2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

Forums › Health and fitness › 2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2464761 18-Apr-2020 14:12

Ge0rge: No press conference today?

IMO this isn't good. IMO it sends the wrong signal. I thought they rotated staff, to give some people time of? Also considering there was apparently a guy who was infected who went shopping at the supermarket, and only got a warning. Why aren't they fining these people and forcing them into quarantine? Self isolation has proven to be a big mistake IMO when it comes to this virus and how it spreads. Unless people risk a big fine, they seem to just be risking it. A $1k fine IMO is a wet bus ticket, and they don't seem to be issuing many of those. In Australia they are taking enforcement seriously. Maybe that is one reason why their cases number aren't that bad considering they had both cases and community transmission well before NZ? If you have the virus and risked getting a 20k fine, I don't think you would visiting the supermarket.

debo

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#2464766 18-Apr-2020 14:23

mattwnz:

Fred99: No data on whether any of the "random" community testing uncovered any cases. If they did - then we've got a problem.

The thing is that it isn't really random, nor testing the people that probably should be tested, so it doesn't surprise me. There was an article from an expert about how crude this method was and that it wouldn't really show much, but I can't find that article any more. I am guessing these tests are going to be presented to the government as an indication that it isn't really spreading in the community. But we still had 13 new cases today, which IMO is a concern this far into lockdown. Unfortunately they still don't appear to be telling us where all these new cases are occurring, in terms of what sort of people are being infected. Guessing some are from resthomes, some are medical staff?. It appears once this virus gets it's foot in the door somewhere, it is rampant.

I consider this "random" testing retarded. It would be better to have tested all 15000 Queenstown residents in combined tests. So swab 50 people and then do 1 test on the whole group. Still 300 tests over all but you will know exactly the spread. If a group tests positive then test the group individually.

frankv

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#2464767 18-Apr-2020 14:26

Scott3:

I know that the WHO has minimal credibility at this point,

I don't think there's any basis for that. Or are you going on the White House pronouncements?

DS248

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#2464779 18-Apr-2020 14:42

Update of plot, changed to cases per million population per day and added Hong Kong for comparison. Don't have suitable database for other countries (well do for Singapore but with the runaway situation there now, not a good comparison).

Small drop in NZ cases ('Date of report' 17 Apr relative to 16 Apr) but still far from 'near zero' (cf Hong Kong - ours still only a little under their max).

Also, cases for 17 Apr may still rise a little in future updates. Today's data includes two cases with 'Date of report' 18 Apr (today), hence only 11 attributed to 17th (3 imported, 8 'local').

ezbee

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#2464828 18-Apr-2020 14:47

More residents from Te Atatu rest home moved to Waitākere Hospital

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12325767

Aged Care homes have a lot of problems , they would be prime material for the old style investigative journalism.
Used to work with someone who had constant problems , not minor stuff .
Minimum wage staff , minimum levels of staffing, minimum supervision, minimum DHB oversight, Financial Directors probably maxing out their bonuses.

Very much the weak point for anything like this.

ITs not just the old people.
The staff there can spread to their bubbles, and go shopping where you shop, and so it goes into general population again.
Not just care staff, but you have usual admin, cleaners who cleaners who do a number of business etc.
Especially if they look at their patents and say, well so and so always has a cough, which seems to be how things went for what I heard.

One can see how badly it continued to go even after patents had been identified and supposed to be isolated etc.
The care homes simply did not have the PPE , and probably the staff numbers, support and training to do that isolation type nursing.
But DHBs still tried to duck shove it back into those unsuitable environments.
Long running DHB under-funding keeps on giving and amplifying .

Overdue for a shakeup the whole system.

freitasm

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#2464844 18-Apr-2020 15:08

Scott3:

I know that the WHO has minimal credibility at this point, but they are warning against assuming antibody tests show evidence of immunity.

To be clear, do you have a source you can quote on the WHO credibility?

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kingdragonfly

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#2464845 18-Apr-2020 15:11

NZ time, filmed on Wednesday 15 April, posted Saturday 10 am.

While this episode was in production, preliminary data from a clinical trial for remdesivir was leaked to the press; while the results look promising, it’s important to note the researchers haven’t formally published their results yet.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/16/early-peek-at-data-on-gilead-coronavirus-drug-suggests-patients-are-responding-to-treatment/

Lots of links in description of video

Our Best Bets for Treating COVID-19

SciShow

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#2464846 18-Apr-2020 15:12

from Herald, about a (yet-to-be-released) report about our contact tracing abilities being suboptimal

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12325778

Scott3

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#2464851 18-Apr-2020 15:23

frankv:

Scott3:

I know that the WHO has minimal credibility at this point,

I don't think there's any basis for that. Or are you going on the White House pronouncements?

I think there is a clear basis.

They have messed up their response to ebola: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5394645/

Then they have messed up the response to Covid-19, In particular:

Publishing information without verifying it's credibility: https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152
Very late declaration of a Pandemic.
Continued Opposition to travel restrictions, Most of the world has taken the opposite stance.
Failure to take warnings and information from Taiwan seriously.
Failure to call out china on clearly falsified / deceptive data coming out of Whuan.
Continued insistence that widespread mask wearing is not usefull despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
Praising china for releasing the Genome, despite that it only being leaked by a whistleblower after a roughly 17 day delay.
Appearance of pro-china corruption in the organisation.

In my eye's this means they have minimal credibility.

I am not alone, there is a million people that are calling for Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to resign... https://www.change.org/p/united-nations-call-for-the-resignation-of-tedros-adhanom-ghebreyesus-who-director-general

kingdragonfly

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#2464853 18-Apr-2020 15:25

Posted Yesterday

Why South Korea's Coronavirus Curve Looks So Different From The Rest Of The World

Business Insider

As COVID-19 spreads around the world, some countries' timelines look different from others. With a combination of contact tracing, testing, and isolating cases, along with other physical distancing policies, places like South Korea were able to reduce the size of its coronavirus outbreak and flatten the curve. But many other countries have seen the number of new cases grow exponentially. Countries that didn't start testing and tracing early have had a harder time reducing the number of daily new coronavirus cases.

kingdragonfly

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#2464895 18-Apr-2020 15:41

Of course Fox News giving oxygen to stupid ideas.

"Dr Phil" holds a doctorate in clinical psychology, and not even licensed to practice.

The Dr. Oz Show and other similar medical talk shows have been criticized by The British Medical Journal. It found that more than half of the recommendations on these shows contradicted medical research.

Fox "news" host Laura Ingraham is just a nasty person. Too many incidents to list here.

Unfortunately they have Trump's ear.

Dr. Fauci corrects Laura Ingraham on false Covid-19 comparison

CNN

CNN's Anderson Cooper fact-checks recent false and controversial statements made by TV doctors and a Fox News host about the coronavirus.

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Scott3

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#2464896 18-Apr-2020 15:43

freitasm:

Scott3:

I know that the WHO has minimal credibility at this point, but they are warning against assuming antibody tests show evidence of immunity.

To be clear, do you have a source you can quote on the WHO credibility?

Ah, Tricky... I can quote heaps of media article, but in a normally a UN organisation such as the WHO should be more credible that the media. Normally we would also expect statements from the leader of the most powerful country in the world to be credible too. But here I am shaking my head...

Some of the below are admittedly lower tier media organisations.

https://hongkongfp.com/2020/02/25/coronavirus-world-health-organization-faces-credibility-crisis-among-hongkongers-survey/

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-whos-china-bootlicking-and-bad-science-has-destroyed-its-credibility

https://www.dailymercury.com.au/news/who-has-no-credibility-left-to-lose/3987813/

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/why-the-who-was-afraid-of-crying-pandemic

https://www.cfr.org/blog/who-and-china-dereliction-duty

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/chinas-opacity-contributed-to-spiralling-corona-infections-and-deaths-its-geopolitical-effects-will-be-long-lasting/

Let me know if I have gone too far with this. I am strongly opposed to the sharing / promotion of false information, and citing credible sources. Generally I support trusting expert's and credible evidence, but my trust is quite broken.

For me it was quite obvious from the late January that the situation was going to go bad (of course I hoped NZ would be a safe haven due to our distance). What was teh turning point in my mind was when china placed an order for 200m facemasks from turkey, despite being the world leader in face mask production, being strongly nationalistic, and that number exceeding the annual production of turkey.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/economy/china-orders-200m-masks-from-turkey-amid-virus-outbreak/1720619

I have been quite frustrated that only recently have authorities taken this seriously.

I would love to trust the WHO again, but at this stage I will look for interdependent evidence of each statement before I do.

Let me know if this is too much for this forum.

[edit] in hindsight, I think the wording "questionable integrity" would have better reflected the situation than the term I used ("minimal integrity").

Scott3

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#2464898 18-Apr-2020 15:53

mattwnz:

Ge0rge: No press conference today?

IMO this isn't good. IMO it sends the wrong signal. I thought they rotated staff, to give some people time of? Also considering there was apparently a guy who was infected who went shopping at the supermarket, and only got a warning. Why aren't they fining these people and forcing them into quarantine? Self isolation has proven to be a big mistake IMO when it comes to this virus and how it spreads. Unless people risk a big fine, they seem to just be risking it. A $1k fine IMO is a wet bus ticket, and they don't seem to be issuing many of those. In Australia they are taking enforcement seriously. Maybe that is one reason why their cases number aren't that bad considering they had both cases and community transmission well before NZ? If you have the virus and risked getting a 20k fine, I don't think you would visiting the supermarket.

I agree it is not a good look, but it is probiably better than facing up to the country with bad or unclear infomation.

My assumption would be that there is something big that they want to spend another 24 hours resolving before the officials face the media. (or something to urgent that the key people needed to attend to at once)

Hopefully this is just the supermarket incident. If they shut down the supermarket, put staff into isolation, put out a press release asking all shoppers at retentive time (or after) to go into isolation etc, All will be well.

Hopefully it is not something along the lines of somebody in the parliament "bubble" getting infected, or a bunch of today's cases coming from the asymptotic people picked up by the random testing.

cshwone

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#2464901 18-Apr-2020 16:02

Scott3:

I agree it is not a good look, but it is probiably better than facing up to the country with bad or unclear infomation.

My assumption would be that there is something big that they want to spend another 24 hours resolving before the officials face the media. (or something to urgent that the key people needed to attend to at once)

Hopefully this is just the supermarket incident. If they shut down the supermarket, put staff into isolation, put out a press release asking all shoppers at retentive time (or after) to go into isolation etc, All will be well.

Hopefully it is not something along the lines of somebody in the parliament "bubble" getting infected, or a bunch of today's cases coming from the asymptotic people picked up by the random testing.

Or then again there was never planned to be a press conference today, same as last Saturday. (But they put one on at short notice due to bad news on deaths).

gzt

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#2464902 18-Apr-2020 16:03

Scott3:
I know that the WHO has minimal credibility at this point,

Imo the WHO credibility is perfectly intact. At the same time, the WHO is under severe attack from the current American administration. The effect is to divert attention from the fact the president did not listen to his own experts. Even before that, he removed an expert panel dedicated to pandemic response for reasons only he knows. No issues with the credibility of the WHO.

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