COVID19

[Doobs]

and remember when the Covid cases in Leicester were big news.

https://mobile.twitter.com/RP131/status/1344325101462953985

[Marky147]

Have to hope that when it starts catching up, the new strains are weaker mutations... Better to be optimistic, I guess

I've not looked at his page, but do punish myself with an occasional check on Cummins and the smiley face gang, so I can see what they're pushing for the week.

[Marky147]

Another video from Mr Swanda.

These PCR tests are what you see lots of noise about them being inaccurate, and they just make everyone positive.

'The guy that created them said they're useless'

The fact he died a year or so ago just fuels the conspiracy fire, too.

[Doobs]

Have to hope that when it starts catching up, the new strains are weaker mutations... Better to be optimistic, I guess

I've not looked at his page, but do punish myself with an occasional check on Cummins and the smiley face gang, so I can see what they're pushing for the week.

It is possible they will be less lethal.  I think Doctor John covered it the other day, and there us no evidence they are less, or more, fatal yet.  It is going to take a while to get enough data to be sure either way.   

Another 900+ day today, but again, there is a lot of catch-up in there, so the deaths by date of death should be significantly lower when the lag works through. 

Most of these deaths are going to be older variants, as 3 or 4 weeks ago the proportion of new variant Covid was much lower.   Even looking 3-4 weeks out from now the new variant will only be making significant differencies to deaths in regions where the new variant is currently dominant.   What this significant difference will be we don't know, but the new variant would have to be much less fatal to balance out the increasing cases.

[Marky147]

Yeah, he's talking about level of hospitalisations today.

Along with the americans looking at the Oxford vaccine in April!

[Marky147]

HNY to the COVID crew 

[neeko]

Mr RPs Twitter feed is amazing, this graph yesterday for the West Midlands made me check it twice.

https://twitter.com/rp131/status/1344680650650120195?s=21

If the West Midlands has a similar number today I can’t imagine primary schools will open here in Birmingham on Monday.

[Doobs]

Mr RPs Twitter feed is amazing, this graph yesterday for the West Midlands made me check it twice.

https://twitter.com/rp131/status/1344680650650120195?s=21

If the West Midlands has a similar number today I can’t imagine primary schools will open here in Birmingham on Monday.

Yeah, his stuff is very good.  He comes across as a bit sceptical, but I think the data just speaks for itself if presented in an honest way.

The West Midlands does look alarming, but given there was less testing on Christmas day, I guess a fair few delayed the test to spend more time with granny :/  I hope it is just an anomaly.  Whilst we we see similar patterns in death reporting each year, I have no special knowledge of medical testing rates over Christmas. 

It is genuinely weird how people are driving to hospitals and allegedly sneaking round A & E at 3AM to show they aren't busy, and others lapping it up. 

We spent some time in ICU/High Dependancy the year before Covid and at 3AM it is very quiet in hospitals.  Even in ICU it is calm and quiet apart from the alarms going off every so often.  It was a privilege to see how they worked and how much attention the patients get. 

FWIW We live opposite a hospital, and yes the car park has been quiet for months  and the road no longer gets snarled up at the end of visiting time.  The ambulances are stil coming in and I haven't been counting, but it was pretty depressing to hear them on Christmas day.

Hopefully we can turn the corner soon if all the over 50s and vulnerable can get at least a single dose of vaccine by April.  I think there is some sense in going to one dose, but still think the extremely vulnerable should get two.  The maths on the ordering was quite convincing and I am very much less vulnerable than some of them.

Happy New Year All.

[Doobs]

https://mobile.twitter.com/GidMK/status/1344811882192879616

False positives are driving the pandemic!"

In NSW last week we tested 332,000 people and found 95 positive cases. If every case was a false positive (unlikely) then the false positive rate is 95/332,000 = 0.028% The "casedemic" is nonsense. It's simple maths

[Marky147]

Yeah, that's what my mate keeps saying.

Inbetween 'it's only flu', and 'it's the global cabal trying to take over the world'.

[Marky147]

Talking a bit about the single dose proposals.

[neeko]

For Brexit I have always followed both sides on Twitter, Alistair Campbell & D A Green but also Daniel Hannah and Andrew Lilico, but I am just ignoring the covid nutters, I can’t even be bothered to work out if they a crazy or just trolling. 

The good news on the West Midlands covid numbers from the 29th specimen date  is that there was a small addition today but a big move elsewhere in the country which suggests that they happened to have had an efficient lab for B!ham tests relative to the rest of the country rather than a giant spike here.

Still bad numbers everywhere, I don’t see that we can get R below 1 before Easter with normal restrictions, either immunity from vaccination or antibody response from catching the virus will probably have to do a lot of the work. The UK population don’t seem to be willing to make the lifestyle changes necessary to lower transmission, nor does the rest of the world either.

[Doobs]

Yeah, that's what my mate keeps saying.

Inbetween 'it's only flu', and 'it's the global cabal trying to take over the world'.

We are doing about the same number of tests each day.   If the Australian ones were all false positives then using the same test we would also see around 95 false positives a day.  This is in line with the very small numbers we saw in Wuhan when they tested after the epidemic was over, those at Cambridge University when they had tested all term, and here in the UK when we had very low numbers of positives in the summer.  False positives are people who are negative who are mistakingly showing as positive when they are negative.   When the negative proportion is at its highest we should see false positives at their highest, but instead we see tiny amounts of false positives when infections are low.  Hence we can conclude the false positive rate for the test is insignificant.

We are seeing 55,000 or so positives a day.   Even if there were a tiny number of false positives, they make naff all difference. 

There may also be a small percentage of residual positives from people who are no longer infectious, but they aren't making the difference between 15,000 a day a month ago and 55,000 now. 

But these people don't even do the maths they just all tell themselves there are 90% false positives.   

[Marky147]

Kind of what I thought, but I'm a sheep because I believe the scientists aren't trying to kill us all, and facilitate the 'great reset'.

'You will own nothing, and be happy'

Think they already gt me as my car is leased, and I only own a few watches, my computers,  and some clothes

[Marky147]

John busy today, and more on the Oxford.