Coronavirus Death Thread

[7om]

I think you've brought up a lot of good points there, Jimmy.

The only thing I would say is we are unsure about the effiacy of the Oxford vaccine against the South African variant. The study you are referrring to when they talk about not protecting against mild/moderate illness was done in quite a young population apparently. The results for that study or the test on severe disease still haven't been published. I guess that begs the question, how likely would a surge in South African variant cases be in the UK if we opened up? And would all the people who have been given the Oxford jab (Pfizer have reported, in another yet unpublished study that their jab is protective) here be protected? It's an unknown.

I think they are shit scared of hospitals being overrun again. What is the wait list now for elective operations, for example? Last I heard was three years. That line of thinking may be right or wrong, but I reckon that's what they are guarding against.

[Baz]

How can you say there’s zero evidence of Christmas having an effect?

[Lewis]

I said the media wasn't equipped to handle any of this in March and the nonce tendency said I was running interference for the government. I should have written it up properly at the time and added 'Contributing Editor' to my social media. Oh well.

[Jimmy Floyd]

How can you say there’s zero evidence of Christmas having an effect?

Because there is zero evidence of Christmas having an effect.

If anything, the rate of increase in infections was probably starting to slow by then.

[Don]

Isn't their concern regarding cases simply that it increases likelihood of mutation and therefore vaccine failure/higher risk of severe illness?

Team Sauna is so disillusioned and defeated it is now batting for the other side.

[7om]

The vaccines won’t fail.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Isn't their concern regarding cases simply that it increases likelihood of mutation and therefore vaccine failure/higher risk of severe illness?

Team Sauna is so disillusioned and defeated it is now batting for the other side.

Exactly my point - if there was actual evidence of a dangerous variant doing dangerous things, then lock us down as per January. Now the discourse seems to have moved to 'But there might be a variant in the future!' which is not a basis to extend this level of lockdown.

[Spikey M]

So even if everyone is vaccinated, we still need to get cases down to ~0 to avoid further mutations? Why don't they do the same with the Flu then? The Flu has form for birthing viruses far more deadly than this.

[Spikey M]

And if that's the goal, are we to keep international travel closed forever? Because there's no way every other country in the world will do the same.

[Yevrah]

Cracking post Jim.

The general gist of it ties into what I was getting at the other day, in that there is simply no logical reason currently to extend lockdown on its current basis for any longer than to the end of March, possibly even the end of Feb, but most of the noises from those feeding into that decision are going the other way and I too, don't really understand why.

And given we've been locked down for what, six weeks now, there's a classic contradiction in the messaging that suggests numbers aren't falling and things are still bad as they've been. In that taking that line and running with it very much implies that lockdown doesn't actually work. Which we all know is bollocks, but when the messaging is as negative as it is then that's the only logical conclusion if you take it at face value.

[Lewis]

Everything The Science has said since summer (publicly at least) has been with a view to covering its arse in the eventual inquiries and balancing any blame they [unfairly] get for the first phase with not being listened to second, third, fourth time round.

[Yevrah]

They were practising shit science though, that even I could have told them was bollocks, so for my money there should be some blame if we have to have an inquiry (I'd rather put the whole thing down to 'shit happens' and invest the time and money towards working out a proper gameplan for the next time ), not that it would have made that much difference as the only thing that would have was the nuclear option of closing borders, but apparently viruses don't respect those....

[Jimmy Floyd]

I think you've brought up a lot of good points there, Jimmy.

The only thing I would say is we are unsure about the effiacy of the Oxford vaccine against the South African variant. The study you are referrring to when they talk about not protecting against mild/moderate illness was done in quite a young population apparently. The results for that study or the test on severe disease still haven't been published. I guess that begs the question, how likely would a surge in South African variant cases be in the UK if we opened up? And would all the people who have been given the Oxford jab (Pfizer have reported, in another yet unpublished study that their jab is protective) here be protected? It's an unknown.

I think they are shit scared of hospitals being overrun again. What is the wait list now for elective operations, for example? Last I heard was three years. That line of thinking may be right or wrong, but I reckon that's what they are guarding against.

The problem here is that scientists are trying to bring the scientific method into public policy.

Science, as you presumably know better than me, is not a set of facts, but a process aimed at establishing truth. When truth is not yet known, the process must continue until it is. Therefore a great many things are 'maybe' and 'perhaps' until the scientific method has exhausted all other possibilities. This makes for good science but makes for dreadful public policy. If we made public policy on the basis of what 'might' go wrong, then we would all be living in caves. Ladders would definitely be banned; so would all forms of automotive transport, presumably, until we could stop them from blowing up and crashing into each other. We'd probably all have to wear special hoods to stop acid rain from getting into the water mains. I could make up any number of similarly far-fetched examples, and extending covid lockdown indefinitely to protect against any future issues is another one.

There comes a point when politicians need to stop 'following the science' as if it is fact rather than method, and start making decisions for everyone's benefit on the balance of all available evidence.

[Lewis]

Public Health England do make policy along those lines. It's just that normally they're only listened to to a point.

[Jimmy Floyd]

And that is because journalists report all the maybes as OH MY GOD LOOK AT THIS because they are under severe pressure to break stories constantly or die. This feeds into public unease, and public unease coming back via focus groups makes Boris Johnson think that really he should listen to 'the science' or he might become unpopular.

[Yevrah]

THE SCIENCE took such a prominent stage in all this because it uniquely tapped into a time where the vast majority of even semi-educated people were moronically wearing 'believing in THE SCIENCE' as some sort of badge to elevate themselves above the droves of idiots who believe in flat earth, creationism and other such manifest nonsense. The government, or more likely Cummings were acutely aware of this and that's why Whitty, Valance, Swiss Van Tam and FOLLOWING THE SCIENCE were front and centre from day 1.

What they didn't realise was that in the case of a pandemic THE SCIENCE actually follows the virus and doesn't precede it, so while you should absolutely be listening to the science, following common sense would have been the much better thing to do.

[Lewis]

As someone pointed out on Twitter, we've actually donned the actual SCIENCE stuff (testing, sequencing, vaccines and vaccination), making it all the more lol/facepalm that we can't manage the low-end stuff like closing airports or hanging randomly selected teachers.

[Jimmy Floyd]

That we are doing 50% of the world's genome sequencing is almost half the problem, in that no one has a clue about the Taco Bell Arkansas variant that inevitably exists, but we shit ourselves about the Little Shittinghampton variant.

[Boydy]

Not really sure how you can claim Christmas had no effect.

[niko_cee]

Wouldn't you expect cases to be higher in mid-Jan than they were during the Christmas period (or at least stay as high) what with the 2 week lag and all?

[Jimmy Floyd]

It's generally thought that the peak of positive cases was the arse end of December (that 7 day trend line shows it fairly neatly). With a 5-7 day lag (it's probably 7-9 but let's say 5-7 for caution) from point of infection to a positive case being registered, that would suggest that infections had already peaked before 24-26th Dec. With a widespread Christmas mixing effect you would have seen cases peak far later and almost certainly peak higher.

Similarly, you can see cases start to fall before lockdown actually starts on the 4th, because people had been scared indoors by then. My personal theory is that no one actually did anything over Christmas and that's why infections didn't soar.

It's close in dates but entirely coincidental.

[Boydy]

Wouldn't you expect cases to be higher in mid-Jan than they were during the Christmas period (or at least stay as high) what with the 2 week lag and all?

The peak was 9th January.

[Jimmy Floyd]

The peak was 29 December.

[Boydy]

The peak was 29 December.

Yeah, you're right, I misread the graph. Dunno how I got 9th Jan.

It still starts to dip before Christmas, then rises slightly, than takes off after it.

[Jimmy Floyd]

The dip is just reporting lag (no one got tested on Christmas Day and the surrounding days). If you look at the 7 day curve on the 4th panel down here https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases you can basically see, apart from the 4 day reporting deviation at Christmas, a smooth curve up to the peak and then a smooth curve down since.

[Lewis]

I read that there was a minor but noticeable bump on the London-Manchester-Dundee trail a couple of weeks afterwards.

[Kikó]

[Shindig]

I feel like the big test is seeing what happens when the kids go back to school.

[Magic]

What A levels lol.

[Don]

6 out of 10 deaths in UK were disabled people?



#OTC #OTS

[Don]

The news is firing zingers all over the gaff tonight.

It costs £2k a day to house each of these fucks in ICU

[Lewis]

Add disability benefits to pensions and expensive houses as the things to raid paying for it all.

[Shindig]

Let's not be too hasty, here.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Don't worry, the lads are all over it:

Toggle Spoiler

I haven't been to a sauna in years, can you stay 1m apart?

[Don]

Fuck knows how they managed to get away with it but my Bannatyne's was allowing 3 into a 2mx1m room

We're hitting up one of those special London male saunas to celebrate full reopening, son.

[Yevrah]

We'll have vaccinated almost everyone who it's worth vaccinating by August, so what in the sweet fuck is that article about?

[Lewis]

If there is one thing liable to undermine popular support for these measures, and it probably is only this one thing, it will be making us wear masks like dickheads in August after we've all been vaccinated just so they can keep the borders open.

[Yevrah]

I'm alright with wearing a mask as we do now, but staying 1m apart suggests many things one would assume should be long open by August, won't be.

And that, can fuck right off.

[7om]

Lol fuck off with that article. 80% of the population will have been vaccinated by then so why would we extend restrictions TO THE END OF THE YEAR.

I’m close to joining the Open The Clubs club.

[Jimmy Floyd]

As I've been saying since April it's because they (politicians and scientists alike) have no concept of human beings as human beings, they just see them as economic actors and disease vectors respectively.

If you obsess on those two things at the expense of humanity this is what you end up with, telling people that they can't hug family members in order to preserve their ability to have a socially distanced drink at Pitcher and Piano.

[7om]

Im probably going to end up waiting until my parents have been vaccinated, hopefully by the end of this month or early March. Drop another 28 days on top of that to give it time to work and I’m abandoning distancing. The vaccines work and I won’t be told otherwise by Boris.

[Mellberg]

Been really disciplined throughout, but the second my mom gets vaccinated I'll be doing what I like and avoiding old people.

[neo_hippy]

I can't be bothered to actually look at the numbers but if the vaccines keep 60-90% of people out of hospital with severe disease that's still 10-40% of people who could get it and overwhelm the NHS right?

I assume that's why come August we're still 1m apart? No?

[Queenslander]

The Australian Open will finish without fans due to a 5 day lockdown.

[Spikey M]

@Giggles will be delighted to hear that my wife's cunt cousin with cRiPpLiNg AnXiEtY has somehow conned her way into getting a vaccine today.

On the plus side this should free up some time from posting Mental Health memes all day. It's probably condemning someone actually at risk to death but hey ho.

[Queenslander]

I wonder if I can get it early down here for mental health reasons...

[niko_cee]

You lot aren't getting it at all, or at least not until everyone else on the planet has had 4 or 5 just to be sure it's safe, no?

[Queenslander]

Starts next month.

Hopefully I can just walk into the nearest pharmacy.


I know plenty of reasonable people who want to hold off not me Ill be getting it asap.


https://www.9news.com.au/national/au...0-0d7242d33acd

[Spikey M]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56030384

The UK's rules on quarantine hotels for travellers arriving from Covid "red list" countries are less stringent than those enforced in Australia.

The BBC has seen a copy of the UK government's official requirements for hotel operators ahead of the policy starting on Monday.

It spells out the rules for handling travellers for 11 nights of quarantine.

Australia's system, introduced early last year, is seen as a gold standard internationally.

for fuck sake

[Queenslander]

I was just reading that very article.

Cant compare the 2 surely?