Good News part 11 - Picnics galore as we head into spring

[OrangeBananaFish]

Hope no-one minds me starting this. Apologies if another has started too. Please can someone add the pretty pictures.

Useful links:

coronavirus.data.gov.uk

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

www.covidmessenger.com Thanks to LittleOwl for all her hard work!

ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

www.omnicalculator.com/health/vaccine-queue-uk

NB Please don’t take this too seriously- it depends what vaccine delivery speed and uptake you estimate so it’s not written in stone.

Please note, this is a thread to share good news and for wobblers to be reassured. Doomploppers will be met with scorn and derision!

Morning all. I dont know if its the weather, the thought that schools will be returning or the vaccination data but I feel so much more positive today. 🥳

Thank god I’ve found you, the rest of this board is enough to send me over the edge!!!

Made a ring marble cake with the centre filled with maltesers, it’s made our day immeasurably better

Checking in :)

@OrangeBananaFish - thanks for the new thread. I lost it for a bit and got sucked into the vortex of doom which I said I was going to avoid today!
@Autumn101 - that cake sounds amazing!

Yesterday there were a total of 3.09 million people under 65 in England who had tested positive for covid and therefore have some protection from antibodies. And 14.8 million people partially vaccinated, with some of those over 65 topping up protection from past infection.

We continue to jab more than 2 million arms a week and stock available should increase again in a week or so.

In 2 weeks time we'll be looking at around at least 22 million of the England population with some protection either from vaccination or natural infection.

ONS figures show many more people infected who are either asymptomatic or dont bother to be tested. Never forget protection via previous infection.

Checking in. DS4 has been talking about missing school so I'm so happy for him he'll get to go back soon. He's an only child with no cousins in the UK so has really missed out on playing. Great news about AZ too. My parents had that and I've been worrying about the SA mutation so hadn't focused on high overall efficacy.

My mum got her vaccination today. That's the last member of my family and friends in the priority groups to be vaccinated. And she got AZ which is great given the news out today but buth vaccines look like they are doing better than anyone could have hoped!

Checking in for sanctuary from the hysteria elsewhere.

So good to see the results from Scotland. And for AZ to be doing so well against the Pfizer in terms of the real world indicator of hospital admissions. Turns out Immanuel Macron isn't a very good immunologist after all - is it too optimistic that actual data will undo some of the damage from political point scoring?

I think it would be easy for anyone with a vested interest to write off the UK real world data because it’s UK. If it’s replicated elsewhere it would eventually be harder to ignore but that might take a while.

Signing the cheerfulness register!

I'm very pleased at the news from Scotland regarding the reduced hospitalisations post vaccine. Fabulous all round, but especially pleased at the Oxford AZ results. Some people seem so snotty about that one, making it out to be lesser than the Pfizer one. ( Apparently over 3000 asymptomatic infections were missed off the Pfizer results...not really comparing like with like).

Anyway, big hurrah all round!!

Place marking!

Extremely good news abt the efficacy of the AZ vaccine. DH was happy to get any vaccine at all last Friday but still v reassuring.

How are you feeling today FuzzyPuffling?

I'm definitely winning. I feel almost human, just a bit dizzy and brain foggy. But on the up...I've even made soup, been in the garden and done two loads of washing. Yesterday I couldn't get off the sofa!

@alreadytaken

Yesterday there were a total of 3.09 million people under 65 in England who had tested positive for covid and therefore have some protection from antibodies. And 14.8 million people partially vaccinated, with some of those over 65 topping up protection from past infection.

We continue to jab more than 2 million arms a week and stock available should increase again in a week or so.

In 2 weeks time we'll be looking at around at least 22 million of the England population with some protection either from vaccination or natural infection.

ONS figures show many more people infected who are either asymptomatic or dont bother to be tested. Never forget protection via previous infection.

This was such a helpful set of info, I’d been wondering how the vaccinations and infections antibodies added up.

@FourTeaFallOut

So good to see the results from Scotland. And for AZ to be doing so well against the Pfizer in terms of the real world indicator of hospital admissions. Turns out Immanuel Macron isn't a very good immunologist after all - is it too optimistic that actual data will undo some of the damage from political point scoring?

Alert : Not Good News : There is a very disappointing article in the Telegraph about the knock on effect of all the misinformation in Europe on the AZ vaccine. They are in terrible trouble with take-up and "nocebo" effect of reported side effects. In terms of behavioural science it is fascinating, but in terms of getting the EU vaccinated is very concerning.

www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/02/21/costs-rising-exponentially-europes-disinformation-war-vaccine/

Ooh that was quick!

BigWoollyJumpers can you give me a summary ( or copy and paste) of the telegraph article please? Paywall woes.

I know, I read that article yesterday BigWoollyJumpers and why my first thought turned to the potential to undo the damage with date.

The nocebo thing was really interesting, it's not a concept I've ever come across before.

Date = data

Wow that is quite a read @BigWoollyJumpers!!

I stand by what I said a few weeks back: many go on about our horrendous death toll, but when all is said and done I don’t think ours will stand out compared to the rest because of our vaccine rollout. That article definitely supports my theory!

It's quite a long rambling tricky to summarise. This is the bit on the nocebo:

Tens of millions have received the AstraZeneca jab in the UK and India without meaningful side-effects beyond minor - and desirable - signs of an immune reaction. Yet frontline health workers in Germany, Austria, France, and Spain have convinced themselves that it is doing them real harm, and that it is also ineffective.

The nocebo effect is a known pathology in medical science. It has been well-documented following false reporting on statins. One clinical trial studying headaches from electric currents found that two-thirds of the volunteers in the harmless control group also had headaches. Nocebo responses can be powerful and physiological. The symptoms are real.

That is probably what has been happening with AstraZeneca in Germany where fake news has run rampant, to the point of mass hysteria. Braunschweig’s Herzogin-Elisabeth hospital reported that 37 out of 88 staff reported sick the day after receiving the jab. The same happened to a quarter of 300 ambulance workers in Dortmund.

This is a bit on the effect of fucking around with the trust capital of a vaccine which has been approved by the EMA by tinkering with the usage:

There were no compelling reasons to argue that a standard viral vector vaccine would not be effective for the elderly. The European Medicines Agency understood this and gave the green light. We now have fuller data confirming the validity of this hypothesis but it is too late. The rejectionists have already dug in their heels.

The result is that Germany has used just 87,000 of the 736,800 AstraZeneca doses received so far. Spain had used 35,000 doses out of 418,000 delivered as of late last week. The precautionary principle has run amok.

I though that Germany was generally a sensible and considered nation. Maybe not...?