The government's response to Coronavirus

Purple said:
Still though, less than 1% infection rate in Wuhan...
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I read that South Korea has run 240,000 tests and has 7000 cases which is 3% infection rate.
How much of that is down to severe containment \ mask wearing versus the disease being not that transmissible... I don't know.

On the other hand, the number of cases in Ireland from N Italy, and whole families getting it via 'local transmission' suggests it is transmissible person to person. Hmm.
 
Purple said:
Still though, less than 1% infection rate in Wuhan...
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.... as far as we know. People may have contracted it but not shown symptoms and therefore not recorded

If an area is put into lock-down, the infection rate will be restricted. But it is really just managing the spread. As restrictions are eased, infections will start again - until there is "herd immunity" (either through infection or vaccine). For most, the symptoms will be fine. For some, not so. And managing the rate of the latter is what they are trying to do. But the advice seems to be that up to 60% infection rate ultimately will be where it gets to before the rate of immunity makes further spreading ease off. Getting there without breaking the health system is the challange.

An interesting comment by a virus expert on Newsnight last night - in an ideal world, you would put all high risk people in the north of Scotland for two weeks, gather everyone else in the South of England and infect them all, allow them to recover and then re-integrate everyone. Gives you 60% immunity. It seems that the UK strtaegy is based a little on this - don't try to stop the spread. Instead try to manage it. A risk - but if they pull it off it is a quicker path to normality.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
I don't think that the Irish government can be held responsible for the cases in the North?
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Purple said:
Why? We are aware of the cases in Northern Ireland but the Irish government and the Irish Health Service is only responsible for cases in Ireland (which, for clarity, is the name of this country).
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Good to see that there are comments being expressed about this...….

From a Boards poster....



"This is to me an amazing little side story just unfolding, Unionist and Loyalist commentators saying basically **** what downing street is saying, we are all one island and need to act in unison about school closures etc,


Other unionists disagreed. “Since coronavirus doesn’t give a damn about borders or identities it makes sense for NI to follow immediately,” tweeted Alex Kane, a unionist commentator.

Jamie Bryson, a loyalist blogger, said Northern Ireland had to recognise it shared an open land border with Ireland. “Regardless of the rights or wrongs of that open border, it is a reality. We face a health crisis that could result in deaths of many people. It is sensible to coordinate the approach between both jurisdictions.”
 
The National Public Health Emergency Team has changed the threshold for Covid-19 testing. It had been the case that if people had returned from an at-risk area and had symptoms, they were to contact their GP. ow, the at-risk area is no longer a condition and if people have symptoms, they should contact their GP. This is expected to result in a big rise in testing.

www.rte.ie

Big rise in testing expected as threshold changes

The National Public Health Emergency Team has changed the threshold for Covid-19 testing, which is expected to result in a big rise in testing.
www.rte.ie www.rte.ie
 
A drive-thru Covid 19 test facility is understood to have opened in Cork city with medical staff in protective clothing swabbing referred persons through their car windows. Contractors worked in recent days to bring two disused buildings at St Mary's Campus in Gurranabraher on the northside of the city up to speed for usage by medical personnel.
www.irishexaminer.com

Drive-thru coronavirus test facility opened in Cork city

A drive-thru Covid 19 test facility is understood to have opened in Cork city with medical staff in protective clothing swabbing referred persons through their car windows.
www.irishexaminer.com www.irishexaminer.com
 
RedOnion said:
No, it's not a 3% infection rate.
There are 52m people.
They have about 153 positive cases per million people.
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I was assuming the have done so many tests we should assume the positive cases percentage scales up to the general population eg drive through testing. But it is an assumption.
 
odyssey06 said:
I was assuming the have done so many tests we should assume the positive cases percentage scales up to the general population eg drive through testing. But it is an assumption.
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No. That would assume that the testing is completely random, and that there are over 1m undiagnosed cases.

What they have done in terms of tracking and tracing close contacts of positive cases is incredible. Read about 'patient 31'.
 
Maybe they need to have a look at this.

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With all the wall to wall news I'm confused about what exactly is the different approach the UK government is doing from that of the rest of Europe including Ireland. I hear they are planning a herd immunity policy which would mean they let the virus infection run its course and if your lucky you are in the 40%. If this is so then will Ireland and Europe not have to ban all UK citizens from entering as we and Europe are doing a containment policy.
 
john luc said:
With all the wall to wall news I'm confused about what exactly is the different approach the UK government is doing from that of the rest of Europe including Ireland. I hear they are planning a herd immunity policy which would mean they let the virus infection run its course and if your lucky you are in the 40%. If this is so then will Ireland and Europe not have to ban all UK citizens from entering as we and Europe are doing a containment policy.
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Not able to answer your specific query. However, I understand UK are alone in adopting this high stakes herd immunity approach which will probably involve asking the older generation to hunker down. They would be different wouldnt they. Some gamble with people's lives and sure if it backfires the NHS will ultimately be a lot slacker. Many scientists have come out against this approach. Wonder what the older generation think of it over there ?
 
Hard to see how and why our pubs are open with social distancing. What about toilets with a few beers in ?.A lot of people can't help themselves and normally it only affects them now we have to take some of these choices away.
 
The risk of the government going into an even deeper lockdown is they know people won’t keep it up. Some parts of China have been in lockdown for 7 weeks. Plus business stalls, people will be laid off in droves. It is a terrible balancing act, terribly difficult decisions to make.

As for the UK, herd immunity is achieved by vaccination. This is why we push vaccination for measles hard, if it drops below a certain level, then people start getting measles. Some vunerable parts of the population cannot get vaccinations and they rely on the 95-97% of the population who have been vaccinated to protect them.

this is why there is a mumps outbreak in the cork/Kerry area currently. 18-20 years ago vaccination rates dropped. These kids are now in colleges and IT’s and there are clusters of mumps outbreaks.

So being a non medical person I don’t understand the approach the UK is taking. How are they protecting the at risk groups?
 
We'll see when it's all over who the smart asses were and weren't. Just because of the herd mentality now starting to be prevalent in Ireland doesn't mean the Irish approach is the correct one. It is what it is at the moment, time will let us know and not amateurs throwing around ideas, etc. Flavour of the month at the moment is "close the pubs", next week it'll be????????.
 
The UK are trying a different plan to build up herd immunity.
Ministers are planning to give police in the UK the power to arrest people with coronavirus who are not self-isolating, the health secretary has confirmed. Over 70s and those with high risk conditions may be asked to self-isolate for 4 months.
They are going to ramp up production of ventilators etc
They expect lots of people to get sick and recover, and only a small % of them will need ICU because they are in the low risk group.
When the isolation period is over, they hope that with herd immunity, better treatments \vaccines and capacity in the NHS they can manage this going forwards.
(I'm not endorsing their strategy, just summarising it)
 
odyssey06,
Your post above is a very interesting take on the UK's response v the rest. I certainly cannot argue against what their response is v others. We all hear of the vulnerability of the older population and the high %'age of that age group who may need intensive care, very difficult to argue against it. This is who they're targeting and maybe they're right? In the animal world only the strongest survive and make the herd all the stronger for it. As blunt as that seems in a human sense, this seems to be the British response and saves huge resources in believing the younger population will heal quicker. Will it prove to be the right tactic? Maybe it will and if so would bring Britain back to better health an awful lot quicker and with massive savings. Time will reveal an awful lot.
 
The UK strategy is out of step with the rest of Europe... but they seem to be basically saying containment won't protect the most vulnerable \ or that they can't sustain the economic costs of containment for months.

After 4 months because of herd immunity once the isolation period is over - fewer vulnerable people will get sick \ complications as the virus will find it harder to circulate and they can manage that number with the increased capacity they are lining up in the NHS. Rather than trying to contain it in wider society, they are going to isolate the vulnerable until the threat is down to a manageable level.

Until then they want to reserve the NHS capacity for the 60-80% of the population still in circulation who get complications in the process of acquiring the herd immunity.
 
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