Covid Booster. Yes/No? *** The Covid Thread ***

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Jdsk
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Re: Covid Booster. Yes/No?

Post by Jdsk »

gbnz wrote: 18 Oct 2021, 1:29pm Should Covid now be ignored? Or time to start taking it seriously again?

Have to admit that whilst I've never been in a panic about Covid, I'd always taken "precautions". But aware that as a Radio 4 listener, there was a good chance that I'd still be under the impression the world was coming to an end due to Covid, months after everyone else had forgotten about it. Is it time to forget about it?
We should have been taking it seriously throughout the outbreak and we should take it seriously for the foreseeable future.

Screenshot 2021-10-18 at 13.35.39.png
Screenshot 2021-10-18 at 13.35.55.png
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare

Jonathan
thirdcrank
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Re: Covid Booster. Yes/No?

Post by thirdcrank »

We are booked for our booster jabs next Tuesday. Luckily, I've not quite reached the seventh age of man because when I received a text inviting me to contact our gp surgery to book and couldn't get through I presented myself personally and twigged that the receptionist had initially booked us both in for flu jabs which we have already had.

Belts and braces because Mrs thirdcrank received a phone call later from the surgery when the caller began to offer her a covid booster but continued "I see you have already booked." Probably a sign of people feeling they are under pressure
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: Covid Booster. Yes/No?

Post by [XAP]Bob »

gbnz wrote: 18 Oct 2021, 1:29pm Should Covid now be ignored? Or time to start taking it seriously again?

Have to admit that whilst I've never been in a panic about Covid, I'd always taken "precautions". But aware that as a Radio 4 listener, there was a good chance that I'd still be under the impression the world was coming to an end due to Covid, months after everyone else had forgotten about it. Is it time to forget about it?
No - it is still a pandemic - there are more people dying each day this year than the same day last year (at least recent months, I looked at the figures earlier this month, and there is necessarily a 28 day lag in the count of 'people dying within 28 days').

(That might not be true for much longer, because there was a huge uptick about this time last year, but the infection rate is still very high indeed).


What I haven't looked at recently is the excess deaths (i.e. those deaths over and above the 5 year average, which of course will have been skewed upwards by last year's omnishambles). I might compare with the average 2014-2019 instead.

Very brief look at the ONS:
In Week 39, 10,510 deaths were registered in England and Wales; this was 174 fewer deaths than the previous week (Week 38) and 12.1% above the five-year average (1,133 more deaths).
They are including last year in the 5 year average, since that is the 5 year average, so that excess is probably fractionally understated - I'm therefore not going to shift it at all.

We are still having 12% more people a week (that's >1000 people a week) dying than we would normally expect at this time of year.
Last edited by [XAP]Bob on 18 Oct 2021, 1:53pm, edited 1 time in total.
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
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simonineaston
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Re: Covid Booster. Yes/No?

Post by simonineaston »

From an individual basis, it makes no sense to reject the offer of a booster. Also, by refusing it, nothing changes. There's simply no mechanism whereby unused doses end up elsewhere, other than in a near neighbour!
S
(on the look out for Armageddon, on board a Brompton nano & ever-changing Moultons)
thirdcrank
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Re: Covid Booster. Yes/No?

Post by thirdcrank »

simonineaston wrote: 18 Oct 2021, 1:50pm From an individual basis, it makes no sense to reject the offer of a booster. Also, by refusing it, nothing changes. There's simply no mechanism whereby unused doses end up elsewhere, other than in a near neighbour!
Some of this depends on your definitions. It may make sense to anyone cautious about government presentation - not all of that caution being triggered by social media.

Then, this "booster" programme includes some hitherto unjabbed teenagers. For long enough we were told - or at least, led to believe - that the risks to individual children, though small, outweighed the benefits. Now, that seems no longer to be the case and there's a teeny-weeny suspicion in some people that this change in policy has been caused by political considerations.
slowster
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Re: Covid Booster. Yes/No?

Post by slowster »

Jdsk wrote: 18 Oct 2021, 1:51pm Screenshot 2021-10-18 at 13.50.04.png
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exce ... untry=~GBR
Some (a significant minority? a majority?) of those excess deaths are presumably not Covid, but the result of the deterioration in the treatment of other illnesses, e.g. cancer, caused by the impact of Covid on the NHS and the increase in the backlog of treatments.
thirdcrank
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Re: Covid Booster. Yes/No?

Post by thirdcrank »

slowster wrote: 18 Oct 2021, 2:08pm
Jdsk wrote: 18 Oct 2021, 1:51pm Screenshot 2021-10-18 at 13.50.04.png
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exce ... untry=~GBR
Some (a significant minority? a majority?) of those excess deaths are presumably not Covid, but the result of the deterioration in the treatment of other illnesses, e.g. cancer, caused by the impact of Covid on the NHS and the increase in the backlog of treatments.
That must be so. I've been diagnosed with diabetes and my last annual retinopathy eye test has still not taken place. In the last eighteen months I've had one of my six-monthly diabetes checks. My blood pressure was raised "Nothing to worry about" she told me before ringing the GP to tell him "It's sky high." Hardly scientific, of course, because he still wanted the numbers. Result, medication increased in a brief telephone consultation.
slowster
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Re: Covid Booster. Yes/No?

Post by slowster »

On an unrelated note, it is interesting to see in fiction written in the 1920s and 1930s how flu and the nature of its threat and impact was perceived in the years following the 1918/1919 Spanish Flu pandemic, i.e. it seems to have been something which was viewed more like Covid than how we now view flu, presumably because the risk was more similar to Covid.

For example, from Dorothy L Sayers' 'Whose Body' published in 1923:
The Coroner, a medical man of precise habits and unimaginative aspect, arrived punctually, and looking peevishly round at the crowded assembly, directed all the windows to be opened, thus letting in a stream of drizzling fog upon the heads of the unfortunates on that side of the room. This caused a commotion and some expressions of disapproval, checked sternly by the Coroner, who said that with the influenza about again an unventilated room was a death-trap; that anybody who chose to object to open windows had the obvious remedy of leaving the court
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: Covid Booster. Yes/No?

Post by [XAP]Bob »

thirdcrank wrote: 18 Oct 2021, 2:04pm
simonineaston wrote: 18 Oct 2021, 1:50pm From an individual basis, it makes no sense to reject the offer of a booster. Also, by refusing it, nothing changes. There's simply no mechanism whereby unused doses end up elsewhere, other than in a near neighbour!
Some of this depends on your definitions. It may make sense to anyone cautious about government presentation - not all of that caution being triggered by social media.

Then, this "booster" programme includes some hitherto unjabbed teenagers. For long enough we were told - or at least, led to believe - that the risks to individual children, though small, outweighed the benefits. Now, that seems no longer to be the case and there's a teeny-weeny suspicion in some people that this change in policy has been caused by political considerations.

The only thing that has changed is that we have more data on the safety of the vaccine in the under sixteens.
I don't know what magic process happens on one's 16th birthday that massively changes physiology overnight - but the line has to be drawn somewhere.

The default position is that "insufficient data" is treated as "no evidence of safety" not "no evidence of harm".
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
Psamathe
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Re: Covid Booster. Yes/No?

Post by Psamathe »

slowster wrote: 18 Oct 2021, 2:08pm
Jdsk wrote: 18 Oct 2021, 1:51pm Screenshot 2021-10-18 at 13.50.04.png
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exce ... untry=~GBR
Some (a significant minority? a majority?) of those excess deaths are presumably not Covid, but the result of the deterioration in the treatment of other illnesses, e.g. cancer, caused by the impact of Covid on the NHS and the increase in the backlog of treatments.
A good point and I think it depends on how you look at the "cause". You could say that those with Covid are the "cause" of a cancer patient not getting treatment and so such a cancer death whilst the SARS-CoV-2 was not directly present it was the cause through 2ndry impacts (massive/horrendous/unbelievable waiting lists).

Ian
gbnz
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Re: Covid Booster. Yes/No?

Post by gbnz »

Jdsk wrote: 18 Oct 2021, 1:41pm
We should have been taking it seriously throughout the outbreak and we should take it seriously for the foreseeable future.

[/quote]

Fair enough, but it's like most life related stuff. Live or survive? I've always taken it reasonably seriously, would jump at a booster shot if applicable (Nb. A few months short of the cut off), it's more whether the Lakes, Dales, Cathedral services or whatever should be avoided indefinitely, given that my only means to travel to such places is via a bus or life defying bike ride (Nb. I'm not supposed to ride :roll:)

Suppose the daily food shops can be cut back. NO, how'd you get decent fresh trout, pain au chocolate or whatever, if not daily?
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simonineaston
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Re: Covid Booster. Yes/No?

Post by simonineaston »

It may make sense to anyone cautious about government presentation
I imagine that cautious types would bypass information coming from government in favour of more direct sources.
S
(on the look out for Armageddon, on board a Brompton nano & ever-changing Moultons)
Jdsk
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Re: Covid Booster. Yes/No?

Post by Jdsk »

slowster wrote: 18 Oct 2021, 2:08pm
Jdsk wrote: 18 Oct 2021, 1:51pm Screenshot 2021-10-18 at 13.50.04.png
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exce ... untry=~GBR
Some (a significant minority? a majority?) of those excess deaths are presumably not Covid, but the result of the deterioration in the treatment of other illnesses, e.g. cancer, caused by the impact of Covid on the NHS and the increase in the backlog of treatments.
Yes. And that's only at the reactive end of health interventions... there's also effects on injuries because of different vehicle use and different patterns of work, effects on other communicable diseases because of isolation and then mixing at an unusual season, and effects on screening programmes.

And major effects on mental health.

[XAP]Bob wrote: 18 Oct 2021, 1:45pm What I haven't looked at recently is the excess deaths (i.e. those deaths over and above the 5 year average, which of course will have been skewed upwards by last year's omnishambles). I might compare with the average 2014-2019 instead.
Good point. Before that comment I hadn't seen anything on what makes the best comparator baseline now that we're nearly two years in.

Jonathan
Jdsk
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Re: Covid Booster. Yes/No?

Post by Jdsk »

gbnz wrote: 18 Oct 2021, 5:16pm
Jdsk wrote: 18 Oct 2021, 1:41pm We should have been taking it seriously throughout the outbreak and we should take it seriously for the foreseeable future.
Fair enough, but it's like most life related stuff. Live or survive? I've always taken it reasonably seriously, would jump at a booster shot if applicable (Nb. A few months short of the cut off), it's more whether the Lakes, Dales, Cathedral services or whatever should be avoided indefinitely, given that my only means to travel to such places is via a bus or life defying bike ride

Suppose the daily food shops can be cut back. NO, how'd you get decent fresh trout, pain au chocolate or whatever, if not daily?
For those lifestyle choices the risk reducing measures are pretty clear: get vaccinated, mix indoors with as few people as possible, wear a mask when you do, maximise the ventilation.

Jonathan
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