Coronavirus

[dandelion]

Anecdotal, I know. But also close enough to home to make me that much more glad I'm vaccinated.

Well I had a disease with all the symptoms of covid in late 2019, in Hastings in the UK. The town then went on to have negligible cases during the whole of the official start of the epidemic from April to November, when the first wave was recorded across the rest of Britain. (But also see Torridge in Devon, which also had very low cases)

The obvious explanation is Hastings had covid first, and was over it before it had officially begun. More, there was no wave of mass death here, it doesnt even seem to have been noticed by the local NHS. That isnt amazing because covid only killed 0.1% of the population, and that isnt very much above the number of people who would be expected to die every year from pneumonia of unidentified cause. Which is probably how they got written up. Also 0.1% is a national average, and the disease has always been worse in the most dense areas, which this one is not. So it would probably have been on the low side of the average. It is also possible that the earliest strains didnt kill as many.

But the truth is Hastings did just as well as anywhere else with no special measures whatsoever. Maybe rather better than places where there were special measures. Allowing our immune systems to handle it did just as well as government intervention.

Hastings did get covid in November, when the new Kent strain swept across the south. Again this supports Hastings having an early outbreak, because plainly there was no magic forcefield or quirk of the population which somehow made it hard to infect us. With a different strain it did the same here as anywhere else.

I have seen this same technique used to pinpoint the starting point of epidemics in other diseases. Where it starts often gets it over before the main event kicks off. Obviously, it has to build from a standing start and then spread, and then be noticed.

Hastings would have been feeding cases steadily into London. They would have been dispersed amongst several million people and again take time for anything noticeable to build up. But it also explains how when experts started testing society they started finding lots of cases. Mostly of course people not very ill, which is what happens to most people catching covid, and especially those who are most likely to catch it first, which is the socially and economically active, who are young.

Sage made a major mistake and over estimated the rate of spread of covid, because when they started looking it had already been spreading quietly for months. They assumed it was spreading much faster from a much more recent introduction. They then too kextreme actions which made matters worse. They over estimated the expected number of cases, which resulted in hospitals being cleare, and already infected people being sent to care homes where they infected other high risk people. Others were turned away from hospitals and died, because beds were being reserved for the expected huge wave.

People were encouraged to stock up to prepare for isolating. This resulted in massive overcrowding in shops when no precautions were in places, involving pensioners and the sick who would never normally got into mass crowds. Government organised the biggest mass spread event ever across the whole UK which must have caused deaths. presumably they thought there was as yet no covid about, but this was very wrong and simply the result of not yet having tested anyone except in hospitals and at borders.

Oh, and I could actually name a person who came back to the UK after visiting Wuhan in China in 2019 and fell ill with 'flu' at the start of the outbreak I got.

As far as I am concerned the evidence Hastings has an early outbreak of covid is overwhelming.

 

[WilliamG]

One of my main persons of knowledge is Dr John Campbell out of the UK. He's taught Nursing for decades. He has a daily update on YouTube. No politics. No conjecture. The fact it became political is what started the rise of deaths. This didn't have to happen. He recently covered the topic of the earlier than reported outbreak.

His channel.
https://www.youtube.com/c/Campbellteaching/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf_id=0

Confirmed outbreak, March 2019...

 

[Freddie53]

Could you point some out?

If you are saying the theoretical maximum age for a human is about 110, then yes it is, but probably 100% of people will not reach that age. In fact 100.0% of people will not and even 100.00% will not.

The average age at death is about 80-85, varying a bit in developed countries, so in somewhere as big as the US probably varying state to state. Perhaps you are claiming that on average a 60 year old has another 20 years to go? The problem with this argument is that people dying from covid almost all have some underlying medical risk factor which made them more susceptible to covid. Most of these risk factors also reduce their average life expectancy as well. It is very likely that for anyone who has died from covid, if they hadn't caught covid the fact they did implies they would never have survived to average age.

In the UK 30% of deaths were of people in care homes with an average life expectancy of 9 months. Another unpublished but large percentage (some estimates suggest another 30%) was of people in hospital because of some other illness, who will therefore have also had reduced life expectancy.

Covid seldom kills healthy people! A good example is Boris Johnson UK PM. Someone in his 50s but overweight with a history of respiratory medical condition. And even so he survived.

Life expectancy is figured for each individual as that particular individual ages.

Life expectancy for cities, states and nations is the life expectancy of a new born baby. As the years go by the life expectancy does increase just a little. Life expectancy is defined as the point at which 50 % of people at a certain age will have died and half are still alive.

Let's consider an area with a life expectancy of 83. Perhaps one million people were born 83 years ago. Now only 500,000 of those born 83 years ago are still alive. 500,000 have already died by age 83.

To determine their life expectancy for the 500,000 still alive, it will be the point where 250,000 have died and 250,000 are still alive.

I studied the charts years ago when taking a business math course.

The life expectancy for these survivors is six years.

When half of those survivors 125,000 die will be the life expectancy of those who are now 83.

As I recall, it is 6 years for this to happen. Now there are 125,000 survivors. The survivors are 89.

The life expectancy will be 89 for those who are still alive at age 83.

The "add-on" years keeps dropping. As infants the life expectancy was 83 years. It took 83 years for half of them, 500,000, to die.

The life expectancy for those age 83 is 89.

It only takes six years for half of those age 83 to die. There are 250,000 still living at age 89.

At 89, it only takes five years for half of those alive at age 89 to die with only 75,000 still living.

At age 94, only 37,500 remain.

The life expectancy for a person aged 89 would be 94.

What I do vividly remember is that somewhere in the mid-90s, this accelerates.

95 18750 still alive Life expectance is 97
97 9375 still alive Life expectance is 98
*98 4688 still alive Life expectance is 98.5
98.5 2346 still alive Life expectance is 99
99 1171 still alive Life expectance is 99.5
99.5 585 still alive
100 293 still alive
100. ? 146 still alive
101. ? 73 still alive
102 36 still alive

* I used .5 to indicate less than a year. It isn't a math computation.

Age 102 was the highest age group listed in this course. The pool from which to gather statistics is too small to make projections for the ones still living.

If this chart is accurate today, there would be 12,240 people in the US aged 102.

(Insurance companies use very much larger than one million people at birth to figure life expectancies if possible.)

Why this matters:

Insurance companies plot out all of this to sell life insurance policies.

I don't remember the oldest age that most life insurance companies will insure a person.

Some people can come up with $75,000 or $100,000 a year, but the heirs can't come up with $ one million all in one year to settle the estate. So life insurance is bought. Of course said person would need to be in excellent health for their age.

There are wealthy people who do not want to break up their company to settle their estate or pay estate tax. I was surprised that there was a market for life insurance for people even in their early 70s.

Insurance companies have to get it just right about life expectancy or they might go bankrupt.

With a large group of people take out life insurance in their early 70s. Insurance companies need to know how many taking out life insurance at age 72 are going to die each year.

Insurance companies need to know what percent at age 72 will still be alive paying premiums at each age to pay for the ones that died six months after life insurance took effect!

Life insurance companies know more than anyone what the life expectancy is for any age and health condition.

It takes 83 years for the first 500,000 of one million humans born to die if life expectancy for that state or nation is life expectancy of 83.

It takes another 19 years for all except for less than 50 of the 500,000 humans still living at age 83 to die.

All the numbers listed here are numbers I have "used to show this" except *98 and 102. It is at at 98 where half of the remaining still alive die in less than a year.

It is at age 102 where there aren't enough still living to be able to make a projection from year to year.

Here in the US from time to time a person lives to age108. John McCain's mother at age106 attended his state funeral in the National Cathedral.

***************************************************************

Dandelion mentions the short life expectancy of the elderly in care homes in UK, nursing homes in the US. Some elderly are in a "home" at age 70 while some do not move to a " home" until past age 90. Many people never have to go to a "home" even though they are well past 90!

The majority of the elderly in the US do not live in a "home" until their health has been greatly compromised. A few people do live for years in a "home" such as stroke victims or those who have dementia. Most people do not live for years in a "home" here in the US.

Many people go to the "home" from the hospital. Their health has failed. They have used all of their Medicare comfort days for hospital care for the year. It is off to a "home" where some do get better for a short while. Some only live a few months if that long.

I have had people in their late 80s in excellent health comment about going to see some of the old people in the "home" who are ten years younger than they were!

Yes, some Americans refer to the nursing home as "the home!" Lift off to heaven perhaps!

 

[dandelion]

Hopefully those trends hold. The average age of illness is generally decreasing across the western world as populations become vaccinated, and the outcomes are significantly improving. All evidence that the vaccines are working well.

Well we dont really know that. All we know is detected illness is falling in vaccinated people. This leaves the question of undetected illness, indeed undetectable illness because its extent is below the threshold of testing. From the virus' perspective, this may be the best sort, because anyone offically passed as uninfected will mix with others. Antibody levels from vaccination will also fall in a matter of months.

Outcomes are improving, but notice at least in the Uk this improvement is outcomes for UNVACCINATED people who are catching covid. It is being reported covid has simply become a bad cold for them.

The most likely explanation is that having had earlier covid strains, they are now immune to severe symptoms.

Almost all hospitalized covid patients have one thing in common:they are unvaccinated]

The UK health minister in parliament yesterday said about 40% are vaccinated. 20% one dose and 20% two doses.

Its also not cleare precisely who these unvaccinated people are, It looks as though they are from high risk groups who have refused vaccination or were otherwise missed. It isnt clear young people are getting ill at all.

 

[dandelion]

The life expectancy will be 89 for those who are still alive at age 83.

This is true as an average for people aged 83. However the 83 year olds who have died from covid in the Uk are not at all average for their age. Deaths have been much more frequent amongst persons at any age who have other medical conditions which have reduced their chances. These same diseases also reduce their life expectancy.

The UK has had about 130,000 official covid deaths. But right now 'excess deaths' in the Uk is negative. Since march fewer people have died in the UK from all causes than the 5 year average. There is normally a rebound effect after an epidemic, where people who would have died after it ends have died early from the disease.So for a while fewer die. This gives an indication how many who did die from the disease would have died in that timeframe anyway.

Since November 2020 deaths from all causes except covid has been below the 5 year average. So while total has exceeded average, some of those deaths are also being compensated because they would have died in the timeframe anyway. There was a small compensation effect May 2020 too, after the April peak of deaths.

Overall about 50,000 of the 130,000 seem likely to be compensated, and would have died within the period of the epidemic anyway. How many might have died rather sooner than your estimates remains to be seen.

Covid only kills people whose health has failed compared to a healthy human. A part of that seems to be we all have stored immunity which works against covid. But when the system fails, it can no longer beat covid. In countries with poorer starting immunity the outcomes have been worse.

 

[b.c.]

In coronavirus news:

More COVID-19 deaths have already been reported in 2021 than in all of 2020 - CBS News

US COVID-19 deaths hit 600,000, equal to yearly cancer toll

In China's Latest Outbreak, Doctors Say the Infected Get Sicker, Faster
Study Finds Many Post-Covid Patients Are Experiencing New Medical Problems - The New York Times
Judge orders 178 hospital workers who refused vaccine to receive shots or be fired | TheHill
Majority of America’s low-income workers who don’t take sick leave can’t afford to, report finds
FDA says 60M J&J vaccine doses from troubled plant must be thrown out: report

GOP BIZARRO WORLD BATSHITERY - or as @sargon20 said, THE CRUELTY'S THE POINT:

Still more evidence that COVID-19 is on its way to becoming a predominantly Republican disease

Covid: GOP governors move to ban mask mandates in schools - CNNPolitics

Chris Wallace Challenges Pompeo: You ‘Had Almost a Year’ to Prove Lab Leak Theory
Republicans are willing to do anything to make Trump 'right,' even if if kills them
.

 

[chrisrobin]

It is the duty of ALL inhabitants, medical conditions accepted, to have vaccinations. The UK government was lax in closing its borders and allowed many full flights from India to return to the UK, therefore potentially spreading the Delta variation into the areas of ethnic minorities who are now reporting vast increases of hospitalisation - many of whom haven't had or have refused vaccinations.
Its not enough to think that one jab is sufficient or that I have good health and wont get it or I believe what the man said in the pub.
Now is the time for all people to make sure they are protected, and in so doing will protect others, world wide a year plus on the apathy to inoculation is appalling, its not a gene changing vaccine, its not a political statement - its for the good of the population.
The reluctance of a few is endangering the many.

 

[Jason]

Yes agreed @christobin we all need to have our jabs. The vaccines are a game changer.

In the UK the government decided to close the borders to Pakistan and Bangladesh. The government got a lot of flack for this, including a letter of protest from a group of Labour MPs. The government held firm on this closure, but kept India open, where cases were lower. Then as cases rose in India the decision was made to close India. A few days later the Indian delta variety was identified. With hindsight of course the border should have been closed earlier, but it is so easy in hindsight. Logically closing India could not be based on the delta variant because it hadn’t been identified.

Right now the government is treating almost everywhere as a red or amber country so effectively stopping tourism, and it is getting a lot of flack for this. It is curious that the same people who say we should have closed India sooner are also saying we should have kept Portugal open and open up most of Europe. I do think the government genuinely has impossible decisions. We can all say after the event that something was wrong.

 

[dandelion]

Yes agreed @christobin we all need to have our jabs. The vaccines are a game changer.

It seems even amongst the unvaccinated people in the Uk covid has been reduced to a bad cold. We needed a vaccine to deal with a bad cold?

Yes OK, for people at high risk a vaccine will save some. Unfortunately the most high risk are probably already dead, so too late for them. But beyond that, vaccinating the low risk half of the population has been a waste of time and money. And that vaccine could have been given to people really at risk in other countries which cannot afford vaccine for anyone, never mind giving it to people who dont need it as we are

The government held firm on this closure, but kept India open, where cases were lower. Then as cases rose in India the decision was made to close India. A few days later the Indian delta variety was identified. With hindsight of course the border should have been closed earlier

Covid arrived in the UK in 2019, and I am estimatingearly winter in Hastings. No one noticed.

By the time it had been identified in India it was no doubt already too late. Had borders been closed when you suggest, and had it not already been here by then, then it would still have moved round the world, just slower. Unless we absolutely close our borders to all people and animals, then it would get in.

 

[Jason]

It seems even amongst the unvaccinated people in the Uk covid has been reduced to a bad cold. We needed a vaccine to deal with a bad cold?

Yes OK, for people at high risk a vaccine will save some. Unfortunately the most high risk are probably already dead, so too late for them. But beyond that, vaccinating the low risk half of the population has been a waste of time and money. And that vaccine could have been given to people really at risk in other countries which cannot afford vaccine for anyone, never mind giving it to people who dont need it as we are

Covid arrived in the UK in 2019, and I am estimatingearly winter in Hastings. No one noticed.

By the time it had been identified in India it was no doubt already too late. Had borders been closed when you suggest, and had it not already been here by then, then it would still have moved round the world, just slower. Unless we absolutely close our borders to all people and animals, then it would get in.

There are few downsides for vaccination. Even if it were the case that it was just preventing the equivalent of a bad cold i suggest it would still be worth getting jabbed. However the intention is to be in a position where most of the population have immunity, including at least some immunity to new varieties, which might be more virulent and hit the young. The chief vaccine cost is in development and the infrastructure of roll out. Right now the cost issue is marginal.

The issue of first world countries donating some vaccines to the third world (at a time of limited supply) is a bit of a sound bite. In UK we pay to UK people pensions and benefits. There is an argument that we should stop doing this and instead give the money to t(e third world. For every granny receiving a pension in UK we could instead fund several overseas. T(e duty of the UK government is to its own population.

When there is surplus of course we should give, But gesture politics of giving a few million to (say) India is crazy - India needs a billion or more. Presumably we can look to having the world vaccinated by autumn 2022.

Closing borders is problematic. What can possibly be achieved is a reduction in the initial seeding of a variant and therefore a slow down of maybe a couple of weeks. There is some use in this, but there is also a huge personal cost. Very many UK citizens have family in the Indian sub-continent and closing the borders hurts. We need joined up thinking.

*****
Meanwhile there is very wide publicity of a leaked formal report to the UK government saying that Perspex screens are useless, and because they reduce ventilation pro/ably have a small effect in increasing transmission. The effect is small but statistically significant. If this is true the UK government should immediately stop advising Perspex screens. The stupidity is that the government are going into fudge mode. They are neither accepting nor rejecting that the report exists. There really should be immediate clarification on this. Today their will be businesses paying out on screens in order to reopen, and it may be that they have already been shown to increase coronavirus transmission.

there’s an added problem in that they are a lot of work to wash down frequently and will certainly be a breeding ground for. 101 other germs.

 

[dandelion]

There are some interesting results from King's college/Zoe phone app which monitors covid prevalence. For the last week R value across britain, which is essentially the new Indian covid variant, have been falling. The one exception is the SW region, which happens to be where the G7 conference has been happening.

If this continues, then this outbreak will be the smallest so far. So far it is essentially negligible in size, and only matters if it is about to get much bigger. So..current trend is it is already slowing. This is supported by government case data too. https://covid-assets.joinzoe.com/latest/covid_symptom_study_report.pdf

Government announces delay in ending lockdown because of rising cases....just as evidence arises this new mini surge is petering out. Thats pretty typical of every outbreak in the Uk so far.

 

[dandelion]

There are few downsides for vaccination. Even if it were the case that it was just preventing the equivalent of a bad cold i suggest it would still be worth getting jabbed.

People get repeat colds every year. Why?

I dont believe thats an accident or design mistake in our immune system. Rather, its absolutely deliberate. If you are infected, antibodies and t cells rise until the invader is eliminated. After that they fall again over 6-12 months. They will eventually become low enough that if you are exposed to the same pathogen again, it can start a new infection. On these numbers in fact this will happen every year.

But this does no harm because you can immediately create new antibody from the stored patterns your body retains. What it does do however, is give the body a chance to experience any new mutation a pathogen has made, and to create new antibodies if necessary.

Having an annual infection means you can update your immunity every year and thereby make sure it never gets a chance to build up enough changes to become dangerous. It becomes dangerous if it goes away fro a long time and comes back with lots of changes. For example, a corona virus which has been circulating amongst animals for a long time but then moves into humans.

In autumn sunlight levels fall and you create less vitamin D. his causes the immune system to slow down its response and immunity overall to fall further. This encourages new infections to happen at the start of winter every year. Whether in countries with long day length or short. Its an annual clock which encourages us to get reinfected every year.

We get reinfected because its good for us. And its good for us not to completely eliminate a pathogen, but keep it in circulation but tamed.

And thats why vaccination may be bad. If it creates too much immunity and so creates a long gap between new infections.

 

[WilliamG]

I've gotten the cold at least 3-4 times a year. That's right 3-4 times. And the flu between Thanksgiving and Xmas. Every fucking year. Year after fucking year. For 20+ years. I hate fucking colds and flu. I eat right. Exercise. Do all the right shit. Why? I think it's because for much of my career I've worked in offices with shitty air flow, no windows, and other sick macho fuckers that won't stay home when they are fucking sick. "Better to go to work and get paid for being sick rather than sit at home" was the motto. I got my first flu shot at the end of 2019. Then the pandemic and no work (no office). I've not been sick once for 20 months now. You have no idea how that fucking feels.

Edit: As for my decisions about covid, I follow science and peer reviewed studies. One of the best out there is Dr John Campbell based in the UK. His Youtube channel provided the best NON POLITICAL information for the time. He does a daily update on the global situation with it. Did I say it's non political?

 

[dandelion]

He recently covered the topic of the earlier than reported outbreak.

In the item you linked John Campbell talked about a study by barcelona University who found covid in waste waters samples stored from March 2019.

This is the earliest I have heard of so far. Cambell still thinks this must be people coming from China to barcelona. It isnt quite clear whether this was just a short burst of cases probably caused by some visitor or groups of visitors (apparently they have a number of chinese workers), so it was only reported that month, or whether they dont have a complete set of monthly samples any more. The finding that covid was there seems robust, but if only that month begs the question why it went away. SARS-CoV-2 detected in waste waters in Barcelona on March 12, 2019 - Universitat de Barcelona

(though I would say a study in the Uk last summer found some 1500 different strains imported to the UK, most of which seemed to have become extinct by then. So there is a certain amount of luck in whether an outbreak takes off)

He also says the US is looking into this and there should another report from them about early incidence in a few months, but considers it may take years to put together a proper chronology of the epidemic. If its proven the disease spread to a few places very early, its likely it spread to more. It is possible early strains were less virulent, and there might have been an advantage in being infected with an early strain because it would confer immunity but at lower risk. If so...we did our best to discard this advantage.

Looking at some of his other bulletins about covid, I see he explains that anyone catching a mild case of covid should not look upon it as a personal misadventure, but instead that it will have increased their immunity against further future covid infections.

In particular he suggests anyone getting a mild dose after being vaccinated should consider this a good thing. Uk government doesnt seem to agree.

There was a wierd government advisor being interviewed on R4 about cases amongst younger people and whether they represented a threat to overload the NHS. He replied the link between older people and hospitalisations seemed to have been broken by vaccination (so few hospitalisations), but had not been broken for the younger unvaccinated people. Which wholly seemed to miss the point of the question, because most hospitalisations in past outbreaks came from age groups which have already been vaccinated, so there should be a massive fall in hospitalisation, even if there was a new outbreak now with as many cases as the last. He dodged giving this answer.

And then of course, symptoms in younger people have also become milder, so presumably there should be fewer hospitalisations there too, even though they have not been vaccinated.

 

[dandelion]

I've gotten the cold at least 3-4 times a year. That's right 3-4 times. And the flu between Thanksgiving and Xmas. Every fucking year. Year after fucking year. For 20+ years. I hate fucking colds and flu. I eat right. Exercise. Do all the right shit. Why? I think it's because for much of my career I've worked in offices with shitty air flow, no windows, and other sick macho fuckers that won't stay home when they are fucking sick. "Better to go to work and get paid for being sick rather than sit at home" was the motto. I got my first flu shot at the end of 2019. Then the pandemic and no work (no office). I've not been sick once for 20 months now. You have no idea how that fucking feels.

Dangerous?

A researcher interviewed last summer reported shcool children typically get 3-4 corona virus infections each year, while adults maybe 1 every 3-4 years (figures approx from memory). Children catch lots of such diseases, and this builds a baseline of immunity. But the reason for being reinfected is to update that immunity, keep it current against new strains. You are trading off annual minor infections against the risk of more infrequent but much more serious infections.

So.. you arent getting the annual colds, but keep that up for 20 years and one of them might come back in a form which is life threatening. Especially as you get older and the immune system doesnt work so well, so the immunity you have stored up and how up to date it is becomes more important. Covid is an example of a corona virus which has been away (living in animals and changing) for years, and so is a much bigger risk to us.

Our circulating immunity falls steadily starting a month or two after an infection, which of course will allow a new infection when it gets low enough. Add to that that falling vitamin D in winter depresses the immune sytem further and encourages new infections. I assume because thats the best time of year to have colds. Better when you are indoors anyway than in summer when you need to go out and grow crops or fight wars. But in either situation you still have reserve stored templates to create new antibody fast. So its like a cat playing with a mouse it has caught to practices its hunting skills. The body allows infections on its terms when it knows it has a reserve ability to fight them, but in the process keeps itself up to date against whatever new variants arise.

You catch annual colds to avoid dying from one huge infection.

 

[Industrialsize]

Dangerous?

A researcher interviewed last summer reported shcool children typically get 3-4 corona virus infections each year, while adults maybe 1 every 3-4 years (figures approx from memory). Children catch lots of such diseases, and this builds a baseline of immunity. But the reason for being reinfected is to update that immunity, keep it current against new strains. You are trading off annual minor infections against the risk of more infrequent but much more serious infections.

So.. you arent getting the annual colds, but keep that up for 20 years and one of them might come back in a form which is life threatening. Especially as you get older and the immune system doesnt work so well, so the immunity you have stored up and how up to date it is becomes more important. Covid is an example of a corona virus which has been away (living in animals and changing) for years, and so is a much bigger risk to us.

Our circulating immunity falls steadily starting a month or two after an infection, which of course will allow a new infection when it gets low enough. Add to that that falling vitamin D in winter depresses the immune sytem further and encourages new infections. I assume because thats the best time of year to have colds. Better when you are indoors anyway than in summer when you need to go out and grow crops or fight wars. But in either situation you still have reserve stored templates to create new antibody fast. So its like a cat playing with a mouse it has caught to practices its hunting skills. The body allows infections on its terms when it knows it has a reserve ability to fight them, but in the process keeps itself up to date against whatever new variants arise.

You catch annual colds to avoid dying from one huge infection.

Well there you have it......

 

[Jason]

I've gotten the cold at least 3-4 times a year. That's right 3-4 times. And the flu between Thanksgiving and Xmas. Every fucking year. Year after fucking year. For 20+ years. I hate fucking colds and flu. I eat right. Exercise. Do all the right shit. Why? I think it's because for much of my career I've worked in offices with shitty air flow, no windows, and other sick macho fuckers that won't stay home when they are fucking sick. "Better to go to work and get paid for being sick rather than sit at home" was the motto. I got my first flu shot at the end of 2019. Then the pandemic and no work (no office). I've not been sick once for 20 months now. You have no idea how that fucking feels.

Edit: As for my decisions about covid, I follow science and peer reviewed studies. One of the best out there is Dr John Campbell based in the UK. His Youtube channel provided the best NON POLITICAL information for the time. He does a daily update on the global situation with it. Did I say it's non political?

We’ve all come to realise just how bad many office environments are for spreading bugs. This really is something our society has to address. Ventilation is often abysmal. We also have tolerance of people coughing and sneezing everywhere.

 

[Freddie53]

There are few downsides for vaccination. Even if it were the case that it was just preventing the equivalent of a bad cold i suggest it would still be worth getting jabbed. However the intention is to be in a position where most of the population have immunity, including at least some immunity to new varieties, which might be more virulent and hit the young. The chief vaccine cost is in development and the infrastructure of roll out. Right now the cost issue is marginal.

The issue of first world countries donating some vaccines to the third world (at a time of limited supply) is a bit of a sound bite. In UK we pay to UK people pensions and benefits. There is an argument that we should stop doing this and instead give the money to t(e third world. For every granny receiving a pension in UK we could instead fund several overseas. T(e duty of the UK government is to its own population.

When there is surplus of course we should give, But gesture politics of giving a few million to (say) India is crazy - India needs a billion or more. Presumably we can look to having the world vaccinated by autumn 2022.

Closing borders is problematic. What can possibly be achieved is a reduction in the initial seeding of a variant and therefore a slow down of maybe a couple of weeks. There is some use in this, but there is also a huge personal cost. Very many UK citizens have family in the Indian sub-continent and closing the borders hurts. We need joined up thinking.

*****
Meanwhile there is very wide publicity of a leaked formal report to the UK government saying that Perspex screens are useless, and because they reduce ventilation pro/ably have a small effect in increasing transmission. The effect is small but statistically significant. If this is true the UK government should immediately stop advising Perspex screens. The stupidity is that the government are going into fudge mode. They are neither accepting nor rejecting that the report exists. There really should be immediate clarification on this. Today their will be businesses paying out on screens in order to reopen, and it may be that they have already been shown to increase coronavirus transmission.

there’s an added problem in that they are a lot of work to wash down frequently and will certainly be a breeding ground for. 101 other germs.

Somewhere I read that youth and young adults should get jabs for COVID, but not so much for themselves.

The youth and young adults need to get their jabs so they don't pass COVID to those at any age who have heath concerns, particularly grandma and grandpa.

When the youth and young adults get COVID they often get the same symptoms as with the common cold. I suspect that most cases of COVID of the youth and young adults are never diagnosed. Some never show any symptoms at all. Some get a runny nose and run a slight fever and that is about it!

 

[Jason]

The UK has vaccinated (fully) 90%+ of over 50s and is fast moving down the adult ages. Take up by younger adults is good. In part this is recognition that vaccination may be needed to go on holiday abroad. The issues are both what other nations will require and the possibility that UK will waive quarantine for vaccinated.

The huge issue is vaccination of children. Of course vaccination of children would help the whole population, but this really is doing something to children for the good of others. There are two additional arguments emerging:
* while children rarely get seriously ill they do get long Covid. We just don’t know yet how serious this is.
* we may see emerge a variant which has high mortality for children. Vaccination would guard against this possibility.

There’s also a view that children would do better to get coronavirus and therefore natural immunity rather than be vaccinated.

The holiday idea may apply to children as well as to adults. It may be that many parents will want their children vaccinated if it is possible.

 

[Freddie53]

This is true as an average for people aged 83. However the 83 year olds who have died from covid in the Uk are not at all average for their age. Deaths have been much more frequent amongst persons at any age who have other medical conditions which have reduced their chances. These same diseases also reduce their life expectancy.

The UK has had about 130,000 official covid deaths. But right now 'excess deaths' in the Uk is negative. Since march fewer people have died in the UK from all causes than the 5 year average. There is normally a rebound effect after an epidemic, where people who would have died after it ends have died early from the disease.So for a while fewer die. This gives an indication how many who did die from the disease would have died in that timeframe anyway.

Since November 2020 deaths from all causes except covid has been below the 5 year average. So while total has exceeded average, some of those deaths are also being compensated because they would have died in the timeframe anyway. There was a small compensation effect May 2020 too, after the April peak of deaths.

Overall about 50,000 of the 130,000 seem likely to be compensated, and would have died within the period of the epidemic anyway. How many might have died rather sooner than your estimates remains to be seen.

Covid only kills people whose health has failed compared to a healthy human. A part of that seems to be we all have stored immunity which works against covid. But when the system fails, it can no longer beat covid. In countries with poorer starting immunity the outcomes have been worse.

Dandelion "Covid only kills people whose health has failed compared to a healthy human."

In general, I agree. There seem to be exceptions. There are many people who appear to be very healthy. They are active. Show no symptoms of disease, yet they die from flu, COVID, etc.

There are some apparently otherwise healthy people whose immune systems are weak for whatever reason. They are sitting ducks for COVID.

As the various mutations of COVID appear on the scene, will those who have recovered from COVID who are then exposed to a new mutation receive additional defense against mutations that they will be exposed to in the future, perhaps next one or two years?

It is my understanding that once a person has a very specific variant of the common cold, he will not catch that exact variant again. However, there are hundreds variants of the common cold. Some are very similar. Then there are variants with significant differences. Some variants may become extinct only to have a variant in the future mutate to be the same or practically the same as an extinct variant.

The older generations show symptoms of the common cold when they are exposed to a variant with enough differences from variants that have infected them in the past to fool their defense system.

In time there will be hundreds of variants of COVID. Some variants will become extinct. Then a new variant may come along that is practically the same or may be the same as a extinct common cold from the past.

Hopefully, in time, all parents will have some immunity to COVID before oonseption of children and will pass that on to their children.

When that happens, will COVID be no worse than the common cold is today?