Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Bulb said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Note that it's not as strict lockdown as other places—shops and services are closed except listed, but almost everything is listed, so they really only closed clothes and shoes shops and hairdressers and similar (restaurants are take-away-only since last week already), and we are not free to go anywhere except almost anything is excepted again and since going to nature is permitted, there is no way to enforce any restrictions anyway.
It sounds like they learned something from watching the lockdowns elsewhere but had to make some theater to keep people from losing their shit. It looks like it missed you guys almost entirely in the Spring.
If you compare daily detected cases to daily deaths, you'll note that the parsimonious explanation is that there were few (detected) cases in Spring and therefore few (recorded) deaths. Peak daily cases in March-April were in the 350-400 range. Currently, there are ~10k new daily cases being recorded.
It should not escape our attention that daily cases have increased ~30-fold, while daily deaths have quadrupled. As of writing, the CFR for Czechia is 0.83%., down from 0.91% on 1st October.
As I've pointed out in the Garage thread, the normal crude death rate in Czechia is in the region of 1.05%.
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@GOG said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
If you compare daily detected cases to daily deaths, you'll note that the parsimonious explanation is that there were few (detected) cases in Spring and therefore few (recorded) deaths.
True, the method of counting deaths is always a big question. I'm sure we over counted since laboratory confirmations weren't always required and that's beyond the with vs due to issue.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Very few masks that I see people wearing in public appear to be capable of doing much in the way of sealing around the nose irregardless of whether they're disposable, home made or commercial cloth masks.
I would have upvoted this post, but for that one word.
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@HardwareGeek said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Very few masks that I see people wearing in public appear to be capable of doing much in the way of sealing around the nose irregardless of whether they're disposable, home made or commercial cloth masks.
I would have upvoted this post, but for that one word.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
The moist air (and the aerosols that go with that) are jetting out and past my glasses into the room.
Sounds like it isn't quite fitting around the nose right.
I lost the mask my wife made that had a wire over the nose. She's going to make a new one. It's the only thing that makes wearing a mask with glasses bearable (also I've cut up old CPAP mask straps so I can put that around my head instead of hanging the mask on my ears, which is also much more comfortable).
Very few masks that I see people wearing in public appear to be capable of doing much in the way of sealing around the nose irregardless of whether they're disposable, home made or commercial cloth masks.
My friend recommended pipe cleaner. I haven't tried it yet, the one cloth mask I like doesn't have it. That was part of the problem at the gym.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@GOG said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
If you compare daily detected cases to daily deaths, you'll note that the parsimonious explanation is that there were few (detected) cases in Spring and therefore few (recorded) deaths.
True, the method of counting deaths is always a big question. I'm sure we over counted since laboratory confirmations weren't always required and that's beyond the with vs due to issue.
It's even simpler than that.
If we assume for a moment that we're capturing all COVID cases, it's totally unsurprising that more cases = more deaths, because COVID does actually manage to kill (or at least contribute to the death of) someone every now and again and with large numbers tail events become common.
If, on the other hand, we are capturing only a fraction of the cases (because of limited testing capacity, for example), we would expect to see exactly the same thing, as soon as we increase our testing to encompass a greater portion of the population.
Where it gets fun is that with a CFR around normal mortality and case sampling that is demographically representative (with the limit being the entire population being infected), you would see the exact same thing if the virus killed nobody at all (1% of the population has died, as expected; 1% of all cases, which are the entire population, 'coz everyone has it, have died;
:its-the-same-picture:
).
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@GOG my assumption is more that deaths are more likely to be an accurate gauge than positive tests because they get more attention. Not all deaths will be "correctly" attributed but they generally get counted at least (and generally get some scrutiny regarding the cause), as opposed to most infections, especially in the Spring when mild or asymptomatic infections were much less likely to be caught by a test.
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@HardwareGeek said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
The moist air (and the aerosols that go with that) are jetting out and past my glasses into the room.
Sounds like it isn't quite fitting around the nose right.
IME, the cheap masks made for the general public are simply incapable of being fitted around the nose right. Or maybe can be fitted right, briefly, but the plastic (not metal, because cheap) nosepiece relaxes and requires constant adjustment (i.e., touching the mask) in a (futile) attempt to keep it fitted right.
To say nothing of it continually moving upwards and trying to rub your eyeballs... (meanwhile my glasses are trying to slide down my nose. life sucks.)
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@cvi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla In that case, I might have gotten lucky with the disposable masks that I found - they come with a metal "wire" (thin flat piece of metal) built-in. Bending it to a face shape indeed makes a huge difference when wearing glasses.
POST A LINK!!!
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@dcon said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@HardwareGeek said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
The moist air (and the aerosols that go with that) are jetting out and past my glasses into the room.
Sounds like it isn't quite fitting around the nose right.
IME, the cheap masks made for the general public are simply incapable of being fitted around the nose right. Or maybe can be fitted right, briefly, but the plastic (not metal, because cheap) nosepiece relaxes and requires constant adjustment (i.e., touching the mask) in a (futile) attempt to keep it fitted right.
To say nothing of it continually moving upwards and trying to rub your eyeballs... (meanwhile my glasses are trying to slide down my nose. life sucks.)
My eyes aren't so bad (I think about -1.25 and -1.5). I don't strictly need my glasses but they do help, I think mostly the astigmatism correction. This means when I wear my mask I take them off to avoid fogging. And because I don't really need them I'm likely to forget them in the car for a while. Or hang them on my shirt and forget to put them back on. I wouldn't be surprised that if during the pandemic I've only worn them about 50% of the time.
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@dcon said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@cvi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla In that case, I might have gotten lucky with the disposable masks that I found - they come with a metal "wire" (thin flat piece of metal) built-in. Bending it to a face shape indeed makes a huge difference when wearing glasses.
POST A LINK!!!
Here - but I'm not sure if that's of any help to you. Kinda doubt they ship internationally. I got them on a visit to Switzerland this summer (picking them up physically at a physical store, , I know).
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@cvi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dcon said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@cvi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla In that case, I might have gotten lucky with the disposable masks that I found - they come with a metal "wire" (thin flat piece of metal) built-in. Bending it to a face shape indeed makes a huge difference when wearing glasses.
POST A LINK!!!
Here - but I'm not sure if that's of any help to you. Kinda doubt they ship internationally. I got them on a visit to Switzerland this summer (picking them up physically at a physical store, , I know).
Bummer. Somehow I knew that...
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@Bulb said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
So Czechia is back to the same level of lockdown as in the spring starting tomorrow morning and lasting tentatively until 3rd November
COVID epidemic suddenly ending on the day of US elections. I was pretty sure that was going to happen, but I didn't expect it to happen in Czechia.
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@GOG said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
If we assume for a moment that we're capturing all COVID cases, it's totally unsurprising that more cases = more deaths, because COVID does actually manage to kill (or at least contribute to the death of) someone every now and again and with large numbers tail events become common.
A reasonable assumption is that we are, and always were, capturing all severe cases, but now we are capturing more of the mild and asymptomatic¹ ones. Hospitals did and do cope³ and never complained about lack of test sets, so any patient admitted with fever and difficulty to breathe was almost surely diagnosed correctly. And someone with such symptoms not seeking medical treatment would be a very rare exception.
So I am fairly confident the death numbers then and now are comparable and really reflect that the situation is worse now.
¹ This creates problem for comparing to other diseases, because for any other disease cases are those with clinical symptoms. This makes the lethality of COVID relatively lower.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Bulb said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
So Czechia is back to the same level of lockdown as in the spring starting tomorrow morning and lasting tentatively until 3rd November
COVID epidemic suddenly ending on the day of US elections. I was pretty sure that was going to happen, but I didn't expect it to happen in Czechia.
Don't worry, the minister of health actually said he expects the epidemic² to peak around 8.–11. of November. So they just declared the measures in effect until 3rd, but they very clearly expect to extend it.
² It wouldn't be called epidemics by criteria for flu, which are something like 1,800—symptomatic—cases per 100,000 people and we are nowhere near that number even including the PCR-positive. But using the same criteria for all diseases doesn't make that much sense, virality and hospital admission rate need to be taken into account and they seem to be newer, maybe in large part because this disease is new.
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³ Hospitals are reported to be nearing their capacity, but there also appears to be many people there who don't really need much medical attention (possibly any more), but cannot be discharged for social reasons. Government is trying to arrange some other accommodation to offload these people, and also for people who don't need medical attention, but shouldn't stay at home so they don't infect other family members. That should help, plus they activated the military field hospital as a backup.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Bulb said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
So Czechia is back to the same level of lockdown as in the spring starting tomorrow morning and lasting tentatively until 3rd November
COVID epidemic suddenly ending on the day of US elections. I was pretty sure that was going to happen, but I didn't expect it to happen in Czechia.
No, it's scheduled to end the day after the election in the US. At least if Biden wins. If Trump wins, the end of the epidemic will be rescheduled for 6 November 2024.
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@Bulb said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
³ Hospitals are reported to be nearing their capacity, but there also appears to be many people there who don't really need much medical attention (possibly any more), but cannot be discharged for social reasons. Government is trying to arrange some other accommodation to offload these people, and also for people who don't need medical attention, but shouldn't stay at home so they don't infect other family members. That should help, plus they activated the military field hospital as a backup.
This part is what I find completely to be expected and why I continue to assert that while the situation may be "worse" in terms of raw numbers, there is less reason to be concerned about COVID now that we have a large number of cases to form conclusions from than in the Spring, when we didn't.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Bulb said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
So Czechia is back to the same level of lockdown as in the spring starting tomorrow morning and lasting tentatively until 3rd November
COVID epidemic suddenly ending on the day of US elections. I was pretty sure that was going to happen, but I didn't expect it to happen in Czechia.
Actually, the COVID epidemic suddenly got worse just after the elections (October 10).
Just another example how the US political garbage is not directly applicable everywhere. Especially in Europe, where each country has its own, localized garbage (EU is just a lowest common denominator).
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@Kamil-Podlesak said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Bulb said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
So Czechia is back to the same level of lockdown as in the spring starting tomorrow morning and lasting tentatively until 3rd November
COVID epidemic suddenly ending on the day of US elections. I was pretty sure that was going to happen, but I didn't expect it to happen in Czechia.
Actually, the COVID epidemic suddenly got worse just after the elections (October 10).
The same happened in Poland! Weird, huh?
Just another example how the US political garbage is not directly applicable everywhere.
I just found it funny that they chose the end date of November 3, of all possible days.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Just another example how the US political garbage is not directly applicable everywhere.
I just found it funny that they chose the end date of November 3, of all possible days.
It's 30 days after October 5. So, it's probably just a coincidence.
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@Kamil-Podlesak said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
So, it's probably just a coincidence.
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From the Absurd Theatre of Czechia:
TL;DR the minister of healthcare, nominated about a month ago, was spotted by reporters, a day after decree closing all restaurants that he himself announced, holding a (political) meeting in a restaurant. He wouldn't resign himself, so he'll be dismissed.
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Map Status: Well, fuck.
Looks like not even the virus wants to live in
Eeast Germany, though.
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@topspin Looks like someone either needs to rescale their map key or to use more colours.
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@dkf I think France added “black” after red, but now everything’s black.
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@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@topspin Looks like someone either needs to rescale their map key or to use more colours.
Not as badly as ours do
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@PleegWat they picked a smooth hue, though. Not aggressive, very relaxing.
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dkf I think France added “black” after red, but now everything’s black.
I think that didn't last for long -- in fact, it lasted for so little that I cannot even find any mention of it now. Any search about those green/orange/red zones only brings back results from the end of the lock-down (in May/June). I think all of France climbed into red (and above) probably one week after they announced this new system and then they brought in curfews and totally ignored the colours.
The curfew started 2 weeks ago in the largest cities, then last week it was extended to most cities (about 2/3 of the population now, I think), and now the government is teasing about new measures that will be announced tomorrow, one of most spoken-about idea is to extend the curfew hours (from 7pm instead of the current 9pm), but local lock-downs are also touted. We'll see.
The most annoying thing to me is that everyone, in the government or in medical circles, says that measures take at least 1-2 weeks, if not 2-3 weeks, before any effect is seen, and yet they add new measures every week saying that the previous ones weren't enough. I know that it's mostly a communication exercise at this point, but IMO they should directly go to the most stringent measure that they might end up taking, since they are building up to it regardless of what previous measures are doing (since they don't wait to see their effect).
Though at least I heard this morning the interior minister (who usually is the first person who wants to curb public liberties, whatever the party they're from, because "law and order!1!") saying that restrictions inside private homes would be unconstitutional (e.g. no more than 6 persons inside like in the UK can only ever be a recommendation, not a strict rule), and so would be a ban on public demonstrations. Though they still have the "state of emergency" laws that allow them to suspend usual rules, so it's not totally out, but at least they're aware they have to tread carefully.
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@remi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
no more than 6 persons inside like in the UK can only ever be a recommendation, not a strict rule
It's awkward to enforce anyway, and the problem is in the contacts between social bubbles rather than the exact size of a bubble (which should ideally be about 1 household, whatever that is).
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@dkf I agree, and combined with the awfulness in terms of individual liberties, I think it was a bad idea from the start. But it's not like the UK government really thinks through what they're doing at the moment. Or just thinks, at all.
Though OTOH when I see that the same people who whine about being treated like children when new restrictions are imposed, also whine about the government not being clear enough when the rules are longer than 3 words, it feels like we're all getting the governments we deserve, really.
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@remi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
it feels like we're all getting the governments we deserve, really.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
– H. L. Mencken
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@remi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
But it's not like the UK government really thinks through what they're doing at the moment. Or just thinks, at all.
It's only a hard fact demonstrated every. single. day. ( )
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@remi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
everyone, in the government or in medical circles, says that measures take at least 1-2 weeks, if not 2-3 weeks, before any effect is seen,
about 10 days incubation time and 2-3 days delay in statistics, so the trend doesn't really start until 2 weeks after introducing the measure. However, what can probably be identified more quickly is how well people are complying with new measures. If a measure doesn't result in the expected behaviour change, that can probably be identified after only a week.
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@PleegWat said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
If a measure doesn't result in the expected behaviour change, that can probably be identified after only a week.
If that's the first thing you suspect when a measure doesn't yield the expected statistical results, what would it take to convince you that the measure simply didn't work?
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@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@PleegWat said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
If a measure doesn't result in the expected behaviour change, that can probably be identified after only a week.
If that's the first thing you suspect when a measure doesn't yield the expected statistical results, what would it take to convince you that the measure simply didn't work?
"We instituted a curfew, but people are not actually meeting other people less"
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@PleegWat What about this situation? "We instituted a curfew, but cases are still increasing even though people are meeting less."
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@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@PleegWat What about this situation? "We instituted a curfew, but cases are still increasing even though people are meeting less."
Highlighted for your convenience:
@PleegWat said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
If a measure doesn't result in the expected behaviour change, that can probably be identified after only a week.
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@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@PleegWat What about this situation? "We instituted a curfew, but cases are still increasing even though people are meeting less."
We have a measure (curfew), an intended indirect effect (less cases) and an intended direct effect meant to cause the indirect effect (people meeting less).
If people are not meeting less, we probably know that after a week or two from various indicators, before we know what happened to the number of cases.
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@topspin There are four possible results of implementing a measure to slow the spread of a virus:
- People comply with the measure and the spread slows or stops.
- People don't comply with the measure and the spread continues or increases.
- People comply with the measure and the spread continues or increases.
- People don't comply with the measure and the spread slows or stops.
@PleegWat said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
If people are not meeting less, we probably know that after a week or two from various indicators, before we know what happened to the number of cases.
I get that, but it seems to me that you're paying more attention to whether people are complying with the measure than to whether the measure actually works.
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@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
I get that, but it seems to me that you're paying more attention to whether people are complying with the measure than to whether the measure actually works.
The whole point of his post was that it might be possible to tell if people are complying with the measure earlier than it is possible to tell if it worked.
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@antiquarian said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@topspin There are four possible results of implementing a measure to slow the spread of a virus:
- People comply with the measure and the spread slows or stops.
- People don't comply with the measure and the spread continues or increases.
- People comply with the measure and the spread continues or increases.
- People don't comply with the measure and the spread slows or stops.
The problem is that some people comply with the measure and some don't. At that point, the mix of how infectious the disease is together with the social dynamics (that the rules have created) produces the result; it's really hard to pin such things down except by experiment because it depends on the in-person social graph and that's got non-trivial connectivity features (see also: superspreaders).
The evidence so far from comparative epidemiological studies is that scenario #4 above is really unlikely.
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Family finds method to keep kids off their lawn, dedicate it to Covid-19:
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Bad news:
And officials here have started talking about going back to complete lockdown.
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@Zerosquare said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Bad news:
And officials here have started talking about going back to complete lockdown.
That's not news, that is expected. Antibodies wane with time. Other parts of the immune system provide the long term defence. And the antibodies will be produced again if they are needed.
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@Carnage Are they measuring the wrong antibodies again like they did in the spring? Actually, the answer appears to be trivially yes because the T-cell receptors are not immunoglobulins.
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@Zerosquare said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Bad news:
And officials here have started talking about going back to complete lockdown.
So basically, permanent lockdown. Because that's going to happen after a vaccine, too. This doesn't seem very well thought out.
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So we also have a night curfew (21–5) starting
tomorrowtoday in Czechia. As if many people got infected in the middle of the night (they've closed all bars and pubs earlier already). It really shows that the cabinet has already jumped the shark. They are acting confused since start of September, but now they've really sunk to the level of bumbling idiots.And as commentators around here note, it's somewhat surprising, since the prime minister was generally recognised as having good PR advisors and therefore had, until the Corona crisis, pretty good political marketing. But he totally failed to utilize them for this crisis and now he's just scolding people and rambling inconsistently. Hell, they are not even able to describe what hey are actually ordering in a coherent way normal people could understand.
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@Carnage said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
That's not news, that is expected. Antibodies wane with time. Other parts of the immune system provide the long term defence. And the antibodies will be produced again if they are needed.
@Bulb said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Carnage Are they measuring the wrong antibodies again like they did in the spring? Actually, the answer appears to be trivially yes because the T-cell receptors are not immunoglobulins.
According to a friend who is in the study, they measured both short-term and long-term antibodies.