Tuesday 3 August 2021

100,000 cases a day and the end is nigh


The "Johnson" Variant indeed. 

By now, 2 weeks are opening up the Country, the group of assorted communists and losers who call themselves Isage (Iceage would be better, given the historic nature of their views) had managed to get Keir Starmer to say the Government were being reckless, that cases would soar and we would be in a new wave of terrible pandemic - and lo the Johnson variant was born. 

The thing that gets me is no one calls all this rubbish out enough. For the whole pandemic the downsides, which in reality have been bad enough, has been really skewed to the downside. 

As if life has not been bad enough, the Government, Labour Party and general media are always willing to give a voice to someone who fears the worst. As a kid I recall people walking around London with the signs above - they were not routinely given any credit and endless media interviews. 

The bug to me about this is it means the pandemic psychosis is going to on for a long time if the media insists on listening to every Cassandra going. The current one they are going to start on is vaccine escape of a new variant, something the drugs companies are happy about because they have easily tweakable vaccines to sell us - not because it means back to square one.

Oh for a summer silly season!

30 comments:

dustybloke said...

Has good news ever sold a paper or attracted a viewer?

The End is Nigh attitude is a bigger money spinner.

The media during the pandemic has been woeful. Blogs are best!

Oh, and thanks for the fiver chaps!

Nick Drew said...

Hold it up to the light, DB ...

Bill Quango MP said...

OT. I had a fake polymer £20 today. Wrong colour ink and some features missing.

The quality of the real polymer is woeful enough. If you have a fiver, look at the image of Big Ben. Hold it over any white paper. A very large number of these notes have the clock faint, or almost entirely missing. And the queen’s head, beside it, also really faint.

These are not fake notes. Just wearing out very quickly.

E-K said...

No, it isn't going away.

This is the New Normal.

I expect a majority of people are wearing masks because they fear social stigma, not a disease.

dustybloke said...

Hmm, first fiver I’ve ever seen with the Larry Grayson watermark Mr Drew!

jim said...

We seem to be in an uncomfortable zone, not sure if Covid is going or waiting to bite us on the bum.

India went from declining nicely to a dramatic surge very quickly. Don't fancy that here. The vaccines seem to be working well, but natural herd immunity???? Not really much sign of that which is a bit worrying. Looks like we are still riding an exponential tiger.

Then there is the economics and pressure from the Right. The lovely Sherrell & friends would give us the white feather for WFM. One wears a mask out because one does not want to look a chav. Then when will the restrictions end, in time for a spot of skiing? Maybe not.

In pre internet days we might have let it rip faut de mieux. But the numbers look a bit scary and too public - re election wise. We may well be paying involuntarily for the next Tory election campaign. Saves Elliot a bit of work and makes Starmer grind his teeth. The downside/upside, Boris dare not let it rip.

Jan said...

Big pharma must be loving it and no end in sight for them to keep profiting! Not just from all the jabs but also for all the prophylactics and anything to treat "long Covid"/anxiety/depression etc etc.

Since when was health the over-riding concern of all and sundry? We really do need to get a grip.

Thud said...

Perhaps its just here but I've seen no masks when out and about for weeks now and a decreasing amount in shops....I've never worn one so I'm happy its starting to be more common here.

E-K said...

"Exponential tiger" woooo !

You wouldn't need to bribe people with pizza when they know infections does not equal deaths.

Research is showing that if you ejaculate more than 21 times a month your chance of getting prostate cancer is reduced by 30%.

I figure that compensates for me ditching masks.

And if you're a vaccinated male with few co-morbidities and so fearful of dying prematurely that you need to wear a mask or not go out and want to 'save the NHS' then lose weight and get wanking.

And if you care so much about other people's lives then don't drive. That is the surest way you're going to hurt someone.

-------

I do not doubt that there have been tragedies but we are at the stage where focused shielding must surely be the way.

My local city, economically devastated, was shocking to see yesterday. The "exponential tiger" that is bounding towards us is death inducing poverty and our loss of humanity and perspective - old people can die of hypothermia for all Green Boris cares. That's OK, somehow, is it ?

DJK said...

I'll have to support Jim here. There was a report on PBS (America) which put it nicely: "For many, the belated realization that COVID will be ‘a long war’ sparks anger and denial." Plenty of anger on show here, some denial too.

It is an exponential tiger. Right now things are going well, and with luck the worst is over and next year will be closer to the old normal. But the virus has a nasty habit of surprising and with some more mutations, fading immunity, etc. we might still go back to exponential growth when things can go very badly, very very quickly.

My guess is that won't happen, but I'm not so hubristic as to declare with the kind of certainty that some folks have, that we need to end masks, WFH, vaccine rollouts, social distancing, et al NOW.

E-K said...

DJK

No hubris here, just an awareness that all of those measures come with incalculable costs.

Don Cox said...

The human population today, with its constant travelling and mixing, is a feast waiting for any virus, bacterial disease, or other parasite.

Remember what happened to the Passenger Pigeons.

COVID-19 has a very low death rate. The next one is very likely to have a higher death rate.

Don Cox

Anonymous said...

Unknown - So ?

You lock down when it comes. And one that bad won't need emergency laws to enforce it.


This is permanent ? Is that what you're saying ?

visc said...

DJK you may not be "so hubristic as to declare with the kind of certainty that some folks have, that we need to end masks, WFH, vaccine rollouts, social distancing, et al NOW."

However your own version of hubris by that statement is mixed with superstition, extremely authoritarianism and finding difficultly in subjective risk assessment.

dearieme said...

@DJK: you might as well end masks, old son. They don't do any good.

Elby the Beserk said...

100,000 false positives a day, in reality. Given the cycle count of 40 which is being used for PCR tests is way above what it recommended for a "clean" test, almost all of these will be false positives. The only figures that matter are

a) how many are sick
b) how many died OF (not "having had a false positive test within 28 days) COVID-19

Everything else is just crap. Weaponised stats to keep us frightened.

Elby the Beserk said...

Blogger jim said...
We seem to be in an uncomfortable zone, not sure if Covid is going or waiting to bite us on the bum.

India went from declining nicely to a dramatic surge very quick
12:07 pm
============================================================

And then the states that used Ivermectin saw dramatic falls in sickness rates.

Let's have the full story eh?

Elby the Beserk said...

DJK said...

It is an exponential tiger. Right now things are going well, and with luck the worst is over and next year will be closer to the old normal. But the virus has a nasty habit of surprising and with some more mutations, fading immunity, etc. we might still go back to exponential growth when things can go very badly, very very quickly.

6:00 pm
===============================================
Viruses mutate to stay alive. Hence vaccination has massively multiplied the rate of mutation. That said, the greatest variation from "root", as it were, is c3%, so minimal. Also, we know that when viruses mutate, whilst they get more infectious, they get less harmful. Mutations are just another stick to batter us with into submission. As the mask wearers everywhere testify to.

lilith said...

..."but natural herd immunity???? Not really much sign of that which is a bit worrying."

The ONS suggests that 1 in 5 people who have manifested Covid develop "long Covid". They suggest that there are 1.5 million with "long Covid". That indicates that 7million have "had Covid" with the other 63 million of us managing to remain symptomless. If that isn't herd immunity (after two winters of the the thing) I don't know what is.

YDG said...


RE: Elby @ 11:40

" we know that when viruses mutate, whilst they get more infectious, they get less harmful. "

Why less harmful?

I understand the increase in infectiousness; random mutations generate a mix of variants where some are more infectious and some less so. Clearly, the more infectious ones do better - from the virus' point of view.

But how does it work with harm? Some people contract Covid and show no symptoms at all. Even people who do eventually show symptoms may be symptom-free for weeks after the initial infection. I'm not seeing the mechanism that favours less harmful variants.

E-K said...

"I'm not seeing the mechanism that favours less harmful variants."

You're witnessing it in action. High infection rates with much lower death rates (taking the tests at face value.)

We've already been told umpteen times by SAGE that the vaccine isn't good enough to have been doing this.

---

Why are there so many people prepared to see their way of life go down the shitter ?

If you seek total safety at the cost of freedom then you deserve neither and indeed will have neither.

lilith said...

"I'm not seeing the mechanism that favours less harmful variants."

Virologists tell us that's how viruses work

Don Cox said...

Being less harmful is an advantage to any parasite. The longer the host survives, the more the parasite can reproduce.

Don Cox

Scrobs. said...

@ Dustybloke - I seem to recall that if you folded a couple of tenners a certain way, you got an image of John McEnroe!

And all this chat about 'Variants' isn't doing the VW second-hand market any good at all!

o/t, My dear Mum would have been 107 today...

Sobers said...

"But how does it work with harm? Some people contract Covid and show no symptoms at all. Even people who do eventually show symptoms may be symptom-free for weeks after the initial infection. I'm not seeing the mechanism that favours less harmful variants."

The more virulent the disease, the quicker the infected die and the less people they infect. Plus the more virulent it is and the more obviously people are showing signs of serious illness the more the uninfected keep away from them. Whereas a mild but contagious illness will infect lots of people, they won't feel too bad and they will spread it far and wide. Thus milder but more contagious viral strains rapidly become dominant over more virulent ones.

The problem is by vaccinating everyone (or a large proportion of the susceptible population) in the middle of the pandemic when the virus is endemic and can mutate rapidly, you are creating the possibility that more infectious AND more virulent strains become dominant, because the vaccine allows people who would have been laid up in bed, or in hospital, or dead, to not feel too bad and spread the disease in a way they wouldn't have without a vaccine. The vaccines effectively raise the bar to the level of virus severity a population can tolerate. If we keep vaccinating people year on year using these leaky vaccines (that don't give you true immunity, just suppress the symptoms) we are creating the conditions for ever more virulent strains to emerge. To the point that the vaccinated will still die at roughly the rate they had from the breakout Alpha variant, but anyone unvaccinated will die if they catch it. That is the lesson from Mareks disease.

We are playing with very dangerous natural evolutionary forces, and making very bad decisions. Its not going to end well.

Elby the Beserk said...

@YDG

"Why less harmful?"

No idea, but that is that happens and what has always happened - one assumes it is part of the virus's survival strategy.

See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0690-4 and a search will produce many papers on this theme.

2:39pm

Elby the Beserk said...

@Sobers

"We are playing with very dangerous natural evolutionary forces, and making very bad decisions. Its not going to end well."

9:07am

Agree 100%. A number of people in the field have spoken out against mass vaccination during an pan/epidemic (worth noting that had this happened before 2009, it would have been classed as an "epidemic" - on death rates. WHO decided that the fear factor needed to be ramped up, so removed the "number of deaths" factor from how they classify such outbreaks. So what once would have been an epidemic became a pandemic. A rose by any other name? Nope...

YDG said...

RE: Elby @ 9:41 (and others)

"that is that happens and what has always happened"

Except it didn't happen with Smallpox nor did it happen with Bubonic Plague (admittedly that a bacterium). There certainly are cases where diseases mutate to become less destructive but that is in no way a given. Hence my question about mechanism. Covid looks like the sort of infection that already spreads so readily - long incubation period, most people survive, many exhibit only minor symptoms - that a reduction in say, the death rate, seems very unlikely
to make much difference to its "success".

I'm not trying to make a political point here. I don't see this question as arguing for or against any particular course of action. I'm just puzzled by the assumption that the virus will become less harmful when

a) we know of other viruses where that didn't happen and

b) the nature of this virus suggests it won't benefit much from reduced harm.

said...

Big pharma profiting? I must've invested in the wrong companies. GSK hasn't gone anywhere for more than a decade and only return has been the dividend, AZN I must've had more than a decade, up around 120%, smallish dividend. Not really worth a conspiracy theory. Greggs would've been a much better investment. Big pharma must be making a killing in some other mysterious ways.

E-K said...

And Greggs has been a big part of the UK Covid problem. (Obesity)

Obviously people are comfort eating and I've never seen so many fatties.