It's getting to the time where we have to look at hospitalisation and fatality rates for a fully vaccinated person infected with Omicron, and compare that to traditional viruses like Influenza to see if Covid restrictions still make sense. Some governments are beginning to do that and remove their restrictions, at least for vaccinated people.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
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Why would keeping your kid off school when they are sick stop? Just like we did before or should have done.
And the risk is far from minimal especially for the teachers who are an aging occupation.
You don't get the equivalent to long covid in fairly large numbers with flu. We all want to go back to normal but if we were sensible that would take years and would be contingent on far higher levels of immunisation and third shots.
This gives an interesting glimpse into how things are changing. Multiple influences in there of course - including disease severity, reinfection/infection despite vaccination, boosters, behaviour patterns in different age groups etc. Broadly though, it's getting closer to flu.
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I think the difference is that currently we're asking kids to stay home even when they aren't sick. Setting quarantine minimums and using infection driven testing (rather than symptomatic illness) means we aren't asking people just to keep kids off school when sick, we're keeping them off school because they might be infectious - that's not a standard we previously applied to colds or flu.
Given that we're asking people to meet a new standard it is worth asking how they get supported to do that - whether that means reminding employers of the need to facilitate home working or it means financial or other support. Which also means asking how long we plan to do that for.
You probably do. It’s just never been something anyone worried about much. Post-viral fatigue, M.E, or even just being a bit beat up for a month or two after a bad dose of flu. These have been round forever.
1st day of in-person lab teaching: 2 covid absences, 2 substitutions from other sessions who missed theirs (unknown covid status), and 1 person released from covid quarantine this morning (5 days after a positive test).
Let's hope that booster is worth something and that double masking works...
Let's hope that booster is worth something and that double masking works...
Some studies suggest you might actually but nobody ever cared before. Its also too early to know if Omicron does cause long Covid as all we know so far is the faster recovery times in normal cases.
Even if you can get long covid, what is the probability? 1 in 10 warrants restrictions on daily life. 1 in 1 million doesn't.
Are those 2022 figures cumulative over the 2 years Covid has been around, or a snapshot of a time period?
The 2022 image is essentially a snapshot of omicron (and tailend of delta) in the UK. It uses the ONS (populated balanced) measure for covid infections and the ONS death stats. They've built a lag into the case-death analysis, so we'll see further updates to the stat over the next couple of months.
The broad picture is probably fair though - at least for the UK, where most people are double or treble vaxxed and most of the others have had at least one infection.
Got my booster just now. Fully vaxxed and vexed, but the latter is chronic 
They are infectious and they are meant to stay home when infectious with other illnesses like chickenpox, measles and mumps etc. They are meant to keep kids home when potentially sick or infectious even with colds or flu but few parents do as most prioritise their inconvenience over the wellbeing of the other kids and their teachers.
With employers what new standard is required? If you are sick (and infectious is sick) stay home and stop making your fellow workers sick. That is what sick leave is for. The problem comes with the casualisation of the workforce and we idiots voted for that.
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Or parents of kids with asymptomatic/presymptomatic colds, flus, chicken pox simply don't know their kids are "sick" and infectious. Potentially infectious kids means literally every kid.
https://amp.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jan/31/lockdowns-had-little-or-no-impact-covid-19-deaths-/
What a surprise, I’ll take all your apologies now innit. And the real shitty thing, the true price of these devastating policies is still to come.
Paper: https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/f...ffects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality.pdf
What a surprise, I’ll take all your apologies now innit. And the real shitty thing, the true price of these devastating policies is still to come.
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Economists stay winning
Covid is pretty much endemic now. If we're not already at the point of no longer needing to worry about spread, it won't be long. Everyone in the UK is either vaccinated or has natural immunity or both.
But I expect a lot of people are going to take time readjusting to the old normal. Getting off the high horses they've been sat on for two years won't be easy.
But I expect a lot of people are going to take time readjusting to the old normal. Getting off the high horses they've been sat on for two years won't be easy.
Good bit of whataboutism there like.Economists stay winning
The idea that lockdowns didn't prevent deaths is unmitigated bollocks. There are lots of countries where it worked very well, usually when they did it properly - early, hard and border restrictions included.
Half arsed or after the horse had bolted attempts, as typified by UK, Europen and US attempts less so.
Well they are only talking about the US and Europe in fairness, and my argument was always that Europe was fecked after Italy because of exactly that, the horse had bolted, and they were not a fecking island on the other side of the planet. And that the Imperial model was an utter piece of trash.
The devastating consequences of these policies were so fecking obvious from day one.
The case of Israel shines a shit load of doubt on this. Nothing was half arsed about their approach, they just once again, were not an island in the middle of an ocean. Despite being miles ahead of everyone with mass vaccination, an excess mortality of almost 90 /100,000, very much in line with many EU countries with a similar population size.
Kids exposed to siblings with chickenpox should isolate at home - somewhat obviously. Even more obviously nobody expects parents to be telepathic. There may be a time in the future where twice weekly testing of school kids isn't required (the current standard here) but until then kids isolating if testing positive or exposed to infected family members is a no brainer.
Teachers have a hard enough job for feck all money without exposing them further and unnecesary risk.
Even in Europe lockdowns still saved a huge number of lives just as anything that reduced infections did. Just nowhere near as many as could have been saved if politicians had been brave enough to take bolder decisions.
Ah, so the John Hopkins paper there is making it all up?
Bollox
Plenty of European countries took what you call brave, but I call reckless decisions.
They just weren’t an isolated country in the middle of an ocean.
So taking into account the unvaccinated that skew that 2022 fatality picture quite considerably, it's probably fair to say there is no longer much/any additional risk from Omicron to a fully vaccinated person.
In which case its time to go back to normal.
They may not have prevented many Covid deaths in isolation, I could see that being true, but that paper totally fails to account for what would have happened when hospitals ran out of capacity for both Covid and other illnesses, and how the lockdowns delayed many cases until vaccinations arrived.
Just because a reputable institution publishes something doesn't always mean its right.
Clearly the European and US lockdowns weren't strict enough. In the UK for example we didn't even have the military patroling the streets, supermarkets were still open as championed super-spreader events and we were permitted to go for an outdoor walk, alone, once a day. Families were also allowed to mix with each other within the same household. Lessons learned I guess.
In case it wasn't obvious.
Israeli spread is driven by segments of the population who have ignored regulation to atvleast some degree, particularly Arabic and Hasadic communities who live in high density conditions and who to a greater degree continued to attend high density social events.
UK lockdowns were OK but doing feck all to prevent infection from overseas made it far less effective than it should have been.
We still have both an indoor and an outdoor mask mandate in Italy - I'm not really seeing much sense in the outdoor one unless you're in a big crowd, but it is what it is. People seem to comply with it very well.
Europe, including the UK, has effectively functioned as one country for a long time. Goods movement, business, workforces and families sprawl across borders. In early 2020, by the time people realised that the ski resorts etc were in trouble it was too late - the families were already home from half-term holidays.
The first lockdown did what it had to in the UK - stopped hospitals collapsing, and got some PPE to places that needed it.
The second/alpha wave lockdown was left too late in the UK, but ultimately bought a bit of time for the vaccine rollout to start. The earlier (regional) lockdowns in 2020 on the other hand were mostly ineffectual, before becoming resented and ignored.
Controls since the vaccine rolled out? Again, things that bought time for more vaccinations in undervaxxed groups - particularly during the Delta wave were useful.
In England, those official controls were mostly ceremonial. The real controls were being done by individuals and families who basically did not go back to business as usual. In Scotland and Wales they tried to do more, but vaccine passports, masks etc didn't seem to affect outcomes very much.
The only things that have really affected outcomes are vaccination and the actions that bought time for vaccination. I'm not sure what countries are buying time for now with border controls and lockdowns. If it's to keep hospital numbers manageable I understand it, otherwise no.
So this study's idea that lockdowns, school closures etc did nothing - no, I don't agree. In the first half of 2020 they were all we had. In the winter of 20/21 we needed to use them tactically to protect hospitals and start vaccinating.
If we hadn't vaccinated most of our vulnerable population before Delta arrived it would have been a nightmare, even if we used the lockdown card again.
The first lockdown did what it had to in the UK - stopped hospitals collapsing, and got some PPE to places that needed it.
The second/alpha wave lockdown was left too late in the UK, but ultimately bought a bit of time for the vaccine rollout to start. The earlier (regional) lockdowns in 2020 on the other hand were mostly ineffectual, before becoming resented and ignored.
Controls since the vaccine rolled out? Again, things that bought time for more vaccinations in undervaxxed groups - particularly during the Delta wave were useful.
In England, those official controls were mostly ceremonial. The real controls were being done by individuals and families who basically did not go back to business as usual. In Scotland and Wales they tried to do more, but vaccine passports, masks etc didn't seem to affect outcomes very much.
The only things that have really affected outcomes are vaccination and the actions that bought time for vaccination. I'm not sure what countries are buying time for now with border controls and lockdowns. If it's to keep hospital numbers manageable I understand it, otherwise no.
So this study's idea that lockdowns, school closures etc did nothing - no, I don't agree. In the first half of 2020 they were all we had. In the winter of 20/21 we needed to use them tactically to protect hospitals and start vaccinating.
If we hadn't vaccinated most of our vulnerable population before Delta arrived it would have been a nightmare, even if we used the lockdown card again.
When do you think that will end?
10 February is the current expiry date, it's being extended on a rolling basis a week or two at a time. Cases are dropping and the hospitalisation wave never really happened so I don't think they will keep it for much longer.
It's not easy for glasses wearers, but I now have my FFP2 technique perfected!
The paper that the village idiot shared is unsurprisingly getting destroyed on Twitter.
You can see why. The whole basis for their argument seems to be that because of a lock of concrete evidence that lockdowns saved lives this means lockdowns definitely didn’t save lives. Which is obviously a flawed hypothesis.
It’s also a weird meta-analysis. They claim to have reviewed 18590 studies, yet only 24 of them satisfied their criteria for inclusion. Maybe they need to have a rethink about their criteria?!
Although having said that lockdown almost certainly saved lives I’m very glad that we didn’t shut down schools again this year, despite many calling for it…
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In England, we now have more people in hospital "with" covid than "of" covid. That's not to minimise how serious an issue "with covid" is, as a minimum it complicates things for the hospitals and it adds to the risks and discomfort of the people affected (potentially disastrously in some cases).
Still, it shows how different this wave is. Plus, it helps explain why hospital bed numbers aren't falling quite as fast as might have been expected. Incidentally, this will also make the "28 day following positive test" death numbers difficult to interpret, and why the ONS cause of death data will be the thing to watch when it comes to understanding Omicron in the UK
Still, it shows how different this wave is. Plus, it helps explain why hospital bed numbers aren't falling quite as fast as might have been expected. Incidentally, this will also make the "28 day following positive test" death numbers difficult to interpret, and why the ONS cause of death data will be the thing to watch when it comes to understanding Omicron in the UK
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The track record of that profession through this pandemic is terrible enough that I'm not going to bother reading it, I know there will be a critique in a day or two.
The policy has already been adjusted. Previously they called it "zero-tolerance policy", now it's "dynamic zero-tolerance policy". They also assign a new definition to "dynamic zero-tolerance policy". It's just another example of CCP refusing to admit their mistakes by manipulating phrases, like they still claim they are running "SOCIALISM with Chinese characteristics".
What has changed on the ground? They still seem to be doing massive but relatively short lockdowns whenever they discover cases...