Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Josquius]

I love Diane Abbott tho!

.
Nowhere near as bad as you'd be led to believe going off all the crap that gets spread about her. But a bit rubbish and Corbynish in general.

[The Brain]

Sweden 12, Denmark 13. Sign of things to come.

Doesn't Norway get to play?

Norw-ay?

[grumbler]

Norw-ay?

Yeah, Norway.  It's like Minnesota, only in Europe.

[celedhring]

First morning of some non-essential workers allowed being back to work (essentially factories). +35% mass transit passengers compared to last Monday, but still -80% over Easter Monday last year.

This matches with usage figures before the government shut down non-essential factories in early April, but it's still early figures. There's been a lot of controversy over here whether it was a good idea to not extend the factory shutdown.

[Syt]

Austria allows shops under 400 square meters and hardware stores to open tomorrow (mask rules apply). Kinda curious how that goes.

I heard several stories of Easter family gatherings, or people going on birthday parties this weekend. Also, apparently, lots of people getting together in green areas unlikely to be patrolled by police.

[celedhring]

Fun fact, yesterday at around 1.30 AM there was no single plane in the skies over Spain (that red one in Madrid means it was taxiing). Wonder how often this is happening nowadays, and how crazy it is compared to our regular air traffic.

[Syt]

Looking at https://www.flightradar24.com/37.16,70.58/4# it seems only China/Japan and maybe UAE are operating at something close to normal

[celedhring]

+517 dead, lowest figure in 3 weeks. Again, Easter weekend beware. Given that several regions are still on holiday today, numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt until wednesday.

[Admiral Yi]

Man, it's seems to early for you guys to be easing up on lock down.

[mongers]

Man, it's seems to early for you guys to be easing up on lock down.

edit:
This is worrying from South Korea:

South Korea reports more recovered coronavirus patients testing positive again

South Korea reported on Monday that at least 116 people initially cleared of the new coronavirus had tested positive again, although officials suggested they would soon look at easing strict recommendations aimed at preventing new outbreaks.

http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/Reuters/worldNews/~3/o9K01T3gDU8/south-korea-reports-more-recovered-coronavirus-patients-testing-positive-again-idUSKCN21V0JQ

Hopefully just false positives or correct results from people who originally had false positives.

[Fate]

Another theory is that they are detecting dead viral RNA in their nose and it's no longer infectious. Kind of like how you'll see these studies about how COVID-19 travels 12 feet or 20 feet or is detectable on a surface after 1 week. What those studies don't say is that those viral particles are still functional or infectious in those conditions.

They could test that if they wanted by culturing the virus from these samples but I'm not sure why they've avoided that to date.

[Caliga]

I don't understand how you could successfully fight the virus off but then not be immune to future infection... isn't that how the immune system works?  It defeats a viral infection by developing immunity/the antibodies necessary to destroy that virus?

I guess it's possible this virus mutates so fast that these people are being infected by strains different enough to the first one that their immune systems aren't recognizing them?

[Fate]

I don't understand how you could successfully fight the virus off but then not be immune to future infection... isn't that how the immune system works?  It defeats a viral infection by developing immunity/the antibodies necessary to destroy that virus?

I guess it's possible this virus mutates so fast that these people are being infected by strains different enough to the first one that their immune systems aren't recognizing them?

HIV and Hepatitis B are two viral examples of this phenomenon. Your body will create tons of circulating antibodies to portions of the virus but none of them are effective in neutralization.

[celedhring]

Man, it's seems to early for you guys to be easing up on lock down.

They have just reverted to the rules of 3 weeks ago. The "hibernation" (shutting down all industry and construction) has been on for 2 weeks only.

Personally, I actually don't think it had much of an effect, given how little mobility data fell when it came into force. However, there's talk that some businesses that shut down before the hibernation was enforced might restart now, like the Airbus production lines in Madrid.

We'll see the mobility data in the coming days, I guess.

[Sheilbh]

That makes sense - after three weeks they can probably see what the benefit of that change was and if it's low, it sort of makes sense to lift it.

In terms of exiting this the Guardian have said that two strategies being looked at are an "unleash the young" strategy which is basically lifting restrictions on under 40s, and re-opening schools especially primary schools (which have smaller class sizes) but basically staggering school times, break times and lunch times so kids basically only spend time with other kids in their classes. Secondary schools are more difficult because they have bigger classes and also you don't stay in the same class all day. I've also heard of an idea about companies re-opening but only having half their staff in at any time (to allow distancing) on a sort of weekly rota - so one week half the staff come in, the next week the other half come in.

Apparently the government here have been surprised how much people have followed the rules, there's been more compliance than was assumed in a lot of the models scientists are working with.