Ok then let's see what the Prime Minister has to say........

[frozendaisy]

It's the hope that destroys you isn't it!

[quote BatSegundo]@hamstersarse you lose all credibility when you start with the "It's just the flu" nonsense. In case you missed it, a previous poster quoted Whitty pointing out that a bad flu year is 20,000 deaths. We're already at more than double that and approaching triple that. There's a lot of this year left to go.

The t cell hypothesis is just a hypothesis. The people that published that were very clear that a lot more research is needed before relying on it. And even if it does make the disease milder for some, it does not prevent them from catching it and infecting others who may not be so lucky.

The false positives are a problem when numbers infected are very low or you're doing surveillance testing on mostly healthy people. Unfortunately, in many, many areas of the UK, numbers are high and nearly all getting tested are symptomatic. In this case, the much higher numbers of false negatives are a problem as lots of people are thinking they're safe to wander around when they're actually infectious.[/quote]
Why do people get so offended by saying it is 'like the flu'?

It is like the flu. I am not and have never said 'just the flu' as flu is a deadly virus which kills thousands every year (Whitty was careful to quote 'good' flu years yesterday as 7000 is a good year) and I am not discounting your precious coronavirus by saying it is like the flu. It is.

Unfortunately, in many, many areas of the UK, numbers are high and nearly all getting tested are symptomatic.

I am not sure that is accurate. There have been door to door tests, people wanting a negative test to travel, track and trace - all most likely people without symptoms

Eton Head confirms to me that every pupil had a Covid test on arriving at school. Imagine if every child and teacher in the country had access to those private tests. Instead growing numbers stuck at home for lack of a test

There you go - an instant example of people getting tested without symptoms

I’d contribute towards private testing at a school. Maybe that’s something that could be considered until test and trace proficient...

@raddledoldmisanthropist

Genuine question: Do the people who value what they reckon over people who spend years studying this (on a hugely complex subject where they have no expertise) do this in the rest of their life?

Do you argue with the car mechanic when she says you need new breakpads?

Do you cut your own hair?

When you get to the checkout do you explain that the till has probably added it up wrong?
Do you phone the takeaway and then tell them exactly how they should make a good Lamb Biryani?
Do you watch Shakespeare and think 'yeah but he should have done this'?

I just can't comprehend how people cope without the ability to at least loosely define the topics they don't understand.

Are you able to understand that 'The Science' isn't really a thing.

When the government say they are following 'The Science', they mean one part of science. There are plenty of scientists who disagree with the approach of SAGE. Plenty.

So which scientists do you have to believe? Only the government sanctioned ones?

Science is about discovery and examination and re-examination to find the right answers and when you just blindly believe the first presentation of a situation Because Science, that is not really in the spirit of science.

Lots of the criticism of The Science the government is following may well be valid, who knows - but I certainly won't stop questioning it and examining it and I would suggest you don't either.

@Pomegranatepompom

I’d contribute towards private testing at a school. Maybe that’s something that could be considered until test and trace proficient...

but testing asymptomatic people is crazy, unnecessary and skews the numbers (as above)

I had it. It’s not like flu.
My bones didn’t ache, my temperature didn’t go crazy and I didn’t sweat it out. Nor did I recover. Six months on I still collapse with exhaustion at times. Still spend a few days per week in bed. Still get air hunger and chest pain. My eyesight and hearing is affected. Not like any flu I ever had.

Stop gaslighting me. Upthread, you said

"I’m sorry but it really isn’t the disease you make out. It on a par with flu, depending on the exact fatality rates you see, but pretty similar in terms of death rate and who it impacts."

It's nothing like in the flu in death rates, in the amount we know about it, in that we don't yet have a vaccine, in the way it affects our bodies and in the rates and methods of transmission. One of the reasons we screwed up early on was we used pandemic plans for flu. They didn't work.

They are both viral pathogens that can kill you, I'll give you that.

People who want us all to move on from Cummings are only too happy to keep on pointing out that members of the public broke some of the rules in the past.

Sorry I meant for symptomatic teachers/pupils, so would need to isolate for long periods while waiting for a test,

Presumably those paying for it privately at Eton or in some BIg City firms could pay for the test to be run twice to check it's a true positive result?

@BatSegundo

Stop gaslighting me. Upthread, you said

"I’m sorry but it really isn’t the disease you make out. It on a par with flu, depending on the exact fatality rates you see, but pretty similar in terms of death rate and who it impacts."

It's nothing like in the flu in death rates, in the amount we know about it, in that we don't yet have a vaccine, in the way it affects our bodies and in the rates and methods of transmission. One of the reasons we screwed up early on was we used pandemic plans for flu. They didn't work.

They are both viral pathogens that can kill you, I'll give you that.

Gaslighting you? Are you serious?!?!

Anyway Covid has a population fatality rate of 0.04 to 0.05% (largely regardless of lockdown btw) (Nobel Prize for Science winner Professor Levitt of Stanford)

This is very similar to flu. What is the problem with this? We have a national vaccinaton programme for flu it is so serious...there is nothing objectively wrong in saying Covid is like flu - flu is a serious disease

@LetsBeSensible

I had it. It’s not like flu. My bones didn’t ache, my temperature didn’t go crazy and I didn’t sweat it out. Nor did I recover. Six months on I still collapse with exhaustion at times. Still spend a few days per week in bed. Still get air hunger and chest pain. My eyesight and hearing is affected. Not like any flu I ever had.

I am really not trying to minimise but postviral fatigue is a known thing following many viruses, including flu. This is not just a Covid thing

me-pedia.org/wiki/Postviral_fatigue_syndrome

@hamsterarse yeah breathlessness isn’t a common feature oPost Viral Fatigue. Around 10% of covid cases are thought to last beyond 90 days, what’s the stats with Flu and PVFS?

Six months, whilst covering the winter flu months, also covers the first weeks of Brexit.

I have never heard of 50,000 people dying of flu in the Uk before in one year. This disease is a killer to some and nothing to others. It’s a nasty disease in many ways and causes divisions between people - economically, risk wise etc. But as there is no immunity to it, it will of course kill a lot more people than flu. Although it is mainly “the elderly “ there were many cases of non elderly people dying too. I don’t count 40s and 50s as elderly. With a high proportion of deaths in the BAME group. So the attitude that this is kit our problem if a few thousand people die because they are old or black sticks in my gullet.

I totally get the idea that why should the whole population suffer for a minority 50,000. And there should be a way of dealing with things that doesn’t restrict everyone‘a lives- but there isn’t-its a pandemic. Government has been shambolic throughout. But as a society we are supposed to protect other people for the good of all. Government should be supporting those who are going under financially though.

Some great comments earlier about Boris‘a speech . Really gave me a good laugh. Did he really fart?

He has lost his influence though. People were inspired by his pull together jingoism during lockdown but he doesn’t seem to get that that will not work any more since the Cummings debacle - he can’t just leave it behind him as if it didn’t happen - he lost all credibility.

@Iggly

Our nhs has been so underfunded, it cannot cope. That’s why they’re locking down.

The tories cannot bear to give public services money and would rather give it to their rich mates instead. That’s what happened with track and trace.

Fund the nhs properly. Stop giving serco money for testing and for the love of god, get rid of Dido that waste of space failed CEO. Chuck money in to the people who already know how to run the NHS (clue, it’s those in the NHS). Chuck money into the social care sector. Then they can better afford to manage covid and we don’t need to lock down.

This

The public generously granted the govt time (by sacrificing so much in lockdown) to get their shit together in terms of care and testing and the govt wasted it. Increased and long term restrictions are the fault of the govt, not the public misbehaving

@HazelE123

I have never heard of 50,000 people dying of flu in the Uk before in one year. This disease is a killer to some and nothing to others. It’s a nasty disease in many ways and causes divisions between people - economically, risk wise etc. But as there is no immunity to it, it will of course kill a lot more people than flu. Although it is mainly “the elderly “ there were many cases of non elderly people dying too. I don’t count 40s and 50s as elderly. With a high proportion of deaths in the BAME group. So the attitude that this is kit our problem if a few thousand people die because they are old or black sticks in my gullet.

I totally get the idea that why should the whole population suffer for a minority 50,000. And there should be a way of dealing with things that doesn’t restrict everyone‘a lives- but there isn’t-its a pandemic. Government has been shambolic throughout. But as a society we are supposed to protect other people for the good of all. Government should be supporting those who are going under financially though.

Some great comments earlier about Boris‘a speech . Really gave me a good laugh. Did he really fart?

He has lost his influence though. People were inspired by his pull together jingoism during lockdown but he doesn’t seem to get that that will not work any more since the Cummings debacle - he can’t just leave it behind him as if it didn’t happen - he lost all credibility.

I remembered something about 2017 to 2018 being a particularly bad flu season and this is the first article that came up.

The idea that there is 'no immunity to SARS-COV-2' may be flawed. I found this article in the BJM very interesting re the importance of memory T-cells:

Covid-19: Do many people have pre-existing immunity?

Published 17 Sept 2020

An excerpt:

t least six studies have reported T cell reactivity against SARS-CoV-2 in 20% to 50% of people with no known exposure to the virus.

In a study of donor blood specimens obtained in the US between 2015 and 2018, 50% displayed various forms of T cell reactivity to SARS-CoV-2. A similar study that used specimens from the Netherlands reported T cell reactivity in two of 10 people who had not been exposed to the virus.

In Germany reactive T cells were detected in a third of SARS-CoV-2 seronegative healthy donors (23 of 68). In Singapore a team analysed specimens taken from people with no contact or personal history of SARS or covid-19; 12 of 26 specimens taken before July 2019 showed reactivity to SARS-CoV-2, as did seven of 11 from people who were seronegative against the virus.8 Reactivity was also discovered in the UK and Sweden.

Though these studies are small and do not yet provide precise estimates of pre-existing immunological responses to SARS-CoV-2, they are hard to dismiss, with several being published in Cell and Nature. Alessandro Sette, an immunologist from La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California and an author of several of the studies (box 1), told The BMJ, “At this point there are a number of studies that are seeing this reactivity in different continents, different labs. As a scientist you know that is a hallmark of something that has a very strong footing.”

and:

“At the start of the pandemic, a key mantra was that we needed the game changer of antibody data to understand who had been infected and how many were protected,” two immunologists from Imperial College London wrote in a mid-July commentary in Science Immunology. “As we have learned more about this challenging infection, it is time to admit that we really need the T cell data too.”

Theoretically, the placebo arm of a covid-19 vaccine trial could provide a straightforward way to carry out such a study, by comparing the clinical outcomes of people with versus those without pre-existing T cell reactivity to SARS-CoV-2. A review by The BMJ of all primary and secondary outcome measures being studied in the two large ongoing, placebo controlled phase III trials, however, suggests that no such analysis is being done.

www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563

We really need more data on the role of T-cell immunity, it could turn out to be a game-changer.

So the question of what he was wearing under the desk has been answered by this picture in the Guardian - unfortunately it just give the impression of a naughty schoolboy trying to talk his way out of detention!

@Thanksitsgotpockets

Our excess deaths were 65k up to the summer this year.

I would think that excess deaths include other causes like cardiac disease and other pneumonias, and these would be included in the 50k figure for 2017/8.

This winter is likely to have higher figures (covid plus flu is thought to be a particular danger); some vulnerable people have already died but there is a large pool of formerly shielding people that remain vulnerable.