COVID-19

robbieBB said:

If you look at the running averages of all-cause mortality in Norway, Finland and Denmark, you see a more or less straight line; but the graph for Sweden shows a significant dip in 2018--19 and through the early months of 2019--20 up to when Covid-19 took off.

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Can you send a link to these stats I would be interested to view them?

robbieBB said:

You have to blame Cromer for that Gandy; he started this dedicated thread. As for life being too short, I wonder if the public service workers whose pay has just been frozen agree. Or your children and grandchildren, who will soon be joining them in paying for the economic damage wrought, not just by the virus itself but, to a much larger extent, the stupidity of much of the world's response to it.

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I think that those there has obviously been some failing I think a lot of criticism is 2020 hindsight

zogean_king said:

Can you send a link to these stats I would be interested to view them?

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Here are the graphs Zog. They are from a Social Science Research Network (SSRN) paper (I haven't got the link to hand but will search it out if you are interested). This link takes you to the ONS's own comparison tool, which tells a similar story (though without the rolling averages). You can also download the raw data from there.



My original post was a bit misleading. What it should have said was that the rolling averages for all four countries are a more or less straight line, but in Sweden's case the "straightening" takes place right at the end of the sequence with the comparatively high toll between March and June 2020 evening out the comparatively lower tolls in 2018--2019 and early months of 2019--2020.

It's quite interesting as most of the graphs show a lower peak last year (Norway and Sweden in particular), was it a warmer winter for them? I know for Australia, early lockdowns essentially stopped community spread and once it gets into the population they can be used effectively as a means to force people apart to slow the spread of the disease to give hospitals breathing space. Breathing space to either develop a vaccine or to try to gain a better understanding of the virus and limit numbers/ risk of mutations of the virus into something more deadly.

How good is excess death as the rate of infection? I'd say it's probably better than total cases because I'd wager that there have been a lot of people who have had it without being tested. This was certainly the case earlier when there was much less testing. Interestingly my dad had to go to Addenbrookes hospital for an operation 3 months ago and there were lots of patients who haven't died, but have long term organ damage from Covid-19. Same with the James Paget in Gorleston has a family friend's daughter who trained as a physio looking after long term covid patients.

Anyway enough on morbidity, some good news coming out on the Oxford Vaccine front with it being far cheaper and easier to store than the other ones announced, though could be a little less effective.

zogean_king said:

I know for Australia, early lockdowns essentially stopped community spread and once it gets into the population they can be used effectively as a means to force people apart to slow the spread of the disease to give hospitals breathing space.

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If you aren't familiar with it, the WHO's Global Influenza Preparedness Plan makes interesting reading. It contains the WHO's "recommendations for national measures before and during pandemics". This document was the result of at least three decades of global experience dealing with outbreaks including SARS and MERS, Beijing Flu etc. Following the 2009 Swine Flu fiasco it was updated and thereafter remained largely unrevised -- before being thrown out of the window by the WHO itself and most Western countries with the onset of the current pandemic.
The Plan has specific recommendations for each phase (Phases 1 to 6) of an outbreak, regarding the appropriate steps to be taken, e.g. at what stage it makes sense to try to prevent altogether or contain the spread, and at what stage trying to do that becomes futile. All the Nordic countries simply followed the Plan, the differences between Sweden and the other three being largely accounted for by the extent to which, by the end of February, early March, the virus had gained much more than a foothold in Sweden compared to the others. In terms of the plan, by mid-March Sweden was already in Phase 6, at which point the Plan specifically says trying to contain the virus is not only useless, but counter-productive; while the other three, and in particular Finland, were still at a stage when prevention or containment by lockdown etc. made sense. So it wasn't that Sweden "refused" to lockdown; it simply followed the WHO recommendations for the stage at which it found itself. The actions that Sweden DID take, such as self isolation by those infected, social distancing, etc., were exactly what the WHO Plan recommended (which, by the way, did NOT include compulsory masks). Regarding the use of lockdowns to protect the health services, the Plan was opposed to doing it on anything other than a very short term basis on the grounds that the cost of doing it vastly outweighed the benefits.
New Zealand's relative success in dealing with the virus is another example of a country which simply followed the WHO Plan for early phase action. They were able to do it because, largely through geography, the virus hadn't yet gained any sort of foothold. In terms of the slogan we were treated to in the early days "Prevent, Contain, Manage", New Zealand were able to "prevent". They then had minor imported outbreaks that they were able to "contain". Here, on the other hand, while the government faffed on about prevention and then containment, we were already well into the WHO's Phase 6.
I haven't really followed the Australian experience in detail, but geography must surely have been a factor there too.

zogean_king said:

How good is excess death as the rate of infection? I'd say it's probably better than total cases because I'd wager that there have been a lot of people who have had it without being tested. This was certainly the case earlier when there was much less testing.

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There is a soundly-based paper on Covid-19's IFR (Infection Fatality Rate) here on the WHO's website. The author concludes that the rate is 0.23% (for comparison, the accepted IFR of seasonal influenza is 0.1%). The 0.23% is an average over all age groups (as indeed is the IFR for seasonal influenza). In both cases the rate is much higher for those over 70; the paper assesses the IFR for those under 70 at 0.05%. There is a quite widespread view that the Covid-19 IFR is actually closer to that of seasonal flu than even this paper suggests.
The high number of deaths in countries where the virus has achieved community spread is more to do with the ease with which it spreads than the IFR. The more infections there are, the more deaths follow. But as the WHO's decades of experience-based, pre-Covid Response Plan acknowledges, there comes a point where attempts at containment are not just futile, but counter-productive, and costs start to rapidly outweigh any benefits.

With the economic and other costs of the UK's ill-conceived and mis-managed lockdown strategy beginning to emerge, Simon Dolan's campaign for Judicial Review of the government's actions becomes even more pressing. You can read about the legal challenge and its progress to date on campaign's Crowd Funding page:

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/l...UKGovtLockdownNovember232020&utm_medium=email

This isn't just about the response to Covid-19, it's about misuse of power and evasion of established parliamentary procedures for oversight and checks and balances.

Breaking news on the BBC web site: "Outdoor carol singing allowed in England post-lockdown". That's worth repeating, again and again and again:

Outdoor carol singing allowed in England post-lockdown
Outdoor carol singing allowed in England post-lockdown
Outdoor carol singing allowed in England post-lockdown

Have we gone mad? We are dealing with a bad flu epidemic, not World War III.

The rush to vaccinate us is not a race to save lives, the NHS, or the economy; it's a race to save face.

So the official "narrative" is gathering pace, to the effect that those who have plunged us into the worst peacetime economic crisis the country has faced, in the course of needlessly extending the time spent in the grip of Covid-19 by imposing two full-on lockdowns plus further periods of lockdown in all but name, are now riding to the rescue with a programme of mass vaccination.
The truth is that the pandemic in this country, and most of Europe bar the south-east, was already heading towards its natural conclusion before the second lockdown was imposed, as this graph from the Covid Symptom Study illustrates (Covid-19 estimated cases, UK, 2nd June -- 9th December):



The only effect of Lockdown 2 was to slightly steepen the downward curve -- until the lockdown ended, following which we will see a consequential, slight, flattening before the natural curve resumes its downward path. Along with active cases, deaths are falling and hospital admissions are falling; the only things that are rising are government borrowing, taxes, business failures, bankruptcies and the number of people in government declaring "We've beaten it". We haven't beaten it; Covid-19 has taken its natural course and the pandemic in Europe is dying its own natural death.

Best wishes to those affected down the road.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone on here either had Covid, or the jab yet?

Bure budgie said:

Just out of curiosity, has anyone on here either had Covid, or the jab yet?

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Both.

robbieBB said:

Both.

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Both jabs?

zogean_king said:

Both jabs?

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Covid (back in May, mild = no hospital admission) AND both Pfizer jabs (first pre-Christmas, second earlier this month)

Both Jabs (but living overseas)

I get my second on Wednesday, but should now have over 80% efficacy after 11 weeks since the first. Happy with that.