What will stop a second wave?

[candle18]

Once lockdown restrictions are relaxed why won’t there just be another huge increase? Is that because a lot of people will already have been infected?

Increase the vitamin D levels across the population. Sunny and southern hemisphere countries seem to have much lower levels of covid. People in at risk groups have much higher rates of the disease - BAME, elderly and people with high BMIs, because they make vitamin D with more difficulty from sunlight in the case of the first two groups, and require higher doses for immunological protection levels in the case of the latter. There’s very little vitamin D available from diet, unless you live in an indigenous coastal fishing community like Inuit. NHS and multivitamin RDIs are woefully low, literally just enough to prevent death from rickets/osteomalacia... optimal levels to prevent infections are around 75 to 150 nmol/l.

High compliance of face mask wearing... just a homemade fabric one, bandana or cotton scarf tied round the face. It will only give me around 20% protection from catching it from you, but it’ll give you 80% protection catching it from me if I have it. Doesn’t seem “watertight” enough, but once you apply those transmission dynamics across the population, it means the R0 transmissibility factor is well below one where the virus will fizzle out.

Continue restrictions on big gatherings like concerts, cinemas and sports fixtures. Continue good social spacing practice like supermarket queues.

If people were immune wouldn't we be well on our way to the much touted herd immunity by know

The numbers who have had the virus is still small. Also there is no vaccine, like we have for measles for example. So we are nowhere near herd immunity.

I think there will be rise in numbers soon anyway, because for the last few weeks more and more people have been relaxed about the restrictions, more traffic, shopping, visiting other households etc.

I hope we are all issued with masks soon. As people are in Italy. Masks might not stop the virus completely, but they definitely reduce the risk of it spreading.

I've been thinking about this a lot, how do they keep the R below 1, whilst at the same time lifting some restrictions.

It will be a fine balancing act. I think places will open up, but with strict hygiene and social distancing.

Limiting the numbers of people that we come into contact with.

Contact tracing, testing and isolating. I think this will be a huge part of it.

Masks in public.

Carry on working from home.

Flax- you can make your own mask - plenty of patterns available.

I think/hope we lockdown or socially distance in November/Dec. Christmas will cause too many gatherings in the middle of flu season and will be a recipe for disaster. One quiet Christmas won’t harm us.

RE: the Nightingales. They were constructed to increase ventilator capacity in the NHS, as the health care system being overwhelmed accelerated the number of fatalities in Italy.

They haven't been used anywhere near capacity (I think some have been shut down) because the NHS diverted a lot of its resources into CV19 care and away from where they'd usually be.

So operations, OPAs were cancelled/postponed, so that demand on the NHS didn't exceed capacity.

It's since become clearer that early intervention with O2 treatment at home may be the best first line of treatment, so they may not have had the role to play as first anticipated.

There have been some suggestions that patients from care homes in hospital who have CV19 should be discharged there, rather than back to their care home. This is neither practical or ethical unless they are refurbished to be suitable for broader CV19 and other co-morbiity care rather than primarily ventilation.

Obvs discharging patients with CV19 back to a care home isn't acceptable, although neither is keeping them in hospital when they don't need treatment that can't be given in a care home particularly ideal (and not enforceable if the person wants to go home).

I think we're going to need a mixture of distancing (in public and even inviting people into your homes), regular thorough hand washing and sanitizer, being reliant on people to stay at home if they have an inkling of a bug (I know someone who had a sickness bug - turned out to be CV),possibly face masks and if numbers can be kept low contact tracing.

Hippofrog we've already talked about Xmas. We agree if we only see one person, it'll be my Mum as she's totally on her own, but we will all hopefully be working so she'll be a risk. The rest of the family have dogs, so we thought about a distance walk with them.

I'd absolutely love a quiet Christmas! What are the chances?!?! 😂