Coronavirus update - NO MORE RESTRICTIONS

[Croesy Blue]

Re: Coronavirus update

Some very encouraging vaccine.news from Scotland.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56153600

We will get english date backing this up later too which should give a much bigger sample size.

So much for quasi ineffective from Macron and Germany about the AZ vaccines. Absolutely the worst bit of playing politics I've ever seen.

The confidence intervals obviously overlap but this shows AZ is more effectove than Pfizer at preventing serious illness.

So much focus was giving to that study in south africa that didn't even have enough participants to be statistically significant.

This is great news, we should be getting a normal summer after this

[Gofer Blue]

Re: Coronavirus update

We will get english date backing this up later too which should give a much bigger sample size.

So much for quasi ineffective from Macron and Germany about the AZ vaccines. Absolutely the worst bit of playing politics I've ever seen.

The confidence intervals obviously overlap but this shows AZ is more effectove than Pfizer at preventing serious illness.

So much focus was giving to that study in south africa that didn't even have enough participants to be statistically significant.

This is great news, we should be getting a normal summer after this

Yes, I thought that was a rash decision at the time and would come back to bite them. I would imagine that there must be quite a few folks over there who will be upset to hear the news today, the ones whose elderly relatives, i.e. the over 65's, have died, and whose lives might well have been saved had they been given the chance to have the vaccine.

[goats]

Re: Coronavirus update

We will get english date backing this up later too which should give a much bigger sample size.

So much for quasi ineffective from Macron and Germany about the AZ vaccines. Absolutely the worst bit of playing politics I've ever seen.

The confidence intervals obviously overlap but this shows AZ is more effectove than Pfizer at preventing serious illness.

So much focus was giving to that study in south africa that didn't even have enough participants to be statistically significant.

This is great news, we should be getting a normal summer after this

Quite glad to be free of the clutches of Europe now.....roll out seems a bit of a mess over there too

[Croesy Blue]

Re: Coronavirus update

Yes, I thought that was a rash decision at the time and would come back to bite them. I would imagine that there must be quite a few folks over there who will be upset to hear the news today, the ones whose elderly relatives, i.e. the over 65's, have died, and whose lives might well have been saved had they been given the chance to have the vaccine.

Not giving it to over 65s will literally have killed people.

I know Macron enjoys f*cking grannies but this is taking it too far imo

[Croesy Blue]

Re: Coronavirus update

Quite glad to be free of the clutches of Europe now.....roll out seems a bit of a mess over there too

I think this is the one thing that has made me think being out of the EU is a good thing.

I don't think it was worth giving up our free trade and freedom of movement but this has been a positive.

I think the tory government would have gone on their own with the vaccine campaign anyway. We committed money to Oxford nd AZ while still in the EU remember.

[life on mars]

Re: Coronavirus update

See Boris has uttered the obvious that people must learn to live with the coronavirus just as they do with flu in the long term due to the availability of a vaccine .

"The only reason I'm able to say...we must learn to live with COVID as we live with flu...in the long term is of course because we have this vaccination program and the capability to evolve our vaccines," he told parliament.

Makes sense to me.

[xsnaggle]

Re: Coronavirus update

I think this is the one thing that has made me think being out of the EU is a good thing.

I don't think it was worth giving up our free trade and freedom of movement but this has been a positive.

I think the tory government would have gone on their own with the vaccine campaign anyway. We committed money to Oxford nd AZ while still in the EU remember.

We weren't in the EU, were were in the transition period, discussing a trade deal, given 12 moths for the old status quo to cease.

[surge]

Re: Coronavirus update

I spoke to Heather Lewis who's a public health consultant working for Public Health Wales leads a specialist team in the Cwm Taf area which monitors and informs public health decisions on managing the virus there.

She helped inform the local lockdown we saw there in the autumn. She laid out a few reasons why RCT has been so unable to shake off high levels of community transmission.

These include:

- Mobility -

Car ownership is much lower in RCT than other places.

As people are more reliant on public transport which opens up more lines of transmission. Especially elderly people are reliant on others giving them a lift to get to places like a doctor's appointment.

This mixing of vulnerable people with those who may well be asymptomatic is another way the virus can spread.

This inability to travel also poses an issue for healthcare planners with regard to testing.

If people are not able to travel far, they may be unable to get a test (you wouldn’t want people with symptoms hopping on the bus).

This means it is harder to get a handle on just how much Covid there is in the area.

- Employment -

People in RCT are more likely to be in roles which require face to face interaction with others.

Carers, supermarket workers, manual labourers - all those professions that we gladly clapped for months because the pandemic showed us just how essential they are.

But it is the nature of these roles that you are more likely to catch Covid as you have more face to face contact with people.

Added to this you have the fact these jobs are, in the main, not well paid and often insecure, which leads to people feeling they cannot miss work.

- Family ties -

This is a big one and in part ties into the employment side.

With lower incomes childcare is less affordable and jobs are less likely to be done from home.

This means a reliance on grandparents and other relatives. This increases lines of transmission.

Plus, the lockdown necessitated a bigger behavior change in the Valleys than Cardiff for example.

Often in the some Valley community there are multiple families living on one street.

I live in Cardiff & know no one on my street and never go in their house. My behaviour didn't have to change.

If my mum lived on my street the transition would've been a harder one to make in terms of the change to day to day life.

- Housing -
Even if you had 100% compliance with the rules, the nature of much of the housing in the area means the virus easily spread.

Smaller houses mean it's harder to isolate and social distance.

It also makes the lockdown harder to endure, esp when you can't leave home.

Even if all these other factors that help the virus spread were not in place, RCT would still likely have more deaths than average.

All those underlying health conditions like heart disease, obesity, diabetes and stroke are above average in the Valleys.

This is just a snap shot. You can read the full analysis here:

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/w...death-19776398

Another interesting thread from main journalist at Walesonline looking at covid. When we talk about lessons learnt from covid we should recognise that so much of what's happened has been built on the decade(s) before.

[Croesy Blue]

Re: Coronavirus update

We weren't in the EU, were were in the transition period, discussing a trade deal, given 12 moths for the old status quo to cease.

Doesn’t make a difference we were operating under the rules.

Being in the EU wouldn’t have presented any barrier to how we invested in the development of the vaccine.

[xsnaggle]

Re: Coronavirus update

Doesn’t make a difference we were operating under the rules.

Being in the EU wouldn’t have presented any barrier to how we invested in the development of the vaccine.

No I don't think it would have stopped them at all.

[Rjk]

Re: Coronavirus update

https://twitter.com/allthecitizens/status/1363903253956734980?s=19

this thread...

[the other bob wilson]

Re: Coronavirus update

https://twitter.com/allthecitizens/s...956734980?s=19

this thread...

will I'm afraid be ignored by so many who now believe that Johnson and his Cabinet of political pygmies and chancers have earned their vote because they have, finally, done something that has worked when it comes to tackling Covid and, let's not forget, they also "got Brexit done".

Meanwhile, as we approach the first anniversary of the claim that 20,000 dead in the UK would be a "good" outcome, 100,000 more than that figure have now died - around a year ago, Gluey was posting links to forecasts which said only around 7,000 would die in the UK, that many, and more, were dying in a week until recently. Despite this, none of it seems to affect those who have had the ultimate responsibility for deciding our Covid policy and I have to wonder what more needs to go wrong before the forty odd per cent start to abandon their blind faith in the UK Government?

[goats]

Re: Coronavirus update

will I'm afraid be ignored by so many who now believe that Johnson and his Cabinet of political pygmies and chancers have earned their vote because they have, finally, done something that has worked when it comes to tackling Covid and, let's not forget, they also "got Brexit done".

Meanwhile, as we approach the first anniversary of the claim that 20,000 dead in the UK would be a "good" outcome, 100,000 more than that figure have now died - around a year ago, Gluey was posting links to forecasts which said only around 7,000 would die in the UK, that many, and more, were dying in a week until recently. Despite this, none of it seems to affect those who have had the ultimate responsibility for deciding our Covid policy and I have to wonder what more needs to go wrong before the forty odd per cent start to abandon their blind faith in the UK Government?

Maybe folks think no other party would have done much different? Unprecedented times as we keep hearing.....who knows?

[the other bob wilson]

Re: Coronavirus update

Maybe folks think no other party would have done much different? Unprecedented times as we keep hearing.....who knows?

That implies that a year ago people were expecting to receive news that, no matter what party was in power, people were expecting the Prime Minister to take a holiday as the virus was establishing itself in this country, they expected the PM not to bother attending the first five COBRA meetings in which the virus was discussed, they expected the PM to contradict scientific advice on shaking hands with the result that he ended up in intensive care with Covid. People expected all sorts of wildly optimistic claims about "having the virus on the run" despite ten years of Conservative government having left us dangerously low on PPE and a "dress rehearsal" back in 2017 for what might happen in the event of a pandemic hitting this country which was basically just ignored.

I could go on and on and on about the number of mistakes, cock ups and misjudgements made by the UK Government when it comes to Covid because the list is almost endless, but I won't - instead, this video only goes up to early May last year;-

https://twitter.com/bydonkeys/status/1354175393327153152

[A Quiet Monkfish]

Re: Coronavirus update

That implies that a year ago people were expecting to receive news that, no matter what party was in power, people were expecting the Prime Minister to take a holiday as the virus was establishing itself in this country, they expected the PM not to bother attending the first five COBRA meetings in which the virus was discussed, they expected the PM to contradict scientific advice on shaking hands with the result that he ended up in intensive care with Covid. People expected all sorts of wildly optimistic claims about "having the virus on the run" despite ten years of Conservative government having left us dangerously low on PPE and a "dress rehearsal" back in 2017 for what might happen in the event of a pandemic hitting this country which was basically just ignored.

I could go on and on and on about the number of mistakes, cock ups and misjudgements made by the UK Government when it comes to Covid because the list is almost endless, but I won't - instead, this video only goes up to early May last year;-

https://twitter.com/bydonkeys/status...75393327153152

There's a hundred different slants you can put on this. The UK has a high death rate because we have so many obese/diabetic people, and we record deaths differently. The fact that cases & deaths trickled to almost zero after everything in that blog before surging to the heights of this winter suggests that those things had no real affect. The fact we left the EU after all those idiots who didn't know better voted for it, and now watch as the EU regions are in a civil war over lack of vaccines.

Seriously, do you ever let up on having a go at the Tories ? Personally I couldn't care about any of them..