COVID-19

[mediocrity511]

There are also some communities who are going to find it near enough impossible. In the 3 bed house adjoining ours there is an elderly lady, 2 married couples and 3 children. The houses round me are full of intergenerational households with limited space.

[lpm]

This just posted by someone on Facebook who appears to believe it. Is it a realistic interpretation of the UK government's plans? It would appear to require social engineering on a scale that even China might well balk at.

The UK plan is excellent for the UK. And I am going to try and fill in the gaps from Boris plan to explain it
His plan is to segregate all vulnerable people (older, ill and at risk) let’s call this group A
Anyone looking after the older,ill and at risk can be group B
The general population generally healthy can be group C
Group C needs to go about it’s business keeping the country moving kids at school us at work
Group B looks after group A and avoids contact with C
Group C is allowed to contract the virus and because it’s generally healthy it can cope with it better than group A
Group A and B are almost self isolating without the virus to avoid putting strain on the NHS and reducing the risk of getting the virus and then needing the NHS
Group C (the generally healthy) go through the cycle of contracting the virus self isolating and being looked after by healthy family members, friends and the local community
Anyone who has complications gets looked after by the NHS while groups A and B are kept away The NHS are not strained by A and B while its looking after complicated cases in C
As group C comes full circle and recovers it divides in to groups that take group B’s position looking after group A allowing group B to go though the cycle
With B and C though the cycle
A is free to have NHS to itself because B and C are now clear from illness and infection and hopefully have a degree of immunity from getting it again this season.
Hope this helps those that are worried or not sure of the plan
Everyone has a job to do for the above to work
Big love to all stay safe and look after each other ❤️
Please feel free to share.
Here is also a link which demonstrates visually and will hopefully help people who have not a clue what they are talking about to understand the action the UK is taking and why it is imperative that it is timed perfectly and not just to coincide with Spain or Italy or any other nation.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nl6tTwxzC ... e=youtu.be

I’ll have a go at writing my own version of that. I know my sort of simplifications, like this YouTube, can be criticised as being too Malcolm Gladwell, but sometimes these kinds of things can give clarity.

[Rich H]

Our choir concert is off, which is the right decision.

One of our members has a friend with a bay who has been trying to buy formula milk and is having difficulty with that. Apparently being are panic buying it in place of milk. I f.cking hate humans sometimes.

[Woodchopper]

You can spot government supporters quite easily in these debates as they all wheel out the "intervention fatigue" argument (the key bit of behavioural science that very few of the behavioural scientists I know believe in). This guy on Facebook was one such. I have a yet to find a behavioural scientist who is convinced of the evidence for this. It would be both tragic and ironic if flawed social psychology research were to kill thousands of people, when one of the arguments sometimes used to not -quite-justify bad research practices is "well, at least nobody dies if they get it wrong, unlike say medical research".

Its possible that intervention fatigue is a euphemism for something much worse.

Its not difficult to imagine a government scenario in which a nation-wide shutdown resulted in, say, a million people being laid off within a week (or just having their zero hours contracts reduced permanently to zero). The f.cked up benefits system can't cope, add to that high levels of debt and minimal savings, and large numbers of people are in a very dire situation.

[Little waster]

I liked this article from the WaPo showing simple simulations of the effects of different social distancing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics ... simulator/

Although it's definitely treating humans as gas molecules.

Perfectly spherical and living in a vacuum ... sounds like half my family.

[lpm]

I’ll have a go at writing my own version of that. I know my sort of simplifications, like this YouTube, can be criticised as being too Malcolm Gladwell, but sometimes these kinds of things can give clarity.

Imagine for a moment Covid isn’t one disease. Instead there are two variants circulating simultaneously – Covid-1% and Covid-4%. They are identical in every way except their Case Fatality Rate.

You assume everyone in your population is going to get one or other of the two strains. It can’t be stopped, it’s going to happen over the next 365 days. But imagine there’s a strong seasonal variation in infection rates: people are currently getting Covid-1%, then will catch Covid-4% from 1 April to 30 September, then Covid-1% from 1 October onwards.

In this imaginary scenario, if you care about lives clearly you want as many people as possible to catch the Covid-1% variant and will desperately do everything possible to stop people catching Covid-4%. The difference could be well over a million lives lost.

In Wuhan they caught Covid-4%, in the rest of China Covid-1%. In Lombardy they have Covid-4%, in the rest of Italy Covid-1%.

Obviously the difference between the two strains is healthcare. Where the system can cope, people die of Covid-1%. When the health service is overwhelmed, people die of Covid-4%.

So what happens on 1 October onwards to make it Covid-1%? Hospitals and ventilators and all other necessary health resources. A huge national effort sees the building of not 40 new hospitals, but 400. Not an increase in ventilators from 5,000 to 10,000, but to 100,000. An effort to get every possible resource in place, knowing every day’s delay means another day’s worth of Covid-4% fatalities instead of Covid-1%

And in the meantime? Delay, delay, delay. Apply the maximum pressure now because Covid-4% is two weeks away. Buy time wherever possible, hindering the Covid-4% enemy in our retreat, buying time to switch it into Covid-1%.

This is the difference between the UK and the rest of Europe. The UK is concerned about multiple waves, the exponential curves re-igniting in Italy and Spain when lockdowns end. Which is a massive problem. You need to slam down new waves multiple times. But each lockdown generates the time and space to get resources in place for the waves that’ll hit in a few months – and those resources can make the waves from October onwards Covid-1% waves.

The UK is choosing to allow higher infection rates now. For example requiring people with mild Covid illness to self-isolate for 7 days only, when infectiousness likely lingers on for a further 7 days after that. They accept this will increase infection rates a little, but see that as worth it for the normality to the economy and ways of life – and crucially the hope that we will then see lower subsequent waves later in the year. When Italy and Spain are struggling with re-ignition, we will be on lower exponential pathways due to more people with acquired immunity.

The flaw is that higher now, in return for much lower later, means a higher case load now with an under-resourced health service – hence the “higher now” is all Covid-4%. While the “lower later” benefits will be seen in the autumn or next winter – when it could have been Covid-1%.

No policy is going to be correct unless it starts with (a) we must build massive healthcare capacity and (b) it's going to take time to get that capacity. Everything else must follow from that.

[purplehaze]

Our choir concert is off, which is the right decision.

One of our members has a friend with a bay who has been trying to buy formula milk and is having difficulty with that. Apparently being are panic buying it in place of milk. I f.cking hate humans sometimes.

There's a couple of very generous people I know on Facebook who are giving their follow on milk away - it's probably gone by now.

I decided to skip a fundraiser due to the nature of close contact with dancing and said I would donate the money instead. 12 hours later it was cancelled.

I know some people who are not letting their children go to school, but they are stay at home, or work from home parents. For GCSEs and A levels it's mostly revision now anyway.

Still no news if exams are going to go ahead. In the school I work in the invigilators are mainly retired and a few are in the 70 and above age group.

[sTeamTraen]

Imagine for a moment Covid isn’t one disease. Instead there are two variants circulating simultaneously – Covid-1% and Covid-4%. They are identical in every way except their Case Fatality Rate.

...

Yes, I get that. It would be wonderful (but see point 3 below) if it were practical in the real world. But ISTM there are a few major problems:

1. People will not go along with government assurances. Look how they are dealing with government assurances that they will be able to wipe their arse in the manner to which they have become accustomed. If they think there is any threat to their delicate mucous membranes, they lay in 300 rolls of Andrex. What's going to happen when they hear on Facebook, rightly or wrongly, that someone's Nan three streets down was denied a ventilator?

2. There seems (to me) to be no plausible mechanism to make the quarantine work. Presumably my FB interlocutor was bullshitting about this Group B of people who somehow look after the needs of Group A while not getting the virus off Group C, but you can see why he would come up with such an idea, because it's going to be hard in real life to minimise contact between groups A and C

In this video that I also posted yesterday, Professor Graham Medley says how it would be nice to move all the 70-year-olds to the north of Scotland and have all the younger people in Kent acquiring herd immunity. He acknowledges that this isn't possible, but I don't think he appreciates exactly how impossible it is (i.e., how little effect this quarantine will have at a population level). The model seems to be that since middle-class English people tend to see as little as possible of their parents, having 4 months between visits versus an average of say 1 month will not be a huge difference, but that isn't true for an awful lot of people, especially single parents and families from an immigrant background.

3. A political risk: At some point a vaccine, or perhaps a credible antiviral treatment, will come along. If that arrives before some date X, the UK's strategy will have been seen to be unnecessarily risky. (Of course, if the vaccine or treatment takes a long time to arrive, the same will apply in countries that experience a lockdown/outbreak/lockdown/outbreak cycle.)

[bob sterman]

3. A political risk: At some point a vaccine, or perhaps a credible antiviral treatment, will come along.

My hunch (vain hope?) is that before we get a vaccine we might get a treatment protocol that can have a significant impact on mortality (assuming facilities are available).

E.g.if the ability to accurately forecast who will deteriorate and an effective protocol could reduce the CFR from say 3% to 1% that would be huge.

Wishful thinking?

[Martin Y]

After I posted the above I asked the poster if there were going to be separate pubs, Nandos, and Sainsburys for each group, and if people would be wearing Rimmer-style letters on their foreheads. I got accused of being a Jeremy Corbyn supporter.

Perhaps an "H" on the forehead for "had it already".

Joking aside, I wonder if that will become a thing: people who have recovered indicating their (probable) immunity in some way.

[Woodchopper]

2. There seems (to me) to be no plausible mechanism to make the quarantine work. Presumably my FB interlocutor was bullshitting about this Group B of people who somehow look after the needs of Group A while not getting the virus off Group C, but you can see why he would come up with such an idea, because it's going to be hard in real life to minimise contact between groups A and C

In this video that I also posted yesterday, Professor Graham Medley says how it would be nice to move all the 70-year-olds to the north of Scotland and have all the younger people in Kent acquiring herd immunity. He acknowledges that this isn't possible, but I don't think he appreciates exactly how impossible it is (i.e., how little effect this quarantine will have at a population level). The model seems to be that since middle-class English people tend to see as little as possible of their parents, having 4 months between visits versus an average of say 1 month will not be a huge difference, but that isn't true for an awful lot of people, especially single parents and families from an immigrant background.

Some suggestions here for government run care homes or setting up support networks to deliver food etc: https://www.itv.com/news/2020-03-14/eld ... ronavirus/

The concerns that if quarantine is not handled properly then some old people will die of neglect don't seem implausible (recall the 30 000 that died in France during the heat wave).

However, if its all just being implemented now it seems very late. If we've got about two weeks before its as bad as Milan there's a huge amount to do in a short space of time. To start with, how easy is it going to be to identify the name and address of each person who is over 70? As far as I recall none of the various UK databases cover all the population and is regularly updated.

[OneOffDave]

I don't know about intervention fatigue but I've got COVID-19 fatigue. Since the second week in January I've only had four days where I've not done something COVID-19 related.

[Blackcountryboy]

health secretary Matt Hancock... confirmed that the government is set to ask, at some point in the coming weeks, over-70s to self-isolate for months at some point in the UK

more on that

Blackcountrygirl and I are well into the over 70 group, so not looking forward to it. At least there is just the two of us in a 3 bedroom house in a leafy cul-de-sac, garden is about 36 yd by 12 yd, a greenhouse to potter in, so in a better position than many for self isolating. Tomorrow I am picking up a dozen bottles of wine, ordered on line from Waitrose, If the worst comes to the worst we shall have to drink the prosecco that has been accumulating under the stairs.

[shpalman]

Aside from Codogno, the other Red Zone set up in Italy at the beginning of the emergency was Vò near Padua; today they had no new positives.

In such a small town it was feasible to swab literally everybody.

If I understand the TV news correctly, the virus reached about 3% of the population.

[purplehaze]

I don't know about intervention fatigue but I've got COVID-19 fatigue. Since the second week in January I've only had four days where I've not done something COVID-19 related.

It's a bit like having a newborn baby with a toddler. It's never ending and you're exhausted.

But this time next year?

[Stephanie]

I've made a support thread in Relaxation Station. Do report any posts you want shifted over, and I'll sort it.

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1006

[Bird on a Fire]

I've made a support thread in Relaxation Station. Do report any posts you want shifted over, and I'll sort it.

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1006

Thank you, Stephanie!

[Lew Dolby]

forgive me if I've missed this in 50-odd pages, but . . .

. . . question - where does the idea of immunity after being infected come from ?? Having a cold or seasonal flu doesn't give immunity.

Is there evidence that Covid does give immunity or is it just wishful thinking ?

[shpalman]

forgive me if I've missed this in 50-odd pages, but . . .

. . . question - where does the idea of immunity after being infected come from ?? Having a cold or seasonal flu doesn't give immunity.

Is there evidence that Covid does give immunity or is it just wishful thinking ?

Common colds are caused by hundreds of different viruses, and the seasonal 'flu tends to be one or two different strains each season (so that season's vaccine is produced depending on which strain seems to be breaking out). But generally, retroviruses are unstable and tend to mutate quickly.

It's not at all clear whether a Covid infection gives total immunity given that we seem to have reports of a person being infected a second time.

Something here: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-styl ... 00691.html

[sTeamTraen]

forgive me if I've missed this in 50-odd pages, but . . .

. . . question - where does the idea of immunity after being infected come from ?? Having a cold or seasonal flu doesn't give immunity.

Is there evidence that Covid does give immunity or is it just wishful thinking ?

I read on That There Internet that one of the reasons that seasonal flu doesn't spread faster is because a large number of people have some sort of partial immunity to it, depending on what previous flus they have had, because the various flu viruses are related to each other. The really nasty thing about this outbreak could be the word "novel" before "coronavirus".

[Iron Magpie]

forgive me if I've missed this in 50-odd pages, but . . .

. . . question - where does the idea of immunity after being infected come from ?? Having a cold or seasonal flu doesn't give immunity.

Is there evidence that Covid does give immunity or is it just wishful thinking ?

Common colds are caused by hundreds of different viruses, and the seasonal 'flu tends to be one or two different strains each season (so that season's vaccine is produced depending on which strain seems to be breaking out). But generally, retroviruses are unstable and tend to mutate quickly.

It's not at all clear whether a Covid infection gives total immunity given that we seem to have reports of a person being infected a second time.

Something here: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-styl ... 00691.html

I didn't think Covid19 was a retrovirus....pretty sure of it but if someone has evidence otherwise I'd be grateful to see it.

[shpalman]

You're right it's not a retrovirus but it's anyway a single strand of RNA.

[Bird on a Fire]

Reports that the US government tried to lock a German vaccine firm into producing a vaccine for sole use by the USA.

The United States and Germany are vying to produce an exclusive vaccine against the coronavirus which is being developed in a German laboratory, Die Welt daily reported Saturday

According to the paper, US President Donald Trump is trying to poach German scientists working on an experimental vaccine against a global health threat that has now killed some 5,500 people with a view to having an exclusive licence rolled out in the United States.

Such a vaccine would be "only for the United States," a source close to the German government told Die Welt, though Berlin would reportedly is looking to make offers of its own to biotech firm CureVac, based in the German state of Thuringia.

Utterly condemnable behaviour if true.

[Bird on a Fire]

The Only Treatment for Coronavirus Is Solidarity

A pandemic makes the slogan of solidarity literal: an injury to one is an injury to all. That’s why a pandemic also heightens the frantic wish to withdraw oneself from the web of interdependence and ride it out alone.

The new coronavirus makes vivid the logic of a world that combines a material reality of intense interdependence with moral and political systems that leave people to look out for themselves. Because we are linked — at work, on the bus and subway, at school, at the grocery store, with the Fresh Direct delivery system — we are contagious, and vulnerable. Because we are morally isolated, told to look out for ourselves and our own, we are becoming survivalists house by house, apartment by apartment, stocking enough that’s canned and frozen, grabbing enough cold meds and disinfectant, to cut ties and go out on our own.

[Woodchopper]

forgive me if I've missed this in 50-odd pages, but . . .

. . . question - where does the idea of immunity after being infected come from ?? Having a cold or seasonal flu doesn't give immunity.

Is there evidence that Covid does give immunity or is it just wishful thinking ?

We don’t know yet: https://www.immunology.org/news/bsi-res ... sars-cov-2

See the second paragraph.