Coronavirus (Covid-19) Is this it?

[GingerCat]

Spent about 6 hours at hospital yesterday and had plenty of time to talk to the a and e drs and nurses. They all said it was overblown and just a virulent flu/bad cold. Not one of them was worried about it. 

[Retsdon]

3 minutes ago, GingerCat said:

They all said it was overblown and just a virulent flu/bad cold. Not one of them was worried about it. 

Of course, one of their jobs is to reassure people!

 

[JohnfromUK]

22 minutes ago, Doc Holliday said:

Having said that then what's the risk to Mrs H & I? Should we self isolate as we have been in the vicinity of a known case, even though it is about 1/2 mile down the road?

As I understand it - you would have no additional risk compared to the rest of us unless;

• You have been in close proximity (within 2 metres) to an infected person for several minutes
• You have been exposed through touching an infected surface (such as where someone has touched after sneezing into their hands).  Surfaces can remain infected possibly for a few days apparently

No one knows for certain, but that seems to be the current 'best estimate' based on similar virusses.

IF you have been to somewhere where the virus is widespread (Wuhan, Northern Italy, Iran, Korea etc.) and feel ill - you should 'self isolate'.

At present the chances of encountering someone infected are VERY VERY low.  There are (in the UK) 40 cases as I write - out of 60 million people.  In China, 90,000 cases out of 1.4 billion population.

There will be more here - no doubt, but at present the risks are still very very low.

EDIT: It seems that even out of those who suspect they may have the virus or have possibly been exposed - the risk is still very low - I qiote from the Chief Medial Officer today: "As of 9am on 2 March, a total of 13,525 people have been tested in the UK, of which 13,485 were confirmed negative and 40 positive."

 

Edited March 2, 2020 by JohnfromUK

[mel b3]

10 minutes ago, ditchman said:

no way ..............not after she's been away wiv them mongolian throat singers..........she will be riddled with virus and stuff

Just get her to gargle and spit first 😊

[AVB]

My daughter is going on a school ski trip in three weeks time to Italy! The school want to cancel but unless the FO say don’t travel then they won’t be able to claim on the insurance.  Therefore they are still going ahead with it. 

I’m not worried as my daughter is young and fit but you know that inevitably somebody will get it and the school will go into lock down.  

[Dave-G]

9 minutes ago, AVB said:

My daughter is going on a school ski trip in three weeks time to Italy! The school want to cancel but unless the FO say don’t travel then they won’t be able to claim on the insurance.  Therefore they are still going ahead with it. 

I’m not worried as my daughter is young and fit but you know that inevitably somebody will get it and the school will go into lock down.  

Trouble is whilst your daughter is young and fit - she may pass it on to you or other more vulnerable people without anyone even knowing she has it.

I'm still (albeit mildly) suspicious there is something us plebs are not being told about it to make so many governments take so many steps to minimise it if its little more than flu.

Edited March 2, 2020 by Dave-G

[Spoonbed]

We( wife, 2 kids under 10 and myself) were due to go to N Italy at the end of the month. 
We’ve decided to cancel, though the risk is very small to us, just not worth the risk. 
Hopefully the FCO will advise against all but essential travel. If not, then tough- we’re down £2.5k😢

[GingerCat]

6 hours ago, Retsdon said:

Of course, one of their jobs is to reassure people!

 

They simply didn't care for it, said no worse than flu. Pretty sure it isn't their job to reassure another emergency service. 

[Retsdon]

5 hours ago, GingerCat said:

They simply didn't care for it, said no worse than flu.  

Unless your local A&E people know more than Chinese epidemiologists, they're either wrong or lying.

Based on all 72,314 cases of COVID-19 confirmed, suspected, and asymptomatic cases in China as of February 11, a paper by the Chinese CCDC released on February 17 and published in the Chinese Journal of Epidemiology has found that:

• 80.9% of infections are mild (with flu-like symptoms) and can recover at home.
• 13.8% are severe, developing severe diseases including pneumonia and shortness of breath.
• 4.7% as critical and can include: respiratory failure, septic shock, and multi-organ failure.
• in about 2% of reported cases the virus is fatal.
• Risk of death increases the older you are.
• Relatively few cases are seen among children.

This disease is nothing like flu. Tell them to read the news from Lombardy...

 https://apnews.com/837274f1bab9af1aab12f1b9481b2d62....and get back to you.

Edited March 3, 2020 by Retsdon

[GingerCat]

I'm not that fussed to be honest retsdon, just what they said. When they panic I will. 

[blackbird]

We are going to have a far far higher % of older people dying of this virus as today we have far far more old people knocking about.

Edited March 3, 2020 by blackbird

[Bobba]

10 hours ago, Spoonbed said:

We( wife, 2 kids under 10 and myself) were due to go to N Italy at the end of the month. 
We’ve decided to cancel, though the risk is very small to us, just not worth the risk. 
Hopefully the FCO will advise against all but essential travel. If not, then tough- we’re down £2.5k😢

FCO advice and insurance claims were discussed on BBC Breakfast the other day. The GP was sympathetic to the situation and said that if a patient came to her anxious about these matters, she would sign them off with Anxiety and advise against travel. This would support an insurance claim. Very interesting line of thought.

[henry d]

15 hours ago, Dave-G said:

 

I'm still (albeit mildly) suspicious there is something us plebs are not being told about it to make so many governments take so many steps to minimise it if its little more than flu.

Try thicker tinfoil and wear it at all times, even in bed, that way "they" won't be able to monitor you and you will be able to think in peace.

Seriously though, the government wants to minimise the risk so that we don't lose our economic output and get dragged into another deep recession.

[Rewulf]

1 hour ago, henry d said:

Try thicker tinfoil and wear it at all times, even in bed, that way "they" won't be able to monitor you and you will be able to think in peace

Seriously though, you could just block everyone, who's opinions you don't like. 

Result! 😂

[grrclark]

1 hour ago, henry d said:

Try thicker tinfoil and wear it at all times, even in bed, that way "they" won't be able to monitor you and you will be able to think in peace.

Seriously though, the government wants to minimise the risk so that we don't lose our economic output and get dragged into another deep recession.

The government approach is really simple and it is based on mathematical models.  The WHO have also done lots of modelling on this as it was always going to be a thing at some point in time.

The reason why we were not taking temperatures at every airport for inbound passengers is for two reasons, it isn’t in itself particularly effective in identifying those who have contracted the virus (less than 50% success rate I believe) and also what do you do if someone has an elevated temperature?  At this time of year there are loads of people with elevated temperatures from the regular cold and flu virus, do you segregate them all or deny entry?  If you segregate them all you place massive burden on our resources for a likelihood of 0.003% of anybody with presenting symptoms actually testing positive. (Based on stats from 9am yesterday)

Would anybody on this forum actually make significant and expensive choices to change what they do for a 0.003% likely outcome?

Right now the confidence threshold of having to do something different has not been breached, when that confidence factor is breached then we will see a change in policy.

Thereafter there is a second threshold at which point any measures to contain and control spread become more harmful than the virus spreading itself, so for example if you start to limit whole scale movement of people then you also start to deny movement of critical care staff, so intensive care nurses and doctors can’t get into hospital and people without the virus start to die as a consequence of that.  Pharmacies cannot open and people die of heart attack because they can’t get angina medicine, food deliveries become restricted because we are quarantining goods movements inbound to the country, etc.

Loads of people die in this country everyday and loads of people don’t die because of other measures to keep them alive, when you start to impact on the regular function of the machine that balance changes and more people die.

All of this is statistically modelled and the government response is based on cold hard numbers, with a dash of politics, and not on emotion. Our government response is also based on the statistical likelihood of public behaviour as a consequence to draconian control measures.  Will we shaft the economy or cause significant public unhappiness for the sake of making little to no difference in virus spread anyway because we all know better than government advice and will ignore most of it?

The strategy is also to contain, then to slow down and when it moves beyond an ability to control it becomes a choice of is it better to have a short sharp period of acute disruption or a prolonged period of chronic disruption?  If it is delayed into the summer then we are closer to a vaccine or effective retroviral therapy and we also naturally lessen the pressure on the NHS from the winter ailment spike.  If the virus looks like it will trip into next winter then expect to see a policy response for an acute spike during the summer rather than really shafting the health system next winter.

What happens with Brexit negotiations may also see a policy approach to virus containment change based on economic modelling, a small increase above the baseline mortality rate of the UK for a short period of time is likely better than a sustained economic slump where there will also be an attendant increase in mortality rate due to other challenges anyway.

There is no political cynicism, opportunism or conspiracy.  It is plain and simple statistical modelling.

[SpringDon]

7 hours ago, Retsdon said:

Unless your local A&E people know more than Chinese epidemiologists, they're either wrong or lying.

Based on all 72,314 cases of COVID-19 confirmed, suspected, and asymptomatic cases in China as of February 11, a paper by the Chinese CCDC released on February 17 and published in the Chinese Journal of Epidemiology has found that:

• 80.9% of infections are mild (with flu-like symptoms) and can recover at home.
• 13.8% are severe, developing severe diseases including pneumonia and shortness of breath.
• 4.7% as critical and can include: respiratory failure, septic shock, and multi-organ failure.
• in about 2% of reported cases the virus is fatal.
• Risk of death increases the older you are.
• Relatively few cases are seen among children.

This disease is nothing like flu. Tell them to read the news from Lombardy...

 https://apnews.com/837274f1bab9af1aab12f1b9481b2d62....and get back to you.

I’m surprised that you are spreading this sort of stuff. It is very similar to the current flu season and this is not even classifies as a severe variant.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm

New viruses tend to become less virulent over time. Covid-19 is new and not fully understood so concern is appropriate, hysteria is not.

[Retsdon]

8 minutes ago, SpringDon said:

I’m surprised that you are spreading this sort of stuff. It is very similar to the current flu season and this is not even classifies as a severe variant.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm

New viruses tend to become less virulent over time. Covid-19 is new and not fully understood so concern is appropriate, hysteria is not.

From your link on flu - USA data.

32,000,000 – 45,000,000
flu illnesses

310,000 – 560,000
flu hospitalizations

In other words around 1% of people who get the flu need hospitalization. Compare that to COV-19  where you have 13%  requiring hospitalization 4% of whom will require ICU care to survive. 

Sure, there are way more flu infections that there are Cov-19 infections and at present levels of infection the chances of getting sick, let alone dying of this thing are infinitesimal. But  that's no reason for complacency.  I'm not getting hysterical.  I'm just pointing out that an insouciant attitude  of  'oh, it's just another kind of flu' is not borne out by the facts.

[grrclark]

5 minutes ago, Retsdon said:

From your link on flu - USA data.

32,000,000 – 45,000,000
flu illnesses

310,000 – 560,000
flu hospitalizations

In other words around 1% of people who get the flu need hospitalization. Compare that to COV-19  where you have 13%  requiring hospitalization 4% of whom will require ICU care to survive. 

Sure, there are way more flu infections that there are Cov-19 infections and at present levels of infection the chances of getting sick, let alone dying of this thing are infinitesimal. But  that's no reason for complacency.  I'm not getting hysterical.  I'm just pointing out that an insouciant attitude  of  'oh, it's just another kind of flu' is not borne out by the facts.

Agreed, it is misleading to describe it as just another flu, albeit for the vast majority of those affected the symptoms are perhaps less impactful.

I think with the flu we are better conditioned to dealing with it at home so less hospitalisation naturally and with covid-19 there is perhaps an abundance of caution in some cases of hospitalisation.

I have heard some interesting thoughts from virologists and epidemiologists that the way that mortality rate for covid-19 is calculated is perhaps a little misleading too, there is a suggestion that we should use the death rate of today agains the infection rate of 3 weeks ago as there is a lag between death/acute phase of illness relative to the date of contraction/detection of the virus.  That would see the mortality rate a little bit hgher.

[SpringDon]

1 hour ago, Retsdon said:

From your link on flu - USA data.

32,000,000 – 45,000,000
flu illnesses

310,000 – 560,000
flu hospitalizations

In other words around 1% of people who get the flu need hospitalization. Compare that to COV-19  where you have 13%  requiring hospitalization 4% of whom will require ICU care to survive. 

Sure, there are way more flu infections that there are Cov-19 infections and at present levels of infection the chances of getting sick, let alone dying of this thing are infinitesimal. But  that's no reason for complacency.  I'm not getting hysterical.  I'm just pointing out that an insouciant attitude  of  'oh, it's just another kind of flu' is not borne out by the facts.

No one has said “it’s another kind of flu” since it’s a different virus. It’s transmission and virulence are similar. And if we are going to dismiss statistics (even one it’s one country compared to the world), I would point out that flu is not a notifiable disease; corona virus is (at least corvid-19 is, let’s not forget that around 18%  of common colds are caused by a corona virus serotype).

[Gordon R]

I like the way that we readily accept statistics on this occasion (albeit Chinese stats), when we normally shred them as fabrications, biased or exaggerations. 

[Newbie to this]

Quote

From LBC's Facebook page. Up to Day 62

How the spread of coronavirus has been much, much quicker than previous viruses like SARS and Ebola.

 

 

[mick miller]

Some interesting things about this virus:

• It seems to have the worst effect on men
• It seems to have the worst effect on those over 55
• It seems to not affect children or the physically fit too badly
• Reinfection is possible. Not sure if a second bout is more likely to be fatal than the first
• It is way more deadly than flu
   

Edited March 3, 2020 by mick miller

[Vince Green]

1 minute ago, mick miller said:

Some interesting things about this virus:

• It seems to have the worst effect on men
• It seems to have the worst effect on those over 55
• It seems to not affect children or the physically fit very badly
• Reinfection is possible. Not sure if a second bout is more likely to be fatal than the first
• It is way more deadly than flu
   

And other people, it is speculated, can have it with no apparent symptoms. Or symptoms so light they don't recognise that they have it 

[mick miller]

Whatever happens the horse has well and truly bolted on this. It'll be everywhere by now considering how long the Chinese authorities were aware of the outbreak before bringing in Draconian controls.

[Rewulf]