Coronavirus - how is it/has it affected you?

Rooter

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Ireland plans to offer vax to 12-15 year olds
Won't happen here, though. If it did, I would offer my 13 year old the choice. I am pretty sure he would take it, but he would be allowed to make his own choice.

Shame, my 13yr old has suffered pnumonia 4/5 times, luckily nothing for a good few years, but I imagine her lungs are not as tip top as they could/should be at that age.
 
D

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Ok, confused now, just seen this quote

More than half of Covid hospital admissions are patients who only tested positive later, the Daily Telegraph reported, citing leaked data.
The newspaper said that as of Thursday, just 44% of patients classed as being in hospital with Covid had tested positive when they were admitted.

So are we saying that the figures for hospital admissions include people who are in hospital and just happen to have covid as opposed to my understanding that these fgures only included people who were in hospital because of covid.

Fully appreciate that and accept that position. I may be wrong but I read that as also meaning, lets say i go in for surgery on a broken leg, if I then test positive for covid in hospital with no symptoms then I am classed a person in hospital with covid and appear on those covid cases in hospital figures. Not aying it slants the figures in any particular way or to any large degree but just like to understand the figures that I am being presented with

You are correct, its been the same throughout, why I dont really understand, so pass. You would think 16 months into this, the data would be 'being treated for covid', fairly certain whitty had said recently we need to change the data but dont think it has changed yet.

I know more than one person that was in hospital that tested positive whilst there, not being treated with covid thankfully, but they are still included in the figures.

Couple of interesting links, you can also get an idea from the vaccine/variants data published (kind of reading between the tested on same day as A&e visit) :-

SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation (publishing.service.gov.uk)

datatosee.com on Twitter: "So they have supplied my FOI request in terms of numbers in hospital being treated for COVID. However as I am aware I am unable to manipulate any of this data. But why don't they publish this daily..... https://t.co/tZCFVnmSFh" / Twitter

There are other people on twitter who extract some interesting figures with this regard(they have always shown iirc 10-40% of not being treated with covid included in the figure), but the above gives an indication.
 

Beedee

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Fully appreciate that and accept that position. I may be wrong but I read that as also meaning, lets say i go in for surgery on a broken leg, if I then test positive for covid in hospital with no symptoms then I am classed a person in hospital with covid and appear on those covid cases in hospital figures. Not aying it slants the figures in any particular way or to any large degree but just like to understand the figures that I am being presented with
I assume that wards aren't deliberately mixed with covid and non-covid patients. So even if covid isn't the reason for admission, or even that significant in the treatment or duration of stay for the patient, it will be another big pain in the backside of those who have to run the hospitals. As each ward has to be duplicated between hot and cold, so effective bed numbers will drop and any slack in the system gets prematurely used up.
 

Ethan

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Fully appreciate that and accept that position. I may be wrong but I read that as also meaning, lets say i go in for surgery on a broken leg, if I then test positive for covid in hospital with no symptoms then I am classed a person in hospital with covid and appear on those covid cases in hospital figures. Not aying it slants the figures in any particular way or to any large degree but just like to understand the figures that I am being presented with

numbers have been with not from since the start havent they, pinch of salt imo

Yes, they have, but consider deaths. There is a fairly stable, if seasonally varying background death rate. If something causes a rise in the death rate, say mysterious rays from outer space, we will see it. Likewise, the death rates seen last year showed a sharp rise, roughly a doubling of the risk of death. That risk is low for young people, higher for older people, but it roughly doubled. That excess is our old friend, excess deaths. that number was driven largely by older deaths which are more visible. Those excess deaths was due to, directly or indirectly, Covid. Interestingly, when there is a pandemic or a nurses strike, say, deaths fall slightly because the death rates associated with elective surgery go away, at least temporarily.

With younger people, admission rates for non-elective surgery or accident tend to be low, so any increase above normal rates is noticeable, and we have that at the moment. Because younger people tend not to be admitted with some problem triggered by Covid, it is pretty easy to tell of they are in due to Covid or not.

When measuring this stuff, it is actually more important to measure it consistently than precisely, so trends can be seen. Even if you believe that a large fraction of admissions are with rather than due to Covid, you won't be able to make sense of data in a months time if the system for counting it changes. Has the number fallen because the "real" case number have fallen or because we changed the way we count it?
 

larmen

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Fully appreciate that and accept that position. I may be wrong but I read that as also meaning, lets say i go in for surgery on a broken leg, if I then test positive for covid in hospital with no symptoms then I am classed a person in hospital with covid and appear on those covid cases in hospital figures. Not aying it slants the figures in any particular way or to any large degree but just like to understand the figures that I am being presented with
I think the importance is not how they are calculating the figures, but that they are calculating it in a consistent way to see trends.

Your leg break scenario might be not that great once we open up ski holidays, but until then the rate of leg breaks should not be that varying to throw out the covid figures.
 

SocketRocket

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Currently trying to decide which way to go, there’s a few different options from Southampton. It sounds like the longer but “faster” route of upto Bristol and down the M5 is not going to be chosen then. I was expecting to hit some traffic whichever way we go, just hope it’s not too bad.
Maybe cut across through Yovil and across to Taunton, the M5 tends to open up a bit past WSM.
 

Backache

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Fully appreciate that and accept that position. I may be wrong but I read that as also meaning, lets say i go in for surgery on a broken leg, if I then test positive for covid in hospital with no symptoms then I am classed a person in hospital with covid and appear on those covid cases in hospital figures. Not aying it slants the figures in any particular way or to any large degree but just like to understand the figures that I am being presented with
It can be quite complicated.
If you are young and have broken a bone very often you won't be admitted there and then unless the operation is urgent because of instability of the fracture you will be brought back. If you have a positive covid test they will send you away agian untill you have served your isolation period unless the operation is very urgent. People with Covid do less well with surgery.
A common reason for needing an operation on a fracture urgently is an elderly patient with a broken hip.
If they test positive for covid how do you decide whether or not the covid is part of the reason for admission, very often elderly people breakhips when they are a bit unsteady on their feet because of things like infection and the covid may well be contributing totheir admission. In either scenario the fact that you have covid and therefore need to be isolated or cohorted puts an extra demand on the health service and if you require an operation slows things down a lot.
 

ColchesterFC

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Ok, confused now, just seen this quote

More than half of Covid hospital admissions are patients who only tested positive later, the Daily Telegraph reported, citing leaked data.
The newspaper said that as of Thursday, just 44% of patients classed as being in hospital with Covid had tested positive when they were admitted.

So are we saying that the figures for hospital admissions include people who are in hospital and just happen to have covid as opposed to my understanding that these fgures only included people who were in hospital because of covid.

It's possible that some of those in hospital with Covid caught it after they were admitted? There seems to have been a large percentage that have caught it in hospital over the course of the pandemic.
 

IainP

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Obviously don't want this to happen, but wonder what the thresholds may be to set the alarm bells..
5000 in hospital, 120 deaths in a day
?
Hmm, was hoping this wouldn't be reached. 3 weeks exactly.
Obviously the cases going down is the good news, today's figures are just one day so hopefully soon the other figures will follow.
 

Hobbit

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Brian when do you expect to be vaccinated ?. Maybe worth flying back here and get your jab at a walk in centre ?

I’m back at the health centre again today, 6th time, starting afresh with all my docs. If they issue a temp health number, which they are supposed to do, I’ll be able to book an appt within 48 hours. There’s also drop-ins here too, just got to watch out for when they’re on- even if it means being in the car a couple of hours getting there.
 

SwingsitlikeHogan

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Lad was supposed to have his first paid work in his sector (performing arts events) since last March last night, but venue in Leeds had to cancel the event as they couldn’t get enough security and too many venue staff isolating. So no work and no income…and no compensation for loss of earning…what I think over the current state of affairs would get me an infraction.
 

Ethan

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It is a bit of a mess at the moment. In my view, there are two big distinctions. One is between vaccinated and unvaccinated. The other indoors and outdoors.

Between vaccinated and unvaccinated, it is unfortunate that some people have not had the opportunity to get their vax, but that is not adequate reason to expose people to risk for fear of making some people feel left out. I have no sympathy for those who have chosen not to do so. They must accept there is a social contract which includes their responsibility towards others, and their personal autonomy cannot override that.

It is clear that whilst not 100% effective, the vax significantly reduces the risk of getting Covid, ending up in hospital with it or transmitting it. I would therefore extend "privileges" to the vaccinated including going to concerts, clubs etc. Indoors stuff. There will be some cases due to the not-100% effect, but people can decide for themselves if they are willing to risk it.

On public transport, I would maintain masks. Not 100% effective, as extensively and exhaustively debated above, but there is broad if not universal agreement that they have an effect and there are no risks.

Outside, in parks, golf courses, sports day at school, pub gardens etc, I would not require masks, and unless there was prolonged close contact, would not require vaccinations. In places where there is indoor mixing as part of the experience, say concourses at football matches, I would treat as indoor venues.

Offices are tricky, so probably best to maintain home/remote working where possible. Where office attendance needed, people should really be vaccinated.

The current strategy is clearly a herd immunity for the young strategy, "let cases run among the young - they won't get too sick or clog up the NHS too much - and that will contribute to the herd immunity numbers. Better to do that than have an awkward debate on vaccinating teenagers where the backbenchers will kick off". This is a dangerous stagey, in my view, storing up health issues for the future.
 

PNWokingham

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this is a decent read
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...point/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr

I can understand how gratifying it is to quote Professor Neil Ferguson’s words back at him – words he said just a week ago when he told Andrew Marr it was “almost inevitable” that daily covid cases would reach 100,000 a day as a result of the last stage of the government’s roadmap out of lockdown. "The real question", he added, "is do we get to double that – or even higher?”
Almost from the moment he uttered those words, new Covid infections began to plummet. Between Sunday 18 and Sunday 25 July, they fell from 48,161 to 29,173. Naturally, this will be rocket fuel for anyone who blames Ferguson’s modelling for plunging us into weeks of lockdown last spring. Not only does it show that his modelling is, to put it kindly, not all it is cracked up to be – it also indicates that you don’t necessarily need a lockdown to provoke a sudden change in direction followed by a steep decline in covid infections.
Ferguson contends that a week’s delay in bringing in lockdown in March 2020 cost many thousands of lives – while modelling by Simon Wood of the University of Edinburgh, for example, has questioned this, suggesting that covid infections could have been falling before the lockdown was called.
Yet something makes me feel a little uneasy about promoting Neil Ferguson as a bogeyman – or, indeed, about celebrating the present fall in new infections at all. It all rather misses the point that the raw infection numbers no longer matter that much any more, now that vaccines have blunted the ability of Covid to cause severe disease and death.
Look at the graph of infections and you can see we have just experienced a significant third wave. Look, on the other hand, at the graphs of hospitalisations and especially deaths there is no ‘third wave’ worthy of the name. That is what vaccination gives us: the ability to tame covid into a disease which, like seasonal flu, we can easily live with.
Yet still the statistics on daily covid infections seem to grip us like nothing else. Where once we might have looked to see how the FTSE 100 did today, or turned to the football results, or, every four years, the Olympic medals table, the daily covid figures have become our one stop shop for judging the health of the nation. We need to wean ourselves off the covid infection figures because at some point it is very likely that we will have a fourth wave of infections. This is how epidemics often progress, with several peaks and troughs, with no obvious trigger for the change in direction.
If we are going to see the current fall in infections as a moment for great rejoicing, then it follows that we ought to react to any subsequent rise in infections with fear. It is perfectly possible that the graph of new infections will start to track upwards again in the next week or two as the full effects of the relaxation of rules on 19 July feed through into infections – at which point Professor Ferguson might well be back to have a little snigger at those who are taunting him this week.
Yet in reality, unless the virus evolves into some new, far deadlier form, we needn't worry about a fourth wave. The government will not need to reimpose any more restrictions on our day-to-day-lives. We will be able to carry on as normal, as we do almost every winter when there is a flu outbreak, with the government just taking care to ensure we deliver booster vaccinations, should the decline in antibodies in the general population justify them. As the Chief Medical Officer has said one a number of occasions we need to decide as a country what level of Covid deaths we are prepared to accept.
If the answer is 20,000 a year or fewer – the number who succumb to flu in a bad year – then we are almost certainly already at the point where we can safely live with Covid without being obsessed with daily infection figures.
So let’s leave Professor Ferguson alone. The limitations of his – and everyone else’s – modelling were clear all along. The only thing that has changed since the spring of 2020 is that, thanks to vaccines, we can safely end our obsession with counting new covid cases.
 
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Lad was supposed to have his first paid work in his sector (performing arts events) since last March last night, but venue in Leeds had to cancel the event as they couldn’t get enough security and too many venue staff isolating. So no work and no income…and no compensation for loss of earning…what I think over the current state of affairs would get me an infraction.

Given your track record, the highlighted bit comes, and I think I can speak for the majority of the forum here, as a real shock to us all.


On topic. Had my second jab on Monday, and the side effects has been minimal, with a slight pain in my arm, but nowhere near as bad as after the first one. No other side effects, so I'm one of the lucky one's!
 
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SwingsitlikeHogan

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Given your track record, the highlighted bit comes, and I think I can speak for the majority of the forum here, as a real shock to us all.


On topic. Had my second jab on Monday, and the side effects has been minimal, with a slight pain in my arm, but nowhere near as bad as after the first one. No other side effects, so I'm one of the lucky one's!
My track record? On what?

Anyway conversation this morning finds potential work popping up all over the place for my lad as DJs, promotions company reps at venues and others getting pinged and having to isolate plus others testing positive. Flip side is that work he accepts can get cancelled at the very last moment as venue loses staff and can’t open. And all at the very last moment so events getting cancelled on the day right up to doors opening. Seems like there’s going to be chaos and great uncertainty in the smaller venue performing arts and nightclubs for quite some time. Ping exemption required for that sector would help mitigate the risk.

Seems like larger venues and festivals may be OK as he’s got 3 days doing late night DJ sets at Rewind North 6-8 August - and not too far from him in Macclesfield - and hopefully then also sets at Leeds Festival. So positive there.
 
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