A nice paper in the BMJ on risk of covid progression for those who are vaccinated. With over 5 million subjects double vaccinated and a further 2 million with a single dose in the dataset, needless to say sensitivity to detect signals is pretty good. The ABSOLUTE risk was very small:
Of 6,952,440 vaccinated patients in the derivation cohort, 5,150,310 (74.1%) had two vaccine doses. Of 2031 covid-19 deaths and 1929 covid-19 hospital admissions, 81 deaths (4.0%) and 71 admissions (3.7%) occurred 14 days or more after the second vaccine dose
What's missing of course is the seropositivity - so most of the detected risk factors are really surrogates for not seroconverting after vaccination. Nothing new here; organ transplantation, cancer and HIV are all immunosuppressive predictors. Still, the algorithm can describe 3/4 of the variability seen.
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2244
Friend told me this weekend that her best mate was at a party the other day with someone who later tested positive. She (the friend) decided to take a pcr but as the results hadn’t come back by the weekend she took a lat flow test, got a negative, before then hosting a dinner party.
No wonder we are in the mess we are..
but if double jabbed those are the rules. While I agree I'd not do that, you can't blame people for doing what they are told.
but if double jabbed those are the rules. While I agree I’d not do that, you can’t blame people for doing what they are told.
I thought you needed to wait for your result before ending isolation?
Not if you are double jabbed - or so my wife was told by the tester when she did a PCR test a while back - she isolated anyway because results were coming back same day at that time so it seemed stupid not to.
The tester may have got it wrong though
From the Gov website - what to do if in contact with someone with Covid, but not specifically required to self isolate
Even if you are vaccinated, you can still be infected with COVID-19 and pass it on to others. If you are identified as a contact of someone with COVID-19 but you are not required to self-isolate, you can help protect others by following the guidance on how to stay safe and help prevent the spread. As well as getting a PCR test, you may also consider:
- limiting close contact with other people outside your household, especially in enclosed spaces
- wearing a face covering in enclosed spaces and where you are unable to maintain social distancing
- limiting contact with anyone who is clinically extremely vulnerable
- taking part in twice weekly LFD testing
Key words....you may also consider.
One person's consideration is another's infringement of civil liberties.
Fair enough if she isn’t breaking any rules.
Not sure the point of getting a pcr test if it can take 5 days to come back and in meantime you can go about your daily business however.
I thought I'd answered that previously but must've been on another thread.
PCR tests are done in the lab and enable not just the virus, but also strains/variants to be identified, thus tracking any potential new variants of concern that may be starting to circulate.
That's why getting a confirmatory PCR is still important.
i thought there was an admission last week that <5% of PCR tests are actually being sequenced.
Case numbers seem to be dropping nicely in Scotland now, despite everything feeling progressively more normal and open. Perhaps that peak we just saw was a classic back-to-school wave of infections, and now things will bob along at a steadier level. Who knows. Of course a lot of social stuff is still outside at present, wonder what will happen when the weather turns.
i thought there was an admission last week that <5% of PCR tests are actually being sequenced.
That's always been the case, but with 20-30,000 tests a day, 5% is pretty good numbers.
Mrs Owg works in a primary school. She's just received an email telling her that staff must wear masks again, no assemblies, no singing (she runs the choir) - the level of cases is higher than it's ever been.
Oh look - another new account.
Another **** wit to contend with
the overweight
Oh...
The Health Survey for England 2019 estimates that 28.0% of adults in England are obese and a further 36.2% are overweight but not obese.
Actually, couldn't you say that smoking, drinking and eating too much is running the NHS ragged so that it can't cope with eventualities like covid?
Yes, it is a pressing concern.
But to not act on Covid is (as I said before) like the fire brigade refusing to put out your fire because your street doesn't have a good record on fitting smoke detectors.
We must do both, but right now Covid is the issue, the weight issue needs years if not generations to fix.
I don't quite get why some people are happy for their fat mate, old relative, ill neighbour etc to die of Covid, just so they don't have to wear a mask on a train?
Edit: Oh look, a year old article from a journal you've never heard of, before Delta even existed.
I don’t quite get why some people are happy for their fat mate, old relative, ill neighbour etc to die of Covid, just so they don’t have to wear a mask on a train?
Aye, it's really bizarre, tbh I, like most of us I suspect, hardly even notice that I'm wearing it now.
There's definitely a higher incidence of non compliance amongst fatties, possibly big man syndrome.
No, I'm not making excuses, I'm saying we must do both.
Yes the risks are small* to otherwise healthy people but that is a selfish attitude. "I'm not at great risk but I can still catch and pass on by my behaviours which put others at risk. But it's their fault for being fat so ****'em, they've had loads of time by now to sort themselves out"
* plus the risks of long term issues are not vanishingly small. Not as big as we feared but definitely non-negligable.
And so we set off on another laps of the same argument.....
Edit: Oh look, a year old article from a journal you’ve never heard of, before Delta even existed.
All opinions are valid but if you haven't heard of Nature and so dismiss it out of hand, you've kind of screwed your own argument there.....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_(journal)
Possibly the highest ranked scientific journal in the world.
Fair enough - not one I’ve heard of, but take your point.
Hi all,
As it heads up we took the decision recently to ban new members from posting in here. It makes it easier for us to monitor the thread, stop repeat discussions and keeps trolls out. If you see any new members posting in here can you please report them. Thanks.
Something people also have to consider beyond the immediate mortality is the cost of sickness (both short and long term).
I had managed 18 months without absence until last week. Now it was only 2 days but I know a a group we have lost a significant number of days due to this one virus none of which were due to hospitalisation level infection
i thought there was an admission last week that <5% of PCR tests are actually being sequenced.
This is highly dependent on the number of cases being tested. When cases were low, it was 70%, when cases are high it's more like 5% - capacity for full genome sequencing is fixed. PHE publish this in their technical reports. Figure 1 here...
For alpha, we sort of got lucky - the standard pcr test, which looks at three genes, found that alpha didn't report one of them (S for spike). So a positive pcr on 2/3 was enough to say that you had alpha. Now that delta has replaced alpha, that luck is over and all three genes are reported for delta. It was interesting to see that the rate alpha replaced the Wuhan strain was about the same as delta replaced alpha (by sequencing frequency) - and the latter was in a vaccinated population.
Fair enough – not one I’ve heard of, but take your point.
To be fair to dan, he's a pilot not a scientist, but for future reference, the big three in science are Cell, Science and Nature. Now each of these brands have many sub journals to build on the brand. "Nature Communications" is where papers that didn't make it into Nature go to die 😉 - all the journals do this now. Pleasingly, almost every journal has made COVID research free to read online.
I missed the new poster...
Interestings trend starting to show on the age demographics heat map of cases on the Gov dashboard.
England Cases
Zoom into the last month or two, highest case rates in kids age 5-19, with another peak in 40-44 age group - possibly parents of said kids.
I could rant about the treatment of "covid safe" schools by government, but I think we've chewed that over already many times!
Oh, go on then, I'm sure they've all had the new CO2 monitors installed now, right?
Zoom into the last month or two, highest case rates in kids age 5-19, with another peak in 40-44 age group – possibly parents of said kids.
Exactly what the head of public health for Leicestershire said last week - they went back to school earlier than the rest of the country, and have taken over the table for highest infection rates, and it was those two age groups, kids and parents.
Daughters school has started reporting positive tests, masks now required moving around indoors.
Tests at our centre are now at an all time high since opening last year.
Aldershot did over 400 tests yesterday with just 4 testers and a almost zero support staff. We are feeling pretty worried. Massive numbers of past minutewalk-ins too.
Local secondary school in Bradford/Leeds area has just reintroduced lots of measures.
To be fair to dan, he’s a pilot not a scientist,
Correct, but the point was as much to everyone and self too. When a different opinion arises, we've IMHO become too quick to dismiss and (in some cases correctly) call troll. At the same time it is frustrating to keep having to explain the same thing over and over again. Sometimes the opinions have merit, or at least deserve debunking. Assuming that it's another troll and by association that the article / journal itself is also crackpot (and getting that badly wrong) should be a learning.
We counter false facts with true facts, and if we aren't which is which then we shouldn't assume, we should verify.
Whether STW's new policy on new posters / another lappers is a good thing or not remains to be seen. I get why, I'm not convinced though.
School not far from me is going to start PCR testing all kids due to high numbers. Mrs Anagallis school back to wearing masks, 60 cases since went back and it's not a big school.
We had our super spreader open evening last week, almost no one wearing a mask over 1000 visitors in a few hours.
We counter false facts with true facts
We reinforce “false facts” by allowing them to be spread by fake accounts and drawing attention to them by discussing why they are false. It ends up just “two sides of the story” and the fake accounts have done what they wanted… spread lies and/or wound people up for fun.
Ultimately, it’s not the nature of the post (if you are a genuine poster, you can post pretty much anything you like here, and deal with the resulting discussion), it is the creation of new accounts just to troll on a topic where people have lost loved ones, and have loved ones still at risk, that is being addressed here.
Properly kicking off here - after not a single positive test before term started, 'bit of a dick' teacher went (is back now), students in multiple year groups going in multiples, three teachers who car share all gone as of today, others off because children/partners close contact fandango, absolute shambles.
Kid @ other school where cases escalate daily, whole classes out, absolute carnage.
Luckily we're all bored of it now so it's not really happening.
Waiting here patiently for my turn, hoping i don't inadvertently kill my Dad.
Meanwhile, in Queensland people are being bribed with free Rugby League tickets to get jabs!
well..... Australia is in a weird place right now.
Internationally we remain closed to foreign visitors, only Citizens and those with permanent residency can return. It seems that numbers of returnees depends on availability of quarantine slots, and flight availability. They are trialing a system to allow people to quarantine at home instead of in a hotel - and for a reduced period I think (I have heard 7 vs 14 days).
Domestically all the states/territories are in some sort of lockdown - whether that's just having their borders closed to those from other states, or fuller lockdowns like NSW and Victoria are seeing. In NSW, your level of lockdown depends on whether you are in regional NSW, or the greater Sydney area. And if you're in Greater Sydney, whether you are in a particular area of concern, and so are in "lockdown Max".
It's working, in NSW we seem to have plateaued at about 1,000 to 1,300 new cases per day, and we seem to be averaging 3-7 deaths a day at the moment. 1,063 cases today and six deaths.
Despite these being very low vs other countries, Australians are still freaking out about those numbers - you have to remember people are used to covid zero over here, and haven't moved on in their thinking since Delta became a thing.
Meanwhile, the vaccination program continues apace, for the most part it seems like the vaccine availability issue has largely been alleviated. Partly by having additional shipments of Pfizer (and now Moderna), but mostly through people understanding that the increased risk of them catching it and getting ill (now that we have an outbreak) is worth them accepting the small risk associated with AZ vs Pfizer. Basically the over 60 crowd were appalled that they were only being offered the "dangerous" AZ vaccine, instead of the "premium" Pfizer one - and were just refusing to get vaccinated..... "I'm waiting for Pfizer" was the boomer's common cry. They've just opened up eligibility for 12-16 year olds.
We are going to be releasing restrictions in stages between 70 and 80% double vaccinated, which in NSW is projected to be 7 Oct (70%) and then 17 Oct (80%). Schools are going to be going back gradually, in stages throughout October, and retail, restaurants etc are going to start opening back up (with restrictions) from oct 7th. The rest of Australia is somewhat behind - but all states/territories are projected to be at 80% by early Dec. The pressure is on to ease restrictions, particularly cross border domestic travel by Christmas.
Vaccine "mandates" are now a huge topic over here. In NSW, they have been very clear that that restrictions will be eased, for double vaccinated people only. They are going to be updating the "check-in" app so that it shows your vaccination status - allowing entry/service to be refused to non fully-vaxxed people (who don't have a medical exemption). My local coffee shop is not sure how they are going to implement this, and are girding themselves for stand-offs with nutters. They are considering not offering dine-in (even though they would be allowed to) to avoid having to deal with this. Personally, I think any announced restrictions like this are more about encouraging people to get jabbed - and are likely only to be in place for a short time.
In Melbourne its all kicking-off with the construction sector about mandatory Jabs, and they have just closed all worksites for 2 weeks because of poor compliance with mask wearing, closed their (union required) break rooms etc. Result has been protests/riots in central Melbourne for the last few days..... only punctuated yesterday, when they had a frikking earthquake.
Just to add to the above - because the numbers are still low, they can still publish stuff like this - which I think is easier for people to process vs the larger numbers that other countries have seen/are seeing:
Breakdown of people in ICU in NSW
Of the 233 people in ICU, 179 are not vaccinated, 48 people have had their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and six people have received two doses.
Breakdown in those who died in NSW today
A gentleman in his 80s from western Sydney who passed away at Blacktown Hospital. He had underlying health conditions and was not vaccinated.
A lady in her 70s from south-western Sydney who died at Campbelltown Hospital. She was not vaccinated.
A woman in her 50s from south-western Sydney who passed away at Liverpool Hospital. She had some serious underlying health conditions and had received two doses of a COVID vaccine.
A gentleman in his 60s from western Sydney died at Nepean Hospital. He was not vaccinated and was otherwise in reasonably good health.
A woman in her 90s from Dubbo died at the St Mary's villa aged care facility in Dubbo where she acquired her infection. This is the fourth death linked to the outbreak at this facility. She had received one dose of a COVID vaccine and had some significant underlying health conditions.
A lady in her 80s from south-western Sydney died at Liverpool Hospital, she was not vaccinated and had underlying health conditions.
There will be a time when this is history.
The historic record will have to explain the reluctance to use the AZ vaccine somehow.
How will that look?
The historic record will have to explain the reluctance to use the AZ vaccine somehow.
How will that look?
In my opinion, this is down to two factors in Australia:
The fact that the risk of catching covid, and being seriously ill/dying in Australia has been very very small through much of the pandemic. Combine this with over-reporting the risks of the AZ vaccine, and I think it's possible to understand why people have been reluctant to take it.
Also interesting is how the Australian healthcare system works, and how this impacts peoples behaviors. In the US, you have ultimate choice over your healthcare (as long as you can pay for it). People there have pretty much been able to choose which vaccine they get I think - particularly if you have strong feelings about which ones you want/don't want.
Conversely, in the UK you basically have zero choice (or at least the perception of zero choice) over you healthcare provision, and which vaccine you receive..... basically, with relatively few exceptions, everyone is getting AZ and that's that. Also see point number one - The UK was in the grips of a huge spike when the vaccination roll-out started
In Australia, about 50% of the population have private healthcare insurance - and the culture here is more like America than the UK - you can choose your care. Having a baby? Tell us what gynocologist you want to use, then go away and choose a midwife, anesthetist etc. Having to run your vaccine rollout like the UK (because all we had was AZ and a few shots of Pfizer) in that environment was always going to be difficult.
We reinforce “false facts” by allowing them to be spread by fake accounts and drawing attention to them by discussing why they are false. It ends up just “two sides of the story” and the fake accounts have done what they wanted… spread lies and/or wound people up for fun.
There's certainly some of that but I still believe shining daylight on false facts is the way to disinfect them, but we may agree to differ there.
But that wasn't my point really. Even the false-fact slingers sometimes propose something that is true or at least deserves debate. We must not just dismiss them (the facts) because of who said them. It's not scientific, and if/when it turns out true then we're discredited as a result. Hence why (and this is not personal against Dan) I picked on that as an example when it happened.
'Oh look, a year old article from a journal you've never heard of'. Dan didn't know his facts, why would he, but because of who posted them assumed that it was unreliable. Didn't know but didn't check either. One example from the periphery of the debate but illustrating what I think we collectively are too quick to do.
Play the ball not the man.
theotherjonv - well said, this place (and this thread) is an echo chamber as it is, without banning new people from posting in it.
The decision to not allow new posters is wrong IMO .
Play the ball not the man.
Unless the man mysteriously joined the day before.
Interesting report from batfink, thanks for the update.
I hate to tell you (I know that you know anyway) but relaxing restrictions at 80% double jabbed won't slow the infection rate much, and you must have a large number of highly vulnerable people with underlying conditions. Going to be a tough winter over there.
Going to be a tough winter over there
Summer! Southern hemisphere don'tcha know.
Yeah, that's the thing with delta - everyone is going to get it, the only questions are:
Will you be fully vaccinated (with a booster?) when you do
How quickly is everyone going to catch it, which will drive the stress on the healthcare system.
Play the ball not the man
Why? You know in organised ball games the ref can just send the man off or the organiser stipulate player eligibility requirements.
Less trolls the better imho.
