Coronavirus Thread

[String fellow]

9 minutes ago, filbertway said:

I assume boosters for the Brazil and SA variants are already being worked on.

 

Feels inevitable that they'll make their way to our shores and spread at some point.

 

If another dominant yet harmless variant could appear soon, thatd be superb

If I've understood the Nextstrain data correctly, the Kent variant (or clade) 20I/501YV1 is increasing its global share by roughly 3% per week, and will soon account for over 50% of cases globally, so perhaps we should be as fearful of our own variant returning as we are about the two other main variants. Having said that, it seems that the Brazil variant is the most lethal. Interestingly, the variant which began in Denmark last year (and blamed on mink) has now disappeared completely.

[yorkie1999]

20 minutes ago, Leicester_Loyal said:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/13/quarter-covid-deaths-not-caused-virus/

 

'Almost a quarter of registered Covid deaths are people who are not dying from the disease, new official figures show, as the Government was urged to move faster with the roadmap in the light of increasingly positive data.  

Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that 23 per cent of coronavirus deaths registered are now people who have died "with" the virus rather than ‘from’ an infection.

This means that while the person who died will have tested positive for Covid, that was not the primary cause of their death recorded on the death certificate.'

Hasn’t this been the case since very early on and the reason we have such a high death toll compared to other parts of Europe 

[DennisNedry]

22 minutes ago, Leicester_Loyal said:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/13/quarter-covid-deaths-not-caused-virus/

 

'Almost a quarter of registered Covid deaths are people who are not dying from the disease, new official figures show, as the Government was urged to move faster with the roadmap in the light of increasingly positive data.  

Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that 23 per cent of coronavirus deaths registered are now people who have died "with" the virus rather than ‘from’ an infection.

This means that while the person who died will have tested positive for Covid, that was not the primary cause of their death recorded on the death certificate.'

Care to copy and paste the full article for the cheapskates among us?

[bovril]

Just now, yorkie1999 said:

Hasn’t this been the case since very early on and the reason we have such a high death toll compared to other parts of Europe 

Unlikely, considering our excess deaths are higher than pretty much every other country in Europe.

 

In fact there are some European countries that appear to be overcounting.

[Leicester_Loyal]

5 minutes ago, DennisNedry said:

Care to copy and paste the full article for the cheapskates among us?

Double click refresh on the article (not instant double click but a tiny delay), takes a while but eventually you'll get used to it, it allows you to beat the paywall and you can read the full article. I'll let you try it out to get the hang of it, that way you'll learn, if I just pasted the article you'd never learn

[Otis]

8 hours ago, filbertway said:

Absolutely, no offence intended on my part

 

In other news I just read this quote from Johnson on the BBC site. Whether or not it's the case, they clearly believe that the majority of the population are brain dead. Of course lockdown is the reason for the drops in infections and deaths. The vaccinations are just going to *hopefully* flatten any future curves so we don't require restrictions to do that.

 

"People don't, I think, appreciate that it's the lockdown that has been overwhelmingly important in delivering this improvement in the pandemic and the figures that we've seen," he says.

It's his way of justifying this lockdown. 

 

When you have a lockdown and the vaccine running side by side he can't be certain the falling rates are a result of one thing more than another.

[st albans fox]

35 minutes ago, String fellow said:

If I've understood the Nextstrain data correctly, the Kent variant (or clade) 20I/501YV1 is increasing its global share by roughly 3% per week, and will soon account for over 50% of cases globally, so perhaps we should be as fearful of our own variant returning as we are about the two other main variants. Having said that, it seems that the Brazil variant is the most lethal. Interestingly, the variant which began in Denmark last year (and blamed on mink) has now disappeared completely.

The more transmissible Kent strain was responsible for the apparent lack of success of the nov lockdown, especially further south 

 

whilst we suffered badly from this through nov, dec and moreso January, the rest of the world is now catching up. In Areas where the Brazilian and s African variants are primary, the Kent strain is not taking over but other parts which have done well to keep those s hemispheric strains out are now suffering with the Kent strain assisting in encouraging faster transmission of the virus. 

 

whilst we pat ourselves in the back, epidemiologists will be nervous that a slow uptake of vaccination by the under 50’s due to vaccine concerns coupled with a relaxation of lockdown will encourage an increase in cases that could lead to another mutation which becomes a problem for us and globally. Let’s hope it remains just nerves and doesn’t come to fruition. 

[Legend_in_blue]

3 hours ago, WigstonWanderer said:

No, he goes off and listens to his conspiracy theorist YouTube experts, then comes back here like Moses bearing the tablets of stone, fully convinced that he knows something that the real scientists don’t.

If you delve into YouTube, you will find no conspiracist views as they have all been silenced a long time ago.  What is concerning though is that rational scientific debate is attempting to stake a claim and argue against lockdown science, if you can call it that, but is equally being quashed along with the way out there conspiracist views on all of this.  The science does not stop with Sage, and nor should it.  Please do enlighten us on who the real scientists are.  Science is about challenging views and assumptions, something largely alien in the response to all of what has happened over the past 12 months as clearly Sage can do no wrong in the eyes of many.  

[yorkie1999]

1 hour ago, bovril said:

Unlikely, considering our excess deaths are higher than pretty much every other country in Europe.

 

In fact there are some European countries that appear to be overcounting.

U.K. 4.2 million cases 127000 deaths

france 5.1 million cases 98000 deaths.

seems to me that if we were wrongly reporting by 23%, those figures would be  about the same.

[bovril]

1 minute ago, yorkie1999 said:

U.K. 4.2 million cases 127000 deaths

france 5.1 million cases 98000 deaths.

seems to me that if we were wrongly reporting by 23%, those figures would be  about the same.

We haven't been wrongly reporting by 23% the entire pandemic. 

 

Our worst period seems to have been at the start of the pandemic last year and this winter. Central and Eastern Europe have been really badly hit.

 

People keep mentioning France (part of the weird Brexit obsession with Macron perhaps) but looks like they haven't suffered anywhere near as many deaths as us. I don't know why our case fatality rate is so much higher. We are a much unhealthier nation than France though. 

[Buce]

9 hours ago, Leicester_Loyal said:

Double click refresh on the article (not instant double click but a tiny delay), takes a while but eventually you'll get used to it, it allows you to beat the paywall and you can read the full article. I'll let you try it out to get the hang of it, that way you'll learn, if I just pasted the article you'd never learn

 

That's brilliant, thanks

 

Does it work on all paywall sites?

[WigstonWanderer]

8 hours ago, Legend_in_blue said:

If you delve into YouTube, you will find no conspiracist views as they have all been silenced a long time ago.  What is concerning though is that rational scientific debate is attempting to stake a claim and argue against lockdown science, if you can call it that, but is equally being quashed along with the way out there conspiracist views on all of this.  The science does not stop with Sage, and nor should it.  Please do enlighten us on who the real scientists are.  Science is about challenging views and assumptions, something largely alien in the response to all of what has happened over the past 12 months as clearly Sage can do no wrong in the eyes of many.  

Sorry mate, I’m not trying to insult or denigrate you, I just wish you’d focus your obvious intelligence in a less conspiratorial assessment of the evidence you say you are uncovering. Dropping dark hints of shady goings on behind the scenes is really not helpful.

 

That isn’t to say that both the UK government and SAGE might not be guilty of mushroom management with the public where they think they can get away with it, and of course, as you say, science involves questioning of generally accepted views as I’m sure Einstein and Darwin would attest if they were still here.

Edited 14 April 2021 by WigstonWanderer

[KrefelderFox666]

8 hours ago, yorkie1999 said:

U.K. 4.2 million cases 127000 deaths

france 5.1 million cases 98000 deaths.

seems to me that if we were wrongly reporting by 23%, those figures would be  about the same.

There are many factors to consider though including the health of people in each country, genetics and the healthcare system to name a few. It's not a simple percentage of total cases.

[Ric Flair]

There will come a point where regardless of mutations and people choosing not to take the various vaccines that this will have to be managed without lockdown and prioritising the health of the vulnerable solely for covid amidst the countless other health problems that people are going to have a much poorer quality of life/length of life as a result. 

 

Horribly there are so many consequences to all of this whatever decisions are made as there always has been with day to day life and how that impacts on those unfortunate to be vulnerable or seriously ill but ignorance is bliss to the majority pre the pandemic but now that we have had a year of being bombarded with fear that its going to have made a lot of people irrational and mentally unwell.

 

I dread to think what the future holds, but this cannot continue.

[Robo61]

9 hours ago, yorkie1999 said:

U.K. 4.2 million cases 127000 deaths

france 5.1 million cases 98000 deaths.

seems to me that if we were wrongly reporting by 23%, those figures would be  about the same.

Except you are comparing eggs to bananas.  As of Week Ending 13th April there was a total of 150,419 deaths in the UK where Covid was mentioned on the death certificate.  The figure you quoted is merely those reported to have died following a positive test within the last 28 days.  Many seem to forget there will be many dying of Covid without ever having had a postive test result for it.  https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths

Edited 14 April 2021 by Robo61

[leicsmac]

2 hours ago, WigstonWanderer said:

Sorry mate, I’m not trying to insult or denigrate you, I just wish you’d focus your obvious intelligence in a less conspiratorial assessment of the evidence you say you are uncovering. Dropping dark hints of shady goings on behind the scenes is really not helpful.

 

That isn’t to say that both the UK government and SAGE might not be guilty of mushroom management with the public where they think they can get away with it, and of course, as you say, science involves questioning of generally accepted views as I’m sure Einstein and Darwin would attest if they were still here.

Yep.

 

As an addendum, it isn't conspiracy theory, YouTube videos or single mavericks working alone "against the system" that changes science.

 

What does? Better science (sometimes from those mavericks) that has been *reviewed and accepted by peers* based on the results from it.

 

That last part, consensus, is really important.

Edited 14 April 2021 by leicsmac

[String fellow]

48 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Yep.

 

As an addendum, it isn't conspiracy theory, YouTube videos or single mavericks working alone "against the system" that change science.

 

What does? Better science (sometimes from those mavericks) that has been *reviewed and accepted by peers* based on the results from it.

 

That last part, consensus, is really important.

Listening to the nonsense spouted by nutters like the 'icke-onic' David Icke is actually quite boring. It usually involves blaming the Israelis for everything, and It has the effect of making me even more trusting of the scientists and what they say about Covid-19 and other subjects, rather than less. He's arguably the worst thing that Leicester ever produced. As regards advances in science, most are done as a result of collective human scientific effort, not by single mavericks, whose ideas more often than not get discredited, once they've been examined in detail. 

[Sol thewall Bamba]

12 hours ago, DennisNedry said:

Care to copy and paste the full article for the cheapskates among us?

Or just press the Stop button top left whilst it's still loading. Works for The Athletic too 

[Mark 'expert' Lawrenson]

5 minutes ago, String fellow said:

Listening to the nonsense spouted by nutters like the 'icke-onic' David Icke is actually quite boring. It usually involves blaming the Israelis for everything, and It has the effect of making me even more trusting of the scientists and what they say about Covid-19 and other subjects, rather than less. He's arguably the worst thing that Leicester ever produced. As regards advances in science, most are done as a result of collective human scientific effort, not by single mavericks, whose ideas more often than not get discredited, once they've been examined in detail. 

Greville Janner and Colin Pitchfork are 2 off the top of my head far worse than the crazy Icke.

Im sure there’s more 😂

[RowlattsFox]

I worked from the office yesterday and took a wonder around town (not Leicester) and you could obviously tell the difference in the number of people around, queues outside shops etc. Having indoor hospitality closed makes it look worse, people gathering outside a pub, people sitting here, there and everywhere eating Mcdonalds or some takeaway from a cafe. Not to mention the rubbish it then leaves. 

 

I understand the caution but its pretty easy to arrange tables a certain way etc to allow indoor eating/drinking. 

[brucey]

1 minute ago, RowlattsFox said:

I worked from the office yesterday and took a wonder around town (not Leicester) and you could obviously tell the difference in the number of people around, queues outside shops etc. Having indoor hospitality closed makes it look worse, people gathering outside a pub, people sitting here, there and everywhere eating Mcdonalds or some takeaway from a cafe. Not to mention the rubbish it then leaves. 

 

I understand the caution but its pretty easy to arrange tables a certain way etc to allow indoor eating/drinking. 

The issue with indoor eating isn't the 2 metre distance. It's the lack of ventilation which means aerosols hang about thickly in the air for ages. Distance makes little difference to aerosol transmission in an enclosed space, just reduces more direct droplet transmission. 

[fox_up_north]

One thing that is really starting to wind me up is the holier than thou attitude I'm seeing from a lot of people. For full disclosure, I have done the following since December - 

- seen 5 friends, individually and on separate occasions, outside for walks and sports
- popped into a friend's house to fill up a bottle of water and wash my hands
- visited vaccinated father for two days, as I've only seen him for half a da since Christmas 2019 and he is being sent abroad with military for at least 6 months
- seen grandparents outside for 2 hours
- went to a gym class the other night that was indoors

But, here's the kicker - I work in a part of education that requires me to go into both schools and hospitals. 

I mention my activities some places (friends and forums) and I get treated like I'm the direct cause of all the deaths. "You're the reason why we're still in this mess". It winds me up and 99% of the time it's people who can work from home. I'm sorry that my job means I have spent a good portion of the last year working in schools with next to no PPE or social distancing or that I've had to work in hospitals delivering education plans but unfortunately, those jobs require me to physically be somewhere. I'm sorry that pretty much all my outlets for dealing with stress have been closed down and I've faced unemployment with no furlough, for several months, due to my zero hours contract. 

For me, the biggest take away from this last year, is that some people really love to judge others at any opportunity and there is a real split coming in society for the home workers and those needed on site. I really do feel for people who've lost someone to covid, but I've also watched children sit alone in hospital with no visitors while they receive treatment for cancer. If we keep blaming everyone and everything, we won't find common ground and support because, as Ric Flair said, the mental health implications of this are pandemic in themselves. I never used to have anxiety but this year I've found myself crying more than ever, comparable only to when a friend had terminal cancer. 
 

[Nalis]

8 minutes ago, fox_up_north said:

One thing that is really starting to wind me up is the holier than thou attitude I'm seeing from a lot of people. For full disclosure, I have done the following since December - 

- seen 5 friends, individually and on separate occasions, outside for walks and sports
- popped into a friend's house to fill up a bottle of water and wash my hands
- visited vaccinated father for two days, as I've only seen him for half a da since Christmas 2019 and he is being sent abroad with military for at least 6 months
- seen grandparents outside for 2 hours
- went to a gym class the other night that was indoors

But, here's the kicker - I work in a part of education that requires me to go into both schools and hospitals. 

I mention my activities some places (friends and forums) and I get treated like I'm the direct cause of all the deaths. "You're the reason why we're still in this mess". It winds me up and 99% of the time it's people who can work from home. I'm sorry that my job means I have spent a good portion of the last year working in schools with next to no PPE or social distancing or that I've had to work in hospitals delivering education plans but unfortunately, those jobs require me to physically be somewhere. I'm sorry that pretty much all my outlets for dealing with stress have been closed down and I've faced unemployment with no furlough, for several months, due to my zero hours contract. 

For me, the biggest take away from this last year, is that some people really love to judge others at any opportunity and there is a real split coming in society for the home workers and those needed on site. I really do feel for people who've lost someone to covid, but I've also watched children sit alone in hospital with no visitors while they receive treatment for cancer. If we keep blaming everyone and everything, we won't find common ground and support because, as Ric Flair said, the mental health implications of this are pandemic in themselves. I never used to have anxiety but this year I've found myself crying more than ever, comparable only to when a friend had terminal cancer. 
 

Coronavirus is a busybody's wet dream. Of course restrictions are neccessary and have been neccessary with various levels depending on the current state of play but the holier than thou attitude absolutely stinks. A mate tried to make me feel guilty because I went to a restaurant in December before I reminded him the last time I seen my mum was December 2019...

 

If you've seen the Paddington films, I just visualise these busybodies to be the Peter Capaldi character types who live, breathe and thrive in this type of environment.

[SpacedX]

12 hours ago, Legend_in_blue said:

Also, the 2nd lockdown imposed throughout December did nothing to the case figures at all, they continued to increase despite the lockdown measures introduced.  There's no correlation between the two at all.  I can't remember the differences between lockdown 2 and 3 but 3 was hugely advantageous over 2 as cases suddenly dropped?  I'm not buying it.  

From early September cases were doubling every day. The failure of the track and trace system, the relaxation of travel abroad, the lack of adequate quarantine, the disastrously ill conceived "eat out help out", the mass return of students to university campuses nationwide - yet we failed to act until two months later. it soon became apparent that the national lockdown had not had the same effect in every region. In Kent cases actually continued to increase during the lockdown (very much due to the emergent variant), despite having the same restrictions as other regions. On Dec 2, 2020, you are overlooking that England lifted its lockdown and moved back into a three-level tiered restrictions system, as a result cases continued to increase sharply in Kent and then rapidly in Greater London and other parts of the southeast which is why Starmer was among those calling for an immediate nationwide lockdown.

 

Having initially driven numbers down in the summer, the government failed to finish the job off and contain the virus at a low enough level before easing restrictions. We moved too fast, too early. And when the restrictions were removed, the easing was done unsystematically, instead of individual restrictions being lifted one by one at different times. 

 

12 hours ago, Legend_in_blue said:

Please add your thoughts on seasonality.  You haven't commented on those.

It's something that I have discussed throughout this thread. Experimental data suggest SARS-CoV-2 persistence on surfaces or in the air is sensitive to temperature, humidity, and UV. Other environmentally sensitive respiratory viruses are seasonal, and more common in winter; and therefore, climatic effects could be protective over space (hot, dry places might have less transmission) and time (summer might see reduced transmission compared to winter). All are generally consistent, but in many sources (including, and especially, on social media), the basic premise of each has been communicated to the public, and policymakers, in a way that overstates this, obscures key nuance and creates false confidence. Those drivers’ impacts are heavily confounded by immunity, interventions, human behavior, and other details that are usually left out of models, leading to potentially spurious conclusions.

 

Influenza, the common cold, and other respiratory infections demonstrate seasonal transmission that correlates with changes in temperature, humidity, and solar radiation. But seasonal epidemics are also a product of the transmissibility of a virus, the initial susceptibility of a population, and the degree and nature of immunity conferred by infections. In basic epidemiological models, stable “oscillations” like seasonal epidemic waves usually require some degree of immunity during the onset of a pandemic, but when transmissibility is high and immunity is low, even strong environmental drivers are unlikely to curb transmission. Previous influenza pandemics show the importance of this. “Seasonal” versus “pandemic” influenza refers not just to different epidemic phases, but entirely different viral strains, and population susceptibility to pandemic strains starts high enough for rapid spread irrespective of the season. For example, during the first wave of the 2009 A/H1N1 pandemic, epidemic growth was still possible in August, the most environmentally unfavorable point in the year, with immunity under 20%. Months later, immunity and consequently environmental sensitivity, may eventually have been high enough to lead to a winter-driven third wave. We saw a similar pattern for COVID-19: while the virus could develop seasonal oscillations if it becomes endemic (i.e., if pandemic control fails in the long term), current susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 is high enough that summer weather is unlikely to be protective - particularly when you consider the MERS coronavirus which is still active. 

 

Regarding the last lockdown, case rates, hospitalisations and deaths have plummeted (thanks in part to the momentum of the vaccination programme). This has been a long harsh winter and with the exception of a brief warm spell before Easter, March and April have been unseasonably cold. More people are inside over the winter months leading to greater transmission and despite the clocks going forward we haven't yet reached the stages that significant numbers are out in the open. 

 

12 hours ago, Legend_in_blue said:

I still think it's concerning for Boris to jump to lockdown 3 as the sole reason for the success in reducing numbers.  Should numbers rise again, he's leaving the door wide open to introducing lockdowns again because "they've worked".  It's a never ending cycle until mass testing ends imo.  He's hardly acknowledging the role the vaccine is playing either.  Boundaries constantly changing, his decision making should be scrutinised.

 

Is he actually suggesting that though? As far as I am aware the vaccine programme has been one of this government's greatest triumphs and he is continually shouting about it from the rooftops. 

 

As has been explained, lockdown does work - but it needs compliancy and it needs to be complimented by a range of other measures. The reintroduction of full national lockdown on January 6th was a huge factor in driving down both case rates and death rates throughout February and March, but not the sole factor. 

[Beechey]

11 hours ago, bovril said:

We haven't been wrongly reporting by 23% the entire pandemic. 

 

Our worst period seems to have been at the start of the pandemic last year and this winter. Central and Eastern Europe have been really badly hit.

 

People keep mentioning France (part of the weird Brexit obsession with Macron perhaps) but looks like they haven't suffered anywhere near as many deaths as us. I don't know why our case fatality rate is so much higher. We are a much unhealthier nation than France though. 

Our reported death rates were similar until our second wave (see image 1). France hasn't been hit anywhere near as hard as we where, for whatever reason.

Weirdly though, their reported cases were not far off ours (we had a delayed peak, see image 2), which makes their relative lack of deaths much more confusing. We were struggling with the B117 virus at the time, which had been said to be more deadly.

 

Who knows what's going on with France's confirmed case figures recently. Gotta be something happening in their testing system to be causing that much noise. These are seven day rolling averages as well, so the lines should be smooth, but Frances are all over the place. Their daily figures must be fluctuating like mad.

 

 

Edited 14 April 2021 by Beechey