Omicron variant

[Wizard]

Over 78,000 new cases today, but of those only 4,000 are Omicron. Is there a wider issue than Omicron?

How do they know only 4,000 are Omicron?

It was said on BBC news channel report around 5.30pm today, they said it at least twice. But I can't find reference to it on the website, so maybe a mistake. I was rather suprised. Indeed, one BBC report is estimating 1/4 were Omicron, past experience suggests some BBC staff are not strong on numbers, so 1 in 4 could have become 4,000.

[1nvest]

147K UK deaths associated to covid across two years when 1.2M deaths would have been recorded naturally over the same period is a case of a massive disruption for many for the benefit of relatively few.

The number of deaths is totally irrelevant to the argument. The number of lives saved is an entirely different statistic. We will never know this number.

There are also long-term effects of Covid that some people experience. Again, we will never know what overall effect the restrictions have had.

Furthermore, unless the decision-makers had access to a properly functioning crystal ball, it is not justified to judge actions based upon results. If I offer you an evens bet on whether I throw a six or not a six, and you choose a six and win, you will still have made an unwise decision.


Julian F. G. W.

We do know that there were fewer deaths in total proportionately in 2020 than in each of 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003. 2020 was the year when Covid first appeared and rapidly spread in the UK and it wasn't until mid December before the first person was vaccinated. I would reject that numbers where lowered by lockdowns as largely that was so selective and poorly implemented to be as good as not having bothered. Nor were the more vulnerable protected, quite the opposite as the NHS exported Covid patients into care homes that were put under threats to accept them or loose their licences or endure financial penalties, and where within those care homes the staff had to make do with DIY PPE. They weren't even aided or supported until after a sea of complaints, when things changed to include them in daily claps and the staff were offered a pin-badge. To this day the occupant 'customers' are living often the last days/weeks/months of their life in solitary confinement prison type environments. Where promised additional funding has instead been directed towards the NHS where the likes of more highly paid GP's who have had their wages doubled have often reduced to part time working and where for instance our local surgery remains dark, largely just a telephone consultation service and a poor one at that (anything that involves a person actually inspecting a person is referred to the ambulance service). A large proportion of the NHS is also relatively quiet, normal surgeries that previously had waiting rooms full of 'customers' now dark with the staff normally working such groups sitting around relatively idle/chatting/laughing.

[Wizard]

Top comment on BBC News Have Your Say (seems plausible and genuine):

I am an NHS consultant.

More people are losing their life from inadequate cancer treatment, cardiovascular interventions, delays in thrombolysis for stroke than from what appears (on early analysis) to be a less pathogenic form of Covid.

We mustn’t let this, admittedly terrible pandemic, prevent us for caring for all of those who have treatable conditions and deserve much better.

Indeed!
I absolutely agree.
One guaranteed way to prevent folk from being treated is to overrun your hospitals with COVID patients (which seems preferable to choosing to recover treatment from COVID patients?)
- I'll suggest that early action to avoid that would be a good thing - especially for people ill with other things
...and build more capacity/headroom in to the system going forward


-sd

Another option could be to stop treating anyone who has not had the vaccine (without good medical reason). That may at least buy some time.
I recall recently hearing that in Scotland 40% of admissions and 60% of intensive care patients with COVID were unvaccinated. If it gets anywhere near as bad as predicted we are going to be choosing who to let die. I would suggest that the first to go should be those that have brought it on themselves.

[Hallucigenia]

And in London, Covid hospitalisations have doubled since 22 November.

They have only risen 56% since 24th November, however.

If you choose your stats carefully...

They are going up, though.


Julian F. G. W.

Well I was taking the 7-day average on 22 Nov versus an eyeball of where are now. There's a more sophisticated attempt to look at the London data here :
https://twitter.com/JamesWard73/status/ ... 3397898249

No sign yet that it's hospitalising at a different rate to delta, but it's early days yet. However one thing that can be said is that it's spilling out from the 20-somethings into other age groups.

[servodude]

Indeed!
I absolutely agree.
One guaranteed way to prevent folk from being treated is to overrun your hospitals with COVID patients (which seems preferable to choosing to recover treatment from COVID patients?)
- I'll suggest that early action to avoid that would be a good thing - especially for people ill with other things
...and build more capacity/headroom in to the system going forward


-sd

Another option could be to stop treating anyone who has not had the vaccine (without good medical reason). That may at least buy some time.
I recall recently hearing that in Scotland 40% of admissions and 60% of intensive care patients with COVID were unvaccinated. If it gets anywhere near as bad as predicted we are going to be choosing who to let die. I would suggest that the first to go should be those that have brought it on themselves.

I've suggested as much myself here before
- or at least charge them for it

- sd

[TUK020]

Another option could be to stop treating anyone who has not had the vaccine (without good medical reason). That may at least buy some time.
I recall recently hearing that in Scotland 40% of admissions and 60% of intensive care patients with COVID were unvaccinated. If it gets anywhere near as bad as predicted we are going to be choosing who to let die. I would suggest that the first to go should be those that have brought it on themselves.

I've suggested as much myself here before
- or at least charge them for it

- sd

Anecdotal, and unverified report - hearsay from my local hospital via a medical worker: The ICU is full of COVID cases. Not one person in there had been vaccinated.

[Hallucigenia]

New preprint on trying to work out the intrinsic severity of omicron - TLDR, it's too soon to say, not least because omicron is facing a population in South Africa that has a lot more exposure to spike protein than delta faced, either through vaccination or infection :

https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content ... o-10-1.pdf

Comes down to this graphic - more infections of a more immune population :

[Lootman]

But Gauteng suggests that we could be looking at a 100x increase in cases before that point is reached. So you could be looking at hospitalisations at 71% of 100x the starting point - and the health system will collapse long before that point.

I thought we'd covered that already - I'm genuinely not sure where the tricky part is

But that may happen anyway and there is probably not a lot that can be done about it.

At some point there will have to be sacrifices. I have been saying since this thing started that most of what countries are doing is just delaying the inevitable.

[nicodemusboffin]

Another option could be to stop treating anyone who has not had the vaccine (without good medical reason). That may at least buy some time.
I recall recently hearing that in Scotland 40% of admissions and 60% of intensive care patients with COVID were unvaccinated. If it gets anywhere near as bad as predicted we are going to be choosing who to let die. I would suggest that the first to go should be those that have brought it on themselves.

I've suggested as much myself here before
- or at least charge them for it

- sd

Really? And would you withdraw treatment from or charge overweight diabetic patients? Or smokers? Or people who crash when going above the speed limit? Those injured when drunk? Practitioners of dangerous sports? Overly adventerous ladder users?

And this kind of divisive suggestion is made on the basis of an anecdote that suggests 60% of those in hospital with COVID are vaccinated!

[Hallucigenia]

At some point there will have to be sacrifices. I have been saying since this thing started that most of what countries are doing is just delaying the inevitable.

But hopefully those sacrifices won't be made by cancer patients, RTA victims and all the rest, because the NHS is overhwhelmed.

We know omicron is going to cause a short, sharp shock to health systems across the world, at this stage we're essentially back to March 2020 and trying to flatten the curve.

[Lootman]

At some point there will have to be sacrifices. I have been saying since this thing started that most of what countries are doing is just delaying the inevitable.

But hopefully those sacrifices won't be made by cancer patients, RTA victims and all the rest, because the NHS is overhwhelmed.

We know omicron is going to cause a short, sharp shock to health systems across the world, at this stage we're essentially back to March 2020 and trying to flatten the curve.

Agreed. Personally I would let the unvaccinated suffer the brunt of the suffering.

And yes we have been pitting this off since March 2020. Although I am not sure the people will be willing to tolerate the kind of lockdown we had back then, because back then everyone thought we'd be done in 3 months. Nobody believes that any more.

[XFool]

Although I am not sure the people will be willing to tolerate the kind of lockdown we had back then, because back then everyone thought we'd be done in 3 months. Nobody believes that any more.

A possible sign of light at the end of the tunnel?

[zico]

But hopefully those sacrifices won't be made by cancer patients, RTA victims and all the rest, because the NHS is overhwhelmed.

We know omicron is going to cause a short, sharp shock to health systems across the world, at this stage we're essentially back to March 2020 and trying to flatten the curve.

Agreed. Personally I would let the unvaccinated suffer the brunt of the suffering.

And yes we have been pitting this off since March 2020. Although I am not sure the people will be willing to tolerate the kind of lockdown we had back then, because back then everyone thought we'd be done in 3 months. Nobody believes that any more.

"Delaying the inevitable" has saved an awful lot of lives compared to "take it on the chin". Just compare back to March 2020 when vaccines weren't available, people weren't too sure how it spread, and medical treatments were little more than guesswork. If you get Covid now, your survival chances are way better than back in March 2020 - in that sense (and that sense only) you could say Covid has got "milder" (defining "mild" as fatality rate) - not because Covid is less virulent, but because (some) humans are very clever, and have learned how to avoid infection, how to create effective vaccines, how to mitigate, and how to treat Covid.

On a personal level, last month, having just got my booster and seen the stats, I felt confident enough to get on a plane to Portugal - back at the start of the pandemic, I'd have thought air travel was the last thing I'd do while the pandemic was still going. But 2 vac + booster massively reduced the risks of serious harm from Covid for me (if infected) so the risk/reward balance tipped very much in favour of flying. (Of course, it's now tipped back again, so glad I took the opportunity to travel when I did.

The unvaccinated are suffering the brunt anyway because they are mostly the ones getting seriously ill and dying (which is as it should be because it's ridiculous that people are refusing a safe, easy and effective way to avoid ill-health and early death). The problem is that they are taking quite a few unlucky vaccinated people along with them, and also creating lots of hosts, giving the virus lots of opportunity to mutate.

It's not really a case of whether people "tolerate" a lockdown, if we do have another lockdown, it'll be the case (as usual) that it's absolutely unavoidable because the situation is so serious, because the initial response was too little, too late. Lockdown is likely to be a moot point anyway with Omicron, because by the time it's clear to our government that a lockdown is needed, it'll be far too late to do anything about it.

Good report (below) of Chris Whitty's response today to an MP claiming that "some people" say we are prioritising Covid over cancer and other serious illnesses.

https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2021/12/16/ch ... ly-polite/

[Hallucigenia]

Overview of the early history of omicron in Denmark - there were cases with travel history from NL and Qatar before SA reported it, and already seems to have been significant community spread within 10 days of it first showing up.

https://www.eurosurveillance.org/conten ... 50.2101146

[swill453]

Good report (below) of Chris Whitty's response today to an MP claiming that "some people" say we are prioritising Covid over cancer and other serious illnesses.

https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2021/12/16/ch ... ly-polite/

Excellent. I would recommend watching the video, as the transcript below it isn't complete and misses some of Witty's expressions.

Scott.

[zico]

Good report (below) of Chris Whitty's response today to an MP claiming that "some people" say we are prioritising Covid over cancer and other serious illnesses.

https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2021/12/16/ch ... ly-polite/

Excellent. I would recommend watching the video, as the transcript below it isn't complete and misses some of Witty's expressions.

Scott.

Definitely. It's high time somebody in authority nailed the "let's treat cancer, not Covid" fallacy.

[Lootman]

It's not really a case of whether people "tolerate" a lockdown, if we do have another lockdown, it'll be the case (as usual) that it's absolutely unavoidable because the situation is so serious, because the initial response was too little, too late. Lockdown is likely to be a moot point anyway with Omicron, because by the time it's clear to our government that a lockdown is needed, it'll be far too late to do anything about it.

I agree, but what would you prefer? That the government over-react every time there is a new variant just on the off chance that this time might be the real deal?

Usually the Covid panickers are arguing for data and evidence. Now you are arguing to panic now and worry about the data later!

[nicodemusboffin]

...The unvaccinated are suffering the brunt anyway because they are mostly the ones getting seriously ill and dying (which is as it should be because it's ridiculous that people are refusing a safe, easy and effective way to avoid ill-health and early death). The problem is that they are taking quite a few unlucky vaccinated people along with them...

Sorry, but this is simply untrue. The UKHSA figures show that the majority of deaths are in the vaccinated (c. 77%) as are the majority of hospitalisations (c. 60%). Moreover, especially with Omicron, it is widely accepted that vaccines do very little to prevent infection; it really isn't fair, or accurate, to suggest the unvaccinated are responsible for taking 'a few unlucky vaccinated people along with them'.

[vagrantbrain]

One local hospital "temporarily" closed it's oncology ward in March 2020 to expand it's emergency department specifically to handle the increase in covid cases. All patients are now making return journeys of up to 100 miles to go to Cumbria to get cancer treatment. I understand the reasoning for it but Chris Witty and others saying it's not prioritising one over the other is complete BS.

The clue is in the press release title: "Oncology Services and Fracture Clinic at RLI moving so Emergency Department can expand during COVID-19 pandemic" https://www.uhmb.nhs.uk/news-and-events ... 9-pandemic

[servodude]

I've suggested as much myself here before
- or at least charge them for it

- sd

Really? And would you withdraw treatment from or charge overweight diabetic patients? Or smokers? Or people who crash when going above the speed limit? Those injured when drunk? Practitioners of dangerous sports? Overly adventerous ladder users?

And this kind of divisive suggestion is made on the basis of an anecdote that suggests 60% of those in hospital with COVID are vaccinated!

No.
I would consider it a variable in triage in the case of catastrophic surge - they're less likely to respond to treatment

-sd