Let me ask a very silly question : Where the hell do people think respiratory viruses go during the summer ? Does flu go on holiday to mysteriously re-visit every year at the same time.
What happens in winter 2021 do we do this all again, in 2022 do we repeat because of newer mutations, in 2023 repeat again due to yet more mutations. How come after millions of years of evolution and exposure to billions of mutated strands of RNA and DNA the Human race has to hide behind masks to survive. What utter insanity.
Reality check : we are surrounded by viruses they spread ALL THE TIME by various methods the most common of which by some margin is aerosols. They have done this from the dawn of time and all life on this planet has evolved strategies to not die from the billions of constantly mutating strands of RNA and DNA that are in the environment. It’s called an immune system. Our immune system needs certain things to remain strong for example vitamin D, good diet, CONSTANT EXPOSURE to DIFFERENT viruses and bacteria.
Constant hand washing degrades your immune system.
Living indoors all the time degrades your immune system.
Not meeting people (who host different viruses and bacteria) degrades your immune system.
Masks encourage the growth of bacteria on the moist back of the mask which is then breathed back into the lungs, INSANE! OH and for good measure we constantly touch these masks full of expelled viruses and bacteria as we shop and touch shelves or browse the sell by dates. Utterly utterly insane.
Everything currently employed to fight the virus is actually degrading our immune system and making us more susceptible. As for the masks, just wait for all the “cases” of bacterial pneumonia to appear followed in a few years by lung damage due to the cotton fibres. Of course this assumes these people have survived the mRNA trials (well it’s not been fully tested has it, phase 3 trials take years because waiting years is part of the fricking test! and there have not been any animal tests).
Pretty much nailed it! I’m in awe of the power of fear to induce distorted thinking and to turn ‘public health’ into a recipe for general unwellness (though I’m cautiously optimistic about the impact of vaccines, if for no other reason than that they’ll calm everyone down).
I think this is the point everybody is trying to make. The virus is killing people who have lost their natural immune systems, so the protection is really for those people. It means that people who, in 10 years’ time say, lose their immune systems in their turn, then they won’t be protected either. So next winter we will have wave 3 and so on.
Really, an undue lack of faith is being put into vaccinations which may not be unsafe but also they may not protect you for even four of five years.
You are mistaken. The flu jab uses the natural immune system to save the lives of millions every year. The corona jab will do this in future. The only people dying of COVID are those with artificially extended lifespans due to the flu jab. They’re uniquelly vulnerable to a flutype disease with no vaccine
Exactly; even if this virus is different from flu viruses, the widespread use of flu vaccines is a major factor in how much of an impact it’s had on the elderly population. Many if not most of the people who’ve died from the virus probably wouldn’t have been alive in 2020 because flu would have taken them out already. I suppose it’s a brutal way of looking at it, as obviously all deaths are tragic. I have a beloved elderly parent myself, and one of my friends just lost her beloved 80+ year old father to COVID. Nobody’s ever ready for that and it hurts like hell when it happens. We want to do all we can to keep our loved ones with us for as long as we can. But at what cost, both to us and to them? The lockdowns of this past year have been torturous to many elderly people, on top of their disastrous effect on everything else: ordinary health care, children’s education, the economy, livelihoods of small business owners, people’s mental health and wellbeing, etc.. Quality of life still matters.
The research on the flu vaccine is mixed. Early research suggested it made you more likely to die from COVID. Most recent research suggests it reduces you chances of being infected and becoming ill.
Actually, research reported in 2008 [https://www.sciencedaily.co…] found little evidence that the flu jab reduced elder mortality:
After controlling for a wealth of variables that were largely not considered or simply not available in previous studies that reported the mortality benefit, the researchers concluded that any such benefit “if present at all, was very small and statistically non-significant and may simply be a healthy-user artifact that they were unable to identify.”
Sunlight UV kills it. Just like flu; in the summer the prevalent flu types in the southern hemisphere are put into the vaccine for us. And vice versa fot them. Henceforth, corona vaccines will go into the annual jab.
As does humidity. There was a considerable amount of research on vireus vulnerabilities done post-SARS (~2003).
Generally, it is well established in the scientific literature that survival times and therefore infection rates for enshrouded-RNA viruses (such as CoV-19, influenza, SARS, MERS, common cold) are strongly influenced by ambient humidity and (to a lesser extent) temperature. (US Homeland Security’s research department confirms that the CoVID-19 virus conforms to this pattern.) This pattern has been known among virologists for more than a decade.
One Mayo Clinic study in schools showed a factor-of-2.3 decrease in influenza when in-school humidity was raised to 50%: (https://journals.plos.org/p….
An Australian study found that a reduction in relative humidity of 1% was predicted to be associated with an increase of COVID-19 cases by 6.11%: (https://onlinelibrary.wiley…
You may find this US Department of Homeland Security CoVID-lifetime calculator interesting: (https://www.dhs.gov/science…
Making it a policy that public-building humidity should be set at 50% and temperature set at 75 degrees F would substantially reduce the infection rates for not only CoV-19 but also for influenza and common colds. Given that tens of thousands of people die each year from influenza, this is a simple *prevention* measure would save many thousands of lives from that disease alone; if it had been done already, it might well have prevented this epidemic, or might prevent a “bump” — and much less intrusively than the current measures, which seem to primarily have the effect of providing an outward and visible sign of compliance to the power-hungry authorities.
“How come after millions of years of evolution and exposure to billions of mutated strands of RNA and DNA …” Evolution may well end up giving us some inherited immunity to this virus, but evolution works by natural selection, eliminating those who can’t keep up. Is that what you want?
it’s not a question of what anyone wants, it’s a question of what is going to happen one way or another and already has in relation to countless other viruses humanity coexists with.
You shouldn’t infer value judgements being made off of a reiteration of evolutionary facts, no one wins from that.
I wasn’t aware I was inferring much. I was asking if Dennis Boylon meant evolution should just be allowed to take its course. I’m not sure the reply enlightened me much.
Is their any evidence the madness done has improved anything. Cases skyrocketing and the only answer from the panic mongers is lock down more. Destroy more life. Destroy all joy in life. Hide under your bed. This is your success story?
Impose restrictions and cases fall, end restrictions and cases increase, impose them again and cases fall again, end them again and they increase again. We have now done this three times in the past 9 months with millions of subjects in about 20 different countries. And hospitalisations and deaths correlate with cases by almost 100%
What more evidence do you need precisely?
And before you get upset. I think the socio economic damage caused by the restrictions are greater than the benefits. It’s just the virus also causes lots of damage. And COVID restrictions can and do mitigate this damage. The two things are not mutually exclusive.
Sweden had no lockdowns at all, no mask mandates, and its infection and death rate is actually lower than many other places that had multiple lockdowns.and where everyone wears masks. I don’t think there was ever any need to “man up” like we were facing a scourge equivalent to the plague or Spanish Flu. We should have just been realistic and sensible about it. But maybe being realistic and sensible is impossible in this age. Right from the beginning of last year, the fear porn media were grabbing onto this like a pack of salivating hyenas and refusing to let it go. By the beginning of February, “Coronavirus” was all a lot of the young kids I teach could talk about. These are kids too young to understand even basic biology, yet the mass media had still instilled into their impressionable minds the idea that we were facing a terrifying existential threat and if something drastic and life-altering was not done, we were all doomed.
The evidence in many places, if you look at it carefully, shows case count beginning to decline ahead of severe restrictions. In Ottawa, Canada, where I live, plotting the rises and falls gives uneven curves with no apparent correlation to periods of more severe restrictions. Seeing a rise two weeks after extra restrictions (a little short of a major lockdown) should make the authorities question its effectiveness, no? But a month and a half after the end of that one, along comes a reinstatement, followed two and a half weeks later with a major lockdown, all while the curve continues curvy (which is called “spiking”, of course).
As for correlation between cases (i.e., positive swabs) and hospitalization, it’s been weak to non-existent in Ottawa. (To its credit, Ottawa Public Health makes fairly rich data downloadable, allowing ordinary citizens with Excel to plot it.)
Sorry, the statistical evidence is overwhelming. You would do better to focus on the costs of lockdown being greater than the benefits. That is a legitimate argument (which I probably support).
But when you start suggesting the lockdowns do not work or people are not really dying, it completely undermines your central point.
‘Fed’ by who? By the lizards or the satanic pedo cult that runs the WEF? I hate to break it to you, but life is not that simple. There is no global conspiracy to destroy the world economy and inject everyone with a tracking device.
You are, probably unwittingly, embracing the left wing concept of postmodernism. That there is no absolute truth, only relative truth that simply a reflects your self-interested economic interests or power.
The statistical data is available on the ONS site. ONS is an independent, globally respective, statistical service that is run by qualified staticians. If you believe there data to be wrong, or a fraud, the onus is on you to prove it’s wrong.
Yes there is plenty of evidence. If they hadn’t been stupid enough to stop the previous lockdown at the start of December, case rates would be a tenth of what they are at the moment and perhaps 25000 lives would have been saved. I think saving lives is an improvement, do you not agree?
I think if you were either in an ICU bed or a close family member was unable to get the help they needed, you wouldn’t be calling it madness.
It’s not about hiding under your bed, it’s more about consideration for the lives of other people. There is a vaccine now, a few more months of pain isn’t the end of the world.
In the areas impacted by the new variant, they never completely removed restrictions. London had one week in Tier 2. Then one week in Tier 3. Then we went into Tier 4 on the 18th December (pretty much a lockdown) then the full national lockdown on 4th Jan. I think the SE never even had a week in Tier 2 (went straight to Tier 3).
The PM only received the report on the 17th of December and went into Tier Four 24 hours later
The economic and social damage caused by lockdowns are substantial. We should only use them to avoid the NHS collapsing. In that sense, the PM’s timing was almost perfect.
It has worked for millions of years as evidenced by the fact that our species is still around. That may sound harsh but remember what Tennyson said about nature: Red in tooth and claw.
Estimated 280 trillion viruses in the human viome. That is a lot of vaccines! Bill and Melinda know a good racket when they see one. Don’t fight it. Maybe Bill and Melinda have space for you on their team. No profit in not exploiting the madness.
Mate, no one is going to take a blind bit of notice of what you’re saying because you’re telling the truth.
Have you not noticed? The truth is the most boring and inconvenient thing. No one wants it.
For instance you have someone commenting on your post, dismissing the important stark truths you present as mere ‘some good points’ and then going on to guesstimate that it kills 20 or 30 times more than flu.
Now that’s the bit people will focus on and are meant to focus on. Not real facts. Frightening bogies.
And he quotes restrictions as reducing death rates. Restrictions reduce the spread they don’t reduce the case fatality rate.
It is this wonderful confusion about exactly what they’re talking about that allows all this panic and hysteria to continue – with its incredible commensurate cost.
Most of the time most of them simply don’t know what they’re saying. Figures need close scrutiny and understanding and that truth never so obvious and important as in this chaos.
What people need really to know is none of the heated debate about this that or the other, such as comparative flu rates and such, from dubious and poorly understood figures and studies – but just what dangers are they facing at the present time.
There is no doubt there is a danger. The debate often gets twisted to appear as though one side is saying there is a danger and the other side is saying there is not.
Just like they twist that germany debate about numbers into one about was there or wasn’t there?
Not so. There’s no doubt there’s a danger and many of the people arguing for sensible appreciation of it are those very people most at risk: like myself.
But the danger needs to be assessed and managed as best possible.
So how great is the danger and where is it:
. From covid: of death? at most ages? very low.
. From covid measures? High and rising all the time for all ages and the nation as a whole.
Simple as that. That’s what it is all about. We’re facing two dangers.
And the greater of the two is the govt. mandated actions. And there’s virtually nil interest in quantifying those.
It’s sounds to me that you still believe in relying on herd immunity to tackle the Covid virus threat. You could have saved an awful lot of words by just saying so.
Living indoors degrades immune system, exactly! The immune system relies upon being exercised doesn’t it? By a daily barage of bacteria and virus particles? Also the fact that we now know how crucial Vit D is to our immune system response to Covid infection, why the hell are we being forced to stay indoors out of any potential Vit D boosting sunshine on the skin?
google nuffield health. Evidence is mixed, but it’s certaintly not a done deal that people are exercising less”. No greater motivation to lose weight and exercise more than death due to covid
“As we wait to hear how Britain will be eased out of lockdown, it seems the constraints on our day to lives have led to some unexpected benefits, with three quarters of Brits (76%) taking up at least one new form of exercise since lockdown began. Walking, specifically for exercise, has been the most popular new activity with three in ten (30%) introducing this into their lockdown regimes. Following walking, the next most popular exercises people have taken up are: jogging, yoga, HIIT, running, home treadmill, weights and cycling outdoors.
Encouragingly, of those who have become more active over the past few weeks, either increasing exercise levels or taking up a new form of exercise, 8 out of 10 (81%) say they will try to continue with their new exercise regime once life returns to a ‘new normal’.
The survey, we commissioned, shows how Brits are making a concerted effort to look after their physical health during lockdown, and shines a light on some of the mishaps people have had, as well as the beneficial effects people are feeling from exercise on their mental health during these challenging times. “
Right; they’re spending at least an hour a day dutifully sweating in their spacious well-ventilated home gyms, which everyone knows most British people have.
Oh please, save us from your victim mentality. Now you can’t exercise unless you have a home gym? If you have 6 square feet you can exercise. You don’t need any equipment.
Last time I checked, anyone can jog on the public roads (where I live more people seem to jog than walk since lockdown)
“How come after millions of years of evolution and exposure to billions of mutated strands of RNA and DNA the Human race has to hide behind masks to survive”
Evolution works by natural selection – by lots of people dying. Many are not keen on this as an approach to disease prevention.
And what is good for the human race is not necessarily good for its current members.
It may be true that the immune system gets stronger by being stimulated (it’s “anti fragile”) but that is a different thing. And so far as we know, that strengthening dies with us.
If one thing was very clear about this virus right from the start, it was that it was NOT something that was going to take out the young and healthy, to whom it was basically just another common cold virus. So efforts to control it should have been concentrated on the most vulnerable population., i.e., those in hospitals and long-term care homes. They should have been protected while the general population was exposed to the virus and built up herd immunity. .
“Our immune system needs certain things to remain strong for example vitamin D, good diet, CONSTANT EXPOSURE to DIFFERENT viruses and bacteria.”
To a degree. But certain sanitary measures have clearly improved the health situation massively.
Your argument could just as well be used against clean water, sanitary disposal of human waste etc. Perhaps we should be ingesting some of that to keep our immune system strong.
Nature itself has provided us with behavioural defences against disease. It’s called the disgust reflex. Things that are likely to cause us infection also cause us disgust, so we avoid them.
I can’t recall the last time I saw anybody in a shop not wearing a mask, most people are keeping their distance from each other (to the extent that they are walking in the road and risk getting run down), pubs, clubs etc are shut… So how are 40k+ people getting infected every day?
40k+ ? How could anyone possibly know? Unless you test everyone, every day, you can’t know. AFAIK , it remains the case that most people are getting this via medical interventions. Does any one seriously believe that you can be in a hospital and NOT pick it up?. And everyone sent home, or to a care home, or to a hotel, or the staff, aren’t these the ‘superspreaders’? Is any official body, or media outlet even remotely likely to discuss this publically? You’re possibly short of Vitamin D; you’re definitely short of a dose of scepticism.
You see, this is how uncertain things get spread around. if you say that you have more protection if you take vitamin D – and this is absolutely not a proven fact – then silly people will take the vitamin and expose themselves to more risk. Like the idea that you are totally protected if you wear a mask, which is what some people do think.
Flu has been way down, possibly because masks and social distancing (and lockdowns) are quite effective against Flu transmission. ~500k non-COVID deaths occurred in the UK in 2020.
Another thing to consider here is that these deaths are recorded as ‘with covid’ – there’s a chance that lots actually died from the flu or other causes. This will surely affect the numbers.
Are people really still touting that nonsense? Does the number of patients in ICUs, the necessary expansion of ICUs, the hospitals having to cancel priority 2 cancer treatments mean nothing? This. Is. Not. Flu.
There are also people that die from Covid more than 28 days after their first positive test, and people that die from or with Covid that are never tested for Coronavirus. Both of these will also affect the numbers.
Deaths counted by ONS require a death certificate.
From David Oliver (a doctor in Manchester) :
“Completion of death certificates is a serious and regulated part of a doctor’s responsibility. The consequences for professional registration or in the courts for deliberately falsifying certificates would be very serious. We are also very aware of just how upsetting the content of death certificates can be for bereaved families and the questions they can then have.
The rules require us to complete the certificate ‘to the best of your knowledge and belief’ and, barring exceptional circumstances, requires the certificate to be completed by a doctor who knew and was attending to the person before death.
Death Certificates contain causes 1a (cause directly leading to death) 1b and 1c (causes leading to 1a) and 2 (causes contributing to death but not directly related).
If Covid-19 is in our clinical assessment of the person we have assessed and treated the main cause of death, we will put it as cause 1a.
In other cases, someone might die from a complication of Covid-19 ““ for instance a pulmonary embolism (blood clot) or a bacterial pneumonia in which case that will be 1a with Covid as 1b or c.
In other cases, the person may have had Covid contributing to a death from another cause ““ perhaps by making the person weaker or more susceptible or starting a chain of events and may appear as 2.
There never was a formal requirement for a positive Covid-19 test to write Covid on a certificate if the clinical picture was clear and so yes, some patients, mostly earlier in the pandemic would have had Covid written down without yet testing positive.
… also “deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid test” does NOT influence what we actually write on death certificates which by law we have to complete to the best of our knowledge and belief and which are scrutinised by a 2nd doctor.
En masse Falsification of certificates? no
the ONS data (rather than GOV own definition for counting) are not based on some arbitrary post test time period but on what we put on the certificate based on our clinical knowledge of that patient in their final illness. If we think Covid contributed to death it goes on.”
Yes and no. Covid is a far more intense disease of the respiratory system and can and does also cause organ failure in some people. This has happened at times with young children who are not as likely to get sick with Covid, too. There is no way to know exactly who will die when you see someone who is above the age of 90 recover while a very healthy younger person of 40 or so succumbs.
I keep hearing people ay how much more deadly COVID is to the elderly and vulnerable than influenza, but I see no evidence. Prior to the introduction of the first flu vaccines two decades ago, flu cut an annual swath through the elderly population every year. Everyone knew, and still knows, how deadly flu could be to elderly or otherwise vulnerable people. And even if such a person recovered from a bad case of the flu, often they were never the same.
I think it’s overwhelming our health services a lot more than a similar number of ‘flu cases would, and that’s with masks, social distancing, lockdowns and so on.
Or maybe it’s been down because many of the people whose deaths have been attributed to COVID actually died of the flu, keeping in mind that there’s no way to prove actual cause of death in these cases, when the diseases cause the same symptoms. The practice is, when a patient tested positive for COVID, to put the COD down as COVID. But a person can be hosting multiple viruses at one time, and as far as I know they’re not testing for the presence of flu viruses, new ones of which appear every year, which is precisely why the flu vaccines are effective against only some of them.
What does it actually matter? Deaths from respiratory disease are way up on the annual figures from the past 20 years, despite social distancing, mask-wearing, closing great swathes of business and industry, and hospitals are overwhelmed. The NHS has something that it can’t deal with right now. It’s extremely obvious that, in the main, this isn’t flu, but even if it were, what difference would that make to anything? It’s something we can’t cope with.
I’ve heard (from someone reasonably senior at PHE) that the primary location for transmission at the moment is shops. Yes, people are wearing masks when shopping, but one thing we know for sure about masks is that they are at best imperfect…
That’s just the point. Masks are indeed imperfect, and made more so by the failure of the authorities to set any sort of benchmarks for the type of masks to be used and their subsequent maintenance. (AFAIK, the regulations merely specify the use of “Face Coverings”. This, above all else, screams out that mask wearing is all about reminding the public about the need for social distancing and the danger of close proximity.
It is not just the masks being imperfect that is the problem. Many people I know go shopping for food with their imperfect masks on and feeling empowered by the mask. Then they stay inside the store for long periods of time, browsing the aisles. They may meet someone they know and chat in the store for extended periods. Then they stand on the line to be checked out for another long period. All of that will raise the chances of coming into contact with enough virus to cause a viral load inside the person to lead to infection, especially when this kind of behavior becomes a regular habit. It is a matter of mathematics at that point, raising chance.
Transmission is a multifactorial phenomenon – environment, host factors, contact pattern, socio-economic factors as outlined in : Sars Cov 2 transmission routes and environments SAGE 22 October (20 pages and 75 references)
and Factors contributing to risk of SARS-CoV2 transmission associated with various settings PHE Transmission group (35 pages, 38 references) – as an example a quote from which reads :
“Households are environments which are characterised by long duration close interactions, usually with minimal control measures between members of the same household. Transmission risk is very variable in households; a meta analysis suggests that if there is an infected person in a household, the risk of another household member being infected is 18% on average, with a range of 4% to 55%. This is known as the secondary attack rate. Household crowding and deprivation are both associated with a significant increase in the risk of transmission in household settings (high confidence)”
You see, if you read all of the comments in this column from educated people (they can write reasoned arguments) you will find a large range of ideas. This is what this site is all about. There are many, many arguments are theories and which is correct? I think I know – but then I would say that.
Even so-called “correct” information is a theory when it comes to this disease because our knowledge is limited at this point and will change. The value of these forums is that they help us to connect and listen and hear many ideas which can only add to our overall wisdom and reason.
A large proportion of cases are from old corona type viruses still present in the system but not enough to produce an infection I wonder if anyone who is vaccinated will also give a false positive ?
Maybe it’s the wearing of the masks that’s contributing to the infection rate I’ve read that mass mask-wearing during the Spanish Flu pandemic has a lot to do with the fatality rate during that time, because so many people were getting bacterial pneumonia.
Alan Thorpe
3 years ago
This article raises more issues than it answers. We have not had mandatory lockdowns and mask wearing at any other time and we must be told why this virus is different. The answer is that it cannot spread in a different way to any other respiratory virus. It must also be obvious to most people that they have been in close contact in the past with people who have had flu or a common cold and not been infected. Why is this?
In 1918 an uncle of mine died at the age of 9 from the Spanish flu, long before I was born and even before my mother. At that time, the family of two adults and six children lived in a two up, two down house and to the best of my knowledge nobody else caught it. Recently, I caught a cold and because of the lockdown I know the day I caught it. I had no close contact with another person, and I was wearing a mask when required. Why didn’t the mask and social distancing protect me?
We are being fed a diet of nonsense by our politicians and health professionals. The only thing that is certain is that they do not understand how viruses are being spread and the true risk of being infected. If they did, we would have influenza under control, but thousands die every year even with a vaccine and we have no explanation. Are the deaths only people who are not vaccinated? What has happened to flu deaths this season? They seem to be zero. Faith is being put in a vaccine for Covid19 and we are now expected to believe that it will work for all the variations we are hearing about and yet there is more panic being generated because of the variants. We are also being told the vaccine might only work for 5 months. None of this makes any sense. We are ruled by braying donkeys.
In all fairness, nobody will know how successfully the vaccines will be. To know that they would protect you for 10 years would, I guess, require 10 years to find out. For me, it is highly unlikely that the vaccines will be as successful as people hope and it is also unlikely that certain people will return to ‘normality’. Really, there is the virus and the fear of the virus and I’m not sure which is worse. A friend of ours (who has a GP daughter) has in the past had a heart attack. The daughter/GP has ordered the woman to stay completely away from people, to have groceries delivered and then wash them individually – followed by not touching them for 24 hours. So the woman hasn’t spoken to anybody face-to-face for about 9 months and she is in a terrible state.
The same report said ‘the deaths were no higher than they would expect from this demographic (old people in a care home). No where did you mention that in your post.
J J my point had hee haw to do with demographics, it was about the fact that MSM had no reporting on it… So as you sadly can’t research into someone’s thought process perhaps you could go buy yourself one of those bubble helmets you are such a fan of and let the rest of us have an opinion….
Its different because the environment for the coronavirus is unprecedented.The flu jab saves the lives of millions every year. The only people dying of COVID are those with artificially extended lifespans due to the flu jab. They’re uniquely vulnerable to a flutype disease with no vaccine. The ‘tsunami of deaths would have overwhelmed the health system, plus , no one knew how to treat it. The wonderful benefit of the first lockdown was that it gave us time, using trial and error , to find treatments. The bad news is that, our hospitals are now overflowing with people who would have died in the first wave, but who can now be kept alive.
There was no “wonderful benefit” to any of the lockdowns. It’s the job of hospitals to take care of sick people; from what I could see during all the lockdowns including the current ones, they all got to have a nice little at-work vacation with plenty of free time to make stupid dance videos.
Flu isn’t under control because the flu viruses change their configuration at a much higher rate than Sars Cov 2 every year and there is variable take up of flu vaccinations every year – it’s like playing wac-a-mole. Also, it’s not as nasty a disease as Covid so no great motivation for big and little pharma to invest in a brand new vaccine cocktail every year to combat the latest and greatest flu variants.
Flu this year has almost disappeared because : 1. There was a big take up of flu vaccinations 2. Masks, physical distancing, quarantining, washing hands works particularly well for flu viruses 3. The southern hemisphere manged their Covid problems particularly well this year (suppressing flu at the same time). To a degree, the southern hmisphere seeds the northern hemisphere with their flu viruses every year by travel (much curtailed this year)
There is a risk calculator available online that gives an (inevitably) imperfect idea of what your individual risk is for contracting and dying from Sars Cov 2. I don’t know whether or how it has been validated, although they do update it regularly : ALAMA Covid-19 medical risk assessment.
Adam Lehto
3 years ago
“it might even be the main way the virus spreads…” Bingo. Echoing some other commenters here, I couldn’t agree more. And as some have pointed out (even last summer), this makes a mockery of mask-wearing. But the obsession with hand-hygiene also points to a deeper problem: the unwillingness of medical and political leaders to treat citizens like adults who might be OK with a strategy that changes with the evidence. Of course, that assumes that real science can inform policy during a pandemic, which has turned out not to be the case. How to fix this? It’s made even more difficult by a citizenry that *wants* clear and absolute answers that they don’t have to think about. It almost seems like a kind of religious instinct, a need for security, by means of some (secular) revealed truth, when facing what is perceived to be a grave threat. I really don’t know what it would take for more robust institutional frameworks to be in place to ensure this pattern doesn’t repeat itself, some sort of check on the tendency of governments (and their narrow circle of medical ‘experts’) to lapse into ideological responses. But one thing we don’t need is more fear campaigns. This is the bread and butter of ideological rule and should have no place in public health implementation. Inducing fear, including and especially the more refined fear among scientists and health providers of deviating from the orthodox narrative, is never a good thing. Rather, acknowledge the limitations of the current state of knowledge, avoid the suppression of divergent scientific voices, remind the public that policy will shift and that a full explanation will be given when that happens, including some sense of how the efficacy of any policy is going to be measured. One can only dream…
their narrow circle of medical ‘experts’ Have you counted the narrow circle? 86 in the main SAGE committee, then 8 sub groups with between 20 and 70 in each of the sub groups. Last time I attended a committee meeting of more than 12 people it was difficult to get a consensus on counting paper clips, let alone a complicated matter like this. Maybe they would better off with a smaller circle?
I see your point. The narrowness I had in mind was ideological, not numerical. I seem to recall others on this forum commenting on the limited range of expertise of the SAGE committee, but I’m in Ontario and don’t have a good sense of how true that is. Still, it seems clear that, just about everywhere, a similar locking down of possible perspectives happened pretty quickly. Why were the economists and public health experts issuing very clear warnings against prolonged lockdowns last Spring (and since!) so completely excluded from those advisory committees? How could this possibly be ethically defensible, let alone scientifically?
The range of expertise is actually very wide and you can see it clearly on our .gov SAGE committee page. I don’t think the economists have been excluded. Certainly not from the discussions, but then at some point a choice has to be made. If you are in Ontario I could ask you the same question since Canada seems to be facing the same issues which we are. In fact there aren’t many countries that aren’t. btw I am not in favour of lockdowns, but then I am not making decisions on which people’s lives, and livelihoods, depend. And jolly grateful for that.
If they’re effective at intercepting larger droplets, then they’re effective only in cases where two people are very close to one another, eg. yelling in each other’s faces and expelling saliva, not a common occurrence. But i think the point was, masks do nothing to stop viruses from being expelled just through normal breathing (as anyone who’s noticed they can see their breath being expelled though their mask on a cold day would know).
Amazing footage on Glasgow Daily Record showing a woman walking outside masked, visor, gloves, wielding a spray bottle (with who knows what in it) and spraying the air in front of her as she walks along, passing people….
Dodgy Geezer
3 years ago
Do you know how Covid really spreads?
Er, NO. We don’t. This is because we no longer follow science.
We have guesses made by people who study in the field, and who have proposed plausible scenarios. But we do not know how ANY individual actually catches the virus. I do not know how we could, unless we find some way of tracking every fragment of replicable RNA in an environment and tracing it as it moves into human bodies. Instead, what we do is listen to people who we believe to be authoritative. Which is, of course, religion.
In practice, we do not actually need to know in detail how it spreads. What would be most useful at the moment is knowing how to stop it spreading, which is a subtly different requirement. For example, John Snow halted a cholera epidemic in the 1850s without knowing anything about cholera germ transmission. He noted that the disease seemed to be connected to a particular water supply, closed that supply down, and noted the fall in cases which resulted.
We NO LONGER do this. In John Snow’s case, the fact that Dr Snow had studied cholera for many years was irrelevent to his justification for closing the Broad Street water supply. he did not rely on his authority – he relied on the mortality figures and the epidemological data that he had gathered. But the government does not currently release the SAGE arguments for the various restrictions it imposes. Instead it provides data on cases – with no correction for numbers of tests – which seem to show, if anything, that the lockdowns are NOT having any impact on virus spread or mortality. They are certainly not having the designed and predicted effects – which ‘using science’ suggests that we have NOT isolated a transmission vector as precisely as the Broad Street pump handle.
So, no, we really do not know how this disease spreads in anything like enough detail for us to institute working and practical countermeasures. We are not in a position much advanced from the miasma theory that sniffing a pommander in areas of bad smells would keep you safe. When that was the primary defense against plague, that disease also went away after a while, and so the miasma theory could claim to have some support….
Excellent! I get corss everytime the polis say we are being ‘led by the science’. Most of the diet of behavioural mantras we are being fed smack of fear-fuelled quasi-religion.
All the SAGE minutes are available online together with the supporting documentation + reports from the various sub groups + the studies they are referencing to come up with their recomendations. For example : Sars Cov 2 transmission routes and environments SAGE 22 October (20 pages and 75 references)
Vem Dalen
3 years ago
Throughout the pandemic, what’s been missing is evidence. Excusable in the early days, unforgivable 11 months later.
This is the third time the UK has imposed a national lockdown in less than a year. Lockdowns are blunt tools that help control transmission but at considerable socio-economic cost.
And yet, even now in January 2021, we still don’t know with any certainty what are the activities that contribute to spreading this disease.
This is a good article, I hope it reaches a few decision makers. It’s time the messaging was changed and “the science” was actually used to explain how 50,000+ people per day are still being infected despite the millions spent on public health information. That message is clearly not getting through.
Presumably you mean 50,000+ people per day are *getting positive test results*? What’s the false positive rate and how many people are being tested per day?
You can easily determine the false positive rate of the PCR test by going to the interactive calculator at the BMJ : BMJ PCR testing dashboard Interpreting a covid-19 test result 12 May 2020 The pre test probability is the prevalance of the disease at the time you take the test and the ONS publish this figure weekly.
The sensitivity according to ONS is between 85% and 98% The specificity according to ONS is 99.9%
That was a useful link – thanks. I would love to hear the response of those (e.g. Mike Yeadon) who say that the false positive rate is probably 3%+. After all, if the evidence blows his argument out of the water, surely his opponents would be delighted to have to opportunity to show him up in the national media?
Two questions still leap to mind: what’s the cycle threshold for the ONS tests and for other testing? And can the specificity of July-September data (the latest figures according to the ONS) give us a good indication of specificity of the test in autumn/winter?
For me, the problem is that it is very difficult to disseminate scientific evidence in a useful way. All evidence is subject to error and scientists compete with each other to find the ‘truth’. Also you get lots of clever people who wilfully choose an interpretation of the science to support their own views.
Also you get lots of clever people who wilfully choose an interpretation of the science to support their own views. Yes – but this is unavoidable. There is always interpretation of the data. It does not magically present conclusions in itself. Sadly some scientists try to sometimes argue otherwise – usually engaging in some form of clunky low grade philosophizing for the purposes of trying to assert how philosophical interpretation isn’t needed.
I agree with other commentators that with all the testing (and we have one of the best records in the world amongst larger countries) there should by now be more precise evidence on where transmission is actually taking place. As far as public spaces including shops are concerned my experience too is that just abut everyone is wearing masks and being cautious about distancing, hand cleaning etc. So is the spread coming from those who are involved in clandestine socialising, school contacts, workplaces or where? There must be some evidence by now as we have tested a huge proportion of the whole adult population and should have a good idea of the habits of those who tested positive. It seems to me that firepower in terms of restrictions needs to be directed at the enemy virus rather than using a scatter gun approach that can lead to unnecessary and costly restrictions.
In one specific area, namely allowing public worship (with masks, distancing, no singing etc) seems to be being questioned. In our congregation most gather online on Sundays with a limited number turning up in person after pre-booking and ‘religiously’ (!) following the rules. We have had a number of infections amongst church members but as far as I know NONE of them are among those who regularly attend in person. I suspect similar stories could be gleaned from those active in many other areas of life. So in summary it would be helpful to have more facts about what really works to reduce infections, what is of minimal effect and what we might be doing that is a complete waste of time. Surely there are some behavioural scientists involved with SAGE who are qualified to get to grips with this.
Daniel Goldstein
3 years ago
“Because of droplets, being close to others or in crowds and being unmasked are bad ideas.” There’s limited evidence for the efficacy of mask wearing.
Andrea X
3 years ago
Well, I, for one, didn’t really know any of that. Or should I say that the omnipresent gel has always made me, like many others, think that hand cleaning was supposed to be the key weapon against Covid.
rhugheslustleigh
3 years ago
Sadly, the story relayed below is being repeated about the country. My partner volunteered at a vaccine centre for the elderly recently run in a gp surgery, who should thus have known better, and the vaccinated were all sitting around in an enclosed unventilated space for the pfizer 15 minutes.
This is complete madness and I despair of the people responsible for organising such vaccination sessions. Back in the autumn I watched a pharmacist using a room no bigger than 2m by 2m to vaccinate a succession of elderly people with the flu jab. It had the potential to be a super-spreader event. Buy/borrow a gazebo and keep all of this in the car park.
If you are looking for any kind of common sense within the NHS you will wait a long while. Sadly, it seems, Nanny has got to the point where the Government is expected to dictate every single thing they do. In spite of the fact that heads of hospitals are paid a very good wage (more than Hancock, or Johnson) to do just that.
Clive Page
3 years ago
If the track and trace system, “world beating” of course, were any good there must be good figures by now on this. I would find it very interesting to know, for example, how many have caught the virus where there has been no contact in the previous 7 days by anyone in their family bubble with anyone else at all except for passing other shoppers in a supermarket. Given the millions who have been infected, if the answer is near zero then it means that shopping is pretty safe. One could ask the same question about say travel by bus or by train. There must be lots of people like my wife and I who are careful to have no physical contact with other people except when doing essential shopping. Why are such figures not available?
Dave Smith
3 years ago
I came to the conclusion that aerosol spread was the danger months ago and it looks as if it is. I was amazed to find my doctor’s practice had the windows tight shut in the summer. Even dafter was the excuse. Data protection !!! It was then I stopped taking that practice seriously. If this is true then multi storey hospitals are far from safe. The lift shafts etc act as vectors of infection as warm air rises. I looked at the plans of the old fever hospitals which were all on one level and used ventilation extensively. I have then avoided all enclosed spaces . Unless there is good airflow. Obviously this is not 100% possible but you can avoid most. I prefer to be outside as that has been my life mostly so it is not a problem. When this is over we should learn to design and build hospitals and public buildings, schools etc that rely on natural ventilation and no sealed interiors. It will mean more use of land and lower heights but that seems a good thing to me. Maybe our overall health will improve.
No, lift shafts are like pistons as the lifts go up and down. Hospitals in the UK are designed on the principles of natural ventilation, with air con in operating theatres and other special diagnostic rooms, mechanical ventilation (usually no cooling) in internal core areas, and opening windows / natural ventilation in perimeter area (wards for example). That has been official NHS design policy for a very long time. City centre hospitals may have more mechanically ventilated and air conditioned areas. The mechanical ventilation and AC systems have no mixing of supply and exhaust air. Energy efficiency is addressed by the use of heat recovery plate heat exchangers which provide complete separation of the fresh air inlet and exhaust air streams. Schools in the UK also mainly rely on natural ventilation (opening windows). If you want to check this then refer to Part F (Ventilation) of the building regulations and the specific hospital and schools ventilation guidance docs referred to therein. This guidance forms the basis of most health care and school building design. Doctors surgeries are most naturally ventilated so requires the common sense of the practice managers and the GPs to allow for window opening. Clearly security, confidentiality, and energy efficiency and comfort in winter are factors that will affect this. Warmer summers caused by global warming is going to cause major problems with these ventilation strategies.
I fail to see how this makes aerosol spread of a virus any less likely. Multi storey, mechanical ventilation and a piston effect seem to make it far more likely. All the hospitals around me are on more than one floor. More than three in most cases.
The mechanical system and air conditioning design utilised in UK hospitals IS designed to minimised spread of infection.
Robin Taylor
3 years ago
A good article, although I’m not sure the response to the virus has ever really followed ‘the science’.
Edgar Wallner
3 years ago
Measuring CO2 concentrations indoors should be obligatory for such places as restaurants, since raised levels indicate poor air circulation. This is from Smart Public Buildings Magazine.
“Since the coronavirus is spread through the air, higher CO2 levels in a room likely mean there is a higher chance of transmission if an infected person is inside”, leading aerosol scientist Prof Shelly Miller writes in The Conversation. “Simply put, the more fresh, outside air inside a building, the better. Bringing in this air dilutes any contaminant in a building, whether a virus or a something else, and reduces the exposure of anyone inside.”
A 2019 study on a tuberculosis outbreak in Taipei University, Taiwan, provides detailed evidence. Many of the rooms were poorly ventilated and reached CO2 levels above 3,000 ppm. When engineers brought levels down to under 600 ppm the outbreak stopped.
Obvious, now you point it out! Why aren’t we hearing more about this? Are CO2 concentrations relatively cheap and easy to measure?
tns1
3 years ago
First of all I trained in Bio Warfare or NBC as we used to call it. We assume that a cloud of the agent(virus) is travelling towards people and the first thing is to suit up and then mask on. You stay in that suit and swop filters until the danger has passed. We have not got to this state yet! But ignorance is no defence for risking others when you are “hot” from the virus within your body and then pass it freely to others from not wearing the mask. I have seen many people not wearing masks due to obstructions on the face and others not covering the nose. The types of mask is another thing. We manly wear a spray defence type (rectangle with loops) this is supposed to be a defence against the agent passed by others in a distance and NOT too close to you. The seal isn’t that great and droplets can pass by these types.Watch the news and see the difference with Intensive care Doctors wearing the EN type mask that fits against the face tightly. OFFICES: Airconditioning this recirculates the air and adds only a small amount of new external air to save on energy (eco). The trunking is a bio hazard in itself, having maintained an office block in my past, the amount of bio matter that is in these passages is shocking and we used vacuums to make paths to the electrics within. So, given a choice of working from home, take it. The water cooler talk can wait.
Adrian Smith
3 years ago
The whole philosophy of controlling this thing with ever changing rules and messages is fundamentally flawed. The word “safe” should not even be used as there is no such thing as safe and unsafe. There is only levels of risk and best ways to mitigate the risks. Instead of the complete mess you have described a clear and simple explanation of the risks and how best to reduce both probability and consequence in various situations would have been far more effective. There are times when hand washing is beneficial just as there are times when proper mask wearing is beneficial, but there are other times when both are entirely counter productive.
There is no evidence that mask wearing is effective in the general public. None. The Danish study was the best but the mask nazis insisted if failed to show effectiveness because most of the Danes were not wearing masks in public. The belief being that if all the people are masked than it will be effective. Over 8 meter spread in meat packing plants with cloth mask wearing put a dent in that belief. I believe it is also what resulted in the Oct 5th update to the CDC paper on “how the virus spreads”. They included the possibility of airborne transmission for the first time but insisted you still better wear your mask. Cool temperatures and a lack of ventilation made meat packing plants the perfect environment for airborne spread that makes a mockery of droplet theory. Granted most people don’t work in these but those studies are rather clear. 6 feet social distancing and wearing masks were based on droplet theory as majority spreader. If you remember the naysayers back in spring kept describing the size of the virus while the mask nazis insisted they only traveled in large droplets. This is without even bringing up how long it takes for a mask to get wet with your breath. At that point you are puffing out droplets again… with more speed as the air restriction causes increased air flow. Further droplets and longer range. The problem with the pro mask studies is they assume people are always wearing a new dry mask! The lack of rigor around the science behind mask wearing is rather obvious. The Danish study was an attempt at resolving this. Instead of being backed the scientists were considered dangerous heretics. Even though they insisted they were pro mask! The empirical evidence on mask wearing is another issue nobody wants to talk about. It is easy for the “scientists” to make from the twitter posts showing graphs… when mask laws were implemented… mask compliance statics going to 90 percent… covid infections going up and down all summer and then skyrocketing this winter. The question has to be asked. Can they really dismiss those that easily?
Andrew Thompson
3 years ago
28% people have heard of keeping 2 metres apart. So let’s do the maths: 72% of people HAVEN’T heard about keeping 2 metres apart. I mean, come on now people.
That misrepresents what the article says, namely: Another question in the poll asked what coronavirus-related advice people had heard most from the Government in recent months. So 28% have heard this most – the other 72% may well of heard it “second most” (or “third most” or whatever). It doesn’t say that they had never heard of it. It looks like a very poorly-framed question to me.
Nina Murden
3 years ago
Interesting level headed article, and so I am thinking of my grandmothers’ habits: always air your house, fresh air circulating is good, and don’t fester in stale air it’s unhealthy! But I see the houses around where I live, no windows open all firmly shut 24/7. I read about the types of new builds that for ‘climate emergency’ reasons don’t have opening windows! BUT, ultimately, this whole approach to ‘wrestling a virus to the ground’ that we hear about, always couched in terms synonymous with war I’m left laughing.. this is black of me I know, and I’m not saying do nothing, mitigate of course, take care, but to think we can be ‘safe’ from an airborne virus is fanciful at best. Our current 21st century fancy is that we can control life and death. Sadly we are utterly deluded. Here’s a study to look at, and in the end it will prove to be just this, that heyho, this virus spreads upon the winds. Why wouldn’t it ? https://www.hilarispublishe…
Swiveleyed Loon
3 years ago
A supposedly learned article and 244 comments. But not one piece of genuine scientific research cited to support any contention about anything whatsoever, except the 1981 study which suggested that surgeons’ masks had no positive effect. It’s all just opinion. Guff. Twaddle. Propaganda.
Is there a scientific consensus re “airborne transmission”?
WHO acknowledge that it’s a possibility but seem to still be withholding judgment about it outside of aerosol-generating procedures in health care contexts.
The WHO work through all peer-reviewed research papers, and are still cautious (the furthest they go is ‘can’t rule it out’, “needs more research” etc). I consequently do not have an opinion on this, would just like to see the basis on which a scientific consensus is asserted in apparent contradiction of the international body that’s supposed to represent such a consensus.
Dodgy Geezer
3 years ago
Do you know how Covid really spreads?
Er, NO. We don’t. This is because we no longer follow science.
We have guesses made by people who study in the field, and who have proposed plausible scenarios. But we do not know how ANY individual actually catches the virus. I do not know how we could, unless we find some way of tracking every fragment of replicable RNA in an environment and tracing it as it moves into human bodies. Instead, what we do is listen to people who we believe to be authoritative. Which is, of course, religion.
In practice, we do not actually need to know in detail how it spreads. What would be most useful at the mopment is knowing how to stop it spreading, which is a subtly different requirement. For example, John Snow halted a cholera epidemic in the 1850s without knowing anything about cholera germ transmission. He noted that the disease seemed to be connected to a particular water supply, closed that supply down, and noted the fall in cases which resulted.
We NO LONGER do this. In John Snow’s case, the fact that Dr Snow had studied cholera for many years was irrelevent to his justification for closing the Broad Street water supply. he did not rely on his authority – he relied on the mortality figures and the epidemological data that he had gathered. But the government does not currently release the SAGE arguments for the various restrictions it imposes. Instead it provides data on cases – with no correction for numbers of tests – which seem to show, if anything, that the lockdowns are NOT having any impact on virus spread or mortality. They are certainly not having the designed and predicted effects – which ‘using science’ suggests that we have NOT isolated a transmission vector as precisely as the Broad Street pump handle.
So, no, we really do not know how this disease spreads in anything like enough detail for us to institute working and practical countermeasures. We are not in a position much advanced from the miasma theory that sniffing a pommander in areas of bad smells would keep you safe. When that was the primary defense against plague, that disease also went away after a while, and so the miasma theory could claim to have some support….
Michael Dawson
3 years ago
Thanks for another sane article on this subject. “I’d be more reassured about what the government is doing if I thought that someone in authority was doing some serious analysis of the mass of data we now have about the impact of the virus, based on 140k+ confirmed cases. There should be significant clues there about the transmission of the virus and which areas of life can return to something like normal with relative safety and which are the ones where restrictions need to be maintained or other actions taken. For example, what’s the relative incidence of the virus of people working in supermarkets, teachers, parents, people working from home etc? There would need to be more follow up with people who have had the virus and their families (in the case of people who have died) to ensure good quality data, but this is really important work if decisions are to be taken based on good evidence.” I posted this 9 months ago on Conservative Home. I don’t think the government has improved its performance in this area in any significant way since then, despite the greater amount of evidence that is – or should be – available.
Jonathan Edwards
3 years ago
“The Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir performed a version of “Joy to the World” while indoors, unmasked ““ but carefully standing two metres apart.. The rules were being followed meticulously…” Good for the Choir!. “Joy to the World” is a belter and undervalued in the UK. I had to pester my choir to sing it – but then they loved it of course. Lucky old choir – they got to sing. I didn’t. I tried in 2 places. We’d have followed the rules too. But why on earth do you say that following the rules meant that “the example set was deplorable.” Careful risk assessment, joy given to the world and (kind of) approved by the Queen. What is wrong with you, Stuart Ritchie?
Ian Perkins
3 years ago
The “UK government took up handwashing in a big way … Back then, it was understandable: we were completely in the dark on how the virus spreads, and were modelling our response on diseases we knew better, like the flu.” Do we know ‘flu that much better, or are we still guessing about how that spreads?
teresa_d_wood
3 years ago
I’ve had the virus, at least I tested positive having self administered a test at a pillar 2 test centre. My husband and I probably caught it off my adult daughter who spends half the week with us for her work, and half the week at home.. normally. Her boyfriend had it too. All our symptoms were different, but no temperature, persistent cough, loss of taste or smell for any of us. Normal cold symptoms for me, a couple of days feeling a bit floppy, nothing that stopped me doing normal daily tasks. We could have caught it from her in the car, or by clearing her plates.
It doesn’t matter.
If we are to trust the test (!) we are now immune, along with 3million others who have recovered in the UK after testing positive, and the millions who have had it since before the first lockdown.
The point I am trying to make, and what I think this article and many of the comments reveal, is that we have to learn to live with this. It is something we can live with. We already live with many similar types of virus. The fear engendered is way out of proportion with the risk. There are still few of us who know anyone directly, who have even had it, let alone had it seriously or died. So, if I am immune, I now pose no threat to my fellow human being, at least for this winter season.
I wore a face covering for the first time in a shop today. My belief that face coverings are worse than useless, for all the reasons that are mentioned in the comments, dirty, germ ridden things, has allowed me to use the (lazy) ‘I’m exempt’ excuse up until this most recent tightening of the rules. I feel I am exempt because it does cause me severe distress to comply so overtly with the groupthink. If everyone stopped wearing their masks tomorrow, unless they were unwell (stay home) or in a vulnerable category (their choice, no compulsion) it would send a message to the government that we do not agree with the groupthink.
But I tried to use my immunity as a ‘get in’ today. It didn’t work. I was, however, able to engage in a 20 minute discussion with one of the managers at the garden centre, about how I was not a risk, and that we have to start getting the fear under control, and lifting restrictions somehow. I then continued my shop with a ‘buff’ pulled up over my nose, which was as useless as all the other face coverings being sported, and messed about with. At least mine was clean.
If those that felt comfortable stopped wearing masks whilst still maintaining distance, it would be really obvious (because they are wearing masks) who are vulnerable, and therefore the rest of us can take care to give them extra space. It might even mean that those people could feel more included in society, because those that are more able could identify them and possibly offer help and conversation. I am talking about community immunity of course. Targeted protection would be ideal but it does seem more and more unlikely that that is possible. But because this virus is new, highly contagious, and mild for the vast majority, community immunity gives the best, and quickest sort or protection for our vulnerable. So go on, expose yourself to it. Your immune system will thank you for it.
(just getting my tin hat on.. I know, I know what about the frontline NHS staff, etc, but I’ve written enough right now)
What makes you so sure you are immune? And if you, say, break an arm, you’ll be perfectly happy being treated by nurses and doctors without masks, so long as they tell you they feel fine? RIP.
I’m not so sure I am immune. It stands to reason (I know, weird concept) that the 4 of us were unwell, 2 following within 3/4 days of the first 2, that we probably had the same thing. Yes, this could have been anything. And depending on where you stand on the accuracy of the pillar 2 PCR testing, will colour your judgement as to whether we had Covid 19 or not, but one of the tests might have ben accurate? But if we are to trust ‘the science’ like good little citizens, then, in the governments eyes we have all had the virus. Whilst this virus is new, it is also a coronavirus. When we catch a coronavirus, and recover from it, we have immunity until the variant mutates, and we come into contact with that variant. Perhaps we’ll get a summer and winter cold, maybe we wont get ill that often. Some will get it worse than others. But there is no doubt that if you have the coronavirus, you have immunity for at least a few months. That is what our immune systems are for.
And quite honestly yes, I would be perfectly happy to be treated by doctors and nurses who were not wearing masks if that was standard procedure. I feel that infection control in hospitals generally would make that unlikely if it was a compound fracture, but if there was no open wound, why would they need a mask?
“When we catch a coronavirus, and recover from it, we have immunity until the variant mutates.” I’m not sure how true that is, but anyway, coronaviruses are mutating all the time. Yes, scientists think you probably on average get at least a few months’ immunity to this one following an infection, but beyond that, no-one knows yet.
As for getting treated by medical staff who don’t wear masks, they were dropping like flies in the early days in Wuhan, because they come into such close, intimate and prolonged contact with COVID patients that they cop for very high viral loads. If you’re happy having them mess with you maskless while highly infectious …
PS At least your reply didn’t get marked as spam! Or is The Algorithm getting ready to pounce?
I don’t follow any rules. I hug. I shake hands. I go to parties. I don’t social distance. I haven’t at all… and more and more people have joined me. There are some bars not following the rules where I live now to. They don’t advertise it. They just ignore the rules. These are the places I frequent. We don’t mask or avoid each other at all. We gather in groups. Yet we still live. LOL
I’m in the UK. And I’m British. And I was also here when Tony Blair’s facts were spread all across the media about why we have to start a war in Iraq. Because we must trust the government, and we must trust the news/BBC. We all know how that went. No-one (well, almost no one) is saying that people aren’t dying from this new virus. What I believe most people here are saying (including me) is that the response we’ve had so far is simply disproportionate to the scale of the problem, to other problems it has created (maternity wards are now understaffed with a rise of 300% in stillborn babies) so, the question I ask you my friend is: Why don’t the state controlled media show the actual death count of covid related deaths per day? Because no-one in their right mind will argue that the tremendous rise in dead born babies isn’t a direct consequence of covid hogging up all resources and sucking the life out of other sectors of the society. And you tell me, is one baby’s life worth more than 1000 over age people? Or is it ok to let babies die in smaller numbers so we can save the 85 year old patient? I absolutely wish we could do both but from what it seems the state has its limit. So I ask again: Who do we save?
You have absolutely no right at all to call someone a killer – in this context.
Do you drive a car? How do you know some poor b****r hasn’t panicked and crashed into a wall because of the way you drive? How do you know YOU know you haven’t “killed” someone without even knowing it?
Or maybe something you’ve said? Maybe you’ve actually hurt someone without knowing it, who then committed suicide.
Or maybe you gave someone the wrong advice, that subsequently lead to his death again without you even realising anything had happened.
Ridiculous and Stupid. Idiotic my friend. Is what this is. Healthy and innocent people who are just.. living, are NOT granny killers.
But what of the people who die as a result of the virus being spread by those refusing to social distance? Would you not wait a few more months to be vaccinated first? Genuinely interested to know how that factors into your thinking, if at all.
I think you are an absolute idiot for believing in any of this. This is the arrogance of humanity. This is the illusion of control. Flatten the curve for two weeks? Wear a mask? Lockdown? We are nearly a year into this and all the “experts” have to show for it is worse outcomes. How do you look at a year of failure and conclude your experts have anything to offer the world? Somebody on twitter scanned in newspaper articles from Australia during the Spanish Flu. The same exact bullshit. After 100 years of “expert” research all they had to offer is the same as what they had in 1918. It took 7 years for Australia to finally remove all the restrictions even though the danger was over after at most 2 years. You have nothing to offer the world but completely destroying peoples lives.. no arts, no music, no socializing, poor schooling, extremely poor healthcare (particularly the most vulnerable), mental health issues, increased poverty, increased hunger and death in 3rd world children, increased homicide rates in large cities, increased domestic abuse, etc. Your beliefs are pure evil. You aren’t saving human civilization. You are destroying it.
I think what you’re trying to say, albeit without pointing to any evidence and using rather emotional language, is that you think the costs of preventing Covid infections (and corresponding harms such as routine hospital treatment being cancelled and economic slowdowns as people voluntarily adapt their behaviour) are outweighed by the costs of social distancing measures.
LOL. What people? I”m healthy. Healthy people don’t spread disease. You are sick in the head for spreading this nonsense. You think this is going to get better with a vaccine? Why the hell would it? They have struck gold. This is their dream come true. It is never going away. This is the “new normal”. From 2010. They got it all lined up right this time. https://abcnews.go.com/Heal…
Kathy Prendergast
3 years ago
Advising people to wash or sanitize their hands frequently is the best preventative measure. because – regardless of what we know now about how COVID spreads – lockdowns, mass mask wearing and “social distancing” have done NOTHING to reduce the rate of infection.
Phill Dorrell
3 years ago
When the Police are fining people for travelling 5 miles to go walking.
When the public were outraged that other members of the public were having street parties or going to the beach last summer.
When the rules state you can only meet one friend outside – and the media has suggested this might be banned.
Then it’s no wonder that the public can’t appreciate the importance of avoiding poorly ventilated spaces
Rickard Gardell
3 years ago
If 1,000 skiers returned from holidays in Italy/Austria in early 2020 with covid with an R0 of 3, why didn’t the entire population of UK get infected within a month? I can’t reconcile the so called highly infectious nature of this with the apparent low spread of this. It has been ravaging for a year and only 30% has been infected. R has been around 1.2-1.4 according to the geniuses in government. It doesn’t make sense. To me, it is amazing how slow this is, not how fast it spread. Pure math doesn’t make any sense. What am I missing?
C Arros
3 years ago
Much of the same fear-mongering rehashed once more, no less than by a psychologist, who should know better than anyone else that the human being does not thrive on isolation.
Steve Naylor
3 years ago
Re masks and transmission. I thought early on that after the introduction of the mask mandate, those wearing Visors rather than masks were deluded if they thought those devices could have any effect. However, I have rethought this. It is accepted that surgical and cloth masks do very little to filter particles, perhaps inhalation of a few only. However, a mask will do a good job of aerosolising exhaled particles, which it is stated can hang in the air for considerable periods. Thus visors are BETTER at stopping the spread than any masks, since there is no aerosol produced, and particles which ARE exhaled will either fall to the floor, or remain on the inside of the device, well away from third parties. Anyone had similar thoughts ?
I agree with your point about masks creating aerosols from exhaled particles but Japanese scientists used a supercomputer to model air flows around a visor and found that they disperse particles just as effectively as masks.
James Moss
3 years ago
One of the problems here is that NO-ONE knows with certainty exactly how respiratory viruses are really spread. It is not settled science. It will take a long time before it ever is since the necessary experiments cannot practically or ethically be conducted.
Thus we are left to rely on scientific consensus, such as that reported in this article. Even that has evolved over the past year.
As a result, an army of opportunists, grifters, fakers and agenda-holders can play the “no evidence” card. There isn’t 100% cast iron evidence that any transmission mode predominates, nor that almost any precaution is highly effective, nor that one type of infectee is more responsible than another. There is a yet larger army of the gullible and of wishful thinkers readily taken in by such people – the fat charlatan for example, completely demolished in an excellent article in Quillette recently by Christopher Snowden, but thousands still believe him.
There you have the advantage on me as I have not. Sufficient demolition for me. One of the leading charlatans has since deleted himself from Twitter, his main outlet, after some rather unsavoury posts were revealed. Why is that relevant? Well it goes to judgement and lack of intellectual rigour. Plus his claims that this material was “hacked” onto his timeline over a period of about a year goes to credibility. He either lies or is deluded. Others have been deleting their past tweets at a rate of knots.
Jeffrey Chongsathien
3 years ago
How does COVID19 spread? Like every other virus particle… because the physical universe has entropy. What do COVIDNazis ant to do? Everything that’s possible to end it, damn the consequences.
Nicholas Taylor
3 years ago
I don’t know how the airborne spread of virus particles compares with other types of particle or droplet, but I do know that I am regularly assailed in the street by invisible tobacco fumes and clouds of nicotine vapour. It is easy to see how quickly and far the latter propagate, and tobacco fumes have a remarkable ability to arrive in concentration 5 or 6 metres away from the source, that I sometimes have to search for to locate. If you get a chance to hear today’s ‘Life scientific’ on BBC Radio 4 (0900 Tue 19/1/21), you will hear Prof. Catherine Knowkes explain how hard it is to predict how air moves around a building, and though a street may be simpler there are barriers and air movements, and turbulence that can concentrate rather than disperse. Tobacco fumes originating several metres away are sufficient to produce an immediate physical reaction in me, though they may not be sufficient to cause any harm. Cov2 may also be insufficiently concentrated in open air to be harmful, but of course it is undetectable. Maybe the trick is to imagine yourself sharing a confined space with a cigarette smoker or vaper.
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
There is an awful lot if bad information about. You have to bear in mind that at the beginning of the pandemic there were all kinds of conflicting things flying around. Scientists put a drop of the virus onto various surfaces like cardboard, steel, copper and measured how long afterwards they could find traces. Of course, they did not measure whether the virus could still be caught from these surfaces. I even read a research article from New Zealand (honestly) that said that all banisters, railings, handles, shelves in the public domain should be ripped out and replaced with copper!! Many of my own family still wash down all of the packages from the supermarket with detergent – there is even one story of a lady who puts here shopping straight into the washing machine. This kind of behaviour is bound to happen if people are scared and governments have done a very good job of ensuring that they are scared.
I even read a research article from New Zealand (honestly) that said that all banisters, railings, handles, shelves in the public domain should be ripped out and replaced with copper!!
Actually, silver is an even better anti-bacterial agent. And it’s not a far step from there to telling immigrants that the streets of London are paved with gold….
I even read a research article from New Zealand (honestly) that said that all banisters, railings, handles, shelves in the public domain should be ripped out and replaced with copper!!
Actually, silver is an even better anti-bacterial agent. And it’s not a far step from that to telling immigrants that the streets of London are paved with gold….
Richard Cosier
3 years ago
The highlighted link to https://unherd.com/2021/01/… suggests “The epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 indicates that most infections are spread through close contact, not airborne transmission”
and that good ways of preveting transmission include “among these interventions, which include social distancing, use of masks in the community, hand hygiene, and surface cleaning and disinfection,…”
Alison Houston
3 years ago
“Because of airborne particles, being indoors at all with poor ventilation is a risk too.”
Should I tell my elderly father with umpteen co-morbidities to spend his days and nights outside in the freezing fog and frost then? Or just to have all his sashes wide open and his doors where possible? If self isolating for 9 months isn’t going to stop the virus blowing in and killing him, even in his rural home, it seems there isn’t much left I can advise. Presumably dying of ordinary pneumonia or hypothermia must be better than dying of Covid?
But cold air does not make you sick… this is an explanation for sickness arising from the middle ages where people correlated coldness in winter with increased illness (probably why we call an illness “a cold”). I live in Germany where people fervently believe this – even a suggestion to open a window in a stuffy room when it is cold outside is seen as attempted murder. Despite a year of Covid and discussion of viruses, people still hang on to this view. People get sick (even before Covid) from sitting in warm, humid unventilated rooms in winter. (I appreciate being cold is perhaps uncomfortable for older and sick people, but some fresh air will certainly do no harm).
Being exposed to air as cold as that in the UK in January may be more than a little uncomfortable, especially for the elderly or infirm. And turning up the heating to counteract the cold air may be prohibitively expensive, as well as environmentally unsound.
If he’s isolating, he’s basically only breathing his own exhaled air. The problem only arises when indoor space is shared.
Dennis Boylon
3 years ago
The “fear appeals” start losing their resonance after 10 freaking months. LOL. Just tell them to stop please. Honestly I don’t think they care. The politicians care about appearances and trying to keep everyone scared. They could care less about actually helping anybody. What evidence is there they actually even want to help anyone? None that I can see. So this article is probably a waste of time. Muge Cevik has been trying to engage this type of thinking. Her paper from September tried to get the conversation going. Probably the best data analysis on spread there has been… but no one cares. 20 times more spread indoors than outdoors! Is it better to be outdoors unmaksed or indoors in a closed in space with people masked. At 20 times the spread I don’t think it takes a genius to figure that one out. Truth is they just want to drive compliance and they like seeing people in masks. They don’t care if anyone gets sick or not. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol…
teresa_d_wood
3 years ago
I believe a post I made 3 hours ago has been marked as ‘spam’. how does that happen? sorry, new to this site.
It looks like I replied to you. As you can see, I didn’t exactly agree with your comment, but from what I remember there was absolutely nothing spammish about it. I take it as just one of those quirks of The Algorithm, variants of which sometimes happen on various sites; try again?
I thought unherd was a place where there was freedom of speech… I guess that just doesn’t exist anymore. I think my closing comment may have been walking a line that could have been deemed as encouraging people to self harm. and I obviously wouldn’t want that. It certainly wasnt my intention.I just need to be careful not to get carried away.
Thanks, I will. I did finish it with a suggestion that everyone should go and catch (cant use the word for fear of being deleted again) so we could all get natural immunity.. that may well have done it! I’ll edit the post and try again, but, its yesteday’s news now.
One of the few html tools in the comment box enables web links, but using it seems to result in the post being amrked as spam…
David Gray
3 years ago
I find it quite amusing that so many people are commenting on this article with their own assured beliefs and expertise. Trump is gone now, you can all start listening to real experts now and follow the science.
“Trump is gone now, you can all start listening to real experts now and follow the science.”
Is that the experts that share your opinion only, or would that include those that don’t? I’m only asking, as there are many epidemiologists and virologists who don’t support the government’s position on this who aren’t given the privilege of a platform in the mainstream media.
And when you say “follow the science”, is that the science backed by empirical evidence that has been peer reviewed, or the ‘science’ that hasn’t been scrutinised in any way, shape or form that certain sections of the media then distorts to support its sensationalist narrative that our directionless and talentless parliament, incapable of critical thinking are then pressured into adopting, usually after the horse has bolted?
A better reply than David Gray deserves. Gray is baiting readers with the provocative insinuation “that so many people” here not only foolishly believe in Trump but also foolishly fail to “follow the science”. Note his rather lofty opening line ““ he finds it “quite amusing…”
Apologies if I came over a bit rude. Science is based on evidence rather than gut feeling. Science is based on testing hypotheses for evidence that supports them and does not prove things (that is best left to the mathematicians). A good (and honest) scientist is probably less certain than your average politician on any given matter within their expertise. So any science we ‘follow’ should not be one scientist or another, one group or another. To do so would be to misunderstand what science is.
” Science is based on testing hypotheses for evidence that supports them and does not prove things (that is best left to the mathematicians).”
My thoughts exactly. Unfortunately, there is plenty of science that is being ‘followed’ by our media and therefore our parliament that is not supported by tested hypotheses.
Alan Peterson
3 years ago
(Retired Internist) Agree with Mr. Ritchie. The main way Covid is spread is by respiratory transmission.
There’s a lot of good information in this comments section, too. People have offered some accurate, detailed info to either support or refute the contention that masks work. That’s confusing, isn’t it? I think the confusion is partly due to forgetting that the debate is about the risk of Covid infection. A mask significantly reduces the risk, but doesn’t drive the risk down to zero.
I think the best evidenced that masks help is not in the articles about droplet size, aerosols, pore size, and the like. It’s in the epidemiological studies that have been done (eg, “Community Use Of Face Masks And COVID-19: Evidence From A Natural Experiment Of State Mandates In The US”https://www.healthaffairs.o… ).
The study showed that, ” Mandating face mask use in public is associated with a decline in the daily COVID-19 growth rate by 0.9, 1.1, 1.4, 1.7, and 2.0 percentage points in 1″“5, 6″“10, 11″“15, 16″“20, and 21 or more days after state face mask orders were signed, respectively. Estimates suggest that as a result of the implementation of these mandates, more than 200,000 COVID-19 cases were averted by May 22, 2020. The findings suggest that requiring face mask use in public could help in mitigating the spread of COVID-19.”. This study bypasses all of the details discussed in Comments and just looks at whether face masks resulted in fewer infections (they do). This kind of study always invites the criticism that “association doesn’t always mean causation”, but it’s very suggestive that masks work to reduce the risk even though the risk is not reduced to zero. Supporting this too is: 1) the experience in Kansas which didn’t mandate masks, but left it up to each county to decide. The counties where masks were adopted had far fewer Covid cases. And 2) the lower incidence in Asian countries (where mask wearing is widely accepted).
This is my first experience on Unherd. I’m impressed with the article and the readership.
Mike Bell
3 years ago
Great article. What’s amazing is that we are still discussing this one year on. The media have been pathetic and have contributed to the problem. Endless interviews with different points of view, vox-pops etc. Almost no explanation of: what a virus is how you get a disease what immunity is and how does it happen droplet size and distance why masks can be effective for droplets even though the holes are bigger than the virus etc etc One of the characteristics of successful countries like Taiwan and New Zealand is that the media and government spoke with one voice. I’m ashamed of of us. 100,000 unnecessary deaths.
Judy Johnson
3 years ago
We used to go to birthday parties and share a cake that someone had blown on!
Julian Calderara
3 years ago
Good to read this. But why have the Government not adopted it? The emphasis has been equally Hands Face Space. Snappy but wrong according to CDC data. Moreover it extends to behaviour and organisation. I had two lateral flow tests in the week. Both carried out in enclosed spaces and where hand sanitising seemed more emphasised than fresh air. Indeed i have now contracted the virus and wonder if that’s where I caught it…
Judy Englander
3 years ago
I’ve religiously cleaned my grocery deliveries for almost a year. Does this mean I’m being over-cautious? Btw, I can’t stop my friendly delivery drivers from chatting as they unload, thus spraying my groceries with invisible particles, infectious or non-infectious. I stand well over two metres away and let them get on with it.
Dennis Boylon
3 years ago
There is no need for anyone to get a vaccine either. This is crazy.
J J
3 years ago
Can we not all wear sealed masks / hoods that provide 100% protection / give 100% protection outside of the household and in the vicinity of other people?
I know it sounds extreme, but these are available and not that expensive (cheaper if mass produced). Until we find another way to solve the pandemic, it could be a good solution. Would allow us to live a relatively normal life.
Appreciate public eating / drinking would still not work, but you could go shopping, go to mass events, go to the office. Perhaps they could also have a hole for straw?
Covid-19 is now endemic, it wont go away, so we need to learn to live it. I hope your proposal is not meant to be taken too seriously because if it became the norm I think I would go completely mad, and so might many others. Perhaps those with poor metabolic health (look it up on the NHS web site if you dont know what that means) and fragility should just shield….. for the rest of their lives.
I don’t disagree it’s endemic and we shall need to live COVID. However that is not a solution. The problem with COVID is that it hospitalises 2% to 4% of those it infects. No country has sufficient hospital capacity to deal with that, so we need to mitigate the spread (bend the curve).
Masks on balance probably help, but are of very limited effectiveness. These hoods seem more straight forward and near 100% effective. Perhaps the old and vulnerable people can use them to shield?
Thats why those who are at risk of being hospitalised, those with poor metabolic health (which includes being obese) and the fragile (many people in care homes) should be subject to lockdown. Locking down the 95% of the population who are not seriously affected is maddness and not sustainable.
Your approach is fine in theory, but it’s not possible to lockdown specific age groups. As one epidemiologist explained “it’s like trying to have a urine free swimming lane in a swimming pool where people are allowed to urinate”
Also, the hospitalization rate for healthy people below 60 is quite high – about 2%. They don’t die, but they still need to be in hospital for a week or two. We could not handle that many hospitalisations.
In a sense, we are locking down the people you reference, but by using a vaccine. That process should be complete in the next 4.5 weeks, thank god. It’s a shame we could not do this at the start of the pandemic, but we did not have the infrastructure, capacity or knowledge.
That is one of the good things to come out of this pandemic. Going forward we shall have the ability to detect any new viruses quickly through mass testing. We shall then have the ability to develop, produce and prescribe vaccines when require in matter of months.
I read in the media today, we now have the ability to do all of this in 4 months (detect the virus and provide vaccines in peoples arms).
Yes. And we will surely crack nuclear fusion in the next 30 years.
Sorry, but it’s just an arms race (pun unintended.) Mankind evolving ever more complex technical fixes keeping ourselves teetering on stilts (not) safe from the inevitable downfall.
Andre Lower
3 years ago
Scary to read just how far down people will go in the rabbit hole of their own “scientific” analyses to support their personal dislike of face masks. We’re lucky that sane people realize the difference between true technically informed professionals and wannabes playing the tired old trope of “freedom of expression” to muddle the waters even further.
I’m afraid you have done the most in “muddling” the waters here (not to mention muddying them) by making a comment which does not apply to the opinions of the writer. Please read an article attentively before jumping to conclusions which fortify your own pet grievances.
Dictionary says I got the spelling right. As for your comment, I was not referring to the author at all – I was addressing thoughtless commenters. And I disagree that my grievance is “pet” – irresponsible commentary risking peoples lives out of sheer scientific pretentiousness, when the commenter has no true knowledge to go around issuing judgement on matters he/she donesn’t know at such depth is very serious business.
Ah, I get you now, Andre. Apologies for misreading your general comment on the commenters for one on the author’s opinions. And I agree that in the context you now speak of, your grievance is not “pet”, and no doubt my complaint to you could be seen in this context as more “pet”. As for the muddy/muddle trifle: Pls forgive, as I love words, but never fear as I am no pedantic purist, and adore the mixing of metaphors and spontaneous creation derived from language mistakes (after all what was most of Shakespeare?). So (and please take in appropriate spirit from a colleague who often does the same): “Muddling” is indeed a correct word, however I think you’ll find that the “correct” idiom is: “muddy the water(s) To introduce something, typically information, to an issue or situation that makes it less clear or more confusing.” But hey – no worries! We now have a new idiom in our most robust and rich language. Cheers, Andre.
Brian Newman
3 years ago
It has been known for many years especially in countries where sars has been treated, ( far east) that mask wearing and distancing are essential in preventing spread..along with track and trace. Spread by objects is acknowledged as relatively small.The problem the UK has experienced is JVT,and others have continually spouted,masks don’t work…many lives could have been saved by wearing masks and 2M distancing
Let me ask a very silly question : Where the hell do people think respiratory viruses go during the summer ? Does flu go on holiday to mysteriously re-visit every year at the same time.
What happens in winter 2021 do we do this all again, in 2022 do we repeat because of newer mutations, in 2023 repeat again due to yet more mutations. How come after millions of years of evolution and exposure to billions of mutated strands of RNA and DNA the Human race has to hide behind masks to survive. What utter insanity.
Reality check : we are surrounded by viruses they spread ALL THE TIME by various methods the most common of which by some margin is aerosols. They have done this from the dawn of time and all life on this planet has evolved strategies to not die from the billions of constantly mutating strands of RNA and DNA that are in the environment. It’s called an immune system. Our immune system needs certain things to remain strong for example vitamin D, good diet, CONSTANT EXPOSURE to DIFFERENT viruses and bacteria.
Constant hand washing degrades your immune system.
Living indoors all the time degrades your immune system.
Not meeting people (who host different viruses and bacteria) degrades your immune system.
Masks encourage the growth of bacteria on the moist back of the mask which is then breathed back into the lungs, INSANE! OH and for good measure we constantly touch these masks full of expelled viruses and bacteria as we shop and touch shelves or browse the sell by dates. Utterly utterly insane.
Everything currently employed to fight the virus is actually degrading our immune system and making us more susceptible. As for the masks, just wait for all the “cases” of bacterial pneumonia to appear followed in a few years by lung damage due to the cotton fibres. Of course this assumes these people have survived the mRNA trials (well it’s not been fully tested has it, phase 3 trials take years because waiting years is part of the fricking test! and there have not been any animal tests).
Pretty much nailed it! I’m in awe of the power of fear to induce distorted thinking and to turn ‘public health’ into a recipe for general unwellness (though I’m cautiously optimistic about the impact of vaccines, if for no other reason than that they’ll calm everyone down).
https://www.google.com/sear…
I think this is the point everybody is trying to make. The virus is killing people who have lost their natural immune systems, so the protection is really for those people. It means that people who, in 10 years’ time say, lose their immune systems in their turn, then they won’t be protected either. So next winter we will have wave 3 and so on.
Really, an undue lack of faith is being put into vaccinations which may not be unsafe but also they may not protect you for even four of five years.
You are mistaken. The flu jab uses the natural immune system to save the lives of millions every year. The corona jab will do this in future. The only people dying of COVID are those with artificially extended lifespans due to the flu jab. They’re uniquelly vulnerable to a flutype disease with no vaccine
Exactly; even if this virus is different from flu viruses, the widespread use of flu vaccines is a major factor in how much of an impact it’s had on the elderly population. Many if not most of the people who’ve died from the virus probably wouldn’t have been alive in 2020 because flu would have taken them out already. I suppose it’s a brutal way of looking at it, as obviously all deaths are tragic. I have a beloved elderly parent myself, and one of my friends just lost her beloved 80+ year old father to COVID. Nobody’s ever ready for that and it hurts like hell when it happens. We want to do all we can to keep our loved ones with us for as long as we can. But at what cost, both to us and to them? The lockdowns of this past year have been torturous to many elderly people, on top of their disastrous effect on everything else: ordinary health care, children’s education, the economy, livelihoods of small business owners, people’s mental health and wellbeing, etc.. Quality of life still matters.
On a related note.
The research on the flu vaccine is mixed. Early research suggested it made you more likely to die from COVID. Most recent research suggests it reduces you chances of being infected and becoming ill.
Actually, research reported in 2008 [https://www.sciencedaily.co…] found little evidence that the flu jab reduced elder mortality:
No entirely true, particularly in respect of the deaths of young people, but I take your more general point about the benefits of vaccination.
Sunlight UV kills it. Just like flu; in the summer the prevalent flu types in the southern hemisphere are put into the vaccine for us. And vice versa fot them. Henceforth, corona vaccines will go into the annual jab.
As does humidity. There was a considerable amount of research on vireus vulnerabilities done post-SARS (~2003).
Generally, it is well established in the scientific literature that survival times and therefore infection rates for enshrouded-RNA viruses
(such as CoV-19, influenza, SARS, MERS, common cold) are strongly influenced by ambient humidity and (to a lesser extent) temperature. (US Homeland Security’s research department confirms that the CoVID-19 virus conforms to this pattern.) This pattern has been known among virologists for more than a decade.
One Mayo Clinic study in schools showed a factor-of-2.3 decrease in influenza when in-school humidity was raised to 50%:
(https://journals.plos.org/p….
An Australian study found that a reduction in relative humidity of 1% was predicted to be associated with an increase of COVID-19 cases by 6.11%:
(https://onlinelibrary.wiley…
You may find this US Department of Homeland Security CoVID-lifetime calculator interesting:
(https://www.dhs.gov/science…
Making it a policy that public-building humidity should be set at 50% and temperature set at 75 degrees F would substantially reduce the
infection rates for not only CoV-19 but also for influenza and common colds. Given that tens of thousands of people die each year from
influenza, this is a simple *prevention* measure would save many
thousands of lives from that disease alone; if it had been done already, it might well have prevented this epidemic, or might prevent a “bump” — and much less intrusively than the current measures, which seem to primarily have the effect of providing an outward and visible sign of compliance to the power-hungry authorities.
“How come after millions of years of evolution and exposure to billions of mutated strands of RNA and DNA …”
Evolution may well end up giving us some inherited immunity to this virus, but evolution works by natural selection, eliminating those who can’t keep up. Is that what you want?
it’s not a question of what anyone wants, it’s a question of what is going to happen one way or another and already has in relation to countless other viruses humanity coexists with.
You shouldn’t infer value judgements being made off of a reiteration of evolutionary facts, no one wins from that.
I wasn’t aware I was inferring much. I was asking if Dennis Boylon meant evolution should just be allowed to take its course. I’m not sure the reply enlightened me much.
… are you a meat eater ?
Is their any evidence the madness done has improved anything. Cases skyrocketing and the only answer from the panic mongers is lock down more. Destroy more life. Destroy all joy in life. Hide under your bed. This is your success story?
The evidence is overwhelming.
Impose restrictions and cases fall, end restrictions and cases increase, impose them again and cases fall again, end them again and they increase again. We have now done this three times in the past 9 months with millions of subjects in about 20 different countries. And hospitalisations and deaths correlate with cases by almost 100%
What more evidence do you need precisely?
And before you get upset. I think the socio economic damage caused by the restrictions are greater than the benefits. It’s just the virus also causes lots of damage. And COVID restrictions can and do mitigate this damage. The two things are not mutually exclusive.
We are fuc*ed whatever we do, time to man up.
Sweden had no lockdowns at all, no mask mandates, and its infection and death rate is actually lower than many other places that had multiple lockdowns.and where everyone wears masks. I don’t think there was ever any need to “man up” like we were facing a scourge equivalent to the plague or Spanish Flu. We should have just been realistic and sensible about it. But maybe being realistic and sensible is impossible in this age. Right from the beginning of last year, the fear porn media were grabbing onto this like a pack of salivating hyenas and refusing to let it go. By the beginning of February, “Coronavirus” was all a lot of the young kids I teach could talk about. These are kids too young to understand even basic biology, yet the mass media had still instilled into their impressionable minds the idea that we were facing a terrifying existential threat and if something drastic and life-altering was not done, we were all doomed.
… been mishandled since day 1
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
get out of your comfy middle class boxes and read more – AGENDA 21
https://grist.org/politics/…
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
https://www.zerohedge.com/g…
The evidence in many places, if you look at it carefully, shows case count beginning to decline ahead of severe restrictions. In Ottawa, Canada, where I live, plotting the rises and falls gives uneven curves with no apparent correlation to periods of more severe restrictions. Seeing a rise two weeks after extra restrictions (a little short of a major lockdown) should make the authorities question its effectiveness, no? But a month and a half after the end of that one, along comes a reinstatement, followed two and a half weeks later with a major lockdown, all while the curve continues curvy (which is called “spiking”, of course).
As for correlation between cases (i.e., positive swabs) and hospitalization, it’s been weak to non-existent in Ottawa. (To its credit, Ottawa Public Health makes fairly rich data downloadable, allowing ordinary citizens with Excel to plot it.)
Sorry, the statistical evidence is overwhelming. You would do better to focus on the costs of lockdown being greater than the benefits. That is a legitimate argument (which I probably support).
But when you start suggesting the lockdowns do not work or people are not really dying, it completely undermines your central point.
As the 19th century politician George Canning said, JJ, “I can make statistics tell me anything except the truth.”
The statistical evidence we are being fed is overwhelmingly fake.
‘Fed’ by who? By the lizards or the satanic pedo cult that runs the WEF? I hate to break it to you, but life is not that simple. There is no global conspiracy to destroy the world economy and inject everyone with a tracking device.
You are, probably unwittingly, embracing the left wing concept of postmodernism. That there is no absolute truth, only relative truth that simply a reflects your self-interested economic interests or power.
The statistical data is available on the ONS site. ONS is an independent, globally respective, statistical service that is run by qualified staticians. If you believe there data to be wrong, or a fraud, the onus is on you to prove it’s wrong.
JJ should he man up in one of those bubble helmets you are such a fan of…..
Yes there is plenty of evidence. If they hadn’t been stupid enough to stop the previous lockdown at the start of December, case rates would be a tenth of what they are at the moment and perhaps 25000 lives would have been saved. I think saving lives is an improvement, do you not agree?
I think if you were either in an ICU bed or a close family member was unable to get the help they needed, you wouldn’t be calling it madness.
It’s not about hiding under your bed, it’s more about consideration for the lives of other people. There is a vaccine now, a few more months of pain isn’t the end of the world.
In the areas impacted by the new variant, they never completely removed restrictions. London had one week in Tier 2. Then one week in Tier 3. Then we went into Tier 4 on the 18th December (pretty much a lockdown) then the full national lockdown on 4th Jan. I think the SE never even had a week in Tier 2 (went straight to Tier 3).
The PM only received the report on the 17th of December and went into Tier Four 24 hours later
The economic and social damage caused by lockdowns are substantial. We should only use them to avoid the NHS collapsing. In that sense, the PM’s timing was almost perfect.
It has worked for millions of years as evidenced by the fact that our species is still around. That may sound harsh but remember what Tennyson said about nature: Red in tooth and claw.
Estimated 280 trillion viruses in the human viome. That is a lot of vaccines! Bill and Melinda know a good racket when they see one. Don’t fight it. Maybe Bill and Melinda have space for you on their team. No profit in not exploiting the madness.
One vaccine can cover multiple viruses. Indeed, they are working on a broad spectrum coronavirus vaccine as we speak.
On a related note, the human body already has antibodies to many of the viruses ou reference. That is all a vaccine does.
But I thought you had “ad enuf of experts”….
Doesn’t apply to you eh…
Cause you know everything….
Your post makes absolutely no sense.
But all yours do…
LOL. OK. Thanks for that.
Where do these things go in the summer then? People travel on public transport, hang around in pubs, theatres, concerts, offices.
If only all of these silly old immunologist, epidemiologists and virologists had your experience, skills and qualifications.
We’ve ad enuf of experts.
Wow says the guy who thinks he knows everything!!!!!
Mate, no one is going to take a blind bit of notice of what you’re saying because you’re telling the truth.
Have you not noticed? The truth is the most boring and inconvenient thing. No one wants it.
For instance you have someone commenting on your post, dismissing the important stark truths you present as mere ‘some good points’ and then going on to guesstimate that it kills 20 or 30 times more than flu.
Now that’s the bit people will focus on and are meant to focus on. Not real facts. Frightening bogies.
And he quotes restrictions as reducing death rates. Restrictions reduce the spread they don’t reduce the case fatality rate.
It is this wonderful confusion about exactly what they’re talking about that allows all this panic and hysteria to continue – with its incredible commensurate cost.
Most of the time most of them simply don’t know what they’re saying. Figures need close scrutiny and understanding and that truth never so obvious and important as in this chaos.
https://www.bmj.com/content…
What people need really to know is none of the heated debate about this that or the other, such as comparative flu rates and such, from dubious and poorly understood figures and studies – but just what dangers are they facing at the present time.
There is no doubt there is a danger. The debate often gets twisted to appear as though one side is saying there is a danger and the other side is saying there is not.
Just like they twist that germany debate about numbers into one about was there or wasn’t there?
Not so. There’s no doubt there’s a danger and many of the people arguing for sensible appreciation of it are those very people most at risk: like myself.
But the danger needs to be assessed and managed as best possible.
So how great is the danger and where is it:
. From covid: of death? at most ages? very low.
. From covid measures? High and rising all the time for all ages and the nation as a whole.
Simple as that. That’s what it is all about. We’re facing two dangers.
And the greater of the two is the govt. mandated actions. And there’s virtually nil interest in quantifying those.
https://collateralglobal.org/
“they” know more than you:
https://www.google.com/sear…
It’s sounds to me that you still believe in relying on herd immunity to tackle the Covid virus threat. You could have saved an awful lot of words by just saying so.
Living indoors degrades immune system, exactly! The immune system relies upon being exercised doesn’t it? By a daily barage of bacteria and virus particles? Also the fact that we now know how crucial Vit D is to our immune system response to Covid infection, why the hell are we being forced to stay indoors out of any potential Vit D boosting sunshine on the skin?
During lockdown, exercise levels are at a record high. So your well intentioned point is rather mute in reality.
Source please…..
google nuffield health. Evidence is mixed, but it’s certaintly not a done deal that people are exercising less”. No greater motivation to lose weight and exercise more than death due to covid
“As we wait to hear how Britain will be eased out of lockdown, it seems the constraints on our day to lives have led to some unexpected benefits, with three quarters of Brits (76%) taking up at least one new form of exercise since lockdown began.
Walking, specifically for exercise, has been the most popular new activity with three in ten (30%) introducing this into their lockdown regimes. Following walking, the next most popular exercises people have taken up are: jogging, yoga, HIIT, running, home treadmill, weights and cycling outdoors.
Encouragingly, of those who have become more active over the past few weeks, either increasing exercise levels or taking up a new form of exercise, 8 out of 10 (81%) say they will try to continue with their new exercise regime once life returns to a ‘new normal’.
The survey, we commissioned, shows how Brits are making a concerted effort to look after their physical health during lockdown, and shines a light on some of the mishaps people have had, as well as the beneficial effects people are feeling from exercise on their mental health during these challenging times. “
Lol
Right; they’re spending at least an hour a day dutifully sweating in their spacious well-ventilated home gyms, which everyone knows most British people have.
Oh please, save us from your victim mentality. Now you can’t exercise unless you have a home gym? If you have 6 square feet you can exercise. You don’t need any equipment.
Last time I checked, anyone can jog on the public roads (where I live more people seem to jog than walk since lockdown)
“How come after millions of years of evolution and exposure to billions of mutated strands of RNA and DNA the Human race has to hide behind masks to survive”
Evolution works by natural selection – by lots of people dying. Many are not keen on this as an approach to disease prevention.
And what is good for the human race is not necessarily good for its current members.
It may be true that the immune system gets stronger by being stimulated (it’s “anti fragile”) but that is a different thing. And so far as we know, that strengthening dies with us.
If one thing was very clear about this virus right from the start, it was that it was NOT something that was going to take out the young and healthy, to whom it was basically just another common cold virus. So efforts to control it should have been concentrated on the most vulnerable population., i.e., those in hospitals and long-term care homes. They should have been protected while the general population was exposed to the virus and built up herd immunity. .
“Our immune system needs certain things to remain strong for example vitamin D, good diet, CONSTANT EXPOSURE to DIFFERENT viruses and bacteria.”
To a degree. But certain sanitary measures have clearly improved the health situation massively.
Your argument could just as well be used against clean water, sanitary disposal of human waste etc. Perhaps we should be ingesting some of that to keep our immune system strong.
Nature itself has provided us with behavioural defences against disease. It’s called the disgust reflex. Things that are likely to cause us infection also cause us disgust, so we avoid them.
Excellent comments. I wholeheartedly agree.
Mmm
I can’t recall the last time I saw anybody in a shop not wearing a mask, most people are keeping their distance from each other (to the extent that they are walking in the road and risk getting run down), pubs, clubs etc are shut… So how are 40k+ people getting infected every day?
40k+ ? How could anyone possibly know? Unless you test everyone, every day, you can’t know. AFAIK , it remains the case that most people are getting this via medical interventions. Does any one seriously believe that you can be in a hospital and NOT pick it up?. And everyone sent home, or to a care home, or to a hotel, or the staff, aren’t these the ‘superspreaders’? Is any official body, or media outlet even remotely likely to discuss this publically? You’re possibly short of Vitamin D; you’re definitely short of a dose of scepticism.
The danger in care homes was reported on the news in the UK last night; some care homes are refusing to accept residents discharged from hospital.
You see, this is how uncertain things get spread around. if you say that you have more protection if you take vitamin D – and this is absolutely not a proven fact – then silly people will take the vitamin and expose themselves to more risk. Like the idea that you are totally protected if you wear a mask, which is what some people do think.
40k+ is the case count in the UK. Actual infections are almost certainly some multiple of case count.
No one ever died of old age or the flu in over a year now..Not sure where they are keeping them all
Flu has been way down, possibly because masks and social distancing (and lockdowns) are quite effective against Flu transmission. ~500k non-COVID deaths occurred in the UK in 2020.
Covid is killing the same people(in aggregate) who would have died of flu or other respiratory disease.
Another thing to consider here is that these deaths are recorded as ‘with covid’ – there’s a chance that lots actually died from the flu or other causes. This will surely affect the numbers.
Are people really still touting that nonsense? Does the number of patients in ICUs, the necessary expansion of ICUs, the hospitals having to cancel priority 2 cancer treatments mean nothing? This. Is. Not. Flu.
There are also people that die from Covid more than 28 days after their first positive test, and people that die from or with Covid that are never tested for Coronavirus. Both of these will also affect the numbers.
Deaths counted by ONS require a death certificate.
From David Oliver (a doctor in Manchester) :
“Completion of death certificates is a serious and regulated part of a doctor’s responsibility. The consequences for professional registration or in the courts for deliberately falsifying certificates would be very serious. We are also very aware of just how upsetting the content of death certificates can be for bereaved families and the questions they can then have.
The rules require us to complete the certificate ‘to the best of your knowledge and belief’ and, barring exceptional circumstances, requires the certificate to be completed by a doctor who knew and was attending to the person before death.
Death Certificates contain causes 1a (cause directly leading to death) 1b and 1c (causes leading to 1a) and 2 (causes contributing to death but not directly related).
If Covid-19 is in our clinical assessment of the person we have assessed and treated the main cause of death, we will put it as cause 1a.
In other cases, someone might die from a complication of Covid-19 ““ for instance a pulmonary embolism (blood clot) or a bacterial pneumonia in which case that will be 1a with Covid as 1b or c.
In other cases, the person may have had Covid contributing to a death from another cause ““ perhaps by making the person weaker or more susceptible or starting a chain of events and may appear as 2.
There never was a formal requirement for a positive Covid-19 test to write Covid on a certificate if the clinical picture was clear and so yes, some patients, mostly earlier in the pandemic would have had Covid written down without yet testing positive.
… also “deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid test” does NOT influence what we actually write on death certificates which by law we have to complete to the best of our knowledge and belief and which are scrutinised by a 2nd doctor.
En masse Falsification of certificates? no
the ONS data (rather than GOV own definition for counting) are not based on some arbitrary post test time period but on what we put on the certificate based on our clinical knowledge of that patient in their final illness. If we think Covid contributed to death it goes on.”
Yes and no. Covid is a far more intense disease of the respiratory system and can and does also cause organ failure in some people. This has happened at times with young children who are not as likely to get sick with Covid, too. There is no way to know exactly who will die when you see someone who is above the age of 90 recover while a very healthy younger person of 40 or so succumbs.
I keep hearing people ay how much more deadly COVID is to the elderly and vulnerable than influenza, but I see no evidence. Prior to the introduction of the first flu vaccines two decades ago, flu cut an annual swath through the elderly population every year. Everyone knew, and still knows, how deadly flu could be to elderly or otherwise vulnerable people. And even if such a person recovered from a bad case of the flu, often they were never the same.
I think it’s overwhelming our health services a lot more than a similar number of ‘flu cases would, and that’s with masks, social distancing, lockdowns and so on.
Or maybe it’s been down because many of the people whose deaths have been attributed to COVID actually died of the flu, keeping in mind that there’s no way to prove actual cause of death in these cases, when the diseases cause the same symptoms. The practice is, when a patient tested positive for COVID, to put the COD down as COVID. But a person can be hosting multiple viruses at one time, and as far as I know they’re not testing for the presence of flu viruses, new ones of which appear every year, which is precisely why the flu vaccines are effective against only some of them.
What does it actually matter?
What does it actually matter? Deaths from respiratory disease are way up on the annual figures from the past 20 years, despite social distancing, mask-wearing, closing great swathes of business and industry, and hospitals are overwhelmed. The NHS has something that it can’t deal with right now. It’s extremely obvious that, in the main, this isn’t flu, but even if it were, what difference would that make to anything? It’s something we can’t cope with.
I’ve heard (from someone reasonably senior at PHE) that the primary location for transmission at the moment is shops. Yes, people are wearing masks when shopping, but one thing we know for sure about masks is that they are at best imperfect…
That’s just the point. Masks are indeed imperfect, and made more so by the failure of the authorities to set any sort of benchmarks for the type of masks to be used and their subsequent maintenance. (AFAIK, the regulations merely specify the use of “Face Coverings”. This, above all else, screams out that mask wearing is all about reminding the public about the need for social distancing and the danger of close proximity.
It is not just the masks being imperfect that is the problem. Many people I know go shopping for food with their imperfect masks on and feeling empowered by the mask. Then they stay inside the store for long periods of time, browsing the aisles. They may meet someone they know and chat in the store for extended periods. Then they stand on the line to be checked out for another long period. All of that will raise the chances of coming into contact with enough virus to cause a viral load inside the person to lead to infection, especially when this kind of behavior becomes a regular habit. It is a matter of mathematics at that point, raising chance.
Transmission is a multifactorial phenomenon – environment, host factors, contact pattern, socio-economic factors as outlined in :
Sars Cov 2 transmission routes and environments SAGE 22 October (20 pages and 75 references)
and
Factors contributing to risk of SARS-CoV2 transmission associated with
various settings PHE Transmission group (35 pages, 38 references) – as an example a quote from which reads :
“Households are environments which are characterised by long duration close interactions, usually with minimal control measures between members of the same household. Transmission risk is very variable in households; a meta analysis suggests that if there is an infected person in a household, the risk of another household member being infected is 18% on average, with a range of 4% to 55%. This is known as the secondary attack rate. Household crowding and deprivation are both associated with a significant increase in the risk of transmission in household settings (high confidence)”
Nothing black and white here.
You see, if you read all of the comments in this column from educated people (they can write reasoned arguments) you will find a large range of ideas. This is what this site is all about. There are many, many arguments are theories and which is correct? I think I know – but then I would say that.
Even so-called “correct” information is a theory when it comes to this disease because our knowledge is limited at this point and will change. The value of these forums is that they help us to connect and listen and hear many ideas which can only add to our overall wisdom and reason.
A large proportion of cases are from old corona type viruses still present in the system but not enough to produce an infection I wonder if anyone who is vaccinated will also give a false positive ?
Maybe it’s the wearing of the masks that’s contributing to the infection rate I’ve read that mass mask-wearing during the Spanish Flu pandemic has a lot to do with the fatality rate during that time, because so many people were getting bacterial pneumonia.
This article raises more issues than it answers. We have not had mandatory lockdowns and mask wearing at any other time and we must be told why this virus is different. The answer is that it cannot spread in a different way to any other respiratory virus. It must also be obvious to most people that they have been in close contact in the past with people who have had flu or a common cold and not been infected. Why is this?
In 1918 an uncle of mine died at the age of 9 from the Spanish flu, long before I was born and even before my mother. At that time, the family of two adults and six children lived in a two up, two down house and to the best of my knowledge nobody else caught it. Recently, I caught a cold and because of the lockdown I know the day I caught it. I had no close contact with another person, and I was wearing a mask when required. Why didn’t the mask and social distancing protect me?
We are being fed a diet of nonsense by our politicians and health professionals. The only thing that is certain is that they do not understand how viruses are being spread and the true risk of being infected. If they did, we would have influenza under control, but thousands die every year even with a vaccine and we have no explanation. Are the deaths only people who are not vaccinated? What has happened to flu deaths this season? They seem to be zero. Faith is being put in a vaccine for Covid19 and we are now expected to believe that it will work for all the variations we are hearing about and yet there is more panic being generated because of the variants. We are also being told the vaccine might only work for 5 months. None of this makes any sense. We are ruled by braying donkeys.
In all fairness, nobody will know how successfully the vaccines will be. To know that they would protect you for 10 years would, I guess, require 10 years to find out. For me, it is highly unlikely that the vaccines will be as successful as people hope and it is also unlikely that certain people will return to ‘normality’.
Really, there is the virus and the fear of the virus and I’m not sure which is worse. A friend of ours (who has a GP daughter) has in the past had a heart attack. The daughter/GP has ordered the woman to stay completely away from people, to have groceries delivered and then wash them individually – followed by not touching them for 24 hours. So the woman hasn’t spoken to anybody face-to-face for about 9 months and she is in a terrible state.
The corona jab will be given periodically like the flu jab
Reported on RT news today that there have been 13 deaths related to covid vaccine in Norway. This has not been reported anywhere on MSM in UK…
The same report said ‘the deaths were no higher than they would expect from this demographic (old people in a care home). No where did you mention that in your post.
Wow I have my own personal editor… Are you recruiting for the Orwellian thought police JJ?
Should I run my posts by you for future approval….
You don’t need to run them by me. You should however do a little more research before you take such a definitive position on something.
J J my point had hee haw to do with demographics, it was about the fact that MSM had no reporting on it… So as you sadly can’t research into someone’s thought process perhaps you could go buy yourself one of those bubble helmets you are such a fan of and let the rest of us have an opinion….
Its different because the environment for the coronavirus is unprecedented.The flu jab saves the lives of millions every year. The only people dying of COVID are those with artificially extended lifespans due to the flu jab. They’re uniquely vulnerable to a flutype disease with no vaccine. The ‘tsunami of deaths would have overwhelmed the health system, plus , no one knew how to treat it. The wonderful benefit of the first lockdown was that it gave us time, using trial and error , to find treatments. The bad news is that, our hospitals are now overflowing with people who would have died in the first wave, but who can now be kept alive.
There was no “wonderful benefit” to any of the lockdowns. It’s the job of hospitals to take care of sick people; from what I could see during all the lockdowns including the current ones, they all got to have a nice little at-work vacation with plenty of free time to make stupid dance videos.
Flu isn’t under control because the flu viruses change their configuration at a much higher rate than Sars Cov 2 every year and there is variable take up of flu vaccinations every year – it’s like playing wac-a-mole. Also, it’s not as nasty a disease as Covid so no great motivation for big and little pharma to invest in a brand new vaccine cocktail every year to combat the latest and greatest flu variants.
Flu this year has almost disappeared because :
1. There was a big take up of flu vaccinations
2. Masks, physical distancing, quarantining, washing hands works particularly well for flu viruses
3. The southern hemisphere manged their Covid problems particularly well this year (suppressing flu at the same time). To a degree, the southern hmisphere seeds the northern hemisphere with their flu viruses every year by travel (much curtailed this year)
There is a risk calculator available online that gives an (inevitably) imperfect idea of what your individual risk is for contracting and dying from Sars Cov 2. I don’t know whether or how it has been validated, although they do update it regularly : ALAMA Covid-19 medical risk assessment.
“it might even be the main way the virus spreads…” Bingo. Echoing some other commenters here, I couldn’t agree more. And as some have pointed out (even last summer), this makes a mockery of mask-wearing. But the obsession with hand-hygiene also points to a deeper problem: the unwillingness of medical and political leaders to treat citizens like adults who might be OK with a strategy that changes with the evidence. Of course, that assumes that real science can inform policy during a pandemic, which has turned out not to be the case. How to fix this? It’s made even more difficult by a citizenry that *wants* clear and absolute answers that they don’t have to think about. It almost seems like a kind of religious instinct, a need for security, by means of some (secular) revealed truth, when facing what is perceived to be a grave threat. I really don’t know what it would take for more robust institutional frameworks to be in place to ensure this pattern doesn’t repeat itself, some sort of check on the tendency of governments (and their narrow circle of medical ‘experts’) to lapse into ideological responses. But one thing we don’t need is more fear campaigns. This is the bread and butter of ideological rule and should have no place in public health implementation. Inducing fear, including and especially the more refined fear among scientists and health providers of deviating from the orthodox narrative, is never a good thing. Rather, acknowledge the limitations of the current state of knowledge, avoid the suppression of divergent scientific voices, remind the public that policy will shift and that a full explanation will be given when that happens, including some sense of how the efficacy of any policy is going to be measured. One can only dream…
their narrow circle of medical ‘experts’
Have you counted the narrow circle?
86 in the main SAGE committee, then 8 sub groups with between 20 and 70 in each of the sub groups.
Last time I attended a committee meeting of more than 12 people it was difficult to get a consensus on counting paper clips, let alone a complicated matter like this.
Maybe they would better off with a smaller circle?
I see your point. The narrowness I had in mind was ideological, not numerical. I seem to recall others on this forum commenting on the limited range of expertise of the SAGE committee, but I’m in Ontario and don’t have a good sense of how true that is. Still, it seems clear that, just about everywhere, a similar locking down of possible perspectives happened pretty quickly. Why were the economists and public health experts issuing very clear warnings against prolonged lockdowns last Spring (and since!) so completely excluded from those advisory committees? How could this possibly be ethically defensible, let alone scientifically?
The range of expertise is actually very wide and you can see it clearly on our .gov SAGE committee page.
I don’t think the economists have been excluded. Certainly not from the discussions, but then at some point a choice has to be made.
If you are in Ontario I could ask you the same question since Canada seems to be facing the same issues which we are.
In fact there aren’t many countries that aren’t.
btw I am not in favour of lockdowns, but then I am not making decisions on which people’s lives, and livelihoods, depend. And jolly grateful for that.
If you look at the SAGE minutes you will see that thankfully, not all 86 attend the meetings.
Why does airborne transmission make a mockery of mask wearing? Masks can intercept larger droplets, thereby reducing transmission, can’t they?
If they’re effective at intercepting larger droplets, then they’re effective only in cases where two people are very close to one another, eg. yelling in each other’s faces and expelling saliva, not a common occurrence. But i think the point was, masks do nothing to stop viruses from being expelled just through normal breathing (as anyone who’s noticed they can see their breath being expelled though their mask on a cold day would know).
Amazing footage on Glasgow Daily Record showing a woman walking outside masked, visor, gloves, wielding a spray bottle (with who knows what in it) and spraying the air in front of her as she walks along, passing people….
Do you know how Covid really spreads?
Er, NO. We don’t. This is because we no longer follow science.
We have guesses made by people who study in the field, and who have proposed plausible scenarios. But we do not know how ANY individual actually catches the virus. I do not know how we could, unless we find some way of tracking every fragment of replicable RNA in an environment and tracing it as it moves into human bodies. Instead, what we do is listen to people who we believe to be authoritative. Which is, of course, religion.
In practice, we do not actually need to know in detail how it spreads. What would be most useful at the moment is knowing how to stop it spreading, which is a subtly different requirement. For example, John Snow halted a cholera epidemic in the 1850s without knowing anything about cholera germ transmission. He noted that the disease seemed to be connected to a particular water supply, closed that supply down, and noted the fall in cases which resulted.
We NO LONGER do this. In John Snow’s case, the fact that Dr Snow had studied cholera for many years was irrelevent to his justification for closing the Broad Street water supply. he did not rely on his authority – he relied on the mortality figures and the epidemological data that he had gathered. But the government does not currently release the SAGE arguments for the various restrictions it imposes. Instead it provides data on cases – with no correction for numbers of tests – which seem to show, if anything, that the lockdowns are NOT having any impact on virus spread or mortality. They are certainly not having the designed and predicted effects – which ‘using science’ suggests that we have NOT isolated a transmission vector as precisely as the Broad Street pump handle.
So, no, we really do not know how this disease spreads in anything like enough detail for us to institute working and practical countermeasures. We are not in a position much advanced from the miasma theory that sniffing a pommander in areas of bad smells would keep you safe. When that was the primary defense against plague, that disease also went away after a while, and so the miasma theory could claim to have some support….
Excellent! I get corss everytime the polis say we are being ‘led by the science’. Most of the diet of behavioural mantras we are being fed smack of fear-fuelled quasi-religion.
All the SAGE minutes are available online together with the supporting documentation + reports from the various sub groups + the studies they are referencing to come up with their recomendations.
For example : Sars Cov 2 transmission routes and environments SAGE 22 October (20 pages and 75 references)
Throughout the pandemic, what’s been missing is evidence. Excusable in the early days, unforgivable 11 months later.
This is the third time the UK has imposed a national lockdown in less than a year. Lockdowns are blunt tools that help control transmission but at considerable socio-economic cost.
And yet, even now in January 2021, we still don’t know with any certainty what are the activities that contribute to spreading this disease.
This is a good article, I hope it reaches a few decision makers. It’s time the messaging was changed and “the science” was actually used to explain how 50,000+ people per day are still being infected despite the millions spent on public health information. That message is clearly not getting through.
Presumably you mean 50,000+ people per day are *getting positive test results*? What’s the false positive rate and how many people are being tested per day?
You can easily determine the false positive rate of the PCR test by going to the interactive calculator at the BMJ : BMJ PCR testing dashboard Interpreting a covid-19 test result 12 May 2020
The pre test probability is the prevalance of the disease at the time you take the test and the ONS publish this figure weekly.
The sensitivity according to ONS is between 85% and 98%
The specificity according to ONS is 99.9%
That was a useful link – thanks. I would love to hear the response of those (e.g. Mike Yeadon) who say that the false positive rate is probably 3%+. After all, if the evidence blows his argument out of the water, surely his opponents would be delighted to have to opportunity to show him up in the national media?
Two questions still leap to mind: what’s the cycle threshold for the ONS tests and for other testing? And can the specificity of July-September data (the latest figures according to the ONS) give us a good indication of specificity of the test in autumn/winter?
For me, the problem is that it is very difficult to disseminate scientific evidence in a useful way. All evidence is subject to error and scientists compete with each other to find the ‘truth’.
Also you get lots of clever people who wilfully choose an interpretation of the science to support their own views.
Not really. It’s not about that; This is about the vaccine. Everything else is irrelevant. It’s just about distracting people til then
Also you get lots of clever people who wilfully choose an interpretation of the science to support their own views.
Yes – but this is unavoidable. There is always interpretation of the data. It does not magically present conclusions in itself.
Sadly some scientists try to sometimes argue otherwise – usually engaging in some form of clunky low grade philosophizing for the purposes of trying to assert how philosophical interpretation isn’t needed.
Its all irrelevant. The vaccine is the new normal
I agree with other commentators that with all the testing (and we have one of the best records in the world amongst larger countries) there should by now be more precise evidence on where transmission is actually taking place. As far as public spaces including shops are concerned my experience too is that just abut everyone is wearing masks and being cautious about distancing, hand cleaning etc. So is the spread coming from those who are involved in clandestine socialising, school contacts, workplaces or where? There must be some evidence by now as we have tested a huge proportion of the whole adult population and should have a good idea of the habits of those who tested positive. It seems to me that firepower in terms of restrictions needs to be directed at the enemy virus rather than using a scatter gun approach that can lead to unnecessary and costly restrictions.
In one specific area, namely allowing public worship (with masks, distancing, no singing etc) seems to be being questioned. In our congregation most gather online on Sundays with a limited number turning up in person after pre-booking and ‘religiously’ (!) following the rules. We have had a number of infections amongst church members but as far as I know NONE of them are among those who regularly attend in person. I suspect similar stories could be gleaned from those active in many other areas of life. So in summary it would be helpful to have more facts about what really works to reduce infections, what is of minimal effect and what we might be doing that is a complete waste of time. Surely there are some behavioural scientists involved with SAGE who are qualified to get to grips with this.
“Because of droplets, being close to others or in crowds and being unmasked are bad ideas.”
There’s limited evidence for the efficacy of mask wearing.
Well, I, for one, didn’t really know any of that. Or should I say that the omnipresent gel has always made me, like many others, think that hand cleaning was supposed to be the key weapon against Covid.
Sadly, the story relayed below is being repeated about the country. My partner volunteered at a vaccine centre for the elderly recently run in a gp surgery, who should thus have known better, and the vaccinated were all sitting around in an enclosed unventilated space for the pfizer 15 minutes.
This is complete madness and I despair of the people responsible for organising such vaccination sessions. Back in the autumn I watched a pharmacist using a room no bigger than 2m by 2m to vaccinate a succession of elderly people with the flu jab. It had the potential to be a super-spreader event. Buy/borrow a gazebo and keep all of this in the car park.
Which is why I never have a flu jab. The waiting room in a surgery is more deadly than a dose of flu.
I pay at Boots for mine. There’s never anyone else waiting.
If you are looking for any kind of common sense within the NHS you will wait a long while.
Sadly, it seems, Nanny has got to the point where the Government is expected to dictate every single thing they do. In spite of the fact that heads of hospitals are paid a very good wage (more than Hancock, or Johnson) to do just that.
If the track and trace system, “world beating” of course, were any good there must be good figures by now on this. I would find it very interesting to know, for example, how many have caught the virus where there has been no contact in the previous 7 days by anyone in their family bubble with anyone else at all except for passing other shoppers in a supermarket. Given the millions who have been infected, if the answer is near zero then it means that shopping is pretty safe. One could ask the same question about say travel by bus or by train. There must be lots of people like my wife and I who are careful to have no physical contact with other people except when doing essential shopping. Why are such figures not available?
I came to the conclusion that aerosol spread was the danger months ago and it looks as if it is. I was amazed to find my doctor’s practice had the windows tight shut in the summer. Even dafter was the excuse. Data protection !!! It was then I stopped taking that practice seriously.
If this is true then multi storey hospitals are far from safe. The lift shafts etc act as vectors of infection as warm air rises.
I looked at the plans of the old fever hospitals which were all on one level and used ventilation extensively.
I have then avoided all enclosed spaces . Unless there is good airflow. Obviously this is not 100% possible but you can avoid most.
I prefer to be outside as that has been my life mostly so it is not a problem.
When this is over we should learn to design and build hospitals and public buildings, schools etc that rely on natural ventilation and no sealed interiors. It will mean more use of land and lower heights but that seems a good thing to me. Maybe our overall health will improve.
No, lift shafts are like pistons as the lifts go up and down. Hospitals in the UK are designed on the principles of natural ventilation, with air con in operating theatres and other special diagnostic rooms, mechanical ventilation (usually no cooling) in internal core areas, and opening windows / natural ventilation in perimeter area (wards for example). That has been official NHS design policy for a very long time. City centre hospitals may have more mechanically ventilated and air conditioned areas. The mechanical ventilation and AC systems have no mixing of supply and exhaust air. Energy efficiency is addressed by the use of heat recovery plate heat exchangers which provide complete separation of the fresh air inlet and exhaust air streams. Schools in the UK also mainly rely on natural ventilation (opening windows). If you want to check this then refer to Part F (Ventilation) of the building regulations and the specific hospital and schools ventilation guidance docs referred to therein. This guidance forms the basis of most health care and school building design. Doctors surgeries are most naturally ventilated so requires the common sense of the practice managers and the GPs to allow for window opening. Clearly security, confidentiality, and energy efficiency and comfort in winter are factors that will affect this. Warmer summers caused by global warming is going to cause major problems with these ventilation strategies.
I fail to see how this makes aerosol spread of a virus any less likely. Multi storey, mechanical ventilation and a piston effect seem to make it far more likely. All the hospitals around me are on more than one floor. More than three in most cases.
The mechanical system and air conditioning design utilised in UK hospitals IS designed to minimised spread of infection.
A good article, although I’m not sure the response to the virus has ever really followed ‘the science’.
Measuring CO2 concentrations indoors should be obligatory for such places as restaurants, since raised levels indicate poor air circulation.
This is from Smart Public Buildings Magazine.
“Since the coronavirus is spread through the air, higher CO2 levels in a room likely mean there is a higher chance of transmission if an infected person is inside”, leading aerosol scientist Prof Shelly Miller writes in The Conversation. “Simply put, the more fresh, outside air inside a building, the better. Bringing in this air dilutes any contaminant in a building, whether a virus or a something else, and reduces the exposure of anyone inside.”
A 2019 study on a tuberculosis outbreak in Taipei University, Taiwan, provides detailed evidence. Many of the rooms were poorly ventilated and reached CO2 levels above 3,000 ppm. When engineers brought levels down to under 600 ppm the outbreak stopped.
Obvious, now you point it out! Why aren’t we hearing more about this? Are CO2 concentrations relatively cheap and easy to measure?
First of all I trained in Bio Warfare or NBC as we used to call it.
We assume that a cloud of the agent(virus) is travelling towards people and the first thing is to suit up and then mask on. You stay in that suit and swop filters until the danger has passed. We have not got to this state yet! But ignorance is no defence for risking others when you are “hot” from the virus within your body and then pass it freely to others from not wearing the mask. I have seen many people not wearing masks due to obstructions on the face and others not covering the nose. The types of mask is another thing. We manly wear a spray defence type (rectangle with loops) this is supposed to be a defence against the agent passed by others in a distance and NOT too close to you. The seal isn’t that great and droplets can pass by these types.Watch the news and see the difference with Intensive care Doctors wearing the EN type mask that fits against the face tightly.
OFFICES: Airconditioning this recirculates the air and adds only a small amount of new external air to save on energy (eco). The trunking is a bio hazard in itself, having maintained an office block in my past, the amount of bio matter that is in these passages is shocking and we used vacuums to make paths to the electrics within. So, given a choice of working from home, take it. The water cooler talk can wait.
The whole philosophy of controlling this thing with ever changing rules and messages is fundamentally flawed. The word “safe” should not even be used as there is no such thing as safe and unsafe. There is only levels of risk and best ways to mitigate the risks. Instead of the complete mess you have described a clear and simple explanation of the risks and how best to reduce both probability and consequence in various situations would have been far more effective. There are times when hand washing is beneficial just as there are times when proper mask wearing is beneficial, but there are other times when both are entirely counter productive.
There is no evidence that mask wearing is effective in the general public. None. The Danish study was the best but the mask nazis insisted if failed to show effectiveness because most of the Danes were not wearing masks in public. The belief being that if all the people are masked than it will be effective. Over 8 meter spread in meat packing plants with cloth mask wearing put a dent in that belief. I believe it is also what resulted in the Oct 5th update to the CDC paper on “how the virus spreads”. They included the possibility of airborne transmission for the first time but insisted you still better wear your mask. Cool temperatures and a lack of ventilation made meat packing plants the perfect environment for airborne spread that makes a mockery of droplet theory. Granted most people don’t work in these but those studies are rather clear. 6 feet social distancing and wearing masks were based on droplet theory as majority spreader. If you remember the naysayers back in spring kept describing the size of the virus while the mask nazis insisted they only traveled in large droplets. This is without even bringing up how long it takes for a mask to get wet with your breath. At that point you are puffing out droplets again… with more speed as the air restriction causes increased air flow. Further droplets and longer range. The problem with the pro mask studies is they assume people are always wearing a new dry mask! The lack of rigor around the science behind mask wearing is rather obvious. The Danish study was an attempt at resolving this. Instead of being backed the scientists were considered dangerous heretics. Even though they insisted they were pro mask! The empirical evidence on mask wearing is another issue nobody wants to talk about. It is easy for the “scientists” to make from the twitter posts showing graphs… when mask laws were implemented… mask compliance statics going to 90 percent… covid infections going up and down all summer and then skyrocketing this winter. The question has to be asked. Can they really dismiss those that easily?
28% people have heard of keeping 2 metres apart. So let’s do the maths: 72% of people HAVEN’T heard about keeping 2 metres apart. I mean, come on now people.
That misrepresents what the article says, namely: Another question in the poll asked what coronavirus-related advice people had heard most from the Government in recent months.
So 28% have heard this most – the other 72% may well of heard it “second most” (or “third most” or whatever). It doesn’t say that they had never heard of it. It looks like a very poorly-framed question to me.
Interesting level headed article, and so I am thinking of my grandmothers’ habits: always air your house, fresh air circulating is good, and don’t fester in stale air it’s unhealthy! But I see the houses around where I live, no windows open all firmly shut 24/7. I read about the types of new builds that for ‘climate emergency’ reasons don’t have opening windows! BUT, ultimately, this whole approach to ‘wrestling a virus to the ground’ that we hear about, always couched in terms synonymous with war I’m left laughing.. this is black of me I know, and I’m not saying do nothing, mitigate of course, take care, but to think we can be ‘safe’ from an airborne virus is fanciful at best. Our current 21st century fancy is that we can control life and death. Sadly we are utterly deluded. Here’s a study to look at, and in the end it will prove to be just this, that heyho, this virus spreads upon the winds. Why wouldn’t it ? https://www.hilarispublishe…
A supposedly learned article and 244 comments.
But not one piece of genuine scientific research cited to support any contention about anything whatsoever, except the 1981 study which suggested that surgeons’ masks had no positive effect.
It’s all just opinion. Guff. Twaddle. Propaganda.
It’s good of you to cite your sources…
OK, here you go……
https://swprs.org/face-mask…
Is there a scientific consensus re “airborne transmission”?
WHO acknowledge that it’s a possibility but seem to still be withholding judgment about it outside of aerosol-generating procedures in health care contexts.
Yes
Details?
Lancet. I read the paper back in Feb/ March. said it’s the same as flu
Some references would be useful.
The WHO work through all peer-reviewed research papers, and are still cautious (the furthest they go is ‘can’t rule it out’, “needs more research” etc). I consequently do not have an opinion on this, would just like to see the basis on which a scientific consensus is asserted in apparent contradiction of the international body that’s supposed to represent such a consensus.
Do you know how Covid really spreads?
Er, NO. We don’t. This is because we no longer follow science.
We have guesses made by people who study in the field, and who have proposed plausible scenarios. But we do not know how ANY individual actually catches the virus. I do not know how we could, unless we find some way of tracking every fragment of replicable RNA in an environment and tracing it as it moves into human bodies. Instead, what we do is listen to people who we believe to be authoritative. Which is, of course, religion.
In practice, we do not actually need to know in detail how it spreads. What would be most useful at the mopment is knowing how to stop it spreading, which is a subtly different requirement. For example, John Snow halted a cholera epidemic in the 1850s without knowing anything about cholera germ transmission. He noted that the disease seemed to be connected to a particular water supply, closed that supply down, and noted the fall in cases which resulted.
We NO LONGER do this. In John Snow’s case, the fact that Dr Snow had studied cholera for many years was irrelevent to his justification for closing the Broad Street water supply. he did not rely on his authority – he relied on the mortality figures and the epidemological data that he had gathered. But the government does not currently release the SAGE arguments for the various restrictions it imposes. Instead it provides data on cases – with no correction for numbers of tests – which seem to show, if anything, that the lockdowns are NOT having any impact on virus spread or mortality. They are certainly not having the designed and predicted effects – which ‘using science’ suggests that we have NOT isolated a transmission vector as precisely as the Broad Street pump handle.
So, no, we really do not know how this disease spreads in anything like enough detail for us to institute working and practical countermeasures. We are not in a position much advanced from the miasma theory that sniffing a pommander in areas of bad smells would keep you safe. When that was the primary defense against plague, that disease also went away after a while, and so the miasma theory could claim to have some support….
Thanks for another sane article on this subject. “I’d be more reassured about what the government is doing if I thought that someone in authority was doing some serious analysis of the mass of data we now have about the impact of the virus, based on 140k+ confirmed cases. There should be significant clues there about the transmission of the virus and which areas of life can return to something like normal with relative safety and which are the ones where restrictions need to be maintained or other actions taken. For example, what’s the relative incidence of the virus of people working in supermarkets, teachers, parents, people working from home etc? There would need to be more follow up with people who have had the virus and their families (in the case of people who have died) to ensure good quality data, but this is really important work if decisions are to be taken based on good evidence.” I posted this 9 months ago on Conservative Home. I don’t think the government has improved its performance in this area in any significant way since then, despite the greater amount of evidence that is – or should be – available.
“The Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir performed a version of “Joy to the World” while indoors, unmasked ““ but carefully standing two metres apart.. The rules were being followed meticulously…” Good for the Choir!. “Joy to the World” is a belter and undervalued in the UK. I had to pester my choir to sing it – but then they loved it of course. Lucky old choir – they got to sing. I didn’t. I tried in 2 places. We’d have followed the rules too. But why on earth do you say that following the rules meant that “the example set was deplorable.” Careful risk assessment, joy given to the world and (kind of) approved by the Queen. What is wrong with you, Stuart Ritchie?
The “UK government took up handwashing in a big way … Back then, it was understandable: we were completely in the dark on how the virus spreads, and were modelling our response on diseases we knew better, like the flu.”
Do we know ‘flu that much better, or are we still guessing about how that spreads?
I’ve had the virus, at least I tested positive having self administered a test at a pillar 2 test centre. My husband and I probably caught it off my adult daughter who spends half the week with us for her work, and half the week at home.. normally. Her boyfriend had it too. All our symptoms were different, but no temperature, persistent cough, loss of taste or smell for any of us. Normal cold symptoms for me, a couple of days feeling a bit floppy, nothing that stopped me doing normal daily tasks. We could have caught it from her in the car, or by clearing her plates.
It doesn’t matter.
If we are to trust the test (!) we are now immune, along with 3million others who have recovered in the UK after testing positive, and the millions who have had it since before the first lockdown.
I am not being blasé. Dying of a respiratory disease and drowning in your own lung juice is not a death I would wish on anyone, but neither is starvation, violence, depression, addiction, cancer, homelessness, poverty and despair. And unfortunately, some people have much more severe disease than others, but I’m afraid that’s life.
The point I am trying to make, and what I think this article and many of the comments reveal, is that we have to learn to live with this. It is something we can live with. We already live with many similar types of virus. The fear engendered is way out of proportion with the risk. There are still few of us who know anyone directly, who have even had it, let alone had it seriously or died. So, if I am immune, I now pose no threat to my fellow human being, at least for this winter season.
I wore a face covering for the first time in a shop today. My belief that face coverings are worse than useless, for all the reasons that are mentioned in the comments, dirty, germ ridden things, has allowed me to use the (lazy) ‘I’m exempt’ excuse up until this most recent tightening of the rules. I feel I am exempt because it does cause me severe distress to comply so overtly with the groupthink. If everyone stopped wearing their masks tomorrow, unless they were unwell (stay home) or in a vulnerable category (their choice, no compulsion) it would send a message to the government that we do not agree with the groupthink.
But I tried to use my immunity as a ‘get in’ today. It didn’t work. I was, however, able to engage in a 20 minute discussion with one of the managers at the garden centre, about how I was not a risk, and that we have to start getting the fear under control, and lifting restrictions somehow. I then continued my shop with a ‘buff’ pulled up over my nose, which was as useless as all the other face coverings being sported, and messed about with. At least mine was clean.
If those that felt comfortable stopped wearing masks whilst still maintaining distance, it would be really obvious (because they are wearing masks) who are vulnerable, and therefore the rest of us can take care to give them extra space. It might even mean that those people could feel more included in society, because those that are more able could identify them and possibly offer help and conversation. I am talking about community immunity of course. Targeted protection would be ideal but it does seem more and more unlikely that that is possible. But because this virus is new, highly contagious, and mild for the vast majority, community immunity gives the best, and quickest sort or protection for our vulnerable. So go on, expose yourself to it. Your immune system will thank you for it.
(just getting my tin hat on.. I know, I know what about the frontline NHS staff, etc, but I’ve written enough right now)
What makes you so sure you are immune? And if you, say, break an arm, you’ll be perfectly happy being treated by nurses and doctors without masks, so long as they tell you they feel fine? RIP.
I’m not so sure I am immune. It stands to reason (I know, weird concept) that the 4 of us were unwell, 2 following within 3/4 days of the first 2, that we probably had the same thing. Yes, this could have been anything. And depending on where you stand on the accuracy of the pillar 2 PCR testing, will colour your judgement as to whether we had Covid 19 or not, but one of the tests might have ben accurate? But if we are to trust ‘the science’ like good little citizens, then, in the governments eyes we have all had the virus. Whilst this virus is new, it is also a coronavirus. When we catch a coronavirus, and recover from it, we have immunity until the variant mutates, and we come into contact with that variant. Perhaps we’ll get a summer and winter cold, maybe we wont get ill that often. Some will get it worse than others. But there is no doubt that if you have the coronavirus, you have immunity for at least a few months. That is what our immune systems are for.
And quite honestly yes, I would be perfectly happy to be treated by doctors and nurses who were not wearing masks if that was standard procedure. I feel that infection control in hospitals generally would make that unlikely if it was a compound fracture, but if there was no open wound, why would they need a mask?
“When we catch a coronavirus, and recover from it, we have immunity until the variant mutates.”
I’m not sure how true that is, but anyway, coronaviruses are mutating all the time. Yes, scientists think you probably on average get at least a few months’ immunity to this one following an infection, but beyond that, no-one knows yet.
As for getting treated by medical staff who don’t wear masks, they were dropping like flies in the early days in Wuhan, because they come into such close, intimate and prolonged contact with COVID patients that they cop for very high viral loads. If you’re happy having them mess with you maskless while highly infectious …
PS At least your reply didn’t get marked as spam! Or is The Algorithm getting ready to pounce?
I don’t follow any rules. I hug. I shake hands. I go to parties. I don’t social distance. I haven’t at all… and more and more people have joined me. There are some bars not following the rules where I live now to. They don’t advertise it. They just ignore the rules. These are the places I frequent. We don’t mask or avoid each other at all. We gather in groups. Yet we still live. LOL
Are you being serious? Are you in the UK? Have you seen the numbers who are dying there?
I’m in the UK. And I’m British. And I was also here when Tony Blair’s facts were spread all across the media about why we have to start a war in Iraq. Because we must trust the government, and we must trust the news/BBC. We all know how that went.
No-one (well, almost no one) is saying that people aren’t dying from this new virus.
What I believe most people here are saying (including me) is that the response we’ve had so far is simply disproportionate to the scale of the problem, to other problems it has created (maternity wards are now understaffed with a rise of 300% in stillborn babies) so, the question I ask you my friend is:
Why don’t the state controlled media show the actual death count of covid related deaths per day?
Because no-one in their right mind will argue that the tremendous rise in dead born babies isn’t a direct consequence of covid hogging up all resources and sucking the life out of other sectors of the society.
And you tell me, is one baby’s life worth more than 1000 over age people? Or is it ok to let babies die in smaller numbers so we can save the 85 year old patient?
I absolutely wish we could do both but from what it seems the state has its limit. So I ask again: Who do we save?
There is no real reason that infected people who ignore the rules would know the people they’ve killed.
I suppose that’s the beauty of it?
You have absolutely no right at all to call someone a killer – in this context.
Do you drive a car? How do you know some poor b****r hasn’t panicked and crashed into a wall because of the way you drive? How do you know YOU know you haven’t “killed” someone without even knowing it?
Or maybe something you’ve said? Maybe you’ve actually hurt someone without knowing it, who then committed suicide.
Or maybe you gave someone the wrong advice, that subsequently lead to his death again without you even realising anything had happened.
Ridiculous and Stupid. Idiotic my friend. Is what this is. Healthy and innocent people who are just.. living, are NOT granny killers.
But what of the people who die as a result of the virus being spread by those refusing to social distance? Would you not wait a few more months to be vaccinated first? Genuinely interested to know how that factors into your thinking, if at all.
I think you are an absolute idiot for believing in any of this. This is the arrogance of humanity. This is the illusion of control. Flatten the curve for two weeks? Wear a mask? Lockdown? We are nearly a year into this and all the “experts” have to show for it is worse outcomes. How do you look at a year of failure and conclude your experts have anything to offer the world? Somebody on twitter scanned in newspaper articles from Australia during the Spanish Flu. The same exact bullshit. After 100 years of “expert” research all they had to offer is the same as what they had in 1918. It took 7 years for Australia to finally remove all the restrictions even though the danger was over after at most 2 years. You have nothing to offer the world but completely destroying peoples lives.. no arts, no music, no socializing, poor schooling, extremely poor healthcare (particularly the most vulnerable), mental health issues, increased poverty, increased hunger and death in 3rd world children, increased homicide rates in large cities, increased domestic abuse, etc. Your beliefs are pure evil. You aren’t saving human civilization. You are destroying it.
I think what you’re trying to say, albeit without pointing to any evidence and using rather emotional language, is that you think the costs of preventing Covid infections (and corresponding harms such as routine hospital treatment being cancelled and economic slowdowns as people voluntarily adapt their behaviour) are outweighed by the costs of social distancing measures.
I think you idiots who have embraced the “new normal” are pure evil.
LOL. What people? I”m healthy. Healthy people don’t spread disease. You are sick in the head for spreading this nonsense. You think this is going to get better with a vaccine? Why the hell would it? They have struck gold. This is their dream come true. It is never going away. This is the “new normal”. From 2010. They got it all lined up right this time.
https://abcnews.go.com/Heal…
Advising people to wash or sanitize their hands frequently is the best preventative measure. because – regardless of what we know now about how COVID spreads – lockdowns, mass mask wearing and “social distancing” have done NOTHING to reduce the rate of infection.
When the Police are fining people for travelling 5 miles to go walking.
When the public were outraged that other members of the public were having street parties or going to the beach last summer.
When the rules state you can only meet one friend outside – and the media has suggested this might be banned.
Then it’s no wonder that the public can’t appreciate the importance of avoiding poorly ventilated spaces
If 1,000 skiers returned from holidays in Italy/Austria in early 2020 with covid with an R0 of 3, why didn’t the entire population of UK get infected within a month? I can’t reconcile the so called highly infectious nature of this with the apparent low spread of this. It has been ravaging for a year and only 30% has been infected. R has been around 1.2-1.4 according to the geniuses in government. It doesn’t make sense. To me, it is amazing how slow this is, not how fast it spread. Pure math doesn’t make any sense. What am I missing?
Much of the same fear-mongering rehashed once more, no less than by a psychologist, who should know better than anyone else that the human being does not thrive on isolation.
Re masks and transmission. I thought early on that after the introduction of the mask mandate, those wearing Visors rather than masks were deluded if they thought those devices could have any effect. However, I have rethought this.
It is accepted that surgical and cloth masks do very little to filter particles, perhaps inhalation of a few only. However, a mask will do a good job of aerosolising exhaled particles, which it is stated can hang in the air for considerable periods. Thus visors are BETTER at stopping the spread than any masks, since there is no aerosol produced, and particles which ARE exhaled will either fall to the floor, or remain on the inside of the device, well away from third parties.
Anyone had similar thoughts ?
I agree with your point about masks creating aerosols from exhaled particles but Japanese scientists used a supercomputer to model air flows around a visor and found that they disperse particles just as effectively as masks.
One of the problems here is that NO-ONE knows with certainty exactly how respiratory viruses are really spread. It is not settled science. It will take a long time before it ever is since the necessary experiments cannot practically or ethically be conducted.
Thus we are left to rely on scientific consensus, such as that reported in this article. Even that has evolved over the past year.
As a result, an army of opportunists, grifters, fakers and agenda-holders can play the “no evidence” card. There isn’t 100% cast iron evidence that any transmission mode predominates, nor that almost any precaution is highly effective, nor that one type of infectee is more responsible than another. There is a yet larger army of the gullible and of wishful thinkers readily taken in by such people – the fat charlatan for example, completely demolished in an excellent article in Quillette recently by Christopher Snowden, but thousands still believe him.
That sounds like an admirably sober approach in this deranged time to me.
Interesting. Not that easy to completely demolish the “charlatans” if you read the comments below the Quillette article.
There you have the advantage on me as I have not. Sufficient demolition for me. One of the leading charlatans has since deleted himself from Twitter, his main outlet, after some rather unsavoury posts were revealed. Why is that relevant? Well it goes to judgement and lack of intellectual rigour. Plus his claims that this material was “hacked” onto his timeline over a period of about a year goes to credibility. He either lies or is deluded. Others have been deleting their past tweets at a rate of knots.
How does COVID19 spread? Like every other virus particle… because the physical universe has entropy. What do COVIDNazis ant to do? Everything that’s possible to end it, damn the consequences.
I don’t know how the airborne spread of virus particles compares with other types of particle or droplet, but I do know that I am regularly assailed in the street by invisible tobacco fumes and clouds of nicotine vapour. It is easy to see how quickly and far the latter propagate, and tobacco fumes have a remarkable ability to arrive in concentration 5 or 6 metres away from the source, that I sometimes have to search for to locate. If you get a chance to hear today’s ‘Life scientific’ on BBC Radio 4 (0900 Tue 19/1/21), you will hear Prof. Catherine Knowkes explain how hard it is to predict how air moves around a building, and though a street may be simpler there are barriers and air movements, and turbulence that can concentrate rather than disperse. Tobacco fumes originating several metres away are sufficient to produce an immediate physical reaction in me, though they may not be sufficient to cause any harm. Cov2 may also be insufficiently concentrated in open air to be harmful, but of course it is undetectable. Maybe the trick is to imagine yourself sharing a confined space with a cigarette smoker or vaper.
There is an awful lot if bad information about. You have to bear in mind that at the beginning of the pandemic there were all kinds of conflicting things flying around. Scientists put a drop of the virus onto various surfaces like cardboard, steel, copper and measured how long afterwards they could find traces. Of course, they did not measure whether the virus could still be caught from these surfaces. I even read a research article from New Zealand (honestly) that said that all banisters, railings, handles, shelves in the public domain should be ripped out and replaced with copper!!
Many of my own family still wash down all of the packages from the supermarket with detergent – there is even one story of a lady who puts here shopping straight into the washing machine.
This kind of behaviour is bound to happen if people are scared and governments have done a very good job of ensuring that they are scared.
The information in Asia is very clear
You are just trolling
I even read a research article from New Zealand (honestly) that said that all banisters, railings, handles, shelves in the public domain should be ripped out and replaced with copper!!
Actually, silver is an even better anti-bacterial agent. And it’s not a far step from there to telling immigrants that the streets of London are paved with gold….
I even read a research article from New Zealand (honestly) that said that all banisters, railings, handles, shelves in the public domain should be ripped out and replaced with copper!!
Actually, silver is an even better anti-bacterial agent. And it’s not a far step from that to telling immigrants that the streets of London are paved with gold….
The highlighted link to https://unherd.com/2021/01/… suggests “The epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 indicates that most infections are spread through close contact, not airborne transmission”
and that good ways of preveting transmission include “among these interventions, which include social distancing, use of masks
in the community, hand hygiene, and surface cleaning and disinfection,…”
“Because of airborne particles, being indoors at all with poor ventilation is a risk too.”
Should I tell my elderly father with umpteen co-morbidities to spend his days and nights outside in the freezing fog and frost then? Or just to have all his sashes wide open and his doors where possible? If self isolating for 9 months isn’t going to stop the virus blowing in and killing him, even in his rural home, it seems there isn’t much left I can advise. Presumably dying of ordinary pneumonia or hypothermia must be better than dying of Covid?
But cold air does not make you sick… this is an explanation for sickness arising from the middle ages where people correlated coldness in winter with increased illness (probably why we call an illness “a cold”). I live in Germany where people fervently believe this – even a suggestion to open a window in a stuffy room when it is cold outside is seen as attempted murder. Despite a year of Covid and discussion of viruses, people still hang on to this view. People get sick (even before Covid) from sitting in warm, humid unventilated rooms in winter. (I appreciate being cold is perhaps uncomfortable for older and sick people, but some fresh air will certainly do no harm).
Being exposed to air as cold as that in the UK in January may be more than a little uncomfortable, especially for the elderly or infirm. And turning up the heating to counteract the cold air may be prohibitively expensive, as well as environmentally unsound.
Concern for the environment has been pretty much put on hold.
If he’s isolating, he’s basically only breathing his own exhaled air. The problem only arises when indoor space is shared.
The “fear appeals” start losing their resonance after 10 freaking months. LOL. Just tell them to stop please. Honestly I don’t think they care. The politicians care about appearances and trying to keep everyone scared. They could care less about actually helping anybody. What evidence is there they actually even want to help anyone? None that I can see. So this article is probably a waste of time. Muge Cevik has been trying to engage this type of thinking. Her paper from September tried to get the conversation going. Probably the best data analysis on spread there has been… but no one cares. 20 times more spread indoors than outdoors! Is it better to be outdoors unmaksed or indoors in a closed in space with people masked. At 20 times the spread I don’t think it takes a genius to figure that one out. Truth is they just want to drive compliance and they like seeing people in masks. They don’t care if anyone gets sick or not. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol…
I believe a post I made 3 hours ago has been marked as ‘spam’. how does that happen? sorry, new to this site.
It looks like I replied to you. As you can see, I didn’t exactly agree with your comment, but from what I remember there was absolutely nothing spammish about it. I take it as just one of those quirks of The Algorithm, variants of which sometimes happen on various sites; try again?
I see a lot of that: a post is vanished, marked as spam – but there are replies from people who clearly considered it serious and pertinent.
I thought unherd was a place where there was freedom of speech… I guess that just doesn’t exist anymore. I think my closing comment may have been walking a line that could have been deemed as encouraging people to self harm. and I obviously wouldn’t want that. It certainly wasnt my intention.I just need to be careful not to get carried away.
Thanks, I will. I did finish it with a suggestion that everyone should go and catch (cant use the word for fear of being deleted again) so we could all get natural immunity.. that may well have done it! I’ll edit the post and try again, but, its yesteday’s news now.
Did it contain a web link?
One of the few html tools in the comment box enables web links, but using it seems to result in the post being amrked as spam…
I find it quite amusing that so many people are commenting on this article with their own assured beliefs and expertise. Trump is gone now, you can all start listening to real experts now and follow the science.
“Trump is gone now, you can all start listening to real experts now and follow the science.”
Is that the experts that share your opinion only, or would that include those that don’t? I’m only asking, as there are many epidemiologists and virologists who don’t support the government’s position on this who aren’t given the privilege of a platform in the mainstream media.
And when you say “follow the science”, is that the science backed by empirical evidence that has been peer reviewed, or the ‘science’ that hasn’t been scrutinised in any way, shape or form that certain sections of the media then distorts to support its sensationalist narrative that our directionless and talentless parliament, incapable of critical thinking are then pressured into adopting, usually after the horse has bolted?
A better reply than David Gray deserves.
Gray is baiting readers with the provocative insinuation “that so many people” here not only foolishly believe in Trump but also foolishly fail to “follow the science”.
Note his rather lofty opening line ““ he finds it “quite amusing…”
Apologies if I came over a bit rude.
Science is based on evidence rather than gut feeling.
Science is based on testing hypotheses for evidence that supports them and does not prove things (that is best left to the mathematicians).
A good (and honest) scientist is probably less certain than your average politician on any given matter within their expertise.
So any science we ‘follow’ should not be one scientist or another, one group or another. To do so would be to misunderstand what science is.
” Science is based on testing hypotheses for evidence that supports them and does not prove things (that is best left to the mathematicians).”
My thoughts exactly. Unfortunately, there is plenty of science that is being ‘followed’ by our media and therefore our parliament that is not supported by tested hypotheses.
(Retired Internist) Agree with Mr. Ritchie. The main way Covid is spread is by respiratory transmission.
There’s a lot of good information in this comments section, too. People have offered some accurate, detailed info to either support or refute the contention that masks work. That’s confusing, isn’t it? I think the confusion is partly due to forgetting that the debate is about the risk of Covid infection. A mask significantly reduces the risk, but doesn’t drive the risk down to zero.
I think the best evidenced that masks help is not in the articles about droplet size, aerosols, pore size, and the like. It’s in the epidemiological studies that have been done (eg, “Community Use Of Face Masks And COVID-19: Evidence From A Natural Experiment Of State Mandates In The US”https://www.healthaffairs.o… ).
The study showed that, ” Mandating face mask use in public is associated with a decline in the daily COVID-19 growth rate by 0.9, 1.1, 1.4, 1.7, and 2.0 percentage points in 1″“5, 6″“10, 11″“15, 16″“20, and 21 or more days after state face mask orders were signed, respectively. Estimates suggest that as a result of the implementation of these mandates, more than 200,000 COVID-19 cases were averted by May 22, 2020. The findings suggest that requiring face mask use in public could help in mitigating the spread of COVID-19.”. This study bypasses all of the details discussed in Comments and just looks at whether face masks resulted in fewer infections (they do). This kind of study always invites the criticism that “association doesn’t always mean causation”, but it’s very suggestive that masks work to reduce the risk even though the risk is not reduced to zero. Supporting this too is: 1) the experience in Kansas which didn’t mandate masks, but left it up to each county to decide. The counties where masks were adopted had far fewer Covid cases. And 2) the lower incidence in Asian countries (where mask wearing is widely accepted).
This is my first experience on Unherd. I’m impressed with the article and the readership.
Great article. What’s amazing is that we are still discussing this one year on.
The media have been pathetic and have contributed to the problem. Endless interviews with different points of view, vox-pops etc. Almost no explanation of:
what a virus is
how you get a disease
what immunity is and how does it happen
droplet size and distance
why masks can be effective for droplets even though the holes are bigger than the virus
etc
etc
One of the characteristics of successful countries like Taiwan and New Zealand is that the media and government spoke with one voice.
I’m ashamed of of us. 100,000 unnecessary deaths.
We used to go to birthday parties and share a cake that someone had blown on!
Good to read this. But why have the Government not adopted it? The emphasis has been equally Hands Face Space. Snappy but wrong according to CDC data. Moreover it extends to behaviour and organisation. I had two lateral flow tests in the week. Both carried out in enclosed spaces and where hand sanitising seemed more emphasised than fresh air. Indeed i have now contracted the virus and wonder if that’s where I caught it…
I’ve religiously cleaned my grocery deliveries for almost a year. Does this mean I’m being over-cautious? Btw, I can’t stop my friendly delivery drivers from chatting as they unload, thus spraying my groceries with invisible particles, infectious or non-infectious. I stand well over two metres away and let them get on with it.
There is no need for anyone to get a vaccine either. This is crazy.
Can we not all wear sealed masks / hoods that provide 100% protection / give 100% protection outside of the household and in the vicinity of other people?
I know it sounds extreme, but these are available and not that expensive (cheaper if mass produced). Until we find another way to solve the pandemic, it could be a good solution. Would allow us to live a relatively normal life.
Appreciate public eating / drinking would still not work, but you could go shopping, go to mass events, go to the office. Perhaps they could also have a hole for straw?
Covid-19 is now endemic, it wont go away, so we need to learn to live it. I hope your proposal is not meant to be taken too seriously because if it became the norm I think I would go completely mad, and so might many others. Perhaps those with poor metabolic health (look it up on the NHS web site if you dont know what that means) and fragility should just shield….. for the rest of their lives.
I don’t disagree it’s endemic and we shall need to live COVID. However that is not a solution. The problem with COVID is that it hospitalises 2% to 4% of those it infects. No country has sufficient hospital capacity to deal with that, so we need to mitigate the spread (bend the curve).
Masks on balance probably help, but are of very limited effectiveness. These hoods seem more straight forward and near 100% effective. Perhaps the old and vulnerable people can use them to shield?
Thats why those who are at risk of being hospitalised, those with poor metabolic health (which includes being obese) and the fragile (many people in care homes) should be subject to lockdown. Locking down the 95% of the population who are not seriously affected is maddness and not sustainable.
Your approach is fine in theory, but it’s not possible to lockdown specific age groups. As one epidemiologist explained “it’s like trying to have a urine free swimming lane in a swimming pool where people are allowed to urinate”
Also, the hospitalization rate for healthy people below 60 is quite high – about 2%. They don’t die, but they still need to be in hospital for a week or two. We could not handle that many hospitalisations.
In a sense, we are locking down the people you reference, but by using a vaccine. That process should be complete in the next 4.5 weeks, thank god. It’s a shame we could not do this at the start of the pandemic, but we did not have the infrastructure, capacity or knowledge.
That is one of the good things to come out of this pandemic. Going forward we shall have the ability to detect any new viruses quickly through mass testing. We shall then have the ability to develop, produce and prescribe vaccines when require in matter of months.
I read in the media today, we now have the ability to do all of this in 4 months (detect the virus and provide vaccines in peoples arms).
Yes. And we will surely crack nuclear fusion in the next 30 years.
Sorry, but it’s just an arms race (pun unintended.) Mankind evolving ever more complex technical fixes keeping ourselves teetering on stilts (not) safe from the inevitable downfall.
Scary to read just how far down people will go in the rabbit hole of their own “scientific” analyses to support their personal dislike of face masks.
We’re lucky that sane people realize the difference between true technically informed professionals and wannabes playing the tired old trope of “freedom of expression” to muddle the waters even further.
I’m afraid you have done the most in “muddling” the waters here (not to mention muddying them) by making a comment which does not apply to the opinions of the writer. Please read an article attentively before jumping to conclusions which fortify your own pet grievances.
Dictionary says I got the spelling right. As for your comment, I was not referring to the author at all – I was addressing thoughtless commenters. And I disagree that my grievance is “pet” – irresponsible commentary risking peoples lives out of sheer scientific pretentiousness, when the commenter has no true knowledge to go around issuing judgement on matters he/she donesn’t know at such depth is very serious business.
Ah, I get you now, Andre. Apologies for misreading your general comment on the commenters for one on the author’s opinions. And I agree that in the context you now speak of, your grievance is not “pet”, and no doubt my complaint to you could be seen in this context as more “pet”.
As for the muddy/muddle trifle: Pls forgive, as I love words, but never fear as I am no pedantic purist, and adore the mixing of metaphors and spontaneous creation derived from language mistakes (after all what was most of Shakespeare?). So (and please take in appropriate spirit from a colleague who often does the same): “Muddling” is indeed a correct word, however I think you’ll find that the “correct” idiom is:
“muddy the water(s)
To introduce something, typically information, to an issue or situation that makes it less clear or more confusing.”
But hey – no worries! We now have a new idiom in our most robust and rich language. Cheers, Andre.
It has been known for many years especially in countries where sars has been treated, ( far east)
that mask wearing and distancing are essential in preventing spread..along with track and trace.
Spread by objects is acknowledged as relatively small.The problem the UK has experienced is JVT,and others have continually spouted,masks don’t work…many lives could have been saved by wearing masks and 2M distancing