Feeling a bit duped about the seriousness of Covid....

[mostwonderfultime]

Found out my district of 55,000 people there have been 156 confirmed covid cases since March. Now I hear there is an enquiry into the over reporting of Covid deaths in England. Average death rate has now lower than average indicating many people who died from Covid would probably died in the next month or so. No surge in Covid cases or deaths since relaxing lockdown measures (I know about Leicester, but we all know reasons why they have more cases and again they haven't had a spike in deaths).
In the meantime, the economy is screwed, Kids have been off school for months, best friends business has gone bust.

@mostwonderfultime

Essentially, lockdown was not about saving lives. It was about saving the NHS which in turn saves lives As far as I can see the NHS never came anywhere near being overwhelmed and the Nightingale hospitals were empty. I'm not at all convinced lockdown to such an extent was ever needed.

Oh my goodness.

The NHS wasn't overwhelmed because we locked down and because it stopped all non essential work and diverted resources to Covid.

Had it continued treating people as usual and we hadn't had lockdown then it would have been overwhelmed.

Look at Northern Italy and watch certain states in the US.

I'm not at all convinced lockdown to such an extent was ever needed.

There are people that are worth arguing with and then people who clearly have such different values that there is simply no point. Enjoy whatever hell on earth you manage to create for your community.

@mostwonderfultime

Found out my district of 55,000 people there have been 156 confirmed covid cases since March.

But by your logic, Covid is extraordinarily serious...

If there are over 50-60,000 deaths (and yes there has been an over-count but likely by 2-4,000), and this has occurred with only 156 cases out of 55,000, that’s terrifying! .

Imagine if we hadn’t locked down and many more were infected!

A friend's family member cannot get a referral for what is certainly bowel cancer. The 'protecting the NHS' which is what the whole upheaval was about, had a very hollow feel and will inevitably lead to a real
backlash against the clunky machine that is the NHS.
In other countries the health service is just that, a service, not a religion.
It is not 'underfunding' , it is a complacent culture of 'we are untouchable' that gives the worst cancer survival rates in Europe.

Have a watch. It's long, you will need to concentrate and it might challenge some things you thought.

Climbdad,

Putting aside some of the persisting immunity that might be appearing in Japan to a presumably similar previous infection, have you seen anything that indicates why immunity to a stable corona virus in humans might not persist. I can understand why 'drift and shift' of a virus might make it novel but I don't recall seeing any proposed mechanisms for why a stable virus that elicits an immunological response might not have that adaptive response persist over time.

It may be a vaccine that gets administered every year. Who knows

How can they vaccinate the most vulnerable without having a good idea of how long immunity will last for?

It's no good if for a large number of people it's worn off after two months yet they're happily living their lives thinking they are protected is it?

And are they planning on studying it in the elderly and immunocompromised before mass vaccination or as I said, will they just tell us to keep our fingers crossed?

OP, you weren't duped. You chose to go along with it, when a bit of engagement of common sense would have told you it was nonsense. It was clear right from the outset that the whole thing was based on hysteria, and that lockdown was a massive error (feel free to 'advanced search' for my posts, if anyone thinks I'm writing this with hindsight: I haven't changed my views since the moment lockdown was announced).

How can they vaccinate the most vulnerable without having a good idea of how long immunity will last for?

They’ll test regularly for antibodies i presume

Someone might have linked already. I imagine people will pour scorn on it, because they always do.

@LaurieMarlow

As for 'randoms on the internet', plenty of posters on this thread have given scientific explanations of why a vaccine won't be ready any time soon.

And I choose to put more faith in what’s being reported in the scientific community

I have no idea how long a vaccine will take, there are no guarantees, but there is good reason to be hopeful that it will be less than two years for all the reasons I’ve already outlined.

The Oxford vaccine has so far performed as they hoped it would. We all await next stage trials with interest.

Treatment options are also progressing. I have every faith we’ll be on a much better position soon. You believe what you like.

It isn't being reported in the scientific community, though. What is actually being reported is that preliminary stages have gone well. People without any understanding of vaccine development (including journalists!) are misinterpreting that as meaning a vaccine will be ready soon.

All the money in the world cannot buy time, and that is what vaccine development needs. You cannot safely rush the testing phases. There is a reason why the only country in the world claiming to have approved a Covid vaccine is China. Anyone fancy being given that?

To use a vaccine outside a clinical trial in a country with proper safety standards, you need to demonstrate both safety and efficacy (effectiveness). Testing the efficacy of a vaccine takes ages, as - once you have a product that you think works - you need to give it to trial subjects, then wait to see whether they become infected. You can't just expose them to the virus in the lab (you do do that, but it's only part of the testing), because you need to know that the vaccine works in real-world conditions.

Testing safety is not straightforward either. You can look for initial side-effects, but some rarer ones may not become apparent for years - as may have happened with the Pandemrix vaccine and narcolepsy - still controversial after 11 years. Can you imagine the panic and fallout if we mass-vaccinated the entire world, then it turns out that the Covid vaccine has some dangerous side-effect?

I don't see the point in lying to ourselves about this. We will probably get there, but it will take time.

@853690525d

I'm not at all convinced lockdown to such an extent was ever needed.

There are people that are worth arguing with and then people who clearly have such different values that there is simply no point. Enjoy whatever hell on earth you manage to create for your community.

Bit dramatic.

Shall I pass on your thoughts to the people I know who've died from COVID? No wait, I can't because they're dead.

I'll also try and forget that I've had to shield for 4 months because other people can't be trusted (bothered) to distance or wear masks.

Count yourself lucky.

Of course, someone with a hint of compassion or decorum may consider how hurtful threads like this are to people whose loved ones have died of Covid or people whose family/friends have been hospitalised or people whose family/friends are still struggling with effects of Covid pneumonia.

Decisions are supposed to be based on facts and evidence for goodness sake, not on how hurtful someone might find something! And people die of lots of things. Covid deaths are not more hurtful.

@Zilla1

Climbdad,

Putting aside some of the persisting immunity that might be appearing in Japan to a presumably similar previous infection, have you seen anything that indicates why immunity to a stable corona virus in humans might not persist. I can understand why 'drift and shift' of a virus might make it novel but I don't recall seeing any proposed mechanisms for why a stable virus that elicits an immunological response might not have that adaptive response persist over time.

Virologists who've been studying human coronaviruses for 20 years still don't understand the mechanics of temporary immunity. It isn't drift and shift. Reinfection in the Columbia study were seen at 30 days, which is too soon for there to have been evasive mutation.

There are theories about soluble ACE2 cloaking the virus to evade immune response, or the virus entering a low replication, persistent state, but no one has been able to pin down exactly why the immune response to endemic coronaviruses wanes. The Columbia University study found that symptoms upon reinfection were of the same severity as upon initial infection, which suggests the adaptive system might not play such a significant role, and that innate immunity is more important. Could also be blood antigen expression as they hypothesised a genetic component, based on similar severity of symptoms in family groups.

Long and short is we don't really know how or why, we just know that we don't build long-term immunity to endemic human coronaviruses.

@ClimbDad, thanks for all the info.

I agree it’s there to stay.
I also think that we have forgotten what it means to be human and affected by diseases. Which we are and have always been by design. We just forgot and thought we were now above nature.

Just one comment about the 65k who died. Why did they when other countries managed to keep the number of deaths in the 100s??

@LaurieMarlow

The Lancet needs to give Climbdad a call. As he seriously knows it all.

Richard and I are still on speaking terms and he has my number.

@climbdad, thank you very much. I thought I'd missed something fundamental during my studies.

Had we locked down earlier more direct deaths would have been avoided but the economic consequences could possibly have been even worse and a tanking economy definitely means deaths from other causes.

Worth stating that countries that started measures to suppress the virus earlier have better economic outcomes. Usually earlier lockdown goes along with a shorter lockdown and earlier relaxation measures.

You could argue that if we'd had social distancing, working from home where possible, and banning large gatherings in February maybe we wouldn't have had to lockdown in March. There was huge community spread because there had been no measures until too late.

Compare S Korea and New Zealand.

The economic damage is linked to the amount of coronavirus in a country - the more coronavirus, the greater the economic damage.

I don't want to be harsh, but the "But where does this actually end?" question was pretty obvious even at the start of lockdown. It was always an unsustainable strategy, but now we seem sort of stuck with it, till...when? To what extent are we willing to run our societies into the ground?

"You could argue that if we'd had social distancing, working from home where possible, and banning large gatherings in February maybe we wouldn't have had to lockdown in March. There was huge community spread because there had been no measures until too late.

Compare S Korea and New Zealand."

I think we also would have needed more tests. If you know who's got it and where they are, it's easier to contain.

Not enough people, especially groups who are less likely to be directly affected, are going to give enough of a shit about the virus to accept restrictions on their way of life for an indefinite period. Even a number of those who stand to be worse affected might prefer to just get on with it and take their chances than live a life of socially distanced and masked misery forever. Ultimately humans are a social species and will want social contact and that needs to be taken into account in formulating any future response. And telling people they’re “selfish” for not prioritising Joe Public won’t help either. You can’t make or shame people into giving a shit.

The trick here is to avoid running society into the ground which does not mean pretend it's all gone away or accept a massive death toll

Lockdown too long, bad. Let virus rip. Probably worse. It's a narrow path. And by taking the easier line at the start we have made it harder for ourselves now.

And on the subject of countries who control the virus having better economic outcomes, here's an article on Sweden, where despite not having a lockdown, they have not avoided any economic damage compared to their neighbours (along with a higher death rate than their neighbours).

www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/business/sweden-economy-coronavirus.html

If you want to improve the economy, you need to control the virus through appropriate measures including masks, social distancing etc (including in schools). Going 'back to normal' is going to achieve precisely the opposite and cause more economic damage.

The lockdown was nothing more than to protect the shit show that is the NHS

Every country near enough has locked down though (barring the horror show seen in Brazil).

That's what I don't get about the argument that the UK overreacted when in reality our death rate is near the top due how to slow we were to lock down.