How would the government go about persuading people who were anti vaccination to get their mandatory vaccine? Threaten them with fines, prison? Now we're back to carrot and stick. It's better to have a small carrot than a big stick I would say.
The new case numbers are still very, very high though.
The other thing is (as with self-isolation and other things) to provide better support.
So it's like we're in the Twilight Zone, it feels. The case rate isn't good. But the vaccine has had an effect that, while welcome, has allowed the cranks now in charge of policy to unfetter everything and leave all of us high and dry.
The hospitalisation rate was never as high as 10% before was it? It's surely just journalists misunderstanding statistics.
That was what struck me when I read the newspaper stories
Long story short it's relative risk reduction. You reduce your risk by 90% compared to not having the vaccine, but it has nothing to do with how many people will actually get hospitalised in the real world.
I had to point out that if you have symptoms you need to get a pcr test. They were actually quite embarassed when I pointed it out and said the symptoms had snuck up on them and they hadn't thought about it enough. It got me thinking about the covid cases that might not be getting tested at the moment. People might be confusing it for a cold and not worrying about it. The symptoms might be quite mild because of vaccination (this family was double jabbed) so people are more inclined to dismiss it as a cold. And if this family were using lfts to test mild symptoms then probably lots of other people are too, and getting false negatives.
So in the last week I met up with a family for something. The whole family had 'a cold', and one of them was coughing. But they had taken lateral flow tests, so were confident it wasn't covid
I think it's just that they are less reliable... if you get a positive result with LFT then it's probably correct, but if you get a negative result it's likely that it's incorrect.
my s-i-l's m-i-l was coughing and coughing and did a lft which came back positive, so i think they do work on people with symptoms as well as people without
Relative.
You can't say they're entirely pointless, they do catch people with symptoms too, but their false negative rate is very high. Testing symptomless people this doesn't matter (too much) because you wouldn't catch any cases without testing, while with testing you might catch about half of all cases. Once you have symptoms that might match, and the probability of you having it is much higher, a false negative is a dangerous thing.
What about seven negatives over the course of a week all performed rigorously, gag reflex thoroughly tested and swab almost into the brain etc. And the other person in the house with the same symptoms has had two negative pcns? What then?
pharmaceutical-journal.com
I'm not enough of a statistician to know how the maths of false negatives versus genuine negatives accumulates through multiple tests (it might also depend on the mechanism of failure). It also seems a lot of trouble to go to when you could have one pcn delivered and send it off.
stopped bothering with the tonsil bit, just keep the swab a bit longer up the nose.
Aren’t you only meant to get a PCR if you have either a positive LFT or have the symptoms they list (fever, continuous cough or loss of taste/smell). Even if you have a cold, unless you have the above, I don’t think you are meant to have a PCR. Obviously you can lie and get one.
I'd go with that if it's as accurate - I have remarkably strong gag reaction around back of throat.
Or if youve had contact with a positive person.
