Coronavirus

[nomadking]

Originally Posted by jonbxx

Pretty much this - if there is a small risk of increased clotting events in certain populations and there are enough vaccines of different types to go around, then recommending AZ for those at a lower risk and Pfizer, Janssen, Moderna and Novavax for everyone else seems sensible.

That said, if you're in an 'at risk' group for clotting events and already have had your first shot of AZ, not sure what's going to happen there - mix and match or take the risk of a second shot of AZ?

They're likely to already be on blood thinners such as Warfarin or Rivaroxaban to protect against such events.

[pip08456]

Originally Posted by jfman

On the contrary - it makes them more essential to managing the response. Not less.

And that is to manage the response to what?

Lead author Jon Deeks, professor of biostatistics at the University of Birmingham, said: "These tests work a lot less well in people who are asymptomatic than symptomatic. The government has not been clear on this.

"The only data we have is based on the [Liverpool and Birmingham] studies, where a total of 78 people had COVID-19, when 40 million tests have been given out.

"I personally find it quite shocking that the government thinks this is an adequate evidence base on which to base such a large, expensive, and quite invasive policy."

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-...place-12266517

There's also this.

Richard Tedder, senior research investigator in medical virology at Imperial College London, commented, “This assay is simply not sensitive enough to use to test persons with a view to confirming an absence of infection and thereby an absence of infectivity. A negative result with this lateral flow test simply does not infer an absence of infection.”

The findings contrast with an earlier assessment of the Innova test by Public Health England’s Porton Down laboratory and the University of Oxford, which found an overall sensitivity of 76.8% but showed that sensitivity dropped to 58% when carried out by self-trained staff at a Boots track-and-trace centre.

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4848

[jfman]

Manage the response to the Covid 19 pandemic. The same as always.

Pierre says zero Covid is an unachievable ambition. However there is no “living with the virus” in the short term. The idea that we hit a magic number of vaccinations and the Government just open the floodgates and say “we did all we could do” continues to be fanciful.

As I’ve said consistently throughout the thread the decision making that led to lockdown 1 makes another one inevitable unless something significant changes.

The vaccine should be a game changer. However the basics will still apply for some time - finding cases, identifying contacts, identifying who is at risk among those contacts. This should be much easier with the vaccines reducing transmission.

There’s still a significant amount of unknowns. Vaccine performance against known variants, vaccine performance against as yet unknown variants, vaccine performance over time.

Complacency now risks making all the same mistakes all over again and undoing significant achievements to date.

Then again. Some people haven’t considered Covid that serious for 15 months so I’m unsurprised some haven’t grasped this either.

Originally Posted by papa smurf

No more lockdowns: UK will treat Covid like seasonal flu, says Chris Whitty


Lockdowns will likely become a thing of the past once England emerges from restrictions in June, Professor Chris Whitty has said, as he suggested Britain will treat coronavirus like the flu in the future.

https://www.cityam.com/no-more-lockd...-chris-whitty/

As I replied, when you posted the same link 3 days ago, the full message he said was...

Originally Posted by papa smurf View Post
No more lockdowns: UK will treat Covid like seasonal flu, says Chris Whitty

Lockdowns will likely become a thing of the past once England emerges from restrictions in June, Professor Chris Whitty has said, as he suggested Britain will treat coronavirus like the flu in the future.

England’s chief medical officer said the UK would have to learn to live with the virus, noting that up to 25,000 people can die in a bad flu year without the figure hitting the headlines.

https://www.cityam.com/no-more-lockd...-chris-whitty/

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-...iants-12263319

Quote:
COVID-19: Chris Whitty warns virus measures needed for another two years to combat threat of variants

Professor Whitty says a "period of risk" remains until there is a bank of vaccines that work against coronavirus variants.

Coronavirus safety measures are likely to still be necessary for another two years, England's chief medical officer has said.

Professor Chris Whitty said it could take up to two years for the world to build up a bank of vaccines and technologies capable of rapidly dealing with COVID-19 variants and outbreaks.

While he said these tools will eventually "find a way through", there still remains a level of risk that needs to be managed before then.

Speaking during a Royal Society of Medicine webinar on Thursday, Professor Whitty said a cautious approach will be needed for the next couple of years "because we've got such a difficult situation to go through at the moment".

He added: "What we don't want to be is in a situation where we look back in six months and say 'If we'd only just been a bit more cautious for a month or two we would've actually got through [vaccinating] the whole population, we'd have understood a lot more, we'd know how to deal with this, we'd probably have a few variant vaccines on the stocks'.

"I don't think though this should be seen as an indefinite posture, I think this is a matter of probably the next year or two whilst we understand how to do this and find a way of responding rapidly to variants."

However, he said a "very wide portfolio of vaccines" is likely to be available in around two years, offering greater protection.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by Hugh

As I replied, when you posted the same link 3 days ago, the full message he said was...


https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-...iants-12263319

Don’t worry Papa , you can always bank this and post in a years time if Hugh has got it wrong.......he’d appreciate that.

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Pierre

Don’t worry Papa , you can always bank this and post in a years time if Hugh has got it wrong.......he’d appreciate that.

Just as well I stopped banking yours.

[papa smurf]

Originally Posted by Pierre

Don’t worry Papa , you can always bank this and post in a years time if Hugh has got it wrong.......he’d appreciate that.

In the meantime we can just treat it as we do a seasonal flue....

[daveeb]

Originally Posted by papa smurf

In the meantime we can just treat it as we do a seasonal flue....

You mean get a chimney sweep to sort it out?

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by jfman

Just as well I stopped banking yours.

Likewise.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Pierre

Likewise.

A thread without jfman-Pierre discussion is like a house without windows.

And with that, can we get back to the topic please.

[jfman]

Iain “get back to the office and buy a coffee you plebs” Duncan-Smith isn’t happy about the MHRA advice.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ers-say-tories

That’s good enough for me. If we can get a quote from Steve Baker of the (I presume ironically named) Covid recovery group I’ll sleep easy tonight.

He doesn’t understand what they thought they were doing ... well, they were doing exactly what they do with every drug that starts to produce post-marketing data. The only problem is that in this case there’s extreme scrutiny of the whole process, which is understandable and unavoidable under the circumstances. The only slightly different line they could have taken would be to advise alternative vaccines without actually acknowledging that there’s a likely risk factor with the Ox-AZ vaccine but again, given the level of scrutiny this whole process is under, that probably wouldn’t have flown - it would just have looked like a fudge, which of course it would have been.

Jonathan Van Tam’s presentation this afternoon was erudite, balanced and very reassuring.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by jfman

Iain “get back to the office and buy a coffee you plebs” Duncan-Smith isn’t happy about the MHRA advice.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ers-say-tories

That’s good enough for me.

I'm not sure the MHRA could have said anything else. Unfortunately, whilst IDS may yearn for a simple life, the MHRA has to follow the science.

[jfman]

Steve Baker is out retweeting folk scaremongering about vaccinating kids.

That’s reassuring that our Conservative backbench MPs have the health of the nation at heart. Remember, as always, there’s no economic recovery without solving the health issue. ONS data shows kids driving all but the first wave (data not available), and no doubt the next one too as schools return with pitiful non-pharmaceutical interventions.

---------- Post added at 23:45 ---------- Previous post was at 23:37 ----------

Originally Posted by 1andrew1

I'm not sure the MHRA could have said anything else. Unfortunately, whilst IDS may yearn for a simple life, the MHRA has to follow the science.

Once the European data became so compelling the game was up. No amount of selective interpretation or skewing the data was ever going to allow the charade to continue.

It’s laughable really to think so-called credible scientists peddled the line a mere few weeks ago that there were less of these rare types of clots among those vaccinated than would be expected to be seen in a population of similar size. Including a release on the MHRA website that lasted a mere two days before being taken down.

The timeline can be traced from 15 March to the Telegraph article on 30 March. At some point between those dates the 15 March statements became demonstrably false to such a clear extent the story was put out on that basis.