David; Attached are updated charts for this week. Positive cases remain on a downward trend. Vaccinations are slowly increasing and test positivity remains substantially above the goal of <5%. Indeed, the 7 day positivity trend line is showing a slight uptick. Increased uptake of vaccinations, vigilance and compliance with protocols seems to be necessary, especially as the Omicron variant is on the move and threatens.
Lyall Small
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Testing is down because cases are down.
Still on target to breaking the 100 new cases per day later this month.
Hopefully the rain we had is not enough to upset the equilibrium and we won’t get an excessive in the wrong places amount over the rest of December.
Same process as in countries with case surges after floods as things return to normal.
No floods = no surges.
Floods = surges.
Brazil’s continues doing pretty well since the numbers of floods abated.
Cases continue to fall, down to 10% of their peak but still high.
Understanding Percent Positivity | Public Health Madison & Dane County, Public Health Madison & Dane County
https://publichealthmdc.com/blog/understanding-percent-positivity
@ David
Forget the amount they test and focus on the percentage of positive tested.
They are testing less so that they can show improvement in case load. After all its all about making things look good and not getting put on the UK red list.
I always thought the person who got tested wanted to get tested to find out if they had COVID-19 or not.
All that is happening is that fewer persons are coming forward to get tested because fewer persons are becoming infected.
A positivity ratio of 10% means as far as I can see that only 10 out of every 100 persons who come to get tested are actually right about having COVID-19.
The other 90 are hypochondriacs.
@John A
This explains the headline. You may recall public health officials implemented an outreach program testing people in hotspots.
The massacre among our natives drives the indolent masses to the vaccination centre. Excellent! Our Supreme Leader´s great plan is working.
We should stop testing altogether! The tests only spoil the winter season.
Those who are vaccinated and under 60 years old have little to fear. Thanks to genetic superiority, people with African genes are more resilient anyway.
Unvaccinated victims are mere collateral damage and only numbers in the statistics.
Nevertheless, we must be on our guard. Where the second vaccination was 6 months ago or a Chinese vaccine was used, I strongly advise a third vaccination with Moderna. This stuff is hotter than speed!
@🐰/🐇 7:55 a.m
Good one.
So it appears that after almost two years, we are still uncertain what are the criteria for testing?
Is it just volunteers as 🐇/🐰 suggested?
Is it random sampling (doubtful)?
Does contact tracing play a role?
An infected household?
Scared neighbors
Seriously, what are the criteria?
The testing dropped around the independence activities but last couple of days the are on the rise / near normal
@ David
Yes sir up to this week you would of seen BAMP saying we must ramp up testing. Will never happen so close to the winter season. From here on in its about appearances
Watch and see old years night will be no curfew if it is not completely lifted before then. Soon we will be treating those who present only to the doctors and everyone else will be self isolating and self testing.
Its that or watch the economy crumble. This will have to be treated like a bad flu season from here on in. Who don’t get vaxx and dead well Paramount and others will say thanks for the work. The PM realises she can’t hold commerce back anymore over a few anti vaxxers and she will do what is required.
Looked let’s be honest she tried her best to make the vaccines available to all who wanted. Now we bring in the law to give business places the right to ask for proof of vax at the door and we force the anti vaxxers to stand home. No different to what everywhere in the developed world has done.
Vaccinated travlers entering the island Were no longer need to tested woyld have also Lead to axdecrease
Did you hear the story of the
Rumpelstiltskin of BU. Not only straw but news stories …
My explanation: Things are more complicated than simple explanations can provide
@John ADecember 4, 2021 9:34 AM
Since we have enough vaccine thanks to our Supreme Leader, corona is no longer a phenomenon of nature, but only a social problem.
Those who do not want to be vaccinated inevitably accept death or serious illness. We should not weep for these victims.
Time to abolish all Corona restrictions! This will naturally immunise the unvaccinated population until spring. Better a few extra deaths now than years of gridlock with unemployed citizens, traumatised children and suicides due to over-indebtedness.
The freed up capacity at Dosantos should be replaced with increased local testing if the concern from public health about community spread is true.
@ DavidDecember 4, 2021 9:54 AM
It is a futile attempt to control the spread of the virus. Almost like trying to control the moon, the sun and the stars.
It would be far better to focus on the unvaccinated. I have in mind colour bands on the wrist that cannot be removed:
Red = unvaccinated, orange = 1 x vaccinated, yellow = 2 x vaccinated.
Only people who have been vaccinated 3 times are trustworthy.
In addition, we should finally create REAL incentives to vaccinate. For example, a temporary exemption from income tax.
I believe herd immunity and community spread can be removed from BU’s vocabulary. Rates > 94% means everyone and if what we have seen is not community spread then nothing is.
Rubbing our bellies and whispering magical words will not get the genie back in the bottle.
——x—–
@Tron
Great idea, but it is not original. If you change the colors to 0=yellow, we may be able to find a few leftover badges from Nazi Germany.
I saw a news item this morning from WHO that claims that worldwide THERE HAVE BEEN NO RECORDED DEATHS FROM Omicron SO FAR . It led me to wonder if that news is corroborated and fortified by incoming data, and remains true after a few weeks, and persons challenged with Omicron are found to develop antibodies that work against all variants, inter alia other factors , if natural infections of Omicron throughout the World might actually lead to a quick unmitigated control of the Pandemic? The key would be to continue striving for herd immunity from vaccinations for the combination of the Delta variant and let Omicron with its higher infectivity work against the other variants.
Just an idea that may have no validity, but that I think might be put in the pot and stirred to get the views of true-true Epidemiologists.
Help!!!
David
The local testing still need volunteers – mostly people eho think the were Exposed
Didnt the community out reach used the rapid test and only used the pcr/ lab to confirm positivismi Cases?
Still need volunteers.
Dont seem to me that the avarage Person is as much concern as the docs after two years.
I would TaKe the test for travel or if was told i was exposed – no other reasin
It has been two years.
The Idea is that:
The disease will spread as long as there are susceptible hosts in the relevant population.
Where there is more than one variant, the variants compete with one another to get access to susceptible hosts and thereby ensure that they themselves survive.
When a new super variant, like Omicron, gets into the mix, it quickly increases its share of hosts and thereby reduces the chances for variants of lesser infectivity to survive.
A very competitive variant that only produces mild symptoms is a very good thing because it restricts access to the host by variants of lesser competitiveness but greater virulence and over a relatively short period of time that variant becomes dominant while concomitantly reducing the expression of serious sickness and even death in the host population.
Therefore, counterintuitively, Omicron could be used as an ultimate cheap effective control method for the disease. Serendipity perhaps? Or a clue to how things actually work?
If wunnah do’n unnerstan ask John or Dr GP Sir. They know everything.
@ TheOGazertsDecember 4, 2021 10:36 AM
Nazi comparison? And what about “Logan´s Run”? “To track this, each person is implanted at birth with a “life-clock” crystal in the palm of the left hand that changes color as they get older and begins blinking as they approach their “Last Day.” (source: wikipedia)
At the airport and in the hotels, the arrivals also get different colour ribbons. I don’t think our government at the airport and our hoteliers are resorting to Nazi methods. I call that common sense.
My suggestion is simply to extend this to the entire population.
Tron,
Your above post is of course a joke, right?
… and the ribbons will be made of Krypton, right?
TheOGazertsDecember 4, 2021 9:15 AM
@🐰/🐇 7:55 a.m
Good one.
So it appears that after almost two years, we are still uncertain what are the criteria for testing?
Is it just volunteers as 🐇/🐰 suggested?
Is it random sampling (doubtful)?
Does contact tracing play a role?
An infected household?
Scared neighbors
Seriously, what are the criteria?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Grasshopper
One Criterion, the person to be tested has to want to be tested.
If the positivity ratio is 10%, that means there 90% of those tested are hypochondriacs!!
Kind of like vaccination, one criterion, the person to be vaccinated has to want to be vaccinated.
lyallsmallDecember 4, 2021 11:48 AM
The Idea is that:
The disease will spread as long as there are susceptible hosts in the relevant population.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This idea does not seem to work in most countries.
Look at Grenada and Dominica, less than 10% of the population have tested positive.
That means 90% of the population did not get it.
There were enough tests done for the whole population to have been tested..
Another harebrained idea bites the dust!!
The obvious conclusion is clearly quite the opposite!!
The disease does not spread as long as there are susceptible hosts in the relevant population!!
Somehow a whole set of the relevant population is protected.
“Look Ma, no vaccine”
Barbados has had 439K tests, as much as would do the whole frigging population.
About 25K cases have been detected.
That means there are a whole set of hypochondriacs in Barbados putting the GOB to unnecessary expense!!
Most of those 25K are according to the Minister of Health in the Southern Corridor which no doubt is where most of the testing has been done.
How hard is it to lock off a stop cock?
I’ve maintained from my first set of posts on Covid-19 that the positivity metric is not a good measure of the true incidence of the disease in the Barbados population and that a better measure might be periodic random testing. Periodic random testing is apparently not done anywhere in the world, AFAIK, Its too expensive.
The test positivity percentage gives a very rough guesstimate or feel for disease incidence. It is the percentage of positive results in the total tests done on a particular day.
In pre-September 2021 Barbados, when the test positivity percentages were generally below 5%, the figures would have indicated that there was a relatively low viral load in our population since less than 5% of the people who had been tested were positive. When the positivity percentage went well above that level and stayed there it essentially indicated, no more than, that there was a highish level of incidence in our population. The consistent fluctuations in the metric are essentially telling us that we still have a ways to go before we can declare that we are on the way to pre-August 2021 levels.
I have been reluctant to join such discussions because from day one I made it clear that we should support our government’s efforts because this epidemic could be very disastrous for us.
However, I have concluded that we should have followed medical association’s (BAMP) advice of more testing and on a wider scale months ago. It is obvious that the advice of BAMP was not taken.
John; Re. your 12:47 pm post.
You are of course right. I should have said susceptible hosts AND viruses capable of infecting those hosts. But I was assuming that anyone reading the post would have been aware that a virulent pest is essential to cause a disease. My bad!
A random sample would have yielded a truer metric of the degree of infection in the population of Barbados. However that is not a useful metric. Tracking and testing at those points likely to be the source of contagion was more effective and efficient. The process was also more cost effective, in light of limited supply of vaccines and testing materials. We should maintain testing at the ports of entry,and at communities identified as centres of spread.
@lyallsmallDecember 4, 2021 12:24 PM
The boundaries between fanciful dystopia, madness and reality have been fading since March 2020. Who would have thought that in some countries there is already compulsory vaccination (in Austria even for the whole population), employers are allowed to ask for vaccination status (in many countries), unvaccinated people are no longer allowed to shop (in many countries) etc. etc.?
What I am indeed writing down as a cynical joke could become reality tomorrow. If not on our island, then somewhere else.
@🐇/🐰
It was a compliment of your clever use of 90% being hypochondriacs. Nothing more.
TheOGazerts; Re. your above post the “90% being hypochondriacs” quip was actually another manifestation of a fake, Trumpian, Dystopian bent given that he has previously demonstrated a reasonable knowledge of what the positivity percentage actually entails. Vincent Codrington’s post above nails it.
I forgot to mention above that the overweening majority of the people who take the tests have to do so because they have to get mandatory certification of their covid-19 status for any of several official reasons, including being primary contacts of persons previously testing positive. They have no real choice.
Aren’t we long past the notion of random tests? What difference would they make at this stage? Tests were relevant when there wasn’t enough vaccine to go around but people were taking tests in lieu of taking the vaccine which is a waste of time and resources. If I took a test today and it was negative, do I take one again in two weeks if I have a runny nose?
There is a lot of misinformation and disinformation out there and fake news has supplanted real news.
The daily vacination count had also dropped around the independence celebrations. Although still Way too low
They are now around 100
@John2December 4, 2021 2:52 PM
The smart elite (ministers, party faithfuls, expats, diplomats and businessmen) has already been vaccinated 3 times. The rest of the population does not want to vaccinate and is therefore negligible.
@SargeantDecember 4, 2021 2:51 PM
More testing? Some people talk about Corona as if it were HIV. How laughable. We don’t have a testing problem, we have a vaccination problem.
Those who do not want to be vaccinated must bear the consequences, up to and including an excruciating death by suffocation.
Vincent Codrington
Yes testing and tracing specific sub-populations with Covid is vastly more efficient, effective, than any kind of total population randomized statistical measures except that the first control method is likely to miss secondary or tertiary outbreaks of infections not connected to known cases. And if those missed show no initial symptoms there maybe a larger outbreak afoot. But yes, given resource allocation issues and the like, testing and tracing represents the optimal choice.
DavidDecember 4, 2021 9:54 AM
The freed up capacity at Dosantos should be replaced with increased local testing if the concern from public health about community spread is true.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
You think people go and get tested just for fun?
They go because they have symptoms or know they have been in contact with someone who was positive.
That’s why hypochondriacs go, they are frighten and want some sort of assurance they don’t have it.
There is no one on earth who can suddenly cause increased local testing!!
Maybe an incentive like no income tax if you get tested might get some traction but if people don’t feel the need to be tested they are not going to waste their time.
The numbers are falling as predicted and will continue to fall unless there is some major flooding.
The GOB saw fit to cancel the curfew which also sends a message.
Doesn’t mean folks will stop social distancing or wearing masks of sanitizing, just that they will get on with their lives.
It is quite possible that in the absence of floods COVID will have disappeared and people will be asking Cowhat?
The medical fraternity and all the experts will be none the wiser because they are looking for too complicated an explanation.
@ Tron
Yes you are dead right we have a vaccination problem. We are still hovering around 50% in an island that is 166 square miles and has 275,000 people on it. So what is the relevance of that some may ask?
Well it’s really quite simple, this virus if it were in the Australia Out Back say with the same 50% vaxxed, but where the population density per square mile was 14% less than ours, the 50% vaxx rate would not be as much of an issue. People play with numbers they want and ignore the others. Our problem is that on a small island with 275,000 people and a vaxx rate of 50% the rate of contagion due to density per square mile makes it a much larger problem than other places.
Just saying we need to consider all variables when we discuss this issue and not just the ones we are fed with.
Yes! It is true that WHO has confirmed that there are NO deaths worldwide attributable to Omicron. Just google Omicron deaths.
I think the advent of a mild but aggressive Omicron variant can spell an imminent end to the dread Covid-19 pandemic. But the speed of that outcome will involve bold actions by Experts and Governments and citizens and a diminution of the traditional inputs by Big Pharma. Poor countries will get there first.
Hants
Keep an eye on British Columbia COVID cases.
Two weeks since the devastating floods so too early to know if there will be a surge or not.
Should know in the next 2 to 4 weeks.
Ditto Israel although there seems to be initial signs of rising cases already.
If the two countries do have surges following their recent flood I would expect Israel’s to happen faster than BC’s.
New COVID-19 testing requirement for entry into US
https://www.nationnews.com/2021/12/04/new-covid-19-testing-requirement-entry-us/
The secret is to avoid the virus which from the test data suggest 95% of people in Barbados do.
I never realised that the minority 5% of the population of Barbados could cause the majority 95% so much trouble!!!
David
This CDC directive should make it clear that the Americans have a low confidence level in the effectiveness of the Covid vaccines especially with new and emerging variants.. Even citizens are being barred from entry without a negative test. This is highly irregular even draconian. We are back to nearly a patient zero scenario again. And it has massive implications for Barbados.
Some Dr.. Strangelove somewhere is making biological war on us all.
My suggestion to increase vaccines is for Pfizer to include a Viagra composition in the injection, to last for the period, one year, until the next jab.
Then John can go find a young nubile and keep busy for the next year and stop writing rubbish about water.
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