Coronavirus (2021) thread

[Saddleworth2]

My daughter finished her training to administer the vaccine today and also got her second jab :-)

 

[Healdplace]

474 England hospital deaths 3 wks v 2 wks v last wk v Today

875 / 109 NW / 13%

767 / 112 NW / 15%

509 / 109 NW / 21%

474 / 112 NW / 24% Today

That is not a good looking trend and NW is seeing the legacy I suspect of the big rises in cases on Merseyside and Chesire around and just after Christmas.

 

[Healdplace]

England hospital deaths by age range:

20 - 39 (5) 0.9%

40 - 59 (43) 9.1%

60 - 79 192) 40.5%

80 PLUS (234) 49.5%

Much the same trend - another day under 50% for the over 80s. Been a few days now since that was not true. And 10% for the under 60s again.

Day to day numbers will fluctuate but the signs as we see them remain looking to be a trend and hopefully will grow more apparent as the days go by.

 

[ZenHalfTimeCrock]

Same way they explain flat earth, for every rational explantion they have an answer, and no matter how rational the argumant they have another answer.

The philosopher Stephen Law looks at this tendency rather amusingly in his wonderfully titled book Believing Bullshit. The relevant section is reproduced here:

The strange case of Dave

Dave believes dogs are spies from the planet Venus. He views any canine with great suspicion, for he believes they are here from Venus to do...

stephenlaw.blogspot.com

However, this does not explain why people persist in clinging to these beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. One suggestion (from another philosopher James Garvey) is that this kind of thinking represents, 'a way of seeing the world. [For example], in order to be a conservative person in America, you have to be anti-abortion, pro-guns, pro-death penalty, small government, no regulation - and climate is in there too. If you look at that set of beliefs, that's an identity. And you can't change an identity with facts.'

This is a view that Garvey expressed to the journalist Will Storr in an interview in his The Heretics: Adventures With The Enemies Of Science, which I am intending to have crack at shortly. It's one that I find persuasive as it would account for the stubbornness: the more a belief or constellation of beliefs are identity-constituting, the harder they are to give up.

 

[blueparrot]

The philosopher Stephen Law looks at this tendency rather amusingly in his wonderfully titled book Believing Bullshit. The relevant section is reproduced here:

The strange case of Dave

Dave believes dogs are spies from the planet Venus. He views any canine with great suspicion, for he believes they are here from Venus to do...

stephenlaw.blogspot.com

However, this does not explain why people persist in clinging to these beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. One suggestion (from another philosopher James Garvey) is that this kind of thinking represents, 'a way of seeing the world. [For example], in order to be a conservative person in America, you have to be anti-abortion, pro-guns, pro-death penalty, small government, no regulation - and climate is in there too. If you look at that set of beliefs, that's an identity. And you can't change an identity with facts.'

This is a view that Garvey expresses to the journalist Will Storr in his The Heretics: Adventures With The Enemies Of Science, which I am intending to have crack at shortly. It's one that I find persuasive as it would account for the stubbornness: the more a belief or constellation of beliefs are identity-constituting, the harder they are to give up.

Might look those books up, that's exactly how it works. I belong to an astronomy club and one of the members got invoved with videoing simple experiments to prove a flat earther wrong online. They kept coming back with more arguments. I've not been to the club for I year now but would bet he's still on that hamster wheel we we get back to meetings.

 

[Healdplace]

England hospital deaths by region:

114 NE & Yorkshire, 112 North West (nearly half todays deaths in these two northern regions note)

76 Midlands, 53 London. 53 South East, 39 East and 27 South West


Looking at the actual location of the deaths my suspicion as to origin of these numbers (legacy from whem Merseyside and Cheshire had so many cases post Christmas because government had kept them out of upper tiers) is supported.

Over half the NW deaths were on Merseyside.

30 in Liverpool and 21 in St Helens were the most.

Only Pennine in GM was in double figures at 13.

Indeed there were only 24 in total from Greater Manchester.

 

[Healdplace]

As I said in here at the time before Christmas the decision to keep Merseyside in a lower tier and punish GM by being in the upper tier would save lives in GM and kill people on Merseyside.

Sadly this was not a hard prediction to make if you distrusted the tier system as I did but it is tragic that it has come to be true two months later.

I do hope Merseyside politicians see this consequence of their 'good fortune' and are very angry.

 

[mosssideblue]

Every shop or entertainment venue should refuse entry to anyone not vaccinated. Kids shouldn't be allowed in bars anyway and we could finally get rid of the family stand at the Etihad. Education might be a problem so maybe seperate schools for kids from unvaccinated families could be set up.

If people want to go on holiday and not be vaccinated then they shouldn't be allowed to leave the country. We should take passports off them to ensure they don't travel. There are plenty of nice places in england we could set up camps for them.

Businesses should also not be forced to employ unvaccinated people. They bring the rest of the workforce down and many unvaccinated people are stupid and lazy.

We would have to be careful not to remove too many public services from people who haven't been vaccinated so we would need to ensure transport and stuff is still available for them. We would need to be careful that they don't infect the vaccinated so maybe they could have a special seating area at the back of buses or something.

Of course all of these measures are futile if an unvaccinated person can move into my street and infect us all. If I wanted to sell my house and had an unvaccinated family next door i would lose so much value which would be totally unfair. We should provide housing for all the unvaccinated so they can be around people like themselves. Also I would be anxious about my kids playing cricket with a kid from an unvaccinated family.

I can envisage a few problems. Their might be mixed marriages for instance where an unvaccinated guy marries a vaccinated woman. We should try and prevent that happening where possible otherwise the vaccine might get watered down. People who refuse to be vaccinated should actually be discouraged where possible from having children. Unvaccinated people tend to raise unvaccinated children which leads to a cycle of disease. They will be healthier and society will benefit if kids aren't raised in those situations. In some circumstances it might be appropriate to remove children from families and educate them to be more like vaccined people.

I've also heard some vaccinated kids are listening to music from unvaccinated musicians and artists. What if they decide to copy those unvaccinated musicians? Some of this stuff should be banned to protect our kids.

Sorry for the long ramble and I fear i may have neglected to get my booster jab. Luckily i can have my blood tested for vaccine purity to make sure I still have the right quality of blood pumping through my veins. I can't wait to go skiing at half term

Let them go on holiday...

Only vaccinated persons can come into the country

 

[Healdplace]

Northern Ireland data:

9 deaths - was 10 last wk

341 cases - was 275 last wk

18.5% positive - was 16.5% last wk

7 day rolling total 2070 (down 25 on yesterday) - was 2685 last wk

64 Care Home outbreaks - down 15 on yesterday - was 96 last week.

(Best news in ages a one third drop in the week here)

474 patients (down 3) - was 579 last week

Ventilated 45 (down 4) - was 57 last week.

 

[Healdplace]

So the deaths with out of hospital from England to add is 540

3 wks v 2 wks v last wk v Today:- 986 v 860 v 587 v 540


Certainly not a huge week to week fall.

Last week's 587 became 1052 with out of hospital add ons.

Hopefully today we are well below 1000.

And never see 1000 again (tomorrow is the only other day this week that is really a possibility)