Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

Disease surveillance have satellite images of hospital parking lots skyrocketing in Wuhan hospitals months before the WHO announced the pandemic. They were also filling up the end of 2018-2019, greater than any other time period in previous years.

 

Are you referring to that pre-print from Harvard, "Analysis of hospital traffic and search engine data in Wuhan China indicates early disease activity in the Fall of 2019"?

If so, I think there might be some problems with that study.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1270360169248108547

 

The BBC even did a fact checking article about it.

BBC News - Coronavirus: Fact-checking claims it might have started in August 2019

 

@lunarainbows

I was referring to an interview I watched with John Brownstein ID epidemiologist (mentioned in the link you provided).

He also said that their data indicated that they saw huge increases in ppl searching for GI disease-diarrhea which increased at level that they'd never seen before.

https://twitter.com/johnbrownstein/with_replies?lang=en

 

Yes, John S. Brownstein is the Harvard Medical professor who led the study I mentioned. If the interview you watched took place sometime in early June, it's likely he was talking about the findings in this study, which was getting a lot of traction in the media around that time.

The more I read, the more I'm realizing this paper is complete garbage. This is the kind of shoddy methodology I expect from BPSers, not an ID epidemiologist who is also Professor of Pediatrics and Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School and Chief Innovation Officer of Boston Children’s Hospital.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1270574421913112576


https://twitter.com/user/status/1270678195050876929

https://twitter.com/user/status/1270850256121540608

 

@lunarainbows

Thanks for posting this. I had stopped reading daily updates because of all the misinformation circulating.

Totally agree!

 

@Mij just a quick note.. you keep referring to me (Lunarainbows) but it’s actually someone else with a similar-ish username, @lunarswirls

 

Thanks for the correction! I will pay better attention

 

This is worrying:

WHO reviewing evidence on airborne transmission of Covid-19

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/coron...f-covid-19/ar-BB16p8ps?li=BBoPWjQ&ocid=ASUDHP

 

Number in Dorset is now pushing 600. That's just over a week later.

But that's nothing. I've just looked at the infection maps for the UK, and the changes in recorded infection rates over the past few days from previously stable numbers are quite shocking in a number of places, in particular in the Lancashire/West Yorkshire area, but also in many London boroughs (maybe up by about one quarter?).

What has caused this? Is it a delay in updating data/the map? More testing, so more infections found? Or relaxation/flouting of the lockdown rules? If the latter, how will we know which ones, since so many have been relaxed at more or less the same time? Will we end up having a wholesale reimposition of the lockdown rules because we can't narrow it down enough to find the one(s) responsible? Sure, there have been outbreaks at various factories and so on, but they surely can't be responsible for everything. It's very worrying.

Coronavirus tracked: Where are Covid-19 infection rates spiking in England?

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknew...es-spiking-in-england/ar-BB16pdND?ocid=ASUDHP

 

More depressing news:

India surges to third-highest number of global coronavirus cases

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...bal-coronavirus-cases/ar-BB16oKoY?ocid=ASUDHP

 

Don't want to hit like. Maybe an emoji like this

 

Reporting of cases has been changed in the last week. I haven’t checked and my memory is hazy, but basically previous public reporting in the U.K. did not include pillar 2 testing from the community, just pillar 1 ie hospitals, care homes etc. This is because pillar 2 tests are carried out by Deloitte?, a private sector contractor, not the NHS. The contract for this testing somehow didn’t allow for that data to be released to anyone except central UK government, who weren’t sharing. This is why the local Public Health officials and the council in Leicester did not know the extent of the rise in cases in Leicester until shortly before they had to lockdown.

The number of positively tested cases in Derbyshire has nearly doubled in a week in Derbyshire too, and it will be largely for that reason. In the previous 4 or 5 weeks the data was showing a slow increase of a handful per hundred thousand a week.

 

From Twitter this morning. Article exploring a correlation between low flu rates and high COVID ones.


https://insight.jbs.cam.ac.uk/2020/...tm_campaign=SocialSignIn&utm_content=#COVID19

 

Sadly in USA, COVID parties are the new measles parties with the inevitable consequences

https://twitter.com/user/status/1280245976163368961

 

that doesn't surprise me after seeing the C4 news coverage over the weekend of the party like atmosphere in Soho. They should have banned Londoners from all but essential travel out of London a long time ago and should definitely do it now.
You had to laugh when it was broadcast that a senior police spokesperson announced 'Drunk people don't social distance very well'......you don't say.

 

Perhaps reflects pillar 2 data now being made available?

 

Further to my previous post about the seeming increase in cases due to change to the inclusion of pillar two testing, from the Gov.uk website here https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/#category=ltlas&map=case

If you click on the LTLA tab on the table further down you can find figures for the lower tier local authorities (eg borough council area), which could be useful to know! (Edit - grammar)