Coronavirus

[Manbush]

My thoughts and prayers are with Trump who has covid

[-TW-]

**** him, serves him right

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[-PJ-]

It ain't that serious eh Trumpster ?

"We have over 360million people in this country, 200,000+ deaths..we're looking ok"

[gerg]

Honestly wouldn't surprise me if it's just a political stunt, so he can come out and say he has beaten it. Or if he loses the election he can challenge the result because he was on deaths door.

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[-PJ-]

He's now at Walter Reed medical centre for observation.

Dons going the whole hog.

[Manbush]

Taking an experimental drug the FDA hasn’t even approved for emergencies yet, wonder how many shares in the company Trump and co own.

[-PJ-]

This would be be a perfect time to inject disinfectant..

[RedRaider]

Dr Z, with the next Covid wave crashing over Europe, are we still looking at the same strains of the original outbreak or is there evidence of further mutation? Immediately following the Bathurst 1000 there was a Covid discovery in the sewerage at Bathurst. One week later further testing did not show any Covid indicating a possible visitor to the town had the virus. When the detection is done, do they simply identify Corona Virus or are they able to identify the specific strain which may allow them to track back to a known area where that particular strain has previously appeared?

[Dr Zaius]

There have been a few mutations, but they are no hugely significant ones like with influenza. Apparently the prominent strain getting around Europe was first detected in Spain, and is more infective than the other strains. As viruses mutate, they tend to decrease in virulence. Mutations haven't been on the spike protein which is the target for vaccination.

I believe that the waste water testing is PCR based, so looks at viral RNA, but not 100% on that. If it is, they should be able to sequence the genome, which would give clues to where it is from. It's been detected on the Sunshine Coast, some areas of Brisbane and Ipswich

[The Nickman]

Yeah, they detected it in Rocky sewage last month too although we hadn't had any active cases in months.

I assume it's either someone passing through, someone who was asymptomatic and didn't pass it on, or perhaps sewage from when we had active cases if that's even possible?

[RedRaider]

Thanks Dr Zaius, appreciate your insights. You are the Norman Swan of the Green House.

[Dr Zaius]

Yeah, they detected it in Rocky sewage last month too although we hadn't had any active cases in months.

I assume it's either someone passing through, someone who was asymptomatic and didn't pass it on, or perhaps sewage from when we had active cases if that's even possible?

There are lots of potential explanations. Someone recovering but not infectious. One of the hotel quarantine positive cases. Cargo ship positive case? False positive?

There was the woman who flew to Melbourne from Townsville via Brisbane and Canberra, and tested positive within 3 days of arriving in Melbourne. Queensland Health called it a Victorian case. ACT Health implied that it was acquired in Queensland.

There's been a lot of positive tests in waste water. I suspect that it is at least circulating in the South East

[-TW-]

All going well tomorrow could be under 100 active (non hotel) cases nationally for the first time since March

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[Manbush]

Pfizer have announce their vaccine has a 90% success rate, hasn’t been peer reviewed yet but if true that could be huge.

[Makaveli]

Could be an awesome way to end the year

[BJ]

I can’t understand how anyone can claim that Covid kills the same percentage of people as does the annual flu.

Do they really think ‘people with or potentially with’ the flu are getting tested for the flu to the same level as Covid testing? Imagine how many people each year have caught the flu each year without formally knowing it or being actually tested?

How many people are tested for the flu each year outside those who attend hospital with the flu? The ‘Divisor’ for the flu calculation is a magnitude of times smaller than the divisor for Covid.

[RedRaider]

Dr Zaius, another question for you. With there being millions of pathology blood tests carried out in Australia each year, is Covid19 something else that could be checked for? I imagine it would require the patient to be advised and to give permission, but it seems to me a way of getting a broad sample of the Australian population tested. Would you know if this is already happening?

[gangrenous]

Yes, it’s already happening. There was an article on it this week.

It wasn’t done to find people though. Was an anonymous study.

[Dr Zaius]

Dr Zaius, another question for you. With there being millions of pathology blood tests carried out in Australia each year, is Covid19 something else that could be checked for? I imagine it would require the patient to be advised and to give permission, but it seems to me a way of getting a broad sample of the Australian population tested. Would you know if this is already happening?

You can request for serology, which looks for antibodies indicating prior exposure. I've requested it once on a person what had returned from the US via Singapore in January and became unwell on return. It was negative. Its not otherwise routinely being done.

As gangrenous said there are some studies being done, such as randomly surveilling people in Sydney to see who has antibodies, and thus exposure, to give an estimate of what percentage of the population may have had the virus. This is problematic in places in Australia where it has not been wide spread. There is a false negative and false positive rate in any test. Just say the false positive rate for serology testing is 1% (which is really low). If 10,000 tests are performed, 100 of those people will test positive despite never having had the virus. It gives a false impression of the spread of the virus, where the true rate of infection may have been 0.1% of the population. It is not so problematic in places like NYC where maybe 5% or more of people have had it.

[RedRaider]

Thanks Dr Z. Does the nasal swab test have similar false negative/false positive outcomes to the serology testing?
Australia seems to be in a good position with Covid19 now. The Qld Government allowing a full house at Suncorp Stadium for SOO3. Social distancing no longer deemed necessary in Brisbane.

[Dr Zaius]

False negative rate from the nasal PCR is pretty low, around 1% I think. They usually rerun positive tests to check, at least in low prevalence areas. False negative is considerably higher.

[RedRaider]

Thanks Dr Zaius. Following your previous answers I did a little search and came up with the below ABC report:

'But in the general population — where very few people have the virus — false negatives are not very common.

Are false negatives a 'problem'?
Professor Sutton said people who tested negative were unlikely to spread the virus.

"There's no capturing people who have very low viral numbers and maybe they're less infectious so it's less of an issue," he said.'

[gangrenous]

False negatives are a problem when you have people with the virus being given the green light and then interacting with others as normal because they think they don’t have it.

It’s not an issue in populations with low virus because if you don’t actually have the virus then you can’t be a false negative. Then when you multiply the small numbers who do have it by the chance of a false negative they’re rare.

Still all it takes is one to create havoc, so depends what you define as a problem.

[Seiffert82]

False negatives are a problem when you have people with the virus being given the green light and then interacting with others as normal because they think they don’t have it.

It’s not an issue in populations with low virus because if you don’t actually have the virus then you can’t be a false negative. Then when you multiply the small numbers who do have it by the chance of a false negative they’re rare.

Still all it takes is one to create havoc, so depends what you define as a problem.

I guess what he is saying is that someone being tested and receiving a false negative may be better than not being tested at all - given the assumption that the negative result indicates the virus may be less active, and therefore less infectious in that person.

[gangrenous]

All depends on the nature of the false negative.

[Dr Zaius]

A cluster in Adelaide. A complete over reaction from the rest of the country, with the exception of NSW and Victoria

[-TW-]

I found that absolutely absurd

There were 50 or 60 cases linked to that pub in Sydney and no-one really blinked an eyelid

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[The Nickman]

A cluster in Adelaide. A complete over reaction from the rest of the country, with the exception of NSW and Victoria

Yeah, the numbers in Adelaide don’t really seem concerning at all, but I said the same thing about Melbourne so my credibility took a bit of a hit there

[Dr Zaius]

A cluster in Adelaide. A complete over reaction from the rest of the country, with the exception of NSW and Victoria

Yeah, the numbers in Adelaide don’t really seem concerning at all, but I said the same thing about Melbourne so my credibility took a bit of a hit there

If it's going to be another Mel, the borders should be shut. But cases were up around 100 per day before everyone closed off Vic

[gangrenous]

They did take too long to shut the border on Vic though.

[Seiffert82]

Capacity crowd suddenly allowed for Origin 3 while the Channel 9 crew are forced to quarantine.

When science and politics collide in Queensland. Hilarious.

[Dr Zaius]

They did take too long to shut the border on Vic though.

But even Queensland didn't close the border to Victoria until they hit 80 cases a day and were a couple of weeks into rising daily case numbers.

[greeneyed]

Who cares about the Channel 9 commentators and crew? I don't. Channel 9's reaction has been ridiculous. They are the least important people who need to get across the border into Queensland. It isn't like there are no people In Queensland to take on the jobs needed to be filled. There are people who need to get across the border to see their dying parents and they need to quarantine. If Channel 9 don't want to cover the State of Origin... and follow the rules... give it to Fox League. They seem to be happy to. It would be a preferable outcome. There are many more important things than Channel 9 commentators and crew in a pandemic.

[-TW-]

Huh? Context?

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[greeneyed]

Huh? Context?

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Phil Gould has explained why the State of Origin decider won't be the same if the Queensland government doesn't do a last minute backflip and allow Nine's commentary team and production staff to fly in for Wednesday night's blockbuster Game Three: https://wwos.nine.com.au/nrl/phil-gould ... edc6aeacbf

State of Origin game three coverage at risk of technical failure: https://wwos.nine.com.au/nrl/state-of-o ... e9efd5d546

They have actually toned down the headlines and story written on Saturday, presumably because they have realised how ridiculous they were. But clearly, they haven't let it go entirely, given Gould's comments.