Corona virus and other pestilences. Poxes ‘n stuff. Part 5.

[Holden Hillbilly]

 

[DaTBird187]

I think the surgeons want elective surgery back because it's going to be raining all week and they can't play golf.

 

[davesnothere]

The difference between the UK approach which we have blindly followed and the Japan approach. Fair to say Japan is about as high density as it gets. On these figures about 14 times smarter and financially better off.

 

[Papa G]

The difference between the UK approach which we have blindly followed and the Japan approach. Fair to say Japan is about as high density as it gets. On these figures about 14 times smarter and financially better off.

Ummmm we are currently sitting at 1 in 8000. So better than Japan. How are we blindly following the UK approach? * you Fetishests are nimrods.

 

[Marat]

The difference between the UK approach which we have blindly followed and the Japan approach. Fair to say Japan is about as high density as it gets. On these figures about 14 times smarter and financially better off.

Everyone likes to sheet these differentials back to government policies. My starting point here would be to look at an obesity rate of 27.8% in the UK versus 4.3% in Japan. As I have said before, we would have much better health outcomes overall if we had taken 1/100th of the money we have spent on Covid and instead put a treadmill in every house

 

[davesnothere]

Ummmm we are currently sitting at 1 in 8000. So better than Japan. How are we blindly following the UK approach? fu** you Fetishests are nimrods.

They've been going longer we've only just started. Also compere density levels.
What was the score before we opened?

 

[Grave Danger]

McGowan has been grizzling about very low testing rates here at the moment. This may have something to do with it m80, with another 40 again today - who'd want to be queuing up for hours in that?

 

[backtozero]

The difference between the UK approach which we have blindly followed and the Japan approach. Fair to say Japan is about as high density as it gets. On these figures about 14 times smarter and financially better off.

"Similar risk factors in terms of age etc."

Hmm.

List of sovereign states by body mass index - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

The UK is 40th on the list and Japan 169th. Would love to know what the "etc." includes. Pretending the two places have comparable risk factors in their demographics is a bit disingenuous.

 

[Festerz]

McGowan has been grizzling about very low testing rates here at the moment. This may have something to do with it m80, with another 40 again today - who'd want to be queuing up for hours in that?

View attachment 1315122

What are testing queues like over there?

This article indicates case numbers are slowly starting to take off despite the border closure with breakouts due to several incidents and protocol breaches from known cases. Talk of the upcoming WA Australia Day Skyworks event might become a 'super spreader (at least by WA numbers)?

"Speaking ahead of today's announcement, Perth Lord Mayor Basil Zempilas said Skyworks would be going ahead as planned.

"Given the advice from the Health Department is that it is safe to proceed on Wednesday night, we are proceeding all guns blazing," he said.

Now that omicron is already there and slowly rising surely McGowan has to set a booster vax rate target and set a date for re-opening in coming days if he wants to retain public confidence?

Take action now to sequester private hospitals for the anticipated rise in hospital admissions, switch testing to RATs for all but close contacts, distribute RATs across the state for distribution and mandate P95/P2 masks in certain high density indoor environments. That will certainly place WA in a far better position than NSW, Vic SA etc were when they opened borders back in November and is likely to see WA reacher a lower peak than other states and much quicker.

Omicron can't be 'eliminated' in WA, government concedes, as case numbers jump and COVID breach occurs at major hospital

COVID case numbers jump in WA and the Health Minister concedes the plan of attack is now to suppress and manage the virus, not eliminate it.

www.abc.net.au

 

[Grave Danger]

What are testing queues like over there?

This article indicates case numbers are slowly starting to take off despite the border closure with breakouts due to several incidents and protocol breaches from known cases. Talk of the upcoming WA Australia Day Skyworks event might become a 'super spreader (at least by WA numbers)?

"Speaking ahead of today's announcement, Perth Lord Mayor Basil Zempilas said Skyworks would be going ahead as planned.

"Given the advice from the Health Department is that it is safe to proceed on Wednesday night, we are proceeding all guns blazing," he said.

Now that omicron is already there and slowly rising surely McGowan has to set a booster vax rate target and set a date for re-opening in coming days if he wants to retain public confidence?

Take action now to sequester private hospitals for the anticipated rise in hospital admissions, switch testing to RATs for all but close contacts, distribute RATs across the state for distribution and mandate P95/P2 masks in certain high density indoor environments. That will certainly place WA in a far better position than NSW, Vic SA etc were when they opened borders back in November and is likely to see WA reacher a lower peak than other states and much quicker.

Omicron can't be 'eliminated' in WA, government concedes, as case numbers jump and COVID breach occurs at major hospital

COVID case numbers jump in WA and the Health Minister concedes the plan of attack is now to suppress and manage the virus, not eliminate it.

www.abc.net.au

I'm in for a booster tomorrow. There's been a blitz on getting schoolkids jabbed before they go back the week after next, but mine's at a city pharmacy rather than one of the big state run clinics, so hopefully I won't have to sit around for ages.

 

[bomberclifford]

Mrs B and I had a booster on Friday. Both have seriously bruised shoulders and lethargy. Mrs B is also feeling flu like symptoms; chills, headache, fever.

Not sure I’d be keen for this every 3 months.

 

[OneGreatClub]

Mrs B and I had a booster on Friday. Both have seriously bruised shoulders and lethargy. Mrs B is also feeling flu like symptoms; chills, headache, fever.

Not sure I’d be keen for this every 3 months.

We got our third doses last week( Moderna) and not a symptom to be had apart from slightly tender injection site for a day or so. Must be luck of the draw or else Mrs B had a nice immune response which is a good thing.

 

[EskimoPAFC]

It's not an inference or an excuse but a fact.

For SA we had our borders shut during almost all of the Delta spread and endured lockdowns whenever positive cases emerged as well as mandates on masks indoors and QR checks. It mostly worked in preventing large outbreaks here. Prior to borders opening up on 23 November last year SA enjoyed months without a single case of local transmission.

Double vaccination provided exceptional coverage against Delta and previous covid variants which is why most states (including SA) agreed to open borders when community double vaccination rates reached 80%.

Unfortunately the agreed date to open (23 Nov in SA) coincided with the highly infectious Omicron variant spreading across the globe. A variant of covid that, unlike previous strains, was far less susceptible to existing vaccines - especially vaccines delivered 3-4 months ago which was the case for much of the ageing and vulnerable. Scientists say it is the fast spreading virus outbreak in recorded history.

Opening our borders before we knew anything about Omicron, other than it was highly contagious was just plain idiotic. That our Premier did it on the advice of a police officer and his former bank manager CEO, ignoring his health advisers, was breathtakingly risky. The first covid case in SA for many months occurred less than 24 hours after the borders opened.

That Omicron has proved to lead to less severe disease despite its highly infectious nature was dumb luck. Nothing else.

Definitely an element of luck involved in this but its pretty well established in scientific research that there is a strong correlation between these two.

All other things being equal, viruses that are less severe are usually going to be more infectious. It was always extremely likely that anything that had an evolutionary advantage over delta was going to be milder.

And yes: fwiw I do agree with the rest of your post. I advocated caution on Omicron from when it was first announced.

 

[EskimoPAFC]

Mrs B and I had a booster on Friday. Both have seriously bruised shoulders and lethargy. Mrs B is also feeling flu like symptoms; chills, headache, fever.

Not sure I’d be keen for this every 3 months.

Bruised shoulder could definitely be a result of the vaccine, but is it possible its the technique? I'd be strongly considering going to a different vaccinator next time.

 

[Power Girl]

Same everywhere. So much of the halth crisis is manufactured.

"
It comes as doctors plead for elective surgeries to be gradually returned, with one surgeon forced to turn away patients in pain as he spends his day “mowing my lawns”.

A call for day surgeries to be reinstated follows a Victorian government U-turn on its ban on crucial IVF treatments this week.

Australian Orthopaedic Association Victorian branch chairman Adrian Trivett lashed the blanket ban on elective surgeries as a “blunt tool” that was leaving people in long-term pain.

He said hospital wards that largely dealt with day surgeries were “empty with the lights off” and nursing staff and doctors were on leave because of “the lack of nuance to the approach to the problem”.

“There’s no doubt there’s capacity in the system to continue with some surgeries that are absolutely not life-threatening but they’re causing disability and pain and they’re not being attended to,” Dr Trivett said.

Gynaecologist Simon Gordon, who specialises in endometriosis, said all of his patients suffered from “chronic and severe pain” but were unable to have surgery.

“I’m at home mowing my lawns and turning the coffee machine on,” Dr Gordon said.

“Patients come to me and I say, ‘Look, I’m not allowed to operate’. Everyone is in the same boat and none of us are doing anything particularly useful.”

He said the nurses he worked with in operating theatres were “highly credentialed” but had “niche” skills that were not applicable to a Covid ward.

“We’re sitting around doing very little when we could be operating.”

No Cookies | Herald Sun

No Cookies

t.co

They are highly credentialed and skilled but couldn't possibly work on a Covid ward why?

 

[Festerz]

All other things being equal, viruses that are less severe are usually going to be more infectious. It was always extremely likely that anything that had an evolutionary advantage over delta was going to be milder.

Obviously I am not a virologist so can't comment one way or another. Perhaps you are?

I am only going on what I read which is best summed up by this article:

How the coronavirus escapes an evolutionary trade-off that helps keep other pathogens in check

Pathogens typically face a trade-off between virulence and transmission. But that’s not the case with SARS-CoV-2.

theconversation.com

Viruses walk a fine line between severity and transmissibility. If they are too virulent, they kill or incapacitate their hosts; this limits their ability to infect new hosts. Conversely, viruses that cause little harm may not be generating enough copies of themselves to be infectious.

But SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 disease, sidesteps this evolutionary trade-off. Symptoms often don’t appear until after infected people have been spreading the virus for several days. One study of SARS-CoV-2 estimated that the highest rate of viral shedding, and therefore transmissibility, was one to two days before the person infected begins to show symptoms.

Put simply, you only feel ill once the virus has accomplished its evolutionary goal: to spread.

Viruses that are good at making copies of themselves, and then getting those copies inside new hosts, are more successful and become more prevalent until host immunity or public health efforts restrain them.

In other words that strong correlation between transmissibility and lethality you refer to does not seem to be the case with covid. Comparisons with STI are seen as more relevant.

But as I say, I am not a virologist and have zero interest in getting into a debate on the finer points of it.

Because it does not change the point that was made, and which itself comes from the virologist experts themselves - that we are fortunate that the Omicron variant has proved to lead to less severe disease despite its highly infectious nature.

We may not be so lucky with the next mutation, bearing in mind virus mutation is not linear in nature.

 

[EskimoPAFC]

Obviously I am not a virologist so can't comment one way or another. Perhaps you are?

I am only going on what I read which is best summed up by this article:

How the coronavirus escapes an evolutionary trade-off that helps keep other pathogens in check

Pathogens typically face a trade-off between virulence and transmission. But that’s not the case with SARS-CoV-2.

theconversation.com

Viruses walk a fine line between severity and transmissibility. If they are too virulent, they kill or incapacitate their hosts; this limits their ability to infect new hosts. Conversely, viruses that cause little harm may not be generating enough copies of themselves to be infectious.

But SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 disease, sidesteps this evolutionary trade-off. Symptoms often don’t appear until after infected people have been spreading the virus for several days. One study of SARS-CoV-2 estimated that the highest rate of viral shedding, and therefore transmissibility, was one to two days before the person infected begins to show symptoms.

Put simply, you only feel ill once the virus has accomplished its evolutionary goal: to spread.

Viruses that are good at making copies of themselves, and then getting those copies inside new hosts, are more successful and become more prevalent until host immunity or public health efforts restrain them.

In other words that strong correlation between transmissibility and lethality you refer to does not seem to be the case with covid. Comparisons with STI are seen as more relevant.

But as I say, I am not a virologist and have zero interest in getting into a debate on the finer points of it unless your understanding of viral spread can shed more light on the matter that a mre mortal like myself can interpret.

Well Im not a virologist, but I dont think you have interpreted that article correctly at all in terms of how it relates to what I was saying.

The article is saying they thought there was a chance covid could continue to mutate without decreasing in virulence, or at least over a long period of time. If the article was correct we would expect to see... basically what we saw over the first 20 months of the pandemic. One variant after another taking over with incrementally greater infectiousness and similar virulence.

Omicron changed all that. From the data we had in December it was very clear that Omicron was incredibly dominant and far more infectious. It was as they have so often said "a gamechanger".

So Omicrons very existence, with its insane levels of reproduction, should tell you immediately that it has likely got an extremely different level of infectiousness and therefore most likely a lower degree of severity. Its Bayesian logic.

 

[Festerz]

Well Im not a virologist, but I dont think you have interpreted that article correctly at all in terms of how it relates to what I was saying.

The article is saying they thought there was a chance covid could continue to mutate without decreasing in virulence, or at least over a long period of time. If the

That I may have misinterpreted the article does not surprise me at all.

But as I said I have zero interest in getting bogged down in debating the molecular level of detail of of something that I no understanding of at all. At least not on a footy forum on a Sunday evening.

More than happy to bow to your greater level of understanding of bayesian logic, accept your well intended correction of my fundamental error in logic about viral mutation and move on.

I'll do my very best to not repeat my error in the future but can no provide no guarantees.

 

[Duckimus Prime]

The authors ask are we just meant to trust the pharmaceuticals. But it goes beyond this when governments are blindly signing up to their regimes and effectively persuading, coercing or compelling it's citizenry to do the same. We might get lucky, the vaccines may do more good than harm, but it's pretty clearly a crap shoot.

You only skin read the article didn't you? Or did you miss the part where it talked about Government Agencies being supplied with all the data that isn't available to journals.

Even talks about how some were trying to access the data through FOI Request to the FDA in the US.

 

[StrappingTape]

Everyone likes to sheet these differentials back to government policies. My starting point here would be to look at an obesity rate of 27.8% in the UK versus 4.3% in Japan. As I have said before, we would have much better health outcomes overall if we had taken 1/100th of the money we have spent on Covid and instead put a treadmill in every house

Japans medical system also takes a dump on the UKs from a great height. Outcomes from the NHS weren't all that great before the pandemic.

 

[sobrave]

Bruised shoulder could definitely be a result of the vaccine, but is it possible its the technique? I'd be strongly considering going to a different vaccinator next time.

Weak body language at the time of injection causes this

 

[raptalia]

I think the surgeons want elective surgery back because it's going to be raining all week and they can't play golf.

I am sure that Ms Monopoli does not see the joke.

Doctors urge SA government to ease elective surgery freeze as private hospitals sit 'idle'

Surgeons say private hospitals in South Australia have the staff, operating theatres and beds to enable more elective surgeries.

www.abc.net.au

 

[EskimoPAFC]

I ******* love this comic:

 

[raptalia]

Mrs B and I had a booster on Friday. Both have seriously bruised shoulders and lethargy. Mrs B is also feeling flu like symptoms; chills, headache, fever.

Not sure I’d be keen for this every 3 months.

I was feeling tired and fatigued after my Pfitzer booster. It sounds like your wife is experiencing common side effects of Pfitzer, assuming that is what you had. I did not have a sore shoulder but my wife did. It appears that the side effects are varied and some people are barely affected while others finish up in bed for a day or two. If we are going to get another booster it will probably be Pfitzer's updated Omicron mRNA vaccine which could be better or worse re side effects.

One side effect that has had publicity lately is the effect the Pfitzer booster has on the lymph nodes which are under the shoulder. Maybe this explains why your wife has sore shoulders. The curious thing is the incidence of discomfort caused by lymph nodes is greater with the booster than with the intial two doses. The article in the link below explains it in detail...

Why did I get sore armpits after my COVID booster, but not my first two doses?

You're much more likely to get swollen or sore lymph nodes following a Pfizer or Moderna booster than after a first or second dose. What's going on?

www.abc.net.au

The article below may be reassuring as it shows that we are not the only ones suffering side effects.

Most people have side effects after the second Pfizer jab. Here's why

What causes common reactions to a vaccine such as fever and headache, and is there anything you can do to prevent them? We explain how the vaccine works and what to expect.

www.abc.net.au

 

[Festerz]

Seems that Marshall's handling of the Omicron spread is costing him key business support as the state election draws closer. Which is all a bit puzzling because I'm pretty sure Marshall opened the borders against the advice of SA Health because of the urgings of some sections of the SA business community.

Reckon there is more to this story than Mr Maras is letting on but given his influence around town he may not be the last prominent business leader publicly dumping on the Premier with less than 2 months to the SA election.

From today's Advertiser:

Businessman Theo Maras switches support to Labor after Covid response​

One of Adelaide’s most powerful business figures has abandoned Premier Steven Marshall, publicly declaring support for Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas. Property developer Theo Maras said he had lost confidence in Mr Marshall for deciding to reopen the state’s borders when the Omicron variant posed a serious threat to the state’s economy.

Mr Maras, a Liberal Party donor, endorsed Mr Malinauskas on social media, saying he represented “leadership that looks to the future and a team that will work together for the benefit of all South Australians’.

The Adelaide Central Market Authority chairman told The Advertiser he had decided it was time to speak out “because the state is teetering on the edge of the cliff’.

“We needed a plan before we opened the gates, we needed contingencies in case of the worst case scenario,” he said. “We needed strength, leadership and conviction. That did not happen from our Premier or our government.”

Asked why he had endorsed Labor, Mr Maras said he decided it was “time to give somebody else the help that I have given the Liberals.”