To be worried about coronavirus part 4

[idontusuallypanic]

I looked and couldn't see another 4th thread.

I'm personally worried this morning as I've heard that two students ds goes to school with have just returned from Milan where cases have just rocketed.

akire I agree and it is another reason why I wonder about my earlier question about why they can't test us when we return to the uk? Surely it will cost less?

So if viral load can kill you, what happens to people isolated at home, if their family get ill ? So if one of my dds picked this up at school, then infected us all, wouldn’t we then be exposed to a large amount of virus ?

WHO saying it's still not pandemic and they aren't seeing widespread cases...

WHO chief Tedros says not seeing uncontained global spread or large-scale deaths from coronavirus at the moment - Reuters

Is he watching a different virus to everyone else? 🙄 How bad does it have to get?

That's because they will have treated scores of patients with the virus so their viral load will be exponentially higher than someone who was infected via a one-off encounter.

Sorry, once a person is infected then the virus will multiply inside their body. Viral load will be the balancing point of the virus multiplying and the immune system killing it off.

Number of exposures is irrelevant.

It seems likely that those dying will have the highest viral load (because their bodies are the least able to deal with it) but I haven't yet seen anything in the literature to that effect.

It seems to me there's a mismatch between the statistics showing that, for the vast majority of young people, this is a mild illness, and the case-reports of individual doctors dying. Right now I can't explain that.

@SirVixofVixHall no - even if this were true you would be exposed only to to one or more DDs for whom the illness might be mild whereas the Medical staff would have been exposed to many extremely poorly patients.

When someone catches a virus it's all about how their body reacts to that virus. From what I understand the medics might well have been young and fit, but by all accounts they were working pretty much round the clock with very little sleep, loo breaks few and far between (stories of them wearing nappies and weeing into them) and probably couldn't remember when they last ate. It's actually not that surprising that their bodies couldn't cope when they contracted COVID-19.

There isn’t the lab capacity to test everyone who returns to the country from affected areas, so cases have to be prioritised. I assume they’re working on increasing capacity for when more people need testing inside the UK.

PMK

"On the bright side, the WHO team in China has concluded the virus can be contained. It peaked between the end of January and the beginning of February."

www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/feb/24/coronavirus-live-updates-china-wuhan-hubei-latest-news-italy-lombardy-south-korea-iran-japan-cases-infections-death-toll-outbreak-xi-jinping-update

Yes I think as well there is a link with it and smoking (it was on an earlier thread) and I think the smoking rate of junior doctors in China is high, coupled with probably deciding to/being made to work whilst ill at the start and the number of patients they would have seen

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51612039

This seems like a "keep calm and carry on" piece of journalism. (crossposted to pandemic preppers).

*Sorry, once a person is infected then the virus will multiply inside their body. Viral load will be the balancing point of the virus multiplying and the immune system killing it off.

Number of exposures is irrelevant.*

I'm not sure this is correct. In viruses like norovirus the dose you get is believed to potentially affect severity of illness so I don't see why this would necessarily be any different.

I'm no expert though so happy to be corrected by someone who is.

Italy has retracted the death of one of today's cases. Think it was a lady from Créma with cancer. They say she died with corona not from it. Source: worldometer

China has temporarily banned the eating of wild animals apparently. These photos are sickening - all those poor animals in tiny cages

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8037093/China-considers-complete-ban-eating-wild-animals-amid-coronavirus-outbreak.html

We had generic nhs public health emails but italy was not on the list....

*In France, the government urged anyone who has visited Lombardy or Veneto – the two most affected regions in Italy – to wear face masks if they go outside, limit non-essential activities and take their temperatures twice a day.

The French health ministry issued the same advice for anyone who had traveled to China, South Korea, Singapore or Macao. France has had 12 cases of the virus overall, and one death*

Why doesn’t the U.K. advise the same??

Is this infectious diseases expert wrong then www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/21/who-is-most-at-risk-of-contracting-coronavirus @motorina?

"If there is a massive inoculum of virus, that could make it a more overwhelming infection"

We're obviously reading that differently. Doctors are more likely to be exposed, yes, because they're around many infected people. If exposed, they're more likely to be infected, yes, because they're likely to be infected to high-volume, high-risk fluids. But I don't see him saying that repeated exposure leads to high viral load. I appreciate we're still in the learning phase about this particular virus, but that would be extremely unusual.

Same as @runningawaywiththecircus - all work travel suspended with global and regional meetings cancelled. I've put my suitcase away for a while!

🔴 #Directo #Coronavirus | Aislan a dos pacientes en el Hospital Regional de Málaga por un posible caso de coronavirus ➡ En cuanto a una tercera persona que no presenta síntomas los profesionales sanitarios han decretado su alta a domicilio en aislamiento t.co/xwXaASPS5Y
Two possible cases in Málaga

Viral load is a thing. As I understand it, it is to do with the speed of viral replication in the body and the lag of your immune system responding to it. So if, as a medic, you are showered in millions of coronaviruses on day 1, you are likely to get much sicker more quickly than if you pick up a few thousand when someone sneezes on the bus, or a few hundred if you brush your hand on a contaminated surface then touch your face. It is more complex than that as different individuals are more or less susceptible but I think that's the theory.