Covid

[Danny]

Sept 22, 2023 21:15:20 GMT @fecklessmiser said:

Sept 22, 2023 21:11:15 GMT mercian said:

You've obviously missed Danny 's posts. Have you blocked him. 😁

I have already established that the virus entered Hastings via the French in 1066. I don’t think anyone has come up with evidence to dispute that fact.

I have several times outlined the case why I believe covid arrived in Hastings about November 2019. I am interested to see your own list as to why you believe it was here in 1066?

Just as a reminder, useful evidence might include stuff like,

1) About Nov 2019 I had a disease with covid type symptoms including loss of taste and smell, which zoe later concluded was 95% certain of identifying covid. The older you were, the worse it was.
2) The index case of this outbreak was someone arriving from Wuhan in China.
3) A couple of linked cases I know of reached hospital, one died, but neither had an identifiable causal infection. Of course not, if it was covid.
4) The location of this infection was in a workplace of some 500 people, so would have dispersed rapidly all over the area.
5) Local hospices did indeed report a wave of deaths with a covid type disease.
6) There was a wave of illness in local schools.
7) Come spring 2020 Hastings did NOT catch covid when the rest of the country did. The most likely explanation is because it had covid already before. This is a recognised academic method of identifying the origin point of an epidemic, look for where there are no cases in the general outbreak.
8) Come autumn 2020 and the new kent strain, Hastings proved just as susceptible as anywhere else. The lack of spring cases wasnt because of a magic forcefield, or because Hastings people just never went out. It was a one off, again suggesting it was simply because it had already come and gone.
9) Examining the national cases data during each wave, the outbreak always started somewhere and if you followed its evolution there, before national lockdowns were imposed, the disease would rise and then fall back way short of official claims, despite there being no intervention. Hastings was not the only place which had covid but it self limited.
10) I never had any vaccinations. I have never been as ill since with anything as I was Nov 2019. I did however test positive for covid spring 22. It was a very mild cold/flu which wouldnt have really bothered anyone. However it did test positive. If that was the first time I ever had covid, I cannot understand what the fuss is because its so mild, especially compared to whatever I had back in nov 2019, which was the worst such disease I have ever had. On the other hand, if that was covid back in 2019, then it explains exactly why I never had a serious case of it since.
11) In 21 I did a covid antibody test, which gave an intermediate result. If I remember correctly they count a '1' or above as definitely having been exposed. 0.1 as probably been exposed. I scored 0.03. If I had covid in 2019, then given the limited data available on how fast antibody decays away, an actual result around 0.03 would not have been unreasonable.

I think that making jokes about 1066 is not very helpful in what is a very serious debate. If this is correct, and frankly I think it is proven by the above beyond reasonable doubt (it certainly convinces people i talk to, quite a few of whom have similar experiences to myself), then it implies covid was always a self limiting disease which would have ended all by itself with similar outcomes to what happened with all the lockdowns etc in place. This is indeed precisely what happened in sweden where they did not lock down. Lockdowns were one of the most expensive mistakes by world leaders in human history.

It should also be noted that the justifications for this policy was made in the absence of the detailed knowledge we have now about how virulent covid really is, and who is at risk. It assumed the worst covid could possibly be, and what might be done to mitigate it. The assumptions about how bad it could be were gross exaggerations, although such exaggeration continued long into the outbreak when they were patently and obviously wrong. Had we instead taken the mildest possible scenario, then its obvious we would have hardly done anything. What happened stemmed from the early figures coming from China which were grossly misleading because they only accounted for cases known to medical authorities. The statistics were based on all the people who had bad outcomes, and completely failed to count all the ones who just took a week off sick. This kind of miss-counting still bedevils some views on covid.

[alec]

lens - much of the commentary on covid hospital numbers skirts past some obvious and scientifically accepted points in favour of downplaying the issue.

The biggest failure of understanding is that many people are likely to present with symptoms that are not listed as being caused or linked to covid, because covid is still being treated as a respiratory disease. So my close friend admitted to hospital with sepsis earlier this year, who then tested +ve for covid, was deemed to have been admitted primarily for sepsis. But the team treating him said they were "almost certain" that his covid had caused the sepsis, which would have killed him had he got to hospital twelve hours later. The link between covid and sepsis is now well known, but there are many cases like this, and literally dozens of conditions with a similar etiology as regards causation and diagnosis with covid.

The second big issue is the established fact that covid worsens other conditions. Average hospital stays are 1 - 1.5 days longer if the patient has covid, regardless of whether they were primarily admitted for acute covid or the finding was 'incidental'.

We keep going round the houses on this, but covid is known to cause a whole host of other health conditions, and is 99.9% certain to be the cause of the surge in deaths seen in every country since covid was given free rein. Officially last year covid killed more than HIV and malaria combined, but unofficially, using excess deaths, it could be ten times that total. In the UK, that translates into hundreds of deaths a week, if we use excess deaths as a measure of covids broader health impacts.

Nothing really controversial in that analysis either.

[Danny]

Sept 24, 2023 17:37:55 GMT lens said:

And worth looking at the graph ("weekly count of all patients in English hospitals") to get some perspective of where we are now compared to 2020/21. Also worth noting how no less than two/thirds of those in hospital were only found to have Covid after being "admitted for another reason."

The question of how many people dying from covid actually caught it in hospital (or other care setting) has always been rather embarassing for medical services.

Sept 24, 2023 18:54:32 GMT alec said:

The second big issue is the established fact that covid worsens other conditions. Average hospital stays are 1 - 1.5 days longer if the patient has covid, regardless of whether they were primarily admitted for acute covid or the finding was 'incidental'.

Doesnt surprise me in the least that catching covid makes a pre existing illness worse. I mean, obviously. But as I said, that just makes it all the worse how many people already admitted to hospital catch covid there.

I have two relevant anecdotes. One person I know who was admitted to hospital with the symptoms of covid end of 2019 and nearly died. The hospital never could identify exactly what they had. But the same person was back in hospital for somethng else in 21 or so, when the hospital was stuffed with covid. They were testing everyone daily, because people came in negative and shortly fell positive. Which very much illustrated the impossibility of preventing spread even in a hospital were staff were trying and presumably given the best advice. But also is another brick in my pile of evidence that we had covid back in 2019. The amount of immunity you develop depends on how severe the infection was. In this case the person nearly died from it but did indeed eventually survive. I suspect that by the end they had very good immunity, and so were able to resist the new strains better than most.

Another person was also in hospital at a similar time, went in with one thing, caught covid, happily was only annoying, but reported the hospital was full of it.

Although lots of people were testing positive, thats not at all to say they were severly ill with it. Just like the general situation now, but it has ALWAYS been the situation that young people have not been dangerously affected by covid, and young means under 50, arguably under 60.

[alec]

This shows how the excess deaths are having real world effects - insurancenewsnet.com/innarticle/insurance-industry-coalition-forms-non-profit-to-study-excess-mortality?fbclid=IwAR2S_NvT0Zyw76fWPRsDZkn2gGACv-16lr3FzWYdWld87exRWl0C81tJOkI_aem_ASwSeHt2zCVTNBectn3necvwq-H4NA9F_9jSCXuBFUwEpfz_WJtooc7b0X49SGMH2Wo

[Danny]

Sept 24, 2023 21:23:47 GMT alec said:

This shows how the excess deaths are having real world effects - insurancenewsnet.com/innarticle/insurance-industry-coalition-forms-non-profit-to-study-excess-mortality?fbclid=IwAR2S_NvT0Zyw76fWPRsDZkn2gGACv-16lr3FzWYdWld87exRWl0C81tJOkI_aem_ASwSeHt2zCVTNBectn3necvwq-H4NA9F_9jSCXuBFUwEpfz_WJtooc7b0X49SGMH2Wo

You post a link to an insurance industry news blog from April?

It opens with "A coalition of insurance industry and healthcare leaders have formed a non-profit organization to help global insurers screen, test, and triage members to combat the baffling rise in excess mortality."

Which doesnt exactly make sense. What does he mean by 'a baffling rise in excess mortality'? Excess mortality is mortality greater than expected. What he seems to mean is simply a rise in mortality, not excess mortality. Excess mortality can only be determined by reference to some sort of past benchmark, if mortality itself is rising then that isnt an 'excess mortality'.

Actual mortality corrected for age changes year by year. It has of late been increasing, and was increasing before covid. It also rather depends where you are talking about. In the Uk it has been rising, and is probably due to increasing underfunding of the NHS.

Its not difficult, conservative government underfunding of the NHS (and social care) has killed people. Poor performance of the economy under con has likely also contributed to early deaths. Behind this lies the increasing numbers of old people, who are by far the most likely to die.

I have yet to see any analysis posted by yourself which actually seeks to quantify any excess of deaths once changes in population age are taken into account. I have mentioned this before, 'sage standardised' figures being bandied about without any explanation. 'More or Less' went into this once and concluded the aging population very nicely explained the increasing death rate in the UK.

[alec]

Danny - "What he seems to mean is simply a rise in mortality, not excess mortality. Excess mortality can only be determined by reference to some sort of past benchmark, if mortality itself is rising then that isnt an 'excess mortality'."

That is an utterly stupid thing to write, particularly so had you read the article, which actually defines excess deaths: "Excess mortality, defined as more deaths than normally expected..".

As I've explained very many times now, actuaries are extremely good at calculating excess deaths, using a well established method of age standardised death rates, so the expected deaths for any given population can be accurately calculated to reflect the changing age structure for that population. Excess deaths are deaths above that level, and it really isn't a hard concept to grasp, unless you are being willfully stupid.

For the record, using this well established method, the excess deaths total since the pandemic started is around 27m, and many people are alarmed by the fact that excess deaths continue to grow, where is all previous pandemics by this stage they have been negative.

[Danny]

Sept 25, 2023 6:43:43 GMT alec said:

As I've explained very many times now, actuaries are extremely good at calculating excess deaths, using a well established method of age standardised death rates, so the expected deaths for any given population can be accurately calculated to reflect the changing age structure for that population. Excess deaths are deaths above that level, and it really isn't a hard concept to grasp, unless you are being willfully stupid.

You have indeed repeated this same statement many times now. Unfortunately never explaining what this process really is. Some research made plain to me that 'age standardisation' means different things to different people. So technically and mathematically, what does it mean to you?

You quote the article definition, "Excess mortality, defined as more deaths than normally expected.." . But that is meaningless too! How is this magical 'normal' arived at? life expectancy has changed over the last hundred years during which it has been fairly well recorded. No doubt throughout history. On the whole upwards, but for example with clear falls just in the last few years of the conservative government, with the deterioration coinciding exactly with their taking office and reducing NHS funding (and of course funding of many other things which contribute to survival). The trend is clear, reductions at the end of the previous con administration, imrovements during lab, reductions again under con. Some data was posted on this website making this clear.

I saw some interesting data, in fact it was probably part of something linked by you, which showed death rates had been rising steadily before covid. Covid has been here officially now for more than three years, getting on for four if you count from late 2019. Thats four years of predicted rise in annual death rate which must be taken into account before claiming covid has caused any such now. And then we get to the problem of how much covid has diverted NHS resources away from treating illness, simply reduced the efficiency of its services because it engaged so much in things like lockdown. Or buying vaccines for people for whom the expert advice was it gave them a negligible benefit. Or sending everyone home and telling them not to work to pay the nations bills, leading to more cuts now.

The reason medics in general and the NHS particularly are not bothering about special covid measures is that its just not serious enough. Their goal is to prioritise resources to do the most good, and that isnt by trying to eradicate covid.

Lockdown against covid was the same as running HS2 through tunnels, or banning land based wind turbines. It was harmful to the nation but at least perceived as giving political advantage to the minority supported government.

[alec]

Danny - "You have indeed repeated this same statement many times now. Unfortunately never explaining what this process really is. Some research made plain to me that 'age standardisation' means different things to different people. So technically and mathematically, what does it mean to you?"

You've either got severe demantia or you are deliberately trying to come across as a trolling twat. I've answered this question dozens of times.

Go look at the Continuous Mortality Investigation website and click through to find their statement on the methodology, which will give you a standard method for assessing excess deaths. 'Age standardisation' doesn't mean different things to different people. It just means 'age standardisation'. The only possible differences will be in the range of ages within each category selected, but the method section explains that.

I don't believe yu are really a complete simpleton, so I'm assuming your efforts to pretend you are are merely part of your trolling persona.

Edit: " On the whole upwards, but for example with clear falls just in the last few years of the conservative government, with the deterioration coinciding exactly with their taking office and reducing NHS funding.."

No, this isn't true. There was one year of falling LE, in 2018 I think, and then it started rising again, albeit slower than before. Covid is the main factor driving the fall.

[lens]

Sept 25, 2023 6:43:43 GMT alec said:

Danny - "What he seems to mean is simply a rise in mortality, not excess mortality. Excess mortality can only be determined by reference to some sort of past benchmark, if mortality itself is rising then that isnt an 'excess mortality'."

That is an utterly stupid thing to write, particularly so had you read the article, which actually defines excess deaths: "Excess mortality, defined as more deaths than normally expected..".

As I've explained very many times now, actuaries are extremely good at calculating excess deaths, using a well established method of age standardised death rates, so the expected deaths for any given population can be accurately calculated to reflect the changing age structure for that population. Excess deaths are deaths above that level, ............

I actually think here Danny makes a very good point. The whole concept of "excess" relies on defining a "normal" level - but that level is far from constant over time. An actuary in 1850 would be using very different figures to today.

It's also worth looking at what is meant by "life expectancy", and the answer isn't as simple as it might appear. (See www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/articles/mortalityinenglandandwales/pastandprojectedtrendsinaveragelifespan) 

What should be most obvious is that the most common figure for life expectancy has gone up substantially from the mid 1800's to the present day - but it's highly skewed by changes in infant and childhood deaths. The most elderly are living somewhat longer - but most of the effect is due to the vast reduction in childhood deaths altering the average. Over the last 150 years it seems to have been very easy to reduce the number of deaths per 100,000 in childhood - far less easy to extend the lifespan of the very oldest. As the link puts it: "Modal age at death remained steady during this period, indicating that lifespans of adults were not increasing in length. Given life expectancy was increasing, this implies that the number of deaths at young ages was falling and that the measure was becoming less skewed." The figures 6 show this very well.

What should be evident is that the charts *can only use figures from the past*, even if they try to predict future trends. They try to give an average life expectation for a child born today - but it can only be a guess, even if based on statistical trends. An unforeseen event (massive plague? or alternatively a wonder drug to make living 120 commonplace?) - a black swan - would render their figures widely wrong. This is no surprise to actuaries, and even they have been caught out to an extent in recent decades in relation to pensions. (One reason for the widespread closure of final salary, and even some less generous schemes in the last few decades.)

What is also obvious is that (figure 4) the really big drop in infant and child mortality per 100,000 occured between about 1900 and the 1950's, presumably due to a combination of nutrition, sanitation, improved medicine, and safety standards. After that, the figure is at a level that further improvements become a law of diminishing returns, it's got down to such a level. Hence childhood death rates can no longer influence average life expectancy post about 1950 in the way they could historically. Is it therefore really a surprise that life expectancy figures have come up against a bit of a brick wall? Post 1950, improved treatments in such as heart and cancer treatments have led to an individual maybe dying at 80 instead of 60, but it's difficult to see the trend being able to be extrapolated in the way it has been in the past.

Covid and 2020/1 certainly saw a glitch in the graphs (as did the world wars and Spanish flu in particular) but it's early days to draw too many conclusions from the last couple of years. Theories abound, and whilst alec may well prefer ones relating to Covid, others are around it being more down to statistics dropping off the scale due to time. It's now 70 years since the end of World War 2 and the medical advances of the immediate post war era, so the argument goes that the great majority alive today have benefitted from such advances in medicine. Comparable to a drop in inflation statistics being less due to falling or stable prices than a previous price rise falling out of the time band! Other theories include higher rates of youth deaths due to such as increased drug abuse, and we've already seen how the younger the person is, the more they affect the average.

Personally, I'm inclined to believe a combination of factors, but mostly that most of the low hanging medical and environmental fruit has already been picked. The link (figure 6) talks about "rectangularising" the graph, which translates into more and more people living into their early 90's (to an extent which would seem impossible 50-100 years ago) - but very very few living much beyond 100.

[alec]

lens - your post is pretty much entirely wrong I'm afraid.

Life expectancy is a bit of a red herring when it comes to excess deaths, because excess deaths are calculated on the age structure of the existing population.

It's also a truism that the excess deaths number is generally negative, because people are living longer. It's also true that excess deaths _always_ turn negative after a standard infectious disease pandemic, because vulnerable people tend to die off and leave a period of lower mortality.

The current pattern cannot be explained by any other factors than covid. That's why globally it correlates with transmission levels, even post vaccination. It fits precisely with the observed evidence of biomarkers post covid, and the very strong correlations between mortality in the year following covid infection.

It is obvious, but equally obvious are the determined efforts many people are going to to try to deny the evidence. I believe that there will eventually be a broad acceptance of this, because the data is so strong and the clinical pathways known. I would suggest it's better to get on the right side of the science sooner, rather than later.

[Danny]

Sept 26, 2023 8:23:08 GMT alec said:

lens - your post is pretty much entirely wrong I'm afraid.

Life expectancy is a bit of a red herring when it comes to excess deaths, because excess deaths are calculated on the age structure of the existing population.

It's also a truism that the excess deaths number is generally negative, because people are living longer. It's also true that excess deaths _always_ turn negative after a standard infectious disease pandemic, because vulnerable people tend to die off and leave a period of lower mortality.

The current pattern cannot be explained by any other factors than covid.

Well obviously the arrival of covid cause the disruption we have seen, but unfortunately two things happened. The effects and consequences of the disease covid. And the effects and consequences of human response to covid. My contention is that the human response has led to ongoing higher death rates now.

After each covid wave there was a measurable shortfall of deaths but it only lasted a few months. The issue however is that what we did disrupted society and in particular general care so much that it increased the numbers dying for all sorts of causes. In the UK there is falling real NHS spending meaning people dying faster. In the example I mentioned of whatever third world country it was, people are still dying from poverty exacerbated by lockdown. Not to say that lockdown induced poverty isnt killing people in the Uk too, because it is.

That's why globally it correlates with transmission levels, even post vaccination. It fits precisely with the observed evidence of biomarkers post covid, and the very strong correlations between mortality in the year following covid infection.

Not exactly sure what you are trying to say, but covid only killed people already sick (including debilitated by old age). Obviously there is a correlation between groups who have recorded a lot of covid and excess deaths now, because this is the same group susceptible to additional death from any cause.

Old people die...old people get bad covid....therefore covid is responsible for all death? No.

[alec]

Danny - "My contention is that the human response has led to ongoing higher death rates now."

There will be some impact, for sure, but it appears minor compared to the known direct effects of the disease. We know this for many reasons. For example, excess deaths match covid case numbers very closely. We also have clear medical evidence that if you have had covid, you are at a substantially elevated risk of contracting a wide range of illnesses, and your all cause mortality risk over the next twelve months doubles. This holds across the age range and is independent of any comorbidities. If the excess deaths were only cause by the response to covid, which everyone endured, then we wouldn't see such a clear relationship between mortality and covid infection.

"Not exactly sure what you are trying to say, but covid only killed people already sick (including debilitated by old age)."

Again, this is just not true. It is true to say that the elderly and sick had a higher death rate than other cohorts, but one of the striking facts about the excess deaths tally is that the biggest proportionate increases are in the young with no comorbidities. These are the groups that are seeing the highest excess death rates. This also helps frame an argument over health service capacity constraints. Young people are far less likely to require health treatments, so will be far less impacted by any service pressure caused by pandemic measures, yet these are the ones with the highest proportionate excess deaths. That is unlikely to be caused by delays etc.

There is no viable way to deny that covid is causing much higher mortality across the age spectrum than has so far been officially recognised, but that doesn't mean that there aren't other factors also at play. It's just that these are minor compared to covid.

[Danny]

Sept 26, 2023 9:10:56 GMT alec said:

Danny - "My contention is that the human response has led to ongoing higher death rates now."

There will be some impact, for sure, but it appears minor compared to the known direct effects of the disease. We know this for many reasons. For example, excess deaths match covid case numbers very closely.

So does lockdown and all the interventions. As well to say lockdown caused this rise in deaths, because it correlates perfectly with the rise and continuing deaths, remembering the NHS is still disrupted by covid precautions and measures introduced during covid (like far fewer personal GP visits) which have not been reversed. In some ways covid was used as an excuse to introduce cost cutting/service cutting measures which remain.

There are obvious reasons why the disruption of normal NHS services would be expected to cause a longer term rise in mortality from all sorts of diseases whose treatment was delayed. And then add in the fact that demand on the NHS is rising at something like 2% a year but funding is not rising to match. In fact what with current inflation its probably falling badly behind even maintaining current real terms funding. This has been going on throughout covid, so three years worth by now, or in effect a 6% smaller NHS. Its hard to say how that would translate in higher mortality, but obviously it would.

And by the way, some of the things which happened during lockdown were very foolish indeed and might have been expected to increase the death rate.  For example, the mass crowding in supermarkets before it began as peopole stocked up. This could have been designed to spead covid from the young most likely to have it at that time, to the old who dont often get out. But they were shoulder to shoulder in rammed supermarkets.  Such a massive contrast to what we told to do one week later with barely anyone allowed in the supermarket at the same time! If the later was genuinely effective in stopping spread, then what was happening one week before must have been expected to make serious cases soar.

Then we refused PPE supplies to care homes, the biggest single source of covid deaths. Instead we has young safe people wearing masks in general society! !!!

We also have clear medical evidence that if you have had covid, you are at a substantially elevated risk of contracting a wide range of illnesses,

Unfortunately, we do not. We have a correlation between having had covid and having a higher chance of other illness. Trouble is for you, that doesnt prove covid caused the higher risk, because it could be instead these people caught covid because they already had a higher risk of illness in general. So catching covid didnt make them worse (or no worse than any disease does), but rather this acted as a lab test for identifying people especially susceptible to illness. They caught covid badly because they were susceptible.

"Not exactly sure what you are trying to say, but covid only killed people already sick (including debilitated by old age)."

Again, this is just not true. It is true to say that the elderly and sick had a higher death rate than other cohorts, but one of the striking facts about the excess deaths tally is that the biggest proportionate increases are in the young with no comorbidities.

That may be true, but you were still more likely to die in a traffic accident. By normal standards these numbers of deaths are considered negligible.  

You are missing the fundamental point here, and seem to be doing so deliberately.  Everyone dies. Every action we take carries risk of death. In society we seek to minimise these risks but they are always there. In general minimising risk is expensive, and its true in recent decades we have been willing to spend more to reduce those risks. But the fundamental calculation remains the same, we need to do various things and want to do various things, which must continue. We are not willing to eliminate all risk because it would cause society to grind to a halt. It would become self defeating because if society halts, everyone dies anyway.  So what we do is find a balance of improving safety where we can, but only within strict cost limits.   Covid amongst truly young is negligible. amongst those say 25-60 it becomes an increasing concern with age, but so do all diseases. Its not different to all the rest meriting special treatment. Covid has behaved as predicted, like all new diseases, big surge of cases which then fades to background.

The real issue here is that waht we did was an experimental approach, trying to halt the disease with locdkown and vaccines. This FAILED!  Ok, we can see why people chose to try that approach, but what we need to do now is accept it failed, and we now know why it failed. And not repeat the mistake of using that approach again.

[alec]

Danny - "Unfortunately, we do not."

Yes we do.

"Trouble is for you, that doesnt prove covid caused the higher risk, because it could be instead these people caught covid because they already had a higher risk of illness in general."

No it's not.

We have multiple longitudinal studies (before and after long term studies) that have data from patients before they caught covid which then compare the physiological changes in those people who have had the disease, compared to those who haven't, and where there was no difference in the two cohorts pre infection.

You're just plain wrong on this. It's what happens when you never actually read the science - you just carry on imagining things, blissfully unaware of what we actually know.

[leftieliberal]

alec  Long COVID patients are much more likely to have multiple organ abnormalities
 theconversation.com/long-covid-patients-are-much-more-likely-to-have-multiple-organ-abnormalities-214224

I’m the lead investigator on an ongoing study called C-More which looks at the long-term harms caused by COVID. Our latest findings, published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, show that nearly a third of people who were severely ill with COVID have multiple organ abnormalities on MRI five months after they were discharged from hospital. This is based on a sample of 259 people who were hospitalised with COVID and 52 in the control group who did not catch COVID.

MRI scans revealed that people with long COVID were 14 times more likely to have lung abnormalities than people who never had the disease, three times more likely to have brain abnormalities and two times more likely to have kidney abnormalities. The extent of MRI abnormalities was linked to the severity of their COVID, their age and whether or not they had other diseases.

It's good to see the research scientists themselves writing popular articles about long Covid.

[lens]

leftieliberal - To play devil's advocate, your link does admit to one issue with the study, namely:

"Pre-COVID MRI scans from patients were not available, making definitive conclusions about the link between COVID and the organ changes difficult."

Which brings up the old query of cause or correlation. Is it a simple case of Covid having an especially bad effect in some people - or some people having pre-existing conditions (even ones they may not be aware of) which somehow exacerbated the effects of a Covid infection? For that matter, what about correlation with vaccination status? We know vaccination is not 100% effective, but even if you still get it, is it likely to be rendered mild enough to make such abnormalities unlikely?

And what also does seem to be lacking is any quantitative sense. It talks about changes showing up on MRI scans - but not how relevant they are to a persons long term health. If an MRI scan shows an abnormality, but it causes no discernable health disadvantage in the long term, does it matter?

Likewise any sense of just how big a problem this is in relation to the population as a whole. No illness is good, but where does this sit quantitatively with all the other health problems affecting populations? I was quite surprised to see a recent BBC report - www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-66963982 - and in particular : "scientists estimate that last winter in England, flu still caused more than 14 thousand excess deaths and Covid caused more than ten thousand."

Which helps put matters in perspective. Especially if compared to such as cancer, heart etc deaths and illness. For myself, I fully intend to have covid and flu injections within the next month, but other than that don't intend to worry about such unduly.

[leftieliberal]

Oct 3, 2023 0:02:12 GMT lens said:

leftieliberal - To play devil's advocate, your link does admit to one issue with the study, namely:

"Pre-COVID MRI scans from patients were not available, making definitive conclusions about the link between COVID and the organ changes difficult."

Which brings up the old query of cause or correlation. Is it a simple case of Covid having an especially bad effect in some people - or some people having pre-existing conditions (even ones they may not be aware of) which somehow exacerbated the effects of a Covid infection? For that matter, what about correlation with vaccination status? We know vaccination is not 100% effective, but even if you still get it, is it likely to be rendered mild enough to make such abnormalities unlikely?

And what also does seem to be lacking is any quantitative sense. It talks about changes showing up on MRI scans - but not how relevant they are to a persons long term health. If an MRI scan shows an abnormality, but it causes no discernable health disadvantage in the long term, does it matter?

Likewise any sense of just how big a problem this is in relation to the population as a whole. No illness is good, but where does this sit quantitatively with all the other health problems affecting populations? I was quite surprised to see a recent BBC report - www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-66963982 - and in particular : "scientists estimate that last winter in England, flu still caused more than 14 thousand excess deaths and Covid caused more than ten thousand."

Which helps put matters in perspective. Especially if compared to such as cancer, heart etc deaths and illness. For myself, I fully intend to have covid and flu injections within the next month, but other than that don't intend to worry about such unduly.

As only a small proportion of the population have MRI scans, you might be lucky and find someone in the sample with a previous scan but it won't be enough people to be significant.

I tend to stand somewhere between you and alec . I'm not phobic about covid like he is but, unlike influenza, covid is a new disease so we don't know how many deaths it will be recognised as a cause of in, say, 50 years time. That's a good reason for applying the Precautionary Principle. Influenza existed before the 1918-19 Spanish flu outbreak, but that variant killed more people than WW1.

[alec]

lens - " To play devil's advocate, your link does admit to one issue with the study, namely:"

There are several other studies (posted here) which have before and after scans, and the results are the same. One found that 60% of a small group (50 or so) 11 year old children had sub-clinical (eg no apparent symptoms) left ventricular heart abnormalities after 'mild' or even asymptomatic covid. Before having covid, the numbers in the cohort having this condition were zero. The condition in adults is taken as a trigger to start long term treatments to prevent coronaries.

We have all the data. The arguments are somewhat academic. It is established that covid damages multiple organ systems. The severity and longevity of these impacts is not yet clear. No one - absolutely no one - is able to state with any honesty or certainty what the impacts of 10 covid infections will be, nor whether today's children will reach 50 if they are repeatedly exposed to covid. We just don't know yet.

[alec]

lens and leftieliberal - I think you two exchanged posts on the lack of accuracy of lft tests a while back? I'm afraid I can't post the study here as I'm struggling on a dodgy connection, but there has been some very recent data that both backs up and contradicts your views that they aren't very good.

The LFT tests have a low sensitivity to infections in the first few days, but the study found that from day 3 onwards they were pretty good at picking up infections (90% or so, I think). That fits with the findings of a rising viral load over the first few days of infection.

Several agencies in various countries now advise testing of exposed individuals with two or three tests spread at 48hr intervals, but while that would be good for the individual to know, it's less helpful in terms of rapid isolation of the infected as soon after infection as possible.

I think that this is one area where governments took their eye off the ball. Developing rapid tests is seen in general terms as a really important aspect of health care development, but after the initial success of the lfts little attention was given to developing and improving this technology.

[lens]

Oct 4, 2023 16:26:21 GMT alec said:

lens and leftieliberal - I think you two exchanged posts on the lack of accuracy of lft tests a while back? I'm afraid I can't post the study here as I'm struggling on a dodgy connection, but there has been some very recent data that both backs up and contradicts your views that they aren't very good.

The LFT tests have a low sensitivity to infections in the first few days, but the study found that from day 3 onwards they were pretty good at picking up infections (90% or so, I think). That fits with the findings of a rising viral load over the first few days of infection.

Several agencies in various countries now advise testing of exposed individuals with two or three tests spread at 48hr intervals, but while that would be good for the individual to know, it's less helpful in terms of rapid isolation of the infected as soon after infection as possible.

I think that this is one area where governments took their eye off the ball. Developing rapid tests is seen in general terms as a really important aspect of health care development, but after the initial success of the lfts little attention was given to developing and improving this technology.

It may sound pedantic, but my view would be more along the lines that in general they were money wasted, rather than "not very good". To be more precise, they correctly identified the presence or not of Covid in a large number of instances - the question is whether such was useful?

My personal example was my wife having the symptoms of "a cold", two days into which she took a test with a negative result. Result being that we both carried on as normal. It wasn't until her second test of the week - some 6 days after first having symptoms, and when feeling better - that a second test showed positive. And I'd argue in our case, it was worse than nothing - lulled us into a false sense of security. Anecdotally, that was far from an isolated example of such, and your study sounds to back such up?

That was a false negative - I seem to remember what leftieliberal posted showed that overall every positive result *in someone with no symptoms* only truly indicated a real infection about half the time(?) So if you're doing twice weekly random tests, have no symptoms, and get a positive what do you do? If it's as likely to be a false alarm as genuine?

I don't know if the study you have seen goes into it, but the question to be asked is whether it would have been more effective to have simply advised a policy of "if you've got symptoms, assume you have Covid, if no symptoms, carry on" - and forget about any routine testing. Such a policy would certainly have saved a vast amount of money, which I would argue could have been better spent elsewhere. (As well as saving a truly huge amount of plastic from landfill.)

And unfortunately, I suspect LFT tests were widely rolled out along with other measures more out of a "we've got to be seen to be doing something" impetus, rather than a sensible measured policy. Same with the (truly useless) "app", and mask mandates, test and trace, etc etc. Which is not to say LFTs, T&T, etc had no place - rather that too much store was put in them, including by people who saw them as a useful box tick in any risk assessment. And our own personal being lulled into false security by an LFT is just one example.

So less a case of LFTs were "not very good" in scientific terms, rather than claims were made that just weren't justified. And very much in the interests of their maker to big them up. I remember going on holiday and someone in the hotel telling me he'd been advised to take such a test to "protect himself". He really thought the act of taking a test was directly helping stop himself get Covid.

[alec]

lens - I don't disagree. There is a place for LFTs, such as the way in which S Korea used them, knowing that they were imperfect, but effective when used to identify cases as part of a 'backward tracing' effort. Notable also that while S Korea employed this methodology very successfully almost as soon as LFT tests became available, the UK and many western nations dismissed LFTs as ineffective. Then, some time later, all of a sudden, we adopted LFTs as the go-to option for protective measures that citizens could take. I think the way these became highly promoted by health authorities after most initially discounted them as insufficiently accurate backs up your view of the motivation behind their use. I would have much preferred the development of a fast response PCR test, or - as previously discussed - the development of low cost/high accuracy breath tests that could yield instant results. If we had put the money spent on LFTs towards these developments, particularly for key sectors, then I think many lives would have been saved.

Along a similar theme, it's noteworthy that we are only now starting to see more open discussion about the shortcomings of the vaccines. Unfortunately, due to a combination of vested interests, public authorities wishing to be seen to be able to offer the solution, and a general (misplaced) fear that any critique of the vaccines would put you in the mad as hatters anti vax brigade, we never had an open debate about the good and bad elements of the vaccines. They have saved millions of lives (20m is the latest research I've seen) but have many flaws. None of them produce sterilizing immunity, they all wane very rapidly, and the mRNA jabs are highly reactogenic, with growing evidence that many are declining to take boosters offered because of intense side effects. Had this not been a global pandemic, I'm pretty sure these jabs would have been withdrawn by now, but in the UK we're in the ridiculous position that no one can now get a non-mRNA jab, despite a sizeable minority being unable to tolerate them, because to admit any problem is to question the entire rationale of the vaccine only strategy.

[Danny]

Oct 4, 2023 20:58:51 GMT alec said:

Notable also that while S Korea employed this methodology very successfully almost as soon as LFT tests became available, the UK and many western nations dismissed LFTs as ineffective. Then, some time later, all of a sudden, we adopted LFTs as the go-to option for protective measures that citizens could take.

Evidently the authorities always knew they dont work very well, and most official pronouncements were propaganda rather than science.

[Danny]

Oct 3, 2023 8:42:28 GMT leftieliberal said:

I'm not phobic about covid like he is but, unlike influenza, covid is a new disease so we don't know how many deaths it will be recognised as a cause of in, say, 50 years time. That's a good reason for applying the Precautionary Principle. Influenza existed before the 1918-19 Spanish flu outbreak, but that variant killed more people than WW1.

the problem with this is exactly what did happen a massive over reaction to covid for fear of how bad it might get, which never ever happened. Vast waste of money and now a world recession. Recession kills, and we just created an epidemic of it.

Thats the problem with precautions, they always have a cost which is wholly wasted if the feared outcome never arises. Some precautions are cheap, but others very very expensive.

[Danny]

Oct 3, 2023 0:02:12 GMT lens said:

leftieliberal - To play devil's advocate, your link does admit to one issue with the study, namely:

"Pre-COVID MRI scans from patients were not available, making definitive conclusions about the link between COVID and the organ changes difficult."

Which brings up the old query of cause or correlation. Is it a simple case of Covid having an especially bad effect in some people - or some people having pre-existing conditions (even ones they may not be aware of) which somehow exacerbated the effects of a Covid infection? For that matter, what about correlation with vaccination status? We know vaccination is not 100% effective, but even if you still get it, is it likely to be rendered mild enough to make such abnormalities unlikely?

And also the whole can of worms, whether a mass campaign of repeating essentially the same vaccination is beneficial (as opposed to annually updated ones as per flu), or whether in the long run protection is simply better for low risk people to catch the disease. Or the hybrid path, a vaccination but then dont bother any more and just catch it. There were early studies showing vaccination cuts cases and cuts deaths, but we dont have any proper studies with control groups of the long term outcomes for people who followed the different options. Nor dividing these by age, which wasnt particularly considered at the outset in any sorts of trials but the retrospective evidence is the massive risk gradient with increasing age.

[lens]

Oct 5, 2023 9:32:26 GMT Danny said:

Oct 3, 2023 8:42:28 GMT leftieliberal said:

I'm not phobic about covid like he is but, unlike influenza, covid is a new disease so we don't know how many deaths it will be recognised as a cause of in, say, 50 years time. That's a good reason for applying the Precautionary Principle. Influenza existed before the 1918-19 Spanish flu outbreak, but that variant killed more people than WW1.

the problem with this is exactly what did happen a massive over reaction to covid for fear of how bad it might get, which never ever happened. Vast waste of money and now a world recession. Recession kills, and we just created an epidemic of it.

Thats the problem with precautions, they always have a cost which is wholly wasted if the feared outcome never arises. Some precautions are cheap, but others very very expensive.

And more in answer to leftieliberal post above, I repeat what I said earlier, and which doesn't seem to have been answered:

"And what also does seem to be lacking is any quantitative sense. It talks about changes showing up on MRI scans - but not how relevant they are to a persons long term health. If an MRI scan shows an abnormality, but it causes no discernable health disadvantage in the long term, does it matter?

Likewise any sense of just how big a problem this is in relation to the population as a whole. No illness is good, but where does this sit quantitatively with all the other health problems affecting populations?"

It all sounds very scary, this talk of "long Covid" and "abnormalities on MRI scans", but how big a problem is it really quantitatively? There's talk on long term effects - which I'm not disputing - but how bad, and/or affecting how many?

After her first Covid infection, my wife lost sense of smell for a couple of months, so presumably would fit in the statistics as having had "long Covid". But (in her case), so what? For the last 18+ months her health has been no different to before. Of everyone I know who has had Covid (excluding one person who got it early on and had life changing effects), a few people have had some effects lasting a few months, but the great majority haven't even had that.

Yes, a good point about the Precautionary Principle, and who knows what might happen in 50 years time - but where to draw the line? And that's where in principle Danny has a valid point with his last sentence. To which I'll add again the question "what's the alternative?" The only measure which seems to have had a genuine effect is vaccination (and I must book my booster today!), the best that can be said of others is they may have had a delaying effect. The China lockdown certainly kept cases down for a period - but was unsustainable, and the longer it went on the more damage it caused the economy.

[leftieliberal]

theconversation.com/youve-heard-of-long-covid-but-did-you-know-there-might-also-be-a-long-cold-214995

You’ve heard of long COVID, but did you know there might also be a long cold?

But COVID may not be alone in causing long-lasting symptoms.

In a new paper, my colleagues and I report the findings of a study comparing long-term symptoms reported by people who experienced different types of acute respiratory infection. We asked more than 10,000 people to report on 16 symptoms commonly found in long COVID, such as fatigue, breathlessness, aches and pains, and dizziness. We then compared how common these symptoms were among three groups: people who had reported COVID, those who had reported another acute respiratory infection (but had tested negative for COVID), and those who had not reported either infection.

Our study showed that all the symptoms considered were more common in people with previous COVID than in people with no infections, regardless of whether they reported long COVID. But this finding wasn’t unique to COVID. Almost all the symptoms we looked at were also more common in people with non-COVID respiratory infections than in those with no infection.

In other words, our findings hinted towards the existence of a “long cold”: long-lasting health effects from other respiratory infections, such as colds, flu, or pneumonia, that are currently going unrecognised.

Some of the most common symptoms of the long cold include coughing, stomach pain, and diarrhoea. These symptoms were reported an average of 11 weeks after the infection. While a severe initial infection seems to increase the risk of long-term symptoms, our research does not yet tell us why some people suffer extended symptoms while others do not.

[Danny]

Oct 6, 2023 10:46:55 GMT leftieliberal said:

Our study showed that all the symptoms considered were more common in people with previous COVID than in people with no infections, regardless of whether they reported long COVID. But this finding wasn’t unique to COVID. Almost all the symptoms we looked at were also more common in people with non-COVID respiratory infections than in those with no infection.

My point, I think. I am not at all surprised there might be longer term illness from covid. However I dont see a material difference has been demonstrated between covid and other diseases which work in similar ways. It is unsurprising that there would be long cold and long flu. It would be surprising if long covid eventually settles down to be any more serious than long cold or long flu, or that we would need to manage it differently to how we have managed these others in the past. (basically ignore them).

What has changed is medicines capacity to study the course of a disease in detail, and covid has been the most stidied disease of all time in terms of the application of modern techniques. That just means massive resources were applied whn the epidemic came along, which no one had bothered applying elsewhere yet.

As to long whatever, the process inside your body is that the invading organism infects individual body cells. The body responds by killing those cells. The worse the infection, the more dmaage is caused. The body then relies on regrowing those cells from the remaining healthy ones afterwards, which of course takes time. people should remember the discovery that steroids helped end stage covid patients, because it suppressed the bodies over reaction to a bad infection which was killing more cells than necessary.  Or consider the theory behind placing people in induced comas on respirators for weeks and months, giving their bodies time to regrow cells.

In the young the response to an invading organism is faster and regrowth faster. Of course they will tend to survive better. With already established diseases the pattern would be catching it in youth and creating an antibody bank which will be available to speed up response when older. That was what was missing when faced with this new disease. (although not forgetting some parts of the world, indeed including China, had higher than average antibody levels reactive against covid from past exposure to related corona viruses. This is likely why they managed to suppress it so much better than we did in Europe)

[alec]

lens - "It all sounds very scary, this talk of "long Covid" and "abnormalities on MRI scans", but how big a problem is it really quantitatively? There's talk on long term effects - which I'm not disputing - but how bad, and/or affecting how many?"

Early evidence suggests that quantitatively it lies somewhere between big and massive. I've regularly posted studies showing alarming increases in actual illnesses that are linked with prior covid infection. We also have know that prior infection increases all cause mortality, by a factor of 2 - 3, and we have robust data showing some astonishing levels of excess deaths that mirror waves of covid, so yes, it's going to be a really big problem, quantitatively.

leftieliberal - don't omit the important line from that article - "However, the researchers do not yet have evidence suggesting that the symptoms have the same severity or duration as long Covid."

Danny - yes, really good that everyone is finally coming to round to something I've been patiently explaining for quite some time, namely that the obsession with the acute phase of 'minor' viruses is misleading. I think you were one of those falsely claiming that infection strengthens us, while the sensible experts were publishing papers, cited here, that show how the more viral infections you get in your life, the earlier you're going to die.

Everyone seems to think that the immune system is a self replenishing attribute, but few apparently appreciate that some elements of immunity are, rather like female human eggs, created once at birth and not replenished thereafter. Use them up more quickly and they're gone, and then you die. Every time your body mounts an immune response, that's one more hit to the immune system.

Your simple guide to the immune system is fundamentally wrong on many levels.

But as I posted on the main thread yesterday, if the critical learnings from covid are that "- The biggest impact of viruses is chronic disease" and "Virus exposure harms, not helps, immune systems", then we'll have learned some good lessons.

[alec]

lens - you asked for data on the risks - jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2810259

Big increases in risks for a wide range of autoimmune diseases, many of which are time consuming and expensive to treat.

Reams and reams of data coming through almost on a daily basis about the long term costs of covid infection.

Yet too many keep asking for more data, instead of boning up on what we actually already know, preferring apparently to base their outlook on how their wife felt.

[alec]

On a brighter note, a trivalent mumps, measles and covid vaccine, delivered as a nasal spray, appears to induce strong and more durable immunity across a range of variants - www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2220403120

There really is a way out of this, but we need to be patient and not be quite so lazy.