Coronavirus Pandemic Information- Local and Worldwide

_Brian

https://www.rte.ie/news/ulster/2020/1215/1184594-coronavirus-ni/

Treating patients in carparks

It’s a shame on NI government that petty politics stopped a cohesive response to covid, too much points scoring.

greysides

Droplet dispersion differs in a corridor compared to an open space.

https://scitechdaily.com/safe-social-distancing-alert-long-streams-of-virus-laden-droplets-can-trail-behind-infected-individuals/

wrangler

You only need look to Northern Ireland now to see why we should adhere to the restrictions. People in the north who act the brat now might as well be putting a gun to the heads of their hospital workers

endainoz

_Brian wrote: »

https://www.rte.ie/news/ulster/2020/1215/1184594-coronavirus-ni/

Treating patients in carparks

It’s a shame on NI government that petty politics stopped a cohesive response to covid, too much points scoring.

Something like this could have easily happened in the republic if the restrictions hadn't been put in place. It's no secret our health system often has to treat patients in hallways on trolleys, it's not much of a further step to have to treat them in the carparks.

yosemitesam1

endainoz wrote: »

Something like this could have easily happened in the republic if the restrictions hadn't been put in place. It's no secret our health system often has to treat patients in hallways on trolleys, it's not much of a further step to have to treat them in the carparks.

That would be our health service and worse every year if the precautions delaying those people being admitted were in place for flu or any other common respiratory disease.
Getting a faster and more efficient system in place is the obvious answer but it's not something that the health service has any history of actually implementing...

Water John

the hospital problem both north and south isn't about A & E not being able to cope, it's having a bed for the patient after admittance.

yosemitesam1

Water John wrote: »

the hospital problem both north and south isn't about A & E not being able to cope, it's having a bed for the patient after admittance.

Put them on a trolley, as we've done for the last however many years before covid ever came along. If there's not room for trolleys due to covid precautions, throw in a prefab into the carpark and create that space...

wrangler

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

Put them on a trolley, as we've done for the last however many years before covid ever came along. If there's not room for trolleys due to covid precautions, throw in a prefab into the carpark and create that space...

I often thought that when we're lambing and there isn't enough individual pens for the ewes, we make damn sure that we've enough the next year.
Yet HSE plunge from one flu season to the next with, if anything, less facilities and staff the following year. What did they expect, there isn't room now for Covid

endainoz

wrangler wrote: »

I often thought that when we're lambing and there isn't enough individual pens for the ewes, we make damn sure that we've enough the next year.
Yet HSE plunge from one flu season to the next with, if anything, less facilities and staff the following year. What did they expect, there isn't room now for Covid

Those high earner consultants need to be paid aswell. Every single year the money allocated in the budget to the hse increases, yet nothing seems to be done. In fairness this is not news to anybody, and I doubt many of us would have the know-how to solve it either!

Time to move topic maybe, seen as we'll have this vaccine here in the very near future, would anyone here have any issue with taking it? And if you do have an issue, please explain. I do believe that the argument about "needing more info" is a bit redundant myself. No matter how many reports and studies and reviews there are, there will still be people saying they don't trust it.

Personally, I won't have any issue with taking it, I do like to attend many concerts, festivals and events myself throughout the year, as well as the odd match. Point is that I'm used to being in big crowds where a vaccine will be absolutely necessary.

I do think, that when it comes down to it, most people will get it for the sake of getting back to normality. The irony is of course that the ones who refuse it will be responsible for keeping the virus in the community and make it for difficult to eradicate it.

yosemitesam1

endainoz wrote: »

The irony is of course that the ones who refuse it will be responsible for keeping the virus in the community and make it for difficult to eradicate it.

There is at this point no reason to think that is the case. There is no data to say whether any of the vaccines will provide a sterilising immunity against covid.

_Brian

endainoz wrote: »

Something like this could have easily happened in the republic if the restrictions hadn't been put in place. It's no secret our health system often has to treat patients in hallways on trolleys, it's not much of a further step to have to treat them in the carparks.

Indeed
The need for so many isolation rooms to treat patients not yet with results puts on a tough burden.

That’s why the restrictions have been so important. To avoid this.

endainoz

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

There is at this point no reason to think that is the case. There is no data to say whether any of the vaccines will provide a sterilising immunity against covid.

It's a well known fact that if a virus has no hosts, then it will not survive. It's the same concept as herd immunity except without infecting people.

Not sure what the point of a clinical trial is if you don't have data from it.

odyssey06

endainoz wrote: »

It's a well known fact that if a virus has no hosts, then it will not survive. It's the same concept as herd immunity except without infecting people.

Not sure what the point of a clinical trial is if you don't have data from it.

Some of the vaccine trials were tracking illness only, not infection.
And there were no guarantees going into this that the vaccine would prevent both illness and infection.

That said, the Moderna trials were tracking for asymptomatic infections, and found significant reduction in the vaccinated group versus placebo - so that's promising.

_Brian

As time goes on one wonders if covid will be part of a seasonal flu and cold season. Needing regular vaccinations.

If one gets repeated infections will the result be cumulative, I know of one young woman who has been infected twice and the second time was much worse and lingering effects not seen the first time.

If this is the case it represents a much bigger challenge long term due to its amazing ability to transmit between hosts and the increased mortality rates.

I’d be concerned at its ability to jump species so easily too.

There’s a belief among many people that there is an end or control to this to allow life go on “as usual”. I’m less convinced we will see the back of Covid19

wrangler

odyssey06 wrote: »

Some of the vaccine trials were tracking illness only, not infection.
And there were no guarantees going into this that the vaccine would prevent both illness and infection.

That said, the Moderna trials were tracking for asymptomatic infections, and found significant reduction in the vaccinated group versus placebo - so that's promising.

Sure it's a start, vaccines can only improve with time, I'll be taking it as soon as it's offered

endainoz

odyssey06 wrote: »

Some of the vaccine trials were tracking illness only, not infection.
And there were no guarantees going into this that the vaccine would prevent both illness and infection.

That said, the Moderna trials were tracking for asymptomatic infections, and found significant reduction in the vaccinated group versus placebo - so that's promising.

Ah interesting, I would still prefer to take something with no guarantees as opposed to nothing which would ensure zero protection.

yosemitesam1

_Brian wrote: »

As time goes on one wonders if covid will be part of a seasonal flu and cold season. Needing regular vaccinations.

If one gets repeated infections will the result be cumulative, I know of one young woman who has been infected twice and the second time was much worse and lingering effects not seen the first time.

If this is the case it represents a much bigger challenge long term due to its amazing ability to transmit between hosts and the increased mortality rates.

I’d be concerned at its ability to jump species so easily too.

There’s a belief among many people that there is an end or control to this to allow life go on “as usual”. I’m less convinced we will see the back of Covid19

Covid has yet to be properly benchmarked against all of the other circulating coronaviruses that affect humans. If it was there would most likely be very little standout differences only that it's new and had a hysterical reaction to it that none of the other strains ever received.
Posted a link months ago in this thread where an outbreak of an old strain caused a fatality rate of over 7% in a Canadian nursing home.
All coronavirus strains can and do kill but no ones ever looked at the rest of them or flu with the sort of testing thats been put into covid.
Flu monitoring is carried out by only sampling a very small number of people. Maybe it would generate even scarier pcr test data if we went looking for it...

Ultimately covid emerged and had spread around the world unnoticed for at least 3 months before it was even discovered. For a disease to do that, it has to be very mild for the vast majority of the population. It simply cant be the deadly disease that grows exponentially if given half a chance, or health services across the world would have collapsed by this time last year before covid was even discovered

wrangler

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

Covid has yet to be properly benchmarked against all of the other circulating coronaviruses that affect humans. If it was there would most likely be very little standout differences only that it's new and had a hysterical reaction to it that none of the other strains ever received.
Posted a link months ago in this thread where an outbreak of an old strain caused a fatality rate of over 7% in a Canadian nursing home.
All coronavirus strains can and do kill but no ones ever looked at the rest of them or flu with the sort of testing thats been put into covid.
Flu monitoring is carried out by only sampling a very small number of people. Maybe it would generate even scarier pcr test data if we went looking for it...

Ultimately covid emerged and had spread around the world unnoticed for at least 3 months before it was even discovered. For a disease to do that, it has to be very mild for the vast majority of the population. It simply cant be the deadly disease that grows exponentially if given half a chance, or health services across the world would have collapsed by this time last year before covid was even discovered

Deadly or not, the north has shown us what can happen, the virus in the south is not as big a problem as our rubbish health service. It's the lack of a health service is the reason the country is kept locked down, young people should be allowed decide what risks to take and have a proper health service to deal with those that get it wrong

yosemitesam1

wrangler wrote: »

Deadly or not, the north has shown us what can happen, the virus in the south is not as big a problem as our rubbish health service. It's the lack of a health service is the reason the country is kept locked down, young people should be allowed decide what risks to take and have a proper health service to deal with those that get it wrong

The health service hasn't collapsed up there like all the doomsday models predict will happen. More issues in the health service seem to be caused by the response to covid rather than covid itself everywhere in the world.
The overwhelming of hospitals in Italy last spring included...

odyssey06

wrangler wrote: »

Deadly or not, the north has shown us what can happen, the virus in the south is not as big a problem as our rubbish health service. It's the lack of a health service is the reason the country is kept locked down, young people should be allowed decide what risks to take and have a proper health service to deal with those that get it wrong

Lots of countries in Europe not lacking in health service who are in lockdown right now.
No health service can cope with this virus unrestrained, you are just buying yourself more time between lockdowns.

endainoz

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

Covid has yet to be properly benchmarked against all of the other circulating coronaviruses that affect humans. If it was there would most likely be very little standout differences only that it's new and had a hysterical reaction to it that none of the other strains ever received.
Posted a link months ago in this thread where an outbreak of an old strain caused a fatality rate of over 7% in a Canadian nursing home.
All coronavirus strains can and do kill but no ones ever looked at the rest of them or flu with the sort of testing thats been put into covid.
Flu monitoring is carried out by only sampling a very small number of people. Maybe it would generate even scarier pcr test data if we went looking for it...

Ultimately covid emerged and had spread around the world unnoticed for at least 3 months before it was even discovered. For a disease to do that, it has to be very mild for the vast majority of the population. It simply cant be the deadly disease that grows exponentially if given half a chance, or health services across the world would have collapsed by this time last year before covid was even discovered

It's quite a large family of viruses though the common cold is a coronavirus, covid 19 has proven to be highly infectious and quite severe. SARS and MERS were quite severe too, but not nearly as invectious as Covid. There was quite an amount of "hysteria" over those too.

Your last paragraph has been responded to on this thread by multiple posters on multiple occasions. It did not spread exponentially and overwhelm health services BECAUSE of the restrictions that have been introduced.

yosemitesam1

endainoz wrote: »

It's quite a large family of viruses though the common cold is a coronavirus, covid 19 has proven to be highly infectious and quite severe. SARS and MERS were quite severe too, but not nearly as invectious as Covid. There was quite an amount of "hysteria" over those too.

Your last paragraph has been responded to on this thread by multiple posters on multiple occasions. It did not spread exponentially and overwhelm health services BECAUSE of the restrictions that have been introduced.

Forget sars and mers. They don't have much to offer us in understanding covid. It's coronaviruses 229E, NL63, OC43, and HKU1 that will offer us greater insight. They are all endemic, have varying levels of diversity, have been around a long time and all kill vulnerable people.

Covid was present in Italy in September 2019 in some sort of numbers (was it hundreds or thousands had it who knows, but it was there as something more prevalent than an isolated case). It took until spring to cause an issue with zero restrictions in place at any time in the runup.
Is that consistent with the idea that a few weeks of unrestricted living will overwhelm our hospitals?
I dont think it is. A much more reasonable answer to what happened in Italy was the response to covid took a very large proportion of the health service out of action over a very short period of time. Affecting both hospitals and nursing homes.
Staffing issues in nursing homes resulted in the remaining workers being overwhelmed and struggling to care for patients leading to hospitalizations that were due to care issues not disease and sending the very old to hospital for covid treatment (who are normally not treated in hospital for flu/pneumonia).
These factors all combined together would overwhelm the best healthcare systems anywhere in the world.


All of that isn't saying that covid cant put hospitals under pressure, just that the doomsday scenario relies heavily upon the response to covid if it is going to get the chance to unfold.

_Brian

endainoz wrote: »

It's quite a large family of viruses though the common cold is a coronavirus, covid 19 has proven to be highly infectious and quite severe. SARS and MERS were quite severe too, but not nearly as invectious as Covid. There was quite an amount of "hysteria" over those too.

Your last paragraph has been responded to on this thread by multiple posters on multiple occasions. It did not spread exponentially and overwhelm health services BECAUSE of the restrictions that have been introduced.

SARS amd MERS were essentially failures as possible pandemic virus because they made the host sick, really sick which restricted the hosts ability to spread the virus to other hosts, they were essentially self defeating in that sense. From Memory mers had a mortality rate in scary levels, 20-30% maybe, but it hospitalised hosts quickly thus restricting spread. If covid had a similar mortality we would he fckued.

dzer2

_Brian wrote: »

SARS amd MERS were essentially failures as possible pandemic virus because they made the host sick, really sick which restricted the hosts ability to spread the virus to other hosts, they were essentially self defeating in that sense. From Memory mers had a mortality rate in scary levels, 20-30% maybe, but it hospitalised hosts quickly thus restricting spread. If covid had a similar mortality we would he fckued.

To be honest Brian I suggest everyone has had covid19 in some form, it is that infectious. Some more than once. If that is the case has our health service not coped well enough. The last spike and this spike are not bogging down the hospitals and I am not sure the lockdowns are achieving anything only reducing the tests which reduces the numbers found. I have heard of 4 cases only one that I vaguely know. The reason spain Italy and most of Europe have big deaths is more to do with the percentage of older people and vulnerable population. We have being **** in this country looking after our elderly. Only one family in our vicinity have a person over 90 not many over 80 also. We have a habit if killing off the vulnerable. Too long of waiting lists to be seen. In the last 3 yrs quite a few younger under 50 people in the area dying of cancer. Undetected for too long.
Hopefully this will transcend into a flu by next winter with all these vaccines coming on stream

Water John

Don't be daft, the % of the pop who have had Covid is a smallish minority. It's not as low as Covid positive tests mostly due to asymptomatic and light infection.
So it might be double the number who have tested positive. Gross generalisation don't add to a rational discussion. If Dzer 2 what you say was true, we hardly need bother with a vaccine.

Say my name

Water John wrote: »

Don't be daft, the % of the pop who have had Covid is a smallish minority. It's not as low as Covid positive tests mostly due to asymptomatic and light infection.
So it might be double the number who have tested positive. Gross generalisation don't add to a rational discussion. If Dzer 2 what you say was true, we hardly need bother with a vaccine.

I was listening to Prof Luke O Neill a few days ago give a run down on Covid.
Very few children and people under 40 test positive. Not because they hadn't been exposed to it but that the virus just hasn't the key to infect those people and show a positive result on a test.

yosemitesam1

Water John wrote: »

Don't be daft, the % of the pop who have had Covid is a smallish minority. It's not as low as Covid positive tests mostly due to asymptomatic and light infection.
So it might be double the number who have tested positive. Gross generalisation don't add to a rational discussion. If Dzer 2 what you say was true, we hardly need bother with a vaccine.

The data isn't there to say howfar through the population covid has travelled but it will be multiples of the official figures.
The antibody survey was carried out at the end may/early june and came up withapprox 1% of the population being infected.
But we know that people with blood antibodies represent only a portion of those infected.
The antibodies dwindle below detectable levels with time.
The antibody sampling was carried out at least 6 months after covid was circulating in the community
The sampling was carried out a minimum of 2-3 months after the peak.
So the real amount of infections in spring was most likely a minimum of circa 5% of the population but probably quite a bit more.

Theres no way of knowing what percentage of people with covid are being picked up now.
The average person has a 50-60% chance of having zero symptoms.
Another chunk of those with symptoms will be so minor that they dont think it's anything to do with covid.
There's plenty of room for doubt for the positives to be in the range 30-50ish % of the real number.
It could even be lower as when you'd start allowing for chains of infection through the younger parts of the population, covid might have to spread through 5-10 people to have a chance of throwing up identifiable symptoms in anyone.

odyssey06

Say my name wrote: »

I was listening to Prof Luke O Neill a few days ago give a run down on Covid.
Very few children and people under 40 test positive. Not because they hadn't been exposed to it but that the virus just hasn't the key to infect those people and show a positive result on a test.

Interesting... think this is the interview with Prof Luke O Neill you are referring to.
Children testing positive for antibodies but not the virus itself in an infected household.

https://www.newstalk.com/news/why-children-have-a-supercharged-way-to-fight-the-coronavirus-1121777

Say my name

odyssey06 wrote: »

Interesting... think this is the interview with Prof Luke O Neill you are referring to.
Children testing positive for antibodies but not the virus itself in an infected household.

https://www.newstalk.com/news/why-children-have-a-supercharged-way-to-fight-the-coronavirus-1121777

Yea it was on newstalk.

Then listeners ringing in saying my son or daughter tested positive.

I've heard of tell of a case where a teen who had asthma tested positive early in the year yet nobody else in the same household or their contacts tested positive.
This was back in the fine weather so plenty of vitamin D which seemingly is a thing in fighting it. Different story this time of year.

whelan2

Local priest has tested positive here.