[petejh]

Also no one has said COVID19 spreads very easily.

Just leave it out of the fridge and it does. (got distracted by the talk of food..)

[abarro81]

Haven't residents in care homes to an extent been some of the most heavily locked down individuals around?

Don't know how you come to this conclusion? Even if only staff are entering and leaving the premises, that's a lot of in/out per day in comparison to the average household where no non-residents at all will be coming through the front door unless you need an emergency plumber/electrician. I imagine if I had half a dozen of my mates coming round for a fingerboard session every day, I'd be at much higher risk (presumably ~7x, adjusted for the chance of me then catching it from them) of catching things even if that's all they're doing outside of their current routine.

[Oldmanmatt]

Haven't residents in care homes to an extent been some of the most heavily locked down individuals around?

Don't know how you come to this conclusion? Even if only staff are entering and leaving the premises, that's a lot of in/out per day in comparison to the average household where no non-residents at all will be coming through the front door unless you need an emergency plumber/electrician. I imagine if I had half a dozen of my mates coming round for a fingerboard session every day, I'd be at much higher risk (presumably ~7x, adjusted for the chance of me then catching it from them) of catching things even if that's all they're doing outside of their current routine.

Are you saying you only have 7 friends?

[abarro81]

I wish. I was just taking a punt at half a dozen staff.. no doubt could be much more for a big care home

[Oldmanmatt]

Still tracking the German study, while juggling several other things. But here is a BI article/interview with the author:
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/death-rate-german-laboratory-city-5x-less-than-national-average-2020-4%3famp

And:

https://today.rtl.lu/news/science-and-environment/a/1498185.html

Originally I saw a preprint of the abstract from the paper. Cannot find it now.

[SA Chris]

I first read the name of the place as Heisenberg, what a pity.

[Oldmanmatt]

I first read the name of the place as Heisenberg, what a pity.

Yeah, I was a bit uncertain as well.

[Oldmanmatt]

Got it:
https://www.land.nrw/sites/default/files/asset/document/zwischenergebnis_covid19_case_study_gangelt_en.pdf

[Muenchener]

Danke!

[Stu Littlefair]

Unless I’m missing it Matt, that paper says nothing about how the virus spreads.

It only seems to estimate prevalence and incidence of the virus, along with an estimate of the fatality rate...

[Oldmanmatt]

Unless I’m missing it Matt, that paper says nothing about how the virus spreads.

It only seems to estimate prevalence and incidence of the virus, along with an estimate of the fatality rate...

Yes, found the link and posted without reading it.
I will keep looking for the longer tract. The abstract didn’t read significantly different to his comments in the interview.

Edit:
My German is too basic, I just can’t find the translation that I saw.
These two are cited  in support of the argument, as well, but I can’t read it well enough to tell:

https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Hygiene.html

https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Steckbrief.html%23doc13776792bodyText1

Perhaps Muenchener could comment on their conclusions?

[Muenchener]

Those are general official guidelines for healthcare workers & premises, so pretty unlikely to reflect any results from new & controversial studies.

They say transmission risks are:

• (1) Droplets: coughs, sneezes, respiratory tract & dental procedures
• (2) Aerosol
• (3) Surface contact "cannot be ruled out" (nicht auszuschließen)

My quest for the actual Heinsberg paper has so far only brought up press reports - will report back if I actually come up with anything from the man himself.

[tomtom]

This popped up in my twitter feed.

https://zoonosen.charite.de/fileadmin/user_upload/microsites/m_cc05/virologie-ccm/dateien_upload/Weitere_Dateien/analysis-of-SARS-CoV-2-viral-load-by-patient-age.pdf

German study on viral load in 3k+ patients. Take home message is no significant difference in viral load between age groups (children through to old). In other words just as likely to be transmitted by children as older people. If correct opening schools early will be a bad idea. Usual preprint caveats etc...

[Will Hunt]

Did anybody see in the news that the Swiss are going to start letting young children see grandparents again - saying something like "they simply don't have the receptors to carry the disease" and that it was the parents who would present the risk to the grandchildren?

This seems out of step with the fact that some young children have died (though it is rare) of the disease. Is it all bollocks?

[Oldmanmatt]

Did anybody see in the news that the Swiss are going to start letting young children see grandparents again - saying something like "they simply don't have the receptors to carry the disease" and that it was the parents who would present the risk to the grandchildren?

This seems out of step with the fact that some young children have died (though it is rare) of the disease. Is it all bollocks?

There’s some sort of alert out across the UK for some associated syndrome in infants and toddlers isn’t there?

[mrjonathanr]

Another article from Tomas Pueyo
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-how-to-do-testing-and-contact-tracing-bde85b64072e

[stone]

The no-sitting-in-parks allowed etc bullshit seems all the more tragic given that Vitamin D deficiency may be a risk factor for COVID19 severity. If you are black and/or wear a hijab etc it would seem a good idea to take cod-liver oil or something I guess https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m810/rr-46

[stone]

Another article from Tomas Pueyo
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-how-to-do-testing-and-contact-tracing-bde85b64072e

Great article, thanks for the link.

At the end he mentions ideas for scaling up testing. What strikes me though is that there seem to be loads of great ideas for how to ramp up throughput of the testing steps that come after the snot has had its barcode swiped and it has been transferred to a multi-well plate. But everything after that is quick and easy anyway as it is. It is all about getting to that stage from what I can see. That is where innovation is needed. The sewerage testing sounds great for sidestepping that when doing surveillance.

[Stu Littlefair]

Stone - maybe you can answer a question for me. I’ve seen a couple of papers showing that saliva tests are as effective - and have lower false positive rates - than the nose and throat swabs we currently use.

Less invasive and not an aerosol generating procedure too.

Is it possible to switch to saliva based testing without retailing the test equipment in labs?

[mrjonathanr]

Hi Stone, his other articles might interest you if you haven't read them: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo

[Offwidth]

Some data visualisation on excess deaths.  One way of removing the differences in the way countries declare C19 mortality.

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#z-scores-by-country

[tomtom]

Some data visualisation on excess deaths.  One way of removing the differences in the way countries declare C19 mortality.

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#z-scores-by-country

These data are the same as those in the SkyNews graphics I posted on Tuesday... it’s good you can tweak them yourselves here though...

[Ru]

Did anybody see in the news that the Swiss are going to start letting young children see grandparents again - saying something like "they simply don't have the receptors to carry the disease" and that it was the parents who would present the risk to the grandchildren?

This seems out of step with the fact that some young children have died (though it is rare) of the disease. Is it all bollocks?

The recent concern about children is, so far as I can tell, an increase in the number of children presenting with symptoms of Kawasaki Disease, which is generally considered to be an autoimmune response to an infection. It still remains rare despite the increase in cases. Having an extreme autoimmune response to a virus can happen independently of how dangerous the virus is in its self to the host, so it may be that the two scenarios aren't mutually exclusive.

[Will Hunt]

Did anybody see in the news that the Swiss are going to start letting young children see grandparents again - saying something like "they simply don't have the receptors to carry the disease" and that it was the parents who would present the risk to the grandchildren?

This seems out of step with the fact that some young children have died (though it is rare) of the disease. Is it all bollocks?

The recent concern about children is, so far as I can tell, an increase in the number of children presenting with symptoms of Kawasaki Disease, which is generally considered to be an autoimmune response to an infection. It still remains rare despite the increase in cases. Having an extreme autoimmune response to a virus can happen independently of how dangerous the virus is in its self to the host, so it may be that the two scenarios aren't mutually exclusive.

Thanks Ru. This might be me being slow, but I'm not quite getting my head around this.

The very brief clip that I heard suggested that young children did not have the receptors to be affected by coronavirus. My layperson's understanding is that this would mean that the virus could enter them but could not then attach to the epithelial cells - meaning no multiplication and no symptoms. So any viruses that entered a child's body would either be shed back out again or die (by just expiring or being targeted by the bodies immune system).

Those cells that did temporarily sit inside the child's body can cause an autoimmune response - which could lead to Kawasaki disease. So does this mean that the virus can't get into the epithelial cells but can still infect the immune cells and cause them to go haywire?

Kawasaki disease is a response to having an infection - but not necessarily of coronavirus. So the children who have been recorded as dying or becoming ill from coronavirus - did they have tests that demonstrated that their Kawasaki disease/over-active immne response was caused by coronavirus? If everything I've written above is right, I'm struggling to think how a child might present. If they have coronavirus but just have the over-agressive immune response as opposed to the damage to the epithelial cells, would they necessarily have a dry cough etc or might they just have a fever?


Apologies. I don't really have the background knowledge about how the virus works to really get my head around this. Most of my knowledge is drawn from this Youtube video:

[Ru]

I don’t think anyone really knows Will. Some of the children with Kawasaki symptoms have tested positive for CV, some have not, as far as I know, but how these are related is guesswork. They’re not even 100 % sure Kawasaki is a autoimmune. Plus Kawasaki Disease seems to be a catch all term for a range of similar clusters of symptoms. Kids have been seen with  CV symptoms but not all have been tested and they could have had other respiratory illnesses either instead or possibly at the same time. From what I gather Paediatrics is as much art as science. Kids get lots of weird things, react to known diseases in weird ways due to developing immune systems and you can’t ethically study them in any standardised ways.