Scrutable

OffTheRock wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 05, 2021 12:04 am

The using LFT tests in schools to replace isolation for close contacts plan might be being wheeled out again.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -plan.html

Assuming they still haven't thought about how these kids will be getting to school.

bob sterman wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 05, 2021 4:52 pm

OffTheRock wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 05, 2021 12:04 am

The using LFT tests in schools to replace isolation for close contacts plan might be being wheeled out again.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -plan.html

Assuming they still haven't thought about how these kids will be getting to school.

Yes this is planned in local school. Close contacts of a confirmed case will be allowed to come to school.

But at weekends they will be expected to isolate at home like close contacts are normally supposed to.

So isolation is only required when they are NOT going to sit in poorly ventilated rooms with dozens of other children.

A mother and her daughter died when 11 members of the same family caught Covid-19 after meeting on Christmas Day.

shpalman wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 7:59 pm

shpalman wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 01, 2021 10:45 am

Pfizer vaccine may be less effective in people with obesity

Italian researchers have discovered that healthcare workers with obesity produced only about half the amount of antibodies in response to a second dose of the jab compared with healthy people. Although it is too soon to know what this means for the efficacy of the vaccine, it might imply that people with obesity need an additional booster dose to ensure they are adequately protected against coronavirus.

Previous research has suggested that obesity – which is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) over 30 – increases the risk of dying of Covid-19 by nearly 50%, as well as increasing the risk of ending up in hospital by 113%.

Non-peer-reviewed preprint at https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 21251664v1

Covid deaths high in countries with more overweight people, says report

I think the report they mean is this pdf: https://www.worldobesityday.org/assets/ ... -Atlas.pdf

shpalman wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 06, 2021 10:53 am

I think that's the same as the one I posted here:

shpalman wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 7:59 pm

shpalman wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 01, 2021 10:45 am

Pfizer vaccine may be less effective in people with obesity



Non-peer-reviewed preprint at https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 21251664v1

Covid deaths high in countries with more overweight people, says report

I think the report they mean is this pdf: https://www.worldobesityday.org/assets/ ... -Atlas.pdf

Embarrassingly, Bolsonaro’s emissaries had asked to visit the hospital where the nasal spray is being developed – but their request was denied. A report in the Times of Israel added to the sense of fiasco, claiming Bolsonaro’s team “would be confined to their hotel for the entire visit”

Brightonian wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 10, 2021 4:58 pm

Big drop in the birth rate in many countries, reports the FT (Google their headline "Pandemic blamed for falling birth rates across much of Europe" if you want to read it).

Sciolus wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 10, 2021 8:08 pm

Brightonian wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 10, 2021 4:58 pm

Big drop in the birth rate in many countries, reports the FT (Google their headline "Pandemic blamed for falling birth rates across much of Europe" if you want to read it).

CBA to read the FT article, but that's a common response to economic uncertainty, and I recall people predicting it last summer.

Martin_B wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 11, 2021 1:10 am

A friend who is an obstetrician noted that the number of births around Christmas was significantly higher than in a normal year. Now what happened 9 months before the 25th December?

11 March 2021

Delaying second vaccine dose leaves cancer patients vulnerable to virus
More than half of cancer patients receiving a single dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine have been left with little protection against the virus.

More than half of cancer patients receiving a single dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine have been left with little protection against the virus.

Data from the world’s first reported trial to examine the level of immune protection after the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in cancer patients has found that anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody responses at week 3 following the first dose of the vaccine were only 39% and 13% in the solid and haematological cancers, compared to 97% in those without cancer.

The preprint study also reports that when the second dose of the vaccine was given three weeks after the first dose, the immune response improved significantly for solid cancer patients with 95% of them showing detectable antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus within just two weeks. By contrast, those who did not get a vaccine boost at three weeks did not see any real improvement, with only 43% of solid cancer patients and 8% of blood cancer patients developing antibodies to the Pfizer vaccine at five weeks compared to 100% of healthy controls.

KAJ wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 11, 2021 5:27 pm

Number of new cases by report date exactly the same (6,753) as last Thursday. What's the chance of that? [/rhetorical question]

Understanding when SARS-CoV-2 emerged is critical to evaluating our current approach to monitoring novel zoonotic pathogens and understanding the failure of early containment and mitigation efforts for COVID-19. We employed a coalescent framework to combine retrospective molecular clock inference with forward epidemiological simulations to determine how long SARS-CoV-2 could have circulated prior to the time of the most recent common ancestor. Our results define the period between mid-October and mid-November 2019 as the plausible interval when the first case of SARS-CoV-2 emerged in Hubei province. By characterizing the likely dynamics of the virus before it was discovered, we show that over two-thirds of SARS-CoV-2-like zoonotic events would be self-limited, dying out without igniting a pandemic. Our findings highlight the shortcomings of zoonosis surveillance approaches for detecting highly contagious pathogens with moderate mortality rates.

wilsontown wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 11, 2021 5:02 pm

First the bad news: unsurprisingly, it looks like cases might be starting to increase. That didn't take long:

Mar11_cases.png

Of course, it probably has a lot to do with the large increase in testing as schools have re-opened. We're now having to do a LOT of tests to find each positive result:

Mar11_test_to_case.png

And finally the good news, the decrease in death rates appears to be accelerating:

Mar11_deaths.png

Grumble wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 21, 2021 6:45 pm

wilsontown wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 11, 2021 5:02 pm

First the bad news: unsurprisingly, it looks like cases might be starting to increase. That didn't take long:

Mar11_cases.png

Of course, it probably has a lot to do with the large increase in testing as schools have re-opened. We're now having to do a LOT of tests to find each positive result:

Mar11_test_to_case.png

And finally the good news, the decrease in death rates appears to be accelerating:

Mar11_deaths.png

Any chance of updated graphs wilsontown? Today’s reported deaths are 33, lowest since last September.

KAJ wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 21, 2021 8:28 pm

Grumble wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 21, 2021 6:45 pm

wilsontown wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 11, 2021 5:02 pm

First the bad news: unsurprisingly, it looks like cases might be starting to increase. That didn't take long:

Mar11_cases.png

Of course, it probably has a lot to do with the large increase in testing as schools have re-opened. We're now having to do a LOT of tests to find each positive result:

Mar11_test_to_case.png

And finally the good news, the decrease in death rates appears to be accelerating:

Mar11_deaths.png

Any chance of updated graphs wilsontown? Today’s reported deaths are 33, lowest since last September.

In case it's of interest, here is my version of the "change in 7 day case average" graph.
DPubCases.png
In the last couple of weeks there's been a clear reduction in the rate of decrease of cases. You'll find (I hope) my usual regressions at Mar21.html where the flattening in cases is seen in sections 3.2 Cases by Specimen Date and 3.3 Cases by Publish Date.

As wilsontown remarked, this "probably has a lot to do with the large increase in testing as schools have re-opened". I think maybe, possibly, perhaps, if I look hard enough I can see a hint of a flattening in hospital admissions over the last few days, section 3.4 Patients admitted to hospital in my regressions from which:
Admits.png

Grumble wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 21, 2021 8:38 pm

KAJ wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 21, 2021 8:28 pm

Grumble wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 21, 2021 6:45 pm

Any chance of updated graphs wilsontown? Today’s reported deaths are 33, lowest since last September.

In case it's of interest, here is my version of the "change in 7 day case average" graph.
DPubCases.png
In the last couple of weeks there's been a clear reduction in the rate of decrease of cases. You'll find (I hope) my usual regressions at Mar21.html where the flattening in cases is seen in sections 3.2 Cases by Specimen Date and 3.3 Cases by Publish Date.

As wilsontown remarked, this "probably has a lot to do with the large increase in testing as schools have re-opened". I think maybe, possibly, perhaps, if I look hard enough I can see a hint of a flattening in hospital admissions over the last few days, section 3.4 Patients admitted to hospital in my regressions from which:
Admits.png

Thanks KAJ. I like this graph from the Guardian which shows the incidence for 3 age ranges. It’s only going up for the under 20’s, which must mean that the increase in testing for school kids is picking up previously undetected cases - which is what we want I think.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... SApp_Other