Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

[navidson]

If this is true - and we lockdown over it.........

 

[grandjoeblue]

If this is true - and we lockdown over it.........

Everyone knows that unvaccinated cause the majority of covid issues for the health service.

So far the COVID ICU numbers in London haven't really risen that much. It's gone from 180 to around 200 over the last 3 weeks. Last year there were around 400 at the same time of year. Again it can increase rapidly but hopefully vaccination will stop a huge rise.

 

[Walken]

Had an instructive morning reading the Tory Press mouthpieces and looking at the anti-sage and anti-restriction narratives. The Daily Mail have rolled out a 'Professor' to argue his model is right and Sage are wrong.

Closer inspection reveals his back ground is in engineering risks and he's actually a 'visiting Professor' (an honorary post essentially) at Bristol Uni but doesn't look to have an actual real academic post. It's a bit like asking me to comment on, well, anything much. With a healthy dose of irony, continue I will...

The other line appears to be going after Sage for not modelling the effects of mild disease severity. The Spectator, Telegraph and latterly the Mail are pursuing this one. Whilst acknowledging that this is because Sage have been asked to look at graded severity of several situations (I.e. scenario planning) the focus remains on Sage as being the key decision makers. They're not- that's the government supported by the civil service. It's also the Govt and media who release and/or focus on the worst case scenario figures. All whilst proclaiming Sage use or produce dodgy data or science.Sure there are limitations on the data, but you work with what you have and factor that in.

For me that's really worrying. It's painting the very well qualified modellers / the science as being untrustworthy.

It isn't and they aren't - what I assume the government look to be doing is waiting for real world data to come in to map a trajectory against the modelled scenarios. A bit like a game of chicken. In the meantime we all get to stew a tad longer.

A high stakes game of holding one's nerve. Get it right and we get a relatively restriction free life and probable praise given so many folk are steaming mad at the prospectof a lockdown. It would indeed be nice. Get it wrong and you'll have those urging caution throwing mud and folk will still be steaming mad at another lockdown. Oh, you may see some human suffering too.

That's why I'm glad I'm not in charge of anything. Speaking as someone who struggles to remember to tie his shoe laces.

Excellent post, there is a lot of critique without any real understanding behind it going on. We headline level analysis going on with the defund the WHO tosh

 

[BlueToff]

I don't really understand that logic TBH

Surely, the testing is to protect vulnerable people. I'm testing everyday to make sure my missus' parents (who of whom have health conditions) will not be compromised when we visit on Boxing Day (Christmas Day already having been ruined by isolation)

Based on anecdotal/personal experience, people are testing more to be sure

 

[LinekersLegs]

Encouraging

 

[grandjoeblue]

Just thinking about the obvious maths but if that 80-90% is true then out of 200 ICU beds currently full if the whole population was vaccinated you'd be looking at roughly between 20-40 beds being full. That's such a huge difference.

 

[LinekersLegs]

Are reinfections being counted? If not that could explain the discrepancy between cases and reality

Know UKHSA detail them in their regular report, don’t know about how they are treated in the daily

 

[BlueToff]

Excellent post, there is a lot of critique without any real understanding behind it going on. We headline level analysis going on with the defund the WHO tosh

I think we do have a right to know what they're basing the severity of Omicron on mind, when the experts are giving interviews to the press. So if Ferguson comes out and says there could be x deaths, fine, but it'd be nice for him to also explain why they think that.

I'm not distrusting them. They know a lot more than all of us. But we're talking about locking things down 2 years into this thing still, when we have a booster roll out hitting 900k-1,000,000 people per day, most people double jabbed and/or having had COVID previously etc, and loads and loads of seemingly accurate reports that Omicron symptoms are much milder, so I think it's fair that someone explains just what the modelling is being based off.

@LinekersLegs posted a really good doc in here yesterday. I read half of it, need to read the rest, but the Danes published their models of it being based on being as severe as Delta or half as severe. Would be good if these experts who are happy to do interviews would explain their thinking there too.

 

[coollino]

i'm guessing there are covid patients in non-icu as well? not sure how it works

 

[grandjoeblue]

i'm guessing there are covid patients in non-icu as well? not sure how it works

Yeh the majority will be. London's got something like 1700 in hospital with 200 of them in ICU.

The ICU stat is key though as they're far more likely to die.

 

[Tipp blue]

Encouraging

Meanwhile in Ireland we are going for a media driven panic based reintroduction of restrictions. Media won't be happy until the government announces full lockdown.

Hiqa: Wave of Omicron infection will 'likely result in increased hospitalisations and deaths'

The health watchdog today published summaries of the evidence on the transmissibility and virulence of the variant and its capacity for immune escape.

www.thejournal.ie

 

[LinekersLegs]

Still a bit early to be confident re severity but this also encouraging

 

[ToffeeTim]

London's vaccine rates are well below the UK average. Need to get the numbers up.

 

[Harryflashman]

To be fair - SAGE did say it could be between 1 and 10,000 per day

That’s the kind of range estimate I used to excel at when asked

 

[navidson]

No restrictions before Christmas confirmed