Coronavirus Thread

[Dahnsouff 5,958]

2 hours ago, leicsmac said:

The high male suicide rate partly due to the "man up" attitude and not seeking help (an example of proactive positivity being pushed) is one that immediately comes to mind, and I don't believe that to be extreme. There are others, too.

 

I'm not saying that being on a downer is best most often, but people "revelling in misery" often need more than instruction on positive thinking, and sadly there's a great deal of lost causes that prove this.

Steady on there, that is not a positive outlook even slightly. Repression of ones emotions and fears to confirm to perceived societal expectations is just plain unhealthy. 
The negatives of being overly positive is probably it can be wearing in the extreme for people who tend to be on a more even (or negative) keel.

[leicsmac 4,939]

6 minutes ago, Dahnsouff said:

Steady on there, that is not a positive outlook even slightly. Repression of ones emotions and fears to confirm to perceived societal expectations is just plain unhealthy. 
The negatives of being overly positive is probably it can be wearing in the extreme for people who tend to be on a more even (or negative) keel.

I'm reasonably sure that the people who purport it believe it to be a "positive" thinking mindset - to be rugged, stoic and indifferent to problems in the mind is positive thought in their minds. I certainly agree with you that it's unhealthy, but our perception isn't the important one here.

 

Do agree with the second sentence.

[Cardiff_Fox 6,521]

7 hours ago, dsr-burnley said:

Is raising expectations such a bad thing?  you have a lot of depressed people, totally fed up, not seen family for all but a year, stuck indoors, sick of the sight of their four walls and the street outside, desperate to get away.  Is it really the best thing to tell them "life is miserable, it won't get any better, deal with it" rather than giving them hope?  Especially when the hope is genuine?

We had a situation at Christmas where expectations were raised for a five day break of restrictions which was then reduced to an one day break. With the plans and expectation, people across the country broke that one day break spending multiple days with their family. 
 

Manage expectations - and anything better than the worst case scenario is great. It’s a crisis, time for this nation to stick their big boy pants and face up to the realities. Maybe then we might start showing the kind of behaviour which finally gets rid of this thing. 
 

Call it misery all you want - it’s cold hard realism. 
 

My other issue with the holiday thing is I have real concerns about businesses who have to service refunds and holidays going back longer than a year and what it does to their cash flow. I see Gary Neville has picked up on the holiday thing this morning and says that very indecision gives his restaurant(S) and hotels a real concern about the roadmap. 

Edited 11 February by Cardiff_Fox

[Bellend Sebastian 2,275]

6 hours ago, leicsmac said:

As most often, I think this depends on the situation.

 

There's a place for idealism/optimism and cynicism/pessimism, and too much of either can be a bad thing.

Most definitely. I worked for years with someone with a relentlessly positive, 'nothing is a problem' attitude. It led to them taking ridiculous, unnecessary risks, being a genuinely terrible judge of character (a total inability to question people's motives made them repeatedly open to be exploited) and soured relations with colleagues that were trying to do the right thing in the face of things like evidence. Whilst there were undoubtedly some circumstances where this approach worked, over the two decades I worked with them, these were FAR outnumbered by the instances where it led them perilously close to disaster

[filbertway 3,164]

9 hours ago, Super_horns said:

Stuff like this won’t help ease people’s doubts about the vaccine .

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1359638587378180096

 

Not very helpful spreading “maybe” rumours

I swear all you do is come into this thread spreading potential bad news

[Mark 'expert' Lawrenson 2,824]

This last 12 months have been truly terrible for all.

What I still fail to understand is why the government insist on counting all deaths with covid as a covid death.

Deaths from dementia are down 500% deaths from cancer, stroke and flu are also down.

Do other countries report COVID deaths the same way as us? 
It’s no wonder we have such a dreadful death rate with the way we report our deaths.

Apologies for my naivety as I just cannot understand why the government do this.

.

Also the  media  in their reports more often than not say there have been over 100,000 deaths “from” Covid not with.

 

[dsr-burnley 580]

2 hours ago, Cardiff_Fox said:

We had a situation at Christmas where expectations were raised for a five day break of restrictions which was then reduced to an one day break. With the plans and expectation, people across the country broke that one day break spending multiple days with their family. 
 

Manage expectations - and anything better than the worst case scenario is great. It’s a crisis, time for this nation to stick their big boy pants and face up to the realities. Maybe then we might start showing the kind of behaviour which finally gets rid of this thing. 
 

Call it misery all you want - it’s cold hard realism. 
 

My other issue with the holiday thing is I have real concerns about businesses who have to service refunds and holidays going back longer than a year and what it does to their cash flow. I see Gary Neville has picked up on the holiday thing this morning and says that very indecision gives his restaurant(S) and hotels a real concern about the roadmap. 

The problem is that there are (oversimplification alert) two types of people - those getting by in the pandemic because even with the restrictions their life isn't so bad as all that, and those not getting by and having an awful time because their life is rotten.  This may be partly a state of mind rather than actual financial/social position, but that's not the issue.

 

Thepowers that be are far too concerned about reining in the optimists who think life isn't so bad.  They want to depress them. to rein them in, to make them believe the situation is worse.  But they can only do that by telling everyone that the situation is worse and it isn't getting better in any significant degree - and so obviously that's what they are telling the already depressed.  When you tell a young man with few cares to put on his big boy pants and face up to realities, you are saying the same thing to the pensioner with depression.

 

Covid is a problem for now.  But depression, dementia, loneliness are problems for now as well.  If government policy is that we should give up hope, then it will lead to problems, and I don't think those problems are being considered.

Edited 11 February by dsr-burnley

[browniefox 695]

47 minutes ago, Mark 'expert' Lawrenson said:

This last 12 months have been truly terrible for all.

What I still fail to understand is why the government insist on counting all deaths with covid as a covid death.

Deaths from dementia are down 500% deaths from cancer, stroke and flu are also down.

Do other countries report COVID deaths the same way as us? 
It’s no wonder we have such a dreadful death rate with the way we report our deaths.

Apologies for my naivety as I just cannot understand why the government do this.

.

Also the  media  in their reports more often than not say there have been over 100,000 deaths “from” Covid not with.

 

The way we report them is shocking, I know someone who's dad had a brain aneurysm and dropped dead 3 weeks after testing positive (no symptoms of Covid at all), went down as a covid death. I was also told and keep hearing that if someone dies of Covid they get some money (don't know who "they" are though). 

[ealingfox 5,625]

10 minutes ago, browniefox said:

The way we report them is shocking, I know someone who's dad had a brain aneurysm and dropped dead 3 weeks after testing positive (no symptoms of Covid at all), went down as a covid death. I was also told and keep hearing that if someone dies of Covid they get some money (don't know who "they" are though). 

 

Behave.

[Robo61 32]

37 minutes ago, Mark 'expert' Lawrenson said:

This last 12 months have been truly terrible for all.

What I still fail to understand is why the government insist on counting all deaths with covid as a covid death.

Deaths from dementia are down 500% deaths from cancer, stroke and flu are also down.

Do other countries report COVID deaths the same way as us? 
It’s no wonder we have such a dreadful death rate with the way we report our deaths.

Apologies for my naivety as I just cannot understand why the government do this.

.

Also the  media  in their reports more often than not say there have been over 100,000 deaths “from” Covid not with.

 

 

4 minutes ago, browniefox said:

The way we report them is shocking, I know someone who's dad had a brain aneurysm and dropped dead 3 weeks after testing positive (no symptoms of Covid at all), went down as a covid death. I was also told and keep hearing that if someone dies of Covid they get some money (don't know who "they" are though). 

Please could you advise where you got the number dying from dementia from,  I can only find data on the internet that indicates the complete opposite. 

 

However Covid deaths are reported there are going to be built in innaccuaries,  there will also be people who have died of Covid-19,  but were never tested before their death and therefore they don't appear in the daily figures.  The three ways the Government is using to monitor the number of deaths caused by the Covid Virus are all tracking around the same ball park number,  so there is no reason to believe that any of them are widely inaccurate. 

[Sampson 3,184]

It's funny how up until mid-December we'd heard nothing about variants and now they're everywhere.

 

Earlier in the pandemic it was said that the virus mutated way less than flu so the variations won't make much of a difference.

 

Now each one is a massive headline which will render the vaccine useless? Obviously it's important that Scientists study them and keep on top of them, but the way these variants feel a little sensationalist to me.

Edited 11 February by Sampson

[Houdini Logic 1,489]

1 hour ago, Mark 'expert' Lawrenson said:

This last 12 months have been truly terrible for all.

What I still fail to understand is why the government insist on counting all deaths with covid as a covid death.

Deaths from dementia are down 500% deaths from cancer, stroke and flu are also down.

Do other countries report COVID deaths the same way as us? 
It’s no wonder we have such a dreadful death rate with the way we report our deaths.

Apologies for my naivety as I just cannot understand why the government do this.

.

Also the  media  in their reports more often than not say there have been over 100,000 deaths “from” Covid not with.

 

This is something I also find particularly interesting. Just this weekend I decided to try and find an accurate figure for myself and I'll tell you, it was hard! I had to pull together individual weekly deaths rates for 2020 and then compare them to the 5 year average. I also found using the 5 year average in itself was fairly misleading because it has been naturally trending upwards since 2011. Anyway... the short and long is that by my calculations there were around 60-65,000 extra deaths in 2020, around half of what the government are reporting. 

 

I can understand to an extent why the government are overplaying this, because in their view it's a necessary form of crowd control (or that's my take on it). It helps you get buy-in from the masses, which is ultimately what they want to stop a more significant spike, people dying on hospital floors and the tabloids running riot. I kind of get that. 

Edited 11 February by Houdini Logic

[Dunge 288]

56 minutes ago, Mark 'expert' Lawrenson said:

This last 12 months have been truly terrible for all.

What I still fail to understand is why the government insist on counting all deaths with covid as a covid death.

Deaths from dementia are down 500% deaths from cancer, stroke and flu are also down.

Do other countries report COVID deaths the same way as us? 
It’s no wonder we have such a dreadful death rate with the way we report our deaths.

Apologies for my naivety as I just cannot understand why the government do this.

.

Also the  media  in their reports more often than not say there have been over 100,000 deaths “from” Covid not with.

 

Right now I’d say it would be for consistency. There’s a value in viewing our position compared to last week, last month, last season, etc. and then presenting this in a way the public can understand. If we altered the definition and started presenting different graphs, that in itself causes confusion, while also adding nothing to the data in a relational sense (eg last week’s death rate is still around x% higher than this week’s death rate regardless of definition).

 

I appreciate the frustration in this and that it creates a somewhat inaccurate picture; but there will always be some manner of inaccuracy if you want answers with any kind of speed, so it’s a trade-off. Considering the main aim right now is to drive down the number of cases and how public trust tends to drop whenever the goalposts get moved (see summer holidays), they likely feel that any kind of redefinition is more trouble than it’s worth.

[browniefox 695]

10 minutes ago, ealingfox said:

 

Behave.

I know! That's my thought. I was hoping someone would be able to let me know who the "they" was. 

[Sol thewall Bamba 8,459]

14 hours ago, bovril said:

Bloody hell, they live amongst us. 

 

Paedos get less. Brainwashed nation. 

[bovril 8,478]

10 hours ago, Innovindil said:

So where do you fall in those categories? Don't really point out who they are. 

I'd like to know who the 13% are so I can keep away from them. 

[David Guiza 2,088]

The level of Government overreach is a little worrying in respect of the 10 year sentence nonsense. It will never happen, but the fact they even went ahead and publicly mentioned it is a concern. 

 

It also plays into the hands of COVID deniers and alike as it makes even rational people question just what on earth is going on. 

[Alf Bentley 11,222]

1 hour ago, Mark 'expert' Lawrenson said:

 

Deaths from dementia are down 500% deaths from cancer, stroke and flu are also down.

 

 

Should 500% read 50% there? Either way, what is the source for that info?

 

A 500% fall would mean that vast numbers were rising from the dead, massively outnumbering those who had died, wouldn't it? I've yet to see evidence of this zombie army... 

 

15 minutes ago, Robo61 said:

 

Please could you advise where you got the number dying from dementia from,  I can only find data on the internet that indicates the complete opposite. 

 

However Covid deaths are reported there are going to be built in innaccuaries,  there will also be people who have died of Covid-19,  but were never tested before their death and therefore they don't appear in the daily figures.  The three ways the Government is using to monitor the number of deaths caused by the Covid Virus are all tracking around the same ball park number,  so there is no reason to believe that any of them are widely inaccurate. 

 

The official data suggests a small but significant fall in dementia deaths in 2019 (i.e. before Covid):

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/dementiaandalzheimersdiseasedeathsincludingcomorbiditiesenglandandwales/2019registrations

DK why the figures fell in 2019 after rising continuously for decades - but nothing to do with Covid, obviously.

 

Another ONS page said that confirmed stats for most causes of death in 2020 won't be available until about June. 

But they did publish this, showing a 79% increase in dementia deaths at home between March and September 2020: https://www.alzheimersresearchuk.org/dementia-deaths-in-homes-soar/

That could be seen as evidence for the harm done by lockdowns (whether necessary, as I believe, or not) - or by lockdowns being longer than was inevitable, due to slow Govt response, fence-sitting, unclear messaging & loss of public trust.

A caveat, though: I presume that at least some of those 79% extra home deaths would have happened anyway in a normal year, just in hospital and not at home (due to hospitals swamped with Covid patients & people scared to get treatment).

 

It's entirely logical that there'll have been a big fall in flu deaths:

- Social distancing & masks will mean a lot fewer people have caught flu, so some people who would have died of flu/pneumonia in a normal year are still alive

- Some people who would have died of flu in the winter had already died of Covid earlier in the year

 

Again, a source for the claimed fall in cancer and stroke deaths would be good....

The expectation is that there'll be a rise in cancer deaths medium-term, due to treatment delayed by Covid-swamped hospitals & folk scared to seek help, when they might have survived/recovered otherwise

Again, in the short-term, there's a logic to there possibly being fewer cancer deaths as most who die of cancer are elderly & many will have died of Covid instead.

Stroke stats are harder to predict. Covid will have caused a fair few stroke deaths (Covid causes blood clots among other symptoms), so how are they recorded? Yet, you'd expect there to have been more stroke deaths at home for the same reasons as before (swamped hospitals, fear of seeking help).

[Fktf 654]

57 minutes ago, Sampson said:

It's funny how up until mid-December we'd heard nothing about variants and now they're everywhere.

 

Earlier in the pandemic it was said that the virus mutated way less than flu so the variations won't make much of a difference.

 

Now each one is a massive headline which will render the vaccine useless? Obviously it's important that Scientists study them and keep on top of them, but the way these variants feel a little sensationalist to me.

It is just relevance in my opinion. Variations didn't make much difference to the course of the pandemic when there was no vaccine - we were going to be in lockdown/control measures whatever was floating about. Now we have a possible route out of lockdowns with the vaccines, it is newsworthy that some variations may reduce the efficacy of vaccines. 

 

I guess the only sensationalist bit is that they don't report that once vaccine technology and manufacture is established, it should be relatively trivial to produce new vaccines to combat new variants. 

[Super_horns 979]

2 hours ago, filbertway said:

I swear all you do is come into this thread spreading potential bad news

Sorry.

 

Will try not too .

 

[Nod.E 2,422]

1 hour ago, Sampson said:

It's funny how up until mid-December we'd heard nothing about variants and now they're everywhere.

 

Earlier in the pandemic it was said that the virus mutated way less than flu so the variations won't make much of a difference.

 

Now each one is a massive headline which will render the vaccine useless? Obviously it's important that Scientists study them and keep on top of them, but the way these variants feel a little sensationalist to me.

Exactly. It's PR. Government needs us to think the odds were stacked against us and that their leadership, or lack thereof, wouldn't have made much difference. Sad thing is, from conversations I've had (with family etc), I think it's working and the public will not hold this government responsible for the total lack of leadership, the preventable deaths, and the additional time required to lock down as a result.

 

Using a fact and disproportionately highlighting and pushing this fact and elevating it to unnecessary status is sensationalist. It's a good PR trick because factually they are not saying anything that is false, so it's difficult to challenge. But to make it headline news for moths is misleading and moves the conversation away from government shortcomings.

[dsr-burnley 580]

12 hours ago, Super_horns said:

Stuff like this won’t help ease people’s doubts about the vaccine .

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1359638587378180096

 

Not very helpful spreading “maybe” rumours

This is the sort of stuff than can be looked at with actual data.  This professor is concerned with the theoretical aspects of reinfection, specifically that the E484 variant (which is also in the Brazil variant) looks like it might reinfect people who have already had the old variant.  This is done by test tube experiments.

 

Why not use real world data?  There have been about 2 million people confirmed by covid test as being infected in Brazil since the start of this year.  There have been 10 million altogether, and about 5 million of those positive tests were before the end of September, before this strain arose.  So how many of the 2 million have been reinfected?  If half of this year's 2 million have the new strain, and 1.5% of the population has had a positive test before, you would expect 2 million x 50% x 1.5% of the new year positive tests to have a previous positive test - if the new variant completely negates the effect of the vaccine.

 

That is 15,000 people who would be expected to have a second test positive, if the new variant totally evades prior immunity.  If the new variant evades prior immunity by 50%, then there should be 7,500 repeat positive test.  If the new variant evades prior immunity by only 10%, there would still be 1,500 people testing positive for the second time.

 

I can find no evidence on google of any significant number of people getting two positive widely separated positive tests in Brazil.  Certainly no more than would be expected with any disease taking into account random failures of the immune system. 

[Innovindil 3,000]

1 hour ago, bovril said:

I'd like to know who the 13% are so I can keep away from them. 

I'd imagine they are the people who view the world from the worst case scenario. Putting myself in those types of shoes, I reckon I could probably justify a not harsh enough stance. 

 

Ten years sounds like a lot, but the reality is someone lying about their travel and not going into quarantine *could* be catastrophic. New incurable strain kills millions etc etc. Ten years in the slammer for that sounds measly eh. 

 

Personally think it's just about right. It's the part that isn't mentioned in that question that does my coconut in, the fine. We all know if the punishment is a fine and/or prison then the chances are the rich and fabulous won't give a damn, especially when the fine is capped. 

[Costock_Fox 12,058]

2 hours ago, Mark 'expert' Lawrenson said:

This last 12 months have been truly terrible for all.

What I still fail to understand is why the government insist on counting all deaths with covid as a covid death.

Deaths from dementia are down 500% deaths from cancer, stroke and flu are also down.

Do other countries report COVID deaths the same way as us? 
It’s no wonder we have such a dreadful death rate with the way we report our deaths.

Apologies for my naivety as I just cannot understand why the government do this.

.

Also the  media  in their reports more often than not say there have been over 100,000 deaths “from” Covid not with.

 

It may be that the deaths are down for these conditions but in some of not a lot it is probably because Covid got there first. In some would it be months, of course, but in others it would have been years and therefore Covid is the true cause of death.

[Finnaldo 3,235]

2 hours ago, Sampson said:

It's funny how up until mid-December we'd heard nothing about variants and now they're everywhere.

 

Earlier in the pandemic it was said that the virus mutated way less than flu so the variations won't make much of a difference.

 

Now each one is a massive headline which will render the vaccine useless? Obviously it's important that Scientists study them and keep on top of them, but the way these variants feel a little sensationalist to me.

My guesses would be a blend of: 

 

- Genetic sequencing being in full gear now, so it’s a lot easier to identify variations than earlier in the pandemic when everyone was scrambling 

 

- A full winter in the Northern Hemisphere pushing up cases - they’re high everywhere that hasn’t kept it out so there’s more chance of mutation with more people infected? 
 

- With the vaccine news largely positive, media are always going to be looking for the negative slant: fear sells. Variations making vaccines useless is the only real angle to get concerned viewers watching or reading, and it also helps the government to keep the public on its toes as to try and maintain a decent level of co-operation until they decide to lift lockdown. 
 

In short, nothing out the ordinary and nothing particularly malicious.