PursuedByBears
Go stick your head in a pig
If/when H5N1 becomes a pandemic I wonder whether these idiots will change their minds very quickly or just die off
Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion
- Thread starter Sasaferrato
- Start date
nogojones
spelling is overrated
CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
Do what to do about that - not drink American milk?
Jimmy Don't
Well-Known Member
It hasn't been suggested anywhere, so it's obviously the deep state's secret plan! Wake up sheeple!
GarveyLives
Well-Known Member
Filthy and disgusting:
Car firm boss ordered to pay £26,438.84 after coughing over staff member worried about Covid during pandemic
"Car dealer and property tycoon" Kevin Davies of Cawdor Cars: The judge described his "gross behaviour"
as particularly "appalling" given it was targeted against a vulnerable person who had asked for respectful social distancing.
Car firm boss ordered to pay £26,438.84 after coughing over staff member worried about Covid during pandemic
"Car dealer and property tycoon" Kevin Davies of Cawdor Cars: The judge described his "gross behaviour"
as particularly "appalling" given it was targeted against a vulnerable person who had asked for respectful social distancing.
maomao
普費斯
Don't worry about the strength of the line, virus in mucus = you kicking the virus out of your body. Just have some paracetamol, you'll be fine soon.
farmerbarleymow
I'm Petee's spirit animal
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
I had kinda hoped that the positive test was a mistake, but no
I'm not really coughing much, which is a good sign I guess?
2hats
Dust.
The diagnostic RAT is just detecting certain fragments of the nucleocapsid (typically around the C terminal domain, but not all do - some diagnostic tests look for protein sequences in envelope and a very small number in spike). You my well still have some active virus many days after signs of infection obviously manifest, but any positive result will (in most cases) simply, increasingly, be triggering off the fragments of (eg) nucleocapsid that your immune system has already chopped up and your body is trying to flush out. It is left as an exercise to the user to make their own mind up as to whether they are still infectious to others around them.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
I'm not really coughing very much. Is that a bad sign in terms of getting rid of it?
maomao
普費斯
Covid cough is famously dry and unproductive, caused by inflammation not mucus (individual reactions may vary). Less symptoms is always better!
High Voltage
In the top 97% of Urban's most interesting posters
Filthy and disgusting:
Car firm boss ordered to pay £26,438.84 after coughing over staff member worried about Covid during pandemic
"Car dealer and property tycoon" Kevin Davies of Cawdor Cars: The judge described his "gross behaviour"
as particularly "appalling" given it was targeted against a vulnerable person who had asked for respectful social distancing.
What a cunt
The rest was deleted as it was "inappropriate"
2hats
Dust.
I don't think you can necessarily read much into that, either way.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
I've changed my behaviour a bit post covid, in that if I have any kind of cold-type virus, I am more thoughtful about infecting other people. So I am more likely to decide not to go out, or if I'm going to visit someone I'll tell them and say it's fine if they'd like to cancel. But I don't do a test for covid each time I have cold-like symptoms.
I've realised that in contrast, some people are still doing covid tests, and then their actions are determined by whether or not whatever they have appears to be covid.
In the current population and levels of vaccination etc, is it still the case that covid presents a significantly greater risk to certain groups of people than the zillion other viruses with similar symptoms?
I've realised that in contrast, some people are still doing covid tests, and then their actions are determined by whether or not whatever they have appears to be covid.
In the current population and levels of vaccination etc, is it still the case that covid presents a significantly greater risk to certain groups of people than the zillion other viruses with similar symptoms?
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
I wouldn't have done a test if my friend hadn't insisted on it. I am not sure tbh, but his partner is vulnerable so better to be on the safe side. Not a good idea with flu or anything either tbf but with this defo not
elbows
Well-Known Member
I have been unable to keep up with scientific and medical research papers for some years now, so I cannot point you to any relevant studies.
I still keep an eye on certain data though, although this wont provide a simple answer to your question either. Because the amount of covid testing changed, and because we dont test properly for a lot of the other viruses you allude to. For example, there is a rather broad "deaths due to influenza and pneumonia" category which has long been something of a simplistic catch-all in the death stats in England & Wales. And it isnt advisable to think about pneumonia as being caused by a single agent, and its also something of a proxy for people that are frail and vulnerable to death, a health event that finishes many of them off.
I would also consider it not totally prudent to only think about covid in terms of classic respiratory illness symptoms, we know that other system are involved.
If we are doing a reasonable job of capturing the number of covid deaths, then in terms of winter death peaks, I would suggest that influenza epidemics have the capacity to pose as great or greater death burden on susceptible groups on the occasions where a nasty H3N2 influenza epidemic occurs. These epidemics can likely rival the sort of winter covid picture we have seen in the stats from 2023 onwards. But so far when this has happened theres also been plenty of covid death at the same time, so we'd have to drill down further into the death spikes for those periods in order to get some sense of how much of a role influenza and covid played in those.
What I would like to add to the picture is that the summer death dip in total deaths from all causes in England & Wales data has not returned to the levels we saw before the pandemic. It may be sensible to consider multiple reasons for this, but covid is still one of them, and so I would still not like to underestimate its threat to the vulnerable at this stage. For example, this graph shows raw weekly death registrations in England and Wales going back to 2010. The blue is the raw data and the red is my naive attempt to smooth out the data to show the trends more easily on the eye. Anyway we can see that the summer death dip has not gotten down to the levels of the past since we had 'freedom day', the last times it got down to those levels was in the summers where we were coming out of lockdowns.
I may follow up with some data from the same ONS source but looking at deaths in the 'influenza and pneumonia' category compared to covid deaths, although I dont find the level of detail satisfactory.
Last edited:
elbows
Well-Known Member
ONS underlying data source used for this post and the previous one: Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional - Office for National Statistics
So, deaths 'involving' and 'due to', for covid and for the very broad 'influenza and pneumonia' category for the last few years in England and Wales.
Things I would consider to be of note include:
So, deaths 'involving' and 'due to', for covid and for the very broad 'influenza and pneumonia' category for the last few years in England and Wales.
Things I would consider to be of note include:
- Certainly the period where the 'due to covid deaths' crossed below the influenza and pneumonia ones is of note, despite caveats I will mention shortly.
- The big spike on this graph was a influenza epidemic spike occurring at about the same time as a covid wave.
- Changes to agenda, attitudes and testing regimes during the period will have had some influence on the covid numbers over time, so some pinches of salt are required when it comes to the exact extent of the decline in those figures during this period. Dont discard this trend completely though.
- Influenza and pneumonia show expected traditional seasonal patterns, covid can still defy such a pattern. It hasnt become a seasonal disease, and so on this graph it sometimes goes up when the influenza & pneumonia line is falling. Number of waves per year still a major cause of concern when it comes to general grinding burden on health systems.
- Given how broad one category is compared to the other, the covid levels should not need to approach or exceed the influenza & pneumonia levels in order to still be seen as significant. Its impact these days may appear small because of just how huge its impact was in the first few years (years that arent shown on these graphs), but the levels are actually still noteworthy.
- We didnt have a very large influenza epidemic last winter, especially not compared to the winter before. I am more hesitant to make exact claims about the size of last winters covid wave compared to previous winter, due to changes in testing etc.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Oh and just to provide a broader context for those last graphs. I dont have the right data for 2020 so the first wave and a big chunk of the 2nd wave is missing, but Ive got 2021 onwards so there is enough of that alpha (Kent) variant, pre-vaccine wave of Covid still visible in early 2021 death figures to illustrate just how high a level we were talking about back then.
Callie
Pivoting
I work with two NHS trusts that work with vulnerable people (children and cancer patients) and we have recently been reissued advice about testing for COVID if symptomatic and staying away from work until 48 hours after the most recent positive test.
I follow teuchters thoughts though - just because you test COVID negative doesn't mean your illness is of no risk to vulnerable people so I would just WFH or actually stay home sick depending on the severity and avoid contact with others if i am symptomatic.
I'm not saying the NHS workplace guidance differs from that but they have made a more marked comment re COVID. Possibly only because that's the only thing people can easily test for at home!
Callie
Pivoting
Obviously that's just because if you died in an RTA they put COVID as a cause on your death cert. [/Tinfoilhat]
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
I agree with that tbh. Although flu can be equally bad depending who gets it and some of the cold causing coronaviruses can be dangerous to the elderly iirc
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
There really needs to be easily available home tests for flu imo
souljacker
innit
My 84 year old Dad had flu last year and it almost killed him. Had a 4 night stay in hospital to recover.
elbows
Well-Known Member
One last angle of nerdy stuff from me for now.
So I mentioned earlier that some of the stuff shown on my graphs was down to a influenza wave, but that the data isnt very good because we dont routinely test in the same way as we do for covid.
One of the ways they try to compensate for that is by using models to come up with estimates. Here is a detailed report on that winter 2022-23, which featured the H3N2 type of influenza A which has always been a notable threat since it emerged in a late 1960s pandemic:
Included is their model for deaths that season, and they also have cold weather and covid estimates that come from modelling too. But note the caveat about those:
In any case these are the numbers they came up with:
The number of unexplained deaths may give some clues about how far away their modelling is from actual reality.
I cant do like for like comparisons to actual numbers of registered covid deaths because most of the data I assembled for that is for England and Wales, not just England. But speaking generally, back in 2022 the numbers recorded for England and Wales were in the range of 33,000 'involving' covid, 21,000 'due to' covid. For 2023 the numbers in that data had declined to more like 17,000 'involving' covid and 11,500 'due to' covid. If we can place faith in the numbers, we may be able to say that covid death burden across an entire year is now in the same ballpark as the amount of flu death we could experience in a H3N2 influenza epidemic winter. We dont get those H3N2 epidemics every winter.
Note that influenza vaccines arent exactly the most amazing thing ever when it comes to effectiveness against hospitalisation:
So I mentioned earlier that some of the stuff shown on my graphs was down to a influenza wave, but that the data isnt very good because we dont routinely test in the same way as we do for covid.
One of the ways they try to compensate for that is by using models to come up with estimates. Here is a detailed report on that winter 2022-23, which featured the H3N2 type of influenza A which has always been a notable threat since it emerged in a late 1960s pandemic:
Included is their model for deaths that season, and they also have cold weather and covid estimates that come from modelling too. But note the caveat about those:
In any case these are the numbers they came up with:
The number of unexplained deaths may give some clues about how far away their modelling is from actual reality.
I cant do like for like comparisons to actual numbers of registered covid deaths because most of the data I assembled for that is for England and Wales, not just England. But speaking generally, back in 2022 the numbers recorded for England and Wales were in the range of 33,000 'involving' covid, 21,000 'due to' covid. For 2023 the numbers in that data had declined to more like 17,000 'involving' covid and 11,500 'due to' covid. If we can place faith in the numbers, we may be able to say that covid death burden across an entire year is now in the same ballpark as the amount of flu death we could experience in a H3N2 influenza epidemic winter. We dont get those H3N2 epidemics every winter.
Note that influenza vaccines arent exactly the most amazing thing ever when it comes to effectiveness against hospitalisation:
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
Sorry to hear that.
I hope he's OK.
Callie
Pivoting
The thing is those tests aren't great. If you test positive it generally will correct. If it's negative...flip a coin or summink. It doesn't mean you haven't got xyx resp virus.
If there were home tests for all respiratory viruses people's noses would fall off as they would have to do at least 8 different tests to cover the main targets!
(COVID, influenza a, influenza b, Parainfluenza 1/2/3/4, RSV, adenovirus, human metapneumovirus....)
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