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Coronavirus - the new strain XII

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mandryka said:
There’s another thing to remember, treatment has improved according to the news, so the rate of transition from hospitalisation to death should be less than in Spring. The system should be able to cope with more.
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We discussed that at length up thread - not much is the answer. They learned early on that not everyone has to be put on a ventilator and the steroids give marginally improved outcomes (6%)
 
paulfromcamden said:
She was absolutely right but it was an unfortunate thing to say in the house - it's going to be used repeatedly against her by her political opponents.

Her aunt died of covid-19 last week. I'm not surprised she's taking the governments failings personally.
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The truth is unfortunate now!
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Just to chew over the first of your Salisbury quotes for a moment (I've added quotation marks, as the pfm quote function italicises anyway): Do we need to 'stop transmission'?

We don't need a cure if the disease can be handled to minimise deaths and longer term effects. I know 'long Covid' and all, which is the hole in my argument, but if Covid can be managed down to 'just another like seasonal flu' by better treatment, and vaccinating the vulnerable, then we don't necessarily need to 'stop transmission'.
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I agree. But my concern is that any death (or indeed illness, because of the effects you mention) from Covid is becoming unacceptable, especially amongst the young. I am also concerned that people are being led to believe that a vaccine available next year will be a cure.

For many, the risk of death or long-term illness (according to David Spiegelhalter) is much lower than other risks we accept every day.

The key is to stop it spreading from these to those who have a much higher risk from the illness. We do that by finding who has the illness, isolating them and their contacts and supporting their income and make sure their jobs are secure. Without this, many people cannot afford to do the right thing.

I'm not sure if that risk is still significantly lower than other acceptable risk factors, but Spiegelhalter et. al. has also said that most of those who have died so far had a high-risk of dying this year of other illnesses.

Stephen
 
stephen bennett said:
I agree. But my concern is that any death (or indeed illness, because of the effects you mention) from Covid is becoming unacceptable, especially amongst the young. I am also concerned that people are being led to believe that a vaccine is a cure.

For many, the risk of death or long-term illness (according to David Spiegelhalter) is much lower than other risks we accept every day.

The key is to stop it spreading to those who have a much higher risk from the illness.

I'm not sure if that risk is still significantly lower than other acceptable risk factors, but Spiegelhalter has also said that most of those who have died so far had a high-risk of dying this year of other illnesses.

Stephen
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Yes, and I think we're broadly agreeing with each other. There's a risk that we might over-emphasise Covid out of some collective hysteria. If - and it's still a big if - we can get the mortality and long term effects down to the levels we see from Flu or other serious infectious diseases like Hepatitis, then we can live with it 'in the wild' as it were. We don't need to eradicate it like Smallpox. SARS and MERS were contained and fizzled out. I still hope that Covid will settle into the category of 'serious, but manageable risk' in a year or so.
 
stephen bennett said:
I'm not sure if that risk is still significantly lower than other acceptable risk factors, but Spiegelhalter has also said that most of those who have died so far had a high-risk of dying this year of other illnesses.
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He ignores how many would have died without the "lockdowns". That's a grossly distorted argument if we're discussing the much less restrictive measures that are now the norm. I'd take some convincing too that the majority of people who died around the world (or even in the uk) would have died this year anyway.
 
stephen bennett said:
I agree. But my concern is that any death (or indeed illness, because of the effects you mention) from Covid is becoming unacceptable, especially amongst the young. I am also concerned that people are being led to believe that a vaccine available next year will be a cure.

For many, the risk of death or long-term illness (according to David Spiegelhalter) is much lower than other risks we accept every day.

The key is to stop it spreading from these to those who have a much higher risk from the illness. We do that by finding who has the illness, isolating them and their contacts and supporting their income and make sure their jobs are secure. Without this, many people cannot afford to do the right thing.

I'm not sure if that risk is still significantly lower than other acceptable risk factors, but Spiegelhalter has also said that most of those who have died so far had a high-risk of dying this year of other illnesses.

Stephen
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There is a peer-reviewed study that estimates the average loss of life to COVID to be around 12 years. I assume this is a mean figure, so it is skewed by the relatively small number of deaths in younger people. Still, it doesn't seem unreasonable to conclude that many elderly people have had 1-5 years sliced off the end of their lives. I would like to understand this impact better.

Whatever the truth is, we should all be wary of the pernicious argument that "They would have died anyway".
 
droodzilla said:
Whatever the truth is, we should all be wary of the pernicious argument that "They would have died anyway".
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Absolutely. It's also to illegal to base policy around such arguments, every case needs to be considered on its own merits...
 
gavreid said:
He ignores how many would have died without the "lockdowns". That's a grossly distorted argument if we're discussing the much less restrictive measures that are now the norm. I'd take some convincing too that the majority of people who died around the world (or even in the uk) would have died this year anyway.
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I agree we need more data.

But that doesn't change the thrust of my post—that a vaccine is not going to be the panacea that many think and we need other mitigating factors to get to Sue's 'manageable' risk scenario.

Stephen
 
gavreid said:
Absolutely. It's also to illegal to base policy around such arguments, every case needs to be considered on its own merits...
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I do really agree on this and we can deal with Covid without letting people die unnecessarily.

But we do base policy around these arguments and on the risk levels to different sections of society rather than individuals. If every case is considered in its own merits, no death from Covid would be acceptable. If we pursue this to its logical conclusion, society is pretty much finished.

i.e allowable pollution levels, traffic, welfare and health availability policies are all based on groups rather than individuals.

We accept, for example, 40,000 early deaths and chronic illness p.a. from pollution because the economic impact from not polluting is seen as too high. We accept thousands of deaths each year from traffic accidents so we can use our cars. Neither of these risk factors are the same across populations, with some people being more vulnerable than others.


Stephen
 
gavreid said:
Absolutely. It's also to illegal to base policy around such arguments, every case needs to be considered on its own merits...
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I was struck by what you said here (Stephen has probably articulated my query better than I would have). What basis do you have for it being illegal to base policy around arguments such as 'they would have died anyway'? I agree it's not a palatable position, but actually illegal?
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
I was struck by what you said here (Stephen has probably articulated my query better than I would have). What basis do you have for it being illegal to base policy around arguments such as 'they would have died anyway'? I agree it's not a palatable position, but actually illegal?
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Yes, it comes with the right to life. Risk is one thing but you still have to assess each case individually - some of the early advice was withdrawn on this basis - I think too it will be part of the legal challenges to the carehome policies and events.
 
droodzilla said:
OK, here's the first google result I got:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.08.20050559v2

US study, not in a peer-reviewed journal, and not the paper I saw (which was more thorough), but it reaches broadly the same conclusion: on average 10.8 years of life is lost for each death due to COVID.
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Ta.

How useful is an overall average here though?

The average wage means little if you include billionaires and those on multiples of a 'normal' salary.

Surely it's better to evaluate 'life lost' for the different age and risk groups, as it differs so much between these (which is Spiegelhalter et. al.'s point)

For people over 70 in a care home it may be days or weeks.

For a child it's going to be 70 years.

Just trying to get my head around if these are useful data and how we apply these to our response to the virus.

Stephen
 
gavreid said:
Yes, it comes with the right to life. Risk is one thing but you still have to assess each case individually - some of the early advice was withdrawn on this basis - I think too it will be part of the legal challenges to the carehome policies and events.
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I do agree that lack of mitigation in care homes was a criminal action. But proving the Government was responsible is going to be an uphill struggle.

Also, how does this 'right to life' apply for the situations I talk about in 469? The Government are not liable for every road death, but might be for the overall policies enacted.

Though even that is a difficult prosecution, as their actions on austerity demonstrate.

Stephen
 
stephen bennett said:
Ta.

How useful is an overall average here though?

The average wage means little if you include billionaires and those on multiples of a 'normal' salary.

Surely it's better to evaluate 'life lost' for the different age and risk groups, as it differs so much between these (which is Spiegelhalter et. al.'s point)


For people over 70 in a care home it may be days or weeks.

For a child it's going to be 70 years.

Just trying to get my head around if these are useful data and how we apply these to our response to the virus.

Stephen
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I know. I'd like to see a distribution by age too. The skewing effect might not be so large because so few young people die.

Regardless, one or two extra years of life at the age of (e.g.) 80 is not to be sniffed at. I wouldn't say no (unless I was in permanent agony, say).
 
stephen bennett said:
I do agree that lack of mitigation in care homes was a criminal action. But proving the Government was responsible is going to be an uphill struggle.

Also, how does this 'right to life' apply for the situations I talk about in 469? The Government are not liable for every road death, but might be for the overall policies enacted.

Though even that is a difficult prosecution, as their actions on austerity demonstrate.

Stephen
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I imagine it relates to the first sentence of Article 1 of the Human Rights Act:

Everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law. No one shall be deprived of his life intentionally save in the execution of a sentence of a court following his conviction of a crime for which this penalty is provided by law.
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So, you can't fail to protect everyone's right to life, by law. But you don't have to positively protect everyone's life.

I agree, though, some policy decisions (pollution control, road safety provisions, etc) do walk a bit of a tightrope. I guess it's the art of the possible, and not letting the best be the enemy of the good, and all that sort of thing. You do what is reasonably feasible, in the interests of a well-ordered society. I imagine there's a lot of wrangling yet to be done over whether the government did, in fact, do everything reasonably feasible, in this case.
 
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