Porton Down

[Suff]

Just to put that in perspective, if the recurrence rate was 5%, then if the entire number of people in the UK who have been diagnosed today were to be re-infected at a rate of 5%, it would be less than 12,000 people. How many are being infected every day?

This is insanity. The only thing which is certain is that people are dying because we are locked down so that others might not die. The likelihood of the NHS being overwhelmed by re-infection cases is so small as to be risible.

At some point someone will, hopefully, make a grown up decision. Until then we shall continue with the children's playground version of making a decision!

[Workingman]

Suff, the grown up decision will be what - herd immunity (HI)? That is what you are hinting at.

UK pop is about 67.5 million. The number where HI kicks in is variable from, say, 60% to 80% depending on the expert(s) asked. Let's go with the lower figure to be in your favour. This would get us about 40.5 million being infected. Of those some 85% recover, so some 34.5 million of them. Bless, that only leaves 6 million of us dead. Another way of looking at it is to divide the total deaths by total cases: 0.07. Using current figures that would leave the UK with 'only' 2.4 million dead.

I think that I will give the herd a body swerve for a while.

BTW I am using worldwide figures from worldometers for closed cases i.e. those who caught it and came out the other side one way or another. I cannot do the same for the wonderful UK because we, and the Netherlands, do not provide the number for those recovered.

[Suff]

Suff, the grown up decision will be what - herd immunity (HI)? That is what you are hinting at.

Not at all.

Taking the three cases of SARS which reinfected (documented not assumption), then take this to a logical conclusion that less than 5% of those who have already been infected, might be infected again. Then calculating that this is, of the reported cases, at 12,000, for 5%, then if we take the average death rate of 14% (current overall % of cases who die), then the max figure of deaths, at 5%, for people who are reinfected, for the whole of the UK, sits at 1,680.

We are not talking millions, we are not talking hundreds of thousands, we are talking, in total, for the entire infected community, 4 days of the current death rate.

This also presupposes that those who are reinfected are more susceptible the second time round than the first. Something which does not bear up to scrutiny over the general run of medical cases. If the body is already producing targeted antibodies, then a second infection is less likely to kill than the first. If the patient has survived the first case and is, as I have suggested, at least 4 weeks past the end of the infection, then it is highly unlikely that a second infection will kill them.

So now we are not talking 14%, of 5%, we are talking about much, much less than that.

In fact ignoring antibody testing and going blind could be putting far more people at risk of primary infection than the other way around. At least people will have a very good indication that the person who has already had the virus is significantly less likely to infect them than anyone who has not had the virus.

That is the grown up decision. Not this run away and hide because the press might call them out on the one case in a million (nearly 2 million now and still no case), where a person who has recovered might be reinfected.

Sorry if I get shirty about this but, honestly, it is their job to assess the risk and make decisions. In a situation like this there is no risk free decision. Just a lower risk than another decision. No matter what the press might think.

[Kaz]

I agree with you Suff, on this.

[medsec222]

There is no such thing as a risk-free society. Boris Johnson is not to blame for that whatever the press might think.

[cromwell]

The press know that very well Meds, but that is not going to stop them.

[Kaz]

Cancer deaths, serious mental health issues, undiagnosed strokes and heart problems, undiagnosed neurological conditions. The NHS should be a complete health service, not a Covid-19 service. I am worried that we are approaching a "tipping point" where more people will die, or have serious life long problems, as a result of lockdown rather than the virus Not to mention the financial fallout.

[Suff]

I'm worried about that too Kaz. On top of that we have respected professors of public health saying

London was much worse hit in the early stages of the epidemic,” Jones said. “So you would expect for a number of reasons that places that were hardest hit early on will recover the quickest.

“One of the reasons is that the more people you have had infected, the less likely new people are to be infected.

“You hear about heard immunity – you basically get to a point where so many people have been infected that the chance of the virus getting transmitted gets very low.

“You need a certain number of the population to be infected to get to herd immunity,” Jones said – a number London has not come close to reaching.

“But even below that, the more people who have developed immunity because they have already had the virus, the less likely someone who is newly infected is to pass it on.

Yet officials whose job it is to make decisions cast doubt on whether there is any immunity. Even with nearly 5 million reported infections around the world, closing on 2 million recoveries and Not One Single validated case of reinfection.

That is the point I'm making. These officials need to grow a pair and start saving lives.

[Workingman]

Marvellous!

The report I mentioned on the Confusing Messages thread, dismissed at the time, is now held up as a beacon of truth to fit the narrative.

But hang on, it was 'modelling' and it 'suggested' that things 'could' be because of....

"The modelling – based on PHE data from May 10 – showed there were 11,400 daily Covid-19 infections in England."

"However, these were not spread evenly across the country."

"While there were estimated to be 4,320 daily infections in the north east and Yorkshire – the highest in the country – and 2,380 in the north west, there were just 23.9 in London."

The real figures, as per the useless government's own not ones picked from thin air to fit a purpose, are that on the date mentioned, 10th of May, there were 3,923 new cases and 268 new deaths for the whole of the UK.

Source? HMG DHSC

I won't be joining the herd any time soon.

I'm off to do some modelling but I'll be using Lego as it is just as accurate.

[Suff]

I use the worldometer WM. I completely ignore all those other figures. Nothing ever matches and "corrections" are always after the fact.

I have seen the worldometer figures corrected on the day, but never after the day has closed.

There is a huge amount of noise for the sake of noise. They need to stop it and start doing real viable things and stop second guessing everything.