Coronavirus - worldwide breaking news, discussion, stats, updates and more
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Ms Ordinary
randompointlesschemistry
Hundreds of UK tourists flee Covid quarantine in Swiss ski resort
Depressing, but pretty much exactly the kind of behaviour I'd expect, if they're anything like the people I know who just had to have a little holiday, every time a travel corridor opened up.
Depressing, but pretty much exactly the kind of behaviour I'd expect, if they're anything like the people I know who just had to have a little holiday, every time a travel corridor opened up.
Cloo
Banana for scale
Yes, I suppose the kind of people who just have to go on holiday are also the kind of people who won't fucking respect quarantine.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
Russia admits to world's third-worst Covid-19 death toll
More than 186,000 Russians have died due to coronavirus, three times more than previously reported
wemakeyousoundb
hopefully not gimboid
not unexpected unfortunatelyRussia admits to world's third-worst Covid-19 death toll
More than 186,000 Russians have died due to coronavirus, three times more than previously reportedwww.theguardian.com
2hats
Dust.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Looking just at death rates, quite a few European countries where things had been getting quite bad seem to have had quite a sudden drop-off in the past week or two, and it can be seen in the all-EU count too. Is that real or just an artefact of delayed reporting over Christmas I wonder?
elbows
Well-Known Member
Probably a mix of both, with the most recent numbers for the Christmas period especially unlikely to have captured the full picture. But there have been some meaningful declines in other data over a longer period, and I'd always recommend trying to look at more than one sort of data for particular countries. Hospital data usually tracks pretty well with deaths data, and so the usual graph I post here about that can help. The real declines seen in Spain, Italy and France number of patients in hospital with Covid-19 should translate into somewhat similar trends in regards death. But its still an awkward time with countries fearing a reversal of these gains, and declines grinding to a halt in some places.
The UK data in this graph is quite old now because some nations data hasnt been reported on the dashboard since before Christmas. I will post it again when this data appears.
Johnny Doe
Well-Known Member
I'm right in thinking in the UK, excess deaths this year are about 20% above the previous 5 years? I'm having a great trouble understanding why some relatively bright people don't understand CoVID is real and want the most obvious data
elbows
Well-Known Member
There are many different sorts of data which obviously demonstrate the seriousness of the pandemic. No measure is perfect, for example excess deaths figures are not capturing the picture fully because lockdowns, recession and behavioural changes mean there have been less deaths from various other causes, and we probably wont get all the flu deaths we normally have.
For example, using data published for the year so far, I have 583,330 deaths average over last 5 years, and 658,712 actual deaths this year. So a difference of 75,382. But I am confident that the number of Covid-19 related deaths so far this year is quite a bit higher than that. If I fiddle around by skipping the first months of the year before the pandemic virus really took hold, I get more like 81,000 excess deaths. If I were able to accurately mess with the baseline so that it took account of less deaths from other causes, it would not surprise me if I came up with a figure more like 100,000 by the years end, but that will be controversial and I couldnt claim that the number would be spot on. Its somewhere in that ballpark though I'm afraid.
Johnny Doe
Well-Known Member
That's really helpful. Much appreciated!
hash tag
Books, not bombs
(I laughed because I used a gif of that picture for something else on here yesterday).
Just what is it about Brits abroad
I certainly would not consider traveling at the moment. I gather the newly found British strain is spreadinglike wildfire far and wide.
Re the Verbier thing, it is generally regarded as a rather exclusive ski resort and those that did the runner were doctors (thought
they would know better), lawyers Etc.
It now turns out there has been a bit of a beach party down in Aus which is mainly being blamed on Brits who are being threatened
with deportation
Covid: Sydney beach party sparks 'backpacker' deportation threatGive a dog a bad name.
klang
klang
Not just Brits. It's generally people doing careless travelling. I know a lot of people who went on holidays this summer, from everywhere to everywhere. That's why Germany and Austria closed their skiing resorts. Because they didn't want tourists from anywhere.Just what is it about Brits abroad
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
It was the behaviour of Dutch students that got the GNR out with batons here early summer not the Brits .
Anyway 16h53 - New strain Covid is only known in Madeira, guarantees specialist from Instituto Ricardo Jorge
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
Post-lockdown SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening in nearly ten million residents of Wuhan, China - Nature Communications
Large-scale population screening can provide insights to levels of ongoing SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Here, the authors report a citywide screening of ~10,000,000 residents of Wuhan and show that SARS-CoV-2 infection prevalence was very low five to eight weeks after the end of lockdown.
www.nature.com
Anyone know about this, which is being promoted as saying that asymptomatic transmission is a fallacy, and so there is no need for lockdowns?
elbows
Well-Known Member
Post-lockdown SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening in nearly ten million residents of Wuhan, China - Nature Communications
Large-scale population screening can provide insights to levels of ongoing SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Here, the authors report a citywide screening of ~10,000,000 residents of Wuhan and show that SARS-CoV-2 infection prevalence was very low five to eight weeks after the end of lockdown.
Anyone know about this, which is being promoted as saying that asymptomatic transmission is a fallacy, and so there is no need for lockdowns?
It doesnt contain anything that can be sensibly used to argue against lockdowns.
It covers the situation over one period of time in one key place that had an intense, nasty outbreak that was actually detected, involving an early strain, and after 5-8 weeks had passed since the end of a very intense lockdown. Hardly any cases were detected in general, so its not a picture of what the level of asymptomatic cases would be like in a time and place where an outbreak was rampant.
Plus data about asymptomatic cases from China has always failed to match what many other countries seem to have observed.
Plus even if there was not a single case of asymptomatic tranmission, or the levels were so low as to be a very minor factor in the epidemic waves, so what? Authorities can claim that if there was no asymptomatic transmission then they could manage the pandemic just by asking everyone with symptoms to isolate, but they are still quite likely to face bad epidemic waves that challenge their healthcare systems. Because not everyone can or will comply with such things, and also because even if there was no asymptomatic transmission, there is still presymptomatic transmission, that is transmission from people who will go on to develop symptoms at some later point but havent yet, and so are still moving around and interacting with other people.
If I wanted to use that study to sell an idea, far from using it to argue against lockdown, I'd say its a much better fit with a zero covid approach where you have a really strong lockdown to crush infection levels, and then take various precautions subsequently to prevent the virus regaining a foothold.
elbows
Well-Known Member
The likes of Whitty assume thats what will happen. I try to be slightly more openminded than that, but its still a rather likely prospect. If an alternative approach with an alternative outcomes is strongly considered by many countries that are currently allergic to ideas such as zero covid (total suppression), it wont be for a long time yet, and then that final piece of orthodoxy could be laid to rest. Not very likely, its just I never say never, especially in a pandemic.
2hats
Dust.
The paper itself outlines many of its own shortcomings ("this study has several limitations that need to be discussed"), not limited to: low test sensitivity, 2 channel PCR, potential high false negative rate, low sampling rate (no continuous monitoring of subjects; not surprising if you have millions!). No discussion of sequencing and consequences this can have for validity of results in the light of what we have learned since it was published.Post-lockdown SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid screening in nearly ten million residents of Wuhan, China - Nature Communications
Large-scale population screening can provide insights to levels of ongoing SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Here, the authors report a citywide screening of ~10,000,000 residents of Wuhan and show that SARS-CoV-2 infection prevalence was very low five to eight weeks after the end of lockdown.
Anyone know about this, which is being promoted as saying that asymptomatic transmission is a fallacy, and so there is no need for lockdowns?
Arguably the paper really tells us more about how effective a true, "stringent", lockdown is...
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weltweit
Well-Known Member
Vaccines are currently being administered to those in the UK most at risk and will reduce illness and death. They aren't yet known to prevent perhaps transmission. Unless everyone is vaccinated and travel severely limited, it seems unlikely we can eliminate the virus by vaccine alone.
I draw hope from the Wuhan shutdown, it was significant enough and for a long enough period that the virus ran out of hosts, infected persons either recovered or passed away and there were no new hosts so it was eliminated.
I think the arrival of the UK variant may cause the authorities to revisit elimination as a strategy via stringent shutdown and control of travellers. It seems Tier 4 is not enough, perhaps they will have no choice.
A recently elected US lawmaker has died from Covid-19 - the first member of the US Congress to die from the disease.
Republican Luke Letlow, 41, had been elected as Representative for Louisiana's 5th district and was due to be sworn in on Sunday.
He announced on 18 December that he had tested positive for coronavirus and was admitted to hospital soon afterwards.
Luke Letlow: Newly elected US lawmaker, 41, dies from Covid
Luke Letlow, 41, was due to be sworn in as a Republican Representative for Louisiana on Sunday.
www.bbc.co.uk
cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
Only 41.
Quicker pcr test,
The main issue with the story, it came from a company press release rather than a science journal. The company says they're aiming for EU-wide approval of the test by March.
uk.reuters.com
The main issue with the story, it came from a company press release rather than a science journal. The company says they're aiming for EU-wide approval of the test by March.
Reuters | Breaking International News & Views
Find latest news from every corner of the globe at Reuters.com, your online source for breaking international news coverage.
uk.reuters.com
Yossarian
⏭️
Only 41.
If he hadn't spent months completely ignoring COVID protocols while campaigning he'd probably have seen 42.
I was thinking more along the lines of thank god, a Republican at last.Only 41.
2hats and others, thought you might be interested: I admitted someone last night who was 7 days post vaccination who was community pcr positive. I don't think he had coronavirus and think it was false positive. I contacted the PHE virologist who said it is possible : the pcr target in the community testing is just for the spike protein so it is implausible but possible that this was being picked up (but why would it be detected in mucosal surfaces?), but our in-hospital pcr testing has multiple targets and if only the spike is positive then it gets reported as negative.
Interesting if our confirmatory test is negative - we'll be writing that one up and letting PHE know ASAP!
(well, I'll be a bit delayed as my girlfriend tested positive at 5am so I'm now isolating...)
Interesting if our confirmatory test is negative - we'll be writing that one up and letting PHE know ASAP!
(well, I'll be a bit delayed as my girlfriend tested positive at 5am so I'm now isolating...)
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
.
