Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

Seems pretty consistent with around a 1% death rate. Spanish population is 47m, so 5% of the population is 2.35m. Covid deaths in Spain are 27k, so 1.12% death rate.

Reese Mogg calls for all 650 MPs to return to set an example
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/13/jacob-rees-mogg-tells-mps-to-set-example-and-return-to-commons-coronavirus

Though if they all take his example and lounge across a few seats, how will they all fit?

Good grief, but he's a total arsehat. He must already be the bookie's favourite for the annual Self-Serving Cynical Pompous Cockwomble of the Year Award. Why does he keep trying? Let someone else have a shot at the title.

I know or knew Spiros!

I have received a DHSC/Imperial College/Ipsos Mori letter today saying i was chosen at randon for voluntary antigen testing and will be sent a Covid test kit. Anyone else get one? i suppose i should take part because i cant very well criticize the numbers of tests etc if i dont take one thats offered.

We got the letter, responded and were then told it’s been massively oversubscribed and may or may not be tested.

How do you know it isn't a scammer?

Correct grammar, correct URLs, no offer of money transferred from a deceased wealthy Uncle from gorgonzolariah.

Blood tests in the Netherlands about 6%

I don't understand why they have such a high % rate of antibodies in Stockholm tests...

No thats what concerns me (well not only for sweden but for the world). It would have been much better if the virus had a large spread everywhere all rdy (obviously since lower death rate) but also like u say, that makes u wonder about our 30% with antibodies in stockholm since this was a projection from a rather small group of testing in comparison to the spain survey for instance. But they have been in complete lockdown since late march or similar? So i still have some hope that the stockholm numbers can hold somewhat true when they release the next test results after the weekend.

There was also that german study of village that found 15%? had had it and only a mortality rate of about .3% or similar which makes one wonder how it can differ so much. Are the tests they used in spain not reliable perhaps? not picking up on every case?

Theres also places like india that leaves me somewhat puzzled.. how can the slum of the big cities in india not produce massive deaths way way higher than beeing reported.

Its like there are factors in this virus that are not yet understood at all. There is otherwise no logic or way to little accurate data at least.

Its like there are factors in this virus that are not yet understood at all.

I think this is definitely true. Can different strains have highly differing levels of mortality?

Oh, you know these protests? The Belfast one is linked to Jayda Fransen from the BNP... She is the owner of Freedom Movement Ltd.

So yeah far right astroturfing for sure.

There is a RNA tracking map of it, there are a few sub varieties atm.

Maybe they also tried to compared mortality for these but it is super hard to do atm, see also badboybjorns post above.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-52643682

It is a weird virus in a way that so many people can get it and have no symptoms, if you get lots of people like that and few that get it into the lungs your mortality won't be as high.

There's a nice video on scishow on youtube explaining a bit about the virus, how it differs from other viruses and why they think it behaves like that.

But right now they only know about the risk factors such as age/cardiovascular issues/lung issues etc.

India may not have mass testing, poor reporting or a slower outbreak? I am not sure, have not looked at it indepth. Excess death figures may help? If those are low too, that's interesting.

Lesotho has finally had a case. So apparently it is in all african countries.

Imperial modelling of death rate looks pretty spot on considering the estimates of population who have tested positive and the number of dead.

Also, there seems to be press about Vitamin D again. Damo, whats your thoughts? Changed yet? @Chalfie

@t-v It wouldn't surprise me.

I can't believe whatever mild symptoms I and my flatmate had were the same strain that hospitalised a fit guy in his 30's from my workshop building and killed my uncle.

Either there are different strains or there is a genetic element to who is most vulnerable (disregarding age and pre-existing conditions).

I'm lucky in that I've only had flu twice in my 40 years. Could this be related to the mild level of symptoms I got for what I assume was covid19?

Who knows..

So, talking about the antibody tests and how much the rates vary... how reliable are those antibody tests? Wasn't there a story at some point that the UK got a whole bunch which turned out to be completely useless?

I mean I don't assume countries are doing widespread testing based on something that completely doesn't work, but maybe all of these numbers have to be taken with an extra big grain of salt.

I suspect they think that returning the HoC to its usual school playground atmosphere might help Johnson out a bit.

They said the new ones were 100% effective on bbc breakfast this morning which I find hard to believe.

What an awful slur on school playgrounds.

It uses the recombinant form of the nucleocapsid protein as the antigen to bind any antibodies in the sample. Which are then detected in scaled up version of an ELISA.

The data is based on 215 women in a hospital in NY.
I think.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2009316

All the women were screened on admission for symptoms of Covid-19. Four women (1.9%) had fever or other symptoms of Covid-19 on admission, and all 4 women tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 (Figure 1). Of the 211 women without symptoms, all were afebrile on admission. Nasopharyngeal swabs were obtained from 210 of the 211 women (99.5%) who did not have symptoms of Covid-19; of these women, 29 (13.7%) were positive for SARS-CoV-2. Thus, 29 of the 33 patients who were positive for SARS-CoV-2 at admission (87.9%) had no symptoms of Covid-19 at presentation.

Edit
Correction

that paper shows the importance.
This is the test data
https://diagnostics.roche.com/global/en/products/params/elecsys-anti-sars-cov-2.html#productInfo

Clinical specificity28

A total of 5,272 samples (from diagnostic routine, blood donors, a common cold panel, and a coronavirus panel*) obtained before December 2019 were tested with the Elecsys® Anti-SARS-CoV-2 assay.

Clinical sensitivity28

A total of 204 samples from 69 symptomatic patients with a PCR confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection were tested with the Elecsys® Anti-SARS-CoV-2 assay. One or more consecutive specimens from these patients were collected after PCR confirmation at various time points.

Here is an image of the IgM/IgG profile and the time of serconversion

My thought too. He's no-one to lean on, no crowd to play to and no stage whispers to help him out.