COVID-19

[Woodchopper]

How likely is it that the apparent levelling off of the exponential curve (in any country, but let's take the UK for now) is due to saturation of testing facilities? That is, if the numbers of both reported infections and COVID-19 certified deaths were continuing to rise, would we know if we can only conduct X tests per day and have already hit that limit?

I ask because the UK's daily numbers for new cases and deaths have been, to a first approximation, rather static for a fortnight now (figures from ECDC.eu below), whereas for reasons that I can't quite put into words, I'd expect them to be going up or down on some kind of trend. I appreciate that my feelings on the matter are not good evidence.

An upper limit of testing capacity is possible. But concerning the UK, the other indicator is hospital admissions, which are trending down, or are flat, depending upon the region.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... 4_2020.pdf

As there are excess Covid beds available it doesn't look like that's because the NHS has reached peak bed.

It looks like either by luck or design the UK government has managed to reduce the re-transmission rate by just enough.

[Bird on a Fire]

In what way are blood donors considered not representative of the whole population?

Presumably they are younger and healthier than average, and therefore also higher probability of asymptomatic infection, but the relevant point is whether they are representative in their chances of exposure to the virus.

Something you learn very early on in courses on trial design is that when people are not assigned randomly to do something, those who do and those who don't will differ, often quite strongly, in ways that you cannot predict. In psychology this gives rise to what is known as "the crud factor", or "everything is correlated with everything else". It is a big problem for most observational studies, and explains a large number of the failures of lab research to replicate in randomised trials.

In this case, I would expect the average 23-year-old who has their act together enough to donate blood to be substantially unrepresentative of their age group on a bunch of measures of health-related behaviours.

They bring blood donation drives to university campuses several times a year, so it's pretty easy to get the student demographic.

That said, I only managed once, due to regular travel to diseasy areas and getting ill. Now I'm out the UK nobody even wants my blood because of mad cow. So it goes.

[shpalman]

Comparing the UK and Italy it's as if the UK has slipped a couple of days behind, in terms of numbers of new positives. Italy has kept on increasing its testing capacity even as the numbers of new cases is decreasing, but it still seems as if day-to-day variations in numbers of cases match day-to-day variations in numbers of tests. (Of course, a test and a new positive being reported at 6pm on a certain day doesn't mean that it dates from the previous 24 hours).

But the csv file I am able to git every day contains information on the total number of swabs reported so far (even if it doesn't say how many patients have been tested). Sometimes I find this information for the UK on a .gov webpage but not in the same convenient format.

But it does seem to me that Italy was doing more tests 2 weeks ago than the UK is managing to do now.

[sTeamTraen]

An upper limit of testing capacity is possible. But concerning the UK, the other indicator is hospital admissions, which are trending down, or are flat, depending upon the region.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... 4_2020.pdf

As there are excess Covid beds available it doesn't look like that's because the NHS has reached peak bed.

It looks like either by luck or design the UK government has managed to reduce the re-transmission rate by just enough.

But if I've understood correctly, those are hospital admissions *with a positive test*, which would seem to depend on the testing capability being there. So (I think) that doesn't refute (or, of course, support) my point.

Again, I have no evidence that there actually is a problem, but I'm wondering what the world would like if there was such a problem, and for the moment it seems at least "not entirely inconsistent" with that.

(Meta-point: It turns out to be quite hard to ask questions without sounding like one of those people who is "Just Asking Questions".)

[lpm]

Yes, I did a quick calc the other day, and the UK is now about 16-17 days behind Italy, compared to the previous 14-15.

You could get your pattern by preventing hospitalisations from care homes, thus maintaining the spare bed statistic as well as the cases/fatality statistics. The round peak of the curve thus becomes a flat plateau.

[Opti]

In what way are blood donors considered not representative of the whole population?

Presumably they are younger and healthier than average, and therefore also higher probability of asymptomatic infection, but the relevant point is whether they are representative in their chances of exposure to the virus.

Something you learn very early on in courses on trial design is that when people are not assigned randomly to do something, those who do and those who don't will differ, often quite strongly, in ways that you cannot predict. In psychology this gives rise to what is known as "the crud factor", or "everything is correlated with everything else". It is a big problem for most observational studies, and explains a large number of the failures of lab research to replicate in randomised trials.

In this case, I would expect the average 23-year-old who has their act together enough to donate blood to be substantially unrepresentative of their age group on a bunch of measures of health-related behaviours.

They bring blood donation drives to university campuses several times a year, so it's pretty easy to get the student demographic.

That said, I only managed once, due to regular travel to diseasy areas and getting ill. Now I'm out the UK nobody even wants my blood because of mad cow. So it goes.

Nobody wants my blood full stop. It started with brucellosis when I were 'nobbut a kid as a lab rat (thanks MAFF as was), and then went downhill (down to me and my peccadilloes).

[shpalman]

Yes, I did a quick calc the other day, and the UK is now about 16-17 days behind Italy, compared to the previous 14-15.

You could get your pattern by preventing hospitalisations from care homes, thus maintaining the spare bed statistic as well as the cases/fatality statistics. The round peak of the curve thus becomes a flat plateau.

Only if Italy hadn't been doing exactly the same thing.

Note that the deaths are still 14-15 days behind; presumably both countries have the same delays in reporting there.

[FlammableFlower]

In what way are blood donors considered not representative of the whole population?

Presumably they are younger and healthier than average, and therefore also higher probability of asymptomatic infection, but the relevant point is whether they are representative in their chances of exposure to the virus.

Something you learn very early on in courses on trial design is that when people are not assigned randomly to do something, those who do and those who don't will differ, often quite strongly, in ways that you cannot predict. In psychology this gives rise to what is known as "the crud factor", or "everything is correlated with everything else". It is a big problem for most observational studies, and explains a large number of the failures of lab research to replicate in randomised trials.

In this case, I would expect the average 23-year-old who has their act together enough to donate blood to be substantially unrepresentative of their age group on a bunch of measures of health-related behaviours.

They bring blood donation drives to university campuses several times a year, so it's pretty easy to get the student demographic.

That said, I only managed once, due to regular travel to diseasy areas and getting ill. Now I'm out the UK nobody even wants my blood because of mad cow. So it goes.

I'm peeved as they stopped that at my institution years ago.

[FlammableFlower]

This is a good listen: https://twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/ ... 2297091074

[jimbob]

Permanent link to this comic: https://xkcd.com/2294/

[shpalman]

Eleven Days in March

[tenchboy]

The commander of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps has unveiled a handheld device that he said could identify people infected with the coronavirus within 100m (330ft), Tasnim news agency reports.

"The basis of this device is to create a magnetic field based on a bipolar virus inside the device, so its antenna can focus on any place within a 100m diameter that is infected by the virus, and identify the infected place in five seconds," Maj-Gen Hossein Salami was quoted as saying.

He added that its accuracy was "80%”, but provided no evidence.

Experts say the only reliable way to test for Covid-19 currently is by taking a swab of the nose or throat, which is sent off to a lab to look for signs of the virus’s genetic material.

From BBC Live News page timed at 11.38

With a pic

This looks like a 'magnetic' version of that bomb detector with the empty box and two dowsing rods that the british bloke sold and demonstrated all over the world and got caught for.

This is/will be a disaster if they give people the all clear with this

How can the BBC even report that with only a token comment for "balance" at the end from "experts".

By including it in their own myth-busting session a few days later!
(second one down)
Hey ho. Such is the way of the world.

[lpm]

Eleven Days in March

Although he didn't share his calcs, it's unlikely he got them right.

It sounds like he's assuming no action to stop the spread in the 11 days to 23 March. But although the govt lagged, we the public took action at the start

- unilateral cancelling of events, sports (e.g. Headshot's theatre company cancelling on 12th)
- working from home (my last day in the office was 10th)
- social distancing (my first Zoom was 13th to replace a physical get together)
- for a few days we were talking on this forum about how unfair it was for pubs etc shutting but unable to claim insurance because the govt hadn't ordered them shut

So any calc that assumes an unhindered virus for 11 days will be a dud, and the govt only cost us the difference between our voluntary partial lockdown and their compulsory incomplete lockdown about 11 days later.

[bmforre]

Virus Vaccine May Be Ready for Mass Production By Autumn, Oxford Professor Says

Bloomberg

A team led by Sarah Gilbert, a professor of vaccinology, has recruited 500 volunteers from the ages of 18 to 55 for the early- and mid-stage randomized controlled trial. It will be extended to older adults and then to a final stage trial of 5,000 people. Gilbert said that the timing is ambitious but achievable.

“We would hope to have at least some doses that are ready to be used by September,” she said in an interview. “There won’t be enough for everywhere by then, but the more manufacturing we can do starting from now, then the more doses there will be.”...

The research aims to determine the efficacy, safety and immunogenicity of the candidate vaccine, named ChAdOx1 nCoV-19. A vaccine against meningococcal disease will be given to participants who will be randomly chosen for control purposes.

Building on earlier work:

ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 is a so-called recombinant viral vector vaccine. It’s made from a harmless virus that’s been altered to produce the surface spike protein of the pandemic-causing SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The vaccine acts by priming the immune system to recognize and attack the coronavirus, stimulating a T-cell response. It uses the same technology as a shot Gilbert’s team previously developed for the related MERS coronavirus. That vaccine appeared to be safe in animal and early-stage human testing, giving confidence for the coronavirus version.

“We’re doing safety testing,” Gilbert said, “but we’re not concerned.”

Gilbert’s team has used the same technology for about 10 different vaccines, she said. The challenge that now arises is testing the vaccine even as virus infection rates vary.

“It’s going to be complicated trying to determine vaccine efficacy when the virus transmission in different places is going up and then going down again,” she said. “The trial has to be set up in the right place at the right time and that’s very hard to predict. That’s why we’re planning to do multiple trials in multiple countries.”

International cooperation:

The WHO is creating a forum for everyone developing Covid-19 vaccines to share their plans and initial findings, according to Gilbert.

“Work is continuing at a very fast pace,” she told the Lancet medical journal, “and I am in no doubt that we will see an unprecedented spirit of collaboration and cooperation, convened by WHO, as we move towards a shared global goal of Covid-19 prevention through vaccination.”

[Opti]

Did I really see a clip of someone on Fox News or summat asking what was going on with Covid-1 to 18? I think I did.

It's all gone bonkers, innit.

[Little waster]

Did I really see a clip of someone on Fox News or summat asking what was going on with Covid-1 to 18? I think I did.

It's all gone bonkers, innit.

Kellyanne Conway IIRC

[Bird on a Fire]

How come nobody ever talk about The Madness of King George I and II?

[Martin_B]

How come nobody ever talk about The Madness of King George I and II?

Possibly because there wasn't a film called: "The Madness of King George III". The working title for the film was: "The Madness of George III", but someone thought that people may not go, because they hadn't seen the first two films of the trilogy ("The Madness of George" and "The Madness of George II") so in order to prevent that they just titled the film: "The Madness of King George".

[tenchboy]

How come nobody ever talk about The Madness of King George I and II?

Possibly because there wasn't a film called: "The Madness of King George III". The working title for the film was: "The Madness of George III", but someone thought that people may not go, because they hadn't seen the first two films of the trilogy ("The Madness of George" and "The Madness of George II") so in order to prevent that they just titled the film: "The Madness of King George".

That's just communism gone mad that is; just wait till the american people with the big guns & the basement full of apples pie hear about it: they'll be on the steps of the town hall and down the morl protesting it with badly drawn placards before you can

[EACLucifer]

So it seems the Sunday Times have published an utterly damning indictment of Johnson's government, inc him repeatedly skipping COBRA meetings to sort out his own disorganised private life, ignoring calls to order more PPE in advance, etc.

Coronavirus: 38 days when Britain sleepwalked into disaster

It's paywalled, sadly, but the short version is that Johnson didn't even attend a COBRA meeting on the subject until March, the government had received dire warnings as early as January, and they f.cked it up, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives.

[Brightonian]

So it seems the Sunday Times have published an utterly damning indictment of Johnson's government, inc him repeatedly skipping COBRA meetings to sort out his own disorganised private life, ignoring calls to order more PPE in advance, etc.

Coronavirus: 38 days when Britain sleepwalked into disaster

It's paywalled, sadly, but the short version is that Johnson didn't even attend a COBRA meeting on the subject until March, the government had received dire warnings as early as January, and they f.cked it up, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives.

Full article on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/com ... lked_into/

[Martin_B]

How come nobody ever talk about The Madness of King George I and II?

Possibly because there wasn't a film called: "The Madness of King George III". The working title for the film was: "The Madness of George III", but someone thought that people may not go, because they hadn't seen the first two films of the trilogy ("The Madness of George" and "The Madness of George II") so in order to prevent that they just titled the film: "The Madness of King George".

That's just communism gone mad that is; just wait till the american people with the big guns & the basement full of apples pie hear about it: they'll be on the steps of the town hall and down the morl protesting it with badly drawn placards before you can

Is it apples pie or apple pies? I mean, each pie contains more than one apple, and may contain different varieties of apples, so it *should* be apples pie, I'm just not sure it is.

[purplehaze]

The Sunday Time's article should not be behind a paywall.

Here's another link.

https://archive.is/20200418182037/https ... -hq3b9tlgh

[Opti]

Meanwhile, en España.

94252871_971754019888850_7144408952770396160_o.jpg (112.13 KiB) Viewed 3180 times

[Stupidosaurus]

Sunday Times article was a good read. Can I share the paywall-dodging article link on FB or would that get me into trouble?