SubJeff on 14/2/2021 at 08:10
Where is this coming from? What's the reservoir?
mopgoblin on 14/2/2021 at 09:25
We don't know just yet. There are three known cases, all in the same family, and one is somewhat associated with border stuff (doing laundry IIRC) so that's a possibility. With these spreadier variants*, the border cases (of which there are generally a double-digit number) pose a greater risk.
*we don't know yet if these cases are one of those variants, but it's being treated as such unless the sequencing shows otherwise
Gryzemuis on 15/2/2021 at 16:43
My parents tested positive for covid-19.
My parents are 82 and 81 years old. They've done good social distancing over the past year. One exception was their cleaning lady. She's 68 or so. She comes to help clean the house one afternoon per week. She gave up all her customers, because of covid-19. My parents were her only remaining customer. Her husband was ill for a long time (kidney's etc). He was taken into a nursing home a few weeks ago. The nursing home got infected. The cleaning lady got infected. And she infected my parents. Probably last Tuesday (6 days ago). Sucks. The cleaning lady's husband died last Friday. (As I said, he was severely ill already, before he got infected).
My parents are not ill yet. No symptoms whatsoever. I was told that even at a high age, many people get infected, but don't show any symptoms. Not just young people. So I hope my parents stay healthy, without any symptoms, for another 4 days to a week. If they haven't fallen ill by then, there's a good chance nothing severe is gonna happen.
My dad was scheduled to be vaccinated next Tuesday. Thank you, Dutch government and Dutch health institutions, for being the slowest in Europe to vaccinate our citizens. Fuck you.
Question: does anyone know what the percentages are of people infected versus people who get ill indeed? Preferably per age-group. Thanks. Edit: a quick google suggests that most people in that age group who get infected actually develop symptoms. :( No idea my conclusion is correct, I can't find the exact percentages anywhere).
SubJeff on 15/2/2021 at 19:57
Unfortunately it's a high risk group. Doesn't mean they get ill, not everyone does. Fingers crossed. Worth using a pulse oximeter and going to hospital if the Sats indicate it. You can feel fine with this and be hypoxic
Gryzemuis on 15/2/2021 at 20:14
Thanks for the advice. I see pulse oximeters are readily available online. And not that expensive. I'll order one for my parents.
I was wondering about the percentages. "High risk group" still sounds a bit vague. Maybe they (for some value of "they") don't want the general public to know the exact percentages. To prevent panic, or prevent people complaining about the lockdown, etc. When looking at national numbers for infected and hospitalzations the numbers seem extremely high. 80% or so. That can't be right. I guess the only thing to do is wait a week, and hope my parents do well.
heywood on 15/2/2021 at 20:55
Sorry to hear that. I hope they make it OK.
Most sources say older people are more likely to develop symptoms. But I don't know how well supported that is.
I don't think we know enough about the percentage of symptomatic individuals among the positives. The numbers being reported in different studies using different samples are all over the place. And around here, the data aren't being collected by the health authorities. They're not following up with individuals who test positive to see if they develop symptoms later. They are busy enough making initial contact with people to make sure they quarantine and spend the rest of their available time tracing contacts. So unless you end up in the hospital, I don't see how they would know whether you developed symptoms.
heywood on 15/2/2021 at 22:29
I've got a personal anecdote which made me question whether you can really control COVID-19 at the border.
I'm stuck in quarantine right now. Last Monday, my 4 year old son came home from school with a mild fever and acting a little lethargic. He went to bed early and was fine the next morning, but we all stayed home as a precaution. The next day, my wife developed a mild fever and was feeling a little tired. So last Wed, we all went to get tested. My son was positive, wife and daughter negative. I'm still waiting on results because of issues with the clinic's online portal. My wife ended up having a mild fever and a little fatigue for 1.5 days. Afterward, her temp fluctuated between normal to 1 deg high for a couple more days. I've had no symptoms that I can feel, but my temp was also up to 1 deg high for a couple days. And FWIW, our thermometer has been very reliable and repeatable, so I know the fluctuations are indicative of something, even if it is inconsequential. We also came to find out that three other students in my son's class had fevers in the week before my son got sick, but all three tested negative. And the most likely path for the virus into the school was through a family where the father was exposed to a known positive (and that's a whole other story grr). He tested negative too. So at least 5 people in this little circle had mild but noticeable symptoms and 4/5 tested negative. And the most likely transmission route was through a negative father who passed it to his negative son, who passed it to my son (the only positive) who passed it to my negative wife and possibly me. These were all PCR tests FWIW. Thankfully, nobody in the chain (so far) has had any significant illness.
The point of the anecdote is that COVID-19 is going around under the radar. We already know it gets passed on by asymptomatic people who don't know they have it. Until my own experience, I didn't appreciate that it's being passed around by minimally symptomatic people who test negative and are presumed to have some other bug. Not to mention all of the people who brush off a minor symptom or two and never get tested. And there's people who develop classic COVID-19 symptoms but decide not to get tested and go about normal life anyway, either because they don't want to be quarantined or don't want to be asked questions. We know they exist because some get caught.
So I think it's unrealistic to expect you can drive community spread to absolute zero in a nation of millions, even an island nation, given there are so many examples of this bug getting passed around without detection. I'm not saying that responding swiftly and decisively isn't the best response, because it is. Just don't be surprised when the serpent's head pops up out of the water once again.
mopgoblin on 16/2/2021 at 01:38
Well, we did manage to get rid of it last year and keep it out for a time before these new mutations came out. Twice, even (IIRC sequencing has indicated that new outbreaks were highly unlikely to be undetected pockets of infection from old outbreaks). It remains to be seen whether that will work this time with the current measures. But yeah, as long as anyone's ever entering the country there's always gonna be a chance it'll make it in, that's part of why all nations should be pursuing an elimination strategy.
I've previously had concerns about the ventilation systems they were using in border hotels, and some of the stuff we're learning now about the situation with aircraft crew seems pretty dicey too. I'm also unsure if the prime minister has the backbone to go to level 4 early enough if that proves necessary in this current situation, based on recent comments and her party's uninspiring recent record on making vaguely scary decisions in other areas. So there are definitely issues at the border, and new ones will probably keep coming up.
heywood on 16/2/2021 at 14:01
I doubt you got rid of it last year. You got down to the point where there were no known positive cases being tracked by your government, but that doesn't mean it wasn't still circulating undetected for a while. If you had really eradicated it, then you would not have seen new positives show up among people who had no contact with a known case and no contact with inbound travelers.
This virus is really, really hard to trace because it spreads through people who don't know they have it. They either have no symptoms at all, or they have some mild symptoms that don't quite match up with what they expect from COVID-19, so they don't get tested for it. There's also a minority of the population (e.g. Advance NZ people, #plandemic believers, fringe right) who are going to undermine your efforts by not getting tested, not responding to contact tracers, not following quarantine rules. We've got way more of them here unfortunately, but they exist in every country. And even if you went to the extreme and tested the entire population on a daily basis, there would still be some transmission of the virus by people who tested negative.
You're doing the right thing, but I think it's unrealistic to think it can be eradicated. This virus is probably going to be circulating in the human population forever at some level.