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

@Hernandez - BFA

Out of interest, are you working within the NHS in the UK?

I know somebody very close to me who has been working as a nurse on the front line, in one of the biggest hospitals in the UK, since this kicked off, and without hesitation she tells me it definitely happens.
So like, no offence but I don’t believe your friend.

Can she or you answer why? For what purpose would doctors falsify certificates to inflate the Covid numbers? If it was a government thing then surely it’s in their best interest to do the opposite?
 
How is it any easier paperwork than giving an alternative cause of death? That literally makes no sense.

Maybe because a Covid death is taken as some kind of given right now and less questions are asked and it’s notched up as another Covid death for the official figures? I honestly don’t know but I will ask for her take on it.

I really don’t know where fact starts and conspiracy theories end these days.
 
Maybe because a Covid death is taken as some kind of given right now and less questions are asked and it’s notched up as another Covid death for the official figures? I honestly don’t know but I will ask for her take on it.

I really don’t know where fact starts and conspiracy theories end these days.
But why would it matter what they died of? Why would it matter to the doctor? I find it very hard to believe they’d risk their entire career just for the ease of writing Covid?

Notched up as another for the figures? Who’s interest is it for that number to keep rising?
 
Maybe because a Covid death is taken as some kind of given right now and less questions are asked and it’s notched up as another Covid death for the official figures? I honestly don’t know but I will ask for her take on it.

I really don’t know where fact starts and conspiracy theories end these days.
Well the facts start with the amount of corona deaths and the conspiracy’s start with your postings.
 
But why would it matter what they died of? Why would it matter to the doctor? I find it very hard to believe they’d risk their entire career just for the ease of writing Covid?

Notched up as another for the figures? Who’s interest is it for that number to keep rising?
I think in the US anyway, the covidots say hospital get more money to deal with the issue if they are struggling more, ie more deaths?

Or something similar
 
I think in the US anyway, the covidots say hospital get more money to deal with the issue if they are struggling more, ie more deaths?

Or something similar

Yep but they lose money so long as there are high Covid case loads as it drastically reduces the number of elective surgeries, one of their prime sources of income.
 
Golf courses shut and Tennis (even outside) banned during lockdown.

Pathetic!
Meanwhile my mother in law has been told to continue going in to work at the library. That essential part of modern life that people definitely couldn't live without for 4 weeks. We're governed by idiots.
 
Unfortunately though, it definitely is happening and I’d actually be surprised if you really haven’t seen it yourself.

It isn't. I'm working in A&E (locum) and in community (GP practice serving a demographic with high covid incidence)

Deaths in hospital require discussion with a medical examiner first (ME) in bereavement office and in rare instances a coroner
Below is a death certificate example
Death-certificate-blank-600x338.jpg


Part Ia is direct cause with b and c also you work your way back through the other diseases that led to the eventual cause of death

Most commonly in hospital for example during first wave I would write
1a) Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)
1b) Bilateral pneumonia
1c) COVID-19

Part II is other conditions that were not necessarily in the main causal sequence of death but played a role in hastening death - often Ischaemic Heart Disease.

All of this pertaining to COVID is public knowledge
https://assets.publishing.service.g...l-certificates-of-cause-of-death-covid-19.pdf

Incidentally the Centre of Evidence Based Medicine for the University of Oxford has more details on COVID-19 as cause of death in addition to ONS' interpretation of what's on death certs in terms of their figures
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/death-certificate-data-covid-19-as-the-underlying-cause-of-death/
 
Maybe because a Covid death is taken as some kind of given right now and less questions are asked and it’s notched up as another Covid death for the official figures? I honestly don’t know but I will ask for her take on it.

I really don’t know where fact starts and conspiracy theories end these days.

You should do that.

One thing I’ve realised from hanging out on message boards full of doctors is that even some of them believe blatantly false conspiracy theories (although never any of the ones who are day to day treating dead/dying covid patients) so would be no surprise at all if nurses are prone to the same.

It’s a terrible fecking shame but Facebook/Twitter bullshit seems to be even more contagious than the virus.
 
Fine, I can't speak for all doctors/hospitals. That is 100% true and maybe I shouldn't put a blanket statement like I said. But I've worked in two hospitals during the COVID pandemic, and from my experience in both, COVID has only ever been put on the death certificate only if it's played a massive contribution towards the death - and the vast, vast, vast majority - COVID is 1A. I am working on the Respiratory COVID ward, so granted we get the sickest COVIDs in the hospital before they are deemed to require intubation in ITU - so naturally I am going to see more deaths that are full barn-door COVID. But I also help the more junior members of the team on the non-COVID Respiratory ward - and work on calls where I see a whole concoction of presentations who may die on admission. In my current hospital, there's guidance for us to say to only put down COVID if its played a role in their deaths. I can safely say that I'm part of the cohort in my hospital who have seen more COVID in the last few months than anyone else in the hospital - which unfortunately means I've done a fair few death certificates so I feel I can hold a fairly valid opinion on this whole death certificates debacle.

Sending you best wishes and resilience, vast vast majority of people I speak to, family members and covid survivors know how much people in respiratory and ITU have done for them. The covidiots don't compare.
 
For me it comes down to the fact that a lot of these people who believe that they are exaggerating deaths or that their favourite sport/leisure activity is completely safe are just refusing to accept reality. The fact that excess deaths (the greatest idea of how many COVID deaths we have had) is ignored and random anecdotal evidence from friends of the family is believed is mental to me. The government and the NHS have absolutely no reason to inflate deaths. Quite the opposite to be honest. But some people just refuse to accept the inconvenience and thus have to twist it to something else.

if you’re losing your livelihood - I get it. It can feel like a death sentence if you’ve got nowhere to go. But quite simply if you don’t believe the death figures because you miss going to the gym or you want a round of golf you’re a knob.
 
For me it comes down to the fact that a lot of these people who believe that they are exaggerating deaths or that their favourite sport/leisure activity is completely safe are just refusing to accept reality. The fact that excess deaths (the greatest idea of how many COVID deaths we have had) is ignored and random anecdotal evidence from friends of the family is believed is mental to me. The government and the NHS have absolutely no reason to inflate deaths. Quite the opposite to be honest. But some people just refuse to accept the inconvenience and thus have to twist it to something else.

if you’re losing your livelihood - I get it. It can feel like a death sentence if you’ve got nowhere to go. But quite simply if you don’t believe the death figures because you miss going to the gym or you want a round of golf you’re a knob.
Well said, and spot on regarding government motivation, what do they gain from inflating numbers? You’re completely right, people are so desperate to go back to their normal lives that they will believe anything, people are just bored of this, and want to justify acting like a jebend.
 
@Hernandez - BFA

Out of interest, are you working within the NHS in the UK?

I know somebody very close to me who has been working as a nurse on the front line, in one of the biggest hospitals in the UK, since this kicked off, and without hesitation she tells me it definitely happens.

Yes I am.

Entitled to her statement - but I don't think she'd know what people are putting down.
Plus as @Pogue Mahone said, I'm not sure why a doctor would feel the need to put down COVID on a death certificate when it isn't relevant to the death. You can say what you want about how the government has dealt with this, but I don't see why there is a conspiracy that doctors are in on it :lol: We're the ones who do these death certificates - I have very little to gain for putting the words COVID down when it's not close to the relevancy of the case. The patient's family sees these so it would come to bite us in the ass if they clock it and say "So COVID killed him?! You told us it was a heart attack!".

I can't think of many who would risk their jobs by getting it wrong.
I remember when I accidently put the wrong diagnosis down on a death certificate in the first year of work - and I had the coroner ring me up demanding me for a statement as to why I put it down on the death certificate.
 
Yes I am.

Entitled to her statement - but I don't think she'd know what people are putting down.
Plus as @Pogue Mahone said, I'm not sure why a doctor would feel the need to put down COVID on a death certificate when it isn't relevant to the death. You can say what you want about how the government has dealt with this, but I don't see why there is a conspiracy that doctors are in on it :lol: We're the ones who do these death certificates - I have very little to gain for putting the words COVID down when it's not close to the relevancy of the case. The patient's family sees these so it would come to bite us in the ass if they clock it and say "So COVID killed him?! You told us it was a heart attack!".

I can't think of many who would risk their jobs by getting it wrong.
I remember when I accidently put the wrong diagnosis down on a death certificate in the first year of work - and I had the coroner ring me up demanding me for a statement as to why I put it down on the death certificate.

Definitely not accusing you of anything, and thanks for putting yourself on the line. The NHS is truly amazing.
 
UK figures for today - 378 deaths, 24,141 new cases.

New cases seem to be fairly stable, been 25k for a couple of weeks now so hopefully that will go significantly down with lockdown.
 
If ever I wished Covid on someone full dose it’s that cnut

Yeah he is such a horrible person. Just think of all those countries he invaded when he was President of the US. Not to mention being complicit in genocide.

Oh wait...
 
Are we likely to see a surge in the US after the election with the rallying, voting, counting and people gathering waiting for results. It`s quite worrying .
 
Are we likely to see a surge in the US after the election with the rallying, voting, counting and people gathering waiting for results. It`s quite worrying .

It's been surging for the last month, I don't think it'll alter the current trend they're seeing I don't think.
 
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.04.355842v1

This seems like bad news to me. Variant that is less neutralised by a number of monoclonal antibodies and convalescent serum. I would have liked to see them challenge immunised mice with it though, to see whether the ability to evade antibodies was significant outside of a test tube.

Says to me that, long term, vaccines might have to be redesigned and re-administered to account for genetic drift, which is the case for flu vaccine, but I was hoping wouldn’t be required as frequently for covid. It also emphasises the need for a simultaneous world wide vaccination campaign to reduce the chance of vaccine evasion strains happening. Something the WHO has been trying to orchestrate but the US has pulled out of.

Hopefully we will get a Twitter thread by a virologist soon explaining why it’s not as bad as it sounds. If these lineages are already around then it seems they would re-emerge quickly post-vaccination of a fraction the population.
 
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.04.355842v1

This seems like bad news to me. Variant that is less neutralised by a number of monoclonal antibodies and convalescent serum. I would have liked to see them challenge immunised mice with it though, to see whether the ability to evade antibodies was significant outside of a test tube.

Says to me that, long term, vaccines might have to be redesigned and re-administered to account for genetic drift, which is the case for flu vaccine, but I was hoping wouldn’t be required as frequently for covid. It also emphasises the need for a simultaneous world wide vaccination campaign to reduce the chance of vaccine evasion strains happening. Something the WHO has been trying to orchestrate but the US has pulled out of.

Holy shit. That is a worry. Is that the mink mutation?
 
Holy shit. That is a worry. Is that the mink mutation?
Yeah N439K, although the paper seems to suggest there is a variable region in the spike that is more prone to mutation, so there could be more. Need to get all these variants into vaccine mouse models ASAP! They probably already are to be fair.
 
@Tony Babangida

Is it possible that this is just freakish bad luck? The virus has very little genetic drift but by a one in a million shot, one of the earlmutations happened to affect the amino acids relevant to Ab binding? As in, we might wait years and years for a similar, clinically relevant mutation to happen again?

My understanding is that influenza mutates many many more times rapidly than coronaviridae. So it seems like terrible luck to get a mutation which is relevant to its antigenicity so soon.

EDIT: Saw your reply. If the spike is particularly prone to mutations that changes everything. Although might also lead to less virulent versions doing the rounds soon? Isn’t the spike how it binds to ACE2 receptors in the body?
 
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.04.355842v1

This seems like bad news to me. Variant that is less neutralised by a number of monoclonal antibodies and convalescent serum. I would have liked to see them challenge immunised mice with it though, to see whether the ability to evade antibodies was significant outside of a test tube.

Says to me that, long term, vaccines might have to be redesigned and re-administered to account for genetic drift, which is the case for flu vaccine, but I was hoping wouldn’t be required as frequently for covid. It also emphasises the need for a simultaneous world wide vaccination campaign to reduce the chance of vaccine evasion strains happening. Something the WHO has been trying to orchestrate but the US has pulled out of.

Hopefully we will get a Twitter thread by a virologist soon explaining why it’s not as bad as it sounds. If these lineages are already around then it seems they would re-emerge quickly post-vaccination of a fraction the population.

It isn't as bad as it sounds. It is very unclear as to how, as you say, it would play out in say a host such as nice and the sort of challenge it would actually face from the immune system and that is not something you can determine from a Petri dish.

As far as future mutations go, based on what has happened so far, it remains relatively stable. However, there is of course a real concern with cross species mutations like we possibly see with mink. If we're to prevent this happening, we need to vaccinate against the current strain as quickly as possible whilst remaining aware and isolating cases where there is a serious risk of cross species mutations.

Having said that, culling 17 million mink doesn't sit right with me. Humanity needs to permanently change in this respect. Who the feck needs mink fur anyway!?

Edit: the current mutation of the spike protein also allows it to bind to specific receptors on our cells. Mutations to the protein won't necessarily work in its favour to get into human cells so there's a lot of unknowns in that respect. We can't take that risk though so it's probably the best course of action, albeit a little extreme.
 
@Tony Babangida

Is it possible that this is just freakish bad luck? The virus has very little genetic drift but by a one in a million shot, one of the earl mutations happened to affect the amino acids relevant to Ab binding? As in, we might wait years and years for a similar, clinically relevant mutation to happen again?

My understanding is that influenza mutates many many more times rapidly than coronaviridae. So it seems like terrible luck to get a mutation which is relevant to its antigenicity so soon.
Function of the number of infections around the world too. Low mutation rate but huge worldwide virus load, higher chance of mutations arising. But could have just got unlucky.

I did note that for most convalescent plasma the change in neutralisation was not huge. Which is why trying these strains in mice is necessary before freaking out (although I admit I got a shock reading the abstract).
 
2020 pressed mutation and set Vaccine development back in plague inc.?
 
Victoria has had 7 days of zero new cases and zero deaths.

We were equal with cases with the UK and France 8-12 weeks ago and now have turned it around.
 
US had nearly 120k cases yesterday. Global deaths hit an all time high as well yesterday.. and winter is just getting started in the northern hemisphere . No one has it under control.
 
For those arguing about conspiracy theories of doctors lying on the death certificates, there's no point arguing about it. Just look at excess deaths this year vs prior few years avg. The last I checked, which was awhile back, what I've seen tallies with the covid numbers or were actually higher.
 
You should do that.

One thing I’ve realised from hanging out on message boards full of doctors is that even some of them believe blatantly false conspiracy theories (although never any of the ones who are day to day treating dead/dying covid patients) so would be no surprise at all if nurses are prone to the same.

It’s a terrible fecking shame but Facebook/Twitter bullshit seems to be even more contagious than the virus.
I know of a nurse who actually believed it's just a flu. And she actually works at a covid isolation/recovery center where people were all either asymptomatic or recovering. And she based her assumption on seeing all the asymptomatic people. It's so stupid. I told her to please go to an actual covid hospital and look at the icu patients there.

Just goes to show even some medical workers are some times no better than some stupid cnuts off the street.
 
You should do that.

One thing I’ve realised from hanging out on message boards full of doctors is that even some of them believe blatantly false conspiracy theories (although never any of the ones who are day to day treating dead/dying covid patients) so would be no surprise at all if nurses are prone to the same.

It’s a terrible fecking shame but Facebook/Twitter bullshit seems to be even more contagious than the virus.
This post is spot on in my experience as well. It's fairly rare to see a medical doctor be a "non believer" but in the rest of the medical staff conspiracy theories are at an all time high. Social media has really poisoned many peoples minds.
 
This paper is interesting/good.

They’ve looked at the B cells which produce Ab’s several months after someone is infected. We know that initial circulating Ab’s decrease after a few months but it looks as though the cells that produce them can subsequently churn new ones out that are even more effective than those produced to fight the initial infection. And they can do this much quicker the second time round.

They found residual virus in the small intestine and theorise that these help the immune system evolve and refine its response.

Obviously, a vaccine won’t have the same effect but does look like very good news for those that recover from being infected.