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Its not anxiety / neuroticism when you see people dying from it all the time. Whats the death toll now? around half the population of my city?
Those "libertarian" attitudes are why we have such a high death toll and why we have been so badly effected. More stringent restrictions earlier would have reduced the number of deaths and the length of restrictions
Your point about childrens MH crisis is correct yes - but the cause of them is too little to late with restrictions leading to the restrictions being in place for much longer
What about the MH crisis in the older population who are still at huge risk from covid and for whom the premature removal of all restrictions has meant they now have far more restrictd lives
So, who’s taking bets on some fresh restrictions within the next month? At no point in the pandemic have I known so many people to be getting it, many for a second time.
Unless numbers in hospital become a serious issue I can't see why we'd need fresh restrictions. Will be interesting to see what Nicola announces for Scotland today.
CV aside, it does show the difference in attitudes towards hygiene. Ms. RL was hand sanitising before CV after using public transport/fuel pumps. Why would you not after touching/handling things that many others have?
Agreed, washing hands before eating etc is something we've tried to teach kids for generations after all! However as with all things there's a balance, even if we could keep things completely sterile I doubt that would be a good thing overall.
Slight amendment there for you.
It's a good point, it's not just trait neurocticism that drives (or drove) our behaviour in the pandemic, but also our level of trait agreeability. So your correction is additive, not subtractive.
ts not anxiety / neuroticism when you see people dying from it all the time
Maybe not but that might also be confirmation bias. The UK annual death toll is about 600,000 IIRC, of which in 2020 Covid was the most frequently cited cause. If you work in a medical setting and see first hand how that wave of the epidemic killed the number of people it did, then of course you're going to have a very different perspective or feeling on it to someone who didn't share that perspecive.
The blunt point is that where we are at now is where we are now and without significant increases in the hospitalisation rate, there's little political justification to start reimposing limitations on the general population.
No political one because the hard "libertarian" right have Johnson in their pockets
however there is still a clear scientific justification
I've got it again, positive lft this morning, works been riddled, both staff and patients (Mental Health Unit) last had it mid October, double vaxxed, no booster, last time only symptom was lack of smell/taste, this time I've gone sore through, bit hot, fatigue (although I did do an hour on the turbo last night)
without significant increases in the hospitalisation rate
Depends where you are. Cornwall currently struggling with hospitalisations. It's not London though.
there’s little political justification to start reimposing limitations on the general population
Absolutely. There is no chance of "limitations" beyond "asking" people and appealing to them to act, that political decision has been made and won't be changing, no matter what. By the summer, that will look like the right decision. We could discuss all day if it was implemented too early, for political reasons... but it wouldn't be of any help to anyone.
Hopefully the "don't look, won't find" approach to the ending of surveying and testing won't leave us unprepared for next winter.
Meanwhile there is an epidemic of mental health problems emerging, and it’s not hard to draw a line between this and lockdown, particularly among children.
So what was the alternative?
Interesting to see people here saying the new omicron may be vaccine evasive, following my infection last week.
Is there any difference between the vaccines, I'm triple pfizer?
The "vunerable" (enough to jump the vax queue by a decade) person who sat between me, and the person who gave it to me, for 2 hours was completely unaffected and has tested negative every day.
Is my understanding that a vaccine update just needs the virus part changed, and therfore is ready for use instantly, with no approval/trial correct?
Covid isn’t going to go away and there’s always a chance it mutates into something that does cause huge problems in the future, but that’s just not where we are at right now.
Meanwhile there is an epidemic of mental health problems emerging, and it’s not hard to draw a line between this and lockdown, particularly among children.
I seem to be agreeing with all of that, strangely. Vaccination and treatments have reduced the risks for the majority, and I fear Covid is becoming "just" another thing that the vulnerable need to take care of.
Hopefully more of us will be considerate about mask wearing and hygiene to help protect the vulnerable after the experience of the last couple of years.
The mental health crisis will be huge. I've decided to get in early and started on Citalopram this morning. I'd like to apologise to anyone I've upset with any random posts recently, and I'll apologise now for the next month's worth while the darn stuff kicks in.
Edit - for clarity, I'll happily deal with the mental health fallout rather than tens of thousands more deaths.
Meanwhile there is an epidemic of mental health problems emerging, and it’s not hard to draw a line between this and lockdown, particularly among children.
This is my area of work - there was a mental health epidemic amongst young people long before Covid arrived on the scene, the impact of which has been largely to exacerbate existing problems, and make the socio-economic context for trying to deal with them even worse. I'm not sure that anything the anti-vax bampot brigade has done has alleviated those issues in any way.
I'll be running the Covid gauntlet later this week with a ~6 hour train trip each way to North Wales to see family, way earlier in the year than the last two years. In theory masks are still a legal requirement on Welsh public transport, in practice I doubt compliance will be great. It would be nice to not come home with a four week proper flu this time!
there was a mental health epidemic amongst young people long before Covid arrived on the scene,
I’m not sure that anything the anti-vax bampot brigade has done has alleviated those issues in any way.
Both very true and pertinent comments.
Is my understanding that a vaccine update just needs the virus part changed, and therfore is ready for use instantly, with no approval/trial correct?
The pathway to approval for follow-on vaccines is not established. We do know that infection with omicron does not confer protection from delta - and that omicron is an escape mutant of sorts. The shift in potency was about 40x from wild type which is why we had an enormous number of infections two months ago, but contained hospitalisations. We've also seen infections with BA.2 after BA.1. The rise we are seeing now is BA.2 driven and I think this is immune escape.
Moderna are testing a hybrid vaccine with some Wild Type and some Omicron mRNA so as to produce a broader antibody response. It is possible that large efficacy studies won't be needed, just safety and tolerability (in a few 1000 subjects), with comparison of sera from these with those vaccinated with the original (hence the hybrid rather than a totally new omicron vaccine). We shall see.
I do wonder whether the epidemic of mental health is acquisition bias. Young people often have poor mental health challenges and a significant event might tune us to look for them more closely. I'd welcome historic epidemiological studies and I am sure they are coming. I don't think the same for cancer, where prospective screening was paused.
Everyone seems to assume that the impact on young people's mental health was negative. There seems to be quite a lot of evidence that for a large number of people it was in fact positive, presumably because they were away from the routinely abusive world of education.
Everyone seems to assume that the impact on young people’s mental health was negative. There seems to be quite a lot of evidence that for a large number of people it was in fact positive, presumably because they were away from the routinely abusive world of education.
Very much a divide though. School is the one constant across most of society.
Personally, I had a miserable childhood in a time of peace and economic boom. I put in low effort at school but was good at exams.
Home schooling and teacher assessments for marks would have left me with some rather bleak qualifications.
Currently in 'merica, Orlando. Its like it never happened.
Everywhere rammed full no masks in bars restaurants no distancing. Its very strange
Young people often have poor mental health
Based on a limited sample set (the young people I work with), I think the issue seems to be that the Covid restrictions cut them off from a lot of the coping mechanisms they had. Our work is intentionally focused on getting young people outdoors and into 'nature' as much as possible, as there's fairly robust scientific evidence to indicate the right environment does a lot of the work for you. Couple that with some basic mindfulness excercises, and the availability of adults who would offer them a listening ear, and you have around 100 kids in our case who aren't doing great, but are on the good side of coping. The lockdown restrictions disrupted those coping mechanisms, to the detriment of a fair few of the kids we work with.
The upside is that we're now overrun with kids wanting to be outdoors - if we had the capacity, we could probably double our pre-Covid numbers - and a lot of the kids that were struggling during lockdown are starting to thrive again now. We got a top up of funding via Scottish Government last summer that was a big help to kick start things over the holidays, but developing a charity's ability to scale up it's work sustainably isn't a short term process, and there seems a UK wide lack of interest in making that happen. Youth Service in England has been increasingly underfunded for decades, so there simply aren't the people with the skills around to do the work at the scale required.
I should make it clear that I don't have any substantive argument with the need for the restrictions that were put in place. I do have serious issues with the self-entitled bellends who made the whole process longer than it might otherwise have been, by assuming the rules didn't apply to them, or weren't necessary, or because some self-proclaimed 'expert' on YouTube "opened their mind to a new reality"!
My work, large scale manufacturing in a huge global corporation, declared that from 1st April, even if you test positive for covid but feel ok, you should still come in. Remarkable.
judetheobscure
2 years ago we were shitting ourselves at 50000 cases a day being a thing
Some people were, not everyone was and that has been the same story the whole way through the pandemic. Not everyone shares the same perception of risk or the same experience of anxiety/neuroticism.
I was. However my "neuroticism" likely stopped my old mum catching it and at 90 at the time possibly preventing her death.
If you surveyed the population as a whole you’d find a fairly strong positive correlation between a person’s predisposition to generally worry about things (like covid) and their adherence to mask wearing and hand sanitisation.
Nah. If people couldn't be bothered to wear a mask/ wash their hands I suspect they don't bother to wash their hands after having a dump either...
The mental health crisis will be huge. I’ve decided to get in early and started on Citalopram this morning. I’d like to apologise to anyone I’ve upset with any random posts recently, and I’ll apologise now for the next month’s worth while the darn stuff kicks in.
Not seen a single contentious post from you in the past or recently.
Your annoyingly nuanced in your posts in fact. Not very STW of you!😁
Well, 952 pages and two years into this virological shitshow, it has finally happened... The Covid bus came.
I was at a four day course last week/weekend and got a mail from the organiser yesterday saying two people had tested positive. Tested myself, negative. Felt a bit sinusy this morning, but put that down to the swab up my nose, but this evening for sure felt a bit like I had a cold. Test? Positive.
Yay.
Still, I have internet and it gets me out of actually going to the office for a few days, so that is good, I guess. Hopefully it is Omicron and I can get a booster to my immunity with a reduced risk of anything bad happening.
I passed the course though, so I guess that's a good thing.
2 years ago we were shitting ourselves
I will concur that two years ago we really were, because previously SARS-CoV-1 had a 10% fatality rate and MERS had a 30% fatality rate. Neither were very transmissible, but we did not know that the new SARS-CoV-2 (which was closely related) was less pathogenic, only that it was much more transmissible.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but you should have seen the presentations that were being shared at work based on emergent morbidity of hospitalised patients. It was grim. Do not forget that a third of people who went to UK hospitals in the first wave with COVID19 pneumonitis didn’t come home.
Across the globe there are vaccinated people in ICU now who have omicron COVID-19. Not all vaccines are equal and not everyone has access to new therapeutics. That will change. But these are, even now, still relatively early days. When you have ready access to an antiviral and an appropriate efficacious vaccine prior to a winter surge of an as yet to be determined variant, then we’ll be ahead of the virus. We’re about even at the moment. We were a long, long way behind two years ago!
^^willard
Sorry to hear that mate.
If you get the explosive cough thing we had, covonia (sp?) is great.👍
Not seen a single contentious post from you in the past or recently.
This is why I didn't make the big hitters list!
Your annoyingly nuanced in your posts in fact. Not very STW of you!😁
I was going to make another twee joke there, but actually quite pleased if I come across that way.
Not seen a single contentious post from you in the past or recently.
A positive paragon of virtue you so and so
MoreCashThanDash
Your annoyingly nuanced in your posts in fact. Not very STW of you!😁
I was going to make another twee joke there, but actually quite pleased if I come across that way.
I made a grammatical error somewhere didn't I, didn't I?!😉
Not seen a single contentious post from you in the past or recently.
A positive paragon of virtue you so and so
Don't worry, I'm an utter **** in real life.
oreCashThanDash
Don’t worry, I’m an utter **** in real life.
Whereas I'm an angel of course, so the balance of the universe is restored.
presentations that were being shared at work based on emergent morbidity of hospitalised patients.
I remember this time two years ago.
A friend in Whitehall sent me a chilling snip from a document showing the UK government response.
My mum turned 70 the day everyone in England 70 or over was to isolate.
One of the Nursing Directors at my workplace told me (with fear in his eyes) that based on data coming out of Europe we anticipate our 40 bed ICU will be overrun by mid April.
I found myself tasked with filming and editing educational videos in theatre showing staff how to intubate and extubate Covid+ patients. I am not a videographer!!!
Then our state government shut things down and we managed surprisingly well.
It’s been good here in Oz that the scientists make the calls. The PM has been asking permission to scrap the close contact isolation requirements. He doesn’t get to make the call.
In Queensland now there are few outside hospitals wearing masks and life is largely back to normal with rates of Covid and deaths so far thankfully never reaching the levels we’d feared… so far.
Had it last week, tested neg sat, sun, Mon. Didn't test yesterday but hooray got to go back to work.
No sense of taste this morning, was bitty last week but it's gone today.
Not enjoying this at all.
I was down south last week, start of a 2 week adoption transition. 1hr into drive home Saturday started aching from my ears to ankles and fever - made it home and tested positive.
Lots of unhappy people as social services wanted to proceed with placing a 18mth old into our house with known covid, because apparently its not a legal requirement to stop doing stuf, thanks Boris. I'm asthmatic amd it's floored me totally, Thankfully wife still tested negative, though toddler coughing lots so probably about test positive.
It's taken 2 days and a lot of my limited energy to make them see sense. Thankfully now I am starting feel slightly better so hopefully continue with placement next week.
We couldn't believe how few masking down there and the willful ignorance of nhs guidelines by social services, well to be fair given our experience of them we weren't too shocked.
So what was the alternative?
Well that's easy to answer, not closing the schools obviously. They weren't technically closed anyway so I'm not sure at all what we achieved by telling two thirds of the kids they couldn't go and one third they could and then bastardising their education via remote delivery, which really didn't work at all except in a few rare cases.
We didn't close the supermarkets did we? And we didn't do that because some measures outweight the down side of their potentially positive effect. If keeping the schools fully open contributed to slightly elevated transmission levels (and there's no evidence to say that that would have been the outcome but let's assume it would haev been), that would have been a price worth paying, in my view.
The risk to those under the age of 75 was low and under the age of 60 it was no higher than your average, background mortality risk so teachers were not, 'technically speaking' at risk by being at work, certainly no more than anyone was in a supermarket or bank. Of course, the novel nature of the virus, and the ability to draw very distinct lines between infection and death (lines that are harder to draw between say lock down and dementia and death, or lock down and undiagnosed cancer and death etc etc even though those outcomes were certain to have happened), meant that our response was more political than scientific.
Ah, so sacrifice the teachers, bus drivers, parents and relatives? I assume you'd have been fine with kids in unattended classrooms while teachers were isolating too?
We didn't close the supermarkets because, you know, people need to eat. Is that really so difficult for you to comprehend or are you just, once again, trolling?
We didn’t close the supermarkets did we?
No, we dramatically reduced the number of people in them, and kept people apart who were in them. Just as we did in schools... which you acknowledge we didn't close.
bastardising their education via remote delivery
That's been acknowledged by most people. Butt those not close to schooling don't seem to acknowledge just how disrupted education has been outside the periods where we asked students to learn from home. While we've been trying our best to "return to normal" in schools, the reality is infection and illness is still resulting in a part time education for many.
I have friends who are teachers
1/3 of the class off positive for covid 1/4 of the teaching staff last week when infection rates well down from the peak fort one of them. Both teachers with a high number of special needs kids so more vulnerable
BOth of my close friends who are teachers have caught it twice. Both were unable to see their parents for well over a year because of the risk of them taking it to their parents who were vulnerable. One gave it to her special needs kid who then passed it on ( because of the timings no positive test) to an entire population of special needs kids in a centre.
Absence rates with teachers are so high education is disrupted badly anyway.
One of them has colleagues who have long covid that means they will not be back teaching for a long time yet.
What Jude describes is the selfish "libertarian" nonsense that has meant the UK has such a very poor record in protecting the population from this illness because the hard right "libertarians" have the PM in their pocket so all measures where too little too late meaning that the restrictions lasted longer and more people died
The risk to those under the age of 75 was low and under the age of 60 it was no higher than your average, background mortality risk so teachers were not, ‘technically speaking’ at risk by being at work, certainly no more than anyone was in a supermarket or bank
simply incorrect go check the stats Teacher were far more at risk of catching it than supermarket workers because of the less restrictive practices in schools and the far greater mixing of groups
meant that our response was more political than scientific.
correct but for the wrong reason in the wrong direction. If we had followed the science, restrictions ( we never had lockdown) would have been stricter earlier meaning we could come out of restrictions earlier and less deaths overall.
We didn’t close the supermarkets because, you know, people need to eat. Is that really so difficult for you to comprehend or are you just, once again, trolling?
You're being very confrontational and I'm not sure why? These are valid questions to ask; we cannot assume we did the right thing and if/when this happens again, we should try to make better decisions.
The child suicide rate now seems annecodtally high - I knew of three in my home town in the last 12 months and three more of my close friends have children on suicide watch having already made attempts to kill themselves. That is annecdotal but seems impossible to ignore.
There was indeed a tidal wave of mental health before Covid - no doubt the result of social media - but that does not vindicate the potential negative impact that closing the schools had; indeed, given how fragile our young peple were, some might argue that taking away the one part of their life that is consistent and reliable was just about the worst thing you could do. It's a valid question to ask and explore. Is that so hard for YOU to understand or are YOU just trolling.
simply incorrect go check the stats
I was referring to the mortality risk having caught it, not the risk of catching it. Clearly the more social contact you have the greater your risk is/was of catching it. Mortality is a different risk and this was something we were able to deduce relatively early on based on the data being published by the ONS and NHS, both of which I explored in some depth.
If we're talking anecdotes, I know teachers who have had their careers ended by Covid, and others who have lost loved ones after taking the virus home before we had the tools to prevent and treat Covid that we have now. Early in the pandemic home learning (and yes, we know for some students that meant little or no learning, unfortunately) saved lives. We are in a far better position now, but education is still being distributed.
...but education is still being distributed disrupted. [ damn autocorrect ]
If yo have a chance that is say 1:1000 of dying if you catch it and a 1: 1000 chance of catching it then your odds of dying are a lot less than if you have a 1: 1000 chance of dying from it and a 1;2 chance of catching it
thats why your thesis is simply incorrect
but that does not vindicate the potential negative impact that closing the schools had;
You want teacher and their families to be at risk so schools did not close? You wanted the schools to remain a reservoir of infection that spreads widely?
how many extra deaths from your policy is acceptable? Extra deaths would be inevitable following your policy. so how many is acceptable? How many teachers dying, teachers families dying and teachers suffering is acceptable?
The other point you completely ignore is greater restrictions earlier would have meant restrictions lasting a shorter time. But because Johnson is so beholden to the "libertarian" hard right that all our restrictions were too little too late hence lasting so long and such damage from the restrictions we had
In the entire length off this long running thread, those against lockdown, masks...whatever... have never been able to come up with a credible alternative.
That is still the case.
I'd be fascinated to know what Jude does so how much personal risk he faced. Its easy to be blase with others lives. Its much harder when its closer to home
Like others in healthcare this was utterly terrifying to me when it broke. It never turned out that bad and I escaped the worst but even so I did not see my parents for 18 months because i was at risk of taking the virus to them and killing them. That effected my mothers mental health badly and mine to an extent
All these "libertarians" being so free and easy with others lives should have been made to work in schools and hospitals to see what we were actually facing. there are workers from both professions ( and not to ignore those shop workers and so on either) who will never be the same again because of what they saw. I got away lightly but what I saw was hard to bear
The other point you completely ignore is greater restrictions earlier would have meant restrictions lasting a shorter time. But because Johnson is so beholden to the “libertarian” hard right that all our restrictions were too little too late hence lasting so long and such damage from the restrictions we had
The example of this is NZ - they lockdown fast and hard, have had problems recently, but for the past two years have had far fewer restrictions and issues than we have.
All these “libertarians” being so free and easy
In truth, they shouldn't even refer to themselves as that, they are "Darwinists" really... let others die so they can go to the theatre, holibobs, etc. Unless it's them going to die of course... other than that they are fine to go full on "survival of the fittest" for the rest of us.