China

Kermit said:
I would propose they be part of the bubble in the way they were during the actual pandemic. Many staff in care homes were living on site. Hospital and care home staff can have the best PPE and be subject to rigourous testing and hygiene protocols. Hospital staff were working in an environment that was already probably carrying one of the highest risks of infection. If protocols are followed properly there is little reason why these places could not function as they actually did during the pandemic (the numerous failures notwithstanding i.e PPE procurement, discharging patients from hospitals) while the public at large cracked on.
Click to expand...


You propose that under your plan, care home workers live on site. There are over 17,000 adult care homes in the UK, housing approximately 500,000 residents. When surveyed in April 2020, 24% of care home owners in the survey sample said that some or all of their staff had moved onto site. That's 13,000 care homes where this didn't happen.

You're talking tens of thousands, maybe over a hundred thousand care home staff, the vast majority of whom are women, many of whom will have school-aged children and families to look after. Do you realistically expect to find enough staff willing to 'live in' care homes, to staff all 17,000 of them?

You also can't hermetically seal a care home, so there's plenty of opportunities to be infected by one of those working-age people who are there for work purposes, doctors, nurses, paramedics for example - all of whom are working in a healthcare system where they are exposed to COVID routinely, because under your proposal, no healthy, working age people are subject to restrictions.

Where was this 'best PPE' coming from? Remember, you're proposing to set this up in March 2020, when the whole world is scrambling around for PPE. The government quite plainly didn't procure sufficient PPE of requisite quality, and this failing has been widely recognised, so you'd face the same problem, unless you have a magic solution for PPE that they didn't have?

You talk about "rigorous testing", but there are two issues with this:

1. You yourself believe that COVID PCR tests are "unfit for purpose" and tell you nothing about infection, so why are you now proposing "rigorous testing" to prevent the spread of infection, when you personally believe that PCR tests are not fit for that purpose? Either you're just making stuff up now, or you were making it up when you said this:

Kermit said:
Did you know for example, the PCR tests this is all based on are completely unfit for purpose? It cannot tell you anything about infection.
Click to expand...

Which one? Were you lying when you said PCR tests are unfit for purpose and cannot tell you anything about infection, or were you lying when you said that you believe that rigorous testing could prevent infections?

2. You are again, proposing to "rigorously test" hundreds of thousands of healthcare workers at a time when there wasn't sufficient testing capacity to do this. We didn't hit 100,000 daily tests until late April/early May, and if you're testing every single person who works in frontline health and social care, even if you're testing them every three days, you're going to need more than 100,000 tests a day.

Your proposals are unworkable.
 
Last edited:


Frijj said:
You propose that under your plan, care home workers live on site. There are over 17,000 adult care homes in the UK, housing approximately 500,000 residents. When surveyed in April 2020, 24% of care home owners in the survey sample said that some or all of their staff had moved onto site. That's 13,000 care homes where this didn't happen.

You're talking tens of thousands, maybe over a hundred thousand care home staff, the vast majority of whom are women, many of whom will have school-aged children and families to look after. Do you realistically expect to find enough staff willing to 'live in' care homes, to staff all 17,000 of them?

You also can't hermetically seal a care home, so there's plenty of opportunities to be infected by one of those working-age people who are there for work purposes, doctors, nurses, paramedics for example - all of whom are working in a healthcare system where they are exposed to COVID routinely, because under your proposal, no healthy, working age people are subject to restrictions.

Where was this 'best PPE' coming from? Remember, you're proposing to set this up in March 2020, when the whole world is scrambling around for PPE. The government quite plainly didn't procure sufficient PPE of requisite quality, and this failing has been widely recognised, so you'd face the same problem, unless you have a magic solution for PPE that they didn't have?

You talk about "rigorous testing", but there are two issues with this:

1. You yourself believe that COVID PCR tests are "unfit for purpose" and tell you nothing about infection, so why are you now proposing "rigorous testing" to prevent the spread of infection, when you personally believe that PCR tests are not fit for that purpose? Either you're just making stuff up now, or you were making it up when you said this:



Which one? Were you lying when you said PCR tests are unfit for purpose and cannot tell you anything about infection, or were you lying when you said that you believe that rigorous testing could prevent infections?

2. You are again, proposing to "rigorously test" hundreds of thousands of healthcare workers at a time when there wasn't sufficient testing capacity to do this. We didn't hit 100,000 daily tests until late April/early May, and if you're testing every single person who works in frontline health and social care, even if you're testing them every three days, you're going to need more than 100,000 tests a day.

Your proposals are unworkable.
Click to expand...

My point is, we already performed poorly in my opinion with regards these high risk settings. We could only improve. We got through it on the numbers you said moved on site (im trusting your numbers here). The only thing we are changing here is an increase in community transmission. You will rightly claim but that will increase the chance of staff contracting the virus in a community setting. Yes i agree. But with resources concentrated in these areas where they are needed, the risk of infection entering hospitals and care homes could be greatly reduced. The tests and PPE being used where they need to be.

Regarding tests. From the evidence i have seen they are poor, are dependant on CT and have been misused throughout in order to inflate numbers. They cannot distinguish between live and dead matter. However, if used correctly and in line with the WHO guidelines the could be useful in this context.

"Most PCR assays are indicated as an aid for diagnosis, therefore, health care providers must consider any result in combination with timing of sampling, specimen type, assay specifics, clinical observations, patient history, confirmed status of any contacts, and epidemiological information."

WHO Information Notice for Users 2020/05

Ive made this point before but you chose not to engage with it. Presumably because you know full well this is not how the tests were being deployed and it doesnt suit your argument. If the tests were used correctly and were targeted to where they would be most effective, resource could have been thrown at increasing capacity to turn the PCR tests around more quickly. The most crucial thing would have been getting a clinical diagnosis quickly, increasing vitamin D levels and looking at some of the repurposed drug candidates.

You will doubtless mock vitamin D as another right wing conspiracy theory but it important for immune function. See the recent peer reviewed paper below.

“Vitamin D supplementation was assoc with a significant 20% & 28% reduction in lab-confirmed covid rates for vitamin D3 & vitamin D2, respectively”

“Vitamin D3 was assoc with significant 33% decrease in mortality within 30-days of covid infection.. These assoc reductions in risk are substantial & justify more significant exploration/confirmation using RCTs. This is particularly imp given high rates of VitaminD deficiency”

Association between vitamin D supplementation and COVID-19 infection and mortality - Scientific Reports
 
Kermit said:
My point is, we already performed poorly in my opinion with regards these high risk settings. We could only improve. We got through it on the numbers you said moved on site (im trusting your numbers here). The only thing we are changing here is an increase in community transmission. You will rightly claim but that will increase the chance of staff contracting the virus in a community setting. Yes i agree. But with resources concentrated in these areas where they are needed, the risk of infection entering hospitals and care homes could be greatly reduced. The tests and PPE being used where they need to be.

Regarding tests. From the evidence i have seen they are poor, are dependant on CT and have been misused throughout in order to inflate numbers. They cannot distinguish between live and dead matter. However, if used correctly and in line with the WHO guidelines the could be useful in this context.

"Most PCR assays are indicated as an aid for diagnosis, therefore, health care providers must consider any result in combination with timing of sampling, specimen type, assay specifics, clinical observations, patient history, confirmed status of any contacts, and epidemiological information."

WHO Information Notice for Users 2020/05

Ive made this point before but you chose not to engage with it. Presumably because you know full well this is not how the tests were being deployed and it doesnt suit your argument. If the tests were used correctly and were targeted to where they would be most effective, resource could have been thrown at increasing capacity to turn the PCR tests around more quickly. The most crucial thing would have been getting a clinical diagnosis quickly, increasing vitamin D levels and looking at some of the repurposed drug candidates.

You will doubtless mock vitamin D as another right wing conspiracy theory but it important for immune function. See the recent peer reviewed paper below.

“Vitamin D supplementation was assoc with a significant 20% & 28% reduction in lab-confirmed covid rates for vitamin D3 & vitamin D2, respectively”

“Vitamin D3 was assoc with significant 33% decrease in mortality within 30-days of covid infection.. These assoc reductions in risk are substantial & justify more significant exploration/confirmation using RCTs. This is particularly imp given high rates of VitaminD deficiency”

Association between vitamin D supplementation and COVID-19 infection and mortality - Scientific Reports
Click to expand...

1. You say we performed poorly and thus "we could only improve", but that's faulty logic, because it's actually most likely we'd perform worse under your proposal for the reasons I've outlined. Poor performance under one policy doesn't mean that all other policy options are better.

2. You again mention tests and PPE. In regards to PPE, we didn't have enough, and you keep magically procuring enough of it. It wasn't there. You can't keep justifying your policy proposal on the basis of PPE that wasn't there. In regards to tests, not only do you personally believe that the tests were not fit for purpose, there wasn't enough testing capacity to make your proposal work. Nowhere near enough. You're magically inventing more testing capacity. That's not how it works.

3. You are now claiming that PCR tests "could be useful in this context" but last summer you were completely rubbishing the tests, for this exact context that you are now promoting the use of PCR tests for. You can't have your cake and eat it, and this is a moot point, because there aren't enough tests available for you to have the "rigorous testing programme" that you're arguing for.

4. I'm not interested in discussing Vitamin D with you, because I know how you operate. You know you are completely wrong and you want to bait me into getting into the minutiae of whether or not Vitamin D is effective for COVID-19, as a distraction. If Vitamin D works that's great, but two very quick things - firstly, the evidence on Vitamin D and COVID is mixed, and secondly we're talking about what policies you would put into place in March 2020, and that study you've just cited is from November 2022.
 
Kermit said:
Absolutely remarkable how you operate i have to say.

1) we could absolutely improve. Firstly, procurement of PPE should be part of any competent governments response. A store of PPE and ready to go contracts should have been in place. Secondly, we wasted millions on corrupt contracts for the likes of Hancocks mates. British Industry could have been mobilised to help out. There was a number of examples of companies volunteering their services only to be ignored by ministers. Off the top of my head Dyson was an example offering to make ventilators. I dont think the government even got back to them.

2) see above, also if we weren't dishing out tests to wetwipes who were testing at every opportunity with no symptoms there would have beem far more for where they were needed.

3) ignoring my point about how the tests were used yet again because its inconvenient even though it is clearly pertinent to my argument. PCR tests are used in a number of situations. They take a small amount of genetic material and amplify it until it is detectable by the machine. It does not tell you if the virus is alive or dead so is therefore useless, on its own for diagnosis of a current infection. However, when used correctly as a diagnostic tool as described in the guidance it can be useful. It is also used to detect genetic changes that can cause disease or pick up small numbers of cancer cells that might be missed by other tests. So you should be able to now understand why they can be useful in some situations and useless in others?

4) im completely wrong but now you are rubbishing a peer reviewed study (which is your holy grail) and dismissing it because it came out in November. Loads of doctors have been promoting vitamin D from the start but it was shut down because pharma companies wanted to push vaccines. They were happy for people to die in order to suppress these cheap, safe and effective treatments. You are happy to defend them. You really need to snap out of this hypnosis. You are a laughing stock at this point. Youve even said i know i am completely wrong on vitamin D then go on to say the evidence on Vitamin D and Covid is mixed. An absolute shambles.
Click to expand...

1. I'm not saying we couldn't improve. It's irrelevant what you think should have happened in regards to PPE. What matters is you're proposing an alternative policy you believe we should have pursued in March 2020, meaning you have to base that policy on the real factors present in March 2020. One factor was a lack of PPE.

2. There would be 'more' tests if they weren't being used on the general public, but there still wouldn't have been sufficient testing capacity. There are 300,000 nurses and 120,000 doctors in the NHS, then add in your nursing assistants, paramedics and care home staff and you're over a million. For the "rigorous" testing regime you propose, you'd have to test people at least once every three days, so if that's a million people, that's over 330,000 tests a day. We didn't have that capacity until Autumn.

So your testing regime, the testing regime that's required to keep the old and vulnerable safe when they need medical care, under your proposals of letting everyone else "crack on", would fail.

3. I'm not ignoring your point. You said that PCR tests are "unfit for purpose" and "cannot detect infections" but you are now proposing using them for just that. Under your proposals, everyone who isn't old and vulnerable would be advised to shield away indefinitely, and everyone else would be expected to "crack on".

Unfortunately as I've explained to you, this means the virus would freely circulate within the working-age population. The working age population who staff all of the healthcare services that the old and vulnerable would still need. So then whenever the old and vulnerable came into contact with healthcare services - as they frequently do, on account of old age and vulnerability, you'd be putting your highest risk patients, into a high risk environment.

Your solution for this, was a "rigorous testing" regime for healthcare staff. If that isn't using PCR tests to detect infections, when you have just said that PCR tests are useless for detecting infections, then what the fuck are you using the PCR tests for?

4. I didn't rubbish the study. I said the evidence on Vitamin D was mixed, and that the evidence you presented wasn't available to you in March 2020 and is thus useless in support of your policy proposal on what should have happened during lockdown.

When I said that I believe you are completely wrong, I wasn't referring to your views on Vitamin D, I was referring to your argument as a whole, and saying that you are (yet again) introducing a new topic to the discussion to distract from what other things you are wrong about.

If you think I'm a laughing stock, imagine being the person who last summer was screaming about how PCR tests are unfit for purpose and cannot detect infections, and who is now tying himself up in knots trying to say we should have been testing more people to prevent the spread of infection in hospitals.

I'll check back in an hour when you've finally worked out what your reply is going to be :lol:
 
Last edited:
Kermit said:
**********************
Click to expand...

1. Your plan by design allows COVID-19 to freely circulate in the healthy, working-age population. You ask these people to "crack on" and you ask the old and vulnerable to shield. Since the old and vulnerable depend on the healthy, working-age population for their care, including doctors, nurses, nursing assistants, paramedics and care home workers, you proposed "rigorous testing", to ensure that hospitals and care homes aren't being staffed by people with COVID-19.

If we ignore the fact that allowing COVID-19 to freely circulate would mean the hospitals are swimming with COVID anyways, because people are being admitted with COVID-19 or attending A&E with COVID-19, infecting the staff and infecting other patients, including the old and vulnerable, which would end up killing many old and vulnerable people...

You said

Kermit said:
Hospital and care home staff can have the best PPE and be subject to rigourous testing and hygiene protocols.
Click to expand...

Rigorous testing would need to be at least every three days, and since there are over 300,000 nurses, 375,000 nursing assistants, 120,000 doctors and 30,000 paramedics, you're already at 825,000 without even counting care home staff, which will easily take you over a million. So that number isn't arbitrary as you claim.

Calling it a round million (it'll be more than a million by some margin) and a test every three days that's 333,000 tests a day. We didn't have that capacity as I've told you, until Autumn of 2020, and you're proposing to implement this policy in March 2020, meaning your policy would fail because a key component - the testing programme - isn't operational to the degree you need it.

2. You say you'd test "maybe once a week" in setting such as "a care home where nobody is displaying any symptoms" but in that same paragraph you go on to say "asymptomatic spread is not a driver"...so why did you just suggest asymptomatic testing? You claimed testing would be rigorous, but "maybe once a week" isn't rigorous testing at all.

3. You say "the vast majority of asymptomatic cases" are false positives. Do you have any evidence for this?

4. You say I'm ignoring your points about getting industry involved in producing more PPE, more testing, and also having pandemic preparedness plans with stockpiles. I haven't ignored them, I've told you those points are irrelevant, because you're saying what policy you would have implemented in March 2020, not what preparedness plans you'd have put in place several years earlier, or how you'd magick up more PPE and testing capacity than the government managed.

5. You are comfortable and confident in your position because you are a textbook case of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Your confidence is entirely misplaced, but it feels real to you, because you are under the false impression you know what you're talking about. This happens to everyone at some point, it's part of the human condition, so I don't blame you personally, but I do blame whatever nonsense you've been reading online for the last two years that has made you like this.

The summary of this, is that your policy is completely unworkable. It could not have worked. You are proposing it because you found the government's actions during COVID-19 to be deeply offensive to your own personal principles. That's fine, but what's not fine is the mental gymnastics you're going through, to avoid the feeling of cognitive dissonance - you hate the fact that lockdown and the vaccination programme went against your personal principles, meaning you can't accept that they were absolutely necessary, so you have to come up with crazier and crazier workarounds.

This particular workaround is mental, completely full of holes and contradictions. Anyone can see that you haven't got a f***ing clue man.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Frijj said:
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Click to expand...

You can laugh but consider this. Every day more information is coming out. Is that information that jabs are safer or more effective? More information suggesting lockdowns were warranted? More evidence that the threat wasnt exaggerated? This is headed one way. Youve backed the wrong horse clearly. There will be nothing more coming out suggesting you are right. Double down or hold your hands up. It's going to he entertaining watching you over the next year or so. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
 
Kermit said:
You can laugh but consider this. Every day more information is coming out. Is that information that jabs are safer or more effective? More information suggesting lockdowns were warranted? More evidence that the threat wasnt exaggerated? This is headed one way. Youve backed the wrong horse clearly. There will be nothing more coming out suggesting you are right. Double down or hold your hands up. It's going to he entertaining watching you over the next year or so. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
Click to expand...

I am laughing yes.

It took you a little over an hour, to go from being done with the thread, to having another mental little rant.

It sounds a lot more like you’re reassuring yourself that you’re right, than you are telling me that I’m wrong.
 
China preparing for 1 million deaths. That equates to 50,000 going on UK population so pretty impressive. All the deaths coming at the same time will be hard to manage mind.
 
Big night out tomorrow, plenty have had covid (including me) but some might not have and they will surely catch it.Bunch of foreigners and most don't even know each other. I'm deciding tomorrow afternoon if i'll bother attending 'the sausage fest' it's bound to be. And yes hospitals are chocca with elderly people. They (elderly) like to hang out at the hospitals at the best of times but it's nothing compared to what's happening now.
 

Back
Top