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Grant
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I tried to get a Twitter hashtag running of #letthemdie but it didn’t have any legs
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| They went to a northern hospital where the critical care ward held 42 beds and was full up. This was evidence of the NHS collapsing. It didn’t appear to have occurred to anyone that as ventilators are now infrequently used on COVID patients they could have just opened another ward and equipped it with oxygen tanks. |
This is a typical example of the professional tail wagging the consumer dog. The NHS is an interest group, just like everyone else. What it wants is more of the same. But not too much more that it will have to change its working practices. Nothing wrong with that, only right now everyone is genuflecting to them rather than wupping their arses. Is anyone using Nightingale hospitals at the moment, apart from ameliorating the annual "Ooh, we're having to ring round to find a bed. It's all so aggravating."
By the way, if they let things rip, they will discover -- as every war discovers -- that you just don't need the trained nurses, the specialist doctors and the fancy equipment. Or rather you do, but you can feed in untrained nurses, most any doctor and standard equipment with only a small fall-off in successful outcomes. And even then it is found that successful outcomes go up as everyone becomes specialised in this new form of emergency medicine. (Remember the good old days when COVID patients were being killed rather than saved by ventilators?)
But at the start of every war they still bitch like hell.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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What are we to make of the news that a vaccine will be ready 'next month'? It all seems kosher despite the usual suspects dashing round warning us not to take our eye off the ball etc. Since it was also announced that the British government had ordered x million doses and we have the muscle to be early in the queue, it is reasonable to assume we'll be a vaccinatory country early in the new year.
If so, official government policy will have been shown to be broadly correct.
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Grant
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Broadly correct apart from destroying three million jobs and thus jeopardising our ability to pay for the saintly NHS. 2021 is going to be bloody
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Mick Harper wrote: | What are we to make of the news that a vaccine will be ready 'next month'? It all seems kosher despite the usual suspects dashing round warning us not to take our eye off the ball etc. Since it was also announced that the British government had ordered x million doses and we have the muscle to be early in the queue, it is reasonable to assume we'll be a vaccinatory country early in the new year.
If so, official government policy will have been shown to be broadly correct. |
Do you mean the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine?
| Ben Osborn, Pfizer’s managing director in the UK said in July that there were 40 million doses sitting in a Belgian warehouse ready to be sent to Britain. That would be enough to treat 20 million people, given that the vaccine requires two doses. |
Hurrah! God bless Pfizer.
| Last week, Paul Duffy, Vice President of Pfizer Global Supply, said that there is “very minimal†chance of the vaccine being distributed this year, even if it is approved this month. Distribution is more likely in the first half of next year, he said. |
Bloody Pfizer, wot they waiting for?
| In terms of timing, they are suggesting mass vaccinations in time for the 2021/2022 coronavirus season which suggests at least another six months of virus suppression policies, including lockdowns. |
Form an orderly queue. Keep quiet at the back. You will be marked as an "Anti-Vaxer" if you ask too many awkward questions, like "Is this like Tamiflu, treating the effects, not the causes?"
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Of course I agree with all this, the reality might be even worse and I, for one, won't be taking it after such a minimalist testing regime. But it will allow everyone to return to a state of near-normalcy (say, something like it was when lockdown was lifted in the summer) and then on to full normalcy. I disagree with your Tamiflu comparison -- a vaccine, even a not 90% effective as first thought vaccine -- really does treat the disease not the symptoms.
It is not the anti-vaxers we have to worry about, already the anti-Big Pharmas are out and about demanding Pfizer make no money out of their work, just in case we want Big Pharma's help in the future.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | I disagree with your Tamiflu comparison -- a vaccine, even a not 90% effective as first thought vaccine -- really does treat the disease not the symptoms. |
I appreciate it was now many years ago, so let's have another look :
| Hundreds of millions of pounds may have been wasted on a drug for flu that works no better than paracetamol, a landmark analysis has said. The UK has spent £473m on Tamiflu, which is stockpiled by governments globally to prepare for flu pandemics. The Cochrane Collaboration claimed the drug did not prevent the spread of flu or reduce dangerous complications, and only slightly helped symptoms. |
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-26954482
The Cochrane Library is still a well-respected (by medical people) medical-grade reporter of evidence-based medicine (not manufacturer's press releases or government policies)
| These findings all suggest that the low immune response with low levels of proâ€inflammatory cytokines, which is induced by the action of oseltamivir carboxylate, may reduce the symptoms of influenza unrelated to an inhibition of influenza virus replication. The potential hypothermic or antipyretic effect of oseltamivir as a central nervous system depressant may also contribute to the apparent reduction of host symptoms. Statements made on the capacity of oseltamivir to interrupt viral transmission and reduce complications are not supported by any data we have been able to access. |
Their review of the accuracy of Covid-19 tests is timely.
https://www.cochrane.org/CD013652/INFECTN_what-diagnostic-accuracy-antibody-tests-detection-infection-covid-19-virus
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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There is no comparison between a drug and a vaccine. They may both work, they both might not work, one can work and the other not, but they are just not the same thing.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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According to ortho current flu vaccines reduce the risk of flu in the entire population between 40% to 60%. I doubt that Covid vacs will be much better, but even if one was (they might decide they need a combination) it will take years to know which one or two of the many being rushed out it was. The massed taking of the vaccination (will we have to enforce it by law?) might not create herd immunity.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This is wrong for the same reason: not comparing like with like. There is no flu vaccine because flu is not a disease. It is a whole bunch of diseases each requiring its own vaccine. Covid is one disease and only requires one vaccine.
I am not saying this will necessarily turn out to be true but that is a different question.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Eh? Covid 19 has already mutated.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Even if true, and assuming the vaccine is not effective against it, that does not really answer the case. If the main strain is mopped up then we are faced with a 'small' new disease. Since Covid-19 was unusual in terms of a new 'flu', there is a reasonable possibility that Covid-20 will be a normal flu and can be ignored/treated with appropriate pigeon steps in the usual way of new strains of flu. Even if it turns out to be Covid-19 all over again we will at least know what to do and what not to do. Er ... wait, you could be right.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Well, according to ortho there were 6 main strains in August, it's currently mutating about half the speed of flu (whatever that is), so they say.
The BBC reported 50,100 excess deaths in 2017/8, in part down to ineffective flu vaccine . That was another bad year for the over 85s.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-46399090
Just saying.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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A bad year for the over-85's is a good year for the rest of us. Just saying.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Over the last 30 years the number of annual excess deaths as % of population is higher but not unprecedented. It's a bit lower than 1995, 1996, 1998 and 1999, about the same as 2018, about 0.4 of the population. In the late 1990s we did not lockdown. We stoically carried on only to waste billions next year on the millenium bug.
Flu is seasonal of course but maybe there is some sort of pandemic scare cycle, similar to what we went through with the Millennium bug.
Both SARS and COVID "started" in China who are heavily influenced by Cyclical thinking, with years and actions being lucky/unlucky?
The Bat is generally thought of as lucky in China, and most people have left it at that (probably wisely).Still, in Native American, African and Aztec mythology, people associate bats with darkness, sorcery and death, and in western literature and popular culture you have Dracula and Batman. Can we be reassured that in China bats are lucky? On Chinese coins/charms the bat is indeed considered lucky, but the references I have seen are that this is when the bats are placed upside-down, at rest, only at this point does it mean that happiness has actually arrived.
What happens if the bats are not upside down? Can we assume the opposite? Have we any Chinese epistemologits? Are these pandemic scare stories out of China due to cyclical panics?
2020 was year of rat. Rats are really flying bats.
Hmm, not sure this is going to make Harper's next volume.
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