UKC

I'd appreciate those in the scientific and medical know explaining why the following does or, perhaps more likely does not. make sense.

Bear with me a moment....

In January I came back from El Chorro with a horrendous 'flu'. Whatever it was, it ripped through the Olive Branch hostel, and people were dropping like flies. But the weird thing was, it didn't really have true flu symptoms. It started with a one day mild fever, and then was followed by dry hacking coughing (but not really sneezing or spluttering). In my case I was just about able to carry on climbing (unlikely with genuine flu) for 5 days, but when I got back to the UK I spent the next week on the couch, totally wiped out. It took 2 weeks to recover in total. Others reported similar symptoms - symptoms that seem a lot more like coronavirus than flu. (Of course, it could have been a coronavirus, and not Covid19.)

But here's my thinking. The first confirmed case in Wuhan seems to date from 1st December. China notified the WHO on 31st December. And we're supposed to believe that a) no cases turned up in Europe until February, and b) there was a perfect detection rate such that the first cases to arrive were straight away discovered? 

Here's an alternative scenario: European climbers who've been out in China come home for Christmas, passing through (say) two Chinese airports where one or more gets infected with Covid19. Being young and healthy, they fall ill but manage to shake it off - and think nothing of it, because China is keeping quiet about the scale of the outbreak at this point. One of them, or a friend/family member, goes climbing in El Chorro over New Year. They pass it on to 2 people, who pass it on to 2 people, etc... Not exactly an outlandish scenario.

OK, you say, but Covid19 would then be in the population at large by mid-late January (I myself would have infected a ton of people on the flight home, without doubt). And that would have led to deaths - and thus detection. But would it? When did UK hospitals start testing for Covid19 in people who hadn't been to 'affected areas'? If it kills mostly the elderly and those with underlying health conditions, who wouldn't have just come back from the Far East, would doctors have simply assumed these people were suffering from post-flu complications, as is standard in winter? Hence is it possible that Covid19 has been in Europe for way longer than official reporting claims, and thus our stats about infection and mortality rates are totally off?

I'm asking this as a genuine question, from a position of ignorance. If there are reasons why the above just doesn't stand up because of information and facts about disease transmission etc, please do just tell me!

Did you see any experimental 5G masts near The Olive Branch?

Logic would state that the infection rate in Europe would have been the same as China, as would the diagnostics, and thus we'd have similar volumes of cases to China if it had come back at the same time.

'Logic' isn't very helpful as an explanation. The logic needs to explain why your reasoning is more plausible than the reasoning in my post. It also requires taking on faith that the Chinese told the truth about many things at many points, something I wouldn't bet my house on.

It all makes sense now!!!!

That's the wrong Paul...

Had a bad cold, epidemic sweeping the world, could it have been covid-19? probably not, go back to sticking up on bogroll...

An interesting speculation, and one which could be tested: does your blood have the antibodies for this new virus?

So that would be interesting to find out - although are we sure that Covid19 recoverers are in fact immune to re-infection (I thought there was a case where someone may have been re-infeced, implying no immune resistance?). However for now I'm keen to keep my nuisance to UKC; the NHS is under enough strain as it is without me rocking up with my tinfoil hat theories.

In reply to Gravy:

Yes, that is of course the sensible response. Lots of other viruses around. But don't think specifically about me, but about the general scenario that I'm pointing towards. I'm not clear why it would be obviously wrong or implausible as I've laid it out (though happy to be convinced).

Alternatively you had a cold.

'We' are sure you are not immune to re-infection, but you would have antibodies have mounted a response and recovered. I've no idea how long they would be present in your blood though I'm afraid. (I'm an engineer, no a medic/micorbioloigist etc)

There have, though there is talk about it being different strains.

In the 2nd week of Jan (when there was no talk of CV being in the UK), I had a really bad cold which in retrospect sounds very like the symptoms of CV - fever, dry hacking cough followed by headache (which lasted ~1 week) then the whole following week feeling completely wiped out. Its only in the last few days when people have been suggesting the Italian outbreak must have been going on for many weeks earlier than we thought that makes me wonder if it was just a bad cold....

What it seems to me is that without large scale testing no-one can really know. From what I understand very few people under 20 are showing any symptoms, so it could be spreading like wildfire if people are only getting themselves tested if they believe they have a link to a CV hotspot. But if that was the case you would also have to assume its much less lethal than people are getting worked up about...

Well, it was much more vicious than any other cold I’ve ever had - but yes I take the point. As above though, I’m not so much interested in whether I had Covid19, as whether and to what extent it’s plausible that lots of people have had it before official detection began. 
 

FWIW I’ve definitely got a bog standard garden variety cold today, and that is quite bad enough thank you very much!

Using a purely probabilistic argument, it is highly unlikely that you were infected with COVID-19. Considering the following - 

* It may well have been a coronavirus, as coronaviruses are a large family of viruses and are known to cause a number of conditions ranging from SARS to the Common Cold (source: WHO)

* COVID-19 presents with cold or flu like symptoms (source: NHS), both conditions which are vastly more prevalent than COVID-19. In retrospect, it is easy to convince yourself that you had COVID-19 - but ask yourself, which is really the more likely scenario?

* The mortaility rate for COVID-19 is about 20-30 per thousand (source: ECDC), whereas that for seasonal flu is about 1 per thousand (source: various), so if in fact it had been in Europe for months longer than is currently estimated, the transmission model based on the first cases appearing in February would not fit what we are currently seeing - eg, there would be many more deaths from "seasonal flu" than would be expected - if COVID-19 was being transmitted among the population unchecked for months.

it would certainly be interesting to have some reasonable scale population surveillance screening done in schools. 

I've had my suspicions for a long time about how widespread it may already be - the difference now is that it is being looked for.   ~It turned up in Surrey in someone who had not apparently had contacts or travel overseas as a result of a random screening, reportedly.

I'd be very surprised if it hadn't travelled before large scale detection.  But I am prepared to be surprised.

ps - over the years there have been stories of pre-1980s cases of what became known as AIDS/HIV

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11367253

Nice arguments though the Chief Medical Officer says 10 per thousand is upper limit of fatality rate (appearance before parliament)

I had these symptoms in late nov/early december. Hacking cough and fever, but no other "cold" symptoms. I assumed (and still assume) it was a mild seasonal flu. I think part of the problem is C-19 and flue are quite hard to tell apart unless it's serious

Thanks, that's really helpful. your last point in particular looks pretty decisive. 

Cheers all - to be clear, I don't really think I had Covid19. Balance of probabilities indicates I likely just had some other more regular coronavirus/flu. It just got me thinking about the more general question.

Not quite true. A child is likely to show some symptoms, but how these are distinguishable from the myriad other childhood illnesses is a bit beyond me. My daughter was off-colour the past couple of weeks, but well enough to go to school, and now has bad cough which could be described as 'dry'.  She gets something similar 2 or 3 times a year. 

I mean it's possible....

Another oddity - the mortality data on CV from China doesn't publish mortality rates for infants under 10 years old. I think this has led to the assertion that children are relatively unaffected, but is this actually backed up by empirical evidence? The mantra on seasonal flu is that it is the very old and very young that are worst affected - indeed it's why these groups are offered free vaccination every year.  I'll rest easier (or not!) when some more hard data is available on this one.

Does it have any truth?  From the WHO report on china linked below.

"The vast majority of those infected sooner or later develop symptoms. Cases of people in whom the virus has been detected and who do not have symptoms at that time are rare - and most of them fall ill in the next few days."

https://www.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/comments/fbt49e/the_who_sent_25_internat...

Remember though that currently most people who develop severe breathing problems and require breathing support in hospital (between 10 and 20 % of cases) get it.

If the health service are overwhelmed (and it would take very little for that to happen) then there just isn’t enough capacity for everybody so the case fatality rate would increase.

Hence the utmost importance of slowing down the spread on as long a period of time as possible.

What I can say is that since the end of November I have had an illness the like of which I've never experienced before in over 6 decades as even the worst chest conditions I've had have resolved in 3 weeks at longest.  My breathing is still affected.

He's either assuming the UK's health system will keep fatalities down, or that lots of cases aren't being reported, he's lying, or he's an idiot.  If we go by the stats on the wikipedia page, Planetmarshall's death rates are correct - 111k cases and 3.8k deaths.  If we pick the big incidences in Europe with similar healthcare systems (France, Germany & Italy) we have 9735 cases and 385 deaths, a similar rate.

Most likely you had the flu and you’re getting old. Welcome to the club.

I wouldn't presume to speak for the Chief Medical Officer, but I think the ECDC is a pretty authoritative source. It's possible that there are different estimates based on particular demographics, and that's what the CMO was referring to. Here is the specific link from the ECDC, which is in general quite a good source of information about the virus.

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/novel-coronavirus-china/questions-answers

not like any flu I've had before and I've had 2 or three very bad ones in my time.

I'm not suggesting it is C-19 but I certainly adhere to acceptance of the possibility it has been around outside China for some time longer than is known at the moment and far more cases than detected including Europe

I wish I'd seen this thread before I posted this on the other Coronavirus thread:

"I'm beginning to wonder if the virus hasn't already done the rounds here at work because coming up to Christmas several colleagues had fever, nagging dry coughs and difficulty breathing at night, feeling they couldn't fill their lungs. It's perfectly possible that 99.99 percent of healthy people just shrugged it off and the few victims were those who already had weakened systems - the poor chap who died yesterday in North Manchester Hospital after returning from Italy, for example." 

Similar to my thoughts.  It’s a fool’s errand to try and infer death rates during the early exponential growth phase but any inference I do suggests the CMO is lowballing total deaths.  Perhaps they think they can slow it down until a vaccine is here or better treatment techniques but I see no sign of doing anything differently to countries currently 13-16 days ahead of us on the numbers.

Italy 5883 case, 233 deaths, 589 recovered

For it to be 0.1% with 233 deaths there would need to be 23,300 cases in Italy which means 17,417 undiagnosed ones.  If there aren't undiagnosed cases the Italians are already at 3.9%, and the really worrying bit is that with only 589 'recovered' the vast majority of cases are still 'in progress' and could potentially still result in death.

trouble is that seasonal flu mortality varies a lot from year to year (>10x from my brief research) so any increase due to covid would be inconclusive esp in early stages?

the two strain theory (original S-type and more aggressive L-type) would be consistent with these earlier symptoms people describe?

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2236544-coronavirus-are-there-two-stra...

Heard the theory about smoking? Half of Chinese men smoke, and China is in trouble.

Many more Italians smoke, and they have more cases than others in Europe, theory is that smoking makes you more likely to get ill/die.

On the other hand, Germany has 1151 cases, with 0 deaths. None.

I'd like to know why there's such a difference!

Possibly because it hasn't been in Germany so long and the German cases haven't progressed as far.

One of the other scary things an Italian doctor said was that they are starting to see young people in intensive care.  It takes longer between when they are diagnosed with the disease and need intensive care but it still happens.

I was Ill over Christmas with a fever, really sore throat and a cough. Felt a lot worse than a normal cold and lasted longer. I was the only one in my family to get it though despite being around them all a lot. I was also the only one who hadn’t had the flu jab so I suspect it was a dose of flu.

or they just touch their mouths more..?

2 deaths reported in Germany today. I can only give you the age of one, an 89 year-old woman.

Agree

Disagree - I think the most likely outcome is that they are lowballing infection rates and as a result over estimating fatality rates.  Death rate = # of deaths / # of infected.  Number of deaths is usually better understood, during the initial phase, than total number infected.

Example:  Swine Flu.

During the Swine Flu epidemic they thought death rates ~1-1.5%.

https://www.who.int/csr/don/2009_11_27a/en/

However, years later they (WHO again) went back and revised the estimate for the numbers infected and found it to be much much higher.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5781221/

The revised fatality rate suggested at is ~0.02%.

The vast majority of those who are infected will not become sick and may never report it to a GP.  They'll be counting numbers reported to health staff at this point time - not trying estimate how widely it is actually circulating in the population.  I recon we should be treating the % mortality rate numbers with care at this point in time ... I think they will fall (albeit maybe years down the road).

Cheers

There was a really nasty cold virus that out took most of the office for a week or so in November / December time. It had a dry cough that wouldn't clear up for up to a month. It left me feeling pretty wiped out for a week or so after I had recovered. I doubt it was Covid 19 though.

Paul, I had a similar odd "flu" over the Christmas holiday period, with a dry cough that took time to shake off and mild fever for three days. Overall, it lasted about two and a half weeks. So I had just the same question as you, and I am following this discussion with interest.

That is the other possibility isn’t it.

The counterpoint to that is that for example in the UK 100 times as many people have been tested as have been found infected when doing targeted contact tracing and testing of suspected infected. That suggests the virus isn’t lurking in the untested, unless there are entirely separate, undetected islands of infection - which is possible but we the public aren’t being given a breakdown of infections by known vs unknown source - or if we are I’m too dim to find it...

I think the problem is that the system lends itself to a given result in the early stages.

Its easy to count fatalities, at the beginning, and everyone is hyper vigilant to it. Anyone who is unfortunate to die of anything remotely resembling Covid-19 at the moment will get tested for it.

Its much harder, in the early stages, to estimate how a virus is spreading in the population at large when (guess) 80% will have nothing more than mild flu symptoms that need no medical assistance and go away in their own time. These groups will be invisible to the establishment.

Couple that with optimism (no one wants to believe that it’s circulating in the population already) and you have a recipe for accurate fatality counts, under estimating infection rates and over estimating fatality rates.

Hypothesis: I imagine if we look at other outbreaks we might find a pattern of similar numbers. (I’m not doing that digging )

cheers

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51674743

I think I spent 2 weeks in Chorro at the Olive Branch just after you and the crew were just starting to recover from the “flu/Coronavirus/bug” you mention. On return to the U.K. I came down with the exact symptoms you describe and it’s taken me a month to properly get over it. I’m currently out in Morocco and delayed my flight out here because of how I felt. I also met a climbing mate out there who’d just returned from Wuhan! 

I’m pretty suspect if what we all had and feel that it may have been Coronavirus, never been so wiped out in my life.

Giles

I've sort of wondered.  I did have a weird thing in late Jan/early Feb which involved a nasty sore throat, a bit of breathing issues (but as I have asthma that can be par for the course so you can't always tell something else caused it) and a headache, which isn't a full set of symptoms but lasted 2 weeks and was like nothing I've had before.  Not sure where I got it from TBH.  It went away after using antibac mouthwash for a few days but that could have been a coincidence.  Overall it lasted about 2 weeks.

And I do know someone who has it (only loosely, and I've not seen him in person for months) and he has it very mild too.

Hmm.

Lots of people I know had the same dry cough and fever over Xmas and new year. I was out of sorts for over a month, and I'm still nowhere near right when it comes to running.

Probably a flu variant rather than anything else though.

I got the cough before Xmas, after 2 or 3 days feeling cold in a warm house. Carried on doing parkruns through the holiday season & ran reasonably well (but lots of coughing after). Wife, a swimmer, avoided my cough but got a traditional cold with catarrh after Xmas which I picked up eventually. Still coughing now, and snivelling a bit, nearly 3 months later but running is substantially OK.

Taking decent doses of Vitamin C, in the hope that my immune system is not too badly compromised when the real Coronavirus arrives... (The Chinese shipped 50 tons into Wuhan a couple of weeks ago).

The Vitamin C thing is a myth perpetuated by the supplements makers after somebody realised that your body is less able to absorb Vitamin C during a viral infection. There's no evidence that Vitamin C strengthens your immune system. However there is evidence that zinc strengthens your immune system and anecdotally, I've been taking zinc daily for the last 15 months and haven't had a cold. I know because when I broke two ribs and a clavicle in August 2018 I dreaded sneezing so started taking zinc and it seems to work. Zinc tabs are very cheap at ASDA.

If it were already widespread with mild to no symptoms in the population you'd also expect a significant fraction of those tested and found positive but asymptomatic during the early contact tracing and containment phase to have remained basically asymptomatic thereafter. That doesn't appear to have been the case, most people seem to get quite noticeably ill. Given we already have pretty useful accidental experiments in the form of failed quarantines and plenty of contact tracing data we should know by now if a significant reservoir of infected and infectious but otherwise well people likely exists and how big it might be.

jk

The zinc connection is a puzzling one. I am looking at the effect of certain immune signalling genes (admittedly in a non-immune context), and one of the genes that most strongly enhances the effect of mutations in the immune genes encodes a zinc transporter.

How and why? No idea.

CB

I take cheapo Berocca most days and that I believe contains a load of zinc, and I still get colds by the minutes in winter.

Never anything serious, just loads of colds.

That would discredit the smoking theory as the German speaking countries seem to be very much the chimneys of Europe.

Same here, my aerobic stamina is still down since end of November, and I have not been in Spain in years. Most likely just the seasonal flu strain, coupled with some residual, cross strain immunity from the last vaccination/infection.

Unlikely that Wuhan CV is widely circulating in Europe since months, otherwise it would have been impossible to see the exponential growth from small clusters or even individual patients that we have seen. Also, while it was still possible, contact tracing only ever detected rare cases, most of whom also fell ill to some extent after testing, not some general background noise.

CB

There isn't widespread testing of those not showing symptoms.  There is very little in place to measure whether it is at large in the population or not - so they assume not.  It will take time to put in place the modelling necessary to put a number to this ... short of testing everyone which they aren't doing.

Give this a read:

https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/mar/06/why-its-hard-estimate-corona...

That article links into this - how to estimate Influenza Illness:

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/how-cdc-estimates.htm#References

This isn't a new problem solve.  Most people don't go to doctor/hospital because they get the flu.  You start with the hospital number of deaths and deaths as a result of complications from flu and divide by the known infected ... then you need to extrapolate out into the wider population to account for the asymptomatic AND symptomatic that never get counted in official numbers.

Early mortality rates estimates during outbreak are high because the way they are counted typically is only # confirmed deaths/# confirmed infected ... but in the early stages of an outbreak they struggle to put realistic numbers on the denominator ... in many cases for purely psychological reasons - they don't want to admit that the numbers of infected are larger than they are.

cheers

Yes but seasonal flu doesn't usually result in the detailed contacts follow up you get for example with imported early cases of a new disease or from a quarantined ship/hotel experiencing an out of control outbreak. There must already be good data available from some of the accidental experiments to allow a reasonable estimate of the infected well reservoir size to be made. 

Jk

I dont belive Covid is in circulation but I don't believe that statement is correct?

Yes, if the respectable media is to be believed, most people experience only mild to moderate symptoms?

I said and meant noticeably, not seriously.

Jk

Sorry yes you did - but I was also thinking of eg the pyramid graphic on the BBC website which seems to indicate a lot of people with symptoms so mild that they might not meet the threshold of “noticeably”?

although after speaking to a doctor friend, I am starting to wonder if the “it’s only the old and already immuno-compromised who are at risk” line is more about panic management than strict accuracy. She seemed to think that there were plenty of serious cases amongst the “young and healthy” now presenting. 

That a pretty good point Jk and one I, might, look into. 

My only concern is whether the detailed follow groups are representative of the population at large.  i.e. if you follow up a Cruise Ship for example ... looks, to me, more like a virus incubation unit than a representative sample.  Might be fair to assume that you could observe markedly different behavior in a sample set from a group of people living in, very, close quarters than those living on land.

Cheers

Oh absolutely, it's not a representative sample and there may very well be curious differences in outcomes depending how the infection is acquired (for example are medics receiving high initial doses or continuous exposure getting sicker than might be expected?). Still, small, incomplete and skewed samples (Diamond Princess is still one of the bigger infected 'countries' so far) are of use particularly when combined with other data-sets having different biases to build a bigger picture. I appreciate there is still and may remain lots of uncertainty but there are lots of things we can potentially know about this already with a reasonable degree of accuracy and certainty. Whether we're good enough and fast enough at pulling together and sharing data across borders/jurisdictions to do this in near real time... there I have my doubts. The Chinese should by now have a pretty good handle on how many remain basically well while infected from their case tracing and testing. With their outbreak clustered in one province there shouldn't be all the cross border jurisdictional barriers in the way of collating and sharing data that we'll have to deal with. 

There's also all the behavioural stuff that will vary significantly across countries and situations, people on holiday behave differently to those supposed to be working for a living when they get mildly ill, likewise those in secure roles with sick pay face different challenges and choices to those without when it comes to choosing to take time off in isolation for the greater good.

jk

Couldn't agree more.

Right ... 

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-r...

Dump of daily numbers:

Date,Deaths,Infected,Mortality Rate (T-0),Mortality Rate (T-14),Mortality Rate (T-28)
21-Jan-20,0,282,0.00%,,
22-Jan-20,6,314,1.91%,,
23-Jan-20,17,581,2.93%,,
24-Jan-20,25,846,2.96%,,
25-Jan-20,41,1320,3.11%,,
26-Jan-20,56,2014,2.78%,,
27-Jan-20,80,2798,2.86%,,
28-Jan-20,106,4593,2.31%,,
29-Jan-20,132,6065,2.18%,,
30-Jan-20,170,7818,2.17%,,
31-Jan-20,213,9826,2.17%,,
01-Feb-20,259,11953,2.17%,,
02-Feb-20,305,14557,2.10%,,
03-Feb-20,362,17391,2.08%,0.00%,
04-Feb-20,426,20630,2.06%,0.03%,
05-Feb-20,492,24554,2.00%,0.07%,
06-Feb-20,565,28276,2.00%,0.09%,
07-Feb-20,638,31481,2.03%,0.13%,
08-Feb-20,724,34886,2.08%,0.16%,
09-Feb-20,813,37558,2.16%,0.21%,
10-Feb-20,910,40554,2.24%,0.26%,
11-Feb-20,1018,43103,2.36%,0.31%,
12-Feb-20,1115,45171,2.47%,0.38%,
13-Feb-20,1369,46997,2.91%,0.45%,
14-Feb-20,1383,49053,2.82%,0.53%,
15-Feb-20,1526,50580,3.02%,0.60%,
16-Feb-20,1669,51857,3.22%,0.70%,
17-Feb-20,1775,71429,2.48%,0.60%,0.00%
18-Feb-20,1873,73332,2.55%,0.67%,0.01%
19-Feb-20,2009,75204,2.67%,0.75%,0.02%
20-Feb-20,2126,75748,2.81%,0.84%,0.03%
21-Feb-20,2247,76769,2.93%,0.94%,0.05%
22-Feb-20,2359,77794,3.03%,1.05%,0.07%
23-Feb-20,2462,78811,3.12%,1.15%,0.10%
24-Feb-20,2618,79331,3.30%,1.28%,0.13%
25-Feb-20,2700,80239,3.36%,1.39%,0.16%
26-Feb-20,2762,81109,3.41%,1.69%,0.21%
27-Feb-20,2804,82294,3.41%,1.68%,0.26%
28-Feb-20,2858,83652,3.42%,1.82%,0.31%
29-Feb-20,2924,85403,3.42%,1.95%,0.36%
01-Mar-20,2977,87137,3.42%,2.04%,0.42%
02-Mar-20,3043,88948,3.42%,2.11%,0.48%
03-Mar-20,3112,90869,3.42%,2.21%,0.54%
04-Mar-20,3198,93091,3.44%,2.28%,0.61%
05-Mar-20,3281,95324,3.44%,2.36%,0.67%
06-Mar-20,3380,98192,3.44%,2.40%,0.74%
07-Mar-20,3486,101927,3.42%,2.42%,0.80%
08-Mar-20,3584,105586,3.39%,2.48%,0.86%
09-Mar-20,3809,109577,3.48%,2.46%,0.93%
10-Mar-20,4012,113702,3.53%,2.43%,0.98%
 

There is another thing to be considered.  Is it fair to divide today's count of deaths by todays count of known infected?  I ask because we need to assume that the deaths that occur today are as a result of infection, guess, 14 or 28 days ago. Therefore is it fairer to divide today's death count by the count of known infected 14 or 28 days ago to get a better number?

T-0:  My numbers are steadying out ~3.5%

T-14:  more like 2.45%

T-28:  Not enough data to see a trend.

-S

I don't think your el chorro virus was Covid19, as of the outbreak was that advanced then we would be seeing a huge spike in elderly viral pneumonia deaths by now.

However, I don't think the UKs Coronavirus statistics currently stack up.

Several of the 6 UK deaths (possibly 5 out of the 6 but would need to check) where infected via community transmission. Since incubation is 5 days to 2 weeks , and time from first symptoms to death is 2 to 8 weeks  (so call it 1 week + 3 weeks) then the these elderly people were infected inside the UK 4 weeks ago at a time when we had 12 (I think) cases 11 of which were recovered and who had all been rapidly isolated on diagnosis. The maths just doesn't add up!

That sounds interesting but could you put it in layman's terms?

In reply to all

Latest German stats.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/germany/

Yes, this links to the fact that the NHS has only been testing people who came back from infection hotspots overseas or who had direct contact with somebody who did. But that means that eg Whitehall civil servants who are ill today and not going in to work are not being tested (this isn’t a hypothetical, I know of at least 2) - despite the fact we know there is a definite transmission chain because Dories has it and has been to all manner of meetings in Whitehall. 

result: I’m convinced the real rate of infection in the UK right now is dramatically higher than official figures. 

OK, here is a translation: I have been short of breath for longer than expected (months!) following some mild, flu like disease. One option, as suggested by the OP is that Wuhan coronavirus had been spreading in Europe for some time, and nobody noticed it as new.

I have argued that it is much more likely that I (and the OP) simply had the seasonal flu, where longer breathing problems are normal. I had irregular vaccinations against previous, seasonal flu strains, and also caught the flu a couple of times over the last decades. Since the strains are not 100% different, I will have had some immune memory cells that partially protected me, hence the overall mild disease.

The alternative scenario, i.e. that it was possible to catch the novel coronavirus in Spain and Germany, before it was identified in cases linked to China, is unlikely for two main reasons: Earlier in the epidemic, when it was possible to identify starter patients, or at least small clusters of patients, medium scale attempts were made to individually track, quarantine, and test potential contacts. That testing regularly found a few carriers of the virus, and a lot of negatives. The vast majority of virus positive persons that were still symptom free at the time of testing then developed disease.

First, this makes unlikely that there is a huge pool of healthy but infected persons: If you catch the virus, you will with high likelihood notice some symptoms, even if they are mild.

Second, starting from these rare cases we see a rapid doubling of secondary infections, especially in cases and areas where isolation of contacts before they fall ill was impossible (Italy, northern Germany, etc.) This is typical of a new virus hitting a population that has no immunity against it. If there had been widepread but undetected Coronavirus in Europe, we would expect a signature that looks like later in the disease cycle, when it is hard for the virus to spread to new victims because the majority of contacts will already have had the infection and have become immune. This is not what we see, especially when looking at well defined cohorts of patients, e.g. cruise ship passengers.

CB

I take your point and I have to assume I haven't had COVID-19 since the end of November but I have had seasonal flu over the last 60 years, swine flu, Hong Kong Flu, bird flu, pretty much everything except the 1918 flu, some when just existing let alone getting out of bed was impossibly painful, and I have never, never, never in my life suffered like this with my chest.

Thanks for that - along with Planetmarshall and JKaran this was exactly the kind of helpful and informative response I was hoping for. 

Reposting this link from the other thread:

https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d...

if the maths and extrapolations are right, then if Coronavirus was in Washington State by early December, not outlandish to believe that it was in Spain early January, and that the number of deaths is now only just catching up with lag effects, and so the points raised above may not hold? Spain after all has a huge number of confirmed cases now - consistent with there being many more undetected cases, indicating the disease has been there a lot longer than realised?

Furthermore:

- We know in the UK the NHS has not been testing for community transmission, so we would have no way of detecting early cases that weren't directly linked to someone returning from overseas/having close associates who did

- On the point above about spikes in flu death rates, what if a) this was a benign flu season (but we didn't realise) and this masked deaths that were actually from Covid19 and weren't tested for, and b) if infection is much more widespread than realised but equally there are far more milder cases than realised (say because it is true that there is an S and an L strain, and the former is less aggressive but is what got here first), then it would take time for there to be a subsequent death spike.

Again, just wondering what people who know more and understand better than I do think in response.  

It's possible, but don't get confused between Medium and the Lancet.  That article is just an individual doing a statistical analysis.  There may be something in it, but as far as I can tell he's a mathematician, not a medical professional.

Cheers, worth bearing in mind!

So I’m not swinging around to thinking

1) I probably did have Covid19 

2) It’s been around for a long time

3) but this probably means it’s less lethal than we have assumed, although still bad enough that what is coming next is still going to be horrific 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/first-covid-19-case-happened-...

Morning all.

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