frankv:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My interpretation is that there's a large pool of near-asymptomatic covid cases in NSW (as stated in the article), so that when a random person has an accident there's a small but significant chance that they will also be covid-positive.

 

A family in NSW I'm related to has covid in their household. They are isolating at home, as directed by the authorities. They told us that they were told to *not* come into hospital unless they were really sick (i.e. needing oxygen). So all the NSW patients that are being admitted *because* of covid are really sick, but there's relatively few of them. And there's a large number with covid (maybe unknown, maybe not) at home, breaking hips and having heart attacks and consequently going to hospital. In this context, "üp to half went in for something different" isn't surprising at all.

 

I expect that the hospitals would record the admission reason for every admission; that's a *very* standard thing to record. So it's a bit surprising that they are reporting counts of covid-positive patients. But I wouldn't be surprised if that was what they were asked to report by whoever in the State government was doing the press releases. Conversely, the "üp to half" is vague and pretty much meaningless, and suggests that the reporter hasn't bothered to ask the right question.

 

I'd expect that the people doing the actual planning of management of covid in NSW would be using the correct stats, and have much better data, so wouldn't be "flying blind".

 

 

 

There could be, without exaggeration, half a million cases now or certainly before weeks end if the 2.4 doubling time has been sustained.

That would be very good news, with positivity rates at 20% this could even be an accurate figure now across the population.

Again this would mean a very rapid wave that goes into rapid decline.

I guess our very fragile health care system and fairly unhealthy population demographic when exposed to omicron really will tell the world what happens in a virgin system.

The high rate of vaccines will protect all most all Kiwis,...it is that million who are not vaccinated that we have to hope only needs a bunch of beds.