Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Agelastus]

First coronavirus casualty in my family - going to my uncle's (social distancing) funeral on Friday.

He was already quite ill recuperating from a fall in a care home. Slightly worried about attending as my cousin was a bit gung-ho about visiting his father when he was ill and is still going to the care home to help out a 100-year-old man with a colostomy bag, which doesn't sound advisable. I'm going to have to bring a 2m long broom handle and poke anyone who comes close away.

My 90-year-old dad is still going strong and being very good about self-isolation. He won't let me into the house so I just wave through the window once a week.

Please accept my deepest sympathies for your loss. 

[Sheilbh]

First coronavirus casualty in my family - going to my uncle's (social distancing) funeral on Friday.

He was already quite ill recuperating from a fall in a care home. Slightly worried about attending as my cousin was a bit gung-ho about visiting his father when he was ill and is still going to the care home to help out a 100-year-old man with a colostomy bag, which doesn't sound advisable. I'm going to have to bring a 2m long broom handle and poke anyone who comes close away.

My 90-year-old dad is still going strong and being very good about self-isolation. He won't let me into the house so I just wave through the window once a week.

So sorry to hear that B

[The Brain]

First coronavirus casualty in my family - going to my uncle's (social distancing) funeral on Friday.

He was already quite ill recuperating from a fall in a care home. Slightly worried about attending as my cousin was a bit gung-ho about visiting his father when he was ill and is still going to the care home to help out a 100-year-old man with a colostomy bag, which doesn't sound advisable. I'm going to have to bring a 2m long broom handle and poke anyone who comes close away.

My 90-year-old dad is still going strong and being very good about self-isolation. He won't let me into the house so I just wave through the window once a week.

I'm sorry.

[Maladict]

NY is going to do a statistical sample with antibody tests, starting today.  Anyone care to make a prediction as to what the statewide positive percentage will be?  My guess is 25%, +/- 5%. 

I think that about 7%-10% of New Yorkers would test positive if they lived in a place that tests everyone with symptoms.  From what I'm hearing, New York is not testing people unless they're on the verge of hospital admission or are first responders, as a general rule.  I also think that we're collectively way underestimating how many people are either asymptomatically sick, or maybe were sick for a day but immediately expelled the infection.  For that reason I'm judgmentally slapping a factor of three on my initial estimate.

7-10% for the entire State.

<5%

[Maladict]

First coronavirus casualty in my family - going to my uncle's (social distancing) funeral on Friday.

He was already quite ill recuperating from a fall in a care home. Slightly worried about attending as my cousin was a bit gung-ho about visiting his father when he was ill and is still going to the care home to help out a 100-year-old man with a colostomy bag, which doesn't sound advisable. I'm going to have to bring a 2m long broom handle and poke anyone who comes close away.

My 90-year-old dad is still going strong and being very good about self-isolation. He won't let me into the house so I just wave through the window once a week.

Sorry B 

[Grey Fox]

I haven't found a source, but credible rumours has it that around 30% of Stockholm has already had it. Swedish CDC is on record claiming that we approach herd immunity.

Doesn't herd immunity need something like 60-80% of the population to have it?

Approach |= There.

If herd imminuty is 60-80%, at 30%, you hare at 50%-62.5% of your target.  I would not describe it as "approaching".

and yet, that is how you get there.

[Zanza]

I predict 4.5% in NYC and surrounding counties, 1% in the rest of the state

[Tamas]

First coronavirus casualty in my family - going to my uncle's (social distancing) funeral on Friday.

He was already quite ill recuperating from a fall in a care home. Slightly worried about attending as my cousin was a bit gung-ho about visiting his father when he was ill and is still going to the care home to help out a 100-year-old man with a colostomy bag, which doesn't sound advisable. I'm going to have to bring a 2m long broom handle and poke anyone who comes close away.

My 90-year-old dad is still going strong and being very good about self-isolation. He won't let me into the house so I just wave through the window once a week.

I am sorry for your loss, B.

[Tamas]

I think that Tyr likes to over-estimate the bad faith of political actors he doesn't like, and that's what he meant.

I am not sure it applies to me though. Do I literally mean the Swedish government wants to eradicate old people? Of course not. But if you are not enacting measures to prevent them dying in roves of a pandemic, then you consider them expendable. Which is again, not EXACTLY as bad as actively trying to kill them, but not a LOT better.

Tyr comes across as the left wing equivalent of a right-wing conspiracy nut when he's talking about political actors he doesn't like.

The tone and content of some of your posts have been grating me particularly badly over the last few weeks as they've started to sound like someone going down the same rabbit hole. I can see Sheilbh has had to post again to point out that Sweden (and Britain beforehand) were following scientific advice of how to deal with the Coronavirus outbreak - and, at least in Britain's case, have published the papers to show that. It's not some sinister right wing conspiracy to reduce social care costs.

Yet at least once a week he's having to say it again in response to posts like yours.

I've been holding back on posting the item I posted or a similar line for the last 2 or 3 weeks; today I finally lost patience and politeness and just posted it and "damn the torpedoes".

I concede that I was overdoing it sometimes, but "on scientific advice" is a 100% meaningless line. Or do you think the rest of Europe did not act on advice of scientists?

Plus, in the real world, leaders are offered alternative courses of actions to choose from. I seriously doubt all the scientists they ever consulted in the UK gave them one and only policy idea to follow/consider.

There was an obvious alternative to not locking down, namely, to lock down, as it was evidenced and practiced by most European countries. The UK government decided to not do that, at least not the same way. And they may have been right to do so, but seeing how nobody else apart from us and Sweden went that route, the UK/Sweden route had to be the (short term) higher risk option, and going with it was a conscious choice of this government, because, again, I am pretty sure they didn't just nod and implement whatever unified single voice UK Science gave them.

And maybe we will get lucky. But what I am seeing so far is British society acting great, overall, not the government. My workplace switched to home office a week, maybe two, after most other workplaces I had information on, and yet we were a week (or two?) ahead of the official UK lockdown.

The lockdown itself have been very well maintained I think, bird-watching aside, and that's also credit to sociey in general.

I maintain that the government  itself tired to muddle through without a proper lockdown, Sweden-style, and failed, and if we avoid disaster it will be because ofthe NHS and society in general.

[The Brain]

Seems sound to me for government not to use force when softer methods may work. People in Sweden work from home if they can, even though the government hasn't forbidden going to work. Etc.

[derspiess]

First coronavirus casualty in my family - going to my uncle's (social distancing) funeral on Friday.

He was already quite ill recuperating from a fall in a care home. Slightly worried about attending as my cousin was a bit gung-ho about visiting his father when he was ill and is still going to the care home to help out a 100-year-old man with a colostomy bag, which doesn't sound advisable. I'm going to have to bring a 2m long broom handle and poke anyone who comes close away.

My 90-year-old dad is still going strong and being very good about self-isolation. He won't let me into the house so I just wave through the window once a week.

Sorry B

Btw, your dad looks way younger than 90.

[Iormlund]

Derspiess, here's a database for IBD cases and outcomes: https://covidibd.org/current-data/

Not that many cases yet. Going by my age and treatment mortality should fall between 0.1 and 1% (I assume only 10-20% of cases are actually tested).

[garbon]

I think that Tyr likes to over-estimate the bad faith of political actors he doesn't like, and that's what he meant.

I am not sure it applies to me though. Do I literally mean the Swedish government wants to eradicate old people? Of course not. But if you are not enacting measures to prevent them dying in roves of a pandemic, then you consider them expendable. Which is again, not EXACTLY as bad as actively trying to kill them, but not a LOT better.

Tyr comes across as the left wing equivalent of a right-wing conspiracy nut when he's talking about political actors he doesn't like.

The tone and content of some of your posts have been grating me particularly badly over the last few weeks as they've started to sound like someone going down the same rabbit hole. I can see Sheilbh has had to post again to point out that Sweden (and Britain beforehand) were following scientific advice of how to deal with the Coronavirus outbreak - and, at least in Britain's case, have published the papers to show that. It's not some sinister right wing conspiracy to reduce social care costs.

Yet at least once a week he's having to say it again in response to posts like yours.

I've been holding back on posting the item I posted or a similar line for the last 2 or 3 weeks; today I finally lost patience and politeness and just posted it and "damn the torpedoes".

I concede that I was overdoing it sometimes, but "on scientific advice" is a 100% meaningless line. Or do you think the rest of Europe did not act on advice of scientists?

Plus, in the real world, leaders are offered alternative courses of actions to choose from. I seriously doubt all the scientists they ever consulted in the UK gave them one and only policy idea to follow/consider.

Indeed. The Times article at the very least seriously undermines the credibility of that in the UK.

[Maladict]

Italy reporting a net decrease in Covid patients for the first time in eleven weeks.

[Sheilbh]

I concede that I was overdoing it sometimes, but "on scientific advice" is a 100% meaningless line. Or do you think the rest of Europe did not act on advice of scientists?

Plus, in the real world, leaders are offered alternative courses of actions to choose from. I seriously doubt all the scientists they ever consulted in the UK gave them one and only policy idea to follow/consider.

This is where one of my questions for the government would come in actually. I wonder if they pushed back and asked for alternatives, or were pushing for scientific alternatives - for example why did we not decide that South Korea was a plausible model early on. I ask because I think if the scientists didn't look at it and they weren't asked to by the politicians then that's kind of on both of them (arguably more scientists because that's meant to be their expertise); if they did and they offered that option then it's on the politicians.

In terms of the way scientific advice works for government my understanding (I remember reading an article about this a while ago) is that there's all the sub-groups that feed into SAGE which is chaired by the Chief Scientific Advisor - but they are asked to come to a "consensus view" or to make a recommendation. It reminded me of the thing we always get told when giving advice at work - there is nothing clients dislike more than a menu of options - they want a recommendation and alternatives, not a range of choices. So it'd be up to the Chief Scientific Advisor (or a lawyer) to flag the risks, the doubts, the weakneses of each approach and their recommendation.

From what I can see, from what they've published the scientists didn't study or model the effects of a full lock-down until after it was implemented in Italy - which seems late and I'd like to know why that was.

As I say my view is that the UK isn't that different in it's approach, and took the same sort of measures as most countries at the same sort of stage in the epidemic. I think most countries were aiming for a flatten the curve approach but it became clear (as the data became better - from non-Chinese sources) that that wouldn't be enough and they needed to move into suppression. 

There was an obvious alternative to not locking down, namely, to lock down, as it was evidenced and practiced by most European countries. The UK government decided to not do that, at least not the same way. And they may have been right to do so, but seeing how nobody else apart from us and Sweden went that route, the UK/Sweden route had to be the (short term) higher risk option, and going with it was a conscious choice of this government, because, again, I am pretty sure they didn't just nod and implement whatever unified single voice UK Science gave them.

But I think everybody went down that route - our policies were the same as most other European countries - the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and France. Start off with trying to mitigate and you might get herd immunity ("60% of Germans"), followed by a shift to suppression once the data changed the risks. I mean even the arrogant comments about Italians were replicated - both UK and French officials said stuff they would regret a few weeks later about Italy.

There are outliers in terms of policy: Greece and Denmark locked down almost immediately - I don't think they'd even had any fatalities; and Sweden, obviously. There are also outliers in results: Germany has far fewer deaths. But I think for people who really don't like Johnson, and for the sort of booster-ish wing of the Tory Party - there's a need for us to be special. We're doing something different that is either uniquely bad or uniquely good. I think the reality is, that in this, as in so much else we're an average big European country.

I maintain that the government  itself tired to muddle through without a proper lockdown, Sweden-style, and failed, and if we avoid disaster it will be because ofthe NHS and society in general.

I agree. I think they wanted to get through without a lockdown by sufficiently flattening the curve, but then the data changed (particularly the Italian hospitalisation rate was at least double what the information was from China) so they moved to suppression. But they have that in common with most other countries and by the time they're getting that good information it's early March.

My main queries would be around decision making as I say above because, for example, it seems odd to me that no-one was looking into the potential impact of a lockdown until late Feb/early Mar even as a "reasonable worst case scenario" - and I would like to know why that was (plus as I say above - did we even look at South Korea and Taiwan?). Also following the Sunday Times article it'd be really important to know if we diverged from our pandemic preparedness plans - because one expert in the article said he'd helped write Singapore's  and they were based on UK plans published after H1N1, the difference is Singapore implemented it. And what went on around preparedness - PPE, testing etc.

The flipside is the one area where I think the government has definitely achieved what it set out to do was increasing capacity in the NHS - we've never breached critical care or general capacity and it's been significantly increased with the Nightingales (and on that it's striking that the military was involved because it's a real contrast between that unified command/instruction set up and the multiplicity of decision makers in the NHS after the Cameron/Lansley reforms). I wasn't sure that would be achievable at the start of this crisis, and there were a couple of weeks when it seemed like the NHS (especially in London) might breach capacity.