OV9

Woozers...

Total Lockdown and Don’t panic buy have to line up

Sundayjumper wrote: Sun Mar 22, 2020 7:38 pm They won’t get it. People are stupid & selfish. This isn’t news.

Cordon off London as a start. The M25 would make a good boundary line.

I've just seen stuff on social media from Edinburgh and the surrounding hills - the amount of people out is like the height of summer in festival season. F*cking insanity.

Lockdown it is.

Been reading about viral load earlier.

In summary, the more you limit your exposure the more you not only reduce the spread, but potentially also the severity.

DeskJockey wrote: Sun Mar 22, 2020 7:15 am Cheers, all. She's fine this morning, back to normal temps, but still have to follow protocol, so in isolation at least until test results are back (Wednesday by the looks of it).

Swervin_Mervin wrote: Mon Mar 23, 2020 12:04 am Been reading about viral load earlier.

In summary, the more you limit your exposure the more you not only reduce the spread, but potentially also the severity.

Could you link the bits you've read please? I'm googling anyway.

We just went into 4wk minimum lockdown. Gonna be a fun old month.

Glad we've done it early though, only 102 cases here, no deaths, 1 recovery and 2 community spread cases.

I heard Oz (I know you are in NZ) has moved onto 2nd-Dan Panic Buying.....

https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/voices/cu ... e-freezers

Hahaha

That wouldn't surprise me. But then for weird reasons that aren't worth explaining, we have a full height freezer and two half freezers for the two of us, so the logic behind that would never have entered my head!

Somewhat alarmingly, as least one gun store here had queues this afternoon after the announcement, and then the next biggest panic after supermarkets was getting to McDonalds.

And lots of online last minute cramming of selling off booze that won't keep once lockdown hits and while the couriers still work.

nuttinnew wrote: Mon Mar 23, 2020 3:13 am

Swervin_Mervin wrote: Mon Mar 23, 2020 12:04 am Been reading about viral load earlier.

In summary, the more you limit your exposure the more you not only reduce the spread, but potentially also the severity.

Could you link the bits you've read please? I'm googling anyway.

Originally I'd read a supposed post from a consultant at Coventry:

"Remember this: VIRAL LOAD

There will be a lot about this. Why is it important?

With this virus, the amount of virus in your blood at first infection directly relates to the severity of the illness you will suffer. This isn’t unusual - HIV management is all about reducing viral load to keep people alive longer. BUT it’s very important in COVID-19.

So if you are in, say, a pub or religious building or entertainment venue with 200 people and a large number don’t have symptoms but are shedding, you are breathing in lots of droplets per minute and absorbing a high load of the virus. In a crowded space. They become ill over the next 48 hours. You then three days later wonder why you can’t breathe and end up in hospital. You’d decided because you were young and healthy it wasn’t going to be a problem. Wrong.

Fortunately but unfortunately because the elderly are isolating quite well, the initial UK data suggests that all age groups above 20 are almost equally represented in ITUs in England. Most of the cases are in London but the wave is moving outwards.

This means that being under 60 and fit and well doesn’t seem to be as protective as we thought. Why? Viral load.

This may be skewed simply by the fact that too many Londoners didn’t do as asked and congregated in large groups in confined spaces and got a large initial viral load. They then went home and infected their wider families. Which is why, as London is overwhelmed, we need to shut everything down to save the rest of the UK. We are a week at most behind London.

Our sympathies go out to the families affected in London and the critical care teams battling right now to save as many as they can.

If I sit with one person and catch this virus, I get a small viral load. My immune system will start to fight it and by the time the virus starts replicating, I’m ready to kill it.

No medicines will help this process meaningfully hence there is no “cure” for this virus. All we can do is support you with a ventilator and hope your immune system can catch up fast enough.

If I sit in the same room with six people, all shedding I get six times the initial dose. The rise in viral load is faster than my immune system can cope with and it is overrun. I then become critically ill and need me (or someone of my specialty) to fix it instead of just being at home and being ok in the end.

THIS BIT IS IMPORTANT:

If you are a large family group, remember that by being ill and in the same room, you will make each other ill or “more ill”. If you get sick, isolate just yourself to one room and stay there. Don’t all sit in one room coughing. You will increase the viral load for all of you, reducing your survival rate.

A family of six people may produce double the droplets of a family of three in the same space. Maths is important.

If one of you is symptomatic, assume you are all shedding and make sure you keep some space.

Parents are getting it from their kids because no one is going to stop comforting their child (nor should they) so the parent gets a big hit as well as the child. I don’t think that can be helped.

REMEMBER: THINK ABOUT VIRAL LOAD"

Taking the assumption that anything "quoted" in relation to this could be utter bollocks ctrl+V'd from Facebook, I did some further Googling, and there's a Lancet piece from 3 days ago Clickety

"The mean viral load of severe cases was around 60 times higher than that of mild cases, suggesting that higher viral loads might be associated with severe clinical outcomes"

"Mild cases were found to have an early viral clearance, with 90% of these patients repeatedly testing negative on RT-PCR by day 10 post-onset. By contrast, all severe cases still tested positive at or beyond day 10 post-onset"

"Overall, our data indicate that, similar to SARS in 2002–03,6 patients with severe COVID-19 tend to have a high viral load and a long virus-shedding period. This finding suggests that the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 might be a useful marker for assessing disease severity and prognosis."

Makes sense when you think about it and when you see the other video describing how it works.

Yeah. The only thing is I can't find anything specific that definitively confirms the doctor's statement. It just suggests a high viral load in severe patients. THere's other research which also suggests that there might be higher viral load in the early stages of shedding - so someone with no/mild symptoms could be doling out a very high dose to those around them.

Still, as you say, the doctor's statement appears to make a lot of sense.

That's very interesting.

My initial response was scepticism about linking the sensible conclusion that high viral load equals high disease activity to the conclusion that this high viral load stems from exposure rather than how quickly our own cells start replicating the virus, producing trillions more.

That said, what we have is a very unusual situation where you potentially could have a whole load of other individuals in a room all shedding the virus and apparently in huge levels (10,000 times SARS) - I imagine that probably only really happens to the same extent where you have this sort of pandemic and no herd immunity. If you're exposed to a high level start off with then it certainly stands to reason a greater number of cells will be infected all at once and start replicating all at once kicking off the process in a big way and may well lead to a worse outcome.

It does makes sense, the way I think about it is that say you get a small dose of 1000 covid viruses - each one will rapidly multiply and by the time your immune system recognises it and starts destroying it you will have millions.
Now if you get an initial dose of a million then you’re pretty screwed by the time the immune system kicks in gear.

Probably completely wrong but it’s how my brain sees it

It does stand to reason but I don't think there is any scientific evidence to prove at the moment. You'd need to accurately control how much people are exposed to and then monitor the results. Clearly that isn't likely to have happened yet. The article Swerve linked to looks at the correlation between load and disease severity but not initial exposure.

Also - re Mito's post, the virus doesn't multiply by itself (as a bacterium does) - it is made of a strand of RNA (in the case of this coronavirus - there are DNA viruses too) which your own body replicates into a new virus. Each cell will have a finite rate at which it can produce virus as a result of its own resources (and how much it can produce before it bursts, releasing the virus it has produced) so it stands to reason that the greater number of cells you infect to start off with, the greater number of 'factories' you have all churning out the virus and the quicker the viral load ramps up.

One of the big killers of young people in Spanish flu (and perhaps SARS and MERS) was that it prompted their immune systems to go into overdrive. A high level of viral load, established quickly would certainly seem more likely to produce that result.

Well, it's all a bit academic, but as long as we maintain sensible social distancing it'll-OH FOR FUCKS SAKE.

Well the tube networks have 70% fewer passengers but they’ve shut 40 stations and reduced the service so are now complaining that it’s crowded again and people can’t maintain a 2 metre gap
Edit - that’s this morning rush hour not the weekend so can’t be too many idiots wanting to just go for a random walk at 7am can it.

Been to the shop. Young lady queuing in front keeping the space gets pushed in front of by some lads speaking in a foreign language. They got told but then stood right behind me jabbering away.

Death spread by stupidity.

Currently waiting to see if the CEO is going to try to furlough us on 80% pay, while still expecting us all to work.

It genuinely wouldn't shock any of us.