….While I’m on a roll with the good news, The Italian doctors are warning there is a lot of younger people on ventilators.

I expect the age threshold to get one will drop quite low once we are 100x oversubscribed for ventilators.

Will start of with over 80s not being treated, then 70s, 60s, 50s, 40s etc., as the ventilators get taken up.

Bojo is saying he is looking into getting more ventilators. I suspect they are all sold out!

Only if the entire nation catch it simitaneously . If we can keep the new infection rate into the thousands a week , of the ,lets say 10,000 a week then by taking an average age of 38, most of those people will have to suffer flu at home , lets say half require medical intervention( 38yr -57yr old) , and half of those 57+ need ventiltaion / icu etc then thats down to 2,500 beds , ok some may need 2 weeks of care

The problem is 10K a week is it is nowhere near the levels to get the herd immunity they are after. 10K week = 520K/yr, so it would literally take 100 years to get 80% of the pop infected.

They need 1-2M/week to get this for their strategy to work.

As you can see this is 100X our NHS capacity.

The other gamble is how the nhs copes, if mortality rate can be kept to 1% that’s maybe 50,000 deaths, if it’s 5% that’s nearer 1/4 million deaths. Flu normally kills ~2000? every winter.

Sorry, your calcs are out by 10X. I assume you are basing on 50M being infected? If so…
1% = 500,000
5% = 2.5M

WHO say 5% need ventilating in ICU (2.5M). We have 4K ICU beds, 3k already occupied.

We would likely need 200k+ ICU beds to tackle this, so sadly the death rate will be 5%+ if they go for 40-50M infections.

Is there any Government advice for internet know it alls to self isolate to stop the spread of hysterical bollocks?

You could go to your nearest kids playground dig a hole in the sandpit and bury your head in it.

More like…..

It’s a bit like going for a jab and the doc saying “this might immunise you and it might not, and anyway it would have a 1% chance of killing you if we had any ICU beds left, but we haven’t so now more likely 5 to 10%. Oh and if you do survive you might have irreversible pulmonary fibrosis. Ihope you don’t know any asthmatics, diabetics, or old folk… or that if you do, that you don’t like them much.

Oh and viruses change all the time so immunity might only last a few months so we might have to repeat the exercise again. However the pulmonary fibrosis you acquired in the first infection means your chances won’t be great

Yes its bad but posts like your mudmuncher really do not help anyone. With your solution it’ll be back within a couple of weeks . We need herd immunity to tide us over till a vaccine is availible. – if you really want to help they are offering you 3500 quid to be a guinea pig.

There is a lot more we don’t know about this virus than we know. The models are predictions on how we will behave, whether CV19 will be weaker in the summer, whether it will mutate, whether we can get herd immunity etc., none of these things are really known even by the experts.

Better to stall it as aggressively as possible to prepare and learn about it. 40M infections in the next 6 months will be carnage. If we can clear it we might have to lock the borders down (with infected countries) for a year until we have a vaccine, but I see that as the lesser of 2 evils.

The government may well be right and we might not be able to stop this.

But why the hell don’t be give it our best shot and throw kitchen sink at this and try to stop it. If we fail the people will still die, but we’ll have bought some extra time to increase ICU capacity, try new drugs etc. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Several Asian countries have got this under control, yes it might come back, but I’d much rather we keep this in check and pull out all the stops to get a vaccine approved.

Just to add, it is basically down to us as a population whether it can be stopped. If CV19 has a mortality of 90% I’m pretty sure it would be gone in 4-5 weeks as people would go into hard isolation. The virus needs human interaction to spread and stay alive. Cut the transmission and the virus dies out.

While there are enough “I’m alright jack” types “it’s just a bad cold“ muppets it will continue to spread

As for ensuring that your mum/dad/gran/gramps isn’t one of the 60% – this is the exact point. Let the healthy and young gain immunity whilst keeping the vulnerable away from it, then the immune will act as a defence when the vulnerable can return to society.

Not sure that would work as well as you think. For herd immunity to be effective it has to be equally distributed in society, the idea is to take away hosts that the virus can transmit through and get the R0<1. There will still be isolated infections but it won’t spread.

If all the young healthy people are immune but you have a nursing home with 100 old folks in, with no immunity then a sporadic infection would rip through them.

The government may well be right and we might not be able to stop this.

But why the hell don’t be give it our best shot and throw kitchen sink at this and try to stop it. If we fail the people will still die, but we’ll have bought some extra time to increase ICU capacity, try new drugs etc. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Several Asian countries have got this under control, yes it might come back, but I’d much rather we keep this in check and pull out all the stops to get a vaccine approved.

I’ve come to realise the flattening the curve rhetoric has nothing to do with NHS capacity. It won’t make any difference. We’ll need 200K+ ICU beds to treat the numbers required to get the 60% immunity. The 1K free ICU beds we have won’t make any discernible difference.

The flattening the curve will be to ensure there is enough military/police available to keep order when the public realise a cull of 5-10% of the population is being allowed to happen.

The big concern is them giving up on testing suspect cases in the community.

How do we (and they) know their strategy is working.

And it is also a good way for them to hide the death rate when the nhs is overwhelmed

The big concern is them giving up on testing suspect cases in the community.

How do we (and they) know their strategy is working.

The crazy thing is other experts are saying you might not get herd immunity with this.

Some Coronavirus can be caught again and again.

Will be a bit embarrassing if we have a few million dead in 3-4 months and people still getting reinfected.

Personally I think we should go all out like China/Korea, if ultimately it starts to come back when measures are lifted then put the brakes on again. In 1 year we could have a vaccine, better to try and hold it at bay until then.

Why do a lot of people on this thread believe that they and some internet bloggers know better than the medical advisors. They aren’t hiding anything – they said it is likely there are 5-10k cases in all likelihood. South Korea brought it under control without resorting to mass restrictions on people.

The UK strategy is very different to Korea. Korea have tested 200K people and meticulously traced contacts. Their cases have been dropping for over a week and they might get away with 10K cases.

Our strategy is to let it go through the whole population and they aren’t interested in testing non hospital cases now. They will let it infect 10’s Millions of people in the next 6 month.

jolmes
Member

@Mudmuncher Your numbers are iffy
You’re not taking into account age or underlying issues. Anyone over 60 has a 3.6% chance of dying getting higher as you increase in age. Under 60 ie the 50-59 age group there is a 1.3% chance, getting lower than 1% decreasing in age. If you have an underlying issue this can increase the chance of death quite substantially, in fact most deaths recorded the patients have had underlying issues.
The UK has around 18% of the population over 60, yes we’re an old nation. You should take this into account with your figures if you’re going to present anything.
If anything that is a worse case scenario which doesn’t take any sort of demographics/lockdown (flattening the curve)/social distancing into account.

@joefm is more than likely correct, 1000’s of people will have had this all over the globe with mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. Many people have had it and not been tested due to complacency issues with 111/Gov/lack of training so will not appear on confirmed figures nor ever will unless there is mass antibody testing.

That isn’t correct, the data from the WHO based on the mission to China suggest 20% need hospitalisation (15% need O2 and 5% need ventilation). China has a lower average age than the UK too, so we will be worse off.

The calculation was based on a completely flat curve, I.e. the 8M people needing hospitalisation over 12 months presenting at 150K/week – again this is totally ideal and it will be much worse than this.

In China WHO didn’t find evidence of widespread asymptomatic transmission that was missed and the Chinese tested a lot of people.

I’m not saying my numbers are totally accurate, but what I can say with a lot of confidence is the NHS can’t get anywhere close to providing the treatment needed for 30-40M people getting this over the next 12 months so the death rate will much higher than 1%

Herd immunity is the way forward.
No school closures. Let it spread slowly through the country.
That is the output of today’s COBRA meeting.
Eh?

Well the figures I worked out were based on a perfectly controlled spread at a constant 154K/cases a week (which won’t happen) – it will still totally overwhelm the heath service, so 95% of the 20% of severe/critical won’t get the treatment they need. Expect Lombardy 8%+ death rates

60% of population – 40M people getting it in the next 12 months
8M needing O2 or ventilation (WHO data, 20% needing hosp. 15% needing o2, 5% ventilators in ICU)
154K a week
Assume 2 weeks hospitalisation required (likely more for severe/acute)
Need approx. 300K beds to manage
75K ICU beds with ventilators
225K general beds with O2
We have 102K general and acute beds in the UK at 92% occupancy = 8260 free
We have 4K ICU beds at 75% occupancy = 1000 free
I.e. We can only treat 1/75 = 1.3% of patients requiring ventilation
We can only treat 8.26/225 = 3.7% of patients requiring O2
i.e. Most of the 8M people needing hospital o2/ventilation won’t get it and likely die

The Governments solution to this is to let it burn through the population so we get herd immunity.
https://www.itv.com/news/2020-03-12/british-government-wants-uk-to-acquire-coronavirus-herd-immunity-writes-robert-peston/

I made a fag packet calculation, can someone please show me where I have gone wrong as it looks like millions will die based on these numbers.

60% of population – 40M people getting it in the next 12 months
8M needing O2 or ventilation (WHO data, 20% needing hosp. 15% needing o2, 5% ventilators in ICU)
154K a week
Assume 2 weeks hospitalisation required (likely more for severe/acute)
Need approx. 300K beds to manage
75K ICU beds with ventilators
225K general beds with O2

We have 102K general and acute beds in the UK at 92% occupancy = 8260 free
We have 4K ICU beds at 75% occupancy = 1000 free

I.e. We can only treat 1/75 = 1.3% of patients requiring ventilation
We can only treat 8.26/225 = 3.7% of patients requiring O2

i.e. Most of the 8M people needing hospital o2/ventilation won’t get it and likely die

The government really needs to be honest about this. Millions are going to die if we stick with this strategy

Looking at Italy should at least make people take this seriously & follow any guidelines issued.

Number of free ICU beds is a complete red herring, as any plan will include re-purposing, prioritisation, private beds, etc.

I’m sure we will be able to rustle up a few more spare beds, but people aren’t going to stop having heart attacks, road accidents, strokes etc. so they won’t be able to free up all of the 4000 ICU beds we have.

Italy is already overwhelmed. Another 168 dying today. They haven’t got enough ICU beds to cope with this.

Ok.

You’re making up the UK being Italy. It’s not.
You’re making up cases no-one knows about in Italy to explain why its worse there than here, or south Korea or China.
You’re making up a trend that doesn’t exist.
You’re making up that you’re better at this than PHE, WHO the NHS and all the people who really do have the intelligence and the data to see what’s coming.

Specifically what am I making up, your comments above are just a load of vague waffle

People making up mortality forecasts from something their Nan heard in the shop…not so much

Please indicate exactly what you think I’m making up.

Unfortunately some people don’t have the intelligence to see what is coming, even though it is happening right now in Italy, I suspect you’ll have a different opinion in a couple of weeks when we are in Italy’s situation.

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Twodogs
Subscriber
once the free 800 ICU beds are gone it is likely to be approaching 10%

>you’ve just made that up

it starts to spread in the community that’s when it goes exponential

>it doesn’t. Do you know what exponential means?

You can get the numbers of ICU beds are published by the government each month. Typically they are at 80% occupancy, so around 800 free each month. 10% of cases need mechanical ventilation in ICU in Italy. They’d die without it, so the death rate will increase dramatically once they run out of ventilators.

I definitely know what exponential means, I’m guessing you don’t from your question.

Apart from the fact that S. Korea has more hospital beds per capita, more available cash and a completely different culture to UK.

The fact we have far less hospital beds than Korea is even more reason to aggressively contain like they have rather than let it run free.

The Koreans have got on top of this by extensive testing and contact tracing not really by locking things down, so any cultural differences shouldn’t be too relevant.

Edit: according to statista Italy has 724 recovered cases vs. South Korea’ s 51. People there aren’t dying as fast but they’re not recovering either.

The likely reason for that is Italy missed a lot of cases initially and have done a fraction of the testing Korea has done. Although the numbers of cases is similar to Korea, deaths are much higher which would imply they are a few weeks further into their outbreak and actually have far more cases than their tests show. As it takes 2-6 weeks to “recover”, they have more recoveries as their outbreak has been running longer.

So South Korea had its first case 20/01, that’s 11 days before the UK. Your point is 14 days from now, we’ll have less cases than south Korea does today (so 3days more since first case) because South Korea has it right and we don’t?

I don’t really understand your point?

The growth in cases is pretty slow in the early days as they are imported cases and are often traced. Once a few of these are missed and it starts to spread in the community that’s when it goes exponential, I think we have moved into this phase in the last week.

Korea obviously has a fair bit of spread before they got on top of it hence the big numbers, the important thing is they have had declining numbers for several days so no reason why we can’t do the same.

Which part of 1000s of cases a day makes you think the UK is doing a worse job with 3-400 total?

It’s not the absolute numbers, it’s the growth in numbers. An approx 10x growth in a week, if that continues we’ll be in Italy’s position in less than 2 weeks.

Because we are not a communist state where people do what they are told, we are a superior western state with a population who can pigging well do what we want when we want, because we’re worth it (and f everyone else).

See also, building hospitals with ICU beds really, really quickly; police enforcing quarantine; keeping essential industry going by making workers live onsite without being able to leave; etc.

Ok, so let’s look at South Korea – They are an advanced democratic country like the UK. They have fought back testing 200k+ people and actively tracking down infected people and their contacts. The government has thrown $25bn at fighting this. They’ve gone from nearly 1000 cases a day down to 35 today.

I saw an interview with one of the WHO guys who was saying the same thing, it is possible to beat this but not with the defeatist attitude of our government.

Anyone else believe the government have got their strategy really wrong on this.

The two options are…

A. Aggressively contain as early as possible to try and stop it spreading to eradicate the virus.

B. Let it run through the whole population until enough people are dead/immune that it fizzles out.

We have gone with B., as the Government believes it is impossible to contain. They will try and slow the spread down a bit once it gets going to move the peak towards the summer when the NHS has more capacity. By their own estimates it is likely to infect 20-80% of the population and kill 100K+ people. (Personally I think it will kill more as they are working on a 1% CFR, while the WHO is saying 3.4% and once the free 800 ICU beds are gone it is likely to be approaching 10%)

China on the other hand seem to have contained this in a few months, only 26 new cases today and I’d expect they will more or less be free of new infection in the next few weeks.

China have shown this can be contained, so why aren’t we doing the same. The sooner we act aggressively the more easily it can be stopped with less disruption and less death/suffering.

Maybe Boris just wants us to be totally screwed so he can have his “Churchill moment” and save us from this disaster (that he created).

I would be interested to know how you came to that figure given its far higher than pretty much any official estimate. If you are going to go on resolved cases then you also need to factor in unreported cases.

Basically, you can arrive at 5.6% if you take a very pessimistic view of things.

Worst case estimates of fatalities in uk predicted to be 100k apparently. That seems very low to me but provides some balance on folks claiming this is the apocalypse..

If I was a betting man I’d say death rate closer to 3% max when done and dusted. Look at Italy, average age of people dying there is 80 apparently.

I think the bigger question is what to be done to prevent this type of thing in future. Given every outbreak of this type appears to materialise in some far East market, the starting point for future mitigation seems fairly obvious.

You can get the updated details of closed cases here….

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

The WHO mission to China didn’t find evidence of wide scale undetected asymptomatic transmission, but you are correct there will be some missed cases that will bring it down a bit….but I doubt down to 1%, that would imply there are 5-6 unreported cases for every confirmed case.

The death rate will also be impacted by health care availability. If you get it in the early stages you will have access to ICU if you need it, in the later stages of the outbreak it will likely be not available.

@mudmuncher

This piece gives a decent sum-up

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/5/21165973/coronavirus-death-rate-explained

South Korea gives an alternative insight to what happens if you have a proper look at community transmission. There just isn’t enough data to give an accurate prediction for the UK, above the ‘signficantly worse than flu’ one.

That is a good summary.

As mentioned in the article South Korea leads the way in testing, having tested well over 100K, so it’s fair to say they probably haven’t missed many cases.

They have 50 deaths from 7313 cases, so a CFR of 0.7%, as they are likely catching these very early and not missing many cases.

….but you can’t really use this until all cases have concluded

I read the typical progression in China for death is week 1, mild illness. Week 2 deterioration requiring oxygen, week 3 death. So some of the 7313 cases have that to look forward to.

Assuming it might take an average of 10 days to die from this from getting a diagnosis then it would be more accurate to look at the deaths today (50) vs. The cases 10 days ago (1261). This gives a CFR of 4%.

I think at the moment we should be focusing more on the CFR once our ICU beds are gone, which will be worse.

That’s higher than the WHO ‘snapshot’ of 3.4%, which, in itself, is unreliable because we don’t know how many people actually have had it and not been part of the official figures. We know it’s a mild illness in the majority of people. The only thing we can say with a high degree of certainty is that death rate seems to be much higher than in seasonal flu.

To go back to the original point, if we ‘just get it over with’, then our death rate will be higher than if we try to manage demand for the 6,000 or so ICU beds in the UK, by changing our behaviours radically.

So, how many of you are taking your elderly mums out to a restaurant for Mother’s Day?

The 3.4% is based on the total 106K cases and 3600 deaths. There are still 42K cases that are active and 3.4% assumes none of them will die which will not be the case so that would tend to increase the percentage.

You are correct about the missed/unreported cases bringing the fatality rate down, however the WHO mission to China reported they didn’t find evidence of this.

Ref the 6K ICU beds, they are already mostly full, so only 7-800 free I believe.

Looking at the global numbers of resolved cases, ie died or recovered the death rate is around 5.6%

Bit dramatic. Care to show your working? Still, Covid19 becoming endemic in the population is probably inevitable, I agree.

Hmmm. Maybe the title of this thread should be changed to the scaremongering and panic thread?

People; wash your hands regularly, cover your mouth when you sneeze/cough, don’t lick strangers. A (pessimistic) 1% death rate is still a 99% survival rate. Don’t be such a drama queen. There’s going to be some hard work to do in the next few weeks and months. Be part of the solution not part of the problem.

The main problem is people have their heads in the sand, thinking this is not much worse than a bad cold.

The 10x growth a week is based on what happens if people maintain their behaviours as of right now. We have grown from 20 to 200 in one week, if that continues, 2000 next weekend, 20000 in 2 weeks.

Looking at the WHO situation reports Hubei went from 258 (approx where we are now) to 11k in 2 weeks but they were putting in much more robust containment that we are.

Once all the ICU beds are full – in a couple of weeks if we don’t do something the death rate could be closer to 10%.

It’s better to start “panicking” a bit now and significantly change out behaviours rather than in a few weeks when the hospitals will be overwhelmed.

Part of me thinks let’s get veins infected and get the while thing over and done with….

I suspect there will be big changes here within 2 weeks…

This virus is now out in the wild in the UK, Infections have gone up 10X from 20 to 200 in one week. If that continues unchecked we’ll be at 2,000 next week, then 20,000 the week after.

In Italy 10% need mechanical ventilation in intensive care to keep them alive.
We only have 7-800 spare ICU beds in the UK.
10% of 20,000 is 2000 requiring ICU in 2 weeks.

Anyone spot the problem!

1% death rate once this gets going is wishful thinking.

But that figure for cases is just positive tests. There will be many more mild cases unrecorded so bring the rate down.

That’s not what the WHO are saying….

Bruce Aylward, World Health Organization Joint Mission to China:

“I think the key learning from China is speed — it’s all about the speed. The faster you can find the cases, isolate the cases, and track their close contacts, the more successful you’re going to be. […]

People keep saying [the cases are the] tip of the iceberg. But we couldn’t find that. We found there’s a lot of people who are cases, a lot of close contacts — but not a lot of asymptomatic circulation of this virus in the bigger population. And that’s different from flu. […]

China got patients in treatment early and have highly sophisticated health care treatment procedures. They are really good at keeping people alive with this disease. They have a survival rate (with a mortality rate of just under 1% outside of Hubei province) for this disease I would not extrapolate to the rest of the world. What you’ve seen in Italy and Iran is that a lot of people are dying.

Panic and hysteria are not appropriate. This is a disease that is in the cases and their close contacts. It’s not a hidden enemy lurking behind bushes. Get organized, get educated, and get working.”

Source: Vox Interview

Ref the mortality….

We have circa 100K cases worldwide with 3400 deaths, so that gives 3.4%.

The WHO mission to China didn’t find any evidence of widespread undetected asymptomatic transmission so I’d expect there isn’t a great deal more than the 100K that has been diagnosed to reduce the calculated death rate.

Out of the 100K only 56K cases are resolved, so the remaining 44K still may potentially die. So just looking at the resolved cases where people either died or recovered the mortality is 6%.

I’m struggling to see why Whitty thinks we’ll get away with 1%, but I hope he is right.

10% need mechanical ventilation in ICU so it will only take 7-8K cases in the U.K. before our free 7-800 ICU beds are taken. Then the death rate will likely be closer to 10%.

I think we probably need to start thinking about more serious containment measures as seen in China before the numbers overwhelm the NHS – I can see this happening within a couple of weeks.

Sorry to bump this, but I have a question.

If someone in a quarantine area, (one of those cruise ships or Arrowe Park hospital for example) gets infected 12 days into the 14 day period, does the clock re-start for everyone else just in case they’ve spread it? The news items I’ve seen about it definitely doesn’t show people individually holed up.

Was thinking the same, the clock should really reset

You’d get away with 100W if you are playing at home with drums, the limiting factor to volume will probably be your neighbours calling the police not the amp. If you get into it and want to start gigging and also overcome the guitars I think you’d need a min 250-300W. I use a 500W 2×12 combo in the band I play in…..but the drummer is a gorilla and the guitarists have Marshall stacks. I’d prefer to play at lower volumes as I don’t like having to wear earplugs to prevent myself going deaf, but everyone else in the band seems to like playing at 11 so 500W is required.

No black grout, will be using white silicone sealant around the edges

Haha. The wood is blackened and a bit rotten so really need to cover it with something. Will just be 45cmx10cm white porcelain strip not the whole worktop and hopefully will just look like an extension of the sink.

They just put them straight in the auction so only really look at it cosmetically. They won’t care or look at oil, brake pads etc, but will try and knock you down for dents, scuffed alloys etc. I don’t think they test drive.