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

I'm no specialist, but an HIV vaccine is a technically much more difficult ask. Plus, there are extremely effective treatments for HIV. So the incentives are really not at all the same.

Exactly my thought s(plus some more darkly political ones...) Therefore, is it possible more energy and great minds (and panic!) will be put towards a vaccine for Covid? This is what keeps me optimistic . Just.

Piggy yes. There is more incentive for a SARS-Cov2 vaccine by orders of magnitude. Think of it like the Met Office weather warning grid [https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/guides/warnings], which has a scale of 1-4 for the likelihood of an event (1 = unlikely, 2 = possible, 3 = probably, 4 = very likely) and for the impact (1 = very low to 4 = very high).

SARS was probably about likelihood 1, impact 4, given that it was relatively easy to contain (because people weren't infectious until symptomatic) but incredibly deadly. So that would be a yellow level warning. Once contained, it was no longer enough of a threat to warrant vaccine development. MERS is less infectious than SARS although more deadly, so I'd put it in the same category.

Ebola I'd guesstimate at likelihood 2, impact 4, because it's much harder to contain due to myriad reasons (cultural, economic, social) in the countries where outbreaks occur. That's an orange warning, and there is a vaccine.

SARS-Cov2 is likelihood 4 because it's so infectious, and impact 4 on the population as a whole because we are all susceptible, even though it's impact 1 to 4 individually or by age/co-morbidity groupings. That's red. There will be billions, perhaps trillions, thrown into developing, producing, and distributing one or more vaccines. The world can't afford not to.

This is hope MShip.

BCF at 00:42

That's a shocking report about US federal government preventing states getting PPE. Then I remembered the companies who were told not to supply Scotland and Wales.

Really good interview with Dick Elsy on R4 Today. He is leading the UK Ventilator Challenge, talking about helping Penlon scale up production.

HIV is a more complex genetic entity than covid-19.

This is important in finding a potential vaccine apparently.

I watched a bit of Trump's press conference yesterday (for as long as I could thole it )

The older lady who is often one of the experts at his press conferences was asked if and how bad a 2nd outbreak might be. She tried to answer saying that we don't really know and that "it depends" but Trump kept on interrupting her to say that he knew (because he had talked to lots of people and he was now an expert ) that a 2nd outbreak definitely wouldn't be as bad, the virus itself wouldn't be as bad and they (because that are the USA and good at this) would be able to contain it easily

She ended up looking cowed and desperate to leave the lectern.

Pity he's not understood or even listened to this expert....

Coronavirus: US health official warns of dangerous second wave https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52378845

And of course, in most developed countries, HIV transmission is easily avoidable.

Diseases apparently aren't such a problem until they start killing too many white folk - and white folk who aren't gay or drug addicts at that.

Actually, I think the west's slow response to coronavirus is part of that.

Well, yes, this is what I think clash.

I'm a bit surprised that, in all the discussion of HIV, no-one has mentioned that the urgency for a vaccine has been dying because PReP:

www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jun/22/sex-without-fear-my-experiment-with-hiv-preventative-drug-prep

HIV fear is way down in the developed world gay community as a result, which rather takes the pressure out of finding a vaccine.

But I am reasonably confident given the number of candidates and the amount of money being spent on the problem that there will be a vaccine.

Money and will are not the deciding factors though, either the science works or it doesn’t.

However, I’m well aware many teams are optimistic about their vaccines.

It’s impossible to know which way it‘s likely to go until we get to human trials.

I guess I’d rather be neutral until further evidence than hopeful then disappointed.

UK government refusing to extend transmission due to covid and demanding access to Europol database post Brexit.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/23/uk-making-impossible-demands-over-europol-database-in-eu-talks

Well we are fond of cake, aren't we?

Expecting a crisis would bring some level of realism and responsibility to this government is turning out to be quite a stretch, sadly.

We love cake.

Why do we need access to the Europol database? Brexit was all about Up Yours, EU.

This was interesting today - nicotine may offer some protection against it.

There was a response on an "article" in the Sun a few days ago threatening the usual doom and gloom for cannabis smokers, that noted Jamaica had a very low death rate from C-19 (2per million).

Be curious to know what the data from US states where it's legal would be (vaguely remembers they're mainly Democractic ?)

There's also a vague memory about cannabis being a treatment for MRSA.

(I'm mildly surprised the snake CBD oil guys haven't tried to flog the stuff as a cure for C19. Or have I done a good job on my adblock ?)

A coronavirus isn't going to be like a measles vaccine that you receive as a child and that protects you for life. It may be more like a flu vaccine that you have to get every year and which doesn't protect you 100%.

Which multiplies the risks to an individual up considerably, and will therefore need a very carefully targeted approach.

Once again, tumbleweed from the authorities that you'd want to be looking into this now. Not "sometime in the future". Now.

Otherwise the UK could end up being the only country that kills more people with the vaccine than it saves. Following the metric that the London Nightingale hospital has turned away more patients than it's treating.

Could it end up like a flu vaccine? As in only a proportion of the population actually get it?

I know I'm asking for troubling comparing it to flu, but aren't the stats similar for the younger and healthier in terms of deaths?

Could it end up like a flu vaccine? As in only a proportion of the population actually get it?

If it's seasonal, then yes. And then the question of which proportion gets it. I bet Bill Gates would have a team looking into that as a problem in tandem with other work. But then he doesn't have a public to hoodwink, not an office to aspire to.

On a much wider scale, Covid appears to be suggesting that UK politics has outlived it's efficacy. It's actively hindering progress, not assisting it.

*Could it end up like a flu vaccine? As in only a proportion of the population actually get it?

I know I'm asking for troubling comparing it to flu, but aren't the stats similar for the younger and healthier in terms of deaths?*

I think at risk groups will be prioritised. These groups are different versus the flu because young children are at low risk from COVID but at risk from flu.

However, overall COVID is a much nastier disease than flu, immunity in the general population is lower, and it is also much more contagious, which means much higher vaccination levels will be require to give any degree of herd immunity.

If for eg the vaccine is only 50% effective, as the flu vaccine is some years, then it will require mass vaccination to protect the vulnerable. It's a very infectious disease that may confer only temporary immunity.

"the UK could end up being the only country that kills more people with the vaccine than it saves."

Why would this happen, DG ?

What I can see happening is that the UK govt is too incompetent to organise a public vaccination program

but that would be killing people by NOT vaccinating enough to get herd immunity

If it results that repeated vaccinations are required there will have to be some sort of rationalisation (not rationing). Something about 2 lots of "1 in a million" chances not being "1 in a thousand million" but a lot higher. A mistake that NASA made over the risk calculations for the Space Shuttle that led to the Challenger disaster.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

R. Feynman.