1 million doses hadn't even been delivered to Scotland by the end of January.
What was delivered is irrelevant. The vaccines are held centrally and then ordered up as needed by the rollout teams in each nation. If those vaccines were not available to be ordered by Scotland, of course that's a good reason to miss the target. If they were, the fact that they were 'sitting in a warehouse in England' just means the rollout in Scotland was slower than promised as Agent P suggests.
*Bad news: growth in vaccination numbers appears to have stalled *Good news: at least it doesn't appear to be going into reverse, though even if it does then, so long as it doesn't drop below about 400k per day, then all the nine priority cohorts should've had jab one by the end of March
That's when the real problems start, of course, because if supply hasn't sped up by then the rest of the population will be waiting months whilst the effort goes into second doses. So we'll have to keep our fingers crossed that things improve.
Beyond that, the over-riding concern is still that imported mutant Plague screws up everything, a potential calamity which the Government appears still to be willing to do nothing meaningful to prevent.
Imported or domestically evolved. Both are possible.
We are going to be stuck in lockdown for months whilst the Plague is driven down to low levels, so as to let us all out and to minimize the prospect of that happening here - all of which will be for nothing if SuperCovid is simply exported from elsewhere instead.
There are some new, much faster tests on the way. Will make mass testing much more reliable and therefore safer.
I am not sure it's wise to place too much faith in testing, when one is dealing with a combination of a hyper-infectious virus and a very leaky and unreliable system of tracing and especially of isolation. Tracing all the contacts of people who've caught a new imported variant is ultimately for nothing if the disease is spreading so fast that you can't keep up with it, or if you fail to trace all the contacts, or if you tell all the contacts to isolate but one or more of them decides to go to work, down the supermarket or to one of these wretched clandestine parties or wedding receptions anyway.
By far the best thing to do is to keep it out in the first place.
To be fair in an inter connected world that is not possible
It's entirely possible, and we know that because New Zealand has been doing it for the best part of a year.
What it all boils down to is what you're prepared to give up and what you gain in return.
If you gain "no lockdowns" when you would otherwise have them then it is worth giving up almost anything else.
New Zealand has a different economic set up
I know. They have an open economy, whereas we have one where most consumer-facing businesses and the entire education system is all shut because of lockdown.
In a straight fight between being a fortress and being stuck with masks, social distancing and having to go through 4-6 month long cyclical lockdowns every time a deadly enough mutation gets loose in the land, for however many years it takes to crush this disease all over the world, the fortress option wins every time.
I thought AZ was supposed to have 12 weeks between doses not 28 days?
The 3 main studies on AZN in UK, Brazil and SA all used different dosage regimes (2 in the UK with the accidental half dose) including different gaps and different placebos. It is why it is hard to combine them into one.
*Bad news: growth in vaccination numbers appears to have stalled *Good news: at least it doesn't appear to be going into reverse, though even if it does then, so long as it doesn't drop below about 400k per day, then all the nine priority cohorts should've had jab one by the end of March
That's when the real problems start, of course, because if supply hasn't sped up by then the rest of the population will be waiting months whilst the effort goes into second doses. So we'll have to keep our fingers crossed that things improve.
Beyond that, the over-riding concern is still that imported mutant Plague screws up everything, a potential calamity which the Government appears still to be willing to do nothing meaningful to prevent.
Imported or domestically evolved. Both are possible.
We are going to be stuck in lockdown for months whilst the Plague is driven down to low levels, so as to let us all out and to minimize the prospect of that happening here - all of which will be for nothing if SuperCovid is simply exported from elsewhere instead.
There are some new, much faster tests on the way. Will make mass testing much more reliable and therefore safer.
I am not sure it's wise to place too much faith in testing, when one is dealing with a combination of a hyper-infectious virus and a very leaky and unreliable system of tracing and especially of isolation. Tracing all the contacts of people who've caught a new imported variant is ultimately for nothing if the disease is spreading so fast that you can't keep up with it, or if you fail to trace all the contacts, or if you tell all the contacts to isolate but one or more of them decides to go to work, down the supermarket or to one of these wretched clandestine parties or wedding receptions anyway.
By far the best thing to do is to keep it out in the first place.
To be fair in an inter connected world that is not possible
It's entirely possible, and we know that because New Zealand has been doing it for the best part of a year.
What it all boils down to is what you're prepared to give up and what you gain in return.
If you gain "no lockdowns" when you would otherwise have them then it is worth giving up almost anything else.
New Zealand has a different economic set up
I know. They have an open economy, whereas we have one where most consumer-facing businesses and the entire education system is all shut because of lockdown.
In a straight fight between being a fortress and being stuck with masks, social distancing and having to go through 4-6 month long cyclical lockdowns every time a deadly enough mutation gets loose in the land, for however many years it takes to crush this disease all over the world, the fortress option wins every time.
One of the things I have found bizarre in the argument over forced quarantine of arrivals from abroad is that it might work in Vietnam, but for a democratic government it would be ‘an unacceptable infringement of civil liberties.’
Well, what the f*** do they call these repeated lockdowns then?
Well, I have been wondering. I mean, surely nobody can be quite so bizarrely stereotypical cybernat as he comes across as, particularly in his increasingly xenophobic attacks on other poste...
Oh hold on - did you mean TUV not TUD?
What do you think a DUP mp has to do with the TUV?
I thought AZ was supposed to have 12 weeks between doses not 28 days?
I think the 12 week findings came much more recently than the start of this trial so they used the default 4 weeks. Would be interesting to see how it does with a 12 week gap given that efficacy goes up to 83% from 55% once the gap increases from 4 weeks to 12 weeks.
Well, I have been wondering. I mean, surely nobody can be quite so bizarrely stereotypical cybernat as he comes across as, particularly in his increasingly xenophobic attacks on other poste...
Oh hold on - did you mean TUV not TUD?
What do you think a DUP mp has to do with the TUV?
1 million doses hadn't even been delivered to Scotland by the end of January.
What was delivered is irrelevant. The vaccines are held centrally and then ordered up as needed by the rollout teams in each nation. If those vaccines were not available to be ordered by Scotland, of course that's a good reason to miss the target. If they were, the fact that they were 'sitting in a warehouse in England' just means the rollout in Scotland was slower than promised as Agent P suggests.
So you are saying Scotland could order the UK's entire stock of vaccine at the drop of a hat?
Who is this Agent P? He comes across as a complete wanker. His tweets are really irritating a la Dave Keating.
They're a leading light in the Yooneverse. Always ready with a numerically incontinent tweet that gets repeated as fact.
Last week he was counjouring up an extra thousand Scottish deaths or so, a few weeks before claiming that a 1-in-100 was a higher infection rate than a 1-in-95 figure.
Who is this Agent P? He comes across as a complete wanker. His tweets are really irritating a la Dave Keating.
They're a leading light in the Yooneverse. Always ready with a numerically incontinent tweet that gets repeated as fact.
Last week he was counjouring up and extra thousand Scottish deaths or so, a few weeks before claiming that a 1-in-100 was a higher infection rate than a 1-in-95 figure.
It's a strange day when the same people who tweet Agent Pee incontinently are also spraying WoS links all over the place. Then you see who the people are and you think fair enough.
I thought AZ was supposed to have 12 weeks between doses not 28 days?
The 3 main studies on AZN in UK, Brazil and SA all used different dosage regimes (2 in the UK with the accidental half dose) including different gaps and different placebos. It is why it is hard to combine them into one.
I wonder whether having a proper P2 trial would have helped AZ figure out the 12 week dosing gap as they could have tested immune responses in P2 with 4, 8, 12 and 16 week gaps as well as the single dose with groups of 300-500 people starting as soon as the safety trial ended in April, though maybe the 16 week gap would have been axed for reasons of speed. With a fast recruitment process they would still have caught the start of the second wave with fully 20-30k vaccinated people and got the results at around the same time as they did but with a much less messy dataset, plus with a larger P2 the reticence to recruit as many 65+ people would have fallen away.
The trial AZ conducted was a complete mess, different placebos, variable dosing gaps, not enough over 65s, the low dose fuck up. It was just so badly run for something that has such a huge amount of importance. Hopefully the US trial and real world data start to clear things up in the next few weeks. Especially once our over 65s start to receive their second doses. We can easily compare them to the unvaccinated within our own county, the sample size will be massive.
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
I must admit this business has got me taking vitD tablets (at the moderate rate generally recommended), being a Scot in the twilit winter, despite eating more than my fair share of mackerel, salmon, eggs and milk.
31 years old. I wouldn't have expected hospitalisation or death in that group, so probably why couldn't be commented on.
That study is underpowered. The vaccine efficacy confidence interval (against B.1.351) was -78.8% to +54.8%. It would be a mistake to read too much into it, at this point.
The data on re-infection is a little bit more robust, though: if antibody presence from past infection confers immunity to B.1.351 then it can't be a huge amount. That's a more worrying finding. Good reason to try to keep this variant out of the UK, or suppress it hard.
And yes, the study has nothing to say about serious illness. I wonder what they were thinking when they recruited for it. Underpowered medical trials are a real problem for science, and lead to bad policy.
--AS
Edit: and, to follow up on reinfection, the same finding happened in the Novavax trial. So I think that conclusion is becoming more firm.
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
I must admit this business has got me taking vitD tablets (at the moderate rate generally recommended), being a Scot in the twilit winter, despite eating more than my fair share of mackerel, salmon, eggs and milk.
"mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing"
Hmmmm
Well, some people might think that. Or they might think that modern medicine and precautions beats Social Darwinism.
All these weaklings, insisting on drains and potable water, anesthetics for their operations, antibiotics when they get a perfectly normal case of gangrene......
Who is this Agent P? He comes across as a complete wanker. His tweets are really irritating a la Dave Keating.
They're a leading light in the Yooneverse. Always ready with a numerically incontinent tweet that gets repeated as fact.
Last week he was counjouring up and extra thousand Scottish deaths or so, a few weeks before claiming that a 1-in-100 was a higher infection rate than a 1-in-95 figure.
It's a strange day when the same people who tweet Agent Pee incontinently are also spraying WoS links all over the place. Then you see who the people are and you think fair enough.
I'm not sure who would be more black affrontit at being mentioned almost in the same approbatory breath by Carlotta et aliis.
I thought AZ was supposed to have 12 weeks between doses not 28 days?
The 3 main studies on AZN in UK, Brazil and SA all used different dosage regimes (2 in the UK with the accidental half dose) including different gaps and different placebos. It is why it is hard to combine them into one.
I wonder whether having a proper P2 trial would have helped AZ figure out the 12 week dosing gap as they could have tested immune responses in P2 with 4, 8, 12 and 16 week gaps as well as the single dose with groups of 300-500 people starting as soon as the safety trial ended in April, though maybe the 16 week gap would have been axed for reasons of speed. With a fast recruitment process they would still have caught the start of the second wave with fully 20-30k vaccinated people and got the results at around the same time as they did but with a much less messy dataset, plus with a larger P2 the reticence to recruit as many 65+ people would have fallen away.
The trial AZ conducted was a complete mess, different placebos, variable dosing gaps, not enough over 65s, the low dose fuck up. It was just so badly run for something that has such a huge amount of importance. Hopefully the US trial and real world data start to clear things up in the next few weeks. Especially once our over 65s start to receive their second doses. We can easily compare them to the unvaccinated within our own county, the sample size will be massive.
I think that in such circumstances as last year the trials were rather rushed for all the vaccines, but even amongst those the AZN was a bit of a mess. Fortunately the virus seems particularly susceptible to vaccines so most work, and have few significant side effects. We had a full on anaphylaxis with a Pfizer at a local vaccination station last week, but that seems to be very rare given the numbers.
Increasingly it will be unethical to have a placebo arm in vaccine trials, so I expect that new vaccines will be tested against current vaccines for non-inferiority studies. The numbers to get statistical power will mean much larger trials.
The other thing to look out for are treatment trials. I am optimistic for SNG001 developed at Southampton University, which should work for all respiratory viruses, not just covid. So much so, that I have punted on some SNG shares, but not so much that I couldn't afford it if it flops.
1 million doses hadn't even been delivered to Scotland by the end of January.
What was delivered is irrelevant. The vaccines are held centrally and then ordered up as needed by the rollout teams in each nation. If those vaccines were not available to be ordered by Scotland, of course that's a good reason to miss the target. If they were, the fact that they were 'sitting in a warehouse in England' just means the rollout in Scotland was slower than promised as Agent P suggests.
So you are saying Scotland could order the UK's entire stock of vaccine at the drop of a hat?
Not at all, but the Scotland rollout team could have ordered up Scotland's full allocation over this time. We can surmise what that might have been by looking at the fastest vaccinating nation (don't know who it was by Feb 1) and seeing how many they did. Scotland's allocation would not have been less than 9% of that.
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
I must admit this business has got me taking vitD tablets (at the moderate rate generally recommended), being a Scot in the twilit winter, despite eating more than my fair share of mackerel, salmon, eggs and milk.
"mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing"
Hmmmm
Well, some people might think that. Or they might think that modern medicine and precautions beats Social Darwinism.
All these weaklings, insisting on drains and potable water, anesthetics for their operations, antibiotics when they get a perfectly normal case of gangrene......
Not to mention freedom from typhus-bearing lice, tuberculotically crowded conditions and so on. I was recently quite startled to discover that my late father born in the 1920s had had a life policy taken out at birth by his not very well off mother to pay the funeral costs. evidently if he went down with one of the many childhood infections. He didn't, and it was quite a job dividing the payout between all of granny's descendants.
1 million doses hadn't even been delivered to Scotland by the end of January.
What was delivered is irrelevant. The vaccines are held centrally and then ordered up as needed by the rollout teams in each nation. If those vaccines were not available to be ordered by Scotland, of course that's a good reason to miss the target. If they were, the fact that they were 'sitting in a warehouse in England' just means the rollout in Scotland was slower than promised as Agent P suggests.
So you are saying Scotland could order the UK's entire stock of vaccine at the drop of a hat?
Not at all, but the Scotland rollout team could have ordered up Scotland's full allocation over this time. We can surmise what that might have been by looking at the fastest vaccinating nation (don't know who it was by Feb 1) and seeing how many they did. Scotland's allocation would not have been less than 9% of that.
Fastest is currently England - 24.3 doses/100 vs Scotland19.2.
I’m the first to criticise LuckyGuy usually, but he clearly wasn’t referring literally to humans being weaklings. What he was saying - to my reading - was that a blood test could be developed to assess who was susceptible to covid. That seems like a fair point to me.
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
I must admit this business has got me taking vitD tablets (at the moderate rate generally recommended), being a Scot in the twilit winter, despite eating more than my fair share of mackerel, salmon, eggs and milk.
"mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing"
Hmmmm
Well, some people might think that. Or they might think that modern medicine and precautions beats Social Darwinism.
All these weaklings, insisting on drains and potable water, anesthetics for their operations, antibiotics when they get a perfectly normal case of gangrene......
That's a ludicrous straw man argument. I think we should make use of every wonderful benefit that building on the experience of our forebears can provide. These do not include (as a long term vision) standing two meters apart from everyone, covering the face, and being dependent on ever-changing vaccines merely to live.
If you're such a fan of modern medicine, what could be more scientific than highlighting (using science) serious nutritional deficiencies and trying to do something about them? It is considerably more scientific an approach than telling people to 'lose weight'. The carrying of energy as fat is not, in and of itself even a disease.
31 years old. I wouldn't have expected hospitalisation or death in that group, so probably why couldn't be commented on.
That study is underpowered. The vaccine efficacy confidence interval (against B.1.351) was -78.8% to +54.8%. It would be a mistake to read too much into it, at this point.
The data on re-infection is a little bit more robust, though: if antibody presence from past infection confers immunity to B.1.351 then it can't be a huge amount. That's a more worrying finding. Good reason to try to keep this variant out of the UK, or suppress it hard.
And yes, the study has nothing to say about serious illness. I wonder what they were thinking when they recruited for it. Underpowered medical trials are a real problem for science, and lead to bad policy.
--AS
Edit: and, to follow up on reinfection, the same finding happened in the Novavax trial. So I think that conclusion is becoming more firm.
I understood it to be a further follow up of the original AZN trial in RSA (Cov005) reported in the Lancet in November. That had 2096 enrolled, with a 4 week interval and allowing for a bit of dropout leaving 1749 for this analysis.
The thing I find strange is that anyone tries with Putin. It is quite clear that he sees the world in terms of the sheep and the wolf.
This episode was particularly humiliating, not only did the Russians quote his SputnikV comments in a video contradicting Navalny, he wasn't 5 minutes out the door and they were expelling EU diplomats....
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
I must admit this business has got me taking vitD tablets (at the moderate rate generally recommended), being a Scot in the twilit winter, despite eating more than my fair share of mackerel, salmon, eggs and milk.
"mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing"
Hmmmm
Well, some people might think that. Or they might think that modern medicine and precautions beats Social Darwinism.
All these weaklings, insisting on drains and potable water, anesthetics for their operations, antibiotics when they get a perfectly normal case of gangrene......
That's a ludicrous straw man argument. I think we should make use of every wonderful benefit that building on the experience of our forebears can provide. These do not include (as a long term vision) standing two meters apart from everyone, covering the face, and being dependent on ever-changing vaccines merely to live.
If you're such a fan of modern medicine, what could be more scientific than highlighting (using science) serious nutritional deficiencies and trying to do something about them? It is considerably more scientific an approach than telling people to 'lose weight'. The carrying of energy as fat is not, in and of itself even a disease.
It's not about "merely to live" - so that an *increasing* number of people continue to live. That whole progress thing.
The claim that vitamin D deficiency increases COVID susceptibility hasn't been proven in any study.
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
is a survey from 2018 showing that almost everybody is getting more than enough of almost everything. And - this is the best bit - 22% of their sample were taking supplements but they ignored those and just looked at what people are getting from their diet. Nutrition is great, but it doesn't "boost your immune system" and it is nothing to do with protecting yourself from viruses - masks and vaccines do that. The one exception is vitamin D and "official circles" are very far from silent about that.
I’m the first to criticise LuckyGuy usually, but he clearly wasn’t referring literally to humans being weaklings. What he was saying - to my reading - was that a blood test could be developed to assess who was susceptible to covid. That seems like a fair point to me.
Thanks for the support! What I am actually saying is that existing blood tests can easily tell us which vitamins and minerals we're deficient in. Assuming that everyone admitted in to hospital with Covid is given a blood test (is this not standard medical procedure?), we could learn at a stroke, right now, which minerals and vitamins sufferers had significant deficiencies in (I would assume these are the same ones that those who get chronic diseases are also deficient in), and develop a long term plan to ensure that these are introduced or reintroduced in to our national diet.
This would be a massively more scientific approach than the current 'Oh look, they tend to be old and fat' that seems to be the limit to anyone's analytical powers at the moment. Oldness, ethnicity, and fatness are meaningless. The first two you can't help, and the second you could well do yourself more harm than good if you tackled wrongly. Blood test data on the other hand is actionable.
The thing I find strange is that anyone tries with Putin. It is quite clear that he sees the world in terms of the sheep and the wolf.
This episode was particularly humiliating, not only did the Russians quote his SputnikV comments in a video contradicting Navalny, he wasn't 5 minutes out the door and they were expelling EU diplomats....
Sucking up to China wasn't enough, they also sucked up to Russia. I have to commend some of our remainers on here for seeing these moves for what they really are.
The thing I find strange is that anyone tries with Putin. It is quite clear that he sees the world in terms of the sheep and the wolf.
This episode was particularly humiliating, not only did the Russians quote his SputnikV comments in a video contradicting Navalny, he wasn't 5 minutes out the door and they were expelling EU diplomats....
Putin, I think, saw the EU speaking out on Navalny as then (the EU) speaking out of turn. To him, the EU/Germans should have the role of supplicants for Russian gas.
1 million doses hadn't even been delivered to Scotland by the end of January.
What was delivered is irrelevant. The vaccines are held centrally and then ordered up as needed by the rollout teams in each nation. If those vaccines were not available to be ordered by Scotland, of course that's a good reason to miss the target. If they were, the fact that they were 'sitting in a warehouse in England' just means the rollout in Scotland was slower than promised as Agent P suggests.
So you are saying Scotland could order the UK's entire stock of vaccine at the drop of a hat?
Not at all, but the Scotland rollout team could have ordered up Scotland's full allocation over this time. We can surmise what that might have been by looking at the fastest vaccinating nation (don't know who it was by Feb 1) and seeing how many they did. Scotland's allocation would not have been less than 9% of that.
If Scotland had matched England (the best vaccinating nation) to Jan 31st then Scotland (using a crude whole population ratio, I don't known what the proportion of vaccine eligible population in the 2 countries are) would have done 787k vaccinations.
So well short of a million.
Edit: I am extremely relieved that Scotland appears to have picked up the pace significantly this last week.
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
is a survey from 2018 showing that almost everybody is getting more than enough of almost everything. And - this is the best bit - 22% of their sample were taking supplements but they ignored those and just looked at what people are getting from their diet. Nutrition is great, but it doesn't "boost your immune system" and it is nothing to do with protecting yourself from viruses - masks and vaccines do that. The one exception is vitamin D and "official circles" are very far from silent about that.
'Intake' in this context is not meaningful. It is the presence of these minerals in the body in sufficient quantities, as shown by a blood test, that is the only valid test - if those aren't present, then clearly we're either not 'intaking' these vitamins and minerals, or they are not sufficiently bioavailable in the foods and drinks we are getting them in. I could eat a packet of chalk, but that doesn't mean my body has actually absorbed and been able to make use of that calcium.
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
I must admit this business has got me taking vitD tablets (at the moderate rate generally recommended), being a Scot in the twilit winter, despite eating more than my fair share of mackerel, salmon, eggs and milk.
"mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing"
Hmmmm
Well, some people might think that. Or they might think that modern medicine and precautions beats Social Darwinism.
All these weaklings, insisting on drains and potable water, anesthetics for their operations, antibiotics when they get a perfectly normal case of gangrene......
That's a ludicrous straw man argument. I think we should make use of every wonderful benefit that building on the experience of our forebears can provide. These do not include (as a long term vision) standing two meters apart from everyone, covering the face, and being dependent on ever-changing vaccines merely to live.
If you're such a fan of modern medicine, what could be more scientific than highlighting (using science) serious nutritional deficiencies and trying to do something about them? It is considerably more scientific an approach than telling people to 'lose weight'. The carrying of energy as fat is not, in and of itself even a disease.
But the medical profession continues to peddle the myth that being overweight vastly increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
1 million doses hadn't even been delivered to Scotland by the end of January.
What was delivered is irrelevant. The vaccines are held centrally and then ordered up as needed by the rollout teams in each nation. If those vaccines were not available to be ordered by Scotland, of course that's a good reason to miss the target. If they were, the fact that they were 'sitting in a warehouse in England' just means the rollout in Scotland was slower than promised as Agent P suggests.
So you are saying Scotland could order the UK's entire stock of vaccine at the drop of a hat?
Not at all, but the Scotland rollout team could have ordered up Scotland's full allocation over this time. We can surmise what that might have been by looking at the fastest vaccinating nation (don't know who it was by Feb 1) and seeing how many they did. Scotland's allocation would not have been less than 9% of that.
If Scotland had matched England (the best vaccinating nation) to Jan 31st then Scotland (using a crude whole population ratio, I don't known what the proportion of vaccine eligible population in the 2 countries are) would have done 787k vaccinations.
So well short of a million.
Edit: I am extremely relieved that Scotland appears to have picked up the pace significantly this last week.
Me too - it is a great effort by all those concerned in Scotland. I would now like any of the nations to kick it up yet another notch and make the rest look bad so they speed it up.
I am sure your numbers are good, though remember it's the number on the morning of Feb 1 that we're looking at, to include Jan 31s vaccinations. It still looks like it would be short of a million, though that is predicated on England performing at capacity. We will never know how much headroom there actually was.
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
is a survey from 2018 showing that almost everybody is getting more than enough of almost everything. And - this is the best bit - 22% of their sample were taking supplements but they ignored those and just looked at what people are getting from their diet. Nutrition is great, but it doesn't "boost your immune system" and it is nothing to do with protecting yourself from viruses - masks and vaccines do that. The one exception is vitamin D and "official circles" are very far from silent about that.
'Intake' in this context is not meaningful. It is the presence of these minerals in the body in sufficient quantities, as shown by a blood test, that is the only valid test - if those aren't present, then clearly we're either not 'intaking' these vitamins and minerals, or they are not sufficiently bioavailable in the foods and drinks we are getting them in. I could eat a packet of chalk, but that doesn't mean my body has actually absorbed and been able to make use of that calcium.
Absolute hokum. Why do you think there are such things as universally recognised recommended daily intakes if intake doesn't usefully correlate with bioavailability? Do you think you have spotted an obvious loophole that the entire worldwide medical profession has overlooked?
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
I must admit this business has got me taking vitD tablets (at the moderate rate generally recommended), being a Scot in the twilit winter, despite eating more than my fair share of mackerel, salmon, eggs and milk.
"mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing"
Hmmmm
Well, some people might think that. Or they might think that modern medicine and precautions beats Social Darwinism.
All these weaklings, insisting on drains and potable water, anesthetics for their operations, antibiotics when they get a perfectly normal case of gangrene......
That's a ludicrous straw man argument. I think we should make use of every wonderful benefit that building on the experience of our forebears can provide. These do not include (as a long term vision) standing two meters apart from everyone, covering the face, and being dependent on ever-changing vaccines merely to live.
If you're such a fan of modern medicine, what could be more scientific than highlighting (using science) serious nutritional deficiencies and trying to do something about them? It is considerably more scientific an approach than telling people to 'lose weight'. The carrying of energy as fat is not, in and of itself even a disease.
But the medical profession continues to peddle the myth that being overweight vastly increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
The correlation between being overweight and these diseases is undeniable, not a myth, but being overweight is a symptom, not a disease. The ability to carry energy (and toxins) as fat is a valuable function of the body - we'd be pretty buggered without it.
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
I must admit this business has got me taking vitD tablets (at the moderate rate generally recommended), being a Scot in the twilit winter, despite eating more than my fair share of mackerel, salmon, eggs and milk.
"mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing"
Hmmmm
Well, some people might think that. Or they might think that modern medicine and precautions beats Social Darwinism.
All these weaklings, insisting on drains and potable water, anesthetics for their operations, antibiotics when they get a perfectly normal case of gangrene......
That's a ludicrous straw man argument. I think we should make use of every wonderful benefit that building on the experience of our forebears can provide. These do not include (as a long term vision) standing two meters apart from everyone, covering the face, and being dependent on ever-changing vaccines merely to live.
If you're such a fan of modern medicine, what could be more scientific than highlighting (using science) serious nutritional deficiencies and trying to do something about them? It is considerably more scientific an approach than telling people to 'lose weight'. The carrying of energy as fat is not, in and of itself even a disease.
But the medical profession continues to peddle the myth that being overweight vastly increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
What magnitude of effect would you describe as "vast"?
I note that you use the term overweight, is that as defined as a BMI of 25-30? Or of 25 upwards? Or do you work to a non standard definition of "overweight"?
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
is a survey from 2018 showing that almost everybody is getting more than enough of almost everything. And - this is the best bit - 22% of their sample were taking supplements but they ignored those and just looked at what people are getting from their diet. Nutrition is great, but it doesn't "boost your immune system" and it is nothing to do with protecting yourself from viruses - masks and vaccines do that. The one exception is vitamin D and "official circles" are very far from silent about that.
'Intake' in this context is not meaningful. It is the presence of these minerals in the body in sufficient quantities, as shown by a blood test, that is the only valid test - if those aren't present, then clearly we're either not 'intaking' these vitamins and minerals, or they are not sufficiently bioavailable in the foods and drinks we are getting them in. I could eat a packet of chalk, but that doesn't mean my body has actually absorbed and been able to make use of that calcium.
Absolute hokum. Why do you think there are such things as universally recognised recommended daily intakes if intake doesn't usefully correlate with bioavailability? Do you think you have spotted an obvious loophole that the entire worldwide medical profession has overlooked?
Of course the entire medical profession hasn't ignored it. Most are not well versed in it, but it is universally accepted (except by you it seems). You've never heard of a fat soluble vitamin? Eat it with fat, it absorbs, without it, it won't. The whole world of nutrition is like that. You are arguing that we can measure the structural integrity of buildings by how much cement and brickwork were used. I say again, as far as I know, the severely ill receive blood tests in hospital as a matter of course. So why wouldn't you look at this actual data, rather than survey them as to what they had for lunch?
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
I must admit this business has got me taking vitD tablets (at the moderate rate generally recommended), being a Scot in the twilit winter, despite eating more than my fair share of mackerel, salmon, eggs and milk.
"mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing"
Hmmmm
Well, some people might think that. Or they might think that modern medicine and precautions beats Social Darwinism.
All these weaklings, insisting on drains and potable water, anesthetics for their operations, antibiotics when they get a perfectly normal case of gangrene......
That's a ludicrous straw man argument. I think we should make use of every wonderful benefit that building on the experience of our forebears can provide. These do not include (as a long term vision) standing two meters apart from everyone, covering the face, and being dependent on ever-changing vaccines merely to live.
If you're such a fan of modern medicine, what could be more scientific than highlighting (using science) serious nutritional deficiencies and trying to do something about them? It is considerably more scientific an approach than telling people to 'lose weight'. The carrying of energy as fat is not, in and of itself even a disease.
It's not about "merely to live" - so that an *increasing* number of people continue to live. That whole progress thing.
The claim that vitamin D deficiency increases COVID susceptibility hasn't been proven in any study.
That's a totally circular argument - I am asking for it to BE studied - not even with precise relevance to Vitamin D, but to all minerals and vitamins, using the vast resource of blood test data that there undoubtedly is. If significant deficiencies are common, that's at least a good pointer - certainly a better one than 'don't be fat, don't get old'.
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
is a survey from 2018 showing that almost everybody is getting more than enough of almost everything. And - this is the best bit - 22% of their sample were taking supplements but they ignored those and just looked at what people are getting from their diet. Nutrition is great, but it doesn't "boost your immune system" and it is nothing to do with protecting yourself from viruses - masks and vaccines do that. The one exception is vitamin D and "official circles" are very far from silent about that.
'Intake' in this context is not meaningful. It is the presence of these minerals in the body in sufficient quantities, as shown by a blood test, that is the only valid test - if those aren't present, then clearly we're either not 'intaking' these vitamins and minerals, or they are not sufficiently bioavailable in the foods and drinks we are getting them in. I could eat a packet of chalk, but that doesn't mean my body has actually absorbed and been able to make use of that calcium.
Absolute hokum. Why do you think there are such things as universally recognised recommended daily intakes if intake doesn't usefully correlate with bioavailability? Do you think you have spotted an obvious loophole that the entire worldwide medical profession has overlooked?
Of course the entire medical profession hasn't ignored it. Most are not well versed in it, but it is universally accepted (except by you it seems). You've never heard of a fat soluble vitamin? Eat it with fat, it absorbs, without it, it won't. The whole world of nutrition is like that. You are arguing that we can measure the structural integrity of buildings by how much cement and brickwork were used. I say again, as far as I know, the severely ill receive blood tests in hospital as a matter of course. So why wouldn't you look at this actual data, rather than survey them as to what they had for lunch?
OK so you are ahead of most of the medical profession on this. What are the odds of that?
Best we leave it there, because I don't want to have my fear confirmed that you are the kind of person who recommends cancer patients should drink more organic smoothies.
But the medical profession continues to peddle the myth that being overweight vastly increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
That's errm... not a "myth"
Scientific studies that prove things that upset people are invalid.
Didn't you get the memo?
On the contrary, I am the one ASKING for scientific studies. We have levels of vitamins and minerals that are deemed BY SCIENTISTS to be optimal in the body. We (presumably) have a vast repository of blood test data from Covid patients. Should we not look at this vast data resource to confirm whether there is significant correlation between deficiencies in whatever minerals and vitamins that are present, with severity of Covid. I don't see how this could be more scientific if it tried.
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
I must admit this business has got me taking vitD tablets (at the moderate rate generally recommended), being a Scot in the twilit winter, despite eating more than my fair share of mackerel, salmon, eggs and milk.
"mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing"
Hmmmm
Well, some people might think that. Or they might think that modern medicine and precautions beats Social Darwinism.
All these weaklings, insisting on drains and potable water, anesthetics for their operations, antibiotics when they get a perfectly normal case of gangrene......
That's a ludicrous straw man argument. I think we should make use of every wonderful benefit that building on the experience of our forebears can provide. These do not include (as a long term vision) standing two meters apart from everyone, covering the face, and being dependent on ever-changing vaccines merely to live.
If you're such a fan of modern medicine, what could be more scientific than highlighting (using science) serious nutritional deficiencies and trying to do something about them? It is considerably more scientific an approach than telling people to 'lose weight'. The carrying of energy as fat is not, in and of itself even a disease.
It's not about "merely to live" - so that an *increasing* number of people continue to live. That whole progress thing.
The claim that vitamin D deficiency increases COVID susceptibility hasn't been proven in any study.
That's a totally circular argument - I am asking for it to BE studied - not even with precise relevance to Vitamin D, but to all minerals and vitamins, using the vast resource of blood test data that there undoubtedly is. If significant deficiencies are common, that's at least a good pointer - certainly a better one than 'don't be fat, don't get old'.
Where do you get your diet fad hokum information from @Luckyguy1983?
If you want a good book on diet and nutrition try Tim Spector's The Diet Myth. Spector btw is not entirely struck on the vitamin supplement fashion:
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
is a survey from 2018 showing that almost everybody is getting more than enough of almost everything. And - this is the best bit - 22% of their sample were taking supplements but they ignored those and just looked at what people are getting from their diet. Nutrition is great, but it doesn't "boost your immune system" and it is nothing to do with protecting yourself from viruses - masks and vaccines do that. The one exception is vitamin D and "official circles" are very far from silent about that.
'Intake' in this context is not meaningful. It is the presence of these minerals in the body in sufficient quantities, as shown by a blood test, that is the only valid test - if those aren't present, then clearly we're either not 'intaking' these vitamins and minerals, or they are not sufficiently bioavailable in the foods and drinks we are getting them in. I could eat a packet of chalk, but that doesn't mean my body has actually absorbed and been able to make use of that calcium.
Absolute hokum. Why do you think there are such things as universally recognised recommended daily intakes if intake doesn't usefully correlate with bioavailability? Do you think you have spotted an obvious loophole that the entire worldwide medical profession has overlooked?
Of course the entire medical profession hasn't ignored it. Most are not well versed in it, but it is universally accepted (except by you it seems). You've never heard of a fat soluble vitamin? Eat it with fat, it absorbs, without it, it won't. The whole world of nutrition is like that. You are arguing that we can measure the structural integrity of buildings by how much cement and brickwork were used. I say again, as far as I know, the severely ill receive blood tests in hospital as a matter of course. So why wouldn't you look at this actual data, rather than survey them as to what they had for lunch?
OK so you are ahead of most of the medical profession on this. What are the odds of that?
Best we leave it there, because I don't want to have my fear confirmed that you are the kind of person who recommends cancer patients should drink more organic smoothies.
No, I am pretty sure the medical profession is up to speed with the concept of bioavailability of vitamins and minerals - it seems to be just you that doesn't really get it.
Accidentally however, you do raise a good point. Nutrition is a tiny part of the medical school curriculum - 'We're taught about 10 to 24 hours over five to six years in medical school on nutrition.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/health-43504125
Most people who are interested in any topic will spend longer than 24 hours over their years learning about it.
The South African variant is indeed deeply worrying - but surely it is of comfort that cases and deaths there have been continuously declining for weeks now? Lockdown there was eased quite substantially last week and we shall see if that makes things worse again, but surely the fact that cases have been brought under control with relative ease in a country that’s a home grown mutant strain, huge wealth disparities and areas where social distancing is impossible must be positive?
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
is a survey from 2018 showing that almost everybody is getting more than enough of almost everything. And - this is the best bit - 22% of their sample were taking supplements but they ignored those and just looked at what people are getting from their diet. Nutrition is great, but it doesn't "boost your immune system" and it is nothing to do with protecting yourself from viruses - masks and vaccines do that. The one exception is vitamin D and "official circles" are very far from silent about that.
'Intake' in this context is not meaningful. It is the presence of these minerals in the body in sufficient quantities, as shown by a blood test, that is the only valid test - if those aren't present, then clearly we're either not 'intaking' these vitamins and minerals, or they are not sufficiently bioavailable in the foods and drinks we are getting them in. I could eat a packet of chalk, but that doesn't mean my body has actually absorbed and been able to make use of that calcium.
Absolute hokum. Why do you think there are such things as universally recognised recommended daily intakes if intake doesn't usefully correlate with bioavailability? Do you think you have spotted an obvious loophole that the entire worldwide medical profession has overlooked?
Of course the entire medical profession hasn't ignored it. Most are not well versed in it, but it is universally accepted (except by you it seems). You've never heard of a fat soluble vitamin? Eat it with fat, it absorbs, without it, it won't. The whole world of nutrition is like that. You are arguing that we can measure the structural integrity of buildings by how much cement and brickwork were used. I say again, as far as I know, the severely ill receive blood tests in hospital as a matter of course. So why wouldn't you look at this actual data, rather than survey them as to what they had for lunch?
OK so you are ahead of most of the medical profession on this. What are the odds of that?
Best we leave it there, because I don't want to have my fear confirmed that you are the kind of person who recommends cancer patients should drink more organic smoothies.
The cruelest cult 'treatment' for cancer (and I am sure @Luckyguy1983 has no truck with this one) is surely the coffee enema fad - encourage ill and vulnerable people to undergo uncomfortable embarrassing procedures for zero benefit.
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
I must admit this business has got me taking vitD tablets (at the moderate rate generally recommended), being a Scot in the twilit winter, despite eating more than my fair share of mackerel, salmon, eggs and milk.
"mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing"
Hmmmm
Well, some people might think that. Or they might think that modern medicine and precautions beats Social Darwinism.
All these weaklings, insisting on drains and potable water, anesthetics for their operations, antibiotics when they get a perfectly normal case of gangrene......
That's a ludicrous straw man argument. I think we should make use of every wonderful benefit that building on the experience of our forebears can provide. These do not include (as a long term vision) standing two meters apart from everyone, covering the face, and being dependent on ever-changing vaccines merely to live.
If you're such a fan of modern medicine, what could be more scientific than highlighting (using science) serious nutritional deficiencies and trying to do something about them? It is considerably more scientific an approach than telling people to 'lose weight'. The carrying of energy as fat is not, in and of itself even a disease.
It's not about "merely to live" - so that an *increasing* number of people continue to live. That whole progress thing.
The claim that vitamin D deficiency increases COVID susceptibility hasn't been proven in any study.
That's a totally circular argument - I am asking for it to BE studied - not even with precise relevance to Vitamin D, but to all minerals and vitamins, using the vast resource of blood test data that there undoubtedly is. If significant deficiencies are common, that's at least a good pointer - certainly a better one than 'don't be fat, don't get old'.
Where do you get your diet fad hokum information from @Luckyguy1983?
If you want a good book on diet and nutrition try Tim Spector's The Diet Myth. Spector btw is not entirely struck on the vitamin supplement fashion:
What diet fad hokum do you actually think I have spread in this discussion? If you have a blood test YOUR DOCTOR will tell you that you are deficient in certain minerals and vitamins. I merely suggest we should examine this data with reference to Covid. I am puzzled as to why this is in any way a controversial concept.
As for Vit D supplements, I think the general consensus is that they don't work that well, and I wouldn't disagree.
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
is a survey from 2018 showing that almost everybody is getting more than enough of almost everything. And - this is the best bit - 22% of their sample were taking supplements but they ignored those and just looked at what people are getting from their diet. Nutrition is great, but it doesn't "boost your immune system" and it is nothing to do with protecting yourself from viruses - masks and vaccines do that. The one exception is vitamin D and "official circles" are very far from silent about that.
'Intake' in this context is not meaningful. It is the presence of these minerals in the body in sufficient quantities, as shown by a blood test, that is the only valid test - if those aren't present, then clearly we're either not 'intaking' these vitamins and minerals, or they are not sufficiently bioavailable in the foods and drinks we are getting them in. I could eat a packet of chalk, but that doesn't mean my body has actually absorbed and been able to make use of that calcium.
Absolute hokum. Why do you think there are such things as universally recognised recommended daily intakes if intake doesn't usefully correlate with bioavailability? Do you think you have spotted an obvious loophole that the entire worldwide medical profession has overlooked?
Of course the entire medical profession hasn't ignored it. Most are not well versed in it, but it is universally accepted (except by you it seems). You've never heard of a fat soluble vitamin? Eat it with fat, it absorbs, without it, it won't. The whole world of nutrition is like that. You are arguing that we can measure the structural integrity of buildings by how much cement and brickwork were used. I say again, as far as I know, the severely ill receive blood tests in hospital as a matter of course. So why wouldn't you look at this actual data, rather than survey them as to what they had for lunch?
OK so you are ahead of most of the medical profession on this. What are the odds of that?
Best we leave it there, because I don't want to have my fear confirmed that you are the kind of person who recommends cancer patients should drink more organic smoothies.
The cruelest cult 'treatment' for cancer (and I am sure @Luckyguy1983 has no truck with this one) is surely the coffee enema fad - encourage ill and vulnerable people to undergo uncomfortable embarrassing procedures for zero benefit.
I have no idea what that is meant to do, and I can't see any way that it could be efficacious, but I wouldn't dismiss anything before I at least know how it is 'meant' to work. It wouldn't be very scientific would it? I watched a programme about a man and his wife who were totally addicted to coffee enemas, so clearly not everybody finds it uncomfortable or embarrassing.
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
is a survey from 2018 showing that almost everybody is getting more than enough of almost everything. And - this is the best bit - 22% of their sample were taking supplements but they ignored those and just looked at what people are getting from their diet. Nutrition is great, but it doesn't "boost your immune system" and it is nothing to do with protecting yourself from viruses - masks and vaccines do that. The one exception is vitamin D and "official circles" are very far from silent about that.
'Intake' in this context is not meaningful. It is the presence of these minerals in the body in sufficient quantities, as shown by a blood test, that is the only valid test - if those aren't present, then clearly we're either not 'intaking' these vitamins and minerals, or they are not sufficiently bioavailable in the foods and drinks we are getting them in. I could eat a packet of chalk, but that doesn't mean my body has actually absorbed and been able to make use of that calcium.
Absolute hokum. Why do you think there are such things as universally recognised recommended daily intakes if intake doesn't usefully correlate with bioavailability? Do you think you have spotted an obvious loophole that the entire worldwide medical profession has overlooked?
Of course the entire medical profession hasn't ignored it. Most are not well versed in it, but it is universally accepted (except by you it seems). You've never heard of a fat soluble vitamin? Eat it with fat, it absorbs, without it, it won't. The whole world of nutrition is like that. You are arguing that we can measure the structural integrity of buildings by how much cement and brickwork were used. I say again, as far as I know, the severely ill receive blood tests in hospital as a matter of course. So why wouldn't you look at this actual data, rather than survey them as to what they had for lunch?
OK so you are ahead of most of the medical profession on this. What are the odds of that?
Best we leave it there, because I don't want to have my fear confirmed that you are the kind of person who recommends cancer patients should drink more organic smoothies.
No, I am pretty sure the medical profession is up to speed with the concept of bioavailability of vitamins and minerals - it seems to be just you that doesn't really get it.
Accidentally however, you do raise a good point. Nutrition is a tiny part of the medical school curriculum - 'We're taught about 10 to 24 hours over five to six years in medical school on nutrition.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/health-43504125
Most people who are interested in any topic will spend longer than 24 hours over their years learning about it.
OK, so they are aware of the concept of bioavailability. What makes you think they do not take it into account when setting RDAs? How would you even have the concept of an RDA unless you were confident there was a strong, virtually invariant and well understood correlation between the two?
And why do you think that those who go to medical school limit their research into nutrition to what they are taught at school? You have plainly spent more than 24 hours of your time over the years learning about it in your spare time. What makes you think they haven't?
31 years old. I wouldn't have expected hospitalisation or death in that group, so probably why couldn't be commented on.
That study is underpowered. The vaccine efficacy confidence interval (against B.1.351) was -78.8% to +54.8%. It would be a mistake to read too much into it, at this point.
The data on re-infection is a little bit more robust, though: if antibody presence from past infection confers immunity to B.1.351 then it can't be a huge amount. That's a more worrying finding. Good reason to try to keep this variant out of the UK, or suppress it hard.
And yes, the study has nothing to say about serious illness. I wonder what they were thinking when they recruited for it. Underpowered medical trials are a real problem for science, and lead to bad policy.
--AS
Edit: and, to follow up on reinfection, the same finding happened in the Novavax trial. So I think that conclusion is becoming more firm.
I understood it to be a further follow up of the original AZN trial in RSA (Cov005) reported in the Lancet in November. That had 2096 enrolled, with a 4 week interval and allowing for a bit of dropout leaving 1749 for this analysis.
But to what end? Just to study the new SA variant? It's too small. And the cohort way too young. There's so little point in these tiny studies, they can't show anything much. They shouldn't be funded, in my opinion.
"Ministers recognise that the disease will not be defeated through a single vaccine drive, but rather kept at bay through the delivery of a series of tweaked jabs to combat emerging variants."
If we can reduce the lethality of Covid to that of a bad flu, we are fine. The vulnerable can be offered a vaccine yearly.
Yep. But I'd say a wider vaccination than that.
What is ludicrous to me is that a simple blood test would show that most of us are significantly deficient in key minerals and vitamins vs. internationally agreed (by Doctors) norms. This makes us vulnerable to infectious disease (as well as chronic disease, which increases year on year) - but there's no discussion about this in official circles. Instead of increasing our rubustness, academics and policy makers think a future as mask-wearing weaklings that need constant jabbing is an acceptable notion. I am not a 'Covid-denier', but it must be springboard to better health for everyone, not a trap door to mass medical dependency.
is a survey from 2018 showing that almost everybody is getting more than enough of almost everything. And - this is the best bit - 22% of their sample were taking supplements but they ignored those and just looked at what people are getting from their diet. Nutrition is great, but it doesn't "boost your immune system" and it is nothing to do with protecting yourself from viruses - masks and vaccines do that. The one exception is vitamin D and "official circles" are very far from silent about that.
'Intake' in this context is not meaningful. It is the presence of these minerals in the body in sufficient quantities, as shown by a blood test, that is the only valid test - if those aren't present, then clearly we're either not 'intaking' these vitamins and minerals, or they are not sufficiently bioavailable in the foods and drinks we are getting them in. I could eat a packet of chalk, but that doesn't mean my body has actually absorbed and been able to make use of that calcium.
Absolute hokum. Why do you think there are such things as universally recognised recommended daily intakes if intake doesn't usefully correlate with bioavailability? Do you think you have spotted an obvious loophole that the entire worldwide medical profession has overlooked?
Of course the entire medical profession hasn't ignored it. Most are not well versed in it, but it is universally accepted (except by you it seems). You've never heard of a fat soluble vitamin? Eat it with fat, it absorbs, without it, it won't. The whole world of nutrition is like that. You are arguing that we can measure the structural integrity of buildings by how much cement and brickwork were used. I say again, as far as I know, the severely ill receive blood tests in hospital as a matter of course. So why wouldn't you look at this actual data, rather than survey them as to what they had for lunch?
OK so you are ahead of most of the medical profession on this. What are the odds of that?
Best we leave it there, because I don't want to have my fear confirmed that you are the kind of person who recommends cancer patients should drink more organic smoothies.
No, I am pretty sure the medical profession is up to speed with the concept of bioavailability of vitamins and minerals - it seems to be just you that doesn't really get it.
Accidentally however, you do raise a good point. Nutrition is a tiny part of the medical school curriculum - 'We're taught about 10 to 24 hours over five to six years in medical school on nutrition.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/health-43504125
Most people who are interested in any topic will spend longer than 24 hours over their years learning about it.
OK, so they are aware of the concept of bioavailability. What makes you think they do not take it into account when setting RDAs? How would you even have the concept of an RDA unless you were confident there was a strong, virtually invariant and well understood correlation between the two?
And why do you think that those who go to medical school limit their research into nutrition to what they are taught at school? You have plainly spent more than 24 hours of your time over the years learning about it in your spare time. What makes you think they haven't?
We have RDAs as a guide to how much of these vitamins and minerals we should be absorbing, not how much we should be chucking down the hatch. If you buy an expensive vitamin supplement, you will notice that the quantities shown on the side are not 100% RDA, because it will have been formulated knowing that certain vitamins and minerals have negative and positive relationships to each other, so (and this isn't a real example) the presence of magnesium might inhibit selenium uptake, so you actually need 300% RDA of selenium to compensate. A cheap supermarket supplement will just contain 100% of everything, which is one reason (among many) that it will do f-all. Another example is the complex relationship between calcium, magnesium, vitamin d and vitamin k. They use each other and you can't just chuck some of them at your body and expect it to work. That's why vitamins and minerals are best supplied by food, because they occur in food naturally in the right quantities and they are absorbable.
31 years old. I wouldn't have expected hospitalisation or death in that group, so probably why couldn't be commented on.
That study is underpowered. The vaccine efficacy confidence interval (against B.1.351) was -78.8% to +54.8%. It would be a mistake to read too much into it, at this point.
The data on re-infection is a little bit more robust, though: if antibody presence from past infection confers immunity to B.1.351 then it can't be a huge amount. That's a more worrying finding. Good reason to try to keep this variant out of the UK, or suppress it hard.
And yes, the study has nothing to say about serious illness. I wonder what they were thinking when they recruited for it. Underpowered medical trials are a real problem for science, and lead to bad policy.
--AS
Edit: and, to follow up on reinfection, the same finding happened in the Novavax trial. So I think that conclusion is becoming more firm.
I understood it to be a further follow up of the original AZN trial in RSA (Cov005) reported in the Lancet in November. That had 2096 enrolled, with a 4 week interval and allowing for a bit of dropout leaving 1749 for this analysis.
But to what end? Just to study the new SA variant? It's too small. And the cohort way too young. There's so little point in these tiny studies, they can't show anything much. They shouldn't be funded, in my opinion.
--AS
The RSA trial was much smaller than the UK and Brazilian ones done by AZN, indeed it is barely touched on in the published Lancet paper.
I agree it is underpowered, and presumably unethical to continue with a placebo arm
I feel very sorry for Oxford, having deliberately not recruited the elderly for testing until they had checked safety on the younger cohorts. It really does seem no good deed goes unpunished sometimes!
I feel very sorry for Oxford, having deliberately not recruited the elderly for testing until they had checked safety on the younger cohorts. It really does seem no good deed goes unpunished sometimes!
It does look a bit like UoOxford had too much influence on the delivery of this vaccine. Partnering with AZ rather than Merck may have guaranteed UK production but a company more familiar with vaccine drugs might have avoided the pitfalls that AZ appear to have fallen into and which Pfizer and Moderna navigated around.
You are right though, that for a drug that is being distributed on a non-profit basis, they are attracting a huge amount of negative attention.
Attention, sports fans! Superbowl LV starts in just under one half hour.
Any tips?
Where’s @Tissue_Price when you need him? Iirc, NFL is his area of expertise. Probably has some lame excuse about representing the people, or something. Pft
The South African variant is indeed deeply worrying - but surely it is of comfort that cases and deaths there have been continuously declining for weeks now? Lockdown there was eased quite substantially last week and we shall see if that makes things worse again, but surely the fact that cases have been brought under control with relative ease in a country that’s a home grown mutant strain, huge wealth disparities and areas where social distancing is impossible must be positive?
The cases have come down. Has it been actually been brought under control or has it merely burnt its way uncontained through most of the population, and then declined as very few people left alive are still susceptible? You might not think it is positive if it is the latter scenario that applies.
The plague too declined in Italian villages in 1347 after 70% of the population had died.
I feel very sorry for Oxford, having deliberately not recruited the elderly for testing until they had checked safety on the younger cohorts. It really does seem no good deed goes unpunished sometimes!
It does look a bit like UoOxford had too much influence on the delivery of this vaccine. Partnering with AZ rather than Merck may have guaranteed UK production but a company more familiar with vaccine drugs might have avoided the pitfalls that AZ appear to have fallen into and which Pfizer and Moderna navigated around.
You are right though, that for a drug that is being distributed on a non-profit basis, they are attracting a huge amount of negative attention.
I understand from the AZN CEO interview that that part of the research had already taken place before AZN was involved.
Attention, sports fans! Superbowl LV starts in just under one half hour.
Any tips?
Where’s @Tissue_Price when you need him? Iirc, NFL is his area of expertise. Probably has some lame excuse about representing the people, or something. Pft
Attention, sports fans! Superbowl LV starts in just under one half hour.
Any tips?
Where’s @Tissue_Price when you need him? Iirc, NFL is his area of expertise. Probably has some lame excuse about representing the people, or something. Pft
The only tip I can give re: SB LV, is that it will give the learned Dr. Green of the Spectator yet another example of "politically-correct Tik-Tok" and wokeism gone wild, when the performance of the National Anthem is accompanied by an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter.
How often do they test people who are part of the trials for covid infection? Are they only tested on demand when showing symptoms? I'm sceptical about how meaningful the reported decline in efficacy is.
Attention, sports fans! Superbowl LV starts in just under one half hour.
Any tips?
Where’s @Tissue_Price when you need him? Iirc, NFL is his area of expertise. Probably has some lame excuse about representing the people, or something. Pft
Anyway, I’m on tampa+3 @ evens
Should be fun.
Anyone else betting?
Not yours truly. But for what it's worth, most of the sports media pundits seem to agree with your assessment; they are (mostly) assuming a high-scoring game, with KC & PM scoring just a bit more than TB & TB.
Comments
In a straight fight between being a fortress and being stuck with masks, social distancing and having to go through 4-6 month long cyclical lockdowns every time a deadly enough mutation gets loose in the land, for however many years it takes to crush this disease all over the world, the fortress option wins every time.
Well, what the f*** do they call these repeated lockdowns then?
Storm Darcy: Netherlands hit by 'first major snowstorm in decade'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-55970665
We had one brief hailstorm in Cannock.
Slightly unfortunate I had gone out for a walk, and was caught in he middle of it, but these things happen.
Or are they going for a cut price these days?
Last week he was counjouring up an extra thousand Scottish deaths or so, a few weeks before claiming that a 1-in-100 was a higher infection rate than a 1-in-95 figure.
The trial AZ conducted was a complete mess, different placebos, variable dosing gaps, not enough over 65s, the low dose fuck up. It was just so badly run for something that has such a huge amount of importance. Hopefully the US trial and real world data start to clear things up in the next few weeks. Especially once our over 65s start to receive their second doses. We can easily compare them to the unvaccinated within our own county, the sample size will be massive.
https://twitter.com/ChrisMusson/status/1358374923425751041?s=20
https://twitter.com/ChrisMusson/status/1358376566254948360?s=20
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/02/07/world/covid-19-coronavirus#south-africa-says-astrazenecas-vaccine-is-not-very-effective-at-stopping-a-variant-from-causing-illness
Have a good evening.
The data on re-infection is a little bit more robust, though: if antibody presence from past infection confers immunity to B.1.351 then it can't be a huge amount. That's a more worrying finding. Good reason to try to keep this variant out of the UK, or suppress it hard.
And yes, the study has nothing to say about serious illness. I wonder what they were thinking when they recruited for it. Underpowered medical trials are a real problem for science, and lead to bad policy.
--AS
Edit: and, to follow up on reinfection, the same finding happened in the Novavax trial. So I think that conclusion is becoming more firm.
Hmmmm
Well, some people might think that. Or they might think that modern medicine and precautions beats Social Darwinism.
All these weaklings, insisting on drains and potable water, anesthetics for their operations, antibiotics when they get a perfectly normal case of gangrene......
That one? Yes, it is.
Increasingly it will be unethical to have a placebo arm in vaccine trials, so I expect that new vaccines will be tested against current vaccines for non-inferiority studies. The numbers to get statistical power will mean much larger trials.
The other thing to look out for are treatment trials. I am optimistic for SNG001 developed at Southampton University, which should work for all respiratory viruses, not just covid. So much so, that I have punted on some SNG shares, but not so much that I couldn't afford it if it flops.
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1358454340793610241?s=20
If you're such a fan of modern medicine, what could be more scientific than highlighting (using science) serious nutritional deficiencies and trying to do something about them? It is considerably more scientific an approach than telling people to 'lose weight'. The carrying of energy as fat is not, in and of itself even a disease.
The claim that vitamin D deficiency increases COVID susceptibility hasn't been proven in any study.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6060686/#!po=0.746269
is a survey from 2018 showing that almost everybody is getting more than enough of almost everything. And - this is the best bit - 22% of their sample were taking supplements but they ignored those and just looked at what people are getting from their diet. Nutrition is great, but it doesn't "boost your immune system" and it is nothing to do with protecting yourself from viruses - masks and vaccines do that. The one exception is vitamin D and "official circles" are very far from silent about that.
This would be a massively more scientific approach than the current 'Oh look, they tend to be old and fat' that seems to be the limit to anyone's analytical powers at the moment. Oldness, ethnicity, and fatness are meaningless. The first two you can't help, and the second you could well do yourself more harm than good if you tackled wrongly. Blood test data on the other hand is actionable.
So he was slapping down impudence.
So well short of a million.
Edit: I am extremely relieved that Scotland appears to have picked up the pace significantly this last week.
I am sure your numbers are good, though remember it's the number on the morning of Feb 1 that we're looking at, to include Jan 31s vaccinations. It still looks like it would be short of a million, though that is predicated on England performing at capacity. We will never know how much headroom there actually was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinner_at_Eight_(1933_film)
I note that you use the term overweight, is that as defined as a BMI of 25-30? Or of 25 upwards? Or do you work to a non standard definition of "overweight"?
Didn't you get the memo?
Best we leave it there, because I don't want to have my fear confirmed that you are the kind of person who recommends cancer patients should drink more organic smoothies.
If you want a good book on diet and nutrition try Tim Spector's The Diet Myth. Spector btw is not entirely struck on the vitamin supplement fashion:
https://theconversation.com/the-sun-goes-down-on-vitamin-d-why-i-changed-my-mind-about-this-celebrated-supplement-52725
Accidentally however, you do raise a good point. Nutrition is a tiny part of the medical school curriculum - 'We're taught about 10 to 24 hours over five to six years in medical school on nutrition.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/health-43504125
Most people who are interested in any topic will spend longer than 24 hours over their years learning about it.
As for Vit D supplements, I think the general consensus is that they don't work that well, and I wouldn't disagree.
And why do you think that those who go to medical school limit their research into nutrition to what they are taught at school? You have plainly spent more than 24 hours of your time over the years learning about it in your spare time. What makes you think they haven't?
--AS
"Ministers recognise that the disease will not be defeated through a single vaccine drive, but rather kept at bay through the delivery of a series of tweaked jabs to combat emerging variants."
A major spin shift.
India 34
England 2.26
Draw 1.88
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/cricket/market/1.178000173
I agree it is underpowered, and presumably unethical to continue with a placebo arm
https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2021/0204/1194946-covid-vaccine/
https://twitter.com/mugecevik/status/1358540001051627522
Strange use of language
You are right though, that for a drug that is being distributed on a non-profit basis, they are attracting a huge amount of negative attention.
Where’s @Tissue_Price when you need him? Iirc, NFL is his area of expertise. Probably has some lame excuse about representing the people, or something. Pft
The plague too declined in Italian villages in 1347 after 70% of the population had died.
Should be fun.
Anyone else betting?
Hello and goodnight all.
P.S. After 10 months, I finally finished War and Peace today. Now for something slightly shorter...