Exactly. They’re in it for the money. Everything else is spinSARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
Exactly. They’re in it for the money. Everything else is spinGiven how many people wear masks incorrectly, I am sceptical regarding how much difference they make anymore. Too many people do not cover their nose or alternatively wear the shields which offer almost no protection for someone who is just exhaling. This is aside from the fact that people already just don't care and won't wear them, regardless of whether they have to or not.
The one I am most concerned about is the highly confusing statement on mask wearing.
I mean what is the real issue with maintaining the requirements to wear masks/face covering inside public places.
Yes we are in the summer months. But in the weeks to come, the weather is going to change. And once the public get used to not wearing face coverings, it will be significantly more difficult to change that.
And Boris promised that he was going to be guided by the data.
Well there was no data to support the relaxation. Not even an attempt to show any data. Because there is none.
That has become the case. But much of this has been caused by the mood music from the government and in particular from the new Health Secretary.
I’d be surprised if it was for any other reason than this. Masks are the visual representation of restrictions, so he can’t claim he’s getting rid of all restrictions without doing that too. He’s more interested in how he’s perceived rather than if he’s making the right decision. It’s basically backed up by Cummings tweets on him too.
The basic modelling theory as I understand it is that the most at risk are already double vaxxed and everyone else who wants to be will be at least single vaxed. However that will still leave all the under 18s and those people who aren't easy to vaccinate (for whatever reason) - so whenever you reopen you get an exit wave.
Do it in the winter and the "vaxxed but still at risk" can't easily dodge some of the added risks (by meeting outside or leaving a window open when you've got visitors). Do it in the summer and a bunch of kids get ill, but it doesn't close the school. The unvaxxed are going to get it anyway, so it doesn't really matter when it happens to them so long as the NHS isn't so busy at the time that it falls apart.
It's pretty ugly and the numbers are balanced on a knife edge, but if you're looking for something that looks a lot like herd immunity without (most of) the deaths it gets you there. If it goes wrong they'll blame the irresponsible public, lack of border controls and political correctness, and the Daily Mail will do headlines about the NHS's failure to defend the old (or young, or diabetics or whoever) and Boris will look sad while the camera is on him but will declare himself innocent on all charges.
I guess it's more about making it a legal requirement to wear one. I'm pretty sure if people aren't comfortable in public places, then they're entitled to wear one. I guess it's just not getting to the depths of regulating what people should and should not wear in the interest of public health.
Again, playing devils advocate, there's no data provided to support wearing them still other than notion. You could argue that social distancing probably has the potential of more of an impact than masks. I go back to a point I made on a previous post, not wearing masks for 95% of peoples visits to indoor hospitality hasn't made them a complete cesspool of infection in comparison to schools which have had them on full time up until very recently, the social distancing has probably more to play.
I don't buy into the 'guiding by the data' annecodates from Boris, and you probably don't as well. The information they gave out back in February about the four stages for unlock were pretty clear:
- The vaccine deployment programme continues successfully.
- Evidence shows vaccines are sufficiently effective in reducing hospitalisations and deaths in those vaccinated.
- Infection rates do not risk a surge in hospitalisations which would put unsustainable pressure on the NHS.
- Our assessment of the risks is not fundamentally changed by new Variants of Concern.
Same here. Mask wearing is about 50/50 where I am and has been for a long time, few shops are enforcing rules. I'm not sure how much difference this will actually make. The people that want to remain cautious have been doing and those with a more cavalier attitude are not and haven't been for at least two months now.
It really depends on the seal of the mask. If there is a good seal, most of the air flow containing the particulates will be exhaled through the filtering material. Otherwise some of it will just escape through the gaps.
The most important factors in an indoor setting is (1) the concentration of particulates in the room, (2) the exposure time of an individual breathing in those particulates and (3) the relationship between the quantity of viral particulates inhaled and the chance of being infected. Social distancing helps in the sense that you are less likely to inhale large droplets from nearby people because they either evaporate quickly and/or settle quickly. But aside from that, what you really need is good ventilation (so particulates already in the room can mix with an external supply of air and disperse elsewhere, preferably outside or via ducting) and regular cleaning of surfaces.
In schools, what has probably happened is the fact that the kids remain in the same rooms for prolonged periods of time, with little or poor ventilation. They are also in close proximity to each other and the surfaces are not regularly cleaned. Contrast to social care homes where visits may not last as long. There are also likely some behavioural effects such as that people who visit care homes are more likely to follow the rules carefully to avoid infecting a loved one compared to kids who generally don't care because it doesn't affect them as much.
Quality posts
Interesting.
Do we know if children can suffer from long-term covid (smell loss, breathing issues etc) if they are tested positive?
So about this idea that vaccines have broken the link between cases and hospitalisations…
Do we know the people being hospitalised have been vaccinated?
You did read a lot of reports, stats over the last 18 months. You know the plan of BoJo from 19 July.
Do you think there will be another lockdown this year? If yes when?
We don’t. But I would be very surprised (and worried!) if everyone being admitted was too young to have been vaccinated yet.
Some of your posting (maybe 10%) is starting to be pretty scaremongerish.
Are you really not convinced at this point whether the vaccines prevent hospitalisation? You’ve shared loads of evidence suggesting they do, so that’s a huge dose of scepticism to pour over that evidence! Especially when there’s a plausible alternative explanation that already fits into your broader risk assessment: millions of people still being unvaccinated.
Whilst the climb in hospitalisations is slightly alarming, the fact remains it could have been worse had vaccines not been around, no?
I would like to see the percentage of vaccinated people being admitted to hospital, any outlets with those stats out there?
I honestly don’t know. I do know the UK is taking a huge gamble. I also think that even if a lockdown is avoided there will be a huge collateral cost to the health of the nation (both covid-related and non-covid related) from the government’s refusal to delay the full reopening.
The uk electorate will have to live with the decisions of the uk government. And I don’t live there (any more) so that’s not my business. What will really boil my piss though will be if the decision to allow covid run riot in a partially vaccinated population ends up spinning off a variant that is as contagious but more vaccine resistant than delta. Because if you wanted to create a variant like that, these are exactly the conditions you’d expect to incubate it.
They reduce hospitalisation. They don’t prevent it. We’ve seen the PHE data on deaths and hospital admissions. We know for a fact that at least some vaccinated people are ending up in hospital/dead. At this stage the only unknown is how many more will follow that same path.
Absolutely. A lot worse.
I’m worried.
You spend time on medical Twitter so you know how extremely worried some well qualified people are about what happens from here. I’m not there yet but I’ve seen this fecking thing throw us curveballs that completely derailed our recovery twice already (alpha and delta). So my reserves of optimism are running low. At this stage I’d rather be pessimistic and proved wrong than have my hopes crushed a third time!
Thanks for the answer.
The emergence of a variant seems to be an unpredictable event that comes from a remote place through specific circumstances (say interactions between contaminated humans and animals)
We have a global disease that seems to perpetually generate new variants, and the famous ones are the most devastating.
Continental Europe will look at the UK.
Log-off from twitter, have a pint of Guinness and enjoy that famous Irish summer weather!
Isn't that just another semantic argument? While the term "break" was used, and you can argue about how precisely that should be interpreted, the KPI related to the re-opening was:
There's some subjectivity in what sufficiently effective means, some people in SAGE will disagree among themselves, you'll disagree with other people, but don't you think the evidence you've shared generally provides a good base to make a legitimate argument that they are "sufficiently effective"? It is undoubtedly not completely effective, and there is still room for uncertainty, but those things were known when that KPI was set, that wasn't the bar.
Not a bad shout. The weather here has actually been lovely recently too.
My personal opinion is that if hospital admissions are growing exponentially then the connection between cases and bad outcomes hasn’t been broken enough. Exponential growth in any context is scary, when it’s using up a finite resource (hospital beds) then you’re heading for trouble. IMHO.
If we’re not going to open up to benefit from the vaccine then the vaccine itself was unless. We could have saved billions and just locked down to suppress
Rising cases and hospital admissions was a trade off we all knew was coming and we see them rising much slower than when cases were at similar levels before.
The govt have got most things wrong but the anti-relaxation cause looks increasingly hardline and has no logical end beyond perpetual attempts at zero COVID that seems to be widespread debunked as a strategy
Hospital admissions are rising but much slower, people are much less sick once admitted and the deaths increase is even slower. I think it’s astonishing the desperation to turn that into bad news. If it is then good news can’t exist in this situation so just bolt the door and wait for the rapture
Rising cases and hospital admissions was a trade off we all knew was coming and we see them rising much slower than when cases were at similar levels before.
The govt have got most things wrong but the anti-relaxation cause looks increasingly hardline and has no logical end beyond perpetual attempts at zero COVID that seems to be widespread debunked as a strategy
Hospital admissions are rising but much slower, people are much less sick once admitted and the deaths increase is even slower. I think it’s astonishing the desperation to turn that into bad news. If it is then good news can’t exist in this situation so just bolt the door and wait for the rapture
It has, there's tonnes of data out there that suggests the link has been broken. Certainly in the UK case rate curve is in an aggressive upwards trend in this current wave, and the hospitalisation rate is not at the same trend as it was in wave two. The clear difference between the two is the vaccination programme. That would suggest that the vaccines are breaking the link, otherwise we would see the same ratio and trajectory. I recall reading that duration of stay in hospital is decreasing for covid inpatients, most likely linked to the age profile and not being vaccinated.
Are you insinuating that vaccines don't break the link? The data here is clearly missing how many of these admissions have either had a both vaccine's or not. That provides a much more of a stronger context to your discussion.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/covid-vaccines-infections-deaths-nhs-b1862412.html
Agreed it’s a strong argument to delay and I’m sure some folks in SAGE are saying the same. It’s unquestionably taking a risk that just weeks ago they were suggesting was very unlikely, following the trends in Bolton and the like. There’s enough uncertainty there to make either choice quite risky, in my view. Government backed themselves into a corner again with their timeline and messaging weeks ago, and I just don’t think they’d get compliance, so it’d create new problems. I just don’t see the same certainty in it leading to trouble, it’s a risk, a serious one like others.
The regionality of areas where infections is spiking is probably a fairly unexplained element to what drives it.
From bits and pieces we get it seems that maybe even this latest surge is being driven by regional increases rather than a uniform national projection. In some of the poorest parts of east London where deprivation is high, demographics are among those considered most vulnerable and vaccine hesitancy is very high, there doesn’t appear to be much of a surge in terms of hospital admissions.
This “link” isn’t binary. Either broken or fixed. Vaccines obviously cause a reduction in the % of cases that end up in hospital. We know that for a fact. What’s not clear is exactly how big a reduction. Especially with this delta variant, where the UK is acting a Petri dish for the rest of the world.
Other facts we know from bitter experience:
a) There is a long delay between cases increasing and hospitalisations/deaths increasing.
b)The nature of exponential growth means things can go from “not too bad” to “omg we’re screwed” very quickly and turning things round once they get out of hand can take a very long time.
Combine these facts with data showing that hospital admissions are currently increasing exponentially and I think it’s reasonable to wonder if the link between cases and bad outcomes is as broken as we would like/need it to be.
Another interesting thing to monitor will also be not just hospitalisations but number of people in hospital, ICU bed occupancy, length of hospital stays. Whether vaccines play a part in that we'll found out pretty soon.
A significant part of the problem in previous waves with covid was length of hospital stays, oxygen dependancy which took up beds, which needed us to create more space (through transforming other parts of the hospital).
If we can discharge people quickly, if they are hospitalised but don't need high flow oxygen, if we can wean them off and move them back into community etc all will be useful in preventing the system from being overwhelmed.
A significant part of the problem in previous waves with covid was length of hospital stays, oxygen dependancy which took up beds, which needed us to create more space (through transforming other parts of the hospital).
If we can discharge people quickly, if they are hospitalised but don't need high flow oxygen, if we can wean them off and move them back into community etc all will be useful in preventing the system from being overwhelmed.
It’ll never not make sense to wait.
Why not wait until everyone has been fully vaccinated? By then why not wait until the vulnerable have had their winter booster? Then why not just sit it out until winter? Then what’s the harm in waiting until the second vaccinations start, then why not hold off until the holidays…?
There is no problematic free time to lift restrictions and lifting restrictions will lead to an increase in cases so arguing we shouldn’t lift restrictions because of an increase in cases is beginning to look indistinguishable from arguing we should never lift restrictions at all, without actually saying it.
The conditions people seem to want us to meet to lift restrictions are those that I’m not sure logically they themselves think can ever exist. The virus isn’t being eradicated and surprise that it spreads outside of strict lockdown conditions seems disingenuous.
And so it begins to looks Julia Hartley Brewer-level of contrarianism but from the other side of the argument.
“Let’s not open up until we achieve a position I honestly do not feel is achievable” isn’t sensible.
Why not wait until everyone has been fully vaccinated? By then why not wait until the vulnerable have had their winter booster? Then why not just sit it out until winter? Then what’s the harm in waiting until the second vaccinations start, then why not hold off until the holidays…?
There is no problematic free time to lift restrictions and lifting restrictions will lead to an increase in cases so arguing we shouldn’t lift restrictions because of an increase in cases is beginning to look indistinguishable from arguing we should never lift restrictions at all, without actually saying it.
The conditions people seem to want us to meet to lift restrictions are those that I’m not sure logically they themselves think can ever exist. The virus isn’t being eradicated and surprise that it spreads outside of strict lockdown conditions seems disingenuous.
And so it begins to looks Julia Hartley Brewer-level of contrarianism but from the other side of the argument.
“Let’s not open up until we achieve a position I honestly do not feel is achievable” isn’t sensible.
If you're curious about what the modelling is actually looking like and what the appraisal was in June (that led to the opening being delayed until July) this will give you an overview:
https://www.covid-arg.com/post/modelling-the-return-of-freedoms
You need to download the pdf file to see the modelling summaries from Sage. Basically they have three models - imperial College, Warwick and LSHTM. These start with various scenarios relating to how much more infectious Delta is, what the hospitalisation rate would be (unvaccinated) and how well the vaccines are working. Then they try and describe what might happen if...
Currently cases are rising as fast as predicted in early June but hospitalisations are lower (but rising). The black/orange lines were the Warwick predictions of what would happen if we reopened fully on June 21 as planned v July 19. The blue is the actual hospitalisation data so far.
This seems to be down to the cases not really moving out of the under 29 group in the same way as they did in previous waves. That's assumed to be part vaccine and part behaviour related (the vaxxed mixing mostly with the vaxxed for example). Unfortunately it now looks like it's spreading into the very highest risk group 80+ probably from unvaxxed or single vaxxed family members or carers, hence why hospitalisations are starting to rise, having not risen as early as was expected.
Next week's data will give people an idea of how the infection is moving through age groups and the vaccinations given in June are part of the equation.
Right now it really is too close to call, but there is an assumption in all the Sage scenarios that not only will there be an exit wave, there will be a lot of hospitalisations over the next year and thousands more deaths. That's what "living with covid" means - we're just not used to seeing it as a calculation.
https://www.covid-arg.com/post/modelling-the-return-of-freedoms
You need to download the pdf file to see the modelling summaries from Sage. Basically they have three models - imperial College, Warwick and LSHTM. These start with various scenarios relating to how much more infectious Delta is, what the hospitalisation rate would be (unvaccinated) and how well the vaccines are working. Then they try and describe what might happen if...
Currently cases are rising as fast as predicted in early June but hospitalisations are lower (but rising). The black/orange lines were the Warwick predictions of what would happen if we reopened fully on June 21 as planned v July 19. The blue is the actual hospitalisation data so far.
This seems to be down to the cases not really moving out of the under 29 group in the same way as they did in previous waves. That's assumed to be part vaccine and part behaviour related (the vaxxed mixing mostly with the vaxxed for example). Unfortunately it now looks like it's spreading into the very highest risk group 80+ probably from unvaxxed or single vaxxed family members or carers, hence why hospitalisations are starting to rise, having not risen as early as was expected.
Next week's data will give people an idea of how the infection is moving through age groups and the vaccinations given in June are part of the equation.
Right now it really is too close to call, but there is an assumption in all the Sage scenarios that not only will there be an exit wave, there will be a lot of hospitalisations over the next year and thousands more deaths. That's what "living with covid" means - we're just not used to seeing it as a calculation.
Last edited:
Yeah, those are good points. Admission numbers only tell you part of the picture.
The average time between symptoms and death is around 19 days. Obviously shorter period for hospitalisation.
38 days ago cases were 3,491. 19 days later on 16th June the death total was announced at 11.
On 16 June cases were 10,786. 19 days later today’s death figure for UK is 9.
Even with established case numbers given the increase we’ve seen in the last 40ish day period deaths are significantly lower than where they should be. Of course it’s possible the vaccines are simply increasing the time between symptoms and death but seems unlikely
38 days ago cases were 3,491. 19 days later on 16th June the death total was announced at 11.
On 16 June cases were 10,786. 19 days later today’s death figure for UK is 9.
Even with established case numbers given the increase we’ve seen in the last 40ish day period deaths are significantly lower than where they should be. Of course it’s possible the vaccines are simply increasing the time between symptoms and death but seems unlikely
Anyone else having a fecking nightmare with this track and trace app disrupting everything??
Despite being double vaccinated for a well over a month, I got pinged and was isolating for 6 days. The only place I could have come into contact on the day listed was sat at an outdoor bar far away from anyone else who was also double vaccinated.
My fiance has now just been told to isolate for 8 days - where the only place she could have come into contact was on a train where she was masked and has also been double vaccinated for ages.
Seriously, people are just going to start deleting it/keeping bluetooth off.
(For the record, I observed my time and took lateral flows tests every day).
Despite being double vaccinated for a well over a month, I got pinged and was isolating for 6 days. The only place I could have come into contact on the day listed was sat at an outdoor bar far away from anyone else who was also double vaccinated.
My fiance has now just been told to isolate for 8 days - where the only place she could have come into contact was on a train where she was masked and has also been double vaccinated for ages.
Seriously, people are just going to start deleting it/keeping bluetooth off.
(For the record, I observed my time and took lateral flows tests every day).
This Peru variant seems a real head scratcher for scientists. This could become the next dominant variant going by reports.