Covid reflection from the UK

France has about 3,25 doctors per thousand people, the UK about 2.75 - a big difference - but the biggest difference is probably that France has about double the number of hospital beds.

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Whilst I take and understand your sentiments its good to reflect or we wont learn or understand how to plan next time and there will be a next time wont there.
Data from Italy September 19 showed many cases of symptomatic covid infections now they have examined blood samples from their records. It is pretty obvious that other countries must have had similar (looking at how quickly it spread it must have been present already) Sweden had it right to begin with but complacency gave way to older population deaths and no one disagrees that sheilding the old and vulnerable should have been a priority. All the panic over closing borders and covid passports was born out of fear that its always the foreigners bringing their diseases in when all the evidence showed it was already in these countries. Also as it emerges none of the jabs stopped transmission so making the above even more ridiculous, you can only travel if you have had a jab! People lost their jobs/careers over a complete falsehood. If you caught covid you caught it, a jab did not protect anyone else, now established as fact.

Where is the incentive from a pharma perspective to produce an actual vaccine in the truest sense of the word when the jab is on its 3rd 4th and 5th circuit of entire populations earning for Pfizer to name just one company 38 billion dollars in profits?

Then we are getting the data that the rNA spike protein is not benign and is causing over stimulation of immune systems and some pretty serious complaints. (My peripheral neuropathy returning after 11 years put me off having any further jabs) until it becomes absolutely a neccessity.

So visiting strageties and making better decisions should definitely be looked at even if it looks like we are being ungrateful.

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Did UK Gov/Medics actually claim that the covid jab would stop transmission???

I think it was very heavily implied. Certainly Pfizer under cross examination had to admit it did not stop transmission. Bearing in mind it was introduced under emergency legistlation they didnt disclose very much at all, its now we can examine the data. In fareness we were all grateful to have something to save us to begin with when the most severe symptoms were very nasty indeed for some.

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Ahā€¦ implied by which expert??

France always pushed masks/hygiene/distance etc against transmission.
The jab was to reduce severity (hopefully) and thus relieve strain on health providers/hospitals et alā€¦

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from all the stuff Iā€™ve been reading over the past 3 yearsā€¦ Iā€™ve not found anything where Pfizer claimed it would stop transmission

Iā€™m thinking that mental-leaps have been made in the excitement of the early daysā€¦ and once someone has claimed/suggested something ā€œmightā€ā€¦ too often itā€™s taken as gospelā€¦

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Thats what it does but how many times on here have I corrected people who say protected? It became part of our conciousness but was not and is still not true. The latter variants produce far far less risk but its up to the person to choose if they want it and that is now a decision they can make with informed consent.

very trueā€¦ (we are on the same wavelength)ā€¦ we know how easily folk cling to something because itā€™s what they want to hearā€¦ even though itā€™s wrong

Cannot speak for the French gov news reports but certainly every evening we in the UK were bombarded by 3 people constantly telling the population it was going to stop transmission and end covid quickly but Only if people got vaccinated which as we can see was not the case. Meanwhile are we ever going to get a proper vaccine that will protect us like the smallpox, flu, whooping cough, polio etc do? Not whilst big pharma can palm us off with jab number 6 ker ching! 38 billion profits who would want to stop that?

no wonder folk are annoyedā€¦

(incidentally I note Pfizer are now looking into blending the flu/covid jabs into one whammy for next winterā€¦ research ongoing)

Iā€™ll take the flu on its own please. So Pfizer ensure their circus carries on clever marketing blighters. We will never get a proper vaccine then as the big pharma would buy up the patent and supress it. 38 billion reasons why. Meanwhile in some people the jab is making them ill.

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Thats my take on it too. Feel that the flu one is more important now. Mum at 93 was jabbed again this week for the 5th time, she is having a bad reaction I heard yesterday and to be honest, she could do without it as she is on oxygen anyway.

I donā€™t like to shoot my mouth off about healthcare and related issues without supporting evidence. There is an article here from the BMJ about vaccination reducing transmission more effectively for the earliest variants, doing so less effectively for later ones. It also mentions government policy changing in step with the evidence of less-reduced transmission and also reduced harm in the population due to vaccination.

There is also some info on the UKHSA website, though it looks to be out of date.

Reviewing the literature quickly shows that early on, vaccination was effective at reducing transmission, but with each major variant that has been reduced. Vaccination is still important to reduce the worst effects of disease, and boosting will help further reduce severity of symptoms.

There has also been discussion about the ability or otherwise to generate sterilising vaccines. my feeling is that this will be impossible with injected vaccination because of the attack surface used by the virus. It might be possible if vaccination was through inhalation of a suitable material to induce mucosal-surface directed immunity, but that might be a challenge to develop safely (no pun intended).

As for lasting effects, from vaccination or otherwise, I still have sciatica that I developed during my covid infection and that doesnā€™t seem to be going away after 6 months. Iā€™d certainly be grumpy if I could link that to vaccination rather than infection, but as it it, I think we both came through with much less and lasting damage than if Iā€™d not been vaccinated - from past experience of respiratory infections thereā€™s a good chance I would not have survived.

FWIW I seem to keep seeing ordinary people getting quite sick with covid, but making full recoveries.

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Well I guess its open to a certain amount of interpretation but too many eminent people took a decision which affected millions.

Looking at the infection rates it doesnt really look like it stopped transmission. The re-infection rates bore some witness to that.
Of course this is Pfizer and the results could be different for others.

I hear you on that. My history of severe respiratory infections in the last 10 to 15 years is not pretty, and thatā€™s without Covid. Iā€™ve never got to the point of being hospitalised, but Iā€™ve been close a couple of times. Fighting for breath is no fun. Thatā€™s why Iā€™m very grateful for the Covid vaccine.

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Perhaps we should not forget that in the first instance there was no vaccine.

Had government not acted and instigated ā€˜Lockdownā€™, there is no doubt that an already strained and underfunded NHS would have simply collapsed under the load of Covid.
The NHS provision of free health care at the time of need is a hugely important thing to many people, and so no government of any colour wants to be in power at the time that the NHS collapses under the strain.
So at a time before the vaccine, and without lockdown, then it is probable that a certain triage of Covid patients would have been needed which would have excluded the elderly, the infirm, the disabled, and the long term unemployed from receiving treatment.
Brutal but necessary, and severely problematic politically. Hence Lockdown.

I shall never forget seeing an Italian doctor from a major hospital in northern Italy being interviewed on TV. She was also the supervising doctor for the old folks care home next door, and quite clearly stated that due to the pressure the hospital was under, there was no chance of any of the care home residents being hospitalised, no matter how sick they became. The elderly were simply to be left to their fate.

As the vaccines came along, and were seen to reduce the severity of illness, and thus reduce pressure on ICUs, it was possible to lift lockdown as the vaccines were achieving what was always the primary objective of stopping the NHS from being overrun.

Indeed there is a huge economic price that is being paid in relation to lockdown, but the alternative would have been to adopt a survival of the fittest policy.

Perhaps those who now complain about the economic fallout of government strategies during the pandemic would be happier if there were now far fewer elderly people in our society. Certainly this would indeed be ā€˜convenientā€™ for reducing the bill for both pensions and social care.

No doubt what was done, or indeed not done, was for a combination of both political, and to probably a lesser extent, compassionate reasons.

At the end of the day, due to the form of politics that currently prevails, the most important thing is always the preservation of the best possible interests of the Party in the prevailing circumstances. Compared to that primary purpose, the interests of the economy, and the well being of the people, come a distant second place.

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Whilst I agree with most of what you have written Robert looking back at the actions, where they were more or less effective and the complete costs involved to be better armed for the future.

There still is no vaccine in the purest sense. There is a jab, a medicine that in some cases makes the symptoms less harmful. One of the biggest points I was making from my previous post is the zero incentive to make an effective vaccine now that big pharma are turning profits of 37-38 billion dollars per year for a constantly repeatable but innefective jab. Yes we were grateful for the introduction early on but reconise the con for what it is. Jabbing the populations of the world that can afford it every 6 months to alleviate some people who have pre dispositions to illnesses is just not viable.
How are the countries doing that cannot afford this path? (One for Ancient Mariner?) There are also health concerns for jabbing and causing peoples immune systems to go into overdrive with a spike protein that has been found to migrate around the body and begin auto immune attacks on other organs. The spike protein of this jab is not benign evidence is showing and other complications are emerging. Time to modify the roll out to those most at risk for now whilst demanding the proper development of a proper vaccine. Dog knows the pharma have made enough money to fund the research!

My reflections on this are not just about the political and economic after effects, but the psychological ones too. Particularly on the vulnerable and the young.

Our grandchildren in the UK missed a huge chunk of education, with all the things that come with going to school. Friendā€™s children here were much less affected as Macron prioritised keeping schools open - horribly complicated for parents and teachers alike. But a better long term decision.

And my auto-immune friends in the UK were terrified into shielding and locking themselves in their homes (govā€™t advice - sit by the window to get fresh air!) whereas I was just told to be careful. The support provided in the UK, such as grocery deliveries, was hit and miss which stressed people out further. I have several acquaintances who are still at home as they have got stuck on the message ā€œ if I leave home, I dieā€.

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Iā€™m sorry @Corona but you are simply incorrect, and talking out of your own biases and wishful thinking.

Corona has been reading Dr Malhotra again, who has given up the evils of sugar for the evils of Covid vaccines