Lockdown #2

[rockershovel]

2 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

 

The key point here, and it is exactly the same with flu, is that people don't die from the virus itself.  They die from complications caused by the virus.  The primary cause of death is therefore likely to be recorded as pneumonia or heart failure or...... and at best Covid recorded as a secondary reason.

 

The official numbers therefore attribute death to Covid if the person dies within 28 days of a positive test.  This has its drawbacks.  If a person gets run over 3 weeks after a positive test, they get counted as a Covid death - which perhaps it could be given that one of the long Covid symptoms is brain fog and confusion.  [ See how complicated it gets.]  And as I understand it, a person testing positive, being put on a ventilator and dying 5 weeks later does not count.

 

So a better bet could be excess deaths.  You ignore the individual cases completely.  You take the average number of deaths over the last 5 years and compare the number of deaths this year and the excess is attributed primarily to Covid.  Some adjustments can be made for some other excess deaths but it is a statisticians blunt instrument that has nevertheless given a fairly good picture.  This gives about 10.000 extra deaths compared with the official numbers.  It does however have a drawback in that while it may be that the number of deaths so far might be relatively accurate, it will now run into the problem that because of social distancing, deaths from flu are likely to be very much reduced.  [Australian experience showed the number of winter flu deaths was very small indeed.]  So you would need to adjust the average number of deaths to take out the flu deaths which in itself is a bit tricky since the excess deaths method has been the most reliable method of estimating flu deaths!

 

The third method is to record Covid deaths based on what is written on the death certificate as secondary causes or comments.  This gives perhaps yet another 5000 deaths.  It does however rely on the diligence of the doctor filling out the death certificate to record Covid - perhaps difficult if the practitioner is under extreme pressure - or indeed to link Covid to the death if they are not familiar with the victim.  

 

So it is very difficult to identify the exact number of deaths due to Covid.  What we can say however is that a lot of people have died and the number is currently going up rather sharply.

 

I think you can see however that the sort of analysis that you would like to see if pretty difficult to do.  I am sure there are a lot of professionals who would equally like to see that sort of analysis.  

 

Well, exactly. The figures are nowhere near as clear as the hysteria, emotional blackmail and fear-mongering in the media, supported by cabinet ministers, are suggesting. 

 

It’s often quite hard to actually get things done in the real world. That doesn’t mean that no attempt should be made. 

 

Note that this doesn’t mean that the infection is not genuinely dangerous, in some respects. It’s entirely feasible that the two statements “Coronavirus is genuinely dangerous” and “the dangers of Coronavirus are being greatly overstated” are both true. 

Edited November 19, 2020 by rockershovel

[Joseph_Pestell]

46 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

Note that this doesn’t mean that the infection is not genuinely dangerous, in some respects. It’s entirely feasible that the two statements “Coronavirus is genuinely dangerous” and “the dangers of Coronavirus are being greatly overstated” are both true. 

 

Perhaps you could become an adviser to Jeremy Corbyn and/or Keir Starmer.

[Nearholmer]

4 hours ago, rockershovel said:

You have missed an important point, which is that a high proportion of reported deaths only list the infection as an associated condition in patients who were already in poor physical condition. There appears to be little attempt to differentiate between symptomatic, and asymptomatic infection, and to identify cases in which the infection played no significant role in the outcome. 

Yes, not having attempted to cover the whole of the known universe in one post, I have missed many important things.

 

The key points is that if you have time and inclination to delve, data are in the public domain, even down to data that differentiate between association and direct cause (although when a man dies as an anvil, a concrete block, and a donkey fall on him, it’s difficult to say exactly which one delivered the fatal blow).

[Nearholmer]

Rocker (and other ‘it’s all being exaggerated’ proponents),

 

Which bit do you hold is being exaggerated?

 

Do you contend that the ‘excess death’ figures this year are being falsified on both a local and global basis?

 

Do you contend that if we don’t periodically impose restrictions like lockdowns then hospitals won’t really be totally inundated with Covid patients?

 

Do you contend that the millions of Covid tests made worldwide are grossly biased towards giving false-positives?

 

Or, if none of these, then what is it that you are saying is being exaggerated?

 

Are you contending that the forward projections of case numbers, hospital admissions, and deaths are being falsified on a grand scale?

 

I fully get that some journalists can’t help themselves when presented with an opportunity to sensationalise, ‘‘twas ever thus, but claiming ‘exaggeration’ without getting specific about it is also to sensationalise, unless it is backed by specifics. It’s much the same as claiming that an election has been rigged, without citing specifics.

 

Kevin

 

 

Edited November 19, 2020 by Nearholmer

[woodenhead]

My sister recently came down with Covid.

 

She is a nurse, she was in PPE (not the full covid ward stuff) but was in a room with a covid sufferer for several hours in a dementia ward.

 

By the time she had recovered (my sister), the whole ward and nearly all the staff had caught it.

[Andy Hayter]

Given that the government's official figure for the number of Covid deaths is the lowest of the three accepted results, I fail totally to see how anyone could suggest that the numbers  of deaths are exaggerated.   If anything the government(s) could be accused of playing down the death rate.  

[stewartingram]

All this says is that you can prove anything with statistics.

[Reorte]

2 hours ago, stewartingram said:

All this says is that you can prove anything with statistics.

 Well, nine times out of ten, anyway.

[Nearholmer]

8 hours ago, rockershovel said:

Weather forecast are actually usually very accurate,

 

Indeed it is - as a cyclist, I watch the Met Office forecasts closely and they are very reliable indeed.

 

It has become very good through iterative development, better data gathering, more sophisticated modelling and, crucially, because we have stacks and stacks of weather against which to calibrate. 

 

It would be a full-on miracle if Covid-19 epidemic progression forecasting was anything like as good, given that we are in the middle of the first one, and it is probably only now reaching its first anniversary. Those doing the modelling are not only trying to forecast intervention-free progression (which they seem to be able to do fairly accurately based on general epidemiological theory, calibrated by a few months data), they are trying to forecast progression with a range of different interventions, which must require a stack of reasoned assumptions. We are bound to be presented with either a range of credible possibilities, or a single forecast one that attempts to squash all the others into one.

 

Come to think of it, its a lot more like climate-change modelling than weather forecasting.

 

 

 

 

[kevinlms]

On 18/11/2020 at 22:36, chris p bacon said:

 

We've got numpties here that really should know better.

Yesterday a Nurse travelled from Leicester to where I live to see his mother, he works at a Hospital with a covid problem and his mother already has breathing difficulties (only 1 working lung) he got into an argument with the carers who visit his mother 5 times a day as they refused to enter the property with him there, he doesn't even bother to sanitise or wear a mask and thinks it's all blown out of proportion. 

 

Just what do you do with d*ckheads like that.....I know what I would do..

I was listening to the radio the other and a nurse in North Dakota USA, was talking about the number of people dying in wards and still denying that the Covid is real and that it shouldn't be happening to them!

[kevinlms]

10 hours ago, rockershovel said:

 

Weather forecast are actually usually very accurate, where they are so described. This is because good forecasting is worth a lot of money to interested groups like farmers, shipping companies and airlines, so they are prepared to pay for it and to acknowledge its limitations. 

 

Popular forecasting, the sort of thing you get at the end of the news, is still better than most people credit. This is because they can afford to be wrong in detail, it doesn’t really mater provided the general content is correct. 

Not long ago the Australian weather bureau, the Bureau of Meteorology celebrated a major birthday. They showed a weather forecast from around 1950. The weather was given as 'warm to hot and windy ', for a huge chunk of Australia.  That was it!

[rockershovel]

48 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

Not long ago the Australian weather bureau, the Bureau of Meteorology celebrated a major birthday. They showed a weather forecast from around 1950. The weather was given as 'warm to hot and windy ', for a huge chunk of Australia.  That was it!

 

The coming of weather observation satellites really changed the whole nature of meteorology. My late mother used to watch the “satellite pictures” in amazement on the TV News. Her understanding of the subject was limited to non-existent, she thought it was quite remarkable how those astronauts could mark up the photos with felt tip pens, with those big gloves on...

[rockershovel]

6 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Rocker (and other ‘it’s all being exaggerated’ proponents),

 

Which bit do you hold is being exaggerated?

 

Do you contend that the ‘excess death’ figures this year are being falsified on both a local and global basis?

 

Do you contend that if we don’t periodically impose restrictions like lockdowns then hospitals won’t really be totally inundated with Covid patients?

 

Do you contend that the millions of Covid tests made worldwide are grossly biased towards giving false-positives?

 

Or, if none of these, then what is it that you are saying is being exaggerated?

 

Are you contending that the forward projections of case numbers, hospital admissions, and deaths are being falsified on a grand scale?

 

I fully get that some journalists can’t help themselves when presented with an opportunity to sensationalise, ‘‘twas ever thus, but claiming ‘exaggeration’ without getting specific about it is also to sensationalise, unless it is backed by specifics. It’s much the same as claiming that an election has been rigged, without citing specifics.

 

Kevin

 

 

 

It probably comes from many years of engineering, much of it in disciplines which can go very badly wrong, very quickly and where things are very much “not proven” until demonstrated otherwise. I would not dare submit the sort of lax analysis and ambiguous data presentation which appears to be the standard in this matter, to any paying client, and I’m sure I wouldn’t be in work for very long if I did. 

 

We have fallen headlong into a world of saturation coverage of fear-mongering and hysteria, in which Cabinet Ministers appear on television conducting outright emotional blackmail (“don’t kill your granny”), bold promises are made about “world-beating systems” which seem to melt away as the snows of April, and Parliament is stampeded into the most wholesale curtailment of civil liberties since the Second World War, and to what purpose? 

 

We have been subjected to the most radical, far-reaching social and economic experiment of modern times, which is doing immense harm to the nation and appears to have no defined end-point or exit strategy. Livelihoods are being destroyed by executive fiat (although Parliament asserted itself and insisted in a vote, the attendant debate was rendered meaningless by lack of information). 

 

I find all of this profoundly alarming. 

 

[woodenhead]

47 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

 

It probably comes from many years of engineering, much of it in disciplines which can go very badly wrong, very quickly and where things are very much “not proven” until demonstrated otherwise. I would not dare submit the sort of lax analysis and ambiguous data presentation which appears to be the standard in this matter, to any paying client, and I’m sure I wouldn’t be in work for very long if I did. 

 

We have fallen headlong into a world of saturation coverage of fear-mongering and hysteria, in which Cabinet Ministers appear on television conducting outright emotional blackmail (“don’t kill your granny”), bold promises are made about “world-beating systems” which seem to melt away as the snows of April, and Parliament is stampeded into the most wholesale curtailment of civil liberties since the Second World War, and to what purpose? 

 

We have been subjected to the most radical, far-reaching social and economic experiment of modern times, which is doing immense harm to the nation and appears to have no defined end-point or exit strategy. Livelihoods are being destroyed by executive fiat (although Parliament asserted itself and insisted in a vote, the attendant debate was rendered meaningless by lack of information). 

 

I find all of this profoundly alarming. 

 

I agree the messaging used has been to drive the most fear of the virus in order to get the best level of co-operation from the general public.

 

I would also agree that the risk of death from the virus is very low, but, it is excessive when it comes up against normal expected levels of death in any given period and it is also likely to cause vulnerable people to be unwell enough to require hospitalisation and potentially additional support within critical care in a manner that makes it very hard for an ICU to perform normally due to it's infectious nature.  As I've witnessed from within my own family, a single infection can quickly spread to other people - in this case vulnerable inpatients and also the staff who work on the ward where those inpatients were - those staff have to be replaced by other nurses with further risk of spreading or you simply run out of nurses and then what?

 

The big thing in all this is the capability of the virus to quickly spread where measures are not being taken to stem infection and once it gets hold it can overwhelm services.  For this simple reason the Government has had to take a route that is unpopular and up for challenge especially from people very unlikely to suffer - the Government does not have (and certainly does not want) to pick one group of people over another.  It is trying to maintain everyone's health through consent which actually is what we have Government for - to manage our health with our consent, that extends to all people of this country and sometimes it means people have to do something they don't really want to have to do for the greater good.

[Nearholmer]

It is distressing: we are trapped between a bl00dy unpleasant bug on the one side, and the low ICU capacity (by ‘first world’ standards) of our health service on the other.

 

But, I still think it’s incumbent upon anyone who says the threats are exaggerated, or that the base figures are dodgy, to get specific, and to say what they propose should be done instead of what is being done now.

 

I’ve racked my brains asking myself what I would do now, and given how backed into a corner we are, I can’t think of a viable alternative. It is possible that different actions during the summer might have left a bit more space for manoeuvre now, but we are where we are. And to a lesser or greater degree every country in the temperate zone of the northern hemisphere is in the place.
 

And it’s ‘orrible.

[Reorte]

23 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

I would also agree that the risk of death from the virus is very low, but, it is excessive when it comes up against normal expected levels of death in any given period and it is also likely to cause vulnerable people to be unwell enough to require hospitalisation and potentially additional support within critical care in a manner that makes it very hard for an ICU to perform normally due to it's infectious nature.

The risk to the reasonably healthy majority is low enough that it doesn't justify any real action being taken (it's not zero - some have died, but that's true of various illnesses that we're constantly living with), whilst to the vulnerable it is very much higher that they're in very real danger from it. This is what's driving the differences of opinion over it, which in a typical black and white fashion seems to have split people in to the extremes of "it's harmless" vs "we're all going to die, panic!" and "you're destroying everything to save a few" vs "you couldn't care less about some people dying if you're fine."

[APOLLO]

Press reporting 99% effectiveness for the Oxford Vaccine, of which the Gov has ordered 100 million doses (plus x millions of the others). Hope this is correct.

 

I will have the jab ASAP, whenever that is - and up to that "point" (!!!) I will continue with Hands, Face Space.

 

After the jab, and when most / all others have also been similarly treated, then that's it. Mask binned, go where / when I like.

If restrictions continue after then then it's civil war. Simple as that.

 

Brit15

[woodenhead]

23 minutes ago, APOLLO said:

Press reporting 99% effectiveness for the Oxford Vaccine, of which the Gov has ordered 100 million doses (plus x millions of the others). Hope this is correct.

 

I will have the jab ASAP, whenever that is - and up to that "point" (!!!) I will continue with Hands, Face Space.

 

After the jab, and when most / all others have also been similarly treated, then that's it. Mask binned, go where / when I like.

If restrictions continue after then then it's civil war. Simple as that.

 

Brit15

I think once people begin being vaccinated we will see a lot more people begin to behave as they feel like - it's understandable in one sense as we've been waiting for this vaccination since March - just so long as people allow long enough for the most vulnerable to receive their vaccine.

 

I feel for transplant recipients who are on a lifetime of suppressants as it is highly possible the vaccine will not help them as their immune system is being suppressed.

[monkeysarefun]

12 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

[Australian experience showed the number of winter flu deaths was very small indeed.]  So you would need to adjust the average number of deaths to take out the flu deaths which in itself is a bit tricky since the excess deaths method has been the most reliable method of estimating flu deaths!

 

I can't find the figures I was looking at a couple of weeks ago, but it looks like overall our annual death rate here will be less than average this year.

 

Apart from the minimal  flu deaths that you mentioned compared to the usual few hundred, workplace fatalities, traffic fatalities and so on are down due to the lockdowns and reduced demand.

 

Also we have several hundred thousand fewer people here - overseqs tourists, temporary workers and immigrants,  due to the closed borders -  who usually make up a  number of accidental deaths (drownings, misadventure, traffic accidents)  each year.

 

That all compares with our COVID death toll of 907, so weirdly, here COVID seems to .have actually reduced mortality!

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, Reorte said:

This is what's driving the differences of opinion over it, which in a typical black and white fashion seems to have split people in to the extremes

I believe you are spot-on with what you say, and way back in March or April, when figures for age-related mortality from the bug became visible from China, I forecast in a long-ago-locked thread that it had the potential to create inter-generational conflict.

 

Its a ruddy good job that vaccines are beginning to look promising, because, much as I think we have to do what we are doing now (TINA), this isn’t sustainable for much longer - it might cobble us through to spring, but if we were to face another winter without vaccine, we would have to find a way of putting 20% of the population in “protective custody” ........... country house hotels or something, to let the less-vulnerable get back to some sort of normality.

[boxbrownie]

36 minutes ago, woodenhead said:

 

 

I feel for transplant recipients who are on a lifetime of suppressants as it is highly possible the vaccine will not help them as their immune system is being suppressed.

And not just transplant patients, Mrs BB has RA and has been immunosuppressed for the past 20 years and is in the very vulnerable category as a result, there are other categories I am sure.

[Hroth]

52 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

...  but if we were to face another winter without vaccine, we would have to find a way of putting 20% of the population in “protective custody” ........... country house hotels or something, to let the less-vulnerable get back to some sort of normality.

 

Well, there's all those unused cruise liners bobbing about offshore, though I'm sure that the Mail/Express would get hold of the wrong end of the stick (as usual).

 

 

[john new]

In some ways though the vaccine will make it worse initially following roll out.  The reason is that 5-10%* of the people as they get vaccinated will think they are safe (but aren't ) and just the logistics of the mass vaccination programme will mean a time lag from person one getting it through to the n-millioneth person who won't get it for ages because they are lower risk and closer to the end of the chain. Added to this will be the probable rise in in R due to the ever expanding (in real numbers) 5-10% of the vaccinated who think they are safe but aren't. 

 

The government then have the dilemma do they keep some blanket restrictions until the vaccinated number reaches a 100% of the national target for the band being done, and if yes what is the cut-off risk level on medical terms, or just go for a post-lockdown free for all with anyone who thinks they are in a category of enhanced risk above the median being asked to voluntarily mask up/social distance etc., or even stay fully sheltered.

 

Wider society behaviour currently suggests that, whatever the HMG guidance is, once the perception is that vulnerable people are getting vaccinated observance of lockdown will fall.

 

Hopefully @Nearholmer 's expertise in looking at stats can add some insight!

 

Just glad I am now retired, no longer the Borough's EPO and therefore, albeit at a relatively low-rung, being part of the multi-agency team process in decision making and ensuring local delivery and compliance with what ever the high-ups in national government decide.

 

* 90-95% success is quoted, that significantly leaves this much smaller but important fail percentage!

 

Edited November 19, 2020 by john new
To make better sense.

[rockershovel]

51 minutes ago, john new said:

In some ways though the vaccine will make it worse initially following roll out.  The reason is that 5-10% of the people as they get vaccinated will think they are safe (but aren't ) and just the logistics of the mass vaccination programme will mean a time lag from person one getting it through to the n-millioneth person who won't get it for ages because they are lower risk and closer to the end of the chain. Added to this will be the probable rise in in R due to the ever expanding (in real numbers) 5-10% of the vaccinated who think they are safe but aren't. 

 

The government then have the dilemma do they keep some blanket restrictions until the vaccinated number reaches a 100% of the national target for the band being done, and if yes what is the cut-off risk level on medical terms, or just go for a post-lockdown free for all with anyone who thinks they are in a category of enhanced risk above the median being asked to voluntarily mask up/social distance etc., or even stay fully sheltered.

 

Wider society behaviour currently suggests that whatever the HMG guidance is once the perception is that vulnerable people are getting vaccinated observance of lockdown will fall.

 

Hopefully @Nearholmer 's expertise in looking at stats can add some insight!

 

Just glad I am now retired, no longer the Borough's EPO and therefore, albeit at a relatively low-rung, being part of the multi-agency team process in decision making and ensuring local delivery and compliance with what ever the high-ups in national government decide.

 

 

This was covered in an earlier post. There is a fairly obvious hierarchy of risk and priority. 

 

There will need to be some difficult questions asked and answered about a number of topics, though. Concentrating the elderly population in care homes, would probably be a good starting point. 

[Nearholmer]

“Concentrating the elderly” or “Concentrating on the elderly”?

 

All newspapers would get hold of the wrong end of the stick if Care Homes were re-labelled “Concentration Homes”!

 

From what I can understand, the draft plan is indeed to cover Care Homes, residents and staff, first, provided the vaccine(s) are effective for the elderly.