Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[mongers]

Slightly alarming information on the new variant (this is limited by the amount of sequencing done) but it seems like this new variant may be slightly more lethal than other variants. Asked about it by a journalist Professor Neil Ferguson gave this explanation:
....

I think this is were using percentages can be misleading, if the R-rate for the original strain is say 1.1 in the UK and the new variant is 35% more transmissible, the rate is 1.485, so over 5 infection cycles, we'll see 1.46 cases for the original, but 4.86 for the new variant.

Then you add in the likely 30-40% increased lethality, there's an increase of 4.48 times as many deaths.

All other things being equal, if left to 7 infection cycles well see 6 times as many infections and 8 times as many deaths.
At ten infection cycles there are 15 times as many cases and 20 times the number of deaths.

Maybe this new variant has hit on some 'sweet spot' or is a worse variant possible/likely?

edit:
Thank god for that, I think there's a serious error in my maths, I should only look at the cumulative cases in both instances.

So in my example after 10 cycles the different is only 6.6 times as many cases and 9 times as many deaths..... I think. 

[viper37]

A kid in my nephew's class, has had covid, no symptoms, but in isolation for 10 days.  The kid has the same first name as my nephew and they are good friends (so it was a little confusing when my dad's girlfriend was telling me this over the phone).
The kid's older sister is also my niece's best friend, so she and her entire family are now all in isolation and awaiting results.  It's getting closer.

In other news, I'm down with a cold.  No idea how I got this shit, I haven't had any contacts with the outside world outside of well cleaned stores, hand washing, distance and mask.  I did shelter my friend's son, but I was getting sick before he got here.  My lungs are burning, as usual.  Can't imagine catching covid.

[celedhring]

One weird thing about Covid is how it's absolutely wrecking the NBA and did some damage to the NFL too, while Euro football and basketball leagues (despite our pandemic levels) seem to be barely affected. I honestly expected the Spanish league to be an absolute trainwreck.

[Josquius]

One weird thing about Covid is how it's absolutely wrecking the NBA and did some damage to the NFL too, while Euro football and basketball leagues (despite our pandemic levels) seem to be barely affected. I honestly expected the Spanish league to be an absolute trainwreck.

I guess basketball could be exaplined by being indoors.
I guess NFL guys spend more time in the gym and/or Americans in general being slow to adapt?

[Sheilbh]

Regarding vaccination, as of today we used 87% of the stockpile and several centers have had to shut down due to lack of vaccines. Also, AstroZeneca has said that they won't be able to fulfill the contract with the EU as planned...

Apparently some issue in the Belgian factory of part of their supply chain and Pfizer's had to reduce their output to retool their factory in Belgium

One weird thing about Covid is how it's absolutely wrecking the NBA and did some damage to the NFL too, while Euro football and basketball leagues (despite our pandemic levels) seem to be barely affected. I honestly expected the Spanish league to be an absolute trainwreck.

The lower leagues are screwed I think. It's weird to praise sports governing bodies/leagues, but I think the protocols in European leagues have been impressive and pretty effective.

I think the international breaks are a mistake and will lead to infections because players from loads of leagues with different protocols suddenly mingle, and I'm not convinced the Euros are a good idea. But it is surprising and impressive.

Edit: Also early signs in Israel on the effectiveness of the vaccine there is now a marked decline in the number of over 60s (the priority group) being infected with covid when they were vaccinated about 2-3 weeks ago - however there is a bit of handle with care about this because vaccine take-up has been higher in areas with lower infection rates anyway. Crucially this is people who've only received one dose (because it's only three weeks):


Based on this and how many people were vaccinated when - I think we should start to see some impact in the hospitalisation rate of the over 80s (in addition to lockdown) here in the next week.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

It's still early days.

I think the bottle is meant to contain 5 doses (but actually contains 6) so I assume some Israeli nurses/doctors didn't read the instructions and were just giving people an entire bottle's worth

Still at least we know it's not dangerous...yet.

Yeah, apparently a Pfizer vial intended for 5 doses can be stretched to 6 doses, but you need to employ a particular kind of needle for that. We're having a minor controversy here, as some regions didn't stockpile the correct kind of needle for this (apparently they were warned about it back in the summer) and are effectively wasting this "6th" dose in each vial, which scales up to thousands and thousands of wasted doses.

we've been managing to get 6 doses from a vial and promptly Pfizer diminished the amount they'd deliver to us. Some bad publicity there.

[mongers]

Why does the UK have one of the very highest Covid19 death rates in the world, I think we're fourth behind Belgium, Slovenia and San Marino?

Noticeably higher than the US, of which our media often refers to as a disaster.

[celedhring]

It's still early days.

I think the bottle is meant to contain 5 doses (but actually contains 6) so I assume some Israeli nurses/doctors didn't read the instructions and were just giving people an entire bottle's worth

Still at least we know it's not dangerous...yet.

Yeah, apparently a Pfizer vial intended for 5 doses can be stretched to 6 doses, but you need to employ a particular kind of needle for that. We're having a minor controversy here, as some regions didn't stockpile the correct kind of needle for this (apparently they were warned about it back in the summer) and are effectively wasting this "6th" dose in each vial, which scales up to thousands and thousands of wasted doses.

we've been managing to get 6 doses from a vial and promptly Pfizer diminished the amount they'd deliver to us. Some bad publicity there.

Yeah, that was the quintessential Evil Pharma move. 

[Josquius]

Why does the UK have one of the very highest Covid19 death rates in the world, I think we're fourth behind Belgium, Slovenia and San Marino?

Noticeably higher than the US, of which our media often refers to as a disaster.

The US has very favourable demographics with a huge very empty country to help spread much of its population out. The UK meanwhile has a pretty high population density. And an incompetent government.

[celedhring]

Also, in "politicians and adjacents jumping the vaccine queue" news, Spain's Chieff of General Staff has quit after it's been revealed that he (alongside some other high-ranking armed forces personnel) got himself vaccinated, using the quota assigned to the armed forces. A Lt.Col. has also been fired. The army vaccines were initially meant for army health care personnel and troops deployed outside of Spain. The brass came third but his office jumped the queue.

[Sheilbh]

Why does the UK have one of the very highest Covid19 death rates in the world, I think we're fourth behind Belgium, Slovenia and San Marino?

Noticeably higher than the US, of which our media often refers to as a disaster.

It depends what we mean. In terms of case fatality rate - now that everywhere is doing a lot of testing - the UK has a CFR of 2.6% which is about the same as the EU, the US is lower at 1.7%. In part I think that might just be demographics. Europe is older and with this disease that really matters because your risk of dying doubles every 7 years.

I also suspect there's a higher level of "soft triage" in the UK's health system than in Europe or the US - I could be wrong on that. But I think several decades of focusing on running the NHS "efficiently" with no waste, plus ten years of basically frozen funding is part of that - because "waste" in normal times is just capacity in a crisis. But I think part of it was also just decisions made around who is clinically viable (I think about that FT article a fair amount) which I think might be different to other countries. Add into that a very fragmented care home sector which is funded by local government (by far the most cut in the last decade) and often run by small businesses with underpaid staff in old B&Bs.

So I think those are factors in deaths - we are older (than the US) and we have less capacity and that impacts the CFR. The biggest reason is because we've had a bigger outbreak than most countries (not Belgium) but certainly the US and most of Europe. Track and trace collapsed and is a huge failure. Every time we see new case numbers those are baked in as deaths in 2-3 weeks time. Part of that will be a more transmissible variant - this is why the rest of Europe needs to stay locked down because that variant is growing there and they need to avoid the risk of it getting out and I think it is spreading throughout the US now and we'll see the impact in the next few months - this is why I think getting vaccines out is key.

But I think the biggest reasons are Johnson dithering/procrastinating/not wanting to make hard decisions - so we repeatedly see decisions that were logically inevitable only be taken when they are absolutely essential. The one day school re-opening is the best example. There's been zero attempts (with the exception of vaccine roll-out) of trying to get ahead of things. Some of it goes to competence which has been variable at best - Williamson strikes me as a huge liability especially over schools and universities, on the other hand I think Coffey at the DWP has done well because they've had to re-engineer a lot of benefits and deal with a lot of new people on benefits, but the system hasn't collapsed which has surprised me.

I also think there's big material reasons, people still need to work , people still need to earn money there's not enough support for people to self-isolate and not enough pressure (or support) on employers to shutdown. I think we've had far too many decisions this year led by the Treasury looking at things on a spreadsheet and it's been very pennywise and pound-foolish. For example the whole "we can't possibly pay people to self-isolate, that would create bad incentives and cost too much" when the alternative is that a virus behaves like a virus, spreads until we have a far more costly lockdown. We've seen this dynamic repeatedly this year - I've mentioned it before but this should have been like Harold MacMillan's advice to Thatcher on the Falklands war: have a small group to make decisions and don't include the Chancellor. The only involvement the Treasury should have had in the last year is paying for everything other departments needed to do and otherwise they should've been in their box - instead I think they've been the driving force behind decisions, especially on restrictions, until we have so many cases lockdown's inevitable and necessary again.

Edit: On the soft-triage point - something I've wondered about for a while is that based on stats available we have had significantly fewer people placed on ventilation than, say, France or Spain. Which I've always found surprising because we've had more people in hospital but it makes me think if the clinical decision of who can survive ventilation has been different here.

[The Larch]

It's still early days.

I think the bottle is meant to contain 5 doses (but actually contains 6) so I assume some Israeli nurses/doctors didn't read the instructions and were just giving people an entire bottle's worth

Still at least we know it's not dangerous...yet.

Yeah, apparently a Pfizer vial intended for 5 doses can be stretched to 6 doses, but you need to employ a particular kind of needle for that. We're having a minor controversy here, as some regions didn't stockpile the correct kind of needle for this (apparently they were warned about it back in the summer) and are effectively wasting this "6th" dose in each vial, which scales up to thousands and thousands of wasted doses.

we've been managing to get 6 doses from a vial and promptly Pfizer diminished the amount they'd deliver to us. Some bad publicity there.

Yeah, that was the quintessential Evil Pharma move. 

According to my mom (who is a retiree from the pharmaceutical sector), Pfizer has a pretty terrible reputation in their sector because of their business practices. 

[Sheilbh]

According to my mom (who is a retiree from the pharmaceutical sector), Pfizer has a pretty terrible reputation in their sector because of their business practices. 

And yet, given everything, I'm not sure the Polish or Italian threats to sue them are the best strategy right now

[celedhring]

As I saw today on twitter: "the only ones to get 100% immunity are Pfizer".

[The Larch]

According to my mom (who is a retiree from the pharmaceutical sector), Pfizer has a pretty terrible reputation in their sector because of their business practices. 

And yet, given everything, I'm not sure the Polish or Italian threats to sue them are the best strategy right now

Yeah, as long as they're the main supplier of vaccines any grievances should be put aside and resolved at a later moment in order to ensure supply, but these shenanigans should not be forgotten and a final settlement should be reached before all payments are done.