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[Anju]

Probably worth you and your daughter looking at what will be expected of her on her particular course. In some institutions it is likely students will be able to complete this year without leaving their bedroom, whereas others will have an element of attendance in smaller groups (and all points inbetween). Some of this information has been slow emerging, but should be there soon, particular as it will be induction in 3/4 weeks. There's a view around in union circles that there will be an increase in cases linked to specific universities/colleges, which will push everyone back to online delivery before Xmas (or maybe outbreaks linked to schools will do the same if they are in the same town). I included that last sentence as a form of reassurance *, believe it or not, though not obviously for the specific places who get the spike...

Edit * I'm not talking mass outbreaks, just a small number of cases within particular student cohorts that mean individual staff will have to quarantine after being in the same room - all disrupting the institution's attempts at having some sort of 'face to face' delivery.

Thanks, will definitely take your advice. Our problem is the kids are, in our opinion, being overly cautious, probably because their mum ended up in hospital for 7 nights last year after an unidentified viral infection.

 

[Teaboy]

Is there actually a significant correlation?

Good question. Its purely anecdotal when I look at the UK who is known as the sick man of Europe anyway. Then the US and Central and a lot of South America have significant obesity problem and the problems associated with obesity (type 2 diabetes being a key one). Obviously a lot of other factors involved in each country but the concept of being in good health before contracting the virus will give the best chance of survival has never really been in doubt as far as I can see.

 

[magneze]

Isn't that the case for most viruses though?

 

[teuchter]

Good question. Its purely anecdotal when I look at the UK who is known as the sick man of Europe anyway. Then the US and Central and a lot of South America have significant obesity problem and the problems associated with obesity (type 2 diabetes being a key one). Obviously a lot of other factors involved in each country but the concept of being in good health before contracting the virus will give the best chance of survival has never really been in doubt as far as I can see.

Spain and Italy don't really fit into the obesity pattern though.

And the difference in covid outcome between the UK and various other European countries is very stark, whereas the difference in obesity levels is much less so.

 

[elbows]

And the difference in covid outcome between the UK and various other European countries is very stark, whereas the difference in obesity levels is much less so.

Using the word outcome implies clinical outcome, and I've not actually seen many studies about that yet. Before exploring any differences in that area, it is more obvious to explore differences in death figures being down to a vastly different number of people being infected at all in some countries compared to others. And even some of the countries that had rather a lot of death had a different experience to the UK because they had very large outbreaks in a subset of regions while other regions were often spared huge outbreaks, unlike the UK where things were spread around more evenly with less exceptions.

 

[Badgers]

Formula One boss Flavio Briatore, (prominent COVID sceptic who attacked the Italian Govt for closing nightclubs last week) is seriously ill in hospital with coronavirus after catching it in his own Italian nightclub - together with 60 of his own employees.

 

[elbows]

Formula One boss Flavio Briatore, (prominent COVID sceptic who attacked the Italian Govt for closing nightclubs last week) is seriously ill in hospital with coronavirus after catching it in his own Italian nightclub - together with 60 of his own employees.

Its not currently clear whether he has it since he has posted saying that he hasnt got his test result and that he only has severe prostatitis.

Fuck him anyway, for many reasons including this quote relating to sour grapes that the authorities wont ignore the pandemic to protect his business interests. "My heart weeps to see an economy slaughtered by people who have never done anything in their lives."

 

[William of Walworth]

Formula One boss Flavio Briatore, (prominent COVID sceptic who attacked the Italian Govt for closing nightclubs last week) is seriously ill in hospital with coronavirus after catching it in his own Italian nightclub - together with 60 of his own employees.

( .... and, about fifteen years ago, almost-owner/near-take-overer of my then pretty impoverished team Oxford United! .... he added irrelevantly )

 

[elbows]

Glimpses of the situation in various european countries continue to pop up in the media:

Prime Minister Jean Castex says the virus is four times more prevalent in the French population than a month ago and 21 areas are now classified as "red zones". That's up from just two earlier today.

"The epidemic is gaining ground and now is the time we have to intervene," he said in a press conference. If France didn't act fast the spread could become "exponential".

Although the spread is primarily among young people, hospital admissions are gradually rising to around 800 a week. The transmission rate is now 1.4 and the French PM says "the virus is spreading all over the country".

While he stressed the "aim is to do everything to avoid a lockdown, especially across the board", Mr Castex said the health ministry was putting plans in place either for local or national lockdowns.

Germany appears poised to limit private parties to a maximum of 25 people, and extend a ban on large events to the end of the year, as cases continue to rise in the country.

The ban on large gatherings was due to end in October.

Meanwhile the government also looks set to impose a €50 (£45; $59) fine on people not wearing masks, and keep fans out of stadiums until at least the end of the year, according to reports from German media and AFP news agency.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to meet the leaders of the country's 16 federal states later today to officially agree on new measures, which would apply nationwide.

From BBC live updated page, the links for which are still all messed up on this forum (its treating them as media) so I have to break them https://www.bb c.co.uk/news/live/world-53928841

 

[cupid_stunt]

That sounds grim.

 

[elbows]

That sounds grim.

Yeah. Less summer wiggle room than hoped, combined with the inevitable contradiction between what needs to be done to keep virus levels low, and what was deemed to be necessary for the economy.

The absolute failure to learn from and prevent seeding via imported cases that was seen the first time around has not helped either. The desire to reopen European borders as quickly as possible, and the lack of desire to attempt a full viral suppression strategy during the window of opportunity that was created in the wake of the first lockdown is very depressing but always seemed somewhat inevitable.

I always said it was important to give people something in summer, and to test how far things could be relaxed. But many countries went too far, too quickly, and its probably come back to haunt them sooner than expected.

Now having said all that, a lot more fuckups and inappropriate behavioural changes would be required in order to get exactly the same scenario as was seen in February and March. And we should still presume that authorities will intervene at a much earlier stage this time. So its hard for me to get a sense for quite how bad things could get again. It ought to be more difficult for R to again reach the giddy heights it managed at the start. But I think I read some stuff that suggests an R of 1.7 would be enough to create a very large second wave. And there are unknowns relating to schools and autumn/winter conditions.

 

[frogwoman]

This might be possible good news tho? Could it be less severe infection for people who were previously infected? Or just that hospitals are getting better at treatment? I hope so?

Covid-19 is becoming less deadly in Europe but we don't know why

It is becoming increasingly clear that people are less likely to die if they get covid-19 now compared with earlier in the pandemic, at least in Europe, but the reasons why are still shrouded in uncertainty

www.newscientist.com

 

[teuchter]

Countries that responded best to Covid-19 had planned for 'Disease X', says top EU health expert

Exclusive interview with Sergio Brusin, principle expert at European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control

www.telegraph.co.uk

Cases are now rising in many countries in Europe, how do you see the prospects for the coming winter?

My feeling, and the common opinion here at the ECDC, is that this resurgence we are seeing now will go ahead for quite a bit. And the risk is really linked to the behaviour of the population and the health policies. The countries that are able to test, contact trace and take measures quickly at a regional level will see a lower resurgence of cases.

How bad do you think the resurgence in cases might get?

I think it will go on for quite a few months. It will probably never get to the same level as the first big wave in Spring but there will be quite a big increase. The good thing is that, although we've seen hospitalisations going up in some countries it is not anywhere near to the situation in March and April. The ICUs are not clogged and our health services now have much better planning and response times. So, I am optimistic we will not see the big horrible scenes we saw in March and April, but we will see a lot more cases.

What is driving the rise in new cases?

What is really driving the resurgence is the fact that we have still quite a few gatherings of people. I wouldn't call them mass gatherings but we see that in most of the countries where the resurgence is very significant that it comes mostly from weddings, bars and discos; places were quite a lot of people are mixing together. These are the super spreading events that are mostly driving the resurgence we are seeing.

It is also relevant that a lot of the new cases are among young people. This is good because they are less vulnerable but they will pass it up to older groups because that is how [viral] transmission works. For this reason, there’s a particular need to protect the vulnerable.

 

[teuchter]

This might be possible good news tho? Could it be less severe infection for people who were previously infected? Or just that hospitals are getting better at treatment? I hope so?

Covid-19 is becoming less deadly in Europe but we don't know why

It is becoming increasingly clear that people are less likely to die if they get covid-19 now compared with earlier in the pandemic, at least in Europe, but the reasons why are still shrouded in uncertainty

www.newscientist.com

If you read that article - I think they have given it a misleading headline. What we know is that fewer people are dying from it, but that's not the same thing as it becoming "less deadly". It's clear from the article that it's not at all certain whether, if you get Covid now, you are less likely to die from it compared to the likelihood some time ago.

 

[Chz]

the inevitable contradiction between what needs to be done to keep virus levels low, and what was deemed to be necessary for the economy.

Skulls for the economy throne!
Blood for the debt god!

 

[elbows]

This might be possible good news tho? Could it be less severe infection for people who were previously infected? Or just that hospitals are getting better at treatment? I hope so?

Covid-19 is becoming less deadly in Europe but we don't know why

It is becoming increasingly clear that people are less likely to die if they get covid-19 now compared with earlier in the pandemic, at least in Europe, but the reasons why are still shrouded in uncertainty

www.newscientist.com

It will be months before I can take these possibilities more seriously.

Mostly because I dont think we had a good sense of how many infections there were in the first wave, and I would expect the current number of infections to be vastly lower than it was at the peak, so of course there are far less hospitalisations and deaths. Crude infection fatality rate or case fatality rate estimates are not reliable in my book, so I have no intention of jumping the gun on the idea it has become milder. There could also be a seasonal factor in disease severity for all we know, so have to wait for the seasons to change. And I already explained why the D614G mutation thing is not something I would use to paint a picture of a milder strain at this stage, and plenty of countries in Europe that had lots of death had lots of that strain present at the time.

I dont blame people for looking for sources of hope. Its not something I am looking for myself, for me the good news will come with the benefit of hindsight and after we have been through some tricky seasons, I'm utterly uninterested in clutching at straws at this stage. I look forward to the time when that changes for me, but it wont be for months yet.

 

[elbows]

Plus I am tracking Spains hospital data, and its impossible for me to take those sorts of stories seriously when I am eyeballing that data closely.

Up until a week ago Spains data was only available in a somewhat wanky format (xxx date within previous 7 days type stuff) plus since the start of July they dont publish any data for weekends. They now publish additional hospital data in a more normal format, and although I will only have 6 days worth of that data when todays numbers come out, I will share my graphs of it for the first time later today.

In the meantime here is the aforementioned old format of data to provide some context. Note that this data only covers a period from late May onwards, so the bulk of the first wave is missing from it. This is for Spain as a whole:



This is for Madrid, although its far from the only region driving the change:

 

[elbows]

OK here are examples of graphs created using the new format of data from Spain which I mentioned earlier. Source is page 3 of offiical daily reports like the one which I will link to, then me manually entering those into a spreadsheet every day. https://www.mscbs.gob.es/profesiona...Cov/documentos/Actualizacion_194_COVID-19.pdf

Spain, and where it says total it means current number of patients, not cumulative counts of all patients ever:


Madrid:


Number of Covid-19 hospital patients by region:



This ends my series of posts of graphs about the hospital situation in Europe, since I was trying make a point and deliver news on this front and I've more than done that now. I will post again about such things if there is a notable change in trajectory or something new we can learn, but I'm not going to keep posting the same sort of numbers for the sake of it. And if I think there is a situation I need to show data for very regularly, I will find another thread for it. Thanks for bearing with me while I took up quite a lot of screen space in this thread with graphics in recent days.

 

[frogwoman]

It doesn't seem to be a super rapid rise though, and it seems to be driven by a few regions? Although still quite worrying. I really want to believe its finally going down

 

[elbows]

It doesn't seem to be a super rapid rise though, and it seems to be driven by a few regions? Although still quite worrying. I really want to believe its finally going down

We are at a stage where any rise that can be clearly demonstrated over time, beyond the background levels of the figure fluctuating, is currently highly newsworthy and of note.

Super rapid rises like those seen as the first waves really hit home in badly affected areas were a result of poor surveillance and then very high levels of existing cases, high levels of transmission between people, and a short amount of time needed for number of cases to double. Despite the various relaxations all over the place, the situation, peoples behaviour etc still should not resemble the situation the virus found itself in in February and the first part of March. So that is not what I would be expecting to see now, I dont expect the same sort of super rapid rises, not unless we completely lose control of the situation again.

And the way authorities will try to avoid losing control is by taking advantage of the much earlier warning signs that are available this time around. In this context things like the hospital data I have highlighted recently are the guide, and authorities will act on this stuff. They can get something of a grip on these things because the rises demonstrate a phase prior to that which almost instantly spirals completely out of control, and thus opportunities to act at a very different epidemic stage to that which authorities acted on last time.

As for regions, everything is driven by regions at the end of the day. Some of these countries only had staggering numbers of hospitalisations and deaths in a few regions the first time around, so I dont understand what sort of reassurance thats supposed to provide.

Unless people want to repeat past mistakes, its perfectly reasonable to see the recent Spanish data as being really bad and alarming, whilst also trying to fairly explain that the numbers involved do not resemble anything close to those seen during the first peak. Because the hideous levels seen in the first wave are not where the bar for where our ideas of what constitutes bad should be set, and to avoid a repeat of that horror the trigger point for action should come way earlier than last time.

2020 already involved painful lessons about what exponential growth means in practice in a bad pandemic. I wont be pleased if I have to keep explaining this again already. And the reality on the ground should be more complicated this time, leading to a far less clean example of exponential growth in action, because we have mitigation and authorities that will presumably intervene more this time. So the earlier disaster of a first wave is an easier way to study and learn those lessons. If you let the humble beginnings of exponential curves lull you into a false sense of security, then one day you wake up and discover the pathetic little mouse has become godzilla and its a disaster and only draconian tools are left in the toolbox.

 

[frogwoman]

Yeah things can spiral. I wasn't saying not to worry or do anything by the way. Just saying that things seem to be a bit more under control in terms of an increase in hospitalisation than they were in March.

 

[elbows]

Yes I was just taking another opportunity to try to describe what sort of alarm I am ringing. I dont expect things like R or the doubling time or peoples behaviour and mixing patterns to be highly similar to what they were in March, so I dont expect the numbers to unfold at the same pace either.

And I've only been doing it so much because a 'well hospitalisations havent increased' narrative rather understandably formed around Europe in recent months, and so now that such things have changed in some places, I thought it worth drawing attention to in as notable way as I could. As I said earlier, I feel like I have done that now, and hopefully look forward to telling some stories about how these outbreaks were then gotten a handle on.

 

[frogwoman]

What do the coronavirus data from August tell us about the new spread of the virus in Spain? elbows just seen this very detailed article about hospitalisation data on Spain.

 

[elbows]

What do the coronavirus data from August tell us about the new spread of the virus in Spain? elbows just seen this very detailed article about hospitalisation data on Spain.

Good stuff, I'm not surprised they took some time in that article to address the shitty data systems & reporting.

I see they mention a website that tries to collate more reliable data. It does appear to be pretty good, I just scrolled down a bit and tried pressing various buttons in the hospital data section and it showed some very useful graphs indeed.

Propagación del coronavirus en España por provincias

Análisis de la propagación del coronavirus (COVID-19) por provincias en España

lab.montera34.com

 

[Supine]

Potentially significant. A patient has been infected for a second time and was hospitalised at second go. Genetic analysis indicates covid mutations have already occured which means existing immunity didn't work.

SSRN Electronic Library

Summary here:

 

[2hats]

Doctors at the Children's National Hospital in Washington, DC have found that infected children can spread the SARS-CoV-2 virus for weeks even though they themselves show no COVID-19 symptoms. That means that children with only mild symptoms, or none at all, can unknowingly infect people around them.

Asymptomatic kids can carry COVID-19 for weeks – DW – 08/29/2020

New US studies show viral loads of the coronavirus are especially high among children and youths, who can unknowingly spread it for weeks. What could that mean for schools trying to reopen?

www.dw.com

doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2020.3996
doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2020.3988

 

[Mation]

Interpret this for me:

Jambo is exploring the hypothesis that Africans have had more exposure to other coronaviruses that cause little more than colds in humans, which may provide some defense against COVID-19.

Science | AAAS

www.sciencemag.org

e2a: The emboldened words, not the data.

 

[2hats]

Interpret this for me

Cross-reactivity towards SARS-CoV-2?
doi:10.1016/S2666-5247(20)30098-7
doi:10.1101/2020.05.14.095414

 

[Supine]

Interpret this for me:

Science | AAAS

www.sciencemag.org

Tough place to live so the frail were already dead and it's a very young population?

 

[Mation]

I highlighted the salient words.