Corona virus - Covid 19 discussion

[TheAddict]

Careful with that Karol Sikora

Blocks anyone and everyone who challenges anything he says.

Not saying you're wrong, but I'd also be careful with getting information from twitter. The place which deletes anyone and everyone who is openly anti liberal, while literally allowing the leftly blue check marked nut cases to freely dox people for having opinions that isnt pro left, and post the doxxed information all over that website without twitter bothering to remove it, literally calling for the destruction (and acheiving it msny, many times) of anyones life if they have an opinion which angers the twitter mob.
It's become just as biased as bloody reddit

 

[dealer wins]

Nothing like a good bit of casual character assassination eh chop, rather than debating or discussing the merits or not of the letter, any ammunition against the other people involved with the letter?

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"Karol Sikora was born in 1948. His father was a captain in the Polish Army who arrived in Great Britain during World War II[8] and his mother was a Scottish schoolteacher.[9] His childhood was spent in Edinburgh, Stafford and London.

He attended Dulwich College on a London County Council scholarship before going to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge where he became a Foundation Scholar and obtained a double first.[10] He received his PhD at Stanford University, where he also served a clinical fellowship.[11]"

"From 1985 to 1997, he served as the clinical director for cancer services at Hammersmith Hospital in London, where he established a cancer research laboratory, and was Professor of International Cancer Medicine at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, later the Imperial College School of Medicine.[13] During the 1990s Sikora was also deputy director of clinical research at charity the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, the predecessor to Cancer Research UK "

NB The Royal Postgraduate Medical School (RPMS) was an independent medical school, based primarily at Hammersmith Hospital in west London. In 1988, the school merged with the Institute of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, and in 1997 became part of Imperial College School of Medicine.

So the claim he has been fraudently making a link to imperial college is a distortion in the way you presented it, and the description "notorious for made-up qualifications and institutions" sounds a bit far fetched to me.

In 1997 he became the Chief of the Cancer Program of the World Health Organization

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before resigning in 1999 over a disagreement with the UN regarding their proposals to restructure work on non-communicable diseases, stating this would create a "top-heavy bureaucracy

The more I read the more based and principled he sounds, this is likely his beef with the NHS too if you think about it. Doctors want to treat patients with the least interference from overpaid pen pushers.

Sikora has published over 300 papers and written or edited 20 books,

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notably the "standard" UK postgraduate textbook Treatment of Cancer

In a 2017 Newsnight opinion piece, he described the NHS as "the last bastion of communism - it is a monolithic, unmanageable and inefficient system [...] the staff are great but the system is not"

^ so that is the context to that comment, and many would agree the NHS needs reform, if the german french, and other health systems etc are routinely achieving better results in outcomes and waiting times.

The Scottish government confirmed Sikora's report was not used by the Scottish Justice Minister in making the decision to release Megrahi, which was instead based on their own medical reports and input from the parole board and governor.

It was likely a political decision, but the man had a terminal illness.

Never even knew he was critical of the NHS, buts hes spot on there too lol. NHS should and could be run more efficiently, and on half its £120 BILLION budget. Its an outrageous money pit that costs us all dearly.

 

[dionysus]

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[mack341]

Hugh Pennington, a very notable doctor/scientist, in today's mail:

For the majority, it is a comparatively innocuous infection that many young people will have without symptoms. For the vulnerable minority, especially the elderly, it can be very serious.

In the over-80s, in fact, the mortality rate is as high as it was for smallpox before the introduction of vaccines, more than two centuries ago. That is to say, for patients in that age group, Covid-19 is a very grave threat indeed.

Government policy, such as the introduction of a nightlife curfew yesterday, seems blind to this crucial difference. It concentrates simply on reducing the blanket figure, without making the vulnerable a priority.

This approach lacks common sense and seems to be driven solely by a fear of red bars on graphs.

That is why about 30 scientific experts and I signed a letter to the Prime Minister and his advisers this week, calling for a targeted approach that is based on evidence.

At the forefront of this approach should be how we handle the crisis in care homes.

At the start of the pandemic, the disease was allowed to run rampant in homes for the elderly, and the result was many thousands of preventable deaths. It is no exaggeration to call this a national scandal of massive proportions.

Care homes should be at the apex of protective controls. All the emphasis should be on frequent testing, to make sure carers can be confident they are not carrying the virus.

I want to be optimistic, but vaccines will not be the silver bullet that ends the pandemic.

Waiting is pointless. We have to act now and be practical. That means focusing on protecting the vulnerable, most of all in our care homes, with effective testing.

This is the crucial aspect we must get right. Shutting down the country is a dangerous distraction.

[not the full article, more text in original]

 

[dionysus]

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[ChopleyIOM]

Hugh Pennington, a very notable doctor/scientist, in today's mail:

For the majority, it is a comparatively innocuous infection that many young people will have without symptoms. For the vulnerable minority, especially the elderly, it can be very serious.

In the over-80s, in fact, the mortality rate is as high as it was for smallpox before the introduction of vaccines, more than two centuries ago. That is to say, for patients in that age group, Covid-19 is a very grave threat indeed.

Government policy, such as the introduction of a nightlife curfew yesterday, seems blind to this crucial difference. It concentrates simply on reducing the blanket figure, without making the vulnerable a priority.

This approach lacks common sense and seems to be driven solely by a fear of red bars on graphs.

That is why about 30 scientific experts and I signed a letter to the Prime Minister and his advisers this week, calling for a targeted approach that is based on evidence.

At the forefront of this approach should be how we handle the crisis in care homes.

At the start of the pandemic, the disease was allowed to run rampant in homes for the elderly, and the result was many thousands of preventable deaths. It is no exaggeration to call this a national scandal of massive proportions.

Care homes should be at the apex of protective controls. All the emphasis should be on frequent testing, to make sure carers can be confident they are not carrying the virus.

I want to be optimistic, but vaccines will not be the silver bullet that ends the pandemic.

Waiting is pointless. We have to act now and be practical. That means focusing on protecting the vulnerable, most of all in our care homes, with effective testing.

This is the crucial aspect we must get right. Shutting down the country is a dangerous distraction.

[not the full article, more text in original]

This ties into my posts a few pages back mack, where I noted the essentially complete failure of the UK's test, trace and isolate system. In the absence of that, restrictions on freedoms are kind of all that are left. (Unless we are advocating just 'letting the virus do its thing' and seeking the (impossible) goal of 'herd immunity'.)

Test, trace and isolate have essentially been farmed out in the UK, at massive cost, to private companies, who are trousering massive amounts of public money to do a shit job. (dunover and goatwack should be getting up to date with this soon as they've both taken out subscriptions to Private Eye.)

Did you watch Johnson in the Commons yesterday? This was raised to him directly by a couple of Labour MPs and he got a bit cross about it.

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That's not to say other countries aren't having a hard time with testing and tracing, and by all accounts the UK aren't the worst either, but some other countries are doing better.

 

[mack341]

This ties into my posts a few pages back mack, where I noted the essentially complete failure of the UK's test, trace and isolate system. In the absence of that, restrictions on freedoms are kind of all that are left. (Unless we are advocating just 'letting the virus do its thin and seeking the (impossible) goal of 'herd immunity'.)

Test, trace and isolate have essentially been farmed out in the UK, at massive cost, to private companies, who are trousering massive amounts of public money to do a shit job. (dunover and goatwack should be getting up to date with this soon as they've both taken out subscriptions to Private Eye.)

Did you watch Johnson in the Commons yesterday? This was raised to him directly by a couple of Labour MPs and he got a bit cross about it.

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That's not to say other countries aren't having a hard time with testing and tracing, and by all accounts the UK aren't the worst either, but some other countries are doing better.

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No I didn't watch Johnson as I need to keep my blood pressure down, and a bit like the budget, I prefer to wait for the press to digest it for me! He's getting on my nerves, and I can't disagree with how you phrased it a page back

Johnson wasn't there because he doesn't want to be there, and because everyone knows he's terrible at being a leader, and because he has the moral authority of a dog with the shits caught short on a croquet lawn, and because his gameshow host shtick doesn't wash in such serious times

He doesn't want to answer any questions, and when he does try the answers are not very credible, just bluster and cliches about fight and 'the time is now'

I know we disagree on a lot about this, but whitty and valance seem to me running from questions and ferguson is still lingering around in the background with his dubious model, I have no faith or trust in them. The 1980s conservatives would have handled this better, with the hugh pennington generation of experts. Privitisation or giving contracts to pals is a part of it, as when we need co-ordinated action it's all disjointed, and more about how much dough can be made and prices for contracts.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Interesting discussion on Sky News just now about why it's a really bad idea for the UK to 'do a Sweden'.

Two main points:

1) Sweden has far better underlying health as a nation than we do, in simple terms, their population is less likely to die or get seriously ill from Covid than ours. (Which also feeds into overall stress on the health service, far more people in the UK would end up in hospital, which stretches everything else.)

2) They have incredibly effective test, trace and isolate. We don't.

The chap they were interviewing is called Dr Chris Papadopoulos (UK Public Health Expert - by all means have a Google on him), and he was crystal clear that the UK population would simply not tolerate a Sweden style approach without suffering a dreadful death toll and also far more poor long term outcomes.

Basically folks, we're not healthy enough to get away with 'doing a Sweden', as we have terrible underlying health inequalities in the UK, that aren't present in Sweden.

IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE - There is zero scientific evidence that the virus has fundamentally changed since the first wave. It's just as infectious and it's just as dangerous as it was back in March/April. All viruses mutate slightly over time due to natural selection, but the attack vector and behaviour of Covid-19 has not shifted.

 

[mack341]

I'm sure many will think this is a good advert, but I have my doubts, if you wanted to terrify the public into obediance and a 'new normal' based on compliance and fear, this is the kind of message you'd produce.

I won't labour that point until we know a bit more how things are going to roll out in 2021, when presumably the 'new normal' starts to begin.

 

[mack341]

IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE - There is zero scientific evidence that the virus has fundamentally changed since the first wave. It's just as infectious and it's just as dangerous as it was back in March/April. All viruses mutate slightly over time due to natural selection, but the attack vector and behaviour of Covid-19 has not shifted.

Well a short while back I remember reading articles that said testing the vaccine in real life conditions was not as easy now because there is simply not enough people infected and displaying severe symptoms.

Just seen this headline on the FT now:

UK to test vaccines on volunteers deliberately infected with Covid-19 [paywalled article though]

edit: found the same article headline on fr24 website free to read:

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“Challenge trials in humans can be useful for vaccine development and can provide early evidence of clinical efficacy, particularly when rates of virus infection are low in the population,” said the MHRA.

Alastair Fraser-Urquhart is the main organizer of 1Day Sooner in the UK
“By exposing only a few hundred carefully selected young and healthy people to the coronavirus – a virus that for this group is much less fatal than routine procedures such as living kidney donation – we can test a wide range very quickly. vaccine, ”said Fraser-Urquhart.

A crucial aspect of challenge trials is to select and purify an appropriate strain of virus that is genetically representative of Sars-CoV-2 currently circulating in the population, and to choose doses that will infect volunteers without overloading their immune systems.

It is also essential to have a “rescue remedy” to prevent serious illness in participants. The London trial will initially use remdesivir, the only antiviral drug to date proven effective against Covid-19.

 

[Slottery]

2) They have incredibly effective test, trace and isolate. We don't.

Not sure why other countries don't just adopt this? There's no real high tech involved, so wonder where you keep getting this argument how great their test and trace system is. Really easy to take in any country to use right away.

STOCKHOLM, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- Sweden's contact tracing model during the COVID-19 epidemic, which largely places responsibility on infected individuals to notify anyone they have come into contact with, has sparked debate.

The approach may even constitute a violation of Sweden's Communicable Diseases Act, according to Peet Tull, former head of the communicable diseases unit at the National Board of Health and Welfare and one of the architects of the Act.

Tull told Swedish Television (SVT) on Sunday that placing the responsibility for contact tracing on patients will limit the potential to prevent the virus from spreading.

"If it is the patient alone who takes care of this and no one is responsible for coordinating it all, then we won't know who the patient has met and if the individuals they've been in close contact with have been tested," he told SVT.

A survey by SVT among Sweden's regional authorities showed that a majority of regions more or less let patients handle contact tracing themselves.

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The new guidance breaks from a strategy adopted by most countries where authorities trace and notify people who have had close contact with a carrier of the disease.

An agency spokeswoman said it was much better that individuals themselves contact people they may have infected, rather than official tracking units which currently have this responsibility.

The existing system worked well when the number of infections was lower but had become less effective as the number grew, she said.


Unlike most tracing systems, the Swedish system is not anonymous as individuals are expected to deliver the news of their infection to anyone they’ve been in close contact with.

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Just two about first articles about Swedish tracing system, you can find more and chose which source you want, but these all tell you pretty same thing. I'm pretty sure that if this would have been done in UK, people and situation had gone bad, people would be shouting here why government let this happen and they didn't take any responsibility and left everything to people to do or not....

Sweden from quite beginning was just all the time limiting spread of virus only that much that health care can handle, they didn't make any strict restrictions as most of places there were enough capacity to cope with people. Not sure why it would be much different in many other places, one thing they failed really bad (which shows in their death numbers to be really high to compare their neighbour countries) was protect care homes and elderly people there which caused big amount of people passed away but amount of lost years wasn't that huge. If you are already in terminal care or just one step from that in care home where average stay is under year, you have really huge chance to pass away for most of viruses like same influenza we have bit different every winter.

Sweden didn't target to any herd immunity but wanted to virus to spread with speed their health care can handle instead of trying to lockdown for few months and hope nightmare is over when you open your eyes, they admitted it can't be stopped and most of people think that they are wrong and killed too many people just for ideology or something. When starting to make restrictions somewhere again, it looks that many countries are more targeting these to vulnerable groups instead of all and not stopping people from moving or seeing other people etc... These areas who never had this earlier, seem to just get hit heavier now and it seem to reach these less populated places as well, in Finland there are many infected clusters now in areas where it never got in spring.

There are again, thousands and thousands of different interviews by highly qualified people (when you look their CV:s), most of them are just making their assumptions as there are no people who would know for sure, so google somebody CV is not really making person to be right in this Many of them are wishing totally ignore any other possible findings or theories which are not supporting their, also for who you work, their songs you sing. Nothing is easier than write scary stories about COVID at the moment. This week got one Finnish nurse interview from Spain again how horrible it is and looking forward other nurse interview from Sweden who teached us how Sweden is killing old people to COVID just by giving them morphine (what is kind of normal threatment in terminal stage there by book, they don't survive if you put them to respirator, it's fcking hard for body). If somebody have too much freetime, can count how many experts are quoted in this thread already and we could have a vote who is most impressing and decide he/she is one who's right.

 

[mack341]

If you like reading and research it's an interesting time, the already large number of articles and opinions in the UK is probably growing because the Govt are not explaining things very well, the hows and whys etc...

It doesn't help that Boris has also stuffed his cabinet full of lightweights and cronies, more a cult of boris than a serious cabinet. John redwood, peter bone and bernard jenkin ought to be in there, but they are too conservative and serious minded.

 

[Borgie]

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[cncas2123]

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Unfortunately we will see much more of this over the next few weeks.

 

[goatwack]

And thus began the 2nd round of nonsensical panic-buying

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[Slottery]

If you like reading and research it's an interesting time, the already large number of articles and opinions in the UK is probably growing because the Govt are not explaining things very well, the hows and whys etc...

It doesn't help that Boris has also stuffed his cabinet full of lightweights and cronies, more a cult of boris than a serious cabinet. John redwood, peter bone and bernard jenkin ought to be in there, but they are too conservative and serious minded.

That's just so fcking much own research at same time to be able to use some media reading critic, so many interviews with numbers which are taken to support some particular view etc... these people most have PhD:s done, they really know how to to chose numbers and facts which are on your side and ignore some other possibilities, so not really capable to follow these and same time do enough research to find things which do or don't support someones theory.

Mostly what can be trusted are these numbers what we get about infected new cases, test amounts, deaths, hospitalized etc... of course these have small mistakes but would trust quite well that most of European countries are specific as they can with these numbers, some North-Korea and some countries you might want to leave out if they don't really impress with their ability and willingness to provide up to date information or they don't test people or very minimum amount (that was Trumps idea to get numbers down as well...). These numbers are quite clear and not many is denying them, so we have some information, just understanding it WHY and using it HOW are missing parts which get better what more information is available.

People do gonna die, nobody deny that. Even in Finland around one person per day in average keep doing it at the moment (around 1000 without COVID but like nice man called Stalin said already once: The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic) If any of my close person pass away, it don't make me any happier was it due to COVID or car accident, this one just at the moment is only one which matters and every each one need to be prevented what ever cost.

About costs, masks have been quite a lot spoken everywhere, all countries and places are different, like how easy it is to keep distances etc... Nobody haven't done that many researches about their actual help, where and how these would be most needed, here is one from Norwegian Institute of Public Health:

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Some are too lazy to go through 45 pages so their outcome was simplified that if 200 00 people (without respiratory symptoms) wear facemasks CORRECTLY one (1) infection could be avoided. These have more psychological effect that people feel more safe, it can also be bad if people in their heads think that when i wear mask, i don't have to care about distances or anything (that's how human mind little bit work, you feel that makes you safe and you might easier fail to follow other advice about preventing spread viruses). Should have own more shares from these few companies who seel quite a lot of these atm with good price (and some people are so cool that they like to drop these just to streets and everywhere to make waste with good portion of your breath in them).

edit: about Goaties shopping pictures above... dunno know what to say..... is anywhere there been near that TP or food is running out or is it again that buy all you can and throw 75% to bin?

 

[goatwack]

That's just so fcking much own research at same time to be able to use some media reading critic, so many interviews with numbers which are taken to support some particular view etc... these people most have PhD:s done, they really know how to to chose numbers and facts which are on your side and ignore some other possibilities, so not really capable to follow these and same time do enough research to find things which do or don't support someones theory.

Mostly what can be trusted are these numbers what we get about infected new cases, test amounts, deaths, hospitalized etc... of course these have small mistakes but would trust quite well that most of European countries are specific as they can with these numbers, some North-Korea and some countries you might want to leave out if they don't really impress with their ability and willingness to provide up to date information or they don't test people or very minimum amount (that was Trumps idea to get numbers down as well...). These numbers are quite clear and not many is denying them, so we have some information, just understanding it WHY and using it HOW are missing parts which get better what more information is available.

People do gonna die, nobody deny that. Even in Finland around one person per day in average keep doing it at the moment (around 1000 without COVID but like nice man called Stalin said already once: The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic) If any of my close person pass away, it don't make me any happier was it due to COVID or car accident, this one just at the moment is only one which matters and every each one need to be prevented what ever cost.

About costs, masks have been quite a lot spoken everywhere, all countries and places are different, like how easy it is to keep distances etc... Nobody haven't done that many researches about their actual help, where and how these would be most needed, here is one from Norwegian Institute of Public Health:

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Some are too lazy to go through 45 pages so their outcome was simplified that if 200 00 people (without respiratory symptoms) wear facemasks CORRECTLY one (1) infection could be avoided. These have more psychological effect that people feel more safe, it can also be bad if people in their heads think that when i wear mask, i don't have to care about distances or anything (that's how human mind little bit work, you feel that makes you safe and you might easier fail to follow other advice about preventing spread viruses). Should have own more shares from these few companies who seel quite a lot of these atm with good price (and some people are so cool that they like to drop these just to streets and everywhere to make waste with good portion of your breath in them).

edit: about Goaties shopping pictures above... dunno know what to say..... is anywhere there been near that TP or food is running out or is it again that buy all you can and throw 75% to bin?

It's ridiculous, it doesn't even make sense why they'd do it. Even some (but not all) shops are out of certain things again, and even online shopping's been affected- again.

And I'd love to know people's average storage capabilities. Our fridge door opens by itself if we try and force one extra pack of peas in, and having extra packs of toilet rolls would mean we do the Triple Jump just to get to the seat!

But even though some supermarkets now say they have 'marshalls' on-site, they're probably there to make sure people wear masks, not to stop idiots hoovering up essential items. Because that's what we do in the UK

 

[dealer wins]

Couple of tweets today resonated with my thinking. And regardless of everyone trying to dismiss Sweden's approach, they nailed it big time, the world around them fucked up. Shame they have messed up with immigration lol

 

[geordiecolin]

Couple of tweets today resonated with my thinking. And regardless of everyone trying to dismiss Sweden's approach, they nailed it big time, the world around them fucked up. Shame they have messed up with immigration lol

I have read quite a number of articles and watched YT vids this evening regarding Doris's latest announcement. Go read the comments sectionswhere they are not turned off .The Uk are starting to become very cynical

 

[dionysus]

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And despite the grim death toll, the president continues to frame the past six months as a success.


“When the terrible plague arrived from China, we mobilized American industry like never before. We rapidly developed life-saving therapies, reducing the fatality rate,” Trump told a raucous Ohio crowd at a rally Monday. “We’re going to deliver a vaccine before the end of the year. But it could be a lot sooner than that.”

 

[geordiecolin]

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And despite the grim death toll, the president continues to frame the past six months as a success.


“When the terrible plague arrived from China, we mobilized American industry like never before. We rapidly developed life-saving therapies, reducing the fatality rate,” Trump told a raucous Ohio crowd at a rally Monday. “We’re going to deliver a vaccine before the end of the year. But it could be a lot sooner than that.”

Deleted

 

[dionysus]

b

c
is it a game?

 

[goatwack]

A lot sooner than that? How much time is left before the year's end??

"We're going to deliver a vaccine before 1986"

 

[dionysus]

A lot sooner than that? How much time is left before the year's end??

"We're going to deliver a vaccine before 1986"

Ya seems like this year has around that many months in it

 

[dionysus]

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