Coronavirus research update

[danlee 22443xp 0]

Research on Coronavirus has just come out which I thought might be worth sharing. Forewarned is forearmed. Here’s the link to the article so you can judge it for yourselves: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-most-contagious-before-during-first-week-symptoms?fbclid=IwAR32s2yBeX9Gawe3YCMLhRvF_cDggcR5beFZxDnz7Ss5wO7cFMc8L7YPvhI

 

Munich Clinic Schwabing in Germany followed a group of nine infected people and have released their findings. The nine people were infected when a colleague from Shanghai visited. The visitor infected one member of staff then the two of them infected the other nine.

 

The researchers found that the infected people produced infectious viruses 1000 times faster than people infected with SARS did, which may account for why Coronavirus is so infectious.

 

The virus stays in the respiratory system – they found no evidence of it getting into the blood or stool in its infectious form.

 

One subject caught the virus from a sneeze, the others from being in meetings for 60 to 90 minutes with infected people. Sitting across a table from someone for 60 to 90 minutes could be used to describe a business meeting or playing a board game or war game!

 

Most of the subjects had coughs. Two had runny noses, four lost their sense of taste and smell. Two developed fevers. One subject never developed any symptoms(!) while another developed severe pneumonia. It is worth noting that a cohort of only nine subjects is too small to extrapolate statistics from.

 

It took the subjects six to 12 days to start producing antibodies after first showing symptoms, after which they stopped being infectious.

 

[noyjatatParticipant 16155xp 3]

Having looked at the article sadly this information is a preprint article and has yet to be peer-reviewed. On its host site, it comes with this written in red.

Caution: Preprints are preliminary reports of work that have not been peer-reviewed. They should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behaviour and should not be reported in news media as established information.

Looks like Science News Independent Journalism since 1921 decided to post it anyway.

So much info out there at the minute from all sorts of sources that’s not to say this articles words won’t prove true.

If anyone wants to get news related information mixed in with world info including WHO announcements with the source link posted, then check this site out.

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

[danlee 22443xp 0]

I knew it wasn’t out in peer reviewed journals yet, which is why I included the link so people can see it for themselves. I hadn’t spotted the “do not report in the media” statement – that’s very naughty of Science News. The article should have made it very clear these are preliminary results.

 

Thanks for the link. It’s very useful to see some clear number breakdowns.

[noyjatatParticipant 16155xp 0]

Sadly the link I posted is also fuelled by news reports but also has updates from the larger health organisations.

It’s tough to get an overall picture of what’s going on.

Things are already in a bad way from a world point of view.

[osbad 4279xp 0]

Difficult to get a balanced view isn’t it.  Its all very well being cautious as we want to be responsible but the world doesn’t stop in the face of other risks which may (or may not) be higher.

For instance normal flu killed several thousand people in England alone in 2017/18 and a few thousand die on the roads every year.  We take care about such thing but don’t go into a blind funk about them.  In fact most of us don’t really think about the risks of them at all unless we have professional reason to.

Covid-19 seems likely to be no worse than a short period of discomfort and inconvenience for the majority of us, at least those of us who are healthy.

It makes sense to minimize the risk from a public health perspective but from an individual perspective panic buying bog roll and fearing the zombie apocalypse is just ludicrous.

Without accurate information though, people are scared of the unknown.  And the news obsession with scare stories and worst xase scenarios doesn’t help.

[danlee 22443xp 1]

Yes it is very hard to gauge the situation.

 

I do get slightly frustrated by the “it won’t be too bad for most of us” attitude though (nothing personal @osbad). Both my daughters had pneumonia over Christmas and were in hospital for several days each. Pneumonia causes on-going breathing problems for a few years at their age. Does that put them in the “have existing health problems” category that are at high risk from Coronavirus? We don’t know but have to assume it does. At that point if my partner or I catch it there is a good chance we pass it on to them. I’ve been in hospital four times in the past three months watching them suffer with pneumonia and struggle to get enough oxygen to keep going. It is not a pleasant experience. I realised that breathing problems are far more dangerous than I’d ever considered. Stop getting enough oxygen and you loose consciousness and then you need oxygen in hospital to recover.

 

On the opposite side I go to work where I’m a senior manager in a small manufacturing company. We can’t afford to loose more than a couple of staff at once due to illness – especially not for two week isolation periods. And if one of us falls ill, everyone in the company should really then self isolate as we’re in close proximity all day. Only about 1/3 of our staff could work from home. If the company goes into lock down we run a very real risk of going bust.

[blinky465 17028xp 7]

The need for extra caution isn’t because this is a strain of virus that is deadly to everyone – it’s the fact it’s a new strain that nobody really knows much about, but is known to cause pneumonia which is potentially lethal for the elderly and other vulnerable people.

We’re not being asked to be careful for our own sakes; it’s for the sake of *everyone else*.

This approach is more easily understood across Europe – the idea of society and solidarity runs through countries like France, Germany and Italy in a way that has become alien to us in the UK. While those countries are prioritising the well-being of the weakest in society, our government is prioritising reducing the impact on economic activity.

Without getting all heavy and political, it’s as if we’ve lost sight of *why* we should be concerned about the virus; it’s not because *we* won’t be adversely affected too badly by it – it’s because *some* might otherwise be killed by it.

Businesses *could* be helped through a difficult period (through loans/grants) – and Richard “sue the NHS” Branson was first in line asking for part of a £7bn handout. Businesses can be helped recover by simply throwing money at them – not so the health of an elderly relative.

If everyone who says “actually it’s not much worse than a bit of a sniffle” was asked to nominate a family to perish as part of the cost of the ignorant “let’s all get it for herd immunity” strategy, I suspect they might see things differently. Not everyone has a sick/elderly/vulnerable family member, so not everyone will lose loved ones – that doesn’t mean it’s ok for others to, though.

[torros 23816xp 6]

I think banks and financial institutions need to help people defer mortgage payments etc. We bailed them out. It’s time they returned  the favour

[sundancer 42985xp 0]

@torros but that would lessen their profits… no, I don’t think the banks will do very much in general…

[danlee 22443xp 1]

@blink465 well said. Couldn’t agree more.

 

As much as I don’t like the current government, they have taken some steps to help businesses: business rates will be 0% for 2020/2021, statutory sick pay can be reclaimed from the government, businesses can defer paying taxes and some form of hardship grants are available.

 

I think a guaranteed mortgage holiday for all property owners, which must also be passed on to tenants as a rent holiday, would help both families and businesses to weather any lock down periods.

[tankkommanderParticipant 6424xp 1]

Good news on the number of new cases in China. Hopefully this is an indicator that taking serious action to lock down at an early stage can work. Stay well folks. It might be worthwhile thinking about some ‘social distancing’ and cancelling game club meets etc. for a little while.

[soulman 2945xp 0]

for me its not about the deaths..as people say, normal flu is worse and if you live in London then you more chance of being stabbed..!!!  its the shape of the world once this is over… like the crash of 1929…  This is the worse thing to happen to the planet and its people….  Thanks China.

[tankkommanderParticipant 6424xp 1]

This is a new virus that has not been found in human before, so the description that ‘normal flu is worse’ does not seem to be a firm conclusion to come to from the available data. In order the manage the severe cases, and try and ensure out health systems are not overwhelmed, action needs to be taken to try and slow down the infection rate.It is also unclear as yet as to how much immunity those who have had the disease will acquire (hence the WHO statement that a policy based on ‘herd immunity’ may not be a good policy) or any long term health impacts.

Certainly there will be a short term economic shock to the global system. The medium and long term is less clear.

Keep in mind that restrictions on travel and global trade are the type of things we will need to do in order to try and impact global warming. This may be the ‘new normal’.

Stay safe, and lets all look out for the most vulnerable in our societies.

[ninjillyParticipant 11673xp 1]

“For me it’s not about the deaths” The callousness of that attitude is just awful. “Normal flu is worse” that’s not firm statement given this is a new virus. At the moment, more people die from flu (and from a bunch of other things),does that mean we should stop trying to prevent people suffering? We keep those numbers lower by providing flu shots. Thanks to medicine, you can live a long life with HIV, does that mean we stop trying to prevent infection? By that measure, the shape of the world afterwards is going to be even sorrier than it currently looks.

[skiptotheend 4525xp 1]

@blinky465: “While those countries are prioritising the well-being of the weakest in society, our government is prioritising reducing the impact on economic activity.”

This was exactly my thought process on their first speech on the matter – economy over people. My g.f’s family are from italy, with many having moved to the Milan area for jobs, seeing and hearing what the italians are having to put up with and what their government is doing to alleviate the problems (both medically and economically), then comparing that to how the UK stated it only further indicated to be that the economy is the thing they worry failing above all.

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