Off Topic Thread 5.0

Bazzo

I'll be alert as **** when I'm out and about from now on. No microscopic organisms will be catching me off guard coming round the corner.

prawnsambo

Bazzo wrote: »

I'll be alert as **** when I'm out and about from now on. No microscopic organisms will be catching me off guard coming round the corner.

I've been doing lessons with Yoda to learn how to control the virus. Professor X wasn't available.

Neil3030

stephen_n wrote: »

It’s mad to think they are sending out a message it’s safe to go back to normal. That’s exactly what that color scheme is designed to do. They feel the original message was too effective and people are afraid to go out. Looking at the growth rate of their death toll. That’s complete madness.


image uploader

Why are Belgium omitted here? They'd be fairly high up that list, you'd imagine?

Neil3030

irishbucsfan wrote: »

As for getting other sports back, the story about Dresden this morning shows how its almost impossible to get sport back properly until there's a vaccine.

2 Players contract the virus a week before games are due to resume. Now their entire squad is in quarantine for 2 weeks. Now what happens to their games during that period? And what happens if the team they're due to play have a similar situation in 2 weeks? I just can't see how its feasible for sport to return properly until next year. Until then you have to accept that any sport you schedule can be pulled at any notice, which makes league-style competitions almost impossible to run in their current structure.

Except it's not a completely alien idea to have games postponed due to weather or other unforseen circumstances. Also a hell of a lot easier to reschedule games when you don't need to coordinate with cities and police over the thousands of attending fans. In some ways it's good that we've had a team go into lockdown so early as it will hopefully whip everyone else into shape from the get go.

irishbucsfan

Neil3030 wrote: »

Except it's not a completely alien idea to have games postponed due to weather or other unforseen circumstances. Also a hell of a lot easier to reschedule games when you don't need to coordinate with cities and police over the thousands of attending fans. In some ways it's good that we've had a team go into lockdown so early as it will hopefully whip everyone else into shape from the get go.

It’s not alien but if a game gets suspended for weather you’re normally back playing in days. The minimum time a team will be going into lockdown for a covid diagnosis is 14 days. Those sort of disruptions ARE unprecedented. If that happens to 3-4 teams in the league it would throw off the entire schedule.

I see they have increased the number of substitutions to 5, I’d imagine that’s in anticipation of situations arising out of this where teams are going to theoretically be playing multiple games a week.

Neil3030

irishbucsfan wrote: »

It’s not alien but if a game gets suspended for weather you’re normally back playing in days. The minimum time a team will be going into lockdown for a covid diagnosis is 14 days. Those sort of disruptions ARE unprecedented. If that happens to 3-4 teams in the league it would throw off the entire schedule.

I see they have increased the number of substitutions to 5, I’d imagine that’s in anticipation of situations arising out of this where teams are going to theoretically be playing multiple games a week.

Weather cancellation sees games back within a few days, but the rescheduling of the particular cancelled fixture is still a headache, given the congestion from midweek cup/European fixtures.

I haven't seen the proposed schedule for the Bundesliga, but if they aim for a fixture per week per team, each Covid diagnosis would see 1-2 games requiring a postponement, and they'll have open midweek slots to cater for this. The scenario you present, 3-4 teams revealing a positive case, can actually be comfortably accommodated within this framework. The key variable is how quickly they plan to complete the season, as there is a direct trade-off between the completion date and the wiggle-room they give themselves for postponements.

jacothelad

http://https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52589449


Here is the gist of the info.





"It seems that new evidence has surfaced indicating that Covid-19 was circulating in England in late December / early January nearly two months before the first confirmed case of transmission in the UK. The members of 2 choirs became ill with what were 'strange' symptoms.



Dr John Wright of Bradford Royal Infirmary is intrigued by a group of amateur singers who experienced a viral illness with familiar symptoms long before the first recorded case in the UK.


An epidemiologist is a medical detective, and like all detectives, the three key clues we are looking for are always: person, place and time.So when I got an email out of the blue from a Bradford resident saying that she and her friends may have been infected with Covid-19 in January - nearly two months before the first confirmed case of transmission in the UK - I looked for these clues and decided to investigate further."


Among the first singers to get ill was the partner of a man who returned from a business trip to Wuhan on 17 or 18 December and developed a hacking cough.


"Jane Hall is a member of two choirs - the Voices of Yorkshire choir and the All Together Now Community Choir - and she says that Covid-like symptoms affected members of both, starting in early January."



"My friend from the choir became ill mid-January. Then my best friend, Christine, became ill, and then I became ill in the first weekend of February," Jane said.She went on to describe her symptoms.
"I had a throat that felt like I had swallowed broken glass, a high temperature, headaches... I was totally fatigued - I slept for two whole days which was totally unlike me. I had a high temperature and a dry unproductive cough." With the passing of time, a new symptom emerged.
"It was like breathing through treacle - I was really struggling to breathe and it felt like there was a lot of gunk I was trying to breathe through."


And later Jane noticed yet another symptom - an impaired sense of smell. Already on the mend, she visited her friend, Simon, a member of the All Together Now Community choir, who was also ailing. She made him a hot drink.
"And the milk curdled when I put milk in the tea. And I said, 'Oh, isn't the milk off?' And he said, 'Oh well, I had some this morning and it did the same but I couldn't taste any different.' So I smelled the milk, and I couldn't smell anything. And I couldn't understand how come I couldn't smell it - the milk was off."


Jane was describing some of the classical symptoms people can experience with Covid-19. On most occasions when people contact me to say they had an illness like this last year, I reassure them that it was probably a different viral infection. But Jane's story, with the link to Wuhan in mid-December, is very interesting."





This might go some way to explaining the huge spread of the virus. It was here for over 2 months before the 'first' cases. Feck.......

thomond2006

Work from home.

If you can't work from home, go to work.

If you're going to work don't use PT. Oh and we've cut PT capacity.

aloooof

jacothelad wrote: »

This might go some way to explaining the huge spread of the virus. It was here for over 2 months before the 'first' cases. Feck.......

This might not be an entirely bad thing; if it’s been readily circulating, it might suggest the CFR is a lot lower than the 3.4% the WHO had suggested.

Elon Musk (obviously not an epidemiologist, so take it with a pinch of salt) reckons that figure is off by a magnitude of somewhere between 10 and 50. If that does happen to be true, that’s really good news.

Buer

aloooof wrote: »

Elon Musk (obviously not an epidemiologist, so take it with a pinch of salt) reckons that figure is off by a magnitude of somewhere between 10 and 50. If that does happen to be true, that’s really good news.

Maybe not the best person to listen to when it comes to Covid-19 based on his behaviour this far!

aloooof

Buer wrote: »

Maybe not the best person to listen to when it comes to Covid-19 based on his behaviour this far!

Ya, probably not the best example to back up my point... listened to some of him on the Joe Rogan podcast, and I was pretty taken aback by he and Rogan’s pretty laissez-faire attitude towards it. Seemed almost irresponsible.

Stheno

aloooof wrote: »

This might not be an entirely bad thing; if it’s been readily circulating, it might suggest the CFR is a lot lower than the 3.4% the WHO had suggested.

Elon Musk (obviously not an epidemiologist, so take it with a pinch of salt) reckons that figure is off by a magnitude of somewhere between 10 and 50. If that does happen to be true, that’s really good news.

Antibody studies seem to suggest the same but the figures fluctuate wildly

Bazzo

aloooof wrote: »

This might not be an entirely bad thing; if it’s been readily circulating, it might suggest the CFR is a lot lower than the 3.4% the WHO had suggested.

Elon Musk (obviously not an epidemiologist, so take it with a pinch of salt) reckons that figure is off by a magnitude of somewhere between 10 and 50. If that does happen to be true, that’s really good news.

Musk has come completely unhinged (not to mention his burning desire to be the centre of attention at all times). Wouldn't be looking at him as a source of reliable information.

Neil3030

That BBC story certainly ticks a lot of boxes.

I can't shake the circularity that we'll soon face.

The number of cases is likely far higher than the cases confirmed by the swab tests, given these latter cases were people who experienced more serious symptoms. So the thinking is that we will need anti-body testing to figure out the true spread of the disease, and our current state of herd immunity.

But here's the problem; the Anti-body tests are what, 95% accurate and 95% specific? Or have better tests been developed?

If it's still 95/95, there's going to be a glut of false positives.

95% accurate means that if someone had Covid, the test will be positive 95% of the time.
95% specific means that if someone didn't have Covid, it will be negative 95% of the time.

The problem is clear to see when you think of an example. Suppose I randomly give the anti-body test to 10,000 people. Let's assume 1% of the population actually had the disease. So of these 10,000 people, 100 had it, 9,900 didn't.

The 100 positives will take the anti-body test and 95 (95% of 100) will come back positive (95% accuracy).

The 9900 negatives will take the anti-body test and 9405 (95% of 9900) will come back negative (95% specificity). This means 495 of this group will come back positive, despite never having it.

So you would face a situation where of your 10,000 sampled, the people testing positive are nearly 5 times more likely (495:95) to be a false positive than a genuine positive. These people now think they're immune, go back out to work, etc., and could wind up catching the disease.

Our faith in the anti-body testing is a function of how many people actually had the disease. In the above example, if you instead use 10% instead of 1% prevalence, you now have 1,000 people from the 10,000 sampled who were positive.

The 1,000 positives will take the anti-body test and 950 (95% of 1,000) will come back positive (95% accuracy).

The 9,000 negatives will take the anti-body test and 8,550 (95% of 9,000) will come back negative (95% specificity). This means 450 will come back positive, despite never having it.

The ratio now inverts, 450:950, that a positive result is a false positive (roughly 1:2 now you didn't have it, or 33% likely).

So here's the circularity: we know that our swab tests were heavily biased towards the more severe cases, so we need anti-body tests to see how widespread was the disease. But our faith in the anti-body tests require some baseline estimate of how widespread was the disease!

Stheno

Neil3030 wrote: »

So here's the circularity: we know that our swab tests were heavily biased towards the more severe cases, so we need anti-body tests to see how widespread was the disease. But our faith in the anti-body tests require some baseline estimate of how widespread was the disease!

We can use the studies from the likes of New York as a rough baseline but I suspect their tests are the quick fingerprick ones so not 100 % accurate

Roche have gotten EU approval a week or two ago for their antibody test which is 100% accurate and 99.8% specific

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.med-technews.com/api/amp/news/roche-s-covid-19-antibody-test-approved-for-use-in-the-uk/

Hmm however it's a "proper" blood test if I understand correctly and we dont have.much spare capacity in terms of the specific machines that would process the tests so we would either need to ramp up that capacity or find a partner like the German lab for the PCR test to process them

It has been stated that there is a joint plan between us and the North to do an all Ireland study, and Cillian De Gascun said in an in interview with the IT last week that the timeframe for antibody testing to start was J UK ne, so realistically I'd add on probably six weeks for it to actually start

sullivlo

Stheno wrote: »

We can use the studies from the likes of New York as a rough baseline but I suspect their tests are the quick fingerprick ones so not 100 % accurate

Roche have gotten EU approval a week or two ago for their antibody test which is 100% accurate and 99.8% specific

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.med-technews.com/api/amp/news/roche-s-covid-19-antibody-test-approved-for-use-in-the-uk/

Hmm however it's a "proper" blood test if I understand correctly and we dont have.much spare capacity in terms of the specific machines that would process the tests so we would either need to ramp up that capacity or find a partner like the German lab for the PCR test to process them

It has been stated that there is a joint plan between us and the North to do an all Ireland study, and Cillian De Gascun said in an in interview with the IT last week that the timeframe for antibody testing to start was J UK ne, so realistically I'd add on probably six weeks for it to actually start

There are hundreds of labs in Ireland that would have the equipment and expertise to run antibody testing if materials and protocols were provided.

The issue would likely be accessing samples. Blood tests are needed, not a finger prick, a vial. They're only stable for a short amount of time before samples degrade, and they're not like the swabs in that they can't be stored at minus 80 indefinitely...

I could run an antibody test in school if required. We have a dark room and the majority of the equipment needed.

Lots of labs are sitting idle currently. I'm sure they would be delighted to help.

Neil3030

Does anybody know what sort of test NYC are basing their estimates? Full blood draw or a finger prick?

Bazzo

Thanks to Boris' crystal clear guidelines I've basically spent the last 12 hours googling and checking my phone every 5 minutes to try to find out if I'll be returning to work this week? today? tomorrow? Wednesday? or possibly next month? or maybe July? Un****ingbelievable

Stheno

Bazzo wrote: »

Thanks to Boris' crystal clear guidelines I've basically spent the last 12 hours googling and checking my phone every 5 minutes to try to find out if I'll be returning to work this week? today? tomorrow? Wednesday? or possibly next month? or maybe July? Un****ingbelievable

Did he not say Wednesday is when things open up?

Bazzo

Stheno wrote: »

Did he not say Wednesday is when things open up?

He gave very very unclear guidance on returning to work(he never mentioned Wednesday, that was a later addition by another member of cabinet) which basically means every business is making their own minds up about opening or waiting for guidance. He didn't actually mention any business reopening at all other than construction, but he said "if you can return to work you should".

Sadiq Khan has just been on BBC 1 saying that he's had clarification that that actually just pertains to construction and one or two other outdoor based businesses but there still hasn't been a peep from the government.

Stheno

Bazzo wrote: »

He gave very very unclear guidance on returning to work(he never mentioned Wednesday, that was a later addition by another member of cabinet) which basically means every business is making their own minds up about opening or waiting for guidance. He didn't actually mention any business reopening at all other than construction, but he said "if you can return to work you should".

Sadiq Khan has just been on BBC 1 saying that he's had clarification that that actually just pertains to construction and one or two other outdoor based businesses but there still hasn't been a peep from the government.

It's all a bit mental. At least our lot released the plan shortly after Leo's speech and gave a bit more notice

aloooof

Stheno wrote: »

It's all a bit mental. At least our lot released the plan shortly after Leo's speech and gave a bit more notice

It seems to me that either they're a complete bumbling shambles or it's deliberate. I'm not sure which is more likely.

Bazzo

aloooof wrote: »

It seems to me that either they're a complete bumbling shambles or it's deliberate. I'm not sure which is more likely.

Why not both?

jacothelad

The Beeb has just showna clip from a CCTV camera at an Underground station.. Holy F%ck. It's rammed. Back to square one Boris. He has been manipulated by the loony toon clowns in the ERG and absolute lunatics like Steve Baker.

Stheno

jacothelad wrote: »

The Beeb has just showna clip from a CCTV camera at an Underground station.. Holy F%ck. It's rammed. Back to square one Boris. He has been manipulated by the loony toon clowns in the ERG and absolute lunatics like Steve Baker.

They don't appear to have any seats blocked off like you see in other countries even

stephen_n

jacothelad wrote: »

The Beeb has just showna clip from a CCTV camera at an Underground station.. Holy F%ck. It's rammed. Back to square one Boris. He has been manipulated by the loony toon clowns in the ERG and absolute lunatics like Steve Baker.

He is a marionette for Cummings. A populist sock puppet trying to govern by social media analytics. The ERG got rid of all the experience and it shows. They are like a bunch of children trying to play house, while mommy and daddy are off drinking gin. The policies (what little exist) are driven by what they think they can get away with. They have a 5 year mandate but are operating as if there is an election in 5 months. It’s absolutely shocking how bad their communication has been through out this crisis.

jacothelad

jacothelad wrote: »

The Beeb has just showna clip from a CCTV camera at an Underground station.. Holy F%ck. It's rammed. Back to square one Boris. He has been manipulated by the loony toon clowns in the ERG and absolute lunatics like Steve Baker.

He's getting pushed around a fair bit alright. Ultimately they are following America's lead in opening up prematurely. Whether that's to keep pace with American markets or because there is new data suggesting it's the correct step to take is anyone's guess.

I can't shake the feeling that this is an overly politicized gamble and given the potential cost to life I think that's pretty grim if in anyway accurate.

Trump is holding onto his core support despite being an even greater shambles in the US and maybe camp Boris figure they can rely on a similar level of hand waving from brexit enthusiasts.

The stonewall rebuke from the regions is bigger news than is being given credit too.

Neil3030

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfrThV6DJu4

prawnsambo

And the most unlikely of people have been tearing into the government about this. Piers Morgan of all people! And Andrew (Irish passport) Bridgen is the rabbit in his headlights. Quite a bloody evisceration. When did Piers Morgan grow a spine?

prawnsambo

Massive botnet pushing the hashtag #ObamaGate at the moment. Twitter shooting them down, but it's like the many-headed Hydra. Fascinating to watch. Over 3 million tweets and they get it down to just over a million and it's back up over 3 million again. It's pure nonsense of course, but it must be trying to drown out something about Trump would be my guess.