On the spotify thing ( at risk of a derailment) this is basically the "no platform" argument which has been going on with no solution since I was a kid. it may seem obvious to no platform anti vaxers, neo nazis etc but the issue become where do you draw the line and who decides? Its actually a difficult ethical question in my view
Let’s hope everyone you were in contact with were just as “lucky”.
If I haven't had it again, I've not given it anyone have I?
… Strangely, all the other unvaxxed people I know have been absolutely fine too. Maybe just lucky
Strangely, the only two family members i had that had Coronavirus got it before they could get a vaccine and are both now dead.
Your point being?
I’ve not given it anyone have I?
You do not know. Asymptomatic infection is a thing
You do not know. Asymptomatic infection is a thing
Tested regularly - before and after attending busy venues and before seeing the im-laws etc
Strangely, the only two family members i had that had Coronavirus got it before they could get a vaccine and are both now dead.
Sorry to hear that
Tested regularly – before and after attending busy venues and before seeing the im-laws etc
Unless you are testing daily you really don't know. You're doing the equivalent of lottery lucky dip without daily testing.
How on earth are we this far into this pandemic and people take a couple of examples of people being fine as a relevant indicator. There’s nothing strange about it, severity of infection ranging from no symptoms to fatal has been there long enough it should not be strange anymore.
How on earth are we this far into this pandemic and people take a couple of examples of people being fine as a relevant indicator. There’s nothing strange about it, severity of infection ranging from no symptoms to fatal has been there long enough it should not be strange anymore.
It's the kind of thinking that clings to bullshit like 'only 17,000 dead' because otherwise how could you process current reports of 250-300 new deaths a day with this 'mild' variant and not change the way you behave in public?
And how on earth do you get this far into a pandemic and not understand the potential for asymptomatic transmission?
Because 'cloth hurt facey'?
It’s the kind of thinking that clings to bullshit like ‘only 17,000 dead’
Apparently these kind of nutters are members of "the truth community" - a term I hadnt seen before trawling through some of the asinine comments on Campbell's video.
Careful... every time one of us points out that the "only 17,000 people have died OF Covid in the UK" is an untruth, we risk making this forum look like an "echo chamber".
echo chamber.....echo chamber.....echo chamber....
My maths lessons were an echo chamber too - everyone repeating their times tables over and over again.
My maths lessons were an echo chamber too – everyone repeating their times tables over and over again.
All those sheeple not doing their own research and convinced that three sevens are 21......
All those sheeple not doing their own research and convinced that three sevens are 21……
Exactly wake up those being censored are right it’s 343.
What's the likelihood of an asymptomatic or really mild infection not showing up on a lateral flow?
My 7 yo daughter had it - positive lateral flow, but really mild symptoms, she had a sore throat and was not herself for a day.
Everyone in the house tested daily, my daughter kept returning positive tests and myself and the wife kept returning negative test. But on about the 7th day after my daughters infection I felt pretty shitty - like I had a hangover, I had a sore throat and felt a bit light headed. Nothing showed up on a lateral flow though and none of the symptoms I had were grounds for a PCR test.
I had a sore throat and felt a bit light headed. Nothing showed up on a lateral flow though and none of the symptoms I had were grounds for a PCR test.
Interested to know what you did next, I'd have stayed at home. Yesterday some other parents despite the whole family testing positive yesterday except for the son, they sent said son to a County Swimming championship, because it "was nice to collect his commemorative hoody".
The felt wrong to me, but apparently he'd tested negative that morning.
Yesterday some other parents despite the whole family testing positive yesterday except for the son, they sent said son to a County Swimming championship, because it “was nice to collect his commemorative hoody”.
how did he get there? I'm not sure I'd be asking other parents to give him a lift in their cars in that situation.
But I also wouldn't confine him to home for no reason.
how did he get there? I’m not sure I’d be asking other parents to give him a lift in their cars in that situation.
His mum dropped him off...
What’s the likelihood of an asymptomatic or really mild infection not showing up on a lateral flow
I reckon that's definitely possible. There's a window of a few days where they detect, and outside of that it becomes less likely.
Also,
Have another look at the lateral flow a lot later.
We were on daily lateral flows as close contacts.
Had negatives so my boy went to school.
Left the test strips on the side, and at the end of the day there was a very faint line where there had been nothing at all before school. The next morning's test was a proper bright red positive, closely followed by a vomit.
Not an expert, but my assumption now is that he was already very mildly infected at the time of that negative and that half hour doesn't show it. But the length of a day -or overnight - has a bit more chance of showing up that asymptomatic/very start of infection as a very faint line.
One of my wifes colleagues was doing LFTs every day as part of her job - always negative. Her husband and daughter got ill and had positive PCRs. When she went for her PCR it was also positive. She carried on doing LFTs for a while and they were also negative.
Conclusion? Dunno. Maybe she has been doing the LFT wrong (which, as she is an NHS front line worker, is a bit worrying) or maybe the LFTs are just too prone to error.
Left the test strips on the side, and at the end of the day there was a very faint line where there had been nothing at all before school. The next morning’s test was a proper bright red positive, closely followed by a vomit.
Not an expert, but my assumption now is that he was already very mildly infected at the time of that negative and that half hour doesn’t show it. But the length of a day -or overnight – has a bit more chance of showing up that asymptomatic/very start of infection as a very faint line.
incorrect - all the nhs instructions says to disregard any 'result' that comes up after the 30 minutes (15 minutes in the case of certain tests)
Interested to know what you did next, I’d have stayed at home.
Other than walking the dog neither of us left the house while my daughter was isolating, despite the official guidance being you can carry on as normal if you have negative lateral flows it would have felt a but wrong mixing with people while someone in the family definitely had it.
I felt pretty shitty – like I had a hangover, I had a sore throat and felt a bit light headed
This is pretty much what happened with us. The boy had covid pretty badly as it happens and Mrs D and I felt pretty rough for a lot of the time.
However we both did daily LFTs and both went for 3 PCRs each (Mrs D is a nurse so her work wanted them done) and every LFT and PCR was -ve. Now I could see some of the LFTs being inaccurate and maybe 1 PCR for one of us but not 20 or so LFTs and 6 PCRs.
So we put it down to coincidence and must have had some other bug. Plenty going round at this time of year.
Conclusion? Dunno. Maybe she has been doing the LFT wrong (which, as she is an NHS front line worker, is a bit worrying) or maybe the LFTs are just too prone to error.
LFTs by my understanding have a high false negative rate - far to high to IMO be considered worth doing.
What’s the likelihood of an asymptomatic or really mild infection not showing up on a lateral flow?
I was testing every day last week as my son had it, and I tested negative Sunday, Monday and Tuesday morning on LF. I felt a bit grotty on Tuesday morning so went for a PCR at 9.30am, about an hour after the LF, and received a positive result Tuesday night.
I continued testing negative until Thursday on LF until Thursday, but on Thursday a very clear positive until Sunday night.
Going to try and get on the turbo tonight. Mostly my experience was mild symptoms but very, very tired and the return of lots and lots ectopic heartbeats for about four days - which seem to be subsiding now.
LFTs by my understanding have a high false negative rate – far to high to IMO be considered worth doing.
I can understand where this is coming from but it’s not correct. The early lfts we were using were largely pointless. The ones we have been using for some time (and I see the same ones being distributed publicly now) are reliable though not perfect. Until recently all lft pos results were backed up by PCR. In the past we have had to back up by double PCRs for symptomatic negatives, ie symptoms-> neg lft -> neg PCR -> neg PCR = clear. IE it’s unusual for the PCR to be false neg but some are (they’re designed to give more false pos then false neg), two PCRs wrong is v unlikely.
https://twitter.com/johnrentoul/status/1488217616632197126?s=21
U-turn on insisting health workers are vaccinated. Now, what happens in the Trusts, do they allow staff into all settings, or keep them out of oncology etc? What happens in care settings now, will the requirement be kept in place there through this winter?
Ta Sparks
Kelvin
goodness knows. right decison for the wrong reasons IMO ( Its Johnson running scared of the back bench " covid recovery group"
I would suspect nothing very much. Perhaps some redeployment or ramping up testing. It seems to be social care workers as well - Dunno if that includes care homes
I think the policy was gesture politics anyway and the reversal is fear of the back benches. It would be nice if they made these decisions on a rational basis based on the science - or even on a pragmatic basis rather than it being all about looking like you are doing something then reversing it because those 60 odd backbenchers that voted against it are also wanting Johnson out and he wants to get some on side
The whole thing is a shambles and to reverse it so late means that huge amounts of managerial time will have been wasted. Literally in 2 days they were due to be redeploying and sacking staff
some trusts may try taking a tough line and calling it professional misconduct.
Edit: it seem like they might have also had legal advice that worried them
This from Alastair McLellan, the editor of the Health Service Journal:
(@HSJEditor)</span>
I understsand that Gov's rather confusing annoncement on ending manfdatory covid vaccination on NHS staff, is partly influenced by fears of legal action who got the jab under what they might see as coercion</p>
Just to add @tjagain I’m absolutely not saying they are infallible. Just that I think on balance they provide good broad coverage and a reasonable indication of infection.
On a group call today daily lft testing was credited for catching a significant number of asymptomatic infections in various care settings which would not have been caught till to late by weekly PCR testing. In essence we recognise that we are moving to a picture of (intense?) local outbreaks with falling overall numbers that are more likely to be caught by frequent testing.
I do worry that self administer lfts by layfolk that show negative may lull them into a sense of safety that is undue
No doubt testing is a useful tool especially in the hands of trained folk
LFT (at home) are one of many flawed tools we have to reduce transmission. Use many of them together and they become useful. Stick to one only, and on its own its marginal usefulness is likely to be shown up as pretty poor.
TJ, what happens now if a future wave/variant requires a booster or a adapted vaccine for staff in order to protect patients? I fear this u-turn undermines any future requirement. It would have been better never to have gone down this path in the first place. But then it would have be hard to do what they did in the care system… which probably saved lives in homes this winter. I still think this was all about care settings… and the calculation that if you insist on vaccines there, it looks either unfair or confusing not to also do so in NHS settings. The argument that vaccine uptake was already much higher in hospitals etc wouldn’t have washed (even though it made logical and practical sense when looking at either setting in isolation).
What happens in care settings now, will the requirement be kept in place there through this winter?
These tend to be private businesses contracted to local social services. They have been sacking people left right and centre to protect their residents, probably terrified of an angry relative suing them or worse after the absolute carnage in the first half of 2020.
Supposed health professionals who refer to "this experimental vaccine" need to get in the sea.
You can guess who Radio4 had on today, Dr Steve James, claiming there isn’t enough evidence that the vaccine is safe. His trust must love him.
Thing is the vaccine mandate never existed in Scotland wales or NI. Its a muck up of the tories own making.
Care home by my understanding have lost so many staff to this that they are hardly able to function, have had to stop admissions in some cases and of course this exacerbates the NHS issues
However given this has been discussed at length on other threads resulting in the bams coming out of the woodwork perhaps lets not derail this one
Cheapo chino LFT kits giving unreliable results shocker!!
lets order a few million more "free" kits with tax payers money!
they look so cool in landfill sites too.
To repeat, self-testing is marginally better than useless.
to repeat, no they aren't
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2021/oct/lateral-flow-tests-detect-most-people-risk-transmitting-covid-19
The kits themselves are reliable if used often. The fact most are made in China is irrelevant. What that study misses, and a few of us raised, is the variables introduced by lay people using them at home, rather than being tested by someone under instruction.
Anyway, they are useful, when paired with other measures. A LFT only approach would be crazy… but we’re not doing that, are we… we have vaccines, masks, PCRs, working from home… none of which are mandated but many of which many of us are using.
to repeat, no they aren’t
"The authors acknowledge that the sensitivity of the LFTs is, of course, dependent on sampling errors and experience of the person performing the sampling and the test and that these uncertainties are not taken into account in their formula calibrations."
Quoted directly from what you posted. I'd go so far as to say self testing is an utterly pointless waste of resources.
I wouldn’t go that far. But it’s no silver bullet, that’s for sure.
Batfink Jnr's first day at school today!
She has to do an LFT/RAT twice a week, but can otherwise keep attending as long as she's negative.
The mum's whatsapp group was pinging all evening - seems at least a handful of kids due to start today, aren't because they tested positive despite being asymptomatic. Home testing seems to be at least partially useful on that basis.
Having said that, I recon we've got 48 hours before she brings it home.
to repeat, no they aren’t
To be clear, self-testing is useless.
Big day batfink - hope you didn't shed too many tears.
We've still got one more week until they go back...and at separate schools meaning double the chance of bringing something home I guess, especially as the youngest is at a highly 'unconventional' school 🙁
Our kids riding buddies have been getting the Rona. One family's son got it (from the antivax neighbours as it turned out) but parents didn't. Next family has now got it. We all went riding and waterfall scrambling together over the weekend so we'll wait and see...
Quoted directly from what you posted. I’d go so far as to say self testing is an utterly pointless waste of resources.
To be clear, self-testing is useless.
The incidence of false positives in a population where infection levels are high is very small. If you get a positive test the overwhelming likelihood is that you have the virus. If you didn't know you had it at that point and now do - i'd say that's very useful.
If you get a negative test then there is a chance you do have the virus, I agree. If that is then used as an excuse to go out with no other care then that's not a failure of the test itself, it's a failure of the public to understand the purpose of the test.
If you haven't done the test right, then you shouldn't get a control line - that's the point of it.
So, agree to disagree, self testing is useful as long as others have said it's not the be all and end all of measures.
https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1411/rr