2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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269 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#2499540 6-Jun-2020 12:04

Batman:

I bet this is not the only fake study out there eh. This is going to give a lot of fuel to Trump supporters and science skeptics.

Yes, I see lots of papers where the results are impossible (i.e., plots are inconsistent with reported data in tables, statistical test values are inconsistent with each other). Generally indicates faked data or incompetence.

In this case there was both. Even if wasn't based upon faked data the analysis had serious issues and should of never got through peer review. But proper review is hard: Yesterday I spent half a day reviewing a paper and it took a lot work find the critical flaws (and it is something that could have reasonable implications for public health). We also get no payment for peer review.

This is really not going to help the current situation. Only a few scientists are truely fraudulent. Many are incompetent though.

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cshwone

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#2499605 6-Jun-2020 13:09

MoH are conducting a survey on information flow:

https://consult.health.govt.nz/communications/covid-19-survey/

zenourn

269 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#2499611 6-Jun-2020 13:17

cshwone:

MoH are conducting a survey on information flow:

https://consult.health.govt.nz/communications/covid-19-survey/

They need a proper survey designer! First question gives a huge list and says pick 5 most important items: to remember all items on that list then properly pick the top five is actually quite a difficult task. Need a much smaller list and to be able to rate importance from 1-5.

neb

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#2499663 6-Jun-2020 13:48

zenourn:
Lancet has issued a retraction of the flawed hydroxychloroquine paper:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31324-6/fulltext

Note that this was the meta-analysis by Surgisphere, not any real research that was retracted. In other words a dodgy company with dodgy employees published a summary of dubious data that told the wrong story, it wasn't actual medical research.

neb

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#2499664 6-Jun-2020 13:50

Looks like Anders Tegnell has finally admitted, or at least barely admitted, that Sweden got its approach to Covid19 wrong. Thinking about this, what Sweden did is apply Pascal's Wager but do it in reverse. For those unfamiliar with it, Pascal's Wager is a philosophical problem that uses a 2x2 decision matrix with the rows "God exists" and "God doesn't exist" and the columns "Worship God" and "Don't worship God". The outcomes are then:

God doesn't exist + Worship God: Nothing bad happens.

God doesn't exist + Don't worship God: Nothing bad happens.

God exists + Worship God: Nothing bad happens.

God exists + Don't worship God: You go to Hell.

The best bet then is to worship God.

In Swedens case the rows are "Rest-of-the-world strategy" and "Sweden's stategy" and the columns are "It works" and "It doesn't work". The outcomes are then:

Rest-of-the-world strategy + It works: Nothing bad happens.

Rest-of-the-world strategy + It doesn't work: Nothing bad happens (politically) because you did what the experts advised and what everyone else did.

Sweden's strategy + It works: Nothing bad happens.

Sweden's strategy + It doesn't work: You go to Hell.

So they took Pascal's Wager but came to the reverse conclusion of the logical one.

mattwnz

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#2499781 6-Jun-2020 17:22

rugrat:

So just wear masks on plane, temperature screening and no need to quarantine for 14 days, I didn't realize someone would get a temperature the moment they are infected!

If it's because no cases for many days in both countries fair enough, otherwise what are they smoking.

:

I am not sure if they haven't been watching all of the 1pm MOH press conferences since early this year. However the DG has explained why temperature checking at the airport gates wasn't being used. It may only pick up people who have symptoms, and there is a margin of error with such equipment. Also why masks were not currently being recommended in NZ. These things may or may not help, and they may or may not reduce the risk. But they won't eliminate the risk. The only way to eliminate the risk to NZ is to eliminate the virus.

If we are not going to use quarantine in our travel bubble, then we need to be 100% certain that anyone entering the country and is not going into quarantine, is not infected. Not just a low risk. The fact that cases got into the country and from 'low risk' places at the time, just show how this hidden virus can get in undetected, and then easily spread, especially as we are always upto 2 weeks behind the virus. I don't think many NZers realize how much of of bullet NZ dodged with this.

Also surely if these were the new international guidelines, wouldn't they be being used now with people entering the country?

The main issue NZ has, is that next week we may have got to the stage were we have eliminated the virus, and moved to level 1, which is basically normal life, which is how many people are already living. But Australia will still be in their level 2 - 2.5, and still with quite a lot of restrictions. The level they are in makes contact tracing far easier. If the virus was to get into NZ from an Australian , who then goes to an event in NZ with a large crowd, how are we ever going to be able to contact trace those people? Think of the even down south that was a major cluster. The only way I can see contact tracing working, with having the risk of potential new cases from Oz, is to move back into level 2, where the numbers of people in groups is lower and allows the contact tracing not to be overwhelmed. But that means increasing our restrictions to match Australia, when we have potentially eliminated it and have gone harder than Australia to eliminate it, with a proper elimination policy, rather than just suppression.

The way I see it, whoever a country joins a travel bubble with, they need to essentially be in the same situation with the virus, and have similar contact tracing systems. If both countries have 'eliminated it' then snap, we match.

mattwnz

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#2499794 6-Jun-2020 17:27

ben28:

The source country would need to be virus free in order for this to work. I dont expect Australia to be at that level for months if ever

I think they have some states that could be. But as they will be opening their state borders, and they only have a virus suppression policy, and not an elimination one, the situation in NZ vs Oz is significantly different. I think the PMs date of September as the earliest is more realistic. But there seem to people wanting this in less that a month. The potential risk IMO seems way too high, considering it has possibly cost 100billion plus to eliminate it.

I would like to see them focus instead on opening up to the pacific islands, who need us for their tourism. Why aren't they instead focusing on this first? THen they can use that, if successful, as a blueprint for a trans-tasman bubble.

ockel

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#2499832 6-Jun-2020 18:20

mattwnz:

ben28:

The source country would need to be virus free in order for this to work. I dont expect Australia to be at that level for months if ever

I think they have some states that could be. But as they will be opening their state borders, and they only have a virus suppression policy, and not an elimination one, the situation in NZ vs Oz is significantly different. I think the PMs date of September as the earliest is more realistic. But there seem to people wanting this in less that a month. The potential risk IMO seems way too high, considering it has possibly cost 100billion plus to eliminate it.

I would like to see them focus instead on opening up to the pacific islands, who need us for their tourism. Why aren't they instead focusing on this first? THen they can use that, if successful, as a blueprint for a trans-tasman bubble.

Its such a danger and such a risk that Australia, in a " level 2 - 2.5, and still with quite a lot of restrictions" as you describe it, will have crowds at sporting events next weekend. With lower death rates despite a clearly burgeoning cohort of unidentified infected it sees the risk/benefit very differently to you and our precious Prime Minister.

Common sense should prevail - $100 billion dollars is an incredibly high price to save 25,000 lives. Way more that Pharmac, NZTA or Worksafe places on the value of a life. What makes Covid so special???

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mattwnz

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#2499851 6-Jun-2020 19:10

ockel:

Its such a danger and such a risk that Australia, in a " level 2 - 2.5, and still with quite a lot of restrictions" as you describe it, will have crowds at sporting events next weekend. With lower death rates despite a clearly burgeoning cohort of unidentified infected it sees the risk/benefit very differently to you and our precious Prime Minister.

Common sense should prevail - $100 billion dollars is an incredibly high price to save 25,000 lives. Way more that Pharmac, NZTA or Worksafe places on the value of a life. What makes Covid so special???

Hopefully common sense will prevail. The thing is that all countries are doing things differently, and the vast majority are doing 'suppression' so their health system doesn't get overwhelmed, because they don't see it as realistic that their country will be virus free. Even some high profile people in NZ have previously used this as an argument for having the travel bubble, that it isn't possible to eliminate it in the country, and we will have to manage cases until a vaccine, but that isn't correct now if we have eliminated it.

100 billion to save 25,000 lives is quite low, as that values a life at around 4 million. There was an expert on the on Q&A program a month or so ago ago discussing this topic and they did value lives higher than this. But as well as lives, having the virus in the country also affect economic activity significantly. Less people will be going out and about and spending if we are living in level 2.5-3. We ave essentially all been enjoying a relatively normal life for weeks now compared to just about every other country infected with this, because we went harder and faster than other countries including Oz. If we were the UK, we would likely already have around 5000 dead from it, and they have more ICU beds per capital than NZ

We were only a week away from being overwhelmed by the virus, Italy style, if we hadn't gone into level 4 lockdown. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/121738171/coronavirus-nz-a-week-away-from-an-italystyle-health-system-crash

ockel

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#2499865 6-Jun-2020 20:34

That is one persons opinion of what might have happened. There were plenty of fears in the healthcare system - it became apparent on a region by region and hospital by hospital basis that these fears were quickly unfounded which is why they had a colour coded overlay beyond the Level nomenclature.

An aged-care facility or an at-risk individual will have a different opinion to that of an essential worker or an office worker. Those opinions need to be collated and balanced with a risk-weighted anaylsis for population health and economic health. We have been captive to population health experts whose viewpoint that any risk greater than zero is an unacceptable risk. Other nations have different viewpoints, as you say, Sweden is at one extreme, NZ is at the China/Vietnam/Taiwan extreme. Australia is less extreme with the same (or better) outcome.

Lets get away from the zero tolerance rhethoric and consider the longterm economic damage that is being done to the country while the population health experts have their day in the sun. They got ignored for measles, they got ignored for meningococcal disease, just because someone is paying attention now doesnt mean all other advice shouldnt be balanced against their viewpoints. So far it is.

Sixth Labour Government - "Vision without Execution is just Hallucination"

frankv

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#2499945 6-Jun-2020 23:48

mattwnz:
I would like to see them focus instead on opening up to the pacific islands, who need us for their tourism. Why aren't they instead focusing on this first?

Because there aren't that many Pacific islanders wanting to come here for skiing holidays.

The trans-Tasman bubble is about bringing tourists to NZ to rescue the lucrative tourism industry.

mattwnz

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#2499951 7-Jun-2020 01:04

frankv:
mattwnz:
I would like to see them focus instead on opening up to the pacific islands, who need us for their tourism. Why aren't they instead focusing on this first?

Because there aren't that many Pacific islanders wanting to come here for skiing holidays.

The trans-Tasman bubble is about bringing tourists to NZ to rescue the lucrative tourism industry.

That is why I suspect Australia aren't as keen as NZ is about a travel bubble, exclusively with NZ, as they don't have as much to gain. Instead they are also looking at bubbles with other countries, which means by default NZ would also be joining those bubbles indirectly too, and possibly increasing the risk, especially if they open one with the UK as was posted by someone above.

The Pacific islands also need us as tourists to rescue their tourism industry, so they potentially have more to gain than us. But it will mean that NZers will be able to holiday away from NZ, at no risk.

I do wonder how much insurance coverage people will have with a travel bubble to Australia, until it has been eliminated in both countries.

WIth the big rallies today in the AUstralia, and the warnings that it could lead to a second wave in Australia, I think that may push back the travel bubble. We'll know in a week or two if those rallies have spread it.

neb

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#2500038 7-Jun-2020 13:23

ben28:
If what he said is true, then the whole recommendation needs to be rejected and be told to go away and try better. Even to a simple layman like me, this recommendation introduces too much risk. A person could catch covid at the departure airport and they wont have any symptoms for a number of days.

Not just that, but temperature-based screening is so horribly inaccurate it's little better than guesswork, it's essentially no screening at all. Potential travellers need to know that if they want to come to NZ they need to factor in 14 days quarantine before they get the run of the country. Sheesh, after our failure to enforce quarantine in Samoa in 1918 caused a catastrophic outbreak there you'd think we'd have learned something about the need for quarantining potential carriers coming into a non-resistant population.