XFool wrote:What is "covid hysteria"? If wet and stormy weather was predicted and I wrapped up warm and wore a raincoat outdoors, would I be suffering from "weather hysteria"?
Your analogy is flawed. Where is the prediction of a 'covid storm' coming from?
Even the government advisor has been reported as saying it's the delta variant they are concerned about, not the new variant.
But as I have repeatedly pointed out, the cases of the delta variant have been going largely sideways for the past few months - they are still below the level of cases back in July when the mandatory mask wearing was dropped.
The mandate to wear masks now is more akin to going outside on a reasonably nice summers day and seeing a nice fluffy cumulous cloud over on the horizon, and immediately rushing straight back home to wrap up warm and wear a rain coat. Yes, I would consider that hysteria / paranoia.
XFool wrote:It's highly infectious?
Anyway, thanks for helping me prove how all those people who tell me I'm wrong when I say many people seem not to understand the 'meaning' of the word "infectious", are indeed wrong.
You keep repeating this, but it makes no sense. You seem to refuse to explain what you mean by it. At least I've not seen any explanation.
I've already given you on a previous thread a logical explanation (using formal logic) of why your comment about it being infectious is logically inconsistent with our normal approach to 'infectious' diseases, but you haven't yet as far as I've seen given any explanation as to why
this infectious disease is different to
other infectious diseases that we treat differently.
As such I can but guess at what you are referring to. Perhaps it's the R number, and a case of premature extrapolation?
I mean, the R number everybody loves to point out is supposedly 'exponential'.
Except strictly speaking it isn't. There are only a finite number of people in the country. This puts a cap on the exponential. So strictly speaking it's only exponential in the early part of the curve.
And with most of the country now vaccinated, so protected against severe illness and death, that also changes the landscape. It puts us outside of the place where the R can be simply described as 'exponential'.
Just jumping up and down saying it's 'infectious' and moaning that people don't understand what it means... well, let's just say, if you don't provide any explanation, more and more some of us are beginning to wonder whether you yourself fully understand it.
Or whether by just repeating that it's "infectious" without explaining what you are trying to say by that, and then just claiming people are being thick for not understanding, are you perhaps just trolling?
XFool wrote:I reckon I've heard the cry: "It's all over now. Back to normal!" at least as many times as we've had waves of coronavirus. Wonder if that's a coincidence?
A few weeks before Christmas and all of a sudden there's another variant of concern supposedly hitting the deadlines. Kind of like deja vu from last year. What a coincidence.
And this variant of concern is with only 50 proven cases at the time. And now the governments advisor saying, but the delta variant is the main concern before christmas, not the new variant. But look at the figures, the delta variant is quite 'stable' now.
Even the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine seem to recognise that there isn't much scope for additional problems from the delta variant...
"England would only suffer 35,000 Covid hospital admissions if EVERYONE caught virus right now because of previous immunity and jabs, study suggests
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine researchers estimated the remaining hospitalisation toll
They say England would suffer another 35,000 admissions if everyone came into contact with the virus
It was the lowest rate of hospitalisation in Europe because of immunity from prior infection and boosters
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... gests.html "
So why is the governments advisor saying the delta is currently the variant of concern before christmas?
In all the articles that I've seen about the new variant, the one thing that I haven't seen yet - and I've specifically been looking for it - is whether there is any evidence to believe that this variant is likely to be more deadly... and if so, in what situations.
For example, is it more deadly to unvaccinated people who have never had covid so far?
Does it reduce vaccine efficacy against serious illness and death? If so, to what extent?
Is it as deadly to people have have actually had a previous variant already? We know that in the first wave, some people are believed to have had some protection from pre-pandemic coronavirus infections (tests on blood samples taken prior to the pandemic have shown some people's blood already recognises sars-cov-2). We also know that the immune system generates a broader response from actually encountering the virus compared to getting the vaccine. If the new variant turns out to be many times more deadly, then it could quite conceivably be the case that prior infection with an earlier strain might actually turn out to be the best defence against the new variant.
But like I say, it's actually unclear whether the new variant is the reason the government are introducing face masks. The various things I'm hearing from the government and the advisors don't seem to fit together in a coherent picture.