You are not allowed to assert something that is in contradiction with primary sources, i.e. government. Anything that isn't government official explanation, is therefore subject to being called conspiracy. Anyway. I would like to see government officials brought in for cross examination and forced to give sworn testimony, it would also help to deal with "alternative" explanations, we would also have something on record. Until that happens, governments position will be free to mutate more than the C-virus itself.
Honestly haven't read the full discussion on this, but I think that basic premise - that asymptomatic carriers do not pass it on to any statistically significant extent - is somewhat missing the point. This infection does have an asymptomatic stage, whether you go on to develop severe symptoms or no symptoms at all. At the point you have become infected you are carrying a viral load which can be spread to other people in airborne droplets. The problem with relying on people to socially distance, wear masks, wash their hands, etc, is that people can't be trusted to do it. FWIW the risk of surface transmission through fomites is actually much much lower than first thought (can't cite that right now, too tired to google it! ), and we actually waste a lot of time, effort, and resources by obsessively disinfecting everthing. On balance though I am quite happy with this increased focus on personal hygiene however, because as someone pointed out many pages ago (was it @oscy...?) that basically everything is covered in poo. That's funny, I don't recall spending billions of public funds on goods that cannot be located... I seem to recall that a government, which absolutely does not represent me or even give one hint of a **** about the country I live in, has misused public funds worth billions on failed schemes and goods that cannot be located. Maybe I'm confused, if the government doesn't own anything maybe I did spend all that money myself...
My inner (and, indeed, outer) pedant requires I point out that if you go on to develop symptoms then you were presymptomatic, not asymptomatic.
In the usual fabulous choice of words, Hancock has said we could live with COVID like we do the flu. Cue the 'It's just the flu'-ers having an absolute field day now. The 'I told you so's and 'didn't I tell you from day 1?'s have begun.
Meanwhile, vaccine envy is now an inevitable thing: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/...tine-hotel-covid-priority-groups-b919679.html
Is it really envy to state those in a non-vunerable group shouldn't be getting the vaccine? Especially if the elderly and most vulnerable to the effects of the disease havn't been fully vaccinated.
Sure, we all know that asylum seekers don't get enough bad press, and that 320 disenfranchised poor people cooped up together in a hotel aren't a vulnerable group...
Any group cooped up together is more vulnerable to catching the disease, hospitals, meat plants, manufacturing plants, poorer people in over crowded dwellings. Vaccines are being given out based on vulnerability to the effects of the disease (roughly speaking) and therefore likeliness to impact health services and not based on who will catch it the quickest. Which is why an 85 year old that lives alone will get it before a bunch of students stuck in a small flat together. The fact they are asylum seekers is irrelevant. There is an established order for giving out the vaccine that should be adhered to as much as possible.
It is to an extent irrelevant, apart from the fact that asylum seekers have little choice in their current accommodation. And that's also not how the article seems to frame it: it is very much "undeserving immigrant leeches vs deserving brits".
Typical right-wing tabloid BS. Their situation places them at high risk and, with half a million plus being vacinated daily, WTF diference is 320 going to make?
Another paper, this time from Uppsala U., which reckons there was limited increase in overall transmission from open schools, but that teachers were affected - double the infection rate for lower-secondary teachers (whose schools were open for in-person teaching) compared to upper-secondary (whose schools were closed and teaching done purely remotely.) The infection rate for teachers' partners was 30 percent higher in lower-secondary than higher-secondary. In other words, it looks like the simulation's conclusion that opening schools doesn't really have much of an effect on overall infection/death rates could be right - but it's still putting teachers and their families at risk. Elsewhere, this paper suggests that treatment with high-dose zinc and vitamin C "doesn't affect SARS-CoV-2 symptoms."
Surprise: at least half a billion of our cash went to Cummings' mates, in exchange for airy-fairy consultancy services. Chinny reckon...
You post academic sources. You speak my language. I like you. To briefly skim a number of things from the past few days: my anti-lockdown acquaintance's argument didn't hinge on the distinction between presymptomatic and asymptomatic (hereafter A/PRE), nor did my ruminations - his theory was basically "anyone with symptoms stay home, everyone else should be allowed to go out because they're not spreading it." In trying to disprove this theory I've mostly met a lack of evidence either way, which surprises me. The theory of A/PRE being infectious is medically valid, hence the precautions - I don't dispute that (though he might, he disputes pretty much everything). But I wanted a smoking gun to take back to him and say "look, they are infectious" and so far can't find much. The lockdowns' measurable impact on the R value seems like the closest thing so far, thank you to those who pointed it out. It's circumstantial in the biggest possible scope tho (the whole society) and not as watertight as direct studies of A/PRE spread.
This doesn't really solve your problem, but my understanding is that "anyone with symptoms stay home, everyone else should be allowed to go out because they're not spreading it" is the textbook approach to disease control. It follows that the reason COVID is so difficult to control (as opposed to much nastier diseases, such as Ebola) is that a lot of transmission happens while the patient is not showing symptoms (doesn't really matter if that happens asymptomatically, or presymptomatically), and so can't be quarantined. That's the theory anyway. It's possible the lockdown r-value stuff is really as close as you're going to get on this, but very possible there are some studies out there that show A/PRE transmissions. In any case, even if you can't nail them on the A/PRE stuff, the impact of the lockdowns is at least reasonably stong evidence that lockdowns work (and not-lockdown is insufficient). I'm not really well read on the topic enough to comment on this beyond that though. As an aside, this might be a bit controversial, but I think the idea of joe public reading papers is oversold. None of us really have the skills/experience to properly interpret the findings (I include myself in this, and I say that as someone with a statistical background and a PhD), nor the time to properly immerse ourselves in the relevant literature. Papers are worth taking a look at, but look towards what prominent scientists are saying if you want to get a better idea of what the state of the 'science' is. The good news is that there are a lot of other, much better, ways of science communication, which are more popular than ever. I don't think anyone should feel they have to dive through the literature (or be able to cite it directly) to be informed on a given topic.
Here are some studies I just found - I have only briefly skimmed the abstract for each, and the third one openly states that the study was only conducted on 30 people. That doesn't automatically invalidate the results, but generally you'd want a larger study than that. They're all from last year by the looks of it, and many more studies may have been done since - these were just the first that DuckDuckGo pointed me to. Before we get to that however, it may be worth tempering your expectations when it comes to trying to convince someone of an opposing viewpoint. If someone has already come to a conclusion and is not engaging in a rational debate about the evidence then it's unlikely that they're going to be convinced by your arguments. The principle of charity still stands: most people aren't intentionally being d!cks about it and most people aren't intentionally spreading harmful misinformation, but to change your views or opinions in light of new evidence is a very hard thing to do. It's one of the main reasons why there's such distrust when it comes to science and scientific research: "how can you trust scientists when they change their mind every 5 minutes?" fundamentally misunderstands scientific research. It's not a Bad Thing(tm) if new evidence comes to light that changes our understanding about something, it doesn't mean that 'they got it wrong': new information may have come to light, new research techniques may have been discovered, improved technology might let us do things we couldn't do before, there may be more funding available for a follow-up study, etc. I'm not advocating avoiding the discussion, just that it's a very difficult thing to have your assumptions and understanding challenged and all too often people will react defensively. Hell, I do it all the time, it's one of the main reasons I don't post in 'Serious' threads very often: most of the time the actual 'serious debate' can be contained within a dozen or so pages, and much of the rest of the thread is just entrenched opposing viewpoints firing salvos at each other. Asymptomatic transmission during the COVID-19 pandemic and implications for public health strategies: Viral Transmission and Clinical Features in Asymptomatic Carriers of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, China: The natural history and transmission potential of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection: I wholeheartedly agree. Even for those in scientific fields, reading papers from another field is pointless because it's not their area of expertise and they're not going to understand it. A theoretical physicist isn't going to be able to pick up and read a paper discussing CRISPR gene therapy. A big issue however is that science communication in a lot of 'trusted' news media is woeful at best, and that's where many people will go in order to get information. Some publications are definitely improving - I've been flabbergasted by how well the Daily ****ing Mail reports on some stories these days! - but more often than not, publications will simply print the press release. Sometimes even the press release doesn't bear any similarity to what the paper actually says, because press releases are basically an advertisement. There's also the issue of 'balance' - good journalistic practice teaches people to include all positions of a viewpoint, but when it comes to scientific research it's very easy for that to spill over into false balance. Medicine, for example: when discussing 'alternative' medicine it's all too easy to give equal weight to homeopathy, chiropractic, reiki, etc, as is given to actual medicine. This creates the impression that there's legitimate scientific debate as to whether these things are valid when the reality is that these are dangerous quackery without a shred of convincing evidence behind any of them. This is why we generally rely on 'experts' to parse scientific papers for public understanding. It's not because 'they think they're smarter than the rest of us', it's because they have expertise in that field and can put things into a context that those without that expertise can understand. But apparently we've had enough of experts...
Thank you for the links. Your google-fu is much stronger than mine (duck-duck-go-fu doesn't sound right other than as an animé character name). Your point about scientific reporting in mainstream media reminded me of this old gem: I take your point about trying to change minds, too. But for the better or worse of my happiness (spoiler alert: the second one) I'm really committed to finding ways to get through to confident people and persuade them to re-examine their convictions. It is as difficult as you say but also probably the most important kind of political activity in the world. If everyone did it instead of hiding in their echo chambers I wager that critical thinking would be more widespread and tinfoil hattery and groupthink would be a little less dominant.
Meanwhile: Another new coronavirus variant seen in the UK - BBC News B.1.525 mutation is likely more contagious like the B.1.1.7 variant, and possibly vaccine resistant like the South African E484K mutation. Oh joy.
