COVID-19 Coronavirus Thread

[kamkar]

A look like this is pretty normal then the splendid youth of Denmark have been together even in just small groups.

Bigger groups like the May 1 rally in the park in Copenhagen leave behind 13 - 15 tonnes of garbage.
Seem like Danish workers can unite on one thing at least, and thats making a mess.

 

[Dashmellow]

Yeah the first car concerts here was in May i think, but TBH i have not heard of others since then.
Also pretty damn silly if you ask me.

And needless to say if you look at who is getting infected here in the past weeks, the age group with the biggest spike ( +23 % ) are the 20 to 30 YO people + 30 YO and things are more or less unchanged, it is the damn kids ruining everything.

Yeah, those parked cars look pretty sedate. Apparently, here in the US the crowds are a bit more animated with people sometimes hanging out outside their cars picnicking, cheering or flashing their brights and honking their horn instead of applauding.
There was an article in our local paper about a series of concerts by Grace Potter a local Vermont girl who made it big and is traveling through the area for a drive-in tour. The word I keep seeing is that everyone had "fun" and is glad to be attending a live music event after the quarantine.

 

[Nigel]

Not looking good in the USA, cases are down, but testing is down even more, so maybe cases are really going up? Nobody knows, but %positive tests is up, and with some tests taking 2 weeks to get results, the data we are seeing as todays cases is actually from last months testing!

In Texas, for instance, new cases have fallen by 10% to an average of 7,381 a day from 8,203 two weeks ago, based on a seven-day moving average. Testing, however, is down by 53% over the same time frame. Meanwhile, the percentage of positive tests has doubled over the last two weeks to about 24%, according to Johns Hopkins University. That compares with a so-called positivity rate of less than 1% in New York state, which was once considered the epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S.

“I really have come to believe we have entered a real, new, emerging crisis with testing and it is making it hard to know where the pandemic is slowing down and where it’s not,” Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said in an interview with CNBC. The Texas data, he said, is “very concerning.”

“How pathetic are we as a nation that six months into this pandemic, we can’t get this stuff right? We don’t have enough tests. Tests are taking two weeks,” he said. “We can’t figure out where the outbreaks are getting better or worse because our numbers are so messed up that we’re having to squint at the data.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/12/accuracy-of-us-coronavirus-data-thrown-into-question-as-decline-in-testing-skews-drop-in-new-cases.html?recirc=taboolainternal

The U.S. has the worst coronavirus outbreak in the world: ‘The numbers don’t lie,’ Dr. Fauci says.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/dr-fauci-agrees-the-us-has-the-worst-coronvirus-outbreak-in-the-world-the-numbers-dont-lie.html?recirc=taboolainternal

It is difficult to believe a plan so overt, so completely shameless as creating a false improvement by trying less hard to find cases, is occurring. This however is what seems to be happening.

America is following disastrous Trump advice to slow down testing | CNN

Don't look now, America, writes Dr. Kent Sepkowitz, but even as Covid-19 infection rates are worsening, many states have decided to reduce their efforts to find cases. As a result, by looking less, they are finding fewer cases and sure enough, the case numbers are going down -- a dangerous...

edition.cnn.com

 

[kamkar]

Tailgating are a unknown phenomenon over here, people just get hammered on some bar, then stumble to the stadium, watch 22 people chase a ball around while drinking more beer for 90 minutes, and then go to some prearranged fight or just in general tear thru town like some SS crew in Eastern Europe may years ago.

Personally i dont like the huge resources police have to waste on every soccer match, i say let them kill each other, like let them in to the stadium - play the match, and then dont let them out before 10% of them are dead.

 

[Dashmellow]

Tailgating are a unknown phenomenon over here, people just get hammered on some bar, then stumble to the stadium, watch 22 people chase a ball around while drinking more beer for 90 minutes, and then go to some prearranged fight or just in general tear thru town like some SS crew in Eastern Europe may years ago.

Personally i dont like the huge resources police have to waste on every soccer match, i say let them kill each other, like let them in to the stadium - play the match, and then dont let them out before 10% of them are dead.

Personally, I've never quite gotten the violence of soccer crowds. Usually, we just like watching hockey players punching each other fighting it out on the ice.

 

[jokiin]

TRUMP on twitter: "So, shower heads; you take a shower and the water doesn't come out. You wanna wash your hands, the water doesn't come out. So what do you do? You just stand there longer or you take a shower longer? Because my hair, I don't know about you, but it has to be perfect."

if that's what perfect hair looks like I'd rather be bald

 

[Nigel]

if that's what perfect hair looks like I'd rather be bald

He was quite sure about it:

 

[jokiin]

He was quite sure about it:

I'm sure he was, a lot of things are different in his reality though

 

[SawMaster]

Did you mean his "unreality"?

Phil

 

[Nigel]

UK indoor music venues, theaters, etc. reopen tomorrow,

When cinemas, theatres and art galleries will reopen after lockdown

As part of the easing of the third lockdown, the government has announced the return of indoor entertainment from early summer

www.telegraph.co.uk

But we are going to quarantine incomers from France. I thought France was doing OK, but it does have a clear exponential rise over the last three weeks, a more virus type rise rather than a more testing type rise, starting to look a bit like USA, and maybe their counting has not been very accurate in the past.

 

[SawMaster]

UK indoor music venues, theaters, etc. reopen tomorrow

That's a BIG mistake as far as the disease goes This has been a proven fail everywhere that it has happened as from one source you get numerous more infections that spread widely to others before the infections become apparent. One highly contagious person at such venues can end up causing dozens of cases which spread to many areas where the disease gets carried when the show is over making good outbreak management impossible

Humans are a very social animal and that is what makes this disease so vexing. Doing what we are inclined to do creates the perfect situation for spreading Covid-19, so we're left with a dilemma and only a few workable solutions. We can ban all gatherings where social distancing and other mitigation techniques cannot be fully kept and maintained which will make everyone unhappy and frustrated. We can ignore the virus and go on as we want to accepting that it will probably sicken or kill us all sooner or later. Or we can tightly control such gatherings, perhaps by allowing them if the participants will fully isolate and quarantine themselves for 14 days and test negative after attending each gathering event which will also be intolerable to most people

It's always been said to pick your fights wisely and to not fight where you cannot win. But here we have had the 'fight' brought to us unwillingly; we cannot avoid the fight. So we can only choose to fight back with all we have disregarding everything else, or we can accept our guaranteed massive losses if we don't. You can't have both together and end up with a workable solution. Had we began fighting earlier and more strongly we would probably have been past most of the problem by now but we didn't, and unless and until we decide to give this an all-out war in return it is going to continue to vex us, and we will continue to suffer failure.

Phil

 

[Nigel]

Denmark is now included for the Oxford vaccine:

AstraZeneca bags EC deal for 400 million AZD1222 COVID-19 vaccine dose

AstraZeneca bags EC deal for 400 million AZD1222 COVID-19 vaccine doses

www.thepharmaletter.com

Building on the existing agreement with Europe’s Inclusive Vaccines Alliance spearheaded by Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands, this new agreement will give all European Union member states the option to access the vaccine in an equitable manner at no profit during the pandemic. It also allows EU member states to redirect doses to other European countries.

 

[SawMaster]

According to THIS newspaper article, the CDC in the US now implies that survivors of Covid-19 are generally immune to re-infection for about 3 months after they first beat the disease This is the first time a known and respected source has made any official statements regards how long immunity lasts. Do note that they didn't exactly come out and say this- rather they passed along what their studies indicated without claiming a specific outcome, but the outcome and their intent is clear enough. This is good news in itself, for post-infection immunity was in question but it is not a very long time period, and their study seems to show that after the three months you will likely not have enough antibodies left to prevent your catching Covid-19 again So thoughts of long-term herd immunity have closed, and there's a real possibility of annual outbreak occurrences or even their being no end to them unless and until an effective vaccine is put to use

So now more than ever we're going to be reliant on science to get us through what nature has thrown at us. I'm almost certain they can do this, but I worry what the future might bring with other new virus strains which might emulate it in scope and effect What we really need is some way to universally mitigate the harmful effects on all corona viruses on humans, otherwise we're going to be going back down this bumpy road again someday...

Phil

 

[Nigel]

According to THIS newspaper article, the CDC in the US now implies that survivors of Covid-19 are generally immune to re-infection for about 3 months after they first beat the disease

They can't say 3 years because nobody yet has enough experience, it will take 3 years to get that experience! Currently we only have enough experience to be sure of 3 months.

their study seems to show that after the three months you will likely not have enough antibodies left to prevent your catching Covid-19 again

The antibody level does decline over time, however I don't think anybody yet knows how long they are effective for, it is likely that they are effective for a lot longer than our current tests can detect them, and the immune system can easily make some more if needed.

there's a real possibility of annual outbreak occurrences or even their being no end to them unless and until an effective vaccine is put to use

There is no guarantee that an effective vaccine will prevent the annual (more likely 5 year) outbreaks. An effective vaccine will protect us from the resulting death. Vaccines themselves do not do the work, they just trigger our immune system to prepare for infection, it does so by making antibodies, the same ones you are saying only last 3 months.

So thoughts of long-term herd immunity have closed,

That depends on what you consider "immunity" to be. You do not need detectable antibodies to be able to survive a new infection, the immune system remembers how to make new ones and in any case, the bodies main defense is not provided by antibodies but by T cells, and they do not disappear over 3 months, they are currently expected to last years, although nobody actually knows.

This is a cold virus, we should expect it to behave like the other coronavirus colds we have regularly experienced, it will quite likely come around and infect a small proportion of people every 5 years or so. The only other likely outcome is that it dies out completely like its predecessor SARS1, which is very likely for a new human virus, especially one that seems to spread quite fast, too fast at it runs out of hosts, not fast enough and it just dies out when it meets unfavorable conditions, the chances of a new one fitting in the gap between too fast and too slow is quite low.

Fauci says that USA can't have herd immunity because Americans are too fat, so you are in trouble if a vaccine doesn't arrive!

Letting the virus spread uncontrollably to achieve herd immunity would bring the death toll to a level that’s “totally unacceptable,” Fauci said. Americans tend to have more underlying conditions, like diabetes and obesity, that lead to more serious cases and even death from the coronavirus.

“If you look at the United States of America with our epidemic of obesity as it were, with the number of people with hypertension, with the number of people with diabetes, if everyone got infected, the death toll would be enormous and totally unacceptable,” Fauci said.

'The death toll would be enormous,' Fauci says of herd immunity to coronavirus in the U.S.

Most scientists think 60% to 80% of the population needs to be vaccinated or have natural antibodies to achieve herd immunity.

www.cnbc.com

 

[Nigel]

That's a BIG mistake as far as the disease goes

It is certainly a risk, but they have made the change at a time when other things are not changing, so in a couple of weeks time it should be obvious if it causes a problem and that this was the cause of the problem, and then it can be undone again.

I suspect it will go OK, remembering that the warm spots have lock-downs that will override this, and that we should have effective contact tracing if someone does spread the virus at an event.

We can only do this if we are close to having sufficient heard immunity, if we haven't got sufficient then we will soon find out! It is unlikely to cause another major outbreak here, just a few spikes that can be dealt with, and if it doesn't work out then the cases will soon drop away again when they are re-banned, so more an experiment than a BIG mistake.

 

[SawMaster]

There's nothing to experiment with; the end effects are already known. You'll see many "local" lockdowns occuring over a wide area from non-local people visiting and then taking the disease back home with them. The effect will be especially pronounced among younger folks who are more than willing to take unnecessary risks to have their fun. By the time the newly-spread cases are discovered there will have already been spreading where they are so a venue event which affects ten will generate dozens of cases- maybe hundreds- which will make contact tracing more of an aftermath-mapping than a preventative measure.

That's how it's worked in the rest of the world as they re-opened public venues and larger gatherings and you will see much the same there whether you want to believe that or not. Mistake, not experiment.

Phil

 

[Nigel]

That's how it's worked in the rest of the world...

Most of the rest of the world does not have enough immunity yet.

All that is needed to keep it safe is to keep R below 1.0, and R for the UK is currently below 1.0, so any new infections that result from indoor live music events will die out over a few generations instead of growing exponentially, and as a consequence the amount of immunity among the people who attend these events will slowly increase making them increasingly safe over time. Anyone in an at risk group would do well to avoid them initially!

The government experts have decided that it is now safe enough, we will see what happens over the next few weeks, a few infections as a result has to be expected, a second wave of virus is not.

 

[SawMaster]

Are these the same "government experts" who said there was no need to do anything to protect against Covid-19 and to just let "herd immunity" do it's thing as the best course to protect your people? Somehow I don't think I'd believe a word they say at this point- I'd rather do my own thinking. Which I do. And it's worked very well with this disease so far.

Phil

 

[Nigel]

Are these the same "government experts" who said there was no need to do anything to protect against Covid-19 and to just let "herd immunity" do it's thing as the best course to protect your people?

Don't think any of them ever said that, the original message was "Flatten the curve", to build immunity while avoiding overshooting on the required immunity. I think USA reinterpreted the message of "Flatten the curve" though, and many countries took it to mean squashing the curve which results in insufficient immunity.

I'd rather do my own thinking.

Of course we are all free not to attend indoor music events, everybody knows that there is increased risk of contracting the virus if you do. With the current UK daily death rate from covid-19 being about 1 in 6 million, and most of those being in "at risk groups", many people are happy to take the risk. The normal risk of dying from flu is over 10 times higher.

 

[SawMaster]

People have shown their stupidity in taking risks with this- you know it's going to happen if it is allowed. People everywhere are clamoring to go back to their bars, pubs, arenas, cinemas, and concert halls. They want this but they do not need this, and there has to be an understanding that as long as our needs are being met we are OK, even if our wants go wanting.

This has nothing to do with 'herd immunity' or 'R numbers'- it is only about the taking of unnecessary risks and having those who choose not to take those risks exposed to the consequences anyway Which is utterly unfair and wrong no matter how you look at it. When you re-open needlessly you allow the bad decisions of the unwise to adversely affect the good decisions of the wise

I don't care about whether someone else is willing to take a risk as long as their choice doesn't affect others including myself, but that's not how this works. By reopening these places you force risks onto the innocent when that is totally unnecessary. These are not small risks, but potentially lethal ones and I for one do not want to see that allowed to happen to anyone anywhere.

Phil