How long before Coronavirus impacts Football?
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zarathustra
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I would be interested to hear your thoughts on how you think letting it "run its course" would play out.
We know that doing nothing would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths, which are on top of "normal" deaths i.e people aren't going to stop getting cancer, having heart attacks, or crashing their cars.
But then there will be even more deaths, which would normally be preventable, because letting it "run its course" would destroy the NHS and people simply won't be able to get the care they need.
It is also notable that not one single country has intentionally let it "run its course", even authoritarian regimes like China and Iran would rather take the economic hit of lockdowns etc than letting large portions of the population die.
I think the government have largely struck the right balance. Not going to Draconian and introducing measures gradually so they can be switched on and off like a tap when required.
Sweden seem to be bucking the trend on this.... No lockdown, bars still open..... Strange!!
zarathustra
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It will play out differently in different countries, and some countries will be further along the line than others.
Even in the UK London is a couple of weeks ahead of the rest of the country, though obviously we haven't got different levels of lockdown for different parts of the country.
Even in the UK London is a couple of weeks ahead of the rest of the country, though obviously we haven't got different levels of lockdown for different parts of the country.
I hear what you say and that is why the powers that be are using the worst case scenario.....but,there are alternative scenarios out there. Different experts are ofbthe opinion that the mortality rate from this is far less that the worst case scenario predicts. Who is right, well we will never know, not until we know how many have/are/will be infected and we can then discover the true rate. We have to also consider that the advice is being promoted by the medical profession who have a certain interest on several fronts. All may be valid, yes the service may be overwhelmed if we do nothing but alternatively we will instead be at maximum capacity for several months. The health profession 's reason d'etre is to save lives and they would fo this with disregard to cost if possible. This also naturally colours their perspective in the bigger picture.
I have recently read that seasonal flu deaths are estimated to lie between about 300 and 600 k per annum, not a small number yet there is not the same reaction.
Cancer kills 15 million plus per annum.....cardio vascular disease 18 million, obesity 3 million, road accidents 1.3 million need I go on.
If you look at the numbers in perspective ...........
The final cost of managing this outbreak is going to lead to commercial and financial crisis, resulting in poverty, malnutrition, suicide, the death toll from these are likely to massively exceed those from covid 19.
Is there a price on life...you bet there is.....
None of this makes pleasant reading and my heart goes out to all those affected...its my opinion, that's all...
afronaut81
Well-Known Member
The flu kills 300-600k people a year globally.
The estimate for this virus unchecked is circa 500k in the UK alone.
These deaths will also be on top of flu deaths.
The two viruses are in different families. We have lived with influenza for centuries and have a degree of familiarity. We also know a reasonable amount about the flu and how it operates. Yes we accept a certain amount of deaths but we strive to develop vaccines and prioritise the vulnerable with those jabs.
Whilst I do think about the harm to the wider community by these measures I am also conscious how I would feel if we did nothing and therefore how the same community would be affected. We know very littlw about this new virus. Today a 21 woman died who had no underlying medical conditions.
It would be playing Russian roulette with the population and I don't see how anyone could do that...but then there is always Trump...
The estimate for this virus unchecked is circa 500k in the UK alone.
These deaths will also be on top of flu deaths.
The two viruses are in different families. We have lived with influenza for centuries and have a degree of familiarity. We also know a reasonable amount about the flu and how it operates. Yes we accept a certain amount of deaths but we strive to develop vaccines and prioritise the vulnerable with those jabs.
Whilst I do think about the harm to the wider community by these measures I am also conscious how I would feel if we did nothing and therefore how the same community would be affected. We know very littlw about this new virus. Today a 21 woman died who had no underlying medical conditions.
It would be playing Russian roulette with the population and I don't see how anyone could do that...but then there is always Trump...
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Justylove
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Cancer does kill a whole load of people, but it’s been around for centuries and researched for many years.
This has gone from 0 to 500k cases (diagnosed) in 3 months. Then you have to take into account people (like me) that are 90% likely to have had it (had symptoms not severe enough to need hospital treatment and had been in close contact with someone who did test positive for it) but have NOT officially been diagnosed with it. The likelihood is that the you can conservatively multiply the number of confirmed cases by a factor of 10 to get the number that have had it. That’s 5m people. Plus the cases and deaths are still rising daily, give it another 3 months as the deaths rise and testing becomes more widespread and who knows what that number looks like.
The other thing with cancer is it’s not contagious, where as this is and it’s virulence in comparison to flu is much higher.
I’m old enough to remember when HIV/AIDS hit the news, again a very different illness, caught in a different way, but it was like a runaway train gathering speed in terms of how it ripped through certain part of society, slowly at first, but then with frightening speed.
Many of the initial cases were those with underlying health issues, however were now starting to see more die who didn’t have underlying conditions and from younger age groups. It also seems that men are more likely to get it more severely than women and children are least impacted by it. At this moment there is no way of knowing why some people will react more badly to it than others, that’s where it’s going to take years of research to understand it.
In the meantime, all anyone can do is try to stay safe and limit their exposure to anyone who with our current knowledge is deemed to be a high risk.
Peter Grove
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But the thing is, you're not comparing like with like. Deaths from flu and the death rate are well-known and relatively stable - there are variations, year on year but the basic numbers (and the average) remains the same. So we know that annual deaths from flu worldwide will not go much above 600k, no matter how bad a flu season we're having (unless a new, substantially more virulent strain emerges). We also have vaccines for the flu, so we've already done pretty much everything we can medically, and we know that no matter how bad the flu season is, our health services have the capacity to cope. None of that is true for SARS-CoV-2.
We need to consider the two most important figures for any virus, its rate of spread (r0) and the mortality rate.
Flu has an r0 of around 1.3 whereas for SARS-CoV-2 it's approx 3. That may not sound like a big difference but as the video someone posted earlier points out, one flu sufferer, after 10 'rounds' of transmission, will have led to the infection of only 14 people while with this new coronavirus, the corresponding figure after ten multiplications is 59,000. That's a massive, massive difference in rate of spread.
Flu, because of its r0 and the fact that we have vaccines, is kind of self-limiting but SARS-CoV-2, if left to "run its course" will spread rapidly throughout the entire population and eventually infect around 80% of people (and it only stops there because epidemiologists estimate that around 20% of people will have immunity against the virus - though that hasn't been proven).
Then there's the mortality rate - depending on the country, this varies from the lowest of just over 1% of cases (South Korea) to the highest of over 8% (Italy).
Even with a mortality rate of 1% - which is at the lower end of the scale, then because an r0 of 3 will lead to 80% of the population being infected if the virus is left unchecked, you would be looking at a total death toll of over 500,000* people in the UK.
If we knew that like flu, the numbers were relatively limited, would not go beyond a certain point, that we had already done everything that we could medically and that our hospitals could cope no matter how bad it got, then maybe we could be OK with letting this run its course but once again this really is not comparable to the flu in many ways, especially in the key metrics. It is orders of magnitude more infectious, twenty to thirty times as lethal and the upper limit of the final numbers if nothing is done, is totally unacceptable - to me at least.
*Edited - figure was off by a factor of 10.
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santa sangria
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Just a reminder, when/if health care staff are overwhelmed with Covid, there won’t be the capacity to deal with anything else.
If we did “let it run its course” imagine for a moment if you break a leg, get an eye infection, need a biopsy or need your child treated for something.
If we did “let it run its course” imagine for a moment if you break a leg, get an eye infection, need a biopsy or need your child treated for something.
@Peter Grove I hear what you say. The only point I'd pick up on is the mortality rate. Until we have accurate counts of deaths and infections in a population can that be known.
@santa sangria very good point, I still maintain my opinion.
@santa sangria very good point, I still maintain my opinion.
Kes
I'll Decide ...
Not true.
Chloe Middleton (aged 21) is the only known case so far (with no known underlying health issues) out of (at time of counting) 433 deaths.
Russell Jones
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Peter, whilst agreeing with 90% of your overall comment, I'm struggling with the maths on this point. 1% of 80% of the UK population is around 500K by my calculations?
Peter Grove
RefChat Addict
You're right - maths was never my strong suit. That's still around 30 times the average yearly UK deaths from influenza.
santa sangria
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I just happened to see this on influenza deaths so:
"The average number of deaths in England for the last five seasons, 2014/15 to 2018/19, was 17,000 deaths annually. This ranged from 1,692 deaths last season, 2018/19, to 28,330 deaths in 2014/15."
And "excess winter deaths" between December 2014 and March 2015 were 44,000.
Interesting as this makes a Covid death toll of say 150k in Spring sound less out-of-this-world.
Then I realise I am glibly talking about tens of thousands of people dying (potentially) necessarily. These are people, and mothers, fathers, sons, daughters. It's just not acceptable to let it take its course without doing everything we can to forget fatalities.
"The average number of deaths in England for the last five seasons, 2014/15 to 2018/19, was 17,000 deaths annually. This ranged from 1,692 deaths last season, 2018/19, to 28,330 deaths in 2014/15."
And "excess winter deaths" between December 2014 and March 2015 were 44,000.
Interesting as this makes a Covid death toll of say 150k in Spring sound less out-of-this-world.
Then I realise I am glibly talking about tens of thousands of people dying (potentially) necessarily. These are people, and mothers, fathers, sons, daughters. It's just not acceptable to let it take its course without doing everything we can to forget fatalities.
Kes
I'll Decide ...
I'd be interested to know your source for those figures mate.
The ones you've given suggest an average annual death toll (for England) of around 3000.
Research on the same subject that I recently undertook gave me average numbers of around 600 people per year in the UK (not just England).
Mostly infants, the elderly and those with a pre-existing condition made worse by it.
Can you cite this? Everything I've read has it lower than that
The BBC are keeping up their usual propaganda efforts by showing footage of every individual in hospital from the low risk age groups
Scaring people into distancing compliance. The fatality rate of under-50's is extremely low on a downward exponential scale
The rhetoric from Government has changed somewhat. Boris is starting to leak bits and pieces. It seems they're targeting total suppression (zero cases) and 20000 deaths in this first wave. Followed up by tactics published widely (e.g. The Lancet) to avoid or rapidly suppress secondary outbreaks using various tactics without having to go back to lock-down
The problem with the 'do nothing' approach, is once we're on that rollercoaster, we ain't getting off
The problem with 'mitigation' is 'suppression' quickly becomes out of reach. The good thing about 'suppression', is if it fails, it's a very good head-start WRT 'mitigation'
It still seems like there's very little account being taken of the consequences
This is the longest thread since FIFA Cards 
santa sangria
RefChat Addict
Office for National StatisticsI'd be interested to know your source for those figures mate.
The ones you've given suggest an average annual death toll (for England) of around 3000.
Research on the same subject that I recently undertook gave me average numbers of around 600 people per year in the UK (not just England).
Mostly infants, the elderly and those with a pre-existing condition made worse by it.
Public Health England via ITV
How does the Wuhan coronavirus compare to seasonal flu? | ITV News
Flu season is well underway and it killed over 1,600 people last year, but is it deadlier than the Coronavirus? | ITV National News
www.itv.com
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