Covid/Coronavirus and diabetes - the numbers

[Max68]

It's interesting to hear that Anders Tegnell, Sweden's state epidemiologist who helped shape the country's light-touched response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has said natural herd immunity has never been used to wipe out an infectious disease and that "striving for herd immunity is neither ethical nor otherwise justifiable."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/me...rd-immunity—covid-is-no-different/ar-BB1ay6wZ

 

[Mbaker]

I think it's also a question of how people decide to interpret the facts or the rules. Anyone can take a fact and make it suit their purposes. Remember Barnard Castle.

Very true, I think of the Time magazine images of essentially fat = bad, then fat = ok. At the time either fact was correct. What I like about Ivor and Dave Feldman is that they dig into the detail, go past the headline or abstract and like any respectable engineer assess the raw data and root cause. I know in my own area of IT, I have held onto contracts by for example proving my system was not slow it was the customers broadband line, or the email that wasn't received was due to the other sides email gateway - in both these areas I needed raw data otherwise over time I would have been toast.

As a kindred spirit of Ivor and Dave how can I un-see the graphs and the numbers:

Sweden as reported 30th October 2020 (20:12 GMT)
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

Even if I do some crude maths and times Sweden's rate by 10, the UK numbers would be 3 times as high. If I were on a panel reviewing "our" (UK) decisions, amazing "facts" would need to debunk what the graph above and number suggest, especially in the context of Sweden being the European outlier March / April time, some might even say control - with full respect to those departed.

 

[hankjam]

Hi @hankjam I respect your views, your comments years ago really helped me believe what was possible with diet only, for months when I was just reading and not a member your contributions were enormous - thanks.

Many who regularly follow Ivor know him to be mild mannered and never combative. The referenced video caught my attention due to it being so spicy for him, I think it was due to the person being anonymous, whilst Ivor's posts leave him exposed to the likes of those referenced in @Mr_Pot 's post .

I have listened to all of Ivor's videos (both Covid / low carb keto and cholesterol). I can find, and bought his book to declare my bias. Interesting that his points didn't hit your ears and eyes in the same way it did me, which is not a criticism, but goes to show how something is delivered can split opinion..

@Mbaker Thank you for your kind words and I am glad to have helped some one on the way.
I think, for me anyway, you hit the nail on the head with your line in your previous post, Test and Trace is central to any control. There are lots of posts saying the test does nothing specific, but a bit like out blood tests, the trends have to be real. The government set great store by them and go on and on about how many they do..... but they don't seem to be using the data in any meaningful way..... as in trace.
I do dispair.

 

[Mbaker]

Just one question. Has Ivor had the virus?

I would guess not, I know Dr David Unwin has. My brother-in-law let us know on a Zoom last weekend that he has Covid 19. Which is the closest I have knowingly been to it.

 

[Estragon]

The Missus and I had COVID19 back in March. We survived. I’m assuming we both have antibodies, but how long they’d now be effective is in the grey area of speculation. London here, so we’re hyper vigilant to NOT getting it again. BTW I was verbally accosted in a Supermarket Car Park by a chap who’d taken it upon himself to shout at me and two others that this all was a Media conspiracy. Quite scary, but not as scary as an unstable Oxygen level of 83% .

Still feel ambivalent about the incident.

 

[bulkbiker]

It's interesting to hear that Anders Tegnell, Sweden's state epidemiologist who helped shape the country's light-touched response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has said natural herd immunity has never been used to wipe out an infectious disease and that "striving for herd immunity is neither ethical nor otherwise justifiable."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/swedens-fauci-no-disease-in-history-has-been-eradicated-with-herd-immunity—covid-is-no-different/ar-BB1ay6wZ

We have zero chance of "eradicating" an endemic virus. It's here and it won't go away. Just like cold and flu viruses have been for millennia.
We should be doing all we can to take care of ourselves by improving metabolic health to be able to fight it if, or when, we get it.
Looking at some of the screeching panic driven headlines recently it seems the entire country will have been infected by Christmas so there's little point in worrying about it.
Get healthy instead.

 

[urbanracer]

A different take on the "false positive" test result claims and perhaps some clarification.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/54270373

 

[bulkbiker]

A different take on the "false positive" test result claims and perhaps some clarification.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/54270373

The key paragraph in that piece is this

So door to door testing which has been noted by many observers in "high risk" areas is doing exactly as JHB said.
Testing random symptomless people. Once again the BBC is economical with the truth.. that license fee money must be at the forefront of their thought (that and the Ofcom regulations of course).

 

[urbanracer]

The key paragraph in that piece is this
View attachment 45058

So door to door testing which has been noted by many observers in "high risk" areas is doing exactly as JHB said.
Testing random symptomless people. Once again the BBC is economical with the truth.. that license fee money must be at the forefront of their thought (that and the Ofcom regulations of course).

Do you know anyone who's been tested under a door-to-door test regime?

It's not a long program of testing, it's just concentrated testing for a single day in a hotspot area and it's not happening in every town.

As an overall % of the population, the number of people tested by door to door testing is probably statistically irrelevant.

 

[bulkbiker]

Do you know anyone who's been tested under a door-to-door test regime?

No because I don't live in "hot spot". In fact where I live deaths and cases are extremely low as you know because you live here too.
However with the likely inaccuracy of testing and the number of times the amplification process is run it's hard to tell what is a real case and what is false.
It surely could not be beyond the whit of the scientific community to re-test those who have recorded a positive once to see if they have a second positive test. This could produce some real numbers as to how many are actually infected.
This has not been done and it seems that timing of testing can exaggerate the numbers so that one person can be reported as a new case more than once if repeat tested.
Its simply appalling that we are shutting down the country whilst these inaccuracies (which are totally avoidable) are being accepted.
I despair.

 

[urbanracer]

No because I don't live in "hot spot". In fact where I live deaths and cases are extremely low as you know because you live here too.
However with the likely inaccuracy of testing and the number of times the amplification process is run it's hard to tell what is a real case and what is false.
It surely could not be beyond the whit of the scientific community to re-test those who have recorded a positive once to see if they have a second positive test. This could produce some real numbers as to how many are actually infected.
This has not been done and it seems that timing of testing can exaggerate the numbers so that one person can be reported as a new case more than once if repeat tested.
Its simply appalling that we are shutting down the country whilst these inaccuracies (which are totally avoidable) are being accepted.
I despair.

We are not shutting down the country based on positive test results alone. We are shutting down because the number of people in hospital with Covid-19 is doubling every 2 weeks (approximately) and it will not be long before the NHS is overwhelmed.

 

[bulkbiker]

We are not shutting down the country based on positive test results alone. We are shutting down because the number of people in hospital with Covid-19 is doubling every 2 weeks (approximately) and it will not be long before the NHS is overwhelmed.

There are allegedly 8,822 patients in hospital in England "with" COVID (not necessarily because of COVID) How many hospital beds does England have? 140,000 approximately.
Overwhelmed? are you being serious?

There were 17,000 in April (still a very small proportion) and treatment is allegedly getting better.
It is a huge overreaction based almost entirely on "positive test results" being viewed as "cases" and "modelling" being used to guess what might happen.

 

[Member496333]

We are not shutting down the country based on positive test results alone. We are shutting down because the number of people in hospital with Covid-19 is doubling every 2 weeks (approximately) and it will not be long before the NHS is overwhelmed.

With COVID-19 or with respiratory problems and a positive PCR test? A subtle but important distinction. We are moving into winter after all. I don't know the answer to that question, and I suspect neither do government.

 

[Mr_Pot]

How many hospital beds does England have? 140,000 approximately.
Overwhelmed? are you being serious?

The 140,000 NHS hospital beds includes general and acute, mental illness, learning disability, maternity and day-only beds. Also how many of those beds are currently empty?

 

[urbanracer]

There are allegedly 8,822 patients in hospital in England "with" COVID (not necessarily because of COVID) How many hospital beds does England have? 140,000 approximately.
Overwhelmed? are you being serious?

There were 17,000 in April (still a very small proportion) and treatment is allegedly getting better.
It is a huge overreaction based almost entirely on "positive test results" being viewed as "cases" and "modelling" being used to guess what might happen.

What has 140k beds got to do with anything? Are you under the illusion that they are empty most of the time?

I sat with my elderly mother in ICU all night because there were no beds on a ward twice during 2018. A long time before anyone had ever heard of Covid19 the NHS was struggling with capacity.

The NHS has to deal with more than just Covid, and yes I am serious.

 

[Max68]

Not agreeing or disagreeing with the below article but felt it's information might promote an interesting discussion on this thread.

https://www.itv.com/news/2020-10-31/six-graphs-that-led-to-the-new-covid-lockdown-for-england

 

[Fairygodmother]

There are allegedly 8,822 patients in hospital in England "with" COVID (not necessarily because of COVID) How many hospital beds does England have? 140,000 approximately.
Overwhelmed? are you being serious?

There were 17,000 in April (still a very small proportion) and treatment is allegedly getting better.
It is a huge overreaction based almost entirely on "positive test results" being viewed as "cases" and "modelling" being used to guess what might happen.

The difficulties arise from staff shortages: if every bed in the Nightingale Hospital were filled as well as every ward in every hospital there wouldn’t be enough staff to attend to the patients. Did you listen to Dr Alison Pittard, from the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine last night?

 

[Mrs T 123]

What has 140k beds got to do with anything? Are you under the illusion that they are empty most of the time?

I sat with my elderly mother in ICU all night because there were no beds on a ward twice during 2018. A long time before anyone had ever heard of Covid19 the NHS was struggling with capacity.

The NHS has to deal with more than just Covid, and yes I am serious.

Yes I agree with you - in my experience of dealing with NHS when kids were younger and more recently elderly parents - NHS were struggling to cope even before COVID - very worrying when you see patients (which I have personally seen) lying in corridors from ambulances waiting to be seen. We once had to wait over 4 hours on an ambulance while my mother struggled to breathe, this was after she had been discharged from hospital too soon as they needed the bed and the attending doctor/paramedics couldn't believe she hadn't discharged herself and ordered an ambulance to take her straight back in to hospital (she had pneumonia and heart failure (not pleasant to watch). With my father we were told he would have to wait around 8 hours for an intensive care bed this was after us being blue lighted to hospital and this was when he had just came out of resus! My brother who has MS waited days for an available bed at another hospital so he could be operated on to have both lungs drained of fluid (he also had pneumonia and was not far from deaths door - again very distressing for the family to watch). Sorry, if I have gone off topic and don't want to scare anyone but in my own personal experience all within the last 3 years I have to say in my opinion I have witnessed the NHS being overstretched and it is very scary and all this was before COVID.

 

[Mbaker]

Not agreeing or disagreeing with the below article but felt it's information might promote an interesting discussion on this thread.

https://www.itv.com/news/2020-10-31/six-graphs-that-led-to-the-new-covid-lockdown-for-england

Yes very useful, I am interested what they don't show, that a couple of these graphs hint at. My understanding is that the younger ones started the bulk of the second spread, along with inputs from eat out to help out and cumulative other inputs, which has progressed to the more vulnerable groups. What I would like help with is is for the number of deaths per day what is the age breakdown - I think this is the critical path.

 

[bulkbiker]

The NHS has to deal with more than just Covid, and yes I am serious.

Not at the moment it isn't.. everything else is being cancelled... hadn't you noticed.

And in 2018 what did the NHS do?

Where are the Nightingales that were created at enormous expense?