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NHS

Discussion in 'General Chit Chat' started by Mattecube, Mar 20, 2020.

  1. bigmac
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    bigmac Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    as the uk is on the brink of financial ruin and billions will be pumped into the economy i would have thought producing enough test kits is top priority.. or is it a case of better you dont know ?
  2. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    There are no magic factories Malcolm, that's the problem, it's physical limits of the production capacity i.e. the facilities that manufacture these things, a lot of this stuff is very high tech it's not just mixing a few simple chemicals and hey presto we have a solution, scaling up production takes time and is difficult.

    This is more an issue of lack of foresight.

    The Polymerase Chain Reaction is a method used in DNA fingerprinting, that's what it is primarily used for, they have re-purposed it to test the for the code of this virus, this wasn't something just lying around in vast quantities waiting for an event like this.

    This is a list of the steps in this test I can't find a more authoritative link just now but it looks pretty complete.

    https://quizlet.com/203251794/polymerase-chain-reaction-and-dna-fingerprinting-flash-cards/

    There is a lot of actual time and human resource required to actually do the test as well.
  3. Druk1
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    Druk1 Well-Known Member

    Getting kitted up :ninja:
    IMG-91d120846905e938fd4c57545118c496-V.jpg
  4. aposhark
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    aposhark Well-Known Member Lifetime Member

  5. bigmac
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    bigmac Well-Known Member Trusted Member


    i was talking to someone local on facebook about this yesterday. i know the woman--she is no fool, holds a very technical job in opticians. she said her mother died in december, she had cancer but it was pneumonia that took her. she was tested in mid december for covid--but was told it was negative. so the tests were available back then.
  6. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Sorry but I don't believe that Malcolm, no one in this country knew about this in December, the genetic sequences required for a PCR test would have only been available in China and they the Chinese hadn't even admitted a problem at that time, the name Covid-19 did not exist at that point in time it was named in February and then subsequently clarified later in February or early March that Covid-19 is the disease caused by the virus that now has the name SARS-Cov-2.

    The doctor from Wuhan who blew the whistle in December when he saw a sudden outbreak of a new SARS like illnesses and who later died himself blew that whistle on the 7th of December for which he was seriously reprimanded.

    The genetic analysis of this virus shows its zoonotic jump occurred between late October and the middle of December, that is the confidence range that comes out of the maths of the analysis, it suggests that the jump probably happened in November, it would have taken a couple of weeks for that doctor to be able to notice the similarity in the cases he had seen and to raise the alarm as from all observed data it takes a week to a fortnight on average for people to show symptoms, he was seeing deaths and the deaths occurred in the second week of infection so middle of November is the best estimate for the date of the jump into humans.
  7. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Just let me clarify yet again, Coronavirus is NOT the name of the virus that causes this illness.

    The word Coronavirus is the name of a family of viruses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus it's a limited family but they have been around a long time and cause cold and flu like diseases, you need to get this clear there is a range of Coronaviruses, this one causing this disease is specifically now named SARS-Cov-2.

    If your contact's mother was tested for a Coronavirus infection in December then she was tested for known Coronaviruses at that time, again a family of viruses, so she probably had multiple tests to check which one it might be, but she was not being tested for Covid-19 because that illness didn't even have a name in December.

    Prior to now there was no need to have a lot of these tests because they were being used for forensics mostly and again the test has to be set up to identify the specific genetic sequence of the thing that is being tested, it's not a magic test that can somehow say oh it is not that one but this one that you have, each type of PCR test is specific for the thing you are testing for.
  8. bigmac
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    bigmac Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    ive found out the tests are a mouth swab. i thought it was a blood test. so--actually taking the sample is quick and easy. so why not take a large sample and test a random few if the analysis is the long and difficult part.

    here on the island there have been 2 cases being hospitalised. neither caught it here .

    we have no idea at all how many are walking around with it. everyone and his dog thinks they have had it because of a few coughs.
  9. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Yeah they do and that is a problem if they think they are safe afterwords.

    The new antibody test is a blood test, but yes to test for this virus you just need to get a sample from any mucous membrane to get a tiny sample, the PCR test is an amplifier, it turns the smallest sample of a genetic sequence into a large sample of that genetic sequence so that we can actually see enough of it to test.

    Yes it is a mouth swab, if you have it in your lungs then there will be some in your mouth so they take a swab and use PCR to amplify that signal, viruses degrade rapidly so you can't delay the testing after taking a sample for too long.

    But yes taking a large number of samples and doing some random processing might actually result in some better more accurate statistics, it would probably, indeed almost certainly, in my opinion be better than just testing those who look ill as we are doing right now in the UK.
  10. Druk1
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    Druk1 Well-Known Member

    Er indoors.
    • Funny Funny x 1
  11. bigmac
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    bigmac Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    looks a little risque in that translucent plastic.
    • Funny Funny x 1
  12. Druk1
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    Druk1 Well-Known Member

    More risky than risqué given the current situation :ninja:
  13. bigmac
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    bigmac Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    doesnt she get a bit fed up with you keeping going off on your adventures ?
  14. Druk1
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    Druk1 Well-Known Member

    Nope, I chose carefully, that's why we have lasted so long :ninja: she knows she can trust me and need my space sometimes :ninja: I should have been in the pyrenees at the moment trekking we're it not for the pandemic.

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