COVID-19 — Coronavirus

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A friend af mine who works for a medium sized construction company in Suffolk has been told that he will more than likely be asked to return to work on the 27th of this month.. He says quarries, for aggregates and such like will be open this coming Monday.. With builders merchants opening On the 27th also... I was a bit surprised,is anyone else ?
Surprised? Not one bit I work in construction and have worked every day since lockdown started.
The sites in Manchester that have closed are reopening on the 20th April and HS2 Civils have just been give the green light so as to kick start the economy.
 
Just watched the UK briefing back. "We are confident that we can meet testing demands in the care sector because we have had over capacity in the testing system for the past few days." Well why didn't you use it then?

Most advanced nations are using testing to find the infections and quarantine them.

As I have said a few times now, I don't believe they are deliberately slack, I think they are just following a conservative strategy but they don't have the bottle to explain this to the public. I think they get away with this because most people simply do not realise what other countries are doing.

As a point of information I just read on the BBC coronavirus feed that Emirates airline are testing their passengers with a ten minute blood test (not antibodies). That shows you what is possible. is the UK so decrepit that it can't organise such matters? No. Oxford Uni is one of the leading players in the race for the vaccine and they are also working in partnership with Italy and China re tests but the UK government doesn't seem interested in testing.

Watch the New York press conferences if you're interested. 100k per day testing target? They want millions of tests so that when they re-open the states they can substitute quarantine from testing for quarantine from a state wide lockdown and so that they can monitor the impact on the infection rate of re-opening their economy.
Marvin, at this stage mass testing isn’t important. Lockdown is what slows this down. If the vast majority are adhering to social distancing and staying at home then we will slow the progress of the virus.

Getting prepared for coming out of lockdown and making sure we can make the following spikes as small as possible is what testing will be all about, and we will no doubt be ready for that with the relevant tests when needed.
 
Do you not think councils are obligated to ensure social distancing is adhered to on their property?
I said priorities. Do you think allotments are hot beds of law breakers? I go to mine every day and see respectable people engaging safely in a healthy pastime.

That said, I confess to the heinous offence of taking butties and a flask of coffee with me.
 
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Good news: Antibody tests validated!

Bad news (I think) : They've realised that under 40s diagnosed who had mild symptoms didn't actually develop antibodies and the virus was killed by other cells in the body. Now unlikely to be immune.


I've found the abstract of the original paper that the article was based on, there's a link to download the full pdf in there if anyone's interested.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.30.20047365v1

To quote my registrar daughter:
"Basically it’s utter shite for the purpose they wanted to use it for and they need to go back to the drawing board."
She then reflected for a minute then said:
"About the only thing it is useful for is to identify people who have definately had the virus and can give blood from which plasma can be extracted "
 
To quote my registrar daughter:
"Basically it’s utter shite for the purpose they wanted to use it for and they need to go back to the drawing board."
She then reflected for a minute then said:
"About the only thing it is useful for is to identify people who have definately had the virus and can give blood from which plasma can be extracted "
Could you ask your daughter to get off the fence, please? ;-)
 
Gutted about that antibody test news. I think a large part of me was hoping deep down that it worked and we were gonna find out who had it and if we were safe to see our loved ones again. Feels like a massive setback. Properly knocked my mood tonight. Guess I was pinning more on it than I realised.
 
So we have a bunch of people who it affected so insignificantly it didn't even register an antibody response.

Surely promising?

Yeah in that way it's good. The flipside not so though. It means they can get infected again though and carry on spreading it. For someone my age, below 40, presuming my body dealt with it the same way, it means I'm not safe to see loved ones even if I've had it once. I'm not safe to go out at all really potentially. Could just keep getting it and spreading it asymptomatically. Naff.
 
So we have a bunch of people who it affected so insignificantly it didn't even register an antibody response.

Surely promising?

It's great for the person who it's hardly affected, until they get it again (because they havent produced an antibody) and it's more severe for them the next time or they keep getting it and keep spreading it.
 
It's great for the person who it's hardly affected, until they get it again (because they havent produced an antibody) and it's more severe for them the next time or they keep getting it and keep spreading it.

I think the being asymptomatic carriers is the more worrying point - if they've fought it off once, it's quite likely they'll be able to do it again.
 
Yeah in that way it's good. The flipside not so though. It means they can get infected again though and carry on spreading it. For someone my age, below 40, presuming my body dealt with it the same way, it means I'm not safe to see loved ones even if I've had it once. I'm not safe to go out at all really potentially. Could just keep getting it and spreading it asymptomatically. Naff.

Not necessarily mate. There will be a vaccine available in time and that should help produce antibodies in everybody.

Also this lack of antibodies in the young is just one report in a paper isn't it? You should wait to see some more verified reports rather than beating yourself up over one news paper report.

We will find a way out of this problem. It just needs calm heads and minds.
 
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