Without knowing the percentages of each category (and not knowing how much presystematic people transmit anyway) that's a moot point at this time in relation to whether lockdown healthy non transmitting people was a good idea. If you are not coughing and spraying the virus with anything like the same velocity as systematic carrier I think based on what WHO have said it is fair to assume transmission in this category is lower. This has an impact on models Which is not being included.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
How do you know this?
And speaking of moot points, we know from various superspreader episodes that individual people can’t be trusted to avoid other people in the early stages of their illness so the only real option has been to forcibly alter the behaviour of everyone.
It’s a fair point that someone who isn’t coughing/sneezing might not infect many people but this is an insidious virus which seems to be capable of being passed on in a few different ways. One of the worst events in the spread of the previous SARS was from someone whose toilet backed up, then leaked into the air conditioning system!
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0668.2004.00318.x
Last edited:
According to this 57% of the population in Bergamo has antibodies from Corona
https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=7491542
Sorry for only Swedish link, they refer to ATS in Bergamo but i dont read good enough Italian to find it on their website.
https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=7491542
Sorry for only Swedish link, they refer to ATS in Bergamo but i dont read good enough Italian to find it on their website.
Holy crap. That’s the highest serology rate I’ve ever heard anywhere. By miles. And Italy had one of the strictest lockdowns in Eruope. How on earth did that happen?!
@11101
Have you seen this?
You're right I don't know it but with the basic messaging that is being given and Government incompetence in general I am inferring basic modelling too. If it was being used do you think our instructions may have been more nuanced? no graphs or discriptions show it so i think it wiser to assume the details are not being modelled.
that’s good, right? Practically herd immunity if the whole world had this (I know that’s massively higher than any other area though)
How is that possible? That's extraordinary.
This would be outstanding news if this is replicated in all areas that have had serious outbreaks. Everything crossed!
Mayor of Bergamo blamed the Atalanta/Valencia CL match for such a massive spread in his area. Can't see that alone being the reason it's allegedly spread so wildly but if the Atalanta fans in the San Siro that night on average lived with three people each it could have infected quite a high number.
It must have spread widely among the population for that many people to have that high a serology rate
It's high likeky as Italians typically don't live alone but with parents.
I haven't. It's a little odd, there is barely any mention of it in Italian news, but it looks to be true. It apparently refers to 3 small villages in Bergamo that were the worst affected places in all of Italy. The last i heard Bergamo as a whole was registering between 5 and 15% but that was some weeks ago, and on a bad day Bergamo can still post close to 100 cases per day when the whole country is consistently in the low 100s.
I can't find any mention of this finding on the ATS Bergamo website or on their Facebook page which they seem to update fairly regularly. Seems dodgy for now.
Which would beg the question, what the hell have the folk in Bergamo been up to over the last few weeks?!
It’s repeated on a couple of Italian news websites (google “Bergamo 57%”) but I couldn’t find it on ATS either.
Sounds unlikely. Unless the sampling area is very small and targets an infection hotspot. I can't see that being representative of the whole region.
The other bit of the story on a lot of these sites is that the prevalance in healthcare workers is lower, at only 30%. That doesn't seem to make much sense to me.
I read some areas in New York where something like 35-50% had antibodies. Can see that for Bergamo since it was a small heavily hit region
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ergamo-have-covid-19-antibodies-idUSKBN23F2JV
"ROME (Reuters) - More than half the residents tested in Italy’s northern province of Bergamo have COVID-19 antibodies, health authorities said on Monday, citing a sample survey.
Of 9,965 residents who had blood tests between April 23 and June 3, 57% had antibodies indicating they had come into contact with the coronavirus, the survey showed.
Health authorities in Bergamo said the results were based on a “random” sample which was “sufficiently broad” to be a reliable indicator of how many people had been infected in the province, which became the epicentre of Italy’s outbreak.
In a separate statement issued later, the Bergamo health agency said that most of those in the sample were residents of the worst-hit areas. Many had already been put under quarantine, the statement added.
Antibodies were found in just over 30% of the 10,404 health operators tested although they are generally considered more at risk than other people."
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ergamo-have-covid-19-antibodies-idUSKBN23F2JV
"ROME (Reuters) - More than half the residents tested in Italy’s northern province of Bergamo have COVID-19 antibodies, health authorities said on Monday, citing a sample survey.
Of 9,965 residents who had blood tests between April 23 and June 3, 57% had antibodies indicating they had come into contact with the coronavirus, the survey showed.
Health authorities in Bergamo said the results were based on a “random” sample which was “sufficiently broad” to be a reliable indicator of how many people had been infected in the province, which became the epicentre of Italy’s outbreak.
In a separate statement issued later, the Bergamo health agency said that most of those in the sample were residents of the worst-hit areas. Many had already been put under quarantine, the statement added.
Antibodies were found in just over 30% of the 10,404 health operators tested although they are generally considered more at risk than other people."
Last edited:
Yeah, there are a handful of brief mentions in Italian news, all quoting the exact same thing, but i cant find anything from an official source.
Having said that, Italian government is not the best when it comes to the internet. They often report something on the news hours/days before it appears online.
The quotes, if true, say the tests are from 10,000 people in a small valley North of Bergamo that was well know as having the worst outbreak in the country.
So this sounds like when everyone got very excited about prevalence data coming out of Germany, which turned out to be from a tiny village that was the epicentre of an outbreak. Basically meaningless at a regional/national level.
The 30% healthcare worker statistic could be more representative, as i believe it covers all of Bergamo province. There are certainly not 10k health workers in those 3 villages.
That makes sense. Seemed crazy for there to be a region where you were less likely to be infected if you were a HCW!
The impact of virus shredding presymptomatic has no doubt been included in the models. This isn't new information Vallance has been talking about presymptomatic impact since the first evidence to committee. In fact even us eejits in here were having those discussions.
How can the advice be nuanced? People don't know if they're presymptomatic it's pointless to build this into the general messaging. What impacts are you proposing this information has exactly?
A national BMA consultant committee member on one of my doctors facebook group has said that healthcare workers who have tested positive for covid antibodies in the last three months have reported difficulties in getting income protection insurance, life insurance and mortgages with a positive test.
Convention wisdom is of course anybody who has antibodies "might" be immune from covid in the future and lethality of it.
However the general narrative of the rejection rationale for those who are antibody positive is that we do not yet have long term data on the sequelae of covid infection. Neurological, psychological etc.
One doctor mentioned that there are echoes of the early days of HIV testing circa ‘90s. You had to declare if you had undergone testing and then if you had you allegedly couldn’t get insurance/mortgage. Because if you had been tested you must be at risk.
A statutory representative body for GPs has said that they are looking into it and discussing it to clear this up with insurance companies.
I'm personally at the start of a mortgage application for a first home and now am a bit torn as to get that antibody test which this BMA person has said I should postpone.
Convention wisdom is of course anybody who has antibodies "might" be immune from covid in the future and lethality of it.
However the general narrative of the rejection rationale for those who are antibody positive is that we do not yet have long term data on the sequelae of covid infection. Neurological, psychological etc.
One doctor mentioned that there are echoes of the early days of HIV testing circa ‘90s. You had to declare if you had undergone testing and then if you had you allegedly couldn’t get insurance/mortgage. Because if you had been tested you must be at risk.
A statutory representative body for GPs has said that they are looking into it and discussing it to clear this up with insurance companies.
I'm personally at the start of a mortgage application for a first home and now am a bit torn as to get that antibody test which this BMA person has said I should postpone.
FFS. One thing this pandemic has confirmed, beyond any reasonable doubt. Insurance companies are utter cnuts.
I’d postpone until your Mortgage application is Complete mate.
it’s an absolutely disgraceful stance From the lenders/insurers.
The sceptre can be used to keep people at a distance.
It's one of the good things about the Swiss private insurance healthcare model. The level of care is incredible but unlike the US, everybody has to have insurance and by law the insurance companies must cover all types of care regardless of your circumstances and they cannot make profit from it.
Whether something is included and whether it is included correctly are two totally different things.
Included - asystematic/presystematic transmits illness or doesn't are two totally different things to include in a model.
Nuance refers to not shutting everything down I.E places that don't impact transmission but offer big benefits to society like primary schools for example.
It wasn't Bergamo, it was 3 small towns in Bergamo province.
However as usual, most provinces within Lombardy posted close to or under 10 new cases today. Bergamo, 52. Bergamo and Brescia are becoming separate to the rest of Lombardy and Italy now and can't seem to get it under control.
There’s no evidence that primary schools don’t impact transmission. Kids tend not to get very sick but they can definitely catch covid and primary school age kids will be absolutely rubbish at social distancing/hand washing/not touching their face etc. Closing schools for summer holidays is thought to be one of the main reasons flu cases peak in winter.
Why do kids do better at social distancing/hand washing/not touching faces when schools out for summer? Is it not that they're outside more, more than those things?
Absolutely. It’s because they’re outside more. Not crammed into a room together all day. More time spent with family and less time with other kids.
Thanks.
Very interesting about Asympto people not passing on the virus - how do you test to find out if you'd be asympto though?
Has there been any updates on the vaccine trials by Oxford?
Has there been any updates on the vaccine trials by Oxford?
I was thinking this - first time the pubs are reopened and after people have had a few drinks, it will be hug city.
So I’ve been very critical of the UK and generally happy with our approach in Ireland but this absolute fecking fiasco about masks is doing my head in. At the risk of going full noodle, can anyone make any sense of this whole “advising but not mandating” bollox? Just make the fecking things mandatory. If 1% of people have a genuine reason they can’t wear on that’s fine. They’re not gonna get chucked in jail and it’s tough shit if they get a few dirty looks. The current situation is just stupid. I reckon less than a quarter of the people who should be wearing mask are wearing masks. How did we make such balls of what should have been the simplest public health intervention of all? This is really boiling my piss now...
So I'm curious.
As I'm supposed to go back to work in customer service on the 15th, I have my dad living with me at the moment who is classed as high risk. Should I actually be going back to work, what are the guidelines / rules on this?
As I'm supposed to go back to work in customer service on the 15th, I have my dad living with me at the moment who is classed as high risk. Should I actually be going back to work, what are the guidelines / rules on this?
25-30 kids plus a teacher in a small room with windows and doors mainly closed during winter is more of an incubator than a classroom. And the younger they are the worse they are at distancing.