Covid-19 Research Thread

Usually I can’t be bothered to read people’s conspiracy theories but this one has piqued my interest as it seems especially absurd. I’ll bet 100nt it’ll be something about how the virus was designed to target populations with lower rates of myopia.

In the UK government ministers were going on holiday in Europe and people were being told to go to work.
‘Sacrificing the many for the few’ seems a tad hyperbolic. Now as the numbers getting sick start to shoot up exponentially the whole message is going to reverse again.

But yeah let’s keep the politics to other threads.

It’s like researchers publishing a study saying “Wiping after Number Two Helps to Keep Clean” to convince people they should wipe themselves.

It’s a relatively new idea that masks can enable the spread of the virus, but lower the viral load thus making infected less sick. Up to now masks have just been seen as a block to infection.

If correct it could explain why cases of infection are rising while death rates remain very low. That is very important when people consider lockdown.

It’s a very interesting idea but very little data to back it up yet I guess. Will be waiting for more supporting data.
Death rates are definitely much lower than the first wave, there’s probably a whole bunch of reasons for that, but I still want to see what the death rate is two to four weeks from now in places where cases are shooting up. I still don’t expect them to get anywhere close to the first wave where it got traction in the nursing homes.
I’d like to see the death rate per age group updated also. We need to look at the death rates for each cohort.

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We talked about this theme deadly somewhere in the mask thread.

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In the U.K., the number of daily deaths are being recorded in a slightly different way to how they were during the first wave. There are also more effective treatments available and doctors and researchers have learnt from the first wave. The current upturn, at the moment is also in a different region too.

There are lots of possible reasons why the daily deaths are so far, staying low compared to the first wave and I agree we need more data. However, hospital admissions are going up which is worrying.

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In Ireland positives are at a record high , four hundred a day roughly correlates with a hundred back then (due to increased testing ).

The number of patients in ICU is still only 16 in total and I think there were zero deaths in Aug but 20 in Sept. The numbers mean either we should have a lot more due to enter ICU soon or its infecting almost all younger people or treatments have vastly improved.
Dublin has gone into a soft lockdown already.
The whole picture is a bit confusing still.
65% of the current positive cases are under 45 years of age which is probably helping Significantly with the very low death rate.

Very cool stuff

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The Guardian, reporting from Japan, has some other interesting news about protection from aerosol transmission:

Guy

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Maybe it’s just misleading reporting, but I don’t find this remotely surprising, to be honest. The article seems to refer to aerosol droplets of <5 µm or <20 µm diameter - I’d be surprised if these were stopped by a face shield.

I thought the face shields were intended to catch droplets formed through sneezing and coughing and are often used in conjunction with face masks anyway. A quick google search seems to suggest that these particles are way bigger than the aerosol particles mentioned in the article, with a mean diameter of several hundred micrometers.

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I think the point of the research quoted in the article is to demonstrate through an experiment that face shields (increasingly used in service industries, including flight attendants) are not as good as masks in protecting the user.

These researchers are not setting policy (of course) but their findings can then inform what individuals and companies do.

Guy

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Researchers estimated that Inteferon issues might underlie as many as 14% of fatalities and the most severe cases.

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Most people abroad use face shields without masks. They think it is enough.

Worse as now they find out it doesn’t work…And hence people do not want to use masks as they think they do not work either.

kids, don’t try this at home

I’ve been hospitalized twice with pneumonia, the first time I came close to death, so Covid19 could be quite dangerous for me. Now comes this report, and of course my blood type is A.

Please, I just need a study that shows balding men who drink flavored lattes every day are at a lower risk :pray:

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“What the WHO is essentially saying is that in getting to the end of this pandemic, or at least to an acceptable background level, the worst possible path to take is through natural herd immunity. That is the path of maximum disease and death, with many perilous unknowns. The best path right now is to continue to flatten the curve with proven methods, such as mask wearing, social distancing, good hygiene, and avoiding mass gatherings, especially inside. We also need testing and contact tracing to reduce spread. We need to keep doing all this until we have an effective vaccine and can distribute it. That is the path to herd immunity, we just need the patience to get there.”

Yes, it is the maligned WHO, but the research was not done by them. And they came to the party quite late, as usual.

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I’d be surprised if anyone disagreed with any of that. No lockdowns, obviously, they are insane and have been proven to be ineffective in most countries. Of course, if herd immunity through a workable vaccine isn’t delivered then eventually natural herd immunity will occur through these blindingly obvious measures - just more slowly. The tiny percentage of possible reinfections will also stop because the virus will no longer be in enough hosts. So, we won’t have to worry about possible reinfections anymore.

Is anybody actually saying people must not wear a mask, or practice good hygiene, but they must have orgies etc? Even Trump isn’t advising letting the virus rip.

Applying perfectly logical measures such as wearing masks and good hygiene is the tricky thing. Stating the obvious is easier.

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So you are the prime minister, national health board is saying you’ve got a week before all ICU are full. Infections are doubling every week, community spread is in every town and village, contact tracing and testing cannot remotely keep up.

What do you do ?

Take the Chinese approach? Weld shut the doors of apartment buildings and fire up the incinerators!