[COVID-19] General Discussion

[McTallshort]

Was reading about the Oxford vaccine on the BBC website and how they were able to get it developed so quickly. Its a real lesson in how you take a failure in Ebola and turn it round to a success...bet all those experts on facebook are still getting hysterical about it...

 

[TRF_Olyy]

840 per 100,000

Blimey, we're only around 280-290ish
Are you in tier 4?

 

[Which Tyler]

You will never convince me that those non-covid extra deaths in March through May were non-covid.

 

[Bada-Bing!]

Blimey, we're only around 280-290ish
Are you in tier 4?

Yep. And expect to be for a while yet.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Looks like everyone's been moved up one tier

Just cough in my face and have covid only gyms, honestly don't give a **** anymore

 

[Bada-Bing!]

Welcome to tier 4.

The areas joining tier four from Thursday are:

• Leicester City
• Leicestershire (Oadby and Wigston, Harborough, Hinckley and Bosworth, Blaby, Charnwood, North West Leicestershire, Melton)
• Lincolnshire (City of Lincoln, Boston, South Kesteven, West Lindsey, North Kesteven, South Holland, East Lindsey)
• Northamptonshire (Corby, Daventry, East Northamptonshire, Kettering, Northampton, South Northamptonshire, Wellingborough)
• Derby and Derbyshire (Derby, Amber Valley, South Derbyshire, Bolsover, North East Derbyshire, Chesterfield, Erewash, Derbyshire Dales, High Peak)
• Nottingham and Nottinghamshire (Gedling, Ashfield, Mansfield, Rushcliffe, Bassetlaw, Newark and Sherwood, Nottinghamshire, Broxtowe)
• Birmingham and Black Country (Dudley, Birmingham, Sandwell, Walsall, Wolverhampton)
• Coventry
• Solihull
• Warwickshire (Rugby, Nuneaton and Bedworth, Warwick, North Warwickshire, Stratford-upon-Avon)
• Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent (East Staffordshire, Stafford, South Staffordshire, Cannock Chase, Lichfield, Staffordshire Moorlands, Newcastle under Lyme, Tamworth, Stoke-on-Trent)
• Lancashire (Burnley, Pendle, Blackburn with Darwen, Ribble Valley, Blackpool, Preston, Hyndburn, Chorley, Fylde, Lancaster, Rossendale, South Ribble, West Lancashire, Wyre)
• Cheshire and Warrington (Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, Warrington)
• Cumbria (Eden, Carlisle, South Lakeland, Barrow-in-Furness, Copeland, Allerdale)
• Greater Manchester (Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, Wigan)
• Tees Valley (Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland, Stockton-on-Tees )
• North East (County Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, North Tyneside, Northumberland, South Tyneside, Sunderland)
• Gloucestershire (Gloucester, Forest of Dean, Cotswolds, Tewkesbury, Stroud, Cheltenham)
• Somerset Council (Mendip, Sedgemoor, Somerset West and Taunton, South Somerset)
• Swindon
• Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole
• Isle of Wight
• New Forest

Feels a lot like tier 3 but with more shops closed and more people mingling in the street instead.

 

[Reiser99]

For me it's simple. They need to either prove that the new strain is transmitted by children like the previous one or shut schools, because these tiers will be completely pointless as long as you allow groups of 30 children or more to mix in spaces less than 1 metre for extended periods of time. Data with the previous virus suggested 30% of transmissions were occurring in education settings, what will it be with a version that children transmit easily.

Also the government should had been prepared for this tbh. The virus was always going to mutate and it is constantly mutating. The successful mutation is the one that allows it to survive better. By forcing schools to carry on as normal the logical mutation was always going to be one that infected children better.

 

[Leonormous Boozer]

Back in full lockdown... T'was a good two and a half weeks.

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

For me it's simple. They need to either prove that the new strain is transmitted by children like the previous one or shut schools, because these tiers will be completely pointless as long as you allow groups of 30 children or more to mix in spaces less than 1 metre for extended periods of time. Data with the previous virus suggested 30% of transmissions were occurring in education settings, what will it be with a version that children transmit easily.

Also the government should had been prepared for this tbh. The virus was always going to mutate and it is constantly mutating. The successful mutation is the one that allows it to survive better. By forcing schools to carry on as normal the logical mutation was always going to be one that infected children better.

I predict this will go the usual way:
1) People point out a threat from Covid and a fault in the covid strategy
2) Boris blusters about Britain, swings a few 3 part slogans and a few more braincells dribble out his nose
3) Human scrotum Gove says it's all fine because the government know what they are doing
4) Various experts and opposition recommend immediate action, Tories make snide comments (cancel new year this time?)
5) 1 or 2 weeks down the line the Tories say they are leading the way taking decisive action that definitely nobody said they should do earlier. Also let's stick an extra tier on top of what we started with and hope nobody noticed the fact it wasn't thought out beforehand
6) Praise the NHS and engage in some braindead deflection tactics until things finally come down again.

Watch this space around 2 weeks in to January I think for action on schools.

 

[The Seeker]

It's been reported that Letlow was a supporter of the Trumpanzee Covid-19 is a hoax/anti-mask crowd. It's sad because he left behind a wife with two little kids. #WearAMask

 

[Which Tyler]

I predict this will go the usual way:
1) People point out a threat from Covid and a fault in the covid strategy
2) Boris blusters about Britain, swings a few 3 part slogans and a few more braincells dribble out his nose
3) Human scrotum Gove says it's all fine because the government know what they are doing
4) Various experts and opposition recommend immediate action, Tories make snide comments (cancel new year this time?)
5) 1 or 2 weeks down the line the Tories say they are leading the way taking decisive action that definitely nobody said they should do earlier. Also let's stick an extra tier on top of what we started with and hope nobody noticed the fact it wasn't thought out beforehand
6) Praise the NHS and engage in some braindead deflection tactics until things finally come down again.

Watch this space around 2 weeks in to January I think for action on schools.

You forgot "Blame the public"

 

[ncurd]

You forgot "Blame the public"

Yup blame others never ever ever accept responsibility. The sad thing is it works....people like scapegoating others rather than blame the government they elected.

 

[Reiser99]

Covid: 12-week vaccine gap defended by UK medical chiefs

The UK will now leave a 12-week gap between both parts of the Covid vaccination, rather than 21 days.

www.bbc.co.uk

People are no longer going to get their second dose at 3 weeks, instead it's been increased to 12 weeks. Apparently there is 'some' evidence it could help the oxford one, but Pfizer say theirs has only been tested based on 2 weeks.

It may work, who knows. However I have 2 major issues.

1) It feels again like they a hoping/guessing rather than using evidence and it could come back to bite them in the arse. I hope someone keeps track of whether those given just the initial dose get covid to help give them accurate data.

2) This decision is again based on the complete incompetence of the government and a reaction to the fact that we are in one of the worst situations on the planet. They wouldn't need to put vulnerable people at risk if they had put together a decent test and trace system and acted when advised.

 

[The Seeker]

Yup blame others never ever ever accept responsibility. The sad thing is it works....people like scapegoating others rather than blame the government they elected.

That's the Trumpanzee credo.

 

[ncurd]

Covid: 12-week vaccine gap defended by UK medical chiefs

The UK will now leave a 12-week gap between both parts of the Covid vaccination, rather than 21 days.

www.bbc.co.uk

People are no longer going to get their second dose at 3 weeks, instead it's been increased to 12 weeks. Apparently there is 'some' evidence it could help the oxford one, but Pfizer say theirs has only been tested based on 2 weeks.

It may work, who knows. However I have 2 major issues.

1) It feels again like they a hoping/guessing rather than using evidence and it could come back to bite them in the arse. I hope someone keeps track of whether those given just the initial dose get covid to help give them accurate data.

2) This decision is again based on the complete incompetence of the government and a reaction to the fact that we are in one of the worst situations on the planet. They wouldn't need to put vulnerable people at risk if they had put together a decent test and trace system and acted when advised.

So for one thing this is based on something Blair suggested a few weeks ago. Now I'm not political strategist but I doubt Boris would do something on Blair's say so.

Secondly I've seen little fallout from the scientific community which suggests it wasn't terrible idea (happy to be proven wrong)

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Secondly I've seen little fallout from the scientific community which suggests it wasn't terrible idea (happy to be proven wrong)

Aye, from what I've seen it's (confidently) predicted to be fine but no peer reviewed evidence of it being so, yet.
As you said: Follow the science. The scientific community seem OK with it so it (hopefully) should be OK.

The Oxford vaccine looks to to be the game changer, though - not quite as effective, but much more easily administered and also much more of it available (apparently they were so confident in it they were mass producing it before it was approved, so there's plenty of reserves to ship out on day one).

 

[The Seeker]

COVID Data Tracker

CDC’s home for COVID-19 data. Visualizations, graphs, and data in one easy-to-use website.

covid.cdc.gov

 

[Which Tyler]

Covid: 12-week vaccine gap defended by UK medical chiefs

The UK will now leave a 12-week gap between both parts of the Covid vaccination, rather than 21 days.

www.bbc.co.uk

People are no longer going to get their second dose at 3 weeks, instead it's been increased to 12 weeks. Apparently there is 'some' evidence it could help the oxford one, but Pfizer say theirs has only been tested based on 2 weeks.

It may work, who knows. However I have 2 major issues.

1) It feels again like they a hoping/guessing rather than using evidence and it could come back to bite them in the arse. I hope someone keeps track of whether those given just the initial dose get covid to help give them accurate data.

2) This decision is again based on the complete incompetence of the government and a reaction to the fact that we are in one of the worst situations on the planet. They wouldn't need to put vulnerable people at risk if they had put together a decent test and trace system and acted when advised.

IIRC, we'd been told that the Oxford vaccine was most effective with somewhere around an 8-10 week gap.
The trouble is, they were subdividing their groups, rather than having full groups for each dose strategy, so it's in the secondary data analysis, and with correspondingly low confidence intervals (and being not-yet published, and therefore peer-reviewed).
If we waited for this sort of thing, you'd need full sample sizes for each sub division - so single dose, half dose-full dose, full dose-half dose, full dose-full dose for each of 2 week, 4 week, 6 week, 8 week, 10 week and 12 week intervals. So 24 times the number of volunteers (or waiting 24 times as long - so 12 years rather than 6 months).

This is relatively normal in medical trials (though I'm far from an expert in vaccines specifically). You answer your primary researrch question, but design your trial to allow for further, deeper anaylsis of the data collected - but that secondary, with all the problems associated with being secondary.

Incidentally, whilst that stuff hasn't been "peer reviewed" - as in published, discussed, and reproduced as necessary; they're incredibly open about it all in these instances, and sharing their results amongst their peers / SAGE various CMOs etc.

 

[Reiser99]

IIRC, we'd been told that the Oxford vaccine was most effective with somewhere around an 8-10 week gap.
The trouble is, they were subdividing their groups, rather than having full groups for each dose strategy, so it's in the secondary data analysis, and with correspondingly low confidence intervals (and being not-yet published, and therefore peer-reviewed).
If we waited for this sort of thing, you'd need full sample sizes for each sub division - so single dose, half dose-full dose, full dose-half dose, full dose-full dose for each of 2 week, 4 week, 6 week, 8 week, 10 week and 12 week intervals. So 24 times the number of volunteers (or waiting 24 times as long - so 12 years rather than 6 months).

This is relatively normal in medical trials (though I'm far from an expert in vaccines specifically). You answer your primary researrch question, but design your trial to allow for further, deeper anaylsis of the data collected - but that secondary, with all the problems associated with being secondary.

Incidentally, whilst that stuff hasn't been "peer reviewed" - as in published, discussed, and reproduced as necessary; they're incredibly open about it all in these instances, and sharing their results amongst their peers / SAGE various CMOs etc.

I get that, though as you mention this is for the oxford one, yet they are also doing it with the pfizer one despite no evidence.

My main issue is that this decision is mainly based on the fact that government has absolutely no control over this virus and the only way to stop yoyoing from one version of a lockdown to another is to vaccinate. If this was solely based on what was best for everyone then fine, but it's based on solving gross incompetence.

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

Well I finally found a way to present what is happening with Covid to someone who didn't think it was serious that made them change their mind. People keep talking about the 2% or so mortality, even the thousands of deaths and thinking it's not a big thing because they see 2% and think as a proportion of the entire country, that is small (I mean it really isn't but that seems to be how it's perceived in their minds)

Another statistic that isn't really talked about but seems to hit home a bit more, in the last week according to the ONS, roughly 1/4 of all the people who died in the country died of something related to Covid. That kinda puts into perspective the amount of damage it's doing. That's with various preventative measures too and without the new strain necessarily even reaching it's worst and without hospitals being completely overwhelmed yet.

It's sad that even now, people don't realise how serious this is. In the USA the Covid pandemic is approaching the number of deaths seen by Americans in WW2...