I just had to phone my mum about a neighbour who was shouting at me yesterday about how they'd had the vaccine and tried to force a conversation while I tried to back away. Apparently she'd been ignoring everything as much as possible anyway having multiple people to stay throughout.
Post-vaccine Boomer Behaviour?
- Thread starter chilango
- Start date
strung out
💩 🤣 🍆 💦 🧐 👻 🐝 🐈⬛
Sorry, I should have made my sarcasm a bit more obvious.
The supermarket is definitely one of the safer places in my experience, with the good ventilation in most of them, ample opportunities for distancing and not being in extended company with anyone who is potentially infected for more than a few seconds.
Boudicca
Seaside Queen
It wasn't obvious.
I liked strung out's post with trepidation, lest the sarcasm had escaped others and I'd come under fire for being a rabid misunderstander of stats and lockdown sceptic.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Is that sarcasm?
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Having said that, when I was in Covid Central at the hospital, two different nurses told me they thought the vast majority of people were following the rules and that basically they could only have caught it at supermarkets. I wondered if that was evidenced or anecdotal, but it didn’t sound outlandish.
strung out
💩 🤣 🍆 💦 🧐 👻 🐝 🐈⬛
If all you're doing every day is going for a walk in the park and the supermarket then I agree that it's the only place you're likely to catch it (assuming no kids at school etc.), but I guess my comment was more directed at the 'stats' posted that made it look like it was more dangerous than pubs, going to the gym, working in a warehouse or factory etc, when in fact it's pretty obviously much safer. It's just that everybody's avoiding the high risk places (unless they happen to work in one of them).
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Did you like my preceding post, to which strung out replied, with greater or lesser trepidation?I liked strung out's post with trepidation, lest the sarcasm had escaped others and I'd come under fire for being a rabid misunderstander of stats and lockdown sceptic.
Just so I can keep my sarcasm obviousness carefully calibrated.
Boudicca
Seaside Queen
I read a post on the local covid forum where a woman said she had only been to the supermarket and so must have caught it there. Later in the conversation, she mentioned a husband who went to work....
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Yes, there are other vectors people often don’t appreciate.
A work friend of my elder daughter’s is very ill in hospital with Covid. She’s pregnant and has been on maternity and furlough. She’s only been food shopping.
But it turns out her mother, who lives with her, runs a corner shop.
elbows
Well-Known Member
I am deeply saddened that some have the impression that supermarkets are relatively safe. They arent. Wolves football club banned their players from going to supermarkets some time ago and I applauded this common-sense response to data. The data isnt brilliant, but it is better than nothing, There are plenty of other risky scenarios too, but regardless of exactly where in league table supermarkets actually belong relative to these other risky settings, they are very far from safe.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
What is the data, though, as far as supermarkets are concerned?
strung out
💩 🤣 🍆 💦 🧐 👻 🐝 🐈⬛
Don't think anyone said they were safe, just safer than pubs, restaurants, factories, warehouses etc. where you're sharing space intimately with the same people over prolonged periods of time.
[Eta: also in response to elbows] Idk, out of the dozens of people I know who caught covid, there was only one person who seemed potentially likely to have caught it in a shop (of course, everybody could have caught it in a shop, but it seemed more likely that it happened in their schools, nurseries, ill-ventilated offices and then in the home).
Very different I imagine for supermarket workers, due to the unmasked work in small spaces behind the scenes, the accumulated time spent there and the vast numbers of people they come in contact with.
I had been meaning to ask actually when the Welsh government said (I paraphrase loosely) that there was definite proof of cases acquired in supermarkets, and I was wondering "can we see the data?"
I was wondering if it was something similar to what's been mentioned here - people self-reporting only having been to the supermarket, but forgetting the much closer-to-home, more intimate contacts.
Also, if spread in supermarkets was a big vector, surely cases would stay much higher. But I am not saying it's impossible, of course.
I don't think there's any reason to be deeply saddened about this, I think all of us here exploring this issue are very cautious regardless. (I certainly am going to the shops as little as possible, always well-masked and with as much distance as possible - and always appalled at the people I encounter who are less cautious).
Wrt risk perception, I also think it's the other way round, and I think that is where the danger lies. A lot of people are very wary of the supermarket (many unknown people), but less aware of the risk from people in their immediate family and work colleagues' circle (which is again reflected in what people might report where they might have caught it.)
Very different I imagine for supermarket workers, due to the unmasked work in small spaces behind the scenes, the accumulated time spent there and the vast numbers of people they come in contact with.
I had been meaning to ask actually when the Welsh government said (I paraphrase loosely) that there was definite proof of cases acquired in supermarkets, and I was wondering "can we see the data?"
I was wondering if it was something similar to what's been mentioned here - people self-reporting only having been to the supermarket, but forgetting the much closer-to-home, more intimate contacts.
Also, if spread in supermarkets was a big vector, surely cases would stay much higher. But I am not saying it's impossible, of course.
I don't think there's any reason to be deeply saddened about this, I think all of us here exploring this issue are very cautious regardless. (I certainly am going to the shops as little as possible, always well-masked and with as much distance as possible - and always appalled at the people I encounter who are less cautious).
Wrt risk perception, I also think it's the other way round, and I think that is where the danger lies. A lot of people are very wary of the supermarket (many unknown people), but less aware of the risk from people in their immediate family and work colleagues' circle (which is again reflected in what people might report where they might have caught it.)
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littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
At least 50 per cent of people are catching it at home, or were before the latest surge. Of course they could be catching it at home from people who are catching it at the supermarket, but we know that certain workplaces are potential superspreading accidents waiting to happen.
Either way, supermarket workers should have been top priority for the vaccine imo. Scandalous that they were not.
Either way, supermarket workers should have been top priority for the vaccine imo. Scandalous that they were not.
As far as I can see I could only really have caught it in the supermarket. Unless I caught it outside from someone I was walking past at a distance - which isn't impossible but isn't that likely. I'm not sure why there's resistance to the idea that people are catching it while shopping.
I think this is missing the main problem - that you're in an enclosed space with a crowd of other people and its quite likely that someone there will have the virus. As it's spread by aerosol the masks and distancing are only going to help up to a point.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
There's not.
Well, it's kinda important where people are actually catching it, so we are debating our understanding of the scant data and anecdata. As most people responding on this topic have been at pains to point out, we are not denying the possibility.
And people misunderstanding the information in the stats that were shared a page or so back can lead to giving people the wrong idea, and to me that's what makes risk more risky, so to speak.
For me, it's similar to the hand-face-space thing being arse over tit, that should probably better be vent-space-face-hand or similar.
strung out
💩 🤣 🍆 💦 🧐 👻 🐝 🐈⬛
I would have been missing the main problem if I'd said there was zero risk from supermarkets, but I didn't.
elbows
Well-Known Member
I've probably missed some and am due to spend some time looking for what I have missed.
And what I do have has been provided in summary form without really clear explanation, and I expect it would be more compelling if I could see the raw underlying indicent data, which I cannot. So I am left with summary tables such as the following one. This one is from the additional graphs document that comes out every week as part of the weekly surveillance report. Do not make the mistake of thinking that the following is the same as other graphs you've probably seen fromt he same publicatio. Those other graphs have been around for longer and are less useful because they are, for example, only counting the activities people did before testing positive. The following graph goes further than that, its based on more detail from test & trace which they are using to find common exposure settings between positive cases, eg cases that overlap in terms of time and space. But like I said, I lack a really thorough, well written description of whats being shown ehre.
From https://assets.publishing.service.g...D-19_and_Influenza_Surveillance_Graphs_W4.pdf
elbows
Well-Known Member
And do note that I do not think that data is high quality, nor is it definitive proof.
But its still useful data, and in various things I have read from PHE about this, they spend quite a bit of time saying what 'common exposure' does and does not indicate. For me this boils down to the fact that coincidences still have to be taken account of before leaping to conclusions, but that these common exposure analyses are at least the sort of starting point they use to try to detect specific outbreaks in specific locations.
I do not think the following blog entry covers all the detail properly, but it might help explain what sort of thing they use common exposure data for:
publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk
But its still useful data, and in various things I have read from PHE about this, they spend quite a bit of time saying what 'common exposure' does and does not indicate. For me this boils down to the fact that coincidences still have to be taken account of before leaping to conclusions, but that these common exposure analyses are at least the sort of starting point they use to try to detect specific outbreaks in specific locations.
I do not think the following blog entry covers all the detail properly, but it might help explain what sort of thing they use common exposure data for:
Can you tell where you caught COVID-19? – UK Health Security Agency
The official blog of the UK Health Security Agency, providing expert insight on the organisation's work and all aspects of health security
elbows
Well-Known Member
The other problem with the data happens when it is reported and the media pick up on it. Two different things tend to come together to generate more fog than clarity. Because on the one hand we have public health officials trying their best to point out what the data does and does not prove. But then this gets combined with the usual weasel words from authorities where they almost always try to downplay specific outbreaks publicly, in a similar way to how laughable concepts such as 'covid secure workplace' are used to hide behind when the politics of the matter heats up.
So for example in November when an earlier, less refined version of 'common exposure' data was published and noticed by the press, we got this sort of thing:
www.itv.com
So not definitive proof, fine, but if its good enough to use for surveillance of possible specific outbreaks, then I'm not going to disregard the signals in that data.
So for example in November when an earlier, less refined version of 'common exposure' data was published and noticed by the press, we got this sort of thing:
Supermarkets revealed as place visitors are most likely to be exposed to Covid | ITV News
Supermarkets were the most common location reported by people testing positive for Covid-19, new data shows. | ITV National News
www.itv.com
So not definitive proof, fine, but if its good enough to use for surveillance of possible specific outbreaks, then I'm not going to disregard the signals in that data.
girasol
Addicted to handstands!
I messaged my mum to ask if she'd been offered the vaccine. She said yes, but she refused it as they wouldn't tell her which one she was getting 
She said she had the flu vaccine ONCE before and had flu symptoms and is worried the vaccine is being "rushed", but how would that change her decision if she had known which vaccine she was getting? I don't know. You tell me.
She said she had the flu vaccine ONCE before and had flu symptoms and is worried the vaccine is being "rushed", but how would that change her decision if she had known which vaccine she was getting? I don't know. You tell me.
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mauvais
on reddit or something
Or ever again, it turns out.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I don't quite follow that. I don't see any signals in the data at all. You have 18.9 % of people testing positive reporting visiting a supermarket, but without knowing what percentage of people who haven't caught it visit supermarkets, that figure contains no signal whatever.
And the journalist who wrote that article clearly didn't understand given that they followed by saying:
ie just totally disregarding the expert quoted immediately above.
elbows
Well-Known Member
If you see no signal then I have failed to describe the data in a way that people understand. If I could do a better job then I would already have done so. I'll just have to give up for now, but I will revisit this when I can find other material to help explain.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
stats not his strong suit tbh
