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

Archer-181 wrote:

What will probably happen is everybody will get this, there will be wave after wave….

These people get hit and we eventually get herd immunity and people will get infected from time to time. They will have cold like symptoms. The Anti-virals coming out now along with better treatment (the steroids) will help those badly hit.

We will get wave after wave after wave, unless a concentrated effort is made by ALL countries WORLDWIDE to stop this. In short, the only way to do this now is to mandate vaccination for EVERYBODY.

An Italian study showed again that the people who were dying had on average 5 comorbidities or were fat and/or were very old

By the looks of it, the general opinion appears to be that fat, old and sick are disposable, that is no longer worth protecting.

My own expectation by now is that I will not live to see the day Corona is so much under control that it allows a return to something which ressembles the pre-covid lifestyles. Pre-Corona live is over, for good. What we have now is the new normal and will remain the new normal. there will be no life without masks, without screening, without massive restrictions in travel.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

We’ve just booked our booster vacc.

Strange setup; no local “bulk” facility anymore. They are still there but do just the #1 and #2. You need to have a car to get to anywhere available. This time they are using GP (family doctor) locations which they didn’t do for #1 and #2 presumably because the GP lobby blocked it, and indeed our local GP practice is not listed as available so they must have blocked it too. The local GP is the perfect location for many people, but they don’t like too much work

However, since there is now a need to use transport, usually a car, the booking should accept say 2+ people, but you can’t do that; you have to log on with two computers, choose the same location, same time slot… clearly the programmers learnt only Python (alt the rage today) instead of a proper language like PHP

Is there any proof that once you’ve had it you are unlikely to get it again?

It’s obviously not correct, but so is the other one (that the vaccine doesn’t do anything). The vaccines we have are very obviously hugely effective.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

This time they are using GP (family doctor) locations which they didn’t do for #1 and #2 presumably because the GP lobby blocked it, and indeed our local GP practice is not listed as available so they must have blocked it too. The local GP is the perfect location for many people, but they don’t like too much work

That depends a lot on where you are. GP groups arranged roughly two thirds of all jabs #1 and #2 in the UK and I got both mine that way. It wasn’t practical in the actual GP practice so they rented the local Royal Horticultural Hall.

This time round the booster jabs compete with flu jabs for GPs’ time, and whilst I did get my flu jab with the GP the NHS got to me first with the booster.

GP practices have a lot of problems, and I think a lot of the criticism they get is unfair.

It is not a popular career choice for new doctors and currently retirements exceed recruitment. That is made worse by arcane Pension Tax provisions which make it pointless for many older GPs to work extra hours, or indeed further years.

Also, e.g. as argued here in the BMJ , deprived areas do not get enough GP practices. That may partly explain the poorer vaccine rollout in those areas, given the importance of GPs in the vaccination drive.

White Waltham EGLM, United Kingdom

DavidS wrote:

GP practices have a lot of problems, and I think a lot of the criticism they get is unfair.

As with a lot of the problems in the NHS, most of it stems from the unusual structures implemented when it was set up in order to gain the support of doctors, the majority of whom were set to lose their status as sought-after independent professionals who, within the constraints of their patients ability to pay, could (and did) charge whatever they liked. Of course they didn’t have the join the NHS, but they would have had very few customers left if they chose to remain independent. The system that was agreed did and continues to allow the more enterprising doctors the best of both worlds – a salary from the government for seeing NHS patients and at the same time the right to see private patients and charge whatever they like, often using NHS facilities. It’s basically a right to moonlight that almost no other professional-grade employees enjoy. In the words of Aneurin Bevan (the founder of the NHS), “I stuffed their mouths with gold”.

For GPs, the system that gave them continued ‘business control’ of their practice means that individual doctors (or more commonly groups of doctors) set themselves up as businesses which provide services to the NHS (and thus the public) and are paid according to some crude and not always helpful formulae based on how many patients are on their ‘list’. Thus they are not employees of the NHS and it has little direct control over how they choose to provide the service. What you end up with is zero consistency from town to town in terms of how the primary care system works, e.g. opening hours, appointment systems, etc. Because of the crude way in which they are paid for the services they provide, GPs have little incentive to deliver the service in any way other than the most convenient for them – which is of course the least convenient for working people. Primary care services during evenings and weekends are almost non-existent, made worse by a major contract re-negotiation some years back which made the situation even worse: GPs could then opt out of the most inconvenient work (i.e. out-of-hours coverage) and still retain nearly all their income – so of course most of them immediately did. The terms are also such that part-time GP work is very attractive and thus many GP practices struggle to cover the hours they are supposed to despite having a lot of GPs.

Historically, GPs spent about 90% of their time seeing about 10% of the patients on their list – ‘frequent flyers’ – if you like, as well as the ‘worried well’ and a lot of people who were frankly just old, lonely and wanted someone to talk to – the weekly trip to the GP being as much a part of their life as collecting their pension. The other 90% they hardly ever, or even never, saw.

Covid-19 changed all this because GP appointments switched to phone or videoconference. This didn’t really work for the 10%, firstly because they often couldn’t do the tech and secondly it didn’t fulfill the need they really had – human contact. So GPs suddenly found themselves with much more time on their hands and able to get on top of their work, and hence when the government proposed to try and force them back to face-to-face appointments being the norm they resisted hard. I have a fair bit of sympathy for them here, because they were never able to openly say that most of their time was being wasted on people who didn’t need to see a doctor.

EGLM & EGTN

GP practices have a lot of problems, and I think a lot of the criticism they get is unfair.

I accept there are big variations between the working environments in different parts of the country. Here – E Sussex being a fairly wealthy area – they want to do as little as possible, and basically fob you off at every opportunity, just doing phone calls, which are problematic because you are not likely to be around when they call you back. And the waiting room is nearly always almost empty, so their work is not exactly onerous. They could easily do vaccinations but they have never done so.

Graham’s post resonates pretty well with what I see around here.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

gallois wrote:

Is there any proof that once you’ve had it you are unlikely to get it again? Or is that opinion.

As usual in these discussions, such a statement is relatively useless when you try to deal in absolutes. What is the measure for “likely” or “unlikely”? How to formulate this question depends on the context of what underlying problem you want to solve or look at. So, in relative terms, the question could be: Is natural immunity equal to vaccine induced immunity, or better, in terms of broadness of the immune response and/or durability. And there is now a wide range of emerging evidence that natural immunity is superior to vaccine induced immunity in both regards: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/09/15/natural-immunity-vaccine-mandate/

On the individual level, I suppose that it depends on many factors, such as your immune health, the variants that you encountered, and many other circumstances. I know of one case (second hand, so very reliable information) of someone who was reinfected, confirmed with positive PCR tests, within 7 months. But that’s an anecdote, and only data plus statistics can help us make generalized decisions. For example, in Switzerland, based on this emerging data, the duration of the immunity passports for recovered individuals will be increased from 6 to 12 months starting next week. Which seems unfair to have excluded them from society for the previous 6 months, because objectively they were a lower risk to others than a vaccinated individual.

Peter wrote:

It’s obviously not correct, but so is the other one (that the vaccine doesn’t do anything). The vaccines we have are very obviously hugely effective.

Indeed, that’s another absolute which is untrue if it’s told like Joe Biden did when he stated: “If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in the IC unit, and you’re not going to die.

With the boosters, I am worried if Moderna have solved their issues from 2017 where the immune system started recognizing the lipid nanoparticles, which are used to deliver the mRNA, as foreign, which would diminish the efficacy of subsequent doses: https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/10/moderna-trouble-mrna/

Otherwise, there is an urgent need for more vaccines based on different technologies, and which hopefully can be more effective against the new variants which are circulating. Luckily, there are a few still under development, but I feel the sense of urgency has unjustifiably been lost on this front, as well as for therapeutics and early treatment options.

Last Edited by Rwy20 at 08 Nov 12:54

as well as for therapeutics

and this is why

and the predictable result:

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

clearly the programmers learnt only Python (alt the rage today) instead of a proper language like PHP

I laughed hard!

My daughters are pushing me to go to the US for a visit to the family there – anyone know if flying commercial with a proper mask is possible? I mean one like I use when working on fiberglass or chemicals.

Last Edited by eurogaguest1980 at 08 Nov 13:58
Fly more.
LSGY, Switzerland

Graham wrote:

I certainly don’t want them to manage risk on my behalf through wide-reaching restrictive interventions when it comes to natural phenomena such as infectious disease.

Same in the case of floods and earthquakes?

LDZA LDVA, Croatia

anyone know if flying commercial with a proper mask is possible? I mean one like I use when working on fiberglass or chemicals.

I can’t see who would stop you wearing it. I actually bought a couple of these for skiing, a year ago (for the enclosed lifts) but didn’t get to use it because everything except Switzerland shut, and then Switzerland itself shut to Brits. These are the really good masks, and not very expensive. My plan for this winter is definitely to wear an FFP3 mask on any airliner or ski bus.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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