Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[mongers]

Photo from the French return to school:

For such small people that's one bloody hardcore game of hopscotch. 

[crazy canuck]

There are like, 30 vaccines being tested? Pretty sure some will work. There are actually few viruses we don't have a vaccine for, and only HIV has seen significant resources poured into it.

actually, there are quite a few viruses that do not have a vaccine.  Even if one does not count the flu and cold viruses.

I hope you are right.  But a lot of those tests are trying formulations already made for other things that researchers hope will have some positive results. There is hope, but normally it takes 10 years.  Of course a lot more effort is being poured into this so we will see.

Problem with the flu is it is a multitude of different strains and mutations.

Problem with the common cold is it is actually a whole bunch of different viruses of different types.

We won't know for sure, but SARS-CoV-2 is a single virus that doesn't appear to mutate rapidly.  It does look like a good candidate for a vaccine.

Sure, but the claim was that there are few viruses that don't have a vaccine.  That is not accurate even if one excludes the flu and colds.  You decided to address the things I excluded.

[Zoupa]

I think saying that without vaccine we'll never live a normal life again is just nuts.  If we won't ever develop a vaccine, I'm pretty sure the whole world is going to just say fuck it and hope for the best.  Putting COVID-19 in mortality terms, if you get it, your annual mortality doubles.  If you had a 0.2% chance of dying that year, it now becomes 0.4% chance, and if you had a 5% chance of dying, it becomes a 10% chance.  It's not something to dismiss, but frankly it's not bad enough to be living in a permanent siege mode.

I'd wait for the stats on long-term effects too apart from mortality. I'm still winded after very mild effort and it's been over a month that I tested negative.

[crazy canuck]

People won't do the calculus, but they'll act as if they did. 

And to address this directly.  Everyone will do calculus about the disease, but the variables are manifold and the weight of such things varies according to social group, personal psychology, and societal reactions.

Agreed.  We are not wired to do the calculation DG proposed.  We are going to assess risk and prefer things that fall within our individual risk tolerance which of course will vary.  But the fact that we will assess risk where before we would not necessarily means that there is going to be change of some kind.

[Legbiter]

The kids should be allowed to play as they like. It's the adult that needs to keep her distance.

[merithyn]

The kids should be allowed to play as they like. It's the adult that needs to keep her distance.

Except that's been shown to not be true.

[Sheilbh]

Really interesting points on this by David Spiegelhalter who's a professor on the public understanding of risk:
https://medium.com/@d_spiegel/what-are-the-risks-of-covid-and-what-is-meant-by-the-risks-of-covid-c828695aea69

I think a really important way to understand it is that even if the personal risk is low it's more about keeping transmission low to protect the at-risk.

I wonder if there's an American cultural angle here. The SAGE papers by the behavioural scientists said that people would be more likely to comply if lockdown and social distancing measures were more about protecting others, they'd be more risky if it was about protecting themselves. People would follow if they thought they were doing it for others, but were more likely to break rules because they'd do their own individual risk calculations. Which I think is true, but maybe works differently in a more individualistic country like the US - people maybe primarily see this as about protecting themselves not each other?

And I think that's really important as we lift lockdown measures etc - all of this is about protecting everyone in society, not about protecting ourselves.

[Legbiter]

The kids should be allowed to play as they like. It's the adult that needs to keep her distance.

Except that's been shown to not be true.

Kids don't spread it among themselves very well apparently. All the school outbreaks here have been among staff. The only children who've been infected here were infected by adults within households, not because they played with Gunnar in recess.

[Sheilbh]

Kids don't spread it among themselves very well apparently. All the school outbreaks here have been among staff. The only children who've been infected here were infected by adults within households, not because they played with Gunnar in recess.

Yeah. It doesn't mean there's zero chance, but primary schools have been open in a load of European countries for a while now and there's no evidence it's lead to increased transmission or many cases among kids.

The Swiss (who are basically a less-publicised version of Sweden in general on this) and Dutch have even allowed kids to mix with other adults because there's very low evidence of kids transmitting to adult either.

[crazy canuck]

Kids don't spread it among themselves very well apparently. All the school outbreaks here have been among staff. The only children who've been infected here were infected by adults within households, not because they played with Gunnar in recess.

Yeah. It doesn't mean there's zero chance, but primary schools have been open in a load of European countries for a while now and there's no evidence it's lead to increased transmission or many cases among kids.

The Swiss (who are basically a less-publicised version of Sweden in general on this) and Dutch have even allowed kids to mix with other adults because there's very low evidence of kids transmitting to adult either.

Based on their data, the researchers estimated that closing schools is not enough on its own to stop an outbreak, but it can reduce the surge by about 40 to 60 percent and slow the epidemic's course

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/health/coronavirus-children-transmission-school.amp.html

[Legbiter]

Well we never closed down primary schools, we staggered the attendance but we were also systematically fighting to eradicate the virus, inch by inch with aggressive nation wide contact tracing. We've never had a cluster of infections among school children.

[Sheilbh]

Based on their data, the researchers estimated that closing schools is not enough on its own to stop an outbreak, but it can reduce the surge by about 40 to 60 percent and slow the epidemic's course

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/health/coronavirus-children-transmission-school.amp.html

As I say it's not zero risk, but schools were kept open in Iceland and in Sweden, they've been open in Denmark for about a month with from my understanding lots of evidence that the risk to children is very low and the role they play in transmission is also very low (e.g. in Denmark R was 0.9 before schools re-opened, it's now 0.7). I think there's been re-openings in states in Australia and Germany too, plus they have been re-opened in France, Netherlands and Switzerland and the WHO have issued considerations on re-opening schools because that's what's being observed. The major risk seems to be adults interacting with each other - e.g. parents dropping kids off, teachers and parents. So the important point is to stagger school opening and closing times etc so adults can also socially distance.

Worth saying this only applies to primary schools. Secondary schools are more risky and I don't think anyone's devised a way to open them yet.

[celedhring]

The regional government of Andalucía has given the preliminary results for the nationwide immunity survey (results for just that region): 1%. They are one of the regions that have controlled the virus the best, but it's still ridiculously low. This was obtained after testing 16,000 people.

Full nationwide results are expected in around 3 weeks.

Apparently they are releasing the full preliminary results later today. Headline is "under 9%".

[Tamas]

The regional government of Andalucía has given the preliminary results for the nationwide immunity survey (results for just that region): 1%. They are one of the regions that have controlled the virus the best, but it's still ridiculously low. This was obtained after testing 16,000 people.

Full nationwide results are expected in around 3 weeks.

Apparently they are releasing the full preliminary results later today. Headline is "under 9%".

Doesn't that mean that the massive number of sympton-less infected people is pretty much a myth?

[Sheilbh]

Doesn't that mean that the massive number of sympton-less infected people is pretty much a myth?

I mean it suggests about 4.5 million people have had it, but I think Spain's only had about 200-250k confirmed cases. So doesn't it mean lots of people had it either without symptoms or very mildly?

Edit: On that - celed do you know if, as well as taking the test they did a survey on symptoms people have had in the last months? Would be interesting to see.