Off Topic Coronavirus

I can relate to that - we might as well have said "it seems to move around" in Swahili for the amount it registered.

We had Cardiology in Jan - they said that 1 in 11 beats being ectopic was high but nothing was physically wrong with the heart. Offered beta blockers as a option.

I hope it'll be a worry off the list for you too.

 

I wouldn't worry about Bristol...
Bristol illegal rave attended by 700 people
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-54769055

 

Pretty much spot on Beth although I did hear that even Germany has had problems with T&T as the numbers have gone up. I also heard today that our T&T had a glitch that was sending out the wrong info You would have thought the money spent might have provided a better app? I like the idea of closing the border but then I also heard someone saying that would hit the economy hard? I give up I have got my Baked beans and wine and will baton down that hatches for a month.

 

Few headlines in the papers up here about closing the border, although I'm pretty sure that won't happen. Some prof from Kings College on the radio today saying that Scotland and the North West seem to be plateauing with the cases - we've been in what you'd call Tier 3 for a few weeks now, and when the new levels come in tomorrow there will be a slight relaxation of the rules (although you still won't be able to get a drink in a pub/restaurant).

 

North East, or at least NE2 in Newcastle where my daughter lives, has been coming down pretty quickly, and never got out of tier 2. Seems it really was a burst amongst students, who isolated effectively and have come through it. I’d love it if this continues, but you never know with this bastard thing.

 

False-positive COVID-19 results: hidden problems and costs
Published:September 29, 2020DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2213-2600(20)30453-7

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RT-PCR tests to detect severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA are the operational gold standard for detecting COVID-19 disease in clinical practice. RT-PCR assays in the UK have analytical sensitivity and specificity of greater than 95%, but no single gold standard assay exists.
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Impact of false-positives and false-negatives in the UK's COVID-19 RT-PCR testing programme.
https://assets.publishing.service.g...9_Impact_of_false_positives_and_negatives.pdf
Date: June 3, 2020
Date accessed: August 8, 2020

• Google Scholar

New assays are verified across panels of material, confirmed as COVID-19 by multiple testing with other assays, together with a consistent clinical and radiological picture. These new assays are often tested under idealised conditions with hospital samples containing higher viral loads than those from asymptomatic individuals living in the community. As such, diagnostic or operational performance of swab tests in the real world might differ substantially from the analytical sensitivity and specificity.
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• Mayers C
• Baker K

Impact of false-positives and false-negatives in the UK's COVID-19 RT-PCR testing programme.
https://assets.publishing.service.g...9_Impact_of_false_positives_and_negatives.pdf
Date: June 3, 2020
Date accessed: August 8, 2020

• Google Scholar

Although testing capacity and therefore the rate of testing in the UK and worldwide has continued to increase, more and more asymptomatic individuals have undergone testing. This growing inclusion of asymptomatic people affects the other key parameter of testing, the pretest probability, which underpins the veracity of the testing strategy. In March and early April, 2020, most people tested in the UK were severely ill patients admitted to hospitals with a high probability of infection. Since then, the number of COVID-19-related hospital admissions has decreased markedly from more than 3000 per day at the peak of the first wave, to just more than 100 in August, while the number of daily tests jumped from 11 896 on April 1, 2020, to 190 220 on Aug 1, 2020. In other words, the pretest probability will have steadily decreased as the proportion of asymptomatic cases screened increased against a background of physical distancing, lockdown, cleaning, and masks, which have reduced viral transmission to the general population. At present, only about a third of swab tests are done in those with clinical needs or in health-care workers (defined as the pillar 1 community in the UK), while the majority are done in wider community settings (pillar 2). At the end of July, 2020, the positivity rate of swab tests within both pillar 1 (1·7%) and pillar 2 (0·5%) remained significantly lower than those in early April, when positivity rates reached 50%.

Globally, most effort so far has been invested in turnaround times and low test sensitivity (ie, false negatives); one systematic review reported false-negative rates of between 2% and 33% in repeat sample testing.
4

• Google Scholar

Although false-negative tests have until now had priority due to the devastating consequences of undetected cases in health-care and social care settings, and the propagation of the epidemic especially by asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic patients, the consequences of a false-positive result are not benign from various perspectives (panel), in particular among health-care workers.
Panel
Potential consequences of false-positive COVID-19 swab test results
Individual perspective
Health-related

• •
  For swab tests taken for screening purposes before elective procedures or surgeries: unnecessary treatment cancellation or postponement
• •
  For swab tests taken for screening purposes during urgent hospital admissions: potential exposure to infection following a wrong pathway in hospital settings as an in-patient

Financial

• •
  Financial losses related to self-isolation, income losses, and cancelled travel, among other factors

Psychological

• •
  Psychological damage due to misdiagnosis or fear of infecting others, isolation, or stigmatisation

Global perspective
Financial

• •
  Misspent funding (often originating from taxpayers) and human resources for test and trace
• •
  Unnecessary testing
• •
  Funding replacements in the workplace
• •
  Various business losses

Epidemiological and diagnostic performance

• •
  Overestimating COVID-19 incidence and the extent of asymptomatic infection
• •
  Misleading diagnostic performance, potentially leading to mistaken purchasing or investment decisions if a new test shows high performance by identification of negative reference samples as positive (ie, is it a false positive or does the test show higher sensitivity than the other comparator tests used to establish the negativity of the test sample?)

• •
  Increased depression and domestic violence (eg, due to lockdown, isolation, and loss of earnings after a positive test).

Technical problems including contamination during sampling (eg, a swab accidentally touches a contaminated glove or surface), contamination by PCR amplicons, contamination of reagents, sample cross-contamination, and cross-reactions with other viruses or genetic material could also be responsible for false-positive results.
These problems are not only theoretical; the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention had to withdraw testing kits in March, 2020, when they were shown to have a high rate of false-positives due to reagent contamination.
5
The current rate of operational false-positive swab tests in the UK is unknown; preliminary estimates show it could be somewhere between 0·8% and 4·0%.
This rate could translate into a significant proportion of false-positive results daily due to the current low prevalence of the virus in the UK population, adversely affecting the positive predictive value of the test. Considering that the UK National Health Service employs 1·1 million health-care workers, many of whom have been exposed to COVID-19 at the peak of the first wave, the potential disruption to health and social services due to false positives could be considerable.
Any diagnostic test result should be interpreted in the context of the pretest probability of disease. For COVID-19, the pretest probability assessment includes symptoms, previous medical history of COVID-19 or presence of antibodies, any potential exposure to COVID-19, and likelihood of an alternative diagnosis.
1
When low pretest probability exists, positive results should be interpreted with caution and a second specimen tested for confirmation. Notably, current policies in the UK and globally do not include special provisions for those who test positive despite being asymptomatic and having laboratory confirmed COVID-19 in the past (by RT-PCR swab test or antibodies). Prolonged viral RNA shedding, which is known to last for weeks after recovery, can be a potential reason for positive swab tests in those previously exposed to SARS-CoV-2. However, importantly, no data suggests that detection of low levels of viral RNA by RT-PCR equates with infectivity unless infectious virus particles have been confirmed with laboratory culture-based methods.
To summarise, false-positive COVID-19 swab test results might be increasingly likely in the current epidemiological climate in the UK, with substantial consequences at the personal, health system, and societal levels (panel). Several measures might help to minimise false-positive results and mitigate possible consequences. Firstly, stricter standards should be imposed in laboratory testing. This includes the development and implementation of external quality assessment schemes and internal quality systems, such as automatic blinded replication of a small number of tests for performance monitoring to ensure false-positive and false-negative rates remain low, and to permit withdrawal of a malfunctioning test at the earliest possibility. Secondly, pretest probability assessments should be considered, and clear evidence-based guidelines on interpretation of test results developed. Thirdly, policies regarding the testing and prevention of virus transmission in health-care workers might need adjustments, with an immediate second test implemented for any health-care worker testing positive. Finally, research is urgently required into the clinical and epidemiological significance of prolonged virus shedding and the role of people recovering from COVID-19 in disease transmission.

 

I heard some Professor on TV today saying the same with cases falling but it wasn't fast enough.

 

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Lee Hurst - Unemployed

@LeeHurstComic

The NHS has become like our nuclear deterrent.
We must pay a fortune for it, but never use it

 

Why did you not ask me directly?
Can you not spell people's user names correctly?

For your information, I replied to a post from Ninj, asking about the current situation in China.
Unfortunately, too many people do not want the truth, only their version of the truth. Because some people cannot look at this as anything other than being China's fault, I decided to step back and leave you all to it.

As for my profile, if you checked correctly, I have been on this site since 2011, have made over 1000 comments and received quite a few likes. So not just posting a few china/covid comments as you suggest, perhaps though, that does not suit your agenda.
Good day to you, I will not bother commenting on your thread again.

 

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The Telegraph
@Telegraph

"Coronavirus could have been specifically designed to help the CCP’s aim of global dominance by 2050"

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The West should not bow before the Chinese regime that made the world ill
The struggle between us and President Xi is a war of values. But do we really know what our values are?
telegraph.co.uk
4

 

Could have some fun with this one.

 

Apparently Downing Street asked the BBC to delay Strictly to give Johnson more time to prepare for the lockdown announcement, but they refused.

Dirty Commies.

 

The Telegraph really is sinking to new depths here ! Compare the records of China and the USA since the war and it becomes patently obvious which of the two has a dream of dominating the World. How many countries has the USA invaded - how many puppet regimes have they supported - how many democratically elected regimes have they helped to topple ? And China ?

 

I wonder how many Chinese apologists we will get on here today? Right I'm off to eat my rat sandwich and start a new virus.

 

How many pandemics has the US started that will kill millions worldwide - except in China apparently?

 

As a fervent adversary of lockdown measures, I'm assuming you'll be supporting Reform UK once it's up and running, Strolls

 

I think you will find that the only country in history which has ever deliberately started a pandemic is Japan Goldie - in that they bombarded parts of China with plague infected flees during World War 2. Other than that one case countries do not deliberately start pandemics - if you are going to accuse China in this way, then, by the same token, you can accuse the UK of starting mad cow disease. Or say that the return of American soldiers was responsible for bringing Asian and Hong Kong flu to Europe - so they were both 'American' diseases. Or would you say that Spain was also responsible for the 'Spanish flu' outbreak ? Trying to find scapegoats to divert attention from our own incompetence doesn't get us very far.

 

We don't know whether it was deliberate or not, so I'm not alleging that. But whatever it was, deliberate, leaked experiment from a laboratory or from the revolting wet markets, China has a case to answer. And the way they treat animals is sub-human imo

This is not a diversion. It's possible to debate more than one topic at a time

 

I would agree that animal rights in China are non existent Goldie. I would also say that China is a vast country containing many different cultural practices which are, mostly, uncontrollable from Peking. I am sure that the central government in Peking is highly embarrassed by local customs of bat eating etc. but a country of this size cannot control everything which happens within its borders (or practices which are tolerated by local authorities). All the evidence suggests that Peking was highly annoyed with Wuhan and that an element of punishment was involved in their strict lockdown. China's biggest crime is simply being too big to control its citizens - and if they did stamp down on the sort of local practices which caused this epidemic, then they would open themselves to other criticisms.

At some stage this pandemic will be over (all pandemics end eventually) maybe next summer. Then we will all breath a sigh of relief and want to get back to normal - things like going to the cinema. But will the local cinema be there ? Or the local theatre ? Will the restaurants and pubs still be in business ? Or any of those organizations specialized in adult education ? Local sports centres ? Will there be any musicians still left ? Or local football clubs ? The list goes on and on - in the end whole branches of the economy are being sacrificed for the common good, and as a result of government decisions. The question of revitalization and compensation is going to occupy us for much longer than the pandemic itself.