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

stw2022 said:
Case numbers show early signs of levelling off, maybe indication spread among younger people is down due to vaccine push in July and August?
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Plus the infections in the June-August - a couple of million of those probably. Now add in the fact that people aren't quite back to old normal and the fact there does seem to be a self-moderating action kicking in following major surge events. Quite a few variables moving in different directions - particularly if you try and include waning vaccine efficiency and boosters in there.

Complicated picture, but not the unremitting gloom that some people imagine when they see the headline number.
 
stw2022 said:
But that won’t be the case the argument will then shift to waning immunity. I’m sure back in spring people then arguing that some summer we would be able to lift restrictions due to level of vulnerable people vaccinated are now arguing for continuing restrictions despite that threshold being met. There will always be an argument why restrictions make sense for some. They’re not wrong at all but some do appear to be in position where you wonder if there’ll ever argue any different.
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Waning immunity will only be an issue if cases surge again. Which hopefully won’t happen. Israel’s current surge seems to be driven by their relatively high % of unvaccinated rather than waning immunity (which is not to say that it isn’t a real thing, just not a major problem).

Over last 7 days the number in hospital with COVID has increased by 594 to 8256. But in that period over 6049 have been admitted with the virus showing that even for those hospitalised they do not seem to be staying very long in the main
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That’s always been the case. And we’re getting better and better at managing covid patients, hence admissions are likely shorter now than in previous waves. Plus vaccinated patients are likely to bounce back quicker.

ICU bed occupation is a more useful metric anyway.
 
stw2022 said:
But that won’t be the case the argument will then shift to waning immunity. I’m sure back in spring people then arguing that over summer we would be able to lift restrictions due to level of vulnerable people vaccinated are now arguing for continuing restrictions despite that threshold being met. There will always be an argument why restrictions make sense for some. They’re not wrong at all but some do appear to be in position where you wonder if there’ll ever argue any different.

Over last 7 days the number in hospital with COVID has increased by 594 to 8256. But in that period over 6049 have been admitted with the virus showing that even for those hospitalised they do not seem to be staying very long in the main
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That’s still over 6000 admitted in a time of year where if there weren’t restrictions you’d also have flu admissions etc. That’s before the system even thinks about elective surgery.
 
golden_blunder said:
That’s still over 6000 admitted in a time of year where if there weren’t restrictions you’d also have flu admissions etc. That’s before the system even thinks about elective surgery.
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I had to go to A&E with my partner on Saturday morning and it was genuinely like a third world country. A&E is grim at the best of times, but I’ve never experienced it like that. I don’t know how much of that is purely funding issues, extra Covid patients or them just having a busy day, but it’s not sustainable.

You’d have thought patient care can’t just be measured by how many beds are empty in wards.
 
Dan_F said:
I had to go to A&E with my partner on Saturday morning and it was genuinely like a third world country. A&E is grim at the best of times, but I’ve never experienced it like that. I don’t know how much of that is purely funding issues, extra Covid patients or them just having a busy day, but it’s not sustainable.

You’d have thought patient care can’t just be measured by how many beds are empty in wards.
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Yeah too much burden on resources and staff. It’s not sustainable. Call me paranoid but how long before Tories start saying we can’t do it alone and start selling off to insurance companies

hope your partner is ok
 
golden_blunder said:
Call me paranoid but how long before Tories start saying we can’t do it alone and start selling off to insurance companies
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It's already starting, this is just the tip of the iceberg. It's one of the reasons why I'm against the vaccine passports for domestic use, once you open the door for government access to give an inch then there will be plenty of opportunity for them to take a mile.
 
F-Red said:
It's already starting, this is just the tip of the iceberg. It's one of the reasons why I'm against the vaccine passports for domestic use, once you open the door for government access to give an inch then there will be plenty of opportunity for them to take a mile.
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Fortunately that particular policy has been indefinitely postponed due to backlash.
 
F-Red said:
Yeah, I'm still waiting on the part where they'll devolve the decision to local NHS trusts and they'll try and manage on the QT.
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The whole thing was a joke and they also made opting out deliberately convoluted and misleading. There were at least two opt-out forms to fill and only one was possible to do online. The second required filling out a form which was difficult to find on the NHS website. Requesting said forms took several months from NHS Digital.

This is aside from the fact that most of your medical data is not available on the NHS app and for the data which is, it requires accepting a third party (Patients Know Best) whose role in delivering this service is not particularly clear to me either.
 
Pogue Mahone said:


So cases are falling in UK and Ireland after schools reopened.
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It does seem like it’s just a case of kids not being as good a vehicle for spreading the disease as adults or at least the whole bubble thing whether an actual system of natural behaviour of kids grouping into classes and friendship circles.

When kids are off school, adults go on holiday, adults go around other peoples houses with the kids, go to cinemas, restaurants, bowling alleys, shopping centres etc etc and there’s just a magnitude more opportunities for any individual to cross paths with people they normally wouldn’t.
 
Pexbo said:
It does seem like it’s just a case of kids not being as good a vehicle for spreading the disease as adults or at least the whole bubble thing whether an actual system of natural behaviour of kids grouping into classes and friendship circles.

When kids are off school, adults go on holiday, adults go around other peoples houses with the kids, go to cinemas, restaurants, bowling alleys, shopping centres etc etc and there’s just a magnitude more opportunities for any individual to cross paths with people they normally wouldn’t.
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It's a big moment data wise and not easy to call as a lot depends on how many kids/parents/teachers are vaxxed or have had covid already. Between the vaccine and prior infection, some places/groups will have a kind of functional herd immunity in place.

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Those are cases rather than case rates. It's worth noting that cases are lower now than they were on the day that restrictions were removed. Night clubs, festivals, full football matches didn't really change things.

Schools, colleges and life moving indoors will, but no one knows by how much. Hospitals are under sustained pressure at the moment. So what the system can tolerate depends on who catches it - if they're mostly under 40, or under 75 if vaxxed we're ok. Though obviously the unlucky, the unvaxxed, and the ones with impaired immune systems who end up hospitalised or dead won't be quite so "on average" minded.

The heat map for case rates (cases per 100k) gives a different angle on some things, that's on:
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=nation&areaName=England
The
 
I know its Stephen Nolan but this guy is heartbreaking to listen to, lost his wife and daughter (only 32) to Covid over the weekend. They weren't vaccinated.

 
madzo2007 said:
I know its Stephen Nolan but this guy is heartbreaking to listen to, lost his wife and daughter (only 32) to Covid over the weekend. They weren't vaccinated.

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These types of stories seem to have the opposite impact on the anti vaxxers as they then point to stories where people have had vaccines have also died. It's very difficult to change their minds despite the fact in this story the vaccine probably would have saved their lives.
 
Stack said:
I do worry about one thing and it was an important point Pogue mentioned a bit back and thats while we will get up to 80% vaccinated we wont also have the added protection of a certain portion of the population immune due to having had the virus. 80% vaccinated here still means 1 million people not vaccinated and thats a decent number of people not protected. The largest group of at risk are our Pacifica population and they mostly live in our biggest city of 1.6 million people. They have large extended families and often have more than 6 people per household. I think we might see some significant hospitalisation once we are mostly vaccinated and start to open up.
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Plus NZ and AU aren't willing to accept the mass deaths that many places around the world have. Some will occur of course but .....
 
2mufc0 said:
These types of stories seem to have the opposite impact on the anti vaxxers as they then point to stories where people have had vaccines have also died. It's very difficult to change their minds despite the fact in this story the vaccine probably would have saved their lives.
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F-Red said:
It's already starting, this is just the tip of the iceberg. It's one of the reasons why I'm against the vaccine passports for domestic use, once you open the door for government access to give an inch then there will be plenty of opportunity for them to take a mile.
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The problem is the Tories, not the vaccine passports. Off-topic, but the UK has been steadily privatising the NHS for many years, it started in the late 1980s with the introduction of NHS Trusts which were to be run like businesses. I worked all through that time in NHS management and I know exactly how things went wrong.

When your raw material is people, you can't run things as if you're in manufacturing industry. Here's an example from the early days - I sat through many high-level meetings hearing the top brass berating hospital managers for missing targets on outpatient cancelled appointments. Two hospitals were held up as great examples of Trusts which had low levels of cancelled appointments - they were both cancer hospitals. Anyone with half a brain cell would realise that if you have cancer, you're far less likely to miss your appointments than if you're just going for a check-up on your hip surgery or whatever. This didn't seem to occur to the Tory-appointed grandees.
 
11101 said:
Italy set to become the first country in Europe to make the Covid pass mandatory for all workers. Can't say I'm not fully in support of this, it's already difficult to do things if you're not vaccinated and it's a good way of weeding the anti vaxxers out.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europ...n-pass-mandatory-workers-minister-2021-09-15/
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I just do not agree with it. How does it help to educate anti-vaxxers? It just risks making them more distrustful and more likely to believe other conspiracies.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Woah!

I’m as pro-vax as it comes but that seems a bit extreme.
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You don't need to be vaccinated to get the pass. You can do a test every 48 hours. They will be free for anybody who can't get the vaccine, and those who choose not to will pay a maximum of 15 euros.


0le said:
I just do not agree with it. How does it help to educate anti-vaxxers? It just risks making them more distrustful and more likely to believe other conspiracies.
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We've had plenty of carrot here with education campaigns. Now it's time for the stick. It's no longer about educating the anti-vaxxers, it's about removing them from society. I've little issue with that.
 
11101 said:
We've had plenty of carrot here with education campaigns. Now it's time for the stick. It's no longer about educating the anti-vaxxers, it's about removing them from society. I've little issue with that.
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Yes, "remove them from society" because they disagree with you :rolleyes:.
 
0le said:
Yes, "remove them from society" because they disagree with you :rolleyes:.
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They don't disagree with anyone, this isn't an opinion this about them being a danger to society. Some will have genuine reasons not to get Vaxed but many have nome beyond hearsay, anecdotal evidence and false science.
 
0le said:
Yes, "remove them from society" because they disagree with you :rolleyes:.
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It's not really a case of disagreeing with just me, is it?

Un-vaccinated people can still go into work, they just need to prove they are not carrying Covid.
 
groovyalbert said:
Do Covid passes require you to have had the vaccine though? Or just a recent negative PCR test?
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Vaccine, test within the last 48 hours, or recently recovered from Covid, I think in the last 6 months but could be wrong.
 
11101 said:
Vaccine, test within the last 48 hours, or recently recovered from Covid, I think in the last 6 months but could be wrong.
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That's not a bad approach. One way or another it asks everyone to cooperate for the common good, and keeps the focus on health and infection control.

Putting all the focus onto the vaccine can actually rally up resistance, whereas what you want to do is push the hesitant (and the indifferent) and isolate the actual anti-vaxxers.
 
0le said:
Yes, "remove them from society" because they disagree with you :rolleyes:.
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It’s not about disagreeing with any one person, and the “remove them from society” comment was unnecessarily harsh, but I don’t disagree with freedom of movement being dependent on Covid vaccination status or a negative test result.

It’s about willingly opposing science to the detriment of the society which will still have your back if you get sick, and putting those around you at risk because you know more than the entire science community.

At what point can a society expect something back from its citizens? Isn’t the entire point of a society that people have rights but also obligations? And if they do indeed have obligations, when do they come into play if not in a global health crisis? I mean, it’s not as if all the people drafted to participate in war were like “wohooo get the feck in there”. They did what was their duty at the time, regardless of what they thought of it, and if they didn’t they were convicted for desertion. Nowadays, the punishment for not doing what society has decided is one’s obligation isn’t a prison sentence, but a 15€ fine every two days (cost of PCR test) and people think that’s oppressive.

Get the feck out.
 
Anustart89 said:
It’s not about disagreeing with any one person, and the “remove them from society” comment was unnecessarily harsh, but I don’t disagree with freedom of movement being dependent on Covid vaccination status or a negative test result.

It’s about willingly opposing science to the detriment of the society which will still have your back if you get sick, and putting those around you at risk because you know more than the entire science community.

At what point can a society expect something back from its citizens? Isn’t the entire point of a society that people have rights but also obligations? And if they do indeed have obligations, when do they come into play if not in a global health crisis? I mean, it’s not as if all the people drafted to participate in war were like “wohooo get the feck in there”. They did what was their duty at the time, regardless of what they thought of it, and if they didn’t they were convicted for desertion. Nowadays, the punishment for not doing what society has decided is one’s obligation isn’t a prison sentence, but a 15€ fine every two days (cost of PCR test) and people think that’s oppressive.

Get the feck out.
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What are you even talking about. What has participation in a war got to do with anything? We are already at nearly 90% uptake for the first dose vaccine:

_120589563_optimised-vaccine_doses_nation16sep-nc.png


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55274833

What exactly is the point of rolling out a vaccine passport when the overwhelming majority of people have already taken some form of action?
 
0le said:
What are you even talking about. What has participation in a war got to do with anything? We are already at nearly 90% uptake for the first dose vaccine:

_120589563_optimised-vaccine_doses_nation16sep-nc.png


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55274833

What exactly is the point of rolling out a vaccine passport when the overwhelming majority of people have already taken some form of action?
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Another question is how many of the remaining 10% are actually anti-vaccine?
 
Anustart89 said:
It’s not about disagreeing with any one person, and the “remove them from society” comment was unnecessarily harsh, but I don’t disagree with freedom of movement being dependent on Covid vaccination status or a negative test result.

It’s about willingly opposing science to the detriment of the society which will still have your back if you get sick, and putting those around you at risk because you know more than the entire science community.

At what point can a society expect something back from its citizens? Isn’t the entire point of a society that people have rights but also obligations? And if they do indeed have obligations, when do they come into play if not in a global health crisis? I mean, it’s not as if all the people drafted to participate in war were like “wohooo get the feck in there”. They did what was their duty at the time, regardless of what they thought of it, and if they didn’t they were convicted for desertion. Nowadays, the punishment for not doing what society has decided is one’s obligation isn’t a prison sentence, but a 15€ fine every two days (cost of PCR test) and people think that’s oppressive.

Get the feck out.
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feck me you’d have been fun during enlistment. :lol: If 90% had just cracked on and gone to war you’d be over the fecking moon at the response, not cracking the whip like a fecking psychopath trying to find the feckers who need punishing for being terrified of war or other psychological issues for wanting to sidestep it.
90% so far are ”doing their bit”, a decent percentage of the remaining likely can’t, else have genuine reasons for not doing so, such as previous bad experiences with medicines or false diagnosis etc.

But hey man, crack the whip and ensure for the rest of time that 90%+ that extra 3-4 percent get that fecking jab in them, it’ll make all the difference.

So many acting like a bunch of psychopaths over this. I very much doubt the “feck you cnuts, do it or feck off and get fined every day” is ever going to be a helpful way to live or to change the opinion of a tiny percentage.
 
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11101 said:
Italy set to become the first country in Europe to make the Covid pass mandatory for all workers. Can't say I'm not fully in support of this, it's already difficult to do things if you're not vaccinated and it's a good way of weeding the anti vaxxers out.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europ...n-pass-mandatory-workers-minister-2021-09-15/
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It was suggested a couple of weeks ago that this would happen. The argument is that if some people have to be vaccinated at work, then it's fair for everyone to be vaccinated at work. I'm also in favour of it, as long as people with medical exemptions can be properly identified and not discriminated against.
 
0le said:
What are you even talking about. What has participation in a war got to do with anything? We are already at nearly 90% uptake for the first dose vaccine:

_120589563_optimised-vaccine_doses_nation16sep-nc.png


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55274833

What exactly is the point of rolling out a vaccine passport when the overwhelming majority of people have already taken some form of action?
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Then the majority can go to work. Work places have a responsibility for their workers too.
anti-vaxxers can still get a pass if they come through covid
 
Ireland doing away with “close contact” at end of the month. Looks like they can’t handle the scale of kids getting tested in flu season
 


Interesting thread on possible origins. I had no idea there were so many of these CoVs trying to jump to people all the time.
 
golden_blunder said:
Then the majority can go to work. Work places have a responsibility for their workers too.
anti-vaxxers can still get a pass if they come through covid
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So you support an idea to enforce a scheme in the UK which encourages people to have a vaccination, even though most of those people have already had a vaccination. I cannot see how that is an effective way to spend our time, money and effort in the UK.
 
0le said:
So you support an idea to enforce a scheme in the UK which encourages people to have a vaccination, even though most of those people have already had a vaccination. I cannot see how that is an effective way to spend our time, money and effort in the UK.
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I’m speaking hypothetically because we all know BoJo manages by reading daily mail headlines so it’s not going to come to pass
 
Schools going back and return of fans at grounds doesn’t seem to be driving up infections
 
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