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

[Andy Hayter]

1 hour ago, hayfield said:

 

A recent FOA request found only 40% of those being treated for covid in hospital, tested positive for covid prior to admission 

 

The figures for people in hospital with covid include those being treated for something totally different but has given a positive test 

 

 

There is a danger that the 40% figure is misinterpreted.   Those not tested prior to admission will certainly be people who go in for something else, but the 60% will include people (and I suspect a lot of people) suffering from severe covid symptoms but who are sent to hospital before being tested.  Severe breathing problems and/or a temperature above 40C is likely to induce an admission whether the victim has been tested or not.

[alastairq]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

r first to get eaten by lions.

 I've made myself thoroughly unpalatable to lions....

I think the biggest issue I have with the herding instinct is the loss of individuality.

[Nearholmer]

It’s a matter of where you strike your balance, isn’t it?

 

You could, at one extreme be a total herd-follower, happiest right in the middle of the pack, doing the currently most main-stream things possible, engaging in all aspects of ‘normal’, or at the other be a total outlier, living in a shack in the woods, subsisting on gleanings, and with a beard like a wild bramble-bush, eschewing mains anything, societal medical care, and (often, but by no means always, in such cases) conventional notions of personal hygiene.

 

I’m not too keen to condemn either extreme, or those in between, because everyone has their reasons. My good lady is more herd-inclined than me, for instance, and each of us has got to our slightly different place because of personal upbringing and experience.

 

 One thought is that RMWeb might be a self-selecting community of weirdos, sorry, I meant slight outliers, anyway. It 

 

 

[Fenman]

55 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

It’s a matter of where you strike your balance, isn’t it?

 

You could, at one extreme be a total herd-follower, happiest right in the middle of the pack, doing the currently most main-stream things possible, engaging in all aspects of ‘normal’, or at the other be a total outlier, living in a shack in the woods, subsisting on gleanings, and with a beard like a wild bramble-bush, eschewing mains anything, societal medical care, and (often, but by no means always, in such cases) conventional notions of personal hygiene.

 

I’m not too keen to condemn either extreme, or those in between, because everyone has their reasons. My good lady is more herd-inclined than me, for instance, and each of us has got to our slightly different place because of personal upbringing and experience.

 

 One thought is that RMWeb might be a self-selecting community of weirdos, sorry, I meant slight outliers, anyway. It 

 

 

 

I would have thought that if you chose to be part of the RMWeb "community" then you would be more likely to want to be part of the group/ crowd/ herd -- real loners won't be voluntarily joining together with lots of other people to form a "community"/ herd, will they? I'd have guessed that, generally, people who really yearn for the opposite of being part of the herd are unlikely to be very "clubbable" people. Though I guess an online "community" is much less difficult for them than an in-person club.

 

By one measure, whether you're an extravert or introvert has nothing to do with whether or not you're the "life and soul of the party": it's about where you get your energy from. Extraverts love being in groups, and feel energised by so being; they need that energy to get them through the times when they're on their own. Introverts get their energy from when they are on their own, and need to spend that energy to help them get through the times when they're in crowds of people -- if they spend too long in crowds they are likely to end up feeling exhausted with "people poisoning". I'd guess where you are on the introvert-extravert spectrum has some sort of relationship with whether or not you want to follow the herd.

 

Extraverts are more likely than introverts to catch Covid?

 

Paul

 

 

 

 

[hayfield]

49 minutes ago, alastairq said:

 I've made myself thoroughly unpalatable to lions....

I think the biggest issue I have with the herding instinct is the loss of individuality.

 

34 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

It’s a matter of where you strike your balance, isn’t it?

 

You could, at one extreme be a total herd-follower, happiest right in the middle of the pack, doing the currently most main-stream things possible, engaging in all aspects of ‘normal’, or at the other be a total outlier, living in a shack in the woods, subsisting on gleanings, and with a beard like a wild bramble-bush, eschewing mains anything, societal medical care, and (often, but by no means always, in such cases) conventional notions of personal hygiene.

 

I’m not too keen to condemn either extreme, or those in between, because everyone has their reasons. My good lady is more herd-inclined than me, for instance, and each of us has got to our slightly different place because of personal upbringing and experience.

 

 One thought is that RMWeb might be a self-selecting community of weirdos, sorry, I meant slight outliers, anyway. It 

 

 

 

Are you not confusing things here, following a herd of people is totally different to herd immunity.

 

Herd immunity is where so many of the herd are immune the virus cannot continue to be an issue, this in a way also protects those not in the herd, it does not mean you cannot catch it but your chances of doing so is greatly reduced (especially if you don't mix with the herd)

[APOLLO]

 

Brit15

[adb968008]

The Mrs has posessed the laptop looking at holidays at the minute, I’ll load up the spreadsheet on here later so you can download and see the math.

[Nearholmer]

23 minutes ago, hayfield said:

Are you not confusing things here, following a herd of people is totally different to herd immunity.

 

No, I wasn't confusing two things, I was merely playing with words around two totally different concepts, which both happen to apply the word "herd" to us human animals.

 

Mind you, I guess if we were each totally uninterested in what our fellow beasts are up to, not concerned to follow the herd, that might affect the rate of spread of viruses. There's probably a branch of zoology that undertakes studies to compare the rates of spread of disease between hive and solitary bees, for instance.

[caradoc]

3 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

2. Cynicism - The herd is usually being manipulated by politicians and their paymasters to behave in ways that benefit the manipulators. To check, I pick up a discarded copy of the Daily Mail (I stopped buying newspapers regularly more than a decade ago and would never buy that one) to verify that I'm still doing the opposite of what its vile proprietors encourage. 

 

As a matter of interest, what are the 'vile proprietors' of the Daily Mail encouraging people to do, and what are you doing instead ? 

 

[Hobby]

Probably the opposite of the Guardian proprietors! 

 

It always makes me laugh when I see the DM singled out when the others are just as bad...

[Andy Hayter]

I am not sure how many have seen this.  It sounds counter intuitive until you really begin to think about how competitive advantage works.   Rather worrying.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/medical/uk-at-elevated-risk-of-new-vaccine-resistant-covid-strain-as-millions-jabbed-alongside-easing-restrictions/ar-AAMJMuE?ocid=msedgntp

 

 

[hayfield]

5 minutes ago, caradoc said:

 

As a matter of interest, what are the 'vile proprietors' of the Daily Mail encouraging people to do, and what are you doing instead ? 

 

 

To balance up the thought process,  probably very similar as the paymasters of the Mirror and Guardian except with a different twist to it. I agree with the sentiment that those pedalling their own agenda which ever end of the spectrum very often at the expense of the public at large, which both form the majority and foot the bill. 

[hayfield]

2 minutes ago, Andy Hayter said:

I am not sure how many have seen this.  It sounds counter intuitive until you really begin to think about how competitive advantage works.   Rather worrying.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/medical/uk-at-elevated-risk-of-new-vaccine-resistant-covid-strain-as-millions-jabbed-alongside-easing-restrictions/ar-AAMJMuE?ocid=msedgntp

 

 

 

I would assume that's an odds on bet, much like influenza. Every year we have a modified booster jab to protect us from the worst ravages of the latest variants in circulation that we know. I assume the hope is we all have enough antibodies to subdue the worst effects of the new strains. Plus treatments are constantly being improved. Influenza kills many each year but we accept this, I assume covid will be similar, the Scandinavians are working on a pill and an inhaler as a way of treating/preventing catching it, rather than an injection

[rocor]

2 hours ago, alastairq said:

 I've made myself thoroughly unpalatable to lions....

I think the biggest issue I have with the herding instinct is the loss of individuality.

 

The biggest issue I have with the herding instinct, is that it puts one constantly under the gaze of a pride of hungry lions.

 

Hoc menu, unde; Cenabis leones.

[Nearholmer]

Yeah, but they’re all stoned, so, who gives?

[Nick C]

1 hour ago, Hobby said:

Probably the opposite of the Guardian proprietors! 

 

It always makes me laugh when I see the DM singled out when the others are just as bad...

I find I usually disagree with both the Mail and the Guardian, so I guess thtat makes me somewhere in the middle...

[D9020 Nimbus]

18 hours ago, Ian Hargrave said:

 
Passing through York on a number of occasions by rail ,the city has an evergreen popularity judging by the numbers of passengers generated throughout the last few months.Unquestionably a hub of tourism .

Yes, but in my experience a lot of the visitors to York were overseas tourists — how many of those are coming now?

[Fenman]

18 hours ago, Hobby said:

Probably the opposite of the Guardian proprietors!

...

 

The Guardian doesn't have any proprietors in the normal sense of that word. It's owned by the Scott Trust, a not-for-profit foundation.

 

I suspect that makes the dynamics of the owner:editor relationship very different from those where the owner is a tycoon/billionnaire. There are lots of examples of how terrible that relationship can be: when "Tiny" Rowland owned the Observer, the editor Donald Trelford had a fairly miserable time trying to prevent his newspaper becoming the mouthpiece for Rowland's corporate interests, especially those in Africa.

 

Paul

[Oldddudders]

Has anyone posted this?

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58029383

[Neil]

Also from the BBC, business tells staff to delete NHS Covid ap. It's unclear if this is widespread but I'd be willing to bet that it'll be happening beyond the reported examples.

[Hobby]

39 minutes ago, Fenman said:

The Guardian doesn't have any proprietors in the normal sense of that word. It's owned by the Scott Trust, a not-for-profit foundation.

 

Which doesn't guarantee impartiality... As the Guardian proves.

 

All of them have an agenda of their own.

[Nearholmer]

For crying out loud guys: a well-educated ten year old knows that Each U.K. newspaper has its own perspective/bias; why beat one another over the head with that particular very old news.

 

The previous two ‘coming out of lockdown’ threads got locked down because of what Andy calls ‘tribalism’.

[Hobby]

23 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

To check, I pick up a discarded copy of the Daily Mail (I stopped buying newspapers regularly more than a decade ago and would never buy that one) to verify that I'm still doing the opposite of what its vile proprietors encourage. 

 

8 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The previous two ‘coming out of lockdown’ threads got locked down because of what Andy calls ‘tribalism’.

 

Exactly, but some people haven't got the message.

Edited July 31, 2021 by Hobby

[hayfield]

55 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Has anyone posted this?

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58029383

 

This latest mini spike has seemingly caught everyone out, from hawks to doves, the 100,000+ infections a day was what it was, a worst case scenario, the pingdemic may have along with the school holidays reduced testing, so we are finding less. Certainly the places I have been to people are still wearing masks and social distancing, perhaps for once the public are listening. Many will be going on holidays over the next month or so and perhaps are taking a bit more care over mixing

 

Certainly in my own area after quickly going into the red zone we are now in blue with cases declining and the Eastern NHS seem to be not under much pressure with covid. Also we are edging ever closer to 90% of those eligible for vaccination has had at least 1 dose, which is far higher than initial expectations of compliance at the start of the pandemic

 

As has been said its hard to make comparisons with other countries as reporting and testing levels differ greatly, in the papers today the government are looking closely at Spain,, France and Italy. Given we are testing between two or three times the number clearly we will find more cases, if this is the case then perhaps its wise to be cautious, but again if we in the UK are getting somewhere near herd immunity does it matter. Only history will tell us

 

The only certain thing is covid will keep everyone guessing

[Hobby]

Round here mask wearing is prevalent, especially in enclosed spaces as well.

 

I hate to say it but perhaps the transmissibility of the delta variant may have done us a favour by infecting people quicker and so brining us closer to herd immunity?