Covid 19

[NewStuff]

The only face to face social interaction (beyond my household) I see in a typical week is asking the delivery guy to 'move the boxes off the front step because the door opens outwards'. I'm going slowly mad!

You think you're the only one? If I felt like being a selfish prick I could get around any and all of the restrictions, perfectly legally and no copper in the world would blink an eyelid. I'm absolutely not going to go into detail in a public forum, so don't bother asking. If I can deal with the 4 walls, not even going out on my bikes (which would be fine given your arguments about not seeing a soul), so can anyone else. It's not nice, easy, or character forming, but it is bloody necessary. At what point do you think that the Tories of all parties would chuck literally billions of pounds at people to stay the f*** home if it wasn't?

maxf - "Great Barrington Convention". As soon as you try to imply that is a serious, realistic source of concerned professionals, you're a joke. Stuffed full of homepaths and woo-peddlers.

 

[mikem]

If successive governments hadn't proved themselves to be untrustworthy, & if the current one had managed to put out a coherent argument, then there might well be a lot fewer deniers.

 

[maxf]

The only face to face social interaction (beyond my household) I see in a typical week is asking the delivery guy to 'move the boxes off the front step because the door opens outwards'. I'm going slowly mad!

You think you're the only one? If I felt like being a selfish prick I could get around any and all of the restrictions, perfectly legally and no copper in the world would blink an eyelid. I'm absolutely not going to go into detail in a public forum, so don't bother asking. If I can deal with the 4 walls, not even going out on my bikes (which would be fine given your arguments about not seeing a soul), so can anyone else. It's not nice, easy, or character forming, but it is bloody necessary. At what point do you think that the Tories of all parties would chuck literally billions of pounds at people to stay the f*** home if it wasn't?

maxf - "Great Barrington Convention". As soon as you try to imply that is a serious, realistic source of concerned professionals, you're a joke. Stuffed full of homepaths and woo-peddlers.

Have you personally vetted all of them....
?

 

[mikem]

The counter argument:
https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-barrington-declaration-an-open-letter-arguing-against-lockdown-policies-and-for-focused-protection/

 

[PeteHall]

If I can deal with the 4 walls... ...so can anyone else.

Clearly the UK government doesn't agree with you, which is why there are specific allowances within all the restrictions (in England at least, I've not read the rules for Wales) for exercise and recreation.

 

[AR]

Regarding the LTF test, it is regarded by many medical professionals as pretty useless - there was a recent Lancet editorial that was pretty scathing about it, and from more personal experience, my wife had a fortunately brief hospitalisation for pneumonia last month and she said that the medical staff on the respitory ward universally regarded the LTF test as a waste of money, given the high percentage of false negatives it gives.

Regarding the quoted case of inaccuracy on the PCR test, that's a single example - I've argued with creationists trying to "disprove" radiocarbon dating from a single anomalous date that an individual outlier case does not invalidate all the others. C-14 dates are usually quoted with a confidence interval attached, which is a statistical means of establishing how likely it is that a value lies within a given range. 95% is preferred for C-14, which means that there's a 5% chance the derived date could be outside that range. To go back to PCR tests, what is the confidence interval for positive tests, from which we can make a reasoned estimate of how many false positives and negatives it will produce? That is the critical factor, not one case which quite possibly could be a serious anomaly.

 

[PeteHall]

I don't think that the quoted results for PCR inaccuracy are actually an anomaly.

I believe they were perfectly predictable results for a healthy population.

If you had a false positive rate of 1% and you tasted 1000 healthy people, you would expect to get 10 positive results. All of them false, as it is a healthy population. This is basically what happened in the quoted example.

When testing any population, the most important factor I think, is the false positive rate, relative to the prevalence within that population.

If you are only testing symptomatic people, the prevalence will potentially be quite high compared with the false positive rate, so it's not a big problem.

If you go for mass testing, the false positive rate is much more important, because the prevalence within that population is much lower and therefore the number of false positive cases vs actual positive cases will be much higher.

This is also true for screening people entering hospital (for other reasons), which I'm pretty sure is now routine. You basically end up with 1% of all hospital admissions recorded as Covid, over and above the actual number. A second confirmatory test would easily solve this, though I'm not sure if it is routine.

 

[cap n chris]

The only face to face social interaction (beyond my household) I see in a typical week is asking the delivery guy to 'move the boxes off the front step because the door opens outwards'. I'm going slowly mad!

You think you're the only one? If I felt like being a selfish prick I could get around any and all of the restrictions, perfectly legally and no copper in the world would blink an eyelid. I'm absolutely not going to go into detail in a public forum, so don't bother asking. If I can deal with the 4 walls, not even going out on my bikes (which would be fine given your arguments about not seeing a soul), so can anyone else. It's not nice, easy, or character forming, but it is bloody necessary. At what point do you think that the Tories of all parties would chuck literally billions of pounds at people to stay the f*** home if it wasn't?

maxf - "Great Barrington Convention". As soon as you try to imply that is a serious, realistic source of concerned professionals, you're a joke. Stuffed full of homepaths and woo-peddlers.

Have you personally vetted all of them....
?

Don't play with the mad people, Max.

 

[RobinGriffiths]

Surely the issue is that our part time Prime Minister, and full time blustering clown, Boris, and his lacklustre government are always 2 weeks behind the curve in making decisions. And the virus is always a week or two ahead.

Therefore any decisions they make are three weeks out of date, hence chaotic change of advice.

Public compliance has gone down partly due to Covid fatigue, The Cummings Effect, great British bloody mindedness, and some conspiracy nutjobs - I presume they are in the minority, otherwise we're knackered.

What's evident is that hospitals are on the verge of being overwhelmed. I'm not sure that now is the time to be querying stats in public. There will be plenty of time later if we get out of this. I've previously noted my concern about the Daily Mail glossing over case rises, and conferring the titles Doctor Doom and Professor Gloom on Whity and Valence. Personally I'm surprised they've hung on in there, so I applaud them for doing so.

 

[NewStuff]

Have you personally vetted all of them....?

You are making the hypothesis, not me. Anyway, for shits and giggles a quick google (note:- a search engine query is NOT "research") by someone not looking to reinforce a bias shows it's riddled with holes, fictions of people, and quacks claiming homeopathy and reiki as doctoral qualifications. As above, I will not be naming names, the idiots get too much exposure as it is, but they're well known fruitcakes, some of which have had medical licenses suspended or revoked, some of which have qualifications in fields totally unrelated to virology and immunology and biology in general (Radiology and Dentistry for example). I would ridicule a PhD physicist saying it doesn't exist as much as I would a knuckle dragging anti-masker dressed in pajamas at midday in the local FarmFoods, they both have the same expertise in the subject, namely sod all.

Don't play with the mad people, Max.

Mad? No.
Had my "filter" worn down by conspiraloons spreading this and 2 faced ex-moderators trying to get a sly dig in? Absolutely.

 

[mikem]

Although I agree that the pandemic has not been handled well, the decision making is not as straight-forward as many seem to think. The main reason lockdowns don't happen earlier is that it's affecting inner cities worse than anywhere else & those are the areas least likely to cope, unless they see personal evidence that it's really necessary...

 

[tony from suffolk]

Anyway, for shits and giggles a quick google (note:- a search engine query is NOT "research") by someone not looking to reinforce a bias shows it's riddled with holes, fictions of people, and quacks claiming homeopathy and reiki as doctoral qualifications. As above, I will not be naming names, the idiots get too much exposure as it is, but they're well known fruitcakes, some of which have had medical licenses suspended or revoked, some of which have qualifications in fields totally unrelated to virology and immunology and biology in general (Radiology and Dentistry for example). I would ridicule a PhD physicist saying it doesn't exist as much as I would a knuckle dragging anti-masker dressed in pajamas at midday in the local FarmFoods, they both have the same expertise in the subject, namely sod all.

It's incredibly disheartening to visit some of these anti-vax, anti-lockdown, anti-mask, climate change deniers, internet/Facebook forums. Any attempt at a logical discussion results in heaps of abuse and much poorly spelt and CAPITALISED "facts" from friends who are doctors/medics/scientists, and from secret sources that only they have access to. Then links to "scientific" opinions whose authors, after the briefest research, turn out to be nutters or malignant trolls. There's always massive government conspiracies behind it of course...

The people actually qualified to tell you the truth can?t tell you the truth because they?re part of the conspiracy not to tell you the truth. Therefore you must trust people utterly unqualified to tell you the truth to tell you the truth. Say all the utterly unqualified people.

 

[owd git]

The only face to face social interaction (beyond my household) I see in a typical week is asking the delivery guy to 'move the boxes off the front step because the door opens outwards'. I'm going slowly mad!

Probably, different and interestingly diverse delivery people, your other household 'besties', and as many personalities as you can manifest? a veritable crowd.!  :spank:
consider those on their own. with no-one. and no job left.  ( not my predicament i happily  inform.) join a help line phone peep's who need a chat .or whatevver. 
Just an idea.

 

[Tripod]

It extremely worrying that in our society people are being put into "boxes" at the extreme ends of a scale. Facebook demonstrates and no doubt plays a part in causing this. The way traits are attributed is very worrying - to express any opinion left of centre invites one to be lumped together with tree-huggers, yoghurt knitters and now anti-vaxers, anti-lockdown, anti mask wearing. 

I find all this extremely annoying. I have my views on the shitstorm we are in. I am reasonably intelligent, have an enquiring mind and I had a long career in the NHS. I have avoided subscribing to conspiracy theories but I am sure that we have been "played" from the start. I am not an anti-vaxer but I have serious doubts about the vaccines and their administration.

Discussion with individuals at either extreme on facebook is often not possible and can bring on personal abuse. The worst of this I found so far on facebook was with a countryside group with a jolly name, the administrators, led my a man of very questionable scruples, were devoted to pushing extreme, mindless right-wing propaganda.

This is all very dangerous and I will comment no further in case I get called a vegetarian, along with load of other, meant to be derisory, names. I say this as this as on reading a load of nonsense on that 'countryside' page I asked (intending it to be relatively playful) "are you saying that vegetarians cannot shoot?" to which the answer came in the form of "no they are to busy --" back to attributed traits.

 

[paul]

Maybe the answer is just to bin Facebook? Surely that would not be a great loss? Or just not treat it as somewhere as a reliable source of news and information and just treat it at the level of friends having a banter in the pub?

 

[aardgoose]

So now maxf attempts the well worn technique of the "Gish Gallop".https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop but brings no new arguments.

Others have dealt with the false positives (again, read up on Bayes Theorem), LPF sensitivity (again), changes in reporting criteria obviously alter figures, and as for the "Great Barrington Declaration!

The instigators of the GBD are the very people who declared the epidemic over in June, that herd immunity has been obtained, claimed that there would be no second wave etc. etc.  They have been repeatedly shown by events to be wrong.  Quoting the number of signatories isn't wise when they include multiple Drs Harold Shipman and other notable medics.

The GBD argues for shielding the vulnerable, which is unfeasible as has been explained many times. Society doesn't come in nice isolated groups you can divide.  It also ignores the large number of people incapacitated and people surviving with long term organ damage, including strokes.

Letting a virus spread unchecked has other dangers including increasing the likelihood of more dangerous mutations, as has occurred. There is now very strong evidence that it is increasingly infectious and in the younger age groups ( < 20 years old). Intensivists are reporting more younger patients and hospitals in London and the SE are now sending critically ill patients to distant hospitals because they have exceeded their ITU capacity.

You are repeating the same points that have already been dealt with but you have ignored the responses.

It is obvious you aren't discussing things in good faith so what is your agenda? Or are you just a Sea Lion? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

 

[tony from suffolk]

I find all this extremely annoying. I have my views on the shitstorm we are in. I am reasonably intelligent, have an enquiring mind and I had a long career in the NHS. I have avoided subscribing to conspiracy theories but I am sure that we have been "played" from the start. I am not an anti-vaxer but I have serious doubts about the vaccines and their administration.

You are perfectly entitled to your opinion. I'm a (now thankfully retired) state-registered clinician and worked for over 55 years for the NHS. But Immunology wasn't my field so my opinions are based solely on the trust I place with those who genuinely are experts. If you have doubts about the vaccination program for Covid 19, I would be genuinely interested in learning what information you used to form this view, and from where you obtained it.

 

[Speleofish]

Like Tony, I've been a clinician for a long time and have very recently retired. I am also not an expert in immunology or virology but I have been privileged to work with many of the people who are leading the vaccine effort and who advise the government. To a man or woman, they are smart, honest and I trust all of them. I'm not aware any of them have hidden agendas (and would be surprised if they did, if you exclude a little academic competitiveness).

The depressing thing about threads like this is not the number of honest doubters and those with genuine questions, it is the small group of people who make a succession of poor arguments when it's clear they don't have a real grasp of the subject matter. I am not going to personalise.

On the plus side, I now know about Gish-gallops and Sea-lioning. Not sure how I'm going to bring them into normal conversation but I'll try...

 

[PeteHall]

On the plus side, I now know about Gish-gallops and Sea-lioning. Not sure how I'm going to bring them into normal conversation but I'll try...

I've heard they are pretty useful terms if you want to resort to name-calling in a discussion.

 

[NewStuff]

On the plus side, I now know about Gish-gallops and Sea-lioning. Not sure how I'm going to bring them into normal conversation but I'll try...

I've heard they are pretty useful terms if you want to resort to name-calling in a discussion.

It's not name calling. It's identifying bad-faith techniques used to distract and attempt to shift the burden of proof. Almost always used when one side realises they're argument has more holes in it than Mendip.