Coronavirus may have infected half of UK population — Oxford study

[Lycidas]

‘New epidemiological model shows vast majority of people suffer little or no illness.’

www.ft.com/content/5ff6469a-6dd8-11ea-89df-41bea055720b

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“The research presents a very different view of the epidemic to the modelling at Imperial College London, which has strongly influenced government policy. “I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model,” said Prof Gupta.

However, she was reluctant to criticise the government for shutting down the country to suppress viral spread, because the accuracy of the Oxford model has not yet been confirmed and, even if it is correct, social distancing will reduce the number of people becoming seriously ill and relieve severe pressure on the NHS during the peak of the epidemic.”

A glimmer of hope. They’re gonna start with the antibody testing very soon.

Many people are losing a lot of money, but don't grab hold of a fringe study that shows "it's just a cold"

The WHO and public health experts around the world disagree

A cold did not kill nearly 7,000 people in Italy in just a few weeks
Did not overwhelm a health system that has far more hospital beds & doctors for its population than the NHS has

Countries all around the world - with governments of the left, right, centre, religious, secular - are not all in some great conspiracy with Mumsnetters

We are going to be broke

Going to be?? Down here we're still waiting for austerity to lift a little bit. Where are you living?
Rent can't afford it, in debt
Energy can't afford it, in debt

When did you lot get lifted out of not being able to pay for anything????
Why didn't you tell the rest of us?

The economic knock on effect is scary. Already today thousands of people trying to claim Universal credits they lose their incomes, the system is completely overwhelmed. Lets hope it's not long before some sense of normality returns as the impact does not bear thinking about. Two of my teenage sons have lost their part time jobs already, my job will be at risk come December when the contract is renewed as the project is funded by a large charity which no doubt will suffer horrendously form no fundraising going on. Dh's job will be at risk too.

Strange that people are ok with an Italy type scenario.

If it has infected half the population why is it that the vast majority are testing negative, even though they are mainly testing people with symptoms?

As for mn being the worst place for it and responsible. I don’t think anyone is paying attention

I desperately hope this is correct but as I understand it, the current admissions and deaths (facts/things we can know for sure) are very much in line with what the Imperial modelling suggests. Not sure if that is correct or if it poses as much contradiction as might appear.

Well if anyone looks on flight radar right now you’ll understand how ridiculous lockdown seems.

According to the WHO, the most common symptoms of Covid-19 are fever, tiredness and a dry cough. Some patients may also have a runny nose, sore throat, nasal congestion and aches and pains or diarrhoea. About 80% of people who get Covid-19 experience a mild case – about as serious as a regular cold – and recover without needing any special treatment.

@LuckyMarmiteLover It's been suggested the reason healthy HCPs are becoming so very ill is because their initial infective dose of the virus is much higher because they are being exposed to the virus multiple times and many of those exposures are at a much higher level than they would be in the community (close contact). It could be that when they were only encountering fewer contagious patients, HCPs were becoming infected but at a much lower initial dose so only had mild to moderate illness and it was not diagnosed (eg they were asymptomatic or thought they had flu or a cold). That is an educated guess though.

They should get on and test people, those who are clear can get back to work.

It's the impact on the NHS of that PLUS the usual Dying, Critical cases that the NHS deals with every day which have led to Lockdown.

Absolutely this. Yes, it's nice to hear a positive report about the possibility that the pandemic will be short-lived and we all hope that is true. But that doesn't change the fact that it has a grip on us at the moment. The rate of death and infection is increasing exponentially to the point where some London ICUs are already on the brink. That isn't going to stop just because someone published a positive report. Hopefully the rate of infection will slow with the lockdown. Eventually, yes, most people will probably get it but they need to spread the time period when people are infected so that those who need intensive care places will get them, including those who need them due to illnesses other than the Coronavirus.

@MarshaBradyo

I get the feeling this thread has been trolled by trump bots.

Has anyone actually read the paper and the comments on the page? I have. The paper does not say what the OP says it does.

It says that most people who get it will have mild illness. No one has disputed that.
It makes an assumption that those susceptible to dying from it are a very low percentage of the population.
It still says over a quarter of a million people will die.

HCPs are also under enormous stress and as you say exposed to large viral loads and working crippling hours trying to firefight to save vulnerable patients under warlike conditions.

I think so Newjez it was making me think of Trump

This is just bizarre. It is like an extension of the "it's just flu".

What, so it isn't all that bad really, and China and Italy were - what - exaggerating?

I would like data on the excess mortality caused by the lockdown as part of the proportionality discussion.

This is not a cold, no matter how much those who are suffering financially wish WHO report:

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint-mission-on-covid-19-final-report.pdf

Page 12 - 13 says:
80% mild / moderate disease

BUT
mild/moderate does NOT mean what you may think:

Page 13 shows about half are mild and half are "moderate"
where Moderate is defined as 'has pneumonia' but not bad enough for hospital

So COVID statistics breakdown is:

40% mild
40% pneumonia - staying at home
13.8% severe disease - hospital, need oxygen
6.1% critical - need ICU

www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#status-of-covid-19

Status of COVID-19
As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious diseases (HCID) in the UK.

The 4 nations public health HCID group made an interim recommendation in January 2020 to classify COVID-19 as an HCID. This was based on consideration of the UK HCID criteria about the virus and the disease with information available during the early stages of the outbreak. Now that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCID criteria. They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.

I get the feeling this thread has been trolled by trump bots.

Oh yawn. Why don't you move along then?

Hi this is a really interesting thread. Does anyone have a share token for the ft articles please?

I’ve been watching news from Turkey out of interest. They are more looking at it from the perspective of this thread. Interestingly the country has just received undisclosed drugs from China to treat the severely infected. This could be interesting.

BigChocFrenzy the WHO can and should and will publish whatever stats it likes... but it does not know the denominator.

why is it that the vast majority are testing negative

Where's this from? Nobody I know can get test, we had a parent who has returned from fucking China a few weeks back and now half the class is coughing their guts up...Nobodies offered a test, or even a GP visit

Oh and Stand Up 2 Cancer everyone.....by telling them Fuck You I need to work and stand 150cm away from people, knowingly denying you healthcare and shortening your life.

Marginal if they didn’t take extra measures this week what numbers would you expect in a few weeks?