Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Sheilbh]

I think the key is to have an efficient system with skilled decision makers in charge.

Just look at the US, that's very decentralised right there, and what a mess it is. Just because Boris and his marry band of political conmen fumbled this one doesn't automatically mean we need to decouple regions from a central leadership.

Yeah. Undoubtedly that's right and the US and Germany are very useful comparisons of a competent, coordinated federal response and one that isn't.

The UK is decentralised on health in a lot of ways - it's a devolved matter and the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish governments are responsible for the coronavirus response in those nations. Johnson has very limited power outside of England (so is education incidentally).

In England there's been about 20 years worth of reforms to move decision making away from Whitehall and "remove politics from the NHS" - but as I say I think in England we're getting all of the downsides of that fragmentation (multiple reporting lines, competing decision makers, byzantine structures) and none of the benefits. It really needs a form of political accountability/democratic decision making and England isn't set up for that (so NHS regions don't really map onto any local government divisions except for London) so unless we have that wider shift then I think it probably is best that it comes back to the Health Secretary being far more powerful.

Which reminds me, wasn't there some little news today or yesterday that some English organisation/company didn't supply enough masks to Scotland because their rules/regulation is to make sure England has enough before they share? Sorry, no link, but that's a shadowy part of decentralisation as well.

Allegedly. The only place I've seen the actual initial story is The National which is a campaigining nationalist paper launched after the Indy Ref and the cybernat bits of the internet. The UK/English government have said there's no truth to it and the Scots government is "investigating the allegations". Everyone else is just reporting on "reports that...."

There's certainly no regulations that say prioritise England.

[Caliga]

I presumed there are no cold vaccines because a) it's so rare for a cold to kill anyone or make them seriously ill, that it's not worth the time and effort to develop one, and/or b) the 'cold' IIRC is actually a huge number of unrelated viruses, so developing vaccines against most or all would be a monumental effort.

[Maximus]

I am in a pessimistic mood.

I don't think a vaccine is possible. IIRC there are no cold vaccine, usually caused by a corona virus.

Yet we have tons of flu vaccines

But what do I know?

I don't know if it's relevant, but influenza viruses are not coronaviruses.

[Threviel]

Me and the wife had an absolutely horrible cold in the beginning of February. Description fits Covid-19 quite well and I still have a light cough. It was too early for Covid-19, so presumably some Corona relative. A few years ago I had a similar cold and a friend of mine got hospitalized for it.

If an elderly frail someone had gotten either one I firmly believe that death is a probable outcome, same with stomach flu. The point being that there are lots of horrible colds and other stuff out there that we presumably have some kind of herd immunity or behavioral defense against and give it some decades Covid-19 will be one of them.

We don't have vaccines for most of them, there are different kinds of viruses and some are easy to get a vaccine against, some are near impossible.

I don't really have a point with that rambling. But today, the Swedish CDC claims that we are nearing herd immunity in Stockholm.

[celedhring]

I presumed there are no cold vaccines because a) it's so rare for a cold to kill anyone or make them seriously ill, that it's not worth the time and effort to develop one, and/or b) the 'cold' IIRC is actually a huge number of unrelated viruses, so developing vaccines against most or all would be a monumental effort.

Yeah, that's about it. The only other coronavirus mankind has been exposed to was SARS and that was nipped in the bud too early for a vaccine to be developed.

IIRC there are vaccines for coronaviruses affecting livestock so I don't think we're in an VIH situation here.

[Sheilbh]

I presumed there are no cold vaccines because a) it's so rare for a cold to kill anyone or make them seriously ill, that it's not worth the time and effort to develop one, and/or b) the 'cold' IIRC is actually a huge number of unrelated viruses, so developing vaccines against most or all would be a monumental effort.

Yeah I don't think we have a vaccine for any coronavirus because most of them aren't this bad, or, like SARS, were contained.

I think Iorm or Larch said that doesn't necessarily mean it can't be done but it probably does mean we're starting from a lower base and it's going to take longer?

[Admiral Yi]

I've heard 1 year (which is what the White House has been saying) for a vaccine is best case and 2 years is expected.

[Sheilbh]

The Nightingale in Birmingham has opened. And Britain continues it's experimentation with weirdly dystopian pictures

[Tonitrus]

Not weird at all. 

[The Brain]

Is the hot water turned on if you don't obey?

[grumbler]

Haven't seen this one talked about here yet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eySDeBdqxGY&feature=emb_logo

Nice BLR-type treatment.

[Josquius]

The Nightingale in Birmingham has opened. And Britain continues it's experimentation with weirdly dystopian pictures

I'm fascinated at their imminent death by hot water.

[Iormlund]

I presumed there are no cold vaccines because a) it's so rare for a cold to kill anyone or make them seriously ill, that it's not worth the time and effort to develop one, and/or b) the 'cold' IIRC is actually a huge number of unrelated viruses, so developing vaccines against most or all would be a monumental effort.

Yeah I don't think we have a vaccine for any coronavirus because most of them aren't this bad, or, like SARS, were contained.

I think Iorm or Larch said that doesn't necessarily mean it can't be done but it probably does mean we're starting from a lower base and it's going to take longer?

Most coronavirus infections are very mild, being responsible for some colds.

The others are SARS and MERS. SARS got you very sick before being contagious, so it was easily contained. This also killed any incentive to make a vaccine (which usually takes 10-15 years and a lot of money).
MERS is similarly aggressive, but IIRC jumps regularly from camels in Arabia. It was one of three illnesses targeted in a recent program to fund vaccine research that is not financially attractive for the industry. Sadly that was in its infancy.

So we are indeed starting almost from scratch when we could have leveraged a vaccine against SARS.
There's around 50 different candidates in the works last I checked. Even if most of those don't work we'll probably have one that does. And there is a protocol to test those candidates in one or two years instead of ten.

[Caliga]

The Nightingale in Birmingham has opened.

Please explain what we are looking at here.

[Valmy]

The Nightingale in Birmingham has opened. And Britain continues it's experimentation with weirdly dystopian pictures

Hail great leader!