Off Topic Coronavirus

In March, when boris first announced lock up, I had my first and only conversation with my sister about this. We are close, we really agree on most things in life, but when I said to her that the response seemed hugely disproportionate to the problem, she made exactly your point to me, why would the party of business do something so economically destructive?

The conversation ended pretty quickly after that, she thought I was being ridiculous and I was making her anxious.

But it does seem like at every turn, the govt have allowed the situation to look as bad as possible and have worked on the basis of worst case scenarios.

The way deaths are classified, the ONS duplication situation, the dying within 28 days of a positive test, previously, dying ever having tested positive.

I realise now that we are coming from the same position regarding the pcr test. It could be used as an effective tool, if care was taken to minimise the false positive by carrying out each test twice, (is that each positive result or every result?) if it were carried out by trained staff in clinical settings and perhaps if the cycle threshold were lessened.

Given that virtually all policy is based on data obtained via the pcr test results, and that we have acknowledged there are serious issues with the implementation of it, it leads me to worry that this is another way in which the government are choosing to make the situation look as bad as possible. The vast sums of money being thrown around could have paid for the double test scenario for example.

I still want that open, public debate, where all the cards are laid on the table and words of one syllable used, making all information available to everyone, but it won’t happen.

I honestly believe there is more to this than protecting the public from a virus, everything leads me to feel that. I don’t know what or why.

 

It’s all about the ability of the NHS to cope with even slight increases in demand, which has led to panic and incompetence, and misleading use of statistics.

The testing system may be **** (as opposed to the tests, which are fine if used correctly if I understand your earlier posts correctly), the predictions may be wildly inaccurate (thanks Neil Ferguson) but two things cannot be denied - there is a real and dramatic increase in the number of admissions to hospital due to COVID 19 and there are increasing numbers of deaths because of it, directly or indirectly.

It doesn’t matter if the libertarians, paranoiacs, deniers and conspiracy theorists are right or wrong, the NHS is on the edge of collapse (pretty permanently, current circumstances just bring it closer) and the government is trying to terrify us into behaving in a way which might take the pressure off the NHS, because they are scared of the PR consequences of people being explicitly turned away from the hospital front door (as opposed to the actual turned away through use of the waiting lists), even more terrified of that than the consequences of COVID related recession. In the short term at least. Of course it’s not working very well, people are tired and bored of the approach and most of them aren’t so scared any more.

I understand this concern about the accuracy of testing and forecasting, but as long as there is real pressure on health services, measurable by admissions, and perhaps exaggerated by sincere scaremongering from health service leadership, that will drive policy/strategy.

The same thing is happening in every other European country and the US, which is food and drink to the ‘global conspiracy’ theorists, but might be more accurately described as yet another collective failure of liberal democracy.

Oxford vaccine 70% effective, which is good enough.

 

Oxford vaccine 70% effective after two high dose immunization. But paradoxically 90% effective after a low then a high dose immunization....they think it gives the immune system more time to get it right....(gonna say that imho that is a bit of twaddle)

But interestingly those who did get Covid19 after vaccination had only a mild dose.

You'll say let's go for the other vaccine.
No ...this one works well enough currently, and possibly will work just as good as the RNA vaccines.

It is easier to produce ( and in this country... remember Brexit is coming!!)
It is much much easier to use, it is stored in a fridge.It is much more stable...and we own 100 million doses.

This is the game changer for us in the UK.

Thank you Oxford Vaccine unit...you did a decade of work in 9 months.

 

Good news indeed. Have you managed to find a press release or similar for this? I can only see newspaper reports. Interested to see the p-value on this one.

 

In answer to my overnight question...Of why make it look so bad and destroy the economy.

I get Stand explaination that the NHS is creaking, this could push it over the edge...and that is the one thing that would destroy the government...so they are desperate for it not to happen.

Is still cannot see it as any sort of conspiracy...my hubby always says if it was a conspiracy...they would have made it more convincing.

I am sticking with my fundamental thoughts that we are lead by a very inexperienced government that does not understand the science, and jumps at anything that is even mooted by the scientists ( who are now realising they will be blamed for the whole thing) . A government that could not arrange a piss up in a brewery, and is corrupt to the core. A government that is being played by fast buck merchants who they are being used to further their own greed

Cockup not conspiracy..in my view Woody

 

Talksport news just said the same.

I think I agree with Beth. Better to attempt to get the most vulnerable vaccinated quicker with something available here rather than risk the logistical nightmare of transporting the vaccines that have to be colder than the away end at Stoke which end up stuck in Kent for three days while the driver fills out 287 forms.

 

Where did you get that figure mate? According to the OND there were 64,000 deaths in total in England and Wales in January 2018, not 64,000 flu deaths.

 

I’ve found it - a misleading headline in the Mail. See my previous post, that was the total number of deaths. About 10,000 higher than January 2019. In April 2020 there were 88,000 deaths, 30,000 more than the previous year.

 

I wish they hadn’t done the low dose/high dose arm. Now I think they need to do another study with far more people (3000 is a big trial for most drugs, but not for vaccines) to see if they can replicate those results. On 3000 there must have been a really small number of people who actually caught the virus.

70%, even though that is also on pretty small numbers, is good enough.

 

Fab news re Oxford vaccine! TBH I would rather take that one using genetically modified cold virus than the ones injecting us with Covid flavoured rat testicles.

 

I think the regulators might allow them to run the hi/hi Vs low/hi trial after regulation Stan.
Their data says no one gets hospitalised even if they get Covid after vaccination. So it might be permitted after regulation... especially as they still have about 30k volunteers on the vaccine trial registry that have not been "used" yet

 

Thread on that Mail article.

 

Looks like the government has backed a winner with the Oxford vaccine - effective, cheap, and easily stored.

Excellent.

 

"Statistics Guy"....

 

You sure you're OK Stroller? That almost sounded like praise for the government...

 

So the mail used Statistics Guy data rather than ONS data!!!!

Statistics Guy promotes the "Great Reset" propaganda. I wonder if his real name is Butthuber