For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
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By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1877781
Flyingfemme wrote:
TopCat wrote:
Flyingfemme wrote:I simply don't believe that the general population here is that much different to (so much worse than) the rest of Europe. I personally know of nobody who has actually been ill with covid for many months and not that many who have tested positive.

And it's because of this attitude, ladies and gentlemen, that we are increasingly living in a post-truth, post-science society, where facts and evidence are not just irrelevant, but positively avoided.

The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.

Artful snipping of the comment to fit your own agenda? I asked the question, because I'd really like to know, what is the UK doing (or not doing) that is so different to the rest of the world? And I see you have no answer, merely a smug, self-satisifed sneer that you are so much brighter than me. Do you seriously believe that all Brits are filthy, disease-ridden slobs and the French, German, Spanish, Italian populations are not? I see no evidence of the NHS being overrun with covid sufferers requiring ventilation. Just media full of speculation that "it will all end in tears".

Well for a start, what agenda do you imagine I have? I can assure you, I have none, other than challenging the misinformation and lies that characterise so many of the covidiots that value their right to do what they damn well please above their responsibility to give a damn for their fellow humans.

But that aside, if you weren't doing what I'm accusing you of, then why even mention that you know of no one with long Covid and not many that have tested positive?

How many you know or don't know is completely irrelevant.

I didn't take your question seriously, because you asked it, and then closed it down by proving that your mind is made up. You don't believe that we're any different from those in Europe, and because you don't know anyone experiencing these problems, you suggest they don't exist. If that's not your view, why bring up those points?

There are endless articles in the media that you scorn so much, by people actually working in the NHS, describing the hellish conditions they've been working under for the last 18 months, and how Covid is still a massive issue, and how it absolutely hasn't gone away.

If you haven't read any of them, why not? And if you have, and you don't believe them, what conspiracy must you believe in to imagine they're all false?
#1877786
We are all the same sort of carbon based life forms, so one would expect us to react the same way to the same germs. Why the huge disparity? Are the UK humans different to the European humans? Is there a significant difference in the behaviours both sides of the channel?

Are we using different tests? Or different standards? Is it simply down to the old, "the more you look, the more you find"?

No, I don't know anybody with long covid. I know that post-viral conditions are common for many types of virus. I don't expect covid to be any different - should I? Covid is not going away - get used to it. The media reports of "hellish conditions" are many and varied; including those that say conditions are pretty normal for the time of year (with the addition of a different virus to blame). Which is correct? Conditions last year were, undoubtedly, hellish - but we are way past that stage now.

If the vaccine isn't the solution, God help us all. I don't fancy retiring to the Stone Age but that is what many people seem to want us to do.
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By Flyin'Dutch'
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1877790
Propwash wrote:I don't wish to descend into a mud-slinging contest with you. I can't help, however, but observe that whilst you are willing to level criticism (from my persepective and experience not always informed) at the UK police service and the Met in particular, you don't seem willing to allow outsiders to do the same with your area of expertise.

PW


My criticism at the Police/Met is seldom if ever aimed at the foot soldiers but very much at the higher echelons of those services and the political leadership.
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#1877791
Flyingfemme wrote:Are we using different tests? Or different standards? Is it simply down to the old, "the more you look, the more you find"?

Yes. The UK is testing schoolchildren & university students twice weekly. Case rates for adults are low & stable but rising among children since the end of the summer holidays.

Image
Since there aren't hundreds of school age children dying of Covid every week it can be surmised that there is no longer a direct link between case numbers & deaths.
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By StratoTramp
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1877792
TopCat wrote:
Flyingfemme wrote:I simply don't believe that the general population here is that much different to (so much worse than) the rest of Europe. I personally know of nobody who has actually been ill with covid for many months and not that many who have tested positive.

And it's because of this attitude, ladies and gentlemen, that we are increasingly living in a post-truth, post-science society, where facts and evidence are not just irrelevant, but positively avoided.

The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.


It's still data of a kind - my wife does know 1 person who died right at the beginning but that's it. They were also Co-morbiditied to the max.

Lots of people are thinking I don't know anyone who has died or even have any friends who know anyone who has died, or if they do they may have been knocking on heaven's door anyway. People can however see all sorts of other drawbacks, suffering & the day to day ennui though. It is hard to know someone who has died as it's "just" 0.2% of UK population.

In terms of other effects - I know someone who's teenage daughter has been sectioned for trying to kill herself, pretty much as a direct result of lockdown psyops. He isn't doing much better. I get respect your elders, though thought most societies cared more about the young? There are friends with babies and small kids that have spent a large part of their life's looking at everyone as plague merchants.

Once again, covid isn't the only game in town. We've been vacinated, the risk is low for most. Let's get back to it whilst there are still things to get back to.

A lot of the official data has shown itself to be bs again and again and published by hypocrites. Dr. Lockdown especially. Or otherwise been distorted by politics. Why should people have more "faith" in that than their own experience.
Last edited by StratoTramp on Fri Oct 22, 2021 4:38 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1877794
Before vaccines we had a pretty close link between the rate of cases and the rate of hospitalisations and deaths.

Vaccination has separated those rates to a significant degree, but they still all travel in the same direction. So if cases are trending upwards, so will hospitalisations and deaths. The actual volume of cases is less important than the steepness of the trend but testing large numbers increases the confidence in the trend.

We are seeing a significant trend upwards in cases and that implies increased hospital load, when hospitals have no peak load capacity and are already under pressure. Hence the cries for further precautions to reduce the steepness of the trend line.....
#1877799
There's no "significant trend upwards" in people over the age of 25, only the 5-14 age group has a higher rate of hospitilisation than the January peak yet there are no reported Covid deaths in that age group. ONS hospitals latest insights.

Most of the reported Covid deaths seem to be people who are already extremely ill with other conditions, in hospital for those conditions, quite probably caught Covid in hospital & then died from other pre-existing illness within 28 days of a positive Covid test.
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By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1877810
The age group is important because it is likely that spread within schools will lead to spread within families and thus the wider community. That in turn will have an impact on both hospital admissions and deaths. It is also becoming clear that Covid affects cells in the brain which may have unlooked for long term impact on the young.
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By StratoTramp
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1877814
As will locking them up and further distorting their childhoods, if you think kids are anti-social now wait until the next generation who haven't been 'calibrated' by correct/old normal interaction either between peers or adults teaching them to automatically think DANGER/DISEASE/DEATH whenever they see another person. Humans are constantly calibrating off each other, take away other humans and people go fruitiloopy. Once again the kids have to suffer for the adults ("would somebody think of the children" :lol: )

You can't live life on "What If's" you have to make the the positive out of each day. Life is not guaranteed, live it. If anything covid has made that more true (though with vaccination very much less so). I still think "most" of us are likely to snuff it either from plane accidents, car accidents, cancer, heart attacks or falling over when we put both legs in one trouser hole. (Not in that order, hopefully on a flying forum).

But if you live long enough as we do these days eventually the big C will catch up. Was in 1 in 2 now? But it's only because we've mitigated all the other things that would get us sooner. We used to commonly die at 30-40, if we made it past 1 week. We've mitigated covid with the vacinne and more and more therapeutics let's move on. It wasn't the black death to start with.

That's until we 'cure' cancer maybe? Then it will be wear and tear :lol: You might even be able to get kidney's from GM :pig: s in the future.
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#1877862
Propwash wrote:... a great many GP practices.,, ]


Must be nationalised.

And I say that as a committed, absolutist, libertarian, capitalist. Enough is enough. If we're going to have a National Health Service, GPs need to be under State control with State wages and State performance standards, instead of this ridiculous shillyshallying situation that we have now.

Or, man up and give the service that customers want.
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#1877864
TopCat wrote:
Flyingfemme wrote:I simply don't believe that the general population here is that much different to (so much worse than) the rest of Europe. I personally know of nobody who has actually been ill with covid for many months and not that many who have tested positive.

And it's because of this attitude, ladies and gentlemen, that we are increasingly living in a post-truth, post-science society, where facts and evidence are not just irrelevant, but positively avoided.

The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.


Indeed, bang on. Also, the plural of "positive test" is not "we're all going to die".
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By flybymike
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1877866
johnm wrote:There's a whole raft of issues in play and some people have the capacity to do their own risk assessment but most don't.

The risk is people in close proximity can transmit the disease very easily. If they are vaccinated they transmit less and don't get so ill, if they then wear masks and keep apart they transmit even less. If everywhere is kept clean there is less virus to pick up.

Offering determined, consistent and coherent guidance based on those simple facts is what leaders should be doing.

...


Lack of consistency is not confined to leaders, including those on the forum.

Johnm wrote:
It seems that the double jabbed can still pass on the Delta variant with a viral load similar to those unvaccinated, it's just that the double jab mitigates the severity of disease suffered by that infected person.
#1877870
johnm wrote:Before vaccines we had a pretty close link between the rate of cases and the rate of hospitalisations and deaths.

Vaccination has separated those rates to a significant degree, but they still all travel in the same direction. So if cases are trending upwards, so will hospitalisations and deaths. The actual volume of cases is less important than the steepness of the trend but testing large numbers increases the confidence in the trend.

We are seeing a significant trend upwards in cases and that implies increased hospital load, when hospitals have no peak load capacity and are already under pressure. Hence the cries for further precautions to reduce the steepness of the trend line.....


Of course, that is absolutely true. Sick people will succumb to whatever comes along,, it is a statistical certainty that's run down the ages.

But we don't design society on edge cases. At some time, your time is up. Your only job is to make sure that you outlive everyone you know, so make the best of it. ;)
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By Paul_Sengupta
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1877878
StratoTramp wrote:Lots of people are thinking I don't know anyone who has died or even have any friends who know anyone who has died, or if they do they may have been knocking on heaven's door anyway.


I think it depends on how much you're involved in your local community. I know several people who died including a couple of friends. At one point we were losing one or two a week in the community to it.

StratoTramp wrote:Once again, covid isn't the only game in town.


No, but it is the deadliest communicable disease we've had in a while. Even with the vaccination programme, it's still killing over a hundred people a day.

StratoTramp wrote:We've been vacinated, the risk is low for most. Let's get back to it whilst there are still things to get back to.


Back to what? Most of us have been working throughout, and are going about many things.

low&slow wrote:Since there aren't hundreds of school age children dying of Covid every week it can be surmised that there is no longer a direct link between case numbers & deaths.


As Johnm says, there's still a direct link, just that it's an awful lot lower than it was before the vaccine. It also seems to be spreading an awful lot slower through vaccinated adults.

low&slow wrote:Most of the reported Covid deaths seem to be people who are already extremely ill with other conditions in hospital for those conditions, quite probably caught Covid in hospital


No, not most, they are high profile cases if they were to actually catch it in hospital.

low&slow wrote:then died from other pre-existing illness within 28 days of a positive Covid test.


If you believe that, then I'm afraid you've bought into the anti-restriction propaganda. The "they were at death's door" argument is untrue, and it's a bit weird to think that many thousands of people just happened to die of something else after catching covid. It's maybe more of the case that with vaccination, the sicker people and the unvaccinated are dying to a much larger extent than pre-vaccination, but one shouldn't think for a moment that people are catching covid and dying of something else.

StratoTramp wrote:We used to commonly die at 30-40, if we made it past 1 week.


I think this is a fallacy. The average age of dying was 30-something but that was because of a high incidence of child mortality. I believe if you made it past 12 that most people could expect to live into their 60s at least.

flybymike wrote:Lack of consistency is not confined to leaders, including those on the forum.


What about comprehension? ;-)

Just because some people who have been vaccinated can catch covid and pass it on, doesn't mean that *everyone* will, or that everyone will for as long a time as they would without being vaccinated.

eltonioni wrote:Of course, that is absolutely true. Sick people will succumb to whatever comes along,, it is a statistical certainty that's run down the ages.


What may be true of the extremely sick, but if you think it's only the extremely sick that are dying of covid then I guess you haven't been in a community that's been devastated by it.
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