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Thread: Coronavirus

  1. #3511
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    Quote Originally Posted by Muddy Retriever View Post
    But cases clearly weren't doubling every nine days before that study. That is demonstrably incorrect. Positive cases as reported on the Government's website had slowed down markedly and new infections had started dropping per the weekly ONS pilot study and the ZOE covid symptom study. Indeed the creator of the ZOE study believe infections peaked before lockdwown.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/...efore-lockdown

    If cases were doubling every nine days why isn't this now being reflected in the death figures?
    From Deepti Gurdasani, Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology, re the Spectator article:

    "This article is misleading in many ways- we know that cases had started declining in the north West prior to lockdown, but had been increasing in all other regions at the point we went into lockdown. The ONS data, REACT data all support this.
    Even the figure in the Spectator piece - on infection in above 60s shows this. It also shows that the decline in the North-West was gradual, and became much steeper after lockdown, which is supported by the inferred R value dropping further after lockdown. Why is this important?
    It's not sufficient for R to be at 1 when there is high transmission, or even just below 1. To save lives, we need to bring down cases rapidly. At the point we went into lockdown we had an estimated ~55K cases a day- this would translate to ~550 deaths in 3-4 wks time.
    An R of 0.9 means we would still have 40K cases in a fortnight (equivalent to 400 deaths/day in the future). An R of 0.7 means a reduction to 19K deaths in a fortnight - more than halving of cases and future deaths. The rapidity with which we reduce cases is important.
    Lockdown wasn't just imposed to turn around case numbers, but to bring down cases in all regions rapidly - which was not happening with the tiered system. And even where cases were declining, R numbers were still only just below 1.
    The piece appears to also completely ignore the findings of the REACT study, which showed a dip in cases briefly during end October, which was followed by an increase, leading to what looked like a double peak, possibly driven by school closures during half term.
    The plateauing observed in the Zoe app towards end of October is consistent with this dip. Case surveillance the REACT study is more reliable that the symptom survey - both the ONS & REACT-1 surveys confirm that we were in a very precarious position before lockdown.
    I don't support lockdown being used as a long term measure for COVID-19 control. Most countries that have successfully managed COVID-19 have only used this in emergencies, using the time under lockdown to strengthen their case finding systems in order to control infection.
    And I completely understand the detrimental impacts of lockdown on society and the economy. The best way to protect our society & economy is to control COVID-19. Had the govt followed an evidence-based strategy early on, we may not have required a second lockdown.
    I don't expect Spectator to necessarily understand the nuance of all this, but I would expect an epidemiologist who runs a COVID-19 study to do better than this, when communicating information to the public.
    The article also seems to minimise risk to younger people- there is accruing evidence that even young people are vulnerable to long-term illness in ways we don't fully understand- and continuing high levels of infection in these age groups are also unacceptable."

  2. #3512
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    Dr David Oliver, on twitter:

    "my 78 year old parents (i am one of 4 children and they also have 6 grandchildren) are on that very page. They actively don't want a get together because they want to live"

  3. #3513
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    Here's the thing, REACT uses the PCR test.

    REACT tests those not going in to the hospital system, so is entirely made up of people not suffering any COVID symptoms.

    The PCR test has a largely accepted minimum false positive rate of 0.8% - and that is as a minimum. Some assessments put it as high as 4% - and measures taken as a result of it have been kicked out of court in Portugal this last week.

    REACT completed 105,123 swab results according to this interim report.

    If 0 were to have Covid, that would mean they would get 841 positive results from that sample size.

    They got 821.

    I struggle to take this study seriously. It is just another statistical mirage that is keeping us trapped in a Penrose Stairs loop.

    However, one thing REACT does is confirm what I and others have been saying. It can't break it down in a detailed way like the ONS data because it doesn't have those daily updates, they are monthly, with fortnightly interim reports which make it much more difficult to track the change of direction and pin it down to a particular week.
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  4. #3514
    Master Witton Park's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mike T View Post
    From Deepti Gurdasani, Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology,
    Dr Gurdasani has multiple conflicts of interest. I've seen her interviewed on a few occasions and she clearly has left wing affiliations.
    She spent last Autumn campaigning on Twitter for the Labour party.
    She described Prof Gupta and Heneghan at Oxford as well as Dr Kulldorf at Yale and Dr Bhattacharya at Stamford as Pseudo scientists with no peer reviewed papers behind them - patently wrong.
    She described opinions that question the Government policy as alt-right and driven by right-wing corporate interests.
    Quite why she lies about other colleagues just because she disagrees with them is beyond me, but I can't take this lady seriously as it seems she has other motivations.
    Richard Taylor
    "William Tell could take an apple off your head. Taylor could take out a processed pea."
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  5. #3515
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    This is so great on Twitter - an anti-masker being handed her arse on a plate

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EoEJLpvX...jpg&name=large

  6. #3516
    Master Muddy Retriever's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mike T View Post
    Case surveillance the REACT study is more reliable that the symptom survey - both the ONS & REACT-1 surveys confirm that we were in a very precarious position before lockdown.
    Why is the React study more reliable than the symptom study? The ONS pilot surveys do not back up the React study. They show a fall in new cases in the last week of October and then a slight increase the following week. The official positive test cases on the government website also show rate increases were slowing down.

    Then we have hospital admission figures. On average it takes a couple of weeks from infection to hospital admission. The peak admission day in England was 11th November with 1,711.

    If cases were doubling every nine days as claimed by React we should be seeing this in the death figures. But we're not, why is that?

    So far from being more reliable, React is the outlier. Not only is it saying something quite different to the ONS, the symptom study and official figures, it's finding are not backed up by either hospital admission or death figures.

  7. #3517
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    Quote Originally Posted by Fellbeast View Post
    This is so great on Twitter - an anti-masker being handed her arse on a plate

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EoEJLpvX...jpg&name=large
    Excellent!

  8. #3518
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    Which expert or experts do we trust? So many differing opinions and vested interests. Some have got it very wrong re Sweden. Some have no published peer reviewed material on the subject.

    https://bylinetimes.com/2020/09/23/s...ity-in-the-uk/

  9. #3519
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    Quote Originally Posted by Witton Park View Post
    I struggle to take this study seriously. It is just another statistical mirage that is keeping us trapped in a Penrose Stairs loop.
    A friend of mine did most of his BG training on a Penrose stairs loop. It meant he could work on his cardiovascular without aggravating his knee injury with all the descending.

  10. #3520
    I'm a bit puzzled over the false positive rate you refer to WP. Of 100,000 tests if there is a 0.4% false positive rate is that 0.4% of 100,000 tests or of the positive tests within that 100,000?

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