Coronavirus

[Jimboo]

Er, everytime the norovirus comes round Mike.
From the NHS website.
The NHS is calling on the public to heed advice and stay at home if they have norovirus to avoid passing it on, as hospitals in England have been forced to close more than 1,100 hospital beds over the last week.
Top medics are concerned about the spread of the winter vomiting bug this year and the impact it is having on hospitals and other services.
They are therefore urging those who catch the virus not to go back to work or school until at least 48 hours after symptoms pass, to avoid passing it on to others.
The latest data from Public Health England (PHE) surveillance showed that the number of positive norovirus laboratory reports during the two weeks in the middle of November (11th-24th) was 28% higher than the average for the last five years.
And almost double the number of hospital beds have been closed every day over the last week than at the same time last year, in a bid to stop the spread of diarrhoea and vomiting to more patients.

 

[Mike Hunt]

Er, everytime the norovirus comes round Mike.
From the NHS website.
The NHS is calling on the public to heed advice and stay at home if they have norovirus to avoid passing it on, as hospitals in England have been forced to close more than 1,100 hospital beds over the last week.
Top medics are concerned about the spread of the winter vomiting bug this year and the impact it is having on hospitals and other services.
They are therefore urging those who catch the virus not to go back to work or school until at least 48 hours after symptoms pass, to avoid passing it on to others.
The latest data from Public Health England (PHE) surveillance showed that the number of positive norovirus laboratory reports during the two weeks in the middle of November (11th-24th) was 28% higher than the average for the last five years.
And almost double the number of hospital beds have been closed every day over the last week than at the same time last year, in a bid to stop the spread of diarrhoea and vomiting to more patients.

Norovirus causes around 800 deaths a year in the US. Deaths from COVID 19 have already passed 7000.

 

[Jimboo]

Yeah, but you asked a question about diarrhea and beds. I am well aware of the covid figures. The NHS unfortunately gets itself overrun a lot.

 

[Mike Hunt]

Yeah, but you asked a question about diarrhea and beds. I am well aware of the covid figures. The NHS unfortunately gets itself overrun a lot.

I was responding to an assertion that Diarrhea kills more people each year than COVID-19 has/will

 

[Jimboo]

Yeah , got ya. However WHO figures are Each year diarrhoea kills around 525 000 children under five. So maybe that's not the case either.

 

[Deleted member 2457]

My wife has the virus (NHS worker), I am at risk (Asthma).
I work in local government and have now deployed most staff to work from home.
We have found a lot of local supermarkets having empty shelves prior to our isolation.
All online deliveries unavailable for nearly a month.

Sorry to hear this Mike too. Hopefully things are improving now for you.

 

[michael hoy]

Thanks Gel, my wife is better (90%) and is due back at work next week.
Hope you and your family are staying well.

 

[insider9]

Sorry, I respectfully disagree PP. Yes panic serves no purpose but people are rightly scared. Death rate keeps climbing and it's at 9.4% on UK already for a virus that spreads like a wildfire. R0 and mortality rate is comparable to Smallpox. Comparisons to seasonal flu are grossly inadequate. Comparing conditions to that of a world war would be more appropriate.

No known vaccines have been developed for any other coronavirus to date in nearly two decades of research. On top of we're being misinformed daily.

Like any living organism it will die

And sorry to not pick but viruses are not living things as they can not replicate on their own.

Hope you're well.

 

[plastic penguin]

Sorry, I respectfully disagree PP. Yes panic serves no purpose but people are rightly scared. Death rate keeps climbing and it's at 9.4% on UK already for a virus that spreads like a wildfire. R0 and mortality rate is comparable to Smallpox. Comparisons to seasonal flu are grossly inadequate. Comparing conditions to that of a world war would be more appropriate.

No known vaccines have been developed for any other coronavirus to date in nearly two decades of research. On top of we're being misinformed daily.

And sorry to not pick but viruses are not living things as they can not replicate on their own.

Hope you're well.

Let me just clarify some points in my previous post. I did state it is scary and it shouldn't be dismissed or brushed aside. There's an awful lot we can learn from history, hence why I mentioned the Spanish flu of 1918/19.

Firstly, Dan Snow spoke to a professor of virology a while back and he clarified he's known about Coronavirus since the late 1960s, and he wasn't scaremongering but laid out facts. Okay it's a different strain but they have tracked it for a long time: It will get worse before it gets better; it will run it's course, but it's whether the NHS can provide enough beds, more importantly, enough experienced doctors and nurses. In fact there's a new temp hospital just opened in E. London specifically for the virus. So that's proof resources are there it's whether they can be implemented and put in place fast enough.

Secondly, the population in 1919 was around 43 million in the UK, and the flu claimed minimum 250k. Today it's closer to 70 million. How did they travel back then? By a chug-a-long car, train, boat or if you were really privileged, by airship which took a day to fly to Paris. Today you can be in China in half a day.

Thirdly, sadly there's been a few deaths at a residential home for the aged. in 1918/19 these homes didn't exist as we know them. Life expectancy was a lot lower and if you were lucky enough to live a long life you were (generalising) confined to what we call now as an asylum. No doubt they were forgotten about and weren't counted on the overall stats.

Due to the mild winter there's an awful lot of colds and flu flying around: Mrs. P has just come off a course of antibiotics for a chest infection. Some people will get a cough and fever and fear the worse.

Also you have to factor in the weather: Once the warmer weather kicks in the cases will naturally start to reduce.

I have every faith in British science, doctors and nurses... but even if there is some sort of virus jab, people will still succumb to the virus. Look how many years the flu jab has been around yet it still claims between 16-28k every year in the UK.

We are fine so far. Lucky to be living in a small village, away from the numbers. And all our GP surgeries are still open, which is a decent indicator.

 

[Deleted member 2457]

Pep’s mum dies after getting it at 82!

 

[Mike Hunt]

Boredom has officially set in, so Photoshop has been getting a hammering.

 

[Dom]

University of Oxford are starting human trials.

 

[Deleted member 2457]

Great news about the new vaccine - 90 per cent effective!

 

[GSV Ethics Gradient]

Yes, fingers crossed life can start getting back to something approximating to normality in 2021.

 

[Deleted member 2457]

Yes, fingers crossed life can start getting back to something approximating to normality in 2021.

Amen to that!

 

[GSV Ethics Gradient]

Failing that, I'll settle for the pubs being open again!

 

[bigboss]

Great news about the new vaccine - 90 per cent effective!

Needs storage temperature of -70 degrees Celsius.......cold supply chain will be a huge challenge.......even impractical I think.

 

[Deleted member 2457]

Needs storage temperature of -70 degrees Celsius.......cold supply chain will be a huge challenge.......even impractical I think.

Oh dear.

 

[bigboss]

Pfizer may win the COVID vaccine race. But distributing it could be another matter.

Needing deep-freeze storage could complicate a massive rollout of any potential Pfizer vaccine for COVID-19.

abcnews.go.com

 

[Deleted member 108165]

Looks like there will be a shortage of dry-ice soon...

 

[abacus]

You can get a massive amount of doses in a refrigerated truck, and there are 1000s of refrigerated premises where the doses could be stored while they wait to be trucked out.

The only problem is who is going to manage the distribution so it gets to where it is supposed to.

Bill

 

[Deleted member 108165]

You can get a massive amount of doses in a refrigerated truck, and there are 1000s of refrigerated premises where the doses could be stored while they wait to be trucked out.

The only problem is who is going to manage the distribution so it gets to where it is supposed to.

Bill

Refrigerated trucks and premises may not cut it, we are talking -70C here... that's damned cold... dry-ice territory.

 

[jjbomber]

Venezuela announced two weeks ago that they had a vaccine. Still waiting for the Western World to announce it.

 

[Deleted member 108165]

Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine announcement yesterday looks very promising indeed. Cheap and relatively easy to transport. Some excellent news methinks, what an exceptionally clever group of scientists

 

[GSV Ethics Gradient]

I wonder what the plan will be? I don't think we've done a great job with this, but it's also once-in-a-lifetime stuff (at least so far) for all of us. So uncharacteristically, I am prepared to cut the powers that be more slack than usual.

I wonder if they will end up vaccinating the vulnerable and allowing it to run its course, so we end up with herd immunity.

Is there any hard science about whether immunity lasts, rather than speculation? I do know from Science Focus that some of the cases of reinfection reported were not that - they were people whose recovery was incomplete and whose recovery went into reverse.