Peter wrote:
But actually I can believe that, in liberal countries, lockdowns don’t alter the total number who get ill or die. … Unless a vaccine is developed.
That’s exactly what everyone always said in the beginning (and unfortunately sometimes got lost in translation): All we do is to flatten the curve until we have a vaccine and/or better treatment of the disease so that not so many die.
I was chatting with a friend last night whose brother is a GP somewhere in the city, apparently in their surgery 7 nurses & doctors tested en masse positive for covid. They’re tested every 48 hours so assume they’ve just got infected. What is odd is that all had the Pfizer vaccine 14 days ago, they’re unsure why this seems to have occured, mutation, uk variant, SA variant, not enough time for vaccine to get to work enough, etc.
I’ve no way to verify this, and it could be nonsense.
Malibuflyer wrote:
That’s exactly what everyone always said in the beginning (and unfortunately sometimes got lost in translation): All we do is to flatten the curve until we have a vaccine and/or better treatment of the disease so that not so many die.
That was our government messaging back in the spring. These measures are not intended to protect you personally, rather they are to slow the spread so that the hospitals can cope with the rate of admissions. You will likely still get it, just later, etc.
Unfortunately that is all being lost in the ‘sky is falling’ narrative that the media love. Every human interest piece they do is with someone saying that they don’t feel safe from the virus and implying that it a government task to protect them and make them feel safe. I am yet to see a journalist challenge such wailing from their subject with a repeat of the spring narrative that it’s just about flattening the curve, not protecting you personally.
Off_Field wrote:
I’ve no way to verify this, and it could be nonsense.
It almost certainly is :-)
LFHNflightstudent wrote:
A Stanford university peer reviewed study concludes there is no proof lockdown measures work.
Well, looking at the infection rate in the UK it’s pretty clear they do work: during the November – early December lockdown, the case rate first levelled off after about 5 days then started to fall very dramatically after the lockdown had been in place for about 10 days. Then within days of the lockdown ending, the reverse happened. You can see it quite clearly in the UK case rate graph.
MedEwok wrote:
So, a more accurate summary is: Social distancing measures are effective at curbing the spread of SARS-CoV2, but we do not know if there is a significant benefit to having “hard” lockdowns"
Won’t go into the more conspiracy theory type of rebuttals of the research, this is Stanford research, not Facebook peer review, but the actual words (and the conclusion of the article) are this – While small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find benefits on case growth (what is being called flattening the curve here) of more restrictive NPI’s (lockdowns). Similar reductions may be (not will) achieved by less restrictive measures.
Off_Field wrote:
apparently in their surgery 7 nurses & doctors tested en masse positive for covid
Off_Field wrote:
all had the Pfizer vaccine 14 days ago
From the way the Pfizer vaccine works, it is impossible to get Covid-19 from the vaccine itself (although an infected vaccinator may well be a problem). It only contains the ‘instuctions’ to build a specific part of the virus (spike proteins), not the whole virus.
However – how does this interact with the tests? The Covid PCR tests are testing for virus antigens including that the spike protein…
How do these tests distinguish between the infected and inoculated? Surely they must have thought of this…
Malibuflyer wrote:
All we do is to flatten the curve until we have a vaccine and/or better treatment of the disease so that not so many die.
In a nutshell, that’s all what it is about: 1/ spread admissions and deaths over time and 2/ lower CFR % from improved treatmenent 3/ innovation in vaccine & treatments, so I am not sure what people (with PhD or not) refer to as “lockdown don’t work?”
Long story short,
- with lockdown over 2 years time everybody will catch it (real or vaccine) and x% will die, life will be painful
- without lockdown over 2 months everybody will catch it (real) and 2*x% to 10*x% will die, life will be chaos
On aggregates, lockdown should work !
For individuals, lockdown may not work: it’s just question of timing, me & wife, we catch it last year when it ravages on day-nursery before the day nursery closes, that was in the middle of a tough lockdown !
LFHNflightstudent wrote:
but the actual words (and the conclusion of the article) are this – While small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find benefits on case growth (what is being called flattening the curve here) of more restrictive NPI’s (lockdowns). Similar reductions may be (not will) achieved by less restrictive measures.
Fully agree to your conclusion: It is extremely important to closely stick to the words here: “we do not find benefits” – that says that by the methodology we used and by the data we have chosen to apply this methodology on we haven’t found a proof for …
The problem will be – esp. as “Stanford” always sounds as great name – is that some media will turn that into almost the opposite of what the authors really said and title “Stanford researches have shown lockdowns are not effective”.
@LHNflightstudent,
why did you summarise “While small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find benefits on case growth (what is being called flattening the curve here) of more restrictive NPI’s (lockdowns). Similar reductions may be (not will) achieved by less restrictive measures”
as
“there is no proof lockdown measures work”
?
