2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2531051 29-Jul-2020 21:05

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Pandemic failure or convenient scapegoat: How did WHO get here?

On April 7, the number of reported deaths in the United States due to COVID-19 reached 12,757—surpassing the CDC’s median estimate of 12,469 deaths from the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic, during Barack Obama’s administration.

That same day, the US president began attacking the World Health Organization for failing to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

@realDonaldTrump

The W.H.O. really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?
3:04 AM · Apr 8, 2020

...
WHO had the job of being the world’s alarm system for the coronavirus outbreak. But WHO was established as and remains an organization whose members are sovereign nations; its ability to act directly when diseases threaten is limited by its members’ willingness or unwillingness to cooperate—and, more fundamentally, by the mandate and resources for intervention that its member states authorize.

What does it actually mean, then, when the most powerful of WHO members, the United States of America, sternly turns around and points the finger of blame at WHO—and, in no small regard, at itself?
...

Hatch

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Hatch (affiliate link).

debo

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#2531053 29-Jul-2020 21:08

Fred99:

There's no point suggesting use of a test which isn't very good, then there's the added problem that countries are somewhat less motivated to test departing travellers than arriving ones.

You keep stating that antigen tests are not very good. Where are you getting your information from? Can you post some links so I can evaluate it. Your information seems to be in contrast to this Medcams video. Probably best we get on the same page with regards to these tests.

Batman

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#2531077 29-Jul-2020 21:36

tdgeek:

ezbee:

Victoria, many lessons here for Professors of Economics, to consider.

The Human factors, so you get tested, and then disappear. Of course you do.

29 positive cases who should be isolating can't be located, Daniel Andrews says

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-29/coronavirus-australia-live-news-covid19-queensland-victoria-nsw/12501508

All you need is an outbreak and a bunch of these types of idiots.

@batman said Victoria is better today? Ive been away.

i didn't

ezbee

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#2531127 29-Jul-2020 21:57

tdgeek, Re my post above on Victoria.

Yep Victoria is trending finally in the right direction fingers crossed last 3 days being 516,364,295 Cases.
https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiODBmMmE3NWQtZWNlNC00OWRkLTk1NjYtMjM2YTY1MjI2NzdjIiwidCI6ImMwZTA2MDFmLTBmYWMtNDQ5Yy05Yzg4LWExMDRjNGViOWYyOCJ9
My post above was to point out that its hard won progress when you have people tested positive who flout isolation at home.
Scale of disaster does not get through to enough people, does not have to be many to make gains tenuous.

Fred99

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#2531132 29-Jul-2020 22:12

debo:

You keep stating that antigen tests are not very good. Where are you getting your information from?

Check US FDA for EUA (interim approval) and selectivity/sensitivity data.

Then it's a few days after active infection before IgM can be detected, so with high false negatives and false positives (reacting to "common cold" coronaviruses), they're not very good. The slower RNA test with isolation/quarantine are safer, you can't safely eliminate quarantine with IgM/IgG tests, to confirm a positive you'd need to do a RNA test - which should be done anyway - and all travellers should be quarantined (as we're doing in NZ) for two weeks. There's no easy answer to avoid that need (quarantine).

FDA authorisation is more or less for "research purposes" - not diagnostics.

frankv

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#2531164 30-Jul-2020 06:40

Batman:
frankv:

[quoted] Batman:

But deaths in the sprawling slum have not exploded, with local officials saying their aggressive efforts to stem the spread of the virus have been effective.

[/quoted]
yet poor people, who can't afford health care let alone hospitalisation, aren't dying.

It doesn't seem credible to me.

how do you know they aren't dying?

Because the article said deaths haven't exploded. And large scale deaths would be hard, if not impossible, to hide.

DS248

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#2531263 30-Jul-2020 10:31

Large COVID-19 outbreak in a high school 10 days after schools’ reopening, Israel, May 2020

https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.29.2001352#html_fulltext

"The circumstances promoting infection spread involved return of teenage students to their regular classes after a 2-month closure (on 18 May) and an extreme heatwave (on 19 May) with temperatures rising to 40 °C and above [6] that involved exemption from facemasks and continuous air-conditioning."

freitasm

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#2531266 30-Jul-2020 10:37

Interesting interview with Dr Fauci on Wired:

Why do you think the US has done so poorly in suppressing this pandemic compared with other rich countries?

It isn't just one single factor. Let me give you one or two that I think are important. First of all, other countries, certainly Asian countries, and certainly the European Union, when they so-called locked down—shut down, shelter in place, whatever you want to call it—they did it to about 95 percent of their countries. So they did it in full force. Some countries got hit badly, but once they locked down and turned things around, they came down to a very low baseline—down to tens or hundreds of new cases a day, not thousands. They came down and they stayed down.

Now, in the United States, when we shut down, even though it was a stress and a strain for a lot of people, we only did it to the tune of about 50 percent of the country shutting down. Our curve goes up and starts to come down. But we never came down to a reasonable baseline. We came down to about 20,000 new infections per day, and we stayed at that level for several weeks in a row. Then we started to open up—getting America “back to normal”—and started to see the cases go from 20,000 a day to 30,000, 40,000. We even hit that one point last week of 70,000 new cases a day.

So when you're starting off with a baseline that already is very high, and then you try to open your country, and instead of listening carefully and adhering to the guidelines, some states—and I’m not going to name them—skipped over some of the checkpoints. They didn’t adhere to the guidelines, which essentially suggested a very measured, prudent way of opening step by step. In other states, the governors and mayors did it right. But in some—all you needed to do was take a look at some of the films. You see people congregating in crowds at bars with no masks on. We didn't shut down fully, the baseline never came down to a real low level. And when we started to open up, we didn't open up uniformly in a very strict way.

Would there ever be a point where you feel your voice would have more impact speaking from outside the government?

No. What people don't appreciate is that a very important part of what I do is developing vaccines and therapeutics that I believe will ultimately end this. I'm a part of the Coronavirus Task Force, but that is not my main job. My main job is as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is the leading funding organization for the conduct and support of research on infectious diseases in the world. So that has nothing to do with anything that you and I are talking about right now. Because what I'm really trying to do most of the time is develop the vaccines. In fact, you might recall that yesterday, a vaccine that was developed by my group went into a Phase III trial.

How much time do you spend in that lab? What's your role in that research?

I run the institute. I run a $6 billion institute.

When is your best guess about when the vaccine will be available to us?

Probably by the end of this year, the beginning of 2021.

Do you think there's going to be one vaccine for everyone?

No, I think that there's going to be multiple successful vaccine candidates. There are at least five or more that we are supporting out of the NIH, and other countries are also having a considerable effort on vaccine development. I'm hopeful that there will be more than one successful vaccine, because we need vaccines not only for the United States, we need it for the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, we’re still trying to understand all the effects of this novel virus. What's the one thing you most want to learn about how this virus operates?

Well, I think we're learning a lot about it. I think what we would really like to know is what are the long-term effects on people who recover from the coronavirus. Are they really totally normal after that, or do they have long-term negative consequences of having gotten infected?

This is a brand-new disease. We've only experienced it for a few months. We don't really know what it means if you get really sick and recover. How are you going to be one, two, three years from now? Only time will give us the answer to that.

freitasm

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#2531270 30-Jul-2020 10:50

"Everything you need to know about New Zealand’s new managed isolation fees":

Who is going to be charged?

The business crowd and holidaymakers are the main target. If you’re in New Zealand right now and you plan to leave in the next few weeks for a getaway or business meeting you might want to look at your cancellation policy. The government won’t have much sympathy if you complain about the cost of coming back with a tan or a new business contact.

New Zealanders coming home for fewer than 90 days will also face the fees. There are some exemptions, but it rules out a quick visit for anyone who wants to attend, say, a wedding or a birthday. To escape the fee you pretty much need to be coming back to New Zealand with plans to live here, get a job and pay taxes.

Temporary visa holders will also be required to pay, unless they are critical workers or were ordinary residents of New Zealand before March 19. Based on current border restrictions, this category will probably apply mostly to partners of New Zealanders.

Good.

kiwifidget

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#2531315 30-Jul-2020 12:09

700+ new cases in Victoria.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12352306

Delete cookies?! Are you insane?!

GV27

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#2531347 30-Jul-2020 13:14

+1 case NZ, in iso.

No CT for 90 days.

So next question: how long do we have until the probability of a false negative on a day 12 test gets out in to the wild?

How long until those false negative day 12 tests trigger something?

Very hard to feel relaxed about our situation given how things are going in Victoria atm.

Oblivian

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#2531348 30-Jul-2020 13:16

2nd PSR has gone + in Korea too.

So false positive scenario dropped.

Fred99

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#2531349 30-Jul-2020 13:18

kiwifidget:

700+ new cases in Victoria.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12352306

723 confirmed cases / 13 new deaths.

The story about the two young women who travelled from Brisbane to Melbourne to "steal clothes from boutiques", caught covid, returned to Brisbane via Sydney, stayed in the airport so they avoided NSW quarantine, caught a flight to Brisbane, lied to border officials...

They've been identified and their photos splashed all over the news in Australia. Jesus wept.

Oblivian

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#2531352 30-Jul-2020 13:26

The media are once again trying to turn the Covid stand-up, into a political story headline grab. Sigh. 'Do you trust Ms Boag..'

And the other day, asking for their thoughts on the cannabis referendum.

Some said they need to ask dumb questions to get the right answers for public asking those. But these... sheesh.

tdgeek

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#2531353 30-Jul-2020 13:28

GV27:

+1 case NZ, in iso.

No CT for 90 days.

So next question: how long do we have until the probability of a false negative on a day 12 test gets out in to the wild?

How long until those false negative day 12 tests trigger something?

Very hard to feel relaxed about our situation given how things are going in Victoria atm.

I'm relaxed. This isnt Victoria. Victorians cant be bothered doing the right thing. So many dont. If we had a false result leak out we will be told, people in that area will comply as thats what we do (yes, always exceptions) Its a big cultural difference. Conservative Kiwis will do enough of the right thing to avoid quick massive spread.

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