COVID-19: THE RISKS

If you've ever had flu, it's typically a couple of days in bed and then back to normal.  If you don't look after yourself, there can be an extended period of lethargy, but that is rare.  As are complications that result in death, with on average 17,000 people dying a year in England from 'flu annually between 2014/15 and 2018/19, in the range 1,700 to 28,300.

COVID-19 is in a completely different league:

• We've already had tens of thousands of deaths in just a few months in England.
• Extended illness including at least 250,000 people suffering LongCOVID

Relax our precautions, and a second wave will claim tens of thousands more dead, and hundreds of thousands with LongCOVID.

We must take COVID-19 very seriously illness.


DEATHS

'Excess mortality' in England, where the mortality in 2020 is compared to the average of recent years, was 53,455 people by 31 July.  Across the UK well over 65,000 even by mid June.

THE OTHER RISKS

But there's much more to COVID-19 than deaths.  There are six distinct risks, applicable to young and old alike:

• Typically ill for 2-3 weeks, much longer than for 'flu, which is a period that is disruptive and can mean lost income.  It's also worse.  Here's one man's experience "It felt like my head was on fire" and "Constant fear". 

• Sometimes longer illness, including possibility of needing to be hospitalised.  This can arise when the immune system over-reacts in what is called a 'cytokine storm'

• Death, as above, although this happens mainly to older people, and in any case below about 1% of those people infected

• Long term lethargy, which again is disruptive and may mean being off work

• Other LongCOVID symptoms, where the virus has attacked other organs such as heart liver, kidneys, digestive system and brain, which can go on for months if not a lifetime.  

• Strokes, even in the young and healthy

There are also indirect risks of inconvenience even if someone has a negative "Got it" test:

• The email I received advises I should still self-isolate for 14 days if "someone you live with tests positive or you've been traced as a contact of someone who tested positive.

• However "If you're not a contact [of someone tested positive] you may return to work if you've not had a fever for 48 hours and feel well" or otherwise get back out living 'COVID-normally'.

• At least until I show symptoms again, when I should "get tested and self-isolate for 10 days from when they start"

For children, LongCOVID is known as MIS-C, Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children, which is a similar multi-organ problem to that which affects adults.  Here's a new paper published in The Lancet, which says:

"In the past 3 months, there have been increasing reports from Europe, North America, Asia, and Latin America describing children and adolescents with COVID-19-associated multisystem inflammatory conditions, which seem to develop after the infection rather than during the acute stage of COVID-19."


Nobody young or old is free of that risk.


A new organisation called the "Long Covid Support Group" has been set up working in partnership with the UK Sepsis Trust.  It is on social media: 

• Twitter

• Facebook, as a private group you can join

As it says on its home page: "It is estimated that up to 10% of people with the virus take at least 3 weeks to recover, with 250,000 people in the UK alone thought to experience symptoms for 30 days or more "

Other studies have shown over 50% of people who have had the virus can have ongoing symptoms.


CONSEQUENCES OF DROPPING OUR GUARD

As New Zealand has recently found, give the virus an inch and it will take a mile.  After more than 3 months without a single case of transmission within the country, an outbreak initially affecting a family of four is now 69 as of today 18 August.  It's covering all age groups, as shown on their official website:

Auckland August cluster – cases by age, as at 18 August 2020

Age Group	Number of Cases	Percent of Cases
0 to 9	7	10%
10 to 19	10	14%
20 to 29	8	12%
30 to 39	10	14%
40 to 49	11	16%
50 to 59	14	20%
60 to 69	5	7%
70+	4	6%
Total	69	100%

This isn't a virus that's going to be be going away any time soon and can affect everyone, whatever their age.  We need to live with it for the foreseeable future, with or perhaps without an effective and safe vaccine, as one is not guaranteed.



IN CONCLUSION

COVID-19 is in a completely different league to 'flu.  We've already officially had more than 50,000 more dead than normal in England, and estimates of LongCOVID exceed 250,000.  LongCOVID is estimated to affect over half of the people who display symptoms with COVID-19.

Drop our guard for a moment and we'll have a second wave that will do this all again.

If you are lucky enough to have escaped COVID-19 so far, or have had it only mildly, then you are lucky.  Let's hope you stay that way.

But as a society we need to take COVID-19 extremely seriously, by taking all reasonable precautions, and getting infection rates down to a very low level.


We can't just hope for the best that it will go away.  With risks of this magnitude, don't we have to err on the side of caution?