Are you worried about coronavirus?

Shouldn’t these numbers be divided by the numbers of tests performed?
A doubling of the number of tests performed naturally leads to an about doubled number of positive test results.
Maybe, the quotients haven’t increased that much?
At least for Germany, this is the case: the quotient remains quite low.

1 Like

New positive test results per 1000 tests performed in Germany!

1 Like

I don’t think they should, because testing is not done randomly. In my state the number of tests performed per day has nearly tripled (mostly due to changes is testing requirements) while the number of cases has remained fairly flat.

I would interpret this to mean that testing was already catching most people who are positive, not that the true number of cases has fallen significantly.

It is a different story if you are in a jurisdiction with insufficient testing of course.

3 Likes

Obviously, the quotient cannot drop to zero because of the inherent error rate of the PCR test.

Continents graph would be impossible to draw because number of tests is unknown for each country.

For contries with at least 5M tests (only PCR? or + igM??)

When there are too many tests per 1000 people, % of positive may decrease even when real number increasing
When there are too few tests, % of positive may be big because only people with symptoms are tested
So its not making things clearer

But information of number of new cases is enough to see when and where wave significantly reduces

3 Likes

Then, if they reduce the number of tests, the wave disappears…? :wink:
I think it can’t be wrong to know as much as possible about the number of tests.

2 Likes

Its not probable that all countries will stop testing
So if numbers are “big”, therefore there are probably many tests and pandemic not ended.

number of new tests / week for countries for which there is such information
each day different countries and different number of countries had it, until 2020-08-23


number of new cases / week for above:

My real question is not on the numbers but on how to deal with the incoming season of normal influenza. Can you imagine the caos when 2-3 million of persons get influenza? How to discriminate if it is covid? We cannot make million of tests to everybody. I suspect that this will be a nightmare winter for the social harmony.

The good news is that all the measures against covid automatically prevent influenza from spreading as well.

7 Likes

if someone got any virus that spreads by air, they already doing something wrong and can’t be trusted to not have coronavirus as well

don’t,
just run from anyone who coughs.

buy cheap pulse oximeter, stay home if you have any cold-like symptom, call to hospital if your oxygen saturation reduces.

There is absolutely no measure that offers 100% protection. It doesn’t work like that. So I find this a bit overboard.

1 Like

FFP3 Filters at least 99% of airborne particles

Um, you say so yourself.

3 Likes

This is quite interesting. I have pulse-oximeter and honestly I don’t know which is the level of the oxigen I should worry about: 97%, 95%, 91%. I don’t know. When the value becomes really abnormal? My mother (88 yo) has a saturation of 94-95% and she is fine. I sometimes get 96-97% and on some specific finger even 94-95%. Not so easy…

2 Likes

Miyazaki in Nausicaa predicted it:

image

4 Likes

when you are far enough from someone on open air, probability of getting even 1 atom from that person’s mouth is very low because concentration reduces with distance. Normal mask reduces safe distance at least 2 times because it reduce concentration.
now imagine * FFP3
if everyone would have such respirator, even artificially made virus of apocalypse would do nothing.

different pulse-oximeters may have different values on different persons and fingers
but if you always measure with same pulse-oximeter, on same finger, there will be
statistical minimum below which it never reduces. And if it does, call to hospital.

Healthy individuals at sea level usually exhibit oxygen saturation values between 96% and 99%, and should be above 94%.
At 1,600 meters’ altitude (about one mile high) oxygen saturation should be above 92%

80% Impaired mental function
75% Loss of consciousness

2 Likes

No. Basically, not at all.
You can’t say with 100% certainty that someone did something wrong and got the virus. The low probability is still an existing probabilty.

Having significantly lower chances to get the virus thanks to masks is one thing. Saying someone must, absolutely must have done something wrong if they got the virus is a completely different thing.

I can’t believe we are arguing 99 and 100 are not the same.

2 Likes

A brilliant idea - fine anyone who got coronavirus, there will be no coronavirus in no time lol. Similar to how in some countries you can get a fine if you don’t have a job.


I bet some people are gonna wear a mask forever after this. I heard people say that no matter how low risk is, if someone somewhere could die, you could be saving a life so you should wear a mask. But that’s true even without a pandemic, and without a flu season. Might as well just live in a hazmat suit.

Kind of like people who faced starvation at some point are careful with the food many years later.

2 Likes

so is winning in lottery

coronavirus is not too deadly, so maybe its not rational to force everyone to do it
But if artificially made virus of apocalypse will come, its not really hard to take measures to have at least 99% safety.

1 Like

I think we are having two different discussions, so I’ll leave it at that.