Coronavirus

[pete]

Yeah pretty sure it's about getting more people tested like you say.

A few weeks ago they made the change to symptoms needed to get a test, so the opposite to that. Looks like it's a necessary step on the road back to normality.

"We'll be looking to broaden and try and make that case definition more sensitive for instance, for situations that will be appropriate if we were thinking about lifting restrictions and that would mean we would need to be greatly increasing the number of people tested."

"COVID-19 interim case definition
Clinical criteria

A patient with acute respiratory illness (fever[1] and at least one sign/symptom of respiratory disease e.g., cough, shortness of breath)

OR

A patient with any acute respiratory illness AND having been in contact with a confirmed or probable COVID-19 case in the last 14 days prior to symptom onset

OR

A patient with severe acute respiratory illness (fever and at least one sign/symptom of respiratory disease e.g., cough, shortness of breath AND requiring hospitalization) AND in the absence of an alternative diagnosis that fully explains the clinical presentation.

[astfgyl]

Cheers for that, I'd only seen the bit I read this evening and not the full quote as you have it there.

It's a step in the right direction so, being able to test all possible cases, so I guess what he is saying in other words is that now we have the materials available, we can start to see the  full picture of what is actually going on (and hopefully that will end up in the mortality rate dropping significantly, if the increase in tests does what I think it will).

While we are at it what is the story with asymptomatic cases; are they considered to be as infectious as symptomatic cases? Is making the definition more sensitive only a step towards the inevitable blanket testing, but it just can't be done yet, or is to get to an acceptable level of deaths? Like some people (an average of 518 000, though the figures are debatable) die of the flu every year in spite of the fact there is a vaccine (think about that for a minute) but the number seems to be acceptable enough not to blanket test for it. Should we not take the same approach to that and get rid of it for once and for all through social distancing and quarantining and contact tracing etc or how many deaths do we not have to worry about? What is so different about the flu that it is grand if we let a certain amount of people die from it every year and we don't bother locking down in an attempt to save the vulnerable? No airports closed, no gigs cancelled, pubs open, go where we want etc. Again bearing in mind that there is a yearly-updated vaccine for the flu and the rate of infection and amount of deaths is so high worldwide.

Like if the flu mortality rate is accepted as being 0.1 percent and the deaths are half a million, that gives us 500 million people a year carrying that virus (and don't forget the vaccine) and we all do nothing about it. I bet hardly no one here worries about getting the flu unless they have an already compromised immunity, and of course some will have that, (and I hope none who are reading this die of anything other than old age) but most won't be worried about the flu at all. Why are we not locked down all the time so that we can try to save everybody? Also not saying we should or shouldn't be but the thought raises an interesting point for me about acceptable rates of death, when every death of viral origin could be treated with the same scrutiny and then we might manage to save thousands of lives just as we are attempting to do now (but for some reason only from this particular virus).

[Snare]

Interesting data released to show how deaths reported compare to actual, showing a real peak 10 days ago in one jurisdiction here. The figures published the last few days were worrying so it's a relief to see for instance that 39 reported deaths were actually 13 for that particular day. Red bars is actual, blue line is reported.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Trump's most recent 'LIBERATE MICHIGAN' twitter vomits got me thinking about "non-linear war" and how, when you put it in the context of business, it's nothing unusual; keep the competition guessing, hedge your bets, smoke and mirrors. Trump claiming everything and its opposite, on top of claiming powers he doesn't have and granting powers that are constitutionally assured, is playing directly to that rule book:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyop0d30UqQ

Edit: Suffice to say that, from my point of view, this may make him a successful politician, but still - and perhaps by that merit - an awful person to have as President, insofar as it encourages this type of behaviour... i.e. precisely the kind of strategics used by the Pepe the Frog, alt-right trolls too.

[Kurt Cocaine]

Japan has had a setback....

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52305055

[Juggz]

There is no getting out of this without a vaccine.

[astfgyl]

that isn't great news for anyone's hopes of getting back to normal any time soon.

I was just reading this one, which has a slightly more positive outlook https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/coronavirus-cases-may-be-tens-of-times-higher-than-previously-thought-study-says-1.4232557

[Emphyrio]

Would I be right in thinking that working on an effective treatment for the more serious symptoms is as important as a vaccine at this point. A vaccine is gonna take a year and a half. Society can't wait that long to get back to some sense of normality.

[Eoin McLove]

I think they are closer to getting a vaccine than 18 months, but it will probably be later in the year.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Alex Jones and the InfoWars mooks out in force in Austin today, packed together and calling hoax. Trump seemingly supporting these protests. Awesome President, supporting civil disobedience against measures his own government applied so as not to isolate potential voters too biased to even think about pulling aside the curtain.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

I think they are closer to getting a vaccine than 18 months, but it will probably be later in the year.

Until you know you've got it, you never fully know how far away it is. Didn't want to announce that as a personal forecast, but then just saw this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/18/dont-bet-on-vaccine-to-protect-us-from-covid-19-says-world-health-expert

[mickO)))]

Alex Jones and the InfoWars mooks out in force in Austin today, packed together and calling hoax. Trump seemingly supporting these protests. Awesome President, supporting civil disobedience against measures his own government applied so as not to isolate potential voters too biased to even think about pulling aside the curtain.

I'm convinced Alex Jones is just another shill along with the likes of David Icke put in place to make people think anyone that even mentions the word conspiracy is a lunatic.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

They're "representative", in the political sense, of the people who celebrate them, and that's not an insignificant number.

[astfgyl]

It was mentioned here already, but I feel that coming up with a cure for the disease caused by this would be a better idea than pinning hopes on a vaccine at the minute anyway. I'm sure the both are being worked on everywhere, with little success (redensivir looks promising but still in trial stage) so far, unless success is counted as ruling lots of things out.

Also David Icke lol. The real pity about lads like him is that half of what he is saying could be going somewhere but then he makes a total fuck of it to the extent that nobody will believe any of it, even the bits that are actually true. His basic maths are 1+1= freemason lizard people, and now you mention it, MickO))), he would be a great way of getting a lot of theories rubbished. In fact as soon as the words "conspiracy theory" are attached to anything, it immediately becomes unbelievable to pretty much anyone and dismissed out of hand.

There was some shit on the telly the other evening about 2 lads who wanted to join the storm area 51 thing a while back, and along the way they were meeting all these witnesses/believers/ex workers and one chap they met claimed that he used to work in Area 51. So the lads asked him what exactly was his job there, and he said his job was to keep the flying saucer stories coming out of there to keep the general public thinking the existence of the place was a myth. He was the only person they met who didn't have a ufo t shirt on as well, and so I was naturally inclined not to write him off as quickly as the rest even though he had equal chance of being full of shit.

[Petardo]

Alex Jones has recently admitted in his divorce case that he is a "performance artist" playing a character on Infowars.

https://time.com/4743025/alex-jones-infowars-divorce-donald-trump/