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 johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1852395
This is why some of us keep banging on about risk management when others think there's a panacea which will suddenly allow normal life again.

While it is possible to visit people (even the elderly and vulnerable) and go to the pub and travel to a limited extent, that only works if the risks are assessed and managed with thought and care.

A complete return to normal across the globe is 2 years away at least and that's if we don't suffer a vaccine beating variant in the meantime.

If people get real much of everyday normal life in the UK can be resumed with a few manageable precautions, but if we all start getting into crowds and travelling and failing to quarantine expect lockdown to reappear.
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By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1852407
flybymike wrote:My original point was confined to the long term effects on the immune system of those who espoused living forever in a life of isolationism and mask wearing.

It was not.

No one talked about isolationism, either for now or forever. Mask wearing as a way of protecting others from one's germs on public transport is consideration for others, not isolationism.

You also asserted that the immune system confers herd immunity. It does not. Herd immunity is a state wherein so many people are immune to a disease that there are insufficient susceptible persons for the disease to take hold. Herd immunity to any disease has been achieved only with vaccines.

Back in the dark ages, we had bubonic plague, tetanus, smallpox, cholera, to name just a few, and no way of treating them or vaccinating against them.

We also had any number of minor bacterial infections that in the absence of antibiotics could quite easily kill you.

Asserting that the immune-system, God-given (if so, woefully underpowered, I'd have to say) or otherwise, is sufficient to protect humanity from the myriad diseases that resulted in a life span about half what we enjoy today, is at best, dangerously ill-informed.

The fact is, it's modern medicine, modern sanitation, and modern vaccines that enable us to supplement the immune system and allow us to live the life that we are fortunate enough to enjoy, relatively disease-free for much longer than our forbears.
Mike Tango, JAFO, kanga and 3 others liked this
By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1852411
Cessna571 wrote:The way EVOLUTION works is that a disease comes along, it kills some of us, the rest have immune systems that can deal with it, they survive to procreate and the human race continues.

The problem? that works on a macro level.

There isn't the remotest evolutionary benefit for the human race from a disease that kills mostly people of an age that have already reproduced.
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By flybymike
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1852414
flybymike wrote:
My original point was confined to the long term effects on the immune system of those who espoused living forever in a life of isolationism and mask wearing.


TopCat wrote:
It was not.


OK Officer Dibble, you just carry on deciding for yourself what my points are, (I mean, who am I to know, I’m only the one who bloody well makes’ em) and you just carry on inventing for yourself any further unfounded and untrue assertions and allegations about my beliefs and opinions. No apology required.

I promise I won’t do the same to you.
By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1852421
flybymike wrote:
flybymike wrote:
My original point was confined to the long term effects on the immune system of those who espoused living forever in a life of isolationism and mask wearing.


TopCat wrote:
It was not.


OK Officer Dibble, you just carry on deciding for yourself what my points are, (I mean, who am I to know, I’m only the one who bloody well makes’ em) and you just carry on inventing for yourself any further unfounded and untrue assertions and allegations about my beliefs and opinions. No apology required.

I promise I won’t do the same to you.


Well, I was just responding to this post of yours:

flybymike wrote:God gave us an inbuilt immune system with which to fend off transmissible diseases. It is the happy circumstance which ultimately allows us herd immunity.
Locking ourselves away from any hint of exposure to transmissible disease will of course (not) work wonders for maintaining this natural immune system which has seen us all through the development of mankind over the ages.
Anyone who sees permanent mask wearing and social distancing as a new norm is stark staring bonkers.


Your comment about herd immunity is simply wrong, no one is suggesting locking ourselves away from any hint of exposure to any hint of transmissible disease, and I disagree that mask wearing in some circumstances as a new and hopefully temporary norm is bonkers.

Please explain where I've misrespresented you, and I'll gladly apologise.

And if you have any evidence that mask wearing compromises the immune system, I'll be pleased to read that as well. No rush.
johnm liked this
#1852428
TopCat wrote:
Cessna571 wrote:The way EVOLUTION works is that a disease comes along, it kills some of us, the rest have immune systems that can deal with it, they survive to procreate and the human race continues.

The problem? that works on a macro level.

There isn't the remotest evolutionary benefit for the human race from a disease that kills mostly people of an age that have already reproduced.


Agreed.

It does kill young uns too.
Importantly the young uns it doesn’t kill procreate, and their offspring are immune.

The old ones are collateral damage. They don’t really matter as far as evolution is concerned once they are past the age to reproduce.

Once they’ve reproduced they are out of the evolution game.

So what is being spouted by my ex friend is that he is in his 20’s, young and fit, his immune system will most probably fight it off, so he’ll (and this is the important phrase) “Trust his immune system rather than a vaccine”
By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1852430
Cessna571 wrote:Importantly the young uns it doesn’t kill procreate, and their offspring are immune.

We don't know that yet, do we?

My OH has chickenpox antibodies, though she's never had it - her older brothers caught it while her mum was pregnant with her. So her mum's immune response created antibodies that crossed the placenta.

But it's not generally true that children are immune to the diseases their parents have had, AIUI.
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#1852447
Cessna571 wrote:So what is being spouted by my ex friend is that he is in his 20’s, young and fit, his immune system will most probably fight it off, so he’ll (and this is the important phrase) “Trust his immune system rather than a vaccine”


Unfortunately, he could very well be wrong. As I said earlier, I have a friend who is young and was otherwise fit and healthy who has been suffering from the effects of COVID for six months now.
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By PeteSpencer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1852458
It always amazes me that 'disease' has taken so long to find a way to wipe out huge swathes of the human race:

Of course it has had a few practice runs in wiping out unprotected populations (measles in Alaska in 1910s and again in Polynesia a few years later) spring to mind.

But it wasn't till mid 1980s that the HIV (0r HTLV3 as it was then) hit the jackpot and went for the obvious: the immune system.

Covid has scored another blinder by going for the lungs and triggering a massive over-response by the immune system.

However the slick development of vaccines (given a head start by having had a trial run with SARS and Ebola) gives me cause for hope, as does the fact that HIV was ultimately conquered by anti (retro)-viral drugs, when 'they' said it couldn't be done.

This will be the gamechanger IMHO.

In the meantime all this whingeing when the government , having given due warning of the possibility, postpones the unlocking in the face of incontrovertible evidence upon the advice of the scientists, has got to stop.

Sure, the leisure industry will take another hit, but to all the soft-palmed baristas- there is plenty of work out here in the fields of East Anglia. :wink:

edit: sp (again)
Last edited by PeteSpencer on Sat Jun 12, 2021 5:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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#1852461
JAFO wrote:
Cessna571 wrote:So what is being spouted by my ex friend is that he is in his 20’s, young and fit, his immune system will most probably fight it off, so he’ll (and this is the important phrase) “Trust his immune system rather than a vaccine”


Unfortunately, he could very well be wrong. As I said earlier, I have a friend who is young and was otherwise fit and healthy who has been suffering from the effects of COVID for six months now.


I know that, you know that,

but there’s videos all over YouTube telling people to “Trust their immune system” and bizarrely he’s taking 1000mg of Vitamin D a day or something ridiculous.

“Professor Zingdavi says to do so, and he knows what he’s talking about”.

You can’t argue with these people, they tell you they are “following the real science”.

Problem is, they’ll most probably survive.
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#1852475
PeteSpencer wrote:In the meantime all this whingeing when the government , having given due warning of the possibility, postpones the unlocking in the face of incontrovertible evidence upon the advice of the scientists, has got to stop.

Sure, the leisure industry will take another hit, but to all the soft-palmed baristas- there is plenty of work out here in the fields of East Anglia. :wink:

It’s not “just” the leisure industry - we are all financially linked in complex ways. Letting some starve because you consider their businesses ‘non-essential’ is unwise. People have put up with unheard of constraints on their lives, and their livings, made careful plans and they are faced with another round of postponements. The business lost will never be recouped. People are running at a loss, just to keep going until ‘things improve’. This cannot continue. Some will lose all hope and never recover. Others will, perhaps wisely, choose not to risk their futures and not begin ventures. We will all be poorer, and not just financially.
johnm, Paultheparaglider, flybymike and 1 others liked this
By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1852477
There are very significant issues brewing:

Trade across the Channel is down 24% with the rest of the world 4% there's a serious shortage of labour in farming and hospitality. The Northern Ireland protocol issues offer a foretaste of what is to come in the rest of the UK around October.

The music industry is in dire straights, both popular and classical, as concert halls and other venues tentatively open at levels that are not sustainable from a financial perspective. Theatres are in similar difficulties.

The NHS still has no plans to develop peak load capacity, its staff are on their beam ends and facing a huge backlog of normal workload, even if the rise in Covid cases doesn't generate a corresponding increase in hospital admissions.

Long haul travel won't recover for at least 2 years

Supply chain issues from Suez incident, Brexit and the Pandemic are affecting the construction and IT industries significantly
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