How long until this Pandemic ceases?

Dwarvenhobble

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It's a Conspiracy, man! The WHO and the Bilderburg group are gonna make us all take fake COVID vaccines filled with nanomachines to broadcast NPR into our brains so we eat less beef.
From a group linked to the University of Oxford


Here, it seems that PHE regularly looks for people on the NHS database who have ever tested positive, and simply checks to see if they are still alive or not. PHE does not appear to consider how long ago the COVID test result was, nor whether the person has been successfully treated in hospital and discharged to the community. Anyone who has tested COVID positive but subsequently died at a later date of any cause will be included on the PHE COVID death figures.
 

Dalisclock

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I did notice this nice bit at the bottom and one of the sources links to another article by Mr. Heneghan(which in turn also links to other articles at CEBM, whom Mr Heneghan is the director) and two of the links go to pages you're expected to set up the data points yourself so right now they show nothing.

Some of the other sources in the sources also don't go to primary sources, but rather sites called "Stuff" in New Zealand questioning the Death Rates in Italy.

And then there's the disclaimer at the bottom of the page.

Disclaimer:
the article has not been peer-reviewed; it should not replace individual clinical judgement, and the sources cited should be checked. The views expressed in this commentary represent the views of the authors and not necessarily those of the host institution, the NHS, the NIHR, or the Department of Health and Social Care.The views are not a substitute
Yeah, this is all coming across as a big COVID denalism operation with some really half-assed attempts to look legit. I mean, the fact they couldn't be bothered to finish writing the goddamn disclaimer says loads about how seriously I should be taking this.
 

Dwarvenhobble

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I did notice this nice bit at the bottom and one of the sources links to another article by Mr. Heneghan(which in turn also links to other articles at CEBM, whom Mr Heneghan is the director) and two of the links go to pages you're expected to set up the data points yourself so right now they show nothing.

Some of the other sources in the sources also don't go to primary sources, but rather sites called "Stuff" in New Zealand questioning the Death Rates in Italy.

And then there's the disclaimer at the bottom of the page.



Yeah, this is all coming across as a big COVID denalism operation with some really half-assed attempts to look legit. I mean, the fact they couldn't be bothered to finish writing the goddamn disclaimer says loads about how seriously I should be taking this.
So you want a peer reviewed journal article saying the death rates are off because the University of Oxford isn't good enough?

You know the same place helping develop the UKs vaccine right now?

Well there is one on about the death rates in Italy saying that the method of calculating may be inaccurate.

 

Kwak

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"Won't someone rid me of this meddlesome priest?"
 

Trunkage

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no because it's a symptom of a larger issue that any death is being attributed to Covid just because the person had Covid when they died. It's been 1 car crash that's known about but there have been others from other things too.
Yes there has been mistakes....

Which usually ADDS way more to the death toll weeks and months later because the death certificate was done incorrectly (i.e. not attributed to Covid when it should have). And there has been some that takes away from the death toll

This is probably being done deliberately to 'not let panic set in.' But eventually just led to mistrust in the government handling once it became clear whar they were up to.

But sure. Let's focus on just one side
 

Agema

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This article is months old.

The error in how covid-19 deaths were being recorded by Public Health England was in the news months ago, and a correction was issued (the UK's official figures dropped from I think ~48,000 at the time to 41,000).

Secondly, the "5-2" pattern (obviously equating to weekdays and weekends) caused by covid-19 deaths being assigned to days when they were reported rather than when the death actually occurred is common to many countries.
 

Shadyside

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Looks like we might be stuck with this for a couple of years. Even with the vaccine, there's no guarantee that it will truly make you immune to other strains. The government is going to have to pay people to stay home whether they like it or not.
 

Phoenixmgs

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Looks like we might be stuck with this for a couple of years. Even with the vaccine, there's no guarantee that it will truly make you immune to other strains. The government is going to have to pay people to stay home whether they like it or not.
A vaccine for a completely different virus (SARS-COV-1) would make you immune to SARS-COV-2. Why wouldn't a vaccine for a older version of SARS-COV-2 not work? There's a ever-so-slight possibility that a mutation can cause that in any virus of course, but it's nothing to worry about. If such things did happen regularly, vaccines wouldn't be a thing that ever worked in the first place as all viruses mutate faster than the time it takes to develop a vaccine. According to the 1st result I found about normal vaccine timetables, it takes 10-12 years on average. How are vaccines even a thing if we have to keep scrapping them every time there's a new mutation is discovered? Because new mutations very rarely will cause the vaccine to not work. Also, this coronavirus is a rather slow virus in regards to developing mutations (it's nothing like the flu in that regard).
 

Trunkage

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Looks like we might be stuck with this for a couple of years. Even with the vaccine, there's no guarantee that it will truly make you immune to other strains. The government is going to have to pay people to stay home whether they like it or not.
I dare say we are going to have a whole bunch of deaths each year due to the Coronavirus. It will end up like the flu and its seen as an acceptable loss. If that's sounds like what Trump was saying... yes it was. In fact, most medical experts were saying something similar.

So... what gives? We arent remotely in the territory of acceptable loss. Pretending we are in that territory, like Trump did, is a lie. Its a goal, not our current position. Letting 250k people die is quite posibly worse economically than shutting things down
 

Fieldy409

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Yea, like rural US. We literally had a ridiculous amount of real life "Cousin Eddies" from the National Lampoon's Griswold's movies. People eat squirrels here. People eat possums here. People eat rattlesnakes here and they have festivals where they slaughter them and cook them right there for yer too. US Has no grounds to stand on to criticize china for anything here.

I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that the problem was not somebody eating an unusual variety of meat like a bat, but rather that these markets full of live animals are just too animals and too many different species all concentrated into one area. On a huge scale to cater for huge chinese populations.

Agriculture always can concentrate much more resources and thus life of one or few species in an area than a natural system usually can, creating monocultures that let pests and diseases thrive on an abundance of their hosts. Giving a virus an unnaturally potent breeding ground between all the animals of it's host species and with all that breeding comes the chance to gain a new potential host species with mutation and then with so many different species together that new host is available. So rather than the actual eating of bats, it's the concentration of live bats and all sorts of other animals tightly together to cater for millions or even billions of people.

The USA only has 300 something million people. I doubt their rural areas can compare in scale of concentrated animals to Chinese markets feeding their big cities.

But I don't know really. I've never been to China and I don't understand virus science so well.

On topic: I think I heard some company say they hope to have just a billion vaccines by the end of 2021? can't remember exactly but It's a long way to this being over in the world, though cynically I know first world countries will get first dibs and be vaccinated sooner there's a loooong path to a world with Covid-19 immunity even with vaccines. You can't just shit out 7 billion vaccines in a month after scientists are finally confident to say it's safe to use their vaccine.
 

Iron

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I really hope the Biden win will mean that we can stop pretending this is a world-wide pandemic and we can go on with our lives.
 

Agema

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A vaccine for a completely different virus (SARS-COV-1) would make you immune to SARS-COV-2.
A bold statement, given most immunologists don't think some of the vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 will guarantee immunity to SARS-CoV-2.

Why wouldn't a vaccine for a older version of SARS-COV-2 not work? There's a ever-so-slight possibility that a mutation can cause that in any virus of course, but it's nothing to worry about.
I do not agree.

If such things did happen regularly, vaccines wouldn't be a thing that ever worked in the first place as all viruses mutate faster than the time it takes to develop a vaccine.
Antibodies don't really respond to "a virus", they respond to a molecule on the virus. So the question to ask is what molecule are they recognising? Let's assume it's a protein - or more technically part of a protein, because proteins are very big molecules. A virus might express a few dozen proteins. It's perfectly reasonable to think that an antibody might bind to a relatively non-critical (part of a) protein - one which can be mutated without any significant loss of viral function. This antibody is at high risk of becoming ineffective, because that protein on the virus might be easily mutated. Potentially better might be an antibody that recognises a critical part of a virus protein (e.g. its means of binding to a host cell), because whilst a mutation might make the antibody less effective, it will also impair the ability of the virus to infect the host.

And thus why vaccines may be, or become, less effective than we'd like.
 

Agema

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I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that the problem was not somebody eating an unusual variety of meat like a bat, but rather that these markets full of live animals are just too animals and too many different species all concentrated into one area. On a huge scale to cater for huge chinese populations.
You're not wrong.

The larger the number of animals and different types of animal concentrated (particularly in what may be relatively unsanitary conditions), including humans, the greater the risk of spread from one species to another. It would be better to keep the livestock stored apart from each other and people.

I'd actually suggest going further than that, and using less intensive farming methods generally for animals. It would make meat more expensive and we would end up eating less of it, but that would mostly be a positive in all ways except for people's desire to eat meat.
 

Phoenixmgs

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A bold statement, given most immunologists don't think some of the vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 will guarantee immunity to SARS-CoV-2.



I do not agree.



Antibodies don't really respond to "a virus", they respond to a molecule on the virus. So the question to ask is what molecule are they recognising? Let's assume it's a protein - or more technically part of a protein, because proteins are very big molecules. A virus might express a few dozen proteins. It's perfectly reasonable to think that an antibody might bind to a relatively non-critical (part of a) protein - one which can be mutated without any significant loss of viral function. This antibody is at high risk of becoming ineffective, because that protein on the virus might be easily mutated. Potentially better might be an antibody that recognises a critical part of a virus protein (e.g. its means of binding to a host cell), because whilst a mutation might make the antibody less effective, it will also impair the ability of the virus to infect the host.

And thus why vaccines may be, or become, less effective than we'd like.
Sources? I haven't seen a thing about the vaccines not causing an anti-body response.

If you don't agree, then how do we have vaccines for other viruses? Why does a different virus SARS-COV-1 confer immunity to SARS-COV-2? Anyone in the general public worrying about Covid mutations is pretty dumb honestly. I'm sure everyone has far far higher priorities of things to be concerned about than this. Hell, for most of the public worrying about driving safely should be a higher concern than the virus is anyway.

I'm aware of that. The vaccines focus on the spike protein.
 

Agema

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Sources? I haven't seen a thing about the vaccines not causing an anti-body response.
They might not - or they may not work in certain people (some vaccines might not work in children, or the elderly, etc.). There are a number of delivery systems to generate antibodies, some of which may be more effective than others. Most of the failures are likely to be failure to generate a sufficient antibody response; similarly there may be question marks over how long the antibody response from the vaccine lasts. Some are tested in cell culture and work, but they might not in a human host - such is the way with cell culture. And just because an antibody binds doesn't mean it always causes the virus to be attacked.

If you don't agree, then how do we have vaccines for other viruses? Why does a different virus SARS-COV-1 confer immunity to SARS-COV-2? Anyone in the general public worrying about Covid mutations is pretty dumb honestly. I'm sure everyone has far far higher priorities of things to be concerned about than this. Hell, for most of the public worrying about driving safely should be a higher concern than the virus is anyway.
During infection, an antibody response is likely to be generated to multiple proteins on the target virus, several of which might be neutralising. Some antibodies are also non-neutralising - they bind, but they don't cause the virus to be attacked by host cells.

I'm aware of that. The vaccines focus on the spike protein.
Evidence suggests it's the best target to generate an effective response. But it doesn't guarantee that any one individual vaccine will work, and there are other viral targets that might also work.
 

Phoenixmgs

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They might not - or they may not work in certain people (some vaccines might not work in children, or the elderly, etc.). There are a number of delivery systems to generate antibodies, some of which may be more effective than others. Most of the failures are likely to be failure to generate a sufficient antibody response; similarly there may be question marks over how long the antibody response from the vaccine lasts. Some are tested in cell culture and work, but they might not in a human host - such is the way with cell culture. And just because an antibody binds doesn't mean it always causes the virus to be attacked.



During infection, an antibody response is likely to be generated to multiple proteins on the target virus, several of which might be neutralising. Some antibodies are also non-neutralising - they bind, but they don't cause the virus to be attacked by host cells.



Evidence suggests it's the best target to generate an effective response. But it doesn't guarantee that any one individual vaccine will work, and there are other viral targets that might also work.
Results from the Phase1/2 of trials have shown as good a response in older people as it has in young people. You also don't need the vaccine to work on 100% of people for community immunity and basically getting rid of the virus. There's literally nothing pointing to the vaccine not being able to work whether it's due to it just not being good enough basically or due to future mutations or what have you. The way the virus is spreading now, we might not even need the vaccines anyway. Even a place like Tokyo where the death numbers are amazingly low, there's some info (not the biggest sample size though) pointing to possibly half of Tokyo getting infected at some point already.