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It might be based on that, indeed. But I think that begs quite a lot of questions. How do you test a vaccine unless you in the middle of spreading infection - you need to vaccinate people who have a reasonable chance of getting infected in a reasonably short time. Maybe you could test the...

Western governments would do well to take note of this and stop messing about with modelling.

Except that that should be at least 4 years not 18 months. With the uncertain behaviour of the virus and periods of cool off it might be more like 10-20 years. It just isn't an option.

I think this Ferguson chap at Imperial is still in cloud cuckoo land. He has just said: Ferguson says that, under the policies that were in force earlier, the NHS would still have been overwhelmed - even with the extra critical beds available. Now, in the light of the new measures, he says he...

This is very interesting. Staff in China dealing with COVID didn’t want psychological intervention, they asked for more rest without interruption and enough protective supplies. Well, who could have predicted that! Amazing!

I had a brief look. I don't think this is consistent with what we know. The curves we have seen would be different if we are getting near to population saturation. My impression is that these modellers are completely incompetent. The understand maths but not how to apply it to reality. This is...

Absolutely. If past presidents of royal colleges are not up to going back to medicine then they should volunteer as kitchen skivvies or barmaids.

Yes I think that means that neutrophilic is an indicator that the body has already got into a serious systemic reaction phase - similarly LDH and D-dimer. D-dimer is something that appears when fibrinogen starts to clot - a sign of a serious complication called diffuse intravascular coagulation.

I doubt this was a dosage problem. You can almost certainly eat a gram of chloroquine without any symptoms. I suspect this fish treatment had something else really toxic in it.

I am not sure about that. Neutrophilia is not an abnormal condition. It is a normal response to bacterial infection. It may mean that people who show a strong neutrophil response during the illness do badly?

They had a dedicated project for an emergency information app a few years back and never bothered to put it into practice. Why they cannot just twitter goodness knows.

Exactly, this is pretty much what I had worked out - maybe these factors: 1. Lots of people together indoors milling about and talking. 2. Recirculating air maybe through air conditioning systems. 3. Lots of people touching surfaces while eating or drinking. This would explain spread on cruise...

The numbers are going to be small for the foreseeable future (maybe 1/250), but perhaps not insignificant. We have already had a medic saying they are ready to get to the front line once recovered. I agree that people who cannot do their own job would be useful drafted into healthcare, but other...

There are loose ends but my suspicion is that after the inevitable lag of 10-20 days numbers will start coming down quite quickly. In the meantime I think the penny will drop with the sceptics who think self-isolating means climbing Snowden. The dreadful situation in Spain and Italy will...

Copied from the Worldwide spread and control thread Colchicine. It blocks microtubular assembly and phagocyte motility. It might possibly block viral production. It is not usefully anti-inflammatory other than in gout. I would not put money on it but it may be worth trying.

I still get the feeling that those who are critical, like the Guardian and even Pueyot, are thinking in terms of slowing rather than eradicating. I just don't think this is an option. If virus is circulating you cannot return to anything like normal life and you will have to limit commerce for...

The coronavirus epidemic in the UK will last until next spring and could lead to 7.9 million people being hospitalised, a secret Public Health England (PHE) briefing for senior NHSofficials reveals. So our friendly government is going for the 1 million deaths option.

I have no idea really. Although the Hammer and Dance piece is well researched there is nothing in it that any immunologist with common sense would not have worked out buy the second week of February if not before. The maths does not need modelling. It can be done in the head with adequate...

From what I can glean from the recent paper on immunodeficiency this list is actually of the wrong conditions. Immunodeficiency does not seem to be a big problem. Chest problems, diabetes and heart disease seem to be the issue. It looks as if the risk is associated with a hypersensitivity...

Not a lot. The point in the article is valid. I think flu has a reservoir outside humans (maybe ducks) that allows it to mutate and reinfect populations. Covid19 probably only has a reservoir in some animal we do not normally meet. Vallance said something about Covid maybe becoming an annual...