No second wave?

[StealthPolarBear]

This has been predicted regularly for ages now but hasn't happened. I'm not aware that it has happened in other countries either. Particularly non evident after ve day. Are we any closer to understanding why as surely that would help to understand what we can do and what we can't? Is meeting outdoors the key? Or is it just too early.?

The alert level is supposed to be set by the Joint Biosecurity Centre but as we learned last week that's not actually up and running yet. It now looks like it won't be fully operational until later this summer.

www.civilserviceworld.com/articles/news/joint-biosecurity-centre-will-not-be-fully-operational-until-later-summer-dhsc-says

Total shitshow.

Nit up and running? But we're on level four, moving to three. Surely somewhere must calculate and show that.

We still don't have very much indoor activity. That's the real risk.

I read/ heard a report the other day that 2m distancing is 1% chance of catching it, 1m 2.5% and indoors is 13%.

So what we have is still activities that really keep transmission at a low a rate as possible.

And there was an increase in hospital admissions a few weeks after VE Day and being able to be outdoors for as long as we like and travel for being outdoors. It seems to be settling again now.

This leads me to conclude it'll go up and down with each thing opened but supports the slow release of indoor spaces compared to quicker opening of outdoors spaces.

The real test would be to open soft place centres. They have to be the most germ ridden, virus friendly places on planet earth, possibly in the infinite universe.

itsgettingweird

We still don't have very much indoor activity. That's the real risk.

You say that, and I expect you're right but you'd have thought the experts would also be thinking about this?

I thought any second wave was due in the autumn, not a few days after the first wave has subsided.

Coronaviruses typically occur in waves spaced around 6 months apart as any immunity wears off and most epidemiologists think that if there is a second wave it will follow this pattern.

Also a big risk factor for spread is indoor gatherings which are much more likely in the autumn/winter. I would expect if we do get a second wave for it to occur around october time.

Indoors is 13%? Interesting. I never knew that.

The experts do know that indoors is the problem, and have told us that. That's why they have expressly stated that people can meet socially distanced outdoors but made meeting indoors illegal.

The second wave was always something that was predicted to take place autumn/winter when people will be indoors more often and when virus's are more prevalent.

We may see an increase in cases following the recent easing of lockdown and the protests but not on a grand scale. The goal is to get the R number as low as physically possible, to make society work as best as possible with outdoors activity, social distancing and encouraging working from home, so that when people are forced indoors due to cold weather there is less prevalence of the virus to cause infections.

I’ve noticed that I catch things a lot from the tube, I started wearing gloves a couple of years ago and was much less prone, then I started wfh a few days a week and rarely get ill. I also noticed soft play was the trigger with dd.
I think social distancing and hand hygiene has a really massive upset, so hopefuly as the number go down we can keep them down with these measures , with everyone being careful.

Impact not upset !

Yes, infection is much more likely indoors because there's no breeze to blow away and evaporate your droplets before they land on someone else's face. The beach pictures pissed us all off but in terms of large outdoor gatherings the beach is probably one of the safest places because there is almost always a sea breeze.

What worries me is that lots of people are going back to work, lots more people will be using public transport and children are starting to return to school at the exact same time the weather has got a lot cooler, so people will be coming home and spending more time indoors with the people they live with. And they in turn are going back to work, using public transport, going back to school ...

We don't know yet whether this virus is seasonal because we only have half a year's data and different countries have had outbreaks at different times. We still have no evidence that catching the virus gives us immunity although it would be reasonable to expect it gives us at least some immunity - we just don't know how much or for how long. All the evidence so far suggests that in all countries the vast majority of people have not had the virus and so remain susceptible.

A second wave is not inevitable, it depends on our continued ability to track and contain the virus as we ease restrictions. I am not convinced that our test, track and isolate system is yet up to the job. We are playing a massive game of catch-up because of the arrogance of our public health system and the hubris of our government.

I think it's extremely dangerous to be easing restrictions before we have a fully functioning system of testing, contact tracing and isolation in place.

Interesting research article on how pollen potentially explains the seasonality of covid:

“ Pollen is documented to be antiviral and allergenic, play a role in immuno-activation, and seems to create a bio-aerosol lowering the reproduction number of flu-like viruses. “

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.05.20123133v1

The problem is the time lag.

If you catch the virus on day 1, then you probably start having symptoms on day 5 or 7. Then it takes about a week - maybe two - before you're poorly enough to go to hospital (assuming you ever get that bad). You may or may not get tested at some point before then, and get into the "infected" statistics. So now you're up to day 14 or 21 after exposure. And then even if you're going to die, you're unlikely to die straight away. You could linger in hospital a week or more on a ventilator. Potentially you're easily up to day 28 after infection by the time you die. And even then the death statistics are not recorded instantaneously, so you can add on at least a few more days before you show up in the daily death count.

It's just way too early to know what effect the easing of lockdown is really having.

No that's not true. If hospitalisation had risen as a result of ve day as so many predicted, we'd know by now.

A second wave has been predicted almost every week after people have been out and about at the weekend.

You can guarantee that every monday social media will be full of memes like the "theres now room in ICU for idioys like you" one

Given that our current death rate exceeds Germany's at the peak of its first wave I don't think we can even assume we are overthe first wave yet.

If hospitalisation had risen as a result of ve day as so many predicted, we'd know by now.

Yep, VE day was almost 5 weeks ago

What was causing the virus to spread before that we arent doing now? Is it weather?

Well obviously in the first wave, no one had had the virus, so there were no people to slow or block transmission. As more people get it, transmission will naturally slow down.

I went to 2 VE street parties. Most people where staying 2 metres apart, lots not leaving their front yards, not sharing drinks, not going into each other's houses. It wasn't like prelockdown. People who had symptoms would be in the house. Even if 20% of people weren't social distancing, that's a lot less than 80%. The second wave will come next winter after socialising outdoors becomes impossible, all shops are open and schools open more.

A lot of these things take much longer than you expect to show as the effect of a large gathering depends on what happens before and after it too.

So if you think about VE day or the protests. Maybe a few people caught it from asymptomatic people there, this wouldn't be enough to show in the statistics. They go home a few days later in the incubation period, one gets the bus to work, one meets up with some friends in the park, one goes to the supermarket. This spreads it unknowingly to a few more people. The same thing repeats a few days later. It takes a couple of months for this to be obvious in the statistics.

It gradually builds up to a peak. There's still maybe a couple of thousand dying every week.

The VE Day was an ill advised time for a national party but wouldn't have made a big difference as most stuck to the rules.

The two big things are the scenes on the beaches and parks at the last bank holiday (only a fortnight ago) and the mass protests and rioting through last weekend.

Too early to see any repercussions from that as people will only now be starting to develop symptoms

I was ill in the first wave (still not completely well) I got it from my daughter before schools closed, as did my brother who caught from his primary age child.

So I think we have to return to pre-lockdown levels of community mixing for a second wave, once schools and most are people back at work in the autumn. Hopefully we’ve learnt enough from the first wave to use short sharp lockdowns to keep the infection level in check.

To have a second wave you need the virus to be replicating in a large number of people, or multiple super spreader events. It's unlikely events like that will happen until next summer, if then even, so that risk is negated. Currently people are still mostly meeting outside, working from home, and schools aren't generally open, so there's fewer opportunities for the virus to spread. We need to get it as low as possible while we're in the fortunate position of having good weather (not today but mostly!) and schools not being back to reduce the R rate as much as possible, so that community spread is less when things open up and people start being tempted to meet indoors.

I honestly can't see there being a second wave as such, because things are being managed. I think there will be local outbreaks - and some will be large - but not that exponential growth we saw in March. If that does happen we will lockdown again, at least to some extent (e.g. pubs, shops). However, this is a new virus and no-one really knows how it will act. It's all guesswork and modelling based on what we already know about viruses. We really just have to wait and see.

But all the science tells us the risky situation of transmission. Being in confined spaces with people. Having direct contact for more than 15 minutes, within 2 metres. Inside a FAR bigger risk than outside. Growing evidence that the time you're most infectious is when you have symptoms - when most people are feeling unwell and will stay at home.

All inside places like clubs, bars, shops, cinemas are closed. A huge proportion of people working at home, not going into the office.

People going to the beach or to a demo outside, and just walking past people in the street aren't going to contract the virus in huge numbers. No increase after VE day parties, which were all outside and mostly socially distanced. No increase after bank holidays.

Also you have to bear in mind that the numbers of people who could potentially pass the virus on is small, and decreasing all the time. According to figures, there are 641 currently active cases in Scotland, half of which are in care home. So as I don't go into care homes, what's the chances of me spending 15 minutes within 2 metres of one of the 320 people who have it, and who have left the house knowing that they have Covid?

Vanishingly small.