Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

[LinekersLegs]

Coronavirus Testing Hampered by Disarray, Shortages, Backlogs

State officials and labs say competition for supplies and questionable results are prolonging the national crisis. The White House put the onus on states to figure out a strategy, while saying there is sufficient capacity.

www.wsj.com

Mr. Trump said the Abbott tests could deliver “lightning-fast results in as little as five minutes,” at a time when politicians around the country were fretting over long backlogs at conventional laboratories. The federal government bought hundreds of the devices to distribute to states.

That marquee effort soon ran into the supply-chain issues that have plagued the testing buildup. State officials found they couldn’t easily obtain enough of Abbott’s single-use cartridges to actually test patients, they said. Each cartridge contains the chemicals and other components needed for the machine to process one test. As of last week, Abbott said it had distributed about 600,000 cartridges for the machines. “We understand there is great demand from both the public and private sectors for our rapid point-of-care test,” said Scott Stoffel, Abbott’s spokesman. “We’ve been clear from the outset on what we could initially provide, and we’ve met every commitment.”

In recent days, state and hospital officials found in internal studies that the devices frequently produced inaccurate results, leading at least one hospital to return the devices, they said in interviews. hMr. Stoffel said the company believes the inaccurate results are rare, and said it has made changes to its instructions for using the machines to address them.

 

[davmaher]

He’s too busy teaching the kids quantum physics.

Apparently the family cat hasn't been seen for a few days, so I'm assuming he's up to Schrodinger's paradox.

 

[ForeverBlue92]

With respect mate, although you're right to some extent that the stats don't tell the full story, and we won't know the full story for some time, I think you're conciously or subconciously trying to convince yourself that things aren't as bad as what the headlines suggest.

A lot of people are currently dying that, if they hadn't contracted COVID-19, would still be pottering about for a good few years yet. There will come a time when the number of people dying as a result of the lockdown, as opposed to dying as a result of COVID means it'll probably be "better" ( less worse really ) to accept a certain amount of COVID related deaths, but we're currently nowhere near that point.



It's not really, a real world example might go something like ( apologies for making it close to home, but it helps illustrate the point )

Uncle Billy is overweight and on medication to control his hypertension.
He contracts COVID-19 and, partly as a result of his pre-existing conditions sadly passes away.

If he hadn't contracted COVID-19, he'd still be alive. With apologies to the medics on here, because I don't know exactly how this works, but a chain of events resulting in Uncle Billy's death was started by COVID-19, so his death certificate might include, as causes of death :-

• Pneumonia, brought on by
• A COVID-19 infection
• Excerberated by a pre-existing hypertensive condition

The above won't be exactly right, but it probably won't be far off.

I agree with what you are saying mate - however you must admit thats just an assumption (which pretty much everything is at this stage).

Unless you die from viral pneumonia / respiratory conditions surely more investigation needs to look into how much this thing actually is contributing to other deaths and if there is a danger of COVID being used almost as an umbrella illness to explain away any death aslong as that person had traces of it in their system.

I think until we know the true infected numbers we are all second guessing - if say 3-5 million in the UK have or have had the virus - there is a decent chance that if someone dies of something unrelated like a heart attack and were one of those millions with COVID traces in their system then they get thrown into the statistics despite their being no clear link.

Basically the more people that have had the virus the more likely that someone who dies may show traces therefore its recorded as a COVID-19 death which may not be the case.

Ultimately none of us know but it would explain to an extent how a 90 year old with underlying conditions can battle it but a healthy 20-30 year old with no underlying conditions dies from it.

As at the moment it seems a lottery to an extent.

 

[Catfish Blues]

There's usually on average 1300 deaths a day in the UK. So average 9100? Deaths a week on varying reasons. I'm curious to know how much that has increased to reflect the virus effects.

Not being funny, but instead of being curious, why don't you just go to the source ?

For the week ending 3rd April, which is the latest full data we have from ONS ...

From https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...glandandwalesprovisional/weekending3april2020

2.Main points

• The provisional number of deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending 3 April 2020 (Week 14) was 16,387; this represents an increase of 5,246 deaths registered compared with the previous week (Week 13) and 6,082 more than the five-year average.
• Of the deaths registered in Week 14, 3,475 mentioned “novel coronavirus (COVID-19)”, which was 21.2% of all deaths; this compares with 539 (4.8% of all deaths) in Week 13.
• In London, nearly half (46.6%) of deaths registered in Week 14 involved COVID-19; the West Midlands also had a high proportion of COVID-19 deaths, accounting for 22.1% of deaths registered in this region.

....

Statistician’s comment

Nick Stripe, head of health analysis and life events at the ONS said:

“The latest comparable data for deaths involving COVID-19 with a date of death up to 3 April, show there were 6,235 deaths in England and Wales. When looking at data for England, this is 15% higher than the NHS numbers as they include all mentions of COVID-19 on the death certificate, including suspected COVID-19, as well as deaths in the community.

“The 16,387 deaths that were registered in England and Wales during the week ending 3 April is the highest weekly total since Week 2 (early January) 2000.”

What part of the highest number of weekly deaths in the last twenty years and 5 to 6 thousand extra deaths do people not understand ?

 

[davmaher]

it’s coming along......

View attachment 83975

Whilst I applaud the choice and appropriateness of dog faeces as a sculpting medium, are you not worried that it may become a bit runny as the weather warms up?

 

[ForeverBlue92]

Do it yourself...I have.
Its not like anyone's gonna see it now is it.
Theres plenty of time to put it right ...no ?

Not risking it mate lol

 

[BlueToff]

Found it....Daily Fail.View attachment 84009

the actual theory behind it is right

but the dates are probably just plucked from thin air at this stage

 

[Walken]

massive jump in spanish daily death figures, backlog accumulation?

 

[Blues Harp]

 

[Catfish Blues]

Unless you die from viral pneumonia / respiratory conditions surely more investigation needs to look into how much this thing actually is contributing to other deaths and if there is a danger of COVID being used almost as an umbrella illness to explain away any death aslong as that person had traces of it in their system.

Deaths from pneumonia, for the w/c 3rd April, rose by 600 from the previous week, and those are deaths which didn't have COVID on the death certificate. Bear in mind that we're pretty much at the end of the flu season and the trend had been steadily downward for weeks, so, almost certainly, that 600 increase was down to COVID, but wasn't recorded as such.

Seriously mate, you're deluding yourself.

Some of the people dying, would have been end of life, so wouldn't have had much more than six months left to live, and so, over the rest of the year, they will bring the overall numbers down a bit, but :-

a ) Is it OK that people who are close to end of life should be denied a few more weeks / months to spend with their loved ones ?

a nd

b ) They will be only a small percentage of the excess deaths we're seeing.

 

[BlueToff]

massive jump in spanish daily death figures, backlog accumulation?

Got to hope so as they'd been plateauing/declining for the last two weeks.

It can't be to do with any lockdown measures being lifted as they were only done a few days ago so in that case there'd be no impact felt until a few weeks later.

 

[Catfish Blues]

Ultimately none of us know but it would explain to an extent how a 90 year old with underlying conditions can battle it but a healthy 20-30 year old with no underlying conditions dies from it.

See below ...

To be honest, anyone that doesn't understand that some young people die while old people survive should take a look at the fatality of all other diseases, which have almost identical outcomes.

Some, very few, people in their 20's have, out of nowhere, a heart attack and die, while some people in their 80's will survive a similar trauma.

 

[BlueToff]

Deaths from pneumonia, for the w/c 3rd April, rose by 600 from the previous week, and those are deaths which didn't have COVID on the death certificate. Bear in mind that we're pretty much at the end of the flu season and the trend had been steadily downward for weeks, so, almost certainly, that 600 increase was down to COVID, but wasn't recorded as such.

Seriously mate, you're deluding yourself.

Some of the people dying, would have been end of life, so wouldn't have had much more than six months left to live, and so, over the rest of the year, they will bring the overall numbers down a bit, but :-

a ) Is it OK that people who are close to end of life should be denied a few more weeks / months to spend with their loved ones ?

a nd

b ) They will be only a small percentage of the excess deaths we're seeing.

Not disagreeing here, just adding a point in that bit in bold

In total, do you think the death rate come the end of the year, while I think it will be higher than the average, won't be such a spike because of the increase in, for example, people working from home. So, that's less commuting - less traffic - less accidents etc.

As crap as the lockdown is for a lot of people losing jobs and stuff, it could actually save lives in other ways than just protecting the NHS from being overwhelmed by COVID (which as grim as our death rate is, we can surely take some solace in our hospitals not being overrun - touch wood it stays that way obviously).

 

[ForeverBlue92]

Deaths from pneumonia, for the w/c 3rd April, rose by 600 from the previous week, and those are deaths which didn't have COVID on the death certificate. Bear in mind that we're pretty much at the end of the flu season and the trend had been steadily downward for weeks, so, almost certainly, that 600 increase was down to COVID, but wasn't recorded as such.

Seriously mate, you're deluding yourself.

Some of the people dying, would have been end of life, so wouldn't have had much more than six months left to live, and so, over the rest of the year, they will bring the overall numbers down a bit, but :-

a ) Is it OK that people who are close to end of life should be denied a few more weeks / months to spend with their loved ones ?

a nd

b ) They will be only a small percentage of the excess deaths we're seeing.

Im not deluding anything mate - its quite simple that none of us know anything about this at this stage - therefore surely people can sensibly debate this thing without being insulted No?

Yes some people dont take it serious but there are also those on the other end of the spectrum that think this is black death x100 and any other viewpoint is someone likening it to a cold.

 

[davmaher]

Tories: we have a plan but we arent going to tell you about our plan in case you ignore the plan we're not going to tell you about.

They did tell us that they would be doing 100,000 tests per day by the end of April. The latest I've seen is that currently around 20,000 a day are being done. Just over a week to bring about a 5-fold increase. I'm sure they wouldn't have lied about it, would they? If the increase doesn't materialise it must be because Boris hasn't been around or civil servants/testing labs etc. are incompetent or something similar. It couldn't possibly be because this government are all a bunch of lying, incompetent toe-rags.