Brexit, for once some facts.

[flecc]

How can you say that about an imaginary disease?

Using my imagination!
.

 

[jonathan.agnew]

Tiny minorities who were always very vulnerable to all sorts of other issues.



Indeed we must, for example these majorities:

The up to 50% who don't want to accept the vaccines.

The vast majority who never catch Covid, including those unvaccinated.

The vast majority of those who catch it but suffer nothing or next to nothing.

The large numbers whose curable conditions have become terminal after their treatment was stopped for the Covid panic measures to take precedence.

This combined majority is what should concern us more than today's customary panic, hysteria and over-reaction about very small numbers with issues only related to a Covid infection, rather than caused by it.
.

I'm with plato when it comes to ethics - quid pro quo; treat others, society as one wants to be treated. On a personal, empathic basis. Before dismissing consequences of infection as negligible, only affecting dispensable minorities, one should ask oneself if one would do that to oneself, if one were a member of a dispensable minority. Which I imagine one would not. We have lots of money. Far more than we need. We're quite short on ethics, community though. And that's without considering the cancer of conservative politics.

 

[flecc]

I'm with plato when it comes to ethics - quid pro quo; treat others, society as one wants to be treated. On a personal, empathic basis. Before dismissing consequences of infection as negligible, only affecting dispensable minorities, one should ask oneself if one would do that to oneself, if one were a member of a dispensable minority. Which I imagine one would not. We have lots of money. Far more than we need. We're quite short on ethics, community though. And that's without considering the cancer of conservative politics.

You should read my post again, in no way did I treat consequences of infection as negligible, nor did I rule out dealing with them.

But that should not be done at such huge cost to the majority of the society.

Even the consultant quoted by Oyster expressed his considerable discomfort at medical staff having vaccinations forced upon them. Where ethics are concerned you might consider what sort of society that does that to individuals.
.

 

[Danidl]

It's the only reliable one.



His bias shows in his mention of smoking as a certain cause of lung disease when it's only a contributory factor in certain circumstances.
.

Really flecc, your bias is showing even more clearly. . Smoking is a CERTAIN cause of lung disease, but not of course the only one. I am very sure he is very familiar with Cystic Fibrosis, with Farmers Lung ,with Miners Lung ,with Radon induced cancers but the point he was making is that Smoking was the most easily preventable form. That a certain fraction of smokers die from factors other than COPD was not the focus of his discussion.
His main point was that in His experience, he has not come across patients who were vaccinated against Covid and then died from respiratory causes.
Again I must reiterate our Irish data where the majority of patients in our hospitals and in our ICUs are the non vaccinated and the partially vaccinated , which is some feat considering that they are under 5% of the population.
.
My patience, and your petty prevarication on this topic has worn thin, when todays Irish Newspapers report that the premier and National designated Heart Lung Transplant Hospital are now cancelling any Transplants because there are no ICU beds available countrywide In fact everything was set up for a Transplant yesterday and it had to be scrapped , and of course that organ is now incinerated. My Son is waiting admission to that List.

 

[flecc]

Really flecc, your bias is showing even more clearly. . Smoking is a CERTAIN cause of lung disease, but not of course the only one. I am very sure he is very familiar with Cystic Fibrosis, with Farmers Lung ,with Miners Lung ,with Radon induced cancers but the point he was making is that Smoking was the most easily preventable form. That a certain fraction of smokers die from factors other than COPD was not the focus of his discussion.
His main point was that in His experience, he has not come across patients who were vaccinated against Covid and then died from respiratory causes.
Again I must reiterate our Irish data where the majority of patients in our hospitals and in our ICUs are the non vaccinated and the partially vaccinated , which is some feat considering that they are under 5% of the population.
.
My patience, and your petty prevarication on this topic has worn thin, when todays Irish Newspapers report that the premier and National designated Heart Lung Transplant Hospital are now cancelling any Transplants because there are no ICU beds available countrywide In fact everything was set up for a Transplant yesterday and it had to be scrapped , and of course that organ is now incinerated. My Son is waiting admission to that List.

Emphatically NO, smoking is not a CERTAIN cause of lung disease.

I grew up in an era when the great majority of males smoked, typically 20 a day, and at the age of 11 I was a confirmed smoker too, easily afforded with three part time jobs and cigarettes being cheap in the 1940s. My smoking rate continuously increased, 20 a day in my teens, 30 in my early 20s and reaching at least 60 a day by 35, at which rate I smoked for 15 years through to 50 years old when it gave me up rather than me giving it up. Throughout I always inhaled and my cycling showed I suffered no lung problem with it, nor do I have one at 85 now.

According to all the "expert" medical predictions I shouldn't have reached 40, since their common opinion was that anything over 20 a day for at least ten years meant death. Clearly my latter 15 years at 60+ a day on top of all the previous heavy smoking proved them very, very wrong.

I'm also reminded of the lady who'd smoked all her life and the way she ridiculed the TV presenter who suggested that she should perhaps give it up now she was 104 years old.

Rather like Covid, the effects of smoking are very much related to the individual vulnerability and their circumstances, and the vast majority of those who smoked throughout life did not die of lung disease.

Turning now to Covid and your comment of "petty prevarication", it seems to escape you that I'm merely posting data from the government's own website app. This is usefully if perhaps inadvertantly an excellent research tool since it can reveal the day by day data for every postcode in the country and the associated larger area it sits in, this easily revealing anomalies.

The only opinion from me was the early one last year that being hit hard early with Covid would pay off later, and it has done. Since that opinion is confirmed later by the data and now by the findings of government's chief statistician, it has been vindicated.

As I've made clear on more than one occasion, I post on my own country and that doesn't include Ireland. However, it is interesting that what has happened there also supports my contention. I well remember your posts on how well Ireland was doing in the earlier stages of Covid, only to suffer much later in line with what I was posting. And of course that pattern has been repeated around the world, from Germany to New Zealand.

As I maintained, with such an infectious disease we would all get it in the end, so getting it over with quickly had clear advantages as London has so undeniably shown.
.

 

[flecc]

The Booster saga continues.

I've continued to try to get both the booster and a 'flu jab since my last post on this subject, with my emphasis on the booster, but walk-in after walk-in pharmacy have either stopped offering jabs or have waiting lists extending through December.

Eventually that brought me down to two definite booster walk-ins, neither an attractive option. One is in central Croydon's busiest Shopping Mall, likely to be packing with non-mask wearers; the other our main hospital, famed for giving people Covid.

So throwing caution to the winds, I chose the shopping mall and drove into the town centre and parked up this morning. Soon locating the covid vaccination centre, I joined the end of a vast walk-in queue. Before too long a couple of attendants came along advising us that there would be at least an hour and half wait and probably much longer. One suggested that i would be much better coming back at another time since they also had numerous appointments and a large backlog of those. So I suggested possibly tomorrow or the next day, at which he replied "Better in two or three weeks time".

So it's pretty much hopeless since I can't endure hours of standing waiting in the winter cold and for obvious reasons don't want an appointment just before Christmas in a busy shopping area. I'd already investigated more distant options. only to find everywhere within about 20 miles south referred me to my same two centres, or inner London locations with no guarantee they were valid. The pharmacies seem to be the problem since so many have stopped giving jabs it's overloaded the few main centres.

So it's survival mode until the New Year in the hope they'll get their act together by then.
.

 

[oldgroaner]

Tiny minorities who were always very vulnerable to all sorts of other issues.



Indeed we must, for example these majorities:

The up to 50% who don't want to accept the vaccines.

The vast majority who never catch Covid, including those unvaccinated.

The vast majority of those who catch it but suffer nothing or next to nothing.

The large numbers whose curable conditions have become terminal after their treatment was stopped for the Covid panic measures to take precedence.

This combined majority is what should concern us more than today's customary panic, hysteria and over-reaction about very small numbers with issues only related to a Covid infection, rather than caused by it.
.

A tiny minority comprising more casualties than caused by the Luftwaffe, without counting the wounded from Long Covid?
And the grief suffered by probably half a million relatives and friends?
And how soon before a more deadly variant arrives.
This is a disastrous defeat not something to applaud.

Why no news on a true vaccine that prevents infection?
Big Pharma too busy making money by continuous sales of a half hearted first effort?

 

[oldgroaner]

Emphatically NO, smoking is not a CERTAIN cause of lung disease.

I grew up in an era when the great majority of males smoked, typically 20 a day, and at the age of 11 I was a confirmed smoker too, easily afforded with three part time jobs and cigarettes being cheap in the 1940s. My smoking rate continuously increased, 20 a day in my teens, 30 in my early 20s and reaching at least 60 a day by 35, at which rate I smoked for 15 years through to 50 years old when it gave me up rather than me giving it up. Throughout I always inhaled and my cycling showed I suffered no lung problem with it, nor do I have one at 85 now.

According to all the "expert" medical predictions I shouldn't have reached 40, since their common opinion was that anything over 20 a day for at least ten years meant death. Clearly my latter 15 years at 60+ a day on top of all the previous heavy smoking proved them very, very wrong.

I'm also reminded of the lady who'd smoked all her life and the way she ridiculed the TV presenter who suggested that she should perhaps give it up now she was 104 years old.

Rather like Covid, the effects of smoking are very much related to the individual vulnerability and their circumstances, and the vast majority of those who smoked throughout life did not die of lung disease.

Turning now to Covid and your comment of "petty prevarication", it seems to escape you that I'm merely posting data from the government's own website app. This is usefully if perhaps inadvertantly an excellent research tool since it can reveal the day by day data for every postcode in the country and the associated larger area it sits in, this easily revealing anomalies.

The only opinion from me was the early one last year that being hit hard early with Covid would pay off later, and it has done. Since that opinion is confirmed later by the data and now by the findings of government's chief statistician, it has been vindicated.

As I've made clear on more than one occasion, I post on my own country and that doesn't include Ireland. However, it is interesting that what has happened there also supports my contention. I well remember your posts on how well Ireland was doing in the earlier stages of Covid, only to suffer much later in line with what I was posting. And of course that pattern has been repeated around the world, from Germany to New Zealand.

As I maintained, with such an infectious disease we would all get it in the end, so getting it over with quickly had clear advantages as London has so undeniably shown.
.

Sorry to urinate on this bonfire but there is no guarantee that prior infection will save your life if a new variant turns up
That's pretty much wishful thinking

 

[Woosh]

Why no news on a true vaccine that prevents infection?

That may be impossible to achieve in the next 20-50 years.
All we can hope for is effective treatments.

 

[Zlatan]

Really flecc, your bias is showing even more clearly. . Smoking is a CERTAIN cause of lung disease, but not of course the only one. I am very sure he is very familiar with Cystic Fibrosis, with Farmers Lung ,with Miners Lung ,with Radon induced cancers but the point he was making is that Smoking was the most easily preventable form. That a certain fraction of smokers die from factors other than COPD was not the focus of his discussion.
His main point was that in His experience, he has not come across patients who were vaccinated against Covid and then died from respiratory causes.
Again I must reiterate our Irish data where the majority of patients in our hospitals and in our ICUs are the non vaccinated and the partially vaccinated , which is some feat considering that they are under 5% of the population.
.
My patience, and your petty prevarication on this topic has worn thin, when todays Irish Newspapers report that the premier and National designated Heart Lung Transplant Hospital are now cancelling any Transplants because there are no ICU beds available countrywide In fact everything was set up for a Transplant yesterday and it had to be scrapped , and of course that organ is now incinerated. My Son is waiting admission to that List.

Very good post Danidl. If there is an argument for anti vaxxers to get a vaccine you just made it in that post. Hope you don't mind I was thinking of sending your post to an anti vaxxer friend. Surely it's as a compelling argument to get vaccinated as anyone could make.
Flecc, OG.. Don't think your anti vaccine stances are particularly helpful, even if they were true. Fact is everyone should get vaccinated, the fact that it is not as efficient as claimed or hoped is surely an argument that more of us should have it.
I do think anyone on borderline of that decision will see your arguments as evidence to not have it. I believe you, ve both had it aswell.
Noticed this morning UK has dropped to 30th in death rate per million World wide. Austria making vaccine compulsory and Germany expected to do same. Both going into quite restrictive lock downs... I don't think we can argue either have dealt with Covid any better than ourselves.. And it's not finished with any of us for a while yet.

 

[flecc]

A tiny minority comprising more casualties than caused by the Luftwaffe, without counting the wounded from Long Covid?

Read the post I replied to, not what you imagined. I was very clearly replying about effects other than death, such as long covid. And they are a tiny minority of those who catch Covid and an even more tiny minority of the population.

Why no news on a true vaccine that prevents infection?
Big Pharma too busy making money by continuous sales of a half hearted first effort?

Fully agreed, and why I post on the vaccines shortfalls. I'm fed up with the apologists for the vaccines in this thread. We will only ever get better if we are openly critical.
.

 

[oldgroaner]

I'm sure we all feel reassured that De Piffle is one well organised smart cookie, here he is at the CBI conference.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1462728319426830341

 

[Zlatan]

Sorry to urinate on this bonfire but there is no guarantee that prior infection will save your life if a new variant turns up
That's pretty much wishful thinking

Both my grand fathers, father, mother, 2 uncles and mother in law died of smoking related disease. ( most of them lung cancer) I, m first male in my family to get past 55 in 3 generations. (I don't smoke and never have)
Dad died at 55...in 1985...lung cancer. Smoked all his relatively short life.
Consultant assured us it was smoking.
Apologies OG, that was for flecc.

 

[flecc]

Sorry to urinate on this bonfire but there is no guarantee that prior infection will save your life if a new variant turns up

So far it has done the earliest infections, giving proven protection against the Alpha (Kent) and the Delta variants.

We cannot forecast the future course of Covid, but history shows we always triumph in the end with our own immunity. If that wasn't true+ we wouldn't exist any more.
.

 

[oldgroaner]

Flecc, OG.. "Don't think your anti vaccine stances "

Have you been suffering memory problems?
Where did you conjure up the idea I have ever been "Anti Vaccine"?

 

[oldgroaner]

Both my grand fathers, father, mother, 2 uncles and mother in law died of smoking related disease. ( most of them lung cancer) I, m first male in my family to get past 55 in 3 generations. (I don't smoke and never have)
Dad died at 55...in 1985...lung cancer. Smoked all his relatively short life.
Consultant assured us it was smoking.
Apologies OG, that was for flecc.

Go on, give me a clue, it's a great answer, what was it related to?

 

[oldgroaner]

So far it has done the earliest infections, giving proven protection against the Alpha (Kent) and the Delta variants.

We cannot forecast the future course of Covid, but history shows we always triumph in the end with our own immunity. If that wasn't true+ we wouldn't exist any more.
.

And if one variant has the interesting side effect of affecting either male or female fertility?
The humble cockroaches will inherit the Earth

 

[flecc]

Both my grand fathers, father, mother, 2 uncles and mother in law died of smoking related disease. ( most of them lung cancer) I, m first male in my family to get past 55 in 3 generations. (I don't smoke and never have)
Dad died at 55...in 1985...lung cancer. Smoked all his relatively short life.
Consultant assured us it was smoking.

I didn't disagree with that, clearly saying it depended on the individual, and by implication the family line. My quoted objection was to Danidl's use of CERTAIN in capital leters. Clearly that is nonsense as the great majority of smokers proved when they didn't die of lung disease. Do you really think that the 80% of the male population who smoked back in the 1940's and before died of lung disease? They very definitely didn't.

Quoting familes is pointless, both my father and brother smoked all their lives and didn't die respectively at 88 and 87 of any lung disease. So much for CERTAIN.

.

 

[flecc]

And if one variant has the interesting side effect of affecting either male or female fertility?
The humble cockroaches will inherit the Earth

Read the last sentence of the post you replied to.

Anyway what's wrong with cockroaches inheriting the world? It would be a better place for starters.
.

 

[guerney]

Study highlights risk of new SARS-CoV-2 mutations emerging during chronic infection

SARS-CoV-2 mutations similar to those in the B1.1.7 UK variant could arise in cases of chronic infection, where treatment over an extended period can provide

www.cam.ac.uk