Covid 19 Part XXXV-956,720 ROI (5,952 deaths) 452,946 NI (3,002 deaths) (08/01) Read OP

Stormyteacup

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Have you ever noticed over a period of time positive test always exceed confirmed cases and have ever considered why this may be?

Yes but I reckoned those were down to repeat testing in certain circumstances? Do you mean swab positives? Yes am aware but how much is that the norm - surely for scientific purposes you would acknowledge that must be known before drawing conclusions?

9.9 cases per 100,000 over the last 7 days in my locality. These antigen tests are obviously doing something right which NPHET scoff at are mighty effective at controlling the spread of the virus...and it is a tourist destination too.

quokula

Deleted User wrote: »

9.9 cases per 100,000 over the last 7 days in my locality. These antigen tests are obviously doing something right which NPHET scoff at are mighty effective at controlling the spread of the virus...and it is a tourist destination too.

It seems strange to put that down to antigen tests that are barely being used, rather than the rapid vaccine rollout or the summer weather.

Probes

normanoffside wrote: »

There are quite a lot of examples of people being unable to fly home due to positive PCR tests post recover.
Here is one article outlining the problem:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/irish-stranded-abroad-despite-full-recovery-from-covid-19-1.4486675

But not the 6 months.

We are in a Pandemic and there are going to be unusual cases, but for the safety of the whole population that is the way it has to be currently. I can’t see any of my relations for the duration of this pandemic, I know well how frustrating it can be but I also understand why the rules are in place.

Renjit

Sweet.Science wrote: »

No Indian variant in New York it seems

Delta Variant Accounts for 5% of NYC Virus Cases Studied Amid New Fauci Warning

Jim_Hodge

Deleted User wrote: »

9.9 cases per 100,000 over the last 7 days in my locality. These antigen tests are obviously doing something right which NPHET scoff at are mighty effective at controlling the spread of the virus...and it is a tourist destination too.

Where are you and, if Ireland, where are you getting current data on local areas?

Always_Running

Last 4 Tuesdays.

25/5 - 7 day average in cases 443. In hospital 103 and in ICU 41.

1/6 - 7 day average in cases 415, In hospital 89 and in ICU 34

8/6 - 7 day average in cases 397, In hospital 77 in ICU 27.

15/6 - 7 day average in cases 321*,in hospital 60 in ICU 23


*Journalist Gavan Reilly added it up wrong. Good continued progress nonetheless.

klose

First Up wrote: »

The main concerns I heard expressed about Antigen tests is the unreliability of people conducting the tests on themselves. If they are done by people who know how to do it properly then they are a good measure, which is how a lot of businesses are screening their staff.

My place of work (pharma site with 1,000+ employees) has a crowd in doing antigen tests and even they are never consistent with the swabbing, some barely enter the nose, others are nearly poking at your brain.

Amirani

Stormyteacup wrote: »

Yes but I reckoned those were down to repeat testing in certain circumstances? Do you mean swab positives? Yes am aware but how much is that the norm - surely for scientific purposes you would acknowledge that must be known before drawing conclusions?

It's for a number of reasons, one of which is that people with very high CT values are often re-tested and not counted as positives.

TefalBrain

65k people at a football match in Hungary today.

Christ we are so slow at moving on with life here.

ceadaoin.

Sweet.Science wrote: »

No Indian variant in New York it seems

The cdc are telling vaccinated people not to get tested. When they do they run the test at a lower number of cycles than non vaccinated. Even if the test is positive, it isn't counted unless it has severe symptoms or results in hospitalisation. That's how to end the pandemic. The vaccines work, the ridiculous focus on cases needs to stop.

Professor Moriarty

TefalBrain wrote: »

65k people at a football match in Hungary today.

Christ we are so slow at moving on with life here.

Interestingly, Hungary has the second highest mortality rate in the world. More than three times that of Ireland.

Arghus

TefalBrain wrote: »

65k people at a football match in Hungary today.

Christ we are so slow at moving on with life here.

Worth bearing in mind that Hungary have twice our population, but six times our deaths, at least.

But they got to go to a football match, so that's good.

Stormyteacup

Amirani wrote: »

It's for a number of reasons, one of which is that people with very high CT values are often re-tested and not counted as positives.

Yes but that was my point. There’s no directive as to which samples are retested, or at what CT values positives are discounted. Many have just taken it for granted that labs are investigating individual cases - just as many took it for granted that coroners were looking into individual deaths (they aren’t), or that sequencing is being done on enough samples to give an accurate picture of variant spread (it isn’t). Guidelines are just that -really does not mean they have been translated into real life practice.

TefalBrain

TefalBrain wrote: »

65k people at a football match in Hungary today.

Christ we are so slow at moving on with life here.

Yep, and one of the highest debt levels in the entire world with a large chunk of that coming from an insanely long lockdown.

But when the young start questioning us about why they can’t buy a house, we can mumble some gibberish about the Hungarians having higher deaths one year.

manofwisdom

TefalBrain wrote: »

65k people at a football match in Hungary today.

Christ we are so slow at moving on with life here.

Overly cautious as seen with only allowing 3% of the Croke Park capacity into the league final at the weekend.

Professor Moriarty

Deleted User wrote: »

Yep, and one of the highest debt levels in the entire world with a large chunk of that coming from an insanely long lockdown.

But when the young start questioning us about why they can’t buy a house, we can mumble some gibberish about the Hungarians having higher deaths one year.

Why is it "gibberish" to point out that Hungary has such a high mortality rate?

Coillte_Bhoy

Deleted User wrote: »

Yep, and one of the highest debt levels in the entire world with a large chunk of that coming from an insanely long lockdown.

But when the young start questioning us about why they can’t buy a house, we can mumble some gibberish about the Hungarians having higher deaths one year.

30,000 deaths with a population twice ours and ruled by a right wing demagogue, aye lets follow them alright :rolleyes:

Professor Moriarty

Coillte_Bhoy wrote: »

30,000 deaths with a population twice ours and ruled by a right wing demagogue, aye lets follow them alright :rolleyes:

It also has the highest cancer mortality rate in the EU. Not a shining example of pandemic control or general healthcare.

Coillte_Bhoy

Coillte_Bhoy wrote: »

30,000 deaths with a population twice ours and ruled by a right wing demagogue, aye lets follow them alright :rolleyes:

Nobody said that at all.

But perhaps we could calm down a bit moaning about people having a laugh on beaches etc.

AdamD

Germany with a decent crowd in the stadium tonight too, their pandemic response has been alright, hasn't it?

Vicxas

AdamD wrote: »

Germany with a decent crowd in the stadium tonight too, their pandemic response has been alright, hasn't it?

I have a friend there and she told me that restrictions were tough but they were per region so they could vary between them all.

quokula

quokula wrote: »

It seems strange to put that down to antigen tests that are barely being used, rather than the rapid vaccine rollout or the summer weather.

Barely being used? You have to go out of your way to avoid the Antigen test tents and prefabs around here. It is paying off though, infection and mortality rates are completely suppressed but you'll have the usual suspects here doffing their caps to NPHET and their strategy of absolutely not using a high quality tool to detect infections inexpensively and quickly.
Free antigen testing has been a cornerstone of the strategy here.

Vicxas

Vicxas wrote: »

I have a friend there and she told me that restrictions were tough but they were per region so they could vary between them all.

That's because they know down to the regional level how things are progressing and can throttle the severity of the restrictions to the level that is appropriate for that region. Knowledge is power.
Check on the dashboard on rki.de

There was an example of Mannheim and Heidelberg which are right beside each other where there is a lot of public transport traffic and based on infection levels you could wear a normal surgical mask until you reach the suburb of Mannheim and must then put on a FFP2 mask all because they know the infection levels on a daily basis and measure over the last 7 days, not 14 days because 14 days isn't granular enough.

Vicxas

Vicxas wrote: »

I have a friend there and she told me that restrictions were tough but they were per region so they could vary between them all.

It depends on the region. They have a system like the United States where each region has their own COVID-19 rules.

That said, it's safe to say that Germany has been very prudent and practical though (as always!); in fact, I would say far more balanced and reasoned compared to the relatively extreme approach adopted by NPHET. Pat Kenny was speaking to the journalist Fladge Dampener last week, who resides in Germany, and he noted how they were far more relaxed about cases than us, as we seem obsessed with "cases" in Ireland.

I know some experiments are taking place this month in Ireland re: a few mass events to see how things go, but it's back to the same over-sensitive bureaucratic approach to how we manage events in this country. Better to take calculated risks than always assuming the worst case scenario will come to pass!

Dr. Bre

ZX7R wrote: »

Surprised there is no outrage about the mass gathering of protesters in Dublin today.
Must be that they weren't drinking ha.

They were wearing GAA jerseys

Klonker

Martina1991 wrote: »

https://twitter.com/stapalato/status/1404502055172050945?s=19

A thread with a little more detail from the hse antigen test working group.

"TL:DR - PCR remains the gold standard for detection of SARS-CoV-2. Missing virus present at low levels, as antigen tests often do, can miss seriously ill, infectious, or pre-infectious individuals. Performance in real world significantly differs from manufacturers data. "

"In meat processing plants, antigen test sensitivity was 51.9% compared with PCR. Looking at asymptomatic individuals with Ct values <=30 (equating to substantial viral load), test sensitivity of 68.9% did not meet WHO acceptiblity criteria (≥80% sensitivity)"

PCR always be the method others are compared to because it is the gold standard. New methods will always be compared to the gold standard. That is the most accurate way of measuring an analyte.

The downfall of PCR is that its "too sensitive ". There are procedures and protocols in place to reduce these incidences, yet the line of false positives being a significant factor in cases and prolonging restrictions is still trotted out. Its not true.

Here are findings that asymptomatic people in meant palnts with high viral loads were missed by antigen tests.

People and "experts" can debate til the cows come home. Its not going to change the results that people don't want to hear. There's the data. There's the findings. This is why decisions and policy are based on real world scientific data.

Some good info in that report that I found interesting:

In symptomatic cases almost all positive PCR cases were also positive antigen cases when using ct 25 cycles.

In the asymptomatic cases, it's a pity there wasn't more positive cases so more antigen brands could be tested. Only one had adequate amounts of positive tests to be tested and that was a nasal swab test rather than the more accurate nasopharyngael swab test. Even at that it had a accuracy of about 80% against ct 25 cycles which is not bad in my opinion. Also its a pity this was a self swab test as and not a professionally swabbed test. I would love to see it revisited but I doubt it will.

I don't think antigen tests should replace PCR tests as used for symptomatic cases abd test and trace just yet but I think they should be used for screening for international travel and large gatherings as you can have results in minutes.

nocoverart

On the plus side, covid will eventually taper off. On the negative side, a deepening concern for climate change is only around the corner. There’s even a minute possibility that the whole UFO thing might be real and that’s probably the only positive. Jaysus, all I wanted out of life was a few pints and a kebab afterwards.

nocoverart

nocoverart wrote: »

Jaysus, all I wanted out of life was a few pints and a kebab afterwards.

That makes you an avowed enemy of the killjoys who consider the pub environment to be a haven for Covid because they haven't darkened the doorstep of a dreaded local in years.

podgeandrodge

Deleted User wrote: »

That makes you an avowed enemy of the killjoys who consider the pub environment to be a haven for Covid because they haven't darkened the doorstep of a dreaded local in years.

But remember Berties_Horse, that we also need to consider the thousands of infections that resulted from Tony's "absolute shock" at that weekend outdoor drinking. He hasn't mentioned how many, but there must be loads of cases, mustn't there!