You’ll note I gave the actual numbers, which is less misleading than simply ranking where the UK was as you did (in a group of six!). Your comment was, therefore, UK has most deaths per million! Without the necessary qualifier that *this is among 6 specific countries (UK, France, Italy, Thailand, Tanzania and South Africa). If you provide the actual numbers it gives a clearer picture.
I think your observations are fair enough. Where I agree with the government is in trying to do things on a local level as much as possible. Where I disagree is the timing and the extent of what those measures are. In addition, there is clearly a problem with the effectiveness of the track and trace system and that’s also on the government. They’ve now had months to get this right and it’s clearly nowhere near good enough.
My first thought is…stay where I am! We’re currently at 9 cases per 100,000 in Gloucestershire. Cardiff is at 27 per 100,000 so perhaps we ought to be restricting the travel of those from Wales
My ultimate point is that whether you have testing or not, the healthcare system must be ready for all positive cases to be rehabilitated and treated. I am hearing from my customers in some countries where basically people are left to die simply because the healthcare system just cannot cope. Imagine a country like Indonesia where they are only doing 14K tests per million (already an increase from a couple of months before) in a country of 270mil people and yet they have warned that their healthcare system face a collapse soon if the infection rate keeps up. Its an expose of the inadequate spending on healthcare systems when they reveal that the healthcare ministry only spent 1.5% on healthcare of their 5 billion dollar budget… That is why I think there are governments out there focusing on the wrong things and letting their citizens die and in some regions, the governments might get called out, but in some regions like Indonesia or the Philippines, the citizens, some of them, just die without even getting a chance…and sad as it is…nobody believed the government cares…their lives are cheap.
I actually have no problem with that restriction other than it’s clearly too late. Not too far from me the postcode of LL40 is considered a high risk area after kids from the local college decided it was a good time to go for a weekend in Liverpool. It’s daft!! But you know, we need to keep propping up England economy. We should shut off the water next.
I would also like to add that in my mind the only way to beat this is with short and sharp action. I’m not convinced by the 3 tier system. I think then need to go further and go earlier. I think it works better in the long run that way.
Quebec has experimented with very local measures, and were sufficiently unimpressed to convince Ontario not to bother with anything below regional.
On the other hand, New York State has been very effective with some highly localized measures.
A working theory is that the turnaround time of tests is at least as important as the absolute numbers. Ontario and Quebec have both seen processing times move out to 5 days from 2, where the NY measures have been accompanied by testing with turnaround times of hours at best.
Ha! An automatic message is now encouraging me to get other people involved in this discussion because I’m replying to you too much! It’s even suggesting that I consider sliding into your DMs
Probably a good prompt for me to do some more work!
I’m no expert on the testing but I’m pretty sure counting mailed out uncompleted tests as a completed test, and counting tests that require two swabs as two separate tests can’t help.
That makes a lot of sense. The sooner those affected can be informed (so effective track and trace relevant here too) and go into whatever isolation/quarantine has been mandated clearly the better chances of reducing the r number.
I know there are tests that can now provide reliable results within less than 90 minutes but I’m not sure how widely available they are?
I dont disagree that focus needs to be put on standing up the health care systems to deal with this. What I objected to is you connecting this need to developing a better approach to testing.
The reality is in an outbreak like this, testing is the absolute first step in controlling the outbreak. If you dont have a health care system that can respond to an outbreak that makes the imperative to stand up a robust and effective testing system even greater, and to connect that the rest of the public health initiatives that help limit the spread
They are pretty widely available now, the problem is they are less sensitive than the more standard tests. They are great for large scale screening, but if you were making a personal decision on whether to go back to work after being exposed, that is not the sort of test you should be taking.
Sure, but I’m talking about the PCR type, which I think is the more accurate one? Some are now turning these type test results around in 90 minutes I think, compared with 24-48 hours that was previously the quickest turnaround?
I think there are potentially tests that are even quicker (10 minutes or less) but those are the less reliable ones that are not detecting rna?
Merkel had this big meeting with the divided federal fuckwits that rule our Corona politics yesterday. Not exactly inspiring confidence when both she and the National Academy of Science bascially say afterwards that the new measures taken won’t be enough.
Ffs, the way this is going lately I’m almost going to miss Angie when she’s gone. Almost.
I see what you’re saying. The distinction is more between a lab test and test kit that gets the designation of “rapid test”. There are now ones for the latter for both antigen detection and RNA, and I suspect if you go to a lab who can get you results in 90 minutes it is far more likely they have simply processed a betty crocker style rapid test for you rather than that they have developed that turn around capacity of their own tests.
These are what we need for the sort of wide spread testing of low risk people that we need to employ but for a proper diagnostic test for someone who has reason to be concerned about detection, then it’s the non-rapid tests we should be leaning on. They need to improve their turn around time, but I dont think it’s realistic at any time to expect a turn around time equivalent to the rapid tests. 14 days as we have in Florida is obviously absurd and defeats the point, but shorter than next day is likely unrealistic.
You don’t develop the antibody unless you were infected. So the infection number (and the death toll) is way beyond the official count of 400K. But that was no secret either.
I don’t think the people pushing it would be convinced of their folly by data. Especially not with data from a country sufficiently different that those differences can be used to create reasons why they dont apply to the US/UK (does anywhere else have decision makers actually pushing this?)
I guess this posted to get a response from me. Here goes.
Fuckwit.
He’s lucky I’ve used my 10 character limit above.
In reality that comment has probably done us a favour. That border he so despises has become just a little bit harder and a little more likely. he’s still a fuckwit though
