COVID-19 — Coronavirus

[cleavers]

Basically we were rubbish but are now very good in the great scheme of things. Our death rate being far worse than the rest of Europe but now being as good as the best.
The problems and benefits of a centralised NHS in a nutshell. If the process isn't right the results are bad.

At least the NHS weren't overwhelmed in April ;-)

Though the reality is they were, and couldn't deal with it all, so many of the NHS staff were also overwhelmed, and a good many died as a result.

The reality is that we (as a country) had no idea what we were really dealing with, and we had no idea how to treat it.

We were then hit by the worst scenario of people travelling to the worst areas in our own half term holidays, just as other countries were getting to their peak of local transmission.

So you can blame government all you like, but at the end of the day we were in a very shit position, sure there were things we could have done better (mainly in hindsight - and there still are even today), but we were pretty much fucked by the fact that many people in the southeast/london area had half term skiing breaks or holidays to spain, just as it was running amok, they all came home and went about their normal lives packing trains and tubes not knowing they were transmitting the virus, a lot of those travel for work, so took it to all corners of the country, and there it spread further.

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

At least the NHS weren't overwhelmed in April ;-)

Though the reality is they were, and couldn't deal with it all, so many of the NHS staff were also overwhelmed, and a good many died as a result.

The reality is that we (as a country) had no idea what we were really dealing with, and we had no idea how to treat it.

We were then hit by the worst scenario of people travelling to the worst areas in our own half term holidays, just as other countries were getting to their peak of local transmission.

So you can blame government all you like, but at the end of the day we were in a very shit position, sure there were things we could have done better (mainly in hindsight - and there still are even today), but we were pretty much fucked by the fact that many people in the southeast/london area had half term skiing breaks or holidays to spain, just as it was running amok, they all came home and went about their normal lives packing trains and tubes not knowing they were transmitting the virus, a lot of those travel for work, so took it to all corners of the country, and there it spread further.

It’s a good job them Germans never go skiing, leave the country or go to work or they’d have done as badly as we have.....

 

[Meatbag]

So you can blame government all you like,

Thanks, I do.

 

[grunge]

Interesting change in UCU stats from the start if the UK pandemic to now.

It was a 12% chance of an admitted patient ending up in ICU back in April - It was 2% at the end if June and I believe its down to 1.5% now (though that is hearsay from my Reg daughter). Of those who go on Ventilators the chance of death was 50% back in April - it's now better but I can't find out from sources the exact amount.
The chances of leaving ICU alive have gone up from 52% to 80%

COVID-19: Declining Admissions to Intensive Care Units - The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine

Daniel Howdon, Jason Oke, Carl Heneghan In a recent article, we observed an apparent fall in the in-hospital mortality rate

www.cebm.net

Basically we were rubbish but are now very good in the great scheme of things. Our death rate being far worse than the rest of Europe but now being as good as the best.
The problems and benefits of a centralised NHS in a nutshell. If the process isn't right the results are bad.

While some of it will be knowledge and theraputics ( and that will keep getting better ) I think a lot of this will be down to viral load as well, social distancing / masks are all helping reduce the viral load which is reducing the severity of its impact.

 

[shemnel]

Seroprevlance study finds ~6% of adults in England may have or have had Covid-19

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/institute-of-global-health-innovation/Ward-et-al-120820.pdf

background for testing methods;

Clinical and laboratory evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 lateral flow assays for use in a national COVID-19 seroprevalence survey | Thorax

thorax.bmj.com

landing page;

Real-time Assessment of Community Transmission findings

The Real-time Assessment of Community Transmission (REACT) programme is one of the largest, most significant pieces of research looking at how the CO...

www.imperial.ac.uk

 

[ayrshire_blue]

Seroprevlance study finds ~6% of adults in England may have or have had Covid-19

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/institute-of-global-health-innovation/Ward-et-al-120820.pdf

background for testing methods;

Clinical and laboratory evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 lateral flow assays for use in a national COVID-19 seroprevalence survey | Thorax

thorax.bmj.com

landing page;

Real-time Assessment of Community Transmission findings

The Real-time Assessment of Community Transmission (REACT) programme is one of the largest, most significant pieces of research looking at how the CO...

www.imperial.ac.uk

Apologies in advance for being lazy, @shemnel, but without reading the article myself can you confirm if it takes into account T cells or is the report just antibody related? The rate seems seriously low, so I'm hoping and expecting that T cell's aren't taken into account in the report.

 

[somapop]

I'm always massively cautious of those reports that have infection rates that hover around 6% and I too feel that the T cell scenario isn't taken into account.

 

[True_Blue69]

Apologies in advance for being lazy, @shemnel, but without reading the article myself can you confirm if it takes into account T cells or is the report just antibody related? The rate seems seriously low, so I'm hoping and expecting that T cell's aren't taken into account in the report.

Pretty sure it is just going off the antibody testing and not taking T Cells into account. The T Cell findings don't seem to have made their way to the news yet, I wonder why that is...

 

[shemnel]

Apologies in advance for being lazy, @shemnel, but without reading the article myself can you confirm if it takes into account T cells or is the report just antibody related? The rate seems seriously low, so I'm hoping and expecting that T cell's aren't taken into account in the report.

i have no medical background, but this is an antibody test on a large sample size (~100k) using finger prick tests, which have been assessed for accuracy in the 2nd link. To my knowledge this does not include T-cells, no. This is due to the time needed for T-cell test where as this focuses on creating a method that is quick, widespread and uses large amounts of data. The results do fall in line with other infection-fatality rates in Spain, Italy (slightly below) and Germany (more).

so yes, this reinforces antibody knowledge, not so much T-cell stuff.

 

[cleavers]

It’s a good job them Germans never go skiing, leave the country or go to work or they’d have done as badly as we have.....

They do, and they had a pretty similar problem to us, but they were in a far better place health service wise than we were, as they had something like 10x the ICU beds that we did when it kicked off here. They also have a very different regional government compared to our central government, which led to better local management.