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Post by Dan213 on Dec 23, 2021 9:37:38 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     This is totally wishful thinking. None of the models currently out there suggest a downturn in cases immediately after new year. Many in fact show the opposite with increased transmission again due to schools returning. Can you elaborate a little more as to what data makes you think this when the models are showing something entirely different |
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Post by zahidf on Dec 23, 2021 9:41:00 GMT
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 This is totally wishful thinking. None of the models currently out there suggest a downturn in cases immediately after new year. Many in fact show the opposite with increased transmission again due to schools returning. Can you elaborate a little more as to what data makes you think this when the models are showing something entirely different By Jan 3rd? schools dont go back until later dont they, so the lack of school mixing and people not being at work, plus more boosters working. Itll be like it was in the autumn again, ups and downs but relatively stable. |
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Post by theglenbucklaird on Dec 23, 2021 9:41:10 GMT
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 ** Applauds the more cautious language being used today ** One proviso, to your last comment. It is an ever changing situation. The comments four months ago would have been in relation to Delta variant which seems to show a little difference to Omicron which changes modelling. |
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Post by zahidf on Dec 23, 2021 9:54:09 GMT
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 ** Applauds the more cautious language being used today ** One proviso, to your last comment. It is an ever changing situation. The comments four months ago would have been in relation to Delta variant which seems to show a little difference to Omicron which changes modelling. Oh, fair enough, but in political terms, the government have made it very clear they only care about hospitalisations and deaths, and case numbers are a lower factor in their consideration. |
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Post by theatreian on Dec 23, 2021 9:56:40 GMT
A couple of articles from the bbc this morning.
Analysis: Basic maths means Omicron is a danger
James Gallagher
Health and science correspondent, BBC News
Omicron seems milder than Delta, so can we all relax?
Itâs clearly good news if you test positive - but itâs also important to remember some basic maths.
The pressure on hospitals will be a combination of the severity of the variant and the number of people infected.
If Omicron is half as severe, but we have twice the number of cases - then youâre back where you started.
And there is a lot of Covid around at the moment. Daily cases peaked at 68,000 last winter - and weâve already topped 106,000 now.
There are also concerns that the benefit of Omicron being milder is eroded by more people being susceptible as the variant bypasses some immunity.
Then there is the pressure on hospitals if large numbers of staff have to isolate.
So while the severity data is welcome news, ministers will also have to closely monitor the trends in the number of cases.
Suggestions of milder illness from Omicron âgood newsâ â but concerns remain
As weâve been hearing, early studies have suggested the Omicron variant may cause milder illness than the Delta variant.
Analysis by researchers at Imperial College London found around a 40% reduction in the risk of being admitted to hospital for a night or more compared with Delta.
Prof Azra Ghani, chairwoman in infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial, says this is âcertainly good newsâ - but must be balanced with the very large number of infections.
She tells BBC Radio 4âs Today programme it is important to bear in mind that many people already have immunity from vaccination or previous infection, which could account for the seemingly milder effects.
And she adds that so far Omicron has been circulating mainly in a younger population - but over Christmas there will be more intergenerational mixing, which could cause the variant to spread to more vulnerable groups.
It's not as straightforward as some would argue. Be careful everyone and try and be safe.
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Post by crowblack on Dec 23, 2021 9:57:07 GMT
In the gutter, basically. Mixed feelings on this. I don't have kids and have a house with a garden. Lockdown has been relatively OK for me and for friends who can work from home or whose work is outdoors. It must be absolutely grim for those who aren't, and as recent cases have shown appalling and even fatal for those stuck in households where abuse is going on. |
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 23, 2021 10:01:26 GMT
** Applauds the more cautious language being used today ** One proviso, to your last comment. It is an ever changing situation. The comments four months ago would have been in relation to Delta variant which seems to show a little difference to Omicron which changes modelling. Oh, fair enough, but in political terms, the government have made it very clear they only care about hospitalisations and deaths, and case numbers are a lower factor in their consideration. This is correct, however case numbers also give you effectively a 1-2 week foresight into what hospitalisations will look like. This is why they're super important What's also important, and whilst this is a totally different issue, is the next variant of concern that comes about as a result of allowing uncontrolled transmission throughout a population. This is a really difficult one to balance though On the post above about schools, they go back first week of Jan. I think we're very likely to see a significant peak around a week or so after Christmas due to increased mixing. This has the potential for greater hospitalisation rates due to increased mixing with elderly relatives. After this, with schools returning again we're probably going to see a further, if not sustained peak in the first half of January |
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Post by Mark on Dec 23, 2021 10:15:07 GMT
In the gutter, basically. Mixed feelings on this. I don't have kids and have a house with a garden. Lockdown has been relatively OK for me and for friends who can work from home or whose work is outdoors. It must be absolutely grim for those who aren't, and as recent cases have shown appalling and even fatal for those stuck in households where abuse is going on. I guess it really does depend on everyones own scenarios. First lockdown, there was four of us in a tiny two bed flat (my parents had just sold their house and we had taken a temporary rental). My sister had to sleep in the living room - No garden or outdoor space. No Wifi for the first 6 weeks. It was horrific. Both my mum and I work for an airline which had a major restructure and jobs threatened throughout all of that. |
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Post by sfsusan on Dec 23, 2021 11:05:01 GMT
Staff shortages are already impacting health care. I had minor in-office surgery yesterday (in London) and the doctor was telling me the hospital where he also practices has had to cancel elective procedures due to staff shortages from COVID.
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Post by londonpostie on Dec 23, 2021 11:11:18 GMT
Then he misspoke: Staff shortages due to Covid testing/isolation ... and seasonal flu. You can hear it on every tube and bus, atm.
A bit like the theatre industry.
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Post by londonpostie on Dec 23, 2021 11:16:37 GMT
Oh, fair enough, but in political terms, the government have made it very clear they only care about hospitalisations and deaths, and case numbers are a lower factor in their consideration. This is correct, however case numbers also give you effectively a 1-2 week foresight into what hospitalisations will look like. This is why they're super important Who knew. |
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 23, 2021 11:38:20 GMT
Then he misspoke: Staff shortages due to Covid testing/isolation ... and seasonal flu. You can hear it on every tube and bus, atm.
A bit like the theatre industry.
Primarily due to COVID... Honestly it baffles me how you think you know more than the doctor working in the hospital. Your profile name would suggest you have 0 insight into what's going on in that particular NHS trust at the moment... |
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Post by zahidf on Dec 23, 2021 12:06:17 GMT
Well
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Post by londonpostie on Dec 23, 2021 12:10:33 GMT
"Honestly it baffles me how you think you know more than the doctor working in the hospital. Your profile name would suggest you have 0 insight into what's going on in that particular NHS trust at the moment..."
Tell us more about the delay between infections and hospitalisations, like it's March 2020 again. And fwiw, imo, you have not said one thing on here that isn't hyperbole, dated or naive. |
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 23, 2021 12:19:42 GMT
"Honestly it baffles me how you think you know more than the doctor working in the hospital. Your profile name would suggest you have 0 insight into what's going on in that particular NHS trust at the moment..."
Tell us more about the delay between infections and hospitalisations, like it's March 2020 again. And fwiw, imo, you have not said one thing on here that isn't hyperbole, dated or naive. Everything that I have posted on here is from recent research papers published by highly respected scientists across the the globe. I've read through these papers first hand as opposed to taking what the media has cherry picked from them, to try and help people here cut through the noise at the moment I'm yet to see a single post on here from yourself backed up by up-to-date reputable research At the end of the day we all have a responsibility to share factually accurate information instead of rumours and cherry picked data. Ensuring people are presented the facts is what allows them to make their own, fully informed decisions about actions that they take. Posting cherry picked data gives people a sense of false security, which doesn't do any of us any good |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 23, 2021 12:31:26 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 â recent UK figures suggest that for a fully vaccinated person it's around 1 in 500 â 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.)
The worry is also that some people will get long covid and the more times someone gets it could cause other health issues and thus potentially shorten lifespans or people's ability to work. The idea would be long term to get it to something like the level of flu whereby certain people are vaccinated. They have done the flu vaccine for years and now have done Covid roll outs so if they have to be done once a year and maybe boosters for at risk people this is what we'd be looking at as a good medium term outlook. |
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Post by londonpostie on Dec 23, 2021 12:37:21 GMT
Until this point the mainstream/social media narrative - disinformation - was entirely acceptanced here. The FT , The Guardian, Twitter: the Gov are clueless, we need lockdown, we need furlough, Johnson is going to kill thousands.
I hate these threads but felt it would be helpful to point out the scale of disinformation. I would just encourage folks to join up the politics and media orientations with the data. I'll wander away again now. Merry Christmas  |
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Post by zahidf on Dec 23, 2021 12:39:15 GMT
Restrictions may be a negative when you're trying to do a booster programme...
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Post by Deleted on Dec 23, 2021 12:47:30 GMT
The view I'm taking from what I've heard from respected viewpoints is that Omnicron may be more transmissable but is less severe than previous strains so this could effectively counter balance each other with regards to hospital numbers. Hopefully with it being less severe and with people hugely more vaccinated than last winter this should work in our favour.
They talked about 100k plus cases when we reopened up but that was mid summer, we are now mid winter and more pressure on NHS so higher case numbers now are much more serious.
The 100k daily cases is a big rise but the figures are going up by less percentages daily than even a week ago and tests are up over 20% too.
I see that the Gov have said no figues will be released for Xmas and Boxing Day so they will know them and have them up their sleeve if anything needs to be announced on 27th/28th Dec as regards a short sharp lockdown or further restrictions.
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 23, 2021 12:48:40 GMT
Until this point the mainstream/social media narrative - disinformation - was entirely acceptanced here. The FT , The Guardian, Twitter: the Gov are clueless, we need lockdown, we need furlough, Johnson is going to kill thousands.
I hate these threads but felt it would be helpful to point out the scale of disinformation. I would just encourage folks to join up the politics and media orientations with the data. I'll wander away again now. Merry Chrismas This is because, as has been stated many times on this thread and by pretty much all top epidemiologists that if you have a reduction is severity combined with an increase in cases by the same proportion it effectively cancels out the reduction in pressure on the NHS Cherry picking information, as you have done here is as damaging as completely falsifying information. When looking at the science, you must do this within the wider context. Until you do this, there is no way you can claim you are trying to prevent disinformation, when you are only fuelling it further |
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Post by londonpostie on Dec 23, 2021 12:51:14 GMT
I know, cherry picking a world-leading specialist over the Science Editor of The Guardian/FT comment/Twitter opinions.
I'm gone: bye!
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Post by zahidf on Dec 23, 2021 17:01:42 GMT
So... according to SAGE(paragraph 19) restrictions would reduce hospitlisations by 10%....
Doesn't seem worth it to me
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 23, 2021 17:05:21 GMT
So... according to SAGE(paragraph 19) restrictions would reduce hospitlisations by 10%.... Doesn't seem worth it to me 10% is pretty significant if you're within a few percentage points of maximum capacity... I'm unsure how you can decide of something's worth it or not based on solely a percentage. It's about this relative to the remaining capacity. Whilst not required at this very second, it's incredibly useful to know the kind of impact certain levels of restrictions would have if you need to pull that lever. It's far from 'not worth it' if we start to see capacity pushed further |
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Post by zahidf on Dec 23, 2021 17:19:38 GMT
So... according to SAGE(paragraph 19) restrictions would reduce hospitlisations by 10%.... Doesn't seem worth it to me 10% is pretty significant if you're within a few percentage points of maximum capacity... I'm unsure how you can decide of something's worth it or not based on solely a percentage. It's about this relative to the remaining capacity Because if its just to prevent a few 1000 hospitalisations and even fewer deaths, then isn't worth discussing instead of running towards restrictions? Oh, and that report politico mentioned is out. Turns out they werent lying about severity. |
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 23, 2021 17:30:31 GMT
10% is pretty significant if you're within a few percentage points of maximum capacity... I'm unsure how you can decide of something's worth it or not based on solely a percentage. It's about this relative to the remaining capacity Because if its just to prevent a few 1000 hospitalisations and even fewer deaths, then isn't worth discussing instead of running towards restrictions? Oh, and that report politico mentioned is out. Turns out they werent lying about severity. When you begin to reach or exceed capacity in hospitals though, the issue then becomes not just about those being hospitalised with COVID, but those requiring urgent treatment for other unrelated conditions. A few 1000 hospitalisations does make the difference here. I'd like to pose this question. If we reach capacity, how do you suggest going about prioritising treatment? Do you just leave those in need of hospitalisation due to covid to to die without intervention? Do you operate on a first come first served basis regardless as to what the person's reason for requiring treatment is? These are incredibly difficult to answer questions that I don't believe you are even considering |
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