IOM Covid removing restrictions

[Roger Mexico]

55 minutes ago, piebaps said:

If of course that any evidence emerges that "herd immunity" is actually a thing.

Herd immunity is definitely a thing, it just isn't the thing that most people believe it to be.  It basically refers to how the higher the percentage of those immune to a disease is in a population the more the non-immune will be protected because it will be more difficult for the disease to spread in that population.  But you need high levels of immunity in the population to do this and this has only ever been achieved for any length of time by using vaccination.

However the term seems, in the minds of many in politics and the media, to translate to "Let the plebs catch it and we'll be protected".  The word 'herd' clearly indicates to them that it's the job of the common herd to suffer and die for their masters[1].  This isn't new - a lot of the resistance to MMR, especially in the US, seems to be based on the belief that it's the job of other people the vaccinate their children.

 

[1]  Actually it's just because the phenomenon was first recognised with cattle diseases.

[Gladys]

8 minutes ago, Out of the blue said:

Mot masks are not used correctly and as such are worse than a waste of time, all they do is create more waste, litter and pollution ffs.

Not only that, they can be spreaders as people adjust the masks with their hands.

Dr A may well have had that conversation,  but what was he supposed to say?  At the time, in the absence of a requirement to wear a mask, that was actually the only response. 

[Feelslike]

8 minutes ago, Happier diner said:

Herd Immunity is a misleading description. There is no immunity in herd immunity. All it means is that if lots of people have had it (if indeed immunity lasts) then it makes the spread more difficult as it can't jump as easy between people as there are less spreaders available.

 

Undoubtedly there will be some herd 'immunity' (maybe call it 'effect') being developed in the UK as more and more people get it, which is better for us who will have none at all. 

As a society, we do not allow a virus with this type of consequence to spread unabated. The diseases are treated, quarantines imposed and vaccines administered where applicable. Schools are closed and ships quarantined at sea when there's a norovirus outbreak. If there's a meningitis infection in a school, kids are given vaccines or boosters. Quarantining to protect everyone else is not a new phenomenon, neither is limiting the risk of infection by reducing contact or exposure. And they did that 50-200 years ago when they didn't know how these things were transmitted or where they came from. 

The issue with trying to achieve this type of herd immunity - by building up antibodies from catching the disease - is that the vulnerable are still vulnerable. The people most at risk still aren't protected adequately from it and if someone's Nan in a nursing home gets it, it could still wipe out half the home. The chance of them catching may be reduced but if they catch it, the end result is still the same. 

How long will it take an adequate % of the population to get to the requisite level of immunity? 

[The Dog's Dangly Bits]

12 minutes ago, Feelslike said:

As a society, we do not allow a virus with this type of consequence to spread unabated. The diseases are treated, quarantines imposed and vaccines administered where applicable. Schools are closed and ships quarantined at sea when there's a norovirus outbreak. If there's a meningitis infection in a school, kids are given vaccines or boosters. Quarantining to protect everyone else is not a new phenomenon, neither is limiting the risk of infection by reducing contact or exposure. And they did that 50-200 years ago when they didn't know how these things were transmitted or where they came from. 

The issue with trying to achieve this type of herd immunity - by building up antibodies from catching the disease - is that the vulnerable are still vulnerable. The people most at risk still aren't protected adequately from it and if someone's Nan in a nursing home gets it, it could still wipe out half the home. The chance of them catching may be reduced but if they catch it, the end result is still the same. 

How long will it take an adequate % of the population to get to the requisite level of immunity? 

Certainly too long to continue strangling economies and the associated damage that brings with it.

It seems to me that a viable vaccine is a long way off.  So the approach will be a rinse, repeat of - lockdown, reduction in cases, lockdown removed,  slow escalation of cases (less people dying too), lockdown again etc etc etc

The question of course is how many times can this realistically be done and at what wider cost? To protect a diminishing percentage of the population. 

The reaction seems disproportionate to me.  The way things are going the next 2 years are a total write off and I would expect to see huge side issues escalate from it.  Whilst a generation or two pays for it.  Meanwhile, a few people will have been " protected".

Edited October 23, 2020 by The Dog's Dangly Bits

[Cambon]

It is not really a few though, is it? It is getting on for half the population. It is not just the elderly, it is the infirm, the fat, the poor (to some degree), and many others. It really is not the few. 

[trmpton]

3 minutes ago, Cambon said:

It is not really a few though, is it? It is getting on for half the population. It is not just the elderly, it is the infirm, the fat, the poor (to some degree), and many others. It really is not the few. 

It is a few.  I don’t quite get your point about the poor.

The rest are all people who are much more likely to die of something else anyway, or should loose weight and take up exercise 

[Roger Mexico]

1 hour ago, Barlow said:

Hah Hah! Well done Paul Moulton for picking up on the Chief Minister coughing and spluttering into his hand.

Howard is not leading by example.

Well quite.  It's not just that he should be better prepared - he shouldn't be there with 'man-flu' at all.  The vulnerable are supposed to be getting jabs and we are all supposed to be aware of the dangers of spreading all infections and there he is swanning around like Typhoid Mary.  It's not a good look.

I know Ashford was also ill, but there's really no need to have any politicians present, and Allinson was there anyway.  If they wanted a relevant Minister it should have been Baker as they were mainly discussing travel.  And after Tuesday's little embarrassment, they also seem to have remembered that they have a Director of Public Health who could be consulted when discussing the health of the public[1].

Instead Quayle's ego meant that he had to turn up to let us know stuff we've already read about in the Guernsey media releases.  No doubt he got lots of sympathetic noises from Gef.  I think cancelling the flights is probably an over-reaction, though we should have a better idea if the outbreak has been contained after the weekend.  There's nothing new today so far, which is probably good news.

In fact the media updates the Guernsey government have been putting out have been a good model of how to handle this sort of thing[2], letting people know as much detail as possible while respecting privacy (rather than using it as an excuse to keep quiet), reporting the initial case, telling us about the follow up (which identified another case from contacts) and then about the two other linked cases yesterday.  They tell people what they are doing themselves and what the public should be doing.  They seem to have excellent track and trace and aren't afraid to test lots of people.

In contrast our lot seem obsessed with 'presentation' and can't even manage that very well.  The latest conference was delayed till 1pm today, then put forward to 2pm and then brought back to 1.20pm.

 

[1]  It's worth pointing out that since April her department has actually been part of the Cabinet Office, so she technically reports to Quayle anyway which makes the lack of input even worse.

[2]  I suspect they have learnt from the way that that New Zealand gave out information in their more serious outbreak from August and also in more sporadic cases since.

[Black Mirror]

3 hours ago, Cambon said:

Agreed. As with most people, I want the borders back to normal, not just here but world wide. The only way out of this is herd immunity (whether by spreading or vaccine). However, just letting it run rampant as sultan wants, will swamp health services and many people will die. Not of Covid but heart attacks, strokes, and the many other issues that require hospitalisation. Slow and steady spread of the virus, as we have now, is the way to go. 

 

3 hours ago, piebaps said:

If of course that any evidence emerges that "herd immunity" is actually a thing.

 

3 hours ago, The Phantom said:

Sorry, what?  You don't 'believe' in herd immunity?  The thing with science is, that it doesn't really care about your beliefs, it relies upon facts and evidence. 

 

2 hours ago, piebaps said:

I take my advice from facts and evidence. here's what the WHO say

"Until we better understand COVID-19 immunity, it will not be possible to know how much of a population is immune and how long that immunity last for, let alone make future predictions. These challenges should preclude any plans that try to increase immunity within a population by allowing people to get infected"

https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/herd-immunity-lockdowns-and-covid-19

 

 

2 hours ago, Feelslike said:

It depends what the person spouting about herd immunity thinks it means. You simply aren't going to get it without a vaccine. Thinking that if enough people catch it, it will go away is idiotic and has never happened with any other virus. Even with a vaccine, the list of eradicated virus' is extremely short. 

 

Recently there has been a series of more balanced articles on the Guardian; even if they don’t usually make the first page. For that I mean opinions and forecasts in which the actual scientific consensus is admitted, rather than the politically correct version of the virus issues from the perspective of the left.

There is admission that, for instance, none of the vaccines currently in the pipeline is expected to work as well as a naturally occurring infection as concerns the bestowing of protective immunity. That the coming crop of vaccines may be suitable for no more than half of the population. And that the virus is going to be endemic; and consequently it is unavoidable having to “live with the virus” and herd immunity from natural infection is also unavoidable, and actually the way out of the pandemic.

Now that more data are available and the evidence difficult to ignore, some doctors have started admitting that, across the world, infection fatality is too low for people to worry about it; but Britain and other western countries are seen by them as “exceptions” for having had much higher fatality. Though, it is not an opinion they dare to put in writing in peer reviewed scientific papers.

Thus, Howard Quayle: why that scientific advice that informed IOM Covid response has to be so confidential?

PS – It follows the most recent Guardian’s article on the above subject. Read it by yourself.

'Covid parties' could become the norm, immunology expert says
Nicola Davis Science correspondent
The Guardian
Thu, 22 October 2020, 3:51 pm BST

Parties in which young people try to catch Covid-19 to gain immunity could become the norm if the virus is not eradicated, a Cambridge professor has suggested, prompting others to caution that the long-term effects of infection are not yet known.

Paul Lehner, professor of immunology and medicine at the University of Cambridge, told a briefing held by the Science Media Centre that the virus could be here to stay and that there might be “Covid parties” for the young to expose them to coronavirus while their risk was low.

“I am going to be an optimist about this and say I don’t think this virus is so unusual that it is gong to wipe us out or make us have to live in the peculiar way we are living at the moment,” he said. “I think it is going to become similar to the four circulating endemic coronavirus [which cause the common cold]. You are going to either get vaccinated or catch it when you are young – and young people do not get sick with this virus.”

In the cases of the latter, he suggested: “You’ll get it when you’re young and not get sick. People will be invited to parties – like chickenpox parties – so you don’t get it when you’re older, but we’ll have to wait and see.”

While some have raised concerns about waning immunity, Lehner again was optimistic, saying that a reinfection was likely to be less severe than the first, while reinfection, so far, seems rare.

“Over 40 million people in the world have been infected and when I last looked … there were four cases of concern over reinfection,” he said. “So I think this is something we have to keep and eye on, we have to worry about, but I think we have to be optimistic and say that this is the sort of thing our immune system has developed to deal with and it will deal with this virus.”

But David Heymann, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, urged caution: “One of the scenarios is that Sars-CoV2 will become endemic like the other four endemic coronaviruses in humans but it’s final destiny is not yet known,” he said, adding there were two main problems with idea of deliberately exposing children or young people to the coronavirus.

“We do not yet know the long-term effects of infection, even among those that are young and asymptomatic,” he said, and it is not yet clear how long any protection against reinfection might last.

“There have been a few reported reinfections among people who have been infected and sick – we do not know yet about reinfection among those who have been infected asymptomatically because they have usually not been tested,” he said.

Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London agreed, adding that although less common in young people, they can become very unwell or develop “long Covid”.

“ I wouldn’t recommend that anyone deliberately set out to catch Covid-19 or infect their children,” he said.

[Utah 01]

1 hour ago, Barlow said:

To reply "if it makes you feel better"

A perfectly reasonable response to a reasonable question.  Poo-pooing is really a figment of your imagination.

If you want to wear a mask feel free to do so - while that freedom still exists.

 

[The Dog's Dangly Bits]

1 hour ago, Cambon said:

It is not really a few though, is it? It is getting on for half the population. It is not just the elderly, it is the infirm, the fat, the poor (to some degree), and many others. It really is not the few. 

That is BS of the highest order.

If we are so concerned about fat people why are we not protecting them from themselves and their over eating? Heart disease anyone?

It really is the few.

[Uhtred]

1 hour ago, Roger Mexico said:

Well quite.  It's not just that he should be better prepared - he shouldn't be there with 'man-flu' at all.  The vulnerable are supposed to be getting jabs and we are all supposed to be aware of the dangers of spreading all infections and there he is swanning around like Typhoid Mary.  It's not a good look.

I know Ashford was also ill, but there's really no need to have any politicians present, and Allinson was there anyway.  If they wanted a relevant Minister it should have been Baker as they were mainly discussing travel.  And after Tuesday's little embarrassment, they also seem to have remembered that they have a Director of Public Health who could be consulted when discussing the health of the public[1].

Instead Quayle's ego meant that he had to turn up to let us know stuff we've already read about in the Guernsey media releases.  No doubt he got lots of sympathetic noises from Gef.  I think cancelling the flights is probably an over-reaction, though we should have a better idea if the outbreak has been contained after the weekend.  There's nothing new today so far, which is probably good news.

In fact the media updates the Guernsey government have been putting out have been a good model of how to handle this sort of thing[2], letting people know as much detail as possible while respecting privacy (rather than using it as an excuse to keep quiet), reporting the initial case, telling us about the follow up (which identified another case from contacts) and then about the two other linked cases yesterday.  They tell people what they are doing themselves and what the public should be doing.  They seem to have excellent track and trace and aren't afraid to test lots of people.

In contrast our lot seem obsessed with 'presentation' and can't even manage that very well.  The latest conference was delayed till 1pm today, then put forward to 2pm and then brought back to 1.20pm.

 

[1]  It's worth pointing out that since April her department has actually been part of the Cabinet Office, so she technically reports to Quayle anyway which makes the lack of input even worse.

[2]  I suspect they have learnt from the way that that New Zealand gave out information in their more serious outbreak from August and also in more sporadic cases since.

Well said. Quayle is an oaf. I've been taken to task by some on these pages for previously, more than once, highlighting the manifest failings of communication from IOMG which other seem to have regarded as near-exemplary (others besides the crawling lick-spittles at Gef). Roger has shone a light (again) on the shit-show that is the reality of IOMG's Covid communications.

[piebaps]

Great stuff all. Some proper debate instead of repeated troll accusations. 

[Gladys]

2 hours ago, Cambon said:

It is not really a few though, is it? It is getting on for half the population. It is not just the elderly, it is the infirm, the fat, the poor (to some degree), and many others. It really is not the few. 

Are you confusing positive tests for cases?  

[thommo2010]

Why does no journalist ask what the long term plan is? Surely I'm not the only one wondering how we exit this?

[jaymann]

1 hour ago, thommo2010 said:

Why does no journalist ask what the long term plan is? Surely I'm not the only one wondering how we exit this?

'We have clearly outlined our strategy based on the infection rate with our neighbours in the UK.The situation is under constant review and when the Council of Ministers have updates for you, we will let you know through one of these briefings. Next question?'

Edited October 23, 2020 by jaymann