NWR new zero tolerance covid thread

Jasper Morris said:
I am sure this below is too simplistic but perhaps Po-yu or others qualified could amend as necessary
In the nose: probably asymptomatic, and less risk of infecting others (except greater likelihood of circulating at large)
In the upper respiratory tract: major illness unlikely, more risk of infecting others (but less circulation at large)
In the lungs: serious illness likely and strong risk to infect (except presumably not circulating at large)
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Sorry only see it now. Had some birthday events yesterday.

In sense of the progression or seriousness of covid yes we can maybe categorise to these three kinds, but transmission risk is probably more complicate than that.

As briefly expalined before, "asymptomatic" people might not be that infectious, but pre-symptomatic can be very infectious, and you couldn't tell who's real asymptomatic (no symptom all the way) until a week later. Virus in the nose and throat can be quite infectious at early point, with two factors: 1. the person feels fine and looks fine at this stage and goes around 2. droplets easily come out from nose and throat when speaking, laughing, singing....

Assumingly that's the mass majority of intection events in the communities, as *already mildly ill people have better chance to infect their households, and *already severely ill people mainly cast risk on caretakers. Actually, many seriously ill people already have little virus in their nose, but there are still lots of virus in their lung and/or the inflammation of lungs already starts, it's cytokine storm causing damage.

Since the seriousness of Covid is related to viral load (viral load at early stage can somewhat predict the outcome later on), you can kind of say those who have symptoms carry more risk of infecting others, but note that it can happen before symptoms onset. Basically, if you have more virus from the beginning, you 1. can infect others more from the beginning 2. have higher chance to be more ill later on. That is why Delta strain seems to go against evolution rule, transmiss better at the same time causing more serious illness. Data from a recent Delta strain outbreak in China shows that Delta strain generate 1000 folds higher viral load compared to the strain in 2020.
 
Jonathan Hesford said:
However, I'm not convinced that once we reach figures like 90% of vulnerable people in a population fully vaccinated, we need to be vaccinating people with miniscule risks of getting ill.
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Nor does it make much sense to me to be forcing vaccines on teenagers, who have never had a significant level of risk to Covid, while poorer countries are struggling to get enough doses to protect their nurses, elderly or unhealthy.
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It seems to be that these are the two major ethical debating points of expanding vaccination programme.
A) Vaccine casts small of existing risk to young people, and Covid causes less risk to the same group of people. Vaccinating these people has more benefit to others than those who gonna receive vaccine.
B) Distribution issue. As you already explained it clearly.

None of them are easy to answer. For point A, the risk for young people getting vaccine might have a more constant ratio, but the risk of having Covid is not fixed. The more Covid cases we have, the higher risk they are under. So if we let Covid Delta strain spreads, let the R>1, at some point even for young people the risk of getting seriously ill from covid will be too large to bear, if the natural herd immunity would not be enough to push down the R. Even very good epidemiology model might not be good enough to predict this, as there are too many factors involve.
I personally think we should offer vaccine to 14-18 yo people if they want one; they are young but not that they totally couldn't decide for themselves. Children under 14 is more tricky ethically speaking. Stopping unvaccinated kids to do clubbing or crowd activities shouldn't be seen as forcing them to get vaccine, as the main reason doing so is to protect people. If that causes some inconvenience to unvaccinated teenagers... well, c'est la vie.

Point B is a whole bunch of other complicate issues.
 
One thing that’s bugging me and I can’t work out is why hospitalisations are so much higher this year than last year. This time last year there were 1,087 people in hospital with COVID and now there are 5,912.

So 5.5x as many people in hospital.

Although we’d had a longer spring lockdown, it became much more lenient from June onwards and this time last year there were very few restrictions, nobody was wearing masks and nobody was vaccinated.

Yes the Delta variant is more transmissible but over the past 12 months a lot more people have acquired natural immunity via infection and on top of that, 75% of adults are now fully vaccinated (90% have had at least one dose) which is supposed to reduce transmission & hospitalisations.

Is there an obvious explanation that I’m missing because it doesn’t quite seem right?
 
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Jonathan Hesford said:
From looking at loads of stats and research papers, I get the picture that the vaccine reduces transmission by about 50%. It reduces the risk of hospitalisation by about 80% and that overall, in populations with a successful vaccine rollout, it has reduced hospitalisations by 75% when you look at cases numbers before vaccines were rolled out.

Therefore the vaccine doesn't protect everyone. It doesn't significantly reduce transmission either. Hence while there are still numbers of unvaccinated vulnerable people out there (as in France), sanitation and distancing measures are still required.
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According to your figures you say that vaccination reduces transmission risk by 50%, and then that it doesn’t significantly reduce transmission.

Maybe I have missed some aspect of your logic, but I'd say a 50% reduction is significant in every sense of the word. Most importantly, if everyone is vaccinated then it would be the difference between R in the range 1.0-2.0 (infection rates growing exponentially) and R less than 1.0 (infection rates dropping off).

From a purely personal point of view, I also consider a 50% reduction in risk to be significant, particularly combined with the benefits of mask wearing
 
I don’t get how germany again has such low case numbers when delta is spreading so rapidly elsewhere. They don’t have higher vaccine rates and the mobility data doesn’t show them as isolating any more than other nations. How is it they seem relatively immune?
 
There's nothing different physiologically about the Germans, so the discrepancy must be in the testing. What else is there?

The German holidaymakers are obviously being tested as a condition of travel...
 
I’m currently in Germany and am constantly driving past temporary testing centres, with queues. I know it varies by state but doing anything here - restaurants, swimming pools etc requires a negative test within the last 24 hours unless vaccinated, applied to all over 6’s, slightly time consuming for our 2 over 6’s. From my observations both social distancing and mask wearing seem widely adhered to, not a thorough survey but feels much stricter than the U.K.
 
Please help me with picking the bones out of the numbers in this excerpt from a Guardian story on the 10th:

fully vaccinated people aged 18 to 64 have about a 49% lower risk of being infected compared with unvaccinated people. The findings also indicated that fully vaccinated people were about three times less likely to test positive after coming into contact with someone who had Covid (3.84%, down from 7.23%).
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I'm seeing a lot of this lately and don't understand it. What is 49% lower? By definition a percentage is already less than a whole. Does a vaccinated person have a 49% chance of being infected compared to an unvaccinated person (in which case why not say just under half as likely or 49% as likely if accuracy is desired) or does it mean something else?

And three times less likely. I don't get using a factor to express a fraction. Does three times less mean a third (in which case why not say a third)? It seems not, as the values for postive tests in this event are given as 7.23% for unvaccinated people as opposed to 3.84% for vaccinated, which could much more simply be expressed as just over half as likely. No, I am completely stumped by three times less.
 
Phil David said:
Please help me with picking the bones out of the numbers in this excerpt from a Guardian story on the 10th:



I'm seeing a lot of this lately and don't understand it. What is 49% lower? By definition a percentage is already less than a whole. Does a vaccinated person have a 49% chance of being infected compared to an unvaccinated person (in which case why not say just under half as likely or 49% as likely if accuracy is desired) or does it mean something else?

And three times less likely. I don't get using a factor to express a fraction. Does three times less mean a third (in which case why not say a third)? It seems not, as the values for postive tests in this event are given as 7.23% for unvaccinated people as opposed to 3.84% for vaccinated, which could much more simply be expressed as just over half as likely. No, I am completely stumped by three times less.
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The way that statistics are quoted in the news would, were I ever to be put in charge, result in significant legal sanction. I'm not in favour of reintroducing capital punishment, but the consequences would be severe.
 
Leon Marks said:
The way that statistics are quoted in the news would, were I ever to be put in charge, result in significant legal sanction. I'm not in favour of reintroducing capital punishment, but the consequences would be severe.
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And how many scientific results are quoted in the past 1.5 year! The almost intentionally confusing usage of the term 'asymptomatic' by certain media is just one example.
Of course, some 'scientists' themselves are guilty, too. I don't mean making mistake or wrong prediction kind of guilty, but even not qualified as scientist kind of guilty.
 
Leon Marks said:
The way that statistics are quoted in the news would, were I ever to be put in charge, result in significant legal sanction. I'm not in favour of reintroducing capital punishment, but the consequences would be severe.
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I just saw a wine post on FishBowl from chaps selling on the proposition "Portuguese wine is five times cheaper than wine from France"
:rolleyes:
 
I sometimes see percentages quoted which are quite obviously nonsense since someone has put the wrong figure in the denominator, so I tend to be a bit sceptical about all the percentages I see!
(I'm thinking of someone who seriously reported that a country's production of wine had decreased by somewhere around 150%, even though they were still producing some...)
 
Alex Lake said:
What's this mobility data? And how has their lockdown/advice been over the last 2-3 months cf UK?
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Google mobility index which lets you look at mobility across various activities - home, office, retail, recreation etc. There’s also a lockdown stringency index (can’t remember the source) which, pre our 19/7 relaxation, showed the UK had effectively the same stringency of lockdown rules as the rest of europe.
 
Neil Holland said:
Very depressing piece on the BBC News at 10 about the low take up of the vaccine in the US deep south and hospitals filling up...
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Yes, and the interviews with people saying that they still won't take it. I'm a little baffled by how this relates to the USA healthcare system. Isn't most of it done on insurance? And surely insurers will be saying no payout unless you're jabbed?
 
Alex,
Lot of Americans are not covered...

Covid test Numbers :
At our pharmacy in La Roque, we can buy (do it yourself) Covid test for 5€ including the pharmacy profit!
Contractor for UK government charges you 210£ for 2 "do it yourself" Covid test (meaning 420 £ for us when we returned a few months ago!).

That is 25 times more expensive!

What is the profit for UK government contractor? Who got the contract? How is the money shared?
(Difference is UK test is PCR, but this antigenic test in La Roque claims it has very high accuracy)
 
The DIY lateral flow (antigen) tests in the UK are free but they are not as reliable as the PCR.

I know because I knew I had Covid (and got a positive PCR) but tested negative for a few days longer on the lateral flow before it turned positive. I think it needs a higher viral load whereas the PCR is much more sensitive.
 
It's being widely reported that a WHO report that played down the possibility of Covid originating in the Wuhan laboratory was redacted under pressure from China as the precondition for the report's publication. A Danish contributor to the report has revealed that the first draft was considerably more incriminating
 
Yup. We'd better get used to that kind of thing from China.

So on the USA covid anti-vaxxers, how many of them will be relying on private health insurance? - and will it pay out? What happens if it doesn't? Is there a catch-all medicare system or are they literally left to die?
 
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