Roylab Stats

Finally, WHO declared an end of public health emergency on covid-19.

2 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 175

Roylab Stats

Dear everyone,

13 April, WHO informed that last week, the lowest number of COVID-19 deaths was recorded since the early days of the pandemic.

A month ago, there were massive spikes in Covid cases and death in South Korea.

Since 2020 January, COVID-19 has been categorized in Group 1 in South Korea. Group 1 only includes the most notorious infectious diseases such as Ebola, Pest, HK SARS, and MERS.

Today South Korea CDC re-categorizes Covid-19 as Group 2 infectious diseases.

I also heard that there are low number of hypoxia symptoms in US Coivd-19 patients.


Excepting some bad news from China suffering from COVID-19 now, there is almost no bad news about COVID-19.


Last year, I planned a new dental office focusing on a good ventilation system and wide space for my patients and staff. Finally, in April I set up a new clinic in Incheon where I grew up in childhood and live now. I began to meet my patients in a much better environment.

In the clinic, I set up a PA ceiling speaker system with acceptable sound, and I am offering a Roylab stats music playlist. Surely I excluded scary and loud epic pieces of music from the list.
Roylab stats' YT silver playbutton is in my new clinic. I am really sorry for the late introduction of the silver playbutton. I still remember when my daughter was excited to see the button with her eyes 2 years ago.



I think finally the time is near. No need to keep this YT streaming in Roylab channel anymore.

Skip the Carousel

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3 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 214

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Two years have passed Since the first COVID-19 patient was discovered in Wuhan.
I almost forget when we struggled to inform situations of the rapidly growing confirmed cases and death tolls due to COVID-19.




It has been two weeks since Omicron became a major issue.

What everyone is looking for right now is the answer to whether the Omicron is the coronavirus that can cause the severe acute respiratory syndrome we have been worrying about for two years.


WHO has announced that the Omicron variant is more contagious but milder in symptoms when compared to the Delta variant.
In my opinion, given that South Africa's death toll is not rising rapidly, the Omicron might not be associated with the severe acute respiratory syndrome.


If the Omicron variant is truly unrelated to the severe acute respiratory syndrome, the next problem would be preparing the test kit to get a positive result only from variants related to the severe acute respiratory syndrome.

If I dare to make a prediction, I think we will be able to reduce our surveillance against the coronavirus only after encountering two or three more viruses that do not have severe acute respiratory symptoms.






2021 was very difficult for me.
There has also been a month-long debate with multiple groups of experts (based on medical and biological) who spread the coronavirus scam theory and fake vaccine theories. Due to a lack of exercise, I gained a lot of weight. Although I couldn't identify the origin, I also suffered from arrhythmias, especially skipping heartbeat for a month. Due to the sudden increase in nevus with irregular borders on the trunk, I received multiple biopsies and made an appointment for skin resection for next year. It was a year in which there were many danger signs for health.
I realized health is the most important. I couldn’t focus on everything I was involved in.



In accordance with the WHO guidelines, I have been properly equipped with PPE and have operated a private dental clinic focusing on emergency treatment. My clinic is a 30-year-old, cozy, and small-sized clinic, it’s only 800 Sq Ft. Currently, I am working with other people to expand the space to 5 times the size to reduce the risk of aerosol/droplet infection. In March, I might meet my patients in a slightly better environment.



I just want to say that Roy is OK.
And I hope everyone would be safe and happy.



Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year.

3 years ago | [YT] | 597

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Which vaccine do you prefer?

The vaccine campaign is undergoing globally, 1 billion doses will have been administered within a day.



Campaign progressions seem to be various among countries. - which vaccines, amount of contracts, and people's attitude toward a vaccine. In my country, the pace of the vaccine campaign is relatively slow. Only several days ago, I got a schedule for healthcare workers in the local community (I am not a frontline health worker for COVID-19, I am just a dentist for a small local community). Now I am in a final step to determine whether the vaccine prepared for me is truly beneficial for public health and individual health.



I just want to share ideas about the preferred vaccine.

If you have a preference for a certain vaccine but less preferred one is ready,

4 years ago | [YT] | 467

Roylab Stats

Althought there are some countries severly inflicted by COVID19, current confirmed cases streaming has been focused on highly populated countries. I aim to show spikes by using only confirmed cases and death (because we can't get numbers of recovered patients, tests and severe/critical patients for all countries).
** My plan is to replace 'active cases streaming' into this new one.

I started this from simple idea - is it possible to show severity in dashboard? I just needed an index which enables ordering to show countries on right panel. I simply sum up 3 values - 'Cases growth rate' means spike of cases, an 'Death growth rate' means spike of death. And I selected 'Deaths per Cases'. The causes of high 'deaths per cases' are various, for example presence of big cluster of elderly people/patients of underlying disease, lack of test capacity.

Without normalizing, I just summed up 3 values.
It's very true that severity index has no meaning. it's just for ordering.
Please check 'Cases growth rate', 'Death growth rate' and 'Death per Cases'.

4 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 1,778

Roylab Stats

Dear All,

I have a plan to show new dashboard based on Daily number of cases and deaths.

Daily number is inaccurate because of irregular update times.
Some countries don't announce in weekend, some governments move official announcement forward or backward.

My python codes taking daily cases and deaths from log files automatically has a high possibility of wrong data.
To get daily number, I check time of log files and retrieve numbers of 24 hours ago.
So daily numbers can be zero, or doubled for a while.

Neverthless, I try to make new dashboard using Daily Cases and Deaths.
To do it, I must stop 'Active Cases' streaming because it's impossible to manage more computers alone.
I can't sure when I will show new dashboard. But when I complete new one, I will stop 'active cases streaming'.

Please be safe. To protect others, please use mask.

4 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 802

Roylab Stats

The last time I commented on why recovered numbers are incorrect.
I will try to explain why case numbers are incorrect.




#1 Until Feb. there was a hope to stop spreading like we did against SARS/MERS.
The only way was a well organized process of detecting, isolating and discharging.

To achieve it, WHO recommended increasing rtPCR capacity and medical capacity, and recommended keeping strict discharge rule.
Only these measures can assure viruses will not spread in our community.

Definition of Confirmed Cases is for concept of public health.
I am sorry to say that 'Confirmed Cases' is about who has the virus NOW.
It is not for already recovered person. (this is related to Ab test survey performed by Spanish government)

Confirmed cases means only rtPCR positive.
But 2 major exceptions were emerged during outbreak.


#1
Until Feb. 11, China's accumulative confirmed case was only 44K.
In Feb. 12, China announced 14K daily cases including symptomatic patients without rtPCR testing. It was just after new big hospital was built.
Surprisingly the number of 14K without PCR testing results was recorded in WHO situation reports as confirmed cases.

Considering the economic indicators, we can guess the current situation of China. I think the completion of new hospital was the turning point.
I remember 14K cases gave me the first difficulty because I only tried to show confirmed cases using rtPCR.

#3 In Apr. 14, US CDC announced new terminology "Total cases/deaths".
Total Cases/Deaths included "Confirmed ~" and "Probable ~". This change was very similar to what China did on Feb. 12.
Some states of US began to report only "total cases/deaths", thus a discrimination between confirmed cases and probable cases has been impossible.

WorldOMeter described in detail about this change.
www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/us-data/
Because of this, WorldOMeter changed the names of columns from "confirmed ~" to "total ~" according to the new US CDC guideline.
But WHO situation reports, and JHU dashboard and WHO dashboard don't use terminology of "total ~".
I think WHO accepted US total cases as confirmed cases. WHO keeps using the term of "confirmed cases".

#4 New Zealand government has been separately announced confirmed and probable, but recovered numbers exceeded confirmed cases.
Thus every dashboards are showing confirmed + probable numbers.

#5 In April, antibody test(Ab test) was a big issue because it is cheaper and faster than rtPCR test. (Some said that the Ab test will be a game changer)
One big misunderstanding about the Ab test is that it can be used for multi-purpose.

But the Ab test should be carefully applied to symptomatic patients in emergency,
for symptomatic patients only positive results have meaning.
Because our body makes antibodies usually 1 weeks after infection, negative results can't assure that a patient doesn't have a virus.

#6 I remember US medical staff urgently requested approval of Ab test because they had to face a bad situation and had to check the patient's status.
It wasn't because Ab test can replace the rtPCR test.

#7 Confirmed cases have the importance that someone has a virus that can be spread now.
Active cases imply the number monitored by health care workers.

We must know who has the virus now.

Interpreting the results of the Ab test is difficult.
For an asymptomatic person, both positive and negative results guarantee nothing.
Positive doesn't mean a person has a virus now. Negative doesn't mean a person doesn't have a virus now.
To know whether a person has the virus, rtPCR should be performed again.

So I want to say that Ab testing on asymptomatic people has no benefit to the community.

I heard a rumor that some US clinics want to receive negative results of Ab test from visitors.
Ab test can't be used as certification of virus-free for normal people.
I doubt that the negative result of rtPCR can be used as certification because of false negative.
(In previous post, I commented that the definition of recovered requires 2day consecutive negative results due to the possibility of false negative)

#8 All testing methods can be evaluated using Sensitivity/Specificity/Accuracy.
To maximize diagnostic ability(accuracy), almost all testing methods should adjust cut-off value.
As adjusting cut-off value, the number of false-positive(Sensitivity) or false-negative(Specificity) can be reduced.
But unfortunately, an adjusting value to reduce false positives causes increasement of false-negatives, vice versa.

Usually the cut-off was determined to minimize total false results.
Until now several guidelines indicate PCR test has 95% of accuracy, but we don't know how many false positives and false negatives were during evaluation.

#9 Early Pandemic, WHO urged to increase accuracy of PCR test kits.
And the quality of PCR test kits was issued in many countries.
But now no one cares about the accuracy of the PCR test kit now.

We are facing the 2nd wave. I think we should check testing methods again.

4 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 960

Roylab Stats

Some people often asked me what 'N/A' of recovered means.
I begin to answer and post about meaning of recovered.



I must say.. This is a long and boring story. And I'm really bad in English.
I should stop writing, but so many asked me.


#1
Unlike confirmed cases and deaths, reporting recovered patients to WHO is not obligation to authorities.
Some countries never announce recovered patients officially, it's not a big fault of government.
As I mentioned in April and May, I still believe that those governments are in shortage of human resources to organize data.
I don't think they are hiding something what they already know.
Especially UK, Netherland and Sweden never announced recovered number.
'N/A' has the meaning of 'not available in this time'

#2
Declaration of recovered has importance in that a patient don't emits coronavirus any more.
To be classified as recovered, the patients must be monitored by health care workers just after rtPCR confirmation.
Normally, the patients must be hospitalized in negative pressure room to prevent more spread.
When a patient becomes asymptomatic, rtPCR test should be carried out and 2-days consecutive negative results are required.
A rtPCR is indirect but the most accurate measure to verify presence of viral RNA.
The beginning and ending of infections heavily depend on rtPCR testing.
This was the guidance from WHO in early 2020.

#3
As situation got worse during March~April, some countries couldn't follow the WHO guidance.
Growth of rtPCR capacity couldn't catch up the speed of spread and growth of medical capacity couldn't catch up the speed.
The government began to use antibody tests, self-isolation (test positive patients).

#4
Now there are so many countries adopting self-isolating policy.
In case of UK, NHS announces to stop self-isolating after 10 days if you feel OK.
If government monitors self-isolating patients, they may know number of released from self-isolaion.
Although the definition of released patients doesn't match to recovered patients's definition,
counting released patients on recovered patients might be helpful knowing progress of Pandemic.

#5.
I remember Ecuador as the first country announcing the number of released from self-isolation.
Looking back before July, Ecuador used special terminology, "casos con alta epidemiológica" implying released from self-isolation.
Ecuador's new reporting caused confusion, so WorldOMeter, JHU and this streaming showed all different recovered numbers. All dashboard were unified to include number of released from self-isolation.

Currently Ecuador doesn't explictly report number of released from self-isolaion.

#6.
I think there are 4 types of countries according to the recovered reporting ways
- Not reporting recovered since outbreak (UK, Netherland, Sweden)
- reporting recovered implictly including released number (countries showing so many daily confirmed cases and recovered cases).
- reporting only discharged (countries without self-isolation policy)
- reporting only discharged (countries with self-isolation policy)

France is not the only country who reporting only discharged.
But France is a rare country revealing that government only can announce discharged from Hospital.
I think French recovered number should be updated as government announcing.

* I remember another example: Slovenia!
WOM retrieves recovered number from "covid-19 sledilnik". Sledilnik is dashboard dedicating to Slovenia. It's not an official government site, but very great dashboard!!
Sledilnik's recovered number includes estimated number using their own presumption that self-isolating will be released just after 2 weeks.
Slovenia government explicitly announces only discharged.
In streaming I will try to show only official recovered number of Slovenia.
This makes approximately 7K difference in calculating recovered number.


And the last Spanish recovered update date was in May. It was official number by govt.
Honestly, I rely on WOM and JHU's decisions showing the last number in case of Spanish recovered.



#7.
I think most of ACTIVE case number is arbitrary because of inaccurate recovered number.
Accumulative case numbers during 2 weeks might be realistic estimation of active cases.
The differences between current active number and estimation may be indicator how busy government are.
Because of this, I have been skeptical to stream active cases.

4 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 1,102

Roylab Stats

In South Korea, flu vaccine invokes fear of death. The news are everywhere in SK.

Until now, 9 died within several days after flu vaccine injections.
Investigations are still ongoing. Maybe, direct evidences of the relation can't be easily identied.
Korea CDC announced that 2 might have anaphylactic shock.
Specialists of SK interviewed that despite the possibility of complications, flu vaccine injection is still beneficial to all.

My concern is about that people will ask more strict safety against new coronavirus vaccine.
Even if authorities approve new vaccine as reliable one, quite many people may want not to be injected.
Honestly, If the injection is not mandatory I may need long time to decide injections for my family.

It is very sure that medicines/vaccines assuring 100% safety can't be made.
We may need considerable time to accept new coronavirus vaccine despite approving.

Please take care and have a good sleep.
Enough sleep is still important in this situation.

And if you get vaccination, you should fully sleep because immune cells begin to proliferate to make massive antibodies. Without enough sleep your immune system might be overloaded.

source (korean language) : www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20201021139451530?input=1195…

4 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 953

Roylab Stats

Dear All.
I am Roy.

It has been almost 8 months since the the first trial streaming .
At least 400 millions of views were made during coronavirus pandemic. I'm really appreciate for your concerning about coronavirus.
All of your efforts reducing unnecessary contacts and improving hygiene have been made great effects on reducing spread.
If you didn't care about coronavirus we may face more deadly situation now.

Recently there are some optimistic news referring reliable vaccines will be available within a month. And the news also indicate that we will get back to normal, if only we get the vaccine.
But there are also pessimistic views by specialists. Someone said we must prepare 'new normal' post-pandemic.

I plan simple survey about the desire for vaccines.
Please feel free to take survey. I just want to share optimistic/pessimistic views among us.

When will a reliable vaccine be ready for 60~70% of human population? (60~70% antibody presence among population is the requirement for herd immunity)

4 years ago | [YT] | 1,679