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Coronavirus - how is it/has it affected you?

SwingsitlikeHogan said:
I am pretty certain that they'll be home by the 15th Feb...and quite possibly bringing more virus and/or variants with them...They don't need to come back to the UK - my daughter tells me that they could continue do their job from Cape Town - as they have been doing through January. They just want to come home - as they've been away for quite a while now.
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Hopefully your daughter will do the right thing if they do “isolate” with others and go out and about.
 
Tashyboy said:
I don’t think they need to be closed entirely, there has to be certain exemptions re transport of medicines etc. What did me the other day was a women who had arrived from Brazil via stuggart. She was asked her thoughts about doing isolation. She said “ I would sooner not, it would be an inconvenience“. I don’t even know where to start for a rant. It has worked elsewhere, so why not here. If Sage have advised the Uk to do it,Why have we not.
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Maybe they should have started in last March and maybe people around then shouldn’t have continued to get off to far away destinations for some hot sun


In other news

https://twitter.com/x/status/1356581395536244738
 
Ethan said:
Just to expand briefly on this issue of virus evolution. The virus is not a sentient organism, it is basically a bot with a genetic factory. It replicates fast, and errors occur in that creating slight variations in the virus. This is all random, but the variants that do better, i.e. have an evolutionary advantage, for example bind to receptors in hosts better, survive better and in contrast those that have a variant which reduces their ability to bind or replicate die out. Therefore the virus tends to get "better" as the variants which improve its ability to spread are preferentially selected. On the other hand, it needs to spread, so variants that kill people fast stop spread and tend to die out.

The emergence of new variants is dependent therefore on at the amount of virus is around, since it is a random process and the more replication that is taking place, the more likely new variants will emerge. Stopping the virus everywhere is important to stop new variants, so it isn't just in those postcodes that Matt Hancock listed that we need to be careful. The next variant will arise someplace else. Nowhere is to "blame" for new variants except insofar as they had too much virus circulating and they were thereof allowing the virus to roll the evolution dice too many times.
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I like that and much prefer to think that it's randomly getting better at trying to kill us rather than it's some sort of malevolent force thwarting us at every turn!
 
Liverpoolphil said:
Maybe they should have started in last March and maybe people around then shouldn’t have continued to get off to far away destinations for some hot sun


In other news

https://twitter.com/x/status/1356581395536244738
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We knew this, but unfortunately other numbers were kicked around that sounded like they were describing the same thing, but weren't. There is a massive difference between the efficacy over the first 3 weeks (around 52%) and the efficacy at 3 weeks (around 90%).

AmandaJR said:
I like that and much prefer to think that it's randomly getting better at trying to kill us rather than it's some sort of malevolent force thwarting us at every turn!
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Some of the media coverage would have you think it was plotting fiendish ways to better attack. It isn't, it is basically all replication errors most of which make no practical difference, but some conferring natural advantages or disadvantages.

There is some interesting data around that looks at coronaviruses in general, and notes that there is a trade off between transmissibility and lethality. From highest to lowest lethality, MERS is the worst with 30-40% death rate, but quite hard to transmit from person to person, SARS is next, 10-20% death rate, easier to transmit than MERS but modest ability to spread, Covid 1-2% death rate and fairly easy to spread, then the 4 common cold coronaviruses, very low death rate and very high transmissibility. There is a view that the number of viable mutations for Covid is limited because it cannot mutate the part that binds to the human ACE2 receptor too much or it will lose the ability to bind at all.
 
Ethan said:
We knew this, but unfortunately other numbers were kicked around that sounded like they were describing the same thing, but weren't. There is a massive difference between the efficacy over the first 3 weeks (around 52%) and the efficacy at 3 weeks (around 90%).



Some of the media coverage would have you think it was plotting fiendish ways to better attack. It isn't, it is basically all replication errors most of which make no practical difference, but some conferring natural advantages or disadvantages.

There is some interesting data around that looks at coronaviruses in general, and notes that there is a trade off between transmissibility and lethality. From highest to lowest lethality, MERS is the worst with 30-40% death rate, but quite hard to transmit from person to person, SARS is next, 10-20% death rate, easier to transmit than MERS but modest ability to spread, Covid 1-2% death rate and fairly easy to spread, then the 4 common cold coronaviruses, very low death rate and very high transmissibility. There is a view that the number of viable mutations for Covid is limited because it cannot mutate the part that binds to the human ACE2 receptor too much or it will lose the ability to bind at all.
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Out of interest, is there the possibility that there are and have been less transmissible strains of the covid or ones with lesser symptoms that have come about and died out during the pandemic or have simply passed through undetected.
 
Tashyboy said:
I don’t think they need to be closed entirely, there has to be certain exemptions re transport of medicines etc. What did me the other day was a women who had arrived from Brazil via stuggart. She was asked her thoughts about doing isolation. She said “ I would sooner not, it would be an inconvenience“. I don’t even know where to start for a rant. It has worked elsewhere, so why not here. If Sage have advised the Uk to do it,Why have we not.
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Yes, we could exempt Mexico eh? ;)
 
GB72 said:
Out of interest, is there the possibility that there are and have been less transmissible strains of the covid or ones with lesser symptoms that have come about and died out during the pandemic or have simply passed through undetected.
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Definitely. Some of the mutations render the coronavirus less transmissible or even less viable, and the strains change. That is the nature of these things. There will be dozens, hundreds, thousands of new variations and some of the old one that disappeared will come back, like someone winning the lottery twice.
 
Tashyboy said:
I don’t think they need to be closed entirely, there has to be certain exemptions re transport of medicines etc. What did me the other day was a women who had arrived from Brazil via stuggart. She was asked her thoughts about doing isolation. She said “ I would sooner not, it would be an inconvenience“. I don’t even know where to start for a rant. It has worked elsewhere, so why not here. If Sage have advised the Uk to do it,Why have we not.
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Yes that’s the problem imo.
Freight is needed.
But random people flying into the country are “ asked to quarantine “
Very few do it .
Where does essential travel come into it.
We are to lax.
 
Tashyboy said:
I don’t think they need to be closed entirely, there has to be certain exemptions re transport of medicines etc. What did me the other day was a women who had arrived from Brazil via stuggart. She was asked her thoughts about doing isolation. She said “ I would sooner not, it would be an inconvenience“. I don’t even know where to start for a rant. It has worked elsewhere, so why not here. If Sage have advised the Uk to do it,Why have we not.
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If she arrived from Brazil, whether through Stuttgart or not, since Jan 16th, then she arrived illegally and should be reported to the police. Brazil is a 'red list' country.

If she had spent at least 10 days in Stuttgart or another non-red list country before coming here, she still needs to self-isolate for 10 days, unless she is doing one of the list of exempt jobs, in which case she needed to take a test before she arrived.

It is people like her who keep this cursed pandemic going, and she should not be allowed to do so. If she has broken the rules, dob in her. I would.
 
clubchamp98 said:
Yes that’s the problem imo.
Freight is needed.
But random people flying into the country are “ asked to quarantine “
Very few do it .
Where does essential travel come into it.
We are to lax.
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Been DIYing for Missis T and as you do you have moments of thought. Ave not followed most of this Covid thread but Ave read most of Ethans posts. Most of them are based on fact and they may not be what folk want to hear or read but it is what it is. We on here are probably more informed re the Covid through Ethans posts. Than many other forums or social platforms. They are as good as Sharons and Darrens on Facebook ( joke). But yet we still have doubters re locking down country either now or months ago, national lockdowns, who is Priority for vaccines etc etc.
Re locking down the country some think it wouldn’t or couldn’t do anything. What I do think is that if we have not even tried it how do we know.
 
Ethan said:
If she arrived from Brazil, whether through Stuttgart or not, since Jan 16th, then she arrived illegally and should be reported to the police. Brazil is a 'red list' country.

If she had spent at least 10 days in Stuttgart or another non-red list country before coming here, she still needs to self-isolate for 10 days, unless she is doing one of the list of exempt jobs, in which case she needed to take a test before she arrived.

It is people like her who keep this cursed pandemic going, and she should not be allowed to do so. If she has broken the rules, dob in her. I would.
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The news story on the BBC set me off on a rant, the very next story was about the oxygen shortage in Brazil in fighting this Covid.
 
Old Skier said:
Hopefully your daughter will do the right thing if they do “isolate” with others and go out and about.
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Well they are in London and she lives 35miles away. She won't see what they are up to and is very diligent in her sticking to the rules - keeping her own side of the street clean.

I do wish they'd be required to isolate in government organised accommodation for the two weeks. I am afraid her friend most probably just can't be trusted to do what is required of her off her own back. I hope I am wrong and that her friends demand compliance by her and her b/f.
 
Captainron said:
The last week has been good. Better than good. Can’t quite put my finger on why but it just feels better.
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It certainly feels like we have turned the tide and the positive news keeps coming each day - those lights at the end of the tunnel are now very bright

the one awful news is the passing of Capt Tom ?
 
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