Coronavirus 4 - Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

[stui magpie]

Any information on what co-morbities the deceased may or may not have had?

[Pies4shaw]

Active cases are down from 830,000 on Jan 16 to 695,000 today

Not for any sensible reason - the jurisdictions basically don't report "ceased-actives" reliably, so on 17 January Qld recorded a "drop" in active cases from 204,000 to 87,000 - that was just a lump sum adjustment when they got around to it. They didn't actually have 117,000 people cease to have active infection on one day.

In the absence of any explanation of individual jurisdiction reporting of active cases, it's hard to know what the rest of the "drop" (almost, by the look of it, wholly in NSW) means - or, indeed, whether it means anything. It is likely just an automatic administrative result of the drop in new reported cases - the NSW Health page states that "Active COVID-19 cases are defined as people who have tested positive for COVID-19, are in isolation and are being clinically monitored by NSW Health. Cases are considered active for 14 days after their symptom onset date. Cases who have been hospitalised are considered active until they are discharged." So, in NSW, it looks like you cease to be an "active" COVID case 14 days after symptom onset, unless you are (still) hospitalized.

[stui magpie]

Whereas in Vic, people still in hospital but no longer have Covid fall out of the numbers.

Trying to make any sense of the numbers is a dogs breakfast, particularly without context

[stui magpie]

Good article by Catherine Bennet.

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opini ... 827a9daed2

[Dave The Man]

Good article by Catherine Bennet.

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opini ... 827a9daed2

Can't be 100% Sure we have Reached it's Peak yet.

Hope it is but can't take anything as a Certainty

[What'sinaname]

Good article by Catherine Bennet.

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opini ... 827a9daed2

Can't be 100% Sure we have Reached it's Peak yet.

Hope it is but can't take anything as a Certainty

We can never be sure, but the numbers suggest new infections / cases have peaked. Now we'll see a peak of hospitalisations, ICU and deaths. By the end of Jan, we should be through most of it - which is pretty much what the experts predicted.

[Pies4shaw]

Reported in NSW today:

- 2,781 hospitalisations
- 212 people in ICU
- 25 lives lost

[stui magpie]

^

82 less people in hospital and 5 less in ICU than the day before.

[Pies4shaw]

And in Victoria:

Hospital: 1,206
ICU: 122
Deaths: 15

[Pies4shaw]

Active cases are down from 830,000 on Jan 16 to 695,000 today

Not for any sensible reason - the jurisdictions basically don't report "ceased-actives" reliably, so on 17 January Qld recorded a "drop" in active cases from 204,000 to 87,000 - that was just a lump sum adjustment when they got around to it. They didn't actually have 117,000 people cease to have active infection on one day.

In the absence of any explanation of individual jurisdiction reporting of active cases, it's hard to know what the rest of the "drop" (almost, by the look of it, wholly in NSW) means - or, indeed, whether it means anything. It is likely just an automatic administrative result of the drop in new reported cases - the NSW Health page states that "Active COVID-19 cases are defined as people who have tested positive for COVID-19, are in isolation and are being clinically monitored by NSW Health. Cases are considered active for 14 days after their symptom onset date. Cases who have been hospitalised are considered active until they are discharged." So, in NSW, it looks like you cease to be an "active" COVID case 14 days after symptom onset, unless you are (still) hospitalized.

After I posted this yesterday, Victoria did a dump of "ceased active" cases, reducing the reported total number of active cases from 235,035 to 116,183. That was obviously a work of fiction because they've bumped it to 246,894 today, although there are only a little under 22,000 new cases reported.

[Pies4shaw]

^

82 less people in hospital and 5 less in ICU than the day before.

It's interesting, isn't it?

Omicron was first detected in Australia on 28 November 2021. Daily case numbers at that stage were on a 7-day moving average of 1,362 cases per day. That number was a slight increase on the "bottom" of the numbers caused by the Delta spread from mid-June 2021 - that "bottom" was a 7-day moving average of 1,212 cases per day on 20 November 2021.

At that time, hospitalizations nationally were 512 (in total), with 73 people in ICU and 33 people on a ventilator. Yesterday, when all jurisdictions had reported, it was 5,307 hospitalizations, 424 people in ICU and 114 on a ventilator. By the looks of it, the "Delta" peaks were (on different days) 1,551 hospitalized, 312 in ICU and 184 on a ventilator.

The maximum number of deaths nationally in any given week as a result of the "Delta" event was 107 (reached in two different weeks in October 2021, most recently in the week ending 23 October 2021). By 30 November 2021, deaths from the "Delta" event had declined to 38 a week. Deaths are presently 9 or 10 times that - and well over 3 times higher than they were at the "height" of the "Delta" event. Between mid-July 2021 and the end of November 2021, "Delta" killed just under 1,100 people at a rate of about 54 per week. By comparison, 600 people have died since 5 January 2022, at a rate of about 280 per week.

We are plainly in the middle of a policy-led debacle (except, of course, for WA - although it plans to open its borders in a couple of weeks and one might reasonably anticipate a commensurate mess there, also, a couple of weeks after that point). Plainly, cases will decline as the impact of the "silly season" recedes. How much cases will decline, we won't actually know - because most jurisdictions are implementing a series of practical impediments to prevent new cases from being reported. The "trailing" numbers of hospitalizations and deaths will - from past experience of each variant outbreak here - continue for many weeks.

[stui magpie]

No arguments there, what complicates things is what we don't know.

As per the article I posted yesterday, just because Omicron is running rampant doesn't mean Delta isn't still around.

Omicron is much more likely to infect fully vaccinated people than Delta but less likely to attack the lungs as it's prone to remain in the upper respiratory region. As such we should assume most of the people being ventilated are Delta cases. There's likely more Delta cases circulating now than at any time before but those numbers would be dwarfed by the Omicron numbers, but with genomic sequencing only done in a tiny minority, we don't know.

The fully vaccinated people who died, which strain did they have? How long had it been since their second dose?

Nick Kyrgious came out Tuesday night and won his tennis match. 7 days earlier he had been diagnosed positive, 5 days earlier he was sleeping 17 hours a day and not a well boy.

The experience from Sth Africa seems to be that Omicron burns bright but burns fast, letting it run means it will essentially wipe out Delta for us, the number in hospital will plateau (which it already seems to have done) and start to fall while ICU and Deaths will tail a few weeks behind that.

By this time next month we should have a real idea of where we stand.

[Dave The Man]

The fully vaccinated people who died, which strain did they have? How long had it been since their second dose?

Very Good Question as the Vaccine does get Weaker.

I was over 6 Month since the 2nd Jab when I got the 3rd

[Jezza]

McGowan shits the bed and won’t be reopening the borders on February 5.

[Pies4shaw]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-20/ ... /100771492

"But if you have a look at the alternative, which is what is going on in the eastern states at the moment, they basically have hundreds of people dying, they have mass dislocation in the economy, in logistics, freight, and all elements of the economy.

"They have huge numbers of people not going to work, kids not going to school, hospitals overflowing with patients, hospitals in meltdown, that is what is happening.

"It would be grossly irresponsible of me not to act on the basis of that because to do anything else without high levels of vaccination would basically mean we would be responsible for potentially lots of people dying."