Coronavirus - the killer flu that will wipe us out? (Vol. 8)

[RammyMP]

I had an antibody test today, seemingly I’ve not had the virus. Makes sense, I’ve rarely left the house in the past 8 months.

[Chromegrill]

I wonder if any of the resident experts on the forum could provide some advice to health officials in Doncaster
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorksh...

or Leeds
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-547121...

Hospitals in both cities now have more patients with coronavirus - including many in intensive care - than they did in March.

And the patients currently in hospital are those who caught the virus a couple of weeks ago when infection rates in the community were around half what they are now, so they will be plenty of people catching it today who won't be trying to find a bed for another fortnight. Just hope everyone in those areas respects the control measures that have been brought in or are being brought in to limit further spread of the virus and prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed (unlike say Belgium which is a few days away from running out of intensive care beds across the country)..

[Zoobeef]

Chromegrill said:

I wonder if any of the resident experts on the forum could provide some advice to health officials in Doncaster
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorksh...

or Leeds
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-547121...

Hospitals in both cities now have more patients with coronavirus - including many in intensive care - than they did in March.

And the patients currently in hospital are those who caught the virus a couple of weeks ago when infection rates in the community were around half what they are now, so they will be plenty of people catching it today who won't be trying to find a bed for another fortnight. Just hope everyone in those areas respects the control measures that have been brought in or are being brought in to limit further spread of the virus and prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed (unlike say Belgium which is a few days away from running out of intensive care beds across the country)..

fk off, they'll be getting ignored.

Thanks for your input though.

[dangerousB]

SpeedMattersNot said:

Numbers creeping up over Europe. France reporting over 500 deaths today. Only a week or two until we're there ourselves I reckon, as our catch up Tuesday gives over 300 deaths. Going to be an awful winter I reckon...can't believe there are still so many sceptics on this forum, well actually, I can, but to think people believe the whole world are fudging the figures to make it look worse is community vegan Facebook page insanity.

Want to see the figures? Here they are from the past 25 years:-



Tell me what you're worried about after having a good look.

[Mr Whippy]

otolith said:

We know that there is significant spread before people become symptomatic, so it clearly doesn't require you to have developed the cough in order to spread it. We know that viral shedding in the upper respiratory tract also peaks as or before people become symptomatic.

If the vaccine enables high risk people to lower their risk to an acceptable level, it lets us go back to normal. If the vaccine halts or reduces transmission, all the better, but really removing the moral requirement for protecting the vulnerable with social distancing measures is a game changer.

Wasn’t a study done in an isolation ward and the virus was found all around the loo extractor and loo facilities but not in the air off the ward?

The sense it was being aerosolised by the flushing loo churning poo and urine full of the virus?


Any kind of communal toilet facilities where loos are flushed often are probably hot spots.

[witko999]

Chromegrill said:

I wonder if any of the resident experts on the forum could provide some advice to health officials in Doncaster
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorksh...

or Leeds
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-547121...

Hospitals in both cities now have more patients with coronavirus - including many in intensive care - than they did in March.

And the patients currently in hospital are those who caught the virus a couple of weeks ago when infection rates in the community were around half what they are now, so they will be plenty of people catching it today who won't be trying to find a bed for another fortnight. Just hope everyone in those areas respects the control measures that have been brought in or are being brought in to limit further spread of the virus and prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed (unlike say Belgium which is a few days away from running out of intensive care beds across the country)..

Until the 'hospitalisations' data is sensibly recorded and presented, this is nothing more than fearmongering.

How many of those inpatients caught it in hospital?

How many were admitted to hospital specifically for it?

How many are in hospital for something else and just happen to have tested positive?

How many need treatment for it?

As is always the case with statistics, crap in = crap out.

[markyb_lcy]

RammyMP said:

I had an antibody test today, seemingly I’ve not had the virus. Makes sense, I’ve rarely left the house in the past 8 months.

Not testing positive for antibodies doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve not had the virus.

[Alucidnation]

witko999 said:

Until the 'hospitalisations' data is sensibly recorded and presented, this is nothing more than fearmongering.

How many of those inpatients caught it in hospital?

How many were admitted to hospital specifically for it?

How many are in hospital for something else and just happen to have tested positive?

How many need treatment for it?

As is always the case with statistics, crap in = crap out.

What does it matter where they caught it?

They have, and are now in hospital with it.

How many did they infect before they were admitted?

[markyb_lcy]

MOTORVATOR said:

markyb_lcy said:

MOTORVATOR said:

markyb_lcy said:

Perhaps some might come to realise soon, how little all these measures actually “work” and the cost of them is simply not worth it.

The virus will do what the virus does.

We are coming into the worst time of the year for respiratory viruses and the diseases they cause. We suck this up every year with regard to flu and pneumonia.

Seeing as how we are still on a shallow exponential growth curve for both beds and deaths can you tell us categorically what that curve would have been without the interventions in place?

If we have that we can each determine for ourselves whether the measures work or are worth it.

You and I both know that’s not possible without major fabrication or modelling, which I’m not prepared to get into.

For my money, the measures don’t work if 7 months on, we are still doing them, and discussing doing them until a vaccine comes or perhaps even longer than that.

They might slow some spread, but clearly not by a significant or worthwhile amount, or the problem wouldn’t still exist and we’d be getting back to normal life. Besides, what’s the benefit of slowing something that which is inevitable? Is it worse if 10 people die in a day vs 10 people dying over a week? 10 people still die. Why not lose them all up front and then crack on with living?

Unless the govt builds a dedicated solitary confinement cell for every single one of the 65m people in the UK, the virus WILL spread. We can delude ourselves that if we stop living our lives for long enough and hard enough, that we can get it to zero and return to normal life but that’s woefully unrealistic. We have had 7 months already of this st. Vaccine doesn’t look anywhere near ready, and there’s big doubts as to how effective it will be. People are living in a perverted authoritarian fantasy to save the lives of a bunch of people mostly who will die soon anyway of one of the many other things that causes death.

The point has long, long since passed where the cure became worse than the disease.

Mark when you start out with 'some might come to realise soon' that is somewhat condescending in itself but worse it's from a position that you readily accept you cannot evidence.

We are in period of sustained growth of both hospital beds occupied and deaths despite the interventions bought in six weeks not as a result of.

No interventions at all? I think it is a no brainer we would be seeing higher numbers than we are today but it maybe debatable as to how much by. Whether that would be sustainable is anyones guess but if you guess wrong the damage could make everyones eyes water a bit more than not being able to get a pint or having to wear a mask to go shopping etc.

Depends what you count as interventions. We could have had a big education push, restrict some large superspreader type events and generally have some minimal interventions especially to prevent spread to vulnerable people. It’s the criminalising of familial and home contact that I most disagree with.

As for “going for a pint”, I find that a bit disingenuous and it belittles and trivialises genuine, more pressing concerns such as familial support and human contact for the benefit of mental health.

The increase of hospital beds and deaths are generally in line with respiratory diseases for the time of year. Every winter the NHS is more or less overwhelmed. Many of the covid deaths over the next few months would be happening to flu and pneumonia if covid-19 wasn’t the new kid on the block. We never locked down society and criminalised close social contact for those diseases.

[MOTORVATOR]

survivalist said:

MOTORVATOR said:

No interventions at all? I think it is a no brainer we would be seeing higher numbers than we are today but it maybe debatable as to how much by. Whether that would be sustainable is anyones guess but if you guess wrong the damage could make everyones eyes water a bit more than not being able to get a pint or having to wear a mask to go shopping etc.

In don’t think you can evidence your ‘no brainer’ point any more than mark can evidence his point that measures don’t work.

It’s also not just about enjoying a pint or wearing a mask. It’s about the impact that those things and many other similar activities have on the economy, people’s livelihoods etc

It’s easy to imply that people are being selfish in demanding such things, but in our society that’s how wealth is distributed. People spend their wages on stuff, so people earn a living and, in turn, spend their wages on stuff.

Firstly, are you going to deny that opening back up did not increase prevalence? That is fairly well evidenced I would have thought, hence measures do work.

Secondly, please don't preach to me about economies and peoples livelihoods not having earned a sausage myself since April or taken a single penny in benefit from the state, something the chap I was responding to knows as he is in the same boat.

And here's one for you, I come from an era when it was actually quite normal for pubs to shut at 10.30 and indeed during the afternoon, you know before we became a service heavy country. So thanks for your attempted education on wealth creation but the last sentence may give you a clue how much credence I am going to give it.

[witko999]

Alucidnation said:

witko999 said:

Until the 'hospitalisations' data is sensibly recorded and presented, this is nothing more than fearmongering.

How many of those inpatients caught it in hospital?

How many were admitted to hospital specifically for it?

How many are in hospital for something else and just happen to have tested positive?

How many need treatment for it?

As is always the case with statistics, crap in = crap out.

What does it matter where they caught it?

They have, and are now in hospital with it.

How many did they infect before they were admitted?

It is deliberately misleading. I don't like being lied to. Perhaps you do.

If I am hospitalised by a football injury, it means I need hospital treatment for an injury I sustained while playing football. If I present to hospital for a routine blood sample and the nurse notices I have a bruise on my leg from football, I am not a football hospitalisation.

The NHS/government/media is reporting Covid hospitalisations knowing that most people think they were specifically admitted to hospital for Covid treatment.

[Zoobeef]

witko999 said:

It is deliberately misleading. I don't like being lied to. Perhaps you do.

If I am hospitalised by a football injury, it means I need hospital treatment for an injury I sustained while playing football. If I present to hospital for a routine blood sample and the nurse notices I have a bruise on my leg from football, I am not a football hospitalisation.

The NHS/government/media is reporting Covid hospitalisations knowing that most people think they were specifically admitted to hospital for Covid treatment.

Local hospital is being misleading. States they have x amount of covid cases this month and this time last year only had Y amount of flu cases.
1. I assume flu is cured which is why they haven't mentioned this years flu cases.
2. Did they test every single person that came into the hospital last year for any traces of the flu virus?

[MOTORVATOR]

markyb_lcy said:

Depends what you count as interventions. We could have had a big education push, restrict some large superspreader type events and generally have some minimal interventions especially to prevent spread to vulnerable people. It’s the criminalising of familial and home contact that I most disagree with.

As for “going for a pint”, I find that a bit disingenuous and it belittles and trivialises genuine, more pressing concerns such as familial support and human contact for the benefit of mental health.

The increase of hospital beds and deaths are generally in line with respiratory diseases for the time of year. Every winter the NHS is more or less overwhelmed. Many of the covid deaths over the next few months would be happening to flu and pneumonia if covid-19 wasn’t the new kid on the block. We never locked down society and criminalised close social contact for those diseases.

Well let's just brush over the fact that there were no major familial support or human contact restrictions as you call it until those that refused to be educated and sensible started taking the piss. We were in a relatively good place just six weeks ago.

As for beds and deaths again unevidenced claims. We are only just coming in to Flu season about now. Seasonal Pneumonia instead of Covid? Yes please mate, Course of antibiotics and I should be good to go as long as I don't get Covid on top of it I guess!

[isaldiri]

Chromegrill said:

I wonder if any of the resident experts on the forum could provide some advice to health officials in Doncaster
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorksh...

or Leeds
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-547121...

Hospitals in both cities now have more patients with coronavirus - including many in intensive care - than they did in March.
.

Did you read your own link? per the first article

"The number of patients being admitted with Covid-19 by one hospital trust has doubled in a week.

Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said as of Sunday it had 201 patients with the virus in its hospitals.

It said if rates continued to rise then in the next two weeks it would have more patients than at any point during the pandemic."

So patients had doubled in a week... but... hospitalisation rates would have to continue to rise (presumably at the same rate and not faster) for the next 2 weeks ie double twice before they had more patients than any point.. so they would now be far from anything like full capacity.......

[WatchfulEye]

Alucidnation said:

What does it matter where they caught it?

They have, and are now in hospital with it.

How many did they infect before they were admitted?

It matters because many cases are mild, and because hospitals are major sites of spread.

So, it is possible for someone to be in hospital for one thing (e.g. an injury) and contract mild CV while in hospital - and that gets counted as an hospitalised case.

The problem is that statistics on this have not been well collected. There has been a system for reporting infections while in hospital, but it worked by the date of positive result - if it was the same day as admission, it is assumed that the case was contracted out of hospital - if it was after the date of admission, it was diagnosed in hospital. The problem is the high false negative rate of nasal swab testing, meaning that many diagnoses are only made on the 2nd or 3rd daily test - hence they are erroneously recorded as in-hospital.

While hospitals should "code" all the diagnoses on an admission, and it should be possible to extract this data, there is a long time lag in this, as the coding may not be done until after discharge.

One academic estimate (from KCL) suggests around 12.5 % are hospital acquired, and on average, these cases tend to be milder than cases which are admitted with it (although that is not always the case; I've seen a couple of cases of hospital acquired CV while in hospital having treatment for a condition from which they were expected to recover, until they died from CV).

We have got some limited local internal statistics on this, which suggests roughly 10% of in-patient CV cases in the city region were contracted while in-hospital for another condition (i.e. 90% are community acquired CV admitted for treatment of the CV) - but the numbers over the Summer were too small to give good statistics - and in the last few weeks, the number has been fluctuating wildly due to surges in admissions with CV, as well as several outbreaks where staff have contracted it and spread it around.

[MOTORVATOR]

witko999 said:

Alucidnation said:

witko999 said:

Until the 'hospitalisations' data is sensibly recorded and presented, this is nothing more than fearmongering.

How many of those inpatients caught it in hospital?

How many were admitted to hospital specifically for it?

How many are in hospital for something else and just happen to have tested positive?

How many need treatment for it?

As is always the case with statistics, crap in = crap out.

What does it matter where they caught it?

They have, and are now in hospital with it.

How many did they infect before they were admitted?

It is deliberately misleading. I don't like being lied to. Perhaps you do.

If I am hospitalised by a football injury, it means I need hospital treatment for an injury I sustained while playing football. If I present to hospital for a routine blood sample and the nurse notices I have a bruise on my leg from football, I am not a football hospitalisation.

The NHS/government/media is reporting Covid hospitalisations knowing that most people think they were specifically admitted to hospital for Covid treatment.

I think it may actually be you that is making the deliberately misleading statements.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/wuhan-n...

Of course if you already have a positive test you should not be playing football.

Nor should you be presenting for your non urgent hospital appointment with a positive test as that is why they asked you have the test in the first place - to keep you out.

Crap in - Crap out as you say, just maybe not from PHE.

[shakindog]

Half the time when you attend a&e they send you down covid possible side.
They did with me 4 times over 2 weeks despite one of the days having had test results back negative. Suffice to say I sit here typing this for a covid ward with a chest drain in lucky me only too nearly 2 weeks.
From what has been said the standard of testing is absolutely dire.
False negative false positive all sorts.
But to all the neig sayers in here trust me it’s coming mostly from what I’ve seen for 50+ unhealthy folk. I’m under 50 and fairly healthy so should be ok.
But what I’ve seen with my own eyes in here is absolutely shocking for the staff just trying to deal with it day in day out I really feel for them.
Folk sat in ambulance waiting hand over for 2-3 hours then in a chair for 2-3 more then with a bit of luck a bed for few hours till they find you a spot. I’m in a ward with 6 folk all covid positive they have been in ranging from 2 days to 2 weeks some worse symptoms than other

[survivalist]

MOTORVATOR said:

survivalist said:

MOTORVATOR said:

No interventions at all? I think it is a no brainer we would be seeing higher numbers than we are today but it maybe debatable as to how much by. Whether that would be sustainable is anyones guess but if you guess wrong the damage could make everyones eyes water a bit more than not being able to get a pint or having to wear a mask to go shopping etc.

In don’t think you can evidence your ‘no brainer’ point any more than mark can evidence his point that measures don’t work.

It’s also not just about enjoying a pint or wearing a mask. It’s about the impact that those things and many other similar activities have on the economy, people’s livelihoods etc

It’s easy to imply that people are being selfish in demanding such things, but in our society that’s how wealth is distributed. People spend their wages on stuff, so people earn a living and, in turn, spend their wages on stuff.

Firstly, are you going to deny that opening back up did not increase prevalence? That is fairly well evidenced I would have thought, hence measures do work.

Secondly, please don't preach to me about economies and peoples livelihoods not having earned a sausage myself since April or taken a single penny in benefit from the state, something the chap I was responding to knows as he is in the same boat.

And here's one for you, I come from an era when it was actually quite normal for pubs to shut at 10.30 and indeed during the afternoon, you know before we became a service heavy country. So thanks for your attempted education on wealth creation but the last sentence may give you a clue how much credence I am going to give it.

Pubs, bars and restaurants have been open for a lot longer than schools and universities, so if we’re using the ‘no brainer’ approach we are targeting the wrong areas.

Regardless of whether you like or dislike our services heavy economy, many people rely on the hospitality industry. An industry that the government seems to view as an easy target for restrictions because it’s easy to claim that holidays, nights out etc are a selfish luxury we don’t need during a pandemic.

[Alucidnation]

shakindog said:

Half the time when you attend a&e they send you down covid possible side.
They did with me 4 times over 2 weeks despite one of the days having had test results back negative. Suffice to say I sit here typing this for a covid ward with a chest drain in lucky me only too nearly 2 weeks.
From what has been said the standard of testing is absolutely dire.
False negative false positive all sorts.
But to all the neig sayers in here trust me it’s coming mostly from what I’ve seen for 50+ unhealthy folk. I’m under 50 and fairly healthy so should be ok.
But what I’ve seen with my own eyes in here is absolutely shocking for the staff just trying to deal with it day in day out I really feel for them.
Folk sat in ambulance waiting hand over for 2-3 hours then in a chair for 2-3 more then with a bit of luck a bed for few hours till they find you a spot. I’m in a ward with 6 folk all covid positive they have been in ranging from 2 days to 2 weeks some worse symptoms than other

Out of interest, what were you admitted for?

[Drawweight]

Alucidnation said:

shakindog said:

Half the time when you attend a&e they send you down covid possible side.
They did with me 4 times over 2 weeks despite one of the days having had test results back negative. Suffice to say I sit here typing this for a covid ward with a chest drain in lucky me only too nearly 2 weeks.
From what has been said the standard of testing is absolutely dire.
False negative false positive all sorts.
But to all the neig sayers in here trust me it’s coming mostly from what I’ve seen for 50+ unhealthy folk. I’m under 50 and fairly healthy so should be ok.
But what I’ve seen with my own eyes in here is absolutely shocking for the staff just trying to deal with it day in day out I really feel for them.
Folk sat in ambulance waiting hand over for 2-3 hours then in a chair for 2-3 more then with a bit of luck a bed for few hours till they find you a spot. I’m in a ward with 6 folk all covid positive they have been in ranging from 2 days to 2 weeks some worse symptoms than other

Out of interest, what were you admitted for?

Unfortunately sitting in a corridor waiting on someone seeing you is nothing unusual. It happens in hospitals all over the country.

And that’s speaking from the experience of lying on a trolley for hours, being looked at then sent home.

I wouldn’t blame everything on Covid.