Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

You said

Is it in stark contrast to what has proven to work in combating this particular virus ? Yes, completely

Please point us to this evidence of what works which your assertion is based on.

#teamvitd with the Ben goldacre vibes.

Everyone who's questioning the government/PHE/NHS guidance - you do realise that when you question public health information you are effectively undermining it, right?

And another snarky comment from @Chalfie

Quelle surprise 👏

Do you know vitamin D is meant to improve mood too?

we have a mouse problem in our flat... With a modest stockpile of rice

Not black rice. Would confuse

It didn't come across well but I meant it positively!
Ben Goldacre is great. And I liked that you were playing the ball!
I am sorry. Seriously.

Guys.
I think we need a drum circle.

As if you question religion?

Number of new infections and deaths in China vs number of new infections and deaths post lock down in China. I’ll spell it out for you , they’ve gone down post lockdown.

ah, so when government policy for managing this in the UK fails, it will be the naysayers' fault?

See also: Brexit.

Why not quote them rather than the unattributable source who happens to be mate?

I thought it might be useful to start a list of people with concerns over the UK strategy.

Dr Tedros Adhanom, Director General of the World Health Organisation
Dr Margaret Harris, WHO, Infections Disease Specialist
Manish Sadarangani, Asisstant Professor Infectious Diseases, UBC
Professor Anthony Costello, Director UCL Institute for Global Health
Professor Devi Sridhar, Professor of Global Public Health, Edinburgh University
Dr Jeremy Rossman, Senior Lecturuer in Virology, University of Kent
Professor Martin Hibberd, Professor of Emerging Infections Diseases, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Imagine how tetchy we’ll be after 4 weeks confinement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzNKZdzMEWA

"I think we need a drum circle."
I laughed. Best post on here.

Oh OK, sorry. I did just realise the hyporacy of replying to (what I thought was) a snarky comment with a snarky comment :/

I am ill and also therefore even more grumpy than normal.

If the guidance can’t stand up to scrutiny it should be undermined

@skydancer No, but I might start selling all the black rice that seems to be growing, fully formed and processed, under the kitchen cabinets when things get desperate, urgh wretch!

It's alright. I think you're at the stage I reached a day or so ago.

Hai fives.

Swinging for the fences for laughs.

Viruses mutate to survive and high mortality viruses don't spread well for perpetuity because they kill all their hosts so mutation usually makes them weaker. Is my basic understanding of something very complicated.

to freedom of movement, you had to show your passport right?

Actually there never was freedom of movement between UK and Switzerland. It's for like schengen area.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/government-acts_switzerland-imposes-sweeping-measures-to-contain-coronavirus/45615344

"Furthermore, border controls with other European countries have been tightened with a suspension of the single border agreement."

there's apparently already two distinct strains of Covid that have been identified; one has proven to be more virile and easier to transmit than the other.

Thank goodness it’s not a prion

Viruses have an inherent fault in their replication mechanism and machinery. It's very error prone. Which means that when it makes copies of itself they're not always the same. This is mutation. This mutation enables them to look different on the outside (surface proteins and stuff). Which means when they encounter a new host (me or you) it may appear as a new infection. Even if you've had that virus before.

The rate of mutation can be measured by looking at the genomic differences between isolates from the same infection in different places. For a virus, you'd want to be mutating moderately and cause low mortality. So that you can just be passed around without damaging your host population.
Ripping through a host population with a high level of infectivity and a high mortality is no good for either the host or the virus ultimately.

Edit: what Dov said.

It'll be academically interesting to look at how diverse the isolates are and the phylogenetics of it all at some point.

If I'm still alive
(Said in the voice of el paso fajita lady from the early 00s)

https://nextstrain.org/ncov

You're so on it.