Corona-virus - Impact of the Health Situation worldwide

[Dunsignalling]

5 hours ago, maico said:

 

Unlikely given all autopsies in the UK test for COVID-19.

But, unless the arrangements have been tightened in light of the current situation, relatively few deaths in the UK lead to an autopsy.

 

IIRC one is only triggered automatically if the deceased has been out of contact with the health profession for at least three months.

 

If not, and a doctor certifies "natural causes" that are commensurate with his/her medical record, that's usually it. 

 

John

[Nearholmer]

6 hours ago, EddieB said:

Kevin, I know you mean well, but please be cautious when presenting your findings.

I thought I had been exceedingly cautious, describing it as having “back of a fag packet” status, but I’ve decided to be even more cautious still, by hiding the post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 29, 2020 by Nearholmer

[gordon s]

Saw this on the BBC news a few minutes ago......A moving tribute to all those helping out right now....

 

 

Edited March 29, 2020 by gordon s

[jjb1970]

To be honest I am not sure how reliable any of the figures are. The big issue is the uncertainty over the number on cases, even in countries doing a lot of testing I suspect that they are lower than the actual cases by a lot. Here even the authorities acknowledge the number is way higher than recorded cases but how much higher is a guess. I already commented on the lack of granularity which makes it hard to read much into fatalities and the fundamental difference between people dying with COVID and people dying because of COVID. And there will be variations in cause of death reporting.  None of these issues are unique to our own country.

On considering the matter of an exit from the current state of exception, government would be negligent if that wasn't part of government discussion and planning.

Edited March 29, 2020 by jjb1970

[jjb1970]

4 hours ago, Lantavian said:

 

I lived in Singapore for seven years.

 

Quite often I was cold in the office and had to wear a pullover, because Singaporeans love airconditioning.

 

Workplaces are airconditioned. 

Cars and taxis are airconditioned. 

Buses and trains are airconditioned.

Homes are airconditioned.

 

Aircon can be quite unpleasant when the difference between outside and inside is too high. People end up shivering because damp clothes ( from sweat) become very chilly if entering a small or shop after being outside. I find the real value if aircon in that part of the world is to dry the air. Temperatures really aren't that hot much of the time, it is the humidity which is unpleasant. The difference between wet and dry temperatures in terms of how we feel is huge.

[Rowsley17D]

The "stay at home" message seem to be getting through. No sign of cyclists or noise of motorbikes in Bowland this morning. Last Sunday was busier than a summer bank holiday. Having typed that a cyclist has just gone by!!

[Metr0Land]

12 hours ago, friscopete said:

They saw Italy and  were warned of what was coming if they didnt test .We didnt test ..........

 

I get that.  What I don't understand is the mechanics of just how they managed to ramp up testing of a hitherto unknown virus so quickly.  We're not the only developed nation that dind't test as many as fast as Germany, so there must be something going on here which isn't just about lethargy.

[maico]

9 hours ago, Dava said:

 

Autopsies are not performed on on all deaths and increasingly will not be.

 

4 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

But, unless the arrangements have been tightened in light of the current situation, relatively few deaths in the UK lead to an autopsy.

 

IIRC one is only triggered automatically if the deceased has been out of contact with the health profession for at least three months.

 

If not, and a doctor certifies "natural causes" that are commensurate with his/her medical record, that's usually it. 

 

John

 

Post-mortem examinations are testing for COVID -19, pathologists want to know the spread of an infectious disease

Edited March 29, 2020 by maico

[Reorte]

41 minutes ago, Rowsley17D said:

The "stay at home" message seem to be getting through. No sign of cyclists or noise of motorbikes in Bowland this morning. Last Sunday was busier than a summer bank holiday. Having typed that a cyclist has just gone by!!

 

Not many going past along the towpath here either.

[boxbrownie]

4 minutes ago, Reorte said:

 

Not many going past along the towpath here either.

Very few on the SWC Path this weekend also, and only the small groups (3-4 family) on the beach yesterday as well, the Coastguard did pop down and check while we were there, gave us all a wave and carried on......then again one is our neighbour 

 

Last weekend the path at our front entrance (SWCP) was busy all day, couldn’t believe it.

[John Tomlinson]

1 hour ago, jjb1970 said:

To be honest I am not sure how reliable any of the figures are. The big issue is the uncertainty over the number on cases, even in countries doing a lot of testing I suspect that they are lower than the actual cases by a lot. Here even the authorities acknowledge the number is way higher than recorded cases but how much higher is a guess. I already commented on the lack of granularity which makes it hard to read much into fatalities and the fundamental difference between people dying with COVID and people dying because of COVID. And there will be variations in cause of death reporting.  None of these issues are unique to our own country.

On considering the matter of an exit from the current state of exception, government would be negligent if that wasn't part of government discussion and planning.

The issue of actual cases is clearly one essential to a proper analysis of what is going on.

 

A few days back, the Scottish Health Minister revised the estimate of these upwards from around 50,000 to 65,000 - this being when confirmed cases from testing reached 1,000. So there must be some analysis going on, and on these Scottish numbers confirmed cases would only be 1.5% of total. Tip of the iceberg indeed!

 

On a seperate matter, there have been several refences recently on this thread of people having something sounding like the disease before Christmas in the UK, and we covered this also a lot earlier in the 105 pages. So I for one don't accept without reservation that this has arisen simply from a food market in Wuhan in the early part of this year.

 

John.

[jcredfer]

2 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

Very few on the SWC Path this weekend also, and only the small groups (3-4 family) on the beach yesterday as well, the Coastguard did pop down and check while we were there, gave us all a wave and carried on......then again one is our neighbour 

 

Last weekend the path at our front entrance (SWCP) was busy all day, couldn’t believe it.

 

Perhaps the grockles are, at last, getting the message the D&C police are putting out there, and the closed campsites / guesthouses etc.  Maybe that's what it takes to get your modern Brit to acknowledge that there are other people in the country other than their own self-indulgent selves.

 

Julian

 

[EddieB]

20 minutes ago, maico said:

 

 

Post-mortem examinations are testing for COVID -19, pathologists want to know the spread of an infectious disease

Yes, but without having tested the sufferers before, post-mortem results will be delayed from the the daily statistical reports.

[Reorte]

The numbers going along the towpath could well be just local people going for their daily stroll or bike ride. I only saw one boat too yesterday, and that's one that goes around delivering fuel (people living on them still need to keep their heating and electricity going).

[Andy Hayter]

50 minutes ago, John Tomlinson said:

 

 

On a seperate matter, there have been several refences recently on this thread of people having something sounding like the disease before Christmas in the UK, and we covered this also a lot earlier in the 105 pages. So I for one don't accept without reservation that this has arisen simply from a food market in Wuhan in the early part of this year.

 

John.

 

 

You  are of course entitled to that opinion, and no doubt there will be many who are equally convinced that they too have had it even though the timescales are all wrong.  Eventually only an antibody test will confirm and even then only that you have had it - not necessarily before Xmas.

 

The question you have to ask yourself though is, if it was indeed C-19 that all these people had, why is that only now it has turned into an obvious killer?   We should have been seeing an abnormal number of pneumonia deaths from before Christmas - and we haven't.

 

FWIW (not a lot)  I too suffered from a nasty bug around mid January that lasted the best part of a month and I still have a dry tickly cough (symptom of C19) but not severe like victims have.  I had a runny nose (not a symptom), headaches (not a common symptom) which I traced to blocked sinuses (not a symptom) and treated as such, I had several episodes of extreme fatigue (not a symptom) spaced over three weeks.  I felt completely crap (not listed but I would say definitely a general symptom).  I at no stage had a fever which I should have had.

 

Conclusion:  I had a nasty bug that shares a few symptoms with C-19 but almost certainly was not.

[billbedford]

56 minutes ago, John Tomlinson said:

On a seperate matter, there have been several refences recently on this thread of people having something sounding like the disease before Christmas in the UK, and we covered this also a lot earlier in the 105 pages. So I for one don't accept without reservation that this has arisen simply from a food market in Wuhan in the early part of this year.

 

 

There was an outbreak of flu in December with a consequential uptick in the excess deaths. What makes the Covid-19 outbreak different is that no-one has immunity to it. When the first cases started to arrive in hospitals there seems to have been the assumption that these were ordinary influenza cases.  It was only when it was realised that staff had been infected and they were unable to work, either because they were ill or were self isolating, that NHS decided that there could be serious capacity problems. 

[Nearholmer]

2 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

On considering the matter of an exit from the current state of exception,

It would be interesting to hear what others think “exit” will consist of.

 

My expectation is that we might even get ‘super locked’ (near total ban on anyone not directly serving the war effort being outside their own property) for a couple of weeks over Easter, but that by the end of April it might be possible to start thinking about some other state of being.

 

Irrespective of exactly when, how do we expect that to unfold?

 

 

[burgundy]

2 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

To be honest I am not sure how reliable any of the figures are. The big issue is the uncertainty over the number on cases, even in countries doing a lot of testing I suspect that they are lower than the actual cases by a lot. Here even the authorities acknowledge the number is way higher than recorded cases but how much higher is a guess. I already commented on the lack of granularity which makes it hard to read much into fatalities and the fundamental difference between people dying with COVID and people dying because of COVID. And there will be variations in cause of death reporting.  None of these issues are unique to our own country.

On considering the matter of an exit from the current state of exception, government would be negligent if that wasn't part of government discussion and planning.

I have rather assumed that the value of the statistics that are published is the trends that they reveal.  As long as they are consistent, they give you a clue about how things are developing. Comparing trends across different countries will give you a clue about where we may be going next. (Note the word "clue"; nothing stronger).

Absolute numbers are pretty meaningless - especially the ones that show the numbers of cases and fatalities, without showing the total population in which they occur.  There are an awful lot of cases in the London area, but then there are also an awful lot of people. And are there actually more cases per head of population than in some of the other hotspots?

One effort to get ahead of the game is the COVID symptom tracker, which is an app. run by Kings College London and two of the London Hospitals.  Everyone can download it and the idea is that you simply report your condition each day, ideally to say that you are feeling fine. If you start to feel poorly, you report the symptoms. With about 2% of the population contributing already, the idea is that it should provide something like real time reporting of when and where people are becoming sick. It does not address the problem of those who have been carrying the virus for the previous week, but it will provide much earlier data on hotspots as they develop.

If you want to do something positive, download the app. and report daily. It takes about a minute each day.

Best wishes

Eric  

[robert17649]

16 minutes ago, billbedford said:

 

There was an outbreak of flu in December with a consequential uptick in the excess deaths. What makes the Covid-19 outbreak different is that no-one has immunity to it. When the first cases started to arrive in hospitals there seems to have been the assumption that these were ordinary influenza cases.  It was only when it was realised that staff had been infected and they were unable to work, either because they were ill or were self isolating, that NHS decided that there could be serious capacity problems. 

The December thing was a nasty influenza as far as I know, and any death therefrom would be a natural one albeit untimely.

 

As to autopsy and so on, as a general rule natural causes deaths will not even trouble a coroner, and if due to Covid-19 in the community would be reported as a natural cause, which by the way is not an acceptable entry for the registrar and what eventually pointed the finger at Shipman.

 

Coroners flicker interest when some form of a b up or neglect has contributed to a death, so evidence from autopsy will be very limited I fear.

[Andy Hayter]

12 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

It would be interesting to hear what others think “exit” will consist of.

 

My expectation is that we might even get ‘super locked’ (near total ban on anyone not directly serving the war effort being outside their own property) for a couple of weeks over Easter, but that by the end of April it might be possible to start thinking about some other state of being.

 

Irrespective of exactly when, how do we expect that to unfold?

 

 

 

I think Imperial College have pointed to how it will unfold.  They suggested that when the death rate reached 100 per day, go into lock down (the government seem to have chosen a lower number but will I am sure have a range of advisors).  IC then say when the death rate falls to below 50 unlock.  (I wonder if this number will also be revised down.)

 

The virus will then pick up again, so you repeat the process and keep repeating until the population have natural immunity or until a suitable vaccine is developed.

[jjb1970]

I think the most telling figures will probably be the absolute mortality figures by month and for the year. Crude but it will give an indication of the impact by comparison with other years and will give a crude indication of how many additional deaths have been caused by Covid. 

[Nearholmer]

AH

 

I wonder if, after the inevitably distressing first peak, there will be the mental and physical fortitude for subsequent smaller peaks, so wonder if something different from the ICL model will emerge.

 

China seems to be attempting a restart with sealed borders, after locking presumably long enough to have stopped the thing in its tracks (every infected person now beyond the infectious stage?).

 

Could we see a ‘sealed UK’ or even ‘sealed areas’ policy, within which test-trace-treat is operated? ‘Sealing’ would have to have ‘gateways’ for essential goods, of course.

 

K

[melmerby]

What is wrong with some people?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-52084653

Edited March 29, 2020 by melmerby

[TheQ]

It's been much quieter round here,  except for tractors,  but I think the reduction of people  is just because of the weather its been a howling gale,  horizontal hail and very cold.. 

[Nearholmer]

Bizarre!!

 

Round here it’s as if aliens abducted everyone. This morning,  a dribble of people were out strolling, walking dogs, or (like son and I) playing footy on the field as exercise, everyone tens of metres apart, but this afternoon ......... tumbleweed. Not even any children playing in gardens. 
 

I hope to goodness they’re not all indoors having huge multi-person buffets!

 

 

Edited March 29, 2020 by Nearholmer