Coronavirus Pandemic

[KlaxonCow]

The BMA is joining in, in far more blunt and stark terms:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... ay-experts

Ending all Covid restrictions ‘premature and not based on evidence’, says BMA
Council chair says decision not guided by data or made in consultation with health profession
[...]
Ending all Covid restrictions is “premature” and “not based on current evidence”, the British Medical Association has said, as experts warned dropping testing and self-isolation could lead to a surge in cases.
[...]
[Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the BMA council] said case rates remained “exceptionally high”, with the latest Office for National Statistics survey suggesting one in 20 people in England were infected last week.
[...]
Experts on the government’s scientific pandemic influenza group on modelling operational subgroup, known as SPI-M-O, which feeds into Sage, warned that ending testing and isolation could lead to a return to rapid epidemic growth of the virus.
[...]
In a document released on Friday the group note that estimates from a modelling team at the University of Warwick suggest that a combination of measures and behavioural change such as testing, self-isolation, mask wearing and increased home working are currently reducing transmission by approximately 20-45%.

“Warwick’s estimates are equivalent to there being the potential for transmission to increase by between around 25% and 80% if the population were to return to pre-pandemic behaviours and no mitigations,” the document says.
[...]
The group add that factors such as waning immunity, seasonality and the emergence of new variants could also affect transmission, either driving it up or down, adding that BA.2 – a close cousin of Omicron that is increasing in prevalence in the UK – may have a growth advantage over other forms of the variant.

“If this were the case, it is possible that SPI-M-O’s medium-term projections may underestimate the short-term trajectory of hospitalisations,” the group wrote.

So the medical experts reckon that their modelling estimates that restrictions are reducing transmission by a fifth to almost a half.

But, no, we're tired of experts. Kill-joy nerds just not allowing corrupt Boris to get away with his blatant lying. How dare they!

[gilesgoat]

Besides does anyone knows if anything changed about "international travel" ?

I am planning a return for a couple of weeks in Italy sometime this year .. I had a look at the "rules" a few days ago seems to me NOTHING CHANGED, they still want the PCR test 72 hours before departure, and no more than 48 at arrival and so on for a total of 4 PCR tests ( at 80 quids each ? ) Not sure if UK still wants the "day 2 test" at arrival and/or if flight companies ( I think so ) still require a negative 48 hours PCR test before to let you board.

.. rules are still .. unclear to me .. but got the feeling "nothing changed" ?

[PFVA]

The guidelines from the EU are to let people come in for as long as they vaccinated with the vaccines recognised by the EU. Now each country may have something different, it depends on the Italian authorities too. The guideline were issued a couple of weeks ago but we took some time to change ours. I

[matt303]

Just had letter from hospital recommending I get a 4th jab 3 months after my 3rd, there's no system in place to book these jabs I just have to turn up unannounced with the letter and proof of the medication I'm on.

[merman]

Slightly unrelated to the topic but having to do with collateral damage fm the pandemic, at least to the planet,
I don't think this discardable things are fully bio-degradable, (and they should not be discarded like that in any way). That was on the side of a windy path and it seemed to have been there for a while including during the rain last weekend. I didn't get close to it, I zoomed in.

By the Trail

There are efforts to recycle, the NHS here is looking at repurposing the plastic into curtains and similar material. But over 200,000 tonnes of plastic waste has already ended up in the oceans...

[rowan]

Just had letter from hospital recommending I get a 4th jab 3 months after my 3rd, there's no system in place to book these jabs I just have to turn up unannounced with the letter and proof of the medication I'm on.

My mum had a letter a couple of days back saying to go online to book a 4th jab booster.
It was hugely confusing, saying that a 3rd primary jab and a booster were not the same thing but she could also get her 3rd primary jab there.
Except she already had a 3rd jab and it was called a booster.

Anyway I put her address in and it said the nearest place was 41 miles away.
Not happening. I told her to just ring her GP instead.

[matt303]

It was hugely confusing, saying that a 3rd primary jab and a booster were not the same thing but she could also get her 3rd primary jab there.
Except she already had a 3rd jab and it was called a booster.

Same here I originally had a letter about a week after my 3rd jab which everyone called a booster saying I needed a 3rd Primary jab and then a booster (4th jab). At least this letter explained that the 3rd booster jab and a 3rd primary jab were the same thing.

[F-ZeroOne]

A possible new addition to the armoury - plant-based vaccine:

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20 ... sc/018000c

[KlaxonCow]

The Queen has Covid.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60453566

The Queen, 95, had been in contact with her eldest son and heir, the Prince of Wales, who tested positive last week.

It is understood a number of people have tested positive at Windsor Castle, where the Queen resides.
[...]
Prince Charles's wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, tested positive for the virus last week, days after her husband.

It was the first time the duchess had caught Covid, and the second time for Prince Charles.

And Tim Spector, of the Zoe Covid Study, after recovering from getting Covid himself, has this to say about Boris's "living with Covid" plan:

It will be interesting to see what the Prime Minister’s “Living with COVID” announcement will include. Whilst I agree we have to learn to live with COVID, and hospital and ICU admissions are very low, the ZOE data doesn’t yet suggest that we’ve entered a stable or endemic phase. It’s very likely that there are more variants on the horizon with unpredictable properties. When the mandates are lifted, to protect others, my advice is we should all still be self isolating for five days from first new symptoms, when infectiousness is high, and tell others to do the same.

Basically, being diplomatic about it, but clear that there's fuck all in the data to justify this policy and that his advice is to ignore Boris's pandering to the Tory backbenchers and behave sensibly of your own accord.

I feel I agree with Tim. We will be "living with Covid" and it'll become endemic. But, like, this is very much jumping the gun, as the numbers aren't telling us that we're in that stable endemic phase yet.

By the Zoe app numbers, we're just coming down from the second Omicron peak with about 180K daily cases. Like, a week after the second highest peak ever, with still a lot of transmission going on:



Omicron had a double peak - a camel-like graph - but you'd have zero idea of this listening to Boris or the mainstream media, who're all declaring "victory" in the midst of the worst case numbers ever. And to declare "victory" because the hospitalisations and deaths are very much reduced is, well, a relative measure, when there's still, like, hundreds dying every single day, and is entirely false credit - Omicron spared us. The jabs and previous infection certainly helps, but the cases show that Omicron really wasn't phased by that at all.

[snaff]

[PFVA]

Here as of next week daily reports on Covid are over, they will just be weekly. The measures in place though such as masks indoors will stay till March 31st. Several people still use them in the street though, specially older people

[Foozwah]

My 14yo came home from school really unwell yesterday and tested positive, and apparently something like 70% of his class are also positive, so now we're all isolating for a week... Who could possibly have guessed that taking away mask mandates for kids sitting in crowded classrooms would quickly lead to results like this? Not the government, apparently...

Spent most of the day so far trying to sort refunds for tickets/camping for a three-day music festival we were leaving for this afternoon. Been looking forward to it (after being cancelled the previous two years due to lockdowns) for so long. Sigh.

So this is "living with Covid", apparently. Basically don't make plans because they'll probably get fucked up at the last minute anyway.

[Cloudane]

Stubborn bastard isn't it, if ZOE is anything to go by (and the real stats not far behind) it's going exponential again here and it seems like everyone I know who is triple jabbed and so far managed to avoid it is now getting it. (No doubt will follow shortly). I've literally lost track of the number of anecdotes from friends or friends-of-friends over the past couple of weeks.

Wonder if that's some undetected new variant or just how it is.

Just fucking never ends, whatever we do, and immunity is shit. Seems like we're stuck with a decision (probably per country) of either minimal social contact, or everyone with the most harmful and most infectious "cold" we've ever had being suffered repeatedly, for the rest of human civilisation. (Mind, if Putin has anything to do with it, the bright side is it won't be long)

Never mind going away (already ruled out) is seemingly never going to go below around 1 in 30 with it, ever, at least until some amazing medical revolution. And that sucks as anyone I've heard from recently who's symptomatic, even with the vaccine, is really struggling with it. One friend in his 20s tested positive a few days ago and was venting a literal death wish today. This is humanity's "stigma" from here on out, probably all suffer every 3-6 months depending on antibody longevity, until our lungs wear out

More rational minds would be more than welcome to tell me why this is probably not the case, or why the most minimal measure like masks in supermarkets would be enough.

[Dio]

It's definitely turned back on again as of about the start of the month. 1 in 30 seems high - I would expect at least double the people in ICU if it was that prevalent. 1 in 100 seems closer to the right ballpark based on the current numbers, although there are almost certainly local areas with that level of prevalence. Up here things are still very quiet, we haven't had an outbreak since the two peaks we had in November (pre-Omicron) and then a late December Omicron burst that caught most of those that didn't get it in November.

Immunity isn't shit though. The number of people in intensive care has stopped declining but it is not yet going back up. If we had the immunity levels of 2020, right now there would be 20-50k people needing ICU beds rather than 250 - 99% of people are immune to serious disease from covid and so far there is no indication that's declining in our hospitalisation numbers.

And December Omicron Burst sounds like a band off the John Peel show.

[Ollie]

It's definitely turned back on again as of about the start of the month. 1 in 30 seems high - I would expect at least double the people in ICU if it was that prevalent. 1 in 100 seems closer to the right ballpark based on the current numbers, although there are almost certainly local areas with that level of prevalence.

If by "the current numbers" you mean the official government statistics, those only represent confirmed cases, i.e., people with positive test results (and, in the case of LFTs, who've bothered to report them) - currently reckoned to be a massive under-representation of the actual number of infected people. The latest available ONS data, for 4 March, suggests 1 in 30 in England and Wales (higher in NI and Scotland) and decreasing, although based on data from other sources - including the official government dashboard - the infection rate looks to have started going up again since then. Updated ONS data is due out today.

<edit> By "current numbers" you mean the numbers of people in ICU? A lot of the people with it are probably re-infections at this stage, meaning they have a good degree of natural immunity protecting them against getting severely ill with it. (But not, evidently, against re-infection.)