I am the polar opposite
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
Not @Eboue ? Dude. Is he happy with you telling the world?
Regarding ebola, I'm tripled vaxxed for that. Or for 5G. Or AIDS. I dunno, I took the vaccines because people who are smarter than me, and I trust with my life, advised me to. And I'm still alive, so they've done well so far
Despite my different views on a lot of things, I don't doubt @Stanley Road is on board with the science
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Boris's only chance is populism, so he's blatantly gonna go for option 1
Just tested positive on a lateral flow earlier. My partner has had it for a few days now (she got it from a Work Christmas Party) and was hoping I’d sneakily avoid it but nope. Throat felt a bit annoying yesterday, and had this slight headache all day that I just couldn’t get rid off.
Today however, just completely sapped of energy, constantly needing to nap. Head is banging. Had a fair few lemsips now. Gonna have to isolate Christmas Day which really sucks, not much to be done about it though.
We’ve both had the double vaccine but no booster.
Today however, just completely sapped of energy, constantly needing to nap. Head is banging. Had a fair few lemsips now. Gonna have to isolate Christmas Day which really sucks, not much to be done about it though.
We’ve both had the double vaccine but no booster.
Corrected it for you
Either you don't get his sarcasm or I don't get your sarcasm, but I'm confused
It's a coded message to Stan with a clue that opens a crypto wallet
That didn't help with my confusion
Feel better soon. You're doing the right thing by sticking to the rules and isolating over Christmas, on the bright side - at least you have your partner and can make it a cozy time for the two of you.Just tested positive on a lateral flow earlier. My partner has had it for a few days now (she got it from a Work Christmas Party) and was hoping I’d sneakily avoid it but nope. Throat felt a bit annoying yesterday, and had this slight headache all day that I just couldn’t get rid off.
Today however, just completely sapped of energy, constantly needing to nap. Head is banging. Had a fair few lemsips now. Gonna have to isolate Christmas Day which really sucks, not much to be done about it though.
We’ve both had the double vaccine but no booster.
I don't know if I'm being stupid here but I don't understand what the point in the vaccines or boosters is if we're now being told that hospital cases could end up double what they were last year unless we go into some kind of lockdown?
If a majority of people are vaccinated (90%), half triple vaccinated, and the vaccine offers the level of protection claimed, then the maths is a mile away from adding up here.
It was what, 1 in 30 at its peak last year, so over the course of the peak you can assume significantly more than 1 in 30 had covid. Possibly more than double that. Now 50% (and growing) of those would have around 70% protection, and almost all would have some vaccine or anti body protection. So for hospital admissions to be double last year you're getting close to everyone in the country needing to have covid at the exact same time? Which in itself makes no sense.
Then we're being told that a "vast majority" of people in hospital are unvaccinated, which based on the above is literally a mathematical impossibility.
I don't doubt the hospital or case number figures but at this point I'm completely lost with the rest of it. The whole point of the vaccine was to avoid this exact scenario and yet we're back in it at the exact earliest point in time it would have been possible to be
If a majority of people are vaccinated (90%), half triple vaccinated, and the vaccine offers the level of protection claimed, then the maths is a mile away from adding up here.
It was what, 1 in 30 at its peak last year, so over the course of the peak you can assume significantly more than 1 in 30 had covid. Possibly more than double that. Now 50% (and growing) of those would have around 70% protection, and almost all would have some vaccine or anti body protection. So for hospital admissions to be double last year you're getting close to everyone in the country needing to have covid at the exact same time? Which in itself makes no sense.
Then we're being told that a "vast majority" of people in hospital are unvaccinated, which based on the above is literally a mathematical impossibility.
I don't doubt the hospital or case number figures but at this point I'm completely lost with the rest of it. The whole point of the vaccine was to avoid this exact scenario and yet we're back in it at the exact earliest point in time it would have been possible to be
Not all hospital admissions are the same.
In Delta and previous waves issues was about severe disease. ITU admission with prolonged admissions that reduced capacity and we were looking at potential shortages of oxygen along with beds. Coupled with staff shortages.
If the boosters can prevent severe disease even with hospital admissions its worth doing. People who are vaccinated usually get admitted on acute medical wards for symptoms that need investigating like chest pain with no underlying significant pathology and discharged quick, or if they require a few litres of oxygen but are otherwise not having much complications we can step them down onto community hospitals.
Vaccinations, and the booster, are a huge game changer in breaking the link between severe disease and covid. So far held up steady. But overwhelming numbers of cases translating into pressures on account of "small percentage of a big number" as previously mentioned potentially a big problem, now with added little appetite sociopolitically for lockdown measures, we might be walking into another dangerous territory if case numbers acutely continue to skyrocket like this
I’m kind of going off vaccines now I’ve had three of them and my cheque from big pharma still hasn’t arrived
Because let's be honest, nobody actually knows how well the vaccine booster works against omnicron. They're just hoping it works - so am I, it's why I've got it and have encouraged my family to get it. It's a hail mary, or else we've got two pandemics happening simultaneously.
Just out of interest- how much of the old covid is getting to people vs this new variant?
Anyone taking bets on when we think lockdown will be announced in the UK?
My £5 would be on Boris holding out till 27th at 5pm.
My £5 would be on Boris holding out till 27th at 5pm.
About two years ago I thought the world was ending. That first wave in 2020 was terrifying. Then it got better. And better. I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the future. Many things can still happen to turn this post on its head, but right now I feel this crisis is petering out. I'm tempted to say we've made it.
I can't seeing it being an actual lockdown, it'll be yet another half arsed half hearted set of rules that don't really do much of anything at all. Then we'll get an actual lockdown.
They add bitcoin to the vaccine, put your arm against any contactless card Machine...
Protection from infection by recent past infection is reckoned to have fallen from around 85% to below 20%. There's a real chance that the only unvaxxed ones it won't infect are the under 15s who got it this autumn.
For the vaccinated, similar dramatic falls have happened. However, the boosters may have pushed protection back up to around 70% + (early figures with wide error margin)
Instead of a pool of about 8m people (mostly children) available to get infected with Delta, Omicron immediately has a much bigger pool (maybe the equivalent of 40m in the UK), and it spreads easily.
Most scientists believe that it will infect a big percentage of that group within months if we live our normal pre-covid lives. Most of them also believe that past infection or prior vaccination will reduce hospitalisation, severe disease and death in those who do get infected - but they don't know by how much.
Even so, a small percentage of 40m is huge. If 1% of those infected get hospitalised that would be 400k. 400k, with the majority arriving in January, maybe 10k admissions/day if no action is taken, is a horror story.
It's easy to see how bad it can get. We've got key information missing when we try to predict what it will really do though - how much protection from hospitalisation do we have once we catch it, how severe is the Omicron variant compared to Delta? We just don't know, but there are glimmers of good news among the gloom
Personally I think the spike in cases and the warnings will send such a shockwave through the system that people will try not to kill their grannies for Christmas. I hope so anyway.
The bolded has never really made much sense, in fact it’s always sounded preposterous, especially after what we saw here and what started to happen with most high case load countries pre-lockdown.
This paper has an interesting angle on it, it’s not peer reviewed sadly but it’s food for thought at least.
Massi was always your best bet in here for doing the math on it.
The perennial lockdown makes no sense posts are back i see. Yawn.
It doesn't make sense because you've just made up the numbers in your head. 23% of the adult population have antibodies from infection (source), in total. Last winter's peak (December and January) added 2.1m reported cases, 19% of the total cases reported since the pandemic started. We've already had 2m reported cases since the beginning of November. So for hospitalisations to double, the number would be much, much smaller than half the population being infected simultaneously.
98% have antibodies from infection or vaccination, that part's true. Having antibodies doesn't prevent infection though, what prevents infection is having a level of antibodies above a threshold. We know that antibodies wane from past infection (source) and vaccination (source), i.e. it starts to fall below the threshold, and Omicron offers a level of immune escape on top of that (source), i.e. it raises the threshold. Once you add those numbers into your calculation - using whatever part of the range of estimates you choose - it becomes a mathematical possibility again.
Torries put money and the economy above anything else. They always have and always will.
When they start proposing restrictions that are going to tank the economy you know things are genuinely bad.
When they start proposing restrictions that are going to tank the economy you know things are genuinely bad.
UK shoppers avoid High Streets amid Omicron fears
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59721526
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59721526
Our cnut Government would be better giving some clarity so people know where they stand...announce an 8pm curfew from tomorrow night on hospitality, and a 2 week lockdown to begin on 27th.
People will appreciate that a lot more imo that the constant worry around Xmas plans, the rumour mill, and ministers saying maybe this maybe that.
People will appreciate that a lot more imo that the constant worry around Xmas plans, the rumour mill, and ministers saying maybe this maybe that.
But then this doesn't explain the 6,000 deaths a day claim and also doesn't explain why this problem of short term admissions has only come into view now when it would have been something that could easily be pre-empted and would surely have been a problem during the first two waves?
We haven't got two pandemics. We've got a virus that's mutating which is exactly what viruses do and will continue to do, every single year.
The problem I have with this is we're still behaving and adopting plans/strategies based on the idea it is a short term pandemic and will just go away in a few months. Why is it any kind of surprise that a mutated version that is more resistant to vaccines and anti bodies would appear and would happen to spread more easily in the winter? There is a reason we have an updated flu jab every single year and there is a reason our health system is built to account for a surge in flu and other virus cases every year. We know enough about viruses and enough about covid to know this would happen and will continue to happen every year. Yet continue to rely on a strategy that demonstrably isn't sustainable or effective.
Yes there are unknowns about new variants but there forever will be. We can't even predict things like the harshness of the weather which also has a significant impact on the health system and people's ability to fight a virus. It'll be a guessing game for all time.
I don't know if people are just still trying to hide from the reality at this point which is that this is something we will need to learn to live with and adapt our health system to cope with. Not just keep adopting hide under the bed tactics and relying on politicians to make decisions they're neither qualified or objective enough to make.
It's a recipe for disaster every single time. Decisions will always be made at the wrong time because they are based on shutting down the system and people's lives/freedoms, rather than based on a system and way of life designed to account for covid.
This does make it all make a bit more sense but then essentially comes back to the vaccines being potentially next to worthless. If only the booster offers significant protection and even then only maybe/hopefully...and the next variant will be back in the same boat again but with twice as many leaks.
I just assumed when the vaccine was rolled out early in the year that the "booster" being talked about was an updated one to account for mutations. Turns out it's just the same thing again which leaves me back to being confused about what the actual plan is as that's obviously not one that was ever going to work for very long at all. Why was it being talked about as the "silver bullet" if there was no immediate plan to account for mutations?
The last point in people protecting their loved ones is where I think people still have tunnel vision. A lot of people who didn't see their granny last Christmas now don't have one to see this Christmas and a lot more won't have one by next Christmas. It is also taking a lot of the joy and freedom from the last part of a lot of people's lives.
My dad has been in hospital 3 times since covid for non covid rated reasons. His quality of life has been severely reduced by restrictions and lockdowns. Now he's facing spending a second Christmas on his own in order to "protect" him. Yet he'll get so lonely he'll end up at the pub instead the second it is open. The booster might protect him from covid but lockdowns and isolation have been astonishingly bad for his copd and drinking. It's undoubtedly taken years from his life.
My girlfriend's mum has multiple conditions and has spent the past 20 months as a prisoner in her own home. She's an anxious mess and doesn't even like going out for a walk anymore. She won't go near anyone and won't let anyone (including me and my girlfriend) in her house. This isn't helped at all by one minute us being told we don't even need to wear masks on a crowded train and the next being told the pandemic has somehow spiralled out of control in a way we couldn't possibly have helped to do anything about. Yesterday she was confused why we're talking about lockdowns and not seeing our own families at Christmas on the same day she's watching a football game on TV with 60,000 people there. She is also confused why it's not safe for a football game to go ahead if some players have covid, but you can still pack people into stadiums/trains to go and watch it. She thinks the world has gone completely mad and at times it's quite difficult to disagree because I can't answer some of what she says without agreeing it's bonkers.
This will forever be the problem with lockdown tactics. They aren't going to be all that effective when you're trying to balance them with the shock factor of a system and way of life not built to cope with them...and the inevitability of that is the more times you do it the more people will ignore or actively revolt against it.
This has descended slightly off topic but I am genuinely at a kiss at this point. Surely there are not people out there who think forever jumping in and out of lockdowns is a sensible or sustainable plan.
Get well soonJust tested positive on a lateral flow earlier. My partner has had it for a few days now (she got it from a Work Christmas Party) and was hoping I’d sneakily avoid it but nope. Throat felt a bit annoying yesterday, and had this slight headache all day that I just couldn’t get rid off.
Today however, just completely sapped of energy, constantly needing to nap. Head is banging. Had a fair few lemsips now. Gonna have to isolate Christmas Day which really sucks, not much to be done about it though.
We’ve both had the double vaccine but no booster.
Yeah it's ridiculous particularly after last year. If we're going to have a lockdown I'd rather know now and I'd rather it start now than suddenly get announced on Christmas Eve.
I don't see the point in curfews either. It won't help the hospitality industry much particularly not pubs. Could have closed hospitality for and from this weekend just gone and that would have bought some reassurance that people could at least spend Christmas with their families. It would have cost money in business support but that's going to need to happen one way or another anyway.
I'm not looking forward to potentially another Christmas sat in my flat on my own. I'm probably in a better place than last year but good fecking job as last Christmas day I spent on a 4 hour walk to avoid frankly feeling suicidal.
You’re forgetting this is unprecedented. The vaccines were developed before Omnicron raised its dirty head. Let’s see how it pans out. At this point they are rightly being cautious because if it’s super transmissible then the hospitals will be under more pressure during the winter months when they are already pushed from winter virals. And their own staff are isolating more too
Exactly. I don’t see why people would argue against that point. Money is the Tory god
Listening to the radio earlier and Leo Varadker (ireland) says that he expected that over the next few years we can expect winter shutdowns or “steps back” and we should take the opportunity to do our stuff in other months. Or words to that effect.
troubling
troubling
I heard that. It was unnecessarily bleak IMO. I mean, he could be right but still. Nobody needed to hear that right now. Read the fecking room, Leo.
It's not unprecedented for a virus to mutate though. It would be unprecedented for it not to. We know vaccines require updating and become less effective over time because we already have to account for this with other viruses.
We know we will have to adapt our health system to cope with the increased demands from covid because we already have to do this for other illnesses and viruses. Otherwise we wouldn't even need a health system as no one would ever be unwell.
We also know it isn't practical to vaccinate an entire population 3 times a year and cancel literally hundreds of thousands of vital operations and health appointments to do so, never mind when you have to factor in on top that it doesn't even prevent excess hospital admissions or a national lockdown which brings its own massive and unsustainable issues. Not least the panic and surge in last minute travelling it will create at this time of year.
A sustainable plan would be increasing health service capacity and targeting updated treatments/protection to the most vulnerable rather than blanketing the entire population with what seems to be near ineffective treatments.
I get that there are a lot of unknowns but we're doing things I know make absolutely no sense and aren't sustainable at this point and I'm not a scientist. I mean I know it makes no sense to have 60,000 people at a football game at the same time as the city it's in has declared a "major incident" due to a pandemic. This would have been incredibly dumb 2 weeks into the pandemic. We're nearly 2 years into it.
I know if makes no sense to do this and then 2 days later try to tell the entire country they can't see their family at Christmas and expect them to listen, after you've made them all get double vaccinated, but that is what we will try to do...and then people will moan or get on their high horse when loads of people ignore the rules or travel to be with their family before the rules are imposed in order to avoid being stuck on their own, as if this isn't completely predictable and expected human behaviour.
It's doing my head in at this point honestly Geebs
If our health service being overwhelmed at winter was the precedence for shutdowns then we'd have had lockdowns the past 20 years.
In fairness, Leo is/was a doctor so probably knows more than most politicians but it still seems unnecessarily bleak. Most pandemics last 3-5 years and that's without the radical improvements in medicine we've had as well as almost unfathomably quick access to vaccines.
I’m far from being some sort of libertarian nut job but that’s a mission creep that I’m a little anxious about. Ending up doomed to spending every winter from now on with restrictions on our behaviour when hospitals get no more slammed with sick people than they have done every winter since forever, just because these sick people now happen to have covid.
I'd join the anti vaxxers in that case
8pm curfew when the majority of the population is off work, one of the stupidest policies I've ever heard, that will do nothing but just encourage people to ram all their social activity into smaller hours