General Coronavirus (COVID-19) chat

[phillm]

Mumsnet has a whole subforum - some great advice in there.

Spoiler: ed: some of the advice is a bit rubbish

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Forum | Mumsnet | Mumsnet

Worried about coronavirus? Want to discuss news / prevention tips / impact on families & children? Join Mumsnet's COVID-19 information forum.

www.mumsnet.com

 

[lizzieloo]

Mumsnet has a whole subforum - some great advice in there.

There is also some shit advice there, probably best to stick to good advice of the official/scientific kind on this thread.

 

[Mrs Miggins]

COVID-19 #CoronaVirus Infographic Datapack — Information is Beautiful

Updated daily, now with global vaccination stats

informationisbeautiful.net

 

[Mrs Miggins]

 

[Mrs Miggins]

I think it's very helpful to make clear it's quite different from a normal cold and that really fever (38c+) and a dry cough and the things to look out for - not blocked nose, sore throat etc.

That is very useful to know. I will start saying that during any discussion about it because people don't seem to be very clear on it. Nobody around me anyway.

 

[sihhi]

View attachment 201167

This is highly misleading more recent estimates have average transmissions at 4.7-6 see attached Los Alamos Report,

One person on a bus infected seven others, one of whom got on the bus half an hour after the original infected person got off.

Coronavirus can travel twice as far as official ‘safe distance’, study says

Health authorities advise people to stay 1-2 metres apart, but researchers found that a bus passenger infected fellow travellers sitting 4.5 metres away.

www.scmp.com

The whole chart looks suspect, the basic reproduction number of measles is in all textbooks 12-18, not 9.

 

[editor]

One person on a bus infected seven others, one of whom got on the bus half an hour after the original infected person got off.

Coronavirus can travel twice as far as official ‘safe distance’, study says

Health authorities advise people to stay 1-2 metres apart, but researchers found that a bus passenger infected fellow travellers sitting 4.5 metres away.

www.scmp.com

From that article:

The study at the centre of this article on the transmission of the coronavirus was retracted on Tuesday by the journal Practical Preventive Medicine without giving a reason. The South China Morning Post has reached out to the paper's authors and will update the article.

 

[sihhi]

From that article:

I read of it on Weibo here 微博搜索
yesterday waited for a translated version.

wait and see, the journal is a core hexin one and so is properly blind-reviewed

 

[mod]

 

[Mrs Miggins]

This is highly misleading more recent estimates have average transmissions at 4.7-6 see attached Los Alamos Report,

One person on a bus infected seven others, one of whom got on the bus half an hour after the original infected person got off.

Coronavirus can travel twice as far as official ‘safe distance’, study says

Health authorities advise people to stay 1-2 metres apart, but researchers found that a bus passenger infected fellow travellers sitting 4.5 metres away.

www.scmp.com

The whole chart looks suspect, the basic reproduction number of measles is in all textbooks 12-18, not 9.

They say their source is the Centre for Disease Control, WHO. I guess either them or the WHO CDC could be wrong/lying though.

 

[Supine]

View attachment 201167

Wtf is going on with that y axis. Looks like it starts logarithmic and then turns linear.

 

[Mrs Miggins]

Wtf is going on with that y axis. Looks like it starts logarithmic and then turns linear.

Good point! Oh well. It looked all right at first glance.

 

[Mrs Miggins]

I guess that so much of what they are plotting is below the 10% mark so it would be impossible to see if they didn't do it like that but yeah - it does kind of make it look less than rigorous.

I still prefer it to WE'RE ALL GOING TO CATCH IT AND DIE though.

 

[steveo87]

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know why Italy appears to have been hit so hard?

 

[weltweit]

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know why Italy appears to have been hit so hard?

My feeling is that they had infected people in their population circulating freely for perhaps a month or two before anyone started testing and treating. This idea is slightly supported in that they announced deaths from the virus almost before they announced cases.

 

[elbows]

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know why Italy appears to have been hit so hard?

Many countries (and posters here including me) appear to be working on the basis that Italy is just further ahead than their countries, and that within a few weeks many other countries will be in the same boat.

I should say that outbreaks of seasonal endemic diseases can have very interesting timing variations between countries, and I'll be posting some stuff on that theme in regards flu in europe this season at some point later this evening or in the coming days. However some of the timing variations with those endemic things is probably down to the history of what went before in the populations of those countries, and that wont apply to this coronavirus since populations had no existing immunity against it so its a clean sheet on that front.

 

[elbows]

My feeling is that they had infected people in their population circulating freely for perhaps a month or two before anyone started testing and treating. This idea is slightly supported in that they announced deaths from the virus almost before they announced cases.

Deaths at the same time as discovering cases is indeed one of those bad signs, along with countries staring to export cases that are then tested/detected in other countries, before they have recorded many cases of their own.

However, once we move away from the country level 'has this country noticed their first outbreak yet' framing of this phenomenon, we can tell a similar story on another level. The 'discover a new cluster/particular chain of transmission' somewhere within that country level.

I will explain this in the form of a question. When it comes to the domestic cluster level, is the UK any better than Italy? By this I mean, were all the recorded UK deaths as a result of either imported travel-related cases, or from community clusters that were already detected well before the death of someone in that cluster? The answer is no. The first death in the UK was a patient without the travel history, who had been in and out of hospital. And there was not much time between the test and their death. The logical conclusion is that this was a community or hospital acquired case, and it was the serious illness/death that first alerted authorities to the existence of this particular cluster. I keep saying cluster but obvious I dont know what sort of scale of transmission has been going on in relation to that particular case.

Or to put it all a different way, just because your existing surveillance methods had detected various other unrelated cases for ages beforehand, doesnt mean these 'death reveals a new cluster' alarms are any less significant.

 

[weltweit]

Deaths at the same time as discovering cases is indeed one of those bad signs, along with countries staring to export cases that are then tested/detected in other countries, before they have recorded many cases of their own.

e.g. Singapore was the source of our so called first super spreader, yet they apparently only report 166 cases. It seems strange to me. Up only 6 from yesterday.

However, once we move away from the country level 'has this country noticed their first outbreak yet' framing of this phenomenon, we can tell a similar story on another level. The 'discover a new cluster/particular chain of transmission' somewhere within that country level.

Indeed, on the macro scale the individual cases don't tell us so much. The trend is more interesting. I forget the terminology but delaying mass infections does mean more possibilities for medicines and eventually a vaccine, however long that will take, perhaps years.

I will explain this in the form of a question. When it comes to the domestic cluster level, is the UK any better than Italy? By this I mean, were all the recorded UK deaths as a result of either imported travel-related cases, or from community clusters that were already detected well before the death of someone in that cluster? The answer is no. The first death in the UK was a patient without the travel history, who had been in and out of hospital. And there was not much time between the test and their death. The logical conclusion is that this was a community or hospital acquired case, and it was the serious illness/death that first alerted authorities to the existence of this particular cluster. I keep saying cluster but obvious I dont know what sort of scale of transmission has been going on in relation to that particular case.

Was the first death like that? I am not sure I ever read anything about that.

Or to put it all a different way, just because your existing surveillance methods had detected various other unrelated cases for ages beforehand, doesnt mean these 'death reveals a new cluster' alarms are any less significant.

 

[elbows]

Was the first death like that? I am not sure I ever read anything about that.

The reason I have to go on about this sort of thing so much is because its often missing from the media articles. Unless a writer happens to latch onto that angle, it is often left without the full implications being spelt out properly at all. This case did feature enough reported detail and hinted at the implications without dwelling on them.

On Thursday March 5th the BBC reported:

A woman with underlying health conditions has become the first person in the UK to die after testing positive for coronavirus.

The Royal Berkshire NHS Trust said the patient, understood to be in her 70s, had been "in and out of hospital for non-coronavirus reasons".

She was admitted and tested positive for coronavirus on Wednesday.

The woman, who was being treated at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, is believed to have caught the virus in the UK, said the country's chief medical adviser Prof Chris Whitty.

She is not thought to have been abroad recently, BBC health correspondent Nick Triggle added.

Officials are now trying to trace the people she was in contact with.

Coronavirus: Woman in 70s becomes first virus fatality in UK

The patient, who had underlying health conditions, dies as the number of UK cases rises to 116.

www.bbc.co.uk

Unfortunately the problem I have is that this is often where the story ends for us. There is not very much reporting these days about the nature of specific UK clusters. I will be lucky to ever discover whether contract tracing for the deceased woman revealed any other cases, or a real good picture of the transmission chain and how it started.

 

[jakethesnake]

This podcast is pretty interesting and worth watching imo. The guest, Michael Osterholm, predicted this outbreak a couple of years ago, he puts it in context and also discusses what can be done.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Does anyone know, if you get the virus and recover, how long do you remain infectious to other people?

 

[killer b]

This podcast is pretty interesting and worth watching imo. The guest, Michael Osterholm, predicted this outbreak a couple of years ago, he puts it in context and also discusses what can be done.

this is good, but jesus christ it goes on.

 

[MrSki]

Polite request Could this thread be kept to sensible information & advice & other non qualifying posts (like this one) be deleted? editor There are plenty of other threads for questions or comments.

 

[elbows]

Polite request Could this thread be kept to sensible information & advice & other non qualifying posts (like this one) be deleted? editor There are plenty of other threads for questions or comments.

Please move them rather than delete them. There can be a thread just for the stuff moved from this one, which should include the conversation I ended up having here earlier after someone asked a question, stuff I was going on about that really doesnt belong here.

 

[Mation]

Are you managing to not touch your face? If so, how?

I was at a conference yesterday and caught myself cupping my face in my hands, elbows on table loads of times throughout the day. And noticed everyone else doing that or similar, too. (But also that hardly anyone shook hands, and lots of people were pushing doors open using their forearm, not their hand.)

From the 'Nudge Unit'

Since there is little to no evidence available on specific tactics, more work is needed to work out the most effective options and how they vary between groups (since we know face touching varies across cultures). However, there is strong evidence that the best way of ensuring that these tactics happen is by using “if-then” plans. These take the form of statements like “if I am looking at my phone, I will put my other hand in my pocket” or “if I sit down in a meeting, I will do ‘locked arms’”. Over time, these actions become habitual. The result is that people do not have to think about creating barriers to face touching: it just happens automatically.

An alternative possibility is that unprompted face touching occurs as a compulsive or habitual action, like nail biting. In those cases, the best option again is to create an alternative behavior that displaces the need away from face touching. Some options could be drumming fingers on legs or playing with a substitute object.

These may seem to be absurdly small and unimportant things to be discussed. In fact, they are crucial. Creating substitute behaviors and new barrier-forming habits are the most effective way of curbing face touching. We need to work out the most promising approaches and the best way of communicating them – fast.

 

[Cid]

Are you managing to not touch your face? If so, how?

I was at a conference yesterday and caught myself cupping my face in my hands, elbows on table loads of times throughout the day. And noticed everyone else doing that or similar, too. (But also that hardly anyone shook hands, and lots of people were pushing doors open using their forearm, not their hand.)

From the 'Nudge Unit'

The virus is readily transmitted through breathing coughing etc; I.e the important bit of you being at a conference and cupping your face isn’t the hands, it’s the conference.

e2a: not to say people shouldn’t be aware of hand washing etc, but it’s not an effective way to avoid infection on its own. I think both this and other measures, like masks, are probably more damaging than many think. There’s a degree to which these become kind of talismans against infection - it feels safer to go out if you remember to wash your hands, avoid touching your face etc. But by far the highest risk factor is simply going to be being in the same room as someone who just coughed.

 

[killer b]

This thread has completely veered off topic. it was supposed to be where people could link to sensible, well researched content and be suitably informed. A chat on Mumset definitely does not fit that description, and I'm not sure a one and a half hour long US radio chat show does either, even if there is an expert speaking.
I'm going to spin all the other stuff off into a general chat thread and would ask that people ONLY post up excellent resources from credible sources here.

Done: General Coronavirus (COVID-19) chat

in which case, I'm not sure how credible this infographic is - shortness of breath is listed as a primary symptom rather than a sometimes one on all the proper resources I've read, and anyone can whack 'source: world health organisation!' on the bottom of their dodgy infographic...

View attachment 201226

 

[extra dry]

I aonder how long it will go on fot a year the rest of the decade. Will it kill off all the politics and such who seem to be in large groups of large people. No very long before hospitals fill up

 

[SpookyFrank]

Mumsnet has a whole subforum - some great advice in there.

Spoiler: ed: some of the advice is a bit rubbish

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Forum | Mumsnet | Mumsnet

Worried about coronavirus? Want to discuss news / prevention tips / impact on families & children? Join Mumsnet's COVID-19 information forum.

www.mumsnet.com

Mumsnet's advice is just 'vote tory' though isn't it?

 

[elbows]

Thanks for splitting this stuff off from the pinned useful sources of info thread.