Something doesn't add up to me

[Greysparkles]

If the virus is as contagious as claimed by some, as in you'll catch it from sitting on the same patch of grass someone else has, or just walking through where someone sneezed earlier.

Why haven't more of us got it??

There’s no way of knowing how many people have it as they aren’t doing enough tests. The theory is that a lot of people have no symptoms at all.

Alot of people have had it with very mild or no symptoms. Unless you end up seriously ill in hospital you are unlikely to be tested to confirm you have had it.

But then surely if most people have it mild then it's brings the severity of this thing way down?
I don't even know what my point is here, I think I'm just rambling!

Yes I know what you mean and I saw some interesting stats for Iceland where loads have been tested suggesting just that.

However it spreads like wildfire and is very bad for a relatively high percentage of people which is why we are where we are. It’s definitely not going to harm the vast majority of us though. Just no way of knowing for sure if you’ll be in the minority if you take it 🤷🏻‍♀️

Agree. Just saw that it can stay on shoes for up to 5 days and packaging. If that was true, literally everyone would have it and definitely every keyworker in the country.

I read somewhere that the fact that the virus is detectable on surfaces for x number of days doesn't necessarily mean that someone could contract the virus from touching the surface towards the end of that period because the virus gradually dies off when it doesn't have a live host.

But then surely if most people have it mild then it's brings the severity of this thing way down?

Yes I understand your point, it appears to have a very high death rate because only those Ill enough to be in hospital are included in the figures, in fact the % is a lot lower because of all the mild to moderate cases.
Even so over 11, 000 people have died and that's not slowing down so it's still pretty serious.

"Why haven't more of us got it?"

How do you know that more of us haven't got it?
Some people have no symptoms at all.

Hopefully lots of people have had it and don’t realise/only had a slight cough.
The problem is if left unchecked it will quickly infect and affect people to the point of needing Hospital care in too high a quantity than the nhs has capacity for at any one time. So lockdown isn’t to completely stop anyone from ever getting it but to slow down the rate of people getting it so the NHS can keep up with admissions. You need to remembee that people tend to stay in ICU for quite a while so beds aren’t being freed up very quickly for the 8-900 people per day that are testing positive

@RJnomore1

The Iceland testing hasn’t shown “just that”.

Iceland has tested people at random as part of their testing regime. A proportion of those tested were asymptotic at the time of testing. That does not mean they will not go onto develop symptoms, either mild or eventually severe. This is because Iceland is testing for live virus and therefore it only shows something we already knew, which is that people can have and spread the virus for some time before they develop symptoms.

Only serological testing (tests for antibodies rather than tests for live virus) will show if a large (or small) proportion of people have developed antibodies without ever having experienced even mild symptoms and that hasn’t happened anywhere yet that I am aware of.

In part this is because few serological tests are either sensitive or accurate enough (one issue being that other coronaviruses can cause a positive result in some tests).

This didn’t stop the Daily Fail massively and inaccurately reporting what has happened in Iceland though as they love to have exciting headlines (that turn out to be a poor reflection of the truth which is usually contained towards the end of their articles).

Greysparkles your ramblings are exactly the same ramblings which are running through the back of my mind every waking hour!

I swing between:

• being nervous to go out ever again without a full hazmat suit and worried in case my 6 year old gets it,

• wanting to go out and lick all the tins in the supermarket to catch the bloody thing and have it all over with in this house.

(Disclaimer: i know both are ridiculous.)

@Metaldog you do understand the difference between the use of the words suggesting and proving don’t you?

"Just saw that it can stay on shoes for up to 5 days and packaging. If that was true, literally everyone would have it and definitely every keyworker in the country."

But you'd have to be licking your shoes/packaging wouldn't you & then your fingers without washing them?

Or sticking your unwashed fingers up your nose or scratching an open wound?

As far as can be extrapolated from the various scientific opinions: 1. It is more easily transmissible than some other viruses. 2. It has a very low level of risk to the vast majority of the healthy young and healthy middle-aged many of whom will be asymptomatic or have a wide variety of odd symptoms, so assuming the understanding about transmissibility are correct, many people, certainly in conurbations and especially in London will have had it and spread it. 3. Only those admitted to hospital are tested so the figures regarding both viral presence and death rate are skewed as they represent the percentage of people who are ill enough to be admitted to hospital and then die, not the death rate as a percentage of those who get the virus.

I think the point is we know there are 1.5million people in the UK with a very high risk of death if they contract the disease, which is increased even higher if they all get it at such a pace there aren't enough icu beds to care properly for them.

Then there's everyone else, who will hopefully by fine on treatment at home but again we know that's not the case and others will need icu/hospital care.

We're only taking about 'thousands' of people each day in a population if 75million. Soon it's not too rigorous at the mo.

A couple of weeks ago I read/heard that it’s believed as many as 50% of the population have had it without any symptoms. I’ve got no idea how/why they (experts) think this and I don’t know what the thoughts are now.

Until we’ve all had the antibodies test we won’t know but if the 50% theory is true it would certainly explain how quickly it’s spread.

They think flu is more contagious op. And less than ten percent of the Uk population has likely had covid. and fifteen percent of EUROPE.

So that’s 85/90 percent of people haven’t had it. So yes it’s a valid point, if it was hugely contagious, why would more of us not have got it by now.

The German government think it’s less contagious than thought. They have sent a team into their Wuhan. Their ground zero town, and are testing a thousand homes, and even in homes with four or five people infected, they are unable to find it live on any surface. It’s still early but they think it’s vanishingly unlikely you can catch it from the supermarket etc if you social, distance, they think it’s close prolonged contact with people, like social events, work places, schools etc is where it’s transmitted.

Well to would be really great news if we had all had it without knowing, it would push the death rate down hugely. Even if the death rate was 'only' 1/1,000 though, if 80% of us got it that's still nearly 53 thousand people dead.

We live on an area that is low on number of cases so far relatively speaking- if they lift lockdown surely it will just spread through these areas with low infection rates???

Although obvs with little testing, the infection rates are a guess at best

It's just all a guessing game with lots of speculation I suppose

I’m in the ‘we’ve probably had this in the UK since January’ camp and believe that most of us in London and other big cities have probably had it and been a bit unwell or had it and shown no symptoms. If it as contagious as the experts believe then there is no way we couldn’t have been exposed prior to lock down. I’m often in closer proximity to a stranger on the tube than I am to my own family.

If it as contagious as the experts believe then there is no way we couldn’t have been exposed prior to lock down

Yes I think this is what I'm alluding too, my DH works in London, and I'm now working in a hospital in a patient facing role. If anyone were to get it I assume we would!

Whether or not the virus can 'live' on surfaces or not or be in the air after someone sneezing or not doesn't mean that there is sufficient evidence that anyone has contracted it that way. But not 100% not as we just don't know. Which is the difficulty.

In some ways in the age of the internet there's too much information which doesn't necessarily translate to risk assessment.

Recently, a German virologist went into a house in a German 'CV hotspot' where everyone in the household had CV but the virus was not detected on any surface in the house.

Apologies for DM link, others were behind a paywall. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8182767/Scientist-casts-doubt-coronavirus-spread.html

Lots of people have read research about the virus existing on shopping, envelopes etc and concluded that poses a transmission risk which is yet to be proven and likely not valid.

I don't think any of it adds up, OP.

yanbu, OP