Covid19 Part XVI- 21,983 in ROI (1,339 deaths) 3,881 in NI (404 deaths)(05/05)Read OP

s1ippy wrote: »

I honestly think he's just misunderstanding because his viewpoint is tipped too far in the favour of the "WHO promotes Chinese agenda" narrative.

Either tobefrank321 has some reading comprehension problems, or (more than likely) is looking just to push a particular narrative. One that isn't borne out by the facts.

Either way, the "WHO promotes Chinese agenda" is bunkum, to be kind about it. I don't think the WHO seeks to promote any nation's agenda. It wouldn't serve them any real purpose.

s1ippy wrote: »

Tell me, if China is the one controlling that narrative, do you think our response is commensurate with the "realities" of this virus, as you regard them?

At the beginning of January, China was controlling information. They were they only ones that had first hand experience as it was their country where the outbreak was. So, the actual data they provided was all that there was. It wasn't only the WHO that had to listen to them, it was everyone else too.

Only when the WHO could get actual boots on the ground in Wuhan, could they go about discerning for themselves what was going on and that only happened after the Chinese authorities allowed a team of theirs into the country on February 9th.

s1ippy wrote: »

Should we be locking down or is it a Chinese plot to topple capitalism?

It's certainly not a Chinese plot to topple capitalism. Whatever China is in the modern day, it's not about toppling capitalism...something that it's benefited from for over two decades now.

As for "locking down", I don't know. I cannot see people just taking to an actual lock down (we aren't in one at present, despite what some people think). But if people continue to keep disregarding advice about staying put for a while, stronger measures may be put in place.

Martina1991 wrote: »

The development of accurate diagnostic testing takes time. It is not easy or straightforward. Especially for a previously unknown virus.

There have been many comments, not only here, suggesting that tests should be quick, available to evryone, easy to use, easy to acquire, cheap to buy etc.
Any test claiming to be any of these will be unreliable moneymaking scam.

Antibody tests will try to measure the amount of IgG produced in response to being exposed to SARS CoV 2.

Some barriers to developing an accurate test would include, but not limited to:
- False positivity to the presence of other Coronavirus
- Interference from any medication the patient is on
- Interference from medication from patients with autoimmune conditions
- False negativity from those on immunosuppressants
- Blood sample interferences from haemolysis, lipaemia, icterus (how red, cloudy or jaundiced the blood sample is)
- False reactivity from Biotin (a vitamin that patients may be taking or may be in cosmetics) This reacts will a lot of immunoassays.

The test will give you a numerical result, but then how do you interpret it.

Then there had to be a value set as to what will be considered a negative or positive result.
What will be the titre that determines the clinical significance of the result.
>100mmol/l, >500mmol/l, >1000mmol/l??

There are so many elements to developing a reliable assay. It is anything but easy.

Absolutely agree there are a lot of variables. 99.9% of posters on here have no idea what they are actually talking about, they wouldn’t know an immunoassay if it fell out of the sky and hit them on the fúcking head.

People bang on about unreliable Antibody tests, that’s true a lot of these finger prick tests are unreliable. Especially those from China that UK and Spain had their pants pulled down over, I think I remember reading about some Irish firm made something similar..... reality is IMO these are just rubbish.

The finger prick tests takes full blood sample, ie normal red blood and you are trying to get it to react to some sort of reagent in a bag or in a stick test a bit like like pissing on a home pregnancy test or an on the spot drug screen test. It’s hard to get an Antibody reaction in those conditions, hormones and chemicals is much easier.

Testing serum is better, it refines the sample. You wouldn’t put crude oil in a high performance car, you have to refine the oil into high octane petrol to get the best result.

most Immunoassay uses Chemiluminescent or Electrochemiluminescence which is very sensitive, and fortunately when it comes to developing assays you don’t necessarily have to completely reinvent the wheel you just need to nail the particular antibody. The analysers, research, experience etc is already there but as Martina says there are lots of variables and it usually takes years of studies and correlations to get it through FDA approval which is the yardstick.

Obviously any test for Covid will have to have an EUA as it won’t be fully FDA approved but at the moment there’s no other choice, will these work for immunity passports etc? Who knows every day is a test day but my belief is that most of these IVD companies been doing this for years they will bring out improvements as they go along.

jackboy wrote: »

There is progress being made though. There is a company launching a test in the next few weeks.

Abbott released their IgG serology test last week for the Architect platform. RD have a Total antibody assay detects both IgM and IgG coming out in May for the Es. Diasorin and Beckman have something in the pipeline too.

Cases in Sweden are higher than its Nordic neighbours but similar to Irelands deaths per capita, but cases are increasing massively right now in Sweden and they are not in Ireland, we are worse than the USA and Portugal for deaths per capita and better than the Netherlands, who will succeed with getting herd immunity at the lowest number of deaths ?

ZX7R wrote: »

To be fair there has been very mixed messages and press releases coming out today.
Latest I read from our minister for health
No big bang of relaxing of recommendations come the 5th,
But he didn't say there would not be.
So I say for now construction and associated firm's will be back.

Don't know how your making that assumption in fairness the only consistent advice has been from the CMO stay indoors don't get complacent or all the good work weve done will quickly be undone. On the other side our governments message has completely fallen apart the last 2 weeks or so why I have no idea its all over the place.

Unless theres a redoubling of efforts by people in the next 9 days not to act like idiots and just assume everythings grand and break the restrictions then the CMO will advise restrictions remain in place and who will be to blame for that us because we suddenly got bored sitting on our arses and decided feck that.

Shin

shinzon wrote: »

Don't know how your making that assumption in fairness the only consistent advice has been from the CMO stay indoors don't get complacent or all the good work weve done will quickly be undone. On the other side our governments message has completely fallen apart the last 2 weeks or so why I have no idea its all over the place.

Unless theres a redoubling of efforts by people in the next 9 days not to act like idiots and just assume everythings grand and break the restrictions then the CMO will advise restrictions remain in place and who will be to blame for that us because we suddenly got bored sitting on our arses and decided feck that.

Shin

It down to working, it went from the NPHET would not recommend,to Dr Nolan saying it's of my opinion
Classic PR at work now.
If you have been following updates for example from rte instead of a new article realised it's an update on the exciting article.
Slide of hand tactics , the narrative sounds the same but the wording paints a different picture.

Jim_Hodge wrote: »

Yet again it must be repeated that the death counts by country are more or less useless because countries are not all using the same criteria. As for herd immunity, it's very existence has yet to be proven.

While true it is about the most comparable stat we have (and I think Sweden and Ireland have similar reporting methodologies for example?)

Do people think they’ll relax the restrictions on the 5th or are we in this for another week? I would think before restrictions are lifted at all that we will have to start wearing masks in public.

People are getting fed up and complacent now. CMO was spot on in the time frame of placing restrictions as his timeline for this fatigue has been accurate.

I think overall it is being handled very well apart from the lack of travel restrictions and support to nursing homes. Hopefully lessons will be learned from this and we can start opening up 5th May

joe_99 wrote: »

Dominic Raab on the Andrew Marr show this morning said the UK are only counting hospital deaths because it makes international comparisons easier. You couldn't make it up.

It's not a competition but the UK govt obviously see it that way.

He also didn't dispute Andrew Marr's assertion that the number of death in the UK are double the reported figure i.e. over 40k.

Lies and politics.

Bozo went for the stiff upper lip method of combating a pandemic and almost got himself killed.

It has been an absolute car crash, but true to form the Tory's will lie and cheat and deflect instead of holding their hands up.

frillyleaf wrote: »

Do people think they’ll relax the restrictions on the 5th or are we in this for another week? I would think before restrictions are lifted at all that we will have to start wearing masks in public.

People are getting fed up and complacent now. CMO was spot on in the time frame of placing restrictions as his timeline for this fatigue has been accurate.

I think overall it is being handled very well apart from the lack of travel restrictions and support to nursing homes. Hopefully lessons will be learned from this and we can start opening up 5th May

If they learned any lessons, we wont be opening up on May 5th. It hasn't been handled well, we were too slow to react.

Boggles wrote: »

Do people actually think life is going on as normal in Sweden?

Things are bad in Sweden:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/19/anger-in-sweden-as-elderly-pay-price-for-coronavirus-strategy

ek motor wrote: »

Things are bad in Sweden:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/19/anger-in-sweden-as-elderly-pay-price-for-coronavirus-strategy

hardly, similar or worse stories in every country that has far more extreme containment measures

joe_99 wrote: »

Dominic Raab on the Andrew Marr show this morning said the UK are only counting hospital deaths because it makes international comparisons easier. You couldn't make it up.

It's not a competition but the UK govt obviously see it that way.

He also didn't dispute Andrew Marr's assertion that the number of death in the UK are double the reported figure i.e. over 40k.

Rather than seeing it as a competition surely it is more likely they want to be able to compare themselves to other countries so they can figure out what works in some countries and what doesn't in others?

The UK get a lot of stick on this MB for only counting hospital deaths. What do the majority of other countries do? Not a loaded question, I genuinely don't know the answer. I know Ireland counts all deaths, but it might be harder to collate all those stats in a bigger country on a daily basis?