Coronavirus

[Spy Bee]

2 minutes ago, Bjornebye said:

A vaccine vaccinates against getting it. Getting infected isn't a vaccine. 

But if you can be reinfected after you have had it, there is a high chance you can be reinfected after you have been vaccinated.

[Bjornebye]

Just now, Spy Bee said:

But if you can be reinfected after you have had it, there is a high chance you can be reinfected after you have been vaccinated.

If anyone can be reinfected then whats the point of a vaccine? 

[Strontium]

2 minutes ago, Bjornebye said:

You were implying 'herd immunity' without a vaccine. That was the discussion. Nice try though shifty. 

 

I was implying nothing. I said herd immunity was the only show in town. If I meant herd immunity without a vaccine, that's what I would have said.

 

Immunity is immunity, whether it's achieved through natural means or a hypothetical vaccine.

[Strontium]

1 minute ago, Bjornebye said:

If anyone can be reinfected then whats the point of a vaccine? 

 

It reduces the chances of being reinfected, but it also means that if you do get reinfected, the symptoms will be less severe.

 

No vaccine is ever 100% effective, and that applies to immunity achieved through infection too.

[Spy Bee]

4 minutes ago, Bjornebye said:

If anyone can be reinfected then whats the point of a vaccine? 

Really?

 

This is the problem. People think a vaccine comes out and the day after everything is fine. 

[Bjornebye]

5 minutes ago, Stront19m Dog™ said:

 

I was implying nothing. I said herd immunity was the only show in town. If I meant herd immunity without a vaccine, that's what I would have said.

 

Immunity is immunity, whether it's achieved through natural means or a hypothetical vaccine.

Yes you were. You know what the discussion has been about. Herd immunity now instead of lockdowns while waiting for a vaccine. Why do you always have to lie and be a shifty little fart just so you don't get proven wrong? Over something as small as me jokingly picking you up on the use of the word 'literally'. Hahaha fucking hell 

[Bjornebye]

4 minutes ago, Stront19m Dog™ said:

 

It reduces the chances of being reinfected, but it also means that if you do get reinfected, the symptoms will be less severe.

 

No vaccine is ever 100% effective, and that applies to immunity achieved through infection too.

Ok. 

3 minutes ago, Spy Bee said:

Really?

 

This is the problem. People think a vaccine comes out and the day after everything is fine. 

Who has said that? 

 

I don't think killing more people with the virus is the way forward but maniacs will maniac. 

[TheHowieLama]

@Spy Bee

Have you ever read or posted any research that does not have Gupta's name at the top of it?

Asking for a friend.

[Strontium]

2 minutes ago, Bjornebye said:

Yes you were. You know what the discussion has been about. Herd immunity now instead of lockdowns while waiting for a vaccine. Why do you always have to lie and be a shifty little fart just so you don't get proven wrong? Over something as small as me jokingly picking you up on the use of the word 'literally'. Hahaha fucking hell 

 

If people misunderstand or misuse the term "herd immunity", that's not really my fault. I will continue to use the term with the implicit understanding that I'm referring to its actual meaning, if that's okay with you.

[Sugar Ape]

23 minutes ago, Spy Bee said:

So some planks sign it to try and undermine it. There is a growing groundswell of opinion that our mechanism for dealing with this needs to change.

You believe the right wing think tank and esteemed medical professionals like Prof. Bert N.Ernie then. Meanwhile, for people not brainwashed by right wing propoganda:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/07/why-herd-immunity-strategy-is-regarded-as-fringe-viewpoint

 

Why herd immunity strategy is regarded as fringe viewpoint

At first glance it sounds like a no-brainer. Coronavirus is most dangerous to older and unhealthier people, so why not protect them and let the rest of society return to life as normal? It would boost the economy and free the young and fit from the mental and financial burdens of Covid restrictions. In time, as the virus tears through them, they will acquire herd immunity that ultimately helps us all.

 

The strategy proposed in the Great Barrington declaration – a letter signed by an international group of scientists – is the latest salvo in an ongoing battle of ideas for how to tackle the pandemic. It calls on governments around the world to abandon strategies that suppress the virus until we can better cope – through working test-and-trace programmes, new treatments, vaccines and more – for the radically different approach.

 

The declaration was drawn up at the American Institute for Economic Research, a right-leaning organisation in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, that promotes individual rights, small government and open markets. It registered a web domainfor the document.

 

Authored by Sunetra Gupta, a professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford, Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford, and Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine at Harvard, the declaration has received thousands of signatures. The appearance of Mr Matt Hancock, a “public health academic”, and the Rev Booker Clownn at Trump University suggest not all are serious, but the strategy is being listened to at the highest levels. On Monday the US health and human services secretary, Alex Azar, tweeted that the authors had provided “strong reinforcement of the Trump administration’s strategy of aggressively protecting the vulnerable while opening schools and the workplace”.

 

According to the declaration, a “focused protection” approach is the most compassionate way to minimise deaths and social harm until we reach herd immunity – a situation where enough people are resistant to the virus that the pandemic shrinks. But among the scientific community, this is a fringe viewpoint.

 

“Their proposed strategy is outside the scientific mainstream,” said James Naismith, a professor of structural biology at the University of Oxford. The scientists risk making the same mistake as seen with test and trace, he said: it is easy to describe what is hoped for, but delivery is another matter.

 

Michael Head, a researcher at Southampton University, believes the declaration is based on the false premise that governments and the scientific community want extensive lockdowns until a vaccine arrives.

 

“Now that we have some knowledge about how best to handle new outbreaks, most national and subnational interventions are much lighter” than the full lockdown the UK imposed in the spring, he said. Head is among many scientists who are sceptical that the most vulnerable in society can be adequately identified and protected.

 

“It is a very bad idea,” he said. “We saw that even with intensive lockdowns in place, there was a huge excess death toll, with the elderly bearing the brunt of that.” In the UK, about a quarter of the population would be classed as vulnerable to Covid-19.

 

Jonathan Read, a biostatistician at the University of Lancaster and a member of the Sage modelling subgroup, shares the concern. “Shielding of the vulnerable was part of the UK policy since the start of lockdown. The deaths of the elderly, and others at high risk, in care homes and from community infection, even after the imposition of lockdown in March, suggest that a policy that entirely relies on a segregation of society isn’t going to go well,” he said.

 

The concept of herd immunity is that when enough people are immune to a virus, it no longer spreads. At the start of the pandemic, before mass lockdowns, a patient with Covid-19 might spread the virus to about three others. If two in three, or 66%, are immune, the outbreak soon fizzles out. What troubles many scientists is that with coronavirus no one knows how protected people are after contracting the virus, how long that protection lasts, and exactly what proportion of society needs to be immune to quell a pandemic.

 

“We know that immunity to coronaviruses wanes over time and reinfection is possible, so lasting protection of vulnerable individuals by establishing herd immunity is very unlikely to be achieved in the absence of a vaccine,” said Rupert Beale, a group leader at the Francis Crick Institute in London. He called the declaration “wishful thinking”, not least because it is impossible to fully identify who is vulnerable and it is not possible to fully protect them.

 

Infection rates in the UK reveal that as new cases rise in one age group, they spill over into older groups, and from there drive up numbers of people in hospital and, ultimately, deaths. “Individual scientists may reasonably disagree about the relative merits of various interventions, but they must be honest about the feasibility of what they propose,” Beale said.

 

William Hanage, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard, likens the strategy to protecting antiques in a house fire by putting them all in one room, standing guard with a fire extinguisher but simultaneously fanning the flames.

 

“If the blaze outside the room were adequately controlled then maybe, just maybe, they would be able to stamp out all the embers,” he said. “But this approach is to actively encourage the fire. The risk is that too many sparks make it through and all you’re left with is ashes.”

 

Another concern many scientists raise is the impact on the young and healthy. While the risk of death is low in people under 40, infection can still expose them to long-term complications that healthcare could be left dealing with for decades, Hanage said. “Quite large numbers of younger people are already becoming infected at present, whether or not they are being encouraged, and there are consequences to those infections.”

[Bjornebye]

1 minute ago, Stront19m Dog™ said:

 

If people misunderstand or misuse the term "herd immunity", that's not really my fault. I will continue to use the term with the implicit understanding that I'm referring to its actual meaning, if that's okay with you.

In the context we are talking about you can 'shift' all you want. I know what you meant. Thats enough for me. 

[Sugar Ape]

12 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

@Spy Bee

Have you ever read or posted any research that does not have Gupta's name at the top of it?

Asking for a friend.

Weird the way there are thousands of esteemed scientists backing herd immunity yet you only ever see the same three or four names mentioned over and over. 

[Rico1304]

30 minutes ago, Spy Bee said:

Suicide rates up

Depression rates up

Death by cardiac problems up

Undiagnosed cancers up

Treatments and scans down

Dental treatment down

 

I could go on..

 

My missus works in a doctors, and someone died last week because they didn't take the advice to go to hospital with a blue light because they were scared of Covid.

 

Open society up for those that are willing, build a level of herd immunity quickly and thereby protect the vulnerable. 

 

 

 

22 minutes ago, Spy Bee said:

So some planks sign it to try and undermine it. There is a growing groundswell of opinion that our mechanism for dealing with this needs to change.

Is anyone else a bit worried that blithely writing off the vulnerable, because it’s risks the vulnerable being written off is a bit of a circular argument? 

[Spy Bee]

2 minutes ago, Rico1304 said:

 

Is anyone else a bit worried that blithely writing off the vulnerable, because it’s risks the vulnerable being written off is a bit of a circular argument? 

Nobody is writing off the vulnerable. How duplicitous can you be?

 

I think the best way to a lower mortality rate in encouraging controlled herd immunity. 

 

There you go, four word. That sums it up.

[Elite]

1 minute ago, Spy Bee said:

Nobody is writing off the vulnerable. How duplicitous can you be?

 

I think the best way to a lower mortality rate in encouraging controlled herd immunity. 

 

There you go, four word. That sums it up.

Would you be willing for you and your family to get infected first to get the ball rolling?

[Spy Bee]

3 minutes ago, Elite said:

Would you be willing for you and your family to get infected first to get the ball rolling?

Yes.

 

Although I would advise my mum to take every precaution not to catch it.

[Elite]

Just now, Spy Bee said:

Yes.

You may live to regret that comment.

[Rico1304]

5 minutes ago, Spy Bee said:

Nobody is writing off the vulnerable. How duplicitous can you be?

 

I think the best way to a lower mortality rate in encouraging controlled herd immunity. 

 

There you go, four word. That sums it up.

Hold on.  You want to isolate c20m but think that won’t have the knock on effects you are currently complain are killing people? 

[Spy Bee]

1 minute ago, Elite said:

You may live to regret that comment.

I may. The chance of me regretting it is very small though. I'm totally aware of the facts. I may live to regret driving every time I get in my car. I may live to regret not having the perfect diet and drinking more than government guidelines recommend. I may live to regret going to play football tonight after 6 months of very little exercise. This is life, it is a series of calculated risks, weighed off against the benefits and risks of other eventualities.

[Rico1304]

1 minute ago, Spy Bee said:

I may. The chance of me regretting it is very small though. I'm totally aware of the facts. I may live to regret driving every time I get in my car. I may live to regret not having the perfect diet and drinking more than government guidelines recommend. I may live to regret going to play football tonight after 6 months of very little exercise. This is life, it is a series of calculated risks, weighed off against the benefits and risks of other eventualities.

You being a pissed up, fat footballer isn’t going to kill anyone else. 

[Elite]

1 minute ago, Rico1304 said:

You being a pissed up, fat footballer isn’t going to kill anyone else. 

Exactly.

 

Life has a funny way of kicking you in the balls, be careful what you wish for.

[Rico1304]

Gupta and her mates have no consequence to being wrong. They should be asked to put some skin in the game.  Ok guys, we’ll take your strategy but if you’re wrong you spend the rest of your lives in prison. With Big Ron who’s in with the warders. 

[Rico1304]

And the driving analogy is bollocks.  Do you drive the same in the rain or snow as you do on a lovely straight motorway?  Do you drive everywhere at 120mph?  There are very few deaths per journey so why bother with a seat belt? 

[Spy Bee]

2 minutes ago, Elite said:

Exactly.

 

Life has a funny way of kicking you in the balls, be careful what you wish for.

I'm not superstitious. I think being superstitious is retarded. There is a chance I could get Covid and die, or suffer really badly. The fact that I have posted about it on here doesn't make me any more prone to this. Covid isn't reading this thinking "I'll show you!".

 

3 minutes ago, Rico1304 said:

Gupta and her mates have no consequence to being wrong. 

None of them have any consequences to being wrong. Ferguson has had no consequences to scaring the shit out of the world by exaggerating the risk about ten fold. Whitty & Vallance have no consequences for standing up there and deliberately misleading the nation.

 

1 minute ago, Rico1304 said:

And the driving analogy is bollocks.  Do you drive the same in the rain or snow as you do on a lovely straight motorway?  Do you drive everywhere at 120mph?  There are very few deaths per journey so why bother with a seat belt? 

No, it's not bollocks. Because I am not suggesting that everybody who is 80 goes out there and licks the faces of the afflicted. There you go, misrepresenting my views again. If you can't understand my four word summary, you're either being deliberately obtuse, or you're thick as fuck.

[Elite]

1 minute ago, Rico1304 said:

And the driving analogy is bollocks.  Do you drive the same in the rain or snow as you do on a lovely straight motorway?  Do you drive everywhere at 120mph?  There are very few deaths per journey so why bother with a seat belt? 

Well Spybee obviously drives in his footy kit and controls the pedals with his studs, whilst eating a double-cheeseburger and 6 cans of Stella.