Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

43 minutes ago, Michael W said:

An interesting development here from China - they have admitted that Sinovac has a low efficacy rate. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/11/china-considers-mixing-covid-vaccines-to-give-greater-protection

Article lacks solid numbers. The 50% efficacy noted in Brazilian trials is mentioned, but that's old news. Apparently some in the UAE are being invited back for a third dose as the two they go got did not give a sufficient immune response. A minter, then, if you'd paid £35k to jump the queue and get vaccinated. 

Joking about those dropping £35k aside, this is very bad news as there are a lot of countries that have ordered it and will depend on it. 

Hopefully we ramp up production and get it out to vulnerable countries, could give some to brazil in exchange for commitments to stop amazon deforestation. 

[mizfit]

It prompts a lot of questions. I think data coming out of China should be treated with scepticism as a matter of course, but they are recording 20-30 cases a day in a country of well over a billion people. Maybe they just have low levels of it after a brutal lockdown and a presumably very tight policy on entry, but they must be covering something much bigger to come out and say the vaccine isn't very good when a number of countries, particularly in Asia, have ordered it. 

Considering they were very hesitant about the WHO poking about the wet market where cases first arose, I would not be surprised if China have been dishonest the whole way through this.

[Michael W]

1 minute ago, Inanimate Carbon Rod said:

Hopefully we ramp up production and get it out to vulnerable countries, could give some to brazil in exchange for commitments to stop amazon deforestation. 

It is a nice thought, but I believe the current Brazilian government attitude is that they all need to stop whining. 

[tamthebam]

14 hours ago, Rizzo said:

Over the past month or so I find myself getting angrier and and angrier at restrictions and the travel one in particular. 

I keep an eye on various wildlife-watching Facebook groups and there's been a sighting of something pretty rare for Scotland across the water in Kinghorn/Burntisland over the past week or so.

The idea that I can't travel 30 miles to sit in my car with some binoculars and a camera has me in a f**king, seething mess. 

If it's the ouzalem bird I hope you see it before it disappears in the way Devi should.

[Elixir]

As for Leitch, Sridhar, and Bauld's credentials - they are quite simply showering nonsense on matters which fall outside their remit. Namely virology, epidemiology, immunology, and by extension, pandemic mitigation. Take Sridhar, for instance: she is a total child who does not debate people whose remit does fall under the aforementioned when challenged, and simply blocks them. That in itself is an affront to science, and the simple fact is her 'zero Covid' vision is a complete outlier among the scientific community. You simply don't need to be a 'qualified expert' to critically analyse this fact... you just need to be able to see where the main consensus lies.

As for 'we don't know what the future holds' - we do: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00396-2

Quote

In January, Nature asked more than 100 immunologists, infectious-disease researchers and virologists working on the coronavirus whether it could be eradicated. Almost 90% of respondents think that the coronavirus will become endemic — meaning that it will continue to circulate in pockets of the global population for years to come.

But failure to eradicate the virus does not mean that death, illness or social isolation will continue on the scales seen so far. The future will depend heavily on the type of immunity people acquire through infection or vaccination and how the virus evolves. Influenza and the four human coronaviruses that cause common colds are also endemic: but a combination of annual vaccines and acquired immunity means that societies tolerate the seasonal deaths and illnesses they bring without requiring lockdowns, masks and social distancing.

 

[effeffsee_the2nd]

You sometimes don't read well, do you?
The subtlety of points escapes you.
 
A better parallel would be to say that Alex Ferguson is clearly clueless, because his career began at Queens Park.

Did this pish not start by some of those alt right wanks often referring to the prime minister of Canada as “ the substitute drama teacher “ which was his first job after college or whatever, I noticed some seething gammons in Scotland refer to sturgeon as “ the divorce lawyer “ in a copy cat way. Not the kind of c***s you really want to be associated with tbh

[ayrmad]

Nowt to do with agreeing/disagreeing with any of these scientists but I firmly believe that governments should be taking advice from experts with a broad spectrum of beliefs/opinions, it's never healthy to have too many like-minded folk shaping decisions. 

[Elixir]

12 minutes ago, Smokie_D said:

Sridhar is an outlier?

 

And you quote an article where a third of scientists asked agree with her?

More than one-third of the respondents to Nature’s survey thought that it would be possible to eliminate SARS-CoV-2 from some regions while it continued to circulate in others.

 

 

also try the BMJ ...who agree with her

 

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m3859

^^^ idiot found

Yes, it is 'possible' to largely (temporarily) eliminate it from certain places, like Australia and New Zealand. That doesn't mean it's desirable long-term because of the constant fire-fighting, snap shutdowns of entire cities, and sealing yourself off from the outside world that is needed in order to achieve it. That isn't going to happen - hence the overwhelming consensus that it is going to become yet another endemic respiratory virus that circulates in humans, and therefore making Sridhar and her ilk an outlier. Jacinda Ardern certainly plans on managing Covid-19 as per influenza post-vaccination rollout to the Kiwi population: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/124012148/jacinda-ardern-declares-2021-the-year-of-the-vaccine

Thanks for playing, though.

[101]

16 minutes ago, ayrmad said:

Nowt to do with agreeing/disagreeing with any of these scientists but I firmly believe that governments should be taking advice from experts with a broad spectrum of beliefs/opinions, it's never healthy to have too many like-minded folk shaping decisions. 

Tbh Devi is one of what 20 or so advisors she might be the most vocal on social media but it's not difficult to imagine that they don't all agree with her.

[Marshmallo]

3 minutes ago, Smokie_D said:

Try again

[Michael W]

Perhaps 'zero covid' could've been given the light of day in the UK had we acted in the same way as Australia and New Zealand did back in February. When you miss the boat, it's pretty much game over. 

That being  the case, how do the likes of Sridhar propose the UK achieves zero covid? I hear zero covid a lot but never how it might be achieved in practice. 

[Todd_is_God]

20 minutes ago, Michael W said:

Perhaps 'zero covid' could've been given the light of day in the UK had we acted in the same way as Australia and New Zealand did back in February. When you miss the boat, it's pretty much game over. 

That being  the case, how do the likes of Sridhar propose the UK achieves zero covid? I hear zero covid a lot but never how it might be achieved in practice. 

The answer will depend on what her definition of zero is that day

[Donathan]

29 minutes ago, Michael W said:

Perhaps 'zero covid' could've been given the light of day in the UK had we acted in the same way as Australia and New Zealand did back in February. When you miss the boat, it's pretty much game over. 

That being  the case, how do the likes of Sridhar propose the UK achieves zero covid? I hear zero covid a lot but never how it might be achieved in practice. 

 

Most Zero Covid types are advocating a very strict lockdown until it the numbers can be driven all the way to zero. I'd have more sympathy for the idea if we didn't have vaccines to protect the vulnerable, but the fact is that we do and thus covid is now over as a public health crisis in the UK (yes, I said it) and there is no need to have ongoing lockdown restrictions. Legal bans on socialising are no longer necessary nor are they proportionate and they should be repealed across the UK imminently and replaced with simple pandemic mitigation measures like good ventilation, hand washing and face coverings.

[Left Back]

7 minutes ago, Smokie_D said:

Well, as sturgeon wanted last year ...to follow NZ and other far East and Australian countries and go for Zero covid....but we can't close our borders as we have a PM who promoted herd immunity and refused to close our borders....if only we were an island like , NZ, Australia, Taiwan, Japan........

Why is it currently illegal to either enter or leave Scotland except for essential purposes then?

[anotherchance]

13 minutes ago, Donathan said:

 

Most Zero Covid types are advocating a very strict lockdown until it the numbers can be driven all the way to zero. I'd have more sympathy for the idea if we didn't have vaccines to protect the vulnerable, but the fact is that we do and thus covid is now over as a public health crisis in the UK (yes, I said it) and there is no need to have ongoing lockdown restrictions. Legal bans on socialising are no longer necessary nor are they proportionate and they should be repealed across the UK imminently and replaced with simple pandemic mitigation measures like good ventilation, hand washing and face coverings.

Exactly, it’s the fact that we’ve got cracking vaccines yet well paid mouthpieces like Sridhar seem to want us to maintain hard restrictions for longer than necessary which will absolutely destroy lives and livelihoods, based on ego and extended time in the limelight.

No better than the worst kind of Tory.

[Left Back]

11 minutes ago, Smokie_D said:

A year later.

So ScotGov reacted a year too late then?

[HTG]

10 minutes ago, Left Back said:

So ScotGov reacted a year too late then?

You're not comparing apples with apples though. Sturgeon maybe wanted to close the borders but she couldn't force England to do so. She still can't. So unless you're prepared to put controls on every border crossing or entry point into Scotland, it is unachievable in practical terms. Scotland doesn't have those levels of resource and let's be honest, if it had been done a year ago, all hell would have broken out politically so trying to change minds across the UK was the obvious thing to do. 

I was talking to my uncle in Auckland about this recently and he was very clear that there are only a couple of main entry points into NZ and of those, only Auckland is truly international with the likes of Wellington connecting to Australia. Australia is also only really reachable in any numbers by air so controlling borders is straightforward. But you have to want to take the hit and Westminster didn't want to. 

Be as simplistic as you like but the level of death on this island is very much down to the setting of policy in Downing Street. If Johnson has shown nothing else in his tenure, it is that he's absolutely fucking useless at almost everything. 

[Melanius Mullarkey]

[strichener]

11 hours ago, Todd_is_God said:

You appear to be mistaking the concept of a cumulative number of "things got right" for "got everything right"

Being below the "experts" in that table is quite an achievement. Hopefully you get your first point on the board soon.

Tbf, your success rate is pretty miniscule.  Let's ignore cumulative and speak about percentages.  I'm sure you'll be well below the "experts".  

Even more stark if you take the number of times that you posted the same inaccuracies with conviction.  

[Michael W]

7 hours ago, Smokie_D said:

Well, as sturgeon wanted last year ...to follow NZ and other far East and Australian countries and go for Zero covid....but we can't close our borders as we have a PM who promoted herd immunity and refused to close our borders....if only we were an island like , NZ, Australia, Taiwan, Japan........

She certainly wasn't advocating this back in February/March 2020 when we might've had a shot at this.