Coronavirus

[blackchubby38]

I think we have reached a critical phase in this pandemic, and it appears to present the same dilemma, whether it is the UK, Continental Europe or the USA and the rest of the world. We know that many people, perhaps the majority, can be infected with the virus and not fall ill, just as we know many who are infected and hospitalized survive and return home, some of them with problems they might be dealing with for years to come, some recovering completely.

But what does not appear to be in doubt, is that because the virus is air-borne and has a wicked ability to transmit from one person to another, relaxing lockdown measures is contributing to an extension of viral infections when, in spite of aggregate numbers declining where they are, in the UK for example, young people not infected by the virus are nevertheless carriers, and thus constitute the most potent threat if not to the rest of society, its elderly and medically vulnerable people.

A pub in Staffordshire opened to customers but apparently did not exercise strict distancing measures. Packed out for some private event, it later emerged 10 had tested positive for Covid 19
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/crown-anch...135545041.html

It seems to me that Governments must decide if physical distancing measures be re-imposed where they have been lifted, and maintained where they continue to exist. In some countries, for example the USA, it is clear that some States have failed their citizens by not imposing severe limits on human congregation. But, and this is the critical point, are we reaching a moment when people even if they care, decide to 'take their chances' on free movement, with Government unable or unwilling to stop them? With economic decline now a reality for so many, are we at 'breaking point'? And does it mean middle-aged and elderly people must in effect, quarantine themselves in fear of open spaces occupied by reckless youngsters?

Apparently another source of spread are family gatherings. Controlling freedom of movement in public is hard enough. Try imposing restrictions on being able to visit family and friends in private homes.

At this point, I don't think re-imposing lock downs is the answer. I still believe there has to be a way for kids to go back to school. So I think the only answer is this and its not going to sound fair, but none of what's been happening for the past six months has been. The elderly and medically vulnerable may just have to quarantine themselves, while everybody else eases back into a masked, tested, and traced society.

If there are certain businesses that want to continue to let their employees work from home, that would be great. But I think we also need get business areas thriving again because of how many other businesses depend on office workers.

Indoor dining, movie theaters, and gyms can't remained closed indefinitely with no plan in sight of how to re-open them. So if those businesses can prove they can re-open safely, I say let them do it.

Finally, if its possible I say start having outdoor events at a limited/reduced and masked capacity.

[rodinuk]

Apparently another source of spread are family gatherings. Controlling freedom of movement in public is hard enough. Try imposing restrictions on being able to visit family and friends in private homes

The British government has just reintroduced these restrictions in the North of England due to rising cases. Family is just a set of potential disease carriers and if you pop them in a confined indoor space with one or more of them a carrier then chances are they’ll have multiple carriers once they leave....and then spread it if they don’t adhere to social distancing, sanitising etc.

I agree that policing it is a different matter I think that it depends on how close to home it is to you. it was scary during lockdown and people have relaxed their attitudes.

[sukumvit boy]

This situation is just so sad and stupid . And I think that in a court of law or if called before a medical licencing board it would easily qualify as unethical and sufficient grounds for medical licence suspension or revocation.
Unfortunately having completed 4 years of undergraduate STEM studies followed by 4 years or more of post graduate medical education is no guarantee of having learned how to think critically !

Three big studies show no success in treating or preventing SARS-CoV 2 with Hydroxychloroquine.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020...event-covid-19
As noted in my post #421 above existing interferon drugs are.

[broncofan]

The elderly and medically vulnerable may just have to quarantine themselves, while everybody else eases back into a masked, tested, and traced society.

This makes an assumption that is not really plausible. The assumption is that if we have a virus that is spreading wildly among our population, that we can protect the most vulnerable members of society.

The biggest predictor of the number of new cases is the baseline number of cases you start with. What I mean is that it takes quite a lot of public health efforts to get r0 to 1, which basically means that each infected person infects one more person. If we have 70,000 diagnosed cases per day, an R0 of 1 would mean we're carrying that many forward

For sure, elderly people are safer if they stay in than if they go out, but how do they get groceries? How do they get medical care? If they live in assisted living, who is it staffed by?

If there truly will be an effective vaccine by early next year, I wonder what it is you're getting as a benefit for tens of thousands of people dying. We couldn't subsidize certain businesses for six more months? Children can't be out of school for one semester? Why isn't Sweden's economy stronger than its neighbors economies when it is the only Scandinavian country not to shutdown?

For sure, if this is a disease that the first round of vaccines and antibody treatments don't touch, we would have to find a way to live with it. But why should we base our public health efforts around that sort of fatalism. Would you want to be the last person to get very sick before a vaccine is distributed?

[blackchubby38]

This makes an assumption that is not really plausible. The assumption is that if we have a virus that is spreading wildly among our population, that we can protect the most vulnerable members of society.

The biggest predictor of the number of new cases is the baseline number of cases you start with. What I mean is that it takes quite a lot of public health efforts to get r0 to 1, which basically means that each infected person infects one more person. If we have 70,000 diagnosed cases per day, an R0 of 1 would mean we're carrying that many forward

For sure, elderly people are safer if they stay in than if they go out, but how do they get groceries? How do they get medical care? If they live in assisted living, who is it staffed by?

If there truly will be an effective vaccine by early next year, I wonder what it is you're getting as a benefit for tens of thousands of people dying. We couldn't subsidize certain businesses for six more months? Children can't be out of school for one semester? Why isn't Sweden's economy stronger than its neighbors economies when it is the only Scandinavian country not to shutdown?

For sure, if this is a disease that the first round of vaccines and antibody treatments don't touch, we would have to find a way to live with it. But why should we base our public health efforts around that sort of fatalism. Would you want to be the last person to get very sick before a vaccine is distributed?

To make sure that elderly people get groceries and medical care, we keep doing the same things that we did during the lockdowns. Supermarkets set aside special hours for them to shop. For routine care, many hospitals are now offering virtual visits. Be they through the telephone or Skype. Family members can help them get to doctor's appointments and/or surgical procedures. There is also things like Access-a-ride or Para Transit.

If they live in assisted living, you take the same precautions that you were doing before. That includes making sure that you don't send people back into the homes that haven't fully recovered from the Corona Virus yet.


If we can figure out way to get kids safely back into the schools, I say we should take that chance. If we can figure out way to keep businesses open, while at the same time keeping people safe and healthy, I say we should take that chance.

Even if an effective vaccine is developed by the end of this year, its going to take at least another month or two to manufacture, distribute, and inoculate people. So we are looking at February/March before things get back to normal. That's a semester and half for children to be out of school. Plus a lot longer to subsidize certain businesses and for people to be out of work.

[blackchubby38]

I think I should make something clear. I don't think this should all happen by Monday, August 3rd. I'm talking about a gradual return over the course of the next 6 weeks.

[sukumvit boy]

Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse , new strains of flu virus with pandemic infectious potential are discovered on pig farms in China.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53218704

[Nikka]

we need to pray

[Stavros]

Apparently another source of spread are family gatherings. Controlling freedom of movement in public is hard enough. Try imposing restrictions on being able to visit family and friends in private homes.
At this point, I don't think re-imposing lock downs is the answer. I still believe there has to be a way for kids to go back to school. So I think the only answer is this and its not going to sound fair, but none of what's been happening for the past six months has been. The elderly and medically vulnerable may just have to quarantine themselves, while everybody else eases back into a masked, tested, and traced society.

If there are certain businesses that want to continue to let their employees work from home, that would be great. But I think we also need get business areas thriving again because of how many other businesses depend on office workers.

Indoor dining, movie theaters, and gyms can't remained closed indefinitely with no plan in sight of how to re-open them. So if those businesses can prove they can re-open safely, I say let them do it.

Finally, if its possible I say start having outdoor events at a limited/reduced and masked capacity.

You are right to draw attention to family gatherings, which I neglected to mention before. If what in the UK we call 'BAME' communities (Black Asian and Minority Ethnic communities) have been affected more by Covid 19 than others, one reason is that the elderly relatives remain in the BAME home, and they are used to living all together in one house. It is easy to slide from this sociological fact to cast blame on BAME, just as at the moment Muslims are a target because of their attendance at Mosques even if worshippers now wear masks.

The dllemma of human congegation we know, but even if the elderly remain isolated compared to others, what happens to those in their 40s or 50s who are vulnerable to infection too? There is no easy way out of this cycle of infection-remission-infection, but I suggest it is due to a) quarantine measures beginning too late to have immediate effect, the virus was on holiday when it should have been in prison; b) the absence of a comprehensive test and tracing organization, which in the UK with a comprehensive NHS we ought to have been able to arrange, means the Govt did not have an accurate geographical profile of the viral spread; and c) relaxation of quarantine measures being lifted too early. In some parts of the USA, as we know, there were no effective quarantine measures and with human congregation common those States are now suffering.

9/11 should have been the template for all: a nationally co-ordinated, total shutdown, with immediate effect.

'Nobody is safe until we are all safe' - but everyone is not safe from the 'flu, and at some point I think we will have to settle for a situation in which Covid 19 becomes as common as the Cold and the 'flu, with the possible outcome that this SARS-related illness can be to some degree be eliminated as have other SARS-related illnesses, so that annual cases of Covid 19 do not cause the havoc they have so far.

I also think that a lot of people now don't trust the advice the Govt is giving, and will ignore some of it. Surveys have claimed that a lot of people decided to go their own way when it was discovered Boris Johnson's special adviser, Dominic Cummings had violated basic self-isolation rules to take his child from London to his parents home in the grim North, and then waft away questions about it as if it were not important. If he could do what he wanted, why not the rest of the country? We have been poorly led in the UK, at least in England. Scotland was also late to the party, though Nicola Sturgeon appears to have a better grip on it than Boris, too busy trying to save Brexit while dishing out awards and privieges to his little Brother and an assortment of Brexit fanatics.

Does this mean wearing masks in public places for some time to come? I think so. The irony is that when I lived in London, or go there, as I have to later this month, I often wished I had a mask on a crowded bus or crowded subway train to protect me from people exuding extraordinary smells, and not just garlic breath. I once fell ill after travelling on a bus on which a young man had a grotesque cough that sounded like it had been orchestratd by Stockhausen - a mask then might have spared me the two weeks I spent in bed. So masks I think are here to stay.

And when the vaccine arrives, who gets it first? And who gets it last?

[blackchubby38]

You are right to draw attention to family gatherings, which I neglected to mention before. If what in the UK we call 'BAME' communities (Black Asian and Minority Ethnic communities) have been affected more by Covid 19 than others, one reason is that the elderly relatives remain in the BAME home, and they are used to living all together in one house. It is easy to slide from this sociological fact to cast blame on BAME, just as at the moment Muslims are a target because of their attendance at Mosques even if worshippers now wear masks.

The dllemma of human congegation we know, but even if the elderly remain isolated compared to others, what happens to those in their 40s or 50s who are vulnerable to infection too? There is no easy way out of this cycle of infection-remission-infection, but I suggest it is due to a) quarantine measures beginning too late to have immediate effect, the virus was on holiday when it should have been in prison; b) the absence of a comprehensive test and tracing organization, which in the UK with a comprehensive NHS we ought to have been able to arrange, means the Govt did not have an accurate geographical profile of the viral spread; and c) relaxation of quarantine measures being lifted too early. In some parts of the USA, as we know, there were no effective quarantine measures and with human congregation common those States are now suffering.

9/11 should have been the template for all: a nationally co-ordinated, total shutdown, with immediate effect.

'Nobody is safe until we are all safe' - but everyone is not safe from the 'flu, and at some point I think we will have to settle for a situation in which Covid 19 becomes as common as the Cold and the 'flu, with the possible outcome that this SARS-related illness can be to some degree be eliminated as have other SARS-related illnesses, so that annual cases of Covid 19 do not cause the havoc they have so far.

I also think that a lot of people now don't trust the advice the Govt is giving, and will ignore some of it. Surveys have claimed that a lot of people decided to go their own way when it was discovered Boris Johnson's special adviser, Dominic Cummings had violated basic self-isolation rules to take his child from London to his parents home in the grim North, and then waft away questions about it as if it were not important. If he could do what he wanted, why not the rest of the country? We have been poorly led in the UK, at least in England. Scotland was also late to the party, though Nicola Sturgeon appears to have a better grip on it than Boris, too busy trying to save Brexit while dishing out awards and privieges to his little Brother and an assortment of Brexit fanatics.

Does this mean wearing masks in public places for some time to come? I think so. The irony is that when I lived in London, or go there, as I have to later this month, I often wished I had a mask on a crowded bus or crowded subway train to protect me from people exuding extraordinary smells, and not just garlic breath. I once fell ill after travelling on a bus on which a young man had a grotesque cough that sounded like it had been orchestratd by Stockhausen - a mask then might have spared me the two weeks I spent in bed. So masks I think are here to stay.

And when the vaccine arrives, who gets it first? And who gets it last?

Here is who gets the vaccine first:

People aged 50 and above.
People in their 40s' with severe preexisting conditions*
All front line workers. That includes people in the service and retail industry.


*-Even though I'm 46 with HTN that is controlled with medication, I'm willing to wait until the second round of vaccinations.

I think once everyone has been vaccinated, you can SLOWLY lift mask mandates and make wearing them voluntary.