WHY do people keep saying we all need to get it...

[nellodee]

When Matt Hancock is clearly saying that we need to get cases right down, so we can move into the next stage, which is contact tracing?

From Guardian updates:

Easing lockdown depends on fall in number of new infections, says Hancock
Easing the lockdown depends on the speed at which the number of new cases of Covid-19 falls and that is as yet “unknown”, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, has said.

The number of new cases is being tracked through hospital admissions, through a new testing study in the community announced on Wednesday, and data that will be gathered from people coming forward for tests under an expansion of the programme.

However, he added that there was no prospect of easing the lockdown yet, and that cases needed to drop substantially before the next phase of isolating infected people and their contacts could be truly effective.

[cantory]

@NmChangry Where do you get that statistic from?

"In the Bupa sample, the average length of stay was 801 days, but with a considerable tail of long-stayers. Half of residents had died by 462 days. Around 27% of people lived for more than three years, with the longest stayer living for over 20 years."

I think you are wrong about how long most people live in care homes. And eating mashed up food does not mean you have no quality of life. Plenty of young disabled adults who will live happily for many years cannot eat solid food.

Yes some people nearing the end of their life it would be a kindness for them to die sooner. But it is clear from the care workers being interviewed on TV that that is NOT what is happening.

[cantory]

And as I said it is black and white thinking to see the choice as everyone gets the virus and we see who survives it versus we wait 2 years for a vaccine. Those are not the only choices as I have already outlined.

[NmChangry]

Half of residents had died by 462 days.

Half of residents die within 18 months?

We can go over the semantics of mashed up food, but that wasn't really my point. I went to a Sinatra themed night there. There was me, my grandpa and one other woman up dancing. Maybe two who were compos mentis enough to clap along. The rest, who were physically well enough to attend, were in various states of confusion / distress / complete "vegetation".

I'm only saying that my knee-jerk reaction to a lot of people I met was that it's a kindness. My grandma, in her 70s, so not that far away from potentially being there herself, agreed with me.

There was quite a lot of agreement about this on the "are we expecting immortality" thread.

Just trying to give another perspective.

[mac12]

People talking about covid19 like it would be a kindness to people in care homes - you know it’s an awful way to die, right? If that’s the debate society wants to have, then let’s do that & have more humane solution than this

[cantory]

I assume you are talking about patients with dementia?
There is a big difference between care homes and nursing homes. The latter takes the least able. The former where my grandmother lived for 13 years has people like her who need more physical help than a carer coming in 3 times a day, but was actually in very good health.

As I said I am going by what the carers on TV are saying as I think they know more than either of us. And I have seen multiple carers say they have been shocked at the number of deaths where they work and the type of people dying.

[Bitofeverything]

It may be an awful way to die, but there aren’t that many fabulous ways to die tbh.

[PuzzledObserver]

I’m an optimist. I think that we will have a vaccine in 12-18 months and that less than half of us will have caught it by then.

At 1% fatality, that’s still 330,000 deaths, so I hope it’s a lot less than half of us have caught it, and/or that the fatality rate is well under 1% owing to asymptomatic cases.

Here’s a thought - if there are still a lot of people needing hospital admission come the Autumn, they could offer the flu vaccine to everyone, not just the vulnerable groups and HCP’s. A good take up of that would reduce the burden on the NHS from flu this year and leave more capacity for Covid.

[duffeldaisy]

Exactly OP.
Even if it is a 1% death rate, and a 5% hospitalisation rate that is one in every hundred of your neighbours dying, 1 in every 20 people you know being hospitalised and possibly getting long-lasting complications. I don't want my loved ones to take that risk.
And that's if the cases all happen very slowly - over years and years to work our way through everyone getting as 'safely' ill as possible.

If we allow it to spread, the death toll will be far, far higher. It's not just a 'oh well we'll all get it sooner or later, let's get this over with'.
The fewer people that get it before there's a vaccination the better, and if we can reduce it to a point where it can be traced and isolated then it'll save us years of extra deaths.

[cantory]

And treatments will improve meaning people who die today may be able to have been saved in a month's time.

[Floatyboat]

@duffeldaisy

A 1% IFR is probably too high. More like 0.5%. and it doesn't just kill randomly like your thought experiment suggests, it overwhelmingly kills old, frail, unwell people. It is not the same as 1 in 100 people you know dying, unless you know particularly old/unhealthy people. Further, deaths will be spread over 12 months. What percentage of your acquaintances would you expect to die in any given year? If you know a reasonably age distributed group it would probably be about 1%

[DeathByBoredom]

I loved the idea of contact tracing. Way back in February. Even in March. It's too bloody late for all that now. We chose a different path. If you didn't agree with it, too bad (and yes, too bad for me too). It might turn out to be better anyway - we won't be perpetually uptight about anyone entering the country. NZ is boxed into a bit of a corner for example. (That's just trying to look on the bright side)

[duffeldaisy]

No, it's not only old, frail, unwell people who are dying.

Those who are at risk are not necessarily at death's door. They have underlying conditions that they're living with perfectly well, but which do make them vulnerable if they get it.

For me, I have a few friends and a family member with severe asthma. They're in their 30s-50s and healthy in other ways, working and living full lives, but have been hospitalised once or more in the past. They would be extremely vulnerable. Three of our children's grandparents are fairly sprightly but do have managed heart conditions, high blood pressure and COPD between them. If they live as they are they could have another couple of decades each at least. But if they get it, they again could be very badly affected.

Most people must have family with those kinds of conditions. Yes, I agree, the odds are still very low, but with the low ratio of healthcare workers to patients in this country and the large number of NHS vacancies, the death rate could well be higher than in countries with better provision. As time goes on, vaccines come closer and treatments improve. That's why I think the lockdown is ever so important in giving people longer lives, and actually improving mental health because of less mourning their loss.

[DeathByBoredom]

Actually op I have a question for you. Why would you think our current lockdown measures in any way suggest we will end up at such low levels we can use contact testing/tracing? I don't get why anyone would think that. Do we look anything like the Wuhan lockdown?

[Floatyboat]

@duffeldaisy

it's not only old, frail, unwell people who are dying.

Of course but they are disproportionately affected.

I don't know how old these grandparents are but plug them into an online risk calculator. They don't sound like they've got a 20 year life expectancy.

I'm not disagreeing that coronavirus is bad and lots of people dying is bad. I just think your language is overly dramatic.

[duffeldaisy]

@Floatyboat I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn’t mean to be as cold and hurtful as you have been.

No, I’m not going to look up their life expectancies based on their illnesses. But they’re my family and I don’t want them to die prematurely

[nellodee]

@DeathByBoredom we are currently calculating R0 at 0.7. This means that instead of exponential increase, we have exponential decrease. Why would you imagine that cases would not continue to decrease?

If you read the quote from my opening post, you will see that it wasn't my words, but those of Matt Hancock, our Minister of Health.

This is not my plan, this is his.

[Floatyboat]

@duffeldaisy

Of course you don't want them to die prematurely. The point I'm making is that coronavirus does not make as big a difference to the risk of premature death as some people assume. Personally, when I reasoned that out last month it removed alot of my anxiety.

[Hercwasonaroll]

I don't understand how contact tracing would work for big places of work like schools. Say I had coronavirus and was asymptomatic for 5 days before I knew. In those 5 days I would see over 1000 people. Then they obviously take it home to say an average of 3 people per household. So that's 3000 people who need to isolate for 2 weeks not including anyone that household has socialised with.

The same for tube travel. Surely people come into contact with hundreds of people every day. How can you isolate them all without a total lockdown?

(I would happily relax regulations and take my chances. I know this opinion is unpopular)

[Keepdistance]

I think it depends on masks. So you are not randomly transmitting to a whole bus etc.
The contacts would be higher if say you were a takeaway driver/preparer etc
Or if say you did a job where you couldnt wear a mask etc.

Masks are the only chance to avoid everyone geting it. Because basically within a family you cannot distance and you touch all surfaces. So almost guaranteed 1 other person gets it.

I definitely wouldnt send schools back till sept. I would see if we can keep it low.
A school classroom is 30x exposure at the same level as home and most people have kids so 60x.

[Floatyboat]

Kids likely transmit it a lot less than adults. Masks for tube etc would seem sensible.

[nellodee]

I'm really hoping that this thing about the under 10s not getting it often and not carrying it much pans out. That would really help a lot, wouldn't it?

[nellodee]

But this is why waiting and seeing what happens in other parts of Europe is a good idea... there's one country that's letting primary aged kids back first, isn't there?

[Keepdistance]

They may or may not be but each child represents 3+ other people with their contacts. Even if only 2.5% of kids catch covid say. We have say 400 kids at school. So 10 kids catch it. Potentially 10 teachers. Plus up to 30 family members.
So 50 people. Then obviously their supermarket and workplaces...

[nellodee]

@Keepdistance we would hope that 2.5% of kids wouldn't catch it, though. If we have contact tracing, we're aiming for only about 10% of the entire population to get it, because the cases should hopefully stay low. So your 2.5% of 10% would then be only 1 kid catching it. So hopefully only 1 member of staff, who would then be traced, and hopefully that chain of transmission is small enough to be stamped on.

I don't know if it will work in practise. None of us do. But staying in lockdown for a year seems impractical and allowing the virus to spread exponentially is intolerable, so we have to try this and hope that there is a third way, I think.

[nellodee]

And you would have to think that if the kid had it, someone else in their family would have it too, and the kid might end up being isolated as part of that transmission chain before they even went in to school to infect people there.