Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

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I am probably missing something here, but what makes them think the numbers infected will stop at 60%, or 80%, and why?

I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be nearly 100%, only missing those who were, and remain, in isolation when this started in their area. So people doing survivor type tv programs, people living in a tent in the middle of a dessert - that sort of thing.

But if this thing is as infectious as they seem to think, what stops it at 80%?
 
Wonko said:
But if this thing is as infectious as they seem to think, what stops it at 80%?
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It's based on network of transmission and the relationship between those who are immune due to prior infection and those who are not. The faster it moves through the community, the more people who will be infected. Slowing it down could limit it to less than 60% for some years at least.
 
Wonko said:
But if this thing is as infectious as they seem to think, what stops it at 80%?
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High infection rates are most dangerous when almost nobody is infected. Once most are infected its much less likely to spread. Most will no longer be infectious, and most in the population should be immune. It might indeed close on 100% at peak infection, or it might be 50%, or much lower, like 20%. A huge factor here is how much we do to contain it and slow transmission. I think trying to keep it under 1% has now already failed.

If we can isolate and limit for a month or longer then infection rates should be much lower. Fewer and fewer people will be left to infect others. We do however need the capacity to potentially test millions of people, and it needs to be part of a public screening program. This is public health, not best viewed as personal health.

My biggest concern is that with enough millions infected the virus will have a high risk of mutating, creating new strains, and maybe becoming endemic. Though in the endemic case, over a long time anyway, viruses typically become much less virulent. The less virulent strains out-spread the highly virulent ones, and then dominate. There is also likely to be some degree of partial immunity to similar strains. Its a bit like cowpox creating some immunity to smallpox.

The common cold is ancient, and well adapted to humans. Its not very virulent. In time this might be the future of any Corona virus. Its the early phases, with a new virus, that are the most dangerous.
 
Cheesus said:
Is anyone else starting to feel a creeping sense of terror or is it just me?
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A virus like this that can completely overwhelm our hospital systems is like nothing that I can remember in my lifetime, at least what I can remember of it. So it is very concerning.

I'm getting tired so I'm going to try to take a break from reading and hearing about it for a bit.
 
Rosie said:
My apologies to this man for not hearing the full story.
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Sorry Rosie, I didn't mean my post to come across like that. I felt the same as you and googled to find out more. The first article just had a short version and it was easy to think the man had travelled while sick. It was just when I clicked through to a longer story that I saw that he had been well when he travelled with no particular reason to think he had been exposed to the virus and it was just routine testing.
 
Hutan said:
Sorry Rosie, I didn't mean my post to come across like that. I felt the same as you and googled to find out more. The first article just had a short version and it was easy to think the man had travelled while sick. It was just when I clicked through to a longer story that I saw that he had been well when he travelled with no particular reason to think he had been exposed to the virus and it was just routine testing.
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:hug:
 
@Leila very interesting article. It’s true, countries like the UK can’t afford to just flatten the curve, it’s not enough.

Italy is seeing more and more younger people sick. Self treating at home and then some time later get sicker. (How could the UK have thought it’s ok to let the infection spread without knowing anything about how the virus affects people?)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...le-hospital-luca-lorini-bergamo-a9402531.html
 
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lunarainbows said:
Do you have any idea Jonathan Edwards on what kind of modelling that the governments advisers may have done? Knowing the capacity of the NHS and how few beds it has, and the % patients who need intensive care, and the exponential growth, it seems obvious to most that it wouldn’t work. And knowing you’ve done the modelling, that confirms what a lot of us suspect.

Is there any kind of modelling that they could have done, that would have shown a different result? They seem adamant that they could flatten the curve this way. I know nudge unit stuff comes into it but there must still be some mathematical and infectious modelling somewhere. I’ve been trying to find out info on this but have failed. All I can find is references to SAGE ( a scientific advisory group), which works with scientists I think.
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From the twitter thread scientists letter
 
alex3619 said:
Now lots of people have talked in various places about treatment or vaccine. There is ongoing work on this. However there is another big issue, discussed a bit, which is herd immunity. Viruses can burn their infection out because the infection rate declines as more and more people have already had it. This is how viruses die out in natural infections. This is unacceptable here though because the death toll might be so high.

These are all strategies of vector denial.

I keep coming across a guesstimate of about 80% peak infection rate. I have no idea if that is right. It sounds too high to me. However if we presume a 3% death rate that could lead to over 160 million dead before the end of the year.

We need to reduce the rate of infection by all means necessary, while we wait for treatment and cure. We need to do this aggressively.
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On this topic, I saw this very interesting and illuminating thread. I’m posting it here. It’s by a statistics professor.

Essentially it seems the assumptions by the UK govt for example, are caused by the fact that they think Wuhan beat the virus in part due to herd immunity. The assumption of needing to have herd immunity to beat this virus, is perhaps what leads to needing to have an 80% figure.

But that’s not actually the case. And in places like China and South Korea, they got their cases under control by actually getting the Re number as close to 0 as possible. I’ve started halfway through the thread but clicking on it you can also navigate to the top post if you wish.


Ie, my understanding is, the UK govt are assuming:
1) Wuhan beat the virus by having herd immunity: not true
2)Herd immunity through transmission has to occur to beat the virus: not true
3) Since 80% of people will get infected anyway, we might as well let 60% get infected: not true










 
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Amw66 said:
From the twitter thread scientists letter
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Thank you. I had come across that graph before but to me it made very little sense. The green curve (ie the one without a second peak) relies on social distancing. Ie the very thing that the government isn’t doing!

Also professor Ian Donald’s tweets. I find that very interesting and actually quite sinister. Especially the part about using children as an infection “tool”, turning the tap “on and off”. But tellingly this also relies on the assumption that 80% of the population will inevitably get the virus anyway. This assumption isn’t really borne out by the evidence from what I can understand. China and South Korea never worked on that assumption. I have no idea why the UK officials got this idea.

 
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I've just spoken with my husband who is working in Bhutan. They have had only one case there, an American man in his 70s who toured around quite a bit of the country. I'm told that the Bhutanese government switched off the nation's internet for a day to delay the population from knowing about the case, to avoid any anti-foreigner sentiment that might have boiled over before the government had worked out what to say and what to do. The American has since been medical-vacced back to the US.

The Bhutanese government closed the borders to tourists and cancelled most flights nearly two weeks ago and a few days ago they closed the borders against people and goods. They are essentially in complete lock-down because they know that their medical system would have no hope of coping with even a small outbreak. Even though they have no cases now, a lot of businesses in the capital are closed and most people are wearing masks.



The staff of the organisation my husband works for in the villages where the American tourist passed through are on a period of self-isolation in their homes. In the office, people alternate, one day at home and one day at the office, with only half of the staff at the office on any one day. Desks are spaced out and arranged so people aren't facing each other. They all wear fabric masks that are washed and boiled each night and a lot of hand sanitiser is being used.

It sounds as though India is not doing much about Covid-19 yet.

I'm copying this link that @JemPD posted earlier; it's very good - a world map with details of cases by countries.
John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center
(fixed link)
 
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Sean said:
Life is likely to be very different for a while.

My main concern is serious disruption to the supply chain of essentials for the general population.

If that breaks down it will ugly quickly.
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I've been having an eery feeling in my stomach for weeks that got better when our government and people around me finally acknowledged that this is serious. And the media stopped mocking this as "hysteria".

I don't know what it is that in crisis people either panic (me) or go into denial. Not much in between.

It feels very surreal to have this invisible threat around everything especially now with spring coming.

I am too worried about what happens to society/social stability with people losing their jobs and decline of health care and possibly certain goods/services getting scarce.
 
Rosie said:
I'd like to see doctors and nurses demand that our border is closed. Better to do it now and not gingerly do a wait and see how things go situation.
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There are already news articles in Sweden about how the recently closed borders between many EU countries are negatively affecting deliveries of much needed medical supplies to Sweden. They are not getting through :( Source

Other news articles (with pictures of empty shelves) are telling people to stop panic buying food, saying "there are no problems with deliveries or availability of goods, there won't be any problems, everything is fine"...

ETA to clarify, Sweden has not closed its borders.
 
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