[COVID-19] General Discussion

[Which Tyler]

Yeah that's it thanks! I was just wondering whether maybe the graph showing av death rate was adjusting for expected increase pre Covid really

For 2020, the average, was taken from Week 1 2014 to Week 52 2019.
For 2021, they simply repeated the same average (2014-2019).
It looks like (I'm not quite sad enough to actually plug the figures in) for 2022, they've used Week 1 2016 to Week 52 2021 - so it bumps up for each covid peak.

Meaning that we're no longer comparing to "were it not for Covid" which is what made that graph useful in the first place; as it shows deaths caused by Covid (mentioned on death certificate, NOT within 28 days of diagnosis), but also takes into account both non-covid deaths prevented by covid measures (such as 2 low-flu winters etc) and deaths caused by other people having covid (such as delayed cancer diagnoses, RTA victims who couldn't get in to ICU etc).

Comparing a covid year to a non-covid year is incredibly informative, even if it can't pick between those various factors above.
Comparing a covid year to 2/5 of a covid year is way less informative, and stinks of massaging the figures to give the desired political message - which wasn't necessary because the death figures were low enough to be below the line anyway (though that wouldn't have been known when the decision was made).

 

[Which Tyler]

 

[Bada-Bing!]

Coronavirus came from Wuhan market and not Chinese lab, twin studies say

Two major studies released by scientists but yet to be published in journals say virus did not emerge from Wuhan Institute of Virology

www.theguardian.com

 

[Bada-Bing!]

Pfizer vaccine significantly less effective in children ages five to 11, study shows

Strikingly higher rates of decline in effectiveness for younger children suggest the lower dose they receive may be the reason

www.theguardian.com

 

[Bruce_ma gooshvili]

Glad to see this thread dying.

In Scotland my employer is pretty much allowing home working indefinitely for anyone who has had to do it over the past two years and seems to be moving towards advertising posts with flexible work location (not tied to a specific building or city). It seems I'll benefit from this also which will make me think of going native somewhere rural.

Bizarrely, they are also saying you can live in the rest of the UK for periods and still be employed by them (they don't have a footprint outside Scotland. If they extend that to the EU (unlikely) I'll be getting an Italian passport pronto.

If any of this might appeal to anyone you know please let them know as we can't fill skilled job as our supply of immigrants has dried up completely. For example, we are currently advertising the same jobs to do with preventing cyberattacks etc for the 4th time and this is being replicated across many sectors. Perusing Scottish vacancies might be worthwhile for anyone who wants to live somewhere less densely populated and to potentially go a step up a career ladder due to a less competitive labour market.

 

[The Seeker]

LA County Lifts Indoor Mask Mandate After Being Reclassified As Having 'Low' COVID-19 Activity

Masking in most indoor public spaces -- such as restaurants, movie theaters, gyms, retail stores and nail salons -- will no longer be required regardless of vaccination status.

losangeles.cbslocal.com

 

[ncurd]

If any of this might appeal to anyone you know please let them know as we can't fill skilled job as our supply of immigrants has dried up completely. For example, we are currently advertising the same jobs to do with preventing cyberattacks etc for the 4th time and this is being replicated across many sectors. Perusing Scottish vacancies might be worthwhile for anyone who wants to live somewhere less densely populated and to potentially go a step up a career ladder due to a less competitive labour market.

This isn't a new problem the entire industry is extremely heavily understaffed throughout the country, I think I saw a figure in Gloucestershire alone its like 10,000 people. I could happily change jobs if I wanted to (I'm getting quite good career progression and opportunities where I am). Scotland (and further a field) has been heavilly favoured by myself and my wife as a potential move but I think that's some years away yet.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Yeah, we've been trying to hire since...October? No dice
Constantly got recruiters hitting me up, as well - really is an employees market atm

 

[ncurd]

Yeah, we've been trying to hire since...October? No dice
Constantly got recruiters hitting me up, as well - really is an employees market atm

We've spent 3 years trying to replace our extremely experienced Head RF Engineer as he's retiring (or trying to) we got one guy, he left after a year, we've now hired one guy from India and another from New Zealand who have moved here. Both are far less experienced and not ready to take over.

I had a long chat with a non techy friend about it the other month, one of the things I find incredibly frustrating is the 'just learn to code' mentality as if this isn't an extremely technical and complicated industry that requires massive amounts of training. BBC had an article recently and the person bemoaned how hard it was to yield interesting output, it was just text and all she got was "Hello World". Yeah its ******* hard what a surprise, I spent 2 years of college and 3 at university then I got a job and I'm still learning to be better nearly 15 years later (currently in a change management meeting so people can knowledge share, I did the code review so paying half attention).

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Yeah, I definitely encourage people to learn to code - I'm self taught and it got me out from working in a warehouse for years to now being a developer for the past 4. There's a lot of incredible resources online either for free or for very cheap - but it takes a lot of time and effort - you don't sign up to Codecademy on a Monday and start applying for Jobs on the Friday

 

[ncurd]

Yeah, I definitely encourage people to learn to code - I'm self taught and it got me out from working in a warehouse for years to now being a developer for the past 4. There's a lot of incredible resources online either for free or for very cheap - but it takes a lot of time and effort - you don't sign up to Codecademy on a Monday and start applying for Jobs on the Friday

I think being self taught is absolutely fine and online resources are great, back when I was Uni the Java guy basically said text books were a waste of time and start using online resources. I think the only benefit to a formal education is software architecture which barely gets touched on in language courses I've done and online materials. They mainly explain how you can do a thing not why you do it and why its important. Its certainly something that comes up a lot in the work I've done as many people in the industry don't have formal Computer Science educations (usually got their degree's in other subject areas which I'm incredibly lacking in knowledge).

I went back to Uni to finish my final year (I didn't learn much it was more to get the damn certificate that I did all but my final project module to obtain) 5-7 years back. It was surprising the amount of people on a final year software engineering module which was far more about architecture than coding didn't understand its importance. Those of us who were doing the degree for similar reasons as myself (it already working in industry) did try to in still into those guys its importance.

I think my first year of university was the big eye opener of how difficult it is to get in to, loads who were on the course hadn't done any software before. Me and about 10-15 people had, we spent literally most first semester explaining and debugging other peoples code as the course was designed from learning from scratch. Of course muggings here didn't realise that main reason the Portuguese lass was asking me specifically for help was not only because she needed it but because she wanted to hook up as well.

 

[Amiga500]

Try to work your way into devsecops fellas. There'll be even bigger money in it now.

 

[Bada-Bing!]

Scans reveal how Covid may change the brain

Even after a mild infection, the overall size of the brain had shrunk, researchers found.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Bruce_ma gooshvili]

Places like Germany and South Korea experiencing elevated case levels and deaths (not awful by previous strand standards). Cases actually heading to a fresh spike in Scotland (with a knock on effect on those in hospital testing positive), which is a bit unusual by international standards but not alarming. I imagine it is the Danish Omicron subvariant but given a lack of reporting who knows? It needs investigation as I'm not aware of any other nation that has had an Omicron era double spike.

I know firsthand of someone who has tested positive twice in two separate symptomatic bouts (with asymptomatic period inbetween) over a four week period in the past month (first mild, second not very pleasant but not hospital). So natural immunity isn't a panacea, but again this could have been original Omicron followed by Danish Omicron?

I'm tempted to advise an elderly relative to dial back their public transport use until this latest spike goes down again and give myself another month of isolation so I can assist them more in person. This is me being very risk averse on their behalf though, but it seems like the right thing to do for now and it's no skin off my nose.

 

[Bruce_ma gooshvili]

Fresh from losing the last of its liberty last year Hong Kong is with Omicron experiencing the highest death rate of any nation at ANY TIME during the pandemic.

Hong Kong COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer

Hong Kong Coronavirus update with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, mortality and recovery rates, current active cases, recoveries, trends and timeline.

www.worldometers.info

In ‘zero COVID’ Hong Kong, deaths smash global records

Poor vaccine coverage among elderly population results in city reporting the highest death rate in the world.

www.aljazeera.com

Causes are a sub par vaccination rate, use of Sinovac for around half the vaccines and an inept undemocratic leadership that suppresses information about what vaccine types are being administered.

Hong Kong refuses to disclose data on Covid-19 patient vaccine types, despite concerns over Sinovac Omicron efficacy | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP

By Candice Chau, Tom Grundy and Peter Lee. Hong Kong health authorities have refused to disclose data on what type of vaccine patients with the Omicron variant of Covid-19 have taken. The city is seeing an unprecedented surge in infections as the more contagious – but less lethal – variant...

hongkongfp.com

Sounds like mainland China is yet to replicate a Pfizer/Moderna type equivalent so they must be absolutely bricking it. A Hong Kong death rate among 1.4 billion Chinese citizens doesn't bare thinking about.

 

[Reiser99]

Places like Germany and South Korea experiencing elevated case levels and deaths (not awful by previous strand standards). Cases actually heading to a fresh spike in Scotland (with a knock on effect on those in hospital testing positive), which is a bit unusual by international standards but not alarming. I imagine it is the Danish Omicron subvariant but given a lack of reporting who knows? It needs investigation as I'm not aware of any other nation that has had an Omicron era double spike.

I know firsthand of someone who has tested positive twice in two separate symptomatic bouts (with asymptomatic period inbetween) over a four week period in the past month (first mild, second not very pleasant but not hospital). So natural immunity isn't a panacea, but again this could have been original Omicron followed by Danish Omicron?

I'm tempted to advise an elderly relative to dial back their public transport use until this latest spike goes down again and give myself another month of isolation so I can assist them more in person. This is me being very risk averse on their behalf though, but it seems like the right thing to do for now and it's no skin off my nose.

The reality is that covid hasn't disappeared. Certainly the situation overall is better than at the start and vaccines seem to be holding up well. But it's too early to say there won't be anymore variants or what effect there might be as vaccine protection wanes.

 

[Bruce_ma gooshvili]

The reality is that covid hasn't disappeared. Certainly the situation overall is better than at the start and vaccines seem to be holding up well. But it's too early to say there won't be anymore variants or what effect there might be as vaccine protection wanes.

Of course, although I remain optimistic about future variants. My concern is more that I consider pandemic management and media coverage in much of the world to be completely abject; so further poor decision making seems likely.

Our dentist in Scotland who is the main spokesman for pandemic management says he isn't concerned by Scotland's the second Omicron spike, but shows no sign of grasping that this is internationally unique and may necessitate a revisiting of removing all restrictions on March 21st and considering expanding spring boosters beyond the over-75s to include vulnerable age groups who got boosted 5 months ago. Just ostrich syndrome. At least if another mess is approaching as a result of idiocy it'll be less catastrophic this time.

And why on earth a record breaking per capita Covid death rate in Hong Kong isnt seemingly worth reporting on major news outlets in the UK I do not know (although I see the FT and Independent have finally woken up). Lessons learned nil in terms of observing things that happen in other countries.

I'm not predicting calamity but a lot of people aged 65-75 in particular will die unnecessarily this spring in Scotland if we remain asleep at the wheel.

 

[Bada-Bing!]

I know my aunt in HK had Pfizer and she is in her late 60s. My parents are here in the UK but don't want return and stay in a quarantine hotel.

Going back to here:

UK Covid cases rising among those aged 55 and over

Imperial College study finds R value higher for older people, raising concerns about waning immunity

www.theguardian.com

We are relying on the vaccines and previous natural infection. What level of immunity are we at? 98%? But between now and say May that will start to drop even further, so inevitably top ups will be needed. Certainly for the elderly and vulnerable. Start any boosters for rest by October ready for winter, but will these last longer than the 10 weeks (for anti bodies) than the present ones? Or are the upgraded ones be ready? Where are we with vaccination of the rest of the world? Africa was less than 10% as a continent in December.

I think I read Pfizer on 5-11 not as effective as that in the older age groups above. Study coming out of NY but not yet peer reviewed.

 

[Bruce_ma gooshvili]

The current Scottish death rate is now exceeding the first Omicron wave peak and is continuing to rise. Hospitalisation levels highest in 13 months. Even allowing for the ~35% Omicron overcount of people who died with Covid (but not because of it) this is a significant moment in the public health history of Scotland.

Media barely touching it. Politicians absolutely silent. Medical experts selectively picking data points and giving them a positive spin. What a shower. At least tell people there is a danger out there and they may wish to exercise some caution until this wave is over.

Omicron having a field day with the historic 'sick man of Europe' and our underlying health issues.

 

[Bada-Bing!]

And UKHSA no longer going to give the ZOE app any more funding.