Release all restrictions, cases drop like a stone

I honestly suspect that we are actually now approaching a level of herd immunity now.

Much better protection from folk who have had their 2 jabs, add to that those who have had covid and recovered. Not too many cases of people having it twice, so I think we may see it drop down then level out at about 10 - 15k cases for a few weeks then fall even further.

Plus I'll repeat my previous posts. If we continue to test 1 million people a day, we will always find more cases than other European countries testing a tenth of that.

 

I definitely saw a 60% figure. Whether it meant folk caught it as both in and out patients, I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong on it or it's exaggerated, but I think it's fairly clear that a good amount of cases (last year at least) came from transmission within hospitals.

I might be wrong, in fairness, but I remember actually being shocked by the article. It was a while ago, mind. Just to clear that up.

Edit: I've had a look for the article but can't find it. It might not have been 60%, that's why. I just remenvwr it being a high figure, over 50%. Thought it was shared on Twitter, so probably worth treating skeptically.

 

I know I'm a bit dim at times (most times) but I don't get how someone who has no symptoms can have such bad symptoms if that makes sense. Surely if they're suffering lung damage or otherwise suffering 'long covid' such as extreme fatigue etc then they have symptoms. How can they be called asymptomatic if that's the case?

 

We were at 60% of adults double jabbed a month ago and the projections seem to be somewhere between 70-90% needed for herd immunity. So you might be right.

Of course there's a lot of variables including vaccine efficacy and longevity which are still relative unknowns across such large numbers. There's also the possibility that, like with flu, true herd immunity is impossible

 

Maybe it's asymptomatic Lung damage?

 

Because long covid is a separate condition that occurs at least 28 days after coronavirus infection. So its symptoms are separate to acute covid 19 symptoms which occur immediately after infection by the virus. Basically it means you can get the virus, have no symptoms, then a month later start suffering with long covid symptoms.

For the lung damage.. bear in mind that asymptomatic covid patients are expressing a virus that has reproduced within their body... The coronavirus that causes covid 19 reproduces in the respiratory system so it's not unfeasible that it could cause damage without necessarily causing noticeable symptoms.

It's worth noting that the studies that discovered this were from small samples and are indicators that further research is urgently needed rather than absolute confirmation that this is a widespread problem.

 

That makes a lot of sense. I wasn't trying to say I didn't believe it or anything, just that I couldn't understand it in my head and as far as I'm aware none of the mainstream media have really explained it.

 

There's loads of evidence that many people that were symptomless from Covid itself have serious organ damage, especially to the lungs which while it may not be causing issues right now will almost certainly cause issues in later life.

I also was reading a study yesterday (it's here if you want a read https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.23.432474v2.article-info ) that there's preliminary evidence that in macaques Covid can cause development of lewy bodies, which are heavily linked to a significant increase in dementia risk.

 

No worries. I like how you ask pointed questions about these kind of things.

I had to do a fair amount of digging and reading to learn about long covid and the risks of asymptomatic covid. We have a newborn and I wanted to try and understand any potential risks before exposing her to the world.

 

I do wonder if they've bothered to do similar studies into the long term effects of having flu or even common colds or more to the point of the results of such studies are available.

 

Oh they have. If it can be studied, someone will probably have studied it!

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17497-6

 

You live in Suffolk, the biggest risk to her at her age is picking up that accent. In all seriousness I hope everything is going ok with having a little one at such an uncertain time

 

Haha. My wife is local, so she's doomed. Just need to make sure she's a tyke, not a tractor girl!

Yes she's doing well thanks. We just are going overly cautious for now.

 

We know a lot more about flu and the common cold, as a result of them being around for a lot longer. I'm not dismissing any long term issues from flu and they do exist, but we know what they are and have experience in dealing with them.

I still think that everything possible should have been done to limit the number of people getting infected by a virus that we knew absolutely nothing about. The goal from the start should have been to keep cases as low as possible (which could have been done with restrictions for far less time than we ended up having them, by the way) until a vaccine was developed.

It's "kicking the can down the road", but it's importantly kicking the can down the road to a time when we have vaccines.

 

Don’t forget herd immunity relies on that percentage of the whole population being vaccinated, not just that percentage of adults.

 

From what I've read, admittedly briefly, the 70-90% figure is for over 18s.

 

Correct, but you have to take the whole population into account when talking about herd immunity.

Roughly 20% of the UK population is under 18, which means almost every adult will have to be vaccinated (difficult to do when there are so many loonies about) if we’re not vaccinating kids.

 

If you want to avoid covid the best thing to do is not be in hospital for something different.

 

The original article is behind a paywall but, from what I can tell, it's not actually suggesting people are catching Covid in hospital but that they're testing positive once they're in hospital for other ailments.. which is inflating the stats of covid hospitalisations.

44% were positive before admission

43% were positive within 2 days of arriving (because of the incubation period all of these had it before admission too.)

13% tested positive in the days and weeks that follows. With up to 14 days incubation, even some of these likely had it before arrival.

So not that many catching it in hospital when you break it down.

Controversial information? Arguably yes.. but not in the way you're selling it.