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Italy & Covid-19

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    #122
    kippy
    Registered Users Posts: 18,401 ✭✭✭✭kippy


    bladespin wrote: »
    Hard to say, we've definitely had over 100k cases now (probably a lot more) and about 5k of those needed hospital attention, many who've had it don't/didn't realise they did,I think it's very possible.

    You think we would have hardly noticed it?


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    #123
    440Hertz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 651 ✭✭✭440Hertz


    If it was around at that stage is it possible the strain was less virulent? Or just that there’s a slower build to a tipping point where it becomes a noticeable phenomenon?

    Exponential growth in biology can be very bursty looking, especially if there were contained clusters in healthy populations. Most European countries, including here, only saw a big death toll when it got into vulnerable institutional settings and then it seemed to just mushroom.


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    #124
    pauldry
    Registered Users Posts: 6,887 ✭✭✭pauldry


    rob316 wrote: »
    I've had the flu a number of times over my 33 years and last Xmas was by far the worst I experienced. 1 week of not been able to breath and wrecked for about 3 weeks afterwards. That wasn't the flu, I'm absolutely convinced.

    I also had this non flu last Christmas and my whole family had a milder version

    Pneumonia, Sweats and Breathing problems.
    Taste gone too.

    Initially went to doc and he said it was a flu .
    But then I got worse and went to doc and he said to get tested for pneumonia which I had with dry cough.

    The breathing was the worst though.


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    #125
    440Hertz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 651 ✭✭✭440Hertz


    The diagnosis of pneumonia my dad got was just based on blood oxygen measurement and symptoms. He didn’t go to hospital and was just put on tamiflu, antibiotics and steroids by the GP. There was never any swabbing or PCR done.

    I don’t think they normally took many swabs or did PCR testing of those kinds of things outside of hospital contexts pre COVID and it was specifically testing for influenza strains, coronavirus wasn’t on the radar at all. If you had it, even if they did a lab test, it wouldn’t have been detected.


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    #126
    bladespin
    Registered Users Posts: 7,334 ✭✭✭bladespin


    kippy wrote: »
    You think we would have hardly noticed it?

    If you check back there were all sorts of alarm bells going off, we just didn't know what 'it' was. Again, speculation but plausible.


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    #127
    bladespin
    Registered Users Posts: 7,334 ✭✭✭bladespin


    bladespin wrote: »
    If you check back there were all sorts of alarm bells going off, we just didn't know what 'it' was. Again, speculation but plausible.

    Linky


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    #128
    pauldry
    Registered Users Posts: 6,887 ✭✭✭pauldry


    440Hertz wrote: »
    The diagnosis of pneumonia my dad got was just based on blood oxygen measurement and symptoms. He didn’t go to hospital and was just put on tamiflu, antibiotics and steroids by the GP. There was never any swabbing or PCR done.

    I don’t think they normally took many swabs or did PCR testing of those kinds of things outside of hospital contexts pre COVID and it was specifically testing for influenza strains, coronavirus wasn’t on the radar at all. If you had it, even if they did a lab test, it wouldn’t have been detected.

    I was sent to hospital for xray and they found pneumonia in my left lung so even if thats all it was I would be terrified to be infected with real Covid as id be fairly high risk. Hence I am a bit of a recluse!


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    #129
    wakka12
    Registered Users Posts: 9,786 ✭✭✭wakka12


    bladespin wrote: »
    Linky

    I don't think it would have just flown under the radar so easily, flu is tested for, it's not widespread but it does occur quite a lot. They would have noticed a lot of flu patients not testing positive surely


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    #130
    440Hertz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 651 ✭✭✭440Hertz


    The one thing I’m taking from this is the exceptionalism and blinkered view that was taken by the medics in general didn’t help. When it was a live issue in China, the medical world in Europe and the US seemed to go into “oh that couldn’t possibly happen here “ mode. Even when it was in Italy the same attitude persisted until it took off.

    Also we all moved too slowly. The idea that air travel might need to be disrupted or testing at airports was seen as crazy and a kind of “typical Chinese Government” over the top reaction.

    I find now we’re reimagining history. The general attitudes towards precautions and awareness have increased, but I still find the fact that you’ll be told “oh, no! That’s impossible. You couldn’t have had it” despite lots of people saying they did have something weird in December, January and February is just more of the same fingers in ears attitude that landed the western world in this mess in the first place.

    We need to look back at any swabs or samples that exist. It would be very useful to determine the timeline.


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    #131
    kippy
    Registered Users Posts: 18,401 ✭✭✭✭kippy


    bladespin wrote: »
    If you check back there were all sorts of alarm bells going off, we just didn't know what 'it' was. Again, speculation but plausible.

    Again, I am not suggesting that the virus wasn's here much earlier than March.
    There was a post above which suggest that if we weren't testing for it, we would hardly notice it at all. This is what my initial response was to.
    We would have noticed it when hospitals got overwhelmed.


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    #132
    440Hertz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 651 ✭✭✭440Hertz


    The issue though is it seems to be one of those drip, drip, drip.... flood type scenarios that starts and then reaches various tipping points when you start to notice it due to large numbers.

    For example, if you look at how it’s moved in the US Midwest. Many of those states threw caution to the wind and had very mild outbreaks all through the year and were sneering at NY and other American coastal city hotspots.

    Then out of nowhere this autumn it just surged in the Midwest and it’s turned extremely serious.

    If you compare Ireland to most of continental Europe. We managed to identify the wave was coming and got in early with pretty simple measures and our hospitals have tens of cases, not thousands.

    It’s a bizarre phenomenon and one I think unless you’re an epidemiologist, you’d really find hard to believe it works like this and I would include the majority of the medical profession, the media and many scientific commentators in the section of society that’s been shocked at the speed of surge. It isn’t intuitive as we haven’t as a society experienced this in living memory.

    It’s very possible it was there and we weren’t seeing it and misidentifying it as flu.

    We noticed a surge when it hit nursing homes in March but there had been that flu season surge in late 2019.


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    #133
    kippy
    Registered Users Posts: 18,401 ✭✭✭✭kippy


    440Hertz wrote: »
    The issue though is it seems to be one of those drip, drip, drip.... flood type scenarios that starts and then reaches various tipping points when you start to notice it due to large numbers.

    For example, if you look at how it’s moved in the US Midwest. Many of those states threw caution to the wind and had very mild outbreaks all through the year and were sneering at NY and other American coastal city hotspots.

    Then out of nowhere this autumn it just surged in the Midwest and it’s turned extremely serious.

    If you compare Ireland to most of continental Europe. We managed to identify the wave was coming and got in early with pretty simple measures and our hospitals have tens of cases, not thousands.

    It’s a bizarre phenomenon and one I think unless you’re an epidemiologist, you’d really find hard to believe it works like this and I would include the majority of the medical profession, the media and many scientific commentators in the section of society that’s been shocked at the speed of surge. It isn’t intuitive as we haven’t as a society experienced this in living memory.

    It’s very possible it was there and we weren’t seeing it and misidentifying it as flu.

    We noticed a surge when it hit nursing homes in March but there had been that flu season surge in late 2019.

    I suppose the "surge" or spread of it in general, is almost primarily down to human behaviour. But added to that are the complexities around how this visus effects different age groups, the incubation time and the amount of asymptomatic cases.

    Theses "Surges" or "waves" aren't the virus doing something thing different or somehow "attacking" in a different way (generally). Its essentially human behaviour that is facilitating it.
    It's hard to know (yet) how prevalent this was late last year or early this year or whether it was the same virus or a slightly different one but if it (Covid 19) was "here" or in contentital europe in September of last year one would have to review all of the thinking on looking at Wuhan and indeed where the virus initially came from.


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    #134
    bladespin
    Registered Users Posts: 7,334 ✭✭✭bladespin


    wakka12 wrote: »
    I don't think it would have just flown under the radar so easily, flu is tested for, it's not widespread but it does occur quite a lot. They would have noticed a lot of flu patients not testing positive surely

    Just on this, I've had both a viral infection and bad flu a few times through my life, only once (viral arthritis) did I ever get a test of any kind.


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    #135
    Away With The Fairies
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 4,077 ✭✭✭Away With The Fairies


    I would love if what I had last year was covid, had a cold with a cough. Most of us coughing in work as well. To have it and not know about it. Then I met up with a friend in February, her son was sick with a fever in hospital. A few days later she ended up sick in hospital as well. While she was sick in hospital, I had a very bad runny nose. I remember googling at the time if it was a symptom of covid because it was so weird for me but then covid wasn't officially in the country then.

    While I would love if these two instances were covid, and not knowing about it, people are still getting infected so I don't know. If this was going through the population unknowingly, I don't understand how people are still getting infected.


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    #136
    wakka12
    Registered Users Posts: 9,786 ✭✭✭wakka12


    bladespin wrote: »
    Just on this, I've had both a viral infection and bad flu a few times through my life, only once (viral arthritis) did I ever get a test of any kind.

    Yeh as I said it's sporadic and inconsistent. But there are still thousands of people tested for flu every year in Ireland, hundreds are returned positive, if there was hundreds of people with hospitalised with FLI and returning negative for the circulating influenza alarms bells would be going off

    How do you think they found out in Wuhan?? That's how it was first reported, large rise in hospitalisations with viral pneumonia that didn't match any circulating respiratory illness when tested for


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    #137
    440Hertz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 651 ✭✭✭440Hertz


    The bit I don’t get is how if it were in Continental Europe it wasn’t here within days. It makes no sense it wouldn’t be and seem to be imagining it’s 1950 and people rarely went abroad. Nor do we have magic bio shields at airports. If it was in London, Paris, Amsterdam, New York etc it had huge opportunity to get to Dublin, Cork, Limerick etc etc.

    There are more trips to and from various parts of continental Europe on any given day and Ireland than there are to and from various parts of Ireland. In a typical year 1.8 million of us make trips to Spain and that’s only one country. Our volume of trips to and from the U.K. is higher still and we’ve loads of connectivity to France, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Italy etc etc - pretty much all of Europe has been to your average Irish person about as big a deal as going to Kerry and then if you add our very intense connectivity for our size to and from North America and we’ve a continuous flow to and from Australia/NZ and into Asia.

    As for the human behaviour element. Think about it more like pathways than behaviour. Different groups of people socialising providing the junctions and interconnection pathways for the virus to move.

    It’s very conceivable that if the virus got into a few offices for example and began to spread that it might no have reached a pathway to nursing homes for some time. If mostly healthier people, living in non congregated settings we’re getting it initially it may have taken a while.

    If you look at the patterns of spread worldwide, it looks to me like it followed business flight nexuses. Cities like London, Paris, New York, Milan, etc were hit hardest first and Ireland is very much part of that realm of international travel and trade. The second big wave was through the tourist spots like Spain and the French one was largely domestic tourism spreading it widely.

    Once it got to more vulnerable groups, particularly those who live in clusters : nursing homes, it got very bad very fast.

    I know in my case when I got very sick, I wasn’t hospitalised or tested for flu. My dad who is in his 60s developed full pneumonia and was only diagnosed by a GP without any lab work.

    So it’s very conceivable that it was silently bubbling away without being very dramatically noticed for a while before it started to show up in hospital cases.


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    #138
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 6,192 ✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30971521.html?type=amp


    Flu surge mid december last year?


    Almost everyone i known sick last year,didnt go to doctor as they'd be used to riding out a flu most years,


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    #139
    lainey_d_123
    Registered Users Posts: 2,385 ✭✭✭lainey_d_123


    I really, really wish there was a way to tell if you ever had Covid, and if that means you're now immune or not.

    I had a really uncharacteristically bad cold in early-mid February. I wouldn't say typical Covid symptoms but I felt really under the weather, which isn't at all usual for me. I then had what I felt was some breathlessness and a very tight/sore chest and lungs for another few weeks. I remember coming home and having to sit down on the stairs after walking briskly home from the shop. I had been in mainland Europe twice in the previous month and was working in a very busy open plan office in central London, taking a packed train there and back, and was also in the pub or a restaurant several times a week.

    At least five different people on my own team had Covid by late March, when the office closed. I'd say I either did have it, or was lucky not to get it. I wish I could know.


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    #140
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 17,381 ✭ [Deleted User]


    I was fully convinced I had already had it at the start of all this. Was completely wrecked by something here in December in Vietnam and so was my brother. I had it worse and was wearing a mask before there was mention of them because I was so sick. I've had proper flu before and remember saying it's not the flu but it's really bad. Bed-bound for a while.

    Vietnam hasn't been hit hard at all though, so I guess it's either this population has had something run through it before, like a weaker strain or a different coronavirus giving some immunity, or it wasn't Covid and it was something else. I haven't been keeping up with it so I dunno.

    Whether or not it started in Wuhan is anyone's guess really. A city that big could have anyone coming in as patient zero.


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    #141
    Rjd2
    Registered Users Posts: 12,013 ✭✭✭✭Rjd2


    lainey_d_123 wrote: »
    I really, really wish there was a way to tell if you ever had Covid, and if that means you're now immune or not.

    I had a really uncharacteristically bad cold in early-mid February. I wouldn't say typical Covid symptoms but I felt really under the weather, which isn't at all usual for me. I then had what I felt was some breathlessness and a very tight/sore chest and lungs for another few weeks. I remember coming home and having to sit down on the stairs after walking briskly home from the shop. I had been in mainland Europe twice in the previous month and was working in a very busy open plan office in central London, taking a packed train there and back, and was also in the pub or a restaurant several times a week.

    At least five different people on my own team had Covid by late March, when the office closed. I'd say I either did have it, or was lucky not to get it. I wish I could know.



    Think its debated how immune you are when you initially get covid, but can't doctors do tests to check if you had it?


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    #142
    440Hertz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 651 ✭✭✭440Hertz


    Rjd2 wrote: »
    Think its debated how immune you are when you initially get covid, but can't doctors do tests to check if you had it?

    You can get an antibody test but the antibodies don’t necessarily remain detectable after a few months, so it might tell you something at this stage, but no detection doesn’t necessarily mean that you didn’t have it.

    Having been infected with it doesn’t mean much other than you had it at some stage. At the moment the jury’s out on whether on whether it’s likely to confer immunity, and if it does whether that’s lasting or strong.

    The vaccines trigger a much broader and more lasting immunity, as they are designed very specifically to make you generate antibodies against the spike protein on the surface of the coronavirus that it uses to connect to ACE 2 receptors and access your cells.

    You immune system may have tackled the virus with T Cells or any number of other responses, but not necessarily have left you with detectable antibodies and the immunity could be fairly weak or it could be extremely specific to a particular strain.

    Basically, what it comes down to is if you’re not vaccinated, don’t assume you’ve immunity even if you’ve been infected as there’s insufficient evidence to support strong immunity because you survived an infection or that you’re incapable of carrying and transmitting it again.

    So basically, you have to continue to assume you’re not immune, at least until evidence emerges that says otherwise and we still haven’t got that.


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    #143
    owlbethere
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,329 ✭✭✭owlbethere


    None of this makes sense. Wasn't it in the news last December, people in Wuhan/China dropping to the ground. If the covid was circulating long before it was found, surely other people would be dropping to the ground like in China?

    How come Wuhan was the only place in China that was badly hit with this covid and not other areas in China? Wuhan locked down to stop the spread of the virus. How come they were successful at keeping it within Wuhan and it didn't travel to other Chinese providences but it got out of Wuhan and travelled all across the world?

    None of this makes sense how the virus was circulating in the population long before it was found.


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    #144
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 17,381 ✭ [Deleted User]


    The levels of misinformation and hysteria about Wuhan was off the charts. People actually believing that people were dropping dead on the street.. Like some sort of zombie apocalypse. It was relentless in the main Covid-19 thread.

    China limited the spread really effectively internally while the rest of the world wad talking about how maybe it only affects Asian people.


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    #145
    NSAman
    Registered Users Posts: 3,388 ✭✭✭NSAman


    Deleted User wrote: »
    The levels of misinformation and hysteria about Wuhan was off the charts. People actually believing that people were dropping dead on the street.. Like some sort of zombie apocalypse. It was relentless in the main Covid-19 thread.

    China limited the spread really effectively internally while the rest of the world wad talking about how maybe it only affects Asian people.

    Don’t you think it is strange that Beijing wasn’t affected as such based on the official figures or Shanghai for that matter?

    Something about the early days in China gives me cause for thought.

    We have obviously seen how infectious this virus is, yet for China to only have one area affected seems strange.

    The second and third wave is ravaging the world right now, but China doesn’t seem to be badly affected....is this China suppressing figures again?


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    #146
    joseywhales
    Registered Users Posts: 4,009 ✭✭✭joseywhales


    Yeah I had the dose in December when I came back for the holidays. Wife and I both got the worst flu of our lives, a week in bed, just fever and insatiable dry cough.

    But really who has a clue what strain anyone had. I think there is something strange about this virus though, the extreme cases seem to be caused often by a large initial viral load. So where you have a highly dense cluster, people who get exposed there seems to have a worse outcome. I'd like to see data on that.

    Perhaps it is a normal coronavirus except there is some viral load threshold when our immune system's don't have time to adapt. Severity to viral load might not be linear, more of a step function maybe?


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    #147
    fiveleavesleft
    Registered Users Posts: 221 ✭✭fiveleavesleft


    NSAman wrote: »
    Don’t you think it is strange that Beijing wasn’t affected as such based on the official figures or Shanghai for that matter?

    Something about the early days in China gives me cause for thought.

    We have obviously seen how infectious this virus is, yet for China to only have one area affected seems strange.

    The second and third wave is ravaging the world right now, but China doesn’t seem to be badly affected....is this China suppressing figures again?

    We shouldn't underestimate the way the Communist party acted as soon as they got a handle on it. The amazing efforts of the state but also the awakening of civil society, the heroic volunteerism, the trust in science & the huge spread of public information.

    On Beijing this article touches on some of that.
    https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/11/05/how-did-china-beat-its-covid-crisis/


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    #148
    8k71ps
    Registered Users Posts: 105 ✭✭8k71ps


    NSAman wrote: »
    Don’t you think it is strange that Beijing wasn’t affected as such based on the official figures or Shanghai for that matter?

    Something about the early days in China gives me cause for thought.

    We have obviously seen how infectious this virus is, yet for China to only have one area affected seems strange.

    The second and third wave is ravaging the world right now, but China doesn’t seem to be badly affected....is this China suppressing figures again?

    No, it's that for the most part China's prevention policy has been massively more successful, albeit admittedly with some tampering of the figures (part of the course for China). They appear to have a comprehensive testing and tracing system alongside obligatory quarantines for the infected, with immense effort into public health measures elsewhere. The democratic countries in East Asia are faring just as well so it's hardly unbelievable


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    #149
    JDD
    Registered Users Posts: 1,578 ✭✭✭JDD


    I thought you were only immune if there was still detectable antibodies in your system. Turns out that's not the case. The antibodies are broken down after three of four months, but your body still has the blueprint for making the right antibody should you be infected again.

    Surely there must be some kind of test, other than an antibody test, that will show whether you are now immune to covid? Could we not be injected with with a fake covid virus, and be tested to see whether our body produces the exact antibodies straight away, evidencing that the body already has the blueprint for making the right antibody? Maybe science hasn't caught up with this yet.

    That way, if someone had covid last January, they could be assured that they are immune now, even if all the antibodies in their system are gone. There should be some motivation for governments to want a test like this. Certainly the Swedes would love it, it would show that they were right to let it rip through their population at the start.

    If we look at the number of daily infections in March/April, versus the numbers of deaths a couple of weeks later, and compare that to the number of infections four weeks ago versus the number of deaths now, we can be fairly assured that we were only catching a fraction of the people infected in March and April. While we may have hit a high of 1000 cases a day in early April, it was probably multiples of that. You don't just go from 1 case at the start of March to 4/5/6000 cases at the end of March - especially when the schools closed on 12 March - without it being in circulation well before the first case was found.

    Does that mean it goes all the way back to December/January? Very hard to tell. From what we know now, it's unlikely there was widespread infection in the younger and healthier population in December/January that took a full three months to start going up the chain and start seriously effecting the over-70's. If people were bringing it back from winter holidays in November/December, you would have expected to see a lot of unexplained deaths in nursing homes and hospitals by February at the very latest.


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    #150
    Thierry12
    Closed Accounts Posts: 979 ✭✭✭Thierry12


    JDD wrote: »
    I thought you were only immune if there was still detectable antibodies in your system. Turns out that's not the case. The antibodies are broken down after three of four months, but your body still has the blueprint for making the right antibody should you be infected again.

    Surely there must be some kind of test, other than an antibody test, that will show whether you are now immune to covid? Could we not be injected with with a fake covid virus, and be tested to see whether our body produces the exact antibodies straight away, evidencing that the body already has the blueprint for making the right antibody? Maybe science hasn't caught up with this yet.

    That way, if someone had covid last January, they could be assured that they are immune now, even if all the antibodies in their system are gone. There should be some motivation for governments to want a test like this. Certainly the Swedes would love it, it would show that they were right to let it rip through their population at the start.

    If we look at the number of daily infections in March/April, versus the numbers of deaths a couple of weeks later, and compare that to the number of infections four weeks ago versus the number of deaths now, we can be fairly assured that we were only catching a fraction of the people infected in March and April. While we may have hit a high of 1000 cases a day in early April, it was probably multiples of that. You don't just go from 1 case at the start of March to 4/5/6000 cases at the end of March - especially when the schools closed on 12 March - without it being in circulation well before the first case was found.

    Does that mean it goes all the way back to December/January? Very hard to tell. From what we know now, it's unlikely there was widespread infection in the younger and healthier population in December/January that took a full three months to start going up the chain and start seriously effecting the over-70's. If people were bringing it back from winter holidays in November/December, you would have expected to see a lot of unexplained deaths in nursing homes and hospitals by February at the very latest.

    What if re-infections caused most of the deaths?

    ADE?

    2nd infection worse than 1st infection

    Could have been around in September, harmless to most and re-infections did the damage 6 months on

    Asymptomatic become sympytomatic 2nd time

    Like dengue virus and many others

    We have no clue how this virus works, learning everyday


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    #151
    Thats me
    Registered Users Posts: 639 ✭✭✭Thats me


    8k71ps wrote: »
    The democratic countries in East Asia are faring just as well so it's hardly unbelievable

    Look at the article refereed by fiveleavesleft, there is comparison of "democratic" approaches
    in EU and authoritarian China: "compliance in China was overwhelmingly voluntary. Beijing’s streets were empty not because people were forced to stay home (as was the case in Italy and Spain) but because they mostly accepted the leadership’s message."
    fiveleavesleft wrote: »
    On Beijing this article touches on some of that.
    https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/11/05/how-did-china-beat-its-covid-crisis/


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