When will this shit end?

[Madyaker]

1 minute ago, eFestivals said:

and then when the measures are relaxed, it'll shoot up again.

"Hey people, we've got some good news. You can now go to the pub but you're going to make loads more people die". 

 

 

Nah. Trump's thinking won't be how the US goes. Even if he tries it, state governors will take their own measures.

This won't be the case if a high enough % of the population have already had the infection.

[eFestivals]

1 hour ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

I’m honestly not trying to clutch at straws here, but to me unless I’m missing something glaringly obvious this makes perfect sense. China had this in December if not earlier, they only admitted to the WHO that human to human transfer was possible on 21st January, we didn’t ban flights from China until well into February.

So is it plausible to say that not one infected person came in to the U.K. from China between December (or earlier) And February? I might be wrong but I’d imagine quite a few probably did, so it’s feasible to suggest the virus was spreading here for the whole of January without any detection.

It's plausible, but tracing done by WHO reckons all major outbreaks in Europe originate from from a first case in the Netherlands (from China), where others were infected and then spread it around Europe.
(The USA got its first cases from China).

But you're right about the first infections being a while before the first positive tests. That same analysis says it was in Europe from December (I think, from memory. It may have been January).

[eFestivals]

4 minutes ago, Madyaker said:

This won't be the case if a high enough % of the population have already had the infection.

yep, but there's no indication from the numbers that that's likely to be the case.

[henry bear]

1 hour ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

So is it plausible to say that not one infected person came in to the U.K. from China between December (or earlier) And February? I might be wrong but I’d imagine quite a few probably did, so it’s feasible to suggest the virus was spreading here for the whole of January without any detection.

There are over 120,000 Chinese students in the UK and a lot of them would have flown back here from China after the Christmas break.

Edited March 25, 2020 by henry bear

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

Here is the actual report: https://www.dropbox.com/s/oxmu2rwsnhi9j9c/Draft-COVID-19-Model (13).pdf?dl=0

From what I can see all it’s trying to do is model certain mortality rates to then subsequently suggest when transmission might have started and then as a result how many of us might have had it.

it looks to me that when they model it with a 1% mortality rate it puts the start of transmission a few days before the first confirmed case here, so to me it’s not a completely implausible theory that the virus is actually much less deadly and has been spreading for longer.

Ultimately it’s just a theory, which at the moment can neither be proven or disproven. Likewise the same can be said about the Imperial college report, it’s just a theory which may or may not be correct. One of the issues with the Imperial college report is that it predicts 500,000 deaths as a worst case scenario but doesn’t allow for any overlap of the amount of people that would’ve died this year anyway from something else.

We aren’t testing for the actual virus anywhere near enough but we need the antibody test as well so we can use this in conjunction.

Ultimately with so many unknowns we absolutely need to take the most cautious approach, but we need the ability to prove or disprove either report as quickly as possible.

 

[eFestivals]

15 minutes ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

One of the issues with the Imperial college report is that it predicts 500,000 deaths as a worst case scenario but doesn’t allow for any overlap of the amount of people that would’ve died this year anyway from something else.

that's an issue with all of medicine. 

Everything is talked about in terms of 'saving lives', but ultimately no lives are saved as we'll all die eventually. What is really happening is 'extending lives'.

That difference ends up being really important - and not necessarily in a good way - because it slants all of the attitudes in how we approach things.

[Crazyfool01]

Prince Charles tests positive  

[Matt42]

7 minutes ago, crazyfool1 said:

Prince Charles tests positive  

I didn’t think it would be this soon that members of the royal family would get it.

what this confirms to me is that the rich / celebrities / public figures are getting easier access to tests than us.

I reckon the numbers of undiagnosed cases in the U.K. must be staggering.

[august1]

If we were all as good as Lee Mavers as self isolating/social distancing things would be fine.

 

 

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

4 minutes ago, Matt42 said:

I didn’t think it would be this soon that members of the royal family would get it.

what this confirms to me is that the rich / celebrities / public figures are getting easier access to tests than us.

I reckon the numbers of undiagnosed cases in the U.K. must be staggering.

Well it’s a fact that they are, it doesn’t need confirming. Bear in mind most rich and famous people will have private medical care, so they will have access to tests that way.

[Crazyfool01]

14 minutes ago, Matt42 said:

I didn’t think it would be this soon that members of the royal family would get it.

what this confirms to me is that the rich / celebrities / public figures are getting easier access to tests than us.

I reckon the numbers of undiagnosed cases in the U.K. must be staggering.

of course .. cant they just get tested privately and pay ? he wasn't hospitalised was he !! so thats the only way to currently get it ? I bet all of them have been tested .. 

[Copperface]

9 minutes ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

Well it’s a fact that they are, it doesn’t need confirming. Bear in mind most rich and famous people will have private medical care, so they will have access to tests that way.

Bear also in mind that many of the private clinics are offering CV19 tests run by Randox Health and are not properly evaluated. Randox, you may remember, were at the centre of the Forensic Science scandal, after forensic services were outsourced by this government to private institutions and the FSS closed down. Subsequently it emerged that thousands of drink/drive samples were invalidated due to tampering and unsafe handling/storage by Randox leading to thousands of cases being dropped and many appeals being mounted.

Oh yep, and Owen Paterson MP (Con.) is paid a consultancy fee of c. £100K per year by Randox.

[zahidf]

The real victims.

[charlierc]

2 hours ago, zahidf said:

Fuck sakes

 

 

Well it is in character. But then he's always come across as thoroughly unpleasant.

Also, given some of his staff were tested positive after a trip to Mar-a-Lago for a chinwag with Trump, you'd have thought he wouldn't be that cavalier.

3 hours ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/24/coronavirus-may-already-infected-half-uk-population-12451012/

There's most probably a high number people in Europe who the virus may have already passed through, but I doubt its to that level.

[BlackZeppelin]

1 hour ago, crazyfool1 said:

Prince Charles tests positive  

Into isolation with Camilla

...!

 

[Crazyfool01]

Just now, BlackZeppelin said:

Into isolation with Camilla

...!

 

thought it was separate ? as she was negative .... not like the houses aren't big enough to keep them apart ... hopefully prince philip doesnt get asked to get the shopping !!

[zahidf]

3 minutes ago, charlierc said:

Well it is in character. But then he's always come across as thoroughly unpleasant.

Also, given some of his staff were tested positive after a trip to Mar-a-Lago for a chinwag with Trump, you'd have thought he wouldn't be that cavalier.

There's most probably a high number people in Europe who the virus may have already passed through, but I doubt its to that level.

I think one the medical experts said five times as many people are on their calculations?

[Toilet Duck]

1 hour ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

...Ultimately it’s just a theory, which at the moment can neither be proven or disproven. Likewise the same can be said about the Imperial college report, it’s just a theory which may or may not be correct. One of the issues with the Imperial college report is that it predicts 500,000 deaths as a worst case scenario but doesn’t allow for any overlap of the amount of people that would’ve died this year anyway from something else.

We aren’t testing for the actual virus anywhere near enough but we need the antibody test as well so we can use this in conjunction.

Ultimately with so many unknowns we absolutely need to take the most cautious approach, but we need the ability to prove or disprove either report as quickly as possible.

 

Hi Nobby, Hope you are holding up ok!

Actually, the Imperial report modelled deaths from all causes (coronavirus-related and otherwise), they were excess deaths based on saturation of ICU. But the report from Oxford that you are referring to above does start to get into some of the unknowns I mentioned when we discussed the Imperial #9 report last week (namely the assumptions they made on the R0 and CFR of the virus). Oxford aren't the only ones to look at this and there was an excellent paper published in Science last week (DOI: 10.1126/science.abb3221) that looked at how the outbreak developed in Wuhan before and after lockdown. The upshot of that paper is that 86% of cases remained undetected (either those infected were asymptomatic, or their symptoms were so mild they did not seek any medical attention). They also looked at how infectious asymptomatic cases were and based on their modelling found that "Per person, the transmission rate of undocumented infections was 55% of documented infections ([46%–62%]), yet, due to their greater numbers, undocumented infections were the infection source for 79% of documented cases". The long and short of it is, the virus may be more infectious and less deadly based on the fact they we don't detect the vast majority of cases (we kinda knew this anyway, but it's nice to see some actual data to support this). In Ireland, we currently have 40,000 people waiting on tests, and there's public outrage...but they are 40,000 people who aren't in hospital, so it doesn't actually matter that much so long as they assume they have it and self-isolate (easier when everyone else is indoors too and there's nowhere to go). The variable that the Oxford report adds is when it all started and whether the virus has been circulating for longer (how many flu victims were misclassified coronavirus victims in January?).

As an update on the Imperial #9 report, its author Prof Ferguson has also stated today "...some hope for countries currently in various levels of lockdown that once case numbers are brought to low levels, it might be possible to relax social distancing – provided equal measures to limit the risk of the resurgence of transmission are introduced...relaxing the lockdown policies would depend on rapid and ubiquitous testing and rigorous case and contact isolation policies". This is another of the factors that we discussed as not being included in their model but would influence how long and how stringent the restrictions on social interaction would need to be.  But it appears like it will be their next recommendation (suppress, the test and trace like crazy...we are training over 300 contact tracers a week at the moment to facilitate this (just my Med School, the others are doing the same...presumably universities in the UK are doing the same thing)).

So again, there are two things that might make this a little better....firstly, more people are infected than we currently know are, but they are not turning up in hospital, so they have mild or asymptomatic disease (and will hopefully become immune), therefore the holy grail of "herd immunity" is reached more rapidly...and when suppression measures bring numbers turning up in hospital back down, widespread testing can help to stave off another surge (we only have models for this at the moment, what happens in China as we all deal with the earlier part of the outbreak will inform those a bit better). Anyway, the key at the moment is to help the health service cope.  An easier serological test will help with all of this (there's a bunch of them, just need to get one approved for widespread use) and it looks like progress on therapeutics is continuing at pace, so many of the things we discussed last week as being able to shift the model appear to be coming into play (will still take a while). Now if we could all just get our hands on some masks and hand sanitiser, we'd be golden!

 

stay safe!

[Superunknown]

8 minutes ago, BlackZeppelin said:

Into isolation with Camilla

...!

 

In Balmoral. What was that about non essential travel to second homes etc?

[zahidf]

1 hour ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

Here is the actual report: https://www.dropbox.com/s/oxmu2rwsnhi9j9c/Draft-COVID-19-Model (13).pdf?dl=0

From what I can see all it’s trying to do is model certain mortality rates to then subsequently suggest when transmission might have started and then as a result how many of us might have had it.

it looks to me that when they model it with a 1% mortality rate it puts the start of transmission a few days before the first confirmed case here, so to me it’s not a completely implausible theory that the virus is actually much less deadly and has been spreading for longer.

Ultimately it’s just a theory, which at the moment can neither be proven or disproven. Likewise the same can be said about the Imperial college report, it’s just a theory which may or may not be correct. One of the issues with the Imperial college report is that it predicts 500,000 deaths as a worst case scenario but doesn’t allow for any overlap of the amount of people that would’ve died this year anyway from something else.

We aren’t testing for the actual virus anywhere near enough but we need the antibody test as well so we can use this in conjunction.

Ultimately with so many unknowns we absolutely need to take the most cautious approach, but we need the ability to prove or disprove either report as quickly as possible.

 

Reading it, they haven't even started testing the theory yet. It's a theory without evidence...

[zahidf]

Interesting figures

Edited March 25, 2020 by zahidf

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

24 minutes ago, Toilet Duck said:

Hi Nobby, Hope you are holding up ok!

Actually, the Imperial report modelled deaths from all causes (coronavirus-related and otherwise), they were excess deaths based on saturation of ICU. But the report from Oxford that you are referring to above does start to get into some of the unknowns I mentioned when we discussed the Imperial #9 report last week (namely the assumptions they made on the R0 and CFR of the virus). Oxford aren't the only ones to look at this and there was an excellent paper published in Science last week (DOI: 10.1126/science.abb3221) that looked at how the outbreak developed in Wuhan before and after lockdown. The upshot of that paper is that 86% of cases remained undetected (either those infected were asymptomatic, or their symptoms were so mild they did not seek any medical attention). They also looked at how infectious asymptomatic cases were and based on their modelling found that "Per person, the transmission rate of undocumented infections was 55% of documented infections ([46%–62%]), yet, due to their greater numbers, undocumented infections were the infection source for 79% of documented cases". The long and short of it is, the virus may be more infectious and less deadly based on the fact they we don't detect the vast majority of cases (we kinda knew this anyway, but it's nice to see some actual data to support this). In Ireland, we currently have 40,000 people waiting on tests, and there's public outrage...but they are 40,000 people who aren't in hospital, so it doesn't actually matter that much so long as they assume they have it and self-isolate (easier when everyone else is indoors too and there's nowhere to go). The variable that the Oxford report adds is when it all started and whether the virus has been circulating for longer (how many flu victims were misclassified coronavirus victims in January?).

As an update on the Imperial #9 report, its author Prof Ferguson has also stated today "...some hope for countries currently in various levels of lockdown that once case numbers are brought to low levels, it might be possible to relax social distancing – provided equal measures to limit the risk of the resurgence of transmission are introduced...relaxing the lockdown policies would depend on rapid and ubiquitous testing and rigorous case and contact isolation policies". This is another of the factors that we discussed as not being included in their model but would influence how long and how stringent the restrictions on social interaction would need to be.  But it appears like it will be their next recommendation (suppress, the test and trace like crazy...we are training over 300 contact tracers a week at the moment to facilitate this (just my Med School, the others are doing the same...presumably universities in the UK are doing the same thing)).

So again, there are two things that might make this a little better....firstly, more people are infected than we currently know are, but they are not turning up in hospital, so they have mild or asymptomatic disease (and will hopefully become immune), therefore the holy grail of "herd immunity" is reached more rapidly...and when suppression measures bring numbers turning up in hospital back down, widespread testing can help to stave off another surge (we only have models for this at the moment, what happens in China as we all deal with the earlier part of the outbreak will inform those a bit better). Anyway, the key at the moment is to help the health service cope.  An easier serological test will help with all of this (there's a bunch of them, just need to get one approved for widespread use) and it looks like progress on therapeutics is continuing at pace, so many of the things we discussed last week as being able to shift the model appear to be coming into play (will still take a while). Now if we could all just get our hands on some masks and hand sanitiser, we'd be golden!

 

stay safe!

Thanks TD, I was just finishing up a home workout in the garden in this glorious sunshine when I noticed you replied, so finished up to read your response properly. I was going to tag you in the study to get your views anyway, so thank you for commenting. Extremely useful and insightful as always, it seems there is hope that we can both tackle the virus and avoid indefinite lockdown as well, with the key being the ability for widespread testing.

Edited March 25, 2020 by Deaf Nobby Burton

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

2 minutes ago, zahidf said:

Reading it, they haven't even started testing the theory yet. It's a theory without evidence...

Read Toilet Ducks response, they know what they’re talking about and can better interpret either study a lot better than us.

[Tranquility of Solitude]

18 minutes ago, Superunknown said:

In Balmoral. What was that about non essential travel to second homes etc?

I know. I’m raging about this in particular. He was displaying mild symptoms, and travelled to Balmoral on Sunday. I travel to Ballater for a large charity event that raises cash for motor neurone disease each June. Needless to say, this years fund raiser has been cancelled. 
Selfish, thoughtless twat.

[eFestivals]

1 hour ago, crazyfool1 said:

Prince Charles tests positive  

funny how he got to the front of the queue for testing even tho he's not in hospital, eh?