Forum menu
In other news, Stanley Johnson says sorry, but he was only I the UK for one day at that point and hadn’t kept up with the current rules.
No fine as yet.
TBH fire fighting IS a legitimate form of government
In a crisis - yes - it's always messy but as what appears to be objective of re-structuring and shrinking the civil service. I'm not convinced, it's not Avengers Assemble, or which ever bit of fiction or children's programming Mr Cummings has drawn his inspiration from on this one.
It's not the immediate response it's the long term direction of travel. I would not be surprised to find Cummings has used this pandemic as a field trial of his ideology. Anecdotally the locking out of local government and civil service would suggest this.
he was only I the UK for one day at that point and hadn’t kept up with the current rules
Ignorance is no defence (it is apparently an election strategy though)
I wonder where he arrived from, to be out and about and not self-isolating?
He said himself that he had no excuse but obviously in the weasiliy way of using it as an excuse; “The fact this was my first day back in the UK after three weeks abroad is, I am sure, no excuse for not knowing the rules.”
Seems to be an Arsehole who gets treated as some sort of national treasure - madness
BBC News - Covid-19: Growth in cases may be slowing in England
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54366478
I'm wary of lies, damn lies and statistics, and the way that they are interpreted by the public.
The rate or growth may be slowing but the number is still increasing - because we now have an estimated 1/200 infection rate. We know how exponentials work but at the same time if that was 1/5000 as per the threshold for extra measures (20/100,000) there's just less infections.
Reading that the infection growth rate is slowing is too easy to interpret as 'so we don't need to restrict ourselves as much any more' and that's so wide of the mark right now.
I find this quite a good read - an ex-colleague with a long history in measurement science and analysis, written in a digestible form.
https://protonsforbreakfast.wordpress.com/
Jeremy Corbyn is also expecting a fine for breaking the "rule of six" at a dinner party.
I wonder where he arrived from, to be out and about and not self-isolating?
Greece I think. But it depends on where it was.
hmmmm, from theotherjonv's link
<b>People who do not want economic restrictions </b>deliberately sow confusion that makes it hard for the general public to fully appreciate the basics of viral transmission and inevitable death toll from inaction.
In both cases, they seek to undermine expert opinion and scientific consensus, creating the illusion of real uncertainty in which inaction can be justified.
6. And finally…
People who minimise the importance of climate change tend to be people who also minimise the significance of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It looks like Liverpool and Merseyside are next in line for tougher restrictions
As the government have recently been heavily criticised for foisting measures on the North East with no notice or consultation, they avoided this by sending a government minister to consult with local MPs
That minister was the Minister for Care, Helen Whately
Can you imagine any situation where confidence in government would be improved by the presence of Helen Whately?
Even by the spectacularly inept standards of this cabinet, she stands out as being so dense that light bends around her. Out of her depth on a wet pavement.
Helen explains lockdown rules...
https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson_MP/status/1310477642349633537?s=20
I'm not sure who is writing the Imperial press releases, but you might like to look at the source data from the REACT study - here
Figure 2 shows that the slope WITHIN a survey period is indeed flatter for the REACT-5 sample, which was one week, but taken across the five surveys, the course of the trajectory is blatantly obvious! The rate is not slowing. Is one week long enough to measure the rate? The confidence interval for slope matches the continuous top plot of the same data. I'm not convinced by measurement of R.
And 1/188 people swabbed positive over that week. The highest level since REACT began.
EDIT: That data in full - choose which message you believe!
We know how exponentials work
We no longer have a highly susceptible population. You can't use exponentials to describe this because infected people are going to keep finding themselves meeting other people who are all now immune.
And hopefully we've also all now learned that if you're feeling under the weather, then soldiering on and going to your job at the care home is perhaps not a great idea.
We no longer have a highly susceptible population.
That is the alternative hypothesis. The null is that about 10% have experienced the infection, many, if not all of whom are currently immune to reinfection (certainly severe disease). I have seen little evidence (I don't count media interviews with Prof Gupta as evidence) to reject the null hypothesis. I have seen NO controlled prospective studies to see the effects of pre-existing T-cell cross-reactivity. I HAVE seen that when you increase contacts, transmission increases.
The fundamental problem is that the force of infection (rate of new cases) is proportional to the product of contact rate times fraction susceptible. Hence one political faction (the doom and gloomers) would like to think that changing the first has an effect (with economic consequences), whereas the second (the lockdown skeptics) think the course is down the reducing the latter (and herd immunity). The consequence of a wrong interpretation could be poor (a lot of body bags, if I am grim). The scientific method is about weighing the uncertainty rather than jumping to a conclusion - that is my day job.
What we do know, is that people who mount an antibody response have markedly lower viral loads that do not respond to exogenous antibody treatment (Regeneron announced their first trial data this week). Hence mounting a seropositive response is clearly important for protection, and it is likely that the seropositivity is meaningful.
@theotherjonv - that's a well written piece. But, in my opinion, there's a key part missing; I think we are all clear on what will happen if climate change continues unchecked - we will all die, all of us. What is less clear is what will happen if the current pandemic continues unchecked, yes, the data is clear, the maths is fairly clear - but what would the outcome be? Will we all die? Will some of us die? What?
Correlation between Climate Change deniers and Coronavirus ponderers is bollocks. IMO.
We no longer have a highly susceptible population.
Do you gave any data for this?
@TiRed do you have a TL;DR (or in this case Big Words; Too Dim) summary for your last post please?
RM.
Is anyone else getting frustrated by seemingly intelligent people in work / social groups starting to subscribe to conspiracy theories about testing (false positives) / mortality / prevalence etc?
While I wouldn't trust this Government to run a lemonade stand I find it unlikely that Chris Whitty, Patrick Vallance, and SAGE would encourage them down a course of action that results in thousands of needless deaths and a trashed economy.
I also think it unlikely that the Tory party would willingly send themselves down a line that makes them unelectable for a decade or more. How do you argue with people like this?
We no longer have a highly susceptible population.
I don't know where the hotspots were in the first wave, but are the areas currently in local lockdown areas that had low rates originally? That would corroborate that theory.
El Shalimo – is that a one-off tee?
If not, where can i get one?
https://ellieshirts.com/products/boris-arseholes-shirt/
[TL:DR] New infections are caused by contacts with people who can catch the infection. If you reduced contacts, then new infections go down. If you often meet people who can't catch it, new infections go down. Some believe you must reduce new contacts. Others believe that many more people than first thought can't catch the infection. There is firm evidence to support the first. There isn't much evidence to support the second.
Tar!
RM.
@TiRed - have we any figures or data that looks at illness / death rate outwith Cv19 as an impact of the focus on Cv19?
Listening to a few radio pieces up here over the last few weeks where doctors are anecdotally suggesting that the lack of cancer / disease / testing / rapid treatments / any treatment is now going to lead to a 'third wave' of ill-health and deaths, both now and in future year or more.
Some proper heartbreaking personal stories about diagnosis and treatments to happening or not soon enough to save folk.
It is too early to count mortality due to non-covid - the opportunity costs of protecting health services, since those deaths will occur over a longer time frame than the epidemic. I am sure that people are trying to estimate how many more (than typical) cardiovascular and cancer deaths we can expect over the next 18 months or so. I have not read them. CV deaths may be a good marker, since incidence of first stroke will be independent of healthcare resource (outcome may not be). Cancer deaths will come later due to diagnosis delays, I think that is expected.
[Anedote warning!] My FIL had a stroke at the peal of the epidemic and nothing bad happened...
I do look at all-cause mortality on a weekly basis in both UK and elsewhere. If little changes, we will meet out 10-year historic death count six weeks early this year.
Is anyone else getting frustrated by seemingly intelligent people in work / social groups starting to subscribe to conspiracy theories about testing (false positives) / mortality / prevalence etc?
Work wise? No... they are actually intelligent people. Social wise... yes. Not as bad as on here though, obvs... but I'm hoping a lot of that is people trying out ideas they know are might be nonsense... far better to have them explained away here, than "frustrate" people face to face.
[ edit : especially with TiRed being willing to help improve everyone's understanding here ]
Sorry to get political but along with Johnson Sr getting caught Corbyn got busted having dinner for 9
Labour want corbyn fined, but tories don't
Talk about mixed messages
https://twitter.com/joncstone/status/1311569768437231617?s=19
Allin-Khan is ace. Should a Labour politician be made an example of? Not if they apologise. A real apology, not a Cummings explanation non-apology.
but are the areas currently in local lockdown areas that had low rates originally?
Not here. South-East Wales (Newport and Torfaen I think) had some of the highest rates initially, and we're now a locked-down hotspot area. So there could be something about this particular area that increases transmission.
It could be because the Valleys are to some extend the hinterland of the main towns - Cardiff, Newport and Swansea. Lots of people come to them to shop and to work, possibly more so than in other areas.
Listening to a few radio pieces up here over the last few weeks where doctors are anecdotally suggesting that the lack of cancer / disease / testing / rapid treatments / any treatment is now going to lead to a ‘third wave’ of ill-health and deaths, both now and in future year or more.
Couple of potential examples among close friends and family so far, plus a few people affected by potentially life changing but not fatal conditions. It was always bound to happen, but as TiRed says, won't be properly recorded and analyzed for a few years.
We no longer have a highly susceptible population.
I don’t know where the hotspots were in the first wave, but are the areas currently in local lockdown areas that had low rates originally? That would corroborate that theory.
Not terribly convincing.
Looks like that's pretty much the whole of the North back in lockdown
https://twitter.com/LivEchonews/status/1311601082158780417?s=20
Listening to a few radio pieces up here over the last few weeks where doctors are anecdotally suggesting that the lack of cancer / disease / testing / rapid treatments / any treatment is now going to lead to a ‘third wave’ of ill-health and deaths, both now and in future year or more.
So people in their 40s/50s/60s are going to be dying in order to protect, by and large, people in their 70s/80s/90s.
That makes no sense.
deleted.
Remember, while control measures have restricted access to many health services, not having control measures would have meant both denying even more people of these services (because more of the settings in which they take place could not be made safe to use), and exposing more of those in need of those services to community transmission of a virus that could kill or seriously further impact on their health situation.
deleted
Still waiting for you to provide evidence for
We no longer have a highly susceptible population.
Listening to a few radio pieces up here over the last few weeks where doctors are anecdotally suggesting that the lack of cancer / disease / testing / rapid treatments / any treatment is now going to lead to a ‘third wave’ of ill-health and deaths, both now and in future year or more.
I can well believe it, "excess deaths" peaked in Apr and May, and even then people who had covid, but died weeks or months after recovery were still being counted as Covid deaths.
Whilst I'm sure the Docs will be talking about people who died 'young' because of missed Cancer appointments etc, a lot of people who were at the end of their lives died months or a few years earlier because of lack of heathcare. I'll have a little rant on behalf of District Nurses everywhere. At the start of the crisis two things happened, at least locally to us, Hospitals discharged thousands of old and sick people who would have usually stayed in to 'clear the decks' and to reduce the chances of in-hospital transmission and refereed them to District Nurses for care, at the same time GP surgeries closed their doors and referred their chronic patients to district Nurses for home care. My Wife hasn't been a DN for a couple of years after moving into a more specialist role, but was drafted back. In her Team in normal times they'd typically have 5-8 patients a day and 10-12 on a busy day in Winter, at the worst point they had the equivalent of 80-100 a day, which is of course impossible. Patients who were able to administer their own care, were asked to, others got seen a lot less often and normal procedures abandoned. Lots of patients died earlier than they would have otherwise and I'm sure people have died, who would have lived much longer with better care.
The situation seems, at the moment to be resolved, but my Wife is only just seeing her usual patients now for the first time in months, at a much reduced rate. Her clinic is starting again next week, but it's going to be fairly short-lived as she'll be joining the ART team doing Covid vaccinations as soon as they're ready.
So people in their 40s/50s/60s are going to be dying in order to protect, by and large, people in their 70s/80s/90s.
That makes no sense.
I suppose that's factually correct, but who would want to be the person to decides who lives and dies? Does the death of 1, 40-year-old with half their life to live equal 5 70-year-olds, 10, 15, 20?
More than that, how do you treat all the people in their 70s+ do you just let them fend for themselves, or admit them to Hospital, further spreading the virus and grinding the hospitals to a stop? I think that might have been the point of all the Nightingales, but then of course Boris took a while to work out that whilst Heaven and Earth can be moved to build field hospitals in weeks, you can't train doctors and nurses so quickly.
Really good read here about cluster tracing vs they type of contact tracing we are trying
but are the areas currently in local lockdown areas that had low rates originally?
Not here. South-East Wales (Newport and Torfaen I think) had some of the highest rates initially, and we’re now a locked-down hotspot area. So there could be something about this particular area that increases transmission.
It could be because the Valleys are to some extend the hinterland of the main towns – Cardiff, Newport and Swansea. Lots of people come to them to shop and to work, possibly more so than in other areas.
Wales has had the hotspots grow in the second wave nearly identically to how they happened the first time round. Doesn't point to any immunity effect at all for us.
This one showing that parents are protected from more severe effects by having >1 young kids at home
Would also hopefully mean teachers are protected too
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.21.20196428v1.full.pdf+html
So people in their 40s/50s/60s are going to be dying
I have said this many times. We focus on deaths because they are easily measured (in the trade we say it's the hardest endpoint). But the morbidity of this new human pathogen in the young has still not been investigated thoroughly. Anecdotally there are reports of fit young athletes who have been knocked down by infection. Morbidity is also to be managed. Management is about unknowns as well as knowns. The economic consequence in 10 years of an epidemic of coronary disease might be a thing.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41569-020-0413-9
We wary of people who know things with absolute confidence, it's my first measure of scientific credibility (and Richard Feynman's)
Just seen someone on my facebook feed say that they're no longer wearing a mask to go shopping, if Boris' dad can do it without any consequences then why should she!
Cummings effect mkII inbound?
Eton has a lot to answer for:
This was a neighbourhood that is mostly made up of a school, Eton College, located in the town of Windsor some distance away to the south-east. In the week ending September 16, this neighbourhood had one of the largest rises in cases reported in the south of England, but there were also similar rises in the north.
They tested all students.
The map below shows just how unusual the Eton cluster was when it emerged.
No other school on that map tested all students.
A potentially more significant possibility is suggested by this graph if we look to its right-hand side. This pattern implies that areas with the highest levels of previous mortality do not show marked resurgences of cases this time around. Specifically, in neighbourhoods where between half and three-quarters of all the earlier deaths were thought to have involved or been directly caused by COVID-19, the numbers of people recently testing positive for the disease falls dramatically.
Care homes hit overly hard in the first peak explain this without falling into conjecture about community immunity.
The map below shows just how unusual the Eton cluster was when it emerged.
At least one secondary within that map had a 4 person outbreak, and at least 2 I know of have had 2 people test positive
Just seen someone on my facebook feed say that they’re no longer wearing a mask to go shopping, if Boris’ dad can do it without any consequences then why should she!
I'm not surprised, It's not that Boris' Dad is seen any any sort of Guru, but people are looking for an excuse.
We really are living in an age of stupid. I've just been for my Flu Jab, Pharmacist ushering me into a 2x2 room for the job with a mask around his chin, I mentioned he's "forgotten to put it up" and I got the impression he hadn't forgotten.
At home I've got a Odd Job Man fitting some doors, he comes in, Asks my Wife and Her Colleague how their patients feel about them wearing masks coming into their homes. (they're Community Nurses, in Uniform) Relived? Then he goes on about how Covid is a Hoax to control us and how he's got an exemption for masks because of a chest complaint... (self cert) then stops after half a door because it's throwing up too much dust and he needs to go and get a mask... Don't get me wrong, dust can be deadly, but he clearly believes dust exist because he can see it, 42k deaths wasn't' enough to prove the existence of a Virus to him. I'm not sure he should be allow to use powertools.
Morbidity is also to be managed. Management is about unknowns as well as knowns. The economic consequence in 10 years of an epidemic of coronary disease might be a thing.
A real problem is that so many people were infected at the peak when no testing was available, I know of several who were quite ill but never went to hospital, all bar 1 seem to have recovered fully, with none of them in the system its impossible for them to be followed up & the vast majority of people who got it werent tetsed or went into hospital
as the alternative SAGE team noted, ACE2 receptors most highly concentrated in ovary & testes, who know what long term effects on fertility for example may be
admissions up again today, comnpared to the last few days, certainly not rising rapidly but people reading a lot into a few days & saying cases are going down
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare
Sorry to get political but along with Johnson Sr getting caught Corbyn got busted having dinner for 9
Labour want corbyn fined, but tories don’t
Corbyn should 100% be find and Johnson's dad. We cant call for Cummings to resign when he didn't technically break the rules and let JC get away with it. Im pro JC but you can 100% guarantee a normal person will get fined for this.
Hospital admissions will keep going up for a few weeks even if cases started declining now, and they havent, its just the rate of increase that may have slowed
Corbyn should 100% be find
I agree, however what is the evidence, I've not looked and did The Mirror ( was it them) get a date on the newspaper Johnson bought?
Sorry to get political but along with Johnson Sr getting caught Corbyn got busted having dinner for 9
He'll just have been listening to his brother and David Icke telling him the whole thing is a hoax by the lizard people 😉
however what is the evidence
The evidence is firm. Both have apologised though.
We cant call for Cummings to resign when he didn’t technically break the rules and let JC get away with it.
We can. He didn't apologise, the rules didn't apply to him, apparently. And he did break them. Resigning from a role where you are involved in setting the rules that you yourself are breaking is a reasonable thing to ask for, without calling for others to be fined where they have slipped and apologised. Cummings could have apologised... instead he basically made out that he was smart enough to get around the rules (he didn't get around them, he just ignored them) and challenged the rest of us to be smarter and explain away any of our own discretions with "doing the right thing for our families"... which we are.
Still waiting for you to provide evidence for
We no longer have a highly susceptible population.
What percentage of the population have been exposed now?
The ONS bulletin for 8th September says 6.2% tested positive for antibodies, so at least that many.
But my wife almost certainly had it back in March - yet she recently tested negative (she had a pinprick blood test sent through the post, I think by the ONS). And I have a friend who *definitely* had it back in March (really ill, all the symptoms, still a bit broken), and she also recently tested negative (antibody test). Those negative tests are not a surprise - we know that antibodies disappear after a while, but that means that the actual number who have been exposed is a lot higher than just 6.2%.
Someone smarter than me could probably figure it out, but I suspect it's a big old number.
And going back to my youngest son. OK, so this is also wildly anecdotal. But he definitely had it back in Feb/March. Recently his flat mate tested positive, and my son developed symptoms. His test came back negative - he's just got "normal" fresher's flu. So that's one less person who can pass Covid19 around, and also shows that despite all these restrictions, we are still going around catching viruses.
with johnson & corbyn, government have opportunity to make an example of wronogdoers, they can both afford it seems a no brainer
Is anyone else getting frustrated by seemingly intelligent people in work / social groups starting to subscribe to conspiracy theories about testing (false positives) / mortality / prevalence etc?
I did get sucked into one at the start of what's become the second wave.
A very articulate guy on Twitter (retweeted by that Prof Sikora guy, I've grown doubtful of him) made a point along the lines of:
"With a FPR of 0.8% if we tested 1000 people at random, 8 would come back as positive, with only 1 in 1000 of the UK population having Covid, that means you'd get 9 positive results, 8 being false and 1 being real. Given the sudden panic for testing, it might explain why we're getting so many more cases, but no hospital admissions"
This isn't really a conspiracy theories as such, but a real case of being careful of confusing opinion with fact.
Firstly, no one really knows what the FPR is. Also, no one really knows how many people have Covid, but it's closer (now at least) to 1 in 200, not 1 in 1000 and even though there was a rush to test, people have been told to only test when they have symptoms. Some will ignore that through worry, but it's no where near 1000 random people on the street.
This statement and various other versions of it have been circulating around ever since and I'm sure it was enough to persuade people that this second wave wasn't real. Now, weeks later, admissions are rising and deaths are rising.
We can. He didn’t apologise, the rules didn’t apply to him, apparently. And he did break them. Resigning from a role where you are involved in setting the rules that you yourself are breaking is a reasonable thing to ask for, without calling for others to be fined where they have slipped and apologised.
Im not defending Cummigns all im saying is it can't be one rule for them and one for us - which seems the case. Cummings should have resigned / been sacked and JC and Bojos dad should be fined. Its about a level playing field when normal people break the rules we get fined they should too. its really simple. I
but you can 100% guarantee a normal person will get fined for this.
Very few people have been fined for breaching the rules throughout this, the police took a softly softly approach that probably seemed wise at the time but with hindsight may not have helped in the longer term.
government have opportunity to make an example of wronogdoers, they can both afford it seems a no brainer
I agree with the sentiment but it's not the government who investigate or enforce the rules.
Those negative tests are not a surprise – we know that antibodies disappear after a while, but that means that the actual number who have been exposed is a lot higher than just 6.2%.
If we are considering who might carry the virus in future, wouldn't it be wise to include anyone who has no antibodies... unless/until we have evidence that those who have had the virus and then had the antibodies disappear are still protected from catching and passing on the virus despite the lack of antibodies?
Someone smarter than me could probably figure it out
Surprising they havent then isnt it
So that’s one less person who can pass Covid19 around
Didnt we do this pages, ago. Just because you keep posting it, it wont make it correct.
But my wife almost certainly had it back in March – yet she recently tested negative (she had a pinprick blood test sent through the post, I think by the ONS). And I have a friend who *definitely* had it back in March (really ill, all the symptoms, still a bit broken), and she also recently tested negative (antibody test). Those negative tests are not a surprise – we know that antibodies disappear after a while, but that means that the actual number who have been exposed is a lot higher than just 6.2%.
Its quite likely , but he ONS do allow for this
theres also the question of whether having lost your antibodies, have they also lost immunity to it?
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.09.20148429v1
And going back to my youngest son. OK, so this is also wildly anecdotal. But he definitely had it back in Feb/March. Recently his flat mate tested positive, and my son developed symptoms. His test came back negative – he’s just got “normal” fresher’s flu. So that’s one less person who can pass Covid19 around, and also shows that despite all these restrictions, we are still going around catching viruses.
there was regular flu going around last winter as well, so theres no way we can say 'definitely' had covid & flu varies in severity & timescale year to year, tho it peaked earlier than normal in 2019/20
you also cant definitively say he's immune, reinfection has been observed, and it may be that his flatmate simply doesnt spread it in the same way >80% of all cases are spread by superspreaders, the majority of people that catch it are not superspreaders
I find it very interesting and eye opening reading people's personal experiences of CV19. I feel very distant from it. I don't know anyone who has been ill, don't even know anyone who has been tested positive (only know one person who has taken a test). Our large urban schools (kids 6&9) have had no cases. It all seems to very far away.
My partner lost her job as the printing company had no work to do all summer so we've felt those effects but thankfully we've been spared, so far, any ill health to ourselves or anyone we know.
It's miserable all this.
I find it very interesting and eye opening reading people’s personal experiences of CV19. I feel very distant from it. I don’t know anyone who has been ill, don’t even know anyone who has been tested positive (only know one person who has taken a test). Our large urban schools (kids 6&9) have had no cases. It all seems to very far away.
My partner lost her job as the printing company had no work to do all summer so we’ve felt those effects but thankfully we’ve been spared, so far, any ill health to ourselves or anyone we know.
It’s miserable all this.
very true, my immediate family have all been fine, my brother was quite ill, one of my colleagues was very ill, other than that it seems remote
I work with a lot of young medics who were called back from research to work on COVID ITU wards have a very different experience of it all
I find it mad when people say they don't know anyone who has been affected by Covid. I don't know if its just because I live in London (higher cases and all that) but I know about 10+ people who have had it all are close / semi close friends.
On the subject of tests and antibodies my partner had it at the start of lock down (got it from me) all the symptoms apart from loss of taste of smell. Works for the NHS and had the antibody test a few months ago result not antibodies and never had covid. The general feeling seems to be the bigger the gap between infection and test the less reliable they are.
"We no longer have a highly susceptible population."
OK, that gets trotted out quite a lot but the only thing that's meaningfully changed in the population since the first wave, is that we let it kill a whole lot of vulnerable people, and that can't happen this time to the same extent because they're already dead.
But actually, that makes no significant difference to the prospects of the second wave because those vulnerable members of the population would be protected anyway. There should be absolutely no possibility now of infected people being sent back to care homes, for instance, and visitors are already heavily screened.
kimbers
Full MemberThose negative tests are not a surprise – we know that antibodies disappear after a while, but that means that the actual number who have been exposed is a lot higher than just 6.2%.
True. But if antibody levels are too low to detect in people that have had it, that's not encouraging for them retaining immunity either. "How many people have had it" only matters for viral spread if those people who've had it can't get it again, or are dead. Otherwise, it's just disaster trivia.
I don’t know anyone who has been ill
My wife's friend is now a widow. As I have said, it is not impossible that immunity is more widespread than seropositivity would have us believe. A firm prediction for herd immunity is that we can lift contact restrictions (and I count mask-wearing in that), and expect infection rates to remain low. How's that going so far? I'm concerned.
There should be absolutely no possibility now of infected people being sent back to care homes, for instance,
I'm absolutely positive that exact scenario has been proposed. Quite recently, no? If not, and you have someone in hospital and fit for discharge, where would they go? (Not saying they should be discharged into a care home, but that an alternative would need to be arranged).
But actually, that makes no significant difference to the prospects of the second wave because those vulnerable members of the population would be protected anyway. There should be absolutely no possibility now of infected people being sent back to care homes, for instance, and visitors are already heavily screened.
Looked into this carefully earlier this year and the fact was that more than 50% of the vulnerable population was under 50 years old.
With shielding ended, these people are back in the workforce. Some will have homeworking options, some will have good employers with enhanced workplace risk assessments, and some will have a mask and hand gel.
The next wave of critically extremely vulnerable admissions will be spread through far greater age range.
I find it mad when people say they don’t know anyone who has been affected by Covid. I don’t know if its just because I live in London (higher cases and all that) but I know about 10+ people who have had it all are close / semi close friends.
You've answered your own confusion.
I’m absolutely positive that exact scenario has been proposed.
Some contracts seemed to prepare for that, just in case, but I’m pretty sure there have been “commitments” (yeah, I know) that it won’t be “forced” on care homes…
Im not defending Cummigns all im saying is it can’t be one rule for them and one for us – which seems the case. Cummings should have resigned / been sacked and JC and Bojos dad should be fined. Its about a level playing field when normal people break the rules we get fined they should too. its really simple.
I said at the time that spending all that political capital on saving Cummings would come back to haunt them in the event of a second wave.
I thought it was a very poor show indeed; extremely bad faith indeed from Cummings and BJ. The worst sort of leadership. As has been said above, Cummings didn't just refuse to admit fault he had to show how clever he was by erecting a legal fiction to excuse his behaviour. The guy is pathological. It's all about him defying journalists who he believes are out to get him. Discharging the proper duties of a man in public office doesn't seem to be a consideration.
As for what's going on now, I'm confused about the ends of all the measures. The first time around, the end of stopping the NHS from being overwhelmed seemed clear. Now, what are we doing though? What's the end game here?
This SNP MP FFS how stupid are these ****s?
While that is obviously ridiculous behaviour, people were being advised to use public transport to access tests at far off test centres pretty recently (which is equally ridiculous obviously but was being suggested by the authorities apparently)
I suspect that this will encourage a lot of people to avoid getting a test if at all possible.
kelvin
Full MemberThose negative tests are not a surprise – we know that antibodies disappear after a while, but that means that the actual number who have been exposed is a lot higher than just 6.2%.
If we are considering who might carry the virus in future, wouldn’t it be wise to include anyone who has no antibodies… unless/until we have evidence that those who have had the virus and then had the antibodies disappear are still protected from catching and passing on the virus despite the lack of antibodies?
"Wise" ? There's a crazy high cost to that wisdom - so it's completely fair to demand some pretty convincing evidence that this coronavirus interacts with our immune system completely differently to every other coronavirus that has preceded it.
There’s a crazy high cost to that wisdom – so it’s completely fair to demand some pretty convincing evidence that this coronavirus interacts with our immune system completely differently to every other coronavirus that has preceded it.
Loss of antibodies has been shown to allow reinfection in other coronaviruses in animals & humans
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074761320303125
Similar to studies of animal coronaviruses, antibody titers in volunteers had waned substantially 1 year after initial infection and many could be reinfected and shed virus, though these secondary infections did not cause clinical symptoms
Funnily enough, just spoken to my mum, who had just spoken to a friend who had been on the cruise ship that left Argentina in the beginning of March and eventually ended up in Florida after a bit of a traumatic virus ridden trip round South and Central America.
Despite not feeling ill at all, she has just tested positive for the Covid antibody, though her husband tested negative.
RichPenny
Full MemberI’m absolutely positive that exact scenario has been proposed. Quite recently, no? If not, and you have someone in hospital and fit for discharge, where would they go?
You're not fit for discharge if you're infectious with coronavirus, obviously.
Why didn't Sturgeon not sack her?
She's done very well thus far in behaving like a state leader yet this is strange. Apparently SNP hierarchy knew yesterday, she knew as of early pm today.
Bizarre
It's not possible to sack someone as an mp.The SNP have done all they can do by withdrawing the whip.
I see Trump just tested positive for Covid. A few good swigs of bleach should sort him out!