NCL leaving Florida? Will HAL follow?

[Dothan1952]

8 minutes ago, POA1 said:

My bad. It was an actual blood test, not a swabbing. BTW - If the # of amplification cycles is too high, you're going to get a lot of positive test results for people who aren't capable of infecting others.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html

Interesting article, I will have research this further , the Cepheid test uses 45 cycles, they always strive for high sensitivity to prevent a false negative test (something critical for diseases like GC, chlamydia or Tuberculosis )

[POA1]

5 hours ago, Dothan1952 said:

Interesting article, I will have research this further , the Cepheid test uses 45 cycles, they always strive for high sensitivity to prevent a false negative test (something critical for diseases like GC, chlamydia or Tuberculosis )

WHO backed the cycle recommendation down to 28 in late January. Not every lab followed the recommendation immediately. Here in Florida, the labs are supposed to report amplification cycles, but not all do.

 

A lot of states and labs don't report the # of amplification cycles, but when you can find the raw data you see a pretty big drop in positivity rates as the thresholds are reduced.

[Dothan1952]

2 hours ago, POA1 said:

WHO backed the cycle recommendation down to 28 in late January. Not every lab followed the recommendation immediately. Here in Florida, the labs are supposed to report amplification cycles, but not all do.

 

A lot of states and labs don't report the # of amplification cycles, but when you can find the raw data you see a pretty big drop in positivity rates as the thresholds are reduced.

Not surprising labs don't report number of cycles, most are using an interface to a LIS, not sure if any of them are set up to capture that data (not sure if the instrument even sends that out). Also for the manufacture to change the number of cycles would require FDA approval, even  with the Emergency Use Authorization I'm sure that was criteria  included . Actually if the low viral load= no transmission holds true that might be good news for ships full of vaccinated passengers - any infection would be very mild or even asymptomatic and no big outbreak like on Diamond Princess will occur

[POA1]

If you go look at the Florida raw data set for testing, you'll see that some labs report cycles. If you go back in time to find the same lab's data set and see where the amplification cycles changed, there's a high correlation between amplification and positivity - which is what you'd expect. There's a good write up on Florida Atlantic University's website. Sadly, I can't locate the page at the moment.

 

The business college, of all places, has some excellent analytics at:

 

https://business.fau.edu/covidtracker/data/florida-data/

[HappyInVan]

On 5/9/2021 at 8:50 AM, kazu said:

 

You are more optimistic than I. 😉 
 

I’ll believe it when I see it 😉 

 

Here's the good news. Canada's vax program is taking off. For BC (pop 5.1m), we expect 2.9 million doses for just May and June. Currently, BC has vax 44% of its entire population with at least one dose...

 

https://covid19tracker.ca/provincevac.html?p=BC

 

For comparison, BC has just caught up with Florida. Next week, we will catch up with California and Washington states. Our next target should be Hawaii. Aloha!

 

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/graphics/2021/01/14/covid-vaccine-distribution-by-state-how-many-covid-vaccines-have-been-given-in-us-how-many-people/6599531002/

 

👍

[kazu]

2 hours ago, HappyInVan said:

For comparison, BC has just caught up with Florida. Next week, we will catch up with California and Washington states. Our next target should be Hawaii. Aloha!

 

hmm... BC might have caught up with Florida for the percentage of those that have received one jab but not for those fully vaccinated.  It is the same with Hawaii.  We are still just getting our first dose.  Very few Canadians are fully vaccinated while 36.2% of Americans are.  

[Aquahound]

A province of 5 million never should have lagged behind a state of 21 million.  Even if they were caught up on full doses, I'm not sure being "caught up," percentage-wise, to a state with 4x the population is very brag worthy.  

[CruiserBruce]

1 hour ago, Aquahound said:

A province of 5 million never should have lagged behind a state of 21 million.  Even if they were caught up on full doses, I'm not sure being "caught up," percentage-wise, to a state with 4x the population is very brag worthy.  

Percentages vaccinated is what matters here, not numbers of people, for a solid comparison. I think the point would also depend on the question of states or provinces getting vaccine allotments as a number related to their population percentage of the national population. That is the way the US is doing it, (or was until a week or so ago, when requests were filled, rather than allotments)is Canada doing the same

 

Important to compare apples to apples, but tough in regards to Canada, as their policy is to give the second dose 12 or more weeks after first dose.

[Aquahound]

5 minutes ago, CruiserBruce said:

Percentages vaccinated is what matters here, not numbers of people, for a solid comparison. I think the point would also depend on the question of states or provinces getting vaccine allotments as a number related to their population percentage of the national population. That is the way the US is doing it, (or was until a week or so ago, when requests were filled, rather than allotments)is Canada doing the same

 

Important to compare apples to apples, but tough in regards to Canada, as their policy is to give the second dose 12 or more weeks after first dose.

 

I agree.  Percentage is what I was referring to in my post.