[acsinuk]

So it is just like a common flu virus and we idiots have over reacted to panicking medical experts.  The NHS needs to be put on a war footing and told to get on with their job and stop scare mongering.
Hopefully, the house of Lords will oppose and delay the lockdown implementation by insisting on suitable amendments to allow normal fit people to continue their lives without fear.

[alancalverd]

Nothing to do with the NHS, but much to do with HM Registrars of Births Marriages and Deaths.

Apparently they are a bunch of lefties who keep lying about the number of people reported dead, except in the summer when they all go on holiday and the reported death rate decreases to the normal level.

And all those scroungers who would rather go to a food bank than work, or try to claim benefits because they had a mild dose of flu and now can't breathe or think.

Source: Donald Trump in tomorrow's Daily Mail. 

[alancalverd]

No need to wait for a mutation.

Current evidence is that the halflife of COVID antibodies is a couple of months, so the vaccine won't eliminate the virus but just make it a bit less dangerous for medical staff to treat victims. 

Six months and counting according to today's papers

Read the small print
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54696873 "Immunity is waning quite rapidly, we're only three months after our first [round of tests] and we're already showing a 26% decline in antibodies," said Prof Helen Ward, one of the researchers.

[Petrochemicals]

No need to wait for a mutation.

Current evidence is that the halflife of COVID antibodies is a couple of months, so the vaccine won't eliminate the virus but just make it a bit less dangerous for medical staff to treat victims. 

Six months and counting according to today's papers

Read the small print
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54696873 "Immunity is waning quite rapidly, we're only three months after our first [round of tests] and we're already showing a 26% decline in antibodies," said Prof Helen Ward, one of the researchers.

Rat hole. Today's papers I said yesterday. T cell b cell antibodies etc.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/02/t-cell-covid-immunity-present-in-adults-six-months-after-first-infection

[Bored chemist]

Rat hole. Today's papers I said yesterday. T cell b cell antibodies etc

Do you understand that if there were lots 6 months ago, and they had a half life of a couple of months, there would still be some... but here's the important bit; there might not be enough.?

Did you consider that before you posted?
If so, how did you address the fact?

The reality is that nobody actually knows how long an given level of immunity persists in any given subset of the population.

But the best we can do is hope.
Even if we only do as good a job as we do with the flu that will be a great step forward.
It drops the infection rate among those vaccinated by about 60%
That, on its own, is enough to take an R value from 1.5 to less than 1.
So, it would be enough to wipe out the virus with the same sort of restrictions that we currently have, rather than the more stringent lockdown.

That's the point; it doesn't need to be perfect.

[acsinuk]

If I were a teenager or of working age; I would seriously consider that the draconian measures introduced against normal healthy people is a totally over the top reaction to what turns out to be similar to a normal flu type virus.  We all know that if we are sick or have a temperature we should stay at home in bed till be get better just as your parents taught you..   

[Bored chemist]

We all know that if we are sick or have a temperature we should stay at home in bed

What the F*** use is that when the symptoms, if they show at all, are two days after you are infectious?
Are you actually an idiot, or are you posting these nonsense posts as an exercise in trolling?

[alancalverd]

similar to a normal flu type virus

It's pretty much the same size and shape, but the similarity ends there. Charlie Chaplin was born on the same day as Adolf Hitler, and looked very much like him. You choose.

As anybody who knows anything about COVID (even the Daily Mail, for God's sake!) will tell you, it is unique in being infectious but asymptomatic in many people, dangerous for 20%, and deadly for 5% of those who are infected. Think of a million Typhoid Marys wandering the streets.

[Bored chemist]

Since you can't tell if you have the virus, the only socially responsible thing to do is act as if you do have it.

[Petrochemicals]

If I were a teenager or of working age; I would seriously consider that the draconian measures introduced against normal healthy people is a totally over the top reaction to what turns out to be similar to a normal flu type virus.  We all know that if we are sick or have a temperature we should stay at home in bed till be get better just as your parents taught you..   

There are 3 differences between this virus and a standard year flu virus

1 is that no one has had a chance to build immunity to this viruz

2 we haven't a vaccine for the vunerable

3 this virus is considerably less dangerous than a flu virus

For a simular comparison between flu and this virus look at 1918 Spanish flu, that was a new 'novel' virus, it had no vaccine and it was influenza . Look at the differences in Sweden between 1918 and 2020.  Couple to this that a large portion of the populace is sustained by herd immunity and vaccines every year against the flu virus thus meaning a large group of people are vulnerable compared to 1918 when life expectancy was beneath the age of 65 you get the idea of quite how bad the 1918 flu was in comparison.

[alancalverd]

a 2007 analysis of medical journals from the period of the pandemic found that the viral infection [Spanish flu] was no more aggressive than previous influenza strains. Instead, malnourishment, overcrowded medical camps and hospitals, and poor hygiene, all exacerbated by the recent war, promoted bacterial superinfection. This superinfection killed most of the victims, typically after a somewhat prolonged death bed.

Also aided by the fact that the principal sources were in military camps in the USA, France, Germany and the UK, where the news was suppressed by the wartime censors. 

Always read the small print.

[Petrochemicals]

a 2007 analysis of medical journals from the period of the pandemic found that the viral infection [Spanish flu] was no more aggressive than previous influenza strains. Instead, malnourishment, overcrowded medical camps and hospitals, and poor hygiene, all exacerbated by the recent war, promoted bacterial superinfection. This superinfection killed most of the victims, typically after a somewhat prolonged death bed.

Also aided by the fact that the principal sources were in military camps in the USA, France, Germany and the UK, where the news was suppressed by the wartime censors. 

Always read the small print.

No it was not. Spanish flu didn't start in europe, but was called Spanish flu because of media restrictions due to the war, Spain was not in the war hence Spain was the first publicly acknowledged area. We haven't a war now yet flu still spreads
Plus your quote is crap. Pregnant women who I doubt where anywhere near the war in the USA received a near death sentence.

And I've just realised the always read the small print may me referring to the ""stem the tide of ignorance" that is your moniker? You should stop using that if you are spreading disinformation, especially if you will ot even try, such as seen in your post 162 in this thread. All you had to do was search "today's papers corona immunity", but you didn't, you just posted crap that bolstered your position. Literally, search "corona immunity" , click on the news. I suggest changing it to

 "Alan calvert pushing my own opinion despite of the facts at the expense of truth, misleading the ignorant. And something about Hitler"

[alancalverd]

So you can read Wikipedia. That's a start, at least.

The newspapers carry all sorts of interpretations of the immunity study, apparently depending on the political color of the owners. But the scientific evidence is of an exponential decrease, as expected, pointed out n this discussion, and evident from the graph published in the Daily Mail.  This is entirely normal and the reason why we need booster shots for various immunisations, the problem with COVID being that the half life of COVID immunity is inconveniently short and we don't have a booster.

A little less hysteria would be welcome.

[Petrochemicals]

So you can read Wikipedia. That's a start, at least.

The newspapers carry all sorts of interpretations of the immunity study, apparently depending on the political color of the owners. But the scientific evidence is of an exponential decrease, as expected, pointed out n this discussion, and evident from the graph published in the Daily Mail.  This is entirely normal and the reason why we need booster shots for various immunisations, the problem with COVID being that the half life of COVID immunity is inconveniently short and we don't have a booster.

A little less hysteria would be welcome.

There was not a Hitler mentioned in that post Alan, Well done you.

[acsinuk]

My only comment is that we were told about this vaccine in March so why the delay. 40,000 people have die in UK just because the testing was following some legalistic H&S procedure!!!!  We, according to Boris are at war with the virus and so to reduce the casualties in wartime you need immediate action.  When the next virus hits let us fight it faster, much, much faster.

[Bored chemist]

just because the testing was following some legalistic H&S procedure!!!! 

Yeah. damned busybodies keeping people alive.

We, according to Boris are at war with the virus and so to reduce the casualties in wartime you need immediate action.

You can enormously increase the casualty rate in war by taking immediate action- before you do reconnaissance.

When the next virus hits let us fight it faster, much, much faster.

Yes.
And the best actual weapon we have at the moment (and the only weapon with a new virus) is lockdown/ quarantine.
I'm glad you are now on board with that.
what took you so long?

[evan_au]

why the delay. 40,000 people have die in UK just because the testing was following some legalistic H&S procedure!!!!

It comes back to the Hippocratic goal of "Do No Harm". You don't want to make a patient worse than they were.

If you take New Zealand, with practically no cases of coronavirus circulating in community.
- The death rate may be 1 person every 2 months
- But all these New Zealanders want to get a vaccine so they can travel to Fiji, Australia, the USA or the UK (or to survive when their neighbour comes back from those destinations).
- So if we deploy a vaccine that has a 0.1% fatality rate (ie much less than Coronavirus), you end up with 4,000 deaths in a population of 4,000,000.
- If this were the USA, the manufacturer would then have 4,000 lawsuits each claiming $1 billion for loss of income and extreme emotional distress.
- Since it is New Zealand, it would probably mean that the government would get voted out at the next election due to forcing the population to take a "dangerous" vaccine.

So the safety bar is set very high for a drug that you give to a healthy person (eg a vaccine). You don't want to make them worse than they are now, even though it might prevent them getting sick in the future.
- If you are in the USA, with new cases exceeding 100,000 per day, you may want to accept a greater risk from the vaccine to avoid a greater risk from the coronavirus
- But the extremely litigious nature of the US legal system means that pharmaceutical companies can't take that risk (despite all the waivers you sign before taking the vaccine).
- No government wants to be seen to harm their people
       ....unless you are Donald Trump, who thinks it will just go away by itself (which is perhaps why he closed the White House office charged with pandemic readiness)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/nsc-pandemic-office-trump-closed/2020/03/13/a70de09c-6491-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html

[alancalverd]

some legalistic H&S procedure

Here's the choice. You can avoid catching a disease, or be injected with a product that might infect you lethally, might possibly prevent you catching the disease if you were to expose yourself to it, or might do nothing at all.

Thankfully, lots of animals and a few brave volunteers got involved in a legalistic H&S procedure, but you want the government to inject your wife and children with this untested magic potion because the only way to protect you is to inject everyone else.   And you don't care how much time, effort and your tax money we spend on it if it doesn't work or kills half the population - what matters is ACTION, not outcome..

That's not how most people think.

[Petrochemicals]

If 50000 people have passed away due to corona as an estimate 25000 cases of excess mortality have occoured catagoricaly not due to corona. Probably due to lack of treatment,
Screenshot_20201111_164354.jpg (192.4 kB . 1827x946 - viewed 434 times)

[alancalverd]

What is the basis of your estimate? It's a bit suspicious because it matches the COVID curve so closely: early death due to delayed treatment is likely to lag a couple of weeks behind the cause of the delay.

Remember that deaths registered as COVID is always an underestimate as COVID is not usually a killer by itself, and in times of crisis, nobody is going to carry out postmortems on non-suspicious deaths, particularly if the corpse may be infected. 

There are arguments that accidental deaths -principally road accidents - have decreased during periods of lockdown. These statistics should be fairly easy to find, and your graph suggests this - it is certainly the case in Sweden that in a few weeks with very few reported COVID deaths, the overall death rate fell below expectation. Problem is that they are likely to increase again if folk go back to work in cars and on bikes  instead of using public transport.