I’m not saying everyone with covid gets anosmia, nor am I saying anosmia is unique to covid. It is, however, a characteristic and unusual symptom and wasn’t something anyone was talking about when people were getting “bad flus” in December/January. Lots of people get a bad dose of flu every year. Deciding that they probably had covid this year is just confirmation bias.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
I’m not saying everyone with covid gets anosmia, nor am I saying anosmia is unique to covid. It is, however, a characteristic and unusual symptom and wasn’t something anyone was talking about when people were getting “bad flus” in December/January. Lots of people get a bad dose of flu every year. Deciding that they probably had covid this year is just confirmation bias.
That's just how exponential growth goes. Maybe it did arrive 3 months prior but it takes time for it to spiral. Over 3 months, assume 1 person infects 2 others each week.
Week 1 - 1 person has it
Week 2 - 3 people have it (including the first)
Week 3 - 9
Week 4 - 27
Week 5 - 81
Week 6 - 243
Week 7 - 729
Week 8 - 2187
Week 9 - 6561
Week 10 - 19683
Week 11 - 59049
Week 12 - 177147
By the time you hit 12 weeks you can see how the first 7 weeks become little more than rounding errors.
It could well have arrived in Europe before Christmas, in Italy they think it arrived January 1st at the latest. However once it's taken hold there is no chance it's mistaken for regular flu.
Yes, so when it leaves China in November/December and day one starts in another country we would have 200,000 cases in said country by February. That doesn’t seem to be what happened
Edit: also if people travelled from China to uk (via other countries maybe) in December , using your relatively low numbers of just one person infecting two in a week the uk would already be up to millions infected
I'm not saying probably, I'm saying its very unlikely just not impossible. Should be a line of enquiry once we've got the antibody tests.
I know what you’re getting at and I agree.
However, there are genuine genetic reasons for black people having underlying health issues (hypertension etc) which makes them more likely to die from covid. In fact, one of the theories about why black people get worse hypertension (which causes heart disease, renal failure etc) is because of a dysfunctional hormonal regulation system that involves the exact same receptors that the SARS-COV-2 virus spikes bind to.
As long as we come out of this with only the right sort of people having died, our governments will be judged to have done a good job.
I’m using the word treatment loosely in this sense, while drawing a parallel between Boris and a normal person to make a point. What’s clear to me is that the NHS is stretched to the very limit and a major part of this is the deep and prolonged funding cuts. You also see poorer parts of society being disproportionately impacted by the crisis due to a variety of the same old factors. To be honest, I’m feeling pretty fecked off by the way this country is run and think our chickens have come home to roost. I hope we hold our government to account after this is all said and done instead of slinking off back into an apathetic state. There are actually people who thinking this government has handled the situation well
But the epidemic could progress very slightly slower, or result in a smaller % being admitted to hospital. Its easy to model a situation where it can happen, its not impossible, but as I said above unlikely.
I’d be interested to see whether there are people who have presented the same sort of symptoms as Boris who have been instructed to stay at home as opposed to getting the very best care the NHS has to offer.
Those figures by 1101011 were very optimistic and only two people getting infected by one person each week. Surely that is the lowest possible end of the scale of infection if this is as contagious as being said.
I’m not sure of this at all, the o my thing I mm sure of at the moment is staying in the house incase, but the numbers are hard to make sense of
We shouldn’t have to go through this again. He’s the feckkng prime minister of a country. Whether you like him or not, he has to get tested
A PROMISING COVID-19 TREATMENT GETS FAST-TRACKED
Arturo Casadevall and collaborators at Johns Hopkins and beyond have worked around the clock to develop a convalescent serum therapy to treat COVID-19 using blood plasma from recovered patients. If early promising studies on the therapy done in China are confirmed by U.S. trials, thousands of survivors might soon line up to donate their antibody-rich plasma. "I absolutely think this could be the best treatment we have for the next few months," Hopkins pathologist Aaron Tobian says.
Those are just random numbers i used to demonstrate how exponential growth works.
If it arrived on 1st January as the Italians think it did, by April 1st you would expect 200,000 cases but until mid February you would not have noticed it. There may have been a few cases here and there mistaken as flu in January, but once it takes hold in a significant way, say around mid-end of February, there is no disguising it.
That's almost exactly what happened.
If it had been here in a big enough way to be spiking death rates in December, or to have infected half the population, as people were suggesting earlier in the thread, we would be looking at millions of deaths worldwide by now.
That’s not the point I was making but feel free to go off on one.
Ok I misssed your point, what was it?
That’s interesting.
Think Sweden will announce today plans to test 1000 randomly picked Stockholmers next week, that should give us some really important data, not least because we haven’t closed schools here so you’d expect our infection rate to Be much higher than Denmark.
Random numbers but I thought you used the 1 person infects two in a week? So it would be a low estimate if cases.
I just can’t get my head around if this virus is as infectious as reported, incubation period, being left on surfaces etc it would have rapidly increased in January and February. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
Either the numbers are no where near right or it’s no where near as infectious as reported.
How can’t thousands and thousands full stadiums every week for two months in January and February without this spreading like wild fire?
Oh that is interesting but also awful when you think about it hitting the African continent.
As long as we come out of this with only the right sort of people having died, our governments will be judged to have done a good job.
I’m using the word treatment loosely in this sense, while drawing a parallel between Boris and a normal person to make a point. What’s clear to me is that the NHS is stretched to the very limit and a major part of this is the deep and prolonged funding cuts. You also see poorer parts of society being disproportionately impacted by the crisis due to a variety of the same old factors. To be honest, I’m feeling pretty fecked off by the way this country is run and think our chickens have come home to roost. I hope we hold our government to account after this is all said and done instead of slinking off back into an apathetic state. There are actually people who thinking this government has handled the situation well
For me the one thing to look forward to is the safety of the NHS. There is no way in hell the public will let the NHS be dismantled now, especially when the full extent of the failure of the US system becomes evident.
We’re already using that here at Karolinska, sure multiple European countries are already doing the same.
In this scenario its probably just as infectious but less likely to lead to hospitalisations than we currently think, potentially with a higher % of asymptomatic carriers as well. You can model pretty much anything you want, the question is whether its likely or not.
First of all, I accept that the PM is a priority case when it comes to testing and treatment because the country clearly needs strong and decisive leadership. I was seeking to make a point about societal inequality, but making a comparison between Boris and a normal member of the population was probably a very stodgy way of doing that.
I was originally responding to a Tweet that showed African Americans in the US are disproportionately impacted by Covid-19, just as they are disproportionately present in their country’s prison system. There’s a recurring theme here...
In the UK, we have a situation where the nurses, delivery drivers and supermarket staff are being thrust into the epicentre of this virus, being told we are all in it together. In reality, those poor bastards are propping the country up while putting themselves in harm’s way, all while being paid shit money and having been forsaken for years thanks to austerity politics. I just hope they don’t get shafted again once this whole crisis is over.
Sorry for the rant.
Boris would 100% not have been tested initially under normal NHS rules.
He also probably wouldn't have been moved to ICU when he was if he was a normal person.
However, he does clearly need to be in hospital if he's needing Oxygen.
The above is all moot to an extent for me anyway as it makes sense that the leader of a country will receive more attention than a normal citizen. His death (or being out of action) will cause significantly more disruption than the death of a normal person, as cruel as that sounds.
And I say this as someone who despises him and his party.
Does anyone know the approach of other countries regarding protecting those identified as extremely vulnerable?
In the UK we have the 12-week measures with food parcels, priority delivery and a volunteer scheme to allow people to shield themselves. But obviously the big question mark is what the guidance will be longer-term whilst we await a vaccine.
In the UK we have the 12-week measures with food parcels, priority delivery and a volunteer scheme to allow people to shield themselves. But obviously the big question mark is what the guidance will be longer-term whilst we await a vaccine.
The british people just voted for more austerity politics so you can't blame the conservatives for doing what they were voted to do.
I'm not sure that relevance of this talk about what treatment the PM and others like Prince Charles should get compared to the average Joe.
It's obvious the country is protecting the office they hold and the monarchy. Any other country would do the rightly do the same. Ensuring that the country doesn't collapse at a vital time in its history is clearly important and to that extent the equality debate is nothing new.
It's obvious the country is protecting the office they hold and the monarchy. Any other country would do the rightly do the same. Ensuring that the country doesn't collapse at a vital time in its history is clearly important and to that extent the equality debate is nothing new.
I agree. There’s no way the public will accept anything akin to austerity measures after this is all said and done. For me though, you can’t just look at the NHS. Everything that impacts society and welfare, ranging from education to community support, mental health to homelessness, it all needs properly addressing.
Yep, I accept that he needed the preferential treatment owing to his role. It still sticks in the throat when normal people are not afforded the same care, in large part due to the cuts that have left the NHS decimated. Cuts imposed by Boris’s party.
I understand Boris getting preferential treatment but the monarchy are contributing nothing to this. Put another way, what’s your view on Prince Andrew and the treatment he would get if he contracted the virus?
The British people also voted for Brexit. It’s clear at this stage that we are a nation full of raving cretins.
Ridicoulous for the Home Secretary to be seen nowhere during this crisis.
I think he's been cut out of the working monarchy so shouldn't and I don't think would. They would definitely keep it quiet if he was tested.
I used the 2x per week infection as an example. It's close to that in reality but not exact, and those numbers don't take into account any attempt at control. It's just a rough example of exponential growth.
It takes 7 weeks for it to break 1,000 cases and with that would be a few dozen deaths, the kind of numbers that wouldn't stand out from a bad flu season. From there though it starts to go up thousands at a time and with the hospitalisation/death rate there is no chance it wouldn't be noticed.
Oh yeah, he’ll still get all the trimmings, the filthy cnut. Luckily, our press would find out about it soon enough.
Why are people upset and amazed at leader of a nation getting the best treatment available? It's normal. And while some of you dont like him, including me. Cant deny that his life at this time worth more than any average joe. I'm saying this as an average joe myself.
The cost of a head of a nation dying is bigger than an average joe
It's inevitable that there were small pockets of COVID-19 infection in the UK around late January that were not declared or traced, otherwise the containment phase would have worked for longer. Quarantining all people returning from infected areas for 14 days as soon as we knew about it would have also been effective but there would have been uproar. Tens of thousands of UK residents were still taking holidays and making business trips to the Far East, Italy and Spain when we knew they had a serious problem.
Thanks for your time explaining.
I’m still struggling to understand how it didn’t spread a lot faster a lot sooner. I sound like a broken record now but Stadiums full of people, hundreds of stadiums, thousands of people since December. Everyone touching the handrails climbing the stairs, wiping their brows etc. I just don’t understand how it didn’t just wipe through the population
I’ve already addressed this point multiple times above.
Apologies if posted already
I think a lot of people had "something" over the winter period, not sure if it was this though. We took the baby to the doctor's with a chest infection and was told it was fine, and then again two weeks later when he still had it but we got fobbed off again. Everyone in the house had it so we limited our socialising with others out of paranoia. My work was rife with it and everyone put it down to a dodgy flu.
This might be the problem though as you say because people will think whatever that bug was means they had it already.
Yup. Was thinking the same thing.