NWR new zero tolerance covid thread

Dominic Sheppard said:
...The vaccines don’t seem to be vaccines in the traditional sense of providing immunity - in fact they are not particularly effective at preventing infection. They seem to be good at preventing hospitalisation & death which is obviously the most important thing but if those choosing not to take them are not in a vulnerable category, their chances of hospitalisation & death are very low anyway so they may not see the point in taking a risk.
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This is exactly the argument put forward by the (several) French anti-vaxxers I have spoken to in the past week or so. You can like this argument or you can hate it (I don't like it), but as a point of view it's as logical as anything else, really. Anti-vax seems to be the latest "manif" summer pastime in France taking over from "gilets jaunes" which is ostensibly all about civil liberties and nothing about healthcare, which makes no sense at all to me. BTW for the British vaccinated the NHS app QR code can now be scanned on the French "tous anti-covid" app giving you Macron's covid pass and letting you into cafes and restaurants, for anyone who's interested..

Meanwhile here in Spain they seem to be taking mask enforcement; supermarket trolley-cleaning; limited table numbers; and social distancing very seriously from what I can see.
 
Dominic Sheppard said:
The vaccines don’t seem to be vaccines in the traditional sense of providing immunity - in fact they are not particularly effective at preventing infection.
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As I understand it, that's actually the case with a lot of vaccines. Two doses of the mumps vaccine gives about 88% immunity while also reducing symproms if you do end up getting it. My friend's son, who was doubly vaccinated, still caught the mumps.

Edit: "Vaccination with the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine reduces infections by 90%, while a single dose confers 80% protection, shows a study led by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that followed essential workers through the worst months of the pandemic."
 
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This is why the whole of society needs to get the jab so infections aren’t passed on. It’s called herd immunity. You can get there naturally but that involves 500-1m deaths(complete guess).
It frustrates me that some will not play the game.
 
Eric Burch said:
When tackling a glass of wine, I'm not sure that it being solely a sound predictive model reaches my minimum requirements for its reality.
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Your predictive model probably includes rules of thumb like: if you drop it on a hard surface it breaks, and if you tip it wine flows out, etc etc. What other requirement do you have for reality?

Conversely, if your glass suddenly disappeared into thin air as you were about to take a sip, I would say that it is pretty strong evidence that it isn't real, and that you are dreaming or hallucinating.

Glasses of wine is simple. The argument is more sophisticated for quantum effects.
 
At the risk of going even further down a rabbit hole…I like David Deutsch’s formulation that in order to be useful a scientific theory needs to be both predictive and explanatory. Quantum mechanics fulfills both roles admirably I think.

The biggest problem with QM is, I think, just how bloody difficult it is. Certainly speaking personally - every other aspect of my physics degree could, with some work, be considered at some level intuitive. Quantum seems to be orders of magnitude more incomprehensible. Friends and family who work in the field, however, do tell me that after a certain point it becomes easier to understand…
 
Geordie Torr said:
As I understand it, that's actually the case with a lot of vaccines. Two doses of the mumps vaccine gives about 88% immunity while also reducing symproms if you do end up getting it. My friend's son, who was doubly vaccinated, still caught the mumps.

Edit: "Vaccination with the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine reduces infections by 90%, while a single dose confers 80% protection, shows a study led by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that followed essential workers through the worst months of the pandemic."
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I think those figures from the CDC may be immediately following vaccination, but the Israelis are suggesting they wane quite significantly. Their health ministry has quoted 75% effectiveness against infection if you were vaccinated in April but only 16% if you were vaccinated in January, so a significant drop in months 4-6. That’s why they are going to push for booster jabs.

I believe they are all Pfizer in Israel but there are plenty of examples of those double vaccinated with AZ at the moment who’ve subsequently got infected. Andrew Marr, Sajid Javid & Piers Morgan are some of the more high profile examples and Piers Morgan said he was contacted by large numbers of other people in the same situation - also double-jabbed.

That doesn’t mean they’re not worth taking of course, but I don’t think they are the answer to herd immunity as Russ suggests. And the countries that are relying on them entirely like NZ & Australia ‘could’ be in for a bit of a shock.
 
Leon Marks said:
At the risk of going even further down a rabbit hole…I like David Deutsch’s formulation that in order to be useful a scientific theory needs to be both predictive and explanatory. Quantum mechanics fulfills both roles admirably I think.

The biggest problem with QM is, I think, just how bloody difficult it is. Certainly speaking personally - every other aspect of my physics degree could, with some work, be considered at some level intuitive. Quantum seems to be orders of magnitude more incomprehensible. Friends and family who work in the field, however, do tell me that after a certain point it becomes easier to understand…
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I might not yet know how something works but observation may already provide a high degree of predictive utility. Theory may follow rather than precede prediction. Or was that the rabbit hole you had in mind?
 
The BBC splits the rates and hospitalisation a by nation in their latest story on the decline in figures and notes that Scotland has seen a 75% reduction in cases and hospitalisations followings a similar curve though they haven’t yet reached 75% reduction but could do in a week or so on the current trajectory from peak. All very encouraging.

Also good to see London falling by nearly 40% infection wise despite such low vaccination rates. Though how much football, school holidays et al have to do with this is still unknown.

All in all very encouraging.
 
Alex Lake said:
So annoying the way they report the news as though their audience were idiots....

"Cases have fallen for the 7th day in a row, but deaths are up!!!! WTF is going on????!!"
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Yup. Very irritating. Though when they report it the other way at the start of the 3rd wave they always mentioned that deaths lag. Weird inconsitency.
 
According to government statistics daily PCR tests (booked by the public, not NHS tests or research tests) have dropped from 432000 to 237000 in the last 10 days
A 45% drop
Cases have dropped from 51,000 to 25,000 in the same time - 51% drop
So are cases falling so less tests are being done, or are less tests being done so less are identified?

It may be people deliberately choosing not to be tested so to avoid isolation and protecting their holidays, it may be that the younger people who have covid may not have obvious symptoms to make them arrange a test, it may be a genuine drop in cases.

The hospital admission data is now the one that matters - NHS modelling has moved away from +ve case since there are now serious concerns about the accuracy of the numbers.
Hence the caution being expressed by scientists and politicians
 
Stephen Locke said:
According to government statistics daily PCR tests (booked by the public, not NHS tests or research tests) have dropped from 432000 to 237000 in the last 10 days
A 45% drop
Cases have dropped from 51,000 to 25,000 in the same time - 51% drop
So are cases falling so less tests are being done, or are less tests being done so less are identified?

It may be people deliberately choosing not to be tested so to avoid isolation and protecting their holidays, it may be that the younger people who have covid may not have obvious symptoms to make them arrange a test, it may be a genuine drop in cases.

The hospital admission data is now the one that matters - NHS modelling has moved away from +ve case since there are now serious concerns about the accuracy of the numbers.
Hence the caution being expressed by scientists and politicians
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Sorry where are you getting your information from its very misleading. PCR tests on the dashboard include pillars 1-4 in the figures you quote. Also 2 days ago the testing was over 370k so a drop of just over 10%. There is clearly a drop in cases unrelated to a slight drop in testing for that period and you always have two days with less testing each week hence better to look at the average than pick the very lowest day.

I would be genuinely amazed if anyone actually gives in and says yes cases are falling. Seems you guys are all just determined to find reasons why this isn’t the case :rolleyes:
 
On vaccine efficacy issue, there are some backgrounds to be introduced:

Covid is mainly a respiratory infectious disease (of course, it also does harm to other parts) It primarily replicates in upper respiratory tract; and then it causes more serious problem when it goes down to the lungs.

Antibody, or immunoglobulin (Ig), has several different groups. IgG is the main force of vaccine induced immunity, found in blood and other body fluid; it's more specific and lasts longer, so in a sense better quality antibody against virus. IgA is mostly seen in mucus of respiratory and digestive tracts; its memory doesn't last as long as IgG, and although it can protect the primary infection at mucus, it doesn't help as much for systematic problem.

Most vaccines are given through injection, same as all the current approved Covid vaccines. They mostly generate very good immune response, with neutralising antibody, mainly IgG which is great, because it's the high quality and long lasting antibody you want to defend the whole body. However it's probably not enough to stop coronavirus to grow in ones nose. It is quite effective to stop coronavirus grow in the lungs, or in the blood and spread to all over the body (so-called viremia), hence effectively prevents severe illness. For strain like Delta variant, which the virus titre is extra high, even the person is vaccinated and their lungs protected, they can still have quite some viruses grow in their upper respiratory tract. They would therefore 1. be tested positive 2. have fever, headache, losing smell etc and 3. pass the virus to others.

Vaccine still significantly reduce 1. the number of people get infected by same amount of virus 2. the infectious virus one can shed if they got vaccinated. So it will therefore significantly reduce R value. As if that R will be lower than 1 or not, it depends on the vaccine coverage + human activity + protecting equipment (e.g. facemask) + the infectivity of the strain. Herd immunity is still possible, just we need higher vaccine coverage for Delta variant.

There are efforts to make something like nose-spray vaccine; I think there is one or two in phase 1 trial. It is not very easy though, and as said IgA doesn't last very long.
 
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Sorry Gareth - that’s pillar 2 data I received today. Definitely not including pillar 1. I’ve given up on the dashboard ever since LFTs we’re counted as a Covid test.
NHSE / PHE was the route it arrived by.
I could double check source - but can’t be arsed.
I haven’t a clue what’s going on at the moment. Cases in my area - Covid at home workload, admissions, are all steadily rising whilst testing and vaccine uptake are falling.
I do think behaviour is impacting on data more than ever before.
 
Stephen Locke said:
Sorry Gareth - that’s pillar 2 data I received today. Definitely not including pillar 1. I’ve given up on the dashboard ever since LFTs we’re counted as a Covid test.
NHSE / PHE was the route it arrived by.
I could double check source - but can’t be arsed.
I haven’t a clue what’s going on at the moment. Cases in my area - Covid at home workload, admissions, are all steadily rising whilst testing and vaccine uptake are falling.
I do think behaviour is impacting on data more than ever before.
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Well ok but that directly contradicts what is on the dashboard. You can also see that Pillar 2 tests have actually increased from 440k to over 500k in the last 10 days but that is obvs not just PCR. I wish they’d breakdown the data in a useful way!
 
The obvious question about the declining infection rates, is wether it is really good news or not ? My understanding was that the Govt wanted a peak now over the summer to prevent a peak happening in the winter when the NHS is under pressure. It’s fine if the lower infection rates are a sign that even in the winter things will be good, but if if this is just pushing back when a final (hopefully) wave arrives, then maybe its not such a good thing.

Over here Sydney are expected to announce that they will extend their lockdown for at least another month. They managed to avoid exponential growth of the virus, but the numbers are still ticking up every day and they are slowly losing control. They probably need to go thru a Melbourne style lockdown with very limited movement and a curfew, but that may be a step too far politically. They are trying to use vaccination as a cure, but there is not enough of Pfizer to innoculate everyone and that would still take months to make a real difference.
 
On infection number up or down issue, I almost didn't participate in the discussion. There are a couple reasons, first of all I didn't see enough data to even say what's actually happening, let alone to guess what are the reasons.

The second reason is, infection number going up and down, isn't that the nature of infectious disease anyway? Even the epidemiology models, when they calculate the 'no interference' curve, they don't draw line that goes up forever, even a very high peak will come down.

If you see most of other less lethal respiratory virus infections, they mostly come in waves, including less serious human Cov. The disease rushing in, peaked, and faded out, even when there is no obvious policy change. Of course, any scenario has reasons, just we scientists haven't found them yet.

The real problem is, is it the last wave? There was a time when we think India magically escaped the huge problem, then it was hit by this virus in the most horrible way. Now that terrible peak is coming down, even in provinces that refused lockdown. Though no one can say if that's the end of the problem. If this virus is not going anywhere, then there is a chance the wave will be back, maybe with a new mutation. Will we be more ready then? Will anyone should and want to be protected get protection? Will older and weaker people get extra immunity form a third dose? Are we satisfied with the current death rate, or something can be done to make it better? Or can we even guarantee that this kind of protection will be as good in another six months?
 
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Agree with you Po, but there has been an unfortunate body of people in the UK who have thought that only government interventions & restrictions can help bring down cases. Everything else is “letting it rip”, causing “exponential growth”. But viruses don’t quite work like that, as has been shown throughout the world many times during this pandemic.
 
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Po, thank you for your thoughts on this. Is it reasonable to assume that the stabilization around the no interference curve you mention would likely have more to do with human behaviour or other externalities, rather than the biology of the virus itself? Presumably, this would not happen in controlled in vitro experiments?
 
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