Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 5

[Barracker]

Welcome to thread 5 of the daily updates.

Resource links:
Worldometer UK page
Financial Times Daily updates and graphs
HSJ Coronavirus updates
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Centre
NHS England stats, including breakdown by Hospital Trust
Covidly.com to filter graphs using selected data filters
ONS statistics for CV related deaths outside hospitals, released weekly each Tuesday
Google mobility stats

Thank you to all contributors for their factual, data driven, and civil discussions.

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the reports from wuhan are suggesting mild cases dont show antibodies. Severe ones do but no-one knows how long they will protect for, immunity often wanes with time.

I’ve seen speculation that younger & less severely affected people are using cell mediated immunity to clear the virus whereas that fails in older people & it’s then than humoral immunity with antibody production kicks in. I read something described it similarly to the response to the rubella virus but I can’t find it now (unhelpful sorry).

I heard from a vet that some coronaviruses in animals don't produce strong immunity. Also human cold viruses.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15742624/

It says Unfortunately, despite long-term efforts, effective vaccines to prevent enteric CoV infections remain elusive, and generally live, but not killed vaccines, have induced the most consistent protection against animal CoVs.

Laniakea I think that's probably the reporting I saw - think it used the phrase "killer cells " in an effort to simplify it!

This article is interesting
www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/story/sorry-immunity-to-covid-19-wont-be-like-a-superpower/amp

It's a bit depressing to think that young people won't develop immunity, whether it's because they either don't get the disease at all (which seems to be happening among a younger cohort of care staff) or get it very mildly.

If that's the case, herd immunity to protect older people simply won't happen, so it will be a case of all older/vulnerable people staying at home until a vaccine is found (if ever). Or everyone just carrying on, taking the risk, and accepting that a large number of older people will just die

Natural killer cells! They are an actual thing ... immune system works in two parts the T cell side (cell mediated) which is the gobble up bacteria & infected cells bit & the humoral B cell side which produces the antibodies (different types at different phases of infection which hang around for various lengths of time). Obviously it is almost incomprehensibly more complex than that.

I was an immuno-histochemist 20 years ago ... it’s all so interesting but there are far fewer actual answers than we thought there would be!

What we don't know is, if young people are killing it in a way which doesn't trigger antibodies, are they also handling it in a way which means they are considerably less contagious?

That's an interesting thought StatisticallyChallenged. I just can't get over how entire groups of nurses working on the front line aren't getting it.

I mean, I know a lot of them are, but many more aren't (if they all did there would be no hospital staff at all). Same for young supermarket workers/shelf stackers. Many, many aren't catching the virus, and I'd love to know why.

Yes that could be the big factor in low antibody tests. So more have had it.

Agree with NewAccount on what this means for older people.

The elements of a virus and how they spread and age group and all the rest is so interesting (although sad too, I sometimes consider what state we’d be in if those elements were different).

Yes - and that obviously has massive implications to the validity of imposing lockdown conditions on children. How can we justify it for a disease that doesn’t severely affect or isn’t particularly spread by young people?

The UN are already talking about the catastrophic effects of all this on child health & education globally.

I think this www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.30.20047365v1.article-metrics#disqus_thread is the study on antibodies in Wuhan survivors.

Nurses in large numbers may be getting it but asymptomatic, we still don’t know that figure especially if antibody testing isn’t picking them up

We don’t know about children and spreading or not yet do we?

That's what I was just thinking Laniakea. It certainly makes the prospect of children as superspreaders somewhat less likely

Didn't the early analysis from wuhan say the teams couldn't think of any cases where infection in a home started with the children?

I think it’s a leap re children we don’t yet know.

It also means that lockdown as a way of delaying a run on hospital beds may be worth doing in the very short term, but if there is no long-term health benefit of herd immunity then is it worthwhile? If everyone who is currently shielded is inevitably going to get it the minute they come out, and there is no way of stopping it, then the alternatives are lockdown forever, or giving up.

We are all happy to stay home for a couple of months to save lives, but if staying home isn't actually saving lives what's the point? Once hospitals have upped capacity as much as possible, and once doctors know how best to treat patients with Covid, maybe we are all going to just have to take our chances.

According to Hancock just now, just over 8% of nhs/care staff are currently off work because either they or a family member has symptoms

Sorry, straying too far into speculation; that's probably for another thread.

The way out of lockdown is mass testing with contact tracing and isolation.

We're ony discussing the possibility re children - it needs far more study. But it seems like a realistic possibility

Yes I totally agree newaccount

I also think (heartless as it sounds) that it might be useful to talk about euthanasia as a possibility for patients on ventilators but unlikely to recover. To try to free capacity a bit more

According to figures - sorry DM link - one third of NHS staff tested are positive. They are only testing those who are showing symptoms, i think, meaning that up to 2/3 of the 8% who are off may not have it at all. Considering how infectious the virus is, I'm surprised the numbers aren't higher, but they don't appear to differentiate between "NHS staff" and "NHS staff working on the front line" when quoting figures.

We read about the numbers of front line staff dying, and the individual stories are tragic. But the front line staff either not catching it, or not showing symptoms is more interesting from a "what happens next" point of view.