What is your thinking behind the hypothesis that a covid-19-B that is easier to control will outcompete covid-19 and become the dominant form? I can see how a more infectious, less deadly one might do well, all those people not running off to the hospital and so forth, but easier to control?
At some point of time, A disease which is probably harder to spread , even if it proves more fatal to the persons having it would be better than something which can affect 60-70% of the population , even if the disease isn’t as fatal.
It’s all relatively speaking , but with the current rate of transmission and the havoc that the virus does to people who are already having pre-existing illnesses… This taxes the local health system leaving them ill-equipped to care for the sheer number of cases. I’d actually venture a guess that more people would have died the world over from the inadequate health response from the healthcare personnel (That can be attributed largely to the lack of knowledge about the disease in the earlier days even among the medical personnel. WHO hadn’t exactly been forthcoming about what the disease could and could not do)…
And also the mismanagement of Pandemic on a global level, First in not containing that where it started… and secondly with the governments of most countries fucking it up totally.
It’s probably easier to deal with 10 really sick people rather than have to deal 100 sick people. The nature of this disease being easily transmittable means that our healthcare facilities are fucked. Our doctors are in the firing light.
Again goes back to what was being discussed about the virus being tougher to be transmitted(even if it proves perversly more deadly to the people it infects)
Well sure, all of that is true. But ISMF is actually something different as well - he is predicting that a mutation that is easier to control will emerge and outcompete the current strain as the dominant one. Sure, that would be lovely. But I am not clear on why that would be the case. One that is less fatal, I can understand - we have more or less reached coexistence with the common cold viruses.
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He’s mentioned that the new mutation might perversely be more deadly as well even if it need not be as infectious. So sounds like hoping for a less shitty outcome for me.
The virus has undoubtedly mutated many times over already, quite possibly to a more deadly strain - and promptly killed its host and thereby itself. There are good reasons why there has never been an Ebola pandemic. But for a mutation to displace the current strain, it has to have a competitive advantage. What I was asking ISMF what competitive advantage he saw that would extend from the property of being easier to control (or vice versa).
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There are a few possible scenarios (and seen some very very different commentaries/assumptions and models). Some believe that mutation cant alter the epidemiology of a pandemic, whilst others believe it can for a virus not optimally adapted to its host.
For example, a more infectious form of the virus may take the form of one that infects the upper respiratory system (nose and throat). This would be more likely to spread and has been theorized to have less deadly consequences (as lower respiratory causes the morbidity).
Another example would be a faster-replicating strain. One that generates a higher virial load and leads to more people being infected. This may have a consequence of less asymptomatic people (which appears a bad thing). However the long term epidemiological effect of less asymptomatic carriers (or shorter window where someone appears asymptomatic) or being able to detect those infected with say a temperature gun could have huge impact on control measures.
Or lets imagine one variant starts to increasing effect younger populations to greater extent. It would spread far and wide pretty quickly. However, the behavioral impact on the population could be huge. You would be unlikely to see people partying or sending their kids to school. Far less selfishness.
I have even seem some talk around D614G being a positive for treatments or a mutation that allows exploitation.
From treatments to control measures, to behavioral change a negative mutation could conceivably lead to a positive response.
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That timeline is very suggestive.
Given the fact that the survey was conducted during the early stages of the epidemic in Bangladesh and the extent of government action (or inaction) throughout the crisis, it would appear that the government was either banking on Herd Immunity or a vaccine all along.
In fact, I actually suggested that the government is banking on Herd Immunity few weeks ago.
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Who would have guessed? 
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Yep, it’s definitely schools and not the massive amount of partying and breaking of social distancing rules 
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who asked him to open up schools?
I feel like I’m missing something. Massively.
And I say this with all respect, I’m naive and I admit it.
Uk First wave peaked at 9000 case and 1200 deaths.
Your sitting on 18000 cases and 140 deaths, even 14 days ago you hAd 11000 cases, more than the first wave peak.
Is this not positive news? Am I connecting the dots incorrectly?
We weren’t really testing in the first wave so who knows how many cases there were.
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Yep.
But you were recording deaths, no?
@Rambler has it. Testing more now so we know more.
Probably other factors as well such as care homes haven’t been thrown under the bus as yet.
The case numbers reported during the first wave are likely to have been massively understated due to the inadequate amount of testing. Those numbers are more accurate now but they’re still going to be imprecise.
Morbidly I think the numbers of people dying are the most reliable indicator but these numbers also have their own problems. What counts as a covid attributable death has changed during the course of the epidemic and also varies between countries. It’s very hard to unravel that data to make it easily comparable.
The only thing we can say is that we’re better prepared this time but the government have run out of money (so to speak) to fund another nationwide furlough scheme. It’s inevitable, I think, that the second wave will now be worse than the first. My bet is that we’re prepared sufficiently (from a hospital capacity point of view) for covid numbers that we saw in the first wave, but not the numbers we’re likely to see in the second. 
Horrible thought.
RE the money I don’t think that’s right. HS2 just announced an £800m cost increase. Where’s that money coming from? I don’t think that’s a PFI type scheme.
With regard to metrics, deaths certainly works, but there was also a factor in an article posted by @Arminius I believe. It isn’t the R value, it was something else.
Personally I also look at the rate of change (steepness) in the charts.
Steep = Oh shit
Really steep = fuck fuck fuck
flat = watch carefully for the next 2 weeks.
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The other problem is that the underlying dynamic has clearly changed, we just don’t fully understand why. The dominant strain may have mutated, it seems most physicians have a much greater sense of how to treat severe cases (although it doesn’t appear there is hard data on that), and transmission in a summer outdoor setting might be exposing more people to milder cases. So death rate, and as noted above, detection of milder cases is much more extensive.
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Are you alluding to the K parameter (K: The Overlooked Variable That's Driving the Pandemic - The Atlantic) - K for cluster?
That’s the one.
but we’re not following the science so kind of irrelevant in some ways.