COVID-19/Coronavirus Information and Support Thread (see OP for useful links)

[JKgo]

Because the statistics are heavily biased worldwide.

Not sure I get you. It's almost midnight here and my brain isn't functioning at 100% after a long day's work so you'll have to explain. Or maybe you're saying that 20 times difference isn't as outlandish?

 

[Tired Tyres]

So the five days allowed for countries to agree is the reason it took three months longer to present anything for them to agree to?!

As far as I was aware, the EMA and the UK's MHRA made their decisions based on the same study data, presumably presented to each of them at about the same time. Did the EMA demand some further information that slowed them down or did they just take longer to decide? Probably a rhetorical question, since I assume any delay caused by waiting for further information would have been worth her mentioning.

Same thing as always with the EU. 27 vested interests in just about every decision making process. It's the worst thing about the EU and I'm sure it played a part in the Brexit vote.

 

[Outspacer]

This may be true, but is it true enough to offset near twenty-fold difference between SA and Nigeria? I'm not sure about that.

Could well be. Here's a graph for England (gov.uk)...

 

[Outspacer]

Same thing as always with the EU. 27 vested interests in just about every decision making process. It's the worst thing about the EU and I'm sure it played a part in the Brexit vote.

Trying not to get into the politics in this thread A better point is that this is undoubtedly an emergency, and yet they didn't use an emergency authorisation


(sorry for the double post folks, I meant to just prepare this as a reply then copy it into my last.)

 

[Danoff]

Not sure I get you. It's almost midnight here and my brain isn't functioning at 100% after a long day's work so you'll have to explain. Or maybe you're saying that 20 times difference isn't as outlandish?

@Outspacer has me covered above.

 

[JKgo]

Could well be

I was about to type some stuff about the differing level of healthcare infrastructure in Sub-Saharan countries compared to Europe and US, only for a thought to suddenly occur to me.

Us discussing whether the reported COVID fatality rate in Africa is legit or under-reported feels just too... I don't know, morbid to me. I can't think of a better word than that to describe it. It's almost as if I'm being disrespectful to all the dead, the dying, and those who couldn't get the necessary care that would've saved their lives.

I'm just going to bed...

 

[Outspacer]

I was about to type some stuff about the differing level of healthcare infrastructure in Sub-Saharan countries compared to Europe and US, only for a thought to suddenly occur to me.

Us discussing whether the reported COVID fatality rate in Africa is legit or under-reported feels just too... I don't know, morbid to me. I can't think of a better word than that to describe it. It's almost as if I'm being disrespectful to all the dead, the dying, and those who couldn't get the necessary care that would've saved their lives.

I'm just going to bed...

I hear you, but honestly I don't think it's disrespectful to talk about. The topic is harsh, so of course it feels harsh to discuss in terms of % this % that. Nigerian life expectancy is thoroughly depressing. Discussing things to improve our understanding of and to recognise what's going on in different places is fine though, even respectful, in my view. It's the polar opposite of using such data to support some conspiracy theory argument.

 

[PeterJB]

The true nature of COVID is probably going under the radar in a lot of African countries because they don't have the means to track and trace it like we do in the West, and they have bigger fish to fry with things like Malaria, Cholera, and Yellow Fever.

 

[TenEightyOne]

The true nature of COVID is probably going under the radar in a lot of African countries because they don't have the means to track and trace it like we do in the West, and they have bigger fish to fry with things like Malaria, Cholera, and Yellow Fever.

I don't agree that they see the latter matters as bigger fish, they're just part of the health storm that undeveloped countries face while we in the glass-and-plastic towers scrabble for the first vaccine. I think the effects on populations are also being seen, I daresay they're being measured as accurately per-test as in the UK if not as accurately per-death.

One Africa has some interesting data, as it happens.

 

[PeterJB]

I don't agree that they see the latter matters as bigger fish, they're just part of the health storm that undeveloped countries face while we in the glass-and-plastic towers scrabble for the first vaccine. I think the effects on populations are also being seen, I daresay they're being measured as accurately per-test as in the UK if not as accurately per-death.

One Africa has some interesting data, as it happens.

The diseases I listed may not be as infectious as COVID but they're definitely much less friendly, particularly to younger people. I don't think it's anyone coincidence that South Africa is the most developed country in Africa and has more confirmed cases than all other countries combined. The vast majority of cases on the continent are most likely going unreported and untraced because they simply lack the infrastructure and the means to do so.

 

[Danoff]

The vast majority of cases on the continent are most likely going unreported and untraced

That's not necessarily different from other countries. Asymptomatic cases of covid are a big part of the reason that we have trouble keeping it under control. It's possible that the majority of cases in the US are also going unreported.

In order to think that deaths are being under reported though, we'd have to assume that countries like Nigeria are losing a lot of people to COVID and not reporting it as COVID. That seems a little harder to believe than that they have more cases in the country than they're reporting. Cause of death is generally held to a higher standard, even in less developed nations.

It's possible that Nigeria is losing a lot more people than they're reporting to COVID, but it would be weird, and requires evidence. Because it would be odd for Nigeria to have a lot of death when they lack the demographic that represents the most COVID death. It's possible, but, at least on the surface, it would appear to require deaths in a lower age group than we see in most places in the world.

 

[JKgo]

...This is nuts.

Tanzania: the country that's rejecting the vaccine, according to BBC.

But it gets worse than that. The government there is saying they are COVID free since last June, that none of their deaths with the symptoms were COVID related. They are promoting bogus remedies like veggie smoothies as the 'cure'.

Funnily enough, it's the country's Catholic church telling the citizens to be more mindful of the virus.

Now that I had a bit of time to think about Africa's COVID situation, I realised something else. Most of the forum members discussing this topic is sceptical in the positive sense, while I'm sceptical in the negative way. And I get a feeling that might be because the forum members are looking at it from the western perspective, while I'm looking at it from the African perspective. Historically, African governments hadn't been all that adept at... basically anything, really. That's including the South African government, of course.

I wish I could be more optimistic here, but thing's are a bit too grim on the ground to feel that way.

 

[Outspacer]

...This is nuts.

Tanzania: the country that's rejecting the vaccine, according to BBC.

But it gets worse than that. The government there is saying they are COVID free since last June, that none of their deaths with the symptoms were COVID related. They are promoting bogus remedies like veggie smoothies as the 'cure'.

Funnily enough, it's the country's Catholic church telling the citizens to be more mindful of the virus.

Now that I had a bit of time to think about Africa's COVID situation, I realised something else. Most of the forum members discussing this topic is sceptical in the positive sense, while I'm sceptical in the negative way. And I get a feeling that might be because the forum members are looking at it from the western perspective, while I'm looking at it from the African perspective. Historically, African governments hadn't been all that adept at... basically anything, really. That's including the South African government, of course.

I wish I could be more optimistic here, but thing's are a bit too grim on the ground to feel that way.

I've no argument at all against the fact that cases are woefully under-reported in most of Africa, even in countries with better leaders than Tanzania. The point raised was about severity - and the bluntest measure of that is deaths. Of course I have a western perspective, particulary an English one. Here, we are fortunate enough to have some of the best monitoring and statistics, yet even so, cases are under-reported by a significant margin. There's no doubt that age plays a hugely significant role in risk of death - about a third of COVID deaths here were in care homes (average age of residents is 87).

UK has just been through a month where hospitals in some areas overflowed and temporary mortuaries were set up. We know grim, and were staring even worse in the face for a while there.

Overall the UK has a huge death toll per capita, roughly double that of South Africa. There too we could point at the disparity in life expectancy as a possible explanation for much of the difference: 81 for UK vs 64 for SA. We've both been hit hard by more transmissible strains. While UK has 3.5m vs SA's 1.5m confirmed cases, I doubt those are directly comparable - in both places it depends a lot on who comes forward for testing, and many don't when they aren't very ill. What I admit I don't much about is how well / how quickly SA has implement restrictions, and how that would compare to the UK (where acting a couple of weeks earlier might have saved a lot of lives), from your comment I take it that SA was as bad or worse than UK in this regard.

Comparing Nigeria to SA is just taking that logic a step further, to the point where only a very small percent of the population is over 65. In fact, given that Nigeria has four times the pop. of SA, the absolute numbers of over 65s could be roughly the same. However, that statistic is a crude one that doesn't take into acount how far past 65 each might live, or how robust someone has to be to make it that far in the first place - I think factors like those mean that UK statistics for vulnerability relative to age would not be applicable in anything other than a broad brush sense, and fatality rate per infection in, say, 65-70 year age group for example, could well be lower in NG than UK.

Don't get me wrong, Nigeria's COVID deaths are almost certainly under-reported by a lot, but even 10x the number would still be tiny in per capita terms compared to SA or UK. They simply don't have the demographics for COVID to be a major disaster - with rapid population growth, 40% are under 14. (With the proviso that a more fatal variant doesn't arise from what is no doubt a wide spread of COVID).

Demographics of each, 0 to 100 yrs, scaled to roughly line up:

NG SA UK

Of course this is a positive borne out of a much bigger overall negative, but let's be thankful COVID isn't piling even more onto Nigerians (and all the other Africans where the demographics are similar).

edit: quick addendum for Brazil, since there have been 230k COVID deaths there (or more), with a similar population size to Nigeria, ~200m. Per capita that's somewhere between SA and UK rates. Life expectancy is 75 years, closer to UK than SA. Demographics pyramid pretty much a blend of UK and SA ones. This is starting to sound like me banging a point home, but honestly I looked at Brazil thinking I might find an argument against. Instead found its life expectancy to be quite a bit higher than I thought it would be.

 

[UKMikey]

https://www.theguardian.com/society...-as-doubts-grow-about-achieving-herd-immunity

 

[Touring Mars]

Well, well, well... who knew that Covid denier Michael Yeadon was a dick?

 

[Outspacer]

https://www.theguardian.com/society...-as-doubts-grow-about-achieving-herd-immunity

Hopefully the preprint for that study gets released soon and we can find out a bit more (the press release was prompted by FT leaking some info, apparently). The study had 2036 participants, half in the placebo group. The numbers of cases are likely to be very small - for example, 9 in the vaccine group getting covid vs 10 in the placebo group. I've read that the study was done with 4 weeks between the doses, when everything points to a longer gap being much better for the AZ vaccine. But, even with predictions in its favour on those points, it seems highly unlikely to reach herd-immunity levels of vaccination against the SA variant.

Well, well, well... who knew that Covid denier Michael Yeadon was a dick?

Do you mean Mike "pandemic is fundamentally over" Yeadon? I had no idea...

 

[Danoff]

https://www.theguardian.com/society...-as-doubts-grow-about-achieving-herd-immunity

Hopefully the preprint for that study gets released soon and we can find out a bit more (the press release was prompted by FT leaking some info, apparently). The study had 2036 participants, half in the placebo group. The numbers of cases are likely to be very small - for example, 9 in the vaccine group getting covid vs 10 in the placebo group. I've read that the study was done with 4 weeks between the doses, when everything points to a longer gap being much better for the AZ vaccine. But, even with predictions in its favour on those points, it seems highly unlikely to reach herd-immunity levels of vaccination against the SA variant.

So what's the outlook then? We just keep getting variants from various parts of the world, and need an annual booster like for influenza?

We need to get better, as a species, at virus control.

 

[Outspacer]

So what's the outlook then? We just keep getting variants from various parts of the world, and need an annual booster like for influenza?

We need to get better, as a species, at virus control.

Looking that way in the UK, at least for a while, beginning with a modified AZ vaccine for the SA variant ready about September. The reason it might only be for a while is that coronavirus don't mutate anything like as rapidly as flu, so perhaps we get to a point where we have a pretty solid wall against them.

Not clear yet whether other vaccines are still reckoned to be effective enough against the current variants that rejigging them isn't warranted just yet - might be better to see what the next few months bring.

 

[Danoff]

Looking that way in the UK, at least for a while, beginning with a modified AZ vaccine for the SA variant ready about September. The reason it might only be for a while is that coronavirus don't mutate anything like as rapidly as flu,

Do we know that? We've got, what... 3 variants? I know there were two for a while, and then the UK variant showed up, and then the SA variant. That seems pretty quick.

so perhaps we get to a point where we have a pretty solid wall against them.

Not clear yet whether other vaccines are still reckoned to be effective enough against the current variants that rejigging them isn't warranted just yet - might be better to see what the next few months bring.

It looked like J&J was significantly less effective at preventing cases of variants. I'd guess that Pfizer and Moderna have a similar profile, just based on what we know about the others. If that's true, while we might see much reduced mortality, we could still see these propagating through periodically and cause people to feel crappy.

 

[Joey D]

We just keep getting variants from various parts of the world, and need an annual booster like for influenza?

All the discussions I've been involved in is suggesting that this will be the case. Hopefully, in a few years, the number of variants sort of levels off and we just have to figure out which one is "circulating" during "COVID season". Our eggheads are hoping that the COVID shot can be combined with the flu shot, or at least given at the same time.

Do we know that? We've got, what... 3 variants?

At least three, but maybe more:

• B.1.1.7 - "UK Variant" detected sometime during the autumn
• B.1.351 - "South African Variant" detected in October 2020
• P.1 - "Brazilian Variant" detected in Japan in January 2021

With the monumental case load in the US, it wouldn't surprise me if there's a US variant floating around.

 

[Danoff]

With the monumental case load in the US, it wouldn't surprise me if there's a US variant floating around.

Does it cause insurrection?

 

[Joey D]

Does it cause insurrection?

Only if you try to overturn your COVID test results.

 

[Outspacer]

Do we know that? We've got, what... 3 variants? I know there were two for a while, and then the UK variant showed up, and then the SA variant. That seems pretty quick.

Yes. Can't remember where I originally read it though, sorry. I don't think it was specifically saying it about COVID, just coronaviruses in general. With such a huge prevalence worldwide, having just 4 or 5 would not be many to have emerged in a year (variants of concern, of course there are many more that don't/won't affect us). There's the Brazil variant as well, and the original mutant D614G that become dominant in Europe and most of the rest of the world. That said, the UK and SA ones share a mutation (H501N), so how does one score them?

edit: there's this article in Nature about COVID:

Slow change
Soon after SARS-CoV-2 was detected in China, researchers began analysing viral samples and posting the genetic codes online. Mutations — most of them single-letter alterations between viruses from different people — allowed researchers to track the spread by linking closely related viruses, and to estimate when SARS-CoV-2 started infecting humans.

Viruses that encode their genome in RNA, such as SARS-CoV-2, HIV and influenza, tend to pick up mutations quickly as they are copied inside their hosts, because enzymes that copy RNA are prone to making errors. After the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus began circulating in humans, for instance, it developed a kind of mutation called a deletion that might have slowed its spread4.

But sequencing data suggest that coronaviruses change more slowly than most other RNA viruses, probably because of a ‘proofreading’ enzyme that corrects potentially fatal copying mistakes. A typical SARS-CoV-2 virus accumulates only two single-letter mutations per month in its genome — a rate of change about half that of influenza and one-quarter that of HIV, says Emma Hodcroft, a molecular epidemiologist at the University of Basel, Switzerland.

Other genome data have emphasized this stability — more than 90,000 isolates have been sequenced and made public (see www.gisaid.org). Two SARS-CoV-2 viruses collected from anywhere in the world differ by an average of just 10 RNA letters out of 29,903, says Lucy Van Dorp, a computational geneticist at University College London, who is tracking the differences for signs that they confer an evolutionary advantage.

Despite the virus’s sluggish mutation rate, researchers have catalogued more than 12,000 mutations in SARS-CoV-2 genomes. But scientists can spot mutations faster than they can make sense of them. Many mutations will have no consequence for the virus’s ability to spread or cause disease, because they do not alter the shape of a protein, whereas those mutations that do change proteins are more likely to harm the virus than improve it (see ‘A catalogue of coronavirus mutations’). “It’s much easier to break something than it is to fix it,” says Hodcroft, who is part of Nextstrain, an effort to analyse SARS-CoV-2 genomes in real time.

It looked like J&J was significantly less effective at preventing cases of variants. I'd guess that Pfizer and Moderna have a similar profile, just based on what we know about the others. If that's true, while we might see much reduced mortality, we could still see these propagating through periodically and cause people to feel crappy.

I don't know how we'll end up, obviously, but since even the AZ vaccine could do well at preventing serious cases what you suggest could well happen, maybe even this year / next winter. Then it's a difficult choice - if the variants are still circulating but hospitalisations and deaths are low, it's unlikely that even moderate restrictions would be respected, yet the unvaccinated would still be just as vulnerable.

When merely having had a common cold seems to give some protection against serious COVID illness, I guess all we can do is wait and see.

 

[Dennisch]

 

[Outspacer]

I suspect most of you have long since given up on hoping for an answer to where COVID originated, as I have.

But anyway, here's a BBC article on some comments from the WHO team in Wuhan: WHO team says 'extremely unlikely' virus leaked from lab.

It was unlikely that the expert group, in its politically-charged mission, would be able to pinpoint the source of the pandemic in China a year after it began. But, after visiting the Wuhan Institute of Virology, they have closed the lid on a controversial theory that coronavirus came from a lab leak or was made by scientists.

Their search for clues also included a visit to the now-famous wet market in Huanan - selling fish, meat and live wild animals - that was linked to some of the first human cases.

The team say the virus may have jumped from animals to humans, but they don't have the proof yet.

Possible culprits include bats and pangolins, but tests so far have yet to find convincing evidence for this. Another line of investigation is whether the virus could have spread through imported frozen food. The hunt for the origin will continue.

Ahem. When you are left with a jump from animals to humans that has more and more evidence piling up against it*, and another line of investigation involves imported frozen food with no known cases associated with whoever prepared and packed that food, then IMO all you are left with are 'extremely unlikely' possibilites - which would not "close the lid" on the lab leak theory.

To be clear, I understand that the concerted effort to deny the possibility of such a leak is at least partly driven by the questionable need to counter those that claim it must be that. Questionable because hollow denial serves to feed conspiracists. I simply have the pragmatic view that it cannot be dismissed entirely, indeed should not - if nothing else, increasing safeguards even further at virology labs would be no bad thing, since they can never be 100%.

* perhaps I ought to say less and less credibility the more people look, since the viruses found are close but not close enough. For example,
Research sheds doubt on the Pangolin link to SARS-CoV-2, which also discusses bats.

OTOH, there are still plenty more bat populations to look at, this one in Thailand apparently hosts a virus that shares 91.5% of COVID's genome: Bat virus hunters find new evidence. For comparison, the study by Zhang et al found Pangolin-CoV to be about 91% the same, and most human 'common cold' viruses are <70% similar (Genetic comparison among various coronavirus strains for the identification of potential vaccine targets of SARS-CoV2, section 4.1).

 

[Danoff]

So in personal news, I think my parents are out of the woods in terms of COVID recovery. It sounds like it was a long and difficult ordeal, no hospitalization though. I just got word that an elderly friend of ours who has been hospitalized for lung problems in the past has just been hospitalized with covid. I think we might lose her.

She's still in the hospital 12 days later.

 

[Biggles]

Bit shocked when I noticed the "Active Cases" count on Worldometer - not something I have been looking at.

Canada (pop 38 million) currently has approx. 40,000 active cases recorded. The UK (pop 68 million) currently has approx. 1.9 million active cases which is about 27 times the Canadian per capita rate. The US (pop 332 million) currently has approx. 19.7 million active cases ... which is about 55 times the Canadian per capita rate.

Is that really possible?

 

[UKMikey]

Bit shocked when I noticed the "Active Cases" count on Worldometer - not something I have been looking at.

Canada (pop 38 million) currently has approx. 40,000 active cases recorded. The UK (pop 68 million) currently has approx. 1.9 million active cases which is about 27 times the Canadian per capita rate. The US (pop 332 million) currently has approx. 19.7 million active cases ... which is about 55 times the Canadian per capita rate.

Is that really possible?

Canada is less densely populated than the UK or Canada so even if there is a contingent of selfish anti-maskers like in the other two countries it's less likely to affect infection risks, is the way I understand it.

 

[Outspacer]

Bit shocked when I noticed the "Active Cases" count on Worldometer - not something I have been looking at.

Canada (pop 38 million) currently has approx. 40,000 active cases recorded. The UK (pop 68 million) currently has approx. 1.9 million active cases which is about 27 times the Canadian per capita rate. The US (pop 332 million) currently has approx. 19.7 million active cases ... which is about 55 times the Canadian per capita rate.

Is that really possible?

I could well believe that order if Canada hasn't got one of the more transmissible strains yet - the UK strain has been found in 40 US states or more now. But "active cases" is the least accurate stat, so I wouldn't read much into the actual numbers, and also different places peak at different times.

Cumulative COVID deaths per million figures are much closer, but same ordering for now: UK: 1701, US: 1418, CA: 553.

 

[TB]

An email yesterday from the campus president said that higher ed will be included in the ND Phase 1C group and even if the vaccination hasn't reached that group yet, we'll be able to get it starting July 1.