OT: not a merry Christmas

On 28/12/2021 03:03, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
> On Tuesday, December 28, 2021 at 3:31:12 AM UTC+11, Martin Brown wrote:
>> 

>> It will be crazy if they exactly repeat the mistake of last year by  mixing it all up in school for just one day and then hard lockdown.  (schools have been the locus of infection for a few months now).
> 
> Kids don't get very sick, but they are great at infecting other people. Australia is getting on with vaccinating the 5- to 11-year-olds

I'm not convinced that is ethically justifiable on medical grounds.

Once you get down to about age 10 or under the benefit to the individual 
patient of being vaccinated is less than the very rare risk of serious 
side effects from the vaccine. It is probably wasted on the under 12's.

It is much more important to triple vaccinate the most vulnerable. Two 
jabs has almost no effect on preventing you catching Omicron.

There is also some interesting evidence reported in Nature a year ago 
now that children under the age of about 7 can catch it but never become 
infectious themselves. They are all riddled with other coronaviruses 
causing sniffles when younger - that was one of the other odd results.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03496-7

It is the teenagers that are driving infection in UK schools - not 
helped by the fact that the incidence of Covid was already high enough 
that in a class of 30 the odds were 50:50 someone would have it. Now it 
is high enough that a class of 20 would be in the same ballpark.

England seems determined to break the daily Covid case rate until at 
least the New Year (by when I expect we may be at 200k/day or more).

It is presently 130k today according to the BBC. Government Covid 
dashboard website is down failing "internal server error" probably 
because there is no one left there who knows how it works. All techies 
off with Covid or isolating after their myriad of Xmas parties...

-- 
Regards,
Martin Brown

tirsdag den 28. december 2021 kl. 20.05.58 UTC+1 skrev Martin Brown:
> On 28/12/2021 03:03, Anthony William Sloman wrote: 
> > On Tuesday, December 28, 2021 at 3:31:12 AM UTC+11, Martin Brown wrote: 
> >> 
> 
> >> It will be crazy if they exactly repeat the mistake of last year by mixing it all up in school for just one day and then hard lockdown. (schools have been the locus of infection for a few months now). 
> > 
> > Kids don't get very sick, but they are great at infecting other people. Australia is getting on with vaccinating the 5- to 11-year-olds
> I'm not convinced that is ethically justifiable on medical grounds. 
> 
> Once you get down to about age 10 or under the benefit to the individual 
> patient of being vaccinated is less than the very rare risk of serious 
> side effects from the vaccine. It is probably wasted on the under 12's. 

you'd be labeled as an antivaxer nutcase if you even mention that you understand
that parents are not sure if they want to take the risk
 
> It is much more important to triple vaccinate the most vulnerable. Two 
> jabs has almost no effect on preventing you catching Omicron. 

three jabs might not either, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.22.21268021v1 

On Tuesday, December 28, 2021 at 2:35:39 PM UTC-5, lang...@fonz.dk wrote:
> tirsdag den 28. december 2021 kl. 20.05.58 UTC+1 skrev Martin Brown: 
> > On 28/12/2021 03:03, Anthony William Sloman wrote: 
> > > On Tuesday, December 28, 2021 at 3:31:12 AM UTC+11, Martin Brown wrote: 
> > >> 
> > 
> > >> It will be crazy if they exactly repeat the mistake of last year by mixing it all up in school for just one day and then hard lockdown. (schools have been the locus of infection for a few months now). 
> > > 
> > > Kids don't get very sick, but they are great at infecting other people. Australia is getting on with vaccinating the 5- to 11-year-olds 
> > I'm not convinced that is ethically justifiable on medical grounds. 
> > 
> > Once you get down to about age 10 or under the benefit to the individual 
> > patient of being vaccinated is less than the very rare risk of serious 
> > side effects from the vaccine. It is probably wasted on the under 12's.
> you'd be labeled as an antivaxer nutcase if you even mention that you understand 
> that parents are not sure if they want to take the risk
> > It is much more important to triple vaccinate the most vulnerable. Two 
> > jabs has almost no effect on preventing you catching Omicron.
> three jabs might not either, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.22.21268021v1

Even if the risk is about even, there is benefit to the population as a whole to not spread this disease.  We require a number of vaccinations for kids to go to school.  If you don't want your kids to be vaccinated, you don't have to do that.  You just can't send them to public school where they run a greater risk of spreading the disease to others.  

It's like a lot of things, you have choices and sometimes none of them are what you want, but we live in a society where we sometimes have to sacrifice for the greater good.  

I'm expecting omicron to eventually have its own vaccine.  But it will take some time to bring it out.  Then there will be people complaining that it didn't come out soon enough and others complaining they didn't spend enough time testing it. 

The disease is bad.  Dealing with all the assholes is worse!  Fuck 'em all. 

-- 

Rick C.

+-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

On Wednesday, December 29, 2021 at 6:05:58 AM UTC+11, Martin Brown wrote:
> On 28/12/2021 03:03, Anthony William Sloman wrote: 
> > On Tuesday, December 28, 2021 at 3:31:12 AM UTC+11, Martin Brown wrote: 
> >> 
> 
> >> It will be crazy if they exactly repeat the mistake of last year by mixing it all up in school for just one day and then hard lockdown. (schools have been the locus of infection for a few months now). 
> > 
> > Kids don't get very sick, but they are great at infecting other people. Australia is getting on with vaccinating the 5- to 11-year-olds
> I'm not convinced that is ethically justifiable on medical grounds. 
> 
> Once you get down to about age 10 or under the benefit to the individual 
> patient of being vaccinated is less than the very rare risk of serious 
> side effects from the vaccine. It is probably wasted on the under 12's. 

Vaccination may not protect the kids, but it does protect their parents and relatives. That's a benefit to the kids.
Concentrating on the direct health benefits to the kid has blinded you to the environmental benefit to the kids of having a complete set of healthy relatives.

Ethics isn't just about the patient in isolation.
 
> It is much more important to triple vaccinate the most vulnerable. Two 
> jabs has almost no effect on preventing you catching Omicron. 

But it does seem to shorten the period when you are infectious with it.
 
> There is also some interesting evidence reported in Nature a year ago 
> now that children under the age of about 7 can catch it but never become 
> infectious themselves.

Some children. What the paper actually mentioned was that the children developed antibodies to the Covid-19 virus - so they clearly got infected - but never had a high enough virus level to register on a PCR test for the virus, so they were unlikely to infect anybody else. That isn't "never become infedctious themselves". The Omicron virus in Australia is clearly is infecting school-children and they are infecting other children, so your interpretation of the Nature paper is dangerously misleading.

>  They are all riddled with other coronaviruses 
> causing sniffles when younger - that was one of the other odd results. 
> 
> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03496-7 
> 
> It is the teenagers that are driving infection in UK schools - not 
> helped by the fact that the incidence of Covid was already high enough 
> that in a class of 30 the odds were 50:50 someone would have it. Now it 
> is high enough that a class of 20 would be in the same ballpark. 
> 
> England seems determined to break the daily Covid case rate until at 
> least the New Year (by when I expect we may be at 200k/day or more). 
> 
> It is presently 130k today according to the BBC. Government Covid 
> dashboard website is down failing "internal server error" probably 
> because there is no one left there who knows how it works. All techies 
> off with Covid or isolating after their myriad of Xmas parties... 

New South Wales is now at 6500-odd cases per day with about a tenth of the population. Omicron changed the odds, but the politicians have been slow to recognise this.

-- 
Bill Sloman, Sydney

On 28/12/2021 20:35, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:
> tirsdag den 28. december 2021 kl. 20.05.58 UTC+1 skrev Martin Brown:
>> On 28/12/2021 03:03, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, December 28, 2021 at 3:31:12 AM UTC+11, Martin Brown
>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>> 
>>>> It will be crazy if they exactly repeat the mistake of last
>>>> year by mixing it all up in school for just one day and then
>>>> hard lockdown. (schools have been the locus of infection for a
>>>> few months now).
>>> 
>>> Kids don't get very sick, but they are great at infecting other
>>> people. Australia is getting on with vaccinating the 5- to
>>> 11-year-olds
>> I'm not convinced that is ethically justifiable on medical grounds.
>> 
>> 
>> Once you get down to about age 10 or under the benefit to the
>> individual patient of being vaccinated is less than the very rare
>> risk of serious side effects from the vaccine. It is probably
>> wasted on the under 12's.
> 
> you'd be labeled as an antivaxer nutcase if you even mention that you
> understand that parents are not sure if they want to take the risk

Parents are, for the most part, laymen.  No one goes to university to
study parenting - it is all made up as we go along.  (I speak as a
parent myself.)  The great majority of people - parents or not - have
very little understanding of statistics, risk assessment, virology,
epidemiology, or any other medical matters.  The only thing that makes a
parent different from other people is a tendency to throw any trace of
reason or rationality out the window when it comes to /their/ child.

So the people /least/ qualified to make a sensible rational decision
about medical matters in respect to a child, are usually parents.
(There are exceptions - some parents really do understand the issues,
and some children really are medically unusual in some respect.)

That does not mean I don't think parents should be involved in decisions
and consents - merely that they are rarely able to do so well.  Parents
make all sorts of decisions for their children that are not purely in
the best interests of the child (even the most rational, informed and
selfless parent can't see the future).  The alternatives to parents
being able to decide things for their children is far worse.

Of course we can also say that the "powers that be" have not done a good
enough job of informing parents of the pros and cons of vaccines - they
have not found a way to beat the idiot social media grapevine that
spreads lies and conspiracies at such speed.


Whether it is actually a good idea to vaccinate 5 - 12 year olds against
Covid is a balance.  You have to look at the chances of getting Covid,
the risks of it being a problem for the child, and the consequences of
it being a problem.  This must be balanced against the risks of
side-effects and their consequences.  You have to decide if it is
ethically correct to consider the risk of them spreading Covid to other
people, or if children should be considered purely on their own basis.
You have to consider the wider aspects, such as an unvaccinated child
not being allowed to visit their granny, or to go on holidy.  You have
to consider the medical facilities in a country when evaluating risks
and consequences, and the spread of the disease in that country.  You
have to consider Omicron and Delta independently as they have very
different profiles.  You have to consider where else those vaccines
could be used.

No parent will do that.  No politician will do that (though they will
claim to do so.)  The health authorities in a country can do it - or
provide best guesses that change as we get more information, and the
situation changes over time.  /Only/ the qualified health authority
experts are in a position to give recommendations here, and even they
might get it wrong (predicting the future is hard).

For everyone else, the single rational reaction is "follow the advice of
the health authorities".

> 
>> It is much more important to triple vaccinate the most vulnerable.
>> Two jabs has almost no effect on preventing you catching Omicron.
> 
> three jabs might not either,
> https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.22.21268021v1
> 

Vaccines are not, and never have been, 100%.  It is all about reduction
of the risks, and reduction of the consequences, balanced against the
disadvantages (cost, inconvenience, and side-effects).  Maybe more
boosters will be the sensible choice, but it seems that for most age
groups, three jabs is the appropriate balance at the moment.

On 28/12/2021 19:35, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:
> tirsdag den 28. december 2021 kl. 20.05.58 UTC+1 skrev Martin Brown:
>> On 28/12/2021 03:03, Anthony William Sloman wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, December 28, 2021 at 3:31:12 AM UTC+11, Martin Brown wrote:
>>>>
>>
>>>> It will be crazy if they exactly repeat the mistake of last year by mixing it all up in school for just one day and then hard lockdown. (schools have been the locus of infection for a few months now).
>>>
>>> Kids don't get very sick, but they are great at infecting other people. Australia is getting on with vaccinating the 5- to 11-year-olds
>> I'm not convinced that is ethically justifiable on medical grounds.
>>
>> Once you get down to about age 10 or under the benefit to the individual
>> patient of being vaccinated is less than the very rare risk of serious
>> side effects from the vaccine. It is probably wasted on the under 12's.
> 
> you'd be labeled as an antivaxer nutcase if you even mention that you understand
> that parents are not sure if they want to take the risk

I think it is important to understand the statistics to make a rational 
decision. Third jabs in many healthy first world individuals would be 
better off going to older and vulnerable patients in the third world.

That said I was not going to turn down a free booster vaccination.

>> It is much more important to triple vaccinate the most vulnerable. Two
>> jabs has almost no effect on preventing you catching Omicron.
> 
> three jabs might not either, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.22.21268021v1

UK statistics suggest that at least once it has created the full immune 
response a booster jab is 75% effective at preventing symptomatic Covid. 
You may be infected and PCR positive but with little harm done to you.

It still remains unclear how infective such individuals are. Infective 
for less time but with masked or no symptoms is a double edged sword.

The main effect of Covid vaccination though is to prevent serious 
illness and hospitalisation and so far that line is holding. The problem 
in the UK is that our government is taking a very high stakes gamble for 
New Year parties with the health of the entire English population.

130k and still rising with new record case numbers broken daily. A 
modest protection factor of 4 doesn't last long against exponential 
growth in daily cases that appears to be doubling every week.

-- 
Regards,
Martin Brown

On Wednesday, December 29, 2021 at 8:44:55 PM UTC+11, Martin Brown wrote:
> On 28/12/2021 19:35, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote: 
> > tirsdag den 28. december 2021 kl. 20.05.58 UTC+1 skrev Martin Brown: 
> >> On 28/12/2021 03:03, Anthony William Sloman wrote: 
> >>> On Tuesday, December 28, 2021 at 3:31:12 AM UTC+11, Martin Brown wrote: 

<snip>
 
> That said I was not going to turn down a free booster vaccination.
> >> It is much more important to triple vaccinate the most vulnerable. Two 
> >> jabs has almost no effect on preventing you catching Omicron. 
> > 
> > three jabs might not either, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.22.21268021v1

> UK statistics suggest that at least once it has created the full immune 
> response a booster jab is 75% effective at preventing symptomatic Covid. 
> You may be infected and PCR positive but with little harm done to you. 
> 
> It still remains unclear how infective such individuals are. Infective 
> for less time but with masked or no symptoms is a double edged sword. 

There's nothing special about it. Everybody who get Covid-19 is infectious before the show symptoms, and there are suggestion that you are most infectious just before you show synmptoms (if you get to the point of showing symptoms - about 30% of the infected didn't ever show symptoms, even amongst the unvaccinated).

> The main effect of Covid vaccination though is to prevent serious  illness and hospitalisation and so far that line is holding.

The main effect of Covid-19 vaccination is to make your immune system react faster the presence of Covid-19 virus particles, once the immune system has run into them.

If you immune system is in good order, that does speed up the response and makes it less likely that you will get seriously sick, but everybody has a different immune system. Averaged over the population that's fewer hospitalisations of people who do get infected, but if you clear the infection faster you are less likely to infect anybody else, and from some points of view this may be "the main effect".

>  The problem  in the UK is that our government is taking a very high stakes gamble for  New Year parties with the health of the entire English population. 

The problem in the UK and in lots of other places is that politicians are more sensitive to business people complaining that lock-downs are reducing their turnover than they are to medical people complaining inadequate lock-downs are overloading the hospitals and the mortuaries.

-- 
Bill Sloman, Sydney