I hypothesise that in the UK we will look back at this a decade from now and the real take-home message will be that Covid-19 exposed how unhealthy our population had become.
I couldn’t agree more, but I don’t hold out much hope that will happen.
Graham wrote:
What I think Covid-19 exposes, more than anything, is how healthy or unhealthy various populations are. It stands to reason when you think about it – a reasonably aggressive respiratory infection that spreads like wildfire will do this.
But from what I’ve read it’s been hitting healthy and active people hardest (the after effects, that is).
This of course could be that someone used to being active, who used to run 90 miles a week before their bout of COVID and 16 weeks on can only run 20 miles a week is still suffering a significant and highly noticeable (to them) loss in quality of life, but someone with a sedentary lifestyle who never goes faster than walking pace doesn’t really notice that drop in cardio function 16 weeks later, even though in reality they are now even less healthy.
MedEwok wrote:
The number of cases will not fall by much in the time span covered, but hospital admissions and deaths should fall quite significantly since the vaccines are targeting the most vulnerable people first.
How many of the most vulnerable is still alive now in the UK? A serious question. The UK has had 90k deaths now, and I would expect the large majority of those being the most vulnerable. IMO the death rate has to drop at some point regardless of vaccine.
Besides. Health authority here say it is a large chance that the first line of vaccinated people will have to take a third shot within a year to continue staying immune.
alioth wrote:
But from what I’ve read it’s been hitting healthy and active people hardest (the after effects, that is).This of course could be that someone used to being active, who used to run 90 miles a week before their bout of COVID and 16 weeks on can only run 20 miles a week is still suffering a significant and highly noticeable (to them) loss in quality of life, but someone with a sedentary lifestyle who never goes faster than walking pace doesn’t really notice that drop in cardio function 16 weeks later, even though in reality they are now even less healthy.
Of course. People easily forget that if you are quite active and you end up in intensive care for whatever reason then it is going to knock you for six and it might be quite a long time before you are back to your pre-illness norm. If your norm is a very high state of physical fitness then it might take a long time and a lot of hard work to achieve, just as it did in the first place pre-illness. This is not unique to Covid-19.
Without data, I don’t really buy the assertion that it is hitting healthy and active people hard. The media love the idea that it does, because it makes good dramatic stories “look at this guy who ran marathons and is now nearly dead” but everyone has a story and the plural of anecdote is not data. For every story like that (where they usually don’t tell you all the pertinent facts anyway, in case they detract from the drama) there are thousands and thousands who just recover and get on with their lives.
The data still tells us that most people who are hospitalised are elderly, frail or with underlying health conditions. Not all, but most. We have an old population and an unhealthy population, so this is a lot of people.
LeSving wrote:
How many of the most vulnerable is still alive now in the UK? A serious question. The UK has had 90k deaths now, and I would expect the large majority of those being the most vulnerable. IMO the death rate has to drop at some point regardless of vaccine.
Yes. I don’t have the data on population age/frailty/health to come up with an estimate on when that should start to happen, but just on gut feel I was slightly surprised it hasn’t dropped off of its own accord anyway due lack of vulnerable victims. Perhaps the problem is we really have little idea how accurate the 90k figure is. It is a consistent measure if you always do it the same way, but we don’t know how many it misses or falsely captures. I would say it likely falsely captures a fair number – for instance the already-close-to-the-end patients who contract it in hospital, and those who die of something else but happen to have Covid-19 at the time (which statistically must be some.)
The UK has had 90k deaths now, and I would expect the large majority of those being the most vulnerable
A long way to go… Google for e.g.
how many over 90 in the uk
From e.g. here:
There were more than 600,000 people aged 90 years and over in 2019, increasing by 3.6% compared with 2018, from 584,024 to 605,181.
Peter wrote:
There were more than 600,000 people aged 90 years and over in 2019, increasing by 3.6% compared with 2018, from 584,024 to 605,181.
Mmmm, but the Covid-19 mortality rate for those aged 90+ is still only perhaps 20-25% maybe (?), so even with 600,000 we would hope for a natural downturn in deaths around now?
I heard today that Israel is already seeing significant changes in hospital admissions, due to their vaccination programme.
Even amongst the very elderly, only a minority are in care homes where COVID has run rampant so as Peter says, there is a way to go before we run out of frail people through attrition. Anyhow, they are now being vaccinated faster than they are contracting COVID.
I can’t comment on how common or severe or long ‘long COVID’ is – not sure anyone truly can. Post viral fatigue is certainly something well known to be associated with other viruses e.g. glandular fever. We saw an unusual number of young people with myocarditis early on in the pandemic. It’s well recognised that type II diabetes often starts following a minor illness. Kawasaki syndrome was a medical mystery, but there was an outbreak associated with the COVID pandemic.
COVID can infect many different tissues – not just lung – so it doesn’t seem impossible to me that it can cause syndromes other than the acute respiratory distress syndrome that is killing people. Personally I’m quite curious to see whether, in the longer term, we find that Coronaviruses have long played a role in these diseases. Early on I had wondered whether we might see a drop in new cases of diabetes as there are far fewer coughs and sniffles going round at the moment.
kwlf wrote:
Even amongst the very elderly, only a minority are in care homes
Is that really true for the 90+? I have no data, but it would surprise me – at least if it were only a small-ish minority.
