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Post by Dan213 on Dec 24, 2021 9:41:30 GMT
This is where it will end up eventually, especially once Omincron has gone through a significant proportion of the population (which it will, due to its high transmissibility). I can see by next winter we probably won't be routinely testing for Covid and it will be treated much more like the flu. I actually think it will be sooner here: thryll change the quarantine requirement to 5 days in the next couple of months, and then by Spring no need to test if you're asymptomatic and have had your jabs, and then by summer no testing as standard You've literally just made this up
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 23, 2021 18:06:36 GMT
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 That doesn't sound like an emergency situation where fully vaxxed individuals have their liberty constrained. The NHS coped with 34k in hospital last year. The proposed omicron wave figures won't come close to that. The NHS can cope with that level of wave, especially with the evidence of it being milder and needing less time in hospital The pain and loss caused by restrictions ( in terms of mental health and devastation to the hospitality industry) isn't proportionate to just a 10% reduction on hospitlisations Please please read up on this a little bit more. Last years hospitalisations came at a monumental cost to the rest of the health care system. Outpatient appointments cancelled, elective procedures cancelled. Yes, in theory we could max out to this capacity again but the cost to other services that can't afford to take this hit again is potentially huge
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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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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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Dan213 on Dec 22, 2021 16:50:54 GMT
It wasn't eve close to sold out on Saturday evening actually - probably about 2/3 full. They were shifting all the rear rows forward. And I got my cheap seat on the day from Almeida to replace one of my cancellations. Of course it's impossible to tell whether there were lots of last minute call offs but the seat map had shown lots of space too. I think the last minute cancellations might be the reason. When my perf was cancelled on Monday, the Almeida BO couldn't get me two seats next to each other in my price band for any of the dates in the last two weeks of the run, but they could offer me them this week and next week (which seemed optimistic then and so it proved). So I think there might have been a spate of late canx on an otherwise fairly well-sold run. Yeah last min cancellations were the reason for this. I'd originally booked for this performance as soon as tickets were released and there were only a handful of seats available back then. i re-arranged last week as I decided to travel home earlier and by that point it looked around 2/3 full
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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 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 Dan213 on Dec 22, 2021 11:21:56 GMT
From that article:
Which is pretty much what I said the last time you made the point about Omicron being milder - if we carry on as normal with no restrictions, the increased transmissibility will likely more than cancel out the reduced virulence, when it comes to absolute numbers of severe cases. I was making the point Omicron is milder. We should work on increasing hospital capacity going forward. Falling back on restrictions in a non-emergency situation because the NHS hasnt got capacity isn't acceptable That's a long term solution, years at best. Your 'crack on with no restrictions' is short term. The two don't go together
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 22, 2021 8:18:07 GMT
Can you show me the source here. This just looks and sounds like a poorly written speculative article. It's so important to limit the spread of misinformation here Its a respected political news website with a copy of the UKHSA report due out today Im not sure why you're accusing me of misinformation, the article clearly states its from a report by the UKHSA It's a dodgy website making claims based upon a report they don't quote once and isn't yet available to cross check with this . We all know how much the media like to cherry pick from these reports. How do we know exactly what they are or aren't missing/exaggerating until the actual report is released.
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 22, 2021 7:51:29 GMT
70% fewer severe cases is still considerably greater numbers of severe cases, in view of the greater number of cases overall due to how much more transmissible it is. A much greater number of cases if we all "crack on without restrictions." Well that's in a non vaxxed area. With triple boosters, the 70% less severity will be even more pronounced. Its nor a straight mathematical calculation Sorry, what you're saying here makes absolutely no sense. This cannot be determined from the research paper you initially posted. Aside from this, a population level study like this is difficult to transpose directly into a much older uk population. Please don't make statements like this, which are categorically untrue. We all have a responsibility to ensure we aren't creating or spreading misinformation
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 22, 2021 7:48:11 GMT
Can you show me the source here. This just looks and sounds like a poorly written speculative article. It's so important to limit the spread of misinformation here
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 21, 2021 20:42:56 GMT
There you go. 70% less severe means we should all crack on without restrictions This is good news. What this doesn't tell us though is how much of this is down to population immunity. We should also be cautious in comparing population analysis with South Africa, where the median age is 28 years, compared with the UK at 41 years All in all, this is promising but in no means should be taken as a 1:1 comparison with how things will/are playing out in the UK
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 21, 2021 14:37:51 GMT
Imperial College London research, published 3 days ago, which has been somewhat largely ignored shows that "the omicron variant largely evades immunity from past infection or two vaccine doses". In fact, the research found that with 2 vaccines, you're only protected by between 0%-20%... and even with the booster, you're more at 55%, rather than the 80% we are being told.
Urgh, it feels like every time I get vaccinated & think I can worry less, along comes something to show that the vaccines are less effective than previously announced so I can't worry less.
Hoping to put your mind at rest a little here: It's really important that we differentiate between effectiveness against 'severe disease' and 'symptomatic infection' here The 55% figure in Anthony's post above is the booster's effectiveness against symptomatic disease. You'd expect this to be lower than the effectiveness against severe disease which is around 80%
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 21, 2021 14:32:15 GMT
You do realise it's not about death rate, it's the ability of hospitals to cope with the number of additional patients, whilst being able to operate other essential treatments. This has absolutely nothing to do with being anti-tory
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 20, 2021 20:52:22 GMT
Me too, but that first night the pain was so bad that it kept me awake even laying on my other side. Thankfully it started to get better the next day and I was able to sleep on subsequent nights, but it was about a week before I could comfortably lay on that side. That is not exactly encouraging to read! I think at the moment my arm is less painful than it was for my first jab, though worse than the second. I'm hoping that now I've had one Pfizer if I have to have more boosters in the future that the side effects won't be as bad, in the same way my 2nd AstraZeneca wasn't nearly as bad as the first. ETA: Damn, I've just remembered that people who started with Pfizer seemed to get worse side effects from the 2nd jab than the 1st, so that doesn't bode well! This was usually if they'd had no prior infection. Those that had been infected prior to their first Pfizer jab often experienced worse/similar symptoms on their first as opposed to their second jab. Source: covid.joinzoe.com/post/covid-vaccine-pfizer-effectsI don't think it would be unreasonable to suggest that a prior dose of any vaccine would yield similar results to this
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 20, 2021 18:45:42 GMT
I think it's far too early to say that cases are stabilising here. No it isn't. Cases are not a good enough guide now, not with a variant that is more viral but less life-threatening.
Hospitalisations are the guide, and in particular unavoidable hospitalisations rather than 'we have Covid bed capacity we should use it'.
No, hospitalisations are absolutely not the guide as to whether cases are stabilising here due to the lag in between infections and hospitalisation As of yet there is little evidence to support that this variant causes less severe disease. If you can present evidence to counter this, please do as I'm interested to read it
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 20, 2021 18:03:14 GMT
He's buying himself a week becasue there is a chance the hospital and death data won't deteriorate very much, even though infection rates have increased. There is also the issue central to Tory thinking of the tail wagging the dog - the unvaxed small minority (but 90% of deaths) determining Gov policy.
Fwiw, 920K vaccinated yesterday.
You might have something there. Cases very much appear to be stabilising rather than increasing exponentially. The number of patients in hospital with covid has been between 7-8000 for the past month of data, again no exponential rises. Average deaths per day has barely changed in a month. I think it's far too early to say that cases are stabilising here. The graph here, looking at cases by specimen date shows the latest 'complete' day as the highest so far, with the later bars indicating that labs appear to be a few days behind in terms of processing. There is also extreme pressure on testing in London. I have been unable to get hold of LFT tests for days and people are queing for hours to access PCR testing sites It's also important to remember that the England data excludes re-infection and we know from Denmark that we have seen a 200% increase in re-infections, so these figures are lower than they should be. Here's the ZOE covid data in comparison, which although uses a lot of modelling has actually been pretty reliable throughout the pandemic
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 19, 2021 21:49:57 GMT
I was referencing disease severity here as opposed to infectivity apologies Apology accepted. Would you like me to disprove the second part of your claim now ? I'm more than happy to be proved wrong on the severity side, in fact I'd love to be given the way things are going. What's super important to remember in all this though is that you have to look at this through the lens of previously unifected individuals, infected with a new variant and compare this to a similar sample being infected with the original variant . Decreased hospitalisation/mortality rates in a population with some level of immunity, be that through prior infection or vaccination, isn't indicative of decreased variant severity, it's indicative of increased levels of immune response. At present, from the research I've looked at, this appears to a key driver in what we're observing in South Africa. If you do have research that indicates something else though, I'd really love to have a read as it's all pretty interesting
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 19, 2021 21:38:17 GMT
Feel free to take a look at my other posts in this thread over the past few days which should confirm this. It was a simple wording error, my apologies
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 19, 2021 21:02:46 GMT
there's no evidence supporting any of this at present Surprise, surprise# ] Yes there is - Omricon up to 70 times more infecteous- I was referencing disease severity here as opposed to infectivity apologies
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 19, 2021 20:01:05 GMT
The key word in this is 'may' there is far more at play with severe covid than just infectivity of lung tissue. The report goes onto mention this. Effectively what this report does confirm is that the virus replicated faster, they've then gone on to suggest a further hypothesis with regards to severity that is not proven in this paper
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 19, 2021 18:36:28 GMT
Apparently the new version is more contagious (but much milder) and we are all going to get it. there's no evidence supporting any reduction in severity at present
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Post by Dan213 on Dec 18, 2021 20:59:53 GMT
it will be interesting to see if I get pinged by the NHS Covid-19 app. I'd be super surprised if performers bring their phones onto stage with them, so I should imagine you won't be pinged
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Post by Dan213 on Nov 17, 2021 10:36:14 GMT
I agree, it’s like Primark being mentioned in Lion King or Aladdin, it makes no sense I completely missed this when I saw it. What was the joke? This wasn't in last Thursdays performance. The Nabalungi mispronunciations change all the time
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