What if there is no cure?

ShineOn7

saabsaab wrote: »

If there is no cure it will burn through the world's population killing millions that are susceptible. A Darwinian survival of the 'fittest'.


I put 'fittest' in inverted commas as it is much misunderstood in that context. Simply meaning those most suited to the environment.

And there it is. I again feel like drinking hard liquor in the house for the first time in a decade.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to who this is killing. There seems to be much more lethal strains of it compared to others

Wibbs

ShineOn7 wrote: »

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to who this is killing. There seems to be much more lethal strains of it compared to others

No S, it's pretty clear who it's killing. Overwhelmingly clear and in all regions so far. If you're under thirty and not already sick with an underlying serious illness(even then) your chances of dying from this are pretty much nil. Under twenty even more so. Under fifty, even 60 you're pretty safe too, unless again you're a diabetic, have heart disease, or high blood pressure, or a serious underlying health condition. Being obese looks to be another risk factor(much less an issue in Asian folks).

But basically it's overwhelmingly killing the elderly and the already very sick and even then the majority of those who catch it don't die. And that's among those who get obviously sick.

Gynoid

10% of people in the world have diabetes, including in Ireland.
30 to 40% of people have high blood pressure. Many undiagnosed
Almost 40% of all deaths in Ireland per annum are from cardio vascular disease, indicating it is a fairly common condition.
1 in 8 at least have asthma. In Ireland. Just about 500,000 people.
Cancer is not uncommon. About 30 to 40% of people will be diagnosed with some form at some point in their lives.

This descriptive phrase - "underlying conditions" - which many are using (paired with "the elderly") as a long stick to keep concern re Covid 19 at a bearable distance, may be a lot more aplicable to a lot more people than a lot of us care to consider.

JP Liz V1

What about the HIV drug to build immunity?

DeVore

The "re-infected" thing is a common issue.

1. Every test has four important factors to consider (this is from my work so I know what I'm talking about here).
A. Where the real answer is True and your test say "True!". This is a true-positive.

B. Where the real answer is False and your test say "True!". This is a false-positive.

C. Where the real answer is True and your test say "False!". This is a false-negative.

D. Where the real answer is False and your test say "False!". This is a true-negative.
https://developers.google.com/machine-learning/crash-course/classification/true-false-positive-negative


In this instance the COVID test is known to have false-positives occasionally. ie: it says you have COVID when in fact you dont.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/downloads/Factsheet-for-Patients-2019-nCoV.pdf


Consider, we're mostly testing people who show signs of it. So, because we are testing millions of people its quite likely that some, perhaps many, people have come for a COVID test because they have COVID-like symptoms and been told they have COVID when in fact they DONT.

Now, some of those unfortunates will then go on to *actually* get COVID, get sick, get tested and HEY PRESTO, we have cases of reinfection of COVID. But its not true.

Most epidermiologists I've read are not buying the anecdotes of reinfection because of covid's slow rate of mutation and that its unusual for the immune system to forget a virus like this, this quickly (common colds are caused by a number of different Rhinoviruses).

Wibbs

Gynoid wrote: »

10% of people in the world have diabetes, including in Ireland.
30 to 40% of people have high blood pressure. Many undiagnosed
Almost 40% of all deaths in Ireland per annum are from cardio vascular disease, indicating it is a fairly common condition.
1 in 8 at least have asthma. In Ireland. Just about 500,000 people.
Cancer is not uncommon. About 30 to 40% of people will be diagnosed with some form at some point in their lives.

This descriptive phrase - "underlying conditions" - which many are using (paired with "the elderly") as a long stick to keep concern re Covid 19 at a bearable distance, may be a lot more aplicable to a lot more people than a lot of us care to consider.

Oh sure G, however looking at the Wuhan figures anyway asthma didn't show up as a serious factor in outcomes. Even oddly enough a serious lung illness like COPD(emphysema in old terms) wasn't high in the stats. IIRC only two or three patients who died outa of 200 had it.

High blood pressure, serious heart disease and cancer tend, in very general terms to be more diseases found in older people. The facts as we know them now are under aged fifty your risks of dying are pretty low, the risk goes up after that age, but doesn't really start to climb until past 70. And even then the majority still don't die from it.

Yes it's a scary time and we should continue to be vigilant, but scary figures and scary stories being thrown about don't help, where ever they hail from. Take the appalling toll of doctors and nurses dying in Italy. It is appalling, truly a fcuking tragedy. However the current number last time I looked was one hundred dead out of twelve thousand confirmed cases in medical staff. That's most certainly a personal tragedy for each and every single one of those men and women behind the numbers, but the numbers are small and we have to keep that in mind. Same goes for the stories of young people dying. Again a bloody tragedy, but the numbers are tiny, like below single digits tiny, but it naturally gets our attention and makes us feel more under siege.

DeVore

JP Liz V1 wrote: »

What about the HIV drug to build immunity?

No real indicator that it helps. More testing is being carried out, results expected Mid-2020.

https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-on-covid-19-hiv-and-antiretrovirals

Wibbs

DeVore wrote: »

Most epidermiologists I've read are not buying the anecdotes of reinfection because of covid's slow rate of mutation and that its unusual for the immune system to forget a virus like this, this quickly (common colds are caused by a number of different Rhinoviruses).

+1 and SARS, a very similar virus gave immune response in survivors for at least two years after infection.

Might there also be the relapse factor? Somebody gets it, clears most of the virus out of their system, feels fine and tests "negative", but maybe gets overtired or whatever and it flares back up again, enough to show up in another test.

DeVore

I dunno about Asthma... rather scarily (since I have asthma) the CDC very clearly puts it front and centre for risk if you have "moderate to severe" asthma. Annoyingly they dont define whats "Moderate" asthma.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-at-higher-risk.html

Wibbs

DeVore wrote: »

I dunno about Asthma... rather scarily (since I have asthma) the CDC very clearly puts it front and centre for risk if you have "moderate to severe" asthma. Annoyingly they dont define whats "Moderate" asthma.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-at-higher-risk.html

It seems like an obvious factor D, just like COPD, but here's the lowdown of some results from Wuhan I mentioned above(I was a little out on the figures from memory, but close enough). It seems asthma isn't a major risk factor. Even smokers were under represented compared to background and by quite a margin. Old age, diabetes and coronary conditions seem to be the biggest factors.

spatchco

might be in the wrong place,but here goes i was out to day in my local park DCU and low and behold 3 of the 5 gates are locked and yes there is staff there but we are told to keep our distance so when you go to go into the park we all have to stand for someone coming or going so whats the point in the DCC and Gov lecturing us on keep your distance must be a good reason hope someone can give me a good answer:

BrianD3

Gynoid wrote: »

10% of people in the world have diabetes, including in Ireland.
30 to 40% of people have high blood pressure. Many undiagnosed
Almost 40% of all deaths in Ireland per annum are from cardio vascular disease, indicating it is a fairly common condition.
1 in 8 at least have asthma. In Ireland. Just about 500,000 people.
Cancer is not uncommon. About 30 to 40% of people will be diagnosed with some form at some point in their lives.

This descriptive phrase - "underlying conditions" - which many are using (paired with "the elderly") as a long stick to keep concern re Covid 19 at a bearable distance, may be a lot more aplicable to a lot more people than a lot of us care to consider.

There are underlying conditions and underlying conditions. You've mentioned some relatively mild ones. Also, cancer is not an underlying condition if you've been fully cured of it which many are.

We don't have many details on exactly what underlying conditions CV victims have. End stage motor neuron disease? Or hypertension.

Some may use underlying conditions in an attempt to reduce concern, if so this at least balances out the media who always portray everything as worse than it is. The nuance of dying with vs dying of CV is rarely mentioned. Sad stories of people who died with their deaths "linked" to CV are published. A couple of weeks ago, sad story on sky news website of man in his forties who was the UK's youngest death at the time. No details on underlying condition until you got well down into the story - then you find that the man had motor neuron disease and had been given a life expectancy of 2 years - in 2018.

At any given time there are lots of people like him with late stage underlying diseases. Terminal cancer, late COPD, MS and so on. If these contract CV death is very likely. But it was very likely anyway.

While I'm on about the media there is a trend now of reporting deaths of parents of celebrities if they had CV. Elderly people whose death would not normally get a mention anywhere are now international news for a "things are terrible" angle e.g. Pep Guardiola's mother.

Also, new wikipedia pages are being created for very minor celebrities because the most notable thing they are deemed to have done in their life is die with CV. They also get to appear on the celebrity deaths page. Notice how many recent entries have CV as cause of death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_in_2020

Jurgen Klopp

DeVore wrote: »

I dunno about Asthma... rather scarily (since I have asthma) the CDC very clearly puts it front and centre for risk if you have "moderate to severe" asthma. Annoyingly they dont define whats "Moderate" asthma.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-at-higher-risk.html

So do I and tbh I don't care what happens to me but my 60 year old mam has it too

I'm trying to quantify it by how often a person needs and uses their inhalers. We'd both be what I'd describe as having a "touch" of asthma where we rarely get short of breath more using it for chest infections but even then I wouldn't say we were ever short of breath. She is on a pill for blood pressure too which terrifies me

But I can't remember where I seen it but I noticed it was people with heart conditions who were getting hit far more

I would put fibrosis as far more a risk respiratory wise but even then I was amazed that COPD wasn't hitting more given the virus

While I have you (or anyone else here) can someone help me. In South Korea the CFR was

50-59 is 0.5%
60-69 is 1.8%

How do you work it for someone bang on 60? Would adding both and dividing by 2 work there be any way right?

Jurgen Klopp

Some news in regards conditions.

There is a man of 80 near me who had it. Had cancer and chemo only last year. Only required non ICU and is home and doing well, his wife of same age has it but was at home only with it.

His son who would be early 40s also got it and said if push came to shove he'd only take 1 day off work. His wife the same.

Another man of at least 65 who smoked a like chimney for years and has had at least 1 heart attack of not a bypass also had it and doing ok, not sure if he is homebound or standard hospital care

gmisk

Jurgen Klopp wrote: »

Some news in regards conditions.

There is a man of 80 near me who had it. Had cancer and chemo only last year. Only required non ICU and is home and doing well, his wife of same age has it but was at home only with it.

His son who would be early 40s also got it and said if push came to shove he'd only take 1 day off work. His wife the same.

Another man of at least 65 who smoked a like chimney for years and has had at least 1 heart attack of not a bypass also had it and doing ok, not sure if he is homebound or standard hospital care

They all sound like very mild cases if they were confirmed as corona...all very anecdotal as well...clearly it isn't like that for everyone just look at the numbers.

Jurgen Klopp

Actually in regards to media scaremongering I saw the daily mail and others running with the shock death of a fit 19 year old Italian male in the UK "with no underlying conditions"

Turns out he had leukemia

From what I gather from the comments most of the "deaths without underlying conditions" turned out to have some pretty serious stuff afterwards that of course wasn't followed up on.

In fact my late father's side of the family had heart disease. I often got the odd twinge and was told after tests etc we can't find anything

Both my father and his sister dropped dead from what the autopsy could only conclude as an "unknown heart condition" now I will be honest and say they were heavy drinkers.

However if I died for C19 it could be claimed I was very healthy bar light asthma , but who knows with my bloody heart?

Jurgen Klopp

gmisk wrote: »

They all sound like very mild cases if they were confirmed as corona...all very anecdotal as well...clearly it isn't like that for everyone just look at the numbers.

Yes they were 100% confirmed, him via GP sending for test and family via contract tracing

Oh I agree, just wanted to give people some bit of good news rather than continuous doom and gloom

JP Liz V1

What about TB vaccine, I think I got this as a kid, ages ago now so probably not still useful

GM228

GM228 wrote: »

The common cold is not a coronavirus, it's a HRV (human rhinovirus).

To be fair, what is described as a common cold (a viral upper respiratory tract infection) whilst commonly caused by rhino viruses, can also be caused by a small enough selection of corona viruses as well as some echo viruses.

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts

Danzy wrote: »

There are several vaccines already in human trials and over 50 being worked on.

It's not considered a highly complex virus.

Honestly, it's alarming to hear that there are already vaccines at the human trial stage. The first part of vaccine discovery has been expedited by new technology but the animal and human trials still take as long as ever and I have to wonder what's been jettisoned to allow these vaccines to already be at the human trials stage.

Jurgen Klopp

Jurgen Klopp wrote: »

Actually in regards to media scaremongering I saw the daily mail and others running with the shock death of a fit 19 year old Italian male in the UK "with no underlying conditions"

Turns out he had leukemia

From what I gather from the comments most of the "deaths without underlying conditions" turned out to have some pretty serious stuff afterwards that of course wasn't followed up on.

In fact my late father's side of the family had heart disease. I often got the odd twinge and was told after tests etc we can't find anything

Both my father and his sister dropped dead from what the autopsy could only conclude as an "unknown heart condition" now I will be honest and say they were heavy drinkers.

However if I died for C19 it could be claimed I was very healthy bar light asthma , but who knows with my bloody heart?

If you are concerned about the possibility of having a heart rhythm issue you could invest in buying a small ecg machine. Occasionally on sale in Lidl, but available on Amazon. Identical to the 24 hour one you get at the hospital. I take occasional read outs due to cardiac history and can show these very usefully to my cardiologist. The cost of buying it for me was less than the cost of hiring very same model from the hospital.

eddie73

I think that we need to remind ourselves that this is an illness that is very dangerous for the elderly, much less so for the middle aged, and almost an inconvenience for the young. The issue for the population beneath the old age bracket is spreading it to the old age community, which would not be nice at all.

Back on topic,

They said the same thing about very many illnesses on the planet, and as far as I know, most illnesses are treatable so I would have confidence in science. I don't have confidence in politics however and the 2 will eventually overlap somewhere on the future timeline

Gynoid

BrianD3 wrote: »

There are underlying conditions and underlying conditions. You've mentioned some relatively mild ones.

I mentioned largely the ones most often associated with the underlying conditions generally refered to as riskier for Covid.

From the WHO literature -

"More rarely, the disease can be serious and even fatal. Older people, and people with other medical conditions (such as asthma, diabetes, or heart disease), may be more vulnerable to becoming severely ill."

I.e the asthma, cvd and diabetes I mentioned.

From the HSE -

"The list of at-risk groups includes people who:

have a long-term medical condition - for example, heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, cancer, cerebrovascular disease, renal disease, liver disease or high blood pressure."

I.e. the high blood pressure I mentioned.

I gave statistics of occurence of those in the general population.

You use anecdotal accounts of celebrities and their parents etc. I don't care about those anecdotes. My point is a lot more people have underlying conditions than one might initially think.

I am not using that to get worked up about it. But I am also not using handwaving about underlying conditions to be casual about it either.
In the beginning I actually wanted to go towards the disease, as an individual and as a society. Very early on in the earliest threads I wondered would a herd immunity approach not be better than postponing the inevitable. In the early days if asked I would have said I want to get it and get it over with.
More recently I have backed off that, as I feel there MAY be hidden complexities in this illness that make it potentially more nasty than I had earlier suspected. For a percentage. And not just the percentage who die (even if just a tad earlier than they might have..I said that sarcastically as there is a slight whiff of the euthanasia arguments from some of the opinions I read.)

I just don't know enough about it. Like about 99.9% of the people in the world.

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts

DeVore wrote: »

Zoonotic diseases are relatively rare. Viruses dont like humans to begin with (we have very elaborate and nasty immune systems) and tend to want to stay within a species. There are some that can jump species for sure, but we're not sure yet if this is one that can jump from cat to humans.

Zoonotic diseases are indeed rare but this coronavirus is one of them, that's pretty much established. Whether it passes between big cats and humans is academic. It's already passed from an animal to a human.

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts

Justin Bewildered Thresh wrote: »

The objective is not to prevent people catching it. The objective is to prevent too many people catching it at once. They are trying to avoid overwhelming the health service. If the health service is overwhelmed then not everyone who is critical can be treated and the fatality rate increases greatly.

Enough people will eventually catch it and recover that fewer humans will be susceptible to infection and therefore those who are susceptible will be exposed less. This does not depend on immunity being permanent. Even if it becomes endemic it will not continue to have the same impact at that point.

The general view seems to be that it's reasonable to expect a vaccine to be developed sooner or later. I don't think colds are a good comparison. There is less motivation to develop a vaccine for a cold. I read somewhere that vaccines are generally not particularly profitable so developing vaccines for relatively trivial diseases seems like a waste of resources whatever way you look at it.

Well, no, it's also to stop people from catching it. I can't afford to catch it at all because I have a diffuse kind of lung metastases so I'd be very lucky for it not to take me out, even with ventilation. And yes, I will die in the next few years anyway but I have a lot of treatments still available to me and that few years could be five years. I'm 36 years old and I do care if it's two months or two years I have left.

People under mental stress are also vulnerable to more nasty disease as that raises cortisol, a natural immune suppressant. Look at Boris Johnson, the weight of running a country has been upon him and he’s not weathering it too well. On the other hand, Prince Charles, an older man (albeit with genes of iron constitution) under much less stress, seems to have shaken it off easily.

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts wrote: »

Well, no, it's also to stop people from catching it. I can't afford to catch it at all because I have a diffuse kind of lung metastases so I'd be very lucky for it not to take me out, even with ventilation. And yes, I will die in the next few years anyway but I have a lot of treatments still available to me and that few years could be five years. I'm 36 years old and I do care if it's two months or two years I have left.

Exactly. And the more that advanced cancer can be held at bay, the more and even better treatment options become available. Because of this there will be some people with a current terminal diagnosis who are still alive and quite well in 20 years time.

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts

BrianD3 wrote: »

There are underlying conditions and underlying conditions. You've mentioned some relatively mild ones. Also, cancer is not an underlying condition if you've been fully cured of it which many are.

We don't have many details on exactly what underlying conditions CV victims have. End stage motor neuron disease? Or hypertension.

Some may use underlying conditions in an attempt to reduce concern, if so this at least balances out the media who always portray everything as worse than it is. The nuance of dying with vs dying of CV is rarely mentioned. Sad stories of people who died with their deaths "linked" to CV are published. A couple of weeks ago, sad story on sky news website of man in his forties who was the UK's youngest death at the time. No details on underlying condition until you got well down into the story - then you find that the man had motor neuron disease and had been given a life expectancy of 2 years - in 2018.

At any given time there are lots of people like him with late stage underlying diseases. Terminal cancer, late COPD, MS and so on. If these contract CV death is very likely. But it was very likely anyway.

Those estimates are very often way off, so much so that doctors are often reluctant to give timescales. Even for motor neurone disease. I was not expected to last very long when I was diagnosed with cancer but I'm closing in on five years now. It's still terminal. But I could feasibly have three or four more years. I know a lot of long-term survivors amongst terminal cancer patients, some have it for more than a decade. They will die when the treatments run out but those treatments can work for a long time. So "Shur, you'd be dying soon anyway" is not only horribly flippant but often inaccurate.

Jurgen Klopp

Anyone looking at the BCG vaccine for TB they are talking of now?

If you contrast the nation's that rolled out the vaccine to those that didn't the virus death figures are eye opening

https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/06/has-the-key-to-a-coronoavirus-vaccine-been-staring-us-in-the-face-for-a-century

DeVore

This is the ECDC info on underlying conditions and the impact on mortality. Frustratingly vague about levels of severity but still... pretty stark.

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus#case-fatality-rate-of-covid-19-by-preexisting-health-conditions