Fuji_Abound wrote:
- so you ask everyone say between 25 and 50 without any medical conditions to be given the virus, and self isolate for x weeks,
The study linked by Peter above suggests that about 5% of all infected between 0 and 40 years still require critical care to survive. For over 40 year olds this figure rises dramatically. I assume that failure to provide them with critical care will raise the mortality rate among the younger population (which is not 0% anyways!) dramatically.
I’m afraid your hypothetical strategy would only lead to more deaths…
Peter wrote:
That’s a very interesting post Medewok. The German situation is especially puzzling, with so few deaths. What is Germany doing differently?
Frankly, I don’t know. I don’t think the authorities reacted any better than in neighbouring countries. One explanation might be that laboratories which could perform the test were relatively widely available from the outset. The tracking of Infected and their contacts also seemed to work relatively well at the outset. The higher number of critical care beds compared to other countries, which we’ve previously discussed in this thread, may also have played a role.
At my hospital we’ve begun to cancel elective surgery, barred visitors from entering and set emergency plans in motion. We only have a single Covid-19 patient so far, afaik, but expecte a quick increase in cases soon. We have to wait and see if it gets as bad as in Italy here…
The Czechs are not messing about, having reportedly collected a whole load of this from returning skiers
As regards herd immunity, it seems that such a strategy would kill way too many people to be politically possible. Already, there is the predictable stuff on social media calling Boris a “murderer” etc etc. It may well be that those who die would have died anyway before long (there are many under-50s with serious health conditions, and anyway it’s obvious this age effect is not age related as such; it is merely related to various health indicators) but that’s not politically acceptable either.
The most dramatic news today is that the Eurovision Song Contest has been cancelled. That will really drive home the magnitude of this crisis.
And I’ve just read that the cafe at Popham is closing due to the virus. That will improve the life expectancy of many more people than saving them from the virus 
MedEwok wrote:
The study linked by Peter above suggests that about 5% of all infected between 0 and 40 years still require critical care to survive.
Yes, but doesnt the study include those with other underlying health conditions? You would have to screen out anyone with any of these, and including conditions that they might not acknowledge, such as hypertension, perhaps blood group even, etc. To be fair I have no idea what problems might arise in the group you were left with?
I am the first to acknowledge it isnt morally acceptable, so entirely a discussion point, as to whether it would result in any deaths, and whether it could stop a much higher rate of deaths in the rest of the population.
Peter – I agree, I am not suggesting it would be remotely politically possibe (or something I would support), just musing on the hypothetical consequences and benefits (if any).
I’ve heard that there was a study released in Hong Kong that said a number of people who survive have permanent lung damage.
The herd immunity is an interesting argument, but surely the issue is trying to avoid overloading our healthcare system, I suspect even with younger people there will still be those who need hospital treatment.
Off_Field wrote:
I’ve heard that there was a study released in Hong Kong that said a number of people who survive have permanent lung damage.The herd immunity is an interesting argument, but surely the issue is trying to avoid overloading our healthcare system, I suspect even with younger people there will still be those who need hospital treatment.
I think those with permanent lung damage are those with underlying health conditions. I am not sure there is any / much evidence that anyone young and with absolutely no underlying health conditions is likely to suffer any consequences (or the percentage is very very small). Of course I could be wrong, and maybe we dont fully know yet.
I think the issue is totally avoiding overloading the healthcare system – hence my point that hypothetically if this group would have no serious health problems then the healthcare system is spared – in contract to allowing herd immunity to develop semi-naturally (in otherwords our best current efforts to control the rate), but still finding it takes months longer, with many far more vunerable people becoming ill.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
so you ask everyone say between 25 and 50 without any medical conditions to be given the virus, and self isolate for x weeks,
How much $$ you pay them to go on “Corona vacation” to Australia or North Pole? Isn’t that what cruise ship trips do?
Putting a side political correctness, this does not work as governments do not have organisational and financial resources to infect, isolate and treat target healthy population in short-term of 4 weeks, so unless you lock everybody it will not work, say you can only manage 1m infected at any given time with exceeds NHS resources, that means at least 15months to cover half of young population…
Fuji, I certainly think it’s an interesting discussion to have, but wasn’t the original whistle blower doctor who died 34 with no underlying health issues? The problem seems to be that even if they are low percentages, the numbers are big enough for them to not be insignificant.
UK numbers getting worse fairly fast
Reportedly a big cluster in London, which is not surprising when you look at the horrid transport modes there.
On balance I think the UK government response has been reasonable, but of course the media (and social media) are full of people who think they know better and are ready to criticise. Nobody wants this, the government would rather being doing other things, and they’re doing the best they can based on scientific advice where different sources may disagree and many things are uncertain. It is not black and white – this is right and that is wrong – there is a lot of uncertainty. One also has to consider the economic cost. It is good politics to say the cost does not matter, but of course it does.
They want to delay closing schools as long as possible, simply because once you close schools the whole economy grids to a halt. Parents (especially key workers in the health service) cannot go to work, and when schools close children would traditionally go to their grandparents but of course cannot in this case.
There has been much talk of ‘decisive action’. We must be careful of politicians and others wanting to be seen to be taking decisive action because it makes them look good rather than because it’s the best thing to do. In nearly every aspect of life the ‘do nothing’ option, while not always the solution, is usually vastly underrated.
For an example of political capital being made, look at what is happening today with schools in the UK. It was said that Boris will shortly be making an announcement on schools, either today or later in the week, probably to say they’ll be closed from next week. So the Welsh and Scottish national administrations just could not help themselves – they had to get in there first and announce that they would be closing their schools even if England was not, just to show that they were better and more decisive.
The is much disquiet about the lack of testing. As I understand it, the tests we have involve a waiting time for the results – I hear it is up to about 24hrs but happy to be corrected. So when people say that we should be testing all our frontline healthcare staff and all people presenting with symptoms to improve isolation, how does that work when results take time to come back? The person who tests positive goes round infecting others until they know, the person who tests negative then contracts the virus between their test being done and getting the negative result! Segregating people, especially your healthcare workers, is very difficult unless you have instant tests.
Most of us will get infected eventually unless a cure or vaccine is developed. It is out there and you can’t possibly test everyone, so realistically it’ll always be out there. You can lock everyone down for weeks or months, but if you ease the lockdown with just one untraced case out there then it’ll gradually start spreading again, the speed of spread gradually growing as it did in China. Unless of course recovery leads to immunity….. hence the herd immunity idea.
