UKC

The main purpose of the restrictions we've faced so far has been to prevent the NHS becoming overloaded/full with Covid patients.Over 80% of admissions to NHS hospitals with Covid infections are those who have not been vaccinated.
But now the vast majority of us have had our 2 doses of vaccine, 80% and huge numbers have had a booster jab.

So in effect those of us who have been fully vaccinated are still having our lives restricted because of a minority refusing, for whatever reason, to be vaccinated.  

Those unvaccinated people are also taking up bed spaces & staff who  could be dealing with  the vast number of the public who are facing long waits for overdue operations and treatments.

Surely there should be tighter restrictions on those who refuse to get vaccinated, rather than impose restrictions on the vast majority of the population who have got vaccinated??

As the great philosopher (Ali G) once asked. 'Why's it call the welfare system, is it coz its well fare'?

There for every apparently 🙄

Have you got any evidence for 80% of admissions are unvaccinated? My brother is refusing to take the vaccine and I want to give him some more information. 

Thanks!

British Medical Journal

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2306

There are press releases from multiple NHS trusts and some news stories saying about 90% of intensive care patients are not fully vaccinated (two doses).  Someone else found some primary data for all of England on a recent thread that got deleted.  Perhaps they’ll pop in here to share it.

https://northeastlondonccg.nhs.uk/news/almost-90-of-patients-admitted-to-in...

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/23/covid-patients-in-icu-now-alm...

https://www.nuh.nhs.uk/latest-news/warning-on-importance-of-vaccine-as-numb...

I don’t think the bias is so strong across all hospital admissions, but intensive care is likely to be the first choke point requiring societal control measures to ease pressure.  I would certainly like to see the government spell out the role of vaccine refusal in requiring any control measures.  The vast majority of people who have played their various roles (obeying control measures, getting vaccinated etc) in helping over the last 18 months deserve the respect of being told why intensive care is under such pressure leading to them to be asked to curtail their activities.

I don’t feel at all charitable about where we are any longer.  Some of the vaccine refusers have been swayed by a lot of misinformation, and the people behind that are also to blame for where we are.

The problem is it isn’t there for every one right now.

Electives are already being cancelled and scheduled surgery delayed and delayed much more than would be the case if hospitals and intensive care wards didn’t have a high load from unvaccinated covid patients.

Edit; although take away all covid patients and I don’t think we’d be back to normal.

I'm not sure that it's the case that 80% are unvaccinated. Even intensive care is roughly 50% vaccinated now. What is the case is that unvaccinated patients are more likely to need longer admissions in both wards and intensive care and they have a disproportionately higher (and 90-95%) preventable impact. 

You got a link for that figure? because there are multiple links up thread evidencing otherwise and the only seriously ill covid patients I've had to take in have been exclusively the unvaccinated.

That data is 5 months out of date.

No conflict I think; the figures I link for are occupancy, and some are from a single trust.

mik82’s may in part be admissions (which is what the OP was talking about).  Lower admissions x longer time on ward = higher occupancy.

I’d take mik82’s comments over mine.

Edit: I’d hope the number of unvaccinated people going in has been dropping in recent months, as the pool of people with no prior immune exposure continues to empty through the ongoing first and second doses and through infection and it’s outcomes.

My (anecdotal) data is three days out of date.

You got any better figures you'd like to link?

100% of the people I know who were hospitalised with COVID were vaccinated. Thankfully it’s only a single case, but a young (well, mid 30s) female with an underlying condition. Was in for a week. Obviously you’re far more experienced in the matter!

No, do you?

But would he listen anyway? My experience of all kinds of conspiracy theory believers is that no amount of even simple 'common sense' evidence works. For example, at work I once tried to explain to someone how the fact that you could see a ship sailing over the horizon showed that Earth is a sphere. His response was that it was just getting further away so you couldn't see it! On a clear day from the hill in town you can see the hills of the Isle of Man - but not Douglas (at sea level) - strange that, isn't it since Earth is flat .... ?

I'd prefer to go off links I can read and what I'm seeing with my own eyes over unsupported statements on the internet. If there are more recent, creditable figures out there then I'm happy to stand corrected.

I read a report in the LA Times this morning that said the meaning of the term "fully vaccinated" might be about to shift. Makes sense to me.

https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-12-11/should-the-definition-of-f...

Of course this is going to happen. Johnson nodded to it in the covid pass presser the other day, about possibly needing to reconsider what constituted vaccinated with boosters being roled out. I think ‘fully vaccinated’ is a redundant term now…but the ranks of officially ‘unvaccinated’ will swell considerably.

"Fully vaccinated+"?

Covid assessment and suitability for admission follows a flow chart style assessment from an app we all carry on our phones. Co-morbidity adds points and any serious underlying health issue adds to the twitch factor, as does individual circumstances, for instance, I'm much happier leaving someone at home if there's aa competent adult living at the same address who's available to monitor the patient. 

Your friend might have been hospitalised because of covid or it might have been a combination of circumstances and underlying conditions, or she might have been one of the unlucky 10-20%

official government stats on vaccine effectiveness published 10 days ago

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/...

Good point. I've nearly given up. He reckons he's more at risk from an adverse side effect than Covid. 

 It’s not difficult to tap  into Google and look it up. 

IIRC, Linda Bauld said on the beeb yesterday you are 4.5x more likely to end up in hospital if you are unvaccinated.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Bauld

This data has been available in the vaccine surveillance report for months. The significant majority of covid admissions are people who are double vaccinated, that has also been the case for several months. The proportion of admissions who are vaccinated has increased over time due to both the increasing proportion of the population who are vaccinated and the waning of immunity in older groups. Boosters may in time cause some reversal but it seems very unlikely to me that unvaccinated would ever be the majority again, even before Omicron came along, and that will skew things further towards more vaccinated admissions.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccine-weekly-surveill...

Page 33.

We will not fight anti-vaxx messaging with our own fake news and anecdote. There is far too much of that around, including from healthcare professionals.

…and as a result here you are using 5 month out of date data? Maybe it’s harder than you make out.

She was indeed one of the unlucky ones. However something good has come of it, she’s been spurred on to have a change in career is beginning the pathway to becoming a paramedic

Starter for ten: which world-famous rock star surprised (almost) everyone and did exactly the same, pre-covid?

Page 33 is deaths not hospitalisations.

Several studies have estimated vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation in older ages, all of which indicate higher levels of protection against hospitalisation with all vaccines against the Alpha variant (8, 9, 10, 11). Effectiveness against hospitalisation of over 90% is also observed with the Delta variant with all 3 vaccines (Figure 3, 3). In most groups there is relatively limited waning of protection against hospitalisation over a period of at least 5 months after the second dose. Greater waning appears to occur among those in clinical risk groups (Figure 3, 3).

That's from the government's  UK health and security report published on the 2nd December. It's not anecdotal and I don't regard it as fake news.

Maybe a group Darwin Award for the unvaccinated 

To check: the table of deaths by vaccine status and age?

If you look at ages 40-60 in that table, the deaths are about 50/50 unvaccinated and vaccinated.  So it doesn’t seem a stretch to think those ages are about evenly represented in ITU now - in line with mik82’s comment on the current situation, and down from the 90% unvaccinated quoted by many different sources in healthcare late in the summer.

The admission in that document are clearly larger for the vaccinated cohort now, but it’s likely the ratio for occupancy will tilt more towards the unvaccinated as they require a larger length of stay.   If you look at the ages likely to send some people in to ITU, there’s much more parity in the numbers between unvaccinated and vaccinated.  So again by this ITU occupancy is likely to lean towards the unvaccinated given their evidenced greater length of stay.

When it comes to availability of hospital capacity, it’s occupancy that’s the key factor and I’ve not seen much data on that vs vaccination status.  In particular ITU occupancy.  It’s clearly been very highly driven by unvaccinated, but it should (must) go down over time for the same reasons you give for admissions…

Also - critically - because the remaining unvaccinated people have been getting infected and mostly either recovering with some immune protection against future serious illness or dying, and perhaps getting vaccinated after recovery.  That’s been going on for some months now and the latest plots I’ve seen suggest there’s really not long to go before everyone still alive has had some prior immune exposure.

Indeed, it’s an ever decreasing pool.

I'm tempted to say David Lee Roth but didn't he do this quite a while back?

I wouldn't say "exactly the same". Dave Lee Roth was a licensed emergency medical technician in New York, which a quick google reveals, requires 208 hours of training. mrphilipoldham's friend will need to complete a 3 year degree and a couple of thousand hours in the back of an ambulance before she can register as a UK paramedic.

Ah, apologies for the mix-up, not my specialty!

I love the story of DLR tending to a biker in NYC who came to after a crash, concussed, and sees this rock god leaning over him...

Did he Jump?

Ooh that’s a good one. No idea, though! Looking forward to hearing who..

A timeline of some of the statements on ITU occupancy or admission from primary sources

NHS Nottingham - https://nottsccg.nhs.uk/covid-19/warning-from-hospital-bosses-on-importance...

• 29 July 2021 [...] Latest vaccination figures reveal that around 90% of Covid-19 patients in intensive care at the trust are unvaccinated. Just over half were aged under 44. Of all Covid-19 patients at NUH, over 60 per cent have not been vaccinated, with a further 10 per cent only having had the first dose.

NHS North East London- https://northeastlondonccg.nhs.uk/news/almost-90-of-patients-admitted-to-in...

• Between 14 July and 2 September 2021, 203 patients with Covid-19 were admitted to intensive care units (ICU) across north east London (NEL). Of these, 90% (181) were not fully vaccinated, with most tending to be on average six years younger than patients admitted to ICU who are fully vaccinated.

 https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/news/effectiveness-covid-vaccination-starkly-u...

• 17 September 2021 [...] Of those in ICU wards with Covid, 72% are unvaccinated, 8% have had one dose and 20% have had two doses.

I haven't found more recent quotes.  As Si dH notes, we'd expect the % unvaccinated going in to hospitals and occupying hospitals to fall going forwards.  Comparable numbers seem to be falling over the timeline above, but the conflation from it being different trusts/home nations is probably bigger than the trend!  Edit: presumably another three months of change since these.

It would be good to have actual national level data on what % occupancy in hospitals and in ITUs is now unvaccinated people.  I'm not sure if there's been an institutional reticence about publishing this, or if it's just not a priority, or if I'm bad at finding it...

I'm afraid it was a dud question, unless anyone else has a better answer.

Sorry, I meant page 32 - typo error.

That is all valid but none of it says which cohort forms the significant majority of admissions. The answer is double vaccinated people.

I'm not arguing that people shouldn't get vaccinated - far from it. I'm arguing people shouldn't make up stats or use anecdotes about hospital admissions to try to encourage it, because they are very easily shown to be BS and it will put hesitant people off of they think arguments in support are using fake news.

Sorry, as above I meant page 32.

You might be right or you might not be, we don't have any data. I scanned the latest cocin report (just submitted on the sage website) this morning and it looked like covid hospital stays were generally longer for older people. A higher proportion of older people are vaccinated.

Is ITU really the issue, or is it ward beds? Covid admissions are way down on last year still at this point, but I'm led to believe a major problem is the lack of social care space to discharge people to. That is presumably affecting ward space but not ITU.

(And another note from the cocin report - only a small fraction of hospital admissions go to ITU and many more are given oxygen on the ward.)

My main bug bear is not the exact truth of the situation, there are obviously subtleties in it. But the raw data on admissions is quite clear and I get upset with people using fake data and anecdote instead. It doesn't help anyone. The argument for vaccination can be made without.

I think it's a function of age and of vaccination status.  Very crudely the vaccines appear to take about 10 year's off person's age in terms of death risk (an order of magnitude reduction of risk) so if they have a similar effect for length of stay...

Intensive care occupancy is higher vs general occupancy in this wave; I don't know how that trend is going to shift as we run out of unvaccinated people to treat.  

Immediately, I think general beds are the problem, but that's one that can be solved more easily than the exhaustion of ITU capacity that would come next if we have a big spike driven by omicron.  I'm increasingly surprised that we're not seeing a crash priority program to address the high occupancy of dischargeable patients, given the models over hospital admissions being submitted to SAGE.

Agree totally.  I jumped mentally straight from admissions to occupancy with the OP, but you're right that the data is clear on hospital admissions.  There's enough months now in those vaccine surveillance reports it's got to be worth extracting it for a plot...

Totally agree; the document Stichtplate linked is about as compelling as it gets from a personal perspective.  From a societal perspective it's hard to pull together a clear, compelling case based on occupancy as the data isn't crystal clear.  Whilst admissions data is clear, it's not as pertinent as occupancy.

Vaccines offering 90% effectiveness against hospitalisation is very different to saying that 90% of people hospitalised are unvaccinated, which is the figure disputed upthread. 

My understanding from the data in the other thread was:

- Unvaccinated patients do not make up a significant majority of covid hospitalisations. They are at much higher risk, but there are also far fewer people in this cohort. They are over-represented in hospital, and an unnecessary strain on resources, but fewer in absolute terms than we might intuitively  think.  
- However, ITU admissions are overwhelmingly unvaccinated. (I wonder if the patients you see are more often on this trajectory, and there are a cohort of less severely ill vaccinated people who are making their own way to hospital).

This still means that unvaccinated people are causing a lot of problems for healthcare provision, particularly by bunging up ITU capacity which then impacts everything downstream from there. But I think Si’s point is that standing behind apparent misrepresentations such as “90% of admissions are unvaccinated” gives the anti vaccine brigade easy targets to aim at. 

Edit: I see that in the time it took me to write that while juggling a baby, the same point had already been discussed at some length!

If you need to be treated in hospital for covid and you are unvaccinated through choice, and not for some other medical reason you should not get seen. That should sort the idiots out. 

I've just checked that latest UKHSA report and by adding data up from a table buried deep in a pdf I've found 35% of admissions are unvaccinated (2355 of 6639). That's no surprise as the majority of the most vulnerable are vaccinated and boosted.

Why do you think a government that says it is doing all it can doesn't have a single landing page with the main reasons people should get jabbed linked to dashboards with the data; so we can just post that to persuade people?

In the meantime the mob minded blame hesitant people facing this poor government information with plenty of mixed messages and plain anti-vax lies on their social media! Why hasn't the government done more to pressure social media companies to take down misinformation?

Why are the government saying not getting vaccinated means people are dying at home and in  ambulances because the NHS emergency  arrangements are close to breaking: please get vaccinated?

Why are they not saying NHS and care staff have been working ridiculously hard and under appalling stress (which has broken many) for nearly two years : please get vaccinated?

That's really interesting. Do you think that is his only reason? Or his main reason? Or only one reason among many? I've not met any adults to talk to who were refusing to have it.

Does he know someone who has a had a bad reaction? Is he interested at all in the idea that you have the jab to protect others along with yourself, so the severe impact of covid might not be on him but on someone he infects?

Why doesn't this government headline page, that doesn't exist, link to data that shows for adults pretty much any vaccine side-effect risk is lower than the risk for the same factor  from catching covid (often significantly so)?

Because in terms of risk many can't differentiate that say 10,000:1 is vastly higher risk than 1,000,000:1. Many just think they are roughly the same. 

Yes - the latest ICNARC report. The data is about admissions  - 48% were unvaccinated in November. 

https://www.icnarc.org/DataServices/Attachments/Download/876791a8-e359-ec11...

Vaccination surveillance data also shows more vaccinated than unvaccinated being admitted

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/...

This isn't inconsistent with the OP's point that they're a real issue though. These unvaccinated people are likely to be in hospital for longer, and particularly (from anecdote) they are going to require much longer in intensive care if they end up there. They're still clogging up the system in terms of over all occupancy, even if admissions are not the "80%" mentioned initially. 

Might as well

I think part of the risk in publication of this data is that the base rate fallacy isn't explained, and neither are proper explanations of the data - in particular info like the ages of those admitted vaccinated Vs unvaccinated. 

Edit to add - as a result the numbers get leapt on and incorrectly interpreted as "it's just as dangerous if not more to get vaccinated..." - which is utter nonsense.

Like idiots who fall off rock climbing, and use up time and resources that 'more careful' people could use in being treated?

You have the right to refuse medical treatment in the UK, dont you?

In any free country you must not be persecuted for exercising your rights

What else do you dislike so you can punish people for it?

It's not persecution to mandate vaccination or mask wearing. It's like somebody whining that they don't see why they should wash their hands before preparing food in a restaurant, or complaining that they can't send their kid to school with measles.

This thread is an example of the same type of misinformation that is driving the antivaxx campaign. My understanding is that its about 50/50 on admissions yet we get all this anecdote based propoganda from the BBC about 90 admissions in hospitals being unvaxxed. It's clear lots of posters on this thread are essentially uninformed yet still happy to have a pop at the antivaxx lot. The whole thing is hugely frustrating but if cannot start from a baseline of good data and a hefty dose of rationality what hope is there?

 I have to admit to not being certain of the exact stats, but I just wanted to flag up that even a really bald figure of 50/50 split of admissions is actually massive argument in favour of being vaccinated.

Edit to add:

https://flowingdata.com/2021/11/22/euler-diagram-to-illustrate-base-rate-fa...

(And that's leaving aside any more inferences based on ages of populations vaccinated/unvaccinated etc)

If the 11% unvaccinated population of the over 12s are representing 50% of hospital admissions, you do the maths!!! 

Saw a couple of young nobs on the local news who were only getting jabbed because it was a requirement for them to go on their holiday.

Seems that the easiest way to make a lot of these people get jabbed is to inconvenience them more than getting the jab does. Sure, there will still be a few from the tinfoil hat, storm the capitol building brigade but restricting the unvaccinated should be enough to convince most. 

What's your understanding on the length of stay vs vaccination status and the implication that holds for occupancy rather than admissions?

By and large the problem isn't how many people can come and go from hospitals, it's how many people are in them.

I ask as you also said:

Here, your use of "in" implies occupancy vs your "on" in the other line I quote implying people being admitted.

There's an awful lot of confusion in a lot of discussion and reporting, not helped by how the situation is changing for various reasons discussed above.

I'm not convinced the nitty gritty of discussion on here over this is in any way connected to the barriers to these remaining people going for vaccination.

My hope is that there are hospital beds for all of them who will need them over the next 6 weeks, if Omicron really is going to accelerate things.

Don't forget idiots who get in their cars and drive.

That's why there are licences, laws, seat belts... to protect idiots from themselves, sometimes the state has to step in for the greater good.

Not everyone who drives has a license. Just like not everyone has been vaccinated. And just like people who crash without a license or insurance they are treated differently to people who abide. 

And even if they were driving without a licence, insurance, drunk and not wearing a seat belt. I'm not sure I want to go down a route where they are refused treatment, if injured as a result of a crash 

Although they will be subject to significant penalties, unlike those who have complied.

Agreed, so I can see more of an argument for insisting the unvaxxed (without medical reason) take out insurance or are fined, but not for  refusing them treatment 

Oh dear. you need to swot up a bit more on the maths. 

I'm not sure if climbing can be compared to be a key element of how society currently functions.

I agree that idiot climbers who injure themselves should be disadvantaged, naturally.  But is it fair to disadvantage ordinary climbers who are not idiots but who hurt themselves?  Surely it is easy to test intelligence before deciding whether and if so what penalty should be imposed?

To you and other posters. I do not need to do the maths and I am fully on board with the sentiment around the unvaccinated. I am merely pointing out that there are misstatements and poor propoganda being dispensed by the likes of BBC and we should be doing a lot better by making a clear cut case explained by statistics for getting vaccinated - which  isn't too difficult to do. Anecdotes ring hollow for many, especially in the age of Johnson.

Not if they end up in hospital they’re not.

Yes, you do have a right to refuse medical treatment.

I did not say, nor infer I dislike anyone.  

 If you think treating one group of people differently than another group for a genuine reason is punishment then you have an unusual sense of what goes on in society.

I'm pretty sure that's why they don't sum the numbers and I had to add them up from the latest UKHSA data table for admissions (from stichtplate's link) on a calculator . What's needed is a table with percentage risks of hospitalisation if you catch covid for the unvaccinated, vaccinated and vaccinated with a booster by age. Ditto for death risks.

I've just calculated the UKHSA percentage deaths for the unvaccinated from the table below the admissions one and its an even lower number (21%). At first sight it seems weird but is again logical as most people who die are very old and the vast majority of them are vaccinated.

I wasn't suggesting that, but drive irresponsibly and the right is remove.

Don't want to be vaccinated, then don't expect entry to stadiums, festivals, airports.   

This is the CDC page showing what US advice is on why you should get vaccinated.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/vaccine-benefits.html

Should probably ban soloing and higher grade scambling innit

If there were 11% of the population soloing they probably would!

Maybe we should go back to Mill's "On Liberty" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Liberty) and look at the tyranny of the majority (against a minority).

I am pro vax (I've had 2 doses and a booster, even got the kids their shot), pro sensible precautions etc etc. But COVID passes and penalising people who didn't get vaccinated?

People have a right to be idiotically wrong people have a right to hold minority views. If you don't like that... the alternatives are worryingly close to living in China.

The problem is simple, if all the idiotically wrong people catch covid in the same 30-60 day period, even with just a low percentage being very ill, the health service in any country couldn't cope, people will needlessly die.

The views of the anti vaxers have consequences that impact anyone who might need healthcare this winter. 

Thanks for that and it does support your original contention, so my apologies.

On a cursory reading, it doesn't outline the reasons for ITU admission, only that they had covid... in other words, the covid might have been the least of their worries. This may seem obtuse but my reasoning is this; if you're currently admitted to many hospitals with any respiratory symptoms then you're stuck on a respiratory ward for assessment. You might have pneumonia or a UTI with pre-existing respiratory issues like COPD but you'll still end up on a respiratory ward for assessment and you'll likely be in a bed next to a covid positive patient. What's more, if you're already seriously ill then your immune system is for shit and you're easy picking for opportunistic infections like covid.  So yeah, you might end up in an ITU bed with covid but it doesn't necessarily mean it was covid that put you in that bed.

I'll stand by my original (anecdotal) contention: we're taking hardly any fully vaccinated patients in because they have covid. The fully vaccinated, by and large, just aren't getting that ill with it.

What about all those getting drunk and ending up in A & E ?

According to this newspaper they're wasting resources:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2659117/Drunk-people-kept-A-E-wa...

What worries me more is how many of you seem aligned with the views of the Daily Mail

If you want to bring philosophy into it, what about Kant's test of universalisability? Ie "would it be good if everyone did this?". Let's have a think; if everyone declined vaccines, we'd still be plagued (literally) by smallpox, polio and a plethora of other diseases, killing and maiming untold millions. 

In this case, Kant trumps Mills.

Yep, they have a right to be wrong and the rest of us have a right to expect the state to impose consequences, whether that's restricting access to public spaces or employment in certain jobs.

Nowt new about actions having consequences, it's how society works,

People can hold views that they should be allowed to rape and murder, when they start acting on them society imposes sanctions. It how a functioning society works.

If someone was run over a by a drunk driver, you reported it and the cops said: "He's perfectly at liberty to be idiotically wrong, why don't you go live in China if you don't like it?", would you think "Good philosophical point, let him crack on"?

But nobody should try to communicate risk to the general public like this. Use a common denominator (so many per 1000 or whatever).

I think many anti vaxers are beyond hope and will just say they are made up figures, folk would have died anyway etc.. even if you said a person was a 100 or 1000 times more likely to a seriously ill, they'll just think they'll be the lucky one and be fine, it's a human trait that gives us hope.

I've huge respect for (and studied chunks of) Kant's philosophy but Mill came later and his reasoning is in part to plug the gaps left behind by thinkers like Kant.

There's a balance... people don't/shouldn't have the right to harm others like murder drink driving etc, but they probably should have the right to risk or harm themselves, within reason. Clearly there's a lot of "within reason" , "balance" and what does and doesn't indirectly harm others. That's the whole debate about liberty by Mill and others

I suspect you are referring to  Lucy C.

I'm sure your anecdote is right but the link you provided to the latest UKHSA report shows nationally nearly two out of every three hospitalised are vaccinated and nearly four out of every five who die are vaccinated. That these numbers are so high is a good thing: it's an indication the vast majority of the most vulnerable are vaccinated. It's also a reminder that although vaccination significantly cuts risks for serious illness it doesn't remove all risks, especially so for the most vulnerable.... so all the hands, face, space & ventilation stuff retains its importance (and meeting outdoors where possible).

That was for delta...we still don't know yet where we are heading with omicron serious illness.

I made the mistake of getting into a discussion on FB last week with a quite famous climber (a "friend" of a "friend") who was spouting all sort of crap about vaccines and restrictions (apparently restrictions on the unvaccinated would be the equivalent of the way Hitler treated the Jews). It is impossible to argue with such people. He claimed that being vaccinated did not reduce transmission of the virus. When I pointed out that a quick google brought up plenty of reputable sources saying they did, he just came up with some other bollocks conspiracy theory ("do you know who is behind google?). 

I think a good a analogy would be the fact that you are allowed own a car  above a certain level of emissions but are not allowed, for the public good, to drive it into central London. I suppose that is a nazi policy too though.

I'm afraid to think who that might be...

DLR is the "right" answer, as discussed above. Maybe you were replying to someone else?

I'd pay as much attention to this gentleman on Covid as I would to Chris Whitty on climbing M12. 

nope Lucy C has/is training to work in NHS (though mot as a paramedic) and is a more appropriate 'rock' star.  i thought DLR was said to be the wrong answer not that it matters

Not sure if this is correct but I was told that the government has started to pay GP’s £15 per vaccination. Perhaps they should pay £10 to people to get vaccinated instead and save a fiver a time. Of course they would have to look out for serial vaccination addicts. 

And grigris

More like the other way round as the unvaccinated are disproportionately accounting for NHS overload and hence making additional restrictions / lockdown more likely for everyone. Sure, people, have a right to have strange views but what they don’t have a right to do is screw up things for everyone else. It’s called public health for a reason.

Haston or Redhead? I've seen the both saying stuff that seemed to be going down that path.

I deliberately didn't name them!

Would it not be fair also to say that vaccinated people who spend a lot of time in social contact should deserve similar ire?

Hospitalisation rates and 'clogging the system' by the vaccinated only looks 'good' when viewed in comparison to unvaccinated. But that vaccinated demographic are still a burden. Potentially far more of a burden than someone who is ultra-cautious in their behaviour but possibly unvaccinated or with acquired immunity.

Singling out unvaxed, with the potential that this edges us towards mandatory vaccination, feels dodgy. Likewise the fact that while singling out certain groups in society for widespread denigration is usually frowned upon, covid seems to have given carte blanche for otherwise fine, upstanding, and moralistic people in society to exercise that sneering muscle of their brains with apparent impunity. They seem to be relishing the opportunity.  

When you are mandating that people must be medicalised, literally injected, then it could be classed as persecution. The Nuremberg Code was based around this.

While covid vaccines are not experimental per se, they are new. There is no certainty about the downstream effects, in 5, 10, 20 years time, of multiple boosted shots, regardless of how unlikely adverse events may be. They can be assumed, but they are so far untested. So unless you are willing to tell someone they are almost guaranteed no ill-effects then they have a right to refuse. Otherwise, how is informed consent given? 

The unvaxed have opted themselves out. They've made a personal decision for whatever reason. 

Literally nobody* has been held down and injected against their will.

We (various democratic nations) do say almost guaranteed no ill-effects which is why vaccination has been approved down to 5 years old (not yet in UK) and pregnant women but still don't remove the right to refuse.

It's seems you think free choice should be free of consequences for the individual when there are consequences for others such as clogging up hospitals, tanking the economy or infecting and killing granny.

*possible exception in some dictatorship in like N Korea characterised by far greater threats to life and liberty

If you were going to land on and kill people below as well as yourself they certainly would.

Nazi persecution of Jews comes up a lot in anti-vax circles. Hugely insulting to the clinicians and scientists who've devoted their careers to saving lives, not "persecuting" people. I imagine it'd also piss me off if I was a holocaust survivor.

You've got it arse about tit there; the actual experts in the field are pretty sure the vaccines are safe long term (they've bet their careers and reputations on it), they're also pretty clear that the long term implications associated with covid are pretty terrifying for a awful lot of people. Just ask Kate Garraway's husband (amongst many thousands of others).

New account, same old bullshit ey?

What about the long term risks of the virus when caught without prior immunity?  Only orders of magnitude more evidenced that those of the highly studied vaccines.  Of course, far fewer people will live to experience the long term if they don’t get vaccinated…

Nazi’s?  Pull the other one.  Equating suggestions a vaccine might be needed to go clubbing with the systematic and sadistically brutal extermination of various peoples?  Tasteless in the extreme.  

Would you like to mention Orwell next?

In my household alone we must be getting on for 20+ injections this year. None of us seem to have felt the need to vote Tory or strangely gone into a robotic mode when we pass a mobile phone mast or our blood has solidified in our veins and we've ended up in a statuesqueic state when we've been on the way to get a bag of chips.

You Sir are a MORON!

“Health Secretary Sajid Javid has confirmed that non-urgent care is going to be delayed due to booster rollout”

Well that’s an interesting concept. Vaccinated clogging up the NHS? 

"Takes A Deep Breath"

Measures for prevention of a serious condition that could overwhelm the NHS in the very near future are not "clogging up the NHS"

Edit: Clearly my sarcasm radar doesn't work on Monday mornings, sorry.

Called tongue in cheek. Guess it doesn’t travel well over the internet. 

Monday morning, guess I didn't spot that. My apologies.

Utter utter dribble. And the whining about mandatory vaccination has gone all the way to court. As you'd obviously be aware since you are so well informed about the legal position around The Nuremberg Code. LOL.

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2021/3182.html

More anti-vaxx nonsense. I presume you are going to get banned. 

Unless perhaps, unlike the numerous virologists and immunologists you are aware of some ground breaking difference between these vaccines that mean they will have long term ill effects unlike any other vaccine ever. I mean even Google can tell you that you are talking rubbish here.

A fair point, but there are well established ways of showing risk that are used in patient information leaflets.  Basically a box of stick figures with one coloured in and then a load of uncoloured ones.  You might have to scale things for 1 in 1,000,000 though!

Can't be too careful about Nazis. I once shared a chairlift with a bloke who made a living reviewing restaurants in ski resorts. (Look him up if you like.) He seemed normal enough, to begin with... by the end of the lift he was trying to convince me that the EU was the result of an alliance between Nazis and international Jewry... I don't know how these people function.

Agreed, there are great analogies of how many months and years 1m and 1bn seconds are. But the fact that we are having this conversation on different methods of display, risk, probability, ratios etc.. proves were aren't the target audience. Many people have no concept and struggle with probability on anything beyond dice rolling, otherwise things like the national lottery would have died decades ago.  

Chairlifts are often random meeting points, you'd think skiers were all alike. I'd rather review chairlifts and tows, i could become quite nerdy about it I think. 

Opted out of what? Society? Eligibility for medical ethics? 

Are you including under 12s in that?

And are doubled vaxed also 'opted out' if they are hanging out in clubs or other crowded places?

Or doubled vaxed who clearly are hardly immune any more because they are 6 months subsequent to vaxination?

And where do you include those with acquired immunity? 

Great. So as long as they aren't being held down and instead simply coerced, harangued or granted less rights (despite having potentially lower risk) then this is fine?

And some who take the vaccine will almost certainly suffer ill-effects of the vaccine - as they do with every medication. It might be one in a million or less, but some will. But it will be made mandatory all the same?  

No. I question the medical ethics of enforced medication for a minority of people for potentially minimal gain. The tanking of the economy has already happened. The vaccinated can apparently consider themselves safe.

Yes society, there many things were do for collective benefit, some might benefit us in the future others not. 

Nope why, they don't have a choice. I'd say anyone over 18. 

nope. 

Time will tell, if your vaccination becomes either ineffective due to time or mutations, then a person would be unvaccinated. Just like a multitude of other vaccines still required for say travel to some countries. Many require multiple doses and don't last a life time  

I don't, because it's impossible to gauge, too many variables, how severe did they have covid, what was their immune response, what is the immunity drop off rate, which variant did they catch etc. 

Funny. On two other threads you came up with the same trope. You understand why I find you tedious?

Because there's no limit anti vaxers will go to in their efforts to influence others free choice. 

Good for you.

I'm double-vaxed, headed in for a booster. I've also been a participant on numerous clinical trials, one of which was for covid.

What camp are you trying to put me in exactly?

Given that my point is simply one in objection to mandatory vaccinations, and that I understand and sympathetic to vaccine hesitancy, your comment is uncalled for and obnoxious. You are a troll though apparently meet with agreement from the UKC community.

It is precisely the language that you use which gives people every justification not to get vaccinated. Coercive, abusive, and seeming to relish in being obnoxious to others on account of their personal health choices which may have no impact on you.  I hope you feel great having had the opportunity call someone a moron while being morally virtuous in doing so.

I expect I probably will. It seems to be what people want. I hope you can see how the dialogue here is utterly hopeless though if that is the case.

The issue can, and should, be able to be discussed with nuance. There are, and should be, legitimate fears about any new drugs. 

Should also be tighter restrictions on everyone who has voted tory for the last 11 years and led to the underfunding of the health system. 

Ah, so his approach is ok?  I'm an anti-vaxer? Every thread I post on where he is present I should expect the same "Oh, new account, you are a hoax/Rom/etc" response?

Strange choice of words - 'free choice'

I get sent yellow stars from deeply offensive idiots on Twitter. It really is a thing with them. Absolutely despicable.

Indeed, you could always go preach on mumsnet, or some maga site? 

Nobody is using force or threatening people if they don't get vaccinated.  So, what's happening doesn't meet a reasonable definition of "coercion".

There's discussion that maybe they will have to make a free choice between getting vaccinated and going to a night club.  We're hardly in to "Make a move and the bunny gets it" territory here.

This is not coercion, this is called rights, responsibilities and consequences, and that is what the whole of society is built opn.

You must be, what, the fourth different person to sign up to then determinedly  argue against imaginary mandatory vaccination this is not even being proposed

I question your sanity and/or your basic ability to read the news and process information if you think enforced medication is in any way relevant to where the UK is.

Are you being purposefully slow?  The economy can get a lot worse, or it can get better.  At the moment, the number of unvaccinated people going through hospitals is one of several factors forcing increased control measures on the vaccinated in order to preserve healthcare capacity in particularly for the unvaccinated but for everyone, for every illness and ailment.

As far as I can tell the unvaccinated are cowards - too scared to take a vaccine that is highly evidenced as safe, declining cheap and effective  medical treatment when it matters most, then too scared to live with the consequences, too scared to decline the costly, expensive and detrimental-to-others (through capacity reduction and mandating infection control measures) medical treatment that sees them exposed to much higher risk and injected with all sorts of things to patch 

Safeer.  An order of magnitude or more safeer.  But some of the most vulnerable will still need hospital capacity just as with any other viral infection, and the minority of unvaccinated people are putting this capacity at risk as cases rise.

Why? It's been trialled, given to maybe a billion folk? That's some field study!? How big a trial do you suggest? Are you a virologist, is this your field of expertise? 

Where do you stand on other "coercive" requirements of society, such as wearing seat-belts, paying taxes, driving on the left, motor-cycle helmets, education etc.? Assuming you favour at least some of these, where do you draw the line?

Really? Is that line of argument necessary?  I get that I'm sounding like a broken record here when pointing out how far UKC has sunk.  Clearly I'm in a complete minority here in even expressing concern about mandatory anything.  But even that is too much and I should just fvck off somewhere else?

It's exactly that attitude that has people resistant to vaccines saying "well fvck you I won't do what you tell me".

To be honest, I'm instinctively against compulsory medication in any context, but having found out at first hand how fecking annoying hardcore antivaxxers are, I now not only support holding them down and injecting them against their will, I also want them to be injected with a special version of the vaccine that's been doctored to do all the things they say it will. Because honestly, some people are long overdue having their balls shrivel up and their hair fall out.

You expect everything to be fine during a pandemic? That is deluded.

Freedom has consequences which may include increased freedom for those with proven potentially lower risk due to vaccination compared to those with an unproven potentially lower risk. 

Obviously as "almost guaranteed no ill-effects" does not mean "guaranteed no ill-effects".

Highly likely for international travel*. Mandatory for employment in general, employment in medical/social care & non-essential shopping or socialising depending on the country. 

There is an ethics question but it is not a medical ethics question as both the freedom to decline treatment and refusal by medic to inject against will of patient are not in question.

*mandatory jabs for travel is not new, see https://www.who.int/ith/ith_country_list.pdf

Perhaps because I have no time for whinging little ***** who jump from account to account in order to pedal their anti-vaccination nonsense whilst routinely dissociating themselves (or being forcibly dissociated) from their past comments once the weight of bullshittery gets too much for any semblance of credibility.

It's not a trope, you're doing it.

You've made it abundantly clear you're not going to reveal your past posting identities, so I'm left to nothing but speculation as to your history, motives and what particularly lines of absolute bullshit you've dissociated yourself from before.

I've said multiple times that I'd be out protesting if vaccination was made mandatory.  In the long term I think it would do more harm than good.  You probably missed that as you're new here.

However, I fully support such control measures as are needed to preserve universal healthcare as we run through this pandemic phase, and I am over the moon that we can offer people the free choice to access vaccination, and that this choice allows them to disengage from some of the control measures.

The irony is that most of the people benefiting 10x more than others (per-person) from the control measures preserving healthcare capacity are the unvaccinated, who are getting their immunity the hard way with far worse short, medium and long term consequences and a lot of death.  We're processing them through healthcare just as fast as we can, and have been for several months now, at great expense to the quality of service for everyone else.  Despite your delusional ideas around mandatory vaccination, they have been free to make their choice and the whole of society has been willingly carrying that cost for months now.  The level of isolation orders required including disruption to education, the increased ambulance waiting times, deferred operations - all of these in part derive from the willingness of society to treat critically ill people who refused vaccination.  You couldn't be more wrong. 

I'd argue it's the misinformation and worn out tropes over "never risk free" and "long term risk" that voices like yours are pushing.

That should be pretty obvious.

There's a world of difference between forcing people to medicate or consume substances against their will, and being made to wear a seat-belt or helmet.

If I drive on the wrong side for anything more than 5 minutes I WILL kill someone. If the chances of causing death by being unvaccinated were that high I think you'd find vaccine take-up rates would be almost 100%. 

Anyone who professes to want a dialogue with nuance and legitimacy and then proceeds to refer to the Nuremberg Code needs to reconsider the "knowledge" they appear to be basing their position on.

They are not mandatory. Vaccines over the last century have likely by now saved billions. 

I don't care. It's your health, not mine. 

I'm anti-vax?  

I've been vaccinated. I participate in clinical trials. I've likely had more canulas, more injections, more drips, and spent more days wired up to telemetry and ECG machines than anyone else here. I've probably put my own body on the line for experimentation with novel drugs at places like Hammersmith Medicines Research, Parexel, Guys Drug Research Unit and Addenbrooks than anyone else here or possibly even that you know.

But because I can sympathise with people who wouldn't want to go near such experiences you go down your warped line of reasoning that I am some imposter, some troll, and convince yourself that I am something who I am not. 

Maybe you'll be happier in sweden? 

You can easily demonstrate a negative result from a lateral flow test instead of being vaccinated.

Any issues with that?

Is there?  If there is I would say seat-belts are more coercive as they are very largely about an individuals's safety whereas vaccines are about other's safety as much as the recipients.

So where do you draw the line?  Being not-vaccinated will very likely lead you to infecting people and there is a good chance someone will die too.

I think that's bloody brilliant, genuinely.

What I would say is that I find that really hard to square with a promotion of vague claims of "long term ill effects" - with all those drug trials you should be better informed than many on the safety and efficacy of the measures in place.

And I cannot say this enough - comparisons to the Nuremberg Code indicates a distinct lack of knowledge around the legal aspects.

Mandatory vaccinations.  Coerced vaccinations.  Differential access and rights based on vaccination status. All while vaccination may confer that person no greater protection than an unvaccinated person. And all while a conforming vaccinated person may be more at risk of spreading the virus than an unvaccinated person.

Can you not see the ethical issue? Every-day medical ethics are with us for a reason and applied even in the most benign of circumstances because of much more serious prior indiscretions.

The ethical reasons have been raised and considered - looking at the full impact of the human rights act, in court.  Where everyday medical ethical decisions are often resolved.

Been proven to be wrong.

Same again 

You know when people say "I'm not racist, but..."

That's you, that's what your'e doing.

But you're not talking about your sympathy, you're...

• trotting out classic anti-vax lines over long term risk, an inability to guarantee it to be risk free etc.  This is disingenuous because it focuses on the far, far, far, far, far smaller of two risks
• You're telling lies about the level of protection conferred by vaccination.

When you do sympathise you're going totally overboard and conflating vaccine enabled release from some control measures with the god damned Nazis.  You're off your nut.

The experiences you list re: clinical trials are bugger all like with receiving an approved medication, and you know it. Give over.

You're not an imposter, their was no previous "nThump" - I have never claimed that you are an imposter.  You lie.

I don't think you're a troll, I don't think I've ever claimed that.  I think you lie.

I don't have a clue who you are because you change your account and don't tell us who you were.  I wondered if you were Renton because of your keenness to talk about Rittenhouse...

Someone with acquired (or even natural) immunity is proven to have less immunity than someone 6-months post vaccine?  Someone with Pfizer an in contact with Omicron?  

You, double-jabbed, go off clubbing, sit in a theatre, or travel by tube every day are a 'safer' person deserving all available freedoms than someone unvaccinated but who has minimal outside contact?

Doesn't wash in sweden. Covid passes for venues over 100 people must be minimum double dosed. Tests and ex covid cases don't count. The theory is if you go to events and you do catch it, they want to minimise the chances of you becoming a hospital case. Plus, testing isn't 100% accurate and fraud isn't exactly hard. 

I think you have lost the plot. Well done on your charts and whotnot.  But your paranoia about people's motivations stinks as much as a rabid anti-vaxer's.

Take two otherwise identical people. Vaccinate one, don't vaccinate the other.  Wait a week, a month, a year, expose to Covid.  The one who has had vaccinations is less likely to go to hospital under every circumstance.

Outside shot given your shared confusion here over immunity - are you "oureed" using a second account?  

Sounds like your hypothetical low risk unvaccinated person isn't actually wanting to use those freedoms they're denying themselves through declining vacation, so what's the big deal?  

As I understand it their are several small groups declining vaccination on religious grounds how are also taking significant measures to isolate and protect themselves.  Honourable, sensible and not a problem.  Their choice, their consequences.  All power to them.

Aquired, when, how, how severe, which strain, what was their immune response. Too many variables to be quantifiable, so best excluded.

The difference is if you do catch it, your odds of needing hospital treatment are massively reduced. That's the whole point. Beside, minimum contact, like when restrictions were at their height and hundreds were still catching it and dying. 

Are you a virologist?

No, you lie.

I have not called you an imposter.  Obviously.  

Because their was never anyone else here called "nThomp" so you can't be imposting anyone.

I have questioned who your past identity may have been; that does not imply I think you are an imposter.

Do you have a dictionary?

Edit:  I note you didn't engage with any of the on-topic parts of my post at all.  I suppose that's because you know you can't rebut any of the points and it's easier to try and divert this into a sideways discussion.

Still, the other points you're incapable of addressing are there for all and sundry to read.

Still suss though. (Those enough know, know).

No. It is because you are incessant with your fillibuster of 'you are Renton', 'you are Rom', 'you are fvcking Santa Claus'. From thread, to thread, to thread.

The accusation that I am some troll. That unless I disclose why I deactivated my former account, or jump through whatever purity test you decide on, this lunacy will continue. 

So I'm not at your beck and call. The narrative your resort to is utterly tedious and I'd rather not engage with you. If you want to take that as an inability to rebut, knock yourself out.

It is irrelevant to me having full sympathy with opposition to mandatory vaccinations (irrespective of what my own view is on vaccinations). 

I'm afraid the approach you and other's take to anyone expressing anything along those lines, the inability to remotely comprehend it or the impact your own approach has on vaccine hesitancy, is deeply disappointing. I was here for the Brexit debates (as a Remainer), and I'm seeing the same crap all over again.

How many drunks end up on a ventilator or needing a bed for weeks whilst being attended by NHS staff wearing full protective clothing though ?

There is no mandatory vaccination

Who do you have sympathy with, the imaginary people of imaginationland?

The approach of

• Pointing out when you lie about vaccine benefit
• Pointing out when you lie by omissiosn about the risks of the virus by only mentioning the orders-of-magnitude lower risk of the vaccinations
• Pointing out when you trot out absolutely classic anti-vax material  
• Questioning your bizarre, highly offensive and totally inappropriate Nazi analogy

What a closed minded bunch this forum is.  Veritable echo chamber.  The door is over there >>> https://www.mumsnet.com

(Fun fact, I know a scientist who has been banned from mumsnet for pursuing an evidence driven line, you mgit be more at home in that kind of echo chamber) 

> the inability to remotely comprehend it or the impact your own approach has on vaccine hesitancy, is deeply disappointing.

I find your threadbare crap deeply disappointing in terms of the impact your own approach has on vaccine hesitancy. 

If you genuinely think you're trying to understand them,  you've succeeded in the sense that you've lost all objectivity and are becoming as delusional as the beliefs much vaccine refusal is built on.  

I haven't asked if your'e Santa Clause.  

I have't called you a "troll".  Once again, you lie.  You're clearly not a troll.

My comment -that you endlessly misrepresent as accusations of being an imposter or a troll - is that you are deliberately dissociating yourself from what you've said in the past.

If you're not deliberately dissociating yourself from past comments, prove it - post a link to your last account so we can see what you had to say there.

Put your old words where your new mouth is, or expect me to continue to resent your dishonest engagement with a lot of honest posters, in the form of dissociating yourself from what you had to say a few months ago.   

Absolutely correct.

If I fail to wear a helmet or seat belt, and subsequently get involved in an accident then who dies - I do.

If you fail to be vaccinated and catch Covid then who dies - maybe you, but also WHOEVER ELSE YOU HAVE INFECTED.

Being unvaccinated is more like driving a motor vehicle along the pavement as regards risk (to others), NOT simply failing to wear a seat belt or helmet.

Really?

Yes.  Bearing this in mind, perhaps re-think some of what you are saying.

It's my understanding that vaccination doesn't prevent infection and spreading, but helps to stop people from becoming as poorly?

I may be wrong.

Complete hyperbolic gibberish. 

You are wrong.  

The range of possibilities for vaccines, timings and infections is becoming unboundable., but vaccination absolute reduces the number of people catching and transmitting the virus, slowing the rate of spread of infection.

Early estimates are coming up with a ~75% protection against infection for 3 doses and Omicron.  If 75% of people don't catch the virus, they don't spread it.

Right, so it vastly reduces the chances of spreading it, that's positive to know, and makes it worth being vaccinated even if it's not a complete prevention of one being able to spread it.

Edit: It seems I'm not wrong in seeing vaccines as something which don't 'prevent' the spread, then, but vastly reducing it is definitely worthwhile...

Perhaps this is all anti-vax nonsense (or simply far too smaller sample size or soon to be revised on peer-review).  But conclusions such as 'vaccinated persons who become infected with SARS-CoV-2 may be no less infectious than unvaccinated persons' from preprints like this (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.12.21265796v1.full) imply at least some question marks exist.

To be talking about mandatory vaccinations, and equating the unvaccinated to cars-mounting-pavements, is exactly the hyperbole that makes mandatory vaccination arguments seem crazy.

I think 'be vaccinated because you're less likely to become poorly enough to end up in hospital and overwhelm the NHS' should probably be argument enough, and it reducing the spread by any degree on top of that makes it unarguable that one should get a booster, unarguable that it's the responsible thing to do.

Exactly, being vaccinated increases the odds this isn't your last Xmas. 

Even without checking out the credibility of that study, I can see a rather big and important qualifier in the conclusion...

I've 'probably' had covid twice already (the symptoms match), and was vaccinated afterwards when well, which makes me vaguely philosophical, but if it reduces my chances of spreading it I'm getting a booster too. Some other people won't be as healthy as I am.

Only if you're sufficiently determined to ignore the bit where someone has to become infected before they can become infectious 

This isn't a complicated point.  

I assume you can tie your shoelaces?  This point is about as complicated as the part where you have to put your shoes on first, and then tie the shoelaces.

> To be talking about mandatory vaccinations,

The only person talking about mandatory vaccinations appears to be you?

So vaccination or people catching something and infecting other people with adverse consequences for health or life is "Complete hyperbolic gibberish".

It's such simple concepts I'd expect an average 8 year old who caught something from somebody to understand so it is not gibberish. It's certainly knowledge I got at that sort of age from catching measles & chicken pox and getting tetanus/TB vaccines later.

It's just denial of things a child can understand.

Yes, it is. Fred99 was asserting that anyone who caught Covid would die. That is what is hyperbolic gibberish. 

No he wasn't. Maybe you misread what he wrote.

Maybe you missed a key word in his post.

Did you spot the word "maybe"?

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/off_belay/the_unvaccinated-742037?v=1#x95...

No one's forcing an unvaccinated person with minimal outside contact to be vaccinated. They are perfectly at liberty to maintain that stance.

However once they decide to go out clubbing etc, then they're no longer in the situation you describe, they become an easily infected vector who can infect others, hence society expects measures to be taken to protect people they will come into subsequent contact with.

You're  concerned about the rights of Schroedinger's Anti vaxxer, a hypothetical person who's simultaneously self isolating and going out clubbing?

Studies show fully vaccinated (by the original definition: 2 doses) reduced an infected person spreading it by 2/3rds compared to unvaccinated person. So it does reduce both infection and catching by a useful amount, as well as helping avoid severe illness. Can provide link to study if challenged (not just made up on spot) but supposed to be working right now

Perhaps I did, in which case it may not have been been hyperbolic gibberish. 

I think I had a singular meaning in mind when I wrote 'prevent', which was to stop/cease/halt/eliminate the transmission entirely across the board where administered. I'm pleased to learn that while vaccines don't 'prevent' the spread, they're still indeed very helpful. 

Edit No pedantry intended, now my home internet is back again, I'll be sorting a booster jab...

Let's look at this from the point of view of my non scientific brain: (perhaps you are much better at understanding science than I am, though my son is probably as least as good as you as he's on a research project concerning RNA splicing)

Let us consider 2 cases

Case 1: you have a population of 70 million people and no one is vaccinated

Case 2: you have a population of 70 million where the majority of people are vaccinated and a large number are double vaccinated and a growing number are "boosted" with a third dose.

What difference to you expect between Case 1 and Case 2 so far as the number of people having infected status at any one time out of the 70 million??

Add to that a second naive question of mine.  How likely is someone not infected with the virus to pass it to other people?  Is that the same risk as someone who has caught the virus?  Are you alleging this paper says that both infected and non infected persons have an equal risk of infecting others?

I hope you see my perplexity with partial facts being stated.

Presumably in the world you think this paper represents it is impossible to control a nuclear chain reaction as you can't reduce the risk of one neutron "infecting" other nuclei so that they lose one as well?

To a point but clearly no further (see proscribed organisations for example). What though when we get to the point with covid where something absolutely must be done: ration healthcare, lockdown everyone or lock down specifically the people exacerbating the problem? Which is fairer and which will work? Genuine questions, I'm not sure.

jk

Our economy is not even close to 'tanked', it's muddling along depressed but with most of working age: still alive, employed, well-ish and able to work in businesses that survived the first waves, with goods and people still just about able to cross borders.

That's not a given.

jk

It is really trivial, or at least, it can be simplified without getting so far from the truth to become misleading: All vaccines work with some efficiency, but they are bound to fail in a percentage of vaccine recipients. THESE are the vaccinated persons that will become infected, and they will spread the infection as badly as if they had fallen ill because they have not been vaccinated. Of course there are such things as partial protection against severe disease, with less coughing potentially equating less spreading etc., but overall that is what it boils down to.

To restate that, if you do not get sick because the vaccine worked you will also not spread the disease. We are definitely not talking about a "Typhoid Mary situation", where a person will be an efficient spreader of a pathogen while feeling no ill effect themselves.

IMO the confusion in the public discussion in part comes from the very welcome fact that the RNA vaccines in particular were so highly efficient that vaccinated almost always also meant protected (at least until the arrival of omicron). With the seasonal flu vaccines we are happy with 70% efficiency of pretection against a given strain!

How that very simple fact of life about ALL vaccines can be turned into an argument against SARS-CoV2 vaccines in particular beats me*.

CB

*Actually it doesn't, it just demonstrates that this flavour of vaccine hesitancy is caused by deliberate desinformtion campaigns.

It's now also reached LinkedIn, which used to be a great networking tool. It's now becoming a little too Facebook for my liking and there's lots of anti-vaxx posts now appearing. This last part befuddles me, given that bosses are likely checking posts and wondering and worrying about people with that mentality in their business.

The data from Wales shows that there are currently 72% less people in hospital with Covid-19 than this time last year.

Of those in hospital with Covid-19, 84% are fully vaccinated.

Please see here (scroll to 12th December):

https://twitter.com/statsjamie?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwg...

As a vaccinated person, you don't get to suffer lockdown and restrictions because of the un-vaccinated. You get to suffer because our Government have chosen to impose some more (perhaps) un-necessary restrictions, to distract attention from their own Xmas parties, but have then conveniently deflected the blame for these un-necessary restrictions, by trying to blaming the un-vaccinated.

I'm all for getting vaccinated if you are vulnerable and I am double jabbed myself. But given the data above I do think we have lost complete perspective here. I see no reason to blame others in society excersizing their perfectly legal rights to choose their own medical treatment for 1), a virus that seems not to respect our control measures very much in any case, and 2), the failure of our government over the last 21 months to adequately boost the capacity within our NHS.

Ah, twitter, the source of 'real' information.

Whenever someone links to twitter to backup their argument, I instantly dismiss their efforts as nonsense.

Please look at the data presented, not the messenger.

This is the data:

https://statswales.gov.wales/Catalogue/Health-and-Social-Care/NHS-Hospital-...

and:

https://www2.nphs.wales.nhs.uk/CommunitySurveillanceDocs.nsf/61c1e930f9121f...

Look at you conflating admission and occupancy like a well seasoned liar.

Amazing! The very, actual, first day you sign up for UKC and you're providing a cornucopia of covid information. We are truly blessed!

If I have got this wrong, what hospital occupancy and admission data (vaccinated v's un-vaccinated percentages) would you deduce from the data links I posted?

It’s only been discussed a dozen times or so.

Occupancy data is different to the number of patients through hospital because, shock horror, unvaccinated people spend longer in hospital on average.

Do some research?

Just as nThomp goes quiet, shift change, or at least screen name change.

Total coincidence, I’m sure.

I've not seen it.  What percentage would you deduce from the data.  So far as I can see there are currently 72% less people in hospital with Covid-19 than this time last year.

Of those in hospital with Covid-19, 84% are fully vaccinated.

Is that correct or not?  If not what are the true percentages in your opinion?

Maybe read the thread, ey?

Admissions are not occupancy 

Systematic data on occupancy is not so forthcoming.

Some links to NHS statements are provided.