Coronavirus

[TheHowieLama]

4 hours ago, Jenson said:

LFD implementation

One for the missing posters thread.

[Mudface]

Hmm. I thought this guy sounded a bit over optimistic-  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/17/uk-covid-lockdowns-can-be-eased-quicker-due-to-vaccines-and-data-mps-told

 

Mark Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, told the Commons science and technology committee on Wednesday that the country could begin to ease out of lockdown earlier than it did the first time round.

“I think we do have reasons to be more confident that we can move out of lockdown swifter than we could have done out of the first one,” he said.

“One of the things we didn’t have was as much confidence in the scientific data that we have now. In my view, we were a little slow to learn from that scientific data.”

He gave two examples. Reviews of the evidence that his group and others had carried out showed that schools could have safely reopened sooner, he stated. Reopening schools had never caused a surge in cases across western Europe, he said – although it had happened with universities. And it was very rare for anybody to be infected with the virus outdoors.

 

So I had a quick look around, and he wrote this back in September in the Telegraph-

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/19/uk-needs-follow-swedish-model-learn-live-covid/

 

Lockdown failed. We must follow the Swedish model and learn to live with Covid
The latest rise in infection should be more of a 'second bump' than a second wave and the response must be proportionate

 

So thank fuck we didn't follow his advice then, and I hope we ignore him now. Still, it's no doubt given some good headlines in the usual rags.

[johnsusername]

738 deaths over the last 24 hours a cause for celebration on BBC news there - "almost a third lower than last week" - excuse me while I break out the bunting. 

[johnsusername]

5 minutes ago, Mudface said:

Hmm. I thought this guy sounded a bit over optimistic-  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/17/uk-covid-lockdowns-can-be-eased-quicker-due-to-vaccines-and-data-mps-told

 

 

 

 

So I had a quick look around, and he wrote this back in September in the Telegraph-

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/19/uk-needs-follow-swedish-model-learn-live-covid/

 

 

 

 

So thank fuck we didn't follow his advice then, and I hope we ignore him now. Still, it's no doubt given some good headlines in the usual rags.

Yep, he's just been on BBC news telling the nation "we should be ending lockdown earlier because the data is so good'.

[Mudface]

5 minutes ago, johnsusername said:

Yep, he's just been on BBC news telling the nation "we should be ending lockdown earlier because the data is so good'.

Well we're under a thousand dead per day, what could go wrong?

[Sugar Ape]

4 minutes ago, Mudface said:

Hmm. I thought this guy sounded a bit over optimistic-  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/17/uk-covid-lockdowns-can-be-eased-quicker-due-to-vaccines-and-data-mps-told

 

 

 

 

So I had a quick look around, and he wrote this back in September in the Telegraph-

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/19/uk-needs-follow-swedish-model-learn-live-covid/

 

 

 

 

So thank fuck we didn't follow his advice then, and I hope we ignore him now. Still, it's no doubt given some good headlines in the usual rags.

There are loads of people like him chatting bollocks repeatedly, shifting the goalposts all the time and nothing ever gets said. 
 

Tim Spector of Zoe app fame has been increasingly chatting bollocks (in my opinion of course) the last few months, he was on Talk Radio the other day with Hartley-Brewer and I seen someone link to this article in the comments. Crazy how they get things so wrong and just carry on like they’ve never said it, still getting booked on radio and columns in the Telegraph and Spectator. This is from the 11th December!
 

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4798

Covid-19: Moving London into tier 3 would be “big mistake,” warns leading epidemiologist

 

A leading epidemiologist has urged the government not to put the UK capital into strict tier 3 measures next week, saying the move would be a “big mistake.”

 

Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London and creator of the Covid Symptom Study app,1 was responding to concerns that rising covid-19 cases in London in recent weeks would see it lose its tier 2 status.

 

London now has the highest prevalence of coronavirus infection in England, at 191 cases per 100 000 population, which compares with 153 cases per 100 000 for England as a whole. Daily cases rose by 37% during the most recent week recorded, from 1647 cases on 28 November to 2253 cases on 5 December.

Government advisers are due to meet on 16 December to review tiering decisions.

Speaking at a Royal Society of Medicine event, Spector said, “This on-off business is a total disaster, and we should avoid it. In London the decrease has stopped and is flat or slightly increased. Most of the cases are in north London at the moment. It would be a big mistake if London goes into tier 3. I think everyone should be coming down a tier and stay somewhere between tier 1 and 2 until April, when we see the vaccine taking effect.”

 

Spector said there was a danger that people would engage in risky behaviour if they thought their freedom was about to be curtailed even further. “Drinking and festivities will happen if people think that in two days’ time ‘that is it for another six weeks.’ It would be madness to do that.

 

“We need to think about these tier systems. The whole point should be the capacity of the NHS to deal with it locally. At the moment, according to our data, London has plenty of spare capacity [in hospitals]. We know we aren’t going to get rid of this virus before the vaccine, so we need to make sure the NHS is under control and that people over the age of 60 are not getting it at bad rates and have some clear criteria.”

 

He said the government should stop treating people like “cattle” to be led and instead give them better information and trust them to do the right thing. “Just having this league table of who is being relegated and promoted and this on-off effect is madness,” he added. “We need a much more consistent pattern that we can all relate to. If you tell people the truth and what is going on in your area—these are the figures, this is how full your hospital is—they will behave responsibly. They need to be part of the discussion not treated as if they are cattle.”

 

But Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, said it was likely London would need stricter controls: “If the epidemic is restricted to teenagers then the impact on hospitals in the area won’t be that great . . . But we know from the past that once coronavirus is prevalent in one age group, it tends to leak into other age groups and ultimately into the age groups that are most vulnerable,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on 11 December.

 

The three worst hit boroughs in London are Havering, Barking and Dagenham, and Waltham Forest. Havering has 380 cases per 100 000 population.

 

[Mudface]

8 minutes ago, Sugar Ape said:

There are loads of people like him chatting bollocks repeatedly, shifting the goalposts all the time and nothing ever gets said. 
 

Tim Spector of Zoe app fame has been increasingly chatting bollocks (in my opinion of course) the last few months, he was on Talk Radio the other day with Hartley-Brewer and I seen someone link to this article in the comments. Crazy how they get things so wrong and just carry on like they’ve never said it, still getting booked on radio and columns in the Telegraph and Spectator. This is from the 11th December!
 

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4798

Covid-19: Moving London into tier 3 would be “big mistake,” warns leading epidemiologist

 

A leading epidemiologist has urged the government not to put the UK capital into strict tier 3 measures next week, saying the move would be a “big mistake.”

 

Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London and creator of the Covid Symptom Study app,1 was responding to concerns that rising covid-19 cases in London in recent weeks would see it lose its tier 2 status.

 

London now has the highest prevalence of coronavirus infection in England, at 191 cases per 100 000 population, which compares with 153 cases per 100 000 for England as a whole. Daily cases rose by 37% during the most recent week recorded, from 1647 cases on 28 November to 2253 cases on 5 December.

Government advisers are due to meet on 16 December to review tiering decisions.

Speaking at a Royal Society of Medicine event, Spector said, “This on-off business is a total disaster, and we should avoid it. In London the decrease has stopped and is flat or slightly increased. Most of the cases are in north London at the moment. It would be a big mistake if London goes into tier 3. I think everyone should be coming down a tier and stay somewhere between tier 1 and 2 until April, when we see the vaccine taking effect.”

 

Spector said there was a danger that people would engage in risky behaviour if they thought their freedom was about to be curtailed even further. “Drinking and festivities will happen if people think that in two days’ time ‘that is it for another six weeks.’ It would be madness to do that.

 

“We need to think about these tier systems. The whole point should be the capacity of the NHS to deal with it locally. At the moment, according to our data, London has plenty of spare capacity [in hospitals]. We know we aren’t going to get rid of this virus before the vaccine, so we need to make sure the NHS is under control and that people over the age of 60 are not getting it at bad rates and have some clear criteria.”

 

He said the government should stop treating people like “cattle” to be led and instead give them better information and trust them to do the right thing. “Just having this league table of who is being relegated and promoted and this on-off effect is madness,” he added. “We need a much more consistent pattern that we can all relate to. If you tell people the truth and what is going on in your area—these are the figures, this is how full your hospital is—they will behave responsibly. They need to be part of the discussion not treated as if they are cattle.”

 

But Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, said it was likely London would need stricter controls: “If the epidemic is restricted to teenagers then the impact on hospitals in the area won’t be that great . . . But we know from the past that once coronavirus is prevalent in one age group, it tends to leak into other age groups and ultimately into the age groups that are most vulnerable,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on 11 December.

 

The three worst hit boroughs in London are Havering, Barking and Dagenham, and Waltham Forest. Havering has 380 cases per 100 000 population.

 

The Zoe app does seem to be noticeably underestimating the no of cases these days. At the last peak, it was giving figures that were only about 75% of the number of positive cases reported and for the last couple of weeks, it's pretty much the same. Don't know if the number of people regularly recording on it has slumped and so the estimates are off, but it seems barely useful even to give a trend these days. 

[Barrington Womble]

1 hour ago, Mudface said:

The Zoe app does seem to be noticeably underestimating the no of cases these days. At the last peak, it was giving figures that were only about 75% of the number of positive cases reported and for the last couple of weeks, it's pretty much the same. Don't know if the number of people regularly recording on it has slumped and so the estimates are off, but it seems barely useful even to give a trend these days. 

I think the numbers of people contributing are massively down. Most days now they don't have enough data to declare any figures for knowsley. I was looking yesterday and there was only 3000 contributers across all of Liverpool. 

[Rico1304]

Anyone had the request to take part in a trial with the NHS?  

[Mudface]

8 minutes ago, Barrington Womble said:

I think the numbers of people contributing are massively down. Most days now they don't have enough data to declare any figures for knowsley. I was looking yesterday and there was only 3000 contributers across all of Liverpool. 

Fair enough- they've never had enough contributors for my area, it's often up and down quite dramatically, and the range for Scotland as a whole is always pretty wide.

[halewood pete]

[Barrington Womble]

8 minutes ago, halewood pete said:

I used to quite like going there before going the royal court - when the royal court had gigs and not those shite Scouse "plays" they do now. 

[TheHowieLama]

Reported over here that about 1 in 3 are not taking the vaccine when offered - that would be among health care workers, military and school teachers.

 

WTF??

[littletedwest]

2 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

Reported over here that about 1 in 3 are not taking the vaccine when offered - that would be among health care workers, military and school teachers.

 

WTF??

Where are you? Mental that

[Bjornebye]

11 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

Reported over here that about 1 in 3 are not taking the vaccine when offered - that would be among health care workers, military and school teachers.

 

WTF??

Dickheads 

[Moo]

8 hours ago, Spy Bee said:

Very good vaccine data: A study in Israel finds Pfizer's vaccine to be >95% effective. 0.1% of 602k vaccinated people tested positive compared to 3.9% of 528k unvaccinated people over same period. Only 7 serious cases out of 602k vaccinated people. via @ariehkovler

Great, if you're in Israel (and most other countries) where they're administering the Pfizer vaccine in the correct way.  Not so great if you're in the UK where you've got to wait at least 12 weeks for the second Pfizer jab, if at all.  Next up, pick and mix vaccines.

[Mudface]

An example of the coruscating wit that's got her TV and press jobs-

 

 

[Davelfc]

Can we send her to mars? She would instantly make the atmosphere a lot more dense. 

[Mudface]

3 minutes ago, Poster said:

Can we send her to mars? She would instantly make the atmosphere a lot more dense. 

The worst thing about it is all the dickheads agreeing with her, no doubt nodding along and thinking what a devastating point she's just made. George Carlin was spot on, as usual-

 

'Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.'

[Section_31]

Vaccine skepticism advert on the telly saying the vaccine contains no pork products. Gutted.

[Spy Bee]

On 17/02/2021 at 23:55, Moo said:

Great, if you're in Israel (and most other countries) where they're administering the Pfizer vaccine in the correct way.  Not so great if you're in the UK where you've got to wait at least 12 weeks for the second Pfizer jab, if at all.  Next up, pick and mix vaccines.

Well, I'll not defend the government over much, but there is clearly a balance to be struck. There is a significant reduction in risk after the first dose, so it is logical to get the first dose to as many people as possible. Seasonality will come into play too, so I can totally understand the approach that they have taken. 

 

For what it's worth, everybody working in my missus' doctor's surgery have had their second dose, or are at least scheduled to.

[Rick Sanchez C-137]

3 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

Vaccine skepticism advert on the telly saying the vaccine contains no pork products. Gutted.

 

If they just make bacon vaccines then everyone except vegans would be saved.

[Spy Bee]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/19/how-the-beach-super-spreader-myth-can-inform-uks-future-covid-response

 

How the beach 'super-spreader' myth can inform UK's future Covid response

News that no outbreaks were linked to beach trips highlights important message about outdoor transmission, says expert

 

 

They were images that seemed to define a hot, febrile, and dangerous summer: massed ranks of daytrippers swamping Britain’s beaches, making the most of the June sunshine after months of restrictions – and, some front pages suggested, creating an appalling risk of coronavirus infection.

Eight months later, the headlines tell a different story: there was no real danger at all.

According to Prof Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at Edinburgh University who sits on the government’s SPI-M committee, the chance of a super-spreader event among the crowds that turned up from Bournemouth to Southend was minimal in theory – and nonexistent in practice.

“Over the summer we were treated to all this on the television news, pictures of crowded beaches, and there was an outcry about this,” he told MPs. “There were no outbreaks linked to public beaches. There’s never been a Covid-19 outbreak linked to a beach, ever, anywhere in the world, to the best of my knowledge.”

If that version of events seems at odds with stern warnings from the health secretary, Matt Hancock, that outdoor exercise could be banned, and an accusation that sunbathers were putting lives at risk, it is wholly consistent with the scientific evidence, other experts agree.

“We have known for some time that only about 10% of transmission events are linked to outdoor activities,” said Dr Müge Çevik, a lecturer in infectious diseases and medical virology at the University of St Andrews.

“Even those events generally involve either prolonged close contact or a mixture of indoor and outdoor time. We had a lot of existing knowledge even when the pandemic began about respiratory viruses and how they transmit in general, and everything directs us to the conditions in people’s homes and workplaces.”

Nobody disputes that there were some possible knock-on risks during the heatwave, on crowded trains or overused toilets – and the traffic jams and litter the crowds brought had a very real effect on local residents’ quality of life.

 

 

Still, reality was never quite as apocalyptic as the telephoto lens pictures which appeared to show a sea of humanity all but on top of each other – in fact, for the most part, just a trick of perspective.

Instead, some suggest, Woolhouse’s intervention is a reminder that the narrative propagated in parts of the media about the daytrippers had some of the qualities of a moral panic.

Woolhouse, for his part, has been taken by surprise by the interest in his comments – which he presumed to be a statement of a generally understood fact.

“This is not a subtle picture,” he said. “The published studies were already quite clear at the time … but after the reaction to my comment I am now concerned that this is not fully understood and maybe this is something the politicians do need to factor more into their thinking. As they make their plans to get us out of this, maybe they do need to be reappraised of where the risks really lie.”

To Vikki Slade, the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council leader for the Lib Dems who was ousted a few months later by the Conservatives, Woolhouse’s evidence is a bitterly ironic reminder of the difficulties she and her colleagues faced. “We were under siege,” she said. “I was working all hours, I had satellite trucks lined up outside my house for interviews. It felt like the world had come to Bournemouth.”

With the media spotlight simply intensifying local anger, “we were trying to balance the message that there was no evidence that large numbers of people coming to the beach presented a risk, but there was a negative impact on the local community in terms of their fear and perception of harm. And we just had insufficient resources to deal with the influx. But there was not a danger around the virus – it was the arrival of so many people into a small area without enough facilities open to deal with them.”

Lucy Yardley, a professor of health psychology at the University of Southampton who sits on Sage, suggested that the government must learn the lessons from last summer’s debacle – and bear in mind that if people are barred from congregating outside, they are more likely to do so indoors, where the risks are greater.

“It’s a really important message, and this is the right time to push it home,” she said. “The difference between indoor and outdoor is huge. Every report about restrictions and enforcement focused on outdoor contacts distracts from the places where the transmission is really happening.”

To Çevik, the hysteria over the beach gatherings in some quarters was, above all, evidence of how dislocated some pockets of social media users are from the reality of about 15 million people who are still going to work every day. “Low-income families have been working throughout this pandemic, and they are much more likely to live in overcrowded housing,” she said. “If you live in a big house and order everything on Amazon, you might be shocked by those images. But they’re missing the bigger picture.”

[easytoslip]

She had her first jab yesterday, over 60, she was round at our and all sound but now she feels like shit, I said it passes after a 2 days and it's better she had it in the long run. 

Anyone know of anyone that's had the jab of a similar age and what they experienced and for how long? 

[Bjornebye]

2 minutes ago, easytoslip said:

She had her first jab yesterday, over 60, she was round at our and all sound but now she feels like shit, I said it passes after a 2 days and it's better she had it in the long run. 

Anyone know of anyone that's had the jab of a similar age and what they experienced and for how long? 

My dad a few weeks back he’s mid 60s and said he slept like a baby that night and had no real side effects. I guess like covid it just hits people in different ways.