Forum menu
Watching various channels around Europe I’ve come to the conclusion there is now a signifant risk associated with taking a Covid test. The obvious one being prosecution for being out whilst positive.
Wait, so you can have symptoms, go out for a test, get a positive result, and then be prosecuted for having been outside with Covid-19?
As long as you discount the possibility of dying. I think you’d have to be a special kind of stupid to do this.
Stupid, yes, special (as in very exceptionally so) no.
hundreds of free pounds for doing something that (age group dependent) has a vanishingly small possibility of death will be a irresistible allure to some demographics
I've looked into what help is available to the poorest and it in no way compensates a loss of access to free and subsidised services for some members of some communities. There is a cost to testing positive. For the self-employed it's a no brainer - never take a test, don't use the app.
Bear in mind I'm looking at at this from a pan-European perspective and I'm not going to go into ever anomoly in every country. The trend is the same everwhere, using the app and testing is a good way to increase hardship for many people.
A positive test for junior last week would have cost him a couple of thousand euros and a mountain of inconvenience, fortunately it was negative. A less upstanding citizen would have ignored the unofficial contact warning and thought **** it, I'm getting on with life unless I'm too ill not to. He has parents rich enough to cough up a couple of thousand euros to compensate being locked in, many don't.
There really is a disincentive to test for many people and the virus benefits from that.
Spent a few hours looking at the Oxford/AZ data in more detail. Taking the standard dose subjects as reference, below is the vaccine efficacy of the various subgroups. Two points; efficacy in the over 65's is unknown. Completely unknown. Approval is entirely based on antibody response and an expectation of some protection from morbidity at the very least. Second point, the efficacy in the South Africa trial is evidently lower, even with the much smaller trial. There is some overlap in uncertainty of response, but not a lot.
The vertical solid line is 50%, this is the minimum VE needed for approval and the peak needs to be to the right of this. The dashed line is 30% - 38/40 of the total area under the curve should be to the right of that dashed line. The UK trial just squeaks over the 30%! The Oxford study data in SA would be a failed trial. Busy updating with the other vaccines...(they all look better).
I will stand by what I have said previously. The OX/AZ vaccine should be viewed as morbidity and mortality preventing. Any effects on transmission are an upside. Think of it as that first infection that spares you the nasty prospects of a trip to A&E.
Good news (to my mind at least).
Death rate (worldometer, UK, 7 day rolling average) declining for the last 2 weeks at a faster rate than last spring despite currently having:
-less strict lockdown than in april/may
-weather far more suited to transmission of respiritory disease
-far less concern by the average population
take your uneducated guesses: better treatment, beginings of vaccine usefulness in the elderly population, running out of really vunerable people to kill, less deadly mutations...
Yea, numbers do seem to look good. Although it certainly looks like it flattening now. Look at France, seems to have flat lined at around 15k cases a day. The weather will be having an impact at the moment, and testing seems to be down slightly.
I'm trying not to think about the SA variant right now. No point.
Going to hold off on calling it on my suspicion that the vaccine program can't end this anytime soon and any idea that this will be over by the end of 2021 is as deluded as those who thought involvement in Vietnam wouldn't end up in anything other than protracted quagmire policy wise - but I reckon my odds are looking better.
We need to start considering/entertaining the possibility that we can't end this with lockdowns and a vaccine and start to think of ways that can mitigate the impact of covid without either policy being in place or having the public support to implement them.
Two points; efficacy in the over 65’s is unknown. Completely unknown. Approval is entirely based on antibody response and an expectation of some protection from morbidity at the very least.
Remember the uproar when politicians (nonUK ones) pointed this out?
Nothing is going to "end this" we are going to have to live with this virus, with vaccines and improved treatments that will become easier to do
Remember the uproar when politicians (nonUK ones) pointed this out?
Nope
That’s a shame. Or perhaps a good thing.
We covered it in this thread IIRC. I’m not reposting the euro hate media links. Here’s a fact check related to it:
https://www.bbc.com/news/55919245
Going to hold off on calling it on my suspicion that the vaccine program can’t end this anytime soon and any idea that this will be over by the end of 2021 is as deluded as those who thought involvement in Vietnam wouldn’t end up in anything other than protracted quagmire policy wise – but I reckon my odds are looking better.
Calm down dear - no one with any real knowledge - like TiRed of this parish and the like - has suggested we will get rid of it, in this or any other years. It's always been about limiting the damage till we can deal with it the way we deal with influenza.
The study may have been too small to give a precise answer, but it was large enough to show that the vaccine isn't highly effective.
tbf the Sun Torygraph etc must have been tumescent with glee getting to have a pop at Macron for slating our great made in britain vaccine
Maqcron said it was quasi ineffecitve, there was (is?) no data to support that statement.
It’s always been about limiting the damage till we can deal with it the way we deal with influenza.
We never really "dealt" with influenza - it killed a lot of people and we shrugged our shoulders, what we are trying to do now has never been done before. This isn't smallpox.
The 1889-1890 pandemic (possibly a coronavirus) had yearly outbreaks until the end of 1895 - that was with the disease being allowed to rip through the global population circa 1889-90.
Oh and +1 thecaptain........humans are inherently biased towards optimism aren't they?
mefty
Free Member
Maqcron said it was quasi ineffecitve, there was (is?) no data to support that statement.
not that im aware, unless EMA or someone has data not public that says its 25% less effective in over 65s?]
edit
certainly for 2 doses theres a good antibody response in OAPs (less so for 1 dose)
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32466-1/fulltext
There’s not enough data either way. That BBC fact check handles it in quite an impartial and fair way. The answer to your question can be found in there Mefty (or just read what Tired has been posting).
The study may have been too small to give a precise answer, but it was large enough to show that the vaccine isn’t highly effective.
Probably worth expanding on your point here thecaptain, for the others.
I suspect I get what you're saying but I'd like to hear you expand on it.
No, there is enough data to say that the vaccine is not highly effective (for some value of "highly"). If it was highly effective there would have been many fewer cases in the treatment arm than the placebo. If it was 100% effective there would necessarily have been none at all for any sample size.
There isn't enough data to accurately identify whether it's weakly effective, moderately effective or totally ineffective. It may still be quite useful.
There’s not enough data either way.
Precisely, so Macron's statement was irresponsible and hence he was criticised, if he had said there was insufficient data to come to a conclusion, there would have not been any meaningful criticism.
humans are inherently biased towards optimism aren’t they?
Not on this thread; we'd have 2 million UK dead, 60 million unemployed and a continuous queue of trucks from Dover backed up to about Birmingham, along with a 2 year continuous lockdown if some people had their way.
Optimism has kept me sane and if we are honest, alive, through the last year.
I may have been wildly over optimistic at some points, and sadly annoyingly risk averse/pessimistic with regards to financial investments.
But the only thing keeping me from taking a rope up to the loft is the thought that life will get back to some sort of "normal" if not the same at some point in the not too distant future.
If not, there really is no point wasting a vaccine or indeed any finite resource on me.
If not, there really is no point wasting a vaccine or indeed any finite resource on me.
This isn't what I'm saying, what I am warning against is getting bogged down in something that isn't "winnable" by the goals and standards that politicians and society have defined so far. It is getting bogged down like that, which will lead to the above.
We have to be prepared for bad news, so we can cope with it. I don't pretend to know what an alternative strategy would look like, but we have to be agile so that we can as a society cope with this when the current plan doesn't work out.
The basic point is that an experiment that can't accurately determine a small effect, may still be powerful enough to detect a large effect, so if it doesn't detect this large effect, you can legitimately rule out the effect being large without having a precise estimate as to how big it is. Essentially just turning the confidence interval around...not that I really like confidence intervals, but there you are...
That's roughly what I suspected you were getting at - but I don't want to put words into other peoples mouths.
70+ not vaccinated yet now being asked to chase it up.
Boris said "prevent" earlier. Hancock has just said "some effect". I'll take TiRed's post on the previous page as nearest to truth.
Good to see your objectivity on your own company's product, TiRed.
Macron’s statement was irresponsible
Time will tell. I’m not sure it was, to be honest. We’re pressing ahead as if it is effective to a limited degree, based on antibody testing and a hunch. It’s a hunch I support, and pushing forward based on a hope of “quasi-effective” is good… mostly because our vaccine plan does not stop there… we’re looking and buying ahead with the assumption that vaccinating again in the UK with other or updated vaccines within 12 months will happen. Do anything that helps keep people out of hospital now. Boost with more effective vaccines later if they offer better protection for individuals and/or communities, or against new variants.
we’re looking and buying ahead with the assumption that vaccinating again in the UK with other or updated vaccines within 12 months will happen.
My issue with this, is despite the rapid roll out of the vaccine program in the UK it's still too slow that in the case of the rapid spread of a variant that significantly reduces the effectiveness of a vaccine - we're back to reactive measures again. Let's not get started on how slow the vaccine program in Europe has been. We aren't anti-fragile, the whole program at the moment is a house of cards.
The initial vaccines will save lives, and allow us more freedoms later this year. They don’t allow us to rule out ongoing measures or rule out further lockdowns. Ongoing vaccine developments and rollouts might.
isn’t highly effective
At preventing symptomatic disease. There are lots of fancy sums one can do to look at posterior distribution for probability of hospital admission, but there really isn't much data here. A bit like the rest of the program, sadly.
Although these trials look big by normal standards, it's really about the number of EVENTS not the number of participants. Below 200 events, a study is basically a proof of concept study and hard to interpret. Some transparency on the over 65's data would have been nice. I'd still take it though.
The initial vaccines will save lives, and allow us more freedoms later this year. They don’t allow us to rule out ongoing measures or rule out further lockdowns. Ongoing vaccines developments and rollouts might.
Sure. But this isn't what the public expects. Just like they didn't expect WW1 to last 4+ years, the Korean war to end in a stalemate, Vietnam to end in humiliation, Iraq to end in ISIS.
Sure. But this isn’t what the public expects.
That is very true. Clear public communication of expectations has been missing. I've tried to be transparent. A vaccine is good news for generating a polyclonal antibody response. That will do something when the virus comes. Whether it will:
1. give sterile protection
2. give asymptomatic infection which can't be transmitted
3. give asymptomatic infection which can be transmitted
4. give mild infection that does not need hospitalization
5. give moderate infection
6. does nothing
is still unknown for the variant. I's say that mRNA is currently a 1-2, Oxford is towards a 2-4. Hopefully things won't head for a 6.
I'm not sure why people are so critical of the European vaccination programme. Vaccins have be made and that takes time. Even if the UK had been a part of the programme if you spread the 12 million UK doses so far used evenly over 450 million you up the percentage vaccinated by only about 2%.
This is why I'm not to fussed about the UK going it alone, the doses being argued over wouldn't make much difference. However, the impact on current and future relations is catastrophic.
But this isn’t what the public expects.
True. And we know why that is. We are poorly served in terms of political leaders and column writers and “quasi-journalists”… and sometimes they are the same people.
In principle it's little different to fighting a COIN war. The idea of pacification of villages and towns by essentially locking them down and inoculating the population against communist ideology is superficially similar in terms of how we are dealing with COVID. We have to manage it based on all the lessons we've learned about why previous counter-insurgencies have failed and why they lost public support. Otherwise we'll commit, commit again and commit some more to policies that are doomed to either fail or lose public support - and history will judge all of the effort, younger lives and money thrown at COVID as a waste.
The Netherlands rioting is a foreshadow.
.
Well, off the back off losing my job cos of COVID and not understanding what the hell all the specifics of statistics people talk about mean, I've just scored an scholarship for the unemployed to do an MSc module in Data Analysis and Simulation from Heriot Watt.
Time to engage the brain.
Nice!
is still unknown for the variant. I’s say that mRNA is currently a 1-2, Oxford is towards a 2-4. Hopefully things won’t head for a 6.
Forgive me here TiRed - I have an enormous amount of respect for the work you've done. We both work in Pharma, your career currently eclipses mine. That said....."hopefully things won't head for a 6".... isn't good enough. This is what scares me, that's similar to the kind of thing that the US intelligence data nerds were saying about cartpet bombing the ho chi minh trail.
"Hopefully" is what leads to...with hindsight....totally daft policy decisions.
TiRed has to be careful what he says though, from a company perspective, I'm sure he has more theories but won't elaborate for that reason?.
Good stuff ygh!
What was missing from the three behind pulpits earlier was the following worst case:
We know the South African virus is circulating as we have 124 confirmed UK cases and the latest test results show one of the vaccines used, AZ, is unlikely to prevent some degree of illness in some people who will probably be infectious. That means that this variant can develop in both the non-vaccinated and AZ vaccinated populations. If lockdown is lifted the virus will take off again in these populations, with further mutation inevitable. It will soon become the dominant variant unless we use vaccines that stop its progression. We are not out of the woods yet and are only using the AZ vaccine as a stop gap.
That would have been more honest than the rambling reassurances and praise of everyone except the people really making a difference: you, me and anyone else wearing a mask around other people, keeping contacts to a minimum, working from home if possible and windows open if not... .
Riots by the summer and certainly next autumn. There....**** it. I'm calling it.
Riots by the summer and certainly next autumn. There….**** it. I’m calling it.
You've been building up to that comment for a few hours now with all your military disaster analogies. Now that you've reached the climax of your disaster fapping, please don't use the curtain on your way out 😉