Here's why you should never trust the "experts".
- Thread starter Leongsam
- Start date
- Joined
- Jul 10, 2008
- Messages
- 65,804
- Points
- 113
UK Covid cases could hit 200,000 a day, says scientist behind lockdown strategy
Natalie Grover
4-5 minutes
Covid cases could hit 200,000 a day in the UK this year and cause “major disruption” to the NHS, according to the scientist whose initial modelling helped shape Britain’s coronavirus lockdown strategy.
Prof Neil Ferguson said it was “almost inevitable” that Monday’s final phase of unlocking would bring on 100,000 daily cases, with about 1,000 hospitalisations – despite roughly half the UK being fully vaccinated. He added that he could foresee a situation in which the case rate expands to twice the size.
“The real question is do we get to double that – or even higher,” he told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday,. “And that’s where the crystal ball starts to fail. I mean, we could get to 2,000 hospitalisations a day, 200,000 cases a day – but it’s much less certain.”
Daily hospitalisations surpassing 2,000 a day is equivalent to the level in the week leading up to Christmas. Although people currently being hospitalised do not fall as severely ill, and are much less likely to die, Ferguson said that “if you have enough cases, you can still have quite significant burden on the healthcare system … major disruption of services and cancellation of elective surgery and the backlog in the NHS getting longer and longer.”
Coronavirus infections in the UK are surging again and hospitalisations are on the rise, driven by the spread of the Delta variant and the partial lifting of restrictions. Nearly all restrictions are set to be discarded in England on Monday, including mask-wearing and social distancing mandates. Whether this unlocking is permanent or temporary will depend on precautions taken by the public and vaccination rates, scientists have warned, adding there would probably be a surge in cases no matter when the remaining restrictions are lifted.
Ferguson and his team at Imperial College London discovered there had been an almost threefold underestimate of the true scale of the level of infections in the country by March last year – compelling the government to impose a full lockdown on 23 March. The colossal upheaval to the British way of life can therefore be traced directly to the modelling carried out over a few days, calculations that would lead to Ferguson being viewed by sections of the British press and public as the figurehead of lockdown.
Some scientists have vehemently opposed lifting the remaining restrictions on 19 July, suggesting the government has decided to achieve “herd immunity” by effectively letting the virus run wild in young people, which they say will lead to disruptions in NHS care and education. This strategy would also lead to more people suffering from long Covid and raise the risk of new vaccine-resistant variants. Instead, they advise more people should be fully vaccinated before fully unlocking.
Although vaccine uptake has weakened the link between infections and hospitalisations and death – it has not severed it. With a high rate of infections, even a small percentage of people being hospitalised and/or dying will still be a big number, scientists have stressed. Sage advisers expect 1,000 to 2,000 daily hospital admissions over the summer after the unlocking, and 100-200 deaths a day, under what was described as the “central scenario”.
The UK has one of the highest daily new case rates per million globally, according to the Our World in Data project run by the Global Change Data Lab, a UK-based non-profit organisation, behind only Indonesia and Brazil in the rolling seven-day average of new daily Covid cases.
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2018
- Messages
- 31,157
- Points
- 113
So the vaccines don't work?
- Joined
- Jul 10, 2008
- Messages
- 65,804
- Points
- 113
Donald Welsh
Follow @DonaldWelsh16
9h, 12 tweets, 2 min read
Good News. The NYT has decided it's acceptable to discuss the topic of C19 vaccine failure. Even Dr. Fauci agrees. Perhaps, the mounting evidence is too substantive to ignore. Lets consider some details and the implications. 1/
Public health positioned respiratory vaccines as the magic cure-all. It would both save society and wash away their sins, like lockdowns, pehaps the worst policy idea ever. We were told the sacrifices of today would bring salvation tomorrow. 2/
It takes years to properly develop a vaccine and no, gobs of cash and public health cheerleading doesn't change this reality. Nor does the warp speed cutting of regulatory corners at the expense of safety, efficiacy and durability. 4/
But perhaps more disturbing was the deliberate misrepresentation of their utlility. It was argued, perhaps out of ignorance, that C19 vaccines would stop the infection, disease and transmission processes dead in their tracks. This was always a fantasy. 4/
Respiratory vaccines, as currently conceived, can't effectively block viral infection or transmission. There are basic technical limitations. Perhaps, however, they would diminish disease severity, a worthy goal particularly for those at risk of hospitalization and death. 5/
This assumption now seems uncertain, as data rolls in from Britain and Israel. 4-6 months out, relative vaccine efficacy has dropped markedly and the benefit of vaccination in preventing serious illness/death appears muted. This is particularly notable in at risk groups. 6/
There are many aspects to vaccine failure at the population level and they are tricky. There's the issue of immunosenescence and breakthrough infections, the later a panicked result of vaccinating when viral circulation is high and the antigenic target small. 7/
So that's the rub, the public collectively sacrificed for an end point that was never really achievable. This is the conservation that society is now avoiding as it drives to the heart of "trust" and "honesty". Ever more so, given the serious concerns with vaccine safety. 8/
Avoiding this conversation has become a cottage industry in Canada. Public health has instead obsessed over vaccinating swaths of the population who aren't at personal risk and where benefit is marginal at best. This obsession has further eroded "trust". 9/
The failure of public health to deal with reality has had wide ranging implications. It has spawned an ever worsening campaign of coercion unhinged from the viral concern. Basic right/freedoms curtailed and medical ethics destroyed. It has been depressing predictable. 10/
More seriously, the legitimacy of gov't is now being questioned along with public health given its continuous string of failure. The former will survive and later is far less certain given the magnitude of this debacle. 11/
If there is one thing society should learn from this fiasco and the magic thinking of vaccines is that "trust" and "honesty" are important. And those that treat them with contempt should be swiftly removed from positions of authority. End.
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2010
- Messages
- 12,289
- Points
- 113
Prof Neil Ferguson did not take into account that 2/3 of England has been vaccinated with good vaccines.
By all means, whip his ass.
You see these chaps in the finance industry commenting on the stock market and making themselves sound smart while unwitting punters lose their skirts.
By the way, this shows the importance of vaccines.
By all means, whip his ass.
You see these chaps in the finance industry commenting on the stock market and making themselves sound smart while unwitting punters lose their skirts.
By the way, this shows the importance of vaccines.
- Joined
- Jul 10, 2008
- Messages
- 65,804
- Points
- 113
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2014
- Messages
- 7,123
- Points
- 113
lawyers, doctors, bankers, who can you trust most?
the most trustworthy person is your dog, wait a minute, dog is animal.......i am a idiot
the most trustworthy person is your dog, wait a minute, dog is animal.......i am a idiot
God. Opposite of dog.
- Joined
- Sep 22, 2008
- Messages
- 85,500
- Points
- 113
From work experience. After a while, you tell these guys whst to do.
Yup.
Especially for drs.
They even promote this saying that patients come first. Patient autonomy.
It is lagi even better than car mechanic.
Patient decides what they want to do for investigation or treatment.
- Joined
- Jul 10, 2008
- Messages
- 65,804
- Points
- 113
Anna Kiesenhofer the anti-authoritarian 'mastermind' of her own Olympic glory
By Patrick Fletcher about 9 hours ago
'On paper I’m an amateur, but cycling takes up a lot of space in my life'
Anna Keisenhofer soaks up her shock win in the Olympic Games road race (Image credit: Bettini Photo)
Anna Kiesenhofer told us that she never expected this and that it still hadn’t sunk in, but her press conference as the new Olympic champion truly came to life when she was asked what advice she’d give young riders starting out in the sport.
"Don’t trust authority too much," she stated, without much of a pause for thought.
The Austrian’s whole cycling career has been a sort of anti-establishment exercise, and it seems to fit with the original ethos of the Olympic Games that a gold medal is currently hanging from the neck of someone who is technically an amateur.
Kiesenhofer, whose principal pursuit is mathematics, has not been part of a cycling team since she left Lotto Soudal in 2017, and nor did she rely much on her national federation in advance of these Olympic Games.
"I manage everything on my own," she said, explaining that she is entirely self-coached and that her game-plan for Tokyo - from nutrition and equipment to training and tactics - was entirely self-authored.
Read more
Olympics: Shock gold for Anna Kiesenhofer in women's road race
Olympics: Van Vleuten celebrates but mistakes silver for gold
Dutch divided at Olympics: Vos knew Kiesenhofer was away, Van der Breggen didn't
Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
"I’m not the kind of cyclist who is only pushing the pedals; I’m also the mastermind behind my performance," she said. "I'm also proud of that."
Kiesenhofer’s independence stands in stark contrast to most of the riders she lined up alongside on Sunday morning, in particular the Dutch quartet that dominated the pre-race agenda.
It was remarkable that such a decorated group of riders were upstaged by someone so unheralded, and amusingly apt that a miscalculation should direct the gold medal the way of the mathematician.
"There was a board showing the time gaps but I never knew if I could trust it,” Kiesenhofer said, in what was another hint of that anti-authoritarian streak.
But where does it come from?
"There’s always this danger – and I was victim of it myself – that you’re young, you don’t know too much, then you have some coach or someone who says ‘I know this and you have to do that, and it’ll work for you’. I was in that spot myself and I believed people," she explained.
"Now I‘m old, I’m 30, and I started to realise that all those people who say they know, they actually don’t know. Many of them don’t know, and especially those who say that they know, don’t know, because those who do know say that they don’t know."
The mistrust might not be limited to her experiences in cycling, since she competed in duathlons and triathlons before injuries steered her away from running in 2014. She caught the attention of Lotto Soudal with her results on the Spanish amateur circuit in 2016 but was completing her PHD at the same time and, after just a year at the Belgian squad, decided the professional echelon of the sport wasn’t for her.
"I started to realise there are no shortcuts, there are no miracles. So that’s really my advice - to not necessarily believe your coach. I mean, you need to trust some people, you need people around you, and you can’t do everything on your own, but you have to be very careful about who you trust,” she said.
"For me, right now, it’s my family and close friends. I know many friends are not real friends. The number of people I trust is quite limited because you think you trust someone but in the end, you realise they are talking behind your back. The few people I trust are very close to me."
That element of isolation meant that Kiesenhofer flew into Tokyo truly under the radar, and it was telling that the one thing the Dutch squad could agree on was that they completely underestimated the Austrian university lecturer.
Indeed, the failure to realise she was still out front only told part of the story, the rest being Kiesenhofer’s own strength in riding all day in the breakaway and then storming clear with a 40-kilometre solo while her former companions faded into the background.
She could never have dreamed up that golden scenario, but nor did she consider herself quite the rank outsider that she has perhaps been portrayed as.
"On paper, I’m an amateur, but cycling takes up a lot of space in my life. I don’t earn money… I mean not a lot, my income is like a normal job, but in my head cycling takes up a huge space. For the last one-and-a-half years, I was completely focused on today," she said.
"I sacrificed everything for today, for getting a good result. In my mind, a good result might have been 25th, and I was just sacrificing everything for 25th, so now to get the win, it’s such an incredible reward."
The big question now is what happens next, with the gold medal sure to open up a wealth of new possibilities.
Kiesenhofer will soon fly home to Austria to celebrate with her family and friends, and then it’ll be over to Lausanne to resume her duties as a researcher and lecturer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
"Let’s see. I don’t know. I think the main change might actually be in myself, in my character. This will give me a lot of self-confidence and self-belief," she said.
"I’m still unsure what will change on the outside. I will keep my job, I will continue riding as I did before this victory. Of course, in terms of self-confidence it has made me another person, I think."
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2008
- Messages
- 108,853
- Points
- 113
Even Singapore kangaroo, despite all evidences pointing against LHL's allegation on defamation, would still uphold LHL's own Gospel as true to the highest order. If one day, LHL walk into court and tell the judge that he is Transgender, the Kangaroo would agree wholeheartedly and put LHL's words on paper as indisputable "FACT".
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2019
- Messages
- 505
- Points
- 28
Does the yearly flu vaccine helps people from getting the cold, cough and flu?
- Joined
- Jul 10, 2008
- Messages
- 65,804
- Points
- 113
The flu vaccine is guesswork. It targets what the "experts" guess will be the predominant strains for the coming season.
Very often they are wrong and serious flu cases clog up the hospitals and can cause many deaths. If they hit the mark serious symptoms and death numbers are reduced.
The flu shot does not work well to protect the elderly because the immune response of those over 60 is weak. Estimates suggest efficacy of less than 20% are common.
The flu shot does nothing for the common cold which is caused by over 200 viruses :
From wiki :
The influenza vaccine does absolutely nothing to prevent infections by any of the above so you can still come down with a runny nose, sore throat, a cough and a fever despite having had the flu jab.
Similar threads
