Features
Coronavirus – Are the Numbers of Cases Reliable?
Right now, we are being told that the novel coronavirus that causes the Covid-19 disease is such an existential threat to all of us that we need extreme measures to deal with it. More than half the world’s population is bunkered down at home under effective house arrest; a form of medical martial law prevails of the streets; most “nonessential” shops and businesses are closed; and trust and social contact between people has almost completely broken down. So is the threat from the new disease worthy of these unprecedented consequences?
Let’s take a close look at the figures. A good source of official data which is updated regularly is the Worldometers Coronavirus page.. The latest figures here as of the time of writing (25th April 2020) are shown by the following summary snapshot from the site:
So, at this time we have more than two and a quarter million cases and more than 150,000 deaths. That sounds pretty bad, right? But we can only put this into context if we compare with the numbers for deaths and cases from other, broadly similar diseases and, for deaths, by comparing with global death rates as a whole.
I will return to the subject of death rates later, but firstly let’s concentrate on case numbers: how are these numbers being calculated? We hear a lot about testing of suspected cases, but what do we know about these tests?
The first thing to note is that, perhaps contrary to popular belief, there is not one standard test being used around the world to test for coronavirus infection; each country is more or less using its own methodology.
Also, as I have discussed in a previous post, tests are not a magic 100% reliable indicator of whether someone has a disease or not. Some of them are really quite unreliable indeed. It’s actually quite a technical challenge to make accurate tests for common diseases, particular those caused by viruses. If it were that easy, the shops would be full of such test kits. Do you not think there would be a huge market for a simple, accurate home test for, say, the flu? And the market would undoubtedly be much bigger for home tests for embarrassing viral diseases such as herpes and sexually transmitted infections.
And even if it were possible to manufacture a fairly accurate test for a disease, if the disease you are testing for is uncommon (as is currently the case with Covid-19 despite all the media hype to the contrary) then the rate of false positives this test will give you will be really high. I will go into more detail on this later to illustrate that the world is largely suffering from a pandemic of false positives for Covid-19 rather than of the disease itself.
The general approach to testing for Covid-19 can be gauged from the US Centre for Disease Control’s (CDC’s) web pages on testing and their information for laboratories doing Covid-19 testing. So, let’s take a look at the two main types of testing that are being done for Covid-19 around the world right now: polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based tests and serology/antibody-based tests.
PCR Based Tests
Many SARS-CoV-2 tests are based on what is called “Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction” or RT-PCR. This is a type of more general process called the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Wikipedia gives good general explanations of the principles of PCR testing as a whole, as well as the type of RT-PCR tests used for Covid-19 testing.
Without going into too many technical details here, the general idea of a PCR test is to take a sample from a patient and multiply up all the target DNA in the sample (using the polymerase chain reaction, PCR). The target DNA sequence used is designed to try and uniquely identify the target virus or bacteria so that if this sequence is found you can be reasonably sure you have found the target organism.
Serology/Antibody Based Tests
Given all the problems with PCR based testing, some companies and countries are investigating the use of antibody-based tests instead. The idea here is to try and detect antibodies – proteins produced by the body to fight infection – against the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the blood or other bodily fluids of a patient. The UK is working on getting antibody tests available in bulk for their population. The CDC in the US is also looking at developing such tests.
I won’t discuss these kinds of tests in so much detail because most countries including our own Ghana and health care systems are still mainly reliant on RT-PCR based testing. This is partly because accurate antibody tests are not widely available, being both difficult and time consuming to prepare in great numbers. But suffice to say that antibody tests, even when they have been successfully manufactured, are also subject to many problems too.
BY RISK OFORIWAA DAUDA
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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