Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
Do you think that the earlier disparity was due to women being more likely to work as carers?
Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion
- Thread starter Sasaferrato
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elbows
Well-Known Member
I assume its a combination of factors involving stuff like you mentioned, but also the greater number of women who survive well into the oldest age groups, end up in care homes etc.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
elbows
Well-Known Member
Yeah I'm afraid they set that scene up months ago when they first unveiled the roadmap out of lockdown. Its not really been a secret 
Vallances '20,000 would be a good result', uttered at the start of the pandemic, turns out to be '20,000 is a result the authorities can live happily with'.
Vallances '20,000 would be a good result', uttered at the start of the pandemic, turns out to be '20,000 is a result the authorities can live happily with'.
platinumsage
HaveMyPassword123
Yeah I'm afraid they set that scene up months ago when they first unveiled the roadmap out of lockdown. Its not really been a secret
Vallances '20,000 would be a good result', uttered at the start of the pandemic, turns out to be '20,000 is a result the authorities can live happily with'.
No one ever batted an eyelid about 20,000 flu deaths other than the peak impacts on hospitals in winter, and urging over-50s to get jabbed. I find it a bit strange that some people think this new disease should be managed so utterly differently.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Funny, then, that they were so adamant that they were going to keep case numbers down so low in the first place.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Yes I've mentioned in the past about how there is a lack of collective memory about what was happening with flu during the period where people were celebrating 'the new millenium' for example.
Its still uncharted territory as far as public acceptance of this sort of thing going in future with Covid though, because the nature of the pandemic caused people to pay attention, and face restrictions, in a way that was quite different to anything most living people have experienced in the past.
Right now I have a neutral opinion about whether people will go along with this. Perhaps, perhaps not. The government will be relying on people being tired of restrictions in order to bounce this approach through, but I must wait and see what this wave and future variants do to the picture.
Another unknown this time is whether comparisons to what other countries do will keep unease about this approach burning, as happened at the start of the pandemic when other countries close to home were taking a very different approach, which tipped our press off that our authorities were going down a dodgy path.
I never forget articles like this one either:
When it comes to national emergencies, Britain has a tradition of cold calculation | David Edgerton
The government’s reluctance to put the health of citizens first has echoes in the 1940s and 50s, says author David Edgerton
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
Flu generally doesn't put so many people in ICU, probably because everyone has some level of immunity.
I saw a report yesterday that Astra and Pfizer may confer lifelong immunity, taken with the obligatory pinch of salt at the moment.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Following on from what I just aid, the pandemic has also let the cat out of the bag in terms of how many flu deaths are preventable.
How many normal seasonal flu deaths are caused by inadequate infection control measures in hospitals and care homes, and via a disinterest in mass testing?
I still hope that if the authorities have learnt anything via this pandemic, its that we should make our mass testing system a permanent thing that we apply routinely to a number of other diseases. And that attitudes towards going to work when sick will change. So far the authorities have at least pretended that these gains will stick around and be used in other areas of health in future. But given the disruption that proper testing and self-isolation cause, and issues with staffing levels if people do the right thing by staying at home when sick, I have my doubts.
And there is certainly no lack of people whose shit instincts towards disease never really went away, who I butted heads with early in the pandemic and will probably continue to do so for the rest of my life. Whether I am left with any sort of audience for such rants in the years ahead remains to be seen.
elbows
Well-Known Member
No. The exponential growth stuff is standard for all manner of epidemiological curves.
The difference with pandemic viruses is only really that they are new, novel, so there is no existing population immunity to rely on.
When that is coupled with a disease that leads to a relatively high percentage of hospitalisations and deaths, there is a problem and the authorities have to move beyond their 'do little' comfort zone. Until the picture changes due to levels of population immunity changing via infections and vaccination programmes.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Short answer, no. An exponential growth phase is common to all pathogens. We don't notice this stage with flu so much because there are always multiple older and newer variants in circulation, creating an overall impression of a relatively steady number of infections or deaths.
e2a: Who could have guessed that elbows would beat me to it
elbows
Well-Known Member
If people look at the actual numbers and news reporting each winter, there isnt really much sense of a stable picture with flu.Short answer, no. An exponential growth phase is common to all pathogens. We don't notice this stage with flu so much because there are always multiple older and newer variants in circulation, creating an overall impression of a relatively steady number of infections or deaths.
e2a: Who could have guessed that elbows would beat me to it
ie there are bad epidemic years and years where the burden is much smaller. And the effects of this are not subtle, they show up in all the excess mortality graphs quite clearly. I will probably fish out a few of those later, highlighting some large flu epidemics.
platinumsage
HaveMyPassword123
I don't see test & isolate being here to stay and being extended to flu also. I'm not sure it would pass a cost/benefit analysis. Hospital infection control maybe, especially as sub-FFP2 masks and hand sanitiser are likely to help more against flu than coronavirus. Careworker flu/corona jabs and masks should be here to stay, along with improved flu/corona jabbing of NHS workers, which was abysmal before the pandemic. I'm more interested in the next pandemic: e.g. will an "atypical pneumonia" report from the WHO or a suspected human-human transmission of a noval H-subtype flu lead to an instant global shutdown of air travel for example...
elbows
Well-Known Member
Heres a quick example of what I said in previous post. Deaths per day from all causes for England and Wales. 1988 and 1989, the latter of which featured a bad flu epidemic that was in the news at the time.
I also include a graph I started for 2020 which I didnt get round to completing, showing the first wave Covid-19 death spike. But do keep in mind that the 2020 death spike would have been larger if we hadnt had lockdowns & massive behavioural changes.
I also include a graph I started for 2020 which I didnt get round to completing, showing the first wave Covid-19 death spike. But do keep in mind that the 2020 death spike would have been larger if we hadnt had lockdowns & massive behavioural changes.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Our influenza epidemics feature exponential growth. So please give up this line of thinking, its just wrong.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Yeah I dont expect that across society. I would hope that it is at least in place in terms of people going into hospital, care homes etc. And that in general our medical system may use testing more than guessing in future.
platinumsage
HaveMyPassword123
Yes I'm not saying it should have been treated like flu, but that an aim of 20,000 deaths max at the start, and such an aim from now onwards, is within the scope of what the population have previously not given two figs about.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Just to expand on that slightly.
These diseases feature epidemic growth until the virus runs out of access to enough victims to enable that growth to continue.
There are several key parameters that affect when a particular virus runs out of victims. When there is an existing a level of immunity against the disease, whether via infections past or present or vaccinations, that makes a difference to when the peak will come. How people behave when cases rise affects when the peak will come. etc. The numbers didnt stack up well for this SARS-Cov-2 virus, we couldnt rely on the peak coming before hospital etc capacity was exceeded, and so we had to modify behaviours and contact mixing patterns. And when we abandoned those changes, the threat was still there and the virus still had a large pool of victims to exploit, causing a return to exponential growth. With flu the dynamics are different because the peaks typically come because the pool is smaller, the virus actually runs out of sufficient vulnerable hosts and runs its course without totally collapsing the system. Although it still gets pretty close at times, in terms of hospital etc burden.
I guess what remains to be seen is how seasonal covid becomes and whether there is an overlap with a bad flu year. I know they were worried about that last winter but it didn't happen presumably due to all the measures in place to prevent the spread of covid.
A bad flu winter + covid doesn't sound like something that can just be shrugged off by politicians or the wider population.
A bad flu winter + covid doesn't sound like something that can just be shrugged off by politicians or the wider population.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Yes and thats a big part of why government think they can go back to business as usual in the months ahead. I'm just saying that the assumption might not be safe, one of the big unknowns is whether attitudes will remain changed for years, or whether everyone other than government will also return to the old, blinkered, ways.
The efficacy of flue vaccines changes from year to year, I would have thought with mutations etc its reasonable to think covid will continue to adapt and our vaccines will vary in their effectiveness as well.
elbows
Well-Known Member
As we have seen they try to shrug such things off unless data and modelling indicates that capacity will be breached, and then they begrudgingly have to actually do something.
Certainly one of the reasons hospitals are currently under pressure is that various other diseases that were suppressed by lockdowns and behavioural changes have bounced back.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Flu vaccines have had mixed performance. H3N2 strain of flu is a pain in the arse because it has a fairly high disease burden and they've had a fair amount of trouble with vaccines against it due to some detail of the flu vaccine manufacturing process - its done in eggs and they've tended to find that H3N2 strains may alter whilst growing in egg culture, producing sub-optimal vaccines. Not that many years ago they changed the type of vaccine given to older people to try to improve the level of protection on offer for this vulnerable group.
Hopefully there will be more effort put into more modern flu vaccines in future.
No doubt you're all well aware of this but I'm going to say it anyway.
Every single death, while only a blip in the data, is an enormous event for the person who died and all who loved them.
In February 1976 my apparently perfectly healthy aunt Susan died of the flu. It took 3 weeks and she was never hospitalised. She was 28 years old.
My cousin J was 8 years old at the time, and lost her (single) mother. My mum lost her beloved only sister. It was a massive event that changed the course of many lives. My cousin J came to live with us and became my sister. Susan's partner grieved for decades and did time in prison for drink driving. My mum and sister J never fully got over the loss.
Susan was a teacher and a political activist. In a sense the whole world lost something significant when she died.
And I never got to know my aunt. I was 18 months old when she died.
Every single death, while only a blip in the data, is an enormous event for the person who died and all who loved them.
In February 1976 my apparently perfectly healthy aunt Susan died of the flu. It took 3 weeks and she was never hospitalised. She was 28 years old.
My cousin J was 8 years old at the time, and lost her (single) mother. My mum lost her beloved only sister. It was a massive event that changed the course of many lives. My cousin J came to live with us and became my sister. Susan's partner grieved for decades and did time in prison for drink driving. My mum and sister J never fully got over the loss.
Susan was a teacher and a political activist. In a sense the whole world lost something significant when she died.
And I never got to know my aunt. I was 18 months old when she died.
cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
I read somewhere recently that they are developing mRNA vaccines for the flu, so may be using this new technology will increase the efficacy of flu vaccines.
ETA - New RNA Technology Could Get the Flu Vaccine Right, Every Year | pfpfizeruscom
ETA - New RNA Technology Could Get the Flu Vaccine Right, Every Year | pfpfizeruscom
elbows
Well-Known Member
Also my 9 year old nephew developed type 1 diabetes during the pandemic last year. There are several reasons I dont go on about this here, one of them being that the authorities werent too bothered about exploring whether there was a link to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. If we lived somewhere with a hospital where research was done, this might have been different. And his father is a type 1 diabetic, so there was likely genetic susceptibility to diabetes present. But since they think viral infections can often be the trigger for the diabetes developing, I have to keep an open mind about a possible link.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
Yes I've mentioned in the past about how there is a lack of collective memory about what was happening with flu during the period where people were celebrating 'the new millenium' for example.
Its still uncharted territory as far as public acceptance of this sort of thing going in future with Covid though, because the nature of the pandemic caused people to pay attention, and face restrictions, in a way that was quite different to anything most living people have experienced in the past.
Right now I have a neutral opinion about whether people will go along with this. Perhaps, perhaps not. The government will be relying on people being tired of restrictions in order to bounce this approach through, but I must wait and see what this wave and future variants do to the picture.
Another unknown this time is whether comparisons to what other countries do will keep unease about this approach burning, as happened at the start of the pandemic when other countries close to home were taking a very different approach, which tipped our press off that our authorities were going down a dodgy path.
I never forget articles like this one either:
When it comes to national emergencies, Britain has a tradition of cold calculation | David Edgerton
The government’s reluctance to put the health of citizens first has echoes in the 1940s and 50s, says author David Edgertonwww.theguardian.com
Well, the Sas's were just discussing this very thing the other day. I'm vulnerable (four lobes and emphysema), Mrs Sas is in good health. We reckoned that vaccination and 'live with it' is going to be the way forward.
There is a phrase in medicine 'The operation was a complete success, but the patient died'. If controlling the virus fully kills the economy completely, what is the point. Going forward, we are going to have to accept a level of death from Covid.
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