Johns Hopkins Medical Centre - World Coronavirus infection Map by Country.

[Sherwood]

Why are people clamouring for Covid tests at all?

They are queueing in droves for many hours or even days for what limited tests can be found available, but any results are of pretty limited use. The accuracy, one way or the other is only 70%, so largely useless! What accuracy there is, is only valid at that exact time, immediately after the test you could be exposed to infection from another person. And what the heck will you do with the information anyway? You'll (probably) still need to go to work and take the kids to school etc. The whole idea seems pointless to me, unless of course you think providing the powers that be with inaccurate information for their records is beneficial.

Also, something to consider. Are you happy with the government having your DNA information?

If seatbelts "only" prevented 70% of crash fatalities would you reject their use. If tests are only 70% effective in identifying true positives, that is still more than 2 in 3 of such cases. That is two sources of potential infections out of three identified for contact tracing and quarantine.

Definitely last post ...

[Macca]

There is so much BS on the Internet about Covid 19, much of it produced by conspiracy theorists with a political axe to grind or by unqualified commentators without the appropriate technical skills and training. The Youtube video posted earlier was authored by a chemical engineer not by a public health specialist or epidemiologist. It amounts to no more than a crude curve-fitting exercise rather than a disease modelling exercise and as such has no explanatory or predictive power. It is already undermined by the fact that infection rates have started to rise alarmingly in many countries in recent weeks. I place my confidence in the work of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and its director Chris Murray. Chris is a world-renowned expert in disease modelling and played a key role in the global burden of disease work when he was at WHO. The IHME projections for the coming months are frightening.


A few governments briefly flirted with the idea of a strategy based on herd immunity principles but quickly abandoned this when the huge mortality implications were calculated. Herd immunity not the only game in town it is not even an effective approach. It is naive in the extreme to believe that we can regulate the rate of new infections en route to the development of herd immunity such that we do not overwhelm health services in the interim period. Without any mitigation actions, the reproduction rate for Covid appears to be about 3. Clearly, clearly some countries have been more effective than others in reducing this rate, with some achieving rates well below unity (1).


As public health experts have repeatedly reaffirmed, there are effective strategies already available pending the development of a safe and effective vaccine. The key elements of this strategy are: mask wearing, social distancing, avoidance of mass congregating, widespread testing with rapid turnaround of results, contact tracing, and early isolation of infected parties. Johns Hopkins projections suggest that in the absence of the above mitigation efforts, this winter will see health services worldwide overwhelmed by Covid cases.


This will be my last post on this subject. As someone who has worked in international health in around 30 different countries over 35 years my comments are based upon evidence and science. I take no pleasure in predicting that without a strengthening of mitigation measures, we will see the NHS under extreme pressure of collapse in the coming winter. I hope I am wrong but the science and (credible) models suggest otherwise.

My comments are also based on evidence and science and, unlike you, I've posted my reference for scrutiny. My guess is you have not even watched it.

Cases have gone up because there has been a massive increase in testing. Really not rocket science. If mask wearing and social distancing has any effect why have influenza cases not gone down? Influenza is a less communicable disease than C19 so cases should have dropped like a stone. Explain that.

[Marco]

Indeed... Also, I have to say I have little time for this stating an opinion, in a forceful manner, supposedly claiming the moral or intellectual high ground, and unquestionable veracity, then uttering 'That's my last post on the matter', and running off like a girl, sorry, Geoff...

Instead, demonstrate proper conviction in your opinions, by STAYING and DEFENDING them accordingly, when they're rightly challenged, and seek to convince us that you're right, rather than taking umbrage at the opinions of others that don't fit with your belief system, as otherwise it does little to add value to the discussion.

Marco.

[Sherwood]

My comments are also based on evidence and science and, unlike you, I've posted my reference for scrutiny. My guess is you have not even watched it.

Cases have gone up because there has been a massive increase in testing. Really not rocket science. If mask wearing and social distancing has any effect why have influenza cases not gone down? Influenza is a less communicable disease than C19 so cases should have dropped like a stone. Explain that.

You are making false and unjustified assumptions about me. Not only did I watch the video in full, I looked up the credentials of the author, checked the figures presented against recent data, and compared this to models which have consistently been close to their projections (albeit somewhat underestimating death rates). If you had done the same I doubt if you would have any confidence in the claims made.

Your reasoning is flawed. New infections (incidence) and current infections (prevalence) are up in reality and not just because we are testing more.

As to influenza cases, the forthcoming winter flu epidemic is forecast to be somewhat lower than usual precisely because of the knock on effects of the Covid mitigation effects.

I have spent enough time on this and conclude that some people will believe what they want, and rely on the arguments made by unqualified parties rather than global experts in the field.

[Marco]

Not only did I watch the video in full, I looked up the credentials of the author, checked the figures presented against recent data, and compared this to models which have consistently been close to their projections (albeit somewhat underestimating death rates)...

Ok then, show us evidence of that then, and the data you believe categorically contradicts that contained in the video Martin linked to, including the models that have been close to their projections, so we can therefore consider it. You need to put some proper 'meat on the bone' on your argument, as mere words mean little.

Marco.

[Marco]

You are making false and unjustified assumptions about me. Not only did I watch the video in full, I looked up the credentials of the author...

What about the credentials of the scientists whose expertise collated the data he was referencing in the video - surely that's the most important and relevant bit?

Marco.

[Macca]

You are making false and unjustified assumptions about me. Not only did I watch the video in full, I looked up the credentials of the author, checked the figures presented against recent data, and compared this to models which have consistently been close to their projections (albeit somewhat underestimating death rates). If you had done the same I doubt if you would have any confidence in the claims made.

Your reasoning is flawed. New infections (incidence) and current infections (prevalence) are up in reality and not just because we are testing more.

As to influenza cases, the forthcoming winter flu epidemic is forecast to be somewhat lower than usual precisely because of the knock on effects of the Covid mitigation effects.

I have spent enough time on this and conclude that some people will believe what they want, and rely on the arguments made by unqualified parties rather than global experts in the field.

Now you are making false assumptions about me. I have no dog in the race and am happy to change my mind if a convincing case is made. Just proclaiming that 'experts' say something and not backing it up is not making a convincing case. In fact that's how people end up believing a whole load of rubbish. There are people who think hi-fi magazine journalists are experts, or marketing men are experts. I am not one of them. The word is bandied about far too easily these days and it adds zero weight to anything.

If you don't want to get involved in the discussion that's fine, but getting involved by simply posting - 'You're wrong, I say so and experts say so' just doesn't cut it. I thought you had an academic background?

[Roy S]

My cousin's daughter Alex airs her concerns about going back to uni (1:18 & 10:31). Don't know how she got to be such a smart cookie, that gene obviously skipped our generation.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...ies-2-16092020

[ianlenco]

You're correct, my bad.

Not a criticism, it's easy to get confused by all these viruses. For instance, around 20% of common colds are caused by a coronovirus, not the same one as Covid 19 but a relative.

[Marco]

Are they kissing cousins?

Marco.