Questioning "the science"

No, Riverdoll, you do not have to blindly accept what the government has said because you do not understand the science. There is a lot of information on the internet and in the papers expressed in accessible form suggesting alternative forecasts and strategies. If you stick to looking at those that come from universities you have heard of, Oxford, Leicester etc, or big cities in major countries; New York, California, Massichusetts, Paris you shouldn't go far wrong

But even looking at news online and on the radio it is clear that there is a lot of research being done that is providing contradictory advice. Look at the number of drugs that have been touted as the great cure-all, that within a month or two are found to be virtually useless.

The best thing to do is understand science is fallible and the government advisors are not necessarily correct. Just doing that means that if you accept the figures we are given, you also accept that they could be wrong so look at what other people are saying.

Thank you for writing that Elegran. As ever, you explain thing so well. There is certainly not an equal weight given to both sides of the argument amongst scientists.

People need to bear in mind that there are two very different suggested approaches. Firstly, there is the idea that the infection rate can be brought down to manageable levels, so outbreaks can be pounced on and dealt with. That's what New Zealand many Pacific rim countries have done.

Then there is the idea of "herd immunity", which is very much a minority view, as it involves many deaths and has never worked to eradicate any infection in the past. Nevertheless, there is a handful of people who believe in it.

Then there is the UK government, which doesn't seem to have decided what strategy it should follow.

Wouldn’t it be informative if there were opposing views put by scientists in the form of a TV debate? I may be wrong but years ago I believed there were far more programmes where debate between opposing views were the norm.

I’d like to see all this discussed in the open rather than by Twitter etc. Maybe the non-scientists amongst us would be better informed and more able to make informed decisions.

I do not trust the selective use of statistics either. We are not told where testing and what amount of testing is done in any area or region. Just that the numbers are going up or down.

It seems to me if you are doing more testing in a particular area then you would expect more positive results. I haven’t seen any charts, graphs etc. that show this type of information. Can anyone who has more experience in this point me in the right direction?

suziewoozie

There’s research on the prevalence of people with antibodies which includes how they taper off over time. What doesn’t appear to be available is how many people may hav3 T cell immunity and how long that lasts. I’ve no idea how T cell immunity can be measured easily.

T cells can be measured with blood tests.

www.healthline.com/health/t-cell-count

My daughter's partner is a research scientist and involved in research into immunity, including T cells.

Which doctor is saying this? No one is saying there’s no immunity from previous infections - it’s just that it appears not all infected people produce antibodies and it appears to taper off. Also no one denies that T cells play a part but atm that can only be measured by relatively high tech means and again, we need to know if it tapers off.

ayse

I do not trust the selective use of statistics either. We are not told where testing and what amount of testing is done in any area or region. Just that the numbers are going up or down.

It seems to me if you are doing more testing in a particular area then you would expect more positive results. I haven’t seen any charts, graphs etc. that show this type of information. Can anyone who has more experience in this point me in the right direction?

Testing is done in labs up and down the country.

More test centres are set up in areas where there is greater need, sometimes by local councils.

More positive cases are now being picked up than at the beginning of the pandemic, but that doesn't mean that the cases aren't increasing too. The percentage of tests proving positive has increased over the last few weeks. Positivity rates have outstripped the increase in the number of tests.

grow thanks - I’ve been doing a bit more reading on well. I think it’s fair to say atm that there is no credible evidence at all that herd immunity can be achieved in the foreseeable future and therefore the GBD /Lockdown sceptics are talking nonsense in policy terms for the here and now.

More testing will obviously result in more positive tests (as Donald Trump pointed out).

But what cannot be ignored are the numbers of hospital admissions, patients being treated in Intensive Care and ultimately the number of deaths.

The number of excess deaths (ie compared with the previous five years) is arguably the most significant figure as Covid being mentioned on a death certificate may depend on differing practices in different places.

The current measure of excess deaths is almost exactly the same as the number of deaths ascribed to Covid, so we hope that very few people have recently died because of neglect or delay in treatment for other conditions.

suziewoozie

Which doctor is saying this? No one is saying there’s no immunity from previous infections - it’s just that it appears not all infected people produce antibodies and it appears to taper off. Also no one denies that T cells play a part but atm that can only be measured by relatively high tech means and again, we need to know if it tapers off.

We don't know if/when the effect of T cells tapers off because the infection is too recent.

It's also not known why some people seem to produce more T cells than others. There's a hypothesis that some people have T cells from some previous infection, but it could be that they have had asymptomatic/mild Covid.

Suziewoozie
Info on T cells.https://www.ft.com/content/5cf2ee49-df7a-4990-b337-860cf7737b2f

suziewoozie

grow thanks - I’ve been doing a bit more reading on well. I think it’s fair to say atm that there is no credible evidence at all that herd immunity can be achieved in the foreseeable future and therefore the GBD /Lockdown sceptics are talking nonsense in policy terms for the here and now.

"Nonsense" isn't the word my possible future son-in-law uses!

ayse it’s not just the testing done with people who go into hospital or to test centres. There are surveillance tests carried out on random samples throughout the country every week and that’s where the higher figures come from of about 50k a week come from.

grow I had several alternatives but didn’t want to upset people.?

varian that’s why the positivity rate is important to know - do we?

I am not a scientist, but I am a sceptic and question every thing, and the motivation behind what is or is not being done in this pandemic.

Dr. Mike Yeadon does have a proven background in medical science but only time will tell if his conclusions are correct. It is however interesting his claim Sage, providing the "scientific" advice to government, is disproportionately made up of mathematicians rather than medical scientists.

sparklingsilver28

I am not a scientist, but I am a sceptic and question every thing, and the motivation behind what is or is not being done in this pandemic.

Dr. Mike Yeadon does have a proven background in medical science but only time will tell if his conclusions are correct. It is however interesting his claim Sage, providing the "scientific" advice to government, is disproportionately made up of mathematicians rather than medical scientists.

I think you should question that claim by MY of the make up of SAGE by doing your own research

Tgere are also sub committees that feed into the overall discussions. He’s being disingenuous

It continually amazes me that the UK seems to be stuffed with people who think they have the education and expertise to question those who do have both.
Just think if, for instance, the design and construction of a nuclear power station or a new kind of airplane were subject to the kind of blind suspicion and reactivity that is being applied to a medical and public health emergency.
Science and maths education bump along at a very low level in this country yet people think rhetoric, social media and cheap journalism somehow inform.
As M0nica says, top universities like Oxford are unlikely to be floundering around, research changes course all the time, that's why it's called research! If outcomes are subsequently found to be wrong, it's not malicious or corrupt or part of a plot to turn us all into Bill Gates' robots, it's how science progresses. And right now, science is trying to find answers to a very new, very clever and invasive virus. There is not yet one answer and there may never be, I think it's fascinating to watch science in progress but personally I tend to trust professionals who have expertise in areas that I don't and that's despite my own postgraduate level of education!

Luckyoldbeethoven - exactly - I could have written that word for word! But didn't - so thank you.

It is however interesting his claim Sage, providing the "scientific" advice to government, is disproportionately made up of mathematicians rather than medical scientists.

The link contains a list of names if you want to check his assertion is correct, sparklingsilver

www.gov.uk/government/publications/scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies-sage-coronavirus-covid-19-response-membership/list-of-participants-of-sage-and-related-sub-groups

The problem Luckyoldbeethoven is that there are different teams of experts with different expertise making different predictions. The government has chosen to nail its colours to one set of experts and disregard any others.

Having some education in statistics and having also been involved in making forecasts for sales of different commodities, the one thing I know is that you cannot blindly follow any curve your mathematics predicts. You have to look at the curve and compare it with what is going on in the real world and then make changes.

Many years ago I did some mathematical modelling that showed quite clearly that within 5 years 200% of Britains total paper consumption would be soft tissue. This is a clear nonsense, and we had to look at other things that showed that actually after 5 years of very rapid growth, the market would now slow down.

I see no evidence that the Imperial College figures do this. On the other hand there is another team of experts at Oxford in the Centre for Evidence based Medicine headed by Carl Heneghan who do just that and constantly recalculate there figures and forecasts and so far their figures are lower and their forecasts are more in line with what is actually happening. Here he explains the figures in a talk radio interview www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0vL0281s5c

I have more confidence in his figures than those of Imperial College and, as the Daily Mail pointed out today and illustrated, some of the graphs shown on Sunday, had been more than a little edited to make things look worse than they are.

The government is trying to make us behave and do as we are told by scaring us. The problem with that, is the problem the little boy who kept crying wolf when there wasn't one had. After a while people do not believe what you say, so that when something happens that is very worrying, no one will take any notice of government because they will just think it is another set of scare tactics and ignore the warnings.

I watched Whitty and Valance being questioned by the select committee this afternoon.
I was very impressed by Jeramy Hunts questioning on the 'Saturday graph' He was not impressed.
Carl Heneghans work was mentioned and both the scientists admitted they were great admirers of his work.
So why wasn't he brought into SAGE ?
They both admitted that the test we have now is not the most perfect and therefore not foolproof. They mentioned a saliva test being used in future.

They mentioned a saliva test being used in future.
I did wonder why the test can't be carried out on a saliva sample, but perhaps there is a higher concentration of the virus, if present, in nasal and throat swabs.