Coronavirus Thread

[Super_horns]

Sounds like Boris is going to request a surge in vaccinations to combat the new variant.

[Dunge]

2 minutes ago, reporterpenguin said:

That’s the thing though, despite everything being upside down for a year and all the changes that have happened in our lives, a lot of people have died. And they will continue too. 
 

It’s a really rubbish way everyone has had to live their lives recently, but in doing so millions of people have been saved. Not only have the lockdowns stopped people from catching it and then dying, it’s also (by the skin of our teeth here) allowed the treatment of many people who would not have survived without medical intervention. The current situation in India is a sobering reminder of what happens when you run out of healthcare capacity… How many of those people would have survived if they were in a hospital, rather than dying on the street outside it?

 

It’s been a tough year, but without the lockdowns it could have been so much worse. We’re through the worst of it now here, but it still needs to be handled very carefully to keep cases low. 

I agree with this.

 

Whatever that WHO report said, as soon as that virus got out of Wuhan we were pretty screwed. All we’ve done since is tried to find the least worst option to deal with the situation.

 

@Harrydc - I do get and sympathise with your opinion, that we shouldn’t have locked down or tried to allow life to carry on, etc.; even though I take a different view for the reasons mentioned above. But what I still don’t get is why you won’t accept a vaccine. Because accepting a vaccine has nothing to do with agreement with lockdown.

[filbertway]

 

22 minutes ago, Super_horns said:

Sounds like Boris is going to request a surge in vaccinations to combat the new variant.

Good stuff, feel like we kind of rested on our laurels a bit after a really good start. It's like being comfortable in a match and the the opposition having a dangerous attack to remind you that the job isn't done. JVT would be proud of that analogy.

[DennisNedry]

What angers me so much has been the images of packed arrival areas at UK airports throughout the pandemic. Makes a mockery of John Smith's commitment to not hug his Nan when you've got people pouring in from COVID hotspots (and still do so through 'third' countries). 

 

I'd have kept Dover open to lorries but shut down pretty much everything else. Want to go to India for a funeral? Fine. But don't come back for 6 months.

[Corky]

We can also bin this argument about "waiting a bit longer, do your bit and we'll get there" when the vast majority have and yet international travellers are bringing new variants in, potentially setting us back.

 

You can forgive people for feeling rather pissed off.

[SpacedX]

1 hour ago, filbertway said:

 

 

Here's hoping that we lift the cup tomorrow and can forget about this pandemic completely for a day 

 

That would be a boyhood dream. I never entertained the prospect of winning the league title/champions of England - but the FA Cup was unfinished business, realistic and something I fantasised about us hoisting in front of the nation at Wembley. Although I was there in person to witness two of our League Cup triumphs it always felt second best. 

 

That shared dream unites us all on here - and as you say in these uncertain times, win or lose, that is something to celebrate. 

[SpacedX]

1 hour ago, Dunge said:

 

@Harrydc - I do get and sympathise with your opinion, that we shouldn’t have locked down or tried to allow life to carry on, etc.; even though I take a different view for the reasons mentioned above. But what I still don’t get is why you won’t accept a vaccine. Because accepting a vaccine has nothing to do with agreement with lockdown.

With respect, there's that word again, Known science is not about an online "opinion", nor does a highly contagious virus defer to one. 

[Guest Harrydc]

9 minutes ago, Line-X said:

With respect, there's that word again, Known science is not about an online "opinion", nor does a highly contagious virus defer to one. 

Well according to the UK government, COVID 19 is not a 'highly contagious' disease. 

 

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid

[Vacamion]

 

The temporary two week "circuit breaker" in Glasgow, during which we are not allowed to meet people from other households in private homes, has now been going on for 8 months and has just been extended.

 

I know why they've done it, but it is a hammer to the City.

 

[SpacedX]

42 minutes ago, Harrydc said:

Well according to the UK government, COVID 19 is not a 'highly contagious' disease. 

 

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid

This is true and I stand by your correction because technically it no longer meets the criteria for an HCID. This doesn’t mean that it is no longer regarded as dangerous or a global healthcare crisis however - from your own link "There are many diseases which can cause serious illness which are not classified as HCIDs." and the potential for future outbreak remains. These things are lurking out there. 

 

I actually can't be arsed right now, fortunately, someone else can. Please try to read an understand this irrespective of your cherry picking, susceptibility to confirmation bias and demonstrable impaired critical faculty...

 

https://fullfact.org/health/coronavirus-hcid/

 

The concern over SARS-CoV-19 - which is far less severe than SARS - is asymptomatic spread. 

 

I'll simply ask you the same question that before me has been previously posed by @leicsmac and that I recently put to another member of this forum to which I received no reply. Rewind to last October. I shudder at the thought, but hypothetically, you are in charge of the nation's health policy. You reject lockdown, you reject vaccination. Very simply, summoning your "think out of the box" facebook wisdom, what do you do? How do you manage/arrest the rising case rate? Also, do you think it would currently be safe for you to hypothetically attend large social gatherings in India unprotected and unvaccinated? 

Edited 14 May 2021 by Line-X

[SpacedX]

2 hours ago, Leicester_Loyal said:

I'm gonna get absolutely Paul Gascoigned next weekend!

Is he still living in Leicestershire? 

[Otis]

24 minutes ago, Line-X said:

This is true and I stand by your correction because technically it no longer meets the criteria for an HCID. This doesn’t mean that it is no longer regarded as dangerous or a global healthcare crisis however - from your own link "There are many diseases which can cause serious illness which are not classified as HCIDs." and the potential for future outbreak remains. These things are lurking out there. 

 

I actually can't be arsed right now, fortunately, someone else can. Please try to read an understand this irrespective of your cherry picking, susceptibility to confirmation bias and demonstrable impaired critical faculty...

 

https://fullfact.org/health/coronavirus-hcid/

 

The concern over SARS-CoV-19 - which is far less severe than SARS - is asymptomatic spread. 

 

I'll simply ask you the same question that before me has been previously posed by @leicsmac and that I recently put to another member of this forum to which I received no reply. Rewind to last October. I shudder at the thought, but hypothetically, you are in charge of the nation's health policy. You reject lockdown, you reject vaccination. Very simply, summoning your "think out of the box" facebook wisdom, what do you do? How do you manage/arrest the rising case rate? Also, do you think it would currently be safe for you to hypothetically attend large social gatherings in India unprotected and unvaccinated? 

I did reply

[Kopic]

Been feeling serious vaccine envy for a while, got a text this afternoon to book mine, being in my late 20s I thought I'd be waiting a lot longer! Now gotta try and get the time off work for it.

[Stivo]

To compress the gap between doses to 8 weeks from  12 we are going to need to do 1M a day over the next couple of weeks

[SpacedX]

22 minutes ago, Otis said:

I did reply

You did indeed, but regardless, neglected to answer the question. 

[Otis]

1 hour ago, Line-X said:

You did indeed, but regardless, neglected to answer the question. 

Ok I wouldn't have locked down millions of low risk healthy people.

I've done no cost benefit analysis but then again neither did the government. 

[SpacedX]

Just now, Otis said:

Ok I wouldn't have locked down millions of low risk healthy people.

I've done no cost benefit analysis but then again neither did the government. 

Yet you yourself proclaimed on here very simply that "lockdown doesn't work". 

 

The government made many, many mistakes for sure  - lockdown was not one of them. 

 

Upon what basis? How do you define "low risk healthy people" or identify susceptibility to this virus? Moreover, this is about transmissibility. Surely you can comprehend the implications of asymptomatic spread by now? Viruses have varying abilities to infect people. For SARS-CoV-19, each person with the virus can go on to infect around 2.5 people. If each of those people go about their day as normal, and infect another 2.5 people, within a month, 406 people would be infected just from that single first infection.

 

In the absence of treatment or a vaccination roll out, ceasing most human contact is really the only way to prevent the spread of the virus. Essentially, the less contact people have with each other, the less the virus can infect others. Given the rapid spread of the virus, social lockdown is imperative to bring overall transmission down, and assess whether testing followed by isolation could be effective – this is all in an attempt to ‘flatten the curve’ or reduce infections and spread cases out over a longer time frame to avoid overwhelming health systems, reduce the clinical burden and hone treatments. Last summer, these restrictions were relaxed prematurely and in tandem with a relaxation of international travel and inadequate quarantine measures, a second wave was inevitable. A month ago I suggested that the Indian mutation may be 20% more contagious than any variant hat we have encountered to date by virtue of the L452R spike protein also present in the highly transmissible California variant. I also speculated that this was unlikely though since the variant had been circulating for months prior to the surge in cases in India which I attributed to a range of other causal factors. There is now mounting evidence that this figure could be more in the region of 50%.

 

Since SARS-CoV-19 can spread unnoticed so easily, the most effective way to ensure people have minimal contact with each other is to sanction total lockdowns, with people only being allowed to leave for essentials, and to adhere to social distancing when they do leave their homes. Countries that experienced the epidemics first, such as China and South Korea, and later Australia and NZ, brought cases down dramatically through social distancing, but also in tandem with effective tracking and testing which the UK government did not deliver.  In the UK we now have 67% of the population that have received their first jab (my earlier post of half was incorrect) and a third that are fully vaccinated. It is anticipated that this will also provide protection against the current variants under study and variants of concern. Last October, our entire population was unprotected. 

 

Presumably then there are millions of arbitrarily chosen "low risk" healthy young individuals currently in India that should similarly not be subject to any restrictions right now? 

 

You "wouldn't have locked down millions of low risk healthy people" last October. Fortunately for all of us, the fields of virology, immunology, epidemiology and health security know better. 

[Guest Harrydc]

The fact is - we were told that we need to 'flatten the curve'. 

 

We were told that we need to 'protect the NHS'.

 

Both of those things have been succeeded. We even built 5 nightingale hospitals which were never used. 

 

Now, the goal posts have changed. It's all about cases. 

 

"cases are rising" 

 

What do you expect when perfectly healthy people are getting tested twice a week with a test that in a lot of cases - produces false positives. 

 

We're in a 'casedemic' now. 

 

The NHS is not overwhelmed. That should be that. 

[Soup]

Over 100 protests worldwide tomorrow including 15 cities in the UK.

[String fellow]

44 minutes ago, Line-X said:

Yet you yourself proclaimed on here very simply that "lockdown doesn't work". 

 

The government made many, many mistakes for sure  - lockdown was not one of them. 

 

Upon what basis? How do you define "low risk healthy people" or identify susceptibility to this virus? Moreover, this is about transmissibility. Surely you can comprehend the implications of asymptomatic spread by now? Viruses have varying abilities to infect people. For SARS-CoV-19, each person with the virus can go on to infect around 2.5 people. If each of those people go about their day as normal, and infect another 2.5 people, within a month, 406 people would be infected just from that single first infection.

 

In the absence of treatment or a vaccination roll out, ceasing most human contact is really the only way to prevent the spread of the virus. Essentially, the less contact people have with each other, the less the virus can infect others. Given the rapid spread of the virus, social lockdown is imperative to bring overall transmission down, and assess whether testing followed by isolation could be effective – this is all in an attempt to ‘flatten the curve’ or reduce infections and spread cases out over a longer time frame to avoid overwhelming health systems, reduce the clinical burden and hone treatments. Last summer, these restrictions were relaxed prematurely and in tandem with a relaxation of international travel and inadequate quarantine measures, a second wave was inevitable. A month ago I suggested that the Indian mutation may be 20% more contagious than any variant hat we have encountered to date by virtue of the L452R spike protein also present in the highly transmissible California variant. I also speculated that this was unlikely though since the variant had been circulating for months prior to the surge in cases in India which I attributed to a range of other causal factors. There is now mounting evidence that this figure could be more in the region of 50%.

 

Since SARS-CoV-19 can spread unnoticed so easily, the most effective way to ensure people have minimal contact with each other is to sanction total lockdowns, with people only being allowed to leave for essentials, and to adhere to social distancing when they do leave their homes. Countries that experienced the epidemics first, such as China and South Korea, and later Australia and NZ, brought cases down dramatically through social distancing, but also in tandem with effective tracking and testing which the UK government did not deliver.  In the UK we now have 67% of the population that have received their first jab (my earlier post of half was incorrect) and a third that are fully vaccinated. It is anticipated that this will also provide protection against the current variants under study and variants of concern. Last October, our entire population was unprotected. 

 

Presumably then there are millions of arbitrarily chosen "low risk" healthy young individuals currently in India that should similarly not be subject to any restrictions right now? 

 

You "wouldn't have locked down millions of low risk healthy people" last October. Fortunately for all of us, the fields of virology, immunology, epidemiology and health security know better. 

I was intrigued to read these figures, and wanted to work out for myself how the number 406 was obtained, based on R = 2.5. Nowhere is it explained explicitly, so here's my attempt to do so. It's based on the assumption that 1 person will infect 2.5 others over a period of 5 days. So after 30 days, the infection will have reached the 6th generation of cases. So there'll be (2.5)^6 = 244 cases in the 6th generation, and this total must be added to the previous 5 generations. So the overall total of cases in a month will be (2.5)^1 + (2.5)^2 + (2.5)^3 + (2.5)^4 + (2.5)^5 + (2.5)^6 = 406. 

[Otis]

1 hour ago, Line-X said:

Yet you yourself proclaimed on here very simply that "lockdown doesn't work". 

 

The government made many, many mistakes for sure  - lockdown was not one of them. 

 

Upon what basis? How do you define "low risk healthy people" or identify susceptibility to this virus? Moreover, this is about transmissibility. Surely you can comprehend the implications of asymptomatic spread by now? Viruses have varying abilities to infect people. For SARS-CoV-19, each person with the virus can go on to infect around 2.5 people. If each of those people go about their day as normal, and infect another 2.5 people, within a month, 406 people would be infected just from that single first infection.

 

In the absence of treatment or a vaccination roll out, ceasing most human contact is really the only way to prevent the spread of the virus. Essentially, the less contact people have with each other, the less the virus can infect others. Given the rapid spread of the virus, social lockdown is imperative to bring overall transmission down, and assess whether testing followed by isolation could be effective – this is all in an attempt to ‘flatten the curve’ or reduce infections and spread cases out over a longer time frame to avoid overwhelming health systems, reduce the clinical burden and hone treatments. Last summer, these restrictions were relaxed prematurely and in tandem with a relaxation of international travel and inadequate quarantine measures, a second wave was inevitable. A month ago I suggested that the Indian mutation may be 20% more contagious than any variant hat we have encountered to date by virtue of the L452R spike protein also present in the highly transmissible California variant. I also speculated that this was unlikely though since the variant had been circulating for months prior to the surge in cases in India which I attributed to a range of other causal factors. There is now mounting evidence that this figure could be more in the region of 50%.

 

Since SARS-CoV-19 can spread unnoticed so easily, the most effective way to ensure people have minimal contact with each other is to sanction total lockdowns, with people only being allowed to leave for essentials, and to adhere to social distancing when they do leave their homes. Countries that experienced the epidemics first, such as China and South Korea, and later Australia and NZ, brought cases down dramatically through social distancing, but also in tandem with effective tracking and testing which the UK government did not deliver.  In the UK we now have 67% of the population that have received their first jab (my earlier post of half was incorrect) and a third that are fully vaccinated. It is anticipated that this will also provide protection against the current variants under study and variants of concern. Last October, our entire population was unprotected. 

 

Presumably then there are millions of arbitrarily chosen "low risk" healthy young individuals currently in India that should similarly not be subject to any restrictions right now? 

 

You "wouldn't have locked down millions of low risk healthy people" last October. Fortunately for all of us, the fields of virology, immunology, epidemiology and health security know better. 

Which is fine because those experts are being paid to advise on just this issue. 

Look I'm no expert at all on diseases as you have probably guessed. 🤐

But No one in power has said look guys we  know lockdowns cause many other issues such as people will lose their jobs, businesses, homes, mental health will suffer, missed health diagnosis, cancelled operations, childrens education will suffer, etc.

But it will be worth it.

 

On a side note. 

I read  a while ago the flu season kills 30000 on a bad year which is a similar figure to covid deaths this year.

 

Yet the flu barely gets a mention, no masks, no social distancing, no closing schools and businesses just maybe a 2 minute report on the 6 o'clock news. 

 

Strange. 

[AS78UK]

Sorry confused at the point being made .... 

 

30k deaths from Flu without us social distancing versus 140k covid deaths with social distancing..... 

 

Uncontrolled social distancing covid deaths would be exponentially higher....

[SpacedX]

5 minutes ago, Otis said:

Which is fine because those experts are being paid to advise on just this issue. 

 

At no stage did I mention "experts" or "getting paid" - rather known science. 

 

6 minutes ago, Otis said:

Look I'm no expert at all on diseases as you have probably guessed. 🤐

 

Really?

 

7 minutes ago, Otis said:

But No one in power has said look guys we  know lockdowns cause many other issues such as people will lose their jobs, businesses, homes, mental health missed health diagnosis, cancelled operations, childrens education will suffer, etc.

Yes they have, this is widely acknowledged - and we have discussed the negative consequences of restrictions on this thread innumerable occasions. I'm not even sure that I have a job to back to. Regarding the NHS the backlog is immense, which heaps even more pressure on our healthworkers. 

 

10 minutes ago, Otis said:

On a side note. 

I read  a while ago the flu season kills 30000 on a bad year which is a similar figure to covid deaths this year.

 

Yet the flu barely gets a mention, no masks, no social distancing, no closing schools and businesses just maybe a 2 minute report on the 6 o'clock news. 

 

Strange. 

There is continual mention of the influenza virus and again, I have devoted many posts to the subject.  The World Health Organisation states that globally, between 290,000 and 650,000 people die of respiratory deaths each year which are associated with seasonal influenza. In the U.K. data from PHE shows that on average, between 2014/15 to 2018/19, 17,000 people died from the flu in England. The number of deaths from flu cases varies every year. The average number of estimated deaths in England for the last five seasons (2015/16 to 2019/20) was actually just over 11,000 deaths annually. 

 

One of the biggest challenges of SARS-CoV-2, is that it’s novel. That means there’s a lot we don’t know about it — how it spreads, how it infects people, how it causes damage in the body, how the immune system responds to it. Seasonal flu, on the other hand, has been around for a long time, so scientists and doctors know a lot about it, including the best way to treat people who have the illness. 

 

A report by Imperial College I posted on here last year estimated that if we had taken no steps to slow the spread of the coronavirus, 81 percent of the population would have contracted the virus over the course of the epidemic. In the United States, this would have resulted in the death of 2.2 million people. This only includes deaths directly related to COVID-19. It doesn’t account for people who would have died from other causes as a result of the healthcare system being overwhelmed by patients with COVID-19.

 

The IFR of coronavirus averages 1% but is substantially higher in low income countries. Seasonal flu is 0.1% in comparison. Biologically, it behaves differently than the flu. It takes one to 14 days for people with Covid-19 infection to develop symptoms (five days is the median). For the flu, it’s around two days. That potentially gives people more time to spread the illness asymptomatically before they know they are sick. When it first emerged, the threat of it causing massive outbreaks that overwhelm health systems around the world was very real. It’s bad enough to have roiled our stock markets, put millions out of work, and caused a global recession. Even with the advent of a vaccination, for the foreseeable future, it could potentially kill tens of thousands a year worldwide. It's nature - and it's completely indifferent to you, your life and humanity. 

[Otis]

47 minutes ago, AS78UK said:

Sorry confused at the point being made .... 

 

30k deaths from Flu without us social distancing versus 140k covid deaths with social distancing..... 

 

Uncontrolled social distancing covid deaths would be exponentially higher....

That's not what I said. 

[Otis]

21 minutes ago, Line-X said:

Yes they have, this is widely acknowledged

Must have missed that. 

I remember Rishi talking about a cost benefit analysis but that was the last i heard about it.

 

25 minutes ago, Line-X said:

At no stage did I mention "experts" or "getting paid" - rather known science. 

2 hours ago, Line-X said:

Fortunately for all of us, the fields of virology, immunology, epidemiology and health security know better. 

Sorry I understood this those in these fields to be experts.

 

29 minutes ago, Line-X said:

It's nature - and it's completely indifferent to you, your life and humanity. 

No arguments here.