Westministenders: Peak something

[BigChocFrenzy]

Westministenders: Peak something

The story so far

COVID has changed the world for the next few years, like a slowly exploding nuke:

• killed well over 100,000 people
• made many people afraid to leave their home
• caused a Global Depression

Countries locked down because they needed the extra time to

Raise the Line while Flattening the Curve:

1. Flatten the curve of the numbers needing healthcare to a level the system can manage

2. Raise the capacity of their health services and public health systems - their testing and tracking process

Also, scientists desperately needed time to find out more about COVID:
how to avoid it, how to treat it

What happens next ?

Research teams around the world are working to produce a vaccine,
will become hopefully available within the next couple of years

In the meantime, treatment procedures are being developed to better treat COVID sufferers.

Also in the meantime, countries will need to gradually exit lockdown to rescue their economies from complete catastrophe.

Timing & measures for each country will be dependent on:

Death rate after peak,
health service capacity,
testing & tracing capacity etc

....and also what their govt and public deem an "acceptable" level of extra deaths & serious illness.

Possibly some countries will need to cycle in and out of lockdown,
whereas others will be able to accept the death toll with lesser social distancing measures.

The first few countries are already relaxing lockdown,
so the UK will watch, wait and hopefully learn what works and what doesn't

..... then copy these the correct way round

Indeed the underlying conditions which seem to pose most risk for mortality seem to be mainly vascular in nature
Which is a concern because many of these people are not shielded - eg coronary heart disease or valve disease only if pregnant.

@borntobequiet that is interesting - when I first re-arrived on here a few weeks ago I was asking if anyone knew more about the ACE2 receptor. I was reading that ex-smokers have more than current smokers, putting them at increased risk. This is why we need to positively identify who exactly is most at risk.

*more and in more cells around the body than smokers

Listening, I don't know why they didn't realise all low risk prisoners and those near the end of their sentences weeks ago.

13 deaths means there are an absolute minimum of 1000-2000 cases in the system and I would be money on the figure being much higher.

Within a week or two, prisons and other closed community settings are likely to account for a big chunk of new cases. They will need to start testing before release, something that could have been avoided if the stupid vindictive fuckers had acted earlier.

Not "realise" but "release" obviously

Covid is a novel pathogen though, and in addition you can’t copy and paste new science. - While all vaccines work on the same principle, some research is using old approaches (and there is existing work on coronaviruses from previous epidemics) - and some research is using new technology.

Sure, but you are using similar technological approaches, and remember there are existing vaccines for animal coronaviruses and a partly developed one for SARS.

If this was so innately difficult there wouldn't be dozens of vaccines already entering trials. The difficult bit is still to come though - proving that it works and has an acceptable risk-benefit profile.

I know you can't extrapolate like this really, but I'm amazed that anyone would expect the UK to come out of lockdown before mid May. If you look at Spain, down to 410 deaths today and a MUCH stricter lockdown from the start (no exercise allowed, no schools open at all, children not allowed out at all) and only now thinking of letting under 12 s out for 30 minutes a day and extending its lockdown to 10 May and saying there will be at least one more after that...how can the UK with 888 (wasn't it?) deaths yesterday and basically doing no testing and a much more lax lockdown expect to come out any earlier??!!

Some research is using old tried and tested approaches (albeit on a new pathogen) and some uses completely new - yet untested technology.

You can’t just take an old vaccine and add a new virus - because the immune response is different. There is no successful existing Coronavirus vaccine for humans. They have apparently been difficult to make safe vaccines for - partly because of the way in which the immune system functions in the upper respiratory tract which makes it hard to target with a vaccine.

Some SARS corona vaccines caused damaging immune responses including lung inflammation and hepatitis in animals for example.

That said, there are some types of SARS vaccine that have been apparently successful on animals.

Either way, if the vaccine has issues when given to people not yet infected, there is even greater need (if that is even possible) for everyone to be tested before vaccination. I imagine we will need testing more than once if this is the case - at least once to help isolate and with one prior to vaccination?

Birdandsparrow
Because you are equating a competent Government with an incompetent and highly dysfunctional one !

So the suggestion of pfeffel missing cobra meetings "came from Labour" means it can be dismissed? It was never going to come from the government was it?
cobra is only supposed to be stood up for a major incident/emergency - and obviously if the 'boss' isn't at a meeting then it's a lower level meeting - as the times story makes very clear pfeffel was, true to form, being a part time premier.
The government have spun their response as 'having always followed scientific advice' - they didn't and we have 800 people a day dying because of it (and that ignores the uncounted care home deaths.)

Some SARS corona vaccines caused damaging immune responses including lung inflammation and hepatitis in animals for example.

Which was the one that caused narcolepsy ?

It was Swine flu vaccine that caused narcolepsy in some humans.

We have long been told that there is no such thing as a natural famine. All famines are the product of bad government, either incompetent or downright malevolent.

It is now becoming increasingly apparent that the death rate of this pandemic correlates strongly with the quality of government in different countries and within those countries.

By their rotten fruits shall ye know them.

So Jenrick's promise yesterday of a ship from Turkey arriving today turns out to be hot air.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52343912

So where was this ship when Jenrick said it was steaming up the Dover Straits?

Looking forward to Piers Morgan on Monday morning.

I think there are natural famines e.g. when the rains fail in Africa. However in the majority of cases bad government makes the problems worth.

But for good management - see the very old fashioned advice found in Genesis where Joseph stockpiles grain and his brothers come seeking Corn in Egypt.

Or for more modern times consider the village of Eyam which knew to quarantine itself to spread disease.

Will our politicians ever learn, I wonder?

Mockersxxx Absolutely!

You can’t just take an old vaccine and add a new virus - because the immune response is different.

Obviously not. But researchers are using established general approaches to creating vaccines.

You don't create a new flu vaccine each year, you just update it to provide protection for different strains. This vaccine is a more complicated than that (because there is no existing human corona vaccine) but they're not starting from scratch.

No one is saying this will be easy, or that there is any guarantee of a vaccine in the next 12-18 months, but scaremongering about the current phase 1 trials is political not scientific.

And there's no such thing as a medical intervention that carries no risk. It's all about the risk-benefit relationship.

Astonished by the anti-vax stuff on here tbh.

You want to talk about how doctors are giving patients unproven treatments for coronavirus which are known to carry a high risk of serious adverse events?

TBH, when a vaccine comes - on the basis that it will be based on the other corona virus ones and will have been moderated across dozens of labs across the world - I'll be quite happy to have it
(hopefully the scar will line up neatly with my smallpox ad BCG)
but I still think that a fully functioning vaccine will arrive too late to make a real difference

But for good management - see the very old fashioned advice found in Genesis where Joseph stockpiles grain and his brothers come seeking Corn in Egypt.

It's fair to say that part of what makes an empire an empire is the ability to override nature with planning, cooperation and understanding.

Astonished by the anti-vax stuff on here tbh.

When you say "here" do you mean this thread, or MN in general ? Maybe it's my turn to be dim, but I don't see much anti vax on this thread. Discussion and debate possibly. But no outright anti-vaxxing going on.

Will our politicians ever learn, I wonder?

As J C Juncker said, "We all know what to do, we just don’t know how to get re-elected after we’ve done it."

Swedish
SO SO TRUE

Who believes in synchronicity ? This floated through my FB feed today and seemed to resonate in an I Ching sort of way ...

Emperor HADRIAN (76 - 138 AD)
Reconstruction is made by History in 3D

"Once, when a woman made a request of him as he passed by on a journey, he at first said to her, "I haven't time," but afterwards, when she cried out, "Cease, then, being emperor," he turned about and granted her a hearing." - Cassius Dio.

(Hadrian being one of Romes best known emperors in Britain, and responsible for the ongoing wonders of the excavations at Vindolanda - the only preserved Roman writing in the whole empire !)