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Corona / Covid-19 Virus - General Discussion (politics go to the Off Topic / Politics thread)

That is obviously (evidently) BS, in general, but one can find more or less anything printed because journos are far from the sharpest knives in the drawer, as the saying goes.

Source:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620#:~:text=Early%20results%20of%20the%20first,and%20a%20placebo%20(43).

For the period February 1, 2021 to October 1, 2021, vaccine effectiveness against infection (VE-I) declined over time (P < 0.01 for time dependence, Table 1), even after adjusting for age, sex, and comorbidity. VE-I declined for all vaccine types (Fig. 1), with the largest declines for Janssen followed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. Specifically, in March, VE-I was 86.4% (95% CI: 85.2% to 87.6%) for Janssen; 89.2% (95% CI: 88.8% to 89.6%) for Moderna; and 86.9% (95% CI: 86.5% to 87.3%) for Pfizer-BioNTech. By September, VE-I had declined to 13.1% (95% CI: 9.2% to 16.8%) for Janssen; 58.0% (95% CI: 56.9% to 59.1%) for Moderna; and 43.3% (95% CI: 41.9% to 44.6%) for Pfizer-BioNTech.

T28
Switzerland
And people without certificates should not be allowed to travel at all.

How do you justify coercing people to protect themselves?

Biggin Hill

There is a really interesting report just out in France on the impact of Covid in 2020 on the French Hospital system which is making some major waves on channels like LCP but more on social media. If you’re interested to read the report it is here https://www.atih.sante.fr/sites/default/files/public/content/4144/aah_2020_analyse_covid.pdf
In short, in 2020 COVID was 2% of all the hospitalisations in France and represented 5% of all the cases that ended up in intensive care. Some very well respected French epidemiologists are now publicly stating a couple of things that are supported by the report. Some politicians and statisticians are adding the following

1) 0.6% of the population of over 80 has died in 2020 of COVID (in France the over 80’s were well above 80% of all deaths) while over 15% of the over 80’s in 2020 that died have died of Cardiac insufficiency
2) over 20% of under 30’s have suffered of ‘’suicidal tendencies’’ that can be directly linked to repeated lockdowns, with other severe mental impacts (fear of schools, fear of failing etc.) massively increasing
3) the direct cost of the lockdowns is well over 200Bio to the French economy
4) the claim the lockdowns were necessary to protect the hospital system are largely disputed (though all admit COVID stays are on average longer than other hospitalisations)
5) the report compares the flu to Covid and the epidemiologist read of the document (from the interviews I have seen) is that COVID is more ’’selective’’ than the flu on comorbidities with one of the epidemolgists on LCP making the claim that post vaccination COVID19 is a less dangerous (and far less deadly) virus than the common flu. A lot of references to herd immunity etc as to why this will be the case

I obviously need to be cautious to not fall into the trap of confirmation bias, but governments (at least the French government) appears to have massively over reacted with its policy of repeated lockdowns and infringements on personal liberties and the arguments around hospitals being overwhelmed have been largely overstated.
a probably less biased view is here, though even this seems to confirm (rather than deny) the findings of the independent report
https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/est-il-vrai-que-les-patients-covid-nont-represente-que-2-du-total-des-hospitalisations-en-france-en-2020-20211111_BEEG2I2RTRAX7O3Q5LD2D33J4I/

LFHN - Bellegarde - Vouvray France

The argument that virtue signaling rhetoric is something jumped on by low status individuals to make themselves feel superior become more compelling when you see stuff like this.

LFHNflightstudent wrote:

4) the claim the lockdowns were necessary to protect the hospital system are largely disputed (though all admit COVID stays are on average longer than other hospitalisations)

Probably a very valid dispute.

In the UK at least, it is extremely hard for anyone to judge because the health service is always complaining that it is at breaking point, doesn’t have enough money, etc. About this time every year, without fail, the newspapers are full of stories along the lines of it being already at peak winter capacity, only weeks away from total collapse, £XXbn needed to plug a black hole, etc.

It seems to garner public sympathy in a way that no other part of the public sector can. “NHS heroes” is now common, though slightly ridiculous, rhetoric and no discussion is complete without mention of those “on the front line”. No politician could even consider saying that they ought to get on with their jobs, stop trying to dictate government policy and perhaps be a bit more efficient with taxpayers’ money. I bet they think it though.

Is it the same in France? That if the voices in the health services say XYZ is necessary, it is taken as gospel and no-one dares publicly challenge it?

Last Edited by Graham at 12 Nov 11:14
EGLM & EGTN

" is it the same in France? That if the voices in the health services say XYZ is necessary, it is taken as gospel and no-one dares publicly challenge it?"
That’s difficult to answer, it might be very variable depending on which part of the health system you are talking about. Here we all see how much a doctors visit or a procedure or a particular medicine has cost and how much the state is paying towards those costs and how much your top up insurance should pay. We get the breakdown of each item as a statement like a bank statement every few months. So we know exactly the cost of everything and if health service needs more money than the Government has agreed the public in general can take a view on whether or not what is being asked for is worth it.
However, France is known for mass protest and might well put pressure on the Government to spend more for a better service or to maintain the status quo.

France

LFHNflightstudent wrote:

a probably less biased view is here, though even this seems to confirm (rather than deny) the findings of the independent report

The Libération article provides an interesting “fact check”, thanks for posting.

I’m not French, but if I read it correctly, they agree the numbers are correct, but go on to make three points which I thought were useful:

In the most intense hospital facilities “les services de réanimation”, Covid admissions were 11% of the 2020 total and 19% of the days (as you pointed out the average Covid stay is longer).

The Covid admissions did not occur evenly throughout the year. There were two big peaks around end-March and mid-November, at which times the figures were obviously much worse than the whole-year average.

The authorities also put out some dodgy statistics which probably overstated the hospital impact.

Last Edited by DavidS at 12 Nov 12:17
White Waltham EGLM, United Kingdom

LFHNflightstudent wrote:

1) 0.6% of the population of over 80 has died in 2020 of COVID (in France the over 80’s were well above 80% of all deaths) while over 15% of the over 80’s in 2020 that died have died of Cardiac insufficiency

Comparing Covid deaths to deaths from Cardiac insufficiency is like comparing 9/11 deaths to deaths from road traffic. So why should we bother about terrorism?

LFHNflightstudent wrote:

3) the direct cost of the lockdowns is well over 200Bio to the French economy

So we are talking about less than 1/3 of the yearly US military budget. How many lives did the US military safe in that year compared to let’s say those 600.000 Americans that died of cancer that year? So why bother about military at all as long as we have cancer?

If you put it that way, you should question why we care about life at all? Less than 20% of all deaths are “avoidable” so why do anything at all to try to avoid deaths?

Germany

DavidS wrote:

The Libération article provides an interesting “fact check”, thanks for posting.

I’m not French, but if I read it correctly, they agree the numbers are correct, but go on to make three points which I thought were useful:

In the most intense hospital facilities “les services de réanimation”, Covid admissions were 11% of the 2020 total and 19% of the days (as you pointed out the average Covid stay is longer).

The Covid admissions did not occur evenly throughout the year. There were two big peaks around end-March and mid-November, at which times the figures were obviously much worse than the whole-year average.

The authorities also put out some dodgy statistics which probably overstated the hospital impact.

Yes correct – though the article starts by stating the FACTS to be checked are indeed facts and not fakes. The 2% and the 5% number are correct. The report mentions the 11% and 19% numbers (so less than 1 in 5 hospital stay days in France in 2020 were covid related in intensive care units) and makes reference to the fact the numbers would be ’’worse’’ than 2% if scheduled interventions would not have been postponed. A mixed bag really…

LFHN - Bellegarde - Vouvray France

There are many differences between countries. France has a much more dispersed population than other places (e.g. the UK, but far from only the UK). It also has a lot less obesity, which is a HUGE factor. Also the poor communities in France (which seem to live largely in tower blocks on the peripheries of the bigger cities) seem to be younger than the poor communities in the UK where you get multi-generational cohabitation (like Italy has). And they have vastly less obesity. Any visit to France makes this really obvious. In the UK they are much more integrated into the population centres; in fact the poor people in the UK are found more or less everywhere, right next to the rich peoples’ areas. CV19 is largely a disease of the poor and the obese, in addition to of the old.

Data from Israel is of little use. They did the Pfizer vacc campaign with 3-4 weeks’ gap whereas it fast became obvious that a ~12 week gap is much more effective. They also have large communities which engage in “interesting and very close-up” practices. That report posted earlier does not mention AZ and the biggest takeaway is that the Janssen vaccine is basically crap. It does not support the wild claims of vaccines being useless after x months; the current UK hospital data for example makes it very plain that such statements are nonsense.

Most of this stuff is non-PC so the national media won’t carry it, and anybody trying to research it isn’t going to get funding because it could never be published afterwards. But everything about this epidemic is covered in the footprints of “less than totally obvious things make a lot of difference, and the few people who have an idea of what they might be are not able to talk about it”.

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Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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