IOM Covid removing restrictions

[Gladys]

1 hour ago, Max Power said:

It may be just a coincidence but there is a queue at the Grandstand testing area since the case was announced yesterday. I haven't seen that since April!

Sure it wasn't the three way lights at Gov Bridge?

[thesultanofsheight]

2 hours ago, The Old Git said:

I see Guernsey is copying us now with a new case with someone returning from the UK testing positive in quarantine.

 

Yeah something odd (or indeed common to testing rules changing) in the timing here. Cases announced in both places within 48 hours? I think they’re mentally preparing people for the optional 7 day testing which is likely to throw up more of these asymptomatic cases. As plenty have said of the last few months if you don’t test people during isolation then you don’t get any positives do you? But by not testing I suppose for a time you can attempt to live off the perception that you’re “Covid-free” when in all likelihood you’re probably not.

The Guernsey spokesman in that link above effectively confirms that

“Prior to Phase 5b, with a 14 day self-isolation requirement in place, we would not have identified any positive asymptomatic cases entering the island as there was no testing required. 

'So it is statistically possible that we’ve had other cases but with no symptoms or testing, we’ve not identified them as we have with this case.”

Edited September 7, 2020 by thesultanofsheight

[gettafa]

1 hour ago, John Wright said:

The Guernsey one was a Guernsey resident who was a patient who had returned to Guernsey after treatment in UK.

The IoM Gov will not release such detail, and even The New Messiah on the matter, our Rache, has proclaimed it thus on Twitter.

I think it is useful to know such details, not for pitchforkian reasons but to be aware of how and where an infection has arisen.

[Nom de plume]

11 minutes ago, thesultanofsheight said:

Yeah something odd (or indeed common to testing rules changing) in the timing here. Cases announced in both places within 48 hours? I think they’re mentally preparing people for the optional 7 day testing which is likely to throw up more of these asymptomatic cases. As plenty have said of the last few months if you don’t test people during isolation then you don’t get any positives do you? But by not testing I suppose for a time you can attempt to live off the perception that you’re “Covid-free” when in all likelihood you’re probably not.

The Guernsey spokesman in that link effectively confirms that

“Prior to Phase 5b, with a 14 day self-isolation requirement in place, we would not have identified any positive asymptomatic cases entering the island as there was no testing required. 

'So it is statistically possible that we’ve had other cases but with no symptoms or testing, we’ve not identified them as we have with this case.”

Test more, find more. Simples.

We only seem to be testing key workers.

The virus is here, no doubt.

[John Wright]

2 minutes ago, gettafa said:

The IoM Gov will not release such detail, and even The New Messiah on the matter, our Rache, has proclaimed it thus on Twitter.

I think it is useful to know such details, not for pitchforkian reasons but to be aware of how and where an infection has arisen.

Im not exactly sure it matters to the general public in any meaningful sense whether its

a returning resident on repatriation 

a returning resident who has gone away for a short break

a patient transfer returning from treatment

a keyworker

a person allowed in on compassionate grounds

it May be useful to @rachomics and @wrighty to know  the type of person, the reason for travel, where it might have been picked up. But I think policy, which is political, is pretty well set at 1:5000 or 20:100,000 ( as everyone else uses - why the 1:5000 for IOM is just confusing ) as the trigger for travel restrictions/quarantine at the border.

Surely the important things is that isolation, track and trace work and that we know if it’s imported or community transmission.

There really is no excuse for the UK and British Islands not having an app. A communal one. Not different ones for each of the devolved administration/crown dependency.

ive got the Spanish one installed. It has an English option. I get weekly messages telling me that no one I’ve had close contact with for 10 minutes has been diagnosed. If someone is diagnosed I’d get an isolate message immediately they input to their app. I’d then arrange testing myself.

[thesultanofsheight]

11 minutes ago, Nom de plume said:

Test more, find more. Simples.

We only seem to be testing key workers.

The virus is here, no doubt.

Politics (government rather than Tynwald) and inertia seems to be driving some of this so far not science. We cannot live in a bubble, a bubble is completely unsustainable, even if you create a bubble you can’t live in it forever. And actually the bubble mentality is a psychologically damaging environment to create as it creates fear of outsiders and all sorts of other strange and insular behaviours and nobody can move on from it. The optional 7 day testing is going to reveal much more of this and people just need to get used to it as the virus is circulating, there is no vaccine, and so locking yourself away from the world isn’t a cure as we’ll go bankrupt in the meantime waiting for it to go away. 

Edited September 7, 2020 by thesultanofsheight

[Non-Believer]

1 minute ago, thesultanofsheight said:

"We cannot live in a bubble, a bubble is completely unsustainable, even if you create a bubble you can’t live in it forever. And actually the bubble mentality is a psychologically damaging environment to create as it creates fear of outsiders and all sorts of other strange and insular  behaviours and nobody can move on from it"

That encapsulates and explains a great deal of IoMG and its CS....

[Nom de plume]

2 minutes ago, thesultanofsheight said:

Politics (government rather than Tynwald) and inertia seems to be driving some of this so far not science. We cannot live in a bubble, a bubble is completely unsustainable, even if you create a bubble you can’t live in it forever. And actually the bubble mentality is a psychologically damaging environment to create as it creates fear of outsiders and all sorts of other strange and insular  behaviours and nobody can move on from it. The optional 7 testing is going to reveal much more of this and people just need to get used to it. 

You make a very good & valid point regarding the fear of outsiders or ‘comeovers’ as the natives describe with such relish.

The longer it goes on, the more they will be perceived as disease carriers, demons or worse.

Are these psychological factors even being considered by those in dark corridors who control us but are never seen?

[thesultanofsheight]

19 minutes ago, Nom de plume said:

You make a very good & valid point regarding the fear of outsiders or ‘comeovers’ as the natives describe with such relish. The longer it goes on, the more they will be perceived as disease carriers, demons or worse.

Kierkegaard - Fear and trembling 

“Infinite resignation is the last stage before faith, so anyone who has not made this movement does not have faith, for only in infinite resignation does an individual become conscious of his eternal validity, and only then can one speak of grasping existence by virtue of faith“

Edited September 7, 2020 by thesultanofsheight

[TheTeapot]

Certainly been some psychological damage been done to some of you. 

[Kopek]

There didn't seem to be much 'fear of outsiders' or trembling of 'the Vulnerable' in Barbary Coast' last night !!! Packed.

[thesultanofsheight]

1 minute ago, Kopek said:

There didn't seem to be much 'fear of outsiders' or trembling of 'the Vulnerable' in Barbary Coast' last night !!! Packed.

Well there weren’t any outsiders were there. The borders are “closed”. 

[P.K.]

3 hours ago, Max Power said:

It may be just a coincidence but there is a queue at the Grandstand testing area since the case was announced yesterday. I haven't seen that since April!

No coincidence.

As of today anyone who has completed 7 days self-isolation can now pay £50 for a test. If it returns negative tomorrow they are released from self-isolation.

There are still caveats however. You can't socialise in pubs, restaurants and so forth but you can shop for essentials and even go back to work if your role is not customer facing.

[Roger Mexico]

4 hours ago, Manx Bean said:

Of the several thousand residents that have gone away and then returned, or have repatriated one, ONE, ONE has tested positive.

Well yes, but how many would have tested positive if all the returnees and key workers had been tested?  We know that very few tests were being carried out and that most of the 50-60 a day would be due to routine pre-swabbing of all hospital admissions.  Otherwise it seems to have been very difficult to get tested even you wanted to - certainly it can't have been a very high percentage of the 600 or so who are supposed to have be coming to the Island every week.  So a lot of people may have developed a mild case when in quarantine without knowing it recovered and become non-infectious,  But if they hadn't isolated, they might have passed it on the others.

People are misreading this new case in two opposing ways.  One is to assume it's something dreadful, when in reality it shows the isolation system is working in exactly the way it should.  The second is that it indicates there's hardly any infection around, so we can ignore it.  That's not true either and we are particularly vulnerable to even one new infection on the Island because we don't have any of the measures in place that will slow down the spread. 

This would be similar to the situation with the recent outbreak in New Zealand, where infection spread rapidly from just one person, partly because people weren't looking for it and so it wasn't picked up, but also because activities were taking place that spread things rapidly.  For example at lot of infections were via an evangelical church (all that hymn singing).

 

3 hours ago, Gladys said:

The stats in all of this have been misleading.  The death from CV in the UK were always skewed by including deaths from any cause after a positive test.  They have now clarified that their mortality figures count anyone dying within  28 days of a positive test. 

What is misleading is the UK Government spin, faithfully repeated by its tame media.  This is partly because the 28 day cut-off isn't true - If you think about it, some people are going to take more than 28 days after diagnosis to die.  We know from the ICNARC figures that a quarter of those who died were in ICU for more than 16 days[1] and when you add on the time before they are admitted and quicker diagnosis than early in the pandemic, then taking more than 28 days to die after diagnosis is very possible. 

But using an arbitrary period (whether 28 days or forever) is a stupid thing to do in any case.  The best judges of what someone died of are the doctors treating them.  That will be reflected in the weekly ONS figures derived from death certificates, the latest of which (registered to 28 Aug ) show 52,099 deaths in total for the year attributed to Covid-19[2].  This compares to the 41,551 'official' deaths for the whole of the UK

In actual fact, removing deaths after more that 28 days reduced the figures by 5400 or so - and some of those may not be valid as I said.  But the main purpose about making a fuss about the methodological change wasn't to get more accurate data, but to try to give the impression that the 'real' figures were magically much less than they are and therefore people shouldn't worry.

 

[1]  Indeed of those who survived a quarter were in ICU for more than 28 days.  This explains why Covid-19 overwhelms ICUs so easily, beds are filled for weeks on end with patients needing prolonged care.

[2]  There is some evidence (see graph in Section 2) that there was some misclassification of Covid-19 deaths as influenza in March and April, presumably because of lack of testing at the time.  This may mean the totals are under by a few thousand.

[P.K.]

2 hours ago, Roger Mexico said:

In actual fact, removing deaths after more that 28 days reduced the figures by 5400 or so - and some of those may not be valid as I said.  But the main purpose about making a fuss about the methodological change wasn't to get more accurate data, but to try to give the impression that the 'real' figures were magically much less than they are and therefore people shouldn't worry should continue to vote Conservative.

[2]  There is some evidence (see graph in Section 2) that there was some misclassification of Covid-19 deaths as influenza in March and April, presumably because of lack of testing at the time.  This may mean the totals are under by a few thousand.

I read at the time that the main reason many deaths from Covid-19 were put on the Death Certificate as something else was simply because GP's etc didn't have the faintest idea what they were dealing with.