COVID-19 (Coronavirus) discussion

SexyGreyFox said:
What a horrible person you are, we aren't full be we still have patients dying because of Covid.
I didn't think you was like that :(
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I’m a horrible person? It wasn’t me suggesting we should only consider deaths upto mid 2021 and ignore everything since.

And thanks for confirming my point.
 
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Jokester said:
I’m a horrible person? It wasn’t me suggesting we should only consider deaths upto mid 2021 and ignore everything since.

And thanks for confirming my point.
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You posted the stats from mid 2021 onwards to back up your “Sweeeden” anti lockdown cry ignoring pre mid 2021. Nobody said anything about ignoring deaths except you.
 
CapitalOne said:
You posted the stats from mid 2021 onwards to back up your “Sweeeden” anti lockdown cry ignoring pre mid 2021. Nobody said anything about ignoring deaths except you.
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Yeah ok we can just ignore the total upto early 2023 that I posted as well then.

This is the crux of the complaints about the enquiry. It’s nothing more than a circus, there’s no serious attempt to make any learnings from what happened, that’s based on real world data and research. And when scientists were called to present this sort of info it descended it nothing more than the enquiry smearing them.
 
Jokester said:
Yeah ok we can just ignore the total upto early 2023 that I posted as well then.

This is the crux of the complaints about the enquiry. It’s nothing more than a circus, there’s no serious attempt to make any learnings from what happened, that’s based on real world data and research. And when scientists were called to present this sort of info it descended it nothing more than the enquiry smearing them.
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The learnings will come from the summing up when all this testimony is weighed with the facts as they happened and reported on. This part is just for the clicks.
 
Rroff said:
As I've mentioned before I've 2 cousins as well as colleagues with family working in the local district hospital and at the peak of the pandemic they were nearly overrun - if not for the lockdowns they would have been.

Currently they have 2 COVID patients, neither in due to COVID and no COVID patients in ICU, etc. I might be wrong but IIRC it is ~6 months since they had the last death due to COVID.
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Our figures have also come down massively but we still have them, also none in ICU.
What is weird is the wording in ICU, Covid patients were coded with U07 but now the words Respiratory Problems now come up where you never saw that until several months ago, if I was a tin foil hatter I'd say that staff have been told to not put COVID down now in ICU.
 
Jokester said:
You have to at least give Dame Jennie Harries some due after being open about face coverings effectiveness. One of the few in charge that has actually referenced evidence based science at the enquiry.

*probably the only one actually.

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Van Tam, April 3rd 2020:
"...wearing of face masks by the general public, this has been a controversial area in pandemic preparedness and planning for the 15 years that I've been involved in it. [referring to his friend who was compiling the report on masks for the WHO] we're of the same mind that there is no evidence that general wearing of face masks by the public who are well affects the spread of the disease in our society.".

Not just limited or weak evidence, none whatsoever.

You couldn't make this up. Except someone clearly did.
 
Rroff said:
Even population density isn't the whole story - you also have to take into account culture and social dynamics - a low population density doesn't mean they don't interact a lot, or alternatively they might shun contact.
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I think the issue with this is, it's not born out by what was seen in the early pandemic - Sweden's spread rate/infection rate certainly wasn't being affected by anything that makes Sweden stand out later on, unless you're arguing that Swede's at an individual level decided to do the actual right thing later on - but what was this? It would be good to learn what this actually is, so we can replicate it for future pandemics. I've mentioned this before, but the single biggest thing that has some level of correlation to Covid deaths is actually whether countries had paticularly bad levels of excess flu deaths in the years leading upto 2020. The UK had gone something like 5 years without significant flu deaths, which was particularly unusual in leading to a large body of "dry tinder" elderly. Sweden was similar in this regards.

Enquiries that are based on feels rather than actual facts will never provide useful, useable learnings, so we'll be prone to making the same (and worse) errors in future.
 
sigma said:
Still can't believe how upset people get over masks. Are you really that fragile?

FFP masks are scientifically proven aren't they?

European respirator standards - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org

That's not to say that diseases can't spread via other means.
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The evidence for proper filter masks says they might reduce infection rates by 30% iirc (from the Cochrane meta analysis work that they've been keeping upto on a regular basis), but that wasn't what everyone was forced to wear and as Dame Jenny points out, the use of face coverings may even have resulted in people being given a false sense of security that resulted in them catching covid, whilst if they had been given the correct information they may have decided to continue phyiscally distancing from other people (the most effective way to protect yourself).
 
Jokester said:
The evidence for proper filter masks says they might reduce infection rates by 30% iirc (from the Cochrane meta analysis work that they've been keeping upto on a regular basis), but that wasn't what everyone was forced to wear and as Dame Jenny points out, the use of face coverings may even have resulted in people being given a false sense of security that resulted in them catching covid, whilst if they had been given the correct information they may have decided to continue phyiscally distancing from other people (the most effective way to protect yourself).
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There weren't enough FFP masks so they couldn't enforce wearing them.

Proper respirator masks prevent people from inhaling deadly gases, masks do work.
 
Jokester said:
The evidence for proper filter masks says they might reduce infection rates by 30% iirc (from the Cochrane meta analysis work that they've been keeping upto on a regular basis), but that wasn't what everyone was forced to wear and as Dame Jenny points out, the use of face coverings may even have resulted in people being given a false sense of security that resulted in them catching covid, whilst if they had been given the correct information they may have decided to continue phyiscally distancing from other people (the most effective way to protect yourself).
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Just remember the actual quote from the report was this -

enkoda said:
we're of the same mind that there is no evidence that general wearing of face masks by the public who are well affects the spread of the disease in our society.".
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It's a bit obvious, if 10 people are in a room who don't have Covid then there's no problem, if one has Covid then there is.
 
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sigma said:
There weren't enough FFP masks so they couldn't enforce wearing them.

Proper respirator masks prevent people from inhaling deadly gases, masks do work.
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Indeed, I think the issue is less what happens when wearing them, but when putting them on or taking them off. Even the most trained people still infect themselves when using barrier protections.
 
SexyGreyFox said:
Just remember the actual quote from the report was this -



It's a bit obvious, if 10 people are in a room who don't have Covid then there's no problem, if one has Covid then there is.
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Well, here's the actual meta analysis of good quality research that's been done:

Medical/surgical masks compared to no masks


We included 12 trials (10 cluster‐RCTs) comparing medical/surgical masks versus no masks to prevent the spread of viral respiratory illness (two trials with healthcare workers and 10 in the community). Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of influenza‐like illness (ILI)/COVID‐19 like illness compared to not wearing masks (risk ratio (RR) 0.95, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.84 to 1.09; 9 trials, 276,917 participants; moderate‐certainty evidence. Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza/SARS‐CoV‐2 compared to not wearing masks (RR 1.01, 95% CI 0.72 to 1.42; 6 trials, 13,919 participants; moderate‐certainty evidence). Harms were rarely measured and poorly reported (very low‐certainty evidence).
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This also refers to the issues that Dame Jenny highlighted that, they can't even state for sure that people weren't actually more at risk through a false sense of security.

And here's the one for proper masks since I've got it open (and yes, it was a 30% reduction):

We pooled trials comparing N95/P2 respirators with medical/surgical masks (four in healthcare settings and one in a household setting). We are very uncertain on the effects of N95/P2 respirators compared with medical/surgical masks on the outcome of clinical respiratory illness (RR 0.70, 95% CI 0.45 to 1.10; 3 trials, 7779 participants; very low‐certainty evidence). N95/P2 respirators compared with medical/surgical masks may be effective for ILI (RR 0.82, 95% CI 0.66 to 1.03; 5 trials, 8407 participants; low‐certainty evidence). Evidence is limited by imprecision and heterogeneity for these subjective outcomes. The use of a N95/P2 respirators compared to medical/surgical masks probably makes little or no difference for the objective and more precise outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza infection (RR 1.10, 95% CI 0.90 to 1.34; 5 trials, 8407 participants; moderate‐certainty evidence). Restricting pooling to healthcare workers made no difference to the overall findings. Harms were poorly measured and reported, but discomfort wearing medical/surgical masks or N95/P2 respirators was mentioned in several studies (very low‐certainty evidence).


One previously reported ongoing RCT has now been published and observed that medical/surgical masks were non‐inferior to N95 respirators in a large study of 1009 healthcare workers in four countries providing direct care to COVID‐19 patients.
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Jokester said:
The evidence for proper filter masks says they might reduce infection rates by 30% iirc (from the Cochrane meta analysis work that they've been keeping upto on a regular basis), but that wasn't what everyone was forced to wear and as Dame Jenny points out, the use of face coverings may even have resulted in people being given a false sense of security that resulted in them catching covid, whilst if they had been given the correct information they may have decided to continue phyiscally distancing from other people (the most effective way to protect yourself).
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Personally I put that more on people than the government, few have an interest in the why or how of mask wearing and what they can do towards the bigger picture. As much as anything it ended up being a visual reminder there was a pandemic and need for people to think about their actions.
 
Evidence is limited by imprecision and heterogeneity for these subjective outcomes.

What does that mean?

And this:

Harms were poorly measured and reported
 
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sigma said:
Evidence is limited by imprecision and heterogeneity for these subjective outcomes.

What does that mean?
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It means the studies aren't like for like in their approach to measuring and recording things - eg some studies never confirmed whether people genuinely had flu/covid via testing but derived a "+ve" just on self reporting of generic symptoms.

Harms were poorly measured and reported
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That bit means that the studies only usually considered the impact on say catching flu/covid and took no account of whether they caused other problems/unintended consequences (eg exposure for fungal/bacterial infections and the impact that might then have on the user).
 
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Masks can be very effective if people understand their limits and work with that, even with other considerations like potential transfer when taking a mask off, etc. problem is people refuse to understand how masks work and their limitations - so if we do get "the big one" and it is predominantly transmitted by aerosol or droplet and people persist with these silly attitudes we are going to suffer worse than necessary.

Jokester said:
I think the issue with this is, it's not born out by what was seen in the early pandemic - Sweden's spread rate/infection rate certainly wasn't being affected by anything that makes Sweden stand out later on, unless you're arguing that Swede's at an individual level decided to do the actual right thing later on - but what was this? It would be good to learn what this actually is, so we can replicate it for future pandemics. I've mentioned this before, but the single biggest thing that has some level of correlation to Covid deaths is actually whether countries had paticularly bad levels of excess flu deaths in the years leading upto 2020. The UK had gone something like 5 years without significant flu deaths, which was particularly unusual in leading to a large body of "dry tinder" elderly. Sweden was similar in this regards.

Enquiries that are based on feels rather than actual facts will never provide useful, useable learnings, so we'll be prone to making the same (and worse) errors in future.
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Not entirely following what you are saying there - but there is a close correlation between the spread rate and factors like percentage of multi-generational (especially 3 generation) households amongst other similar factors. Unless people entirely isolate permanently eventually it gets around anyhow but slowing that down allows better efficiency of the medical services in dealing with it and time for medical developments to save some lives which would otherwise be lost.
 
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