Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart; According to the BBC, University of York in Britain advised students who are self isolating because of Covid-19 to wait in their rooms for a minute if they hear a fire alarm, to minimise the risk of healthy people being infected as they flee the burning building.
Covid: York self-isolating students told ‘wait behind in fire’
Students self-isolating at the University of York have been told to wait in their room in the event of a fire and let others out first.
The university’s Health and Safety Services told students to wait for a minute before leaving “to allow non-isolating individuals to exit”.
In total 288 staff and students at the university have tested positive for coronavirus.
The university said it had since “updated and changed” its guidance.
However, it has not yet made it clear if the advice to self-isolating students is still applicable.
…
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-54551789
I’m personally deeply concerned about Covid-19, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of this nasty virus. But compared to the risk to life of lingering in a burning building? Seriously University of York, grow a sense of proportion – you shouldn’t have had to be told that this is a stupid idea.
Correction (EW): h/t Melvyn Dacombe, saveenergy Corrected the image – University of York (UK), not York University (CA).
Good grief it’s New York, only this time young people die by fire.
Add them to the list of people dying from Covid-19 !!
Risk of young healthy students dying of Covid, negligible, risk of dying from smoke inhalation and fire during a building fire, high. I think I’d literally be hot under the collar!
Out of an abundance of caution, Dr. Fauxi recommends they wait 6 minutes.
Now THAT’S funny!
Oh, just sue the pants off those morons and lock them in the dorm rooms. See how they like it.
Kind of a Darwin award moment – dieing in a burning building while not spreading da Covids ….
So freaking stupid
Today the US daily Covid deaths average 2 per million population. But the daily deaths from all diseases runs over 16 per million, year after year. Who cares about new cases surging if deaths continue to decline?
Sheesh…relax…It was for a planned fire DRILL….makes total sense to have those self isolating practise their exit route awareness a minute later.
The guidance stated (verbatim): “If you are self isolating and the fire system in your accommodation building is activated please follow these procedures to ensure your safety.
“When the alarm sounds; stay in your room for one minute then make your way to the nearest refuge (this will allow non-isolating individuals to exit the building).”
The University didn’t issue new guidance until after they were contacted by the local fire brigade. It said nothing about a fire drill – you made that up.
“It was for a planned fire DRILL”. To be announced before or after the drill was completed? Oops “This is not a Drill, panic, the drill for today has been called off”
You should put in the Darwin Award nomination for these fools, I think. It is richly deserved.
NO, a Darwin award refers to getting yourself killed, not trying to kill the young people in the residences you are in charge of.
NO, a Darwin award refers to getting yourself ki11ed, not trying to ki11 the young people in the residences you are in charge of.
Remember the Grenfell Tower fire in London where 72 people died.
They had been advised by the fire service to remain in their rooms.
Agree Stephen, when I saw that I was dumbfounded, the signs in the building said to stay in your rooms in case of fire. What bureaucrat thought that little gem up, should be locked in his room and then set fire to it. Funny, he would be the first in line to escape if his building caught fire.
No evidence that there is even a specific Covid-19 virus as no one has yet isolated it in pure culture. They would have to take a number of death cases, isolate and culture all the viruses present (more often than not a person is likely to have more than one and even a few viruses), and then show that one of them causes the dreaded disease symptoms. In effect, as the flu season is a salad of viruses, it may be various combinations of covis that causes the Covid-19 syndrome.
As there is no pure culture, a Gold Standard to work from, the PCR tests are nonspecific and detect general coronaviruses (covis), the common cold, and even has some human genetic sequences in it. The antibody test is also bogus as the antibodies are not against a specific virus. This explains the vast numbers of false positives, 85–96%, which are listed as asymptomatic positive cases—No they are false positives.
For the same reason, a vaccine is impossible as they have nothing pure to work from. Just because a vaccine test shows antibody production, it does not mean it results in protection from this specific virus. In addition, RNA viruses mutate quickly and a real vaccine would become worthless rather quickly. Efforts have been made for decades to make vaccines against covis and, suddenly, they can cobble one up in a few months?—more money please. The genetic sequence approach, which basically makes your own body make a protein against which you make antibodies, also suffers from the high mutation of the natural virus, again rendering the vaccine outdated rapidly. Gene therapy, no thanks.
Since no one has this virus in pure culture, it would be important to ask what is in the vaccine they want us to take? Gene therapy is not the way to go for a virus that is basically part of the flu season in its behavior.
Curious. One should not assume all the facts at hand are actually facts, and you raise some very good points about the nature of the virus.
Early on, I have heard some comments that the symptoms of ChiComFlu (just giving credit where it’s due) are very close to those of a severe Zinc deficiency- doubly interesting, as Zinc is a primary component of most of the therapies successfully used to combat the illness.
What say you?
From what I’ve seen, they’ve been changing the list of symptoms pretty regularly – adding more symptoms – until it seems like if you feel sick at all, in any way whatsoever, it’s a symptom.
The university administration probably assumed when you have SARS-CoV-2 then you are bound to contract COVID-19, your days are numbered and you just as well can surrender right away. /SARC
On the other hand, if they only have to wait 60 seconds, it will probably not make much of a difference.
In the end they can always spread the virus when arriving to the muster stations.
Maybe they were hoping the extra minute would ill the virus.
Well, it can certainly go a long way to killing the occupants. Once complete ignition is achieved, a fire doubles in size approximately every 10 seconds. So waiting 60 seconds could leave you exposed to a fire 64 times larger than if you got the heck out of Dodge right away.
Has anyone on the Left ever heard of the concept of “relative harm”?
relative ?
Chances of dying from covid IF you’ve got covid AND your a college student – 2.5 in 10000
Chances of dying from covid IF you don’t have covid and your a college student – 0 in 10000
Chances of dying from a fire in your dorm if there is a fire in your dorm – way freakin’ higher than the above quoted numbers
I sure hope there is some common sense within this student population
Further I sure hope all the school’s risk premiums are paid up because this sure seems like an admission of negligence
In times of stress especially, one might not have a good sense of time, to know when a minute is up, so just sing the Birthday Song 6 times thru and you should be good to go.
Considering that the student age group has almost a zero death rate from COVID, this is the exact opposite of logic. Then again, the Nazis were right on one thing-“Make the lie big, make it simple, repeat it frequently and people will come to believe it.”
A lie that is the exact opposite of the truth gets under the radar. Propaganda.
Statistically, the way they should be looking at it, for all intents and purposes, if you ain’t got some other condition, it is zero
These folks seem stupid but, if we’re being fair, the vast majority of humanity are really bad at evaluating risk.
They need to update their sage advice to include:
Encourage deep inhalations and exhalations of CO-laden, formaldehyde-laden and other combustion hot gasses in the smoke will help inactivate any virus in the air. Breath deep. Problem solved.
WHO estimated 750 million cases world wide, 2 weeks ago.
1.09 million deaths world wide.
90% of those had co morbidities and were over 80
Unknown number of patients as of yet who were killed by the ventilators used to save them, especially back in April and May, ventilators trashed already struggling lungs where in many cases patients had tiny blood clots that stopped oxygen being taken away from the lungs, which I suspect were caused by some common existing condition in the their bodies, or a comorbidity.
Unknown number not even given oxygen (Swedish care homes did not give oxygen, claimed their staff didn’t have training, this in a country with a health system and 10s of thousands of nurses that could do this in the homes and train staff)
How “nasty” exactly is COVID? It is not nowhere near as nasty as the consequences happening now and those to come of the overreaction to it.
They’d been having pool parties in Wuhan through the late summer. Let that sink in
Oh and I forgot, the concentration of infected with elderly (in that tragic and catastrophic mistake of “trying to protect hospitals”. UK estimated 21000 direct deaths alone from people not being able to go to hospital
Not including diagnosed cancers and other health problems, which will kill another unknown number more. Suicides way up. Destroyed families, alcoholism and ruin all to come from this
“we had to destroy the village to save it”
I’m also in a fairly high risk group, so its not like I don’t have a horse in this race
Oh and I forgot, the concentration of infected with elderly (in that tragic and catastrophic mistake of “trying to protect hospitals”. UK estimated 21000 direct deaths alone from people not being able to go to hospital
Not including diagnosed cancers and other health problems, which will kyl another unknown number more. Suicides way up. Destroyed families, alcoholism and ruin all to come from this
None of which matters to the lockdown fanatics, who seem to want to shut everything down until the virus is completely eradicated.
I’ve had discussions with them. Their completely single-minded in their approach with no appreciation for the consequences at all. A family loses their business and ends up homeless because they can’t pay the rent? “At least they’re still alive”
Wow. I’ve been checking the US statistics put forth by CDC, updated on a weekly basis – a fairly constant 79-80% of all deaths where COVID-19 was shown as a cause of death on the death certificate were of people age over 65. A clear 94% of all who died in this context averaged at least 2.6 co-morbidities. Only 6% had COVID-19 listed as the sole cause of death. So your stats fairly compare to what I have learned.
Tragic – but the real tragedy is how the airhead political leadership, rigid and blinkered by apocalyptic, worst-case thinking, has just about destroyed the world economy and the liberties of the people in Western countries. I share nothing in what these airheads value.
This is similar to the craziness of the Australian road rule that a vehicle can cross unbroken white lines, even though they are there because it would be dangerous to do so, if passing a cyclist.
The fool that calls them idiots is no drongo
Not quite capturing the full stupidity of this road rule.
Laws were passed so that motorists are not allowed to pass within 1m of a bicyclist.
However the reverse is not true. A bike rider can happily slide past cars delayed by traffic lights, get in front and then force the vehicle to either crawl along behind or, like John has mentioned, cross the road centreline in order to pass.
Remember people, the common factor for bicycle accidents are bicycles. Muse on that.
Modern academia in a nutshell.
Close the shithole!
A University education could make a real difference to the rest of your life.
Acquiring a marketable skill is helpful for prosperity.
Staying behind in a fire is a good way to ensure posterity
You can always work in climate science or McDonalds with an Arts Degree
Oh and I forgot, the concentration of infected with elderly (in that tragic and catastrophic mistake of “trying to protect hospitals”. UK estimated 21000 direct deaths alone from people not being able to go to hospital
Not including diagnosed cancers and other health problems, which will kill another unknown number more. Suicides way up. Destroyed families, alcoholism and ruin all to come from this
“we had to destroy the village to save it”
I’m also in a fairly high risk group, so its not like I don’t have a horse in this race
The problem with “public health” experts is that – unlike doctors and surgeons – you can’t even tell the most awful ones from the decent ones by watching them perform everyday.
It’s more like “being crushed by German army proved our generals were not that great” level of late realization.
The thing is, they don’t care which way you die, just die already.
Extreme heat kills the virus so maybe they should wait 10 mins !!!
Any casualty’s will be counted as a covid death.
(In the UK, if you die from ‘ANY’ cause within 28 days of testing positive, it’s counted as a covid death !!! )
Also,in Northern Ireland, almost a third of people classed as having died from Covid-19 … did not test positive for the virus.
Sorry, missed out the link
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sunday-life/news/statistics-exaggerate-covid-death-toll-jim-allister-39377160.html
I’m a little behind here, but how was the two-week isolation rule founded? As in, after two weeks of testing positive you cease to be contagious.
I think that the original idea behind the lockdowns in France and the UK was that, if everyone locked down for two weeks, then everyone who had been infected would cease to be contagious and the virus would have been contained. Well, that didn’t work.
Incidentally, the website to read if you’re interested in these issues is Lockdown Skeptics (via Google.) It’s a British site, but most of its reporting on the pandemic is applicable to all countries.
hmmm my other post never made it but the one right after it did.
Odd
several of my posts have disappeared over the last few days ???
I have found using certain words sends a comment into the Netherworld bit bucket, never to be seen again.
G e n o c i d e
S i l i c o n V a l l e y
are two.
There are probably others.
These are different from the “k1ll” word which sends a comment to moderation.
Total miles driven per year in US = 3.22E12
Total traffic accident deaths per year in US = 40,000
Risk of death from driving 1 mile = 40E3/3.22E12 = 1.24E-8
deaths of <65 yr old from covid = 42069
US population <65 yr old = 274,181,260
fraction of <65 dying from covid = 42069/274,181,260 = 0.000153435
risk of dying of covid for <65 yr old in US is equivalent to traveling 1.53435E-4 / 1.24E-8 = 12374 mi.
That’s about the mileage I used to drive every year. The average fatality rate is around 36 per million registered vehicle years. link That’s something like one death per 28,000 registered vehicle years.
I recall doing the same calculation when I was much younger and getting a much different number. It seems like driving is a lot safer than it used to be. link On the basis of miles travelled, it’s about 4.5 times safer to drive now than it was when I got my driver’s license.
It’s quite a while since anyone I knew personally died in a vehicle accident. Do I know anyone personally who has died from this coronavirus? Nope. Do I know anyone who has been sickened by it? Yep. (Does that have any statistical significance? Nope.)
Heart-less Pangburned:
Roughly one of 1000 Covid infections lead to death these days. But roughly 600 of 1000 get normal flu symptoms (not pleasant) or serious flu symptoms (with far more hospitalizations and need for ICU than ordinary seasonal flul. Hospitalized people are likely to have at least some ng lasting or permanent lung damage. You are data mining the 1 of 1000 and completely ignoring the pain and suffering for the 600 of 1000. And why do you focus on people under 65? Do people over 65 not matter to you?
Lots of numbers presented but not clear thinking. The only real connection of Covid and driving is fewer miles driven by people during partial lockdowns, especially those working from home, so I would expect fewer accidents and fewer deaths.
Of course lockdowns will cause more suicides and deaths of sick people afraid of going to doctors’ offices and hospitals. Not to mention spouse abuse and child abuse. The damage from lockdowns has become worse than the damage from Covid. That was not true in March and April but was true after three to four months of flattening the curve, or whatever it was that caused Governors to become little dictators.
Post viral syndromes were first recognized in the 1980’s. They vary by virus, but they really are a fact of life, and very unpleasant if you happen to be a victim. It took us 2 years to get our daughter back to school fulltime, and a few more before she was 100%. Right now, our guv is trying to scare the younger people about ‘post-covid’. Why didn’t we hear all this about flu and epstein barr, ect? Because today’s panic is about social control.
“Post viral syndromes were first recognized in the 1980’s. ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheumatic_fever
Rheumatic fever (bacterial) has been known to cause heart valve, and other damage, for a long time. I suspect follow-on problems from flues (virus) have been known farther back than the ’80s.
Just a guess.
Swedish research has found from blood donations from 2019 that there was a 30% rate of T cell immunity to the virus
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/why-covid-herd-immunity-could-be-twice-as-high-as-first-thought/ar-BB16cYvL
Finland very low death rate too, a few hundred, and not a major amount of hospitalizations relatively speaking
I wonder if there’s a thing to being here in the bloody freezing every winter and getting bathed in other corona viruses every winter pre 2020
Leave it up to MSN to write a misleading headline about herd immunity. The herd immunity threshold is much LOWER than previously thought for 3 reasons; 1) 30 to 50% (depending on location) already have t-cell cross immunity from exposure to previous corona viruses (the point of the article that isn’t clear from the title), 2) asymptomatic carriers are far less likely to transfer the disease than someone with symptoms (lower viral load and they’re not coughing and sneezing), and 3) a large fraction of the disease is spread by super-spreaders (people with high social connectivity). Super-spreaders are more likely to be infected early also; if they survive, they gain immunity early and cease to be super-spreaders. Many know these things already but we’re supposed to listen to politicians and the (so-called) epidemiologists who haven’t yet figured it out. Sweden was right when they decided to go for herd immunity.
Sweden did not go for herd immunity. Sweden never reached herd immunity.
The Swrdish peopke volunrarily social distanced and children over 16 were locked out of their schools and colleges. The economy fell 7 to 8 percent (real GDP) in the first half of 2020 because the people did not want herd immunity. You don’t need herd immunity for a virus to stop spreading. You don’t appear to know what herd immunity is, and certainly don’t know the herd immunity percentage for Covid.
You must have missed all those photos of Swedish people enjoying meals in restaurants when we were in lockdown. Sweden reopened their high schools on June 15 after being closed for less than 3 months and didn’t close their grade schools at all when our school kids (and a parent) are STILL stuck at home. Their shops stayed open. Most Swedes went to work.
The Swedish GDP dropped primarily because international commerce came to a halt and Sweden’s economy is somewhat dependent on foreign trade NOT because Swedes implemented a voluntary lockdown – they simply didn’t. Their unemployment didn’t get as bad as ours. Sweden has indeed achieved herd immunity in their densest population centers and it’s starting to happen across the country. They have a population of over 10 million and Swedish deaths have dropped to the very low single digits per day – a lower fatality rate than other European countries and the U.S. that did lock down.
Did someone tell you those misleading statements (and/or outright lies) or did you make them up yourself?
Replied before I seen this, re Swedish economy, exactly, Sweden’s domestic economy did well, all retraction was because of falloff in Global economy and largely, Sweden’s neighbours too in the Nordics and Scandinavia
I live in Finland, you don’t have a clue what you are talking about
Sweden would see a retraction of GDP anyway because ITS A GLOBAL ECONOMY in a GLOBAL PANDEMIC
Sweden’s internal economics, GROWTH and more growth estimated for next year while everyone in Europe will see retractions (UK is in a right mess)
Finland closed schools for kids too, for 2 weeks and limited travel out of the Helsinki hot spot… why SO THEY COULD GEAR UP TO PROTECT THE VULNERABLE and they did a great job of it too.
Once that was done, most restrictions were lifted, my son was only schooling from home for 2 weeks when they started back after the summer
Finns and Swedes social distance anyway. Finland is not somewhere you want to move if you want to make lots of close friends 😀
Sweden doesn’t have the legal mechanism to lock the country down, neither does Finland, Finland had to rely on old war legislation just to limit traffic in and out from the Capital and region of Usimaa.
I believe you have a track record of bitter nonsense on here.
Blood donations tested in Sweden before COVID appeared, show a 30% T cell immunity rate
Given they never locked down, they did not even remotely, and the Lead adviser’s plan was herd immunity, even though the deathrate caused much resistance to the plan, it was the plan. Sweden’s failing was it never protected the old like Finland did, and it burned like wildfire through the care homes and old people apartment blocks where one person gets it and the entire block of 40 or 50 residents got it. Sweden is littered with apartment complexes like that and those old people only have each other for company mostly
Helsinker
You can toss insults at me but I will respond with some facts, basically a summary of an article I researched and wrote on one of my three blogs:
The US and Sweden had about 6 deaths per 10,000 popilation — nothing to brag about for Sweden there!
Sweden did not go for herd immunity. They relied on voluntary social distancing snd hygiene measures. Swedish shops and restaurants were quite empty from March to early June. Gatherings over 50 people were forbidden. Virtual learning for high schools and colleges were closed or partially closed. Nursing home visits were eventually controlled, but too late. Face masks would have helped, but I guess a lot of Swedish eople did not like them.
Herd immunity merely means enough people have antibodies so that each new infection goes on to infect just one person, on average. No growth of infected people. Not zero new infections, but one new infection , or less, per infected person is herd immunity. Herd immunity does NOT stop the spread of a virus. And containment of a virus does not require herd immunity. Herd immunity is not likely to be under 50 percent of tbe population with antibodies. It may be 60 or 75 percent for COVID. No one knows. Too many people speculate.
It is difficult to know how many people have had COVID because up to half have no symptoms, or mild symptoms. Thats why COVID spreads so easily. It appears that peak viral load can happen just before symptoms, or even with no symptoms.
Containment does not require hard lockdowns. It does require accurate tests with quick results, followed by contact tracing. The goal is to isolate the sick people and the elderly vulnerable people.
Since it is so hard to be sure how many people havr been onfected, I can only guess that 10 percent of the Swedish population has been infected, and has antibodies. It could be 20 percent. It is nowhere near 50 percent. nd nowhere near herd immunity.
After the pandemic is over, smart people will analyze the data, which could be very inaccurate now, and may figure out which countries handled the pandemic well. Two countries NOT on that list will be Sweden, doing much worse than neighboring nations, and especially the United States.
So, Mark from Helsinki, I have given you a brief COVID, Sweden and herd immunity education for free. It is your choice on whether to learn, or whether to character attack me.
Mark Helsinki
I imagine the countries where the most Chinese people flew to in late 2019 and early 2020 were the ones with the highest infection rates. Italy and the NYC area come to mind. Maybe Norway and Finland during the coldest time of the year were not popular with Chinese tourists? I imagine once the infection arrived, the policy concerning nursing homes became very important relating to the death rate. Sweden failed there.
Overall, very few infected people die now that the “ventilator craze” is over. A friend who had COVID in March was a retired emergency room doctor. Her son, who is a doctor too, decided to treat her at home 24 hours a day, saying the hospitals did not know what they were doing, especially concerning ventilators. Smart doctor. She survived a very rough three weeks but he caught COVID from her … not very serious for him, but his Mom had never been sicker in her 60+ years. … Then another friend about 70 had only a loss of smell and taste along with a friend’s 30 something daughter. A strange disease.
I would suggest the tests are wrong, given the continued spread of infections in many nations. The test could be combining people who had coronavirus colds with those who had SARS2 coronavirus.
My dear Swedish mother would have put it down to cod liver oil, the universal panacea for everything.
😀
That is pretty commonly used here too. We have the capsules
In Ireland when i was a kid, my mother had a big bottle of it, and filled you out a tablespoon of the stuff. Man it was rank 😀
Amen.
Cod liver oil’s main claim to fame is that it is high in vitamin D. Vitamin D is needed for the immune system. Vitamin D deficiency is common.
The flag shown looks suspiciously like the Canada flag !
Thanks, fixed 🙂
I dunno, this sounds like a hoax to me.
It sounds perfectly in line with other stuff I’ve read universities are doing to students. One of the weirdest was students having to sit alone while they eat, everyone facing the same direction, no turning of heads or talking to anyone, straight back to your room after eating. It’s worse than prison.
Da’ Itelligentsia just ain’t quite what it used to be.
The picture is from Canada…
This is York University UK,
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.UgD2XFvfsl1uuFQIpLUihQHaD_%26pid%3DApi%26h%3D160&f=1
The subject of the article.
Thanks, fixed 🙂
I just can’t fathom that students are putting up with this bullshit. What a bunch of brain dead conformist pantywaists.
The proper response to the health and safety nutters is in this case, up yours!
Ok wait 60 seconds…….
Now PANIC
Not sure I believe that this is true. But, if it is… not a surprise: “Hey, new policy. If you’re sick, stay and die so someone better than you can live. kthxbye.”
Yeap.
Fire wardens now care more about social distancing then protecting their fellow employees from actual fire and smoke harm.
There was a fire in South Australia in an industrial area last month where an unoccupied building from other site was blowing large clouds of smoke across the fence into a completely different business.
Due to smoke risks the decision was to evacuate the nearest buildings and move the employees to the evacuation areas a greater distance from the source of the smoke.
And then, over the fire warden’s radio network:
“They are not social distancing in the evacuation areas!!!”
So yes, all fire action plans MUST also be COVID Safe. I kid you not.
Those that are self-isolating should certainly have a mask at hand. They should wet it, put it on, and go, even if that doesn’t take a full minute to do. If there’s smoke and super heated air to pass through, they’ve just significantly increased their chances of survival over those without a wet mask, for a few seconds delay. Just pretend it’s a minute.
The administration doesn’t need this enlightenment.
Those that are self-isolating should certainly have a mask at hand. They should wet it, put it on, and go, even if that doesn’t take a full minute to do. If there’s smoke and super heated air to pass through, they’ve just significantly increased their chances of survival over those without a wet mask, for a few seconds delay. Just pretend it’s a minute.
The administration doesn’t need this enlightenment.
Feel free to delete the duplicate.
The authors of this policy are clearly part of the essential intellectual wealth of modern society. When the time comes we should ensure they board Arc 2 along with the telephone sanitizers, beauticians and astrologists as we send off the human race to find a new home. We will need their valuable insights when the rest of us land.
Jump from a window.
Be the first out AND avoid the crowd.
3rd story or higher preferred. Ground floor jumping not allowed, you must first go up the stairs to find an appropriate high window to dive from. Make it Grand.
Have our woke universities reached peak stupidity yet?
Every time I think they have, they prove me wrong, so I’ll go with “no”
I know the phrase “ as daft as a snooze button on a fire alarm” but this is stupider is right up there with Mikey Mann,Greta Thunberg et al
Oh good godfrey – do they want a repeat of 9/11? “It’s ok, stay at your desk”
Abstract
Objectives
When SARS-CoV-2 prevalence is low, many positive test results are false positives. Confirmatory testing reduces overdiagnosis and nosocomial infection and enables real-world estimates of test specificity and positive predictive value. This study estimates these parameters to evaluate the impact of confirmatory testing, and to improve clinical diagnosis, epidemiological estimation and interpretation of vaccine trials.
Methods
Over one month, we took all respiratory samples from our laboratory with a patient’s first detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA (Hologic Aptima SARS-CoV-2 assay or in-house RT-PCR platform), and repeated testing using two platforms. Samples were categorised by source, and by whether clinical details suggested COVID-19 or corroborative testing from another laboratory. We estimated specificity and positive predictive value using maximum likelihood-based approaches.
Results
Of 19,597 samples, SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected in 107. 52 corresponded to first-time detection (0.27% of tests on samples without previous detection); further testing detected SARS-CoV-2 RNA ≥1 time (“confirmed”) in 29 (56%), and failed to detect SARS-CoV-2 RNA (“not confirmed”) in 23 (44%). Depending upon assumed parameters, point estimates for specificity and positive predictive value were 99.91%–99.98% and 61.8%–89.8% respectively using the Hologic Aptima SARS-CoV-2 assay, and 97.4%–99.1% and 20.1%–73.8% respectively using an in-house assay.
Conclusions
Nucleic acid amplification testing for SARS-CoV-2 is highly specific. Nevertheless, when prevalence is low a significant proportion of initially positive results fail to confirm and confirmatory testing substantially reduces false positive detections. Omitting additional testing in samples with higher prior detection probabilities focuses testing where clinically impactful and minimises delay.
https://www.clinicalmicrobiologyandinfection.com/article/S1198-743X(20)30614-5/fulltext
I just can’t shake the feeling that those that advise politicians to take such destructive and counter productive actions have a vested financial or career interests in keeping the fear level high, the media certainly do.
There is a bit of class struggle to this. Corporate types and the subordinates can all work remote, can get paid without loss of income, the media too, have less restrictions and writing also can be done anywhere, academics who don’t need to “go to work” and those well off, actors and so on who only have to suffer very minor inconveniences who are all screaming at the people who need to work to eat, to not do so.
The former refuse to even recognise that they still get paid and refuse to recognise the suffering caused by what they are demanding, calling for more lockdown.
I note the hypocrisy about the protests, any left wing protest is OK and not a super spreader but at least there is the silver lining, these protests are ballooning herd immunity 🙂
If we take the Swedish result of 30% T cell immunity (makes sense given how many people don’t even show symptoms in every other country)prior to the outbreak + the immunity from those surviving the infection itself, there is just no reasonable argument for a vaccine except to those who are most vulnerable.
Helsinker we finally agree on sonething. The partial lock down became worse than the disease after a few months and politicians, especially leftists, never let a crisis “go to waste”.
I can’t tell you how happy some Dumbocrats were when Trump caught COVID … and how disappointed they were when he quickly recovered. I am sponsoring a Congressional bill to deport all US leftists who hate Trump to Finland. They make good pets.
Lets not forget, you were completely wrong with your initial rant. Lets not overlook that. Glad you agree with at least one thing you got arse about face
The Irish government calls bullshit on the “experts” hitting the panic button
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8808043/Irish-government-IGNORES-experts-demands-new-national-lockdown.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailUK
Ireland has 27 cases in ICU and 2 deaths a day rate (it was 2 a day a week ago too) and the “experts” told them “LEVEL 5 LOCKDOWN” which is pretty much economic suicide, 4 or 5 die every day from heart attacks
Trust the experts?
To Mark from Hellstinki:
I don’t mind you calling my comment a rant, but the conclusions were correct. “You were completely wrong ” is just your meaningless generic character attack — a “debate” style typically used by smarmy leftists.
There are many nations with good COVID results that may have done the right things, or maybe just got lucky.
Sweden and the US, especially the US, are not among them.
Meanwhile, the pandemic is still in progress so traditional methods of virus containment are still useful to actually REDUCE the number of infections. Herd immunity just means no more GROWTH of tbe total number of infections, which would be good, but far from a COVID pandemic “victory”.
There are no COVID experts yet, a point I have made repeatedly in my on line comments, especially towards people speculating about specific percentages related to COVID herd immunity.
Perhaps we will find something else to agree on in the future, although that would be a reat disappointment — Al Gore invented the internet mainly for anonymous vicious arguments. Being polite is strictky forbidden.
The goobermint over reaction to COVID is yet another reason why I’ve been a libertarian since 1973. Yet another reason for supporting LESS government and MORE freedom.
I’m not sure why you keep calling out Sweden – it appears to be doing a lot better than many other countries: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/
As for the US, you really can’t take the country as a whole, since every state had its own response. NY and NJ being the worst, three to four times the national rate: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/
Tony G
For deaths per million US and Sweden are not far apart. And I don’t data mine to exclude NY and NJ to make the US look better. Lots of Chinese people flew into NYC (and Italy tool) and NY had wrong policies to protect nursing homes, Sweden too.
It’s not “data mining” to separate the US by state. It’s acknowledging that every state had its own policies on dealing with the virus. With your approach, you might as well just lump all of Euorope together, all of South America, etc.
I am not sure most posters are doing an appropriate Baysean analysis here. I have been out of college for a looong time now, but when I was living in the dorm, I am pretty sure that the ratio of actual fires to fire alarms was substantially lower than the IFR for COVID 19.
The purpose of any drill is to train people how to accomplish a task whether it is a fire or action stations or abandon ship. Practicing otherwise is a waste of time.
If it is not a fire drill criminal charges will be in order for the nonsense of having people wait while the building burns.
A university education is to train people how to live better and be useful. The logic would be understandable if it applied to witches or warlocks. Do I have to say sarc?
My daughter is at York University and because she was a first year student she had to stay in a hall of residence. In the last academic year she and her boyfriend found that they were the only ones left in their rooms, security and cleaning services were withdrawn (though their accommodation fees were not) and the groceries we had bought for them were disposed of by the university a few days later.
We were fortunate, we managed to rent them a small house (for less than the cost of their two rooms) so they were able to look after themselves safely.
The feedback that I get is that universities are far more interested in maintaining rental fees from the students rather than looking to their safety or providing education.
One can only speculate about the decision-making process that went into this. At what point did common sense become short circuited? If only we had a recording where the initial pronouncement was decided on so it could be analyzed.
Has the Babylon Bee done this story yet?
The Babylon Bee now has a website “Not The Bee” for stories that should be satire, but are not.
University of York in Britain advised students who are self isolating because of Covid-19 to wait in their rooms for a minute if they hear a fire alarm, to minimise the risk of healthy people being infected as they flee the burning building.
That reminds me of the tragic incident in Saudi Arabia some years ago when a school caught fire. Some girl pupils were blocked from leaving the building because their clothing did not meet religious requirements for being outside in n the streets. A number of them died in the fire 🔥 .
they have officially jumped the shark with this one. pathetic. criminal.
The problem with “public health” experts is that – unlike doctors and surgeons – you can’t even tell the most awful ones from the decent ones by watching them perform everyday.
It’s more like “being crushed by German army proved our generals were not that great” level of late realization.
I find it impossible to comprehend the level of idiocy we (as a species) have reached in our response to this virus. And we seem to be trying to apply it to everything else as well.
Civilization is weakining humanity to a point we will no longer be able to survive.
Law Suits Law Suits Law Suits Law Suits…Felony Arrest…go ahead make that call..AND LOSE IT ALL