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

I’ve heard of tests being used to see whether vaccines have ‘taken’ in immunocompromised people, but using them to see whether you can safely skip a booster seems questionable to me. ‘<50’ gives you a threshold for detectable immunity, but what’s the threshold for acceptable immunity for this specific test?

This test doesn’t measure T-cell response, which is an important component of immunity, and they don’t tell you how fast your immune response is falling so you would have to take repeated tests to be sure you were still immune in e.g. 6 months. The possibility of having been infected since vaccination makes it impossible to extrapolate how quickly immunity is waning. £60 is more than the price of a booster and doesn’t offer any increase in immunity so from a public health perspective it’s not money well spent.

I can see why someone who is very worried about vaccines or who felt significantly ill after a second dose might want to test rather than boost, but the test would need to come with an algorithm and threshold values to enable you to use it safely for this purpose.

This is interesting. It suggests you need a much higher level than 50.

BTW the above test was 1 month after my 2nd vacc.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

The paper referenced by that study uses a different assay and the values (given in arbitrary units) may not be directly comparable.

Archer-181 wrote:

I am being provocative but the discussion on this forum is respectful and the very best on the internet, so am I right or wrong?

I think overall you’re right. Both in the general gist of what you say, and that such things are generally unacceptable (certainly for the media or politicians to say) these days.

The comparison to glandular fever and influenza is a good one. People forget how a serious infection can knock you over for a long, long time. I knew a guy at school who got glandular fever at 16 and it took the best part of a year out of his life before he was attending school regularly and playing football again.

It is a not a dataset that the media or government are going to want to analyse, but it’s quite clear that the biggest (non-age-related) risk factor for a bad case of Covid-19 is being overweight and having other (related) comorbidities. It is amazing that despite how frightened many people profess to be of Covid-19, they do not appear sufficiently motivated by that fear to bring their weight down and improve their own chances. Instead they demand that governments ‘protect them’ by shutting down the economy and imposing radical restrictions on personal freedoms.

Even my parents (who are both slim and healthy, as well as logical and self-reliant) spurned my suggestion that, during the first lockdown, the best thing they could do to improve their own chances in the event of infection was to get on their static exercise bike now and improve their cardiovascular fitness. When it comes to physical exercise, one is never short of excuses.

EGLM & EGTN

I agree – most people don’t give a t**ss about their health and want the State to fix them, so they get the three stents (full cost to taxpayer ~20k) and immediately go back to eating the same old stodge. And they will proudly tell you that is what they will do!

Except for the vacc certificate being used for certain purposes I am in favour of that simply because many people need an incentive to get vacced. A bang on the head would be a bit unacceptable these days; the vacc cert is the next best thing

The UK has not done that, more or less killed its airlines (and much else) in the process (I spoke to a big-airport ATCO the other day who described just how badly hit Easyjet and Gatwick have been, by these pre-return-to-UK tests, etc, and not making use of vacc certificates). And the political classes still don’t seem to get it… The UK can’t get its numbers down because it has about 10% fully nuclear-hardened anti vaccers and these people work in jobs where they have a lot of human contact.

I am very happy to have the vacc cert and present it to anybody who wants to see it. I know “showing your papers” rings a lot of bells with a lot of people, but it should ring plenty with me, as I come from Czechoslovakia

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

so am I right or wrong?

Right. Was there a pandemic? Yes.
Is the pandemic over? Yes
Will we ever get rid of the Corona virus? No

It’s up to each individual now. The best protection is a vaccine (or two, or three) my father has three shots of pfeisser he will not die from Corona for sure.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

LeSving wrote:

my father has three shots of pfeisser he will not die from Corona for sure.

He still might. It’s quite unlikely, but he might.

I don’t know if your statement is tongue-in-cheek (if it is then my apologies) but if it isn’t then it shows up some of how the public don’t get the statistics involved.

EGLM & EGTN

With UK daily infection rate rising once again exponentially (heading for 50,000 a day), am guessing they (HM’s Government) might observe the effect of re introducing some relevant health policies (mask wearing, crowd events) to be in line with more enlightened major European countries.

Oxford (EGTK), United Kingdom

CNN just announces that General Colin Powell has died from Covid 19 at 84. He had been fully vaccinated.

Last Edited by Mooney_Driver at 18 Oct 12:45
LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

RobertL18C wrote:

With UK daily infection rate rising once again exponentially (heading for 50,000 a day)

I don’t believe the infection rates can be compared directly. The UK continues to test several times more people every day, on a per head of population basis, than any other European country. The next most prolific tester in Europe is Denmark, with approx. half as many as the UK each day on a per head of population basis. Most are around 1/4 or 1/3 of the UK rate.

Testing rates correlate highly with reported infection rates, recalling that most infection is asymptomatic. Seek and ye shall find…

In any case, I don’t think HMG is able to re-introduce restrictions (even if it wanted to) without a severe back-bench rebellion.

Last Edited by Graham at 18 Oct 13:28
EGLM & EGTN
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