Article uses DNA analysis to recreate the spread of the infection. Shows that several outbreaks died out in the US and Germany during February. Argues that the most important aspect of containment measures was speed.
It's being pointed out that the Moonshot testing could do more harm than good.
With 0.01% population prevalence and 99% specificity of the test, you're going to have ~100 false positives for every true case you find. Those 100 will have to majorly isolate (quarantine), and all their contacts will get alerts on their world-beating app. This could cause precisely the disruption to the economy that the uncertainty over the virus is meant to avoid. Of course, the virus might be more prevalent by the time the moonshot lands, and the specificity might be better than 99% (although after a certain number of decimal places you hit limits, including simple human error; "the test" is not just about scraping a sample and assaying it, it's also things like getting the participant's phone number right), but there will still be lots of false positives under such a regime. If it becomes known that most people who are diagnosed don't actually have the disease (to the extent that that can be separated from "They said I was positive but nothing happened, so I must have been an asymptomatic case"), it would seriously affect public confidence in the process.
Re: COVID-19
Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2020 10:07 am
by headshot
It's almost like Boris Johnson announced it without thinking it through fully, or consulting any experts about it.
Is being shared all over my Facebook as proof that Covid etc is over.
Can you lot help me Fisk it?
I get all sorts of red flags from it.
Oh God "Gompetz Curve" and "Professor Michael Levitt*". Those alone are red flags that the person knows less than me - and I'm fairly happy with my competence in semiconductor engineering and device physics. Epidemiology - less so.
Levitt is someone who on the 22nd May was predicting fewer than 5000 deaths in Sweden at a time when there had already been 4200.
Spoiler - he was wrong.
Screenshot 2020-09-12 203846.png (43.65 KiB) Viewed 3715 times
"Around 80% are already depfacto immune" Ha. To be honest. If he's misunderstanding or misrepresenting the data this badly this early into the video, it's going to boil down to "he has no credibility - so why should we even address his claims"?
I am unsure even about the shape of his graph for the UK.
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And this is from my download of the ONS weekly death statistics for England and Wales 2020
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Neither *quite* look like his from a quick youtube check - the ONS data is more accurate.
As an aside "sadly have passed" - f.ck YOU AND YOUR INSINCERE SYMPATHY (Although you could probably have a drinking game with that phrase).
4:05
"some hospitals were overflowing in the UK" - various NHS staff have stated that April 2020 was completely different. And indeed it was especially in London - here it is note how utterly invisible this 2017-2018 winter flu is in the overall deaths compared to the April peak, and the lack of cumulative impact on the running total of deaths for the years
(this from the ONS all deaths statistics for Deaths by region of usual residence "E12000007 London" from the ONS weekly deaths data for 2015-2020)
I have so far got 4 minutes out of 37 and got these
Re: COVID-19
Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2020 8:28 pm
by jimbob
4:18 Lockdowns and masks have been shown to have very little impact. Evidence?
It's not what what epidemiologists have been saying.
And Israel is an example. Presumably from his previous statements about 20% of the Israeli population were infected by early April, then it declined in a "classic Gompetz curve" before a new population of Israelis arose in the end of May, coincidentally after the restrictions were relaxed:
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(oldish graph from my analysis of the ECDC data for Israel)
Re: COVID-19
Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2020 8:31 pm
by jimbob
I'm losing the will to live at this rate it would take about a week to get through the video. I always point out that if someone is making that many poor analyses in the first five minutes - why should I have to watch to the end to dispute the rest?
Clearly, no sterilizing immunity through cross-protection was evident during the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak on the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier, where 70% of the young adult sailors became infected before the epidemic came to a halt9.
But he's still talking about 20% threshold for herd immunity, which is 3x higher than we have reached, and with lots of evidence that it is far too low
Re: COVID-19
Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2020 8:35 am
by badger
The Times breaking a story (behind paywall) on testing capacity: apparently UK have only been managing 62k a day:
You wouldn't expect herd immunity to happen for an acute outbreak in a vulnerable population, because it would spread faster than immunity is acquired. So that 70% isn't evidence that the threshold for herd immunity is higher than that. (Although it's surely higher than 20%.)
Somebody obviously just got their phone out and snapped a photo of their screen while on a conference call. That's what I like to do. How can you stop leaks like that?
And it has all those little powerpoint errors and crammed-in-iness.
I said 3 weeks ago, 22 August, that quantity was going up but quality was going down. It was pretty obvious even from a quick look at published stats. Incompetetence isn't having things go wrong on your watch - it happens to all of us and things going wrong is why we have a watch. Incompetetence is not responding when things start going wrong. Lying and blustering through it makes it worse, the cold hard facts of reality always push through.
The UK abandoned proper testing at the start of the 1st wave. And now here we are at the possible start of a 2nd wave, still without a functioning system.
Re: COVID-19
Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2020 10:37 am
by Bird on a Fire
My favourite little detail on that slide is that they apparently have a target of ≤2% results issued positive.
You wouldn't expect herd immunity to happen for an acute outbreak in a vulnerable population, because it would spread faster than immunity is acquired. So that 70% isn't evidence that the threshold for herd immunity is higher than that. (Although it's surely higher than 20%.)
His claim is that 80% is immune due to exposure to other coronaviruses.
You wouldn't expect herd immunity to happen for an acute outbreak in a vulnerable population, because it would spread faster than immunity is acquired. So that 70% isn't evidence that the threshold for herd immunity is higher than that. (Although it's surely higher than 20%.)
His claim is that 80% is immune due to exposure to other coronaviruses.
New German study confirms that 81% of pre-Covid blood donors show T-cell reaction against SARS-CoV-2.
This Confirms that ~19% of people are only expected to be infected with Covid19!
The tweet linked to this: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-35331/v1 which has a slab of red text at the top saying "This is a preprint. Preprints are preliminary reports that have not undergone peer review. They should not be considered conclusive, used to inform clinical practice, or referenced by the media as validated information." The authors also say in the discussion that:
Notably, we detected SARS-CoV-2 cross-reactive T cells in 81% of unexposed individuals. To determine if these T-cells indeed mediate heterologous immunity and whether this explains the relatively small proportion of severely ill or, even in general, infected patients during this pandemic32,33, a dedicated study using e.g. a matched case control, or retrospective cohort design applying our cross-reactive SARS-CoV-2 T-cell epitopes would be required.
It is frequently assumed that pre-existing T cell memory against SARS-CoV-2 might be either beneficial or irrelevant. However, there is also the possibility that pre-existing immunity might actually be detrimental, through mechanisms such as ‘original antigenic sin’ (the propensity to elicit potentially inferior immune responses owing to pre-existing immune memory to a related pathogen), or through antibody-mediated disease enhancement. While there is no direct evidence to support these outcomes, they must be considered.
You wouldn't expect herd immunity to happen for an acute outbreak in a vulnerable population, because it would spread faster than immunity is acquired. So that 70% isn't evidence that the threshold for herd immunity is higher than that. (Although it's surely higher than 20%.)
His claim is that 80% is immune due to exposure to other coronaviruses.
New German study confirms that 81% of pre-Covid blood donors show T-cell reaction against SARS-CoV-2.
This Confirms that ~19% of people are only expected to be infected with Covid19!
The tweet linked to this: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-35331/v1 which has a slab of red text at the top saying "This is a preprint. Preprints are preliminary reports that have not undergone peer review. They should not be considered conclusive, used to inform clinical practice, or referenced by the media as validated information." The authors also say in the discussion that:
Notably, we detected SARS-CoV-2 cross-reactive T cells in 81% of unexposed individuals. To determine if these T-cells indeed mediate heterologous immunity and whether this explains the relatively small proportion of severely ill or, even in general, infected patients during this pandemic32,33, a dedicated study using e.g. a matched case control, or retrospective cohort design applying our cross-reactive SARS-CoV-2 T-cell epitopes would be required.
It is frequently assumed that pre-existing T cell memory against SARS-CoV-2 might be either beneficial or irrelevant. However, there is also the possibility that pre-existing immunity might actually be detrimental, through mechanisms such as ‘original antigenic sin’ (the propensity to elicit potentially inferior immune responses owing to pre-existing immune memory to a related pathogen), or through antibody-mediated disease enhancement. While there is no direct evidence to support these outcomes, they must be considered.
Thanks. You have a pet denier who hasn't blocked you? I have one, but she doesn't seem to say much. Those who make lots of assertions tend to be block-happy like Alistair Haimes