Coronavirus

[Mudface]

5 minutes ago, Stront19m Dog™ said:

Science.

 

 

The paper's from 2018.  https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2018.0296

 

Is this a universally accepted model? If not, why would it apply to Covid-19? And how does it fit in with the various social distancing restrictions governments enacted? Do we have a study that correlates that, along with the more than 6+ months worth of data that we've accumulated?

 

If not, that snacks more of a random Tweet and you saying 'Science' in lieu of anything actually scientific. 

[TheHowieLama]

16 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

38000 seems pretty hard to believe when it was 3000 just a few days ago. There's the Zoe app also tracking symptoms as well as tests and there hasn't been that level of uptick. 

The app reports actual test results doesn't it - certainly they can see the backlog of test numbers and extrapolate that against current positive test %. I would imagine they also figure in a multiplier on virus spread for the time spent twiddling thumbs.

[Sugar Ape]

16 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

38000 seems pretty hard to believe when it was 3000 just a few days ago. There's the Zoe app also tracking symptoms as well as tests and there hasn't been that level of uptick. 

Yeah seems too high at the minute but maybe they’ve got data it’s higher than we think, fuck knows since they’ve fucked up testing. 

[sir roger]

Seems the North East ( bar Teesside ) are in line for fairly severe restrictions from the week end, a meeting of local mp's have been pre-warned.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Stront19m Dog™ said:

Science.

 

 

Ironic that social distancing is abbreviated to SD. SD can increase the size of an outbreak is scientifically sound, where SD is @Stront19m Dog™.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Mudface said:

The paper's from 2018.  https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2018.0296

 

Is this a universally accepted model? If not, why would it apply to Covid-19? And how does it fit in with the various social distancing restrictions governments enacted? Do we have a study that correlates that, along with the more than 6+ months worth of data that we've accumulated?

 

If not, that snacks more of a random Tweet and you saying 'Science' in lieu of anything actually scientific. 

Science does not include the word 'may'. The headline of that article does include the word 'may'. There have been many epidemics, if it were true the word 'may' would be replaced with a more definitive word.

[skend04]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/17/falling-flu-rates-in-southern-hemisphere-offers-hope-as-winter-approaches-coronavirus

 

Lockdowns have greatly reduced instances of the flu in the Southern Hemisphere during their winter season.

[Barrington Womble]

7 hours ago, TheHowieLama said:

The app reports actual test results doesn't it - certainly they can see the backlog of test numbers and extrapolate that against current positive test %. I would imagine they also figure in a multiplier on virus spread for the time spent twiddling thumbs.

Initially the app was looking at symptoms only to try and track cases, back before we had world leading track and trace we have today. Then some time maybe through may or June it got involved in the testing programme too. They combine this data, with the symptoms data and ons data where they test parts of the community symptoms or not, to try and understand the numbers of cases nationally regardless of our testing capability or people who may be asymptomatic. 

[Bjornebye]

Have I seriously just seen someone claim that social distancing INCREASES the spread of virus and then called it science? 

 

The mind boggles. 

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Bjornebye said:

Have I seriously just seen someone claim that social distancing INCREASES the spread of virus and then called it science? 

 

The mind boggles. 

[Barrington Womble]

zoe figures up by another 1000. 

 

[Bruce Spanner]

9 hours ago, Sugar Ape said:

The Tories are fucked whatever they do now they’ve lost control of testing. 
 

If they lockdown now everyone will moan including their own MPs as they don’t think cases/hospitalisations are high enough to justify it, if they don’t lockdown and end up like they were in March and April them everyone will be fuming at them for not introducing a lockdown until it was too late. 
 

 

He’s retracted this now, that Whitty advises, but I don’t think he’s too far off from where we’re really at.

[Strontium]

42 minutes ago, Bjornebye said:

Have I seriously just seen someone claim that social distancing INCREASES the spread of virus and then called it science? 

 

The mind boggles. 

 

"Science doesn't give the results I think it should - it must be wrong"

[Bjornebye]

5 minutes ago, Stront19m Dog™ said:

 

"Science doesn't give the results I think it should - it must be wrong"

"may" "think" 

 

Solid. 

[Mudface]

Some potentially good news at least- https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/17/falling-flu-rates-in-southern-hemisphere-offers-hope-as-winter-approaches-coronavirus

 

Southern hemisphere has record low flu cases amid Covid lockdowns
Data offers hope as winter looms in north and raises viability of eliminating future flu pandemics

Cars queue for a Covid-19 test in Auckland, New Zealand, on 14 September. New Zealand’s Covid-19 rates are among the lowest in the world, but even notwithstanding the pandemic, people in the country have experienced their healthiest cold months on record. Photograph: Hannah Peters/Getty Images
Health systems across the southern hemisphere were bracing a few months ago for their annual surge in influenza cases, which alongside Covid-19 could have overwhelmed hospitals. They never came.

Many countries in the southern half of the globe have instead experienced either record low levels of flu or none at all, public health specialists in Australia, New Zealand and South America have said, sparing potentially tens of thousands of lives and offering a glimmer of hope as winter approaches in the northern hemisphere.

General practitioners in New Zealand have not detected a single influenza case since they started screening patients in June, health data shows; last year about 57% of the samples they collected were positive.


The last flu cases detected by major hospitals in Auckland, the country’s largest city, were in April. “It’s amazing. There’s just nothing there at all. No influenza,” said Michael Baker, professor of public health at the University of Otago in Wellington.

New Zealand’s Covid-19 rates are among the lowest in the world, but even notwithstanding the pandemic, people in the country have experienced their healthiest cold months on record. “Our excess winter mortality peak has largely disappeared,” Baker said.

A tracking system that monitors a cohort of at least 30,000 people for influenza-like symptoms shows as few as 0.3% of New Zealanders reported coughs or fevers some weeks during their winter, a tenfold decrease on some previous years.

The trend holds true across the Tasman Sea in Australia, where Covid-19 restrictions have also deeply dented rates of flu and other respiratory illnesses. The country recorded more than 131,000 influenza cases in the peak months of July and August last year, according to government data. Over the same period this year, there were 315.

“Cases have fallen off a cliff since March,” said Prof Ian Barr, deputy director of the World Health Organization’s collaborating centre for reference and research on influenza, in Melbourne.

Fewer than 40 Australians have died from influenza this year, compared to more than 950 last year, “and there haven’t been any deaths for the past three to four months”, Barr added.

Even across South America and in South Africa, where lockdowns have been patchy or harder to enforce, and Covid-19 has spread widely and killed tens of thousands of people, flu rates have been well below historical rates or nonexistent – despite increased testing for it in the Americas, according to the Pan American Health Organisation.

This apparent contradiction – Sars-CoV-2 growing exponentially while influenza virtually disappears – illustrates a key difference between the two viruses. The seasonal flu is not just less deadly, but significantly less virulent, Baker said.

Populations have higher immunity to seasonal influenza, whether acquired naturally or through vaccines, while travel bans instituted from March interrupted the normal migration of the virus from the northern hemisphere to the south.

As an unprecedented live experiment on a massive population, it could offer some good news for northern hemisphere countries heading into their own flu season, just as drier air and more time indoors are expected to drive up Covid-19 rates. Even relatively less stringent quarantines appear to be surprisingly potent at suppressing influenza and other common respiratory illnesses.

“You would still see a flu season, but I expect it would be much less intense,” Baker said. “Northern hemisphere countries that are actively suppressing Covid-19 to some degree should get a lot of protection [from influenza] by doing that.”

It could mean that more people are susceptible to flu strains in the years ahead, having not acquired any kind of immunity this year, Barr said, though he added the threat would significantly decrease if people kept washing their hands thoroughly and wore masks in crowded areas even after the pandemic subsides.

In a year that will be studied by public health specialists for decades, it also points to new ways of fighting the future influenza pandemics that some scientists regard as inevitable.

“[Before,] it was thought that when a new influenza pandemic virus arrives, all you can do is dampen it down, you can’t stop it,” he said. “We now know that if you had a pandemic flu virus of sufficient severity, you could take the elimination approach, or even the exclusion approach, as Taiwan has done with Covid-19.”

[Gnasher]

11 hours ago, Stront19m Dog™ said:

Science.

 

 

I'm staying two meters away from that report.

[TheHowieLama]

5 hours ago, skend04 said:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/17/falling-flu-rates-in-southern-hemisphere-offers-hope-as-winter-approaches-coronavirus

 

Lockdowns have greatly reduced instances of the flu in the Southern Hemisphere during their winter season.

 

Many countries in the southern half of the globe have instead experienced either record low levels of flu or none at all.

[Dougie Do'ins]

13 hours ago, Mudface said:

Jesus fucking Christ. Our sacrifices bought them a few months to get sorted after they completely fucked up the original response, and they've managed to fuck this up beyond belief within weeks. These cunts should hang, along with whatever bellend came up with the idea that Covid couldn't spread within schools.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/sep/16/up-to-25000-teachers-in-england-self-isolating-due-to-covid-fears

 

Wonder why it's 'state schools' going through kits so quickly and there's no mention of private schools  ?

 

Hmmmmmm

[Sugar Ape]

Proportion of people getting in-person test results in 24 hours has halved, latest figures show

 

NHS test and trace has published its latest weekly performance statistics (pdf). Here are the main points.

 

A total of 18,371 new people tested positive for coronavirus in England in the week to 9 September, the figures show. That’s a 75% increase on the total for the previous week.

 

The number of people receiving in-person test results within 24 hours has halved, the figures show. The service has never been able to meet Boris Johnson’s target of delivering test results within 24 hours. But the latest figures show that in the week ending 9 September just 33.3% of people tested a regional site, local site or mobile testing unit - a so-called “in-person” test - received their result within 24 hours. This is down from 66.5% in the previous week.

The service reached 73.9% of people identified as close contacts of people who had tested positive for coronavirus in the week ending 9 September and told them to self-isolate, the figures show. That was an increase on the figure for the previous week, 69.5%, but well below the average performance since May, 78.1%, and below the unofficial 80% target set by the government’s Scientific Advisory Group of Emergencies for the service to be effective.

[Mudface]

Should start calling it Serco Test and Trace, put the blame where it really lies.

[TheHowieLama]

Can you pay out of pocket for the 15 minute test in the UK?

[Sugar Ape]

4 hours ago, Barrington Womble said:

Initially the app was looking at symptoms only to try and track cases, back before we had world leading track and trace we have today. Then some time maybe through may or June it got involved in the testing programme too. They combine this data, with the symptoms data and ons data where they test parts of the community symptoms or not, to try and understand the numbers of cases nationally regardless of our testing capability or people who may be asymptomatic. 

Some info on this today:

 

 

 

One source of information on coronavirus taken seriously by scientists is the data from the Covid symptom app launched by a team from King’s College London. More than 4 million people have downloaded the app, and in an interview on the Today programme this morning Prof Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College, said that his findings suggested that, if people did not have severe headaches or fatigue, they probably did not have coronavirus.  
 

He said:

What we are learning from all these data points [is that] nearly everybody, 80% of people, in all the age groups in the first week reported quite severe headaches and tiredness, fatigue. 

 

What we are seeing is, if people are particularly worried about colds and Covid, if they don’t have this combination of symptoms, quite severely, it’s highly unlikely that their symptoms are actually related [to coronavirus].

 

In a comment that may offer reassurance to thousands, he also said that people with a runny nose, or who were sneezing, almost certainly did not have coronavirus.
 

He said:

We’ve also shown some negative signs in our app. So if you do have a runny nose, or congestion, or sneezing, that’s really a sign you absolutely do not have Covid.

[Barrington Womble]

40 minutes ago, Dougie Do'ins said:

Wonder why it's 'state schools' going through kits so quickly and there's no mention of private schools  ?

 

Hmmmmmm

I'm guessing the private schools have to fund their own and probably stock piled or are doing it all through their own choice of private company - and selecting one who might actually know what the fuck they're doing. 

[Barrington Womble]

10 minutes ago, Sugar Ape said:

Some info on this today:

 

 

 

One source of information on coronavirus taken seriously by scientists is the data from the Covid symptom app launched by a team from King’s College London. More than 4 million people have downloaded the app, and in an interview on the Today programme this morning Prof Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College, said that his findings suggested that, if people did not have severe headaches or fatigue, they probably did not have coronavirus.  
 

He said:

 

 

 

In a comment that may offer reassurance to thousands, he also said that people with a runny nose, or who were sneezing, almost certainly did not have coronavirus.
 

He said:

 

 

Some good stuff in there I think. I was searching through the NHS website at the weekend because of my daughter and there was conflicting information about a runny nose, wish I'd know the above info then. 

[Rico1304]