COVID-19 The Thread

[Jgav]

I think we all are right now. Hold tight, another 6 weeks and the worst of it should be over.

[Paul_L]

@SloggingScotsman

Can anyone tell me how blood works in the US? A US relative has come down with covid and another US relative has Facebook posted asking for blood donations. I only quickly saw the post but it got me wondering (I suspect there are other health issues as well).

Not sure how it works today, but many years ago if a patient needed blood in the USA you had two choices:

• Add the cost of the blood to the rest of your medical expenses OR
• Provide like-for-like blood donations from friends and relatives and not get charged.

Sorry, I’m supposed to be doing something else, so got to go…

[JibberJim]

Would be nice to be so confident, however with the current R rate now well into lockdown, we’ll still be looking at well over 20,000 cases a day, which with the transmissability of new variant there will be limited options on opening things up with such case volumes.

I cannot see any further steps that can particularly get R signficantly lower, indeed it’s likely to edge up again as more people get comfortable going out, more people edge the rules further.

[Jgav]

Yer but vaccines innit

[Poet]

But the R number is still above 1 in lockdown.
An vaccines aint a magic shield, innit.

We needed a “learn to live with it” strategy from Day 1.
Not this “hope for a vaccine” one

Press conference at 5pm.
I’ll either be rushing my tits off to get a change signed off before the weekend, or I’ll have given up and be walking the dog to Waitrose for some booze.

[TROSaracen]

I disagree.

Every day more people are jabbed. Millions of them during February; all from the most likely to get seriously ill/die groups.

More people have also been effectively vaccinated by catching the illness and recovering.

Of the remainder that haven’t caught it so far are probably lots of folk who are very disciplined, and have a life that really has them out of the virus’s way. The virus will have run through a lot of its ‘low hanging fruit’ already and won’t have the same R through this residual population.

Finally the virus loses transmissibility naturally with warmer weather/stronger sunlight.

I see the R falling and keeping on falling.

[Jgav]

@Poet

We needed a “learn to live with it” strategy from Day 1.
Not this “hope for a vaccine” one

Learn to die with it. There is no living with it for the elderly. Vaccinating the most vulnerable is the only way I can see that we will move on from here.

[awildt]

@Jgav

Learn to die with it.

Have you seen that the “recovered” numbers are significantly higher than the deaths? It just doesn’t get reported. It’s a serious, horrible illness but people (any age) are recovering from it.

[r0bh]

@Poet

We needed a “learn to live with it” strategy from Day 1.

We needed a “get infection rates as low as possible and keep them there” strategy from Day 1

Sadly it is now far too late for that as we have let it rage through the population

[Jgav]

@awildt

@Jgav

Learn to die with it.

Have you seen that the “recovered” numbers are significantly higher than the deaths? It just doesn’t get reported. It’s a serious, horrible illness but people (any age) are recovering from it.

Yes, you are right that many recover. The estimated death rate is 1% and 88% of all deaths have come from the top JCVI cohorts, meaning their mortality rate is significantly higher than 1%. That’s not something you can let go unchecked.

[JibberJim]

@Poet

But the R number is still above 1 in lockdown.

Nah, last week it was, very unlikely to still be, current indications have it around 0.9 - the headline on the BBC is old news, that was while it was still doing the last of the household infections at the start of lockdown.

[Whisk]

Doesn’t the vaccine just surpress symptoms, rather than stopping people catching the virus?

Surely that’s likely to push up infection rates if there’s a load of people who feel invincible, but it should reduce deaths.

[Poet]

@r0bh

We needed a “get infection rates as low as possible and keep them there” strategy from Day 1

‘Cos that’s worked out mint for the countries who did that

@JibberJim - 3rd to the 10th that R-rate, isn’t it? So some people still at school. A few days prior to “lockdown” - but judging by the queues I’ve seen at Costa, McDs and the sheer amount of cars on the road, I’d be doubtful it’ll be under 1
You know I love the taste of hats, right

[r0bh]

Reported today:

R value is between 1.2 and 1.3

The reproduction number, or R value, of coronavirus transmission across the UK is between 1.2 and 1.3, the government Office for Science and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) said.

Last week, it was between 1 and 1.4.

R represents the average number of people each Covid-19 positive person goes on to infect.

When the figure is above 1, an outbreak can grow exponentially.

An R number between 1.2 and 1.3 means that, on average, every 10 people infected will infect between 12 and 13 other people."

[r0bh]

@Poet

‘Cos that’s worked out mint for the countries who did that

Examples where that hasn’t worked? It’s worked out quite well for NZ and Aus

[Poet]

It’d worked out quite well for us during our summer months, too.

Hard lockdowns?
Spain, Italy, France.

I recall the French had to carry an attestation card with them to prove they were only going out once per day.
The Spanish were under virtual house arrest.

Like Richard Ashcroft sang;
Now the lockdowns don’t work
They just make you worse
But I’ll never see your face again

[awildt]

@Poet

I recall the French had to carry an attestation card with them to prove they were only going out once per day.

They still have to do that now it’s just that it’s required between 6pm-6am. The reasons for the attestation are also stricter now.

[JibberJim]

@r0bh

Reported today:

@Poet

@JibberJim - 3rd to the 10th that R-rate, isn’t it? So some people still at school. A few days prior to “lockdown”

Yes, it’s not current at all, lots of different estimates. If the rate has continued at 1-1.4 range then we are finding less and less of the cases every day, and the cases are even less representative in the Zoe data than previous. Both of those things seem unlikely, and the most recent middle estimate of 0.9 fits daily case data and Zoe data, and as Poet says, some of the period wasn’t completely locked down, and there was some remaining household transmission to shake out.

0.9 is still huge for lockdown, it was much lower last time, the new variant really is more transmissable.

[awildt]

No one is mentioning Germany. In one city they had a total of 80 deaths up until 1st December. Now they’ve got 340. It’s all gone a bit pear shaped there. Not entirely sure the reasons why.

[r0bh]

It’s not what you do in lockdown that is important, other than locking down soon enough and long enough to get the infection rate low enough. It’s what you do afterwards to keep it there.