Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Vaccination update

Have a read up on Exercise Cygnus, carried out in the UK in 2016.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Cygnus

Hamwich ..... wasn't really thinking about the macro picture ..... the assumption I heard was the last couple of years specifically were lower death years leaving a cohort of vulnerable people ..... not a clue if there's anything to it .... plenty of plausible corealations that don't add up to causality out there (if this even is one in the real world 🙂)

K

I think the macro picture is important because it shows we have to do any analysis against a background of steadily declining figures, otherwise it enables cherry-picking of data to support an hypothesis which really may not be valid at all. Let's take 3 obvious stats from the last 5 years:

1. Average death rate to flu = 17,000
2. Peak year (2014/15) = 28,330
3. Lowest year 2018/19 = 1,692

What can we draw from this? That there are loads of people who would have died from flu last year who are being mopped up by C19 this year? Well, it's possible, but how many given that we expect based on 50 year's worth of data to see a steadily declining pattern.

Clearly taking the average would be wrong as the distribution is so skewed, but lets be cautious and say we would have expected 15,000 excess deaths this year due to flu. Lower than the 5-year average, but not by a huge amount. This is entirely in line with the pattern since 1970. We know that this year's excess deaths are 98,000 or so, so we are now suggesting that only 83,000 people have died of C19, the rest actually dying of flu.

And let's go with Peter's estimate of only 2 million true cases of C19 rather than the 4 million the ONS claims. That gives a death rate from C19 of 4.1%. Let's go wild and say there's 2 year's worth of stored up flu deaths in the stats (very dodgy ground in my view). That gives a death rate of 3.9%. Let's go even further and claim that similar numbers would have died in the next year anyway of other causes, and their bodies were simply weakened by Covid so they died this year instead. That gives a death rate of 2.6%.

It seems to me that however one might want to 'adjust' the data to try and paint C19 as being somehow less serious than it really is, when you start analysing the actual position it doesn't really support anything other than the conclusion that C19 is a flippin' nasty disease to get.

And finally, let's not forget that analyses like these are also deeply flawed because by concentrating on deaths they support the narrative that "If you don't die, you'll be fine", which is hopelessly wide of the mark. As we are seeing, significant numbers of people are suffering limiting symptoms for very long periods following infection - 10% reporting symptoms lasting longer than 3 weeks. That's at least 200,000 people seriously affected.

https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/covid-long-term

C19 is a very nasty disease. We really must not get complacent and we really must ensure that as many people as possible are fully vaccinated as quickly as possible.

Excellent analysis, Tim.
By every measure COVID 19, in its present form, is nasty.

The virus is highly likely to continue to mutate over the next 3 to 5 years into a form that is more contagious but less dangerous, all Corona Viruses do this as it isn't in the interest of a parasite to kill its host.
But not all viruses are so clever, Ebola is a case in point.

In the meantime vaccination is the only logical way forward and whilst I would not support making it mandatory my proposal is that whilst vaccination would not be compulsory anyone who declines should have their passport suspended until they change their mind.
Add to that allowing businesses to require proof of vaccination before entry and we would soon see all those who spend far too much time on the internet reading conspiracy theories change their mind if they can't travel or go and have fun.
I'd also require proof of vaccination before allowing foreign visitors in.

It may be flawed to look at the impact of covid pandemic solely in the terms of flu/covid deaths impacts as there are other medical conditions that have been very much untreated during this pandemic eg cancer treatments, increases in dementia etc. which may lead to excess/premature deaths now and in the coming years that are all outside of any stats correlation.

We have yet to understand what are the long term health impacts on those that have survived the Covid infection but may carry health problems into the future........the true cost of the pandemic has yet to be understood and quantified and will materialise in the detrimental impact on public physical and mental health going forward......IMHO the whole picture has yet to be drawn of the impact of Covid.

This is the bit I do not understand.

So we in the UK are lucky to be ahead in the vaccination race. Sadly the rest of the world has a long way to go in becoming safe. If UK aid money goes to helping chlorine the pool it is a good thing.

So at what point do we choose to protect the pool by blocking all the flights in and out with the exception of critical and vaccinated in order to ensure we retain as much integrity as possible for the vaccine to respond. This allows it to be bought under control and the variant issue to be tightened. It is never going to be a fix but it might dampen the onward risk and make all that money spent on the vaccines more effective?

What am I missing ?

Nothing. Sometimes I despair at our so called scientific experts. I can't see the issue on vaccine passports, I have a yellow fever, hep B etc passport in a yellow book that was mandatory to visit say Cote D'Ivoire.

Fully agree.

Neither can I, but isn't th decision whether to have them or not a political rather than a scientific matter?

Cheers Hamwich ..... first let me nail my colours to the mast .... I have a Science background and am in no way shape or form a 'covid denier' or 'anti-vaxer' .... in fact the exact opposite 🙂

As I've said before on here, the patchy impact of Covid around the world in the face of seemingly contradictory health-care provisions have, since the start, made me consider that factors beyond individual national responses have had the greater part to play in death numbers (eventual widespread vaccine roll-out excluded).

It would appear that 2019 adjusted deaths were around 4% down from 2018, (which was a reasonably typical year) and a similar dip around 2013 was followed by a matching readjustment .... this relates to about 20,000 people.

One consequence of the general decline in death you rightly point out is a top heavy age structure compared to, say, African or South American countries ..... if covid had been a re-run of the Spanish Flu that attacked the younger population our figures would have been very different (but socially more disasterous)

I'm interested to see what the results are of the long term scientific analysis of this pandemic ( the short term political posturings, not so much 🙂) ... one thing's for sure, with modern global communications and massive data gathering we'll get far more understanding from this one than 100 years ago.

Thanks for your very thorough post.

K