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Coronavirus.
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DarloRich
Veteran Member
I was amused that he fluffed the slogan at the end though!
I do wonder why they dont have an autocue for the speachy part!
Professor Van Tam put Robert Peston very firmly in his box yesterday.
DarloRich
Veteran Member
That's where I saw him! Thanks. Very impressed.
nlogax
Established Member
No. Forgive the slightly exasperated tone, but people don't seem to be that keen on doing a tiny bit of research about this. It's info that's been out there for months.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/hea...ronavirus/coronavirus-disease-2019-vs-the-flu
"Influenza (the flu) and COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus, are both infectious respiratory illnesses. Although the symptoms of COVID-19 and the flu can look similar, the two illnesses are caused by different viruses."
I suspect the government will want to know the results in return for providing the tests.
99% of cases are still above the Tropic of Cancer in the temperate regions of Asia, Europe and N America. The virus seems to be most effective at 8°C and low humidity. UV, heat and high humidity quickly inactivate it. Reported CoV2 cases are limited in Africa, S America and the tropics, most by far are imported. Of course buildings with AC provide an ideal cool dry environment which can confuse things.
It’s not unreasonable to believe the virus will cause less disease in European summer. People’s immune systems are stronger, respiratory illness less prevalent, the virus should be less effective. The population is building immunity every day, immune pressure is shaping the evolution of the virus, they tend to get weaker over time.
Greybeard33
Established Member
It does not appear to be the scientific consensus that the virus will cause less disease in summer:
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/2019-ncov-background-disease
Regarding population immunity, UK positive tests to date, i.e. people admitted to hospital with COVID-19, are less than 40000. International data suggests that the total number of infections to date will have been no more than five times that number, i.e. 200000. That is only about 0.3% of the population who might have immunity so far!
I think there’s a reluctance to say anything that could impact on compliance, which is fair enough.
The latitude similarity of the locations of the case epicentres is quite evident just by looking at a world map. Australia is usually mentioned but the authorities have mentioned several times that >80% of their cases are imported. Same goes for Singapore.
I really don’t see how summer weather can’t help, just from the fact that the highest risk population is elderly with congestive illness.
I’m convinced a large proportion of the population (or at least far more than currently realised) have had this illness already. It’s nothing more than a hunch though, but my colleagues share it. We’ll see if we’re right, PHE are apparently starting smallish antibody population studies.
No, the original post doubted that people would flock to the pubs if they reopened. Not that "nobody would go".
And it's not about Mr A or Mr B who choose to go to the pub (or restaurant, or cinema, or nightclub etc).
It's about Mr A passing it to Mr B, who then passes it to Mrs B, who then passes it to two other people, who then each pass it on to two more, one of whom - who has never visited the pub, or restaurant, or cinema etc - dies.
A lot of people are going to get the virus; the issue is simply that right now we need to reduce the rate of transmission. At some point we won't need to do that (or simply won't be able to sustain it - whichever comes first), so people who choose to go to the pubs at that point will be able to do so.
I certainly hope so!
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
It'll probably help in terms of deaths because there'll be less of a risk of having a cold or the flu at the same time as it. It might not help in terms of numbers of actual cases, though.
Greybeard33
Established Member
I hope your hunch is correct. It is not shared by Prof Anthony Costello, Director of the UCL Institute for Global Health, writing in the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...herd-immunity-community-surveillance-covid-19
johnnychips
Established Member
Has anybody noticed a drop in homeless people on the streets? In Sheffield it seems to have, anecdotally, halved. Evidently less people are about giving their ‘any spare change’ so I really hope some homeless people have sought refuge in shelters etc. where they will be able to access help and advice.
I had to pop into Exeter in the car this afternoon and I noticed a couple of people in the usual places, but nowhere near the usual amount.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
The Government has pressured Councils to house homeless people in unused hotel rooms.
It’s a difficult one though because to socialise a lot of homeless people in Exeter (and many other cities) tend to meet up in the same few places. It’s completely understandable that they still would as they need each other’s support.
A week ago there seemed to be a lot of police cars cruising around, and I assume that they would have been following up on reports of people breaking the stay at home (or in a hotel) rule.
That seems to have faded away though in the last few days from my observations.
johnnychips
Established Member
In Sheffield a lot of homeless people used to congregate in front of the Wetherspoons at Castle Square tram stop. Recently there has often been a police officer stood there outside his/her car looking stern, presumably to discourage this.
Apologies for bumping a post, but in terms of chemicals etc, whilst it is a proprietary system, what I don't understand is why those things can't be manufactured under license. It seems a very old fashioned system if things have to be manufactured in a particular factory somewhere rather than where needed.
Peter Kelford
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It's a really bad comparison that government who thought they would never deal with an epidemic on their soil created back in February (remember those days?). It spread quite well in Australia. Hong Kong has a minimum daytime high of 25 degrees all year round, but still got infected... On the opposite extreme, over 1000 cases in Iceland.
The tests are CE marked, validated and the results are guaranteed by the manufacturer as long as you follow the instructions. Validation is important as you know the results are correct and will be the same across labs as long as they follow the instructions. The manufacturers are set up to produce their tests in bulk so it’s easier for them to scale up their process rather than someone else making compatible tests, which could happen but it would take time. As you say Roche would have to licence other manufacturers to make test kits for their system, You can develop you own “home brew” assays to work within the Roche system so it’s not impossible but no 3rd party manufacturer does that currently as far as I know. I’d imagine they’d need a lot of information about Roche’s system which Roche would probably regard as commercially sensitive. The UK is assisting Roche in making these kits for global use but I can’t say any more than that.
For the Roche system the manufacturer provides everything that’s required to complete the test. It comes in bespoke cassettes and bottles that fit the machine. Everything’s even RFID tagged so it’s hard to do things wrong, someone with little training can operate the machine and a single operator can complete thousands of tests per day.
Of course you can develop your own PCR based test and buy in generic reagents and chemicals to use. It’ll be very labour intensive by comparison though and you’ll need trained and experienced staff to support it. You need to optimise and validate the test yourself. Even when you’ve done that you’re talking about doing 10s of tests per day compared with 1000s.
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It sounds as though it would have helped if there had already been a local manufacturer in place who could scale things up. Perhaps after this crisis, the world will move to a system of international licensing with more local manufacturing. Certainly a look at the weakness of global supply chains seems overdue.
I'd suggest that given that there's a lot of very highly trained scientists who carry out testing on a wide range of things that it would fairly easy to train them to test other things.
Whilst each of them would unlikely to be able to do 1,000's a day, with the potential for there too be 1,000's of them they could significantly increase the testing capacity of the country.
Bantamzen
Established Member
Given that most countries are only recording cases as we do, i.e. those that require medical attention, that figure cannot be verified as is probably very inaccurate.
That’s the problem with population epidemiology though, the lack of hard data, confounding factors and uncontrolled variables make estimations like err... guessing.
Meanwhile in Sweden life carries on as normal almost.
Yes, but the Swedish population respects guidance on how to cope with the pandemic.
This news story sees both sides - some are alarmed, some think it is a dangerous experiment.
https://news.sky.com/story/amp/coro...r-strategy-for-dealing-with-covid-19-11968101
The position in the UK remains that the virus has to pass through the population but it has to do so at a manageable rate.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
This is probably the only realistic option for the UK. The British public, as @Bantamzen points out, simply are not disciplined enough to deal with Chinese style lockdown (i.e. no going out even if you're hungry and destitute). You could put the Army on the streets, but if you did the social consequences would be being felt for many, many years, which is why the Government are shying away from this. A liberal democracy using its army "against" the populace would cause a massive, massive crisis, far greater than the disease itself.
Greybeard33
Established Member
Indeed, but the estimate of the proportion of cases that require hospitalisation is based on data from China, S Korea and the other countries that have carried out mass testing. And even in the unlikely event it is out by an order of magnitude, that would still mean that no more than 3% of the UK popoulation can have contracted COVID-19 to date. So at least 20 times more people would need to be infected to reach the 60% where herd immunity might be expected to slow the transmission rate, meaning 20 times more hospital admissions for the NHS to cope with.
Prof Neil Ferguson was on the R4 Today programme this morning and indicated that the government's exit strategy from lockdown is now mass testing combined with contact tracing and quarantine measures, as has successfully slowed the outbreaks in China, S Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. This completes the slow motion policy U-turn from the herd immunity strategy that Prof Ferguson and the government's SAGE committee were advocating only a few weeks ago.
Prof Ferguson said his modelling now indicated that the full lockdown will have to remain in place until at least the end of May before some gradual easing might be considered. It seems to me that this is consistent with the timescale for manufacture and commissioning of additional ventilators, and training of new staff, to enable the new field hospitals to handle an increased flow of critically ill patients.
I don’t think the way the Chinese authorities have enforced their “lockdown” should be applauded or taken as a model for anywhere else. It’s still hard to work out what’s going on inside China or estimate its actual case rate, once again that sort of lack of transparency isn’t something that should be commended. The WHO’s closeness to China and its lack of leadership in this crisis raises questions about its ability to command global respect in future.
The internationally reported testing numbers are causing some puzzlement within the UK scientific community and with the international suppliers it seems. Germany are reporting 70,000 Covid tests per day for instance but what sort of tests and using which platforms. No one seems to know.
The internationally reported testing numbers are causing some puzzlement within the UK scientific community and with the international suppliers it seems. Germany are reporting 70,000 Covid tests per day for instance but what sort of tests and using which platforms. No one seems to know.
I don’t see how case tracking is feasible with the current number of infections. Its not my area but it seems like a mammoth task.
I can see how it would still work in Australia for instance chasing round 100 or so mostly imported cases per day, but in the UK with 4000+? Then there’s implementing the testing and reporting systems against the background of UK data protection and civil liberties practice for May/June???
We’ll see.
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