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Post by zahidf on Dec 22, 2021 12:27:03 GMT
Young, healthy, vaccinated people cannot be expected to lock down when their risk of being hospitalised is unbelievably low. It's completely disproportionate. It's an emergency response and shouldn't be treated as an acceptable way of managing the pandemic going forward. Yup i agree. Well put! |
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Post by zahidf on Dec 22, 2021 12:29:33 GMT
An interesting and thoughtful thread. Worth a read
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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2021 13:16:54 GMT
Young, healthy, vaccinated people cannot be expected to lock down when their risk of being hospitalised is unbelievably low. The key word there is "unbelievably". People don't believe there's a risk because they don't understand the risk. They are wrong.
It's true that the risk is low at the moment but that's only the case because a comparatively small proportion of the population is infected. Most people you meet will be clear, and you obviously have zero risk of catching a disease from someone who doesn't have it. But if we don't have restrictions soon then the disease will spread until it reaches almost everyone, and that changes everything.
Consider a disease like the common cold. Back when I was commuting to an office I'd catch around five colds a year. This coronavirus is more catchable than the common cold so it's reasonable to say that if Covid-19 had a similar reach to the common cold then a conservative estimate of the number of times you'd get Covid-19 each year would be five or so. Now, I grant you that your chances of dying with any one of those infections is low — recent UK figures suggest that for a fully vaccinated person it's around 1 in 500 — so you'd almost certainly shake it off, but every time you catch it you get to roll the dice again. Most people don't get this: they see the low probability of dying and think of it in lifetime terms, so 1 in 500 people will die but everyone else is in the clear. That's not how probability works: every time you're exposed you have a chance to catch it, and every time you catch it you have a chance to die. And when you're exposed to it more often than you're exposed to the common cold those chances stack up pretty fast.
If you catch it five times a year and have a 1 in 500 chance of dying each time then each year there's a chance of slightly under 1 in 100 of you dying. In a decade that becomes 1 in 10.5 (9.5%). That's not unbelievably low. I suspect many people who can't do the maths will say that's unbelievably high, but the probabilities say otherwise.
That's why we need restrictions.
(And yes, zahidf, I've seen those tweets and I think it's unjustifiably optimistic to talk of people catching it once a year. There are already many instances of people catching it multiple times and in some cases dying from a reinfection, and that's with the less transmissible variants and with restrictions in place. With no restrictions, full penetration of the population and higher transmission rates a claim of "once per year" is not supported by the data.)
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Post by zahidf on Dec 22, 2021 14:04:23 GMT
Young, healthy, vaccinated people cannot be expected to lock down when their risk of being hospitalised is unbelievably low. The key word there is "unbelievably". People don't believe there's a risk because they don't understand the risk. They are wrong.
It's true that the risk is low at the moment but that's only the case because a comparatively small proportion of the population is infected. Most people you meet will be clear, and you obviously have zero risk of catching a disease from someone who doesn't have it. But if we don't have restrictions soon then the disease will spread until it reaches almost everyone, and that changes everything.
Consider a disease like the common cold. Back when I was commuting to an office I'd catch around five colds a year. This coronavirus is more catchable than the common cold so it's reasonable to say that if Covid-19 had a similar reach to the common cold then a conservative estimate of the number of times you'd get Covid-19 each year would be five or so. Now, I grant you that your chances of dying with any one of those infections is low — recent UK figures suggest that for a fully vaccinated person it's around 1 in 500 — so you'd almost certainly shake it off, but every time you catch it you get to roll the dice again. Most people don't get this: they see the low probability of dying and think of it in lifetime terms, so 1 in 500 people will die but everyone else is in the clear. That's not how probability works: every time you're exposed you have a chance to catch it, and every time you catch it you have a chance to die. And when you're exposed to it more often than you're exposed to the common cold those chances stack up pretty fast.
If you catch it five times a year and have a 1 in 500 chance of dying each time then each year there's a chance of slightly under 1 in 100 of you dying. In a decade that becomes 1 in 10.5 (9.5%). That's not unbelievably low. I suspect many people who can't do the maths will say that's unbelievably high, but the probabilities say otherwise.
That's why we need restrictions.
(And yes, zahidf, I've seen those tweets and I think it's unjustifiably optimistic to talk of people catching it once a year. There are already many instances of people catching it multiple times and in some cases dying from a reinfection, and that's with the less transmissible variants and with restrictions in place. With no restrictions, full penetration of the population and higher transmission rates a claim of "once per year" is not supported by the data.)
Is there any evidence that your more likely to die from it a second time compared to the first time? because the evidence being shown is that secondary infections are milder, because your body knows what to do to combat it. ( T cells). Especially if you have your jabs. So its not a case that the odds of dying from it are the same every time you catch it, you would have less and less of a chance of severe illness every infection. And antibodies from previous infections last for a few months, so you would be very unlikely to get it anything like 5 times in a year. Im not sure you can extrapolate your chances of catching a cold with catching Covid, especially as there isn't a vaccine against the Cold. Even in high prevalence countries without restrictions ( like Florida) no one has caught it more than twice a year Anyway, young people statistically have a very low chance of getting Covid. Thats been a constant throughout. Young people are aware of this |
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Post by zahidf on Dec 22, 2021 14:06:05 GMT
Tony Blair, the former Labour prime minister, has said that not introducing new Covid restrictions in England before Christmas is a “gamble”. But, in an interview with Times Radio, he implied it was a gamble that was justified, because he said the only intervention that would really work against Omicron was a full lockdown, and he said the public would not tolerate that.
Asked if he would be introducing new rules before Christmas, he replied:
"No, but I think we’ve got to be very frank with people as to why not and I don’t think it’s really that there’s some great piece of data we’re waiting on.
It’s really because the pain of going into a full lockdown, and with this variant that’s the only thing that would really work ...
It is a gamble what the government’s doing, because if you look at this in purely public health terms - and I’ve spoken to many public health professionals in the last days - they’re pretty much of one view. If you were taking a purely precautionary view of this, you would impose further restrictions, probably quite draconian restrictions.
But I think a) the public’s just been through too much, and b), you’ve got too many different categories of people for the blunt instrument of a lockdown really to work in the way that you want."
Asked if he thought that meant a full lockdown would be impossible in the future too, he replied:
"I just think it’s incredibly difficult because of the massive collateral damage you’re going to do."
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 22, 2021 14:36:32 GMT
The key word there is "unbelievably". People don't believe there's a risk because they don't understand the risk. They are wrong.
It's true that the risk is low at the moment but that's only the case because a comparatively small proportion of the population is infected. Most people you meet will be clear, and you obviously have zero risk of catching a disease from someone who doesn't have it. But if we don't have restrictions soon then the disease will spread until it reaches almost everyone, and that changes everything.
Consider a disease like the common cold. Back when I was commuting to an office I'd catch around five colds a year. This coronavirus is more catchable than the common cold so it's reasonable to say that if Covid-19 had a similar reach to the common cold then a conservative estimate of the number of times you'd get Covid-19 each year would be five or so. Now, I grant you that your chances of dying with any one of those infections is low — recent UK figures suggest that for a fully vaccinated person it's around 1 in 500 — so you'd almost certainly shake it off, but every time you catch it you get to roll the dice again. Most people don't get this: they see the low probability of dying and think of it in lifetime terms, so 1 in 500 people will die but everyone else is in the clear. That's not how probability works: every time you're exposed you have a chance to catch it, and every time you catch it you have a chance to die. And when you're exposed to it more often than you're exposed to the common cold those chances stack up pretty fast.
If you catch it five times a year and have a 1 in 500 chance of dying each time then each year there's a chance of slightly under 1 in 100 of you dying. In a decade that becomes 1 in 10.5 (9.5%). That's not unbelievably low. I suspect many people who can't do the maths will say that's unbelievably high, but the probabilities say otherwise.
That's why we need restrictions.
(And yes, zahidf, I've seen those tweets and I think it's unjustifiably optimistic to talk of people catching it once a year. There are already many instances of people catching it multiple times and in some cases dying from a reinfection, and that's with the less transmissible variants and with restrictions in place. With no restrictions, full penetration of the population and higher transmission rates a claim of "once per year" is not supported by the data.)
Is there any evidence that your more likely to die from it a second time compared to the first time? because the evidence being shown is that secondary infections are milder, because your body knows what to do to combat it. ( T cells). Especially if you have your jabs. So its not a case that the odds of dying from it are the same every time you catch it, you would have less and less of a chance of severe illness every infection. And antibodies from previous infections last for a few months, so you would be very unlikely to get it anything like 5 times in a year. Im not sure you can extrapolate your chances of catching a cold with catching Covid, especially as there isn't a vaccine against the Cold. Even in high prevalence countries without restrictions ( like Florida) no one has caught it more than twice a year Anyway, young people statistically have a very low chance of getting Covid. Thats been a constant throughout. Young people are aware of this Again Zahidf, this is false. I'd really encourage you to read up a little more on epidemiology before presenting poorly thought out statements as fact. With the current dominant variant, (key word being current) it looks to be the case that there is decreased ability to cause severe disease, driven by a number of factors, pathogenicity of the variant, levels of population immunity etc, to which the current weighting of each component is unknown. Mutations giving rise to future dominant variants will not necessarily follow this pattern, we don't know how effectively anitbodies work against future variants until we start to see them (you can model this to a certain extent based on looking at similar viruses and historic trends but it's still not perfect). We've already seen huge increases in re-infection in countries like Denmark and that's even in people that have had a relatively recent infection. There is no vaccine against the common cold, that's because the common cold covers a wide range of different virus types;rhinovirus, coronarvirus among others, so it's therefore more complex to do so. The 'common cold' is a term for a group of ilnesses that present with similar symptoms that are actually. genetically very different from eachother. SARS CoV-2 is a species level term, referring to a number of viruses that are genetically similar. Aside from this, there's actualy little need to as you don't see hospitalistion and mortality rates from the common cold anywhere near that of COVID. It's a incredible oversight to compare the common cold to a disease that has killed 147k+ people in the UK over the past 2 years Your last statement here is also wildly incorrect " young people statistically have a very low chance of getting Covid.". Young peaople have a reduced chance of severe disease, this is completely different to catching the virus in the first place. Please think before posting mis-information that others may construe as fact |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2021 14:37:02 GMT
Is there any evidence that your more likely to die from it a second time compared to the first time? because the evidence being shown is that secondary infections are milder, because your body knows what to do to combat it. ( T cells). Especially if you have your jabs. So its not a case that the odds of dying from it are the same every time you catch it, you would have less and less of a chance of severe illness every infection. I think there's evidence both ways. It's certainly true that catching it and surviving acts as a weak vaccine for the unvaccinated and as a booster for the vaccinated, but there's also the factor that if you have residual damage from a first infection it can make you less able to survive a second. I know there have been several cases in the US where people have survived their first bout of Covid-19 with little trouble, cockily gone round telling everyone that it's all a big fuss over nothing, and then they died from the second. (Mind you, those were mainly anti-vaxxers, so it may be that they'd have survived the second time too had they had the added support of the vaccine instead of relying on the partial immunity from the first infection alone.) |
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Post by zahidf on Dec 22, 2021 14:44:51 GMT
Is there any evidence that your more likely to die from it a second time compared to the first time? because the evidence being shown is that secondary infections are milder, because your body knows what to do to combat it. ( T cells). Especially if you have your jabs. So its not a case that the odds of dying from it are the same every time you catch it, you would have less and less of a chance of severe illness every infection. I think there's evidence both ways. It's certainly true that catching it and surviving acts as a weak vaccine for the unvaccinated and as a booster for the vaccinated, but there's also the factor that if you have residual damage from a first infection it can make you less able to survive a second. I know there have been several cases in the US where people have survived their first bout of Covid-19 with little trouble, cockily gone round telling everyone that it's all a big fuss over nothing, and then they died from the second. (Mind you, those were mainly anti-vaxxers, so it may be that they'd have survived the second time too had they had the added support of the vaccine instead of relying on the partial immunity from the first infection alone.) Oh yeah, ive seen those stories,but that's mainly anti-vaxxers egged on by Joe Rogan and Fox news saying one infection protects you for life ( which is NOT what im saying). If you've had your vax jabs, and a previous infection, that should provide a lot of protection against a second infection being serious. Obviously there may be some bad outcomes for a few people, but i dont think thats something public health can proportionately allow for unfortunately. |
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Post by zahidf on Dec 22, 2021 14:46:44 GMT
Is there any evidence that your more likely to die from it a second time compared to the first time? because the evidence being shown is that secondary infections are milder, because your body knows what to do to combat it. ( T cells). Especially if you have your jabs. So its not a case that the odds of dying from it are the same every time you catch it, you would have less and less of a chance of severe illness every infection. And antibodies from previous infections last for a few months, so you would be very unlikely to get it anything like 5 times in a year. Im not sure you can extrapolate your chances of catching a cold with catching Covid, especially as there isn't a vaccine against the Cold. Even in high prevalence countries without restrictions ( like Florida) no one has caught it more than twice a year Anyway, young people statistically have a very low chance of getting Covid. Thats been a constant throughout. Young people are aware of this Again Zahidf, this is false. I'd really encourage you to read up a little more on epidemiology before presenting poorly thought out statements as fact. With the current dominant variant, (key word being current) it looks to be the case that there is decreased ability to cause severe disease, driven by a number of factors, pathogenicity of the variant, levels of population immunity etc, to which the current weighting of each component is unknown. Mutations giving rise to future dominant variants will not necessarily follow this pattern, we don't know how effectively anitbodies work against future variants until we start to see them (you can model this to a certain extent based on looking at similar viruses and historic trends but it's still not perfect). We've already seen huge increases in re-infection in countries like Denmark and that's even in people that have had a relatively recent infection. There is no vaccine against the common cold, that's because the common cold covers a wide range of different virus types;rhinovirus, coronarvirus among others, so it's therefore more complex to do so. The 'common cold' is a term for a group of ilnesses that present with similar symptoms that are actually. genetically very different from eachother. SARS CoV-2 is a species level term, referring to a number of viruses that are genetically similar. Aside from this, there's actualy little need to as you don't see hospitalistion and mortality rates from the common cold anywhere near that of COVID. It's a incredible oversight to compare the common cold to a disease that has killed 147k+ people in the UK over the past 2 years Your last statement here is also wildly incorrect " young people statistically have a very low chance of getting Covid.". Young peaople have a reduced chance of severe disease, this is completely different to catching the virus in the first place. Please think before posting mis-information that others may construe as fact I wasnt the one comparing it to the cold. i was using the example someone else made Ill amend that young people statistically have a very low chance of getting a serious infection which would require hospitalisation. |
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Post by sfsusan on Dec 22, 2021 15:15:42 GMT
Young, healthy, vaccinated people cannot be expected to lock down when their risk of being hospitalised is unbelievably low. If this weren't a communicable disease, I might agree with you. But young people (even those who don't have 'a serious infection') can transmit a potentially fatal infection to granny, or their co-worker with a compromised immune system, or their neighbor's unvaccinated child. So someone's 'freedom' to not to be locked down temporarily (or to ignore precautions if not locked down) at best takes away the freedom of others by forcing them into self-isolation, and at worst, their lives. |
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Post by zahidf on Dec 22, 2021 15:27:36 GMT
Young, healthy, vaccinated people cannot be expected to lock down when their risk of being hospitalised is unbelievably low. If this weren't a communicable disease, I might agree with you. But young people (even those who don't have 'a serious infection') can transmit a potentially fatal infection to granny, or their co-worker with a compromised immune system, or their neighbor's unvaccinated child. So someone's 'freedom' to not to be locked down temporarily (or to ignore precautions if not locked down) at best takes away the freedom of others by forcing them into self-isolation, and at worst, their lives. Its not really been just 'temporary' has it? theyve done it for the last 18 months or so, and i think its a bit much to ask for them to do so on an indefinite basis when there are so many vaccinated and protected people. |
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 22, 2021 16:21:48 GMT
If this weren't a communicable disease, I might agree with you. But young people (even those who don't have 'a serious infection') can transmit a potentially fatal infection to granny, or their co-worker with a compromised immune system, or their neighbor's unvaccinated child. So someone's 'freedom' to not to be locked down temporarily (or to ignore precautions if not locked down) at best takes away the freedom of others by forcing them into self-isolation, and at worst, their lives. Its not really been just 'temporary' has it? theyve done it for the last 18 months or so, and i think its a bit much to ask for them to do so on an indefinite basis when there are so many vaccinated and protected people. What would your realistic short term solution be? Yes this is far from ideal but I'm yet to see anyone with this viewpoint provide a legitimate solution that allows the NHS to continue to provide essential care I think everyone dislikes the way things currently are but let's realistic, allowing the NHS to become flooded and people to die needlessly (that includes young people with issues unrelated to covid, and who would be unable to access care) is not a viable option |
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Post by zahidf on Dec 22, 2021 16:52:39 GMT
Well here we are. Edinbrugh study saying Idmiston causes 2/3rd less hospital admissions
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 22, 2021 17:03:23 GMT
Well here we are. Edinbrugh study saying Idmiston causes 2/3rd less hospital admissions Again, as we've said several times when you've posted these links there is little in the way of evidence to suggest whether the variant causes less severe disease or whether this is caused by existing immunity in the study population. Aside from this, the increased virulence and allowing uncontrolled infection growth very quickly cancels out any reduction in severity |
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Post by zahidf on Dec 22, 2021 17:36:56 GMT
Well here we are. Edinbrugh study saying Idmiston causes 2/3rd less hospital admissions Again, as we've said several times when you've posted these links there is little in the way of evidence to suggest whether the variant causes less severe disease or whether this is caused by existing immunity in the study population. Aside from this, the increased virulence and allowing uncontrolled infection growth very quickly cancels out any reduction in severity Well does it matter since it allows for vax status of the population ( hence immunity of the pop)? Look at the second paragraph. I know it spreads more, but these multiple studies make it clear that its going to be milder. You can argue by what degree I guess. But I guess it's better you're not just accusing it of being misinformation |
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Post by Latecomer on Dec 22, 2021 17:40:51 GMT
Couldn’t have put it better than Dan 213 …..2/3 reduction is good….but if it’s 2/3 reduction of a HUGE number then it will still be overwhelming. That’s why we have to try and keep cases as low as possible…so that it doesn’t get to the vulnerable and unvaccinated. And don’t tell me they can just not take part in society. We all know it doesn’t work like that. And don’t tell me “it’s their own fault for not getting vaccinated” I don’t care…I’d quite like there to be a free bed if I become ill, and I would also quite like the NHS staff not to be completely overwhelmed.
And when the latest wave is over I would like the government to sit down and make a plan for the NHS to increase capacity in a sensible way. Extra beds with no staff doesn’t work.
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Post by sfsusan on Dec 22, 2021 18:19:44 GMT
Its not really been just 'temporary' has it? theyve done it for the last 18 months or so Compared to death, 18 months is temporary. |
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Post by sfsusan on Dec 22, 2021 18:21:37 GMT
I know it spreads more, but these multiple studies make it clear that its going to be milder. But more cases means more petri dishes for the next variant to develop. Nothing says that variation will be milder. |
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Post by Mark on Dec 22, 2021 23:49:09 GMT
The news tonight is looking positive though. I believe we may escape some of the more severe restrictions seen in Scotland and Wales.
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Post by talkingheads on Dec 23, 2021 7:28:15 GMT
The news tonight is looking positive though. I believe we may escape some of the more severe restrictions seen in Scotland and Wales. We had over 100,000 cases yesterday. That's absolutely mental. The Government cannot stay silent after that surely? |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 23, 2021 8:30:08 GMT
The Government cannot stay silent after that surely? Distraction story in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... |
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Post by zahidf on Dec 23, 2021 8:41:39 GMT
The news tonight is looking positive though. I believe we may escape some of the more severe restrictions seen in Scotland and Wales. We had over 100,000 cases yesterday. That's absolutely mental. The Government cannot stay silent after that surely? They said in September that they were comfortable with 200k cases a day because of vaccinations reducing the link massively between cases and hospitalisations. Since we got 100k cases a day 4 months later than a lot of scientists had modelled, i doubt they are that concerned by a number like that |
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Post by zahidf on Dec 23, 2021 8:42:45 GMT
The news tonight is looking positive though. I believe we may escape some of the more severe restrictions seen in Scotland and Wales. Fingers crossed! seems unlikely anything straight after Xmas. In the new year is possible, but by then i think cases will be on a downturn anyway |
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Post by zahidf on Dec 23, 2021 9:06:38 GMT
Seems clear where the mood is on further restrictions
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Post by Mark on Dec 23, 2021 9:26:00 GMT
Seems clear where the mood is on further restrictions In the gutter, basically. |
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