2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

Forums › Health and fitness › 2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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574 posts

Ultimate Geek
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#2465854 20-Apr-2020 09:22

Why are you surprised? Do you not follow the news?

That there would be an announcement today deciding whether we stay Level 4 or move to Level 3 on Wednesday 11:59pm was communicated well in advance - early last week IIRC. At that stage businesses and media commentators were saying they needed information and certainty on when they could get back to work, and the government said they needed as much information as possible to make an announcement but still give enough notice. It may be that they decide Level 4 will extend further, and they may decide there will be another announcement before leaving Level 4 then.

tdgeek

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#2465855 20-Apr-2020 09:27

MikeB4: @tdgeek please show me precisely where I stated " you take it as the 100% Govt guaranteed result"

If you are going to assert and attribute to people please be accurate.

Im not playing dog with a bone. If you feel Alert Level 4 is Eliminate as a result, and not the method (as I feel it is) then eliminate is eliminate, its an absolute, its zero. Its 100%. It does not exist in NZ in the wild. Nada. That is accurate as per your definition of Alert Level 4.

Rikkitic

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#2465857 20-Apr-2020 09:31

My impression from comments here and elsewhere is that most people still support extending level 4 to stay on the safe side. A Newshub poll confirms that.

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NumPy

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#2465858 20-Apr-2020 09:31

tdgeek:

NumPy:

I don't know I am not part of the goverment. To be honest I am surprised there is an announcement today because we have not yet eliminated this thing. Maybe the announcement is just going to confirm we stay at level 4. I hope so.

I feel elimination will take a few months. Level 4 was the elimination "method" IMO, its now manageable, so with no thousands of travellers arriving every day and upsetting matters, and more testing, we are well placed to mop it up over time. Just my opinion. Im good to extend L4 if they decide that.

You keep using the words 'mop up'. If we go out of Level 4 now we back to where we were a month ago.

I'm also good to extend level 4 on the grounds that it has not yet eliminated the virus. If I hear we coming out of Level 4 and we have not yet eliminated the virus then I think the last few weeks have been an absolute waste of time and money and we should have just gone to a Level 3 instead of a level 4 1 Month ago.

tdgeek

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#2465865 20-Apr-2020 09:43

NumPy:

You keep using the words 'mop up'. If we go out of Level 4 now we back to where we were a month ago.

I'm also good to extend level 4 on the grounds that it has not yet eliminated the virus. If I hear we coming out of Level 4 and we have not yet eliminated the virus then I think the last few weeks have been an absolute waste of time and money and we should have just gone to a Level 3 instead of a level 4 1 Month ago.

We have had 1400 odd known cases. With a month, people feeling sick, you would feel this is probably the vast majority of what we allowed in the border, plus what has spread. Now we are getting a handful each day, all from what I gather, from existing cases. If we go to L3 today, the daily updates will still be a handful. Say we got 8 cases on day one of L3. Those 8, plus the contacts are removed for circulation. Its mopping up as its low, the leftovers, last dregs. If you look at our outbreaks, the clusters, they seemed to all be avoidable. If you tallied up those outbreaks that's a large number of our current 1400, leaving a relatively small number of natural spread. We havent had random cases from every town in NZ popping up continually. OK, that's level 4 doing its work. L3 is not too much below l4. Workplaces with distancing and other measures just like supermarkets. We have has no cases caused by supermarkets. Yes, there is more risk, but yes, there are WAY lower numbers out there now

Paul1977

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#2465870 20-Apr-2020 09:53

I'd interpret the "eliminate" goal of L4 to be to eliminate it from the community, meaning the only new cases are in the fully isolated bubbles of known existing cases.

E.g. Jane Smith tests positive, but she is in the bubble of known case John Smith.

From a purely health perspective it would be ideal to stay at L4 until there were no new cases at all, meaning true elimination. But that probably isn't feasible as it could take months depending on some bubble sizes.

I think another 2 weeks at L4 and drive home the message that while we are doing well, we need to do better. Seriously consider full quarantine of the bubbles of known cases; I think the number is low enough that this could be done.

Fast and rigorous contact tracing needs to be available, but if it is required at L3 then L4 has failed.

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Paul1977

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#2465875 20-Apr-2020 10:06

tdgeek:

We have had 1400 odd known cases. With a month, people feeling sick, you would feel this is probably the vast majority of what we allowed in the border, plus what has spread. Now we are getting a handful each day, all from what I gather, from existing cases. If we go to L3 today, the daily updates will still be a handful. Say we got 8 cases on day one of L3. Those 8, plus the contacts are removed for circulation. Its mopping up as its low, the leftovers, last dregs. If you look at our outbreaks, the clusters, they seemed to all be avoidable. If you tallied up those outbreaks that's a large number of our current 1400, leaving a relatively small number of natural spread. We havent had random cases from every town in NZ popping up continually. OK, that's level 4 doing its work. L3 is not too much below l4. Workplaces with distancing and other measures just like supermarkets. We have has no cases caused by supermarkets. Yes, there is more risk, but yes, there are WAY lower numbers out there now

Sure, but don't forget that by the time a person is symptomatic and tested they might have been spreading it to others for up to a couple of weeks already. One case could have started a chain spreading to hundreds of people before contact tracing even begins.

NumPy

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#2465876 20-Apr-2020 10:06

Paul1977:

Fast and rigorous contact tracing needs to be available, but if it is required at L3 then L4 has failed.

Exactly this.

vexxxboy

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#2465878 20-Apr-2020 10:15

i am just wondering if we will get out of restrictions before Italy.

Common sense is not as common as you think.

tdgeek

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#2465882 20-Apr-2020 10:19

Paul1977:

tdgeek:

We have had 1400 odd known cases. With a month, people feeling sick, you would feel this is probably the vast majority of what we allowed in the border, plus what has spread. Now we are getting a handful each day, all from what I gather, from existing cases. If we go to L3 today, the daily updates will still be a handful. Say we got 8 cases on day one of L3. Those 8, plus the contacts are removed for circulation. Its mopping up as its low, the leftovers, last dregs. If you look at our outbreaks, the clusters, they seemed to all be avoidable. If you tallied up those outbreaks that's a large number of our current 1400, leaving a relatively small number of natural spread. We havent had random cases from every town in NZ popping up continually. OK, that's level 4 doing its work. L3 is not too much below l4. Workplaces with distancing and other measures just like supermarkets. We have has no cases caused by supermarkets. Yes, there is more risk, but yes, there are WAY lower numbers out there now

Sure, but don't forget that by the time a person is symptomatic and tested they might have been spreading it to others for up to a couple of weeks already. One case could have started a chain spreading to hundreds of people before contact tracing even begins.

Not sure about a couple of weeks, but you are right, there is a risk there. Is it manageable? I think so. Why I feel that is for me L3 is the same as L4. Its still for me, tight. Supermarkets give a glimmer that a workplace is ok. If we only had say 1500 cases in NZ, most from avoidable clusters and from travellers, there isnt much out there now you would think. If ABC Ltd got a case, that's a new cluster, its closed and ring fenced. I guess it depends how many unknown infected people there are in NZ right now.

Fred99

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#2465885 20-Apr-2020 10:29

Fred99:

Reasonable article here from BBC on antibody testing:

Speaking in Geneva, the World Health Organization's (WHO) Dr Maria van Kerkhove cast doubt on the benefit of rapid serology tests due to a lack of evidence around coronavirus immunity.

She said: "There are a lot of countries that are suggesting using rapid diagnostic serological tests to be able to capture what they think will be a measure of immunity.

"Right now, we have no evidence that the use of a serological test can show that an individual has immunity or is protected from reinfection."

(the other point not really covered about the presently available poor quality antibody tests is that studies carried out in various countries using them are being circulated in "preprint" papers that are being picked up by stupid / partisan media, and misinterpreted as conclusive evidence that we should just let this virus run its course and ease mitigation strategies)

Conclusions being made resulting from one of these flawed studies has been debunked.

The study was headlined in the news:

“Santa Clara county has had 50 to 85 times more cases than we knew about, Stanford estimates.”

Of course, had this been true - or even just as flawed an exaggeration and there were "only 5 times more cases", then you divide the case fatality rate by that multiple, and conclude "The disease is nowhere near as bad as we thought, we'll have herd immunity soon, we should lift the lockdowns, it's just (or no worse than) flu.

Big problem if that was wrong, and it turns out that C-19 is just as lethal as it seems to be. And it is wrong - completely wrong.

The conclusions from the study get circulated as a "pre-print" paper, it's being reported as "Stanford research" - and it's not just deeply flawed probably best suited to relieve any toilet paper shortage - but it's dangerous because people believe it, and many of those people for political reasons want to believe it's true - that we've "overreacted" to the threat. Maybe the people who did the study and wrote the paper had a motive - nobody really knows - it hasn't been peer reviewed and that review process usually takes many months that we don't have.

But the worst part is that despite the paper being BS, it's being circulated around the interweb as "proof" that the disease isn't so bad, that we've overreacted - and the same media who happily print headlines with fake "good news" don't bother to retract it - but here we are in a post-truth world where everybody (including many scientists) seems to literally only believe what they want to believe - and ignore anything that upsets that world view.

In cases like this - then they're deliberately or unwittingly putting millions of people's lives at grave risk.

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/04/19/fatal-flaws-in-stanford-study-of-coronavirus-prevalence/

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Batman

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#2465902 20-Apr-2020 10:38

the virus model who advises the country says extend at least another 2 weeks https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/lockdown-should-be-extended-two-weeks-virus-tracker

freitasm

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#2465912 20-Apr-2020 10:49

People keep talking about herd immunity but there seems to be no hard evidence either way.

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Varkk

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Ultimate Geek
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#2465914 20-Apr-2020 10:52

Oh, they will get there, eventually. Even if it means thinning the herd of all but people with a natural immunity to the virus, that might only be 5% or less. But hey, no costly lockdowns slowing the economy.

DS248

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#2465920 20-Apr-2020 10:59

freitasm: ...

Except that one was caught in a supermarket this week, so how many others are doing it? We go back and we have 10% of those 550 going out for a "stretch" and we are back to the same starting point we were a month ago.

It's not just NZ where people are 'naughty'. Probably why places like HK & Taiwan are still seeing occasional local cases despite gaps of several days with none.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-23/hong-kong-expats-point-fingers-over-who-s-spreading-coronavirus

"Officials continue to report quarantine violations, in spite of the threat of up to six months in prison and fines of HK$25,000 ..." = NZ $5,340

"On Sunday, Hong Kong caught five returners who had broken quarantine -- two by removing electronic tracking bracelets. Another 36 people who left their apartments without permission are on a police “wanted list.”

Several of the new cases have been linked to disregard for social distancing protocols. A wedding party at a seaside hotel, Auberge Discovery Bay, has been connected to a cluster of confirmed Covid-19 cases. One of the guests later went out drinking in Lan Kwai Fong, an area of bars in central Hong Kong popular with tourists and foreigners, and infected more people, officials said."

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