Social distancing, .. what's that?

[selly]

May I please thank Jake, Robin and Terry for presenting, very patiently and thoroughly, the calm voice of reason in the face of nigh-rabid denial and polarised, delusional opinion.

Sam

Delusional about saying locking everyone up is a poor tool to try and control a virus that kills 1 per million per day? Of which there is a 95% chance they are over 75 and with Comorbidities

 

[SammyQ]

I beg to disagree Selly. There certainly is a paucity of long term data, no doubt. But, 8 -10 months in, we DO have "trends" and they are indicative enough for precautions to be taken. Indicators like the 60+ age group vulnerability vs 18-30 (!) less susceptibility. Indicators like men more vulnerable than women.
There most certainly are possibilities that will only crystallise with time; the continuing blood group conundrum for example. What is confounding is the sheer number of variables in play: ethnicity, age, social norms, population density, innoculation histories, and so on.
You are perfectly correct in one respect, in that we have not yet enough information to seive out these influences that skew the data vis-a-vis direct comparisons from country to country for example, but we DO havevenough to go on to spot incremental factors. Social mixing is a stand-out one. Which would you rather have? A pint or a (live, healthy) person?

Sam.

 

[selly]

I beg to disagree Selly. There certainly is a paucity of long term data, no doubt. But, 8 -10 months in, we DO have "trends" and they are indicative enough for precautions to be taken. Indicators like the 60+ age group vulnerability vs 18-30 (!) less susceptibility. Indicators like men more vulnerable than women.
There most certainly are possibilities that will only crystallise with time; the continuing blood group conundrum for example. What is confounding is the sheer number of variables in play: ethnicity, age, social norms, population density, innoculation histories, and so on.
You are perfectly correct in one respect, in that we have not yet enough information to seive out these influences that skew the data vis-a-vis direct comparisons from country to country for example, but we DO havevenough to go on to spot incremental factors. Social mixing is a stand-out one. Which would you rather have? A pint or a (live, healthy) person?

Sam.

We know loads more than that., it's not a great mystery of a virus. It's a seasonal coronavirus, it's not the Great Plague at all.

To ask whether you want a pint or social mixing is just facile. It's not just about a pint at all. Does that you mean you prefer the coming suicides of unemployed young men and a missed mammogram and cancer death over the death of an 89 year old who is pretty close to death anyway? If I take your strand of argument and what you are advocating then you must do

 

[FatmanG]

Th

May I please thank Jake, Robin and Terry for presenting, very patiently and thoroughly, the calm voice of reason in the face of nigh-rabid denial and polarised, delusional opinion.

Sam

There you go again a differing opinion is delusional. Where is the reason in that statement. Typical woke behaviour. I'm right and if you don't agree that makes you (insert your adjective) and now I understand your Trump comment.

 

[FatmanG]

Robin you mention across the Atlantic and not following the rules. What rules? Who's rules? Yours! The USA is known as the land of the free as it is all about personal responsibility. Now since you mention them the treatment Trump received, antibodies via a drip looks like a way to get to herd immunity with minimal damage. If the left didn't politicise evenything to do with Trump I'm sure the FDA would of made it available under the emergency provision by now.

 

[SammyQ]

We know loads more than that., it's not a great mystery of a virus. It's a seasonal coronavirus, it's not the Great Plague at all.

To ask whether you want a pint or social mixing is just facile. It's not just about a pint at all. Does that you mean you prefer the coming suicides of unemployed young men and a missed mammogram and cancer death over the death of an 89 year old who is pretty close to death anyway? If I take your strand of argument and what you are advocating then you must do

Selly:
1. "It's a seasonal coronavirus" No. Absolutely not. Equating C-19 with 'colds' is not valid. And, a great deal about it is as yet 'unquantifiable', as opposed to "unknown", so in some respects, it IS a mystery, hence my "ethnicity" and "blood" references above.
2. "Does that you mean you prefer the coming suicides...you must do" Get real. Who in their right mind would wish death on anyone? I find your interpretation of what I posted extremely offensive, apart from the fact is is so convoluted a misinterpretation as to be staggering.

I am out on this discussion. I find those who will not listen, but impose their own biases and agendas basically unhelpful and probably employing inflaming opinion to assuage their egos.
Hard, straightforward facts and analyses seem to be in short supply here.

Sam

 

[artie]

Do you realise there is a difference between test accuracy and operational test accuracy?

It's been a long thread, but I don't recall any previous mention of operational test accuracy.

Are you moving the goal posts?

 

[Rorschach]

Well according to Pratrick Valance we should have 50k cases today. Yesterday was 14k so they better pull their finger out if they are going to find an extra 36k for today, unless of course they were purposely trying to scare us?

 

[FatmanG]

Of 50k cases 45k will be young and asymptomatic. Since when has that been a case? Fear mongering, manipulation of data for 60/70 deaths its a total and utter disgrace

 

[RobinBHM]

It's been a long thread, but I don't recall any previous mention of operational test accuracy.

Are you moving the goal posts?

Do you not understand why operational test accuracy is relevant to your quote of the Dominic Raab tweet?

Do you agree that what Dominic Raab said is contradictory and only makes sense if he really meant false negative.

 

[RobinBHM]

Delusional about saying locking everyone up is a poor tool to try and control a virus that kills 1 per million per day? Of which there is a 95% chance they are over 75 and with Comorbidities

A virus that has killed 6000 healthcare workers, 600 in the UK, none of which were over 75

People that were healthy enough to work in a full time job.

A virus that quickly overwhelms the capacity of critical care beds.

Please could you explain where you get your figure of 1 per million per day? - we need to see the context, as in isolation it doesn't mean much

 

[RobinBHM]

Well according to Pratrick Valance we should have 50k cases today. Yesterday was 14k so they better pull their finger out if they are going to find an extra 36k for today, unless of course they were purposely trying to scare us?

Please could you stop misrepresenting quotes

Patrick Valance did not say that.
I would be grateful if you quoted what Valance actually said

 

[RobinBHM]

Well certainly influenza sometimes, comes close to overwhelming the NHS in a bad year. Of course you may like to pretend hospitals are usually empty

Yes that is certainly true, some years have seen hospitals almost overwhelmed with influenza.
But that occurred in periods when hospitals operated normally with all departments still functioning.

This year hospitals were virtually turned into Covid treatment centres. All routine operations and outpatients were largely cancelled. Wards for the elderly were emptied....discharged.



Please could you provide some data for how many NHS staff have died from flu in any of the years where NHS was almost overwhelmed?

 

[selly]

A virus that has killed 6000 healthcare workers, 600 in the UK, none of which were over 75

People that were healthy enough to work in a full time job.

A virus that quickly overwhelms the capacity of critical care beds.

Please could you explain where you get your figure of 1 per million per day? - we need to see the context, as in isolation it doesn't mean much

1 million per day is the current death rate average. Actually its less but even if it was 2 or 3 million per day it wouldnt be a big deal in the great scheme from a data point of view. It was never in isolation it was always in context.

The figure for health workers is sad but we need to remember the virus was circulating for a long time, healthcare accounts for a huge sector of employees too and it was a new virus and we were unprepared for a lot of it. We cannot undo that side of things now.

 

[selly]

Yes that is certainly true, some years have seen hospitals almost overwhelmed with influenza.
But that occurred in periods when hospitals operated normally with all departments still functioning.

This year hospitals were virtually turned into Covid treatment centres. All routine operations and outpatients were largely cancelled. Wards for the elderly were emptied....discharged.

They were turned into covid treatment centres but based on a (totally wrong) projection of deaths. I think people will forgive that once as we didn't know what we were dealing with, now we do. We have way better data. But are still pretending this is the great plague

Why would I have flu data according to job from 2018?

 

[Trainee neophyte]

Please can you give me some examples of "any respiratory disease" which:

1. Overloads hospitals and critical care
2. Has managed to kill 6000 health care workers globally
3 May lead to Cytokine storm

Well, the one that immediately springs to mind would be influenza. I'm sure that there are others, but influenza would be top of the list.

1. Overloads hospitals and critical care:

Some random links:
https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-01-french-hospitals-overwhelmed-flu-epidemic.htmlhttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5279685/California-hospitals-looks-like-flu-war-zone.html
2017 seems to have been a tricky winter in the USA, 2015 was bad for the UK. Italy seems to get overwhelmed every year, and other countries have their own issues. Influenza does seem to get the better of the health care planners. Being overwhelmed says more about the lack of competence of the planning system than it does about how virulent or otherwise a disease is.

2. Managed to kill 6000 health workers worldwide (and 600 from the UK, you added in a later post.) The NHS has 1.1 million members of full-time-equivalent staff, apparently, which probably means more actual bodies, as some work part time. If your 6,000 dead were purely from the NHS that would be an IFR of 0.5%, which is higher than influenza, but not dramatically so. Just the 600 who actually were in the UK gives us an easy to calculate 0.05% fatality rate. If you include all health workers worldwide (a very quick search gave me 40 million health workers worldwide in 2013 - no idea if it is accurate) you get an IFR of 0.015% - quite a mild influenza indeed. Health workers are people too: they are perfectly entitled to catch and die from diseases that "ordinary" people also catch and die from. Unless my numbers are significantly wrong (always a possibility) then the coronavirus looks to be no more agressive than your average influenza when it comes to health workers- which we already know because the vast majority of "victims" are people over 70. It might even be said that health workers are actually getting off lightly this year, as normal influenza is more fatal at lower age ranges. It would seem that this is an emotive argument without much relevance to the disease and it's actual fatality rate.

3. May lead to Cytokine storm. Wikipedia tells us: Cytokine storm - Wikipedia

"Cytokine storms can be caused by a number of infectious and non-infectious etiologies, especially viral respiratory infections such as H5N1 influenza, SARS-CoV-1,[2][3] and SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 agent). Other causative agents include the Epstein-Barr virus, cytomegalovirus, and group A streptococcus, and non-infectious conditions such as graft-versus-host disease.[4]"

It's that sneaky influenza in the list again. The more I look into this, the more evident it becomes that, by any metric you care to use, our novel coronavirus is not worth the damage being done in order to fight it. And more to the point, it really isn't any more deadly than a bad influenza outbreak.

 

[Rorschach]

I find all these requests for data on flu rather amusing. We don't have detailed data on Flu because we don't get our knickers in a twist over it. Most years we just tick along with 15 to 20k deaths being treated as perfectly normal. Some years it gets worse but we never complain about the numbers of deaths, all we care about is the hospitals being overwhelmed which stops OTHER treatments, that is always the news story at the time.

As I pointed out before, we rarely if ever test for flu, but we know that's what causes a majority of winter deaths, that's why we have a mass vaccination programme every year and yet still we treat thousands of deaths as normal. We don't even get worked up about the fact that flu kills young people including children and babies, hence why toddlers get a flu vaccine every year. C19 does not kill children or babies.

 

[doctor Bob]

Selly:

2. "Does that you mean you prefer the coming suicides...you must do" Get real. Who in their right mind would wish death on anyone? I find your interpretation of what I posted extremely offensive, apart from the fact is is so convoluted a misinterpretation as to be staggering

Sam

I'm not fighting anyones corner but you did say "what would you rather have a pint or a healthy person" implying equally offensive message to the poster, so may I suggest everyone calms down.

 

[doctor Bob]

I think we can agree that in this country it's related to seasonal conditions, by the fact that if it's brass monkeys people go indoors and decrease social distancing.
Chaps you're all splitting hairs to gain one upmanship, some give and take is necessary unless you are all experts.

 

[Noel]

I've no problem with discussions on most issues but with that comes a degree of responsibility, especially with regards to health and wellbeing. And furthermore a good measure of respect toward other members as opposed to insults and the usual passive/aggressive commentary and innuendo.
If the thread continues on the course it's currently heading it'll be early closing time.

So please bear the above in mind.