Covid-19, the Territory Anomaly

[bruto]

Originally Posted by pipelineaudio

Everyone from the sick states are fleeing here and social media influencers keep being arrested for breaking quarantine. For some reason, community spread just doesn't seem to want to take, but REALLY stupid crap like airlines packing all their employees into a room yelling for training seminars kep causing super spreading events

Much the same here, though people don't have to fly into Vermont. They just get in the car and drive in. But our brief interlude of leading the states in Covid resistance looks about to end. The governor has instituted a mask mandate (with the simultaneous announcement that it won't be enforced), and a pretty good percentage of people are being smart, but cases are on the rise again.

[pipelineaudio]

I cant believe ALL the states didnt have mask mandates! We certainly did and do. Though the clown car vagina people flaunt it. Hopefully we bring back the one person per household shopping rule again to knock that down

[marting]

Originally Posted by pipelineaudio

I cant believe ALL the states didnt have mask mandates! We certainly did and do. Though the clown car vagina people flaunt it. Hopefully we bring back the one person per household shopping rule again to knock that down

Departments of health are done by states. The federal govt. has surveillance but not authority which is limited by the Constitution. The feds can propose requirements but they don't have the legal authority to impose them outside of the interstate commerce clause.

On top of that the feds have sent mixed messages and much of people's understanding of the pandemic has been politicized due to impending elections. Quite a mess.

[pipelineaudio]

It was pretty obvious from the start the federal government reponse would be garbage So we ignored it and mandated masks I'm still surprised they didn't all do it

[The Atheist]

Originally Posted by pipelineaudio

I cant believe ALL the states didnt have mask mandates! We certainly did and do.

That might save the situation for you.

[Darat]

Coronavirus: England had highest excess death rate in Europe over first half of 2020, ONS says


....

[The Atheist]

Originally Posted by Darat

Coronavirus: England had highest excess death rate in Europe over first half of 2020, ONS says


....

Yeah, I saw that just before. Makes all those claims about Covid deaths being overstated because car crash victims were being added to Covid numbers look pretty stupid.
_________________________

Meanwhile, my territory anomaly is starting to look less like an anomaly than a few lucky breaks as Hong Kong, Japan, Hawaii & Vietnam all battle surges of infection.

[The Atheist]

And you can add Iceland to the list, with at least two community-based clusters having sprung up: https://www.icelandreview.com/societ...-drops-to-100/

[fromdownunder]

It's finally hitting the fan in Hawaii. 231 cases yesterday, the highest one day total ever, and the seven day moving average has gone thus:


June 1st: 1
July 1st: 13
August 1st: 83
August 7th: 143.


The previous five days have been 206, 143, 172, 151 and 201.



https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/hawaii/


Norm

[The Atheist]

Yeah, and Japan looks to be on the same trajectory as well.

Covid fatigue, maybe? People get to the point where they think it's all over and let their guard down, which looks to be what happened in Aussie as well.

Right now, there are two countries that haven't had a new outbreak: NZ & Taiwan, both with 100 days or more of no community transmission.

[fromdownunder]

Well, to be totally fair, Victoria, not Australia.


Norm

[rjh01]

Originally Posted by fromdownunder

Well, to be totally fair, Victoria, not Australia.


Norm

The good news is that the number of new cases (7 day average) is going down in both Victoria and Australia. In Victoria it was at a peak on 5 August and has been in decline since then.

[Samson]

Originally Posted by rjh01

The good news is that the number of new cases (7 day average) is going down in both Victoria and Australia. In Victoria it was at a peak on 5 August and has been in decline since then.

Elimination will be hard fought but I believe there should be underlying funds to drive it in the lucky country.

[rjh01]

Originally Posted by Samson

Elimination will be hard fought but I believe there should be underlying funds to drive it in the lucky country.

I hope you are right. Though I suspect our dear leaders are not quite up to the task.

[pipelineaudio]

Originally Posted by The Atheist

Yeah, and Japan looks to be on the same trajectory as well.

Covid fatigue, maybe? People get to the point where they think it's all over and let their guard down, which looks to be what happened in Aussie as well.

Right now, there are two countries that haven't had a new outbreak: NZ & Taiwan, both with 100 days or more of no community transmission.

A lot of the (formerly very respectable) medical science people I was pointing the influencers at said "social justice is more important that social distance" which was then immediately used by both the covidiots and the covid fatigued to justify getting a bit lax. Churches got open, bars got opened, interisland travel got going again.

And now the rich can go to the beach and the golf courses are open, but the public parks and trails (where I doubt there have been many, if ANY cases from) are closed again for a month

[Samson]

Originally Posted by pipelineaudio

A lot of the (formerly very respectable) medical science people I was pointing the influencers at said "social justice is more important that social distance" which was then immediately used by both the covidiots and the covid fatigued to justify getting a bit lax. Churches got open, bars got opened, interisland travel got going again.

And now the rich can go to the beach and the golf courses are open, but the public parks and trails (where I doubt there have been many, if ANY cases from) are closed again for a month

The mantra in our smug haven (NZ) is "we will have to open again!"

Discuss!

Thinking gorillas in the mist do they feel this urgency?
What is the evolutionary or cultural imperative that makes reopening a categorical imperative?

Hmm maybe off topic but fascinated to discuss.

[The Atheist]

Originally Posted by Samson

The mantra in our smug haven (NZ) is "we will have to open again!"

Only by a small and insignificant portion of Kiwis.

In no surprise at all, that small percentage are all National voters.

Continuous polling shows Kiwis overwhelmingly back Jacinda and continuing closure of borders.

Originally Posted by Samson

Discuss!

Nothing to discuss, you're just jumping at shadows. Jacinda wins next month by a margin big enough to govern alone, although she'll probably allow the Greens to jump in to show how caring and inclusive she is.

Originally Posted by Samson

What is the evolutionary or cultural imperative that makes reopening a categorical imperative?

$

If you break the numbers down, the people in favour are those with vested interests. Fortunately, 75% of us think those rich people who want to follow their former leader's advice can go **** themselves.

Originally Posted by Samson

Hmm maybe off topic but fascinated to discuss.

Sort of on topic - NZ is about the last anomaly left, and I'm sure that's about luck and trying hard than any medical reasons.

[pipelineaudio]

Originally Posted by Samson

The mantra in our smug haven (NZ) is "we will have to open again!"

Discuss!

Thinking gorillas in the mist do they feel this urgency?
What is the evolutionary or cultural imperative that makes reopening a categorical imperative?

Hmm maybe off topic but fascinated to discuss.

The one that cracks me up is the relentless covidiot drive to get the schools open again.

[bruto]

My sister in law is a high school teacher in Georgia. Very scary there right now, and still waiting to see what happens there. Elsewhere in GA there's been a somewhat newsworthy scandal, as one local high school decided that the way to handle the crisis was to suspend any students who posted pictures of the woefully irresponsible way things were done. A couple of students were suspended for posting shots of unmasked crowds of kids in the halls. Until, of course, a bunch tested positive, and the school had to close, whereupon, it seems, the wise owls in charge decided to lift the suspensions. Good old Georgia.

[jimbob]

Originally Posted by bruto

My sister in law is a high school teacher in Georgia. Very scary there right now, and still waiting to see what happens there. Elsewhere in GA there's been a somewhat newsworthy scandal, as one local high school decided that the way to handle the crisis was to suspend any students who posted pictures of the woefully irresponsible way things were done. A couple of students were suspended for posting shots of unmasked crowds of kids in the halls. Until, of course, a bunch tested positive, and the school had to close, whereupon, it seems, the wise owls in charge decided to lift the suspensions. Good old Georgia.

To be fair, if I was the parent of one of those kids - such a suspensuon would be less bad thsn the alternative

[The Atheist]

After discounting South Africa as an anomaly, it looks like it is an anomaly and nobody knows why: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53998374

All of sub-Saharan Africa seems to have missed the bus on deaths from Covid, with vastly lower numbers than elsewhere.

A tiny piece of good news!

[novaphile]

Meanwhile, in beautiful South Australia, we're back to 0 days of having no ongoing infections, because of Yet Another Stupid Victorian (YASV), flying into the State without permission.

Now, I'm more than happy to state that the overwhelming number of Victorians are not these "me smart ebry one else dumb" mouth breathing, sovereign citizen idiots...

... But I'd really appreciate the sane ones from doing more to stop the YASV's efforts to spread the virus around the country.

(i.e. don't let them on the plane at Melbourne airport.)

I'm happy to report that the border controls are really frustrating the crims too.

[The Atheist]

As time goes on and the initial anomalies are at least partly explained, new ones are springing up.

London is a good example - as Covid surges again in other cities, why is London exempt?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-a-second-wave

[Samson]

Originally Posted by The Atheist

As time goes on and the initial anomalies are at least partly explained, new ones are springing up.

London is a good example - as Covid surges again in other cities, why is London exempt?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-a-second-wave

But if the numbers are New Zealandised you get a suburb low of 40 per day in Bromley.

[Puppycow]

I wonder if this paper is to be believed:

It's a preprint, not peer-reviewed yet, but it has some rather astonishing findings for Japan. Or perhaps not so astonishing. Maybe it's even a better explanation for what we are seeing in Japan than the official numbers. Officially, as of 16 October, 91,542 people have tested positive (less than 0.1% of the population) and there have been 1,660 recorded deaths so far. Both numbers are very low compared to many other countries.

Anyway, here is the paper:
Dynamic Change of COVID-19 Seroprevalence among Asymptomatic Population in Tokyo during the Second Wave

Quote:

Objective: To assess changes in COVID-19 seroprevalence among asymptomatic employees working in Tokyo during the second wave.

So the study was only looking at people who were asymptomatic (anyone with symptoms was excluded from this study) and these people are company employees who commute to work in Tokyo. (By the way, I also happen to commute to work in Tokyo, but I wasn't involved in this study). That means, for the most part, they commute by train, and the trains here tend to be rather crowded during commuting hours, so there should be plenty of chances for all of them to be in the same train car as someone with the virus.

Anyway, what they found is that "seroprevalence" increased from 5.8% to 46.8% over the course of the summer. That would suggest that nearly half of the people in this study population have had some exposure to the virus, despite not having symptoms. Remember that less than 0.1% of Japanese have had a positive PCR test so far.

If you're interested, this study is discussed in this YouTube video by Dr. John Campbell, and his opinion is that it seems to be a good study. His opinion is that it shows that wearing masks, ventilation, staying quiet, distancing, and good hygiene habits work. Because you will still be exposed to the virus, but the amount of inoculum will be smaller so that you can build up immunity gradually without a severe course of disease.

[The Atheist]

Doesn't seem likely that half the population had it and nobody died. I'd say it's more likely half the employees at the company had it.

Definitely needs more work.

[marting]

Originally Posted by The Atheist

Doesn't seem likely that half the population had it and nobody died. I'd say it's more likely half the employees at the company had it.

Definitely needs more work.

Yep. Although the claim is that the people were widely separated in different work locations and resided broadly over Tokyo.

However, the study presents data incorrectly.

Look at the graph: "The seropositivity rate and 7 days moving average of daily confirmed new cases of COVID19 from 5/26 to 9/1"

The sero-positivity precedes the daily case curve. If that's not bad enough they are comparing apples and oranges. The graph should be cumulative case counts, not daily case counts. The sero-positivity should trail slightly the cumulative cases.

And that (integral of the case counts) would be skewed strongly to the right. For instance the cumulative case count over the time period is only about 15% by the time the sero-positivity reached almost 40%. During the rest (the other 85%) of the cumulative case rise sero-positivity only increased to 48%.

I'm surprised that the authors didn't notice this, present the correct graph, and comment on it.

This simply makes no sense unless the employees somehow got exposed through a different mechanism and isn't representative of Tokyo sero-prevalence.

[No Other]

Originally Posted by marting

Yep.

However, the study presents data incorrectly.

Look at the graph: "The seropositivity rate and 7 days moving average of daily confirmed new cases of COVID19 from 5/26 to 9/1"

The sero-positivity precedes the daily case curve. If that's not bad enough they are comparing apples and oranges. The graph should be cumulative case counts, not daily case counts. The sero-positivity should trail slightly the cumulative cases.

Why the need to show cumulative? This sequential graph is only showing comparisons within the same time frame. It shows the number of tests given within a time frame, it shows the results in the exact same time frame, and then they plotted the information.

[marting]

Originally Posted by No Other

Why the need to show cumulative? This sequential graph is only showing comparisons within the same time frame. It shows the number of tests given within a time frame, it shows the results in the exact same time frame, and then they plotted the information.

Because antibodies, especially IgG, are cumulative. Daily or weekly case counts are not. Hence to compare the two you need to compare antibody positives against accumulated case counts.

BTW, it's the number of confirmed case counts at issue, not tests given.

[Puppycow]

Originally Posted by marting

Because antibodies, especially IgG, are cumulative. Daily or weekly case counts are not. Hence to compare the two you need to compare antibody positives against accumulated case counts.

BTW, it's the number of confirmed case counts at issue, not tests given.

Well, the title of the study is "dynamic change" so presumably they were looking for the prevalence a discrete points in time, or discrete periods of time, not the cumulative number.

[No Other]

Originally Posted by marting

Because antibodies, especially IgG, are cumulative. Daily or weekly case counts are not. Hence to compare the two you need to compare antibody positives against accumulated case counts.

BTW, it's the number of confirmed case counts at issue, not tests given.

I see your point, I took the study too literal.

[marting]

Originally Posted by Puppycow

Well, the title of the study is "dynamic change" so presumably they were looking for the prevalence a discrete points in time, or discrete periods of time, not the cumulative number.

The problem is they compared one metric, antibody levels, which are cumulative by nature, with weekly case numbers, which are specific points in time and plotted them together. Doing so makes it look more highly correlated than they actually are.

They should have used the same metrics over time. Either cumulative or weekly changes for both. They could have done so by plotting either the antibody weekly deltas together with the weekly case counts or the antibody levels and cumulative case counts.

Had they done this correctly the plots would show a wild divergence with the antibody levels arriving much earlier than the cases. And that, of course, makes no sense since antibody levels trail active viral load.

Such data divergence brings the whole paper into question.

This is such a basic screwup that I'm sure it will be addressed by peer review.

[The Atheist]

Just going back to territorial anomalies, I think we're only left with a couple: Japan and Hawaii.

In both cases, the initial surge was small, and there hasn't really been a second surge, just a slow, steady increase in case numbers.

That would indicate there's plenty of the virus around, but it just hasn't got out of hand.

Japan could well be a result of care by the citizens, but Hawaii doesn't fit that.

Must be the Fukushima water!

[Orphia Nay]

Japan has 100 times the population of Hawaii.

They have had their second wave and are now at first wave levels.

Hawaii are at the stage of being over a first big wave, with only very few cases before August.

Hawaii would be affected by US covid management and perhaps supply of PPE.

Not sure what we can learn from both.

Where are ICU respirators made to supply both?
Where are Regeneron, antivirals, steroids made and are patients getting access? Can we compare death rates per population?

Have we looked at islands like Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Madagascar to see how they have charted?

ETA Possibly wrong thread. Who know?

[The Atheist]

Originally Posted by Orphia Nay

ETA Possibly wrong thread. Who know?

Definitely the right thread and I must confess to being guilty of not keeping up statistical analysis of the various countries.

I'll try to spend some time in the coming week to see what's happening where.

The other side of territorial anomaly is why the hell Europe is doing so badly right now.

They had it largely crushed, and the new surge doesn't appear to be linked to opening up, because that was some time back.

[dann]

Originally Posted by The Atheist

why the hell Europe is doing so badly right now.

After hammering down, but not eliminating, the virus, Europe reopened schools, colleges, bars, theaters etc., people had to go back to the office and stop working from home, public transport started filling up.
That the infection rates from spring reappeared is no surprise at all, really.
In Scandinavia, it seemed to work as long as people were away from the cities on summer holidays and mainly met outdoors.

[fromdownunder]

Originally Posted by The Atheist

The other side of territorial anomaly is why the hell Europe is doing so badly right now.

They had it largely crushed, and the new surge doesn't appear to be linked to opening up, because that was some time back.

"Largely" crushed is not crushed. The UK to take just the one example, never got below a 7 day moving average of less than 550. It may not seem like many, but if vigilance, testing and social distancing is relaxed at all, it "all go BOOM".


Here is what happened in Victoria just two weeks ago. One clown from Melbourne decided he needed a haircut and Cafe meals in two country towns (against lock down rules). In one of them he infected four people, and in another, three. That's seven from one alone. Had Victoria eased testing and tracing, because we were back down to single figures in Melbourne, and zero outside Melbourne, anything could have happened from there. But it was all picked up relatively quickly due to the public being hammered with going for a test if you cough more than once, all cases were put into quarantine, and it stopped before it really started. ,

We are door knocking, texting, advertising and asking anybody in a risk area to get tested.

There is a growing outbreak as I type in the Northern suburbs which stemmed from one case (from a school), and we were back up to seven yesterday from ones and twos. It could even be enough to slow down the plan to reduce the present restrictions tomorrow. This thing is not benign and it will take off at the speed of a sneeze.


Norm

[dann]

Originally Posted by The Atheist

why the hell Europe is doing so badly right now.

New study:

Quote:

An increasing trend over time in the R ratio was found following the relaxation of school closure, bans on public events, bans on public gatherings of more than ten people, requirements to stay at home, and internal movement limits; the increase in R ranged from 11% to 25% on day 28 following the relaxation compared with the last day before relaxation, although the increase was significant only for school reopening (R ratio 1·24, 95% CI 1·00–1·52) and lifting bans on public gatherings of more than ten people (1·25, 1·03–1·51); for all other NPIs, the lower bound of the 95% CI was below 1.
The temporal association of introducing and lifting non-pharmaceutical inerventions with the time-varying reproduction number (R) of SARS-CoV-2: a modelling study across 131 countries (Lancet, Oct. 22, 2020)

[Ulf Nereng]

I'm sure that schools (and probably kindergartens, too) are the main drivers of the infection. This has been known for a long time when it comes to flu and the common cold so it should be no surprise that it's the same with covid-19. This will be a long winter!

[lionking]

Originally Posted by fromdownunder

There is a growing outbreak as I type in the Northern suburbs which stemmed from one case (from a school), and we were back up to seven yesterday from ones and twos. It could even be enough to slow down the plan to reduce the present restrictions tomorrow. This thing is not benign and it will take off at the speed of a sneeze.


Norm

If we have less than 5 new cases tomorrow, I think there will be significant easing, if above 10 there won’t.

Bloody annoying that one selfish family can thwart the efforts of so many.