Coronavirus

[transatlantic]

The one really big benefit for me is no commute, so thats 90 minutes a day I get back. I'm also enjoying being able to finish up early, do some hobby stuff, and then do a bit more work later in the evening.

We have a set of core hours where we have to work/be available, but outside of that, can catch up our work hours when we want.

 

[Rorschach]

Work has pretty much dried up for me as expected. I am being productive with my time though. I have materials preparation I can do as well as a few workshop improvements.
I purchases a storage garage earlier in the year, with this fine weather we are having I am getting on with the repairs that are needed. Before this all started I re-pointed the brick work, wish I hadn't really as it would have been much more pleasant to do that now but there we go. Perfect weather for getting the paining done, just hope I have enough paint! Luckily I don't have to look at it so functional is all that's important, it may well get painted in 2 different colours :lol:

 

[craigs]

one thing that concerns me with pandemic is whether my house purchase takes a dump or not, hopefully the worst will be over when im supposed to move in July...but who knows :/

 

[user22161]

Had a strange day yesterday. Flew out of Lisbon T2 to Manchester on Ryanair's last flight on that route. Only about 30 passengers and no trolley-dolly service. We were the only flight within T2, no other desks open or passengers and the same when we arrived at Manchester T3, no other flights arriving at the same time. Have been in lock-down in Portugal and will now have to isolate in case we picked anything up on the trip.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

one thing that concerns me with pandemic is whether my house purchase takes a dump or not, hopefully the worst will be over when im supposed to move in July...but who knows :/

My daughter is looking to buy after May - she has her eye on two that have dropped £20,000 - 10% - in the last week.

 

[lurker]

MikeG,

Just a thought, but have yours and your wife’s illnesses been captured by national statistics.

 

[craigs]

one thing that concerns me with pandemic is whether my house purchase takes a dump or not, hopefully the worst will be over when im supposed to move in July...but who knows :/

My daughter is looking to buy after May - she has her eye on two that have dropped £20,000 - 10% - in the last week.

Yeah, it's a good time if you haven't already started the process, but i'm a couple of weeks away from exchanging and i've already made workshop plans for the garage trouble is anything can ruin it at this point.

Sorry for the thread hijack

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I purchased a world map and gave my wife a dart and said "throw this and wherever it lands I'm taking you for a holiday when this pandemic is over".

Turns out we're spending two weeks behind the fridge.

 

[MikeG.]

MikeG,

Just a thought, but have yours and your wife’s illnesses been captured by national statistics.

No.

I heard an expert on BBC yesterday say that the number of official cases are thought to represent about 1% of the actual number of cases. They can work back from the number of hospital admissions and arrive at a good estimate of the numbers in the country who have or have had the disease.

 

[Rorschach]

MikeG,

Just a thought, but have yours and your wife’s illnesses been captured by national statistics.

No.

I heard an expert on BBC yesterday say that the number of official cases are thought to represent about 1% of the actual number of cases. They can work back from the number of hospital admissions and arrive at a good estimate of the numbers in the country who have or have had the disease.

If that is indeed the case then the mortality rates are far below what the media is reporting and my suspicions about this being overblown are probably correct.
I notice today they announced the antibody testing will start soon. What if that does indeed show this has all been a massive over reaction? I suspect the numbers will be hidden if that is the case.

 

[Deadeye]

MikeG,

Just a thought, but have yours and your wife’s illnesses been captured by national statistics.

No.

I heard an expert on BBC yesterday say that the number of official cases are thought to represent about 1% of the actual number of cases. They can work back from the number of hospital admissions and arrive at a good estimate of the numbers in the country who have or have had the disease.

Unfortunately there's a very significant error bar on that 1% number, so not really a good estimate.
The hospital reporting is good - the deaths number is very accurate (and all tested); the cases number is pretty good (most have been tested, though not 100%).
Beyond that 111 is recording people who call and scoring symptoms - so some 'flu may be getting mis-categorised. But, conversely, some people with C19 are simply staying at home and not calling - and so avoid statistical immortality.
Once antibody testing is more widely available (allowing to test for having recovered rather than for the live virus) a much better picture of the epidemiology will emerge. There is also an ?Oxford University app that tracks health status and symptoms to try to approximate the incidence and spread parameters.
The 1% is a best estimate currently, based on 111 calls and subsequent hospitalisations - but the 111 calls are a data subset and not a wholly clean one.

 

[sploo]

If that is indeed the case then the mortality rates are far below what the media is reporting and my suspicions about this being overblown are probably correct.
I notice today they announced the antibody testing will start soon. What if that does indeed show this has all been a massive over reaction? I suspect the numbers will be hidden if that is the case.

Something in the order of 12,000 deaths (just in Europe) in a bit over a month is hardly overblown. Granted the mortality percentage rate is difficult to pin down due to the fact that there are likely many people getting relatively minor symptoms, and not being officially recorded. As far as is known though; any of those mild cases could easily infect someone who might fare much worse - so the fact there are larger numbers of infections than recorded is still a worry.

EDIT...

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps ... 7b48e9ecf6 indicates ~20k deaths worldwide, with ~440k confirmed cases => about 4.5% mortality rate. Say there's actually 100 times more people infected than officially recorded (i.e. most of them with mild symptoms); so that's 0.045% mortality rate.

The UK has ~60 million people, so if the infection spread widely that would still be 27k deaths in the UK alone. All of Europe together would be 10 times that number. Add Asia, and the USA and you're into a fair few million deaths.

 

[D_W]

MikeG,

Just a thought, but have yours and your wife’s illnesses been captured by national statistics.

No.

I heard an expert on BBC yesterday say that the number of official cases are thought to represent about 1% of the actual number of cases. They can work back from the number of hospital admissions and arrive at a good estimate of the numbers in the country who have or have had the disease.

This is a strange supposition. I often work with incomplete data, but am not an expert on epidemics. However, we have 60 confirmed cases in my county, and many folks who suggest the same (that the actual number is a hundred times that).

The local university health system here has limited tests,but had tested 900 individuals at random who were asymptomatic or suspected to have another sickness and no family exposure to try to gauge community spread and they had no positive tests. Hard to tell how good that statistic is as it may not age well, but the expanded data that I've seen suggests fatalities will ultimately be something between just less than 1% of cases to slightly higher.

It is, in my opinion, dangerous for people to believe that there are 2-10K cases for each death or some such thing, as it keeps them from taking things seriously. In time, we'll get better numbers if there is widespread antibody testing at random, but that's probably pretty far off.

Our local health system didn't use their study to declare that there's no community spread (vs. family spread, etc), they actually said they believe that there is some community spread, but that it's not significant at this point.

They provide about half of the healthcare in a region with a few million people, and I guess their objective was to plan for capacity. I'm skeptical that the death rate will ultimately end up being a tiny fraction of a percent (between a tenth or a hundredth) as the now-recovered areas suggest otherwise.

As a ruse, I calculated the rough chance that the hospital system here could've done random testing of 900 people in a county with 1.2 million residents where 6000 were infected, and found no infections. The chance of that is about 1 in 100. True randomness in something like this is hard to achieve, of course. Is it possible that the 1 in 100 naysayers are correct? Sure. Is it likely? no.

It's only by chance that the percentage of suspected reported cases (1 in 100) is about the same as the chance of such an assumption being right based on these 900 tests.

 

[Rorschach]

If that is indeed the case then the mortality rates are far below what the media is reporting and my suspicions about this being overblown are probably correct.
I notice today they announced the antibody testing will start soon. What if that does indeed show this has all been a massive over reaction? I suspect the numbers will be hidden if that is the case.

Something in the order of 12,000 deaths (just in Europe) in a bit over a month is hardly overblown. Granted the mortality percentage rate is difficult to pin down due to the fact that there are likely many people getting relatively minor symptoms, and not being officially recorded. As far as is known though; any of those mild cases could easily infect someone who might fare much worse - so the fact there are larger numbers of infections than recorded is still a worry.

EDIT...

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps ... 7b48e9ecf6 indicates ~20k deaths worldwide, with ~440k confirmed cases => about 4.5% mortality rate. Say there's actually 100 times more people infected than officially recorded (i.e. most of them with mild symptoms); so that's 0.045% mortality rate.

The UK has ~60 million people, so if the infection spread widely that would still be 27k deaths in the UK alone. All of Europe together would be 10 times that number. Add Asia, and the USA and you're into a fair few million deaths.

If we end up with 27k deaths that is still only as bad as a bad flu winter and nobody worries about those numbers. Since they are not carrying out autopsies we also have no idea how many of the deaths are directly caused by the coronavirus or whether those people would have died from something else very shortly anyway. We'll never really know the true numbers. Remember almost 1700 people die in the UK everyday.

 

[D_W]

The reason we don't care that much about the flu compared to something like this is the death rate is much lower from the flu, and it generally doesn't impact otherwise healthy or somewhat compromised people.

And because about 10% of cases seem to need serious or critical care (ventilation). Without a ventilator, a large % of those individuals die. Seasonal flu untreated just makes us feel terrible enough that we say things like "we wish we'd die".

This version also seems to be identifying people who have curable conditions (younger folks with undiagnosed leukemia, for example) that would otherwise be diagnosed later.

 

[sploo]

If we end up with 27k deaths that is still only as bad as a bad flu winter and nobody worries about those numbers. Since they are not carrying out autopsies we also have no idea how many of the deaths are directly caused by the coronavirus or whether those people would have died from something else very shortly anyway. We'll never really know the true numbers. Remember almost 1700 people die in the UK everyday.

My best answer is probably D_W's posts before and after yours above. If it does turn out to be ~1% mortality rate then that'll be really scary.

Flu (though undeniably a killer) is small beans compared to Covid-19.

 

[welly]

If we end up with 27k deaths that is still only as bad as a bad flu winter and nobody worries about those numbers. Since they are not carrying out autopsies we also have no idea how many of the deaths are directly caused by the coronavirus or whether those people would have died from something else very shortly anyway. We'll never really know the true numbers. Remember almost 1700 people die in the UK everyday.

Given how quickly this virus has spread and how many people infected with the virus have died in only the past couple of weeks, do you honestly not see the urgency to contain this virus? And by whatever means necessary? It's a necessary inconvenience for a few months.

 

[Rorschach]

If we end up with 27k deaths that is still only as bad as a bad flu winter and nobody worries about those numbers. Since they are not carrying out autopsies we also have no idea how many of the deaths are directly caused by the coronavirus or whether those people would have died from something else very shortly anyway. We'll never really know the true numbers. Remember almost 1700 people die in the UK everyday.

Given how quickly this virus has spread and how many people infected with the virus have died in only the past couple of weeks, do you honestly not see the urgency to contain this virus? And by whatever means necessary? It's a necessary inconvenience for a few months.

If things pan out as I think they will, no. I don't think it warrants the reaction we have had. If the country or rather the world goes into a deep depression as a result of the actions taken then more people will die and suffer from that than ever would have if less extreme action had been taken. I hope I am wrong and things turn out ok, but I don't think they will. It will be ironic as well as the people most likely to die (the elderly for the most part) won't suffer later on, yet the young who are most likely fairly safe will suffer greatly in the years to come.

 

[D_W]

The realistic alternative here (based on regions in italy and information from China and others) is that we would see:
* large numbers of deaths
* health care practitioners knocked out of service in great numbers
* a lack of ventilators, driving death rates up several times
* individuals out of work service to take care of themselves or relatives or dependents instead of staying in quarantine (many of us in quarantine continue to work - well, i'm not in quarantine -we're under a "stay at home" order)
* potential long-term health complications from surviving individuals who sustained permanent organ damage due to lack of ventilation, but who did not die
* much greater viral exposure before treatment is available leading to high community viral loads and an increased chance for mutation

 

[MikeG.]

If we end up with 27k deaths that is still only as bad as a bad flu winter and nobody worries about those numbers. Since they are not carrying out autopsies we also have no idea how many of the deaths are directly caused by the coronavirus or whether those people would have died from something else very shortly anyway. We'll never really know the true numbers. Remember almost 1700 people die in the UK everyday.

Given how quickly this virus has spread and how many people infected with the virus have died in only the past couple of weeks, do you honestly not see the urgency to contain this virus? And by whatever means necessary? It's a necessary inconvenience for a few months.

If things pan out as I think they will, no. I don't think it warrants the reaction we have had. If the country or rather the world goes into a deep depression as a result of the actions taken then more people will die and suffer from that than ever would have if less extreme action had been taken. I hope I am wrong and things turn out ok, but I don't think they will. It will be ironic as well as the people most likely to die (the elderly for the most part) won't suffer later on, yet the young who are most likely fairly safe will suffer greatly in the years to come.

The percentage dying is unimportant. It's the rate at which the dying and near dying present at A&E which is the critical thing with this disease. If like flue it kills say 20,000 over the course of a winter, then you can react to it in the same sort of way you react to flu. If, however, those same 20,000, plus the near dying who survive, all turn up at A&E in the same fortnight, then not only will many more of them die, but so will lots of the other people who would be in A&E otherwise for all the normal reasons. When the government talks about protecting the NHS and flattening the curve, they really are meaning precisely what they say. They want the NHS to be able to cope, and if everyone turned up at A&E in the same fortnight, then the outcome would be like Italy.