Testing & this government

Keelo said:
With a virus we keep getting told we know hardly anything about, what if herd immunity doesnt work with this one...awful lot of lives to destroy trying on the off chance 🤔
Click to expand...

We know a lot more about it than we did a few months ago and one could apply that argument to any new virus, we'd never live!

The question needs to be asked (many scientists are asking): What is the purpose of mass testing? What does it achieve?

In March I was very critical of the government for simply not acting fast enough. Now it seems to have completely swung the other way into a state of fear and paralysis. It's nuts. Much of what we hear in the media is "rising cases", "second spike" etc etc. Much of it without basis and crucially, context.

For a very interesting read I suggest the article below containing Prof. Carl Heneghan's comments.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ausing-utter-chaos-post-lockdown-Britain.html
 
TAD I am not sure what your point is to be honest. Cases are rising, hospitalizations are rising and now deaths are following the same trajectory. What context is missing?

I would agree that the government are being obtuse with figures, but that is down to their political agenda. Look at Iceland, they screwed up completely at the outset, then handed all covid decisions to a scientific panel for decisions and have turned things around. That is what happens when you actually follow the science.
 
T_A_D said:
For a very interesting read I suggest the article below containing Prof. Carl Heneghan's comments.
Click to expand...

Carl Heneghan is the self-styled Director of Evidence Based Medicine. As such, you would would expect him to objectively analyse evidence and draw reasoned conclusions from them.

I don’t know about other diseases, but on Covid he does the exact opposite. He has a pre-conceived opinion which he then searches for evidence to support, finding reasons to dismiss any evidence which doesn’t support his views.

He has a large social media following which appears to mainly consist of conspiracy theorists. Fellow scientists on his social media feed are, in the main, highly critical of his postings.

This week, he put his name to a report that claimed that death certificate reports of Covid-related deaths were vastly inflated. This was based on two cases he analysed, one of which was a patient recovering from a Road Traffic Accident and the second a patient recovering from a heart attack. In both cases, the patients acquired Covid whilst in hospital and subsequently died.

Heneghan claims that this shows that people are being reported as dying from Covid when they in fact died from other causes. However, there is no evidence to support this claim, even from the two cases cited, as I’m sure we’re all aware of people who’ve had either an RTA or a heart attack and then recovered in hospital. The only evidence regarding their cause of death is the death certificate, completed by the attending doctors, which states it was Covid. Heneghan chooses to ignore that evidence however.

He should really call himself the Director of Opinion Based Medicine.
 
There are plenty of things I disagree with Heneghan about and have said so on this forum.

However, I think he makes some very interesting and sensible points around testing (particularly in schools), the details of PCR testing, and false positive rates.
 
Laughing said:
TAD I am not sure what your point is to be honest. Cases are rising, hospitalizations are rising and now deaths are following the same trajectory. What context is missing?

I would agree that the government are being obtuse with figures, but that is down to their political agenda. Look at Iceland, they screwed up completely at the outset, then handed all covid decisions to a scientific panel for decisions and have turned things around. That is what happens when you actually follow the science.
Click to expand...

Again, you're mentioning cases with no context. How many of those positive tests convert into people requiring treatment? Is the NHS able to cope with and treat those requiring hospitalisation? Just saying we have rising cases is meaningless. It is like saying we are now at half the number daily cases of the peak in March/April when in reality we were only detecting a fraction of the number of cases back then and now we have vastly increased testing capacity. It is pointless comparing these figures yet the media still do.
 
T_A_D said:
Again, you're mentioning cases with no context. How many of those positive tests convert into people requiring treatment? Is the NHS able to cope with and treat those requiring hospitalisation? Just saying we have rising cases is meaningless. It is like saying we are now at half the number daily cases of the peak in March/April when in reality we were only detecting a fraction of the number of cases back then and now we have vastly increased testing capacity. It is pointless comparing these figures yet the media still do.
Click to expand...
Hospitalisation rising and deaths rising isn't meaningless.

According to our testing Tsar this week only a quarter of those requiring tests can be accommodated. We will soon be back to key workers only based on prioritisation messages being put out.
 
bear66 said:
Hospitalisation rising and deaths rising isn't meaningless.

According to our testing Tsar this week only a quarter of those requiring tests can be accommodated. We will soon be back to key workers only based on prioritisation messages being put out.
Click to expand...

I never said that hospitalisations and deaths rising was meaningless.

How many people are being hospitalised? Are hospitals able to cope?

What proportion of the population is still susceptible? (THE key question) Knowing this would enable a path forward. The percentage of the population who have had the virus is often reported (in the media) to be the figure who have tested positive for antibodies when we now know this will be an underestimate, there are other forms of immunity and this has clearly been demonstrated by several research groups.
 
T_A_D said:
I never said that hospitalisations and deaths rising was meaningless.

How many people are being hospitalised? Are hospitals able to cope?

What proportion of the population is still susceptible? (THE key question) Knowing this would enable a path forward. The percentage of the population who have had the virus is often reported (in the media) to be the figure who have tested positive for antibodies when we now know this will be an underestimate, there are other forms of immunity and this has clearly been demonstrated by several research groups.
Click to expand...
Hospital admissions are doubling every 8 days. If that continues, in 32 days we will exceed the highest admission rate back in April. Hopefully, with a large proportion of the population doing their bit with sensible isolating and care homes more prepared, that won't happen.

The highest % of antibodies found in the ONS national screening was 6.7%, although that fell off to 5.4% over the next month and no new figures have been given since as the numbers are below statistical significance with the numbers currently screened.

The other form of 'immunity' found in those with under developed immune systems (younger people) is discussed in both positive and negative terms in the 3 papers I've read. A vaccine may require the formation of T-cells to be effective (the Oxford vaccine does). On the negative side, even those with under-developed immune systems exhibit very low levels of antibodies. Having been 'tickled' into life, what happens in a second wave? (Why did the Spanish flu affect so few 20-40s in the first wave and hit them so hard in the second wave?)
 
Last edited:
I think that we will only really know where we are in a few weeks time, when we actually see some data in the fallout of the increased hospital admissions/PCR testing and everything else related to that. Sadly.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top