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Covid: what's wrong with this picture?

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 Postmanpat 23 Oct 2020

Can someone explain to the us non-scientists why the below is not true? (The written version is an abbreviated version of the long interview-his basic position is that SAGE has got its analysis largely wrong and exaggerated the risk from the virus.)

And yes, I know the interview is on Delingpole's channel but can we ignore that fact (Delingpole just provides the platform), and can we please avoid the Russian BOT , alt right motives , ad-hominem stuff? (And, in case of doubt, it has nothing to do with anti-vaxxer/5G loony stuff.)

Please stick to explaining why the science is wrong.

https://lockdownsceptics.org/what-sage-got-wrong/

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-atukd-efc5d9?utm_campaign=au_share_e...

https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563

Post edited at 14:30
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 marsbar 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

I don’t know enough about it.  

My feeling is to hope that it is right and continue to work on a vaccine in case it is wrong.  

Probably over simplified, but biology was never my strong point. 

I also thing we should look to Germany because their infection rates are much lower than everyone else’s.  

1
 The New NickB 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

Looks like an extension of the Gupta lunacy. The conclusion appears to be that the pandemic is over, however the sustained growth in hospital admissions and deaths appears to contradict that. Growth obviously isn't as fast as in March, but that is primarily to do with mitigation measures. Immunity will have some effect, but the numbers really don't support what this is suggesting.

6
 wintertree 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

First link looks and smells like bullshit to me.

I picked an example at random.  From your first link:

The main point from these graphs is the trend line. The rising number of cases and deaths is proceeding 4x more slowly now than in the spring. This doesn’t prove that we are nearing the end state, but this observation is consistent with that concept.

If he was right and it's emerging herd immunity at play here and not the massively increased risk control measures we now have (which he strangely neglects to mention), then we wouldn'' have had a more than 4x increase in cases week-on-week at my local university when a bunch of random students from around the country were put together in accommodation unfit for those risk control measures.  Time after time outbreaks in environments unfit for risk control measures such as meat packing plants and now undergraduate halls make it abundantly clear that most of the population is still susceptible and the virus still has the potential to tear through the population doubling every ~4 days, just like in March/April.  So it smells like someone misunderstanding the situation or deliberately misrepresenting the data.

Second link - unless there's a transcript I'll skip right over podcasts.  Awful means to communicate scientific content, great means to gish gallop a point. 

Third link - yes, T-cell immunity is not well understood and is likely more important than antibody immunity.  Much navel gazing can be done there, but we know cases were exponential at an overwhelm healthcare level when we locked down the first time around.  Not enough water has passed under the bridge since then to change the susceptibility much in the population, and cases are again exponential and heading for healthcare overload.  Healthcare overload is the key measure for lockdown, not the unknown fraction of people who remain susceptible.  It's not spitballing, it's not modelling, it's not riddled with unknowns - it's a single measurable that incorporates all of those and its the factor we need to control. 

3
In reply to Postmanpat:

The first one that comes to mind is the claim that lots of people should have some immunity because of the endemic nature of the common cold, also a coronavirus.

I would guess that everyone has had plenty of common colds in their life, given that it is endemic. So, why are so many people getting sick, and dying, with this particular coronavirus, if we all have this prior immunity he claims? I imagine he would argue that those with immunity are getting exposed, but are not falling ill.

The prevalence in student residences and other confined space outbreaks suggests that pre-existing resistance is weak, and it would spread very widely unless measures are taken to prevent it. It's difficult to test that assertion on moral grounds, because we cannot simply let it 'run its course' in a controlled environment (even if some might suggest forcing students to return was intended to be just such an experiment ..).

The exponential dynamics of the first and second peaks don't seem to show much evidence of tailing off naturally, and only seem to respond to distancing and isolation measures. We have had to apply those measures in order to prevent those exponential dynamics from swamping available healthcare capacity.

Whether the pandemic would indeed peter out on its own if left unchecked cannot be known, unless we are prepared to risk allowing the health services to be overrun. Exactly how overrun they would be before natural petering out is a big gamble.

That's about as far as I got...

[edit: wintertree beat me to most of my points...]

Post edited at 14:59
1
Bilbo Baggins 23 Oct 2020
In reply to The New NickB:

How much is the increase in numbers to do with the fact that we are now identifying cases that went unidentified previously? On the positive side, if there is one, the increase in cases reduces the percentage of those cases that result in fatality. That is presumably a good thing?

Joe

5
 Jon Stewart 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

> Can someone explain to the us non-scientists why the below is not true? (The written version is an abbreviated version of the long interview-his basic position is that SAGE has got its analysis largely wrong and exaggerated the risk from the virus.)

I don't think what he's saying is plainly not true. What I think he's doing is making some valid points about how SAGE's assumptions might be incorrect, and then running away with those points to draw conclusions that aren't justified.

This coronavirus is new, so we don't know how our immune systems will respond to it. As you'd expect, SAGE made the assumption "no one is immune" - sounds intuitively sensible, and if nothing else, it's a cautious starting point for making public health policy.

I don't have the expertise to argue about immunology. But it strikes me as intuitively a bit weird to start calculating numbers like 30% prior immunity from contact with coronaviruses that cause the common cold, when it looks a lot to me like no one is immune to the common cold. But, that's by the by, I don't have anything to say about immunology, it just strikes me as a bizarre conclusion that will surprise me if it becomes mainstream scientific knowledge. Which of course it could do, he might be right. Do I think that SAGE should have begun modelling on the basis of 30% prior immunity? I'd need to see that emerging as consensus, at present it's only potentially plausible - I'm certainly nowhere near being convinced it's "true" given how the rest of Yeadon's argument runs.

We're no longer at the start of the pandemic. We're not relying on SAGE modelling to tell us how dangerous the disease might be. We've got a lot of data from the real world, so without any modelling we can draw completely reliable conclusions about how dangerous the disease is. Attacking SAGE modelling is not a sufficient target for attacking policies - you have to show us that the disease is not as dangerous as we thought, in the face of the data about infections, hospital admissions, long term complications and deaths. Yeadon doesn't seem to want to do this, he wants to attack SAGE. Smells fishy to me.

But lots of it smells fishy. We all know that the point of wearing masks isn't to protect us from inhaling the virus and catching it, it's to lessen the spread of our droplets - so why does he say this:

We are now walking around wearing masks! Those of us who’ve studied the practical challenges of getting inhaled drugs into the right places in patients lungs – to treat asthma, for example – know full well that such flimsy pieces of cloth absolutely do not prevent the transmission of respiratory viruses (Macintyre et al, 2015).

It seems like he's asking us to suspend our knowledge of the world and instead pay attention to some completely irrelevant point he's making to persuade us that the policies he doesn't like are wrong. It's not a good look if you're trying to make a scientific argument.

In terms of predictions, my take on the pandemic is that, at a national level, the greatly reduced proportion of the population that remains susceptible now means we will not see another large, national scale outbreak of COVID-19. Viruses do not do waves. That’s just a myth based on poor understanding of influenza at the end of WW1, a century ago.

Well, let's have a look at his prediction - here's the hospital admissions (so no "it's just false positives, more testing, etc.").

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare

Let's face it, he's just wrong. Wishful thinking, ideologically driven, in the face of the evidence. We'll have to see whether he backs down or doubles down? I know where my money is.

Then there's this enormous blindspot in his argument:

Think for a moment: that is precisely what IS happening, right now, in London. That’s why the deaths are a tiny fraction of what they were in spring. This matches my prediction. SAGE would say nothing has changed. It clearly has.

Well something has changed, hasn't it? Could it be that people's behaviour, once they've become aware of the virus and been told/forced to change their behaviour might have had an influence on the spread of the virus? Where is his consideration of this? This is another example of being asked to completely suspend what we know about the world to make way for his argument.

The article is monumentally unconvincing in the face of everything we know about the virus.

If someone wants to argue that we should end restrictions, they have to come up with a convincing story that hospital admissions will not go up and exceed capacity.  I'm yet to see it.

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 The New NickB 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

> How much is the increase in numbers to do with the fact that we are now identifying cases that went unidentified previously? On the positive side, if there is one, the increase in cases reduces the percentage of those cases that result in fatality. That is presumably a good thing?

We only identified a tiny percentage of the cases early in the pandemic, due to lack of testing capacity. If you look at deaths and use the IFR to give an approximate number of cases about three weeks earlier, this is probably more accurate.

We still probably have about half the new cases each day than we had in late March, we are just finding more of them, but nothing like all of them. We are potentially only a couple of weeks off late March actual numbers and another few weeks off early April death rates. 

 Jon Stewart 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

> How much is the increase in numbers to do with the fact that we are now identifying cases that went unidentified previously? On the positive side, if there is one, the increase in cases reduces the percentage of those cases that result in fatality. That is presumably a good thing?

Look at hospital admissions if you're worried that the testing data don't tell you a reliable story.

In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

My understanding is that the early estimates of mortality rate took into account the fact that only a small subset of cases were tested. They were never based on a simple equation of deaths/positive tests. I think they have broadly stood the test of time as increased testing was rolled out and the estimates were able to be checked against better data. 

So no, I don’t think there has been any significant movement in our understanding of mortality rates associated with Covid. Although it’s possible that has changed since I last read anything about it. 

 jkarran 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

Another group led by Sunetra Gupta at the University of Oxford has arrived at similar conclusions of lower herd immunity thresholds by considering the issue of pre-existing immunity in the population. When a population has people with pre-existing immunity, as the T cell studies may be indicating is the case, the herd immunity threshold based on an R0 of 2.5 can be reduced from 60% of a population getting infected right down to 10%, depending on the quantity and distribution of pre-existing immunity among people, Gupta’s group calculated.

Great, we're there already, it's over!

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-covid-19-surveillance-r...

at 17.5% covid seroprevelence London has nearly twice the level Prof' Gupta calculates will confer herd immunity, it has been over 10% for weeks yet London clearly doesn't have herd immunity, it has a substantial and growing new flare-up.

https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/coronavirus--covid-19--cases

The North West is almost certainly over 10% seroprevelence. It has a substantial flare-up right at the point we should apparently be seeing cases tail off without additional control measures.

If the data doesn't fit the hypothesis one or other or both are wrong.

jk

Post edited at 15:35
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In reply to Jon Stewart:

> Yeadon doesn't seem to want to do this, he wants to attack SAGE. 

That's my reading of the entire article; a rather bitter attack on SAGE.

 Swig 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

> (Delingpole just provides the platform)

Presumably only to views that suit. This context is relevant. 

 jkarran 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

> How much is the increase in numbers to do with the fact that we are now identifying cases that went unidentified previously? On the positive side, if there is one, the increase in cases reduces the percentage of those cases that result in fatality. That is presumably a good thing?

> Joe

The absolute numbers pre and post introduction of widely available (ish) testing are as you have identified, incomparable.

However the trends in the test results from the last few weeks fit with an infectious disease spreading quite freely with cases growing exponentially. Now it would be possible to have say a stable background level of infection (R=1) and exponentially increasing test availability produce those same figures but we know that isn't the case, certainly not all of it. There is some obscurity around how testing is rationed with more capacity diverted to hot-spots which could be distorting underlying trends but even that as an explanation requires the virus to be growing fast in those hot spots. We know those hot spots are seeing rapid case growth (not just high steady state transmission) because it's reflected in the hospitalisations and deaths (growing and reliable but lagging indicators). Is it yet as bad as it was in March? No but we're not very far off, certainly at the point where we need to be very careful about the choices we make.

jk

Post edited at 15:38
 wintertree 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

> and can we please avoid the Russian BOT

You’re rather sensitive to a pair of threads conducted in your absence.

> and can we please avoid the Russian BOT , alt right motives , ad-hominem stuff

Surely that would be an “ad machina” attack?

As for alt-right motives; they’re never far from the case when Gupta is being cited given her overt association with a small state libertarian lobby organisation in the USA.  Scientists are people too, they’re not robotic logic.  Context is king.

1
Bilbo Baggins 23 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

 Scientists are people too, they’re not robotic logic.

Not sure about that.  There are several regular contributors on UKC who brag about being scientists and their responses are, at times, so predictable that they can appear robotic. In case anyone misses the smiley that's a joke.

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 wintertree 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

Some joke.  Over many threads I don't recall anyone "bragging" about being a scientist.  Could be wrong.  Know what - prove me wrong with an example...  

People have sometimes mentioned working in science to justify some of their their experience.  Unless I'm missing something it's never been a brag.  Perhaps I'm wrong.  Predictability is my thing because the same misinformed arguments keep popping up in direct opposition to the evidence.  Evidence which isn't changing in any way that reduces its opposition.  Till the evidence does change, I doubt my responses will change either.

Post edited at 16:03
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 Jon Stewart 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

> There are several regular contributors on UKC who brag about being scientists and their responses are, at times, so predictable that they can appear robotic

But are they right?

1
 MG 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

>

> Please stick to explaining why the science is wrong.

Others have pointed out scientific flaws.  What stands out to me though is the aren't-I-clever personal anecdotes dominating the article and the breathless  claims about other's shortcomings and motivations.  A style that screams conspiracy theory bullshit.

1
 Jim Hamilton 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Jon Stewart:

> But are they right?

not always!

 John Kelly 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

Very interesting

I think there will be some mileage in the idea that some T cell immunity to Covid 19 arises from the circulating corona viruses that make up part of our 'common cold' experience.

There are aspects of the pandemic model that have never made a lot of sense to me, German infection rates ( now rising), the disparity in infection to death rates between countries, what happened to previous Sars/Meds outbreaks? are 3 that spring to mind.

completely accept I may just not have accessed or more probably understood the science 

Sage - love em, think we should stick with them currently but it did take them a very long time to get that masks, now considered crucial, could be of any benefit.

Post edited at 16:51
Bilbo Baggins 23 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

Jon Stewart recently made the point, directly at me, that there were several forum members who were highly qualified scientists and did this type of analysis and debate all the time and would consequently wipe the floor at every opportunity with the rest of us. Not verbatim but that was the gist of it.

That's the very definition of bragging.

23
 wintertree 23 Oct 2020
In reply to MG:

>  What stands out to me though is the aren't-I-clever personal anecdotes dominating the article and the breathless  claims about other's shortcomings and motivations

Edit:  I revised my post to pull out all the references and commentary; don't want to put too much of my spin on it but it's worth googling his drug development company detailed in the intro of the article. 

I've spent ten minutes researching his pre-clinical drug development firm, it's funding and it's acquisition, the likely terms of his exit and the rather painful results of the Phase 2b clinical trial of his lead compound, I can see why he might have a lot of bitterness against other players in the field, some of whom could well be on SAGE.

One way of putting it is a half billion dollar failure.

Post edited at 17:09
 wintertree 23 Oct 2020
In reply to John Kelly:

> the disparity in infection to death rates between countries, 

Yes, even accounting for different levels of testing I can't square off the differences with the UK and France - I need to spend some time digging out demographic data for France and to try and find some estimates of the fraction of cases being detected.

 MG 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

> Jon Stewart recently made the point, directly at me, that there were several forum members who were highly qualified scientists and did this type of analysis and debate all the time and would consequently wipe the floor at every opportunity with the rest of us. Not verbatim but that was the gist of it.

> That's the very definition of bragging.

No it's not. It is the definition of making an informed, persuasive case.

Post edited at 17:10
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 MG 23 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I did have a quick look...

In reply to John Kelly:

> but it did take them a very long time to get that masks, now considered crucial, could be of any benefit

Or was that simply a pragmatic response to a lack of availability for masks, even for front line care workers? I can't remember if SAGE ever failed to advise the use of masks, or whether that was the Government message.

 John Kelly 23 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

> the disparity in infection to death rates between countries, 

>> Yes, even accounting for different levels of testing I can't square off the differences with the UK and France - I need to spend some time digging out demographic data for France and to try and find some estimates of the fraction of cases being detected.

You may well find a sensible solution that confirms the 'Sage' model but I have a gut feeling there is something not quite characterised about the pandemic, expect the maths to be super robust so maybe the biology has a quirk - not a scientist

In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

> That's the very definition of bragging.

No, it's presenting the credentials and experience of those posting, and pointing out that maybe it would be worth listening to that experience, rather than an uninformed JoeBlow (using the term generically, rather than meaning you specifically; no idea what your experience is).

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Joe%20Blow

Post edited at 17:17
1
 wintertree 23 Oct 2020
In reply to John Kelly:

There’s a lot that’s still unknown.  The disparity I mentioned is clear at the “fag packet” level of maths and a bit of inductive reasoning with a few sensible assumptions.  The number of unknowns is the main reason I’m - still - not a fan of more detailed modelling.  You can’t do predictive modelling with too many unknowns and hence assumptions.

 Jon Stewart 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

> Jon Stewart recently made the point, directly at me, that there were several forum members who were highly qualified scientists and did this type of analysis and debate all the time and would consequently wipe the floor at every opportunity with the rest of us. Not verbatim but that was the gist of it.

> That's the very definition of bragging.

The point I made was that anyone trying to peddle psuedoscience, misinformation or (as in this case) bad science is going to have their arse handed to them on UKC, because it's a community full of scientists.

That stuff isn't going to fly on here the way it will on facebook.

Whether that's bragging or not, so far, I appear to be right.

2
Alyson30 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Jon Stewart:

> The point I made was that anyone trying to peddle psuedoscience, misinformation or (as in this case) bad science is going to have their arse handed to them on UKC, because it's a community full of scientists.

That one is particularly bad you don’t really need to be a scientist to debunk it, the whole premise of the articles is based on two claims SAGE supposedly made which they haven’t made.

Post edited at 17:26
1
 wintertree 23 Oct 2020
In reply to MG:

> I did have a quick look...

I’m imagining the mood in Novartis’ acquisitions team now as they stumble across the article the OP linked and think “this is the caliber of judgement from the person whose lead candidate we burnt half a billion dollars on?” before weeping.

I wonder if he brought the same agenda driven “science-lite” approach to their pre clinical trials?  Shame conferences and meetings are all digital right now else there’s a reasonable chance I could manage to meet a former Ziarco scientist at the bar and buy them a drink...

 elsewhere 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

No need for science.

The first URL has an infographic saying "THE PANEMIC IS ESSENTIALLY OVER" but Google Dashboard says 189 deaths on 22nd October.

For me to believe the infographic I have to believe that Google figure has been faked in a huge conspiracy uniting health workers, government & media. I'm no immunologist but neither am I a credulous cretin.  

 wintertree 23 Oct 2020
In reply to elsewhere:

> I'm no immunologist but neither am I a credulous cretin.  

You win “response of the year” to covid misinformation.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

> That stuff isn't going to fly on here the way it will on facebook.

As I've said elsewhere, UKC is an oasis of relative sanity, compared with the wide world of social media.

1
 Rob Exile Ward 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

'That's the very definition of bragging.'

Um no, it's the exact opposite. Bragging by definition means claiming more for yourself than is justified; the characters on here who sustain the analysis have earned the right to do so.

Your comment leads directly to a Govian 'We've had enough of experts', i.e. if someone knows what they're talking about then we don't want to listen to them.

2
 mondite 23 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

> I’m imagining the mood in Novartis’ acquisitions team now as they stumble across the article the OP linked and think “this is the caliber of judgement from the person whose lead candidate we burnt half a billion dollars on?” before weeping.

Based on this I had a quick google. The different stories told by the mix of 2016 and 2020 stories is quite entertaining.

 Rob Exile Ward 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

I agree it's kind of confusing, I'm no fan of 'big government', there are issues of civil liberties and I'm particularly concerned that the government(s) (i.e. especially Wales!)  sometimes seems to believe that the more painful a policy is the more efficacious it must be.

Against that there are the inescapable facts that hospital admissions ARE increasing significantly, and there could be a tipping point where the NHS can no longer cope, partly because of physical resources but more likely staff. There's an analogy here to the arguments about climate change: maybe it's not such a threat as we think, but if the worst case predictions are true then  the consequences are potentially so dire that the rational response is to make every effort to mitigate. We're never blessed with perfect knowledge. 

Bilbo Baggins 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

OK.  I studied English Lit and History at Uni .  My understanding of the English language is far superior to yours and I think you are wrong.

Regardless of my qualifications or the validity of the argument it is still bragging.

25
 Jon Stewart 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

> There's an analogy here to the arguments about climate change: maybe it's not such a threat as we think, but if the worst case predictions are true then  the consequences are potentially so dire that the rational response is to make every effort to mitigate. We're never blessed with perfect knowledge. 

There's more than an analogy. The exact same people who resisted the science on climate change and have been proven wrong are now denying the science on coronavirus and are being proven wrong. The motivation is precisely the same: I don't want to stop doing exactly what I want to do because of the dire consequences it has for others. Since I can't justify this, I'll pretend that the consequences aren't what we know they are. Oh dear, I'm wrong, but I'll hang on and on, grasping at draws, until the final gasps of credibility have been kicked out of the arse of my beliefs...

 Rob Exile Ward 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

OK fair enough, I'm convinced. 

 wintertree 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

You were specifically arguing that posters were bragging about being scientists.  It’s there in black and white in your post.

The one example you have given is of a non-scientist arguably bragging that the forum is a notch above Facebook due to the presence of some scientists.

So it seems like you were, if not wrong, let us say off target.

1
 MG 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

> OK.  I studied English Lit and History at Uni .  My understanding of the English language is far superior to yours and I think you are wrong.

It would appear not!

2
 MG 23 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I think some might say Mike Yeadon is not above a little bragging. Hardly thesstella publication record he implies

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=mike+yeadon&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5

 Stichtplate 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Jon Stewart:

> Look at hospital admissions if you're worried that the testing data don't tell you a reliable story.

Nice graphic that illustrates your point just popped up on the BBC evening news. Plus the fact that on Wednesday night the queues in the corridors of my local A&E were longer than anything I’ve seen since April.

Post edited at 18:50

 elsewhere 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

Third URL (bmj) asks "Do many people have pre-existing immunity?". Good question.
Published 17/9/20 so events since then such as high levels of infection in student halls and rise general population suggest any immunity pre OR post infection is not stopping growth. It's not growing as fast as in March but we are not living as we did in March.

However there is far older information dating back to February for the Diamond Princess cruise ship: 14 dead, 711 confirmed cases, 3711 passengers & crew.

Any immunity of any kind did not prevent the deaths of 0.3% of the total population on board.

If the total population is 67 million it's reasonable to say you might get 200,000 deaths (0.3% of population) as a VERY ROUGH FIRST ESTIMATE* back in February/March regardless of pre or post infection immunity. Obviously we know lower limit for UK is about 50,000ish unless I am to believe doctors suddenly became incredibly thick and started mistaking the living for the dead. 

*obviously the UK population, living conditions and social distancing in October are not the same as a cruise ship in February

I would not claim that such basic numeracy is science. It does not prove or disprove pre-existing immunity. It does show that immunity of any kind did not prevent the death 0.3% of the total population on the cruise ship.

 

Post edited at 19:00
Bilbo Baggins 23 Oct 2020
In reply to MG:

And you are missing the point and resorting to insults.  Pathetic.

16
 Jon Stewart 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Stichtplate:

Good point. Doesn't look like trying to cast doubt on whether there's an issue is very helpful at this juncture.

As for the civil liberties angle, I think it's a bizarre mischaracterisation. It would be a valid concern if we honestly thought that the government was using the virus as an excuse to impose restrictions on our freedom to go shopping and drinking, etc, that they secretly wanted to impose anyway. But obviously they don't. That would be a completely stupid thing to believe.

Since no one actually knows what they're doing and there's just one awful trade-off on top of another on top of another, there's plenty of legitimate debate to have about what measures should be in place to control the virus (which will basically boil down to guessing). But discussing whether whether we think particular measures are effective and proportionate is a completely different debate to "do we need to do anything?". That's exactly like for climate change - a waste of time, doesn't need debating.

 Rob Exile Ward 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

I detect some defensiveness here, I'm getting a touch of paranoia, maybe some over-sensitivity?

I do think that if someone has 'missed the point' the fault usually lies with the person who tried to make it in the first place.  

1
 MG 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

So we can add "insult" to words you don't understand.

1
Bilbo Baggins 23 Oct 2020
12
 MG 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

Ah. Back to empty posts again, Mr Bot.

3
Bilbo Baggins 23 Oct 2020
In reply to MG:

Apologies, I can only put that down to my eagerness to respond and my senior years.

1
 MG 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

..and the need for human input on some other forum you are trolling.

1
 Blunderbuss 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

Absolute drivel from Mike Yeadon.. can he not see with his own eyes what is happening across Europe. 

 The New NickB 23 Oct 2020
In reply to MG:

> Ah. Back to empty posts again, Mr Bot.

That explains a lot. 

1
 MG 23 Oct 2020
In reply to The New NickB:

It's interesting to speculate which posts are "real" and which automated. "Senior years..."??

1
 mondite 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

Dont worry komrade we all make mistakes... once.

A second repetition and it will be gulag time.

 StefanB 23 Oct 2020
In reply to captain paranoia:

> The first one that comes to mind is the claim that lots of people should have some immunity because of the endemic nature of the common cold, also a coronavirus.

That's not true. "The common cold" does not exist as such. It's a term applied to symptoms caused by a number of viruses. Most of them are classed as rhinoviruses, some as influenza viruses, and very few as coronaviruses (I think just 4).

> I would guess that everyone has had plenty of common colds in their life, given that it is endemic. So, why are so many people getting sick, and dying, with this particular coronavirus, if we all have this prior immunity he claims? I imagine he would argue that those with immunity are getting exposed, but are not falling ill.

Coronavirus is just a type of virus. I am not a biologist, but my understanding is that this classification is due to the shape and ways of attaching itself to cells. Immunity to one virus of a certain class does not mean you are immune to the whole class.

Post edited at 20:26
 StefanB 23 Oct 2020
In reply to John Kelly:

> Sage - love em, think we should stick with them currently but it did take them a very long time to get that masks, now considered crucial, could be of any benefit.

This has been the same in a few countries. It's one of the things our Spanish government health advisors are being accused of right now. 

I am torn between thinking that some things just have to change given new evidence, and we just have to accept that the knowledge of the expert also improves step by step, and thinking that they deliberately chose to say that masks were of no use because there was a shortage and they were trying to prevent a riot. Probably a mix of both.

Bilbo Baggins 23 Oct 2020
In reply to MG:

> It's interesting to speculate which posts are "real" and which automated. "Senior years..."??

Seriously what is wrong with "senior years" ? I'm trying to understand. Is there an age mismatch?  Is there an intelligence mismatch?  Is there an empathy mismatch? or is it simply that the generation and social group typically represented on this forum is lacking in manners? WTF is the matter with you people? Do I need to be less sensitive?  Should I trade insults with insults? Should I withdraw from the forum?

13
 MG 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

It's not a phrase someone "born and raised in a northern mining town" is likely to use. It is a phrase an bot trained on US English is.

1
 MG 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

> Should I withdraw from the forum?

No stick around so we dont have to detect your successor.

1
 Stichtplate 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Jon Stewart:

> As for the civil liberties angle, I think it's a bizarre mischaracterisation. It would be a valid concern if we honestly thought that the government was using the virus as an excuse to impose restrictions on our freedom to go shopping and drinking, etc, that they secretly wanted to impose anyway. But obviously they don't. That would be a completely stupid thing to believe.

It's insane the lack of even rudimentary common sense or critical thinking that's out there. I had a job in one of the leafier Cheshire suburbs yesterday where I got into this conversation with a ballet teacher. She'd experienced no end of issues with middle class mum's seeking mask exemptions and beyond this, had actually had to start using her infra red thermometer on peoples forearms because of some Mums concerns that scanning foreheads was frying their little darlings pineal glands.

> Since no one actually knows what they're doing and there's just one awful trade-off on top of another on top of another, there's plenty of legitimate debate to have about what measures should be in place to control the virus (which will basically boil down to guessing). But discussing whether whether we think particular measures are effective and proportionate is a completely different debate to "do we need to do anything?". That's exactly like for climate change - a waste of time, doesn't need debating.

The shambolic response from our government (and Christ, doesn't that seem an increasingly grand title for a shower of shit?) deserves the utmost scrutiny and debate, but anything reasonable or measured is often drowned out by nutters insisting that masks are muzzles and that covid is the test phase of 5G before it's fully unleashed to control the population.

One of the many things the pandemic has revealed is just how easy it would be to get a sizeable portion of the community fully on board with burning warty spinsters as witches and hanging shipwrecked monkeys as foreign spies.

1
 MG 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Stichtplate:

>

> One of the many things the pandemic has revealed is just how easy it would be to get a sizeable portion of the community fully on board with burning warty spinsters as witches and hanging shipwrecked monkeys as foreign spies.

We aren't far off that  with Patel and Cummings..

6
Bilbo Baggins 23 Oct 2020
In reply to MG:

> One of the many things the pandemic has revealed is just how easy it would be to get a sizeable portion of the community fully on board with burning warty spinsters as witches and hanging shipwrecked monkeys as foreign spies.

We aren't far off that  with Patel and Cummings..

The irony is astounding

6
 Jon Stewart 23 Oct 2020
In reply to StefanB:

> That's not true. "The common cold" does not exist as such. It's a term applied to symptoms caused by a number of viruses. Most of them are classed as rhinoviruses, some as influenza viruses, and very few as coronaviruses (I think just 4).

Ah, thanks for that, I'd misunderstood. I thought that the common cold was just caused by the 4 known cold-causing coronaviruses, but I've just checked and there's about 200 different virus that cause the common cold as you say, mainly rhinoviruses. Which makes sense as to how they behave.

 Stichtplate 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

> We aren't far off that  with Patel and Cummings..

> The irony is astounding

Not really. Warty spinsters and shipwrecked monkeys are entirely blameless.

 John Kelly 23 Oct 2020
In reply to MG

> Test capacity 5 times here.

Can that be right we've done 30 million tests, Germans 20 million

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Post edited at 21:21
 MG 23 Oct 2020
In reply to John Kelly:

Something odd, but German testing was ahead from very early. Even Hancock admitted it.

 Dave Garnett 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Jon Stewart:

> I don't have the expertise to argue about immunology. But it strikes me as intuitively a bit weird to start calculating numbers like 30% prior immunity from contact with coronaviruses that cause the common cold, when it looks a lot to me like no one is immune to the common cold.

I haven't read PP's links yet, but I think there's quite a lot of immunity to the common cold.  Certainly it seems easy to show antibodies and T cell responses to the common coronaviruses in the general population.  That doesn't mean that everyone has a rapid and complete sterilising immunity to all the circulating coronaviruses (or adenoviruses or rhinoviruses) they meet, especially recently emerged antigenically shifted mutants, but there's enough memory of only sightly changed, or overlapping, epitopes to trigger a sufficient holding response and rapid clonal selection of more exact matches to new viruses to prevent serious infections.  This is how herd immunity really works much of the time.  

That's not the only thing that defines how dangerous a virus is (the target receptor and how broadly it's expressed in different tissues is also important - especially for the current virus) but I think it has a lot to do with why really different new viruses are so infectious.

 MG 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Dave Garnett:

Would the common cold viruses maybe have been as dangerous as Covid initially then?

 Andy Hardy 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

Well PP this thread has provided a bit of food for thought, would you like to respond to any of it?

 wintertree 23 Oct 2020
In reply to MG:

> Hardly the stella publication record he implies

Oh my, that’s embarrassing.

I think there might be one hell of a back story behind the pre-clinical company, the acquisition and the abandonment.  Lots of alarm bells for intrigue going off here.  I’m not saying it’s a case of “Maximum Theranos” but it’s all seems a little irregular.  

 Jon Stewart 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Dave Garnett:

Interesting thanks, I've learnt a bit about common colds from this thread.

 Dave Garnett 23 Oct 2020
In reply to MG:

I expect they would have been a bit more pathogenic, but I think that also depends on the target receptor they bind to. SARS-CoV-2 binds to ACE2, which is expressed in lots of tissues, including deep in the lung (MERS binds to DPP4, which also expressed widely especially the gut).  The common cold -type coronaviruses mostly bind to sialoglycoproteins found on cells lining the upper airways, so maybe that might make it less likely they would spread to other tissues.   

 wintertree 23 Oct 2020
In reply to thread:

From the twitter feed of the author of the first link.

https://mobile.twitter.com/MichaelYeadon3/status/1317078240171798528

I expect anyone reading my opinions of late should know I’m not nuts & I’m more qualified by far than anyone in SAGE to have drawn the conclusions I have. [...] Do challenge anything I say, but accept I have a deep & extensive scientific research history coupled w senior leadership experience.

That’s moving on from breathtaking arrogance to delusional thinking.

In the last hour he’s gone on a massive rant about rising cases being down to false positives in the PCR.  This is so astoundingly ignorant of the hospitalisation and deaths data and fails at the first hurdle of near constant testing rate and exponentially increasing case rate that I think he’s probably having some sort of psychotic break brought on by being utterly unable to accept that he has been totally wrong.  

Post edited at 23:18
In reply to StefanB:

> That's not true. "The common cold" does not exist as such. It's a term applied to symptoms caused by a number of viruses.

I was summarising Yeadon's point in the first of PP's links (did you read it?):

"none of the so-called medical correspondents and science journalists on radio and TV have ever (as far as I know) spoken of the four, endemic, common-cold inducing coronaviruses. It’s well understood by clinicians and scientists who’ve spent any time reading the scientific literature that at least four coronaviruses circulate freely in UK and elsewhere where they’ve been studied. They have names: OC43, HKU1, 229E and NL63 (Zhu et al, 2020)."

 Niall_H 23 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

"I expect anyone reading my opinions of late should know I’m not nuts & I’m
more qualified by far than anyone in SAGE to have drawn the conclusions I
have."

(From the twitter feed of the author of the first link)

Is that an example of attempting "proof by outrageous statement"?

Post edited at 23:21
 CurlyStevo 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

The problem with most these types of posts is they seem to think that having a look at some self selected graphs and ignoring others is science, it’s not.

 jimtitt 24 Oct 2020
In reply to John Kelly:

> In reply to MG

> Can that be right we've done 30 million tests, Germans 20 million


Sounds about right, last time I looked it was 20m in the UK and 15m in Germany.The testing in Germany is targeted;- symptoms, contact, care homes etc.

 Blunderbuss 24 Oct 2020
In reply to CurlyStevo:

> The problem with most these types of posts is they seem to think that having a look at some self selected graphs and ignoring others is science, it’s not.

I liked Mr Yeadons pie chart he made using a combination of wishful thinking and back of a fag packet calculations... 

1
 Dr.S at work 24 Oct 2020
In reply to MG:

Germany had way more, and better testing capacity to start with. (Also ICU capacity)

We and others definitely playing catch up initially.

 StefanB 24 Oct 2020
In reply to captain paranoia:

Yes. I did read it. I know you were summarizing not making claims.

My comment was aimed at two things:

- The way the summary was phrased it seemed to propose that all colds are caused by coronaviruses. This is not true.

- The fact that there are other coronaviruses is interesting, it can scientists in learning about their shared characteristics, but it does not mean everyone who has ever caught such a virus is immune against all coronaviruses. 

> "none of the so-called medical correspondents and science journalists on radio and TV have ever (as far as I know) spoken of the four, endemic, common-cold inducing coronaviruses..."

This is a good point from the original article in general. A lot of the reporting is shocking. There are many things that are not well understood, for example, why some people seem immune, and prior exposure to previous viruses is one candidate answer. 

IMO, most of the non-politicalized experts are trying to do the best their can, are forced to make recommendations on a moving target, are pushed into "appearing" confident about things, and are then misquoted and criticized. 

 StefanB 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Dr.S at work:

> Germany had way more, and better testing capacity to start with. (Also ICU capacity)

The Spanish lead expert advising the government (unsuccessfully), recently stated that Germany found itself in the lucky position at the start of the pandemic to be the place where almost all test kits were manufactured. He claimed they were just all bought up by the German customers, which is why they could test so much early on.    

I don't know if this is true, but I think it probably indicates that the success of a response to something no one knows how to deal with is sometimes down to luck and other circumstances, not competence and clever decision making. 

 wintertree 24 Oct 2020
In reply to StefanB:

> A lot of the reporting is shocking. There are many things that are not well understood, for example, why some people seem immune, and prior exposure to previous viruses is one candidate answer. 

There have been snippets of good reporting in the general media; an early article or two on the BBC etc discussed the other circulating coronaviruses and noted that we don’t have persistent immunity to them.  I can see why Yeadon wouldn’t want to acknowledge those however as they’re diametrically opposed to his point.  Arstechnica have had some good coverage over pre-existing co immunity from other virus; although this is quite a specialist outlet.  In general though I agree the reporting is shocking.  

> IMO, most of the non-politicalized experts are trying to do the best their can, are forced to make recommendations on a moving target, are pushed into "appearing" confident about things, and are then misquoted and criticized. 

Yes.  They have to make recommendations based on imperfect knowledge and with something like this it’s best to be guided in doing so by a reasonable worst case estimate.  As knowledge of the facts improve it doesn’t make their previous decisions wrong; the question should be “was that a good decision with what was known at the time?”.   This point is generally lost and that’s where a lot of the noise comes from.

 SouthernSteve 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

some slightly rambling thoughts...

I will not comment on the first 2, but T-cell epitopes (the very small bits of protein that fit the T-cell receptor) are likely to be common between different coronaviruses in some instances, but that does not equate to being protective. In addition, partial immunity could potentially be one of the reasons why the body gets overheated immunologically speaking causing severe disease. 

'Immunity' in itself is a useless word - we need to divide the 'immune responses' into 'protective', 'non protective' and 'harmful', and of course these are not completely clear cut divisions.

There are some good points on the feedback page for the BMJ article you cite

https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563/rapid-responses

There were 83000 new cases diagnosed in the US yesterday - this virus is a credible threat. The balance between control, economic distress, and increases in mortality and morbidity due to other diseases and poverty are beyond my brain and the complexity will lead to a vast set of differing opinions - it is mind boggling. Scientists of good standing usually like to express the doubt in their findings as well as the certainties, but when this becomes translated into public policy there is little place for the discussion of probables or possibles. Now that scientific information is freely available on the internet people can genuinely miss the point of the broad thrust of a subject in their questioning or more insidiously cherry pick to support a political or economic goal.

Why don't we trust in scientists and science? Perhaps standing next to politicians hasn't helped and the recent split between what SAGE say and the government do, is right and healthy. 

Edited for typos

Post edited at 09:13
 mik82 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

I read the first article by Mike Yeadon. The first thing that struck me about it was in parts it read like a CV, particularly of someone who his very confident of himself and has been successful in business. 

There's random pie charts of immunity levels with no references to how they're worked out. His theory that 30% have prior immunity and that 32% have been infected when 7% have antibodies is complete rubbish when you look at Bergamo in Italy - 58% antibody positivity earlier in the year I'd also argue that his theory on London being spared is also wrong, again shown by Italy. The hardest hit province, Lombardy (where Bergamo is) is again being the hardest hit in the second wave.

>It is my belief and that of multiple, top quality research groups around the world, that many individuals who’ve been infected by one or more of these endemic, common-cold producing coronaviruses in the past, have a long-lived and robust immunity

This is just a belief and it's wrong (see papers from the common cold research centre)

 off-duty 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

> OK.  I studied English Lit and History at Uni .  My understanding of the English language is far superior to yours and I think you are wrong.

> Regardless of my qualifications or the validity of the argument it is still bragging.

Now that's bragging.

If I say "Listen to JoeBlow - he's got a degree in English Lit and History at University and a rally good understanding of the English language and his opinion on the term 'bragging' is based on expertise" - that WOULDN'T be bragging.

(It would also be wrong - we don't need an expert on English Lit. and history - we need an expert in English Language and linguistics - who might actually understand the term 'bragging'....)

 off-duty 24 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

> From the twitter feed of the author of the first link.

> I expect anyone reading my opinions of late should know I’m not nuts & I’m more qualified by far than anyone in SAGE to have drawn the conclusions I have. [...] Do challenge anything I say, but accept I have a deep & extensive scientific research history coupled w senior leadership experience.

Now THAT'S bragging!!

 Dr.S at work 24 Oct 2020
In reply to StefanB:

Yes I’d agree - the article in the guardian by the German politician says Germany had a lucky start to the pandemic. 
of course they could just be being polite

cb294 24 Oct 2020
In reply to captain paranoia:

What a wanker. To know about the other coronaviruses you do not even need to be a scientist, being able to click on wikipedia will do.

Obviously every virologist will know about these, at least I do, and I published my single paper in the Journal of Virology way back in the last millenium....

Same with T-cell immunity. The level of discussion is really bad, which is probably not helped by the professional background of many science journalist (media studies or failed scientists...).

So here is my take: You cannot have proper B-cell mediated, antibody based immunity, and in particular immune memory, without T cells. For different diseases, the relative importance of mopping up circulating virus particles (the job of antibodies) or killing infected cells producing virus (T cell immunity) will vary. The other main job of T cells is to coordinate the immune response, hence the general collapse of immunity when the HI virus kills a certain class of T cells.

However, pathogens have evolved strategies to avoid our immune response. The strategy of coronaviruses is to disrupt the communication between infected cells and the immune system, reducing the chance that our immune system generates a long lasting and robust memory. The immediate response is usually fine, indeed, many of the severe cases seem to be caused by an overshooting immune response (hence the treatment with steroids that supress immune activity), which can be a side effect of the viruses messing with the coordination of teh immune response.

Other viruses have similar strategies, even if the molecular mechanism will differ. E.g., certain Herpesviruses that try to hide long term in infected cells will try to prevent their host cells from announcing the presence of virus, and our immune system has evolved mechanisms to try and detect such tampering.

As for the common cold inducing coronaviruses, I have already posted a couple of times that there is the possibilty that OC43 and not some influenza virus caused the "Russian flu" of 1889/90. It would be cool to go up to the arctic and dig up some graves from that time to identify the virus responsible. if it turns out to be OC43, it would be interesting to see whether there were some changes in the virus that have since made it more harmless, or whether it is simply the pattern of immunity in the worldwide human population that has changed. Maybe we all get infected with that virus as children (when we are less likely to become severely ill, as the immune system is less likely to overshoot), and afterwards we are not immune enough to prevent reinfectio, but sufficiently immune to limit the infection to the uppermost airways and hence the disease to a snotty nose.

In that case, this is what herd immunity against a coronavirus that faffs around with memory formation might look like, not a situation where there are still rising numbers of people admitted to hospital (the "flu" of 1889 also killed millions...).  Also, vaccines will likely generate a lasting response, as the other nasty virus inventions suppressing memory formation will not be around, and antibodies, if present, seem to help suppress disease (hence the Regeneron AB cocktail, and related drugs).

Anyway, the claim that not everbody keels over in the road even though we cannot detect antibodies, so therefore we must have T cell mediated herd immunity, is obviously nonsense and circular.

CB

1
 jkarran 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

An interesting thread and no reply. Has the discussion answered your question? 

Or is this a new low form of trolling by amplifying pandemic misinformation? If so 8/10 for getting bites and -5 because it's an all round bad idea. 

Jk

 wintertree 24 Oct 2020
In reply to jkarran:

> An interesting thread and no reply

I think PMP has retreated to the safe space he built after his last covid thread in July.  Still a different, new poster popped up just in time to take his place.  

Post edited at 10:09
1
 MG 24 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I was wondering that. Is he really that far gone down the populist rabbit hole? At one time he was quite sane and rational. 

Bilbo Baggins 24 Oct 2020
In reply to off-duty:

I think you may have taken my comments out of context and ignored previous comments that led up to that specific post. I was creating a fictitious situation to illustrate what my understanding of bragging was. But this just illustrates the folly of trying to discuss such matters via social media.

8
 off-duty 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Bilbo Baggins:

> I think you may have taken my comments out of context and ignored previous comments that led up to that specific post. I was creating a fictitious situation to illustrate what my understanding of bragging was. But this just illustrates the folly of trying to discuss such matters via social media.

Hopefully enough people have spelled it out now that you can see the difference between bragging (about oneself) and praising (others).

1
Bilbo Baggins 24 Oct 2020
In reply to off-duty:

Not really.  I still maintain that the exchange I had on another thread with Jon Stewart was Jon Stewart bragging.  That was where we started. He was bragging about his and others scientific credentials and their ability to demolish every time, anyone with what he saw as a lesser intellect.

10
 wintertree 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Blunderbuss:

> I liked Mr Yeadons pie chart he made using a combination of wishful thinking and back of a fag packet calculations... 

Do you think he used MS Excel?  I gather it's the go-to choice for epidemiological number crunching because any school leaver can use it and it runs on a basic PC.

He does get some marks for the numbers on each pie chart adding up to 100%.   

Post edited at 17:21
OP Postmanpat 24 Oct 2020
In reply to jkarran:

> An interesting thread and no reply. Has the discussion answered your question? 

>

  Well, I suppose I owe  a response.

  Three posters,  cb, Dave Garnett and Southernsteve seemed to be informed and were informative (to me at least) on the science, although none of them claimed to be conclusive either way. My thanks to them. Wintertree raised a good point about the resurgence in Lombardy which deserves examination .

Otherwise. No. Most posts either didn't seem to have really fully listened to what he was saying or, if they had, didn't address the science, or were making points that I've seen addressed   elsewhere. So I'm not much the wiser yet. I guess it requires virologists, immunologists or other appropriately qualified people who can explain their science to laypeople.

I'm interested in understanding the science, which is very poorly presented and under-discussed in the media, not hearing theories about bots and politics etc.

Post edited at 18:23
14
 MG 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

If you really are interested the science,  why not read some basic textbooks rather than contrarian conspiracy websites?

2
 The New NickB 24 Oct 2020
In reply to MG:

> If you really are interested the science,  why not read some basic textbooks rather than contrarian conspiracy websites?

To be honest, some very basic stuff on critical thinking would be adequate. 

1
In reply to Postmanpat:

> I'm interested in understanding the science,

You do seem to have concentrated on 'anti-lockdown science', though.

 Doug 24 Oct 2020
 wintertree 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

Wasn’t me talking about Lombardy

> didn't address the science

As a fully paid up scientist, I don’t see much in the first link that I could call “science” so it’s hard to engage with it as science.

What I see are flights of unevidenced fancy easily demolished by the most trivial of arguments.  Which, along with more detailed approaches, have been given by many posters in many different ways.  

One simple one - if you believe the link, how do you explain mass outbreaks in meat packing plants and students halls of residents spreading like wildfire now?

I skim read everything in the first link and also skimmed their twitter. They remind me of someone who once sat in my office screaming, shouting and spittling for 90 minutes because I wouldn’t accept their analysis that proved all my data was meaningless.  They’d analysed the time series of a single pixel in a corner of the image where there was no light and shown it to be random.  No matter how carefully I led them round to the rather obvious point where most of the image was lit and had stuff in it, they always came back to that one pixel in the dark corner and how it being random suggested my entire data set couldn’t be analysed in any meaningful way because fitting a polynomial to randomness isn’t mathematically valid.  A week later they were on the phone to the FBI accusing me of hacking their gmail - which I didn’t know they had.

Post edited at 18:44
2
 MG 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Doug:

Is that  Roger Everetts article? (Cant see Facebook)

https://www.mountaineering.scot/

 Doug 24 Oct 2020
In reply to MG:

2nd link is Roger's preprint, he has also been posting a lot of material on his Facebook page, much explaining the science related to Covid

 Jon Stewart 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

> I'm interested in understanding the science

It doesn't look that way. 

4
 henwardian 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

Ugh, it's a classic case of "lies, lies and damned statistics". If you take anything where there are 100s of experts, even if there is the broadest possible agreement on one side, there will always be a small number of very learned and expert people who, nevertheless, believe strongly that the opposite side is correct and by the nature of the thing, they are almost always wrong. That is science.

To give a very broad, response without doing point by point detail:

The reason deaths are still low is because we are better at treating the virus now and we are much better at detecting it. So the numbers of infected people back in March/April were many times more than the number of detected infections (this was widely stated by scientists at the time).

The continuing rapid rise of cases across the country, despite much increased vigilance, social distancing, masks, etc. etc. shows that there MUST still be a very large percentage of people who are susceptible. The "second wave" effect is just a name for a variety of factors like fatigue with the rules and increased time indoors that were always predicted to make the numbers of infected increase in winter (again widely stated by scientists in advance).

There are a small, but increasing, number of proven cases of re-infection. It's too early to make meaningful calculations about how prevalent this but that and what we know about human immunity to corona viruses points away from the idea of heard immunity.

Finally - If the inference is that it's some kind of conspiracy to control the population or something then I just can't credit that, I'm not even going to go into the multiple reasons why.

 wintertree 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Jon Stewart:

> It doesn't look that way. 

Indeed.  What then was the purpose of the post?

To get a bunch of well reasoned views to then ignore?  To create a publicly visible link to the trash grade article in link 1, as part of a search engine optimisation strategy to raise the prominence of that link in search results?  To try and push covid misinformation onto UKC readers?  To further the view that there’s no scientific consensus by presenting a badly put together (unhinged, really) minority view as somehow equal in standing to the majority consensus?  Simple trolling?  Enquiring minds want to know...

2
 wintertree 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Niall_H:

> Is that an example of attempting "proof by outrageous statement"?

I don’t think they consider it an outrageous claim, which tells me a lot about their current ability to make rational judgements. In this case I don’t think they are deliberately pushing covid misinformation, rather I think their judgement processes are totally shot.  They’re being exploited by those vested in the misinformation; I suspect most of their 30,000 twitter followers only appeared in the last few months.  Bad business.  

Given this astounding arrogance from the author, I was very surprised at Postmanpat for taking them seriously given the tone of pat’s last covid thread back in July.

Post edited at 22:03
1
 MG 24 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I suspect he thinks "the science" is like writing essays, or debating, with winners  depending on eloquence and slight of hand. He is probably surprised no one is taking the links seriously. 

2
 The New NickB 26 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a couple of graphs that I had created based on projections of deaths and case numbers, with and without some sort of significant mitigation action. Whilst these graphs where pretty basic compared to some of your efforts and the projection techniques very simplistic, the results were pretty terrifying, showing that without significant intervention we would be at 1,000+ deaths a day within six weeks.

Two weeks on from my projections, I have some real numbers to make comparisons with. 11th October was the last day that I had reported numbers for, the 7 day daily average of deaths was 68. I projected that after two weeks that number would be 170. Based on reported numbers from 25th October, the number is now 178. Of course those deaths were already baked in when I did my projections and if tier 2 / 3 and restrictions in NI, Wales and Scotland are going to have any effect, we won't see that for a couple more weeks. My projection suggests 428 daily deaths in two weeks, so hopefully the additional restrictions will have an impact, but one thing is for certain, the idea that Covid-19 over as suggested in the OP's links is ridiculous and dangerous.

Post edited at 11:11
cb294 26 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

I wonder how you can interpret my post as undecided with respect to the key point,i.e. that we are nowhere close to herd immunity. That we do not know what coronavirus herd immunity will eventually look like, given the specific interplay of that virus family with immune regulation, does not at all change that fact.

The thing I focussed on is the misrepresentation in the media, but especially amongst covidiots, what T cell immunity actually means. T-cell immunity is probably one of the more difficult processes in biology, with feedback loops within feeedback loops, and really hard to explain without oversimplifying. However, the one thing it definitely is not is a magic bullet able to account for widespread immunity in the absence of antibody seropositivity.

It is either wishful thinking or deliberate disinformation (cui bono?) to assume that we are getting close to the point where the pandemic would self limit through herd immunity.

This can be shown by multiple, independent lines of reasoning. Most obviously, we can still get infections spreading like wildfires in specific populations if conditions for transmissions appear, e.g. first year students moving into halls or abbattoir workers becoming exposed to virus.

If we already had anything approaching herd immunity (but which scientists somehow failed to detect because, unlike clever right wing bloggers, we are too stupid to understand T cells), you would in addition have to argue that students and butchers are special populations that were up to now shielded from the virus, and are therefore now much more susceptible to the virus than the general population (same as cruise ship passengers in the early phase).

This is of course not at all plausible. Instead, it is safer to assume that students and abbatoir workers are representative of the population in general, and infection levels are therefore still low, in keeping with with the seroprevalence data.

In a slightly more model dependent way, you would also expect to see some saturation effect in the general population, if the current newly positive cases were merely the virus mopping up the few leftover susceptible pockets in our population (the majority being already protected by the "invisible" T cell immunity).

We should then see a flattening of the curve in the absence of any public health measures, which is not seen anywhere in the data, suggesting we are still at a infection level where exponential growth is possible.

CB

1
 MG 26 Oct 2020
In reply to cb294:

> We should then see a flattening of the curve in the absence of any public health measures, which is not seen anywhere in the data, suggesting we are still at a infection level where exponential growth is possible.

> CB

I'd suggest you are wasting you time with PMP.  However, is it possible Brazil is now seeing some population immunity?  Cases are (slowly) dropping, it seems.

https://www.google.com/search?q=brazil+covid+cases&oq=BRazil+covid+case...

1
 wintertree 26 Oct 2020
In reply to The New NickB:

> A couple of weeks ago, I posted a couple of graphs that I had created based on projections of deaths and case numbers, with and without some sort of significant mitigation action. 

I missed those; is the thread still live?

>  and the projection techniques very simplistic

All I'm doing is exponential fits; extrapolating the present.   Also very simplistic!  Much more is unwarranted (by me) in my opinion as it starts to include a lot of assumptions and I’m probably less qualified than you to make those...  My take is that short term extrapolation is a powerful way of interpreting the current situation.   

> the results were pretty terrifying, showing that without significant intervention we would be at 1,000+ deaths a day within six weeks.

Yup.  It's not looking rosy.  Not at all.

> Of course those deaths were already baked in when I did my projections and if tier 2 / 3 and restrictions in NI, Wales and Scotland are going to have any effect, we won't see that for a couple more weeks. My projection suggests 428 daily deaths in two weeks, so hopefully the additional restrictions will have an impact

Yes, the latest rolling exponential fits I'm doing give 465 deaths/day in 2 weeks time.  Not a "prediction" so much as "extrapolation"; although much of this is probably locked in.  If I was to predict, I'd nudge the number down from that as the doubling time for deaths is slowly increasing and there's nothing in the admissions data or cases data to suggest that'll change over the next two weeks.  Quick plot below, it's a bit messed up visually...

> but one thing is for certain, the idea that Covid-19 over as suggested in the OP's links is ridiculous and dangerous.

Yes.  Frankly they need to have a word with themselves about getting drawn into this toxic rabbit hole.

Post edited at 13:01

cb294 26 Oct 2020
In reply to MG:

Could be, at least in certain regions. However, at what price? I remember the pictures of mass burials in ditches in Manaus....

CB

 The New NickB 26 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I'm struggling to find it, may have been on the Pub forum. Here are the graphs though, case numbers are simply based on deaths with a three week lag and an IFR of 0.5%.

The second graph includes a 4 week lockdown to show the impact it would have on numbers.


In reply to wintertree:

So the doubling rate plummetted around the start of September.

What else happened around the start of September that might have contributed to a sudden increase in transmission...?

Alyson30 26 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

Only very basic critical thinking skills are enough to refute the claims made in the article you posted.

Post edited at 14:12
1
 Harry Jarvis 26 Oct 2020
In reply to cb294:

I profess no useful knowledge of the science involved, but I do receive the daily Nature briefing newsletter. One of the links last week pointed to this article:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02948-4

which seemed sensible to me. One of the key points was that when herd immunity has been achieved in the past, it has been as a result of successful widespread vaccination programmes, not as a result of simply letting a virus go unchecked through a population. It is asserted in this article that herd immunity in the absence of a vaccine has never happened. It would be interesting to know why the pro-herd immunity lobby think that Covid 19 should be different in this respect. 

 freeflyer 26 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

I was idly wondering if there was anything other than scientific enthusiasm behind Doctor Mike sticking his head above the parapet, and a quick Google revealed this:

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/novartis-dumps-ziarco-eczema-drug-tak...

Seems they've canned the drug they bought his company for. Now I'm wondering about what the deal was, and whether he's over-committed himself in some way, but I'm too idle to look into it.

 wintertree 26 Oct 2020
In reply to freeflyer:

> Seems they've canned the drug they bought his company for. Now I'm wondering about what the deal was, and whether he's over-committed himself in some way, but I'm too idle to look into it.

I'm glad it's not just me who is wondering what the back story is here...  Also a bit to idle to do much actual digging beyond a quick google of the trade press...

 jkarran 26 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

> I guess it requires virologists, immunologists or other appropriately qualified people who can explain their science to laypeople.

To understand much of this is nonsense really doesn't take a PhD in immunology, it takes some basic critical thinking skills. Skills I know you possess.

When someone says it's basically all over at 10% infected or that there won't be second waves in hard hit areas yet we have example sub populations at home showing roughly 20% covid seroprevelence and abroad at roughly 60%, both with classic 'second waves' of disease then an alarm bell should be ringing. Something isn't right. Everyone knows this, those putting their names to the ideas know it by now, those hawking them and frankly even those amplifying them for free on social media must have some pause for thought.

People who continue to stand by demonstrably false claims aren't doing science, they've either chosen their hill or they're in the process of trading their reputation for something they believe to be of more value to them. The thing I don't quite understand is how they take their research groups with them into the abyss, a tragic mix of loyalty, myopia and inertia I guess.

jk

Post edited at 15:30
 freeflyer 26 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

Yes. I roused myself enough to poke around at Companies House and the sparse info available for Yeadon Consulting Ltd seems to confirm my idle speculation!

 wintertree 26 Oct 2020
In reply to jkarran:

> The thing I don't quite understand is how they take their research groups with them into the abyss, a tragic mix of loyalty, myopia and inertia I guess.

One of the things to bitterly disappoint me about academia in the last decade is watching the way some bright young PhD students come in to a doctoral training centre on Project X and a year later have lost all critical evaluation skills, and have a cult like take on it's approach vs other ones, it's importance to the future and its chances of success.  What's odd is that when I've spoken with senior professors from Project X, they're under no such illusions and are quite open in their views.  It's a form of tribalism that emerges from the mid-levels I think.  

Critical thinking isn't specifically taught or tested at any point from the cradle to the grave in school or academia, and there's far things involves to making it in academia than being good at critical thinking...

 wintertree 26 Oct 2020
In reply to freeflyer:

Yes, quite.  

The whole thing would be a good project for an investigative journalist - sadly they've been notable by their total absence in the UK and USA from this orchestrated misinformation shitshow.  

Post edited at 15:49
 MG 26 Oct 2020
In reply to freeflyer:

Hardly a rip-roaring success then!  He does seem to have a genuine PhD from Sussex in 1988, on rat respiratory diseases.  After that an indifferent publication record, a failed consultancy business and really failed major project.  Unclear how real his claims about leadership at Pfizer are.  Hardly in a position to claim greater knowledge than all of SAGE, even on the rosiest interpretation.

 Toerag 26 Oct 2020
In reply to captain paranoia:

Everyone went back to work. All those families who had one or both parents off all summer to look after their kids went back to work when the kids went back to school. Start of September is too early for most university terms if I remember correctly.

In reply to wintertree:

> bright young PhD students come in to a doctoral training centre on Project X and a year later have lost all critical evaluation skills, and have a cult like take on it's approach vs other ones,

I suspect it's because they have to have some belief/enthusiasm in what they are doing; being able to be objective about what you are doing comes with experience; cynicism of experience...

In reply to Toerag:

> when the kids went back to school

That's the one I was thinking of...

 The New NickB 26 Oct 2020
In reply to Toerag:

Schools, but actually their was a big spike in Manchester in early September when MMU students went back. They go earlier than most.

In reply to The New NickB:

Are you implying that the 'spike' in Manchester has eased off now? It certainly hasn't in south Derbyshire, in fact it's looking like a terrifying exponential curve rather than a mere spike:

https://bit.ly/3jvmENE

 MG 26 Oct 2020
In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

In central Manchester the rate is flat or possibly falling.

 MG 26 Oct 2020
In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

That's greater Manchester. 

 wintertree 26 Oct 2020
In reply to MG:

A common motif in this pandemic is one slowly rising exponential being hidden by a faster rising one that then holds or decays.  Eventually the first one takes prominence.   I think that’s the case for a few university boroughs.  The university halls should really be different reporting units.

 bruxist 26 Oct 2020
In reply to The New NickB:

You might find the IHME's projections interesting. They're not far away from yours: they envisage daily deaths reaching the 1k level on 3 Dec, after total hospital bed capacity being exceeded on 20 Nov. They've been pretty much on the nail so far, more so than the IGH or CMMID.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-kingdom?

 wintertree 26 Oct 2020
In reply to captain paranoia:

> So the doubling rate plummetted around the start of September.

> What else happened around the start of September that might have contributed to a sudden increase in transmission...?

There’s going to be PhDs written on this one day.  I’m torn between schools and the more insidious effect of people dropping their guard between the low level of cases in August and things like the eat out to doom us all scheme.

I worry we’re in an unstable feedback loop given the reactive approach of government and the massive lags in terms of policy change > major change in death rate.  

 The New NickB 26 Oct 2020
In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

It looks like, the sudden influx of students caused a rapid spike, that has eased. Numbers are still very high in Manchester, I also suspect the tested numbers in student areas are not capturing as high a proportion of cases compared to non-student areas. The trend in Manchester is clearly rising, but it is perhaps falling back in line with its neighbours.

In reply to MG:

> That's greater Manchester. 

I know. I was saying, well what about the whole of the rest of Manchester?

 MG 26 Oct 2020
In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

> I know. I was saying, well what about the whole of the rest of Manchester?

Greater Manchester is rising, clearly.

 The New NickB 27 Oct 2020
In reply to MG:

> Greater Manchester is rising, clearly.

As is Manchester itself now. +13% in the last week.

 John Kelly 27 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

We're not seeing many reinfections yet but the antibody mediated immunity is dropping fairly rapidly, 25% ish in 2 to 3 months 

Is this simply timing, will reinfection rise after 6 months, a year, 18 months whatever?

or

Could a t cell immunity to Covid 19 be involved?

 Toerag 28 Oct 2020
In reply to John Kelly:

> We're not seeing many reinfections yet but the antibody mediated immunity is dropping fairly rapidly, 25% ish in 2 to 3 months 

Although the sample size was large enough to be statistically significant, it wasn't the same people as previously tested so we don't know for sure that it's demonstrating a loss of antibodies. They should test the same people again and again to find out how the antibodies disappear. Jersey is doing this to determine the prevalence level but hasn't published any results for months.

Post edited at 12:36
 John Kelly 28 Oct 2020
In reply to Toerag:

I don't think it matters who they test, the BBC described it thus

June 60 individual per 1000 had antibodies

Sept 44 per 1000 has antibodies

It's a rate, doesn't matter who they test (350,000 in survey)

T cell immunity - wonder if the Chinese had already met this type, or close relative, of Covid19 virus in past, a different explanation of their numbers ( deaths 3 per million vs UK 600+ per million) instead of the 'generally held belief ' that  they are just good at fibbing

 jkarran 28 Oct 2020
In reply to John Kelly:

> T cell immunity - wonder if the Chinese had already met this type, or close relative, of Covid19 virus in past, a different explanation of their numbers ( deaths 3 per million vs UK 600+ per million) instead of the 'generally held belief ' that  they are just good at fibbing

We know covid kills quite selectively. After decades of one child policy and grinding poverty that has only recently changed I suspect their demographics and incidence of chronic complicating diseases like hypertension and diabetes are very different to western Europe with it's long wealth, well established health systems and falling fertility rates. Is that enough to explain the difference without invoking less likely explanations or Chinese secrecy? Probably not but I bet it gets us a lot of the way there.

edit:

Age pyramids aren't as dramatically distorted as I expected but the differences are notable

https://www.indexmundi.com/united_kingdom/age_structure.html

https://www.indexmundi.com/china/age_structure.html

jk

Post edited at 13:31
1
 John Kelly 28 Oct 2020
In reply to jkarran:

Surprisingly those pyramids we very similar - I dont think that's the reason

(Big) if we take the worldometer  numbers I quoted as reasonable our death rate is 200x reported Chinese

Virus are initially local, Ebola in Africa, Hanta in Americas

Maybe the Chinese have come across similar challenges in the past and given what we are told about antibody numbers falling over quite short time periods have their T cell or memory cells had some protective effect?

Post edited at 13:43
 wintertree 28 Oct 2020
In reply to John Kelly:

> Maybe the Chinese have come across similar challenges in the past and given what we are told about antibody numbers falling over quite short time periods have their T cell or memory cells had some protective effect?

Unlikely given the way it tore the arse out of Wuhan province.

It seems more likely that having a repressive totalitarian state is one way of successfully achieving a hard lockdown leading to effective eradication.

 jkarran 28 Oct 2020
In reply to John Kelly:

> Surprisingly those pyramids we very similar - I dont think that's the reason

Yeah, I was surprised.

> Maybe the Chinese have come across similar challenges in the past and given what we are told about antibody numbers falling over quite short time periods have their T cell or memory cells had some protective effect?

Maybe but you'd have to explain how those previous 'challenges' died out previously, we'd only  be looking back a human lifespan (perhaps a long one to give protection to the most elderly and vulnerable) but China has been relatively open for quite a bit of that period. I suspect the reality is they're just more used to living with strict government control and the idea of collective endeavour (even if the reality in recent years of Chinese communism has been rather different).

jk

Post edited at 14:00
 Toerag 28 Oct 2020
In reply to John Kelly:

> I don't think it matters who they test, the BBC described it thus

> June 60 individual per 1000 had antibodies

> Sept 44 per 1000 has antibodies

> It's a rate, doesn't matter who they test (350,000 in survey)

With overall percentages that low the margin of error due to testing different people in each round must be quite considerable even if the result is statistically OK (decent sample size).  A 25% drop from 17.5% is only 4% difference in the overall numbers. Unfortunately Jersey hasn't checked their test cohort since July and the stats guy didn't know if and when they were going to test again (I asked the question). There hadn't been any change between June and July's tests.

 John Kelly 28 Oct 2020
In reply to jkarran:

Human lifespan - good call (As a side issue, whatever happened to epigenetics, never heard anything about that for ages) I suppose possible it wouldn't have to be a completely identical virus to elicit some effect, could have been something less lethal/contagious.

Totalitarian lockdown and supine population - I think given our experience of lockdown that is possible

Post edited at 16:51
 JohnBson 30 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

As someone who has conducted quantitative risk analysis and spends a large proportion of their work time using mathematical modelling to diagnose problems before they occur I would lead with this line of enquiry; "Would being wrong by an order of magnitude (x10) be acceptable when calculating whether critical infrastructure, like a bridge, would break? And, if that was proved the size of your error, then would you continue to use the same modelling assumptions for future justifications?"

The imperial model, when used by Swedish academics to predict the number of deaths in Sweden suggested that there would be 85,000 deaths. The actual number stands at 5934. It's very simple, rubbish in, rubbish out. The assumptions are, or were, quite clearly flawed. In any career where simulation is what you are employed for this kind of error margin would lose you your job, it's the kind of error you should spot in your hand calcs, give yourself a quick shake, and find where you mis-defined a unit of measurement or used the wrong equation.

My opinion is that they still have not learned from this, the government is, uncritically applying the Reasonable Worst Case Scenario and stating it as fact in their briefings. This is a political decision, and as we can quite easily calculate the RWCS of 50,000 cases per day on 14/09/20 has not borne out either in terms of tests or deaths, if you assume the fatality rate to be 0.37%, which the government do. Remember that we were told that the RWCS prediction would occur if no action was taken.

Personally I find it worrying when we are told that a RWCS, if we do nothing, is 50,000 cases per day so the government acts (with the Rule of 6, a pub curfew, and local tier system) however the scientists then comment that these measures had no effect. However if you do the mathematics, on the 14/09/20 we can estimate the number of daily cases, from the deaths we have now seen, to be approximately 1/3rd less.

So this is a better model but;

These actions have either had an effect, as is denied, or they didn't and the trajectory of the disease itself is largely independent of the measures taken. Again either the assumptions are wrong, or the analysis of the data after acquisition is wrong. Both scenarios do not bode well for our desperation to "follow the science".

So in my opinion, as someone who actually believes that scientific mathematical modelling is an excellent tool for predicting risk, is that these tools are only as good as their validations, and I have yet to see the model agree with the observable. When I see information indicating a prediction fidelity within 5% then I'll have a little more faith. I'm sure all the scientists involved are very excited by their opportunity to have so much data at their finger tips, and great advances in this field will be derived from the failures of the modelling.

6
 The New NickB 30 Oct 2020
In reply to JohnBson:

It would seriously worry me if someone who claimed to understand quantitive risk analysis, then went on to completely misrepresent the inputs, mitigation and outcomes. 

Post edited at 09:02
 MG 30 Oct 2020
In reply to JohnBson:

You seem to not understand  what a RWCS, in your parlance, actually is. That it hasn't happened, doesn't make the estimate wrong. "Worst Case" is the important bit.

 john arran 30 Oct 2020
In reply to JohnBson:

"Rubbish in, rubbish out" indeed.

Read into the data and the political statements what you want to hear and you'll end up spouting nonsense.

 wintertree 30 Oct 2020
In reply to JohnBson:

> The imperial model, when used by Swedish academics to predict the number of deaths in Sweden suggested that there would be 85,000 deaths. The actual number stands at 5934. It's very simple, rubbish in, rubbish out. The assumptions are, or were, quite clearly flawed. 

You seem to be making the incredibly basic mistake of comparing a "take no action" prediction with what actually happened when lots of risk control measures were implemented because of the "take no action" prediction that directly motivated enacting the risk control measures.

I've seen this wrong-headed thinking explained on UKC about 100 times by about 10 different posters so I'm struggling to see how you can be doing anything other than making a deliberate misrepresentation at this point, especially as this is apparently your bread and butter.

So, are you deliberately misrepresenting the Imperial model as part of a campaign to discredit scientific approaches to this pandemic, or are you professionally incompetent?

> Personally I find it worrying when we are told that a RWCS, if we do nothing, is 50,000 cases per day so the government acts (with the Rule of 6, a pub curfew, and local tier system) however the scientists then comment that these measures had no effect. However if you do the mathematics, on the 14/09/20 we can estimate the number of daily cases, from the deaths we have now seen, to be approximately 1/3rd less.

You seem remarkably ill informed of some estimates of true infection levels (95,000 per day, React study, headline BBC news) - what is the basis for your estimation?  How can you justify comparing deaths at some middle point of an exponentially rising phase with a “worst case” prediction?  We are at perhaps 2x that “worst case” with no end to the exponential rise in sight and with the risk control measure you list in place.

I have a real problem with people spitballing absolute shit and dressing if up in fancy language or claims of expertise.  At best you are adding noise, at worst you are influencing people to make decisions that make the situation worse for everyone.

Man up and retract your post.

Post edited at 10:06
1
 jkarran 30 Oct 2020
In reply to JohnBson:

> The imperial model, when used by Swedish academics to predict the number of deaths in Sweden suggested that there would be 85,000 deaths. The actual number stands at 5934. It's very simple, rubbish in, rubbish out. The assumptions are, or were, quite clearly flawed...

Jesus wept. Comparing worst case predictions based on then current behaviour and policy with the result before the pandemic (or current wave of it) has played out, after mitigation measures informed by worst case predictions... it's moronic or it's wilful. Which?

> My opinion is that they still have not learned from this, the government is, uncritically applying the Reasonable Worst Case Scenario and stating it as fact in their briefings. This is a political decision, and as we can quite easily calculate the RWCS of 50,000 cases per day on 14/09/20 has not borne out either in terms of tests or deaths, if you assume the fatality rate to be 0.37%, which the government do.

Because of mitigation measures informed by those reasonable worst case projections. You write well enough I fear you're not stupid so why do you keep missing that?

> Remember that we were told that the RWCS prediction would occur if no action was taken.

Yes. But action was taken, because it became clear not taking action would be catastrophic. To legitimise that potentially unpopular action a democratic government has to explain to its electorate what they understand will likely happen if they don't take action, the RWCS.

> Personally I find it worrying when we are told that a RWCS, if we do nothing, is 50,000 cases per day so the government acts (with the Rule of 6, a pub curfew, and local tier system) however the scientists then comment that these measures had no effect. However if you do the mathematics, on the 14/09/20 we can estimate the number of daily cases, from the deaths we have now seen, to be approximately 1/3rd less.

We didn't do nothing. The rules changed across a wide swathe of England. The home nations imposed their own revised restrictions. Behind the scenes lots of plans have shifted gear significantly. We didn't do enough it seems but we elect a government to weigh conflicting interests up before setting course then we hold them accountable for their judgement and actions.

> So in my opinion, as someone who actually believes that scientific mathematical modelling is an excellent tool for predicting risk, is that these tools are only as good as their validations, and I have yet to see the model agree with the observable.

Because you're looking at the worst case projections and comparing them to mitigated reality informed by the projections. Look at the projections with the most relevant mitigation measures included then compare them to the reality after those measures were applied. If they're still orders of magnitude out then we have a significant ongoing problem in understanding the efficacy or uptake of control measures. I see significant but reducing uncertainty here, not complete misunderstanding.

It seems to me you're deliberately misrepresenting rather than misunderstanding the situation. Why?

> When I see information indicating a prediction fidelity within 5% then I'll have a little more faith.

You'll be waiting a while given the complexity and sensitivity of the situation to numerous poorly predictable stimuli. I'd go as far as to say you're dreaming if you think that's even possible with a problem of this complexity.

jk

Post edited at 10:46
 Ridge 30 Oct 2020
In reply to JohnBson:

> In any career where simulation is what you are employed for this kind of error margin would lose you your job.

Depends what you're modelling. If it's structural engineering then no, you wouldn't expect to be an order of magnitude out. You know exactly what you're modelling.

If you're doing predictive modelling, say a release of radioactive material to the atmosphere and it's effect on people, thats a different matter. Using a simple gaussian plume model you could model simple worst case weather, most likely weather conditions, or possibly probabilistic weather conditions. There's nearly a couple of orders of magnitude difference in the likely doses between those three simple models.

If you like you can start using something like Lagrangian particle modelling (e.g. NAME developed by the Met Office). Great if you have all the data (you get abnormally high levels of Iodine 131 across the EU for example, use those values and run the model backwards using historical weather data) and hey presto, a very accurate idea of which dodgy Russian site in the Urals it came from, how much was released and where its ended up.

Run the model forward, i.e. try and predict the future, and things get very complicated very quickly, even using past and current weather data, plus some of the most powerful software available. How often does the weather forcast say there's only a 5% chance of rain on Thursday and it rains?

By your standards everyone at the Met Office must keep losing their jobs due to their incompetance and the model must be obviously wrong. Maybe they should have done a 'simple hand calculation'  like you do, which would soon have shown them they were wrong about next Thursdays weather.

> When I see information indicating a prediction fidelity within 5% then I'll have a little more faith.

If you can model pandemic spread and incorporate mitigation strategies that haven't yet been developed, the effects of political interference and outright misrepresention on social media on those control measures, and the probability of people being knobheads at a societal level and still predict the number of future cases in a few months time to that degree of certainty then your talents are wasted in whatever field you currently work in.

Post edited at 12:05
 Dave Garnett 30 Oct 2020
In reply to JohnBson:

> My opinion is that they still have not learned from this, the government is, uncritically applying the Reasonable Worst Case Scenario...

Looks like you were right.  Actually, it's even worse than that -

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54750775

 mik82 30 Oct 2020
In reply to Dave Garnett:

It really isn't looking good is it? If it carries on like this then we'll run out of hospital beds in just over 3 weeks.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-kingdom?view=resource-use&tab=tre...

 Neil Williams 30 Oct 2020
In reply to mik82:

As that's effectively "locked in", time to activate the Nightingales?

 wintertree 30 Oct 2020
In reply to Neil Williams:

They’re getting activated - but not as many of us expected

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/the_pub/nightingale_hospitals_not_covid-7...

Ralph McTell summarises my mood tonight

youtube.com/watch?v=-BjzPDv5lP4&

 Stichtplate 30 Oct 2020
In reply to mik82:

> It really isn't looking good is it? If it carries on like this then we'll run out of hospital beds in just over 3 weeks.

Which is the point at which the 'I'm all right Jack, let's just lock down the vulnerable' crowd suddenly realise that it doesn't matter if you're an 18 year old stabbing victim, a 28 year old RTC victim, a 38 year old with a burst appendix or a 48 year old drowning on dry land with covid.

Patients that should be on ITU will be on wards, patients that should be on wards will be on corridors and patients that should be in A&E will see swamped hospitals and stay at home.

 And people will die. From all sorts of things.

 Misha 31 Oct 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

In less than months we've gone from a low of 3 deaths on 1 September to 200+ a day over the last week or so. And counting. Despite the partial restrictions and despite a lot of vulnerable people doing their best to shelter themselves.

The lockdown sceptics articles starts with terms like 'fatal errors', 'wildly inaccurate' and 'disastrous results'. That is not a sensible start to a serious, impartial scientific analysis.

Post edited at 06:16
 wintertree 31 Oct 2020
In reply to Misha:

Pat is a bit noticeable by his absence.   If this was a deliberate reposting of misinformation I’m guessing this poor attempt isn’t going to earn a bonus...

1
 mik82 31 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

Really going down a wormhole now looking at the twitter feed of the original author

https://twitter.com/michaelyeadon3?lang=en

>it is roughly where I believe it it be, then the “Covid19 “cases”, hospital admissions & even deaths are all NOT COVID19 AT ALL. Is this even possible?? The shocking answer is YES.

Amazingly, had a full article published in the Daily Mail today.

 Blunderbuss 31 Oct 2020
In reply to mik82:

> Really going down a wormhole now looking at the twitter feed of the original author

> >it is roughly where I believe it it be, then the “Covid19 “cases”, hospital admissions & even deaths are all NOT COVID19 AT ALL. Is this even possible?? The shocking answer is YES.

> Amazingly, had a full article published in the Daily Mail today.

Yep made my piss boil when I heard that... 

 wintertree 31 Oct 2020
In reply to mik82:

> Really going down a wormhole now looking at the twitter feed of the original author

It's quite something to watch unfold in real time.  I haven't been this engaged in daily updates since the Stinky Meat project of the late 1990s.

The little sympathy I had for this guy just evaporated in a puff of anger.  

 Misha 31 Oct 2020
In reply to mik82:

Unfortunately there are people who read this rubbish, don’t question it and believe it.

I do have sympathy with people who will be financially impacted by another lockdown (I’m lucky in that I won’t be - at least not directly but I will be paying for it all for years to come through higher taxes, as will most people). I imagine Sunak is scrambling together a far from adequate support package as we speak. Thing is, if Covid rips loose, the economy will collapse anyway. People don’t seem to realise that.

OP Postmanpat 05 Nov 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

This addresses my question calmly and sensibly despite the provocative title:

https://unherd.com/2020/11/the-trouble-with-covid-denialism/

 Jon Stewart 05 Nov 2020
In reply to Postmanpat:

> This addresses my question calmly and sensibly despite the provocative title:

Good! Thanks for posting that.

A lot of people have written off Yeadon, Gupta and Heneghan as cranks on the payroll of the alt-right. Yeadon and Gupta we can write off as totally dishonest, but for me the jury is out on Heneghan. His claims are nowhere near as obviously false as those made by Yeadon and Gupta, who keep being comprehensively proven wrong and then failing to change their position. Every source who cites them loses their credibility.

Since the latest ZOE data shows infections levelling off a bit, given the lag between infections and hospital admissions it still looks like harsher restrictions were needed at this point (or earlier of course); but I'm not quite so worried as I was yesterday that we were really on the brink of meltdown.

Hopefully the regional restrictions worked a bit, plus SD/behaviour change and more people having been infected really is slowing down the spread.  Let's see how it goes over the next week...

 freeflyer 05 Nov 2020
In reply to Jon Stewart:

Hopefully Yeadon is in the past, a sad case of enthusiasm and need for self-promotion overcoming the need for caution and verification.

I think Heneghan is a force for good however, and has not just been barking up some denialist tree. He has def been wrong, as have many others, but has consistently looked for evidence of errors in interpreting the official data, .

And on that note:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54831334

 wintertree 05 Nov 2020
In reply to freeflyer:

> He has def been wrong, as have many others, but has consistently looked for evidence of errors in interpreting the official data, .

He has made 0.0 attempts that I have seen to clarify his piece on false positives that has been jumped all over by the anti-lockdown brigade, that was based on sub-standard analysis, and that has sent Yeadon down his rabbit hole. 

Regardless of if he was right or wrong at the time, within a couple of weeks it was clear that the effect he hypothesised was irrelevant to the developing situation.  If my work was being so widely abused I would as a matter of urgency clarify it.

This is far from the only time he’s been publicly wrong on the optimistic side and not stepped back.

> And on that note:

Yup.  More recent scenerios and the actual situation with hospitalisations remain sufficient reason to act.  The real question for me is why when these were considered on the 9th of October was the decision made “ah well let’s give it another 3 weeks and see what happens”... Also the actuals fall only just outside the confidence interval on that one contentious curve which was the clear outlier in the set of models presented.

Post edited at 20:28
 Dave Garnett 05 Nov 2020
In reply to Jon Stewart:

> A lot of people have written off Yeadon, Gupta and Heneghan as cranks on the payroll of the alt-right. Yeadon and Gupta we can write off as totally dishonest, but for me the jury is out on Heneghan. His claims are nowhere near as obviously false as those made by Yeadon and Gupta, who keep being comprehensively proven wrong and then failing to change their position. Every source who cites them loses their credibility.

I tend to agree about Heneghan.  He strikes me as a good, common-sense GP with an interest in evidence-based clinical medicine.  I think he's maybe a bit flattered by suddenly being so in demand for his opinion and is being tempted to break his on rules on allowing his prejudices to colour the evidence.  It happens.

As for Gupta, god knows.  She was once married to a proper scientist.

In reply to Postmanpat:

Seems largely consistent with the rebuttals to your OP that have been given in this thread.

 wintertree 05 Nov 2020
In reply to Jon Stewart:

> A lot of people have written off Yeadon, Gupta and Heneghan as cranks on the payroll of the alt-right

I don’t think Yeadon is on anyone’s payroll over this.

I think he got drawn in by the false positive PCR angle, where he has (or claims) relevant expertise and someone latched on to it, and it’s snowballed from there.  He’s gaining about 5k twitter followers a day; I imagine he had about 50 before this all kicked off.  They’re congratulating him, encouraging him, building a wall of confidence between him and the world.  Hopefully he can step back and reevaluate.

Post edited at 20:47
 Jon Stewart 05 Nov 2020
In reply to wintertree:

> I don’t think Yeadon is on anyone’s payroll over this.

 He's doing an awful lot of work for Nigel Farage for free then! What do you think the chances are they've at least had a chat on the blower?

 wintertree 05 Nov 2020
In reply to Jon Stewart:

YHM.

 freeflyer 05 Nov 2020
In reply to Dave Garnett:

The Barrington Declarators appear to have had a Wile E. Coyote moment...

 wintertree 05 Nov 2020
In reply to freeflyer:

> The Barrington Declarators appear to have had a Wile E. Coyote moment...

Interestingly, the spectator has turned on it.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-problem-with-the-great-barrington-d...

Ultimately, the concept of segmentation and herd immunity via natural infection is flawed in several ways and is not supported by current scientific understanding. 

Barrington was never going to fly in the long run.  It couldn’t.  It didn’t have a scientific foundation.  But it did it’s job - put something out there aggressively enough and it gets into people’s heads in a way no gradual fall from grace can reverse.

 Jon Stewart 05 Nov 2020
In reply to freeflyer:

> Hopefully Yeadon is in the past, a sad case of enthusiasm and need for self-promotion overcoming the need for caution and verification.

As I say, Yeadon and Gupta we can reliably regard as liars and see them as red flags. See their name, write it off.

> I think Heneghan is a force for good however, and has not just been barking up some denialist tree. He has def been wrong, as have many others, but has consistently looked for evidence of errors in interpreting the official data.

There's a really big problem: he signed the Great Barrington Declaration. This is a call for a policy which will cause absolute mayhem in our society. No one's come up with a way to "protect the vulnerable". The Great Barrington Declaration looks an awful lot to me like a call to watch the world burn.

> And on that note:

Well yeah. There's a false narrative being spun here: that the lockdown policy was based on an out of date model predicting 4000 deaths per day. That's bollocks. It's a good point that by the time they gave the presentation they should have realised that their big sales line "now with an extra 4000 deaths every day" was bollocks, but what the bad people on the right have done is misrepresented the rationale given perfectly clearly: "carry on as we are, and the NHS, and therefore society, is f*cked". The rationale was not "carry on as we are and we'll get 4000 deaths per day" - that's cherry-picking/spin of the governments story (who did not cherry pick that model, they included it alongside the rest, but should have checked whether it was still valid and didn't). It was indeed an important error to include that graph because it's given the dickheads on the right a legitimate, but utterly superficial line of attack. But when you're talking to the audience of the f*cking Telegraph and Talk Radio etc, all you need is a completely superficial line of attack.

Then you get on "professor" lackey ballbag, and bob's your uncle, all the wankers believe you. It's not hard to drive this society off the edge of a cliff, if that's what you want to do - anyone think of another recent example? Perhaps there's some connection?

It wasn't a meaningful error of analysis though, because in terms of making the decision it was not relied upon, even if it was highlighted in the sales pitch.

 wintertree 05 Nov 2020
In reply to Jon Stewart:

I agree pretty much outright with your take.

> but should have checked whether it was still valid and didn't.

The plot in the slides is so poor it's hard to tell, but the shading showing the 95% confidence interval is very close to where the actual deaths fall.  So the data doesn't seriously disprove the model although it suggests its on the pessimistic side.

It is frustrating that they didn't use more recent data, but this data also is not on the critical path to the motivation for lockdown, which is about hospital occupancy.  

> It was indeed an important error to include that graph because it's given the dickheads on the right a legitimate, but utterly superficial line of attack

That is a good point - but I see an even bigger flaw in the government releasing that slide.  It tells us that on October 9th, they were looking at a raft of predictions fit to the then current data, all of which were much worse than their operational "reasonable worst case" model, and most of which suggested that we'd be hitting healthcare meltdown by mid November.  Their response to tihis? Stick with the status quo of tier 2 / tier 3 restrictions for several more weeks before pressing the Panic button at the 11th hour.

The latest extrapolations of the government's dashboard data are pulling back from the nuclear brink from the time they announced lockdown.   There's still ten days to go before we reach the point where the effects of lockdown (however effective they may be) translate into hospital occupancy levels.  I don't have a feel for if that's going to see the projection rising back above the red line of "surge capacity" or not - there are so many unpredictable factors at play.  But to take things this close to the line, and in your key briefing to the public, to let them know you were aware this was going to happen a month ago and chose not to act then - wow.


 freeflyer 05 Nov 2020
In reply to Jon Stewart:

> There's a really big problem: he signed the Great Barrington Declaration

Do you have a link for that? It doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere that I can see - not that I'm much surprised about that.

CEBM would be an obvious destination for libertarian funders; watch this space.

 Jon Stewart 05 Nov 2020
In reply to freeflyer:

> Do you have a link for that? It doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere that I can see - not that I'm much surprised about that.

I'm not sure now - I don't use twitter so this google search might be confusing matters:

https://www.google.com/search?q=heneghan+great+barrington&rlz=1C1CHBF_e...

> CEBM would be an obvious destination for libertarian funders; watch this space.

Eughh. 

 Jon Stewart 05 Nov 2020
In reply to wintertree:

> But to take things this close to the line, and in your key briefing to the public, to let them know you were aware this was going to happen a month ago and chose not to act then - wow.

Very good point. I would just reflect that the problem here isn't just that we've got the Tories in charge - it's that Johnson had to purge the Tories of intelligent, experienced (but ultimately untrustworthy and nasty) people and replace them with worthless pieces of shit who'd support his lunatic Brexit policy and weren't capable of contributing anything other than an arselick on demand and following direct orders from Dominic Cummings. It's not the Tory Party in power, it's the left over bits of the corpse of the Tory Party that's all that remains after Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has harvested its organs to save his own skin.

There's some people who really deserve to get covid twice, and just a bit worse the second time round.

Post edited at 23:33
In reply to Jon Stewart:

Jon, never mind a ‘like’, that post deserves a round of applause... 

 The New NickB 06 Nov 2020
In reply to freeflyer:

> > There's a really big problem: he signed the Great Barrington Declaration

> Do you have a link for that? It doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere that I can see - not that I'm much surprised about that.

He tweeted that he signed it.

> CEBM would be an obvious destination for libertarian funders; watch this space.

Maria Willetts and others, lots of connections to the right of American politics.

 freeflyer 06 Nov 2020
In reply to Jon Stewart:

Thanks for your link efforts (and NickB). I'm surprised that he jumped on the herd immunity horse, but hey ho.

> Very good point. I would just reflect that the problem here isn't just that we've got the Tories in charge - it's that Johnson had to purge the Tories ...

Despite the (for me) confusing invective, this has some merit.

To make an obvious point, the current government is a populist one, and is drawn from the 'modern' right wing of the Conservative party. ERG, the 19th century and the left wing are still there, but think American Republicans - they're happy to let the monkeys have their tea party because they get to eat all the sandwiches.

What are the libertarian goals of this populist government?

0. Win the next election.
1. Get Brexit done. Doesn't matter how - no deal, some other deal, whatever.
2. Minimise the economic downside of the pandemic.
3. Dismantle the 'elitist state machinery' in the Civil Service.

Why are they always behind the curve on virus control? See 2 above.

What messaging can we expect to support these goals? You heard it during the referendum campaign and the election, but properly managed by UKIP; the Tories have only the vaguest idea of what to do and say - thank your god for that, and that they don't have someone of the calibre of Trump to do their twittering for them.

 Jon Stewart 06 Nov 2020
In reply to freeflyer:

> 2. Minimise the economic downside of the pandemic.

> Why are they always behind the curve on virus control? See 2 above.

It's painfully obvious that being behind the curve does not minimise the economic downside. Do you mean that because they want to appear to be minimising the economic impact (to people who aren't paying attention - to the rest of us, it's bleeding obvious) that they don't want to appear to be bringing in measures "too early" (i.e. before hospital admissions go mental)?

 RobAJones 06 Nov 2020
In reply to Jon Stewart:

I'm not sure how many people are looking at how their actions now, could affect things in the future. I know a few people (variety of ages)who would not normally go out during the week, but went out three nights this week. They were "supporting" the hospitality sector, by drinking cheap beer. I thought it was generally accepted that if we had "locked down" 3 or 4 days earlier in March then restrictions could have been lifted a month or so earlier?

 freeflyer 06 Nov 2020
In reply to RobAJones:

I've heard rumours of a few businesses in London staying open doing 'takeaways', and one or two in the west country that are openly defying their local council.

I certainly don't know for sure what's going on in the minds of our glorious leaders. Not much, it seems to me.


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