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Living alongside covid

T

Teaboy

It definitely looks brighter over there..
From pretty much the first Downing St press conference around a year ago the phrase "learning to live alongside covid" has been used and it continues to be used. I'm wondering what people think living alongside covid actually looks like? What will be acceptable and what will be too much to ignore?

When anybody uses the phrase its often accompanied by something along the lines of 'a bad flu season kills 20,000 and its barely reported...'. Whether they are consciously doing it or not using that number makes it a baseline number. A point where good and bad are pegged to. Of course covid is worse than flu so we should probably expect more than 20,000 deaths p/a, but should we?

Currently we seem to be levelling off at around 5k-6k new cases a day. Deaths remain high but are coming down and even at 20k deaths per annum we're probably not far off that figure now (assuming a summer of much lower infection and death rates). Are we already at or very close to what living alongside covid looks like?

I'm interested in what our thoughts are on this. I guess this isn't a thread about what the government should have done or maybe even what they should do in regard to eradication and zero covid because they have already dismissed that as not possible. Covid is here to stay for the foreseeable how bad can it be before government interventions in the form of restrictions are needed? How possible will further restrictions be?
 
I dont have a prediction because I just have to wait and see what level of hospital admissions the vaccinated era leaves us with. Because its a certain level of hospitalisations rather than deaths that will force authorities to act.

And I have no idea quite what will happen in terms of new variants that are escape mutants, and updated vaccines. And the question of how many deaths a society will tollerate/ignore/not cause massive political stink is also unclear to me. How old the people dying are is a factor, which leads me back to hospitalisation levels being key again, given that plenty of people who this disease can hospitalise are quite a bit younger, and that disruption to normal healthcare is harder for people to ignore.
 
No clue to be honest...but it's not like we haven't had practice at this sort of thing - living with syphilis, living with smallpox, living with malaria, living with inequality, living with malnutrition...these things become sorta...normalised...and what we think is unbearable or untenable becomes absorbed in the ongoing lifeness of life. Grief, feeling a bit gloomy. Time for a nice bath and a foray to the garden.
 
I don't know the science of it, but the lethality of these things can reduce. It happened with Spanish flu. It didn't disappear after 1920 but our bodies were able to cope with it. Maybe our immune systems adapted, maybe the virus itself mutated to something less lethal

It came back a few times. 1958 I think but not at the same level it had before.
 
rubbershoes said:
I don't know the science of it, but the lethality of these things can reduce. It happened with Spanish flu. It didn't disappear after 1920 but our bodies were able to cope with it. Maybe our immune systems adapted, maybe the virus itself mutated to something less lethal

It came back a few times. 1958 I think but not at the same level it had before.
Click to expand...

Sure, a benign strain may become the dominant strain but that would just be a matter of luck. We have to assume that won't be the case or at least not in the foreseeable.
 
Teaboy said:
From pretty much the first Downing St press conference around a year ago the phrase "learning to live alongside covid" has been used and it continues to be used. I'm wondering what people think living alongside covid actually looks like? What will be acceptable and what will be too much to ignore?

When anybody uses the phrase its often accompanied by something along the lines of 'a bad flu season kills 20,000 and its barely reported...'. Whether they are consciously doing it or not using that number makes it a baseline number. A point where good and bad are pegged to. Of course covid is worse than flu so we should probably expect more than 20,000 deaths p/a, but should we?

Currently we seem to be levelling off at around 5k-6k new cases a day. Deaths remain high but are coming down and even at 20k deaths per annum we're probably not far off that figure now (assuming a summer of much lower infection and death rates). Are we already at or very close to what living alongside covid looks like?

I'm interested in what our thoughts are on this. I guess this isn't a thread about what the government should have done or maybe even what they should do in regard to eradication and zero covid because they have already dismissed that as not possible. Covid is here to stay for the foreseeable how bad can it be before government interventions in the form of restrictions are needed? How possible will further restrictions be?
Click to expand...
I recently heard Devi Sridhar predict that the virus will remain endemic within poorer, marginalised communities.
 
rubbershoes said:
I don't know the science of it, but the lethality of these things can reduce. It happened with Spanish flu. It didn't disappear after 1920 but our bodies were able to cope with it. Maybe our immune systems adapted, maybe the virus itself mutated to something less lethal

It came back a few times. 1958 I think but not at the same level it had before.
Click to expand...

Speaking very broadly some of this is down to what makes a pandemic a pandemic in the first place - a novel virus that our immune systems havent seen before, making whole populations susceptible.

Over time it loses its novelty, and that makes a difference. Especially as we perceive diseases not just in terms of how deadly they are, but in terms of how many people catch it within a relatively short period of time.

All those sorts of variables are in a state of change from the moment the virus arrives. Then we add in human awareness, behavioural changes as a result, seasonal changes, virus mutations, better treatments, vaccinations. And, to be frank, the extent to which those humans who ended up most vulnerable to the virus had already died in large numbers, reducing the viruses potential to kill in such large numbers again past some future point.

As for the flu stuff and there are some big assumptions in our 1918 knowledge because we are missing some scientific details/proof that we would have in this modern age. But to be brief and somewhat oversimplified, that 1918 strain was of overall type H1N1 and that type was around (in continually evolving form) till the 1957 pandemic H2N2 influenza came along, at which point the H1N1 version lost out and went away. The 1957 pandemic was the first one where we really had enough understanding of viruses and the ability to scrutinise them in labs, which is why I'm not too keen on 1918 knowledges reliance on assumptions.. Then in 1968 H3N2 came along and caused a new pandemic, and got rid of the previous H2N2. The 1950's descendent of the 1918 H1N1 then came back in 1977, probably as a result of a lab accident. But the implications of this were limited because many peoples immune system had experience of this strain from decades before. It also failed to get rid of the 1968 H3N2 type from the scene. It stayed around till it was displaced by the modern swine flu version of H1N1 that came along in the 2009 pandemic. In hindsight that 2009 virus was not totally novel, only partially, which explains why 2009 wasnt very deadly (although it did kill younger people a bit which was disturbing).

Anyway the descendent of the H3N2 version of influenza which came along in 1968 is still with us and tends to be the strain responsible for the nasty epidemics we have every so many years that kill tens of thousands of people. Its also been more challenging to come up with really effective vaccines against it for older people. So I'd certainly use that strain as one to think about, in terms of judging new viruses that dramatically arrive in a pandemic in a more long-term manner. I've not tried adding up all the H3N2 flu deaths that have happened since 1968 but I'm sure its a very large number indeed.

As for coronaviruses, we've been a bit shit about detecting various sorts of these in humans until relatively recent decades. But we eventually found 4 human coronaviruses that were with us well before SARS, MERS and this pandemic one arrived, the consequences of which tended to have them lurking at the 'common cold' end of the spectrum. Our historical understanding of these earlier coronaviruses first bursting onto the human scene is very limited and often speculative. eg pick a epidemic or pandemic from history that was assumed to be influenza, and look for any signs that might suggest it could actually have been a coronavirus pandemic for all we know. Our lack of understanding of this history probably means that assumptions about what will happen next with this coronavirus are based on more general assumptions and knowledge rather than much that is coronavirus specific.
 
We also have the opportunity with this current pandemic virus to track its evolution with far more data than we've had for anything else in the past. Genomic analysis is not new, but the sheer quantity of samples being analysed in this way during this pandemic is on a different level to whats been done before. Who knows what revelations may emerge as a result, and what their implications are.
 
brogdale said:
I recently heard Devi Sridhar predict that the virus will remain endemic within poorer, marginalised communities.
Click to expand...

danny la rouge said:
Yes, she says it’s already becoming a disease of the poor.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't mind reading her article, if someone could post a link please ....

But I'm wondering to what extent lower take-up (and/or access to?) vaccination might (?) influence the above outcome?
 
Here’s a recent twitter thread of hers arguing similar on global scale:



“More concerned for poor countries being left behind: with vaccines, therapeutics, and even basic medical interventions like oxygen. We live in a global world and have to continue to act like one human race. As we've learned, viruses don't care about borders or citizenship.”
 
For me it seems part of living alongside it for the nearish future is working out something better to do with recovering people with severe cases than them staying in hospital for months, with no one able to see them, it feels like there ought to be a better solution than that by now. Not that I know what it is.

Thinking particularly of the very sad story of Kate Garraway's husband who has obviously been left profoundly and permanently ill, but it sounds like everything is so much worse because he hasn't been able to see his wife or family.
 
rubbershoes said:
I don't know the science of it, but the lethality of these things can reduce. It happened with Spanish flu. It didn't disappear after 1920 but our bodies were able to cope with it. Maybe our immune systems adapted, maybe the virus itself mutated to something less lethal

It came back a few times. 1958 I think but not at the same level it had before.
Click to expand...

1957 and again in 1968. My mum spent 1957 nursing the sick in Hastings during her Nurse training. She avoided the 1968 outbreak by giving birth to me 😷
 
"Living with Covid" is such a craven abdication because it's so fucking obvious that it didn't have to be this way. Vietnam and New Zealand showed us what was possible, but our piece of shit leaders shied away from doing what was necessary to contain the disease. The stupid fucking bastards.

They should be reminded at every turn that we're only "living with Covid" because of their greedy, short-sighted and cowardly actions.
 
Countries like Vietnam and New Zealand will have to find their own way to live alongside it just as every other country has to. No country can just shut its border indefinitely unless you go down the North Korea route.

We can see what's going on in the Isle of Man at the moment and the world we live in is so interconnected no country can keep covid away from their doors forever. There is long way still to go in this pandemic. I mentioned on another thread that Oz is a country well worth keeping an eye on is this regard.
 
Teaboy said:
Countries like Vietnam and New Zealand will have to find their own way to live alongside it just as every other country has to. No country can just shut its border indefinitely unless you go down the North Korea route.

We can see what's going on in the Isle of Man at the moment and the world we live in is so interconnected no country can keep covid away from their doors forever. There is long way still to go in this pandemic. I mentioned on another thread that Oz is a country well worth keeping an eye on is this regard.
Click to expand...

Those countries are still managing to keep on top of things so far that I've heard. Vietnam doesn't even have the luxury of being an island nation.

I despise this "living with Covid" terminology. It's being promoted by the very people least likely to have to live with it. Or die of it. It sounds like a surrender and fuck that shit so much.
 
NoXion said:
I despise this "living with Covid" terminology. It's being promoted by the very people least likely to have to live with it. Or die of it. It sounds like a surrender and fuck that shit so much.
Click to expand...

Its a virus not a war. We already have to contend with numerous other conditions we don't like very much, why will it be different with covid? Whether we like it or not its going to be around for a while and regardless of what should or could have happened its here now.

This is why I'm interested in where we go from here because there are enough threads already where we can vent at the government. It might make people feel better (though I suspect its actually the opposite) but it doesn't help with where we go from here. The government have ruled out zero covid as ever possible and besides its running rife around the world anyway. Its here to stay for the foreseeable, where do we go from here?

In general my initial post was a bit focused on deaths and illness but actually there is another side relating to what restrictions will be possible long term? What personal actions will be adopted long term? Hand washing for sure but I think the personal space / distance thing is one a lot of people struggle with. Not just because of the actual physical contact but just that its so alien.

Masks will probably be around for a while but I think there is a limit to what can be achieved with them and they've probably taken on a greater / wider meaning than their actual practical usefulness, I'm not saying that they aren't useful just sound scientific theory and human behaviour don't always sit comfortably together.
 
NoXion said:
Those countries are still managing to keep on top of things so far that I've heard. Vietnam doesn't even have the luxury of being an island nation.

I despise this "living with Covid" terminology. It's being promoted by the very people least likely to have to live with it. Or die of it. It sounds like a surrender and fuck that shit so much.
Click to expand...
The situation in NZ can only ever be temporary. It is being achieved with heightened caution and very strict border controls, which cannot be maintained indefinitely.
It is a perfect holding strategy while the vaccine is fully distributed. After that, as world travel and trade returns to previous levels, NZ will have to cope with it just as much as everyone else. The disease is not going away any more than the flu is.
 
I'm not talking about eradicating Covid completely. That's unfortunately out of the question, even if only for the time being. But if the idea of "living with Covid" (nope, still fucking hate it) means that community transmission isn't being reduced to negligible levels on par with TB and pertussis (the infuriating consequences of anti-vaxx bullshit notwithstanding), then those responsible are dressing up their own incompetence and indolence in the face of this disease as if it was some inevitable law of nature, when in fact that is a fucking lie.

Diseases never "go away". They have to be actively kicked out.
 
Domestic pets can contract SARS-CoV-2 infection but, based on the limited information available to date, it is unknown whether the new British B.1.1.7 variant can more easily infect certain animal species or increase the possibility of human-to-animal transmission. In this study, we report the first cases of infection of domestic cats and dogs by the British B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2 diagnosed at a specialist veterinary hospital in the South-East of England. Furthermore, we discovered that many owners and handlers of these pets had developed Covid-19 respiratory symptoms 3-6 weeks before their pets became ill and had also tested PCR positive for Covid-19. Interestingly, all these B.1.1.7 infected pets developed atypical clinical manifestations, including severe cardiac abnormalities secondary to myocarditis and a profound impairment of the general health status of the patient but without any primary respiratory signs. Together, our findings demonstrate for the first time the ability for companion animals to be infected by the B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2 and raise questions regarding its pathogenicity in these animals. Moreover, given the enhanced infectivity and transmissibility of B.1.1.7 variant for humans, these findings also highlights more than ever the risk that companion animals may potentially play a significant role in SARS-CoV-2 outbreak dynamics than previously appreciated.
Click to expand...
DOI: 10.1101/2021.03.18.435945.
www.sciencemag.org

Major coronavirus variant found in pets for first time

Infected cats and dogs experience serious symptoms, but it’s unclear whether the virus is causing them
www.sciencemag.org www.sciencemag.org
 
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