COVID-19 — Coronavirus

[Manc Born & Bred]

If 40m catch it over the next 12 months, that’s 4 to 6m people being hospitalised.

Even at the low end, that 333,000 every month.

How does the NHS cope with that?

I am not an expert so can't answer that question, sorry although there does appear to be plenty of other expert virologists on this site.

 

[domalino]

If 40m catch it over the next 12 months, that’s 4 to 6m people being hospitalised.

Even at the low end, that 333,000 every month.

How does the NHS cope with that?

It depends on who is getting it and who makes up that 40m.

There's 15m children in the country who mostly show almost no symptoms. If those 15m get it you will get minimal hospitalisations.

There's 12.15m people over 60 in the country, if they get it, we will be fucked.

Keep the schools open while locking away the old, and you should have the virus spread through the child population and people with school age children - 30-50 year olds.

And that should get you up to your 40m with much fewer hospitalisations than if it's just spreading through the population at random like in Italy.

 

[Tricky_Trev]

When my 3 were little (not that long ago) we used washable nappies. If you get stuck, cut up some old towels and line them with dried out babywipes. You can learn how to fold nappies from Youtube. Not ideal for you but better than nothing....which really would get messy !

Cheers for the tips! Found some on amazon but delivery is not expected until 25th March - 9 days away. It could work out perfectly, but a slight delay and we’re up shit creek (literally!)

 

[Indaparkside]

Fair play mate

This outbreak has shown there’s a lot of people in society fuck you I’m in the boat, it’s time we started thinking of the most vulnerable and showing we’re there for them

 

[Tricky_Trev]

It depends on who is getting it and who makes up that 40m.

There's 15m children in the country who mostly show almost no symptoms. If those 15m get it you will get minimal hospitalisations.

There's 12.15m people over 60 in the country, if they get it, we will be fucked.

Keep the schools open while locking away the old, and you should have the virus spread through the child population and people with school age children - 30-50 year olds.

And that should get you up to your 40m with much fewer hospitalisations than if it's just spreading through the population at random like in Italy.

There needs to be some really strict, enforceable restrictions on the elderly. I’m sure I won’t just be speaking for my elderly loved ones but they are as stubborn as anything. Trying to keep them inside even for one day is a challenge. They just want to carry on as normal. The stricter the better for me personally.

 

[aguero93:20]

It depends on who is getting it and who makes up that 40m.

There's 15m children in the country who mostly show almost no symptoms. If those 15m get it you will get minimal hospitalisations.

There's 12.15m people over 60 in the country, if they get it, we will be fucked.

Keep the schools open while locking away the old, and you should have the virus spread through the child population and people with school age children - 30-50 year olds.

And that should get you up to your 40m with much fewer hospitalisations than if it's just spreading through the population at random like in Italy.

How do you guarantee that the low and high risk don't come into contact? My youngest has acute bronchitis, so do we close his school? The stepmother is >50, has lung cancer and is going through chemo, she works for the postal service, How do we guarantee she doesn't come into contact with it?

 

[bluejon]

so if you had a terrible illness and they said you need urgent treatment , do you want a consultation with the professor who happens to be the leading expert to treat you , or Julie, who is a maths student? Up to you

If Julie is a stats expert who is being trained by people who know what they are talking about, and the question that julie is commenting on is a stats question, then I suggest you give the girl a listen, she might know what she's talking about. Instantly disregarding the collective opinion of 200 scientists because a couple of them are PhD students is just fucking stupid. The government's response to this has been pathetic, they are just calling this out.

 

[domalino]

How do you guarantee that the low and high risk don't come into contact? My youngest has acute bronchitis, so do we close his school? The stepmother is >50, has lung cancer and is going through chemo, she works for the postal service, How do we guarantee she doesn't come into contact with it?

Common sense would say the kid and the stepmother join the lock in with the elderly.

In fact when I say lock in the elderly, it should really be the "at risk", no matter how old.

 

[Blue Hefner]

 

[domalino]

If Julie is a stats expert who is being trained by people who know what they are talking about, and the question that julie is commenting on is a stats question, then I suggest you give the girl a listen, she might know what she's talking about. Instantly disregarding the collective opinion of 200 scientists because a couple of them are PhD students is just fucking stupid. The government's response to this has been pathetic, they are just calling this out.

83 of them are students for the record. Which makes me think they just forwarded it around a University mailing list.

The problem is that very few of them are actually epidemiologists or virologists.

25 year old PhD maths students questioning the work of the scientists who have specialised in this and worked on it for decades for the government when they have no experience in the field at all is not a great look.


I would hold 1000x more weight in the comments from similarly qualified people from WHO etc. who have not criticised it but asked for more details and urged more testing to keep the numbers as accurate as possible.

 

[aguero93:20]

Common sense would say the kid and the stepmother join the lock in with the elderly.

In fact when I say lock in the elderly, it should really be the "at risk", no matter how old.

Doesn't really work that way though, outside of actual hospital isolation units you can't do it and there isn't enough of those.

 

[Chippy_boy]

I am confused why a formerly rational poster has apparently taken leave of his senses. Doubling every 5 days not 3 btw.

So are you disagreeing that there are probably about 20,000 now or not? When you said you'd heard anecdotally (fucking irony you should be relying on anecdotes and not official advice) that there were "tens of thousands" was that you agreeing with me or disagreeing? Which? Agree or disagree?

And btw, there were 460 cases on March 11th. So 920 by the end of today then. Doubling every 5 days. Oh wait... we're at 1,391 and todays stats are not out yet. So much for doubling every 5 days.

 

[BobKowalski]

Govt to start daily briefings and to step up response level throughout the week. Public in many ways is ahead of the Govt on response level and it is important that the Govt do not fall too far behind public response to the risk.

 

[AlgarveBlu]

on testing, there is no point as we have already said those with mild conditions should self isolate. So that’s whether they have it or not. So if they follow the advice that should help the spread.

the Asian countries have seemingly controlled the spread if you look at the numbers but that’s by locking everything down. You have no idea whether that is effective or not until they try and return to normal. When they come out of isolation the virus is still going to be around and guess what the danger is you end up with it increasing again as people try to return to normal.

the strategy here , which I agree with, is as there is no vaccine it will spread so the plan will be to make sure that spread does not peak at anyone time and we spread the strain on the health services as best we can to avoid a spike ( they will still be overwhelmed) but that is the plan. At the same time planning to protect the vulnerable.

that’s why it’s going to be a drip feed of measures , wash hands , stay in if have symptoms, protect vulnerable , at some point ban large gatherings , eventually close schools and then lockdown.

however all of that is managed to protect the vulnerable and the nhs.

you can’t just lock the whole country down for a year, it won’t work. Even if you do the virus will still be here when we get out.

I covered my thoughts on this on the politics thread so I will super summarise here but the question of who's science is right on this matter is irrelevant if you cannot carry the general population and media with you. Organisations, private corporations and people are already taking unilateral action as if the government didn't exist which means you end up with a hybrid policy that will inherit the worst of both strategies.

The optics will look bloody terrible for the government in two or so weeks as graph after graph makes direct comparisons with the EU countries and shows the UK line going through the roof as the EU numbers start to flatten out; add a great dose of personal harrowing testimonies on the front pages, footage of tents in the middle of a field with exhausted NHS workers being briefed by Chinese and Italian experts who have gone through the same thing and the government will capitulate and operation lockdown will commence and the obvious questions will be asked by all - damage to the government's credibility will be immense and that's the last thing the UK needs now. Any moves by Cobra over the following week will start to look like incremental steps to lockdown status anyway and yes before people start saying that was all in the government/scientific planning, nobody will believe it and Johnson has to take some responsibility for that for spending 2018/2019 making Pinocchio look like he doesn't have a nose, integrity of the government is more vital now then at any other time for the coming months/year.

I really do share your concerns on what phase 2 of lockdown is??, as it seems to be to wait for a vaccine or effective anti virals and the time lines simply don't work for the next 6 months minimum; its a worrying situation but again I remain optimistic in not just the UK scientists cracking this but also the world class teams around the world working night and day in coordination with each other to come to our assistance.

 

[bluejon]

83 of them are students for the record. Which makes me think they just forwarded it around a University mailing list.

The problem is that very few of them are actually epidemiologists or virologists.

25 year old PhD maths students questioning the work of the scientists who have specialised in this and worked on it for decades for the government when they have no experience in the field at all is not a great look.


I would hold 1000x more weight in the comments from similarly qualified people from WHO etc. who have not criticised it but asked for more details and urged more testing to keep the numbers as accurate as possible.

My annoyance is more due to the attacking of the people who wrote it rather than the substance of the claims, but this is where we are as a society now it seems.

 

[domalino]

My annoyance is more due to the attacking of the people who wrote it rather than the substance of the claims, but this is where we are as a society now it seems.

There is no substance to the claims? All they say is "release all your information".

Also I appreciate ad-hominem attacks are not great but this is the difference between listening to a genuine expert and someone who had never thought about pandemics before last week. Who the people asking questions are....it matters. Not all opinions are equal.

 

[SWP's back]

Currently the total number of infections is derived from the known number of severe cases which are tested.

Not it’s not. Severe means hospitalised and needing ventilation.

 

[PragueBlue]

Common sense would say the kid and the stepmother join the lock in with the elderly.

In fact when I say lock in the elderly, it should really be the "at risk", no matter how old.

And children that live with those at risk presumably.

 

[George Hannah]

So are you disagreeing that there are probably about 20,000 now or not? When you said you'd heard anecdotally (fucking irony you should be relying on anecdotes and not official advice) that there were "tens of thousands" was that you agreeing with me or disagreeing? Which? Agree or disagree?

And btw, there were 460 cases on March 11th. So 920 by the end of today then. Doubling every 5 days. Oh wait... we're at 1,391 and todays stats are not out yet. So much for doubling every 5 days.

You must be confusing me with someone else - I have offered no opinion on projected numbers - 'anecdotal' or 'official' - the product of modelling used by the government advisors is the one I would trust if that's any help.

 

[Uffa]

What I'm worried about is that some of my countrymen will see that cases and deaths keep rising and will think that the lockdown isn't working, even though they're being told countless times that results of the lockdown will only be visible in 2 weeks because of the nature of the virus itself.