Thanks Mathukuma.I like your views/posts.See what you were denying us by staying in the bathroom for so long yet the enemy was already in the sitting room.

Now what's your take on the new pattern of 700 tests where 8,9 or 10 have tested positive?

Can we start working on how to live with the virus going foward so that we can go back to working and rebuilding the economy.

We are almost half way the 21days partial lockdown,a period I believe was meant to bring out all there could be about this virus....that is the sick will get cured or die,new infections will come up and we shall study the pace and pattern etc.

Yes - that was the classical view. The reasoning was that hundreds of thousands of infections will happen — but they don't all have to happen at once.
Consider the area below the curves below - both areas are the same.



What differentiates the two curves is the infection rate - this determines the shape each takes.

It could be a steep curve, in which the virus spreads exponentially and the total number of cases skyrockets to its peak within a few weeks. Infection curves with a steep rise also have a steep fall; after the virus infects the susceptible population - it drops off.

The key observation is that the faster the infection curve rises - the quicker the health care system gets overloaded beyond its capacity to treat people. Choking the system.

A flatter curve, on the other hand, assumes the same number of people ultimately get infected, but over a longer period of time. A slower infection rate means a less stressed health care system, fewer hospital visits on any given day and fewer sick people being turned away.

The truth is this disease will not go away easily... it will be endemic in some population pockets (thinking failed states like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, South Sudan, Libya) where it will burn through they populations and aid workers going to work there will have problems.

West Africans learned from Ebola and have no time to play around with theories about African immunity or herd mentality.

Stop movement. Test. Isolate.

I have said that from the first post on this topic.

We are doing fine. Lakini wakenya ni wajeuri sana. Rwanda is doing amazing and so is Uganda. They are leverating on the ICT Hiv experiences.

In TZ, the president still thinks this is the maji maji rebellion. He has gone to pray at the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Thai thai.

Yes I am anti testing because mass testing doesn't achieve anything. Why test then achieve a negative test result? that negative result doesn't guarantee that a person can't turn positive even seconds after testing. Testing should be done on people showing symptoms or people under quarantine on suspicion of having contact with a victim.. The rest is just a waste of resources.
This testing resources should be directed to prevention measures and public awareness.

Am with you on not wasting resources on mass testing people.However I was guided that the mass testing does not mean testing all and sundry but rather a scientifically selected sample that will help determine the extent and guide the next cause of action.

Forgive my layman's understanding

Innovation is making testing simpler and cheaper.
Soon it will be easier to test quickly for the virus and test to detect IgG antibody to SARS-CoV-2 (Detecting these IgG antibodies will help determine if a person was previously infected with the virus that causes COVID-19)
If this is the case, then it will make sense to test a lot.
People shall have confidence to return to work knowing the other people around them are either uninfected or have recovered.

Agree...The hierarchy of actions when resources are scarce:
1. Hygiene
2. Physical distancing
3. Doing everything needed to facilitate 1&2 above (food, water community messaging etc)
4. Aggressively testing health care workers and strengthening their ability to care for patients
5. Testing symptomatic folks
5a. isolating/quarantining and treating those who are positive and are sick
5.b. aggressively following and testing contacts and isolating/quarantining/treating them as needed
6. Mass testing if resources allow then following steps 5a&b

The only time I would skip the order above is if a test to determine who has already had the disease and has immunity is available (AKA determining Seroprevalence). This would be important cuz we can let these people help others including possibly donating their plasma to treat the disease or if they are health care workers they can work with sick folks..

As for Ghana, you test more you get more cases...which may not always translate into more deaths. Our death numbers would be comparable if we had many more cases (tested more)

Absolutely. Watched this video twice and plan to watch the previous episode.

Several other things I appreciated from this interview:

1. Covid-19 may have low fatality rate/but high infection rate due to the location of the receptors it targets (higher in the respiratory system). So even though it does not kill like the previous SARs Covids, it is highly contagious. MERS/Ebola/H5N1 Avian on the other hand have high fatality rates/low infection rates because the receptors (DPP4) the virus needs to bind to are deeper in the respiratory system; but are aplenty and once exposed, virus replicates rapidly.

2. Strengthening the immune system with the likes of Ginseng, vitamins, flu vaccination is not necessarily helpful. They don't provide specific antibodies that can fight the virus.

3. Cytokine storm - Young, healthy people with strong immune system succumbing to the virus because their immune system overreacts and begins to annihilate their own body.

Were they in quarantine did they pick them randomly on the streets was it from contact tracing .

how does it compare to other countries

Most Covid-19 patients in Kenya had no symptoms - Ministry report

A majority of Covid-19 patients had no symptoms when they tested positive, a situation report by the Ministry of Health shows.

The report dated April 16 shows that 59 per cent of the 225 cases announced by Wednesday were asymptomatic.

The 'smart, stable genius' as Trump described it. It will lurk around looking for vulnerable people then boom!

So what do we say to the god of death?