Everything COVID19 - PART 4

[thinkwild]

Wouldn't that also mean that social distancing, mask wearing and locking down thousands and thousands of businesses was not as effective as originally thought? Not to mention the effects of a prolonged lockdown had on people.

Will be interesting to see what comes forth from this information.

Not sure id be willing to go that far yet as we've seen the positive effect it has had in many places. That effectiveness seems to have been established. Its also possible there is a dangerous complacency setting in right now that is going to send us back to that strategy again. We are still learning for sure.

 

[JD1]

It seems to me that we have a bigger issue with systemic racism in our law enforcement community than in society at large. A partial solution to that is to stop the long practiced "get out of jail free card" afforded to law enforcement personnel when they commit acts that many view as having racist undertones. Acts that would be punishable with jail terms if committed by regular civilians

As for society at large, income inequality is part of the issue. One way of addressing this is to do a better job of accepting foreign credentials. We invite people to this country. In fact our economic growth is dependent on immigration but we don't do a very good job of accepting or equating the academic credentials of many immigrants which forces many highly educated people into low paying jobs which starts a cycle of poverty.

 

[Micklebot]

Wouldn't that also mean that social distancing, mask wearing and locking down thousands and thousands of businesses was not as effective as originally thought? Not to mention the effects of a prolonged lockdown had on people.

Will be interesting to see what comes forth from this information.

There's already been some push back on this, not so much with the true asymptomatic cases, but the pre-symtomatic or paucisymptomatic (new word of the day for me...) transmission cases

Making this distinction between asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infections remains important -- but also between "paucisymptomatic infections," which refers to having atypical or very mild symptoms, Babak Javid, a principal investigator at Tsinghua University School of Medicine in Beijing and consultant in infectious disease at Cambridge University Hospitals, said in a written statement distributed by the UK-based Science Media Centre on Monday.

"Detailed contact tracing from Taiwan as well as the first European transmission chain in Germany suggested that true asymptomatics rarely transmit. However, those (and many other) studies have found that paucisymptomatic transmission can occur, and in particular, in the German study, they found that transmission often appeared to occur before or on the day symptoms first appeared," Javid said in the statement.
"Other data available, from studies in several continents confirming that presymptomatic transmission does occur, would suggest that being well does not necessarily mean one cannot transmit SARS-CoV-2," Javid said in part. "This has important implications for the track/trace/isolate measures being instituted in many countries."

Asymptomatic spread of coronavirus 'appears to be rare,' WHO official says - CNN

 

[Sens of Anarchy]

There's already been some push back on this, not so much with the true asymptomatic cases, but the pre-symtomatic or paucisymptomatic (new word of the day for me...) transmission cases

Asymptomatic spread of coronavirus 'appears to be rare,' WHO official says - CNN

Interesting they are drawing a line between pre-symptomatic and Asymptomatic. Both would mean no symptoms to me at a point in time .. lets say a visit.

 

[Micklebot]

Interesting they are drawing a line between pre-symptomatic and Asymptomatic. Both would mean no symptoms to me at a point in time .. lets say a visit.

The tricky one is paucisyptomatic. Say you sneezed a few times today but otherwise feel fine. Chalked it up to dust or pollen. You had to clear your throat more than usual, your throat felt a little tight but what you'd call sore.

What might seem like asymptomatic at the time might in hindsight end up being mildly symptomatic, or just the first day of onset. I think that's what the social distancing and masks are likely to make an impact on.

Whenever we do start making our way closer to normal, I really hope people take the time to self administer a Covid assessment every day. There's a phone app, and a web app you can use at Canada COVID-19 App / COVID-19 Canada or if you're worried about the potential privacy implications you can just do it the old fashion pen and paper way

 

[Pierre from Orleans]

Not sure id be willing to go that far yet as we've seen the positive effect it has had in many places. That effectiveness seems to have been established. Its also possible there is a dangerous complacency setting in right now that is going to send us back to that strategy again. We are still learning for sure.

Is the positive effects measurable or comparable though? Can we really say that the extended lockdown has prevented X number of deaths? Its an interesting debate with what the info they have now.

There are plenty of negative effects with the lockdown that are rarely ever talked about but we all know the reason for that.

 

[JD1]

Interesting they are drawing a line between pre-symptomatic and Asymptomatic. Both would mean no symptoms to me at a point in time .. lets say a visit.

Would presymptomatic not mean you go on to develop symptoms and asymptomatic mean you never develop symptoms?

Perhaps the difference is the viral load? Asymptomatic people catch a low viral load which is not transferable? Presymptomatic means the symptoms haven't developed but they eventually do, probably from a heavier viral load?

I'm just speculating but that makes sense to me.

 

[Sens of Anarchy]

Would presymptomatic not mean you go on to develop symptoms and asymptomatic mean you never develop symptoms?

Perhaps the difference is the viral load? Asymptomatic people catch a low viral load which is not transferable? Presymptomatic means the symptoms haven't developed but they eventually do, probably from a heavier viral load?

I'm just speculating but that makes sense to me.

Yes on the extended definitions but .. NO symptoms when you are presymptomatic and asymptomatic would appear as no symptoms at a point in time. Asymptomatic means no symptoms. So if you are not having any symptoms you would not necessarily know if you are presymptomatic or asymptomatic when you venture about. You would only find out later .. which I guess in someways is a good thing and perhaps why they are distinguishing since you can then contact trace and potentially help some of the people you've been in contact with or they are to be in contact with. And, further, those asymptomatic people that test positive under any scenario would have less chance of having passed it on and those that do not get tested should worry less about being tested?

 

[Knave]

Well we're third per capita in testing now behind Alberta and then Quebec.

We could catch Quebec very soon assuming our testing doesn't continue to decline (we might even if it does, Quebec dipped below 5K for yesterday while we approached 13K).

Alberta is approaching 10K so their public health is doing a really good job getting tests done when they're a fraction of our size.

 

[Stylizer1]

 

[AchtzehnBaby]

Is this guy Swedish?

 

[thinkwild]

Is the positive effects measurable or comparable though? Can we really say that the extended lockdown has prevented X number of deaths? Its an interesting debate with what the info they have now.

There are plenty of negative effects with the lockdown that are rarely ever talked about but we all know the reason for that.

Yes i've heard them talk about many of those negative effects. It must be hard to quantify lives saved by taking preventative measures. But I remember there was some talk a while back that had the Americans started their lockdown just 1 week earlier, they could have saved something like 20,000 lives. Indeed Trump actually bragged about what a great job he has done as had he done nothing there could have been a million or two deaths.

Here’s one link to a study, Researchers Say Stay-At-Home Orders During Coronavirus Pandemic Have So Far Saved Over 200,000 Lives .
I don’t know how they did their math or if this study has been replicated.

The analysis, based on 45-day stay-at-home mandates, covered the 30 biggest cities in the U.S. and shows the action reduced Covid-19 deaths by 232,878 and prevented 2.1 million people from hospitalizations.
[..]
their models did not create an estimate for the entire U.S. population, but she says “one-fifth of the population lives in those 30 cities, so you could multiply by 5 and have a rough estimate.”
Using her calculation, that would bring the estimated numbers of lives saved to more than a million.

Its quickly forgotten how fast this pandemic spread before we did anything. It was so bad that even Trump had to admit they needed to take action. There seems to be a lot of magical thinking now that maybe it has just gone away and we are over it now. The kiwis can apparently say that. But our graphs cant yet.

 

[Micklebot]

The WHO walking back a bit on the asymptomatic transmission comment,

“And in that [context], I used the phrase ‘very rare.’ I think that that’s misunderstanding [sic] to state that asymptomatic transmission globally is very rare.

Here's a pretty detailed article covering both the innitial comment and the follow up along with an attempt to explain what the WHO was trying to say

WHO butchers asymptomatic COVID comments. Here’s what they meant

 

[Knave]

251 new cases today, almost hit 20K tests. 3 new cases in eastern Ontario, all of them in Ottawa

 

[Pierre from Orleans]

The WHO walking back a bit on the asymptomatic transmission comment,



Here's a pretty detailed article covering both the innitial comment and the follow up along with an attempt to explain what the WHO was trying to say

WHO butchers asymptomatic COVID comments. Here’s what they meant

You would expect a clear concise message from a world health organization.

 

[Micklebot]

You would expect a clear concise message from a world health organization.

Sure, it would be nice if the WHO or for that matter any organization required to inform the public always be crystal clear in their messaging, but frankly there will always be blunders along the way.

Hopefully the confusion messaging doesn't result in bad policy decisions

 

[slamigo]

You would expect a clear concise message from a world health organization.

I know that this is a prevailing sentiment expressed here and elsewhere, but people need to please understand: the medical scientific community is learning new information about this virus every day. It is still not at all understood how it affects the body and yet people are expecting the scientists to have answers instantly. It takes years of research to fully understand how a virus works.

 

[FunkySeeFunkyDoo]

You would expect a clear concise message from a world health organization.

One individual made a poorly worded statement. People are people, they are fallible.

 

[Stylizer1]

251 new cases today, almost hit 20K tests. 3 new cases in eastern Ontario, all of them in Ottawa

Doesn't matter.

 

[FunkySeeFunkyDoo]

Doesn't matter.

It does to 251 people.

 

[Stylizer1]

It does to 251 people.

If it were 251 people went to the hospital today because of Covid then yes. For all we know most of those people are probably not even sick.

 

[Pierre from Orleans]

If it were 251 people went to the hospital today because of Covid then yes. For all we know most of those people are probably not even sick.

What is the fascination with test numbers.

 

[Micklebot]

What is the fascination with test numbers.

We should just stop testing altogether amirite?

 

[Sens of Anarchy]

What is the fascination with test numbers.

Its related to the outcome of tests that are published. So many people tested positive out of so many people tested. We want the first number to be low and the 2nd number to be everyone. Fascination may be a little strong..

 

[Stylizer1]

What is the fascination with test numbers.

Yesterday your test result says you are negative but you pick up the virus today and in 2 weeks you still have no symptoms.

This saves epidemiologists from having to travel to the Congo and study Ebola i guess.

From the start it didn't make sense just to report the infected and the deaths. They should've provided more information like age, severity, and those who recovered. I bet if they would have people would have been not so eager to allow the government to shut everything down andfor this length of time.