Still got questions about Coronavirus? Shall we gather them together in one place?

[ChicChicChicChiclana]

Then hopefully other Mumsnetters who are more in the know or who have done a lot more reading around the subject can guide us to some useful reading or other credible / reliable articles.

I know it's difficult but I'd really appreciate it if we could keep this thread as factual as possible, rather than another place to vent about fear and anxiety - as there are many other threads on which to do that.

My questions are:

1. How come the quarantine period is only 7 days for someone showing symptoms when it is 14 days for others (who live with them for example)?

1. What is a sensible estimate of the current number of untested UK cases?

1. When will this home test we were hearing about become available?

1. If you get the home test, test and find you have had the virus, what happens next?

goingoverground

I'm not talking about mortality rates or percentages, I'm just talking about number of deaths. Afaik we have a similar sized population to Italy, and about 10 to 15 million more than Spain.

So if they had 1 death on day 1 and 10,000 deaths on day 20 (or whatever the actual figures are) we can assume our figures will be similar or higher? Since we are relatively wealthy modern European countries.

Something that worries me in this is that people are expecting the figures to go down or stop climbing already.

Why do people on here keep saying how dumb it is if you think the lockdown will reduce deaths and not just slow the spread?

Why won’t it reduce deaths?

Here is the paper from Imperial @peajotter:

www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-Europe-estimates-and-NPI-impact-30-03-2020.pdf

It was estimating current infection rates in different countries on 28 March and looking to see if the measures taken by different nations had had an impact, it isn't making long term predictions. It only makes predictions up to 31 March.

They have now estimated R0 as 3.87 (the average number of people each person infects if no one is immune), which is higher than their previous estimate and the R0 used in their previous model. That would mean the herd immunity threshold is 74%. However, it is very hard to estimate R0 so so the herd immunity threshold could be anywhere in the 50-80% estimates already put forward.

The good news is that it looks like measures taken have significantly reduced the Rt (the current number of people each infectious person infects), slowing spread. However, that also means it will take much longer to reach the herd immunity threshold.

You can easily find all the research from Imperial on their website, including the original paper that the government based their current strategy on.

@ChicChicChicChiclana we have similar size populations bit very different social norms (big, emotionally effusive funerals - lots of crying and hugging - are thought to have been an early accelerator in Italy for example). It's one of the big reasons why we can't all follow exactly the same approach as so much depends on the specific circumstances. Also levels of trust and perception of government control will have an impact on how well people respond to public health advice.

Thank you for your reply Griefmonster. I don't have CV, but have been reading the threads on here of MNers who do. It is rather heartbreaking as they are really struggling, but there isn't anything out there besides what you stated being suggested.

It would be nice if there were some guidelines because there may be some 'usual' remedies for flu/cold that do more harm (and could stall or prevent recovery) or some that are helpful.

On reading the other threads it really highlights that this is definitely not like the flu, so why are we being told to 'treat' it as you would the flu? Many of them are in or heading into three weeks of illness. I can't imagine sitting up for nights on end as they are doing without any real relief from the symptoms.

@ChicChicChicChiclana you can get a very rough back of an envelope idea from the figures in Spain and Italy. There are so many factors that can affect the spread of an epidemic.

@goingoverground thanks!

@ChicChicChicChiclana the issue with counting from death #1 is that it could be an outlier- e.g. someone who came from another country or a fluke bad case. If the death was one week earlier it would make a massive change for lining up the data. The same could even be said for the 10th death. It is better to line up from a higher number when the epidemic has really taken hold in the local population.