Saner parts of the world, such as Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (and I never thought I’d write that) are managing to go ahead with their matches, but in the Pro-14, non-cancelled matches scheduled for today are rarer than gracious election concessions by Donald Trump.
There are a couple of not-cancelled Top 14 matches that don’t appear to be available for your viewing pleasure in the UK, and the Sunday and Monday (boo, hiss) Pro-14 matches are so far still on. The English Premiership appears to be having a wee rest.
Maybe it’s just a plot to make us all savour the prospect of Friday’s Ireland v Wales supershowdown. Supposing it doesn’t get cancelled.
Fixtures not yet nixed onna telly this week
Saturday 7th November
| Australia 24 – 22 New Zealand | 08:45 | Sky Sports Arena |
Sunday 8th November
| Ospreys v Leinster | 15:00 | TG4 / Premier Sports 1 |
| Scarlets v Zebre | 17:15 | S4C / Premier Sports 1 |
Monday 9th November
| Ulster v Glasgow | 20:15 | Premier Sports 1 |
| Edinburgh v Cardiff | 19:45 | Premier Sports 2 |
Friday 13th November
| Ireland v Wales | 19:00 | Channel 4 / S4C |
Ovally Balls 
“The results have not been peer-reviewed by outside scientists or published in a medical journal, and even Pfizer and BioNTech have been given no other details about how the vaccine performed by the independent monitors overseeing the study.”
Oh good, so governments round the world spending billions on something really rigorously tested in the time honoured fashion.
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yeah, anyone really cynical can brows this :-
https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/09/covid-19-vaccine-from-pfizer-and-biontech-is-strongly-effective-early-data-from-large-trial-indicate/
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https://www.theroar.com.au/rugby-league/nrl/state-of-origin/teams/
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State of Origin 2 Kick off 9.10 London time, VIP league has it wrong, I think.
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The Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine may be a better bet than the Pfizer one anyway:
– AZ one is a more common type of vaccine that mimics the infection. Pfizer uses RNA to train the immune system, no vaccine of this type has ever been approved for use before meaning the potential risks are quite big
– Pfizer one needs to be stored at solid CO2 (dry ice) temperatures arouns -80C, meaning it is very difficult to transport. AZ one can be stored at around -40C.
– Pfizer one is around £30 a dose, AZ just over two quid.
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On the other hand Liverpool is just rolling out a Lateral Flow Test that has a positivity rate of 0.7%, compared with 2.2% (I believe ) for PCR. That suggests for every 22 cases reported at least 15 are false positive.
Additionally in the Pfizer study they had 22,000 people globally in the placebo bit and only reported 86 infections. I’m convinced we are massively over reporting cases.
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I got deja vu Borderboy, in that I was going to tell my tale of buying 2 very good records from a different band called Placebo in the early 80s. Obscurity swallowed them up, and when the records were re-released in the 90s on cd they had to be relabeled as the ‘Original Placebo’ to avoid in part confusing and upsetting fans of Brian Molko’s outfit buying the records by mistake.
When I was looking for a band-clip on youtube I got the feeling I’d done all this before.
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Well, I just did a quick Google to understand what PCR was and then skim read a few articles.
If I understood it right …PCR can give false +ve ( lot of different numbers quoted ) and also doesn’t tell you if the person (or viral material that they are carrying) is infectious.
Then …first thing I read on lateral flow tests indicated an issue with false negatives – due to low sensitivity.
As Pope says ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing’
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@trisk
Dead right. I know more about PCR than LFT and know an invalid measurement when I see one.
My best guess at the moment is that the amplification inherent in PCR will tend to amplify and propogate errors and lead to more false positives than false negatives arising from LFT (false negatives will tend to arise when there isn’t much material around which may mean the patient is not very infectious, but that’s a big assumption on my part). Looking at the very normal looking excess deaths data I don’t get the impression we are seeing loads of false negatives but it does suggest we have loads of false positives. It would take a very brave politician to admit that though…..
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OT, from what I can gather the Pfizer vaccine stays viable in a normal fridge for several days, perhaps up to a week, meaning after transportation it is relatively easy to manage.
However, it would seem that one will be used as a first step for immunisation of front line workers etc, with the AZ one being the more likely candidate for mass use.
As for PCR testing, real positive test numbers shoot right up on symptomatic patients, there was a BMJ paper I read a few weeks ago on it.
The presence of viral RNA, whilst not “proving” illness as such, means the virus is present in some form.
We don’t seem to know much about presymtomatic or asymptomatic transmission, but you can be infectious several days before and after symptoms show
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btw
“real positive test numbers shoot right up on symptomatic patients” might sound bleeding obvious, but some Covid symptoms are similar to cold and flu virus symptoms.
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@ticht
One issue is that it has to be stored in dry ice on an aeroplane, and there are limits on the amount of solid CO2 an aeroplace can transport (in case it leaks out and suffocates everyone) so there will be difficulties in getting it over the Atlantic to the UK in enough quantities to do a mass rollout.
That’s right, and is one of the reasons I trust pillar 1 numbers but not pillar 2. We also have to ask why nobody is getting diagnosed with influenza anymore but that is slightly tangential.
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Don’t you have to have symptoms to request a test under pillar 2?
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@OT –In the Liverpool study….for every 22 cases reported at least 15 are false positive.
Sounds like the pre-season prediction from Everton fans.
@MrIks – When I was looking for a band-clip on youtube I got the feeling I’d done all this before.
It’s the false positive Placebo effect there.
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@ticht
depends what you mean by symptoms. Having a cold may count, but the people being tested in hospital will typically have stronger symptoms (if you know what I mean). The people I know who have gone for pillar 2 testing have basically had a runny nose and a cold.
I still keep going back to the disappearance of influenza and asking how this has happened (Page 3 – https://www.who.int/influenza/surveillance_monitoring/updates/2020_11_09_surveillance_update_380.pdf)
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Relax, I was leaving anyway.
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Wouldn’t you expect flu numbers to be well down, with all the precautions being taken? I wouldn’t expect the number to be zero though!
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What’s wrong with politicians from the far side of the Atlantic that they keep nicking stuff from Labour politicians?
https://newsday.co.tt/2020/11/10/former-ministers-poor-taste-by-unc-to-plagiarise/
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OT – I’m sure this was said before but with the death count being people who have died 28 days after being tested positive for covid Shirley this is just going to lead to a circular pattern of more tests leading to more identified deaths, leading to more precautions and tests, leading to more identified deaths etc etc.
Can’t we just protect the vulnerable and reopen everything? Pubs mainly, but I’m sure there must be other things I’m not thinking of.
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OT, is it simply that it’s not flu season yet?
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@craigs
I think we can. But there’s a reason why people like Vallance and Whitty aren’t saying it and I don’t know what that is.
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“no vaccine of this type has ever been approved for use before meaning the potential risks are quite big”
Yeah, roll it out first to carehome residents and workers, then over 85’s. See how it goes. All a bit Logans Run for me.
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it does suggest we have loads of false positives
If you look at Ireland, our second spike had more daily cases than the first wave but (with exception of yesterday) deaths have been 2-5 per day, plus numbers in ICU at around 40 rather than upwards of 100 in the first wave. Right now ICU capacity is not threatened (by COVID cases anyway). Of course, testing is now widespread and more efficient – so as we cast the net wider, if I understand what I read we find people who were “infected” but never sick, and who may not be infectious.
Story is a bit different in Northern Ireland – on a per capita basis, the numbers there are 3 to 4 times higher than Ireland both in cases and deaths. They have been dropping since their lockdown but are still higher and there’s an ongoing argument about the proposed reopening Friday coming (we are at level 5 till early Dec). Not really clear why the big difference.
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Trisk, it’s a bit different in the Czech Republic. Here there were few cases and far fewer deaths in the Spring.
9,000 new cases on Tuesday and a little over 100 deaths.
On May 28th there had been 9,086 registered cases all-time and 317 deaths.
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@tomp
The southern hemisphere missed out on an entire flu season in the middle of this year (page 5 of the link I posted earlier). BUT that report suggests the southern hemisphere did have a little influenza peak (fewer than 500 cases) in March of this year which then quickly dropped to near zero. I bet they were picking up Covid-19.
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There was an article that appeared in the Spectator over the summer that was picked up on by a couple of journalists and that led to stories of 90% false positives.
Statistically that could be true, with an infection rate running at about 1 in 1000 and a false positive rate at around 0.8% (as per testing data) you’d expect to get 1 real positive and 8 false positive results from any given random 1000 people, ie around a 90% false positive rate.
That is not who is being tested, though, the vast majority of tests are conducted on people who are either symptomatic or have a high risk due to contact with people who are symptomatic. It’s this heightened probability that leads to higher true positives, statistically as well as in real life.
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It’s not possible to only protect the vulnerable. For starters, 30% of the population is obese, so that’s a fuckload of people we’re talking about. Second, many of the vulnerable, especially the elderly, will be living in care homes, or having home care. What do you do with the care workers – make them move into the homes, leaving their families? Sames goes for other health professionals. What about vulnerable people who live in multi-generational households?
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@ticht
Part of the reason the pillar 2 testing regime is in doubt is because of the poor QC put in place to not get in the way of Hancock’s massive testing scale-up. When the original SARS virus was doing the rounds there was a bit in the QC guidelines that specified that all positive tests needed to be verified by a 3rd party (i.e. by someone who would slow the whole process down). That was removed for this virus, probably to keep the politicians happy.
Also the acceptable cycle threshold has not been specified, and not reported for every positive result. Without that data it’s very hard to know if the patient is likely to be infectious or not.
But you are right that targeted testing of people is going to yield more true positives than random testing of the population (and why the Spectator article was a little misleading).
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‘It’s not possible to only protect the vulnerable. ‘
Don’t necessarily know who’s vulnerable either. Isn’t that part of the issue with this virus, that some otherwise healthy / relatively young people end up deid due a previously unidentified issue?
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I’ll lock my wife inna room for the next year for her own good as she’s asthmatic.
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Thaum – it would probably be a case of ‘if you fit these characteristics stay inside etc’. For people in nursing homes, they would unfortunately probably have restricted visitor access or something.
By no means ideal but better than locking the whole population down with everything that comes with it.
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Tbh – it doesn’t really feel like a lockdown in Kent.
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Look what happened to Coo Face
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Looks weak. Italy by 16.
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Squidge is back again
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Ticht, Duncy has gone Heeland Cooface to get in the side. Good on him.
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Happy enough with that team in the circumstances.
Only mildly interesting / controversial call is SHC recalled to the bench. Horne junior not in favour (or injured?)
Also treacle toes still on the naughty step. Imagine he’ll be back for the France game though.
Tight five them into submission then launch the back 3 at them. Is what I hope happens.
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that’s an awesome ‘fro
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ah, Horne with a toe injury
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Callum Sheedy to get a cap off the bench, but no Zammo.
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Lots of hair in that Scotland squad. Hasn’t always been the case but it’s good to see.
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Wait, I’ve been fooled!!!! Cheeky fuckers. Italy by 8.
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Wales: Leigh Halfpenny; Liam Williams, Jonathan Davies, Owen Watkin, Josh Adams; Dan Biggar, Gareth Davies; Rhys Carre, Ryan Elias, Tomas Francis, Will Rowlands, Alun Wyn Jones (capt), Shane Lewis-Hughes, Justin Tipuric, Taulupe Faletau.
Replacements: Elliot Dee, Wyn Jones, Samson Lee, Jake Ball, Aaron Wainwright, Lloyd Williams, Callum Sheedy, George North.
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Sounds weak. Come on Ireland!!
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The ‘Hair’ is being grown for a good reason, and not because he wants to emulate Alan Rough*.
https://lastwordonsports.com/rugby/2020/08/12/duncan-weir-hair-charity/
*Dog, I hope not.
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“Stands still.”
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Just channelling Sag’s impression of Alan Rough there.
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https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/nov/11/how-to-make-the-perfect-meat-and-potato-pie-recipe-felicity-cloake
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