[News] The Coronavirus Good News thread

[CHAPPERS]

Is this conversation not best had in the dedicated area? Not a criticism, just a suggestion

 

[Mellotron]

Game changer.

If true, and replicated in other countries, that’s surely enough for life to get pretty much back to normal. Doesn’t herd immunity work at 60%? Italy could reach that in a week or two.

I’m genuinely not trying to have a dig here, but if as you say the infection peak was about a month ago in Italy, how would they jump from 38% to 60% within a week or two, given the tiny numbers of new infections they would likely be seeing now?

Or are you saying relax lockdown to achieve this final load of infections?

Of course, this is all based on data that still needs verifying - all noises on asymptomatic numbers and early data on real numbers of people infected are encouraging though, in terms of us possibly being much further through this virus than we may have thought previously.

 

[Bakero]

Random antibody testing by an Italian lab is apparently indicating 38% of Italians (from across all 9 regions) have been exposed to the virus....if validated this means the virus has spread far more widely and the death/serious infection rate is much lower than thought.

https://www.liberoquotidiano.it/new...italiani_dieci_reale_estensione_epidemia.html

Great if true. Has it been reported in a better quality paper though? Libero is not the most trustworthy of sources.

 

[knocky1]

That's really interesting news. i really hope it's accurate. It's a study done by a manufacturer, so I have some scepticism, but if true that's a huge number and the UK is probably not too far behind

Exactly. The group was only 1700 people and hard to fathom how random testing was done across the country under lockdown.

 

[Mellotron]

I wasn’t very clear, but yes, I meant they would absolutely need to relax lockdown. As you say, they aren’t going to go from 38% to 60% or more when the whole country is locked up.

If these figures are anything near the truth, it seems to me like relaxing lockdown and allowing as many people to get infected as the hospitals can cope with is the way to go. I don’t know enough about Italy’s capacity, but roughly speaking if 38% of the population was infected in 4-6 weeks it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think they could hit 60% given another couple of weeks.

It would also make the “up to 50% infected” modelling look slightly less silly than first thought.

It’s also important to note they said “up to 50% infected”, not “50% infected” - there’s a huge difference. i.e. anywhere between 0-50%. I certainly thought that 50% would be too high, however it’s increasingly looking like figures of perhaps 20-30% aren’t outside the realms of possibility at all.

 

[highflyer]

I hope people are using the C-19 symptom tracker app, https://covid.joinzoe.com/ which is now collecting data from 2.2 million people. Very basic in terms of information, but with that number of people involved, I'd imagine it's getting some useful and reliable data now.

There is a newsfeed - which tells you what information is emerging from the analysis.

Most recent is that 'the rate of new symptoms being reported nationally has slowed down significanty in the past few days'

The (extrapolated) data, which lines up with other sources such as the NHS digital (based on calls to 111) suggests that people in Uk aged 20-69 having symptomatic Covid-19 fell from 1.9 million to 1.4 million between 1st and 5th April.

I have no idea how those figures translate to an overall number of people that have, or have had, the virus. Presumably you'd need to account for asymptomatic cases and for those that caught it through March as well. But strikes me that a) these are very large numbers and b) the drop in numbers over just 5 days is encouraging.

What is clear is that there is no quick fix (yet) and no easy route out. But what we are doing is working and if we keep going the data says we'll see deaths start to drop off significantly within two weeks.

 

[Mellotron]

I hope people are using the C-19 symptom tracker app, https://covid.joinzoe.com/ which is now collecting data from 2.2 million people. Very basic in terms of information, but with that number of people involved, I'd imagine it's getting some useful and reliable data now.

There is a newsfeed - which tells you what information is emerging from the analysis.

Most recent is that 'the rate of new symptoms being reported nationally has slowed down significanty in the past few days'

The (extrapolated) data, which lines up with other sources such as the NHS digital (based on calls to 111) suggests that people in Uk aged 20-69 having symptomatic Covid-19 fell from 1.9 million to 1.4 million between 1st and 5th April.

I have no idea how those figures translate to an overall number of people that have, or have had, the virus. Presumably you'd need to account for asymptomatic cases and for those that caught it through March as well. But strikes me that a) these are very large numbers and b) the drop in numbers over just 5 days is encouraging.

What is clear is that there is no quick fix (yet) and no easy route out. But what we are doing is working and if we keep going the data says we'll see deaths start to drop off significantly within two weeks.

Good to have the app but it is frustrating they don’t allow you to backdate - I had 80-90% of the symptoms of a viral infection back in early/mid March, and it would help them a lot to know how many have already had something along these lines.

 

[Green Cross Code Man]

Good to have the app but it is frustrating they don’t allow you to backdate - I had 80-90% of the symptoms of a viral infection back in early/mid March, and it would help them a lot to know how many have already had something along these lines.

Precisely this. I got part way through and gave up as it seemed useless for me to simply record that I had no symptoms now. They should definitely allow back-dating, at least since Feb.

 

[pb21]

No, the more infectious a disease is the higher proportion of people need to have had it. If that many people have had it then it's very infectious... I think.

Yep, herd immunity is approximately 1-1/R0.

The 60% thing is based on R0 of Covid-19 of ~2.5 (measles is up to 18).

However, if it is very infectious (R0=5?), whilst more people would need to be immune for herd immunity to be effective (80%), then for Covid-19 it would suggest it has a much reduced severity of the disease in general.

Edit: I think the original basis for the R0 of Covid-19 was based on early ata from China, now thought to be higher.

 

[Bry Nylon]

So if you have been lucky enough to swerve Covid-19 in this initial outbreak, and the restrictions are relaxed, and you subsequently catch it - it still has the potential to **** you up just as badly? Is this correct?

 

[Mr Banana]

You could try to ask Tim Spector about backdated submissions on that app. Pretty much anything he gets involved with tends to be brilliant.

People can also volunteer to take part in swab and pin tests here (they get sent in t'post): https://oxford.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/coronavirus-disease-covid-19-in-the-uk-community

 

[Postman Pat]

Countries across Europe are cautiously starting to ease their lockdown measures, as infection rates slowly decline.

Small shops will open in Austria and Czech Republic, and schools in Denmark will re-open on 15 April. German health minister Jens Spahn suggested there could be “a gradual return to normality” after Easter if the current positive trend in numbers continues.

Even in the worst affected nations there are reasons for optimism. Reports in Italy suggest restrictions could be eased on 4 May. And on Thursday morning, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the country may be finally passing the worst of the outbreak. “The fire starts to come under control,” he told parliament.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-52225173

 

[Notters]

You could try to ask Tim Spector about backdated submissions on that app. Pretty much anything he gets involved with tends to be brilliant.

People can also volunteer to take part in swab and pin tests here (they get sent in t'post): https://oxford.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/coronavirus-disease-covid-19-in-the-uk-community

Thanks dude, I have signed up.

 

[Mellotron]

From FT;

Germany to carry out first large-scale antibody test for coronavirus

Germany will be the first country in the world to carry out large-scale antibody testing for coronavirus, which will help show how many people are now immune to the disease.

Lothar Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute, announced details of three antibody tests: one of blood donations, one of 4 distinct areas that saw outbreaks of the virus, and a representative study of the broader population.

They will be carried out jointly by the Robert Koch Institute, the Institute for Virology of Charité Hospital in Berlin and the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig.

Dr Wieler said the aim was to find out how many Germans were immune to the virus. He added:

We'd like to know how large is the proportion of asymptomatic cases - that is people who were infected by the virus but didn't know it - and to assess how many people in Germany have died, so how high the mortality rate is.

Experts have argued that doing spot checks and randomised tests will be key in uncovering real infection rates for coronavirus, rather than relying on models which use data that can quickly become obsolete. So far, no country in the world has successfully implemented a nationwide antibody testing programme.

 

[Driver8]

From FT;

Germans leading the way again.

 

[Diablo]

Germans leading the way again.

Good news ??

 

[Driver8]

Good news ??

Good news for the Germans!

 

[Green Cross Code Man]

Good news for the Germans!

Good news for much of the world. If they can test enough people, we will know a lot more about its spread and mortality rate.