Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

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Adrian said:
I've not seen this story being discussed. Its talking about tracking infection paths by looking at virus mutations. Its interesting to see how they can try to trace mutations and therefore infection paths.
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This should be standard management of a spreading infection. It was used in the TB outbreak my daughter got involved in. The strain was traced across the school using molecular biology. I am actually slightly surprised that the TB doctors have not been raising issues about tracing more - presumably they are not in a position to comment on policy.
 
From the BBC website:

"Coronavirus in Scotland: Who is dying and where?
The Scottish government has changed the way it reports coronavirus deaths in Scotland.

The daily figures from Health Protection Scotland will still be published, but additional figures from the National Records of Scotland (NRS) will now be released every Wednesday.

These new figures include all cases where Covid-19 is mentioned on a death certificate, even if the patient was not in hospital and had not been tested - and even if the virus was just one of a number of factors."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-52214177

Link to National Records of Scotland, pdf for week 14 gives the further details,

https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/covid19stats
 
Adrian said:
The model may already be wrong looking at the predicted death rates vs what has happened over the last couple of days where they were predicting 1300 deaths in the UK rather than the 900 we had. But the data in the UK seems so flakey that it is hard to tell. Also the UK data only included hospital deaths and I'm not clear what there model is intended to cover.
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The model also gives a range of predicted deaths. For instance, when it predicted 1308 deaths in the UK on Friday (4/10) it gave a range of 537 to 2782. [I'll admit that's a fairly wide range.]

I noticed that the real numbers haven't been updated since 4/9. Maybe they don't get raw data on the weekend.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
This should be standard management of a spreading infection. It was used in the TB outbreak my daughter got involved in. The strain was traced across the school using molecular biology. I am actually slightly surprised that the TB doctors have not been raising issues about tracing more - presumably they are not in a position to comment on policy.
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Given the article and the mention of a database where this information is exchanged its clearly something that is just going on in the background with out much associated publicity.
 
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ing-hardest-modern-equivalent-victorian-slums

Cramped living conditions may be accelerating UK spread of coronavirus

Analysis by the New Policy Institute shows that even after allowing for the much higher infection rates in London, the top five most-crowded areas in the country have seen 70% more coronavirus cases than the five least-crowded, where better-off homeowners are likely to live in larger homes with spare bedrooms and more than one bathroom.

Coronavirus hotspots such as London, which has 16,011 cases, and Birmingham, which has 1,604 cases, both have pockets of extreme overcrowding. Just over 11% of homes in the capital and 9% of homes in Birmingham are classed as overcrowded – the two highest rates in the UK.

Professor Gabriel Scally, president of epidemiology at the Royal Society of Medicine, said he was enormously concerned that the virus was spreading through overcrowded housing because it passed easily between people living in close proximity and sharing facilities such as toilets and kitchens. “Houses in multiple occupation must be in the same category as care homes because of the sheer press of people,” he said. “I have no doubt that these kinds of overcrowded conditions are tremendously potent in spreading the virus.”
 
lunarainbows said:
Just over 11% of homes in the capital and 9% of homes in Birmingham are classed as overcrowded – the two highest rates in the UK.
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The figure for overcrowded homes is likely to be much higher in reality (by most people's understanding of the term). My council house would officially only be considered to be overcrowded after the living room has been used by 2 adults as an 'additional bedroom'. That would leave only the kitchen and the bathroom as 'non-bedrooms'! This is the principle applied to all social housing accommodation (whereas having just one free bedroom means the house is under-occupied).

https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/repairs/check_if_your_home_is_overcrowded_by_law
 
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Simbindi said:
The figure for overcrowded homes is likely to be much higher in reality (by most people's understanding of the term). My council house would officially only be considered to be overcrowded after the living room has been used by 2 adults as an 'additional bedroom'. That would leave only the kitchen and the bathroom as 'non-bedrooms'! This is the principle applied to all social housing accommodation (whereas having just one free bedroom means the house is under-occupied).

https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/repairs/check_if_your_home_is_overcrowded_by_law
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Funny how none of those behaviourists are interested in how living in such crowded & cramped environments affect people's mental health.
 
These apps are a lovely idea, they really are.

I'm still not signing up to them. I have zero trust in the privacy.

I have a very low online presence and yet I have had various apps recommended & forwarded to me from all angles. It's getting very annoying.

This isn't aimed at you @Adrian - liked the cartoon post explanation - just in general.
 
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Adrian said:
I thought this is quite a nice cartoon explaining the latest privacy enhanced tracking apps. I believe the apple and google approach is using these protocols - not sure about the proposed NHS one.

It does rely on take up and people remembering to tell the app they are ill.

https://github.com/DP-3T/documents/tree/master/public_engagement/cartoon
View attachment 10566
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Is the U.K. definitely going to be getting a tracking app? I remember an article about that - but were they just exploring that or is it definitely getting rolled out to everyone?
 
Invisible Woman said:
These apps are a lovely idea, they really are.

I'm still not signing up to them. I have zero trust in the privacy. If the govt would like me to sign up for this stuff in the future then it needs to start taking privacy stuff much more seriously.

I have a very low online presence and yet I have had various apps recommended & forwarded to me from all angles. It's getting very annoying.

This isn't aimed at you @Adrian - liked the cartoon post explanation - just in general.
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The point about what the DP-3T group are trying to do is to reduce the privacy risks by not having central data collection. If you don't have good data then it is hard to abuse the privacy of individuals - although correlation with mobile records could be possible.

I did see something suggesting that the NHS one isn't using this approach so I've no idea what they are using. But if they don't do something like the above then data would be accessible.

I would also be concerned at the 'broadcast every few minutes' part as is this enough for contract tracing?
 
lunarainbows said:
Is the U.K. definitely going to be getting a tracking app? I remember an article about that - but were they just exploring that or is it definitely getting rolled out to everyone?
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Not sure. Hancock talked about it today so it could happen sometime in the next 10 years. The concern would be what data they are tracking. They talked about releasing source code but they also need to publish protocols they are using for review.
 
I hope this is not a reporting glitch, but good news in Australia.

After plateauing for most of a week, new cases plummeted yesterday to a level not seen since the start of the pandemic. I do think it will spike suddenly for a bit, as we are taking in maybe 100 cases from cruise ships - I am not sure when this will happen though, I did not follow up on the story.
 
Rosalyn J. Moran et al. Estimating required ‘lockdown’ cycles before immunity to SARS-CoV-2: Model-based analyses of susceptible population sizes, ‘S0’, in seven European countries including the UK and Ireland: https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/covid-19/Moran_arXiv_2020.pdf
Conclusion: Our results indicate that after the current wave, a large proportion of the total population will remain without immunity. This suggests that in the absence of strong seasonal effects, new medications or more comprehensive contact tracing, a further set of epidemic waves in different geographic centres are likely. These findings may have implications for ‘exit strategies’ from any lockdown stage.
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I'd recommend reading all of Anthony Costello's summary of the paper by clicking on the Twitter thread above - 23 posts in all.

He concludes:



 
alex3619 said:
I hope this is not a reporting glitch, but good news in Australia.

After plateauing for most of a week, new cases plummeted yesterday to a level not seen since the start of the pandemic. I do think it will spike suddenly for a bit, as we are taking in maybe 100 cases from cruise ships - I am not sure when this will happen though, I did not follow up on the story.
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Best wait for a few days after Easter, as testing numbers might be down over the long weekend too. Will see
 
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