8 ms·

Story from a very good friend of mine in Germany, we talk almost every day: There was a suspected case in his kid’s school class, first grader. So they closed t

by baxtr 7y ago

Story from a very good friend of mine in Germany, we talk almost every day: There was a suspected case in his kid’s school class, first grader. So they closed the class and tested the other kid. That was 11 days ago. The result came in today (I.e. the other parents were informed today): Positive. There is no way you can stop this virus from spreading if you inform contacts almost 2 weeks later.

chris_engel 7y ago
But if they closed down the class because of that all parents should have been aware that their kids could possibly be infected.
s9w 7y ago
That seems strange. Most results are ready in 24h in Germany I think.
- VyperCard 7y ago
  No. My colleague was tested on Wednesday, still no result.
- dmix 7y ago
  In Canada it used to be 24hrs, but there is now a 4-5 day waiting period to get results after you get swabbed or blood tested, due to a large backlog of tests. So most results we see today are about ~9-10 days old if we combine that with “when did first symptoms appear?” survey in the Chinese study (results were often 5-10 days before visiting the hospital when the tests are first initiated). Then on top of that some people take up to 5 days to show the first symptom. So any data you see today could easily be 2 weeks old. 1 week would be an ideal target in the short term, depending on where your goalposts are...
- fabian2k 7y ago
  Most stuff related to the pandemic like testing is not centrally organized in Germany, this is all on the state or local level. So I can easily imagine that there are very large differences depending on where exactly you are.
- hobofan 7y ago
  It still looks like a lot of testing is still not being done. 2 of my friends (here in Germany) most likely had it (as attested by their doctor), but were told they would not be tested as they could not with certainty say that they had contact with someone that was tested positive.
- endymi0n 7y ago
  Living in Germany with a neighbor working in intensive care on COVID-19 patients: Germany was one of the first nations to come up with a test and usually, the lab they're working with has a 4h turnaround time, but the backlog is currently 3 days. As said, results vary widely depending on where you are, but on average, Germany's still testing more people here than most other nations other than maybe China or South Korea. I suspect that's the main reason behind the huge discrepancies of deaths per case in Germany vs. South Europe: Germany may not be particularly thorough, but the number of unreported cases is certain to be higher almost anywhere else. Especially the US will have a really rough wakeup call.
- humaniania 7y ago
  That's why the best rule for ingesting news about current events is usually: don't read the comments
  - FpUser 7y ago
    In theory you're right but I've often see reporting that is plain BS and serving some underlying political agenda rather then cold facts and/or reasonable analysis. So in those cases first hand info from the people who are actually there could make more sense.
- eclipsetheworld 7y ago
  The test in the lab actually only takes a couple of hours. Most labs are currently struggling with a backlog. The test is a simple polymerase chain reaction (PCR), however, the number of PCRs that some labs have to perform has increased by an order of magnitude. The utilization of the required machines and the number of qualified lab scientists are now bottlenecks. This is why tests results often take a couple of days now. We should see faster lab results in the coming weeks as labs are equipped with more machines and staff is retrained. However, this is also of course dependent on the increase of tests.
- Wubdidu 7y ago
  It really depends… tests in my city are 1-2 days right now I think, but priority cases like doctors will take the front of the queue and can happen all the time. Colleague of mine was tested and diagnosed (negative) within 4 hours, because her partner is a emergency doctor.
odiroot 7y ago
I know of another case reported to me by a friend. Their co-workers have taken part in an event that spawned multiple infections. They were ordered to stay home for two weeks and await testing. No one ever came to test them, after multiple pleas. The two weeks ran out some time ago.
- wbl 7y ago
  Would the tests have made a difference to them?
  - odiroot 7y ago
    In the meantime, since that event, they met multiple co-workers, and they in turn met other people as well (families etc.). So potential for spreading is high.
    - PeterisP 7y ago
      Well, that was on the "ordered to stay home for two weeks" part which should have prevented them from meeting multiple coworkers.
    - watwut 7y ago
      They should not through. You are supposed to assume you are infected.
    - buboard 7y ago
      Maybe the authorities should start sending sham tests that always test positive. Honestly what difference would the test make if they keep meeting people. Even after the event, they expose themselves to infection
ohlookabird 7y ago
That's surprising. A family member of mine (mid 20ies) in Germany went on a one-week vacation to the north of Germany (he lives somewhere else in Germany) two weeks ago and one of them wasn't feeling well. So they called the respective office to ask about Covid-19 and were told to stay at there vacation home, no one should go anywhere and someone would come to see and test them. They came early the next day in full hazmat suits testing everyone of them. Also bringing an official order that they have to stay in the house until there are results. Results where available a few hours later and they were told by phone that they are negative and can move freely again. All of this was about two weeks ago. They were generally happy with the response and the speed of everything.
- k__ 7y ago
  Friends of mine were on a vacation in Italy too a few weeks ago. They said they were tested right at the border and got their results in under 24h
- type0 7y ago
  > That's surprising. A family member of mine (mid 20ies) in Germany went on a one-week vacation to the north of Germany (he lives somewhere else in Germany) Not every state responds the same and follows the same routines, that's the federal structure for you and differences can be enormous depending on where it is.
- yokaze 7y ago
  Health is delegated to the States, not a federal matter, so the respond may differ greatly between each of them. The title is also misleading, as Merkel does not have the power to decide such things. Well, at least not by the letter.
  - foepys 7y ago
    It's even worse. Each city and county has its own health department (Gesundheitsamt) that can freely decide on their own guidelines. So you have some departments that test nearly everybody and others that will only test when you call 3 different always busy hotlines with a 40°C fever - which btw isn't even an indicator; you can be infected and just have a mild cold. Bavaria declared a statewide emergency in part to be able to overrule and have a consistent guideline across all health departments.
ThePhysicist 7y ago
Well people hopefully don’t run around if they suspect being infected. Germany is not China, we don’t protect people “by force” e.g. by locking them into their apartments, we currently still trust people to do the right thing. If that’s the right strategy remains to be seen, I think/hope we will be able to stop the growth of (verified) infected people at 50.000 or less, then we won’t overburden the health system. So far it seems to work as the number of new infections seems to go down, we will have to wait until next week to see if it really works though.
- megous 7y ago
  Our gov said that about half of the people that were told to self quarantine after returning from Italy just went shopping outside. (determined by credit card usage data) Card sharing may account for low percentage of that perhaps. So I'd trust about 50% of people, perhaps. I guess this number rises, as the effects of the crisis are getting more severe and immediate.
  - jonfw 7y ago
    Which gov is 'our gov'? Can you cite that report?
    - megous 7y ago
      https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/odhaleni-diky-datum-polovina-lidi-alespon-jednou-porusila-karantenu-94555 https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/odhaleni-diky-datum-polov... Google translate: > COVID19CZ's IT Initiative has put together anonymised card payment data at merchants. They show that people do not comply with the mandated quarantine, but also that many Czechs are still in risk areas. Article Those arriving from Italy are going to quarantine for two weeks, the government announced on Friday 6 March. The measure began to apply from Saturday. That person was supposed to report on the phone to his general practitioner, who decided on quarantine on Monday. If returning Czechs have taken this step, it is not clear, but their payment data shows that 46 percent of people quarantined at least once in the first week in the first week. “We can look at the number of people who paid with a card for one week in Italy and the next one in the Czech Republic. It can be seen from payment transactions that such people often went somewhere in the Czech Republic and bought something, ”says Petr Bednařík from DataSentics, who is part of the initiative of several Czech technology companies and IT enthusiasts COVID19CZ. It focuses on helping to combat a new type of coronavirus pandemic. His analytical group, consisting of DataSentics and Keboola, works with leading Czech financial institutions. The analysis of Czech payment card activities abroad was based on Dateio data. [...]
GloriousKoji 7y ago
I don't think there is a way to stop this virus from infecting "everyone". The important thing about self isolation and social distancing is that it reduces the speed of spreading so hospitals are not overloaded. * "everyone" being a large enough population in the world where heard immunity is achieved, probably something around 90%
- kiney 7y ago
  you can calculate the necessary herd immunity by taking the natural R0: 1-(1/R0) with R0 of 2.4 that would be about 58%
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mns 7y ago
That’s just anecdotal data. Two weeks ago, Munich, test on Sunday for a 4 person family, results came back Tuesday. They were not allowed to leave their home until results came back.
- lmm 7y ago
  That's consistent with what other people in the thread are saying, that Bavaria has declared an emergency and is taking it much more seriously than most other German states.

by baxtr 7y ago

chris_engel 7y ago

But if they closed down the class because of that all parents should have been aware that their kids could possibly be infected.

s9w 7y ago

That seems strange. Most results are ready in 24h in Germany I think.

VyperCard 7y ago
No. My colleague was tested on Wednesday, still no result.
dmix 7y ago
In Canada it used to be 24hrs, but there is now a 4-5 day waiting period to get results after you get swabbed or blood tested, due to a large backlog of tests. So most results we see today are about ~9-10 days old if we combine that with “when did first symptoms appear?” survey in the Chinese study (results were often 5-10 days before visiting the hospital when the tests are first initiated). Then on top of that some people take up to 5 days to show the first symptom. So any data you see today could easily be 2 weeks old. 1 week would be an ideal target in the short term, depending on where your goalposts are...
fabian2k 7y ago
Most stuff related to the pandemic like testing is not centrally organized in Germany, this is all on the state or local level. So I can easily imagine that there are very large differences depending on where exactly you are.
hobofan 7y ago
It still looks like a lot of testing is still not being done. 2 of my friends (here in Germany) most likely had it (as attested by their doctor), but were told they would not be tested as they could not with certainty say that they had contact with someone that was tested positive.
endymi0n 7y ago
Living in Germany with a neighbor working in intensive care on COVID-19 patients: Germany was one of the first nations to come up with a test and usually, the lab they're working with has a 4h turnaround time, but the backlog is currently 3 days. As said, results vary widely depending on where you are, but on average, Germany's still testing more people here than most other nations other than maybe China or South Korea. I suspect that's the main reason behind the huge discrepancies of deaths per case in Germany vs. South Europe: Germany may not be particularly thorough, but the number of unreported cases is certain to be higher almost anywhere else. Especially the US will have a really rough wakeup call.
humaniania 7y ago
That's why the best rule for ingesting news about current events is usually: don't read the comments
- FpUser 7y ago
  In theory you're right but I've often see reporting that is plain BS and serving some underlying political agenda rather then cold facts and/or reasonable analysis. So in those cases first hand info from the people who are actually there could make more sense.
eclipsetheworld 7y ago
The test in the lab actually only takes a couple of hours. Most labs are currently struggling with a backlog. The test is a simple polymerase chain reaction (PCR), however, the number of PCRs that some labs have to perform has increased by an order of magnitude. The utilization of the required machines and the number of qualified lab scientists are now bottlenecks. This is why tests results often take a couple of days now. We should see faster lab results in the coming weeks as labs are equipped with more machines and staff is retrained. However, this is also of course dependent on the increase of tests.
Wubdidu 7y ago
It really depends… tests in my city are 1-2 days right now I think, but priority cases like doctors will take the front of the queue and can happen all the time. Colleague of mine was tested and diagnosed (negative) within 4 hours, because her partner is a emergency doctor.

odiroot 7y ago

I know of another case reported to me by a friend. Their co-workers have taken part in an event that spawned multiple infections. They were ordered to stay home for two weeks and await testing. No one ever came to test them, after multiple pleas. The two weeks ran out some time ago.

wbl 7y ago
Would the tests have made a difference to them?
- odiroot 7y ago
  In the meantime, since that event, they met multiple co-workers, and they in turn met other people as well (families etc.). So potential for spreading is high.
  - PeterisP 7y ago
    Well, that was on the "ordered to stay home for two weeks" part which should have prevented them from meeting multiple coworkers.
  - watwut 7y ago
    They should not through. You are supposed to assume you are infected.
  - buboard 7y ago
    Maybe the authorities should start sending sham tests that always test positive. Honestly what difference would the test make if they keep meeting people. Even after the event, they expose themselves to infection

ohlookabird 7y ago

That's surprising. A family member of mine (mid 20ies) in Germany went on a one-week vacation to the north of Germany (he lives somewhere else in Germany) two weeks ago and one of them wasn't feeling well. So they called the respective office to ask about Covid-19 and were told to stay at there vacation home, no one should go anywhere and someone would come to see and test them. They came early the next day in full hazmat suits testing everyone of them. Also bringing an official order that they have to stay in the house until there are results. Results where available a few hours later and they were told by phone that they are negative and can move freely again. All of this was about two weeks ago. They were generally happy with the response and the speed of everything.

k__ 7y ago
Friends of mine were on a vacation in Italy too a few weeks ago. They said they were tested right at the border and got their results in under 24h
type0 7y ago
> That's surprising. A family member of mine (mid 20ies) in Germany went on a one-week vacation to the north of Germany (he lives somewhere else in Germany) Not every state responds the same and follows the same routines, that's the federal structure for you and differences can be enormous depending on where it is.
yokaze 7y ago
Health is delegated to the States, not a federal matter, so the respond may differ greatly between each of them. The title is also misleading, as Merkel does not have the power to decide such things. Well, at least not by the letter.
- foepys 7y ago
  It's even worse. Each city and county has its own health department (Gesundheitsamt) that can freely decide on their own guidelines. So you have some departments that test nearly everybody and others that will only test when you call 3 different always busy hotlines with a 40°C fever - which btw isn't even an indicator; you can be infected and just have a mild cold. Bavaria declared a statewide emergency in part to be able to overrule and have a consistent guideline across all health departments.

ThePhysicist 7y ago

Well people hopefully don’t run around if they suspect being infected. Germany is not China, we don’t protect people “by force” e.g. by locking them into their apartments, we currently still trust people to do the right thing. If that’s the right strategy remains to be seen, I think/hope we will be able to stop the growth of (verified) infected people at 50.000 or less, then we won’t overburden the health system. So far it seems to work as the number of new infections seems to go down, we will have to wait until next week to see if it really works though.

megous 7y ago
Our gov said that about half of the people that were told to self quarantine after returning from Italy just went shopping outside. (determined by credit card usage data) Card sharing may account for low percentage of that perhaps. So I'd trust about 50% of people, perhaps. I guess this number rises, as the effects of the crisis are getting more severe and immediate.
- jonfw 7y ago
  Which gov is 'our gov'? Can you cite that report?
  - megous 7y ago
    https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/odhaleni-diky-datum-polovina-lidi-alespon-jednou-porusila-karantenu-94555 https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/odhaleni-diky-datum-polov... Google translate: > COVID19CZ's IT Initiative has put together anonymised card payment data at merchants. They show that people do not comply with the mandated quarantine, but also that many Czechs are still in risk areas. Article Those arriving from Italy are going to quarantine for two weeks, the government announced on Friday 6 March. The measure began to apply from Saturday. That person was supposed to report on the phone to his general practitioner, who decided on quarantine on Monday. If returning Czechs have taken this step, it is not clear, but their payment data shows that 46 percent of people quarantined at least once in the first week in the first week. “We can look at the number of people who paid with a card for one week in Italy and the next one in the Czech Republic. It can be seen from payment transactions that such people often went somewhere in the Czech Republic and bought something, ”says Petr Bednařík from DataSentics, who is part of the initiative of several Czech technology companies and IT enthusiasts COVID19CZ. It focuses on helping to combat a new type of coronavirus pandemic. His analytical group, consisting of DataSentics and Keboola, works with leading Czech financial institutions. The analysis of Czech payment card activities abroad was based on Dateio data. [...]

GloriousKoji 7y ago

I don't think there is a way to stop this virus from infecting "everyone". The important thing about self isolation and social distancing is that it reduces the speed of spreading so hospitals are not overloaded. * "everyone" being a large enough population in the world where heard immunity is achieved, probably something around 90%

kiney 7y ago
you can calculate the necessary herd immunity by taking the natural R0: 1-(1/R0) with R0 of 2.4 that would be about 58%

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mns 7y ago

That’s just anecdotal data. Two weeks ago, Munich, test on Sunday for a 4 person family, results came back Tuesday. They were not allowed to leave their home until results came back.

lmm 7y ago
That's consistent with what other people in the thread are saying, that Bavaria has declared an emergency and is taking it much more seriously than most other German states.