The General Covid19 Thread

hugopal

Jules72 you are a very boring man…..

You manage to be both a snowflake and a massive flip-flop; truly a man for some seasons.

zackster

benson

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/unvaccinated-people-begging-jab-its-25743812

This is quite sad. A lot of people getting to the point of no return and realising their mistake.

zackster

He’s doing his part

Smallman1

zackster He’s doing his part

Christ I miss him.

Millsy

zackster that’s my president. Hero and saviour.

zackster

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/20/health/moderna-booster-omicron-bn/index.html

LT42

zackster you almost got away with this horrendous take, Z.
Out of all the weirdos and sensationalists I deleted/blocked over the course of this, he’s been the most balanced and on point specialist I’ve seen. He’s been extremely positive the majority of the time and his info is extremely helpful and ahead of the curve.

vinnyt77

Interesting study I’d not seen before, examining the impact of a variety of non pharmaceutical interventions during the second wave in Europe.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26013-4

Figure 2 towards the top of the page gives a clear and succinct view of the relative impact of different measures…

hugopal

vinnyt77 Interesting study I’d not seen before, examining the impact of a variety of non pharmaceutical interventions during the second wave in Europe.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26013-4

Figure 2 towards the top of the page gives a clear and succinct view of the relative impact of different measures…

That is interesting, as far as I can tell, the effects didn’t seem that great.

Take the closing of nightclubs for instance.

Since January 2020 there have been 312,659 cases of covid in Berlin (I can’t find a breakdown between 2020 and 2021).

A reduction in the r-rate by 0.12 might have therefore reduced cases by 37,519 (crude calculation I’m aware considering timelines etc.).

Total covid infection fatality rate in Germany was about 0.5%, so that’s 188 deaths, of which 60% were vulnerable from pre-existing conditions, so that’s 75 non-vulnerable deaths which might have been prevented from nightclubs in Berlin being permanently closed over the course of 2 years. For some context about 50 people die per year in Berlin from a traffic accident.

There is also a fatal flaw in trying to draw conclusions from the analysis in nature as to ultimately how much certain restrictions would reduce the r-rate and ultimately help preventing cases and deaths - which is that lockdowns in a large part only kick the can down the road, mostly reducing the r-rate of transmission while the lockdowns are in place only for numbers to rebound once restrictions are lifted. We have seen this in the difference between Delta rates between the UK and Germany this winter for instance - whereby the UK which opened up more in the summer had its majority of Delta transmission then, whereas Germany which was slower in opening up have ultimately only caused the cases to have been delayed until winter.

One thing is for sure though, given the impact of lockdowns during the second wave appears to have been fairly minimal based on the nature article, even before covid passports/covid recovered/covid test restrictions that would drastically reduce the number of infected people entering large events, and the effects of vaccinations in reducing infection fatality rates even further (plus the reduced mortality from Omicron) - the likely effect from lockdowns this time round would be near enough zilch. The closing of nightclubs on their own would certainly have made no difference to anything.

The final interesting point worth noting from that nature study is that shutting down gastronomy was perceived to have exactly the same effect as shutting down nightclubs, yet in Berlin nightclubs have been forced to shut, while gastronomy has been allowed to remain open.

Covid infection fatality rates from Germany here:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.06.21260105v1.full.pdf

Smallman1

Dusting off my MAGA cap as we speak.

vinnyt77

hugopal The closing of nightclubs on their own would certainly have made no difference to anything.

Yeah, I think that’s the logical conclusion from the data presented. Implementing any of these restrictions in isolation is unlikely to have much of an impact.

hugopal yet in Berlin nightclubs have been forced to shut, while gastronomy has been allowed to remain open.

I guess there could be two contributing factors here. Firstly - that few people use nightclubs than eating establishments, so perhaps the proportionate impact of shutting nightclubs is greater given the higher population eating out. The other could be the impact on working population. I assume there’d be a much higher workforce in restaurants than nightclubs?

hugopal

vinnyt77 Yeah, I think that’s the logical conclusion from the data presented. Implementing any of these restrictions in isolation is unlikely to have much of an impact.

Sure, but also implementing all of them, including banning all household mixing in both public and private, for just a temporary 66% reduction in r-rate, feels excessive and draconian. And again, these are all figures for the second wave, so prior to vaccinations.

vinnyt77 I guess there could be two contributing factors here. Firstly - that few people use nightclubs than eating establishments, so perhaps the proportionate impact of shutting nightclubs is greater given the higher population eating out. The other could be the impact on working population. I assume there’d be a much higher workforce in restaurants than nightclubs?

It’s probably true that a higher proportion of people both eat out and work in gastronomy. However, takeaway and delivery services have typically still been available from cafes and restaurants during lockdowns, which limits the effect in denying the customers and staff. Such compensatory measures are impossible with clubs.

And another thing I’ve already pointed out in this thread, something which is also surely relevant is who the transmissions and reduced transmissions are between - and that is not covered by the nature article - reducing transmissions amongst older and more vulnerable people would be more important than younger people, and it is older people who would be much more likely to use gastronomy than night clubs.

LT42

vinnyt77 I guess there could be two contributing factors here. Firstly - that few people use nightclubs than eating establishments, so perhaps the proportionate impact of shutting nightclubs is greater given the higher population eating out. The other could be the impact on working population. I assume there’d be a much higher workforce in restaurants than nightclubs

From what I know back home the restaurant industry holds a much stronger sway with local Govt than the clubs ever did or ever will. The connecting associations are heavily linked with politicians, similar to the landlord associations. They also view clubs as havens for hard drugs so if there’s a toss up there’ll only be one winner, despite what common sense dictates.

hugopal

Looking at that chart, and considering my comments above, I wonder what sort of an impact the “household mixing in private limited to 2 people” but just for the over-60s would have had?

alistair

The we must seen to be doing something anything fallacy

zackster

Hugo be like

hugopal

zackster I don’t actually think that, but I’ll accept the comparison to Christian Bale in American Psycho.

zackster

I might has misspoke when I said Kamala had absolutely no chance of ever being POTUS

hugopal

https://www.iomcworld.org/articles/lifeyears-and-lockdowns-estimating-the-effects-on-covid19-and-cancer-outcomes-from-the-uks-response-to-the-pandemic.pdf

“A comparison between the life-years saved from the Covid-19 deaths prevented during the UK lockdown and the life-years that will be lost in the near future from excess cancer deaths due to lockdown indicates that preventing Covid-19 deaths through six-month lockdowns might result in more life-years being lost than saved. For example, if the average life-years saved from prevented Covid-19 deaths is eight and lockdown produced six months of cancer delays, anything less than around 22,000 Covid-19 deaths prevented would mean more life-years lost to cancer than saved from Covid-19. ”

Worth noting that the paper bases its calculation from an old measure of average age of covid deaths being 75, when actually in the UK it’s 80 - meaning that anything less than around 59,000 Covid-19 deaths prevented by six months of delayed cancer treatments would mean more life-years lost to cancer than saved from Covid-19.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/final-report-on-progress-to-address-covid-19-health-inequalities/appendix-d-further-data-and-evidence

Keep in mind that covid deaths in the UK have been about 75,000 per year, so it would require the measures taken to have almost halved amount of annual covid deaths, which seems unlikely given the age and vulnerability of most who have died and that there has been 131,000 excess deaths across the two years of pandemic:

i.e. / in sum with lockdowns delaying cancer treatments by six months, excess deaths from covid would have had to have been double what they actually were to counteract the lost life years from cancer; and I don’t think anywhere in the world has had excess deaths anywhere near as high as that, lockdowns or not.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19latestinsights/deaths

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