Wife : did I get fat during COVID?
Husband : You were never really skinny to begin with.
Time Of death 11.15 AM, cause of death COVID
Here’s the second funniest thing I have heard today.
Amazon is selling the PCR kits for £35. This will undermine just about all the other sellers, most of whom are anyway shysters, conmen, wide boys, crooks and criminals.
Next day delivery, even if you order quite late in the day. I think I’ve seen stuff turning up even if the order was placed 8pm the previous day.
The equally funny bit is that Amazon will supply the magic number for the PLF in their order confirmation 
No details are being released on the one person who has reportedly died of Omicron… Maybe he/she died due to a wrong response to a question from his/her wife (got to cover all possibilities there, nowadays) saying “does my bum look too big in these?”
Correct me if I am wrong.
Omicron is more than twice as contagious as Delta. 1% of unvaccinated (2 doses) are likely to die of Delta. 10% of the UK and French population are unvaccinated. That is 1% of around 6.5million people or ariund 6500 people are going to die of the Delta variant in the UK and another approx 6500 in France.
But the vaccines are also only a maximum of 90% effective which makes another 6500 will probably die which makes 13000 people in each country are likely to die of Covid 19.
Now along comes ormicron spreading twice as fast but thought to only be half as lethal (maybe this is a worse case scenario but a figure suggested by senior virologists). So lets say we are talking of 3250 unvaccinated people in each country that could possibly die of the ormicron variant. The total for each country now moves to 16250. At present the 2 vaccines are only 30% effective against ormicron but a third dose increases that back to 90% effectiveness. The problem is that only about a third of the UK population and the same proportion of the French population have received the booster, or as it is now becoming known as the third dose.
So one consider some 110,000 people in each of France and the UK to be at risk of death until we reach the stage when 90% of the population have their third dose. And then we are only talking of 90% effectiveness so we are talking a further 3250 deaths to be expected from the omicron virus.
Off the top of my head we are looking at some 19500 deaths due to all current variants of the virus, with the possibility of up to a further 100,000 deaths whilst the third vaccine dose is being rolled out.
On top of this we have already had ovee 100,000 deaths in each country.
And then there is the collateral damage. The cancer patients who cannot be treated because ICU or staff are not available to treat them.
A paramedic relative of mine in the UK told me of how ambulances have to be completely disinfected after each patient drop off. This takes about 15minutes during which time they are not available to attend emergencies. By the end of the day the delay builds and its not unkown for people to have to wait for 7 hours following a 999 call.
A UK A&E nurse on television told the story of someone arriving at the hospital she worked at suffering from cardiac arrest. The normal reaction would normally be to rush to the patient and start treatment. Now, they can no longer do that they have to follow a procedure of hand cleansing, donning protective gear etc, before they can go to the patient. Not only might the patient die before they can get treatment , but what effect do you think this feeling of helplessness has on the moral of A&E personnel, let alone on any family members pacing the grounds outside the hospital doors.
I agree with others that mandatory vaccinations, lockdowns, vaccine passes etc are all political decisions . And all these measures can be seen as restricting peoples freedom to live their normal life. But on the other hand how many deaths will the public accept before prime ministers or presidents find themselves out of a job?
Peter wrote:
Amazon is selling the PCR kits for £35. This will undermine just about all the other sellers, most of whom are anyway shysters, conmen, wide boys, crooks and criminals.
Might fulfill UK requirements, but not the requirements in Germany: To qualify as a PCR-Test (or an official test at all) the sample collection needs to be done in the controlled environment of a testing center by somebody who checks your personal data. If this is not done, you can send in a sample of your hamster and nobody will notice.
And yes: Even an official testing center is no safe protection against fraud – but two people who have to collude to commit a crime is always much less likely than one who can do the crime silently…
It’s rather obvious IMO, unless of course we see some rapid changes:
I wonder where you got last week data from – to my knowledge SAMRC as the official source of such data in South Africa only publishes weekly data each Wednesday…
BeechBaby wrote:
I am going to bed this evening pondering on the plural of fatsoes….
LOL!
Graham wrote:
But there is a valid conversation to be had about how the virus affects different people, why some are so much more susceptible
That is a valid conversation for sure, particularly for the medical community and those who are concerned.
However, it should not be misused to say that all those who are not are immune. But that is what media and those people do. It makes all the self proclaimed super healthy think that Covid is not any of their concern. And that is clearly wrong.
Graham wrote:
I don’t know why your personal experiences seem to indicate something different to the overall picture – perhaps some of these people have (or had) health issues they didn’t tell you about? People often don’t share everything, and in any case as per above we may have different definitions of fit and healthy.
You can never know that. But so far, not ONE of them has fit into any of the drawers set. Just the opposite. Apart from 2 elderly ones who passed in the first wave, the others were exactly of the type who were going around saying they are so super healthy that it doesn’t worry them. The two we have at work who got it recently are as slender as it gets and both have a vicious exercise regime. One is a paraglider who walks up the mountains he flies from. Not for a long time I reckon, he is still doing very badly almost 2 months into it. All of them got caught by the “it’s a disease for the old, fat and unhealthy”.
And that is clearly wrong. Anyone can get it. Anyone can get a severe case just as well as a benign case. Everyone who does get it is impacted in some way of the other. Even vaccinated people experience massive discomfort, such as semi-permanent loss of taste and smell (all which had it in my surroundings recently complain of this, upwards of 2 months afterwards).
People will do that, the moment someone tells them, no worry for you, they will ignore it. Until it hits them.
Obviously the risk gets hugely reduced by vaccination. And if everyone was vaccinated, the problem would be very managable. But as long as particularly those unvaccinated go by the way of exactly that moniker, Covid is for the fat, unwashed and stupid and I am so super strong that it will not hurt me, this pandemic will go on and on.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
You can never know that. But so far, not ONE of them has fit into any of the drawers set. Just the opposite. Apart from 2 elderly ones who passed in the first wave, the others were exactly of the type who were going around saying they are so super healthy that it doesn’t worry them. The two we have at work who got it recently are as slender as it gets and both have a vicious exercise regime. One is a paraglider who walks up the mountains he flies from. Not for a long time I reckon, he is still doing very badly almost 2 months into it. All of them got caught by the “it’s a disease for the old, fat and unhealthy”.
People’s experiences differ, evidently. I cannot count how many people I know who’ve had it, it must be dozens, plenty of them more than once. However I don’t know anyone who’s had it bad enough to keep them in bed, let alone go to hospital.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
And that is clearly wrong. Anyone can get it. Anyone can get a severe case just as well as a benign case. Everyone who does get it is impacted in some way of the other. Even vaccinated people experience massive discomfort, such as semi-permanent loss of taste and smell (all which had it in my surroundings recently complain of this, upwards of 2 months afterwards).
The data doesn’t suggest quite what you’re implying. Yes anyone can get a bad case, just like anyone can die from a vaccine-related blood clot, but for healthy non-elderly people the chances are very small indeed, and vanishingly small with vaccination.
Again, it is the uneven distribution of risk. Almost all the risk lies with a very small subset. If the fatality rate from confirmed cases is 1%, that does not mean that you take 100 confirmed cases and it is a straight lottery for which one of the 100 dies. How it works is that 97-98 of those cases actually have an essentially zero chance of being the one that dies, and one of the other 2-3 will get the short straw.
Graham wrote:
Again, it is the uneven distribution of risk
That is absolutely right
Graham wrote:
Almost all the risk lies with a very small subset.
That is not quite as right. If it is not for age (where >60 adds 215% on your mortality risk and >75 482%) the impact of other health related risk factors is typically overestimated / overstressed in press articles.
One of the biggest impact is sex (male have a 87% increased mortality risk). Obesity (BMI >30<40) adds 45%, severe obesity (BMI>49) adds 51%. Active smoking 21%, Cardiovascular disease 53% COPD 100%, active cancer 115%, etc. Hypertension with 9% increase of morbidity risk is almost negligible.
So yes, risk is unevenly spread – but by far not in a way that if you do not self identify with a specific risk group you can be sure not to die from it.
Graham wrote:
it is a straight lottery for which one of the 100 dies
Correct. It is not a straight lottery. If you are obese you get one and a half tickets for this 1 in hundred lottery.
A huge game changer in Germany will be the fate of Joshua Kimmich (a soccer player): He was a very outspoken non vaxxer, not particularly overweight, catched covid and and is now suffering from chronic lung function impairment. If they will turn out to be so severe that he has to end his career, many people might reconsider their )non-)vaccination choice.
Malibuflyer wrote:
So yes, risk is unevenly spread – but by far not in a way that if you do not self identify with a specific risk group you can be sure not to die from it.
Not correct.
If you’re not a member of an at-risk group (e.g. elderly or relevant comorbidities) then your risk of dying of Covid-19 is very small indeed, particularly if vaccinated. So small that, if people really understood risk, they would not worry about it in comparison to some other risks they take.
The problem with that argument is that we are seeing an increasing number of very fit very healthy people suffering enough from catching it to have an affect their work for several months.
This came up recently when Lewis Hamilton admitted that having had Covid had affected his performance for a large part of the formula 1 season. Quite a large number of top footballers have admitted the same, particularly respiratory problems and loss of energy. Several top tennis players and golfers are also reported to be suffering the effects of Covid, many months after they thought they were recovered from what had seemed like a nasty cold.
They may not be dying or taking up ICU beds but it is serious for the sporting economy and has to be taken into account and communicated to dispel the myth that the young and healthy are either not affected or just marginally affected.
