Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

From what I see coming out of Oz, testing is seriously lagging. This is likely a reflection of a choice to... ride the wave, I guess. Lots of comments and reports I see indicate they are trying the herd immunity/modest proposal and basically abandoned rigorous testing as part of the solution.

I hope this is just from limited information and skimming, not quite reading in detail, but everything I see coming out from down under supports that. Not good.

 

Yes, a lot of coronavirus email (spam) and SMS scams at the moment... Had one of those likely scam Chinese-language phone calls a few weeks ago too.

 

So basically, there is going to be a long tail and current restrictions on travel, social distancing and economic activity are going to last months until ~40-60% of the population have been infected.

Unless you can completely isolate a population, eg total travel bans, anything else risks overwhelming healthcare resources, which incidentally, must guide the optimum solution in terms of policy restricting the spread.

Hospital beds per population is 0.4% in Australia and 0.3% in the UK and the USA. The data on worldometer suggests 5% of active cases are in critical condition, which would mean for an average bed occupation of 1 week, 50%(percentage of population who will be infected) *0.05 (bed cases)/1 (bed/weeks) = 2.5% of the population who will require beds = 8 weeks given optimum bed allocation. But what would the numbers requiring ventilators be? It could be longer. Plus if the spread is too slow to not utilise all the ventilators, it will take longer - or if case numbers are volatile, more people will die. Hence with some margin for error, current measures should be expected to be imposed for quite some time - so highly likely to be longer than 8 weeks.

 

"A new pre-print study by a team of Harvard researchers concludes that the idea of a single prolonged lockdown — which many are calling for in the U.S. — is not the most effective or sustainable way to curb the coronavirus epidemic. A more viable, long-term approach is to carry out a series of shorter “intermittent” lockdowns triggered by certain medical care capacity thresholds."

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.22.20041079v1

 

updated NZ growth curve. Were are now on our sixth day of lockdown, and the curve already seems to be flattening a little. While there may be many case out there undiagnosed, we have not reduced our rate of testing in the last few day, so that doesn't seem a likely explanation for the downturn.

Edit: Updated to April 1 (now on 7th day of lockdown).

 

29 idiots in Italy have been found violating the quarantine despite having proven infection.

 

"Study shows chances of catching CCP virus from someone who´s asymptomatic as cases continue to rise"
About the situation in China.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDYqzx0UR7M

 

I've not watched the video above, so the answer may well be there, but why is it being called CCP virus?

 

Which is what we have just tried and proves to be not only a catastrophe but achieves more or less nothing because we still only have less than 1% of the population infected. It will be month before the cases in hospital so far are dealt with and recovered (or not). I fail to understand how people can get their arithmetic so wrong.

 

NZ's Ministry of Health has published their latest modelling reports (and they aren't pretty though we still have a chance to avoid the worst):

https://www.health.govt.nz/publication/covid-19-modelling-reports

Related article:

More at: https://thespinoff.co.nz/science/31...-ministry-of-health-releases-covid-19-models/

On a different topic, @Jonathan Edwards will be interested to see Air NZ's CEO shares his predictions regarding International travel:

More at https://thespinoff.co.nz/business/31-03-2020/full-scale-of-damage-to-air-nz-becoming-clear/

 

I read this and thought sounds reasonable. I Googled "Anthony Costello" and found that he should know a thing or two!

One of the questions I have @Jonathan Edwards @Simon M or others is that we need to test to identify people who are current infected with the virus/infectious - I think this requires the PCR test (looking for viral RNA). I assume that this (PCR test) was the basis for the control of the virus in South Korea. However, here I've heard experts who either deliberately, or accidentally, fudge the issue of testing; they talk about testing for antibodies --- those who have developed antibodies have beaten off the virus --- they are not hosting the virus/infectious.

I almost forgive politicians who talk about "pregnancy type tests ---X zillion arriving next week" these are antibody tests and they do not identify those shedding virus/infectious i.e. they cannot be used to control transmission. The role of a Minister is to represent Government policy in the best possible light; in this case that involves a certain amount of obfuscation regarding testing --- many of us don't expect our politicians to be clear when it doesn't show them in a good light!

The Republic of Ireland introduced drive through (PCR) testing, to identify members of the public who are infected/infectious, weeks ago. They have also taken over hotels* to accommodate those who are infected/infectious --- breaking transmission. Seems a little bizarre that the Government hasn't explained why they are not testing to identify people who are infected/infectious.

*https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/0329/1127114-hse-briefing-covid/

 

I am afraid that the scientific experts buy in to the idea that it is better to bullshit to keep people happy because people are so stupid they will not be able to cope with the reality. I think the advisors should wake up to the fact that a lot of ordinary lay people have more common sense than they do.

It has struck me a few times in the last week that maybe what is needed is to set up 'neighbourhood watch' type groups to establish the virus status in small geographic areas and then pool these through an easy access website. Government seem to be incapable of making use of modern technology and old fashioned human ingenuity in this way. Local communities could do well to source food in a domain that is known to be virus free. Those communities could enlarge and coalesce as more is known.

 

Related to this:
https://twitter.com/user/status/1244899623438897154


He writes:

 

The other issue which you have highlighted @Jonathan Edwards is that doctors may refuse to work in these conditions/circumstances. Doctors will have to decide you go on a ventilator (young healthy) you do not (older/underlying condition/s). After they have gone through this peak then if we do not introduce effective controls (testing & tracing contacts, personal protective equipment, social distancing --) then the doctors will have another round of who gets the chance to live --- they may refuse to work in those conditions.

The absence of adequate ventilators in the UK was know months ago --- Wuhan, Italy ---. Testing and tracing --- should have been implemented.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1244893092173537280

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...est-tens-of-thousands-more-people-says-expert