Loads of cases and thousands self isolating but how many are actually really ill?

[Marcellemouse]

I'm interested to know this. I know there's thousands self isolating after being in close contact plus thousands of positive cases. Mass disruption to education and work places but is this proportional to how ill most people are?

What is the false positive rate for the test? Had this ever been published?

RBA14, Matt Hancock said 1%, then later said less than 1%. SAGE says between 0.8% and 4.2%. Clearly it isn't as high as 4.2% as with over 200,000 tests in a day we don't have 8,400 positives, true or false.

It's all a bit circular because as we don't know the percentage of false positives we don't know the true positive rate so we can't calculate the false positive rate!

Then there's the question of whether the RNA found in the sample is infective or whether it's been de-activated by the 'infected' person, maybe from an infection, noticed or not, from months ago.

And then there's the false negative rate. Also unknown.

@Marcellemouse

I work within a small online company. If one of us tests positive we'd all have to self isolate for 2 weeks at home which the business would not recover from. If non of us got really ill that would be a business ruined and 10 people unnecessarily unemployed.

Can I suggest that someone urgently reviews the way you are working to protect against this?!?

It's too risky to completely ignore the fact that you might have to self isolate - equally breaking the law (which seems to be your current Plan B) is also a touch risky.....

Can you split into 2 teams who never work together so there's always 1 team who can work? Can you split into 2 workplaces temporarily so everyone works at the same time but split into 2 bubbles??

I know the solutions will affect the productivity etc and be a ball ache to think about / design / implement but it's really naive to just try and carry on as usual.

@BigBlueHouseBear

I read something recently, I can't remember the source now, but it did make me think.

That never before in medicine have we tested people with no symptoms, found them to be positive and called it a case.

In the example of the 770 students, I assume the uni is doing mass testing wether symptomatic or not. So they had 770 cases from an unknown group size. But if only those with symptoms were tested the number would be much much smaller.

We test people for STD’s with no symptoms though don’t we, and we say they’re then positive for HIV or Hepatitis and then treat them for it.

BornOnThe4thJuly undiagnosed and untreated STI can cause devastating fertility damage and death in some cases.

With covid 80% of people just have mild cold symptoms or zero symptoms at all and then it goes. Just like a common cold.

And you really can not compare HIV with Covid.

320 something hospital admissions for Covid 19 in England yesterday. If you google uk hospital admissions for covid the NHS england Stats page comes up.

Ok yes of course they do go shopping etc but in controlled environments where they wear masks, sanitise, distance etc. As a parent of two students at uni I say let them spread it amongst themselves for term one and build up student herd immunity whilst they are faraway from vulnerable or shielding people. We cannot put life on hold much longer.

Some of my colleagues are in their 60s and/ or have diabetes, asthma and other conditions that make them vulnerable. We are all teaching face-to-face as the virus rips through our campus, while the senior management sits at home to make sure that the campus is “safe and socially distanced”. The bar for being allowed to teach online at my university is so high that you need to be practically dead. Now the outbreak is such that the campus security won’t even respond to calls about large parties as they are scared for their health. I’m told that hardly anyone is wearing a mask in the library and colleagues working there are also terrified.

There are thousands of older people that work on many university campuses. What you’re asking for isn’t herd immunity. Herd immunity is achieved through vaccination, not through inflicting serious illness or worse on some of the population so that others can carry on partying.

What is the point of risking long covid, affecting studies, for immunity that wears off quickly, so a few months later they could contract it all again?

Why do people still keep banging on about herd immunity? It. Can't. Happen.

The studies show long term post viral symptoms affect 1 to 2% of those infected. Even Tim Spector of the Zoe app put it as 1 in 50 people have symptoms after 3 months compared with 10% who have symptoms after 3 weeks. It's not exactly a significant risk for the students is it.

And it’s ridiculous to suggest that you’d “spread it to thousands”

But that is how an infectious virus like this works, and why we are in a pandemic, and why things such as lockdown, self-isolation, and restrictions are being imposed all over the world. Because, if left unchecked, one case can spread and - in an astonishingly short amount of time - infect literally thousands, and then not long after that, tens of thousands of people.

There are 34 million confirmed cases, worldwide, despite entire countries closing their borders, and most having strong restrictions if not lockdowns currently. Those 34 plus million cases all came from one case 10 or so months ago.

Long covid is a fair risk. I would always hope my child didn't get glandular fever or tonsillitis whilst studying. The figure are 10% for symptoms at 3 weeks, missing 3 weeks of term is not beneficial.

The underlying heart damage etc in the smaller group with ongoing symptoms is a serious risk. I don't want my child to have a 1-2% chance of serious ongoing complications, that could shorten their life.

We test for all sorts of things where people have no symptoms, cervical smears, mammograms, etc., Have you never heard of preventative medicine?

OP you don't have a Covid problem, you have a workplace problem. What does your Covid risk assessment say? Which GOV 'working safely' guidance was used to prepare it? Who makes sure it is implemented? I spent all day yesterday contacting businesses with positive employee cases in their premises and one has had to shut as they had no Covid secure measures in place. The rest have isolated 1 or 2 close contacts and the rest carry on.

*the business carries on operating

If we stop having lockdowns the virus will spread throughout the population very quickly, and we'll soon be back where we were in March. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to be back to hearing that nearly 1000 people per day have died of this.

That will also cripple the economy, because people will stop going out.

Lockdowns allow us to carefully continue to function as a society, while accepting that unfortunately some people will get it. We don't yet know if this is the correct strategy because this is a new virus that no-one knows much about compared to other viruses, but it's the best we can do for now.

This article says scientists don't know if an immune response makes it worse which makes it even less appealing for students to catch it. They are starting to studying whether immunity helps or hinders.
www.theguardian.com/science/2020/oct/04/scientists-study-whether-immune-response-wards-off-or-worsens-covid

@Marcellemouse

I work within a small online company. If one of us tests positive we'd all have to self isolate for 2 weeks at home which the business would not recover from. If non of us got really ill that would be a business ruined and 10 people unnecessarily unemployed.

but your workplace should be covid secure - ie set up so people can maintain a distance of 2m form others. Unless a worker is within 2m or less of another worker for more than 15 minutes then they wont have to isolate in the case of a postive test. If you cant for some reason maintina a covid secure workplace then you should be looking at least at the use of mitigation such as ppe (masks)

@whatswithtodaytoday

If we stop having lockdowns the virus will spread throughout the population very quickly, and we'll soon be back where we were in March. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to be back to hearing that nearly 1000 people per day have died of this.

That will also cripple the economy, because people will stop going out.

Lockdowns allow us to carefully continue to function as a society, while accepting that unfortunately some people will get it. We don't yet know if this is the correct strategy because this is a new virus that no-one knows much about compared to other viruses, but it's the best we can do for now.

You're talking about restrictions aren't you, rather than total lockdown?

[quote RepeatSwan]This article says scientists don't know if an immune response makes it worse which makes it even less appealing for students to catch it. They are starting to studying whether immunity helps or hinders.
www.theguardian.com/science/2020/oct/04/scientists-study-whether-immune-response-wards-off-or-worsens-covid[/quote]
That article is suggesting that this is one thing they are exploring. The other one being that the prevalence of common colds amongst kids is what gives them protection from Covid.

They also suggest in rhe same article that locking down and closing schools so they don't get exposure to these colds as normal might be an awful thing to do in terms of this resistance.

I’m interested in the notion that if numbers keep increasing there will be a voluntary lockdown.
I mean I know there was one in March, but things have hugely changed now.
There’s no evidence that the majority of people want to stay home any longer - including the vulnerable.
I was in a seaside town the other week with work and it was rammed with the elderly on holiday.
Restaurants and bars were FULL during EOTHO.
The vast vast majority of parents have sent their DC back to school.
Universities are at capacity with UK students.
If you opened a football stadium tomorrow I predict it would sell out.

I’d also predict that if you opened the ROH that would be packed too - for anyone who fancies that it’s just the chances who won’t stay home.

Yeah, people voluntarily limiting their activities pre-lockdown in March were doing it in the face of a disease we knew much less about, and hadn't just faced over six months of restrictions (and bear in mind there are millions of us who are in local lockdown areas and only got a few weeks of relative normality). Lockdown fatigue obviously has the potential to play a part now, in a way that it didn't in early March.

It’s a big gamble to take that peoples instinctual behaviour changes that much in a short space of time.

I think a lot of people have found a comfortable level of the risk we’re prepared to take day to day but this a moveable goal post. My personal risk limit moves in line with the changing situation; if numbers rise considerably and I start to experience the repercussions of staff shortages (due to sickness) in various areas of my life, like a lot of people I suspect, my behaviour will change.

My concern is if restrictions are lifted recklessly there’s two ways it can go and how we recover from that if it does overwhelm infrastructure. It’s a lot harder to recover than prevent. There are pros and cons to both sides but imho the cautious approach is the only morally acceptable choice both in terms of direct and indirect consequences of covid long term.

It's equally a massive assumption that it will stay the same. And a gamble too, given the potential impact on the economy. There aren't any non gambling options at this point.