Testing Times

A couple of weeks ago I was informed by Aljoš Mlakar, a friend in Ljubljana, that the Slovenian government was undertaking a nationwide random testing program to establish the true extent of COVID-19 infection rate in the population at large, rather than only concentrating on the apparently symptomatic portion of the population as had been the case. Think of it as a similar exercise to taking a nationwide opinion poll of a random sample of a population rather than merely relying on politically active people to form a model of a society. This exercise was undertaken as an adjunct to the work being done to analyse when the lockdown could be unwound. 

On Tuesday another friend in Ljubljana, Aleš Pečnik, informed me that the provisional data reported approximately one person in 30 testing positive in this random trial which would suggest that the current official number of infections for Slovenia which sits at just under 1,500 would need to be dramatically raised to somewhere above 65,000.

Back in February I remember reading that approximately 80% of infected individuals in one Asian country (possibly South Korea but I cannot be certain) were presenting as asymptomatic. These Slovenian provisional numbers would tend to imply a far higher asymptomatic population than as first imagined.

The first thing that I would say is that these numbers must only be taken in the context of the specific Slovenian demographic so it is worthless to attempt to superimpose these numbers on other populations. However the broader context, at least from my own point of view, is that other countries need to be considering a similar random testing regime as the highest priority to nail down the genuine infection rate within a given population. This goes hand-in-hand with easing the lockdown.

On a more ominous note, Slovenia relaxed several aspects of its lockdown from Monday onwards, even as the much higher than expected infection rates are becoming clear. Maybe it would be smart for other countries to observe Slovenia closely over the next couple of weeks before potentially jumping out of lockdown in too precipitate a manner.

May You Live in Interesting Times...

The supposed Chinese expression, “May you live in interesting times,” would appear to be entirely apocryphal and comes, in fact, almost certainly from an English language source with Eastern connections which attributed the saying to China. The closest that the Chinese come to this is, “Better to be a dog during peacetime, than a human in times of war.” What would we rather be in that case?

These months, weeks and days are increasingly “interesting” – they are filled with mixed messages from sources which should know a whole of a lot better than to sow uncertainty among the populace.

The Orange-Tinted One oversaw a shocking degree of chaos trickling down from his administration in the US which has led to COVID-19 achieving firm toeholds in several states. The obfuscation continues but El Presidente assures everyone that he has handled things in a fabulous manner from the outset. Fake news folks, fake news… Referring to Trump's responses and a new UK government unit designed to counter misinformation about the virus online, a UK official was quoted as saying that "our COVID-19 counter-disinformation unit would need twice the manpower if we included him in our monitoring."

BoJo the Clown has been equally doubtful in his leadership. If anyone saw the Robert Peston question at the press conference the other day and the utter confusion written all over BoJo’s face as the question became more and more detailed, then his complete lack of understanding of the subject matter relating to the virus was crystal clear. 

He keeps on channelling his imaginary Churchillian inner self with thundering, sabre-rattling rhetoric which generally avoids the key issues. Plenty of stuff about beating the virus but very short on particulars. The detail is left to the various ministers who haven’t been entirely awful but still lacking.

One question which UK residents may wish to ask but which the BBC is eager to suppress is the matter of how many people have died in the country? Visit the BBC News website and look for the number. It’s not there unless you really search. The live news feed at this moment on Saturday afternoon, 21st March, tells us how bad Spain is, that Singapore has recorded its first deaths, that other Asian countries are seeing a big rise in cases and deaths, that one in five Americans will soon be under lockdown orders, but no up-to-date info about UK deaths. The Establishment seems to be in lockstep to keep the most dramatic question off the agenda. Pretty shocking actually. I’m sitting in Tallinn, Estonia and the state news outlet here is completely upfront about numbers with regular updates on their website. 

The Johns Hopkins University website which tracks COVID-19 cases, deaths and recoveries is one of the best resources online for the global viewpoint but even this offering does not tell the whole story. If one looks at the tally of confirmed cases, the US currently ranks as the country with the sixth highest number of infections. However, the US does not feature near the top of the tally of deaths. This is because the US figures are broken down state by state in this category and one has to learn a little trick of the site’s use to present the total number of deaths in the country as a whole. Having said that, Washington State, California and New York all rank above Henan which has the second highest provincial death tally in China after Hubei. Which is just fabulous. Nevertheless, I would not point the finger at JHU in any way as they are reflecting seemingly honest figures in as close to real-time as they can. For that they have to rely on national reporting from across the world.

These times are indeed interesting but how much of that is due to poor leadership and dishonest reporting? Only time will tell…

***Update 23/03***: Use of the Johns Hopkins University website to reflect US rates of infection and death has become even more tricky because from today the US figures are now broken down city by city. Of course this reflects better figures supplied locally to JHU in the States but it does tend to hide the underlying gross mortality rate in the US.