Covid-19 the second wave.

[jof]

My big worry is that the death rates from other preventable illness will dwarf the Covid death rate because people were too scared to visit Dr or go to Hospital, or the services they required were not running (e.g. cancer screening)

If its true, it would make the reaction to Covid very questionable indeed.

 

[pms67]

Someone posted a link on this thread to a Scottish doctor who had a very interesting take on all of this along with his Belgian colleagues but I can’t find it?

 

[GerritT]

Re bog roll: a lot of people **** at work, and while the domestic supply of bog toll was cleaned out within days, the stocks for offices and business were nearly untouched. It was a logistical issue, not much more.

 

[GerritT]

Re bog roll: a lot of people s**t at work, and while the domestic supply of bog toll was cleaned out within days, the stocks for offices and business were nearly untouched. It was a logistical issue, not much more.

**** is being ******* censured when talking bog roll?!

 

[Chippy_Tea]

s**t is being ******* censured when talking bog roll?!

Its an automatic word censor the forum software doesn't know what you are discussing so doesn't make exceptions

 

[Covrich]

It’s a bit more complicated than that.
Plenty of scientist do not support the theory that a second wave is inevitable.
Tests are not as accurate as they should be, and are showing many false positives. Virus may be getting weaker, people may have some immunity given from other Coronavirus’s they have been previously exposed to and immunity is more complex than just a person having antibodies. So I think the R rate is not an accurate measure, because the data it uses is not accurate.
There is no guarantee of an effective vaccine, which will mean the virus will have to run it’s course anyway.
Due to public hysteria, ramped up by the main stream media, we stayed locked down way longer than the purpose the lockdown was meant for, which was the NHS to not be overwhelmed.
I believe we lost our chance of gaining a good degree of herd immunity during the summer months when the hospitals sat half empty Even the words ‘herd immunity’ triggered the short term thinking of the safety first brigade. A lot of people were not receiving treatment for other serious illnesses.
We have wrecked our economy, we will have mass unemployment and the whole thing will probably cost more lives than the virus.
Not to mention creeping infringement of our civil liberties.
Now we go into winter in a very bad position in every aspect.

If I could like your post more than once I would!!

I agree with everything you said.

 

[Gerryjo]

I always thought there must be reason the likes of the sun and daily mail were still produced. The down side is newsprint on the backside.

Horrible stuff news print... Too many streaks.

 

[Rodcx500z]

Well feck it i have had enough of these buggers Parliament boozing sessions: MPs’ bars exempt from nationwide 10pm curfew i am now not listening to anything they have to say until they toe the line like the rest of us, classed as a works canteen my arse rant over

 

[marshbrewer]

They must be listening to you @Rodcx500z ;

'“no outlet on the Parliamentary Estate will be selling alcohol after 10 pm, with immediate effect. This includes across the Commons and the Lords.”

 

[Rodcx500z]

You never know, walls have ears as the saying goes

 

[Northern_Brewer]

It’s a bit more complicated than that.
Plenty of scientist do not support the theory that a second wave is inevitable.

We're past the stage of talking about a future second wave - we're already in it.

Tests are not as accurate as they should be, and are showing many false positives. Virus may be getting weaker, people may have some immunity given from other Coronavirus’s they have been previously exposed to and immunity is more complex than just a person having antibodies. So I think the R rate is not an accurate measure, because the data it uses is not accurate.

The R rate is all that matters - if it's >1 then it will run unchecked, under 1 and it's under control. And although the nature of sampling means that we will never know it perfectly, we can estimate it closely enough - say within 25% or so - to make sensible decisions based on it. Most of the factors you mention either aren't relevant or drop out on both sides of the equation, but they sound like plausible FUD to those who aren't familiar with the science.

For instance say that last week there were really 100 people infected in a town and that this week there are really 200 people infected. So (to a first approximation as infection cycle is not exactly a week) R = 200/100= 2.

Let's say that for various reasons - false negatives, asymptomatic infections etc - you only detect 50% of the actual infections. That means you only see 50 infections last week and 100 infections this week. So you calculate R as 100/50 = 2 - it doesn't matter that you're not testing all the infections, you still get the right value for R.

Same the other way if you're getting false positives. So it doesn't matter that your testing is inaccurate, as long as it's consistently inaccurate (and yes, the people who calculate these things are aware of more testing happening now, and can adjust for it).

But the accuracy of tests makes for a great talking point for people who don't know what they're talking about.

I believe we lost our chance of gaining a good degree of herd immunity...Now we go into winter in a very bad position in every aspect.

The reason we're in such a bad position is precisely because our leaders went for herd immunity as their primary strategy.

The reason SARS and MERS and others didn't become pandemics is because they were stamped out by aggressive quarantining, mask-wearing etc in Asian countries - they didn't just wait for herd immunity. The people who are such fans of the disaster in Sweden don't talk about Taiwan so much, which went hard from the start, with testing for incoming travellers in January, have had only a handful of cases of community transmission and have an economy that's pretty much back to normal now. Just goes to show, you have to solve the health crisis before you have a chance of solving the economic crisis.

There is no guarantee of an effective vaccine, which will mean the virus will have to run it’s course anyway.

That's one thing that's looking reasonably hopeful, not least because of the sheer number of vaccines currently under test.

This FT article gives an overview, and this amazing Twitter thread gives more detail on the individual technologies, from a professor at Mt Sinai who recently wrote a review of them for Nature (not yet published). He counts 180 vaccines in development, of which 40 are in clinical trials and 10 are in Phase III trials - an amazing number given that it's just over 9 months since the virus was identified.

If anything he's a bit more worried about supplies of syringes etc to deliver them than the vaccines themselves. A few of his take-homes :

Perhaps the biggest thing to consider is that one vaccine may not fit all. In particular, a vaccine that works well for people of working age may give severe side-effects in the strong immune systems of kids, but may not be enough (or at least need a booster) in the elderly.

Also the elderly have been exposed to a lot more viruses over their lifetime and so are more likely to have some cross-reaction against some of the non-SARS2 viruses used as vectors to deliver DNA/RNA in some vaccines. Which means those vaccines tend not to work so well in the elderly.

Because vaccines are designed to stimulate the immune system, some of them do provoke some side-effects that are typical of the immune system doing its thing - fever, headache, soreness etc. One of the Chinese vaccines in particular (CanSino Biologics) has seen 9% of those with a high dose getting significant side-effects like that. But even that's OK - a bit miserable for the 9%, but a whole heap better than Covid.

But don't be surprised to see stories in coming months, in the press and less-informed parts of social media, about vaccines not working in the elderly or causing side-effects - these things are normal and are a failure of degree not total failures, they should be able to either tweak doses for different groups of patients, or just switch to another vaccine for that group.

On the other hand, the FT piece shows that one thing HMG has done well is on getting the orders in for vaccines - we have ordered over 5 doses per person split over 6 different technologies. I imagine it helps that it's a low-profile thing that the adults have been able to get on with quietly, without too much interference from Downing St worried about tomorrow's headlines. But it also just reflects the fact that vaccines are an area where the UK has a world-class industry in, whereas for instance we don't have a particularly big testing industry (which is why Germany has been so good at testing).

 

[Saisonator]

This is interesting, taken from twitter.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1310525363097939968.html

 

[pms67]

Just booked my latest holiday.
10 years in Cornwall

 

[Northern_Brewer]

This is interesting, taken from twitter.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1310525363097939968.html

Interesting only as an example of how propagandists will use half-truths to manipulate the less well-informed - it's a classic example in fact.

First - he sets up a straw man "a pint of doom bar in Polzeath whilst Sebby and Aggy have a surf lesson...according to the computer modelling any one of these breaches of protocol will spell doom for all".

Just not true - one thing the science is pretty settled on is that outside is pretty safe - and guess where people on holiday in Cornwall at the height of summer spend most of their time? Yep, outdoors. And at that time a lot of restaurants etc either were only opening outside areas or only opening indoors if they had proved to the council that they were Covid Secure (or risk their licence), and I suspect that the kind of people who name their kids Sebby and Aggy don't use public transport much and are probably pretty good about wearing masks.

Compare that with the biker rally in Sturgis, South Dakota which is estimated to have led to over 250,000 cases of Covid. Where almost nobody was wearing a mask or taking other precautions, but Mark doesn't mention that. It's almost like making people wear masks and Covid Secure restaurants has some effect on transmission.

And just generally - given that it typically takes people a month to die, looking at deaths to 10 September means you're only looking at the first month or so after lockdown was released - and July was the low point across the country, there just wasn't much around. Whereas now there are outbreaks happening in Cornwall, which he doesn't mention.

Given that it takes over a week for symptoms to develop, Sebby and Aggy will be safely back in Guildford by the time they have symptoms, they won't be registering in Cornwall.

And deaths is not a great metric for the population who goes surfing in Cornwall - they're generally in the age group that tends not to die, but can get long-haul Covid, which he doesn't talk about. There weren't too many 80 year-olds hanging out on Fistral in July - they were all still shielding.

There's also all sorts of details that are wrong or taken selectively. Despite posting on the 28 September, he chooses 10 September as his cut-off - because a death was recorded at Treliske on 11 September. And in fact it happened on the 8 September, so he is not correct in saying that there were no deaths to 10 September. And although you might think Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust covers the whole of Cornwall, he neglects to mention that it only accounts for ~2/3 of hospital deaths in Cornwall from Covid, the rest are at the Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

I don't know how they've been dealing with Covid, but it's also worth mentioning that when I had family down there, all the complicated medical cases had to go up to Plymouth for treatment, which would mean that if you're counting by hospital, a lot of people from Cornwall would be counted as dying in Devon.

 

[pms67]

Holiday cancellation

 

[An Ankoù]

The reason we're in such a bad position is precisely because our leaders went for herd immunity as their primary strategy.

They're not our leaders. They're our representatives. They exist to serve us in running the country and our affairs, by our consent and on our behalf, through our representatives in Parliament for the good of all.
They've long since forgotten this because we've forgotten it too.
But I haven't.
Why do we love being serfs? Too many Black Adder seasons?

 

[Falco]

Now who does this remind me of?

 

[GhostShip]

Well, that’s the walking weekend with the lads in Northumberland next month out the window.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Last two posts moved to the bridge Covid thread. https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/forums/the-bridge.89/

 

[Portreath]

From a Cornish perspective, things have been going slightly more pear-shaped here in recent weeks with schools sending kids home etc. Funny that during lockdown most were bemoaning the effect on our much needed tourist trade, now the virus has reared it's f**n head here again it's the tourists that are getting the blame for bringing it down here.