Yeah, we’ve got through this current wave incredibly lightly, all things considered. While the UK’s decision to crack on basically as normal has been vindicated, our 8pm closing will probably look overly cautious with hindsight. Even though it didn’t seem particularly crazy at the time (due to uncertainties about how nasty omicron would turn out)
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
Yeah, we’ve got through this current wave incredibly lightly, all things considered. While the UK’s decision to crack on basically as normal has been vindicated, our 8pm closing will probably look overly cautious with hindsight. Even though it didn’t seem particularly crazy at the time (due to uncertainties about how nasty omicron would turn out)
A closing hour for pubs and restaurants is not an effective or proportional measure imo. It's 11pm here in Belgium but I barely see anyone actually going home when the pubs close. People just go to someone's home where there is less control on their behaviour as well (I'm guilty of that myself as well so definitely not judging). I get the line of thinking that boundaries disappear and behaviour changes when you're drunk but in the grand scheme of things it's just one of those measures that doesn't make a difference (or not enough of a difference to be reasonably upheld for a long period of time).
It wasn't cautious, it was stupid (imo). I doubt it had any real effect. Seriously, people just went to house parties instead, or went to the pub earlier. My local is absolutely rammed all day at the weekends and then people cram out of it at 8pm and straight into the off license beside it. Was there even any tangible science behind the move? Hopefully they remove the rule soon because it's pointless keeping it now.
It is not a particularly surprising result given that tiny (water) droplets evaporate quickly in air. Indeed, for this reason, you may add glycerol to increase their lifetime.
Also, ventilation will give two affects: Dispersion of particulates and influencing in some way the evaporation rate of liquid content in the droplets [ref, quote below]. It is likely to be a complex interplay of different physics so saying one or the other is significantly more or less important is probably not a good approach for any group to take.
A better approach is to carry out a risk assessment for each room of a given building and determine solutions appropriate for the room. For example, if there is a meeting room where the meetings are held for sustained periods of time (> 1hr), masks become less effective [ref] and ventilation or air conditioning with appropriate filtration is appropriate. For this reason I did not understand the hysteria from a recent BBC article where children were cold in school with the windows left open. It is an unenviable task to have to make decisions like this.
Not demonstrated just yet. From the article:
In fairness, case numbers has very little meaning. And as for deaths, you can't go off those nonsense "official" figures on worldometres, you must go from the current "gold standard" which is excess mortality..... https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker
The UK are way behind Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Romania, Poland, Latvia, Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary, Czech.
And they are also behind Italy, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia.
This daft feck was back in the limelight today, managing to contradict himself at several points.
Has no response to the notion he is putting those he is supposed to be protecting at risk through his actions, and seems to believe having 90% of people disagreeing with you doesn't put you in the minority
This daft feck was back in the limelight today, managing to contradict himself at several points.
Has no response to the notion he is putting those he is supposed to be protecting at risk through his actions, and seems to believe having 90% of people disagreeing with you doesn't put you in the minority
His argument is all over the place. Seems like a weirdo tbh. Pity he’s getting so much air time. Fair play to Dr Hilary for going in hard on his responsibility to his patients.
What a plonker. What about the voices of those elderly people that risked death because of his idiotic voice and those of the 1 out of 10 other plonkers? Surely the government needs to reach out to commonwealth countries to start replacing these twats ASAP.
I don't see the point in having any restrictions anymore. Cases are exploding despite lockdown, let nature take its course.
I can't find anything saying Snoop Dogg has ever tested positive so this must true.
Can I book a fast PCR or antigen test at Manchester airport when I visit Manchester in february? Can't seem to find anything for foreigners. Only people leaving the UK. It's called a Day 2 test but as i read it, you don't have to take it on day 2 and it can even be a self test now? How do they check the results or am i misreading?
Last edited:
Worth mentioning that aerosols can travel a fair distance in 5 minutes, and lots of stuffy rooms can have relatively high humidity allowing for greater survival. It is encouraging though, and probably helps explain why it doesn't seem to regularly spread room-to-room.
https://www.manchesterairport.co.uk/coronavirus/arrivals-testing/
It'll give you two providers to book with (Collinson or Randox) and how to do that.
Cheers!
Father is positive but after 24 hours his symptoms have subsided. Now my mother has symptoms for half a day and seems fine. What is the appropriate time to isolate for us after this please? I’ve been exposed to both of them but no symptoms yet. Google throws up mixed results.. assuming the caf would have the best known answer..
Poland have done quite amazing on COVID front in that we've managed to keep death toll at 400 per day for the last 6 weeks with hospitals completely overwhelmed with nobody really giving a feck. Our politicians have done great job at shifting the blame to medical personnel who are possibly the most hated group in Poland now (my uncle works in a COVID hospital and he's basically getting death threats every week now for being part of conspiracy).
Varies from country to country. 5 days in US, 7 days in Ireland. I would say 5 days reasonable if their symptoms were over so quickly. A negative antigen before mingling again would give good reassurance.
Alright. Thank you.
You can do it at any point up to 2 days after arrival and you need the reference number for the UK PLF. If you have an old reference from a previous test you can usually re-use that and skip buying a new one, not that I would suggest you do anything of the sort.
https://www.britishairways.com/en-it/information/incident/coronavirus/covid19-tests
I would strongly recommend waiting until a few days before departure to book as the rules change so frequently and you wont get a refund.
Succumbed to the 'rona.
Forget how "mild" symptoms can still be pretty awful. Worst head cold ever but glad not to be in ITU
Obviously not at all discounting the benefits of getting the booster which are clear as day but anybody know vaccine efficacy of booster in terms of latest real world data? I got boosted in early October so probably bit of waning but literally every single person family member I know has had close contact and contracted the damn thing (obvious anecdata but wondering if vaccine efficacy numbers for symptomatic disease even in that 1-2 month period are a bit lower than what's currently being said)
Forget how "mild" symptoms can still be pretty awful. Worst head cold ever but glad not to be in ITU
Obviously not at all discounting the benefits of getting the booster which are clear as day but anybody know vaccine efficacy of booster in terms of latest real world data? I got boosted in early October so probably bit of waning but literally every single person family member I know has had close contact and contracted the damn thing (obvious anecdata but wondering if vaccine efficacy numbers for symptomatic disease even in that 1-2 month period are a bit lower than what's currently being said)
Can’t find it easily but saw a pre-print recently which concluded that recency of vaccine is by far most important factor in protection vs symptomatic illness with omicron. At three months out from the booster there’s a good chance your protection vs transmission is low to non-existent.
Obviously, protection vs serious illness more persistent (shout out to T and B cells!)
Having said that, my own anecdata includes a number of households where boosted inviduals (1-2 months out from last jab) have swerved the virus (when unvaccinated kid was index case) These were all mRNA boost to mRNA original vaccine.
40-50% 10+ weeks. 50-70% 5-9 weeks, depending which vaccines.
I know a few people who have now contracted the virus in the past few days despite having been boosted a month ago. I don't believe any had tested positive at any point during the pandemic up until this point and all feeling relatively fine.
Are we now close to the point (in the UK at least) where getting the virus is a virtual inevitability? It's surely now mainly about how you protect yourself (vaccines/boosters, healthy lifestyle, etc) in the build up to this.
*Should add that the positives mentioned have all been in people who have had a Pfizerx2, Moderna vaccination history
Are we now close to the point (in the UK at least) where getting the virus is a virtual inevitability? It's surely now mainly about how you protect yourself (vaccines/boosters, healthy lifestyle, etc) in the build up to this.
*Should add that the positives mentioned have all been in people who have had a Pfizerx2, Moderna vaccination history
Cheers!
I've seen some stuff recently on them investigating what gives rise to the odds ratio for symptomatic infection - personal susceptibility v leakiness. That is whether it protects 50% of people really well against infection (in which case can we tell who is susceptible) or if it depends on something else like the viral load of the contact or the environment where you get exposed to it (in which case can we make the risk activity/location advice more specific). I don't think anyone has the answer on that yet.
A really interesting (and mainly understandable to me) article explaining how our immune system works and the differences between how B and T cells respond to viruses. There's a bit on the end which explains that T cells can spot more of the virus (hence the longer lasting protection against varients), but with the MRNA vaccines only introducing them to the spike protein, means that there is only a limited amount of protection against major mutations when the response hasn't experience the rest of the virus yet.
It lends some evidence that a mixture of traditional and MRNA vaccines may be a good longer term protection?
https://arstechnica.com/science/202...y-omicron-had-experts-worried-form-the-start/
It lends some evidence that a mixture of traditional and MRNA vaccines may be a good longer term protection?
https://arstechnica.com/science/202...y-omicron-had-experts-worried-form-the-start/
I actually don't think Fauci and the CDC would be able to argue this point given their recent public statements
Most people will end up with good long term protection from a combination of vaccine and infection. Ideally in that order.
Good summary of covid in-patients in Ireland. 71% not receiving any oxygen at all!
Great news. Can only imagine the ICU numbers right now without our vaccination rates. Even if we only had the sort of numbers as some other European countries (75%) we'd be fecked.
Yeah, good to see some obvious upsides from our extremely high vaccine take up. Because it did feck all to keep case numbers down!
You say that, but I know a lot of people (myself included) who have been in direct contact, even isolating with, people who had Covid... and they didn't get it. That's surely the vaccines at work. We'd probably be at a fecking 80% positivity rate or something mad without them
You say that, but I know a lot of people (myself included) who have been in direct contact, even isolating with, people who had Covid... and they didn't get it. That's surely the vaccines at work. We'd probably be at a fecking 80% positivity rate or something mad without them
Yeah, true. I‘m sure it helped. Mind boggling to think where we’d be at otherwise.
What is the point of the vaccinations really though, they don't even block 100% of transmission
The most offensive thing there is the capitalisation of .Com