Anyone else think our reprieve might be short lived?

[Lemons1571]

The briefing just seemed so, abrupt today. Suddenly it’s ‘the last ever briefing’, most things are allowed to open up next week, keep your distance, and then a “right we’re off good luck” sort of exit. While there’s still hundreds of deaths a week.

Seems a bit premature - I would’ve thought they would at least do a weekly briefing. I can’t decide if they think taking the briefings off the air will be “out of sight out of mind”, and people will chill out and start spending and going out again. Or whether they’ve run out of steam and need a break before the autumn colds season descends. Whitty seemed sure this wasn’t going anywhere and we’re in for a year plus of this. What do you think?

nasal swab and saliva swab

A nasal and saliva swab are different tests. The saliva testing is a different method. The other tests are throat and nose swabs, which are performed more widely- these two swabs are counted as the same test.

Care to explain the absurd theory I questioned? How exactly does that work

If you are talking about “waves” then on a graph it does look like a lull when the infection goes down.

If it was anything like how we felt after having this virus then we had self enforced isolation as no one had the energy to go out and do anything (6 weeks after I was still questioning whether my legs would give way if I walked to a shop 200m away) so we didn’t spread the virus because we physically found it near impossible to leave the house
So a lot of people weren’t out and about infecting people. So the infection rate went down.

Then I think the virus changed and became more lethal.

Usually the 2nd wave kills more than the first
If we are only counting March figures onwards as the first wave and say this winter we are looking at the 2nd wave then we will see the death rate soar to huge figures.
The virus will be come more deadly and we will see deaths in the 6 figures from when the weather changes to next Spring.

What part of my theory (which seems to have been backed up by doctors) do you see as “absurd”

@Oliversmumsarmy

Care to explain the absurd theory I questioned? How exactly does that work

If you are talking about “waves” then on a graph it does look like a lull when the infection goes down.

If it was anything like how we felt after having this virus then we had self enforced isolation as no one had the energy to go out and do anything (6 weeks after I was still questioning whether my legs would give way if I walked to a shop 200m away) so we didn’t spread the virus because we physically found it near impossible to leave the house
So a lot of people weren’t out and about infecting people. So the infection rate went down.

Then I think the virus changed and became more lethal.

Usually the 2nd wave kills more than the first
If we are only counting March figures onwards as the first wave and say this winter we are looking at the 2nd wave then we will see the death rate soar to huge figures.
The virus will be come more deadly and we will see deaths in the 6 figures from when the weather changes to next Spring.

What part of my theory (which seems to have been backed up by doctors) do you see as “absurd”

Why would the virus become more deadly?

I fully believe that there will be another wave and the key to how we manage will be down to testing and tracing. There’s no certainty that another wave has to be as massive as the one we’ve just/still come through if momentum can be kept up to take it seriously.

I don’t believe that there will be another lockdown like the one we had unless services start creaking and we absolutely have to. At that point there’s not much choice in the matter to be honest, the public will take matters into their own hands in the worst case scenario once they realise there’s no medical help available and infrastructure suffers staffing shortages.

What I don’t think will happen again is the same level of financial support. There’ll be no bridging the gap so a percentage of people remain unaffected and can just about scrape through. Another wave like the one we just had will leave it up to fate and people will either sink or swim.

There are multiple predictions on what could happen and I think everyone is hoping for the best but it would be misguided to completely rule out future difficulties.

I think they have realised that none of the government ministers do well in public briefings so are trying to minimise exposure of public to them to try to recover popularity.

It is a tried and tested tactic for this team- after all, minimising the length of time BJ spent with MPs and the public, and carefully staging everything else, won him first the leadership and then the election!

Why would the virus become more deadly

Because viruses change

This looks to be a very good recent summary of where we're at it with this damn thing though obviously US-centric. Looks like the old normal isn't coming back anytime soon and certainly not this year.:(

Six Months of Coronavirus: Here’s Some of What We’ve Learned
Much remains unknown and mysterious, but these are some of the things we’re pretty sure of after half a year of this pandemic.

www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-facts-history.html

Because viruses change

Yes but usually they become milder, if anything.

The virus needs to replicate itself. It can't do that if its host is dead. Even if the host is seriously ill and at home in bed, it's less likely to spread to a lot of other people.

The Spanish flu didn't become milder, it came back a second time, and was much more deadly. Although obviously one reason for this was that a lot of soldiers caught it and died because they had been weakened after 4 years of war.

The Spanish flu didn't become milder, it came back a second time, and was much more deadly

Completely different disease which unlike Covid, also severely affected the young and fit. It is much more common for a virus to mutate to a milder version.

Mittens030869

All of which is true, but completely irrelevant given this isn't flu.

It doesn’t need to mutate to become milder because it can spread asymptomatically.

But flu is still a virus the same as SARS. They both had a more lethal 2nd wave

But flu is still a virus the same as SARS

They are both viruses, but there are thousands of viruses. The H1N1 virus which led to the Spanish flu is very different from the coronaviruses which caused SARS and Covid.

They both had a more lethal 2nd wave

That's not true. SARS more or less burned itself out in 2003, less than a year after it first emerged.

@Oliversmumsarmy

That's what I was thinking, it's a virus like flu is, even if it isn't the same. And SARS is a good comparison, as it was very similar, it just didn't spread like COVID-19 has.

Anyway, time will tell.

@IcedPurple Okay, I don't know much about it, but I know it burned out after 2003.

I think the problem is that COVID-19 hasn't gone away, and it's spreading rapidly in other parts of the world.

That's what I was thinking, it's a virus like flu is, even if it isn't the same

Flu isn't a virus. It's a disease caused by a number of different viruses.

I think the problem is that COVID-19 hasn't gone away, and it's spreading rapidly in other parts of the world

That's true, but the discussion is whether another 'wave' is going to happen. The Spanish flu is a poor comparison in that respect.

But with it being elsewhere in the world, it could easily be brought back into the country with the increase in air travel which is now happening. If this can't be contained, then that could conceivably lead to an second wave. I don't have much confidence in our government's competency to contain it, because their test and trace strategy is still in a mess.

The comparison with Spanish flu was simply to do with it being an infectious illness that couldn't be contained and ended up even more deadly in a second wave. Obviously, we hope that this won't be the case with the COVID-19 pandemic.

They're not the same, obviously. But they're both diseases that can spread exponentially.

Flu isn't a virus. It's a disease caused by a number of different viruses.

But presumably each individual case of flu is caused by a virus? I know there are different strains, which is why there's a new vaccination every year.

I think it’s far from over.

I think the only way Spanish flu was stopped was because of herd immunity.

I think the comparison with Spanish flu is to do with how it spread.

SARS I think was able to be contained because the symptoms showed themselves quite quickly.
With Covid there is up to a 2 week window before people can get ill and even then some people aren’t showing any symptoms which is make it harder to get a handle on,

None of us have a crystal ball, any number of scenarios could play out over the next twelve months. I think most of us are hoping for covid to burn out and go away but in the meantime it’s important to revise previous pandemics/epidemic and take what lessons we can from them. Why wouldn’t you?

The virus isn’t going to go away just because we want it to.

Since only a small percent of the population has had it it's far from over but for economic reasons we won't have shut downs like we have had national wide just other precautions and maybe local restrictions.
Hopefully medical knowledge has now improved, although far from perfy so situations can be managed better, PPE supplies better probably won't be good panics again as everyone realises the supply chain holds up etc.
Still I think people need to still take precautions best they can, like getting vit D, getting fitter etc. Wearing a mask in confined spaces with others esp if more at risk.

I think we've eased lockdown too much too soon. No doubt when cases ramp up they'll be too slow to take action again resulting in another overly long half arsed lockdown.
Happy to meet friends outside and see kids start to go back to school in bubbles but as for the rest, meeting inside etc, 2m to 1m in supermarkets, just not necessary until new infections decrease quite a bit more.
Guess we'll all just have to wait and see what happens...

Totally agree OP.

Second wave will be much smaller than the first. People are also better informed and prepared now.
I cannot get upset about stopping the daily briefings. All they do is spread hysteria. Other countries only do such things when there’s actually something to say.