Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

Especially, now that Londoners are relocating to more rural areas. It would give everyone peace of mind and potentially slow down the spread.

 

I’m not happy about the fact lots of people from London are relocating to other parts of the country at this present time.

Mark Handley, a scientist from UCL that I follow, seems to have worked out that 1 in 25 people in London would be infected with the Coronavirus.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1241018131323256832


https://twitter.com/user/status/1241018260763611137


https://twitter.com/user/status/1241018466041290754


https://twitter.com/user/status/1241042655804624897


https://twitter.com/user/status/1241043121212919810

 

With us its mostly travel related, though that is changing. Based on those cases we know were related to travel from specific countries, the country most people caught it from is .... the USA, at 34 cases.

 

It seems many people haven't grasped that handling the coronavirus spread and containment is about enabling all hospitals to cope with the additional demand. Most people don't realise that living in a rural area means that ones access to hospitals is already limited, ambulances take much longer to get to peoples homes, even in normal circumstances. Many areas rely on on a very limited 'air ambulance' service (all paid for by charity donations) for the most serious, life-threatening emergencies.

Standard and small community hospital beds are often occupied by frail people who can't be discharged due to lack of social care. Now these very vulnerable people are being discharged without the normal checks and community care packages being guaranteed (as part of the NHS plan to increase hospital capacity) and somehow expected to manage in self-isolation. An influx of affected healthy people to rural communities is particularly going to put these people at very high risk.

In my area, most volunteering is done by those over 65 - stats checked on local government site - (many even in their 80s) and in normal circumstances the community relies on these people to support the more vulnerable elderly/chronically ill. If younger, healthy people are going to these rural areas, I hope they step up and contribute to the community.

 

I found the mathematics of engineer Tomas Pueyo very interesting: he proposes a good method of calculating the number of infected people, simply based on the current number of deaths.

He worked out that at any point in time, the number of infected people in a region will be around 800 times the number of coronavirus deaths that have occurred in that region.

I was able to estimate that there have been about 70 deaths in Greater London so far (using this UK map), which implies that there are 70 * 800 = 56,000 infected people in London at present. That works out to around 1 in 160 infected in London.



Tomas Pueyo's calculation is based on the mathematics of exponential growth, and the fact that it takes an average of 17.3 days for death to occur after the person is first infected. So there is a time lag to death, during which the total number of infected people in the region will further increase, as a result of exponential spread of the virus.

In other words, the number of deaths today provides a snapshot of the situation it was 17.3 days ago; but by using exponential growth equations, you can use this snapshot to calculate the estimated number of infected today.

His calculation assumes two figures: that the death rate is 1% (1 in 100 people with the virus will die), and that the rate of exponential growth of infected people is such that the total number infected doubles every 6.2 days. From these two assumptions, you can arrive at the result that the total number infected people at any given point in time is 800 times the number of deaths at that point in time.

 

This is a classic epidemic situation, and goes right back to the historical plagues.

 

But this isn't the plague. This is what the public needs to grasp (and be told by government and experts) - controlling the deaths in this modern coronavirus pandemic (which are skewed towards a certain age group and those with underlying health conditions) requires different behaviours and personal sacrifices (which may include staying where you are in an urban area and sacrificing your personal freedoms for the sake of others). I think this difference needs to be made explicit to people, so they can understand what is being asked of them and why
.

 

It's not that the illnesses are the same it's that the human response is the same creating the same conditions for spreading and contamination. I think that was the point.

 

I'm not so sure the figures are accurate. There was a clip of the mayor of one Italian region (sorry didn't catch the region) who was saying that the elderly dying at home and at care homes weren't being included in the figures.

Unless we all start working together I think we'll end up with a lot of additional, but non corona virus, deaths by virtue of people with unrelated illness not being able to access healthcare or emergency services.

 

Yes, I know, that's the point I was addressing (sorry, I didn't make that clear - that governments should be able to predict this behaviour and factor it in) That is why people need to be told the difference between this and the plagues they learnt about in their history lesson, and governments then need to direct and manage behaviour accordingly.

 

This is a major concern. Some of legislation proposed to enable freeing up hospital beds is going to put these frail people at great risk. It could well become a 'silent killer', not in the public domain.

It's already impossible to get a food delivery online and the UK government won't intervene, just keeps telling people to 'think of others' and let the supermarkets deal with this their own way. Yeah, that approach is working real good. My daughter went to Tesco at 6 am and Sainsburys at 7 am this morning (getting there before the opening times) to try to get essentials for herself and some toiletries for me. Still no toilet rolls and limited food on the shelves! She said the car parks were full within 10 minutes. Tesco's solution - give the vulnerable the 9-10 am shopping hour 3 times a week! Great, thanks.

 

Yet its the same situation in terms of human response. In medieval plagues they finally resorted in some places to nailing the doors shut on houses with sick people in them. Or just burned it down with living people inside. Anything to stop them moving around.

We sometimes run when there is danger if we cannot fight it. We move to where it feels safe. This also applies to persecution, wars, famine and drought. The difference is that with a pandemic that behaviour just makes the pandemic worse.

Yes.

I also wish people were more aware there may be other consequences of this virus, and why staying at home is so important. Like disability following recovery, for which we have so very little data, only early indications of lung damage in some patients. Or the failing hospital system means that other health issues, including heart attacks, are not adequately treated. Moving around is such a very high risk.

We often do not think of consequences. Like panic buying can mean that hospital workers cannot buy groceries, and may be even less equipped to help others. I am encouraged though that there are now some stories of supermarkets with groceries back on the shelves.

Of course I have decades of experience at being isolated, of not leaving home. Its much harder to cope with if its new, just as it is with new ME patients, and harder again if you don't feel sick. If people are feeling anxious or even panicked, then its much easier to start thinking about escape, even if there is nowhere really safe to escape to.

 

Exactly.

 

There are at least four issues here, and probably more I am not thinking about. First, modern political culture seems to often consider experts as unreliable, they pick and choose who they listen to. Those who listen without preselecting favourites, learn.

Second, people have been told that experts are wrong so often that there is a subculture around it. Sometimes doubt in experts is justified, sometimes its just foolish.

Third, modern Western society, with the exception of a few European countries, has the citizens distrusting government. Generations of poor government, which is common, has led to disbelief when something contradicts a person's lived experience.

Fourth, distrust in media is at an all time high. Drastic reductions in investigative journalism, increased biases in reporting, and cost saving measures like churnalism, have led to increased distrust of reporting. Right now that is having a cost other than just a financial one.

ETA had to fix a bunch of typos.

 

I believe it's still a bit early to see the full effect of the nationwide lockdown but it doesn't look promising. The only effect so far appears to be that the virus is not increasing as fast as it could. Which means that things are going to get worse and worse and what is happening now is still nothing in comparison to how the situation will be in a few weeks let alone a few months. This virus needs to be a treated like a world war kind of situation.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1240957013502439427

 

Its too early. The rate of increase is declining, that is a good trend and early indicator. However apparently Italy only has a partial lockdown, at least according to Chinese experts who are there. It may need to be even stricter.

 

What did China do differently, that made their lockdown so effective? It is now looking like what was done in China, with the same sort of social restrictions, may be what is going to be needed in Europe.

 

In which case, I guess the calculation will provide a minimum figure for the number infected.