Coronavirus Pandemic

[Rhythm]

854 today. I know they said yesterday's numbers were typically "blippy" as the post-weekend numbers have traditionally been lower than usual, but wow.

On track for 10k deaths by Friday/Saturday

[Harlequin]

Oh. I am pleased to see I was not the only person wondering if this might be viable:

Plasma from coronavirus survivors found to help severely ill patients

[Rhythm]

Oh. I am pleased to see I was not the only person wondering if this might be viable:

Plasma from coronavirus survivors found to help severely ill patients

Except the subjects were also receiving other treatments and the study wasn't randomised in any meaningful way, it seems :-/

[Harlequin]

Oh. I am pleased to see I was not the only person wondering if this might be viable:

Plasma from coronavirus survivors found to help severely ill patients

Except the subjects were also receiving other treatments and the study wasn't randomised in any meaningful way, it seems :-/

Indeed. Nothing there could be considered a proper trial. I just like to see that I was not alone in considering it.

[Rhythm]

854 today. I know they said yesterday's numbers were typically "blippy" as the post-weekend numbers have traditionally been lower than usual, but wow.

On track for 10k deaths by Friday/Saturday

Hmm, final official figures for the day are somewhat lower than that initial call. Still high, at 786

[Cloudane]

I hope there is some kind of immunity after people get it otherwise we could be stuck hiding from this thing forever?

Locking down for a bit is fine but I think there'll eventually come a point where we ask ourselves "if life from now on is nothing but isolation, then what is the point of living"

[Little stoned kiwi]

New Zealand's strategy is to eliminate the virus, rather than letting it slowly spread, with the quick and hard lockdown. If successful there will be tight border controls to stop it re-entering the country until a vaccine is developed.

[KlaxonCow]

My understanding is that the only way to beat a highly contagious virus is via herd immunity

The 'flu is also a contagious virus.

How's the "herd immunity" end game going with that one? When are we finally going to get that one licked by just letting folks get it, eh?

Oh, right. Never. Because it keeps mutating and every time it mutates, then any previous "herd immunity" becomes null and void - including the artificial herd immunity that we humans painstakingly engineer in the form of vaccines.

The herd is immune to this particular strain. But if the strain changes, then all bets are off. We're back to square one, and back to lockdowns and all the rest of it for "SARS 3" and "SARS 4" and so on.

"Herd immunity" is not a plan. It's what inevitably happens if you fail to otherwise get a handle on things.

It's a failure state and "herd immunity" as a supposed "plan" is nothing more than a surrender. Which, if this reaches millions and millions of infected, then the chance of mutation greatly increases and then we'll never be rid of it, as we'll be forever reset to square one again and again - just like with the flu.

So it's a surrender to an entity that is incapable of mercy, which'll very likely not even actually work. Because if this strain mutates to a new one then our "herd immunity" to this becomes null and void, our efforts towards a vaccine become invalidated and we could end up in the eternal "cat and mouse" we forever play with the flu forever more every Winter.

But the most crucial point is that "herd immunity" happens anyway. So if our current consensus plan of "deny it new hosts" doesn't send it to extinction - which, by the way, is a possibility if we can literally get new infections down to zero everywhere on the planet simultaneously for two to three weeks - then its failure will naturally end up as "herd immunity" regardless.

There's no point aiming for "herd immunity". Rather we should aim for pro-active extermination, via a "deny it hosts" strategy, and if that doesn't work, then we'll end up at "herd immunity" in our failure anyway. Might as well give it a go, as it might just work, and if it doesn't, then we're back where we are anyway.

Plus, we buy more time. Successful treatments for this - potentially making it drastically less lethal - could be developed (as they're definitely being worked on) and then there's ultimately a vaccine, which allows us to manually give people "herd immunity" in a not-dicing-with-death way.

On top of the obvious notions of "flattening the curve" can keep numbers down, so health systems are not overwhelmed - and patients can get treatment - because if the capacity is exceeded, then people will just have to be left to die horribly without any treatment, as it's just not physically there to be able to give it to them.

Letting this run wild is not a plan. It's sheer madness, that likely would not even work anyway - as I say, how's the "herd immunity" thing working out for the 'flu so far?

[Harlequin]

Has herd immunity via contagion ever worked for eradicating a virus that infects humans? The only effectiveness that I can recall has been via mass vaccination.

[Little stoned kiwi]

The 'flu is also a contagious virus.

How's the "herd immunity" end game going with that one? When are we finally going to get that one licked by just letting folks get it, eh?

Oh, right. Never. Because it keeps mutating and every time it mutates, then any previous "herd immunity" becomes null and void - including the artificial herd immunity that we humans painstakingly engineer in the form of vaccines.

The herd is immune to this particular strain. But if the strain changes, then all bets are off. We're back to square one, and back to lockdowns and all the rest of it for "SARS 3" and "SARS 4" and so on.

Covid is a novel virus, meaning our immune systems are unfamiliar with its type because... it's novel.
Immunity will mean mutations, which are different rather than novel, will be resisted . Slowing their spread and minimising the harm they cause.
Vaccinations are simply a method of getting the virus so your immune system can deal with exposure to it and faster to react to mutated strains.

[gilesgoat]

Correct me if I am wrong there's a point about "mutations", NOT ALL mutations are worse, some actually could be better in the sense they could be less dangerous.

Problem is "you don't know what/how it can mutate into".

But I don't know .. if as you say "the vaccine is going to protect us ONLY for THIS particular hopefully yet-non-mutated variant" .. then it's still "almost pointless" even to have a vaccine ?

[gilesgoat]

I hope there is some kind of immunity after people get it otherwise we could be stuck hiding from this thing forever?

Locking down for a bit is fine but I think there'll eventually come a point where we ask ourselves "if life from now on is nothing but isolation, then what is the point of living"

It's not just that .. we'll run out of resources .. there's only so much government and stuff can give, what happens when - not too long in time - cause too less work or no work we all ran out of money and there's nothing we can buy or sell ?

Then we'll be totally PRAYING someone would sent us some pieces of food ? And even that how long can it last ?

It'll get the point then "there's nothing else, there's no one giving us food" .. people rioting smashing whatever they find robbing all shops or things that still have something edible ?

Then what ? .. even that .. how long can it last .. 2 months ? .. 3 months ? .. then everyone is run out of food ?

Will it turn into a "zombie scenario" people risking lives "going out" to try to find anything, something to eat in a semi-destroyed remaining of what once was a society ?

Armored tanks in the streets ? Rich people closing themselves into guarded places ? "Some mutants" immune to the virus going around trying to survive ?

I mean seriously "I do have some money now, for now, it's not going to last forever then what if some sort of work/commerce on a larger scale does not restart ?"

We can't all or everything work "from home" ..

[edit] - also "what about those I give you some loan XYZ while ..." .. then "on the top of this crisis" we'll found ourselves totally shit in debts - we could probably never repay - for the rest of our miserable lives ?

Yeah you can give me money then you want it back .. well thanks keep or don't even think to see me giving it back ..

[KlaxonCow]

I hope there is some kind of immunity after people get it otherwise we could be stuck hiding from this thing forever?

To be clear, there definitely is immunity.

Those who've had it have antibodies against it. We know this for a fact - that's what the "antibody tests" are all about detecting, of course.

And the other point is that we currently have no treatments for this. When people recover, that's 100% down to their own immune systems. So, you know, we also know for a fact that the antibodies produced by the immune system can and do get rid of the virus - otherwise, no-one would ever recover, as we have no treatments, so it's only the immune system alone doing the work here currently.

I think there is some confusion on this topic. There is no question that the immune system produces antibodies that are capable of getting rid of this strain of the virus. If that wasn't true, then absolutely no-one getting this would ever recover.

The "known unknown" here is not whether you get immunity or not - you certainly do - but we're not sure of its robustness.

How long is this immunity good for? How weak / strong is it?

And the simple reason why this is a "known unknown" is because, well, no-one's ever had this thing for more than 4 months at the most. First cases in December.

And we know from other diseases that this can vary. Some diseases - i.e. chicken pox - give you immunity that's basically good for life. Some are long-lasting but need a "booster". With the flu, the damn thing never stops mutating, so you can keep catching the new strain of it every single Winter (note that your immunity to last year's flu remains perfectly good, though, but because it keeps changing itself all the time, that's not useful for seeing off this year's new strain).

Where on that spectrum will this one end up? We don't yet know. It's not been around long enough. No-one's had it that long to show us. It didn't exist until December last year, as far as we're aware. Will it mutate? Maybe. But, basically, until it does mutate, we can't really know how likely or unlikely that is with this brand new virus.

You get the gist. These are unknown, because this is brand new and no-one's had it long enough. So we can't say with certainty if immunity'll still be good a year from now, because that's not happened anywhere yet.

In fairness, though, there's no particular reason to think that "unknown" automatically means bad news. Immunity seems good so far. There were some confused reports of a a potential re-infection of someone who'd already had it in China. Maybe. But this is a one-off anomaly, which was not really rigorously shown to scientifically be the case, so should be put in the "rumour" category.

But, thinking statistically, if re-infection were likely, then it'd be common and we'd be seeing hospital re-admissions at scale by now, which we're not seeing, and we'd know the answer already.

The immune system is definitely producing antibodies that are seeing this off - otherwise, no-one would ever recover - and though we can't exactly say how robust that immunity is - because it's just not been around long enough yet for us to be able to point at anyone and say "look, his immunity's still good 6 months later!" because we've not had this 6 months yet - there's the logic that it must be at least reasonably good immunity for a few months simply because, by now, with how contagious this thing is, we'd be seeing hospital re-admissions that would have already told us that the immunity is very poor.

"Unknown" doesn't automatically mean "bad news". It means "no news".

But, actually, there's statistically some hope in that, because the longer things go with "no news", then though that's not "good news", it's also not "bad news" either. We can take some comfort in the idea that if this was really "bad news" - no lasting immunity at all - then we'd already have had that "bad news" come in by now.

[Cloudane]

Okay that makes sense and is a bit less scary than the talk of complete civilisation collapse and zombie apocalypse scenarios


Thicko questions / trying to understand exceedingly complex things based on GCSE level biology: it's a little while ago but I'm sure I remember learning about vaccines in school and them basically just being a very small quantity of the virus. Small enough that your immune system can figure it out and produce its own antibody, without getting overwhelmed. Is that not possible with this? And if it was, is wiping down the tiny amounts of it that might be on food packaging etc cheating yourself out of a potential defence against it in bigger doses?

The fact the PM has gone down with it and is almost certainly at death's door (I don't believe all this playing down they're doing) after going around shakings hands with patients all over the place, seems to further support the theory that you're more fucked the more you're exposed to it, or "viral load"

[KlaxonCow]

Immunity will mean mutations, which are different rather than novel, will be resisted . Slowing their spread and minimising the harm they cause.

Okay, yes, I perhaps exaggerate in saying "back to square one".

The immune system, having dealt with the previous strain, is not totally starting from scratch in learning to resist this new variant, and not all the effort put into the vaccine will be in vain because the new strain will be mostly like the old strain with some changes.

Let's fix the language. Perhaps not "back to square one" exactly, but it's definitely landing on a square with a snake that sends us back down the board again - like "back to square two or three" or "back to the bottom row again".

I accept the rebuke. It would not be a total wipeout, hopefully, but the general point that it wouldn't be too good holds.