Covid - coming out of Lockdown 3 - no politics, less opinion and more facts and information.

[hayfield]

1 hour ago, Neil said:

 

It's about the best comparison that you'll get. Certainly comparisons within Europe tell us far more than comparisons with the rest of the world and compared to those parts of Europe which have similar levels of wealth, education etc we haven't done as well as we could or should.

 

You have hit the nail on the head, its the best comparison available, but it does not mean its a good comparison, most of the countries with better results have a different demographic or geographic make up to those with worst results. But then are the results we are comparing using the same criteria ?

 

Don't get me wrong as we at times have moved patients further away to less affected areas, but some of the reports on TV and radio of what has occurred in the worst affected areas seem far worse than those I have seen from the UK.

 

Looking at Europe at the moment its the more northern countries that are fairing worst, the southern countries are fairing better. France for instance was in the latter group until last week. It may well be that as winter progresses the southern countries may see an increase in infection.

 

We can look at our most recent spike which appeared to hit rural areas worst, when they seemed to have escaped the worst effects of the earlier spikes. Its a nasty disease that just wont let go 

 

It appears this new variant was in circulation prior to it being sequenced, banning flights even at the earliest date possible would have been too late !!  If it seems to be a weaker but more contagious strain it may in the long run be seen as the beginning of the end, lets hope so

 

But at the moment its up to all of us to protect each other

[EddieB]

2 hours ago, beast66606 said:

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-58330796  - nasty side effect ?

 

Among others: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/myocarditis-and-pericarditis-after-covid-19-vaccination/myocarditis-and-pericarditis-after-covid-19-vaccination-guidance-for-healthcare-professionals

 

While it is evident that vaccinations have saved many lives, Pfizer has been forced to disclose knowledge of serious side-effects, including 1200 deaths.  Such numbers may not be statistically significant in the overall fight against Covid, but they certainly are for those directly affected.

 

Things aren't always as binary as we might want them to be - and I apologise for making a contribution that doesn't fit the popular narrative.

 

[DY444]

18 hours ago, EddieB said:

Among others: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/myocarditis-and-pericarditis-after-covid-19-vaccination/myocarditis-and-pericarditis-after-covid-19-vaccination-guidance-for-healthcare-professionals

 

While it is evident that vaccinations have saved many lives, Pfizer has been forced to disclose knowledge of serious side-effects, including 1200 deaths.  Such numbers may not be statistically significant in the overall fight against Covid, but they certainly are for those directly affected.

 

Things aren't always as binary as we might want them to be - and I apologise for making a contribution that doesn't fit the popular narrative.

 

 

Any death is obviously significant for those directly affected. 

 

Decisions in life are often based on assessing the relative risks of multiple courses of action and very often none of the options carries zero risk.  That's just the way it is.  Whilst any death resulting from a preventative action like a vaccine is a tragedy for those involved, it doesn't negate what are now demonstrable benefits to the overwhelming majority.  I think it is pretty clear that the risk of dying from Covid for many cohorts is substantially greater than the risk of dying from the vaccination.   

Edited December 7, 2021 by DY444

[DY444]

5 hours ago, hayfield said:

 

 

The one thing to take into consideration is that our figures for covid deaths are "People who have died having tested positive for covid in the past 28 days " I have said before my mother  had liver cancer and died 6 weeks after diagnosis, the death certificate stated bronchitis was the cause of death, everyone knew it was the liver cancer that killed her 

 

No where does it say that they died because of covid. Now is this an international standard of trying to get a handle on the number the deaths caused by covid, or just some way of making sense of a complicated matter.

 

I think you may have said in the past the true measure of covids effect on the population is the excess death rate over the 5 year average 

 

 

 

Indeed.  Big, big difference between "died of" and "died with". 

 

In the wider context I think these comparisons with other countries are meaningless because the counting methodologies are different.

[EddieB]

Just now, DY444 said:

Whilst any death resulting from a preventive action like a vaccine is a tragedy for those involved, it doesn't negate what are now demonstrable benefits to the overwhelming majority.  I think it is pretty clear that the risk of dying from Covid for many cohorts is substantially greater than the risk of dying from the vaccination.   

As I wrote?

 

But when you say "many cohorts" that implies not all, and what if those not included in that majority are compelled to take the vaccine?

[Reorte]

5 minutes ago, DY444 said:

 

Indeed.  Big, big difference between "died of" and "died with". 

 

In the wider context I think these comparisons with other countries are meaningless because the counting methodologies are different.

Is there a big, big difference?

[Hobby]

Yes, because Covid may have no bearing at all on the cause of death.

Edited December 6, 2021 by Hobby

[Oldddudders]

Carrot and stick are both options for getting boosters, and indeed vaccinations, in place. 

 

I have just discovered that on Nov 9th, while I was in England, and before we had all heard of Omicron, President Macron decreed that from Dec 15th, all over 65s must have a booster if they want to enter a restaurant or travel by a mainline train. Clearly that carrot/stick will then apply progressively to younger age-groups. Doctolib, the French online service for reserving vaccinations, among other things, has been very, very busy ever since.

 

Having talked to my pharmacie, they have me pencilled in for mid-Jan for my booster - if they have the vaccine. Since I hope to return to the UK on the very day this becomes law, I was a mite disturbed. Fortunately a further search revealed helpful small-print - the law only applies 6 months and 5 weeks after the second vaccination. My second vaccine was 28th June, so I should be ok to come back to France in time for my booster.

 

Of course, by then Omicron-avoiding measures of all sorts may have been enacted either side of the Channel....

[Dunsignalling]

2 hours ago, EddieB said:

As I wrote?

 

But when you say "many cohorts" that implies not all, and what if those not included in that majority are compelled to take the vaccine?

But the reports of deaths from Covid vaccine reactions indicate that they tally with reactions that are generated by the virus itself, but that the virus is at least eight times more likely to cause them than the vaccine. 

 

If the reactions are caused by a sensitivity or allergy to the vaccine, anyone open to them would presumably suffer the same outcome if they caught the virus..... 

 

The main variable will be how long an unvaccinated person with that specific (and currently undetectable) vulnerability can dodge getting infected.....

 

John

 

 

Edited December 6, 2021 by Dunsignalling

[Dunsignalling]

7 minutes ago, Hobby said:

Yes, because Covid may have no bearing at all on the cause of death.

But equally, in many cases, it will have contributed to or hastened the death of patients when overlaid onto whatever else ailed them. The proverbial "last straw that broke the camel's back".

 

John

 

 

[Hobby]

I never said it couldn't, but it's not an accurate way of measuring deaths caused by Covid, is it!

[Reorte]

24 minutes ago, Hobby said:

Yes, because Covid may have no bearing at all on the cause of death.

May not is not enough for "big, big difference." AFAICT all the evidence is that it's a pretty good proxy for the number of people who were killed by Covid; even for the chronically seriously ill the odds of them dying within 28 days of a positive test if Covid had no effect would be slim I'd have thought.

[Dunsignalling]

1 minute ago, Hobby said:

I never said it couldn't, but it's not an accurate way of measuring deaths caused by Covid, is it!

Short of conducting a full PM on everybody who dies, there's no entirely accurate way of measuring deaths caused by most other things either.....

[Nearholmer]

Surely this is one of those “go in with eyes wide open” things? 
 

Yes, the vaccines bring with them a very small risk of unpleasant side affects, and a very, very small risk of serious or deadly side affects, and TBH so do many other medical treatments, even quite trivial ones (I have been advised to take a very low dose of statin as precaution against stroke, because I used to smoke, and reading the leaflet that entails a 1:10 000 possibility of hearing loss), so it’s a case of pitching that against the benefits.

 

The reason UK medicine regulators didn’t firmly recommend Covid vaccination right down to 12yo, was that the individual risk/benefit balance becomes very fine indeed, too close to call, at somewhere around 18yo. HMG then ‘made vaccination available’ for that age group, because it gives societal benefit. Personally, I’ve always found this particular area uncomfortable ground: should we be asking fit young lads (the risk is significantly greater, although still very, very small, to boys) to take risks, however tiny, to help preserve fragile old guys? And, I don’t have an answer to that question - it stumps me.

 

I’m not even sure giving 12-18yo “all facts and the ability to choose for themselves” is the solution, because kids, especially boys, of that age are notoriously rubbish at risk judgements. Their working assumption is that they are individually invulnerable/immortal, which is why they do daft and dangerous things more than any other age group, and they love to think of themselves as heroes. I’ve been a teenage boy, and I can remember how I used to think!!

 

 

 

 

Edited December 6, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

Exact ways of categorising deaths for statistical purposes?

 

It’s not a football league, so does it really matter if the categorisation methods vary slightly between countries?

 

Why not just envisage the figures available as giving rise to wide, slightly fuzzy, lines on graphs, rather than seeking hair-thin lines of absolute precision?

 

As we briefly discussed earlier, things like ‘excess deaths’ and ‘average lifespan’ will probably tell the overall story most clearly in the long run.

 

There seems in some places (not here) to be a want to play a “Britain counts more conservatively than those dodgy foreigners, so things aren’t as bad here as the numbers suggest” game, which I find really strange. It’s as if some people want to stick a pole with a national flag on top of each casualty pile, and play a jingoistic game of “yours is bigger”. Maybe it’s the converse of people trying to prove how terribly their own country is doing, because that reflects badly on the incumbent government.

 

Isnt it better to focus on doing the best practicable, and let someone do the full analysis, and write the comparative study later?

 

 

Edited December 6, 2021 by Nearholmer

[LNER4479]

Forgive me but just had to post this (from the Wikipedia Spanish flu entry)

 

They may not have had an effective vaccination programme but most of the rest of it has a strangely familiar ring to it. Nothing new under the sun or a case of re-learning old lessons?

 

No.8 on the list stands out from the others ...

[Nearholmer]

Medieval medical PPE wasn’t far-off either, although maybe forming the face protection into a beak to contain a filter of herbs did add a somewhat sinister air.

 

[boxbrownie]

5 hours ago, beast66606 said:

 

You had very old employees then

 

Care workers have already been sacked if not vaccinated - clap, clap, cl - oops

Has nobody under 65 died from Covid then?  Sorry I missed that little gem of information……

[Andy Kirkham]

Regarding risks of vaccination, there has been a recent report suggesting that one factor might be the inadvertant injection of the vaccine into a blood vessel instead of muscle tissue, and that this mght be avoided by the practice of "aspiration" - drawing out the plunger of the syringe and checking that no blood is drawn.

This is summarised in a video by Dr John Campbell. I Sometimes take Dr Campbell with a pinch of salt, but this seems sound.

 

And a letter in British Medical Journal makes the same point https://pmj.bmj.com/content/early/2021/10/06/postgradmedj-2021-141119

 

It has been recently demonstrated that direct administration of vaccine into—and distribution through systemic circulation may be responsible for platelets-adenoviral vector interaction, platelets aggregation and activation.3 This may also explain vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopaenia, also known as the thrombosis with thrombocytopaenia syndrome, leading to postimmunisation rare fatal thrombotic events like cerebral venous sinus thrombosis or the splanchnic vein thrombosis.4 Other adverse reactions of concern, such as postvaccine myocarditis/pericarditis5 and Guillain-Barré syndrome2 may also be associated with inadvertent vaccine distribution and transfection to tissues beyond injection site.

[rocor]

2 hours ago, LNER4479 said:

Forgive me but just had to post this (from the Wikipedia Spanish flu entry)

 

They may not have had an effective vaccination programme but most of the rest of it has a strangely familiar ring to it. Nothing new under the sun or a case of re-learning old lessons?

 

No.8 on the list stands out from the others ...

 

I would like to see an effective treatment for No.8 on the list. Though it has nothing to do with Covid.

[John M Upton]

18 minutes ago, rocor said:

 

I would like to see an effective treatment for No.8 on the list. Though it has nothing to do with Covid.

 

Try "Never read the Daily Mail" for a starter... 

[Andy Kirkham]

Dr Campbel's latest video about Omicron is very upbeat, as he is predicting a very swift spread of the variant with mild symptoms, leading to herd immunity and the end of the pandemic. 

 

The trouble is, as I see it, is that if delta infection doesn't confer immunity to omicron, why should omicron infection confer immunity to delta, or any other variant? 

 

 

[Hobby]

Because it takes over from delta as the dominant strain and ousts it and all the other strains. It is what the scientists were predicting last year.

 

Edited December 6, 2021 by Hobby

[LNER4479]

42 minutes ago, John M Upton said:

 

Try "Never read the Daily Mail" for a starter... 

... and don't spend all your time reading this thread for a second (oops!)

[Hobby]

44 minutes ago, John M Upton said:

 

Try "Never read the Daily Mail" for a starter... 

 

Or the Mirror, Guardian, Telegraph, Times, Sun, Independent or any if the others, especially the Express...