This is worth watching. It is the UK ZOE study where a large number of people (about 500k) reported symptoms, including vacc side effects, over a long period of time, into an app
The latest data from the above can be seen here.
Some other interesting snippets today:
Both vaccines are highly effective against the S. African and Brazilian variants but only after 2 doses. This is fine if you can vaccinate the population 2x before the other variants spread in your country.
AZ runs at 2x the side effects of Pfizer. It has worse side effects on 1st dose, while Pfizer reverses this. Both develop little immunity before 2 weeks. With both, the magnitude of side effects is no guide to resulting immunity. And both give almost total protection from severe disease; beyond what anybody had dreamed of, and right across the age range.
The Brazilian version has a mortality up to 2% i.e. 2x worse but data is unclear because it comes from a place where medical care (and access to it) is poor.
Another thing is that some regions could vaccinate a lot faster. For example Brighton has very few people going through now. They want to do the lower age groups. But they have been told centrally that they cannot because once the media get hold of it, hell with break loose. The format of the TV news here is the banal one, where they run 5 mins of news and then endless interviews with people “affected” (selected by the producer of course to support the station narrative, preferably with appropriate emotion) and if one place is vaccing 50+ the media will smell blood and will drag out some guy of 60, 200km away, saying he hasn’t got the invite yet. This “equal for all” is costing lives, hundreds at least, but it is a battle not worth fighting if you are in politics because the media is constantly looking for somebody to hang.
Cobalt wrote:
1% mortality of Covid, if let run rampant, across 8 billion people, would be 80 million.
Do you want to say that without lockdowns 8 billion people would get infected in 1-2 years?
How is the mortality rate of 1% calculated?
Peter wrote:
With both, the magnitude of side effects is no guide to resulting immunity.
I’m glad to hear it. I keep on hearing ‘the side effects are a sign the vaccination is working’ and I was starting to worry that I hadn’t had any!
:-)
Valentin wrote:
Do you want to say that without lockdowns 8 billion people would get infected in 1-2 years?
How is the mortality rate of 1% calculated?
Valentin – I think you are still obsessing over the numbers. Whatever the numbers take a moment to consider the consequence of a collapse of the hospitals please, and whatever you or I may think, whether any politcal party would survive a collapse of the health service.
It means people going untreated. And this means not just people with Covid. It means people dieing at home and on hospital trolleys, and dieing because the manpower and equipment is not available in circusmtances they would have survived. It means doctors having to make decisions that no doctor wishes to make, and no politican can explain away. No one wants to explain there wasnt a bed for your 70 year old Dad, and no one can adequately explain when it isnt just your Dad, but hundreds, thousands of Dads that werent given the best chance. You may disagree with the policy, but sadly this would have been the consequence, unless you can explain why not. No one has managed to do so convincingly.
Quite a few countries got very close, and this was with intervention.
Without intervention it would have happened, and it would have happened rapidly.
I agree lighter intervention may have still avoided the health services collapsing, but involved a much finer judgement call. However, look how close we came in the UK and this was with all the social distancing, masks etc, but it wasnt enough. If you played the game to the wire, and toppled over the brink, there would have been no quick way back. Cases would have accelerated and the health emergency got worse. In the end if nothing else the press would have forced all sorts of measures to contain the virus on the politicians. Only in a totalitarian regime of some sort would this have been possible.
Therein is the answer you seek as to why there was no other course.
Another thing is that some regions could vaccinate a lot faster. For example Brighton has very few people going through now. They want to do the lower age groups.
But that, at least by itself, doesn’t mean it could be done any faster. If all the vaccine being delivered is being used, and none is left spare on a shelf, then Brighton couldn’t do the next age group without slowing another area down.
Of course if vaccine is being left on the shelf in Brighton, waiting on permission to start the next group, that’s a different story, but you haven’t stated that.
Yes; a good Q. I am sure they are not chucking the stuff away. But also nobody wants to talk about it, especially as they are not allowed to. Nobody in the system is allowed to talk, especially to the media. Only the Daily Trash gets the real dirt 
Why Brighton is not doing more people is not clear. It is a “fashionable place” so full of anti-vaxxers, but it is also full of money and therefore people who will want to travel, which will mean mortgaging your principles and getting vaxxed
This is how you do it, and it was apparent when we got done:
In reality the Daily Trash should be glad more people are getting done.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
It means people going untreated. And this means not just people with Covid. It means people dieing at home and on hospital trolleys, and dieing because the manpower and equipment is not available in circusmtances they would have survived. It means doctors having to make decisions that no doctor wishes to make, and no politican can explain away. No one wants to explain there wasnt a bed for your 70 year old Dad, and no one can adequately explain when it isnt just your Dad, but hundreds, thousands of Dads that werent given the best chance. You may disagree with the policy, but sadly this would have been the consequence, unless you can explain why not. No one has managed to do so convincingly.
The problem of the political system is that it does not care about the indirect consequences of its actions. Politicians act as if reducing the number of deaths which are direct results of the infection is the only goal. However, many actions have indirect and unintended consequences that are very often overlooked by them. And because the actions are often of unprecedented severity and act on the whole population, their unintended consequences both short and long term can easily exceed any positive results. For example, the shock for the economy (mostly resulted from the restrictions and not from the virus itself) greatly affects the income of many people both short-term and long-term. This affects their quality of life and psychological well-being. No doubt that it will reduce their average life expectancy. The effect must be stronger for poorer people and for poorer countries. That is, effectively these actions kill people.
Valentin – I think it does care, but politics in a democracy is the art of the possible. Which do people care about more? Mums and Dads dieing because the health services has collapsed or all the other things you mention? I think if you asked the majority of the people at the time the health services HAD collapsed and people were locking themselves away because of fear of having to go to hospital they would care about the here and now. This is what really drives the political process because a health service collapse is unacceptable. Even if the politicians had argued as the health services collapsed around them it was for the wider good, they would have been removed from office, so they had no alternative. Certainly this is why not one single major economy allowed this to happen. If it was possible you might imagine one economy somewhere would have tested the theory, but none did because they knew the consequence.
I am afraid at a moment in time when you weigh the short term health of loved ones especially loved ones in otherwise pretty good health, and the long term health of the economy the people will vote for their loved ones all day long.
Fuji_Abound, it’s not only the economy. I mentioned it only as an example. There are much more unintended consequences of the restrictions that affect people lives. For example, reduced access to medical care for covid-unrelated problems, as well as postponed diagnostics. There are many others as well. And medical systems in many countries are very far from collapsing and have never been close to it.
As for what people care about more, it really depends on particular individual and circumstances. If you ask a guy whose mum is in a hospital with covid, you get one answer. If you ask a guy who lost his job/business and is in depression whilst his mum/dad are in good health and taking reasonable precautions against covid, you probably get another answer. Most people I know personally are fed up with restrictions and don’t think the government is acting for good.
reduced access to medical care for covid-unrelated problems, as well as postponed diagnostics.
Everybody is learning… In the 1st wave, the reaction was panic. Doctors cancelled even routine monitoring blood tests. Just went crazy and cancelled the whole lot. The more plush offices they had the sooner they got rid of their patients. Those few pro-active about their health had to go to a private hospital and pay for a commercial / corporate test package – easily £400. The remaining 99% got nothing… In the 2nd wave, much less of that got postponed because it was realised loads more people were dying of cancer and other stuff. And there is a clear argument – totally missed in the 1st wave – that CV19 patients don’t have a greater right to life and health care than any others.
As time moves on, there is a political and economic realisation that life will have to carry on regardless. Fortunately, we have the vaccine now, which will deliver a good (if perhaps not total; we don’t know yet, especially with perhaps 30% being anti) solution, but if that had not arrived, if CV19 turned out to be as hard as say HIV or any of the countless other viruses which have no “cure”, then life would have to adapt to a death rate managed at a level where the hospitals just cope, which in the 1st World is roughly 1000 deaths per day. And a great deal of CV19-related long term problems, which may turn out to be a bigger problem in the long run. The need to keep deaths at say 1k/day would have still finished off much of the economy e.g. airlines, hotels, travel generally, gyms, pubs…
Lessons are being learnt every day, and not just about the virus. The biggest one is that there is no such thing as “united Europe”. You just get pure nationalism, and some of it pretty nasty. As the old saying goes, countries have no friends; just mutual interests. For the next one, better have a stockpile of little glass bottles, of the test swabs, of everything else non-perishable, and manufacturing capability in your own country for all the rest. Even if the factory for that costs 1BN/year to keep mothballed it will be cheap.
