The UK response - Part II - read OP

Luckily for us who live in GB life goes on as normal, seems like mental hysteria at home.

Amazing eh ?

Ffs I was wrong about life going on like normal.

Anybody know if a recovery pass will do as a Covid cert this time? Unclear from Bozo's announcement

Thats what happens when you double your daily testing capacity in December vs January

The Tories refusing requests from Wales, Scotland and NI for support packages for businesses affected by Omicron

It has the advantage of objectivity. You died + you tested positive for Covid therefore "Covid death". It doesn't involve the opinion of a doctor deciding that you died because of Covid rather than merely with Covid. Comparisons can be made easily with other countries too as they count deaths in a similar way.

The problem is that the nature of the disease is changing. With vaccinations and the virus itself mutating into less deadly forms, it is far more likely that a covid death will be a death with Covid rather than of Covid. If it was a very common but completely harmeless virus, then you would still get large numbers of "Covid deaths" simply because people die and a certain proportion will have the virus when it happens. This would clearly be a distortion of the truth if we treated it the same way as before.

The graph I'd like to see is cumulative deaths per million since around late May 2021 for various broadly vaccinated European countries (i.e. zeroed at that point in time).

This eliminates poor performance prior to initial vaccination rollout to the vulnerable and should show to some extent the effect of various policy approaches.

They're zeroed from April 2020. As I wrote, I'd like to see them zeroed from May/June 2021, so that we can see relative performance after vaccination rollout to vulnerable.

An interesting piece of data from the Financial Times today. A stat from London hopsitals indicates that 111/169 new Covid +ve patients who were admitted were not being treated primarily for Covid

A good insight into Omicron given London has an extremely low vaccination rate versus the rest of the UK.

Overall, I think the UK handled the vaccine situation better than the EU generally. Crucially, they completed the bulk of their initial vaccinations as the summer was beginning. This allowed a much greater opening of society during the warmer weather when the virus could spread immunity without overwhelming the NHS. In the EU, we got to roughly the same stage as summer was ending. This meant that we could not our exit wave without serious consequences and therefore restrictions have had to remain in place for another winter.

Sorry to hear pal. Get a test though, you might not have caught it, fingers crossed.

If even you are negative?

Ah Jesus, well I hope it all works out for you in the end. Sorry it’s happened.

You need to be careful comparing testing figures. Most countries only report PCR test results for obvious reasons, the UK report (or more accurately posters on here) only report the combined antigen & PCR figure.

Hows Denmark compare? Leave the countries out that do better obliviously.

With German cases falling, it makes sense that testing would reduce also. That's why positivity rate is taken into account.

It just annoys me when a certain user starts comparing UK positivity (antigen & PCR) rate to another countries rate (PCR only) and thinking it's an equal comparison. If you remember there was a time the UK counted the nasal and mouth swabs as 2 different tests and each antigen test posted out was counted also (negative posted out and positive only if it was reported)