COVID 45: Those Are Rookie Numbers

[A wilding]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

You do understand the difference between showing a driving licence and showing proof of your medical status /  having an injection, to access goods and services? It doesn't cross your mind that there might be a world of difference between to the two?

No, and if it helps you understand why, I would point out that, if you have any one of a long list of medical conditions that might effect your driving, then you have a legal duty to inform the DVLA, who will then demand access to your medical records and may require you to submit to a medical examination. You can of course refuse, but then they will take your license away. Edit: and of course you have to inform your insurers too - a commercial organsiation.

Which is at least as intrusive as needing to carry something that says "has been vaccinated".

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

You have to have your head up your ass to think it's just a handful of QAnon people who are not in favour of vaccine passports

And of course I said no such thing, and once again you resort to insult.

[lessthanluke]

2 hours ago, Padraig said:

Maybe in hindsight that is true but what was the basis for him to resist advice?  He is far from an expert.  Was he told that the models were rubbish?  And they were definitely rubbish in a particular direction?

IMO, Johnson wanted to keep businesses open, so he took a calculated risk and hoped he could spin his way out of trouble.  He probably has a reasonably feel for the media landscape.  I've looked at the trends though.  Quite a lot of people died in the UK after restrictions were lifted.  The media could have made a big deal about it but they choose to focus on other things.  Now, I accept, people did suggest it could be a lot worse but I couldn't shrug that level of death off.

I don't know what you have based on this.  But Kalbear has responded to it, so I wouldn't bother.

I'm dubious about this too.  If you compare the UK with other Western European countries, there is quite a big difference in the Jul-Nov period.  Admittedly, that's not a proper scientific study.  There are so many factors involed in COVID spread, that I wouldn't rely just on those stats.  I'm sure people will research this though.  And we'll see in a few years.

But it was correct to be reasonably cautious.

Just to add.  I'm probably not that far away from your viewpoint in theory.  As much as I don't care about their tears, vaccine passports shouldn't exist just to punish people.  As I said in my last post, it depends on the level of crisis.  We definitely disagree on where the appropriate level of crisis lies though (before you would apply a vaccine passport).

I would add though, people get upset about really trivial or stupid things.  I'm not sure i'd be dictated completely by their level of supposed aggravation.  Just encouarges them.

I think you are making this sound way more complicated than it actually is.  For the EU passport, you need to have finished your initial series of doses no more than 9 months ago, otherwise you need a booster.  The vaccines need to be approved by the EU.  That's it.    Things may change in 8 months (or whenever) but things always change.  That's science.  Wanting nothing to change is a waste of time.

Didn't realise I needed a booster for the EU Passport. That is annoying.

[Padraig]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

It still seems rather complex. Does it take into account previous infection. Why are the numbers such as they are? They don't really seem to be based on anything and appear quite arbitary. Again to my previous point, what happens when boosters wear off, whats the plan then? What happens with the next wave, and there will be a next wave. The reasoning doesn't really add up if you look at it.

A classic political ploy is to delay making a decision because more research is needed.  And the more you know, the chances of making the right decision does increase.  In a year we probably will know what the optimum response is to our current situation.

Of course, it will be a bit late then.  Instead, we make intelligent estimates now.   Or the classic political ploy, the fudge.  But i'd rather make a decision, an intelligent guess, a fudge (call it what you will) than have an interminable delay because we don't want people to call our decision arbitrary.   Most decisions are somewhat arbitrary.

Much of this is about how you frame the question. You view it as "somewhat arbitrary restriction" v "no restrictions at all".  Others would view it as "somewhat arbitrary restriction" v "a lot more restrictions".   And there can always be tighter restrictions.  It's all about risk reduction.

As for what happens in 3 months.  Or 4 months?  That really depends on the surrounding environment.  If there is another serious wave in 3 months, there probably will be a push towards another booster.  Certainly for the older demographic if its a nasty variant.  I don't see that as a particularly complicated decision.  We have to react to events (preferably having gamed a few different scenarios in advance).  Rather than make a decision now about our plan for the next 12 months and not budge on that because we are tired of giving boosters to people.

I'm certainly at least expecting another booster next winter

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

But as information changed, its been really obvious for a while that it is a bad policy, and on the whole does more harm than good.

For the UK.  Sure.  I can accept that given the environment there.  If you are talking about another country, you'll have to specify.

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

England was no worse and in some ways did better than other nations, kind of making a mockery of leaders like Sturgeon and Drakefords extreme positions. 

Relatively extreme.  I'm not sure would they have been viewed as extreme compared to other European countries.

I'm sure this question will be researched though.  And I do think it needs research given how many factors are involved.  Having a major neighbour being a reservoir of cases doesn't do Scotland or Wales any favours.  Or maybe behaviour change is the biggest factor, as you noted.

But even if it turns out that Scotland and Wales were wrong, I wouldn't blame them.  Being cautious versus COVID should be something to feel proud of (compared to taking risks with peoples lives).

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

Sure Boris was interested in staying open, but there was also a lot of evidence that Omicron was less deadly, and good reason to not listen to the overly cautious, clearly untrue statements from people who took the most cautious line.

I don't know whether we are talking about the Delta or Omicron wave anymore.  Restrictions were put in against Omicron, even if relative mild?  Against Delta, it was let rip, after a time.

I never followed what SAGE were saying too closely, so I can't say much about that.  I will say that in Ireland they did get things wrong too but they did it in both directions.  Generally, I find caution acceptable in this situation.

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

The health benefits for anyone double jabbed of a booster is pretty minimal if you aren't in a vulnerable group, and so then you are giving boosters to people who don't need it, instead of sharing those jabs with people who might in fact benefit. 

As far as I understand, the main benefit of boosting the young is to reduce spread.  But it does reduce your odds of having a bad reaction to COVID also, which does help.

Weirdly, against Omicron there is an extra benefit of the young been boosted (that didn't exist previously).  So many people will get infected that even a small percent of a huge number is quite large.  So it does reduce stress on hospitals.

[Padraig]

1 hour ago, lessthanluke said:

Didn't realise I needed a booster for the EU Passport. That is annoying.

Sorry!  Maybe in the longer term it will disappear but I think we are talking about Summer 2023 (and only if we avoid serious waves in the meantime).

 

Unrelated but I did find this article interesting.  It talks about extending the gap between vaccines.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/97182

And the under 5 vaccine gets delayed again until April.  Disappointing but it might reassure some people that they aren't rushing into a decision on this age group (given the already reduced threat).

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/11/health/fda-postpones-covid-19-kid-vaccine-meeting/index.html

[The Anti-Targ]

I thought it was pretty well established mid to late last year that 8+ weeks is the immunologically preferred 1st to 2nd dose interval. Shortening the interval was more about getting people double dosed as soon as possible before the shit hit the fan than about the immunologically optimal interval. Just as omicron was starting to hit here in late January the govt dropped the interval to 3 weeks, and not long ago they dropped the booster interval from 6 months to 4 months.

Now that we are in the middle of omicron with nearing 1000 cases per day, if I was getting vaxed for the first time I'm not sure whether I would wait the 8 weeks or I would get double vaxed ASAP. The good news for me is I was not a numpty and I got vaxed last year and hit the 4 month booster date just as omicron was about to get going. Some sort of good news for a friend who I thought was anti-vax is she is now getting vaxed, but she is faced with the dilemma of how long to wait. On the one hand, the risk most people talk about with 2nd jabs is myocarditis, but that's mostly in young men, and she is a female pensioner, so hopefully that means myocarditis is very unlikely, so the 3 week option is probably safe. On the other hand it may be sub-optimal immunity and by the time she can get boosted to get the best immunity, in 4 months, the omicron wave may be over. On the third hand, we have no idea whether the world will be in the grip of an entirely different variant wave, nor do we know how good current vaccines will be against it.

A news article yesterday said an American had purchased a vax certificate to be able to enter NZ later this year to visit a family member who lives here. The family member was concerned enough to tell the media about it so they could write an article, but they were not concerned enough to ID the person because "the US family are all libertarians and unvaxed, and would be angry if he told the immigration authorities". I didn't realise libertarians were all fine and dandy with committing fraud and telling lies. I always thought an essential element of a libertarian utopia would be honesty. Without scrupulous honesty on the part of everyone in a libertarian society it will surely fail hard. 

[Varysblackfyre321]

8 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Waste of police, court and prison resources.

Yeah the implication of every measure being something done solely because people want to feel good about being cruel or want to be cruel is a bad take.

 

[Padraig]

7 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I thought it was pretty well established mid to late last year that 8+ weeks is the immunologically preferred 1st to 2nd dose interval. Shortening the interval was more about getting people double dosed as soon as possible before the shit hit the fan than about the immunologically optimal interval. 

Sounds right.  But a lot of countries still haven’t updated their official guidance on the second dose yet.  Delta and Omicron delayed things I suppose but now might be the right time.

[Heartofice]

8 hours ago, Padraig said:

Much of this is about how you frame the question. You view it as "somewhat arbitrary restriction" v "no restrictions at all".  Others would view it as "somewhat arbitrary restriction" v "a lot more restrictions".   And there can always be tighter restrictions.  It's all about risk reduction.

My issue with it, is that if you are going to be dividing society up into good / bad categories then you need to have a clear reason and a sensible reason for your categorisation. To me it seems that vaccine passports are an essentially political tool rather than a scientific / health one. There are used so that governments can declare that an area or country is safe, the problem being that the passports themselves do not make that guarantee at all.
The arbitrary nature of that categorisation is important because the water is so muddy in terms of who is more infectious, who is safe and who isn't. Because it's not so easy to determine who is infectious based on their vaccine status, it then becomes more obvious that passports are not about protecting the public, but are there for other reasons (I'd suggest those reasons are because the 'feel' right to the thesis, protectionist side of the debate, and allow politicians to say they are doing something)
 

8 hours ago, Padraig said:

As for what happens in 3 months.  Or 4 months?  That really depends on the surrounding environment.  If there is another serious wave in 3 months, there probably will be a push towards another booster.  Certainly for the older demographic if its a nasty variant.  I don't see that as a particularly complicated decision.  We have to react to events (preferably having gamed a few different scenarios in advance).  Rather than make a decision now about our plan for the next 12 months and not budge on that because we are tired of giving boosters to people.

Sure but that question is about whether you boost people or not. I'm talking about who you allow in and out of places based on their vaccine status. From previous discussions it seems that the main reason that a booster worked well against Omicron was that the 'boost' meant a huge number of antibodies were in the system, and Omicron needed a far larger number of antibodies to be killed off than Delta. To me that suggests that waning is inevitable, so we'll be back in this position quite soon. So when you want to divide people up again based on how infectious they are, it will need to be 4 jabs to demonstrate any sort of protection. Are you really going to prevent people from entering locations if they have 3 jabs? That doesn't seem a workable system. So this comes back to my original point that this isn't a system based on protecting the public or making areas safe, its a political tool that feels nice. 

8 hours ago, Padraig said:

For the UK.  Sure.  I can accept that given the environment there.  If you are talking about another country, you'll have to specify.

Well I'm applying it to any country that has a relatively high level of immunity already, whether through prior infection or vaccination. There might be some situations and countries where it is appropriate, but I'd also suggest if you have high levels of vax hesitancy in a country, you are only making it worse, especially long term by having government mandates of vaccines and creating tiered systems.
 

8 hours ago, Padraig said:

I'm sure this question will be researched though.  And I do think it needs research given how many factors are involved.  Having a major neighbour being a reservoir of cases doesn't do Scotland or Wales any favours.  Or maybe behaviour change is the biggest factor, as you noted.

But even if it turns out that Scotland and Wales were wrong, I wouldn't blame them.  Being cautious versus COVID should be something to feel proud of (compared to taking risks with peoples lives).

I don't think it's correct to say that England was this reservoir of cases. The whole point was that those countries introduced a number of measures, and saw no noticeable difference in case numbers. In fact across the world now as everyone gets their Omicron wave it's hard to see what measures actually have a noticeable effect against it, outside of an extreme lockdown. 

8 hours ago, Padraig said:

I don't know whether we are talking about the Delta or Omicron wave anymore.  Restrictions were put in against Omicron, even if relative mild?  Against Delta, it was let rip, after a time.

I never followed what SAGE were saying too closely, so I can't say much about that.  I will say that in Ireland they did get things wrong too but they did it in both directions.  Generally, I find caution acceptable in this situation.

10 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Well we are talking about both really. Boris did go into Plan B eventually, but I would suggest that was essentially unnecessary, and was being forced into it by some alarmist voices. Then previously when we had opened up early, it was deemed to be a 'dangerous and unethical experiment', again by the most alarmist voices. But while cases remained relatively high, deaths and hospitalisations were a lot lower than previous waves. It could also be said that opening up created a level of immunity in the country during a time when we weren't exposed to winter flu that helped us during the Christmas period. 

As for SAGE, there is some interesting stuff about how they arrive at their models, and why they got the Omicron modelling so wrong
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/sage-vs-actual-update-as-of-22-jan

[Padraig]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

fact across the world now as everyone gets their Omicron wave it's hard to see what measures actually have a noticeable effect against it, outside of an extreme lockdown. 

Netherlands is an interesting case study.  Had the most restrictive conditions in Europe from (roughly) early December to mid January.  But far from a traditional lockdown.  Flighting off the last of Delta and early Omicron.  Cases were largely contained compared to their neighbours.  Right now, they have one of the highest rates in Europe (since most restrictions were removed) but they started from such a low base in mid January, that they still have very few real issues. One of the worst case rate in Europe but one of the best fatality rates.

There is a lot of interesting such case studies.  I don't have the full story behind them but my perception is that measures do much better than their detractors.  But never as good as you'd wish.   People complicate things.  But it is why most scientists do suggest that targeted responses are still best (rather than no response).

I'm not particularly concerned about guarantees.  Expecting guarantees when you deal with a pandemic is unrealistic.

I will always go back to managing risk.  Perfection is the enemy of progress.  Doing something is better than doing nothing, because you can't guarantee anything.

So yes, we probably will have tough questions to answer when the next wave arises.  But i'm fine with that.  Sometimes you just have to get over the next hill.  I think there is already some evidence about waning boosters but we don't know when the next wave will be.  Heading into the summer works in our favour at least.  Omicron not being that bad helps as well.

But if large swaths of the population start dying again, different questions arise.

[Heartofice]

20 minutes ago, Padraig said:

Netherlands is an interesting case study.  Had the most restrictive conditions in Europe from (roughly) early December to mid January.  But far from a traditional lockdown.  Flighting off the last of Delta and early Omicron.  Cases were largely contained compared to their neighbours.  Right now, they have one of the highest rates in Europe (since most restrictions were removed) but they started from such a low base in mid January, that they still have very few real issues. One of the worst case rate in Europe but one of the best fatality rates.

There is a lot of interesting such case studies.  I don't have the full story behind them but my perception is that measures do much better than their detractors.  But never as good as you'd wish.   People complicate things.  But it is why most scientists do suggest that targeted responses are still best (rather than no response).

If as you say Netherlands introduced almost a full lockdown then that is probably quite different to the pick and choose nature of a lot of the other methods that have been used by other countries. IMO Omicron has basically led to an all or nothing approach, because not much else seemingly has much effect. It's much harder to say 'oh we'll introduce vaccine passports and that will being down the R0 rate by X'. I think it's all a little meaningless.

I also think all of these conversations mostly tend to ignore the negatives and downsides of measures and restrictions, I suspect because so many people are comfortably sitting at home, getting their necessaries delivered every day, not being too worried about leaving the house or not. Small business owners, young people, people who need to survive would be less supportive of some of these measures. 

As I said, introducing these measures has to be a balanced approach, taking in every aspect, not just the risks from Covid itself. Now we have highly immune populations and less dangerous variants, we need to really scrutinise calls for more measures and take a much more holistic approach, and don't just take for granted the most alarmist positions. 

[JoannaL]

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

My issue with it, is that if you are going to be dividing society up into good / bad categories then you need to have a clear reason and a sensible reason for your categorisation. To me it seems that vaccine passports are an essentially political tool rather than a scientific / health one. There are used so that governments can declare that an area or country is safe, the problem being that the passports themselves do not make that guarantee at all.
The arbitrary nature of that categorisation is important because the water is so muddy in terms of who is more infectious, who is safe and who isn't. Because it's not so easy to determine who is infectious based on their vaccine status, it then becomes more obvious that passports are not about protecting the public, but are there for other reasons (I'd suggest those reasons are because the 'feel' right to the thesis, protectionist side of the debate, and allow politicians to say they are doing something)
 

I think there is a miconception here of the reason for a vaccine passport: The reason is not that no infections can happen (because also vaccinated people can be infectious -though to a lesser degree), no, the reason is to get the more vulnerable people, who are not vaccinated, into lockdown. They should not mingle with the others, because if they get infected the outcome is statistically so much worse. So a vaccine passport is in place to protect the unvaccinated  and not to annoy them.

[Heartofice]

33 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

I think there is a miconception here of the reason for a vaccine passport: The reason is not that no infections can happen (because also vaccinated people can be infectious -though to a lesser degree), no, the reason is to get the more vulnerable people, who are not vaccinated, into lockdown. They should not mingle with the others, because if they get infected the outcome is statistically so much worse. So a vaccine passport is in place to protect the unvaccinated  and not to annoy them.

I'm not quite sure what you are saying here. How does a vaccine passport put the vulnerable into lockdown? How does it protect them?

[JoannaL]

12 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I'm not quite sure what you are saying here. How does a vaccine passport put the vulnerable into lockdown? How does it protect them?

Well, if only the vaccinated can go for example to the cinema or the theatre but the unvaccinated cannot,then only the vaccinated can get infected there and very likely their infections will be harmless. On the other hand the unvaccinated cannot get infected (which would have been much more risky for them).

[rotting sea cow]

50 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

I think there is a miconception here of the reason for a vaccine passport: The reason is not that no infections can happen (because also vaccinated people can be infectious -though to a lesser degree), no, the reason is to get the more vulnerable people, who are not vaccinated, into lockdown.

Lockdown for the unvaccinated? That didn't work, because there is no way you can control the whole society and unvaccinated still have to work.

Besides, in the long term, with a fraction of the population forbidden to consume certain goods and services and another part unwilling to do the same because of fears of getting infected, you have a recipe for a recession.

 

50 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

They should not mingle with the others, because if they get infected the outcome is statistically so much worse. So a vaccine passport is in place to protect the unvaccinated  and not to annoy them.

The COVID poses less risk to an unvaccinated 20yo person in comparison to a 3-dosed 80yo one.

 

 

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, JoannaL said:

Well, if only the vaccinated can go for example to the cinema or the theatre but the unvaccinated cannot,then only the vaccinated can get infected there and very likely their infections will be harmless. On the other hand the unvaccinated cannot get infected (which would have been much more risky for them).

Oh i see. My confusion is you have conflated 'vulnerable' with 'not vaccinated', and I wouldn't say they were exactly the same group. Vulnerable to me is people in certain age brackets or with pre existing health conditions. 

[Luzifer's right hand]

6 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

Well, if only the vaccinated can go for example to the cinema or the theatre but the unvaccinated cannot,then only the vaccinated can get infected there and very likely their infections will be harmless. On the other hand the unvaccinated cannot get infected (which would have been much more risky for them).

Here those that can't get vaccinated for medical reasons are excempt. Well not completely I guess but they are allowed to get PCR tested instead. 

So at least here in Austria that argument would not work.

[JoannaL]

1 minute ago, Heartofice said:

Oh i see. My confusion is you have conflated 'vulnerable' with 'not vaccinated', and I wouldn't say they were exactly the same group. Vulnerable to me is people in certain age brackets or with pre existing health conditions. 

I absolutly agree with you that it would make even  more sense to only protect the unvaccinanted which are also old and /or have other risk factors. but it is a possible way the restrict the movement of the unvaccianted and vulnarable ones and these we need to protect.

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, JoannaL said:

I absolutly agree with you that it would make even  more sense to only protect the unvaccinanted which are also old and /or have other risk factors. but it is a possible way the restrict the movement of the unvaccianted and vulnarable ones and these we need to protect.

This only makes sense if the virus affected everyone equally, as mentioned above, a 20 year old unvaccinated person is not at any great risk from the virus. 

[JoannaL]

1 minute ago, Heartofice said:

This only makes sense if the virus affected everyone equally, as mentioned above, a 20 year old unvaccinated person is not at any great risk from the virus. 

Well you get the 80 year old unvaccinated people to not go to the cinma - so thats a win. The 20 year old also not going is just "collateral damage"

[Derfel Cadarn]

BBC article on the difference between the covid death rate in Canada and the US

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60380317