When will this shit end?

[st dan]

Just now, Havors said:

I love David Schneider, very funny. But that is an absolutely ridiculous analogy... 

Yep, and people like him don’t realise they are being as outrageous and the people they are criticising, just on the other side of the fence. 

[Zoo Music Girl]

17 minutes ago, Toilet Duck said:

Howdy, I guess “symptomatic” is quite a spectrum. Feeling a bit rough for a day or two is symptomatic, but it’s not going to do you much harm. There’s substantial variation in the magnitude of individual immune responses, so plenty of people will need a couple of days for it to ramp up and rid them of the infection (and have some symptoms in that time). I’ve said it before, but I have a feeling we are over-estimating how well the vaccines work in terms of stopping transmission, mainly as we’ve only seen how they work in a world that has other mitigating measures in place. But, in most cases, converting a potentially fatal infection into one that keeps you on the couch for a day or two is a win in my book and they do that extremely well.

I’ll be pleasantly surprised if vaccines alone can virtually eliminate the virus, but if they all but eliminate severe disease and death, then I can live with that. Yes, the trials looked a bit better in terms reduction of symptomatic Covid, but there’s different variants around now, different behaviour and environmental conditions (things are much more open now with far greater opportunity for infection), different levels of virus circulating, different mixes of vaccines with different administration regimens compared to very tightly controlled trials, so this is what effectiveness looks like in real world use with the sands shifting under our feet. They still do the main things we need them to do and that’s really the bottom line. If they keep our hospitals and morgues mostly empty, then they are successful. 

Thanks, great detailed answer as ever!

[MEGABOWL]

1 hour ago, Radiochicken said:

Twitter is an absolute burning pile of excrement today, like back to the bad old days of Remain vs Leave. Going to ignore it for the rest of the day. I’d recommend others do the same…

The worst thing is I feel like it’s ‘my’ side trying to turn it into some sort of culture war. All these people I followed because they were smart, forceful Remainers now talking absolute bilge. Sigh.

[Toilet Duck]

1 hour ago, Memory Man said:

Agreed. 
 

trying to find something someone posted on here about any mutation that was enough to avoid the vaccines completely would also render the virus unharmful to humans but cant find it. 

the number of people on twitter that seem to think a vaccine resistant strain is inevitable is alarming. 

So, the simplest explanation of how our immune systems work goes something like this…There’s two broad arms to our immune systems…innate and adaptive. Innate is non-specific and targets any kind of infection and parts of the innate system teach the adaptive part how to specifically recognise a given infection.

Within our adaptive immune response we have 2 main types of immune cells (really there’s loads more to this, but I’m simplifying it!)…T cells and B cells. T cells do lots of things, but for our purposes here, the two important things are (1) they teach B cells how to make antibodies that target the virus (these are called helper T cells, and they are the guys that HIV infects, hence the immunosuppression associated with HIV infection) and (2) they also destroy cells that are infected with the virus (these are called cytotoxic T cells). When the virus infects our cells, the spike gets chopped up inside our cells and displayed on the surface of the infected cell for our immune system to recognise and the cytotoxic T cells see it and kill the infected cell. The key thing here is that there are currently about 90 different parts of the spike that our T cells can recognise in order to kill infected cells, so that’s an awful lot of changes required to completely evade that part of our immune system.

Once the helper T cells teach B cells how to make antibodies, the B cells churn them out. There’s different types of antibody made (1) Neutralising antibodies that interact with the part of the spike that facilitates entry into our cells (so when the antibody is bound to these parts of the spike it blocks viral entry and without entry, the virus can’t replicate) and (2) binding antibodies that interact with other parts of the spike. They don’t stop the virus from binding to our cells, but virus coated with binding antibodies is snaffled up by the non-specific parts of our immune system and again, the virus is killed.

What we have seen so far in terms of antigenic drift (changes in the spike) are mutations that interfere with how well neutralising antibodies can bind (from the perspective of the virus, this is where the greatest pressure is, evade that and you can replicate…making people sick is not required for this virus as it can spread via speech, laughter etc from the upper airways, it doesn’t need a cough to get back out of the lower respiratory tract)…but changes that impact on binding antibodies are not so common. The other changes we are seeing in the variants are alterations that get the virus into our cells more efficiently…so it’s optimising itself to get past the neutralising antibodies, get into our cells, replicate and get back out quickly. In order to completely evade the immune response generated by the vaccines, it would need to change about 90 different parts of the spike and in all likelihood, if it did that, the spike would be unlikely to still bind ACE2 and the virus would function completely differently. It’s not impossible, but it’s highly unlikely. 

[Radiochicken]

27 minutes ago, andyrhodes24 said:

Just logged in and didn't have to scroll very far to find this spectacularly bad take

They should use that as a case study for System 1 and System 2 thinking. Literally if those 10.9k who’ve liked that engaged a single neuron before liking…

[andyrhodes24]

32 minutes ago, fraybentos1 said:

Dumbest thing I've ever fucking read. We DO live with car crashes fs but people still drive we just put mitigations in place to make it as safe as possible while still being practical. Vaccines are the mitigation with covid and they work very well.

It's an utterly stupid comparison and one which touches a nerve with me for different reasons. To emphasise your point, one of my best mates was killed on the roads a few years back. He was following the traffic light signals, the road markings, the speed limit and was wearing his seat belt. He was hit by a speeding drunk driver on the wrong side of the road.

Point is he put the mitigations in place to protect himself and others. By getting vaccinated and wearing masks up until 19 July we've done the same, sooner or later people like Schneider have to accept that we've done all we can and balance the risk with the need for a fully open society

[DeanoL]

The Schneider analogy makes sense, it just ignores that the vaccine is also a mitigation. And if we wanted to introduce further restrictions on roads, we could reduce car crashes even more. Lower speed limits would mean less fatalities, but it's a balance between what prevents most deaths and our need to get on with our lives. 

I disagree with the message behind what he's pushing and I think he's ignoring certain parts of the analogy to fit his narrative, but I don't see that the analogy itself is flawed, it's just selective.

I don't get where the "this is completely different" folk are coming from either.

[steviewevie]

19 minutes ago, andyrhodes24 said:

It's an utterly stupid comparison and one which touches a nerve with me for different reasons. To emphasise your point, one of my best mates was killed on the roads a few years back. He was following the traffic light signals, the road markings, the speed limit and was wearing his seat belt. He was hit by a speeding drunk driver on the wrong side of the road.

Point is he put the mitigations in place to protect himself and others. By getting vaccinated and wearing masks up until 19 July we've done the same, sooner or later people like Schneider have to accept that we've done all we can and balance the risk with the need for a fully open society

I mean...it's different interpretations of what should be used for mitigations, right? So, at this point should it be vaccines alone, or should it be also masks and distancing in high risk places until everyone is vaccinated?

[Chapple12345]

1 hour ago, st dan said:

Yep, and people like him don’t realise they are being as outrageous and the people they are criticising, just on the other side of the fence. 

You've put all my thoughts into words, it's just another thing to be polarised about - for example I imagine half the people who attended last summers BLM marches (I completely stand with the cause) would criticise the anti-lockdown marches of the last few weeks. A global health issue has been politicised beyond words and the next few weeks are gonna be horrific. The message should be you can do these things freely,  but only do what makes you feel comfortable

[steviewevie]

NE England seems to be the new hotspot.

[DeanoL]

6 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

I mean...it's different interpretations of what should be used for mitigations, right? So, at this point should it be vaccines alone, or should it be also masks and distancing in high risk places until everyone is vaccinated?

Yeah, I don't agree with what he's saying, but it clearly makes sense. It's logical. It's the polarisation thing again - he gives an over-the-top analogy and people respond with "that doesn't even make any sense".

When surely the reality is "well yeah, I see what you're saying but you're ignoring X, Y and Z"

[andyrhodes24]

2 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

The Schneider analogy makes sense, it just ignores that the vaccine is also a mitigation. And if we wanted to introduce further restrictions on roads, we could reduce car crashes even more. Lower speed limits would mean less fatalities, but it's a balance between what prevents most deaths and our need to get on with our lives. 

I disagree with the message behind what he's pushing and I think he's ignoring certain parts of the analogy to fit his narrative, but I don't see that the analogy itself is flawed, it's just selective.

I don't get where the "this is completely different" folk are coming from either.

I definitely see what he's getting at, he's just been clever and left out certain points to fit his narrative as you say. We do unfortunately live with car crashes, just like we live with the flu. They're both a part of our lives we just protect ourselves as much as we can.

2 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

I mean...it's different interpretations of what should be used for mitigations, right? So, at this point should it be vaccines alone, or should it be also masks and distancing in high risk places until everyone is vaccinated?

If the Government and the health experts are comfortable with Ministers etc saying to live with Covid and making the mitigating requirement of mask wearing discretionary then they must be confident that the mitigations so far have been largely effective. Obviously there's the pressure being put on Boris from his business pals but there has to be a compromise between the current mitigations and fewer restrictions

[Ozanne]

12 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

I mean...it's different interpretations of what should be used for mitigations, right? So, at this point should it be vaccines alone, or should it be also masks and distancing in high risk places until everyone is vaccinated?

I think masks inside is probably a good idea for a bit whilst we get more fully vaccinated and understand how the vaccines work with a fully open society. In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really cost anything to do and could get keep prevalence of the virus down slightly. 

[steviewevie]

3 minutes ago, andyrhodes24 said:

 

If the Government and the health experts are comfortable with Ministers etc saying to live with Covid and making the mitigating requirement of mask wearing discretionary then they must be confident that the mitigations so far have been largely effective. Obviously there's the pressure being put on Boris from his business pals but there has to be a compromise between the current mitigations and fewer restrictions

pressure on Johnson from his own ministers and backbench MPs too.

Anyway, it's all a bit of a gamble, just have to see how it goes over the next few months.

[kalifire]

When is Johnson giving his announcement today, anyone?

[gigpusher]

1 hour ago, Toilet Duck said:

So, the simplest explanation of how our immune systems work goes something like this…There’s two broad arms to our immune systems…innate and adaptive. Innate is non-specific and targets any kind of infection and parts of the innate system teach the adaptive part how to specifically recognise a given infection.

Within our adaptive immune response we have 2 main types of immune cells (really there’s loads more to this, but I’m simplifying it!)…T cells and B cells. T cells do lots of things, but for our purposes here, the two important things are (1) they teach B cells how to make antibodies that target the virus (these are called helper T cells, and they are the guys that HIV infects, hence the immunosuppression associated with HIV infection) and (2) they also destroy cells that are infected with the virus (these are called cytotoxic T cells). When the virus infects our cells, the spike gets chopped up inside our cells and displayed on the surface of the infected cell for our immune system to recognise and the cytotoxic T cells see it and kill the infected cell. The key thing here is that there are currently about 90 different parts of the spike that our T cells can recognise in order to kill infected cells, so that’s an awful lot of changes required to completely evade that part of our immune system.

Once the helper T cells teach B cells how to make antibodies, the B cells churn them out. There’s different types of antibody made (1) Neutralising antibodies that interact with the part of the spike that facilitates entry into our cells (so when the antibody is bound to these parts of the spike it blocks viral entry and without entry, the virus can’t replicate) and (2) binding antibodies that interact with other parts of the spike. They don’t stop the virus from binding to our cells, but virus coated with binding antibodies is snaffled up by the non-specific parts of our immune system and again, the virus is killed.

What we have seen so far in terms of antigenic drift (changes in the spike) are mutations that interfere with how well neutralising antibodies can bind (from the perspective of the virus, this is where the greatest pressure is, evade that and you can replicate…making people sick is not required for this virus as it can spread via speech, laughter etc from the upper airways, it doesn’t need a cough to get back out of the lower respiratory tract)…but changes that impact on binding antibodies are not so common. The other changes we are seeing in the variants are alterations that get the virus into our cells more efficiently…so it’s optimising itself to get past the neutralising antibodies, get into our cells, replicate and get back out quickly. In order to completely evade the immune response generated by the vaccines, it would need to change about 90 different parts of the spike and in all likelihood, if it did that, the spike would be unlikely to still bind ACE2 and the virus would function completely differently. It’s not impossible, but it’s highly unlikely. 

Thanks have you thought about doing these kind of explanations with animations and selling them to governments around the world to send out as public service announcements. I feel like there is a real lack of understanding around the vaccines and what they do which drives a lot of the increase in infections to begin with. So many people have already completely abandoned social distancing etc. 

[efcfanwirral]

3 minutes ago, kalifire said:

When is Johnson giving his announcement today, anyone?

5 o clock press conference apparently

[BobWillis2]

Mathematician Pagel on the BBC spreading lies this morning. 
 

“We’re 75% of the way through our vaccination program I’d like to finish it before we open up fully which is exactly what Israel did” 

 

 

 

[Fuzzy Afro]

David Schneider has been an absolute nobody for years. The total definition of yesterday’s man. 

[Ryan1984]

2 hours ago, andyrhodes24 said:

Twitter was a glorious place last night with all the stuff about the German football GoFundMe until someone started retweeting countless anti-unlocking/Fake Sage posts onto my timeline. It put a right downer on proceedings!

The last I saw was the creator of the fundraiser hasn’t been in contact with the girl or her family? Did anything happen after?

[kalifire]

1 minute ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

David Schneider has been an absolute nobody for years. The total definition of yesterday’s man. 

Quite the fall from grace though, given the seminal comedy he used to be involved in.

[philipsteak]

So as I mentioned yesterday I'm currently having to isolate after being pinged on the app. Along with two other colleagues who also got pinged over the weekend. One from a contact on Monday and two (me included) from a contact on Wednesday. I was at work on Wednesday, around a lot of people so I could well have come in to contact with someone, but very unlikely to have been in contact with someone for any length of time. Isn't it supposed to be 15 minutes? The weird thing is my colleague (and housemate) was off on Wednesday and didn't leave the house. He barely left his room (he very much celebrated England's win over Germany) so how did he get pinged?

[philipsteak]

8 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

David Schneider has been an absolute nobody for years. The total definition of yesterday’s man. 

So if he was on a more current show you'd be OK with his analogies? 

[Ozanne]

Pretty graphs.

 

[efcfanwirral]

6 minutes ago, philipsteak said:

So as I mentioned yesterday I'm currently having to isolate after being pinged on the app. Along with two other colleagues who also got pinged over the weekend. One from a contact on Monday and two (me included) from a contact on Wednesday. I was at work on Wednesday, around a lot of people so I could well have come in to contact with someone, but very unlikely to have been in contact with someone for any length of time. Isn't it supposed to be 15 minutes? The weird thing is my colleague (and housemate) was off on Wednesday and didn't leave the house. He barely left his room (he very much celebrated England's win over Germany) so how did he get pinged?

Tiny chance but maybe if he left his Bluetooth on at home, his neighbour?