2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2544781 19-Aug-2020 22:29

rugrat:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12350087

Lot of graves for twice the death rate of the flu. We have a yearly vaccine for the flu, though not perfect saves a lot of lives.

Also if someone needs hospitalization that is bad as well. Lot more going to hospital from this then the flu.

Out of a current 96 known active cases in NZ, 5 are in hospital.

I'm guessing you'll say there's another couple of thousand cases not tracked?

https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-current-situation/covid-19-current-cases

Hospitalization rate of this outbreak seems a lot higher than last time. I don't have enough info to form a conclusion, but I have heard demographics (age / ethnicity) speculated.

Of course the death rate is only one factor when comparing to influenza. The main other factor is how contagious it is (R0 value). A minor other factor is how much damage the virus does to those who live through it.

When we did the initial lock-down the main concern was about the virus's ability to overload our hospital system, leading to fatalities from other stuff as well. The ability of Covid-19 to consume a large amount of hospital resources seems well in excess of influenza. (that said we do have hospitals overflowing in bad flu years).

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#2544829 19-Aug-2020 23:19

rugrat:
]

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12350087

Lot of graves for twice the death rate of the flu. We have a yearly vaccine for the flu, though not perfect saves a lot of lives.

Also if someone needs hospitalization that is bad as well. Lot more going to hospital from this then the flu.

Out of a current 96 known active cases in NZ, 5 are in hospital.

From the Numbers - the DEATH rate is 20 to 40 TIMES Worse than the seasonal flu.

This is why we have refrigerated trucks with bodies lined up in New York.
And Mass Graves of unidentified bodies buries in peacetime in Italy.
(Which can't be exhumed for 2 years to get identified & returned to relatives [tissue matter must fully break down and anything the virus could survive on broken down - before they can disturb it again.] )

This is incredibly more serious than the common Flu.
(With its longitudinal damage & short 3-6month natural immunity expiration - every time you get it - you come out worse off & at higher risk the next round)
......like a First Person Shooter player with no access to Med Packs...... Except this is real life!

Hurray! For the use of a decent amount of DFNZ personal! I said this week's ago! - it should also majorly reduce our cost of isolation facilities. (They are already getting paid - & we are not paying new wages for this work) & accountability should be far greater.
I still think it is still far too low - by a factor of 10 - there is zero reason to be using Any External Security contractors! - if the Army can't 'secure' a site, they ain't worth 'tuppance'.
Put 5000 Defense Force staff on the job, for pity sake!
We know they won't moonlight with 2nd jobs! - & when they are given a sanitization process to follow - they are darned likely to follow it!!

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#2544832 19-Aug-2020 23:50

freitasm:

The cynic in me says whoever talked to RNZ had an ulterior agenda when talking about those low rates.

That is entirely possible, though it didn't come across as if the interviewee had such an agenda.

I do think the differences between the figures may be attributed to different measurement metrics. In reality there may not be a significant difference between them once the differing methods have been taken into account.

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#2544833 19-Aug-2020 23:58

Air NZ mass email:

Kia ora,

There has been a fair bit of noise around testing of aircrew recently and I wanted to give you some clarification around how we are protecting New Zealand and our country's fight against COVID-19.

It’s fair to say our aircrew have borne the brunt of the impact of COVID-19 on a very personal level and this has tremendous impact on their everyday lives and wellbeing. I want to make sure we all support them, as they are essential to keeping New Zealand connected.

Testing of crew and border workers

The current Government testing regime has delivered a high volume of testing across our crew, with many being tested multiple times. In addition to this, we are also strongly encouraging all of our Auckland airport-based staff to be tested because it’s the right thing to do for our people, for our customers, and to ensure New Zealanders can have confidence in Air New Zealand.

Our people follow strict guidelines:

•We have separated our A320 cabin crew which means they either operate international or domestic flights, but not both.

•Many international destinations require crew to undergo testing which means they are tested here before they go.

•Our international destinations have protocols in place to ensure crew are not exposed to COVID-19 during their layover. The Ministry of Health deems the US a high-risk route, which is why crew need to be tested on their return and self-isolate for 48 hours. This has been ongoing since June and we have an in-house testing facility up and running for this purpose.

•When offshore, crew are required to follow strict protocols including self-isolating in their hotel room and having their food delivered. They must wear masks and gloves when moving through the terminal. If crew are travelling to a hotel, they only use crew transport so they are not mixing with other people. There is no use of hotel gyms or pools and our crew do not meet with other crew while offshore.

•Crew travelling between Australia and New Zealand remain at the airport for the turnaround and return to New Zealand on the same day.

•Crew travelling to the Norfolk Islands from Brisbane and Sydney are required to self-isolate in their hotel while in Australia.

Tackling COVID-19 is a team effort and we continue to work closely with the Ministry of Health around guidelines that keep our communities safe.

Travelling within New Zealand

Here in New Zealand, travelling in Alert Level 2 and 3 does look a little different than usual.

•All front of house Auckland Airport staff and domestic cabin crew are wearing masks and gloves, and pilots will be wearing masks when moving through the terminal and interacting with customers.

•Masks are required when leaving Auckland Airport and for the rest of the country it is encouraged. Thank you for your cooperation with wearing masks - our crew and your fellow passengers appreciate it.

•Physical distancing is the new normal for the next few weeks at least, but we will do our best to seat travelling companions together.

We are also regularly cleaning our aircraft with antiviral products, approved for use by aircraft manufacturers and by the World Health Organisation, and hand sanitiser is available on board all aircraft for customer and crew use.

Our crew take their responsibility of keeping themselves, their colleagues and our customers safe very seriously. We appreciate the personal sacrifices they are making to return people to their homes and get our economy moving again. So please be kind to crew and other customers – together we can get through this.

Ngā mihi,

Greg Foran

CEO

Seems to be a disconnect between the Airline and Chris Hipkins with Air NZ staff only self isolating (48hours) and testing NZ based international crew on return if they have been to a high risk country.

Even then the 48 hour isolation period seems odd given the number of people that have come through managed isolation and passed the day two test, but become positive on day 12.

I think the time for high trust "self isolation" is well over given the potential consequences (and antidotes of aircrew breaching the rules.).

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#2544836 20-Aug-2020 00:09

Technofreak:

mattwnz:

Please can you provide a source for this information, eg WHOs numbers. Also who was the expert?

...University of Auckland's Public health lecturer Simon Thornley ...

Ah, of course it was good old "Plan B" Thornley. I assume he is getting airtime as some weird "balance" against the vast majority of New Zealand's epidemiologists (not that he is one of course). I thought he'd been complaining about being silenced by mainstream media, so had been concentrating on pushing his ideas via social media, but the renewed lockdown has restored his anti-lockdown platform

He definitely has a huge amount of self-confidence - you would think that having sixty other University of Auckland health academics being so appalled at their colleague's theories that they wrote to the PM to affirm the scientific consensus would cause some self-reflection, but no - he's happily off selecting random data to support his ideas.

Looking at the site, Plan B don't seem to have changed much - still quoting Sweden's Covid response as something to aspire to (ignoring the economic and health stats to the contrary), and saying that we shouldn't lockdown because Covid 19 isn't all that bad but lockdowns are - a good response to all that is here on newsroom https://www.newsroom.co.nz/covid-19-should-nz-go-swedens-way

tieke

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#2544838 20-Aug-2020 00:18

I had thought that Plan B's recent "international symposium" would have been similarly worthless, but the reddit user sum_won_els has some interesting comments on it in this reddit thread

sum_won_els:

I watched this in its entirety live on Monday.

Two of the speakers were actually really good: the Canadian vaccine specialist, Byram Brindle gave a good account of why we should temper our hopes on that front a little and Carlo Caduff gave an excellent critical analysis of our framing of the pandemic. Interesting to note that Caduff's nuanced and critical presentation is the only one that has not been posted to their page (at his request?).

Sunetra Gupta's analysis was excellent until she flew of the rails with prescriptions for action.

The rest undertook some half-baked analysis, ignorance of socio-cultural / institutional specifics, cherry picking of evidence, misusing evidence and outright wild and false claims (I'm looking at you in particular, Bhattacharya, I'm going to be charitable and say that you were under-prepared).

Interesting to note that despite being "against lockdowns", they roundly failed to engage with, provide a definition of or acknowledge different countries' approaches to the concept until Carlo Caduff spoke at the end. I would have expected this to be the first topic (but of course that would undermine their campaign).

All in all I'm generously giving it a B-

Edit to add that I completely zoned out of the legal / liberty talk as that's neither an area I am knowledgeable or interested in; so none of the criticism applies.

Caduff's talk can still be watched here, just remembered the youtube thing:

https://youtu.be/cf_zWtdKKKQ?t=23138

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#2544891 20-Aug-2020 08:02

Technofreak:

The cynic in me would say the WHO have a interest in publishing data to back up their original claims otherwise they run the risk of being seen as an organisation that published unreliable data, thus losing the confidence of their benefactors. Then again perhaps the WHO never said 3 in 100 would die and all along they were using the CFR as their basis, though the CFR does seem to be an odd way of measuring the fatality rate.

I think one point being made is the fatality rate is far less than was initially being predicted by various "expert" sources.

The cynic is me says ignore the cynics ...

... when it comes to global pandemics.

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#2544898 20-Aug-2020 08:29

just want to make a quick observation - i've been watching a lot of sport taking place in Europe recently

- soccer matches (international - say a local team from Spain vs England, France vs Ukraine)

- cycling races (like you have 200 people from all over the world bunched up in a sardine packed group riding for 4 hrs a day)

and i'm sure other sport are happening too

when you look at the case rates in Europe over 100,000 cases a day

- so they have learnt to live with covid around them?

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#2544900 20-Aug-2020 08:34

@Batman given the case rates and deaths in Europe and the America’s the answer to that is no they haven’t. The longer they dick around and think kicking a little ball or wearing Lycra is more important than lives the same nations like Aotearoa have to keep locked up and locked down.

Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.

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#2544907 20-Aug-2020 08:46

MikeB4: @Batman given the case rates and deaths in Europe and the America’s the answer to that is no they haven’t. The longer they dick around and think kicking a little ball or wearing Lycra is more important than lives the same nations like Aotearoa have to keep locked up and locked down.

ok i'll watch this space. specifically a whole month of it. tour de france is starting soon ... 200km a day x 19 days x 200 cyclists + their circus i mean entourage. could be interesting in terms of covid.

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#2544913 20-Aug-2020 09:02

They're also meant to be running in 'sport bubbles' like the Warriors.

But the public are coming out in droves and still trying to hi-5 the riders etc. While they have to stand on a podium with a mask on to collect trophies as part of the contract requirements.

Goes back to the same old

People are stupid. The leaders don't make them stupid/cockups. Individuals equally play a part not to.

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#2544935 20-Aug-2020 09:40

Batman:
MikeB4: @Batman given the case rates and deaths in Europe and the America’s the answer to that is no they haven’t. The longer they dick around and think kicking a little ball or wearing Lycra is more important than lives the same nations like Aotearoa have to keep locked up and locked down.

ok i'll watch this space. specifically a whole month of it. tour de france is starting soon ... 200km a day x 19 days x 200 cyclists + their circus i mean entourage. could be interesting in terms of covid.

It stuns me governments, sporting and cultural groups and general public in many places around the globe seem to think we are nearly through this when really we less than a third of the way through this deadly journey.

Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.

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#2544937 20-Aug-2020 09:41

tieke:

@Technofreak:

...University of Auckland's Public health lecturer Simon Thornley ...

Looking at the site, Plan B don't seem to have changed much - still quoting Sweden's Covid response as something to aspire to (ignoring the economic and health stats to the contrary), and saying that we shouldn't lockdown because Covid 19 isn't all that bad but lockdowns are - a good response to all that is here on newsroom https://www.newsroom.co.nz/covid-19-should-nz-go-swedens-way

It seems Plan B proponents (and those that want a Sweden-alike strategy) shout about economic impact but conveniently forget that an increase in death rate may impact the workforce. With an impacted workforce there maybe less tax collected, less retail. Those who survive COVID-19 might be in for at least a few months, if not a life-long, series of lasting effects on health - including lungs, liver and hearth, which will need to be treated at the taxpayers expenses (those same taxpayers who are now no longer contributing because they are either too ill to continue working or dead already).

But don't let some scenarios get on the way of their immediate profits.

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#2544998 20-Aug-2020 10:02

Scott3:

Batman:

every time i hear on the news "we have no new cases" "we have no community transmission for x days"

it just sickened me to know there was no testing and people were mixing so what was the point of those statements. now all sorts of blaming and excuses but i better stop right here or else

*OTOH, i don't think any other govt (as we have seen in 195 countries) can do a lot better, and it is also possible that - no matter what you do, it was going to come in anyway.

Remember at the end of the last lockdown when we were cerebrating no active cases in NZ at all. Then we started testing those in managed isolation, finding that roughly one case a day was getting imported into NZ.

While you may well be right, about other governments not being able to do better, but NZ is in a different situation to other countries (including having somewhat competent governance), so we don't need to follow other countries leads.

Regarding it coming in being inevitable, we could completly close our boarders and have the military paroling to shoot down rouge aircraft, and boats who breach. Of course not having any imports (and having five times as much food as we can consume), along with abandoning New Zealanders currently out of the country would we disproportionate for the severity of covid-19 - Perhaps a movie level virus could justify this...

Given the above, we accept risk at the border, in return for the rewards of having trade and limited travel. Essentially an odds game. I think we should be stacking the odds in our favor as much as is reasonable.

Minister accepts responsibility https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300086610/live-coronavirus-cluster-growth-slowing-minister-accepts-border-testing-blunder-responsibility

But seriously, are there only 2 people in the Govt (PM of everything + Minister of everything) that does any work? the rest of the govt don't appear very useful ...

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#2545000 20-Aug-2020 10:06

"World Memorial for the Pandemic" to be constructed in Uruguay according to this

https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/latest/122500283/coronavirus-visually-powerful-world-memorial-planned-for-victims-of-the-pandemic

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