Has anyone actually asked the over 75's or over 80's what they want ? have only spoken to a few I admit, but ALL of them have said they would rather carry on with life, than be locked away, festering on their own, it is the people 'left behind' that are calling the shots, not those it affects.
-
Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Do we trust the experts in regard to COVID-19?
- Thread starter DustyBin
- Start date
- Status
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
I have a family member in their 90s (in another country) who lives at home and is desperately lonely and miserable because nobody will go see them for fear of killing them with the virus. A wretched, miserable death sentence from loneliness is what is happening instead, but it doesn't matter because it isn't covid. It disgusts me that this is what things have come to.
It is, if we tried.
Yep, all these things are quite practical and very easy. You could also do things like free broadband and simple videoconference kit for people who don't have it and aren't tech savvy (something like a Facebook Portal - just say "Call Phylis" and it does) to help people stay connected to their friends.
Set up some properly bio-secure cafes - no normals allowed in, safe space for shielders to meet, play draughts, natter over the paper etc. Proper secure transport for if they want to go for a day out in the countryside etc.
All of this is utterly doable and a tiny fraction of the cost of shutting down the economy (again).
They'd be far better shielded than they are now - it's only a matter of time until it gets to you. Unless you really believe the hotchpotch of measures we have is working - it's clearly not from the slides that Van Tam showed earlier today.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Not without overwhelming healthcare.
My parents were shielding first time around. They are now going on days out and for meals out etc. They have friends coming to stay with them in a couple of weeks and comply with the rule of 6 only because they don't know people up here yet, having only just moved, and my mother in law refuses to spend time with us when they are here because virus. Mum goes to the gym and hates wearing a mask in the shops.
They are both in pretty ropey health. I suspect that when the end comes it will be pretty swift for both of them. They have no desire to "exist" as my mother puts it, and I don't want that for them either. They are/were both scientists, so very capable of making their own risk-based decision and don't need anybody to tell them what to do or not to do. They would make use of practical help for shielding if it was available, but would resent being prevented from seeing family, which was the whole reason they moved up here.
Evidence please. 90% of the hospitalisations come from a very small section of the population (namely the over 80's). Even if shielding was only 50% effective, you'd reduced your hospital load by 40%.
As Van Tam has shown today, it's impossible for us to live any semblance of a normal life and NOT shield the vulnerable, as we've been trying to do since the early summer. Therefore we either stay stuck in this life that nobody want's to live, and further cripple our economy and ability to fund an NHS in future, or we try something else.
Unfortunately I don't think any of our political 'leaders' have a cojones to do it.
The Great Barrington declaration (made by a collection of experts, just not the ones being listened to - by the UK government at least) says
which seems good enough to me. Obviously there would need to be detail filled in there, but it seems a lot more straightforward than the total mess we're getting into.
As an aside, one thing in there I'm not sure I understand is this next line
What is the herd immunity 'threshold' in this case, and why would it be reduced by a slower spread among the healthy?
Still, I totally agree with the general idea, and will sign it.
which seems good enough to me. Obviously there would need to be detail filled in there, but it seems a lot more straightforward than the total mess we're getting into.
As an aside, one thing in there I'm not sure I understand is this next line
What is the herd immunity 'threshold' in this case, and why would it be reduced by a slower spread among the healthy?
Still, I totally agree with the general idea, and will sign it.
So herd immunity works because the virus doesn't have enough chances to find new hosts and grow exponentially, because too many of the "new" hosts are immune. If you have lots of sources of infection, you need a lot of immune people. If there are fewer sources of infection, you need fewer immune people, because even though some non-immune people will pick it up, it isn't being seeded often enough to start exponential growth again, because it keeps running into immune people.
If people don't wash their hands and therefore leave pathogens all over the place, more non-immune people will pick them up, become infected and potentially infect others.
It's about reaching true herd immunity without having an "unacceptable" level of sickness/death in the interim.
The more easily-spread a disease is, the higher the proportion of the population who need to have achieved immunity before you can get the effective R value below 1. Handwashing is viewed as an easily achievable and not particularly disruptive way to slightly reduce the ability of the disease to spread, so having that in place is not a bad thing.
StationTown
Member
I am not proposing that.
This is not the only group of people at risk. The most vulnerable are unable to express their views on this.
Fair enough for some people but you seem to assume all people at risk live independently in their own home. I'm saying many people do not live independently, they require significant levels of health and social care support and shielding here is much more complex.
I don't believe the current problem is strategy per se but rather implementation. There have been many failures in implementation and personally this is where my anger is directed.
Yes, that makes sense, thanks - was having a bit of a mental block there for some reason
Indeed it's not unsolvable though. For example in care homes you could ask for volunteer staff to live in, rotating 2 weeks on 2 weeks off a bit like on oil rigs. Test incoming staff before their "shift".
I know there are peripatetic service providers, and that's a bit more difficult. That probably comes down to PPE, much as it does now I expect.
And it wouldn't be forever, unlike the current situation, it would be for a few months.
It did have me puzzled for a moment too, it's a but abstract as the context in which they make that statement isn't immediately set out.Yes, that makes sense, thanks - was having a bit of a mental block there for some reason
DustyBin
Established Member
How are they being shielded now? Genuine question as I don’t know. However, I would think regular testing for carers, and proper PPE would be a start. With a bit of effort I imagine we could improve the level of shielding over that which is currently in place.
As for the experts knowing what they’re talking about, I’d like to think they do, but they clearly don’t all agree with each other and I do wonder how much political pressure some of them are under....
GRALISTAIR
Established Member
10/10 totally agree
Well there's one person over 75 you could ask - me! I'm 76. Yesterday my partner (she hates that word) and I had a nice Sunday lunch in a local Good Beer Guide pub. I said to the landlord on the way out, "I hope to see you in the not too distant future" he replied "keep your fingers crossed". Well it does seem that here in South Ribble that BJ has allowed the pubs to remain open.
In other fields my life has been altered. I am a church bellringer, an activity good for the brain, and afterwards good for the breweries. This is a no go in the era of covid though. If there are any campanologists skilful in method composition out there, a new method, Covid Surprise Major, would be interesting. I also am learning Italian, we used to have physical classes, but it's now all on Zoom, which isn't as good especially with Italian which is spoken with the hands as much as the mouth.
So I'm not in favour of too much clampdown. When I was a boy it was polio that was the big fear, I remember it was rampant in Bolton. Then it was nuclear war, so there's always been something to be scared of.
brad465
Established Member
There are examples of vulnerable people who've haven't liked shielding because they would rather enjoy life while they still can (as opposed to just existing). It might be better to make shielding voluntary for this group, which would be a smaller group than all of them and less disruptive. I think this was something the 3 scientists in the Barrington Declaration alluded to.
Edit: I failed to read the latest page when typing this (thinking I was already at the bottom), where it turns out this has been answered in more recent posts.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Shielding was always voluntary.
The medical experts aren't of course the only experts involved in advising the government. The medics advise on measures designed to achieve the appropriate mitigation. The actual implementation of any measures is arrived at with advice from behavioural experts. Their input is critical as the levels of public compliance largely determine their effectiveness. Of course, those experts are not normally operating in the public domain, - there is enough lay criticism of the medical experts, visibility of the behavioural experts would cause too much disruption.
applepie2100
Member
- Joined
- 16 Aug 2011
- Messages
- 167
There is very little about any of the current "experts" that I have any trust in. We have supposed data experts using Excel to store massive amounts of data in ways that a high school computing student could tell you was going to end in tears, we have supposed science experts like Whitty, Valance and Van Tam who seem hellbent on pushing their lockdown agenda to the exclusion of all other opinions and then we have politicians who seem determined to press the CTRL-ALT-Delete keys on the world. The cure is going to be many orders of magnitude worse than the illness.
Wuffle
Member
Whitty has history with Neil Ferguson of GIGO software fame indeed they were part of a group which received some £31 million from the Bil and Melinda Gates Foundation
Vallance has a further £600,000 of share options with GSK after selling some he already had
So No I don't trust them - Prof Carl Heneghan and the other members of the CEBM have some excellent information on their site
( https://www.cebm.net/oxford-covid-19-evidence-service/ )
Dr John Lee a retired English pathologist who has also been very critical of the government and it's advisers
You get the impression that we are not being told something - the Government's statistics are good as far as they go, but they rarely consider other co-morbidities and also lack an ethnicity composition.
I could well believe that the experts are being sponsored to justify a specific opinion - after all, it is said that 97% of Scientists agree with their sponsors. Academia as a community is also prone to group-think generally, even before sponsors come into play.
I do have to agree about the politicians and the reset - and I wonder if part of the rationale behind tracking systems is to get us used to co-operating with being tracked. It might not be impossible to prevent tracking but it can be made more difficult.
I could well believe that the experts are being sponsored to justify a specific opinion - after all, it is said that 97% of Scientists agree with their sponsors. Academia as a community is also prone to group-think generally, even before sponsors come into play.
You are aware that science needs funds to do its work? And that Gates is a philanthropist?
Tinfoil hattery.
Agree Carl Heneghan speaks sense. I wish it were he who was writing the script for Boris, we'd be in a similar position to Sweden right now.
KevinTurvey
Member
- Joined
- 9 Oct 2016
- Messages
- 205
Bill Gates is an interesting one. He has so many fingers in so many pies it is unbelievable. This includes funding the WHO and a number of other organisations, including donation links to the BBC and the Guardian.
He is paraded around the media as if he were some health guru. He is not a doctor.
I just don't get why a retired billionaire computer software CEO would want the entire world population to receive a vaccine. A doctor or medical practitioner perhaps, yes.
Perhaps he's just a nice guy and doing all of this out of the goodness of his heart.
He is paraded around the media as if he were some health guru. He is not a doctor.
I just don't get why a retired billionaire computer software CEO would want the entire world population to receive a vaccine. A doctor or medical practitioner perhaps, yes.
Perhaps he's just a nice guy and doing all of this out of the goodness of his heart.
birchesgreen
Established Member
It is interesting the cynicism there is from some over Bill Gate's philanthropy and his motives. Maybe we are now just too accustomed to see the bad in people or assume nefarious purposes behind every action nowadays.
Of course he could be secretly evil but i prefer to give folks the benefit of the doubt unless proven otherwise.
Of course he could be secretly evil but i prefer to give folks the benefit of the doubt unless proven otherwise.
His work getting vaccines into lost of poor countries is great, access to protection from diseases is wonderful for more people to have.
Putting the world on hold, and causing damage and suffering in the meantime, to wait for a vaccine to be developed is another thing entirely.
Jozhua
Established Member
- Joined
- 6 Jan 2019
- Messages
- 1,856
In regards to herd immunity:
Herd immunity is not a binary state. The more people who gain immunity, the lower the effective 'R' rate will be. We see this now in London. The North is seeing a larger spike because of less herd immunity - for various reasons we actually did better in the first wave in March.
At a 0.5% death rate, 13% of the population will have been infected. Current testing levels put our CFR at 0.5% for the last couple months, so between 1/10 to 1/5 people have likely had it.
When we are dealing with exponential growth, even small differences change the outcome significantly. This is why cases can only continue to rise so much before it begins to 'burn out'. I think in the next week we will hit the top of this peak before it begins to decline again. A lot of the spread has happened in university halls and education settings, which have pretty much established immunity under the groups most at risk of spreading.
If the latter is often the case, then the increase in COVID hospitalisations could be misleading.
Overall, I think we lack a direction. We need to move beyond kicking the can down the road and have a destination in mind as to where we want to be by the end of the year and eventually how we plan to live with this.
Personally, I think we need to adopt a policy of once again "flattening the curve", as well as somewhat guiding the wave to places it will cause less damage. I see "Flattening the curve" involving advising people on how to stay safe, when to get tested and how much risk different activities involve.
Mass gatherings should be off the table and I think perhaps staggering the school week a bit more to slow the spread there. Face masks are a relatively small sacrifice and providing hand washing facilities in more locations is a good idea too.
Herd immunity is not a binary state. The more people who gain immunity, the lower the effective 'R' rate will be. We see this now in London. The North is seeing a larger spike because of less herd immunity - for various reasons we actually did better in the first wave in March.
At a 0.5% death rate, 13% of the population will have been infected. Current testing levels put our CFR at 0.5% for the last couple months, so between 1/10 to 1/5 people have likely had it.
When we are dealing with exponential growth, even small differences change the outcome significantly. This is why cases can only continue to rise so much before it begins to 'burn out'. I think in the next week we will hit the top of this peak before it begins to decline again. A lot of the spread has happened in university halls and education settings, which have pretty much established immunity under the groups most at risk of spreading.
It would seem like the members of SAGE who are annoyed they are not getting their way, are the ones who are leaking to the press. Is there any scientific basis in the "circuit breaker" lockdown, because it makes very little sense to me as a policy. At most we delay the spread by another month, and then what? At that point we'll be in the dead of winter and it'll be an even worse time for it to spread.
Do we know how many of these patients are coming in because of COVID and how many are coming in for another condition and happen to have COVID?
If the latter is often the case, then the increase in COVID hospitalisations could be misleading.
Overall, I think we lack a direction. We need to move beyond kicking the can down the road and have a destination in mind as to where we want to be by the end of the year and eventually how we plan to live with this.
Personally, I think we need to adopt a policy of once again "flattening the curve", as well as somewhat guiding the wave to places it will cause less damage. I see "Flattening the curve" involving advising people on how to stay safe, when to get tested and how much risk different activities involve.
Mass gatherings should be off the table and I think perhaps staggering the school week a bit more to slow the spread there. Face masks are a relatively small sacrifice and providing hand washing facilities in more locations is a good idea too.
Bantamzen
Established Member
Quite honestly I neither trust not distrust the experts, for me it isn't about trust but about balance. We need the experts advising the government to be constantly be challenged, and to bring forward what they constantly refer to as "growing evidence" for scrutiny. That scrutiny should be be coming from their peers & the media, as well as being added to the government's line of thinking. Its not entirely clear if the latter happens, the government are not being fully transparent about this, but the former does seem to be suppresses and it has only been in the last few weeks that the media have actually started to ask tough questions.
The risk here is that the experts at the government's ear are stuck, to use one of their phrases, in something of a support bubble where they don't have to worry about scrutiny and become fixated on only their ideas, even if their ideas are not working. So it doesn't matter whether or not that I trust them or not, I am concerned they are not offering the best advice any more, if indeed they ever did.
The risk here is that the experts at the government's ear are stuck, to use one of their phrases, in something of a support bubble where they don't have to worry about scrutiny and become fixated on only their ideas, even if their ideas are not working. So it doesn't matter whether or not that I trust them or not, I am concerned they are not offering the best advice any more, if indeed they ever did.
I trust experts who take a holistic, balanced approach. I do not trust experts who take a narrow view.
I do not trust Tedros Ghebreyesus one bit.
Tedros Ghebreyesus approach is scientifically and ethically problematic; his approach of harsh measures is completely unaffordable and disproportionately further disadvantages younger and poorer people.
Harsh lockdowns cause unnecessary suffering and hardship and cause huge long term damage.
I'm absolutely sick of people listening to Tedros; he is downright dangerous in my opinion.
This virus cannot be eliminated; the only way out is herd immunity. But we've been told people under 50 won't be getting the vaccine. People under 50 are effectively being told (except we're not actually being told!) that many of us are going to get it, but we must ensure many of of us are made redundant, suffer hardship, lose livelihoods and place the nation into huge debt, over the next few months in order to delay getting it until after the vaccine has been rolled out. While we're told to expect the vaccine in early 2021, the likes of Whitty are warning we could be in this state for much longer as there is no guarantee a vaccine will be ready by then.
How can 'experts' who are incredibly biased against younger/disadvantaged people possibly be trusted?
I'm one of the lucky ones: able to work from home where required, not made redundant, no issues with jobs (in fact I've turned jobs down) but I see the incredible injustice which is affecting people I know deeply; I cannot sit idly by and not speak out against this awful injustice just because it doesn't affect me
Those who support lockdowns have no endgame; they cannot see the bigger picture; they lack vision and understanding. And they make me angry.
I do not trust Tedros Ghebreyesus one bit.
Coronavirus: WHO head calls herd immunity approach 'immoral'
Dr Ghebreyesus said allowing coronavirus to spread unchecked would cause unnecessary suffering and death.
www.bbc.co.uk
Herd immunity is not a 'strategy' but is a naturally occurring phenomenon that protects us.
Tedros Ghebreyesus approach is scientifically and ethically problematic; his approach of harsh measures is completely unaffordable and disproportionately further disadvantages younger and poorer people.
Harsh lockdowns cause unnecessary suffering and hardship and cause huge long term damage.
I'm absolutely sick of people listening to Tedros; he is downright dangerous in my opinion.
This virus cannot be eliminated; the only way out is herd immunity. But we've been told people under 50 won't be getting the vaccine. People under 50 are effectively being told (except we're not actually being told!) that many of us are going to get it, but we must ensure many of of us are made redundant, suffer hardship, lose livelihoods and place the nation into huge debt, over the next few months in order to delay getting it until after the vaccine has been rolled out. While we're told to expect the vaccine in early 2021, the likes of Whitty are warning we could be in this state for much longer as there is no guarantee a vaccine will be ready by then.
How can 'experts' who are incredibly biased against younger/disadvantaged people possibly be trusted?
I'm one of the lucky ones: able to work from home where required, not made redundant, no issues with jobs (in fact I've turned jobs down) but I see the incredible injustice which is affecting people I know deeply; I cannot sit idly by and not speak out against this awful injustice just because it doesn't affect me
Those who support lockdowns have no endgame; they cannot see the bigger picture; they lack vision and understanding. And they make me angry.
Last edited:
DelayRepay
Established Member
- Joined
- 21 May 2011
- Messages
- 2,929
A woman I know of went in for routine surgery that was nothing to do with Covid. She tested negative on admission, and tested positive before being released. So it appears she caught it in the hospital. I wonder if she was counted in the figures?
Like so many, she had no symptoms.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
As a well-known philanthropist, I'd imagine, yes, that is indeed why he's doing it. Why do people assume that being rich disqualifies people from this?
He's made enough money, he doesn't need any more.
He has no power to do that. It's Governments doing that.
Is Gates pushing for lockdowns? If not I have nothing against him.
I don't believe any of the conspiracy theories
I don't believe any of the conspiracy theories
Not guaranteed as if she caught it just prior to admission it would not necessarily be picked up by a test made on admission.
- Status