Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

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Over the past few weeks, observing how this herd immunity thing has played out. I’ve seen people defending the UK govt’s policy on social media/other types of media/papers. It always goes like this: “The UK govt policy was never herd immunity! They only wanted to flatten the peak / spread out the virus/ not get a second wave. herd immunity is just a consequence as people get infected over time, the actual point is trying to slow things down so our health system copes, and so there’s no second wave”. This was the “science”.

Not realising that they’ve just literally described the entire problem with herd immunity: allowing lots of people to get it over time. It doesn’t matter how you get there. Not wanting to eliminate the virus and only wanting to “slow it down” is always going to be a strategy which means far more people get the virus than they ever should have done, and so far more excess deaths. If you only slow it down enough to reduce ICU peak you are not slowing it down as much as you can - the way tracing, testing, containing and stopping the virus wherever it is, would have achieved. The ethical implications of the UK following such a policy are staggering, let alone the extremely dodgy science behind it we’ve discussed.

Then there’s the fact that regardless of whether herd immunity was a primary or secondary aim, it was a policy and outcome that the uk govt actually entertained. The fact they even entertained such a thing, never mind the fact they’re still probably carrying it on...

 
Extremely sad today to hear of the doctors who have died in the UK, including those who came out of retirement, as well as the people who have died from the virus as well. :(
Unbelievable to me that doctors, nurses, staff paramedics, people who test patients, people who go into care homes, etc still do not have PPE or any proper testing (waiting in a queue for 2 hours and 2000 tests over 3-4 days for a workforce of over a million doesn’t really count) when we have 500 people a day dying here from this virus.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
The German figures make it hard to see how the overall death rate can be much above 2-3% I would say.
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Currently it´s 0.9%, having gradually risen by 0.1% each of the last days.

In TV today some expert hoped for an underdetermination of 20-fold, that would mean with about 70.000 confirmed cases there would be 1.400.000 real cases (being the number of infection ca. 10 days ago).

This may even be reasonable as still only people have got tested who have been guessed to be with a good chance positive.

I think yesterday in Spain there have been 85.000 confirmed cases, and the mortality rate is about 10 fold higher than in Germany. If we assume that the rate would be alone due to strictly common parameters higher - which is of course questionable - and that Germany simply tested 10 times more than Spain, than we would have 850.000 cases in Spain.

If we then take these 850.000 and say that this is an underdetermination of 20 times, we would have 17.000.000 people infected in Spain (about a third of the population, I would guess), reflecting the number of infection from about 10 days ago.


Because the death rate in Spain might be higher than in Germany, e.g. because the hospitals cannot work at their best, and because a 20-fold underdetermination in Germany might be too much, the number might be lower.
 
Hutan said:
It's sounding a bit hopeful in NZ though now, isn't it. Seems that the government is talking about doing random testing to try to get a better understanding of whether there are cases outside the known clusters.
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@Hutan I still don't feel reassured with the way returnees are being quarantined. Quarantine to me is being in one place for 14 days under guard so as not to infect the rest of the country. And every single one of them should have been tested before leaving quarantine.

I think the community testing is happening now because the National Party pushed for it since they have been meeting with the government the last few days?
 
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Jonathan Edwards said:
Dropping social distancing would obviously produce a second wave, and the next time a third wave and on for ever. The 'second wave' though, seems to be based on some graphs from a historic flu epidemic where there was a second wave for reasons that probably had nothing to do with containment measures.
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I have read that Wuhan residents who had tested positive earlier and then recovered from the disease are testing positive for the virus a second time. Based on data from several quarantine facilities in the city, which house patients for further observation after their discharge from hospitals, about 5%-10% of patients pronounced "recovered" have tested positive again.

Is this what they are referring to by 'second wave'? I'm so confused from all the conflicting information out there.

(Some posts relating to viral reactivation have been moved to the biology thread.)
 
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spinoza577 said:
Currently it´s 0.9%, having gradually risen by 0.1% each of the last days.

In TV today some expert hoped for an underdetermination of 20-fold, that would mean with about 70.000 confirmed cases there would be 1.400.000 real cases (being the number of infection ca. 10 days ago).
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Are you referring to Germany?
10 days ago 22 Mar they had about 25000 cases, five days ago 51000 cases.

As of today they have c. 900 deaths so about 1.75% allowing for a 5 day lag.
If the true death rate is 0.66% then the underdetermination is only about 3 fold.
i.e 5 days ago they had about 150000 cases.
 
I'm wondering, everybody is talking about ventilators.

From what I understand, that's for the most severe cases.

But there are also people that only need an oxygen mask, a CPAP or just a nasal cannula (I hope I got this right). And that can prevent them from needing a ventilator if their case isn't that severe.

Are there enough of those?
 
Leila said:
I'm wondering, everybody is talking about ventilators.

From what I understand, that's for the most severe cases.

But there are also people that only need an oxygen mask, a CPAP or just a nasal cannula (I hope I got this right). And that can prevent them from needing a ventilator if their case isn't that severe.

Are there enough of those?
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It sounds like CPAPs are also in short supply in the Uk. Edit; they seem to be building a new prototype of it though, and Mercedes are building them. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ld-new-uk-breathing-aid-for-covid-19-patients
 
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BurnA said:
Are you referring to Germany?
10 days ago 22 Mar they had about 25000 cases, five days ago 51000 cases.

As of today they have c. 900 deaths so about 1.75% allowing for a 5 day lag.
If the true death rate is 0.66% then the underdetermination is only about 3 fold.
i.e 5 days ago they had about 150000 cases.
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Today´s numbers from the Robert-Koch-Institute (I though looked today in the morning and got older ones) are

confirmed cases: 67.366 ........ (+5.453)
deaths: 732 .............................(+149)
death rate: 1.1%

https://www.rki.de/

Obviously they didn´t calculate with a time lag between the cases (reflecting the number of infections a couple of days ago) and the resulting deaths (occuring today), both cumulated.


True death rate is as much unknown as the underdetermination. But it might be easier to make a guess on the underdetermination, and here the expert hoped for an underdetermination in Germany as high as 20-fold, which would lower the death rate significantly, of course. If 20-fold is true might be doubtful.
 
Mij said:
@Barry COVID19 is an enveloped RNA virus.

These small, enveloped RNA viruses replicate via reverse transcription of their RNA genomes; the resulting DNA establishes persistence by integrating into the host genome, from which it generally cannot be dislodged. In most infected cells in culture, such integrants continue to express genomic RNA and viral proteins, leading to the production of progeny virions. However, in some cultured cells such integrants are completely transcriptionally silent, though they can be exogenously stimulated to express viral mRNAs and resume virus production. These cells meet the molecular definition of latency.
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So would that be like the chickenpox virus that can reactivate to cause shingles yrs later, or am I displaying my ignorance lol?
 
lunarainbows said:
Then there’s the fact that regardless of whether herd immunity was a primary or secondary aim, it was a policy and outcome that the uk govt actually entertained.
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This was Sir Patrick Valance, England’s chief scientific adviser, speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme a couple of weeks ago:

”Our aim is to try and reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not suppress it completely; also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease and we reduce the transmission, at the same time we protect those who are most vulnerable to it. Those are the key things we need to do.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...f-defends-uk-measures-criticism-herd-immunity

So I think we pretty much have it on record that herd immunity was the government’s primary aim.
 
Does anyone know any public data sources on the number of hospitalized cases (including those in ICU) in Italy? @strategist

This Dutch journalist (see Twitter post below) reports that the increase there is slowing down suggesting that Italy may finally be reaching its peak. The number of newly confirmed cases also suggests so. Just hope that the virus won't spread further to the south of the country.

The unfortunate situation in Spain, New York and the UK suggests that Italy will not be the exception with thousands of COVID-19 deaths. The country is like a canary in the coalmine for the rest of Europe.

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Mij said:
I have read that Wuhan residents who had tested positive earlier and then recovered from the disease are testing positive for the virus a second time. Based on data from several quarantine facilities in the city, which house patients for further observation after their discharge from hospitals, about 5%-10% of patients pronounced "recovered" have tested positive again.
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The tests have poor sensitivity - 20% of positive cases will test negative (based on studies of the tests used in China, but similar results elsewhere). The virus isn't "reactivated", they had it the whole time, but the test has flaws.
 
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