CV19 - Cure worse than the disease? (Vol 13)

[Mortarboard]

bodhi said:

In fairness, Trump didn't originally suggest HCQ - that was done by Didier Raoult in Marseille, who is also a doctor.

However to your last point, absolutely, and the anti-vaxxers are by no means the only culprits in that. Witness over the last week or so half of Indie SAGE sharing a study suggesting that COVID lowered your IQ, when in reality, there wasn't really any way the study could have shown that. It's actually been a great study on the horseshoe theory, as an awful lot of the proclamations and habits of the anti-vaxxers are remarkably similar to the Zero COVID crew.

True, and a good example of how not all data analysis should be treated with the same level of confidence.

But there are a couple of good inferences that can be proofed already:
-Short term safety of the vaccines (all breeds) is stellar. Based on a few hundred million recipients
-Health outcomes once you get COVID is highly dependent on your vaccination status (based on at least a few hundred thousand cases, well above statistical relevance)

So it can be argued that long term safety of current vaccines is "unknown" - but we can certainly look to "knowns" such as (1) long term adverse effects from vaccines are much rarer than long term effects from theraputics (so if you're worried about long term effects, you're "chances" are better with a vaccine than a theraputic) and (2) long term adverse effects from vaccines are almost unknown anyway (I can't think of any offhand)

M.

[bodhi]

Mortarboard said:

True, and a good example of how not all data analysis should be treated with the same level of confidence.

But there are a couple of good inferences that can be proofed already:
-Short term safety of the vaccines (all breeds) is stellar. Based on a few hundred million recipients
-Health outcomes once you get COVID is highly dependent on your vaccination status (based on at least a few hundred thousand cases, well above statistical relevance)

So it can be argued that long term safety of current vaccines is "unknown" - but we can certainly look to "knowns" such as (1) long term adverse effects from vaccines are much rarer than long term effects from theraputics (so if you're worried about long term effects, you're "chances" are better with a vaccine than a theraputic) and (2) long term adverse effects from vaccines are almost unknown anyway (I can't think of any offhand)

M.

The only long term adverse affect I can think of off the top of my head was the infamous Pandremix, which has resulted in a fair few cases of narcolepsy, but nothing else I can think of - certainly not anything worrying or inexplicable enough to refuse these ones.

However cannot disagree with any of your post, I was more thinking of therapeutics as a Plan B for if the vaccine was less effective or couldn't/wouldn't be administered. I've had both lots of AZ's finest, and the only thing that was making me doubt it was worth going for was a previous, although unconfirmed SARS2 infection.

[ruggedscotty]

sim72 said:

SCEtoAUX said:

JagLover said:

You cannot trust anything coming out of China on Covid.

I would argue that you cannot trust anything from our own Government either. The second that they started couting deaths of people with COVID as deaths from COVID the game was up.

Except that the number of deaths which have COVID on the death certificate (154,000) is actually 25,000 higher than the Government's "within 28 days of a positive test" figure. I'm not exactly sure why this "with/from COVID" meme is still being trotted out.

probably because they think its a valid / real fact to quote - its not though.. as you have shown, its pretty lazy this with/from stuff.

[isaldiri]

bodhi said:

I'll happily admit there is probably an element of bias on my part as my nephew's partner works for AZN, and she is currently tearing her hair out at the treatment the AZN jab has had. I haven't spoken to her since that report was released from Spain yesterday, suggesting it was no worse for clotting than Pfizer (and both resulted in far less clots than COVID itself - or the contraceptive pill for that matter), but I don't suspect it will have improved her outlook much. There was an element of an introductory offer with AZN offering them at cost price - and I know they were funded in other ways for the development, however speaking to her they genuinely thought they were doing it for the right reasons - however I will be very surprised if they do that again....

It's entirely fair to say AZN had got a bit of a raw deal and the vaccine was unfairly targeted for non medical reasons having got mixed up (entirely by accident) in part of the whole stupid EU/UK brexit spat. That said, the ViTT safety signal on the viral vector vaccines seems pretty clear enough once age is factored in. The Spanish one had very low numbers being studied (half a million or so?) with no age correction that I saw in a very quick speed read. It doesn't imo show very much more meaningful compared to the existing CDC/MHRA data.

The 'right' reason I suppose is a bit of a vague one. I'm sure a lot of employees especially those working on the vaccines definitely would think they were doing it for the right reasons. However you probably could say the same for those at PFE or JNJ etc....so it's kind of neither here nor there.

Perhaps I'm being a little over cynical but AZN had very decent non altruistic reasons to get involved. They, pre 2020 were a company with a very strong pipeline of drugs/treatments but had very little to no exposure to vaccines. Oxford had done the most risky hard yards for research - lots of public money was then available that would get them an easy entry into production/manufacturing plus potentially some extra brownie points for being seen to be 'the good guys' offering cost price with (at the time) little perceived downside probably not quite having guessed at the scale of potential reputational issues that did happen......

bodhi said:

What's the current guidance if you do contract SARS 2? Is it still Paracetamol and rest, and if you don't improve call 111?

I'd also suggest the other issue with any therapeutics mentioned is that, given this is our first "Politicised Pandemic", how seriously the treatments are taken seems to be determined by who suggests them, to a degree. Facui mentions remdisivir and it is employed everywhere, Trump mentions HCQ and it is instantly trashed. Of course they both turned out to be entirely ineffective so it is a little moot, but I'd hate to think we were missing out on something that could save lives just because the wrong guy suggested it.

Er as far as I can tell the guidance is get tested if you cough/sniffle (or not) but then it's a bit of a blank paper after that if you do test positive apart from stay at home... Presumably take whatever may or may not reduce symptoms then start calling 111 if you can't breathe or similar/start to choke to death.....but try not to go to hospital and risk infecting others there anyway to 'protect the NHS'.

But yep definitely agree on the politicisation of the pandemic. And it's still happening now in many respects with the vaccines. The desired policy amongst the most strident vax everything and everyone supporters seems to be increasingly linked to those who are opposed to the vaccines (for admittedly sometimes some pretty dubious reasons) by simply more shrilly being pro vax in response to any perceived antivax sentiment. And that has essentially become something close to vax at all cost irrespective of actual benefit and continually ramping up fear of not doing so resulting in variants etc that will reset the whole damn mess. A pox on both sides of the extremes would be bloody helpful tbh to shut them both up.

[turbobloke]

ruggedscotty said:

sim72 said:

SCEtoAUX said:

JagLover said:

You cannot trust anything coming out of China on Covid.

I would argue that you cannot trust anything from our own Government either. The second that they started couting deaths of people with COVID as deaths from COVID the game was up.

Except that the number of deaths which have COVID on the death certificate (154,000) is actually 25,000 higher than the Government's "within 28 days of a positive test" figure. I'm not exactly sure why this "with/from COVID" meme is still being trotted out.

probably because they think its a valid / real fact to quote - its not though.. as you have shown, its pretty lazy this with/from stuff.

Lazy?

Is it really as straightforward as that - death certificates can and do have more than one condition listed, covid being merely present
on a death certtificate doesn't necessarily mean it was the cause.

According to a scan through the table in ONS's response on this (below), deaths due to covid were fewer than deaths involving covid for every week from week 11 2020 to week 7 2021, and the only other position was equal (5 apiece) in week 10 (2020).

https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgove...

[Rufus Stone]

We'll probably have 'climate change' on death certs soon.

[V1nce Fox]

Rufus Stone said:

We'll probably have 'climate change' on death certs soon.

We'll have it on lockdowns. Alas.

[steveT350C]

APontus said:

steveT350C said:

‘COVID-19 Interdisciplinary Symposium: July 29th and 30th, 17.00pm – 22.00pm BST’

https://doctors4covidethics.org/save-the-date-covi...

Get a free Doctors4CovidEthics Tin Foil Hat with early ticket purchase.

It’s free, and live now. Scientists talking about science, and challenging each other. Not the Government’s propaganda.
Live link here https://www.ukcolumn.org/live

[anonymoususer]

The recent decrease in figures of confirmed Covid cases look suspicious says a scientist
Just as they ae going back up.

Lock down in September anyone ?

[Red Devil]

Thin White Duke said:

Darth Paul said:

I had someone post this corker the other day. Unsurprisingly another left leaning, self identified empath, which I’m pretty sure is just an excuse for being a miserable bd all the time! I felt like saying a better analogy would’ve been, I could carry on eating food I’ve eaten my entire life and not choked to death yet, or I could try some lab grown meat that offers little to no nutritional value to me and may in fact have a higher choking rate than the natural food I normally have. But I couldn’t be arsed!

That's the trouble with left leaning types, they do always seem to be miserable. Do you ever get that sense that they want everyone to condescend to their level. One of my friends (left leaning) once asked me how could I justify buying a Jaguar? Genuinely shocked by the question I just said, why do I need to justify it?

They would only be truly happy if you were driving a Trabant. The pollution level of such a conveyance would, of course, be conveniently ignored.

APontus said:

anonymoususer said:

I will be campaigning to have schools, roads and in particular roundabouts named after him.

If we're going to name road furniture after him, the U Turn sign would be most appropriate.

I reckon cul-de-sacs should figure highly. Ferguson Not Very Close.

Boringvolvodriver said:

GSE said:

We could be enjoying our last summer of freedom of movement within our own country, without passport control. If this goes through CV19 won't be the only thing on the list. No doubt the government will rapidly expand it to include everything from the common cold, to voting the wrong way at the last election, whilst exempting themselves from the regulations, of course. Need to pop out to buy a pint of milk at a shop? Verboten!! You don't have the right pass! Never have I hated a Government so much as this lot, they are utter s!

The thing is that they are led by a man who claims to be a libertarian and said in the past that he would eat any ID card brought in.

Many Conservative MPs are opposed to it, as, judging by comments on the Telegraph (aka Torygraph) many Tory party members and traditional Tory voters.

So the question is why do they want to do this because it sure as hell isn’t looking like it’s much to do with a virus with a 99+% survival rate.

Hmmm. Quite a clever statement from BJ. I would love to know how anyone could eat a digital ID/Covid Pass.

SCEtoAUX said:

Venturist said:

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Don’t forget the mitigating effect of the tiger statue I put outside my front door last year. Its beneficial effects were clearly seen in the statistics ever since, except of course where even the tiger‘s power sadly couldn’t hold covid at bay. If it was this bad with it, imagine the carnage we would have seen had we not had its help!
However it seems to be working remarkably well the last few months, praise be.

You’re all welcome.

In the same vein, my anti-elephant butter has been brilliant. Just a dab on the patio and not an elephant to be seen.

A variation of the technique I used to use decades ago: throwing rolled up balls of newspaper out of the train window.

Tuna said:

Brave Fart said:

I take your point, but I fundamentally disagree that governments should behave in this way.
You are saying that governments cannot tell us the truth because, to coin a phrase: "You can't handle the truth!"
Well, I think we can, and I think treating citizens as children 1) perpetuates the problem, and 2) gives rise to conspiracy theories and "alternative" views that you complain about elsewhere.

Be honest, set out the issues, explain your policy, and trust the people. That's what I would like to see, but I'm not hopeful that will ever happen.

Note that I'm not saying they should lie, but that I don't believe they can be explicit about some issues.

Any competent government opposition would take a single concession to explicitly listing harm as a wide open goal - and suddenly your health policy is being politically destroyed and half the country is refusing to go along with it.

Unfortunately I think the current social media trend has to some extent complicated these discussions. We had two world wars that did untold human damage, but were predicated on governments convincing hundreds of thousands of people to willingly put down their lives en-masse for a wider good. I don't think you could make those same choices these days.

Unfortunately public health is about convincing enough of a population to do "the right thing" - and whilst I absolutely agree that many people can handle the truth, and we all deserve it, there isn't much evidence that you can maintain public control at the same time.

The interesting exception is China - there will surely be some interesting studies on how they appear to have controlled the virus. They have incredibly tight control over the information that their citizens receive, no significant opposition and a social sense of group responsibility that appears to make group decisions easier to enforce. The complete opposite of what we believe is "good" in the west, yet they (appear) to have done far better than us in controlling the virus.

Where does that leave our freedom, independence and "the truth"?

A great many people in liberal democracies may be dimly aware on a superficial level that China is different but they don't understand exactly how and why.
https://hbr.org/2021/05/what-the-west-gets-wrong-a...
https://www.workandliveinchina.com/cultural-differ...

isaldiri said:

A pox on both sides of the extremes would be bloody helpful tbh to shut them both up.

Indeed. Unfortunately that is about as likely as a manned mission to Mars by 2022.

[PurplePangolin]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Took people long enough to suss it out!

[Alucidnation]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

News said earlier cases have increased in the last 24 hours?

[NerveAgent]

Alucidnation said:

News said earlier cases have increased in the last 24 hours?

Schools must have gone back + euro2021 second edition

[Boringvolvodriver]

From the Telegraph

“ The Covid-19 vaccination programme in England has prevented an estimated 22 million infections and 60,000 deaths, according to new figures from Public Health England.

Vaccines are also estimated to have prevented more than 52,600 hospital admissions.

The deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam said that it marked the “truly massive” success of the vaccination programme and urged more young people to come forward for their jabs.

The figures apply to the period up to 23 July and are based on modelling by PHE and Cambridge University.

Previous estimates, for the period up to 9 July, had suggested around 37,000 deaths and 11 million infections had been prevented by the success of the vaccine rollout.”

Based on modeling I see! Wonder what the input parameters were on the model or was it “think of a number, double it, divide by your age and that’s the number!

I am somewhat surprised to see that the vaccine has saved more deaths than hospital admissions as I would have thought it would have been the other way round and that the gal would have been greater than 7,400.

Also I see that in the 2 weeks the infections prevented have doubled whilst the deaths saved has only increased by 64%.

Any chance we will ever see the stats behind these models?

[SS2.]

If Ferguson got within spitting distance of those models, you can probably correct the figures by a couple of orders of magnitude - either up or down, you choose.

[Ligne]

Whilst I was driving home earlier Radio One played a 15 minute segment with Prof Van Tam answering questions on the vaccine from Joe Public.

Two people asked why they should get a vaccine as they'd already had Covid and were young fit and healthy. He gave a very thorough answer but chose not to pay any attention at all to the key point that they'd already had Covid.

Another caller said he had a number of friends who were double jabbed yet still caught Covid and so what was the point. Prof Van Tam flipped it around to say "had they not had the vaccine they'd PROBABLY have ended up in hospital, and possibly worse".

Probably definition: almost certainly; as far as one knows or can tell.

Ridiculous.

[isaldiri]

Ligne said:

Another caller said he had a number of friends who were double jabbed yet still caught Covid and so what was the point. Prof Van Tam flipped it around to say "had they not had the vaccine they'd PROBABLY have ended up in hospital, and possibly worse".

Probably definition: almost certainly; as far as one knows or can tell.

Which is pretty bloody likely untrue as well.

Vaccination does not obviously reduce symptom severity by whatever % that efficacy is claimed at. it is a pretty clear wilful misrepresentation to claim that if someone got covid while jabbed up and felt quite ill, that person would then necessarily have been far more ill had it not been for the vaccine.

As far as most if not all of the data has shown, there is an obvious reduction of incidence of severe illness but that's achieved by relatively much ess people getting badly ill rather than through those getting it all being far less ill. there is quite a difference between the 2 things..... While there is an understandable drive by the medical authorities to encourage as many people to take up the vaccines for decent enough reasons, it is also just inexplicable to me that someone like van Tam, given his position in particular, could just blatantly claim something like that.

[Andy888]

Description of the BBC Van-Tam conversation here, with what appears to be a BBC stats guy dismissing the 60k figure in the middle of the article.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-58014546

Also nice we propoganda video with lots of reassuring messages and imagery to encourage more youngsters to do the right thing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av-embeds/58014546/vpid...

[Alucidnation]

isaldiri said:

Which is pretty bloody likely untrue as well.

Vaccination does not obviously reduce symptom severity by whatever % that efficacy is claimed at. it is a pretty clear wilful misrepresentation to claim that if someone got covid while jabbed up and felt quite ill, that person would then necessarily have been far more ill had it not been for the vaccine.

As far as most if not all of the data has shown, there is an obvious reduction of incidence of severe illness but that's achieved by relatively much ess people getting badly ill rather than through those getting it all being far less ill. there is quite a difference between the 2 things..... While there is an understandable drive by the medical authorities to encourage as many people to take up the vaccines for decent enough reasons, it is also just inexplicable to me that someone like van Tam, given his position in particular, could just blatantly claim something like that.

So why are people getting less ill from it?

Potency reduction?

[Andy888]

Also, hadn't realised France had gone just this far:

"Macron announced that from 21 July, anyone visiting a theatre, cinema, sports venue or festival with an audience of more than 50 people would need a health pass proving they were either fully vaccinated, had tested negative or were immune.

The same requirement will be extended to bars, cafes, restaurants, shopping centres (though not supermarkets), hospitals, long-distance trains, coaches and planes from 1 August, he said – including for children aged between 12 and 17 from 1 September.

People unable to present a valid health pass risk up to six months in prison and a fine of up to €10,000 (£8,500), according to the draft text of the law, while owners of “establishments welcoming the public” who fail to check patrons’ passes could go to jail for a year and be hit with a €45,000 fine."

The last paragraph is a bit extreme.