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Excuse me for not being up to date as I've sadly had to do some work....but it appears that every day a new troll account is created for the purposes of baiting people on this thread. Most of those people on the receiving end have made significant contributions to the discussion.
What's going on? It's all a bit weird......
If only I could carbonrider, id never leave the house - can I get a pair of breasts as well?...nothing too fancy, 34C would be nice
cheers!
Then you are a huge statistical outlier, or you are the one talking utter bollocks.
More that I know a few people who work in the NHS and schools and have recently held jobs delivering to student halls, nursing homes and other places full of vulnerable people. All areas where Covid is prevalent. One of those who passed away was a call centre worker in her 30's and lived a healthy lifestyle, ran marathons etc. She caught it from her husband who works in the local hospital.
Go **** yourself you conceited prick.
Word fail.
I wasn’t talking bullocks about the Cancer stuff so if you are trying to deny this you can go swivel:
You understand that the thing that is supposedly blocking cancer treatment is the virus you are saying isn't that serious?
I'm intrigued as to how you square that circle.
What do the learned panel think of Tony Blair suggestion to give more people a single biontech vaccination dose instead of giving less people the recommended 2 vaccination doses.
I am guessing that those of you who support the thorough effing of our economy for Covid will happily contribute more in taxes and give up you homes, jobs, future healthcare, etc. if required in future to pay for the damage?
Ah the 'who's going to pay for it' question. The answer is no one, it's being paid for by someone at the BoE adding an entry to their spreadsheet. The issue is not that the money isn't there or that it will have to be paid back, it's that our corrupt and incompetent govt (which I'm guessing you voted for) have made a political decision not to support the economy to the extent that is needed.
You should learn about the national debt and why it's not a problem...
https://twitter.com/RichardJMurphy/status/1337737606688333826?s=20
If you look at diagnosis of “soft tissue sarcoma”, you will find that diagnosis is far from trial and fraught with misdiagnosis.
Can agree with this, my dad had a soft tissue sarcoma in his shoulder, was missed twice by the doctors and the speed it grew at was staggering, went from the size of a cricket ball to the size of a size 4 football in 3 weeks. He ended up with a forequarter amputation (at the height of first lockdown).
Unfortunately six month later and it’s back on his lungs and is not treatable, but diagnosis was really quick this time so clearly COVID hasn’t stopped all cancer work.
I think your phrase was ‘hiding behind the sofa’. You then have questioned the evidence provided with alternative views yet provided very little in the way of credible alternatives, or answered what you want to see that will change your mind.
That was a quotation, intended ironically, from someone else’s post. I haven’t questioned any evidence, presented any alternative views or attempted to present any credible alternatives, and I don’t have a mind to change. Otherwise that’s a fair summary 🙂
Well, I did make a throwaway comment about having a proper lockdown, and I still don’t see why that wouldn’t work. But I have no influence over government policy so there’s no point looking beyond my own family/community really.
In one ear I have the government firing out clearly flawed and skewed information to support their position, and in the other I have some credible people, not just nutters, offering stats which often make more sense - and somehow, without expertise, I have to work out what to believe.
My instinct is to believe the science. But I know from personal experience (that’s all I have to offer) that the science isn’t always clear, or right. “Trust me, I’m a doctor” just doesn’t cut it. (Take the NHS guidelines on diet and diabetes and obesity...)
But OK, some very specific questions:
1. Covid has been kept out of nursing homes in my county, so why is that not a realistic strategy elsewhere?
2. Why, to my knowledge, are there still no statistics on the risks and effects for different existing conditions? And do Covid deaths still include unrelated deaths or not?
3. Why aren’t people being encouraged to improve their health and strengthen their immune systems?
suggestion to give more people a single biontech vaccination
Would probably give similar protection as the Oxford vaccine. But, I would argue, better to give the full protection of both doses to those most at risk, and those most likely to catch it (the old, key NHS/care workers etc) and the rest of us get the other, later, possibly less effective vaccines. [ I am not 'learned' though ]
Tony Blair reckons the second dose only improves the efficacy of the vaccine by a few percent, think it was 3 or 4 percent on the BBC article I read.
They are trying that line… will it stick…?
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1341763288410054657?s=21
Personally, as long as they act fast now, I don’t care.
I don't care what they blame as long as they're doing the right thing. Bit surprised not to see Burnley/Pendle and Eden left out of the move to Tier 4. New variant is dominant strain there, cases are rising fast.
There are quite a few other places where the direction is upwards, even under Tier 3.
Same old, same old.
Why not just announce a full, national Tier 4/lockdown from boxing day?
I can't really understand it either. This variant is all over the place, will achieve dominance quickly as it has done in the SE, and fuel rapid case growth. Why not hammer it hard, then you might not need to hammer it as hard later on?
1. Covid has been kept out of nursing homes in my county, so why is that not a realistic strategy elsewhere?
how have they acheived this?
probably by dumb luck. they could have taken the same precautions/lack thereof as every other care home in the country. The relatively small number of staff, new admissions (and visitors if and when allowed) as points of entry can throw off any statistical analysis.
3. Why aren’t people being encouraged to improve their health and strengthen their immune systems?
This has been said for decades. Not just for covid. If anyone doesn't know the benefits they are beyond help.
Quite literally the only thing that got the masses to do some light daily excersise was April's lockdown and being allowed out once a day.
Why not just announce a full, national Tier 4/lockdown from boxing day? January is a quiet months for business generally so will have less of an impact than a later lockdown in say March.
1. Covid has been kept out of nursing homes in my county, so why is that not a realistic strategy elsewhere?
Where is you county out of interest?
A question for the scientists on here (hoping it hasn't already been done). Is it feasible or preferable now for us to move to a zero covid strategy? At the beginning of all this it seemed obvious to me that would have been the right thing for the UK to do seeing as we are an island and can easily control who comes in or out of the country. That still stands, and whilst it would require a monumental lockdown surely that's now an option given we're pretty much sealed off from the rest of the world already? I have no real wish for a lockdown longer and stricter than we already have but I'd accept it if the goal was total suppression. Obviously the vaccines change the reasoning but surely elimination should now be the aim seeing as managed suppression has been a catastrophic failure?
Chrispo, very reasonable questions and I’ll give some answers.
1. Covid has been kept out of nursing homes in my county, so why is that not a realistic strategy elsewhere?
At the start of the epidemic in March the government were caught in the headlights. No testing facility and a likely wave of patients heading to hospital. There was mass discharge of infected patients into nursing homes. Mortality in those homes was about 20%. Now there is prospective testing of residents and workers in those homes, careful screening or bank workers who spread from home to home, and testing of patients discharged to them from hospital. Things are very different.
2. Why, to my knowledge, are there still no statistics on the risks and effects for different existing conditions? And do Covid deaths still include unrelated deaths or not?
All deaths are coded with an ICD10 code. Influenza is ICD99. COVID deaths have their own new code (it’s a new disease) ICD100. Such deaths are the official COVID statistics. At the beginning there was some confusion. Now one has to have tested positive within 28 days of death for the headline figure. Of course dying after 30 days in ITU of COVID will be an ICD100 death and counted overall but not make the news.
ONS have done multiple analyses of this information. For example
3. Why aren’t people being encouraged to improve their health and strengthen their immune systems?
The speed with which people improve their health is slow compared to the speed of an epidemic. Even so, there is some evidence that vitamin D deficiency may play a role in susceptibility- risk of death is higher for those with darker skin, after adjusting for other factors. Vitamin D supplementation is probably (but not confirmed) a prudent preventative measure. Losing weight will help. But Christmas....
You are right to be wary of the unknowns in the science. But some aspects are now clear and others still hazy (new strain for example). You will hear the best commentators accept what is not known. Decision making in the presence of uncertainty requires judgement. Science helps with that judgement. It’s okay to say “we don’t know”, and then the precautionary principle kicks in. If it doesn’t turn out all doom and gloom, everyone forgets that we didn’t know.
Always ask not what you think, but why do you think it?
1. Covid has been kept out of nursing homes in my county, so why is that not a realistic strategy elsewhere?
Even where they've had some success things can just happen. My sister-in-law manages a care home in Cheshire. Despite the very best efforts and 9 months of defending the residents, it got in last week and they now have several cases. No mixing of carers, frequent temperature checks, strict regime for dealing with deliveries, post etc. etc. etc.
It could have been as simple as an asymptomatic delivery driver coughed on laundry paperwork accidentally. It could be from an asymptomatic carer who got it from their asymptomatic teenage child. Nobody knows how it got in there.
EDIT: there was a piece on the BBC a few months ago about the differences between rich/posh carehomes and the more "basic" ones. As you would expect. the care homes with more resources fared much better in general
Tony Blair reckons the second dose only improves the efficacy of the vaccine by a few percent, think it was 3 or 4 percent on the BBC article I read.
I just read the same article. It's worth noting the Info came from Prof. David Salisbury, he was in charge of Immunisation at the Dept. Of Health until 2013, so isn't just the ramblings of old man Blair.
Given the massive spike in cases, an economy on the brink and of course, nearly 700 deaths a day, it seems to me it's crazy not to!
I don't want to try to sell my opinion as any kind of fact, but I'm frustrated by the pace of the vaccine roll out, it's not that it's not a huge undertaking or that the people doing it aren't working as hard as they can, it's the fact that, at least locally there's a massive plan in place, staff standing by to be redeployed to give the vaccine and they're just waiting, and they don't really know why. It could be the logistics of storage and transport, but most of them seem to think that they're holding back, waiting for the Oxford to be signed off (between Xmas and NY supposedly) because it's easier to transport and store.... not to mention, hugely cheaper.
OK, let’s do a thought experiment.
Let’s hypothesise along the lines of:
‘0.5% mortality is acceptable therefore we do nothing and keep services running as normal’ scenario. All shops, restaurants, schools, activities open as normal.”
But, (and it’s a big but) the NHS is open. To keep it open we will have to introduce some rules. We don’t want it overwhelmed (otherwise no normal services), and we’re perfectly happy with the mortality rate so we don’t want pesky covid patients clogging up ICU. We certainly don’t want our ‘normal’ patients accidentally infected. So, the inevitable conclusion is that we would have to actually refuse NHS treatment for anyone with tested or suspected Covid and check that any ‘normal’ admissions are covid negative before they are admitted. Nor do we want our health service staff bringing it in. Get Covid? Stay out of the NHS. If you die you die.
I keep rerunning this one in my head and I’m pretty sure it is just ‘a different kind of bad’ rather than saving the economy. The economy would be mashed but in a ‘bleed dry’ way as reduced numbers would erode places people mix and the viability of businesses. Employers would be faced with Health and Safety claims off the charts if people start catching it at work so many would be taking extreme preventive measures anyway. But there would be no support rather than lacklustre support.
That scenario would also risk a lot of rebellion - I was quite struck in lockdown 1 as to how many households had to shield - people are connected and separating low risk and high risk people is harder than you think. I’m not sure how quickly social unrest would kick in but I’m fairly sure that at least as much social fabric would erode.
You can run a lot of thought experiments along the various options. None of them are pretty.
The best real world examples at the moment are New Zealand / Taiwan / Australia. But we’re a way off that. The relatively laissez faire* approach in the US has still had staggering economic consequences (*consisting mainly of states instituting panic measures when the bodies began to pile up) - like 30% off GDP in the second quarter and 14%+ increase in unemployment.
In short, ‘let it rip’ isn’t going to help the economy.
What do the learned panel think of Tony Blair suggestion to give more people a single
This one is a really hard decision. There is gold standard evidence of efficacy at the approved regimen. There is a nice plot of protection starting from seven days. Drugs are approved according to the label. The label is for two doses. There have been cases of sparing other medicines in shortages.
Given the robustness of the response, almost unprecedented for a vaccine, I am tempted to agree. But then there will be the class action US law suit for those who caught COVID having had one dose. Yes that will be a thing. And likely in the uk too. It’s more an indemnity argument. Three months (say) in twice as many people buys perhaps more protection till manufacture is scaled, than six months in half as many.
Zero COVID is not going to happen. This is the fifth endemic human coronavirus. It’s happened in our lifetime. Others were in your parents and grandparents lifetimes. They are reasonably recent zoonotic jumps. This one is more pathogenic. It also has a vaccine to provide catch up immunity.
Tony Blair reckons the second dose only improves the efficacy of the vaccine by a few percent,
He also insisted Iraq had WMDs, so I'll wait until a more reliable source offers up some robust evidence 🤔
Can we just ignore the next obnoxious pop-up troll please? I don't want to miss something interesting from someone who actually knows what they are talking about.
Why not just announce a full, national Tier 4/lockdown from boxing day?
The journalists keep, repeatedly, asking the very same question.
And asking about schools in January.
Obviously the vaccines change the reasoning but surely elimination should now be the aim seeing as managed suppression has been a catastrophic failure?
So glad someone else is saying this Dazh.
Zero COVID is not going to happen.
How about closer to Zero?
We are just storing up six months of on/off pain... and others quarantining us, because we can't control things ourselves. The economic damage of trying to keep prevalence at an internationally relatively high level, rather than reduce it to a level where Track, Trace, Isolate can be actually be made to work, is going to roll on and on... at a time where we are taking on other economic challenges as well.
How can they say schools are a very controlled environment. Have they been in a school its.30 in a small room with no ppe.
I love @TiRed's posts as they increase my vocabulary with all his fancy long words
😉
By the way I loved "zoonotic jumps" first album... guitar based rock at its finest!!
😜
How can they say schools are a very controlled environment. Have they been in a school its.30 in a small room with no ppe.
It's a very controlled environment, just not relation to Covid transmission.
Obviously the vaccines change the reasoning but surely elimination should now be the aim seeing as managed suppression has been a catastrophic failure?
Elimination is impossible in the timeframes we're dealing with, always has been. Kicking the mortality can along the road as we wait for vaccine coverage to expand is the best we can possibly hope for.
Elimination is impossible in the timeframes we’re dealing with, always has been.
Elimination, yes. Now, some countries are counting their daily new cases at far lower levels than our daily deaths. We don't have control. Others have better control, even if they are still having to work hard to stop new cases taking off again. We keep reducing our options by refusing to take action. We have laid the path to a very difficult winter by just trying to "suppress" rather than reduce infections to a level where we can follow new infections and isolate them and their contacts.
But then there will be the class action US law suit for those who caught COVID having had one dose
That's a political problem and can be solved by the government indemnifying the drug companies. In times of national crisis governments can do whatever they think is right. For example, in WW2 underperforming farms were seized by the state without compensation.
Given how badly the number of cases are increasing at the moment it seems worth trying, at least in a large scale trial. I'd volunteer to only get one dose.
Can we just ignore the next obnoxious pop-up troll please? I don’t want to miss something interesting from someone who actually knows what they are talking about.
Are you referring to me as an obnoxious pop up troll?
It's no wonder people don't really come on here much with any opposing views, I'm here asking a genuine question about a credible piece of news (t Blair and other scientists suggesting a single dose of the vaccine might be good) and you refer to me as an obnoxious troll?
I think it (t blairs suggestion) sounds like a pragmatic solution to the problem of the speed of vaccine roll out, what about you?
We are just storing up for six months of on/off pain
This. Elimination was the wrong word, I agree zero covid is unachievable, but it's demonstrably possible to get as close to it as possible so we can open up the economy again. We're in the worst sort of limbo where the economy is in freefall with no hope of relief and cases are not reducing. Ignoring it like the US has done isn't an option (unless you're a psycopath), so the only other is a New Zealand type approach. Shut the borders, impose a massive lockdown to get numbers down and see it through until we can open up again and be confident it won't surge again. We could be back to normal by the spring otherwise it'll roll on for another year.
Are you referring to me as an obnoxious pop up troll?
No he wasn't, unless you've just outed yourself as ArseBiscuitRiderCarbon, late lamented of this parish. 🙂
No he wasn’t, unless you’ve just outed yourself as ArseBiscuitRiderCarbon, late lamented of this parish.
I am not him/her, I have no other logins to stw.
In terms of cancer treatments. A relative with dual nationality left London for Malaga due to delays in her cancer treatment in the UK due to Covid. If you check back through the thread you'll find I documented it at the time, the first confinement this side of the channel.
What do the learned panel think of Tony Blair suggestion to give more people a single biontech vaccination dose instead of giving less people the recommended 2 vaccination doses.
If we just had the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine I'd say that was a risky strategy but to be fair to Blair his scenario assumes the Oxford vaccine will be approved in a few days time and as we have millions of doses of that already in stock and more will be made shortly, some in the UK, he is recommending giving as many people as possible their first vaccination with the not unrealistic expectation that second doses will be available from current and future manufacturing when they are required in a months time. I'd say go for it as its the only way we'll get on top of COVID next year especially with the new variant. I cannot believe no action, or at least no visible action, is being taken to set up drive-through/walk through inoculation centres, commandeer football stadia, racecourses etc. We managed to build 10,000 bed hospitals in a couple of weeks so surely scaling up mass vaccination to 4-5 million a week is possible.
OK, let’s do a thought experiment.
Let’s hypothesise along the lines of:
That's the stuff of movies isn't it? I think Michael Bay has decided to cash in with a film that sounds a bit like that, it's terrible apparently.
Anyway, it won't happen now. Even if people can accept the concept of letting 250k-350k people die, because they'd 'mostly' be in their 80s "anyway" when it comes down to people they actually know, their parents, grandparents etc it's unthinkable. People still phone for an Ambulance to come quickly when their 95 year old loved one stops breathing.
Really I think his is the shitty sting at the end of the tail for Covid 19, and yes it's going to be around for a long time, maybe forever, but the emergency stage will end in the coming months, one way or another.
That's not to say we won't let "nature take its course" which will be likely the phrase that's used. The public doesn't have a limitless appetite for restrictions, public opinion has shifted too much.
I see some of the Tory ****ers are starting to wonder out loud why we haven't used the Nightingales yet, if we do, that'll be as close to "letting nature run it's course" we'll see in the short term. We haven't used them, because there's no staff to man them. Hell, heaven and earth has been moved to open Covid 40 new beds in my local hospital, they're empty, because there isn't enough critical care staff to run them.
If they do open, it may well be little more than keeping people comfortable until they get better, or don't. Critical Care nurses are highly skilled, highly trained specialists. It's got the point already they're trying to get my Wife to go and work Covid just because she's a specialist, she hasn't worked in a Hospital in 5 years.
I cannot believe no action
Good. Because there is action. Drac will be along to tell us about his cricket club again no doubt...
On the other hand if you base it on the rate at which people can be tested it doesn't bode well, and the test is a piece of cake compared with a vaccine that needs cold storage.
Go on then Kelvin tell us
Are you referring to me as an obnoxious pop up troll?
Wasn't referring to you at all. Apologies if you felt I was.
Wasn’t referring to you at all. Apologies if you felt I was.
No worries, appreciate the clarification, thanks
Go on then Kelvin tell us
Where are you? They'll be similar sites being prepared for the vaccine rollout. Not really national news though.
ONS have done multiple analyses of this information.
Thank you. Unfortunately, to be of any practical use the data would need to break each condition down into ages and severities and so on, and effects not just deaths. Is poor data another of the reasons this country has done so badly?
Losing weight will help. But Christmas….
Every overweight person in the UK could've easily got down to healthy weight in the past nine months, and a large percentage of the obese too. I get that the government are averse to telling people what to do, but they could at least tell people how they can help themselves and their families. This is their great chance to do something about diet and obesity, and they're blowing it.
Getting the nation to cut right down on sugar and processed shite and eat loads of veg (for a start) would save far more lives and do far more for health and wellbeing and for the NHS in both the short and the long term than anything else I can think of.
What I'm learning from this thread is that the arguments have moved on since the summer. It's no longer just about deaths, it's not harmless to the under-60s, we can't ignore it, and it's too late to contain it or protect the most at risk. Thank you.
One thing I could tentatively contribute is that the economic damage is not as great at an aggregate level as the headlines would suggest. We're still making as much as we were in 2010. So the key is to support those who are struggling individually and focus on health. The economy can wait.
they could at least tell people how they can help themselves and their families
They did. And, to be fair to the PM, post his brush with Covid, he banged on about the importance of people getting into better shape to help protect themselves. But ultimately, that's down to them... not being in shape increases your own risks... the big interventions this year are all about not being a risk to others.