#COVID19 | Page 516 | Vital Football

#COVID19

Woanz said:
let’s be honest Boris can’t answer that, at least he’s stopped going on holiday every 2 minutes but he still hasn’t been in front of anything while he’s been PM.
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Erm beg to differ, there is one thing he is ahead of imo and that is actually being held accountable. The stuff he got up to while mayor should have disqualified him for public office. Giving hundreds of thousands of taxpayer cash to a yank you want to bonk should have seen him step down from high office.

He leads a charmed life paid for by mugs (yeah, us!).
 
Woanz said:
The chancellor & soon to be prime minister is for a start,

North Yorkshire & Cheshire They care about a bit.
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Couldn't be arsed to defend london but cant let the **** get away with anymore.

Truth is boris has fucked london cos it has a labour mayor and is majority labour. Its actually london they dont care about cos it can look after itself.
 
radfordinlondon said:
Tbf the flip side of that argument is settling for second best. I support public broadcasting and the bbc but it is.not above criticism.
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Undoubtedly but the constant sniping from both sides is hardly constructive is it?

Name a broadcaster anywhere in the world you'd prefer?

The work they do with the world service, for education child and adult, for the disabled etc is without parallel.

99% of the criticism they get is from twats who sulk that the BBC doesn't just represent exactly what they think it should. The 1% is absolutely up for debate but the vast majority of criticism is from the extremes of both flanks.
 
Calvin Plummer said:
Undoubtedly but the constant sniping from both sides is hardly constructive is it?

Name a broadcaster anywhere in the world you'd prefer?

The work they do with the world service, for education child and adult, for the disabled etc is without parallel.

99% of the criticism they get is from twats who sulk that the BBC doesn't just represent exactly what they think it should. The 1% is absolutely up for debate but the vast majority of criticism is from the extremes of both flanks.
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Agree.
 
Calvin Plummer said:
Herd immunity looking less and less likely:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...d-with-covid-antibodies-has-fallen-study-says
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I saw this article too.

I haven't read the original paper but I'm not panicking yet. It is difficult to conclude much about the prospects of herd immunity from this result, whatever we are meaning by herd immunity (i.e. what level of protection we are talking about) or how it might be achievable (i.e. naturally or with a vaccine).

We already knew that antibodies fade away with time. I'm not sure if this result is showing that decay to be substantially quicker than normal. There is no more information on any of the T cell responses.
I would be much more concerned with a paper that showed either the T cell response decaying, or second infections presenting on a major scale. The (I hope alarmist) prediction that follows from the BBC article is that we are about to see reinfections appearing all over the world. People might read the article and take away that conclusion without considering that it hasn't happened yet on any significant scale, nor, if it were to occur, what the severity of those illnesses might be. If there is some degree of protection mediated by the memory t cells then we might be in, say, the territory of common cold severity, which nobody would care much about in the long term. They wouldn't care because everybody would get it (probably several times) while youngish, and then not be too troubled if it comes around again later in life unless you are particularly frail (same group as those who succumb to pneumonia in the general run of events).


In fact, there could even be a positive side to this result that the article doesn't consider. That being if the antibody tests that we are using to estimate how many of the population have already had it is a bigger underestimate than we already knew it would be. This could occur if the response decay is unusually fast. We have convered that possibility on here before.
 
in_the_top_one said:
I saw this article too.

I haven't read the original paper but I'm not panicking yet. It is difficult to conclude much about the prospects of herd immunity from this result, whatever we are meaning by herd immunity (i.e. what level of protection we are talking about) or how it might be achievable (i.e. naturally or with a vaccine).

We already knew that antibodies fade away with time. I'm not sure if this result is showing that decay to be substantially quicker than normal. There is no more information on any of the T cell responses.
I would be much more concerned with a paper that showed either the T cell response decaying, or second infections presenting on a major scale. The (I hope alarmist) prediction that follows from the BBC article is that we are about to see reinfections appearing all over the world. People might read the article and take away that conclusion without considering that it hasn't happened yet on any significant scale, nor, if it were to occur, what the severity of those illnesses might be. If there is some degree of protection mediated by the memory t cells then we might be in, say, the territory of common cold severity, which nobody would care much about in the long term. They wouldn't care because everybody would get it (probably several times) while youngish, and then not be too troubled if it comes around again later in life unless you are particularly frail (same group as those who succumb to pneumonia in the general run of events).


In fact, there could even be a positive side to this result that the article doesn't consider. That being if the antibody tests that we are using to estimate how many of the population have already had it is a bigger underestimate than we already knew it would be. This could occur if the response decay is unusually fast. We have convered that possibility on here before.
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Excellent points.

I'm not an expert at all, but from what I have read the T Cells are just as important, if not more.

Reinfections appear to be rare enough that they appear in the media on the few occasions they have been happening. I read that there is some evidence that reinfections tend to be asymptomatic as well.

Time to be concerned is if we saw more widespread reinfections, and specifically, hospitalisations and fatalities amongst them
 
Pope John XXIII said:
Viruses don't tend to mutate to become more deadly.

It is counter intuitive to their survivial
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Viruses do not work on intuition, they can (and do) however easily mutate and there is no reason they could not mutate in a way that makes them more deadly to a different sector of the population is there? Covid has a slower mutation rate than influenza but it still mutates and (for instance) some strains of flu are more deadly to children than others.
I don't know that there is any mechanism that prevents the virus from mutating in a direction that makes it more deadly to children, do you?
 
InvincibleBrianMan said:
Viruses do not work on intuition, they can (and do) however easily mutate and there is no reason they could not mutate in a way that makes them more deadly to a different sector of the population is there? Covid has a slower mutation rate than influenza but it still mutates and (for instance) some strains of flu are more deadly to children than others.
I don't know that there is any mechanism that prevents the virus from mutating in a direction that makes it more deadly to children, do you?
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No. Your right that mutations are random.
However, on the bright side, a virus that is more deadly to the individual might be less deadly to the population.

SARS-COV2 seems to be in a very nasty goldilocks zone of being deadly, yes, but not so much so that most people who have it obligingly keel over quickly before giving it to plenty of others. As it is, it is very well designed (loose language - I don't mean to invoke a Designer) to kill a lot of people. Mutation to more or less deadly strains would probably be beneficial.

However, that concept also presumes that if/when it mutates the old version disappears did some reason, which probably wouldn't happen.
 
in_the_top_one said:
No. Your right that mutations are random.
However, on the bright side, a virus that is more deadly to the individual might be less deadly to the population.

SARS-COV2 seems to be in a very nasty goldilocks zone of being deadly, yes, but not so much so that most people who have it obligingly keel over quickly before giving it to plenty of others. As it is, it is very well designed (loose language - I don't mean to invoke a Designer) to kill a lot of people. Mutation to more or less deadly strains would probably be beneficial.

However, that concept also presumes that if/when it mutates the old version disappears did some reason, which probably wouldn't happen.
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Yes, but that's what worries me. Mutating strains competing for hosts and no proof of long term immunity.
 
InvincibleBrianMan said:
Viruses do not work on intuition, they can (and do) however easily mutate and there is no reason they could not mutate in a way that makes them more deadly to a different sector of the population is there? Covid has a slower mutation rate than influenza but it still mutates and (for instance) some strains of flu are more deadly to children than others.
I don't know that there is any mechanism that prevents the virus from mutating in a direction that makes it more deadly to children, do you?
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I'm not a virologist, I going by what I have read and learned since this started, and some of that may be wrong.

No, there is nothing to stop it mutating to be more deadly. To do so I presume it would have to become more like Spanish Flu and attack healthy immune systems; that would surely be quite a substantial mutation.

But evolution suggests that viruses and bacteria tend to weaken over time rather than strengthen simply because it is not useful to them to be very deadly to their host.
 
While I'm not panicking about the antibody drop off (yet) I'm more concerned by this BBC article that tells of hospital admissions.

It really underplays the situation.

"
Cases still well below the peak
Admissions are up [ITTO edit: to >1000/day], but still nowhere near the numbers seen in the spring. At one point, more than 3,000 patients a day were being admitted.
Instead, we have seen a gradual rise - the numbers doubling every two weeks or so, compared with every four days at one stage of the first wave.
"

That's ok then! Or is it?
At this rate of increase (as in, unless the tiered approach works effectively to turn the tide - who is confident of that?), there will be the same number of daily hospital admissions as at the peak of the first wave in just three weeks. Yikes!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54712003
 
in_the_top_one said:
While I'm not panicking about the antibody drop off (yet) I'm more concerned by this BBC article that tells of hospital admissions.

It really underplays the situation.

"
Cases still well below the peak
Admissions are up [ITTO edit: to >1000/day], but still nowhere near the numbers seen in the spring. At one point, more than 3,000 patients a day were being admitted.
Instead, we have seen a gradual rise - the numbers doubling every two weeks or so, compared with every four days at one stage of the first wave.
"

That's ok then! Or is it?
At this rate of increase (as in, unless the tiered approach works effectively to turn the tide - who is confident of that?), there will be the same number of daily hospital admissions as at the peak of the first wave in just three weeks. Yikes!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54712003
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Yes, but I don't think there will. Case numbers are dropping off already. This is a fundamental problem with modelling; the number of assumptions needed to project this are staggering

I'm never one to say "wait and see before panicking" but in this case there isn't much we can do other than wait to see if current measures make a difference
 
Pope John XXIII said:
Yes, but I don't think there will. Case numbers are dropping off already. This is a fundamental problem with modelling; the number of assumptions needed to project this are staggering

I'm never one to say "wait and see before panicking" but in this case there isn't much we can do other than wait to see if current measures make a difference
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I don't think it will really be at that level in three weeks. I am not making many assumptions. The only assumption I have made in that extrapolation (model, if you will) is that the current rate continues. That involves no epidemiology at all, does not rely on an accurate value of R, or K, etc.

I/they expect the rate of hospital admissions to drop because most of the larger population areas have been put into stronger restrictions. How much difference that will make is a different question. Certainly it will make some improvement but remember that more limited restrictions have already been in place in some areas for a while. Maybe it could be longer than three weeks, maybe, say, five. Maybe ten, maybe never. Who knows. In any case it is worrying right now because we aren't seeing the curve turning down just yet.
 
in_the_top_one said:
I don't think it will really be at that level in three weeks. I am not making many assumptions. The only assumption I have made in that extrapolation (model, if you will) is that the current rate continues. That involves no epidemiology at all, does not rely on an accurate value of R, or K, etc.

I/they expect the rate of hospital admissions to drop because most of the larger population areas have been put into stronger restrictions. How much difference that will make is a different question. Certainly it will make some improvement but remember that more limited restrictions have already been in place in some areas for a while. Maybe it could be longer than three weeks, maybe, say, five. Maybe ten, maybe never. Who knows. In any case it is worrying right now because we aren't seeing the curve turning down just yet.
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I wasn't saying you were making assumptions; I was pointing out the flaws in extrapolation modelling.

To be honest, it's a wonder the nation's mental health isn't in meltdown. Every day we are treated to a new scientist on TV/media telling us that a vaccine won't work/won't exist/ Christmas will be cancelled/ things will never again be normal/ the virus will be with us until at least spring/summer/winter/ the end of time.

Then you have your politicians telling people who are following the rules it's "our choice" whether these awful things happen, while we read this and despair that we can't stop the delinquent family down the road having a party or running a drugs den if the police can't.

And then we have the politicians/ scientists in the media every day saying we are turning a corner, there is hope, a vaccine will be ready by X time, etc.

It's awful
 
in_the_top_one said:
I don't think it will really be at that level in three weeks. I am not making many assumptions. The only assumption I have made in that extrapolation (model, if you will) is that the current rate continues. That involves no epidemiology at all, does not rely on an accurate value of R, or K, etc.

I/they expect the rate of hospital admissions to drop because most of the larger population areas have been put into stronger restrictions. How much difference that will make is a different question. Certainly it will make some improvement but remember that more limited restrictions have already been in place in some areas for a while. Maybe it could be longer than three weeks, maybe, say, five. Maybe ten, maybe never. Who knows. In any case it is worrying right now because we aren't seeing the curve turning down just yet.
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Predictions now include flatter but longer curve, i.e. less deaths per day than the 1st peak but for much longer.

Imo we are still at square 1, without the ability to quickly test, track and trace in a timely manner the above is probably the best we can hope for imo

Lets hope the 25000 hospital admissions by end of November prediction is wide of the mark.
 
radfordinlondon said:
Predictions now include flatter but longer curve, i.e. less deaths per day than the 1st peak but for much longer.

Imo we are still at square 1, without the ability to quickly test, track and trace in a timely manner the above is probably the best we can hope for imo

Lets hope the 25000 hospital admissions by end of November prediction is wide of the mark.
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Not sure where that number comes from but if it is a daily rate then it will certainly be a long, long way from true.
 
I don't know your true figures and by the sound of it there's some doubt about them anyway but Melbourne has just ended 117 days of a very harsh lockdown and the last couple of days have resulted in no new cases. I don't know the full restrictions imposed but at one stage residents were confined to their homes from 8PM to 5 in the morning, I can only imagine how they must feel now, no wonder they're dancing in the streets. I've no idea whether or not we're going to get rid of it as we still get small strikes all over the country but we seem to have a great system of track and trace and it begins to look as though we're stuck with it for the immediate future, probably longer.
 
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