[Misc] Will we have another lockdown ?

[Audax]

The thing I don’t understand about the way the government decided to report the death numbers, is that you would have thought they would want to play them down, not big them up. You would have thought the government in charge of a pandemic would want to show how well they are keeping people alive, rather than exaggerating the death figures. It makes no sense.

Unless you believe it is all some kind of control conspiracy. As if BoJo an his band of buffoons have the capability for something like that!

They are underestimating. At the moment by nearly 25,000 (129k "official" vs 153k on death certs). A lot of that gap is from early on when they weren't testing, but even now the "within 28 days" statistic is crap. Test positive today, have a car accident tomorrow - included. Test positive today and die from Covid at the end of August - not included. As a rough "estimate" of deaths, the official figure reported each day does a job. But it's not accurate and should never have been portrayed as such - partly because when it came out that it wasn't it leads to exactly the misunderstandings that we've seen in this thread.

(below not directly related to the post I quoted)

Similarly, there's a lot of misunderstanding of what "underlying conditions" actually means. Far too many in society interpret that as "they're dying anyway", partly because it was portrayed that way in the media with some of the early deaths. There's far too many out there who don't understand that an "underlying condition" doesn't mean someone was going to die within days or weeks anyway. Just some of the "underlying conditions" that can worsen outcomes if you catch Covid but are not typically immediately life threatening:

- Diabetes
- High blood pressure (in particular around the lungs)
- Being a current or former smoker
- Being a transplant recipient (I have a cousin who fits in this category. He's already over 10 years on from his transplant and living a full and healthy life, but if he caught Covid he'd be in a lot of trouble and classified as having an "underlying condition")
- Being pregnant
- Being overweight
- Having HIV
- Asthma
- Down Syndrome

 

[Audax]

The contribution of COVID-19 to this increase in deaths in private homes is small, at just over 3,000. The increase of non-COVID-19 deaths in private homes is 30% above the five-year average.

Yep - on that side you've got a lot of deaths where Covid wasn't directly involved but the pandemic itself nevertheless contributed. You've got people who couldn't get treatment they needed because of the state the NHS was in, you've got people who died of perfectly treatable conditions because they were too scared of going to hospital and catching Covid that they never got diagnosed, etc etc.

It's a horribly complicated picture, and we won't know the true extent for years to come I think. That's why I really think that Boris delaying the inquiry into next year is so wrong. The longer the delay, the vaguer memories will be, the more difficult it will be to pick apart a lot of what went on (in particular within government and government departments).

 

[Audax]

nice read and some parts are good for me.

Do note its from " im an NHS Covid ward manager ....anonymous"

Not saying its untrue but the media use a lot of this to scare to get vaccines

Suspect in this case it'll be anonymous for bureaucratic reasons: a) the person who wrote it probably wasn't authorised to write it, and b) it helps with data protection. If we don't know who wrote it, we then also can't trace back to patients they might be talking about.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

They are underestimating. At the moment by nearly 25,000 (129k "official" vs 153k on death certs). A lot of that gap is from early on when they weren't testing, but even now the "within 28 days" statistic is crap. Test positive today, have a car accident tomorrow - included. Test positive today and die from Covid at the end of August - not included. As a rough "estimate" of deaths, the official figure reported each day does a job. But it's not accurate and should never have been portrayed as such - partly because when it came out that it wasn't it leads to exactly the misunderstandings that we've seen in this thread.

(below not directly related to the post I quoted)

Similarly, there's a lot of misunderstanding of what "underlying conditions" actually means. Far too many in society interpret that as "they're dying anyway", partly because it was portrayed that way in the media with some of the early deaths. There's far too many out there who don't understand that an "underlying condition" doesn't mean someone was going to die within days or weeks anyway. Just some of the "underlying conditions" that can worsen outcomes if you catch Covid but are not typically immediately life threatening:

- Diabetes
- High blood pressure (in particular around the lungs)
- Being a current or former smoker
- Being a transplant recipient (I have a cousin who fits in this category. He's already over 10 years on from his transplant and living a full and healthy life, but if he caught Covid he'd be in a lot of trouble and classified as having an "underlying condition")
- Being pregnant
- Being overweight
- Having HIV
- Asthma
- Down Syndrome

Also having had a severe stroke and being at risk of more. It wasn’t enough to go on the Government shielding list despite the incidence of strokes caused by Covid.

 

[Albion Dan]

How many ? How does that compare to the numbers who didn’t have Covid on their death certificate despite dying from the disease (particularly last year) ? I suspect you don’t know the answer to either question and without those answers yours is really not much of an argument at all.

As you well know it is impossible to quantify how many because the certificate just said with Covid. What I do know is that there were many reports of deaths that simpy couldnt have been because of Covid where with covid was added. That's a fact.

Likewise those that have died very soon after a vaccination have that as a potential contributor of death (now over 10k in the states) but not fact. All I am asking is that there is recognition that is a factor on both sides of the measures.

 

[Deportivo Seagull]

It’s not for selfish reasons - I choose not to take drugs/medicines where possible. I believe the immune system we have is powerful against most infections (of course not everything), but the problem is that so many people have such a bad lifestyle that their immune system is weakened. look at the junk which most people view as food - jeez. These are the people that expect to go the the doctors and ‘made well’.

I am sorry that you have reasons for needing the shield and I appreciate your courtesy in your replies, as it could be easy to take offence to my view under such circumstances. I also have a friend who needs to be careful with a compromised immune system, and I would wear a mask around him. But, for the relatively small percentage of people who are like this, they should be taking their own precautions (as you obviously are).

I believe that society has now got to the position where it expects life to be risk free. It’s not and never has been. This pandemic in comparison to the 1918 Spanish flu is fairly minor.

Just so I understand this.

For the vaccine to be effective and to protect those that have illnesses that make them very vulnerable to COVID (blood cancers, asthmatics, birth defects and other non live style illnesses), It is extremely important that we play our part by having the jab to reduce transmission. The vaccine is not 100% so it will still be in a small part of the population.

You clearly aren’t interested and are taking the I’m alright jack approach . That’s selfish in my book.

I do agree that a very large proportion of those that have died or got very ill can be attributed in a large part to lifestyle. Post COVID this needs to be addressed but using peoples life style as the basis of the reason for not having the jab is quite frankly bollocks.

If you catch the winter flu and then get exposed to COVID you are going to be very very ill unless you’ve had the jab.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Audax]

Also having had a severe stroke and being at risk of more. It wasn’t enough to go on the Government shielding list despite the incidence of strokes caused by Covid.

Yeah, I left a bunch off the list - I was going for the more "benign" types of underlying conditions. However, you are right. A history of stroke, history of cancer (even if successfully treated and in remission), lung related conditions such as COPD, etc. For all of these, they may or may not be immediately life threatening in and of themselves. COPD, for example, can be relatively mild and while having it would shorten life expectancy, it can be lived with for a long time. Or it can be severe and heavily shorten life expectancy.

Also worth mentioning that I've also seen early reports that those who have had Covid are more likely to subsequently die from heart attack / stroke than those who haven't (at a point in time where Covid won't be on the death cert). A lot more research to go into that one, but given what we know about Long Covid and the damage that Covid can do to the lungs and heart of those who survive Covid, I suspect that we'll eventually be hearing more about this.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

As you well know it is impossible to quantify how many because the certificate just said with Covid. What I do know is that there were many reports of deaths that simpy couldnt have been because of Covid where with covid was added. That's a fact.

Likewise those that have died very soon after a vaccination have that as a potential contributor of death (now over 10k in the states) but not fact. All I am asking is that there is recognition that is a factor on both sides of the measures.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths

If the death certificate cites Covid as the cause of death then that is the reason in the opinion of the doctor and they are duty bound to record honestly and in their professional opinion. If you are disputing this number then why not dispute reasons for death on all death certificates ? I thought your issue was the arbitrary 28 day measure in which case just look at the death certificate number which is higher and probably under reports because of missing cases from early last year.

 

[Audax]

As you well know it is impossible to quantify how many because the certificate just said with Covid. What I do know is that there were many reports of deaths that simpy couldnt have been because of Covid where with covid was added. That's a fact.

It's also common for a lot of other diseases, not just Covid. My uncle died a few years back from a stroke. It was the stroke that killed him. But his death cert also lists lung cancer. It lists lung cancer not just because he had lung cancer, but because the stroke was probably caused by a combination of the treatments he was on for the lung cancer (blood thinners, because the lung cancer was causing blood clots) and the lung cancer itself.

In a lot of the cases you'll have heard about where "with Covid" is listed, it is because the direct cause of death was "something else" (eg blood clot-induced stroke or heart attack) but the underlying cause of that "something else" happening in the first place night have been Covid. In particular in the first wave when the understanding of how Covid affected the body in severe cases wasn't well understood, it will have been difficult for doctors to definitively say "Covid was the direct cause" so they will have listed the immediately obvious cause (organ failure, heart attack, stroke etc) and then "with Covid" alongside.

Having said that: yes, there was a number of cases of people who were dying anyway being admitted to hospital, catching Covid, and dying with Covid added to the death cert. It happens. Not just with Covid, it happens with other hospital-acquired diseases as well (eg bacterial infections that hasten by a day or two a death that would have occurred anyway).

Anyway, let's look at the facts shall we: https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n352

From that link: "In 90% of certificates where covid-19 is recorded, it does so in part 1 as the cause contributing directly to death."

That puts to bed the argument that most died "with" Covid, not because of it. The vast, vast majority of death certs that have Covid listed, list it as the direct cause of death. If we take the current 153k death certs covid deaths and apply that 90% figure to it, we're still talking about nearly 138k deaths caused by Covid. Which is still higher than the official government figure of 129k (the bull shit "died within 28 days of a positive test" figure).

 

[Bozza]

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths

If the death certificate cites Covid as the cause of death then that is the reason in the opinion of the doctor and they are duty bound to record honestly and in their professional opinion. If you are disputing this number then why not dispute reasons for death on all death certificates ? I thought your issue was the arbitrary 28 day measure in which case just look at the death certificate number which is higher and probably under reports because of missing cases from early last year.

As someone who knew very little (ok, ok, nothing) about death certificates, I found this piece provided a solid explanation: https://www.independent.co.uk/voice...ertificates-conspiracy-theories-a9513981.html

 

[Guinness Boy]

Just so I understand this.

For the vaccine to be effective and to protect those that have illnesses that make them very vulnerable to COVID (blood cancers, asthmatics, birth defects and other non live style illnesses), It is extremely important that we play our part by having the jab to reduce transmission. The vaccine is not 100% so it will still be in a small part of the population.

You clearly aren’t interested and are taking the I’m alright jack approach . That’s selfish in my book.

I do agree that a very large proportion of those that have died or got very ill can be attributed in a large part to lifestyle. Post COVID this needs to be addressed but using peoples life style as the basis of the reason for not having the jab is quite frankly bollocks.

If you catch the winter flu and then get exposed to COVID you are going to be very very ill unless you’ve had the jab.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

This, You get vaccinated to protect others. If you can get vaccinated you should do. You wear a mask to protect others. If you can wear one in crowded indoor situations you should continue to do so. Or you are very, very selfish and quite arrogant.

However, what does not help is things like "smoking and obesity" being mentioned as "benign" underlying conditions. They are both lifestyle choices. A long term smoker could get cancer or COPD at any time. The more obese you are the greater your chance of a heart attack today, tomorrow or next week. And I say that as an ex-smoker who took a long time to recover from Covid - I regretted every cigarette at that point, but I didn't bleat about having an underlying condition.

 

[beorhthelm]

The thing I don’t understand about the way the government decided to report the death numbers, is that you would have thought they would want to play them down, not big them up. You would have thought the government in charge of a pandemic would want to show how well they are keeping people alive, rather than exaggerating the death figures. It makes no sense.

Unless you believe it is all some kind of control conspiracy. As if BoJo an his band of buffoons have the capability for something like that!

i would expect its because clinicians and statisticians want to collect and report reasonably useful numbers. reporting only those dieing "of Covid", with no other comorbidity, would grossly understate the problem and prevent them from responding properly. for them, contraction of Covid makes people ill, then die of another pre-existing condition a week is a simple case of understanding risks and consequences. they report all reasonably impacting comorbidity on the death cert and statisticians filter them out later.

 

[Albion Dan]

Or you are very, very selfish and quite arrogant.

.

Or they are not wanting to take something where there is now a lot of information out there suggesting that risks might be higher than being presented? 10k+ people now in the states listed on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System as having died after taking the vaccine and it being cited as a complication. https://www.openvaers.com . I appreciate this is small in context of those that have had the vaccine but that's a pretty big number of people that have been reported as potentially dying because of the vaccine that may not have at all because of Covid. I've also read that VAERS potentially only has a 10% reporting rate.

Again I really don't want to get into some of the old childish arguments of the past I want to present a counter balance to this view that its just selfish to not want to take the vaccine at this stage as I think it is a real debate that is going to run and run. Just casting people who dont want a vaccine as selfish or stupid isnt going to help at all and will just polarise yet another section of society from each other, just what we dont need more of.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Or they are not wanting to take something where there is now a lot of information out there suggesting that risks might be higher than being presented? 10k+ people now in the states listed on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System as having died after taking the vaccine and it being cited as a complication. https://www.openvaers.com . I appreciate this is small in context of those that have had the vaccine but that's a pretty big number of people that have been reported as potentially dying because of the vaccine that may not have at all because of Covid. I've also read that VAERS potentially only has a 10% reporting rate.

Again I really don't want to get into some of the old childish arguments of the past I want to present a counter balance to this view that its just selfish to not want to take the vaccine at this stage as I think it is a real debate that is going to run and run. Just casting people who dont want a vaccine as selfish or stupid isnt going to help at all and will just polarise yet another section of society from each other, just what we dont need more of.

That's fine - not going to binfest this one.

My position is that even if those numbers ARE accurate then they are lower than the number of deaths in unvaccinated people. I'll leave it there on my side.

 

[Audax]

However, what does not help is things like "smoking and obesity" being mentioned as "benign" underlying conditions. They are both lifestyle choices. A long term smoker could get cancer or COPD at any time. The more obese you are the greater your chance of a heart attack today, tomorrow or next week. And I say that as an ex-smoker who took a long time to recover from Covid - I regretted every cigarette at that point, but I didn't bleat about having an underlying condition.

I used the term "benign" in the sense that they are not immediately life threatening. And while I agree with you 100% that smoking is a life style choice, and that hose who make that choice need to accept and live with the consequences, for many of those in the older demographics who smoked from a young age, they did so unaware of the risks they were taking. Similarly, there are many who made poor life style choices when younger who have since corrected that choice. But they will remain at greater risk of severe illness from Covid. Well do I know this: on my father's side of the family we lost my grandfather in his 50's, two of my uncles in their 50's, and my grandmother mid-60's. All 4 smoked heavily, all 4 died of smoking related complications. All 4 started smoking before the risks were known and were unable to quit. My father and aunt are both going strong in their mid-to-late 60's, neither of whom ever smoked.

In regards being over-weight / obese. Again, in many cases, it is the result of life style choice. Absolutely. But for a not-insignificant proportion of the population it has nothing to do with life style choices. I've know a number of clinically over weight people in my life time who have lived what the rest of us would consider quite healthy life styles. Many of them followed healthier lifestyles than I do, but they are "over weight" while I have spent most of my life being technically "under weight". For many, their status as over- or under-weight has nothing to do with life style and can, therefore, be considered a "condition".

Or they are not wanting to take something where there is now a lot of information out there suggesting that risks might be higher than being presented? 10k+ people now in the states listed on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System as having died after taking the vaccine and it being cited as a complication. https://www.openvaers.com . I appreciate this is small in context of those that have had the vaccine but that's a pretty big number of people that have been reported as potentially dying because of the vaccine that may not have at all because of Covid. I've also read that VAERS potentially only has a 10% reporting rate.

An interesting link you've provided. I'd be interested in seeing whether or not the data they are reporting is considered to be faithfully produced or (whether consciously or unconsciously) produced in a way that introduces flaws. For those who haven't clicked through: it is not an official website. It is a site that is run by a group of private citizens in the US who have direct experience of adverse events from vaccines. They claim to only be presenting data in an easily-accessible format as an alternative to using the official VAERS site, but as far as I can tell they have had no independent verification that the data they are producing is an accurate reflection of reality. Nor do they present any independently verified comparison between vaccine-related adverse events or Covid-related adverse events. Nor do they appear to be doing any follow ups to discover how many of these reports are subsequently found to be unrelated to the vaccine.

So: treat with caution. The data they present might be accurate (as far as it goes), or it might not. And the way it is generated and presented makes it very difficult to draw any scientific conclusions (in particular the lack of tracking reported adverse events to filter out those ultimately found to be unrelated to the vaccine). I also noted that they are pulling in non-medical adverse events as well - they've got a lot of data points that relate to mistakes in how the vaccine was administered (eg patient too young, vaccine not stored correctly, wrong dose given).

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

Or they are not wanting to take something where there is now a lot of information out there suggesting that risks might be higher than being presented? 10k+ people now in the states listed on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System as having died after taking the vaccine and it being cited as a complication. https://www.openvaers.com . I appreciate this is small in context of those that have had the vaccine but that's a pretty big number of people that have been reported as potentially dying because of the vaccine that may not have at all because of Covid. I've also read that VAERS potentially only has a 10% reporting rate.

Again I really don't want to get into some of the old childish arguments of the past I want to present a counter balance to this view that its just selfish to not want to take the vaccine at this stage as I think it is a real debate that is going to run and run. Just casting people who dont want a vaccine as selfish or stupid isnt going to help at all and will just polarise yet another section of society from each other, just what we dont need more of.

If you believe this stuff do you think it would have been better to not roll out the vaccine ? Presumably our choices then would have been either to remain in perpetual lockdown or massively increase NHS funding to cope with the hospitalizations and deaths ? Where would you have found the staff ? What would you have said to relatives of victims of Covid if the medical advances to prevent their deaths were in place but it was not deployed ? Or does none of this apply because you are happy to piggy back on most other people’s community spirit ?

 

[dsr-burnley]

Or they are not wanting to take something where there is now a lot of information out there suggesting that risks might be higher than being presented? 10k+ people now in the states listed on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System as having died after taking the vaccine and it being cited as a complication. https://www.openvaers.com . I appreciate this is small in context of those that have had the vaccine but that's a pretty big number of people that have been reported as potentially dying because of the vaccine that may not have at all because of Covid. I've also read that VAERS potentially only has a 10% reporting rate.

Again I really don't want to get into some of the old childish arguments of the past I want to present a counter balance to this view that its just selfish to not want to take the vaccine at this stage as I think it is a real debate that is going to run and run. Just casting people who dont want a vaccine as selfish or stupid isnt going to help at all and will just polarise yet another section of society from each other, just what we dont need more of.

OpenVAERS is a site run by non-medical people. Those 10k people who died shortly after taking a vaccine have not had their cause of death linked to a vaccine except by the friends or relatives who reported it.

Simply by law of averages, you would expect at least 15,000 people of those vaccinated in the USA, to die within 24 hours after the vaccine. Another 15,000 the day after. And the day after that.

Try and find an actual medical site that reports on deaths, and you might be reassured.

 

[Pavilionaire]

1. I don't think there will be another lockdown while Boris Johnson is Prime Minister.

2. I think infection will be rampant over the coming months, but the Tories will see this as a price worth paying to establish "herd immunity" in the country.

 

[Albion Dan]

I used the term "benign" in the sense that they are not immediately life threatening. And while I agree with you 100% that smoking is a life style choice, and that hose who make that choice need to accept and live with the consequences, for many of those in the older demographics who smoked from a young age, they did so unaware of the risks they were taking. Similarly, there are many who made poor life style choices when younger who have since corrected that choice. But they will remain at greater risk of severe illness from Covid. Well do I know this: on my father's side of the family we lost my grandfather in his 50's, two of my uncles in their 50's, and my grandmother mid-60's. All 4 smoked heavily, all 4 died of smoking related complications. All 4 started smoking before the risks were known and were unable to quit. My father and aunt are both going strong in their mid-to-late 60's, neither of whom ever smoked.

In regards being over-weight / obese. Again, in many cases, it is the result of life style choice. Absolutely. But for a not-insignificant proportion of the population it has nothing to do with life style choices. I've know a number of clinically over weight people in my life time who have lived what the rest of us would consider quite healthy life styles. Many of them followed healthier lifestyles than I do, but they are "over weight" while I have spent most of my life being technically "under weight". For many, their status as over- or under-weight has nothing to do with life style and can, therefore, be considered a "condition".




An interesting link you've provided. I'd be interested in seeing whether or not the data they are reporting is considered to be faithfully produced or (whether consciously or unconsciously) produced in a way that introduces flaws. For those who haven't clicked through: it is not an official website. It is a site that is run by a group of private citizens in the US who have direct experience of adverse events from vaccines. They claim to only be presenting data in an easily-accessible format as an alternative to using the official VAERS site, but as far as I can tell they have had no independent verification that the data they are producing is an accurate reflection of reality. Nor do they present any independently verified comparison between vaccine-related adverse events or Covid-related adverse events. Nor do they appear to be doing any follow ups to discover how many of these reports are subsequently found to be unrelated to the vaccine.

So: treat with caution. The data they present might be accurate (as far as it goes), or it might not. And the way it is generated and presented makes it very difficult to draw any scientific conclusions (in particular the lack of tracking reported adverse events to filter out those ultimately found to be unrelated to the vaccine). I also noted that they are pulling in non-medical adverse events as well - they've got a lot of data points that relate to mistakes in how the vaccine was administered (eg patient too young, vaccine not stored correctly, wrong dose given).

You can run a report direct from the base data here. The numbers are accurate.

https://wonder.cdc.gov/vaers.html

 

[Audax]

OpenVAERS is a site run by non-medical people. Those 10k people who died shortly after taking a vaccine have not had their cause of death linked to a vaccine except by the friends or relatives who reported it.

Simply by law of averages, you would expect at least 15,000 people of those vaccinated in the USA, to die within 24 hours after the vaccine. Another 15,000 the day after. And the day after that.

Try and find an actual medical site that reports on deaths, and you might be reassured.

I'm looking through some of the data points they are including. Looks to me like they've made an easy mistake: they're pulling all records where a patient has had the vaccine, regardless of how recently and the actual cause of death. Found one record where the listed cause of death is Covid, which the patient caught 5 months after having their vaccine.