Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) (SARS-CoV-2) [2020]

The Dutch call the Netherlands Holland sometimes! I've been to a football match between the Dutch team and Latvia (I think - it was way back at Euro 2004) and the fans were chanting Holland.

I was aware of the Finns not liking to be lumped in with Scandinavia but then my sister did live in Helsinki for a decade so I've more knowledge than most.

A very peculiar society to my English eyes - very reserved - it seemed very strange to me when I took the bus and it was almost complete silence but for a couple of old ladies nattering away at the back. I can see how social distancing might not be too much of a difference to the norm in some regards - apart from when the pubs and bars are open!

Back on topic, the heparin study is interesting. I'd imagine there must be all sorts of small scale trials such as this going on at present. Worth expanding the promising ones so I wonder if this is one which will end up being part of the large scale UK trials?
 
Nesh said:
I want more information on this. Is there a program that supplies all vets with test kits which allows and asks them to test animals with (common) symptoms?
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I think this was conducted as research between the CDC and the USDA’s National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL). Looks like they selected a hot spot (New York) and may have done some random sampling with pets.
At this point I don't believe kits for the general population are available for animals, but more information might be available through your local vet.
 
Background: https://www.who.int/emergencies/dis...us-hazards/members/biographies/en/index2.html

Source:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/v...secke_why_lockdowns_are_the_wrong_policy.html

Lockdowns are a wrong policy he says, the virus is not as severe and the real death rates are around 0.1% ?

This is very peculiar. The media report statistical numbers that are very very high.
But when I see epidemiologists with high statistical knowledge we see these contradictory claims where the virus is much less fatal.
So I am a bit lost. John Ioannides is another highly credible scientist with strong background in statistics and his claims are very close to his based on recent data
 
Well I'm sure the death rate would be much much lower if it was only exposed to a very healthy population. I assume comments regarding a sub-1% death rate would be if the elderly and frail were the only ones in lockdown.
 
Nesh said:
Background: https://www.who.int/emergencies/dis...us-hazards/members/biographies/en/index2.html

Source:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/v...secke_why_lockdowns_are_the_wrong_policy.html

Lockdowns are a wrong policy he says, the virus is not as severe and the real death rates are around 0.1% ?

This is very peculiar. The media report statistical numbers that are very very high.
But when I see epidemiologists with high statistical knowledge we see these contradictory claims where the virus is much less fatal.
So I am a bit lost. John Ioannides is another highly credible scientist with strong background in statistics and his claims are very close to his based on recent data
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That may be right once antibody tests show the vast majority of people have had the disease. Until we see that though, we can't make an evidence-based decision to let the disease run its course. The real-world data we had (and have) was case-fatality rate based n number of people testing positive and number of those people dying, which is very high.

It may come out that in the end, lockdown wasn't necessary, although I think that's still somewhat unrealistic with lockdown, the UK has seen 4000 new cases a day. Without lockdown, that would have grown and grown and definitely overwhelmed the medical services. Unless one believes these people can't be helped anyway, reducing the number requiring hospitalisation at any one time will certainly save lives. But decisions have to be made without the advantages of hindsight, and best/worst guesses. Models of the disease were presented. No-one knew which model was accurate. Governments had to pick one and work to that model. The cautious one is probably the lesser of two evils if it's the wrong one, depending on what the economic fall-out is. If governments had assumed it was a mild disease and it turned out not to be so, there'd be piles and piles of bodies.
 
From my POV the critical issue is to not run out of capacity at hospitals. If we run out of beds, respirators, supplies, nurses, doctors then that's where situation gets really dire. If we had infinite capacity there would be no problem letting a lot of people have covid19 at the same time(presumed exponential growth). On the other hand if we don't have infinite capacity then trying to manage spread so that we don't run out of capacity would be nice thing to do. My understanding is that most people will get sick and the issue really is more about slowing spread so we don't run out of capacity to give care.
 
Nesh said:
How did they test the cats for Covid-19? The vets have test kitds for animals and of all cat diseases they thought "hm they might have Covid-19"?
Cats are sensitive animals and have their own set of diseases with cat flu being one of the most common that can prove deadly if not treated. Its so common that I doubt a vet would have suspected about a special case that needs to be tested for Covid-19.
This sounds suspiciously strange.
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https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/2118219/

That's my post from a while back. It's been known for a while now that Covid-19 can be transmitted to cats. Likely some places may be testing them now in addition to humans to gauge a potential re-introduction of the virus back into the human pool as there may be a lot of humans without any sort of immunity once lockdown is lifted.

Regards,
SB
 
Seeing the headlines for this as well as some of the conclusions that are being drawn annoys me.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a...us-fatality-in-us/ar-BB134epU?ocid=spartanntp

So, someone who died Feb. 6th has been posthumously identified as having had Covid-19. And their death is now being attributed to Covid-19, but I don't think the death was due to that. I think the original diagnosis for the cause of death (heart attack) is far likelier. Perhaps Covid-19 contributed in some way, but AFAIK you don't suddenly drop dead from Covid-19. It's usually a situation where the symptoms become increasingly dire until something in the body fails.

In this case, she was in apparent recovery when she suddenly died. It seems like those in charge in some locations are quick to label any death as being caused by Covid-19 if there is any trace of it in the persons body. And I think that's wrong and a disservice to trying to understand the full scope of the virus and its impact.

Regards,
SB
 
Can someone explain to me what the exit strategy is in relatively highly infected nations.

Lets assume testing capacity is high enough for contact tracing containment measures, but that >10% of people have already been infected. Can we really afford to quarantine everyone who tests positive in contact tracing for 2 weeks? (Of which an above average percentage will be medical/care personnel.)

Or are we just doing herd immunity with a slight detour at this point? Doing the Sweden way from a point of 90% non infected is not much different than doing the Sweden way from the start, except for the economic damage ... if we are, can we expect anyone important to be honest about it?
 
Well, providing you can keep the R number below 1 (hopefully well below 1), it should die down eventually. Doing this within a nation shouldn't be impossible, though very difficult, but the issue begins once borders start to open up again. If anybody could be a potential carrier, how is tourism going to be a thing before a vaccine or treatment arrives? I'd imagine business meetings will be mostly teleconferencing for the foreseeable future. I wonder if any other clever ways to quickly discover if people are infected will become available? Probably not, but it would certainly be helpful!

We'll all be watching South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan closely to see how they proceed ahead of us. Singapore have failed to keep it under control in recent times. China a different proposition to the sheer power of their state which can do what it pleases, human rights be damned.
 
MfA said:
Can someone explain to me what the exit strategy is in relatively highly infected nations.

Lets assume testing capacity is high enough for contact tracing containment measures, but that >10% of people have already been infected. Can we really afford to quarantine everyone who tests positive in contact tracing for 2 weeks? (Of which an above average percentage will be medical/care personnel.)

Or are we just doing herd immunity with a slight detour at this point? Doing the Sweden way from a point of 90% non infected is not much different than doing the Sweden way from the start, except for the economic damage ... if we are, can we expect anyone important to be honest about it?
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I would wait on sweden for a while before deciding if their strategy is working or not. The trend there is not good at the moment but only time will tell how it really goes.

This was what was estimated to happen in USA at the time when quarantines became topical. Imagine what would have happened in new york without quarantines,...
upload_2020-4-23_10-33-0.png
 
Mariner said:
Doing this within a nation shouldn't be impossible
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I'm not so sure that's true if contact tracing is no longer practical because of the high positive testing rate ... not without keeping the economic shutdown in place any way, which is a very short term solution.
 
manux said:
I would wait on sweden for a while before deciding if their strategy is working or not. The trend there is not good at the moment but only time will tell how it really goes.

This was what was estimated to happen in USA at the time when quarantines became topical. Imagine what would have happened in new york without quarantines,...
View attachment 3812
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As that is using the University of Washington model for the spread of the disease and number of deaths, they have since revised it down to a potential of as few as 60k deaths. However, that was under the assumption that lockdowns would continue until deemed safe to lift. That may not be possible due to the economic impact on peoples lives. At some point the lockdowns will have to be lifted so that people can resume work otherwise deaths due to economic failure could potentially scale higher than deaths due to the virus.

Whether that will match up with a point where corona virus new infections is deemed low enough to be "safe" is the big question mark at the moment.

Regards,
SB
 
Silent_Buddha said:
In this case, she was in apparent recovery when she suddenly died. It seems like those in charge in some locations are quick to label any death as being caused by Covid-19 if there is any trace of it in the persons body. And I think that's wrong and a disservice to trying to understand the full scope of the virus and its impact.
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Yes and no. My brother died from leukaemia, but it was an infection causing pneumonia that actualy killed him, as is fairly typical. In the official statistics, should he not be recorded as a death from leukaemia because technically it wasn't that disease that killed him? that doesn't make sense as anyone undergoing treatment for cancer who dies invariably dies from complications.

The impact of Covid19 on the population is measured in increased deaths over those that would have happened anyway. In some cases, the disease pushes someone over the edge so they succumb to some other disorder like heart disease, but it was the virus that pushed them and had they not been infected, they wouldn't have died from that condition. Of course, then there'll be other people who were going to die anyway who happen to have some SARS-Cov-2 in their system. As there's no real way of differentiating those who died from the effects of Covid19 and those died regardless of Covid19, there's no way to sort the data. That leaves us with either leaving all Covid19 infected cases with underlying conditions unrecorded as Covid19 deaths, or labelling everything that has Covdi19 involved as a Covid19 death.

There's no real correct way; it just depends what info you want to prioritise as more useful. I think this is the primary decided between those countries with high and low death rates. The UK labels any death with Covid19 presence as a Covid19 death. I expect some (all?) of the low mortality countries to only count those with SARS collapse as Covid19 deaths and all those other ones with complications are considered deaths by those complications.
 
manux said:
This was what was estimated to happen in USA at the time when quarantines became topical. Imagine what would have happened in new york without quarantines
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That "diminish overall cases" was the questionable part of that projection ... if nothing changes before and after the economic shutdown you don't diminish overall cases.

There is a difference between flattening the curve and reducing the surface below the curve. If Sweden goes to economic shutdown at say 30-40% infected, they will just flatten the curve. If we go out of economic shutdown now and don't manage to contain it, then we won't even have flattened the curve.

We didn't keep our powder dry ...
 
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MfA said:
That "diminish overall cases" was the questionable part of that projection ... if nothing changes before and after the economic shutdown you don't diminish overall cases.

There is a difference between flattening the curve and reducing the surface below the curve. If Sweden goes to economic shutdown at say 30-40% infected, they will just flatten the curve. If we go out of economic shutdown now and don't manage to contain it, then we won't even have flattened the curve.
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Sweden has population of 10 million. They had 172 deaths yesterday. If you scale that number to usa you get roughly 5500dead a day. It's anybodys guess if swedish numbers keep going up or if they hit the peak now or in 6 months. Looking at swedish numbers and current trend and extrapolating from sweden to usa using similar strategy million+ dead in usa in a year due to covid19 would easily be possible. Especially when considering how close to capacity things went in new york despite quarantines.

It's easy to say retroactively what was right decision, as of today we just don't really know. It also depends on economy versus life kind of arguments which are very subjective.
 
MfA said:
Can someone explain to me what the exit strategy is in relatively highly infected nations.

Lets assume testing capacity is high enough for contact tracing containment measures, but that >10% of people have already been infected. Can we really afford to quarantine everyone who tests positive in contact tracing for 2 weeks? (Of which an above average percentage will be medical/care personnel.)
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Going that route, the plan would be to stay in lockdown until the case rate is very low. That should be happening over the next few weeks. Assuming a 3 week incubation period and 3 weeks after that for recovery, you'll have three weeks of growth after lockdown and then 2-3 weeks of decreasing infections. After six weeks there should be no more cases as with everyone at home, the virus couldn't spread. Well, it won't reduce to zero, but it should drop to a few tens a day.

The only problem here is that's what we started with - contact tracing and containment - but that failed. I don't know what will be different in round two. I guess the hope is better testing throguh serological tests, but they're going to need these ready in a few weeks. The current PCR test is too unreliable. Maybe they'll end up quarantining all contacts for two weeks regardless of testing?

Or are we just doing herd immunity with a slight detour at this point? Doing the Sweden way from a point of 90% non infected is not much different than doing the Sweden way from the start, except for the economic damage ... if we are, can we expect anyone important to be honest about it?
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That another possiblity. Lockdown comes and goes and they realise it can't really stop the virus, so we just let it go. However, China, Taiwan and South Korea look to be having success with containment so that gives hope it's a realistic option.

The third option isn't an exit strategy so much as fumbling in the dark to stumble out a concealed door - that the virus is actually incredibly widespread, half of people have already have it and are immune, and all these deaths are the tail end of the pandemic.
 
manux said:
It's easy to say retroactively what was right decision
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But it's important to own mistakes so you don't get counter-productively pot committed. If we were too late with the shutdown to contain it (due to the necessity of low infection rates for contact tracing) and herd immunity has become the only way, then we better be honest about it.
Shifty Geezer said:
The third option isn't an exit strategy so much as fumbling in the dark to stumble out a concealed door - that the virus is actually incredibly widespread, half of people have already have it and are immune, and all these deaths are the tail end of the pandemic.
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My point is much more negative ... whether it's the tail end or not, we might be forced to face it regardless.
 
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