Coronavirus (2021) thread

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blueinsa said:
Only according to the “wrong” type of experts according to some on here.
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I get why they are scaremoungering and predicting worst worst case scaenarios. As they are not certain. Personally I just like to be given all the facts including the best case scenarios. This is something Sage and the politicians in this country arent very good at. You can excuse the politicians somewhat as its not their area of expertise and they lie and exagerate on a daily basis as part of their job.
 
Churchlawtonblue said:
Isnt covid 19 doing what all virusses do over time. Mutate to become less dangerous, evade vaccines but become more contagious. Like the common cold.
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They mutate to become less severe when there is evolutionary pressure to do so e.g. it's killing too many hosts before passing onto to others. The mutations here are seemingly improving on its already strong af strengths - it may be that is more mild (jurys out atm) but that will be a lucky by product and not the main driver of Omicrons evolution, fingers crossed!
 
Gogootz said:
They mutate to become less severe when there is evolutionary pressure to do so e.g. it's killing too many hosts before passing onto to others. The mutations here are seemingly improving on its already strong af strengths - it may be that is more mild (jurys out atm) but that will be a lucky by product and not the main driver of Omicrons evolution, fingers crossed!
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Is the jury really still out on whether its more mild. Have you looked at any data other than what the UK provides?

Everything coming out of SA indicates it is more mild, In fact significantly more mild.

Check it out, I find it very helpful in alleviating the doom and gloom stuff being spouted by our own scientists and politicians. Which if im totally honest isnt doing my own mental wellbeing any good.
 
BerkshireBlue said:
The UK takes an extremely myopic viewpoint with their own data. It's why we have had soooo many deaths compared to other countries. I'd rather listen to GPs and Drs on the front line than someone sat behind a desk. If the UKHSA did that from the start of the pandemic then they would have saved tens of thousands of lives
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Wishful thinking and denial.

I can't fathom the arrogance that, when almost every expert in the world disagrees , drives people to think "yeah, but I know better".

Rather than "I wonder where I might be mistaken".
 
roubaixtuesday said:
I'm watching it too.

Virtually no expert opinion agrees with your assessment.

The view is that there is insufficient evidence to judge whether there is a difference in severity. There is currently no compelling evidence either way.

Here, once again, is the UKHSA assessment. Why you think you know better, who knows?

There are insufficient data to assess severity, which is expected in the early period of emergence of a new variant.

www.gov.uk

Investigation of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern: variant risk assessments

Risk assessments for SARS-CoV-2 variants.
www.gov.uk www.gov.uk

The media reporting it to be likely to be a significant problem is simply the truth.
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I don't think most the UK media have reported Covid in a fair or accurate way at all. The information is out there if you seek it in medical journals and from credible respected experts but, with a few exceptions, the press coverage has been hysterical and overly negative.
The coverage has been very politicised and rarely has it shown the full context. The stories are distorted and spun from a very partial position depending on the media outlet's position. What we have not seen is a clear communication and explanation of what is going on. In my view the UK media has failed miserably with its Covid coverage. It is one of the reasons the loonies and conspiracy cranks have been able to fill the vacuum with their crazy ideas.
 
Marvin said:
The mild illness argument is coming from some GPs and Drs who make videos and gets picked up and repeated.

They should present the argument another way: no reason to think that omicron is any less virulent than any other previous strain but in populations with high exposure to the virus it will lead to a predominantly mild illness.

That still leaves us with a big problem that's hard to quantify because if you have 250,000 infections a day, and some people who have limited exposure / poor immune response, you are going to see 'some' serious illness.

We'll probably get a better handle on this when we see the extent of hospitalisation in the limited omicron infections we have seen in the UK population i.e. more accurate information going into models.
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It is not just a few GPs though. The WHO have said publically that early research suggests that Omicron is mild and that has been backed up EU health officials. It is too early to say what the outcome will be in the Uk where the population is very different to South Africa. I agree it is correct to be cautious till we know the full picture though.
 
Psychedelic Casual said:
Scientists don’t make predictions based on their own knowledge and opinion; they forecast what might happen going off past data. They can only use past data and the results can only come from that data. Their own expertise doesn’t come into it.

If the forecast doesn’t fit with the real world occurrences, it doesn’t mean the scientists were wrong, it simply shows that what they’re investigating is variable.

With Covid, scientists had to use other viruses as their dataset because there’s no past data for Covid in humans. But they can’t just tell us what they think is going to happen, they have to use data, and action can only be taken from data.
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They don't go by past data. If they did the predictions in March, July and late September would have become more accurate with each wave with latest actuals somewhere between the lower and upper quartile predictions.
Last September the lower quartile prediction was between two and three times HIGHER than the actual numbers.
As a statistician the SAGE models really, really bug me. They are shit and are are virtually useless.
They are so consistently bad that I will take their lower quartile prediction as the very worst case and scale it back from there.
 
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M18CTID said:
Is it just me or do cases numbers in SA look to be on the decline?
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They have to be interpreted cautiously. Weekend figures tend to be patchy and there have been numerous technical hiccups, so we cannot hold too much stead in daily figures either way. Apparently, Wednesdays and Thursdays tend to be a better indicator, though that information was anecdotal. The price of PCR tests is set to drop in South Africa now, so that may lead to more people being tested and affect the numbers we see.
 
roubaixtuesday said:
Wishful thinking and denial.

I can't fathom the arrogance that, when almost every expert in the world disagrees , drives people to think "yeah, but I know better".

Rather than "I wonder where I might be mistaken".
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Are you worried this thread will die off and you’ll have to post in the rest of the forum or something?
 
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