raven wrote: Fri May 01, 2020 11:24 pm
If numbers aren't being supressed by lack of testing, it looks like my area is over the peak and trending down nicely. The area my parents live in, not so much.
Which is great if anyone wants to look at local data. The stats for my area say Covid deaths are running at almost a third the rate of all deaths. Yikes. Although that's age-standardised, not raw. But still.
shpalman wrote:But it means lots of you would be likely to know people who had symptoms but didn't/couldn't get tested.
Well, one of son#1's friends was sick 3 or 4 weeks ago, & not tested.
I also know of one death in hospital, tested 7 times and all negative as far as relatives know, but Covid-19 was the third thing on the death certificate. Dunno how that gets counted.
shpalman wrote: Fri May 01, 2020 4:53 pm
...
But it means lots of you would be likely to know people who had symptoms but didn't/couldn't get tested.
Anecdotally, niece is a district nurse caring for mainly EOL patients in the community. She had bad flu symptoms about 4 weeks ago, which cleared up after a few days and she was back at work a week later (if I understood correctly). Her partner is a theatre nurse (temp ICU nurse at the mo) and had to take 2 weeks off but had no symptoms and is now back at work. Neither were able to get tested.
Friends son works in A&E in Derby (junior doctor) and was tested (negative) but his view was the test would not have been of reasonable quality as the swab was not far enough back in his nose, but they wouldn't retest. His brother, also a junior doctor, in Birmingham A&E had not been tested when we last spoke last week.
MartinDurkin wrote: Sat May 02, 2020 8:49 am
Friends son works in A&E in Derby (junior doctor) and was tested (negative) but his view was the test would not have been of reasonable quality as the swab was not far enough back in his nose, but they wouldn't retest. His brother, also a junior doctor, in Birmingham A&E had not been tested when we last spoke last week.
This a worry I have about the home testing for keyworkers - people are expected to swab themselves. So if not done correctly we're going to see a lot of false negatives and people thinking it's OK to return to work.
bob sterman wrote: Sat May 02, 2020 9:07 amThis a worry I have about the home testing for keyworkers - people are expected to swab themselves. So if not done correctly we're going to see a lot of false negatives and people thinking it's OK to return to work.
MrsG is an OT. At the beginning of last week we both had the same symptoms - bit of a temperature, bit of a cough - so thought it was possible we had the virus. Started self-isolating just as they rolled out testing to key workers and household members. We don't have a car and only managed to get a home test kit booked on Sunday, which arrived on Monday afternoon. Unfortunately as the website to book the courier pickup is only open from 8am to 4pm, we missed the cut off by 15 mins. So courier was booked for Wednesday, which meant doing the swabs at 7am that morning - more than a week after first having symptoms. The instructions for taking the nasal swab said it only need to be inserted 2.5cm (nothing like the pictures you see on the news), so no idea if we did it properly.
Got the results yesterday - both negative. So we either didn't do the swabs properly, were too late to get tested, didn't have it seriously enough to be picked up (? don't know if this is a thing), or we never had it. Anyway, I'll be leaving the house today!
bob sterman wrote: Sat May 02, 2020 9:07 amThis a worry I have about the home testing for keyworkers - people are expected to swab themselves. So if not done correctly we're going to see a lot of false negatives and people thinking it's OK to return to work.
MrsG is an OT. At the beginning of last week we both had the same symptoms - bit of a temperature, bit of a cough - so thought it was possible we had the virus. Started self-isolating just as they rolled out testing to key workers and household members. We don't have a car and only managed to get a home test kit booked on Sunday, which arrived on Monday afternoon. Unfortunately as the website to book the courier pickup is only open from 8am to 4pm, we missed the cut off by 15 mins. So courier was booked for Wednesday, which meant doing the swabs at 7am that morning - more than a week after first having symptoms. The instructions for taking the nasal swab said it only need to be inserted 2.5cm (nothing like the pictures you see on the news), so no idea if we did it properly.
Got the results yesterday - both negative. So we either didn't do the swabs properly, were too late to get tested, didn't have it seriously enough to be picked up (? don't know if this is a thing), or we never had it. Anyway, I'll be leaving the house today!
Sounds pretty standard. Some home test kits are being sent out via Amazon couriers but the return is just via Royal Mail. Patient is told to stick it in a priority post box before 11am. Supposedly 24hour delivery - but one big lab is in Belfast. Not great for samples from London. Leaflet says lab will send result within 72 hours of receiving the specimen.
So taken all together - there is very little chance of getting results within 7 days from symptom onset.
But apparently you get counted in the UK 100,000 tests per day statistics as soon as they post the swab to you!
jimbob wrote: Sat May 02, 2020 5:50 pm
Does anyone have the official UK stats for tests and confirmed cases from the last few days?
I have this, some of it from that github I posted above and some dug out of the twitter. The number of cases who have recovered hasn't been updated for a long while.
having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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bob sterman wrote: Sat May 02, 2020 3:16 pm
So taken all together - there is very little chance of getting results within 7 days from symptom onset.
But apparently you get counted in the UK 100,000 tests per day statistics as soon as they post the swab to you!
So instead of arguing about how they come up with the 100,000 a day figure, really we should be highlighting the pointlessness of the way the tests are being carried out as the majority will end up giving negative results?
MrsG (more a twitter follower than I) told me of a key worker who was posted a kit, but one that didn't have a return label.
The recipient phoned the helpline and were told to throw away the kit.
It is not beyond the rational mind to think that this might be a deliberate approach to boost the 'test numbers' where they know that there's not sufficient capacity for them to be tested.
Quite apart from the failure of the test itself to detect infection - already considered to be up to 30% false negatives where conducted by trained staff - and maybe as much as 50% when self-conducted
My avatar was a scientific result that was later found to be 'mistaken' - I rarely claim to be 100% correct
ETA 5/8/20: I've been advised that the result was correct, it was the initial interpretation that needed to be withdrawn
Meta? I'd say so!
jimbob wrote: Sat May 02, 2020 5:50 pm
Does anyone have the official UK stats for tests and confirmed cases from the last few days?
I have this, some of it from that github I posted above and some dug out of the twitter. The number of cases who have recovered hasn't been updated for a long while.
Of course in the interests of at least trying to look transparent, the government should have that handy table around. After all, they know many people will have created their own versions, so they aren't making it any harder - just looking shifty (which is accurate).
I notice that the number of daily tests is listed as less than 100k. I'm glad to see that they didn't change the data there.
I’m seeing a lot of chatter about Sweden having done the right thing by not enforcing a lock down and everything being hunky dory there. Telegraph articles are cited. Is this a fair thing?
From my cursory digging, to date, they seem to have had just over half the fatalities per capita as compared to the U.K., However community transmission seems to have kicked off at least a month later than in the U.K., so adjusting for that, they have 1 death per 5000 people, as opposed to the U.K.’s 1 death per 13,000 people a month ago. Doesn’t sound so good to me. Am I missing something?
jimbob wrote: Sat May 02, 2020 5:50 pm
Does anyone have the official UK stats for tests and confirmed cases from the last few days?
I have this, some of it from that github I posted above and some dug out of the twitter. The number of cases who have recovered hasn't been updated for a long while.
Of course in the interests of at least trying to look transparent, the government should have that handy table around. After all, they know many people will have created their own versions, so they aren't making it any harder - just looking shifty (which is accurate).
I notice that the number of daily tests is listed as less than 100k. I'm glad to see that they didn't change the data there.
But the difference in total number of tests is >100k for the last two days?
What am I missing?
shpalman wrote: Sat May 02, 2020 6:07 pm
I have this, some of it from that github I posted above and some dug out of the twitter. The number of cases who have recovered hasn't been updated for a long while.
Of course in the interests of at least trying to look transparent, the government should have that handy table around. After all, they know many people will have created their own versions, so they aren't making it any harder - just looking shifty (which is accurate).
I notice that the number of daily tests is listed as less than 100k. I'm glad to see that they didn't change the data there.
But the difference in total number of tests is >100k for the last two days?
What am I missing?
Of course in the interests of at least trying to look transparent, the government should have that handy table around. After all, they know many people will have created their own versions, so they aren't making it any harder - just looking shifty (which is accurate).
I notice that the number of daily tests is listed as less than 100k. I'm glad to see that they didn't change the data there.
But the difference in total number of tests is >100k for the last two days?
What am I missing?
I was looking at the cases tested data
"number of daily tests", which is not the same as cases tested, I think?
Daily difference on 1st of May:
"tests" 121,929
"cases tested" 74,910
What's the make up of the 45k between those numbers?
It's the difference between the number of swabs, and the number of people who have been swabbed. Some people will have been swabbed more than once (in Italy it takes two negative swabs within 24 hours of each other to declare someone cured but the UK is not declaring anyone cured that I've noticed).
It's not clear if the "number of people tested" includes people who've had a test posted to them, while that test is included in the "number of tests" number to make it look like > 100,000. We'll see how sustainable that number is (and if they didn't just save up lots of tests to send/register on the same day).
Last edited by shpalman on Sun May 03, 2020 10:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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shpalman wrote: Sun May 03, 2020 10:49 am
It's the difference between the number of swabs, and the number of people who have been swabbed.
I wonder how they know the difference, as the data we have to send to the government daily is total tests carried out, number of tests split my patients and staff and the number of positive samples in each category - no de-duplication involved.
shpalman wrote: Sun May 03, 2020 10:49 am
It's the difference between the number of swabs, and the number of people who have been swabbed.
I wonder how they know the difference, as the data we have to send to the government daily is total tests carried out, number of tests split my patients and staff and the number of positive samples in each category - no de-duplication involved.
In Italy the "number of people tested" has only become available in the past week or so, as compared to the numbers of swabs carried out.
having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
@shpalman@mastodon.me.uk
@shpalman.bsky.social / bsky.app/profile/chrastina.net
threads.net/@dannychrastina
When we've been waving at stats from other countries about the number of tests (and lack of them in UK), are those numbers swabs or cases/people?
It seems it's becoming increasingly difficult to make comparisons internationally given the difference and opacity around the definitions and collection method.
