Daily numbers, graphs, analysis thread 9

[Barracker]

Welcome to thread 9 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

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

Really interesting regarding the oestrogen effect.

www.genscript.com/antibody-drug-development-news/memory-t-cells-how-are-they-formed.html
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4125530/#!po=9.57447
An article that gives explanation of T cell response ( memory T cells hang around for long time and may confirm related immunity) and a paper re T cell response in SARs diseases.

re catching the virus from surfaces:

A contact trace of the very earliest cases in German followed a worker who travelled from a plant in Wuhan.
She infected some collegus in a meeting, but also other workers she had never met
and it was discovered that this happened in the canteen, when they touched a salt cellar she had used earlier

The Gangelt study and others indicate that the virus dies off within hours on a surface,
However, if an infected person is shedding a lot, then anyone touching the same surfaces shortly afterwards is at risk.

@BigChocFrenzy The salt cellar person caught it not from the original contact but from another infected employee who handed them the salt cellar. Apparently they exchanged a few words when passing the salt.

The full paper on the initial Munich infection in Germany is published in the Lancet. It is well-worth reading to understand how the virus spreads. They tested everyone at that office and then their family members and other contacts to see who was infected. They also could trace who passed the virus to whom through the genome.

Only close contacts of those infected got the virus and although they tested hundreds of non-close contacts, none of them got the virus. This suggests that door handles, lift buttons etc are unlikely to be an issue.

This makes me greatly reassured that the risk of contamination from surfaces is v.v. low.

The key thing that infection seems to have in common is close contact - either a lengthy conversation or singing or shouting in a crowded room.

www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30314-5/fulltext

Something jingles in the back of my mind re immunity and T cells and young children.

Not sure what but I think it's different to adults.

Oh, this:

www.endocrineweb.com/endocrinology/overview-thymus

Some sort of part of the jigsaw I bet.

A peculiar feature of the thymus is that it disappears as we get older. The thymus starts deteriorating after birth but the process speeds up after puberty and, by age 65, we are basically unable to make new T cells. As the organ shrinks, the T cell areas are replaced with fatty tissue, in a process called involution.

"Apparently they exchanged a few words when passing the salt"

There were different reports in the newspapers here, but presumably the Lancet is more accurate

What is important:
it was a brief encounter and noone was singing
Shouting would be no more than is usual in a work environment with a lot of people

I’m fascinated by the T- cell research.

I wonder if it’s the reason why other diseases are mild in children but potentially very serious for adults and the elderly, chicken pox for example?

Neurotrash Reports of those who recovered from COVID but had no antibodies seemed to be of young people
I hope any study with antibodies also records ages

However, scientists seem reasonably sure that antibodies would confer at least partial immunity for a time,
BUT
I haven't read if they think T cells would confer immunity,
or whether someone could catch COVID again and we hope that the T cells work the 2nd or 3rd time round

==> Anyone any info on this ?

FT stats geek - mortality rate = deaths / million population, rather than IFR (Infection Fatality Rate)

SkyNewss@SkyNews*

Data visualisation journalist @jburnmurdoch says the UK has the second worst #COVID19 mortality rate,
but England alone would have the highest mortality rate in the world.

“It really depends on where we draw the borders.
If we’re looking at the UK as a whole, the UK is now very slightly behind Spain for the worst mortality rate of all countries that we have this data for.

If we were to change that and look at England alone, England is now actually the highest in the world.

“This is over the whole period for which any country has been seeing a Covid outbreak.
So for the UK and for England we’re talking about the last eight weeks of data, which goes back to the period in early to mid-March
and takes us right the way through to the latest data we have which comes to May 15.”

afaik Spain doesn't include care home deaths, so we'd need to compare [COVID + excess deaths] for each country,
rather than the crude official figures

Interesting article about difficulty filling in death certs and excess deaths by hcp

www.rt.com/op-ed/490006-death-certificates-covid-19-do-not-trust/

*I’m fascinated by the T- cell research.

I wonder if it’s the reason why other diseases are mild in children but potentially very serious for adults and the elderly, chicken pox for example?*

Possibly, and also why vaccinations are done so young, obviously the disease affects them badly at a young age but I wonder if the vaccine is better at that age?

Apparently one of the issues with the cp vaccine is that it isn't always as reliable as actually getting infected.

There's lots of links to childhood illnesses being protective against autoimmune disease; the new rota virus vaccine was shown to reduce incidents of coeliacs disease when the children were older in Australia (it was introduced earlier there.)

The Track and Trace system does not sound great
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/30/boris-johnsons-test-and-tracing-system-britain-lockdown

@whatsnext2

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.26.115832v1.full.pdf

Preprint showing immunity from SARS 1 infected in 2003 have T cell immunity to SARS 2

@BigChocFrenzy

This study indicates up to 30% immunity to T cells

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20061440v1

And these both on T cells
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20061440v1
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20061440v1

Aargh sorry technology defeating me, there are others on cell.com and medrxiv.

I read that listening. there's a thread in coronavirus where employees have been struggling for some time.

This is why I was querying the reports that it was up and running when it seems that actually there have been some pilots in a few places and they've only just attempted to start.

I think there is also genetic faults in some individual T cell response which may account variables seen in Covid
Memory T cells are probably the reason why the common cold doesn’t kill us all every year.
The T cell response results in mature memory T cells hanging around so we mount an effective T cell response to the next cold virus infection.

Can those with T-cell immunity still shed virus particles and infect other people ?

The elderly have fewer T cells remaining, or they don't work as effectively ?

I read somewhere that some people may kill the virus with T cells at the point of entry. Which could explain anosmia as the only infection in some young, healthy people.

Maybe they would be less infectious, because less time for viral replication and a lower viral load?

I can't remember where I saw it though! I'll have a hunt...

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20061440v1.full.pdf
Interesting ( not yer peer reviewed) paper re cross reactive T cells. The idea that children’s much closer social contacts with other people may be significant. Maybe dentists’ social contact behaviour is very close to that of children so we have a similar immune response ie multiple contacts daily.
We all know how awful the early years of practice were staggering from one cold to the next through winter months.
I usually get a mild cold in September then sail through winter disease free. Although I get the blame for taking it home!