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The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

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Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#271

Post by throwaway8582 »

billiam wrote: post #137
arbuge wrote: post #90

Most news articles I see focus solely on the number of vaccinated people when estimating how far away countries are from herd immunity, which seems odd to me. Left out in the discussion seem to be the unvaccinated but already infected. As far as I know, prior infection confers at least some degree of immunity. It may also be the case that those inclined to be skeptical of vaccines were also the ones who exposed thems…

I don't know what the point of such conjecture is. Of course we don't know how much immunity comes from infection, and it is quite clear from the spread of delta that we are nowhere near herd immunity in the developed world, even in places like Israel. I had a coronavirus called a cold last year; does that mean I'm immune this year? Unlikely in the long term with COVID. The entire concept of herd immunity may be a mi…

> I had a coronavirus called a cold last year; does that mean I'm immune this year?

There are supposedly over 200 different viruses that can cause the common cold (https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/underst...). So it's quite possible for immunity to any individual strain to last a very long time and still get multiple colds per year.

> Usually viruses become more transmissible and less lethal in response to rational behavior in their hosts--but humans are proving we're not rational.

Our own "rationality" doesn't matter much, if a virus leaves you bed-ridden or dead, that makes it very hard for you spread it regardless of your choices. The fact that we have so many different viruses which essentially cause more or less the same "common cold" proves that there is very strong evolutionary pressure for a virus to behave this way.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#272

Post by andy_ppp »

People in the summer in the UK spend plenty of time outside, I would think the winter is when things get interesting again. Let’s hope we’re out of the woods but the luck of the uk government isn’t something I’d bank on!

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#273

Post by idlemind »

Havoc wrote: post #247

>all the more conspicuous for happening just two days after the country’s pandemic restrictions were [...] lifted Lateral flow tests just happened to run out on the day restrictions were lifted. [0] And tada numbers plummet right when gov is taking massive heat for dropping restrictions in the middle of a surge. Yes really - that is how the current UK gov rolls. The fact that the author is trying to extrapolate other…

There are plenty of tests available since then, we picked some up recently. This was a temporary blip, if anything. You can see the testing rate on the gov dashboard [0] and it hasn’t really changed enough to account for the fall in cases.

[0] https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/testing

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#274

Post by mrhands69 »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #184
aristophenes wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without time for a study, wouldn’t it make sense to assume the most common thing, that a natural infection provides more immunity than the vaccine? Taking the line of reasoning where we assume the worst case scenario until proven otherwise, would it be reasonable to assume long term medical issues from the vaccinations?

> Without time for a study, wouldn’t it make sense to assume the most common thing, that a natural infection provides more immunity than the vaccine? No, actually; the actual infection sometimes misfires, leaving dud spike proteins outside the cells. If the immune system finds those first, it'll attack the dud spike proteins instead of the still-functional spike proteins, attacking all the viruses that failed to get…

> Assuming the worst-case scenario until proven otherwise doesn't work like that. You have to look at the entire range of uncertainty, and choose the worst-case scenario for each question.

It seems to me the worst case scenario is always applied when looking at things like natural immunity from prior infection, long covid, etc

If you model Sars-Cov-2 after Sars-Cov-1 or MERS then you would be lead to believe natural immunity lasts around 5+ years.

Where is worst case scenario not applied? Anything to do with vaccines. We're not even allowed to question it.

We are extremely conservative on one side of the coin, but not the other. Why?

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#275

Post by Wolfenstein98k »

danenania wrote: post #80
Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #2

Important and underexamined question. What happened in the UK?

Oh fun: the game where everyone puts their pet biases forward in an attempt to explain the behavior of a poorly understood complex system. It reminds me of the financial news. "Commodities markets are spooked as backlash to latest Justin Bieber video mounts!" In all seriousness, apart from the vaccination rate and strictly enforced lockdowns, I have yet to see an explanation for cases going up or down in a particular…

The lockdown thing doesn't work as well as you'd think either.

We have nearly the world's toughest lockdown in Sydney, and weeks later the cases are higher than ever.

Same thing happened here in Melbourne last year, with "officially" the toughest lockdown in the world, for 120 days. It was absolutely miserable.

It eventually works - but the UK eventually saw a similar precipitous decline, along the same timeframe, while only relinquishing restrictions.

The only common thread is that in 5-8 weeks, the spike reverses and plummets, regardless of policy.

(Lockdowns may keep the spike much lower, along with the general spread. But I'm more interested in why they seem to have no effect on arresting or reversing the spread once it takes hold.)

Perspective: Aussie, plugged in, watching the West and India closely.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#277

Post by kevinbowman »

kmlx wrote: post #239
dmje wrote: post #223

UK citizen here. I just don't think this "collapse" is the case. My gut feel is that everyone has stopped doing lateral flow tests and reporting those tests: noone wants to be isolating now the summer holidays have started, and many people are now ignoring track and trace because they're scared of the possible "pingdemic". I know many people who have stopped scanning in to venues. I reckon many suspect they may have…

i think schools closing, euros ending, the nhs covid19 app ping and holidays starting are actually contributing to a lower number. scotland’s early school holiday should correlate at least part of this hypothesis. a couple of q’s thou: 1. where do you report lateral flow tests? i do mine at home every day as my work sent out boxes of them. 2. if a lateral flow is positive, aren’t you supposed to do another and then a…

> where do you report lateral flow tests?

https://www.gov.uk/report-covid19-result

> if a lateral flow is positive...

I imagine that that report result site will refer you for a PCR test, although thankfully I've never personally been in that position.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#280

Post by dude187 »

ericb wrote: post #188
dude187 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The response to controlling people and taking away their freedom in the name of COVID has been ran deliberately and openly run through fear mongering. It's no wonder people keep defaulting to that, but we must actively reject and counter fear mongering.

> run through fear mongering More than 4 million people have died so far. If you're going to say it was "fear mongering" then buzz off.

If you aren't aware of all the fear mongering, you're not paying attention.
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