Coronavirus Pandemic

[Barney]

So in pure theory, that test should be able to tell one if he's been already affected by the virus and now is immune to it ?

Do they really know it actually works like that ? Weren't many doubts about :

- they are not sure yet if you can really get immunity with exposure

It would be exceedingly strange if you didn't get immunity with exposure, you do with anything else. The only case I can think of where you don't is botulism, because the poison produced by the bacteria is so violent that you don't need the bacteria, the poison will get you even if the bacteria are already dead.

Immunity to certain viruses can cause other members of that virus' family to gain entry to your system easier than if you had never encountered it. Dengue is one of those, iirc from my nursing days. Having the antibodies will grant immunity from that particular strain, but other strains of the same virus will attach to those antibodies much more readily.

We don't know if Covid-19 does that yet.

[(o)(o)]

So the UK is going it alone in terms of reporting the death count..
First they are requiring family consent for the anonymised number
Secondly those dying OF coronavirus are being counted, whereas in Italy those dying WITH coronavirus

Ah, yes. The old "if we cannot directly fiddle the statistics we can fiddle the definitions" trick. Last seen, IIRC, in unemployment and homelessness figures. I do suspect, though, that we are by no means alone in reporting fiddled figures..

Incredible isn't it. Satisfaction rating with Johnson's bumbled handling of a global contagion has his satisfaction ratings through the roof!

Oh, Jeremy Corbyn... where art thou

… and then spent a week with a half-arsed half-lockdown.

It still seems pretty half-arsed to me. For starters, many people are travelling in crowded reduced service public transport to perform entirely non-essential work.

These arseholes are still flapping around wrt how to manage the self-employed! Trying to get untrained, untested volunteers to infect the population!! It's like a massive game of cities skylines that's being played really really badly. So much for preparedness and crisis planning, not to mention the 2+ months notice they've had.

Maybe we should have elected a government that's into running the country rather than feathering their vested interests nests?

Regarding company loans - directors have to front 20% of the risk !! Entire thing should be underwritten by the government. It's actually illegal for directors to take out such loands and put their creditors at risk, in most cases, where businesses are on a downturn.

Meanwhile the government is deploying MMT *NOW*. They can turn on the money taps.. *NOW*. How many have just lost their jobs?

Unless they do that very soon, there are going to be riots.

That tipping point is approaching fast.

[KlaxonCow]

- they are not sure yet if you can really get immunity with exposure

You do get antibodies to it. They know that. After all, you can't have an antibody test otherwise, right?

And the antibodies are effective against this strain of the virus because, remember, right now, we have no vaccine nor drug treatments for this. When people recover, that's entirely down to their immune system - current treatment for the severely ill is just trying to keep them alive with ventilators long enough for the immune system to hopefully win the battle.

So we know you get antibodies and we know that these antibodies are good for getting rid of the virus. Ergo, to this particular strain, you will obtain immunity.

These bits are known.

What's not known is how robust that immunity is. And the obvious reason why that's not known is simply that no-one in the world has been "recovered" long enough yet for us to have directly seen if these people might get re-infected 6 months or a year later.

Plus, if the virus mutates then, like seasonal flu which does that all the time, last year's antibodies might not be any good for this year's strain. You can keep catching flu every year, because it keeps changing - or, if you want to be more accurate, you can keep catching different strains of the flu every Winter.

And, yes, what Barney said as well, as he's got expertise in this that I don't (save just being interested in it and reading about it), so I didn't even realise that was a thing.

Basically, this is brand new so there are many things we don't know - in many cases, such as the robustness of immunity, because it's not been around long enough to have even happened yet - but, equally, "unknown" doesn't automatically mean "bad".

There's over a hundred thousand "recovered" people in the world now and, so far, there doesn't seem to be a problem yet. Though, of course, that doesn't mean that one won't emerge but, equally, not knowing something doesn't mean that it definitely will either.

Which is the other thing to bear in mind - this is an emerging situation, so when experts say "we don't know", they didn't know back when they said it. But more is becoming known as we go along.

"The half-life of facts" and all that jazz:

[zip accident]

There's over a hundred thousand "recovered" people in the world now and, so far, there doesn't seem to be a problem yet.

Are there? There sort of ought to be, but mostly there seem to be a lot of cases of "caught it, not known to be clear yet".

This is part of the way down the wiki page for the UK, the image I'm interested in is on the right of the page, a big graph, there are a lot of cases, very few recoveries, fairly few deaths:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coro ... irst_cases

There is no such graph on the covid page for the world, yet.

[KlaxonCow]

Purposefully fake coughing is attempted murder.

Actually, the Director of Public Prosections has declared it, in the case of kids doing the fake cough at key workers at least, to be common assault:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52052880

[Harlequin]

So the UK is going it alone in terms of reporting the death count..
First they are requiring family consent for the anonymised number
Secondly those dying OF coronavirus are being counted, whereas in Italy those dying WITH coronavirus

Ah, yes. The old "if we cannot directly fiddle the statistics we can fiddle the definitions" trick. Last seen, IIRC, in unemployment and homelessness figures. I do suspect, though, that we are by no means alone in reporting fiddled figures..

Incredible isn't it. Satisfaction rating with Johnson's bumbled handling of a global contagion has his satisfaction ratings through the roof!

Trump's ratings are also greatly improved. Perhaps it is just their being seen to apparently be doing something for once. Mostly by sitting in front of cameras to emulate WWII leaders.

Meanwhile,

Ahead of the labor department release, the Trump administration pushed to block states from releasing daily figures on the soaring unemployment crisis.

Ohio and South Carolina stopped releasing daily figures after receiving a memo from the department of labor that read: “The data from these reports is monitored closely by policy makers and financial markets to determine appropriate actions in light of fast-changing economic conditions. As such, the data must remain embargoed until the national claims report is released the following Thursday at 8.30am.”

There's over a hundred thousand "recovered" people in the world now and, so far, there doesn't seem to be a problem yet.

Are there? There sort of ought to be, but mostly there seem to be a lot of cases of "caught it, not known to be clear yet".

This is part of the way down the wiki page for the UK, the image I'm interested in is on the right of the page, a big graph, there are a lot of cases, very few recoveries, fairly few deaths:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coro ... irst_cases

There is no such graph on the covid page for the world, yet.

According to the site that I am mostly using, 121,227 people confirmed to have had the virus have recovered or at least been discharged (compared to 22,339 who have died).

[tufty]

the image I'm interested in is on the right of the page, a big graph, there are a lot of cases, very few recoveries, fairly few deaths:

Well, that's perfectly normal. If you go back around 14 days, you get more or less the same number of infected as you have recovered + dead today. In reality, you'd probably have to go back further, given that detection was a bit flaky at the start. Basically, what this says is that, if you contract covid-19 today, in 14-20 days, you will be either recovered, or dead.

[(o)(o)]

Trump's ratings are also greatly improved. Perhaps it is just their being seen to apparently be doing something for once. Mostly by sitting in front of cameras to emulate WWII leaders.

Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro, Duterte.. what a wonderful time to be alive!

Well, that's perfectly normal. If you go back around 14 days, you get more or less the same number of infected as you have recovered + dead today. In reality, you'd probably have to go back further, given that detection was a bit flaky at the start. Basically, what this says is that, if you contract covid-19 today, in 14-20 days, you will be either recovered, or dead.

Yeah, between 14 and 19 days usually.. don't count ALL those 'recovered' as being A-ok though, like SARS, covid19 probably punches holes in your lungs..

[KlaxonCow]

According to the site that I am mostly using, 121,227 people confirmed to have had the virus have recovered or at least been discharged (compared to 22,339 who have died).

Yes, that's the main site that I've been monitoring as well, from where I got the "over 100 thousand" assertion.

And, indeed, these are basically "active cases" - positively confirmed to have had coronavirus - who have recovered and been discharged (or, more morbidly put, did not die).

This demographic is known to have the antibodies. Because it's from that population that we would necessarily have discovered what the antibodies are in the first place.

So, in saying "over 100 thousand", I was being perfectly conservative to stick to the known "recovered", as reported by governments and health systems throughout the world.

The fact that, yes, there could potentially be even greater numbers again, amongst the asymptomatic and "mild symptoms" sufferers, who have just self-isolated their way through this and weren't ever tested and did not require any hospitalisation, can only increase that number further.

Of course, we simply don't know. Because, as I said, this virus hasn't existed long enough for us to know things like how long immunity lasts, when no-one's yet had that immunity for any significant length of time. But there is at least over 100 thousand people out there - some, in China, who've been recovered for a month or so - who're implicitly finding out the only way we can find out.

I was being conservative with the numbers and was only mentioning those who did test positive for coronavirus, but have recovered since. The people we can be sure of saying have the antibodies - more than that may exist, true, but we don't know, so I'm not hazarding a guess.

[zip accident]

the image I'm interested in is on the right of the page, a big graph, there are a lot of cases, very few recoveries, fairly few deaths:

Well, that's perfectly normal. If you go back around 14 days, you get more or less the same number of infected as you have recovered + dead today. In reality, you'd probably have to go back further, given that detection was a bit flaky at the start. Basically, what this says is that, if you contract covid-19 today, in 14-20 days, you will be either recovered, or dead.

Interestingly, in the UK, much more likely dead than recovered going by that graph.

[tufty]

Interestingly, in the UK, much more likely dead than recovered going by that graph.

IMO, that's more than likely a reflection of how terribly the UK is doing in terms of detection.

[MattyP]

Just went out into our street to clap for the NHS at 8pm. Lovely atmosphere. Felt the warmth of the community around. Lovely moment of positivity during this whole debacle and one I won't forget.

[Cloudane]

Yeah that was lovely. Didn't think anyone would bother here in random housing estate in the middle of nowhere (relatively speaking) - well the entire street did. Every house, someone was at their door or window clapping. Amazing scenes and though it was for the NHS people I felt that it did us all a bit of good that.

[zip accident]

Just went out into our street to clap for the NHS at 8pm. Lovely atmosphere. Felt the warmth of the community around. Lovely moment of positivity during this whole debacle and one I won't forget.

Where was that organised? This is the first I've heard of it, and if it happened on this street I ought to have heard the clapping.

[(o)(o)]

I only have one neighbour within earshot and he reads Ayn Rand. Appreciative of the NHS or not I don't know.

Blasted out recordings of people cheering on the stereo TRIPLE LOUD.