Coronavirus

[slasher]

Had a wee day out in town (Glasgow) with Mrs Slasher yesterday. Had a lovely meal  and a relatively normal dining experience in Gamba. The pubs were another matter however and I’m not sure I’ll be hurrying back. Beer gardens were fine but in the pub itself even if it’s done right you totally lose out on banter and meeting new people. Worse than that is where it’s not done right or you have (generally) younger folk not giving a fuck about any virus.

In the main, I think I’ll be giving pubs a miss for the most part in future sadly. ☹️

[thplinth]

 

[Squirrelhumper]

On ‎8‎/‎21‎/‎2020 at 7:37 AM, dandydunn said:

Oldmachar Academy in Aberdeen is shut today for a deep clean due to a positive case being in the school. 
 

They almost managed a whole week before something happened. 

School in Dundee closed today as 17 teachers and 2 pupils test positive.

[Squirrelhumper]

13 hours ago, slasher said:

Had a wee day out in town (Glasgow) with Mrs Slasher yesterday. Had a lovely meal  and a relatively normal dining experience in Gamba.

Cracking place, never had a bad meal in Gamba.

[Toepoke]

7 minutes ago, Squirrelhumper said:

School in Dundee closed today as 17 teachers and 2 pupils test positive.

Mr Johnson said the risk of catching coronavirus in school was "very small" 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53882175

 

 

Edited August 24, 2020 by Toepoke

[Squirrelhumper]

1 hour ago, Toepoke said:

Mr Johnson said the risk of catching coronavirus in school was "very small" 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53882175

 

 

To be fair schools need to go back, localised lock downs like this will be the norm for the foreseeable but to say the risk is very small is daft.

From what family and friends have told me, schools are basically BAU for now, with very little social distancing in practice and little guidance from those in charge.

[PapofGlencoe]

having seen the numbers across europe this virus is undoubtedly on the way back.

What we do about it is a different matter.  Italy have said they will not do a nationwide lockdown again.

I'm far from a sympathiser of some of the consipiracy theorists out there but surely we need to live with this virus to some extent.  I thought the point was to flatten the curve so the NHS can cope, not eradicate it (which seems to be an impossibility).

open to be persuaded, im just very conscious that people's jobs are being lost at an alarming rate.  Lives are more important than jobs though but a murky balance needs to be struck.

[Squirrelhumper]

4 minutes ago, PapofGlencoe said:

 

open to be persuaded, im just very conscious that people's jobs are being lost at an alarming rate.  Lives are more important than jobs though but a murky balance needs to be struck.

Exactly this, folk need to get used to the idea of localised lockdowns as and when they are needed.

Same with face coverings etc.

The number of jobs being lost just now is mental and not showing any sign of slowing down. No chance any government can justify a nationwide lockdown again.

[Toepoke]

Hong Kong man catches Covid for a second time...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-reinfected-hong-kong-covid-19-study-a9685571.html

Edited August 24, 2020 by Toepoke

[phart]

4 hours ago, thplinth said:

 

7 full double blind randomised trials haven't been able to show it works. Opnions just just don't have the same weight of evidence as those. Especially the opinions of folk outside their area of expertise.

The objective experiments are designed to eliminate bias by being double blinded and randomised. Opinions are inherently biased as that's what humans are.

I'm sure the claim "well he is a epidemeologist might be cited , yeah a cancer one. Like a Civil engineer talking about nano-technology or an electrical engineer on how to build a bridge.

What's more likely the experriments are all wrong or some guy speaking outside their area of expertise is wrong cause of a biased reading of biased experiments.

There isn't even 1 competing double blind randomised trial as a contradiction, it;s only tiny sample size non double blinded non-randomised trials of a couple of dozen folk.

As Feynman famously said "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

 

Risch boss at Yale

Dr. Harvey Risch is a distinguished cancer epidemiologist who has opined on the topic of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and COVID-19 out-patient therapy. He has written a review article in the American Journal of Epidemiology that cites evidence that he believes supports HCQ use for out-patient infection with SARS-CoV-2. Studies that indicate no effect or harmful effects, Dr. Risch believes, enrolled patients too sick to benefit from HCQ.

Yale-affiliated physicians used HCQ early in the response to COVID-19, but it is only used rarely at present due to evidence that it is ineffective and potentially risky.

His colleagues at Yale

We write with grave concern that too many are being distracted by the ardent advocacy of our Yale colleague, Dr. Harvey Risch, to promote the assertion that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) when given with antibiotics is effective in treating COVID-19, in particular as an early therapeutic intervention for the disease. As his colleagues, we defend the right of Dr. Risch, a respected cancer epidemiologist, to voice his opinions. But he is not an expert in infectious disease epidemiology and he has not been swayed by the body of scientific evidence from rigorously conducted clinical trials, which refute the plausibility of his belief and arguments...

https://medium.com/@gregggonsalves/statement-from-yale-faculty-on-hydroxychloroquine-and-its-use-in-covid-19-47d0dee7b2b0

Edited August 24, 2020 by phart

[phart]

 

[phart]

On 8/11/2020 at 5:37 PM, phart said:

Yeah, I have no idea what the best practices are for making those sort of decisions.

Seeing Boris talk about a "moral duty" to get schools back just makes me roll my eyes. Israel put schools back and it faciliated a relative disaster, US looks like going that way as well.

The vulnerable will just have to shield is my best guess as schools is just going to spread it. It won't be stopped.

Will need contingency plans for the vulnerable with school age children to get their kids educated as well as can't really expect them to potentially trasmit a disease that will kill their parents.

A lot of hard decisions and no win situations needing to be addressed. Glad I don't have to make the final call on any of them.

[phart]

Mark Woolhouse said lockdown was a “panic measure” but admitted it was the only option at the time because “we couldn’t think of anything better to do”.

 

But it is a crude measure that takes no accounts of the risk levels to different individuals, the University of Edinburgh professor said, meaning that back in March the nation was “concentrating on schools when we should have been concentrating on care homes”.

 

Prof Woolhouse OBE, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours that advises the Government, said: “Lockdown was a panic measure and I believe history will say trying to control Covid-19 through lockdown was a monumental mistake on a global scale, the cure was worse than the disease.

“I never want to see national lockdown again. It was always a temporary measure that simply delayed the stage of the epidemic we see now. It was never going to change anything fundamentally, however low we drove down the number of cases, and now we know more about the virus and how to track it we should not be in this position again.

“We absolutely should never return to a position where children cannot play or go to school.

“I believe the harm lockdown is doing to our education, health care access, and broader aspects of our economy and society will turn out to be at least as great as the harm done by Covid-19.”

 

https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/1320428/Coronavirus-news-lockdown-mistake-second-wave-Boris-Johnson

[thplinth]

2 hours ago, phart said:

7 full double blind randomised trials haven't been able to show it works. Opnions just just don't have the same weight of evidence as those. Especially the opinions of folk outside their area of expertise.

The objective experiments are designed to eliminate bias by being double blinded and randomised. Opinions are inherently biased as that's what humans are.

I'm sure the claim "well he is a epidemeologist might be cited , yeah a cancer one. Like a Civil engineer talking about nano-technology or an electrical engineer on how to build a bridge.

What's more likely the experriments are all wrong or some guy speaking outside their area of expertise is wrong cause of a biased reading of biased experiments.

There isn't even 1 competing double blind randomised trial as a contradiction, it;s only tiny sample size non double blinded non-randomised trials of a couple of dozen folk.

As Feynman famously said "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

 

Risch boss at Yale

Dr. Harvey Risch is a distinguished cancer epidemiologist who has opined on the topic of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and COVID-19 out-patient therapy. He has written a review article in the American Journal of Epidemiology that cites evidence that he believes supports HCQ use for out-patient infection with SARS-CoV-2. Studies that indicate no effect or harmful effects, Dr. Risch believes, enrolled patients too sick to benefit from HCQ.

Yale-affiliated physicians used HCQ early in the response to COVID-19, but it is only used rarely at present due to evidence that it is ineffective and potentially risky.

His colleagues at Yale

We write with grave concern that too many are being distracted by the ardent advocacy of our Yale colleague, Dr. Harvey Risch, to promote the assertion that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) when given with antibiotics is effective in treating COVID-19, in particular as an early therapeutic intervention for the disease. As his colleagues, we defend the right of Dr. Risch, a respected cancer epidemiologist, to voice his opinions. But he is not an expert in infectious disease epidemiology and he has not been swayed by the body of scientific evidence from rigorously conducted clinical trials, which refute the plausibility of his belief and arguments...

https://medium.com/@gregggonsalves/statement-from-yale-faculty-on-hydroxychloroquine-and-its-use-in-covid-19-47d0dee7b2b0

I doubt Feynman would have to rely on ad hominem arguments.

[phart]

8 minutes ago, thplinth said:

I doubt Feynman would have to rely on ad hominem arguments.

That's why we use the double blind randomised trials. They best replicate reality.

He did use to mock folk talking outside their area of expertise, including himself, it's a feature of his writings as evidenced from his collection of letters published after gis death.

[thplinth]

Well you are not convincing me. The truth will no doubt surface eventually.

[phart]

2 minutes ago, thplinth said:

Well you are not convincing me. The truth will no doubt surface eventually.

 

Not a concern of mine. Just putting out information for anyone reading the thread they can then weigh the evidence and make a judgement like we did.

 

[phart]

"Jaw-dropping" being the Tory interpetation.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/politics/scottish-politics/1532167/jaw-dropping-correspondence-heaps-more-pressure-on-nicola-sturgeon-and-jeane-freeman-over-transfer-of-hospital-patients-into-care-homes/?utm_source=twitter

Dozens of patients who had tested positive for Covid-19 were transferred from hospitals into care homes in the critical weeks around lockdown, we can reveal today.

https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/hospitals-sent-patients-into-care-homes-after-they-had-tested-positive-for-covid-19/

[ThistleWhistle]

11 hours ago, phart said:

"Jaw-dropping" being the Tory interpetation.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/politics/scottish-politics/1532167/jaw-dropping-correspondence-heaps-more-pressure-on-nicola-sturgeon-and-jeane-freeman-over-transfer-of-hospital-patients-into-care-homes/?utm_source=twitter

Dozens of patients who had tested positive for Covid-19 were transferred from hospitals into care homes in the critical weeks around lockdown, we can reveal today.

https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/hospitals-sent-patients-into-care-homes-after-they-had-tested-positive-for-covid-19/

One of the parents on our street works in the local care home and around that time they were clearing folk out of his to other homes so theirs was specifically a Covid home.  Not sure if that was a national strategy and just implementation went mammary glands skyward in real time.  

Bit of a tangent but this is where the lack of credible opposition kicks in because its too easy to play the man and point to the greater cluster fuck they oversaw down south rather than critique what went wrong up here.  

[Orraloon]

I still haven't seen any evidence that COVID infectious hospital patients were transferred to care homes. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. Any doctor who signed off on knowingly transferring an infectious patient out of hospital to a care home could be in serious trouble. If anybody has real evidence that this happened then it should be investigated. Possibly by the police? I don't think any responsible doctor would do such a thing. 

One thing that sometimes seems to get missed in some of these claims is that just because someone tests positive for COVID, doesn't mean they stay infectious for ever. At some point they will have recovered enough to be deemed not infectious anymore. At that point a clinical decision will be taken to allow them to go back into society whether that be a care home or anywhere else.

 

[Orraloon]

56 minutes ago, ThistleWhistle said:

One of the parents on our street works in the local care home and around that time they were clearing folk out of his to other homes so theirs was specifically a Covid home.  Not sure if that was a national strategy and just implementation went mammary glands skyward in real time.  

 

Quite a few places round the country had contingency plans like that. Some health boards booked entire hotels and started kitting them out with the view to house some of the less serious COVID patients. I'm not sure that any of them were ever used? Hospitals didn't really get close to full capacity. Well not in Scotland anyway. Did the "COVID home" you mentioned ever get used for COVID patients?

[phart]

Africa is expected to be declared free from wild polio, after decades of work by a coalition of international health bodies, national and local governments, community volunteers and survivors.

Four years after the last recorded cases of wild polio in northern Nigeria, the Africa Regional Certification Commission (ARCC) is expected to certify that the continent is free of the virus, which can cause irreversible paralysis and in some cases death.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/aug/25/africa-to-be-declared-free-of-wild-polio-after-decades-of-work

Another win for the science of Immunology

[ThistleWhistle]

28 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

Quite a few places round the country had contingency plans like that. Some health boards booked entire hotels and started kitting them out with the view to house some of the less serious COVID patients. I'm not sure that any of them were ever used? Hospitals didn't really get close to full capacity. Well not in Scotland anyway. Did the "COVID home" you mentioned ever get used for COVID patients?

Initially it was supposed to be but there wasn't the demand so last time I spoke to him it was like a staging post where half the rooms were for folk waiting test results and half were for if anyone was 'positive'.  

[Orraloon]

7 minutes ago, ThistleWhistle said:

Initially it was supposed to be but there wasn't the demand so last time I spoke to him it was like a staging post where half the rooms were for folk waiting test results and half were for if anyone was 'positive'.  

These sort of "half-way houses" are something that can muddle the stats up a wee bit and lead to folk getting the wrong impression about what went on. Depending on how you look at the stats, it could look like those positive cases were "hospital patients transferred to care homes". Doctors might view them as patients transferred to a "COVID home". They might have never been in hospital at all, but could look like "hospital patients" in the stats. 

 

[aaid]

It seems that these patients, while having COVID, weren't hospitalised for COVID, they were in hospital for other reasons and either picked up COVID while in hospital or had it confirmed by a test while they were in hospital.   They weren't - or at least there's no evidence to the support it - patients who should've been treated for COVID in hospital but were being slung out the door to care homes.  There's certainly some insinuation in some of the reporting that this was the case.

They were patients who were fit to be released from hospital, keeping them in hospital when a pandemic is about to run riot doesn't seem like a good idea to me, either for their own safety or from the perspective of freeing up beds for people who need to be in hospital, better to release them back to where they live, either at their own home or to a care home.

Each patient was supposed to go through a risk assessment - by I believe a GP - to establish whether they could safely be released.  If they've been released into an environment that was unsafe because of pressure to free up beds then clearly that's unacceptable, but there's no evidence to suggest that's the case.  That's not to suggest that hasn't happened in certain cases - wouldn't be surprised if it had been in some cases - but that there's no evidence to support that currently.  If that were the case then the scale of that is important.

if someone who was positive for COVID was released to a Care Home and the home wasn't informed of that, then that's also unacceptable.  There's some anecdotal evidence that was the case, whether that's true or not, I'm guessing there a paper trail that would either repudiate or support that.

Not withstanding that - and I'm prepared to be proven wrong on this - I understand the guidance was that *all* people being releaed from hospitals were required to self-isolate regardless and while I appreciate that there's problems for that with staff wrt to personal care there's anecdotal evidence from some care homes that wasn't happening.

These are all the sort of things that need to be looked at and a detailed investigation would certainly do that.  It's only a few hundred cases, so while it would be resource intensive, it should be possible to follow up on those and see if everything was done correctly or not. 

That should certainly happen, not sure of the urgency given that things have moved on massively since then.