Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[TheScarf]

It's very weird how politicians at home and abroad refuse to admit that schools are what is and was infecting and killing vulnerable people.  Asymptomatic children going to see their aunties, uncles, grannies and grandads, giving them Covid, then 6 weeks later, said children parents are arranging a funeral.

[Todd_is_God]

3 minutes ago, TheScarf said:

It's very weird how politicians at home and abroad refuse to admit that schools are what is and was infecting and killing vulnerable people.  Asymptomatic children going to see their aunties, uncles, grannies and grandads, giving them Covid, then 6 weeks later, said children parents are arranging a funeral.

The theme throughout has been to double down on mistakes and misconceptions rather than admit (big) errors.

Lockdowns, masks, vaccine passports, curfews etc.

Whether this is down to ego, or a desire to avoid damaging credibility (lol) of the modelling / science that underpins the whole thing I don't know.

[Abdul_Latif]

9 minutes ago, TheScarf said:

It's very weird how politicians at home and abroad refuse to admit that schools are what is and was infecting and killing vulnerable people.  Asymptomatic children going to see their aunties, uncles, grannies and grandads, giving them Covid, then 6 weeks later, said children parents are arranging a funeral.

Not sure the governments are that bothered. Children are the future voters who will grow up with a very different mindset to their elders…

Edited November 19, 2021 by Abdul_Latif

[welshbairn]

1 minute ago, AlbionSaint said:

Are there that many people dying of it? I don't actually know a single person who has succumbed to Covid. Now obviously, I might be very lucky and my own experience is purely anecdotal. But of the 650 MPs in Westminster, how many have died? There would presumably be a by-election when that happens, but I can't think of any MPs. Again, that's only a sample of 650 people and most aren't very old, but it does make me wonder.

144,000 crisis actors imo.

[TheScarf]

1 minute ago, Abdul_Latif said:

Not sure the governments are that bothered. Children are the future voters who will grow up with a very different mindset to their elders…

Aye true.  Fuck the current electorate just focus on the next generation.

[welshbairn]

Just now, TheScarf said:

Aye true.  f**k the current electorate just focus on the next generation.

I think their attitude is the opposite, COP26 showed they don't give a f**k about future voters.

[Mark Connolly]

3 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

I think their attitude is the opposite, COP26 showed they don't give a f**k about future voters.

I don't think they give a f**k about any voters tbh.

Donors, however...

[TheScarf]

4 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

I think their attitude is the opposite, COP26 showed they don't give a f**k about future voters.

Fair point brother.

[Abdul_Latif]

Just now, Mark Connolly said:

I don't think they give a f**k about any voters tbh.

Donors, however...

Donors leaving hefty contributions in wills? I wonder how they could get them in quicker?

[welshbairn]

10 minutes ago, AlbionSaint said:

No need to be facetious! That's not what I'm saying, but I have heard those statistics include people who have died from other things, but also tested positive from Covid. Excess deaths would be a better way of establishing the lethality of Coronavirus, but then I know of one person who has died of cancer after his NHS appointments were cancelled and two who have committed suicide since this began, which is 50% of all the people I have ever known who have taken their own life.

 

It appears that there have been three deaths of MPs since 2019:

https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/elections-and-voting/by-elections/by-elections-2019/

But we're talking fewer than 1/200 people since the 2019 General Election.

My maths is terrible but I think the death rate from Covid for the UK population as a whole is about 0.2%, so MPs at 0.5% is more than double the average.

[Michael W]

The excess deaths figure doesn't lie and the vast majority of them will have already been recorded as Covid deaths. Whether it's because of covid or with covid I'm not going to get into - for statistical purposes the person dies within 28 days of a positive test it's a covid death. That's the measurement most countries go with. I am more interested in the amount of covid patients that were already admitted and then caught the virus in hospital and how we might be able to better prevent this. Fully understand people catching infections in hospital is not exactly groundbreaking or new, but it's one way we might be able to reduce pressure a bit. 

Whilst I also don't know anyone that's died of it, I'm in my early 30s so my social circle has a lot less of the at risk groups than an older person will have. It does however mean I have seen some people with clear health issues being fobbed off by their GPs with refusals of appointments, which in one case meant emergency surgery was required.

What we have done however is greatly reduced instances of both hospitalisations and deaths through a successful vaccination programme. The numbers of cases we are running at the moment had us in Europe's harshest lockdown late from late December. From.that perspective it is firstly depressing that we continue to use cases as the key metric, and even more depressing that we are not willing to target the measures appropriately if reducing cases is the objective. 

Edited November 19, 2021 by Michael W

[Bairnardo]

Oldest wean sent home today, positive LFT so took her for a PCR and got myself one too (my LFT was negative).

Hoping for a falser here. Im in no mood to look after my child for 10 days

[Ross.]

1 minute ago, AlbionSaint said:

@oaksoft & @welshbairn

Three MPs have died according to the link I provided earlier. One, Sir David Amess, was stabbed to death as you're probably well aware. 

According to Wikipedia, Dame Cheryl Gillan & James Brokenshire died of cancer. So it doesn't appear a single MP has succumbed to the Coronavirus. An anomaly perhaps, but it reflects my own experience, and again people may argue that it's proof that the lockdowns and vaccines have worked. 

I know 3 people who have died of covid in the last 6 months, with zero ambiguity over the cause of death, all of them living within a few miles of each other in Clydebank/Yoker.

[LongTimeLurker]

45 minutes ago, AlbionSaint said:

...Anyway, I suppose the argument is that it would be much more than 0.2% if there weren't lockdowns,...

The lockdowns were initially only supposed to be about flattening the peak so the NHS didn't get overwhelmed, so probably not the case on "much worse". It's vaccines that have ultimately helped out a bit on fatality rates where the delta variant wave is concerned, but were only going to be able to do so much for those with severe co-morbidities. The vast majority of the population was always likely to have their roll of the dice with it eventually because herd immunity was going to have be achieved one way or another.

The politicians were basically treating people like mugs around this time last year by pretending they could pick and choose what to close down based on political expediency and what would risk a populist backlash (pubs and restaurants open to help the economy despite being indoors, schools open despite being high risk on transmission between families, but nae lower level fitba outdoors even though it was low risk) without having another exponential curve develop on cases when a more infectious variant with a higher R₀ emerged.

Edited November 19, 2021 by LongTimeLurker

[Empty It]

The lockdowns were initially only supposed to be about flattening the peak so the NHS didn't get overwhelmed

One of the biggest lies of the whole pandemic, see also "follow the science" and "two week circuit breaker."

[Suspect Device]

25 minutes ago, Ross. said:

I know 3 people who have died of covid in the last 6 months, with zero ambiguity over the cause of death, all of them living within a few miles of each other in Clydebank/Yoker.

What was their age? Any comorbidity? 

I don't know anyone who has died of covid but I do know of folk who are now dying of cancer which wasn't caught early enough.

 

Anyway, the figures for excess deaths in the UK.

 

[Suspect Device]

Also worth noting that 72% of those deaths were among the over 75 and that the life expectancy in the UK is around 81.

[Ross.]

5 minutes ago, Suspect Device said:

What was their age? Any comorbidity? 

I don't know anyone who has died of covid but I do know of folk who are now dying of cancer which wasn't caught early enough.

One was late 70's and unvaccinated, other two were mid 50's, one of whom could not be vaccinated due to other health issues, and one who as far as I know was vaccinated and had no other known issues, though I cannot say that with certainty.

I also know one person who died from cancer, which may have been treatable had they been able to get it seen to earlier, but there is no guarantee with that.

[Ross.]

6 minutes ago, Suspect Device said:

Also worth noting that 72% of those deaths were among the over 75 and that the life expectancy in the UK is around 81.

Deaths should start dropping as the target audience is ripped apart then?..

[Suspect Device]

6 minutes ago, Ross. said:

Deaths should start dropping as the target audience is ripped apart then?..

Doesn't seem to be happening. Deaths are still above the average even though fewer people are dying of covid. Which makes me think that's the folk who are dying of cancers/heart problems which have gone untreated while we are busy with covid. I've got nothing to back that up, just my thoughts.