Coronavirus

[FuB]

Hundreds of UK care home deaths not added to official coronavirus toll

Care England, the industry body, estimated that the death toll is likely to be close to 1,000, despited the only available official figure for care home fatalities being dramatically lower.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... icial-toll

They're not testing for it on care homes. It's mad. They should be one of the first cos they're most at risk. Can't help thinking this is more Tory eugenics.

The fatality numbers are missing a lot of people in every country. Care homes is a factor, people dying at home too. Every country adds more deaths a few weeks or even months after the fact, when officials have the time to do more thorough accounting and analysis. I've read that this is what always happens during epidemics. There were also more deaths that went unacknowledged early on, when they were just attributed to pneumonia, especially among the old. The latest daily numbers are usually basically just people who died in hospital, and even then some corona victims will go uncounted at first because they died without being officially tested.

From the guardian

About half of all Covid-19 deaths appear to be happening in care homes in some European countries, according to early figures gathered by UK-based academics who are warning that the same effort must be put into fighting the virus in care homes as in the NHS.

Snapshot data from varying official sources shows that in Italy, Spain, France, Ireland and Belgium between 42% and 57% of deaths from the virus have been happening in homes, according to the report by academics based at the London School of Economics (LSE).

So the deaths in care homes is probably bigger than even Care England reckon, especially given that we're on course to be the worst affected European country

It's interesting how another story from, i assume, a different journalist that you quoted previously was implying that various countries were not including care home deaths yet now both Italy and France (the two countries that were mentioned previously) have 'official sources' that those amazing economists have managed to find despite them evading everyone else. Than god for economists is all i can say. where would we be without them?!

Not a dig at you, Sid. I just find it sort of laughable how these things are all so blatantly contradictory. It's also quite laughable how the LSE have suddenly found the time in a global financial meltdown to do statistical analyses of epidemiological data. Maybe they were just calculating how much pension deficit was being wiped out by Covid-19 and thought it would be an interesting aside to publish.

[FuB]

Re. the Munich survey; I realise that on an individual basis the error rate is problematic but in a representative sample, if you know the error rate for the antibody test, can't you factor that in to the results to still give you a good steer on what proportion of the population are likely to be carrying the antibodies?

I get what you are saying but this makes it purely an academic interest exercise which has no epidemiological value. We need to be working with certainties and reliable data to have any hope of worthwhile predictions.

If you think about it logically, it's pretty difficult to work out an error rate for an antibody test unless you rigorously follow up every test subject to see whether any of them who were supposedly showing an immune reaction subsequently contracted SARS-CoV-2. Even then, this only deals with one side of the error bar... what about the people who actually had antibodies but showed (wrongly) negative on an antibody test? In theory, they won't subsequently contract SARS-CoV-2 but they'd get recorded as a sort of "some other factor" being responsible for their apparent "luck".

I'd assume it's not quite so cut and dried as this, though. What i've described above is sort of assuming the test "reliably" gives the same result (right or wrong) for a given sample every time. In reality, i'd expect current tests are known to be unreliable precisely because they DON'T give the same result every time for a given sample. Maybe they can test and re-test multiple times to arrive at a more certain result (i.e averaging out over a number of samples) but (a) how many tests do you need to do to be certain of a result (and can you ever really be certain if something flip flops?) and (b) this doesn't lend itself to a real word testing situation because if you have to do, say, ten tests per person to be "certain", that quickly adds up in terms of time and resources.

In the latter (more likely) case, i'm sure you can also see why picking out a number for "percentage unreliability" is prone to being highly inaccurate all on its own.

[Sid]

Hundreds of UK care home deaths not added to official coronavirus toll

Care England, the industry body, estimated that the death toll is likely to be close to 1,000, despited the only available official figure for care home fatalities being dramatically lower.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... icial-toll

They're not testing for it on care homes. It's mad. They should be one of the first cos they're most at risk. Can't help thinking this is more Tory eugenics.

The fatality numbers are missing a lot of people in every country. Care homes is a factor, people dying at home too. Every country adds more deaths a few weeks or even months after the fact, when officials have the time to do more thorough accounting and analysis. I've read that this is what always happens during epidemics. There were also more deaths that went unacknowledged early on, when they were just attributed to pneumonia, especially among the old. The latest daily numbers are usually basically just people who died in hospital, and even then some corona victims will go uncounted at first because they died without being officially tested.

From the guardian

About half of all Covid-19 deaths appear to be happening in care homes in some European countries, according to early figures gathered by UK-based academics who are warning that the same effort must be put into fighting the virus in care homes as in the NHS.

Snapshot data from varying official sources shows that in Italy, Spain, France, Ireland and Belgium between 42% and 57% of deaths from the virus have been happening in homes, according to the report by academics based at the London School of Economics (LSE).

So the deaths in care homes is probably bigger than even Care England reckon, especially given that we're on course to be the worst affected European country

It's interesting how another story from, i assume, a different journalist that you quoted previously was implying that various countries were not including care home deaths yet now both Italy and France (the two countries that were mentioned previously) have 'official sources' that those amazing economists have managed to find despite them evading everyone else. Than god for economists is all i can say. where would we be without them?!

Not a dig at you, Sid. I just find it sort of laughable how these things are all so blatantly contradictory. It's also quite laughable how the LSE have suddenly found the time in a global financial meltdown to do statistical analyses of epidemiological data. Maybe they were just calculating how much pension deficit was being wiped out by Covid-19 and thought it would be an interesting aside to publish.

It's fine, I'm used to putting stuff up and you destroying it

This from the guardian

Two of the largest providers of care homes in the UK have revealed the deaths of 521 residents from coronavirus in recent weeks, in the clearest sign yet of the rising scale of fatalities outside the NHS which are not yet being officially announced.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... rus-deaths

[Sid]

A third of the residents have died at this care home

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... m-covid-19

Dominic Cummings will be pleased that he's still getting to kill old people

[bman2]

A third of the residents have died at this care home

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... m-covid-19

Dominic Cummings will be pleased that he's still getting to kill old people

They voted for Brexit, and they're no longer necessary. Cost too much money.

[FuB]

Trump now turns his favourite criticism-deflecting tactic of "blame the other guy, but do it louder" on the WHO.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52289056

It really does take a special (needs) kind of megalomaniac to make a pandemic all about himself.

[bman2]

Imagine trying to defund the WHO during the worst pandemic in modern history. This prick isn't satisfied getting in the way of saving Americans, now he wants to get in the way of saving anybody anywhere in the world.

[Robbo]

Trump now turns his favourite criticism-deflecting tactic of "blame the other guy, but do it louder" on the WHO.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52289056

It really does take a special (needs) kind of megalomaniac to make a pandemic all about himself.

Thing is more than likely we can put up with his shite for another 4 years. No doubt the WHO as do all the countries who dallied and dithered need to take a good look at themselves but not now not in the middle of a pandemic that affects the whole of the world, maybe through all of this a global task force will be created to prevent such a thing happening again on this scale.

[bman2]

My impression is that the WHO has done a good job. They're only a bunch of doctors and scientists, all they can do is analyse things, give advice, treat people when they're given permission to, and they can't get into arguments with national governments. Things would be very different if countries had followed their advice, they definitely said back in February that this was very serious. They don't have any real power, after all. Trump is just looking for a scapegoat, the more powerless the better. The staff of the WHO can't afford to tell him to fuck off.

[FuB]

beat me to it, bman…. i was going to ask in what way the WHO needs to take a "good look at itself"? what part of it's mandate didn't it live up to?

i'm all for the "countries that dallied and dithered" to take a good look at themselves, especially since they were the ones ignoring the WHO.

as for Trump looking for a scapegoat, I'm not even sure it's that. He's doing his usual school playground politics of shouting back louder and insulting anyone who dares to criticise the poor little unloved child.