Covid

[guymonde]

ZOE app in my West London borough - 18014 active cases this week, up 2919 from a week ago. Now back at the most recent peak, mid February and rapidly approaching the early Jan Omicron peak of about 19,500. And this despite the fact that I imagine testing is down dramatically. It ain't over yet.

[Danny]

Mar 9, 2022 11:27:24 GMT guymonde said:

ZOE app in my West London borough - 18014 active cases this week, up 2919 from a week ago. Now back at the most recent peak, mid February and rapidly approaching the early Jan Omicron peak of about 19,500. And this despite the fact that I imagine testing is down dramatically. It ain't over yet.

It depends what you mean by over. Although Zoe has been showing steady ongoing cases, they do not differentiate serious cases. Government hospital stats say admissions and serious cases and deaths continued falling.

The way out of covid was always to let it run through the main population in spring 2020. The vaccine does not prevent new cases, and nor does infection. What either does do is provide a level of immunity which can prevent cases becoming so serious. The end point is endemic covid just as we had endemic other corona virus colds circulating pre covid. In all probability these killed a few people each year but no one noticed. Maybe a few thousand.  

There is a case to be made that with each new strain, a different segment of population becomes susceptible. and that by allowing infection from the earliest strains you could have boosted immunity which would have helped when that new strain arrived. We stay immune to circulating  corona viiruses by regular reinfection. We chose to revent this pprocess happeniing naturally. That was a big mistake.

What we should have done is allow the original strain to run as widely as possible amongst safe groups. This would have reduced the spread of later waves and given an outcome no worse than intervention until vaccine arrived. We essentially proved this to be the case because where by chance of timing  interventions didnt happen, outcomes were no worse.

We really didnt achieve anything by intervention except to throw away money.

[shevii]

Mar 10, 2022 7:06:46 GMT Danny said:

Mar 9, 2022 11:27:24 GMT guymonde said:

ZOE app in my West London borough - 18014 active cases this week, up 2919 from a week ago. Now back at the most recent peak, mid February and rapidly approaching the early Jan Omicron peak of about 19,500. And this despite the fact that I imagine testing is down dramatically. It ain't over yet.

 Government hospital stats say admissions and serious cases and deaths continued falling.

The main dashboard is showing cases, deaths and hospital admission all rising now:

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/?_ga=2.208211030.512615830.1598284545-569722553.1579263878

[c-a-r-f-r-e-w]

more on things that might affect Covid severity…

“Higher levels of exposure to toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” may increase the likelihood of Covid-19 infection, more serious symptoms and death, a group of recent studies have found.”

www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/10/pfas-covid-infection-forever-chemicals-studies

[Deleted]

ONS infection survey confirming a rise in actual infections:

W/end 5Mar (change on the week)

Wales: 3.2% (+0.1%)
England: 3.8% (+0.2%)
Scotland: 5.7% (+0.4%)
NI: 7.8% (+2.0%)

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/11march2022

From the primary diagnosis report (NHS England) then the % of folks 'with' Covid who are in hospital primarily 'for' Covid continues to drop and is now at 43%. Hence treat the recent small rise in admissions with some caution when comparing to previous levels.
see: Primary Diagnosis Supplement 10 March 2022 (XLSX, 36KB)
www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/

Finally, deaths. Fig1 in below continues to show 'excess' deaths are below the 5yr average 
www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending25february2022#deaths-data

[Deleted]

"Britain’s death toll during the pandemic was below average for western Europe, an international comparison has concluded.
Although recorded numbers who died of Covid are higher in Britain than in countries such as France and Germany, the gap vanishes when looking at excess deaths.
Globally, the pandemic may have killed three times as many people as suggested by standard death tolls, a paper by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle suggested.
Worldwide 5.9 million people are recorded as having died of Covid in 2020 and last year, but there were 18.2 million more deaths during this period than would have been expected, scientists reported in The Lancet. A “substantial fraction” of excess deaths are likely to have been due to Covid, particularly in poorer countries with less comprehensive record keeping, they said.
In western Europe, excess deaths averaged 140 per 100,000, higher than the 127 per 100,000 recorded in the UK. The difference between Britain’s figure and the rate in France and Germany, 124 and 121 per 100,000 respectively, was not statistically significant.
The figure puts the UK ninth in western Europe, well behind Spain on 187 per 100,000 and Italy on 227 per 100,000, and 29th in Europe as a whole. Bulgaria has Europe’s highest rate at 647 per 100,00, not far behind Bolivia, the world’s worst, at 735 per 100,000. Some countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and Singapore, did not record any excess deaths during the pandemic.
Raghib Ali, an epidemiologist at Cambridge University, said the paper would correct “widespread misconceptions” about how badly Britain had fared during the pandemic. All home nations had roughly similar death rates.
Ali said there was “no clear relationship between levels of excess mortality and different levels of restrictions . . . across western Europe or indeed the whole of Europe”. For example, Sweden, which alone among western countries held out against formal lockdowns in 2020, had an excess death rate of 91 per 100,000, indistinguishable from Denmark and Finland.
He said that the world should try to learn from Norway, where excess deaths were only 7 per 100,000 but argued “all the commentary to date as to how and why the UK, or Sweden, has done worse than its neighbours is clearly no longer valid”.
Eastern Europe’s much higher death rates were “mainly due to lower levels of vaccination”, Ali added."

Times


www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02796-3/fulltext

[Danny]

Mar 12, 2022 9:05:42 GMT colin said:

Ali said there was “no clear relationship between levels of excess mortality and different levels of restrictions . . . across western Europe or indeed the whole of Europe”. For example, Sweden, which alone among western countries held out against formal lockdowns in 2020, had an excess death rate of 91
Times

www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02796-3/fulltext

As I have been saying, must be for more than a year now. There is no evidence of different outcomes depending on severity of restrictions. They just didnt do any good.

The most likely determinant is how much immunty a country already had before the epidemic began, based on vaccination by exposure to other corona viruses locally.  After that the epidemic ran its course, and all restrictions did was make it all last longer at vast expense.

[Deleted]

Folks might be starting to notice the modest uptick in cases and hospitalisations? Appears to be very localised at the moment (eg Scotland) and we're seeing very little rise in deaths (although that obviously comes with a bit of a lag)

[Danny]

Mar 15, 2022 14:21:27 GMT @tw said:

Folks might be starting to notice the modest uptick in cases and hospitalisations? Appears to be very localised at the moment (eg Scotland) and we're seeing very little rise in deaths (although that obviously comes with a bit of a lag)

Zoe  reports daily new cases are currently up 50% on their average value this year to the start of March. This peak of cases reported by them is the highest since spring 2020 when they started counting. Difficult to properly compare back that far because they restarted counting with a new methodology about summer 2020 after testing became available and based upon their findings thus far about typical symptoms. So anyway, cases are now the highest they have been since summer 2020.

Case levels in England and scotland are much the same on their figures and both are rising fast right now.  Thats hardly cause for alarm however, because this will be the third peak of cases since December. None of the others caused a problem, so no reason to think this will.

if you are minded to worry, more concerning is that cases are rising pretty uniformly in all age groups. The most obvious explanation would be vaccinations given disproportionately to older people at the end of last year have now worn off so they are catching covid again.  There might also be an effect from people just ceasing to worry and going back to normal.

Death rates remain very low compared to the number of cases and the relative proportions of cases to deaths from early days of the epidemic.  The number of deaths does not justify extraordinary interventions, but then it never has.

If there is a trend, it would be that long term the total of cases has steadily increased. If you correlate number of vaccines given with number of cases, then you would conclude that the more people are vaccinated, then the higher is the background level of infections and repeat infections. There is a credible mechanism where vaccination encourges more frequent mild infections in place of fewer severe ones.

[matt126]

Cases are starting to increase not just here but around the world. It does seem some countries who previously had the toughest controls previously at the moment like South Korea and China are suffering the most as they had less immunity from previous infections then . Most countries on the western orientation are coming around to living with it. I would guess that the Russia/Ukraine War has had a big effect on this, as for one it as diverted attention away from Covid as being a major issue , with very little mention of the pandemic, when without the war it would still be taking considerable amount of media time, in a lot of countries. Also it would make a lot of people decide they have more to worry about than the virus so they behave less cautiously.

[leftieliberal]

Good article in The Guardian on why countries that were thought to be best prepared for covid actually had poor outcomes.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/24/countries-covid-trust-damage-pandemic

It comes down to interpersonal trust, that's trust in other people, not in governments or institutions.

[c-a-r-f-r-e-w]

Mar 24, 2022 18:42:15 GMT leftieliberal said:

Good article in The Guardian on why countries that were thought to be best prepared for covid actually had poor outcomes.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/24/countries-covid-trust-damage-pandemic

It comes down to interpersonal trust, that's trust in other people, not in governments or institutions.

Yes, more trust means you don’t need to impose such inflexible lockdowns, and can avoid some of the craziness, e.g. it should be ok for people to make longer journeys to get some exercise, if it means they can go somewhere more remote, and they are trusted to do so. 

[leftieliberal]

A worthwhile read from Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College London.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/28/uk-cant-rely-on-boosters-new-wave-covid

The 'green pill, yellow pill' analogy is enlightening. It is quite possible that we will need an entirely new vaccine to deal with all the different variants.

[c-a-r-f-r-e-w]

Mar 28, 2022 9:11:07 GMT leftieliberal said:

A worthwhile read from Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College London.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/28/uk-cant-rely-on-boosters-new-wave-covid

The 'green pill, yellow pill' analogy is enlightening. It is quite possible that we will need an entirely new vaccine to deal with all the different variants.

yes, reading about how ‘Omicron and the subvariant BA.2 have managed to mutate almost every amino acid residue targeted by protective antibodies, escaping protection” shows the difficulty. If they can manage to target bits of the virus that don’t change much it might help (but you’d have thought they might have done that already if it weren’t that difficult?…)

[Danny]

Mar 29, 2022 8:35:55 GMT c-a-r-f-r-e-w said:

Mar 28, 2022 9:11:07 GMT leftieliberal said:

A worthwhile read from Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College London.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/28/uk-cant-rely-on-boosters-new-wave-covid

The 'green pill, yellow pill' analogy is enlightening. It is quite possible that we will need an entirely new vaccine to deal with all the different variants.

yes, reading about how ‘Omicron and the subvariant BA.2 have managed to mutate almost every amino acid residue targeted by protective antibodies, escaping protection” shows the difficulty. If they can manage to target bits of the virus that don’t change much it might help (but you’d have thought they might have done that already if it weren’t that difficult?…)

The approach used by vaccine designers was to concentrate on spike proteins, because they argued these cannot be changed because they have to remain able to 'match' receptors in human cells. So yes, they picked the parts they though would be least able to be changed.

There was an interesting study from california which analaysed  antibodies produced by infected people compared to vaccinated ones, using what I guess was a panel of all the possible antibody tests they could get hold of. Including ones designed for sars and mers and flu and spike and internal covid proteins. basically they concluded the vaccines produce a huge response to spike proteins, whereas humans created a wide spread of antibodies to all parts of the covid virus and in fact a stronger response to internal proteins than to spike. Past work on flu vaccines has concluded that where a vaccine was based upon whole denatured virus it usually produces better protection against future variants than does a vaccine based upon selected parts of a virus. Such vaccines have their own manufacturing problems, the ones we have used against covid are also intended to be cheap and easy to manufacture and less risky if something goes wrong in production.

The idea that either an infection or vaccine produces an initial surge of antibody which fades after a couple of months is not at all new. A good vaccine would however have created a background level sufficient to give long lasting protection -these are not good vaccines. The fact they have not by now been updated suggests no one is confident they can fundamentally imrpove them.

Incidentally, the californian study proved cross imunity between antibodies produced against different types of corona viruses. So yes, they proved the fact kids  have several corona viruses each year (and adults too but less frequent) had created a background level of imunity against covid itself. Its a process jenner called vaccination, where he used a natural related but milder cowpox infection to protect people against smallpox.  This likely explains by the pacific region did so well in resisting covid, because of past exposure to other strains.

[Danny]

On the main thread I posted 24 march, "Anecdote, my partner now has covid, and is showing the new suite of symptoms reported by zoe, that covid has morphed into a gastro intestinal illness. Thats depite having had it in 2019, and three vaccinations. Fat lot of good they did. I await with interest to see if I get ill, having had it 2019 but no vaccinations. So if you hear nothing more from me -fear the worst. But I actually think it is possible i had it first with some slight upset tummy I didnt really think anything of. "

I can now update on this to advise that after that wednesday i maybe had a suggestion of a sore throat thursday evening, definite aches by Friday and probably a bit feverish by saturday. Persistent need to cough if was lying down, whch was rather inconvenient. a covid lateral flow test on that day showed negative.

Whatever the illness it continued and by this morning I was feeling better, but decided to try another test. This one was positive.

So a few things to conclude. The first as I argued before, that the tests are deeply unreliable. I was feeling definitely ill on Saturday and tested clear. I would suggest this was because i didnt really have a sore throat or runny nose and thats where you stick the swabs. By today, although my throat was worse yesterday and sunday and isnt really very noticeable today, clearly there is now virus in the right place to be detected. Although of course the tests also detect dead virus, so arguably are as much a test you had it recently as still do.

As to severity, I will remind people I had covid in 2019 and have had no vaccination. This attack was defnitely milder than in 2019, though in neither was I so incapacitated I could not go out and do some shopping (and indeed did). During the first i was too ill to have gone to work whereas maybe this time i might have, save the covid issues and general encouragement for anyone to stay home if ill.

So my experience of this is I have fared better than my triple vaccinated partner. Although I did eventually get a clear positve result whereas my partner only got a faint line, maybe that means something. We seem to agree I was less ill last time too so maybe it wasnt that the vaccinations made matters worse.


It would not be in the least surprising if the virus has evolved to a form less likley to infect the throat and nose where we are swabbing for virus. Enormous evolutionary pressure to do exactly that. Which might be a bit worrying.

[c-a-r-f-r-e-w]

In the Guardian…

“Scientists also discovered that individuals who had contracted both Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, and influenza viruses were more than four times more likely to require ventilation support and 2.4 times more likely to die than if they just had Covid-19.

“We found that the combination of Covid-19 and flu viruses is particularly dangerous,” said Professor Kenneth Baillie of Edinburgh University. “We expect that Covid-19 will circulate with flu, increasing the chance of co-infections. That is why we should change our testing strategy for Covid-19 patients in hospital and test for flu much more widely.””

www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/27/patients-with-covid-and-flu-double-the-risk-of-dying-say-scientists

[leftieliberal]

Vaccination benefits even those who already caught covid: www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/31/covid-vaccines-give-extra-protection-to-previously-infected-studies-show

[Danny]

Apr 2, 2022 8:46:41 GMT James E said:

@danny

from the main thread:

"Didnt he (Boris Johnson) also plan to eradicate covid in 2021 by the forthcoming vaccination program?"

I am fairly sure that neither Johnson, nor any of his ministers have ever claimed that the vaccination programme would eradicate Covid. And given that neither the vaccine manufacturers nor any research into their efficacy have ever claimed 100% effectiveness, they would have been wrong to have done so.

www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1088

They may have been careful enough to never claim it WOULD eradicate covid, but there was plenty of publicity saying they HOPED it would create herd immunity and therefore eradicate it. This was a BIG justification used for lockdown, that there was some purpose being served in spending soooo much money trying to slow the disease. It is also really the ONLY justification for most people being given these vaccinations - the gain for most young people does not justify the expenditure even on buying and delivering the vaccines, never mind the rest of the damage to society.

South Africa vaccinated only 30% of their population and their outcome was much the same as the UK. The rest were likely better off simply catching covid. Better off because catching it a few times gives them a broader based immunity against new strains than repeat vaccinations which are identical, and dont work very well anyway against repeat infection. This isnt just me saying this, an article from the guardian by an immunologist was linked here a couple of weeks ago. It isnt rocket scince either, its rather what you would expect based upon past performance of vaccines against colds. There was a hope these new ones might work better, but they do not. Instead its all played out pretty much as you might have expectd based upon past experience. The vaccines did not work well.

[leftieliberal]

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/12/herd-immunity-covid-reinfection-virus-world


Devi Sridhar: Herd immunity now seems impossible. Welcome to the age of Covid reinfection.

This is a thoughtful article on the consequences of vaccines making covid less dangerous, but not stopping people from catching and spreading it (sterilising immunity) and how we have to change our behaviour. The decision to end free testing may soon be seen to be as big a mistake as he original herd immunity. The Government could help by not only bringing them back, but also paying sick pay from day1 for anyone self-isolating with covid. That would reduce (but not eliminate) the risk of people going into work while they were infectious. I'm still wearing a mask when indoors in public spaces and on public transport, but I see very few others doing so now.

[lens]

Apr 12, 2022 14:36:06 GMT leftieliberal said:

The decision to end free testing may soon be seen to be as big a mistake as he original herd immunity.

Was "herd immunity" a mistake? At the time - before it was known if vaccines would be at all effective - it was the best that could be come up with. Strict lockdown could never be enforced indefinitely, though it played a valuable role early on in limiting rates when the NHS was in danger of being overwhelmed. ("Flattening the curve".) It also deferred many cases until the arrival of vaccines, and Covid being therefore a far less serious threat. But after vaccination it arguably did more harm than good.

Point is that current herd immunity hasn't just been arrived at by letting the virus rip - it's immunity via vaccination *AND* prior infection. And in this case "immunity" doesn't just mean an illness going away - the genie's out of the bottle - it does mean it doesn't have anything like the severity it had in most of 2020. It's becoming more and more like flu, colds etc.

And as for free testing, then if not end it now - when? It's arguable that right from the start that the billions spent on it could have been better spent elsewhere in the Health system. Many, many more people have died of other causes than Covid over the last two years. You could carry on throwing money at Covid for years and never get to "zero-Covid" - as China is (painfully) finding out now. (Not that their leader will admit such.)

Apr 12, 2022 14:36:06 GMT leftieliberal said:

I'm still wearing a mask when indoors in public spaces and on public transport, but I see very few others doing so now.

A standard scientific methodology is to split a sample, treat one part differently to the other and see how the samples compare. Regarding widespread mask enforcement, that happened by default when England wound back the rules last July - but Scotland didn't. I'm quite sure Nicola Sturgeon thought Scotland case rates would then be lower than in England - but it didn't happen. Scotland has had higher rates than England for quite a while now. There is also the study involving the comparison between schoold with high case rates where mask wearing was and wasn't made compulsory. Analysis showed they made "no statistically significant difference". www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59895934

In such as shops etc, mask wearing has no discernible benefit, end of story.

[leftieliberal]

Apr 12, 2022 18:21:11 GMT lens said:

Apr 12, 2022 14:36:06 GMT leftieliberal said:

The decision to end free testing may soon be seen to be as big a mistake as he original herd immunity.

Apr 12, 2022 14:36:06 GMT leftieliberal said:

I'm still wearing a mask when indoors in public spaces and on public transport, but I see very few others doing so now.

A standard scientific methodology is to split a sample, treat one part differently to the other and see how the samples compare.

That only applies when you know that the two parts of  the sample are alike in all other respects. You cannot just simply compare cases in England and Scotland because you haven't ensured that the two groups being compared are alike in all other respects. That's what the statisticians call confounding: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding 

[lens]

Apr 13, 2022 18:17:03 GMT leftieliberal said:

You cannot just simply compare cases in England and Scotland because you haven't ensured that the two groups being compared are alike in all other respects.

But the England-Scotland comparison is just one example, which backs up other evidence - such as the link I gave about schools with mask mandates and those without. Outside of clinical settings (with effective PPE, and strict protocols in force especially around safe removal) the evidence simply is not there to support any view that general mask wearing in such as shops has any measurable effect.

I could turn your comment around. You say you still wear a mask, and sound disapproving that most others aren't - why? Where's your evidence they do any good in such as a shop? What can you point to as sound statistical evidence that the inconvenience of masks is doing any good? Because when I've had such conversations with a few people it ends up along the lines of "oh, they must do, mustn't they?" There is little or no correlation to support the view.

And you expressed opposition to the ending of free testing. I ask again - if not now, when? Six months, a year, ten years? Because they are not really "free". It's government money that (IMO) could be far better spent in other parts of the health service. The programme has cost BILLIONS over the time of the pandemic, and we can only wonder what may have been the result if most of that had gone instead towards research into cancer, stroke, heart disease etc. And it must never be forgotten that for every person in the UK who has dies of Covid over the last two years, ten times as many people have died of other causes. Again, there was certainly argument for testing in the early days, but it had to come to a point where the question was if the benefits were worth the cost, or the money could be better spent elsewhere.

[davem]

It would appear that we are world leading again, well Europe leading at least.

pbs.twimg.com/media/FQUHZBPXEAwKQXI?format=jpg&name=large

Will this come back to bite the government?

[lens]

Apr 17, 2022 13:14:11 GMT davem said:

It would appear that we are world leading again, well Europe leading at least.

Ah! Statistics, doesn't everyone love them! An interesting read on the BBC website at www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-61105949 

IMO, if it illustrates anything, it's that league tables of Covid deaths are possibly one of the least useful metrics, certainly in isolation, and certainly just total numbers.

Why? For starters, they don't take into account when during the pandemic they occured and when the disease first struck. In the case of the UK there were many cases very early on (via the ski resorts) when treatments wren't as advanced as now, and so many that test and trace didn't stand a chance of preventing spread. Compare that to New Zealand, with far fewer cases early on, and combined with geography and it's inconceivable that anyone could ever expect the UK to not be far more badly affected. New Zealand did indeed play their cards well - but they were dealt a far better hand in the first place.

On top of that, Covid deaths per 100,000 depend on factors such as the average age of the population, and how much testing went on. If a country has a very poor health care system, and a consequent low average life expectancy, then all else equal many fewer Covid deaths may be expected - people of the age most likely to die from Covid will have already have died of other causes beforehand! And how effective is the testing regime? If few tests are able to be carried out, how many deaths are going to be put down as due to Covid?

So as the BBC article points out, a far better tool is to look at "excess deaths" rather than "Covid deaths", and especially to look at them graphically over time. All else equal, you'd expect far fewer now than early on, due to vaccination, better treatment and strains with a lower mortality rate.

And from that article, then whereas England may have more "Covid deaths" ("died with Covid listed on the death certificate") Scotland is far worse in terms of excess deaths. Perhaps not what may be expected, given that Scotland had stricter restrictions in place for much longer?

[birdseye]

Even then I doubt the vailidity of any comparison.Medical competence and treatment style is likely to be the same in both scotland and england. population density and issues like poverty and ethnic diversity will be different. General health levels will differ too.

Its nice to play with numbers - I had a working life doing just that. But I think the question we have to ask ourselves is whether, allowing for the state on knowledge and pre existing resources, we made as good a job of it as we could reasonably have hoped.Sure we will have made mistakes - the only way to avoid that in real life is to do nothing at all.

[Danny]

Apr 12, 2022 14:36:06 GMT leftieliberal said:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/12/herd-immunity-covid-reinfection-virus-world


Devi Sridhar: Herd immunity now seems impossible. Welcome to the age of Covid reinfection.

This is a thoughtful article on the consequences of vaccines making covid less dangerous, but not stopping people from catching and spreading it (sterilising immunity) and how we have to change our behaviour. The decision to end free testing may soon be seen to be as big a mistake as he original herd immunity. The Government could help by not only bringing them back, but also paying sick pay from day1 for anyone self-isolating with covid. That would reduce (but not eliminate) the risk of people going into work while they were infectious. I'm still wearing a mask when indoors in public spaces and on public transport, but I see very few others doing so now.

It is questionable to what extent vaccines currently make covid less dangerous. I still have seen no news that vaccines have been updated, which means they are the same as original and directed against the wrong strain. Plainly we now all agree reinfection is to be expected, which begs the question why serious reinfection is not to be expected.

There is a recognised effect where any infection puts our immune system on high alert. Whereas not having had an infection recently causes it to regulate  down. Having one infection protects us against a different one.  A vaccination just looks to the body like any other infection, so presumably the effect is the same. So the question becomes, to what extent does a short term protection against current covid from having a repeat vaccination, simply reflects gearing up the immune system, not speciic antibody boosts against covid. That rather fits with the observed facts that boosters wear off after a couple of months ( or even one month).

It has always been claimed that people need to be infected by more than one virus particle to become ill with covid. WHO suggested a tariff, and all the anti infection strategies are based upon the idea that a small dose of virus for a longer time is as safe as a bigger one for a shorter time. All this implies everyone has had immunity to covid from the outset. Or at least, since all these figures are based upon average outcomes,  that we had an average necessary dose before becoming infected which however probably varied from person to person. It might be this average is purely a statistical model with no factual reality, just that the model makes the same predictions  in average outcomes. In reality one virus must be enough to infect some people, and if most can fight it off they had some sort of immunity protecting them. Enough virus will infect anyone (but maybe not dangerously).  Also the average level of immunity probably varied from country to country (it must have, surely?), though i have seen nothing formally about some countries having much more immunity to covid from outset than others.

And then by now it is recognised being infected gives as much or more protection as having a vaccine. If you have had covid at least once, then you are as safe as if vaccinated. if you have survived covid then you will very likely have it milder next time so you will not die. Not unless your general health has deteriorated, which admittedly it does with advancing age but not over a year or two. The worse it was first time, then in general the more established will have been your immune response to protect you in the future. Most people in the Uk can now be placed firmly  in the 'safe' category should they be reinfected. Although thats simple statment has always been true, most people, the great majority of people, have always been safe from covid. Thats simply the fact demonstrated by deaths statistics.

Although the virus keeps changing, there is no reason to think its ability to do so is endless. Rather, all human experience says we will develop a level of population immunity which makes severe cases rare. Thats what has happened with other originally deadly new corona virus infections. This will happen faster if we simply get on with catching covid. There is no real world data demonstrating that trying to extend the time this takes to happen saves any lives.

Hastings had covid winter 2019/20. no one really noticed beyond people knowing they had flu, behaving as normal for such with many still going about their business while ill, and some older people dying. But not noticeably more than normal from winter 'flu'. It went away all by itself. covid was more dangerous than general random winter infections but not massively so. Deaths really only became anomalous when large numbers had been infected. In a catchment area of maybe 100-200,000 people, we didnt notice it.

lockdown and all-population isolation strategies were a massive mistake which didnt help except in very limited cirumstances and created huge economic  and other health problems which we are now seeing. Ultimately the only way out of this is herd immunity, and has always been herd immunity. Immunity shared by the herd which keeps almost all safe. But it wont eradicate covid, and it isnt even desireable to eradicate covid. We need to tame it. This is not part of the traditional meaning of 'herd immunity', which means an organsim wholly dying out. Maybe we need a new official phrase to describe the effect. We need more exposure to covid to keep us safe.

[Danny]

Apr 13, 2022 21:18:25 GMT lens said:

But the England-Scotland comparison is just one example, which backs up other evidence - such as the link I gave about schools with mask mandates and those without. Outside of clinical settings (with effective PPE, and strict protocols in force especially around safe removal) the evidence simply is not there to support any view that general mask wearing in such as shops has any measurable effect.

Its obvious why. Or maybe not obvious, so I shall explain again. imagine 100 people go shopping every day with a 50% chance of catching covid each time. imagine masks reduce your risk by 50%. So if the group does not wear masks, on first day 50 catch covid, on second 25, on third 12, on fourth 6, 5th 3, 6th 1, 7th 1- so after a week 98% have caught covid.

Now imagine they all wear masks. First day 25 catch covid. Second day 1/4 of the remaining uninfected 75 catch it, which is about 19. Third day 1/4x56=14. Fourth day 1/4x42=10. fifth day 1/4x32=8. 5th 1/4x24=6. 6th 1/4x18=4. 7th 1/4x 14=3. So after a week 89% have caught covid. thats just 9% less than for those who wore masks, even though the mask was 50% effective. After two weeks the number infected will be much the same, and practically speaking the difference between 98% and 89% isnt very useful anyway, its still most of the population. All that happened was we delayed it a bit. Because people catch it slower, there are more remaining who have never been infected and so as time passes the numbers being infected each day are higher and catch up.

Masks and any other measure which slows spread can never prevent everyone catching covid. The disease only stops once herd immunity is achieved. If thats impossible in the sense covid dies out, because it keeps mutating, then essentially everyone will catch covid whatever you do. Masks are utterly pointless except to slow spread, and see the example why they may not slow spread much at all. Which is precisely what we have seen in reality. If there is a miracle vaccine arriving soon then there may be some point to slowing spread, but there isnt. And the actual vaccine we did try to wait for has been pretty poor.

[Danny]

Apr 19, 2022 9:51:34 GMT lens said:

In the case of the UK there were many cases very early on (via the ski resorts) when treatments wren't as advanced as now, and so many that test and trace didn't stand a chance of preventing spread. Compare that to New Zealand, with far fewer cases early on, and combined with geography and it's inconceivable that anyone could ever expect the UK to not be far more badly affected. New Zealand did indeed play their cards well - but they were dealt a far better hand in the first place.

There was covid in hastings winter 19/20, and based on the spring infection stats, probably also in Torridge in Devon (see stats yourself for other possible candidates including I think from memory Norfolk and Worcester). The devon outbreak probably didnt make a lot of difference nationally because covid takes time to spread, but Hastings would have directly infected London via commuters, shoppers, party goers, etc. People arriving from Europe were detected as infected because a program of testing new arrivals had begun. There was no testing in Hastings, or generally in the London population. And so the disease would have spread unreported until enough cases reached hospital. This has been officially blamed upon international travellers, but it seems much more likely the very fast rise in covid at that time was simply because more testing was undertakenn in the communty and so this hidden epidemic was discovered. Covid isnt dangerous to most people, and the people most likely to be infected first have always been the young who are safest. Deaths come late in an outbreak after care homes and hospitals become infected.

...and strains with a lower mortality rate.

Assuming curent strains have exactly the same intrinsic mortality as early ones, if this is the second time around catching covid for most people...then the susceptble ones already died in the first round. So a variant with identical mortality would appear to be milder.

And from that article, then whereas England may have more "Covid deaths" ("died with Covid listed on the death certificate") Scotland is far worse in terms of excess deaths. Perhaps not what may be expected, given that Scotland had stricter restrictions in place for much longer?

Perhaps the lower population density of Scotland has made disruption to other health services worse while trying to operate under lockdowns, etc, and so deaths caused by suspending health services generally have been higher?

[davwel]

With the programmes of booster vaccine doses seemingly becoming more varied across the UK, I am just putting on record that my wife and I (who stay in NE Scotland) have in the last few days been offered 5th and 4th booster jabs respectively.

The wife is highly shielded and had her 4th jab in early January, so this one is coming exactly 4 months later.

I am over 80, and my 3rd vaccination was in October 2021. So my gap is six and a half months, somewhat worrying with many folk around us having recently had Covid.