Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Zoupa]

Which genocidal regime are you a fan of?

Geez I wonder

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Which genocidal regime are you a fan of?

Geez I wonder

[Legbiter]

Looking at the curves at FT (deaths/million and cases/million and their overview of lockdowns), it seems that the UK is relaxing earlier in its cycle than other countries in Western Europe with a comparably bad outbreak.

Yeah. As I say I think the mistakes going into lockdown were scientific. The SAGE minutes have been published and there seems to be a shift in the thinking of the science/a realisation we were in a worse place than they thought in early March. Plus the governments of all nations (Tory, Labour, SNP and DUP/Sinn Fein) broadly went into lockdown on the same timescale) they're very different politically and it seems like the most likely reason was that they all received the same advice.

But this is different. We've had 4-5 SAGE members publicly come out and say they disagree with the way this is being done. The government set up an independent analysis unit which determines the coronavirus "threat level" which should then impact the measures the government take. The government expected the threat level would be decreased, but the unit said we couldn't drop it yet. While there's some fiddling round the edges, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are not going at the same pace as England. Even the Chief Scientific Advisors/Chief Medical Officer have raised a few concerns around this but more in the phrase that it's a very delicate/dangerous moment and that we are lifting it at a time when the prevalence of the disease is quite high, so even though the R is .7 to .9 it's risky.

Plus I find it really weird that we all lift lockdown restrictions in England but then may have local lockdowns imposed if there are outbreaks. Given that the R and prevalence seems to be very different in different bits of England, I don't know why we'd not move straight into local decision making/restrictions. So London, has flattened the curve - we're getting around 100-150 new cases testing positive a week in London and similarl I think we've been under 10 deaths a day for a while. Other regions haven't - I think this is possibly linked to the number of care homes in different areas, because we still have a care homes crisis.

It's almost like you guys were paralyzed with too much scientific advice, each camp with their own competing models.

[Valmy]

I don't believe there's a cure for Belgianity.

Well...

*map of enemies of freedom*

not a bit fan of that genocidal regime

Well certainly not up to Belgium standards but they had a much shorter period of time.

[mongers]

A comment on the current situation in England:

Devi Sridhar
@devisridhar
·
Thinking about why England has 8K daily new cases even w/lockdown. My hypotheses:
1. Lockdown not strict enough & self-isolation not adhered to. Even 1 symptomatic person can start a chain that infects 59K people within 10 cycles.
2. No border control so steady incoming stream.

[Iormlund]

There's no way there's thousands of infected arriving to the UK.

[Valmy]

No border control? Did I miss something? 

[mongers]

No border control? Did I miss something? 

The UK was one of the few countries not to enact restrictions on visitors or testing of them. IIRC some 300-400 people have been quarantined on entering the UK and those were from the early Wuhan evacuation flights.

Stable doors and all, but I think the UK is planning on introducing testing and controls this month, June.

[Zanza]

Where does she get the daily 8k infections in England from? The official numbers are a quarter of that.

[Sheilbh]

Where does she get the daily 8k infections in England from? The official numbers are a quarter of that.

So 8,000 is the official number but it's a projection like the R number. As one of the points made by the scientists here is that R is really important but it only makes sense in the context of prevalence.

There's around 2,000 confirmed cases from hospitals, care homes, key workers and people with symptoms getting tested every day. At the same time the Office of National Statistics are doing weekly random surveys with Oxford University and the Wellcome Trust to try and work out the estimated prevalence of covid (in England). For the last two weeks the estimated number of people infected (at any point) has been around 125-30,000. I think they estimate there's around 55,000 new infections each week.

In theory the data on prevalence and the various R projections by different universities/modellers then goes to this analysis centre I've mentioned and they determine the "threat level" which decides the actions/level of lockdown by government. As mentioned, that's not how things are working currently.

[Sheilbh]

The UK was one of the few countries not to enact restrictions on visitors or testing of them. IIRC some 300-400 people have been quarantined on entering the UK and those were from the early Wuhan evacuation flights.

Stable doors and all, but I think the UK is planning on introducing testing and controls this month, June.

The argument against was exactly stable doors, after March 12 the UK wasn't doing any contact tracing or community testing because there was widespread transmission in the community. Given that there was widespread spreading in the community (about 20% of Londoners and 5% of the rest of the country have had this in the last few months) there wasn't much point on worrying about it coming in from overseas.

Now we have testing and are starting to track and trace again it's probably more relevant.

[Sheilbh]

As I saw someon on Twitter comment, it feels like the government guidance that you should strictly maintain social distancing, bring your own utensils and plates, routinely wipe down surfaces and only go indoors for very short periods of time (eg to use the loo) is being lost in communication:

[Syt]

Meanwhile, in Berlin ...

[Tamas]

I guess we are going to see about this seasonal virus thing in about a month's time.

[Sheilbh]

I guess we are going to see about this seasonal virus thing in about a month's time.

I mean so far the indications from countries that re-opened early, including US states, are good - that either it's seasonal or outdoor space/UV matters.

There have been minor outbreaks in South Korea and Singapore, but no sustained second wave anywhere. What's striking is that in Singapore and South Korea it seems like you had those "super-spreader" environments: in South Korea a bar and in Singapore migrant worker dorms. There's also now evidence from multiple countries that there are super-emitters (10% of the infected are responsible for 80% of transmission) for reasons no-one understands yet.

I've said before but I feel it's unlikely we will inevitably see second waves emerging after lockdown is lifted (because people's behaviour has changed and will stay changed), the key is whether a country has the infrastructure to catch those local outbreaks before they start spreading in an uncontrolled way.