance no visitors for the elderly dwelling was Iceland first action 6 weeks ago, but Sweden just took that measure a week ago. Now it seems the virus has hit the elderly bad in Stockholm.
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Some Swedish health expert (the Swedish health expert, I think, at least that's the way Norwegian media has treated him) claimed that the difference in death rate between Sweden and Norway (and the other Nordic countries, but it was a response to a Norwegian journalist) is that 1) Sweden is further along in the infection cycle and 2) the elderly homes (and such) in Sweden were hit much harder than Norway so far. He didn't really have an explanation for why elderly homes were hit harder, beyond maybe random chance.
 
nimic said:
Some Swedish health expert (the Swedish health expert, I think, at least that's the way Norwegian media has treated him) claimed that the difference in death rate between Sweden and Norway (and the other Nordic countries, but it was a response to a Norwegian journalist) is that 1) Sweden is further along in the infection cycle and 2) the elderly homes (and such) in Sweden were hit much harder than Norway so far. He didn't really have an explanation for why elderly homes were hit harder, beyond maybe random chance.
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I saw a report that Norway just have a much more professional approach in their nursing homes, that Sweden are a long way behind Norway when it comes to treating our elderley.

What I will say to @Oldham is that the missus gran is in a short term care home for dementia, and we haven’t been able to visit her for over a month. We look at her through a window and she’s beyond confused, depressed and sad. Poor thing, what a time to end up there, she just gets to see her great grand daughter through a window and can’t hug her. It’s devastating and she calls us 10 times a day :(

So yeah, the government “banned” visitors but many many nursing and care homes had taken that step a long long time before due to health ministry recommendations.

What’s likely is that Iceland just have a shit load less people than anywhere, Stockholm region alone has almost 7 times the population of all of I Iceland, hence why you guys are no doubt doing so well.

People also can’t grip that Iceland may have had 200 infected on 1st March and Stockholm 10,000, maybe Norway had 30,000 but are just fecking awesome. We’ll never know these figures.
Gothenburg figures (also bigger population than Iceland) say the number of infected in Stockholm when it all kicked off in Europe was the bigger problem, not the easier restrictions.
 
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Dante said:
Do you know of any website that provides the uncombined figures for the UK?
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They're not combined. What they release as far as I know is hospital deaths. BBC had an article looking into all deaths at care homes and found most end up in hospital at that time of looking so not many die at the care homes so far.

JPRouve said:
As for the bolded point where does that come from?
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It goes back to my original post you quoted, the BBC article about UK care home deaths and the French 4599 care home deaths so far from March.
 
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Regulus Arcturus Black said:
I saw a report that Norway just have a much more professional approach in their nursing homes, that Sweden are a long way behind Norway when it comes to treating our elderley.

What I will say to @Oldham is that the missus gran is in a short term care home for dementia, and we haven’t been able to visit her for over a month. We look at her through a window and she’s beyond confused, depressed and sad. Poor thing, what a time to end up there, she just gets to see her great grand daughter through a window and can’t hug her. It’s devastating and she calls us 10 times a day :(

So yeah, the government “banned” visitors but many many nursing and care homes had taken that step a long long time before due to health ministry recommendations.
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Yeah, maybe. Whatever else is true, it's going to be very interesting to see the end result of all of this. Hopefully we get a better idea of how the spread happened, what went wrong, what could have been the correct move, etc. Right now it seems like Norwegians mostly approve of the Norwegian way of doing it, and Swedes approve of the Swedish way of doing it, with some dissenters here and there. For example, it will be interesting to see how the Swedish economy comes out of this, compared to the Norwegian economy. Obviously this will be skewed by Norway having the sovereign wealth fun to fund emergency measures, but Sweden is a rich, well-run country as well.
 
BeforeKeanetherewasRobson said:
:lol: Not getting the love that deserves. Political comedy to rival Ben Elton

(Edit. You could reply with "than-coo")
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Nah, you're alright. I have more respeckt for myself than that. Don't mean to squabble but birds puns are owlful.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Yup. Swine flu vaccine dished out some nasty narcolepsy right?

Give me Covid-19 over that.
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In Finland 230 people got narcolepsy from that. Over 2.5m had the vaccine, so less than 1 in 10.000 got narcolepsy. Your chance of dying from covid is more than 1 in 10.000, so I would go with the vaccine myself.
 
massi83 said:
In Finland 230 people got narcolepsy from that. Over 2.5m had the vaccine, so less than 1 in 10.000 got narcolepsy. Your chance of dying from covid is more than 1 in 10.000, so I would go with the vaccine myself.
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Is my chance that? Or is the population chance that?
What are my chances at 39 and fit as feck? :)
Do we have a number for that?

Less than 1 in 10,000 to be fair, that’s a decent figure. Not what it should be for a vaccine I’d say but not as bad as sometimes made out.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
This chap is one of the advisers to the government and this thread details how the government makes decisions in times like this



This was his response to the herd immunity business



I do think that the initial response was based on some real science.
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Wasnt the modelling a cluster feck? It mught have been science but it was 2 plus 2 equals 5 science and deserves condemnation
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Is my chance that? Or is the population chance that?
What are my chances at 39 and fit as feck? :)
Do we have a number for that?
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Your, I figured you would be around 35-40, probably around 1 in 1.000-3.000 for you and me. Well, population chance of dying is also more than 1 in 10.000 obviously, as I think it will be 0.3%-1.5%
 
Simbo said:
Will work with what side effects? I think any human trial is supposed to be 14 month minimum for this sort of thing. If your going to mass vaccinate everybody on the planet you have to be absolutely-fecking-sure.
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The plot twist is that they gamble on the vaccine and it's a side effect that kills us all by sterilizing everybody.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Can I do that. :drool:

Seriously though, there has been so much negative press regarding Sweden, completely ignoring how well we have done compared to say Belgium, Holland, Switzerland. Even fexking Trump is getting in on it, the cheek of the fuxker :lol:

But as I said above, even those comparisons are pointless as we’ll never ever know how countries infected rate looked when Italy kicked off.
Could quite easily be that Belgium had 10 times the infected Sweden did on 9th March.
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I don’t think Sweden has had much negative press.

They’ve gambled. People are sensibly looking and discussing. If you think this is bad press, wait until you’re proven wrong (if so).

I honestly don’t know why you’re picking up a sword on a hill right now. Everyone hopes that Sweden has done something avante garde that the rest of the world can follow. Nobody is hoping Sweden fails. But to defend a policy that cannot be judged for months is silly and a waste of your time.

Sweden is great. But Swedish people are more different that the average European than the English. You guys have an odd relationship with disease, evolution and such. Open eugenics programs, forced sterilisation, it doesn’t surprise me that the country is willing to roll the dice and see if you can just ‘Pass through it’.

There’s no racial or bigoted angle to my comments. I’ve never met a Swede I didn’t like. I love the cities, culture. But very few countries have a populace that could handle the route you’re taking.

By all means defend policy. But take on board the fact it will look very callous and plain nutty to an outsider.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Ahhhh Bastard. No sleep it is then.

But wait... 2 dead in Sweden in my age bracket from 10,000 cases, likely many many more cases. Likely both with underlying conditions.

I’ll wait with the jab.
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You are confusing the fact that the 10.000 is all the cases in Sweden. How many in your age group?
 
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
I don’t think Sweden has had much negative press.

They’ve gambled. People are sensibly looking and discussing. If you think this is bad press, wait until you’re proven wrong (if so).

I honestly don’t know why you’re picking up a sword on a hill right now. Everyone hopes that Sweden has done something avante garde that the rest of the world can follow. Nobody is hoping Sweden fails. But to defend a policy that cannot be judged for months is silly and a waste of your time.

Sweden is great. But Swedish people are more different that the average European than the English. You guys have an odd relationship with disease, evolution and such. Open eugenics programs, forced sterilisation, it doesn’t surprise me that the country is willing to roll the dice and see if you can just ‘Pass through it’.

There’s no racial or bigoted angle to my comments. I’ve never met a Swede I didn’t like. I love the cities, culture. But very few countries have a populace that could handle the route you’re taking.

By all means defend policy. But take on board the fact it will look very callous and plain nutty to an outsider.
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You realise I’m a Manc right @UnrelatedPsuedo?

I think my home country gambled, they had a plan, probably a shit one for such a populated country, they panicked and now it looks like the blind leading the blind over there. They like France closed the barn doors long after the horse had bolted.

Sweden aren’t gambling, they have a clear plan and methods to implement it and the information overload we get daily is light years ahead of home. I feel a shit load safer here that’s for sure.
So far it’s showing.
 
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Regulus Arcturus Black said:
I reckon easily 10,000 30-40 year old have it in Sweden. Probably double that.

We only know the hospitalized ones though I’m afraid.
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Probably quite close. And if 2 of them die, it is right there in my probability range. Remember it can take up to 60 days for someone to die from this, young people especially fight longer.
 
cyberman said:
Wasnt the modelling a cluster feck? It mught have been science but it was 2 plus 2 equals 5 science and deserves condemnation
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They changed track when the Imperial study was released as that gave much worse outcomes but since then that model has been challenged as being far too negative by other experts.

As far as I understand the key error they made was a belief that the British people wouldn’t accept a lockdown so they tried the use ‘nudge theory’ to gently persuade people to behave but that didn’t work.

I think the communication has been poor and Boris has been especially poor when going off message and waffling about ‘theories’. We’re also reaping the legacy of Cameron’s austerity on the NHS and other services. I do think that power is far too centralised in England too and that has hindered responsiveness to the crisis.
 
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