Coronavirus

[benjii]

Seems to me that the notes of caution are largely due to the SA variant and potential future variants.

There is doubt how effective the curernt vaccines are against the South Africa variant. This is why some countries were "red listed" even with comparably low case numbers - some of them are countries where the UK suspected the dominant strain doing the rounds was the SA strain.

I heard this from a senior official source.

They also need to keep a cautious tone to stop people acting like Bacchanalians until this is definitely under control. More spread amongst younger unvaccinated groups equals more chance of nastier strains emerging.

Edited 10 April, 2021 by benjii

[Whitey Grandad]

1 hour ago, Weston Super Saint said:

394 between 1 jan and 31 Aug 2020.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsduetocoronaviruscovid19comparedwithdeathsfrominfluenzaandpneumoniaenglandandwales/deathsoccurringbetween1januaryand31august2020

 

And how does that compare with previous years?

[aintforever]

1 hour ago, benjii said:

Seems to me that the notes of caution are largely due to the SA variant and potential future variants.

There is doubt how effective the curernt vaccines are against the South Africa variant. This is why some countries were "red listed" even with comparably low case numbers - some of them are countries where the UK suspected the dominant strain doing the rounds was the SA strain.

I heard this from a senior official source.

They also need to keep a cautious tone to stop people acting like Bacchanalians until this is definitely under control. More spread amongst younger unvaccinated groups equals more chance of nastier strains emerging.

Makes sense. It’s probably just a matter of time before a vaccine evading strain emerges so you want to get infection rates right down and hopefully be in a position where isolated outbreaks can be dealt with through test track and trace.

[Turkish]

2 hours ago, Weston Super Saint said:

394 between 1 jan and 31 Aug 2020.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsduetocoronaviruscovid19comparedwithdeathsfrominfluenzaandpneumoniaenglandandwales/deathsoccurringbetween1januaryand31august2020

 

Thanks, so hardly any! Be interesting to see this years figures. 

1 hour ago, Whitey Grandad said:

And how does that compare with previous years?

They say it’s usually around 17k with around 30k dying from pneumonia, 13k in the same period here. So 34k fewer deaths from flu and pneumonia.  It sounds like some people who have serious problems with Covid also catch pneumonia. I’d be very interested to see how many people die because of Covid rather than With Covid. A friend of mines father died about this time last year, they had terminal cancer and were on end of life care, caught Covid in hospital and died, but they would have died within weeks anyway, cause of death put down as Covid.

Edited 10 April, 2021 by Turkish

[Whitey Grandad]

1 hour ago, Turkish said:

Thanks, so hardly any! Be interesting to see this years figures. 

They say it’s usually around 17k with around 30k dying from pneumonia, 13k in the same period here. So 34k fewer deaths from flu and pneumonia.  It sounds like some people who have serious problems with Covid also catch pneumonia. I’d be very interested to see how many people die because of Covid rather than With Covid. A friend of mines father died about this time last year, they had terminal cancer and were on end of life care, caught Covid in hospital and died, but they would have died within weeks anyway, cause of death put down as Covid.

Thanks for the info.

This is the trouble with statistics like these. It’s what you read into them that matters, plus what action is taken as a result.

As the old saying goes, one person’s death is a tragedy, the death of thousands is a statistic.

[Raging Bull]

1 hour ago, Turkish said:

Thanks, so hardly any! Be interesting to see this years figures. 

They say it’s usually around 17k with around 30k dying from pneumonia, 13k in the same period here. So 34k fewer deaths from flu and pneumonia.  It sounds like some people who have serious problems with Covid also catch pneumonia. I’d be very interested to see how many people die because of Covid rather than With Covid. A friend of mines father died about this time last year, they had terminal cancer and were on end of life care, caught Covid in hospital and died, but they would have died within weeks anyway, cause of death put down as Covid.

 

8 minutes ago, Whitey Grandad said:

Thanks for the info.

This is the trouble with statistics like these. It’s what you read into them that matters, plus what action is taken as a result.

As the old saying goes, one person’s death is a tragedy, the death of thousands is a statistic.

I’d add to this that a bad flu season like 2018 you’d see around 50k excess deaths 

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/excesswintermortalityinenglandandwales/2017to2018provisionaland2016to2017final

[RedArmy]

1 hour ago, Raging Bull said:

 

I’d add to this that a bad flu season like 2018 you’d see around 50k excess deaths 

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/excesswintermortalityinenglandandwales/2017to2018provisionaland2016to2017final

So covid has been twice as bad as a “ bad flu season” despite lockdowns and vastly reduced social contact. Good to know.  

[Lord Duckhunter]

3 hours ago, Turkish said:

Thanks, so hardly any! Be interesting to see this years figures. 

A friend of mines father died about this time last year, they had terminal cancer and were on end of life care, caught Covid in hospital and died, but they would have died within weeks anyway, cause of death put down as Covid.

My Snap dragon was told at the end of last Jan to prepare herself for the worst and her old man wouldn’t make it past Feb and wouldn’t be leaving hospital.The stubborn old bugger got better and went home, only to fall a few weeks later, be readmitted, catch Covid and die. There’s absolutely no chance he’d have seen out the year even if Covid never existed. He did however die of Covid. Is he an excess death, would he have died in 2019 had the flu strain been bad that year, who knows? But it shows statistics are  more nuanced than you’d think they would be. 

Edited 10 April, 2021 by Lord Duckhunter

[benjii]

On 10/04/2021 at 11:25, benjii said:

Seems to me that the notes of caution are largely due to the SA variant and potential future variants.

There is doubt how effective the curernt vaccines are against the South Africa variant. This is why some countries were "red listed" even with comparably low case numbers - some of them are countries where the UK suspected the dominant strain doing the rounds was the SA strain.

I heard this from a senior official source.

They also need to keep a cautious tone to stop people acting like Bacchanalians until this is definitely under control. More spread amongst younger unvaccinated groups equals more chance of nastier strains emerging.

As I was saying.....

https://www.timesofisrael.com/real-world-israeli-data-shows-south-african-variant-better-at-bypassing-vaccine/amp/?utm_source=upday&utm_medium=referral

[RedArmy]

4 hours ago, benjii said:

As I was saying.....

https://www.timesofisrael.com/real-world-israeli-data-shows-south-african-variant-better-at-bypassing-vaccine/amp/?utm_source=upday&utm_medium=referral

How many got sick and how many passed it on to someone else? 

[whelk]

7 deaths in Uk and 30 new cases in whole of Hampshire. Watch out for the 3rd wave you complacent cunts

[RedArmy]

Southampton has got the 23rd worst rate per 100,000 people in England. Twice the national average. 
 

I blame raging bull and his conspiracy pals. 

[Raging Bull]

41 minutes ago, RedArmy said:

Southampton has got the 23rd worst rate per 100,000 people in England. Twice the national average. 
 

I blame raging bull and his conspiracy pals. 

[Turkish]

7 deaths yesterday and only 1700 infections. Where is this South African variant that is dodging the vaccine?

[AlexLaw76]

I read that Boris is dropping (or has dropped) "data not dates" line.  Data is telling him to open up now, which was clearly never ever the case.

 

[Weston Super Saint]

1 hour ago, Turkish said:

7 deaths yesterday and only 1700 infections. Where is this South African variant that is dodging the vaccine?

If it is going to be an issue, it's only going to happen in a couple of weeks time when they open up international travel - I get that they want to introduce testing, isolations etc etc but I think we all know how succesful they will be!

At the moment our international travel is barely happening - I can't remember the last time I saw a plane fly over from Bristol or Cardiff airports - but no doubt as soon as it opens up we'll start to see the SA variant, whether it's as damaging as the claims being made is something we'll have to wait and see....

[ecuk268]

3 hours ago, Weston Super Saint said:

At the moment our international travel is barely happening - I can't remember the last time I saw a plane fly over from Bristol or Cardiff airports - but no doubt as soon as it opens up we'll start to see the SA variant, whether it's as damaging as the claims being made is something we'll have to wait and see....

Border Force have been saying that around 20000 per day coming in since the last travel ban.

[AlexLaw76]

Happy Herd Immunity day everyone.  Did you all enjoy queuing in the cold to get into Primark today?

 

[Weston Super Saint]

7 hours ago, ecuk268 said:

Border Force have been saying that around 20000 per day coming in since the last travel ban.

Presumably that's the total for the entire country, which would equate to roughly 20% of the 2018 average for Heathrow arrivals alone...

https://www.heathrow.com/company/about-heathrow/performance/airport-operations/traffic-statistics

[Raging Bull]

It’s been a while since I’ve stuck stuff up my nose, but this looks promising 

 

Let’s all do lines

[Turkish]

3 minutes ago, Raging Bull said:

It’s been a while since I’ve stuck stuff up my nose, but this looks promising 

 

Let’s all do lines

Bet the Bosnian variant has already worked out how to evade this treatment. 

[Raging Bull]

26 minutes ago, Turkish said:

Bet the Bosnian variant has already worked out how to evade this treatment. 

I heard it explained by Dr Mike Yeadon that for the body and or vaccine to not be able to deal with any new variants it would have to mutate by around 30%. And it sure ain’t doing anything like that! 

Edited 12 April, 2021 by Raging Bull
Dyslexic

[The Kraken]

I’m reading that 40+ will be able to book from tomorrow. As such I just went on the nhs central booking site and was able to book my jab for Friday (I’m 46), friends same age have just done the same. Worth checking.

[aintforever]

1 hour ago, The Kraken said:

I’m reading that 40+ will be able to book from tomorrow. As such I just went on the nhs central booking site and was able to book my jab for Friday (I’m 46), friends same age have just done the same. Worth checking.

Cheers, just booked mine for Friday as well.

[benjii]

23 hours ago, Turkish said:

7 deaths yesterday and only 1700 infections. Where is this South African variant that is dodging the vaccine?

Lambeth and Wandsworth, potentially. Wandsworth is full of Saffas, so makes sense! I once saw a pub landlord aggressively challenge a chap doing the typical pub Arsenal fan thing of ordering half a coke and spending all afternoon watching the football. If you know, you know.

https://www.itv.com/news/2021-04-12/covid-surge-testing-in-wandsworth-and-lambeth-after-at-least-44-south-african-variant-cases-confirmed?utm_source=upday&utm_medium=referral

[Turkish]

16 minutes ago, benjii said:

Lambeth and Wandsworth, potentially. Wandsworth is full of Saffas, so makes sense! I once saw a pub landlord aggressively challenge a chap doing the typical pub Arsenal fan thing of ordering half a coke and spending all afternoon watching the football. If you know, you know.

https://www.itv.com/news/2021-04-12/covid-surge-testing-in-wandsworth-and-lambeth-after-at-least-44-south-african-variant-cases-confirmed?utm_source=upday&utm_medium=referral

Right on cue! The very day Restrictions are eased and isolated cases of this variant found, this script Is very predictable Isn’t it.

[Weston Super Saint]

Johnson & Johnson's turn now :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-56733715

Quote

US health authorities are calling for a pause in the use of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine, after reports of extremely rare blood clotting cases.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it was acting "out of an abundance of caution".

It said six cases of severe blood clotting had been detected in more than 6.8 million doses of the vaccine.

6 cases from 6.8 million doses!  Pretty sure the virus kills more than 6 people for every 6.8 million infections doesn't it?

And from those six blood clots, one has died and one is in critical condition...

[CB Fry]

I cannot imagine the Johnson and Johnson vaccine to be anything other than a thick pink liquid like baby lotion.

 

[Weston Super Saint]

5 hours ago, Turkish said:

Right on cue! The very day Restrictions are eased and isolated cases of this variant found, this script Is very predictable Isn’t it.

On the news they were claiming that the South Africa variant was brought in by an international traveller in February and has spread to a care home.  Odd really since travel from South Africa has been banned since 24th December (although British nationals were allowed to travel but had to self isolate on arrival), since Febraury any arrivals would have had to spend time in a quarantine hotel.

Looks like there are plenty of holes once again in our strategy for containing the virus!

[Raging Bull]

The fear mongering did its job though 

 

Edited 13 April, 2021 by Raging Bull

[Turkish]

13 minutes ago, Raging Bull said:

The fear mongering did its job though 

 

Hang on a minute, wasn't this the variant ripping through the Europe, was 30-70% more contageous than all the others more deadly and the reason why we had to go into lockdown?

Edited 13 April, 2021 by Turkish

[aintforever]

15 minutes ago, Turkish said:

Hang on a minute, wasn't this the variant ripping through the Europe, was 30-70% more contageous than all the others more deadly and the reason why we had to go into lockdown?

I know it's difficult for you to understand but if it is 30-70% more contagious it doesn't have to make illness any more serious to kill more people.

[Turkish]

4 minutes ago, aintforever said:

I know it's difficult for you to understand but if it is 30-70% more contagious it doesn't have to make illness any more serious to kill more people.

Oh god dopeys turned up  

[aintforever]

3 minutes ago, Turkish said:

Oh god dopeys turned up  

Hang on a minute.

[Turkish]

1 minute ago, aintforever said:

Hang on a minute.

You make me laugh mate, you regularly come on here on the attack telling people how stupid they are yet 90% of discussions very quickly go over your head and you end making yourself look extremely thick. The tragedy is you dont even realise it

[aintforever]

2 minutes ago, Turkish said:

You make me laugh mate, you regularly come on here on the attack telling people how stupid they are yet 90% of discussions very quickly go over your head and you end making yourself look extremely thick. The tragedy is you dont even realise it

Brilliant.

[Turkish]

6 minutes ago, aintforever said:

Brilliant.

I rest my case. 

[Weston Super Saint]

1 hour ago, Raging Bull said:

The fear mongering did its job though 

 

 

45 minutes ago, aintforever said:

I know it's difficult for you to understand but if it is 30-70% more contagious it doesn't have to make illness any more serious to kill more people.

I know it's difficult for you to understand but that tweet was talking about the deadliness of the virus, not the contagiousness.

Where have you got the 30-70% more contagious calculation from, not sure that's been mentioned before :

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/covid-variants-brazil-south-african-b1525-new-strain-uk-cases/

Quote

What do we know about the Kent variant?

Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, suggested the Kent variant might increase the case fatality rate (CFR) by 30 per cent. To put this in context, he said that out of 1,000 men in their 60s infected with the old variant, 10 would be expected to die, compared to 13 with the new variant. You can read the full study here.

Study referred to in the article

[AlexLaw76]

Oddly, Boris has now stated that the vaccine is not the cause of the amazing drop in cases (hospitalisations), and in fact, it is all down to the lockdown (which is the opposite of what he said a few weeks back).

Data, not dates. Remember?

Anyway, seeing as the vaccine is not as useful as we hoped ........

[Turkish]

2 minutes ago, AlexLaw76 said:

Oddly, Boris has now stated that the vaccine is not the cause of the amazing drop in cases (hospitalisations), and in fact, it is all down to the lockdown (which is the opposite of what he said a few weeks back).

Data, not dates. Remember?

Anyway, seeing as the vaccine is not as useful as we hoped ........

and there was us thinking vaccines were the way out of this. Seems lockdown is the only way.

[aintforever]

30 minutes ago, Weston Super Saint said:

 

I know it's difficult for you to understand but that tweet was talking about the deadliness of the virus, not the contagiousness.

Where have you got the 30-70% more contagious calculation from, not sure that's been mentioned before :

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/covid-variants-brazil-south-african-b1525-new-strain-uk-cases/

Study referred to in the article

Try reading the thread, the 30-70% was a figure Turkish came up with.

[whelk]

So to paraphrase Boris the vaccinations aren’t worth a wank and it is lockdown that’s done it. Brilliant 

 

[The Cat]

Interesting interview here with the Dr who discovered the link to blood clots and the work they are doing to treat anyone found with them. Basically goes on to say everyone should still have the vaccine.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/apr/13/how-uk-doctor-marie-scully-blood-clotting-link-astrazeneca-covid-jab-university-college-london-hospital

 

[Weston Super Saint]

1 hour ago, aintforever said:

Try reading the thread, the 30-70% was a figure Turkish came up with.

He also said 90% of discussions go over your head, so I guess you're happy with that stat as well  

[The Cat]

1 hour ago, whelk said:

So to paraphrase Boris the vaccinations aren’t worth a wank and it is lockdown that’s done it. Brilliant 

 

What's he on about? Surely it's both? It's already well known that vaccines have an effect on lowering transmission rates.

[Weston Super Saint]

2 minutes ago, The Cat said:

What's he on about? Surely it's both? It's already well known that vaccines have an effect on lowering transmission rates.

To be fair, he's probably trying to point out that vaccines haven't been able to prove their worth during lockdown when theoretically no-one is mixing to cause the transmissions.

It's a pretty valid point he's making given the evidence from the first lockdown when there was no vaccine, yet the number of infections, hospitalisations and deaths reduced dramatically...

[Whitey Grandad]

1 hour ago, The Cat said:

What's he on about? Surely it's both? It's already well known that vaccines have an effect on lowering transmission rates.

Otherwise why vaccinate?

[RedArmy]

5 hours ago, Raging Bull said:

The fear mongering did its job though 

 

Anyone capable of critical thinking could see it was a behavioural science scare tactic. 

[Lighthouse]

4 hours ago, whelk said:

So to paraphrase Boris the vaccinations aren’t worth a wank and it is lockdown that’s done it. Brilliant 

 

He said the bulk of the work in reducing the outbreak was down to the lockdown, which I thought we knew already. If it wasn’t, what would be the point in having them? Vaccines take time to have an effect and are our best defence against future outbreaks IF everyone who is able to take the vaccine takes it.  Up until about a month ago we’ve been doing almost entirely first doses, which they reckon are around 60% effective.

 

If your starting point is 1,800 deaths a day - even if you managed to perfectly predict every single person who was about to be infected and killed and give them one dose - you’d still only knock it down to just over 700 a day, without a lockdown. That is also (completely incorrectly) assuming that the infection rate would have stayed the same and that 1,800 was the highest we could possibly have achieved, which it wasn’t. Without lockdown the vaccine might have protected 60% of people out of 5,000 who were ‘supposed’ to die, I.e. 2,000 per day would still be dying.

 

Boris can’t win. If he’d said it was mostly down to the vaccine, the conspiracy theorists would have been foaming at the mouth saying, "look, this is proof it’s all about controlling our behaviour, they’re locking us down for months and they’ve just admitted there was no need to!"

[whelk]

1 hour ago, Lighthouse said:

He said the bulk of the work in reducing the outbreak was down to the lockdown, which I thought we knew already. If it wasn’t, what would be the point in having them? Vaccines take time to have an effect and are our best defence against future outbreaks IF everyone who is able to take the vaccine takes it.  Up until about a month ago we’ve been doing almost entirely first doses, which they reckon are around 60% effective.

 

If your starting point is 1,800 deaths a day - even if you managed to perfectly predict every single person who was about to be infected and killed and give them one dose - you’d still only knock it down to just over 700 a day, without a lockdown. That is also (completely incorrectly) assuming that the infection rate would have stayed the same and that 1,800 was the highest we could possibly have achieved, which it wasn’t. Without lockdown the vaccine might have protected 60% of people out of 5,000 who were ‘supposed’ to die, I.e. 2,000 per day would still be dying.

 

Boris can’t win. If he’d said it was mostly down to the vaccine, the conspiracy theorists would have been foaming at the mouth saying, "look, this is proof it’s all about controlling our behaviour, they’re locking us down for months and they’ve just admitted there was no need to!"

It’s patronising bollocks. They are saying fck all about effectiveness of vaccines regarding new cases and full on nanny approach to it. Just trot out third wave, variants blah blah. What happened to processing information although clearly there are fan boys who lap it up.