Covid--new restrictions.

[DonPeffers]

It seems about 80% who catch covid are asymptomatic and suffer no lasting effects. (https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-up-to-80-of-covid-19-patients-have-no-symptoms-health-secretary-says-12004987  and  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/08/majority-people-test-positive-coronavirus-asymptomatic-tested/ ).

 

Average age of someone dying of covid is (Scotland) 81 for men and 85 for women, usually with underlying health condition.

(Scotland standard life expectancy 80.5 for men and 84 for women). (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8470843/The-average-Covid-19-victim-OLDER-age-people-usually-die-Scotland.html)

 

 Up to 60,000 people (UK  figure) may suffer from long-term effects more than three months after recovering from covid. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/07/nhs-england-to-invest-10m-in-clinics-to-help-long-covid-sufferers)

 

How many counted as covid deaths had other major illnesses but the covid-label is driving decision making?

 

Shutting Scotland's pubs - what's the evidence?  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-54432006

 

"The R value did rise above 1 about three weeks after pubs opened (15 July) and just over 20% of people recently infected report having been to a pub, restaurant or café in the preceding week".

 

What did the non-pub or non-cafe 80% do?   Scot Govt. say cannot prove infection in hospitality. What next?..... 20% who reported visiting a supermarket caught covid so close supermarkets?

 

New infections (Scotland) 6 times as many in 15-24 age group compared to 65+ age group in Oct.  Big increase in infections amongst University students and face-to-face tuition now stopped. 

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8817075/Coronavirus-lockdowns-kill-herd-immunity.html   "Shortages of vital diagnostic materials threaten to derail the target of 500,000 coronavirus tests a day" .....(by end Oct 2020--PM) and why only one supplier (Roche)?

"Edinburgh University study - released on Wednesday - was published in the British Medical Journal, co-ordinated by the Royal Society and funded by UK Research and Innovation, an arm of the Government. 

Its authors said their findings support calls for older age groups to be protected while the rest of society returns to normal to build up immunity.

The researchers said 97 per cent of Covid-19 deaths occur in over-65s, compared with just 5 per cent during the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic".

 

Average age of a covid death is apparently 82 years.

 

So what's left?  A national lockdown failed and recent local lockdowns have seen cases rise a lot. More problems with the Oxford vaccine so hold your breath there.

 

Either full lockdown and more damage: economic as well as 'health beyond covid'     or    try to return, with care, to some kind of normality before the working landscape and Country's finances are irretrievable?

 

 

[Steve (sdh2903)]

I felt that they should have closed the pubs back when they did the 10pm closures. 

 

However I'm confused a little today. Not for the first time. 

 

Licensed cafes ARE allowed to open and serve food but not serve alcohol. Pubs and restaurants AREN'T. 

 

Universities where there is a massive infection control problem are staying open? Yet all their material is online at least till the end of the month?? We've had a difficult discussion with our daughter and she's decided to come home this weekend for a few weeks after her second period of self isolation. The only reason they are keeping them open is to keep taking the rent monies. 

[Blatman]

5 hours ago, DonPeffers said:

and why only one supplier (Roche)?

Reliability of the test? There are definitely less reliable tests out there.

 

5 hours ago, DonPeffers said:

Its authors said their findings support calls for older age groups to be protected while the rest of society returns to normal to build up immunity.

There's no evidence that immune response is strong or long lasting and there are plenty of scientists who disagree strongly with that course of action.

Obviously long term immunity is un-knowable as we're less than 12 months from the emergence of the disease and less than 9 months since it was starting to be take seriously by most except Trump. 

At some point the immunity question will shift to figuring out whether immunity from the virus is better or worse than immunity from a vaccine. Either way, my very personal opinion is we need to keep social distancing, wearing masks/gloves and washing hands until a proven vaccine is jabbed into me. But I digress...

 

3 hours ago, Steve (sdh2903) said:

I felt that they should have closed the pubs back when they did the 10pm closures. 

Yup. I'm sure the only people who looked at that as a good idea are the same ones propping up the bar until requested to leave.

 

 

[jim_l]

 

When contact traced people are asked 'when they had close interaction with the named contact..' this is what they say: 

 

 

So with the ban on inter-household visiting in the worst areas , and if students have got over their freshers week, we may see a downward impact on cases, needs to happen soon though. 

 

Next step is to think, well somebody has to be going out of the house and bringing it back, and the following is anecdotal rather than science, but I look at schools, gyms, shops, hospitals etc and they look like relatively safe places to me,  9 million staff and students went back to school and there was hardly a blip, and you can find supermarkets where 99% are wearing masks and keeping distant , even on Merseyside.  Prime suspect for me was our town centres a week or so ago. 

 

We'll see.

Edited October 8, 2020 by jim_l

[Blatman]

What level of confidence do we have that this is accurate? To me there are so many variables and with infection to symptoms being on average 3 to 5 days (I think...) and 80% of cases presenting as asymptomatic I struggle with this data set.

Jim do you have any insight as to how we can look at these with any confidence?

[jim_l]

I can’t justify it statistically Blatters, am fairly sure a brighter person than me could though, that is what PHE are using to get the best idea of where transmission is taking place.

 

From ‘how test and trace works’ …If someone you have been within a metre of (or within 2 metres of for 15 minutes) tests positive, then you test positive and are asked where that is likely to have happened, you would get it right most of the time wouldn’t you?

 

Time and proximity increase the viral load and will result in more symptomatic and sick cases, we are not talking about passing in the street. Many asymptomatic people will pass each other, possibly transmit a small viral load, and know nothing about it.

 

With a sample size of 70,000 people though I think this is a very strong pointer to ‘where the symptomatic and sick people are getting it'. 

[jim_l]

You made a few references above Don to life expectancy, the extent to which the victims tend to be older people, and how few young people have any adverse effects. 

I shall carefully avoid ascribing a view based on that, but if we think of protecting the elderly and everyone else 'getting on with it’ it is important to have a feel for our demographics: 

We have 7 million 65 to 75-year olds - case fatality estimates approach 2%

We have 4 million 75- 85-year olds - case fatality about 5%

We have 1.6 million over 85’s - case fatality for that age group in the region of 15% to 20% (estimates from Spain and Italy)

 

Based on those fatality rates, if they all got it 600,000 would die, we would have to protect them well.  Is it even possible to protect that many people?  they live in houses and require other people to come and go, or care homes where shifts of staff come and go (Some view visiting restrictions in care homes as cruelty)

 

This is a population that the NHS has spent about £1 trillion keeping alive over the past decade or so. 

[Steve (sdh2903)]

On the flip side of that Jim. If we don't start to 'get on with it' in some respect how many die from cancer who's treatment has been compromised? How many from heart disease? Other serious issues not picked up by telephone consultation? 

 

My own mother was hours away from becoming a statistic last week after falling through the gaps of basic treatment of her heart condition. I'm pretty certain that the gaps were never there in her previously excellent care and treatment pre covid. 

 

And then the big question. What do we do if no vaccination appears?

 

1 hour ago, jim_l said:

then you test positive and are asked where that is likely to have happened, you would get it right most of the time wouldn’t you?

 

After a night out on the beer? Judging by what's been going on in our town centres every weekend then not a chance. 

[AdamR]

35 minutes ago, jim_l said:

This is a population that the NHS has spent about £1 trillion keeping alive over the past decade or so. 

 

For me, this is another point.

 

We (the modern West) seem to place such an emphasis on length of life rather than quality. Totally the wrong way to do it IMO, for many reasons.

 

I could waffle on for ages about this, but I'll leave it there as my thoughts about the subject don't often align with others!

[jim_l]

8 minutes ago, Steve (sdh2903) said:

On the flip side of that Jim. If we don't start to 'get on with it' in some respect how many die from cancer who's treatment has been compromised? How many from heart disease? Other serious issues not picked up by telephone consultation? 

 

Wholeheartedly agree Steve, I was just fleshing out the picture of a 'get on with it' strategy, it seems stark. We have a certain amount of healthcare capacity, common sense would target that at adding quality and years of life to younger people, which will mean telling the very elderly to 'shield for their lives' .  All that aside from an economic catastrophe, Who'd be in government? 

 

In March any discussion of herd immunity was considered to be abhorrent, not now. 

 

[jim_l]

11 minutes ago, AdamR said:

We (the modern West) seem to place such an emphasis on length of life rather than quality. Totally the wrong way to do it IMO, for many reasons.

 

Agreed again,  the conversation needs to be had, but you won't find any politician raising the issue, the press and other parties would have a field day.   I told my kids I don't want them remembering an old man sat in a chair being spoon fed and having his nappy changed. 

 

[Blatman]

1 hour ago, jim_l said:

From ‘how test and trace works’ …If someone you have been within a metre of (or within 2 metres of for 15 minutes) tests positive, then you test positive and are asked where that is likely to have happened, you would get it right most of the time wouldn’t you?

 

As Steve says where we have people going out as if life were already back to normal can we really take those numbers at face value. I do appreciate that we must have some numbers and that history will likely prove them to be inaccurate. BUT did the inaccuracy lead to a poor decision being made? We won't know the answer to that any time soon.

 

6 minutes ago, jim_l said:

In March any discussion of herd immunity was considered to be abhorrent, not now.

 

As ever it's all about money. We can't afford the restrictions for too much longer. The left leaning press will ascribe this to fat cat millionaires/billionaires who are losing profit where any sane minded person will say that as ever it is the lower income families who are really suffering here. The self employed and those on zero hours simply can't afford to be off work for yet more lockdown time.  

 

1 minute ago, jim_l said:

Agreed again,  the conversation needs to be had, but you won't find any politician raising the issue, the press and other parties would have a field day.   I told my kids I don't want them remembering an old man sat in a chair being spoon fed and having his nappy changed. 

 

100% agree with that Jim and Adam. I'm betting perspectives change when we see a parent/grandparent with Secondary Progressive MS or Parkinsons or Motor Neurne Disease or Dementia or... well the list goes on... One worries for quality of life along with actual health issues and the immediate treatment/symptom relief thereof.

[Man On The Clapham Omnibus]

Of course most interactions are household! Just as (statistically) most road accidents happen within two miles of home! Best park three miles away then!

Sometimes I look at my telephone 'missed calls' log and cannot think for the life of me where the hell I was to miss the call! It's hopeless to expect any degree of accuracy from several days earlier in just the person's memory. Home is where we all spend the majority of nights so we're bound to say "Well, I was at home, of course..." But where did the infection come from before that? Not the cat, that's for sure! Where you spread it to is one factor, but where you got it is also important. Keep 'location' on in your 'phone options and Google Maps 'your timeline' will tell you where you were at any given time.

[jim_l]

9 minutes ago, Man On The Clapham Omnibus said:

Of course most interactions are household!

 

I think the question is more specific 'where did you , infected person C, spend time with infected person B, (or vice versa)  I agree that on its own it isn't that useful, it is what I would have hypothesised before I saw the data, people that live together or spend time in each other's homes infect each other if they have it, much more often than two people passing in a shop.    I don't think the app registers anything less than 15 minutes as contact does it? 

 

What we really need to know of course is 'where did infected person A , who brought it into the house, get it, who is moving it from house to house?  This is where it falls down if everyone is out partying and not following the rules. 

[Rory's Dad]

It's just such a worry... Weatherspoons is one thing, my local something completely different thank goodness!