Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[beesher]

42 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

Anyway, here is a very sad and worrying story about the effect on children with health conditions from the slow shutdown down of the NHS during the pandemic. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-60417283

What a thoroughly depressing article.

I was 100% behind lockdowns at the time but it is becoming clear that our response has totally fucked up society for generations to come. 

How do you solve these types of problems, where do you even start? Given the government's handling of the pandemic I have absolutely 0 confidence in them to effectively deal with any of these issues.

 

 

[scottsdad]

31 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

It’s when you manipulate someone into doubting their own sanity. Comes from a 1940s noir film, The Gaslight.

Yep, often used by controlling partners to make people doubt their own memories of events. Part of the coercion that goes on in some abusive relationships.

NOT clarifying a point of statistical analysis on twitter. 

[Bairnardo]

What a thoroughly depressing article.
I was 100% behind lockdowns at the time but it is becoming clear that our response has totally fucked up society for generations to come. 
How do you solve these types of problems, where do you even start? Given the government's handling of the pandemic I have absolutely 0 confidence in them to effectively deal with any of these issues.
 
 

The worst of it is the refusal to review and analyse these issues. What I mean is, people and in some cases in positions of power simply lined up to get behind some measures as a tool for political gain, and you are still seeing it.

You are still seeing people loudly insisting how super dangerous this virus is and how we still need this or thay in place. They have little in the way of evidence to back this up, and they ignore the unintended consequences which are clearly, thanks to Omicron, stacking up ever higher in comparison to covid itself.

Folk seem to be oblivious to that. Its sort of like folk are preaching to us from a big scaffold, but they havent noticed yet that the scaffold is being dismantled from the bottom.

[Scary Bear]

43 minutes ago, beesher said:

What a thoroughly depressing article.

I was 100% behind lockdowns at the time but it is becoming clear that our response has totally fucked up society for generations to come. 

How do you solve these types of problems, where do you even start? Given the government's handling of the pandemic I have absolutely 0 confidence in them to effectively deal with any of these issues.

 

 

Government are no different from the senior management in many public sector workplaces. They are highly risk averse and seem to exist just to make risk averse decisions while occasionally issuing some policy document which few people engage with or understand.

What can you do? I can see why the US citizens don’t want to give up their weapons. 

[effeffsee_the2nd]

Government are no different from the senior management in many public sector workplaces. They are highly risk averse and seem to exist just to make risk averse decisions while occasionally issuing some policy document which few people engage with or understand.
What can you do? I can see why the US citizens don’t want to give up their weapons. 

When this is truly over , it’s going to come out in the wash that lockdowns, and the insistence that ALL cases of covid must be avoided as much as possible( not just those at risk), caused more harm than the virus itself.
Getting unwell is a fact of life

[scottsdad]

On 16/02/2022 at 20:24, oaksoft said:

Nature is one of the most highly credible general scientific journals in the world.

That doesn't stop them publishing absolute shite from time to time but that's a journal most scientists want to get published in.

And if a scientist DOES get published in there, my God you won't hear the end of it from them. You'd think they had won a Nobel Prize.

Have to say, I never saw the attraction. One good peer-reviewed journal is as good as another IMO. Never saw the point in wasting over a year trying to get into Nature when you can get published in 6 weeks in any number of other credible places.

Just spotted this - and I have to disagree here.

There are very high quality peer reviewed journals, and very low quality ones. I have said before on here about MDPI journals which are peer reviewed but are often quite shoddy. I remember reviewing a paper for them and recommending that it not be published at all, the work was so poor (not even "major revisions" could save it). Perhaps one of only twice I have ever made this recommendation. A week later it was published, unchanged, errors and all. 

There was a paper in the journal Vaccine (MDPI) that claimed that for every 3 lives saved by the vaccines, 2 would be lost to vaccine side effects. The maths in that paper was laughable. Again, peer reviewed but utter dog shit. 

On deciding what journals are quality and which are not, the impact factor is an indicator (though imperfect). https://impactfactorforjournal.com/jcr-2021/ 

Nature is actually quite quick to get into these days. I tried there last year but didn't get in (*quietly sobs*). But the paper found a good home nonetheless.

As a wee story, my old boss was in his annual review talking about his publications record. He had made it in to some very good journals and the reviewer - a renowned bell end - just asked "Yeah, but where's your Nature paper?"

[Elixir]

3 hours ago, Snafu said:

Could we see Civil Liberty Groups elsewhere around the world challenging misuse of emergency powers by their governments?

Most have been silent as a crypt throughout, including the worthless Amnesty International.

 

2 hours ago, beesher said:

What a thoroughly depressing article.

I was 100% behind lockdowns at the time but it is becoming clear that our response has totally fucked up society for generations to come. 

How do you solve these types of problems, where do you even start? Given the government's handling of the pandemic I have absolutely 0 confidence in them to effectively deal with any of these issues.

The reason I couldn't believe what was happening with the blanket response we saw is because I knew the potential long-term consequences. The panic and group think was awful and there will be a lot of revisionist nonsense coming from scientists and politicians alike in the years ahead.

[Abdul_Latif]

It’s finally caught up with me this morning.

Very slightly achy knees and a dry(ish) throat the only symptoms.

Actually felt worse on Wednesday and Thursday, but tested negative, then got a positive today, when I’m much better.

Wouldn’t have even really known, if not needing to test for work.

Of course my experience is completely anecdotal, but this is not even as bad as a standard winter cold.

Edited February 18, 2022 by Abdul_Latif

[Elixir]

 

[Honest_Man#1]

10 minutes ago, Abdul_Latif said:

It’s finally caught up with me this morning.

Very slightly achy knees and a dry(ish) throat the only symptoms.

Actually felt worse on Wednesday and Thursday, but tested negative, then got a positive today, when I’m much better.

Wouldn’t have even really known, if not needing to test for work.

Of course my experience is completely anecdotal, but this is not even as bad as a standard winter cold.

I felt a bit shite last week for a few days, no idea if Covid or not, probably a winter cold but just worked from home and then once better continued on with life as normal. The way it should be going forward.

[Dawson Park Boy]

57 minutes ago, effeffsee_the2nd said:

When this is truly over , it’s going to come out in the wash that lockdowns, and the insistence that ALL cases of covid must be avoided as much as possible( not just those at risk), caused more harm than the virus itself.
Getting unwell is a fact of life

On that theme, way back in the Spring of 2020, I attended a Freedom Rally in a local park and was invited to speak as a representative of the ‘elderly’. The speeches all were about the negative effects of lockdowns as against adopting a more liberal approach (Sweden), all of which I agreed with. However, one of the off putting characteristics of the majority of folks there was a decidedly anti vaccine approach,which were under development at the time, and the evils of big pharma, Bill Gates, etc.

As you can guess, I never attended any more of those events. 

[Todd_is_God]

1 hour ago, effeffsee_the2nd said:

When this is truly over , it’s going to come out in the wash that lockdowns, and the insistence that ALL cases of covid must be avoided as much as possible( not just those at risk), caused more harm than the virus itself.
Getting unwell is a fact of life

Come out in the wash? It's been obvious since about May 2020 thanks to the absolute #lads in Sweden

 

[scottsdad]

Been in a Teams call with a few colleagues. One tested positive today (no symptoms). Another's son tested positive (again, no symptoms). A third had to isolate a couple of weeks back as she tested positive with mild symptoms. 

Time to end this, really. 

Then again, just search for "BA2" on twitter and you'll see that apparently we're scunnered with a new variant on its way. 

[scottsdad]

I tracked down the article that all this noise is based on (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.14.480335v1.full.pdf). Not yet peer reviewed. 

But all this about it being more pathogenic (ie damaging) is based on experiments conducted on hamsters. 

Call me a cynic, but I don't think we should lock down/force mask wearing/use vaccine passports based on 20 hamsters in a lab experiment. Even if these hamsters have been vaccinated! I'd rather wait on the real world data.

[RH33]

1 hour ago, scottsdad said:

I tracked down the article that all this noise is based on (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.14.480335v1.full.pdf). Not yet peer reviewed. 

But all this about it being more pathogenic (ie damaging) is based on experiments conducted on hamsters. 

Call me a cynic, but I don't think we should lock down/force mask wearing/use vaccine passports based on 20 hamsters in a lab experiment. Even if these hamsters have been vaccinated! I'd rather wait on the real world data.

So do I have to lft the hamster now too?

[effeffsee_the2nd]

So do I have to lft the hamster now too?

Best just get him put down. Don’t want to catch the sniffly wifflys now do we

[ParsJake]

7 minutes ago, RH33 said:

So do I have to lft the hamster now too?

We just don't know...

[RH33]

1 minute ago, effeffsee_the2nd said:

Best just get him put down. Don’t want to catch the sniffly wifflys now do we

Not sure I can afford vet fees, I'll just set her free instead to roam the wilds of the west of Scotland.

[scottsdad]

38 minutes ago, RH33 said:

Not sure I can afford vet fees, I'll just set her free instead to roam the wilds of the west of Scotland.

Just flush it down the bog. 

"Farewell old friend. I send you off to Davy Jones' Locker with good wishes and happy memories."

[effeffsee_the2nd]

Not sure I can afford vet fees, I'll just set her free instead to roam the wilds of the west of Scotland.

What so she can go round without a mask infecting vulnerable people! I think not reckless toarry