Coronavirus Thread

[Dunge]

12 minutes ago, shade said:

I made an observation underneath the graph that the correlation doesn't seem strong (although the data is poor and there are so many confounding variables) but you would hope it would look more like this...

 

 

 

So, I return to my first question: What do you make of the fact that it doesn’t? Are you claiming a conclusion? Asking for more information? (If so, what?) Or what do you make of China’s position?

[orangecity23]

30 minutes ago, shade said:

I made an observation underneath the graph that the correlation doesn't seem strong (although the data is poor and there are so many confounding variables) but you would hope it would look more like this...

 

 

 

Thanks for the professional input, it would be interesting if you have time for your expert opinion in to whether the second paper does debunk the first one? Worryingly the first paper is claiming that the deaths <14 days of the vaccine (obviously classed as unvaccinated) suggests that the vaccine caused it, they posit that the fact that the spike in non-covid all cause mortality amongst 40-49 year olds happens as the vaccine rollout began in that agegroup, that it's evidence that the vaccine was causing it?

To be honest, I couldn't be arsed to read the papers in detail now, I already waste too much time in this thread as it is - burnt a lasgne the other day because I was typing a long post!

But on a very basic level, the fact they are looking at all cause mortality and extrapolating that out to "Vaccine caused deaths". Just as a simple thought experiment, consider what else people in a young age group might start doing once they get vaccinated - start going out more, return to working in the office and so on. So you might expect increases in things like road traffic deaths, since there's more traffic on the road and so on. The correlation might be of some interest, but it's really only a very low level prompt to start breaking down and categorising where that spike in mortlity comes from. It could simply be a bit of "noise" in the data, these things don't always follow smooth trends. However, if indeed you wanted to "prove" vaccines were causing death, then you'd start to look into things like mortality rates from heart issues if you are assuming that the vaccine was causing blood clot related deaths. If the overall mortality spiked but cardiac related death rates stayed low, then the spike may be explained by other sources - Road traffic accidents, homicides, suicides, and number of other medical issues and so on. 

 

Besides, we know there was some issues with blood clotting and the AZ vaccine, when given to younger age groups. They stopped using it for younger people as a result, and now use Pfizer and Moderna instead. So the more pertanent question is to whether there was an increase in mortality amongst people who took those vaccines instead.

 

As a general rule of thumb, I find the best thing to do is consider Sturgeons Law for all things though, including news articles and scientific papers etc - i.e. 90% of everything is crap. It's really not worth poring over paper abstract you see, or micro analsing every piece of data or graph some random on the web puts out. Things like Dr John Campbell spamming out a Youtube video  every day don't help - if you watch and consume every single thing you can find, the main thing you'll do is give yourself anxiety. There was a Campbell video posted weeks back in here where he waffled for an hour on a paper about a potential 25% increased risk of heart issues after vaccination. I watched the beginning, and the first thing he says is he's found the abstract but not the paper - so really, it should be a 5 minute videio that says - I found a paper and haven't read it. Should you worry about it? Probably not, but I'll let you know if I actually find the thing and read it. Instead of spending an hour poring over every sentance and word in the abstract like its an Engima code and then at the end of the video dropping the nugget that the guy who wrote the paper was running a website peddling "alternate" healthy diet supplements and the like - ie. someone very invested in convincing people they don't need a vaccine if only they spend money in his online store.

 

If there's genuinely an issue with ONS stats, they'll get caught - it's the ONS, not some cowboy operation or random nobhead with a piky Matlab downloaded off bittorrent.

 

[SpacedX]

1 hour ago, Farrington fox said:

This won't go away..

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/11/scientists-believed-covid-leaked-wuhan-lab-feared-debate-could/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr

Not whilst it continues to sell and generate hits it won't.

 

On the strength of the consilience of arguments within the field of virology and evidence in support of zoonosis, it amounts to little more than circumstantial speculation circulated by the same MSM that those that frequently resort to when it suits them, also oddly deride on here as being untrustworthy. 

 

Be good if they reserved the same scepticism about their social media feeds.

[Super_horns]

Worrying increase in deaths today or a lag in numbers counted due to the Bank Holidays?

[CosbehFox]

21 minutes ago, Super_horns said:

Worrying increase in deaths today or a lag in numbers counted due to the Bank Holidays?

Was similar yesterday - the theory seems to be that as the virus is more (at large), more people are dying with it rather dying because of it. 

Edited 12 January 2022 by Cardiff_Fox

[Parafox]

2 hours ago, Sol thewall Bamba said:

Will we ever get the "died of Covid" rather than "died with Covid" distinction? 

No. It doesn't fit the Gov's narrative. I will never understand the publishing of numbers of deaths of people within 28 days of a positive test. It just doesn't make sense to me and IMO skews the figures. Other than the early weeks of the outbreak I can't remember any announcements that said "the number of people who have died as a direct result of Covid are...". Surely that should be the benchmark.

[Legend_in_blue]

Dr Steve James: I’d sacrifice my job over vaccine mandates - The Post (unherd.com)

 

 

Edited 12 January 2022 by Legend_in_blue

[orangecity23]

10 minutes ago, Parafox said:

No. It doesn't fit the Gov's narrative. I will never understand the publishing of numbers of deaths of people within 28 days of a positive test. It just doesn't make sense to me and IMO skews the figures. Other than the early weeks of the outbreak I can't remember any announcements that said "the number of people who have died as a direct result of Covid are...". Surely that should be the benchmark.

Surely simplest explaination is that it is a piss easy stat to produce, and can be updated quickly every day. They have a database of deaths. They have a database of Covid test results and test dates. You query both databases to find people who are in both where test date is less than a month ago, so to eliminate outliers of people who tested positive 2 months ago then died from something else.

 

It's not a terrible stat really, it's directly proportional to the number of people who died "of" covid which is not as easy to produce, as it's reliant on things like death certificates/autopsies being done and is likely to be slower / out of date.

[Dahnsouff]

4 minutes ago, orangecity23 said:

Surely simplest explaination is that it is a piss easy stat to produce, and can be updated quickly every day. They have a database of deaths. They have a database of Covid test results and test dates. You query both databases to find people who are in both where test date is less than a month ago, so to eliminate outliers of people who tested positive 2 months ago then died from something else.

 

It's not a terrible stat really, it's directly proportional to the number of people who died "of" covid which is not as easy to produce, as it's reliant on things like death certificates/autopsies being done and is likely to be slower / out of date.

This cannot be a valid approach though, as the efficacy of transmission with omicron would lead to a large set of ‘with covid’, potentially to such a degree that every death could be tagged as such, despite the largely less severe outcomes with omicron.

[WigstonWanderer]

6 minutes ago, orangecity23 said:

Surely simplest explaination is that it is a piss easy stat to produce, and can be updated quickly every day. They have a database of deaths. They have a database of Covid test results and test dates. You query both databases to find people who are in both where test date is less than a month ago, so to eliminate outliers of people who tested positive 2 months ago then died from something else.

 

It's not a terrible stat really, it's directly proportional to the number of people who died "of" covid which is not as easy to produce, as it's reliant on things like death certificates/autopsies being done and is likely to be slower / out of date.

Quite so. Don’t the ONS stats follow up with more accurate data based on death certificate “cause of death” determination?

[Parafox]

6 minutes ago, WigstonWanderer said:

Quite so. Don’t the ONS stats follow up with more accurate data based on death certificate “cause of death” determination?

If they do, why aren't these figures announced publicly on news channels etc?

[orangecity23]

17 minutes ago, Dahnsouff said:

This cannot be a valid approach though, as the efficacy of transmission with omicron would lead to a large set of ‘with covid’, potentially to such a degree that every death could be tagged as such, despite the largely less severe outcomes with omicron.

Yes, but that's kind of a one off "step change" in the stats you'd likely get once, as Omicron becomes dominant. Once Omicron is the only covid in town (and we are comparing current stats to earlier omicron data in future), the"non covid" covid deaths will become a fairly static small subset of the overall death count. Everyone bangs on about the hypothetical "hit by a bus" example again and again, but it bears saying - there hasn't been a massive increase in people being hit by a bus in the last few years. Moreover, a death is a death, and just because someone died "with" Covid doesn't make them any less dead than someone who died "of" Covid. As MRSA has shown in recent years, nasty infections spreading around hospitals are very bad news for people who are already in hospitals dealing with other serious health issues - the last thing they need is a respirotory infection that might finish them off.

 

I think we had the ONS death certificate numbers a page or 2 back, when the 150,000 milestone was passed. There was the usual "ah, but with Covid, not of Covid" chatter, then it turned out the death certificate numbers were higher than that, at 170,000.

 

EDIT: from the ONS Weekly death figures:

Quote

To meet user needs, we publish very timely but provisional counts of death registrations in England and Wales in our Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional dataset. These are presented:

• by sex
• by age group
• for regions (within England)
• for Wales as a whole

To allow time for registration and processing, figures are published 11 days after the week ends. Because of the rapidly changing situation, we also provide provisional updated totals for death occurrences based on the latest available death registrations, up to 8 January 2022.

The number of registration days in a reference period can affect mortality statistics. For example, bank holidays can affect the number of registrations within a week or month because of the closure of registration offices. We often see high death registrations in the first two weeks of January when registration services are back in office and dealing with any backlog from the bank holiday period because of the Christmas period.

There's an 11 day lag on these figures. Which is why the 28 day test figures have been used throughout the pandemic - they are more up to date. When you are at the stage where the virus is growing exponentially, using the slower figures causes problems for decision making and analysis where the people in charge are trying to make timely decisiions.

Edited 12 January 2022 by orangecity23

[WigstonWanderer]

2 hours ago, orangecity23 said:

As a general rule of thumb, I find the best thing to do is consider Sturgeons Law for all things though, including news articles and scientific papers etc - i.e. 90% of everything is crap. It's really not worth poring over paper abstract you see, or micro analsing every piece of data or graph some random on the web puts out. Things like Dr John Campbell spamming out a Youtube video  every day don't help - if you watch and consume every single thing you can find, the main thing you'll do is give yourself anxiety. There was a Campbell video posted weeks back in here where he waffled for an hour on a paper about a potential 25% increased risk of heart issues after vaccination. I watched the beginning, and the first thing he says is he's found the abstract but not the paper - so really, it should be a 5 minute videio that says - I found a paper and haven't read it. Should you worry about it? Probably not, but I'll let you know if I actually find the thing and read it. Instead of spending an hour poring over every sentance and word in the abstract like its an Engima code and then at the end of the video dropping the nugget that the guy who wrote the paper was running a website peddling "alternate" healthy diet supplements and the like - ie. someone very invested in convincing people they don't need a vaccine if only they spend money in his online store..

 

I generally agree with most of your posts, and agree with most of this one. However, I’m kind of surprised that you take aim at Campbell. I’m sure he doesn’t get everything right, and I suspect he’d be the first to say so. He comes across to me as just someone who genuinely wants to keep people informed of what’s going on and is trying to pre digest and review some of the information that’s available to keep people informed of the overall situation. As far as I can tell, the data he uses is mostly from very reputable sources like the ONS, etc.

 

He is very pro vaccine and most of his videos are quite informative, though sometimes long winded, and to me at least, appear to be agenda free, unlike the sort of crap you get from other internet sources whose clear agenda is to undermine vaccines, restrictions, and any other public health measures.

Edited 12 January 2022 by WigstonWanderer

[Dahnsouff]

4 minutes ago, orangecity23 said:

Yes, but that's kind of a one off "step change" in the stats you'd likely get once, as Omicron becomes dominant. Once Omicron is the only covid in town (and we are comparing current stats to earlier omicron data in future), the"non covid" covid deaths will become a fairly static small subset of the overall death count. Everyone bangs on about the hypothetical "hit by a bus" example again and again, but it bears saying - there hasn't been a massive increase in people being hit by a bus in the last few years. Moreover, a death is a death, and just because someone died "with" Covid doesn't make them any less dead than someone who died "of" Covid. As MRSA has shown in recent years, nasty infections spreading around hospitals are very bad news for people who are already in hospitals dealing with other serious health issues - the last thing they need is a respirotory infection that might finish them off.

 

I think we had the ONS death certificate numbers a page or 2 back, when the 150,000 milestone was passed. There was the usual "ah, but with Covid, not of Covid" chatter, then it turned out the death certificate numbers were higher than that, at 170,000.

Sorry, you lost me on this! There is a step change from Delta to Omicron in terms of efficacy of transmission, but the metric on if you had covid when passing, compared to if covid played as a genuine causing factor in your passing should be static and not subject to variation based on variant. 
 

Not saying that I have not missed the thrust of the argument (That’s hardly rare  ) but I just don’t see how such numbers are any form of true jnducator.

[orangecity23]

Just now, WigstonWanderer said:

I generally agree with most of your posts, and agree with most of this one. However, I’m kind of surprised that you take aim at Campbell. I’m sure he doesn’t get everything right, and I suspect he’d be the first to say so. He comes across to me as just someone who genuinely wants to keep people informed of what’s on and is trying to pre digest and review some of the information that’s available to keep people informed of the overall situation. As far as I can tell, the data he uses is mostly from very reputable sources like the ONS, etc.

 

He is very pro vaccine and most of his videos are quite informative, though sometimes long winded, and to me at least, appear to be agenda free, unlike the sort of crap you get from other internet sources whose clear agenda is to undermine vaccines, restrictions, and any other public health measures.

I might be being unfair on him, I only watched one video. It's just that particular one struck me as a waste of time, and after an hour of material for what turns out to most likely be a paper by a quack flogging snake oil I wasn't particularly inclined to watch any more! Got plenty of other absolute rubbish I need to be watching on Youtube every day

[WigstonWanderer]

3 minutes ago, orangecity23 said:

I might be being unfair on him, I only watched one video. It's just that particular one struck me as a waste of time, and after an hour of material for what turns out to most likely be a paper by a quack flogging snake oil I wasn't particularly inclined to watch any more! Got plenty of other absolute rubbish I need to be watching on Youtube every day

Haha, yes it’s easy to get bogged down in absolute crap. I’d give some of his videos another try if you get the chance and I’m sure you’ll agree that he shouldn’t be put in the same bin as some of the other shysters that are regularly posted here.

Edited 12 January 2022 by WigstonWanderer

[orangecity23]

1 minute ago, Dahnsouff said:

Sorry, you lost me on this! There is a step change from Delta to Omicron in terms of efficacy of transmission, but the metric on if you had covid when passing, compared to if covid played as a genuine causing factor in your passing should be static and not subject to variation based on variant. 
 

Not saying that I have not missed the thrust of the argument (That’s hardly rare  ) but I just don’t see how such numbers are any form of true jnducator.

That's what the slow ONS death certificate numbers are for. If this is a problem, it will start to become apparent if you time delay the 28 day positive test numbers and compare them with the Death certificate numbers.

 

[WigstonWanderer]

1 minute ago, orangecity23 said:

That's what the slow ONS death certificate numbers are for. If this is a problem, it will start to become apparent if you time delay the 28 day positive test numbers and compare them with the Death certificate numbers.

 

I think until recently at least the 28 day and ONS data were in reasonable agreement. This might change soon with the high percentage of the population that are now infected at any one time due to the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

[WigstonWanderer]

42 minutes ago, Parafox said:

If they do, why aren't these figures announced publicly on news channels etc?

The ONS stats take much longer to produce and are therefore delayed.

 

Edit:

 

Here’s a link to November data and some contextual explanation

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/monthlymortalityanalysisenglandandwales/november2021

 

Deaths due to COVID-19 registered in November 2021

The doctor certifying a death can list all causes in the chain of events that led to the death, and pre-existing conditions that may have contributed to the death. Using this information, we determine an underlying cause of death. More information on this process can be found in our user guide.

Since March 2020 (when the first deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19) were registered in England and Wales), where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate it was the underlying cause of death in most cases (88.6% in England, 87.2% in Wales). For more information on our definition of COVID-19 deaths, see Section 10: Measuring the data.

!

In this bulletin, we use the term "due to COVID-19" when referring only to deaths with an underlying cause of death of COVID-19, and we use the term "involving COVID-19" when referring to deaths that had COVID-19 mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, whether as an underlying cause or not. 

Of the 48,180 deaths registered in November 2021 in England, 6.6% (3,185 deaths) were due to COVID-19, a larger proportion than in October 2021 (5.6%). Including all deaths involving COVID-19 (3,752 deaths), this percentage increases to 7.8% of all deaths in England in November 2021.

In Wales, 9.0% of the 3,344 deaths registered in November 2021 were due to COVID-19 (302 deaths), a smaller proportion than in October 2021 (9.5%). Including all deaths involving COVID-19 (360 deaths), this percentage increases to 10.8% of all deaths in Wales.

 

 

Edited 12 January 2022 by WigstonWanderer

[Robo61]

Just now, WigstonWanderer said:

The ONS stats take much longer to produce and are therefore delayed.

Interestingly I can only find broad sheets reporting these figures which are significantly that the 28 day figure. That's despite the accusation being that the MSM only report bad news.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/11/uk-covid-death-toll-ons

[WigstonWanderer]

30 minutes ago, Robo61 said:

Interestingly I can only find broad sheets reporting these figures which are significantly that the 28 day figure. That's despite the accusation being that the MSM only report bad news.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/11/uk-covid-death-toll-ons

Thanks for that. I edited my post after yours above to include a link to November stats from them. Interesting that the the chart shown in your link actually shows Covid related deaths as higher than the 28 day headline rate. Obviously this might change over coming months due to the high percentage of the population that is infected at any one time, as noted earlier above.

Edited 12 January 2022 by WigstonWanderer

[shade]

1 hour ago, WigstonWanderer said:

I generally agree with most of your posts, and agree with most of this one. However, I’m kind of surprised that you take aim at Campbell. I’m sure he doesn’t get everything right, and I suspect he’d be the first to say so. He comes across to me as just someone who genuinely wants to keep people informed of what’s going on and is trying to pre digest and review some of the information that’s available to keep people informed of the overall situation. As far as I can tell, the data he uses is mostly from very reputable sources like the ONS, etc.

 

He is very pro vaccine and most of his videos are quite informative, though sometimes long winded, and to me at least, appear to be agenda free, unlike the sort of crap you get from other internet sources whose clear agenda is to undermine vaccines, restrictions, and any other public health measures.

I admired his "debunking the BBC's debunk of ivermectin" video particularly.

[WigstonWanderer]

7 minutes ago, shade said:

I admired his "debunking the BBC's debunk of ivermectin" video particularly.

His ivermectin stuff is probably a bit more controversial, and I can’t say I’ve watched much of it. Not sure if he’s on the right track with that or not, but no doubt time will tell. Important to emphasise that he isn’t saying it’s an alternative to vaccination.

 

Generally the information he presents is pretty mainstream, but easy to follow for us lazy bastards.

Edited 12 January 2022 by WigstonWanderer

[pazzerfox]

 

[Lionator]

1 hour ago, pazzerfox said:

 

Basically coronaviruses evolve quite quickly (though not as fast as flu), which means that there'll be new variants popping up all the time. Unlike flu, the variants all have similarities which means that while infection won't be stopped, serious illness will be, as we're seeing now. Eventually we'll probably have to have annual updated covid jabs, just like we do flu depending on which variant is looking most prominent in an endemic world.