Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[The Brain]

Sweden's number of infections has been rising slowly for a month, ICU admissions and deaths are still at the low level they've been since late July though.

[Tamas]

So is this all students going around and then infecting their families or WTH is going on? I am still assuming it was worse in March/April we were just blind but it seems like all 6 months of restrictions and lockdowns have been good for was to put a medium-size dent into the pandemic at best.

[mongers]

Worth remembering the UK lockdown didn't start till March 23rd, a full three months after the darkest day of winter and arguably Spring was well under way by then.

Where as today the UK finds itself two months to go before the depths of Winter and then another three months till we reach another March 23rd.

So we've got four to five months of worse daylight hours and challenging weather that we didn't have during the first wave.

Not withstanding the medical and organisational improvements, I think we're in for a worse time.

And that's before we consider what I see as the UK government tardiness over going over to more concrete measure to lockdown and reduce the R number.

[viper37]

Legal consequences are unclear so far, but it seems likely that at least the Israeli football association will try and sue him. And I assume he shouldn't travel to the country anytime soon.

The airline company should sue him too.  And everyone on board the same flight...
If California has the authority, maybe they should sue him too since he landed there while positive...

What a fucked up individual.

[Syt]

While infections reach peaks every week at this point, 43% of Austrians say the current measures in place are sufficient, while 43% think the measures should be loosened to support the economy.

[Tamas]

One of the last remaining bastions of investigative journalism in Hungary produced a sobering/scary report on what happened to one of the hospitals back in May. They pieced it together from reports they had access to, what the health workers from there told them, Facebook posts etc.

This was as I understand a mid-size hospital in the town of Tata, almost entirely specialised to rehabilitation pre-pandemic. Another nearby hospital was designated to be dealing with the pandemic so they started shipping the non-Covid patients to Tata with increasing speed in April. This would had been challenging enough for a hospital mainly equipped for rehabilitation treatments, but as it turned out the virus was already wide-spread among the patients transferred over.

The virus wreaked havoc among the hospital workers, they almost became unable to take care of their patients. A couple of nurses came back from recent retirement, and at some point even the recovery masseurs had to perform nurse duties to keep the hospital from collapsing. The other hospital (the one originally meant to be the one full of Covid patients) actually was shut down for a couple of weeks or so around this time, as lack of testing and negligence (some staff kept working following positive tests) totally overwhelmed them with infections.

It's especially scary as this was entirely unknown by the public at the time (and to be fair still is because this won't reach many). It is impossible to trust the government or their ability to handle things.

[Josquius]

THERE IS NO CORONA IN HUNGARY

[crazy canuck]

THERE IS NO CORONA IN HUNGARY

I am sure Mexico will export some

[Syt]

Record breaking 2435 new cases today after a record breaking 1958 cases yesterday. 

Apparently part of it is due to an increase in testing as contact traced persons in known clusters get isolated and tested.

[Iormlund]

Girl who ate lunch next to me (at a proper distance) came positive yesterday evening. Really hoping aerosol transmission isn't a thing.

[celedhring]

Girl who ate lunch next to me (at a proper distance) came positive yesterday evening. Really hoping aerosol transmission isn't a thing.

If aerosol transmission was such a big factor I think we'd be looking at far worse numbers, imho.

I myself had a mini-cold that lasted 3 days or so last week. Sore throat, some sneezing, very mild discomfrot. But it came and went. I cancelled my weekly meeting with my parents just in case.

[Sheilbh]

So is this all students going around and then infecting their families or WTH is going on? I am still assuming it was worse in March/April we were just blind but it seems like all 6 months of restrictions and lockdowns have been good for was to put a medium-size dent into the pandemic at best.

I think it was far worse in March/April - I'm not sure if you've seen them but there's very helpful charts which show the number of confirmed cases v the number of implied cases (based on hospitalisations, testing levels, mortality etc).

Also it is worth pointing out a few bits of context that I think are important - so the infection is starting to fall in a number of areas now which is positive (compared with a couple of weeks ago):


And it's early days but the ONS survey (which is randomised) has captured that the case numbers might have started to tail off in the North-East and Yorkshire and Humber:


What's also important is that the ONS survey is also showing that this is - so far (and touch wood it stays this way) - mainly happening with younger people and not (yet) getting into the most at risk 70+ people:


I think this is also reflected, so far, into far, far lower hospitalisation and critical care rates - part of that may also be that we're better at treating it than we were then.

THERE IS NO CORONA IN HUNGARY

Just looking at the ECDC maps and I also saw recent deaths in Czech Republic and it feels like this wave is hitting Eastern Europe very hard who largely avoided the first wave. It's worrying.

[Josquius]

Good news from the north east. Case numbers on decline again. Seems it was just freshers flu

[Sheilbh]

Oh and one other comment on spread - according to my mum who lives in the South-West but comes up to London fairly regularly for work. In her view, people in the countryside don't think the Tiers/restrictions apply to them  

[Grey Fox]

Sounds right. Pretty much the same here.