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

[Hound Dog]

If it happens, amazing, but we just can't plan on it. September seems crazy unrealistic, and vaccinologists have no expertise in actually manufacturing things on large scale. Even if they had a safe vaccine that works now, distributing this year would be difficult.

I am not saying that we can plan on it, as the truth is that no one knows when it will be available.

What I was trying to point out is that it is ridiculous that some people are claiming that it will certainly take 18+ months, while there is a leading scientist claiming that there is a very good chance that it will be finished in five months.

 

[Simbo]

Well how did they manage to contain SARS so much better and why haven't they done so this time?

Because SARS was a very different disease that was much more deadly. It floored people before they could spread it en mass. People are spreading this one before they even show symptoms, it couldn't have been stopped.

 

[Fiskey]

I am not saying that we can plan on it, as the truth is that no one knows when it will be available.

What I was trying to point out is that it is ridiculous that some people are claiming that it will certainly take 18+ months, while there is a leading scientist claiming that there is a very good chance that it will be finished in five months.

I think she means having a working vaccine. There will be a fair amount of time between developing the working vaccine and getting it manufactured and distributed.

We've seen how difficult it is to manufacture and distribute PPE! Doing the same thing for a novel vaccine for way more people is of orders of magnitude more complicated.

 

[Wibble]

I am not saying that we can plan on it, as the truth is that no one knows when it will be available.

What I was trying to point out is that it is ridiculous that some people are claiming that it will certainly take 18+ months, while there is a leading scientist claiming that there is a very good chance that it will be finished in five months.

5 months is impossible. 18 months for a widespread immunisation rollout will be 3 or 4 times faster than we have ever done it before and even then that assumes everything goes smoothly.

 

[Compton22]

There was a research paper from South Korea that looked at 300-400 recovered patients. The young adults in that group produced little to no antibodies, which suggests that immunity is rare for young people. This in return means that it could last until we have a vaccine

Having antibodies in the bloodsteam constantly is not the only way immunity works. When the virus is defeated, T-cells store the memory of the virus and the antibody used in case the virus reinfects the body. If/when that happens, the immune response is much quicker and lots of antibodies are released to deal with the virus before it takes hold in the body. That's probably a big part of the reason why antibody tests are not reliable or useful. Plus, it may be the case that some of the mild or asymptomatic cases may not result in much antibody production anyway. It'll be really interesting if they could find out the reason why there is so much difference in how the body responds to being infected with coronavirus.

 

[711]

Just a thought, but I wonder if we'll start to see a rise in loony religions and loony religious beliefs before long? One or two idiots apart the churches and mosques, at least in most countries, have done well at taking the 'no gatherings' thing to heart and set a good example of course, but when people are terrified and desperate for solutions and reassurance that's when logic flies out of the window and the loonyness begins. 5g phone masts today, god says do this or else tomorrow?

 

[Hound Dog]

5 months is impossible. 18 months for a widespread immunisation rollout will be 3 or 4 times faster than we have ever done it before and even then that assumes everything goes smoothly.

I was talking about the timeframe of a vaccine being developed and tested, not distributed.

 

[Wumminator]

Just a thought, but I wonder if we'll start to see a rise in loony religions and loony religious beliefs before long? One or two idiots apart the churches and mosques, at least in most countries, have done well at taking the 'no gatherings' thing to heart and set a good example of course, but when people are terrified and desperate for solutions and reassurance that's when logic flies out of the window and the loonyness begins. 5g phone masts today, god says do this or else tomorrow?

My post is somewhat related to yours.

But has anyone else been flabbergasted at just how bad science has been during all this?

I know that sounds ridiculous, but I think I've lived in a bubble for so long that I am shocked things got this bad.

In my head if there was ever a disease like this that was having a massive impact on the world, I thought we'd at least be able to mass produce tests for it easily enough. And mass produce tests that fecking worked.

Stuff like ventilator shortages. I literally thought it would be as easy as just flipping a switch in a factory to double setting and we'd be sorted. We have fecking doctors wearing bin bags FFS. I thought the world was better than this.

 

[11101]

Median age of the whole population. Not tested, not cases, not deaths. The whole population. Didn't spend more than 5 secs on googling any of those, but seem quite right also intuitively. Happy to look at better data from someone else. But the point that Icelandic are young and Italians are Europe's oldest (at least top3) stands.

Fair enough that makes sense. Italy has the second oldest population in the world after Japan (who we now know were lying about their situation) and one of the highest smoking rates.

The time to die was very short and the case fatality rate very high early on, as the weaker patients died quickly. Both numbers are slowing down over time.

 

[Wibble]

Pogue, isn’t there a chance that because SO many people are working on this that it could be quicker than any other?

8-10 years is typical so yes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_drug_development

 

[Dancfc]

So young and relatively fit people will still be required to get on with their everyday lives as much as possible. We are not going to see an 18month worldwide quarantine or dystopian perverse fantasy that some people seem desperate to see happen.

I was truly thinking about it last night and I was quite scared at how easy it was to turn the public into a submissive choir.

Now I'm not talking lockdown in itself because that was the right thing to do (at this point) I'm talking the people who are taking this too far. On social media you see people bitching about people taking exercise or buying stuff that's deemed to be non essential, or even their neighbours talking at a distance, some people are taking their role in this a little too far.

It worries me because it clearly demonstrates it won't be very hard to manipulate people into not only accepting martial law, but to also help implement it.

 

[Fiskey]

I was truly thinking about it last night and I was quite scared at how easy it was to turn the public into a submissive choir.

Now I'm not talking lockdown in itself because that was the right thing to do (at this point) I'm talking the people who are taking this too far. On social media you see people bitching about people taking exercise or buying stuff that's deemed to be non essential, or even their neighbours talking at a distance, some people are taking their role in this a little too far.

It worries me because it clearly demonstrates it won't be very hard to manipulate people into not only accepting martial law, but to also help implement it.

This, makes more worried about the 60 or so years I still hope to live.

 

[sullydnl]

https://www.businessinsider.com/cor...eptember-oxford-vaccinologist-uk-death-2020-4

What about this?

I am not saying that we can plan on it, as the truth is that no one knows when it will be available.

What I was trying to point out is that it is ridiculous that some people are claiming that it will certainly take 18+ months, while there is a leading scientist claiming that there is a very good chance that it will be finished in five months.

Three things about that:

1) That time frame is based on her being 80% sure the vaccine will work and everything going perfectly after that. The 20% where the vaccine doesn't work and the extreme likelihood of things not going perfectly afterwards is huge room for error and delay, even assuming her assessment is correct, which it may well not be.

2) As she says, having it "ready" for September would depend on the government putting in the resources to begin mass production before the vaccine has actually proven to work. Which would be a questionable move on the government's part, to put it mildly.

3) It's hard to imagine that a vaccine developed so quickly that mass production starts before we even know it works can have be tested and trialled to the usual standard in terms of identifying negative health impacts from the vaccine itself. So it would presumably be extremely high risk as vaccines go?

Based on the qualifiers she mentioned and basic logic, I would still imagine that having a vaccine ready in five months is completely unrealistic. She's described a best case scenario that I struggle to imagine is in any way plausible. As has been said already, even the 18 month time frame would be very fast.

 

[Wibble]

My post is somewhat related to yours.

But has anyone else been flabbergasted at just how bad science has been during all this?

I know that sounds ridiculous, but I think I've lived in a bubble for so long that I am shocked things got this bad.

In my head if there was ever a disease like this that was having a massive impact on the world, I thought we'd at least be able to mass produce tests for it easily enough. And mass produce tests that fecking worked.

Stuff like ventilator shortages. I literally thought it would be as easy as just flipping a switch in a factory to double setting and we'd be sorted. We have fecking doctors wearing bin bags FFS. I thought the world was better than this.

What have the things you mention got to do with a failure of science? The things you mention are a failure of governmental planning.

 

[Alabaster Codify7]

I was truly thinking about it last night and I was quite scared at how easy it was to turn the public into a submissive choir.

Now I'm not talking lockdown in itself because that was the right thing to do (at this point) I'm talking the people who are taking this too far. On social media you see people bitching about people taking exercise or buying stuff that's deemed to be non essential, or even their neighbours talking at a distance, some people are taking their role in this a little too far.

It worries me because it clearly demonstrates it won't be very hard to manipulate people into not only accepting martial law, but to also help implement it.

100% true. It's not even up for debate, 'the people will police themselves' is definitely a thing that can be manipulated. The easiest people in the world are scared people, and there's a lot of them around right now for understandable reasons.

 

[Wumminator]

What have the things you mention got to do with a failure of science? The things you mention are a failure of governmental planning.

I literally thought someone in a lab within a month would be able to develop a vaccine. That's how simple I thought this might be.

 

[UnrelatedPsuedo]

Great news. They are more corrupt than FIFA. Let their Chinese overlords pick up the tab until they do a massive overhaul and cut the political crap.

What are you waffling about?

 

[Hound Dog]

Three things about that:

1) That time frame is based on her being 80% sure the vaccine will work and everything going perfectly after that. The 20% where the vaccine doesn't work and the extreme likelihood of things not going perfectly afterwards is huge room for error and delay, even assuming her assessment is correct, which it may well not be.

2) As she says, having it "ready" for September would depend on the government putting in the resources to begin mass production before the vaccine has actually proven to work. Which would be a questionable move on the government's part, to put it mildly.

3) It's hard to imagine that a vaccine developed so quickly that mass production starts before we even know it works can have be tested and trialled to the usual standard in terms of identifying negative health impacts from the vaccine itself. So it would presumably be extremely high risk as vaccines go?

Based on the qualifiers she mentioned and basic logic, I would still imagine that having a vaccine ready in five months is completely unrealistic. She's described a best case scenario that I struggle to imagine is in any way plausible. As has been said already, even the 18 month time frame would be very fast.

There is no "after that". The talk is regarding a timeframe when vaccine could be developed and tested. It is already developed and she is 80% confident that testing will be done in September. Everything after that is out of scope of what we are talking about.

I said nothing regarding when everyone would actually be able to get it.

What I said that a lot of posters suggested that it will be at least 18 months until a vaccine is developed and tested and I just provided a link to a differing educated opinion.

Personally, I have no idea when this will be available; I am a programmer, not a doctor and am pretty sure that the majority of them don't have any idea either.

 

[Pagh Wraith]

Germany will announce new measures later today after the Chancellor's meeting with the state PMs in the afternoon.

Apparently those will include:
- extension of the current contact restrictions (1.5m distance, gatherings of no more than two people except for families and those living together) until 3 May
- reopening of shops up to 800m² from 20 Apr
- green light for football behind closed doors (Bundesliga plans to continue on 9 May)
- possible reopening of zoos, botanical gardens and museums
- restaurants will remain closed, possible exception for outdoor gastronomy

No information yet on schools and mandatory masks.

 

[Alabaster Codify7]

Germany will announce new measures later today after the Chancellor's meeting with the state PMs in the afternoon.

Apparently those will include:
- extension of the current contact restrictions (1.5m distance, gatherings of no more than two people except for families and those living together) until 3 May
- reopening of shops up to 800m² from 20 Apr
- green light for football behind closed doors (Bundesliga plans to continue on 9 May)
- possible reopening of zoos, botanical gardens and museums
- restaurants will remain closed, possible exception for outdoor gastronomy

No information yet on schools and mandatory masks.

Great news, good to see. country on the front-foot with some positive action. Hope to see more following suit very soon! It's going to be very much playing it by ear but it's a good start. Well done, Deutschland.

 

[BusbyMalone]

I literally thought someone in a lab within a month would be able to develop a vaccine. That's how simple I thought this might be.

So it's not the science that's bad then

 

[Ekkie Thump]

Good news from South Australia. Today was the first day where they found no new infections in their population and only 13 were found positive in the last week (4-500 tests a day). Only 466 South Australians have been found positive over the history of the pandemic and 279 of them (64%) have already recovered and only 10 are in hospital.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04...us-testing-with-two-week-covid-blitz/12150524

 

[Hound Dog]

Germany will announce new measures later today after the Chancellor's meeting with the state PMs in the afternoon.

Apparently those will include:
- extension of the current contact restrictions (1.5m distance, gatherings of no more than two people except for families and those living together) until 3 May
- reopening of shops up to 800m² from 20 Apr
- green light for football behind closed doors (Bundesliga plans to continue on 9 May)
- possible reopening of zoos, botanical gardens and museums
- restaurants will remain closed, possible exception for outdoor gastronomy

No information yet on schools and mandatory masks.

I am wondering if there will be any restaurants left worldwide when this is over.

 

[blue blue]

Because SARS was a very different disease that was much more deadly. It floored people before they could spread it en mass. People are spreading this one before they even show symptoms, it couldn't have been stopped.

Reports would suggest the Chinese government covered up the spread and the doctors reporting the virus were closed down and now mysteriously have gone missing.
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavi...19-and-its-apparent-cover-up-attempt-11966539

 

[Pogue Mahone]

My post is somewhat related to yours.

But has anyone else been flabbergasted at just how bad science has been during all this?

I know that sounds ridiculous, but I think I've lived in a bubble for so long that I am shocked things got this bad.

In my head if there was ever a disease like this that was having a massive impact on the world, I thought we'd at least be able to mass produce tests for it easily enough. And mass produce tests that fecking worked.

Stuff like ventilator shortages. I literally thought it would be as easy as just flipping a switch in a factory to double setting and we'd be sorted. We have fecking doctors wearing bin bags FFS. I thought the world was better than this.

It’s actually kind of fascinating.

It’s incredible how rarely we have supply shortages of important supplies, when we’re on a constant knife-edge in terms of getting the stuff we need, in the right quantities, to the place where it’s needed most, in time to meet demand.

Global crises like this really highlight what an incredible job mankind is doing keeping everything ticking over when life is “normal”.

 

[Compton22]

I am wondering if there will be any restaurants left worldwide when this is over.

Take away restaurants maybe. I feel sit in restaurants may take a long time to come back

 

[acnumber9]

I agree! That's why I'm saying we need to come up with a strategy very soon to allow this to pass through more of the population, with young people and women at the forefront.

Women and children first? How chivalrous.

 

[Foxbatt]

Women and children first? How chivalrous.

So the Captain goes down with the ship? I don't think either Trump or Boris is going to do anything of that sort. I wish they would.

 

[golden_blunder]

Which is very close to the % quoted in a Danish study looking at blood donors. They came up with 1.5%.

My understanding is that this current wave is likely to end with 6.5% of the population infected (in the UK). Which means another 5-10 waves needed before herd immunity achieved without a vaccine.

And that’s only if immunity persists for a long time after infection. Which is a huge bloody “if” If not, we’re looking at cycles repeating once or twice per year, forever. Unless an effective long-lasting vaccine can be developed (another huge “if”)

Jesus. This really could get much worse. Imagine having to live with knowing it’s going to keep coming back. Life as we know it will be utterly changed. I hope that you’re wrong.

sigh. “It’s just another flu“

 

[Ludens the Red]

If that does turn out to be the case - and we can’t develop an effective vaccine (which is not an unlikely outcome) - then we’re probably looking at humanity being wiped out completely.

In that case we bring in Bruce Willis and we drill.

 

[Oldham]

For those interested this is the best info regarding Iceland's corona statistics https://www.covid.is/data
To keep in mind, the Icelandic population is 360 thousand. We've tested around 10%...

 

[Skills]

My post is somewhat related to yours.

But has anyone else been flabbergasted at just how bad science has been during all this?

I know that sounds ridiculous, but I think I've lived in a bubble for so long that I am shocked things got this bad.

In my head if there was ever a disease like this that was having a massive impact on the world, I thought we'd at least be able to mass produce tests for it easily enough. And mass produce tests that fecking worked.

Stuff like ventilator shortages. I literally thought it would be as easy as just flipping a switch in a factory to double setting and we'd be sorted. We have fecking doctors wearing bin bags FFS. I thought the world was better than this.

Tbf that's not sciences fault. That's a business decision. I work in production and all the principles we follow are to reducing waste & maximising profit (waste as in time, machines, production space etc). That's why you can't just double your capacity.

Then there's stuff like Health & Safety mean that you can't just drop a new machine in the middle of your factory. Even changing shift patterns to get sites working 24 hours involves a lot of negotiation.

 

[Shakesy]

Eight to 10 years for a vaccine? Maybe we should globally fund research into molecular nanotechnology. The nanobot could be COVID's worst nightmare. It could hunt it down and then ruthlessly terminate it.

"Come with me if you want to live!"

 

[Brownie85]

800 deaths today, with somewhat normal reporting... Good signs me thinks. Not getting too optimistic just yet though

 

[Rooney1987]

Take away restaurants maybe. I feel sit in restaurants may take a long time to come back

I wonder what plan they have for public transport. Can you open restaurants or cinemas who could sit customers a metre away from each other yet let millions of workers sit close for hours on buses and trains. I use 2 buses and a train every day to get my hospital I work at. No chance of social distancing, it's difficult to do that now even with so few passengers on the bus. How would they even achieve this, have more buses/trains and have more staff delegating a certain amount of passengers per bus/train.

 

[lynchie]

800 deaths today, with somewhat normal reporting... Good signs me thinks. Not getting too optimistic just yet though

The peak date for deaths in English hospitals is still currently the 8th April. I expect that to change eventually, but glad it's not been quickly overtaken.

 

[Brownie85]

The peak date for deaths in English hospitals is still currently the 8th April. I expect that to change eventually, but glad it's not been quickly overtaken.

I don't know if there will still be some lag with the easter holidays (Fri/Sat/Sun/Mon) and it'll take a couple of days to catch up, but it's been stableish for the past few days now.

 

[Alabaster Codify7]

800 deaths today, with somewhat normal reporting... Good signs me thinks. Not getting too optimistic just yet though

Trying to not be too optimistic but yeah, as awful as it sounds to say, 800 deaths is slightly promising. If it can ever be promising to report so many people dying, I know. Not a huge increase on yesterday. Let's keep an eye on the numbers as we approach the weekend. 17th is Friday, which many felt would be our real peak date......we'll see. Fingers crossed.

 

[Ekkie Thump]

Updated graph of deaths in England by day of death. 744 new deaths as of 5pm yesterday. Orange is a 5 day trailing average (last 5-7 days will see large to moderate upward changes):

Spoiler: graph

Updated graph of deaths in England by day of death. Decent news from NHS England today. Due to the long weekend I thought there'd be a big rise in reported deaths, instead the opposite happened and they fell to 651 (-93) by 5pm yesterday. Gives some hope that we may well be just around or just past the peak. Let's hope tomorrow is similar.

Spoiler: graph

Orange is a 5 day trailing average (last 5-7 days will see large to moderate upward changes):

 

[berbatrick]

So you’re arguing that the the virus does show up in lab results after 5 days in mild cases @Prometheus? If you say her quote makes sense in that it can’t be grown in the lab after 5 days in mild cases, how the feck are you expecting to get a positive test result after 5 days?
Tell me the science in your thinking there fella?

You don't need to grow a virus (something which is quite difficult) to detect its genetic material.