I can't see it being contained here. People are too mobile, and probably too pig-headed to take any precautions. S'ok though, I'm sure we can all trust in the safe hands of Matt Hancock. Wonder how many hospitals we can build in 10 days?
My friends were in Finland to see the northern lights. The place they stayed had 4 hotels. A chinese person was confirmed with the virus and had visited 3 of the hotels.
My friends developed stinking colds. To return to the UK they had a coach journey to the airport , a flight then a train journey in the Uk.
They were then told to quarantine themselves for a week at home.
Door,bolt,horse.
Following on from dazh above..... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51447761
Alcohol containing handgel and disinfectant now on the shopping list; over-reaction? Possibly.
The government must now know that containment is impossible (at least not without basically ****ing the economy). So measures like self-isolation, which reduce but do not prevent spread, are seeking to move back the point at which the impact on the NHS increases significantly, perhaps by a month or so, so it's not running concurrently with normal winter pressures.
Unfortunately, the NHS is not known for having much extra capacity, even out of flu season.
The cruise ship situation is mental, though. Isolation should mean proper isolation, not allowing them to mingle and effectively reset the clock for everyone with every new case that emerges. Some of those poor buggers will be stuck on there for months at this rate.
Given that they were also reporting a 20% mortality rate in hte worst affected chinese province I'm not sure anything is an over-reaction! Althouh more conseravtive estimates are between 3-5%
Its only going to keep spreading unless there are global travel restrictions. Sounds insane but if it really is 20% mortality, insane measures might make sense.
Sounds insane but if it really is 20% mortality, insane measures might make sense.
It's not. There is still no clear picture of how many people are getting it, not getting all that ill, and not seeking medical attention, so mortality is going to be much lower than initial reports suggested.
But the lower end of your conservative estimate is still pretty alarming.
Its only going to keep spreading unless there are global travel restrictions. Sounds insane but if it really is 20% mortality, insane measures might make sense.
There's a fun little game you can play on mobile caled "Plague inc".
If you want your virus to destroy the world (in the game obvs), it has to be a low level danger for a while so it spreads easily until you get it to mutate into something nasty. Ideally, you want something where the corpses are still contagious.
Kicking off properly in Brighton now
https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/18223764.coronavirus-brighton-live-updates-four-new-cases/
Patients of a GP who tested positive for coronavirus are being urgently traced.
Her surgery was closed this morning, almost two weeks after she returned from skiing holiday with the man at the centre of the Brighton cases.
I'm beginning to get a bit uncomfortable. 3 out of our 4 kids work in the NHS and I stay for some of most weeks in a hotel where there are always Chinese guests and Singapore Airline staff. This morning I used the stairs rather than the lift and gave a wide berth to a group of orientals at breakfast. Being over 60 could be a chink in my armour, I sincerely hope not.
Sounds like the cruise passengers are getting a couple of months of free cruise!
Can you catch it again if you've had it before?
I’m beginning to get a bit uncomfortable. 3 out of our 4 kids work in the NHS and I stay for some of most weeks in a hotel where there are always Chinese guests and Singapore Airline staff. This morning I used the stairs rather than the lift and gave a wide berth to a group of orientals at breakfast. Being over 60 could be a chink in my armour, I sincerely hope not.
erm, nah. Not going to do it.
Sounds like the cruise passengers are getting a couple of months of free cruise!
Can you catch it again if you’ve had it before?
A couple of months! not sure I could think of much worse, I'd rather be dead......oh...
erm, nah. Not going to do it.
😀
Sounds like the cruise passengers are getting a couple of months of free
cruisedock!
Can you catch it again if you’ve had it before?
I guess if it circulates for long enough it may mutate into a fresh strain, like flu does. Research suggests that an 'All You Can Eat' buffet is actually the perfect substrate to promote viral replication.
Well, I'm still groggy after first being a snotty lump two weeks ago. Thought I had got over it, until Saturday when I was properly bunged up again.
Maybe it is mutating!
(was at a trade fair with lots of Chinese exhibitors two weeks ago, my work colleague goes through Stockdorf (the area near Munich with the confirmed cases) everyday on the train and I know one guy who lays basketball with one of the people who had been quarantined)...
‘All You Can Eat’ buffet is actually the perfect substrate to promote viral replication.
I guess that goes for buffet breakfasts as well? Deary me, if the virus doesn't get me starvation might.
Just seen on the Guardian that a school in Southampton has been evacuated after pupils who'd visited an affected area came down with the symptoms. Fingers crossed that its just a flu/cold; but I feel for all the parents, you'd be bricking it for your kids!
It's loose everywhere, I really think its horse, door, stabled, bolted by now. Better stock up on lemsip and decongestants. With a 14 day incubation period how many carriers are going to to work, school, on the train, plane or bus?
Latest rumour mongering I see is that the Pangolin could be the carrier, if so its having the last laugh!
I'm going with the theory that its a man altered virus created by the CIA and released in China too wreck their economy but with usual SNAFU CIA planning they failed to see it would "escape" into the rest of the world.
I’m going with the slightly more boring theory that it's a transfer from another species with no deliberate human conspiracy.
Either way, it's loose. How far it goes remains to be seen. The only method of stopping transmission seems to be lockdown and quarantine and nobody here has the political balls to do what China has done (plus, that doesn't seem to have stopped it anyway) and we're "a bit" past patient #1 now.
Got to admit, this thing is probably in a viral sweet spot. Rather transmissive, not massive fatality rate, etc. Could keep on circulating for years...
The only method of stopping transmission seems to be lockdown and quarantine...
...and the first thing we did was repatriate people from the source country...
Just seen on the Guardian that a school in Southampton has been evacuated after pupils who’d visited an affected area came down with the symptoms.
I hope it's something else and everyone's okay.
Perhaps now is the time, as a precaution, to close all UK schools until at least after the Easter holidays.
Perhaps now is the time, as a precaution, to close all UK schools until at least after the Easter holidays.
It's an interesting conundrum, crash the economy to delay the inevitable, or expose the lack of capacity in the NHS to deal with it resulting in thousands of dead people? Either way I wouldn't want to be Boris Johnson right now.
I dunno, I reckon it's easy for him. Which option ****s everyone who isn't him and his mates hardest? That's the one to pick. Job Jobbed.
Edit, actually, it's whicever option makes him and his mates the most monies.
and the first thing we did was repatriate people from the source country…
Into lock down and quarantine.
Into lock down and quarantine.
Providing any number of potential points for transmission...
Basic infection control procedure would be to leave the people where they are; bad PR, good drills.
It's out, innit. Anyone read The Stand...?
From the Beeb:
'There are thousands of new cases being reported each day.
However, outbreak analysts believe these are only the tip of the iceberg.
Their mathematical models suggest the true scale of the outbreak could be 10 times larger than the official figures.
Multiple groups have estimated the number of cases is doubling every five to seven days.'
Multiple groups have estimated the number of cases is doubling every five to seven days.
This is surely good news though, in a way. It suggests that whilst it seems to spread like wildfire, only a small proportion of people get ill enough to come to the attention of the authorities, and still fewer actually die. So very spready, not very killy. Like colds and flu, really. And next year there’ll be a vaccine.
Perhaps now is the time, as a precaution, to close all UK schools until at least after the Easter holidays
I would just like to say I 100% agree with this!
Basic infection control procedure would be to leave the people where they are; bad PR, good drills.
This, I'm really sorry but it is a a poorly understood virus at present. You have to stay put. Remember, humans fail, all the time. Apparently the coach drivers for the repatriated were to go home and self quarantine for two weeks. So one coach driver gets to 12 days and thinks I'm fine, I'll go down the pub tonight for a few pints.........
The opening chapters of The Stand cover this quite well.
I don't believe for a minute the official Chinese figure of 5% mortality, figures of 20% are leaking out.
But its too late (as I stated earlier), its loose.
Perhaps now is the time, as a precaution, to close all UK schools until at least after the Easter holidays
They’ll not do that lightly either.
You’ll have parents off work for 2 months and frankly a lot of them will only end up in Soft Play centres etc.
Mortality rates will likely rise when healthcare becomes overwhelmed.
What's the demographic of those that don't recover, I'm assuming the elderly and those with underlying health issues?
Heard a cheery story this morning suggesting that PCR diagnostic kits in China are of multiple differing types and several are known to fail to identify the virus reliably. So in addition to it being a secretive, authoritarian/totalitarian state, even the figures it's probably lying about are wrong 🥵🤧👨🔬👨🚀
If we get something analogous to foot and mouth transmission rates then its into something fairly draconian to shut it down. We're a highly mobile country with limited slack in the system, poor hygiene and bags of belief in entitlement. Thats not a great start for containment.
Sat next to someone in a meeting today whose kid is in a class with the lad who was in the ski chalet.
😳
So very spready, not very killy. Like colds and flu, really.
Hmmm. I'm married to someone with seriously compromised immune system, for whom a vaccination doesn't work either. Worrying times for us.
Getting a bit close to home now. Dad is 85 and in heart failure, waiting for surgery. Wife teaches in a primary school in Brighton. Hmmm.
Into near simultaneous hmmm territory now. Shit just got real, hmmm?
Multiple groups have estimated the number of cases is doubling every five to seven days
So that's about 6 months to get from 40 000 to 8 Billion (gross oversimplification, assuming it continues at that rate).
I don’t believe for a minute the official Chinese figure of 5% mortality, figures of 20% are leaking out.
Utter nonsense and daily mailesque levels of scaremongering. Have a word with yourself. 😉
True infection rates are very hard to grasp and depend on self presenting patients, accurate tests, good admin and a truthful government. Mortality numbers are far easier to establish for obvious reasons. Hundreds of thousands of low acuity infections are reasonable to assume given the relatively low mortality of those unwell enough to require hospital admission. This means that the actual mortality rate will be even lower than currently being reported by eager for drama media.
There is lots to learn about this virus but so far it seems only a little more nasty than flu in severity, with it’s dangerousness coming mainly from how easily it appears to spread. I can’t help but think that given the numbers of people arriving in the UK having travelled in close proximity to 2-300 other in a recirculated air pressurised cylinder for several hours from affected parts of the globe, we should probably switch from efforts to contain, to efforts to increase bed capacity in the NHS by about 30-50%, because as it stands, UK hospitals Will. Not. Cope. with a mass influx of poorly people, an order of magnitude higher than normal winter pressures.
What’s the demographic of those that don’t recover, I’m assuming the elderly and those with underlying health issues?
Dr Li Wenliang was 34
Dr Li Wenliang was 34
Yeah, he was, y’know, helped along a bit... [\tinfoil hat]
Utter nonsense and daily mailesque levels of scaremongering. Have a word with yourself. 😉
Really , you’d believe the Chinese state , the state that’s conservatively locked up in concentration camps 10’s if not 100’s of thousands of Uighers for being religiously different. The state that hid a massive loss of life after a huge earthquake in the 1970’s. I suggest you are the one that needs a word with yourself.
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
to efforts to increase bed capacity in the NHS by about 30-50%,
Which is not actually achievable, nor is the rather more important issue of ITU beds. When Swine flu was a threat, critical care units across the UK were tasked with doubling their capacity, again not realistically achievable at the time. The same plans are being made now, with little thought to how any of these beds are to be staffed. If your healthcare system is run like Lastminute.com, you do not have the capacity to cope with any global healthcare crisis...
@Ming the Merciless
read this, published today by the Medical Research Council Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis
Which give a rather more informed and more measured account of what's known about moortality. There's a short summary published today in the British Medical Journal
https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m550
...which given how panicky people can get, I'll quote from:
These updates came as the Medical Research Council’s Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London published its latest report, which estimated the case fatality ratio for 2019-nCoV as between 1% and 18%.1 The ratio is defined as the proportion of cases of a disease that will ultimately result in death from the disease. Though this is a simple calculation at the end of an epidemic, as all deaths and cases will have been ascertained, during an epidemic the ratio underestimates the true number owing to the time lag between onset of symptoms and death. The researchers have accounted for this in their estimates.
They said that in cases detected in Hubei (the Chinese province where the outbreak began) the case fatality ratio was estimated at 18% ["aha!" I hear you say, but read on...(95% credible interval 11% to 81%). Among cases detected in travellers from mainland China to other countries they estimated the ratio as between 1.2% and 5.6%, with substantial uncertainty around these central values.
Among all cases, they have estimated that the case fatality ratio to be around 1% (95% confidence interval 0.5% to 4%).
The report noted that the differences in these estimates did not reflect underlying differences in disease severity between countries but rather the varying sensitivity of surveillance systems to detect cases of differing levels of severity and the clinical care offered to severely ill patients.
Martin Hibberd, professor of emerging infectious disease at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said, “The new number crunching from the MRC Infectious Diseases group at Imperial has given some insights into the current case fatality rate estimates and shows how much these can vary at the moment (from 18% to 1%), with the numbers in general coming down over time, as more accurate estimates are made through the increased use of diagnostics in less severe cases.
“This is reminiscent of the 2009-nH1N1 influenza strain, where initial estimates were also much higher than the now more established less than 0.1% rate overall. It is worth noting, though, that despite this apparently low fatality rate for 2009-nH1N1, this pandemic caused serious additional problems (compared with typical seasonal influenzas) to healthcare systems worldwide, showing why governments have placed such importance on this new coronavirus even as the case fatality rate drops.”
tl:dr - early estimates are always based on a small proportion of folk who have the disease so are way high. There's loads of uncertainty for sure, and we're hoping spring comes to the rescue as there won't be a vaccine in time to stop this. But less of the irresponsible "it's starting to leak out..." type nonsense. Cite sources or if you know nothing, say nothing.
(coi: I've a son in China atm as I said up thread.)
edited to give link to the pdf report
