Off Topic Covid 19 restrictions have done one

About time the elderly were venerated in this country. Especially anyone 70 and over.

 

Lateral flow testing has been a disaster from the start - the results achieved by the Innova test kits were revealed to be dangerously unreliable last year. More recent "monoclonal" lateral flow tests are allegedly more reliable but I suspect that these aren't being used yet as we work through the mountain of (dodgy and very expensively bought) Innova lots.

 

Heads should roll if that's the case.

 

There have been some questions asked...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56340831

Though the Govt have used smoke and mirrors* to divert from the failings by bigging up the bits that have worked...

*
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56348558

 

How unreliable? Are you saying potentially these lockdowns have been based on false evidence??

 

I watched Shapps interview earlier. He may have been hiding (?) the fact that the L.F. tests have been suspect, but whoever it was interviewing him (Minchen?) as ever didn't listen to her target's answers, therefore in my opinion in that particular situation it wasn't conclusive.

 

You can still catch it - but without the more serious, life threatening symptoms. Hospitalisations dropped significantly for those who had had a vaccine.

You can still pass it on - but studies are showing a decrease in transmissibility (at least 33%).

 

well obviously.....Doh..... the lockdowns were imposed not just on deaths...

The number of cases was one of the criteria for the tiers & subsequent lockdowns.
The number of cases per 100,000 was a criteria for selecting what areas to lockdown

 

14:33

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What do regional cases look like across England?

Data for the seven days to 5 March shows that 15 local areas in the UK (5%) have seen a rise in cases, while 299 (95%) has recorded a fall in positive tests, with one staying the same.

South Derbyshire has the highest rate in England, with a case rate of 142.9 per 100,000 people - but that's down from 155.7 per 100,000 the previous week.

The top five areas with the highest case rates (per 100,000 people) are:

• South Derbyshire - 149.2
• Barnsley - 146.2
• Redditch - 145.4
• Rotherham - 145.1
• Hull - 144.4

At the other end of the table, these are the places with the lowest case rates (per 100,000 people) are:

• South Hams - 5.7
• Isle of Wight - 7.1
• Eden - 9.4
• Torridge - 10.3
• Rother - 10.4

The areas that have recorded a rise in cases are (expressed as cases per 100,000 people):

• Derbyshire Dales (up from 63.6 to 132.7)
• Craven (31.5 to 47.3)
• East Devon (41.7 to 54.7)
• Canterbury (24.2 to 33.3)
• Welwyn Hatfield (60.1 to 66.6)

 

08:21

Two studies 'debunk' theory of vitamin D benefits against COVID

There has been lots of talk, including in the media, about the supposed benefits of vitamin D for pretty much everything, but most recently in guarding against the severe effects of COVID.

Now we have two studies, neither peer reviewed, which suggest there is no real evidence to support this.

One study mined a database of hundreds of thousands of people with genetic markers that make them predisposed to vitamin D deficiencies to understand whether a supplement could decrease their probability of having symptomatic or severe COVID.

The researchers said: "In this two-sample MR study, we did not observe evidence to support an association between 25OHD levels and COVID-19 susceptibility, severity, or hospitalisation. Hence, vitamin D supplementation as a means of protecting against worsened COVID-19 outcomes is not supported by genetic evidence. Other therapeutic or preventative avenues should be given higher priority for COVID-19 randomised controlled trials."

The second study compared the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in 24 European countries to coronavirus infections, recovery and mortality data.

Lead author, Dr Michael Chourdakis, from Aristotle University, Greece, said: "There is an overloading of information about vitamin D benefits… vitamin D has been praised for too many things even though we have very limited data for that."

All of this comes after a University of Barcelona study that suggested giving high-dose vitamin D to COVID patients in hospital could cut deaths by 60% - this was quoted by MP David Davis but The Lancet has since removed the paper from its server over concerns about the methodology.

 

One very nasty side-effect is that you develop a ****ing stupid haircut.

 

I think the test results haven't driven the lockdowns - they do appear to produce a high rate of false positive reports but once this became apparent they had to be confirmed by a PCR test. This is obviously an expensive and inefficient safety net that isn't going to be available for schools. Lockdowns have been triggered by the high incidence of disease in the general population.

 

Thanks - my memory was the early tier system (that triggered the lockdowns) had a criteria that was on the number of infections per 100,000.

I’m sure I remember so areas like York had bars open as they had a Lower figure per 100,000.
All part of the lockdowns

 

I saw on Twitter that Hull has something like double the UK average for manufacturing workplaces which means less people able to work from home.

 

Oy vey

 

so you’re agreeing with me then! Thank you...

“the infection rate just determined how severe the lockdowns were in each area.”

 

You might be onto something there - a mate of mine runs a small training business - he has about 15 apprentices that he trains. This week he got 5,000 face coverings and a shed load of testing kits sent by the department of education (free and unasked for)