Coronavirus - how is it/has it affected you?

[bobmac]

Maybe I am reading your article incorrectly but it appears to say that those who had AZ are just as likely to spread Covid as the unvaccinated after 3 months. Pfizer less so. Given that I was double jabbed in June I am in theory as infectious as an unvaccinated at this point in time.

It's a really important question because if you're right then vaccine passports would be pointless.
What I see is
1. if you are vaccinated, you are less likely to die from Covid
2. if you are vaccinated, you are less likely to be hospitalized
3. if you are vaccinated, you are less likely to become infected
4. if you are vaccinated, you are less likely to infect others
5. if you are vaccinated, you will be infectious for less time.
6. if you are un-vaccinated, the opposite applies.

If the powers that be decide that entry to certain place will be dependent on having a vaccine passport then I'll be first in the queue.

 

[rudebhoy]

People die. It's what we do best.

Sorry, but people seem to have forgotten about all the other reasons people die, thousands of them every day. Covid is just another thing to add to the list.

Lockdowns don't work. The people we locked down to protect have gone back to life as normal. Those who should have been wearing masks have special lanyards to exempt themselves.

Meanwhile our children continue to receive a sub standard education, many have anxiety they didn't have before. People are losing their jobs, there is a massive cost that is being kicked down the road that future generations will have to pay for.

Most of the people looking for further restrictions apear to be the ones who it will have the least effect on. No job or mortgage to worry about, and won't have to pay in the long term.

Can someone tell me what the endgame is? Because I can't see one....

That's the thing, isn't it? We've had 3 lockdowns, Covid is still here. Cases are rising again. So we need to accept that lockdowns won't solve Covid. They are however effective for stopping the NHS being overrun, but are massively damaging to the economy. So will we see more lockdowns? Depends on what our leaders see as the priority.

 

[Deleted member 21258]

I agree, partially, with your general point that high levels of testing are not necessarily very informative, especially LFT testing.

But if you look at your graphs, the first one (tests) has UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain. The second one (deaths) doesn't have any of those apart from the UK, but has Romania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Lithuania. The testing numbers would be more understandable if the graph included the same countries. Europe is listed, close in numbers to the UK. If we consider that there are high rates of death in Romania, Bulgaria and so on, it seems reasonable to infer that the average European rate must therefore have rates lower than the UK in some of the other non-eastern European countries, wouldn't you say? Reports from near neighbours in Europe do not report the same levels of admission or death as in the UK. On ICU numbers, Germany (and most other Western European countries) has considerably greater provision of ICU than the UK, so they have a lower br to admission to ICU and therefore have more capacity to admit people earlier than they would in the UK. They are not like for like comparisons.

The graphs I posted on testing/deaths weren't meant to be compared, in fact I made sure they could not be, tbh I suggested people look for themselves and I hope it would mean people would ask questions and go look for themselves, people need to, as there are far to many unanswered questions over this period. What about the at home excess deaths figures, is one such example

Media want clicks on websites and everyone have their agendas. Covid sells, been proven time and time again, especially to a certain richer/older part of society, that would tend to be on this website. I am sure you would agree with that......

I have always questioned everything, learn, asks questions and educate yourself.

 

[rudebhoy]

Okay, sorry....

Spain 1.52
France 7.3
Italy 5.91

I wouldn't call that massively better.

not sure what those figures are saying, maybe you should show your workings here?

 

[bobmac]

Was listening to a phone in the other day, a lady rang in to say her 16yr old niece was now too scared to leave the home due to the risk of Covid. That's horrendous to think that a healthy 16yr old has become that scared of a virus that carried (largely speaking) no risk or her. Obviously this is an extreme case but I would imagine not isolated and we have to get the message across to these types of people that they are safe, they need to get back to normal and it's those at risk that we need to take the precautions and be protected.

Was she vaccinated?

 

[road2ruin]

not sure what those figures are saying, maybe you should show your workings here?

You said that I had, conveniently, not included the numbers for Spain, France and Italy so I did. Those figures are the numbers being tested per 1,000 in each of the countries.

 

[Ethan]

People die. It's what we do best.

Sorry, but people seem to have forgotten about all the other reasons people die, thousands of them every day. Covid is just another thing to add to the list.

Lockdowns don't work. The people we locked down to protect have gone back to life as normal. Those who should have been wearing masks have special lanyards to exempt themselves.

Meanwhile our children continue to receive a sub standard education, many have anxiety they didn't have before. People are losing their jobs, there is a massive cost that is being kicked down the road that future generations will have to pay for.

Most of the people looking for further restrictions apear to be the ones who it will have the least effect on. No job or mortgage to worry about, and won't have to pay in the long term.

Can someone tell me what the endgame is? Because I can't see one....

The endgame should have been strong, swift and effective control and a robust public health response to minimise downtime and casualties.

A half-arsed lockdown doesn't work very well, a proper one works brilliantly, see New Zealand or Oz. A half-arsed one also only prolongs the economic effects. All those MPs and business figure like Tim Spoons whining about the economy have done more damage to it than was necessary.

 

[BiMGuy]

Was she vaccinated?

Would that cure her anxiety?

 

[road2ruin]

Was she vaccinated?

Yep, had it as soon as it was made available to her age group.

 

[Ethan]

The graphs I posted on testing/deaths weren't meant to be compared, in fact I made sure they could not be, tbh I suggested people look for themselves and I hope it would mean people would ask questions and go look for themselves, people need to, as there are far to many unanswered questions over this period. What about the at home excess deaths figures, is one such example

Media want clicks on websites and everyone have their agendas. Covid sells, been proven time and time again, especially to a certain richer/older part of society, that would tend to be on this website. I am sure you would agree with that......

I have always questioned everything, learn, asks questions and educate yourself.

People can't educate themselves with Facebook or in the mainstream media. There is some good material online, for example Devi Sridhar or Christina Pagel's tweets, but knowing how to read and understand data and what some seemingly simple terms mean, takes time and proper education.

 

[road2ruin]

People can't educate themselves with Facebook or in the mainstream media. There is some good material online, for example Devi Sridhar or Christina Pagel's tweets, but knowing how to read and understand data and what some seemingly simple terms mean, takes time and proper education.

Only my opinion but Devi Sridhar is one of the last people I would listen to, if it were up to her we'd be locked up forever whilst she chases the unicorn that is 'zero covid'. She's also been accused of spreading disinformation about vaccines amongst younger people. She's also has no medical qualifications from what I've seen so I she's no better than others at just shouting loudly about things she believes in rather than having anything to back it up.

 

[garyinderry]

Is there any kind of data released on re-infection rates?

 

[BiMGuy]

People can't educate themselves with Facebook or in the mainstream media. There is some good material online, for example Devi Sridhar or Christina Pagel's tweets, but knowing how to read and understand data and what some seemingly simple terms mean, takes time and proper education.

We can't educate ourselves using Facebook. But we can using Twitter? ?

 

[Deleted member 21258]

Is there any kind of data released on re-infection rates?

Some good details here(fairly low at the moment, have a read of the whole thread and the enclosed threads) :-

Meaghan Kill ??? on Twitter: "A friendly reminder that in England ??????? COVID-19 is still spreading mainly among immune naive people: ENGLAND cases in July: ? 98.6% never previously infected ? 78.1% were unvaccinated" / Twitter

Over time, the reinfection rates will grow, with immunity waning and mutations on the virus. Therefore you are likely to catch covid over and over again. Its not what I wished for either.. This is not the measles.

This is how the transition and future life will go.

There is growing evidence (takes time to gain more knowledge) the severe disease will not occur until you are older or iller, when you body/immune system is plop (and things like colds, flu, any virus tbh, can finish you off, have a good life Garyinderry )

Hope that helps.

 

[Ethan]

We can't educate ourselves using Facebook. But we can using Twitter? ?

My point was to choose people who know what they are talking about and follow them, as they will comment on new clinical papers and offer an expert interpretation. You tend not to get them on FB or Youtube.

Pagel and Sridhar are quite well known from media appearances and their Twitter accounts are verified and genuine. There are other good sources to whom they will often link. Lots of nutters on Twitter too.

 

[Deleted member 21258]

We can't educate ourselves using Facebook. But we can using Twitter? ?

CPs on independent sage IIRC and has a certain narrative. So read alot more than just those two twitter accounts.

Twitter is vastly better than Facebook, there is no comparison, unless you are looking at the wrong twitter accounts.

There are some great twitter accounts, providing some really detailed science stuff, links to studies, labs, science based individuals and so on(certainly enough detail for plebs like me).

 

[Ethan]

Some good details here(fairly low at the moment, have a read of the whole thread and the enclosed threads) :-

Meaghan Kill ??? on Twitter: "A friendly reminder that in England ??????? COVID-19 is still spreading mainly among immune naive people: ENGLAND cases in July: ? 98.6% never previously infected ? 78.1% were unvaccinated" / Twitter

Over time, the reinfection rates will grow, with immunity waning and mutations on the virus. Therefore you are likely to catch covid over and over again. Its not what I wished for either.. This is not the measles.

This is how the transition and future life will go.

There is growing evidence (takes time to gain more knowledge) the severe disease will not occur until you are older or iller, when you body/immune system is plop (and things like colds, flu, any virus tbh, can finish you off, have a good life Garyinderry )

Hope that helps.

Reinfection rates will grow, but immune responses will improve and the reinfections will, hopefully, eventually become like another version of the common cold. That has happened, to some extent, with flu. We have built up a complicated multi-deimensional immunity to that, and usually (unless there is a new "bad" variant) only those people whose immunity is weak or doesn't last are really at risk.

 

[Ethan]

CPs on independent sage IIRC and has a certain narrative. So read alot more than just those two twitter accounts.

Twitter is vastly better than Facebook, there is no comparison, unless you are looking at the wrong twitter accounts.

There are some great twitter accounts, providing some really detailed science stuff, links to studies, labs, science based individuals and so on(certainly enough detail for plebs like me).

I would say that CP has a very conventional public health narrative, as has iSAGE. Who else would you recommend?

 

[road2ruin]

Reinfection rates will grow, but immune responses will improve and the reinfections will, hopefully, eventually become like another version of the common cold. That has happened, to some extent, with flu. We have built up a complicated multi-deimensional immunity to that, and usually (unless there is a new "bad" variant) only those people whose immunity is weak or doesn't last are really at risk.

I was going to ask, even with the waning vaccine immunity, by the time we get to the age (some of us quicker than others) where we are most at risk won't we have built up the required immunity (both natural and vaccinated) that it won't have quite the same devastating affect on the elderly that it has had over the last 18 months or so? I'm 41yrs, by the time I am most at risk I would expect to have had Covid a number of times so I should (in theory) have a better chance of getting through my later years without it being such a worry.

 

[Ethan]

I was going to ask, even with the waning vaccine immunity, by the time we get to the age (some of us quicker than others) where we are most at risk won't we have built up the required immunity (both natural and vaccinated) that it won't have quite the same devastating affect on the elderly that it has had over the last 18 months or so? I'm 41yrs, by the time I am most at risk I would expect to have had Covid a number of times so I should (in theory) have a better chance of getting through my later years without it being such a worry.

Yes, very likely.

We all have a cumulative immune response to flu now, so the immune system recognises not only previously recognised flu variants but new ones which look like they could be flu. The same will probably happen with Covid over the next number of years. By the time you get to your decrepitude, your immune system will know Covid well. Some of the Covid you will have had resulted in minor illnesses, like a cold, some asymptomatic like other exposures to the cold, and maybe the odd bad one, a day or three off work.

With age, our ability to fire up the immune system weakens and that'll happen too. Older people end up in hospital not only because their immune system weakness, but also because they are easier to tip over into being knocked off their feet. An older person who gets a flu or a uninary tract infection, or a minor fall, can often be knocked for 6 where a younger person would shrug it off.

At the same time, vaccines are becoming more sophisticated, so I would expect that in another 20 years, we will have vaccines which deal with 99% of known Covid strains in one, perhaps combined with flu, RSV and some versions of the common cold as well, a one stop respiratory cocktail.