Omicron variant

[chas49]

Moderator Message:
Name calling is not acceptable - any posts which do not comply with the rules risk deletion (chas49)

[Wizard]

To save time why don't we just shoot those who refuse the vaccination? I'm sure we'd have no problem finding people willing to pull the trigger.

I would certainly not support that.

[csearle]

To save time why don't we just shoot those who refuse the vaccination? I'm sure we'd have no problem finding people willing to pull the trigger.

Because we are trying to optimise the system for lives saved, not speed of resolution. C.

[CliffEdge]

To save time why don't we just shoot those who refuse the vaccination? I'm sure we'd have no problem finding people willing to pull the trigger.

Because we are trying to optimise the system for lives saved, not speed of resolution. C.

I detect an element of judgement and condemnation expressed in this thread of those who choose not to have the vaccination. Personally I think those who refuse the vaccine are silly but that's neither here nor there.

But choices on treatment in the presence of rationing should be objective and neutral and based solely on probability of success.

[Hallucigenia]

Ahem, if we might go back to talking about omicron...
The Saffer Health Minister has given what I think are the first government numbers on their current wave. Death rate so far is about a third of previous waves and hospital stays are around half the length of previous waves. But some of that at least will be down to a more immune population than any inherent properties of omicron.

There are suggestions that omicron is completely rampant in settings such as hospitals with attack rates of 50-80%, which will skew the stats in all sorts of ways - if they're detecting it earlier then it may be easier to control, set against that the patients are ill enough to be in hospital already. But eg from a GP :
"From a doctor friend in a DGH in England
Word from the front line trenches: omicron spreads like wildfire. Omicron went from one patient in a ward, to 8 pts and 4 staff infected overnight to 5 wards full (mostly hospital acquired)4 days later. Monday was horrible Tuesday worse.

Omicron kills in the same way as 'classic covid' in the elderly - exponential oxygen or a more gentle oxygen demand and then death. Lots of back pain and diarrhoea as a feature as well as sore throat. Most of the old who are dying are double vaxed with AZ"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4Y2sXkt-cw

[Hallucigenia]

I did ask in another post if anyone actually had some reliable data on current PCR turnaround time, time to sequence, and if my assumption that all samples sent for sequencing would have first been PCR tested. If anyone can supply numbers better than my “I think I read somewhere” almost guesses I would love to know what the actual turnaround times are and if my assumption of PCR-then-sequencing is correct.

As one datapoint - this week we sent swabs for PCR in the 5pm Wednesday post, and the (-ve) result email was timed at 10pm Thursday, so at least round here they seem to be OK. I imagine that may be different in London though.

AIUI in normal times sequencing takes about a week. Of course the intermediate option that is pretty quick and dirty, is an additional PCR with omicron-specific primers. I think I saw somewhere that Ireland is doing that?

[servodude]

I'm not sure how clogging up beds with people who are just going to die, while clogging up morgues with those could be easily saved is going to benefit anyone, vaccinated or otherwise?

Indeed!
And that's why it's not done except in the minds of [name calling deleted].
You'll get a bed if there's one available and you are (more) likely to respond to it.

I do think that vaccination IS part of that calculation and it would be generally helpful to make people aware of that (or to have made them aware of it)

-sd

Would you give a bed to an unvaccinated person with a 51% chance of survival over a person who been vaccinated, and generally done all they can to avoid being infected, but who for other reasons has a 50% chance of survival?

As a rational ethical person absolutely I would
At the point of treatment where that decision HAS to be made, to give it to someone to satiate a prejudice would be misanthropic and spiteful IMHO
- surely you can see that increasing the chance of wasting the effort is counterproductive? as a human? for the work we put in to designing equipment to keep sick people alive? (Yeah fair enough I get paid for that... but I do it because I want to see people pull through)

-sd

[Wizard]

Indeed!
And that's why it's not done except in the minds of [name calling deleted].
You'll get a bed if there's one available and you are (more) likely to respond to it.

I do think that vaccination IS part of that calculation and it would be generally helpful to make people aware of that (or to have made them aware of it)

-sd

Would you give a bed to an unvaccinated person with a 51% chance of survival over a person who been vaccinated, and generally done all they can to avoid being infected, but who for other reasons has a 50% chance of survival?

As a rational ethical person absolutely I would
At the point of treatment where that decision HAS to be made, to give it to someone to satiate a prejudice would be misanthropic and spiteful IMHO
- surely you can see that increasing the chance of wasting the effort is counterproductive? as a human? for the work we put in to designing equipment to keep sick people alive? (Yeah fair enough I get paid for that... but I do it because I want to see people pull through)

-sd

My view is that in the longer term allocating the consequences of decisions, like refusing the vaccine, to those who make that choice will modify behaviour and therefore ultimately save MORE lives than your short termist approach. I take this view because I want the best for society as a whole, I would say to take a short term view that supports decisions that are bad for society in aggregate is the wrong approach.

It is not about one virtuous approach and one evil one as you seem determined to portray it, but rather two different approaches both intended to ultimately benefit society. It is the same reason I favour vaccine passports (with no negative test option). By ramping up the consequences of foolish decisions we will hopefully reduce the number making such decisions.

[9873210]

There would still be a lag, but not the nonsense of saying "40 confirmed Omicron cases". There's a big difference between "We sequenced 41 cases and 40 of them are Omicron" and "We sequenced 4000 cases and 40 of them were Omicron."

Nicola Sturgeon said yesterday that they expect Omicron to be the dominant variant in Scotland by today (Friday). I haven't seen the figures, but presumably that sort of thing is behind it.

Scott.

That's the worst case scenerio: That they have the information, and have decided that it should be kept secret, and they have succeeded. I find this unlikely (particularly the last part). Also terrifying.

[9873210]

If we trained some artificial intelligence up to do triage based on the goal of optimising lives saved with finite medical facilities it would be interesting to see whether it homed in on prioritising the vaccinated or the rest. C.

It would do what AIs always do. Reflect the prejudices of the people who programmed it (or selected the training data). Most likely it would prioritize skin color, income, gender or regional accents.

This is an ethical issue. Trying to avoid value judgements simply lets unknown value judgements slip in through the back door.

[anon155742]

I see that my post was taken down.

I would like to point out in that case that the rules, linked above, state:
Any derogatory remarks regarding any groups, whether majority or minority, will be removed

I am finding many derogatory comments in this thread against those that choose not to be vaccinated.

[U962]

To save time why don't we just shoot those who refuse the vaccination? I'm sure we'd have no problem finding people willing to pull the trigger.

I suppose you have never heard of Lisa Shaw?
Prominent north of England BBC radio presenter and very pro vax aged 44
She lined up in her turn to have the vax and within a week was dead.
The coroner ruled that she had no underlying conditions and her death was a result of the vax.
So someone who in all likelyhood at her age would not have been badly affect by the virus has been killed by the vax.

but you don't really care about her do you?
nor any of the other 1138 fatalities post the AZ vax, the 18 fatalities post the Moderna vax or the 634 fatalities post the Pfzier vax - data as of 01/12/2021.
HMG of course claim they are all co-incidental and most had underlying illnesses or were old - well they would say that seeing as they are on hook for any compo so HMG will be desperate to say the figures don't really matter. Perhaps they might apply the same logic of thinking to the actual covid deaths - they are all either old or already "ill" so we need not bother anymore?

Just for the record I've had the virus as have several others I know: for all of us a mild abeit strange winter's cold.
I do know one person who had the virus and then sometime later the vax and ended up with a reaction to the vax which was worse that the actual virus - and all of this is acceptable? no it's a bleeding joke.
Scotland publishes the number of people who have died within 28 days of the vax - comparable to the dying within 28 days of a postive PCR test figure. The number when I last looked was 5500 for Scotland. England refuses to publish the figure - well you can see why!

I'm not having the vax under any circumstance whatsoever and anyone who does not like is told to fk off and get out of my life forever.

[Hallucigenia]

I did ask in another post if anyone actually had some reliable data on current PCR turnaround time, time to sequence, and if my assumption that all samples sent for sequencing would have first been PCR tested. If anyone can supply numbers better than my “I think I read somewhere” almost guesses I would love to know what the actual turnaround times are and if my assumption of PCR-then-sequencing is correct.

As one datapoint - this week we sent swabs for PCR in the 5pm Wednesday post, and the (-ve) result email was timed at 10pm Thursday, so at least round here they seem to be OK. I imagine that may be different in London though.

AIUI in normal times sequencing takes about a week. Of course the intermediate option that is pretty quick and dirty, is an additional PCR with omicron-specific primers. I think I saw somewhere that Ireland is doing that?

And here's a slide from IndieSAGE :

[CliffEdge]

To save time why don't we just shoot those who refuse the vaccination? I'm sure we'd have no problem finding people willing to pull the trigger.

I suppose you have never heard of Lisa Shaw?
Prominent north of England BBC radio presenter and very pro vax aged 44
She lined up in her turn to have the vax and within a week was dead.
The coroner ruled that she had no underlying conditions and her death was a result of the vax.
So someone who in all likelyhood at her age would not have been badly affect by the virus has been killed by the vax.

but you don't really care about her do you?
nor any of the other 1138 fatalities post the AZ vax, the 18 fatalities post the Moderna vax or the 634 fatalities post the Pfzier vax - data as of 01/12/2021.
HMG of course claim they are all co-incidental and most had underlying illnesses or were old - well they would say that seeing as they are on hook for any compo so HMG will be desperate to say the figures don't really matter. Perhaps they might apply the same logic of thinking to the actual covid deaths - they are all either old or already "ill" so we need not bother anymore?

Just for the record I've had the virus as have several others I know: for all of us a mild abeit strange winter's cold.
I do know one person who had the virus and then sometime later the vax and ended up with a reaction to the vax which was worse that the actual virus - and all of this is acceptable? no it's a bleeding joke.
Scotland publishes the number of people who have died within 28 days of the vax - comparable to the dying within 28 days of a postive PCR test figure. The number when I last looked was 5500 for Scotland. England refuses to publish the figure - well you can see why!

I'm not having the vax under any circumstance whatsoever and anyone who does not like is told to fk off and get out of my life forever.

I was not being flippant: I was being ironic. The definition of ironic is available in any online dictionary.
Hope this helps you and others. I'm always glad to help.

[dealtn]

To save time why don't we just shoot those who refuse the vaccination? I'm sure we'd have no problem finding people willing to pull the trigger.

I suppose you have never heard of Lisa Shaw?
Prominent north of England BBC radio presenter and very pro vax aged 44
She lined up in her turn to have the vax and within a week was dead.
The coroner ruled that she had no underlying conditions and her death was a result of the vax.
So someone who in all likelyhood at her age would not have been badly affect by the virus has been killed by the vax.

but you don't really care about her do you?
nor any of the other 1138 fatalities post the AZ vax, the 18 fatalities post the Moderna vax or the 634 fatalities post the Pfzier vax - data as of 01/12/2021.
HMG of course claim they are all co-incidental and most had underlying illnesses or were old - well they would say that seeing as they are on hook for any compo so HMG will be desperate to say the figures don't really matter. Perhaps they might apply the same logic of thinking to the actual covid deaths - they are all either old or already "ill" so we need not bother anymore?

Just for the record I've had the virus as have several others I know: for all of us a mild abeit strange winter's cold.
I do know one person who had the virus and then sometime later the vax and ended up with a reaction to the vax which was worse that the actual virus - and all of this is acceptable? no it's a bleeding joke.
Scotland publishes the number of people who have died within 28 days of the vax - comparable to the dying within 28 days of a postive PCR test figure. The number when I last looked was 5500 for Scotland. England refuses to publish the figure - well you can see why!

I'm not having the vax under any circumstance whatsoever and anyone who does not like is told to fk off and get out of my life forever.

Care to provide some links to those numbers and data you refer to please?

[Wizard]

To save time why don't we just shoot those who refuse the vaccination? I'm sure we'd have no problem finding people willing to pull the trigger.

I suppose you have never heard of Lisa Shaw?
Prominent north of England BBC radio presenter and very pro vax aged 44
She lined up in her turn to have the vax and within a week was dead.
The coroner ruled that she had no underlying conditions and her death was a result of the vax.
So someone who in all likelyhood at her age would not have been badly affect by the virus has been killed by the vax.

but you don't really care about her do you?
nor any of the other 1138 fatalities post the AZ vax, the 18 fatalities post the Moderna vax or the 634 fatalities post the Pfzier vax - data as of 01/12/2021.
HMG of course claim they are all co-incidental and most had underlying illnesses or were old - well they would say that seeing as they are on hook for any compo so HMG will be desperate to say the figures don't really matter. Perhaps they might apply the same logic of thinking to the actual covid deaths - they are all either old or already "ill" so we need not bother anymore?

Just for the record I've had the virus as have several others I know: for all of us a mild abeit strange winter's cold.
I do know one person who had the virus and then sometime later the vax and ended up with a reaction to the vax which was worse that the actual virus - and all of this is acceptable? no it's a bleeding joke.
Scotland publishes the number of people who have died within 28 days of the vax - comparable to the dying within 28 days of a postive PCR test figure. The number when I last looked was 5500 for Scotland. England refuses to publish the figure - well you can see why!

I'm not having the vax under any circumstance whatsoever and anyone who does not like is told to fk off and get out of my life forever.

Links? Substantiation?

[servodude]

Would you give a bed to an unvaccinated person with a 51% chance of survival over a person who been vaccinated, and generally done all they can to avoid being infected, but who for other reasons has a 50% chance of survival?

As a rational ethical person absolutely I would
At the point of treatment where that decision HAS to be made, to give it to someone to satiate a prejudice would be misanthropic and spiteful IMHO
- surely you can see that increasing the chance of wasting the effort is counterproductive? as a human? for the work we put in to designing equipment to keep sick people alive? (Yeah fair enough I get paid for that... but I do it because I want to see people pull through)

-sd

My view is that in the longer term allocating the consequences of decisions, like refusing the vaccine, to those who make that choice will modify behaviour and therefore ultimately save MORE lives than your short termist approach. I take this view because I want the best for society as a whole, I would say to take a short term view that supports decisions that are bad for society in aggregate is the wrong approach.

It is not about one virtuous approach and one evil one as you seem determined to portray it, but rather two different approaches both intended to ultimately benefit society. It is the same reason I favour vaccine passports (with no negative test option). By ramping up the consequences of foolish decisions we will hopefully reduce the number making such decisions.

You said you would give it to a vaccinated person with 1% chance of success over an unvaccinated person with 99% chance; you would give the one remaining spot to the case with 99 less chance of success
- and yet you seem to imply foolish decisions should be avoided??


-sd

[daveh]

To save time why don't we just shoot those who refuse the vaccination? I'm sure we'd have no problem finding people willing to pull the trigger.

I suppose you have never heard of Lisa Shaw?
Prominent north of England BBC radio presenter and very pro vax aged 44
She lined up in her turn to have the vax and within a week was dead.
The coroner ruled that she had no underlying conditions and her death was a result of the vax.
So someone who in all likelyhood at her age would not have been badly affect by the virus has been killed by the vax.

but you don't really care about her do you?
nor any of the other 1138 fatalities post the AZ vax, the 18 fatalities post the Moderna vax or the 634 fatalities post the Pfzier vax - data as of 01/12/2021.
HMG of course claim they are all co-incidental and most had underlying illnesses or were old - well they would say that seeing as they are on hook for any compo so HMG will be desperate to say the figures don't really matter. Perhaps they might apply the same logic of thinking to the actual covid deaths - they are all either old or already "ill" so we need not bother anymore?

Just for the record I've had the virus as have several others I know: for all of us a mild abeit strange winter's cold.
I do know one person who had the virus and then sometime later the vax and ended up with a reaction to the vax which was worse that the actual virus - and all of this is acceptable? no it's a bleeding joke.
Scotland publishes the number of people who have died within 28 days of the vax - comparable to the dying within 28 days of a postive PCR test figure. The number when I last looked was 5500 for Scotland. England refuses to publish the figure - well you can see why!

I'm not having the vax under any circumstance whatsoever and anyone who does not like is told to fk off and get out of my life forever.

Links? Substantiation?

Even if true I just did a quick and dirty calculation on the back of my hand. Looking at the number of covid deaths to the number of positive cases as of today ( data off the BBC website) I make the death rate for covid approx 1.3%. Taking your unsubstantiated figures for vaccine deaths and approximating vaccine doses given at 130m (1st dose + 2nd code + boosters) that's a death rate of 0.0014%. I'll take my risk with the vaccine thanks.

[XFool]

Just for the record I've had the virus as have several others I know: for all of us a mild abeit strange winter's cold.
I do know one person who had the virus and then sometime later the vax and ended up with a reaction to the vax which was worse that the actual virus - and all of this is acceptable? no it's a bleeding joke.
Scotland publishes the number of people who have died within 28 days of the vax - comparable to the dying within 28 days of a postive PCR test figure. The number when I last looked was 5500 for Scotland. England refuses to publish the figure - well you can see why!

It looks to me as if this post is a bit of a joke. It's difficult to know where to start... Let's try.

"Scotland publishes the number of people who have died within 28 days of the vax - comparable to the dying within 28 days of a postive PCR test figure. The number when I last looked was 5500 for Scotland."

What was the number who died within 28 days of a positive PCR test? (Of all causes?)

How many of those 5500 who died "within 28 days of vaccination" have been established as having died DUE to the vaccination? How many who died died from COVID? How many died for reasons unrelated to either COVID or COVID vaccination?

You claim "England refuses to publish the figure" - But the figures for deaths attributed to COVID vaccination are available from the ONS:

Deaths caused by the COVID-19 vaccination

https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/deathscausedbythecovid19vaccination

More explanation here:

How many people have died as a result of a COVID-19 vaccine?

https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2021/10/04/how-many-people-have-died-as-a-result-of-a-covid-19-vaccine/

Care to provide some links to those numbers and data you refer to please?

I wondered about that too. Could this have anything to do with the above? :

5,522 people have died within 28 days of having a Covid-19 Vaccine in Scotland according to Public Health Scotland

https://dailyexpose.uk/2021/07/18/5522-people-have-died-within-28-days-of-having-a-covid-19-vaccine-in-scotland-according-to-public-health-scotland/

You may not have come across 'The Daily Expose' before, I have.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-daily-expose/

CONSPIRACY-PSEUDOSCIENCE

"Overall, we rate The Daily Expose a Tin-Foil Hat Conspiracy and Quackery level Pseudoscience website based on promoting false and misleading information regarding Covid-19."

[Midsmartin]

It seems that about 62000 people died in Scotland up to dec 20 2020. Very crudely, that's about 4800 every 28 days. Not very far from the number given as dying within 28 days of a vaccine above. I'm sure there are some other considerations that might need adjustments to be made, but that figure reassures me that the vaccine is not causing lots of deaths.