The big mistake: treating it like flu ...

[Eddy Edson]

rather than SARS, MERS or ebola.

Coronavirus: fixated on the flu and shrouded in secrecy, Britain’s scientists picked the wrong remedy

On December 29, 1972, Eastern Air Lines 401 took off from New York, bound for Miami. The flight was without incident until the plane began its descent, the pilot pulling the lever to lower the wheels. Then a problem emerged: a light that should have illuminated to show the front wheel was down faile

www.thetimes.co.uk

Because it exactly matches my conclusions, I think this Sunday Times piece is just excellent, but it's worth a read anyway.

Countries which started implementing old-school infection containment policies in January have a handful of deaths. Countries which instead listened to the flu modellers have death rates orders of magnitudes higher.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

He wrote another article the week before also making this point (that everyone involved seemed to be looking at this virus while thinking of flu). It seems entirely plausible to me, too, and makes sense of some of the early decisions which seem challenging to reconcile with the current policy.

 

[mikeyB]

The countries which started infection containment early (and tracing and testing) were countries which had previously experienced animal sourced coronavirus infections, SARS and MERS. This country, and others in Europe have no such experience.

So the error made by our government was not looking at how those countries dealt with those other viruses, and this one. You can’t gainsay that experience, as the current catastrophe shows. S Korea has had 259 deaths in this epidemic. All the government needed to do was ask the WHO, a fount of knowledge about such epidemics. But no, they chose to ignore WHO advice. And listened to “experts” who had only experienced flu epidemics

The government is deliberately concealing that they recived such advice, as the minutes of the SAGE meetings have been redacted (thick black lines concealing the comments of some scientists).

This government has negligently killed 40,000 or so of our population.

 

[Docb]

Yes mikeyB, but all is well because the NHS was not overrun.

Just caught a part of file on four on radio four. Depressing listening on what has been going on in care homes, which were overrun.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Depressing listening on what has been going on in care homes, which were overrun.

And that they defend their record on care homes, saying that only a quarter of our deaths have been in care homes. (i.e., they've managed to kill lots more people outside care homes than other countries.)

 

[Eddy Edson]

The countries which started infection containment early (and tracing and testing) were countries which had previously experienced animal sourced coronavirus infections, SARS and MERS. This country, and others in Europe have no such experience.

Not just countries which had experienced SARS and MERS, but countries which had taken on board their lessons and the clear WHO guidance. Apart from South Korea/Taiwan/HK/Singapore etc, that means Oz, NZ, others without the experience but also with sub 5 deaths per million; and Austria, Norway, Czechia, Israel, Norway with sub 100.

 

[Docb]

There was a Horizon programme last night on the virus which made three points about this virus which distinguish it from flu, SARS and MERS.

First off, it breeds in the upper respiratory tract (like flu) with a significant but far from guaranteed risk of moving elsewhere in the body (unlike flu). SARS and MERS breed deep in the lungs from the off, harder to catch but bigger problem if you do.

Second, most who get it have few or no symptoms and only slightly inconvenienced by it, unlike flu.

Third, people with it shed virus almost from the off, unlike the other respiratory viruses where you have to be symptomatic before becoming contagious.

So, the message is use your flu models with care. We have no idea whether the flu modellers put these caveats on their advice. Politicians generally stop reading when it comes to the caveats.

 

[Eddy Edson]

There was a Horizon programme last night on the virus which made three points about this virus which distinguish it from flu, SARS and MERS.

First off, it breeds in the upper respiratory tract (like flu) with a significant but far from guaranteed risk of moving elsewhere in the body (unlike flu). SARS and MERS breed deep in the lungs from the off, harder to catch but bigger problem if you do.

Second, most who get it have few or no symptoms and only slightly inconvenienced by it, unlike flu.

Third, people with it shed virus almost from the off, unlike the other respiratory viruses where you have to be symptomatic before becoming contagious.

So, the message is use your flu models with care. We have no idea whether the flu modellers put these caveats on their advice. Politicians generally stop reading when it comes to the caveats.

This is a good summary of transmission characteristics as they are known so far: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...ny-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-all

This thing transmits in clusters much more than flu. There's a parameter "k" which defines this in the models. For flu, k is about 1, which means it doesn't really clsuter; everybody just gets it. For COVID-19, it might be as low as 0.1, which means that it spreads almost always in clusters, outside of which it fizzles.

This has certainly been the experience here, where fighting it is low-level whack-a-mole: cluster at an airport, isolate all baggage handlers; cluser at an abbatoir, isolate all the meat workers; cluster at an aged care home, isolate the residents and care-givers. Backing it up with contact tracing prevents the odd case slipping out of the cluster into the community and finding another cluster-setting to ignite.

The thing is, this approach works, and it works quickly. Just wouldn't be the case with flu.

It's also good because getting a handle on where clusters form allows for much more targeted virus-prevention while safely opening up the economy, as is happening here.

As to where clusters form: in-door settings with a lot of people breathing heavily on each other in close contact, exacerbated by settings which aerosolise droplets allowing wider spread.

 

[mikeyB]

Much like the common cold, then, rather than flu. 20% or so of colds are caused by coronaviruses.

Interestingly, one of the coronaviruses that cause the common cold is genetically identical to the one that caused the Russian Flu epidemic in the early 20th century. That shows the natural history of such infections. The best viruses don’t kill you.

 

[Docb]

Don't think its a question of "best" virus mikeyB. More a question of being successful as a virus, they have a vested interest in not killing the host!

 

[mikeyB]

Inasmuch as a virus, which is basically a stretch of RNA enclosed in a shell can have a vested interest, I agree with your point.

Mind you, between 10 and 20% of our DNA is virally added, though nobody knows what it contributes to our humanity.