Coronavirus: what your country is doing, how you feel & general discussion

[rainbowbluebells]

Yes there is: the evidence comes from a standard understanding of immunology, and how the immune system develops protective antibodies once exposed to an infection.

The idea would work very well if we could somehow predict in advance which people will only get mild symptoms, and allow those people to get infected first. Once someone is infected, they will have immunity henceforth, at least for a few years hence anyway. This is because the adaptive immune system creates antibodies to the virus within days of you being infected.

Once more and more people develop immunity, the virus will stop spreading. This is because a virus can only spread if it finds new susceptible hosts; but when more and more people have immunity, the virus finds it harder and harder to find any further susceptible hosts, so the epidemic eventually fizzles out. This is exactly how vaccines prevent infectious outbreaks.


Ethically it might be argued that the young and health should be exposed first, to create the herd immunity that will cause the epidemic to fizzle out. That way, the virus will never reach older or unhealthy people, who are at higher risk of dying.

However, even for the young and healthy, there is still some risk of death. So ethically it's a hard call to make.

You didn’t actually mention both of my points about mutation. “Does coronavirus cause strong herd immunity or is it like flu where new strains emerge each year needing repeat vaccines? We have much to learn about Co-V immune responses.”

It is a policy of allowing a virus to move through the population, killing whoever gets in it’s way. Theoretically it could be “healthy” people. Who knows who will have a good response and who won’t? The vulnerable and elderly live with healthy people. It is impossible to isolate them away from this. They are the ones who will die. They are the ones who are already dying, by the sounds of it.
No govt has attempted this before and for good reason. No other govt in the world is doing this. In my eyes, it is a genocide of those who are vulnerable and old - nothing more and nothing less.
Not one single person should have to die, more than they would have to. The WHO has tried and tested evidence based suggestions about strong social isolation policies, testing of people; saving peoples lives. It is only this country that decides that’s not the way to go. And in my eyes, and in many others eyes, it is horrific on a grand scale.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1238418349190778885

 

[rainbowbluebells]

Also, sorry @andyguitar and @Hip I will have to say, for my own mental and physical health, I cannot engage with you on this topic or argue about why this policy is horrendous or not in my eyes. I have used the word genocide, it may be a strong word, but it captures it perfectly for me. I would also use the words social Darwinism and eugenics, this is how I feel about it. And I cannot freely think about it while trying to talk about all the “science” behind it, without hurting myself, due to my severe ME and how emotion can make me crash. So I will leave that there.

 

[Hip]

You didn’t actually mention both of my points about mutation. “Does coronavirus cause strong herd immunity or is it like flu where new strains emerge each year needing repeat vaccines? We have much to learn about Co-V immune responses.”

The experts have already warned that it's possible SARS-CoV-2 might become a regular occurrence, returning every year like the flu, in a slightly different (mutated) form that requires a new vaccine to be created every year.

However, for future recurrences of SARS-CoV-2, we should have enough time to develop vaccines. So the issue is dealing with this current outbreak.


I think only time will tell which country is using the most effective approach to dealing with this pandemic. I don't think anyone really knows for sure what is right or wrong, in terms of strategy. And I don't think any strategy is written in stone; I expect any country may change its approach if necessary.




@rainbowbluebells, if like me you suffer with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) as a comorbid symptom to your ME/CFS, then if you add to that a worrying scenario like this pandemic, it's going to make things a lot worse.

I found a remarkably effective supplement protocol for my GAD, which is detailed in this post. Lots of people on this forum also found them highly effective. Just mentioning this in case you do have GAD, as this protocol may well help. Treating GAD will not change external events, buy it may help the mind to be more relaxed in the way it deal with them. For me those supplement were a godsend.

 

[rainbowbluebells]

The experts have already warned that it's possible SARS-CoV-2 might become a regular occurrence, returning every year like the flu, in a slightly different (mutated) form that requires a new vaccine to be created every year.

However, for future recurrences of SARS-CoV-2, we should have enough time to develop vaccines. So the issue is dealing with this current outbreak.


I think only time will tell which country is using the most effective approach to dealing with this pandemic. I don't think anyone really knows for sure what is right or wrong, in terms of strategy. And I don't think any strategy is written in stone; I expect any country may change its approach if necessary.




@rainbowbluebells, if like me you suffer with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) as a comorbid symptom to your ME/CFS, then if you add to that a worrying scenario like this pandemic, it's going to make things a lot worse.

I found some remarkably effective supplement protocol for my GAD, which are detailed in this post. Lots of people on this forum also found them highly effective. Just mentioning this in case you do have GAD, as this protocol may well help. Treating GAD will not change external events, buy it may help the mind to be more relaxed in the way it deal with them. For me those supplement were a godsend.

Thank you.
Yes I do suffer from severe anxiety and OCD. It’s very tough. I will have a look at your post

 

[Arius]

Gosh that is such a long illness.

I know we're all scared, and this is serious, but I had to laugh at the irony of this statement coming from a person with CFS/ME! I mean, I don't relish the prospect of being extra sick for six weeks, but compared to the six years I've had CFS/ME, it seems like the blink of an eye.

 

[Arius]

Obviously not every symptomatic case of SARS-CoV-2 infection will be recorded, so in order to calculate the total number infected, you would have to guesstimate the percentage of symptomatic cases which are actually recorded in the official figures.

Hip, please forgive my ignorance, but my understanding is that a virus is most contagious before a person even begins to show symptoms, or very early in the illness at least. Which to my mind means that this virus could be ripping through the population as we speak with hardly anybody showing symptoms so far.

And then of course people are avoiding doctors offices and hospitals out of fear. I would expect that the number of cases reported to the government would be a tiny fraction of the total number of infected people.

I'm not sure why you think the number of recorded cases is any indication at all of how many infected symptomatic people there are. (Again, this isn't my area of expertise, I'm just trying to use my logic.)

I expect this coronavirus to be the same as any other flu: almost everybody gets it. And if almost everybody gets it, then we're talking about maybe 2-4% of the global population dying in the next several weeks. Skewed heavily towards elderly and immunocompromised folks such as ourselves, of course.

Am I wrong? (I would LOVE to be wrong about this.)

 

[Inara]

firstly, we have no idea if herd immunity can ever be reached. We know nothing much about the coronavirus and how fast it mutates etc. There might not be any type of herd immunity reached, only death. In any case, herd immunity is spoken about in vaccinations. - not allowing it to infect a whole population.

The virologists I heard assume that the corona virus will maybe behave like the flu.

I think the "herd immunity" belief gives a sense of safety and "togetherness". (That's a double standard...)

Can someone explain why people speak about immunity when it comes to viruses? Sure, immunity to one strain of the virus...Why is mutation ignored?

then there’s the sheer ethical and moral horror of basically having a “plan” of allowing a virus to rampage through the population at will, killing elderly and vulnerable people.

It's not what the WHO aims for. The UK is taking an "interesting", individual position.

Funny you say that: I live with two parents in their 80s, who are the most vulnerable age group, who seem to be a little negligent in self-protection

You are right...I observe this in one of my parents, and the other parent is not happy about that...

 

[Inara]

The idea behind this is that if a lot of healthy people get infected and only suffer a mild illness (like a normal cold) then the virus burns itself out

By "it burns itself out" do you mean like with SARS (from 2016?) which "disappeared"? But virologists think this won't happen with COVID-19, or did I understand that incorrectly?

 

[Rufous McKinney]

You are right...I observe this in one of my parents, and the other parent is not happy about that...

....my 75 year old husband with major health challenges is NOT going to- stay home, be careful, avoid exposures, wash hands, use sanitizers....he is NOT CIVIC.

some of us are very : Agreeable and Civic and Operate often thinking of Others.

 

[Inara]

The idea would work very well if we could somehow predict in advance which people will only get mild symptoms, and allow those people to get infected first. Once someone is infected, they will have immunity henceforth, at least for a few years hence anyway. This is because the adaptive immune system creates antibodies to the virus within days of you being infected.

But, @Hip, this only works if the virus doesn't mutate? And why shouldn't the vulnerable be infected? As soon as a "herd immune" person meets someone who was never infected, that person can be infected, right?

 

[Inara]

....my 75 year old husband with major health challenges is NOT going to- stay home, be careful, avoid exposures, wash hands, use sanitizers....he is NOT CIVIC.

some of us are very : Agreeable and Civic and Operate often thinking of Others.

Yeah, I share my flat with someone who is healthy and works. I asked him to consider my safety, but he doesn't care.

 

[rainbowbluebells]

I know we're all scared, and this is serious, but I had to laugh at the irony of this statement coming from a person with CFS/ME! I mean, I don't relish the prospect of being extra sick for six weeks, but compared to the six years I've had CFS/ME, it seems like the blink of an eye.

Haha yes! You made me laugh! I completely forgot I’ve had severe ME for 5 years now

 

[Inara]

The Czech Republic wants to declare the intentional risk of people through corona as a crime.
https://www.zeit.de/wissen/gesundheit/2020-03/corona-pandemie-virus-covid-19-ausbreitung-live-blog
(Message from 18:38)

 

[Inara]

This is really interesting:
https://m.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/pa...ferrer=https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=59293

It's in German, but I hope you can use "translation machines". If not let me know and I'll translate some parts into English.

 

[Hip]

my understanding is that a virus is most contagious before a person even begins to show symptoms, or very early in the illness at least.

There was originally some concern that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus might be contagious before the first symptoms appear; but the latest news is that this is generally not the case, although there are some occasional stories of the virus transmitting before symptoms appear:

Can someone spread the virus without being sick?

• People are thought to be most contagious when they are most symptomatic (the sickest).
• Some spread might be possible before people show symptoms; there have been reports of this occurring with this new coronavirus, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.

Source: CDC

I'm not sure why you think the number of recorded cases is any indication at all of how many infected symptomatic people there are. (Again, this isn't my area of expertise, I'm just trying to use my logic.)

Simply because during the initial containment phase — when it was hoped that if you track down and quarantine every single case, you might be able to halt the outbreak — every effort was made to find and test anyone who had the symptoms. So I think many symptomatic cases were detected and recorded.

But now that containment has unfortunately failed, and we have moved into the management phase, medical authorities are no longer that interested in tracking down everyone. The strategy now is just to slow down the inevitable, so that hospitals are not overloaded with lots of patients all at once.

I expect this coronavirus to be the same as any other flu: almost everybody gets it. And if almost everybody gets it, then we're talking about maybe 2-4% of the global population dying in the next several weeks. Skewed heavily towards elderly and immunocompromised folks such as ourselves, of course.

Influenza pandemics typically spreads to about a quarter of the world's population. This coronavirus has been predicted to spread to about 70%, but we don't know for sure at this stage.

The coronavirus death rate is probably less that the figures given: this is because the death rate is calculated on the known cases, and excludes asymptomatic cases which are not recorded. If you look at data from the Diamond Princess, the actual death rate is more like 0.7% — see this article. That's still substantially higher than the death rate from seasonal flu, which is around 0.1%. But it's better than the 3% figure often quoted.

It's going to take several months, not weeks, for a substantial percentage of the population to be infected.

 

[Hip]

But, @Hip, this only works if the virus doesn't mutate? And why shouldn't the vulnerable be infected? As soon as a "herd immune" person meets someone who was never infected, that person can be infected, right?

No, once you have overcome the infection, generally speaking you are no longer infectious. Just like when you get over your cold, then you no longer can transmit it to others.

Having said that, there are occasional cases where SARS-CoV-2 seems to cause a persistent or recurrent infection in some people. People have tested positive for the virus, overcome the infection and tested negative, but then a few weeks later tested positive again. So it looks like this virus can reactivate in some people. And this may be a problem; but we have to wait to we get more info on these apparent reactivated infections.


The virus may mutate, and may reappear next year in a new form which nobody has immunity to. But that's not the issue now; and that mutatation can be taken care of by providing yearly updated vaccines, as they do for flu.

 

[Arius]

There was originally some concern that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus might be contagious before the first symptoms appear; but the latest news is that this is generally not the case, although there are some occasional stories of the virus transmitting before symptoms appear:

Source: CDC





Simply because during the initial containment phase — when it was hoped that if you track down and quarantine every single case, you might be able to halt the outbreak — every effort was made to find and test anyone who had the symptoms. So I think many symptomatic cases were detected and recorded.

But now that containment has unfortunately failed, and we have moved into the management phase, medical authorities are no longer that interested in tracking down everyone. The strategy now is just to slow down the inevitable, so that hospitals are not overloaded with lots of patients all at once.





Influenza pandemics typically spreads to about a quarter of the world's population. This coronavirus has been predicted to spread to about 70%, but we don't know for sure at this stage.

The coronavirus death rate is probably less that the figures given: this is because the death rate is calculated on the known cases, and excludes asymptomatic cases which are not recorded. If you look at data from the Diamond Princess, the actual death rate is more like 0.7% — see this article. That's still substantially higher than the death rate from seasonal flu, which is around 0.1%. But it's better than the 3% figure often quoted.

It's going to take several months, not weeks, for a substantial percentage of the population to be infected.

Thanks for your response, Hip. That helps put things in perspective a little.

 

[Inara]

Simply because during the initial containment phase — when it was hoped that if you track down and quarantine every single case, you might be able to halt the outbreak — every effort was made to find and test anyone who had the symptoms. So I think many symptomatic cases were detected and recorded.

At least in Germany, that is not what happened. Yes, they tracked SOME cases. But NOBODY coming from China was checked. This was negligent in my view. That was at a point of time where everybody knew there's an epidemic in China, and of which sort. They could travel into Europe freely. And they certainly infected others - which wasn't checked. The first reported and tested case in Germany was a young woman who returned from ITALY - and I guess she was only tested because her father (tested positive, too, infected by the daughter) is a senior physician in a big, famous clinic.

 

[Sarahloudobby]

I live in the U.K. too I have ME and I have two young children and a zero hours contract as a carer. My life is full of contradictions. But if they close our children’s school my husbands work have already made it clear he won’t be paid to stay at home with the children when I go to work. If I don’t go to work I don’t get paid. It’s a complete mess

 

[pamojja]

Simply because during the initial containment phase — when it was hoped that if you track down and quarantine every single case, you might be able to halt the outbreak — every effort was made to find and test anyone who had the symptoms. So I think

At least in Germany, that is not what happened.

In Austria neither. I came back from a 2 months vacation in India. Slept 5 hours in an Oman Airport with lots of Chinese in a waitingroom - a couple just in a meter distance and coughing all the time - on Jan. 11th. 3 weeks later had for 1 week a cold. And again when returning home. Despite symptoms was told: only travellers from China, Iran, South Korea and Italy would be tested. And I should proceed to my working-place, a homeless shelter with severely immunity-compromised clients! Same answer from a GP.

Only my boss meanwhile ordered me to stay home. Because with my diagnoses (PAD, COPD and T2D) actually at very high risk of dying very fast, if infected myself.