Covid

[alec]

Interesting thread here -

Arijit Chakravarty (AJ) has an extremely good record of predicting the course of covid so far, with papers dating back to 2020 detailing the evolutionary likelihood of covid which have proved extremely accurate, unlike many. Here he picks up on a paper that suggests chronic infections can randomly mutate within an individual, leading to worsening symptoms. This matches some of the predictions he and others made concerning intrahost evolutionary pressures on the virus, which run counter to the commonly held view that it's natural for viruses to mutate to be less severe. In fact, with chronic infection, the intrahost pressure is to become better at infecting (more severe). That doesn't mean more transmissible though (this is only inside a single host) but it does mean that someone with chronic persistent infection has a random chance of becoming more seriously ill. This appears to be exactly what the researchers quoted have found.

We know that SC2 is persistent (see here www.news-medical.net/news/20231030/SARS-CoV-2-antigens-stick-around-Study-finds-virus-markers-can-linger-for-over-a-year.aspx ) which already sets it apart from most RNA viruses. Again, it was assumed that SC2 would not be persistent by many when it first appeared, which is yet another error in understanding the threat that the establishment fell into.

In this case, the second reply in the thread illustrates one of the worries. It mentions 'FIP', or feline infectious peritonitis. This is a cat owners nightmare, as it is fatal. It is a form of the Feline Coronavirus (FCoV) which takes two forms, Feline enteric coronavirus (FCEV) or FIP. FCEV is not generally serious in cats, but it can be persistent, with some becoming permanent shedders. But FCoV can also translate into FIP, which is always fatal, through random mutations. The recent story of hundreds of cat deaths in Cyprus (see www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/18/experts-warn-about-feline-coronavirus-after-thousands-of-cat-deaths-in-cyprus )

This is the world of mammalian coronaviruses. SC2 has surprised many of the experts and continues to do so. If these latest findings are borne out, it raises the question of whether we have 10% or so of the population (the % found with persistent SC2 virus) who are randomly chucking out mutations that could, in a FIP scenario, lead to severe outcomes at some future time. We just have no idea whatsoever about this.

This is the frustration for many of us. Equating SC2 with the common cold is just wrong. The common cold is primarily caused by any one of a couple of hundred rhinoviruses, which are so mild they don't even produce an antibody response as the innate immune system deals with them. Human coronaviruses are a lot more severe than that, but even here, the existing HCoVs are pretty mild, but SARS type viruses are not - all the human SARS viruses are deadly. With SC2, we may well be setting ourselves up for decades of severe outcomes as we see now in the feline population.

[leftieliberal]

Oct 31, 2023 13:31:00 GMT alec said:

lens - "Straight question, what about a straight answer?"

I've actually answered that multiple times already. With a bit of effort, we can eliminate covid. All perfectly possible, according to the experts who rank viruses in terms of their ease of eradication.

As I've said repeatedly, mask wearing isn't very nice and it isn't a long term solution, save for some clinical settings where it possibly ought to become the norm, if other solutions don't prove sufficiently effective. Otherwise, it's very simple; we get on with the business of addressing the challenge of indoor air quality. NHS Scotland are researching UV air cleaning kit. They've released a research note showing that 6 far-UV lights running at 10% power cleared a 32m3 space of 89% of sars virus at just 6W energy consumption without creating any ozone. I've seen Ikea now sell a coffee table with an in built HEPA filter, and the Dundee NHS UV researchers also managed to eliminate 57% of virus particles in a scenario with two diners facing each other at a table with one infected, with a low powered lamp over their heads.

Then we have the studies showing a 20% reduction in school absences in the Bradford schools Hepa filter RCT. That's an enormous impact considering the children are only in the classrooms for 21% of the week and the study only looked at actual school absence rates for sickness, not taking into account where the children actually got infected.

Then we start thinking about Sweden, which pays 90% salary from day one for any certified sick leave, thus enabling workers to stay at home when ill.

And so on. I have repeatedly and rather patiently explained all the various measures and technical solutions to prevent covid and any other airborne infection spreading, and I've repeatedly and patiently explained that while masks are good, they're the last line of defence when everything else has failed, and not particularly helpful as a long term solution.

And every time I get asked the same question, and I give the same reply; engineer out the virus, like we engineered out cholera, typhoid, etc, and in parallel, work on better vaccines.

It is worth pointing out that far-UVC light doesn't just kill the SARS virus, it will kill all airborne viruses and bacteria. So it is a natural approach to use in air-conditioning systems, for example. This Nature article is from 2018, so two years before Covid. The work used a lamp with a Kr-Cl gas mixture and a filter to limit the emission to 222 nm. The same approach would work, without the need for a filter, using LEDs; you just need a 5.64 eV bandgap, so a material like Boron Nitride would be about right. The exact wavelength of emission is not important as long as it is not much above 220 nm; the original studies had shown wavelengths in the range 207-222 nm to be effective in killing bacteria. It would be very easy to design LEDs for lighting purposes to have this additional germicidal function.

[alec]

leftieliberal - very interesting. The news item I heard on the Dundee research mentioned LEDs as the developing best option for this, so your techichal input chimes very well with everything else I'm hearing.

It's frustrating, as the solutions, while difficult in terms of the need for widespread, constant application, are actually very simple in technical terms (or at least, the techniques are well understood). In this, it's very much like most H&S I guess. The really frustrating aspect is that we just need leadership, particularly from politicians but also business leaders. Get this, and we can crack covid and - as you say - many other airborne pathogens.

[Danny]

Nov 8, 2023 13:49:49 GMT alec said:

Oh Danny. Oh Danny.

Yes, my dear? Always happy to help..

That's probably one of the dumbest statements you've ever made on the topic. You clearly have no conceptual understanding of what exponential growth looks like at very low levels. You actually think that there would be an instant bounce back, when infection rates were driven very low, just because schools went back?

Well there was... Did I actually say one word about the nature of its evolution, whether it took a little while to grow, whatever?

We know that 90% of the population remained completely naive, because we tested people.

Really? How? Show me the stats. Government refused to permit antibody testing, banned its private sale to the public. Nor were antibody results interpreted to properly count anyone infected, only those still with high antibody levels in their blood. Infection data told us nothing because ther were far far too few tests done and never on a random trial basis. Thats before we get to the other issue mentioned at the enquiry, the proportion asymptomatic (and testing negative even though they actually did have it recently)

That's what science does - it establishes known facts.

Science does, but the only place the scientists were in charge was Sweden. Who felt lockdown was a mistake so didnt do it. They still think so. They did better than us.  Honestly,  the presumption should be on the other foot - Sweden proved lockdown was useless, you should have to prove why you think it worked and you really have not been able to. There should be hundreds of thousands of extra dead Swedes if you were right.

We also know that the initial suppression measures drove the virus to very low levels, because we have reams of data on social contacts, travel, work patterns etc, that clearly show reduced contacts and reduced spread.

Covid fell to low levels by May 2020. I cant remember, but it fell off x10 or x100 in April? Thereafter it did not continue to fall as it should have if it was exponential fall. This is far more likely accounted by it having already peaked naturally at just about the time lockdown was called. The instant fall did not repeat, thats why lockdown kept getting extended, because it wasnt working as predicted. And the scientists could see it wasnt working. In the end it plateaued, it never went towards zero as it was intended to.

We could produce stats on how people made fewer trips to work, etc etc, but unfortunately that doesnt at all say how effective this was in preventing spread. For example, suppose someone absent restrictions might have got on a train, and 100 people on that train got close enough to infect him. Now restrictions slash that to just 1 person - he still gets infected. We have no clear understanding of precisely how people caught covid, or indeed how they avoided catching covid.

We know it worked, because we tested lots of people. I remember showing Trevor my basic calculations in April 2020 when he mused that we might be close to 'herd immunity' and I worked out we had something like 15% at most infected.

The zoe figures published pretty much from 1 April 2020, suggested maybe ten milion infected in that first wave. But with a huge uncertainty, could have been a lot higher, it was something of a minimum credible number. Most people who have had covid in the Uk have never been formally diagnosed with covid.

[Danny]

Oct 31, 2023 13:31:00 GMT alec said:

Otherwise, it's very simple; we get on with the business of addressing the challenge of indoor air quality. NHS Scotland are researching UV air cleaning kit. They've released a research note showing that 6 far-UV lights running at 10% power cleared a 32m3 space of 89% of sars virus at just 6W energy consumption without creating any ozone.

Thats 6w per installation, presumably running 24 hours a day. 20 million homes makes that 120 MW of electricty to run the system. Total UK consumption is approximately 50 GW, so that would be an extra 0.25% on the national energy demand?

And 32m3 is approximately an average room size. Just about any home is going to be twice this at least. More likely three times, average maybe 4 times? Might be more realistic to approximate this number for filtration per person in the UK, and then it would mean multiple installations following people around depending on which room they are currently in. So that would be more like 1% additional national energy demand? Thats quite a lot, you know....

And then every home will have to be retrofitted with filtered air exchange. Which will have a lifetime of, who knows, say ten years. So every ten years has to be replaced.

And then theres all the workplaces, public spaces. Double the figure again? 2% increase in our annual electricty bills.

For what benefit?  Anyone brought up in a virus free atmosphere would never be able to travel to any country where this same system was not in place, because they would immediately come down with whatever bugs are circulating there. No more foreign holidays for anyone? Anyone visiting such a place would be in the same position as native americans when they first met western travellers. They died in their droves from western diseases.

Oh, and we havnt got onto the subject of fans yet, which are needed to push all this air around. Going to be a lot more for that than for the lamps....

[alec]

Danny - your last post was rather daft, wasn't it?

We're not talking about domestic homes for far-uv light. That's just silly. As are most of your posts on covid. I appreciate you're a bit desperate to avoid having to acknowledge that everything you said about the pandemic has been proven wrong, but just making up daft stuff doesn't really help.

In terms of costs, the total UK energy spend in 22/23 was £43bn - www.statista.com/statistics/298887/united-kingdom-uk-public-sector-expenditure-fuel-and-energy/

To give you an idea of the enormous economic benefit we would derive from controlling airborne pathogens, the increase in long term sick since March 2020 is 500,000, which allowing a very modest £200 per week per person for benefits, lost salary tax and other healthcare needs, comes to £5.2bn a year, which is over 10% of the total annual energy spend. Going on pre 2020 trends, most of this can be attributed to covid, and then you can add on the cost of the additional illnesses, NHS costs, workplace absences, etc etc.

So yes, I think you may be beginning to appreciate that the very small additional energy costs of air treatment will be vastly outweighed by the massive economic gains from a healthier population.

[lens]

Nov 8, 2023 21:04:40 GMT Danny said:

Oct 31, 2023 13:31:00 GMT alec said:

Otherwise, it's very simple; we get on with the business of addressing the challenge of indoor air quality. NHS Scotland are researching UV air cleaning kit. They've released a research note showing that 6 far-UV lights running at 10% power cleared a 32m3 space of 89% of sars virus at just 6W energy consumption without creating any ozone.

Thats 6w per installation, presumably running 24 hours a day. 20 million homes makes that 120 MW of electricty to run the system. Total UK consumption is approximately 50 GW, so that would be an extra 0.25% on the national energy demand?

And 32m3 is approximately an average room size. Just about any home is going to be twice this at least. More likely three times, average maybe 4 times? ............

Well, just for fun Danny, let's try running a few numbers. 

As a quick measurement,  my living room is somewhat over 4 metres square,  and 2.5 metres high. The back room is about the same. So each a bit over 40m3. The kitchen is also roughly the same. So if I was to follow @alecs advice about addressing the challenge of indoor air quality, then if I was to set up such a UV system in just those 3 rooms (ignoring hallways, bathrooms, stairs, bedrooms and study) I believe I'd be looking at a power consumption of around 6x120/32=22.5 watts? Agreed so far? Now let's assume operation between the hours of 7am to midnight, so 17 hours per day. Which equates to about 382.5Wh per day. Or close to 140kWh per year. 

Which further equates to about £42 per year and add about 2% to my annual electricity consumption. 

What anybody would think of that is likely to depend if anyone sees glasses as half full or half empty. My own immediate thought is that it's all really fairly pointless for our household.  If one person gets infected,  it's most likely to get passed on by close contact anyway,  before any such viruses get the chance to be killed by UV.

But yes, I was assuming the real intention of bringing up UV was applications in public settings - not in the home - so let's move on. 

And how effective would it really be in (say) a restaurant, a nightclub, pub, or a theatre or cinema? For starters, the volume of any of those (especially the latter two) is many, many times greater than 32m3. It's not just energy costs, what about cost of installation? But isn't the real question of how much good it would do in (say) a theatre, if someone infected is sitting in the row behind? Or next to you in a crowded pub? (We won't even think about nightclubs......) It would be simply naive to think that any viruses exhaled are going to be immediately zapped as they leave the mouth and before they could reach anybody close by.

Now that is not to say such as UV doesn't have applications  - and it's far from a new idea anyway. But it's any idea that such solutions can completely eradicate such as Covid that I find far fetched. It's just not "very simple", as alec would have us believe. It's one thing  to say "repeatedly and rather patiently explained all the various measures and technical solutions to prevent covid and any other airborne infection spreading" - but unfortunately all too often the reality falls short of the promise. Are they really "solutions", or simply some tech which looks good in principle but which doesn't live up to promise in the real world? (eg Real time monitoring for virus in a public setting. You are manager of a theatre and it gives a positive indication. What do you do? Order everyone out on the street? Yeah. Right.) And unfortunately too often those promoting such "solutions" are only too aware that their products effect may be far more limited than hoped for, even if they perform as on the tin. But nobody makes money by undermarketing.

It was one thing in 2020, with case and death rates as they were. A big imperative to try anything..... ANYTHING! But now? With case rates and hospitalisations at current low levels? And they are. A few weeks ago there were a few scare stories about "big rise in covid cases!!!" Strangely, the same voices aren't now as loudly announcing equally big falls. Look for yourself. coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nation&areaName=England .  Look at Covid hospital admissions - down 18% in the last week. And it was down 10% the week before. Look at the graphs. A few weeks on and the scare stories ("big rises!") are shown to be just an upslope - before another fall. We've seen another peak - but lower than any previous peak.

OK, it would be better to have no cases, no hospitalisations, and no deaths. I get that. But with those rates, and in the absence of any measures at all, Covid just is nowhere near the problem it was a couple of years ago, not even close. Myself, my arm is still sore after a recent vaccination, at my age that seems a sensible and simple precaution. Other than that, I intend to just get on with life. There are many, many things to worry about far more than Covid IMO now, both in terms of health and what's going on in the world.

[alec]

lens - what I would suggest you do is conduct a bit of historical research into the lengthy and ill tempered debates, in parliament and the wider press, in the period from 1840 - the mid 1850s, regarding clean water supplies and public health in general. It followed precisely the same tactics as you are using on these pages, and those who raised costs, practicalities, and doubts about effectiveness were ultimately proved entirely wrong. So many diseases were either eradicated, when few thought this possible, and others put into retreat to such an extent that population health improved massively and a golden era of economic development followed.

You're wrong on this, and history will in due course prove this to you. We really can have a revolution both in our understanding of airborne transmission and our abilities to stop it, just as there is now growing recognition within the medical community, inspired by long covid, that medicine has misunderstood viruses to a large degree, thinking of an infected/recovered model. We're now understanding that many viruses affect our health years or decades later.

Everything is changing.

[alec]

lens - a couple of current examples - www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10582888/

RSV cases in children (where it's really quite dangerous) strongly associated with prior covid infection and here -

record diagnoses of TB in 2022. On this one, I'm still a little sceptical on the numbers, as there is clearly a backlog of missed diagnoses from 20/21, but other studies have shown that covid does reactivate latent TB and increase the odds of new infection, so at some level there is certainly a covid effect.

You can hide behind the restricted numbers of acute covid right now in one small corner of the world, and ignore the growing mountain of evidence that covid is sickening populations well beyond the acute phase, or you can move with the science and accept that there is a growing a serious health threat that needs dealing with.

[alec]

lens - and then there's this one - www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2023.1212959/full

Just out, confirming persistent damage to male semen after covid recovery, confirming several earlier findings from elsewhere. We don't to what extent this will affect birthrates, whether it will result in more birth defects (some evidence suggesting these on the rise since 2022, but I'm a little dubious on those reports at this stage), and we don't know whether these effects are cumulative, growing with each infection. We do know that the male testes are packed with ACE2 receptors and SARS-CoV-2 is found to persist there post infection in some individuals.

So neither you, nor I can make any statements yet about the possibility that after 10 years of constant covid reinfection, we'll find the level of global live births collapsing because of a male infertility crisis. It might happen, it might not. Who knows?

[Danny]

Nov 8, 2023 22:20:54 GMT alec said:

Danny - your last post was rather daft, wasn't it?

We're not talking about domestic homes for far-uv light. That's just silly.

The largest number of people probably caught covid at home from another family member.

To give you an idea of the enormous economic benefit we would derive from controlling airborne pathogens, the increase in long term sick since March 2020 is 500,000, which allowing a very modest £200 per week per person for benefits, lost salary tax and other healthcare needs, comes to £5.2bn a year, which is over 10% of the total annual energy spend.

I fwe managed to eliminate all airborn pathognes in the UK, then the upshot would be no one would be able to travel abroad, for fear of catching what there would be a cold but to an inexperienced Brit could very well be deadly. Do you really think people would accept that at any price?

I wonder how many extra long term sick are due to underfunding of the NHS, failing GP services to catch illness early and then ever growing waiting lists for a hospital. The collapse of NHS services because of underfunding (as explained by Chris whitty the other day, people are just living longer and spending more time each being ill) seems to be snowballing. The way the NHS manages demand is by adding people to waiting lists, obviously all with medical conditions, and leaving them there. Better you understand the choice is between more nhs funding or more long term sick. Although, a relative of mine disabled from birth can today look forward to much longer lifespan than in times past. Lots of such people are quietly surviving as permanently ill. That ironically, is a consequence of NHS success.

[alec]

Danny - "The largest number of people probably caught covid at home from another family member."

Yes, this is one of the pointless truisms that many minimizers have hidden behind. It's a classic example of dumb thinking. Households are, by definition, people living in close contact, but of course, households don't generate their own index infection - someone has to get infected outside the home. If there were no outside infections, household transmission would be zero.

The actual main drivers of infections are children, which is completely the reverse of what the GBD and other minimizers once claimed. If we dealt with air quality in schools and hopsitals it's quite likely that we would see covid in more or less permanent retreat.

[Danny]

Nov 11, 2023 22:50:25 GMT alec said:

Danny - "The largest number of people probably caught covid at home from another family member."

Yes, this is one of the pointless truisms that many minimizers have hidden behind. It's a classic example of dumb thinking. Households are, by definition, people living in close contact, but of course, households don't generate their own index infection - someone has to get infected outside the home. If there were no outside infections, household transmission would be zero.

The actual main drivers of infections are children, which is completely the reverse of what the GBD and other minimizers once claimed. If we dealt with air quality in schools and hopsitals it's quite likely that we would see covid in more or less permanent retreat.

And then we would all die in a few years when it came roaring back but we had no immunity. The reason why it was so dangerous this time round was because it has not been free in the human population for some time, so all the immunity we had was dervived from exposure to other, related corona viruses. Its the same reason why medics are concerned about other animal reserviors, because they have the potential to bring back to us diseases we are not yet immune to. You would deprive us all of all our immunity, leaving us defenceless. As applied to the indigenous people when europeans arrived in america.

Yes, transmission is granular. Thats one of the things the experts failed to model when making predictions about covid. A soon as one member of a household gets infected, its an easy step to others. I seem to remember one paper comparing rates to partners and children in a home, because different issues apply. I was very struck by the great ease of transmission at parties, where many people get into close proximity. The difficulty is there is no household which can isolate itself eternally from interaction with the rest of the world. And who would want to live forever like that? Or even for  few months? We would of course all die anyway, as society fell apart.

But the other thing to remember is that the kids and their parents are essentially at negligible risk from covid. It was always open to us to encourage them to catch covid as fast as possible, so as to create herd immunity to that strain. Once the major vectors are immune, then the disease dies down. It isnt high risk people giving it to each other, its them catching it from the younger group transmitting it. The way to minimise deaths was to make sure the younger group caught it fast.

Hastings achieved herd immunty to the first wave winter 19/20 and therefore had no recurrence that spring. Nor in the autumn. It only recurred once a new strain arrived. There was no wave of deaths amongst younger people, anymore than there was at any other time anywhere. But it would have spread much faster and much more efficiently absent the extra restrictions. No surprise then it idnt even get noticed. Slowing the disease quite likely made matters worse. And the people who chose it as a policy must have known it would make matters worse. The gamble was that the vaccine would eradicate the virus permanently. The gamble was lost, it didnt, so we got botht eh detahs eventually and the extra harm caused by dragging out the epidemic.

However you dont need Hastings as a special example to prove this.  You will remember covid was officially credited as having arrived in the Uk from tourist resorts in Europe. And yet they didnt notice they had it, to pass to those tourists.  The nation acquired herd immunity, just about, to the first strain, which failed to become a general outbreak that autumn when schools returned. But very interestingly it did resume in northern schools, but not southern ones. Indicating again the disease began in the south and had pretty much created herd immunity amongst kids before schools were closed...in the south but not the north.

The evidence is there, for those that look.

[alec]

Danny - "And then we would all die in a few years when it came roaring back but we had no immunity."

I don't think you appreciate just how barking mad you've become on this. In a single post, you're literally saying we would all die of covid through waning immunity if we don't keep catching it, before then going on to say that Hastings had it's first wave - with zero immunity - and no one died.

Can't you see how utterly stupid that is?

And if you can't, that should tell you that it's time to stop posting on the topic.

[lens]

Nov 10, 2023 7:35:56 GMT alec said:

lens - what I would suggest you do is conduct a bit of historical research into the lengthy and ill tempered debates, in parliament and the wider press, in the period from 1840 - the mid 1850s, regarding clean water supplies and public health in general. It followed precisely the same tactics as you are using on these pages, and those who raised costs, practicalities, and doubts about effectiveness were ultimately proved entirely wrong. ................

You're wrong on this, and history will in due course prove this to you. We really can have a revolution both in our understanding of airborne transmission and our abilities to stop it, ..................

Ah, but you are there using the tactics of the cherry picker. Without disputing the accuracy of what you say re water and the 1840's, history is littered with examples of proposals for all manner of projects, health related and otherwise - some very sensible, others far less so. Many, many schemes have been proposed in the past (some acted upon, some not) and frequently yes, doubts have been raised about costs, practicalities, and effectiveness (some very sensible and valid, others not).

You give the example of water supplies. Yes, the doubters may have been wrong then - but that is certainly not to say that doubters must always be wrong! As just one example, what about the infamous groundnut scheme after WW2? ( en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanganyika_groundnut_scheme ) As an extract from that article:

"The scheme's proponents, including Minister of Food John Strachey, had overlooked warnings that the environment and rainfall were unsuitable, communications were inadequate, and the whole project was being pursued with excessive haste. The management, initially by the United Africa Company as Managing Agent and subsequently by the government-run Overseas Food Corporation, was appalling, and the scheme came to be popularly seen as a symbol of government incompetence and failure in late colonial Africa.[3][4] The scheme was described in 1953 as "the worst fiasco in recent British colonial history."[1]"

Now with both your example and the groundnut scheme, we are fortunate to have the benefit of hindsight. In one case the promoters have been judged to be right, in the others it was the doubters who got it right. But it's completely wrong for anyone to suggest that never to bring up potential problems with any scheme is sensible. That's especially true when vested interests are at stake with any scheme. (Apparently Ferguson tractors were strongly in favour of the groundnut scheme - I wonder why....?)

More recently, and with direct relevance to Covid, I'd also point to the infamous NHS app. Criticisms were raised right from the start - and ignored - but it went ahead at great expense. And was fundamentally a failure. It was a good example of wishful thinking and sweeping problems under the carpet. But a failure to accept that radio waves and viruses travelled in very different ways was always going to doom it.

For myself,  then yes - if I raise any objections to any scheme they should be equally subject to scrutiny. If you think I'm using faulty logic in any argument, then let's hear the detail of why. That's only proper. But that's not what I get here. I've twice now raised as example what a manager would do if they installed Covid air monitoring in such as a theatre or restaurant, and got a positive alarm. And not received any answer. Why? I can only conclude we both know the answer. And we both know the idea is impractical.

That's not to say such technology would not have *any* use. One example (say) may be testing of passengers about to board an aircraft or cruise liner, if it could be done quickly (and cheaply) enough. But the earlier example given of such monitors being installed in all public areas and such measures leading to a complete eradication of Covid. That's just wishful thinking.

[lens]

Nov 13, 2023 19:37:51 GMT Danny said:

Hastings achieved herd immunty to the first wave winter 19/20 and therefore had no recurrence that spring. Nor in the autumn. ...................

However you dont need Hastings as a special example to prove this.  You will remember covid was officially credited as having arrived in the Uk from tourist resorts in Europe. And yet they didnt notice they had it, to pass to those tourists.  ............

The evidence is there, for those that look.

@danny - the Alpine resorts *DID* notice they had it - albeit it took a few weeks for it to be recognised! Initially, there just seemed to be "a few cases of a flu outbreak", but before long it was clear what had happened - though by which time the damage had been done. Which is why we are referring to it now! And you say it's others who need to look for the evidence!

And this is in spite of people there being disproportionately younger and healthier than the general population - you don't get many elderly people with health problems going ski-ing. So far less likely to be seriously ill or hospitalised. And secondly the transience of the population, many people getting infected whilst at a resort, but not even showing any symptoms until getting home. (Where of course they spread it further.) This is exactly what happened with some friends of mine. Went away for a week, then had "bad flu" a few days after getting home.

Which is a very different case to Hastings, with (presumably) a far more typical age profile - older - and less transient. If Hastings had had a 2019 outbreak big enough to give any degree of future immunity, then there is no way it would have gone unnoticed - even if it took a few weeks to register. They (eventually) worked out what was happening in the Alpine resorts, Hastings would have been a lot more obvious.

It's just conceivable *YOU* may have had it via a direct Wuhan contact early - it's not conceivable Hastings had widespread infection.

[alec]

lens - "Ah, but you are there using the tactics of the cherry picker."

Please - stop being so silly. Covid and groundnuts? Just daft. Take a step back sometimes and read what you post.

It's not good to be sick. Everyone knows this. Whether it's food quality, water pollution, infected air or workplace health and safety, vested interested have always looked to stall and prevent progress.

Groundnuts. FFS.

Danny - equally daft. One of the first big spreader events was when they closed ski resort and everyone went home because...they were all sick.

[leftieliberal]

Nov 14, 2023 7:53:23 GMT alec said:

lens - "Ah, but you are there using the tactics of the cherry picker."

Please - stop being so silly. Covid and groundnuts? Just daft. Take a step back sometimes and read what you post.

It's not good to be sick. Everyone knows this. Whether it's food quality, water pollution, infected air or workplace health and safety, vested interested have always looked to stall and prevent progress.

Groundnuts. FFS.

Danny - equally daft. One of the first big spreader events was when they closed ski resort and everyone went home because...they were all sick.

alec Please don't be so stupid. You clearly don't understand the skiing business. The vast majority of people in ski resorts are tourists and they are only there for a week or two at the most. Of the remainder most of them are the locals who run the hotels, and the ski services. The proportion who are normally there for the ski season, such as the chalet girls and the reps, are the only ones who spread covid when the ski resorts closed. The super-spreader events occurred because the ski resorts were open and it was mainly the returning tourists who spread the disease.

[alec]

leftieliberal - you might wish to rephrase your post - www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/12/failures-at-austrian-ski-resort-helped-speed-up-spread-of-covid-19-in-europe

"The commission’s report also points the finger at the Austrian chancellor for eventually rushing to evacuate the entire Paznaun valley, leading to tumultuous scenes that will have likely exacerbated the spread of the virus among departing tourists."

This incident is well known and was pinpointed as a key moment in spreading covid in Europe quickly. Several court cases are still underway on this.

[leftieliberal]

Nov 14, 2023 12:42:27 GMT alec said:

leftieliberal - you might wish to rephrase your post - www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/12/failures-at-austrian-ski-resort-helped-speed-up-spread-of-covid-19-in-europe

"The commission’s report also points the finger at the Austrian chancellor for eventually rushing to evacuate the entire Paznaun valley, leading to tumultuous scenes that will have likely exacerbated the spread of the virus among departing tourists."

This incident is well known and was pinpointed as a key moment in spreading covid in Europe quickly. Several court cases are still underway on this.

Perhaps you should have read this article: www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/05/everyone-was-drenched-in-the-virus-was-this-austrian-ski-resort-a-covid-19-ground-zero before you commented on my post.

And skiing, Von der Thannen points out, keeps you healthy. In late April, a group of virologists came to the valley to mass-test the population and found that while more than 40% had developed Covid-19 antibodies, only 15% had had any symptoms. “A tough people, very resistant,” Von der Thannen recalls one scientist saying. “Almost all the locals ski regularly. We are active and out in the open air. Our fathers and grandfathers worked the fields, and maybe we inherited their genes.

The only way the Austrian authorities could have stopped the outbreak spreading would have been to have quarantined the town and let no one in or out until there were no more cases. Bearing in mind that some covid cases are asymptomatic, that was not a practical approach.

Your arrogant approach, that you are the only person who knows anything about covid, and your refusal to listen to anyone else means that you are just as bad as Danny.

[lens]

Nov 14, 2023 7:53:23 GMT alec said:

lens - "Ah, but you are there using the tactics of the cherry picker."

Please - stop being so silly. Covid and groundnuts? Just daft. Take a step back sometimes and read what you post.

It's not good to be sick. Everyone knows this. Whether it's food quality, water pollution, infected air or workplace health and safety, vested interested have always looked to stall and prevent progress.

Groundnuts. FFS.

Danny - equally daft. One of the first big spreader events was when they closed ski resort and everyone went home because...they were all sick.

alec - I could have replied to you saying "Covid and water quality in the 1840's? Just daft".

I didn't. I understood the point you were trying to make - that historically some schemes are proposed, receive objections, but with hindsight the schemes are seen as highly sensible. And my point was that such is not always the case.  In the case of groundnuts it's exactly the opposite.

Read again what I put: "......history is littered with examples of proposals for all manner of projects, health related and otherwise........" In the case of groundnuts, a scheme was proposed, received objections, and with hindsight it was seen to be the objectors who were highly sensible.

That was a direct response to your post of the 10th Nov urging me to ".......conduct a bit of historical research into the lengthy and ill tempered debates, in parliament and the wider press.......". You imply that objections to major schemes (certainly re health) must always be wrong - and just because that may have been true in 1840's does not make it a universal truth. Do you understand the point I'm making, now it's been spelt out? I really think you need to follow your own advice, and "Take a step back sometimes and read what others post."

And I even went on to give a direct Covid related example - the NHS app, albeit one where the definitive history with hindsight is largely still to be written. In that case it wasn't "vested interests" who "looked to stall and prevent progress" - rather people with valid concerns about why it just wouldn't work, and would be a waste of money! If any "vested interests" were involved, it was those promoting it! It'll be interesting to see what the Covid enquiry has to say about the app, but I think we can draw a lot of conclusions from the way in which it was not only dropped but seemed to become a forbidden subject, not to be mentioned. At least the direct costs of that were relatively (only millions!!) small compared to such as Test and Trace and LFT tests - we'll have to wait and see how history judges such as the latter.

Please - if you are going to call people names, then follow your advice, step back and make sure you are pretty certain you understand what they are saying before you respond.

[alec]

leftieliberal - as someone who reads more of the research on covid than most, I think that's a bit harsh.

I'd also suggest that offering up a quote from a bar owner in Ischgl as a riposte to the findings of the expert commission who investigated the outbreak there and it's handling isn't the best way to attack the point I made.

Yes, quarantine has it's difficulties when cases can be asymptomatic, but that's precisely why we quarantine rather than just test. Evacuating the resorts was clearly a mistake, as the expert commission found. What a bar owner thinks about that may be of interest, but I'd say he's likely to have a bit of a vested interest.

[leftieliberal]

Nov 14, 2023 16:14:34 GMT alec said:

leftieliberal - as someone who reads more of the research on covid than most, I think that's a bit harsh.

I'd also suggest that offering up a quote from a bar owner in Ischgl as a riposte to the findings of the expert commission who investigated the outbreak there and it's handling isn't the best way to attack the point I made.

Yes, quarantine has it's difficulties when cases can be asymptomatic, but that's precisely why we quarantine rather than just test. Evacuating the resorts was clearly a mistake, as the expert commission found. What a bar owner thinks about that may be of interest, but I'd say he's likely to have a bit of a vested interest.

So 25% of local residents had had covid but were symptomless. That is important because it is quite likely that a similar proportion of tourists had caught covid but were symptomless too. To denigrate my comment because what I quoted happened to come from a bar owner is shooting the messenger because you don't like the message. We know how long covid lasts for and there is no way you can quarantine a whole village for a fortnight or more (unless you are an authoritarian state like China). To say quarantining has its difficulties is a very serious understatement and that you can even suggest it shows a lack of understanding of human behaviour. The successful examples of quarantining in the early stages of the epidemic were all associated with keeping covid out of places with vulnerable people, not keeping it in.

[alec]

leftieliberal - I'm not denigrating your comment. Far from it. You're absolutely right - asymptomatic spread is a real problem, which is why we isolated contacts, something that didn't happen in this case. In the circumstances in March 20202, yes, I think you should be looking at supported quarantine for whole communities in such cases, at least until you could test everyone. That's broadly what the official investigation found as well, which was highly critical of the response.

All I'm saying as someone who follows this topic quite closely is that the official investigation came to it's conclusions, and some of the vested interests involved in the incident were less supportive of the official findings. That's not being arrogant or critical of you. Whether quarantine would have worked is an open question, but clearly in this case the management of a major outbreak was poor.

[Danny]

Nov 13, 2023 23:21:45 GMT lens said:

@danny - the Alpine resorts *DID* notice they had it - albeit it took a few weeks for it to be recognised!

I seem to recall they did some antibody testing, which came back with numbers at that time pretty high percentages. They had therefore had it for months. I seem to recall thinking the model was probably that many people in the town had had it and would therefore now be immune, but the constant flux of tourists were likely arriving, catching it, passing it on to new arrivals, and then going home to spread further.

Which is a very different case to Hastings, with (presumably) a far more typical age profile - older - and less transient. If Hastings had had a 2019 outbreak big enough to give any degree of future immunity, then there is no way it would have gone unnoticed

If hastings had had an outbreak with the standard death rate as seen later, there would have been maybe 100 deaths. And thats pretty pessimistic. These would have been old people dying from unidentified respiratory disease, which Alec recently complained was even now going down on death certificates (which he believed was really covid). A bunch of old people dying from a flu type disease in winter is NORMAL! Maybe some doctors looked at each other and thought bit of a surge here, but so what? Maybe they reported it to the flu monitoring service, but if they had it would have been dismissed, because it definitely wasnt flu. Its outside their remit (or was) to count flu-like disease, unless the total becomes significantly big. And 100 cases in the SE region of England would be absolutely nothing. The system was quite deliberately set up to eliminate false positives like this.

As to the age group affected, covid has ALWAYS shown most cases amongst the young. The R quoted in the region 1-3 depending what you are looking at, isnt the same for all age groups. Its way higher for younger than older. You argue the situation in Hastings would have meant more spread to high risk people, but I see the reverse. In the tourist town new arrivals would be coming all the time who were not immune, so straight away they got infected and could be spreading it again by the time they left. Whereas in Hastings, once all the young had had it, it was over, and then no more spread to older people. I dont know about you, but I and my family always tried to avoid visiting granny if we had colds. Belgium or someone at the very start published a little chart after tracing cases, showing how people spread the disease mostly to people their same age, lesser peaks to their childrens age, or their parents age. But considerably less to their pensionable parents or grandparents. Dont know if I still have a copy somewhere, Sage published it. Zoe showed always there are more cases per head amongst youngsters, at times by a factor of x10.  So I think the fact is was a tourist town kept it going there.  Otherwise it might have gone unnoticed in a modest provincial town.  (although surely, it was only detecte there BECAUSE tourists going home got tested at borders, and therefore were identified as having been infected there. It was border testing which found it. They could have not noticed it for months alreay, and never would have but for that testing)

It's just conceivable *YOU* may have had it via a direct Wuhan contact early - it's not conceivable Hastings had widespread infection.

Why not? Yes...why not? I can tell you it got a good start into a workplace of maybe 300 people, went through the place. They would have all gone home and spread it. It was a pretty excellent starting place. If I had, then I have no doubt the town had it, thats not in any way a leap. The only alternative to it being covid is it was a general infection locally of something else. Something just like covid, fatal like covid, which however died out just as covid started spreading. And it was definitely a fatal disease in worst case outcome because I know of a couple of people hospitalised (one of whom made it, neither had an identifiable cause). The symptoms were right. The age group affected was right. The fact Hastings never got the April covid outbreak is right.

[alec]

Some interesting developments around covid and cognitive impairment. It's long been known that covid infection (even mild) is linked to the development of dementia. The strength of this link has been disputed, but there is an abundance of epidemiological data (see here for one example - www.news-medical.net/news/20220918/COVID-19-increases-risk-of-developing-Alzheimers-by-50-8025-in-older-adults.aspx ) but there have also been several studies based on brain scans and biopsies that find significant before and after changes.

Up to now, these have focused on the elderly, because doctors assume dementia is an old person's problem. So - just as medicine made a huge mistake over covid impacts on children, failing to spot the problems because preconceived biases stopped them from looking - it appears that the issue of cognitive decline in the young due to covid has been largely missed.

This thread is more significant than it looks -

Tufekci is routinely berated on twitter as a 'minimiser', which is I think a bit unfair. She has made some mistakes in her previous characterisation and prevalence of long covid, but she has also been quick to flag up covid risks on some other occasions. However, she is critical of many of the studies showing high rates of cognitive decline post covid and is doubtful about the numbers suffering LC. So this thread marks a significant moment.

The data itself is nothing to do with covid directly, but part of a long running survey by the US Census Bureau. What has shaken Tufekci, and many others, is the stark growth of working age people (driven by the 18 - 44 age range) reporting selected cognitive issues. Nothing like this has ever been seen before across this decades long data series, and the timing fits perfectly with the major waves of the pandemic, not the restrictions. Tufekci herself says "My conclusion is that it has to be the pandemic".

It's also being picked up by economic commentators, and is part of a growing trend of data that shows the under 45's are suffering proportionately worse from covid as we move through 2023.

[lens]

Nov 15, 2023 13:42:36 GMT Danny said:

Nov 13, 2023 23:21:45 GMT lens said:

@danny - the Alpine resorts *DID* notice they had it - albeit it took a few weeks for it to be recognised!

I seem to recall they did some antibody testing, .....................

If hastings had had an outbreak with the standard death rate as seen later, there would have been maybe 100 deaths. And thats pretty pessimistic. These would have been old people dying from unidentified respiratory disease, which Alec recently complained was even now going down on death certificates (which he believed was really covid). A bunch of old people dying from a flu type disease in winter is NORMAL! Maybe some doctors looked at each other and thought............ And 100 cases in the SE region of England would be absolutely nothing. The system was quite deliberately set up to eliminate false positives like this.

@danny - re the Alpine resorts, then forget about anti-body testing. Just look at this from 10th FEBRUARY 2020 (!) - www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/10/super-spreader-brought-coronavirus-from-singapore-to-sussex-via-france Look at the already KNOWN cases on the graphic, and their geographical distribution. The main text makes it clear that even by then there were a huge number of cases in Italy, and the risk to spread from ski resorts was known. There was certainly a delay between initial cases and spread - but it only took a few weeks for it to become clear. Your original point re "they didn't notice they had it" may have been true for a few weeks (at most) but it was very soon obvious.

Re your interminable point about Hastings, then which is it? Deaths or cases?

Let's try out some very rough numbers. From google, the population of Hastings is somewhat under 100,000, yes? Wherever Covid struck in Europe, a ball park figure for deaths seems to have been about 0.1% of the population, so firstly yes - about 100 deaths, mostly amongst the elderly, seems roughly right. But I believe for every death there were about 10 *hospitalisations* at this time? Many of them needing ventilators. So an expectation of about 1,000 extra hospitalisations in Hastings at such a time - many needing ventilators/ICU. (And likely 10x as many CASES again, with patients being ill at home for a week or two.)

Would you like to tell us how many hospital beds there were in 2020 to serve the Hastings area? Because I believe it was (is) under 1,000 in total. So can you seriously believe that if Covid had struck, the Health Authority wouldn't have even noticed around 1,000 extra hospitalisations, all from an apparently similar cause? Especially with the reports coming in even by December 2019 from China?

You have to differentiate between deaths, hospitalisations, and cases.

Nov 15, 2023 13:42:36 GMT Danny said:

Nov 13, 2023 23:21:45 GMT lens said:

It's just conceivable *YOU* may have had it via a direct Wuhan contact early - it's not conceivable Hastings had widespread infection.

Why not? Yes...why not?

For the reasons above. A thousand extra hospitalisations, and a hundred extra deaths WOULD_HAVE_BEEN_ NOTICED.

And in the conceivable case the outbreak did happen - but was limited - it couldn't have given rise to the widespread immunity you claim. You can't have your cake and eat it.

But this has been explained to you many times before........

[alec]

Danny - Jesus H Christ!

You cannot be serious, as they say. 100 extra deaths in a tiny town like Hastings from a mystery virus wouldn't have been national news - it would have been a very big global story, with the WHO crawling all over Hastings demanding immediate quarantine for the whole town and the isolation of the UK.

You have absolutely no conception of the level of bullshit you are forced into writing because of your daft belief system.

[alec]

Really significant thread here -

Lots of detail, including no evidence for immune suppression from covid (good) but equally no protection against reinfection (very bad). Indeed, it's worse than that, as risk of reinfection goes up after Omicron infection (by 48 fold !!!) and that time since vaccination is not relevant.

"Although done in older adults, the study challenges the existing dogma that hybrid immunity is the way out of the pandemic.
More infections do not mean better immunity."

It's a large study, with dramatic results (although these aren't new to this study). Bottom line is that the idea of hybrid immunity has just been blown out of the water, for older (higher risk) people at least.

[johntel]

alec Doesn't this just imply that people with some kind of 'natural' covid immunity (like I seem to have) continue to be immune?