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The great Brexit divide – Approval of Johnson and Starmer – by referendum vote and social class – po

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  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957

    Because I always hope for the best and prepare for the worst, what do we think happens when schools reopen and universities start having students back on campus?

    Cases to rise a lot?

    And cases lead to hospitalisations right?

    Except when you are admitted for something else but catch covid in hospital, but are still a covid admission. IE a bogus covid admission.
    As someone pointed out earlier given the use of ventilators recently, they aren't bogus covid admissions.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059

    MaxPB said:

    Goal posts shifted!

    Other countries with high levels of vaccination are having to reverse easing of restrictions based on vaccination, and strengthen mitigations in schools to control spread. Is the UK learning from global experience, or are we planning to move in the opp. direction on Aug 16th?

    https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1420045685987098633?s=20

    Lol what a complete wanker. Independent SAGE is just a joke. All of these Zero COVID scientists are given far too much prominence by the idiot media like Peston who just want an anti-government story to get twitter likes.
    Its funny, but Any criticism of any scientist whatever would invite a climb on from any number of posters on here only three months ago.
    Really? Most of us were dismissive of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. And many others.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,610

    Why the Great Barrington Declaration was full of crap:

    https://twitter.com/ScienceShared/status/1420014267995238401

    Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland.
    ...
    Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19).
    ...
    In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.


    Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.

    --AS

    The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:

    "I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."

    The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
    You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?

    It's a view.
    It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else.
    I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?

    "We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
    Weren't they were the ones also banging on about false positives last year?

    All those false positives leading to all those deaths.
    The false positive cases turned into false positive hospitalisations and false positive deaths.
    Of course we now know that more than 50% of those hospitalisations that you quote were effectively bogus. The patients concerned contracted covid in hospitals that were rampant with it, and not in the community.

    You really don't understand what you've read.
    Well it is certainly true for the latest wave. I don;t know about the earlier waves
    No it isn't.

    People in hospital, with COVID, include

    - Those diagnosed with COVID after a test
    - Those bought to hospital with COVID, but without a test result
    - Those bought to hospital with COVID after a test, but hospitalised primarily for another condition
    - Those bought to hospital with COVID, but without a test result, but hospitalised primarily for another condition

    :

    - Those who caught COVID in hospital

    We don't have the breakdown of these categories.

    The process from symptoms to hospitalisation is generally very rapid, so many people arriving at hospital haven't been tested before admission. Or have not received a result at the point where they are admitted.
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 3,335
    edited July 2021

    BREXIT, COVID, Johnson variant....oh....

    Britain's economy will grow faster than any major economy in Europe as it rebounds from the #COVID19 recession and emerges from lockdown, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted

    https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1420056822677917697?s=20

    Why is it astounding that we are going to get a lot of growth? When you start from a very low level of activity, you are bound to get high growth. This press statement is only "no shit, sherlock". A hell of a lot of people have a lot of savings and much less credit card debt! They'll be like lemmings over a cliff.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818

    MaxPB said:

    Goal posts shifted!

    Other countries with high levels of vaccination are having to reverse easing of restrictions based on vaccination, and strengthen mitigations in schools to control spread. Is the UK learning from global experience, or are we planning to move in the opp. direction on Aug 16th?

    https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1420045685987098633?s=20

    Lol what a complete wanker. Independent SAGE is just a joke. All of these Zero COVID scientists are given far too much prominence by the idiot media like Peston who just want an anti-government story to get twitter likes.
    Its funny, but Any criticism of any scientist whatever would invite a climb on from any number of posters on here only three months ago.
    Yes, because PBers have always been complimentary about that prize goof Sikora and others.

    Still I remember your posts about how Whitty and Vallance wouldn't allow us to open pubs and restaurants.

    How'd that turn out?
    Plenty of posters shat themselves about 200,000 cases by now. How'd that turn out? Plenty of posters argued passionately that lockdowns were the right thing to do, how'd that turn out? Plenty of posters predicted the US states would see carnage by now because of low vaccination rates. How'd that turn out? Plenty of posters thought Florida Texas and Ohio were going blue, how'd that turn out.

    Your 'how'd that turn out' exposes are pretty selective, lets face it. Natch.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,610
    DougSeal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Goal posts shifted!

    Other countries with high levels of vaccination are having to reverse easing of restrictions based on vaccination, and strengthen mitigations in schools to control spread. Is the UK learning from global experience, or are we planning to move in the opp. direction on Aug 16th?

    https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1420045685987098633?s=20

    Lol what a complete wanker. Independent SAGE is just a joke. All of these Zero COVID scientists are given far too much prominence by the idiot media like Peston who just want an anti-government story to get twitter likes.
    Its funny, but Any criticism of any scientist whatever would invite a climb on from any number of posters on here only three months ago.
    Really? Most of us were dismissive of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. And many others.
    The suggestion by a certain scientist that herd immunity had been reached last year brought a fair degree of mockery.....
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772

    Why the Great Barrington Declaration was full of crap:

    https://twitter.com/ScienceShared/status/1420014267995238401

    Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland.
    ...
    Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19).
    ...
    In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.


    Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.

    --AS

    The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:

    "I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."

    The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
    You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?

    It's a view.
    It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else.
    I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?

    "We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
    Weren't they were the ones also banging on about false positives last year?

    All those false positives leading to all those deaths.
    The false positive cases turned into false positive hospitalisations and false positive deaths.
    Of course we now know that more than 50% of those hospitalisations that you quote were effectively bogus. The patients concerned contracted covid in hospitals that were rampant with it, and not in the community.

    It's been demonstrated to you that is rubbish. Please don't repeat it.

    Just out of self-interest you should avoid repeating it, because it taints anything else that you do write by association, as either you're the idiot that thinks half of Covid hospitalisations were Covid infections acquired in hospital, or you're the troll who determinedly repeats falsehoods.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,926
    MattW said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    I seem to recall @RochdalePioneers assuring us haughtily that supermarkets would never agree to pay more to lorry drivers as it was essentially set in stone?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57983698

    Oh looks as if "market forces" actually do exist afterall. Who could have ever foreseen that? 🤔

    I don't remember either of us saying that - what we said was that the agencies wouldn't be in a position to pay those sort of offers because supermarkets keep costs low.

    Mind you it's worth looking at the actual job advert https://www.tesco-careers.com/jobdetails/641063/

    20 days holiday rising to 22 tells you everything you need to know about the treatment of drivers even now.
    20 days holiday (plus bank holidays) is the law. That's pretty standard in much of the private sector.

    Rising to 22 is 10% higher than much of the country gets.
    Yet a public sector job will likely give you a minimum of 25 days - the issue that a lot of firms have is that drivers have seen that other sectors offer equivalent or better pay without the hassle of being away from home in a tin can overnight.

    Remember the main complaint about driving is not just that the pay is bad, but every other part of the job is bad as well.

    What I find interesting is that your viewpoint is that 22 days is great, mine is that it really, really isn't.

    There is a firm currently trying to recruitment me who are offering 30 days with bank holidays on top (38 total) - and I'm not that interested....

    NHS:

    Life isn't all about work, and working for the NHS means that you enjoy a generous holiday allowance. Staff can expect at least 35 days off a year, including bank holidays. Long-serving members of staff get up to 41 days a year. Generally you can take holiday when you like, but you need to agree it with your manager.
    https://digital.nhs.uk/about-nhs-digital/welcome-to-nhs-digital/time-off

    That is 33 + 8 b/h.

    That extra over say 25 is worth a bit.
    28 days is the legal minimum. It is not uncommon even in the private sector (which is code for I've no idea but it was there at firms I worked for) to have additional days depending on service: 1 extra day for each year's service (or each year past five).

    Where it gets messy is that employers can decide when you take all or some leave. For instance, if your factory closes for two weeks' maintenance every summer.

    It was also my experience that public sector contacts got more leave than I did as standard.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818

    Why the Great Barrington Declaration was full of crap:

    https://twitter.com/ScienceShared/status/1420014267995238401

    Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland.
    ...
    Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19).
    ...
    In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.


    Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.

    --AS

    The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:

    "I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."

    The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
    You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?

    It's a view.
    It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else.
    I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?

    "We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
    Weren't they were the ones also banging on about false positives last year?

    All those false positives leading to all those deaths.
    The false positive cases turned into false positive hospitalisations and false positive deaths.
    Of course we now know that more than 50% of those hospitalisations that you quote were effectively bogus. The patients concerned contracted covid in hospitals that were rampant with it, and not in the community.

    It's been demonstrated to you that is rubbish. Please don't repeat it.

    Just out of self-interest you should avoid repeating it, because it taints anything else that you do write by association, as either you're the idiot that thinks half of Covid hospitalisations were Covid infections acquired in hospital, or you're the troll who determinedly repeats falsehoods.
    demonstrated by who? demonstrated how?
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164
    NEW THREAD
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772

    Because I always hope for the best and prepare for the worst, what do we think happens when schools reopen and universities start having students back on campus?

    Cases to rise a lot?

    I would expect so, but I would also expect the hospitalisation rate per case to be lower again than we've seen this time around.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059
    Dvir Aran

    @dvir_a
    You’ve probably seen reports from Israel on low vaccine effectiveness in this wave. Is it because of Delta? Waning immunity? We think the reason is mostly that we got the denominator wrong.

    https://twitter.com/dvir_a/status/1420059124700700677
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    But remember according to Prof Peston the government are actually hiding all the reinfections cases, so perhaps not really cases falling, it is Boris is burying the truth again (like the bodies in the gardens at Chequers) ;-)

    Tut tut.....

    Boris is hiding the dead (and the kidnapped not-dead) in the basement of Pizza Express on Dean Street, in Soho...
    And Finchley Road.
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 3,335

    Why the Great Barrington Declaration was full of crap:

    https://twitter.com/ScienceShared/status/1420014267995238401

    Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland.
    ...
    Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19).
    ...
    In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.


    Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.

    --AS

    The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:

    "I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."

    The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
    You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?

    It's a view.
    It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else.
    I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?

    "We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
    Weren't they were the ones also banging on about false positives last year?

    All those false positives leading to all those deaths.
    The false positive cases turned into false positive hospitalisations and false positive deaths.
    Of course we now know that more than 50% of those hospitalisations that you quote were effectively bogus. The patients concerned contracted covid in hospitals that were rampant with it, and not in the community.

    Just because the test occured in hospital doesn't mean he caught it there, also it takes days for symptoms and test results to be positive, he could have caught it anywhere.
  • Why the Great Barrington Declaration was full of crap:

    https://twitter.com/ScienceShared/status/1420014267995238401

    Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland.
    ...
    Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19).
    ...
    In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.


    Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.

    --AS

    The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:

    "I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."

    The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
    You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?

    It's a view.
    It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else.
    I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?

    "We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
    Weren't they were the ones also banging on about false positives last year?

    All those false positives leading to all those deaths.
    The false positive cases turned into false positive hospitalisations and false positive deaths.
    Of course we now know that more than 50% of those hospitalisations that you quote were effectively bogus. The patients concerned contracted covid in hospitals that were rampant with it, and not in the community.

    We know nothing of the sort. Liar.

    --AS
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Barnesian said:

    Leon said:

    My Official Prediction for Peak Cases was tomorrow and 87,000

    It looks - God willing - that I am going to be gloriously, spectacularly wrong. Same goes for Neil Ferguson, et al

    Did ANY of the experts predict this startling fall? I know a couple of people on here did, and Kudos to them

    The peak number of cases was 17th July (54,674).

    On 12th July I predicted that the peak would be within a week.


    Impressive! Bravo

    I suspect Robert Smithson's was the most accurate prediction, however (if it turns out he is right). He called the peak almost perfectly, out by just one day I believe?
    Pretty sure I said that too but will have to dig up the post. I'm also not 100% convinced this is the final peak. I do think that in mid-late August we'll have a big exit wave among the unvaccinated as people lose their fear of it and socialise more.
    I'm on my phone so unable to do the numbers to backup the following thesis which is as follows

    The mid June to July rise is almost entirely football driven. Which is why the peak is so sharp, the end of football was the equivalent of a lockdown.

    And it explains why places like Bolton which had a early June peak then reversed and had a second. The football was a giant superspreader event.

    However, if you look at the Specimen date data from the 17th of May (the date of previous easing) there absolutely is a slow, looks like exponential rise in effect until mid June when the football takes over.

    This is where being at the computer means I don't have good numbers - if yoi assume the May to June exponential curve continues then I think you would be expecting to see about 25k cases a day now so you may well be right and we are about to see cases rise again as the football effect fades and the natural unlocking curve reasserted itself.

    Or, the football curve pushed so many infections forward that the unlock g curve is disrupted and we will see a continued fall.

    What I'm saying is "situation uncertain"
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772

    Why the Great Barrington Declaration was full of crap:

    https://twitter.com/ScienceShared/status/1420014267995238401

    Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland.
    ...
    Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19).
    ...
    In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.


    Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.

    --AS

    The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:

    "I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."

    The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
    You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?

    It's a view.
    It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else.
    I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?

    "We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
    Weren't they were the ones also banging on about false positives last year?

    All those false positives leading to all those deaths.
    The false positive cases turned into false positive hospitalisations and false positive deaths.
    Of course we now know that more than 50% of those hospitalisations that you quote were effectively bogus. The patients concerned contracted covid in hospitals that were rampant with it, and not in the community.

    It's been demonstrated to you that is rubbish. Please don't repeat it.

    Just out of self-interest you should avoid repeating it, because it taints anything else that you do write by association, as either you're the idiot that thinks half of Covid hospitalisations were Covid infections acquired in hospital, or you're the troll who determinedly repeats falsehoods.
    demonstrated by who? demonstrated how?
    By numerous posters during the day.

    We've looked at the number of patients on ventilators, and seen that they're a higher proportion now than previously.

    Another poster looked at the detail of the timescale within which patients in hospital who had not previously tested positive tested positive, demonstrating that this could not have been because they acquired the infection as they crossed the threshold, because it takes time for a new infection to be detectable by a PCR test.

    Naturally you have ignored all evidence that contradicts what you want to believe, that is contrary to your preconceived opinions.
  • BigRichBigRich Posts: 3,489

    Because I always hope for the best and prepare for the worst, what do we think happens when schools reopen and universities start having students back on campus?

    Cases to rise a lot?

    depends what you meen by a lot?

    There probably will be some rise, that's what happens to respiratory viral infections, in the autumn.

    but I don't think a large number, cases for kids are dropping more slowly than for adults, according to the chartes posted below, suggesting that the fall in kids is a lagging secondary affect of the fall in adults, not because of the schools closeting.

    For the original and even the alfa variant, kid to kid transiention was low, it seems to have been a bit higher for delta, but hard to say if amongst kids only the R0 number would be above 1, it might be but if its 1.1 or 1.2 then only 10 or 20% of kids need antibodies for there to be effetely zero growth in schools, and we probably have about that now.

    I think the big risk is that there is a small rise in kids and then a massive over-reaction of kids being sent home n large numbers. ether kids get the vaccine or are allowed to get to heard immunity thought infection, but we cant keep sending them home sacrificing there education just to stop infections that might spread to adults, who have now mostly been vaccinated.
  • Andy_CookeAndy_Cooke Posts: 4,793
    BigRich said:

    Why the Great Barrington Declaration was full of crap:

    https://twitter.com/ScienceShared/status/1420014267995238401

    Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland.
    ...
    Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19).
    ...
    In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.


    Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.

    --AS

    The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:

    "I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."

    The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
    You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?

    It's a view.
    It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else.
    I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?

    "We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
    We where at a form of Hear Imunity last April, given:

    lower R0 number for classic Covid compared to Alfa or Delta
    The then improving weather
    Voluntary actions being taken, buy almost everybody.

    Yes if we did not have the restrictions, then cases would have fallen slowed than happened in our time line, but the NHS would not have been overrun, most of the extra infections (not all) would have been in the young, fit and heathy, who are most likely to have taken risks. and as a result the subsequent waves would not have been as big so would not have been such presser to lockdown a second and third time.

    Sweden is not the perfect comparison, but its the best we have, lots of deaths in the first wave, (compared to other Europe nations) but much more, mild by comparison further waves. Sweden has only had one death since the 17th of July.

    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/


    We were nowhere near herd immunity last April. Under 20% of people had any immunity. No version of covid was anywhere near there.
    Sweden has done far worse than any comparable country (compare to its neighbours); shielding worked nowhere (Sweden even highlighted that shielding had failed there).
  • Andy_CookeAndy_Cooke Posts: 4,793

    Why the Great Barrington Declaration was full of crap:

    https://twitter.com/ScienceShared/status/1420014267995238401

    Many western countries used shielding (extended self-isolation) of people presumed to be at high-risk from COVID-19 to protect them and reduce healthcare demand. To investigate the effectiveness of this strategy, we linked family practitioner, prescribing, laboratory, hospital and death records and compared COVID-19 outcomes among shielded and non-shielded individuals in the West of Scotland.
    ...
    Referent to low-risk, the shielded group had higher confirmed infections (RR 8.45, 95% 7.44–9.59), case-fatality (RR 5.62, 95% CI 4.47–7.07) and population mortality (RR 57.56, 95% 44.06–75.19).
    ...
    In conclusion, in spite of the shielding strategy, high risk individuals were at increased risk of death.


    Shielding was worth doing, but it was a fantasy that vulnerable people could be prevented from encountering a highly contagious novel respiratory pathogen.

    --AS

    The entire point of the Great Barrington Declaration was:

    "I don't like all this covid and restrictions and stuff. I liked it the way it was before. Maybe it doesn't have to apply to me. Let's pretend only a very few are vulnerable and we can handwave to say they'll be locked up for their own safety so I can go back to normal."

    The rest was highly motivated reasoning around that.
    You seriously think that Martin Kulldorf, Harvard professor and world ranking public health expert, co-wrote the GB Declaration just because he wanted things to go back to how they were and he couldn't be arsed with the social lockdown?

    It's a view.
    It turns out scientists are as vulnerable to wishful thinking as anyone else.
    I mean, how else to you explain Ioaniddis, Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta, Battacharya, and co?

    "We're at herd immunity" as of April last year would be a hopeful statement; doubling down on it ever since then looks a bit wishful.
    Weren't they were the ones also banging on about false positives last year?

    All those false positives leading to all those deaths.
    The false positive cases turned into false positive hospitalisations and false positive deaths.
    Of course we now know that more than 50% of those hospitalisations that you quote were effectively bogus. The patients concerned contracted covid in hospitals that were rampant with it, and not in the community.

    No we don't. As has been pointed out to you repeatedly, that's bollocks.
    Repeating it again and again doesn't make it true.

    Seriously, do you not bother reading what is written?
  • Andy_CookeAndy_Cooke Posts: 4,793
    edited July 2021
    Ratio of people in mechanical ventilation beds for covid to people in hospital for covid has averaged 1:8 through the pandemic.

    Graph of 8x the number in mechanical ventilation beds against people in hospital with covid in England through the pandemic.



    It would be useful if contrarian could point to the recent dates when the ratio fell by half or more.
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