UK Covid dashboard showing ‘zero deaths’ but also flashing warning signals

[pm133]

No, but we could delay (or slow) reopening a bit. Israel is reporting about 10% of the cases per million that we are. Presumably because they have a higher proportion of the population vaccinated.

If we thought long term effects of covid were common enough or serious enough, we could surely wait a month or two until we had similar levels of vaccination. (I guess we might need to aim for higher levels given the delta variant which I think isn't common in Israel yet. Even so, it wouldn't be restrictions forever.)

Then the governments need to come out and explicitly state that this is now about long covid and let the public decide whether to accept that or not.

Long covid is not a good enough reason to continue trashing the economy in my opinion. If this is about covid directly, the public will probably accept another couple of months of waiting. For post-viral syndrome? I very much doubt they'll tolerate losing another summer for that.

 

[pm133]

Pm133,

I'm in full agreement with what you are saying. You seem to be disagreeing that we are agreeing, if that makes sense. I understand that too, these are reported, not confirmed nor dismissed. It's just official data. Same for long covid. Only self reported. That's not to say though that it should just be dismissed. However, this is the only official data to look at, at the moment.

Then I'm honestly struggling to see what point you were trying to make.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Then the governments need to come out and explicitly state that this is now about long covid and let the public decide whether to accept that or not.

I don't think there's enough data to use that as a reason. My guess is that England will more or less reopen on schedule, with maybe some restrictions retained for a while.

It would probably be better to wait a couple of weeks (that's what some scientists are suggesting) in order to get really good information about the delta variant, but I think Johnson (and others) wouldn't want that so we'll have an awkward compromise that doesn't really work for anything.

 

[pm133]

I don't think there's enough data to use that as a reason. My guess is that England will more or less reopen on schedule, with maybe some restrictions retained for a while.

It would probably be better to wait a couple of weeks (that's what some scientists are suggesting) in order to get really good information about the delta variant, but I think Johnson (and others) wouldn't want that so we'll have an awkward compromise that doesn't really work for anything.

From a scientific point of view, I can understand your second paragraph but the problem here is that it's putting the cart before the horse. There will always be a new variant. They are talking about a Nepal variant now as well as some other double mutant beast from hell variant which appears to be a cross between Indian and South African variants. We can't keep on waiting for data. At some point we need to remove restrictions until a variant shows itself to be a problem. There isn't another sustainable path.
It looks like at least one Sage scientist is in agreement with this and is talking about it today (I think) where he says we can't keep obsessing over every new variant.

I agree with your first paragraph. Unfortunately, whlst I think 21st June will go ahead, they'll keep masks and social distancing. I'm beginning to get the fear that they'll never remove that piece of law. Irrational I know but then there's no credible science to back their continued use so I'm not the only one indulging in irrationality.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Unfortunately, whlst I think 21st June will go ahead, they'll keep masks and social distancing.

I think they might drop the laws and go to recommendations. So recommend face masks in some places. (Maybe require them on public transport.) And continue to recommend social distancing in most places, while allowing hospitality and so on to open fully (where social distancing isn't possible). (As a tweak, I guess they might give slightly different recommendations for vaccinated people, as the CDC did.)

And keep the recommendation to work from home if possible (which is probably free because people will do that anyway).

 

[pm133]

I think they might drop the laws and go to recommendations. So recommend face masks in some places. (Maybe require them on public transport.) And continue to recommend social distancing in most places, while allowing hospitality and so on to open fully (where social distancing isn't possible). (As a tweak, I guess they might give slightly different recommendations for vaccinated people, as the CDC did.)

And keep the recommendation to work from home if possible (which is probably free because people will do that anyway).

And I would accept all of that if it turned to guidance rather than mandatory. I hope you are right about that.

 

[pm133]

Just showing how the current official figures compare with covid and vaccines side effects and deaths. I am not going to draw any conclustions from them, but somebody should be. Why bother collecting all this data if nobody is verfiying anything.

What makes you think they are not trying to verify the results?
These companies and governments across the world will have teams working on that.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Just that there doesn't seem to be much to go on, besides the yellow card reports.

They managed to find these rather specific, rare, blood clots with low platelet counts, and (now) these cases of heart inflammation (likely from the Pfizer vaccine).

 

[pm133]

Another research group believes they have found the problem with the AZ vaccine causing blood clotting and seem to know how to fix it.

People absolutely are looking at all of these things.