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Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

The home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
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This is the home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
Lootman
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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432323

Postby Lootman » August 3rd, 2021, 7:56 pm

9873210 wrote:
Lootman wrote: it turned out the UK and its government did a better job than most other places.

By what metric?

The word "better" does not by itself have its own measurement. It is a blend of both objective and subjective factors.

From my perspective the UK found a good balance between taking steps to suppress the spread whilst maintain a fair amount of individual liberty. And of course placing more emphasis on vaccinations than most other places.

You can probably find some countries with a lower death rate and if that is the only metric that matters to you then maybe that is "better" for you. But those countries just paid a different price for that in terms of other factors.

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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432324

Postby Lanark » August 3rd, 2021, 8:09 pm

Arizona11 wrote:My wife and I are early 60’s no kids and retired. We have had both jabs. I should also say that two dearly loved cousins have died from Covid, so I don’t think I am being totally irrational.

We are still being very cautious, as we have been from the start of all this. We don’t touch post or packages for many days. Groceries delivered by Ocado are cleaned when they arrived. We don’t see our friends, but they seem to be doing whatever they want. We wear masks when we go for a walk and wash our hands all the time. Haven’t been in a shop since March 2020.

Here is the problem. Lifting all the restrictions recently was the worst thing that could happen as we want to get rid of the virus and also get our lives back again. All we read/hear is “if not now, then when?” And my answer is “not when the figures are at their worst in ages and spreading quickly”. We think people doing normal things like there is no pandemic is crazy. Yes I know that double jabbed people are unlikely to get seriously ill, but I don’t want to get ill at all! People moaning about their holiday being spoiled seem mad to us. Why are you flying in the middle of a pandemic. Do these people have a death wish?

I do not really want comments from those who think we are mad and should get on with our lives (who cares if we get ill or maybe die!). I would like to hear from those behaving like us and still being really careful to confirm that, rather than being crazy, we are actually doing the sensible and responsible thing at this time. We are worried that this pandemic will go on for years as so many people continue to behave in such an irresponsible way. The more they do, the more the infections and the increased risk of new variants which may also be vaccine resistant. Why are these people behaving like that?

Any reassurance that can be given to us would be very much appreciated.


I think you are being a little over cautious, you don't need to clean deliveries. I don't wear a mark outdoors, but I do when going into a busy town centre (and I still do that as rarely as possible).
One aspect to consider is the vitamin D, you want to be getting as much sunlight on your skin while the good weather lasts. There is no solid evidence for vitamin D protection but it does strongly correlate with better outcomes from covid. In particular dark skinned people living in cold countries have the lowest vit D levels and the worst outcomes from covid.

Why are these people behaving like that?

I think a lot of them have already had covid and recovered, so have become blase about it. About 6 million known cases so far.

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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432337

Postby Arborbridge » August 3rd, 2021, 9:08 pm

Dod101 wrote:Actually, if we have won this war it is down to vaccinations. End of. I am currently reading 'The Vaxxers'. Well worth the £20 or whatever it cost. These Professors did the most amazing job to get us to where we are today and so did the UK Government in authorising the purchase of millions of doses of vaccine before they were ever proved effective.


Dod



There's no argument between us there! All I meant was that by using lockdown and fear HMG bought some time, ensuring that the NHS was not overwhelmed before vaccinations could come to the rescue.

Arb.

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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432352

Postby MrFoolish » August 3rd, 2021, 10:55 pm

I do feel the media slightly overplayed things - perhaps with good intentions.

Early on in the pandemic, the BBC repeatedly showed a clip of a woman in an Italian public space saying "the only sounds we can hear now is ambulances". Yes, it was pretty alarming!

But the UK soon got worse than Italy and that was never the case here. Should we really believe everyone in car-mad Italy stopped driving and became mute? And why was this woman outside gossiping to reporters if it was all so dangerous? It didn't really stack up.

And then we had the oft repeated "the virus doesn't discriminate" line. Remember that one? Even back then it was well known the young were much less affected by covid. But still they said it, though they eventually dropped this one once it became patently absurd.

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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432353

Postby 9873210 » August 3rd, 2021, 11:02 pm

Arborbridge wrote:
I wonder how much Johnson in this war time mode was thinking of what happened in Britain in WW2? Chamberlain's procrastination may or may not have been deliberate, but it bought us time to ramp up preparations for what was to come.

Arb.

It bought the Nazis time to prepare. They needed it more, and knew what to do with it.

Over 10% of German tanks in the invasion of France where of Czech origin. Good tanks too, not rubbish like Pz. I. That's what you get when you give up your allies without a fight.

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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432357

Postby 9873210 » August 3rd, 2021, 11:06 pm

Lootman wrote:
9873210 wrote:
Lootman wrote: it turned out the UK and its government did a better job than most other places.

By what metric?

The word "better" does not by itself have its own measurement. It is a blend of both objective and subjective factors.

From my perspective the UK found a good balance between taking steps to suppress the spread whilst maintain a fair amount of individual liberty. And of course placing more emphasis on vaccinations than most other places.

You can probably find some countries with a lower death rate and if that is the only metric that matters to you then maybe that is "better" for you. But those countries just paid a different price for that in terms of other factors.


I can find places that had a lower death rate, and fewer restrictions and less loss of GDP. Maybe that's not "better" for you. So jingoistic bombast it is.

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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432371

Postby Lootman » August 4th, 2021, 5:57 am

9873210 wrote:
Lootman wrote:
9873210 wrote:By what metric?

The word "better" does not by itself have its own measurement. It is a blend of both objective and subjective factors.

From my perspective the UK found a good balance between taking steps to suppress the spread whilst maintain a fair amount of individual liberty. And of course placing more emphasis on vaccinations than most other places.

You can probably find some countries with a lower death rate and if that is the only metric that matters to you then maybe that is "better" for you. But those countries just paid a different price for that in terms of other factors.

I can find places that had a lower death rate, and fewer restrictions and less loss of GDP. Maybe that's not "better" for you.

Sure there are some remote places in the South Pacific or similar that may have done better, but they are not comparable to a densely populated international trade and transit hub like the UK.

And sure, if you cherry pick the factors that matter you can engineer a claim that almost anywhere did better. But that doesn't make your case and I notice you were careful to avoid citing any specific place for fear of being shot down in flames again.

But then that is the problem with taking a purely left-brained approach with "metrics". You end up missing the bigger picture and what is actually important to people. Ultimately this is a political judgement that cannot be fully expressed in digits.

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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432381

Postby Arborbridge » August 4th, 2021, 7:35 am

9873210 wrote:
Arborbridge wrote:
I wonder how much Johnson in this war time mode was thinking of what happened in Britain in WW2? Chamberlain's procrastination may or may not have been deliberate, but it bought us time to ramp up preparations for what was to come.

Arb.

It bought the Nazis time to prepare. They needed it more, and knew what to do with it.

Over 10% of German tanks in the invasion of France where of Czech origin. Good tanks too, not rubbish like Pz. I. That's what you get when you give up your allies without a fight.


The truth is an onion :)

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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432464

Postby GoSeigen » August 4th, 2021, 12:32 pm

Arizona11 wrote:Any reassurance that can be given to us would be very much appreciated.


I'm not going to echo your fears but reassure you in another way: that I think it's very unlikely Covid is going to affect you in a major way now. The exponential growth of COVID worldwide ended pretty much last May 2020 or so, and already from July it was clear that its growth had gone linear. What this means in everyday language is that COVID is not in its rapidly spreading early stage where it could become a huge problem but no-one really knows; it has become pretty much like many of the other seasonal bugs that we have lived with for ever, and we'll likely get a steady number of deaths from COVID each year but they are most unlikely to exceed the approximately 0.5 per thousand per year** observed up to now. Furthermore, rich countries like the UK have vaccinated most of their populations, so people who spend most of their time in those places should have little to fear.

So personally I am relaxed despite living in a not-so-rich country. COVID is a known problem now; there is no need to react the same way we did in April 2020 when the future was far more uncertain. Personally I am trying to get back as close to life as usual as I can.


GS
(**)It should be noted that most of these are from high-risk groups like over 70s and those with pre-existing conditions, so the effect on life expectancy is minimal.

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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432466

Postby 1nvest » August 4th, 2021, 12:46 pm

GoSeigen wrote:
Arizona11 wrote:Any reassurance that can be given to us would be very much appreciated.


I'm not going to echo your fears but reassure you in another way: that I think it's very unlikely Covid is going to affect you in a major way now. The exponential growth of COVID worldwide ended pretty much last May 2020 or so, and already from July it was clear that its growth had gone linear. What this means in everyday language is that COVID is not in its rapidly spreading early stage where it could become a huge problem but no-one really knows; it has become pretty much like many of the other seasonal bugs that we have lived with for ever, and we'll likely get a steady number of deaths from COVID each year but they are most unlikely to exceed the approximately 0.5 per thousand per year** observed up to now. Furthermore, rich countries like the UK have vaccinated most of their populations, so people who spend most of their time in those places should have little to fear.

So personally I am relaxed despite living in a not-so-rich country. COVID is a known problem now; there is no need to react the same way we did in April 2020 when the future was far more uncertain. Personally I am trying to get back as close to life as usual as I can.


GS
(**)It should be noted that most of these are from high-risk groups like over 70s and those with pre-existing conditions, so the effect on life expectancy is minimal.

A concern is that secondary effects from Covid. Opportunistic diseases that wait for your immune system to become weak. "Black Fungus" for instance in India that has a 50% death rate
.
Concerned that it could turn out to be similar to the Spanish flu, similar low mortality rates in the first wave as we've seen so far from Covid for the first couple of years, and then a variant that hits with a vengeance with a 33%+ mortality rate. The saviour back then was the intensity/speed - contraction in the morning, dead by the afternoon, that served as a form of containment. Only Australia escaped, in being a island they applied strict quarantining.

Hopeful for the beginning of the end, fearful it may just be the end of the beginning.

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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432469

Postby Dod101 » August 4th, 2021, 12:55 pm

Of course just to cheer up everyone I was reading in the newspaper this morning that of course the vaccines have a finite lifespan and I do not think that anyone knows for certain what that is but a booster for at least vulnerable people in the Autumn will help.

Dod

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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432472

Postby pje16 » August 4th, 2021, 12:58 pm

My vaccine is still working 3 months in (I get a monthly blood test) and I do keep wondering when it will stop (ie show negative for antibodies)

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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432475

Postby onthemove » August 4th, 2021, 1:05 pm

pje16 wrote:My vaccine is still working 3 months in (I get a monthly blood test) and I do keep wondering when it will stop (ie show negative for antibodies)


Negative for antibodies wouldn't necessarily mean it's no longer working.

There's also the T cell immunity that can also provide a good degree of protection. A paper that I linked to a few weeks ago, looked specifically at T cell immunity (likely established from prior common cold coronavirus infections) as being a likely factor as to why many people only get mild (or even no) covid symptoms.

So if the T cell immunity from the vaccine is still strong even after antibodies have waned, then the vaccine can still be considered to be 'working'... it's still likely to protect you from more serious illness from covid.

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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432523

Postby 9873210 » August 4th, 2021, 5:16 pm

Lootman wrote:
9873210 wrote:
Lootman wrote:The word "better" does not by itself have its own measurement. It is a blend of both objective and subjective factors.

From my perspective the UK found a good balance between taking steps to suppress the spread whilst maintain a fair amount of individual liberty. And of course placing more emphasis on vaccinations than most other places.

You can probably find some countries with a lower death rate and if that is the only metric that matters to you then maybe that is "better" for you. But those countries just paid a different price for that in terms of other factors.

I can find places that had a lower death rate, and fewer restrictions and less loss of GDP. Maybe that's not "better" for you.

Sure there are some remote places in the South Pacific or similar that may have done better, but they are not comparable to a densely populated international trade and transit hub like the UK.

And sure, if you cherry pick the factors that matter you can engineer a claim that almost anywhere did better. But that doesn't make your case and I notice you were careful to avoid citing any specific place for fear of being shot down in flames again.

But then that is the problem with taking a purely left-brained approach with "metrics". You end up missing the bigger picture and what is actually important to people. Ultimately this is a political judgement that cannot be fully expressed in digits.

China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Florida, Texas, Canada.

These are not small islands at the back of beyond. In fact if you want small islands on the back of minor continents you know where to look.

The problem with not using metrics is you get both "we must be better, we're British" and "We must be awful, we're British". The only thing that is important to these people, and apparently to you, is group identity.

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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432525

Postby Lanark » August 4th, 2021, 5:36 pm

onthemove wrote:
pje16 wrote:My vaccine is still working 3 months in (I get a monthly blood test) and I do keep wondering when it will stop (ie show negative for antibodies)


Negative for antibodies wouldn't necessarily mean it's no longer working.

There's also the T cell immunity that can also provide a good degree of protection. A paper that I linked to a few weeks ago, looked specifically at T cell immunity (likely established from prior common cold coronavirus infections) as being a likely factor as to why many people only get mild (or even no) covid symptoms.

So if the T cell immunity from the vaccine is still strong even after antibodies have waned, then the vaccine can still be considered to be 'working'... it's still likely to protect you from more serious illness from covid.


+1

The T-Cells are long lasting. probably decades and they allow your body to generate new antibodies as needed. However that will take a couple of days during which you can still get ill and transmit the virus to others.
So the T-Cells prevent serious illness, a booster jab will boost antibodies and prevent short term illness and lower the spread to others.

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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432550

Postby Lootman » August 4th, 2021, 9:57 pm

9873210 wrote:
Lootman wrote:
9873210 wrote:I can find places that had a lower death rate, and fewer restrictions and less loss of GDP. Maybe that's not "better" for you.

Sure there are some remote places in the South Pacific or similar that may have done better, but they are not comparable to a densely populated international trade and transit hub like the UK.

And sure, if you cherry pick the factors that matter you can engineer a claim that almost anywhere did better. But that doesn't make your case and I notice you were careful to avoid citing any specific place for fear of being shot down in flames again.

But then that is the problem with taking a purely left-brained approach with "metrics". You end up missing the bigger picture and what is actually important to people. Ultimately this is a political judgement that cannot be fully expressed in digits.

China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Florida, Texas, Canada.

These are not small islands at the back of beyond. In fact if you want small islands on the back of minor continents you know where to look.

The problem with not using metrics is you get both "we must be better, we're British" and "We must be awful, we're British". The only thing that is important to these people, and apparently to you, is group identity.

You evidently did not read what I said. I said that the UK has done better than most other (comparable) countries. That excludes almost every nation on your list other than some parts of North America which I happily admit have done as well.

My other statement was that there are very few places I would want to be right now purely from a Covid perspective. You are welcome to suggest smewhere.

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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432579

Postby Itsallaguess » August 5th, 2021, 6:43 am

Arizona11 wrote:
Any reassurance that can be given to us would be very much appreciated.


It was mentioned earlier in the thread that you might start to improve your personal confidence over the coming weeks and months if you could clearly see local and national infection-rates coming back down, but one aspect that I now realise hasn't been covered is just how you might be able to do that if it's not something that you've sought access to previously.

So here's some links for you to have a look at, which might cut through some of the more sensationalist headlines that we sometimes see in the mainstream media -

  • Interactive UK COVID Map - this map can be viewed at county, town, and suburb level using your mouse scroll wheel, and then by left-clicking on an area-element at each viewing level, and it shows total cases in a 7-day period, along with a 'case-rate per 100,000 people' figure as well, and in many areas of the UK both of those figures can currently be seen coming down at a fairly impressive rate. A user-entered postcode can also be used via the box in the top-left area of the map -

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map/cases

  • Daily Update - this contains a quick-look UK summary of vaccinations, people testing COVID-positive, deaths within 28-days of a positive test, COVID patients admitted to hospital, and COVID tests conducted, along with recent snapshot-graphs to enable visual trends to be seen easily and clearly -

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

  • COVID cases in the UK - this page shows longer term charts, including the scale and length of previous COVID waves experienced since the start of the UK pandemic, for cases by specimen date, cases by date reported, and 7-day rolling averages of both recent 7-day case rates, and also of the percentage change on those rolling 7-day case rates -

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases

  • COVID-related healthcare in the UK - this shows long term charts for COVID patients admitted to hospital, COVID patients in hospital, and patients in mechanical ventilation beds, from the start of the UK pandemic and showing the scale and height of previous COVID infection waves -

    https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare

It should be noted that the final two links, for cases and healthcare, will open by default at 'UK' level, but can be configured using a link at the top of each page to also show nation-level data (England, Scotland, etc..), regional-level data (South-East, South-West, etc...), and local-authority level data based on major local towns.

Hopefully taking a look at the above links at both national and local level might start to give you some confidence that even if infection-rates are still higher than you're currently comfortable with at the moment, they might be heading in the right direction and can be judged at a more granular level than perhaps simply taking confidence-cues from broader media sources, some of which tend to be of a more sensationalist nature by default...

At the very least, you should be able to clearly see using the above links how things like local infection-rates are hopefully coming down at a good pace, and that even though the charts will show that case-rates have been quite high for this most recent wave, the links above also do clearly show that UK hospitalisation rates and deaths have remained at a very low level compared to earlier waves, which clearly show the vaccines doing exactly what they're designed to do, which is to protect the most vulnerable of us from the worst outcomes, even if we do become infected, and for those of us that have been double-jabbed and don't carry any other major underlying health issues, it's turned the virus into something that can be largely tolerated without major issues now, for the most part, and hopefully the healthcare links above can start to shine a light on that key factor for you, and help you gain some confidence in how much our current situation has improved when compared to earlier, non-vaccinated waves...

Best wishes,

Itsallaguess

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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432612

Postby murraypaul » August 5th, 2021, 8:49 am

9873210 wrote:
Lootman wrote:
9873210 wrote:I can find places that had a lower death rate, and fewer restrictions and less loss of GDP. Maybe that's not "better" for you.

Sure there are some remote places in the South Pacific or similar that may have done better, but they are not comparable to a densely populated international trade and transit hub like the UK.

And sure, if you cherry pick the factors that matter you can engineer a claim that almost anywhere did better. But that doesn't make your case and I notice you were careful to avoid citing any specific place for fear of being shot down in flames again.

But then that is the problem with taking a purely left-brained approach with "metrics". You end up missing the bigger picture and what is actually important to people. Ultimately this is a political judgement that cannot be fully expressed in digits.

China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Florida, Texas, Canada.


Have you been checking the news recently?
1 in 3 of all new US cases are in Florida and Texas. Florida has ~49% fully vaccinated, Texas ~41%.
Florida in particular is a terrible situation, with daily cases at an all-time high, and daily deaths greater than the whole of the UK.

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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432621

Postby GoSeigen » August 5th, 2021, 9:09 am

murraypaul wrote:
9873210 wrote:
Lootman wrote:Sure there are some remote places in the South Pacific or similar that may have done better, but they are not comparable to a densely populated international trade and transit hub like the UK.

And sure, if you cherry pick the factors that matter you can engineer a claim that almost anywhere did better. But that doesn't make your case and I notice you were careful to avoid citing any specific place for fear of being shot down in flames again.

But then that is the problem with taking a purely left-brained approach with "metrics". You end up missing the bigger picture and what is actually important to people. Ultimately this is a political judgement that cannot be fully expressed in digits.

China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Florida, Texas, Canada.


Have you been checking the news recently?
1 in 3 of all new US cases are in Florida and Texas. Florida has ~49% fully vaccinated, Texas ~41%.
Florida in particular is a terrible situation, with daily cases at an all-time high, and daily deaths greater than the whole of the UK.


I think a sense of perspective is needed!! Current deaths figure for the UK is hardly a dire yardstick....

Besides, Florida deaths 69pd UK 82pd (7DMA).


GS

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Re: Can anyone reassure us or are we alone?

#432632

Postby dealtn » August 5th, 2021, 9:28 am

GoSeigen wrote:
I think a sense of perspective is needed!! Current deaths figure for the UK is hardly a dire yardstick....

Besides, Florida deaths 69pd UK 82pd (7DMA).


GS


So you think the comparison isn't relevant as the UK number isn't sufficiently bad? Odd logic.

Besides, Florida population ? UK population? Or is that also irrelevant?


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