I was watching a report on C4 last week. He was an Icelandic academic working on the recently published report from Oxford University. He also stated that 50% of the Icelandics that tested positive were asymptomatic.
Oh right. I assume that’s the report that said up to 50% of Britons could already have had it at the end of March? It’s interesting to see cases like France as it gives it more credence - particularly the fact that the gentleman in question had not travelled.
Iceland, South Korea and the Diamond Princess were closer to the truth on asymptomatic cases due to broader testing alright. Would be interesting if the HSE here could disclose the numbers in nursing homes and health workers who have been more randomly tested in the last couple of weeks.
My query on the “it’s been here in bigger numbers that we thought and from earlier” is why weren’t we seeing the numbers in ICU beds filled and deaths?
More so on the daily figures how many are nursing home hospitals and healthcare worker cases. All they say is clusters. Might show that 80-90% of new cases are in those setting.
Yup. I think the bigger numbers are an absolute though given the asymptomatic carriers.
You’d wonder is it a case that it didn’t reach the more at risk population in the numbers seen for a period of time. Lots of younger people carrying it around post Christmas in January, many in urban areas, people with milder symptoms and asymptomatic carriers. Unlikely to mix with older parents for a bit after the Christmas break and certainly not go into care homes. Then once it reaches them things get ugly.
With say 100k cases by the start of February in France, distributed amongst asymptomatic carriers and those with symptoms you would have only 50k cases with symptoms which would appear as a bad flu to most, a % end up in hospital. Would that make a bit statistical difference, particularly if it managed to avoid at risk areas en masse?
In terms of the build up in China, it looks similar, but their outbreak was November so you move up the critical period spot.
But given the supposed R level and how infectious this was, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense that it would only reach these areas in significant numbers 6-8 weeks after coming into a country.