Mutating Corona Virus

[London1971]

All Viruses mutate. Mostly they either become easier to catch / less deadly. Harder to catch / more deadly.

 

Evolution favours the successful, the common

cold and Norovirus are incredibly successful because they do not kill their hosts and as a result 1 person keeps walking around and spreading them everywhere.

 

Ebola is incredibly unsuccessful because Said victim is unable to move far and dies rapidly.

 

Some experts have now worked out that in order for 7 people to have been infected abroad, using flight passenger numbers from Wuhan per day, and the number of people that the airport serves. That there must be many thousands of unreported cases out there, either mild or asymptomatic. The fact that 25 elderly, immunocompromised people have died (that’s probably at least 4 times higher) means the death rate and profile is similar to seasonal flu.

 

Google Imperial  college coronavirus report

 

 

[London1971]

All of this is good debate, better than the conspiracy theories popping up all over Twitter. I’m happy to stand to be corrected any time.

 

IMO this virus is going to spread everywhere, millions will be infected, most will have a mild version, a minority severe. Some will die, as a percentage not many, but it will be like a bad flu season.

 

All of the lockdowns in China won’t change anything.

[London1971]

29 minutes ago, tobyjugg2 said:

 

agreed to a certain extent, but the various 'eradication' dates are somewhat arbitrary

but that link was an easy to read blog entry referring the findings of the reasearchgate paper and other things, not the paper itself.

 

Sars type incubation period is 5-14 days with the CDC saying (as info increases)

 

" The median incubation period for secondary cases associated with limited human-to-human transmission is approximately 5 days (range 2-14 days).

In MERS-CoV patients, the median time from illness onset to hospitalization is approximately 4 days.

 

 

 

projected likely worst case scenarios should ALWAYS be considered

 

https://www.medicinenet.com/mers_middle_east_respiratory_syndrome/article.htm

 

10 days at least - 14 days for working on spread and infection

 

 

And ALL virus mutate.

 

MERS is very very difficult to catch, thank goodness, with a 35% mortality,

 

I'm guessing the next couple of weeks will be key to nail down how long the incubation period actually is for this novel virus.

 

 

[London1971]

In my opinion the real threats to be terrified of are antibiotic resistance over the next 15- 20 years.  That has potential to take us back to Victorian times!

 

And currently Sepsis, which probably kills more people in the UK in a week than this new virus will in a year.

 

Words from an expert , Editor of the Lancet.

 

 

richard horton

 

@richardhorton1

·

3h

 

A call for caution please. Media are escalating anxiety by talking of a “killer virus” + “growing fears”. In truth, from what we currently know, 2019-nCoV has moderate transmissibility and relatively low pathogenicity. There is no reason to foster panic with exaggerated language.

 

 

[London1971]

Look at some respected Viral epidemiologists working on this new virus on Twitter versus the crazy unverified reports of people 'dropping like flies'. Plenty of conspiracy theories from people trying to sell books too.

 

It's widely thought that some of the increase in cases is due to not having tests available at the beginning, and that there are large numbers of people who had mild symptoms, that never got detected.  Therefore it's likely that the mortality is much lower than thought. Also think about how many people are lining up in hospitals who might only have a cold but are terrified from all the panic.

 

However all are urging caution, that much more will be revealed over the coming weeks as the infections accelerate.

 

It is terrifying to see a city on lockdown, but also worth understanding even a 0.5% fatality rate in China is 10's of millions of people. That's why they are acting like it's a Hollywood disaster movie.

 

 

[London1971]

Experts in Epidemiology, Virology and Microbiology are aplenty on Twitter. Consensus at the moment is that it's a lot milder than thought initially for most people, and doesn't spread as easily. There are even charts comparing it with other common disease like Flu.. Oh and there is still no concrete proof of it spreading in the incubation period.

 

Nutty conspiracy theorists, unfortunately are even more prominent on Twitter, to them 'It's the end of the world' blah blah blah. Bioweapons Laboratory  Yawn.

 

Question is do you trust the expert teams who have already modeled the Virus and are working on a Vaccine, or some inane random nutter screeching deluded tweets.

 

 

[London1971]

They are right, it’s far outstripped SARS. Probably hundreds of thousands of unreported mild cases, many who recovered without even realising they had it.
 

SARS fatality rate was far higher though.  10%!

[London1971]

Yup , you all know I hate Johnson but I think the government has things about right. on this. That's on the economic side also.

[London1971]

Yup. We are fortunate because we both work from home and our kids are teenagers, so can do their own thing. A few years ago this would have been an impossible situation.

[London1971]

3 hours ago, tobyjugg2 said:

On a more positive note, pollution is rapidly declining and nature would seem to be thriving already during the lock down of the planets main virus - Us.

 

 

Yup , to stay positive. The air is so clear now, it's amazing. also the quiet. No more planes overhead, I'm on the take off path to Bristol and the Landing path for Heathrow. It's so peaceful now.

[London1971]

Nature is coming back. I had the window open last night, I can normally tell the time by the distant roar of traffic on the A4 and planes coming into Heathrow. I woke up, thinking it was 2am, because it was dead silent out there.  Looked at my watch, it was nearly 6 am ! Not a car, not a plane, just silence. On a Tuesday, the busiest morning of the week normally.

[London1971]

Very weird indeed. I'm an aviation geek, so I'm always plane spotting using flight radar 24. Planes are coming straight in at Heathrow at all times now. The are not even in a holding pattern at peak times.  That's the first time since, probably forever.

[London1971]

4 hours ago, tobyjugg2 said:

 

 

with Johnson and Trump

 

 

 

The way Trump and Johnson have dealt with this is night and day. It's the wrong comparison!

 

Go on to some American Web Sites, study some of the Trump daily briefings.  I'm not saying that we weren't lacking or got some things wrong, but if you really want to look at who is standing apart from the crowd, it's the USA, Sweden and Holland.  In my opinion those are the 3 developed countries that are making a pig's ear of this.

 

Sweden by the way has done close to zero despite having proportionally the same number of cases and deaths as the UK, and their government is coming under a lot of pressure to issue a lock down.

[London1971]

8 hours ago, tobyjugg2 said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUp1e-hrzYA

 

 

 

It aint rocket science, and if the Virus is more like flu/the common cold and re-infections occur, as seems possible according to latest reports, or for the next variant outbreak

- this sort of thing may become vital and as normal as facial recognition ...

Note that most experts believe that re infection cases are faulty tests. Plus there are always a small number of people who can get something twice. I can attest to this as I was unfortunate enough to get Chicken Pox again as an adult, something I wouldn’t wish on anybody.

[London1971]

This is ridiculous. Nobody could prepare for an event like this on that scale. Maybe after this we will realise that spending 30 billion on being prepared for a pandemic will save maybe a Trillion when the next one hits.

[London1971]

If this pandemic was a 90 minute football match, we'd be 5 minutes in. That's why there is zero point in comparing us with other countries, who did best, or worst or whatever.  The time for that is in 18 months when the dust has settled (hopefully).  I don't like Boris, or the Tories but I am starting to like people even less who are trying to score petty party political points from this.pandemic. To suggest that Corbyn, Swinson, or anybody else would have somehow done better is a stretch.

 

Personally I think the response was misguided at first but lessons are being learnt, considering it's a once in a century global crisis that sprang from nowhere. 

 

1. Massive support package to bail out the economy

2 .NHS not overwhelmed,not even close

3 Food Supply Chains holding up well (despite initial problems)

4.Power networks holding up well

5.Rubbish and Recycling Collections holding up well

6 Testing increasing massively (important for future control)

7 Far better than expected lockdown compliance

8 Number of Covid patients in hospital falling.

 

The above shows that things are OK, in my opinion, and the government are actually doing a surprisingly good job. 

 

 

 

 

[London1971]

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/02/fearful-britons-oppose-lifting-lockdown-schools-pubs-restaurants-opinium-poll

public opinion is strongly behind lockdown. That has to be worth something. 

[London1971]

1 hour ago, tobyjugg2 said:

 

 

So before we add more to the case, lets take a little time to look at protecting the nation as a whole rather than any specific areas ... apart from one I'll start this bit with

 

On 3 March:

 

the government released its coronavirus action plan - the document did not mention restricting visits to care homes.

 

Chief Medical Officer for England Prof Chris Whitty said on care homes: "One of the things we're keen to avoid is doing things too early, because if you do them early you get no benefit from the epidemic, but what you do get is a social cost."

 

and  Prof Whitty told a committee of MPs that as there were cases that could not be traced back to people who had come from abroad, it was "highly likely therefore that there is some level of community transmission in this virus in the UK now".

 

 

 

 

and through this period and beyond:

 

* Apparently in the order of 18,000,000 (Eighteen million) people came into the UK from abroad with just 273 out of the 18.1 million people who entered the UK in the three months prior to the coronavirus lockdown were formally quarantined

There appear to be no  reports of anyone even having their temperatures checked.

 

and

*At least 1,800 private aircraft landed in the UK during lockdown, official figures have shown, with no requirement for arriving passengers to provide contact details for purposes of tracking the spread of coronavirus, and seemingly no evidence of any actual health tests or checks carried out

 

Apparently all were just sent out in to the country via taxi, public transport or whatever arrangements they made for themselves.

 

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/18/more-than-1800-private-planes-landed-in-uk-during-covid-19-lockdown

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/52674073

 

 

 

London is the worlds biggest Air transport hub with 100 million PAX plus per year going through 5 airports. I think there is a general (or wilful) lack of understanding what the implications would have been had a quarantine been announced back in January for some barely reported unknown disease far away in China.(as it was seen back then).  The same armchair epidemiologists offering their 'expertise' now , would have been up in arms as their holidays and business travel plans were destroyed. Plus temperature checks are about as useful as indicators on a submarine!

[London1971]

I defer to the experts on this Profs, Virologists, Epidemiologists, CMO's etc. Plenty of them with blue ticks on Twitter, all who say Temp testing is a waste of time. Sure it's great to give a bit of re assurance, which is why most public think it's a good idea.

 

The reasoning behind it being a heap of steaming cr@p, there are tonne of reasons , my wife is on Meds that can elevate temp, Hayfever can elevate temp (hence the name) I'll guarantee you there is more hay fever in the general population than C19 at the moment. This means you tie up a tonne of time and resources with perfectly harmless people. Remember doctors don't grow on trees, and were talking about thousands of people per day.

 

Meanwhile Joe blogs, his family and wife all walk pass with no symptoms or temp, but incubating a nasty case of Coronavirus, only to fall ill and spread it to 50 people in Manchester next week.

 

That's why its pointless 50 times over.

[London1971]

2 hours ago, tobyjugg2 said:

so how many people going through the average boarding gate do you think are going to be running a 37.8+ temperature?

 

and apart from legitimate reasons some of which you state which could easily be pre-declared, why do you think they should be allowed on a plane without appropriate explanation?

 

... Particularly given the evidence from cruise ships and care homes.

 

 

Was it cjcregg who thought that only stopping 54% of people with symptoms with the temp technology available 17 years ago was some sort of waste of time failure?

Surely you don't agree with that ?

 

Not a failure 17 years ago, that's how SARS 1 spread, that's why they got it under control. Symptomatic = infectious.

 

Covid 19 you would have been catching a few snowflakes in a Blizzard of seemingly healthy, pre symptomatic or asymptomatic but infectious people, who would stroll right past temperature screening without so much of a hair out of place. 

 

Factor in 120 million passengers per year coming from the widest choice of direct international destinations on the planet and you have the ingredients for one of the worlds worst outbreak.  I also might add that the timing of half term holidays and many thousands holidaying in Italy over that period, didn't help.  Nobody had a clue until it was too late, and Italy would have been the last place on the planet anyone would have introduced passenger checks for anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A 

[London1971]

1 minute ago, tobyjugg2 said:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/18/london-care-homes-report-possible-fresh-covid-19-outbreaks

 

London care homes report possible fresh Covid-19 outbreaks

Residents also testing positive more than 30 days after showing first symptoms

Yup it's like Noro Virus, can still shed Virus after 3 weeks, despite having recovered from symptoms. Nasty

 

On the other subject, commercial air travel is done, stick a fork in it.  The day that anybody feels comfortable cramming into a metal box for 3 hours with 150 other people is the day they have been given a dose of a proven Vaccine. Companies won't spend money on flying people to conferences, meetings etc either, when they can do the whole thing cheaper and safer on Zoom.

 

This means that Quarantines form abroad are way easier to manage. I believe Heathrow passenger numbers are down 97%.  Lets ignore the fact that the UK aviation sector employs 341,000 people, and the carnage that is going to be caused. Which brings me to the next subject, way too many are still in denial about the coming recession, it's going to be brutal.

 

 

[London1971]

9 minutes ago, tobyjugg2 said:

 

Its been that way for years. They still fly/travel to meetings.

I tried to start to change that many years ago where I was - failed.

 

 

 

 

Do agree with that.

 

 

but all that aside, there will still be people who fly (float, train or drive) in and out of countries - like those 182,000 private flights I mentioned

and one of the ONLY fast, automatic tests we can implement, not just at airports, but all major transport hubs and quite possibly more - is temperature checks.

(please someone come up with something else)

 

We need them in before the end of Autumn not just for Covid - but for the next one - which if its a pneumonic type or Covid mutated that way would have been 100's millions of deaths by now with how this has been mishandled.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To me, going on holiday is all about me and my family being happy and feeling comfortable. It's impossible for me to be either of those if I'm worried that said holiday is going to book one of us in for a trip to the local ICU.  If my employer is stupid enough to believe that running a Sales Kick Off event in California, like last year is a good idea, neither me , nor any of my colleagues will be attending. I suspect I'm in the majority opinion.

[London1971]

Yup it's like when everyone started freaking out when the found Viral RNA particles on that cruise ship 17 days later, a total non story.  Personally I doubt whether re infection is possible, although immunity might fade after a while.

[London1971]

Yup, I'm sure the Premier League can find a bit of spare money behind the Sofa to pay privately for tests. Although I do think that with the news of Brighton and Watford players testing positive in the last week, all talk of the season resuming is purely academic.  It's a shame because as @hightail says, it is good for morale, and a feeling of normality.

[London1971]

My wife had a fever and cough, rang 111 on Wednesday. Test arrived via Amazon yesterday afternoon. Send back by courier. She's got an underlying condition, so is a priority.