Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[HibsFan]

6 minutes ago, Bob Mahelp said:

You get a greeny from me for that. 

Cheers Bob, but just for future reference, I get a notification when you give me a greeny, you don't need to inform me in writing.

[vikingTON]

37 minutes ago, HibsFan said:

Speaking of sketchy BBC articles:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55635451

Does anybody else get the feeling that 'long COVID' is going to become the big debate over the course of this summer?

It'll be the big debate right up until the point that the boomers are all vaccinated. When the government wants to roll back on general vaccination and get everyone spending/off benefits again it'll disappear quicker than snow off a dyke. 

[Alert Mongoose]

25 minutes ago, madwullie said:

Here's a recent study on it

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32656-8/fulltext

hospital, those who were unable to move freely due to concomitant osteoarthropathy or immobile before or after 
 

 

[MuckleMoo]

The original political idea was herd immunity before the science told them that the NHS would be overwhelmed . They then waited to see what Italy would do and hesitated even more until the virus had already spread the length of the country, reactive government, not proactive. There was no plan B, they had already decided on herd immunity.
It was carnage in Sweden but the majority of the population behaved and the government trusted them to do just that. Could our governments trust the population of the UK to behave ourselves enough during a pandemic that there would only be light restrictions? Given that at the mere rumour of a lockdown in the middle of March sent the mobs into supermarkets to strip the shelves leaving nothing for others less fortunate. Nor the behaviour of the idiots abroad in Spain deciding that the Spanish restrictions didn't apply to them because 'we are britash'. Despite the horrendous figures recently I still think it could have been a lot worse had the politicians not listened to their advisors, that psycho c**t Cummings had too much power.
 

Not defending Cummings as the man is a c**t, but he was actually pushing for a lockdown back in March which the government tried to resist. Reports suggest he was pressurising SAGE to recommend the lockdown

[vikingTON]

12 minutes ago, madwullie said:

Well according to that ~63% of people have some kind of noticeable after effects, and people who had it bad have a fair chance of still having organ damage visible on scans. 

I don't know the figures for post viral fatigue for the flu for example (63% after 6 months seems high?) , but I get the feeling that how you feel about how serious etc covid is in general determines how much you actually believe that long covid is significant or not. I do think there's a real desire to wave it away as over egged hyperbole from lockdown/covid sceptics anyway.

63% of whom exactly? Over twelve million people in England are modelled to have already caught the virus: are you suggesting that fully eight million of them have been floored with this?

The real denominator is so large as to make the case rate absolutely meaningless in terms of overall risk.

Edited January 12, 2021 by vikingTON

[Todd_is_God]

27 minutes ago, madwullie said:

I think an equally bad job is being a bit harsh. 

A lot of the early damage done was before we were taking our own decisions, and once we were, measures such as closing the borders etc that NS at least paid lip service to were also in the hands of the UK govt.

This is extremely old ground, but I think the relative goodwill shown towards NS has more to do with apparent empathy, far better messaging, visibility, taking responsibility and nowhere near as much appalling corruption as seen down south, than raw numbers. And the fact that BJ is a detestable c**t, whereas NS seems to be quite likeable to a lot of folk. 

But like someone said earlier, doing better than England is not really enough, just like Sweden doing better than us is not going to have them cheering on the meatballs and gravalax football forums over there. 

RE: closing the borders. You are right that they are reserved.

However the requirement to impose quarantine upon arrival clearly isn't given Scotland has, at times, added countries to it's own list independently of anywhere else.

NS maybe could not have shut the border, but she could have imposed mandatory quarantines. She didn't.

Edited January 12, 2021 by Todd_is_God

[madwullie]

13 minutes ago, virginton said:

63% of whom exactly? Over twelve million people in England are modelled to have already caught the virus: are you suggesting that fully eight million of them have been floored with this?

The real denominator is so large as to make the case rate absolutely meaningless in terms of overall risk.

I'm not suggesting anything. I'm reading the study. You can too. 

[madwullie]

27 minutes ago, virginton said:

It'll be the big debate right up until the point that the boomers are all vaccinated. When the government wants to roll back on general vaccination and get everyone spending/off benefits again it'll disappear quicker than snow off a dyke. 

 

Same energy

[vikingTON]

7 minutes ago, madwullie said:

I'm not suggesting anything. I'm reading the study. You can too. 

You quite clearly haven't read the study because at no point does it state that '63% of people have some kind of noticeable after effects' from Covid-19. 

[ICTChris]

This account will be interesting

[Sergeant Wilson]

1 hour ago, HibsFan said:

Trying to phrase this as kindly and sensitively as possible, but they're not exactly the healthiest-looking 25 year old I've ever seen, with blood pressure issues being tucked away halfway down the article for good measure.

Still a tragic death, of course, and condolences to the family, but what are the BBC's purposes for writing that article?

"SEE? Anyone can die from it! Even you young people, so don't be selfish and go to the park!"

Well, statistically, no that just isn't the case at all. Let's keep things in perspective here.

She looked older than her Mum. 

[madwullie]

13 minutes ago, virginton said:

You quite clearly haven't read the study because at no point does it state that '63% of people have some kind of noticeable after effects' from Covid-19. 

I'm not going to lie, it's a bit wordy and medically / statistically inaccessible for me, but it says of the cohort - Fatigue or muscle weakness (63%, 1038 of 1655) 

That reads to me like 63% of those in the study suffered fatigue or muscle weakness long afterwards. 

[vikingTON]

11 minutes ago, madwullie said:

I'm not going to lie, it's a bit wordy and medically / statistically inaccessible for me, but it says of the cohort - Fatigue or muscle weakness (63%, 1038 of 1655) 

That reads to me like 63% of those in the study suffered fatigue or muscle weakness long afterwards. 

The cohort studied wasn't 'all Covid patients' though. Nor was it 'all confirmed Covid patients' nor even 'symptomatic Covid patients'.  It was a study of hospitalitised Covid patients i.e. those who needed significant medical intervention up to and including getting the ventilator out for days. 

That 63% of that particular study group reported fatigue - or ' anxiety or depression', one of the other most common categories of 'long Covid symptom' - from that experience should be surprising to no one. It wouldn't be substantially different to those who were hospitalised with any other virus though. 

Meanwhile the overwhelming majority - >95% of cases if the latest models for 12 million English infections are to believed - are so weak that they aren't even picked up at the time never mind affecting people months down the line with the long Covid bogeyman.

Edited January 12, 2021 by vikingTON

[bendan]

1 hour ago, virginton said:

It'll be the big debate right up until the point that the boomers are all vaccinated. When the government wants to roll back on general vaccination and get everyone spending/off benefits again it'll disappear quicker than snow off a dyke. 

I don't agree - way too many knicker-wetting people in their 20s and 30s who think Covid = almost certain death.

[BFTD]

4 hours ago, renton said:

Yeah, Threads is pure nightmare fuel. When the Wind Blows is not much better.

Ironically in the 80s you had this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83

Which ended up probably being an even closer call than the Cuban Missile crisis. One side was hallucinating and the other wasn't paying attention. Would have been a real whoopsie. The whole world incinerated over a misunderstanding and no one left standing afterwards would have known why.

Apparently Reagan saw a soap opera style TV movie called The Day After, about a nuclear strike on a small American town, and was greatly depressed when confronted with the "reality" of nuclear war. It was part of the reason why he softened his stance on the Soviet Union, and led to the talks and treaties that followed.

Putting aside the issue that the president of America hadn't thought about the consequences of nuclear war, The Day After was mild as f**k. He'd have been a gibbering wreck if they'd shown him Threads. Well, more so than usual.

[Rob1885]

We watched Threads in p7 and as a 10 year old I found it absolutely harrowing [emoji23][emoji23]had bother sleeping for about a week afterwards. f**k knows why we were even shown, wasn't remotely relevant to what we were being taught at the time and was 20 years old at the time. Aye, some laugh.

[Todd_is_God]

I've just clocked that the shielding letter sent out last week is valid for any time shielding is in place up until the 31st March.

I can't imagine now a scenario where shielding is eased and re-implemented so, given it only applies to areas in level 4, and the constant reference to the increased transmissibility of this new variant, I think at least some areas of Scotland are going to be in Level 4 for a disappointingly long period of time.

[madwullie]

3 hours ago, virginton said:

The cohort studied wasn't 'all Covid patients' though. Nor was it 'all confirmed Covid patients' nor even 'symptomatic Covid patients'.  It was a study of hospitalitised Covid patients i.e. those who needed significant medical intervention up to and including getting the ventilator out for days. 

That 63% of that particular study group reported fatigue - or ' anxiety or depression', one of the other most common categories of 'long Covid symptom' - from that experience should be surprising to no one. It wouldn't be substantially different to those who were hospitalised with any other virus though. 

Meanwhile the overwhelming majority - >95% of cases if the latest models for 12 million English infections are to believed - are so weak that they aren't even picked up at the time never mind affecting people months down the line with the long Covid bogeyman.

So like I said, at least 63% of that study had a noticeable long term effect from covid. In studies they tend to take a smaller population and extrapolate results out to larger populations through this. Just like opinion polls don't ask every single person in the franchise who they'd vote for. That's usually called "an election"

So of course the study doesn't cover everyone who had covid - it literally states its a sample of those who were hospitalised. Hospitalisation is a pretty broad stroke though, which is explained in the study, ranging from in a ward for a day or two, all the way through to required ventilation in icu/hdu. 

I get the eencest, weenciest, feeling that you just argue for the sake of it sometimes. 

Do 63% of people who suffer from other viruses get long term effects as these? Even just looking at those who are hospitalised? Do people who get more serious cases of viruses get long term effects such as damage to organs at the levels and numbers they have seen in this study?

I don't even have a strong opinion one way or the other on this - but 63% seems quite high (as I said in my op) , and I've never heard of significant numbers of people having long term kidney / lung damage from other viruses.  Odd cases, yes. Significant numbers showing significant disease, no. That's what I'm asking. These cases seem to be rare exceptions with other viruses, this study would suggest to me they're more regular with covid. Does that mean the world has to end because of this? Of course not, but I think it merits more discussion and analysis than simply waving it away as hysterical panic about a covid bogeyman.

I mean ~300k people have been admitted to hospital so far, say 60k of them died (pulled that out of my arse) 63% of 240k people is a fairly hefty number of people suffering 6 months later. This is obviously an extra burden on the nhs and shouldn't just be brushed away as unimportant, or normal stuff, or something that shouldn't be accounted for. Not to mention it doesn't even look at those who weren't hospitalised yet still suffer from after effects months later. 

Even anecdotally on here, a fair number of people who had the virus (or those known to those on here) report symptoms many months down the line. Is this usual for other viruses? I've had flu a ciuple of times and didn't have any kind of post viral fatigue, but others have said they did. Certainly, plenty who know of someone, or had covid themselves, report on here that it has affected them for a long while afterwards. For me, my MiL was admitted to icu, still buggered 6+ months later - breathless, can't climb stairs without stopping, stuff like that - she had no such issues before catching CV. But only anecdotal. 

You seem to already have taken a position and are happy to argue blind that position is correct. That's fine, but I'm more interested in finding out if this pattern is unusually strong, relatively speaking, when looking at covid than I am in arguing for a position I've already decided 

Prob won't read anything else you write about this given the above. 

If you're genuinely interested in the topic rather than just wanting to get an internet win, this looks like a good place to start, looking at longer term effects of previous pandemics, the passage below being of particular interest. These only discuss fatigue and sleeping Issues tho- they don't look at seeming long term damage to various organs though. Does that make covid different, or was that just outside the scope of the study? Is it to do with it being a vascular disease in some respects? I dunno. Think it bears looking at rather than just being ignored as theatre tho

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21641846.2020.1778227?scroll=top&needAccess=true&#:~:text=Fatigue was one of the,virus causing an epidemic SARS.

Quote

 

 

Viral infections

Epidemics

The most devastating epidemic in modern history was the Spanish Flu of 1918, caused by the A(H1N1) influenza virus [6]. Researchers estimate the global mortality of this pandemic was between 24.7 and 50 million [7]. Of those who survived, some experienced complications during recovery. For example, one report stated that ‘of 1000 cases of influenza, about 200 patients did not fully recover’ and, of these, about 40 remained severely ill [8]. Physical exertion was cited as a factor deterring recovery or even leading to death [9]. Fatigue was one of the most common longer-term consequences of the Spanish Flu.

Post-infectious fatigue has also been observed after the onset of other epidemics. In 2003, there was an outbreak of the SARS-CoV virus causing an epidemic SARS. Tansey et al. [10] assessed the health outcomes of recovered patients 3-, 6-, and 12-months after hospital discharge. The researchers found that more than half of their sample experienced fatigue throughout their recovery: 64% reported fatigue at 3-months, 54% at 6-months, and 60% at 12-months. The symptoms often occurred with sleeping difficulties. Additionally, Lam et al. [11] conducted a 4-year follow-up evaluation of people recovering from SARS in Hong Kong and found that 40.3% reported chronic fatigue, and 27.1% qualified for a diagnosis of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS). Moldofsky and Patcai [5] also examined people affected by this outbreak approximately 18.9 months after infection onset. While the researchers did not specifically assess ME/CFS in their participants, they did liken many of the post-infection symptoms to ME/CFS. Most notably, many of the patients experienced severe or disabling fatigue, myalgia, and sleep disturbances.

In 2009, the influenza A(H1N1) resulted in a pandemic. Magnus et al. [12] studied this pandemic in Norway, and found an ME/CFS incidence rate of 2.08 per 100,000 person-months. Rates were higher for people younger than 30-years old, suggesting that a younger population was more at risk to develop ME/CFS post-infection. The researchers hypothesized that the development of ME/CFS was a reaction to the fever and immune response that was associated with the influenza virus.

Post-viral fatigue has also been observed in people recovering from Ebolavirus infection. Wilson et al. [13] estimated that 28% experienced unusual levels of fatigue post-Ebolavirus. Post-Ebola Syndrome shares some common symptomologies with ME/CFS, most notably fatigue, muscle and joint pain, and sleep disturbances. Similarly, Rowe et al. [14] reported that 8.1% of patients reported extreme fatigue while recovering from previous outbreaks of Ebolavirus. In addition, this severe fatigue was also accompanied by myalgia and joint pain.

The development of post infectious fatigue has been observed in other studies [4]. Cope et al. [15] found that within 6-months of a generalized viral infection onset, 17.5% of patients developed chronic fatigue. Furthermore, Garcia et al. [16] found that approximately 31% of people recovering from West Nile virus infection experienced chronic fatigue of which 64% qualified for ME/CFS. [/spoiler] 

 

Edited January 13, 2021 by madwullie

[madwullie]

2 hours ago, BFTD said:

Apparently Reagan saw a soap opera style TV movie called The Day After, about a nuclear strike on a small American town, and was greatly depressed when confronted with the "reality" of nuclear war. It was part of the reason why he softened his stance on the Soviet Union, and led to the talks and treaties that followed.

Putting aside the issue that the president of America hadn't thought about the consequences of nuclear war, The Day After was mild as f**k. He'd have been a gibbering wreck if they'd shown him Threads. Well, more so than usual.

That was all in the wiki article @renton posted. Extremely interesting and frightening. I'd never even heard of it.  

Edited January 13, 2021 by madwullie

[hk blues]

18 hours ago, effeffsee_the2nd said:

the difference with this, as opposed to say proving you are over 18 in order to buy alcohol , is because exemptions are for medical reasons. In the uk under an equalities act you are not obliged to disclose any of your medical information , those who wish to view your information need your written permission to do so,  Your  can in certain circumstances, Eg sickness from employment or for disability help , be asked to provide evidence but something like a shop has no right to ask you

Shops were specifically told not to challenge individuals on mask use, exactly the opposite of the stance on alcohol where sellers are directly responsible for upholding the law

OK, but doesn't that provide a huge hurdle for us to overcome in the current pandemic?  I suppose stores can simply state that no-one not wearing a mask can enter regardless on public health grounds.  They  could then leave the door open for those with exemptions to prove their exemption.  Not living in the UK, I don't know how big the problem is - where I am compliance is 100% and there are no exemptions.  

Edited January 13, 2021 by hk blues