On a lighter side note I watched Outbreak (1995) on Netflix a couple of days ago.
Watched it last week. If you count how many scenes contain helicopters it's very amusing.
Contagion (the movie) however is uncannily close to the current situation.
The plural of (BBC) case report is not clinical trial. How many <5yo have been tested?
Obviously and no idea, but why would the Swiss guy say kids cant get it whilst the UK has had confirmed infections in children which includes at least one death?
this isn’t Whitty’s first big epidemic. There are epidemics all over the world all the time and Whitty’s been involved in sorting them out for several decades. He’s a pro and his involvement in this field hasn’t been academic, it’s been hands on and practical.
Does it explain why the government ignored WHO advice & abandoned community testing, track & trace so early & why Johnson let football matches, concerts & Cheltenham festival etc go ahead in March?
Genuine Q
the UK has had confirmed infections in children which includes at least one death?
Have these cases been confirmed by testing that is reliable?
Have these cases been confirmed by testing that is reliable?
as reliable as any other countries test, yes
The apparent faith in Scientists shown here is as heartening as it is misplaced.
From earlier as I'm late to the party and most of the drink and food has now gone. We can usually tell the scientists as they will change their theory/opinion/recommendation as more observational data arrives. Graham has demonstrated this in the last page.
Regarding masks they may cause risk compensating behaviour as previously stated but may have a detrimental effect on the safety of young BAME males in inner cities.
Some of our police services are tasking their riot control officers with enforcing social distancing guidelines! A strange choice as they are not trained/equipped for public health compliance and are seeking to use public order methods to do the job. There are several observations about this operational mistake on Twitter (I'm off that platform today to have a rest and de-stress so won't be providing links). If you're interested @Netpol is a good place to start.
Kimbers,
I ask myself those same questions all the time.
The only answer I have is that he realised London was consumed by the virus so wanted it to spread throughout the country as quickly as possible but at a manageable level. He let football matches and Cheltenham go on one week and the next weekend instituted a half hearted lockdown that saw the masses head for the hills in their camper vans, just like he wanted, before ordering a stricter lockdown the next weekend.
Job done, virus in all corners of the country at a level that didn't end up (completely) overwhelming the NHS. Call me a cynic but I can't see it any other way. Can you imagine a lockdown being instuted in London whilst the rest of the country stays relatively virus free?
A couple of comments; yes, a child under 5 in UK has died of/with (which?) covid-19 - with confirmed underlying health problems.
Inkster - c'mon on, your post ^^^ is a conspiracy theory; we don't need that - there has been too much what-iffery and just suppose on this thread.
Responding to your invitation - I call you a cynic, pushing an irresponsible conspiracy theory.
We all have views - a few are informed and base their comments on an understanding of the developing science; for most of us, me included, and in the nicest possible way we're just making noise.
Job done, virus in all corners of the country at a level that didn’t end up (completely) overwhelming the NHS.
The government let the virus spread geographically before ‘lock down’. They looked at, and dismissed, locking down effected regions only (mostly London) in favour of waiting for us all to be “in this together”, following the same control measures UK wide. In the end NI and Scotland dragged England&Wales into putting serious measures in place (with pressure from Ireland and France as well).
Frankconway,
Not a conspiracy theory, just an honest answer to Kimbers question.
I'm not pushing it on anyone but it's what I thought at the time, especially with Cheltenham and the heading for the hills the next weekend. I remember thinking Boris is about to repeat exactly the mistakes made by Iran and Italy, where a half hearted lockdown led to the middle classes running to the beaches and the ski resorts spreading the virus as they went. I remember feeling more incredulous during the time covered by Kimbers question than any time before or since.
It certainly tallies with DomCums herd mentality strategy if indeed there was one (the theory was certainly floated in the Daily telegraph).
Persuade me otherwise, I'd love to be wrong on this one.
EDIT
The charitable me would say that they only pursued this course of action once things in London had got out of hand owing to their negligence.
The sceptical me (I should have said sceptical not cynical before) thinks that maybe DC and Bojo were only ever paying lip service to the idea of tracking and testing.
I’m not pushing it on anyone but it’s what I thought at the time
The trouble with your thought though imho, is that whilst the clearly poor and questionable management of the situation at the start does raise questions, your conclusion is one of many and unlikely to be true. Perhaps a more likely answer would be, that those in government are ****wits (in fairness they’ve largely got skills 😂 that do not lend themselves to dealing with a global pandemic caused by a new virus). They didn’t pay attention, didn’t understand the dangers, worried too much about the economy, maybe didn’t care too much about the lives of some, ..., ****ed up.
That is a far cry from deliberately spreading the disease!
That is a far cry from deliberately spreading the disease!
Now that would be a conspiracy theory!
Allowing the spread to occur, “just enough”, before introducing measures to slow it… well, that was exactly what it looked like they were doing.
Gauss1777
The current incumbents are such a complete and utter bunch of cockwombles it makes easy to put all their mistakes down to incompetence.
However, I'm a sceptic at heart and I do think it only fair to consider that the demonic duo chose this path from the beginning. It's also the easiest, laziest option and Boris is nothing if not lazy. Some people are educated beyond their intelligence, Boris is educated beyond his attention span.
I was reading an article about how Greece has been handling the pandemic and It seems they've done rather well with miniscule numbers of infections compared to their neighbours.
It transpires that they let their CMO head up strategy and appointed the security minister as his deputy to implement his reccomendations.
It's the equivalent of letting Chris Whitty be in charge here with another minister appointed to implement his reccomendations. (Impossible given the narcissism of Boris)
This touches a little more on Kimbers question. What we see here is Chris Whitty as advisor to the gov't, not the person who decides strategy, so his hands are tied as much as those of the medical advisors at Trumps briefings.
Wouldn't we all love to ask Whitty the question- 'what would you have done Chris?
His answer would be the definitive answer with regards the actual intentions of the diabolical duo.
The following is going around facebook and it’s clear he’s utterly superb:
It was apparently Whitty's idea that starting lockdown earlier was unworkable, so leave me out of the fan club, thanks.
A couple of comments; yes, a child under 5 in UK has died of/with (which?) covid-19 – with confirmed underlying health problems.
The Swiss guy would be wrong either way if the child had covid. His/her tragic death is not the important factor in my post, it just made it easier to google a confirmed covid case in a young child.
Current summary of covid in children
Have a look at the link, current thinking seems to be that they can get infected but seem to have a very limited role in passing on the virus
Some of our police services are tasking their riot control officers with enforcing social distancing guidelines
This confuses me, as it seems to come from someone with inside knowledge. I hadn't realised that our riot trained coppers were only trained for, and deployed in, that role, week in and week out 🤔
Anyhoo, today's middle of the night musings to ask those in the know - is the focus on Covid going to detract from work on the regular seasonal flu vaccine? I know the flu jab is a "best guess" as to what version winter will bring, but presumably winter 2020 will be pretty crucial to get right if Covid is still doing the rounds as well.
Dr J,
Is that So?
If so you can leave me out of the fan club too as I always believed lockdown should have been Implemented earlier, along with flight restrictions and quarantine as in Greece (and Kenya where my partner is at the minute)
The plot thickens...
As for conspiracy theories, I'm not convinced that the self serving **** wits are capable of that kind of planning. I think the poor initial handling of the crisis, from the moment WHO declared it a worldwide emergency, left them with no time or gumption to play catch up.
We had to go to national lockdown (albeit later than we could/should have done) because a London first approach would have had everyone who could leaving London and heading to holiday homes/family/camp sites around the UK and taking it with them.
I hope Whitty has a proper secure record of advice he gave the government, or he'll be joining Hancock as the fall guy
We do have small units of police who are there to take on the dirtier jobs, provide some properly trained muscles. I think they are TAU, tactical aid units.
DrJ - 2020 flu vaccine
It may affect production. It entirely depends on how the new vaccines are produced but it makes sense that if covid is the priority there will be a large amount of the available production space taken up reducing the availability for other vaccines.
Flu is an odd one though as it is mainly produced from eggs so the manufacturing facilities are less able to be repurposed.
it is more likely that other vaccines get bumped if (a big if) a viable covid vaccine is found
The plot thickens…
Oh for God's sake, just because we disagree with what the experts may or may not have done, can we please stop with "nudge nudge wink wink" conspiracy theories.
It is possible that at the time, they felt the actions were in the long term best interests of the wider population given the apparent lack of enough useful resources to do the "right" thing, regardless of the short term death toll.
I was surprised at the implication that TAU aren't used for regular policing when not providing the muscle. Maybe the need for muscle is greater than I realised
I posted this just over a week ago
A former director of the WHO told the hearing that contact tracing, testing and isolation could have continued for longer across the UK and would have enabled the government to lock down London while leaving other areas of the country with fewer restrictions.
Prof Anthony Costello, the head of the Institute for Global Health at University College London, pointed out that Yorkshire had fewer than 10 cases identified in 300,000-400,000 people around the time that contact tracing and community testing were halted and, as such, could have avoided a complete lockdown.
Hancock admitted the government had discussed it. “We did consider having a London-specific lockdown and decided it was better to do it across the country as a whole.”
This was because people would be travelling between London and other parts of the UK and, he said, it was striking how the country had come together to observe the restrictions. “To separate one part of the country from another has downsides in terms of the national unity we have seen in the response.”
Would it not have been possible in the early stages of this to identify and test those who had been in contact with the small number of people who had covid19 ? Are people now dying for the sake of national unity
There was an opportunity early in this to limit the spread of the virus.
Link to the full article
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/uk-to-start-coronavirus-contact-tracing-again
In slightly more positive news: https://www.ukri.org/news/preliminary-results-of-covid-19-drug-treatment-trial-found-to-improve-recovery/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SocialSignIn
Early stages, and 8% mortality isnt exactly a cure (compared to 11.6% on placebo) but any port in a storm etc
Some of our police services are tasking their riot control officers with enforcing social distancing guidelines
Poor bit of work by netpol. The article used by netpol makes it quite clear that the force in question have set up a task force using tsg as well as other units to support borough responses, it also makes it quite clear that public order is a small part of tsg duties. Not sure who else will actually enforce the law around social distancing other than the police.
Current summary of covid in children
Have a look at the link, current thinking seems to be that they can get infected but seem to have a very limited role in passing on the virus
That link isn't working for me at the moment. Here's a study that shows that viral load is similar in kids to adults, supporting the idea that everyone can be infected, it's just that young people get milder symptoms:
https://twitter.com/c_drosten/status/1255555995671150597?s=19
It's not clear precisely how the variation in symptoms translates to differences in infectivity (for example coughing is likely to increase your personal infectivity), but if asymptomatic adults can pass it on then why not kids?
So, I guess very little is known for certain, but the early signs are that kids do get infected and develop significant viral loads, so to assume that they can't transmit it would be a bit reckless.
Gray - the link was to the don't forget the bubbles site (crap name I reckon, but they are a peads blog and have done a good literature review) which is a summary of the majority of the children and covid studies.
Yep there seems to be no absolutes yet, but the literature is interesting.
Website link
Have added the website link. I think the study I referenced is the top one on the page
Gray – the link was to the don’t forget the bubbles site (crap name I reckon, but they are a peads blog and have done a good literature review) which is a summary of the majority of the children and covid studies.
Thanks. I tried the original link again and it worked so I've read it now. Interesting, and I guess might give hints at the effective transmission rates for asymptomatic vs symptomatic patients. I have no clue how directly the viral load detected by PCR translates to infectivity. I certainly wouldn't be buying a "kids definitely don't get it" claim, but it still could be true that "they are not a significant route of infection". Of course, opening schools will have other knock on effects than just kids licking each other.
Totally agree, if kids are having detectable viral rna then they have been infected. They may not be infectious but that is a different question which is going to be difficult to prove as deliberate study would be unethical to say the least.
The anecdotal evidence seems to point to them being of limited infectivity but it is just that anecdotal which is a worry
At what age do we think this perceived effect wheres off 6, 9, 10, 13, 16, 18. Would be useful information re getting schools open.
Absolutely no idea, it seems from reading that review that the younger they are the lower the impact, but as for a cut off. That's going to need further research, but that will likely need some sort of antibody test and also more symptom mapping to align it all
Have a look at the link, current thinking seems to be that they can get infected but seem to have a very limited role in passing on the virus
Not a lot of real knowledge, is there? I personally think that they can of course be infected, but show very few symptoms, as per many of the population, and hence pass on asymptomatic transmission. In a school setting this may not be too serious for the children (pity the poor teachers), until they go home to be looked after by their grandparents...
There is no simple solution here, short of a waiting game. September... Reset day.
Nope, all assessments are based on very limited knowledge at the moment.
I wouldn't want my little boy going into school then meeting his grandparents.
I just can't see how a child couldn't be infectious, I appreciate in an overall population their impact might be much less than say a working environment. But with colds and other bugs kids are amazing vectors, so I can't see how it would be otherwise.
the data will be interesting in the future but at the moment it is very limited
Not a lot of real knowledge, is there?
Its almost like its a novel virus!!
I would find it astonishing that a virus that is highly infectious and has rapidly spread around the world despite unprecedented attempts to stop it does not get transmitted by kids. But then my PhD was studying wild flowers!!
the data will be interesting in the future but at the moment it is very limited
And even then almost every country has closed schools so what comparisons can be easily made?
The thing is, it actually isn't really novel, it is one of a massive known family of viruses, just that this one seems to have developed some new tricks, plus up until now no one has really cared about coronaviruses as in general they produced mild colds (sars and mers excepted - and also there is the sad reality that those 2 only infected 'other' countries,so the majority of research has gone elsewhere) as I have said before one of the few positives that could come out of this is that the developed world finally wakes up and gives a crap about diseases of the developing world.
One sixth of all common colds are caused by one of two circulating corona viruses. Nothing particularly unusual about them, and this one is not particularly novel. It has just found a new host to which it is well-suited. My comment was really that there is not a lot of paediatric-specific knowledge because kids don't have the symptomatology to draw attention to themselves.
And I too would be astonished if the little b**ers aren't vectors. For influenza the difference is that they are also big consumers of healthcare resource too. And guess what what the I in SPI-M stands for 😉 . We were fighting the 2009 pandemic at the beginning.
When comparing our excess deaths (or even Covid19 identified deaths) with Italy, it is worth recalling…
https://www.channel4.com/news/health-secretary-uk-is-taking-actions-earlier-than-italy
and also there is the sad reality that those 2 only infected ‘other’ countries,so the majority of research has gone elsewhere) as I have said before one of the few positives that could come out of this is that the developed world finally wakes up and gives a crap about diseases of the developing world.
Have a watch of the youtube link I posted of Whitty talking back in 2018. Uk epidemiologists have been directly involved in handling epidemics worldwide for decades. We're not coming to this cold by any means. Epidemics might not have been on you radar (or mine) but the people who need to handle them have been hands on working with real epidemics for years because real epidemics are not rare.
The UK is at the forefront of fast vaccine development as well: https://www.ovg.ox.ac.uk/ Usually the work they do benefits people abroad.
plus up until now no one has really cared about coronaviruses as in general they produced mild colds
So its not novel apart from in the ways it is novel?! 😉
Obviously similar virus are going to be genetically very similar as the genetic material is very limited compared to say a dog or a carrot. But there is no doubt that the novel features of this virus make extrapolation from similar ones difficult for aspects like transmission. No other virus has caused a europe wide shut down since?
must be some good news today, rolling blowjo out for the briefing.
Well, it's clear I live on a street with at least one mean and unpleasant knobber.
I've just returned home after working on the ship for nearly 10 weeks. The boat went into a lockdown 6 weeks ago.
We left the ship and took a direct charter flight home Boeing 787 for 16 passengers. Followed all the expected social distancing, masks, gloves, sanitizer etc etc. Couldn't have be more careful. Drove a hire car home from Heathrow.
This morning some kind soul posted a note through our door:
"YOUR HUSBAND HAS COME HOME.
YOU ALL NEED TO SELF ISOLATE FOR 14.
THAT MEANS NONE OF YOU MUST LEAVE THE HOUSE FOR 14 DAYS"
Government advice says nothing of this. Called the police for advice and they said it's utterly wrong, only neeed if anyone in the house is showing symptoms.
Just reassure me, good people of Singletrack, that someone is just being a vile small minded bully.
I'm distancing myself from Mrs Seadog and the Seadog the youngest in the house as much as practical. Sticking to the bedroom (Mrs in the spare room) and second bathroom is mine alone.
Eating eating in the room, etc etc...
