Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

We @Dunn_School have many people experience in PCR; also antibody-based testing. We'd love to help and have been trying to volunteer for weeks.

Must be many university departments and institutes around UK in similar position. I'd love to know more about why we can't be used 1/4

I have heard this too from fellow scientists.

I think the answer is that health service managers in the last twenty years have honed the skill of making sure you get away with doing is little as possible, and in fact this time a bit less than that. The whole administrative structure is geared to not getting a job done, partly so that private interests can reap the rewards of high demand. Sadly, in this situation they cannot fill the gap because it requires central co-ordination.

 

It seems that it is contra-propaganda: CCP = Chinese Communist Party,

so blaming the CCP for having let escape the virus.


This wording throws of course not only doubt on the official numbers but also on the channel that is making this wording.

 

Ireland: this is interesting and puts into stark perspective how different the UK policy is from much of the rest of the world and what the WHO advises. And this is greatly affecting Ireland as a whole. The North of Ireland is following what the UK does. While the South is doing what the WHO advises to do:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1244778721199951873


“One difference stands out. The Republic is attempting to limit spread and terminate the outbreak as rapidly as possible. The aim is to identify people developing the disease through widespread intensive community testing. It then traces close contacts of those testing positive for the virus and ensure that both patients and contacts are isolated.

In the North, community testing and contact tracing were abandoned on March 13th and, as in the rest of the UK, testing will be largely reserved for hospital inpatients and health service staff. In the Republic with its network of over 40 community testing facilities, the aim is to reach 100,000 tests per week by the end of April, whereas the North has set a goal of performing just under 8,000 tests per week.”

 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

Numbers of Sweden (which is refusing to make a lockdown).

Cases: 4.028
Deaths: 146

The site says furthermore that there have been until now 306 serious or critical cases (8%) and
3.560 mild cases (92%). 16 have recovered.

 

The UK seems to have stopped counting 'recovered' - it's been at 165 for a long time.

I can only hope that this is because they no longer count them, and not because everyone in the official figures is either not recovering or being whisked off somewhere 'nice' for their own safety when they do.

 

Coronavirus death toll 20% higher than NHS figures, new data suggests

https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/31/uk-coronavirus-death-toll-new-figures-ons-12481875/

 

Anthony Costello again, thinks Deputy CMO should resign..(I too was shocked after seeing this clip. It does seem the lack of testing is very much a strategy).

https://twitter.com/user/status/1243884636394192896


https://twitter.com/user/status/1243886153855578115

 

I think the latest paper from Imperial is out (Neil Ferguson).

https://twitter.com/user/status/1244905720706936832


https://twitter.com/user/status/1244907795855691776

 

Video about the Czech Republic and how they’ve managed to keep numbers of cases down a lot, and how masks have helped that. The minister of Health for the Czech Republic is featured in the video, saying it’s the most important thing they’ve done. They want this video to be shared widely. My friend from Dubai sent me this.

Edit; everyone who has to leave their house, has to wear a face mask in the Czech Republic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tZJz68CZ7I

 

I am fearing already since two days that masks are going to be the new fashion.

I would have preferred not to have unhygienic animal markets (and even kissing pets).

 

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-an...theory-that-informed-the-trump-administration

The Contrarian Coronavirus Theory That Informed the Trump Administration

Pretty amazing interview here—complete meltdown.

 

Well I suppose they could boost immunity by an infinite % if they kill their patients.

 

"Every early case was followed though..." No, of course it wasn't! How could you possibly state that when not testing to detect all cases, including early cases? How can you possibly try to use that as an argument for minimal testing!

 

From the Guardian, there are still at it:

Two behavioural scientists have written to Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, to warn about the potential unintended consequences of mass public testing for coronavirus infection.

Prof Madelynne Arden at Sheffield Hallam University and Prof Christopher Armitage at the University of Manchester have told Whitty they felt compelled to share their concerns about the likely impact of mass testing on the public’s adherence to the lockdown and social distancing measures.

Reported by Ian Sample, whose name is familiar.

 

What about the possibility of the heavy hammer lockdown we are currently in, and then once it has taken effect, easing it back off gently, either progressively or in modest steps.

With many processes that can run out of control, the first move is to get it back under control, and that can need a pretty heavy-handed control input to do that. In order to achieve that the control input may end up having to over-suppress the process initially, just to get it stable - stability is the #1 priority. Once there, you can then gently ease off the control input to get the process running normally again, but being very careful to not back off the control too much too soon, else the process will go unstable again.

You have to close the loop to see how things are going, but do it gently enough so that if things start going wrong, you get time to spot that it's going wrong and to correct for it; there is invariably a lag between control input and it taking effect. The lag is what makes life hard for closed loop control, the longer the lag the harder it is to maintain stability. Testing would reduce that lag.

 

I would view the system dynamics a bit differently. I agree a heavy hammer. I also agree that you can then consider easing certain restrictions. However, the Catch22 of the time frame here means that the aim of easing restrictions is specifically to find restrictions that turn out to make no difference at all to spread. As an example it might be that allowing people to buy plants from garden centres might turn out to be no problem. With luck certain extra aspects of normal life could return.

But this is not a case of lifting controls that are actually doing a useful job. The exponential and poorly understood dynamics of the infection mean that ANY loss of control will return us to the same disaster we have now. Lots of systems have a safe zone - like microphones operating below the level of positive feedback howl. Viruses do not have a safe zone. Or at least if you want to keep in a safe zone the epidemic will smoulder for years.

I suspect what we need to do is identify new restrictions - very likely wearing masks would be one - that are actually much less of a problem than banning all travel to non-essential work and once we have accrued the benefit of those to start easing off on things not with the idea of letting the virus get going a bit but with the idea of continuing the process of eradication. Once we have eradication we are in the clear. Without it we are forced to turn the mike down so low for the entire concert that nobody will hear us sing. You don't protect the economy by putting on inaudible concerts.

 

It seems that in the UK every year 50.000 people die from pneumonia (5% of all cases). This makes on average 4.166 per month (but with a typical peak in late winter/ early spring, I think).

https://www.google.com/search?

It would be interesting to know the number of non-corona pneumonia cases and deaths this year.

 

Presumably there is a potential for a given number of false positives also considering you have had the foresight to inform us that you are taking no chances and are wiping down all your shopping delivery containers with meths as meths is used in laboratories to deal with lab contaminants.

Could you ask your nephew Al if the tests are being sent off in random samples for further blind testing to continuously validate the accuracy of the ongoing tests in each lab.

Surely if this virus is airborne and can live on surfaces for a given amount of time we should be extremely vigilant in proving our assays continuously?

Especially as we keep hearing the officials use these 4 completely different terms interchangeably that i provided sources for in an earlier post....



Died of..

Died from....

Died with....

Died after testing positive...

https://www.s4me.info/threads/the-b...-vaccines-treatments.14022/page-7#post-249266


When we add this on top......

....there should be some serious red flags going off over what we are actually counting.

@dave30th

 

Hallelujah, some real critical thinking.