Covid

[jib]

Sad story of the first UK Omicron victim:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/16/first-uk-omicron-victim-unvaccinated-pensioner-hooked-online/

Freedom of speech for deniers? Crackpots I say

[Danny]

Dec 16, 2021 22:36:34 GMT jib said:

Sad story of the first UK Omicron victim:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/16/first-uk-omicron-victim-unvaccinated-pensioner-hooked-online/

Freedom of speech for deniers? Crackpots I say

Freedom of speech isnt freedom of speech unless everyone has it.

Your point is that people should not be allowed to climb mountains, smoke, drink alcohol, eat meat, over eat at all, drive private cars, go on holiday, go out at all really....because every one of those things creates risk to life which could be avoided.  Obviously as a nation we should cease sending armies abroad, and even using them in self defence is a bit susect.  We certainly ought to join the EU as fast as possible, obviously questions of liberty and peronal choice should be discounted in such a decision.

If you dont  believe such things, just where do you draw the line? Its obvious where the government draws it.  Vaccines are not  compulsory. If you think they should be then make it so. If you dont, then no one really should be trying to coerce people into being vaccinated by name calling or indeed vaccine passports. Thats just pretending you believe in freedom when you dont reallly and want to deny  it to those you dont agree with.

The article says,

""He wasn't vaccinated at all. My sister is gutted but on the other hand she's a little bit angry that he never took these vaccines. She had an argument with him at the end of October about this very thing - getting vaccinated. He thought it was a conspiracy. He was an intelligent man but it's all these different things you're getting from online and different media."

So obviously as an intelligent man he had made a choice based upon the information available to him. I cant say if  I would have made the same decision or not. What I can say is if he relied solely upon government sources of information he would not have received unbiased information. If he had been less intelligent he might have accepted that advice, but as an intelligent man he might have seen its obvious flaws and therefore not believed it. SAGE way back at the start told government to be open and honest, but instead they chose the route of propaganda. Nanny knows best. While you will convince some that way, others you will simply alienate.

As a simple example, anyone can look up the Zoe case numbers and see they markedly disagree with government testing resuts at the moment Yet the media only reports the higher number, at government encouragement. Why is that? Zoe has a good track record of being right and the testing count of being wrong, for obvious reasons. There is an alternative narrative of mistake after mistake by government in handling this epidemic which they will not admit to. Its the same malaise which sees us with a two party system of government where hardly anyone really believes in either of those parties and we are certain to get governments oposed by a big majority of people. So  no one believes politicians at any time, and they are right to disbelieve them based on track record. How do you decide when they are lying?

Now personally I havnt been vaccinated, and the reason is I believe I caught covid in 2019. As an intelligent man and based upon research evidence from credible sources, I see good evidence to support this belief. No one here has come up with credible arguments to invalidate my conclusions, indeed they refuse to engage with them, which is very telling. Obviously circumstantial evidence as no testing was available in 2019 for a disease which didnt officially exist, and in 2020 when antibody tests might have settled the matter, government banned them for private citizens. They didnt want people to be able to confirm they had had covid, because those people would have done the same as professor of epidemiology and government advisor Neil Ferguson (and other such advisors), who  believed rightly they were at minimal risk from covid because they had already been infected, and so ignored restrictions. But this created a narrative of suppressing the expert opinions of such people. It was precisely what SAGE had warned against doing, only telling half the truth.

Its very obvious vaccine has failed in its promised objective of ending this epidemic. Sweden adopted a very different course to the UK in terms of minimally restriciting civil liberties, and got better outcomes than the UK. Ironically it did this because it handed control of policy to medical experts, who therefore made decisions taking into account strict risk assessment based upon balance of evidence. They admitted mistakes as new facts became available.  They chose a path which did not rely upon  vaccine working. Great when it came along, not so great if it never did or did not work as hoped.

Alec here has from time to time talked about the risk of immune imprinting. The vaccine takes a different approach to creating immunity than does nature. For someone who has never had covid, then my judgement would be they are safer being vaccinated.  At last, if they are in a high risk group which would incude 70 somethings. But for anyone who has had covid, this is rather different. Its pretty obvious their best immune response for the future would be created by catching omicron now. Its rather unlikely to do them harm, because they survived it once already and they  start with more immunity second time round. Humans stay safe by being reinfected. That immunity will be up to date and better than imprinting on the out of date and anyway rather narrowly targeted vaccines. Thats potentially dangerous as alec used to say.  So for my long term survival I see this better  served for when I reach 80 by catching omicron now. Quite honestly this applies to young, healthy and uninfected people too because they woud be setting up life long immunity optimally. 

The world had immunity to covid before it arrived. That was proved by summer 2020. Thats what saved us from a bad epidemic of the sort originally predicted. What precisely saved us was almost certainly past infection by circulating corona viruses which kids catch four times a year (another piece of 2020 research).  Suspending the natural process of catching circulating viruses for two years by imposing restrictions is rather a concern as it will have harmed the future health of everyone. Thats why  there is a wave of bad colds now, and experts fear a bad flu coming along. Naturally we dont eradicate respiratory diseases like covid, we reach a truce  with them for mutual benefit. They get to keep circulating. We get to build immunity to them and their potentially much more dangerous wild relatives. Actually, it worked against covid.  As humans we have always tamed other species for our benefit. Jenner didnt invent vaccination, he discovered it and gave it a name.  We have just spent two years trying to reproduce what nature does for us anyway, with only middling success.

The real problem with our approach to covid has been we are fighting the natural process which keeps us safe. Infection is good for you. Kids are safe, catching it young they build immunity which keeps most of us safe well into old age (retirement happens once we reach old age, so talking 60s here, not 80s, but 80s have survived well too).  However there is a second string to our defences. Many people always avoid dying by never being exposed to a disease. Covid propagates through the young population, so once they have all had it it has to die out (or at least down to very low levels). If this had been allowed to happen, then the disease would have ended naturally in 2020. Statistically  this is an important defence which we have done our best to sabotage by imposing lockdowns on the young. Judging by the public debate, experts dont even realise what they have done. Although its likely the mistake lies in the interface and separation between medics presenting options to government and politicians choosing without themselves understanding the limitations of that advice.  Thats why sweden got it more right than wrong.

[leftieliberal]

Early estimate of effectiveness of vaccine against severe disease caused by the omicrom variant: www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59696499

Essentially, it is down to 80-85.9% from 97% against delta. New RNA vaccine jabs should be able to get it up again, but it will take a few months for them to become available (they won't have to go through the clinical trials again).

[Deleted]

Dec 17, 2021 16:19:12 GMT leftieliberal said:

Early estimate of effectiveness of vaccine against severe disease caused by the omicrom variant: www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59696499

Essentially, it is down to 80-85.9% from 97% against delta. New RNA vaccine jabs should be able to get it up again, but it will take a few months for them to become available (they won't have to go through the clinical trials again).

Some of the early studies (based on 2 doses of Pfizer) suggested 'down to 70%' [1] so as a glass half full type then 'could provide around 85% protection against severe illness' from a booster[2] as good news as 'should still keep many people out of hospital'. 85% is 'twice as good' as 70% (15% being half of 30%) and still some uncertainty about 'T-cells' and we've heard good news on effectiveness of drug treatments. Good to see in the BBC article a statistician point out the obvious: 'if you keep on doubling and doubling and doubling cases, there'll eventually be more people getting infected than there are people in the UK - so there is a limit on this' (amazing how many folks still ignore that (eg I-SAGE and 'Zero Covid' types)

Current patients in hospital bobbing around within post 'Freedom Day' range (ie still the 'rolling hills' although a bigger one is almost certainly coming). Latest (17Dec) being 6,321 'With' Covid (and we know from NHS data that 25%ish of folks 'with' Covid are in hospital for something else). Younger folks making up most reported cases (and actual infections[3]) likely the main reason hospitalisation as a ratio are dropping and bit early to be see Omicron impact (links I posted other day, using today's update, only suggest 65 hospitalisations from Omicron and 1 death but obviously a lag post infections)

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nation&areaName=England

Impossible to see, the future is.. In a dark place we find ourselves, and a little more knowledge lights our way (Master Yoda)

[1] Lots of sources available via google but I'll pick one (and note all the caveats about high uncertainty, different vaccines/doses, etc)
www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/pfizer-vaccine-protecting-against-hospitalisation-during-omicron-wave-study-2021-12-14/

[2] 44.1% of over 12s have now had a booster and that is massively skewed to those more 'at risk'. Over 50s have had the 'offer' for a booster for enough time for it to have kicked in with 'high' effectiveness.

www.travellingtabby.com/uk-coronavirus-tracker/

[3] w/end 11Dec 1.72% (1.62-1.81%) only up a smidge from previous week ('trend is uncertain' = within MoE) despite cases rises significantly in the same period (once again highlighting the cases data under-reports even in England-UK where we conduct a massive amount of testing). Almost certain to rise significantly in next weekly update but I expect we've seen folks start to make flawed 'league table' comparisons yet again. zzz ZZZ

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/10december2021

[Danny]

Dec 17, 2021 23:36:33 GMT @tw said:

Some of the early studies (based on 2 doses of Pfizer) suggested 'down to 70%'

I posted an in vitro experimental result above somewhere which found antibody effectiveness against omicron was only 1/30 that against the original virus used to create the vaccines. I dont think this lab experiment is nearly the end of the matter and field results look to be rather better. I have come across a number of reasons why this might be, though no clear professonal consensus. Our antibody response is broad and varied creating many different types hitting small specific targets on a virus or indeed the vaccine. Changes to a virus will invalidated some of these but not all. The in vitro experiment using samples of blood serum from vaccinated volunteers will contain the whole mix of different antibodies, and a result of 1/30 the effectivenes suggests an awful lot of them are no good against omicron. However, its the good ones which in a real person will go on to trgger production of a lot more of that type, which will then create a response only 30% down.

The problem is that this might lead to a 'sudden death' situation once the virus has changed enough none of the previous antibodies work. It will go on working with fewer and fewer effective antibodies until suddenly there are none left. In nature we adjust to changes firstly by never making a huge response to one particular part of the virus - whereas vaccines are deliberately designed to max out our response. Secondly, by allowing repeat infections at a low intensity which will however gradually retrain the immune system to new targets. Presumably that will continue after vaccination when we get new infections but the risk has to be a very high level of one antibody generated to the vaccine will continue to carry the whole load of protection without much stimulating new antibodies (because it still suppresses the virus enough they arent needed)....until it suddenly fails completely.

Repeat vaccination with the same badly matched vaccine isnt going to solve this problem. Nor will it wean us off vaccines which is what we need to do. To move to wholly human defences with vaccines only used for the susceptible few.

Good to see in the BBC article a statistician point out the obvious: 'if you keep on doubling and doubling and doubling cases, there'll eventually be more people getting infected than there are people in the UK - so there is a limit on this' (amazing how many folks still ignore that (eg I-SAGE and 'Zero Covid' types)

Thats assuming the limit is the total number of people in a country. However, there was plenty of work around by summer 2020 showing old blood samples from 2019 had immunity to covid. Its assumed this was cross immunity beause they had been vaccinatd by exposure to related corona viruses in the past. The phenomenon discovered by Edward Jenner, which he named vaccination. So from the total population as a theoretical maximum of cases, you have to deduct everyone who was already vaccinated. Unfortunately since we really dont know how many caught covid in each outbreak, we canot say how many were immune enough already that they never did. But we can with more confidence count how many died, sand its about 0.1% in one wave of covid in the UK.  Some countries such as Japan have achieved repeatble scores of under 0.01% in a wave and china is even lower. It looks like no coincidence China was both the starting point for covid, but already had a lot of immunity to it. They have probably had failed migration of corona viruses to humans there for a long time.Probably have had lots of modest break throughs over the centuries. Zoe numbers suggested maybbe ten million people had covid in the UK in spring 2020, but my guess is virtually all the population was exposed to it and most failed to be infected enough to notice.

We need to get away from the idea you are either ill or well and instead think of being in a state of constant reinfection by masses of different pathogens which we are constantly fighting off.

[3] w/end 11Dec 1.72% (1.62-1.81%) only up a smidge from previous week ('trend is uncertain' = within MoE) despite cases rises significantly in the same period (once again highlighting the cases data under-reports even in England-UK where we conduct a massive amount of testing). Almost certain to rise significantly in next weekly update but I expect we've seen folks start to make flawed 'league table' comparisons yet again. zzz ZZZ

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/10december2021

See Zoe ffigures which tend to be more up to date than ONS, also no reporting a sudden surge in cases as claimed by government. There is however clear indication in yesterdays zoe of the start of a rise, just less damatic.

The problem with government test results is obvious. They just asked people to do much more self testing, so its caused a surge in deteced cases. Hopeless study bias. The trouble is this must also upset the zoe, ons and react studies because more of their subjects will be reporting positive tests they wouldnt otherwise have taken and so biasing up their test results. Government has created a fake growth rate by doing more testing.

The other thing this has done, is I know someone in a vulnerable group who is not able to get new tests or tests for friends etc wanting to visit.....because the national supply has run out. Being used by the well and safe. Another policy cockup. Government has managed to waste the supply of tests it has.

[leftieliberal]

Results from the Liverpool trial show the benefits of mass Lateral Flow Tests
www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/19/mass-rapid-tests-in-liverpool-cut-hospital-stays-by-a-third

"Professor Iain Buchan, dean of the Institute of Population Health, who led the evaluation, said: “This time last year, as the Alpha variant was surging, we found that Liverpool city region’s early rollout of community rapid testing was associated with a 32% fall in Covid-19 hospital admissions after careful matching to other parts of the country in a similar position to Liverpool but without rapid testing."

“We also found that daily lateral flow testing as an alternative to quarantine for people who had been in close contact with a known infected person enabled emergency services to keep key teams such as fire crews in work, underpinning public safety.”

[Deleted]

Dec 19, 2021 14:44:34 GMT leftieliberal said:

'Test to release' is the way to reduce the impact on essential workers being off sick. Prof Lockdown and some countries (eg US) have also mentioned cutting the time period to 7days. At some point IF we become more confident that Omicron is far less severe then a more controversial move would be to allow people with Covid to consider it the same way they would a mild cold/flu with perhaps 'limitations' on their role (ie keep folks with/without in separate bubbles as much as possible to minimise with-without risk of transmission) or even at some point stop testing gen.pub and concentrate testing purely on screening for the most high risk people/settings (Prof Lockdown's Imperial College also mentioned that in one of their analysis reports)

www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-16-testing/

Some of the hysteria around hospital admissions seems to be ignoring the past and what NHS coped in previous waves or is perhaps lazily taking 3,000 admissions per day and 'reversing back the assumptions' without factoring in that boosters look like they reduce risk of hospitalisation by 80%+ (which on 85% of the most at risk means we can have infection levels 3x or more higher[1] than in the original or Alpha-Delta waves). So if we're going to see X hospitalisations in total as 'area under the curve' then do we want a Winter long 'slow burn' (ie a long-low peak) or get Omicron wave done as fast as we can (ie a short-high peak)? The latter IMO but for now then I certainly appreciate the concern and unknown for now how effective 'voluntary' behavioural adjustment will be. I'm also 'aware' of the polling and the short-term political pressure to go into lockdown but I hope Boris/Saj can take a longer-term view that considers the socio-economic cost.

[1] If average time in hospital is also shorter (due to better treatments, plenty of sources mentioning that but unclear exactly how much, 20-25% shorter by looks of it) then IMO we can run about 5x higher and peak at/below 20k patients in hospital 'WITH' Covid (and far less 'from' Covid). Current levels (6,321 as at 17Dec for England) and around 800 admissions per day are significantly below previous peaks when NHS was certainly stretched but didn't collapse (despite all the 'predictions' that it would). 

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nation&areaName=England 

[Danny]

Interesting to look at the latest cases and deaths in S Africa.

Attachment Deleted_

Attachment Deleted

The latest data shows cases of omicron  in SA have peaked. While if you look at the number of deaths and compare them to previous waves- theyre negligible.  Data says its already on the wane there. Nothing to see folks. No reason to panic. All going very well. They certainly will not be cancelling christmas.

[Danny]

Meanwhile in the Zoe daily reports we can see the age group prevalence and regional prevalence.

Attachment DeletedAttachment Deleted

The first plot shows how prevalence has changed in different age groups, and the only one showing sudden growth is the 20-29 age group.

While amongst the regional results, the obvious rise is for London, with some rise elsewhere.

Note however, these rises are sharp, but far from spectacular thus far in quantity. The rise on cases amongst 20-29 might be expected to have never created a significant number of additional people seriously ill with covid, let alone after vaccination. This group will probably have one of the lowest national percentages vaccinated, but also one of the highest for natural infection.

It is noticeable there is a distinct lack of exponential curves in these plots. You  could squint at the age group data and see it as an exponential whose rise in omicron  which began mid november. That is, the date at which it started to have an effect on total prevalence which previously was all delta. So it must have started earlier than that. Been here some time then.

Or you could see it as a couple of more or less linear rise segments.One presumably delta until quite rcently, and then a sharp omicron rise. That doesnt really seem to fit with reported percentages of cases which are omicron, so sounds like the former scenario is more likely. Oops! government  missed its arrival....again.

covid-assets.joinzoe.com/latest/covid_symptom_study_report.pdf

[Deleted]

YG article:

How many Britons’ Christmas plans have had to change because of Omicron?

- (31%) say they have made changes to their routine due to the Omicron variant. This includes 16% who have now called off going to a Christmas party they otherwise would have attended. Another 13% say they have not visited friends or family, and 11% have cancelled pub and restaurant trips.
- In London, where cases of Omicron make up half of recorded infections, some 45% have made changes to their plans[1] - the highest of any of the regions in the UK

yougov.co.uk/topics/lifestyle/articles-reports/2021/12/20/how-many-britons-christmas-plans-have-had-change-b

That will cause Rt to reduce from whatever it was (eg some folks reckoned doubling every day) but if Omicron is extremely transmissible then it won't get Rt below 1 UNLESS/UNTIL population immunity reduce the numbers of 'S-usceptible' folks (S from the SIR model). It's impossible to pinpoint the variables in the models when behaviour is also changing (a mistake Prof Lockdown et most, including moi, made in the original modelling way back in Feb-Mar'20 but became 'aware' of quite quickly when it was obvious behavioural changes were making a big impact to the numbers).

[1] A consequences of behavioural changes is loss of booking for hospitality, entertainment and 'in person' shopping and that is a tricky one for Rishi. We can't keep shaking the 'magic money tree' every time folks get nervous and reduce their spending and there is also a lot of pain in other industries from the global spike in energy prices that IMO has a 'better' case for a bit of help from the 'magic money tree' if the printing presses are being spun back up again (although 'politically' that might be less obvious generosity). If Rishi hopes to be PM one day then he doesn't want to be remembered as Scrooge but he also needs to ensure he's not remembered for the debt mountain he leaves future generations to pay back (or roll-over on the 'never-ever' if BoE allow them to)

[Danny]

Dec 21, 2021 0:03:36 GMT @tw said:

That will cause Rt to reduce from whatever it was (eg some folks reckoned doubling every day) but if Omicron is extremely transmissible then it won't get Rt below 1 UNLESS/UNTIL population immunity reduce the numbers of 'S-usceptible' folks (S from the SIR model). It's impossible to pinpoint the variables in the models when behaviour is also changing (a mistake Prof Lockdown et most, including moi, made in the original modelling way back in Feb-Mar'20 but became 'aware' of quite quickly when it was obvious behavioural changes were making a big impact to the numbers).

Well.....no.

Sure people change their behaviour but you couldnt really have tried harder than the UK government has just recently to persuade people to change behaviour. And what has happened since? The governments preferred indicator has continued to soar. Whether people might have christmas parties planned is quite irrelevant because whatever they are doing right now is quite enough for mass spread.

It also begs the question whether at cristmas spread would really increase. Christmas isnt just about parties, its about staying home with family because there is a holiday and so you dont go out to work. We saw at half term a dip in cases in schools because the kids were on holiday. So why wouldnt this apply to the general working population too? Its only a guess that factors increasing spread would be stronger than those reducing spread. Plus, as ever, the fastest spreaders would be those partying hardest which is the actually young adults (rather then the covid young, which is the under 50s).

[Deleted]

Dec 19, 2021 19:25:36 GMT @tw said:

Dec 19, 2021 14:44:34 GMT leftieliberal said:

To follow on the 'maths' then new studies coming out:

The researchers said they were seeing a roughly two-thirds reduction in the number needing hospital care

www.bbc.com/news/health-59758784

Which although a small sample confirms the 'maths' of being able to run much higher infections in the Omicron wave to get it over with quicker (also note time in spent in hospital is likely to be far shorter which gets to the 5x levels I guesstimated a few days back).

Also note the 'booster' roll out will have a bigger impact going forward (ie since we now have over 50% of over 12s and vast majority of most at risk 'boostered' then the impact of boosters will further decrease the ratio of infected ending up needing hospital care)

Not sure if folks are doing 'league tables' at the moment (probably not given they don't make UK look bad) but on boosters then for 'total population' as at 20Dec:

England: 44% (which is over 50% for 12+)
EU: 24%
US: 19%

ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-vaccine-booster-doses-per-capita?country=USA~OWID_WRL~GBR~European+Union

Testing league tables (ie hardly a surprise UK is finding a lot more cases than 'others' and note that is very likely reducing actual transmission)?

ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-tests-per-thousand-people-smoothed-7-day?tab=chart&country=USA~GBR~FRA~ESP~DEU~ITA

Final bit of info worth a look is the 'stringency index' and note from the small print that UK is being distorted higher by the smaller nations who have higher stringency than England but still much less than most of Europe and rWorld (ie England/UK has kept more of our socio-economy open than others and will hence likely 'Get Omicron Wave Done' quicker than others, Freedom Day'22 hopefully not too far away as we learn to live with Covid better+faster than 'others')  

ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-stringency-index

[leftieliberal]

Have you got a cold? It could be Covid: www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59768366

"For most people, an Omicron positive case will feel much more like the common cold, starting with a sore throat, runny nose and a headache. You only need to ask a friend who has recently tested positive to find this out.

[Deleted]

Latest ONS infection survey[1] (for w/end 16Dec) shows higher levels of infection than Jan'21 (previous peak)

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/23december2021

Yet the lag in that data conveniently matches the lag from being infected to being in hospital. In Jan'21 there were 30k patients in NHS England hospitals, currently 7k (less than 1/4 of the previous peak) and a lot of folks currently in hospital have the more severe Delta variant rather than Omicron that is now dominant in most areas.

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nation&areaName=England

Obviously for now then folks should do a test before meeting family+friends that they don't normally come into contact with but infections are clearly not doubling every 2 days and we'll run out of people to infect before NHS collapsed on actual 'doubling' rate (taking numbers from Jan'21 for NHS and the flawed cases data for most recent doubling time). After Xmas we'll have a bit more data (ie confidence) that Omicron is less severe, then with combination of booster roll out + better treatments is it time to start treating Covid the same way we treat colds or the flu (for vaccinated people at least and the Coronaphobia hysteria did almost certainly help with the rapid booster roll out)

[1] Doens't suffer from the flaws of 'record cases' which under report 'actual infections' but by a varying degree

[Deleted]

A good source of data led info from the twitter verse highlighting the drop in 'From' Covid % of folks in hospital (yet another sign Omicron is less severe and the full impact of that will drop the % even further as a lot of folks in hospital currently have Delta). Worth bearing in mind when folks talk about patients in hospital 'With' Covid.

I'll also post the his most recent update comparing current wave (which is becoming the Omicron wave) versus previous waves from which folks can look at the 'ratios' comparing this wave to previous waves WRT to hospitalisations and deaths (and how quickly we could get through this wave if we don't 'over react')

?

[Deleted]

Moving Covid specific issue posts from the main thread to the Issue Specific thread titled Covid

Dec 23, 2021 16:22:11 GMT bantams said:

Vaccination figures for today:

See earlier posts from myself. Note patients in hospital 'from' Covid has dropped as a % and how much lower hospitalisations and deaths are in this Omicron wave (which started when Delta was still dominant, so near future ratios are likely to drop even further)

Dec 23, 2021 15:20:10 GMT colin said:

Dec 23, 2021 15:08:36 GMT turk said:

Colin

19,000 nhs staff absent.

Blimey only another 1.3 million staff to go and there be nobody left.

It's mainly a London problem I think. Where vaccination coverage is low.

Certainly a lot more 'refuseniks' in London than elsewhere (see regional data) and Omicron was spreading fast in London before folks adjusted behaviour (see YG article). I'd also add a/ the essential staff absent was a problem in previous waves (and every Winter), b/ the self-isolation (test to release) being dropped to 7days will help this year. 

[Deleted]

Further info on colin 's point re:vaccinations by region.

London has the youngest population of any English/UK region/nation so best to look at the age x-breaks, below is London % (difference to average)

50-54: 57.3% (-10%)
55-59: 64.7% (-10.1%)
60-64: 71.4% (-11.4%)
65-69: 76.1% (-10.6%)
70-74: 79.4% (-10.0%)
75-79: 83.6% (-12.6%)
80+: 73.1% (-13.2%)

See 'COVID-19 weekly announced vaccinations 23 December 2021' in www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-vaccinations/

If we take the 75-79 age group as an example then in England overall only 3.8% don't have the extra immunity offered for free by a booster jab compared to 10.6% in London. So London has almost 3x as many folks in that age group who are significantly more at risk for their own health and overwhelming NHS than elsewhere in England. 

Blair made useful comment t'other day[1] but I'll quote Biden (and add the context and an adjective he missed out)

"But it's (Omicron) here now and it's spreading and it's gonna increase. ... We are looking at a winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated -- for themselves, their families and the hospitals they'll soon overwhelm. But there's good news: If you're vaccinated and you have your booster shot, you're (highly) protected from severe illness and death," the President added.

www.cnn.com/2021/12/16/politics/joe-biden-warning-winter/index.html

Additional 2c. Folks might have heard of DNRs but perhaps for 'refuseniks' we should consider DNBs (Do Not Bother) or at least make it very clear that if Triage is required then they get 'black' tagged if they have refused to have their jabs and don't have a genuine medical reason to be a 'refusenik' (sadly won't happen of course). The 'refuseniks' selfishness is putting avoidable extra strain on NHS and risking further restrictions and socio-economic damage for everyone. I doubt Biden, Spahn (who warned Germans would be 'vaccinated, recovered or dead' by end of winter) or Blair's comments will get the hard core of 'refuseniks' to get their jabs and the CRG rebels + LDEM + LW-Libertarians object to mandatory vaccines and vaccine passports but society is for the many not the few!

[1] Unvaccinated people are ‘irresponsible idiots’, says Tony Blair

metro.co.uk/2021/12/22/covid-tony-blair-calls-unvaccinated-people-idiots-amid-omicron-wave-15812541/

[alec]

I get that everyone is desperate to make Omicron benign, but there are so many negatives about this variant I don't think people are factoring into their thinking.

The UKHSA said it appears to be "up to" 70% less severe, so once it hits the elderly, the real number could be much lower than this, but Sage have already said that with it's greater transmissiblity, it would need to be 90% less severe to avoid the NHS experiencing overwhelming peak rate admissions.

Tonight we also have data showing that booster jab efficacy starts to wane after a month and drops to as much as 30 - 50% effective at 10 weeks. The vast majority of the over 60s had their boosters over 10 weeks ago.

Omicron as not yet really broken into the older age ranges, and has predominantly been seen in the under 40s, but this is now starting to change.

Once again upthread we have people making bold statments about what we should or shouldn't do next, despite the same people being wrong on multiple occasions throughout the pandemic. But while the latest data today, only up to the 19th, shows a modest 4.4% rise in weekly UK admissions, the figure is 6.5% for England, but for London - well ahead on the Omicron wave - admissions increased by 41% over the week to the 19th. The 7 day London case rate increased by a factor of around 2.5 between the week to Dec 11th and the week to Dec 18th, and the 41% increase in admissions won't include any of this huge surge in cases.

Just think there is a hge amount of amatuer analysis here from people wishing this all away.

[birdseye]

Dec 17, 2021 6:52:13 GMT Danny said:

 Freedom of speech isnt freedom of speech unless everyone has it.

Your point is that people should not be allowed to climb mountains, smoke, drink alcohol, eat meat, over eat at all, drive private cars, go on holiday, go out at all really....because every one of those things creates risk to life which could be avoided.  Obviously as a nation we should cease sending armies abroad, and even using them in self defence is a bit susect.  We certainly ought to join the EU as fast as possible, obviously questions of liberty and peronal choice should be discounted in such a decision.

If you dont  believe such things, just where do you draw the line? Its obvious where the government draws it.  Vaccines are not  compulsory. If you think they should be then make it so. If you dont, then no one really should be trying to coerce people into being vaccinated by name calling or indeed vaccine passports. Thats just pretending you believe in freedom when you dont reallly and want to deny  it to those you dont agree with.

The article says,

""He wasn't vaccinated at all. My sister is gutted but on the other hand she's a little bit angry that he never took these vaccines. She had an argument with him at the end of October about this very thing - getting vaccinated. He thought it was a conspiracy. He was an intelligent man but it's all these different things you're getting from online and different media."

So obviously as an intelligent man he had made a choice based upon the information available to him. I cant say if  I would have made the same decision or not. What I can say is if he relied solely upon government sources of information he would not have received unbiased information. If he had been less intelligent he might have accepted that advice, but as an intelligent man he might have seen its obvious flaws and therefore not believed it. SAGE way back at the start told government to be open and honest, but instead they chose the route of propaganda. Nanny knows best. While you will convince some that way, others you will simply alienate.

As a simple example, anyone can look up the Zoe case numbers and see they markedly disagree with government testing resuts at the moment Yet the media only reports the higher number, at government encouragement. Why is that? Zoe has a good track record of being right and the testing count of being wrong, for obvious reasons. There is an alternative narrative of mistake after mistake by government in handling this epidemic which they will not admit to. Its the same malaise which sees us with a two party system of government where hardly anyone really believes in either of those parties and we are certain to get governments oposed by a big majority of people. So  no one believes politicians at any time, and they are right to disbelieve them based on track record. How do you decide when they are lying?

Now personally I havnt been vaccinated, and the reason is I believe I caught covid in 2019. As an intelligent man and based upon research evidence from credible sources, I see good evidence to support this belief. No one here has come up with credible arguments to invalidate my conclusions, indeed they refuse to engage with them, which is very telling. Obviously circumstantial evidence as no testing was available in 2019 for a disease which didnt officially exist, and in 2020 when antibody tests might have settled the matter, government banned them for private citizens. They didnt want people to be able to confirm they had had covid, because those people would have done the same as professor of epidemiology and government advisor Neil Ferguson (and other such advisors), who  believed rightly they were at minimal risk from covid because they had already been infected, and so ignored restrictions. But this created a narrative of suppressing the expert opinions of such people. It was precisely what SAGE had warned against doing, only telling half the truth.

Its very obvious vaccine has failed in its promised objective of ending this epidemic. Sweden adopted a very different course to the UK in terms of minimally restriciting civil liberties, and got better outcomes than the UK. Ironically it did this because it handed control of policy to medical experts, who therefore made decisions taking into account strict risk assessment based upon balance of evidence. They admitted mistakes as new facts became available.  They chose a path which did not rely upon  vaccine working. Great when it came along, not so great if it never did or did not work as hoped.

Alec here has from time to time talked about the risk of immune imprinting. The vaccine takes a different approach to creating immunity than does nature. For someone who has never had covid, then my judgement would be they are safer being vaccinated.  At last, if they are in a high risk group which would incude 70 somethings. But for anyone who has had covid, this is rather different. Its pretty obvious their best immune response for the future would be created by catching omicron now. Its rather unlikely to do them harm, because they survived it once already and they  start with more immunity second time round. Humans stay safe by being reinfected. That immunity will be up to date and better than imprinting on the out of date and anyway rather narrowly targeted vaccines. Thats potentially dangerous as alec used to say.  So for my long term survival I see this better  served for when I reach 80 by catching omicron now. Quite honestly this applies to young, healthy and uninfected people too because they woud be setting up life long immunity optimally. 

The world had immunity to covid before it arrived. That was proved by summer 2020. Thats what saved us from a bad epidemic of the sort originally predicted. What precisely saved us was almost certainly past infection by circulating corona viruses which kids catch four times a year (another piece of 2020 research).  Suspending the natural process of catching circulating viruses for two years by imposing restrictions is rather a concern as it will have harmed the future health of everyone. Thats why  there is a wave of bad colds now, and experts fear a bad flu coming along. Naturally we dont eradicate respiratory diseases like covid, we reach a truce  with them for mutual benefit. They get to keep circulating. We get to build immunity to them and their potentially much more dangerous wild relatives. Actually, it worked against covid.  As humans we have always tamed other species for our benefit. Jenner didnt invent vaccination, he discovered it and gave it a name.  We have just spent two years trying to reproduce what nature does for us anyway, with only middling success.

The real problem with our approach to covid has been we are fighting the natural process which keeps us safe. Infection is good for you. Kids are safe, catching it young they build immunity which keeps most of us safe well into old age (retirement happens once we reach old age, so talking 60s here, not 80s, but 80s have survived well too).  However there is a second string to our defences. Many people always avoid dying by never being exposed to a disease. Covid propagates through the young population, so once they have all had it it has to die out (or at least down to very low levels). If this had been allowed to happen, then the disease would have ended naturally in 2020. Statistically  this is an important defence which we have done our best to sabotage by imposing lockdowns on the young. Judging by the public debate, experts dont even realise what they have done. Although its likely the mistake lies in the interface and separation between medics presenting options to government and politicians choosing without themselves understanding the limitations of that advice.  Thats why sweden got it more right than wrong.

You have posted some nonsense here Danny!   There is no such thing as freedom of speach in the UK and most other countries. The laws of slander alone prevent that before you get on to what the PC people call hate speach, and before you get onto the self restraint that keeps a civilised society civilised. We are all tempering what we say - particularly to wife / partner!

You say " If you dont believe such things, just where do you draw the line? Its obvious where the government draws it. Vaccines are not compulsory. If you think they should be then make it so. If you dont, then no one really should be trying to coerce people into being vaccinated by name calling or indeed vaccine passports. Thats just pretending you believe in freedom when you dont reallly and want to deny it to those you dont agree with.". I see no coercion which requires " force or threats" - the use of that word shows your attitude to what is in reality just  encouragement.

I liked your quote from the article where it said " He thought it was a conspiracy. He was an intelligent man but it's all these different things you're getting from online and different media."So obviously as an intelligent man he had made a choice based upon the information available to him. Clearly he wasnt intelligent in the least or he wouldnt believe the crackpot american style conspiracy theories prevalent on the net. Likely he believes the CIA shot Kennedy and bomber the World Trade centre etc. You have to be midly suspicious of the newspapers but you have to be exopteremly suspicious of gossip on the net. But then as you imply, he was a free man free to do stupid things.

In saying " What I can say is if he relied solely upon government sources of information he would not have received unbiased information. If he had been less intelligent he might have accepted that advice, but as an intelligent man he might have seen its obvious flaws and therefore not believed it. SAGE way back at the start told government to be open and honest, but instead they chose the route of propaganda. Nanny knows best. While you will convince some that way, others you will simply alienate." Leaving aside that Sage minutes are published, the role of Sage is not the role of government. Sage advises, government decides as must always be the case in a democracy. Trouble is this is all against a background of media publishing the opinions of any academic they can find who differs with the official line because conflict is news, agreement isnt. And what academic doesnt like a bit of publicity and a bit of cash for saying something different. So third rate professors from third rate universities get their day in the sun and throroughly muddy the waters. We saw exactly the same with MMGW and the MMR vaccine and it's routine in economics where there are always at least one more opinion that there are economists.

I dont see much sign of intelligence in " Now personally I havnt been vaccinated, and the reason is I believe I caught covid in 2019. As an intelligent man and based upon research evidence from credible sources, I see good evidence to support this belief." You may have had covid though it seems very unlikely since the start in the UK has been traced back to two Chinese visitors from Wuhan. But given that without antibody tests there must be some uncertainty, what is there for you to lose but being vaccinated ? The risk is tiny? The intelligent decision, since it is possible to have the virus twice and worse the second time, is to use belt and braces. We all take decisions based on risk and benefit - I got the vaccination because the risk to me was minimal and it minimised the risk of me infecting others. But I ride my motorbike fast, a high risk activity, because the enjoyment is great and the risk to others is minimal.

"Covid propagates through the young population, so once they have all had it it has to die out (or at least down to very low levels). If this had been allowed to happen, then the disease would have ended naturally in 2020. Statistically this is an important defence which we have done our best to sabotage by imposing lockdowns on the young." is unrealistic. Covid doesnt only propagate through the young - look what happens in care homes. How do you think that we could seperate the young ( define them please) from everyone else and what makes you think that in an open world the virus would not reappear in the UK even if your approach temporarily eradicated it here. The reality, though it is politically impossible for HMG to say it, we are in a herd immunity approach and always have been. Lockdowns are simply about trying to spread out  peaks in hospital demand whilst herd immunity builds either through vaccination or catching the bug and recovering. There is no alternative and never was an alternative short of the enforcement approach of the Chinese communist party.

In an economic sense the choice is between some short term damage to minor industries like pubs and shops on the one hand and people dying because of hospital capacity limits / demand peaks on the other hand. The former is easily recovered - the latter isnt.

[John Chanin]

Latest ONS figures. 2.5% of the whole population (1 in 40) had the virus a week ago. It may well be more now. No wonder things everywhere are closing because people are off sick or isolating. For better or worse this is going to rip through at least a quarter of the population in short order, but at least they will all then have immunity against the new variant.

[Deleted]

Some Covid specific polling from R&W.

and there are not going to be specific Christmas restrictions in England but if there were:

See also Ben Walker (New Statesman) article posted on main thread. One shouldn't mix polling from different sources but the YG article I posted a while back suggested a lot of folks taking 'voluntary measures' (see also the first R&W poll above) and the second R&W finding suggests a lot of folks wouldn't comply with an enforced lockdown which begs the question how much more impact would an enforced lockdown have compared to a voluntary behavioural adjustments?

Also a good summary piece from BBC finishing with the question we'll know the answer to only in hindsight in a few weeks time:

'The question is whether everything in our favour - milder, antivirals, boosters - is enough to deal with a variant that spreads faster than anything we've seen before.
Or will it take more restrictions to manage the Omicron wave?'

www.bbc.com/news/health-59769967

Jan'22 is going to be 'bad'[1] (that is now 'baked in') but I'm cautiously optimistic it won't be as bad as Jan'21 and that we can avoid further enforced measures (which would likely have less impact on transmission than before but would certainly have high socio-economic cost)

[1] Notably for the 'refusenik' anti-vaxxers (see Blair, Spahn, Biden, etc comments) but also for the risk of overwhelming NHS (London most likely, other TBC) which will be the trigger for more restrictions. 

[Danny]

birdseye,
what you have to lose from following government advice to get repeat man made but rather outdated vaccines is imprinting your immune system against a variant which died out 18 months ago. It's like keep buying a new black and white TV and expecting it to burst into colour.

Aside from that, covid is no more deadly intrinsically than the other corona viruses in general circulation. Our goal is to reduce it to similar mildness, and the way to do that is by repeat mild reinfections each time it makes a change. South Africa has announced and end to testing and isolation and no doubt intends in future to deal with covid as just another annual cold ir flu. Most people ignore it and carry on their normal routines.

It's likely their strategy of only vaccinating the 30% or so at highest risk was optimal. After that diminishing returns set in fast with additional vaccinations even in the short term, and long term you are leaving people less well protected. It seems likely younger ( under 50) people who have already had covid or a first vaccination are better off catching omicron than having a booster. Indeed young people have always been better off just catching it. Certainly the national bank balance is, and older people would have always been better off with the younger becoming immune fast thus limiting spread to those older.

[Danny]

birdseye,
have to say I also resent the government throwing away a trillion pounds of their and our money on an experimental plan to manage an epidemic which has failed. You ask what is there to lose from being vaccinated? another answer is it implicitly accepts the government plan was right, whereas it has been a world disaster.

At every step rusk from covid has bed over stated and never realised. This was used to justify intervention, which absent those dire outcomes never was justifiable.

[Deleted]

No Boris announcement today. For some reason '400' admission to London hospitals on Xmas Eve is being used as a measure for whether England needs to enter lockdown and that data is now out:

London hospital admissions:

22Dec: 386
23Dec: 390
24Dec: 278 
25Dec: 364 

So the '400' number wasn't breached. See 'Daily Admissions and Beds 27 December 2021 (XLSX, 41KB)'
in
www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/

Beds occupied in London up to 2,640 but time spent in hospital is clearly lower with Omicron (you'll need to do some maths for that, sum previous X days as a rough guide and solve for X to minimise the error)

Total admissions in England (24Dec) : 1,020 
Beds (as at 27Dec): 8,474

NB Xmas data might well be messed up for various reasons but the numbers are certainly less than 'feared'

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

“Far fewer people in hospital with Covid this Christmas despite cases being three times higher”

“...the latest hospital data showed there were 7,536 patients in hospital on December 26, compared to 18,350 on the same day last year.

The current figure has risen slightly after falling in recent weeks, and is now at around the same level as on November 1 (7,535).

The latest data showed that reported coronavirus cases fell to 98,000 from 103,000 in England on Monday. The numbers from the other devolved nations, as well as hospital admissions, will be updated on Tuesday.

The figures are well below last winter’s peak on January 18 when 34,336 patients were in hospital in England, having tested positive for coronavirus.”

Telegraph

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

“Britain’s relatively low recent death toll from Covid compared to Europe may be a result of earlier use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab to vaccinate the most vulnerable, according to the nation’s former vaccine tsar.

Dr Clive Dix, former chairman of the Vaccine Task Force, told The Telegraph that he believed the AstraZeneca jabs offered more robust, long-term protection against severe disease and death than RNA-based alternatives made by Pfizer and Moderna.”

...

“Figures from Our World in Data, a website run by the University of Oxford, shows the UK has 1.7 daily deaths from Covid per million people. In comparison, the EU as a whole has almost four.”

...


“The key, he says, is that although the RNA jabs produce a more obvious and rapid jump in antibody levels in lab tests, other vaccines may be better at priming another part of the immune system: cellular immunity.

Cellular immunity includes various forms of T cells, including those that destroy infected cells, and also memory cells, ensuring a person can fight off an infection several years after they are first exposed to it. They are slower to react than antibodies and do not prevent infection, but do halt the pathogen in its tracks, making it harder for the virus to cause damage.”

[Deleted]

Dec 27, 2021 18:44:11 GMT c-a-r-f-r-e-w said:

Dix (and Torygraph) might have a bit of bias but the info has also been published in paywall free ES:

Oxford AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine ‘preventing lagged rise in deaths’

www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/astrazeneca-oxford-europe-fears-b973903.html

FWIU then MHRA has also been quicker to approve various drug treatments as well and that is likely also a factor in UK's lower recent death numbers. It would take a more detailed study to split out specific reasons but it's clearly good news for UK. Excess deaths is the 'better' number to use as countries report Covid deaths differently but UK is 38th of 47 in Europe for 'deaths in last 7days / 1M pop' at 9

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/weekly-trends/#weekly_table

PS The cases data is more flawed now than ever. I'm not sure why folks still use that, thankfully CON HMG (for England policy) are mostly looking at the hospital data (which certainly isn't doubling every 2days or every week or whatever else is part of the dodgy data being used to push for a lockdown). Time spent in hospital is also shorter (for various methodology, Pharma, and 'omicron less severe' reasons).

Omicron cases are much higher than official stats for multiple reasons (and the ratio of under reporting is likely higher now for various additional reasons). The only relevance the cases data might have is that if less folks are ending up in hospital 'from' Covid (and the official stats only give the exaggerated 'with' number) and dying then Omicron is obviously far less severe for England/UK population (due in large part to the high levels of highly (not perfectly) effective vaccination immunity, some acquired immunity and Omicron being a less severe variant - not that I expect the 'Zero Covid' types or anti-vaxxer types to acknowledge reality and ever admit they were/are wrong)

Increasing my level of optimism, which although still cautious, should mean we (England) can get through the Omicron wave quickly, without over-reacting as some other nations have. 
 

[mercian]

Danny
"I havent seen any evidence young people are generating a large proportion of covid hospital cases whether vaccinated or not, so its irrelevant whether they get vaccinated."

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You make this sort of false inference a lot.
----------------------------------
Here are the causes of death from the ONS. Not bang up to date but includes November.
www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/monthlymortalityanalysisenglandandwales/latest#death-occurrences-in-november-2021-and-year-to-date

Covid deaths in November 6.7% of total. Total deaths below the 5-year average.

[Danny]

Dec 27, 2021 19:37:15 GMT @tw said:

Oxford AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine ‘preventing lagged rise in deaths’

Hm. Research earlier this year reported how antibody levels post vaccinations were falling faster after pfizer than AZ. At the time this meant their effects were equal despite pfizer having scored better initially. The question was, would they level out the same or pfizer protection continue falling faster.

However none of this really tells us how well protection against serious disease holds up over time. Nor indeed how it compares to post infections immunity. The standard article argues the UK may do better than europe because it used AZ rather than pfizer, but South Africa seems to be doing quite well based upon most people using neither.

FWIU then MHRA has also been quicker to approve various drug treatments as well and that is likely also a factor in UK's lower recent death numbers.

Indeed. But also of course, the proportion who caught covid before any vaccination existed. The UK had a stonking big first wave which Zoe estimated as 2.2 million cases concurrently at peak with symptomatic disease aged 20-70. Total cases in the first wave could easily have exceedd ten million people becoming immune to severe future outcomes. Could be rather more. Much depends upon when it really arrived in the UK and how many caught covid unawares. You will recall I had covid in 2019, and others did too, before anyone started counting.

It would take a more detailed study to split out specific reasons but it's clearly good news for UK. Excess deaths is the 'better' number to use as countries report Covid deaths differently but UK is 38th of 47 in Europe for 'deaths in last 7days / 1M pop' at 9

I have been comparing deaths in the kent wave to delta, and the delta wave had about 1/10 the deaths for the same number of cases (as measured by zoe). We dont know why, of course, especially considering vaccine and post infection immunity are likey to both be protective against future severe disease. I posted elsewhere it would be good to see a detailed analysis of exactly who is currently getting seriously ill. Which we dont seem to know.

As to excess deaths, we have a problem in that deaths caused by misguided anti covid easures will be lumped in with ones caused by covid itself.

Increasing my level of optimism, which although still cautious, should mean we (England) can get through the Omicron wave quickly, without over-reacting as some other nations have.

Too late to not over react. Christmas was cancelled  needlessly.
 

[Danny]

Dec 27, 2021 20:08:43 GMT mercian said:

Danny
"I havent seen any evidence young people are generating a large proportion of covid hospital cases whether vaccinated or not, so its irrelevant whether they get vaccinated."

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You make this sort of false inference a lot.

So you are agreeing with me, theres's no evidence this vast interruption of the world economy actually saved anyone? Thats the problem I have, you see. No evidence it helped. Whereas what I do see in the UK was the national plan for managing the epidemic was changed, but step by step the new plan failed.

Covid deaths in November 6.7% of total. Total deaths below the 5-year average.

So... excess deaths earlier in the epidemic were in fact people who would have died now anyway?

I had a look at the ONS link you gave, which included a table of main causes of death in November 2021, which placed covid as third. Talk about partial! For all the other causes they included a 5 year average, which was pretty similar to this November outcomes. The exception was they failed to include the covid 5 years average. Obviously over the last 5 years its a lot lower and would place it behind influenza. Ok..so its new, but do we honestly believe it is likey to ever again kill as many as in November 2021, so the long term average will sink. If it behaves more like other corona viruses rather than flu, it will end up killing rather few. In the long term its unlikely to be a significnt killer worth a special category.