Coronavirus outbreak

[marinyork]

We are so much in the dark - you would think deaths would be a solid stat - but now it seems only in hospital deaths are counted.

There are variations day by day, the errors are quite large. Like the Piemonte figures that weren't included and then got added later. Or the UK that changed it's system, or a large london hospital that had a lot of deaths and then I think it was 3 day's worth that got added together.

The uncertainty's reflects the lack of testing. All right so someone looks at Italy and say's cor blimey 394,079 tests, what are you on about? Not very much testing is going on in some regions, for what are relatively large outbreaks with still quite a lot of deaths (as Italy's ahead of most other countries). Italy was doing almost the same number of tests per day as the UK is now for the same number of deaths. The number of patients in ICU in Italy is still rising which isn't reported here.

 

[marinyork]

Regardless as to what it tells us about the epidemiology, 900 deaths in a single country in a single day is desperately awful.

Horrific. But I think Spain is sadly about to overtake Italy in largest daily death toll. New York State is not looking good in about a week's time.

541 deaths in a day in a region of ten million people.

 

[kingrollo]

All the overreaction s now seem like underreactions

 

[Wobblers]

I think a state of affairs where the PM is in isolation but not tested is untenable, frankly.

Is it really any more untenable than not testing anyone who's displaying Covid-19 symptoms? If anything, this highlights just how hopeless our testing policy is. Without meaningful testing, there's no way of tracking the epidemic which means that there's no way to gauge if the measures we're taking are having an effect. It means we can't track down contacts and get those who're asymptomatic (but are still infectious) into isolation. It means the only way of assessing what's happening is to look at the hospital admissions or death rates - that has a 2-3 week lag so our strategy is always lagging behind the reality. This is costing lives.

 

[roubaixtuesday]

Horrific. But I think Spain is sadly about to overtake Italy in largest daily death toll. New York State is not looking good in about a week's time.

541 deaths in a day in a region of ten million people.

For weeks now I've been saying this is coming, and that the exponential rise means it will be unbelievably fast when it hits. And I've been increasingly frustrated that society and government haven't reacted to the warning from Italy in particular.

But experiencing it now is still a massive shock.

 

[marinyork]

Is it really any more untenable than not testing anyone who's displaying Covid-19 symptoms? If anything, this highlights just how hopeless our testing policy is. Without meaningful testing, there's no way of tracking the epidemic which means that there's no way to gauge if the measures we're taking are having an effect. It means we can't track down contacts and get those who're asymptomatic (but are still infectious) into isolation. It means the only way of assessing what's happening is to look at the hospital admissions or death rates - that has a 2-3 week lag so our strategy is always lagging behind the reality. This is costing lives.

The UK has said it's made progress on the antigen for a test kit today. They are just still being extremely vague and cagey about it.

The antibody stuff isn't really any more details than the last 2-3 days.

 

[roubaixtuesday]

Is it really any more untenable than not testing anyone who's displaying Covid-19 symptoms? If anything, this highlights just how hopeless our testing policy is. Without meaningful testing, there's no way of tracking the epidemic which means that there's no way to gauge if the measures we're taking are having an effect. It means we can't track down contacts and get those who're asymptomatic (but are still infectious) into isolation. It means the only way of assessing what's happening is to look at the hospital admissions or death rates - that has a 2-3 week lag so our strategy is always lagging behind the reality. This is costing lives.

I agree. But I still think we need to know if the pm has it.

 

[marinyork]

For weeks now I've been saying this is coming, and that the exponential rise means it will be unbelievably fast when it hits. And I've been increasingly frustrated that society and government haven't reacted to the warning from Italy in particular.

But experiencing it now is still a massive shock.

I agree. I think UK society has been a lot smarter than UK government. Still not enough, especially in the week before Monday where social distancing came in and was slowly applied. Scarily enough, that still seems a lot better than 2 other countries.

 

[tom73]

It was a horrible sight on the telly seeing 40 ft refrigerated trailers parked up by New York hospitals to be used as temporary mortuary’s,
Jesus, What next ,

Well we've just started to build a temporary mortuary able to take 1,500 min using part of Birmingham airport.

 

[kingrollo]

Is it really any more untenable than not testing anyone who's displaying Covid-19 symptoms? If anything, this highlights just how hopeless our testing policy is. Without meaningful testing, there's no way of tracking the epidemic which means that there's no way to gauge if the measures we're taking are having an effect. It means we can't track down contacts and get those who're asymptomatic (but are still infectious) into isolation. It means the only way of assessing what's happening is to look at the hospital admissions or death rates - that has a 2-3 week lag so our strategy is always lagging behind the reality. This is costing lives.

Yet - staggeringly the move from contain to delay actually reduced the testing - it might have been a forced decision true - but that seems a bad move now.
Nobody has the answers - but Johnson and co have made some poor calls IMO. Whilst I don't know the finer points - being outside the EU ventilators programme could be the biggest.

 

[kingrollo]

The UK has said it's made progress on the antigen for a test kit today. They are just still being extremely vague and cagey about it.

The antibody stuff isn't really any more details than the last 2-3 days.

I'm confused here - what's now being called the antigen test - is in fact the test for the live virus.

The 15 minute test - that was going to be widely available (to test if you have had cov 19) seems to have dropped off a cliff.

 

[ozboz]

Well we've just started to build a temporary mortuary able to take 1,500 min using part of Birmingham airport.

A temporary mortuary is an awful thing, but to put people on a vehicle built for carting animal carcasses around in is a bit to near to the old saying “being treated like cattle”

 

[marinyork]

I'm confused here - what's now being called the antigen test - is in fact the test for the live virus.

The 15 minute test - that was going to be widely available (to test if you have had cov 19) seems to have dropped off a cliff.

The government calls them antigen tests along with other similar implementations which are also antigen tests (I think they think people are morons and would raise an eyebrow at anyone calling them that tbh). The media generally doesn't. I tend to refer to them as PCR (or other techs) as do some bits of the media.

Both techs antigen and antibody test kits are being worked on. The government haven't been terribly clear on the antigen test, which has led to some confusion of some posters (depending on which edition of newsnight you watch or which day you tune into the news).

I'm far, far, far more sceptical about the antigen kits than others here. Others are far more sceptical about the antibody tests. I'm sceptical about the antigen kits as it's something the government have intermittently mentioned for a very, very, very long time now and apparently not too much progress made on. The antibody kits on the other hand have been something mentioned much more recently (last three weeks), been poo pooed on and appear to have made some substantial progress (if not fully implementable yet). Vallance is the one that tends to bang on about the antigen tech (although he doesn't directly say this sometimes) - not sure why.

 

[kingrollo]

The government calls them antigen tests along with other similar implementations which are also antigen tests (I think they think people are morons and would raise an eyebrow at anyone calling them that tbh). The media generally doesn't. I tend to refer to them as PCR (or other techs) as do some bits of the media.

Both techs antigen and antibody test kits are being worked on. The government haven't been terribly clear on the antigen test, which has led to some confusion of some posters (depending on which edition of newsnight you watch or which day you tune into the news).

I'm far, far, far more sceptical about the antigen kits than others here. Others are far more sceptical about the antibody tests. I'm sceptical about the antigen kits as it's something the government have intermittently mentioned for a very, very, very long time now and apparently not too much progress made on. The antibody kits on the other hand have been something mentioned much more recently (last three weeks), been poo pooed on and appear to have made some substantial progress (if not fully implementable yet). Vallance is the one that tends to bang on about the antigen tech (although he doesn't directly say this sometimes) - not sure why.

But PCR is what they have being doing all along isn't it ? - but as from tommorow they are called anti gen tests ? - is that correct ?

 

[marinyork]

But PCR is what they have being doing all along isn't it ? - but as from tommorow they are called anti gen tests ? - is that correct ?

PCR is a very well used technique cleverly adapted by a Chinese Lab in January to invent a test for Covid-19. Before then, there wasn't one. Yes been doing all along.

This diagram below is from a lab company (Biopanda reagents) that developed an antibody test and have almost certainly had some bought by the UK government and being tested.

Obviously the frigging antibody test doesn't work very well/at all in the first 3/5/7 days (depending on who you ask). What isn't said is that PCR doesn't work so well later on and various makers of the antibody tests say their tests work better then, so complement. Unfortunately this is lost and another poster got quite angry about this the other day skim reading the thread (which is easy to do). You might well say that a company would say that, except in the rare technical discussions on the tv the same thing's been said. I was a bit disappointed that Witty didn't have the gumption to say yesterday direct, we've been communicating with or spying on the spanish and their test kits they bought some came out at 30%, so guys this is terrible so we're just going over our own UK test kits to see how they do.

PCR
advantages:-
can pick up the virus early

disadvantages:-
worldwide shortage of materials
numerous other countries the same
have to take swabs that are technically hard to do (see above)
have to be driven to a lab (there aren't many)
done in batches
wait of 4-24 hours
is alleged to not be so good in the latter stages (which arguably with our joke testing regime is relevant)

So as you can see, there are many disadvantages from PCR. If you have a mobile PCR or some other antigen kit and not shortage of bits then this gets rid of most of the disadvantages!

It's not a one or the other. An antibody test would be extremely useful. I want the UK government to make massive strides with an 'antigen' kit. I'm just sceptical.