# Covid screens to be removed from pubs, offices and restaurants after they are found to increase transmission



## Amity Island (Jun 18, 2021)

After advising businesses and spending millions on installing screens throughout offices, shops, restaurants and cafes to prevent transmisson, current advice is saying this actually makes things worse by blocking air circulation, now the advice is to remove them.









						Perspex screens should be scrapped over fears they increase Covid transmission, Government told
					

Ministers are understood to be drawing up plans for long-term restrictions for living with Covid




					inews.co.uk


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## Inka (Jun 18, 2021)

Looks like ventilation systems might be the way forward. I really wish Covid would fade away and then we wouldn’t have to “live with it”.


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## Leadinglights (Jun 18, 2021)

Even though we have learnt a lot in the 18 months it has been around, there is still so much that is not yet known and so many anomalies. It is very hard to know where we can go from here and move to being back to a normal life.
Even if and when restrictions are lifted, self imposed restrictions in behaviour are making life not feel normal.
We visited somewhere on Sunday which would normally have been really busy but it was deserted, how the poor businesses are managing to survive goodness knows.


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## trophywench (Jun 18, 2021)

@Amity Island - your last sentence.  Consider if you will, the impact of them losing all their grandparents and both their parents to Covid, when compared to those things you mention.  You have to weigh up the pros and cons - which would have been better for them, should you think?

We have 2 daughters.  No1 - who got married to a lovely chap when she already had had one daughter - and subsequently had a boy and a girl, so those 3 have a dad, plus their maternal grandad.  The other one has 4 daughters by 3 different blokes, none of whom bothered to stick around very long and hence the only male figure in any of their lives is Grandad Pete, my husband - and they all love him, trust him, turn to him for advice.  Oh yeah he's old alright, he has COPD - so when he pops his clogs, whenever that happens to occur, goodness only knows what the knock on effect on all their lives might be - and three of the granddaughters also have children .....  Not simple, but hardly unusual in 2021.

How the hell do you arrange things that will be the right solution for everyone whether they happen to have families or not and keep commerce running seamlessly whilst you're at it and by the way, just sort out devolved UK Government, the NHS and a painless transition from being part of the EU while you're on, all without upsetting anyone at all?

You are the Government and know whatever you do, someone's going to say it's wrong anyway, so you can't win!


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## Drummer (Jun 19, 2021)

I know of one family where a grandchild was taken to visit older generations of the family just before Christmas to deliver and collect presents, which resulted in all  of them falling ill as she had caught covid at school but her parents thought she had a bit of a cold. No one died, but they were very ill and are still suffering the effects. 
Some of the families of school friends did lose older members and where the children realised they'd infected them they were extremely distressed.


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## Gwynn (Jun 19, 2021)

This Covid thing is just horrible. Horrible. Horrible.


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## Leadinglights (Jun 19, 2021)

Drummer said:


> I know of one family where a grandchild was taken to visit older generations of the family just before Christmas to deliver and collect presents, which resulted in all  of them falling ill as she had caught covid at school but her parents thought she had a bit of a cold. No one died, but they were very ill and are still suffering the effects.
> Some of the families of school friends did lose older members and where the children realised they'd infected them they were extremely distressed.


That was certainly one of the well known effects that a lot of people seemed totally oblivious to that it was not necessarily  the direct contact with an individual but the indirect ones. We have stayed well away from my family with then working in the NHS and with school age children.
I only now know a couple of people who have been told to self isolate so this is still not going away.
It really is a case of the invisible enemy being your worst enemy.


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## pm133 (Jun 19, 2021)

trophywench said:


> @Amity Island - your last sentence.  Consider if you will, the impact of them losing all their grandparents and both their parents to Covid, when compared to those things you mention.  You have to weigh up the pros and cons - which would have been better for them, should you think?
> 
> We have 2 daughters.  No1 - who got married to a lovely chap when she already had had one daughter - and subsequently had a boy and a girl, so those 3 have a dad, plus their maternal grandad.  The other one has 4 daughters by 3 different blokes, none of whom bothered to stick around very long and hence the only male figure in any of their lives is Grandad Pete, my husband - and they all love him, trust him, turn to him for advice.  Oh yeah he's old alright, he has COPD - so when he pops his clogs, whenever that happens to occur, goodness only knows what the knock on effect on all their lives might be - and three of the granddaughters also have children .....  Not simple, but hardly unusual in 2021.
> 
> ...



You doubly vaccinate all vulnerable people as a priority (which we essentially completed many weeks ago) and then start opening up the economy again whilst vaccinating as many other adults as possible.

There isn't another way to go as far as I can see which protects society and keeps a functioning economy to pay for everything.

The issue here is less what the government are doing and the pace at which they are doing it and the order in which they are doing it. The government can only make decisions about what's best for society in general and not about individual families - as difficult as that is for people to hear.

And no, they can't win. No government can. Whatever decision they make to help one person will hurt someone else.


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## Drummer (Jun 19, 2021)

Leadinglights said:


> That was certainly one of the well known effects that a lot of people seemed totally oblivious to that it was not necessarily  the direct contact with an individual but the indirect ones. We have stayed well away from my family with then working in the NHS and with school age children.
> I only now know a couple of people who have been told to self isolate so this is still not going away.
> It really is a case of the invisible enemy being your worst enemy.


Oh it was direct contact - the child was driven from one house to another after being picked up from school, hugs all round cards and presents exchanged. Half a dozen households were involved but the grandparents were the ones worst affected - some still have problems.
It was against all the guidelines, but some people were ignoring them and getting away with it, others didn't.


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## pm133 (Jun 19, 2021)

Drummer said:


> Oh it was direct contact - the child was driven from one house to another after being picked up from school, hugs all round cards and presents exchanged. Half a dozen households were involved but the grandparents were the ones worst affected - some still have problems.
> It was against all the guidelines, but some people were ignoring them and getting away with it, others didn't.



And rightly or wrongly, in the real world, you will always have lots of people who will not allow themselves to be told what to do by other people.
Not everyone likes to obey the instructions of others.
Not everyone cares about the consequences of their actions on others.
That is a fact of life I'm afraid.

And governments know this. 

As in every other way of life, you only expect a certain number of people to fall into line and you govern accordingly.
That's as true for covid restrictions as it is for things like obeying laws and paying taxes -  their are millions of people for whom the latter two are essentially optional in all but name.


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## Matchless (Jun 19, 2021)

Inka said:


> Looks like ventilation systems might be the way forward. I really wish Covid would fade away and then we wouldn’t have to “live with it”.


Its very unlikely to ever fade away inka it will be with us for a very long time it has and will  continue to  mutate just like the flu every year and they will continue with new vaccines and we will have to live with it just as we do with other illnesses and viruses.


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## Matchless (Jun 19, 2021)

Inka said:


> Looks like ventilation systems might be the way forward. I really wish Covid would fade away and then we wouldn’t have to “live with it”.


Its very unlikely to ever fade away inka it will be with us for a very long time it has and will  continue to  mutate just like the flu every year and they will continue with new vaccines and we will have to live with it just as we do with other illnesses and viruses.


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## pm133 (Jun 19, 2021)

Matchless said:


> Its very unlikely to ever fade away inka it will be with us for a very long time it has and will  continue to  mutate just like the flu every year and they will continue with new vaccines and we will have to live with it just as we do with other illnesses and viruses.



Agreed.

It could well fade away of course but the likelihood is we're just going to have to add covid to the ever lengthening list of things which can kill us and our loved ones and get on with living our lives. We only get a few short years as it is and giving up one of them for this damn thing is quite enough for many of us. Fortunately we have vaccines now which allow us to move on.


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## Inka (Jun 19, 2021)

Matchless said:


> Its very unlikely to ever fade away inka it will be with us for a very long time it has and will  continue to  mutate just like the flu every year and they will continue with new vaccines and we will have to live with it just as we do with other illnesses and viruses.



I’m hoping it will mutate itself into a less harmful form eventually. More like a cold than flu.


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## pm133 (Jun 19, 2021)

Inka said:


> I’m hoping it will mutate itself into a less harmful form eventually. More like a cold than flu.



It already appears to be doing that.

After 4 months, the Indian variant is not causing the serious hospitalisation and death numbers we were seeing during the first 2 peaks. Those who are hospitalised are not as seriously ill as before - even amongst those unvaccinated.


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## Bruce Stephens (Jun 19, 2021)

pm133 said:


> After 4 months, the Indian variant is not causing the serious hospitalisation and death numbers we were seeing during the first 2 peaks. Those who are hospitalised are not as seriously ill as before - even amongst those unvaccinated.


That's just changes in the patient population, isn't it?

I've no heard anyone say that this Delta variant is less virulent. (I'm not sure how much more virulent it's thought to be. Estimates seem to vary.)


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## trophywench (Jun 19, 2021)

Not that anybody will behave differently 'next time we have a pandemic' either - OK Boris Matt Chris and JVT may be wise after the event right now, but by next time if there is one, none of them will be in a position that the Gov of the day will be minded to listen to!  (except knowing upfront they're not spending that sort of money ever again ..... )


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## nonethewiser (Jun 20, 2021)

Really hope screens stay in cafes restaurants. 

We often have lunch in Morrisons when shopping who have screens between tables,  covid aside feel lot less likely to pick up germs from other people sitting at other tables, more so in winter with cold & flu doing rounds & folk sneezing & coughing.


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## pm133 (Jun 20, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> After advising businesses and spending millions on installing screens throughout offices, shops, restaurants and cafes to prevent transmisson, current advice is saying this actually makes things worse by blocking air circulation, now the advice is to remove them.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



It beggars belief that anyone in government thought perspex screens could block an airborne virus in the first place.

Honestly, between perspex screens and masks, you have to start seriously questioning the credentials of some of these "scientists" because they don't seem to understand the basics of the thermodynamics which govern how air moves around and particles spread out spontaneously.

A few years ago now, the minister in charge of science (who I believe had a science degree) was asked by the press to explain the 2nd law of thermodynamics during a media briefing and he couldn't do it. Maybe these questions need to be asked of the current incumbents. This might sound a bit trite but we shouldn't be allowing anyone to make expensive and intrusive decisions like this when they clearly have no idea what the hell they are talking about.

For the layman, here's a wee explanation.
Get someone to spray a small amount of perfume in a corner of a room.
See how long it takes before the entire room smells of it.
Try it in another room whilst wearing a mask and you'll still smell it so that is telling you how effective your mask is.
Try it in a 3rd room and hide behind a perspex screen and you'll still smell it.
Now a layman can satisfy themselves in 3 minutes that masks and screens are useless against water-based aerosols (of which your breath is one) so why can't the people who are asking us all to inconvenience ourselves do it as well. No expensive equipment required.

It's very hard to put into words how disappointing it is for someone like me who loves the discipline of science to see the people at the top of a wonderful profession spouting so much utterly, incomprehensibly, incompetent garbage in the name of something I hold very dear. You always assume they are experts and know what they are doing. Clearly they don't. It's a bit like finally meeting Paul McCartney and finding that he doesn't know actually know how to write music at all and that he was using a ghost writer to create his songs.

It is extremelt damaging that our top scientists show no real understanding of the prblem they are trying to fix. We cannot possibly then trust their advice for how to fix those problems. How on earth did it come to it that THESE incompetent people are in charge at the worst point of our country's existence since 1945.


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## pm133 (Jun 20, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> After advising businesses and spending millions on installing screens throughout offices, shops, restaurants and cafes to prevent transmisson, current advice is saying this actually makes things worse by blocking air circulation, now the advice is to remove them.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



As you know, I've spent the last 14 months or so watching with horror and disbelief at the actions and words of the people at the top of my profession.

50 Tory MPs are trying to bring in a new law preventing spontaneous lockdowns without a parliamentary vote and that all of the scientific advisors have to appear before MPs to be grilled on the justification of their advice AND that these scientists should be held accountable for their advice.
I find myself in full agreement with all of that and I think it's the only way science can ever recover from this disastrous period in its history. Our discipline has shown itself to be no better than the quackery seen in the medical profession before the 20th century. The reputational damage has been such that extreme measures need to be taken.
Society should demand these measures are introduced as soon as possible.

I have a lot of sympathy for the government because these guys are not experts in anything. What leading scientists advising them have done is unforgiveable.


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## pm133 (Jun 20, 2021)

Bruce Stephens said:


> That's just changes in the patient population, isn't it?
> 
> I've no heard anyone say that this Delta variant is less virulent. (I'm not sure how much more virulent it's thought to be. Estimates seem to vary.)



I'm not sure I understand your first sentence.

As for it being more virulent, they are talking about how easily transmissible it is.
That's a completely different thing from a consideration of the effect on people catching that variant. 
For reasons only they can explain, they seem infuriatingly reluctant to discuss the effect of this variant on patients and the evidence clearly showing things are not as bad for those who catch it. None of this evidence is hidden. It's right there in front of our eyes. We can SEE the impact isn't as bad from the ton of available evidence.

Then you have a health secretary who has been shown to be a bare-faced liar deliberately holding back positive news on a whole slew of things so that he can pull rabbits out of a hat at a later date when things start to appear rocky for him (haven't we all worked with people like this who bank good news for a rainy day???) so we know things are even better than the current positive evidence shows.


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## Bruce Stephens (Jun 20, 2021)

pm133 said:


> It beggars belief that anyone in government thought perspex screens could block an airborne virus in the first place.


They didn't. They thought it would be effective against a virus transmitted in aerosol form. (So droplets as typically produced when coughing and sneezing.)


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## Bruce Stephens (Jun 20, 2021)

pm133 said:


> I'm not sure I understand your first sentence.


I mean that the population being hospitalised now is younger than before (because more older people are vaccinated).

So it's no surprise that they're less seriously sick.


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## pm133 (Jun 20, 2021)

Bruce Stephens said:


> They didn't. They thought it would be effective against a virus transmitted in aerosol form. (So droplets as typically produced when coughing and sneezing.)


That's what I meant by "airborne virus".
Oh and the vast majority of these aerosols will not be sneezing or coughing at all. It'll be from normal breathing.


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## pm133 (Jun 20, 2021)

Bruce Stephens said:


> I mean that the population being hospitalised now is younger than before (because more older people are vaccinated).
> 
> So it's no surprise that they're less seriously sick.


Exactly. That's my point.

If hospitalisations are less serious, why all the knicker-wetting from the authorities about this?


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## Bruce Stephens (Jun 20, 2021)

pm133 said:


> That's what I meant by "airborne virus".
> Oh and the vast majority of these aerosols will not be sneezing or coughing at all. It'll be from normal breathing.


People apparently use the two terms in some technical sense so the two things (very small airborne particles which can stay in the air and larger droplets which will tend to fall) are distinct.

Initially the government (and WHO) thought this virus transmitted mostly in the larger droplets. Hence (I think) this idea of 1m or 2m separation being "safe", and this idea of screens and (for people who prefer not to use masks) visors.

I agree that (as with so much) it's crazy. If we didn't know, we should have tested. Can't be impossible to devise trials that could say whether improving ventilation was more effective than such screens. I suspect the government feared the answer: ventilating all state owned buildings (all schools, etc.) would be much more expensive (and likely just impossible to do, even if they'd tried) than some perspex screens.


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## Bruce Stephens (Jun 20, 2021)

pm133 said:


> If hospitalisations are less serious, why all the knicker-wetting from the authorities about this?


Purely numbers, I think. They're low enough now but the modelling suggests they might be high enough to be disruptive. The more people who test positive, the more people are stuck at home isolating rather than being out working and spending, and the more people in hospital the more they're occupying space that could be being used for handling other problems. (Occasionally politicians warn of possibly 10s of thousands of deaths; that feels like nonsense to me, though I think it's also in the models. Still feels like nonsense.)


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## pm133 (Jun 20, 2021)

Bruce Stephens said:


> People apparently use the two terms in some technical sense so the two things (very small airborne particles which can stay in the air and larger droplets which will tend to fall) are distinct.
> 
> Initially the government (and WHO) thought this virus transmitted mostly in the larger droplets. Hence (I think) this idea of 1m or 2m separation being "safe", and this idea of screens and (for people who prefer not to use masks) visors.
> 
> I agree that (as with so much) it's crazy. If we didn't know, we should have tested. Can't be impossible to devise trials that could say whether improving ventilation was more effective than such screens. I suspect the government feared the answer: ventilating all state owned buildings (all schools, etc.) would be much more expensive (and likely just impossible to do, even if they'd tried) than some perspex screens.



Not sure why they'd need to differentiate between those two terms but I've clarified what I meant so that we understand each other.
I certainly can't understand why they thought only large droplets would contain the virus. That would make no sense whatsoever.
Then when they found out that all droplet sizes can contain the virus why on earth didn't they announce that masks wouldn't help at all? Why have they kept us wearing something which can cause respiratory issues if people re-use them for too long and allow mould to get into the pores?

The perspex screen thing could have been tested in any analytical chemistry lab in vrtually any university with a cheap IR machine (which usually lie unused in a corner) at almost zero cost within a few hours.

I am genuinely searching my brain here for a reasonable explanation for all of this and I can only assume that they are just simply incompetent. I'm not buying any conspiracy theory nonsense and nothing else really explains it as far as I can see.
I think all these people have migrated to the top of the administrative tree and once in charge they've collectively been found out to be utterly useless. We've all seen countless examples of this in every organisation. It's pretty shocking to see it at the very top levels in the country though. Turns out our very best scientists are absolutely useless in a crisis situation. How they sleep at night whilst taking a hefty wage is frankly beyond comprehension.

The head of the Independent Sage group has been directly quoted in the press crowing about how great this has all been because now all 12 members are household media stars.
150,000 people have died in the UK alone and this leading scientist is publicly buzzing because him and his colleagues have all become famous. He can't wait to use this new-found fame to push the climate change agenda. That's worth letting sink in for a second. That is borderline psychopathic behaviour. I'll try and dig out his exact comments.


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## pm133 (Jun 20, 2021)

Bruce Stephens said:


> Purely numbers, I think. They're low enough now but the modelling suggests they might be high enough to be disruptive. The more people who test positive, the more people are stuck at home isolating rather than being out working and spending, and the more people in hospital the more they're occupying space that could be being used for handling other problems. (Occasionally politicians warn of possibly 10s of thousands of deaths; that feels like nonsense to me, though I think it's also in the models. Still feels like nonsense.)



I understand the argument.
I also understand the use of modelling. That was my discipline when I was in science (a different type of modelling - theoretical chemistry - but the idea of trying to make predictions is exactly the same).

What I don't understand is the refusal to look at the vast amount of actual data to compare with what the models predicted at this stage. That's how you check your model is correct. All competent scoentists would have done that at every step of the way.
That either hasn't been done in this case or it's telling a story they don't want to have publicised which is that their models are not being matched by actual data.
So then you ask why they would keep that quiet and not tell everyone.
The answer to that is because telling people the models are crap would completely undermine public confidence in these people. This is where politics trumps science. Who amongst these top people wants to admit to making a mistake?

And THAT should raise a red flag straight away about those in charge. We all know that countless mistakes have been made. Can you name a single top scientist or government minister who has publicly admitted to a single one? I can't think of any. That's not normal at all. Someone MUST have made these mistakes but apparently nobody is accountable for any of it.


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## Bruce Stephens (Jun 20, 2021)

pm133 said:


> Not sure why they'd need to differentiate between those two terms but I've clarified what I meant so that we understand each other.
> I certainly can't understand why they thought only large droplets would contain the virus. That would make no sense whatsoever.


As far as I understand it the difference is significant for at least some respiratory infections. Not that they only transmit in one form or another, but that one is much more significant than the other.

I presume they (WHO scientists) had reasons to think that this virus transmitted mostly in droplets, and so there was also a risk of transmitting it from surfaces (supported a bit by detecting virus fragments on surfaces), and not so much by airborne transfer. Again, not that surface transfer can't happen, but it's now thought not to be that important.

(It's not just the UK government. Some of the virus escape from quarantines elsewhere seem to be most likely due to transfer by air flow between rooms since they just didn't think that would be a significant risk. And maybe it isn't, I guess, but it probably happens.)


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## pm133 (Jun 20, 2021)

Bruce Stephens said:


> As far as I understand it the difference is significant for at least some respiratory infections. Not that they only transmit in one form or another, but that one is much more significant than the other.
> 
> I presume they (WHO scientists) had reasons to think that this virus transmitted mostly in droplets, and so there was also a risk of transmitting it from surfaces (supported a bit by detecting virus fragments on surfaces), and not so much by airborne transfer. Again, not that surface transfer can't happen, but it's now thought not to be that important.
> 
> (It's not just the UK government. Some of the virus escape from quarantines elsewhere seem to be most likely due to transfer by air flow between rooms since they just didn't think that would be a significant risk. And maybe it isn't, I guess, but it probably happens.)



OK so now you're mixing the two terms. 

Whether we use the word "aerosol" or "airborne", The virus IS transferred along with water molecules and only water molecules.

The droplets are not just the big and juicy ones from sneezing and coughing but in the general humidity that comes with breathing out. And like general humidity, those fine particles of virus drenched water are light enough to hang in the air almost indefinitely unless some ventilation or general air movement forces it to move.

Large or small, aerosol or droplet, whatever you want to call it, it's all transfer by differing quanitities of water and that water is absolutely teeming with whatever you have in you - bacteria, food, viruses, CO2, nitrogen, everything.

I don't really want to get hung up on what actual words we are using as long as we understand each other here. I prefer to keep that sort of thing to academic papers where it matters more. 

As an aside, that's me dumped my masks as of tonight.
I'm done with them. Asda without a mask was an absolute joy tonight and I wasn't the only one ditching them. I'm not going to criticise others for wearing something which is worse than useless but that's me finished with them.

If someone running the shop asks me to put one on I'll politely decline. If they ask me to leave their shop, I'll be happy to do so without kicking up a fuss or being "that guy" but enough is enough.

It's like a weight off to be honest. Wish I'd done this sooner but that's it done now.


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## pm133 (Jun 21, 2021)

On the positive side, Hancock has finally accepted this morning that the data is there to show that vaccines are working and that we are now on the right track for re-opening perhaps earlier than mid-July.

What is it with these people that they always have to be so far behind everyone else? The data on this has been clear and available for absolutely ages. It's as though someone voted the slowest kid in the class to take charge.


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## pm133 (Jun 21, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> The same can be said for so many decisions strategies undertaken by the government. That is why we have so many scientists, doctors and experts voicing the same disbelief against their fellow scientists, doctors and experts. Very little has made sense right from the very start. Unfortunately, all the "good" people have been pretty much sidelined through the whole pandemic, all the ones who believe in what they were taught, what almost the whole scientific community believed about viruses. These people get no airtime. Anything that goes against the televised narrative doesn't get seen or heard.


There's a lot about this pandemic which has been truly baffling. The U-turning on herd immunity was certainly one of them.

First, it was the only game in town, then overnight the message from the same people was that to believe this meant you wanted to "kill granny" and then an admission that herd immunity was a few days away (remember that from a couple of months ago), was a good thing and that we should be proud that we've achieved it, then it went all quiet again as the new message was to panic and shriek over this new "more dangerous" Indian variant which has been anything BUT more dangerous than the dominant strains in either of our previous waves, now we're back onto herd immunity again in all but name but this time they're not actually using the phrase ("we'll need to live with it" is the new buzz-phrase but it means the same thing).

One could almost conclude that these people simply don't know what the hell they are talking about.

As for the rest of your post, I do get where you are coming from and have some sympathy for parts of that view. I am also open to persuasion that lockdown may have done more harm than good. I'm not persuaded that lockdown has killed more than it has saved but it's certainly not the clear cut success that the mainstream is claiming. I do however still believe it was necessary at the start. I'd have removed lockdown last May and only re-introduced it once it was clear the NHS was going to be swamped. And I do mean CRYSTAL clear from actual real data - not "the models suggest, we might, possibly, could, maybe...." clear.

Stacking up on your side of the argument are some reasonable and intelligent people who have presented very good arguments to back their positions. But you've also got every crackpot under the sun piling in on that side as well, screeching about "blocked" cures such as things like Invermectin, prayer, vitamin C and in one famous case - injecting bleach straight into peoples lungs. When you look around you and see that collection of raving nutters on your side of the argument, you haven't a hope in hell of having your voice heard.
That's been an issue from day 1.

I read a book about non-violent civil disobedience. I can't remember the name of the book but it had a white flower on it. It talked about how people like Gandhi, conscientious objectors during the wars, the people involved in the Northern Ireland peace process etc. won the day using peaceful methodsand one thing stood out which reminds me of what's happening now.
There's a time and place for having your voice heard. When the timing is wrong, you are wasting time and effort. There were lessons in there about when to accept that right now you have lost individual battles, to keep your powder dry, don't give in to violence and to focus on winning the overall war. Those advocating peace during WW1 were completely overwhelmed by the emotional urge for "glory" amongst the population. Could you imagine people agreeing to forced conscription for a 3rd world war now?

12 months ago, you'd have trouble convincing anyone that lockdowns were a bad thing and that masks were useless. Public opinion goes largely on emotion and a year ago people were embarassing themselves by banging pots and pans on a Thursday night. You had no chance whatsoever to successfully present an opposing narrative.

Now, however, things are changing. People are still led by emotion but now they're starting to see that this is affecting them personally. They've seen the vulnerable all fully vaccinated but are still not free. People are now asking what the hell the point of all this was. Now you're seeing civil disobedience on a much larger scale. Beaches, parks, trains, planes, pubs, packed with people not social distancing or wearing masks. More and more people are now shopping without masks on and not being challenged anymore. Governments rule by consent and you can see they're losing the war. They KNOW they are losing the war. It's beautiful to watch this happening.


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## Bruce Stephens (Jun 21, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> How did they come to that conclusion when during the initial trials they never purposely infected those vaccinated and unvaccinated with the virus?


What's wrong with the Phase 3 trials? The results seemed pretty convincing to me and seem to be holding up in practice. (I mean in principle. There's lots of details that aren't ideal, especially in those for the Oxford/AZ vaccine which were complex and confusingly described.)

There was discussion of human challenge trials and as you say they never went ahead. I think partly it's because the normal trials went ahead fine (there was some worry that prevalence would be too low for enough people in the trials to become infected in their normal lives), but also because they might not have shown useful things. The problem is that any ethics committee is only going to let you test people who are very likely to be OK (so healthy young adults) but those aren't really the people who're important with this virus.

(Personally I'd support using Covid skeptics in experiments but unfortunately they're also very likely not to want to take experimental vaccines so they'd be of limited value.)


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## Bruce Stephens (Jun 21, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> How can we compare 2 groups if neither have knowingly been tested against the virus.


Again, what's wrong with the Phase 3 trials?

You take a large group of volunteers, vaccinate a random half of them (the other half getting some placebo), and have them all live their normal lives until some pre-specified number have become infected. (You choose the pre-specified number to be large enough to suitably reduce the probability of a positive result by chance, but as low as you think you can get away with (because you want a result fast).)

Once you've tested for safety and dose (in previous phases) that's easy to get ethical approval for (you're not asking anyone to do anything they wouldn't be doing anyway) and it tells you what you really want to know: how well does the vaccine reduce the chances of symptomatic infection in the real world? (Some trials used endpoints different to symptomatic infection. I think some regularly tested participants, for example.)


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## Bruce Stephens (Jun 21, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> But were they living their normal lives during the trials?


Well no, that's fair. But they were living the same lives as everyone else at the time, in environments where it was expected that some proportion would become infected.

I agree that doesn't directly give evidence of what might happen when all restrictions are lifted and people return entirely to normal (whenever that might happen). If we were willing to deliberately expose people to increased risk of infection then we could perhaps get closer to that, but we're not (apart from school children, arguably).


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## pm133 (Jun 21, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> Something that has really stuck in my mind is that we were told by government vaccines are the "only route back to normal". How did they come to that conclusion when during the initial trials they never purposely infected those vaccinated and unvaccinated with the virus?
> 
> Doesn't make sense. How can we compare 2 groups if neither have knowingly been tested against the virus.
> 
> ...



They started talking about the vaccines being the only way out when they saw the copious amounts of data showing that they completely broke the link between cases and hospitalisations/deaths amongst those who had been vaccinated. I don't recall them talking like that before that data was available and I'd want some context before discussing it if they did. There's no other reasonable explanation for why deaths/hospitalisations amongst the vulnerable groups has hit virtually zero overnight and I notice you've not really attempted to answer that question.

The Indian variant has shaken them a bit but they are already starting to accept (waaaaaay too slowly) that this variant is being smoked by the vaccines as well.

They are completely correct, in my opinion, that vaccines get us out of this. Natural herd immunity was the only other option and I'd have backed that approach too. For all the tiresome moralising, nobody else has offered a single practical alternative to those two approaches. It's a childish notion for some people (and there are many) to suggest we can stay locked down or under restrictions forever.

The logical flaw in your last paragraph is that the unvaccinated and partially vaccinated groups all showed increases in cases at exactly the same time as the fully vaccinated hit zero so I'm afraid that your argument in that regard is a busted flush as far as I can see but I'm always open to persuasion.

It's still a substantial majority who are wearing masks. I was the only person not wearing one whilst doing my weekly shop today and the shop was pretty busy. It was a wee bit stressful because despite all apearances I hate confrontation with a passion but nobody even looked at me, let alone say something. Apparently I have a fabulous "angry face" and I've shaved my head so maybe that was part of it.  Still, standing up for what you believe in is never an easy business. I honestly don't know how campaigners who genuinely face death and violence can find the strength to stand up anyway. I am happy to take a police fine but I couldn't do it if violence was a likelihood.


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## pm133 (Jun 21, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> It's fine in one respect, if that is all you are trying to achieve, but to make the claim "only route back to normal" without having actually tested against the virus, seems very presumptious. Do you not think?


You seem to be getting hung up on the word "only".

The alternative is herd immunity and maybe the risk of an additional hundred thousand deaths - maybe more. Vaccines in comparison kill perhaps less than 1000.

Imagine yourself in Number 10 and those are your alternatives.
It's a no brainer isn't it? And if it isn't a no brainer for you, why not?

It's one thing supporting herd immunity when it's the only option.
It's another thing when a vaccine is showing itself to cause almost no deaths in comparison.

We're in the realms now where we can do both. We are in optimum country now. We can open up with virtually no deaths or serious illnesses.


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## Drummer (Jun 21, 2021)

Although there are a lot of illogical rules and guidelines at the moment we can only really wait until things calm down and checks are carried out to see what is and is not effective.
There should also be some checks on the way money was lost due to fraud, and to the opportunities missed  - there was an offer made by a PPE maker to increase output to provide equipment here in the UK which was totally ignored, and he ended up selling to the US, whilst large orders were made to overseas firms which took the money and never delivered, and there were also large amounts of equipment which arrived incorrectly packaged, or marked as unsuitable for the use it was intended.


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## pm133 (Jun 22, 2021)

Amity Island said:


> Hi pm133,
> 
> It's not the "only" bit that is the problem, it's the fact that at the time that statement was made, they didn't really know the new vaccines were even an option _at all_, because they hadn't tested them against the virus. Could anyone make an  announcement about anything, if it hadn't actually been proven under clinical study e.g by exposing those directly to the virus. What made that statement even more unreliable, is that at the time of the trials, we were not in a normal environment, there were social distancing restrictions in place, works places closed down, people told to stay at home, hospital appointments cancelled. Are these the right settings to test a vaccine against a virus?



I can't comment on any of that I'm afraid because I genuinely don't remember them talking about that before vaccines were available.


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