SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

Dan_F

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By far the most widespread piece of misinformation still circulating is the "Vaccines do nothing to prevent infection" or "Vaccines have absolutely no effect in limiting transmission". I see it non-stop, always presented as a statement of fact, and often from people who are otherwise pro-vaccine.

If people genuinely believe this - and seemingly a big chunk of the population do - then it becomes much harder to make an argument to healthy people in their 20s, or similar, to get vaccinated.

Really needs a proper messaging campaign from the government/media.
I’m sure this stemmed from a study about a month or two ago. I don’t remember what it was exactly, but the news reported it in a way where if someone just saw a headline, or wasn’t really listening, it gave that impression. I wish I could remember what it was.
 

11101

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No. It has not. Italy didn't didn't create apps to control individual movement and having the police tracking individuals constantly. Barricades and grassroots volunteers making sure no one escape the lockdown for what strictly was necessary and believe me, they had no other choice than to comply. while the strictest lockdowns in europe, Italy and Spain, they were walking the dog 4 times a day (when before Covid probably 2), groceries everyday (before covid once a week) and going to do sport everyday (some never did) bending the rules.

On paper strick lockdowns. Reality, in europe/america finding loopholes and NO ONE WILL TAKE MY FREEDOM! and in China had tools of control that would attempt ith civil liberties and a population that complied or was made to comply yes or yes.
That's not correct. You were not allowed to go for a walk let alone do any kind of sport. You were allowed to walk the dog within a set distance of your house, 100m from memory, and you were allowed to go to your nearest supermarket. You needed to fill out a form to do any of it and police were everywhere checking them as there was no other crime to deal with.
 

Ecstatic

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When a minority of people oppose or support something I wonder are they, in this instances figure , in the top 26% of intelligence or are they in the bottom 26% of intelligence, do you have any information about the socio-economic background of the majority of the 26% ?

Because obviously there are a minority of highly intelligent people that throughout their lives see things that others don’t and this will usually reflect in their life success and on the flip side I’m sure with the right viral, pardon the pun, spread 10-20% of people will believe that “ Ghandi told us the Internet was the future”
I have some questions:

What is the link between socio-economic background and intelligence?
Is the 26% supposed to be full of identical individuals similar in terms of intelligence or socio-economic background?
Why is life success a good indicator of intelligence?
Is it possible to rank individuals according to their intelligence?
Does the concept of intelligence matter when one knows an individual can be "intelligent" in a field and "stupid" in different ones?
Don't you think a minority can be extremely diverse like...members of a same large family?
 

Penna

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That's not correct. You were not allowed to go for a walk let alone do any kind of sport. You were allowed to walk the dog within a set distance of your house, 100m from memory, and you were allowed to go to your nearest supermarket. You needed to fill out a form to do any of it and police were everywhere checking them as there was no other crime to deal with.
That's right. I remember walking the dog less than half a km from our house, on a country road with absolutely no-one around. A police car stopped and said I should go back.

We were stuck shopping at our tiny village shop for months, because it was the nearest that sold "basic essentials". There are no takeaway food options in the little villages, nothing at all. Some people were upset with the shopping rule because the village shop is considerably more expensive than the budget Eurospin in the nearby town. The Mayor asked the shopkeeper to sell on credit when necessary and said he would personally cover any bills that weren't eventually paid.

Later on they allowed people in very small villages like ours to travel to the next small village for more shopping choices. People in small Comunes were extremely restricted during the first lockdown.
 

Ecstatic

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If your views are comparisons between the Covid pandemic and Nazi Germany then you should feck off to be fair.
You feel the need to insult because you unconsciously know there is something wrong in the era we live.

Unvaccinated people are now the second-class citizens who are politically persecuted.

No offence intended but I don't think you really understand the notion of freedom.
 

Utd heap

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You feel the need to insult because you unconsciously know there is something wrong in the era we live.

Unvaccinated people are now the second-class citizens who are politically persecuted.

No offence intended but I don't think you really understand the notion of freedom.
:lol: good morning to you also.
 

11101

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When a minority of people oppose or support something I wonder are they, in this instances figure , in the top 26% of intelligence or are they in the bottom 26% of intelligence, do you have any information about the socio-economic background of the majority of the 26% ?

Because obviously there are a minority of highly intelligent people that throughout their lives see things that others don’t and this will usually reflect in their life success and on the flip side I’m sure with the right viral, pardon the pun, spread 10-20% of people will believe that “ Ghandi told us the Internet was the future”
Firstly it's not 26%. 26% don't strongly support the Green Pass but far less actually oppose it.

Polls are often broken down by political support here, including this one. You probably won't be surprised to learn the party that most strongly opposes the Green Pass is the neo-fascist Brothers of Italy, closely followed by the right wing Lega Nord whose main goal in life is to annex Southern Italy.
 

Pogue Mahone

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You feel the need to insult because you unconsciously know there is something wrong in the era we live.

Unvaccinated people are now the second-class citizens who are politically persecuted.

No offence intended but I don't think you really understand the notion of freedom.
It’s so weird to me to hear people bleating about “mah freedom” as we start to come out of a pandemic that crippled the world (and is still an absolute nightmare in many of the poorer regions). Desperate times call for desperate measures and obviously no country is taking measures to increase vaccine uptake lightly.

The whole point of trying to get vaccine uptake as high as possible is so we can return to normal life as quickly as possible. The longer the vaccine hesitant drag this process out the longer the rest of us have to deal with much more significant restrictions to our freedom. We all want to be able to go to music festivals, to travel without red tape, to hang out in crowded pubs etc etc. But we can only do that when it’s safe to do so and the way for this to happen is to get as many people vaccinated as possible.

If anyone really gave a shit about living in a society where you’re free to enjoy life as you please then they would do their bit by manning the feck up and getting vaccinated.
 

golden_blunder

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You feel the need to insult because you unconsciously know there is something wrong in the era we live.

Unvaccinated people are now the second-class citizens who are politically persecuted.

No offence intended but I don't think you really understand the notion of freedom.
I think we should lock all the unvaccinated up and then get on with our lives.
 

Rektsanwalt

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You feel the need to insult because you unconsciously know there is something wrong in the era we live.

Unvaccinated people are now the second-class citizens who are politically persecuted.

No offence intended but I don't think you really understand the notion of freedom.
Political persecution or prevention of another escalation of a global health crisis? Hmm...

Soon people will tell me that traffic signs, speed limits or mandatory safety belt rules are political persecution because "freedom" (this word is very often confused with egocentrismd and egoism, completely forgetting that freedom works in many ways and directions). I mean, isn't it obvious that all individual's rights have to be in concordance with all other individuals' rights? There's actually lots of proverbs for those who don't deal with actual freedom rights to grasp this concept. A german proverb (goes down to Kant) literally translated for example means "the freedom of one individual ends where the freedom of another equal individual starts". It's not very difficult.

Brief summary:
Unvaccinated people are a danger for any individual, for society, for health insurances, for their employer and for the state's treasury. Therefor, they have to be treated accordingly. Equal things have to be treated equally, unequal things have to be treated unequally.
 

FrankDrebin

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Isolating and waiting for the results of my PCR test to comeback because 2 individuals at work caught covid.
Urrhh.
 

FrankDrebin

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Good luck Frank. My nephew and his son have it at the mo, the boy caught it as soon as he went back to school. Nephew vaccinated, feels rough but is able to continue WFH.
Thanks. I feel perfectly fine. I took a lateral flow test and came out negative but work insist that I take the PCR one too. A weeks wages gone.Arh.
 

Rektsanwalt

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Thanks. I feel perfectly fine. I took a lateral flow test and came out negative but work insist that I take the PCR one too. A weeks wages gone.Arh.
Doesn't your government compensate you while you're in quarantine? Huge debate at the moment in Germany whether unvaccinated should keep getting paid by the government while quarantining.
 

Sparky_Hughes

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Doesn't your government compensate you while you're in quarantine? Huge debate at the moment in Germany whether unvaccinated should keep getting paid by the government while quarantining.
Only if you can knock up a dodgy ppe contract and whats app it to twat wanksock.
The nipper now having to self isolate having tested positive. Ive so far tested negative and have been double jabbed, am I supposed to stay in too or not?
 

jojojo

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Only if you can knock up a dodgy ppe contract and whats app it to twat wanksock.
The nipper now having to self isolate having tested positive. Ive so far tested negative and have been double jabbed, am I supposed to stay in too or not?
You don't need to self-isolate if you're fully vaccinated and you've not got symptoms (unless you test positive on LFT or PCR). You should get a PCR test. It's a good idea to take a couple more LFT tests over the next week or so as well, just in case it develops later.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coron...reatment/when-to-self-isolate-and-what-to-do/
 

Rektsanwalt

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Only if you can knock up a dodgy ppe contract and whats app it to twat wanksock.
The nipper now having to self isolate having tested positive. Ive so far tested negative and have been double jabbed, am I supposed to stay in too or not?
I have no idea regarding covid laws in the UK, but it seems like someone else already helped you!
 
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Firstly it's not 26%. 26% don't strongly support the Green Pass but far less actually oppose it.

Polls are often broken down by political support here, including this one. You probably won't be surprised to learn the party that most strongly opposes the Green Pass is the neo-fascist Brothers of Italy, closely followed by the right wing Lega Nord whose main goal in life is to annex Southern Italy.
Basically the types that would vote for Itxit and spend their time smashing up restaurants and shops on match day.
 

antohan

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A stunning timeline. Daily deaths vs vaccination progress (1st, 2nd and 2nd+14d) in Uruguay.



A battering. Need I say more?
 

jojojo

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A stunning timeline. Daily deaths vs vaccination progress (1st, 2nd and 2nd+14d) in Uruguay.



A battering. Need I say more?
The vaccines really are doing an amazing job where they're available.

In the UK, case rates between July and now have been as high as they've been at any point in the pandemic. Hospitalisation rates are high (but falling and nowhere near the January peak) and death rates are depressing but vaccines have had a massive impact in the UK - most easily seen in the age profiles of hospitalisations.

Beware of misreading the chart, it's comparing how many people in a particular age group are being hospitalised to that same group during the January 2021 peak. The actual numbers of under 17s hospitalisation is thankfully low. The bulk of those hospitalised are unvaccinated adults and 80+ vaccinated.

Hospitalisations as high as they've ever been during the pandemic for U17s, but vaccines doing such an important job among adults that we can actually see the trends as they get vaccinated.
 

antohan

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The vaccines really are doing an amazing job where they're available.

In the UK, case rates between July and now have been as high as they've been at any point in the pandemic. Hospitalisation rates are high (but falling and nowhere near the January peak) and death rates are depressing but vaccines have had a massive impact in the UK - most easily seen in the age profiles of hospitalisations.
Do they provide a breakdown of hospitalisations jabbed vs non?

We currently have ~40% spare capacity in ICUs, with Covid accounting for ~1.5%.

Last time I saw the breakdown those were 1/3 jabbed vs 2/3 non. Idiotically used by someone arguing the vaccines were ineffective... when >95% of over 70s are jabbed, leaving under 5% to account for 2/3 of ICU Covid patients.

Rough numbers, there must be a couple of U70s there with or without vaccines, but you get the drift.
 

Pexbo

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I’m going to assume she’s far more qualified to talk on this subject than I am but I’m confident enough to say she’s a fecking moron for making claims like this.
 

Anustart89

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What do you mean? She's a moron for explaining how viruses usually behave and that SARS-CoV-2 is behaving like other viruses, by virtue of also being a virus? @Pexbo
 

Suedesi

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Rather than trying to distinguish between types of deaths, The Economist’s approach is to count all of them. The standard method of tracking changes in total mortality is “excess deaths”. This number is the gap between how many people died in a given region during a given time period, regardless of cause, and how many deaths would have been expected if a particular circumstance (such as a natural disaster or disease outbreak) had not occurred. Although the official number of deaths caused by covid-19 is now 4.7m, our single best estimate is that the actual toll is 15.6m people. We find that there is a 95% chance that the true value lies between 9.7m and 18.3m additional deaths.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates
 

Pogue Mahone

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I’m going to assume she’s far more qualified to talk on this subject than I am but I’m confident enough to say she’s a fecking moron for making claims like this.
What do you mean? She's a moron for explaining how viruses usually behave and that SARS-CoV-2 is behaving like other viruses, by virtue of also being a virus? @Pexbo
Paywalled, so can’t read it but I seriously doubt she’s saying anything moronic. Most likely a variation on what a lot of people who understand this stuff are saying. The virus can only mutate so much without a trade-off. Getting better at some things while getting worse at others. It’s not unlikely that delta is as bad as it gets.
 

Classical Mechanic

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This is what she said

“The virus can’t completely mutate because the spike protein has to interact with the Ace2 receptor on the surface of the human cell in order to get inside that cell.

“If it changes its spike protein so much that it can’t interact with that receptor, then it’s not going to be able to get inside the cell.

“There aren’t very many places for the viruses to go to have something that will evade immunity but still be a really infective virus.

“So I don’t think there’s an enormous amount of concern that we’re suddenly going to see a switch to something that evades existing immunity.”

“We tend to see a slow genetic drift of the [pandemic flu] viruses and there will be gradual immunity developing in the population as there is to all the other seasonal coronaviruses,”

“We already live with four different human coronaviruses that we don’t really ever think about very much and eventually SARS-CoV-2 will become one of those. It’s just a question of how long it’s going to take to get there and what measures we’re going to take to manage it in the meantime.”
 

jojojo

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This is what she said

“The virus can’t completely mutate because the spike protein has to interact with the Ace2 receptor on the surface of the human cell in order to get inside that cell.

“If it changes its spike protein so much that it can’t interact with that receptor, then it’s not going to be able to get inside the cell.

“There aren’t very many places for the viruses to go to have something that will evade immunity but still be a really infective virus.

“So I don’t think there’s an enormous amount of concern that we’re suddenly going to see a switch to something that evades existing immunity.”

“We tend to see a slow genetic drift of the [pandemic flu] viruses and there will be gradual immunity developing in the population as there is to all the other seasonal coronaviruses,”

“We already live with four different human coronaviruses that we don’t really ever think about very much and eventually SARS-CoV-2 will become one of those. It’s just a question of how long it’s going to take to get there and what measures we’re going to take to manage it in the meantime.”
I think it comes down to the principle that one way or another we need to build our immunity to the existing variants, not worry about speculative super-variants. We can do that via a vaccine - safer for ourselves and our neighbours. Or via infection - at higher risk to ourselves and our neighbours.

SARS2 won't be leaving. If it mutates into something that evades the vaccines and past infection, it won't be SARS2 because it'll have had to lose too many characteristics of the spike protein.

Chances are we'll all pick up SARS2 infections multiple times in our lives. Its characteristics don't lend itself to eradication, its presence in multiple types of animals (from other primates to cats and dogs, mink and beavers) says it's sticking around.

The issue now is how hard do you fight it and for how long. The UK has effectively abandoned hope of stopping it spreading through the under 12s, and is only grudgingly offering vaccines in the 12-17s (more to protect their education than their health). It's going to be a long hard winter for the vulnerable, the ones who can't take/get benefit from a vaccine, and the unlucky.

Those unvaxxed by choice have limited time to choose. The UK won't do much to stop them getting infected now - unfortunately they'll probably kill some of the vaccinated and/or vulnerable along the way to their own version of basic immunity.
 
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Little premature one had a night in Astrid Lindgren’s hospital on Wednesday for the RS virus we’ve been shitting ourselves about, big sis brought it home from day care where half the school is now off sick. We’ll probably be back in hospital again on Sat or Sun as the virus ”peaks” with the flem build up.
Cause and effect, RS has already absolutely exploded here due to such low levels of natural immunity. They now say they expect flu to annihilate many more than Covid this winter. :( Scary.