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the shizzle => shootin' the shit => Topic started by: TobyD on July 20, 2021, 08:58:08 am
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I don't think I have any problems with it but clearly many people do. Interested to know if anyone has any convincing arguments?
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Seems fine as long as there's a "good reason" (i.e. the current surge in cases and ongoing pandemic) and free, easy access to vaccination for anyone who wants/needs it. I think the tricky bit is how you decide to phase it out.
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I'm undecided. I am happy to get vaccinated and prove it myself, but I have concerns about it on an national level, the precedent it sets, if you implement it how you phase it out, how close it would take us to the forced/coerced vaccinations etc.
Complicated stuff, I'm glad we've got the best minds in the country with a strong ethical backbone currently in the cabinet sorting it all out........
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My biggest real issue with it (I've been double vaxxed for ages and have an app to show it) is will there not be a bunch of 18-whatever year olds who will be basically stuck out of going to clubs for a bit because they only just got their first dose? A bit wank for them and realistically we've shat on them from a great height as a society across the pandemic (hardest hit for unemployment, rinsed for all their money by unis but spent it all sat inside their overpriced housing on a laptop etc etc etc). They've already missed a year.
One thing I will say is that actually the Tory gov probably don't want to bring this in and a lot of their backbenchers will be pushing to get rid of ASAP. But yeah if it's actually needed... why wait until September?
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I'm not a yoof, and not been to a club for aaaaaaaages, so perhaps too far detached from it to give the other viewpoint much weight - but I struggle with seeing going clubbing (or indeed foreign travel) as "a right" - it's a privilege, and so having to be double-vax'd to gain entry isn't that much of an ask.
A club is arguably one of the best super-spreader locations there is; lots of people, small space, loud music so people talking loudly right in each others' faces, and (scandal) I suspect some heavy petting takes place too!
So anything that can be done to mitigate the risk of turning every club into a hot-bed of transmission seems sensible to me.
I agree it sucks for those that haven't been out-out with their mates for a while, but whilst I sympathise, I suspect that's why they've delayed implementing it until September so more of them can get jabbed if they want to.
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... But yeah if it's actually needed... why wait until September?
Because currently not everyone has had the chance to be double vaxxed, even if they wanted to. I would definitely see mileage in not allowing clubs to open until the point at which they can require double vaccination, but they couldn't do that currently - the only reason young people had to wait was because they were told to, so it wouldn't be right to exclude them until they had a fair chance to get it.
Further to that, clubs would be pretty empty at the minute given their target audience is pretty closely aligned to the people still waiting on second vaccines!
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The young people I know don't want the opportunity to go clubbing regardless of their vaccination status, they want the opportunity to get fully vaccinated.
I have a "coronapas" on my phone that proves my fully vaccinated status. I have to show it if I want to eat or drink inside a bar/restaurant, enter any other place of entertainment, visit a museum, or use any kind of indoor sports facility - basically any indoor public space that isn't a shop. I acknowledge that the big difference is that proof of a negative test older than 72 hours also suffices (proof of test results is also digital). This not only reduces (hopefully) the chances of mingling indoors with infected people but also drives testing, which is very readily available. Seeing as almost other restrictions have been removed it remains Denmark's most powerful mitigating tool and I'm all for it. If circumstances dictated that it be made vaccinated only then I would be willing to support that on a temporary basis.
I see people arguing that such systems are impossible to implement, who would do the checking etc. but they are checked without fail here. A couple of weeks ago I was refused entry to a museum because I hadn't realised my test status had expired less than an hour before.
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The situation with clubs- as with much of the COVID mitigations - makes absolutely no sense.
If double vaccination is required for safe opening, it’s required. No entry without it now or later.
If it’s not required now, it is (surely?) not required for safe opening, so it need not be brought in later.
Which is it?
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The young people I know are all mad for going out clubbing and all of em are just going to house parties in the meantime so in all fairness I doubt that transmission amongst them is actually going to be that much worse.
Personally I am excited to go out to a nightclub and probably will in the next couple of weeks. But I digress. Point is; clubbing is a privilege not a right 100%, but I suppose (and this is less a policy view and more a comment of sympathy) I really do feel for young people of late. They've had the short end of the stick on a lot of things and been blamed for a lot, while actually the vast majority of them have steadfastly kept to the rules which have stuck them inside during a year that is commonly held to be one in which they should be out getting pissed, dancing and whatever. It's just a shame.
You're probably right about the delay being so that those exact people can get that second jab by the time it comes in, in all fairness. And actually if someone refuses to get the jab, my sympathy for them tends to evaporate sharpish.
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Worth considering here that not everybody who declines one or both doses fits neatly into the nutjob-antivaxxer-we-don't-have-to-care-what-they-think category (that's not a category that I think exists, but I expect it's how a lot of people see it).
One friend had the 1st dose and had such a ghastly reaction that they won't be going for the 2nd. I believe they have a family history of this sort of reaction to vaccinations. If remember correctly there are multiple medics in the family (late father was a consultant) who they have discussed this with, so hardly ignorant.
Another friend had the first dose and a day or two later her jab-arm went completely dead (and remained so for a while). Reported to the hospital where the doctors did plenty of tests but found no explanation.
You can argue all you like about the balance of risks, but this looks at the issue at a population level. These individuals quite reasonably perceive a risk to their health from having the second dose. If you have a vaccine you will definitely be exposed to the risks of having one; if you don't then you may actually avoid getting COVID-while-unvaccinated and thus avoid all the risks that go with that. I don't know if I would make the same decision that these people have made, but I don't think they are unreasonable decisions to make.
I'm undecided about whether they're ethically a good idea or not, but you have to recognise that widely adopting vaccine passports would be a massive divergence from our current position of allowing people to make their own decisions about their medical treatment without coercion.
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The situation with clubs- as with much of the COVID mitigations - makes absolutely no sense.
If double vaccination is required for safe opening, it’s required. No entry without it now or later.
If it’s not required now, it is (surely?) not required for safe opening, so it need not be brought in later.
Which is it?
It's not coherent if viewed purely as a measure to reduce transmissions. However, I suspect the point of it is to create a disincentive to not having the vaccine among people who might not bother otherwise due to apathy, or a belief that they don't need it medically, or consider it not worth the risk. It creates a self interest incentive i.e. it's about coercion. If viewed in those terms it makes sense to introduce it only when everyone has had an opportunity to receive the jabs.
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proof of a negative test older than 72 hours also suffices (proof of test results is also digital)
Are these PCR or lateral flow tests, Andy?
On a different note. Rights, privileges, freedoms, responsibilities, obligations. What are the definitions of these things? Saying "going to a nightclub is a privilege not a right" is a nice way of saying that you don't think it's important enough to be inalienable, but I wouldn't have defined it as either. Thinking aloud here: going to a nightclub is a freedom isn't it? And don't we have a right to our freedoms?
I'm going to have a go at answering my own question:
Rights - things that you have which are inalienable and are protected by law.
Freedoms - things that you can choose to do, within the law.
Privileges - things that you can do, but which others cannot do.
Responsibilities - things that you ought to do.
Obligations - things that you must do.
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proof of a negative test older than 72 hours also suffices (proof of test results is also digital)
Are these PCR or lateral flow tests, Andy?
Antigen - that's lateral flow isn't it? Far from perfect, I know. Obviously, if you get a positive you have to do a PCR - also very freely availble. Also obviously, I meant to not older than 72 hours. Cases are rising here but not explosively and most restrictions were removed several weeks ago - the coronapas must be part of the explanation for that.
Don't know if anyone noticed (probably not) but Denmark moved the UK to its red list a couple of days ... with an exemption for Wales.
I wasn't sure if you were saying "nut job anti-vaxxers" are not a real category in your post above? Sadly there are least two in my family.
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Pretty sure music above 200bpm kills the curryonavirus so my scene should be okay :punk:
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I would find it weird and don't think I'd be entirely comfortable with a "vaccine only" passport, rather than one that allowed negative test instead of vaccination. I'm not entirely sure why I feel that way though, I suspect I'd need to put some real effort into pondering the ramifications to be able to articulate why...
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nutjob-antivaxxer-we-don't-have-to-care-what-they-think category
Nut job anti-vaxxers are definitely a thing, but I don't think it's a long-term solution to try and deal with them by ignoring them and riding roughshod over their beliefs.
Budding participants in the culture war would very happily make them an underclass with reduced freedoms, to punish them for their beliefs. What other beliefs which the majority might deem unreasonable might we decide to punish someone for?
There are lots of things (including vaccinations) which a doctor might advise, including interventions required to protect an individual's life or the health of a community, which will be refused on religious grounds. If somebody refuses a vaccine, let's say for an infectious, asymptomatic disease other than COVID, on religious grounds, should they be excluded from society?
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It has been funny watching the anti vaxxers I know melting down about this. And, it'll do some of the filtering for you if you're going out to a club to pull..
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I don’t have a strong opinion (voted for the second option but could also have voted the first or, with more information, the last).
It’s clearly being used as a tool for getting more young people vaccinated, with relatively low political consequences. Seems like a practical policy from that point or view.
Instead of clubbing, what if you had to be vaccinated to be able to go to work? Would people feel the same?
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I'm on the fence with this one, I know the Cons. have a whopping majority (although given their back-benchers aren't fond of legislating for mask wearing perhaps not) but will this be voted on before coming into force?
The way Greater Manc. and Lancs. as a whole were treated last year, with changes to legislation receiving little to no scrutiny wasn't great.
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On a different note. Rights, privileges, freedoms, responsibilities, obligations. What are the definitions of these things? Saying "going to a nightclub is a privilege not a right" is a nice way of saying that you don't think it's important enough to be inalienable, but I wouldn't have defined it as either. Thinking aloud here: going to a nightclub is a freedom isn't it? And don't we have a right to our freedoms?
I agree, but often there's an argument from the "I don't wanna" crowd that this is somehow impinging on their "rights", same as the "It's outrageous I have to get a vaccine to go to [insert country here]" view.
You don't have a right to go to other countries if you don't meet their rules, in fact, you don't have a "right" even if you do - there's an agreement in place to let you do so. The terms of those agreements can change.
So yes, "freedom" is a much more accurate term, but people often use the more politically/important sounding word "right" instead - which I don't think it is.
I guess the question then, is whether "you're free to go clubbing, as long as x" is still free? i.e. is "freedom" binary or a spectrum?
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I’m okay with it, but only whilst it’s necessary. E.g. I’d be cool with it now whilst cases are starting to go crazy, but less cool with when things start getting better.
I can see why they’ve said they would wait until end of September so everyone can have a chance to be fully vaccinated but if that’s the case, why not do the same for returning to amber list countries, or avoiding having to isolate if you get “pinged”? It seems like a cop out aimed at trying to coerce people into getting vaccinated.
And I think we’ve got enough separation in society at the moment between different groups/backgrounds of people and this is one way to add to it as, from what I’ve read, the uptake of vaccines isn’t equal amongst different classes/races/backgrounds for whatever reasons.
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nutjob-antivaxxer-we-don't-have-to-care-what-they-think category
Nut job anti-vaxxers are definitely a thing, but I don't think it's a long-term solution to try and deal with them by ignoring them and riding roughshod over their beliefs.
I was going to contest this point, but you got there first :lol: How would you deal with them then? I have had to deal with quite a number in the past (unsurprisingly increasing in frequency over the last year), and have yet to find a legitimate long term solution. Simply discussing things cordially occasionally works in the short term, but invariably they slide back into their old rhetoric, because it is comfortable and familiar. I agree that belittling their beliefs is absolutely the worst possible solution. It's a hard enough task to convince someone that they might be under a misapprehension at the best of times, why would anyone think placing their ego between you would help.
Being a pathogen biologist with an interest in public engagement of science, this is something I have given a lot of thought to.
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Aren’t there lots of different reasons for being ‘anti’ the covid vaccination though?
Countering their point would depend on their reasoning. Countering the long-term safety issue would be a completely different discussion to countering someone who believed that covid isn’t that dangerous, comparative to all the other things you can die of or get ill with, therefore why should they worry about it more than ‘x, y or z’. The data for probability of death or significant illness is what can I find interesting. Also the data around vaccination preventing spread (rather than the data for prevention of serious illness) isn’t as good, afaik?
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I think if there's exemptions for those with contraindications (e.g. previous allergic reaction to the first dose or components of the vaccine) then I'm fine with it. It's not like clubs don't police who gets in anyway - why the uproar about vaccine status? More reasonable than allowing entry based on footwear or how hot you are.
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My strong suspicion is that a lot of "anti-vaxxers" would loudly protest about getting a jab and quietly get it when they realise their life will be harder and certain things impossible without it. I'd say its entirely possible for European countries like Spain and Portugal to introduce no jab no entry policies in the next year or so and that would do a lot to encourage takeup. I don't actually think the nightclub threat will come to anything though, it might well be quietly dropped once it has served its purpose of increasing uptake in the young.
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Also the data around vaccination preventing spread (rather than the data for prevention of serious illness) isn’t as good, afaik?
My concern is that being (double) vaccinated is somehow being associated with 'freedom' from risk - either personally or collectively. The Government's pivot towards personal responsibility while removing any incentives/requirements to eg mask wear or socially distance - even in public/crowded/indoor places - risks giving the impression that being double jabbed is a passport to 'freedom' with little or or no acknowledgement of the still significant risks of getting infected even when double-jabbed* and still unclear risks of transmission by those same people.
* See Table 1 on page 7 of latest Govt. update - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1000512/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_27.pdf (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1000512/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_27.pdf)
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My strong suspicion is that a lot of "anti-vaxxers" would loudly protest about getting a jab and quietly get it when they realise their life will be harder and certain things impossible without it.
My afore-mentioned loon friend dearly loves going to Font and the Frankenjura and is resigning themselves to never doing that again due to their dogmatic loon stance. I told them to make sure they've got a good data allowance because next time I go to Font without them I'll be messaging them so many photos and videos my phone might melt.
There was something about getting an allotment and starting Good Life style farming as they thought they might not be allowed in supermarkets too.
BTW although I am dropping the anti-vaxxer bantz bombs I should point out that my friend's and my views do coincide a lot more closely when it comes to blanket lockdowns, actual restrictions of freedoms, and the government's position on the death-vs-disruption response to covid. As much as I find the loons ridiculous I am very much not a Tomtom-style militant lockdowneer fanatic #fulldisclaimer
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My strong suspicion is that a lot of "anti-vaxxers" would loudly protest about getting a jab and quietly get it when they realise their life will be harder and certain things impossible without it.
Doesn't that misunderstand what a lot of them believe? A lot/most/all (I don't know) are not anti-vaxx because it's not organic, they're opposed to it because they think it will kill anybody who has it within two years.
To really think about what might be the most reasonable way forward you need to first understand what the reasons are for people not getting the vaccine, how many of them there are, and how they're distributed. We currently tolerate all sorts of objections to medical treatment because the harm to society is fairly low and dispersed, and the reasoning might be on religious grounds which we tend not to argue with. Maybe the numbers of people in the UK who are vaccine hesitant/anti-vaxx crazy are actually low enough as to not threaten society?
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I don't see a contradiction in our posts. on the libertarian side of the ledger, I agree that the numbers who are genuinely vaxx crazy are v small and likely to pose no threat to society. On the authoritarian side (which I do tend towards on this specific topic), I'm happy to piss this group off so have no problem with them being locked out of travel/clubs/pubs/sporting event.
I think there is a fairly significant minority that are vaxx hesitant, which I think could potentially pose a societal risk. I think there are a lot of carrots out there for getting vaxxed; a decreased risk of dying is obviously top of the list, along with preventing your family and friends from being excessively exposed et etc. I don't see a huge amount wrong with the slight use of the stick as well as the carrot to try and persuade the hesitant that they really should get jabbed. Selfishness and self interest is a much more powerful emotion than generosity ; maybe some are more likely to get jabbed for something tangible and concrete like 'no jab, no club/pint/travel' than the more empathetic 'get jabbed to protect granny.' :doubt:
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Worth considering here that not everybody who declines one or both doses fits neatly into the nutjob-antivaxxer-we-don't-have-to-care-what-they-think category (that's not a category that I think exists, but I expect it's how a lot of people see it).
One friend had the 1st dose and had such a ghastly reaction that they won't be going for the 2nd. I believe they have a family history of this sort of reaction to vaccinations. If remember correctly there are multiple medics in the family (late father was a consultant) who they have discussed this with, so hardly ignorant.
Another friend had the first dose and a day or two later her jab-arm went completely dead (and remained so for a while). Reported to the hospital where the doctors did plenty of tests but found no explanation.
You can argue all you like about the balance of risks, but this looks at the issue at a population level. These individuals quite reasonably perceive a risk to their health from having the second dose. If you have a vaccine you will definitely be exposed to the risks of having one; if you don't then you may actually avoid getting COVID-while-unvaccinated and thus avoid all the risks that go with that. I don't know if I would make the same decision that these people have made, but I don't think they are unreasonable decisions to make.
I'm undecided about whether they're ethically a good idea or not, but you have to recognise that widely adopting vaccine passports would be a massive divergence from our current position of allowing people to make their own decisions about their medical treatment without coercion.
As a practical point, it's been stated that the proposed system will have exemptions available for people unable to get vaccinated for medical reasons. Though I'd imagine that'd require something like an official letter from a doctor to confirm it.
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My strong suspicion is that a lot of "anti-vaxxers" would loudly protest about getting a jab and quietly get it when they realise their life will be harder and certain things impossible without it.
Doesn't that misunderstand what a lot of them believe? A lot/most/all (I don't know) are not anti-vaxx because it's not organic, they're opposed to it because they think it will kill anybody who has it within two years.
To really think about what might be the most reasonable way forward you need to first understand what the reasons are for people not getting the vaccine, how many of them there are, and how they're distributed. We currently tolerate all sorts of objections to medical treatment because the harm to society is fairly low and dispersed, and the reasoning might be on religious grounds which we tend not to argue with. Maybe the numbers of people in the UK who are vaccine hesitant/anti-vaxx crazy are actually low enough as to not threaten society?
But then surely you're into the epidemiological, rather than the ethical.
Personally, I have zero ethical problems with having laws saying you can't participate in X activity without Y, when not-Y potentially causes serious harm to others. For example, you can't drive a car without having a license.
And we already have laws and regulations which stipulate that people have to have specific medical treatments if they want to do specific things.
For example, if you have seizures that affect consciousness, you're going to have to be on meds that control them if you want to have a driver's license. You can't be forced to have that medical treatment if you don't want it -- but if you decide you'd rather have the uncontrolled seizures than the meds side-effects, you don't get to keep your driver's license.
HOWEVER.
There's the whole separate question of whether "you have to be vaccinated to go to a nightclub (but only from September)" is going to be effective, proportionate, counter-productive, or whatever.
Is it actually going to achieve the goals it's aiming for (presumably, encouraging more people to get vaccinated and reducing spread)? Is it the best or most efficient way of doing those things? Is it potentially going to be counterproductive or harmful in some way (e.g. maybe by hardening some people's anti-vax stance, or as a thin end of the wedge way of introducing an ID card system)?
As I said, I have zero ethical problems with that kind of restriction in principle. But I have all sorts of concerns with this -- not least, that it's proposing to introduce a restriction way after it could make a really big difference (and I think that has a lot more to do with not wanting to damage the nightclub business by preventing twentysomethings from going clubbing now). Which makes me question whether any of this has been thought through (and with this government, I assume the answer is almost certainly "nah").
Okay, I have an ethical objection to imposing restrictions if they're likely to be ineffective and/or counter-productive, because I tend to feel "unecessary restrictions = bad".
But whether this is going to be effective or counter-productive or whatever -- to me that's a factual/epidemiological question.
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Ethically, I think it's wrong to only letting people participate who are double vaccinated when spot tests are available which enable people to prove (more or less) that they are not infectious immediately prior to participating. Practically speaking, perhaps the lateral flow tests are not of sufficient accuracy to make for a workable system, but taking double vaccination as the gold standard seems a bit odd when we know double jabbed people can still catch covid (as per Sajid Javid) and may still be able to pass it on.
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Many who are not taking the vaccine have not been taking the jab because they are in an economically precarious situation and cannot afford to loose out on income or might even loose their job if they get side effects that impede work for a few days. For them it is often completely rational to not vaccinate. Baring a complete overhaul of the barbarian system of McJobs (unlikely) it would be good if the whip (that I fully support) was accompanied by a carrot.
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it would be good if the whip (that I fully support) was accompanied by a carrot.
You get a sticker.
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Many who are not taking the vaccine have not been taking the jab because they are in an economically precarious situation and cannot afford to loose out on income or might even loose their job if they get side effects that impede work for a few days. For them it is often completely rational to not vaccinate.
Is that a significant issue?
Most side effects last less than 48 hours allowing you to book an appointment to coincide with time off. Plus there's the reduction in the chance of needing time off due to covid.
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Many who are not taking the vaccine have not been taking the jab because they are in an economically precarious situation and cannot afford to loose out on income or might even loose their job if they get side effects that impede work for a few days. For them it is often completely rational to not vaccinate.
Is that a significant issue?
Most side effects last less than 48 hours allowing you to book an appointment to coincide with time off. Plus there's the reduction in the chance of needing time off due to covid.
It's a significant issue if you're an Uber driver and not getting paid for the time off.
I don't have major ethical concerns once everyone has had the opportunity (in the broadest sense, see jwi) to have both. Not sure that's yet the case.
A case study: my hairdresser revealed, mid-cut, she'd not had her vaccinations as "they weren't natural". I think my eyes rolled the full 360 degrees. She then said that she'd probably get them done in order to be able to travel.
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Ethically, I think it's wrong to only letting people participate who are double vaccinated when spot tests are available which enable people to prove (more or less) that they are not infectious immediately prior to participating.
With people being incentivised to return a negative result, a self-administered negative test result does little to prove that someone is not infectious.
A small number of people will both perform the test correctly and report a positive test result honestly, but most won't when a negative result is a requirement for entry to something that they value.
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Many who are not taking the vaccine have not been taking the jab because they are in an economically precarious situation and cannot afford to loose out on income or might even loose their job if they get side effects that impede work for a few days. For them it is often completely rational to not vaccinate.
Is that a significant issue?
Most side effects last less than 48 hours allowing you to book an appointment to coincide with time off. Plus there's the reduction in the chance of needing time off due to covid.
It's a significant issue if you're an Uber driver and not getting paid for the time off.
I don't have major ethical concerns once everyone has had the opportunity (in the broadest sense, see jwi) to have both. Not sure that's yet the case.
A case study: my hairdresser revealed, mid-cut, she'd not had her vaccinations as "they weren't natural". I think my eyes rolled the full 360 degrees. She then said that she'd probably get them done in order to be able to travel.
I know a waitress who always puts her phone number down wrong and always turns her bluetooth off. She can't afford to have to isolate. The system has, shall we say, some deep flaws.
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I still fail to see any problems with discrimination against unvaccinated people. They're easy to get, free, safe and without significant side effects compared to many other often taken medication. So either get vaccination or suck it up and don't go clubbing/ to the pub/ to football matches etc.
I don't have a problem with the government mandating this I don't think. By the time this is likely, everyone will have had a chance to get it.
Many interesting points of view above, but I think most people would rather be a confined area with hundreds of people who were vaccinated than not?
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A case study: my hairdresser revealed, mid-cut, she'd not had her vaccinations as "they weren't natural". I think my eyes rolled the full 360 degrees. She then said that she'd probably get them done in order to be able to travel.
Woah wait a mo, hang on a sec, YOU have a HAiRDRESSER?? :ohmy:
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it would be good if the whip (that I fully support) was accompanied by a carrot.
You get a sticker.
WHAT??!! I'm marching back into our vaccine centre first thing tomorrow morning and kicking right off.
Joking aside, the place I went for my first jab were very hot on looking after us, long chats about risks and side effects, and then a timed 15 minute rest in a chair before you were allowed to leave. The second place, I didn't even get to sit down for the jab, which they pretty much wacked in as I was walking out the door.
The first place was Totnes though, so I guess they have to do everything they can to get people jabbed there.
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it would be good if the whip (that I fully support) was accompanied by a carrot.
You get a sticker.
WHAT??!! I'm marching back into our vaccine centre first thing tomorrow morning and kicking right off.
Joking aside, the place I went for my first jab were very hot on looking after us, long chats about risks and side effects, and then a timed 15 minute rest in a chair before you were allowed to leave. The second place, I didn't even get to sit down for the jab, which they pretty much wacked in as I was walking out the door.
The first place was Totnes though, so I guess they have to do everything they can to get people jabbed there.
A Totnes vaccination centre, twinned with the Mary Celeste.
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it would be good if the whip (that I fully support) was accompanied by a carrot.
You get a sticker.
WHAT??!! I'm marching back into our vaccine centre first thing tomorrow morning and kicking right off.
Joking aside, the place I went for my first jab were very hot on looking after us, long chats about risks and side effects, and then a timed 15 minute rest in a chair before you were allowed to leave. The second place, I didn't even get to sit down for the jab, which they pretty much wacked in as I was walking out the door.
The first place was Totnes though, so I guess they have to do everything they can to get people jabbed there.
A Totnes vaccination centre, twinned with the Mary Celeste.
Totnes residents are probably worried that its something to do with 5G.
Lots of houses in Derbyshire have conspiracy rubbish flyers etc up about 5G and vaccination as well, unfortunately.
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it would be good if the whip (that I fully support) was accompanied by a carrot.
You get a sticker.
WHAT??!! I'm marching back into our vaccine centre first thing tomorrow morning and kicking right off.
Joking aside, the place I went for my first jab were very hot on looking after us, long chats about risks and side effects, and then a timed 15 minute rest in a chair before you were allowed to leave. The second place, I didn't even get to sit down for the jab, which they pretty much wacked in as I was walking out the door.
The first place was Totnes though, so I guess they have to do everything they can to get people jabbed there.
A Totnes vaccination centre, twinned with the Mary Celeste.
Totnes residents are probably worried that its something to do with 5G.
Lots of houses in Derbyshire have conspiracy rubbish flyers etc up about 5G and vaccination as well, unfortunately.
Around here, it’s suddenly the young men that are baulking. The rumours around long term infertility and impotence are rife.
I hadn’t even heard of this until last week, when my 18 year old nephew vomited it up and now I’m hearing it everywhere (though still haven’t seen it written/posted).
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it would be good if the whip (that I fully support) was accompanied by a carrot.
You get a sticker.
WHAT??!! I'm marching back into our vaccine centre first thing tomorrow morning and kicking right off.
I had to ask for a sticker.
Joking aside, the place I went for my first jab were very hot on looking after us, long chats about risks and side effects, and then a timed 15 minute rest in a chair before you were allowed to leave. The second place, I didn't even get to sit down for the jab, which they pretty much wacked in as I was walking out the door.
The first place was Totnes though, so I guess they have to do everything they can to get people jabbed there.
Big queue on Monday for my second jab. Constant stream for the 25 mins I was there, nearly all second jab Covid or Moderna. Really efficient and excellent care ( I got a seat for the jab AND for the 15minute monitoring!)
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TBH at the point where anyone could have been fully vaccinated, and they haven't (but not for medical reasons), I'm not particularly bothered if they can't go to the pub or whatever. Fuckwits don't get a lot of sympathy.
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Out of curiosity I logged back into social media yesterday and every status / comment I see (from friends and other people I know) is giving the reasons why they aren't having it. It seems they all start: "i'm not an anti vaxxer but..." Is this typical? Is the uptake very poor in younger people?
Most reasons given relate to it only being approved for emergency use and that their chance of survival from covid is ~ 99.9% so there's no point having a vaccine at all or certainly a new one. Often thrown in is comments about the government telling them what they can / can't do with their own bodies. Obviously there's a few nut jobs who think Bill Gates is trying to depopulate the world but it seems most are trying to distance themselves from these types.
By the way i've had my 1st jab months ago (not found time to get the 2nd one yet but the new rules will give me a kick up the arse).
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Is the uptake very poor in younger people? ...
(not found time to get the 2nd one yet but the new rules will give me a kick up the arse).
There is your answer, I suspect. The main reason many people will have not been vaccinated is that they haven't overcome the tiny amount of inertia and just done it.
Apologies if you genuinely have a very time consuming job etc but it really doesn't take very long to get vaccination. I think my second appointment took a whole 5 minutes, check details, shown to a table and chairs, repeat check, jab, advised to remain nearby for 15 minutes afterwards, leave.
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Is the uptake very poor in younger people? ...
(not found time to get the 2nd one yet but the new rules will give me a kick up the arse).
There is your answer, I suspect. The main reason many people will have not been vaccinated is that they haven't overcome the tiny amount of inertia and just done it.
Apologies if you genuinely have a very time consuming job etc but it really doesn't take very long to get vaccination. I think my second appointment took a whole 5 minutes, check details, shown to a table and chairs, repeat check, jab, advised to remain nearby for 15 minutes afterwards, leave.
I have a relatively busy job, 2 kids and lots of hobbies/interests. I don't watch TV or read the news and rarely log in to social media so I generally have no idea about what's going on with covid (frankly i'm fed up with hearing about it so tend to actively avoid). I just haven't made it a priority, but I will sort it out at some point.
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Around here, it’s suddenly the young men that are baulking. The rumours around long term infertility and impotence are rife.
I hadn’t even heard of this until last week, when my 18 year old nephew vomited it up and now I’m hearing it everywhere (though still haven’t seen it written/posted).
The estimable Dr Viki Male's dropped some threads on this too:
https://twitter.com/VikiLovesFACS/status/1413086054790443009
Ironically, there are some indicators that getting Covid can cause erectile dysfunction:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2021/05/16/can-covid-19-coronavirus-cause-long-term-erectile-dysfunction-here-are-2-more-studies/
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Most reasons given relate to it only being approved for emergency use and that their chance of survival from covid is ~ 99.9% so there's no point having a vaccine at all or certainly a new one.
This opinion riles me more than anything else, I think. I accept that epidemiology is not something most people have had to put much thought into before now, but there is no way everyone who uses the "survival rate is 99.9% so there is no point" argument don't see the flaw in this. This whole year feels like one big exercise in patience.
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Is the uptake very poor in younger people? ...
(not found time to get the 2nd one yet but the new rules will give me a kick up the arse).
There is your answer, I suspect. The main reason many people will have not been vaccinated is that they haven't overcome the tiny amount of inertia and just done it.
Apologies if you genuinely have a very time consuming job etc but it really doesn't take very long to get vaccination. I think my second appointment took a whole 5 minutes, check details, shown to a table and chairs, repeat check, jab, advised to remain nearby for 15 minutes afterwards, leave.
I have a relatively busy job, 2 kids and lots of hobbies/interests. I don't watch TV or read the news and rarely log in to social media so I generally have no idea about what's going on with covid (frankly i'm fed up with hearing about it so tend to actively avoid). I just haven't made it a priority, but I will sort it out at some point.
In case it helps, loads of places are now taking walk-ins. If you don't mind posting where you are, people could probably point you at some nearby ones, so you can drop in during a lunchbreak or whenever, knock it off.
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it would be good if the whip (that I fully support) was accompanied by a carrot.
You get a sticker.
That's more than we get in France. The whip is real though. I'm in the bouldering gym now and they are obliged to check the covid pass for everyone except the kids from today.
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My strong suspicion is that a lot of "anti-vaxxers" would loudly protest about getting a jab and quietly get it when they realise their life will be harder and certain things impossible without it.
Doesn't that misunderstand what a lot of them believe? A lot/most/all (I don't know) are not anti-vaxx because it's not organic, they're opposed to it because they think it will kill anybody who has it within two years.
The problem is, basically anything you say will misrepresent what a lot of them believe, because there is no consistency with what they believe, because there is no solid evidence for any claim I have seen so far. I would say that even "they're opposed to it because they think it will kill anybody who has it within two years" is a misrepresentation of the majority, because there is no majority, because there is no consensus in this community. The breeding ground for these ideas are in social media comments sections, not labs.
To really think about what might be the most reasonable way forward you need to first understand what the reasons are for people not getting the vaccine, how many of them there are, and how they're distributed. We currently tolerate all sorts of objections to medical treatment because the harm to society is fairly low and dispersed, and the reasoning might be on religious grounds which we tend not to argue with. Maybe the numbers of people in the UK who are vaccine hesitant/anti-vaxx crazy are actually low enough as to not threaten society?
This is kind of what I thought the answer would be. The problem is, for the time being this necessitates most people ignoring them anyway. This is a long term data collection strategy (and a valid one), but it remains to be seen whether a long term solution will spring from this. Personally I think the current COVID anti-vax movement has little to do with what the movement was prior to the pandemic. The prior movement seemed to be very much dominated by a scepticism of western science and conventional medicine, which could be seen in their rhetoric. The current movement takes a much more anti-government stance, where a gov conspiracy tends to take centre stage and most of the focus of their rhetoric. I don't think their philosophies are, for the large part, the same. Though it stands to reason that there will be a large amount of overlap for obvious reasons that if you were anti-vax prior to the pandemic, you aren't suddenly going to accept the COVID vaccination. If the movement is retheorised like this, I don't believe it will ever actually disappear, because it is just the newest manifestation of an anti-gov philosophy.
I am pessimistic, if you can't already tell!
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The current movement takes a much more anti-government stance, where a gov conspiracy tends to take centre stage and most of the focus of their rhetoric.
I know an anti-vaxxer who is very, very, very far right (I'm being very polite is describing them this way) and their "thinking" is pandemic = plandemic = great replacement/NWO/Jewish cabals etc. But this is obviously an extreme position, even if a wider pool of people share aspects of this essentially paranoid perspective, sometimes unknowingly - I've definitely seen people who don't realise they are sharing anti-semitic tropes. Plenty of this stuff on display at anti-lockdown events. Then there are the "Big Pharma" tribe.
But I suspect that the majority who have so far declined vaccination are simply unsure and perhaps afraid. They don't feel well-informed, poor at evaluating scientific information and weighing differing risks, and easily swayed by immediate peer groups. They are genuinely unsure getting vaccinated is the right or necessary choice for them ... and hesitate.
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Views from France on Day 1 of their corona passport. Not especially encouraging.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/21/i-never-thought-this-would-happen-in-france-day-one-of-showing-the-covid-vaccine-pass
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The current movement takes a much more anti-government stance, where a gov conspiracy tends to take centre stage and most of the focus of their rhetoric.
I know an anti-vaxxer who is very, very, very far right (I'm being very polite is describing them this way) and their "thinking" is pandemic = plandemic = great replacement/NWO/Jewish cabals etc.
Well of course we can all think of exceptions, which is why I began my post with a throat clearing, saying "basically anything you say will misrepresent what a lot of them believe". My claim here is not that this is the philosophy which drives all anti-vaxxers. It was more that this seems to be the general trend of thought in the new movement. But by any rate, using your friend (might be the wrong word, thinking about it!) as an example kind of demonstrates my point. From what you have said, their opposition is not born from the same place as much of the opposition to vaccination prior to the pandemic. It appears that your friend has used their anti-zionist conspiracy theorism to determine their position on the COVID vaccine, rather than an opposition to the science. If they believe in NWO/Jewish cabals, then they are driven by the same anti-authoritarian philosophy that I was describing, just on a global rather than national scale.
But I suspect that the majority who have so far declined vaccination are simply unsure and perhaps afraid. They don't feel well-informed, poor at evaluating scientific information and weighing differing risks, and easily swayed by immediate peer groups. They are genuinely unsure getting vaccinated is the right or necessary choice for them ... and hesitate.
These are the kinds of people I would absolutely love to reach out to, but have never found or heard anything from. If they are the majority, then they are the silent majority. The unvaccinated-by-choice who I have seen have not hesitated to spray their opinions everywhere they go. This pandemic and the vaccine has been accompanied by just about the largest amount of "layman digestible" information I have ever seen of anything remotely sciency. There has been enormous effort made by a huge number of people to relay all this technical information in an understandable way, so that people can make something closer to an informed decision. If the "silent-uncertain" make up the majority of people who have chosen not to become vaccinated, then all this information must have absolutely failed to either reach them, or persuade them. This is a massive problem.
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The current movement takes a much more anti-government stance, where a gov conspiracy tends to take centre stage and most of the focus of their rhetoric.
I know an anti-vaxxer who is very, very, very far right (I'm being very polite is describing them this way) and their "thinking" is pandemic = plandemic = great replacement/NWO/Jewish cabals etc. But this is obviously an extreme position, even if a wider pool of people share aspects of this essentially paranoid perspective, sometimes unknowingly - I've definitely seen people who don't realise they are sharing anti-semitic tropes. Plenty of this stuff on display at anti-lockdown events. Then there are the "Big Pharma" tribe.
But I suspect that the majority who have so far declined vaccination are simply unsure and perhaps afraid. They don't feel well-informed, poor at evaluating scientific information and weighing differing risks, and easily swayed by immediate peer groups. They are genuinely unsure getting vaccinated is the right or necessary choice for them ... and hesitate.
As an aside…
This Jewish cabal/NWO/Great replacement organisation, must be the most ineffective, inefficient, lazy, incompetent conspiracy in human history. They’ve been on the cusp of taking over since, what, the 13th century?
These guys are even less effective than UKIP.
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One friend had the 1st dose and had such a ghastly reaction that they won't be going for the 2nd. I believe they have a family history of this sort of reaction to vaccinations. If I remember correctly there are multiple medics in the family (late father was a consultant) who they have discussed this with, so hardly ignorant.
Another friend had the first dose and a day or two later her jab-arm went completely dead (and remained so for a while). Reported to the hospital where the doctors did plenty of tests but found no explanation.
These are the two that I know about. Both seem reasonable to me, though their GP (who would presumably provide the hypothetical exemption letter) might not agree.
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Ironically, there are some indicators that getting Covid can cause erectile dysfunction:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2021/05/16/can-covid-19-coronavirus-cause-long-term-erectile-dysfunction-here-are-2-more-studies/
Schlong covid, not good :'(
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As an aside…
This Jewish cabal/NWO/Great replacement organisation, must be the most ineffective, inefficient, lazy, incompetent conspiracy in human history. They’ve been on the cusp of taking over since, what, the 13th century?
These guys are even less effective than UKIP.
My dad occasionally complains that the International Jewish Conspiracy still hasn't sent him his membership card, so, you know, they've not even got the mailing list sorted.
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Ironically, there are some indicators that getting Covid can cause erectile dysfunction:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2021/05/16/can-covid-19-coronavirus-cause-long-term-erectile-dysfunction-here-are-2-more-studies/
Schlong covid, not good :'(
Not all bad then.
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Also the data around vaccination preventing spread (rather than the data for prevention of serious illness) isn’t as good, afaik?
Well, we have pretty solid evidence that the vaccines substantially cut the chances of infection, with some data indicating that if you get a breakthrough infection they still reduce the chances you'll transmit.
I think the worst performer among the vaccines currently licensed here is AZ, "only" preventing infection with circa 60% efficacy (Pfizer's at around 88% with Delta, I believe, and Moderna should be the same). Which isn't spectacular, but people forget that at the start of this, the brief was that the FDA would consider approving anything that got over 50%; we've been spoiled by the crazy crazy efficacy numbers the mRNA vaccines got with original flavour Covid.
The vaccines are much better at preventing severe illness and hospitalization (up in the 90s with both AZ and mRNA) than they are at just blocking infection, but I feel people shouldn't underestimate the fact that they're still fairly decent at the latter.
Apologies if this is stuff you already know backwards, but I think it's worth emphasizing because I've seen people out there saying that the vaccines don't do anything to prevent you from getting Covid, they only stop you from getting severely ill. Which is incorrect.
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This pandemic and the vaccine has been accompanied by just about the largest amount of "layman digestible" information I have ever seen of anything remotely sciency. There has been enormous effort made by a huge number of people to relay all this technical information in an understandable way, so that people can make something closer to an informed decision. If the "silent-uncertain" make up the majority of people who have chosen not to become vaccinated, then all this information must have absolutely failed to either reach them, or persuade them. This is a massive problem.
Agreed, but the problem is that the accurate "layman digestible" information is being drowned in the flood of anti-vaxx garbage, a lot of which comes with all the trappings of respectability: you've got someone with "Dr" before their name (maybe it's a literature PhD but never mind) explaining confidently that the spike protein in the vaccine will cause the body to develop antibodies to a protein in the placenta and cause infertility.
For a lot of people that'll make them go -- wow, maybe they're on to something, maybe I shouldn't get the vaccine yet, here's this other thing saying Covid's no worse than flu and "only" elderly and disabled people die from it, and the vaccines can cause very severe and dangerous side-effects (like the blood-clotting thing with AstraZeneca) which the doctors and researchers didn't know about initially, so maybe it's more cautious and sensible to not get the vaccine.
All seems very reasonable! Unfortunately, also based on flat-out false information and lies.
But then someone who wants to explain why that's not actually reasonable (and present all the evidence why the spike-protein-infertility thing is utter bullshit and we can prove it) has got to fight uphill against that uncertainty and suspicion.
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Ethically, I think it's wrong to only letting people participate who are double vaccinated when spot tests are available which enable people to prove (more or less) that they are not infectious immediately prior to participating.
With people being incentivised to return a negative result, a self-administered negative test result does little to prove that someone is not infectious.
A small number of people will both perform the test correctly and report a positive test result honestly, but most won't when a negative result is a requirement for entry to something that they value.
What SDM said, plus as per the “more or less” in Colin8ll’s post, LFTs are not sufficiently sensitive to tell you you haven’t got it. I got COVID a few weeks ago and had negative LFTs 3 days in a row while waiting for my PCR test result, which came back positive. I subsequently tested positive on an LFT.
The real utility of LFTs is to tell you if you have got it so you and any close contacts can isolate. If the contact I caught it from hadn’t been testing, we wouldn’t have known. They were testing daily and I was in contact with them the day before they got a positive LFT, so they were clearly infectious while still LFT negative. All of their known contacts subsequently got it, even though he isolated as soon as he got a positive LFT. Because he was testing, we were isolating before we came into contact with anyone, otherwise we’d have probably been spreading it while asymptomatic.
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Also the data around vaccination preventing spread (rather than the data for prevention of serious illness) isn’t as good, afaik?
Well, we have pretty solid evidence that the vaccines substantially cut the chances of infection, with some data indicating that if you get a breakthrough infection they still reduce the chances you'll transmit.
I think the worst performer among the vaccines currently licensed here is AZ, "only" preventing infection with circa 60% efficacy (Pfizer's at around 88% with Delta, I believe, and Moderna should be the same). Which isn't spectacular, but people forget that at the start of this, the brief was that the FDA would consider approving anything that got over 50%; we've been spoiled by the crazy crazy efficacy numbers the mRNA vaccines got with original flavour Covid.
The vaccines are much better at preventing severe illness and hospitalization (up in the 90s with both AZ and mRNA) than they are at just blocking infection, but I feel people shouldn't underestimate the fact that they're still fairly decent at the latter.
Apologies if this is stuff you already know backwards, but I think it's worth emphasizing because I've seen people out there saying that the vaccines don't do anything to prevent you from getting Covid, they only stop you from getting severely ill. Which is incorrect.
Yep, aware of the figures showing reduced risk of infection and reduced risk of serious illness upon infection. That wasn't what I was getting at.
My point was more to do with a lack of data to show whether or not being jabbed reduces transmission onwards, if you do manage to get infected. A comparison showing a single jab, double jab, or no jab. This data is still unclear afaik?
Of course, reduced overall # of infections as a result of a population being vaccinated = less overall transmission than in a population unvaccinated!
I raised it because I considered that someone objecting to getting jabbed may think that there's a lack of evidence to show the jab reduces their risk of passing on covid, *if* they get infected. They could say it *only* reduces (significantly) the risk of them getting infected and of getting seriously ill. And their logic, if they're young and healthy, might be why should they care if they get infected if they'll probably be fine, and it hasn't been proven that being jabbed reduces their risk of passing it on? (yes I know this is selfish.. but many people are).
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My point was more to do with a lack of data to show whether or not being jabbed reduces transmission onwards, if you do manage to get infected. A comparison showing a single jab, double jab, or no jab. This data is still unclear afaik?
Right, got it. Yeah, there's some data on that, showing some pretty substantial reduction even from a single dose, but that's from when Alpha was still dominant, so I don't know how the numbers have changed given Delta's generally increased transmissibility -- dunno if we've got studies on that yet.
They could say it *only* reduces (significantly) the risk of them getting infected and of getting seriously ill. And their logic, if they're young and healthy, might be why should they care if they get infected if they'll probably be fine, and it hasn't been proven that being jabbed reduces their risk of passing it on? (yes I know this is selfish.. but many people are).
Well, even if the vaccines had zero effect on transmissibility once a breakthrough infection's occurred, they'd still reduce the risk that you pass it on by slashing the risk that you get infected in the first place. Can't pass it on if you don't get it!
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Well, even if the vaccines had zero effect on transmissibility once a breakthrough infection's occurred, they'd still reduce the risk that you pass it on by slashing the risk that you get infected in the first place. Can't pass it on if you don't get it!
Yep, I agree. That line of reasoning however relies on a mindset of getting yourself vaccinated for someone else's benefit - that is, the stranger (or relative) who doesn't get infected and doesn't suffer because of it. For young healthy people that's a very different type of mindset required towards covid vaccination compared to any other vaccination we have, where the vaccine is clearly for our own benefit as well as the general population. For young healthy people I can see a sort of selfish logic for being hesitant about getting a jab, not that I agree with it.
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Agreed, but the problem is that the accurate "layman digestible" information is being drowned in the flood of anti-vaxx garbage ...
But then someone who wants to explain why that's not actually reasonable (and present all the evidence why the spike-protein-infertility thing is utter bullshit and we can prove it) has got to fight uphill against that uncertainty and suspicion.
That's the crux of the issue really. What you just described is referred to as Brandolini's law, aka the bullshit asymmetry principle, which states that the amount of energy required to refute an argument is an order of magnitude larger than that required to produce it. This leads to a massive overrepresentation of bullshit on any given topic existing in public consciousness. In a discussion with a self titled "PCR-sceptic" (which is a surreal title to me similar to how the term "electricity sceptic" would sound to an electrical engineer) who spouted all the compelling sounding but cynically misleading Mike Yeadon statistical slight of hand bollox, I pointed out that it took Yeadon 20 seconds to convince him, and it will take me a good 15 minutes of giving him a crash course in the statistics of binary classifiers and assorted terminology to refute what he read, assuming he get and accepts it the first time round. He listened, we discussed, he thanked me, and then he said the same shit the next time we talked :wall:
However, I would assert that although there are many more claims being made (which should indicate something in itself), there are not more people actually making those claims. There are more people who do not believe in this nonsense than do, the problem lies in social media and the echo chambers they produce, making it very hard for someone giving reliable information to reach the news feed of someone who has established themselves in the anti-vax corner.
I feel like the problem boils down to fundamentally what these claims imbue the wielder with, which is confidence. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, as they say. Someone who has gone from never having given virology or genetics a thought to learning their first few terms and then diving into the world of conspiracy theorism, where everything is pre-packaged and easy to understand, is often going to feel confident enough to start evangelising about it on social media (see the Dunning–Kruger effect). They then get a lot of support and validation since, as previously stated, SM is an echo chamber, which galvanises them. It is far easier to believe what a load of quacks have written about, for example, PCR, than to actually go and learn what it is, what it stands for, how it works, and how we use it. It's this volume which often stands out to people, there may not be as many people making these bunk claims, but one person shouting in a café will disrupt everyone's conversation.
The problem is, people tend to be absolutely woefully bad at distinguishing reliable from unreliable information, and equally as poor at distinguishing a good scientist from a bad one.
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Agreed, but the problem is that the accurate "layman digestible" information is being drowned in the flood of anti-vaxx garbage ...
But then someone who wants to explain why that's not actually reasonable (and present all the evidence why the spike-protein-infertility thing is utter bullshit and we can prove it) has got to fight uphill against that uncertainty and suspicion.
That's the crux of the issue really. What you just described is referred to as Brandolini's law, aka the bullshit asymmetry principle, which states that the amount of energy required to refute an argument is an order of magnitude larger than that required to produce it. This leads to a massive overrepresentation of bullshit on any given topic existing in public consciousness. In a discussion with a self titled "PCR-sceptic" (which is a surreal title to me similar to how the term "electricity sceptic" would sound to an electrical engineer) who spouted all the compelling sounding but cynically misleading Mike Yeadon statistical slight of hand bollox, I pointed out that it took Yeadon 20 seconds to convince him, and it will take me a good 15 minutes of giving him a crash course in the statistics of binary classifiers and assorted terminology to refute what he read, assuming he get and accepts it the first time round. He listened, we discussed, he thanked me, and then he said the same shit the next time we talked :wall:
However, I would assert that although there are many more claims being made (which should indicate something in itself), there are not more people actually making those claims. There are more people who do not believe in this nonsense than do, the problem lies in social media and the echo chambers they produce, making it very hard for someone giving reliable information to reach the news feed of someone who has established themselves in the anti-vax corner.
I feel like the problem boils down to fundamentally what these claims imbue the wielder with, which is confidence. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, as they say. Someone who has gone from never having given virology or genetics a thought to learning their first few terms and then diving into the world of conspiracy theorism, where everything is pre-packaged and easy to understand, is often going to feel confident enough to start evangelising about it on social media (see the Dunning–Kruger effect). They then get a lot of support and validation since, as previously stated, SM is an echo chamber, which galvanises them. It is far easier to believe what a load of quacks have written about, for example, PCR, than to actually go and learn what it is, what it stands for, how it works, and how we use it. It's this volume which often stands out to people, there may not be as many people making these bunk claims, but one person shouting in a café will disrupt everyone's conversation.
The problem is, people tend to be absolutely woefully bad at distinguishing reliable from unreliable information, and equally as poor at distinguishing a good scientist from a bad one.
If I anonymised this statement , would you object to it being posted on wider social media?
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If I anonymised this statement , would you object to it being posted on wider social media?
Feel free to do with it as you wish!
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Right, got it. Yeah, there's some data on that, showing some pretty substantial reduction even from a single dose, but that's from when Alpha was still dominant, so I don't know how the numbers have changed given Delta's generally increased transmissibility -- dunno if we've got studies on that yet.
.... even if the vaccines had zero effect on transmissibility once a breakthrough infection's occurred, they'd still reduce the risk that you pass it on by slashing the risk that you get infected in the first place. Can't pass it on if you don't get it!
I think it highly unlikely the vaccine will have a noticably smaller effect in preventing transmission with delta than the evidence we have seen on hospitalisation etc. I'm more worried about people thinking they are immune if double jabbed, or if they had covid (Manaus had overwhelming levels of deaths from those who survived being infected the first time). A lot of the current spread must be from people with antibodies from vaccine or infection (at the current very high level the ONS quote) or we would have already passed the peak.
On the subject of the peak the nightclub move seems blatant to me as a political jabbing incentive as we will almost certainly be on the post peak down-curve by then. People who really want to party will have just been doing so in their homes etc, and will continue. My preference would have been not to open clubs and apologise and provide some extension to financial assistance.
Also on the subject of peaks my pals who have a serious bout of long covid would just love to be able to move about for more than 5 minutes without beng completely exhausted....the idea of sex must be very much light at the end of the tunnel category at present. Given the weird range of organ damage associated with covid, fertility is very likely way more affected by catching it than from any vaccine risk.
Finally although I recognise we need to look carefully at ethics, it seems to me most people blathering on about covid restrictions affecting their human rights should not be pandered to. It would be nice if everyone paid a little more attention to very real freedoms lost or at risk under this government in wider democratic terms. Plus the checks and balances in our democracy failed to prevent our PM making decisions that led to tens of thousands of uneccesary deaths in September and December 2019 ...and way more economic damage than was neccesary if he had acted faster and had shorter lockdowns. Plus the level of illegal behaviour and blatant lies to Parliament with no obvious consequences. Our democracy is wobbling a bit (and ethics become meaningless without democracy)
I'm on the stricter side of the middle ground on restrictions.....lockdowns were vital to prevent hospital overload but not everything was as clear. As an example very relevant to climbers, all the outdoor restrictions were scientific factors relating to behaviour. There was never any significant risk outdoors when social distancing. Outdoor surface risks were much lower than suspected intially, and we knew that from summer 2019. I think being too strict on outdoor rules from that time was a real problem and led to unnecessary mental health damage. I look forward to seeing the ethics explained behind outdoor restrictions.
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The remaining vaccine hesitant people should probably read this sort of thing https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/22/us-coronavirus-covid-unvaccinated-hospital-rates-vaccines?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Sounds pretty grim.
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The remaining vaccine hesitant people should probably read this sort of thing https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/22/us-coronavirus-covid-unvaccinated-hospital-rates-vaccines?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Sounds pretty grim.
I read her FB post, after a US friend shared it, but I wasn’t sure if the implication that lots of “young” people are dying, was accurate. Anybody seen an age break down of recent deaths? I would have thought a surge in young deaths would have been headline news.
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It isn't really, is why. Not statistically. Realistically in this country we are going to get over 90% of adults vaccinated and then probably work on the last ten percent by relentlessly bollocking them about it, but deaths are almost all older people still (and they're still really low compared to cases).
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Hopefully it won't translate into deaths, but anecdotally at least, a lot more of the current hospitalizations are in younger age groups than last time round:
https://twitter.com/seahorse4000/status/1416152941346627585
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Not vaccinated though
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Not vaccinated though
No, that's kind of the point. The article TobyD linked was about the surge in hospitalizations in young unvaccinated people (in the US, in the article, though the Tweet I linked to is from the UK), so I thought that's what we were talking about?
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Data on cases, emergency care visits, emergency care overnight stays and deaths is presented by vaccination status in under/over 50 age bins for Delta here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-novel-sars-cov-2-variant-variant-of-concern-20201201
The latest update has just been issued, look at table 5.
The data has a few caveats, but big picture:
- ratio of total cases in under 50s to total cases in over 50s approx 10:1 (obviously due to average vaccination status combined with young people having on average more contacts)
- ratio of total emergency care visits in under 50s to the same in over 50s approx 4:1 (within these groups, very roughly 75% of <50s were unvaccinated at the time, vs very roughly 25% of >50s.)
- ratio of total emergency care overnight stays in under 50s to the same in over 50s very roughly 2:1 (similar ratios of vaccinated/unvaccinated to the above)
- ratio of total deaths in under 50s to the total deaths in over 50s approx 1:4, ie the balance flips. Ratios of vaccination status again broadly the same (perhaps more like 1 in 3 >50s who die are unvaccinated rather than 1 in 4 who go to emergency care.)
TLDR in the UK emergency units have 2-4 times more <50s with covid in them than >50s, around 75% of the <50s in emergency care (cumulative since February) have been unvaccinated, but there are still around 4 times as many deaths in over 50s (most of whom have been fully vaccinated and are just unlucky.) The number of <50s who have died more than 3 weeks after their first dose (or after their second) with Delta is still in single figures.
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Data on cases, emergency care visits, emergency care overnight stays and deaths is presented by vaccination status in under/over 50 age bins for Delta here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-novel-sars-cov-2-variant-variant-of-concern-20201201
The latest update has just been issued, look at table 5.
The data has a few caveats, but big picture:
- ratio of total cases in under 50s to total cases in over 50s approx 10:1 (obviously due to average vaccination status combined with young people having on average more contacts)
- ratio of total emergency care visits in under 50s to the same in over 50s approx 4:1 (within these groups, very roughly 75% of <50s were unvaccinated at the time, vs very roughly 25% of >50s.)
- ratio of total emergency care overnight stays in under 50s to the same in over 50s very roughly 2:1 (similar ratios of vaccinated/unvaccinated to the above)
- ratio of total deaths in under 50s to the total deaths in over 50s approx 1:4, ie the balance flips. Ratios of vaccination status again broadly the same (perhaps more like 1 in 3 >50s who die are unvaccinated rather than 1 in 4 who go to emergency care.)
TLDR in the UK emergency units have 2-4 times more <50s with covid in them than >50s, around 75% of the <50s in emergency care (cumulative since February) have been unvaccinated, but there are still around 4 times as many deaths in over 50s (most of whom have been fully vaccinated and are just unlucky.) The number of <50s who have died more than 3 weeks after their first dose (or after their second) with Delta is still in single figures.
Interesting stats, thanks!
Though isn’t the deaths one more like 1:10, rather than 1:4?
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yes.
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Data on cases, emergency care visits, emergency care overnight stays and deaths is presented by vaccination status in under/over 50 age bins for Delta here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigation-of-novel-sars-cov-2-variant-variant-of-concern-20201201
The latest update has just been issued, look at table 5.
The data has a few caveats, but big picture:
- ratio of total cases in under 50s to total cases in over 50s approx 10:1 (obviously due to average vaccination status combined with young people having on average more contacts)
- ratio of total emergency care visits in under 50s to the same in over 50s approx 4:1 (within these groups, very roughly 75% of <50s were unvaccinated at the time, vs very roughly 25% of >50s.)
- ratio of total emergency care overnight stays in under 50s to the same in over 50s very roughly 2:1 (similar ratios of vaccinated/unvaccinated to the above)
- ratio of total deaths in under 50s to the total deaths in over 50s approx 1:4, ie the balance flips. Ratios of vaccination status again broadly the same (perhaps more like 1 in 3 >50s who die are unvaccinated rather than 1 in 4 who go to emergency care.)
TLDR in the UK emergency units have 2-4 times more <50s with covid in them than >50s, around 75% of the <50s in emergency care (cumulative since February) have been unvaccinated, but there are still around 4 times as many deaths in over 50s (most of whom have been fully vaccinated and are just unlucky.) The number of <50s who have died more than 3 weeks after their first dose (or after their second) with Delta is still in single figures.
Interesting stats, thanks!
Though isn’t the deaths one more like 1:10, rather than 1:4?
Sorry, yes, not sure what happened there
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~25M over 50's vs ~42M under 50's too
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I do find the data interesting, I'm not critising anyone here, but the thread was intended to be more about ethics of nudging / coercion of people to get vaccinated.
I have to say in the last few days I think I'm more convinced that fairly heavy coercion of vaccination is a good thing. This won't be the last pandemic mankind has to deal with, and covid itself won't be going away anytime soon. People are going to have to used to it, unless we want serious problems in the future.
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I do find the data interesting, I'm not critising anyone here, but the thread was intended to be more about ethics of nudging / coercion of people to get vaccinated.
I have to say in the last few days I think I'm more convinced that fairly heavy coercion of vaccination is a good thing. This won't be the last pandemic mankind has to deal with, and covid itself won't be going away anytime soon. People are going to have to used to it, unless we want serious problems in the future.
Appreciate it was off topic, just thought it might help a few of the posters above discussing that topic.
I don't have any problem with vaccines being mandatory for adults to attend events that are potentially high risk and which are clearly not essential. Nightclubs, theatres, churches, football stadia, other places with crowds. I'd feel a bit uncomfortable with requiring it for everyday essentials like going shopping or using public transport, even if everyone was given enough notice that they could easily go out and get a jab beforehand. It just feels like a bit too much of a precedent to set. If we needed it for those activities to keep infections low then I'd say we'd gone down the wrong path as a country and would be much better off putting some restrictions back in. I'm a bit on the fence with relatively everyday things gyms (incl climbing walls) or pubs - they are a pretty high risk environment so I'd probably support it while wishing it was unnecessary -but it doesn't currently look like UK govt wants them to be that widespread anyway.
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I do find the data interesting, I'm not critising anyone here, but the thread was intended to be more about ethics of nudging / coercion of people to get vaccinated.
I have to say in the last few days I think I'm more convinced that fairly heavy coercion of vaccination is a good thing. This won't be the last pandemic mankind has to deal with, and covid itself won't be going away anytime soon. People are going to have to used to it, unless we want serious problems in the future.
Appreciate it was off topic, just thought it might help a few of the posters above discussing that topic.
I don't have any problem with vaccines being mandatory for adults to attend events that are potentially high risk and which are clearly not essential. Nightclubs, theatres, churches, football stadia, other places with crowds. I'd feel a bit uncomfortable with requiring it for everyday essentials like going shopping or using public transport, even if everyone was given enough notice that they could easily go out and get a jab beforehand. It just feels like a bit too much of a precedent to set. If we needed it for those activities to keep infections low then I'd say we'd gone down the wrong path as a country and would be much better off putting some restrictions back in. I'm a bit on the fence with relatively everyday things gyms (incl climbing walls) or pubs - they are a pretty high risk environment so I'd probably support it while wishing it was unnecessary -but it doesn't currently look like UK govt wants them to be that widespread anyway.
Fair enough, I'm in roughly the same place on it, although I'd be happy to have vaccination certificate required at a climbing wall or cinema, these things aren't excluding the unvaccinated from society, things like food shops or public transport would feel like a step further, and I agree if needed, then perhaps lockdown would be more appropriate.
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One friend had the 1st dose and had such a ghastly reaction that they won't be going for the 2nd. I believe they have a family history of this sort of reaction to vaccinations. If I remember correctly there are multiple medics in the family (late father was a consultant) who they have discussed this with, so hardly ignorant.
For completeness. This person is about 31 and had the AZ vaccine early through work (March). They had a bad reaction to AZ and also have 2 hereditary blood clotting disorders so when the stuff about blood clotting risk came out they were advised not to have the second. They've since been given Pfizer as a cohort of mixed vaccine people with no problems.
So that example is moot, but I still think it's relevant to consider the impact of vaccine passports on those who might reasonably decline/not be able to have 2 x vaccinations.
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Oh yay, glad your friend's been able to have an appropriate second jab!
Also they might know this already, but they've had what is potentially one of the most effective vaccine combos around -- AZ followed by Pfizer looks amazing:
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-06-28-mixed-oxfordpfizer-vaccine-schedules-generate-robust-immune-response-against-covid
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3874014
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One friend had the 1st dose and had such a ghastly reaction that they won't be going for the 2nd. I believe they have a family history of this sort of reaction to vaccinations. If I remember correctly there are multiple medics in the family (late father was a consultant) who they have discussed this with, so hardly ignorant.
For completeness. This person is about 31 and had the AZ vaccine early through work (March). They had a bad reaction to AZ and also have 2 hereditary blood clotting disorders so when the stuff about blood clotting risk came out they were advised not to have the second. They've since been given Pfizer as a cohort of mixed vaccine people with no problems.
So that example is moot, but I still think it's relevant to consider the impact of vaccine passports on those who might reasonably decline/not be able to have 2 x vaccinations.
Is there some reason I’m unaware of that those with legitimate reasons for being Un/partially vaccinated couldn’t have a “passport” that reflects that?
I was shown a homemade “I refused the vaccine” card the other day, by someone who was vehemently opposed to vaccine passports.
The tit got quite upset when I laughed at him being the only person in the room who actually had one and he’d made it himself…
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Oh yay, glad your friend's been able to have an appropriate second jab!
Also they might know this already, but they've had what is potentially one of the most effective vaccine combos around -- AZ followed by Pfizer looks amazing:
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-06-28-mixed-oxfordpfizer-vaccine-schedules-generate-robust-immune-response-against-covid
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3874014
Interesting. I'll go and get my 2nd vaccine next week to coincide with a training deload week. My first jab was AZ in March, I think. I hear that alternatives to the AZ jab are now offered to people under 40 and I'm 31. Do I need to ask for a different one now?
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One friend had the 1st dose and had such a ghastly reaction that they won't be going for the 2nd. I believe they have a family history of this sort of reaction to vaccinations. If I remember correctly there are multiple medics in the family (late father was a consultant) who they have discussed this with, so hardly ignorant.
For completeness. This person is about 31 and had the AZ vaccine early through work (March). They had a bad reaction to AZ and also have 2 hereditary blood clotting disorders so when the stuff about blood clotting risk came out they were advised not to have the second. They've since been given Pfizer as a cohort of mixed vaccine people with no problems.
So that example is moot, but I still think it's relevant to consider the impact of vaccine passports on those who might reasonably decline/not be able to have 2 x vaccinations.
Is there some reason I’m unaware of that those with legitimate reasons for being Un/partially vaccinated couldn’t have a “passport” that reflects that?
I'm sure that exemptions will be given, though I don't know of any guidance as to how they might be handed out. I haven't looked into it as it's not an issue for me personally (I had my second dose yesterday and the sore arm is substantially less sore than with dose 1). If it comes down to GP's discretion (it probably will do?) then I can see it being fraught with issues.
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Oh yay, glad your friend's been able to have an appropriate second jab!
Also they might know this already, but they've had what is potentially one of the most effective vaccine combos around -- AZ followed by Pfizer looks amazing:
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-06-28-mixed-oxfordpfizer-vaccine-schedules-generate-robust-immune-response-against-covid
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3874014
Interesting. I'll go and get my 2nd vaccine next week to coincide with a training deload week. My first jab was AZ in March, I think. I hear that alternatives to the AZ jab are now offered to people under 40 and I'm 31. Do I need to ask for a different one now?
I believe guidance in the UK is currently that if you got AZ for your first dose and it was fine, you're supposed to get it for your second dose too (and the data seems to say that the risk of clotting issues on the second dose are minimal if you didn't get them on the first):
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccination-worried-about-having-your-second-dose-of-astrazeneca/worried-about-having-your-second-dose-of-astrazeneca-vaccination
Mix-and-matching is being studied intensely as a way of boosting effectiveness (and because some countries are mix-and-matching by default because of changing their rules partway through their rollout, e.g. Spain and Canada), but it's not officially endorsed here, so sadly you don't get to pick.
(Also it looks like right now there's loads of AZ available in the UK and constricted supplies of Pfizer/Moderna.)
On the plus side, you'll have had a properly long interval between doses, which does turbo-charge AZ's effectiveness.
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Oh yay, glad your friend's been able to have an appropriate second jab!
Also they might know this already, but they've had what is potentially one of the most effective vaccine combos around -- AZ followed by Pfizer looks amazing:
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-06-28-mixed-oxfordpfizer-vaccine-schedules-generate-robust-immune-response-against-covid
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3874014
Interesting. I'll go and get my 2nd vaccine next week to coincide with a training deload week. My first jab was AZ in March, I think. I hear that alternatives to the AZ jab are now offered to people under 40 and I'm 31. Do I need to ask for a different one now?
I believe guidance in the UK is currently that if you got AZ for your first dose and it was fine, you're supposed to get it for your second dose too (and the data seems to say that the risk of clotting issues on the second dose are minimal if you didn't get them on the first):
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccination-worried-about-having-your-second-dose-of-astrazeneca/worried-about-having-your-second-dose-of-astrazeneca-vaccination
Mix-and-matching is being studied intensely as a way of boosting effectiveness (and because some countries are mix-and-matching by default because of changing their rules partway through their rollout, e.g. Spain and Canada), but it's not officially endorsed here, so sadly you don't get to pick.
(Also it looks like right now there's loads of AZ available in the UK and constricted supplies of Pfizer/Moderna.)
On the plus side, you'll have had a properly long interval between doses, which does turbo-charge AZ's effectiveness.
Thanks for the info!
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I am a massive nerd about the mix-and-match research because it's fascinating, so I'm a little sad I didn't get to do it!
But (as a fellow double-AZ person) I console myself that either we end up needing boosters (probably mRNA, therefore getting to mix-and-match), or it turns out we don't need boosters because AZ's done its "little vaccine that could" thing again.
It really sucks that it's got the clotting issue (at however low a rate), because AZ's turned out to be a real workhorse, and it's got some interesting and funky stuff going on with the T-cell response; there's been some speculation recently that it might lead to longer-lasting immunity.
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I’m sat in the Bunker, feeling sorry for myself, with four holes in my left shoulder, an arm which is hurting enough to probably deny me much sleep tonight.
And I got to thinking about the thread title.
I had to renew my vaccine passport today, and that meant four vaccines today. Unfortunately, because my original was lost, I had to get a repeat Yellow fever, along with all the renewals and boosters. Meningitis (all of them), Hep A (my B was still good) and Typhoid. Luckily, my Tetanus, Diphtheria and Polio are only a couple of years old and my GP had records for Measles, Mumps and Rubella and (hopefully) my Rabies is still in date (but I still await my papers from the MOD)….
Anyway, if you’ve never seen one, it’s a little yellow booklet (easy to lose) and if you’re a Merchant sailor, you have to produce it on request and inspections are logged in your Discharge book (which is, sort of, another passport, all rolled up with a record of qualifications, experience and a host of other things).
As yet, Covid isn’t one of the requirements, but it surely will be soon. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but it’s a requirement for employment, so that probably explains why I haven’t met many anti-vaccers at sea…
I honestly don’t feel very oppressed, just sore.
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Will ~60,000 care workers be sacked tomorrow? And potentially 70,000 NHS staff by next April?
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I'm genuinely interested on peoples opinion on this? This thread was quite interesting, and now we've moved on 6 months and some of these measures are actually being implemented in Scotland and other European countries.
eg Austria set to lockdown the non-vaccinated https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59245018
"The chancellor says this means that people who have not been vaccinated won't be able to leave home, unless it is for essential reasons like going to work, buying food or exercise"
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I'm trying to have an opinion on the situation overall, but I keep getting distracted by anti-vaxxer conspiracy loons and having an opinion on them instead. Which is considerably easier and more black and white - anyone who refuses the vaccine and campaigns against the vaccine on the basis of fucking """magnetism""" or """depopulation""" or """nano-particles""" should not only be denied civil liberties, they should also be denied medical treatment when they do get the covid-5g.
Ahem where was I?? Ah. The actual question. Well the logic of vaccine reliance seems to have worked out looking at the statistics: It has stopped the very high transmissions causing high hospitalisations and deaths, and thus, crucially, not encouraged the government to bring in any more draconian restrictions. Vaccines to avoid lockdowns seems to be very real.
Should vaccination be enforced to support this?? Assuming of course that vaccination means "vaccination or proof of medical exemption". Dunno. Maybe. If the choices are: 1. Let the covid run riot and crash the NHS (the govt won't let this happen), or 2. Go back to any form of lockdown to stop 1 happening (this can totally and utterly fuck off) or 3. Enforce some creepy draconian nanny-state vaccine rules to prevent 1 or 2 ... then 3 gets my vote. If there is an alternative 4 then I could be totally fine with that as long as it doesn't involve giving the magnetism morons a pico-second of leeway AND doesn't involve seeing the words "Stay Home" ever a-fucking-gain.
Incidentally I went out to a nightclub recently and the night organiser (Oblivion Underground) was very clear in advance that they didn't care what you did with vaccines, but that having proof of a recent negative covid test OR proof of vaccine status was mandatory simply for the safety of the clubbers, staff, DJs etc. They were very down-to-earth about it. Even so there was still one hilarious fucking imbecile on the FB page asking for a refund because she refuses to do covid tests because of harmful chemicals in the test swab thingies. Yup you heard it here first - anti-testers are the new anti-vaxxers... Incidentally although I caught a banging set from Deathmachine, I left early because the sound levels kept getting really low and didn't do the industrial hardcore justice. Meh.
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The French covid-pass has certainly helped the country to achieve a high vaccination grade despite the fact that 31% of the adult population are absolute twats. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_de_sondages_sur_l%27%C3%A9lection_pr%C3%A9sidentielle_fran%C3%A7aise_de_2022
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The French covid-pass has certainly helped the country to achieve a high vaccination grade despite the fact that 31% of the adult population are absolute twats. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_de_sondages_sur_l%27%C3%A9lection_pr%C3%A9sidentielle_fran%C3%A7aise_de_2022
I believe that the mandate for vaccination in the French health service only led to 0.1% of people actually leaving, and a large escalation of people getting vaccinated.
I still think its entirely right for people to have to prove vaccine status, there can't be anyone who wouldn't rather sit on a plane, or be treated by someone who is less likely to give them a serious illness.
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Edit: My response is based around vaccine enforcement solely in terms of unvaccinated people being restricted from certain optional/luxury high transmission risk indoor public social environments such as pubs, clubs, restaurants, cinema, air travel etc (I'd have indoor sporting facilities as essential not optional / luxury) and NOT on a blanket lockdown for unvaccinated people as is proposed in Austria.
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One complication to the question of 'should you have to prove vaccination status' is the availability of self-testing. This muddies the waters because in theory for some of the situations where people are talking about mandating for proof of vaccine, you can 'prove' a negative self-test instead. But in practice the self-test process can easily be bullshitted and the incentive is there to do that.
Proof of vaccine is harder to bullshit, although the 'proof of vaccine' checks I've been through while travelling over the last year have been comical - I could easily have screen-shotted some phoney NHS covid pass and flashed it at the person checking and they wouldn't have been interested in checking.
A lot of this comes down to self-policing because a government only has so much power of enforcement, and a lot depends on the motivation of the person doing the self-policing. In my experience many people don't care very much, and I don't blame them.
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In larger cities in France the police sometimes walk through restaurants to check the vaccination pass and the id. If you use someone else's pass you risk up to €3,750 in fines (for repeated offences.... €750 the first time). If the restaurant let you in without a pass they get fined as well.
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Denmark has reintroduced its Coronapas from today as cases rise after a very stable period. I see three effects: it drives vaccination (not a massive issue, there are anti-vaxxers, of course, but fewer than in Germany, for example); it drives testing, and it stops the unvaccinated and/or untested from mingling with the rest of us. It was a major tool in the government's arsenal and I'm very glad to see it reintroduced - we pretty much all still have it on our phones anyway. And last time round it certainly was properly checked and enforced, with the QR code being scanned. The pass is based on vaccination status, negative test (readily and freely available), or recovery from infection within certain timeframe and is reguired for pretty much all indoor public spaces except for shops.
As to mandates in certain professions, especially care and medical professions, then I'm afraid I have little sympathy left. If you want to be a carer in an old people's home then you should be vaccinated. The typical reason given not to be seems to be along the lines of "I'm not sure yet, we don't have enough information etc." Billions of doses of these vaccines have been administered - they're safe.
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Please... They're not "vaccines" , they're experimental MNRA gene-therapy injections, for de-population and/or sterilisation. Ofc. It's just the de-population bit seems alarmingly slow.
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I'm genuinely interested on peoples opinion on this? This thread was quite interesting, and now we've moved on 6 months and some of these measures are actually being implemented in Scotland and other European countries.
eg Austria set to lockdown the non-vaccinated https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59245018
"The chancellor says this means that people who have not been vaccinated won't be able to leave home, unless it is for essential reasons like going to work, buying food or exercise"
I think this is wrong under normal circumstances as its possible to have passports (as other countries have) which include testing and recent infection. Pete's right its easy to 'game' testing in social settings but in a work setting it would be a dismissable offence so I think reasonable compliance is possible. Then we have the fact that the psychology of compulsion feeds into poorer belief in the public health message (already wobbling due to shit government messaging and mass misinformation on social media).
In the current UK situation with mass staff shortages in the care system and the NHS, where the NHS is in crisis (and stroke patients and heart emergencies cant get to hospital in the required time window) and where testing and PPE should ideally give as near as possible 100% protection, it seems to me to be completely nuts as a policy. Safety gains would be sub percentile if people are following testing rules and wearing proper PPE and don't forget vaccinated people can also easily spread delta. It was at least possible to implement the lunacy in the care system (with tens of thousands now looking for new jobs and care standards likely hitting a new low as a result of understaffing) but in the NHS the unions and professional bodies won't accept mass sackings of around 5% of frontline staff ...there will be a fudge. The government picking fights with health workers in a crisis is also nuts. The government trying their hardest to block bad news from the NHS by threatening trust management is also nuts (well evidenced on Roy Lilley blogs if anyone doubts this).
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I believe that the mandate for vaccination in the French health service only led to 0.1% of people actually leaving, and a large escalation of people getting vaccinated.
Yeh it seems that telling people they will loose their jobs and banned from joining the rest of society will force encourage them to get vaccinated.
I still think its entirely right for people to have to prove vaccine status,
I'm quite shocked at how many on lefty-liberal-progressive ukb advocate a 2nd class citizenship for un-vaccinated people :sick:
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The counter argument is that people not getting vaccinated are forcing people with shit immune systems to lead a second class existence.
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In my experience of the NHS I would expect that the tin hat/ anti vax staff are probably the ones who will be off sick anyway.
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In my experience of the NHS I would expect that the tin hat/ anti vax staff are probably the ones who will be off sick anyway.
Seen the price of tin recently? Demand/supply reaction due to all the hat-wearing going on in the world:
(https://i.imgur.com/RNy46Sn.png)
The counter argument is that people not getting vaccinated are forcing people with shit immune systems to lead a second class existence.
This claim needs unpacking because it's such a common response. A counter-counter argument is 'how many people need to be vaccinated?'.
In the spring of this year the common wisdom appeared to be that once the majority of adults above a certain age - somewhere around late 20s/early30s - were vaccinated then the relative risk from severe illness due to covid (versus severe illness from a.n.other cause) in the population would be acceptable. The narrative has shifted to vaccinating young kids and teenagers. Where do you accept enough has been done versus 'perfection'. I don't have a concrete view btw, just find it interesting to watch the goalposts of public attitude moving.
I'm quite shocked at how many on lefty-liberal-progressive ukb advocate a 2nd class citizenship for un-vaccinated people :sick:
Really? I'm shocked that you're shocked. The 'political compass' project shows both right wing and left wing are equally capable of authoritarian beliefs.
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As to mandates in certain professions, especially care and medical professions, then I'm afraid I have little sympathy left. If you want to be a carer in an old people's home then you should be vaccinated. The typical reason given not to be seems to be along the lines of "I'm not sure yet, we don't have enough information etc." Billions of doses of these vaccines have been administered - they're safe.
Having little sympathy doesn't help though. What we need is to convince people in the face of Brandollinis law fed by social media misinformation (that our governments and companies don't seem keen to block) and some religious extremism that is stuck against some actual facts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
On the latter point, some might not be aware of say the catholic ultra conservative position on not accepting vaccines because some of the testing was based on cells cultures that had foetal cell ancestry. The pope disagrees with this view but they don't care. It's not strictly misinformation in that particular case, it's a faith position of a cultish branch of a religion.
Yes vaccines are very very low risk (usually much lower than the covid infection risks for the exact same conditions), yes health staff should get vaccinated. Yet the pragmatic reality is we can't afford to lose those staff from the NHS front line this winter and a passport type system in risk terms (given testing and PPE and the fact that vaccinated staff can also spread delta) would be in the noise in risk terms. As a comparison, do all visitors need to be fully vaccinated?
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I'm quite shocked at how many on lefty-liberal-progressive ukb advocate a 2nd class citizenship for un-vaccinated people :sick:
That's a little hyperbolic Mark. Lots of jobs have eligibility requirements, particularly when mistakes in the work carry a real threat of harm to others. Bus drivers can't turn up to work drunk. I don't support a general vaccine mandate - far from it - but I think there are a number of professions for which a strong case can be made, most obviously medicine and care.
More broadly, participation in society is not some purely individualistic free for all. Even the most anarchic among us conform to lots of norms and rules. In times of a pandemic - and, critically, assuming vaccination, testing, or proof of infection are readily and freely available to all, without favour - then it doesn't seem an unreasonable request in exchange for participation in a quite a limited range or non-essential social activities.
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In the spring of this year the common wisdom appeared to be that once the majority of adults above a certain age - somewhere around late 20s/early30s - were vaccinated then the relative risk from severe illness due to covid (versus severe illness from a.n.other cause) in the population would be acceptable. The narrative has shifted to vaccinating young kids and teenagers. Where do you accept enough has been done versus 'perfection'. I don't have a concrete view btw, just find it interesting to watch the goalposts of public attitude moving.
Since spring, delta happened and the vaccination requirement estimate now is in the high nineties percentile, with half year boosters as immunity sags. It's not clear that the combination of vaccination and infection immunity will be enough to ever give herd immunity with delta as the ubiquitous variant, and quite likely jt won't be. We have high risk populations that are vaccinated as well as some of the more careful unvaccinated (like the catholic cultists) who will need to be very careful for many months.
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That doesn't answer the underlying question. What is the current estimate of risk from serious illness due to covid, relative to the risk of serious illness due to a.n.other virus? I genuinely don't know, so I can't form an informed belief about the vaccination status of people. Is the relative risk a bit higher/much higher/or lower? Bearing in mind there will always be immune-compromised people in the population - this fact hasn't emerged with the outbreak of the covid pandemic.
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Pete, how many people need to be vaccinated? Good question. Depends what you deem to be an acceptable number of deaths.
From an individual (my) point of view it is sa function of
Probability that a given person has COVID and is transmissive, the probability of me catching it if locked in a cinema/restaurant/climbing wall with them, and the probability of me dieing or getting long term effects if I contract it.
I have little to no control over 3 and limited control over 1 and 2. More vaccines should reduce 1, masks and other measured reduce 2. In my case 3 is significantly higher than the gen pop, so I am more bothered about 1 and 2.
What's an acceptable combined probability at an individual level? I don't know, and will likely vary depending on the place/event I want to attend, and the current COVID rates. I haven't done any maths to work it out, so it is quite emotionally driven.
If people aren't being vaccinated due to misunderstanding that is a failure of the authorities. If it is for some deeply held belief, e.g. religion, I think it is mental, but whatever.
Should we cater for the average population person, or the most vulnerable in our society? Would a complete lockdown for non vaccinated improve quality of life for shit immune people significantly Vs the harm it would impose on the non vaccinated?
I don't have any answers, but it's interesting to think about. The modelling side of it must be fascinating to be involved with, and I'm a bit jealous of those who are!
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As to mandates in certain professions, especially care and medical professions, then I'm afraid I have little sympathy left. If you want to be a carer in an old people's home then you should be vaccinated. The typical reason given not to be seems to be along the lines of "I'm not sure yet, we don't have enough information etc." Billions of doses of these vaccines have been administered - they're safe.
Having little sympathy doesn't help though. What we need is to convince people
Absolutely. I was just expressing some personal frustration - not offering a prescription for policy.
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As to mandates in certain professions, especially care and medical professions, then I'm afraid I have little sympathy left. If you want to be a carer in an old people's home then you should be vaccinated. The typical reason given not to be seems to be along the lines of "I'm not sure yet, we don't have enough information etc." Billions of doses of these vaccines have been administered - they're safe.
Having little sympathy doesn't help though. What we need is to convince people
Absolutely. I was just expressing some personal frustration - not offering a prescription for policy.
Convincing can take the form of both carrot and stick. There are plenty of incentives to get jabbed already and there has been a year long education campaign. Those that haven't been jabbed have had plenty of opportunity to and I don't think 'education' will get the job done; they just aren't bothered. As such I have no problem with making anti-vaxxers lives awkward in some specific contexts to force peoples hand. The covid passport/ pass system seems to work well in France and across Europe as detailed above. Yes I accept my authoritarian streak is showing!
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I don't have any answers, but it's interesting to think about.
I think those questions are not just interesting to think about, they're essential to think about by all of society and shouldn't be left just to government modellers! To me the decisions should be mostly about risk relative to an acceptable norm. Accepting that a definitive 'norm' is difficult to quantify.
If the issue isn't being thought about in that frame then, as you say, decisions are based more on emotion. Which is a bullshit way for societies and governments to make decisions affecting public health, individual liberty and the economic health of countries.
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I don't have any answers, but it's interesting to think about.
I think those questions are not just interesting to think about, they're essential to think about! They should be at the core of decision-making. To me the decisions should be mostly about risk, relative to an acceptable norm. Accepting that a definitive 'norm' is difficult to quantify.
If the issue isn't being thought about in that frame then, as you say, decisions are based more on emotion. Which is a bullshit way for societies and governments to make decisions affecting public health, individual liberty and the economic health of countries.
I agree.
But.
Humans don’t and probably never will, work like that.
Remember, some humans still believe Torquay United will, one day, win the Premier.
Even ant-vaxxers think they’re nuts.
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I think we should permit people to act as they please but be more accountable for the consequence of their actions.
For example if my gran was in a nursing home and died of Covid I think that it would be reasonable to seek damages from any unvaccinated care staff who on the balance of probabilities contributed to her death.
Likewise any unvaccinated medical staff should not be covered by the NHS medical negligence insurance cover opening them up to the risk of circumstance changing payments being made against them.
If they want the freedom to kill people they should carry the consequences of killing people.
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I think we should permit people to act as they please but be more accountable for the consequence of their actions.
For example if my gran was in a nursing home and died of Covid I think that it would be reasonable to seek damages from any unvaccinated care staff who on the balance of probabilities contributed to her death.
Likewise any unvaccinated medical staff should not be covered by the NHS medical negligence insurance cover opening them up to the risk of circumstance changing payments being made against them.
If they want the freedom to kill people they should carry the consequences of killing people.
Even if there was a way to ascertain whether it was passed on by that member of staff then this could be possible but even then I think it would be a bad idea. Knowing you had Covid and going to work in those circumstances would be a different question.
Being vaccinated doesn’t stop you catching and transmitting Covid, far from it.
An unvaccinated hermit who only goes to work/the shops is far less likely to spread anything than a vaccinated person who goes clubbing every weekend. Should we ban all care staff from enclosed spaces too?
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I think we should permit people to act as they please but be more accountable for the consequence of their actions.
For example if my gran was in a nursing home and died of Covid I think that it would be reasonable to seek damages from any unvaccinated care staff who on the balance of probabilities contributed to her death.
Likewise any unvaccinated medical staff should not be covered by the NHS medical negligence insurance cover opening them up to the risk of circumstance changing payments being made against them.
If they want the freedom to kill people they should carry the consequences of killing people.
Where do you live? Because I want to ensure I never, ever, give you a belay.
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Likewise any unvaccinated medical staff should not be covered by the NHS medical negligence insurance cover opening them up to the risk of circumstance changing payments being made against them.
I may be out of date but I don’t think the NHS has insurance. I think pay outs come out of the budget.
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Why specifically?
I think the idea of fractional damages for statistical contribution to harms caused could unlock loads of benefits in society.
Imagine if you could go after polluting companies for a fraction of the cost of flooding based on their proportional contribution to global warming.
Or asbestos producers who gave people cancer and always hid behind the defence of "you can't prove it was a strand of our asbestos that killed him".
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I think we should permit people to act as they please but be more accountable for the consequence of their actions.
For example if my gran was in a nursing home and died of Covid I think that it would be reasonable to seek damages from any unvaccinated care staff who on the balance of probabilities contributed to her death.
Likewise any unvaccinated medical staff should not be covered by the NHS medical negligence insurance cover opening them up to the risk of circumstance changing payments being made against them.
If they want the freedom to kill people they should carry the consequences of killing people.
Even if there was a way to ascertain whether it was passed on by that member of staff then this could be possible but even then I think it would be a bad idea. Knowing you had Covid and going to work in those circumstances would be a different question.
Being vaccinated doesn’t stop you catching and transmitting Covid, far from it.
An unvaccinated hermit who only goes to work/the shops is far less likely to spread anything than a vaccinated person who goes clubbing every weekend. Should we ban all care staff from enclosed spaces too?
I suspect, that should there be even the most marginal way of ascribing liability (preferably to an insured entity), the legal profession will find it.
The “Free Market” has a way of moulding public behaviour, too.
Watch this space for employers finding a way to block employees from long term sick leave, for Covid related issues, if unvaccinated, too.
Little things like having to state your status, every time you want to sit in a cinema or whatever, even when no mandate to be vaccinated exists, will convince a number of the hesitant to conform. Many of the arguments against vaccination, will wither in time and eventually, only the truly un-convincable will be left. Much like the “3G”, “4G”, “5G” and “Microwave ovens melt your brain and make your food radioactive” brigades all fade over time.
We’re too early in the process to be worrying about this. Granted, if we’d seen 35/40% refusal, we’d have to worry.
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That doesn't answer the underlying question. What is the current estimate of risk from serious illness due to covid, relative to the risk of serious illness due to a.n.other virus? I genuinely don't know, so I can't form an informed belief about the vaccination status of people. Is the relative risk a bit higher/much higher/or lower? Bearing in mind there will always be immune-compromised people in the population - this fact hasn't emerged with the outbreak of the covid pandemic.
A lot is out there for individuals. Risks for the unvaccinated and previously uninfected for serious illness are a bit higher than the first waves and death a bit lower (but due to improvement in medical responses) and very age dependent and related to particular underlying health conditions (Infection fatality rate is still around 0.3-0.5% if hospitals are coping). Risks for the vaccinated for serious illness are a lot lower but still probably worse than a normal flu year. Looking at plots on CFRs by age bracket seems to match other information that for older people vaccination gives you an effective risk reduction of death being about a decade or more younger compared to the unvaccinated (a big risk reduction). The new medical treatments coming on line should reduce deaths and serious illness further for those who are hospitalised. We seem to be entering an endemic phase nationally, but there is massive uncertainty on that and the international picture mostly looks bad for months.
We do know the NHS is already in real trouble in November (unheard of at the levels of delays on life threatening emergency response, let alone in this month): higher vaccination levels and tighter covid restrictions is one of the few ways we can reduce that pressure.
Best to climb a bit safer than usual and try and persuade people to get vaccinated and take covid precautions (especially the vulnerable). Ventilation is the big helpful factor that is least understood by the general population but an domestic energy price crisis isn't going to help with that. Exercising together outside is the best way for people to meet.
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Hi all, back here to wade in on the debate, in a nice way 💪
Am I right in thinking that the ‘vaccines’ do little to prevent catching and transmitting covid and as new strains develop seem to be less effective generally?
[further drivel disguised as “honest questions” deleted]
Voila! Why vaccine pass might be necessary to minimise the impact of imbecille conspiracy nuts like these.
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Hi all, back here to wade in on the debate
"Back here," with your first post? Who have you been on here before?
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I did wonder. Why don't you just post under your own name?
(though I suppose it's possible it's not Dan at all, just some lurker who's watched previous Dan incarnations. Who knows really?)
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I did wonder. Why don't you just post under your own name?
(though I suppose it's possible it's not Dan at all, just some lurker who's watched previous Dan incarnations. Who knows really?)
I don’t want to if that’s cool by you.
Of course it is, it's your choice. I was just wondering.
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A lot is out there for individuals. Risks for the unvaccinated and previously uninfected for serious illness are a bit higher than the first waves and death a bit lower (but due to improvement in medical responses) and very age dependent and related to particular underlying health conditions (Infection fatality rate is still around 0.3-0.5% if hospitals are coping). Risks for the vaccinated for serious illness are a lot lower but still probably worse than a normal flu year. Looking at plots on CFRs by age bracket seems to match other information that for older people vaccination gives you an effective risk reduction of death being about a decade or more younger compared to the unvaccinated (a big risk reduction). The new medical treatments coming on line should reduce deaths and serious illness further for those who are hospitalised. We seem to be entering an endemic phase nationally, but there is massive uncertainty on that and the international picture mostly looks bad for months.
We do know the NHS is already in real trouble in November (unheard of at the levels of delays on life threatening emergency response, let alone in this month): higher vaccination levels and tighter covid restrictions is one of the few ways we can reduce that pressure.
Best to climb a bit safer than usual and try and persuade people to get vaccinated and take covid precautions (especially the vulnerable). Ventilation is the big helpful factor that is least understood by the general population but an domestic energy price crisis isn't going to help with that. Exercising together outside is the best way for people to meet.
I should have been clearer - I didn't mean what is the risk relative to another covid strain from the past. I meant what is the risk of serious illness from covid *now*, relative to a.n.other cause of serious illness currently? I'm still in the dark about that. I don't have any firm beliefs, because I can't form firm beliefs about stuff like this if I don't know the evidence for or against them.
Surely it's important to know this if you're considering placing restrictions on people's liberty. Because if restrictions are placed on people for the purpose of reducing pressure on the NHS - rather than restrictions being placed for the purpose of reducing the direct impact of covid due to its significant inherent risk, then that's problematic. The two purposes are obviously connected but aren't the same and appear to have different beliefs at root.
I assume pressure on NHS comes from a combination of sources all converging at one time, covid cases being one of them. So the logic for restricting behaviour might not be based in the inherent risk posed by catching covid but instead could be based on the side-effect risk to the NHS from 'increased pressure' of people catching covid. As per last year's lockdowns, when the health service struggled (to put it mildly) but didn't fail.
Like I say I'm still in the dark whether the evidence is clear that covid is in itself significantly more 'risky' than a load of other maladies that are also currently causing pressure on the NHS. Like you say we can actually do something about covid by restricting behaviour, voluntarily altering behaviour, or both (as well as medicating with vaccines and treatments..).
It appears to me that the health service is struggling, understandably, due to after effects of the massive shock of last year and from inherent long-term issues. But that issue should now be separated out, because it's a different issue to the question of what liberties society gets to enjoy in a country that isn't in a pandemic any longer. I don't think society should be subjected to any significant restrictions based on what its health service thinks would be best for the health service*. Except for in the most extreme circumstances which we all experienced last year, but we've now come out of that into a world with a new endemic virus.
I expect you and me will always differ on that view. I understand that what's good for a health service is likely also good for a society, but that principle only goes up to a certain fuzzy line beyond which are increasing grades (and slash-grades) of micromanagement over people's lives. Road to hell paved with.. etc.
* One reason being we could start looking at all sorts of behaviour that didn't pass a health service's 'pressure' smell test and justifiably restrict them as well.
Another being a health service, opposite to a company, will always have a massive incentive to not want people to need to use it.
** Dan, are your claims disprovable? Likely not. Handy that a lot of these types of claims can't be disproved. (presumably because of the massive forces of conspiracy against us that will forever prevent getting to the truth..). So they'll always be there for you to ponder on.
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Brandolini.
Can’t waste my life with all that.
Believe what you like, 50M doses administered in the UK alone, no pile of vaccine induced bodies, versus a very large pile of Covid inflicted deaths and a massive difference in the death/hospitalisation to infection ratios, pre to post vaccine program; has me convinced.
Question to everyone else that’s reading this thread, is Dan convincing you of anything?
If he is, point me to the bit worth looking at. Ta.
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I'd rather go through another lockdown watching Dave Mac videos about keto diets than wade through the shit Dan spouts again.
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Hi all, back here to wade in on the debate, in a nice way
Am I right in thinking that the ‘vaccines’ do little to prevent catching and transmitting covid and as new strains develop seem to be less effective generally? "
No, the vaccines do significantly reduce the risk of catching and transmitting the virus including Delta. Of course you still can catch and transmit if fully vaccinated but at a much reduced rate.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2294250-how-much-less-likely-are-you-to-spread-covid-19-if-youre-vaccinated/amp/
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Regarding mortality the U.K. is currently running at a 15% excess mortality rate which has been more or less consistent for a few months. I believe the current weeks breakdown is about half of the 1200 deaths were related to covid. So there certainly does appear to be ‘bodies piling up’
Weekly deaths would appear to be c.10,000-12,000 total from this data https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales so you’re accidentally out by a factor of 10, with there being 1,000 covid deaths last week.
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(https://i.ibb.co/1YC2z74/328498-DA-7-A86-4376-A9-CD-19-EBED8-A930-D.png)
I have five minutes, whilst the better part of this relationship watches some crap soap.
Perhaps you could point out which of the figures above you feel is “about half” of 1200?
Edit:
I must be missing your argument completely here Dan, because:
(https://i.ibb.co/VLy5d9M/6-CFAE63-F-1376-4-FB0-A318-E1-A4-EBF6-EA69.png)
Definitely less than 5 minutes of searching.
Looks like the vaccines are working. I had only assumed, prior to your input, nice to confirm it with a quick Google.
Cheers. I booked my booster just prior to this edit.
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There is quite a poor IMO longitudinal study in the lancet that shows effectiveness at reducing catching the delta variant however when there is a breakthrough infection ‘peak viral load’ was shown to be the same in fully vaccinated and unvaccinated persons.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00648-4/fulltext
Regarding mortality the U.K. is currently running at a 15% excess mortality rate which has been more or less consistent for a few months. I believe the current weeks breakdown is about half of the 1200 deaths were related to covid. So there certainly does appear to be ‘bodies piling up’
Edit - the authors of the lancet study suggested that this meant fully vaccinated individuals could just as readily transmit covid as the unvaccinated. This was apparent in my office recently when there was a covid outbreak of the fully vaccinated
https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-study-on-household-transmission-of-sars-cov-2-looking-at-vaccination-status-and-variant-type
The conclusion you draw appears to be incorrect re: peak viral load = same transmission overall etc. Anyway it seems you have an agenda and it won't matter if the data contradicts you.
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Regarding mortality the U.K. is currently running at a 15% excess mortality rate which has been more or less consistent for a few months. I believe the current weeks breakdown is about half of the 1200 deaths were related to covid. So there certainly does appear to be ‘bodies piling up’
Weekly deaths would appear to be c.10,000-12,000 total from this data https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales so you’re accidentally out by a factor of 10, with there being 1,000 covid deaths last week.
The last time I looked it was data from the 22nd Oct which was as I said it was. You can trace the excess back over the weeks. Thanks for the update though, it looks like the booster program is really reducing those numbers now.
(https://i.ibb.co/k936KZY/792-F4-F2-B-20-BE-4-A14-93-AA-5-D28-AAA9688-B.png)
Obviously, ONS don’t see “15%” as “statistically significant” . 🤷♂️
The boss is finished watching shite, so, I plead Brandolini for the rest of the night.
Cheer up Dan, it’s just not as bad as you fear.
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Vaccine efficiency and safety are important factors to be taken into account regarding the original question, and M20s bump, about the justification of proving vaccine status.
Anyway, if anyone wants calm and unbiased reporting on potential vaccine risks and adverse side-effects of the vaccine, this site seems to cover it well................................. https://www.notonthebeeb.co.uk/news :-\
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Vaccine efficiency and safety are important factors to be taken into account regarding the original question, and M20s bump, about the justification of proving vaccine status.
Anyway, if anyone wants calm and unbiased reporting on potential vaccine risks and adverse side-effects of the vaccine, this site seems to cover it well................................. https://www.notonthebeeb.co.uk/news :-\
Still here. Not sure why.
I dunno.
I read a couple and thought “that all sounds really emotive” (reporting of adverse effects is on the bumf they give you when you get the jab, by the way. Three of my kids are in studies, so extra reporting). Anyway, thought I’d just go to the source material:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions/coronavirus-vaccine-summary-of-yellow-card-reporting (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions/coronavirus-vaccine-summary-of-yellow-card-reporting)
Reads a little differently.
“Fatal” for instance, just refers to fatalities that occurred after the vaccination, not as a result of.
Here, the text:
“ Events with a fatal outcome
Vaccination and surveillance of large populations means that, by chance, some people will experience and report a new illness or events in the days and weeks after vaccination. A high proportion of people vaccinated early in the vaccination campaign were very elderly, and/or had pre-existing medical conditions. Older age and chronic underlying illnesses make it more likely that coincidental adverse events will occur, especially given the millions of people vaccinated. It is therefore important that we carefully review these reports to distinguish possible side effects from illness that would have occurred irrespective of vaccination.
Part of our continuous analysis includes an evaluation of natural death rates over time, to determine if any specific trends or patterns are occurring that might indicate a vaccine safety concern. Based on age-stratified all-cause mortality in England and Wales taken from the Office for National Statistics death registrations, several thousand deaths are expected to have occurred, naturally, within 7 days of the many millions of doses of vaccines administered so far, mostly in the elderly.
The MHRA has received 597 UK reports of suspected ADRs to the COVID-19 Pfizer/BioNTech Vaccine in which the patient died shortly after vaccination, 1,118 reports for the COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca, 19 for the COVID-19 Vaccine Moderna and 32 where the brand of vaccine was unspecified. The majority of these reports were in elderly people or people with underlying illness. Usage of the vaccines has increased over the course of the campaigns and as such, so has reporting of fatal events with a temporal association with vaccination. However, this does not mean that there is a link between vaccination and the fatalities reported. Review of specific fatal reports is provided in the summaries above. The patterns of reporting for all other fatal reports does not suggest the vaccines played a role in these deaths.
A range of other isolated events or series of reports of non-fatal, serious suspected ADRs have been reported. These all remain under continual review, including through analysis of expected rates in the absence of vaccine. There are currently no indications of specific patterns or rates of reporting that would suggest the vaccine has played a role.”
Which is somewhat less alarmist than the article linked too…
Otherwise, I agree, as calm and un-exciting as your taste in music, Fiend…
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The last time I looked it was data from the 22nd Oct which was as I said it was. You can trace the excess back over the weeks. Thanks for the update though, it looks like the booster program is really reducing those numbers now.
Ah sorry were you just talking about excess deaths for the 1200? Where did you read that 600 were from Covid? On the gov figures https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/excess-mortality-in-england-weekly-reports it has respiratory disease (but not a Covid category), and the excess there was around 400 added up for the week you were talking about. Looking at the graphs there gives a good picture of where we are in terms of excess deaths compared to where were pre vaccine roll out.
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It isn’t conspiracy theory to say that all NHS requiring the vaccine under mandate will be asked to have a booster followed by another jab 6 months after. Several politicians, Macron, Dan Andrew’s and their ministers have suggested that they don’t yet know how many jabs people will be required to have.
Some people may be happy to continue having these injections whilst others may not. Considering the evidence for waning effectiveness, acquired natural immunity and the ability of vaccinated people to carry and transmit the virus it seems very harsh to impose segregation based on vaccine status.
In Canada at the moment you have to be fully up to date with Jabs and boosters to access public transport and other amenities. This is for everyone over the age of 12.
The question in my original post was - how many vaccines are you willing to take? 3? 4? 5? 2 per year to keep your job indefinitely. Considering the dubious safety profile this seems (no words)
There are a variety of jabs, that I am required to have, periodically. Some are yearly, some I only need every ten years or so. I have a little yellow, international, vaccine passport. I can’t work without it. I have had eight different vaccines in the last two months, I will be getting my Flu jab next week (finally) and my Covid booster, the week after. I will happily turn up for any future boosters, as often as they are required, for as long as they are required (though I anticipate a newer, less frequently required version will appear in time).
There are over 20k UK nationals, who work under the same conditions as me and are legally required to produce that little yellow book at the request of port state authorities, world wide.
So, no, I don’t see that people in the health care sector should be exempt from similar regulation.
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Considering the dubious safety profile this seems (no words)
I’d consider the ‘dubious safety profile’ were I shown objective evidence of its existence. A talking head on a YT video is not that. Till then I’ll remain a trusting soul.
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I understand that some people in the military have been widely experimented on with a range of drugs. My uncle was in the gulf and given a cocktail which (he felt) severely damaged his health. I have read something to do with this and the anthrax vaccines. He died of heart complications at an early age.
Edit - I think this was known as ‘gulf war syndrome’?
Dude, this has nothing to do with the military, every merchant seaman, worldwide, has to comply.
For reference, though, I had all the jabs in 1990, prior to deploying to the Gulf War. I can promise you, there were a lot of things that might have adversely affected a person’s health during that conflict. Google the burning oil fields and bear in mind you could still smell it 150km away. Depleted Uranium munitions. I mean, shit, have you ever been through a Middle Eastern Sandstorm? Or thought about the crap that’s mixed up in that “Sand”. Add to that the psychological toll. You don’t have to be in combat, to feel that. In many ways, the anticipation of combat is almost as bad. War fucks you up. All of it.
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It's possible that I should give a shit about this... But for whatever reason I just struggle to :shrug: I guess there are just a lot of things about this country/gov/society that wind me up more so this doesn't make much impact.
The Austrian thing seems like a step too far but I'm pretty chill about some jobs having it as a requirement and had no objection to showing a pass to get into a restaurant in France
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School staff asked to call the police if unvaccinated teachers arrive to work in NZ
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10193565/New-Zealand-schools-urged-call-COPS-unvaccinated-teachers-up.html
In NSW Australia if you are over the age of 16 there are a whole range of things you cannot do if unvaccinated including leisure time with friends and access to libraries and other public facilities. You are also unable to get a hair cut at a hairdressers
https://www.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/stay-safe/rules/not-fully-vaccinated
Good.
I’d call.
Hopefully, that’s obviously not “true”, it’s just, you are ridiculously paranoid Dan. Feels like you are very very unhappy.
In truth, I just don’t see any of this as any more oppressive than my children being sent to sit on the stairs, or forced to wear a bike helmet. Or, come to that, jailing a drunk driver. Suitable precautions for society to function, under the circumstances. Much of your complaining, comes over to me (just an opinion, I can’t actually help holding) in the same way my children’s whining about that bike helmet. I know, the bike helmet isn’t a panacea, there’s a possibility it might even increase some risks, but I know it is, on balance, better than no helmet.
You focus on minutiae and rare effects and, somehow, filter out the overarching benefits.
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I can’t imagine what it must feel like for someone that religiously followed all the guidelines had all 3 jabs, then had a stroke on the third, only to be told I’m sorry you can’t go to a restaurant or travel to see family.
Nor can I. We’d need to ask them. How many are there?
7.4 billion shots have been administered worldwide so we can quickly calculate a risk ratio.
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
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Historically when segregation measures have been implemented there is a significant minority support and a majority of indifference. It wouldn’t be good to make everyone’s life difficult, just create a class of people which can be scapegoated for a range of societies ills.
No, they aren’t. They are being held accountable for their choices. They made a choice, they weren’t born in to it, they are not being persecuted (at all, in any case) for reasons of bigotry.
Medically exempt people, who cannot have, or continue to have, a vaccine, are exactly the reason we need good take up by the remaining population. Medically exempt people, are not being detained or locked up. That’s a BS argument to tug at heart string and hides (even from yourself, I suspect) the weakness of your argument.
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School staff asked to call the police if unvaccinated teachers arrive to work in NZ
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10193565/New-Zealand-schools-urged-call-COPS-unvaccinated-teachers-up.html
Bit of a mischaracterization (or, less sympathetically, what could be described as deliberately disingenuous bollocks) - despite the clickbait headline if you read the article the advice was basically what you'd expect it to be:
'If staff do turn up on site after this date, we encourage school leaders to deal with this in the usual manner you would if other inappropriate people were to turn up on site.'
'If you feel your safety or the safety of ākonga (pupils or students) or other staff is compromised, you could consider contacting the police.'
One problem that the "pro vaccine choice" movement have is probably to convince people like me to give a shit when so many voices from that "side of the aisle" come across as anti-vax anti-science pro-Trump smackheads. Just see the comments below any vaccine-related post on facebook. Obviously this is irrelevant to the philosophical/ethical aspect of the debate, and I see the irony in some "liberals" being pro some of these kinds of restrictions, and I can see the objection, but it really does put a big block in the way of me giving a shit (even if that's philosophically moronic on my part). Your history on this forum (and your disingenuous post above) doesn't help you in that regard Dan.
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Dan, I don’t know you, but I like your films and respect what you’ve done in the climbing footage I’ve seen.
I’m not going to engage further with the conspiracy nonsense because it’s plainly false and you don’t engage at a rational level- because it’s not rational and cannot be defended on that level
If every time there’s a serious examination of an issue it dissolves into unsubstantiated assertion it’s clearly driven by emotional need not external reality.
So my -serious- question is this: do you think consuming these conspiracy theories is good for your mental health? Would it not be better trying to engage with the world as it is, rather than this retreat into fantasy?
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Cheers Dan for derailing the thread from a reasoned debate about the ethics of vaccine passports and restrictions, to your usual disingenuous, click bait, conspiracy bollocks
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This sort of thing wouldn't happen if UKB mandated for showing proof of vaccine before being allowed to post. Just saying.
(joke btw. just in case)
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Genuine question for those with genuine concerns about increased restrictions on the un-vaccinated:
At the moment covid transmissions / hospitalisations / deaths seem to be at a fairly constant and "manageable" level in terms of government policy. If any of those (esp. the latter two) rises to a level where the govt determines it is unmanageable (e.g. too many deaths, too much pressure on the NHS) without bringing in further restrictions, and restrictions on the unvaccinated is one option - if that is unpalatable, what would be better alternatives?? (assuming the govt won't simply live with the virus and accept increased deaths / NHS pressure)
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If that was the situation, then I think restrictions should be applied equally to everybody regardless of people's vaccination status.
Because, as OW points out, there's very little evidence that being jabbed significantly reduces transmission *if* you have covid. Being jabbed reduces your risk of catching covid, or getting seriously ill if you do. But in the situation you're talking about the issue is too many people have caught covid and are transmitting it. So vaccine status doesn't appear relevant to the solving the immediate problem.
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I haven't read all of the recent posts, but the anti vaxxer or indeed so called sceptic position is frankly just stupid.
As I'm sure everyone else knows as well, vaccination is safer than a thousand things most people do every day, it benefits the individual and society, it's free and easily available. What's the bloody problem?
Millions of people in poorer countries would benefit hugely from vaccination and jump at the chance if their governments could fund and organise it properly. It just seems selfish and ignorant to maintain a so called libertarian opinion and bicker.
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Off out for a beer with a friend. I'll have to show my Coronoapas, but I think I can live with it.
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I see the Danes have been putting some entertainment on with water cannons and tear gas.
I know stuff like that happened in the Netherlands, but if you have sources on events here too that would be appreciated.
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It’s all very well to spout libertarian conspiracy guff but the reality is that failing to acknowledge climbing Covid rates and act accordingly directly contributes to increased deaths, not least amongst those who are unable to access the care they should for other illnesses because of the numbers of Covid patients.
In other words, it’s not just a bit of confused nonsense, it contributes to deaths of people who might otherwise have lived and reduced quality of life for the non urgent ill.
It’s nasty, not victimless, and deserves to be called out as such.
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where the govt determines it is unmanageable (e.g. too many deaths, too much pressure on the NHS) without bringing in further restrictions, and restrictions on the unvaccinated is one option - if that is unpalatable, what would be better alternatives??
Never mind, I've got the answer and it's a corker:
Mandate the voluntarily vaccine-refused to sign a legally binding document in which they forfeit any medical treatment for covid-19. They're still entitled to any and all treatment for any other issues but if they have covid-19 symptoms and test positive for it, they don't get medical treatment for it.
This tackles the actual potential problem with the voluntarily vaccine-refused i.e. the proven increased chance of serious illness and the strain that puts on NHS resources and other people who need them (and the chance of them contracting it) whilst retaining liberties and equalities in general including all other medical care.
Might drop C. Widdy an email now.
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Weird that this is on some random website and not on The BMJ.
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Hey Matt, Peter Doshi’s statement about vaccine mandates is now viewable here. He is the deputy editor of the British Medical Journal, not ‘click bait’ and worth a watch.
https://odysee.com/@JWild:6/Peter-Doshi-BMJ:d
Doshi is a long standing anti-vaccine mandate character. Long before Covid appeared. Also, he is “a” senior editor (1 of 8 ) rather than “deputy” and his colleagues sought to distance themselves from his remarks, on the basis they were driven by his political liberalism, rather than good science. But, hey, you do you. “Seek and ye shall find” is the saying, I believe, if you look for expert support, you’ll find someone who looks credible. That’s why, as a layman, you should be looking at the consensus view, not individual opinion.
You’re just a bit lost, really. Stop. Look around. Look at the numbers. The vaccines work (nothing is perfect). Your fear is unfounded, people are not dying in droves from vaccine side effects (some people have adverse reactions, true of all vaccines and, Coca-Cola for that matter). Nobody, unable to have the vaccines, for genuine reasons, will be mandated against (it’s possible that people who refuse the vaccines, for reasons of personal choice, might be excluded from certain, social, activities. Their choice).
On the other hand, unvaccinated people are far, far, more likely to get very sick and burden everyone else, they are far more likely to catch and spread, too. Breakthrough cases, are a tiny percentage.
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Weird that this is on some random website and not on The BMJ.
Yes I agree it is weird isn’t it.
Not in the slightest.
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Mates of yours Dan.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-59274090
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What conspiracy have put in this thread?
:wall:
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. As for disingenuous [...]
I'd love to see you explain how the bit I referred to as disingenuous isn't disingenuous... Crack on ...
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Protests across Italy
https://mobile.twitter.com/AnonCitizenUK/status/1459600856983166983
You know, I once spent four hours, in sleepy Como, waiting for a riot to end and finally drive my car out of the garage, because the Mayor had raised parking meter charges by €0.05/hr.
Dude, people protest, about a lot of things. It’s not evidence of anything except that some people don’t like something. It hasn’t got anything at all to do with this thread. Pretty sure we’re all aware some people don’t agree with mandates.
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Um.. mandates are a civil liberties issue. In a free society resolving freedoms when they collide is an ongoing dialogue. That’s the point of the thread- but it isn’t furthered by conspiracy nonsense, discussing the pandemic is vexed as it is.
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Dan, I find it very frustrating to go round in circles on stuff like this so excuse me if I don’t continue to debate it beyond this.
Since you asked me a direct question.
I guess I’m using conspiracy as a bit of a catch all term for the rather paranoid collection of knowing references- a mandate you expect to become unceasingly oppressive here, a brave Cassandra-like dissenter there, fears for a dystopian future, insinuations and anecdotes about the medical dangers of vaccines which are not supported by data, and so on.
When this is put to you, the response is to avoid the issue and continue in the same, arch, it ain’t me gov honest style without really defending your assertions.
Let’s take one - ‘the dubious safety profile’ of vaccines. Evidence? Is there any? I asked you this upthread and of course you ignored it because…?
I think if you want to receive respectful responses you should be in the business of giving them, rather than a hit and run if hints and winks and never backing up your point with reasoned or evidenced argument.
Anyway. I wish you well, but don’t see the anti vaccine paranoia so afflicting our society as harmless, so hope you find a way out of the maze. There are serious civil Liberty issues at stake in how we collectively handle this and concurrently serious threats to our civil liberties from the current administration. But going off the vaccine deep end is a distraction from defending our rights, not a valiant or helpful act. Move on.
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Ah right the Mail headline, yeah well I’m sure we are all able to read between the lines to understand what is going on there.
I clearly can't because if someone asked me to write guidance I'd write something just like that :shrug:
The only thing I read between the lines is that the Mail likes to shit stir and is presumably authored by a bunch of pricks. Quelle surprise
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You can go to the VAERS database or watch the video of trial participants speaking out to get an understanding of the vaccine safety concerns. You can also read the stories of people affected by the covid vaccine throughout the media since the role out. There are websites that collate stories of patients with covid vaccine injuries and films of their stories. I mentioned my relative had a stroke within 24 hrs of their booster due to a clotting injury. It has also been mentioned by other posters on here that there has been a reported incidence of increased clotting injuries in outpatient clinics post vaccination. Allyson pollock a well respected left leaning public health professional posted on Twitter that she had ‘thousands’ of emails from vaccine injured people, she also linked to Peter Doshi’s talk and the trial participants stories. From an anecdotal perspective I know l people who have had wide ranging problems including stroke, menorrhagia, autoimmune problems , cardiac problems and blood disorders (low platelets). Non of this is conspiracy and all of these people will be affected by incoming mandates. This is not bringing into question that the vaccine has saved lives or isn’t effective at reducing serious illness. It is not denying that covid is a terrible illness.
The issue is that this is all anecdotal and not evidence of a systematic issue with the covid vaccines beyond what is already apparent from the vaccine trials. I stubbed my toe falling off a step once, it hurt like fuck and bled for 48hrs. I don't think we should all live in bungalows though.
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"What conspiracy stuff?"
"Covid is a very horrible illness for some people no doubt. The evidence seems to suggest that it was manufactured in a lab with funding from the same people who had invested in the vaccine technology"
Hmmm.
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I should have been clearer - I didn't mean what is the risk relative to another covid strain from the past. I meant what is the risk of serious illness from covid *now*, relative to a.n.other cause of serious illness currently? I'm still in the dark about that. I don't have any firm beliefs, because I can't form firm beliefs about stuff like this if I don't know the evidence for or against them.
Surely it's important to know this if you're considering placing restrictions on people's liberty. Because if restrictions are placed on people for the purpose of reducing pressure on the NHS - rather than restrictions being placed for the purpose of reducing the direct impact of covid due to its significant inherent risk, then that's problematic. The two purposes are obviously connected but aren't the same and appear to have different beliefs at root.
I assume pressure on NHS comes from a combination of sources all converging at one time, covid cases being one of them. So the logic for restricting behaviour might not be based in the inherent risk posed by catching covid but instead could be based on the side-effect risk to the NHS from 'increased pressure' of people catching covid. As per last year's lockdowns, when the health service struggled (to put it mildly) but didn't fail.
Like I say I'm still in the dark whether the evidence is clear that covid is in itself significantly more 'risky' than a load of other maladies that are also currently causing pressure on the NHS. Like you say we can actually do something about covid by restricting behaviour, voluntarily altering behaviour, or both (as well as medicating with vaccines and treatments..).
It appears to me that the health service is struggling, understandably, due to after effects of the massive shock of last year and from inherent long-term issues. But that issue should now be separated out, because it's a different issue to the question of what liberties society gets to enjoy in a country that isn't in a pandemic any longer. I don't think society should be subjected to any significant restrictions based on what its health service thinks would be best for the health service*. Except for in the most extreme circumstances which we all experienced last year, but we've now come out of that into a world with a new endemic virus.
I expect you and me will always differ on that view. I understand that what's good for a health service is likely also good for a society, but that principle only goes up to a certain fuzzy line beyond which are increasing grades (and slash-grades) of micromanagement over people's lives. Road to hell paved with.. etc.
* One reason being we could start looking at all sorts of behaviour that didn't pass a health service's 'pressure' smell test and justifiably restrict them as well.
Another being a health service, opposite to a company, will always have a massive incentive to not want people to need to use it.
Sorry Pete I thought I gave that...or to be simpler: about the same risk for delta as previous strains if unvaccinated and about the previous risk of someone over a decade younger if you have been vaccinated (and have caught it, as vaccination also cuts infection risk, even for delta). Maybe around a factor of ten reduction in risk, if vaccinated, so still more serious than flu, so it doesn't make us invincible.
There are some nice clean plots around of calculated Infection Fatality Rate versus age, but I couldn't remember where I found them so the plots in this link will have to do (from data of unvaccinated):
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33289900/
If the NHS was running well the current system risks would be OK. However, pressures have never been worse for delays in getting people to hospital for the serious emergencies where time is vital (especially heart emergencies and strokes). Anything that cuts ambulance delays is good... it's one reason why we are vaccinating younger people for flu this year (alongside the individual risk reduction as the combination of flu and covid is greater than the sum of the parts) .
The restrictions in plan B were just mask use, improved ventilation mandates and vaccine passports for some venues (vaccinated, recently infected or recent negative test) ...hardly worth getting worried about impingement on personal freedoms, if the alternative is you or loved ones ability to be treated in time in a medical emergency is seriously affected.
On Dan's point I would say it's bloody horrible if someone you love gets a serious side-effect but in the specific case of blood clots, risk is much higher from catching covid than from being vaccinated.
https://b-s-h.org.uk/about-us/news/covid-19-infection-much-more-likely-to-causes-blood-clots-than-vaccines-major-analysis/
Also on Dan's point about unfair exclusions for those who have serious side effects, they should see their doctor and the recommendation may well be no more jabs (and evidence to that effect).
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"What conspiracy stuff?"
"Covid is a very horrible illness for some people no doubt. The evidence seems to suggest that it was manufactured in a lab with funding from the same people who had invested in the vaccine technology"
Hmmm.
While that might make a mildly entertaining dystopian sci fi novel, it's not remotely credible.
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Sorry Pete I thought I gave that...or to be simpler: about the same risk for delta as previous strains if unvaccinated and about the previous risk of someone over a decade younger if you have been vaccinated (and have caught it, as vaccination also cuts infection risk, even for delta). Maybe around a factor of ten reduction in risk, if vaccinated, so still more serious than flu, so it doesn't make us invincible.
There are some nice clean plots around of calculated Infection Fatality Rate versus age, but I couldn't remember where I found them so the plots in this link will have to do (from data of unvaccinated):
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33289900/
If the NHS was running well the current system risks would be OK. However, pressures have never been worse for delays in getting people to hospital for the serious emergencies where time is vital (especially heart emergencies and strokes). Anything that cuts ambulance delays is good... it's one reason why we are vaccinating younger people for flu this year (alongside the individual risk reduction as the combination of flu and covid is greater than the sum of the parts) .
That still isn't what I'm asking. (note I don't expect you, or anyone, to have all the answers!).
I'm simply interested in trying to understand how serious a risk to health is catching covid currently, relative to all the other common risks to health currently around - i.e. risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, flu/pneumonia (for the elderly), COPD, traumatic injury, etc. etc. Knowing the IFR for covid is useful but how does it compare to the fatality rates of other maladies, and what are the likelihoods for those other maladies.
I'd like to understand this so I can put covid in wider context. And therefore understand any proposed restrictions to liberty, mandates for vaccines etc. in a wider context.
I realise risk could only be calculated for an average person, and the average person doesn't exist. And risks differ for different age groups. I also realise 'a struggling health service' is, in itself, an added risk to health.
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Why isn’t it credible Toby?
Because of the structure of the virus, because it hasn't materially benefited China any more than it has us, because it just isn't very likely anyway...
Your preference for trying to collect anecdote, hearsay and innuendo in preference to listening to the opinion of every major health organisation in the world is pretty baffling to be honest. You're siding with the likes of Bolsanaro, who has presided over a national disaster and thousands of unnecessary deaths.
In the 1950s, smallpox vaccination was mandatory for nurses, before it was largely eradicated. It'd be nice if foolish quibbling doesn't prevent covid from going the same way.
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Sorry Pete I thought I gave that...or to be simpler: about the same risk for delta as previous strains if unvaccinated and about the previous risk of someone over a decade younger if you have been vaccinated (and have caught it, as vaccination also cuts infection risk, even for delta). Maybe around a factor of ten reduction in risk, if vaccinated, so still more serious than flu, so it doesn't make us invincible.
There are some nice clean plots around of calculated Infection Fatality Rate versus age, but I couldn't remember where I found them so the plots in this link will have to do (from data of unvaccinated):
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33289900/
If the NHS was running well the current system risks would be OK. However, pressures have never been worse for delays in getting people to hospital for the serious emergencies where time is vital (especially heart emergencies and strokes). Anything that cuts ambulance delays is good... it's one reason why we are vaccinating younger people for flu this year (alongside the individual risk reduction as the combination of flu and covid is greater than the sum of the parts) .
That still isn't what I'm asking. (note I don't expect you, or anyone, to have all the answers!).
I'm simply interested in trying to understand how serious a risk to health is catching covid currently, relative to all the other common risks to health currently around - i.e. risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, flu/pneumonia (for the elderly), COPD, traumatic injury, etc. etc. Knowing the IFR for covid is useful but how does it compare to the fatality rates of other maladies, and what are the likelihoods for those other maladies.
I'd like to understand this so I can put covid in wider context. And therefore understand any proposed restrictions to liberty, mandates for vaccines etc. in a wider context.
I realise risk could only be calculated for an average person, and the average person doesn't exist. And risks differ for different age groups. I also realise 'a struggling health service' is, in itself, an added risk to health.
I can’t answer that, however, logic would suggest that, as a compounding factor to all the others you mentioned (which haven’t gone away), generally, as a population, our risk of severe illness and death, has risen markedly.
Covid has not replaced any of the above, it has added to them all.
Therefore, I can’t see any reason to not indulge in mitigating actions that significantly reduce it’s impact at very small cost (on a society level and I don’t mean lockdowns, which can now be avoided and cost a metric shit tonne).
If I’m brutally honest, I don’t think replacing some of the “unlucky who respond badly to Covid” with a smaller number “who respond badly to Covid vaccines” is a massive moral dilemma. Bear in mind, prior to the jab, I had no certain clue to my own status in that regard, nor that of my loved ones.
Some people are run over and killed by buses. Buses interfere with my right to walk down the middle of the road or cross without having to waste my precious time looking first. buses contribute to CO2 emissions and are a menace to the environment. But, some people need buses, society needs buses to keep functioning and, as yet, we don’t have a viable alternative and they are less damaging than everyone driving their own car, probably kill fewer pedestrians than everybody driving their own car would and, maybe, buy us a bit of time to come up with a better alternative. So, I don’t burn vehicles, throw rocks at coppers and smash shop windows, about buses. Nor do I get involved with stupid theories about buses being created in labs, that also research alternatives to buses, or buses being used for population control, or any other “Big Bus” paranoia.
Edit:
Damn Auto correct! Not sure why it replaced “Vaccines” with “Buses” there. Probably a Government conspiracy to stop people talking about those secret mind control jabs and distract us all with the murderous Bus situation.
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"What conspiracy stuff?"
"Covid is a very horrible illness for some people no doubt. The evidence seems to suggest that it was manufactured in a lab with funding from the same people who had invested in the vaccine technology"
Hmmm.
I believe it’s reasonable to say that gain of function research on bat Coronavirus’s was being performed at the Wuhan lab in part funded by the NIH and Ecohealth alliance and there is links from those funding the research to the Moderna mRNA vaccine development program.
The central points are summed up nicely in this very creative animation.
https://mobile.twitter.com/FunctionGain/status/1459649111712542723
Ps thanks Offwidth appreciate your comments 👍🏻
This is a good example to me of why this thread has become so frustratingly confused.
Firstly, some simple background from the BBC here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/57932699
As I understand it, there is no doubt that Zhengli was doing gain of function research. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18787
Nor is it in question that the NIH, through NiAID (director A Fauci) provided research funds to the Wuhan lab.
Fine. This is where things go wrong. It is not simply the case that the NIAID funded GOF research in Wuhan. It is more complicated than that. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02903-x
Moreover, the quote above goes on to insinuate, without providing a shred of evidence, that funding which led directly to the current pandemic came from sources which had an enormous commercial interest in such a pandemic occurring. By implication, having invested in the creation of a vaccine prior to a novel virus causing a global pandemic.
“ The evidence seems to suggest that it was manufactured in a lab with funding from the same people who had invested in the vaccine technology"
This works if you are easily led and can’t stop to interrogate what is actually being said/implied and what supporting evidence is provided. We have had ‘plausible deniablility’ from politicians, here we have ‘plausible assertability’.
This- taking in the credulous with vaguely plausible sounding and unsubstantiated allegations- is the very heart of conspiracy making. It’s scaremongering. Maybe because the author is fearful. Maybe because its author wants the kudos of some ‘special knowledge’ ( cf the occult and all sorts of nonsense down the centuries). Whatever. It is pernicious nonsense and has no place in healthy debate.
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Edit:
Damn Auto correct! Not sure why it replaced “Vaccines” with “Buses” there. Probably a Government conspiracy to stop people talking about those secret mind control jabs and distract us all with the murderous Bus situation.
Apparently Johnson spends his free time painting model buses and used one to announce the £350m post eu uplift to the NHS. On a the side of a bus. I think we should be told.
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The easily led argument works both ways. For example if I was easily led I’d be rolling my sleeve up and supporting social segregation measures.
Defending your position by a false equivalence to avoid having to deal with the argument? Let me remind you that your post has sensationalist and completely unsubstantiated assertion, vs studies and data sets exceeding 7billion.
Conflating issues to avoid having to deal with ... :yawn:
It may be that your intentions - which don't seem, on consideration, indisputably benign- are coming from a good place. However, it is such a tortuous muddle; I'm out now.
edit - As I said previously, issues which impact civil liberties that you want to highlight deserve proper debate, but I find your contributions confuse rather than illuminate the issues, so I don't want to continue.
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Please guys, don’t support the mandates and vaccine passports. They are really bad news and not ok. They create division, hate and fear and perpetuate trauma and isolation. These are not the conditions required for people to heal from any illness.
I swore I wasn’t going to engage you directly, again, but…
No, they don’t, people like you, do.
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That still isn't what I'm asking. (note I don't expect you, or anyone, to have all the answers!).
I'm simply interested in trying to understand how serious a risk to health is catching covid currently, relative to all the other common risks to health currently around - i.e. risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, flu/pneumonia (for the elderly), COPD, traumatic injury, etc. etc. Knowing the IFR for covid is useful but how does it compare to the fatality rates of other maladies, and what are the likelihoods for those other maladies.
I'd like to understand this so I can put covid in wider context. And therefore understand any proposed restrictions to liberty, mandates for vaccines etc. in a wider context.
I realise risk could only be calculated for an average person, and the average person doesn't exist. And risks differ for different age groups. I also realise 'a struggling health service' is, in itself, an added risk to health.
Something like this?
https://wintoncentre.maths.cam.ac.uk/coronavirus/how-have-covid-19-fatalities-compared-other-causes-death/
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-01/covid-19-s-death-toll-compared-to-other-things-that-kill-us
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With the caveat that I know nothing about funding in biological sciences, it strikes me as unremarkable that a funding body that deals with infectious diseases might fund both research on diseases and on vaccines. Or why people involved in those bodies might be involved in other bodies related to companies working on vaccines. It seems a bit like being pissy if EPSRC used to fund oil and gas research and then now decided to fund work on geoengineering to fix the problems they helped make (I don't know if they did fund O&G work but I'd guess so). It could be a big conspiracy, or it could be people doing their best to make sensible decisions... Perhaps you have much more info that implies dodgyness than you've mentioned Dan? I can't be arsed to look.
P.s. BJ talks like Churchill cos he wants to be known as that kind of figure rather than a Knob of a Known. I should point out that he is definitely not an alumni of Kranko's Klowning Academy. For starters he doesn't own enough rubber.
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I wonder who you are trying to convince Dan. Because it doesn’t seem you have many converts on here.
Is it yourself by any chance.
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History sounds like my PIP joints :lol:
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Something like this?
https://wintoncentre.maths.cam.ac.uk/coronavirus/how-have-covid-19-fatalities-compared-other-causes-death/
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-01/covid-19-s-death-toll-compared-to-other-things-that-kill-us
Those are both very useful yes, thanks.
But (you knew there was one coming!)... Those are still backward-looking stats though (I know, what other sort are there), and are comparing the relative risk of death of covid in 2020 compared to risks from other causes of death. As we all know, 2020 was the worst of it for covid (hopefully!), so using the 2020 covid fatality stats is creating quite an unrealistic base effect which shouldn't apply to how we live and make decisions *today*. A bit like some of the inflation figures currently. (that doesn't imply I think inflation isn't shaping up as a potential problem btw, but that's a totally different topic).
I'm interested in what the relative risk of covid is *today*, compared to other risks. Because it isn't 2020 anymore, and we're going into the future where we aren't in a pandemic state, not going back to 2020 where we were in a pandemic state.
But I also realise it's virtually impossible to have comprehensive stats of that sort up-to-date. A 12-momth lag is probably the best we can do.
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With the caveat that I know nothing about funding in biological sciences, it strikes me as unremarkable that a funding body that deals with infectious diseases might fund both research on diseases and on vaccines. Or why people involved in those bodies might be involved in other bodies related to companies working on vaccines. It seems a bit like being pissy if EPSRC used to fund oil and gas research and then now decided to fund work on geoengineering to fix the problems they helped make (I don't know if they did fund O&G work but I'd guess so). It could be a big conspiracy, or it could be people doing their best to make sensible decisions... Perhaps you have much more info that implies dodgyness than you've mentioned Dan? I can't be arsed to look.
P.s. BJ talks like Churchill cos he wants to be known as that kind of figure rather than a Knob of a Known. I should point out that he is definitely not an alumni of Kranko's Klowning Academy. For starters he doesn't own enough rubber.
I was going to make a similar point along lines of correlation not being causation.
Dan, if you're going to suggest the lab in Wuhan is responsible for the pandemic then the first thing you should do is research how many countries in the world also have such labs. Not easy to research but the info could be found out through a lot of leg work. From this information you then have a rough prior likelihood of there being a bio research lab in the same region as an outbreak. From that info, you can begin to calculate how likely or unlikely other correlations are, such as companies involed in research and vaccines. Continue doing that sort of calculation for every subsequent link, and you get a better idea of the probabilities involved.
One example. The UK has more than one bio weapons research labs (for defence, not attack). So if a respiratory virus had originated here, you could say it came from the same geographical region as a bio weapons lab. I think Hubei province (where Whuhan is located) is a pretty large region, comparable roughly in size to the UK? Do we know for sure covid originated in Wuhan city? Or could it have been just *somewhere* in Hubei province? If in the province, then it's highly probable it would have made its way to Wuhan, it being central China's most populous city (according to wikipedia) and a central hub.
That isn't meant to be any sort of convincing rebuttal btw - I'm open minded to the origin and wouldn't completely discount any theory just because it was difficult to deal with. But look at the probabilities of it properly, not in some suggestive winky winky anecdotal way.
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Something like this?
https://wintoncentre.maths.cam.ac.uk/coronavirus/how-have-covid-19-fatalities-compared-other-causes-death/
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-01/covid-19-s-death-toll-compared-to-other-things-that-kill-us
Those are both very useful yes, thanks.
But (you knew there was one coming!)... Those are still backward-looking stats though, and are comparing the relative risk to health from covid in 2020 compared to the risks from other causes of illness or death. As we all know, 2020 was the worst of it for covid (hopefully!), so using the 2020 covid fatality stats is creating quite an unrealistic base effect that doesn't, shouldn't at least, apply today. A bit like some of the inflation figures currently. (that doesn't imply I think inflation isn't shaping up as a potential problem btw, but totally different topic).
I'm interested in what the relative risk of covid is *today*, compared to other risks. Because it isn't 2020 anymore, and we're going into the future where we aren't in pandemic state, not going back to 2020 where we were in a pandemic state.
But I also realise it's virtually impossible to have comprehensive stats of that sort up-to-date. A 12-momth lag is probably the best we can do.
Surely all you need to know, is that we currently (and for many weeks now) have no statistically significant excess deaths? So, given current mitigation (mainly vaccines) it *isn’t* a statistically significant risk.
You could also just run some numbers for yourself, maybe? Take the total number of infections (known, so under estimated) from two weeks ago and compare it to deaths four weeks later and admissions two weeks later? Do that on a few days over the period since the latest outbreak began to peak and you could drum up a fair picture?
For instance, last Wednesday, 10th, there were 128 deaths.
Two weeks prior, Wednesday, 27th, there were 1147 admissions.
Four weeks prior Wednesday, 13th, there were 46978 positive tests.
Not worth running such a small sample and I’m roasting dinner. You can pull the data off :
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ (https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/)
As a CSV and bung it into a spreadsheet and you’ll have a moderately accurate picture of your risk, with the asymptomatic /unreported caveat giving it an inflated value. Plenty of errors, but a broadly useful guide.
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With the caveat that I know nothing about funding in biological sciences, it strikes me as unremarkable that a funding body that deals with infectious diseases might fund both research on diseases and on vaccines. Or why people involved in those bodies might be involved in other bodies related to companies working on vaccines. It seems a bit like being pissy if EPSRC used to fund oil and gas research and then now decided to fund work on geoengineering to fix the problems they helped make (I don't know if they did fund O&G work but I'd guess so). It could be a big conspiracy, or it could be people doing their best to make sensible decisions... Perhaps you have much more info that implies dodgyness than you've mentioned Dan? I can't be arsed to look.
P.s. BJ talks like Churchill cos he wants to be known as that kind of figure rather than a Knob of a Known. I should point out that he is definitely not an alumni of Kranko's Klowning Academy. For starters he doesn't own enough rubber.
I was going to make similar point along lines of correlation not being causation.
Dan, if you're going to suggest the lab in Wuhan is responsible for the pandemic then the first thing you should do is research how many countries in the world also have such labs. Not easy to research but the info coul be found out through a lot of leg work. From this information you then have a rough prior likelihood of there being a bio research lab in the same region as an outbreak. From that info, you can begin to calculate how likely or unlikely other correlations are, such as companies involed in research and vaccines. Continue doing that sort of calculation for every subsequent link, and you get a better idea of the probabilities involved.
One example. The UK has more than one bio weapons research labs (for defence, not attack). So if a respiratory virus had originated here, you could say it came from the same geographical region as a bio weapons labs.
That isn't meant to be any sort of convincing rebuttal btw - I'm open minded to the origin, but look at the probability of it properly, not in some suggestive winky winky anecdotal bullshit way.
There’s also that minor thing about labs studying animal populations at risk of transmitting disease to humans, being located close to that animal population…
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Surely all you need to know, is that we currently (and for many weeks now) have no statistically significant excess deaths? So, given current mitigation (mainly vaccines) it *isn’t* a statistically significant risk.
The obvious question that that raises is whether we are still in period where death rates would be expected to be anomalously low due to the premature removal of so many from the at-risk group in the preceding 18 months? So no excess deaths on a long baseline might still mean excess deaths in the current context.
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Surely all you need to know, is that we currently (and for many weeks now) have no statistically significant excess deaths? So, given current mitigation (mainly vaccines) it *isn’t* a statistically significant risk.
The obvious question that that raises is whether we are still in period where death rates would be expected to be anomalously low due to the premature removal of so many from the at-risk group in the preceding 18 months? So no excess deaths on a long baseline might still mean excess deaths in the current context.
Yeah, I was multitasking and I don’t do that well anyway, plus I was on my second glass of wine, and…
I thought of numerous holes, after posting.
It’s just another error though and in some ways, removing the most vulnerable, improves the perspective on the risks to the bulk of the population. As stated in some of those articles above, many of the deaths occurred in people who would very likely have died within the same period, anyway. A harsh statement, that sticks in my throat somewhat, but I can’t dispute it’s validity.
Seriously though, it’s a complex question and I don’t imagine anything beyond a rough guide will be possible until we can look back with some degree of clarity.
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I guess it’s made even more complex when one considers the substantial reduction in quality of life a lot of people who have had Covid and recovered have suffered. For someone like Pete trying to weigh up the risks, I would assume that a 50% loss of lung function (or whatever) would have to strongly be taken into consideration.
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Hang on, am I the only person here who's periodically trying to objectively* weigh up the risks from covid versus other things? Please tell me I'm not the only one!
*While accepting it's nigh on impossible to be accurate.
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Hang on, am I the only person here who's periodically trying to objectively* weigh up the risks from covid versus other things? Please tell me I'm not the only one!
*While accepting it's nigh on impossible to be accurate.
No. It’s just that last line is all too true.
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Something like this?
https://wintoncentre.maths.cam.ac.uk/coronavirus/how-have-covid-19-fatalities-compared-other-causes-death/
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-01/covid-19-s-death-toll-compared-to-other-things-that-kill-us
Those are both very useful yes, thanks.
But (you knew there was one coming!)... Those are still backward-looking stats though (I know, what other sort are there), and are comparing the relative risk of death of covid in 2020 compared to risks from other causes of death. As we all know, 2020 was the worst of it for covid (hopefully!), so using the 2020 covid fatality stats is creating quite an unrealistic base effect which shouldn't apply to how we live and make decisions *today*. A bit like some of the inflation figures currently. (that doesn't imply I think inflation isn't shaping up as a potential problem btw, but that's a totally different topic).
I'm interested in what the relative risk of covid is *today*, compared to other risks. Because it isn't 2020 anymore, and we're going into the future where we aren't in a pandemic state, not going back to 2020 where we were in a pandemic state.
But I also realise it's virtually impossible to have comprehensive stats of that sort up-to-date. A 12-momth lag is probably the best we can do.
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Further to the original question and M20s bump:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59283128
(Link to brainwashing state authority mainstream media site)
I would say that whilst some restrictions on the voluntarily vaccine-refused, specifically in optional/luxury high transmission risk busy indoor social scenarios, might be okay, a full lockdown for them is absolutely not. Just like previous blanket lockdowns irrespective of transmission risks were not. It's disproportionate and unnecessarily vindictive. Restrictions should be about keeping the overall public safe, not about excessively punishing people for their choice (the punishment can be reserved for conspiracy sheeple who actively push an lie-based agenda that carries a risk of further general lockdowns due to encouraging people to avoid more palatable measures).
Actually in some scenarios mandatory mask wearing (apart from genuine medical exemptions) for the voluntarily vaccine-refused could be a good compromise, pretty sure masks don't cause blood clots or 5G reception or magnetism.
There you go. That can be fed into the UKB Aggregate Opinioniser Algorithm.
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It's disproportionate and unnecessarily vindictive. Restrictions should be about keeping the overall public safe, not about excessively punishing people for their choice
Is it disproportionate? 35% of their population is unvaccinated and the vaccines are proven to significantly reduce the risk of harm if you catch covid. If your aim is to limit harm to those 35% of people then lowering the chance of them catching it by introducing a lockdown could be a sensible idea. I guess they may also be worried about overwhelming their available healthcare resources in case of a big spike in cases which would be bad for everyone involved.
ed. got the vaccinated/unvaccinated numbers the wrong way round, fixed.
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I would say that whilst some restrictions on the voluntarily vaccine-refused, specifically in optional/luxury high transmission risk busy indoor social scenarios, might be okay
Was highlighting the difference between high-risk-scenario-specific restrictions for the unvaxxed vs full 2020-style Stay At Home lockdown for the unvaxxed. Obviously there's a lot of thrilling potential nit-picking as to the actual difference of course.
Just chucking opinions into the mix since it was asked for.
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Am I misunderstanding something really obvious here on the discussion of excess deaths?
There ARE significant excess deaths right now (deaths above the average baseline of previous years) : they have been averaging around 14% since the beginning of August.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/29october2021
Excess mortality (%) is a plot category for Our World in Data, if people want to look at the graph of UK excess deaths and compare with other countries.
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer
As Johnny points out we have lost a lot of the old/vulnerable to covid , and along with flu numbers being low so far, this should be a low year for two of the biggest factors, cancer should be higher due to treatment delays from covid.
I'm keeping an eye on the numbers as this escalation in ambulance delays is really serious for heart problems (our biggest killer) and strokes. I'm worried most right now about that but it's hard to see in excess deaths: it's certainly not huge yet (compared to covid deaths) as the covid deaths are close to the excess deaths (and which broadly match the variation).
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/14/patients-are-dying-from-being-stuck-in-ambulances-outside-ae-report
On Matt's point about 'people would have died soon anyway': various analysis indicates covid deaths take about a decade off life expectancy so on average that's not true for the majority.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/longevity/497097-those-who-died-from-covid-19-lost-more-than-a-decade-of
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It's disproportionate and unnecessarily vindictive. Restrictions should be about keeping the overall public safe, not about excessively punishing people for their choice
Is it disproportionate? 35% of their population is unvaccinated and the vaccines are proven to significantly reduce the risk of harm if you catch covid. If your aim is to limit harm to those 35% of people then lowering the chance of them catching it by introducing a lockdown could be a sensible idea. I guess they may also be worried about overwhelming their available healthcare resources in case of a big spike in cases which would be bad for everyone involved.
ed. got the vaccinated/unvaccinated numbers the wrong way round, fixed.
You’re talking about Austria, with those numbers?
Here, only 12% of the population over 12yrs is unvaccinated and only 20% are short their second dose (and a good number of the second figure are under 18 and not required, offered or expected to need the second dose).
I took one of my brood in for his jab (13) last week (because the school program was over subscribed and they couldn’t get through everyone). The Riviera centre was completely wrapped in the queue for walk ins. Hundreds waiting. We went in at 16:00 and they marshals reckoned it had been like that since they opened and for several days prior.
I think our anti-vax mob here are a very small minority. Loud, but small
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Am I misunderstanding something really obvious here on the discussion of excess deaths?
There ARE significant excess deaths right now (deaths above the average baseline of previous years) : they have been averaging around 14% since the beginning of August.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/29october2021
Excess mortality (%) is a plot category for Our World in Data, if people want to look at the graph of UK excess deaths and compare with other countries.
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer
As Johnny points out we have lost a lot of the old/vulnerable to covid , and along with flu numbers being low so far, this should be a low year for two of the biggest factors, cancer should be higher due to treatment delays from covid.
I'm keeping an eye on the numbers as this escalation in ambulance delays is really serious for heart problems (our biggest killer) and strokes. I'm worried most right now about that but it's hard to see in excess deaths: it's certainly not huge yet (compared to covid deaths) as the covid deaths are close to the excess deaths (and which broadly match the variation).
On Matt's point about 'people would have died soon anyway': various analysis indicates covid deaths take about a decade off life expectancy so on average that's not true for the majority.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/longevity/497097-those-who-died-from-covid-19-lost-more-than-a-decade-of
Except, the actual all cause mortality reports, disagree. Pick a few.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/weekly-all-cause-mortality-surveillance-2021-to-2022 (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/weekly-all-cause-mortality-surveillance-2021-to-2022)
I think the point is, that whilst we are sitting above the 5 year median, we are not outside of typical fluctuations around that median. Meaning, Covid, under current conditions, is not increasing the individual’s risk of death by a statistically significant amount, albeit a measurable one.
Fig 1, of those reports give a very strong impression of how different things are to the previous waves, but you can also see, quite clearly, that we are very much within “normal” bounds.
Edit: basically, we are in the fuzzy territory, where many thing combine to alter the world from “normal”. We still have increased social distancing, widespread mask use, increased awareness and reduced activity in many areas, added to a severely whittled vulnerable population and a largely vaccinated population.
So, Covid is probably responsible for more of the total share of deaths, where the overall non-Covid deaths are somewhat reduced by the overall situation. If that makes sense?
-
Further to the original question and M20s bump:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59283128
(Link to brainwashing state authority mainstream media site)
I would say that whilst some restrictions on the voluntarily vaccine-refused, specifically in optional/luxury high transmission risk busy indoor social scenarios, might be okay, a full lockdown for them is absolutely not. Just like previous blanket lockdowns irrespective of transmission risks were not. It's disproportionate and unnecessarily vindictive. Restrictions should be about keeping the overall public safe, not about excessively punishing people for their choice (the punishment can be reserved for conspiracy sheeple who actively push an lie-based agenda that carries a risk of further general lockdowns due to encouraging people to avoid more palatable measures).
The alternative is that those who are clinically vulnerable, despite having done the right thing and got the vaccine, are in perpetual lockdown through no fault or choice of their own....
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Those are both very useful yes, thanks.
But (you knew there was one coming!)... Those are still backward-looking stats though (I know, what other sort are there), and are comparing the relative risk of death of covid in 2020 compared to risks from other causes of death. As we all know, 2020 was the worst of it for covid (hopefully!), so using the 2020 covid fatality stats is creating quite an unrealistic base effect which shouldn't apply to how we live and make decisions *today*. A bit like some of the inflation figures currently. (that doesn't imply I think inflation isn't shaping up as a potential problem btw, but that's a totally different topic).
I'm interested in what the relative risk of covid is *today*, compared to other risks. Because it isn't 2020 anymore, and we're going into the future where we aren't in a pandemic state, not going back to 2020 where we were in a pandemic state.
But I also realise it's virtually impossible to have comprehensive stats of that sort up-to-date. A 12-momth lag is probably the best we can do.
It depends on what decision we are talking about and the importance of each category: statistical risk in the population (which varies with age etc) risk for a specific person (the 'me' factor or the 'I'm worried for my gran' factor) or risk of NHS system issues. The driver for pandemic measures is always the last of those as we simply cant operate as a society without functioning hospitals, so governments are forced to act when the system starts to break. Risk for a specific person probably dominates most individual considerations.
Looking at statistical risk first. As I said above: if unvaccinated, the risks are roughly unchanged (actually the delta strain is more life threatening than the first wave strain but medical responses have increased faster). If vaccinated or with infection immunity risks are still worse than a typical annual flu wave.
On risk for a specific person there is loads we can do to mitigate; so those population stats are not always the risk for us or our loved ones: get vaccinated; always try to meet outside; if you have to go indoors in public try and choose a well ventilated, location at a quiet time; if vulnerable consider an FFP2 mask indoors (mask policy is mainly about preventing spread from the wearer to others indoors but an FFP2 masks gives reasonable protection to the wearer indoors, very important where mask compliance is lax and ventilation poor). Any climber also needs to factor in what happens if they hurt themselves climbing and need to go to hospital.
On NHS system risks: we are in a position as critical as the peak of previous waves. Back then it was mostly about covid but now the cracks are opening in an overstretched system with an exhausted and understaffed workforce. Covid still makes things worse as hospitalisations are still high and infection control clogs up systems. Banning the unvaccinated from working in care homes will make things worse over winter as it reduces care capacity and the overstretched care (especially in the least well funded homes) leads to more general heath problems and so extra admissions.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/14/patients-are-dying-from-being-stuck-in-ambulances-outside-ae-report
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On risk for a specific person there is loads we can do to mitigate; so those population stats are not always the risk for us or our loved ones: get vaccinated; always try to meet outside; if you have to go indoors in public try and choose a well ventilated, location at a quiet time; if vulnerable consider an FFP2 mask indoors (mask policy is mainly about preventing spread from the wearer to others indoors but an FFP2 masks gives reasonable protection to the wearer indoors, very important where mask compliance is lax and ventilation poor). Any climber also needs to factor in what happens if they hurt themselves climbing and need to go to hospital.
This paragraph reads like in an IndySage press release. I appreciate its all good advice but it misses the obvious reality that the above mitigations are not compatible with living an enjoyable life for most people. The majority of peoples jobs will require them to be indoors with the public and the vast majority of people want to be indoors with the public going to sporting events, pubs, concerts, you name it. The point is surely whether putting restrictions on the unvaccinated to allow the vaccinated vulnerable to live a more normal life would have any benefits. I don't know but I can see why the vaccinated vulnerable might be pissed off with the prospect of years of wearing an FFP2 mask indoors; its just not practical or realistic.
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The alternative is that those who are clinically vulnerable, despite having done the right thing and got the vaccine, are in perpetual lockdown through no fault or choice of their own....
It isn't true that that's the alternative for clinically vulnerable people.
The real alternative for the clinically vulnerable is that some people will always have to live their lives with increased risk - this was true before covid and it'll be true after the covid pandemic. Clinically vulnerable people are a special case and need special levels of protection and health care, but they shouldn't be the primary deciding factor in how the rest of humanity live their lives.
If living in 'perpetual lockdown' as you put it really *was* the only alternative then that would imply that zero covid is the desired outcome. Thankfully no government is stupid enough to think achieving zero covid is possible in the long term. Even NZ, the most isolated country and most able to seal itself off from the rest of humanity, has given up on zero covid. https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/end-new-zealands-zero-covid-policy
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Am I misunderstanding something really obvious here on the discussion of excess deaths?
There ARE significant excess deaths right now (deaths above the average baseline of previous years) : they have been averaging around 14% since the beginning of August.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/29october2021
Excess mortality (%) is a plot category for Our World in Data, if people want to look at the graph of UK excess deaths and compare with other countries.
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer
As Johnny points out we have lost a lot of the old/vulnerable to covid , and along with flu numbers being low so far, this should be a low year for two of the biggest factors, cancer should be higher due to treatment delays from covid.
I'm keeping an eye on the numbers as this escalation in ambulance delays is really serious for heart problems (our biggest killer) and strokes. I'm worried most right now about that but it's hard to see in excess deaths: it's certainly not huge yet (compared to covid deaths) as the covid deaths are close to the excess deaths (and which broadly match the variation).
On Matt's point about 'people would have died soon anyway': various analysis indicates covid deaths take about a decade off life expectancy so on average that's not true for the majority.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/longevity/497097-those-who-died-from-covid-19-lost-more-than-a-decade-of
Except, the actual all cause mortality reports, disagree. Pick a few.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/weekly-all-cause-mortality-surveillance-2021-to-2022 (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/weekly-all-cause-mortality-surveillance-2021-to-2022)
I think the point is, that whilst we are sitting above the 5 year median, we are not outside of typical fluctuations around that median. Meaning, Covid, under current conditions, is not increasing the individual’s risk of death by a statistically significant amount, albeit a measurable one.
Fig 1, of those reports give a very strong impression of how different things are to the previous waves, but you can also see, quite clearly, that we are very much within “normal” bounds.
Edit: basically, we are in the fuzzy territory, where many thing combine to alter the world from “normal”. We still have increased social distancing, widespread mask use, increased awareness and reduced activity in many areas, added to a severely whittled vulnerable population and a largely vaccinated population.
So, Covid is probably responsible for more of the total share of deaths, where the overall non-Covid deaths are somewhat reduced by the overall situation. If that makes sense?
I'd agree with most of what you subsequently say but if you read the reports' detail and the ONS reports I think the headline statement on the all cause mortality report is close to dishonest. It's certainly a misuse of statistics. When we have high years we know why from the detail. The detail shows the opposite....mostly it's a low year with most excess deaths due to covid or covid knock-on effects. Prior to Boris I never would have thought I'd say a civil service produced document headline statement could be close to dishonest. What's going on for example with NHSE pressure is that we are long past politically neutral normal checks and balances being lost and we are now actively suppressing information in behalf of covering for the government.
https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Trashing-their-careers.html?soid=1102665899193&aid=NVtok1OAiPA
(there are several more blogs that are more specific to covid bad news suppression or suppression of news of other failures
with senior management leaking as Lilley will post it ....this is an ex advisor to the tories on NHS management)
Again my concern right now is not that we need restrictions to stop some imminent covid wave (that IS the case in Europe but not here). Our UK problem is a multifaceted NHS perfect storm. These Ambulance service delay numbers are unheard of. The wider scale of Trust OPEL 4 reports are unheard of (failures are so bad that the public are at risk). The public are sleepwalking through this until they need to be the ones needing urgent care.
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This paragraph reads like in an IndySage press release. I appreciate its all good advice but it misses the obvious reality that the above mitigations are not compatible with living an enjoyable life for most people. The majority of peoples jobs will require them to be indoors with the public and the vast majority of people want to be indoors with the public going to sporting events, pubs, concerts, you name it. The point is surely whether putting restrictions on the unvaccinated to allow the vaccinated vulnerable to live a more normal life would have any benefits. I don't know but I can see why the vaccinated vulnerable might be pissed off with the prospect of years of wearing an FFP2 mask indoors; its just not practical or realistic.
I'm a fan of Indie SAGE. What the critics of Indie SAGE brush over is the implications of what you correctly point out above ends up in the list of their concerns and advice. Covid disproportionately hits the most deprived and most vulnerable the hardest. All their advice was always based on clear concensus science at the time and I find it weird there is pushback against that from progressive thinkers.
Wearing an FFP2 mask is a big benefit in highest risk areas if the person is especially vulnerable.... that's not a common position for the most vulnerable who are living independently, unless they are not aware of various rights they have. For the big exceptions, in care homes or hospitals say, the staff should have the PPE not the individuals. This is partially british exceptionalism again: Germany mandated FFP2 mask use for all in indoor public space.
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English exceptionalism maybe. I have to put on a mask to walk around a shop here in Wales. Have you considered moving here, it sounds like you'd enjoy life more? :)
At heart you're making an argument for the health service dictating policy on areas of how we live our lives that are outside the remit of a health service to decide. I think that isn't OK, you think it is.
On excess death versus a long-term norm. The figures are what they are. You can see where we stand in the reports Matt linked (thanks). Why should it matter if the figures are lower for other causes and higher for covid or higher for other causes and lower for covid? The people are still dead, or not.
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I'm a fan of Indie SAGE.
I know you are. :) I'm not though, I think they're great scientists but media obsessed and too often propose totally unworkable, pie in the sky 'solutions,' which they present as common sense thinking but in reality are anything but due to the practicalities. As Pete says, they consistently make arguments that the health service should dictate policy, which I don't agree with. I don't think they're bad people, just a bit single issue obsessed. As a humanities graduate I might suggest they embody some of the more unfortunate traits of scientific thought... :worms:
Being a progressive doesn't equate to being a covid hawk, thats a simplistic inference.
Given you mentioned Germany in a positive light, in the interest of balance its worth pointing out their rates are going the wrong way and they are looking at a significantly worse winter than the UK, despite the mask mandate which you mention. No easy answers.
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On the Wuhan lab issues, this channel 4 documentary was a balanced look at the situation as known around now.
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/did-covid-leak-from-a-lab-in-china
I've not seen any convincing evidence the lab leak theory is even equally likely, let alone most likely, but it was clearly possible and there is clear evidence of problems with the work undertaken in Wuham and with problems with the safety precautions for the specific gain of function experiments. This work was partly funded by US researchers using US government funding who ethically would not have been allowed to do the work in the US; any of the riskiest work, if carried out in the US (it happens....as they have a defensive bio-warfare capacity) would be done under much stricter safety measures than it was in Wuhan. Some US researchers were caught with their pants down, ethically speaking, due to distortion of public risk appraisal of the lab leak theory when in a position of conflict of interest. Even Fauci was tainted ethically on the matter: when he said no US money was used on 'gain of function' work in Wuhan that was a potentially dishonest position as it intrinsically defined 'gain of function' in a very specific way, rather than the general understanding of the term, which did include US funded work in Wuhan.
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Am I misunderstanding something really obvious here on the discussion of excess deaths?
There ARE significant excess deaths right now (deaths above the average baseline of previous years) : they have been averaging around 14% since the beginning of August.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/29october2021
Excess mortality (%) is a plot category for Our World in Data, if people want to look at the graph of UK excess deaths and compare with other countries.
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer
As Johnny points out we have lost a lot of the old/vulnerable to covid , and along with flu numbers being low so far, this should be a low year for two of the biggest factors, cancer should be higher due to treatment delays from covid.
I'm keeping an eye on the numbers as this escalation in ambulance delays is really serious for heart problems (our biggest killer) and strokes. I'm worried most right now about that but it's hard to see in excess deaths: it's certainly not huge yet (compared to covid deaths) as the covid deaths are close to the excess deaths (and which broadly match the variation).
On Matt's point about 'people would have died soon anyway': various analysis indicates covid deaths take about a decade off life expectancy so on average that's not true for the majority.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/longevity/497097-those-who-died-from-covid-19-lost-more-than-a-decade-of
Except, the actual all cause mortality reports, disagree. Pick a few.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/weekly-all-cause-mortality-surveillance-2021-to-2022 (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/weekly-all-cause-mortality-surveillance-2021-to-2022)
I think the point is, that whilst we are sitting above the 5 year median, we are not outside of typical fluctuations around that median. Meaning, Covid, under current conditions, is not increasing the individual’s risk of death by a statistically significant amount, albeit a measurable one.
Fig 1, of those reports give a very strong impression of how different things are to the previous waves, but you can also see, quite clearly, that we are very much within “normal” bounds.
Edit: basically, we are in the fuzzy territory, where many thing combine to alter the world from “normal”. We still have increased social distancing, widespread mask use, increased awareness and reduced activity in many areas, added to a severely whittled vulnerable population and a largely vaccinated population.
So, Covid is probably responsible for more of the total share of deaths, where the overall non-Covid deaths are somewhat reduced by the overall situation. If that makes sense?
I'd agree with most of what you subsequently say but if you read the reports' detail and the ONS reports I think the headline statement on the all cause mortality report is close to dishonest. It's certainly a misuse of statistics. When we have high years we know why from the detail. The detail shows the opposite....mostly it's a low year with most excess deaths due to covid or covid knock-on effects. Prior to Boris I never would have thought I'd say a civil service produced document headline statement could be close to dishonest. What's going on for example with NHSE pressure is that we are long past politically neutral normal checks and balances being lost and we are now actively suppressing information in behalf of covering for the government.
https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Trashing-their-careers.html?soid=1102665899193&aid=NVtok1OAiPA
(there are several more blogs that are more specific to covid bad news suppression or suppression of news of other failures
with senior management leaking as Lilley will post it ....this is an ex advisor to the tories on NHS management)
Again my concern right now is not that we need restrictions to stop some imminent covid wave (that IS the case in Europe but not here). Our UK problem is a multifaceted NHS perfect storm. These Ambulance service delay numbers are unheard of. The wider scale of Trust OPEL 4 reports are unheard of (failures are so bad that the public are at risk). The public are sleepwalking through this until they need to be the ones needing urgent care.
I’d have to disagree.
I think the mistake in your thinking, revolves around trying to compare the highly unusual NOW, with a smoothed, averaged, “normal”; THEN.
What results, from the various factors, is that you are not, statistically, more likely to die now, than in previous years (well, not much more. A little). It is just more likely to be Covid that gets you, than more “traditional” risks, if you are unlucky enough to get got.
The other issue is, that, unfortunately (and again, I have to force my Engineer head to take over and push my Human, down, to write this), a Grand and a bit of excess deaths, is small change in a population close to 70M.
This doesn’t mean I’m advocating for relaxation of anything, mandate-wise and I absolutely believe we could make things much better with quite simple measures. In fact, in hindsight, I think the previous Flu spikes could and should have been mitigated and I wish I’d been as aware of their severity before all this.
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I'm a fan of Indie SAGE.
I know you are. :) I'm not though, I think they're great scientists but media obsessed and too often propose totally unworkable, pie in the sky 'solutions,' which they present as common sense thinking but in reality are anything but due to the practicalities. As Pete says, they consistently make arguments that the health service should dictate policy, which I don't agree with. I don't think they're bad people, just a bit single issue obsessed. As a humanities graduate I might suggest they embody some of the more unfortunate traits of scientific thought... :worms:
Being a progressive doesn't equate to being a covid hawk, thats a simplistic inference.
Given you mentioned Germany in a positive light, in the interest of balance its worth pointing out their rates are going the wrong way and they are looking at a significantly worse winter than the UK, despite the mask mandate which you mention. No easy answers.
That's foolish rhetoric.
We tried the IndieSAGE discussion before and you couldn't substantiate anything about Indie SAGE proposals being 'pie in the sky'. The only major problems I've seen are with occasional individual members of IndieSAGE speaking outside the group agreed positions (Costello at times in particular).
In science terms there is no such thing as a covid hawk. The so called scientific covid doves, like the Great Barrington group, were always proved plain wrong based on hard evidence.
In Germany the FFP2 mask mandate was based on clear science with no significant cost implications (they are not so expensive nor in short supply now). German case numbers are going up fast as they are less well vaccinated and have lower overall population antibody levels (vaccination and fewer were infected there), so far the impact on their hospitals is much lower than ours (the German government can't try and cover-up, like Boris, as it's federal). ...I'll lay strong odds they end up overall with lower economic impacts from lockdowns, much lower per capita deaths, and much lower serious knock-on effects to other parts of their health systems (like what's happening now in our ambulance emergency).
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I can't really be arsed with a massive debate on this, as we aren't going to change each others minds. You have a different view to me, fair enough, but its not the only view.
I think the mistake you are making, which IndieSage are equally guilty of, is seeing it as a purely scientific question when quite clearly it isn't; its a public health and political question as well. I don't deny that all of ISage and your suggestions would be great ideas and make perfect sense in a controlled environment or lab. My point is that human societies don't operate like an experiment or equation and ISage too often don't take that into account.
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I’d have to disagree.
I think the mistake in your thinking, revolves around trying to compare the highly unusual NOW, with a smoothed, averaged, “normal”; THEN.
What results, from the various factors, is that you are not, statistically, more likely to die now, than in previous years (well, not much more. A little). It is just more likely to be Covid that gets you, than more “traditional” risks, if you are unlucky enough to get got.
The other issue is, that, unfortunately (and again, I have to force my Engineer head to take over and push my Human, down, to write this), a Grand and a bit of excess deaths, is small change in a population close to 70M.
This doesn’t mean I’m advocating for relaxation of anything, mandate-wise and I absolutely believe we could make things much better with quite simple measures. In fact, in hindsight, I think the previous Flu spikes could and should have been mitigated and I wish I’d been as aware of their severity before all this.
Again I agree with most of what you say. I can see why you think the way you do on the .gov headline, but I think you are wrong on trusting that headline statement on any government communication where it disagrees with headline statements on much more independent bodies (in this case the ONS). Previous high mortality periods in November have identifiable reasons which simply do not apply right now. Independent criticism of government information has really accelerated, in numbers and scale of concern, under this particular govenment. Climbers have talked of their personal negative experience on the serious erosion of civil service independence as employees, here and on the other channel.
The actual critical health issue around mortality that we face right now, is there is no guarantee you can get into a hospital on time if facing a highly time dependent major medical emergency. The level of this threat is as high as it ever has been (and past times as high were in the much bigger earlier covid hospitalisation peaks). Covid is only part of it but the fairly light touch 'plan B' covid restrictions are one of the few levers we can use quickly and without major economic impact in tackling the genuine national health emergency we are facing right now. Things will likely get even worse as the winter comes in.
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I can't really be arsed with a massive debate on this, as we aren't going to change each others minds. You have a different view to me, fair enough, but its not the only view.
I think the mistake you are making, which IndieSage are equally guilty of, is seeing it as a purely scientific question when quite clearly it isn't; its a public health and political question as well. I don't deny that all of ISage and your suggestions would be great ideas and make perfect sense in a controlled environment or lab. My point is that human societies don't operate like an experiment or equation and ISage too often don't take that into account.
Again this isn't about opinions. IndiSAGE work hard in good faith as scientists, for no pay and in their own time, on behalf of providing the best information they can for the public. Anything that is 'pie in the sky' would be easily provable as such, and widely distributed (as they piss off all sorts of bad covid actors and covid sceptic media outlets ). You can insult their work but can't be arsed to even provide a single example of where they have been proven scientifically wrong.
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Interesting analysis of data here
https://dr-no.co.uk/2021/11/15/when-the-facts-change/
The main takeaway for me is that charts clearly show the vaccine has saved thousands of lives in the over 60's cohorts. Given the lack of other tools with similar levels of effectiveness it seems sensible to continue until clearer data emerges that the case is otherwise. I'm not sure that is present here.
The chart for the under 60's does seem to show a real and consistent trend. However it is worth noting the tiny increase - from 1 per 100,000 to 2.5, and the gap is closing not growing. A tiny difference like that could easily be accounted for by small behavioural differences between the two groups, specifically more cautious behaviour by some of the unvaccinated. Whilst not untrue, the summary that 'being fully vaccinated roughly doubles your chance of dying' seems leading at best.
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I CBA to do the digging but is this just what they covered on More or Less ages ago - essentially a function of how you work out how many people there are that are unvaccinated. There are multiple systems/estimates and depending on which one you use you get very different figures per 100k now that vaccinated numbers are so high. Worth looking up the old episode if you're interested, shouldn't be hard to find
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It would be good to get your thoughts on the Dr. No analysis Steve. Cheers
I'll give you mine while OW gets around to slaughtering you.
The chart is showing all-cause mortality rate per 100,000 for people aged 10-60.
All cause mortality for that age group is a very low number, relative to older age groups.
That blog has zoomed in on a very small number i.e. 1 or 2 per 100,000, and made it look significant.
Is it significant?
The difference is between 1 death per 100,000 or 2 deaths per 100,000.
My fag packet maths:
There are approx 36 million people aged between 10-60 in the UK.
36m/100,000 = 360
If the weekly death rate was 1 per 100,000 then 360 people died per week.
If the weekly death rate is 2 per 100,000 then 720 people died per week.
So the chart is talking about the difference between very approximately. 360 deaths per week and 720 deaths per week, from all causes.
How many people in total die per week in the UK from all causes?
= there were approx. 11,000 deaths per week from all causes in the UK last week and this is around average.
So 360 or 720 out of a total of 11,000.
That's just first impressions and bag of fag packet calcs. Take from it what you will. My first impressions were it seems counter-intuitive. But thinking it through, how many of those 360 or 720 people in age 10-60 actually died from covid, does it say?
Any, a tiny number? It must be a tiny number because around 700-1000 people per week are dying from covid, and the vast majority of those are over 60.
I honestly haven't bothered to look into it any further than that, but it looks like your blog's author is focussing in on a tiny number, who mostly didn't die from covid, and trying to make it seem significant in terms of covid.
If that's true, and I'm happy to proved wrong, than what a total fucking cunt.
I notice you haven't replied to the point about looking at the prior likelihoods of there being a bio research lab in the same country as the country of origin of a pandemic.
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I’d have to disagree.
I think the mistake in your thinking, revolves around trying to compare the highly unusual NOW, with a smoothed, averaged, “normal”; THEN.
What results, from the various factors, is that you are not, statistically, more likely to die now, than in previous years (well, not much more. A little). It is just more likely to be Covid that gets you, than more “traditional” risks, if you are unlucky enough to get got.
The other issue is, that, unfortunately (and again, I have to force my Engineer head to take over and push my Human, down, to write this), a Grand and a bit of excess deaths, is small change in a population close to 70M.
This doesn’t mean I’m advocating for relaxation of anything, mandate-wise and I absolutely believe we could make things much better with quite simple measures. In fact, in hindsight, I think the previous Flu spikes could and should have been mitigated and I wish I’d been as aware of their severity before all this.
Again I agree with most of what you say. I can see why you think the way you do on the .gov headline, but I think you are wrong on trusting that headline statement on any government communication where it disagrees with headline statements on much more independent bodies (in this case the ONS). Previous high mortality periods in November have identifiable reasons which simply do not apply right now. Independent criticism of government information has really accelerated, in numbers and scale of concern, under this particular govenment. Climbers have talked of their personal negative experience on the serious erosion of civil service independence as employees, here and on the other channel.
The actual critical health issue around mortality that we face right now, is there is no guarantee you can get into a hospital on time if facing a highly time dependent major medical emergency. The level of this threat is as high as it ever has been (and past times as high were in the much bigger earlier covid hospitalisation peaks). Covid is only part of it but the fairly light touch 'plan B' covid restrictions are one of the few levers we can use quickly and without major economic impact in tackling the genuine national health emergency we are facing right now. Things will likely get even worse as the winter comes in.
No, this isn’t about headlines, nor is it that the reports “lie”. Thus far, the numbers indicate a trend, that broadly reflects, typical yearly mortality rates, at the upper range of such. Should that receive constructive interference by a compounding, say, Flu, surge, then we will be in deep do do. There are many reasons to criticise the government’s apparent lack of preparedness for such a confluence of events and the overstressed nature of of hospital provision, after almost two years of sustained pandemic.
However, the environment is dynamic.
First dose vaccine numbers continue to rise, particularly in high spreading, younger, groups.
Second doses continue to rise.
Boosters are racing up.
Treatment protocols are developing rapidly and are already massively improved on this time last year.
A compounding Flu season is by no means guaranteed. Much of the global Covid precautions mitigate against Flu in equal measure to Covid.
There surely cannot be a dispute that the current wave is dramatically better managed than previous waves? Clearly, vaccination is far more effective than previous mitigation methods combined. Obviously, if you used lockdowns and other mandates, you could control it to even lower numbers. But at what cost?
If (if) that compounding Flu (or whatever) appears, then, as a layman, I can see the need to react, strongly.
Also. I have been a Civil Servant now for 10 days (mostly sat at home, because, Covid). But I have been chatting with plenty of my new colleagues for several weeks. The disruption and current inability to “get things done” is pretty unprecedented and frustrating for them. The Civil Service is a behemoth of quite ancient and ingrained routine and structure. Sending them all home to work, hasn’t played out very well. Probably, better than them all sitting in offices trading pathogens and being severely ill or dead, but it wasn’t meant to work as it is right now. So, trying to infer, as you have, nefarious intentions and cover ups, based on things not being “like they were”, might be a little premature. Possibly even unjustified. Please don’t do a Dan.
Also.
Stop making me defend the friggin Government. I agree they’re a bunch of Tossers and have screwed this up plenty.
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I CBA to do the digging but is this just what they covered on More or Less ages ago - essentially a function of how you work out how many people there are that are unvaccinated. There are multiple systems/estimates and depending on which one you use you get very different figures per 100k now that vaccinated numbers are so high. Worth looking up the old episode if you're interested, shouldn't be hard to find
Here it is:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000zkzq
It's cases not deaths but the stats issue may be comparable. Or may not as this seems to be based on an ONS not PHE report. Someone else can put the effort in to working this out...
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You can insult their work but can't be arsed to even provide a single example of where they have been proven scientifically wrong.
I have literally just said I don't think the issue is scientific. I say again, I don't doubt their science. I doubt their critical evaluation of how the science fits into a workable public health policy.
https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2504
https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2504/rr-4
The above is a reasonable reflection of my opinion on the group. A few quotes from it below.
- Referred to the relaxing of restrictions in July 21 as 'a dangerous and unethical experiment'- wrong.
- Former member Alyson Pollock: 'Often, it ended up advocating things when it hadn’t sufficiently thought through the uncertainties in the evidence and the potential for harm—including prolonged lockdowns, school closures, and mass testing.'
- Pollock: the group 'rapidly moved (toward) wanting to make policy, sometimes without sufficient scientific expertise or scientific evidence to inform it.'
- June 2020 - Independent Sage became supporter of a zero covid position - since proven to be absolute bollocks
- set up with the help of activist group Citizens, founded by Caroline Cadwalladr; a good journalist in 2016, since descended into conspiracy theory nonsense
- Francois Balloux, UCL Genetics head - 'i think the group started convincing themselves of increasingly implausible things'
- 'In some circles, ISage has become a byword for poorly evidenced alarmism'
- Massive media reach: over 85,00 media citations and numerous media appearances. If you think they haven't been paid for those appearances and benefited from their increased exposure I have a bridge to sell you. As David King put it 'all 12 members have become media personalities'... :-\
On its members - Deepti Gurdasani has repeatedly been alarmist about every single new variant that has been reported. She has also amplified the voices of absolute morons like Eric Feigl-Ding on Twitter. Christina Pagel is more sensible but still falls prey to alarmism and selective use of statistics alarmingly often. Ditto Zubaida Haque, Kit Yates. Costello you have acknowledged has repeatedly got carried away with the sound of his own voice. I'm not going to footnote every tweet where they have been alarmist, I'll leave it to those who are interested to have a browse. I still follow some of them as some of what they say is interesting. Edit: its telling that Devi Sridhar, a Scottish govt advisor, was previously well into the rhetoric of ISage and zero covid before steering well away as they dug themselves even deeper.
Fortunately none of the people in the group are listened to. They have zero power and influence and long may it stay that way. It is unfortunate that what began as a really good initiative and forced greater transparency from the government has degenerated quite so far.
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It would be good to get your thoughts on the Dr. No analysis Steve. Cheers
It's an incorrect explanation of cherry picked information, some of which is wrong. Firstly you can't die of covid vaccinated until you are vaccinated! This means the trend between start and finish misleads. More importantly risk of covid death when vaccinated is not insignificant for the highest risk groups (the very old and very vulnerable) and the vast majority of those at highest risk are now vaccinated (by around a factor of 20) compared to the unvaccinated, so there are now more deaths in the vaccinated than in the unvaccinated. The rates quoted per one hundred thousand by DrNo for the unvaccinated are plain wrong and I can't say why without seeing more of of the methodology than is provided.. My guess is Dr No almost certainly uses a wildly incorrect population as a denominator but maybe makes other mistakes as well. Other research looking specifically at comparative risk for the unvaccinated versus the vaccinated shows time and time again roughly the same risks as before for the unvaccinated and much reduced risks from the vaccinated from the actual populations in the research data.
We have had endless discussion about people making such errors on the other channel. The actual unvaccinated population has a sizable uncertainty and overestimated in the UK data used on the tables. Yet we know the exact number in the age group who have been vaccinated. When we subtract a known number from a similar sized number with an error (on the big side) it transfers a much bigger proportional overestimate error into the result*. Divide a big over-estimated result into the known deaths and you get an massively underestimated death rate.
* It used to be the other way round as we used a different underestimated population data set and ended up with >100% vaccination in some age categories..... as Spain still does.
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I have literally just said I don't think the issue is scientific. I say again, I don't doubt their science. I doubt their critical evaluation of how the science fits into a workable public health policy.
https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2504
https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2504/rr-4
The above is a reasonable reflection of my opinion on the group. A few quotes from it below.
- Referred to the relaxing of restrictions in July 21 as 'a dangerous and unethical experiment'- wrong.
- Former member Alyson Pollock: 'Often, it ended up advocating things when it hadn’t sufficiently thought through the uncertainties in the evidence and the potential for harm—including prolonged lockdowns, school closures, and mass testing.'
- Pollock: the group 'rapidly moved (toward) wanting to make policy, sometimes without sufficient scientific expertise or scientific evidence to inform it.'
- June 2020 - Independent Sage became supporter of a zero covid position - since proven to be absolute bollocks
- set up with the help of activist group Citizens, founded by Caroline Cadwalladr; a good journalist in 2016, since descended into conspiracy theory nonsense
- Francois Balloux, UCL Genetics head - 'i think the group started convincing themselves of increasingly implausible things'
- 'In some circles, ISage has become a byword for poorly evidenced alarmism'
- Massive media reach: over 85,00 media citations and numerous media appearances. If you think they haven't been paid for those appearances and benefited from their increased exposure I have a bridge to sell you. As David King put it 'all 12 members have become media personalities'... :-\
On its members - Deepti Gurdasani has repeatedly been alarmist about every single new variant that has been reported. She has also amplified the voices of absolute morons like Eric Feigl-Ding on Twitter. Christina Pagel is more sensible but still falls prey to alarmism and selective use of statistics alarmingly often. Ditto Zubaida Haque, Kit Yates. Costello you have acknowledged has repeatedly got carried away with the sound of his own voice. I'm not going to footnote every tweet where they have been alarmist, I'll leave it to those who are interested to have a browse. I still follow some of them as some of what they say is interesting. Edit: its telling that Devi Sridhar, a Scottish govt advisor, was previously well into the rhetoric of ISage and zero covid before steering well away as they dug themselves even deeper.
Fortunately none of the people in the group are listened to. They have zero power and influence and long may it stay that way. It is unfortunate that what began as a really good initiative and forced greater transparency from the government has degenerated quite so far.
I'm happy for others to judge that.
At least I see partly where your scepticism comes from now in all that smoke and mirrors. That's a highly one-sided political hatchet job by a scientific journalist. Cherry picking the same journalist rather than giving different articles by different fellow scientists, in why specific policies were clearly 'pie in the sky' (your words) and ignoring the formal replies from Indie Sage to the BMJ article isn't a balanced position; linking such is just reinforcing your prejudiced and exaggerated position. If there is so much policy smoke why does no one show any clear fire in the official group agreed communications, let alone 'pie in the sky' positions. It's also not logically possible to be highly influential with multiple mainstream media appearances at the same time as not listened to and completely without power. The political attacks on them are usually from those who resent their influence.
By far the biggest issue in this pandemic was being too slow to lockdown in the face of exponential case growth and in that too slow to respond to linked clear information on new variants. This has killed tens of thousands in the UK and led to longer lockdowns with all that extra unnecessary social and economic damage. IndieSAGE group outputs called both areas right.
Finally I would defend Pollock's position, as it isn't how you state it... it's much more nuanced... disagreement on some minor points and on emphasis in policy and later research showed that position to be over-cautious in some cases (in particular mask efficacy was always obvious from other research and didn't need to wait for large scale epidemiological style evidence).
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Interesting analysis of data here
https://dr-no.co.uk/2021/11/15/when-the-facts-change/
Aside from Offwidth's points about not knowing the size of the unvaccinated populations, we do know that the unvaccinated population is going to skew considerably younger than the second dose population. And young people (excepting the under ones) die at a far lower rate than older people, especially those in their fifties.
It's almost as if to work out what's going on you'd need to control for age, rather than just plotting out some death rates on a graph.
Death rates for England and Wales by age here: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rate-by-age-group-in-england-and-wales?country=~England+and+Wales
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:agree:
No, this isn’t about headlines, nor is it that the reports “lie”. Thus far, the numbers indicate a trend, that broadly reflects, typical yearly mortality rates, at the upper range of such. Should that receive constructive interference by a compounding, say, Flu, surge, then we will be in deep do do. There are many reasons to criticise the government’s apparent lack of preparedness for such a confluence of events and the overstressed nature of of hospital provision, after almost two years of sustained pandemic.
However, the environment is dynamic.
First dose vaccine numbers continue to rise, particularly in high spreading, younger, groups.
Second doses continue to rise.
Boosters are racing up.
Treatment protocols are developing rapidly and are already massively improved on this time last year.
A compounding Flu season is by no means guaranteed. Much of the global Covid precautions mitigate against Flu in equal measure to Covid.
There surely cannot be a dispute that the current wave is dramatically better managed than previous waves? Clearly, vaccination is far more effective than previous mitigation methods combined. Obviously, if you used lockdowns and other mandates, you could control it to even lower numbers. But at what cost?
If (if) that compounding Flu (or whatever) appears, then, as a layman, I can see the need to react, strongly.
Also. I have been a Civil Servant now for 10 days (mostly sat at home, because, Covid). But I have been chatting with plenty of my new colleagues for several weeks. The disruption and current inability to “get things done” is pretty unprecedented and frustrating for them. The Civil Service is a behemoth of quite ancient and ingrained routine and structure. Sending them all home to work, hasn’t played out very well. Probably, better than them all sitting in offices trading pathogens and being severely ill or dead, but it wasn’t meant to work as it is right now. So, trying to infer, as you have, nefarious intentions and cover ups, based on things not being “like they were”, might be a little premature. Possibly even unjustified. Please don’t do a Dan.
Also.
Stop making me defend the friggin Government. I agree they’re a bunch of Tossers and have screwed this up plenty.
The gov.uk headline that there is no statistically significant excess death now is partly dishonest in my view for the reasons I gave. It's far from unique in that as a government report headline, and many past examples have been picked out by independent bodies, including the Royal Statistical Society. Nearly everything else I agree with (including regret for making you think you need to criticise government for unfair reasons)
One area where I do disagree is that "management" right now is 'not bad', but the consequences of the mismanagement I see are much less serious than they were in exponential growth phases pre vaccination. There are many grounds for optimism (as per your list) but there are also still risks ... NHS cracks cause bits to 'fall off', large pockets who are vulnerable but largely sheilding, flu, and any new covid variant with significant vaccine escape.
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Well there's noting like a hashtag to convince me :lol: Especially as I see on the preview that they don't like the UK terror threat system (wtf has that got to do with a sensible debate on this?). And at least one of the OTs posting a picture on there is moronic too. In fact, from the brief preview I'm swayed to thinking that I'm fine with the mandate, so that backfired...
Come on Dan, convince me to care...
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I'd be interested in his response to the response from Offwidth he was so keen to hear.
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I'd be interested in his response to the response from Offwidth he was so keen to hear.
:goodidea:
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Well there's noting like a hashtag to convince me :lol: Especially as I see on the preview that they don't like the UK terror threat system (wtf has that got to do with a sensible debate on this?). And at least one of the OTs posting a picture on there is moronic too. In fact, from the brief preview I'm swayed to thinking that I'm fine with the mandate, so that backfired...
Come on Dan, convince me to care...
You forgot the bit where there are a whole 744 subscribers to the first link and the second had 92 views and one like. Even I have more Instagram followers and that’s still less than my 13 year old daughter who posts screen shots of Fortnight to her school friends.
So “We are the resistance” strikes me as a bit grandiose.
Did you actually look at those links, Dan?
Plus, Telegram is anonymous, user to user, so anybody could log on under any guise and say what ever they want.
I could do that here, too (except this is moderated, so that would (hopefully) proscribe much extreme behaviour).
Essentially, anything you read on such groups is of a lower evidential value than anecdotal, since it isn’t even given an attributable source.
A modern equivalent of “some bloke in the pub, told me his sister said”.
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I'd be interested in his response to the response from Offwidth he was so keen to hear.
:goodidea:
:goodidea:
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Hi all, I asked Steve as I really value his opinion and I’m not mathematically minded so wanted to check on what was being said in the article. I had a quick look earlier and didn’t quite understand what he was saying, so will have another look now.
Bit late to the party on this and someone may already have made this point, but a quick look at the link shows some pretty dodgy work.
In particular the graph for 10-59 year olds mortality and the following conclusion:
'This makes no sense, especially in the later stages. The early rise in mortality in the vaccinated could be explained by preferentially vaccinating those at higher risk, and so more likely to die, in the early stages, but once large numbers (getting on for tens of millions) of people at normal risk are vaccinated, any such effect will disappear. Bear in mind the rates are all cause mortality — no need to fuss about cause of death — and the numbers are charted as rates, so accounting for the changes in numbers in each group. According to this chart, based on ONS data, for 10 to 59 years olds, being fully vaccinated roughly doubles your chance of dying. No wonder this didn’t make it into the published ONS report, let alone the mainstream media.'
The fact that all cause mortality for the double vaccinated group is higher than for the unvaccinated is almost certainly due to the very different cohorts being analysed. Double vaccinated will be significantly older than unvaccinated particularly since a lot of 10 to 17 year olds will not have been vaccinated yet as well as vaccination rates being lower as you go down the age range. It shouldn't come as too big a surprise to anyone that younger people have lower mortality than older people, its kind of how mortality works generally in the modern world.
Don't think you need any more detailed analysis to call bullshit on Dr No but the below linked chart shows death rates by age (2015 so no Covid) and the difference by age is unsurprisingly significant e.g. 50-54 death rate is more than 5 times that of 30-34.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rate-by-age-group-in-england-and-wales?country=~England+and+Wales
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The fact that all cause mortality for the double vaccinated group is higher than for the unvaccinated is almost certainly due to the very different cohorts being analysed. Double vaccinated will be significantly older than unvaccinated particularly since a lot of 10 to 17 year olds will not have been vaccinated yet as well as vaccination rates being lower as you go down the age range. It shouldn't come as too big a surprise to anyone that younger people have lower mortality than older people, its kind of how mortality works generally in the modern world.
This.
My main question is: is this a blog written by someone who has an understanding of stats wilfully misrepresenting data in such a way that it will only pass muster with people without any stats knowledge, or someone ignorant enough to think they’re right in this, and which one of these is worse!
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Either option is a bit shitty. I'm sure you know that and know that your characterisation of my position is disingenuous.
As for not trying to convince people...
Please guys, don’t support the mandates and vaccine passports. They are really bad news and not ok. They create division, hate and fear and perpetuate trauma and isolation. These are not the conditions required for people to heal from any illness.
But if you'd rather just post links to stuff than articulate your position a bit more then feel free to link an article that sets out the best arguments for your position... I genuinely feel like I probably "should" care but nothing has made me care yet...
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In reply to IanP maybe an analysis of the excess mortality further broken down by age might be more clear. I’ll have a look.
No, no, no, no. You are not getting this.
Ian and I have both pointed out the same basic problem with these stats, and Offwidth has shown up a more situation specific issue. If you want to make some assertions with some data, which can be very hard, then go away and read an introductory stats textbook or take a course. Learn to think about data rather than trying to prove something that you emotionally require.
And whether you do that or not, the takeaway should be that perhaps this subject matter is hard, there are people out there trying to deceive you and that you are prone to believing the deceivers. Try improving your skills at selecting who to believe.
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In reply to IanP maybe an analysis of the excess mortality further broken down by age might be more clear. I’ll have a look.
Re anonymity- who can blame them.
It doesn't need to be more clear, the interpretation placed on the raw data is simply not justified unless the 2 cohorts (vaccinated and unvaccinated) have similar age profiles which we know is not true.
Even worse, I went to look at the source data referenced and it actually includes age standardised mortality data in table 2 which shows significantly higher mortality for unvaccinated across the whole timescale.
The article is inexcusable bullshit. Conspiracy or stupidity? I tend towards a mix of the two.
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But he sounds so credible Dan.
''Dr No is a medical doctor (appeal to authority) who has had over 35 years experience of medicine (appeal to authority), both inside and outside the NHS (appeal to authority). Bad Medicine is his blog in which he casts a sceptical eye (it's good to be sceptical right) on all aspects of medicine. Especially Bad Medicine (implication: if they've deigned something worthy of casting their sceptical eye over for this blog then there must by definition be something wrong with it.''
In reply to IanP maybe an analysis of the excess mortality further broken down by age might be more clear. I’ll have a look.
What's for you to clear up? As others have pointed out you're going to find mortality rates increase as age increases, and almost certainly more old people within the 'vaccinated' cohort than the 'unvaccinated' cohort.
This should be made clear by the blog author (but then he'd have no bollocks to write). If he can be bothered going to the trouble writing all that bollocks then surely he can go to the trouble of researching kind of important stuff like the spread of ages within the two cohorts.
If that data isn't available to them then not to worry because they're a very experienced very sceptical medical doctor don't you know - they make this very clear in their bio. A mind to be trusted with apparently conflicting data. And so, when they cast their (sceptical and very experienced remember) eye over such data, they can decipher anything bad and dispense their opinion with sound authority for us all to trust. They're surely somebody capable of breaking down those stats and not just taking them at face value like the sheep they lead.
Based on the stats, Dr No dispenses his sound medical opinion:
''ONS’s own data tell us that, for working age people, being vaccinated appears to increase your overall risk of death. Sure, the numbers are small (in the hundreds), but that is of no comfort if you are one of the unlucky ones, and furthermore, it is hundreds week in week out, and they soon add up.
(....)
There is certainly nothing in this unique set of official data to suggest that vaccines do much good, and something to suggest they may well do harm, and to the extent that this is true, the entire Fourth Reich of mandatory vaccination and covid certification is an evil empire built on a falsehood. ''
Yes doctor.
edit: IanP said it first and better.
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That’s why I asked Steve. To get a better understanding of what I was reading and reduce the risk of being taken in by a deceiver.
Dan, if you're serious about this, I would suggest starting by being equally (probably more) suspicious of the type person who claims to be giving true analysis that disproves the mainstream 'narrative' as you appear to be about the views of all those mainstream experts. I think its generally good to apply a degree of questioning to all sources of information but why should you be more suspicious of the general mainstream view as compared to outliers claiming to have access to information being supressed for nefarious reasons.
As referenced a few times More or Less is a pretty good resource for coverage of statistics in the media and has been generally excellent on the pandemic.
For background I'm no great stats expert but did do Maths at Manchester Uni and would consider myself fairly numerate with a nerdy interest in this sort of stuff.
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That’s why I asked Steve. To get a better understanding of what I was reading and reduce the risk of being taken in by a deceiver.
Stop kidding yourself. You read it because - as per Pete’s quote above - it agrees with your prior beliefs and had a whiff of authority about it. But a far better rule of thumb when you don’t know a subject area really is just to go with expert consensus. Boring, but you stand less chance of being wrong. Expert consensus will still be wrong some of the time - this is not a method for infallibility because there’s no such thing - however it is a safer bet than reading easily debunked bullshit. If you were trying to reduce the risk of being deceived you’d probably be reading the FT or BBC.
This is a a bit US centric and goes wider than covid, but worth a read:
https://thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/andrew-sullivan-and-the-narrative?r=1emko
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Yeah but people are tired of experts :wall:
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So, to recap. Dan believes, or at least is keen to suggest we consider, the following:
1. covid originated in a bio research lab.
2. there are links between pharma companies and the aforementioned bio research lab.
3. these links are nefarious, and suggest the pharma companies designed the covid pandemic to make money.
4. however, the vaccine that the pharma companies created to make money is not only ineffective at preventing ill health from Covid, it’s actually *more dangerous* to health than remaining unvaccinated, even for age groups up to 50.
5. we should be concerned about liberty because the UK may introduce covid passes and mandate vaccination in the same way they have in Austria (and Australia, among others), despite evidence to the contrary. I have a <small> amount of sympathy with this concern.
5. currently-employed doctors should not be trusted.
6. retired doctors who write blogs, they should be trusted.
Anything I missed?
You’re almost making me think cancel culture might have something to be said for it Dan.
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Even worse, I went to look at the source data referenced and it actually includes age standardised mortality data in table 2 which shows significantly higher mortality for unvaccinated across the whole timescale.
Conspiracy or stupidity? I tend towards a mix of the two.
If that's so, that's a few times I've come across misuse of the age standardised mortality data to generate misinformation. It's funny how these dishonest methodologies spread I favour mostly conspiracy for these sites first, given what's happened around people like Andrew Wakefield in the US (excellent documentary link below). It's rarely stupid if they are cynically making money, so its best to look for any evidence of income for the misinformation (supported by the rich americans who helped Wakefield or direct income from selling stuff be it clicks or books or quack cures).
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-anti-vax-conspiracy
As a bit of synergy about dark money I watched this last night...a brutal comedy on the rise of Dick Cheney but there are real truths about how the Republicans fought back against a rise of liberal values in the US....highly recommended..stellar cast and from the same Director as The Big Short
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6266538/
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With regard to the misrepresentation of data. I saw a headline in the Guardian about 4 weeks ago that stated that on average each Covid death in the UK had resulted in a loss of life of approximately 10 years. This is a shocking statistic and contrary to the underlying assumption of many people, along the lines that many of us had assumed that a significant proportion of deaths from Covid were amongst the highly vulnerable in society whose life expectancy wasn't great even without the threat of Covid. I had merely read the Guardian article as there was no direct link to the reported research. I've since tried to find the original Guardian article but to no avail. Anyway, on later thought it increasingly bothered me how the research might have been conducted. The obvious question is, how could you reasonably estimate the life expectancy of those people if they hadn't died from Covid? After a bit of searching I suspect that the research that the Guardian article referred to is this https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/news/1.5-million-potential-years-of-life-lost-to-covid-19 (https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/news/1.5-million-potential-years-of-life-lost-to-covid-19).
The big problem with it is that it just uses straight across the population average life expectancies according to age. So the headline "average Covid death reduces life by 10 years" is clearly utter bollocks. The research gives some caveats "These may be overestimates as those who died from COVID-19 were more likely to have co-morbidities than their peers and may have had lower life expectancies." Understatement or what? Average life expectancy for someone in a care home that includes nursing provision (according to the British Geriatrics Society) is around 12 months.
This just indicates to me that it's not possible to take reporting of research at face value even within a supposedly reputable publication ( at least as far as mainstream media goes). Ben Goldacre would not be impressed.
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Re the Wakefield channel 4 documentary, I watched it after being recommended by a friend earlier in the year. I believe it to be unadulterated shite.
As ever, you could be more persuasive by describing why you thought this.
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An interesting post from Prof Norman Fenton, one for those stats boffins to get stuck into.
https://probabilityandlaw.blogspot.com/2021/11/is-vaccine-efficacy-statistical-illusion.html?m=1
This post uses measures of 'deaths per 100k' without taking in to account the fact that the underlying population is changing through time. That is people are shifting from the pool of unvaccinated to vaccinated, so the demographic of the 100k people you're measuring a proportion of is changing.
The post actually alludes to this issue at the start but then fails to mention that the underlying assumption in the first example, that the population is uniform, is not true for real world data. This is exactly the issue Barrows raised a few posts ago.
Imagine that a placebo rather than a vaccine is quickly rolled out to a population of one million people of similar age and health.
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Hopefully Dan is feeding these insights back into the anti vax circles where these links originated…
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The irony of everyone having to refute Dan's (usually fairly baseless) assertions on all of this is that it means we're all having to defend the "mainstream" view, even if many *are* sceptical of *some* aspects of the way the data is represented.
It's just bringing the whole debate down a level.
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An interesting post from Prof Norman Fenton, one for those stats boffins to get stuck into.
https://probabilityandlaw.blogspot.com/2021/11/is-vaccine-efficacy-statistical-illusion.html?m=1
Why is he looking at 'other than covid' mortality rates to assess the efficacy of a covid vaccine? A covid vaccine is not a panacea, it reduces your risk of dying from one specific cause - the specific cause he's stripped out. So he's pointing out that being vaccinated doesn't reduce your risk of dying from things that aren't covid? I don't think anyone was claiming that it did?
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The irony of everyone having to refute Dan's (usually fairly baseless) assertions on all of this is that it means we're all having to defend the "mainstream" view, even if many *are* sceptical of *some* aspects of the way the data is represented.
It's just bringing the whole debate down a level.
That's the name of the game though. The film Vice illustrates it perfectly and memorably ...truth is no longer important, with a clever enough message you can convince 70% of the US population that invading Iraq is important and that the fairness of taxation can be regarded as a moral evil.... inheritance tax becomes a death tax.
On the subject of the covid conspiracy documentary I'd be interested in Dan's views... I might even agree with some of them as it's hard to make a documentary that is entirely unbiased and perfectly fair (as if nothing else it would lose its impetus with visual footnotes!). I was previously unaware how much Wakefield had slipped into the dishonest Republican system of misinformation and how big that was wrt covid misinformation (the Russian influence is much better known) and Republican supporting dirty funding, so I'll take a few minor journalistic faults for an important warning message.
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The big problem with it is that it just uses straight across the population average life expectancies according to age. So the headline "average Covid death reduces life by 10 years" is clearly utter bollocks. The research gives some caveats "These may be overestimates as those who died from COVID-19 were more likely to have co-morbidities than their peers and may have had lower life expectancies." Understatement or what? Average life expectancy for someone in a care home that includes nursing provision (according to the British Geriatrics Society) is around 12 months.
How much of an understatement do you think it is? Or in other words how significant a condition is "a comorbidity"?
I'm not sure from the last part of my quote whether you're suggesting the right answer is 12 months rather than ten years, or of not what it is there to illustrate.
Regardless, comorbidities shouldn't necessarily be thought of as either rare or particularly limiting on lifespan, depending on exactly which comorbidity of course. If they are common - obesity being perhaps the most obvious common comorbidity for covid - then average lifespans will include a reasonable weight towards any effect they have. If they are not particularly life limiting in normal circumstances - noting for example that CDC defines pregnancy as a risk factor for covid - then the presence of the comorbidity is an irrelevancy.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-with-medical-conditions.html
I guess one thing that's easy to say is that it would have to take a very significant skew towards very life-limiting comorbidities for the number of years of life lost to be less than ten years for those in middle age or younger. A quick Google didn't find me the proportion of covid deaths from the under-65s, but I thought it was a quarter or a third or something in that sort of region.
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The one I linked Dan (and you said you watched it). Why exactly do you think it is it unadulterated shite?
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-anti-vax-conspiracy
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The irony of everyone having to refute Dan's (usually fairly baseless) assertions on all of this is that it means we're all having to defend the "mainstream" view, even if many *are* sceptical of *some* aspects of the way the data is represented.
It's just bringing the whole debate down a level.
That’s why I called Brandolini and opted not to engage him directly (tried to not engage, anyway).
As it turns out, I’ve learned a lot from the ancillary discussion that grew out of others refutation of his claims. So, ill wind and all that.
Seriously though, his last post simply reads as “everyone who disagrees with my beliefs is engaged in propaganda” and he thinks it’s a trump card. I’m not convinced anyone arguing with him gains anything.
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I’d been raising an eyebrow from day dot when everyone was panic buying bog paper and watching videos of people face planting in Wuhan.
This says as much as needs to be said. Before there was any real information to go on you suspected that something sinister was happening. No amount of evidence that stacks up to the contrary is going to convince you. You'll continue to reject anything that challenges your assumptions and keep latching onto any hokum that might support your view.
As an exploration of ‘conspiracy theories’ around covid it was complete junk alone. Clearly the journalists making it had limited time, money, imagination and a particular brief of defending the desired narrative. Pretty shite all round
And here is the example. You'll notice that where people have debunked the "stats" blogs that you've linked to they've explained, in statistical terms, why the narrative presented there is false. You could, and I suspect would, say the exact same thing about anything you didn't agree with, neatly avoiding the need to take apart and refute any of the arguments made.
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As an aside, I just came across this quote from George Horn, a 16th century academic, on the “Brandolini” Wikipedia page* written in 1786:
“ Pertness and ignorance may ask a question in three lines, which it will cost learning and ingenuity thirty pages to answer. When this is done, the same question shall be triumphantly asked again the next year, as if nothing had ever been written upon the subject. And as people in general, for one reason or another, like short objections better than long answers, in this mode of disputation (if it can be styled such) the odds must ever be against us; and we must be content with those for our friends who have honesty and erudition, candor and patience, to study both sides of the question.”
So, “Dan” has been around for while or six.
*Every now and then, I have to double check that I’m not going senile and misremembering concepts, usually after making some sweeping comment, that I’m suddenly unsure of. It’s like going back to check the gas is off. These days, I’m up to check the oven four times and the front door twice…
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Gotcha! Because it was propaganda which set out to paint a particular picture from a very narrow perspective. The intended result being that anyone asking questions about the safety of said current pharmaceuticals would be thought of in the vision laid out by the documentary makers. I’d been raising an eyebrow from day dot when everyone was panic buying bog paper and watching videos of people face planting in Wuhan. I’d never even heard of Wakefield or thought of Piers Corbyn as anything other than an eccentric chap, suddenly they’re the vanguard of a new anti vax movement. As an exploration of ‘conspiracy theories’ around covid it was complete junk alone. Clearly the journalists making it had limited time, money, imagination and a particular brief of defending the desired narrative. Pretty shite all round
Edit: I’ve seen lots of interviews with public health professionals, Dr’s, scientists, vaccine manufacturers etc etc all raising concerns. Non of which have been Wakefield or Piers Corbyn, they were chosen by the film makers with a particular journalistic agenda in mind. (Propaganda)
That's interesting but it's not what I cane away with I thought it started by looking at the troubled and dishonest anti-vax UK history and then shifted to how things in the pandemic became linked with various neferious powerful US political movements funded by dirty money. People like Wakefield exploited the vaccine hesitant as part of a deliberate larger scale effort linked into other foci of that dirty money.
The irony in your position is those US corporates have been guilty of clear evidenced problematic behaviour in the US, especially some lobbying scandals and the horrendous national pain medication scandal. Whereas much of the vaccine conspiracy is unevidenced. It's obvious US vaccine companies have been part of such bad behaviour before and are not always good organisations in governance terms. They do make a lot of money from vaccines and other covid medications and lobby on that; and against say free public licence that could really help the developing world in what still is a worldwide emergency.
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Got a new drinking game for you chaps to quench the likely thirst from all this debating.
Any time an anti-vaxxer posts a link to an article / post / tweet / video that supports their view, go to the main website behind that posted page. Every time you look past the single article / tweet and see the main website or person is very clearly an extremely biased single-issue-focused fanatic pushing their specific agenda (rather than a general website neutrally looking at all perspectives or a range of issues), take a drink. And take a bonus sip if the website is called something convincingly generic and sensible like "statisticsandmedicine.wordpress.com" or "@generalhealthscience", instead of what they really mean which is "38iratearticlesragingagainstvaccinepassports.wordpress.com" or "@fuckcovidmeasures".
:alky: :alky: :alky: :pissed: :pissed: :pissed:
Pretty soon you'll be pissed as a fucking newt and it will wash over you....
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Got a new drinking game for you chaps to quench the likely thirst from all this debating.
Any time an anti-vaxxer posts a link to an article / post / tweet / video that supports their view, go to the main website behind that posted page. Every time you look past the single article / tweet and see the main website or person is very clearly an extremely biased single-issue-focused fanatic pushing their specific agenda (rather than a general website neutrally looking at all perspectives or a range of issues), take a drink. And take a bonus sip if the website is called something convincingly generic and sensible like "statisticsandmedicine.wordpress.com" or "@generalhealthscience", instead of what they really mean which is "38iratearticlesragingagainstvaccinepassports.wordpress.com" or "@fuckcovidmeasures".
:alky: :alky: :alky: :pissed: :pissed: :pissed:
Pretty soon you'll be pissed as a fucking newt and it will wash over you....
That might be fun if only we didn't have, in a Centre for Evidence Based Medicine and the department of Zoology in Oxford,University, two prestigious UK Profs (Heneghan and Gupta) who convinced our PM Boris of herd immunity in September 2020 and that directly led to ten thousand extra unnecessary deaths ... and yet right now they are still in their day job. Money seems to beat ethics in a top UK University so we don't need to look at cranks.
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That’s pretty funny Will, so I’m stood there in Tesco chatting to the pharmacist about dodgy footage of people peeling over in the streets of Wuhan, whilst there is a bog roll horde* stampeding down the middle aisle.... and raising an eyebrow to it is evidence of my insanity.
It depends what you mean by raising an eyebrow. If you mean you looked at what was going on and thought "Good gracious, what a hullaballoo, I wonder what it could all mean", then that is perfectly normal; if you thought "Aha! Just as I predicted, the global 5G elites have released a deadly crypto-biological pseudo-virus upon the world to drive up sales of an ineffective and deadly vaccine and also bog roll", and then as events unfolded and contrary evidence from multiple sources piled up you searched further and wider for any near-respectable blog post that sounded like it challenged the evidenced narrative and posted links to a rock climbing bulletin board under a series of puzzling pseudonyms, each more unconvincing than the last, desperately trying to convince your fellow climbers that it was all a great con dreamt up by Captain Tom to score a free holiday to the Bahamas then I'd politely suggest that you're absolutely fucking raving.
I don't mind questioning policy about whether we should enforce mask wearing or vaccines - they're good questions with loads of room for reasonable differences of opinion. What I'm quite tired of is the constant questioning of the fundamentals like "Does the vaccine work?" or "Is the vaccine safe?". We know, more or less, the answers to these questions. Yes, the vaccine works most of the time and reduces (but does not eliminate) the risk of death, serious illness, and transmission, but there are questions about the value/ethics of giving the vaccine to younger cohorts who face a smaller risk from the disease than their older counterparts. Yes, the vaccine is relatively safe for most cohorts, especially when compared with the risks that come with getting COVID.
So raise your eyebrows as high as they will go about whether you want the police to be fining people for going to Almscliff or whether NHS staff should be compelled to have the jab, but don't base your arguments on dodgy interpretations of data which you yourself admit to not understanding.
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Glad to see YouTube being responsible, for once.
And, duhhh!
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Full Fact on the pandemic of the unvaccinated and why social segregation of these human vectors of disease is essential
https://fullfact.org/health/economist-vaccination-status/
What's your point Dan? That vaccines are imperfect and most people - especially old people - are vaccinated? Well duh.
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Full Fact on the pandemic of the unvaccinated and why social segregation of these human vectors of disease is essential
https://fullfact.org/health/economist-vaccination-status/
What's your point Dan? That vaccines are imperfect and most people - especially old people - are vaccinated? Well duh.
I believe he thinks the 50 odd million vaccinated people in the UK alone are “human vectors for disease” (obviously, it didn’t exist before the vaccines).
This is getting a bit silly now.
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Full Fact on the pandemic of the unvaccinated and why social segregation of these human vectors of disease is essential
https://fullfact.org/health/economist-vaccination-status/
What's your point Dan? That vaccines are imperfect and most people - especially old people - are vaccinated? Well duh.
The fact that 35% of hospitalisations are still from unvaccinated people, given how small the unvaccinated pool of people at the high risk end of the spectrum is, is a pretty big marker for how risky being unvaccinated is!
Vaccination rates in the oldest age groups are what, 90% plus, so that sub 10% remaining is driving a third of admissions....
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I'd rather go through another lockdown watching Dave Mac videos about keto diets than wade through the shit Dan spouts again.
6 pages later I stand by this. Silly to even give him fuel.
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Re 'antivax circles' it's good to see the propaganda machine in action there Tim, don't worry though I'll feed it back to the 3 people I know personally who are skeptical all of which have either had or have close contact with covid vaccine injuries.
Well where do you find this stuff in the first place and how would you characterise those spaces?
Yes, telling those three people (if you have shared these links with them) that the interpretation of the statistics in the two links is nonsense in both cases would seem be a great start.
I’m dipping out of responding to anything further here as it just doesn’t feel constructive.
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An interesting post from Prof Norman Fenton, one for those stats boffins to get stuck into.
https://probabilityandlaw.blogspot.com/2021/11/is-vaccine-efficacy-statistical-illusion.html?m=1
I have no interest in getting involved in the general argument, but I really can't help being a stats pedant!
The blog is premised on creating a "statistical illusion of vaccine efficiacy". This is supposedly created via a one week delay in reporting time. This is meant to be demonstrated by simply shifting the deaths column down one row by copy pasting the data, shifted down a row, into an *identical* excel table.
My issue - the tables are not identical.
Quite simply the formula for calculating the figures in the "Mortality Rate" column is obviously not the same in tables 1 and 2. How does the constant answer "15" (table 1), become a whole range of figures (table 2) if the formula is the same? Thoughts?
In addition the formula in table 2 clearly has an (inconsistent) error in it as for e.g. 1 death per 9999 people is not a mortality rate of 7.5 per 100K.
I haven't got past the start of the blog, but on that evidence there may be other errors.
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If you’re going to mandate a drug to work (as in many countries) and implement social segregation measures based upon safety and efficacy then it seems reasonable that part of the argument against such mandates would be to question the safety and efficacy.
What strikes me as odd is that I’m the only one commenting on this when I know for absolute sure there are others on here or reading this aware of some of the problems occurring and feel as strongly about the authoritarian measures as I do.
There's many reasons that I could be concerned about mandatory vaccination and social segregation and all that, but "because the vaccine doesn't work" isn't part of any reasoned argument to that end. They have a great risk:reward balance for anyone aged 40-50 upwards versus catching covid directly and at younger ages it becomes a fine balance of small numbers game.
"Because the vaccines don't work" is only part of the argument about the associated control measures for idiots, put bluntly.
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Disturbing times
Very true. The welter of vaccine disinformation is costing people their lives. Literally dying of ignorance - except the ignorance is peddled by self appointed pundits.
Currently, the pandemic is hitting the global south far more than the north because of the difference in availability of vaccination. Shocking that people are deterred from the single greatest good available to them in the pandemic through pseudoscientific nonsense peddled by fools.
It’s pernicious. I have no time for this rubbish when it costs people their health. The posts you make refer to a series of weak and superficial sources of evidence. You seem to think this is worthy of our time, but do not have the courage or respect to engage with other people’s arguments.
I previously thought you were a bit lost and harmless. I don’t think so now. Taking these posts as a whole, I’m appalled.
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Dan, given your apparent interest in the topic of vaccines, it strains all credulity that you'd never heard of Andrew Wakefield until recently. And if you really hadn't then it just goes to show how ill-informed you are. There is no plausible defence of Wakefield, he is utterly discredited. And far from being "suddenly ... the vanguard of a new anti vax movement," he's been busily seeding anti-vaccine falsehoods for the last twenty plus years.
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If you’re going to mandate a drug to work (as in many countries) and implement social segregation measures based upon safety and efficacy then it seems reasonable that part of the argument against such mandates would be to question the safety and efficacy.
What strikes me as odd is that I’m the only one commenting on this when I know for absolute sure there are others on here or reading this aware of some of the problems occurring and feel as strongly about the authoritarian measures as I do.
There's many reasons that I could be concerned about mandatory vaccination and social segregation and all that, but "because the vaccine doesn't work" isn't part of any reasoned argument to that end. They have a great risk:reward balance for anyone aged 40-50 upwards versus catching covid directly and at younger ages it becomes a fine balance of small numbers game.
"Because the vaccines don't work" is only part of the argument about the associated control measures for idiots, put bluntly.
Sorry I meant to quote, it would be great to hear more reasoned arguments against mandates and segregation from a respected poster. Quite a relief in fact
I'm not sure anyone has called me that before. Given your posting history, I'm not certain it's a good thing!
If I was going to put forward the argument against making the vaccine compulsory, one of the more compelling arguments to me is that it encourages the kind of antivax nonsense you've been indulging in. People will say - even if they could never have been persuaded by any evidence under the sun - that the state couldn't make the argument on the merits of the vaccine so has had to go all Big Brother to force it. It risks pushing disengagement with the system. In a similar vein, in those age groups where the vaccine has little medical benefits (the young, where the risks of covid are fairly low) the argument relies on the wider but more indirect benefits to society and a sense of social solidarity, then compulsion has the potential to backfire.
Extra restrictions for the unvaccinated is a great carrot/stick to encourage vaccination, but has the obvious societal downside of creating a group of "other" on which to blame the problems, which rarely ends well (although a lockdown for everyone because of healthcare overload caused primarily by the unvaccinated is likely to be just as detrimental to social cohesion). Also, the higher the vaccination % the less effective it is anyway, in that since vaccine take-up isn't perfect and vaccine protection fades in time at a certain point (probably about where the UK finds itself) enough of the cases will come from weakening protection amongst the vaccinated that extra restrictions for the unvaccinated won't be a particularly effective tool anyway. Looking at where we are now, we probably need more boosters (and first jabs, but thankfully voluntary take-up has been high) in older people than chasing down more first jabs for people in their 20s or 30s.
I guess more widely the virus seems to thrive on the inequalities in society - it benefits from people who aren't able to self isolate because of a poor social security net or who otherwise can't afford not to work, it thrives when people distrust the system and refuse medical care or peddle conspiracy theories to others, it thrives in cramped and poorly ventilated homes and workplaces..... A risk of mandates and compulsion is of damaging the sort of social cohesion which can help act as some sort of counter to these things. However, there are obviously opposite risks if control measures have to be placed on everyone as a result of the choices of a sub group. Not obvious or easy choices.
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If you’re going to mandate a drug to work (as in many countries) and implement social segregation measures based upon safety and efficacy then it seems reasonable that part of the argument against such mandates would be to question the safety and efficacy.
Everything you've said there sounds quite reasonable. You're getting shit for posting an endless tide of shit, not for wanting a sensible discussion about this stuff. Maybe make some arguments about why you don't like mandates (more than 1 line soundbite pls)! Instead you're just endlessly posting links with some slightly vague words from you that you can fall back on - "oh, I never said vaccines weren't effective I just posted 300 links to things seeming to say that" (I still have zero clue why you posted that FullFact link for example - really, what was your point?)... and then disappearing onto a new link/tangent when that gets critiqued.
Like I said a million posts ago, I feel like I should care and think they're bad, but don't so maybe expressing why you really dislike them would help me formulate my thoughts. (The "divisive" argument is rather ironic, the method and content of your communication on here is part of why people get pissy with/divided from your "side" of the argument, which could instead be perfectly sensible)
EDIT: Andy did it for you. Can't really argue with that. Definitely agree that a general lockdown would make me much more anti-unvaccinated than anything else ever could!
Re that Fenton thing
"Now suppose there is a one-week delay in the reporting of deaths. Such delays are routine in statistical reporting of mortality and vaccine data." - curious that he then shifted only the deaths data. But assuming that his point is that by tweaking reporting dates you can produce weird graphs, that's no biggie, it does demonstrate a certain point.
However, the ONS uses date of death not reporting date, which - with the caveat that I'm not a stats expert - appears to fuck up his argument. [Also unvax deaths in week 1 in table 2 should be 150 not 0; this doesn't change the shape of the graph but makes me wonder about other things like that I've maybe missed on my skim through]. I do find the graph for non-COVID deaths by week based on ONS data interesting - that peak looks weird, and while it doesn't appear to be caused by what he suggests causes it, it does make me wonder what's going on there - possibly something else causing a shift between the datasets? In any case, it's worth pointing out that this shape of graph also exists if the vaccine is effective. I.e., at first pass there does seem to be a weird effect in the data, but that this is not really linked to whether the vaccine is effective or not. I defer to others with more time or stats knowledge on anything beyond that first pass i.e. whether this may actually show something interesting or not.
This is meant to be demonstrated by simply shifting the deaths column down one row by copy pasting the data, shifted down a row, into an *identical* excel table.
My issue - the tables are not identical.
Quite simply the formula for calculating the figures in the "Mortality Rate" column is obviously not the same in tables 1 and 2. How does the constant answer "15" (table 1), become a whole range of figures (table 2) if the formula is the same? Thoughts?
In addition the formula in table 2 clearly has an (inconsistent) error in it as for e.g. 1 death per 9999 people is not a mortality rate of 7.5 per 100K.
I haven't got past the start of the blog, but on that evidence there may be other errors.
The first table runs from a fixed mortality rate and calculates deaths, but he only shows to 1 sig fig so "1" isn't 1.0. The second table runs the other way round (i.e. deaths is fixed and shifted and rate is calculated). As far as I can tell it runs ok.
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The only people I ever hear going on about ‘Wakefield’ are the mob.
What is this even meant to mean? Who are the mob? Do you mean effectively the entire medical-scientific community, because that's the reality? People "go on" about Wakefield because he has been working assiduously for two decades to sow as much doubt as possible about vaccines, with results we are now all witness to. Whatever your naivety he's not some blameless victim of a faceless mob. Try informing yourself.
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The only people I ever hear going on about ‘Wakefield’ are the mob.
What is this even meant to mean? Who are the mob?
It must mean the General Medical Council, because it was they who struck him off the register in 2010 finding it
the only sanction that is appropriate to protect patients and is in the wider public interest, including the maintenance of public trust and confidence in the profession and is proportionate to the serious and wide-ranging findings made against him. (https://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c2803)
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Re that Fenton thing
"Now suppose there is a one-week delay in the reporting of deaths. Such delays are routine in statistical reporting of mortality and vaccine data." - curious that he then shifted only the deaths data. But assuming that his point is that by tweaking reporting dates you can produce weird graphs, that's no biggie, it does demonstrate a certain point.
However, the ONS uses date of death not reporting date, which - with the caveat that I'm not a stats expert - appears to fuck up his argument. [Also unvax deaths in week 1 in table 2 should be 150 not 0; this doesn't change the shape of the graph but makes me wonder about other things like that I've maybe missed on my skim through]. I do find the graph for non-COVID deaths by week based on ONS data interesting - that peak looks weird, and while it doesn't appear to be caused by what he suggests causes it, it does make me wonder what's going on there - possibly something else causing a shift between the datasets? In any case, it's worth pointing out that this shape of graph also exists if the vaccine is effective. I.e., at first pass there does seem to be a weird effect in the data, but that this is not really linked to whether the vaccine is effective or not. I defer to others with more time or stats knowledge on anything beyond that first pass i.e. whether this may actually show something interesting or not.
I think the spike in the graph is partly driven by the very uneven speed of vaccination in the example - in the weeks in the middle then 15%+ of the sample population are moving state each week which means the delay becomes hugely significant in the deaths versus the baseline population. I don't think that's a terribly realistic example, plus obviously the real world has non identical populations w.r.t. age and so on.
I also think the date of death reporting screws him over. It's not like people haven't been working out how to do this sort of comparison right for decades if not centuries!
Edit: in the ONS data, I assume the problem is potentially the size of the error bars around the unvaccinated pool as it gets smaller - the problem discussed many times that we can guess how many people there are with estimated error bars and are taking from that a number of almost equal size that is known precisely. The error bars on the residual are proportionately huge.
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I’m aware of the story of Wakefield and his corruption and sleaze and agree he is a disgrace.
From where I’m typing the mob seems comprised of frothing members of the covidian cult.
Aaaaand we’re back to “Covid is a myth”.
I admire your determination, guys, but the phrase “Pissing in the wind” springs to mind. Thirty pages or reasoned rebuttal, same unfounded claim regurgitated.
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I’m aware of the story of Wakefield and his corruption and sleaze and agree he is a disgrace.
From where I’m typing the mob seems comprised of frothing members of the covidian cult.
You said you weren't, but consistency clearly isn't a priority.
"the mob seems comprised of frothing members of the covidian cult" = people who recognise that Wakefield is a dangerous individual.
You seem to be completely uninterested in making any kind of a coherent argument.
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Re that Fenton thing
"Now suppose there is a one-week delay in the reporting of deaths. Such delays are routine in statistical reporting of mortality and vaccine data." - curious that he then shifted only the deaths data. But assuming that his point is that by tweaking reporting dates you can produce weird graphs, that's no biggie, it does demonstrate a certain point.
However, the ONS uses date of death not reporting date, which - with the caveat that I'm not a stats expert - appears to fuck up his argument. [Also unvax deaths in week 1 in table 2 should be 150 not 0; this doesn't change the shape of the graph but makes me wonder about other things like that I've maybe missed on my skim through]. I do find the graph for non-COVID deaths by week based on ONS data interesting - that peak looks weird, and while it doesn't appear to be caused by what he suggests causes it, it does make me wonder what's going on there - possibly something else causing a shift between the datasets? In any case, it's worth pointing out that this shape of graph also exists if the vaccine is effective. I.e., at first pass there does seem to be a weird effect in the data, but that this is not really linked to whether the vaccine is effective or not. I defer to others with more time or stats knowledge on anything beyond that first pass i.e. whether this may actually show something interesting or not.
I think the spike in the graph is partly driven by the very uneven speed of vaccination in the example - in the weeks in the middle then 15%+ of the sample population are moving state each week which means the delay becomes hugely significant in the deaths versus the baseline population. I don't think that's a terribly realistic example, plus obviously the real world has non identical populations w.r.t. age and so on.
I also think the date of death reporting screws him over. It's not like people haven't been working out how to do this sort of comparison right for decades of not centuries!
The media blaring out the “The UK reported X number of deaths today!” Where X was date registered and usually on a Monday, has been irritating me for months. It’s always instantly obvious that it’s entirely misleading bollocks, that left people wondering around thinking the UK has a much higher daily death rate than it actually has.
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This is exhausting. You're at least two characters Dan.
Two examples,
I’m aware of the story of Wakefield and his corruption and sleaze and agree he is a disgrace.
Dan:
''I’d never even heard of Wakefield or thought of Piers Corbyn as anything other than an eccentric chap, suddenly they’re the vanguard of a new anti vax movement.''
You’re right Andy I am ill informed about vaccines. In fact I couldn’t have given a toss until the past few months.
Bullshit. I suggest to anyone that they go and take a skim read of the last 8 or so pages of you describing your seemingly quite in-depth knowledge of vaccine research and counter-argument against its efficacy.
Endless bullshit, endless suggestions of a narrative counter to the mainstream, before weaselling out (quite wisely) of committing to a position that isn't supported by any sound evidence. Interspersed with snippets of reasonable-sounding waffle ''we should have a discussion about this serious issue etc.''.
Run for parliament you could do well. :shit: :shit:
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It’s fairly surprising that someone, particularly a medical professional, could have missed the whole MMR thing at the time, it was kind of a big deal.
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Problem being we were already doing that discussion and various views including your own were already in the mix, before you arrived and stirred in your special bullshit sauce.
Nothing about what you just said is controversial. You could easily have said what you just did, without the last 8 pages of your own utterly needless bullshit and links to dubious bullshit, and many people would have agreed that they’re also not in favour of mandates.
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Problem being we were already doing that discussion and various views including your own were already in the mix, before you arrived and stirred in your special bullshit sauce.
Nothing about what you just said is controversial. You could easily have said what you just did, without the last 8 pages of your own utterly needless bullshit and links to dubious bullshit, and many people would have agreed that they’re also not in favour of mandates.
^ This totally. There are moral and ethical questions around mandates / vaccine passports / restrictions etc that definitely need to be discussed. As a small 'l' liberal my general tendency is towards freedom of choice where possible (taking into account impacts on others) so have some sympathy with this. However that needs to be discussed in the context of a realistic analysis of the science/data and conflating it with a load of links to unsubstantiated outlier analysis and tbh bullshit really doesn't help your case in any way.
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There are a lot of posters here who are really illuminating about topics I have a limited knowledge of, it's what makes this forum really interesting.
At some point in the future you might find yourselves in the situation where you’re not willing to have another booster. I’m here now to support your right to choose.
However. I don't need patronising gibberish to save me from myself.
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And we're straight back to it, true to form. Given that you're not a total mornon I can only conclude you're back to trolling (quite successfully!) Can we ban again please?
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And we're straight back to it, true to form. Given that you're not a total mornon I can only conclude you're back to trolling (quite successfully!) Can we ban again please?
What he said.
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Maybe he's ACTUALLY a paid up shill troll?
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Dan, I hope you take this in the manner which I intend – one of looking out for you. I really think you need to take a couple of days out from thinking about this. Covid, vaccine mandates, and restrictions upon personal liberty are all very serious matters, but the way your posts read makes me think that you’d benefit from giving yourself some respite from thinking about it. And definitely consider some respite from posting about it on here or anywhere else, and from looking up any other links to it.
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Demanding that people take 6 monthly injections of a therapeutic with no long term safety data which is known to have some very serious adverse affects so that they can have the freedom to work, travel attend education and access healthcare is literally insane. The fact that there are people who consider this as reasonable is representative of a mass psychosis.
...or not everyone agrees that the evidence of harm is as strong as you suggest, and the decision is more nuanced. I don't think labelling one side of an argument as being part of a mass psychosis is a good way of debating. Why not start from the assumption that the people you're talking to are, broadly, reasonable and capable of forming sensible opinions?
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In reply to LozT
CLAIM
One time in the 80’s-90’s, people died from AZT and not the actual AIDS virus; Anthony Fauci pushed this treatment
DETAILS
Unsupported: Zidovudine, or AZT, was the first HIV drug approved by the U.S. FDA in 1987. Due to the drug’s fast-track approval and toxicity, zidovudine was controversial. However, the claim that more people were killed by zidovudine rather than AIDS comes from a speculative quote by an AIDS denialist in a 1989 article about zidovudine.
Lacks context: During the early years of HIV treatment when few drugs were available, zidovudine was given to patients by most doctors. As the main spokesperson on AIDS for the federal government, Fauci was often the government official who spoke about HIV treatments, including promoting zidovudine, however, Fauci was not the only doctor or government official recommending zidovudine, nor was he instrumental in the recommendation
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Hi Dan, as someone who spends a lot more time reading on here than posting, I recommend you try my approach. It's actually quite enlightening. It's not based around being particularly shy or retiring or being afraid of being pounced upon and humiliated by the UKB stalwarts. It's based upon finding what other people have to say interesting and informative. I like to read what other people have to say and follow the links and references. I like to fact check. Then on occasion I might consider that I actually might have something to add to a discussion. Your approach of just spewing forth relentlessly, never maintaining a consistent or reasoned argument, never actually checking the facts behind your statements (it took me around 30 seconds to find the reality about your statements on Fauci and AZT) merely antagonises people and prevents any meaningful discussion. Everything becomes centred around you but in a massively negative fashion. It destroys any thread that you post on. Please either find a more constructive way of engaging or just stop altogether.
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I’m aware of the story of Wakefield and his corruption and sleaze and agree he is a disgrace.
From where I’m typing the mob seems comprised of frothing members of the covidian cult.
I see a mob as an angry ill informed group likely to cause harm to innocent bystanders and unfair targets.
The MMR message, that Wakefield put out, terrified parents so much that a highly successful vaccination programme was at one point on its knees due to a mob of parents. Wakefield is involved again in covid misinformation that will kill a huge extra number in a mob of Republican voters, in part because people in their media bubbles can't unscramble some well hidden dishonesty in some plausible looking graphs. The villains are rich Republican extremists who see misinformation as a tool to electoral success. The villains are the russians who sow misinformation to disrupt our liberal democracies. The villains are the Wakefield types who peddle medical lies to make money. The villains are shock jocks and Fox news presenters who say covid risks are overblown and vaccines are dangerous (quite a few of whom have died following their own idiocy). Trump is the epitome of the success of that path of democratic and structural degradation and he only just lost an election in a perfect storm.
Be sceptical but please don't support the misinformation from those c*nts.
There really are things to get upset about. I've already mentioned the cost barrier for vaccines and other covid medicine for the developing world... ignoring the horror of the pointless deaths for now.... are we going to have to build a wall around those countries because the pandemic isn't under control until it is nearly everywhere? What about variant risk that escapes vaccination protection to some serious degree?
AJM explained above why vaccine mandation is usually a bad idea and I agree. In UK care homes I see it as an almost criminally bad idea, as reducing the capacity of the UK care system and the quality of care in that system, by sacking tens of thousands of staff in the middle of a staffing crisis, is exactly what the country doesn't need now.
The risk of unvaccinated care staff is massively overblown.... shout to the mob 'they will kill your granny'... untested visitors are more likely to do that ... the unvaccinated care staff are only about twice as likely to spread covid and daily testing and PPE should mitigate risks to the point that they become sub percentile (see below).
The real serious risk for care staff is to themselves and their loved ones. The real risk to the clients is shitter care due to understaffing. A risk to the NHS is shitter staffing means more go to hospital. Another NHS risk is shitter staffing reduces output capacity so the NHS bed blocking is worse than ever.
Practically speaking, risks are too high at times in care homes as most of our care is in fragmented system with too many 'mom and pop' businesses, massively underfunded for council clients and some homes really struggle and don''t follow procedures as well as they should. Armies of cover staff going from care home to care home doesn't help. I know this has been going on for decades as I know people who earn spare cash working part time in the system, including Lynn in the late 80s....she would say, never send your loved ones to x y or z back then.
I watched the first in Ed Balls' new series on care last night and played covid infection control error bingo (he was usually told off by the staff to be fair): that will be in a good quality care home, suitable to be televised. The care system in the UK is a national scandal.
Finally, and worse of all, we live in an open democracy and most people are good and care about important things and yet most people are clueless the NHS is in a crisis as large as it has ever been. What could be more important than we have people having heart attacks and strokes and medically justified response times are regularly being missed by hundreds of percent and sometimes thousands of percent. How can such a thing happen? Isn't that something more important to ponder on than unevidenced claims from dubious sources?
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I'm pointing out these people are corrupt and untrustworthy, fact checking via google and the bought and paid for organisations that do this is the modern equivalent of the 'Ministry of Truth'.
Is that the first rule of conspiracy theory you just quoted. “Well they would say that”
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Hi Dan, as someone who spends a lot more time reading on here than posting, I recommend you try my approach. It's actually quite enlightening. It's not based around being particularly shy or retiring or being afraid of being pounced upon and humiliated by the UKB stalwarts. It's based upon finding what other people have to say interesting and informative. I like to read what other people have to say and follow the links and references. I like to fact check. Then on occasion I might consider that I actually might have something to add to a discussion. Your approach of just spewing forth relentlessly, never maintaining a consistent or reasoned argument, never actually checking the facts behind your statements (it took me around 30 seconds to find the reality about your statements on Fauci and AZT) merely antagonises people and prevents any meaningful discussion. Everything becomes centred around you but in a massively negative fashion. It destroys any thread that you post on. Please either find a more constructive way of engaging or just stop altogether.
Yes sometimes something that looks like a manufactured conspiracy, as it seems so mad and involves criminal behaviour from doctors and criminal collusion and cover-up in the medical system in modern times, does happen to be true:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study
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And what about Big Foot at Cannock Chase. They (as in Google, Facebook and the Cannock Chase Cycling Centre) don't want us to know.
"Lee Brickley found tracks and claw marks after a decade searching for the ape-like beast.
The 33-year-old says the print was a terrifying 41cm from toe to heel – nearly twice the size of a man’s size eight.
Lee knows people will think he is “mad” but he hopes to prove them wrong. He said: “When I show them the pictures they’re amazed."
There have been sightings of a yeti-like creature around Cannock Chase in Staffordshire dating back to the 1800s.
Lee has heard of 12 in the past two years and has even camped in the woods in a bid to spot the creature that’s known in the US as Sasquatch."
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This is the level of your posting though Dan.
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I appreciate your concern Reeve and tend to agree, it is difficult when people appear to have taken leave of their senses.
The fact that there are people who consider this as reasonable is representative of a mass psychosis.
Scroll to the top of the page of this thread - you'll see a poll about needing to show proof of vaccination. It has a 52/48 split (sounds familiar..) broadly for/against. I'd expect that a poll on, in your words, 'demanding that people take a vaccine' would reflect great unease.
The picture you're attempting to paint of a mass of unthinking sheeple doesn't reflect the reality, not among posters here and probably not among people in general. It might be the reality in your mind, you might just be trolling for attention, or there's some other unhealthy reason for your intensity of focus. Whatever the reason is you should take Reeve's advice. If I was an admin at this point I'd block you for your own good so you can have a break from your proselytising.
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Off topic but just on the topic of the discrediting of people in science. John Yudkin was thoroughly discredited in the 1970s because his science didn't align with the science of the powers that be at the time. Turns out he was probably more right all along.
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Thing is, taking a vaccine is not just a personal choice. It's a choice that impacts society. Deciding not to do it puts other people at risk.
In my view not getting vaccinated is unethical and people who refuse to get vaccinated realistically can expect to face some social consequences; if those were codified into legal restrictions on where they can go then I'm not too concerned, as long as everyone is offered it. Although practically it seems difficult to make work.
A load of buzzwords about sheep, protecting human rights (what about people's rights not to be put at risk of a potentially deadly disease by their fellow citizen's stupidity and selfishness?) doesn't persuade me otherwise. In fact all it tells me is that someone needs to get off Facebook and grow up a bit, no matter their age!
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Dan, if you could shut up a minute we could actually discuss the question in rational terms. There's lots of people on here who are actually arguing against vaccine mandates, at least in part, but your head is so firmly rammed up your colon that you don't seem to have noticed.
I've been sceptical about vaccine mandates in the NHS and wider society but didn't care enough about it to actually look up any figures to form a proper opinion. Offwidth has posted something very interesting here:
AJM explained above why vaccine mandation is usually a bad idea and I agree. In UK care homes I see it as an almost criminally bad idea, as reducing the capacity of the UK care system and the quality of care in that system, by sacking tens of thousands of staff in the middle of a staffing crisis, is exactly what the country doesn't need now.
The risk of unvaccinated care staff is massively overblown.... shout to the mob 'they will kill your granny'... untested visitors are more likely to do that ... the unvaccinated care staff are only about twice as likely to spread covid and daily testing and PPE should mitigate risks to the point that they become sub percentile (see below).
The real serious risk for care staff is to themselves and their loved ones. The real risk to the clients is shitter care due to understaffing. A risk to the NHS is shitter staffing means more go to hospital. Another NHS risk is shitter staffing reduces output capacity so the NHS bed blocking is worse than ever.
OW, is there any indication of what sort of % of staff need to be vaccinated to maintain this balance of risk? Does the same apply to hospital settings?
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Off topic but just on the topic of the discrediting of people in science. John Yudkin was thoroughly discredited in the 1970s because his science didn't align with the science of the powers that be at the time. Turns out he was probably more right all along.
The history of Science is full of such characters including many who were actually correct but ignored for a long time, sometimes well until after their death. A lot of the older standard examples are unfair as the church controlled what could be published as science and we will never know if others sussed out what say Galileo did but kept quiet about it? Never forget the modern scientific establishment involves a lot of politics and human emotions.
I'll try and put a list up if I have time later. My favourite consequential is the infamous Heaviside letter box conversation.
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Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" documents this kind of thing very well. I don't really feel that this is the same as the discredited scientists mentioned throughout the thread. The ones discussed in the thread aren't just outliers, they're frauds and fantasists.
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Likewise the story of stomach ulcers and h.pylori which I always think of when people argue for something being a 'certainty' in medicine. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)71459-8/fulltext#:~:text=Parts%20of%20the%20H%20pylori%20story%20have%20already,drank%20the%20bacterial%20suspension%20to%20test%20Koch%27s%20postulates.
But like you say history doesn't record all the people with whack theories that were proved whack, just the ones that were proved correct.
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Likewise the story of stomach ulcers and h.pylori which I always think of when people argue for something being a 'certainty' in medicine. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)71459-8/fulltext#:~:text=Parts%20of%20the%20H%20pylori%20story%20have%20already,drank%20the%20bacterial%20suspension%20to%20test%20Koch%27s%20postulates.
But like you say history doesn't record all the people with whack theories that were proved whack, just the ones that were proved correct.
There are lessons to be learnt about why some correct and well evidenced scientific theories ended up being rejected. There was definitely at least group think, sometimes jealousy, and sometimes dirty politics, involved.
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Likewise the story of stomach ulcers and h.pylori which I always think of when people argue for something being a 'certainty' in medicine. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)71459-8/fulltext#:~:text=Parts%20of%20the%20H%20pylori%20story%20have%20already,drank%20the%20bacterial%20suspension%20to%20test%20Koch%27s%20postulates.
But like you say history doesn't record all the people with whack theories that were proved whack, just the ones that were proved correct.
There are lessons to be learnt about why some correct and well evidenced scientific theories ended up being rejected. There was definitely at least group think, sometimes jealousy, and sometimes dirty politics, involved.
Plate tectonics.
It’s easier for individuals or small groups to hold back innovative “youngsters” in niche fields, at least until their tenure/life expires and the evidence finally overwhelms the bastions of academic inertia. Pretty sure that it doesn’t apply in the examples cited by Dan, though. Most of that doesn’t even stand up to cursory examination of laymen.
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Will ~60,000 care workers be sacked tomorrow? And potentially 70,000 NHS staff by next April?
This is what caused this thread to be resurrected back on page 4 before you hijacked it and went rabid.
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The counter argument is that people not getting vaccinated are forcing people with shit immune systems to lead a second class existence.
I beg to move that dunnyg remains a second class citizen. If you saw the state of his cutlery draw then you too might question whether it were hygienic for him to be allowed into public spaces.
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The counter argument is that people not getting vaccinated are forcing people with shit immune systems to lead a second class existence.
This. ditto masks.
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If you want to keep this discussion civil, you should start by moderating your own hyperbole.
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We’re back into the realm of the delusion that the public health measures being suggested are something other than an authoritarian control agenda.
This succinctly illuminates the thread.
When people start from a completely different premise agreement is not possible. To start with your conclusion, then work back, requires selecting and disregarding evidence as required to maintain your POV.
Science works the other way, observing and deducing.
The two are never going to meet.
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Or to summarise: It's like trying to discuss the pandemic whilst a giant toddler shouts in your ear.
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I know the received wisdom is that telling conspiracy believers that they're wrong doesn't work and can be counterproductive. But perhaps, sometimes it is necessary to be blunt and direct. Dan, you are listening to and repeating lies, falsehoods, distortions, and disinformation.
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I agree, I'd personally like to still be able to drink drive and run people over, prior to getting a slap on the wrist as alcohol was a mitigating factor.
Bloody authoritarians stoping me fucking over others in society.
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The facts seem fairly clear, authoritarian control measures are being implemented in the name of public health. So I disagree with you Andy.
Strangely Dan everyone disagrees with you.
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I messaged Reeve about this earlier, but I reckon this isn't Dan. I don't know him personally, but this is just too bonkers.
Can a mod check up some how?and can someone who actually personally knows the really Dan ask him directly?
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The thread is a joke because if the control measures were purely authoritarian, the evidence to debunk their justification would be solid and straightforward. There' d be no need to go to the Wakefields and weirdos if data on vaccines not working was available.
I can easily see data on vaccine efficacy, walking down the street, in the supermarket, in reliable sources.
If authoritarianism was a genuine concern to posters, they would be trying to hold Patel and Johnson's feet to the fire for any number of nasty bills and decisions. Judicial review, anyone?
But they don't.
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Where do you draw the line between justified and unjustified intrusion into your freedom Dan?
Do you think society has any right to tell you what to do under any circumstances?
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Tell me a restriction on you that you are ok with?
Would you like to fuck young boys? Are you pissed that social pressure and authoritarians are holding you back?
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Erm....
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I'm just trying to tease out of you what kind of restrictions you are happy not live with.
You seem to be able to tell me what is an unjustified intrusion into your life.
Tell me what isn't.
Are you pissed off that you have to wear pants?
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What kind of pants?
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The ones that cover your nob
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😂 I’m ok with pants
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Masks?
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What kind? The rubber ones with the mouth piece?
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If that's your thing. Last time I checked mask mandates were less prescriptive than that.
Are they an unjustified intrusion into your freedom. Another step on the road to surfdom?
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Wear one if you like
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I'm asking about the mask mandate as it applies to you?
Is this an unjustified intrusion into your freedom? Are you down with the government telling you how to behave?
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I thought ‘wear one if you like’ covered that. No I’m not really into masks being mandated.
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Why not? You are into mandated pants?
Is it:
a. Due to shame of your micro penis
b. Because you are a cunt who doesn't give a shit about those more vulnerable
Clearly it's not because masks don't work as you let the man coerce you into pants despite them having no medical benefits.
Or are you one of the sheeple who thinks they wear pants because they want to.
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Crikey! Can I have ‘all of the above’ 😂😂😂
Tell you what tho Potash, I respect your position, as opposed to the tedious virtue signalling and sincere correctness of some. Peace ✌️
(Mods, does potash need time out to calm down? I’m sure we must be concerned about his sanity..... not)
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LozT account deleted and posts removed. I’ve deleted the other thread as well.
I generally don’t follow non-climbing threads so if anyone Dan-like pops again can you PM me so I can delete their account.
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The latest ultra-bantz from a prominent and farcical anti-vaxx site (https://www.notonthebeeb.co.uk/post/chipped)
On this occasion, analyzing one of the images obtained by Dr. Campra , corresponding to a sample of the Pfizer vaccine, see figure 1, it has been discovered, which with great probability, is a nanorouter or part of its circuitry. In the original image, a well-defined drop can be seen in which crystalline structures of a quadrangular or cubic format appear. If you look closely, you can see some marks on these crystals, with a regular pattern, well defined in some cases, but limited by the microscope optics.
The finding has been made possible by isolating each quadrangular crystal, applying a process of rasterizing, focusing and delineating the edges of the image, in order to further pronounce the observed marks. Once this process was completed, a rough draft was drawn with the lines and patterns inscribed on the glass, creating a clean outline of what actually looked like a circuit. The fact of finding parallel and perpendicular lines with a distribution far from the fractal patterns was very striking, which allowed us to automatically infer the possibility that it had been a product of manufacture. For this reason, similar patterns were searched in the scientific literature, which had a similar scheme, similar to the circuit that had just been drawn. The search result was almost immediate, since the pattern of a quantum dot nanorouter was found, as shown in figure 2.
(https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a904eb_49e0a713b9bb453289a12d15401b2ecd~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_576,h_768,al_c,lg_1,q_95/a904eb_49e0a713b9bb453289a12d15401b2ecd~mv2.webp)
I'm not sure why I rubberneck these imbeciles / extremely-traumatised-and-damaged-by-the-pandemic-scenario-and-quite-ill-people, but they're not getting any less outrageous with time.... It does support my theory that the rise of ridiculous anti-vaxx / anti-mask conspiracies is a trauma response due to the biggest life-affecting upheaval (even though it's relatively minor compared to world wars etc) that almost all westerners have experienced.
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Nanorouters, pffft, you haven't seen the tentacles:
https://twitter.com/BadVaccineTakes/status/1444006608904851467
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I got shares in moderna and AZ...
all I see is PROFITS :tease:
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The latest ultra-bantz from a prominent and farcical anti-vaxx site (https://www.notonthebeeb.co.uk/post/chipped)
So many words. I lost the will to read about halfway down the rather looooong page.
Not been on that site, seems less right wing than most.
On this occasion, analyzing one of the images obtained by Dr. Campra , corresponding to a sample of the Pfizer vaccine, see figure 1, it has been discovered, which with great probability, is a nanorouter or part of its circuitry. In the original image, a well-defined drop can be seen in which crystalline structures of a quadrangular or cubic format appear. If you look closely, you can see some marks on these crystals, with a regular pattern, well defined in some cases, but limited by the microscope optics.
The finding has been made possible by isolating each quadrangular crystal, applying a process of rasterizing, focusing and delineating the edges of the image, in order to further pronounce the observed marks. Once this process was completed, a rough draft was drawn with the lines and patterns inscribed on the glass, creating a clean outline of what actually looked like a circuit. The fact of finding parallel and perpendicular lines with a distribution far from the fractal patterns was very striking, which allowed us to automatically infer the possibility that it had been a product of manufacture. For this reason, similar patterns were searched in the scientific literature, which had a similar scheme, similar to the circuit that had just been drawn. The search result was almost immediate, since the pattern of a quantum dot nanorouter was found, as shown in figure 2.
(https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a904eb_49e0a713b9bb453289a12d15401b2ecd~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_576,h_768,al_c,lg_1,q_95/a904eb_49e0a713b9bb453289a12d15401b2ecd~mv2.webp)
I'm not sure why I rubberneck these imbeciles / extremely-traumatised-and-damaged-by-the-pandemic-scenario-and-quite-ill-people, but they're not getting any less outrageous with time.... It does support my theory that the rise of ridiculous anti-vaxx / anti-mask conspiracies is a trauma response due to the biggest life-affecting upheaval (even though it's relatively minor compared to world wars etc) that almost all westerners have experienced.
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Nanorouters, pffft, you haven't seen the tentacles:
https://twitter.com/BadVaccineTakes/status/1444006608904851467
Summon the kraken!!
"It seemed self-aware" :lol: that's ace. Love the way they've shoe-horned the obligatory "gene therapy" and " ''vaccine'' " in quotes ::)
Yeah Kelvin, I struggled to read the introduction, although that was mostly because it's complete bollox. The rest is obviously pseudo-science waffle to fool the stupid / susceptible. As usual.
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Also I got forwarded this for more fun, have corrected the context slightly....
I post this in response to speaking directly with several other climbers who have had concerns about their posts and/or their accounts being censored or removed by UKC UKB.
For those not already in the know, UKC UKB has been routinely censoring the forum posts of any climbers who question the current (and in our opinion), ongoing massive over-reaction to the Covid pandemic. UKC UKB have been deleting or banning anyone who questions whether the increasingly authoritarian measures taken by our Government are proportional to the threat in hand. Some have attempted to re-register but have been quickly banned once again. In short, UKC UKB has been attempting to hide one side of the debate from its forum users, seemingly to promote their own (some would say narrow) agenda.
By doing this, UKC UKB have been stealthily manipulating us all by making those with perfectly valid concerns about the huge societal damage being done by authoritarian Covid policy measures feel marginalised, unpopular amongst their peers, and/or ostracised from the climbing community. UKC UKB have given a free rein to certain ‘approved’ forum users, often self-proclaimed experts, to bully, or label as anti-vax, or to not take seriously and debate in bad faith, any climber who does not side with UKC UKB’s particular view of the world. Unfortunately this means that a sensible debate, where all points of view can be discussed freely, cannot be had on UKC UKB without the ‘bad actors’ shutting it down. This is not acceptable.
If you check outside of the UKC UKB bubble, there are many, many well renowned and very senior scientists, virologists, epidemiologists, doctors etc. who think that lockdown policy, mask mandates, and vaccine passports are some of the worst public health mistakes ever made in the history of medicine. They have serious concerns that the long term damage caused by these policies, and our priority with Covid above all other forms of healthcare will prove to be far worse than the disease itself.
Often these scientists will have been smeared by their colleagues from the ‘popular’ and ‘approved’ camp. Often they are not featured on the BBC or the Guardian, but their scientific credentials are just as valid, often far more valid than those scientists you hear about on the mainstream news or conducting the government briefings. Unfortunately many people and UKC UKB itself seems to have forgotten how science works. Science works through robust debate and by challenging assumptions. It does not work by ridiculing, smearing or censoring those with whom you do not agree.
As a forum user, you should also be aware that our media, the ones promoting ‘the science’ will directly benefit financially from us all being locked down or restricted in some way. In times of crisis, people spend far more time online, on forums, reading the news and such like. Hence advertising revenue, usage and click-through rates will increase. So you wonder whether itmight be in the media’s interest to keep this crisis going? The answer, as ever, is to follow the money. As a commercial media operation, UKC UKB is not immune from this vested interest.
Sadly as a result of UKC UKB censorship, UKC UKB has now seemingly become an echo chamber. If you have the right opinion, you can stay. If you are a climber who wishes to discuss a different point of view then you are no longer welcome it seems. Yet out in the real world, those who have been most directly affected by lockdown policy, find the narrow minded and un-sympathetic views of some of those on UKC UKB selfish, out of touch and often abhorrent.
It is now well understood that lockdown policy and Covid restrictions have impacted the poorest in society the hardest. Restrictions have also been used an umbrella vehicle under which the largest transfer of wealth in human history has occurred. It has made the wealthiest one percent even wealthier at the expense to everyone and everything else.
At the same time, our parliament, once accountable to the people, has run rough-shot over due democratic process. Our government has employed behavioural psychologists to ramp up the fear and manipulate the population. Our rights to protest have been curtailed. Our right to bodily autonomy is under threat. Our population has been left divided and frightened, not sure when the goalposts back to normal life will be moved once again. We are under imminent threat of a technocratic and authoritarian future unless we are careful.
The government (often via the media), has routinely encouraged the population to blame those who are not following the rules hard enough, or the un-vaccinated, or those who won’t wear masks, to distract attention from its own failings. After all, if we are all busy blaming each other, we forget about the thousands of elderly sent back to nursing homes to die last March without proper testing. We forget about the broken promises, the lies and the lucrative PPE contracts awarded to mates. We forget about the government’s mismanagement of the health service for decades which is the real reason why we are in this mess. In short, we are in an abusive relationship with our government.
On top of this the media has been controlled and kept in check by the Ofcom restrictions introduced during the spring of 2020 meaning that the media cannot communicate anything but the official government point of view on Covid. The media will also not bite the hand that feeds it. Convenient isn’t it that the two biggest advertising spenders with the UK media are the UK Government and the Pharmaceutical industry.
Think about it, when was the last time you heard a dissenting question asked at a government press conference? It never happens. The questions are always “should we do more of this?” or “perhaps sooner?”, or “maybe now is time for Plan B?”. It is never “show us the scientific evidence for this policy?”, or “what damage will this policy do?”, or “those numbers don’t seem right”, or back in January you said “15 million jabs to freedom” etc.
When cases go down it is seldom reported. As soon as cases rise they are ‘surging’ or exponential’. Even the chief of the NHS Amanda Pritchard was never properly called upon to apologise for her lie on ITV that there were 14 times more Covid patents in hospital than the same time last year, when the actual number was far less. And Prof Neil Fergusson who has never got a single prediction even nearly right since this whole thing started is still rolled out by the BBC as an expert.
To top this off are the ‘fact checkers’ including such schemes used directly to sensor mis-information on YouTube and Facebook. Please do your own research into who these people are, what their qualifications are, and who funds them. You will often be very surprised. The level of censorship going on across the board is epic.
If history proves correct, no doubt UKC UKB will delete this post (and me) as soon as it can, but by doing so it would firstly show you that what I say is correct. Secondly it would be showing it is committed to manipulating you, the forum user, into conforming to their way of thinking by hiding one perfectly valid side of the argument (this used to be called brainwashing). So let’s hope that UKC UKB sees sense at long last.
If the UKC UKB does censor this post then because I think that users need to be aware of what’s been going on, I will just come back again using a different device and a VPN to post this again. There should be no need for this hopefully. Therefore UKC UKB, please finally let the discussion be had without the ‘bad actors’, the censorship and the bullying. By discussing this in good faith we can hopefully reach a better place with more understanding all round.
Maybe a single thread where alternative views can be freely discussed might be a good idea?
In the meantime, here are some links if you do wish to have an alternate non-UKC UKB view of the world. Not all of these links you will agree with and some you might think are a little far-fetched. But that is the point. The aim is to understand both sides of the argument from which you can draw your own conclusions.
Edit: Links redacted because there weren't enough tentacles.
-
Also I got forwarded this for more fun, have corrected the context slightly....
I post this in response to speaking directly with several other climbers who have had concerns about their posts and/or their accounts being censored or removed by UKC UKB.
For those not already in the know, UKC UKB has been routinely censoring the forum posts of any climbers who question the current (and in our opinion), ongoing massive over-reaction to the Covid pandemic. UKC UKB have been deleting or banning anyone who questions whether the increasingly authoritarian measures taken by our Government are proportional to the threat in hand. Some have attempted to re-register but have been quickly banned once again. In short, UKC UKB has been attempting to hide one side of the debate from its forum users, seemingly to promote their own (some would say narrow) agenda.
By doing this, UKC UKB have been stealthily manipulating us all by making those with perfectly valid concerns about the huge societal damage being done by authoritarian Covid policy measures feel marginalised, unpopular amongst their peers, and/or ostracised from the climbing community. UKC UKB have given a free rein to certain ‘approved’ forum users, often self-proclaimed experts, to bully, or label as anti-vax, or to not take seriously and debate in bad faith, any climber who does not side with UKC UKB’s particular view of the world. Unfortunately this means that a sensible debate, where all points of view can be discussed freely, cannot be had on UKC UKB without the ‘bad actors’ shutting it down. This is not acceptable.
If you check outside of the UKC UKB bubble, there are many, many well renowned and very senior scientists, virologists, epidemiologists, doctors etc. who think that lockdown policy, mask mandates, and vaccine passports are some of the worst public health mistakes ever made in the history of medicine. They have serious concerns that the long term damage caused by these policies, and our priority with Covid above all other forms of healthcare will prove to be far worse than the disease itself.
Often these scientists will have been smeared by their colleagues from the ‘popular’ and ‘approved’ camp. Often they are not featured on the BBC or the Guardian, but their scientific credentials are just as valid, often far more valid than those scientists you hear about on the mainstream news or conducting the government briefings. Unfortunately many people and UKC UKB itself seems to have forgotten how science works. Science works through robust debate and by challenging assumptions. It does not work by ridiculing, smearing or censoring those with whom you do not agree.
As a forum user, you should also be aware that our media, the ones promoting ‘the science’ will directly benefit financially from us all being locked down or restricted in some way. In times of crisis, people spend far more time online, on forums, reading the news and such like. Hence advertising revenue, usage and click-through rates will increase. So you wonder whether itmight be in the media’s interest to keep this crisis going? The answer, as ever, is to follow the money. As a commercial media operation, UKC UKB is not immune from this vested interest.
Sadly as a result of UKC UKB censorship, UKC UKB has now seemingly become an echo chamber. If you have the right opinion, you can stay. If you are a climber who wishes to discuss a different point of view then you are no longer welcome it seems. Yet out in the real world, those who have been most directly affected by lockdown policy, find the narrow minded and un-sympathetic views of some of those on UKC UKB selfish, out of touch and often abhorrent.
It is now well understood that lockdown policy and Covid restrictions have impacted the poorest in society the hardest. Restrictions have also been used an umbrella vehicle under which the largest transfer of wealth in human history has occurred. It has made the wealthiest one percent even wealthier at the expense to everyone and everything else.
At the same time, our parliament, once accountable to the people, has run rough-shot over due democratic process. Our government has employed behavioural psychologists to ramp up the fear and manipulate the population. Our rights to protest have been curtailed. Our right to bodily autonomy is under threat. Our population has been left divided and frightened, not sure when the goalposts back to normal life will be moved once again. We are under imminent threat of a technocratic and authoritarian future unless we are careful.
The government (often via the media), has routinely encouraged the population to blame those who are not following the rules hard enough, or the un-vaccinated, or those who won’t wear masks, to distract attention from its own failings. After all, if we are all busy blaming each other, we forget about the thousands of elderly sent back to nursing homes to die last March without proper testing. We forget about the broken promises, the lies and the lucrative PPE contracts awarded to mates. We forget about the government’s mismanagement of the health service for decades which is the real reason why we are in this mess. In short, we are in an abusive relationship with our government.
On top of this the media has been controlled and kept in check by the Ofcom restrictions introduced during the spring of 2020 meaning that the media cannot communicate anything but the official government point of view on Covid. The media will also not bite the hand that feeds it. Convenient isn’t it that the two biggest advertising spenders with the UK media are the UK Government and the Pharmaceutical industry.
Think about it, when was the last time you heard a dissenting question asked at a government press conference? It never happens. The questions are always “should we do more of this?” or “perhaps sooner?”, or “maybe now is time for Plan B?”. It is never “show us the scientific evidence for this policy?”, or “what damage will this policy do?”, or “those numbers don’t seem right”, or back in January you said “15 million jabs to freedom” etc.
When cases go down it is seldom reported. As soon as cases rise they are ‘surging’ or exponential’. Even the chief of the NHS Amanda Pritchard was never properly called upon to apologise for her lie on ITV that there were 14 times more Covid patents in hospital than the same time last year, when the actual number was far less. And Prof Neil Fergusson who has never got a single prediction even nearly right since this whole thing started is still rolled out by the BBC as an expert.
To top this off are the ‘fact checkers’ including such schemes used directly to sensor mis-information on YouTube and Facebook. Please do your own research into who these people are, what their qualifications are, and who funds them. You will often be very surprised. The level of censorship going on across the board is epic.
If history proves correct, no doubt UKC UKB will delete this post (and me) as soon as it can, but by doing so it would firstly show you that what I say is correct. Secondly it would be showing it is committed to manipulating you, the forum user, into conforming to their way of thinking by hiding one perfectly valid side of the argument (this used to be called brainwashing). So let’s hope that UKC UKB sees sense at long last.
If the UKC UKB does censor this post then because I think that users need to be aware of what’s been going on, I will just come back again using a different device and a VPN to post this again. There should be no need for this hopefully. Therefore UKC UKB, please finally let the discussion be had without the ‘bad actors’, the censorship and the bullying. By discussing this in good faith we can hopefully reach a better place with more understanding all round.
Maybe a single thread where alternative views can be freely discussed might be a good idea?
In the meantime, here are some links if you do wish to have an alternate non-UKC UKB view of the world. Not all of these links you will agree with and some you might think are a little far-fetched. But that is the point. The aim is to understand both sides of the argument from which you can draw your own conclusions.
Edit: Links redacted because there weren't enough tentacles.
TLDR:
But, that’s that fellow that started all the BMC coup shite a couple years back, isn’t it?
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T(entacles)L(acking)D(idn't)R(read):
But, that’s that fellow that started all the BMC coup shite a couple years back, isn’t it?
No idea, it was posted anonymously afaik.
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After all, if we are all busy blaming each other, we forget about the thousands of elderly sent back to nursing homes to die last March without proper testing. We forget about the broken promises, the lies and the lucrative PPE contracts awarded to mates. We forget about the government’s mismanagement of the health service for decades which is the real reason why we are in this mess.
Can only speak for myself, but I really, REALLY haven't. I can remember those things and also think that anti-vaxxers are a bunch of tedious, dangerous arseholes, because my brain is capable of containing more than one thought.
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That’s outrageous. Surely the writer knows the idiom is ‘to ride rough-shod’? ‘Rough-shot’ is meaningless gibberish :no:
PS you know some seriously weird saddos, Fiend. And I don’t just mean on ukb.
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I don't know who posted the original. The person who copied the post for me is legit, they were mostly thinking of keeping me distracted / entertained whilst I'm nursing tweaks, quite thoughtful of them really ::)
P.S. Isn't "rough-shot" about right in this case??
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Touché
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'Nanorouter' - someone enthusiastic about climbing on the RH side of the Tor?
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I got shares in moderna and AZ...
I'm just concerned that the nanorouter I was injected with will need upgrades on a monthly basis, is that what the booster shots are for?
I'm also concerned it might not be compatible with my Android device. Is there a list somewhere of which vaccines work on which operating systems?
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It's a stunning piece of reasoning.
"We had an image from a microscope but it was very poor quality, so we rasterized it [Google 'vector Vs raster' if you don't know what this means] and were horrified to find a pattern of squares."
:slap:
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I got shares in moderna and AZ...
I'm just concerned that the nanorouter I was injected with will need upgrades on a monthly basis, is that what the booster shots are for?
I'm also concerned it might not be compatible with my Android device. Is there a list somewhere of which vaccines work on which operating systems?
Android and Apple work everywhere.
As for the Haiwei operating system - it's probably not got a bat in hell's chance of working.
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Is it from Wuhan? ;)
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I got shares in moderna and AZ...
I'm just concerned that the nanorouter I was injected with will need upgrades on a monthly basis, is that what the booster shots are for?
I'm also concerned it might not be compatible with my Android device. Is there a list somewhere of which vaccines work on which operating systems?
Given what I'm currently going through with Vodafone, I would like to advertise to any and all vaccine producers that I would be delighted to have nanorouters injected on a monthly basis in return for basic mobile phone functionality.
If it reduces my risk of getting Covid as well, that would be a nice bonus.
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However, unless these nanorouters configure to form a HUD on my retina I'm not bothered.
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Just waiting 15 mins after my booster. Gonna be a total of an hour taken up. Barely noticed the jab.
Quite happy to put up with that utterly tiny bit of inconvenience if it contributes to avoiding lockdowns and keeping the gyms open for knee rehab and the walls open for elbow rehab and eventual training. Meanwhile these knobends are blethering on about fucking nano-circuitry and tentacle-routers, oh just piss off already.
Incidentally I presume that any anti-vaxxers campaigning on the whole "my body my rules" shite that conveniently ignores the fact we've all been part of a communal interactive society for millenia, are also campaigning for hard drug legalisation because after all that's another clear example of the govts ruling over what we can and can't do with our own bodies...
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Freedom to choose may have a price.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/07/trump-voters-counties-more-likely-die-covid-study
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Incidentally I presume that any anti-vaxxers campaigning on the whole "my body my rules" shite that conveniently ignores the fact we've all been part of a communal interactive society for millenia, are also campaigning for hard drug legalisation because after all that's another clear example of the govts ruling over what we can and can't do with our own bodies...
There's a big difference between being told by the state what you can't put into your body, and what you MUST put into your body (to keep you job/place in society etc, or avoid being routinely fined (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greece-covid-vaccine-mandate-omicron-b1967117.html) )
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Arguably true. There's also a big difference in the potential penalties.
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A vaccination card has long been around and necessary for travel and work to various different places - mine is tucked away next my passport, has been for years.
No jab for (insert disease) = no travel insurance = Kelvin not working. I'm sure Matt mentioned his card a few pages back. This has resulted in me pottering off to the surgery to get a jab to keep my job. :wank:
Easy for me as I'm not believing in tentacled heebeeweejees or Bill Gates Corp nanorouters.
I'm happy to accept that people don't want to be forced to have jabs but at least be honest about why and don't go making up 'evidence' to back your argument. It makes me switch off to any claims of sufferance that are put forth.
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Freedom to choose may have a price.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/07/trump-voters-counties-more-likely-die-covid-study
Clearly a Democrat led conspiracy to kill the Republicans?
I've been dealing with a parts supplier for the van. He mentioned he was struggling due to having 2 guys off with covid. I mentioned I had had it 2 weeks ago, now fine, commiserated but DID mentioned I was double vaxxed. His guy has been off 2 weeks and was in hospital. Who knows if he was vaxxed or not, but hopefully some subtle messaging might help the case...or not....
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I'm increasingly of the view that like, if you refuse to get the jab, why should the rest of society adjust its behaviour for you
Like if you won't get it, then don't travel internationally, don't go to festivals etc. Tough shit.
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One point is that getting a jab protects others to some extent as well as the vaccinated individual. Likewise masks. There are plenty of people who cannot be vaccinated or for whom the vaccines are not fully effective. The safety of these people is very dependent on the behaviour of others which is why I find anti vax and anti mask attitudes disheartening.
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Is it ethically okay to demand mandatory vaccine passports for people sharing your home board??
#askingonbehalfoftheentireyorkshirecontingentthebunchofincestuousbuttlordsthattheyare
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Is it ethically okay to demand mandatory vaccine passports for people sharing your home board??
#askingonbehalfoftheentireyorkshirecontingentthebunchofincestuousbuttlordsthattheyare
I'm afraid board owners of Yorkshire will need to crush alone this winter unless they want the HSE knocking at their garage door:
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/NIOSH%E2%80%99s_%E2%80%9CHierarchy_of_Controls_infographic%E2%80%9D_as_SVG.svg/1200px-NIOSH%E2%80%99s_%E2%80%9CHierarchy_of_Controls_infographic%E2%80%9D_as_SVG.svg.png)