Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

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Barry said:
So what I'm still trying to fathom is why higher population density seems to increase the ratio of deaths to cases? Once someone is infected with Covid 19, why would population density then influence their chances of survival, given that somewhere like the UK has relatively high population density, very high deaths to cases ratio, yet an extremely good health system.
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I wonder if one factor could be that people living in areas with the highest population densities are more likely to be housed in overcrowded accommodation, poorer, and in worse health (e.g., living with obesity and/or diabetes) to begin with? Obviously this doesn't work in every case – in London there are high rise buildings where apartments cost millions – but in most cities it is generally the rule.

Language barriers may also be a factor. Locally the provision of information in South Asian languages seems to have been reasonably good, but a Polish neighbour told me she's worried that there is little or no provision in European languages. I suspect the same applies to languages spoken by some refugee communities.

Apologies if you're actually talking about global death ratios, @Barry, rather than communities in the UK. I've been away a few days, and am still catching up...
 
Kitty said:
I wonder if one factor could be that people living in areas with the highest population densities are more likely to be housed in overcrowded accommodation, poorer, and in worse health (e.g., living with obesity and/or diabetes) to begin with? Obviously this doesn't work in every case – in London there are high rise buildings where apartments cost millions – but in most cities it is generally the rule.

Language barriers may also be a factor. Locally the provision of information in South Asian languages seems to have been reasonably good, but a Polish neighbour told me she's worried that there is little or no provision in European languages. I suspect the same applies to languages spoken by some refugee communities.

Apologies if you're actually talking about global death ratios, @Barry, rather than communities in the UK. I've been away a few days, and am still catching up...
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Mainly talking about the suggestion there might be higher death-to-cases ratios in more densely populated countries.

And I agree. There could be a huge number of factors involved, including whether statistics are validly comparable between countries. If one country records a death as covid related, because they died of heart failure and covid was contributory to that, would all countries necessarily do the same? And what if a country records it as covid related if the person previously was infected but now apparently recovered? May simply be that comparisons between countries won't be sensible for quite some time yet.
 
The overcrowding issue could be that if one person in a family gets ill in a 4 bedroom house they can stay in their room so no one else gets infected by them, or the chances are lower at least. If there are lots of people but few rooms, isolation is not possible.

They also said that where lots of families use one entrance way then opportunities for infection are higher than getting in a car in your own garage.

I am sure there are lots of small factors that add together.
 
I don't know if this is propaganda or not. Based on the comments it's not very popular, that's for sure.

Title : The future is ‘CLEAR’ and it’s Dystopian: Virus hype ushers in a Covid 19-84 nightmare of restricted access

Link : https://www.rt.com/op-ed/497272-clear-health-pass-covid-dystopian/

Clear’s new Health Pass and other ‘Covid hi-tech innovations’ are a stark warning of how the globalist ‘New Normal’ being mapped out will operate. Access to travel, sport & restaurants may be barred for all who refuse to comply.
“Originally launched in May, Health Pass is an extension of Clear’s mobile app. The service links COVID-19 related data like a health questionnaire and temperature check to assess whether someone is healthy enough to enter a certain venue. Additionally, the app has the capability to link COVID-19 test results through partnerships with labs, and eventually vaccination status.”

That’s how Condé Nast Traveller described the latest piece of technology by the biometric ID company Clear, which will help the authorities determine who will, and who will not, be allowed to go to the ball.

... Article continues...
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Do I need to fill in a form to state non compliance?

As not being allowed to use restaurants, sports venues, or travel, sounds like it matches my lifestyle pretty much perfectly.

Tailor made for excuses for people who don't want to waste resources to do things others want them to, but keep getting socially obligated to do so ;)

So...I'm weird right?
 
Arnie Pye said:
I don't know if this is propaganda or not.
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It seems at first glance to be as much distorted messaging, possibly from marketing, as much as hype. Its about one possible way things can go to the exclusion of a myriad of others. Even with apps its not clear one will dominate and then dominate legal restrictions. Its highly unlikely.

Vaccination status is going to matter a lot though. Anyone choosing not to vaccinate, who is negative for antibodies, will most likely face international travel restrictions plus certain jobs and professions might be barred. However you need to take this into the context that travellers often have to be vaccinated already, and so do certain professions such as doctors, nurses and paramedics.
 
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Genomic epidemiology reveals transmission patterns and dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 in Aotearoa New Zealand

Jemma L Geoghegan et al

Preprint Aug 2020

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.05.20168930v2
New Zealand, a geographically remote Pacific island with easily sealable borders, implemented a nation-wide lockdown of all non-essential services to curb the spread of COVID-19. New Zealand has now effectively eliminated the virus, with low numbers of new cases limited to new arrivals in managed quarantine facilities at the border.

Here, we generated 649 SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences from infected patients in New Zealand with samples collected between 26 February and 22 May 2020, representing 56% of all confirmed cases in this time period.

Despite its remoteness, the viruses imported into New Zealand represented nearly all of the genomic diversity sequenced from the global virus population. The proportion of D614G variants in the virus spike protein increased over time due to an increase in their importation frequency, rather than selection within New Zealand.

These data also helped to quantify the effectiveness of public health interventions. For example, the effective reproductive number, R0, of New Zealand's largest cluster decreased from 7 to 0.2 within the first week of lockdown.

Similarly, only 19% of virus introductions into New Zealand resulted in a transmission lineage of more than one additional case. Most of the cases that resulted in a transmission lineage originated from North America, rather than from Asia where the virus first emerged or from the nearest geographical neighbour, Australia.

Genomic data also helped link more infections to a major transmission cluster than through epidemiological data alone, providing probable sources of infections for cases in which the source was unclear. Overall, these results demonstrate the utility of genomic pathogen surveillance to inform public health and disease mitigation.
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And to mark 100 days without community transmission - how long can this lucky streak last? - a couple of articles on how it was done and what needs to still be done to keep it that way.

100 days without COVID-19: how New Zealand got rid of a virus that keeps spreading across the world

https://theconversation.com/100-day...-that-keeps-spreading-across-the-world-143672


Successful Elimination of Covid-19 Transmission in New Zealand

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2025203
 
Another article, this time from NPR (National Public Radio), discussing viral dose and viral load (I actually thought those meant the same thing - oops!) and how wearing a mask affects those.

The study using hamsters separated by surgical masks (it's not like they could train the hamsters to wear masks;)) was interesting.

NPR: Wearing A Mask Could Be Even More Important Than We Thought said:
SOFIA: The case that a mask can protect the person wearing it is laid out by scientists in a new paper coming out soon in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Katherine Wu wrote about that paper, which ties together three different concepts about viruses and how they work. The first is the idea of viral dose.

WU: That's kind of the amount of virus that is hitting your face parts (laughter)...

SOFIA: Right.

WU: ...And the amount of virus that you're exposed to.

SOFIA: The second concept is viral load, basically the amount of virus that has set up shop in your body after you get infected.

WU: Exactly.

SOFIA: The third idea, which is not new to scientists who study viruses, by the way, is that cutting back on the viral dose might mean that even if you get the coronavirus, your immune system will react in such a way that you won't get as sick.

WU: This idea that you can encounter a tiny, little bit of virus and your immune system's going to have just a way easier time wrangling those kind of few invaders at a time.

SOFIA: Right.

WU: And so it's less likely that your body's going to struggle to control the infection and less likely that you are going to get really, really sick.

SOFIA: Again, not a new concept for scientists. But what is new is the coronavirus itself. Remember how we all called it novel for those first few months? Scientists had never seen this coronavirus before, so saying masks might protect the wearer doesn't mean that scientists are just changing their minds. As Katherine and I talked about, it means that each day, they're learning more and more about the virus. But things like viral dose and viral load are really hard to study.

WU: Yeah, absolutely. And this research is fascinating. I think the trick here is we have so much data that seems like it could support this idea, but a lot of it is totally observational.
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Link to audio:
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/04/898915882/wearing-a-mask-could-be-even-more-important-than-we-thought

Link to transcript:
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/898915882
 
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We've just had some breaking news here in New Zealand. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has just announced that we have community transmission in Auckland, 4 have tested positive. As a precautionary Auckland is going into lockdown at alert level 3 and the rest of the country will go into lockdown level 2 at midday tomorrow (Wednesday).
 
And they have no idea how the virus spread to that family - it’s four family members who have tested positive. So far, no links to managed isolation facilities or to people who have been in quarantine have been identified. So it’s entirely possible that there is more significant unidentified community transmission going on.... which seemed on the cards when the government started encouraging us to go out and buy masks recently.
 
As in many countries there seems to be a divide in society getting deeper pushed by a probably small yet loud minority.

The biggest initiative is based in my hometown (seems like we Swabians love to protest).

I see people wearing shirts with their logo on now and keep extra distance bc they likely don't fear for themselves nor care for my wellbeing thinking Corona is one big hoax.

I hope this nonsense will somehow stop soon.
 
New Zealand's bad news is that they still don't know how this family was infected. They may have community spread.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is busy putting children back in schools with inadequate protection, testing and tracing. Nonsense about children being immune, or suffering no serious consequences, is widespread. Major newspapers have written about new data from the CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics on COVID-19 in children, but I can't tell if you will hit paywalls. Here's an account I hope you can read. Children make up only 8.8% of U.S. cases, but the number of pediatric cases shot way up in July. This is not a negligible number. Few children have died, but we have reliable data on pediatric hospitalizations, showing this is not a trivial illness. It appears that about the same percentage of hospitalized children need ICU care as adults.

All this argument bypasses the role of children, with or without apparent symptoms, as carriers of infection. Children necessarily have parents, etc. I'm afraid we are looking at more superspreader events in the near future. The Georgia school which made news last week for ignoring distancing recommendations, has isolated 200 people after testing revealed active cases, they are now back to remote learning.

Another potential superspreader event I referenced is a meeting of thousands of motorcyclists in Sturgis South Dakota. An old friend suggested these were competing for Darwin Awards. What he failed to comprehend was the effect they have on others. Most people who ride motorcycles long distances are in fairly robust health. It is hardly speculation to suggest they may pass the infection they pick up to people who took no such risks.
 
Daisybell said:
And they have no idea how the virus spread to that family - it’s four family members who have tested positive. So far, no links to managed isolation facilities or to people who have been in quarantine have been identified. So it’s entirely possible that there is more significant unidentified community transmission going on.... which seemed on the cards when the government started encouraging us to go out and buy masks recently.
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My guess is that there is a high chance that this new cluster is due to imported goods, maybe stuff bought on the internet. New Zealand have been very lucky to keep free of community spread and I think it very likely that they will be able to restore the situation of no spread. However, there was always the issue of imported goods nand the risks will have risen as infection rates have risen. I wonder if NZ is importing fresh produce that cannot be grown at home in August.
 
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