Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Covid-19

There is much talk about asymptomatic carriers, infecting many. Is this real, or scaremongering?
Without a lot of testing there is no way of knowing.

Lockdown has worked, but it is unworkable for much longer.
So we relax it and keep our fingers crossed, force people to wear face masks and separate as much as possible.

My view is that if testing was available on demand we could end all the distancing and go back to work, and until a vaccine is available require that if you want to go away from your immediate surroundings, especially into a metropolitan area, you would have to show that you are either immune, or not infected. If PHE worked as the PHLS used to this could have been achieved. But there is more chance of Mr Trump losing the November elections than PHE getting their act together.

AIUI, with a 14 day incubation period the point of testing is to identify those people who are infected but asymptomatic, so they can be isolated before they infect others - it's all about getting the R value below 1.

Antibody testing, together with evidence of sustained immunity would indeed be a good thing. But the former doesn't currently exist in a reliable form and the latter seems to have the evidence in the other direction, ie that you can still be infectious after recovery and you can still get it again.

With an incubation period of 14 days, there's plenty of time for asymptomatic carriers to infect before showing symptoms. Whether it's possible to remain asymptomatic for longer periods is somewhat of a moot point, it's the 14 days of normal incubation that push the infection factor up to 3 or 4.

John, Peter .... the sort of instant answer testing of 60 or 80 million people you postulate just doesn't exist .... Even the gold standard in Europe has only managed about 3% ish in three months ....and a random study of antibody testing indicates that 15% have had it and not gone to hospital or never knew .... in Germany that's over 12 million people who have been wandering the community infected .... does any country begin to have the logistical ability to contact and then reliably trace the contacts of even 12M people ("who have I contacted in the last two weeks? ... what, you mean other than the supermarket full of unknown randoms every few days??") ... if it proves that having had it gives some useful level of immunity then mass antibody testing will be very useful (and at least that would give some ongoing value ...unlike testing for presence of the virus where you could walk out of the testing room with an all-clear and be infected within 5 minutes )

K

So were the Government correct in the first place - Herd Immunity? The country simply cannot afford to stay indoors, harsh, but at the moment cannot see another way forward.

Given the effective reduction in infection if everyone wears masks, making them compulsory when outside would seem like an obvious step. The big question is, when we go to the pub, how wil we drink our beer through them?

Are there any statistics to support this claim? The picture seems to be common on twitter but where did it come from?
Nick

I wholeheartedly hope that we will get an effective vaccine. I want to be an optimist but we also have to consider that to develop a working vaccine is not a matter of course....or just a period of time to wait for. HIV got no vaccine since almost 40 years...

AFAIK this particular one came from South Africa, but I've seen it in several different forms, there's a French version too. The graphs showing infection and death rates for countries which enforce public mask-wearing compared to those that do not are also quite striking.

Please delete the posts, whilst I accept they are posted in good faith and face masks MAY help. These are the kind of posts/texts that create rumours and scaremongering. Reuter’s have investigated and found them to be complete bowlocks.

Illustrations widely shared on social media claim to show the percentage decreases in the risk of COVID-19 contagion when people wear face masks.

The illustration has also been shared in multiple languages including Catalan), French Burmese and Spanish.

The diagram in the illustrations makes the following claims: There is a 70% contagion probability between a COVID-19 carrier not wearing a mask and a non-carrier wearing a mask; a 5% contagion probability between a COVID-19 carrier wearing a mask and a non-carrier not wearing a mask; and a 1.5% contagion probability between a COVID-19 carrier and a non-carrier both wearing masks.

This claim is not substantiated. Although some health authorities recommend the use of masks to help limit the spread of COVID-19, Reuters could not find any evidence to back up these percentages.