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

Mooney_Driver wrote:

Makes an interesting read.

It is the classic Kansas City shuffle. (Google it if unsure).

It is all falling into place for them. The population totally softened up by the vaccine. Now let’s move for the passports, restrictions, freedoms dissipated, no life as we knew it. The Barrier, Madrid 2025 is a good indicator of the possibility of where we may go. A pretty frightening dystopian society where the vaccinated move freely, whilst the rest of us???

Fly safe. I want this thing to land l...
EGPF Glasgow

If you vaccinate most people then the rest can build herd immunity by catching it, which is what is happening in the UK.

What one could not do was herd immunity earlier (with few vaccinated) because of health system collapse.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

BeechBaby wrote:

A pretty frightening dystopian society where the vaccinated move freely, whilst the rest of us???

The dystrophy mainly comes from the realisation that people are not willing to contribute to get out of a crisis. Some out of egoism, some out of stupidity or whatever.

Peter wrote:

If you vaccinate most people then the rest can build herd immunity by catching it, which is what is happening in the UK.

Or die in the process.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/covid-vaccine-antivax-alabama-family-death-b1890600.html

There are plenty such examples around…. one would be tempted to point to a Darwinian selection process, if these people would not take others with them.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Horse to water comes immediately to mind.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

The dystrophy mainly comes from the realisation that people are not willing to contribute to get out of a crisis.

I am sorry but that is utter nonsense. Some get it, the picture that is, some evidently do not.

Check the latest from Israel….

Fly safe. I want this thing to land l...
EGPF Glasgow

The UK numbers are still in a free fall.

Even Ferguson reckons it will be done soon.

This has astonished all the critics of this “reckless policy”.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

The UK numbers are still in a free fall.

Is there any indication as to why they are dropping? I can think of lots of reasons why it might be eg

- So few people left to vaccinate, that they quickly catch it and achieve immunity that way thereby achieving herd immunity through mainly vaccinations, supplemented by people catching it.
- Like in previous spikes, people change their behavour as they become worried about catching it, and are more careful
- Those we were reluctant or just ‘too busy’ to get the vaccine are motivated to get it by increased daily numbers.
- People just not bothering to get tested anymore.

But I’d be curious to know if the medical experts in the UK are giving any indication as to why they believe it shot up and is now rapidly falling.

EIWT Weston, Ireland

It’s got to be mostly the 1st one.

The groups – whoever they are; much debate around that – which make up the ~11% of adults currently unvacced are rapidly heading for herd immunity. Schools have packed up which would help a lot also, so this removal of the restrictions was very well timed, in retrospect.

I see maybe 50% of people in shops not wearing a mask (was ~100%) but can’t report on general public “crowd” behaviour.

Time will tell, as hospital intake is still rising, but that is lagging by ~ 2 weeks.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

It’s quite puzzling why that sort of spike happened – up very quickly for a very short time and then down just as quickly. I don’t think anyone expected widespread vaccination to have that effect. Hospitalisations and deaths did go up too, but this time only a fraction of what they were in relation to infections during previous waves, and not at a level that causes any problems with hospital capacity. The Guardian disagrees of course, and is full of anecdotal stories from healthcare workers about how they might be overrun and how we should lock down indefinitely until the world is risk-free in every respect.

The drop in the last few days certainly isn’t as a result of people not getting tested. The UK continues to do around a million tests a day which is far more than any other European country – both in absolute numbers and on a per-head-of-population basis. Various sectors of the economy continue to screw themselves by repeatedly testing employees as a matter of routine in accordance with ‘guidance’ and sending everyone on a given site home for 10 days if there is a single positive test. The false positive rate for lateral flow tests is thought to be about one in a thousand, so with 3/4 of a million each day (the rest are PCR) that is 750 false positives every day, and if each false positive results in some restaurant/bar/shop/office/site/classroom being closed for 10 days that is really quite crippling.

Two guys who work for me in the UK have kids (one has two young ones, the other has four a bit older) and both families are consuming lateral flow tests like there’s no tomorrow. No particular reason, just ‘to be careful’. They are literally collecting the free ones from the local pharmacy each week (I think it is 7 tests per week per household) and going through them as a matter of course. They tell me their kids friends parents are all doing the same, and of course as soon as there is one positive test somewhere all the kids that have been near that kid get locked up for 10 days, as do their families. I am just thankful that our team is all home-based, so it doesn’t mean they stop working. My guy in Sydney is under total lockdown, so he can’t really do anything except work!

I would wager that the official infection numbers in most European countries, relative to each other, are basically a function of the amount of testing being done: seek and ye shall find. Everyone seems to have forgotten how common asymptomatic infection is, perhaps as a result of the constant narrative around how ‘deadly’ the virus is.

In doing a million tests a day the UK Government continues to do what it is best at – pushing vast quantities to taxpayers money into the hands of grubby opportunists.

dublinpilot wrote:

But I’d be curious to know if the medical experts in the UK are giving any indication as to why they believe it shot up and is now rapidly falling.

Witty et al have not hypothesised publicly as to why it might be happening – they are just sticking to a “don’t count your chickens” line. That suggests to me that either (a) they have no idea, or (b) the reason is something that the government doesn’t want announced because it would undermine their messaging.

Last Edited by Graham at 29 Jul 09:18
EGLM & EGTN

Graham wrote:

It’s quite puzzling why that sort of spike happened – up very quickly for a very short time and then down just as quickly

Actually – it’s entirely expected!

Population growth generally approximately follows a logistic function — and absolutely NOT an exponential function (whether it be humans, mice, foxes, bacteria or viruses). Remember the number that is in “freefall” is not the total number of cases, but the rate of increase of infected people (daily NEW cases), in other words, the derivative of the logistic function. The derivative of a logistic function is symmetric, going down as quickly as it went up. So it’s not really surprising that the cases are falling as quickly as they rose. If the total numbers infected with delta follows a logistic growth curve (like pretty much all population growth does), this is exactly what you’d expect! The only surprise is the peak is sharp rather than rounded.

If you eyeball a logistic function, it doesn’t look that way (in fact if you showed people just the red line on the graph below, and asked them “Where does it start getting shallower?” many would answer about x=2, and by then the gradient is less than half of what it was at x=0), but the maths doesn’t lie. Here is what a logistic function looks like (the red line) and its derivative (the blue line), if the red line approximates the number of people who caught delta in the UK, the blue line would represent the daily new cases.

If you look at the jurisdictions that went “yolo” such as Texas in earlier waves, you’ll see the downward side of the slope of the “new cases” graph be as steep (or sometimes steeper!) than the upward side of the graph. The reason why the UK new cases graph comes to a sharp peak rather than a more rounded one is probably due to schools breaking up and the nice weather, and the Euros being over meaning people are outside (and not packed like sardines into rooms watching the Euros).

The other thing I’ve heard about the UK is that around 90% of the population now has antibodies, which means there just aren’t many hosts with naive immune systems left to infect.

Last Edited by alioth at 29 Jul 13:36
Andreas IOM

Mooney_Driver wrote:

You might want to read up on the plague… that took several years to burn out. I suppose one reason why it is now called a dark age

Just my “dark sarcasm” on “the old bright days” where we did not have vaccines…

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom
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