Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

[Barnfred 55]

Its crossed my mind, but im presuming mail testing was the quickest way for the UK to set up an infrastructure and balance resources. Perhaps maybe a joint approach of the mail testing and centers locally might be the way forward. We have testing and contact tracing teams wholly over here. I suspect there are different challenges for the UK though, as we have a smaller population and country and not quite as big as an island.

The concern i have with mail testing is the efficacy for the reasons i mentioned earlier mate, in terms of people doing it themselves. My second concern is the timeline. How long does it take, presuming Joe Public has done it properly 1. Get a test after having symptoms, 2. Post it back. 3. Have it processed at labs, 3. Have it analysed. 4. Get the results. 5 Contact trace. Seems like a long time line to me and an inefficient way of contact tracing and identifying clusters (more then three linked cases).

For example, if i work in health care, i work on a ward were covid is present, i develop symptoms, i apply for a test, it arrives three days later, i do the test, i send it off, three days later it arrives at a lab, two days later its processed by the team, the results are recorded, the next day i get the results. You might be touching two weeks beginning to end, i might have recovered, gone to hospital. But critically i may live with my partner, parents, have been to work in a hospital, down the shops etc. while i have been a symptomatic during incubatition or - i may have infected others in the intervening periods over the lag, the whole process and timeline doesn't seem to lend itself to speedy contact tracing or shutting down clusters the same way immediate testing would in a testing center.

But im sure this has all be weighed and any testing system is better then none, the scale if it comes of is impressive, but testing also has to be purposeful beyond numbers. What is the reason you are testing? and What are you trying to achieve? - these are key questions. Is it to see how many people have the virus representativly, is it a knee jerk political seen to be doing - also keep their political promise during the crisis., or is it to shut down clusters and turn the tide in the community - speed and efficacy are the key factor in that. So its an interesting question as to why the UK government decided that this was the best approach for them and what were the reasons for that.

As I said mate, with contact tracing speed is of the essence

 

[Paris]

Yeah, that says absolutely nothing about it being made in a lab. It says the Chinese suppressed reports. Which we all knew.

You might as well have pasted a copy to the last video you watched on Pornhub. It might have had a little more relevance to your claims.

Did you quote me or is there a glitch in the matrix?

 

[zzr45]

Did you quote me or is there a glitch in the matrix?

I think I’d pressed reply on one of your posts this morning and it did that annoying thing where it keeps it in for some reason

 

[Brennan]

I think I’d pressed reply on one of your posts this morning and it did that annoying thing where it keeps it in for some reason

Does my head in that...

 

[mahermi1]

The death figure yesterday, as it has been for the last month or so, is truly awful and very sad.

But I haven't seen anybody celebrating the tests levels in anything like the way you portray. And certainly not on here. One or two have said it has been a good effort to get the numbers up, which in fairness it has. But that still needs to be tempered by the fact it should have been done weeks earlier. The ability to test in large numbers has been there all the time if PHE had not insisted on using their own facilities only.

But the good news is that testing capacity is now there. What we need to do now is get a better organised structure to who we test going forward. In my opinion this involves setting up local testing centres, and by local I mean within a 5/10 mile radius, so we can start a proper test, contact, trace and isolate strategy, which is vital to our ability to open up the country again. We're not in a position to do this nationally yet as the daily new infection figures are still far too high. But there is absolutely no reason why it can't be rolled out in some regions where the new infections are quite low, like down here in Cornwall for instance. Trialling it in selected regions will also help them learn what works and what doesn't before rolling it out nationally.

To be fair the testing has been used as a weapon for both sides of the political arena on here and I'm sure everywhere else. What's most important is to get these death figures down, depressing really.

 

[spectateur]

Maybe the wrong thread but I wonder your view on the demonstrations in several US state capitals. Tens of thousands of people crowded together protesting against anti covid lockdown measures. Armed protesters taking over the capitol in Michigan?. Just one shot and it's frightening to think about how it could have turned out.
How uncivilised!. They'll never get the thing under control over there with that attitude.
Until they do, UK should ban all flights from there.

 

[LinekersLegs]

I know there was discussion around this this week

Poor health outcomes from COVID-19 more probable among black patients | Imperial News | Imperial College London

Black patients may be at increased risk of poorer health outcomes from COVID-19, according to an analysis of patients hospitalised in London.

www.imperial.ac.uk

Very stark difference in California for the 18-50 age group when broken down by race

Race Ethnicity

www.cdph.ca.gov

Proportions of Cases and Deaths by Race and Ethnicity Among Ages 18‐49

Race/Ethnicity	No. Cases	Percent Cases	No. Deaths	Percent Deaths	Percent CA population
Latino	8,542	53.1	89	68.5	43.5
White	3,459	21.5	10	7.7	31.2
Asian	1,750	10.9	10	7.7	15.9
African American/Black	853	5.3	18	13.8	6.3
Multi-Race	166	1	0	0	2.2
American Indian or Alaska Native	38	0.2	2	1.5	0.6
Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander	195	1.2	1	0.8	0.4
Other	1,078	6.7	0	0	0
Total	16,081	100	130	100	100

 

[mahermi1]

Maybe the wrong thread but I wonder your view on the demonstrations in several US state capitals. Tens of thousands of people crowded together protesting against anti covid lockdown measures. Armed protesters taking over the capitol in Michigan?. Just one shot and it's frightening to think about how it could have turned out.
How uncivilised!. They'll never get the thing under control over there with that attitude.
Until they do, UK should ban all flights from there.

Said the same myself, should ban all American flights to here until they can get their act together. The majority of Americans are probably similar to us and are staying in and being careful. The minority are the loud mouth idiots who are spoiling it for everyone. Trump take a bow, quite possibly the worst president you could have in charge at a time like this.

 

[Neiler]

What we've been doing the last few weeks is as soon as someone goes off with symptoms, we ring them up and arrange a test usually that day or the next. Everyone has been able to attend the test centres and none have required home swabbing. If someone can't drive and are a key worker they've been picked up by the porters and taken back. The results then take about 48/72 hrs. So within 3/4 days they can be back in work and the household members can go about life as normal if it comes back negative.Those tests should have been made available at the start so we could have stopped the tired arses who self isolated before the bat soup was even finished.

Fair play mate!! Are you working in a test centre? Whats your take on the home kits?

 

[Minimeister]

Fair play mate!! Are you working in a test centre? Whats your take on the home kits?

No I work in HR mate. Home kits are great if they're being sent to people too ill to attend a test centre. Unfortunately though in my experience, people just want a test for tests sake though and they'll be the people determined to be tested.

 

[mill]

Very stark difference in California for the 18-50 age group when broken down by race

Race Ethnicity

www.cdph.ca.gov

Proportions of Cases and Deaths by Race and Ethnicity Among Ages 18‐49

Race/Ethnicity	No. Cases	Percent Cases	No. Deaths	Percent Deaths	Percent CA population
Latino	8,542	53.1	89	68.5	43.5
White	3,459	21.5	10	7.7	31.2
Asian	1,750	10.9	10	7.7	15.9
African American/Black	853	5.3	18	13.8	6.3
Multi-Race	166	1	0	0	2.2
American Indian or Alaska Native	38	0.2	2	1.5	0.6
Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander	195	1.2	1	0.8	0.4
Other	1,078	6.7	0	0	0
Total	16,081	100	130	100	100

Those figures just tell me it’s not biological and more social economical.

 

[tsubaki]

Very stark difference in California for the 18-50 age group when broken down by race

Race Ethnicity

www.cdph.ca.gov

Proportions of Cases and Deaths by Race and Ethnicity Among Ages 18‐49

Race/Ethnicity	No. Cases	Percent Cases	No. Deaths	Percent Deaths	Percent CA population
Latino	8,542	53.1	89	68.5	43.5
White	3,459	21.5	10	7.7	31.2
Asian	1,750	10.9	10	7.7	15.9
African American/Black	853	5.3	18	13.8	6.3
Multi-Race	166	1	0	0	2.2
American Indian or Alaska Native	38	0.2	2	1.5	0.6
Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander	195	1.2	1	0.8	0.4
Other	1,078	6.7	0	0	0
Total	16,081	100	130	100	100

TBF a cynic might note when it was realised there was a racial disparity in terms of deaths, when the protests started and then come to some sort of conclusion about the protesters.

 

[LinekersLegs]

We've been conservative i think mate - pardon the pun - we went with with a very risk averse approach early doors and continue along that vain. We've been decent enough with patience and general social compliance as well. We didnt take any risks and continue not to, all the while waiting and watching elsewhere to see what works and how we can apply it. No point being a hero and playing games of chance with the loss of human life. Really if we had less conservative politicians we might have moved to phase 1 on this Tues and opened up a little, but the two week extension just gives us that bit extra time to prepare and make sure. I think we are taking advantage of our position in Western Europe and seeing how opening up in central Europe is going and will learn lessons around that in the next two weeks. We are also hoping to have the capacity to do - 100k tests a day in two weeks - even if its unlikely we will need that many. We're doing well at the moment with cases dropping day on day.

A worry going on, is sharing a border with the UK, we have seen a spike of cases in the border counties, Cavan and Mongahan, with day trippers coming over the border and back - different jurisdictions and it is creating problems in health and policing. Going on if we open say the likes of shops, pubs and restaurants and the UK dont we could be flooded with people being pulled south from the North, were we have no jurisdiction over health etc. But such is living in Ireland.

We made mistakes - residential care settings particularly, but genuinely trying to rectify these now and salvage what is salvageable with an acknowledgement we dropped the ball.

I wouldn't be to fool hardy though or self congratulatory now, dealing with this virus is like a game of snakes and ladders, just as soon as you go up a ladder you can be knocked back at any stage stepping on a snake. Personally i think locking down a country is easy, i think its far harder and there there are huge risks involved in opening up again incrementally. That will separate many governments from the herd of just blanket lock-downs as a way of managing this. The winter is going to be difficult, a concern would be a flu and covid duel outbreak - which could be carnage and will be a real challenge for our health services.

While id share a lot of your opinions on how the government have dealt with this in the UK and their morality and political, values and motivation behind many of their decisions, its been a week of acknowledgement and progress - more so then any other week - strides have been in getting a testing strategy and a response into care homes - hopefully both those things come off, they've been painfully slow bordering on incompetent on the broad management of this - with a horrffic human cost, but better late then never on these measures and i really hope the UK progress from here.

I think the slow response by the UK government over a coherent multifaceted holisitic strategy to this across a range of settings will delay things for the UK as they are late to many of the particular "best practice" parties. If the testing strategy comes of it could really help. On reflection i think the UK and to a lesser extent us, prioritised the acute setting and the UK particularly panicked and front loaded everything into hospitals very narrowly (maybe not unreasonably), other settings like the community and care homes less so and is only now starting to deal with the issues there. The chain of infection starts in the community, if you dont deal with the growth of the virus at source its not going to get ease in hospitals or ultimately. The UK are late to that and other parties but at lest they've shined their shoes this weeks.

I’m wondering if how seasonal flu is treated is going to change this year?

Here in the US the flu jab is advised for everyone, at least in my experience you can’t go to the doctor past August without it being strongly encouraged. https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/pages/immunization/influenza.aspx
Some of that might be financial (not sure what $ the doctors get) but it is free to most patients under health plans and has the twin goals of reducing individual risk and to try to stop the spread to the most vulnerabl/those who can’t get the jab. I’d hope that there is a even more obvious public campaign to increase uptake given those worries about dual covid/seasonal flu.

As I understand it for the NHS and Ireland it is only the over 65s and at risk that get it free - is that correct?

 

[roydo]

As I understand it for the NHS and Ireland it is only the over 65s and at risk that get it free - is that correct?

Yep.

 

[LinekersLegs]

Yep.

Is it available, at cost, for other groups?