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Covid
Apr 23, 2022 10:36:16 GMT
Post by leftieliberal on Apr 23, 2022 10:36:16 GMT
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Covid
Apr 25, 2022 23:50:09 GMT
Post by lens on Apr 25, 2022 23:50:09 GMT
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 "Being infected gives as much or more protection as having a vaccine"!?! Oh come on! That may in a sense be true - but you have to acknowledge that the RISK to an individual of getting that protection from a vaccine is vastly less than getting it from an infection! Vaccinate 1,000 individuals and you'll get a given level of protection. Infect 1,000 individuals and you may get a similar level of protection in 990 of them - and 10 deaths. Well, fine if you're one of the 990 - not so good if you're one of the 10. Actually, maybe not so fine. The vaccination is known to give a few sore arms and similar side effects - not much compared to a couple of weeks of "bad flu" that some of the early Covid cases reported pre-vaccination. (Even if they went on to recover.) I'm inclined to be hard headed about it, and not blindly put store by government pronouncements, but just try to correlate raw statistics with changes. Do that, and the biggest correlation is between death rates pre and post vaccination, even more pronounced when you take more recent (high) case rates into account. Conclusion - vaccines work pretty well. Not perfect - but even if they don't stop you catching Covid, will most likely mean it won't be as serious. The fact that more recently the number of Covid hospitalisations has been disproportionally amongst the unvaccinated should be proof of that. Apart from the stats it also seems to be my anecdotal experience. The only personal case I know of who suffered severe life-changing Covid effects (and is extremely lucky still to be alive) was early on, and in the first year people who know who got Covid were typically pretty ill for a couple of weeks. Now, I know of a lot of cases - but typically being described as "a bad cold" or "mild flu". Do similar correlations and there is little evidence the ill-fated app and mandatory masks do a lot to help, and even test and trace is questionable when the huge cost is taken into account. Severe lockdowns do seem to have worked - but are totally unsustainable in a long term. (As China seems to be painfully finding out now.) Worth it to stop health services being overwhelmed in the short term, and shift cases to when vaccination rates are higher, but the only really viable end game is increasingly being seen to be herd immunity. Where we differ is that I see that being primarily achieved via vaccination, and only fter that via immunity from an infection. Where we may agree is that once high vaccination levels have been reached, measures which can at best delay cases become pretty pointless, and at worst may lead to worse outcomes if they push cases longer from an individuals last vaccination. |
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Danny
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Covid
Apr 26, 2022 6:54:25 GMT
Post by Danny on Apr 26, 2022 6:54:25 GMT
The date they started counting differs between nations, so Wales starting June 2020 would have missed most of the spring 2020 wave which was very big. England only starts end of April 2020 so those numbers missed the peak in spring too, which might have added at least another 10% to the total. Ireland is high despite only starting from august 2020, while scotland only started counting late september.
They plot cumulative case data, which suggests most cases have been recent, but that is just plain wrong. ONS and government simply were not counting the cases when the epidemic began, and the first wave spring 2020 was probably the biggest. It was essentially allowed to grow unchecked and even some of the early measues like telling people to stock up in overcrowded supermarkets probably helped spread to high risk groups.
We dont know how many had covid at any time because the tests are not reliable for mild and asymptomatic cases (plus no systematic survey testing early on), but Zoe reported 2.2 million concurrent cases at the start of April 2020 in their sample group, which was symptomatic people approx 20-70 year olds. You need to gross that up for the entire population, approx twice as many people in the entire poulation, approx double the total for cases leading to and from peak, maybe double again for asymptomatic cases which they ignored (zoe only count people reporting symptoms). So thats about 16 million in Spring 2020, 30% of the population, although potentially many more were exposed and just didnt get ill.
Its a glaring hole in the claims about severity of covid that we really dont know whether essentially everyone was exposed, just that most never even noticed they were ill.
The percentage infected also excludes anyone reported ill in a hospital, care home or other communal living. Basically, just private household data.
Incidentally, China seems to have a new covid crisis exactly because it is still imposing extreme lockdowns and has refused to acknowledge this is not a viable policy. The low death rate in China originally was probably because the population had significant pre existing immunity. Unfortunately as covid has evolved, by preventing new waves of infection they will also have prevented that immunity being updated. Thus moving from being largely protected at the start to potentially much more at risk now, precisely because they imposed lockdown. Which could be a disaster for us if Chinese industry remains closed down.
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Danny
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Covid
Apr 26, 2022 8:14:04 GMT
Post by Danny on Apr 26, 2022 8:14:04 GMT
"Being infected gives as much or more protection as having a vaccine"!?! Oh come on! That may in a sense be true - but you have to acknowledge that the RISK to an individual of getting that protection from a vaccine is vastly less than getting it from an infection! Um....actually no. We established that risk varies by as much as x10,000 comparing oldest to youngest, and we can predict that. So we can confidently say the risk for most people from catching covid is not significantly worse than the risk from vaccinations. To put that in perspective, medical procedures regularly carried out in hospitals have risks of death around 1%, and for most people the risk of death from catching covid is tiny compared to that. Of course an individual might alternatively consider that the risk from catching it is an unnecessary one to run compared to being vaccinated and so elect for vaccine. But that has only applied since vaccines were available. Before that, there is little evidence the interventions prevented most people from being exposed. If you caught it anyway, then the protection you received was longer lasting according to Zoe data than if you had a vaccination, and by now most people have had covid anyway. See my post above which is copied from the main thread, which discusses ONS stats on how many people have had covid. Their figures are obviously wrong because many people had covid spring 2020 and they werent counting then, maybe minimum 10 million max approaching half or more of the population. When schools reopened there was a very pronounced differential with covid taking off again in the north but not south, suggesting the south was already close to the herd immunity point with respect to the first strain from the spring outbreak. Which probaby means most had either caught it or were immune anyway (figures then suggested you needed maybe 70% immune to reach herd immunity). Death rate from first wave was about 0.1%, 1 in 1000. Later waves have been better (we cannot know for sure why, yes people have been vaccinated but they have also been infected). In Japan more like 0.01% and at least officially even fewer in China and India. It isnt clear how much the vaccine has improved on that, because deaths now are not happening is big spikes, but at a constant background level, but one which over the whole period this epidemic has been going on, averages out much the same. We have ended big spikes in deaths, but the average over the last six months has been much the same as early on before vaccination. Also see S. Africa, which only vaccinated 30% of the population, the highest risk. This was probably a sensible strategy in that they vaccinated those at any significant risk and who would have provided most of the deaths. They had as good an outcome as we did after multiply vaccinating the majority of people. yes indeed, but first its 1 not ten, and second if you are a pensioner that 1 is you and if you are younger it isnt you. Which means there has always been a strategy avaialable to beat covid by isolating the pensioners while encouraging everyone else to catch covid fast. Thats what we should have done. a doctor interviewed said if it were a fee choice left to the NHS, it would never vaccinate children against covid because its simply isnt cost effective in terms of health outcomes. Much of the debate about vaccinating younger people has concentrated on whether there is a tiny health advantage to being vaccinated as compared to not. But considering the even quite modest cost of vaccinating each person, the NHS would have created more health benefit by spending that money on other kinds of care. It cost billions to vaccinate millions. See for example ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=gbr&areas=fra&areas=swe&areas=dnk&areas=nor&areas=fin&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usla&areasRegional=usnd&areasRegional=usak&areasRegional=usfl&areasRegional=ustn&cumulative=1&logScale=0&per100K=1&startDate=2020-04-08&values=deaths If you look at the rather linear death rate from covid over the last six months, we seem to have eradictated big spikes of deaths but the constant level is not so very much lower than the average over the pre-vaccination epidemic. That doesnt suggests vaccines have done more than smooth the death rate, not eliminate it. Bit concerning, that, but entirely consistent with evidence vaccinations 'wear off' after a month or two. So they didnt really work at all. Also consider that with most having had covid already, many of the most susceptible are already dead and cannot die again-which ought to have reduced the death rate anyway. Both myself and my partner had covid in late 2019. My partner has since been triple vaccinated for work reasons but myself not at all. We both had covid again recently, both milder than 2019, both times I had it milder. No obvious difference from those vaccinations. Same symptoms as last time except no loss of taste this time and generally milder. Some disbelieve I had covid in 2019, but it tested positive this time and whatever I had in 2019 was worse but otherwise same. I presume you will have read in the past the reasons why i believe I had covid in 2019 including the symptom profile, the directly traceable contact with someone with same symptoms coming from Wuhan, the fact Hastings didnt get the 2020 spring wave and then fell in line with the rest of the country after kent strain arrived, behaved exactly like it got it early over that winter.
Oh, and I know of one person who died in hospital probably from covid winter 19/20 and another who didnt quite but has been ill ever since. Speaking to someone running a care home, they had a spate of deaths at that time which in retrospect fit the covid pattern.
We can agree on that, up to a point. We have proven the world had a degree of immunity to covid before it existed and it is likely this was cross immunity from previously catching related viruses (ie classic 'vaccination'). Given how Pacific rim countries have all done much better in containing covid than the rest of the world whatever regimes they had, it seems likely this part of the word had more immunity altogether and thats why they succeeded in containing outbreaks. But yes, obviously if you become sufficiently extreme you can contain it. The risk for China now is that they are experiencing a strain which has been all round the world and come home again, after mutating to overcome our pre existing immunity. It could now take off there because their original advantage is gone and can only be restored by infection, which has happened despite all the measures we could use. Its possible at outset China was in a similar situation to Uk now, and they are in a situation more like we were. Everyone including me is guilty of using this term wrongly. Its original meaning was that enough people are immune to some disease that the disease dies out because it cannot infect enough people to sustain an outbreak. It implies a new outbreak can never get going. It seems likely we did achieve herd immunity to the original strain of covid, or kent, or Indian, but we have never achieved herd immunity to covid itself and there seems no prospect that we will because it keeps changing. What we may have achieved is a different thing and I dont know if there is a term for it. People still catch covid, so plainly there is no herd immunity. But people get it milder and dont die from it. We have achieved immunity to death from covid, but not to catching it. Or we may have, or we hope to. I see why medics thought it worthwhile trying to suppress cases until a vaccine arrived, but the suppression didnt work and the vaccine then didnt work very well either, certainly not in achieving herd immunity (thats important, because part of the potential saving is really from eradicating a disease which will always kill the most susceptible whether vaccinated or not, and doesnt kill most people even if not vaccinated). The offical death rate now is also not far short of what was happening before vaccination, just more steady.
I contend we did achieve herd immunity to original, kent and Indian by infection before vaccines came along. That could only have happened if a big enough percentage of the population had been infected, way above what ONS suggest. They simply werent testing and counting at the right times. These strains were not supplanted by others because those others were more infectious, but because the older strains could no longer find enough victims. Herd immunity.
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Covid
May 12, 2022 16:07:36 GMT
Post by leftieliberal on May 12, 2022 16:07:36 GMT
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Covid
May 12, 2022 19:29:58 GMT
Post by birdseye on May 12, 2022 19:29:58 GMT
classic Guardian report. "we were right" whereas if it hadnt worked out it would have been "the government were wrong".
Judging the seriousness of the infection by using death rates is silly. Unlike many such epidemics , deaths are way more likely in the older age groups such as me with the result that the average age at death for a man who has tested positive is a mere 2 years lower than that of a man who hasnt. The death rate overstates the impact in life years by a huge amount - the majority of those dying with covid were on their way in the first place. That might sound callous but we have damaged the lives of young people to save a few months for the old.
You could even argue that the consequences of the disease has been good for the human herd by clensing it of the old and the lame.
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Danny
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Covid
May 13, 2022 4:59:51 GMT
Post by Danny on May 13, 2022 4:59:51 GMT
Bit unclear there what you meant. The Guardian says the Uk was right not to impose lockdown during the most recent omicron wave, and did no worse than anywhere else as a result.
The real question is whether the Uk would have done as well had it never imposed lockdown. If thats true, then the regulations were a lot more wrong than right.
The inference of this latest conclusion is that at least during the last 3/4 of 2021 there should have been no lockdown measures, because the only real difference between early and late outbreaks was that the UK population was mostly vaccinated start of 21. If thats what made the difference, then restrictions should have ended nearly a year before they did.
On the other hand, if vaccination did not make much difference, then there wasnt anything much else which happened, so lockdown never should have been imposed. There is good evidence Hastings had covid in 2019 and worked through its outbreak without reallly noticing. The implication of this is the natural death rate of covid has always been much the same as we experienced with all restrictions in place. Nowhere on earth has it been worse whatever anyone did or didnt do. The penny should have dropped by now that covid was from the outset grossly over estimated as a danger, while our ability to mitigate it by interventions was too.
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Post by leftieliberal on May 29, 2022 14:57:47 GMT
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Covid
Jun 24, 2022 15:15:46 GMT
Post by leftieliberal on Jun 24, 2022 15:15:46 GMT
Van Tam saying that he doesn't wear a face mask any more: www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-61922698I think it is actually more difficult for the general public to make the judgement than it is for experts like Van Tam and the Government Health Watchdog should still be giving advice. |
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pjw1961
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Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
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Post by pjw1961 on Aug 25, 2022 17:11:28 GMT
My reflections on working in an acute hospital during Wave 1 Covid:
Part 1 - The good
Medical treatment advances
The rapid development of vaccines against COVID has been rightly lauded. What I don’t think has had sufficient praise is the equally rapid learning in how best to treat the disease.
In wave 1 (roughly February to April 2020) no one (world-wide) knew the best way to treat COVID patients. It was a new disease, related to but different from other respiratory diseases. Many mistakes were made initially, and with the advantage of later knowledge some patients received sub-optimal treatment, which contributed to a higher proportionate death rate in wave 1. This was, of course, unavoidable and nobody’s fault.
What is remarkable is that when wave 2 arrived, only six months later, the lessons had been absorbed and treatment and outcomes revolutionised. Many less people needed to go to intensive care and overall interventions were less intrusive, to the benefit of death rates. Wave 2 saw a much higher rate of inflections, but proportionately fewer hospitalisations, intensive care cases and deaths. This was an impressive achievement by the medical and nursing professions internationally.
The overall reaction of staff
I won’t overplay the war analogies, as there is a real shooting one going on in Ukraine; with COVID the only enemy was a virus. However, there were certain parallels in the way that the priorities suddenly changed, with improvisation and reuse of resources (both people and equipment) in ways not previously intended.
For example, one of my colleagues had the task of identifying every nurse who had ever worked in intensive care, regardless of their current role, for potential redeployment. Anaesthetic machines used in surgical theatres were repurposed for use as ventilators. There were many similar examples. On a personal level I halted my previous workload and got involved in the procurement of hardware to support the expansion of intensive care.
The staff, by and large, rose to the challenge and there was a really positive attitude to meeting the changed requirements.
The driver for positive change
Going into ‘crisis’ mode enabled much faster decision making, with the usual governance processes being significantly foreshortened. Most of these ultimately relate to money and finance was – temporarily – not a consideration, although sadly the Government is now trying to claw it back, so we are returned to ‘financial target’ mode and the bureaucracy is back.
Meanwhile, the need to change the way we work opened-up opportunities to implement efficiencies that had been talked of for years but been resisted for various reasons. A good example is remote consultations. With the move to limit the number of people coming into the hospital by cancelling outpatient appointments, these were moved online wherever possible (that approach is not suitable for all conditions).
Clinicians found that their previous concerns with this and the clinical risks they perceived did not materialise in reality, and, post-COVID, many remote consultation clinics have been maintained – saving patients time, cost and effort and improving the efficiency for clinicians who can review many more cases in the same amount of time.
There have been numerous other examples of positive change being enabled that we have sought to embed and retain.
Charity monies
The money raised by the late Captain Sir Tom Moore was in the news a while ago, due to his daughter and son-in-law. As part of the fallout from that some people got excited about “turning the NHS into a charity” and there being a plot to replace government funding. This is nonsense. For one thing, every hospital has always run its own charity and actively sought funds raised by charitable giving. This money is never used to meet basic running costs. It delivers extras over and above the state funded part of care – extra bits of equipment being a typical use. Charitable giving has never got anywhere near providing a tiny fraction of the cost of running a hospital.
In this context the extra charity money raised by all sorts of people (of who Tom Moore was just the one with the highest profile) was a useful extra boost. My hospital spent it’s Tom Moore money on building a memorial garden to the workers from the hospital who died during the pandemic. It’s just outside the building I work in.
Staff welfare and ‘Operation Wingman’
The trust implemented a variety of measures to support the mental and physical wellbeing of staff during the pandemic, which was helpful.
Once feature which was appreciated was ‘Operation Wingman’. With the huge decrease in the number of flights, the airlines had a lot of cabin crew with nothing to do. It was arranged for them to come into hospitals – in uniform – and provide staff for areas where hospital personnel could relax and have a cup of tea and a chat. Both sides appreciated this. I am even aware of some cabin crew who decided on a change of career and took up NHS posts.
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pjw1961
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Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
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Post by pjw1961 on Aug 25, 2022 17:12:56 GMT
Part 2 - The bad Stress and trauma on staff The damage done to staff, some of which is long-term, is very real. ‘Burn-out’ is apparent with many staff considering early retirement and career changes. One example will suffice: In the first wave, nursing students were brought out of college and deployed onto wards. One senior nurse commented that some of them had seen more patients die in a week than she had previously in a twenty-year career. That kind of thing has a psychological impact. The death of colleagues is another factor. The Trust had a number of staff die in service of COVID, and this had an impact on morale. PPE There was a terrible shortage of PPE at the beginning. Obviously the ‘frontline’ was rightly prioritised, but at the beginning it only the frontmost part of the frontline that was properly served – i.e., those working on the COVID ‘red’ wards. Back-office staff were told that we didn’t need PPE as we were not going on wards – but we were mixing with clinicians who had just come off those wards. One result was that all six members of the team I work in caught COVID in the first wave*. Much the same happened with the Corporate Management Team in were in the same position. More serious was that there wasn’t enough PPE for clinicians in non-COVID areas. For example, the nurses on Respiratory Wards – where patients were suffering from other respiratory diseases and prone to cough – had no PPE at all at the start and reached the point where they threatened strike action unless they got some. One of our respiratory consultants, who had full PPE as he went on COVID wards, in an act of commendable leadership refused to wear it on the Respiratory Wards unless the nurses got PPE too. They got their PPE shortly after. The government propaganda, counting bottles of bleach and each glove as a separate item of PPE to bump the numbers up, did not go down well. These issues only applied in wave 1. By wave 2 everyone had the necessary equipment. (*With mixed results. One of my colleagues didn’t even notice and only found out in May 2020 when all the staff were tested for antibodies. I felt ill for a few days but didn’t realise it was COVID as my symptoms didn’t match those being cited at the time. In contrast, another colleague had long-covid and was negatively affected for about nine months.) Nightingale hospitals The Nightingale Hospitals were wonderful photo-ops for Ministers and had things taken a different turn might have been needed, but as it was proved to be white elephants (for example the London one cost £57m but treated only 54 patients – half of whom died). www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/2021/04/nhs-nightingale-hospitals-worth-moneyHowever, that was not the problem that affected me at the time. Given that the vast bulk of patients were treated by the existing NHS general hospitals, the creation of the Nightingales represented a significant diversion of resources of equipment and staff away from where it was needed and would be used immediately, into creating a new facility the use of which was always going to be provisional. My task at the time was to source ventilators, spares and related supplies, which were in world-wide demand and had to be imported in many cases from abroad, notably from Germany. It was a real struggle to get hold of the necessary equipment and I was less than delighted when the government gave priority to the Nightingales and the supplies were diverted there (to sit virtually unused as it turned out). This was not a good use of resources. Backlogs With the advantage of hindsight, it was recognised as a mistake to cancel all elective surgery, outpatients’ appointments and non-urgent medical treatment in the first wave. This was a part of the pandemic plans that were in place pre-COVID and so was activated accordingly. However, it was not repeated in the second wave as it was found possible to maintain a reduced level of service and in the third wave nothing was shut down at all. This was much preferable, as the first wave cancellations have created backlogs of treatment that will take years to clear and service pressures going forward. Of course, this is partly because even in normal non-pandemic times the NHS ‘runs hot’ using 95%+ of capacity to deliver care, whereas ideally you would run at 85-90% capacity to retain some redundancy in the system for emergencies. This is a consequence of current capacity falling short of growing demand. The NHS volunteer force The government put out a call for people to volunteer to help the NHS and many did. There was nothing useful for these people to do and I am sure many felt let down as a result. This call should not have been made without a plan for how they would be used, or indeed whether they were needed at all. Idiots Sundry assorted conspiracy theorists and proponents of ‘individual freedom’ (i.e., ‘sod the sick and vulnerable, I’m going to do what I want’) crept out from under their slimy rocks to cause trouble, harassing staff and roaming the hospital trying to prove it was all a hoax. Putting it mildly, this was not helpful. |
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pjw1961
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Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
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Post by pjw1961 on Aug 25, 2022 17:14:11 GMT
Part 3 - The odd
Food deliveries and other freebies
There was a period in wave one where we were the recipients of large qualities of hot and cold food provided by restaurants, fast food outlets and supermarkets. This ranged from fish and chips and pizzas to cakes and chocolate bars. As one of our consultants observed, we were actually the lucky ones, in paid employment and no danger of being furloughed or laid off. We were the last group that needed donations of free food and it would have been better directed to those in financial difficulty, the homeless, etc.
In a similar vein, Amazon supplied every staff member with a typical Amazon cardboard package with contained a rather eccentric selection of stuff (some gelatine sweets, Nivea skin cream, one of those ‘mindfulness’ colouring books, etc.).
The great Easter egg mountain
This was a weird one. Apparently, Easter 2020 was a washout for Easter egg sales, with most of the shops shut, so somebody decided to send them to hospitals for the benefit of staff. There is a large room on the ground floor of the building I work in which was empty at the time and ended up full of pallets of Easter eggs – literally hundreds of them. And that was only the hospital I work in; the other two in our group received similar quantities.
Resources (back-office, not front line) then had to be put into doing something with them. A lot were parcelled out to other organisations and frontline staff were also given priority, and yet even as a back-office staff member I still ended up with about a dozen. It took a couple of months to fully clear the room.
Free haircuts
It sounds silly, but the fact that all the hairdressers were closed was an issue. One of our Healthcare support workers was a former hairdresser and free haircuts were offered to all staff. Very quick and efficient they were too.
Clapping
The ‘Clap for Carers’ – boy, was this divisive. There was certainly some staff that appreciated the gesture and saw it as recognition for their work. However, there were at least as many and possibly more who got quite wound up about it. Partly this was the feeling that people didn’t really understand what was going on in hospitals and quite how grim it was for those on the frontline, who were witnessing mass deaths (see above). For others it was seeing Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock, etc. joining in, when debacles like lack of PPE were occurring (again see above). What those people wanted was tangible action not clapping.
In between those two extremes were the majority of staff who shrugged their shoulders and got on with things, recognising it was more about letting the public feel they were doing something helpful, than anything to do with front line workers as such.
It is fair to add that when later the government announced its paltry pay rise for the NHS, or when Sajid Javid as Health Secretary attacked GPs as lazy, the politicians clapping thing seemed all the more galling in retrospect.
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Aug 25, 2022 18:31:20 GMT
pjw1961Really appreciated you taking the time to write this
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Covid
Aug 31, 2022 20:32:14 GMT
Post by Mercian as guest on Aug 31, 2022 20:32:14 GMT
Why doesn't Danny post his incessant ramblings on this thread?
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Post by alec on Sept 19, 2022 17:26:27 GMT
Some analysis on excess deaths from Singapore, from their health ministry, summarised in this thread -
In a nutshell, they found that the remaining excess deaths after confirmed covid are accounted for is largely explained by people dying of other diseases within 90 days of a conformed covid infection. Analysis shows that among those without a covid infection, there was no excess deaths.
More evidence from other countries, where health systems were not overwhelmed, that covid exerts a substantial risk well after initial recovery.
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Post by alec on Sept 20, 2022 16:56:41 GMT
Latest data on the link between covid and Alzheimers - content.iospress.com/download/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad220717?id=journal-of-alzheimers-disease%2Fjad220717This matched cohort study found that Alzheimers diagnoses increased markedly in those over 65 year olds who had covid within the previous year while there was no increase in those who were not infected. In terms of numbers, 7 in a 1000 post covid against 5 in a 1000 for the uninfected, which means a pretty staggering 40% increase in incidence. Importantly, the research cannot say that covid is causing Alzeimers, rather than simply accelerating it, but either way, this could mean a massive wave of dementia released by covid. |
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Post by alec on Sept 20, 2022 21:40:34 GMT
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Post by alec on Sept 21, 2022 21:19:25 GMT
Possibly linked to yesterday's post about the marked increased risk of Alzheimers after covid, this fascinating paper adds some understanding - www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(22)00411-3This research found that injections of vaccines into the muscle doesn't produce mucosal membrane antibodies, and that even when there are high levels of antibodies in the bloodstream, infection in mucosal tissue is able to infect the brain. This is adding to a wealth of research that is now highlighting the risk of brain impairment from covid, and this particular study may shed light on why even mild bouts of covid that appear to produce no serious symptoms have been shown to correlate with brain shrinkage and degenerative conditions. I've now come across several virologists who are suggesting that we need to stop thinking of covid as a respiratory disease, and much more of a novel, multi-system infection. Meanwhile, the Zoe app is reporting a sharp upturn in cases.This has not always been a reliable indicator of case levels but has a good track record of picking up trends, and with a 42% increase in cases in the last three weeks and a noticeable growth in the last four days, the expert predictions of a substantial wave towards the end of October still seem valid. Excess deaths running at 7% above normal for the last available week also. Tough winter coming. |
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Covid
Sept 22, 2022 7:49:31 GMT
lens likes this
Post by alec on Sept 22, 2022 7:49:31 GMT
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Post by alec on Sept 22, 2022 21:53:02 GMT
Latest hospital admissions data here -
Not a great picture, with a sharp increase this week.
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Post by alec on Sept 23, 2022 6:18:15 GMT
More analysis here on the hospital stats -
Notably large increases in primary diagnoses (from, rather than with covid) in some areas, and also noteworthy that the trough was not as low as the previous trough. With growth rates this fast this early, this suggests that Karl Friston's modeling of an end October/early November cases peak that is bigger than anything we've seen before might indeed be on the cards.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2022 20:26:58 GMT
I can offer some anecdotal evidence of increasing cases in the south west. After 2 1/2 years of dodging the COVID bullet, I woke up this morning feeling decidedly secondhand. Slight cough but generally manflu symptoms. This seemed very unusual for me, so I took a test and am positive. Fingers crossed that it remains pretty mild.
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Covid
Sept 23, 2022 22:46:03 GMT
Post by lens on Sept 23, 2022 22:46:03 GMT
Increasing rates at present seem to be linked to the schools going back - www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-63009813 . Surprise, surprise. I suppose the question is how much that will feed back into the older population, with children passing it on to adult family members. Hopefully, the imminent roll out of the booster programme to the older and most at risk (mine is booked for two weeks time) will mean that even if any rise does go further than school age, it won't lead to much extra severe illness or death? I know quite a few people who have had it in the last few weeks, but in every case it's varied between a moderate cold and mild flu. And that's before the booster programme. |
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Covid
Sept 23, 2022 23:07:28 GMT
Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2022 23:07:28 GMT
Increasing rates at present seem to be linked to the schools going back - www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-63009813 . Surprise, surprise. I suppose the question is how much that will feed back into the older population, with children passing it on to adult family members. Hopefully, the imminent roll out of the booster programme to the older and most at risk (mine is booked for two weeks time) will mean that even if any rise does go further than school age, it won't lead to much extra severe illness or death? I know quite a few people who have had it in the last few weeks, but in every case it's varied between a moderate cold and mild flu. And that's before the booster programme. I had my fourth jab last week. I've felt worse as the day has gone by and I haven't felt this rotten for several years. |
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Covid
Sept 24, 2022 1:03:39 GMT
Post by ptarmigan on Sept 24, 2022 1:03:39 GMT
Hope you feel better soon @isa
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Covid
Sept 24, 2022 7:30:05 GMT
Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2022 7:30:05 GMT
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Post by alec on Sept 24, 2022 14:49:55 GMT
@isa - sorry to hear of your diagnosis. I hope it's mild and with no lasting symptoms.
******
For those interested, this provides links to a couple of new studies into post covid type 1 diabetes in children -
So two more studies which appear to confirm the established pattern that post infection in under 18s, including mild infection, the risk of type 1 diagnosis roughly doubles.
In the UK, we have not provided boosters to children, declined to follow most other advanced countries in vaccinating the under 5s, and the JCVI has recently withdrawn vaccination for those newly turned 5, so in effect leaving children unprotected.
Interestingly enough, this series of tweets from Prof Topol also references the fact that it took around 15 years for society to realise that the 1918 flu epidemic caused elevated risks of Parkinson's disease in survivors. With covid, it is already known that even mild infection leads to elevated risks for a slew of conditions after just 2 years, so goodness knows what we will be finding in 15 years time.
It's genuinely scary, if folks can be bothered to actually follow the science, and the only bits of good news I can give are that firstly, the risks of additional conditions appears to be increased by each subsequent infection, so if you've caught it once, fingers crossed and avoid further infection if you possibly can, and second, that it is actually remarkably easy to avoid spreading infection, if only governments and populations start to take the risks seriously and adopt a few very minor adaptations to the way we go about our business.
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Covid
Sept 24, 2022 20:18:59 GMT
Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2022 20:18:59 GMT
@isa - sorry to hear of your diagnosis. I hope it's mild and with no lasting symptoms. ****** Thanks alec. Unfortunately no noticeable improvement thus far. Fingers crossed. |
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Covid
Sept 24, 2022 21:20:29 GMT
Post by alec on Sept 24, 2022 21:20:29 GMT
@isa - I think rest, even once you think you've recovered, seems to be one good option.
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Post by alec on Sept 25, 2022 8:15:54 GMT
Link here with a neat summary of immunity issues and covid -
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