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Liverpool to pilot city-wide Covid-19 testing
Interesting one – will the false positives outweigh the benefit of identifying more people?
I feel like this is huge news. We are not at the level of China (testing 9m people in one go) but its a step forwards, lets just hope track and trace can cope with the amount of calls. I remember a stat saying something like 40% of people in Vo Italy were asymptomatic! Partner is convinced im one of those asymptomatic people and gave it to her way back in March. I feel like not enough is done to explaine to people how many of us could be asymptomatic.
I need a bit of help with the new lockdown regulations, and in particular this bit from this BBC explainer link:
Clinically vulnerable advised not to go to work if they are unable to work from home
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-52530518
I can't find this in the official guidance, or anywhere else, except on this BBC article.
To me, it sounds like shielding, which BJ also said was not coming back.
I'd really love if someone knew where the BBC have got this from and if its true.
For context, I was a shielder.
I was diagnosed with cancer back in April this year, started chemotherapy straight away, and have been isolating since.
On the advice of the oncologist, I've had to isolate from the family, so I've moved into my little girl's room and she's moved into the boys room with him.
Before the summer ( first lockdown) I was working from home, marking work online, for the school I work at. The school have been absolutely brilliant with me but there's no homeworking this time.
I'm currently off sick recovering from a cancer surgery. Still isolating, still clinically vulnerable. Technically, the post-operation recovery period ends this week. And that means back into school just as lockdown 2 starts.
I've an oncologist consultation later today for scan and test results and next steps
It would be great if anyone knew where the BBC got that advice as it may just help me get paid if I'm told to stay off.
Thank you in advance.
Here?;
There is a further group of people who are defined, also on medical grounds, as clinically extremely vulnerable to coronavirus – that is, people with specific serious health conditions. Over this period, we are advising the CEV to work from home. If you cannot work from home, you are advised not to go to work and may be eligible for Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) or Employment Support Allowance (ESA). You are encouraged to stay at home as much as possible, but are encouraged to go outside for exercise. The full new guidance will be published on Monday 2 November and the Government will write to everybody who is clinically extremely vulnerable to set out detailed advice while the new restrictions are in place.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/new-national-restrictions-from-5-november#stay-at-home
Thanks kilo.
That's clearly the right part of the right government guidelines.
Guess I was just hoping for a bit more than "may be eligible for ssp or ESA."
Just have to go with whatever the doc says later.
the fact that Spoons have dropped the price of beer to 99p/pint is just going to make it worse! Utter madness. As if the ****s need any more encouragement. Just thankful I don't know anyone who would go to one 😃Youngest daughter reported weatherspoons in local town was worse than new years eve after lockdown#1, covid secure my arse. These few days of crazy shopping & socialising will just cause another spike in cases
Guess I was just hoping for a bit more than “may be eligible for ssp or ESA.”
I really hope that the government roll back on that this week... not supporting people who need to shield this winter has to be very unpopular with Tory MPs, and their supporters... no? That's not a party political point... I can't imagine anyone thinking that it's the right move.
I still feel that we have jumped the gun with this lockdown.
Really? How so? It's pretty straight forward in my view. An exponentially rising number of infected will lead to an exponential rise in hospital admissions. Too many infected, too many critically ill, hospital is unable to go about normal business, more people die from covid, and more people die from other things that are otherwise treatable. If you can kick the can further down the road the likelihood of effective treatments and prevention increases, less people die, more people left to pick up the pieces.
Yours is certainly 'a' view. In the media it's largely put forward by Tory back benchers saying it will cause the economy to tank. I'll just point out that many of these are the same backbenchers who are proponents of Brexit. Which will cause the economy to tank. Go figure.
I’m no expert
You could have stopped there.
ANyone listening to Whitty and Valence in the Select Committee? Where are they going with this questioning?
grum
Free Member
I’m no expertYou could have stopped there.
Yes congrats you scored in an open goal there. Very clever but doesn't really add anything of interest to the conversation does it. What's your expertise? I'm open minded about the two sides of this debate and not willing to belittle either side but will listen to people who have scientific training and expertise so I'd like to hear Tired thoughts on the interview and particularly the sensitivity of the test and how this could be overwhelming the test and trace system unnecessarily.
I don't think that this "lockdown" is going to be very locked.
BMC say that we can still travel to climbing and walking, C+RT say that we can still paddle. I guess we can travel to biking then.
No pubs or shops, just have to spend our weekend biking, walking and paddling. No change for me then.
No point doing mass testing ‘till we are prepared to fund people isolating. If you are young, feel fit & healthy, but living pay day to pay day, you will try and avoid self isolating to avoid being broke.
This is vastly overlooked IMO.
I suspect a lot of people haven't downloaded the app and are giving false contact details when asked for this very reason. And then, particularly if the're asymptomatic, are then spreading it to others.
I don’t think that this “lockdown” is going to be very locked.
BMC say that we can still travel to climbing and walking, C+RT say that we can still paddle. I guess we can travel to biking then.
yeh, this I don't get. I thought I sorta understood the rules. now its like lockdown, only essential travel but you can still drive somewhere to exercise. But to be fair transmission in the outside seems really low. Im just clueless to how the rules do and do not work.
No point doing mass testing ‘till we are prepared to fund people isolating. If you are young, feel fit & healthy, but living payday to payday, you will try and avoid self isolating to avoid being broke.
Fear not. The government has cleverly picked an affluent area of the country to try mass testing, where zero-hours contracts and agency work are unheard of, most people are in secure, highly-paid professions with enough savings to ensure self-isolating will probably just be like a nice holiday.
They've clearly thought this through.
I'll predict a take-up rate for testing at 20%-30%, tops
Most people just can't afford to risk a positive test
Nice visualization of cases in the US
Myti, Why do you think we've jumped the gun with the lockdown now?
Im just clueless to how the rules do and do not work.
Not that they're really being enforced anyway. A few parties broken up and some attention-gathering headlines of £10k fines presumably to put people off doing similar but no way of enforcing isolation, checking on what is and isn't "essential" travel, the app largely didn't work (gosh, I *am* surprised...) and we're not far off March/April situation except a huge amount of money has been wasted in between that.
Best of luck to you guys in England going into your lock-down, ours ends on Monday, numbers seem to be falling, but it's too early to say whether it's more than just a statistical anomaly, either way the upside for us in Wales is that from Monday we're pretty much going back to the sort of restrictions we had in summer, well it seems that way to me.
I generally find this tread on the pessimistic side, probably with good reason, but I know some of us are fairly positive about vaccines coming towards the very end of development, and with lockdowns and the US election they're out of the headlines at the moment.
MHRA (who govern new drugs in the UK) have recently started an accelerated review of the AstraZeneca vaccine using live data from their phase 3 trials which are likely to conclude within weeks (the trial, not the review)
Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-astrazeneca-vaccin-idUSKBN27H1BD
Based on recent findings in regards to antibodies and T-cells, I’d guess the vaccine will likely be effective for around 6 months, so it’s likely to be a annual vaccination as we do now with flu to get us through the peak months of Sept-Jan.
That's not to say that it's going to be some magic bullet to "Save Xmas" or anything like that, but we might see Healthcare workers being vaccinated at the very end of the year and the very vulnerable early next year, which will hopefully quicken the end of 'Covid Season' this winter and everything-crossed, mean we don't have a 3rd wave next Autumn, we may not even need to have restrictions in place.
I’d say that these first generation vaccines probably won’t be enough to eradicate it, even in the long run (years, not months) although it might well contribute to eradication if indeed that ever happens.
Bringing this back to The US Election, Pfizer who are trying to produce the US’s front running vaccine at the moment, are also in Phase 3, a few weeks behind the UK.
Source:
https://www.pfizer.com/news/hot-topics/an_open_letter_from_pfizer_chairman_and_ceo_albert_bourla
If the Pfizer vaccine makes in to an Advisory Committee it could make interesting viewing - it should be livecast from their website/youtube. These public hearings are one aspect of the US drug approval process I rather admire.
@myti I am a scientist and I can bet Ive done a lot more rt-PCRs than Hanegan!
and hes wrong about several things in that interview
here is the protocol for that test
its not a 20bp fragment, its a 100bp fragment that amplified, thats a big difference
RNA (what viruses store their genetic info as & use to hijack our cells to reproduce themselves) degrades very quickly, our bodies are chock full of RNASES (enzymes that degrade RNA for the very purpose of killing viruses) RNA has to be kept cold at all times or it will rapidly degrade outside of its natural environment (inside the packaging of the virus or in the host cell)
you would indeed have lots of 20 bp fragments from a dead virus floating around, but youll have far far less 100bp ones, most will have degraded beyond measureable amount (this is the bane of my research life)
and there is no hard cut off for the CT (the threshold that you call it positive or negative) , each run will vary slightly, based on the properties of the machine used (its a reaction that measures changes in a flourescent probe that binds specifically to the target sequence so the intensity of the laser & state of CCD camera that measure it will have variations)
in turn the reagents used will have variations, be from different manufacturers, slightly different concentrations of different component chemicals , different companies use varrying tehcnologies
UK lighthouse testing labs use various machines taken from research institutes & universities all over the country from different manufacturers & using different methodologies (they took ours, wed like them back!)
so theres no way he can say that ct value can be used to interpret load,- hes very wrong on that
its a bit wobbly & at low input levels theres some sort of Poisson (ask Tired about that) distribution of target, so its done in replicates of 3(or more) to average it out
especially as viral amount will be low before symptoms are strong (but we know you can still be very infectious) and after, when they can last for a while- thats where the worry about false positives lie & he has a point there BUT, IME (and Ive done even more detailed work on 1000s of RNA samples) its a much bigger problem having degraded RNA, especially when home testing kits (which make up bulk of tests run) are not easy to do (ive done it on my wife)
False negatives are MUCH more likely than false positives based on my work
to sum up Hanegan may have valid points but, he is either badly misinformed or deliberately lying about some basic aspects of the science
really frustrating to hear journos like Hartley-Brewer just repeat this guff unchecked because it agrees with her agenda
loum - I really hope your surgery went well and you get back to good health very soon.
Del. I think we should either have listened to our chosen government experts when they said do a 2 week circuit break or say we're not doing full lockdowns and stick to our guns with regional measures and with appropriate funding for those businesses. We are punishing areas with very low numbers. Just one example but West Sussex where I have family have had 3 cv deaths in the last 2 months. We should wait to see if the tier 3 measures work in the other areas. This faffing is the worst of both worlds. Terrible for businesses and peoples mental health.
Also I've been following Spain's numbers and they were well ahead of us on cases and deaths a month ago and are using regional measures still. Deaths there are not spiralling exponentially the 7 day average on the 1st of November was 170.
Yes there will be deaths as this second wave combines with seasonal aspects but i don't think assuming worst case scenario is the way forward.
Kimbers thank you for taking the time to explain that to me if only you had been available for interview of Mark Henegan.
We are punishing areas with very low numbers.
We should not talk about punishing. Otherwise, what do you mean, that people in areas with higher incidence should be punished? We could wait for the regional measures to play out, to have more numbers to reassure people that stricter measures are needed... but, you need to be aware that many of us have been under regional measures for months now... and the data really doesn't suggest that they are enough. We are a very connected country... especially as concerns hospital capacity.
No update on data today, have they found some more down the back of the sofa again?
Even the "low" areas have infection rates higher than the level we used to use to put countries on the quarantine list.
It's a relative concept.
Yeah I noticed that too a_a
*tin foil hat on* another huge spike in cases after the weekend lag so they're hoping to bury it later evening/convince some back bencher to say something stupid to distract attention?
397 deaths but cases seem to be stalled at around 20 000
Positive test cases stalled? Fingers crossed. But, I assume testing has stalled as well, yes? I think past a certain level of incidence, the testing capacity just can’t keep up, so we really can’t see the full picture. Next ONS results will be interesting. Again, fingers crossed.
Cant seem to see figures for hospital admissions.
Myti, numbers of admissions and capacity do not necessarily correlate. Just because a region has low numbers per head of population does not make it unreasonable to lockdown. Also numbers of beds does not necessarily correlate to numbers of operational beds. You still need staff.
+1 a global pandemic has been on the cards for some good few years now, yet we seem to have no plan for stockpile of ppe or even procurement of it and don’t try and run the NHS on a just in time supermarket model 😡
Public Health England were more worried about tacling obesity than preparing for a pandemic.
PHE spent £220 million on anti-obesity schemes in 2018-19, but just £89 million on tackling infectious diseases.
https://lockdownsceptics.org/public-health-england-a-predictable-failure/
More on the theme of crap maps, data Viz not being clear enough:
Del. Last Autumn 92% of hospital beds were full at this time of year. Instead of locking up our citizens and closing businesses I think we should be holding the government to account on this. If we can get this changed how many lives will that ultimately save in the years ahead.
Compulsory vaccination on the way…
I do hope so.
. If we can get this changed how many lives will that ultimately save in the years ahead.
None
We'll have deaths from unchecked Covid(forecast in the hundreds of thousands) deaths from people unable to get treated now because hospitals are full of unchecked Covid (maybe 40-50,000 this winter), and then ongoing deaths from long term issues arising from Covid (no one seems to be estimating, but I'm guessing a few tens of thousands a year for 10 years)
It's those first two short and medium term numbers which gave to be the priority.
Unless you are prepared to publicly state that your preference is to sacrifice the elderly and vulnerable, which is, if course, a valid opinion to have, but you need to be clear what your choice means.
Compulsory vaccination on the way…
It'll never happen.
No other vaccines are a legal requirement.
Instead of locking up our citizens and closing businesses
Curious to know how you would put in place enough beds to deal with an exponential spread of infection? And then enough care to deal with the long term effects.
The government need to be held to account (spoiler - they won't be) for their handouts of public money to their mates.
Compulsory vaccination on the way…
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/9253/pdf//a >
This is such a complex issue. Its basically everyone HAS to get the vaccine no choice, there is a choice and we hope that enough people choose to get it to make it effective. My partner works for the NHS and will likely get it first which we are both a bit iffy on taking something thats been pushed though so quick, but there will be a lot of social pressure within the NHS for all the staff to have it. And the danger is whee does this mandate on state required vaccines end?
It’ll never happen.
No other vaccines are a legal requirement.
I read that more that those who choose to remain unvaccinated will need to also have fewer opportunities to mix - in some countries, vaccination is a requirement to access education, for example.
So perhaps, no vaccine certificate, no pubs/restaurants/cinemas/sporting events. Probably a small price to pay to keep out Bill Gates' mind control jabs.
Public Health England were more worried about tacling obesity than preparing for a pandemic.
Seems fair enough. Obesity is a preventable condition that kills and has killed far more people than Covid ever will, and is one of the main reasons the NHS has been under continuous ongoing pressure. It's also one of the major predictors of a poor outcome from Covid (after old age).
Curious to know how you would put in place enough beds to deal with an exponential spread of infection?
Just wondering how many beds that would take - if left unchecked what percentage of the population would have Covid at any one time? Multiply by, say, 1/5 to give cases requiring hospitalisation. Looks like we'll have to mass convert football stadiums to hospitals and staff them with teenagers quickly trained as ICU specialists wearing bin-bag PPE.
Obesity is a preventable condition that kills and has killed far more people than Covid ever will, and is one of the main reasons the NHS has been under continuous ongoing pressure. It’s also one of the major predictors of a poor outcome from Covid (after old age).
My thought as well - it shouldn't have had to be an either/or decision, it should have been both. If it was an either/or decision due to lack of adequate government funding, hindsight is wonderful but it's the government's failure for putting PHE in that position.