what are the false positive and the false negative rates, these are different and important
what are the false positive and the false negative rates, these are different and important
Sorry for the delayed response. But yes people could have been dying from this and no one would have known about it. They'd just state viral pneumonia or something similar. Remember this is a novel coronavirus so they wouldn't have known of its existence unless they looked for it. Death tolls are likely to have been higher and might be wrongly attributed to the flu.
Boris time.
www.youtube.com
Watch Sky News live
Watch Sky News live: Rescuers are working against the clock to free hundreds of people thought to be trapped under rubble in Turkey and Syria; Joe Biden has ...
www.youtube.com
Asda did too but their site seems completely broken because of the traffic.
daily briefing
www.theguardian.com
UK coronavirus: tests prioritised for NHS workers, 'not available on the internet next week' – as it happened
Rolling updates on all the UK developments, as they happened
www.theguardian.com
Thats an incredible response and hats off to every one of them.
Johnson looks knackered. The magnitude of the situation must be weighing heavy on his shoulders.
Yep.
Probably didn't envisage this occurring less than a year into being PM.
(To be fair, no one did)
OK the clear declaration that they're not rushing and accuracy is everything is very reassuring; am less anti the new testing proposals.
Yeah, there was some good clarification there.
The questions are quite good today too.
I think he brought that up for the scientists to debunk to be honest... they immediately said we can't know who has had it.
I've signed up as a volunteer. Feel a bit conflicted over it as surely the 5th richest country in the world should not be asking for volunteers, but...
Right here:
Coronavirus: How to sign up to become an NHS volunteer responder
Members of the public will be helping the 1.5m vulnerable people who have been asked to "shield" themselves from COVID-19.
news.sky.com
Boris sounds like he's trying to become a TV presenter now.
"We'll be back tomorrow..."
Give him a run on The One Show.
"We'll be back tomorrow..."
Give him a run on The One Show.
He wishes he could go back to HIGNFY. This is his nightmare
TBF the UK government is paying 80% of the salaries of those millions working in hospitality and leisure who are stuck at home doing nothing right now (through no fault of their own of course). But I don't think it would be unfair to kindly ask for some of them to volunteer to help out the vulnerable in these circumstances, whilst they would otherwise have been working.
Also the "5th richest country" thing is such Brexit argument bullshit. We're #27 based on GDP per capita.
Not aiming this at you btw :) Good job on volunteering!!
What is your credible source please. Be aware of the staff post above the reply box that says not to post unsourced rumours.
Me too mate. PCBs gone.
I feel your pain.
HAND WASH UNDIES 4 LYFE
ring a local guy. Not a chance they will turn down the work
I have symptoms where my chest hurts to breathe. Ain't nobody getting indoors anytime soon.
Just go nude. When in lockdown, let it all hang out and turn the boiler on for heat
because people are crazy. Some people seem to want the whole world to completly shutdown.
Edit just reading staff were told they would be getting 3 weeks leave fully paid and then 48 hours later told they need to go in or face disciplinary action.
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On my usual walk i'm seeing so many more people out and about that i've never seen before, as well as us usuals. I know it's because most people are at home now and the weather is good. But everyone is keeping a distance from eachother so it's fine. People doing laps in the field behind us too. Must be nice to own land.
Went to sign up to volunteer for the NHS but it needed a photo of my DBS which i don't have to hand. I don't drive so i only would have been able to chat to people over the phone.
Well, my place has finally shutdown (at least temporarily). Not sure if it's unpaid leave or if they'll be taking up the Govt offer of 80% paid salary, but I'll take it over being forced to go in at any rate since no one else there seemed to be taking the virus seriously.
Really informative post from Azraes- science
There's so much misinformation about this virus so I'll put a few bits of information here, hopefully it's okay to post here. But before that here is a good article on how we are not only facing an epidemic but an infodemic thanks to bad actors and miscommunication.
First of all, COVID-19 is the disease and SARS-COV-2 the virus. It is not from the same family as the flu and in fact the disease is a different class of disease from the flu. Other than SARS and MERS, the other four viruses in this class (coronavirus) generally are viruses associated with the common cold.
Over the length of its 30,000-base-pair genome, SARS-CoV-2 accumulates an average of about one to two mutations per month. This virus mutates slower than the flu and it is about 2-4 times slower than the flu. This indicates that it is possible that once a vaccine is developed it will be like vaccines we use for diseases we can develop immunity from. However bear in mind that there is still not enough information to study the phylogeny of this particular virus and that we have not effectively developed vaccines for the common cold this is why testing the vaccines is important and cannot be 'fast-tracked'. It isn't impossible, it just needs time. Some of the articles I've linked here were from when there was 350 genome sequences shared on GISAID; think there's over 1500 now. But these represent a tiny fraction of cases and show few telltale differences leading us to overinterpret the data.
Human mobility is really key in this spread. Here's an image that shows what happened in China.
Human mobility, spread and synchrony of COVID-19 outbreak in China. (a) Human mobility data extracted in real time from Baidu. Travel restrictions from Wuhan and large scale control measures started on January 23,2020. Dark and red lines represent fluxes of human movements for 2019 and 2020, respectively. (b) Relative movements from Wuhan to other provinces in China. (c) Timeline of the correlation between daily incidence in Wuhan and incidence in all other provinces, weighted by human mobility.
You can read the paper here. It's from the magazine, Science, and this is peer reviewed. The clear indication is that to keep this contained travel/human mobility needs to be contained. This is going to be important moving forward in case we have wave 2. This is why we need to see what will happen in China of course.
The first case of COVID-19 was now identified from mid November in China but it is quite likely that there have been other cases. People have been traveling and that hasn't stopped so most countries would have had infections before we realised it was this and even before Wuhan. The central travel hubs across the world will have higher infection rates than we are aware of. So cities like London, New York, Tokyo, Amsterdam, etc could probably have a lot more than we know. It also is likely that it means that these locations need antibody/antigen testing conducted to see how many recovered from it and more testing is never a bad thing.
Those flaunting the models saying that 50% of people are infected are sadly speaking not from conclusive datasets and there are many doubts on it. You cannot make conclusive models on the spread as yet as the current assumption is the rate of spread is 2.5 per person and that could be 2.5 per day in some calculations. If you go by bad input data you can even have it that in 10 days with 50% not self-isolating from an initial infected of 500(of which 100 are known as this is supposed to be 80-20 in terms of mild-severe ratio) the infection rate would be in double digit millions. There are also factors that show that 13% of the spread in China was from asymptomatic carriers. So the modelling has flaws. But the number of deaths from flu-like illnesses or pneumonia can potentially be an indicator.
Here's also something to read on the affect of the four medication sets that WHO is trialling. Chloroquine is still in doubt but people are already being stupid. Some doctors in Australia have been irresponsibly self-medicating themselves and family.
They are testing BCG vaccines right now to see if it can raise our immunity in general so that we can fight off this virus. Yes the vaccine is aimed towards bacteria and it's the good old anti-TB vaccine BCG.
If you want to know why the SARS-COV-2 has been successful you can find more reading here. Some excerpts
The whole thing about Italy's cases being imported from Munich was misinformation because there wasn't sufficient information to claim that link since there could have been a variant from the Chinese outbreak that carried the three mutations. But someone jumped the gun and tweeted it and it got picked up.
Viruses mutate and more so in an outbreak. This happens. This isn't to be concerned about. We also do not know if the SARS-COV-2 will mutate to become milder like its cold virus siblings or be like it's other siblings that cause SARS or MERS. However the fact that it is a lot slower indicates that when we develop a vaccine it might be a permanent one. Situation is evolving and will be monitored.
Additionl interesting reading:
Everything you should know about the COVID-19 outbreak.
spectrum.ieee.org
It is okay to feel anxious - an article written by a professor in China during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mental health note:
While people understand some people have anxiety and speak to them, remember that some of you or your loved ones might have signs or symptoms of OCD which can have adverse effects on anxiety. It is increasingly important to help in these cases or at the very least be mindful. Throwing facts at their face will not stop the compulsion part of the OCD and telling them to stop doesn't help either. Here's an article that shows the state of some people who have OCD/Anxiety.
Here's Stephen Fry on stress and anxiety.
Work out and hey here's some Lululemon workouts too.
In general, talk to people and there are some free classes on here that you can access. Mind you that this is based on Eastern time but you could check them out when you feel like you're overwhelmed. Don't everyone sign up at once.
Take breaks from the news and don't follow the 24-7 cycle.
Stick to your meal times and sleep schedules.
Do you want to help scientists monitor symptoms so they can get a better understanding of the disease? Download this app.
First of all, COVID-19 is the disease and SARS-COV-2 the virus. It is not from the same family as the flu and in fact the disease is a different class of disease from the flu. Other than SARS and MERS, the other four viruses in this class (coronavirus) generally are viruses associated with the common cold.
Over the length of its 30,000-base-pair genome, SARS-CoV-2 accumulates an average of about one to two mutations per month. This virus mutates slower than the flu and it is about 2-4 times slower than the flu. This indicates that it is possible that once a vaccine is developed it will be like vaccines we use for diseases we can develop immunity from. However bear in mind that there is still not enough information to study the phylogeny of this particular virus and that we have not effectively developed vaccines for the common cold this is why testing the vaccines is important and cannot be 'fast-tracked'. It isn't impossible, it just needs time. Some of the articles I've linked here were from when there was 350 genome sequences shared on GISAID; think there's over 1500 now. But these represent a tiny fraction of cases and show few telltale differences leading us to overinterpret the data.
Human mobility is really key in this spread. Here's an image that shows what happened in China.
Human mobility, spread and synchrony of COVID-19 outbreak in China. (a) Human mobility data extracted in real time from Baidu. Travel restrictions from Wuhan and large scale control measures started on January 23,2020. Dark and red lines represent fluxes of human movements for 2019 and 2020, respectively. (b) Relative movements from Wuhan to other provinces in China. (c) Timeline of the correlation between daily incidence in Wuhan and incidence in all other provinces, weighted by human mobility.
You can read the paper here. It's from the magazine, Science, and this is peer reviewed. The clear indication is that to keep this contained travel/human mobility needs to be contained. This is going to be important moving forward in case we have wave 2. This is why we need to see what will happen in China of course.
The first case of COVID-19 was now identified from mid November in China but it is quite likely that there have been other cases. People have been traveling and that hasn't stopped so most countries would have had infections before we realised it was this and even before Wuhan. The central travel hubs across the world will have higher infection rates than we are aware of. So cities like London, New York, Tokyo, Amsterdam, etc could probably have a lot more than we know. It also is likely that it means that these locations need antibody/antigen testing conducted to see how many recovered from it and more testing is never a bad thing.
Those flaunting the models saying that 50% of people are infected are sadly speaking not from conclusive datasets and there are many doubts on it. You cannot make conclusive models on the spread as yet as the current assumption is the rate of spread is 2.5 per person and that could be 2.5 per day in some calculations. If you go by bad input data you can even have it that in 10 days with 50% not self-isolating from an initial infected of 500(of which 100 are known as this is supposed to be 80-20 in terms of mild-severe ratio) the infection rate would be in double digit millions. There are also factors that show that 13% of the spread in China was from asymptomatic carriers. So the modelling has flaws. But the number of deaths from flu-like illnesses or pneumonia can potentially be an indicator.
Here's also something to read on the affect of the four medication sets that WHO is trialling. Chloroquine is still in doubt but people are already being stupid. Some doctors in Australia have been irresponsibly self-medicating themselves and family.
They are testing BCG vaccines right now to see if it can raise our immunity in general so that we can fight off this virus. Yes the vaccine is aimed towards bacteria and it's the good old anti-TB vaccine BCG.
If you want to know why the SARS-COV-2 has been successful you can find more reading here. Some excerpts
The whole thing about Italy's cases being imported from Munich was misinformation because there wasn't sufficient information to claim that link since there could have been a variant from the Chinese outbreak that carried the three mutations. But someone jumped the gun and tweeted it and it got picked up.
Viruses mutate and more so in an outbreak. This happens. This isn't to be concerned about. We also do not know if the SARS-COV-2 will mutate to become milder like its cold virus siblings or be like it's other siblings that cause SARS or MERS. However the fact that it is a lot slower indicates that when we develop a vaccine it might be a permanent one. Situation is evolving and will be monitored.
Additionl interesting reading:
Everything you should know about the COVID-19 outbreak.
Source: World Health Organization; 2020.
Big Data Helps Taiwan Fight Coronavirus
How Taiwan used big data, new technologies and heavy handed government to control the spread of the coronavirus
spectrum.ieee.org
Mental health note:
While people understand some people have anxiety and speak to them, remember that some of you or your loved ones might have signs or symptoms of OCD which can have adverse effects on anxiety. It is increasingly important to help in these cases or at the very least be mindful. Throwing facts at their face will not stop the compulsion part of the OCD and telling them to stop doesn't help either. Here's an article that shows the state of some people who have OCD/Anxiety.
Here's Stephen Fry on stress and anxiety.
Work out and hey here's some Lululemon workouts too.
In general, talk to people and there are some free classes on here that you can access. Mind you that this is based on Eastern time but you could check them out when you feel like you're overwhelmed. Don't everyone sign up at once.
Take breaks from the news and don't follow the 24-7 cycle.
Stick to your meal times and sleep schedules.
Do you want to help scientists monitor symptoms so they can get a better understanding of the disease? Download this app.
I don't get it. They're not even paying the NHS staff enough and now they want people to do life endangering work for free. Tories gonna tory
A thorough and insightful post. Thank you for taking the time to write this up.
My Mum started isolating last Wednesday (developed a cough which has thankfully subsided for the most part) but I only realised that there was a way to get an isolation note from the NHS today. Now I can't enter last Wednesday as the date in the form...
Anyone know what I should do? I work in essential retail so they will be expecting me to go in but I'm not going in if it's not going to follow the proper guidelines.
Anyone know what I should do? I work in essential retail so they will be expecting me to go in but I'm not going in if it's not going to follow the proper guidelines.
Way to spin a massive positive into a negative.
Also the point of the volunteers is to assist those who are vulnerable in the community. It's hardly anymore life endangering that just surviving at the moment.
Yeah, I'm currently unemployed so I like to go during the day when, under normal circumstances, everyone else is at work/school. Today was a surprise!
ThanksRight here:
Coronavirus: How to sign up to become an NHS volunteer responder
Members of the public will be helping the 1.5m vulnerable people who have been asked to "shield" themselves from COVID-19.
Without knowing which hospital it is, and I understand why you wouldn't want to identify it, this kind of post isn't that helpful. Please can we stick to sourced information rather than second-hand anonymous sources in unknown hospitals in unknown towns, in accordance with the staff post above the reply box. Thanks.
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I feel like at this point they should give everyone a year off the council tax (1st homes only, obviously). Pretty easy to administer and everyone benefits. I can see a lot of self-employed/contractors about to get royally screwed.
All we can do is wait until tomorrow to find out just exactly how screwed...
The form let's you put a date 7 days in the past so just put last Thursday if Wednesday is to late now? Otherwise I guess you'd have to speak to your GP or 111.
I've put last Thursday and will just explain what happened to my boss when I send it in. It's a day before not a day after so it's not like I'm trying to steal another day off lol
Honestly quite surprised that I've heard nothing about this service until now. Seems like it's quite crucial for essential workers like myself.
I've had a severe flu...or maybe worse these past 2 weeks. Can't remember having something this bad like...ever. Sweating, sneezing, exhaustion, some occasional breathing difficulties. Anyways, today I'm starting to feel mostly better which is great buuut...
My Grandma is giving my uncle (whom she lives with) a hard time since she's basically locked up inside without much to do. She has some level of dementia, and can make the wildest, and frankly mean accusations because of this "You stole my things, you're trying to give me raw food, etc" whilst being uncoooerative and making life hell.
The problem is my uncle and father have decided they'll bring her to our house (I live with my father, mother and siblings) everyday for some hours in the evening. And I blew my fuse at this because I've never felt this ill and I haven't even 100% recovered yet, let alone allowing 2 weeks as a buffer. They don't see my panic at letting a 80 years old plus person come when I've had the worst illness in my life. Oh and my sister has started developing a temperature and maybe a cough.
I'm happy to host her everyday for the next 1.5 years but my position is give at least 2 weeks in case I have/had it.
Am I overreacting? I feel like either I'm crazy or my whole family is.
My Grandma is giving my uncle (whom she lives with) a hard time since she's basically locked up inside without much to do. She has some level of dementia, and can make the wildest, and frankly mean accusations because of this "You stole my things, you're trying to give me raw food, etc" whilst being uncoooerative and making life hell.
The problem is my uncle and father have decided they'll bring her to our house (I live with my father, mother and siblings) everyday for some hours in the evening. And I blew my fuse at this because I've never felt this ill and I haven't even 100% recovered yet, let alone allowing 2 weeks as a buffer. They don't see my panic at letting a 80 years old plus person come when I've had the worst illness in my life. Oh and my sister has started developing a temperature and maybe a cough.
I'm happy to host her everyday for the next 1.5 years but my position is give at least 2 weeks in case I have/had it.
Am I overreacting? I feel like either I'm crazy or my whole family is.
Not a priority they said...
www.theguardian.com
London woman dies of suspected Covid-19 after being told she was 'not priority'
Kayla Williams, 36, from Peckham, south London, died a day after calling 999 Coronavirus – all updates
www.theguardian.com