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The Coronavirus Discussion Thread.

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BTW whatever silliness SAGE comes up with today, the R number is likely close to 1, meaning that the peak isn’t going to get worse but isn’t going away any time soon either.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 6:59 am
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to what aim is this government doing this? Why would destroying the economy medium long term be part of a plan? Inept they may be but genuinely crippling the economy? For what?

I asked him why the gov was trying to brainwash us pages ago, he hasnt answered.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 7:25 am
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There comes a point where you just say no. I'm not calling him out on economic arguments but on his aim to develop doubt in what is very robust science. Those who aren't angry that someone comes on the forum 2 days ago then starts writing screeds of conspiracy nonsense of the internet are either not understanding this or want some of it to be true. These arguments have been had in finitum already on here yet as soon as some koolaid sponsored fool comes on he's given legitimacy? Why don't you all (Edukator and mr Ike) pop to your local hospital and start rolling his arguments about in ITU? Try it and then report back here instead of banding internet-accumulated nonsense


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 7:47 am
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What I’d really like to know about SAGE is how and why the mountain of empirical evidence for a rapid doubling time was rejected in favour of some poorly-supported modelling.

I came away with the opinion that there was a mountain of evidence both ways but the key point I got was that many of the experts and modellers lived in a bubble if scientific theory. One interviewed said he should have realised if it was ripping through Italy it was ripping through other European countries, another talking about care home deaths said they didn't understand how they operated in the real world - and I got the impression he was about to break down at that point.

Wise old heads with previously proven experience will always be listened to more than new young guns presenting new realities. Hopefully that lesson has been learnt and we'll lockdown harder and faster next time when the experts get it right- oh ****, no we didn't


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 7:57 am
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Basically ALL science that does not agree with our public health authorities narrative.

Here is the letter from Ofcom that I was looking for:

Yeah, that's the letter

What I'd like to see is the censored science you've uncovered with your research, to back up your claims


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 8:41 am
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Interesting Development in Australia....

The lockdown in South Australia (Adelaide) is going to be lifted early - tomorrow. Some smaller restrictions will remain, but in the most part its being lifted. But Why?

Turns out the bit of the contract tracing that had them most worried - was a blatant lie. Turns out the chap in question had a second job at the pizza restaurant in question, and hadn't just picked it up from ordering takeaway (which was his original story I think)

Pitchforks are being sharpened and torches being lit as we speak - or the Australian equivalents. The locals are revolting.

Dude's going to have to go into hiding.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 8:46 am
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I've not read most of the last few pages but the modelling has to take into account the uncertainty associated with the various transmission scenarios. The uncertainty can be many times larger than the phenomena being predicted/extrapolated.

It's not a surprise that different models with different parameters provide wildly different projections.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 8:48 am
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What I’d like to see is the censored science you’ve uncovered with your research, to back up your claims

Another request for this please.

Responding with “do your own research” or some other deflection just invalidates your opinion.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 8:53 am
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If you will look further back he goes as far as to say “people are dying of respiratory diseases but not covid.” I can assure you very much that they are dying of covid.

Well the British government isn't counting people who die after 28 days after a positive test as dying of Covid, they are just dying of a respiratory disease. It's bollocks of course.

The semantics are a problem. I got picked up by TiRed for using "T-cell immunity" a few weeks back despite that exact term being used to describe what I wanted to mean in several serious sources. A few pages back TiRed makes the distinction betwee SARS 2 infection and having Covid. Scientists are just muddying the water and the conspiracy theorists jump on the bits that please them.

Just call it Covid from a positive test to death whenever that is a direct result FFS and there will be less arguing about the detail and more concentration on the fact that effective measures are necessary and those measures don't necessaarily mean shutting down the economy.

Some news on Europe 1 this morning. In the first wave 1/2 French care homes were infected. In wave 2 it's 1/5 half way (hopefully) through the wave. We haven't learned.

As for prisons, a high profile trial is in trouble because the prisoners have Covid (or have tested positve for SARS 2 - rolls eyes). There can't be a better example of strict confinement than a prison, and that confinement has its limits in terms of limiting spread.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 9:10 am
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(Edukator and mr Ike)

I shouldn't bite at obvious provocation but read evey post I've made on this thread and then see if you want to retract that.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 9:22 am
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I don't know if Pondlife is trolling or just presenting an alternative opinion in a confrontational way. If it is trolling, he's getting the results he needs (other genders implied)

But some of the things he says are true, or at least need proper debate. I'm a scientist myself and have an opinion derived from what I have read and understood, but there do seem to be some areas lacking - whether they are not relevant, being avoided, or actively covered up I don't know. As example we don't know what the impact of the economic damage will have long term on health / quality of life for poorer members of society. We don't know how many are dying / will die 'because of' the pandemic rather than of the pandemic - I mean those who have delayed treatment for treatable diseases for fear of catching the virus or overwhelming the systems. Increase suicide rates among young, jobless. And so on....

I disagree with how he wants to introduce those discussions, but they are discussions to have. And in case I'm asked - I don't have an alternative plan, I subcontract that to the people that run the country (not that i chose this lot) and in the meantime I'm following the plan we have because it seems to be working. Doesn't mean another plan wouldn't work better - I can light a barbecue with sticks and a match, but I use a chimney starter.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 9:24 am
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But some of the things he says are true, or at least need proper debate.

Yes, we spotted that technique. Don't fall for it, they are just trolling.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 9:29 am
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pondlife

official government narrative

You keep mentioning this ... yet we have nearly 500 pages documenting the U turns and almost daily changing and contradictory "government narrative"


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 9:35 am
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As example we don’t know what the impact of the economic damage will have long term on health / quality of life for poorer members of society.

Some of the implications seem likely to be life long.

Local high school has (allegedly) seen a jump in kids no longer attending, these same kids are now drinking heavily several times a week along with other drug consumption. For whatever reason* there has also (allegedly) been a decline in parents/guardians trying to do anything about it.

*arguably the increased strain they are under themselves. I’m in a reasonably safe place financially and the whole thing is still highly stressful and frankly exhausting.

Logical end result is an increase in unemployed alcoholics/drug addicts whose entire adult lives will be blighted or simply destroyed completely. Not all of them of course, but an increased proportion. And that has major wider community implications for decades to come.

No evidence for any of that, anecdotal etc etc


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 9:39 am
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Edukator

The semantics are a problem. I got picked up by TiRed for using “T-cell immunity” a few weeks back despite that exact term being used to describe what I wanted to mean in several serious sources. A few pages back TiRed makes the distinction betwee SARS 2 infection and having Covid. Scientists are just muddying the water and the conspiracy theorists jump on the bits that please them.

I don't think it's really the scientists muddying the waters but the political spin being put on it and the actual questions they are being asked and to some extent the constraints being put on them for funding.

Example:
Politician: Do you have any evidence to suggest the virus is being transmitted in XYZ
Scientist: Not as such, it's obvious so we haven't spent time
Politician: Then you have no evidence
Scientist: It doesn't work like that
Politician: Right so no evidence and you don't understand it ... off to set policy and do a press conference

An extreme example from the other side of the pond?
Have you tried injecting patients with disinfectant?


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 9:44 am
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@TiRed, SAGE didn't meet on the 15th did they? No minutes from that day IIRC. 16th perhaps?

Pellis' claims are slightly weakened by the fact that his paper uses data from the 17th March so could hardly have been written prior to the 18th, and SPI-M changed their estimate of doubling time (to 3-4 days) on the 20th. Maybe he presented an earlier analysis (what and when exactly? Documentation matters) but most importantly, where were these voices in the public sphere when a handful of modellers were still rubbishing the evidence of faster doubling times?

Just watch one minute of this: Pueyo's scared and slightly panicky comment, and Edmunds' utterly dismissive and patronising response (should start 22:40 in):

It chills me every time I see that. There were plenty more of us who could see what Pueyo described, playing out in real time while the "experts" sat on their hands.

@MoreCashThanDash, there was absolutely not a mountain of evidence either way. The only evidence that there ever was for a 5-7 day doubling was a very limited analysis of a few hundred cases at the start of the Wuhan outbreak, which was acknowledged as being highly uncertain by the authors of those papers (ie 5-7 days didn't actually cover the full range of uncertainty) and which had been completely overwhelmed by the evidence from thousands of cases and deaths in multiple European countries by the middle of March.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 9:44 am
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Interesting Development in Australia….

The lockdown in South Australia (Adelaide) is going to be lifted early – tomorrow. Some smaller restrictions will remain, but in the most part its being lifted. But Why?

Turns out the bit of the contract tracing that had them most worried – was a blatant lie. Turns out the chap in question had a second job at the pizza restaurant in question, and hadn’t just picked it up from ordering takeaway (which was his original story I think)

Pitchforks are being sharpened and torches being lit as we speak – or the Australian equivalents. The locals are revolting.

Dude’s going to have to go into hiding.

Read that. It says far more about the authorities knee-jerk and over-reactive response to an anomaly in the data than any fault of the man in question. I mean the authorities have jumped right in there and assumed it must be some new strain? Lockdown everyone for 60 days, with zero evidence apart from wild assumption?

If you guys think the conspiracy theorists (of which I am not one) are crazy, just take a look at your governments and how they are acting. Rational? Proportionate?

That's the problem with lockdowns. The science does not support them and there is zero evidence they have any positive effects. Possibly the only thing they might achieve is perhaps slightly delaying the death of a few elderly or very sick people, but we still don't know the full costs of lockdown on society and on healthcare in general. Andthey are probably huge, the cure being far worse than the disease.

Not knowing this yet apply lockdowns anyway is negligent at best, criminal at worst. It goes against the fundamental principle of medicine "First - do no harm".


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 9:59 am
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@MoreCashThanDash, there was absolutely not a mountain of evidence either way

I stand corrected, I misunderstood from the way I felt it was presented.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 10:09 am
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You keep mentioning this … yet we have nearly 500 pages documenting the U turns and almost daily changing and contradictory “government narrative”

All different degrees of lockdown though. If any of them worked why would we need to keep chopping and changing? The virus hasn't changed. In fact we now know it's far less deadly that we thought back in March. Yet the government seems to want to keep doubling down on failure. Oh that last lockdown didn't work, best have even more lockdown then! Test and trace doesn't work - lets have more test and trace!

There are other approaches (GBD), yet I think the government don't want to admit they are wrong and change tack. Personal reputations ahead of the health of the nation. Who'd have thought?

You have to wonder why the government felt the need to censor the media via Ofcom? If the government had nothing to hide why would they? What are they not telling us and why are they doing this?


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 10:11 am
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Pondlife, your not going to get any form of debate on here, I've followed it from the start. As you can see it's just accusations of trolling.
When some of the experts on here contribute to other threads on different sites their data is called into question and their lack of context is made apparent.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 10:13 am
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When you say ‘knee jerk’ I say ‘using the cautionary principle’. Inexplicable source, inexplicable spread - use the cautionary principle and over-react in the short term until information is available. If we’d ‘over-reacted’ at the start, the shape of the epidemic would have been different - more like say, New Zealand or Australia or even Germany.

As it is, the rates are too high for me to be comfortable and I am personally damaging the economy. Things aren’t as simple as ‘unlock’ and it will save the economy. I’ll contribute more when I consider it low risk for me to.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 10:17 am
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That’s the problem with lockdowns. The science does not support them and there is zero evidence they have any positive effects.

You keep saying this, but dont back it up with any evidence,

Please could you supply some?


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 10:22 am
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That’s the problem with lockdowns. The science does not support them and there is zero evidence they have any positive effects. Possibly the only thing they might achieve is perhaps slightly delaying the death of a few elderly or very sick people, but we still don’t know the full costs of lockdown on society and on healthcare in general. Andthey are probably huge, the cure being far worse than the disease.

Well the last lockdown greatly reduced the prevalence of the virus, thats pretty damn good evidence. The problem is the government have failed to cime clean that the lockdown was just to prevent every at risk person dying at the same time as it would knock outvthe nhs. This allows the nhs to keep services going as much as possible and now a vaccine is within sight its to delay the nhs. Being overrun enough to get the vacinnes rolled out. Do nothing isnt and wasnt an option as it would mean hundreds of thousands clogging yp the nhs. Its not hard to grasp tbh


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 10:27 am
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Proper lockdowns work pretty well at suppressing the virus. Ours have so far managed to screw the economy and give us the worst death rate in Europe.

There are clearly discussions to be had about how we "ration" NHS treatment. They happen all the time, there isn't an endless pot of money and more importantly resources. Similarly for supporting or minimising damage to the economy, mental health, young people's prospects.

But, that needs to be in the context of a potential additional death toll of 200,000+, and the same again left with long term health issues, with the knock on effect that has on the economy, the NHS, social care, mental health and education.

It's a new virus, we're learning as we go along. But if you want to discuss it, bring some peer reviewed research to the party if you want to be taken seriously.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 10:32 am
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All different degrees of lockdown though. If any of them worked why would we need to keep chopping and changing?

Erm nope.... not all to do with lockdown .
The government narrative has flipped continually on every aspect I can think of.
(I'm not even going to try and start listing them)

Various forms of half-hearted lockdown are merged into the ongoing narratives but you are only concentrating on the lockdown aspect.

You have to wonder why the government felt the need to censor the media via Ofcom? If the government had nothing to hide why would they? What are they not telling us and why are they doing this?

Partly though the overriding reason is because they don't have a narrative. Indeed they are feeding the media with leaks to see which way the wind blows.

I'm still trying not to list the huge list ....so just examples are "We have more than enough PPE" ... "It's just a mild flu"... "Carehomes are safe"... "pubs are safe", "masks do/don't work" , "kids can't carry the virus" ...

Part of these are driven by public opinion, part are driven cos "some mate offers to make PPE"...
I already commented "the science"... ^ the vast majority is driven by deliberately asking the wrong questions. Absence of evidence is changed to evidence something doesn't rather than "we didn't test because it's obvious"


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 10:44 am
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Well the last lockdown greatly reduced the prevalence of the virus, thats pretty damn good evidence.

No it didn't. There is no evidence for this apart from circumstantial. For proper evidence you need to compare the graphs of countries who did or didn't lockdown, and degrees of this and the shape of the curve is exactly the same. Apart from Aus/NZ of course and a couple of other notable cases who got in early and closed their borders and haven't even had their first wave. We didn't have that luxury.

A quick question for you. All those very old and badly ill people who succumbed to Covid in the Spring (the 95% or so of deaths). Do you think they'd have survived the flu this winter? Are we actually saving lives or simply trying to postpone deaths?


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 10:48 am
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No it didn’t. There is no evidence for this apart from circumstantial

🤪🤪🤪🤪😄😄😄👋👋😬😬😬😬😬😜😜😜😜😆😆😆

I'm out!!


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 10:54 am
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No it didn’t. There is no evidence for this apart from circumstantial

So hospital admissions went from 1000s a day to 0

Because..... ?

Please provide some evidence


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 10:55 am
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Are we actually saving lives or simply trying to postpone deaths?

See my previous post.

#Iamoutreallythistime


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 10:55 am
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So hospital admissions went from 1000s a day to 0

Because….. ?

Please provide some evidence

Here you go, perhaps this guy knows more than you and TiRed put together:

https://www.bitchute.com/video/J0JWur5LNePt/

I tried to post a YouTube link but it says the above video was removed for violating YouTube terms and conditions. It was only uploaded yesterday afternoon.

More censorship of the alternative science! I wonder why they need to do this? After all if the official narrative is so obviously right and this guy is wrong why not just debate him and all would unravel. Yeadon has asked publicly many times for a debate yet no one from SAGE or the Government has had the balls or conviction to do so. I wonder why?


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 11:06 am
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And so the credit taking begins!

https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1329699215128268800

Steve Baker seems to be switched on to the deception:

https://twitter.com/SteveBakerHW/status/1329707981982855168


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 11:10 am
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What I’d really like to know about SAGE is how and why the mountain of empirical evidence for a rapid doubling time was rejected in favour of some poorly-supported modelling.

My read - and I was not on SAGE at the time, is that the modelling was focused solely on the UK data streams. Fitting anything remotely exponential, be it a log-linear regression or an SEIR model (which I think people were) to limited data meant that R was badly estimated and the doubling time equally so.

Rather. I looked at all countries and used a rebased epidemic, and a mixed-effects log-linear model that says all epidemics are taken from some population, that way other countries. I used ECDC cases and deaths, Lorenzo used hospital admissions from UK and Ital, which he was sent from colleagues there. Two methods to get a 2-3 day doubling time.... Lockdown.

Yeadon

Please. I replied previously on lockdownsceptics. Yeadon makes all the typical drug developer presumptions I see every day at work. My formal response was as follows - tell me where the logical induction error falls?

djaustin

Error 1: Assuming that 100% of the population was susceptible to the virus and that no pre-existing immunity existed.

Error 2: The belief that the percentage of the population that has been infected can be determined by surveying what fraction of the population has antibodies.

Mike Yeadon makes the fundamental scientific flaw of stating as fact what should only be a hypothesis. The purpose of science is to construct a hypothesis and test it against data, then see whether there is sufficient information to reject the null hypothesis. The above two “Errors” are the null hypothesis. What are the testable outcomes that these hypotheses produce? – what evidence allows them to be rejected?

I have seen no prospective evidence that pre-existing T cell cross reactivity confers a lower risk of infection. I have seen no evidence that people with confirmed infection have not produced some seropositivity. Multiple hypotheses may lead to the same description of observation, but there must be testable outcomes for future states.

By changing the state of the system – leaving lockdown, opening schools, returning to office-based work, what are the testable predictions of his assertion? How does high immunity square with rising hospital admissions, and as surely as night will follow day, rising deaths in a couple of weeks’ time? How many deaths does his assertion predict in a month’s time? When will immunity prevent such mortality, if that was the primary reason for the previous decline from April? Is immunity really only of six months duration? How does that short duration compare with the first hypothesis?

There is no point appealing to authority (argumentum ab auctoritate), science is science – every confirmatory trial he ever ran attempted to reject the null hypothesis. And I’m also a thirty year scientist, in the same field with a background in Mathematics, Medicine, Biology and Epidemiology.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 11:19 am
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Your link doesn't work pond life. If youtube blocked it I suspect it's baseless conspiracy stuff.

As someone above noted, you started with reasoned argument and an alternative view to the consensus on here. Denying that confinement reduces transmission flies in the face of facts. You've gone from alternative strategies based on the same base of knowledge to denial of important facts. Then the following question:

I wonder why they need to do this?

Which is firmly into conspiracy theorist language.

I'll defend your right to disagree with strategies and look at the Covid death rate in its wider context which includes the economic, social and mental health implications of lockdown but if you're going to post pondlifefacts the vultures and eventually the mods will get you.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 11:21 am
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The science does not support them and there is zero evidence they have any positive effects.

Can someone explain why this troll is still here? They signed up (again?) just to troll on this subject.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 11:24 am
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Can someone explain why this troll is still here? They signed up (again?) just to troll on this subject.

Yet another useful contribution here from Kelvin, the man who likes to talk the talk, until it comes to walking the walk.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 11:28 am
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Incoherence is the third stage of grief.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 11:33 am
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Another story from Europe 1 this morning, the longer the confinement goes on the higher the incidence of beaten kids and women. 🙁


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 11:40 am
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Are we actually saving lives or simply trying to postpone deaths?

Aren't they the same thing? I'd quite like to postpone my death as long as possible.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 11:47 am
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71stu
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Pondlife, your not going to get any form of debate on here, I’ve followed it from the start. As you can see it’s just accusations of trolling.
When some of the experts on here contribute to other threads on different sites their data is called into question and their lack of context is made apparent.

again

please provide some evidence

pondlife
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And so the credit taking begins!

matt hancock being a dick is hardly news

the data would suggest that the regional lockdowns in northern areas were working

so lockdowns work, which you said they didnt


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 11:48 am
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My current hypothesis is that pondlife = recently joined and banned jim_barclay.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 11:56 am
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DNFTT!

Are we making any of the Oxford vaccine in advance of approval?


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 11:57 am
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I’d quite like to postpone my death as long as possible.

I'd like the opportunity to end it when I wish without making a mess on the pavement at the bottom of a tower with the possibility of landing on someone. (there is an element of black humour here before anyone gets upset)

My grandfather lived in excellent health until he died of flu at 92. Two years before he died he said he was just waiting for the end and was happy to go. He said that all his friends were dead, he'd done everything he really wanted to and he'd had enough.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 12:02 pm
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As someone above noted, you started with reasoned argument and an alternative view to the consensus on here. Denying that confinement reduces transmission flies in the face of facts.

More to the point it flies in the face of the scientific hypothesis.
That being that the virus is primarily transmitted between people.

Give or take a few mustelids, pangolins and such I see no evidence to dismiss the hypothesis that unless people meet the virus can't spread and when people meet the virus can spread.

If we were discussing some avian transmitted flu
If this was a strain of some airborne fungus spore
then perhaps they might say differently.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 12:03 pm
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No the northern areas were not as hard hit as areas such as London in the spring so these are merely the secondary ripples. They were always going to die out with or without any lockdown.

Sorry but that is simply misinformed nonsense. Look at admissions in the NE and NW and Yorkshire, then look at mortality. You will find such facts fly in the face of your assertions

At the peak, London recorded 700 admissions/day.
At the peak, NE and Yorkshire recorded 400 admissions/day.
At the peak, NW recorded 400 admissions/day
At the SECOND peak, NE and Yorkshire recorded errrr 400 admissions/day, and NW 300/day prior to Tier 3 and lockdown.

On a per-capita basis, London NW and NE had the same first wave admissions. Deaths were also in the same proportion. Thanks for playing - you may research (and download the data) here . When you have, come back with some facts please.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 12:24 pm
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That being that the virus is primarily transmitted between people.

Exactly. So can you explain why there were no peaks in transmission after big public gatherings then? For example the lockdown protests, the BLM protests, VE Day celebrations etc? Cases continued to go down.


 
Posted : 20/11/2020 12:26 pm
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