Sussex wrote:
There is part of me that wants to get this bloody bug, have a week or so sweating and aching and then get back to some sort of personal normality.
I suppose it depends on how we think it would affect us personally, all the way from not being aware at all/barely noticing it, to ending up on a ventilator, or even worse
Of course there are predictors (like old-age, asthma, smoking or a compromised immune system), but there's a lot of stuff out there about relatively young and fit people ending up in ICU or in a coffin
But I'm still relatively unworried about getting it, or maybe it's because the financial implications seem more obvious and immediate
Anyway, interesting study that's apparently been reported in the FT, and suggests half of us may have already been infected
Alastair Benn of Reaction comment site wrote:
Is the UK close to developing herd immunity? That's the potential conclusion of an exciting study by a group of Oxford academics. The term herd immunity has been widely misused and condemned in the last few weeks, but if large numbers of Britons have developed Coronavirus and suffered very few symptoms it could - could - suggest that the death rates in the more apocalyptic modelling published last week might not come to pass.
The latest modelling produced by the group of Oxford academics indicates that the Coronavirus may already have infected as many as half of the UK population.
The Oxford’s Evolutionary Ecology of Infectious Disease group uses a “susceptibility-infected-recovered model”. Published today, it takes into account initial underreporting and the vulnerability of the general population to hospitalisation from respiratory illness.
The study assumed that the disease has been circulating freely since the beginning of February. Infection would then have spread through the UK population in an uncontrolled way.
The first deaths from the virus were reported at the beginning of March. The picture we are seeing in terms of death rates may reflect the rapid progress of the disease through the population in that period.
Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology, who led the study, sounded a note of caution, however. The findings can only be corroborated through “large-scale serological surveys — antibody testing.”
Nonetheless, the initial conclusions are in marked contrast to the models produced by Imperial College, London which estimated that as many as half a million people could die of the disease in the UK if it circulated with no controls.
The Imperial study is credited with changing the UK government’s approach to much stricter restrictions on social mixing.
Gupta is quoted in the FT criticising the study: “I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model.”
But she supports the government’s strict measures to prevent the number of cases expanding over the next month beyond the capacity of the NHS.
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