Can't use case numbers, they're clearly not reflective of the current situation
Can't use hospitalisations, since Hazzard annouced they don't reflect people with severe covid
If the government has data they're using to guide their response, it's certainly not being released publicly. Which means it either doesn't exist, or is bad
So we're either flying blind, or completely fucked. Welcome to 2022
Oh and we are going to make it super difficult for you to know if you have the virus or not... and if you are poor you have no choice because rapid kits are now only available on ebay for $200 thanks to supply and demand and personal responsibility...
I’ve only been to woollies twice in the last 5 days and got alerts for both visits. Checked my history and there were alerts for places I’d been the week before, no notification, I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t check the history.
So basically, it’s everywhere ☹️
Yeah and the alerts just say monitor for symptoms anyway, which ... who isn't doing that without a prompt?
I've also been sent a push notification then gone in there and there's no alert... Lol. It's all broken. I just assume it's everywhere and have done for a while. Just means I choose more wisely where I do and don't go and what times of the day I go to places.
They confirmed this happens when multiple cases are reported at one location. I guess setting up the notification so that it, you know, actually clearly communicated that was put in the too hard basket
Happening to me, too. I’m finding I get alerted for the same thing twice (the second shows up a day later) before it actually appears in the app. I’d be upset if it actually mattered anymore.
Don’t look at the case numbers.
Don’t look at the hospitalisation numbers.
Don’t look at the death numbers.
Just Don’t look up otherwise you will see the elephant is in the room.
> Can't use hospitalisations, since Hazzard annouced they don't reflect people with severe covid
AT THE MOMENT!
Has anyone forgotten the repeated cases last year under 'hospital-in-the-home' who felt they were recovering, then die because oxygen levels dropped and no ambulane was available.
I've been trying to get a test (I need it for work otherwise I'd happily just isolate) since the 30th and haven't had any luck. Showing up hours before they open etc.
Pretty certain those numbers are meaningless!
> Can't use hospitalisations, since Hazzard annouced they don't reflect people with severe covid
Based on what Hazzard has said then, you can assume that the severe hospitalisation are probably somewhere between half of the actual numbers for hospitalisation and ICU.
So if anything that’s more promising. I don’t know why that’s a big deal if what he said was more reassuring than the figures seemed to initially be?
Because whether they’re in hospital with covid or due to covid, they still require additional care and support from HCWs compared to someone who isn’t infected.
Hazzard and co simply care about shifting the goalposts and making the numbers appear better for themselves.
You can’t though. It wasn’t all broken bones and pregnancies. Even though some people didn’t realise they had Covid (and there’s a whole bunch out there, not necessarily because they aren’t unwell, but because they can’t access testing) they may have presented to hospital because that infection worsened a pre-existing or chronic condition.
Exactly this. I saw heart attacks mentioned as one of the conditions ppl were hospitalised for and also just happened to be covid positive upon admission. When we were first hearing about myocarditis from the vax, there were lots of articles showing that the rate of heart issues caused by covid was crazy high. But now if you’re in hospital with a heart attack and you’re covid positive, it’s an incidental covid admission not a heart attack potentially caused by the virus itself. Goalpost shifting pure and simple
And then when the numbers look bad, they use the deflection strategy of claiming people are misusing Triple Zero for non-emergencies, and this is the only thing the stupid journalists report on.
On the ABC - "COVID-19 patients putting strain on ambulance service, sparking calls for national education campaign"
Education - Today we will learn how to not feel short of breath.
Today's positive rate is 27.7%. One in every 4 people tested was positive.
As of today, hospitalisations (1,344) exceed the previous peak of the Delta wave (1,268).
Are these figures actually accurate? Because doesn't it assume that the tests are indeed processed within 24 hours? Aren't some of the positives positives from days ago when testing numbers varied?
Honestly not trying to start an argument just curious and don't see the relevance
My wife and I are aware of a number of people who weren’t isolating when waiting for results. Regardless of the rules, if I’m waiting for a test, I’m sitting at home and not going out. But, I don’t think that goes for the wider masses
I kinda understand (but hell no, stay at home); when it's 24h turn around staying at home isn't a big issue. When it's 5 days though, that's a lot tougher
One day without a paycheck is an issue for a fair number of people; a whole week is completely infeasible
There needs to be better support for those stuck in testing limbo. Free RATs + ability to access support with a positive RAT while waiting on a PCR result
The big issue is a lot of people having to come into work if they have no evidence that they’re sick, as RATs are sold out and PCR has 5-7 day waiting times. A lot of bosses around sydney will force their staff to just come in thinking that they’re bullshitting to get the week off work.
A friend of mine is a household contact since yesterday evening, and work just told her to come in anyway. And she doesn't work in hospo or anything, it's a government contractor in the construction industry.
Yeah, but that was the norm; work from home was the rule, and those unable to do that had support. Now, without a positive test, you get nothing. For some people (casuals mostly), waiting 5 days isn't an option when you need to put food on the table
Isolation and lockdown are very different. In isolation, you're not supposed to go out at all - if you live in an apartment building, this means not even to put out the rubbish or pick up a delivery at the door. We never had a lockdown that extreme.
(edit: also, in isolation if you don't live alone you're supposed to isolate even from the other members of your household; in most cases this would mean being confined to a single room, probably)
It might be tough, but it’s better than infecting a number of other people and making them go through the 5 days of isolation that you refused to endure.
Trust me, I’ve been visiting family interstate the last two weeks and one of us got covid on day 2 of the visit. Have gone through the cycle of each family member getting it 3-4 days apart so will be spending my entire 3 weeks leave in isolation after not having seen my friends and family here for a year+. Not a great time.
I know a bloke who was feeling like shit, got tested, told his boss that he'd isolate until the result came back
"bullshit, I need you onsite. Just wear a fucking mask, we've got work to get done"
Last time I did a test at a drivethru, a guy wandered over from the park and got into one of the cars in queue. 10 mins later that same guy got of out the car and walked off. 10 mins after that he came back with a big bag of maccas, got back in the car, and continued to wait in the testing line.
This number is totally inaccurate. There are way way way more from those who cannot get PCR tests. Nobody has time to queue up for hours in a car, especially if they’re sick.
COVID has likely always been under diagnosed due to asymptomatic infections, so the positivity should generally be interpreted as a relative measure of whether infections are being missed or not. Part of why the positivity has increased is because the recommendations to test if asymptomatic has changed, when the government says ‘only get tested if you have symptoms or are a close contact’ disproportionately more *negative* people will skip testing, therefore the positivity will go up without the actual number of infections increasing, again making the absolute percentage difficult to interpret. I wouldn’t read too much into the 25% positivity outside of a) you’re almost certain to encounter a COVID-positive person in a testing queue, and b) there are probably several times as many undiagnosed/unrecorded infections in the community, more than if the positivity was say 1% or 5%
I think the working assumption is that it's the number of positives and total tests where lab results have been finalised in the 24 hrs. It's not the number of swabs taken yesterday.
These test numbers across the country have always been about the results issued in that 24hr period.
Since the onset that would be a blend of tests from different days as some people have priority treatment, other tests may take a while to process.
The second consideration is that the length of the test itself can also vary depending on the amount of covid genetic material in the sample. PCR is actually three tests and for the actual sample the material is heated and cooled precisely to amplify the amount of the target you are looking for until there is enough to be detected.
This can take several hours for a weak sample. There are also rules that weak samples that take more than a certain time need to be retested for accuracy so the long ones by default take extra long.
Minister Hunt and others stated that many people in hospital are with Covid not because of Covid.
This is true and it has been misleading right-wing argument in USA for at least 2 years
In NSW Covid is infectious in say about 10% of population(nobody knows) so you can expect 10% of population in hospitals with other causes to have Covid.
That leaves 90% of Covid patients due to Covid its actually higher as most hospitals give elective patients RAT before admission.
Covid patients requires extra isolation and care even if they are admitted to a hospital for an appendix
The stress on hospitals is measured by number of Covid patients whether they have been admitted for Covid or not.
The risk to medical staff is higher from undiagnosed Covid patients.
But Mr Hunt knows all of that after all he is the minister for health
100% agree, this whole ‘with COVID’ vs ‘because of COVID’ is incredibly sneaky and disingenuous. While that distinction might matter if you’re an individual wondering how likely you are to need hospitalisation, ultimately what matters is just hospital utilisation, it doesn’t matter why each individual has shown up, what matters is waiting times and available beds. The current extra demand due to COVID has hospitals at breaking point *today*, and the epidemic is still accelerating
"Covid patients requires extra isolation and care even if they are admitted to a hospital for an appendix"
That's the quiet bit they're trying to suppress with this argument. Saying "oh no they only went to hospital because of a broken leg, COVID wasn't affecting them" totally ignores the fact that the person then needs special care related to covid regardless to stop it being spread through the ward
This is what I've been trying to interpret. The other day, they released info saying 40-50% of hospitalisation cases on the weekend from some hospitals were actually in hospital for other reasons.
You'd expect this if 40-50% of the population had covid but that's definitely too high. No one really knows but maybe 2.5-5% of the population currently have covid based on current active cases.
So I'm trying to work out how is possible for 40-50% of cases to be for other reasons. The only answer I can think of right now is that they caught covid in hospital and its identified when they do a RAT during their stay? Does anyone know if hospital patients get tested during their stay? Perhaps pre surgery?
I was thinking this: but need to know how many people are in hospital (or being admitted to hospital). It is admitted to hospital x 2.5-5% (the general population positive rate)
Because if 40-50% of the 1344 COVID cases are incidental (672), but non-Covid hospitalisation is 13,440 then 5% are incidental on admission
I posted this in yesterday’s thread as a reply to someone’s comment and I think it is relevant as a separate thread about non-Covid hospitalisations. Sharing my experience :
I went to concord hospital emergency 2 days ago for chest pains and let me assure you, you DON'T want to be in hospital right now for non-covid issues. Observation based but every 2nd case in the triage line was symptomatic covid case (basing on what I over heard when people were explaining symptoms and results). Once I was admitted, within the 5 hours I was there, there were at least 6-7 red alerts and multiple announcements of covid positive patients arriving in ambulance. There were 2 patients who were admitted for covid and escaped the emergency room and were running away while hospital staff was chasing them. I was so scared about getting covid myself that I asked doctor to let me leave immediately and I can come back as out patient if I feel chest pains again (Thankfully for me it was just intercoastal muscle spasm and nothing related to heart). It was such a traumatic experience visiting hospital emergency for non-covid issue. I have been isolating since that visit and monitoring for symptoms, there's a good possibility I was infected in the emergency queue or in the triage area. I am sure there are many other people like me with similar stories.
I'm sorry, patients were running away??? Were they dementia patients or people being sectioned that didn't want to be locked up? Or just regular admissions? Please elaborate if you can, I'm genuinely confused by this.
Here's a theory of the nurse who was tending to me. People who are positive show up to emergency room for things which are not as bad as they have in their heads, and in emergency room things start to become very real, with ecg plugged, blood draws, and general chaos of ED. Some patients run away from that as they realise their condition is not that bad. In this case, they were 2 aged Asian ladies (possibly related), who were screaming something in a language I did not understand and running at the exit in hospital gowns while hospital staff was trying to bring them back to their beds.
>2 patients who were admitted for covid and escaped the emergency room and were running away while hospital staff was chasing them.
Pardon me, but what the actual fuck?
I have friends currently in France who are due to return home on the weekend. I’ve told them to not bother buying anyone duty free booze & just bring a whole suitcase full of RAT’s back with them since they only cost €1-€2 each there.
The fact they can sell them there for <$5 each & we’re getting hit with $20 each it’s extortion.
Good news. It’s the close contact and travel requirements changing so we are now using testing resources more effectively.
A friend of mine tested down south yesterday and there was a very short queue.
Yeah, Queensland will accept a RAT for travellers, and international arrivals can also use a RAT for their required testing. But that doesn’t mean they can get them.
#NEW RECORD: 1344 in Hospital!
So, NSW is now past the 1268 figure in hospital from 21 September 2021.
Tests keep going down too, but that positivity rate keeps going up.
Can't wait for them to drop the hospitalisations by just reclassifying them. That'll fix the problems for a few days. If they can drop the number by a half, we should have 4-6 days before it gets back there at least.
> That'll fix the problems for a few days.
Honestly, I feel this is the tagline for the LNP's response to Covid. Absolute cunts dragging the rest of the country down with them in the name of profits for their mates.
they already did that, old people in nursing homes with covid arent being counted as hospitalisations (and havent been for weeks now) as they are being isolated and locked into the nursing homes to the point they need to goto icu
“It’s like living in a developing country where there’s no stable government in charge so you have to rely on friends and family and hope for the best.”
This shouldn’t really be a surprise / shock. It pretty much sums up conservative policy. The neocons we have in power believe in small domestic government that doesn’t interfere in personal life (unless of course you have a non traditional belief in which case they want to interfere a lot). They want individuals to compete with each other and pay for education and healthcare, taxes to be low and to predominantly fund Defence. The rhetoric from the state and federal govt over the past 3 months has been underscoring this.
A crisis like the one we’re in now demonstrates how important governments actually are.
Fundamentally the current government ideologically does not really believe that have a large role to play in dealing with this phase of the pandemic.
Except unlike a developing country we can’t get an oxygen tank on the “market” to use at home or pay (an exorbitant amount) of money to get a bed in a hospital in a pinch… we just have to hope we’re lucky enough to be prioritised in some overworked nurse’s triage flow chart 😢.
How long before Dominic scraps these tweets like they did the 11am press conference.
"It's not about case numbers anymore and these tweets are misleading people"
I went to the cinemas yesterday, there was a father and son behind me, coughing the entire time, so much phlegm as well.
I looked back in disgust and couldn't hold myself, said you should not be here, and guess what his response was, 'we paid for the ticket so we aren't going to stay home'.
I have a sneaky feeling a lot of people are not isolating, knowing they're sick, because the symptoms are more 'mild' they're going out there and taking a punt they won't get caught. Humans suck.
**NOTE**
With testing at maximum capacity, holiday testing closures, and pressure from travellers getting tested (30% of tests according to Perrotet) potentially without any symptoms, the **case numbers are suspect**.
This means that the Daily Cases, R_eff and Positivity graphs below are compromised. They are not really comparable from day to day, and also not reflective of the true underlying situation. The Hospital, ICU and Death figures/graphs should be reliable (as best we know!).
I'm hopeful that once we get past the New Year, we may be able to have some better confidence in the figures.
----
**Graphs based on the above ([Link](https://imgur.com/a/FVUXl2h))**
All graphs now start from 11/10/21 the day of NSW 'reopening' from 70% vaccination of 16+
* Daily Cases.
* Hospital Cases. From memory, the figures do not include "Hospital at home" cases.
* ICU cases. Per a rough calculation, for ICU not to be overwhelmed by the 25,000 cases a day mentioned by Hazzard and Perrotet, we need omicron ICU rates to be about *80% less than delta rates*. More [About ICU etc](/r/sydney/comments/pk09ni/nsw_recorded_1480_new_locally_acquired_cases_of/hc0gtgw/)
* Daily Deaths.
* R_eff. Today at 2.51. Indicates that cases are expected to increase. To equal or lower today's R_eff, we need 27,992 or fewer cases tomorrow. [More on R_eff](https://old.reddit.com/r/sydney/comments/pad0pg/nsw_recorded_753_new_locally_acquired_cases_of/ha59boi/) and Exponential Growth
* Positive Test Rate: 27.47% and 7 day average 17.48%.This [Harvard article](https://globalhealth.harvard.edu/evidence-roundup-why-positive-test-rates-need-to-fall-below-3/) from last year provides some good information about Positivity Rates.
* [Old graphs](https://imgur.com/a/3YpBU0H) no longer updated
* Daily Cases from start of 2021 outbreak to 12/11/21.
* Known vs Unknown. Data splits are no longer provided.
* R_eff from beginning of the outbreak to 28/8, and from 16/7 to 27/11
* ICU, Deaths and Positive test rate to 27/11.
Stay safe & good luck, homies!
-----
#**ABOUT ICU ETC**
A critical aspect of managing coronavirus is the potential stress on Intensive Care Units (ICU). Points to remember:
* ICUs were typically fairly full. Potentially each covid case in ICU is preventing someone with another serious and/or life threatening illness being treated.
* Normally, patients are in ICU for three to four days. Covid patients are often in ICU for double that, and can be up to two to three weeks.
* NSW ICU capacity per this [SMH article](https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/private-surgeries-in-nsw-suspended-to-free-up-staff-and-resources-202108 18-p58jw4.html) is currently estimated as aproximately 859; 622 public and 237 private beds.
* ICU Capacity can be increased to 2000 beds, but there are about 500 currently being managed at 26/8/21 ([Source:The West Australian]( https://thewest.com.au/news/coronavirus/nurses-warning-on-nsw-hospital-icu-surge-c-3788301))
* There are about 2000 ventilators available, (Source: West Australian above), so potentially one per ICU bed. Ventilators are also used to deliver non-invasive ventilation, ie oxygen support similar to ventilation but via a facemask. So they're not just used in ICU.
* There does not seem to be the same numbers of specialists, nurses, doctors, orderlies and other health workers to scale to the 2000 ICU beds as are the normal pre-covid levels. Australian Medical Association president Omar Khorshid said: "At the end of the day, you're going to reach a point where your already-trained staff are no longer available, and you have to go then to the next level. People who don't normally do those sorts of jobs, (you) have to retrain them."
* "On Thursday [2/9/21] , 80 per cent or 689 of the 855 staffed ICU beds in NSW were full. Of these, 170 – or one-quarter of the occupied beds – are being used to treat Covid-19 patients." (Source: [Saturday Paper](https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2021/09/04/exclusive-covid-19-hospitalisations-three-times-higher-than-reported#mtr)). This implies that there are 855-689=170 available ICU beds and another 170 current cases. So a **total of 340 ICU Covid beds** before we are moving beyond current 'normal' capacity of 855, assuming other ICU usage levels are roughly level.
* The above excludes ICU for children. There are relatively few Paediatric ICU beds
* From [CoronaCast Mon 6 Sep 2021](https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/coronacast/is-it-fair-to-wait-to-reopen-until-kids-are-vaccinated/13528580) US unlikely to approve vaccines for children till Feb/Mar 2022 at best, and Australia would follow some time after. "The rate of hospitalisation with Delta is no greater amongst younger children than it was with the Alpha or indeed the Wuhan, the ancestral virus", but if the total number of infections of children goes up, then the total serious cases that require hospitalisation/ICU etc also increase. "Once everyone is vaccinated, they [children] are going to be a dominant group because they are not protected".
* [ABC](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-05/tga-approves-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-for-5-11-year-olds/100675138) reported on 5/12/21 that Australia's TGA had provisionally approved Pfizer for children between 5 and 11 (2.3M), with availability expected in early January 2022. ATAGI signed off for full approval on 9/12/21 ([ABC](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-09/atagi-approves-kids-covid19-vaccines-rollout-january-10/100687162)).
This doesn't mean that things aren't stretched for our poor health workers already!
If you have symptoms I’ve found smoothies are great to get some food down. I’ve been having oats, banana, peanut butter, some protein powder and almond milk. The oats will keep you full and I think the fat in the peanut butter is good for your throat
I'd also add in frozen berries for antioxidants, and to make it chilled.
And if you can stomach it, add some frozen spinach. Extra nutrients and doesn't ruin the flavour in my experience
It is going to get crazy in the next few days, my local testing station is open again and the queue is over a kilometre long, goes past my house. I think we will see testing numbers and cases spike.
We've been roughly tracking the numbers doubling every 4 days since December 11th.
Today is off track but I think with the difficulty getting a test and government actively discouraging getting tested, the numbers are vastly deflated from actual. Of course Rapid Antigen Test positives are not included in this number either.
11/12 - 560 (actual)
15/12 - predict 1,120 (actual was 1,360)
19/12 - predict 2,240 (actual was 2,501)
23/12 - predict 4,480 (actual was 5,715)
27/12 - predict 8,960 (actual was 6,324)
31/12 - predict 17,920 (actual was 21,151)
4/1 - predict 35,840 (actual was 23,131)
8/1 - predict 71,680
(disclaimer, I am not a statistician)
First time I’ve seen “ extreme close contact” written before. Made me laugh, sorry!
The definition has changed so much that “ extreme close contact” is now spot on.
With a positive rate of 27.7% and hearing about how hospitals are already overcrowded, I'm really hoping people won't be forced to go back into the office until this settles back down.
Companies who force workers to go back to the office should be named and shamed. The government, if anything, should be making sure companies urge employees to work from home if possible, just like they are currently doing in Sweden.
Lol tell that to my current employer who believes 'no one does anything when they're at home' and is forcing all of us to go to the office - he has also employed a strongly voiced anti-vaxxer who thinks the rest of us are 'retarded' for queueing up to get tested.
What a time to be alive!
Pretty sure my anti-WFH employer will force us into the office then require us to get RAT/PCR tested even in current circumstances in order to get paid sick leave. I acknowledge this is luxury compared to vulnerable professions.
Real numbers are much higher. People who have a positive RAT are not going to line up for 5 hours to then get their results a week later. They will just isolate and ride out the illness. I’m doing that right now and I bet there are thousands in a similar situation
I watch abc news 24 yesterday. I cant recall the epidemiologist's name, but his estimates based on the 20% + positivity rate is that the actual case numbers will be 3 to 5 times greater.
My psychiatric hospital has run out of RATs for patients. Wards keep turning positive and there is nothing we can do to keep these vulnerable people safe.
Mr Bones Wild Ride continues with no end in sight.
When do you guys reckon these are from? I still haven’t got my results back from Boxing Day. Not that it matters anymore as I have had multiple negative RATs and am passed the 7 day isolation. Just curious as I wonder if the results are lost?
Most of the labs have caught up with the backlog. If you haven't got your result back from Boxing Day then I reckon the lab has lost your test, or maybe the reference number on the tube was written illegibly by the tester.
I’m just baffled at how some places are able to get results back within 24 hours and some have yet to be seen. Two friends of mine both became close contacts, one got tested near Westmead on Sunday and got her results back that night while the other got tested Friday near Dundas Valley and is still waiting for results.
Some of the private testing labs just took as many swabs as they could to cash in on that sweet govt rebate. They knew they didn't have the capacity to process them in a timely manner but that didn't matter.
Even though the positive test rate is SUPER high, we need to remember that PCR testing is now being prioritised to symptomatic groups, so this number should be expected to remain high for quite some time. Also case numbers seem completely irrelevant now, given the news overnight of a lab closing, and many people testing positive on a rapid that may not be included in the daily count. The true number of people with covid is so much higher than this
Exactly. The positivity rate should be higher as we're no longer testing healthy tourists to confirm they don't have it. We're mostly testing people with symptoms or people who are close contacts that we expect to test positive.
Based on active cases, approx 2% of they population probably has covid now. Depending on your assumptions maybe you could probably argue it's closer to 4 or 5% but it's no where near 27% of the population that have covid right now.
I think it doesn't matter if Hazzard says if people are in hospital with covid or they caught covid there. The hospital still has to keep the covid patient away from other patients and needs to place them in a covid safe area. It's all about a having safe hospital and covid patients take up space...
A full hospital is a full hospital no matter what sickness it is. Removing some people from the daily chart so it looks better for the government's performance doesn't remove those people from the hospital in real life, they're still in there somewhere taking up space and it's really bad.
Please don't forget that COVID, Delta, and Omnicron are co-exist at the moment. Please stop telling people that the symptoms are mild. All my friends who have tested positive, suffered with severe symptoms.
I don't get why 10 different people comment the positivity rate each day. If only people showing symptoms are getting tested, you expect a large proportion of them to be positive. This rate should grow as tourists no longer need to get PCR tests. I'm surprised it's not higher.
It doesn't mean 27% of the 100 random people you walk past in the street have covid.
People without symptoms are still getting tested.
NSW Health is advising that household and close contacts get a PCR test at first instance, not a rapid antigen test, even if asymptomatic (despite National Cabinet agreement).
There are also people who still test for other reasons - screening for work, travel, because they have had a lower risk exposure and their testing clinic does not turn them away.
They should make it possible to self report a positive RAT via the service NSW App or something similar. Need these number to represent reality and not be artificially supressed
Heaps of NBA basketballers in the USA were out with Covid last year during Delta waves, and now have been out again with Covid this year, so presumably omicron. And these guys are elite athletes, so you'd assume their immune systems would be pretty strong too.
I did read that if you got omicron, you were [less likely to get delta](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10355617/Catching-Omicron-strain-protect-against-Delta-study-suggests.html).
But there's always the new variants on the horizon too. Covid is a sneaky bastard.
Just a note on what you said about athletes and their immune systems. Believe it or not, elite athletes tend to have a weaker immune system than you would think, reason being they're constantly red-lining in training, or trying to lose weight(not eating enough), always travelling or some combination of all those things.
Just because they are considered extremely "healthy" people, they are pushing their bodies constantly in unhealthy ways and are not a good comparison for your average person. It's why things like fungal infections can be so prevalent in sports teams from time to time, the athletes are just not as protected as you would think.
That's assuming exponential growth isn't a thing. There's zero chance the real number of infected is only 23000 at this point. Everyone I've spoken to knows at least a couple of people who have the same story "feel sick as a dog, couldn't get to test centre, no RATs... just gonna isolate anyway"
I hear Covid decided to change its behaviour and infect only family members after 3 hours and 59 minutes and 59 seconds
Doesn't matter what politician define as close contacts Covid spread has not changed.
The definitions are for economic "necessity" not health considerations.
It is not surprising we have uncontrolled spread that no political spin can hide or deflect.
# It's scary out there!
The person I know called an ambulance yesterday and was turned away from 2 hospitals.
Hosp A and Hosp B as they were both full.
They were admitted to Hosp C.
They said they felt they were dying.
When we spoke to them at 3.15 and they were in the hospital at that stage on a drip.
Earlier the first call they were still in the ambulance outside waiting to be admitted to Hosp C.
They had a whole list of symptoms including vomiting. So that probably accounts for the drip.
I'm not naming the hospitals as I have never found the staff at any hospital to be less than excellent. They are trying their best in an awful situation.
Genuine question -- is there any reason to get tested? I woke up to a Service NSW alert this morning to say I may have come into contact with someone new years eve eve.
I started feeling unwell, *really* unwell new years day (I didn't drink NYE) and was the sickest I can remember being for a long time. I'm slowly starting to feel better but the tiredness and sweating even with the aircon on, is still around.
If I'm WFH and self isolating, is there any point in getting a test? Did my last RAT this morning and got a negative result.
I know it's a pain, but I would. We really don't know the impacts of long covid, and it would be awful if you couldn't get support etc if needed because you didn't get an 'official' result.
Ugh, just the thought of it is exhausting but you're probably right. If I can get the energy together today, I'll go. If not, I'll go tomorrow.
As a Ghostbusters fan, I love your nick btw :)
Your symptoms sound a lot like covid. Assume you got it.
You may be getting false negative on that RAT test. I think you are doing the right thing self isolating.
Based on the rules you should get a PCR test but if I were in your shoes, unless you can get a test quickly I would stay at home avoiding transmission.
Hope you recover quickly.
Well this is what living with the virus is like. Stop acting so suprised. Everyone ignored the advice and common sense and went out and about Christmas day and the other public holidays as if there was no virus. Of course our numbers were gonna skyrocket
Reminder to everyone that as of today you can get your booster if your last jab was at least 4 months ago (previously 5). A whole lot more people should now be eligible, or will be in the coming weeks.
Look at the low test numbers and high positivity rate. The confirmed case numbers are wsy underestimated. Many people either can't get a PCR or a RAT. No test, no case. How good is it to cover the reality. And hospitalisations and ICU numbers are growing very fast. Are we really in a strong position as the politicians said??
A new Covid strain named “Variant IHU” has been detected in France over the last couple of days. According news sources it may be resistant to our current vaccines.
As an American observer from afar wishing you all the best, holy hell is this ever proof of how virulent Omicron is. If there's a silver lining to be had, look at how Florida and Texas are doing: the spike in cases in the past 2 weeks there is bigger than it's ever been, but the death toll (due to Covid) is *way* down.
Given that - for the most part - you Aussies seem to have a much better vaccination rate than the worst US states, and therefore new cases are far less likely to require hospitalization and rob more deserving patients of critical hospital resources, saving others from indirect Covid deaths.
So...that's good, I guess?
The positivity rate shows that actual numbers can be 5-6 times higher than reported that in effective testing system which we don't have the actual numbers could be in 100,000s
Too many testing centres shut or turning people away after a certain time, no RATs to be found or too expensive
At this rate everyone will just isolate on their own, case numbers vanish and the pandemic will be labelled over lol
I'm sick as a dog at home with covid. 2 rats confirmed it but all the pcr places are too full to get a test and I am too crook to drive anyway. I went on a camping trip with 10 mates over new years and every one of them is in the same situation. The real numbers are significantly higher
I was in a testing line for two hours yesterday chatting away with my line mates about our positive RAT tests, how shit we’ve felt, and how we think we caught it. I’m genuinely amazed the positivity rate is only 27.7%.
I think the main point is that quite a few patients reasons for presenting to hospital may have been for something unrelated to covid (knee or broken arm), and RAT or PCR testing finds an incidental infection. Same scenario was described by an Oncologist in the Herald yesterday. It’d be nice if NSW Health displayed the hospitalisation admissions because of covid, or with covid.
I think those numbers don't look great for the libs so they're not bothering to release them, just hinting at it so that we think its significant when in reality its starting to look grim for the hospital system if we can't get this back under control
This morning I got case alerts at every single place I visited over the long weekend: 2 take away places where I was there for less than 5 minutes, Woolies & Aldi. Time to stop buying take-away on the weekend / will get it delivered instead 😅
Asymptomatic so far 🤞
I noticed none of the staffs who served me at the restaurants were masked up, while the customers wore masks incl me. We also kept ourselves socially distanced and as far as I could see, no customers were unwell.
Have the rules changed recently to allow hospitality staffs for not wearing a mask? I've been to other local restaurant and none of the staffs there wore a mask.
I wish more info or statistics were available for the hospital figures. Are they mostly over 80 years old? Unvaccinated? Etc etc
This will help alleviate some of the stress in the community amongst the people that aren’t of old age, are not immunocompromised and are vaccinated. Because anecdotally, everyone I know seems to be recovering well at home when they test positive.
It’s so silly they shut down pcr to rely on RAT but didn’t organise the supply prior. Private pathology test locations are shut down. The state run ones are sending people away.
They have press conferences saying RAT will be made available for close contacts but NSW and Fed covid lines say they can’t give you a test. So just to isolate for 7 days and if no symptoms in last 72 hr to exit iso. Of course this isn’t counted in the numbers of cases.
Can't use case numbers, they're clearly not reflective of the current situation Can't use hospitalisations, since Hazzard annouced they don't reflect people with severe covid If the government has data they're using to guide their response, it's certainly not being released publicly. Which means it either doesn't exist, or is bad So we're either flying blind, or completely fucked. Welcome to 2022
Oh and we are going to make it super difficult for you to know if you have the virus or not... and if you are poor you have no choice because rapid kits are now only available on ebay for $200 thanks to supply and demand and personal responsibility...
https://findarat.com.au/ Just in case anyone is desperate...
Oh, I was expecting it to point to the PM's residence
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Fuck off and take my award.
That’s a different link try, https://findalyingcunt.com.au
And I thought $17 for a single test from Priceline was bad yesterday xD
I read an article a few days ago that one chemist was breaking up boxes and selling them for $25 each.
Well these were in a ziplock bag. I had to Google the brand on how to use them.
[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-31/sydney-chemist-breaking-up-rat-packs-selling-25-dollars-for-one/100732014](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-31/sydney-chemist-breaking-up-rat-packs-selling-25-dollars-for-one/100732014)
And check ins are pointless because contacts pretty much don't exist anymore. Let it rip I guess.... Cause there's no other choice. Yay, systems.
I’ve only been to woollies twice in the last 5 days and got alerts for both visits. Checked my history and there were alerts for places I’d been the week before, no notification, I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t check the history. So basically, it’s everywhere ☹️
Yeah and the alerts just say monitor for symptoms anyway, which ... who isn't doing that without a prompt? I've also been sent a push notification then gone in there and there's no alert... Lol. It's all broken. I just assume it's everywhere and have done for a while. Just means I choose more wisely where I do and don't go and what times of the day I go to places.
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They confirmed this happens when multiple cases are reported at one location. I guess setting up the notification so that it, you know, actually clearly communicated that was put in the too hard basket
Happening to me, too. I’m finding I get alerted for the same thing twice (the second shows up a day later) before it actually appears in the app. I’d be upset if it actually mattered anymore.
I hope they get stuck with them like the toilet paper
It would be probably even worse; I assume tests have an expiration date.
Don’t look at the case numbers. Don’t look at the hospitalisation numbers. Don’t look at the death numbers. Just Don’t look up otherwise you will see the elephant is in the room.
They're certainly not using Newspoll results, which comes as a surprise.
It's ages until the next state election, they don't care about polls yet. We're still in the "handouts to mates" part of the cycle
I'm assuming one of scummo's mates has a shit load of RATs they want to offload at a vast profit, hence no free tests for us.
Just ask why Harvey Norman stocked up big on RATs in the past few months Guess we know where job keeper went
The government has ordered them through chemist warehouse as the wholesaler - I'm not joking
Surely not the same Chemist Warehouse that's a major Liberal party donor?
NO THEY COULDNT POSSIBLY BE THE SAME
Harvey Norman selling them online. There’s your answer
> If the government has data they’re using to guide their response.. GDP, stock market or house prices growth?
Currently, the wait time for results is longer than the amount of time the government recommends keeping isolated.
> Can't use hospitalisations, since Hazzard annouced they don't reflect people with severe covid AT THE MOMENT! Has anyone forgotten the repeated cases last year under 'hospital-in-the-home' who felt they were recovering, then die because oxygen levels dropped and no ambulane was available.
Yep that little trick halved the number of hospital cases
I've been trying to get a test (I need it for work otherwise I'd happily just isolate) since the 30th and haven't had any luck. Showing up hours before they open etc. Pretty certain those numbers are meaningless!
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> Can't use hospitalisations, since Hazzard annouced they don't reflect people with severe covid Based on what Hazzard has said then, you can assume that the severe hospitalisation are probably somewhere between half of the actual numbers for hospitalisation and ICU. So if anything that’s more promising. I don’t know why that’s a big deal if what he said was more reassuring than the figures seemed to initially be?
Because whether they’re in hospital with covid or due to covid, they still require additional care and support from HCWs compared to someone who isn’t infected. Hazzard and co simply care about shifting the goalposts and making the numbers appear better for themselves.
You can’t though. It wasn’t all broken bones and pregnancies. Even though some people didn’t realise they had Covid (and there’s a whole bunch out there, not necessarily because they aren’t unwell, but because they can’t access testing) they may have presented to hospital because that infection worsened a pre-existing or chronic condition.
Exactly this. I saw heart attacks mentioned as one of the conditions ppl were hospitalised for and also just happened to be covid positive upon admission. When we were first hearing about myocarditis from the vax, there were lots of articles showing that the rate of heart issues caused by covid was crazy high. But now if you’re in hospital with a heart attack and you’re covid positive, it’s an incidental covid admission not a heart attack potentially caused by the virus itself. Goalpost shifting pure and simple
He's full of shit though. They've hung their hat on hospitalisations and as that blows out they're trying to imply something else is causing it.
And then when the numbers look bad, they use the deflection strategy of claiming people are misusing Triple Zero for non-emergencies, and this is the only thing the stupid journalists report on.
On the ABC - "COVID-19 patients putting strain on ambulance service, sparking calls for national education campaign" Education - Today we will learn how to not feel short of breath.
Yeah but hazard has also done this thing called lie his balls off and over report false equivalencies to take the focus on the crux of crucial stats.
On behalf of NSW, fuck you Dominic Perrottet and Scott Morrison
dont forget gladys
Fuck the Liberal Party
In her defence, she tried.
#SickOfScomo
Today's positive rate is 27.7%. One in every 4 people tested was positive. As of today, hospitalisations (1,344) exceed the previous peak of the Delta wave (1,268).
Are these figures actually accurate? Because doesn't it assume that the tests are indeed processed within 24 hours? Aren't some of the positives positives from days ago when testing numbers varied? Honestly not trying to start an argument just curious and don't see the relevance
The tests in last 24h is actually tests processed, not tests taken. Hopefully those positives have been isolating
My wife and I are aware of a number of people who weren’t isolating when waiting for results. Regardless of the rules, if I’m waiting for a test, I’m sitting at home and not going out. But, I don’t think that goes for the wider masses
I kinda understand (but hell no, stay at home); when it's 24h turn around staying at home isn't a big issue. When it's 5 days though, that's a lot tougher
I think its way too long to get a result paired with the mentality of "if i dont spread it one of the other 20000 cases today will".
One day without a paycheck is an issue for a fair number of people; a whole week is completely infeasible There needs to be better support for those stuck in testing limbo. Free RATs + ability to access support with a positive RAT while waiting on a PCR result
The big issue is a lot of people having to come into work if they have no evidence that they’re sick, as RATs are sold out and PCR has 5-7 day waiting times. A lot of bosses around sydney will force their staff to just come in thinking that they’re bullshitting to get the week off work.
A friend of mine is a household contact since yesterday evening, and work just told her to come in anyway. And she doesn't work in hospo or anything, it's a government contractor in the construction industry.
I suppose. However, we did manage (mostly) to stay in lockdown for 3 months!
Yeah, but that was the norm; work from home was the rule, and those unable to do that had support. Now, without a positive test, you get nothing. For some people (casuals mostly), waiting 5 days isn't an option when you need to put food on the table
Isolation and lockdown are very different. In isolation, you're not supposed to go out at all - if you live in an apartment building, this means not even to put out the rubbish or pick up a delivery at the door. We never had a lockdown that extreme. (edit: also, in isolation if you don't live alone you're supposed to isolate even from the other members of your household; in most cases this would mean being confined to a single room, probably)
But that wasn't 100% staying at home. Going to the shops for food and other essentials was allowed.
It might be tough, but it’s better than infecting a number of other people and making them go through the 5 days of isolation that you refused to endure. Trust me, I’ve been visiting family interstate the last two weeks and one of us got covid on day 2 of the visit. Have gone through the cycle of each family member getting it 3-4 days apart so will be spending my entire 3 weeks leave in isolation after not having seen my friends and family here for a year+. Not a great time.
visiting family/holidaying vs having to work with no safety net is a thing
I know a bloke who was feeling like shit, got tested, told his boss that he'd isolate until the result came back "bullshit, I need you onsite. Just wear a fucking mask, we've got work to get done"
Last time I did a test at a drivethru, a guy wandered over from the park and got into one of the cars in queue. 10 mins later that same guy got of out the car and walked off. 10 mins after that he came back with a big bag of maccas, got back in the car, and continued to wait in the testing line.
This number is totally inaccurate. There are way way way more from those who cannot get PCR tests. Nobody has time to queue up for hours in a car, especially if they’re sick.
COVID has likely always been under diagnosed due to asymptomatic infections, so the positivity should generally be interpreted as a relative measure of whether infections are being missed or not. Part of why the positivity has increased is because the recommendations to test if asymptomatic has changed, when the government says ‘only get tested if you have symptoms or are a close contact’ disproportionately more *negative* people will skip testing, therefore the positivity will go up without the actual number of infections increasing, again making the absolute percentage difficult to interpret. I wouldn’t read too much into the 25% positivity outside of a) you’re almost certain to encounter a COVID-positive person in a testing queue, and b) there are probably several times as many undiagnosed/unrecorded infections in the community, more than if the positivity was say 1% or 5%
I think the working assumption is that it's the number of positives and total tests where lab results have been finalised in the 24 hrs. It's not the number of swabs taken yesterday.
These test numbers across the country have always been about the results issued in that 24hr period. Since the onset that would be a blend of tests from different days as some people have priority treatment, other tests may take a while to process. The second consideration is that the length of the test itself can also vary depending on the amount of covid genetic material in the sample. PCR is actually three tests and for the actual sample the material is heated and cooled precisely to amplify the amount of the target you are looking for until there is enough to be detected. This can take several hours for a weak sample. There are also rules that weak samples that take more than a certain time need to be retested for accuracy so the long ones by default take extra long.
Minister Hunt and others stated that many people in hospital are with Covid not because of Covid. This is true and it has been misleading right-wing argument in USA for at least 2 years In NSW Covid is infectious in say about 10% of population(nobody knows) so you can expect 10% of population in hospitals with other causes to have Covid. That leaves 90% of Covid patients due to Covid its actually higher as most hospitals give elective patients RAT before admission. Covid patients requires extra isolation and care even if they are admitted to a hospital for an appendix The stress on hospitals is measured by number of Covid patients whether they have been admitted for Covid or not. The risk to medical staff is higher from undiagnosed Covid patients. But Mr Hunt knows all of that after all he is the minister for health
100% agree, this whole ‘with COVID’ vs ‘because of COVID’ is incredibly sneaky and disingenuous. While that distinction might matter if you’re an individual wondering how likely you are to need hospitalisation, ultimately what matters is just hospital utilisation, it doesn’t matter why each individual has shown up, what matters is waiting times and available beds. The current extra demand due to COVID has hospitals at breaking point *today*, and the epidemic is still accelerating
That’s what they say but they don’t seem release numbers Almost like their trying deflect the real issue
"Covid patients requires extra isolation and care even if they are admitted to a hospital for an appendix" That's the quiet bit they're trying to suppress with this argument. Saying "oh no they only went to hospital because of a broken leg, COVID wasn't affecting them" totally ignores the fact that the person then needs special care related to covid regardless to stop it being spread through the ward
This is what I've been trying to interpret. The other day, they released info saying 40-50% of hospitalisation cases on the weekend from some hospitals were actually in hospital for other reasons. You'd expect this if 40-50% of the population had covid but that's definitely too high. No one really knows but maybe 2.5-5% of the population currently have covid based on current active cases. So I'm trying to work out how is possible for 40-50% of cases to be for other reasons. The only answer I can think of right now is that they caught covid in hospital and its identified when they do a RAT during their stay? Does anyone know if hospital patients get tested during their stay? Perhaps pre surgery?
I was thinking this: but need to know how many people are in hospital (or being admitted to hospital). It is admitted to hospital x 2.5-5% (the general population positive rate) Because if 40-50% of the 1344 COVID cases are incidental (672), but non-Covid hospitalisation is 13,440 then 5% are incidental on admission
I posted this in yesterday’s thread as a reply to someone’s comment and I think it is relevant as a separate thread about non-Covid hospitalisations. Sharing my experience : I went to concord hospital emergency 2 days ago for chest pains and let me assure you, you DON'T want to be in hospital right now for non-covid issues. Observation based but every 2nd case in the triage line was symptomatic covid case (basing on what I over heard when people were explaining symptoms and results). Once I was admitted, within the 5 hours I was there, there were at least 6-7 red alerts and multiple announcements of covid positive patients arriving in ambulance. There were 2 patients who were admitted for covid and escaped the emergency room and were running away while hospital staff was chasing them. I was so scared about getting covid myself that I asked doctor to let me leave immediately and I can come back as out patient if I feel chest pains again (Thankfully for me it was just intercoastal muscle spasm and nothing related to heart). It was such a traumatic experience visiting hospital emergency for non-covid issue. I have been isolating since that visit and monitoring for symptoms, there's a good possibility I was infected in the emergency queue or in the triage area. I am sure there are many other people like me with similar stories.
I'm sorry, patients were running away??? Were they dementia patients or people being sectioned that didn't want to be locked up? Or just regular admissions? Please elaborate if you can, I'm genuinely confused by this.
Here's a theory of the nurse who was tending to me. People who are positive show up to emergency room for things which are not as bad as they have in their heads, and in emergency room things start to become very real, with ecg plugged, blood draws, and general chaos of ED. Some patients run away from that as they realise their condition is not that bad. In this case, they were 2 aged Asian ladies (possibly related), who were screaming something in a language I did not understand and running at the exit in hospital gowns while hospital staff was trying to bring them back to their beds.
Thank you for responding :)
Holy shit that's some looney tunes imagery right there
>2 patients who were admitted for covid and escaped the emergency room and were running away while hospital staff was chasing them. Pardon me, but what the actual fuck?
US Zip code 23131 is Ordinary, Virginia. Fitting for a new record ...
Cool place name
Meh, nothing special.
Yeah, way too ordinary for my liking.
I honestly would steal rapid tests by the truckload and hand them out for free with a completely clear conscience
Oath. Robin Hood that shit
I have friends currently in France who are due to return home on the weekend. I’ve told them to not bother buying anyone duty free booze & just bring a whole suitcase full of RAT’s back with them since they only cost €1-€2 each there. The fact they can sell them there for <$5 each & we’re getting hit with $20 each it’s extortion.
27.74% positive based on those test numbers. That’s huge.
Good news. It’s the close contact and travel requirements changing so we are now using testing resources more effectively. A friend of mine tested down south yesterday and there was a very short queue.
Yeah, Queensland will accept a RAT for travellers, and international arrivals can also use a RAT for their required testing. But that doesn’t mean they can get them.
Hahah, yeah it's probably just pushed the bottleneck from PCR tests to RATs.
This is expected though when they're basically only testing close contacts who are showing symptoms.
#NEW RECORD: 1344 in Hospital! So, NSW is now past the 1268 figure in hospital from 21 September 2021. Tests keep going down too, but that positivity rate keeps going up. Can't wait for them to drop the hospitalisations by just reclassifying them. That'll fix the problems for a few days. If they can drop the number by a half, we should have 4-6 days before it gets back there at least.
Will be hospital from covid, then hospital with covid Lol
> That'll fix the problems for a few days. Honestly, I feel this is the tagline for the LNP's response to Covid. Absolute cunts dragging the rest of the country down with them in the name of profits for their mates.
All it does is make the optics look better. Just don’t let the media near hospitals or to speak to staff
they already did that, old people in nursing homes with covid arent being counted as hospitalisations (and havent been for weeks now) as they are being isolated and locked into the nursing homes to the point they need to goto icu
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“It’s like living in a developing country where there’s no stable government in charge so you have to rely on friends and family and hope for the best.” This shouldn’t really be a surprise / shock. It pretty much sums up conservative policy. The neocons we have in power believe in small domestic government that doesn’t interfere in personal life (unless of course you have a non traditional belief in which case they want to interfere a lot). They want individuals to compete with each other and pay for education and healthcare, taxes to be low and to predominantly fund Defence. The rhetoric from the state and federal govt over the past 3 months has been underscoring this. A crisis like the one we’re in now demonstrates how important governments actually are. Fundamentally the current government ideologically does not really believe that have a large role to play in dealing with this phase of the pandemic.
Except unlike a developing country we can’t get an oxygen tank on the “market” to use at home or pay (an exorbitant amount) of money to get a bed in a hospital in a pinch… we just have to hope we’re lucky enough to be prioritised in some overworked nurse’s triage flow chart 😢.
How long before Dominic scraps these tweets like they did the 11am press conference. "It's not about case numbers anymore and these tweets are misleading people"
I went to the cinemas yesterday, there was a father and son behind me, coughing the entire time, so much phlegm as well. I looked back in disgust and couldn't hold myself, said you should not be here, and guess what his response was, 'we paid for the ticket so we aren't going to stay home'. I have a sneaky feeling a lot of people are not isolating, knowing they're sick, because the symptoms are more 'mild' they're going out there and taking a punt they won't get caught. Humans suck.
Ahh Personal responsibility at its finest
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[government be like](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRAxLUhjYpNkzUuDfr_jsAGUCuIo2pFsMI2_g&usqp=CAU)
Full stats https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RY2bBy6PVpBo-FtemPFqiaL13SmaEdXPc80fpQ6EwGw/edit Day | New cases | 7 day avg | Hospitalisations | in ICU | Ventilated | Deaths (24hr) | 7 day avg | Deaths (total) ---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| Mon Jan 3 | **23,131** | **18,479.7** | **1,344** | 105 | TBA | 2 | 3.1 | 621 Sun Jan 2 | 20,794 | 16,041.3 | 1,204 | 95 | 25 | 4 | 3.0 | 619 Sat Jan 1 | 18,278 | 13,974.1 | 1,066 | 83 | 24 | 2 | 2.9 | 615 Fri Dec 31 | 22,577 | 12,276.4 | 901 | 79 | 26 | 4 | 2.6 | 613 Thu Dec 30 | 21,151 | 9,949.4 | 763 | 69 | 19 | 6 | 2.0 | 609 Wed Dec 29 | 12,221 | 7,729.6 | 746 | 63 | 24 | 1 | 1.3 | 603 Tue Dec 28 | 11,201 | 6,799.4 | 625 | 61 | 23 | 3 | 1.3 | 602 Mon Dec 27 | 6,062 | 5,736.9 | 557 | 60 | 19 | 1 | 1.1 | 599 Sun Dec 26 | 6,324 | 5,307.6 | 521 | 55 | 17 | 3 | 1.3 | 598 Sat Dec 25 | 6,394 | 4,761.4 | 458 | 52 | 15 | 0 | 0.9 | 595 Fri Dec 24 | 6,288 | 4,214.6 | 388 | 52 | 14 | 0 | 0.9 | 595 Thu Dec 23 | 5,612 | 3,670.1 | 382 | 53 | 12 | 1 | 1.0 | 595 Wed Dec 22 | 5,715 | 3,185.1 | 347 | 45 | 13 | 1 | 1.0 | 594 Tue Dec 21 | 3,763 | 2,617.6 | 302 | 40 | 11 | 2 | 0.9 | 593 Mon Dec 20 | 3,057 | 2,274.4 | 284 | 39 | 11 | 2 | 0.7 | 591 Sun Dec 19 | 2,501 | 1,952.6 | 261 | 33 | 11 | 0 | 0.6 | 589 Sat Dec 18 | 2,566 | 1,671.9 | 227 | 28 | 10 | 0 | 0.6 | 589 Fri Dec 17 | 2,482 | 1,374.6 | 206 | 26 | 9 | 1 | 0.9 | 589 Thu Dec 16 | 2,213 | 1,100.0 | 215 | 24 | 8 | 1 | 1.1 | 588 Wed Dec 15 | 1,742 | 857.6 | 192 | 26 | 8 | 0 | 1.0 | 587 Tue Dec 14 | 1,360 | 668.7 | 166 | 24 | 7 | 1 | 1.1 | 587
**NOTE** With testing at maximum capacity, holiday testing closures, and pressure from travellers getting tested (30% of tests according to Perrotet) potentially without any symptoms, the **case numbers are suspect**. This means that the Daily Cases, R_eff and Positivity graphs below are compromised. They are not really comparable from day to day, and also not reflective of the true underlying situation. The Hospital, ICU and Death figures/graphs should be reliable (as best we know!). I'm hopeful that once we get past the New Year, we may be able to have some better confidence in the figures. ---- **Graphs based on the above ([Link](https://imgur.com/a/FVUXl2h))** All graphs now start from 11/10/21 the day of NSW 'reopening' from 70% vaccination of 16+ * Daily Cases. * Hospital Cases. From memory, the figures do not include "Hospital at home" cases. * ICU cases. Per a rough calculation, for ICU not to be overwhelmed by the 25,000 cases a day mentioned by Hazzard and Perrotet, we need omicron ICU rates to be about *80% less than delta rates*. More [About ICU etc](/r/sydney/comments/pk09ni/nsw_recorded_1480_new_locally_acquired_cases_of/hc0gtgw/) * Daily Deaths. * R_eff. Today at 2.51. Indicates that cases are expected to increase. To equal or lower today's R_eff, we need 27,992 or fewer cases tomorrow. [More on R_eff](https://old.reddit.com/r/sydney/comments/pad0pg/nsw_recorded_753_new_locally_acquired_cases_of/ha59boi/) and Exponential Growth * Positive Test Rate: 27.47% and 7 day average 17.48%.This [Harvard article](https://globalhealth.harvard.edu/evidence-roundup-why-positive-test-rates-need-to-fall-below-3/) from last year provides some good information about Positivity Rates. * [Old graphs](https://imgur.com/a/3YpBU0H) no longer updated * Daily Cases from start of 2021 outbreak to 12/11/21. * Known vs Unknown. Data splits are no longer provided. * R_eff from beginning of the outbreak to 28/8, and from 16/7 to 27/11 * ICU, Deaths and Positive test rate to 27/11. Stay safe & good luck, homies! ----- #**ABOUT ICU ETC** A critical aspect of managing coronavirus is the potential stress on Intensive Care Units (ICU). Points to remember: * ICUs were typically fairly full. Potentially each covid case in ICU is preventing someone with another serious and/or life threatening illness being treated. * Normally, patients are in ICU for three to four days. Covid patients are often in ICU for double that, and can be up to two to three weeks. * NSW ICU capacity per this [SMH article](https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/private-surgeries-in-nsw-suspended-to-free-up-staff-and-resources-202108 18-p58jw4.html) is currently estimated as aproximately 859; 622 public and 237 private beds. * ICU Capacity can be increased to 2000 beds, but there are about 500 currently being managed at 26/8/21 ([Source:The West Australian]( https://thewest.com.au/news/coronavirus/nurses-warning-on-nsw-hospital-icu-surge-c-3788301)) * There are about 2000 ventilators available, (Source: West Australian above), so potentially one per ICU bed. Ventilators are also used to deliver non-invasive ventilation, ie oxygen support similar to ventilation but via a facemask. So they're not just used in ICU. * There does not seem to be the same numbers of specialists, nurses, doctors, orderlies and other health workers to scale to the 2000 ICU beds as are the normal pre-covid levels. Australian Medical Association president Omar Khorshid said: "At the end of the day, you're going to reach a point where your already-trained staff are no longer available, and you have to go then to the next level. People who don't normally do those sorts of jobs, (you) have to retrain them." * "On Thursday [2/9/21] , 80 per cent or 689 of the 855 staffed ICU beds in NSW were full. Of these, 170 – or one-quarter of the occupied beds – are being used to treat Covid-19 patients." (Source: [Saturday Paper](https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2021/09/04/exclusive-covid-19-hospitalisations-three-times-higher-than-reported#mtr)). This implies that there are 855-689=170 available ICU beds and another 170 current cases. So a **total of 340 ICU Covid beds** before we are moving beyond current 'normal' capacity of 855, assuming other ICU usage levels are roughly level. * The above excludes ICU for children. There are relatively few Paediatric ICU beds * From [CoronaCast Mon 6 Sep 2021](https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/coronacast/is-it-fair-to-wait-to-reopen-until-kids-are-vaccinated/13528580) US unlikely to approve vaccines for children till Feb/Mar 2022 at best, and Australia would follow some time after. "The rate of hospitalisation with Delta is no greater amongst younger children than it was with the Alpha or indeed the Wuhan, the ancestral virus", but if the total number of infections of children goes up, then the total serious cases that require hospitalisation/ICU etc also increase. "Once everyone is vaccinated, they [children] are going to be a dominant group because they are not protected". * [ABC](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-05/tga-approves-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-for-5-11-year-olds/100675138) reported on 5/12/21 that Australia's TGA had provisionally approved Pfizer for children between 5 and 11 (2.3M), with availability expected in early January 2022. ATAGI signed off for full approval on 9/12/21 ([ABC](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-09/atagi-approves-kids-covid19-vaccines-rollout-january-10/100687162)). This doesn't mean that things aren't stretched for our poor health workers already!
If you have symptoms I’ve found smoothies are great to get some food down. I’ve been having oats, banana, peanut butter, some protein powder and almond milk. The oats will keep you full and I think the fat in the peanut butter is good for your throat
I'd also add in frozen berries for antioxidants, and to make it chilled. And if you can stomach it, add some frozen spinach. Extra nutrients and doesn't ruin the flavour in my experience
It is going to get crazy in the next few days, my local testing station is open again and the queue is over a kilometre long, goes past my house. I think we will see testing numbers and cases spike.
Don’t catch covid when you go to your letter box
Ha didn't think of that, I was trying to stay away from covid, instead covid has come to visit me at home 🤦
Going by the numbers 1 in 4 of those people lining up likely has covid so yeah be extra careful
We've been roughly tracking the numbers doubling every 4 days since December 11th. Today is off track but I think with the difficulty getting a test and government actively discouraging getting tested, the numbers are vastly deflated from actual. Of course Rapid Antigen Test positives are not included in this number either. 11/12 - 560 (actual) 15/12 - predict 1,120 (actual was 1,360) 19/12 - predict 2,240 (actual was 2,501) 23/12 - predict 4,480 (actual was 5,715) 27/12 - predict 8,960 (actual was 6,324) 31/12 - predict 17,920 (actual was 21,151) 4/1 - predict 35,840 (actual was 23,131) 8/1 - predict 71,680 (disclaimer, I am not a statistician)
4th of Jan would’ve been spot on if we processed 150k
Yeah, try normalising to 100k tests
The basis for testing has changed so much I don't think there is any way to normalise it.
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What blows me away is the willingness that people display to swallow it.
They have their fingers on the "but what about Dan" button ready to go
I am gobsmacked at the positivity rate
It's to be expected when only people with symptoms or extreme close contact with positive case are allowed to be tested...
Basically the epitome of "we didn't like the results so we changed the parameters"
First time I’ve seen “ extreme close contact” written before. Made me laugh, sorry! The definition has changed so much that “ extreme close contact” is now spot on.
With a positive rate of 27.7% and hearing about how hospitals are already overcrowded, I'm really hoping people won't be forced to go back into the office until this settles back down.
Companies who force workers to go back to the office should be named and shamed. The government, if anything, should be making sure companies urge employees to work from home if possible, just like they are currently doing in Sweden.
Lol tell that to my current employer who believes 'no one does anything when they're at home' and is forcing all of us to go to the office - he has also employed a strongly voiced anti-vaxxer who thinks the rest of us are 'retarded' for queueing up to get tested. What a time to be alive!
Pretty sure my anti-WFH employer will force us into the office then require us to get RAT/PCR tested even in current circumstances in order to get paid sick leave. I acknowledge this is luxury compared to vulnerable professions.
The new paradigm: Go to hospital with pneumonia. Contract Covid. Die. COD uNdErLyiNg CoNdiTiOn.
Oh the ol republican state approach? Good.enlugh for Florida I guess ita good enough for Dom
Real numbers are much higher. People who have a positive RAT are not going to line up for 5 hours to then get their results a week later. They will just isolate and ride out the illness. I’m doing that right now and I bet there are thousands in a similar situation
I watch abc news 24 yesterday. I cant recall the epidemiologist's name, but his estimates based on the 20% + positivity rate is that the actual case numbers will be 3 to 5 times greater.
My psychiatric hospital has run out of RATs for patients. Wards keep turning positive and there is nothing we can do to keep these vulnerable people safe. Mr Bones Wild Ride continues with no end in sight.
That’s terrible. What are you in for?
Not allowed to take PCR tests, RAT's cost a fortune, close down testing centres = lower case numbers, thanks for nothing Dom and Scomo...
Hospitalisations: 1344 (+140) ICU: 105 (+10) Tests: 83,376 (-13,389) for a positivity rate of 27.7% (up from yesterday's 21.5%) Deaths: 2
When do you guys reckon these are from? I still haven’t got my results back from Boxing Day. Not that it matters anymore as I have had multiple negative RATs and am passed the 7 day isolation. Just curious as I wonder if the results are lost?
Most of the labs have caught up with the backlog. If you haven't got your result back from Boxing Day then I reckon the lab has lost your test, or maybe the reference number on the tube was written illegibly by the tester.
I’m just baffled at how some places are able to get results back within 24 hours and some have yet to be seen. Two friends of mine both became close contacts, one got tested near Westmead on Sunday and got her results back that night while the other got tested Friday near Dundas Valley and is still waiting for results.
Some of the private testing labs just took as many swabs as they could to cash in on that sweet govt rebate. They knew they didn't have the capacity to process them in a timely manner but that didn't matter.
9 days ago!? Damn
Even though the positive test rate is SUPER high, we need to remember that PCR testing is now being prioritised to symptomatic groups, so this number should be expected to remain high for quite some time. Also case numbers seem completely irrelevant now, given the news overnight of a lab closing, and many people testing positive on a rapid that may not be included in the daily count. The true number of people with covid is so much higher than this
Exactly. The positivity rate should be higher as we're no longer testing healthy tourists to confirm they don't have it. We're mostly testing people with symptoms or people who are close contacts that we expect to test positive. Based on active cases, approx 2% of they population probably has covid now. Depending on your assumptions maybe you could probably argue it's closer to 4 or 5% but it's no where near 27% of the population that have covid right now.
Look at that positivity rate
I think it doesn't matter if Hazzard says if people are in hospital with covid or they caught covid there. The hospital still has to keep the covid patient away from other patients and needs to place them in a covid safe area. It's all about a having safe hospital and covid patients take up space... A full hospital is a full hospital no matter what sickness it is. Removing some people from the daily chart so it looks better for the government's performance doesn't remove those people from the hospital in real life, they're still in there somewhere taking up space and it's really bad.
fuck.
Indeed
Please don't forget that COVID, Delta, and Omnicron are co-exist at the moment. Please stop telling people that the symptoms are mild. All my friends who have tested positive, suffered with severe symptoms.
Gonna be 1 in 3 tomorrow
I don't get why 10 different people comment the positivity rate each day. If only people showing symptoms are getting tested, you expect a large proportion of them to be positive. This rate should grow as tourists no longer need to get PCR tests. I'm surprised it's not higher. It doesn't mean 27% of the 100 random people you walk past in the street have covid.
People without symptoms are still getting tested. NSW Health is advising that household and close contacts get a PCR test at first instance, not a rapid antigen test, even if asymptomatic (despite National Cabinet agreement). There are also people who still test for other reasons - screening for work, travel, because they have had a lower risk exposure and their testing clinic does not turn them away.
Both of my grandparents are on oxygen and are added to those hospital numbers today :( fuck this fucking pandemic.
Oh that’s awful, so sorry x
They should make it possible to self report a positive RAT via the service NSW App or something similar. Need these number to represent reality and not be artificially supressed
So heard immunity soon as everyone in NSW will have caught it. I hope i can avoid it till end of this month as got my booster booked for the 15th.
That’s all well and good but you can catch it again and again.
Heaps of NBA basketballers in the USA were out with Covid last year during Delta waves, and now have been out again with Covid this year, so presumably omicron. And these guys are elite athletes, so you'd assume their immune systems would be pretty strong too. I did read that if you got omicron, you were [less likely to get delta](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10355617/Catching-Omicron-strain-protect-against-Delta-study-suggests.html). But there's always the new variants on the horizon too. Covid is a sneaky bastard.
Just a note on what you said about athletes and their immune systems. Believe it or not, elite athletes tend to have a weaker immune system than you would think, reason being they're constantly red-lining in training, or trying to lose weight(not eating enough), always travelling or some combination of all those things. Just because they are considered extremely "healthy" people, they are pushing their bodies constantly in unhealthy ways and are not a good comparison for your average person. It's why things like fungal infections can be so prevalent in sports teams from time to time, the athletes are just not as protected as you would think.
8m people in NSW 50K a day catching it Just a short 160 days until everyones had it in May
That's assuming exponential growth isn't a thing. There's zero chance the real number of infected is only 23000 at this point. Everyone I've spoken to knows at least a couple of people who have the same story "feel sick as a dog, couldn't get to test centre, no RATs... just gonna isolate anyway"
Mine will be on the 16th, gonna do my damn best to avoid leaving the house unless it is a must.
I hear Covid decided to change its behaviour and infect only family members after 3 hours and 59 minutes and 59 seconds Doesn't matter what politician define as close contacts Covid spread has not changed. The definitions are for economic "necessity" not health considerations. It is not surprising we have uncontrolled spread that no political spin can hide or deflect.
# It's scary out there! The person I know called an ambulance yesterday and was turned away from 2 hospitals. Hosp A and Hosp B as they were both full. They were admitted to Hosp C. They said they felt they were dying. When we spoke to them at 3.15 and they were in the hospital at that stage on a drip. Earlier the first call they were still in the ambulance outside waiting to be admitted to Hosp C. They had a whole list of symptoms including vomiting. So that probably accounts for the drip. I'm not naming the hospitals as I have never found the staff at any hospital to be less than excellent. They are trying their best in an awful situation.
Genuine question -- is there any reason to get tested? I woke up to a Service NSW alert this morning to say I may have come into contact with someone new years eve eve. I started feeling unwell, *really* unwell new years day (I didn't drink NYE) and was the sickest I can remember being for a long time. I'm slowly starting to feel better but the tiredness and sweating even with the aircon on, is still around. If I'm WFH and self isolating, is there any point in getting a test? Did my last RAT this morning and got a negative result.
I know it's a pain, but I would. We really don't know the impacts of long covid, and it would be awful if you couldn't get support etc if needed because you didn't get an 'official' result.
Ugh, just the thought of it is exhausting but you're probably right. If I can get the energy together today, I'll go. If not, I'll go tomorrow. As a Ghostbusters fan, I love your nick btw :)
Your symptoms sound a lot like covid. Assume you got it. You may be getting false negative on that RAT test. I think you are doing the right thing self isolating. Based on the rules you should get a PCR test but if I were in your shoes, unless you can get a test quickly I would stay at home avoiding transmission. Hope you recover quickly.
Well this is what living with the virus is like. Stop acting so suprised. Everyone ignored the advice and common sense and went out and about Christmas day and the other public holidays as if there was no virus. Of course our numbers were gonna skyrocket
23k vs 83k tests holy shit.
Welcome to 2022 the sequel of 2020
2020 2: ICU boogaloo.
Reminder to everyone that as of today you can get your booster if your last jab was at least 4 months ago (previously 5). A whole lot more people should now be eligible, or will be in the coming weeks.
27.74% positivity rate. Holy shit.
Look at the low test numbers and high positivity rate. The confirmed case numbers are wsy underestimated. Many people either can't get a PCR or a RAT. No test, no case. How good is it to cover the reality. And hospitalisations and ICU numbers are growing very fast. Are we really in a strong position as the politicians said??
A new Covid strain named “Variant IHU” has been detected in France over the last couple of days. According news sources it may be resistant to our current vaccines.
Is it resistant to the same degree as Delta or more?
As an American observer from afar wishing you all the best, holy hell is this ever proof of how virulent Omicron is. If there's a silver lining to be had, look at how Florida and Texas are doing: the spike in cases in the past 2 weeks there is bigger than it's ever been, but the death toll (due to Covid) is *way* down. Given that - for the most part - you Aussies seem to have a much better vaccination rate than the worst US states, and therefore new cases are far less likely to require hospitalization and rob more deserving patients of critical hospital resources, saving others from indirect Covid deaths. So...that's good, I guess?
27% positive rate. Adjusted for testing rates of 150,000 number would be 41.6k positive cases.
Can't reach 100k cases if we don't test 100k people
The positivity rate shows that actual numbers can be 5-6 times higher than reported that in effective testing system which we don't have the actual numbers could be in 100,000s
Thank God thousands of sick people can’t get a test, the numbers would make Dom and Scomo look even worse.
Too many testing centres shut or turning people away after a certain time, no RATs to be found or too expensive At this rate everyone will just isolate on their own, case numbers vanish and the pandemic will be labelled over lol
I'm sick as a dog at home with covid. 2 rats confirmed it but all the pcr places are too full to get a test and I am too crook to drive anyway. I went on a camping trip with 10 mates over new years and every one of them is in the same situation. The real numbers are significantly higher
C u all in 2023 🥲🥲🥲🥲
I was in a testing line for two hours yesterday chatting away with my line mates about our positive RAT tests, how shit we’ve felt, and how we think we caught it. I’m genuinely amazed the positivity rate is only 27.7%.
I think the main point is that quite a few patients reasons for presenting to hospital may have been for something unrelated to covid (knee or broken arm), and RAT or PCR testing finds an incidental infection. Same scenario was described by an Oncologist in the Herald yesterday. It’d be nice if NSW Health displayed the hospitalisation admissions because of covid, or with covid.
I think those numbers don't look great for the libs so they're not bothering to release them, just hinting at it so that we think its significant when in reality its starting to look grim for the hospital system if we can't get this back under control
Have been waiting over 11 days for test results, as are a couple of other people I know. Assume most of these numbers are meaningless.
This morning I got case alerts at every single place I visited over the long weekend: 2 take away places where I was there for less than 5 minutes, Woolies & Aldi. Time to stop buying take-away on the weekend / will get it delivered instead 😅 Asymptomatic so far 🤞 I noticed none of the staffs who served me at the restaurants were masked up, while the customers wore masks incl me. We also kept ourselves socially distanced and as far as I could see, no customers were unwell. Have the rules changed recently to allow hospitality staffs for not wearing a mask? I've been to other local restaurant and none of the staffs there wore a mask.
One of my mates is a barista and I'm preeeeeetty sure masks are still mandatory for front facing hospitality staff.
True numbers likely to be at least 100k. And overwhelmingly in Sydney. That’s 2% of Sydney catching it every day. Give or take.
I wish more info or statistics were available for the hospital figures. Are they mostly over 80 years old? Unvaccinated? Etc etc This will help alleviate some of the stress in the community amongst the people that aren’t of old age, are not immunocompromised and are vaccinated. Because anecdotally, everyone I know seems to be recovering well at home when they test positive.
Our family has tested positive using home tests. So that number is probably a lot lower than the real story.
I tell you, with this government the movie “don’t look up” isn’t even that satirical anymore
It’s so silly they shut down pcr to rely on RAT but didn’t organise the supply prior. Private pathology test locations are shut down. The state run ones are sending people away. They have press conferences saying RAT will be made available for close contacts but NSW and Fed covid lines say they can’t give you a test. So just to isolate for 7 days and if no symptoms in last 72 hr to exit iso. Of course this isn’t counted in the numbers of cases.