COVID-19

[Matt2112]

This is a nice follow-on from the Dr Campbell video I posted on 5th December re: Myocarditis

Had your booster yet, Slim?

I think we've already addressed this myocarditis question in post #220 of this thread. Thanks for your interest, I doubt I'll get boosted before February.

Just be extra careful of that <0.002% risk of something undesirable happening, James. Rooting for you. 

[David L]

Just be extra careful of that <0.002% risk of something undesirable happening, James. Rooting for you. 

Your faith in that statistic is bordering on religious   

[Matt2112]

Just be extra careful of that <0.002% risk of something undesirable happening, James. Rooting for you. 

Your faith in that statistic is bordering on religious   

"76.4% of statistics are made up".*


* Mine aren't.

[dom]

Covid has made an appearance again in our household. Both my wife and I have tested positive. She feels awful I just have a slight headache to show for it. I was able to get the most recent booster a couple of months ago, she wasn't.

[David L]

Covid has made an appearance again in our household. Both my wife and I have tested positive. She feels awful I just have a slight headache to show for it. I was able to get the most recent booster a couple of months ago, she wasn't.

Sorry to hear that. Still vax-free and covid-free since March 2020 

[The Picnic Wasp]

Covid has made an appearance again in our household. Both my wife and I have tested positive. She feels awful I just have a slight headache to show for it. I was able to get the most recent booster a couple of months ago, she wasn't.

Sorry to hear that Dom. I still wear a mask when I'm shopping but was beginning to feel a bit pessimistic about this situation having never had COVID and being surrounded but the mainly non mask wearing masses all the time. I think I'll just stick with the cautionary approach for now. I hope you both feel better soon and can enjoy the upcoming holiday.

[Slim]

Well - I was looking at the stats yesterday, like I used to every day at one point. The "patients admitted" graph for England has a gently upward trajectory unfortunately but it did dip very pleasingly from a peak at the beginning of October into November. Lower than it was this time last year.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nation&areaName=England

[Matt2112]

Hospital admissions for flu now exceed those for Covid.

This is still no reason for complacency - together they could potentially cause worrying pressures on the health system; fortunately, however, there's currently no reason for any Pagel-esque panic either.

[David L]

This is quite a long one but very interesting. I made it all the way through and thought it was worth it.
Dr John Campbell talks to Professor Norman Fenton about risk and benefit calculations of medical interventions, such as vaccines. Most interesting is the way in which data from observational studies can be managed and presented to provide wildly different conclusions by treating a small section of the data in a particular way.
It is a fairly deep-dive into stats that were used to inform the decision makers. If you have interest in stats, this one's for you!

[Nick]

It's like we have learned nothing, why wasn't this glaringly obvious for the government? Testing arrivals from China is a no brainier.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64130655?at_medium=social&at_link_type=web_link&at_campaign=Social_Flow&at_link_origin=BBCBreaking&at_ptr_name=twitter&at_link_id=A09187FE-886B-11ED-9FAD-2867FC756850&at_bbc_team=editorial&at_format=link&at_campaign_type=owned

[Nickslikk2112]

Meanwhile in the EU

https://www.politico.eu/article/european-countries-covid-pandemic-china-ingore-pandemic-lessons/

[Slim]

It's like we have learned nothing, why wasn't this glaringly obvious for the government? Testing arrivals from China is a no brainier.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64130655?at_medium=social&at_link_type=web_link&at_campaign=Social_Flow&at_link_origin=BBCBreaking&at_ptr_name=twitter&at_link_id=A09187FE-886B-11ED-9FAD-2867FC756850&at_bbc_team=editorial&at_format=link&at_campaign_type=owned

If it's a no-brainer and glaringly obvious, I wonder why a public health academic interviewed on 5 Live earlier said it wasn't worth doing? His rationale was that it's the same variant that's already circulating here, and while a high proportion of people arriving from China might be infected, their numbers are still tiny compared to people circulating it who already live here.

That said, I don't have a problem with this policy. Can't hurt.

[David L]

"China's secrecy is also a concern raised by World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who has called for "more detailed information" from China"

      Brilliant!

But when it comes to the EU....what does Guy Verhofstadt think? 

[Slim]

Possibly the most annoying thing about the pandemic, after the large number of people who have died or become ill of course, is the similarly large number of people giving their thoughts about the technicalities of the disease (or indeed the vaccines) in a matter-of-fact style when they know next to nothing about it.

On Thursday I was out on my bike listening to Talk Radio, listening to Cristo Foufas' show. The whole gist of his show was that there was no possible need for any new restrictions in the UK after the Chinese eased their own restrictions and allowed people to come here. A few of his callers suggested that the virus was turning into the "common cold".

Cristo himself claimed that new variants "inevitably" (or possibly "invariably", I can't quite remember exactly what he said but it was one of the two) are milder than previous variants. Is that really true? I wondered. But certainly a few of his callers shared his conviction.

Well - this morning Dr Simon Clarke, Associate Professor in Cellular Microbiology at Reading University was interviewed on LBC. He stated that the idea that new variants are necessarily less aggressive was "nonsense".

I think there's a certain strand of personality type in human society, a bit neurotic and vulnerable to paranoia - usually politically to the right I must admit, though not representative of right-wing opinion in general - and they're a bit like autistic people in that they can't stand any sort of disruption to their comfort zone. They just want things to be the same all the time. They're often frightened of needles but especially frightened of change; even frightened of people wearing masks in superrmarkets; so much so that they will project their fear onto others and accuse them of "fearmongering", or make up their own science.

So - next time you hear a random member of the public, a Talk Radio presenter or perhaps the Member of Parliament for North West Leicestershire waxing lyrical about the effectiveness of face coverings, genome sequencing, spike proteins or similar - remember, they may well be talking utter bollocks.

[Matt2112]

Indeed.  Not only should there be ongoing vigilance against potential outbreaks that may put intolerable pressure on the NHS - and that applies to flu as well as Covid - but also against the contrarians on one side calling for a dropping of all safeguards, and the medically unqualified academics on the other claiming a Covid strategy should still dictate how society functions.

It's curious how those opposing positions have a common denominator, which is that they are both often used as a stick with which the beat the Government.  Now, I'm no Tory, but that element makes me wonder who is actually acting in good faith.