Coronavirus

[Archied]

6 hours ago, Bob The Badger said:

Sorry to hear that mate, but glad you're ok. 

it does annoy me how some people dismiss what's happening because it's not happened to them. 

I'm glad you posted your experience. 

There’s a lot of stuff happening to a lot of people through this 

[Archied]

4 hours ago, ramesses said:

Yes, I heard about a similar (isolated) death in Switzerland. But I expect that this sort of news will only be a concern to those who don’t realise that the groups of people who are first in line for the vaccine in Iceland, Switzerland, Portugal or elsewhere will continue to die at the same rate - unrelated to the vaccine.

Deaths and adverse events linked in time with the administration of ‘any’ vaccine are thoroughly investigated in the UK even when a causal link seems very unlikely and I’d be surprised if the same investigations don’t take place in other European countries.

You would hope that any deaths within 28 days of having the vaccine be thoroughly investigated and no I don’t think it s best to just wait as you expect a few deaths out of a large set of people

[Archied]

Swiss medical authorities dismissed rumors of BioNTech-Pfizer coronavirus vaccine causing the death of an elderly patient.

The death of the 91-year-old in the central canton of Lucerne was widely reported in Switzerland. The Swiss agency for therapeutic products, Swissmedic, confirmed the incident on Monday, but said the patient already suffered from multiple illnesses.

"Clarifications by cantonal health authorities and Swissmedic determined that, as a result of the illness history and disease course, a link between the death and the COVID-19 vaccine was highly unlikely," it said in a statement.

"Neither the medical history nor the acute course of disease suggests a direct causal link between the COVID-19 vaccine and the death," it said.

The regulator said the death certificate would list the previous illnesses as the person's "natural cause of death."
 

==============================================================================================

very marked difference in the approach to the importance of someone’s death because they were old with underlying health issues 

[ramit]

6 hours ago, Eddie said:

I've just checked a few Icelandic news websites, and there's nothing. 

The nearest I could find was this from Reuters last month.

It's been in the local internet news sites, but i did look for an English language link about it, but like you i found none.

https://www.visir.is/g/20212056794d/tilkynnt-um-thrju-daudsfoll-i-kjolfar-bolusetningar

[Tamworthram]

8 hours ago, Bob The Badger said:

Here's what he could have said:

We unequivocally support the decision by Boris Johnson's government to enforce a lockdown and we urge every British citizen to obey the law and stay safe for the good of the NHS and our country.

However, we strongly protest at the way the government led by Mr. Johnson has dealt with this issue and constantly changed his mind on an almost daily basis, unlike the leaders of the devolved nations. His handling has been nothing short of shambolic.

However, we will take this matter up again in Parliament and pursue accountability after we are through these dreadful times. And we once again urge people to support a lockdown and do their civic duty for the benefit of themselves, their loved ones and the country as a whole.

See, it's easy to agree and protest at the same time.

So this, even though it’s just word, would have made you feel much better than feeling sickened? If so, fair enough, if it makes some people feel better whilst not actually changing anything so be it.

I like your first and final paragraphs but would leave out the middle one.

[Albert]

1 hour ago, Archied said:

Swiss medical authorities dismissed rumors of BioNTech-Pfizer coronavirus vaccine causing the death of an elderly patient.

The death of the 91-year-old in the central canton of Lucerne was widely reported in Switzerland. The Swiss agency for therapeutic products, Swissmedic, confirmed the incident on Monday, but said the patient already suffered from multiple illnesses.

"Clarifications by cantonal health authorities and Swissmedic determined that, as a result of the illness history and disease course, a link between the death and the COVID-19 vaccine was highly unlikely," it said in a statement.

"Neither the medical history nor the acute course of disease suggests a direct causal link between the COVID-19 vaccine and the death," it said.

The regulator said the death certificate would list the previous illnesses as the person's "natural cause of death."
 

==============================================================================================

very marked difference in the approach to the importance of someone’s death because they were old with underlying health issues 

It's not about 'importance of someone's death', it about a causal link. People do indeed die, the question is what the cause is. If you vaccinate enough people, the expectation is that some will die for unrelated reasons in the following day. 

At this point, over 13 million people have received a Covid-19 vaccine. To estimate the number of people that are expected to die within the following days, all things being equal, we just need a daily death rate. For the UK, it's about  25 people per million per day, and about 20 people per million per day worldwide. The reason the UK is higher is that the population is on average older than the World as a whole. Anyhow, from this, if 13 million people have received the vaccine, you expect that hundreds of such cases of people dying within a day or two of the vaccine would have happened already. These will include things like strokes, heart attacks, etc, which are the ones that will cause initial suspicion. 

The key is investigating each death that occurs, and looking at the statistics as a whole to assure that there isn't some major side effect that wasn't picked up in trials. 

1 hour ago, ramit said:

It's been in the local internet news sites, but i did look for an English language link about it, but like you i found none.

https://www.visir.is/g/20212056794d/tilkynnt-um-thrju-daudsfoll-i-kjolfar-bolusetningar

Cheers, didn't realise you could read Icelandic. Good spot. 

[Bob The Badger]

8 hours ago, ariotofmyown said:

This x1000. Have people always been so bad at understanding things that don't happen to them personally, or has it got worse lately?

I *think* it's always been like this. It's just the availability heuristic in action. 

[Angry Ram]

10 hours ago, Bubbles said:

??? You taking the piss?

They’ve made mistakes that have led us to be one of the worst affected countries in the world. Their handling of this pandemic has been generally, abysmal, thank duck this vaccine is being rolled out, otherwise we’d be ducked.

Not saying I’d do a better job, what an immature comment for you to make. The point is we’ve handled it atrociously. 

Nah not taking the piss at all.. Surely you are.

It’s all their fault ain’t it.. Still if it makes you feel better, hay ho.

[GboroRam]

14 minutes ago, Angry Ram said:

Nah not taking the piss at all.. Surely you are.

It’s all their fault ain’t it.. Still if it makes you feel better, hay ho.

The response has been entirely Boris and his chums. Can't pin it on anyone else. Every failing that has happened in this country is down to their decisions. 

I don't think anyone is blaming the virus on them, but it's entirely down to them what we did in response to it.

[Mucker1884]

I won't be going out this evening.  I'm staying in to wash my hair

 

... with Johnson's No More Tiers baby shampoo!

[G STAR RAM]

12 minutes ago, GboroRam said:

The response has been entirely Boris and his chums. Can't pin it on anyone else. Every failing that has happened in this country is down to their decisions. 

I don't think anyone is blaming the virus on them, but it's entirely down to them what we did in response to it.

And worryingly, so many of these decisions are voted through Parliament by Keir and his chums without the slightest opposition.

[BIllyD]

4 minutes ago, GboroRam said:

The response has been entirely Boris and his chums. Can't pin it on anyone else. Every failing that has happened in this country is down to their decisions. 

I don't think anyone is blaming the virus on them, but it's entirely down to them what we did in response to it.

That IMO is an opinion based upon a dislike of the party. "Every failing", what does that even mean, so they are to blame for people not social distancing for example. If we look at the majority of every other country in Europe, every one has the same problem, did they all fail ?

They have made bad calls based on hindsight, wrong calls on getting the balance between maintaining the economy and keeping the spread under control, but how can you attribute everything that has failed down to them,  their counter argument I'm sure would be that it would have been a lot worse.

[GboroRam]

10 minutes ago, BIllyD said:

That IMO is an opinion based upon a dislike of the party. "Every failing", what does that even mean, so they are to blame for people not social distancing for example. If we look at the majority of every other country in Europe, every one has the same problem, did they all fail ?

They have made bad calls based on hindsight, wrong calls on getting the balance between maintaining the economy and keeping the spread under control, but how can you attribute everything that has failed down to them,  their counter argument I'm sure would be that it would have been a lot worse.

The government have failed to get through to the general population the importance of social distancing and wearing masks. I fear the message of how important vaccination is will also fail. 

The population is what it is - if they aren't following the rules the government needs to enforce them more. And maybe lead by example instead of paying lip service to their own rules.

There is only one party which has any role in making decisions. Doesn't matter if you like that party or not. 

[Spanish]

9 hours ago, ramit said:

In the last 2 days 3 people who received Pfizer Covid19 vaccine in Iceland have died.  Doctors say that it cannot be determined whether they died as a result of taking the vaccine, or some underlying age linked medical condition.

obviously they died 'with' the vaccine! 

Terrible news though but with one of the target groups being vulnerable I suppose it was always going to be a possibility.  The story will given ammo to both sides of the argument though but clearly it is not the silver bullet that some like to think it is.

[ariotofmyown]

9 minutes ago, G STAR RAM said:

And worryingly, so many of these decisions are voted through Parliament by Keir and his chums without the slightest opposition.

Starmer: We need a national lockdown before things get even worse.

Johnson: no we don't, you are a typical north London inhumane lawyer who wants to ruin the economy.

a few days later....

Johnson: things have got even worse, so we need a national lockdown.

Starmer: I know Labour should oppose this lockdown to please @G STAR RAM, who certainly would not accuse us of playing politics if we did, but we are going to vote with the government on this. A delayed, botched lockdown is better than no lockdown.

(Keep repeating every 2-3 months)

[G STAR RAM]

4 minutes ago, ariotofmyown said:

Starmer: We need a national lockdown before things get even worse.

Johnson: no we don't, you are a typical north London inhumane lawyer who wants to ruin the economy.

a few days later....

Johnson: things have got even worse, so we need a national lockdown.

Starmer: I know Labour should oppose this lockdown to please @G STAR RAM, who certainly would not accuse us of playing politics if we did, but we are going to vote with the government on this. A delayed, botched lockdown is better than no lockdown.

(Keep repeating every 2-3 months)

Yeah because that is literally the only thing Government have voted on in the last 10 months. 

And I am sure you can see that the political slant came about in a post by one of the moderators rather than being stated by me.

[Albert]

10 minutes ago, BIllyD said:

That IMO is an opinion based upon a dislike of the party. "Every failing", what does that even mean, so they are to blame for people not social distancing for example. If we look at the majority of every other country in Europe, every one has the same problem, did they all fail ?

They have made bad calls based on hindsight, wrong calls on getting the balance between maintaining the economy and keeping the spread under control, but how can you attribute everything that has failed down to them,  their counter argument I'm sure would be that it would have been a lot worse.

Honestly, Europe's response as a whole has indeed been a failure. Some countries have done better than others, but the lack of locking down at least the borders from outside Europe, and this incessant drive to 'open up' during the summer, is what has lead to all of this. Just because the UK's neighbours made the dame mistakes, however, doesn't make what's happened okay. 

Equally, we know all this 'balancing the economy and keeping spread under control' is absolute complete and total nonsense at this point. The countries that have managed their economies best are the ones that have controlled the pandemic the best. There is no getting around that fact. This, however, at it's core is what has caused all the issues in Europe though, this ideology that it's lives versus the economy.

As macabre as the economy v lives movement has been, it would at least not be so horrific had there actually been an argument to be had there, had there actually been benefits to be had. There weren't, and it was predicted right from the start that it'd be that way. Pandemics are driven by number of cases, and the best way to prevent spread is simply not to have the virus in the first place, otherwise to maintain control the only option you have is enough restrictions to maintain an R number below 1. Unfortunately for this pandemic, the level of restrictions to achieve that for most countries was lockdown level restrictions. That's not fair on a population long term, so hard borders and elimination should have been the plan. 

Countries that have done well against the virus didn't just 'luck out', they followed the health advice. It's no coincidence that places that have successfully dealt with epidemics in recent memory, and had well developed plans, are exactly the countries that have done well. I do wonder how the USA would have done if the Trump administration didn't dismantle their pandemic preparedness schemes, but that'll remain one of histories great 'what ifs'. 

Basically, this argument of 'yeah, but the rest of Europe', is like failing an exam and declaring 'well, others did too'. Awesome, that's the crowd you're placing yourself in. 

[Albert]

11 minutes ago, Spanish said:

obviously they died 'with' the vaccine! 

Terrible news though but with one of the target groups being vulnerable I suppose it was always going to be a possibility.  The story will given ammo to both sides of the argument though but clearly it is not the silver bullet that some like to think it is.

I don't think anyone claimed the vaccine ever was a silver bullet, as it takes time to generate an immunity with them, and... you know, actually administering them properly, rather than just deciding on the fly to conduct a new stage 3 trial with your country. 

Also, as noted above, just from a statistical point of view, you expect from 13 million people vaccinated that a few hundred would die from other causes within a few days of receiving it. There's no evidence to this point of any of the vaccines causing a death. 

[Norman]

12 minutes ago, GboroRam said:

The government have failed to get through to the general population the importance of social distancing and wearing masks. I fear the message of how important vaccination is will also fail. 

The population is what it is - if they aren't following the rules the government needs to enforce them more.

This sound horrible. 

You're asking for a tyrannical government. Which doesn't surprise me one bit. 

We live in a large, multicultural, Liberal democracy. That is part of the problem. But to have personal responsibility and personal freedoms eroded away? No thanks.why should the majority have a tyrannical government, as pointed out last night in the speech last night.

[Albert]

3 minutes ago, Norman said:

This sound horrible. 

You're asking for a tyrannical government. Which doesn't surprise me one bit. 

We live in a large, multicultural, Liberal democracy. That is part of the problem. But to have personal responsibility and personal freedoms eroded away? No thanks.why should the majority have a tyrannical government, as pointed out last night in the speech last night.

...yet, there are free, by definition more democratic countries, that have managed to achieve this without tyranny, and their people are better off for it.