Off Topic Coronavirus

See my reply above

 

You’re completely backing up his point.

 

No ****ing way. The politics thread is literally unreadable. This one has some interesting stuff on it sometimes, and is a genuine barometer of the variety of public feeling.

 

Here in Oz, they have just relaxed the laws a little to allow us to wander up to 50klms from our place of residence.

I’m about 45 klms from the New South Wales border and the Gestapo have stated that anyone flouting the law with feel their wrath.

The youth in me wants to test them so l might get Mrs Squat to pack the Beemer with a picnic lunch so we can sit by a river some 51 klms away and tell the world to get stuffed.

 

Dumb question maybe but how do they judge the 50km? As the crow flies or you’d have to travel?

 

Good question WWR and l have no idea tbh.
I plan on being far enough away that it won’t matter either way.

 

mmm interesting comments from Leadsom re-testing/care homes. She said what I did the other day in that the government's priority on testing was NHS staff and then others after. We simply didn't have the capacity to test all.
mmm not sure how well that will go down?

 

Given you’re her adviser that’s not really a surprise.

 

Just spoken to my neighbour (they were trying to sell there house but have given up, and now live in their new home, so haven't seen her since before Xmas).
She went home to Australia for Christmas, and came back to England in early January with a "cold/cough" that sounds just like Covid. High fever, cough...it last near a month, she gave it to her husband, but her two young kids seemed unaffected. This is not an isolated tale either.

I really believe the timings we have been told are somewhat wrong.
We have had it a long time. I wonder how many people died before lockdown too

 

and cause apparently some of the ppe was requisitioned from the private care homest for the nhs

 

On your last point, even if people were dying before lockdown, it wasn’t showing up as ‘excess deaths’, as we were at or below the 5 year average according to the ONS until well into March. So if we have had it a long time and lots of people might have had it before ‘it’ was an epidemic, that could be a good thing. I think.

 

Early indications are that we'll not be coming out of lockdown next week.....the required indices are still too high......

Also saw mentioned yesterday that a report suggests that those who can WFH should continue until at least September....

 

How long after the first wave is the second expected? Anyone know what the general consensus is on this?

 

Beth I have been bleating on about this when people have been moaning about the lateness of the lockdown. It was happening before.

 

This could be promising although the company name doesn't fill me with optimism (I think I got away with that).
Coronavirus: New antibody test with 99 per cent accuracy approved for use across Europe
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...l-news-europe-uk-accuracy-abbot-a9490026.html

 

So we should have started earlier then Ellers...absolutely my point.
Even if it was there earlier (it was hard to "recognise" possible at the very early points I am happy to admit BUT...if we had only started soon after it became apparent that it was devasting northern Italy, we would have saved lives

 

Well, I'm sure will be discussed after. We obviously didn't test back then for Covid-19 so unless there are any blood samples still about it won't help us?

 

That would have meant boris attending cobra meetings! We all know it wasnt taken seriously, purely by his absence. Oh his buffonery forgives him. What a character he is chortle chortle

 

I set up tests ...it still worries me me. (even though it is from Abbott who are a re pretty good diagnostic company)

It is to do with the specificity or sensitivity of the tests. There is a very important difference. There test is 99% sensitive....but no mention of specificity

SENSITIVITY: The true positive rate, is the number of real positives that are picked up in a test
SPECIFICITY: This is the proportion of the real negatives that are picked up. ...Inversely it means how many false positives are there

You can set up any test to get the "results you want". So set the criteria for testing positive very high. You pick up 70% of positives and no false "positives" you can be sure if you get a positive , it is right...but you miss 30% of positives...BAD... But the specificity is 100%...because a positive is positive (100% correct)

Set it up another way...very low cut-off...you get all the positives, butsay you get 40% of the healthy population (who really don't have the disease) as positivity. The sensitivity is then 100%, everyone who has a positive test has the virus/antibody. But 40% of the population think they have the virus/antibody but don't.

Intuitively you think the second criteria is good... But actually for the antibody test it is not...really it is not.

So you give those people a knowledge (or a paper passport) that they have had the virus, and they have antibodies that protect them and they don't...You send them off into the wide world to catch the virus. Think of putting a nurse back onto a Covid ward with the knowledge she was safe ...and she wasn't. She had a cough...but it was not CoVid, because she had had a positive antibody test

This is apparently what happened with the China kit...low cut off...loads of positives in the kit...but a lot of them were "false" positives