A #COVID19 antiviral made by @Pfizer has been approved for use across the UK by @MHRAgovuk
There’s one company having a good pandemic.
Not only the first vaccine to market, but also the vaccine of choice for most of the Western world, and now an antiviral drug to treat those who do get it badly.
For every bunch of Sacklers giving the industry a bad name, there’s also a bunch of geniuses working to make the world in 2022 a better place.
And absolutely cleaning up on the money front from a project derisked by government. IP not shared. Massively unequal vaccine distribution hence prolonging the global pandemic.
I quite like what Astra did though. Bought their shares because of it.
Yep, there is a heck of a lot of bad behaviour in the drugs industry, and the Sacklers are just part of it.
"Bad Pharma" by Ben Goldacre is good on it - though it's not as good as 'Bad Science'.
As a recent example, Aducanumab’s approval for Alzheimer's seems worrying.
What’s wrong about the Adu approval?
Biogen f*cked up their futility analysis embarrassingly badly. The FDA ad-com took a conservative approach (I trial showed some benefit the other didn’t). The FDA ignored their advice (which they are entitled to do) to approve it on a balance of risk basis. Payors and prescribers have made their views clear.
Occupation - and probably being prejudicial here - but what % of construction workers are Eastern European?
It's not prejudicial if it's based on facts. My niece worked in a meat processing plant in Cornwall. Virtually all her co-workers were Romanian or Bulgarian. Very few were vaccinated, most tried not to get tested when it was voluntary. They have (with good reason for the older generation) a strong distrust of government.
That just means my prejudices were right… not that they weren’t prejudice (I have no idea of the facts)
So here's my current theory on the mismatch between infections and in hospital for COVID. Three doses of vaccines gives close to zero protection from asymptomatic infection, I have seen that close up with my parents, both triple dosed for a few weeks before they got infected, neither have had any symptoms at all but both PCR positive. So what we may actually have is close to 100% of people in the country likely to get some kind of Omicron infection which is why the infection stats look absolutely terrible with ~200k per day being detected by testing and 2.2m people in England having it last week.
However, it seems as though very few of the infected actually get severe symptoms, whether that's because Omicron is inherently more mild or because of high rates of immunity against severe disease or both is still a bit of an unknown, but it seems very difficult to deny it now.
Looking at the specific data release from the ONS, Delta still accounted for around a third of the total cases over the previous monitoring period which means of the 7k in hospital a very significant proportion will have been because of Delta, for the 1.4m Omicron cases during the monitoring period we may actually only have seen a 2-4k hospitalisations *for* COVID. Once again, this proved why the NHS trusts are so bullish over not needing more restrictions and the government also more bullish than most of us expected.
Here's the bottom line - Omicron may only have a CHR of 1/400 to 1/700 in the UK with our level of population immunity. Delta we know had a CHR of around 1/100 over the summer/autumn but with a worse population immunity profile.
That's my theory too. Everyone will get it, relatively few will notice.
If this is right, then something like back to normal by spring, with more and more people realising that everyone gets it, sometimes old and very ill people die, we manage other illnesses without it dominating the headlines every day for 2 years, the NHS gives regular guidance about everything from thrush to bubonic plague without anyone getting excited, and Covid is one more of these, sometimes it is sensible to be cautious, and every six months everyone has an injection.
Hope so.
This leaves a couple of interesting questions:
What about the several million unvaccinated, who will increasingly be the dalits of our society. Some will die without good reason.
Does it give Boris one tiny chance to be ahead of the game and rescue himself?
i think you might have a problem with the everyone has an injection every 6 months...Nigel Farage for one is off that train
what i mean by a good thing is that there will not be the same meek compliance in the future as the state tramples all over civil liberties....
A respect for following the rules and making necessary sacrifices during times of national crisis is what makes Britain great.
Some people resented putting out their lights during German air raids.
it is when you have a decent govt acting in good faith....when you have the present govt its a disadvantage
Every country has relatively good governments and bad governments. The difference is that Britain (along with other countries like Ireland, Germany etc) have sensible cultures and institutions that channel even mediocre or bad actors into mainly doing things that are helpful. That is why Britain, Ireland, Germany etc have stable democracies with increasing average incomes decade after decade.
This is all true even though political and media incentives are all about focusing on the negatives and convincing everyone stuff is shit all the time.
So here's my current theory on the mismatch between infections and in hospital for COVID. Three doses of vaccines gives close to zero protection from asymptomatic infection, I have seen that close up with my parents, both triple dosed for a few weeks before they got infected, neither have had any symptoms at all but both PCR positive. So what we may actually have is close to 100% of people in the country likely to get some kind of Omicron infection which is why the infection stats look absolutely terrible with ~200k per day being detected by testing and 2.2m people in England having it last week.
However, it seems as though very few of the infected actually get severe symptoms, whether that's because Omicron is inherently more mild or because of high rates of immunity against severe disease or both is still a bit of an unknown, but it seems very difficult to deny it now.
Looking at the specific data release from the ONS, Delta still accounted for around a third of the total cases over the previous monitoring period which means of the 7k in hospital a very significant proportion will have been because of Delta, for the 1.4m Omicron cases during the monitoring period we may actually only have seen a 2-4k hospitalisations *for* COVID. Once again, this proved why the NHS trusts are so bullish over not needing more restrictions and the government also more bullish than most of us expected.
Here's the bottom line - Omicron may only have a CHR of 1/400 to 1/700 in the UK with our level of population immunity. Delta we know had a CHR of around 1/100 over the summer/autumn but with a worse population immunity profile.
That's my theory too. Everyone will get it, relatively few will notice.
I am still holding out for more data on virulence of omicron, but I am convinced that lockdown measures will be ineffective against it for a mixture of technical (the R0 of omicron) and behavioural (lockdown burnout) reasons.
I ran a crude CAR (Case Admissions Rate) calculation for the England data....
Admissions highest in kids ?
Almost perfect* inverse ratio to triple vaccination rates
*Edit: save 0-5 age cohort, which is probably a non-independent variable as they belong with parents (i.e. they are accompanied by parents wherever they go and so their exposure level mirrors that of their parents')
BBC - Whiff of infected breath enough to catch Omicron - Openshaw
More from Professor Peter Openshaw, who says someone only needs to be exposed to "a whiff of infected breath" to catch the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
"Omicron is so infectious. We're lucky really that it wasn't this infectious when it first moved into human-to-human transmission," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We've had several iterations of this virus going through different stages of its evolution.
"It has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected."
Or its a shame it wasn't this infectious originally because if it was this infectious when we had no idea what it was it would have burnt out in the space of a month or two and then we'd have gotten back to normal instead of spending two years obsessing over Covid.
But then it would have been going over an unvaccinated population, so swings and roundabouts.
Had it been this infectious to begin with, it would have been carnage. Mind you, the world might have shutdown air travel that much faster had 1% of China died in a couple of weeks.
It would have been carnage but we'd have ripped off the bandage much quicker.
I'm far from convinced that having two years of lockdowns was in hindsight worth preventing 1% of global population from dying. Considering that life expectancy from here isn't 100 years for the people who were dying.
I am far from convinced a disease as infectious as Omicron and as deadly as the original variant would have been 1% fatality. Bear in mind health systems would simply have imploded under the pressure so even quite minor infections, coughs etc might easily have been fatal. And it would certainly have gone charging through sub-Saharan Africa and not in a good way.
Yes it would have burnt through very quickly and lots of people would have died, but then it would have been over almost as soon as it began. Close to a million die of natural causes anyway in a two year period and aren't getting that time they've lost back. There wouldn't be expanded waiting lists for years to come for cancer, hips, dental and all the other postponements. There wouldn't have been years of disrupted education. There wouldn't have been trillions spent.
There'd need to be surge money spent on funeral homes for a few weeks, but the rest of society I suspect would have been better off if it had just ripped out of control immediately. Cynical but true.
Almost all countries with the necessary resource & infrastructure did lockdowns of some sort. The main exceptions were those run by fascist 'strongmen' types unencumbered with giving a shit about their citizens. It's very unlikely their approach was the better one. So unlikely, in fact, that I'm not sure it was worth floating. So I'm going to pretend you didn't. Think that's best.
In hindsight I think the Swedes were right. I am willing to say I called it wrong last year when I opposed the Swedish method and wish @contrarian were still around so I could apologise to him over that. Perhaps @MISTY might be able to pass on the message.
Yes lockdowns do seem to have become the populist option in the Democratic world but that doesn't make them right. The fascist 'strongmen' types have possibly been able to do the right thing by their countries unencumbered by the need to appeal to their voters.
However I 100% entirely prefer democracy even if democracy sometimes means we end up having to do the wrong and populist thing instead of the right unpopular thing. Its funny to see those who regularly abhor populism rush to defend it here though.
Like I say, I'm pretending you aren't airing such a nonsensical notion. No tumble on this. I'm a busy man today.
But, look, what gives with the doxxing of another poster? When someone does it to you you're up in arms, now here you are doing it yourself. The sheer nauseating hypocrisy of it takes the biscuit.
i think the problem is in the UK we have a very aged unhealthy population.
I've set up a monthly donation and would encourage others to do the same. I can imagine that running a website with 1000+ anonymous comments every day is very difficult work and the outlook in terms of regulation and risk is bad given the endless panic driven government policy initiatives about online safety and abuse. I've followed this website for years and have got a lot out of the commentary on it so would like to see it keep going. Cheers.
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+others
This is all true even though political and media incentives are all about focusing on the negatives and convincing everyone stuff is shit all the time.
*Edit: save 0-5 age cohort, which is probably a non-independent variable as they belong with parents (i.e. they are accompanied by parents wherever they go and so their exposure level mirrors that of their parents')
Median age/life expectancy:
Germany: 47.0 / 81.0
Italy: 46.5 / 83.3
Spain: 43.9 / 83.6
France: 41.7 / 82.7
UK: 40.6 / 81.3
Russia: 40.3 / 73.6
https://www.worlddata.info/average-age.php
2 main headlines:
1. Severity analysis is settling around 60-70% reduced risk of hospitalisation with Omicron vs Delta
Regardless of variant, a booster/3rd dose significantly reduces the risk of hospitalisation (85-90% vs unvaxxed)
2. Updated Vaccine Effectiveness analysis
Shows that while protection against *infection* starts to wane quickly for Omicron (from 4-9 weeks post-booster)
Protection from *hospitalisation* is high 88%. We know from Tcell studies it is unlikely to wane so quickly
https://twitter.com/kallmemeg/status/1476930728688451584?s=20