COVID-19 — Coronavirus

Status
Not open for further replies.
M18CTID said:
Part of the explanation could be that enough have now had it that some level of herd immunity has been reached across Europe - obviously not full herd immunity - and cases are dropping drastically as a result. France reported over 50,000 cases in one day not long ago but now it’s down to around 5000.

I think that, along with far more testing these days, and a vaccine just around the corner should be enough to effectively see it off in the next 6 months or so. I’m not sure it will ever go away completely but I can see it eventually being one of those rare diseases that only a few people get.
Click to expand...
I doubt any herd immunity has been attained in most of Europe. Northern Italy is currently being battered yet again and that area is well known as ground zero of the pandemic back in March. You'd expect a considerable amount of immunity there but it seems not.

It's not possible to determine herd immunity until a massive chunk of the population is confirmed as tested positive, or previously by anti-body tests (so far in the UK only around 2.5% - 5% of the population has ever tested positive).

It's possible that certain very localised areas may have attained some immunity. London for example was battered in March but then again I actually think that London is not seeing a big second wave this time because no-one lives there anymore.
 
inbetween said:
I doubt any herd immunity has been attained in most of Europe. Northern Italy is currently being battered yet again and that area is well known as ground zero of the pandemic back in March. You'd expect a considerable amount of immunity there but it seems not.

It's not possible to determine herd immunity until a massive chunk of the population is confirmed as tested positive, or previously by anti-body tests (so far in the UK only around 2.5% - 5% of the population has ever tested positive).

It's possible that certain very localised areas may have attained some immunity. London for example was battered in March but then again I actually think that London is not seeing a big second wave this time because no-one lives there anymore.
Click to expand...
It took 50% of the population of Bergamo to contract the virus for it to get close to heard immunity. The areas of Lombardy that suffered less in the first lockdown have been hit hard this time around.
 
Marvin said:
Have you read the reports of the trial dosages? 3,000 people got the wrong dosages. Apparently these people were better protected but really that's quite concerning that something that should be very carefully controlled goes so wrong.

I give them credit though for being open about it, and for making a good decision when they found about it.
Click to expand...
Didn't know that.
I thought it was deliberate.
They may have got a lucky break there.
 
Len Rum said:
Didn't know that.
I thought it was deliberate.
They may have got a lucky break there.
Click to expand...

According to the reports, it was accidental in an early trial; the thousands given the dose regime in the full phase 3 were deliberate, after the earlier, accidental lower dose showed promise.
 
Churchlawtonblue said:
Personally im not so sure shutting schools would make that much of a difference. Having spoken to the head teacher of our school she is certain that they have had no pupil to pupil transmission, the issue appears to be outside of school and pupils gathering together outside of school, parents not isolating or bothering to follow the guidance and some parents even allowing sleep overs!
Click to expand...
I am not sure I would trust a head teacher to be completely unbiassed.

Very sadly a teacher passed away recently at our children's school after "a short illness", as far as I know they were previously healthy. We were informed by the head teacher that it was definitely not due to Coronavirus since they had been tested 3 times while they were ill.

Make of that what you will but if they were tested 3 times it must have been suspected, perhaps they were only tested after the infectious stage.
 
MillionMilesAway said:
I was thinking penicillin and x-rays (or was it gamma rays? the one with the photographic paper image) as being two quite important ones.
Click to expand...
The radiation one was the one I was thinking of. They only discovered it was actually coming from the uranium as some French fella left it in a draw, covered in photographic paper and a black cloth due to being unable to leave it outside because it was raining. They initially thought it was the sun that was causing it to emit radiation, rather than it doing it of its own accord.
 
The Gov UK website has been improving a lot recently and adding new data features that help.

Here is their table of all the England regions for the past 7 days.

The first number shows the total cases in that region over the past 7 days.

The second number alongside is the Weekly Pop Score (which is those cases measured against the regional population so each region can be compared with one another as to how the case number squares up based on size - so that number is basically weekly cases per 100,000 people)

The principle is exactly like the weekly pop scores I list for all the 10 GM boroughs in my update every evening).

As always the LOWER the pop score the better, but of course less densely populated regions have natural advantages over urban areas in a pandemic so spread is not so easy.

The most interesting thing this table shows is that the North West is no longer the region with the highest Pop Score as it has been for most of the late Summer/Autumn.

It is now number 5 and London is catching up too and was in the Summer way behind the gap now existing.

Every indicator these days is pointing to the tier 3 restrictions as applied to the NW have been the most effective way of handling this second wave and have had the most impact in bringing numbers down.

It was actually an advantage that Merseyside adopted them first and GM later after the debate over money. We saw then how quickly rates fell on Merseyside and I posted about it then as it was so startling, It took a little longer in GM as we were by then higher and had been for longer, but it has worked here too after just a couple of weeks.

Unfortunately the downside of this is that scientists and the government will have realised this is the best way to stem the tide until the cavalry arrives with mass immunisation. So I expect much of the urban areas of the UK to go back into tier 3 or enter them if they were not before in hope that even a Christmas/New Year blip will ride through the apparent way it can suppress numbers.

I don't think even the scientists or governments really know why this blend of restrictions worked. But even if they got there by trial and error it seems they are likely to stick with it now they have found it.



Yorkshire and The Humber 19,729 Weekly Pop 358.5

West Midlands 19,468 Weekly Pop 328.1

South West 9,686 Weekly Pop 172.2

South East1 6,284 Weekly Pop 177.4

North West 19,941 Weekly Pop 271.6

North East 9,497 Weekly Pop 355.7

London 17,296 Weekly Pop 193

East of England 8,755 Weekly Pop 140.4

East Midlands 13,946 Weekly Pop 288.4
 
Last edited:
Another thing you can do with the numbers above is look at the Weekly Pop Score for your area (from last nights list in here if you are in GM or Cheshire East) and compare it to the numbers for either the NW as a region or the areas doing better (with lower than NW weekly pops) or worse (those with higher weekly pops).
 
I should add to the tier 3 question is that it is not 100% clear this is the main reason the NW fell. There were hints that Merseyside was at a plateau or even falling even before it was introduced. By a few days.

Waves do have a natural form of this and its not impossible something similar (though likely a more slow fall like we saw in the Spring) might have occurred in the NW without tier 3.

But the link between the two will be hard to escape as it will seem like a strategy that worked and that in of itself might even change behaviour and make people comply with something they believe is being successful already elsewhere. So expect a lot of focus on how well Merseyside acted to save the nation by agreeing.

Even though arguably the drop in GM has been more important as it had been high for much longer than Merseyside was so a harder nut to crack.

And all of this presumes the numbers do not start to escalate again as winter hits home in coming weeks.
 
MillionMilesAway said:
I was thinking penicillin and x-rays (or was it gamma rays? the one with the photographic paper image) as being two quite important ones.
Click to expand...
It was Becquerel who stored some Uranium compounds next to photographic plates that were in a black bag. The alpha particles emitted by the Uranium caused some exposure of the plates, essentially discovering radioactivity by accident.
 
Wales 3 wks v 2 wks v last wk v today

Deaths 4 v 22 v 34 v 21 today - hopeful this has turned around as the death rate in Wales is tragically high.

Cases 1198 v 444* (low due to lost tests, really at least double) v 705 v 595 today - again looks promising.

Patients 900 v 1044 v 1060 v 1100 (weekend)

Ventilators 54 v 68 v 67 v 64 (weekend)
 
lancs blue said:
It was Becquerel who stored some Uranium compounds next to photographic plates that were in a black bag. The alpha particles emitted by the Uranium caused some exposure of the plates, essentially discovering radioactivity by accident.
Click to expand...
We've all done it tbf...
 
England hospital deaths 353 with 71 from NW. Up from 330 last week.

Tuesday is always a big number, along with Wednesday because of weekend death registration catch up.

But this is the smallest week to week rise in weeks.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Unread Posts

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top