If a second wave is inevitable could we get it out of the way now.....

[Mallowmarshmallow]

It seems a second wave is fairly inevitable....scientifically, is it an option to get it over and done with now the hospitals seem to be under less pressure....?

(I realise this might be a totally stupid question...)

Is the current pause about nhs staff getting it? So that it isn't widespread among the full population at the same time as NHS staff are getting ill and or isolating?

I mean, once key workers and front line people have had it, the rest of us can get ill without the country coming to a halt.

There won't be a second wave.

I know no one will believe this post, but when you read the articles in the next few months remember it.

Covid was in the UK by October 2019 at the latest. Deaths that occurred from it were attributed to the flu or pneumonia, because no one knew there was a new virus going around until the reports came out of Wuhan. Then everyone started noticing it and freaking out.

We'll come slowly out of lockdown, there'll be a few more upticks of infection but no other huge peak. Eventually, it'll be found that:
The vast, vast majority of people who get covid don't die from it
It does however have a worrying mechanism that means a person can go from fit and healthy to total shutdown very fast, a mechanism that is deadly for older people or people with illnesses, meaning that while most people are fine, older people and more unwell people are in danger and there's a scary 'Russian roulette' element for younger people (not unlike flu).

The lockdown will be justified as a necessary precaution given a lack of clear information. Sweden will come out of the whole thing looking like the only country with an ounce of sense.

I asked a similar question yesterday...but got no replies!!

That makes no sense the daily carbuncle. I work on a respiratory ward and the deteriorating patients and deaths we've had from covid do not look like pneumonia or flu. It's a distinctive pattern which we did not start to see until March/April. Plus it's also distinctive on an xray.

Italy is finding cases from October 2019 that fit the profile for covid but weren't recognised as being anything new or different. How can a disease be recognised if no one yet knows it exists?

uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-italy-timing/italian-scientists-investigate-possible-earlier-emergence-of-coronavirus-idUKKBN21D2IT

The US believed it had its first death in Washington State at the start of March. It has now found two covid deaths from weeks before that 2,300 miles away in California. Those two people probably contracted the virus through the community, not through travel, meaning that covid was circulating in California in January and was in Washington weeks later.

edition.cnn.com/2020/04/22/us/california-deaths-earliest-in-us/index.html

Hospitals still don't have enough equipment to safely deal with this wave. Hospital staff are having to fight to get correct PPE every day.

The British medical association has assured its members this week that they cannot be expected to work in an unsafe environment and they have every right to refuse to treat anyone without adequate protection.

A big surge now could be an absolute disaster for everyone.

I understand there are a lot of unknowns with this illness. But the belief that it started in Wuhan in November and then spread to almost the entire world by February is just bizarre - how on earth could that be possible? The sheer quantity of people from Wuhan who would have had to be infected and then travel is enormous.

The number of new hospital admissions infected needs to come right down (a goal of 500 per day has been floated) and then restrictions lifted in phases (what order these will be in who knows?). The scientific advice is that at this number they should be able to contain and trace new infections and prevent the exponential growth shooting up (another gamble!). it would be great to time this to avoid flu season/winter/Christmas etc etc but the virus may not be that obliging. By keeping a control of new infections they should be able to identify hotspots/clusters (why they are so keen on getting adequate testing in place) and in an ideal world this is what we should have been doing in January.

The wards are quite because elective and routine procedures have been cancelled. ICU is not quiet, I would the surprised if any ICU in the country is not at capacity. My trust has opened an additional 80 ICU beds so yes we technically have empty beds but literally zero additional ICU staff. Our work load has doubled if not tripled. If someone had said to me before to imagine the sickest patient on the unit, that is all of the patients now and we are looking after 2-3 of them each shift. I’m so, so sick of hearing that the NHS is not overwhelmed, in ICU we are totally overwhelmed! I’m pleased for other areas of the hospital that they are getting a much deserved break but please don’t think this is over, far from it.

@TheDailyCarbuncle if the previous poster is right about the virus mutating to be more deadly, that would mean the previous incarnation version potentially seen here in October was the comparatively milder version which obv would cause less deaths.

Tricky one..ppe still shite in many areas... who do you think will staff the Nughtingale hospitals?..it is staff from other hospitals. As a nurse in a Nursing home I feel anxious re relaxing lockdown..unless they can provide ppe,testing, and I still think visiting is a no no

Surely though if your own antibodies don’t protect you after having it once then a vaccine is not on the cards?

TheDailyCarbuncle if it turned out to be less dangerous that would be a good thing, but it doesn't mean ignoring it was more sensible since it's only something you can know after the fact.

True @Reastie although there isn't currently any evidence that that's the case. Anything I've seen about mutation has said it's more likely to mutate to become less deadly.

There has also been an assumption that the high numbers of people in hospital seen in Italy is due to the virus being deadly. The other possibility is that it was circulating for a while, infecting a lot of people and then reached a critical mass, so the high number of people in hospital was due to very very high numbers of people being infected.

So if 1 in every 1000 people infected needs hospital treatment then 300,000 people infected means 300 people in hospital. It's sheer quantity.

There is no reason to suppose that people who recover will NOT be immune. Statements by experts saying that you can't be sure with a new virus are twisted to make good headlines

@LastTrainEast I wasn't suggesting ignoring it. Sweden isn't ignoring it. They're managing it without locking people in their homes and without killing their economy.

It makes no sense to prevent people from getting covid while killing other people in the process.

If we are already planning a second peak what on earth was the point of the first lockdown!!

Hospital capacity has never been exceeded. People increasingly going out although businesses remain shut. You can't leave the house. Unless you have a reason. Economy in melt down.

I completely agree we need as many cases now before the autumn. Precisely why lockdown was a terrible idea all round...

Just throw everyone with cancer under the bus OP why don’t you. The NHS is not coping right now, despite what they say on TV. People with cancer are not all being treated. Might as well just kill us all off already too if you want a second wave now. And then a third wave and then a fourth wave.

elephant with lockdown we've seen over 20,000 hospital deaths and over 17000 admissions. How high do you think these figures would be by now if we had just carried on? The cases were doubling every 2 days at one point to give you an idea.

To the previous 2 posters. The nhs is coping fine. And yes that's what happens during a pandemic. Which is why avoiding it in autumn when the nhs will not cope so well is a great idea.

HTG

This wave has infected somewhere between 2-6% of the population. Very roughly.

There is no point trying to get a second wave out of the way before winter, because you couldn't possibly infect enough people to prevent a third wave in winter. And you absolutely wouldn't want to. If you infected enough people to gain "herd immunity", then it wouldn't matter whether you did it in summer or winter, because you'd not have any kind of health service to speak of in either case, it would be that swamped.

Baddoc - the Oxford vaccine needs there to be a second wave in order to check whether the vaccine works. If no one is getting the virus, they can’t tell whether it is effective or not. If we continue the lockdown, the vaccine trials will take far longer.

The trials work by injecting volunteers and then seeing whether they get infected or not. If the virus is not spreading, there is no way to check whether it is effective as it is unethical to infect someone deliberately.

I think that figure is strongly disputed due to the unreliable testing. Others have said between 25-50%. But really who knows

Covid was in the UK by October 2019 at the latest

I’d have thought November into December , but it does seem the science is saying it was here before Xmas, and simply physicians didn’t know what it was, they just assumed respiratory disease like pneumonia, they also wouldn’t have seen much of it.