Worried About Coronavirus- thread 38

[TheStarryNight]

New thread

I would be all for schools opening after half term, and part-time sounds like a possible way of making it happen. My DDs are 11 and 8 and they both need their lives to get back to some form of normality. But it needs to be done in such a way that both teachers and parents will feel that it can be achieved safely for all involved. Part-time attendance for children sounds like a workable solution.

Lewis Goodall @lewis_goodall
Spoken to lots of NHS staff this wkend about PPE. Some trusts in a good place, some in a v bad one. One theme though is that most have no confidence in Public Health England’s PPE advice: they think it’s being chopped and changed according to supply (or lack thereof),not science.

Thanks mrshoho

schools are exploring if they can re-open after the may holidays (mid may) possibly part time.

God I hope that's true.

In order to maintain decent social distancing i think you could only allow a third of any one class in a classroom at any one time.

Thread on a German virologist explaining why a second wave of infections could be worse than the first: mobile.twitter.com/HzBrandenburg/status/1251911950260482052

Two neighbors in my block having little parties again. Maybe I'm being paranoid but hopefully if their breath in the close will be gone by next time I go out. I want to call the police but also don't. Maybe I can ask them to patrol round here at some point in the next three months

@buttermilkwaffles it's actually quite terrifying to think this is what is coming later this year. I just hope the government gives early, clear, honest, information. This can give people and businesses time to prepare and have a realistic expectation of the situation. I see many friends currently rebooking holidays for October and Christmas and the holiday companies going along with it all and I'm thinking hmmm but don't want to be the kill joy.

This is German buttermilk waffles

I am no scientist but surely there is no point comparing this to what the Spanish flu pandemic did? It isn't a flu virus.

It relates to Germany, the UK and everywhere else

'You can't let an exponential process get away from you, even a little bit.'

@iWantKoalas

The podcast is in German, yes, but the twitter thread explaining the main points is in English.
mobile.twitter.com/HzBrandenburg/status/1251911950260482052

@Frompcat

No, it's not a flu virus, but I think it's probably still valid/useful to compare the way that an infectious disease is spread during a pandemic, even if it's a different disease?
The Imperial College model was originally designed for a flu pandemic for example but has been repurposed/adapted for Covid-19.

I am no scientist either, so I don't know, but epidemiologists and virologists seem to think you can.

"allowing #COVID19 to go to herd immunity and beyond would be a disaster."

"Herd immunity without vaccination requires a huge number of infections, at least 1-1/R0. But in practice, you get far more people infected than that due to overshoot.

The cost in lives makes this approach untenable."
mobile.twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1251999295231819778

Thanks for the link @buttermilkwaffles, very interesting. Does anyone know why viruses might stay at R below one for a while then suddenly take off again...is it just a matter of time or is it weather related, or..?

@inkpaperstars I am guessing but changes in behaviour e.g. in winter we may spend more time in close proximity inside which could increase the R again, or if people started socialising, attending pubs/theatres/gyms again the R would increase, or if they started shaking hands again etc.

InkPaperstars I have read that the Spanish flu mutated and got worse for the second wave

So do we think the reason they are continuing with the Nightingale hospitals is because if a possible second wave, more terrible than the first?
At the moment the hospitals seem more of a OR exercise , patients are being refused admission unless their lips are blue and their head is floppy. Insufficient nurses and inadequate PPE why continue to build?

I thought that the general accepted knowledge was that as viruses mutate they tend to get less deadly, not worse

And I also thought that one of the reasons the 1918 flu pandemic was so deadly and killed so many young people was due to the fact their health was already fucked thanks to WW2 and also from living in such close proximity in the trenches etc

I just think we should be cautious about comparing covid-19 to the spanish flu, as they're completely different viruses. If we were dealing with a flu pandemic here I could understand the comparison.

We don't have much to compare it to apart from people building immunity to flu. Their mutations would probably be as bad if we didn't. I don't believe a lot of science anymore they all just talk and talk like they know everything and they don't

I thought we were comparing by the sheer scale and mortality of it

patients are being refused admission unless their lips are blue and their head is floppy

Is that from validated official admission criteria or the claim of one MNer who’s posting style on her thread was a tad dramatic?

patients are being refused admission unless their lips are blue and their head is floppy

I really don't know if that is necessarily true in all areas as I know two people local to me (London, in one of the hardest hit boroughts) who were both admitted to hospital with covid with much more minor symptoms than that. They were both released after about 4 days (no intensive care).

I thought that the general accepted knowledge was that as viruses mutate they tend to get less deadly, not worse

I think that may be too simplistic a view (sorry!). Generally, viruses need to survive just like the rest of us, so any mutations (mistakes in the genetic code made during replication) that occur will either make their spread (and thus survival) more likely, or they will not. The longer a virus can keep its host alive and spread more virus particles, the better. But it could still kill at the end of that. So it would be deadly, but only after a longer period of illness.

In the case of Coronaviruses, apparently they do the equivalent of 'spell checking' their genetic code when they replicate, to cut down on mistakes, so they don't often incorporate mutations. Even so, this particular Coronavirus is doing rather well, it has a long incubation time, it doesn't get serious for about a week, allowing the host to spread it as they still feel well enough to be out and about, but then for some folk, it worsens considerably and can lead to death. So it's already capable of spreading efficiently, so there's no great need for it to mutate in order to spread better. Which is potentially good news, of a sort, for treatment strategies. In that way, it's fortunate it isn't like flu, that mutates far more readily.

www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/25/820998549/the-coronavirus-is-mutating-but-that-may-not-be-a-problem-for-humans?t=1587369120403