Coronavirus in the UK

Again at the start of the year testing capacity was much lower, so the cases uncovered under represented the total actual infections, today we are probably finding 30% to 60% of actual cases back then we were finding 5% to 10% of cases, the result of that is that when reading the data now it looks less fatal than it did but nothing has actually changed, right now we are still at a mid March point on the curve and thank god the doubling period is slower back than it was 3 days now it is about two weeks.

edit: And the reason the doubling rate is lower is because of the people who are following the rules, masks and distance are helping and with luck the next peak might not be any worse than April-May but it will likely be more protracted.

Malcolm, the thing is we are all directly connected to everyone we know and to everyone they know and so on, you are part of a network of related people be it friend, friend of friend etc.

When there is a virus that is infectious without the person who has it showing any symptoms at all, it will spread through these networks faster than anyone can trace, people can be shedding virus days before they get sick and some of course never get sick.

You and I we cannot see it spreading.

Every year I have ended up ill because of my connections at work, I live like a hermit, I have not been in a pub for 4 and half years and I never go anywhere so I am pretty sure that every infection I got was through work in other words through the network of people I know.

Yeah I'm noting it

You stay positive until either you die or your body designs antibodies (proteins) that neutralise the virus.

Viruses work by hijacking the machinery in your cells, that machinery is designed to read the code in your DNA and replicate portions of it, we build a lot of the materials we need to live from the code contained in our cells, a virus is a code sequence, the sequence codes for the manufacture of more viruses, when you get infected the virus makes thousands of copies of itself which spill out of the cell and in the process usually kill the cell, those copies go on to infect thousands more cells and so on, it's a chain reaction like an atom bomb, very quickly 1 virus multiplies into millions then billions unless your body's immune system finds a way to stop it.

There are two ways it stops one is neutralising antibodies, these attach to regions of the viral particles like a key in a lock and prevent the virus from entering new cells, the second way is that your killer T-Cells identify cells in distress from viral hijacking and kill the infected cells.

Fragments of the virus particles can remain in the blood stream for a long time but these are dead broken up virus, unfortunately the PCR testing process can amplify those fragments and someone who is not infectious or infected any more can look like they have active infection, that is a failing of our toolset for testing people and that is one kind of false positive test.

This is well published, this is the whole point of two weeks isolation if you have been exposed.

They think the incubation period is 3 to 14 days, that means if you have no symptoms after 14 days in general you are deemed to be clear of the virus and unlikely to infect anyone.

As for asymptomatic people I don't know, we don't know exactly why they don't show symptoms but we do know they can shed viable virus but we don't know how long for.

edit: people in intensive care units are still infectious as long as they have symptoms, they are a danger to the people caring for them.

The only virus that I can think of where you need to avoid certain types of contact forever is HIV because it does not go away, HIV infects CD4 T-cells i.e. it directly compromises the human immune system, which unchecked eventually kills the infected person through the disease AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome).

HIV is no longer a death sentence decades of therapeutic research has resulted in treatments that keep it at bay but as far as I know it's not cheap to be on those treatments and people do still die from it.