2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2503044 11-Jun-2020 16:19

mattwnz:

It is working fine for me today, so may have just been a bug yesterday, where the entire grey 'enhanced by google search box was missing. . As someone else mentioned above who had a similar problem, I was also using chrome, and all ad blockers are disabled.

Did the same for me a minute ago - sorted by refreshing the page. (Chrome).

frankv

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#2503050 11-Jun-2020 16:31

Fred99:

Supposedly only 19,000 "active cases", but 700 died so far today. So they're way behind on testing which skews the stats, but it's clearly way out of control there.

Not that it's particularly apropos Fred99's post, but it occurred to me while reading it...

Counterintuitively, when the disease is way out of control the Infection Fatality Rate (deaths/infections) is relatively low, because the new infections are a large multiple of the old infections. New infections haven't had time to get sick and die. Deaths will relate to people who got infected days to weeks to months ago (given a good hospital system with available ICU beds). When the infection is under control, the IFR will rise for a while.

mattwnz

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#2503059 11-Jun-2020 16:58

wellygary:

Not looking great on the Trans-Tasman bubble front...

I think we are about to get some real life data on mask wearing over the next few days...

"A man in his 30s who went to Saturday's Black Lives Matter protest in Melbourne, which thousands of others attended, has tested positive for COVID-19. He is one of eight new cases recorded in Victoria overnight, including a toddler.

The man, who wore a mask to the protest, developed symptoms in the 24 hours after the demonstration, the state's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said"

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/attendee-at-black-lives-matter-protest-in-melbourne-contracts-covid-19-20200611-p551jq.html

Yeap. I predicted this could happen after those marches in Oz.

Didn't they have some court case to try and stop the marches, due to the high risk of it spreading the virus? All those people who attended those marches should be required to self isolate for 14 days. This was requested by everyone who attended the NZ ones, even though there was less risk in NZ because we were already at a lower risk and there was no sign of community transmission occurring.

I think they are going to have low level community transmission occurring for many months in some parts, because they never implemented a level 4 type lockdown, which is needed to starve the undetected community transmission.

neb

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#2503139 11-Jun-2020 17:41

Fred99:
I also think it's been politicised in countries where they've mishandled things - the notion of widespread "asymptomatic" spread justifies the political position that "there's nothing we can do" to stop C-19 transmission. They grasp at straws that the answer is to limit spread by wearing masks, but fully reopen the economy.

Yup, that's the response by people who don't understand how science works, they expect a magic answer machine but science doesn't just pop out instant answers like a politician. Phenomena require study, and further study of any phenomenon may demonstrate that early assumptions were wrong, which leads to a re-evaluation of results and projections for the future.

We've only known about this virus for about six months, and initial assumptions worked from knowledge of related viruses like SARS and MERS because there wasn't enough data available for Covid19. Expecting perfect answers from a virus that researchers have known about for half a year is unrealistic, and in particular assuming that every time there's a re-evaluation of results based on new information means that the researchers are always wrong and all the conspiracy theories are always right shows a complete misunderstanding of how science and medicine work.

msukiwi

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#2503142 11-Jun-2020 17:55

If the report into the Rest Home clusters says it entered via a staff member or visitor, how else could it enter the Rest Home?

(Realistically of course? Walked in by itself?)

tdgeek

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#2503147 11-Jun-2020 18:19

msukiwi:

If the report into the Rest Home clusters says it entered via a staff member or visitor, how else could it enter the Rest Home?

(Realistically of course? Walked in by itself?)

I think the issue is was it preventable. Mistakes happen, it may have been slack, or inadvertent

mattwnz

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#2503163 11-Jun-2020 18:23

tdgeek:

msukiwi:

If the report into the Rest Home clusters says it entered via a staff member or visitor, how else could it enter the Rest Home?

(Realistically of course? Walked in by itself?)

I think the issue is was it preventable. Mistakes happen, it may have been slack, or inadvertent

I recall that at the time, people returning from most countries weren't being required to self isolate. Self isolation was only for a few countries and regions earlier one. So potentially if there was a staff member who had returned, they could return to work. Likewise the same for visitors.

tdgeek

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#2503166 11-Jun-2020 18:28

mattwnz:

I recall that at the time, people returning from most countries weren't being required to self isolate. Self isolation was only for a few countries and regions earlier one. So potentially if there was a staff member who had returned, they could return to work. Likewise the same for visitors.

Yep, your probably right, I thought this was later on, But OTOH if she came from Oz and went to work straight away that's a gap. I haven't read the articles as have been out today but I saw one that pointed the finger at her I thought, I;ll check now

tdgeek

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#2503168 11-Jun-2020 18:36

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/121797658/coronavirus-report-on-agedcare-clusters-reveals-how-virus-got-in-to-facilities

Doesn't really say a lot. But in hindsight it was tough for the employees and visitors. Mistakes were no doubt made. Many aged care centres had zero cases, but those that did it was harsh to say the least. Easy to say now, but learnings. NZ and probably every other country had pandemic plans but not a 100 year event plan. Can we expect any Govt to cater for a 100 year event? IMHO, no. But from here I expect many will, as this event may occur in another 100 years or another 2 years.

bluey

70 posts

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#2503172 11-Jun-2020 18:48

Excuse me if I have missed previous discussion on this but doesn't Sweden have a pretty good idea of how many infections they have had (through antibody testing) and therefore a good idea of the death rate of the virus?

I see a lot of people still debating the death rate but surely Sweden should know pretty well the rate when hospitals are not overrun.

mattwnz

16395 posts

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#2503183 11-Jun-2020 19:09

tdgeek:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/121797658/coronavirus-report-on-agedcare-clusters-reveals-how-virus-got-in-to-facilities

Doesn't really say a lot. But in hindsight it was tough for the employees and visitors. Mistakes were no doubt made. Many aged care centres had zero cases, but those that did it was harsh to say the least. Easy to say now, but learnings. NZ and probably every other country had pandemic plans but not a 100 year event plan. Can we expect any Govt to cater for a 100 year event? IMHO, no. But from here I expect many will, as this event may occur in another 100 years or another 2 years.

Although it is a 1 in 100 year event, I would have thought the planning if it would be similar to planning for a bio terrorism event. Potentially something like this virus could be a perfect bio weapon, partly due to the way it spreads undetected before people even show symptoms, and it keeps people mobile allowing it to spread. Plus other countries certainly did plan for it, as we have had warnings over the last few decades with near misses like SARS and MERS. Bill Gates even predicted it. On the TV program Sunday, a NZ scientist said that we should now plan for these events every 10 years. That is scary, because what has changed that increases the chances of these events occurring? Humans encroaching on nature too far?.

kingdragonfly

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#2503224 11-Jun-2020 20:29

I have no medical training, but this sounds like a bad idea.

How to Fight COVID-19... with a Virus

SciShow

When it comes to fighting COVID-19, scientists are throwing every bit of science we’ve got at it. A creative technique some researchers are looking into involves using gene therapy to fight this virus with… another virus!

Fred99

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#2503245 11-Jun-2020 22:08

bluey:

Excuse me if I have missed previous discussion on this but doesn't Sweden have a pretty good idea of how many infections they have had (through antibody testing) and therefore a good idea of the death rate of the virus?

I see a lot of people still debating the death rate but surely Sweden should know pretty well the rate when hospitals are not overrun.

I think that it's complicated - without going back and checking sources, IIRC they did a reasonably well randomised and accurate serology survey in late April, found about 7.5% had antibodies in Stockholm, but much lower elsewhere in Sweden. They estimated from that, presumably using growth in number of confirmed cases to extrapolate that maybe 20% of the Stockholm population had been exposed (by a few weeks ago). That's fraught with so many variables and multiplies errors/uncertainty.

Worldometer has a section on "IFR" (infection fatality rate) in New York City. The figure they came up with is 1.4%.

US CDC quote 2 deaths per 100,000 population for seasonal influenza. Based on the article linked above, New York had ~ 279 deaths per 100,000 population - to get to only less than 1/3 of what would be needed for herd immunity. Those are the figures people should be looking at. The reason we locked down hard here was stated as that if C19 let rip the eventual death toll would be tens of thousands. It's correct - that's what would happen.

ockel

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#2503365 12-Jun-2020 09:23

And so it goes on: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12339050

With the school holidays only a month away the concept of travel to a COVID-free country remains trapped in political mire.

I can fly to what was one of NZ's C-19 hotspots - Queenstown - and not have to quarantine or self isolate when I get home BUT I cant fly to a C-19 free country like the Cook Islands without having to spend 14 days in mandatory quarantine when I return.

Utter madness. A country that is willing to take the risk of having people from a country that had an outbreak like NZ but we treat them like lepers. And the lack of response from the Government shows there is no understanding, no common sense, no clue. Again.

#cluelessGovernment

ockel

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#2503508 12-Jun-2020 11:06

Great article from Newsroom. It will take years, at the current rate, to bring our own people home let alone deal with tourists.

Clearly if you're in the most affluent group of people (like film workers for billionaires) then you'll get one of those 250/day places for quarantine.

https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2020/06/12/1225937/the-limit-on-nz-incs-migrant-led-growth?utm_source=Friends+of+the+Newsroom&utm_campaign=d95be47f50-Daily+Briefing+12.6.20&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_71de5c4b35-d95be47f50-83321269

How difficult can it be to organise more quarantine places - hotels have record low occupancy (and are being mothballed), hotels have the ability to provide food and cleaning, the Government should be able to organise security and management for more than 3,500 people at a time.

And capacity hasnt changed in a month. What are Departments like Immigation and Health doing? Continued mismanagement.

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