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Coronavirus
- Thread starter Jb85
- Start date
Islander
TS Member
This makes logical sense, however they're going to have to step up the supply of LFTs to cover this if they go down this route... reports today (admittedly from a probably bored media looking desperately for a coronavirus story) that supply is patchy.
Tom
TS Member
It's been reported that about a third of those in hospital with Covid are primarily being treated for something else.
pluk
TS Member
There isn't really an answer for this, there are just too many variables. People with underlying conditions are effected by the virus in different ways. Are they there for their existing condition exacerbated by covid, or are they there for covid which is exacerbated by their existing condition?
The world doesn't fit into neat little boxes.
In a huge way, it doesn't really matter. Medical staff can't be spreading covid, so can't work if they have it and have to take massively time consuming measures when they are at work. All the time this remains the case there will be a pressure on the NHS that will necessitate measures in the community to slow the spread.
Dave
TS Founding Member
The issue with the obsession with people being treated for something else but also have covid is that even if they are not been treated for covid they still take up more resource as you have to separate them from the rest of the patient population.
It’s certainly important to know if they are in because of covid as it informs the severity data but they still have an impact regardless
It’s certainly important to know if they are in because of covid as it informs the severity data but they still have an impact regardless
Dave
TS Founding Member
The people going into hospital today got the virus around the 18th of December when cases where around the 80,000 mark. Still good news though as previously 80,000 cases would have had a far higher admission rate.
pluk
TS Member
That still tells us nothing. They may have been in for 'something else', but would that something else have required hospitalisation if it wasn't for the presence of covid, whether they knew they had covid or not? No one could possibly say.
The official figures are a joke and we need to know the truth before any more restrictions are put in place, there is now serious distrust in these figures as anyone with an ounce of a brain cell can tell they are being manipulated.
Why are they being manipulated to a worst case? Here’s my theory:
For the government it gives them an excuse to control a population, to cover up the lack of investment in the health service over the last 30 years, power that even tin pot dictatorships have wet dreams over.
Then there is the opportunity to line their own pockets with fake contracts etc. the reason that most of them went into politics in the first place.
For the media this is gold, a constant home run against the government, Johnson has made many many enemies in the media over the years and this is their chance to strike back.
Be under no illusion, the goal of the media (especially the BBC) is to bring down this government in revenge for Brexit and get back at Johnson.
For the scientists constantly being wheeled out this gives them relevance, relevance that gives them funding like they never believed was possible, they aren’t going to give this up easily.
We have some of the best statisticians in the world in this country, believe me they know the figures, they know exactly how many people are in hospital because of Covid not with it, they know exactly how many people have died of a car accident or heart attack 3 weeks after a positive case, they know exactly the actual global death rate of covid is much less than 1% not the “official” 1.9%.
I don’t like conspiracy but even now I’m finally having to admit we are being lied to, by the government, the media, the scientists, by China etc. etc.
They all have their own agenda and we are stuck in the middle of it, these constant daily figures are so wrong you’d have to be a fool to see there is not something else going on.
Why are they being manipulated to a worst case? Here’s my theory:
For the government it gives them an excuse to control a population, to cover up the lack of investment in the health service over the last 30 years, power that even tin pot dictatorships have wet dreams over.
Then there is the opportunity to line their own pockets with fake contracts etc. the reason that most of them went into politics in the first place.
For the media this is gold, a constant home run against the government, Johnson has made many many enemies in the media over the years and this is their chance to strike back.
Be under no illusion, the goal of the media (especially the BBC) is to bring down this government in revenge for Brexit and get back at Johnson.
For the scientists constantly being wheeled out this gives them relevance, relevance that gives them funding like they never believed was possible, they aren’t going to give this up easily.
We have some of the best statisticians in the world in this country, believe me they know the figures, they know exactly how many people are in hospital because of Covid not with it, they know exactly how many people have died of a car accident or heart attack 3 weeks after a positive case, they know exactly the actual global death rate of covid is much less than 1% not the “official” 1.9%.
I don’t like conspiracy but even now I’m finally having to admit we are being lied to, by the government, the media, the scientists, by China etc. etc.
They all have their own agenda and we are stuck in the middle of it, these constant daily figures are so wrong you’d have to be a fool to see there is not something else going on.
Dave
TS Founding Member
1) The data isn’t being manipulated, the numbers are available to everyone, even the % admitted due to covid and those with incidental infection. Problem people have is they read the headline figures rather than the detail (so for instance yesterdays large increase in cases had 5 days of backlog from Northern Ireland, it wasn’t hidden from anyone as a big blue banner was on the webpage telling folk).
2) Scientists are trained to work on reducing bias, they don’t really care for the limelight and just tell people facts. The modelling they did has tightened as the data increased and to date the reality of covid has been within the models.
3) An epidemiologist will only advise in their area of expertise. So they might say “to reduce cases we need to do x” but if you watch any of the scientists on the news they have also said the government need to balance that against economic impact, the scientists are not going to comment on that as they are not economists just as the economists advising the government are not going to be advising on how to reduce cases. It’s the politicians job to balance the various advice and make a decision in the round.
3) There are huge media biases particularly in the newspapers but all but 2 newspapers (Mirror and The Guardian) massively favour the Tory’s. The BBC is fairly unbiased as the law prevents it (and ITV) but at the moment the BBC has some major Tory stooges in positions of power (The directory general stood as a Tory councillor twice and was deputy chairman of his local Tory party and the Chair of the BBC is a Tory donor), so to say it’s actively trying to take revenge on the government is not really representing reality when it’s run by people who support the government.
pluk
TS Member
I've not seen it represented anywhere that the figures are for people hospitalised for covid, it's alway in hospital with covid. Not misreading at all without deliberately misinterpreting the information.
And again, it doesn't really matter whether covid is the primary or secondary cause of hospitalisation, the drain on resources and risk to staff absence is the same.
Craig
TS Administrator
There is actually a weekly update provided by the NHS which does differentiate between those admitted primarily for covid and those who were tested as part of admission and found to have it.
If anyone wants to take a look it can be found on the NHS’s covid statistic pages at the bottom of the weekly update section. It’s called the Primary Diagnosis Supplement and the next update will be tomorrow.
As others have mentioned even those who are found to have Covid secondary to their primary admission still need to be treated differently, and along with staffing issues due to self isolation, a lack of tests and delays in results means there is pressure there. However, regardless of those concerns, even last week’s figures still point towards higher primary covid admissions in the south where Omicron took hold earlier.
Again though, I’m not stating we should be locking down, but we also shouldn’t be stating that there’s data manipulation out there, when it’s publicly viewable and published regularly. Hospitals are affected by primary covid admissions and they have gone up, it’s just a case of whether the pressure of those admissions can be properly handled considering the speed of spread and the other affects as a result of staff either catching it or awaiting confirmatory negative results.
If anyone wants to take a look it can be found on the NHS’s covid statistic pages at the bottom of the weekly update section. It’s called the Primary Diagnosis Supplement and the next update will be tomorrow.
As others have mentioned even those who are found to have Covid secondary to their primary admission still need to be treated differently, and along with staffing issues due to self isolation, a lack of tests and delays in results means there is pressure there. However, regardless of those concerns, even last week’s figures still point towards higher primary covid admissions in the south where Omicron took hold earlier.
Again though, I’m not stating we should be locking down, but we also shouldn’t be stating that there’s data manipulation out there, when it’s publicly viewable and published regularly. Hospitals are affected by primary covid admissions and they have gone up, it’s just a case of whether the pressure of those admissions can be properly handled considering the speed of spread and the other affects as a result of staff either catching it or awaiting confirmatory negative results.
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Tom
TS Member
The real weakness of the cover-up, conspiracy, stitch-up, etc. theory is that it requires 200+ national governments to be doing the same thing to their own people all at the same time.
If we had not added £500 billion(?) of debt with furlough, bail outs etc, shut nothing down and allowed a mass wipeout of the elderly (and subsequently reducing the state pension cost), then the national wealth would be in a much healthier position now. If the UK had not had lockdowns or furlough then it would have massively strengthened its economic position against versus every other country in the world. Not much motivation for a conspiracy then - unless it is about control - but why would you need a pandemic for that when you have a massive parliamentary majority based on less than a third of the adult population voting for you? There's no need for it, as absolute power is relatively easy to obtain.
If we had not added £500 billion(?) of debt with furlough, bail outs etc, shut nothing down and allowed a mass wipeout of the elderly (and subsequently reducing the state pension cost), then the national wealth would be in a much healthier position now. If the UK had not had lockdowns or furlough then it would have massively strengthened its economic position against versus every other country in the world. Not much motivation for a conspiracy then - unless it is about control - but why would you need a pandemic for that when you have a massive parliamentary majority based on less than a third of the adult population voting for you? There's no need for it, as absolute power is relatively easy to obtain.
Themeparksandy1981
TS Member
At my work 4 of us got Covid within days of each other and since then another 3 tested Positive if you don’t have a isolation period it would have spread round the whole factory and then you run the risk of been out of a job as not getting work out to our customers. Also you run the risk of also spreading it everywhere you go and we go back to square 1 with tougher restrictions again.
Islander
TS Member
You miss the point though - if symptoms for the majority are now no worse than a cold, what does it matter if it spreads across the whole workforce? Colds etc. have been doing so for years.