When will this shit end?

[squirrelarmy]

5 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

well, he's based in US...I expect he doesn't care what UK govt instructions are. Either we go into office, or our site gets closed.

I bet he hates our pesky employment laws and mandatory national insurance contributions. 

[steviewevie]

4 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

Sorry to hear that mate, what a horrid position that’s put you in. 

yeah, I have already sent a little complaining email to my boss...but it is what it is, so I will start going in full time from next Monday. It's a small office, there's only about 10 of us, and we have partitions up to separate work stations, but you know, it increases the risk of spread of infection, especially as a number of us have kids in school too...

[WestCountryGirl]

Thanks for your responses all @Ryan1984 @august1 @guypjfreak @Leyrulion

Unfortunately his job is literally to rove around the library, so not much chance of just holing up at his desk! They do seem to have put in a great number of restrictions though. Think it's down to 1/3rd normal capacity - no group studying, no students going to get their own books. Apparently everyone he's had to remind/ask to put their mask back on so far has been polite and compliant. 

I think he was more worried before he went back, he seems okay now that he's seen how it's all set up. Of course, the next few weeks will be the real test. Meanwhile my venturing back onto campus one day a week has been postponed by two weeks, and then I imagine will be postponed again.. (I hope).

[Ozanne]

In case anyone is curious or worried about battery life for the NHS COVID-19 app, here is the usage of my battery. I’m in an iPhone 11 Pro and iOS 14.

[squirrelarmy]

5 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

In case anyone is curious or worried about battery life for the NHS COVID-19 app, here is the usage of my battery. I’m in an iPhone 11 Pro and iOS 14.

Mine is 3% usage. Depends what else you use your phone for. For a background app that you never look at it is fairly significant but not going to make a huge difference in your everyday use. If you’re using your phone a lot anyway it’s not going to make you charge it more often. 
 

My phone is always on charge if I’m not out 😂

[Ozanne]

16 minutes ago, squirrelarmy said:

Mine is 3% usage. Depends what else you use your phone for. For a background app that you never look at it is fairly significant but not going to make a huge difference in your everyday use. If you’re using your phone a lot anyway it’s not going to make you charge it more often. 
 

My phone is always on charge if I’m not out 😂

True it’s a big drain on battery searching for Keir Starmer gifs all day. 

[Fuzzy Afro]

Spain now apparently seeing 300-400 deaths a day but is cooking the numbers to make them look favourable. Basically they only report those who died in the last 24 hours, and if there’s a reporting lag from time of death to time of reporting (as is very often the case, especially outside hospitals), then a person’s death is not subsequently “caught up” in the figures. So deaths which aren’t reported within 24 hours are being fudged out of the official figures completely. 

[priest17]

9 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

True it’s a big drain on battery searching for Keir Starmer gifs all day. 

[eFestivals]

An interesting take on herd immunity in a letter to the Guardian.

From what he says about London, I guess that might be proven or not over the new few weeks and months.

[JoeyT]

1 minute ago, eFestivals said:

An interesting take on herd immunity in a letter to the Guardian.

From what he says about London, I guess that might be proven or not over the new few weeks and months.

Looks interesting.

Would like to throw my weight behind supporting this theory even more because the Professor is from Bristol 

[zahidf]

4 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

An interesting take on herd immunity in a letter to the Guardian.

From what he says about London, I guess that might be proven or not over the new few weeks and months.

new york seems to show this as well

[Fuzzy Afro]

8 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

An interesting take on herd immunity in a letter to the Guardian.

From what he says about London, I guess that might be proven or not over the new few weeks and months.

Let’s suppose that the natural R number, in absence of any social distancing regulations and in absence of isolating those who test positive, is 3.0. It could be slightly lower of higher, but in early March before we started being more careful, the epidemic was roughly tripling every 5 days which would imply R is 3.0.

 

That would mean that at least two-thirds of the population needs to be immune for herd immunity to be achieved. 
 

Note that herd immunity doesn’t mean “no one can ever catch it”, it just means that any outbreak will eventually burn itself out because it won’t come into contact with enough susceptible people to infect.

 

You can think of the effective R number as: Natural R x %age of population susceptible 

 

Now if we believe this theory that as many as 50% of people are naturally protected, then we are a lot closer to the magic number of 66.7% than we think (given roughly 8% have been infected)

 

I have pretty good reason to believe that natural immunity does exist. I don’t know if it’s anywhere near as high as 50%, but I know people who have repeatedly been exposed to covid and have not become infected despite trying to catch it deliberately. 

[Toilet Duck]

5 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

An interesting take on herd immunity in a letter to the Guardian.

From what he says about London, I guess that might be proven or not over the new few weeks and months.

Yeah, it's something we have been discussing here for a while. The underlying T-cell mediated immunity looks to be anything from 30-80% in different populations based on a range of studies (no absolute evidence for one or another and may simply vary by population). For a while I've believed that this was the root of the asymptomatic/mild cases. It's certainly the best explanation I've seen yet. As pointed out previously, what's really needed to nail this down is a prospective study linking t-cell profiles to outcome (or alternatively, look at historical blood samples in areas where the virus is spreading a lot and correlate with how patients do when they actually get infected). The other main factor that needs to be looked at with this hypothesis is whether t-cell immunity has much, if any, impact on acquiring and spreading the virus. Many of us have t-cell profiles that recognise other CoVs, but we still pick them up. They don't do much to us, but we can still spread them, so if the above is really true I don't think it will have an impact on cases, but should translate into better outcomes once a threshold is reached in new infections. Of course, the other underlying factor in all of this (should it be true) is that at around the age of 65, the thymus starts to involute (shrink). This is the part of our bodies where t-cells mature. As a result, over 65s have poorer t-cell driven immunity and it worsens the further past 65 you get. Considering over 65 is where fatality and severe disease rates rocket with COVID, it's certainly at the very least a striking coincidence. So, if all this is true, what you would start to see is lots of cases, lots of mild/asymptomatic infections but still hospitalisations and fatalities over 65 (hence, we still need a vaccine of a blockbuster treatment)...only time will tell!

[thetime]

1 hour ago, steviewevie said:

yeah, I have already sent a little complaining email to my boss...but it is what it is, so I will start going in full time from next Monday. It's a small office, there's only about 10 of us, and we have partitions up to separate work stations, but you know, it increases the risk of spread of infection, especially as a number of us have kids in school too...

Some of us have had no choice to go into work from day 1. 

The right precautions and its the right thing to do.

[philipsteak]

59 minutes ago, WestCountryGirl said:

Thanks for your responses all @Ryan1984 @august1 @guypjfreak @Leyrulion

Unfortunately his job is literally to rove around the library, so not much chance of just holing up at his desk! They do seem to have put in a great number of restrictions though. Think it's down to 1/3rd normal capacity - no group studying, no students going to get their own books. Apparently everyone he's had to remind/ask to put their mask back on so far has been polite and compliant. 

I think he was more worried before he went back, he seems okay now that he's seen how it's all set up. Of course, the next few weeks will be the real test. Meanwhile my venturing back onto campus one day a week has been postponed by two weeks, and then I imagine will be postponed again.. (I hope).

That pretty much describes me 2 1/2 months ago as we reopened. Not usually a particularly anxious person but definitely worried about restarting and then it was fine. If anything I felt at the time that some of the measures were too much and we showed a bit too much caution, although with hindsight maybe not. 25 or so staff, and  thousands of guests later and we've not had a single incidence (that we know of. Could be that someone has not reported symptoms of course) so that caution was a good thing

[Reckoner]

15 hours ago, efcfanwirral said:

No messing in Singapore! 

The problem here at the moment is that the case count is very low (10-15 a day in the workers dorms or mandatory quarantine from airport arrivals with proactive testing, 0-1 what has been termed a “community case”) yet the restrictions are still limited to 5 people max. Managing the restrictions is a tough act but They are only as useful as the compliance with them. The risk here is so low that people are starting to push the boundaries, although the mask etiquette is virtually perfect. 

[DeanoL]

38 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

I have pretty good reason to believe that natural immunity does exist. I don’t know if it’s anywhere near as high as 50%, but I know people who have repeatedly been exposed to covid and have not become infected despite trying to catch it deliberately. 

I feel like that's a story worth sharing if possible!

[SheffJeff]

39 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

Let’s suppose that the natural R number, in absence of any social distancing regulations and in absence of isolating those who test positive, is 3.0. It could be slightly lower of higher, but in early March before we started being more careful, the epidemic was roughly tripling every 5 days which would imply R is 3.0.

 

That would mean that at least two-thirds of the population needs to be immune for herd immunity to be achieved. 
 

Note that herd immunity doesn’t mean “no one can ever catch it”, it just means that any outbreak will eventually burn itself out because it won’t come into contact with enough susceptible people to infect.

 

You can think of the effective R number as: Natural R x %age of population susceptible 

 

Now if we believe this theory that as many as 50% of people are naturally protected, then we are a lot closer to the magic number of 66.7% than we think (given roughly 8% have been infected)

 

I have pretty good reason to believe that natural immunity does exist. I don’t know if it’s anywhere near as high as 50%, but I know people who have repeatedly been exposed to covid and have not become infected despite trying to catch it deliberately. 

Why on earth would they try to catch it deliberately?

[JoeyT]

 

[zahidf]

3 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

I feel like that's a story worth sharing if possible!

yeah, why would someone catch it delibrately? unless htey are on of those 'Covid immunity party' morons

[Fuzzy Afro]

1 minute ago, DeanoL said:

I feel like that's a story worth sharing if possible!

 

Just now, SheffJeff said:

Why on earth would they try to catch it deliberately?

Covid had made it into a household where five of my friends live together. One person caught it and tested positive, meaning two week isolation for them all. 
 

As with the rest of us, the remaining four were worried about catching it and then spreading it on either to their vulnerable elderly relatives, or into the wider community. It was therefore decided that since they were all isolating together, it was best to try and catch it from the one person who’d brought it in, see out their infection in a controlled environment, then return to the community after recovering safe in the knowledge that they’d had the virus and not spread it.

 

Despite their best efforts, all of the housemates tested negative repeatedly. 

[JoeyT]

1 minute ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

 

Covid had made it into a household where five of my friends live together. One person caught it and tested positive, meaning two week isolation for them all. 
 

As with the rest of us, the remaining four were worried about catching it and then spreading it on either to their vulnerable elderly relatives, or into the wider community. It was therefore decided that since they were all isolating together, it was best to try and catch it from the one person who’d brought it in, see out their infection in a controlled environment, then return to the community after recovering safe in the knowledge that they’d had the virus and not spread it.

 

Despite their best efforts, all of the housemates tested negative repeatedly. 

"Best efforts"

All I can think of is a south park episode where they try to make each other ill by spitting in each others mouths.

I hope it didn't come to this...!

[Fuzzy Afro]

1 minute ago, JoeyT said:

"Best efforts"

All I can think of is a south park episode where they try to make each other ill by spitting in each others mouths.

I hope it didn't come to this...!

AFAIK this didn’t happen. The “efforts” extended to the infected guy being welcomed as a normal member of the household and sharing meals with them, watching TV on the sofa etc. Basically they didn’t ask him to quarantine in his bedroom. There wasn’t any spitting, but there also wasn’t any distancing.

 

He was an asymptomatic carrier so I wonder if he wasn’t contagious at all. 

Edited September 25, 2020 by Fuzzy Afro

[Toilet Duck]

7 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

 

Covid had made it into a household where five of my friends live together. One person caught it and tested positive, meaning two week isolation for them all. 
 

As with the rest of us, the remaining four were worried about catching it and then spreading it on either to their vulnerable elderly relatives, or into the wider community. It was therefore decided that since they were all isolating together, it was best to try and catch it from the one person who’d brought it in, see out their infection in a controlled environment, then return to the community after recovering safe in the knowledge that they’d had the virus and not spread it.

 

Despite their best efforts, all of the housemates tested negative repeatedly. 

This fits with the data from Wuhan early in in the outbreak, where only 5% of household contacts of cases actually ended up testing positive.  How symptomatic was the infected individual in this case? I think one of the interesting questions is, what is it about super-spreaders that leads to massive infection levels, while in many other cases, only a small fraction of close contacts end up being infected. There are anecdotal reports of super-spreaders being asymptomatic, so there's got to be some reason to explain it!

 

Edit: Ah, I see you just posted the infected individual was asymptomatic...

Edited September 25, 2020 by Toilet Duck

[Fuzzy Afro]

Just now, Toilet Duck said:

This fits with the data from Wuhan early in in the outbreak, where only 5% of household contacts of cases actually ended up testing positive.  How symptomatic was the infected individual in this case? I think one of the interesting questions is, what is it about super-spreaders that leads to massive infection levels, while in many other cases, only a small fraction of close contacts end up being infected. There are anecdotal reports of super-spreaders being asymptomatic, so there's got to be some reason to explain it!

This guy was asymptomatic, but caught it from someone who was pre-symptomatic.