Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[superbigal]

That is absolutely ridiculous. [emoji1787]
You introduce the vaccine.
Deaths and hospitalisations drop like a stone.
You remove restrictions.
You keep an eye on deaths and hospitalisations and respond if they go up.
Stop making things more complicated than they need to be.

I get an advert for the national lottery at the foot of all your posts buddy.
Anything I should know ?

[welshbairn]

25 minutes ago, peasy23 said:

8 hours ago, virginton said:

The unions feigning concern about the vulnerable and climate change while continuing a network-crippling, rolling strike every Sunday for months on end is truly laughable. They couldn't give a toss about either. 
If rail is such a vital public service then upon it being nationalised they should have their right to disruptive strike action removed as well. 

Scotrail have played a blinder with the press coverage of this. Nobody is actually on strike, and very few of their staff are contracted to work on a Sunday. Staff were given a payment if they worked on their days off on top of the overtime, but Scotrail withdrew that payment at the start of the pandemic. Staff are simply working to the terms of their contracts, the whole system relies on them working overtime on their off days.

RMT are calling it a strike. So is it more like a work to rule?

https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/scotrail-strike-solid-once-more/

 

Edited August 20, 2021 by welshbairn

[djchapsticks]

1 hour ago, Michael W said:

I remember laughing at China's reaction and how that would never fly in the western world. 

Step forward, Australia. Your little zero covid game's gone - accept it, start seriously vaccinating your population and quit the strongman nonsense. 

They made a massive rod for their own back when they completely poo-pooed the AZ vaccine early doors. Hesitancy in Australia to AZ is through the roof and will likely never recover.

[Michael W]

4 minutes ago, djchapsticks said:

They made a massive rod for their own back when they completely poo-pooed the AZ vaccine early doors. Hesitancy in Australia to AZ is through the roof and will likely never recover.

There are a few that will be judged very negatively for that, including Emmanuel Macron. His trashing of the vaccine has undoubtedly added a good few thousand to the respective death tolls of France and the wider EU. 

[Wee Bully]

49 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

That is absolutely ridiculous.

You introduce the vaccine.

Deaths and hospitalisations drop like a stone.

You remove restrictions.

You keep an eye on deaths and hospitalisations and respond if they go up.

Stop making things more complicated than they need to be.

Think back to last year - specifically July & August.

Restrictions were eased.  Deaths & hospitalisations dropped like a stone.  So did cases at that point.  In fact, some declared it over as a public health emergency.  

Without measuring cases, and thereby seeing the impact, there would be no way of knowing that it is the vaccine that’s doing the business this time round and not something else - a summer effect for instance.  Seeing cases going up, and deaths & hospitalisations not, is actually comforting as it proves it’s working.

But you need to measure the cases to make that connection.    

 

[vikingTON]

The impact of vaccination on deaths/hospitalisations was already established, fucking months ago, by the Israeli data. You'd be as well running an investigation into the religious affiliation of the Pope for all the insight provided by tests now. 

Edited August 20, 2021 by vikingTON

[peasy23]

RMT are calling it a strike. So is it more like a work to rule?
https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/scotrail-strike-solid-once-more/
 

Yep, a work to rule is how it was explained to me by a ticket collector involved in it.

[Elixir]

6 hours ago, Wee Bully said:

What other respiratory infection manages to kill 120,000 people in a year in the UK, whilst movement etc was curtailed?

The testing is actually proving what (I hope) you want it to prove, namely that the vaccines are breaking the link between cases and hospitalisations / deaths, and we can therefore get on with life. I suppose we could just go on trust, given the Main Players “know” it is ok, but history tells us that if we had done so, then we would have declared Covid as being over more than a year ago.

I prefer the data proving it.

Err, that was when the virus was hitting a naive population with no prior immunity. Now, we have highly effective vaccines delivered to ~90% of the adult population and near 100% of vulnerable groups, in addition to large swathes having been exposed. This therefore hastening it's transition to endemicity and rendering it a virus with equivalent levels of risk as other respiratory infections we don't obsessively screen for.

The simple fact is that testing is largely a UK obsession. Germany, for example, is winding it down in the coming months.

[Wee Bully]

30 minutes ago, Elixir said:

Err, that was when the virus was hitting a naive population with no prior immunity. Now, we have highly effective vaccines delivered to ~90% of the adult population and near 100% of vulnerable groups, in addition to large swathes having been exposed. This therefore hastening it's transition to endemicity and rendering it a virus with equivalent levels of risk as other respiratory infections we don't obsessively screen for.

The simple fact is that testing is largely a UK obsession. Germany, for example, is winding it down in the coming months.

So, “winding down in the coming months” means “not yet wound down”?

Testing isn’t slowing the transition to endemicity. What it is doing is proving it with data, rather than the gut feel of some internet “experts”. 

[welshbairn]

49 minutes ago, peasy23 said:

1 hour ago, welshbairn said:

RMT are calling it a strike. So is it more like a work to rule?
https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/scotrail-strike-solid-once-more/
 

Yep, a work to rule is how it was explained to me by a ticket collector involved in it.

Fucking annoying when the Dutch don't have a stake in it anymore, probably more profitable not running a Sunday service short term. Thought the fight for having guards as well as ticket collectors was over a while back.

[Elixir]

25 minutes ago, Wee Bully said:

So, “winding down in the coming months” means “not yet wound down”?

Testing isn’t slowing the transition to endemicity. What it is doing is proving it with data, rather than the gut feel of some internet “experts”. 

It certainly keeps the hypochondriacs and profiteers happy! The simple fact is the UK is an outlier here.

[Elixir]

Those bits of cloth the Scottish Government want us to keep over our gubs indefinitely are clearly working wonders at keeping cases down. 

Meanwhile, England remains essentially flat. Still, we already knew from the variety of approaches across the US that masks do next to nothing.

 

[D Angelo Barksdale]

11 hours ago, Proposition Joe said:

I'm fully DP'd now after taking my second full wad of Pfizer this morning.

Pints and a trip to watch the Ladyboys of Bangkok tonight to celebrate.

Someone pick me up plz xx

[Todd_is_God]

I see @Wee Bully's point here tbh. Mass testing is/was needed to highlight a trend and support a hypothesis.

The argument around the benefit of continuing mass testing now is that, having provided a load of evidence to support the view that the vaccines have broken the link, does the benefit of continuing to mass test people who are mostly either mildly ill or not ill at all continue to outweigh the downside.

[The Master]

6 hours ago, virginton said:

The impact of vaccination on deaths/hospitalisations was already established, fucking months ago, by the Israeli data. You'd be as well running an investigation into the religious affiliation of the Pope for all the insight provided by tests now. 

The Church of Shitting in the Woods?

[Aladdin]

7 hours ago, Todd_is_God said:

I see @Wee Bully's point here tbh. Mass testing is/was needed to highlight a trend and support a hypothesis.

The argument around the benefit of continuing mass testing now is that, having provided a load of evidence to support the view that the vaccines have broken the link, does the benefit of continuing to mass test people who are mostly either mildly ill or not ill at all continue to outweigh the downside.

There is still a further point to testing in that it can be used to measure the long term effectiveness of the vaccines and when protection begins to wane to help plan when, if at all, a booster shot is needed.

 

[strichener]

51 minutes ago, Aladdin said:

There is still a further point to testing in that it can be used to measure the long term effectiveness of the vaccines and when protection begins to wane to help plan when, if at all, a booster shot is needed.

 

How exactly does our current testing detect this? 

Surely if vaccinated people can still be infected, can still transmit it to other folks and can go about symptom free then the only way we will see the protection begin to wane is if first hospital admissions and then deaths start to increase.

 

[Elixir]

Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58270098

Quote

There are marked differences in your immune system after a natural infection with coronavirus and after vaccination.

Which is better?

Even asking the question bordered on heresy a year ago, when catching Covid for the first time could be deadly, especially for the elderly or people already in poor health.

Now, we're no longer starting with zero immunity as the overwhelming majority of people have either been vaccinated or have already caught the virus.

It is now a serious question that has implications for whether children should ever be vaccinated. And whether we use the virus or booster shots to top up immunity in adults. Both have become contentious issues.

"We could be digging ourselves into a hole, for a very long time, where we think we can only keep Covid away by boosting every year," Prof Eleanor Riley, an immunologist from the University of Edinburgh, told me.

Prof Adam Finn, a government vaccine adviser, said over-vaccinating people, when other parts of the world had none, was "a bit insane, it's not just inequitable, it's stupid".

...

The idea of regularly topping up immunity throughout life is not radical in other infections, such as RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) or the four other coronaviruses that infect people and cause common cold symptoms.

Each time you're exposed, the immune system gets a little bit stronger, and this continues until old age, when the immune system starts to fail and the infections become a problem again.

"This isn't proven, but it could be a lot cheaper and simpler to let that happen than spend the whole time immunising people," said Prof Finn, who warns we could end up "locked into a cycle of boosting" without seeing if it was necessary.

However, he said the argument in children had "already been won" as "40-50% have already been infected and most weren't ill or particularly ill".

But Prof Riley said there was potential in using vaccines to "take the edge off" Covid, followed by infection, to broaden the immune response.

She said: "We really need to consider, are we just frightening people rather than giving them the confidence to get on with their lives? We're close to just worrying people now."

 

[Monkey Tennis]

Well just as his sister emerges from her isolation, the boy tests positive.  

Bit of a bugger for him regarding school, work and football.  Both his double vaccinated parents are negative.

[Detournement]

"Take the edge off Covid"

It's good to see medical science has caught up with jakey science. 

 

Edited August 21, 2021 by Detournement