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

jojojo said:
The 2022 image is essentially a snapshot of omicron (and tailend of delta) in the UK. It uses the ONS (populated balanced) measure for covid infections and the ONS death stats. They've built a lag into the case-death analysis, so we'll see further updates to the stat over the next couple of months.

The broad picture is probably fair though - at least for the UK, where most people are double or treble vaxxed and most of the others have had at least one infection.
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So taking into account the unvaccinated that skew that 2022 fatality picture quite considerably, it's probably fair to say there is no longer much/any additional risk from Omicron to a fully vaccinated person.

In which case its time to go back to normal.

Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Ah, so the John Hopkins paper there is making it all up?
Bollox

Plenty of European countries took what you call brave, but I call reckless decisions.
They just weren’t an isolated country in the middle of an ocean.
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They may not have prevented many Covid deaths in isolation, I could see that being true, but that paper totally fails to account for what would have happened when hospitals ran out of capacity for both Covid and other illnesses, and how the lockdowns delayed many cases until vaccinations arrived.

Just because a reputable institution publishes something doesn't always mean its right.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Ah, so the John Hopkins paper there is making it all up?
Bollox

Plenty of European countries took what you call brave, but I call reckless decisions.
They just weren’t an isolated country in the middle of an ocean.
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Clearly the European and US lockdowns weren't strict enough. In the UK for example we didn't even have the military patroling the streets, supermarkets were still open as championed super-spreader events and we were permitted to go for an outdoor walk, alone, once a day. Families were also allowed to mix with each other within the same household. Lessons learned I guess.

In case it wasn't obvious.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
The case of Israel shines a shit load of doubt on this. Nothing was half arsed about their approach, they just once again, were not an island in the middle of an ocean. Despite being miles ahead of everyone with mass vaccination, an excess mortality of almost 90 /100,000, very much in line with many EU countries with a similar population size.
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Israeli spread is driven by segments of the population who have ignored regulation to atvleast some degree, particularly Arabic and Hasadic communities who live in high density conditions and who to a greater degree continued to attend high density social events.
 
finneh said:
Clearly the European and US lockdowns weren't strict enough. In the UK for example we didn't even have the military patroling the streets, supermarkets were still open as championed super-spreader events and we were permitted to go for an outdoor walk, alone, once a day. Families were also allowed to mix with each other within the same household. Lessons learned I guess.

In case it wasn't obvious.
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UK lockdowns were OK but doing feck all to prevent infection from overseas made it far less effective than it should have been.
 
We still have both an indoor and an outdoor mask mandate in Italy - I'm not really seeing much sense in the outdoor one unless you're in a big crowd, but it is what it is. People seem to comply with it very well.
 
Europe, including the UK, has effectively functioned as one country for a long time. Goods movement, business, workforces and families sprawl across borders. In early 2020, by the time people realised that the ski resorts etc were in trouble it was too late - the families were already home from half-term holidays.

The first lockdown did what it had to in the UK - stopped hospitals collapsing, and got some PPE to places that needed it.

The second/alpha wave lockdown was left too late in the UK, but ultimately bought a bit of time for the vaccine rollout to start. The earlier (regional) lockdowns in 2020 on the other hand were mostly ineffectual, before becoming resented and ignored.

Controls since the vaccine rolled out? Again, things that bought time for more vaccinations in undervaxxed groups - particularly during the Delta wave were useful.

In England, those official controls were mostly ceremonial. The real controls were being done by individuals and families who basically did not go back to business as usual. In Scotland and Wales they tried to do more, but vaccine passports, masks etc didn't seem to affect outcomes very much.

The only things that have really affected outcomes are vaccination and the actions that bought time for vaccination. I'm not sure what countries are buying time for now with border controls and lockdowns. If it's to keep hospital numbers manageable I understand it, otherwise no.

So this study's idea that lockdowns, school closures etc did nothing - no, I don't agree. In the first half of 2020 they were all we had. In the winter of 20/21 we needed to use them tactically to protect hospitals and start vaccinating.

If we hadn't vaccinated most of our vulnerable population before Delta arrived it would have been a nightmare, even if we used the lockdown card again.
 
Penna said:
We still have both an indoor and an outdoor mask mandate in Italy - I'm not really seeing much sense in the outdoor one unless you're in a big crowd, but it is what it is. People seem to comply with it very well.
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When do you think that will end?
 
jojojo said:
When do you think that will end?
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10 February is the current expiry date, it's being extended on a rolling basis a week or two at a time. Cases are dropping and the hospitalisation wave never really happened so I don't think they will keep it for much longer.
 
11101 said:
10 February is the current expiry date, it's being extended on a rolling basis a week or two at a time. Cases are dropping and the hospitalisation wave never really happened so I don't think they will keep it for much longer.
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It's not easy for glasses wearers, but I now have my FFP2 technique perfected!
 
The paper that the village idiot shared is unsurprisingly getting destroyed on Twitter.
 
massi83 said:
The paper that the village idiot shared is unsurprisingly getting destroyed on Twitter.
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You can see why. The whole basis for their argument seems to be that because of a lock of concrete evidence that lockdowns saved lives this means lockdowns definitely didn’t save lives. Which is obviously a flawed hypothesis.

It’s also a weird meta-analysis. They claim to have reviewed 18590 studies, yet only 24 of them satisfied their criteria for inclusion. Maybe they need to have a rethink about their criteria?!
 
In England, we now have more people in hospital "with" covid than "of" covid. That's not to minimise how serious an issue "with covid" is, as a minimum it complicates things for the hospitals and it adds to the risks and discomfort of the people affected (potentially disastrously in some cases).

Still, it shows how different this wave is. Plus, it helps explain why hospital bed numbers aren't falling quite as fast as might have been expected. Incidentally, this will also make the "28 day following positive test" death numbers difficult to interpret, and why the ONS cause of death data will be the thing to watch when it comes to understanding Omicron in the UK

 
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202202/1251557.shtml

As long as China has no new measures to prevent the imported strains of the coronavirus from triggering large-scale transmission and with no effective way to contain the epidemic, the country will not adjust its dynamic zero-tolerance policy for now, because relying on only vaccines cannot contain COVID-19, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Global Times in an exclusive interview.

Responding to the question whether vaccinating 70 percent of the global population could end the acute phase of the pandemic, Wu said such an assertion is still open to discussion. Ahead of the fourth wave of the pandemic, many countries in Europe have already reached 70 percent total vaccination, and some countries like Germany, France and the UK have vaccination rates above 70 percent, but the occurrence of Omicron with breakthrough cases challenges the concept of herd immunity.
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the official chinese line
 
berbatrick said:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202202/1251557.shtml



the official chinese line
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The policy has already been adjusted. Previously they called it "zero-tolerance policy", now it's "dynamic zero-tolerance policy". They also assign a new definition to "dynamic zero-tolerance policy". It's just another example of CCP refusing to admit their mistakes by manipulating phrases, like they still claim they are running "SOCIALISM with Chinese characteristics".
 
hmchan said:
The policy has already been adjusted. Previously they called it "zero-tolerance policy", now it's "dynamic zero-tolerance policy". They also assign a new definition to "dynamic zero-tolerance policy". It's just another example of CCP refusing to admit their mistakes by manipulating phrases, like they still claim they are running "SOCIALISM with Chinese characteristics".
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What has changed on the ground? They still seem to be doing massive but relatively short lockdowns whenever they discover cases...
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
https://amp.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jan/31/lockdowns-had-little-or-no-impact-covid-19-deaths-/



Paper: https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/f...ffects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality.pdf

What a surprise, I’ll take all your apologies now innit. And the real shitty thing, the true price of these devastating policies is still to come.
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There’s some excellent critiques of this




none of the covid contrarians who have been regurgitating that paper responded to any of the above
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Haven’t doom posted in here for ages. Oh well. Here goes.

This is… a bit of a worry?
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Does the article break it down into age groups? And as a layman I'm not even sure what it's telling me. Something about the heart.
 
What happened to the mutation of Omicron that was being reported in some countries last week? Nothing to worry about or too early to tell?
 
Dumbstar said:
Does the article break it down into age groups? And as a layman I'm not even sure what it's telling me. Something about the heart.
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The graph on the right has various bad cardiac outcomes and whether having covid increases your risk of experiencing them, one year later. Dotted line means no increased risk. The further to the right of that the higher the risk. Green = “mild” covid. Orange = hospitalised. Purple = ICU.
 
FootballHQ said:
What happened to the mutation of Omicron that was being reported in some countries last week? Nothing to worry about or too early to tell?
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Last I heard it was potentially more transmissible (based on Danish data I think) but no more harmful (although we may not have enough data to know yet).
 
Pogue Mahone said:
The graph on the right has various bad cardiac outcomes and whether having covid increases your risk of experiencing them, one year later. Dotted line means no increased risk. The further to the right of that the higher the risk. Green = “mild” covid. Orange = hospitalised. Purple = ICU.
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So non-hospitalised (green) had a significantly raised risk, hospitalised (orange) had a much bigger increased risk and ICU admitted (purple) had a massively increased risk? Am I reading that right?
 
Wibble said:
So non-hospitalised (green) had a significantly raised risk, hospitalised (orange) had a much bigger increased risk and ICU admitted (purple) had a massively increased risk? Am I reading that right?
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Basically, yes. The big caveat is they collected all their data from a US army veterans healthcare database, so the average age was mid 60s.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Basically, yes. The big caveat is they collected all their data from a US army veterans healthcare database, so the average age was mid 60s.
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I get it now, thanks. Amazing how many people didn't/don't want the vaccine and would rather 'ride it out'.

As you know my wife, and specially teenage daughter, got unhospitalised long covid off the alpha variant. Both are fine now thankfully and obviously vaxxed up. Still relatively little attention is being paid to long covid by governments and health industry two years on. It is what it is I suppose.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Basically, yes. The big caveat is they collected all their data from a US army veterans healthcare database, so the average age was mid 60s.
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Interesting Im going to read through this. Was the covid cohort studied post vaccine?
 
FootballHQ said:
What happened to the mutation of Omicron that was being reported in some countries last week? Nothing to worry about or too early to tell?
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I've just read in our local paper that 2 cases of Omicron 2 have been isolated in our region of Italy. The article quotes the experts as saying it's too early to tell if it's more contagious.
 
Stanley Road said:
Just under 500k positive tests in NL today, population 17m. Thats quite an achievement
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Didn't they announce today that they're doing away with restrictions soon? They said something about not being able to cope socially and economically with more lockdowns.
 
Klopper76 said:
Didn't they announce today that they're doing away with restrictions soon? They said something about not being able to cope socially and economically with more lockdowns.
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Presser next week. The new guy in charge of health is a highly acclaimed scientist and is pro opening up. While hospitals are seeing a rise in patients, icu numbers are falling.
 
I'm going to Spain at the end of Feb, I'm having my booster this Saturday and I had Covid at the end of December. Aside from filling out the Spanish form, do i need to have a pre-departure covid test? It's all a bit confusing for me.
 
SilentWitness said:
I'm going to Spain at the end of Feb, I'm having my booster this Saturday and I had Covid at the end of December. Aside from filling out the Spanish form, do i need to have a pre-departure covid test? It's all a bit confusing for me.
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Currently there's no testing required for people who are fully vaccinated:
https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/spain/entry-requirements

Like all these things, there's no knowing what they'll say at the end of February. Spain has a list of "high risk" countries. The UK isn't currently on it.
https://www.sanidad.gob.es/en/profesionales/saludPublica/ccayes/alertasActual/nCov/spth.htm
 
Stanley Road said:
Presser next week. The new guy in charge of health is a highly acclaimed scientist and is pro opening up. While hospitals are seeing a rise in patients, icu numbers are falling.
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Exact same trend as in Ireland, we opened up a few weeks ago and hospital and ICU numbers are still going down.
 
Woohoo, no mo isolation after 21st Feb according to BoJo today. It's being brought forward by a month. The optimism is infectious. :lol:
 
horsechoker said:
No isolation for those who test positive

This can't be a good idea
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It's also throwing under the bus those who cant get the vaccine or are otherwise vulnerable. Those people will now be terrified of going anywhere.
 
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