Worried About Coronavirus- thread 36

[TheStarryNight]

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I am being told that the death rate in the Uk is about the same as it usually is, even with Coronavirus. Can anyone help explain this, if it is true?

It was said on sky news its now over average unlike first few weeks of March which were under.

In the Guardian it says Gove has been self-isolating since yesterday but has not been tested. Notwithstanding the parlous state of our (non) testing regime, I'm a bit gobsmacked by this. Surely key figures should be immediately tested if believed to be at risk, several times if necessary, so that contingency plans can be put in place at the earliest opportunity?

Prof Neil Ferguson, from Imperial College London, worked on the scientific modelling that the current government advice is based on.

Neil Ferguson's model is based on one particular assumption that can be challenged - that children transmit virus in the same way adults do. This is not consistent with the Chinese data which appears to indicate that the risk of transmission from a child to an adult is in fact much lower.

Of course, the Chinese data needs to be questioned and re-verified but the reality is the outputs from Neil Ferguson's model will vary greatly depending on the input assumptions. I can see why we assumed the worst case scenario for "child to adult" transmission rates (it is safer to be conservative) but this particular input into the model should be scrutinised in much more detail.

Wehttam I think realistically it will be long term before they can see grandparents anyway.

I do not necessarily think it's the time for schools to return yet but I will send my kids if they do open at the right time in the future (before vaccine), but I really can't see it happening for many months.

They have no data for in schools in China though as they closed the schools...

Old Gove does not have symptoms. His family does.

I'm not sure how reliably we can extrapolate from the data from China in relation to spread by children. Until vert recently, they had a one child policy, so they won't have the situation we have of siblings in different schools mixing with children with siblings in further schools.

They have no data for in schools in China though as they closed the schools...

They also looked at data prior to the lockdown and failed to identify any documented cases of C19 transmission from adults to children.

A more recent study in Norway that looked at the global data identified "five documented cases of likely spread of disease from children" but the researchers admit the results are inconclusive. In any case, five potential cases do not seem to indicate that children transmit the virus in the same way as adults do:

www.fhi.no/en/publ/2020/The-role-of-children-in-the-transmission-of-covid-19/

Behaviour in China probably better too.

They would listen to social distancing instructions.

China have far better exit strategy wrt schools

A pp from China listed all the measures and they far exceed what we’d do.

Here is an extract from the study above that covers the findings in Iceland:

In Iceland, which has the highest rate of testing per capita in the world, 10-15% of the patients tested have tested positive, but of the 268 tested children under the age of 10, only three tested positive for the virus (1.1%) (personal communication with Thorolfur Gudnason on 23 March 2020). Icelanders have also carried out testing among the population, with about 1% of those tested showing a positive result. This data includes 433 children, none of whom tested positive, which is interpreted as an indication that the transmission among children is very low (personal communication with Thorolfur Gudnason on 23 March 2020).

@Random18 - I know, but if he has been in close contact with his family member who is now showing symptoms and may have been incubating for a couple of weeks, would it not make sense to see if he has it even if currently asymptomatic?As a middle aged man he seems to be in one of the "risk" groups, and as a member of government he will have been around a bunch of other officials who should also be tested. As I said in my first post on the previous page, the implications of political instability if the virus gets to too many people in office is concerning so robust testing, contact tracing and containment should imho be a priority.

@refraction I am being told that the death rate in the Uk is about the same as it usually is, even with Coronavirus. Can anyone help explain this, if it is true?

Less influenza deaths and other infections diseases due to isolation/social distancing
Less car accidents
?Less suicides - not been shown yet but generally when a country goes through an emergency like war or famine, suicides go down at first as people go into survival mode. Suicides increase in the recovery period as people start to pick up the pieces

Sorry, to be clear I wasn’t suggesting schools should be open- I think them being shut is the thing that enables the rest of lockdown- I was trying to say that them not being the biggest source of transmission was not new news. If they opened any time soon my daughter would not be going back. However I am trying to prepare myself for accepting schools will open way before a vaccine and so will by no means be risk free. I’m a nurse but on maternity leave right now but by October she’ll have to go in at least sometimes 😣.

Sorry pocket it wasn't me who said that it was a quote. Hard to make bold in the app.

Sorry - a correction to my previous post:

They also looked at data prior to the lockdown and failed to identify any documented cases of C19 transmission from children to adults.

I am being told that the death rate in the Uk is about the same as it usually is, even with Coronavirus. Can anyone help explain this, if it is true? It was said on sky news its now over average unlike first few weeks of March which were under.

There were relatively very few CV deaths in early March. Things would have changed late March. The lock down is to prevent the death rate from spiking massively over the coming weeks. The fact that CV was able to make an appreciable difference to the death rate in just a couple of weeks at the end of March shows how important it was to suppress it.

Under 10s. So that's what - up to year 5? What about year 6 in primary and year 7-13 in secondary?

Winger I’d say nothing in the ‘real world’ will ever be consistent with the Chinese ‘data’.

That needs to be scrapped from ANY modelling we do in this country.

Agree Derby that's why I posted that.

Seems it appears my quoting a pp poster hasn't worked very well on the mumsnet app.

But definitely agree.

Under 10s. So that's what - up to year 5? What about year 6 in primary and year 7-13 in secondary?

I wondered this too. Thinking of that poor 13 year old boy.

There was a poster on another thread AST night who said she had lost a 3 year old patient to Covid 19 yesterday. Children may be at lower risk but they are not risk free

Last

With re children - I guess under 10's are less at risk?

And may be less of a risk for passing it on?

If a 3 year old died and it’s not in the media then we moving to a new situation where the death of such a young child is not reported

Caveats: no way to verify post if above is true, may still be reported.