Coronavirus Thread

[Mark 'expert' Lawrenson]

6 hours ago, yorkie1999 said:

They have got to start facing facts, 9 people died from it yesterday, and probably 6 of them were added in from a few weeks back. Okay 3000 people a day are catching it and that’s been probably going on for quite a while but it’s the testing that’s putting those figures up. Let’s see in 10 days time if there are any changes in the death rate. 
 Another thing, How exactly do you suspend vaccine trials? What do the bods do, take the vaccine out of people or something. It doesn’t make sense. I personally think the virus has just about run its course and the government don’t know what to do about it. 

Well we keep hearing about being 2 weeks behind Spain and they recorded just approximately 240 deaths last week, roughly 34 a day, very sad but nowhere near the numbers earlier in the year.

I’m fed up with the media and it’s relentless pursuit of a second wave, I desperately hope we don’t have one and that deaths remain low.
The government I’m sure will pat themselves on the back, say bravo and that their policies have worked.

[Leicester_Loyal]

5 new deaths (all aged between 67 and 86), 3300 new cases today.

[CosbehFox]

Worth mentioning, theres 75 minutes to go until the new ‘Rule of Six’. 
 

And the legislation hasn’t even been published yet 

[foxile5]

40 minutes ago, Cardiff_Fox said:

Worth mentioning, theres 75 minutes to go until the new ‘Rule of Six’. 
 

And the legislation hasn’t even been published yet 

This is endemic of the government over the last six months. Information and guidance being released at the last minute makes the public services look disorganised - it allows for the blame to be placed at their door in the event of a cock up. Not at Whitehall. 

[Crinklyfox]

16 hours ago, simFox said:

Currently, there are six strains of coronavirus. The original one is the L strain, that appeared in Wuhan in December 2019. Its first mutation -- the S strain -- appeared at the beginning of 2020, while, since mid-January 2020, we have had strains V and G. To date strain G is the most widespread: it mutated into strains GR and GH at the end of February 2020.

 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200803105246.htm

 

That's from August, so could be more. I've seen some genetic sequencing maps, but LeicsMac would probably be able to baffle tell us about those.

 

From my own observation and training (dot to dot colouring books) I don't think there are much differences, certainly not in relation to virulence. 

Thanks for the link to the paper, I'd missed that one.  My comments on the variants came from slightly earlier papers which only referenced the two strains.

 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200702144054.htm

 

https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)30817-5.pdf

[Mark 'expert' Lawrenson]

It’ll be madness to have another total lockdown, so with taking that into account when is it going to be? 🤔

[Alf Bentley]

Excerpt from article by Dr. Phil Whitaker (a GP) about Long Covid and the risk to "low risk" people (yes, it's from the NS, Kopf, but it's not Stephen Bush!)

 

"If the neglect of care homes was the scandal of the first wave, the second wave scandal may prove to be the concept of “low-risk” people. We now possess a much deeper understanding of Covid-19 as a disease. In the first wave, it was thought to be a respiratory infection from which most patients recovered fairly swiftly, while a small minority would succumb or require intensive care to pull through. We now know that for anywhere between 5 and 10 per cent of patients, Covid-19 becomes a chronic disease, relapsing and remitting for months on end. There are ongoing respiratory and gastrointestinal symptoms, and profound fatigue, heart rhythm disturbances, life-threatening blood clot formation, and debilitating abnormalities of the nervous system. While some “long Covid” patients do recover, many have not as yet. Most are frightened about the future, and enervated by being a “medical mystery” for whom no one can give definitive explanations, advice or prognosis.

 

The demographics of “long Covid” are very different from those for hospitalisation and mortality; if anything, younger people appear disproportionately affected. And instances of relapsing-remitting disease are independent of severity – the majority of sufferers were never unwell enough to be admitted to hospital at any stage. Research into this variant is in its infancy – trying to define how many people develop it, to understand what factors make the illness chronic, and to discover effective treatments. Nonetheless, long Covid is now an accepted phenomenon. The puzzle is why government pronouncements and statistics continue to suggest that death rates are the only meaningful outcome".

[String fellow]

With Israel re-imposing a full lock-down as new cases rocket up, are the folk demonstrating against it right to do so? Judging by several of the recent posts in this thread, there'll be some folk here who would agree with them. 

[Brenfox]

3 hours ago, Mark 'expert' Lawrenson said:

It’ll be madness to have another total lockdown, so with taking that into account when is it going to be? 🤔

My own useless uninformed opinion is no matter what there will not be another lockdown. The financial aspect is more important than the loss of lives to the government.

[filbertway]

No chance there'll be another nationwide lockdown unless hospitals are genuinely in danger of over spilling. It'd be economic suicide and the impact on the country and it's residents would be even more devastating than we're probably going to see in the next few months. 

[Sol thewall Bamba]

According to the theory that the death rate lags behind the new cases by about two weeks, deaths *should* start to creep up this week. I can't see it happening personally and it'll be very hard to justify further restrictions if deaths are still hovering around the 10 a day mark in a weeks time. 

[yorkie1999]

1 hour ago, Sol thewall Bamba said:

According to the theory that the death rate lags behind the new cases by about two weeks, deaths *should* start to creep up this week. I can't see it happening personally and it'll be very hard to justify further restrictions if deaths are still hovering around the 10 a day mark in a weeks time. 

What were the deaths per day in spain 2 weeks ago.

[Sol thewall Bamba]

4 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

What were the deaths per day in spain 2 weeks ago.

58 on the 1st Sept, 48 was the most recent data point on the tracker which was the 11th I think. Might be wrong as I'm looking at the line on my phone. 

 

Didn't realise how many new cases they're having though.

[Stevosevic]

Another nationwide lockdown would be catastrophic for the economy. 

[leicsmac]

On 13/09/2020 at 21:46, simFox said:

Currently, there are six strains of coronavirus. The original one is the L strain, that appeared in Wuhan in December 2019. Its first mutation -- the S strain -- appeared at the beginning of 2020, while, since mid-January 2020, we have had strains V and G. To date strain G is the most widespread: it mutated into strains GR and GH at the end of February 2020.

 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200803105246.htm

 

That's from August, so could be more. I've seen some genetic sequencing maps, but LeicsMac would probably be able to baffle tell us about those.

 

From my own observation and training (dot to dot colouring books) I don't think there are much differences, certainly not in relation to virulence. 

I can certainly try!

 

The paper involving those genetic sequencing methods appears to be this one: "Geographic and Genomic Distribution of SARS-CoV-2 Mutations". https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.01800/full

 

From what it seems the labs divided up the original nucleotides (individual pieces of DNA) and then classified them according to the region of the world from which the sample was taken. This told us quite a few things, but above all it proved that there actually isn't as much genetic variance in the virus by region as might be expected - the same four/eight nucleotides are prevalent everywhere - and that it mutates rather more slowly (it would seem) than other viruses, too.

 

If anyone has any more specific questions about the sequencing process itself and how we get information from it, I'd be happy to answer.

 

 

[Nod.E]

On 13/09/2020 at 11:44, WigstonWanderer said:

All sorts of possibilities.
 

- Probably younger people getting infected and older, more vulnerable people making sure they keep well away.

Flawed logic. Young people still directly and indirectly come in to contact with the vulnerable and elderly. Isn't that presicely why young people were being told to be careful?

 

Quote

- Hugely more testing making the number of cases look much larger than back in April.

Likely plays a part but only adds to panic.

 

Quote

 

- Much better treatments available, from cocktails of drugs to use of ventilators.

Also a factor.

 

Quote

 

- Use of masks and other measures such as social distancing, etc probably mean that the initial viral load is much reduced.

 

The virologists I’ve heard addressing the possibility of mutation seem to dismiss the likelihood that it has become less virulent.

Bottom line is we continue to damage the fabric of society because Karen from Bedford says it's outrageous we should put our families at risk, while chugging on a fag as she passes through McDonald's drive thru on her family day trip to the precinct.

Edited 14 September 2020 by Nod.E

[leicsmac]

23 minutes ago, Nod.E said:

Flawed logic. Young people still directly and indirectly come in to contact with the vulnerable and elderly. Isn't that presicely why young people were being told to be careful?

 

Likely plays a part but only adds to panic.

 

Also a factor.

 

Bottom line is we continue to damage the fabric of society because Karen from Bedford says it's outrageous we should put our families at risk, while chugging on a fag as she passes through McDonald's drive thru on her family day trip to the precinct.

We continue to damage the fabric of society (and yes, damage is happening) because most countries are of the opinion that we simply do not know enough about the properties of the virus to allay the risk that opening up entirely would end up causing much worse damage in the long term.

 

Hopefully we will get to know much more very soon and then an informed and sensible decision can be made either way - and hopefully it is soon because it's reasonably self-evident that "neither one thing or the other" isn't really working in the UK as a measure.

[StanSP]

 

 

[simFox]

7 minutes ago, StanSP said:

 

 

Plan B: in order to reduce number of cases, reduce testing. There's a chance this might work. 👍

[Kopfkino]

I saw from MEN on Friday that part of the problem with tests is that the Pillar 2 labs have been staffed by lots of students who are now leaving to head back to uni whereas Pillar 1 labs are constrained by reagent supply. So Pillar 1 labs have the staff to expand capacity but not the stuff they need to actually execute the tests, whereas Pillar 2 labs have the stuff they need but not the staff to do it. A good system would, of course, be an integrated network. 

 

Which, because the government releases the figures P1 and P2 capacity combined, it looks like there's higher capacity, and also spare capacity, than there really is. P2 labs have little spare capacity whereas P1 labs have loads but P1 labs aren't processing P2 tests. 

[Mark 'expert' Lawrenson]

45 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

We continue to damage the fabric of society (and yes, damage is happening) because most countries are of the opinion that we simply do not know enough about the properties of the virus to allay the risk that opening up entirely would end up causing much worse damage in the long term.

 

Hopefully we will get to know much more very soon and then an informed and sensible decision can be made either way - and hopefully it is soon because it's reasonably self-evident that "neither one thing or the other" isn't really working in the UK as a measure.

We need to look closer at Sweden’s progress through the whole pandemic, at the moment they seem to be in a far better place than most of Europe.

[leicsmac]

12 minutes ago, Mark 'expert' Lawrenson said:

We need to look closer at Sweden’s progress through the whole pandemic, at the moment they seem to be in a far better place than most of Europe.

As opposed to countries like Brazil and the US that took a similarly laissez-faire approach with rather different results?

 

I mean, it's a good example, but I don't think it's an answer to the uncertainty that still exists.

[yorkie1999]

So now we can grass our neighbours up for having more than 6 people round and the police are even setting up a hotline for us to use, a) will that have a knock on effect for 999 calls when you have a burglary so in future it could take a 2 months for a police offer to turn up instead of the usual 2 weeks and b) will we get anything out of the £3200 fine or will we just have to move after the neighbours find out who grassed them up 

[Mark 'expert' Lawrenson]

1 minute ago, leicsmac said:

As opposed to countries like Brazil and the US that took a similarly laissez-faire approach with rather different results?

 

I mean, it's a good example, but I don't think it's an answer to the uncertainty that still exists.

Definitely a different demographic than Brazil and the US no doubt about that.

[Leicester_Loyal]

1 death today, 2621 new cases.