Covid

[alec]

I've not seen this before, but this is a group calculating real time infections in England, and while I haven't trawled through the methodology, it seems to produce some highly credible estimates, based on their hospital admissions projections - www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/blog/latest-real-time-tracking-of-covid-19-6/

They suggest cases are increasing rapidly at present.

[lens]

Dec 13, 2022 22:22:59 GMT alec said:

They suggest cases are increasing rapidly at present.

ONS don't seem to indicate the same.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19/latestinsights

A week or so delayed, true, but based on proper data and I think up to about the same point as your link? A slow uptick at the moment in cases, but way down on the previous peak due to schools returning in September. I find it surprising it's not higher, given the time of year and weather etc More significant maybe are the graphs for ICU admissions and deaths due to Covid which neglecting the noise are pretty flat, declining somewhat for months.

It seems every month there are dire predictions of armageddon just around the corner - I certainly remember seeing such predicting the health service being overwhelmed in mid-November. Yet now in this report: "We estimate the daily number of new diagnoses in hospitals to have hit a low on the 19th November." !! Yet do you ever see the people who made the previous report ever apologising for being so wrong?

The ONS graphs for cases and admissions show what roughly approximates to a decaying sine wave for the last few months. Hardly surprising therefore you see "an increase in the rate of new cases" at a certain portion of each cycle. So far it's led to a peak (smaller each time) then a rapid decrease. Shall we wait and see what the situation is in a months time? And if it just turns out to be a rise followed by a rapid decrease, would you care to write to them asking for an apology this time?

Also now worth noting the bar chart further down that ONS page, asking what most concerns people in the UK. "Covid" is now bottom of the list, dwarfed by cost of living, climate change and the economy.

[Danny]

Dec 13, 2022 22:22:59 GMT alec said:

I've not seen this before, but this is a group calculating real time infections in England, and while I haven't trawled through the methodology, it seems to produce some highly credible estimates, based on their hospital admissions projections - www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/blog/latest-real-time-tracking-of-covid-19-6/

They suggest cases are increasing rapidly at present.

That depends on what you mean by rapidly. It seems to be on another rising jag, but case level of apparently this same strain have oscillated up and down four times now with a periodicity of once every three months. That roughly coincides with the time for circulating antibody levels to fall off after an infection or vaccination. It suggests people are not becoming fully immune to this strain as they did to previous strains (which is why they died out). Both the first waves folowed a typical pattern for any infection, big surge of cases then collapse for a long time. Now we are getting smaller repeted peaks but not herd immunity.

Some possible explanations:
1) is this behaviour a historical first and covid is a very strange virus? (unlikely)
2) is this behaviour unknown to medicine but actually always happened. We are seeing it now not because its unusual lots of people are repeatedly infected, but because through testing we are recording mild cases which people would have just ignored in the past? (side effect of the new capacity for mass testing)
3) We did something different during this epidemic which prevented herd immunity and has caused the disease to become a permanent circulating infection instead. The obvious reason would be the program of mass repeat vaccinations with the same experimental vaccine. (that one is a bit concerning)

[Danny]

Dec 14, 2022 17:41:20 GMT lens said:

More significant maybe are the graphs for ICU admissions and deaths due to Covid which neglecting the noise are pretty flat, declining somewhat for months.

The oxford forecast also notes a decline in recorded cases coincided with a change in testing regime. Which is by now a very old problem in trying to look at trends based upon official government stats.

It seems every month there are dire predictions of armageddon just around the corner - I certainly remember seeing such predicting the health service being overwhelmed in mid-November.

I am sure you remember that in April 2020 we implemented a lockdown for fear the NHS would be overwhelmed. Every experience of these predictions since then has shown them to be gross overestimates. This calls into question whether lockdown was ever needed at all, evey other wave has ended by itself far short of estimates.

The oxford data has two graphs, one of hospital admissions and one of cases. This comfortingly shows cases now higher than in April 2020 whereas admissions are lower. The problem though is this is based upon their own estimates of 2020 cases, whereas the survey done by zoe at that time suggested cases then higher than they are now. If you substitute that case data, then franky hospitalisations are moving in lockstep with community cases and always have.

Yet do you ever see the people who made the previous report ever apologising for being so wrong?

To admit they were wrong would be to undermine the rationale for ever having imposed lockdown. No one is willing to admit it wasnt needed.

Also now worth noting the bar chart further down that ONS page, asking what most concerns people in the UK. "Covid" is now bottom of the list, dwarfed by cost of living, climate change and the economy.

The current world recession is a consequence of covid lockdowns. Who wants to admit they caused this?

[alec]

Danny - I'm not sure what you are on about here, and to be honest, I don't think you do either.


Coronaviruses are typified by rapidly waning immunity, so there is no surprise that we are getting repeat waves. There was some hope that vaccines could engender neutralizing immunity, but that was false optimism, and the fact that coronavirus vaccine efficacy wanes over time should come as no surprise. You were calling for herd immunity via infection way back, I was saying that idea was rubbish and that we need to "protect the vaccine", and lo, everything you said would happen didn't, and everything I predicted did. So why the surprise?


You also don't seem to understand immune imprinting, as I think you are talking of this in terms of the vaccination program creating an imprinting problem. Had you read the papers I've been posting these last few years, you will have seen the ones where they describe immune imprinting from natural infection. It's as common as vaccine induced imprinting. It's what you risk when you allow rampant infections of a novel virus to spread without restriction.


Again, it's exactly what I predicted in March 2020. The vaccines have been excellent, but we haven't supported them sufficiently with NPIs.

[Danny]

Dec 15, 2022 10:03:45 GMT alec said:

Coronaviruses are typified by rapidly waning immunity, so there is no surprise that we are getting repeat waves.

I honestly havn't seen any evidence immunity to corona viruses declines faster than to anything else. There are two aspects to this, stored templates to create new antibodies fast if a reinfection happens. Currently circulating antibody. Circulating antibody always declines once the pathogen is disposed of, and I dont see this has been claimed faster for covid. Stored templates are only as effective as the pathogen is unchanging, the quicker it changes then the faster they stop working or become less effective. Of these two circulating antibody prevents rapid reinfections and with covid fades after a couple of months, while the other gives lasting protection, which it has been claimed lasts for years even with covid, at least against serious illness.  Not forgetting that every time your body is challenged by a pathogen trying to reinfect, it has to get in and form a bridgehead before immunity swings into action. So there is a problem of the definition of being immune, you have to be reinfected before you can throw it off even if without noticing.

 Stored immunity is long lasting in a healthy human and I havnt seen that it isnt for covid (See below discussing covid mutations).   Therein lies the rub- because those dying from covid are pretty universally less than healthy and mostly pretty unhealthy. Covid is a dangerous illness to those already ill.  However also there are issues due to how it invades the body avoiding the boodstream on the way in.  This causes a delay between it arriving and infecting cells, especially in the airways, before the immune system has a chance to see it.  You have mentiond nasal vaccines, which might enable a quicker response but that remains to be seen.

You were calling for herd immunity via infection way back, I was saying that idea was rubbish and that we need to "protect the vaccine", and lo, everything you said would happen didn't, and everything I predicted did. So why the surprise?

As i recall, many experts were watching closely to see if herd immunity to covid developed, and it did. The early strains of covid have now disappeared which would only happen if we were now immune to them. Problem is covid mutated and so we have to develop herd  immunity to each new strain. My argument at the time was that covid continued to spread despite lockdowns and so there wasnt any point to lockdowns. That was the conclusion from the first two waves. We didnt slow it down or reduce the total of seriously ill. My fundamental principle which still seems correct is that healthy people under about 70 are safe from covid and so can simply and safely get on with life. Moreover, if they do get immune through infection then they quckly stop circulation of a strain within society, which prevents spread to the higher risk.

The pattern we have seen is first two waves where the population became infected and developed herd immunity fast. For the latest omicron wave, it never has. The open question is whether this is essentially the natural progression as we defeat a new virus, but we have never been able to track it in such detail before, or whether we have changed the nature of the epidemic and not necessarily in a good way.

You also don't seem to understand immune imprinting, as I think you are talking of this in terms of the vaccination program creating an imprinting problem. Had you read the papers I've been posting these last few years, you will have seen the ones where they describe immune imprinting from natural infection. It's as common as vaccine induced imprinting. It's what you risk when you allow rampant infections of a novel virus to spread without restriction.

Imprinting will happen if its does at all from the strongest of stimulus to the immune system. The vaccines are designed to give the maximum stimulus which a body can tolerate. And then this is repeated identically. Thats the strongest imprint anyone is likely to get my any means. Possibly the strongest imprint humans have ever had throughout history. We have created a population of people imprinted on the vaccine (if its a thing at all).

The vaccines have been excellent, but we haven't supported them sufficiently with NPIs.

They really havnt. If smallpox vaccines worked as badly as covid it would never have been eradicated.

[alec]

Danny - "As i recall, many experts were watching closely to see if herd immunity to covid developed, and it did. The early strains of covid have now disappeared which would only happen if we were now immune to them."

Panto season. Oh No They Haven't!

You're clueless, I'm afraid. No, they haven't disappeared, oddly enough. Genomic surveillance is still picking up past strains, which are persisting for various reasons. The numbers are down, now because we are herd immune to them (doh!) but because they are outcompeted by later variants.

One of the things that worries virologists is the risk of throwback variants, with some specific recombinant variants of Omicron/Delta combinations deemed likely to happen (already observed in small numbers) and likely to be highly immune evasive and dangerous if they start to spread widely.

I do sometimes wish I could inhabit your world of simplistic certainties, where all I had to do was believe something, rather than actually learn about the evidence. It would be so much easier.

[Danny]

Dec 15, 2022 15:42:58 GMT alec said:

You're clueless, I'm afraid. No, they haven't disappeared, oddly enough. Genomic surveillance is still picking up past strains, which are persisting for various reasons. The numbers are down, now because we are herd immune to them (doh!) but because they are outcompeted by later variants.

Which reasons are those then? Hard to say who is right unless you explain what exceptional reasons are keping them in circulation. Herd immunity is a theoretical concept and will never in reality be perfect, so literally no disease is going to have no new cases unless it is extinct. But are the original cases producing any outbreak we would be concerned about by themselves? No.

One of the things that worries virologists is the risk of throwback variants, with some specific recombinant variants of Omicron/Delta combinations deemed likely to happen (already observed in small numbers) and likely to be highly immune evasive and dangerous if they start to spread widely.

Not sure what you mean by 'throwbacks'? If you mean covid can mutate back to how it was before, then of course it can. If you take the view that actually covid isnt one strain at all but more a cloud of strains which mutate into each other all the time including within every patient, then its also true to say the old strains never went away, they simply fell back to a minor role which cannot now take off because of the aforementioned herd immunity.

Having said those points, there seems to be a misunderstanding here how diseases spread. Suppose there are two people, one with original covid and one with omicron. The two are identical and have identical lifestyles with identical chances to meet new people. So each breathes on ten new people who are therefore exposed to covid. If those new people have no immunity, then each will catch it, and so both strains have spread to ten new people.

Now suppose omicron can spread faster, somehow it infects ten people whereas the old strain infects five. Then we get ten omicron cases and 5 old strain. In another generation we get 100 omicron and 25 old, then 1000 omicron and 75 new. My point is that although omicron spreads faster, the old strain keeps spreading too. The old strain will continue growing in numbers until it is finally prevented by herd immunity. The whole point of a new strain is that it evades immunity to an old one. It would seem likely that that is a two way process, if a second strain is sufficiently different to evade immunity to the first, then the first can evade immunity to the second. So had they arrived in the opposite order, omicron would not have generated immunity to original strain either (though not certain). But whether they interact or not, the first strain will continue to grow in numbers until herd immunity to it has been achieved, thats the definition of herd immunity.

If two illnesses happen to be present at the same time, then both will spread until herd immunity is achieved to each separately. If two strains of covid are present at the same time, then the situation is not much different to two separate diseases at once. One strain could be out competed because another spreads faster so the proportion of cases of the fast spreader increases, but the absolute number of cases of the slow strain will also keep on growing. Its a tortoise and hare race, but both grow until herd immunity stops them individually. So, if we are not seeing growth in numbers of original strain now, then we have achieved herd immunity to it.

I do sometimes wish I could inhabit your world of simplistic certainties, where all I had to do was believe something, rather than actually learn about the evidence. It would be so much easier.

Its true most people seem to simply believe what they are told by official sources. Neither of us is in that bracket. Examples of misleading offiicial sources  include what was said by politicians about the benefit of brexit, and what was said by those same politicians about the benefit of lockdown.

[lens]

Dec 16, 2022 7:04:48 GMT Danny said:

Its true most people seem to simply believe what they are told by official sources. Neither of us is in that bracket. Examples of misleading offiicial sources..........

As a very general point, and without remotely agreeing with the extreme conspiracy theories (no, Covid is not spread by 5G, and vaccines do not implant chips for mind control), there is no doubt that "for the greater societal good" official sources will effectively lie to the disadvantage of individuals.

On a historical basis, when faced with the start of the V1 campaign, the British authorities used German agents who had been turned to feed false information back to Berlin, suggesting that the weapons were tending to overshoot the target. (Assumed to be the centre of London.) The result was the Germans shortening the intended range with the result that on average they would now tend to fall short (in less populated areas). The likelihood is that *overall* lives were saved. But if they had known, it's debateable the inhabitants of such as Bromley would have approved........

I believe with Covid advertising the government went over a red line with some adverts on at least one point. It was to do with LFT testing, and at one point they were telling people that for their own benefit, they THEMSELVES should regularly test. Which was a lie, and I believe they had to stop using such wording. For any individual, by the time a test is positive it's too late for them in health respects (they've already got it!!), and a false positive for a self employed person can be devastating in financial terms.

To encourage testing at that time for the general good may well have been valid and justified - your test protecting others - but I believe the ASA took the view such didn't excuse the claim that testing would be directly beneficial to the person concerned.

[ptarmigan]

Just recovering from another bout of covid at the moment, my second brush with it having had it for the first time in February. Pretty standard cold symptoms really. Felt a bit rubbish at the start of the week but mostly back to normal now so I'm glad I seem to have escaped relatively lightly again. 

Last week I went to a work bash thinking, after a couple of abnormal years, I'd try to enjoy the festive season in more typical fashion this year. That'll teach me, eh...

[leftieliberal]

New Devi Sridhar article on Covid in China: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/21/china-covid-surge-vaccination-data-infected

[alec]

ptarmigan - good to hear you are recovering, but without wanting to put a damper on things, do give yourself a bit of a quiet time, just in case. Long covid does appear to be triggered by activity after apparent recovery, and avoidig over exertion too soon after infection appears to be one way to reduce the risk.

[leftieliberal]

I'm going to post this here, rather than in the main thread, because it is health-related (just not covid-related)

www.kcl.ac.uk/news/fatty-liver-disease-endangers-brain-health

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

Loss of smell in long Covid patients caused by immune response in nasal tissue cells


“The loss of smell suffered by people with long Covid is caused by an immune response affecting nerve cells in nasal tissue, scientists have said.

The researchers who conducted the study found that there was a decline in the number of these nerve cells in such patients.

The study, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, was led by researchers at Duke University in the US and involved colleagues from Harvard University and the University of California, San Diego.

…

The single-cell analyses revealed that there was a widespread infiltration of T-cells, a type of white blood cell used by the immune system, engaged in an inflammatory response in the nasal tissue.

Researchers found this immune response from these T-cells continued even when there were no detectable levels of Covid in the patient.

They also found there were fewer of the nerve cells that help detect smell in these patients, which might be the result of damage to the nasal tissue caused by the immune response.

Dr Bradley Goldstein, an associate professor in neurobiology at Duke, who was a senior author for the study, said researchers had been encouraged to find that nerve cells appeared to maintain some ability to repair themselves.”

Telegraph

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

Dec 22, 2022 11:36:33 GMT leftieliberal said:

I'm going to post this here, rather than in the main thread, because it is health-related (just not covid-related)

www.kcl.ac.uk/news/fatty-liver-disease-endangers-brain-health

That’s a good spot Lefty. Maybe we might try a general health thread?

[alec]

As promised, those links -

www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(22)00469-8/fulltext

The potentially alarming findings here are that covid suppresses the p3 gene expression, which plays an important role in mopping up cancer cells. It shares this ability with HIV. It's unclear how persistent this effect is, but even for the 6 months found here, that could be sufficient to allow cancerous growth.

This isn't that surprising. We've just found out that the 'harmless' Epstein Barr virus is linked to the later development of MS, and these findings raise the possibility that we'll see a future epidemic of cancers if we persist in allowing repeat covid infection, much as we are starting to see elevated levels of heart disease and diabetes following infection.

But more positively, it doesn't have to be like this - www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm

In this study, any mask reduces risk of infection, if worn consistently, but the FFP2/N95 masks are better, showing here at 83% efficacy. It's actually likely to be far higher than this, as the study didn't exclude those mask wearing in public positive cases that had been infected at home, when presumably unmasked, so in reality the real work protection is likely to be well above the 83% mark.

Masks work, even when used by the non-expert general public, so there are options if you want to protect your p3 gene expression.

Stay safe, and happy Christmas.

[lens]

Dec 24, 2022 11:53:41 GMT alec said:

But more positively, it doesn't have to be like this - www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm

In this study, any mask reduces risk of infection, if worn consistently, but the FFP2/N95 masks are better, showing here at 83% efficacy

Masks work, even when used by the non-expert general public, so there are options if you want to protect your p3 gene expression.

Sounds very exact, doesn't it, 83% efficacy? But before anyone rushes out to buy their FFP2 mask they should think about the limitations of the study, and bear in mind "correlation or causation"? At least read the penultimate paragraph, which starts: "The findings in this report are subject to at least eight limitations. First, this study did not account for other preventive behaviors that could influence risk for acquiring infection........."

The most obvious is whether the lower Covid rate is actually due to the mask wearing....... or whether the individual is more risk adverse, more limiting of contacts, hardly goes out, is more anxious - and it's because of all such that they wear a mask in the first place!? And it's primarily because of such factors that the risk of infection is reduced?

It's worth reading all 8 of the limitations the study self identifies, but another obvious one is that to an individual it may not be too onerous to wear a FFP2 mask during one or two half hour visits to the supermarket every week - but be a very different matter for a member of staff working five eight hour shifts there weekly. So giving a correlation between non mask wearing and much longer exposure in a public place. Is it the mask that makes the difference - or spending only an hour per week in the public environment versus 40 hours?

The other factor is that even if accurate, even an FFP2 mask "lowering the odds by 83%" is far from eradicating any infection risk. Being infected *at all* must therefore also be a function of time, so we're back to the argument of delaying cases - not stopping completely. My own experience in public is that of the people I see still wearing masks, about half are worn round the chin, or at least not covering the nose, with frequent touching of the mask with the hands. So in their case, what's the point? Apart from maybe a psychological comfort blanket.

All that said, then for someone clinically vulnerable, a proper mask when in public probably does make sense - as long as worn to a proper medical standard, and removed in the proper fashion. Together with strict limiting of contacts and minimising being in public places. But it's a far step from that to suggest that masks have much use in general, outside of clinical settings - that was proven by the Scottish experience versus England when the latter dropped any mask mandate and the former didn't.

[alec]

lens - nothing wrong with anything you say there, but worth noting that the 83% calculation is the lowest possible figure, and in reality, it's actually likely to be far higher than that, as every infection picked up at home (when not masking) will reduce the mask efficacy calculation.

But yes, as with all science papers, the authors list the possible confounders. On the point of how people wear masks, in some countries they provide FFP2 masks for free, including for children, and give public information lessons on how to fit and wear them properly.

Meanwhile, on this day in 2021 NHS bed occupancy was 90.6% and dropping like a stone (hit 89% y the 29th) and in 2020 it was at 88.4% on it's way to a similarly timed low of 84%, both years displaying the typical pre-Christmas clear out in readiness for the January surge. This year it's at 96%, heading up.

[lens]

Dec 24, 2022 18:27:01 GMT alec said:

lens - nothing wrong with anything you say there, but worth noting that the 83% calculation is the lowest possible figure, and in reality, it's actually likely to be far higher than that, as every infection picked up at home (when not masking) will reduce the mask efficacy calculation.

I don't see that. Make an assumption that mask efficacy is zero, but mask wearing correlates 100% with the other factors and those figures will still give an 83% for that group. It can't distinguish between the effects of masks and effects of other measures if the correlation was 100%.

There are other confounders that the survey hinted at as well. It relies on test results - could those more likely to wear masks be more likely to get tested in the first place, for example?

All that said, I do believe that in an ideal world, a proper mask, properly used may well bring a benefit. I said previously that the basic mask mandates were pretty stupid - far better a policy of encouragement for those who had a genuine reason to feel vulnerable to wear an FFP2, and forget about the rest. And to wear it according to strict clinical protocols - no reuse, and care to avoid contamination when taking off as well as putting on. But since those who may benefit most are likely to be very elderly, and possibly with dementia, I wonder how effective it would be....?

Dec 24, 2022 18:27:01 GMT alec said:

But yes, as with all science papers, the authors list the possible confounders. On the point of how people wear masks, in some countries they provide FFP2 masks for free, including for children, and give public information lessons on how to fit and wear them properly.

A number of years ago I was sent on a CBR course at Porton Down, including being put (with full respirator) in a gas chamber with CS gas. There were various lectures on how to put on basic protective equipment in the event of a nerve gas incident, and most importantly how to safely take it off afterwards. I reckon I would have been able to survive a real incident if given a minute or two warning to put the equipment on, and could get to an unaffected area within an hour or two. But if the contamination was too severe or widespread, or a second incident (forget about reusing the gear)...... it's goodbye.

OK, that was about such as nerve gas, but to think all that needs to be done to be secure from Covid is to hand out FFP2 masks with public information lessons...... you must have a much higher estimation of the British public than I do. (Very early on, someone I knew in my local supermarket was very worried, and working at the checkout with mask, gloves, the works. In the middle of my shopping she needed to sneeze - so slipped her mask down and sneezed onto her hand before continuing. No more comment.)

The beauty of vaccination is that after a little needle prick, the recipient doesn't need to think any more about it. With a mask it's ongoing. It's totally unrealistic to expect everybody in such as work situations to wear such as FFP2 masks for hour after hour indefinitely - it's a factor that greatly enhanced stress for even front line medical staff at the height of the pandemic. One slight lapse of routine may be all it needs. Which is largely why individual tests re masks show efficacy - real world mass situations such as the England/Scotland mandate differences, don't.

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

Just saw this in the Telegraph:

“A new preprint from Queensland’s Berghofer Institute says Omicron’s BA.5 sub-lineage attacks the brain and “shows increased neurovirulence compared to earlier omicron sub-variants” in mice. It is not yet reproduced in human studies.”

[Danny]

Dec 16, 2022 18:58:58 GMT lens said:

Dec 16, 2022 7:04:48 GMT Danny said:

Its true most people seem to simply believe what they are told by official sources. Neither of us is in that bracket. Examples of misleading offiicial sources..........

As a very general point, and without remotely agreeing with the extreme conspiracy theories (no, Covid is not spread by 5G, and vaccines do not implant chips for mind control), there is no doubt that "for the greater societal good" official sources will effectively lie to the disadvantage of individuals.

Government propaganda was used to try to increase adherence to government regulations, and you give a clear cut example where they were shown to have lied. The bigger problem came because government was faced with a choice, lockdown as chosen by most countries or minimal intervention as chosen by Sweden. Interestingly Sweden's choice came about for technical legal reasons where medical experts made those choices rather than politicians. But once that choice had been made, then the propaganda lies reinforced belief it was the correct choice, whereas it was only at best a balance of probabilities what would be best in the long run. The propaganda made it impossible to reverse the decision when evidence came along it wasnt working. China has just seen the ultimate result of that, where it retained lockdown for longer than anyone else, harder than anyone else, but has finally had to admit the policy has not worked. The population still has to be infected before it can be rid of covid. The consensus this time is that China was wrong to delay ending lockdowns, most other countries didnt have such extreme propaganda and were able to U turn much faster.

[lens]

Dec 30, 2022 8:59:16 GMT Danny said:

Dec 16, 2022 18:58:58 GMT lens said:

As a very general point, and without remotely agreeing with the extreme conspiracy theories (no, Covid is not spread by 5G, and vaccines do not implant chips for mind control), there is no doubt that "for the greater societal good" official sources will effectively lie to the disadvantage of individuals.

Government propaganda was used to try to increase adherence to government regulations, and you give a clear cut example where they were shown to have lied.

Well, careful, Danny. Later I did also say "To encourage testing at that time for the general good may well have been valid and justified - your test protecting others -.......", and it's important to make the distinction between the societal and the personal. On the societal level the testing advice may have been justified as helping to keep cases down - where they crossed a line was stating that one's own testing was directly beneficial to the individual themselves. Which was never the case. If the test was a true positive, the individual was already infected. If it was a false positive it meant unnecessary isolation for the individual, and possibly (unnecessary) financial loss, especially if self employed.

Does it matter? If the message helped on a societal level, does it matter if it disadvantaged some individuals? I'd argue yes, and the very fact this conversation is happening may be an indication. To give another example from the war, the government wished the BBC to take a much less impartial viewpoint in coverage. To their credit, the BBC refused and argued that by reporting bad news when it happened, they were more likely to be seen as credible when reporting good war news and less likely to be just seen as government propaganda.

On a wider point, it's easy to be wise with hindsight. Battling a pandemic has to match freedoms and economic benefit with health issues, and it's likely inevitable that caution will lead to some restrictions being kept longer than with hindsight may have been necessary.

What is necessary is to always keep sight of the endgame. And maintaining closed borders, lockdowns, business closures, eevn mask mandates, is not a viable endgame. The Chinese experience has shown that lockdowns and harsh restrictions can't last for ever - even in a country such as China. And I'll say it again. With hindsight, the most realistic endgame is to delay cases as far as possible until most of the population is well vaccinated, and to effectively do that as quickly as possible. After that most restrictions become largely pointless and at best can only spread the inevitable over a longer period of time at a lower incidence.

New Zealand kept Covid largely out initially, but were somewhat slow to vaccinate, and kept strict restrictions (closed borders) for about 9 months longer. But eventually they had to open, had to accept an uplift in cases, and the inevitable question then has to be why not have opened up 9 months earlier, and saved that period of economic damage? As for China - they may well have kept cases low for a long time by physical measures such as draconian lockdowns, but they squandered that by failing to vaccinate remotely as much as they should, and even then with vaccines which seem very inferior (especially against Omicron) to ones in the West. Then finally are forced to drop nearly all measures suddenly with the predictable result.

[pete]

www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/videos-and-interviews/covid-vaccines-driving-dangerous-variants-immune-suppression-dr-geert-vanden-bossche

(sorry if already posted and I'm not doing a Danny and agreeing with him-found it interesting)

[pete]

Dec 24, 2022 23:25:56 GMT lens said:

Dec 24, 2022 18:27:01 GMT alec said:

lens - nothing wrong with anything you say there, but worth noting that the 83% calculation is the lowest possible figure, and in reality, it's actually likely to be far higher than that, as every infection picked up at home (when not masking) will reduce the mask efficacy calculation.

I don't see that. Make an assumption that mask efficacy is zero, but mask wearing correlates 100% with the other factors and those figures will still give an 83% for that group. It can't distinguish between the effects of masks and effects of other measures if the correlation was 100%.

There are other confounders that the survey hinted at as well. It relies on test results - could those more likely to wear masks be more likely to get tested in the first place, for example?

All that said, I do believe that in an ideal world, a proper mask, properly used may well bring a benefit. I said previously that the basic mask mandates were pretty stupid - far better a policy of encouragement for those who had a genuine reason to feel vulnerable to wear an FFP2, and forget about the rest. And to wear it according to strict clinical protocols - no reuse, and care to avoid contamination when taking off as well as putting on. But since those who may benefit most are likely to be very elderly, and possibly with dementia, I wonder how effective it would be....?

Dec 24, 2022 18:27:01 GMT alec said:

But yes, as with all science papers, the authors list the possible confounders. On the point of how people wear masks, in some countries they provide FFP2 masks for free, including for children, and give public information lessons on how to fit and wear them properly.

A number of years ago I was sent on a CBR course at Porton Down, including being put (with full respirator) in a gas chamber with CS gas. There were various lectures on how to put on basic protective equipment in the event of a nerve gas incident, and most importantly how to safely take it off afterwards. I reckon I would have been able to survive a real incident if given a minute or two warning to put the equipment on, and could get to an unaffected area within an hour or two. But if the contamination was too severe or widespread, or a second incident (forget about reusing the gear)...... it's goodbye.

OK, that was about such as nerve gas, but to think all that needs to be done to be secure from Covid is to hand out FFP2 masks with public information lessons...... you must have a much higher estimation of the British public than I do. (Very early on, someone I knew in my local supermarket was very worried, and working at the checkout with mask, gloves, the works. In the middle of my shopping she needed to sneeze - so slipped her mask down and sneezed onto her hand before continuing. No more comment.)

The beauty of vaccination is that after a little needle prick, the recipient doesn't need to think any more about it. With a mask it's ongoing. It's totally unrealistic to expect everybody in such as work situations to wear such as FFP2 masks for hour after hour indefinitely - it's a factor that greatly enhanced stress for even front line medical staff at the height of the pandemic. One slight lapse of routine may be all it needs. Which is largely why individual tests re masks show efficacy - real world mass situations such as the England/Scotland mandate differences, don't.

Some good point. Misses viral load though

[pete]

Posted anywhere?
scitechdaily.com/breakthrough-receptor-decoy-drug-neutralizes-covid-19-virus-including-omicron-and-other-variants/

[Danny]

Jan 1, 2023 11:40:43 GMT alec said:

Hastings did have low rates of infection in the initial stages - see here democracy.eastsussex.gov.uk/documents/s32413/Appendix%201%20-%20East%20Sussex%20COVID-19%20Outbreak%20Control%20Plan%20v2.3.pdf but it wasn't alone. At the time of this report (July 2020) there were 6 other Lower Tier Local Authorities with lower infection rates than Hastings, with many other around the same level. The pattern in Hastings was not average, but equally not unusual, and fit exactly within normal variation of pandemics across a diverse geographic region.

I think from memory it was massively below average. I have also pointed out several times the actual lowest levels were around Torridge in Devon. The same logic applies there, that was likely an early infection site too. I seem to remember several local areas around torridge comprised all the lower rates below Hastings at the time I studied this in 2020. I probably even posted that finding with links on UKPR.

If you looked at the cumulative infection or indeed death totals for local authorities, you would see how a place could have low case numbers and then take off as the infection hit that place. Then cases stop again. In Hastings it never hit or rose to the levels typical during an infection wave, orders of magnitude higher than the background level.  There was real clustering of places on total cases as they became infected and a 'state change' so you could see which had it during the period the website covered and which didnt.

East Sussex Council commissioned research from Sussex University into why Hastings was lower in case counts than neighbouring areas. This article summarises the findings - www.sussexlive.co.uk/news/sussex-news/5-reasons-hastings-lowest-coronavirus-4695693

I see the article starts by acknowledging that Hastings rates were the lowest in Sussex. That article is dated Nov 2020, which was just around the time the kent strain hit Hastings in November, rising during the then declared national lockdown. So even as it was being written, the Hastings immunity effect was ending. I recall seeing someone from a local university on TV talking about local case rates, and thought he made several factual mistakes. I even went so far as to email him, never got a reply. I suggested he should use his position to examine death rates through the winter and look for a surge of deaths from pneumonia (ie covid) then. Such figures are not normally published.

To address the reasons they suggest.

1&2) Low rates of travel and low population mobility. At least as described here these sound pretty much the same, people in Hastings dont travel much because Hastings (and Bexhill) is an urban area of about 100,000 surrounded by miles of countryside. I find it interesting that this is being cited as a reason covid would not have entered Hastings, but not mentioned earlier by Lens or yourself as a reason why an outbreak within Hastings would be slow to spread elsewhere in the country and would therefore pass unnoticed, because growth of the disease was geographically limited to just this area. It makes Hastings a microcosm of the Uk and an interesting experimental site. Covid arrived winter 2020, unnoticed, and see what happened? Not much.

Although local recorded cases were relatively few before Nov 2020, that does not mean they did not exist. You may have noticed how nations have been desperate to keep even one infected person from crossing their borders. There were hundreds or thousands of cases of covid in hastings in the period concerned, but the important thing is it never grew into an actual epidemic spike. Its simply wrong to say Hastings didnt get covid because no one infected entered the town. They did enter the town, but Hastings behaved as if it had herd immunity to covid and the infections never took off.

While Hastings is relatively cut off to local travel, it is however a commuter town to London. Hundreds or thousands of people commute to work in London each day. Which did indeed have widespread covid. Again, this is how Hastings was well placed to have been the source infection for London. Winter 2019 a small bubble of local infection too small to cause concern through resulting deaths, but plenty to infect those commuters with covid colds and start spreading via their workplaces in a wholly dispersed manner to colleagues living all across London and other commuter areas. Timing would fit perfectly.

And since this report was written nov 2020, it would be interesting to see what those same people would write now. Once the kent strain arrived it had no difficulty whatsoever entering Hastings and causing the classic spike of infection seen everywhere else. Hastings isolationism as a reason spread didnt happen miraculously vanished just as this article was being written. That really suggests it never existed at all as a means of preventing a wave within Hastings spring 2020.

This is quite important, because it basically says that when strain 1 covid was introduced to the town it failed to take hold. But when Kent strain was introduced, it did. Thats quite a robust medical study experiment right there. Nothing else changed but Hastings was infectable by kent but not original strains.

3)a rapid community response? Are you kidding me? Theres nothing unusual about Hastings, it had no different repsonse to anywhere else in the country! This never worked anywhere else to stop spread, nor in any other country unless it was by massive interventions. Hastings just went on as anywhere else and people were totally bemused how it could be different.

Anyone considering whether any sort of community response could have stopped covid needs to factor in that until lockdown was called we had few restrictions about covid. It spread across most of the south before anyone tried to stop it. So local zeal at such measures could not have prevented it entering Hastings early beause there weren't any anywhwere. By the time lockdown was called most places were already infected (south east england) and it was just a question of watching the seeds grow. Didn't happen in Hastings though. If Hastings didn't have winter covid, then those commuters I mentioned would have been busy bringing it into the town from London.

4)Local staff in care homes. Now thats interesting. They seem to be arguing that because care homes were more likely to have local staff they would not be importing the disease. This seems to treat infected care homes as the real problem in terms of cases and deaths from covid, which is born out by statstics world wide of who and in what situations actually got seriouly ill. Yes, it was already old and sick people who mostly died fom covid. Cutting covid death rates, or indeed worsening them, was all about how you isolated these people. Not what happened to the great majority of the population of approx working age.

 The Swedish authorities issued a report probably about the same sort of time as these about their deaths in the first wave, saying where their policy had failed was not because it didnt have lockdowns but because it did not concentrate enough on protecting care homes from infection. People will recall the NHS sent infected people back into care homes, or refused to remove them, thereby assisting spread within the very high risk group. Such places were denied suplies of PPE. Hastings hospitals had minimal cases of covid, with wards set aside for covid standing empty spring 2020.

So you could argue Hastings NHS werent infecting the high risk the same as happened elsewhere. Except of course that the local staff also wouldnt be catching covid locally and taking it into those same care homes, because there was little covid locally anyway for them to catch. There was however a wave of pneumonia deaths in the winter in care homes, cause unknown. Maybe the local staff introduced it from the then local covid outbreak?


5)High commitment to control measures. "Sally-Ann Hart, MP for Hastings and Rye praised the residents in Hastings for their efforts to control the spread of COVID-19. She said: “I believe the low rates of infection in Hastings are primarily down to the dedication, commitment and determination of local people to follow the guidance, protect the most vulnerable and support each other. " So this is sourced to an opinion expressed by the local MP in response to a question. Would anyone on here seriously take the view of the local MP on the likely outcome of the next election, or would they seek some sort of more robust facts to justify a view? Thats...laughable!

But as per 3 to which this is very similar really, nowhere had measures in place to stop spread as the epidemic was gathering pace. It was already widespread before authorities even realised this. Most likely for the obvious reason that having a cold or flu is not something you normally bother much about and the government has never formaly recognised an illness as being covid unless it has a positive test result. No testing, no covid.

So all in all, perfectly normal in terms of the boundaries of statistical variance,

Er...not at all. And you do not post any statistics anyway.

and with academic studies now identifying the specific reasons.

There is no academic study in the material you post. There is reference to one being commissioned, but the news article doesnt even claim this is the source of its article. Since they cite a statement by the local MP as one of their points, I doubt it is.

The first link you give is to the local authority covid outbreak control plan. It also doesnt seem to mention anything based upon an academic report. For all thats in either of these, the academic might have agreed with me! The academic report might not even have been written by the date of this plan.

No more needs be said.

You just made a post arguing academics had researched the cause of covid not striking Hastings in spring 2020, and then fail to provide any reason sourced to said report or any link to the actual report. If thats how you think a post should be made on a website nominally dedicated to analysing statistical data robustly, then much more needs to be said. You have writen a long post which claims academic support but actually has none. (OK, havnt read all the 80 pages of the LA plan just skimmed it, so please direct me to an actual refernce I have missed.)

I would really like to read that commissioned report of you have an actual link?

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

Study Finds There Are 4 Subtypes of Long COVID
Doctors say this is another step toward figuring out the complicated condition.


“Research has found that long COVID impacts one in five adults under the age of 65, but scientists are still trying to learn more about the condition. Now, a new study has found there are actually four main subtypes of long COVID.

The study, which was published in the journal Nature Medicine, used machine learning to analyze clusters of symptoms in about 35,000 patients with long COVID. (Each patient had at least one lingering symptom after having COVID-19 that lasted between 30 and 180 days after they had the virus.) The researchers used an algorithm that looked at 137 different symptoms, and then classified the patients into four main groups that appeared.

This isn't the first study to try to classify long COVID. One study published last year divided long COVID symptoms into three clusters—cognitive, respiratory, and everything else.

…

The researchers found that long COVID sufferers generally fell into one of the following categories:

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Conditions impacting the cardiac and renal (kidney) systems
Conditions that impact the respiratory system, sleep, and anxiety problems
Conditions of the musculoskeletal and nervous systems
Conditions that impact the digestive and respiratory systems
According to the findings, the subtype impacting cardiac and renal systems was the most common—34% of patients fell into this category. However, 33% of patients fell into the second category, with respiratory symptoms, anxiety, lingering headaches, and insomnia.”

[Danny]

Yesterday I was talking to someone who argued vaccinations have caused a surge of deaths amongst young athletes. It would seem this has become a topical belief, because 'more or less' went into this yesterday too and comprehensively debunked current claims. They said there is a good study based on 40 years data establishing risk anmongst athletes under 35. However nothing establishing risk post covid or post vaccination. Instead various claims seemed to be based upon one very dodgy source which was counting people very much older and with doubtful causes of death as vaccine victims. They ridiculed it by saying 'Pele' was enumerated as one of the vaccine victims. I explained all this to the person concerned.

Now its interesting this belief has become established. However, the post here yesterday about the suspended MP showed he publicised a list of vaccine side effects which was headed by cardiovascular risks. Reported vaccine linked deaths are very rare, and the specific reasons have been investigated, but there is clear truth here, of a coincidence of the type of side effect with the claimed types of death. Its pretty obvious that is why the MP was getting over excited. Its not too much of a stretch to argue vaccination could cause similar longer term problems which would not be immediately apparent. Problem is there doesnt seem much evidence either way. It is a fact the Uk currently has a surge of cardiovascular deaths for unknown reasons. So unlike the young athlete deaths claim, this one is an established fact but mainly a surge of deaths of people around 50-60.

Alec, you believe having covid causes illness and therefore deaths from other causes. The set of people currently catching covid (indeed catching covid all last year) is mostly a subset of the people who have been vaccinated. It is a logical step therefore to argue these people became more susceptible to these diseases because of the vaccination. This is another problem you have to deal with in arguing covid causes susceptibility to other diseases. There are logical grounds to raise concern that the vaccination was the cause, whether either premise is true (that covid causes susceptibility, or vaccination causes susceptibility).

Its an irony that you once used to bang on about immune imprinting post infection causing a susceptibility to variant covid, without noting that the group of people with covid symptoms is by now largely a subset of those who have been vaccinated, so they are more likely to be having such a problem based upon having been repeatedly vaccinated with a massive dose of antigen. The same now applies re noted higher susceptibility to cardiovascular diseases. Thank you for bringing both these things to my attention, but you dont seem to have noticed both phenomena can have this alternative interpretation, that is was the vaccine rather than the infection which caused the problem.

I once had training as a computer programmer. Just this sort of flaw in an argument is how many a program came to grief. You always have to look out for the alternative possibilities, because even if they are very unlikely, what you miss is what will cause the program to fail eventually. It is not outside the bounds of possibility that vaccination has caused a surge in certain long term illness, because I am not aware of any long term study which could detect this. Dont look, dont find. If most people have already been vaccinated, there is no longer a control group to compare with. Nor would the age group now showing excess cardiovascular deaths have been the one chosen to test covid vaccines first or most, new medicines are always tested on young fit volunteers first precisely because they are least likely to have dangerous side effects. By now it is likely all control groups in such trials have been actually vaccinated anyway so there cannot be ongoing data.

This would not be the first time a mass vaccination problem in fact created a wave of disease. That time, it led to lots of new safety regulations about long term trials before a new vaccine could be adopted widely. This time round we ditched the long term trials. You raise the possibility history may have repeated itself, and if thats the case we have not stopped giving these vaccines so it is rather a serious concern. The leading theory at the moment has to be we simply didnt treat these sorts of people because of the epidemic and so more are dying at the moment, but there is no evidence to eliminate vaccines as the cause of the current wave of middle aged cardiovascular deaths.

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

Thought I’d copy a few bits over…

Jan 13, 2023 22:02:00 GMT alec said:

BBC Formula 1 commentator Jennie Gow struck down with a serious stroke two weeks ago. She's only 45. Did she have covid in the last 12 months? If so, is that connected? Does my relatives sudden and unexpected death at 58 from breathing difficulties (suspected blood clot on the lung) have any relevance to previous viral infection?

You know Alec, I nearly posted something for you a few days ago related to that. A sportsman who had been having difficulties following a bout of Covid. It was suspected he had long Covid. Nothing seemed to work. Then another doctor thought it might be that Covid had caused a blood clot.

“George Garton interview: 'Doctors said I had long Covid – it was a blood clot'
Exclusive: England hopeful nearly quit over misdiagnosed illness before chance meeting at a party led to full recovery”

“The story began back in January when, following a second bout of relatively mild Covid, Garton was selected in the England T20I squad for the series in Barbados and received his first international cap.

A holiday to the United States followed but then, upon returning to England and resuming training in Hove, it became obvious that something serious was wrong. The harder he worked, the worse he felt. Just getting up to make a coffee left him short of breath. The three-minute walk from his home to the County Ground would feel like running a half-marathon. His heart-rate was surging and an attempt simply to bowl one over prompted a virtual panic attack.

“It was like running into a brick wall - my body started shaking quite violently and I thought I’d pass out,” says Garton, who was promptly taken for a series of tests with a cardiologist that included an MRI scan and a 48-hour ESG.”

…

Nothing was found, leading medics towards what Garton saw as an unsatisfactory hypothesis. Long Covid. But what does that actually mean?

…

“It was later in the summer, however, that he attended his grandmother’s 90th birthday party. She had spent more than 40 years working as a volunteer at the Royal Sussex and among those who had joined the celebration was Dr Galloway, who she had known since he was a trainee doctor. “I spoke to him about how I was feeling, going through every single event and, at the end, he said, ‘I don’t think you had long Covid’.”

Garton says that Dr Galloway thought it particularly unusual that he should have apparently recovered from both bouts of Covid before the wider symptoms of fatigue kicked in. A professor of haematology was also consulted and the strong belief now is that Garton actually had a blood clot on his lung. “Two risk factors for a blood clot are a lot of flying and, apparently, Covid can give you sticky blood,” says Garton, who says that the new diagnosis fits every symptom, especially a typical six-month period before even a fit, young body clears a lung clot and you again begin to feel normal.”

Telegraph

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

Jan 14, 2023 0:27:30 GMT leftieliberal said:

Jan 13, 2023 22:38:26 GMT c-a-r-f-r-e-w said:

You know Alec, I nearly posted something for you a few days ago related to that. A sportsman who had been having difficulties following a bout of Covid. It was suspected he had long Covid. Nothing seemed to work. Then another doctor thought it might be that Covid had caused a blood clot.

“George Garton interview: 'Doctors said I had long Covid – it was a blood clot'
Exclusive: England hopeful nearly quit over misdiagnosed illness before chance meeting at a party led to full recovery”

It is also worth mentioning that pulmonary embolisms (the medical name for a blood clot in the lung) are the second most common cause of death in cancer patients after the cancer itself. Like covid, cancers also give you sticky blood. See www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/dvt/materials/cancer-and-blood-clots.html

my partner’s uncle - who has cancer - was in hospital with one recently. Scary stuff. 

We talked about clotting and Covid early in the pandemic on the old board, particularly micro-clotting:

www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.120.317447

More recently it’s suggested that micro-clotting might play a role in long-Covid 

www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02286-7

Jan 14, 2023 6:54:54 GMT alec said:

Many medical experts I read state that we should not view covid as a respiratory illness, but instead a vascular disease. It bears no similarities to the common cold, nor flu

Indeed Alec, and one of the links I posted last night wasca reprise of research I talked about on the old board, when wondering about the causes of micro-clotting, and the idea that Covid attacks the “endothelial” cells, cells that line the blood vessels.

Why might Covid attack the endothelial cells? Because of the number of ACE2 receptors again. Though I think Covid might be more than just a vascular disease.

More recent research has suggested not only that this may carry injury to other organs, but also in targeting the endothelial cells, Covid affects healing as well since the endothelial cells play a role in that.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8771611/

Jan 14, 2023 17:12:18 GMT Danny said:

Jan 14, 2023 14:51:13 GMT c-a-r-f-r-e-w said:

If it’s the case that natural infection gives more immunity than vaccination, then an interesting potential side effect of the approach of reducing transmission, is that even where it doesn’t stop infection, it may reduce the viral load. So you may still get infected, and get improved protection, but without as much damage. Of course, if you get a lot more protection from a heavier viral load that could be a bit of a dilemma. But there’s the question: do low viral loads acquired naturally still provide more protection than vaccines? 

So what about Alec's immune imprinting on your first severe exposure? Makes sense, a big initial response would create a strong stored pattern, and in the future while it might not be a perfect fit for a mutated virus, its still partially effective. Enough so that you dont really need to create a new pattern. And then along comes another mutated version, but you did not update when the previous one came along. Now you suddenly have no stored immunty which works and you are back to the start where wholly umprotected.

yes, any infection results in damage. But thats how our protection system works, cells are considered expendable. To identify an invader we look for damaged cells and track the pattern of the invader. We cannot create a new defence unless there is first damage.  The problem with Alec's plan is that he seeks to prevent infections and prevent damage, so then we can never build up immunity naturally. What would happen naturally is we keep getting new infections each time a virus has changed just enough to give it an opening. We specifically aim to get reinfected often enough that while the virus has an opening, we still have overwhelming reserves to stop it after it has arrived, and thereby neutralise its latest change before it can go on to accumulate many changes which all at once could be overwhelming.

Incidentally, even the vaccines cause cell death. Thats one of the reasons for injecting them directly into the flesh of a handy muscle where the damage wont be too important. Thats why it hurts afterwards. Thats why accientally injecting into a blood vessel so the vaccine spreads around the body is more dangerous.

I first posted about imprinting on the old board when I posted about the actuaries’ report on the Spanish Flu epidemic…

www.actuaries.org.uk/system/files/field/document/IFoASeptember2018_GWoo.pdf

…and how imprinting might explain the curious age-distribution of Spanish Flu. 

It’s possible that frequent infection by recent new strains keeps the immune system updated with infections that aren’t that wildly different to what the immune system is used to.

As opposed to having a big gap between infections when the virus has mutated more and might present the immune system with something more unfamiliar and hence potentially more dangerous. 

I’ve not found much to back it up, in the case of Covid yet, But then there are now, what, 300,000 papers on Covid and counting? A trial even for the experts to keep up. 

However yes, this is a crucial feature of the debate. Do you gain from repeated infections, or are they more debilitating than many may realise, even if mild? I tend toward the latter camp but I don’t know there’s anything out there that necessarily nails it yet.