SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Her point was that is no such thing as “not being in a danger group” and well, of course there is. Every single stat from every single country informs us of that, there are huge danger groups, and those not in those groups.
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The rather obvious point is that the term "danger group" implied that everyone isn't in danger from covid - some are just in more danger than others and Delta seems to be spread far more in children than the other variants. As with the death of this 5 year old https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...oy-dies-covid-cases-surge-nationwide-n1274671
 
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Wibble said:
The rather obvious point is that the term "danger group" implied that everyone isn't in danger from covid -
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Everyone isn’t, that’s the point.

I for example know at least 50 people who have had it and none of them in a risk group, not one was seriously ill. I myself had it and have had worse colds.

I also know a bunch of people in risk groups that had it and ended up extremely ill.

Yes there are anomalies in the data (as with all viruses and illnesses) but let’s not make out they’re not still extremely rare in comparison. Over here a healthy person under 30 has about a 1 in 500,000 chance of dying from Covid. That’s if we can believe the total number of cases are correct and none have been missed, so likely it’s 1 in 1 million.
Dismissing how very rare it still is to get seriously ill from Covid and extremely rare to die for certain groups doesn’t help the discussion and certainly feels like fear mongering. It seems to be coming a more regular occurrence as people try to convince others they need to take the vaccine but I’m uncertain it helps, people can read stats and don’t need or appreciate being bullshitted, better to explain instead why exactly vaccination is important for the society as a whole.

If the point is, anyone of us can contract something at any point in our lives and die, well yeah obviously but why’s that even a point?
 
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Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Everyone isn’t, that’s the point.

I for example know at least 50 people who have had it and none of them in a risk group, not one was seriously ill. I myself had it and have had worse colds.

I also know a bunch of people in risk groups that had it and ended up extremely ill.

Yes there are anomalies in the data (as with all viruses and illnesses) but let’s not make out they’re not still extremely rare in comparison. Over here a healthy person under 30 has about a 1 in 500,000 chance of dying from Covid. That’s if we can believe the total number of cases are correct and none have been missed, so likely it’s 1 in 1 million.
Dismissing how very rare it still is to get seriously ill from Covid and extremely rare to die for certain groups doesn’t help the discussion and certainly feels like fear mongering. It seems to be coming a more regular occurrence as people try to convince others they need to take the vaccine but I’m uncertain it helps, people can read stats and don’t need or appreciate being bullshitted, better to explain instead why exactly vaccination is important for the society as a whole.

If the point is, anyone of us can contract something at any point in our lives and die, well yeah obviously but why’s that even a point?
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People of all age groups are getting sick and dieing. Far more are suffering ongoing and long term harm from covid. Just because you weren't killed doesn't make covid harmless. Such talk simply encourages vaccine reluctance when we should be aiming for as close to 100% vaccination rates as possible to try to get the world back to normal ASAP.
 
dumbo said:
People need to start fecking off with the arguing with the vaccine. The data is out there and has been presented fairly widely and clearly. That there is an obvious benefit for the vast majority to getting vaccinated is supported by the available evidence.

All the "but this happened to my friends cousin" and "difference of opinion" shit is fecking rubbish.

If you won't get the vaccine then so be it but expecting others to indulge your ill informed umming and arring gibberish is crap.
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I really hate the way difference of opinion is used as some kind of catch all for stupid shit. (not just here, but everywhere). Yes you are entitled to your opinion, just dont expect it to be taken seriously
 
Get the impression that when people throw out the stats on deaths/illnesses that the small fact that we have done everything possible to reduce the spread is left out. Left completely uncontrolled this illness could have torn through people.

And then there's the line of thinking like, "ah sure you might only lose your sense of smell and taste" which...is actually still a pretty big deal I feel. Death and severe illness aren't the only things we're trying to stop.
 
One Night Only said:
I think those numbers do speak for themselves, but isn't that because those most vulnerable have been vaccinated already? They'll still catch it but less likely to be hospitalised.

Whereas someone who is not in a danger group could catch it and not end up in hospital anyway even without the vaccine? With case numbers as they are with the amount being vaccinated, it doesn't really look to be doing much to stop the spread as they put it.

That's what I'm not understanding personally. The jabs are doing the grand some of feck all for a lot of people apart from making them bad for a couple of days, then letting them get the virus anyway? They could have got the virus without the jab, and not been ill after their jabs thus they've actually made themselves bad for an extra 2 days.

I know it's only a jab, but a lot of people who have had it seem right up their own arses, it's the new "I'm better than you look at me". I can fully understand why people want it, and why others don't. There are some rough stories, the type of "it'll never happen to me" but it could.

Well done to those who have had the jab.

End of the day it's a personal choice at the moment and I'm fine with people either way.
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At this point, with all the evidence and with how vaccines work in general. With all the people in the U.K. who already have previous vaccines. The people getting vaccinated are definitely better than the people who are not.

Those going unvaccinated in my experience have usually gone with the “not knowing long term effects”…line. Completely ignoring the long term effects bad covid can potentially have.
But that’s fine whatever, where all these people fall on their fecking arse is with everything else in their lifestyle.
Every single person I know who’s stated the “long term effects” either smokes weed on a regular basis, drinks heavily, or has a poor diet. Seemingly these things do not have physical and mental ‘long term effects’ on them.
It’s this hypocrisy I can’t personally stand. Then throw in your dangerous folks who refuse vaccination and also refuse to follow isolation rules and you’re left with a big pile of steaming shit that just slows this whole recovery process down.

With that in mind to me it’s pretty obvious getting a vaccine makes you better than people who don’t.
 
Big-Red said:
Get the impression that when people throw out the stats on deaths/illnesses that the small fact that we have done everything possible to reduce the spread is left out. Left completely uncontrolled this illness could have torn through people.

And then there's the line of thinking like, "ah sure you might only lose your sense of smell and taste" which...is actually still a pretty big deal I feel. Death and severe illness aren't the only things we're trying to stop.
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Two very good points.

The smell/taste thing is more than enough to convince me to get vaccinated. I’m (relatively) young and (relatively) healthy so the odds are in my favour of surviving covid. I’ve a good friend who got infected in April 2020. He had a very mild illness but his sense of smell is still messed up. For anyone who enjoys their food that’s a shitty state of affairs. Absolute no-brainer to take a vaccine if it makes that outcome less likely.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Two very good points.

The smell/taste thing is more than enough to convince me to get vaccinated. I’m (relatively) young and (relatively) healthy so the odds are in my favour of surviving covid. I’ve a good friend who got infected in April 2020. He had a very mild illness but his sense of smell is still messed up. For anyone who enjoys their food that’s a shitty state of affairs. Absolute no-brainer to take a vaccine if it makes that outcome less likely.
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I’d go mad if I lost sense of smell or taste. Food is my only vice nowadays.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Two very good points.

The smell/taste thing is more than enough to convince me to get vaccinated. I’m (relatively) young and (relatively) healthy so the odds are in my favour of surviving covid. I’ve a good friend who got infected in April 2020. He had a very mild illness but his sense of smell is still messed up. For anyone who enjoys their food that’s a shitty state of affairs. Absolute no-brainer to take a vaccine if it makes that outcome less likely.
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Pretty terrifying for top chefs. Worse than losing an arm or a leg.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
The friend of mine I mentioned is an actor who works as a sous chef when acting work dries up. Closure of theatres followed by messed up smell/taste has been such a kick in the balls for him.
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Is he famous?
 
The next old person or person who can't he vaccinated, due to being young or having a medical condition, who suffers covid related harm after you decide not to get vaccinated could be on you. You could have been infected, passed it on and not even known. Still on you.

I wonder how many free riders happily took financial assistance from society but won't do their bit for society even if they don't want to vaccinate themselves for whatever reason?
 
Pogue Mahone said:
No. Although you may have seen him on the telly if you’ve paid attention to my recommendations on the Entertainment forum over the years.
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I haven’t taken the slightest bit of notice :)
 
Carolina Red said:
This can’t be stated enough. It is taking a terrible toll on healthcare workers’ mental state.
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Yeah, while it is occasionally acknowledged in the UK news it rarely seems to be discussed as a problem. It’s mostly discussed in the context of a binary choice: can the NHS handle another surge of x size, or will it overload them? There’s no question of what effects come about from having to handle another surge, and the priorities that are signalled by allowing that

Even if technically, in pure numbers, the health system “can withstand” the pressure of 100k daily cases (and probably not 200k cases), can the healthcare staff cope with that pressure as a set of individuals who’ve suffered more than anyone else? Should they have to, just to enable business and society to take a step forward? If they can get through this year, how much more likely are they to burnout, feel undervalued, etc. and leave the healthcare system in a worse off position than it started?

It’s a great shame for me. The respect for healthcare workers is very transient, and we don’t think of them seriously as a critical resource that needs support and protection to function properly.
 
The latest I have seen from covidiots is “the NHS is protect us not for us to protect it”. I think it’s safe to presume these are the people not getting vaccinated and ending up hospitalised.
 
Brwned said:
Should they have to, just to enable business and society to take a step forward?
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As individuals they shouldn’t have to. As an organisation they kind of have to. Society taking a step forward is crucial to being able to continue funding the NHS. We can’t really afford to continue with restrictions as they were indefinitely. They are paying the price of years of underfunding and poor management.

The lack of funding has taken its toll and the ones suffering are the ones who don’t deserve it. Anybody that doesn’t feel for these people doesn’t deserve their care.
 
Brwned said:
can the healthcare staff cope with that pressure as a set of individuals who’ve suffered more than anyone else? Should they have to, just to enable business and society to take a step forward? If they can get through this year, how much more likely are they to burnout, feel undervalued, etc. and leave the healthcare system in a worse off position than it started?
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Exactly. My wife and several of her coworkers are having to go through therapy as-is due to being diagnosed with PTSD from all this. They can’t keep going through this. People seem to think it is some generic “nurse” job where the hospital can just sub in some new nurses in the ICU to give these a break. Well, they can’t. If they run out, there’s not others walking around who just know how to do the things ICU nurses do. They’ll have to learn on the job and that won’t be good.

AllGoodNamesRGone said:
The latest I have seen from covidiots is “the NHS is protect us not for us to protect it”. I think it’s safe to presume these are the people not getting vaccinated and ending up hospitalised.
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I’d lose it if someone said that to me. Absolutely the most selfish, piece of shit attitude they could have.
 
Carolina Red said:
Exactly. My wife and several of her coworkers are having to go through therapy as-is due to being diagnosed with PTSD from all this. They can’t keep going through this. People seem to think it is some generic “nurse” job where the hospital can just sub in some new nurses in the ICU to give these a break. Well, they can’t. If they run out, there’s not others walking around who just know how to do the things ICU nurses do. They’ll have to learn on the job and that won’t be good.


I’d lose it if someone said that to me. Absolutely the most selfish, piece of shit attitude they could have.
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Health care workers such as your wife and a couple of friends I have over here are a rare breed. I certainly wouldn't want to do what they do in normal times. They go above and beyond what can be considered a job or a career and we are in danger of taking them for granted and losing them with very few people willing or capable of taking their place
 
Brwned said:
Yeah, while it is occasionally acknowledged in the UK news it rarely seems to be discussed as a problem. It’s mostly discussed in the context of a binary choice: can the NHS handle another surge of x size, or will it overload them? There’s no question of what effects come about from having to handle another surge, and the priorities that are signalled by allowing that

Even if technically, in pure numbers, the health system “can withstand” the pressure of 100k daily cases (and probably not 200k cases), can the healthcare staff cope with that pressure as a set of individuals who’ve suffered more than anyone else? Should they have to, just to enable business and society to take a step forward? If they can get through this year, how much more likely are they to burnout, feel undervalued, etc. and leave the healthcare system in a worse off position than it started?

It’s a great shame for me. The respect for healthcare workers is very transient, and we don’t think of them seriously as a critical resource that needs support and protection to function properly.
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I have a bunch of friends on the front line so my instinct is to agree with all of this. But we have to remember that dealing with the dead and dying in a stretched public health system is what they do. It’s basically part of their job description.

What made their job so crazy during the first wave was relying on PPE to protect them. Now they’re all vaccinated their jobs have become that bit less stressful. So we don’t need to feel overly protective. They’re amazing people doing an incredibly tough job - whilst being chronically under-appreciated- but that’s the way it’s always been and always will be.

I hope the under-appreciation will change, moving forwards but I wouldn’t bet on it.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I have a bunch of friends on the front line so my instinct is to agree with all of this. But we have to remember that dealing with the dead and dying in a stretched public health system is what they do. It’s basically part of their job description.

What made their job so crazy during the first wave was relying on PPE to protect them. Now they’re all vaccinated their jobs have become that bit less stressful. So we don’t need to feel overly protective. They’re amazing people doing an incredibly tough job - whilst being chronically under-appreciated- but that’s the way it’s always been and always will be.

I hope the under-appreciation will change, moving forwards but I wouldn’t bet on it.
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Yeah I generally agree, the only thing I would add is now there's such a constant and collective focus on the NHS, and under such extreme circumstances, it provides them more opportunities for reflection on their place in society and what's expected of them, how they're valued, etc.

I have many fewer friends and family members who work in healthcare, but those that do generally seem closer to wit's end than they usually are, and for such a sustained period, and they do consider society's choices a direct cause of that. There's a general vibe of people want to go to a pub so much that they want to push us to breaking point, really? After we've just lost so many EU coworkers due to that other big choice society made? Not sure I can take it much longer. They always operated under that higher level of stress and managed it very well, mostly kept it below the surface. They're less able to now.

And there was already some talk of there being an epidemic of workplace burnout among healthcare workers before the pandemic, things didn't appear sustainable as they were. No doubt that dynamic of incredibly hard work and under appreciation has always been there, but placed in this other context I do think it creates a higher-level problem that we're just hoping works itself out.

Protection probably isn't the right phrase, in fairness. They're among the most resilient around so I agree we shouldn't feel overprotective. It's more a question of respect, I guess. Do we respect them so little that taking these extra risks for minimal reward is really more important than giving the healthcare system a bit of breathing room? Do we think it's ok to push them to these extremes for this long, just for a nice meal? Not sure myself.
 
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decorativeed said:
Health care workers such as your wife and a couple of friends I have over here are a rare breed. I certainly wouldn't want to do what they do in normal times. They go above and beyond what can be considered a job or a career and we are in danger of taking them for granted and losing them with very few people willing or capable of taking their place
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Nor could I. Teaching through this was stressful enough for me, I don’t see how my wife and the others in her position have done it.

And you’re quite right about them leaving bedside nursing. My wife has finished her nurse practitioners degree and applied several places and will leave bedside nursing as soon as she gets a job offer. She is completely burned out at this point.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
But we have to remember that dealing with the dead and dying in a stretched public health system is what they do. It’s basically part of their job description.
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For my wife it was the fact that she was so many times the only other person in the room for the dying person and that for so long, she knew there was nothing they could do to prevent it because they didn’t know what to do. And they just kept coming, over and over and over, all to the same result.

She’s spent her whole career in trauma and ICU, but this broke her.
 
Carolina Red said:
For my wife it was the fact that she was so many times the only other person in the room for the dying person and that for so long, she knew there was nothing they could do to prevent it because they didn’t know what to do. And they just kept coming, over and over and over, all to the same result.

She’s spent her whole career in trauma and ICU, but this broke her.
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I hope I wasn’t downplaying what she went through. I’m sure everyone’s experience is different and ITU nurses must have got it worst of all.
 
Carolina Red said:
Exactly. My wife and several of her coworkers are having to go through therapy as-is due to being diagnosed with PTSD from all this. They can’t keep going through this. People seem to think it is some generic “nurse” job where the hospital can just sub in some new nurses in the ICU to give these a break. Well, they can’t. If they run out, there’s not others walking around who just know how to do the things ICU nurses do. They’ll have to learn on the job and that won’t be good.


I’d lose it if someone said that to me. Absolutely the most selfish, piece of shit attitude they could have.
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I am currently seeing it in my ICU.

The thing that infuriates me is our hospital administration and so many others don't value the nurses they have, dont adjust pay, make them work overtime for only a little extra and then of course they leave for better paying travel jobs. Which is practically every hospital. So all hospitals are willing to pay extra for travel nurses but not to their own nurses to keep them. How fecked up and nonsensical is that?
 
AllGoodNamesRGone said:
The latest I have seen from covidiots is “the NHS is protect us not for us to protect it”. I think it’s safe to presume these are the people not getting vaccinated and ending up hospitalised.
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The NHS is protecting them, by offering free vaccinations. Can't protect them by putting them on ventilators, so just send them straight home if unvaccinated.
 
mav_9me said:
I am currently seeing it in my ICU.

The thing that infuriates me is our hospital administration and so many others don't value the nurses they have, dont adjust pay, make them work overtime for only a little extra and then of course they leave for better paying travel jobs. Which is practically every hospital. So all hospitals are willing to pay extra for travel nurses but not to their own nurses to keep them. How fecked up and nonsensical is that?
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Yes! The hospital system my wife works for literally cut their pay back at the start of May. This was after changing the rules for receiving “Covid pay” multiple times. It started as “you work in the Covid ICU = you get Covid pay”. Then it became based on treating 1 Covid patient your entire shift. Then based on if you had 2 Covid patients for the entire shift. One shift, my wife had a Covid patient die 45 mins before shift change, so they took away her Covid pay for the entire shift because of that.

To top it off, they hired so many travel nurses, who by contract must work, that when patient census went down, they were also sending the nurses actually employed by the hospital home (frequently with no pay) to make room for the travelers.
 
Carolina Red said:
Yes! The hospital system my wife works for literally cut their pay back at the start of May. This was after changing the rules for receiving “Covid pay” multiple times. It started as “you work in the Covid ICU = you get Covid pay”. Then it became based on treating 1 Covid patients your entire shift. Then based on if you had 2 number of Covid patients for the entire shift. One shift, my wife had a Covid patient die 45 mins before shift change, so they took away her Covid pay for the entire shift because of that.

To top it off, they hired so many travel nurses, who by contract must work, that when patient census went down, they were also sending the nurses actually employed by the hospital home (frequently with no pay) to make room for the travelers.
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:eek::eek::eek:

wow. Could not make it up.
 
Pretty big drop off in cases in the UK from the same time last week - down almost 10,000 from 48,553 to 39,906. Most probably the school holiday impact.
 
groovyalbert said:
Pretty big drop off in cases in the UK from the same time last week - down almost 10,000 from 48,553 to 39,906. Most probably the school holiday impact.
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Whatever’s behind it that’s great news. Almost out of the woods in terms of any Euros surge too.

EDIT: Obviously 5 day average the best way to get a handle on what’s actually happening.
 
groovyalbert said:
Pretty big drop off in cases in the UK from the same time last week - down almost 10,000 from 48,553 to 39,906. Most probably the school holiday impact.
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Schools and colleges are closing, students have mostly gone home. There was a blip upwards in the case curve during the Euros, but it faded as fast. The warm weather will have helped, it's a lot easier to follow advice to meet outside when it's like this.

We don't know what impact the wider reopening will have yet, or whether the age demographics will change. That'll show up next week.

Meanwhile even one dose of a vaccine will have an impact, on the younger ones it'll have an impact about two weeks after the jab.

All my instincts say it's time to offer incentives for getting the jab and give better support for people quarantining. We won't stop the anti-vaxers and the covid deniers from spouting idiocy, but we can encourage the apathetic and we can assist the ones who would take up a walk-in option if it was a van in the supermarket carpark rather than a trip across town to a football stadium.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I hope I wasn’t downplaying what she went through. I’m sure everyone’s experience is different and ITU nurses must have got it worst of all.
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I definitely didn’t mean to make it seem that way. Apologies.

I just wanted to point out that this experience is different, due to the frequency of dying patients and prolonged nature of the pandemic, and it is seriously mentally affecting nurses who have already been conditioned to seeing the worst cases.
 
decorativeed said:
Health care workers such as your wife and a couple of friends I have over here are a rare breed. I certainly wouldn't want to do what they do in normal times. They go above and beyond what can be considered a job or a career and we are in danger of taking them for granted and losing them with very few people willing or capable of taking their place
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More than 60% (yes that many) of the senior team of Doctors at my Wife's work place have decided to go part time due to the influx of extra patients and less staff to deal with them since Covid began. They are burnt out. Most of them don't plan to return to work full time and some are thinking of changing careers or leaving for Australian and US healthcare systems which actually pays doctors what they are worth making the hardship somewhat acceptable.
 
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