#COVID19 | Page 401 | Vital Football

#COVID19

strettea red said:
m/world/2020/jul/14/action-to-stop-winter-covid-19-second-wave-in-uk-must-start-now

Stick to thinking the 1970s was the pinnacle of cuisine and trolling on other threads. Your nonsense here isn't helpful.
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That estimate is the worst case scenario, much like Ferguson's 500,000.
But you know that, don't you?[/QUOTE]

"Further modelling in the report shows less severe second waves might lead to 1,300 or 75,000 deaths between September 2020 and June 2021 if the R value rises to 1.1 or 1.5 respectively."
1.1 is very comfortably within the margin of error in the R estimates I put just above and it is going up rather than down as lockdown eases. Many of us haven't gone back to work yet but there is a clamour to fully open up because "the first wave is over, there's no evidence there will be a second one, only one death in xxx yesterday, etc, etc etc."

R isn't quite so important (just a warning alarm) when prevalence is very low. Unfortunately, the Covid symptom study data I gave you shows that there are probably 25000 cases of symptomatic covid spread liberally throughout the UK. That is a bomb that needs to be diffused very carefully.
 
Calvin Plummer said:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.09.20148429v1

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-19-could-be-lost-in-months-uk-study-suggests

Got a credible response? As I recall out of the 2 of us only one has posted unsubstantiated rumours...
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No need to be so touchy, it was a genuine request. God knows what you mean about my unsubstantiated rumours but I'm not sufficiently interested to bite.
I actually gave you the credit that you might be a poster who could provide a credible link, as you have done many times before. A credible link is something I hadn't yet seen, that I would have been grateful for. And you did provide one. As I suspected you could. So thanks for the link you have generously provided.

Back on track, I haven't had time to read them properly yet, of course, so I don't have much of a response, credible or otherwise. However, it does seem to be concerning. I'd like to see how the antibody response compares with other viruses. My limited understanding is that these viral antibody responses take a while to appear, then typically peak and die away (hence the need for boosters for some diseases) but that isn't always too bad of a problem because the body retains a memory for how to make them.
That makes sense because there is no point wasting the energy of producing masses of antibodies for something that isn't attacking you at that time. However, for a response to be undetectable so soon down the line is obviously a problem.
 
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80% of deaths were in over 80’s. Only 14% of those Over 80’s were in the community. The rest were in nursing homes. The nursing and residential homes that had the problems were those that relied heavily on agency staff, who are low paid and were going in to multiple homes. This is a solvable problem. Contracted staff.

Of the remaining 20% that died but lived in the community, 16% had health conditions, such as diabetes. That leaves 4% of people that were otherwise healthy.

This is not to belittle this virus which is very nasty but some level of perspective has to be given. If healthy, wash hands regularly, keep social distance and in crowded areas wear a mask and don’t breath.
 
strettea red said:
From your link... "Over the last week there is no evidence of any further change in the number of daily new infections"

Also..."Our real-time model has been further updated to allow higher susceptibility to infection in the over-75s. The modelling focusses on regional data and we no longer report an estimate of Rt for England.

Yet you are framing that it is rising without stating the above. I know you have an anti-government agenda, but framing facts to fit, is not that clever.
The partisan massaging of facts would be funny if it wasn't so serious.
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What am I cherry picking? If I am it is not intentional.
The first point you have made is irrelevant. The estimated R in London is higher right now than it has been. That's not controversial. If you want to talk about framing, then maybe you should extend the window beyond one week.

I can't see what you're trying to say with the second point. We were talking about London. Do clarify and then we can talk about it.


I don't always have an anti-government agenda but these are by far the worst in my living memory and I've given clear reasons why I think that is the case.
 
Polly 433 said:
80% of deaths were in over 80’s. Only 14% of those Over 80’s were in the community. The rest were in nursing homes. The nursing and residential homes that had the problems were those that relied heavily on agency staff, who are low paid and were going in to multiple homes. This is a solvable problem. Contracted staff.

Of the remaining 20% that died but lived in the community, 16% had health conditions, such as diabetes. That leaves 4% of people that were otherwise healthy.

This is not to belittle this virus which is very nasty but some level of perspective has to be given. If healthy, wash hands regularly, keep social distance and in crowded areas wear a mask and don’t breath.
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I generally agree with this.
I'd caveat it by saying we don't know how many have died in the community. Are you going on govt figures or excess deaths? Neither is a perfect measure.
Then we should also think about those with longer term effects. Quite a bit of emerging data on that which is quite worrying. It might not be as simple as getting over your flu-like symptoms and being restored to normal for many people.
It is also a bit dodgy to discount those with preexisting health conditions. That's a pretty big cohort.
 
in_the_top_one said:
No need to be so touchy, it was a genuine request. God knows what you mean about my unsubstantiated rumours but I'm not sufficiently interested to bite.
I actually gave you the credit that you might be a poster who could provide a credible link, something I hadn't yet seen, that I would have been grateful for. And you did. As I suspected you could. So thanks for the link you have generously provided.

Back on track, I haven't had time to read them properly yet, of course, so I don't have much of a response, credible or otherwise. However, it does seem to be concerning. I'd like to see how the antibody response compares with other viruses. My limited understanding is that these viral antibody responses take a while to appear, then typically peak and die away (hence the need for boosters for some diseases) but that isn't always too bad of a problem because the body retains a memory for how to make them.
That makes sense because there is no point wasting the energy of producing masses of antibodies for something that isn't attacking you at that time. However, for a response to be undetectable so soon down the line is obviously a problem.
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You are quite correct. The body rarely carries loads of antibodies for life. They do however keep a tracer. Thus if an infection invades the body it can reproduce antibodies. T cells play an important role in this. Many of us have very effective T cells in our lymph system thus many of us will not get a disease, be it the common cold or a virus like covid.

For The author in the guardian article to reference the common cold as an example is simplistic and lazy journalism. The common cold isn’t one illness circulating the planet. It is a range of viruses, which mutate several times, quite significantly each year. Thus our antibodies can’t keep up and our T cells have to develop new antibodies. Covid appears to be quite stable, only mutating slightly every 6 weeks or so. At present only three distinct strains have mutated. It also appears to not be quite so deadly as it was in March/April, although no science is prepared to say this at present.
 
Polly 433 said:
80% of deaths were in over 80’s. Only 14% of those Over 80’s were in the community. The rest were in nursing homes. The nursing and residential homes that had the problems were those that relied heavily on agency staff, who are low paid and were going in to multiple homes. This is a solvable problem. Contracted staff.

Of the remaining 20% that died but lived in the community, 16% had health conditions, such as diabetes. That leaves 4% of people that were otherwise healthy.

This is not to belittle this virus which is very nasty but some level of perspective has to be given. If healthy, wash hands regularly, keep social distance and in crowded areas wear a mask and don’t breath.
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I don't doubt that some homes have fared better than others and that is correlated with their use of agency staff.
However, it would have been better had a protective ring really been thrown around the homes since we always knew they housed the most vulnerable people in our community. Discharging untested hospital patients into care homes was a sickening mistake. As was their acute shortage of PPE. Contracted staff would not have solved either of those issues even if it would have reduced spread between homes.
 
in_the_top_one said:
What am I cherry picking? If I am it is not intentional.
The first point you have made is irrelevant. The estimated R in London is higher right now than it has been. That's not controversial. If you want to talk about framing, then maybe you should extend the window beyond one week.

I can't see what you're trying to say with the second point. We were talking about London. Do clarify and then we can talk about it.


I don't always have an anti-government agenda but these are by far the worst in my living memory and I've given clear reasons why I think that is the case.
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They are certainly the stupidest when it comes to clear messages. I'd go so far as to say it's a pig's breakfast of a mess.
 
Polly 433 said:
You are quite correct. The body rarely carries loads of antibodies for life. They do however keep a tracer. Thus if an infection invades the body it can reproduce antibodies. T cells play an important role in this. Many of us have very effective T cells in our lymph system thus many of us will not get a disease, be it the common cold or a virus like covid.

For The author in the guardian article to reference the common cold as an example is simplistic and lazy journalism. The common cold isn’t one illness circulating the planet. It is a range of viruses, which mutate several times, quite significantly each year. Thus our antibodies can’t keep up and our T cells have to develop new antibodies. Covid appears to be quite stable, only mutating slightly every 6 weeks or so. At present only three distinct strains have mutated. It also appears to not be quite so deadly as it was in March/April, although no science is prepared to say this at present.
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Yes.
The deadliness has gone down but that could be for a number of reasons unrelated to the virus itself.

I think it is the B-cells make the antibodies but the T-cells are involved.
T-cells also get it wrong sometimes. They are responsible for the cytokine storms that have killed a lot of people with covid.
 
Regarding masks. In isolation, a face mask of any quality standard might help. Beyond that, you touch your face after you have touched foods that probably have been handled by others that have touched surfaces, etc. It’s even suggested people touch their face more frequently when wearing one. The message about hand washing needs to be hammered home again.

It all just reeks of gesture governance, as without training, fitting, any sort of standard of mask to be worn as well as other mitigating advise ( I, along with many men** sport a beard, how’s the efficacy compromised, if at all?). This is all of limited value on its own, in my opinion.
I will of course wear one as I am a good citizen.

**Women can/do sport good beards too.
 
And it's also difficult not to think that, as has been suggested, there is a touch of the cui bono about the sudden mandating of masks.
 
strettea red said:
Regarding masks. In isolation, a face mask of any quality standard might help. Beyond that, you touch your face after you have touched foods that probably have been handled by others that have touched surfaces, etc. It’s even suggested people touch their face more frequently when wearing one. The message about hand washing needs to be hammered home again.

It all just reeks of gesture governance, as without training, fitting, any sort of standard of mask to be worn as well as other mitigating advise ( I, along with many men** sport a beard, how’s the efficacy compromised, if at all?). This is all of limited value on its own, in my opinion.
I will of course wear one as I am a good citizen.

**Women can/do sport good beards too.
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Glad to hear you will be wearing one.

It is not a panacea. It is only one tool in the box and if you have a mask that fits badly, or you sport a beard like ZZ Top, or even the fella in The Joy of Sex, then efficacy is likely to be reduced but it is still better than not wearing one at all because it slows down and redirects your spittle from the person you're gobbing over when you talk.

For a guy who often questions the evidence (that's not a criticism!), why aren't you weighing the evidence on masks? If you did, I don't think you would only be wearing one because you have been told to. It won't take long - you could start here: http://files.fast.ai/papers/masks_lit_review.pdf

But, yes, we must keep washing our hands, using sanitiser, and trying not to touch our faces when we go out.


Back to OKD's point earlier. I don't actually think there is an inconsistency in this particular government policy. I often see the argument "So why am I allowed to go to the pub without one but not the supermarket?" Well the answer is that you can't really go to the pub wearing one on account of all the drinking and eating. If that were possible then you would probably be required to mask up. For most people there isn't any mitigating circumstance for not wearing one in shops. I've been wearing one since the start.
We can argue about whether pubs should be open yet but it is quite clear that they are an important part of our society and very many would have gone out of business if not allowed to reopen. So we have to weigh the risks of covid with the societal damage of businesses going under. That's fine IMO. It is about reducing risk wherever reasonably possible.
 
in_the_top_one said:
Glad to hear you will be wearing one.

It is not a panacea. It is only one tool in the box and if you have a mask that fits badly, or you sport a beard like ZZ Top, or even the fella in The Joy of Sex, then efficacy is likely to be reduced but it is still better than not wearing one at all because it slows down and redirects your spittle from the person you're gobbing over when you talk.

For a guy who often questions the evidence (that's not a criticism!), why aren't you weighing the evidence on masks? If you did, I don't think you would only be wearing one because you have been told to. It won't take long - you could start here: http://files.fast.ai/papers/masks_lit_review.pdf

But, yes, we must keep washing our hands, using sanitiser, and trying not to touch our faces when we go out.


Back to OKD's point earlier. I don't actually think there is an inconsistency in this particular government policy. I often see the argument "So why am I allowed to go to the pub without one but not the supermarket?" Well the answer is that you can't really go to the pub wearing one on account of all the drinking and eating. If that were possible then you would probably be required to mask up. For most people there isn't any mitigating circumstance for not wearing one in shops. I've been wearing one since the start.
We can argue about whether pubs should be open yet but it is quite clear that they are an important part of our society and very many would have gone out of business if not allowed to reopen. So we have to weigh the risks of covid with the societal damage of businesses going under. That's fine IMO. It is about reducing risk wherever reasonably possible.
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Thanks for the link. I will read later as my company's protocols don't allow me to at work.
The anti-maskers seem to be split between the anti-vax type of wanksockery argument, to a principled one of liberty!
I have not seen one credible argument against wearing one now; they all seem founded in bad science and batshit fuckwittery.
I do remember the anti-condom cocksockets when HIV was doing it's thing, the argument against was along the lines of the perforations in the condom would let the virus through. [hits face with palm smiley] I personally used the abstention method back then, not by choice though.

I will be wearing one, I've got a few tailored triple ply ones arriving today actually (masks not condoms)
 
I don't think there is principled case at all. People with principles should understand that we have rules and guidelines in place to protect society. You can have as many pints as you want but not if you are planning to drive home.
It is not acceptable to go for a drive to see if you're ok to go for a drive after drinking a few pints. It's the same if your eyes are a bit squiffy. It isn't an infringement of your civil liberties, it's to protect everyone else's.

You don't have to wear a mask unless you want to travel on public transport or go into a shop where could potentially be a danger to others. If you want to enjoy your facial liberty (is that even a thing?) you are welcome to roam freely in the countryside with your lips flapping in the breeze.
 
Y
in_the_top_one said:
I don't doubt that some homes have fared better than others and that is correlated with their use of agency staff.
However, it would have been better had a protective ring really been thrown around the homes since we always knew they housed the most vulnerable people in our community. Discharging untested hospital patients into care homes was a sickening mistake. As was their acute shortage of PPE. Contracted staff would not have solved either of those issues even if it would have reduced spread between homes.
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Y mention the three main issues around care homes and Covid.

Hospital patients discharged to homes without tests. In late feb and March when this was an issue, major problems with tests existed. The turn round was slow, the number of labs able to test was small and the reliability of the tests were poor. We have come a long way since then and this problem shouldn’t be repeated in waves 2 and 3 if they happen. As a matter of interest data from ONS shows fewer people were discharged from hospital to care homes than in corresponding period in past years. The argument that vast numbers were shipped out of NHS beds to private homes is untrue.

PPE was run down to low levels with little in stock and slow supply chains. As these were ramped up, the quality of some supplies were sub standard. PPE is only helpful if Covid is already in the home. If we can stop covid entering the home PPE is not required be it a useful psychological reminder. This again has been identified as a problem and overcome with supply chains improved, quality control improved and makers with in the U.K. identified. This should not be an issue in future.

The third route of infection was staff introducing covid from the community and other homes. This has not been tackled but is not beyond the wit of human kind. Filling staffing vacancies with agency staff should be stopped. All staff should work in one home only and sickness covered so staff do not continue to work with symptoms because of financial requirements. This issue needs attention now before Winter pressures. I know a review of health and social care, across parties are due but that will take months/years. This needs action now.
 
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