Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

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Listening to BoJo brief the nation, he's confident of beating turning the tide of the coronavirus within the next 12 weeks apparently....

ETA: He definitely said "turning the tide of", he may not have said "beating".
 
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Do we know when we may be expected to “peak” and when it may be, that cases would come down to very low levels again, in the UK?
Obviously it’s dependent on social distancing. But is there a rough estimate
 
lunarainbows said:
Obviously it’s dependent on social distancing. But is there a rough estimate
Click to expand...

Depends on whose rough estimate you want I guess!

The computer modellers will no doubt have an estimate with no relation to reality. The government may think they have a plan and an idea of how things will start to turn but from what I have seen they have no understanding at present.

My understanding of the situation is that it is currently driven by the fact that the NHS is now unable to cope but it will take another four or five days for that to become so apparent that complete lockdown in London will be inevitable. Maybe medical staff will walk out (mostly on an individual basis I suspect) when they see one or two more news items on their colleagues in Italy.

If things are locked down the current peak will start to go down in about ten days I think. By that time a bit more sense may prevail and it may go on going down. As to what happens next I have no idea but if the government relaxes things again too soon we will be back to where we are now pretty sharpish - within a month at most.

I am pretty sure that fairly soon what happens in the UK will just be dictated by the experience in Italy and also France, Spain and Germany. It should have done a month ago. So Whitty and Vallance will become irrelevances.
 
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Simon M said:
The author calls this "the Apollo challenge of our time".



Basically, a massive if expansion of testing and contact tracing (presumably after a massive short term lockdown to be clear on who isn't infected). And also massive antibody testing to establish who has already been infected and so can get back to work to keep the economy and society moving
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Just read this article in the Guardian, would like to see the data of their experiment.

Scientists say mass tests in Italian town have halted Covid-19 there
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ss-tests-in-italian-town-have-halted-covid-19
 
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lunarainbows said:
Do we know when we may be expected to “peak” and when it may be, that cases would come down to very low levels again, in the UK?
Obviously it’s dependent on social distancing. But is there a rough estimate
Click to expand...

If the current infection rate keeps up, and folk keep ignoring the social distancing policy, by mid April everyone (who isn't isolating or protected) will (might/could?) be infected. If the mitigation strategies work (to flatten the curve), it could take a lot longer than that, but things should start to slow down in a couple of weeks - and by "slow down", that means the rate of increase will slow down. Italy's infections are still climbing, and we are 3 weeks behind them.

Ultimately, it's really difficult to tell, and it's even harder to predict when the authorities are giving such mixed messages.
 
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Jonathan Edwards said:
Depends on whose rough estimate you want I guess!

The computer modellers will no doubt have an estimate with no relation to reality. The government may think they have a plan and an idea of how things will start to turn but from what I have seen they have no understanding at present.

My understanding of the situation is that it is currently driven by the fact that the NHS is now unable to cope but it will take another four or five days for that to become so apparent that complete lockdown in London will be inevitable. Maybe medical staff will walk out (mostly on an individual basis I suspect) when they see one or two more news items on their colleagues in Italy.

If things are locked down the current peak will start to go down in about ten days I think. By that time a bit more sense may prevail and it may go on going down. As to what happens next I have no idea but if the government relaxes things again too soon we will be back to where we are now pretty sharpish - within a month at most.

I am pretty sure that fairly soon what happens in the UK will just be dictated by the experience in Italy and also France, Spain and Germany. It should have done a month ago. So Whitty and Vallance will become irrelevances.
Click to expand...

I guess one problem with the modelling in the UK is the fact that there is no testing of people in the community who have symptoms and no testing of their contacts (regardless of whether they have symptoms) so you don't have the data to populate a model. You probably only have outcomes i.e. people who are hospitalised but the number of people hospitalised doesn't really tell you how the rate of transmission is increasing.
 
Barry said:
"New data has revealed that the United Kingdom has one of the highest coronavirus death rates in the world" ...

https://www.euronews.com/2020/03/19...d-19-death-rate-in-europe-on-a-par-with-china

A 4% death rate amongst confirmed cases.

Presumably there are various possible reasons for that. The obvious ones can think of:
  1. Fewer people being identified with the virus.
  2. Older demographic?
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Many things but definitely the fact fewer people are being identified, as no one in the community with symptoms is being tested - only if you are admitted to hospital.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
Depends on whose rough estimate you want I guess!

The computer modellers will no doubt have an estimate with no relation to reality. The government may think they have a plan and an idea of how things will start to turn but from what I have seen they have no understanding at present.

My understanding of the situation is that it is currently driven by the fact that the NHS is now unable to cope but it will take another four or five days for that to become so apparent that complete lockdown in London will be inevitable. Maybe medical staff will walk out (mostly on an individual basis I suspect) when they see one or two more news items on their colleagues in Italy.

If things are locked down the current peak will start to go down in about ten days I think. By that time a bit more sense may prevail and it may go on going down. As to what happens next I have no idea but if the government relaxes things again too soon we will be back to where we are now pretty sharpish - within a month at most.

I am pretty sure that fairly soon what happens in the UK will just be dictated by the experience in Italy and also France, Spain and Germany. It should have done a month ago. So Whitty and Vallance will become irrelevances.
Click to expand...

When you said, if things are locked down then the current peak will go down within 10 days. But with Italy, I think it’s been over 10 days since they’ve been locked down and the number of new cases and deaths per day are still rising?

Or do you mean with a 14 day lag, and then 10 days?

With things in London so bad, I cannot understand what the govt hope to achieve by leaving things to get even worse at this point.
 
FMMM1 said:
I guess one problem with the modelling in the UK is the fact that there is no testing of people in the community who have symptoms and no testing of their contacts (regardless of whether they have symptoms) so you don't have the data to populate a model. You probably only have outcomes i.e. people who are hospitalised but the number of people hospitalised doesn't really tell you how the rate of transmission is increasing.
Click to expand...

I think there is a more fundimental issue in how they are using the modelling. They should be running over a number of permutations so that they know when the model is reliable in its prediction and where the model is sensitive to the assumed parameters. I've not heard anyone talking about doing this and how the predictions would change.
 
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