SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

[Dumbstar]

Love this post, I got to the second to last paragraph completely depressed then that last paragraph brought me right back.

It's important to keep a positive outlook on things. Main one being our children on the whole are safest from this thing. That's my takeaway.

However, for that last paragraph I would urge caution to you and @Leroy The Red . Remember it's not covid that kills. It's not even always the resultant cytokine storm. It's the hope.

 

[senorgregster]

Well, a lot of that in the US is due to underlying factors relating to poverty and access to healthcare. You can see this in New Orleans and Detroit.

But...there is a lot to unpack there, so you can forgive me if I don’t take it all on at the moment.

Yes, agreed. But there would have to be a few leaps of faith to start games. Are there any risk factors we haven't thought of? Could players become superspreaders in their communities? All so we can watch a game.

 

[sullydnl]

Yep. Also I’m a great believe in if you have done nothing wrong why would you worry about it?

Aye, personally I have no particular issue with my extremely dull interactions forming a small part of a mass of data. There's little there that's of interest to me, let alone anyone else.

Plus the reality is I carry a very traceable phone with me at all times, have a mass of apps which already record a lot of information, regularly volunteer information to social media platforms and fitness apps myself and have all my financial transactions recorded in such a way that any schlub who works for my bank could look them up on a whim if they were minded too. Adding another app to that is hardly a stake through the heart of my precious privacy.

I realise some people are more anxious about this type of thing than I am, mind.

 

[jymufc20]

It's important to keep a positive outlook on things. Main one being our children on the whole are safest from this thing. That's my takeaway.

However, for that last paragraph I would urge caution to you and @Leroy The Red . Remember it's not covid that kills. It's not even always the resultant cytokine storm. It's the hope.

 

[One Night Only]

Yep. Also I’m a great believe in if you have done nothing wrong why would you worry about it?

I think it's because it's a first step to monitoring everything and controlling what people do. Especially with how our government leave laptops on trains with confidential info and lose usb sticks. I wouldn't trust them knowing my every move.

Them monitoring movements will then lead to more, monitoring what websites you can go on and can't (didn't they try to do that with porn recently?)

Monitoring who you're talking to, when it's none of their business tbh. It'll end up being abused somehow.

I would imagine a shit ton of annoying alerts too. It would be some half arsed app which isn't secure anyway. All government websites and technology is a shambles

Edit: also, they'd probably snoop on your spending in the end, maybe limit your gambling habits, that type of thing I'd expect and they'd put it down to "mental health help" or something.

 

[Penna]

yeh, well I certainly have been out and about most days with the lovely weather. I’ve been walking and biking isolated areas. The risk of that to me and others is close to zero.

Maybe the risk is zero as far as you're concerned, that's true - but other people aren't going to isolated areas. My point really was that it's not a "lockdown" - you can basically be out of the house all day if you choose to do so, because there's no enforcement.

Most people complaining about being locked-down are talking rubbish in the UK. The folk it's affecting are people not getting paid or losing their jobs/businesses and people who've actually got sick or have loved ones who've got sick. If you're working from home, not infected and being paid, not being able to go out for a meal or to the pub or football is absolutely nothing.

 

[Jippy]

It's amazing just how poor journalism is, this whole pandemic is showing the journalists to be pretty much amateurs. They're just taking any interview they do as truth, not getting sources verified, or quotes, and they're always bending their articles to their own thoughts.

As for 'taking every interview as truth', all you can do as a journo is present the different views, say on the spread of Covid- do you expect them to do a Phd on the subject?

You guys here are more trustworthy than they are, well apart from the religious nutjob.

Papers have a house view, so if you work for the Mail as a journo then you have to tow the line.

I remember when the swine flu was breaking out, there were some wild claims in the media.

Third of the world would be infected.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/12/swine-flu-report-pandemic-predicted

65,000 could die
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jul/16/swine-flu-pandemic-warning-helpline

392 died in the UK

You realise that 'wild claim in the media' was just reporting of the chief medical officer's report, hardly some journo plucking a figure from the air.

 

[caid]

My brother-in-law owns a couple of barber shops and lockdown has crippled him. He is paying 6 staff out of his own pocket currently and his landlord is being a nightmare. Lease is due to soon with a fairly big payment due on renewal and when he asked for some co-operation the landlord said that tenants that are difficult during this period won’t get their leases renewed. My sister found various websites on how to commit suicide including videos on his laptop after he was acting funny. I can imagine this is far from an isolated case as it stands and it’s put huge strain on the family. I’m probably going to need to give them a big chunk of my house deposit just to get through this period as I’m quite fortunate with my position/employer at the minute and not at risk. Hope this virus fecks off soon.

Poor guy. Tell him to fold if he needs to. He's not responsible for keeping his staff employed during this time from his own pocket. If the business can't pay them then you have to let them go. Keep the money he has the get the business back up and running and paying people wages when its possible to open. Re the landlord, maybe its time to look at changing premises? Would that be a nightmare scenario?
Hes not responsible for the financial security of everyone he has any dealings with. Terrible situation to be in and i dont envy him in the slightest, he just needs to keep taking the least shitty option available and find a route out the other side.
People will still want haircuts and business will be booming again one day.

 

[Grinner]

Yep. Also I’m a great believe in if you have done nothing wrong why would you worry about it?

Then you haven't looked closely at the US justice system where innocent people are locked up and even executed often enough to make it a huge concern. Then there are all the incidences of police brutality, illegal shootings by cops, false arrests, evidence tampering, and conspiracy that frequently impact innocent people.

More power leads to abuse of power.

 

[Zexstream]

People just dont get it.

This is a civilization ending event.

The Economy is never getting back to the levels we had before, social distancing is not going away.

Some jobs are going to be lost forever.

The options are, carry on as normal and watch the economy crash and burn, people slowly becomming ill, some dying.

Or,

Try to carry on with some restrictions, pray and hope we can keep levels down but still tbousands dying a becomming seriously ill with possible long term health issues.

Facts are,

Under lockdowns we are still seeing close to a thousand deaths per day and thousands infected. Thousands ill and thousands seriously ill.

Start to lift restrictions and that figure begins to rise.

We cant win, thus this virus which I believe came from a lab is doing its job, ending our civilization as we know it.

We still do not even know the long term effects for those recovered, are they immune from the virus, what damage it has already done to their bodies and so on.

 

[Hound Dog]

The bad news is a lot of people are learning to cut their own hair or their partner's learning.

A lot of people also know how to cook, yet restaurants still exist.

 

[Shakesy]

People just dont get it.

This is a civilization ending event.

The Economy is never getting back to the levels we had before, social distancing is not going away.

Some jobs are going to be lost forever.

The options are, carry on as normal and watch the economy crash and burn, people slowly becomming ill, some dying.

Or,

Try to carry on with some restrictions, pray and hope we can keep levels done.

Facts are,

Under lockdowns we are still seeing close to a thousand deaths per day and thousands infected. Thousands ill and thousands seriously ill.

Start to lift restrictions and that figure begins to rise.

We cant win, thus this virus which I believe came from a lab is doing its job, ending our civilization as we know it.

We still do not even know the long term effects for those recovered, are they immune from the virus, what damage it has already done to their bodies and so on.

Is this a poem?

 

[One Night Only]

A lot of people also know how to cook, yet restaurants still exist.

Aye, people CBA to cut hair to save a fiver tbh, it's a boring arse on. Only doing it now because they have no other choice.

 

[Cloud7]

My brother-in-law owns a couple of barber shops and lockdown has crippled him. He is paying 6 staff out of his own pocket currently and his landlord is being a nightmare. Lease is due to soon with a fairly big payment due on renewal and when he asked for some co-operation the landlord said that tenants that are difficult during this period won’t get their leases renewed. My sister found various websites on how to commit suicide including videos on his laptop after he was acting funny. I can imagine this is far from an isolated case as it stands and it’s put huge strain on the family. I’m probably going to need to give them a big chunk of my house deposit just to get through this period as I’m quite fortunate with my position/employer at the minute and not at risk. Hope this virus fecks off soon.

On the last day that my team admitted patients, we got a guy that tried to commit suicide via organophosphate ingestion. Even though I’m not psych, I usually still talk to these people and try to find out what pushed them to this. This particular guy, in his 30s or so, said that he simply had no money remaining, no money coming in, nothing, so he tried to commit suicide.

Locking things down is very essential, but there is the dark side of it, things like this, and I think it will get more frequent the longer this goes on.

 

[Cardboard elk]

Regarding the anti-body discussion earlier :

1. Studies have between 25-60% asymptomatic cases.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/01/europe/iceland-testing-coronavirus-intl/index.html
https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s...ut-those-who-can-pass-corona-without-symptoms
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ases-wuhan-china-symptoms-study-a9424686.html

2. Studies shows many recovered from Covid-10 has low levels of antibodies or none at all. Here is one article about that:

https://www.jwatch.org/fw116548/2020/04/13/sars-cov-2-antibodies-undetectable-some-recovered

3. The antibody test (blood test) will only detect infections after the immune system has produced antibodies that recognise the virus. This happens approx. 7-10 days after symptoms develop.
Antibody tests need to be accurate to help us. That means 3 criterias must be reached:

a) If some people do not produce detectable amounts of the antibody used in the test after infection, or if antibody levels wane with time, the test will be insufficiently sensitive, missing too many infections (false-negative results) to be useful.

b) The test must be specific enough to give high confidence that a positive test result is correct (not a false positive). This is especially true if past infection is uncommon among those who are tested, as in the general population.

c) before an antibody test can be used to indicate that someone is immune to further infection, the level of protection must be demonstrated in experimental trials. While there is a clear link between the presence of the antibody and protective immunity for many common viral infections, this has not yet been confirmed for the new coronavirus. It is possible that people are temporarily protected against reinfection but the protection wanes with time, or that protection operates agains current but not future strains of the new corona virus.

https://coronavirusexplained.ukri.org/en/article/vdt0006/

4. It is possible that the antibodies that someone develops against the virus could actually increase the risk of the disease becoming worse," he said, noting that the most serious symptoms come later, after the patient had formed antibodies.
For the moment, it is also unclear whose antibodies are more potent in beating back the disease: someone who nearly died, or someone with only light symptoms or even no symptoms at all. And does age make a difference? Faced with all these uncertainties, some experts have doubts about the wisdom of pursuing a "herd immunity" strategy such that the virus - unable to find new victims - peters out by itself when a majority of the population is immune. "The only real solution for now is a vaccine," Archie Clements, a professor at Curtin University in Perth Australia, said.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/recovering-from-the-coronavirus-may-not-make-you-immune-experts-warn

There are many other elements to this also, but at the moment we do not know if anti-bodies tests will be accurate, we know that propably many will not HAVE any antibodies, we do not know if everyone gets immune, and for how long, we do not know if the antibodies even are good for us, and maybe even the disease can lay dormant for a while and "reinfect" a person already recovered as South Korean studies shows. In some diseases, antibodies can even cause problems where you can easier get other infections and have immune problems etc.

I think it is safe to say that herd immunity seems like a big gamble, and indications is it will not work well, and will propably not last long. Vaccine seems like the only option besides natural mutation into a less harmful virus, like the spanish flu into H1N1 for example. Also anti body testing might not be accurate and may not be the tool governments wants it to be, like WHO tried to say. Everyone can draw their own conclusions, but in reality we do not know much yet. It is all indications and too early to conclude on anything right now. We do not even know if a vaccine will work permanently or will have to be given at certain intervals of time. If we get a fully functioning vaccine.

 

[Hugh Jass]

Is this a poem?

The Covid 19 version of Ozymandias.

 

[caid]

Yep. Also I’m a great believe in if you have done nothing wrong why would you worry about it?

You and your governments interpretation of wrong can diverge, if they're not already wildly different. Or the government can change. Maybe your comfortable enough with the current admin having access to your movements and interactions but you should consider some of the nightmare scenario potential governments having access to it
Not that i disagree in this particular example but i'm not a fan of the reasoning

 

[Shakesy]

The Covid 19 version of Ozymandias.

 

[Balljy]

It's also really similar to the script of Outbreak, starring Dustin Hoffman(also fiction).

I'm just glad we haven't got any other signs of our impending doom at the moment. Imagine what the religious lot would be saying if other elements of the book of revelations were going on right now.

Plague of Locusts

 

[PepsiCola]

Sunday times article is damning.

feck boris.

feck tories.

 

[sullydnl]

Hadn't occurred to me that if schools re-opened it might initially be on a one day per week basis. I wonder how much of an impact that would have for people? Seems very limited but I suppose from a mental health point of view it would make a big difference for the kids.

 

[do.ob]

I'm just glad we haven't got any other signs of our impending doom at the moment. Imagine what the religious lot would be saying if other elements of the book of revelations were going on right now.

Plague of Locusts

I mean..

1 Donald
2 Donald Jr
3 Ivanka
4 Melania

only 3 more Trumpets to go until the apocalypse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_trumpets

 

[Balljy]

Hadn't occurred to me that if schools re-opened it might initially be on a one day per week basis. I wonder how much of an impact that would have for people? Seems very limited but I suppose from a mental health point of view it would make a big difference for the kids.

I'm a bit unsure how that would be any safer for anybody involved than 5 days a week. If one kid has the virus surely they would just spread it to everybody on the one day they were in per week. Maybe it's more to do with staffing levels?

 

[Dancfc]

Tell you what, Chelsea fans can go first then. Step up there big man

What a ridiculous twisting of my words.

Let me guess your the type of person who doesn't fly just incase?

 

[sullydnl]

I'm a bit unsure how that would be any safer for anybody involved than 5 days a week. If one kid has the virus surely they would just spread it to everybody on the one day they were in per week. Maybe it's more to do with staffing levels?

I'd imagine there would be pretty stringent social distancing on that one day with groups of kids being kept apart from each other. Would it really be that hard to stop it spreading between different classes, say? Plus the week gap would give time for symptoms to develop and alarm to be raised, I suppose.

Not being a parent, I'm just not sure how big an impact one day a week would make. If people are working that's still four weekdays where kids need to be minded, which is pretty difficult to work around. I can see how it would be good for those parents' and kids' moods to get that break for a few hours but it more practical terms it seems limited.

 

[One Night Only]

I'm a bit unsure how that would be any safer for anybody involved than 5 days a week. If one kid has the virus surely they would just spread it to everybody on the one day they were in per week. Maybe it's more to do with staffing levels?

Haven't read it but possibly one-two year groups per day?

 

[Sweet Square]

I think it's because it's a first step to monitoring everything and controlling what people do. Especially with how our government leave laptops on trains with confidential info and lose usb sticks. I wouldn't trust them knowing my every move.

Them monitoring movements will then lead to more, monitoring what websites you can go on and can't (didn't they try to do that with porn recently?)

Monitoring who you're talking to, when it's none of their business tbh. It'll end up being abused somehow.

I would imagine a shit ton of annoying alerts too. It would be some half arsed app which isn't secure anyway. All government websites and technology is a shambles

Edit: also, they'd probably snoop on your spending in the end, maybe limit your gambling habits, that type of thing I'd expect and they'd put it down to "mental health help" or something.

It will be used as a trial for a future social credit system(Somewhat similar to what China is trying to do). Resulting in easier ways for the state(So governments and private companies)to issues fines, track political organising, tougher sanctions on people who use welfare/benefits etc etc.

The problem isn't with the app(It's very useful to be able to track the population during an pandemic)but that it's not democratically controlled.

 

[Zexstream]

Hadn't occurred to me that if schools re-opened it might initially be on a one day per week basis. I wonder how much of an impact that would have for people? Seems very limited but I suppose from a mental health point of view it would make a big difference for the kids.

The virus doesn't work on certain days per week. It operates 24/7 everyday.

Its safe to go to school 1 day per week but the other 4 are dangerous?

A simple test to any business or school would be asking them, can you guarantee my safety from catching Covid-19.

 

[UnrelatedPsuedo]

We have to grow up and accept that people will be dying of COVID-19 until we get a vaccine and it's as simple as that.

No. People don’t need to die. Not at scale. We should never accept that.

We have to grow up and take personal responsibility. Realise that the government is not our friend. Nor will it protect us to a standard that we try to protect people we love.

I will not be the cause of anyone else getting sick.

I will not take public transport until this is under control. I’ll ride my bike.

I won’t be booking international travel for well over a year. I can find joys in this country with a degree of safety.

I won’t be going to internal gatherings at pubs.

I won’t be booking gig tickets.

I’m willing for life to be a little less fun, until there’s some semblance of calm and understanding.

The problem is selfish people putting faith in the government. All they need is a little suggestion that things will be relaxed and they start doing everything that got us in this mess. If everyone realised that personal responsibility should trump guidelines from total strangers in Westminster, we’d all be a lot safer.

 

[Infra-red]

Sunday times article is damning.

feck boris.

feck tories.

Yep. An absolutely brutal takedown of Boris and the UK government.

 

[Hound Dog]

On the last day that my team admitted patients, we got a guy that tried to commit suicide via organophosphate ingestion. Even though I’m not psych, I usually still talk to these people and try to find out what pushed them to this. This particular guy, in his 30s or so, said that he simply had no money remaining, no money coming in, nothing, so he tried to commit suicide.

Locking things down is very essential, but there is the dark side of it, things like this, and I think it will get more frequent the longer this goes on.

We need to make a wall with posts like this for all of those who want to lockdown until a vaccine is available.

And imagine how much this would happen after, say, six months of lockdown. Exponential growth.

 

[Balljy]

Haven't read it but possibly one-two year groups per day?

That would make some sense. Have a couple of classes with the same teachers for the same kids every day. You'd then limit any potential spread to isolated groups at a time. It could still get around families, but any form of lifting of restrictions is going to do that.

 

[sullydnl]

The virus doesn't work on days per week.

Its safe to go to school 1 day per week but the other 4 are dangerous?

A simple test to any business or school would be asking them, can you guarantee my safety from catching Covid-19.

No business or school can guarantee your safety. That isn't the standard they'll have to meet to re-open though.

You say the virus doesn't work on days per week but limiting the amount of time children are potentially exposed to each other by 4/5ths will obviously reduce opportunity for them to spread it to each other. Plus the week gap limits the opportunity for children to spread the disease during an initial asymptomatic period.

 

[Wibble]

People just dont get it.

This is a civilization ending event.

The Economy is never getting back to the levels we had before, social distancing is not going away.

Some jobs are going to be lost forever.

The options are, carry on as normal and watch the economy crash and burn, people slowly becomming ill, some dying.

Or,

Try to carry on with some restrictions, pray and hope we can keep levels down but still tbousands dying a becomming seriously ill with possible long term health issues.

Facts are,

Under lockdowns we are still seeing close to a thousand deaths per day and thousands infected. Thousands ill and thousands seriously ill.

Start to lift restrictions and that figure begins to rise.

We cant win, thus this virus which I believe came from a lab is doing its job, ending our civilization as we know it.

We still do not even know the long term effects for those recovered, are they immune from the virus, what damage it has already done to their bodies and so on.

Events are very stressful but this is not a civilisation ending event. It might take a while but we will get through this.

 

[cyberman]

Who wants to send the kids to school for 1 day per week starting in May?
Keep them closed and put our foot down on the virus throat until September

 

[One Night Only]

That would make some sense. Have a couple of classes with the same teachers for the same kids every day. You'd then limit any potential spread to isolated groups at a time. It could still get around families, but any form of lifting of restrictions is going to do that.

Yeah, also probably meals served into classrooms instead of a dining hall for now aswell, deep clean classrooms every night.

It's quite a good idea tbh, it's still risky, but not as risky as letting the entire school in for the same day. It's sort of contained still

 

[senorgregster]

Viral load not different in asymptomatic patients. Just bizarre.


https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20053157v1

On the 21st of February 2020 a resident of the municipality of Vo, a small town near Padua, died of pneumonia due to SARS-CoV-2 infection. This was the first COVID-19 death detected in Italy since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in the Chinese city of Wuhan, Hubei province. In response, the regional authorities imposed the lockdown of the whole municipality for 14 days. We collected information on the demography, clinical presentation, hospitalization, contact network and presence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in nasopharyngeal swabs for 85.9% and 71.5% of the population of Vo at two consecutive time points. On the first survey, which was conducted around the time the town lockdown started, we found a prevalence of infection of 2.6% (95% confidence interval (CI) 2.1-3.3%). On the second survey, which was conducted at the end of the lockdown, we found a prevalence of 1.2% (95% CI 0.8-1.8%). Notably, 43.2% (95% CI 32.2-54.7%) of the confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections detected across the two surveys were asymptomatic. The mean serial interval was 6.9 days (95% CI 2.6-13.4). We found no statistically significant difference in the viral load (as measured by genome equivalents inferred from cycle threshold data) of symptomatic versus asymptomatic infections (p-values 0.6 and 0.2 for E and RdRp genes, respectively, Exact Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test). Contact tracing of the newly infected cases and transmission chain reconstruction revealed that most new infections in the second survey were infected in the community before the lockdown or from asymptomatic infections living in the same household. This study sheds new light on the frequency of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection and their infectivity (as measured by the viral load) and provides new insights into its transmission dynamics, the duration of viral load detectability and the efficacy of the implemented control measures

 

[One Night Only]

Who wants to send the kids to school for 1 day per week starting in May?
Keep them closed and put our foot down on the virus throat until September

I'd send them back, doesn't make a difference to me anyway as I'm a key worker, as is the Mrs, and by us being key workers and risking ourselves, we are also having to send them to school when we are working anyway, so putting the entire family at risk tbh.

 

[Zexstream]

Events are very stressful but this is not a civilisation ending event. It might take a while but we will get through this.

Nobody knows, but lets look at the facts.

Lockdown or no lockdown, people are fying, people are getting seriously ill, some with long term health issues.

Even if you somehow get the virus there are no guarantees you wont catch it worse a 2nd time, or that you could be a carrier.

We are not going back to normal any time soon, some experts dont even believe we will ever create a vaccine.

Thus, our civilization as we know it has come to an end, can we rise and create a new civilization? Who knows, but the slow decay and crumbling of this one has begun.

 

[One Night Only]

Viral load not different in asymptomatic patients. Just bizarre.


https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20053157v1

On the 21st of February 2020 a resident of the municipality of Vo, a small town near Padua, died of pneumonia due to SARS-CoV-2 infection. This was the first COVID-19 death detected in Italy since the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in the Chinese city of Wuhan, Hubei province. In response, the regional authorities imposed the lockdown of the whole municipality for 14 days. We collected information on the demography, clinical presentation, hospitalization, contact network and presence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in nasopharyngeal swabs for 85.9% and 71.5% of the population of Vo at two consecutive time points. On the first survey, which was conducted around the time the town lockdown started, we found a prevalence of infection of 2.6% (95% confidence interval (CI) 2.1-3.3%). On the second survey, which was conducted at the end of the lockdown, we found a prevalence of 1.2% (95% CI 0.8-1.8%). Notably, 43.2% (95% CI 32.2-54.7%) of the confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections detected across the two surveys were asymptomatic. The mean serial interval was 6.9 days (95% CI 2.6-13.4). We found no statistically significant difference in the viral load (as measured by genome equivalents inferred from cycle threshold data) of symptomatic versus asymptomatic infections (p-values 0.6 and 0.2 for E and RdRp genes, respectively, Exact Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test). Contact tracing of the newly infected cases and transmission chain reconstruction revealed that most new infections in the second survey were infected in the community before the lockdown or from asymptomatic infections living in the same household. This study sheds new light on the frequency of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection and their infectivity (as measured by the viral load) and provides new insights into its transmission dynamics, the duration of viral load detectability and the efficacy of the implemented control measures

Too many big words for my little brain, what does this mean? Explain like I'm 5 please.