Main Coronavirus / Covid-19 Discussion Thread

[dsr-burnley]

Indeed. And as I said if we get it wrong by acting early, we row back relieved. (And, let's be clear, Plan B really doesn't make much difference - everything is open, at full capacity and we have to wear a mask now and again.)

If we act late and get it wrong, people die, possibly lots and lots of them.

Which way is best?

I desperately hope these mild ratcheting up of restrictions is an over-creation. That would be the best outcome here.

From the Sage minutes...

14. The faster the growth in infections at the point measures are introduced, the more admissions will increase in the period between action being taken and the number of admissions being affected. With lags of the order of two or more weeks, and doubling times of the order of three days, it is likely that, once hospitalisations begin to increase at a rate similar to that of cases, four doublings (a 16-fold increase) or more could already be “in the system” before interventions that slow infections are reflected in hospitalisations.​

The main thing I'll take away from this pandemic is how most people really don't understand exponential growth.

I agree that Boris's latest restrictions are pretty useless. If he wants to make a difference, or more specifically wants to put restrictions in place so that omicron can't spread, then we need a full lockdown, and it needs to be long-lasting enough to last until the variant has gone away or been neutralised, even if that takes years.

The current restrictions will do nothing. A full lockdown if omicron proves no worse than delta, would do nothing beneficial. But if omicron does prove more harmful than delta, then a short term lockdown would do nothing - or at least, nothing good. It would do a lot of harm. Any lockdown would have to be long term to save any lives.

I think what they have in mind is that we could have another lockdown if omicron is harmful - close the schools again, borrow many more billions from Lord-knows-where, allow the civil service to fall further into disrepute, let the rich go back to hiding at home while the poor bring them parcels and service their lives - and that lockdown could last for months, or years if need be. That is what would be needed to reduce the total deaths.

Alternatively, a lockdown might just be a way of averaging out the deaths over a longer period. Instead of loads of people (mostly unvaccinated from choice) dying all at once, if everyone lives another miserable year sitting at home and not seeing their friends, then the deaths will be spread more evenly, may possibly be a few less, and if all the old folks have another miserable year of a life hardly worth living, well what the heck. And as for children's education, is it really necessary?

Or we can accept that we have done all we can. And that people will die. But we accept that children's education is not just a nice thing to have, it is essential. And we accept that if 10 old people live miserable lives alone and then are forced into nursing homes with dementia, to delay another old person's death by a few years - that it may not be worth it. And we accept that we are all mortal.

If we have a lockdown for omicron, then we will also have lockdowns for theta, and for omega, and for all the other letters from other alphabets that they may turn to next. If there was a policy of lockdown now for 6 weeks and it will all be over, then well and good. But that isn't the policy; the policy is lockdown now and again and again and again until we are all immortal; unfortunately many millions will die in misery while we wait for that to happen.

As for saving the NHS? Perhaps some hospitals should be devoted to covid and nothing but covid, and we'll do the best we can for the foolish unvaccinated in there. They won';t have anything like the satff they need for best results, and they'll be short of some equipment too. But the government needs to make the choice between absolute lives on the one hand, and quality of lives on the other. If 5,000 or 10,000 extra unvaccinated fools die, but on the other hand 600,000 other people die having had a happy last year of life rather than a miserable lonely one, and everyone else has a much better, more sociable life - it's at least worth considering as a valid option.

 

[Weststander]

A renowned epidemiologist writes...

[tweet]1468180742995947524[/tweet]

That was at a time where little was known, recording patchy, testing minimal. It’s often said that folk died from Covid earlier in 2020, but were not documented as such.

This paper found the average time lag to be 8 days.



Using real nation examples, the recent sharp ascent in cases numbers in Austrian and Switzerland, were followed a fortnight afterwards in both cases by recorded death numbers.

 

[Bozza]

IAs for saving the NHS? Perhaps some hospitals should be devoted to covid and nothing but covid, and we'll do the best we can for the foolish unvaccinated in there. They won';t have anything like the satff they need for best results, and they'll be short of some equipment too. But the government needs to make the choice between absolute lives on the one hand, and quality of lives on the other. If 5,000 or 10,000 extra unvaccinated fools die, but on the other hand 600,000 other people die having had a happy last year of life rather than a miserable lonely one, and everyone else has a much better, more sociable life - it's at least worth considering as a valid option.

I swore I was going to just leave you group of denialists and thumbsup crew today, but I'm weak.

What about all the not-foolish fully vaccinated who get Covid? Do you just lump them in with your second class service hospitals?

What about the cancer patient who comes in for treatment and tests positive - does he get lobbed over to the Covid hospital too, even though there are no specialist oncologists there to help with his condition?

The "Covid hospital" / "Ordinary hospital" idea just doesn't work for that reason - many people with specialist conditions will catch Covid, or turn up at hospital for treatment and test positive. There won't be enough specialists to staff all your Covid hospitals and Ordinary hospitals with the people needed to treat those both with and without.

Running a health system in a pandemic seems simple on a football message board, doesn't it?

 

[crodonilson]

Anyone falling for the need for Plan B now needs to check themselves into simple school. This is classic diversion to dig the tosser out of his almighty mess. It's astounding people are falling for it. His ex-mate Cummings calling it out exactly as it is.

https://twitter.com/Dominic2306/status/1468531753979678725?s=20

BJ is quite rightly being pilliaried for the Xmas party fiasco, and the biggest issue out of all of that fall out is people now will refuse to comply with the new measures. However I do not agree it was diversionary, it wasn't Boris who created a new mutation that has some vaccine evasion and spreads significantly quicker than anything we have seen before. Additionally SAGE met on Tuesday and basically urged that there must be some measures put in place to avoid the strong potential for daily hospitalisations to be above 2,000 daily and put unsustainable pressure on the NHS. If BJ did nothing and buried his head in the sand like he did last year until it was too late, that would have been the true crime.

 

[Bozza]

These restrictions are a nothing, doesn’t overly bother me - with the exception of the WFH order (but you can still go to parties) they won’t make much of a difference.

Even the vaccine passports (which I think are a good idea as a nudge) is thrown in just because and not done correctly - as I said months ago when they had them just for football grounds you have more tighter gathering spots without them than with them - there is no science behind it.

This is a diversion from the parties, what has changed in less than 24 hours from going from nothing in the data to rolling out plan B - when actually the news on the vaccines has been better than expected

The good data comparing from South Africa is comparing deaths/Hospitalisations to the previous delta wave - which is currently lower 8% v 25%

Currently 95 percent of over 16s in the UK have antibodies

But this is it now, every new variant we will be faced with restrictions and potential rumoured lockdown.

I’ve finished work for the day now, so I wish you a good evening.

Once again, I'm absolutely delighted that football fans know more than epidemiologists and scientists and relieved that this will all prove to be a fuss over nothing.

I'm not being sarcastic here: I genuinely am.

Omicron being a fuss over nothing is the best news we could possibly have, and I'll stop trying to break it to my son that our Feb half-term trip to Florida may not go ahead. I might even get the suitcase out and pack my swimmers.

 

[dsr-burnley]

I swore I was going to just leave you group of denialists and thumbsup crew today, but I'm weak.

What about all the not-foolish fully vaccinated who get Covid? Do you just lump them in with your second class service hospitals?

What about the cancer patient who comes in for treatment and tests positive - does he get lobbed over to the Covid hospital too, even though there are no specialist oncologists there to help with his condition?

The "Covid hospital" / "Ordinary hospital" idea just doesn't work for that reason - many people with specialist conditions will catch Covid, or turn up at hospital for treatment and test positive. There won't be enough specialists to staff all your Covid hospitals and Ordinary hospitals with the people needed to treat those both with and without.

Running a health system in a pandemic seems simple on a football message board, doesn't it?

FWIW, the suggested covid hospitals I have in mind are for those who are being treated for covid, not those being treated for something else that happen to have covid. It's not a new idea - they had scarlet fever hospitals in my mother's youth, for example. It must make it easier for the skeleton staff and the emergency lay workers if they only have one thing to treat. You've assumed that I was presenting a fully formed solution complete in every detail, and as a result you've picked some obvious holes in it - as you say, running a health service isn't that simple.

I don't think it's simple, and I'm sure you don't either. But should the fact that it's a complicated business, mean that "ordinary folk" should just shut up and accept what they are given? Questions need to be asked about the way the NHS is being run, and how it ought to be run, and what we do about it. In particular, the question needs asking (as the Daily Telegraph asks it this morning) why the capacity of the NHS is no bigger now than it was this time last year. Were senior management not aware that there was a health crisis?

 

[Weststander]

FWIW, the suggested covid hospitals I have in mind are for those who are being treated for covid, not those being treated for something else that happen to have covid. It's not a new idea - they had scarlet fever hospitals in my mother's youth, for example. It must make it easier for the skeleton staff and the emergency lay workers if they only have one thing to treat. You've assumed that I was presenting a fully formed solution complete in every detail, and as a result you've picked some obvious holes in it - as you say, running a health service isn't that simple.

I don't think it's simple, and I'm sure you don't either. But should the fact that it's a complicated business, mean that "ordinary folk" should just shut up and accept what they are given? Questions need to be asked about the way the NHS is being run, and how it ought to be run, and what we do about it. In particular, the question needs asking (as the Daily Telegraph asks it this morning) why the capacity of the NHS is no bigger now than it was this time last year. Were senior management not aware that there was a health crisis?

The Nightingale hospitals eg at the London Excel. Set up at great expense in quick time, vast numbers of shiny new ventilators bought.

Ideal for a further wave IF that translates in hospitalisations, especially in ICU.

Shut down, packed up.

Why?

 

[Bozza]

I'm out. Have fun.

 

[beorhthelm]

The Nightingale hospitals eg at the London Excel. Set up at great expense in quick time, vast numbers of shiny new ventilators bought.

Ideal for a further wave IF that translates in hospitalisations, especially in ICU.

Shut down, packed up.

Why?

somewhere in NHS managment they decided they had enough capacity to cope with predicted admissions. they also havent used the private sector capacity available.

this is the real issue of covid, mis-managment and lack of contingency planning through the department of health, PHE, NHS England/Soctland/Wales. the fact there are so many bodies involved is a problem itself. at no point has there been attempts to do the obvious and restrucutre admission policies, so we continue to go to A&E and send ill people to building with potentially hundred of covid cases. hospitals where a long time the second largest source of transmission, after homes (now third after schools).

 

[Weststander]

somewhere in NHS managment they decided they had enough capacity to cope with predicted admissions. they also havent used the private sector capacity available.

this is the real issue of covid, mis-managment and lack of contingency planning through the department of health, PHE, NHS England/Soctland/Wales. the fact there are so many bodies involved is a problem itself. at no point has there been attempts to do the obvious and restrucutre admission policies, so we continue to go to A&E and send ill people to building with potentially hundred of covid cases. hospitals where a long time the second largest source of transmission, after homes (now third after schools).

Mrs.W works at Worthing. A generic pre-pandemic point, she sees awful waste and inefficiencies. For example, different teams not coordinating, multiple home visits by differing practitioners/teams who fail to communicate with one another, folk having to visit hospitals on numerous occasions when one combined trip would do. Not a party political broadcast, she’s witnessed this since 1998!

A huge organisation. The nimble German system mentioned on nsc a few times, has always looked attractive.

 

[beorhthelm]

A huge organisation. The nimble German system mentioned on nsc a few times, has always looked attractive.

a shame we'll never be able to learn from German system, its regionalised and part private, two sacred cows would have to be slaughtered.

 

[sparkie]

Am I correct in thinking there has not be 1 death from the Omicron variant?

Whether there has or hasn't YET been you are in danger of echoing the posts at the start of this thread.

Best wait and see.

 

[e77]

While it's possible that money and equipment could have been allocated to the NHS over the last 18 months, it isn't so easy bringing trained Doctors and Nurses in. Brexit and variable travel restrictions hardly make the UK desirable to foreign workers anymore and it takes years to train people from scratch.

 

[dsr-burnley]

While it's possible that money and equipment could have been allocated to the NHS over the last 18 months, it isn't so easy bringing trained Doctors and Nurses in. Brexit and variable travel restrictions hardly make the UK desirable to foreign workers anymore and it takes years to train people from scratch.

NHS spending has increased vastly over the past couple of years. £34 billion according to this report. Couldn't some of it have been used to become more prepared for the possible next wave? Especially if, as you correctly point out, that bringing trained staff from abroad is harder.

I would be interested to see by how much doctor and nurse training has increased since Brexit and coronavirus started. It ought to have increased in vast numbers. Has it been?

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/...or-nhs-covid-19-response-over-next-six-months

 

[Weststander]

NHS spending has increased vastly over the past couple of years. £34 billion according to this report. Couldn't some of it have been used to become more prepared for the possible next wave? Especially if, as you correctly point out, that bringing trained staff from abroad is harder.

I would be interested to see by how much doctor and nurse training has increased since Brexit and coronavirus started. It ought to have increased in vast numbers. Has it been?

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/...or-nhs-covid-19-response-over-next-six-months

I know many recently retired nurses and GP’s came back to work early on in the pandemic. Initially there were a raft of red-tape hurdles, treating them as 24 year old novices, swiftly brushed aside after bad publicity.

R5 or R4 who had a special piece on this recently, its success and some positive interviews.

In England, 8,000 nurses and 4,000 clinicians, all front line services.

But not enough.

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

Once again, I'm absolutely delighted that football fans know more than epidemiologists and scientists and relieved that this will all prove to be a fuss over nothing.

I'm not being sarcastic here: I genuinely am.

Omicron being a fuss over nothing is the best news we could possibly have, and I'll stop trying to break it to my son that our Feb half-term trip to Florida may not go ahead. I might even get the suitcase out and pack my swimmers.

Which ones? It’s pretty much a mix bag with x scientists say one thing and y saying another.

I’m not sure what I’m that last part was controversial, or seeing to know better than others.

Signs of hope' on omicron, as intensive care occupancy rates remain low in South Africa
A report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has highlighted “signs of hope” on the omicron variant, as preliminary data indicated that hospitalisations across South Africa have remained low.

“Emerging data from South Africa indicates that omicron may cause less severe illness”, a WHO report stated.

Data which looked at hospitalisations across South Africa between November 14 and December 4 found that intensive care occupancy was only 6.3 per cent – which is very low compared with the same period when the country was facing the peak linked to the delta variant in July.

Are the WHO are deniers now for using the same numbers I posted yesterday?

If we listened to the Doomers over July 19th we would be in a much worse position due to the infection levels - according to current research

 

[A1X]

[tweet]1468926687287070735[/tweet]

 

[Swansman]

Once again, I'm absolutely delighted that football fans know more than epidemiologists and scientists and relieved that this will all prove to be a fuss over nothing.

I'm not being sarcastic here: I genuinely am.

Omicron being a fuss over nothing is the best news we could possibly have, and I'll stop trying to break it to my son that our Feb half-term trip to Florida may not go ahead. I might even get the suitcase out and pack my swimmers.

They are saying different things and you are selectively choosing those who say the worst.

You can do that, but why do you get so butthurt when people also listen to the scientists and epidemiologists that you ignore?

Some people say it is "nothing", somepeople say that it is all likely go to hell.

I'm putting my money on that it is going to be "not as good as some hope, not as bad as some fear", but for now the myriad of studies, scientists and knowing people pointing in all kinds of directions is a sign that there's simply no way of knowing yet.

 

[e77]

NHS spending has increased vastly over the past couple of years. £34 billion according to this report. Couldn't some of it have been used to become more prepared for the possible next wave? Especially if, as you correctly point out, that bringing trained staff from abroad is harder.

I would be interested to see by how much doctor and nurse training has increased since Brexit and coronavirus started. It ought to have increased in vast numbers. Has it been?

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/...or-nhs-covid-19-response-over-next-six-months

That might require some joined up thinking, which isn't the current government's strong point.

 

[Bakero]

[tweet]1468926687287070735[/tweet]

I was thinking the singing clause was a bit of a loophole. Did this exchange really happen?