I’m type 3.

Not surprised I’m the only one so far given all the queer-bashing that goes on around these parts.

But anyone claiming that the [insert illness here] vaccine gave them [insert illness here] needs to shut the hell up and do some reading as to how vaccines work before more people die.

Why did they bother safety-testing them at all then?

I doubt that the number of infectees follows a binomial distribution. This would mean the situation where no-one else caught it would be more common than it would be if each person was infected (or not) independently with a 1/3rd chance.

Sorry, I have no idea what this means😂

Sheer numbers of contacts times duration you can pass it on. If 2% have it, then your chance of meeting someone randomly without it is 0.98. But suppose you meet 100 people randomly in a day. Easy on a packed commuter train with 200 people in a coach.

Surely that situation is very much the rare exception these days?

I’ve been a good boy and been in an enclosed space with a grand total of four people other than immediate family in the past 10 months. So the ones that bring the average up must be really taking the piss.

Unless you are frontline NHS etc, I can’t see how anyone can infect 1.5 other people without being actively negligent🤷‍♂️

So that’s what’s wrong with my toes! Thanks. I thought it was some variant on athlete’s foot.

The secondary attack rate in a household for one extra case is about 33% from PHR and ONS survey data. Probability that someone does not get it is 67%. Prob that the other four do not get it is 0.67*0.67*0.67*0.67 so prob that AT LEAST one person DOES get it is 1 – 0.67^4 = 0.8. So there’s actually a 20% chance that in a household of five nobody else is a case. Not so bad odds

If there’s only a 33% chance of catching it from a family member who definitely has it, with no precautions, does this not mean you’re gonna have to try really bloody hard to catch it masked up in a supermarket or distanced outside from people who mostly haven’t got it?

How on earth do you get from that to an R of 1.5?!

I’ve done well with weldtite and lifeline cheapo kits. I prefer the former as I’ve never had a need to use the thin noodles. On enduro tyres the repair has always been permanent.

Modesty forbids, but my proudest scientific achievement has been the invention, development and eventual approval of one of those drugs.

Did you also have a hand in the naming of ofatumumab? Were you all pissed at the time?

chvck

I don’t think that I’ve seen this posted and it may be of use to some – Association of British Neurologists COVID vaccine guidelines. tldr: none of them are live vaccines, take whichever is offered.

Thanks. Trouble is, it’s hard to have blind faith in medical science when a neurologist told you to measure up for wheelchair ramps and 15 years later you’re still walking, and wanted you to take a drug that is no longer used because it turned out it didn’t work, and the oncologist said it wasn’t cancer when it was, and the surgeon told you you won’t need chemo but you did, and so on.

When you have an overactive immune system, you don’t really want to mess with it.

What’s making it worse for me is that nearly everyone I know is continuing to drive to the forest and ride in groups, both of which are against Welsh rules.

I thought it was two cases. Isn’t this an old concern that more recent events have reduced?

No, definitely three. What recent events have reduced this concern?

If this were a side-effect affecting a high percentage of people with MS, it would be useful to know how long it might be until more cases show up to confirm it, or alternatively how long until we can rule it out.

It’s not an old concern but a very real concern when society is pressuring you into being jabbed with something that could make you even more ill than you already are but is still not proven to stop you spreading the virus.

When will we know whether the apparent side-effect of transverse myelitis in the trials is real or not?

We won’t. You cannot logically prove a negative. Rare events are rare, and one case was in placebo. Cast your mind back to autism onset at the age of vaccination. Causality is hard to prove in rare events.

Thanks.
Is it rare, though? Three cases in 23,000 patients of something that normally affects 1 in 200,000. Two with the vaccine (one possibly predisposed due to MS) and the third in the control group (which wasn’t actually a placebo but another vaccine).
Obviously there can be coincidences and flukes, but if you had multiple sclerosis, would you not be pressing to have one of the other vaccines or avoid them altogether?

We’re allowed to in Wales, but I still feel like everyone’s staring when my daughter chauffeurs me around.

She’s rearranged her theory test half a dozen times and spent hundreds on lessons ready for a test that never happened. Her A-levels and learning in general have been messed around with constantly for a year, she can’t see her friends or do her sport despite being on the national squad, and there’s a good chance she won’t get a proper student experience at uni.

So it seems reasonable for her to do that one thing.

The lockdowns do seem to help. Cases in Wales rocketed in December but then we locked down and now they are flat to falling, with the predicted Armageddon from letting people out for Xmas day not materialising.

I have two questions for the experts here:

1. Why have the scientists still not worked out whether or not the vaccines reduce the spread of the virus? How hard can it be?

2. When will we know whether the apparent side-effect of transverse myelitis in the trials is real or not?

…you didn’t mean it?

🤷‍♂️ Not sure what you’re getting at.

It may well not be in a village 20 miles from you, but be in your household

Possibly, but I’m not going to give it to that village by driving or cycling through it. That’ll be the people coming from that village to shop in our supermarket or work in our town, or more likely coming to visit someone.
I’ll continue not to drive to ride, as per Welsh rules, but ride through that village quite happily, also in line with our rules. But that doesn’t mean the exercise rules aren’t a little silly, which is why people are ignoring them.
And once they ignore one rule, they’re more likely to ignore other ones too.
So you’d think the government would think the rules through a bit more carefully.

Now that the virus is everywhere, I don’t see the need to ask people to stay local. It made sense last spring, but not now.

If it’s to save a few RTAs, why are they not asking us to walk rather than drive to the shop/work if we can?

Because if you’re a man you’re less likely to jam your pecker between your biffin and the back of the saddle, which is best avoided.

But which one is easiest to snap off when it clogs up with mud to the point where the wheel stops turning halfway down an enduro stage?

the only reason we got the outbreak is because someone did not follow the guidence.

Not necessarily.

I agree with those above saying that people could be nicer to each other here.

I would say it’s more important to make sure you don’t spread the virus than to follow the letter of the law, but I think we should also also make sure that our actions don’t encourage others to ignore the rules.

People skills, mainly. You ****.

Thanks for making me laugh.

Stay local has no logic now that the virus is everywhere.

But if that’s made the rule, that’s what I’ll do.

In Wales, they’re all **** because they’re shut.

Some do, some don’t.
Some will, some won’t.

I do and my repairs
Have lasted longer than theirs.

Despite my joke earlier about voting for Boris because he’s done such a good job, it’s hard to imagine any of the other parties or their leaders doing much better than Boris and the Tories.

Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are run by other parties but are also riddled with Covid and making last-minute decisions.

And anyway, by 2024 we should be living off the fat of a post-Covid, post-Brexit economic boom, in which case the issue is probably moot.

We’ve been beyond Tier 4 and had schools closed in Wales for three weeks and it doesn’t seem to have gone down much🤷‍♂️

I expect I’ll be voting for Boris because he’s done a really good job so far.

@cloggy: An interesting read, thanks. I had no idea. It can be a bit Wild West over here. I remember another mid Wales organiser cutting a few corners. Probably much harder these days though.

I guess that was the Trans Wales, which was just before my time. I only did the marathons. I remember “winning“ the Brecon Beast in one of the final years. Me and the second placed guy waited ten minutes at the end and there was still nobody there so we just went home…

The red tape for events has put me off hosting one, even though it would have been all on NRW land. It’s hard enough getting permission for guiding groups these days. And it is crazy this no-race rule given that people race it just the same even when it isn’t a race. Maybe things will change when the new access rights come in.

I have total respect for all event organisers. What a nightmare!!!

Stuff like John Lloyd events and the Brecon Beast ran for years illegally till they were forced to tighten up, actually I’m not sure John Lloyd events were ever legal with valid insurance. He broke the law in so many ways.

How were they illegal? We used to race them, but they were never a race.

you pile the big logs at the bottom and light it at the top then let it burn all the way down and start again

Interesting, I’ll give it a go. I’ve always intuitively done smaller to bigger going upwards to bring the fire up to hot quickly.

Some people seem to just have one oversized damp log barely smouldering and putting out all smoke and no heat, and I imagine that is where most of the pollution comes from.

Seems like a very lazy way of shutting down anyone you disagree with.

You don’t know my motives. Fact.

As it happens I came in good faith, so you got the wrong cartoon animal. But yes I did work very hard to remain polite when almost none of you did.

I’m out. Enjoy!

FFS – I’ve been quite supportive of your position so far, but that is either pig ignorant or your trolling fu has got a lot weaker

Not a clue…

Hell, even as a PM of a run of the mill suburban GP surgery I’ve got some pretty impressively wide leeway

Don’t you have the Hippocratic oath?

is excluding people who are carrying a disease an infringement of their rights?

I would say so if you’re excluding them from everything. How are they supposed to live?

There are no human rights implications in refusing service to potential plague rats. Which article of the hra do you think it breeches?

You’re a potential plague rat right now…

Well I’m not a human rights lawyer. Freedom of conscience? It seems to me that it ends up as coercing people into consenting to medical treatment they don’t want. That’s surely wrong? (And yes I know what they’re doing is wrong too)

You seem to be saying there are no rights issues. OK. Next problem: can you see the government actually going down this route?

All sorts of “rights” come with an over arching “greater public good” exclusion on them. It’s just that as a society, we/the media tend to ignore that aspect

I’ll bow to your greater knowledge there, but I can’t see it not being controversial. Especially if it’s affecting 10-20% of the population.

There already are processes to exclude people with notifiable diseases from public places

These people don’t necessarily have the disease. Would that make a difference?

It still feels authoritarian to me.

these people do not have rational reasons for their beliefs,why would they respond to rational arguments?

That’s a good point. Some clearly don’t. But some definitely do. Their approach is definitely rational. It’s very carefully thought through and intensively researched. Flawed but rational.

I think they could be won round by methodically debunking each individual argument or piece of evidence reasonably and fairly (and acknowledging uncertainties and where they might actually have a point) rather than just saying vaccines are safe, end of.

(I joined this thread in good faith to talk about vaccines in general, and not Covid which is a special case. I realise that this is not the best time for that conversation. Well, it is for me, but not for everyone else. I honestly have no desire to be me, me, me but there are 10-20 people on one side and only me on the other, so yes I have been more involved than I envisaged.)

OK, I’ll try again.

I do not think excluding the unvaccinated is a realistic option due to the logistics for implementing and enforcing it.

There are human rights/civil liberties issues too, which would further delay the rollout.

I think that allaying these people’s concerns in a positive and constructive manner would be a better way forward.

What I can’t get my head round is that they have known for 9 months they needed a vaccine. They have known for 6 months pretty much what the vaccine was, and they’ve had a fairly good idea for 3 months what the dose had to be.

Why the hell didn’t they take the gamble on massively ramping up production 3 months ago.

Couldn’t agree more.

Doorman checking for either certification of immunisation or a medical exemption certificate. We’ve been doing it to validate minimum ages for decades, go try and buy fags aged 16 and see what happens.

In my experience, you give them your money and walk off with your fags 🙂

I’m not sure the system would/could work. Doorpeople absolutely everywhere? Unfakeable passes? Working databases? In the near future?

I hate to break this to you, but not being able to go to Wetherspoons because you might have an infectious disease is not a human rights issue. And frankly it’s kind of offensive to equate the two.

But I didn’t. Do you really not think excluding people from public transport/buildings would raise all kinds of civil liberties/human rights issues?

we shouldn’t still be having to explain this.

You don’t. Why are you?

these things are not equivalent.

I didn’t say they were. It was a “where do you draw the line” argument. But forget that. I realise now that is against the rules here.

Bill Gates must be rubbing his hands 😉

That was a joke. People worrying about microchips aren’t going to be up for presenting ID everywhere they go, and if there are enough of them to affect herd immunity then there’s going to be big problems policing your new normal.

oh look, there they are again (opinions)

What have you presented other than opinions? It’s a discussion. I’ve presented my opinion: excluding people is not practicable.

I also believe it is fundamentally wrong. The way to deal with the issue is to include people, not to exclude them.

It’s like excluding kids from school: finding ways to include them is a far better way of dealing with it. Put the effort into getting people on board with getting vaccinated instead.

Mostly not understanding the scale of an epidemic and the actions required to stop it going on for another 3 years

You don’t yet know that vaccination will stop the spread.

Why the constant assumptions that I haven’t understood just because I have a different view? I really am not stupid. (Teed it up nicely there.)

making ridiculous statements about people not caring about human rights.

You are, in my view, advocating removing people’s human rights by excluding them from society.

Sorry, I do realise that the words “dumb” and “****” are rising in my throat, I promise not to say it out loud this time…

It was ironic. A joke. Hence the smiley just to make sure it was taken that way. What more can I do? And I’m actually not going to say out loud what I’m thinking.

I seem to recall someone said something about trolls and feeding once upon a time,welcome back to the dark ages.

If you don’t like what I say, and you don’t want to engage with it, why don’t you just ignore it? What’s the point of all the snide digs?

What have I done wrong now?

@vdubber Not being a race doesn’t stop them being a race. How dare you try to steal my only wins 😉

I suspect Dyfi etc might well be staggered starts for some time…

But yeah, any kind of event/race would be great! Even a ride for two would do me.