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An informative thread written by Chris Hopson (Chief Exec. of NHS providers). Some positive stuff, some not so much, and a sprinkling of caveats (such as we need to wait and see..).

All the things you say are very fair. There is nothing currently scientifically factual about the study. It is indeed a pre-print. I’d expect the findings will promote further studies and hopefully eventually translate into something more conclusive It’s been mentioned before that some people now just want to find glimmers of hope and positivity in something, anything. I’d hope that nobody sees Tweets like that and thinks “Oooh, I’ll run out and lick the surfaces of my nearest COVID ward and gulp in the air cos if I get Omicron, I’ll be immune to Delta”. Those kind of people probably still think the vaccine contains microchips or that COVID is a hoax. The small glimmers of positivity that are out there might just give some people a slight feeling of hope. Other people will, fairly, dismiss some of it, and need something more solid to lift their own views/thoughts about how things are and how they might play out. edit: I concede on that Doctor Clare whoever. I didn’t think there was anything fundamentally wrong with that one particular video but, yes, it’s clear she has been shown to have certain views towards the extreme side of bonkers.

Positive stuff!

Good article. There’s a longer version of that interview somewhere in which he talks about the robust t-cell response from that “type” of vaccine. It’s likely that MRNA vaccines are better at producing antibodies whereas an adenoviral vector like AZ, although it might not be as effective against initial infection, gives you better overall and longer lasting protection against severe disease. (I hope he’s right because I had AZ). Couple of good articles in the Guardian over the last few days. One from Owen Jones of all people (who’s usually a misery word removed). https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/22/omicron-covid-restrictions-young-people And a somewhat positive slant within this one: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/26/omicron-bleak-new-year-or-beginning-of-the-end-for-the-pandemic

I do indeed as may others. Some might not. She’s just explained the risk based on raw stats from Cambridge University. She hasn’t promoted anyone take risks or not adhere to restrictions.

Here’s a good, positive video from a doctor who puts COVID risks into perspective in an easy to understand way. She uses data taken from Cambridge University studies.

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/12/us-army-creates-single-vaccine-effective-against-all-covid-sars-variants/360089/ Might be something

With caveats, but a little bit of Christmas cheer from the man himself: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/16/britain-may-better-omicron-delta-says-chris-whitty/

Like the Nightingale hospitals that Boris and his chums opened and then closed?

This is nice news. It adjusts for age and shows more positive outcomes across all ages.

This is very fair. It does now seem that there is a clear spectrum of how the data is being interpreted by different scientists/doctors/experts. There are some who view the data available through a negative lens whilst others are managing to identify positives. Personally, I’m just trying to be optimistic and I suppose I am paying more attention to those scientists/doctors/experts who feed into my optimism. Ahh well. I’ll keep bringing the sprinkles of optimism. Some people might appreciate it.

First you had Dominic Raab who couldn’t decide if the number of people in hospital with Omicron was 250, 9 or 10. Then you had Boris saying there had been 780,000 cases in one day. And now this hilarious effort…. Same energy as a school kid who is trying to blag the answers because they didn’t do their homework.

I’m sure it’s not mate. The doctor himself didn’t say it was a slight cold; Kevin O’Sullivan twisted his comment there.

Just adding another silly bint to the bin-fire. This one is Carl Heneghan: a professor of evidence-based medicine at the University of Oxford and director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine

https://samedaydoctor.org/dr-laurence-gerlis-gmc-1736645-ma-mb-bchir-mrcp-uk-dip-pharm-med/

Fair. He’s said some commentators are being alarmist (true) and the next day he said we need to be calm. It’s fine imposing restrictions to manage the spread of the virus, but I do think the message sent out could be managed in a more delicate (and calmer) way rather than sounding the klaxons of impending doom. The worse case scenarios/data always seem to get pushed much harder and there doesn’t seem to be much positive data/many positive scenarios offered as a counterweight.

Some people want to prey at the altar of Chris Witty whilst others do not. It’s not all random nut jobs on Tik Tok/Twitter who are calling for a measured approach. There are other scientists interpreting the data and calling for a calmer response. Is this consultant at the University of Oxford hospitals opinion one of a nut job on Twitter?

Yup. People do take tongue in cheek stuff way to seriously.

Here’s a good account. The guy running it has been doing an excellent job at completely dismantling the nonsense coming out of people’s mouths (including the Welsh health ‘expert’ who claimed there were 10K patients in Welsh hospitals with COVID and Lorraine Kelly & Dr Hillary Doom’s claim that 90% of patients in hospital were unvaxxed). He makes it explicitly clear that he’s not anti vaccination but he’s bored of people misrepresenting the facts.

I’m pretty sure Chris Witty said yesterday that the most vulnerable will need four jabs.

Caveat: unsure of the source but…. edit:

Meanwhile over in South Africa (one of the world’s unhealthiest nations) https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2021-02-09-is-sa-the-worlds-unhealthiest-country/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/12/13/south-africas-omicron-covid-outbreaks-may-already-running-steam/ We can debate demographics all day but S.A can seemingly give us some hope. If Omicron causes serious issues in this country given we’ve double vaxxed a larger amount of the population, delivered >20M booster jabs, with 95% of adults having antibodies then there really is absolutely no hope. It’s never going to end.