Coronavirus

[G STAR RAM]

1 minute ago, Stive Pesley said:

And to be fair I dont think anyone posting in this thread is either. Or elsewhere- I've not seen anyone advocating for it anywhere.

It feels like it's only the usual media channels making it a debate for the sake of their ratings. People are literally arguing against an opinion that no one actually holds

But Covid passports or certificates or whatever they are being referred to are pretty much mandatory vaccination through the back door.

[Gone]

4 hours ago, Stive Pesley said:

the precise details of that split, I don't pretend to know - nor could anyone

Oh yes they could.......I think you’ll find one poster who goes by the name similar to the Uncle from a very famous British comedy would know

[Sith Happens]

57 minutes ago, G STAR RAM said:

But Covid passports or certificates or whatever they are being referred to are pretty much mandatory vaccination through the back door.

Not if a negative test will suffice.  I don't see them being used for anything other than travel so shouldn't be  a hardship. 

If pubs etc bring something in then yes i see it being problematic but no one is suggesting that as far as I know. 

Travel is the only area I'd support either negative test or proof of vaccine. 

 

[Tamworthram]

1 hour ago, G STAR RAM said:

But Covid passports or certificates or whatever they are being referred to are pretty much mandatory vaccination through the back door.

I'm not having a vaccination through my back door.?

[Eddie]

12 minutes ago, TexasRam said:

Oh yes they could.......I think you’ll find one poster who goes by the name similar to the Uncle from a very famous British comedy would know

Is there anyone on here called 'Mort'? Testing, testing... @mort... nope.

[Sith Happens]

12 minutes ago, Tamworthram said:

I'm not having a vaccination through my back door.?

I did read the Vatican were going to insist on vaccination if you wanted to keep your job. I don't think employees will be too put out as having to endure a small p rick now and then is not uncommon in the catholic church. 

 

[Gone]

3 minutes ago, Sith Happens said:

I did read the Vatican were going to insist on vaccination if you wanted to keep your job. I don't think employees will be too put out as having to endure a small p rick now and then is not uncommon in the catholic church. 

 

[ariotofmyown]

5 hours ago, Eddie said:

See you in the beer thread. When this crap is over, I would be happy to buy you a beer.

Before this is arranged, I want to see some forecasts of the number of pints that will be consumed!

[Eddie]

56 minutes ago, ariotofmyown said:

Before this is arranged, I want to see some forecasts of the number of pints that will be consumed!

Pints? PINTS?

33 or 75 cl, please. Or 37.5 cl if you prefer Gueuzes.

[Albert]

11 hours ago, maxjam said:

What was the actual point?  I've spent the last few posts talking about the AstroZenica study (17k ppl is not a small study imo, but no doubt someone will tell me otherwise...)

It's not a small study, but it's also not sufficient to say '100% protection against serious illness and death'. Scaling 17k to the UK's population is a factor of around 4k. It's very promising, but just repeating '100% protection' isn't the best idea. 

11 hours ago, maxjam said:

Flu, measles, food poisoning, fall over - can't live your life in a bubble.

 

11 hours ago, maxjam said:

Again, you protect yourself.  If others haven't had their jab and still gone on holiday, surely thats their decision?

A pandemic is a bit different, as people who catch it pass it on to more people. The aim should be to end transmission, particularly given the rise of more and more variants across the planet, some with the potential to be outside the protection of some vaccines. 

11 hours ago, maxjam said:

Again, just shift the responsibility to the customer in the small print - everytime I go to the pub on the way back from watching Derby the sign in the pub carpark tells me vehicles left there are done so at the owners risk.

Again, the risk is that as people pass it on, they pass it on to more people. The aim should be to end transmission. 

[Archied]

4 hours ago, GboroRam said:

Don't forget there is a group of people who for whatever reason can't get the vaccine. For example people with immune system problems. The reason why herd immunity is important is for those people who for one reason or another can't take the vaccine. 

For the record I'm not in favour of mandatory vaccination. I don't care if people need a jab before they travel, that's nothing new and is the standard for a number of countries and a number of vaccinations. What we need to do is have an open discussion with the public in general about what vaccines are and how they work; be honest about their safety (that's not a guarantee it's safe - some people will be ill from a vaccination, but fleetingly small numbers) and talk science to educate those people who listen to pseudoscience that calls out incorrectly that vaccines are inherently dangerous.

Great post , I’m also very big on not demonising those that don’t want to take it because they have fears about vaccines, no matter whether you ,I or anybody think those fears are irrational or stupid ,they are very real to them and as I say we extend ( hopefully) a level of understanding to things like ocd and anxiety in people

[maxjam]

16 minutes ago, Albert said:

It's not a small study, but it's also not sufficient to say '100% protection against serious illness and death'. Scaling 17k to the UK's population is a factor of around 4k. It's very promising, but just repeating '100% protection' isn't the best idea. 

Although if its good enough for AstroZenica to confident enough in publishing the data, its good enough for this bloke on a forum.

Out of interest just how many people was the vaccine itself trialled on?

 

18 minutes ago, Albert said:

A pandemic is a bit different, as people who catch it pass it on to more people. The aim should be to end transmission, particularly given the rise of more and more variants across the planet, some with the potential to be outside the protection of some vaccines. 

Again, the risk is that as people pass it on, they pass it on to more people. The aim should be to end transmission. 

I'm not going to argue with you other than to say I'll have to disagree with this.  If people have been vaccinated and according to AstroZenica it is 100% effective at keeping you out of hospital, life should return to normal.  

The alternative is regardless of covid, we shut the world every year to control seasonal flu etc. 

[Albert]

18 minutes ago, maxjam said:

Although if its good enough for AstroZenica to confident enough in publishing the data, its good enough for this bloke on a forum.

Out of interest just how many people was the vaccine itself trialled on?

There's a difference between the key statistics of the study, and the 'nobody got serious ill or died' points. Again, note how the key figures they quote are all given with confidence intervals. The 100% thing is just marketing. 

There were a similar number in most stage 3 trials. The point is though we're talking about rare instances, the point is getting a clear idea of how rare those rare instances are, and you don't get a full picture of 1 in 50k+ events from a sample a third that size. 

18 minutes ago, maxjam said:

I'm not going to argue with you other than to say I'll have to disagree with this.  If people have been vaccinated and according to AstroZenica it is 100% effective at keeping you out of hospital, life should return to normal.  

Not everyone can get immunised, some people don't respond to vaccines. There will be no point where 100% of the country is immune to serious illness or death, it's about reaching a point where through immunity, the effective R number remains below 1 even without restrictions. That's where life goes back to normal. Until then, a staged reopening keeping that number below 1 seems the most effective plan to not waste all the time and effort put in to date. 

18 minutes ago, maxjam said:

The alternative is regardless of covid, we shut the world every year to control seasonal flu etc. 

This is such a silly point that has been dealt with so many times on here. Seasonal flu is no where near as dangerous as this disease. 

[maxjam]

13 minutes ago, Albert said:

There's a difference between the key statistics of the study, and the 'nobody got serious ill or died' points. Again, note how the key figures they quote are all given with confidence intervals. The 100% thing is just marketing. 

There were a similar number in most stage 3 trials. The point is though we're talking about rare instances, the point is getting a clear idea of how rare those rare instances are, and you don't get a full picture of 1 in 50k+ events from a sample a third that size. 

There were approx 11.5k in the stage 3 trials, less than the 17k that produced 100% reduction in hospitalization and deaths.  A significant percentage for someone that is very strict about his facts when it suits him.  

I'm just a bloke on a football forum, but if AstroZenica and the Govt are happy to mass vaccinate people after 11k test subjects, I'm happy to go with the data from 17k subjects that show 100% reduction in hospitalization and deaths.  For me to argue any further is pointless - as is the rest of your post tbh, its arguing for arguments sake.  Prize exhibit number one;

 

20 minutes ago, Albert said:

This is such a silly point that has been dealt with so many times on here. Seasonal flu is no where near as dangerous as this disease. 

To paraphrase previous arguements made by you, do you not care about the 10k-50k in the UK alone that die from flu every year?

Don't bother answering, it was rhetorical and I'm done with this conversation.

[jimmyp]

[sage]

Things are going much better, but I fear the worst with all schools reopening on March 8th as cases are only rising amongst children. 

[Albert]

2 hours ago, maxjam said:

There were approx 11.5k in the stage 3 trials, less than the 17k that produced 100% reduction in hospitalization and deaths.  A significant percentage for someone that is very strict about his facts when it suits him.  

17k and 11.5k are similar levels... 

2 hours ago, maxjam said:

I'm just a bloke on a football forum, but if AstroZenica and the Govt are happy to mass vaccinate people after 11k test subjects, I'm happy to go with the data from 17k subjects that show 100% reduction in hospitalization and deaths.  For me to argue any further is pointless - as is the rest of your post tbh, its arguing for arguments sake.  Prize exhibit number one;

...you really don't have a proper grasp of statistics do you? 

The point with the trials were to determine safety, and whether there were common reactions. The point with claiming 100% is that you'd need a much larger sample. You can be happy with something without confidence intervals if you like, but it's not something you would get published with in a scientific journal. You'll note their claims in their actual paper don't bother with the "100% protection" line, it's just a marketing point. 

2 hours ago, maxjam said:

To paraphrase previous arguements made by you, do you not care about the 10k-50k in the UK alone that die from flu every year?

Don't bother answering, it was rhetorical and I'm done with this conversation.

I do care about flu deaths, which is why I'm pro strong vaccination programs. Seasonal flu, however, is a less dangerous disease, and why can vaccinate effectively. Current measures being the numbers down quite low. 

I'd be curious where you got your '50k deaths per year form the flu' line from though. 

[maxjam]

5 minutes ago, Albert said:

17k and 11.5k are similar levels... 

Its approx 33% less

 

5 minutes ago, Albert said:

...you really don't have a proper grasp of statistics do you? 

I believe I do. Do you know what rhetorical means?  This entire post is one more than I wanted to make and is entirely rhetorical - I am only really answering to provide the link at the bottom of this post.

 

5 minutes ago, Albert said:

The point with the trials were to determine safety, and whether there were common reactions. The point with claiming 100% is that you'd need a much larger sample. You can be happy with something without confidence intervals if you like, but it's not something you would get published with in a scientific journal. You'll note their claims in their actual paper don't bother with the "100% protection" line, it's just a marketing point. 

As noted, the point is I'm not making the claim. 

The Govt were happy to mass vaccinate everyone after a trial of 11k people and AstroZenica are happy to release findings that their vaccine is 100% effective at preventing hospitalization and death following a trial of 17k people.  Marketing or not, they are happy to release the data, who am I - or you - to argue?

 

9 minutes ago, Albert said:

I do care about flu deaths, which is why I'm pro strong vaccination programs. Seasonal flu, however, is a less dangerous disease, and why can vaccinate effectively. Current measures being the numbers down quite low. 

Not to the 10k-50k it kills annually in the UK alone - or the up to 650k worldwide.  If we reduce the annual covid deaths to under 10k in the UK why would we not open up? Or alternatively why don't we lockdown for flu? Again, they are purely rhetorical questions.

 

24 minutes ago, Albert said:

I'd be curious where you got your '50k deaths per year form the flu' line from though. 

Numerous places, easy to google;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/54735702

and worldwide;

https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=208914

[Albert]

Last time:

2 hours ago, maxjam said:

Don't bother answering, it was rhetorical and I'm done with this conversation.

...hmmm...

Just now, maxjam said:

Its approx 33% less

Yes, well spotted. That implies that it's the same order of magnitude, so the scale of the significance of the results will be similar as uncertainty tends with sqrt(n). 

Just now, maxjam said:

I believe I do. Do you know what rhetorical means?  This entire post is one more than I wanted to make and is entirely rhetorical - I am only really answering to provide the link at the bottom of this post.

You can believe what you want, but given the blunders you've made with grasping basic statistical principles...

Just now, maxjam said:

As noted, the point is I'm not making the claim. 

The Govt were happy to mass vaccinate everyone after a trial of 11k people and AstroZenica are happy to release findings that their vaccine is 100% effective at preventing hospitalization and death following a trial of 17k people.  Marketing or not, they are happy to release the data, who am I - or you - to argue?

Yes, because 11k is sufficient to judge safety of the drug. The point here is whether it's actually 100% protection across as a population of a few dozen million, which the sample size isn't sufficient to determine. 

Just now, maxjam said:

Not to the 10k-50k it kills annually in the UK alone - or the up to 650k worldwide.  If we reduce the annual covid deaths to under 10k in the UK why would we not open up? Or alternatively why don't we lockdown for flu? Again, they are purely rhetorical questions.

Because 10k isn't a sustainable number for the disease. It has an infection fatality rate on the scale of 1%, while seasonal flus are well below 0.1%, implying that Covid-19 is at least 10 times more lethal than the worst seasonal flus, and usually far more than this. Even with a conservative estimate, just letting Covid-19 become endemic would be taking you 10-20k a year deaths for respiratory diseases, and magnifying that by at least a factor of 10 by letting it burn through the same population. That is, you'd be going from 10-20k deaths per year being the standard to it being over 100-200k deaths per year, once endemic. 

One of the issues a lot of people seem to brush over is that the deaths we're seeing with Covid-19 is without it being endemic, while seasonal influenza is. To understand the impact of such a disease being endemic, you have to consider the above. 

So no, it being at 10k per year just isn't realistic with it being endemic. Thankfully, it does appear to respond better to vaccination, at this time, than the flu, but this is largely as it is still one disease, with some variants. Allowing it to become like the flu, which is a collection of diseases with a myriad of variants, would lead to the same issues with vaccination, however. We're already seeing the beginnings of that, but thankfully we should, from here, have the tool so successfully prevent that.  

Just now, maxjam said:

Numerous places, easy to google;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/54735702

and worldwide;

https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=208914

...your article refutes the 50k flu deaths figure...

[Eddie]

And still the 'flu comparisons come out in this asylum of a thread.