Gigging during coronavirus

[Stub Mandrel]

The 2018 flu pandemic killed a quarter of a million people in the UK. It's calculated that 50% of the population was infected. The death rate was probably around 2-3%.

A the time one could equally have said:

" The first thing to note is that the vast majority of influenza cases produce symptoms similar to a cold. Of those that are more serious than a cold, the vast majority produce symptoms similar to flu. Of those that are more serious than flu, most sufferers develop very nasty symptoms that can be life-threatening to a minority of the population. And finally you reach the cases that the media are drooling over ... people dying. "

The main difference is that it appeared to have an additional peak in mortality for 30-year olds:

 

Coronavirus seems to be just as infectious, but may have a lower death rate - we really don't know as there simply aren't reliable figures on how many people are infected without symptoms (or who hide them).

The things that are certain are that we still have too little data to really understand how the outbreak will progress; it could be a year or more before we have a vaccine to enable us to do more than we could have done for historic pandemics; and if this one does fizzle out, there will eventually be one that doesn't.

 

 

[Happy Jack]

14 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

The things that are certain are that we still have too little data to really understand how the outbreak will progress; it could be a year or more before we have a vaccine to enable us to do more than we could have done for historic pandemics; and if this one does fizzle out, there will eventually be one that doesn't.

 

Absolutely this ^. It is inevitable. But I don't believe it's helpful to greet every new virus as potentially The End Of Civilisation As We Know It.

 

[41Hz]

The big problem will be the NHS....

looking at the Italy outbreak 49% have needed hospitalisation. 9% are in intensive care, presumably on ventilators.

the 1-2% death rate that is being quoted is based on current cases that have had full medical care including ICU.

The government have said up to 80% could be infected. I think this is unlikely, but assuming 10% get it, that’s 6.6M people. If 9% need ICU care, that would be 600K people. We only have around 7-800 free ICU beds in the UK at any time, so I suspect most of the 600K people needing ICU care would be toast.

This could potentially push the death rate closer to 9% once the NHS is overwhelmed.

Edited March 3, 2020 by 41Hz

[ambient]

On 01/03/2020 at 22:04, arthurhenry said:

But you may be served by someone who was hugging, shaking hands and spitting at a gig the night before.

Yet another reason to use self checkouts 😊

[ambient]

2 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

The 2018 flu pandemic killed a quarter of a million people in the UK. It's calculated that 50% of the population was infected. The death rate was probably around 2-3%.

A the time one could equally have said:

" The first thing to note is that the vast majority of influenza cases produce symptoms similar to a cold. Of those that are more serious than a cold, the vast majority produce symptoms similar to flu. Of those that are more serious than flu, most sufferers develop very nasty symptoms that can be life-threatening to a minority of the population. And finally you reach the cases that the media are drooling over ... people dying. "

The main difference is that it appeared to have an additional peak in mortality for 30-year olds:

 

Coronavirus seems to be just as infectious, but may have a lower death rate - we really don't know as there simply aren't reliable figures on how many people are infected without symptoms (or who hide them).

The things that are certain are that we still have too little data to really understand how the outbreak will progress; it could be a year or more before we have a vaccine to enable us to do more than we could have done for historic pandemics; and if this one does fizzle out, there will eventually be one that doesn't.

 

 

I thought Coronavirus was more deadly, tens times more deadly is what I’ve read.

[41Hz]

11 minutes ago, ambient said:

I thought Coronavirus was more deadly, tens times more deadly is what I’ve read.

Flu is 0.1% I believe. So this is between 10-60x more deadly depending on what figure you want to believe.

Based on known cases that have had a conclusion I.e died or recovered, the death rate is currently running at 6%, but could be lower than this if mild cases have been missed.

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

Edited March 3, 2020 by 41Hz

[drTStingray]

4 hours ago, Cato said:

I'm not sure that's a particularly useful statistic.

It's not 1 in 340 from a random sample of the population.

Until quite recently the only people being tested were those who developed symptoms after visiting high risk countries or had direct contact with people who have been diagnosed with coronavirus.

So that's 1 in 340 from a fairly small and very specific subject group that were thought to be at a much higher risk of contracting coronavirus anyway.

It doesn't really tell us anything about how contagious the virus is or what's happening in the general population.

I believe it was from 13,500 tested by a set point in time - the testing was of people who had phoned 111 with symptoms etc etc plus those returning from affected countries. 

I think this is of more concern to people suffering from underlying health conditions like asthma and diabetes. Otherwise people can probably afford to be reasonably blaze about it (maybe). 

Interesting the differences in how a communist compared with capitalist country deals with it. 

Both seem to suffer from initial denial (eg the US line of if you don't test people then you can't say there's a problem (until people die of course) ; the Chinese preventing people from talking about it initially). However we seem to be stressing about the NHS - yes it's in a dreadful mess owing to penny pinching but it's still far better than many - but no doubt if necessary the private health sector could and should be commandeered. Countries like the US have a much bigger problem owing to reliance on the private sector.  

[Happy Jack]

[Stub Mandrel]

25 minutes ago, ambient said:

I thought Coronavirus was more deadly, tens times more deadly is what I’ve read.

Than normal flu.

The 1918 strain was far more lethal than ordinary flu.

[ambient]

21 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Than normal flu.

The 1918 strain was far more lethal than ordinary flu.

Research has actually shown the 1918 strain to be no more virulent than any other. There were other factors to consider, poor nutrition, overcrowded and insanitary conditions in camps and hospitals. This lead to superinfection. How many were already in a poor state of health following the war?

Edited March 3, 2020 by ambient

[Dan Dare]

22 minutes ago, ambient said:

Research has actually shown the 1918 strain to be no more virulent than any other. There were other factors to consider, poor nutrition, overcrowded and insanitary conditions in camps and hospitals. This lead to superinfection. How many were already in a poor state of health following the war?

Exactly. People were exhausted and malnourished following the Great War and hospitals were over-loaded dealing with casualties. Housing was poor and over-crowded for all but the wealthy. It was not surprising that the outbreak was so deadly.

[Stub Mandrel]

1 hour ago, Dan Dare said:

Exactly. People were exhausted and malnourished following the Great War and hospitals were over-loaded dealing with casualties. Housing was poor and over-crowded for all but the wealthy. It was not surprising that the outbreak was so deadly.

Not according to some sources:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3029258/

The “Spanish” Influenza Pandemic of 1918–1919

In early March of 1918, several severe cases of influenza were reported in the United States. This would mark the beginning of the first wave of the “Spanish” influenza pandemic (reviewed in [1]). As massive numbers of US military troops were deployed in Europe, the virus spread too, leading to outbreaks throughout the United States, Europe, and possibly Asia. Spain was neutral during the war and its press was therefore uncensored. Accordingly, the Spanish newspapers were filled with reports of the disease, especially when the king became ill. It is believed that these published accounts of the spread of the disease explain why the virus became known as the “Spanish” influenza. During the first wave of this, like other, pandemics, mortality rates were in the normal range, though morbidity rates were high. However, while the first wave killed relatively few, by the time the next wave came, in the fall of 1918, the virus had undergone numerous passages through humans, had changed dramatically, and was now lethal. Together with a third wave, which occurred in the winter of 1918–1919, approximately 30% of the world's population (500 million people) is thought to have been clinically affected by the 1918 pandemic [1]. Unexpectedly, the 1918 pandemic attacked particularly young adults, who usually have a low death rate during influenza epidemics. As a result, influenza and pneumonia death rates for 15- to 34-year-olds were more than 20 times higher in 1918 than in the previous year (the mortality rate associated with the 1918 virus was more than 2.5% among infected persons compared with less than 0.1% in other influenza epidemics; [1]). Most deaths were caused from secondary bacterial pneumonia due to a lack of antibiotics [1]. The 1918 pandemic virus, however, also killed quickly and directly with a violent viral pneumonia, often with either massive acute pulmonary hemorrhage or pulmonary edema. The disease course was frequently less than 5 days [1].

:::

Although the complete sequences of the viral RNAs of the 1918 pandemic virus have been determined, the viral genome does not contain any motifs known to be associated with high virulence [5]. Therefore, to understand the extraordinary virulence of the 1918 pandemic virus, it was important to re-create the virus and examine its pathogenicity in animals. The recent technological advancement of reverse genetics, which allows the generation of infectious influenza viruses entirely from cDNAs [11], made possible the re-creation of the 1918 pandemic virus. Tumpery's group at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [12] and we [13] succeeded in rescuing viruses bearing all eight RNA segments of the 1918 virus by using reverse genetics. Now that we had all of the materials required, we could study the molecular properties associated with the unusual virulence of the 1918 pandemic virus.

:::

Which viral factor(s) contribute to the extraordinary virulence of the 1918 virus? One of the key players is hemagglutinin (HA), which is the viral surface glycoprotein that has two functions in the early stage of virus replication: receptor binding and membrane fusion.

 

 

The interesting thing being that, unusually for flu, it killed through viral pneumonia, the same way as Covid-19.

[Woodinblack]

2 hours ago, drTStingray said:

Countries like the US have a much bigger problem owing to reliance on the private sector.  

Indeed. As previously mentioned there is the cost of testing if you don't have health insurance (figures vary), which means large amounts of the population will not be tested when they have it, and also the 'self isolate for 14 days'. There are a very large amount of people in the USA (as here but more so) for whom self isolating isn't an option. People working in catering, care homes, schools, public bodies - any of the 'unvalued' occupations. These people can not afford to be off work due to being ill so they will go in.

At least we have a bit of a safety net for a few more here, however much they are trying to strip it down. Still, the work heroes will help spread it.

[Phil Starr]

2 hours ago, Happy Jack said:

Genius

[Phil Starr]

We need to be careful about mortality rates, they are expressed as percentages, what is not clear is percentages of what? All countries seem to be using different measurements of what constitutes infection. For some it is those tested who are positive, for some it is an estimate of how many we believe might be infected, for others it is people who show symptoms and others of those hospitalised. That's one of the problems of comparison with Spanish Flu there were no test for viruses so the 2-3% mortality is based on people reported as infected. The 2-3% for Coronavirus I quoted was based upon the proportion of serious infections in China and other east Asian countries as reported in New Scientist. 

Spanish Flu was particularly deadly because it was a novel disease, we are the decendents of the survivors so the 2009 outbreak was much less dangerous to us. Covid-19 is another novel disease

 

[whynot]

On 01/03/2020 at 23:45, Woodinblack said:

Our singer is already ready

Phil on drums looks a little concerned :)

[Barking Spiders]

Going to the gents at work today, bearing in mind transmission of covid 19, it struck me as how stupid that with  toilets in public places you push through the door when going in but coming out you have to pull on a handle. Considering general hygiene issues surely it should be the other way round. Furthermore, it's startling how many adults don't wash their hands after going to the john, not just after # 1s but also after #2s. Then there are those people who cough and splutter without covering their mouths. WTF?

[Beedster]

18 minutes ago, Barking Spiders said:

Going to the gents at work today, bearing in mind transmission of covid 19, it struck me as how stupid that with  toilets in public places you push through the door when going in but coming out you have to pull on a handle. Considering general hygiene issues surely it should be the other way round. Furthermore, it's startling how many adults don't wash their hands after going to the john, not just after # 1s but also after #2s. Then there are those people who cough and splutter without covering their mouths. WTF?

Mate, if you start questioning the logic of well-accepted everyday processes you will quickly go mad, especially when it relates to hygiene and toilets 

[Cato]

Think about taps, for example, especially in a public or office toilet.

People generally handle the taps at the point at which their hands are most contaminated, ie. just after they've done their business, just before they actually wash all the bacteria and microscopic mank off their hands.

By the end of the day there's probably enough biohazards on the average public tap to wipe out a small country.

Edited March 3, 2020 by Cato

[Beedster]

13 minutes ago, Cato said:

Think about taps, for example, especially in a public or office toilet.

People generally handle the taps at the point at which their hands are most contaminated, ie. just after they've done their business, just before they actually wash all the bacteria and microscopic mank off their hands.

By the end of the day there's probably enough biohazards on the average public tap to wipe out a small country.

Which is why we should look after our immune systems 

[Happy Jack]

 

[drTStingray]

9 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

The 2018 flu pandemic killed a quarter of a million people in the UK. It's calculated that 50% of the population was infected. The death rate was probably around 2-3%.

A the time one could equally have said:

" The first thing to note is that the vast majority of influenza cases produce symptoms similar to a cold. Of those that are more serious than a cold, the vast majority produce symptoms similar to flu. Of those that are more serious than flu, most sufferers develop very nasty symptoms that can be life-threatening to a minority of the population. And finally you reach the cases that the media are drooling over ... people dying. "

The main difference is that it appeared to have an additional peak in mortality for 30-year olds:

 

 

We should remember that prior to the clean air act implementation in the 60s, many people with underlying respiratory problems would be subject to severe illness and many to death even if they didnt get flu especially in winter. Add to that the fact many people returning from the war had been in dreadful environmental conditions (trenches/cold/damp/mustard gas attack) let alone being under fire etc. 

So couple that with a new flu, the conditions are there for a massive breakout of flu and high death rate.

I heard recently more people died in that flu outbreak than in the First World War. 

Edited March 3, 2020 by drTStingray

[Bleat]

I have access to Hypochlorus Acid so am covered if we all run out of hand sanitiser.... I'll just spray myself down with it each morning 👍

[BreadBin]

They've been handing out packs of antiseptic wipes at work. The lads in the workshop were most amused and looked pointedly at the bottles of degreaser they clean everything down with!

[steantval]