Main Coronavirus / Covid-19 Discussion Thread

[Napper]

Spain 9,000 + new cases today.

 

[Rugrat]

Spain 9,000 + new cases today.

Where did you get that from? Worldometers is reporting 2,793

 

[Napper]

Where did you get that from? Worldometers is reporting 2,793

Was worldometers. They have changed it now , thank goodness

 

[Notters]

Incredibly irresponsible reporting which seems based on very little fact based evidence.

Now on the BBC but written even more poorly.

 

[Mellotron]

Spain 9,000 + new cases today.

They need proper separation of actual new cases and cases of antibodies/possible immunity.

Apparently over 17,000 of their total cases are antibodies tests.

 

[The Wizard]

Now on the BBC but written even more poorly.

The MSM are so desperate for clicks, really terrible the way the majority of the press have covered this pandemic IMO. Sums it up, a few weeks ago when Italy were in the depths of the crisis the press were all over them, now they don’t even report their figures because they are dramatically improving. Online newspapers have become even more sensationalised probably because they aren’t selling any physical copies.

 

[The Wizard]

329 England
12 Scotland
8 Wales
NI - NA yet

Around 350 in total, Sunday and Monday are always the lowest figures but looks like being around 100 fatalities down on already low U.K. 449 total last Monday. As always, these numbers are still people and we must always remember that but numbers wise it is positive signs we are well past the peak.

 

[atomised]

329 England
12 Scotland
8 Wales
NI - NA yet

Around 350 in total, Sunday and Monday are always the lowest figures but looks like being around 100 fatalities down on already low U.K. 449 total last Monday. As always, these numbers are still people and we must always remember that but numbers wise it is positive signs we are well past the peak.

Definitely seems a positive trend even with it being weekend figures

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Incredibly irresponsible reporting which seems based on very little fact based evidence.

Now on the BBC but written even more poorly.

Fact Check.

https://www.channel4.com/news/factc...worried-by-warning-about-covid-19-in-children

It is a warning sent out to GPs about a danger to children who have a rare disease.

 

[Notters]

Today's actual date graph for England from the NHS.

 

[Yoda]

Today's actual date graph for England from the NHS.

View attachment 122833

Beat me to it. Also, no Deaths in Sussex reported/registered in Sussex for yesterday (at least not recorded by 5pm, may still change over the coming days but I hope it doesn't). The first time since 18th March.

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

Sunak just said 1/4 of all businesses have already ceased trading?!?

 

[Mellotron]

Today's actual date graph for England from the NHS.

View attachment 122833

Miiight be too early to say, but appears we are decreasing in deaths at a faster rate than Italy did at the same stage post-peak? Italy's death peak as per Worldometers was 27th March (a month ago today) yet it's taken until yesterday for them to post a sub-400 day.

However I wonder if that's partly that they had a bigger early peak and the reporting is taking longer to catch up on, due to the ICUs being overwhelmed etc? Perhaps?

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

Sounds like he’s extending furlough for businesses that don’t open up straight away.

 

[Mellotron]

More noise around asymptomatics;

Diamond Princess

The Diamond Princess testing missed a lot of asymptomatic / mild passengers because they initially focused on testing the significantly ill and symptomatic. The last people tested were the asymptomatic, so they may have been past the RT-PCR window, which was less well understood early on. A later study of a fairly random subset of 104 passengers under quarantine found 73% remained asymptomatic over two weeks of daily medical observation. And that subset had a median age of 68, so we'd expect a more typically aged population to be even higher asymp.

The Roosevelt

“What we’ve found of the 600 or so that have been infected, what’s disconcerting is a majority of those, 350 plus, are asymptomatic,” Esper said in an interview with the “Today Show” on Thursday. “So it has revealed a new dynamic of this virus that it can be carried by normal, healthy people who have no idea whatsoever that they are carrying it.

Ohio prisons

"Nearly 3,300 inmates across four US state prison systems tested positive for coronavirus – but 96 percent were asymptomatic"

Boston Homeless Shelter.

Out of 397 people tested, 146 (36%) came up positive. But even more surprising, they weren't showing any signs of sickness.

Per Dr. Jim O'Connell of Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, "Every one of these folks were asymptomatic. None of them had a fever, and none of them reported symptoms. So the usual screening tool we had been using in order to see who should be tested turned out to be essentially useless for us."

Arkansas Prison

Forty-four of 47 inmates in a barrack at the Arkansas Department of Corrections Cummins Unit prison have tested positive for COVID-19, state officials said Monday. Tyler said none of the inmates are experiencing symptoms.

"All inmates and staff at Cummins have masks and did so prior to the first positive case," Tyler said in the release. The department stopped all visitation with inmates in March

Some of these asymptomatic people may later develop symptoms but the median time from infection to onset is just 5 days and people rarely test positive in the first two or three days post-infection so that's a short window in which a pre-symptomatic person could test positive. Also, since you mention serology validation you may be interested in this info on the Abbott Labs test that will have shipped four million by the end of April and 20 million by June.

“This is a really fantastic test,” Keith Jerome, who leads UW Medicine’s virology program, told reporters today.

The UW Medicine Virology Lab has played a longstanding role in validating diagnostic tests for infectious diseases and immunity.

Jerome said Abbott’s test is “very, very sensitive, with a high degree of reliability.”

Univ of Washington's virology lab reports zero false-positives in their analysis. Abbott's CV19 serological test takes less than an hour and runs on their existing equipment that is already installed and working in thousands of labs with "a sensitivity of 100% to COVID-19 antibodies, Greninger said. Just as importantly, the test achieved a 99.6% specificity".

Doesn't prove anything in and of itself, of course. Just some interesting info.

 

[Weststander]

Today's actual date graph for England from the NHS.

View attachment 122833

Thank you, by date of death, is rarely reported but far more telling. Pleasing to see the effect of lockdown since the worst point of 8th April.

 

[WATFORD zero]

Miiight be too early to say, but appears we are decreasing in deaths at a faster rate than Italy did at the same stage post-peak? Italy's death peak as per Worldometers was 27th March (a month ago today) yet it's taken until yesterday for them to post a sub-400 day.

However I wonder if that's partly that they had a bigger early peak and the reporting is taking longer to catch up on, due to the ICUs being overwhelmed etc? Perhaps?

I'm always very wary of comparing UK figures against other countries as we have no idea of their reporting basis, their delays in reporting and the effect of these things on overall numbers, when even the UK announced figures are way out.

If you compare the figures released daily by the Government to the ONS date of death figures, we know that the Government's daily reporting is only 64% of total fatalities at best, due to the announcements being hospital deaths only and the delay in reporting. This means that today's announced figure of 21,092 fatalities is actually a minimum figure of 31,956 fatalities. (I can be more specific tomorrow with the next release of ONS figures).

This is what we know about the UK, given all the detailed information available to us. And if we are only managing an accuracy of 64%, how other countries are doing, I wouldn't have a clue

Having said all that, I think all the trends for the UK on both cases and fatalities are looking negative (which, of course, is positive )

 

[The Wizard]

Pretty much all nightingales virtually empty, I could of course be wrong but the government probably knew the majority wouldn’t be ready for phase one peak of the virus but still went ahead to build them at a substantial cost, do they allow the government to potentially ease restrictions earlier than some other countries (in the timeline) because we know we have the extra capacity there if needed for ‘wave 2’ of the virus, should this come when they loosen restrictions.

Fits in with what Boris said before his illness about lockdown buying the NHS time and restricting the spread to allow us to cope with the peak. Probably wrong, but you’d think at the very least these extra beds will give the government a little more room for error.

 

[Green Cross Code Man]

Pretty much all nightingales virtually empty, I could of course be wrong but the government probably knew the majority wouldn’t be ready for phase one peak of the virus but still went ahead to build them at a substantial cost, do they allow the government to potentially ease restrictions earlier than some other countries (in the timeline) because we know we have the extra capacity there if needed for ‘wave 2’ of the virus, should this come when they loosen restrictions.

Fits in with what Boris said before his illness about lockdown buying the NHS time and restricting the spread to allow us to cope with the peak. Probably wrong, but you’d think at the very least these extra beds will give the government a little more room for error.

I do not think the govt want a high 2nd peak like that nor expect it. Jeremy Hunt mentioned earlier that all the historic data of epidemics supports protecting the workforce at the expense of the economy in an initial phase actually gives much more benefit to the health of the economy in the long term. I would be surprised if the govt was anything but cautious in relaxing lockdown measures, as getting it wrong would precipitate a more damaging 2nd peak.

 

[Raleigh Chopper]

Sunak just said 1/4 of all businesses have already ceased trading?!?

I wonder if that includes people like me as a one man band who has ceased trading because I can't go in other people's houses.
I have not packed it in but I have definitely ceased until I'm allowed to sensibly do so.
There must be thousands like me.