Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

[roydo]

All settings - 79 is the announced total, down 31 on yesterday and 6 down on last Wednesday, bringing the 7 day rolling average down to an even 64. The earlier hospital figure brings that average down further to an even 13

Slowly slowly slowly.

I know there is a modest uptick in infections, but with the recent local outbreaks thats kinda expected, plus the loosening of restrictions. But it feels close to being almost controllable now. Unless we have a collective meltdown.

 

[Barnfred 55]

Interesting perspective from Cowen. Basically while the government are crap, our medical researchers are truly top drawer, and he argues that it's the latter that will ultimately be required to crack this.

Which country has had the best response to the coronavirus? - Marginal REVOLUTION

I pick the United Kingdom, even though their public health response has been generally poor. Why? Their researchers have discovered the single-best mortality-reducing treatment, namely dexamethasone (the cheap steroid), and the Oxford vaccine is arguably the furthest along. In a world where...

marginalrevolution.com

Which makes the decision from PHE to keep testing in house all the more bizarre. FFS we had the best Universities and chemical companies available to us

 

[Prevenger17]

The answer is 1 in Tesco and 0 in both also and Lidl.
View attachment 95090

Nobody cares Tipp

 

[TommyDavo]

As that Twitter thread LL posted said, even a vaccine doesn't absolutely end it. Likely makes it "like the flu" still causing thousands of deaths a year.

Your chances of being here are ridiculously slim, but as you are, don’t waste time worrying about how you will leave it. Take care and enjoy is all you can do.

 

[Brennan]

Slowly slowly slowly.

I know there is a modest uptick in infections, but with the recent local outbreaks thats kinda expected, plus the loosening of restrictions. But it feels close to being almost controllable now. Unless we have a collective meltdown.

Think it will likely go to pot in a couple of months when it’s no longer warm enough to spend extended periods of time sat outdoors.

 

[roydo]

Think it will likely go to pot in a couple of months when it’s no longer warm enough to spend extended periods of time sat outdoors.

Hope you are wrong, obvs. I am an eternal optimist, which means usually a crushing disappointment round the corner, but if we all just mask up, social distance, and pray some lab nerds hit on sommet soonish, hopefully it will not get daft.

Anyrate, off to the real world. Stay safe GOT'ers. Xx

 

[Tipp blue]

Nobody cares Tipp

It would appear so.

 

[LinekersLegs]

 

[Prevenger17]

It's OK legs, I have it on good authority that it's no worse than the flu

 

[Neiler]

This is a very interesting and, if you think too much about it, worrying article.

Can I just check with you first that I got the gist of it. There's always been a belief that maybe the virus was not as contagious in warmer weather. But what this report is suggesting is that the virus is just as contagious, but it is not as dangerous and doesn't attack the bodies systems in much the same way as it does in colder weather.

They are using this to explain why the mortality rate in some of these warmer countries are nowhere near as high as the European death rate during the colder months of February and March.

Does this not throw a question mark over some of the treatment breakthroughs, particularly those in the UK.? These (the likes of dexamethasone) were announced in June/July. is it possible that the effectiveness of these drugs has been overemphasised by the virus being less lethal due to the warmer weather?

There are a lot of articles being produced at the moment predicting a very hard autumn and winter and a very severe second wave across the UK and Europe. I'm hoping that controlling the spread of the disease through social distancing and track and trace will prevent this happening.

Thats the premise alright mate. Personally I think it draws a wide conclusion based just on seasonality. Recent research has shown the impact of ventilation and UV light on the virus, both are condusive to summer in Europe as opposed to winter. In many ways I think their are psychosocial factors to the virus, social distance, ventilation and not congregating inside is likely best achieved in the summer, our social habits in colder weather are more conducive to virus spread in my opinion. Of course we are learning as we go and everything is a hypothesis. But if we are going to see the fabled second wave in Europe it will be from Oct - March in my opinion. I’m steeling myself already, it’s going to really challenging in health care testing, isolating, treating and discerning risk from Covid to seasonal flu. Not looking forward to it and it’s going to challenge the heath services.

 

[ForeverBlue92]

Whens the estimated time of the oxford vaccine ready to go?

End of the year or 2021?

 

[LinekersLegs]

Thats the premise alright mate. Personally I think it draws a wide conclusion based just on seasonality. Recent research has shown the impact of ventilation and UV light on the virus, both are condusive to summer in Europe as opposed to winter. In many ways I think their are psychosocial factors to the virus, social distance, ventilation and not congregating inside is likely best achieved in the summer, our social habits in colder weather are more conducive to virus spread in my opinion. Of course we are learning as we go and everything is a hypothesis. But if we are going to see the fabled second wave in Europe it will be from Oct - March in my opinion. I’m steeling myself already, it’s going to really challenging in health care testing, isolating, treating and discerning risk from Covid to seasonal flu. Not looking forward to it and it’s going to challenge the heath services.

There also may be some link with Vitamin D levels, will be interesting to see what further research shows.

More evidence on vitamin D deficiency and death rates from COVID-19

Physicians at the Complete Med Care clinic in Dallas, Texas, have conducted a study showing that the prevalence of severe vitamin D deficiency is strongly correlated with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) mortality rate in European countries.

www.news-medical.net

 

[LinekersLegs]

Whens the estimated time of the oxford vaccine ready to go?

End of the year or 2021?

Tbf the US appears to be doing its damndest to make sure the last bit isn’t an issue.

Oxford Cautious About Timeline Following COVID-19 Vaccine Data

Oxford University, which by many standards is ahead of everyone in the vaccine development world, is suggesting end of the year is possible, but being very cautious about it.

www.biospace.com

University of Oxford, which by many standards is ahead of everyone in the vaccine development world, is suggesting end of the year is possible, but being very cautious about it.

Sarah Gilbert, who is heading the University of Oxford efforts, told BBC Radio, “The end of the year target for getting vaccine roll-out, it’s a possibility but there’s absolutely no certainty about that because we need three things to happen.”

Those three things include effectiveness in Phase III trials, large volumes of vaccines manufactured, and regulators have to license it quickly for emergency use.

Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, and his deputy Jonathan Van-Tam, were even less confident of the end-of-year timeline. Whitty told lawmakers, “The chance of us getting a vaccine before Christmas that actually is highly effective are, in my view, very low.”

Van-Tam, on the other hand, said he was “cautiously optimistic that we will have some vaccine this side of Christmas.”

AstraZeneca has the manufacturing capacity to scale-up production of the vaccine to millions of doses by year-end. However, what may be the bottleneck is the trials themselves. The large-scale Phase III trials that involve thousands of participants are somewhat dependent upon continuing incidents of COVID-19 where the trials are being run.

 

[Neiler]

Whens the estimated time of the oxford vaccine ready to go?

End of the year or 2021?

The most optimistic have said Sept if there are no hitches. But there are almost always hitches.

But as LL article above and mine below there are conflicting narratives.

Oxford COVID-19 vaccine may be available in two months, trial results today

According to various media reports, the Jenner Institute's COVID-19 vaccine candidate may provide 'double protection' against coronavirus

www.livemint.com

 

[LinekersLegs]