COVID19

[Marky147]

Should it not just be considered as winter flu ?

Does nobody die of pneumonia/ heart attack / stroke anymore?

All deaths are grouped as covids ?

What are the normal daily deaths pre covid in the uk ?

For someone that has been so involved in COVID logistics, I'm surprised you come out with that, lol.

Death certificate numbers are even higher than the deaths you'll see used using the 28 days business.

[Marky147]

Also, if you listen to half the windowlickers online, everyone that has been vaccinated is having a heart attack.

[EvilPie]

Also, if you listen to half the windowlickers online, everyone that has been vaccinated is having a heart attack.

That's good news. At least if I have a heart attack I don't have to worry about the AIDS they told me I was going to get.

[Marky147]

Also, if you listen to half the windowlickers online, everyone that has been vaccinated is having a heart attack.

That's good news. At least if I have a heart attack I don't have to worry about the AIDS they told me I was going to get.

 

[tonytats]

The media try whipping us up into a frenzy

Just like the weather men after getting the gale of 1988 wrong they’ve been so over cautious.
Just three weeks ago we were warned of 8 inches of snow yet we barely had any

With covid we have to remain open ,shield the old and weaker folk , and try and carry on

I went into our towns shopping centre for a fit to fly test at boots there were at least 30% of people without masks
It’s probably been a year since I’ve been up town and will likely be the same before I go again

[Sheriff Fatman]

I, and other people I know from different social circles, have had Covid over Xmas and it’s all similar symptoms - basically that of a head cold, without the big coughing and lung shenanigans of previous waves.

I’m in Dublin and in the space of a few days, it went from me not knowing anyone who had covid since the start of it all, to several friends, who don’t know each other, getting it in a space of a few days. It’s essentially everywhere here - case levels are at record levels yet many people can’t even get PCR tests as the testing centres are maxed out - the website to book them gets booked out just after midnight everyday when the new day’s appts are available.

It will be interesting to see whether the longer term effects of Omicron are also milder, as these have been more of an issue for me than the actual symptoms while infected.

I tested positive in late October, so this was presumably Delta virus as it pre-dated Omicron.  The symptoms while isolating were exactly as you describe - a head cold without a significant cough or lung issues, thankfully (no doubt helped by being double-vacced at that time).

When my nose cleared up I realised that I'd lost my sense of smell, albeit I could still taste most things as before.  I've gradually regained a bit of the sense of smell, but it's still nothing like it was pre-Covid.  Over Christmas I realised that my sense of taste is also not 100%, most notably from eating hazelnuts and walnuts which I literally could not taste, even if I chewed them for a prolonged period of time to try to force me to taste them.

The bigger issue for me was that I discovered that I got easily fatigued from mild exertion.  I tail-walked a local parkrun a couple of weeks after my isolation period ended.  The course has a long drag of a hill on each lap and I discovered that I was getting light-headed as I went up it each time.  Oddly, the sensation never quite disappeared for the rest of the day and I felt 'off' for the rest of it, to the extent that I abandoned plans to go to the football and to a gig that evening.

The impact has been that it has made me very cautious in terms of doing too much, as it has been an intermittent symptom that could get triggered quite easily.  For example, I got dizzy climbing a single flight of stairs at work on a couple of occasions.  It's pretty much gone now, albeit I haven't yet attempted to do any meaningful running or high-exertion exercise.

For anyone testing positive over Christmas (and like Andrew, this seems to have been loads of people in my social circle) I would suggest a little bit of caution regarding whether or not you have any longer-term symptoms.  Some, like the sense of smell, might be minor inconveniences but the energy level thing, for me, has been something that I've had to be mindful of and treat with more respect.

[tonytats]

I have the same
I randomly feel fatigued and out of breath
Phlegm production is ridiculous- coughed into a tissues in my van put in a Marcy d bag and burnt every other day
Some nights I’m up with the lark after 5-6 hours sleep other times I need more
I’m ready for bed from 930 pm most evenings
I’m lucky in that if I don’t feel like work I don’t need to log on and can finish any time and say yes or no to jobssent to me ,but generally I do at 63 drive 5.5/6 days a week

[Doobs]

Should it not just be considered as winter flu ?

Does nobody die of pneumonia/ heart attack / stroke anymore?

All deaths are grouped as covids ?

What are the normal daily deaths pre covid in the uk ?

 
Should it not just be considered as winter flu ?

Covid was originally about 10 times as deadly as winter flu, and simply isn't flu.  Going forward, with vaccines/prior infections/better treatments etc. it is still much nastier than all but the very worst flu epidemic, but we will probably be much less likely to use significant restrictions.   Omicron is now expected to be something like a third to half as bad as previous versions (half is what I have seen estimated for the oldest ages).   I expect deaths to climb up over the next month or so, but not to anything like we saw in wave 1 and wave 2.  I think we'll learn to live with it, like we do flu, but it just isn't flu, and will cause a bigger strain on the NHS (people hang round in hospital/ICU longer and there will likely be more of them).  I definitely wouldn't want to see a strain that spreads as well as omicron, and was as deadly as earlier versions though.

Does nobody die of pneumonia/ heart attack / stroke anymore?

Yes, and Marky covered most of this.  At peak, Covid was killing more than anything else, and without interventions I think it is fair to say it would have killed around as many as pretty much everything else put together.  I  think the original estimate was about 500,000 without interventions which is in line with the annual death rate for everything else combined.  We are unlikely to see anything like that going forward and heart problems and cancer will likely be bigger killers.  It is hard to be too confident, as new strains could be different and vaccines/previous infections could become less (or more) effective in providing protection against future strains, or vaccine take up could become much lower.

  All deaths are grouped as covids ?

I think Covid deaths are pretty much correctly described as Covid deaths when looking at overall figures.  We can look at excess deaths, deaths where Covid is listed as the primary cause on death certificates and deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid test, ad each produces roughly the same numbers.  Deaths within 28 days, and excess deaths, have weaknesses but they are both in the same ballpark as death certificates.  I think this means that we can be pretty sure that whichever method you use for Covid deaths is about right. Sure there may exist someone who died in a car crash within 28 days of a test (yawn), but Covid won't be on the death certificate and they are unlikely to be an excess death as people previously died in car crashes.  And whilst some of those who die before 28 days didn't die with Covid as a primary cause, there are likely to be similar amounts of others dying after 28 days who did die of Covid. So an individual death can be wrongly attributed to Covid, but overall it is unlikely to be making any significant difference to the counting.

What are the normal daily deaths pre covid in the uk ?       

It depends whether it is winter or summer, and when you mean?  We did get down below 500,000 deaths a year for a short time before Covid, but the population was ageing, and improvements in life expectancy were already slowing, so those levels were probably optimistic.  So maybe 1400 a day would be roughly right without Covid (with more in the winter, less in the summer).  So an extra 100 or 200 a day is going to be nasty, but not massively so, and a lot less than we were seeing at peak Covid.

[Doobs]

It seems Boris Johnson has found a way to unite all sides of the Covid debate.

[StuartHopkin]

It seems Boris Johnson has found a way to unite all sides of the Covid debate.

Watching PMQs earlier really was a prime example of them all at their worst. Disgusting.

Still jeering, heckling, point scoring, making jokes and not taking any of it seriously.

They all need to go.

[EvilPie]

It seems Boris Johnson has found a way to unite all sides of the Covid debate.

Watching PMQs earlier really was a prime example of them all at their worst. Disgusting.

Still jeering, heckling, point scoring, making jokes and not taking any of it seriously.

They all need to go.

Bunch of absolute twats.

Unfortunately if they all go they'll just get replaced with another bunch of absolute twats.

Maybe get someone in from a poorer background so that the £75k salary gets you a person with a functional brain rather than a complete turnip

[Doobs]

Given I said we that we should have a clearer view by New Year's Eve, I'll do an update.

I am not sure we should have been cracking open the champagne on New Year's Eve or visiting vulnerable relatives at Christmas, but I did both.

I'd say that it is pretty clear by now that Omicron is milder than delta, but can't say how much of that is down to vaccines, previous infections, the virus itself or age distribution of victims.  I think it is a combo of all those things, and the proportions don't really matter.  There is also some evidence that it has peaked in London; I don't think it is falling rapidly yet, and it is hard to tell due to the disruptions to reporting over Christmas and the New Year.  I think it has least hit a plateau and has probably fallen a bit.  Deaths have been pretty flat since I posted last time.

So that is the good news, on to the not so good news.

Cases overall have been increasing pretty rapidly, but are no longer doubling every 2 or 3 days.  It doesn't seem like long ago at all that cases had been steady at about 50,000 a day for some time.   There might be some disruption in the figures, but we are close to 200,000 a day right now.  It might not be obvious to most, but that 200K ignores reinfections, so if you have officially had it before, then your current infection doesn't count.  This didn't really matter much before omicron, as reinfections were known to be fairly rare, but now it is likely to be significant.  This is on target to get resolved towards the end of January, so they'll likely be an unusual jump around then. 

Hospitalisations have also been rising rapidly, by about 60% a week.  People seem to be spending less time in hospital, which is good.  Some of that may be temporary, as omicron is so new that longer stays aren't possible yet, so average and median stays can be understated (some of those currently in for a couple of days could still end up staying a couple of months).  Also ICU and ventilator beds are still looking much lower than in the last, which appears to be at least partially genuine (again much of that will be hidden as hospital admissions have only started rising rapidly for the last week or two, so many of those ICU movements won't have happened yet).     

Deaths are flat right now, but you can see in the last week's stats that this is about to change once the lag effects are removed.

So overall it appears manageable for now, but there are some worrying times ahead, and hospitals are likely to be busy for some time.

I think we can be optimistic in the UK now.

Deaths are still increasing, we are up above 200 a day now in England alone, but I don't think we'll go much higher now, and should stop below 300 a day.  If we are at 200 a day then that is 100K a year, if there is no downswing, but we are going to get a downswing.  I assume we'll get back to about 100 deaths a day, so overall mortality will be about 10% worse than before Covid. 

One thing that does pee me off is the amount of dunderheads who are carrying on the with and from Covid debate.  There is a quirk of Omicron that infections are so high, that more people are going to have omicron as a secondary condition on death certificates - when 90% of deaths were primarily due to covid we had the same shit from the same people, so it is a bit like the stopped clock when they are right.  Anyway it doesn't really hold up well, because if you are borderline for survival with something else and pick up an "incidental" covid infection it could easily tip you over the edge.  Flu and pneumonia have been doing this to vulnerable people for years.   

Anyway, in a crowded field, this is about the dumbest tweet I have seen about the mildness of omicron

https://twitter.com/EssexPR/status/1479491607812612106?cxt=HHwWlIC9verxmogpAAAA

Omicron may be up to nearly 100 TIMES less deadly than seasonal flu, scientists believe  | Daily Mail Online  Not only are the Daily Mail horribly wrong, but the UK's worst statistician can't even copy the words properly.  If Covid was really 100 times milder than flu, wouldn't we be getting something like 20,000 flu deaths a day right now?  Did he not think he'd have noticed all the people dropping dead of flu in his boozers by now, and did he not think the huge seasonal flu epidemic might have been on the news? 

Anyway, hospitalisations are flattening out at about 2,000 a day, and we should peak not much above 20,000 for the total in hospital at one time.  This is going to be significantly below the highest numbers in the past.  Given Omicron is milder too, then hospitals aren't going to be as stretched as in earlier waves.  Ventilation beds have never really increased in this wave, but far fewer people were finding their way there even before omicron (we have better treatments now, and the doctors are much more selective over who ends up there.

Cases are clearly dropping too, though part of the large drop is because here is going to be less PCR testing going forward.

So overall goodish news, and hopefully there won't be much need for briefings from Van Tam or me from now on, and my trip to Norway is looking much more likely.  Ha, meant to do a short one.  Good night all.

[Marky147]

Think he has actually got some form of attention seeking disorder now, as he can't put his phone down.

Whoever owns the pubs he manages must wonder wtf is going on, as he's never off Twitter.

Wouldn't surprise me if he has a meltdown when this is over, and all he has left to Tweet is pics of the menu for this Sunday.

[Doobs]

Think he has actually got some form of attention seeking disorder now, as he can't put his phone down.

Whoever owns the pubs he manages must wonder wtf is going on, as he's never off Twitter.

Wouldn't surprise me if he has a meltdown when this is over, and all he has left to Tweet is pics of the menu for this Sunday.

Thought he owned the pubs, though that was probably just an assumption? 

Got my first block on Twitter the other day; Allison Pearson rocked up on James Ward's timeline telling him he was wrong and should get better data (when she had messed up her numbers).  Wouldn't have minded if I said something offensive to her, but only said something like she could learn about impartiality from him and that was that.  Had been happily ignoring her for ages.  Wish I'd given her the full Keith Hawkins now, she has been pretty relentless in her love of misinformation over the last couple of years.

[Marky147]

Think he has actually got some form of attention seeking disorder now, as he can't put his phone down.

Whoever owns the pubs he manages must wonder wtf is going on, as he's never off Twitter.

Wouldn't surprise me if he has a meltdown when this is over, and all he has left to Tweet is pics of the menu for this Sunday.

Thought he owned the pubs, though that was probably just an assumption? 

Got my first block on Twitter the other day; Allison Pearson rocked up on James Ward's timeline telling him he was wrong and should get better data (when she had messed up her numbers).  Wouldn't have minded if I said something offensive to her, but only said something like she could learn about impartiality from him and that was that.  Had been happily ignoring her for ages.  Wish I'd given her the full Keith Hawkins now, she has been pretty relentless in her love of misinformation over the last couple of years.

I thought so as well, but seen it posted by a few people that they looked into the pubs and they're managed houses. Could be wrong, but wasn't interested enough to delve any further

She's a muppet, and right up there with Hartley-Brewer. See her touting Heneghan's latest interview as a 'superb listen', which just about sums her up.