RSV - most have never heard of this virus and yet its one of those viruses that cause the cold.

The WHO say this virus kills on average 600,000 children a year and causes 33 million serious respiratory infections a year.

The CDC estimates it kills 14,000 adults in the USA each year however they state themselves this is likely an underestimates.

In the UK aroun 14,000 hospitalisations and 8,000 deaths per year just for adults.

Anecdotal I know, but if a large percentage of his contacts now develop coronavirus it would possibly *suggest* the number of people with antibodies in the UK is low. Worth following up IMO.

I do wish people were not so gullible - it can be fatal:

"Iranian media reports nearly 300 people have been killed and more than 1,000 sickened so far by ingesting methanol - fake coronavirus remedies have been widely circulated. Reuters."

Meths is a poison - if it does not kill you, it can make you blind.

My personal list of  known cases :-

1.   2 people from work - tested positive

2.   Sisters friend - in hospital on oxygen

3.  1 cousin's family - positive all caught it -  in isolation - over worst - mild, especially the kids.

4.  2  cousin's family - in isolation,  cousin's  hubby with temp  and persistent cough (so far mild - he's in denial )- almost certainly it - Cousin thinks it is and  she is a nurse.  She also thinks it's highly likley they will all get it.

Just a snapshot and anecdotal for sure but multiply that around the country and it's loads of people, then you add all the mild and asymptomatic cases  that won't have been tested.  IMHO this is massively more widespread than the official figures are suggesting. 

The positive spin on this is we could be a lot nearer the day we reach some kind of herd immunity than is currently officially  recognised.

Still no idea if my cough  and tight chest  was  "it" - and won't do until  antibody tests wheeled out.

Can't find a direct link but the Guardian is reporting that researchers in Germany are proposing a mass study to see what proportion of the general population are immune/have antibodies. This has to be a good thing, but then:

If applied to the general population, I can't see how this would be workable for anything more than a very short crisis period.  A situation where some people have a pass to go and live normally while some don't would be extremely difficult and divisive, plus it would be widely flouted. It would also give people a reason to deliberately get infected so they could get a pass.

If we do get mass antibody testing it should be prioritized for health staff and other key workers so they know when they can safely keep working.

Absolutely !

That's good to hear.

👍

Of course, with luck you might have had a very mild reaction and now be immune for a while - but as everyone keeps saying, without a test we're all in the dark.

I've had several weeks of feeling 'yuk' off and on and had a strange, tight chest which I only noticed initially when exercising and taking deep breaths. Slight temperature for a couple of nights but no cough and no sore throat, so no idea if that was it or not.

Just out of interest, how long did you have that tight chest? Thanks.

I only personally know one confirmed case - my daughter's mother-in-law who appears to have had a similar experience to Nadine Dorris.

Since my son-in-law is a GP and my daughter is an NHS Doctor (in psychiatry) I have been expecting them to come down with it, but fortunately not so far (unless they are asymptomatic). I had been concerned that my daughter might be reassigned to COVID related duties, but yesterday she told me that is unlikely, since there are a lot of new patients requiring psychiatric help (for obvious reasons), although she still has to take the basic precautions when in direct contact.

8,911 tests to 9am today

 2,921 confirmed as positive 32.78%.

A 30%-ish increase, as you'd expect from an exponential function (remember that bell curve!)

The bad news is, we've at least another 10-14 days of marked rises to come, as we're seeing people that will have been infected 2 or 3 weeks ago dying.

More bad press for these delightful creatures

Coronavirus: Pangolins found to carry related strains

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52048195

Bad press for the Chinese more like.

Hopefully however, it means the species will now be protected:

https://www.pangolinsg.org/pangolins/threats/

New JFF model prediction using quite different parameters.

Total number of confirmed cases: 143 070

Total peak number of daily cases: 7181

Day of peak: T-13 days

I've been forced to incoperate the 3 day periodicity into the model, without it I can't get close. There are alot of testing idiosyncracies going on behind the scenes, I need to make at least some attempt to account for them.

English deaths were aged between 29 and 98 and all but four patients (between 82 and 91) had underlying health conditions.

Could be wrong but isn't it close to 50%? (can work out %s but can't remember the number from yesterday for certain)

Edit: Sorry, you were referring to the total. Realised after posting.

5 in Dudley too

You could try casting your racist views a little more widely.

"Estimates suggest that at least 400,000 pangolins are hunting and consumed locally in Central Africa each year"

Ingram, D.J., Coad, L., Abernethy, K.A., Maisels, F., Stokes, E.J., Bobo, K.S., et al., 2018. Assessing Africa-wide pangolin exploitation by scaling local data. Conserv. Lett. 11 (2), e12389.