Let's ramp up the fear.....

[Workingman]

Dispatches on C4 has just done a coronavirus programme looking at contamination in all sorts of places - think door handles, TV remotes, shopping trolleys - and guess what? They found organic contamination; all sorts of contaminants. The suggestion from all that was that we were in real danger.

So, swabs were sent off for analysis and, unsurprisingly, living things (bacteria, fungi and viruses) grew on agar nutrient Petri dishes. Now we really are in grave danger.

But some samples grown were small and all too often they were of things like E-coli and salmonella, there was hardly a mention of coronavirus and certainly no outstanding 'OMG!' cause for concern, and it was coronavirus that the programme was supposed to be about.

Think of all the millions of us who are out every day touching handrails, door handles, trolleys, shop counters, bus seats, table tops.... and we are not all keeling over and dying from Covid-19. The whole thing was fear mongering at its finest, and was so unnecessary.

[Suff]

The thing is, within reason, the cleaner the world you live in the more susceptible you will be to dirt and bacteria.

The immune system has to learn to cope. The more we disinfect our world, the more likely some relatively harmless bug (to us), will kill.

But that kind of sense doesn't sell news or scare people into buying more disinfectant.

[Workingman]

The programme that followed was about allergies and how they affected people's lives; and also how dangerous they can be. There has apparently been a 65% increase in allergies in young people over the past five years. Everyone was talking about how careful everyone should be and what steps food shops and manufacturers should take, by law if necessary.

Nobody, not one person, asked what was causing the allergies in the first place or why the cases were going up so quickly.

[cromwell]

Let's ramp up the fear indeed. Some of MrsC's relatives just sit and watch the news all day - no wonder they are terrified.
There was an article in the Telegraph yesterday pointing out that we are still reacting to the ridiculous forecasts of Professor Neil Ferguson and his 500,000 deaths.
We have over estimated covid deaths and we are not even counting the deaths and illnesses caused by lockdown.
Missed cancer diagnoses, suicides, mental health problems, untreated strokes. Admissions for heart attacks have halved. The attacks are still happening, but people aren't going to hospital. Long term this will damage the heart irreparably.
We can't go on doing this.

[Suff]

How about this one then...

[url]

Covid: Antibodies 'fall rapidly after infection'

[/url]

In the article the prof says

"On the balance of evidence, I would say it would look as if immunity declines away at the same rate as antibodies decline away, and that this is an indication of waning immunity."

On the face of it, quite terrifying.

But if you do a bit of study from articles WELL before Covid.

there is another matter of historical interest associated with the results described in this volume. The scientists who proposed the elements of the clonal selection theory in the 1950s thought that the immune response would be driven entirely by antigen and that, when antigen disappeared, the immune response would cease (1-3). These scientists also expected that the primary immune response would create relatively small numbers of antigen-specific cells, cells that would survive more or less in toto, to become memory cells, when the primary infection was over. Now we know that the clonal selection theory was wrong on both these fronts. In spite of the fact that this theory accurately predicted many aspects of the immune response, it fell short in its predictions about the end of immunity, as amply demonstrated by the articles herein. For example, we now know that immune responses are accompanied by tremendous increases in the numbers of antigen-specific T cells (4-9) and to a lesser extent B cells (10). Clearly, most of these cells must be destroyed to make space, cytokines, and nutrients available for other cells and also to avoid huge amounts of inflammation were all these cells to be reactivated. Thus, biology has arranged that most of the antigen-specific cells generated during an infection disappear. The processes that control such removal are discussed at length in several articles in this volume (11-18). Nevertheless, not all antigen-induced cells die, many survive to create the memory cells (predicted by the clonal selection theorists) that protect us against reinfections (16, 19, 20).

So, one wonders, who were the experts? Those who study the cell levels and say "wow look they are declining, must be losing immunity"? Or those who spent a lifetime studying cell response and have recorded this decline many times but actually record the results, analyse them and come to a viable theory peer reviewed and released?

There are even articles with images which show how the human body responds to first and second infections and the levels of antibodies found in the blood.



Fear is power.

[Workingman]

I don't know the article (no url, but reports are in various outlets) and I suspect that this would be the study by Imperial College London, which found the number of people testing positive for antibodies has fallen by 26% between June and September.

This was shared with news from the Office for National Statistics show that the number of Covid-19 deaths in the UK rose by 60% in the week of 16 October.

Compare and contrast - 26% fall with a 60% rise. We are doomed!

Nothing much was said about T-cells and their function and nothing at all about B-cells, it was all about antigens and immunity and it is easy to see why. The vast majority of us know what antibodies are and what immunity is so play on those and exclude all else.

Thankfully the BBC interviewed Dr Chris Smith, Clinical Lecturer in Virology at Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge. He coolly and calmly explained the difference between immunity and the immune response. He explained that antibodies were first reponders and that T-cell and B-cells were memory cells necessary for when the antibodies had done their work so that that hose antibodies could reproduce if there was reinfection. Antibodies are or can be (relatively) short lived whereas memory cells live on for decades, even for our whole lives.

But sod that. WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE! That is what the media wants us to believe.

[Kaz]

Let's ramp up the fear indeed. Some of MrsC's relatives just sit and watch the news all day - no wonder they are terrified.
There was an article in the Telegraph yesterday pointing out that we are still reacting to the ridiculous forecasts of Professor Neil Ferguson and his 500,000 deaths.
We have over estimated covid deaths and we are not even counting the deaths and illnesses caused by lockdown.
Missed cancer diagnoses, suicides, mental health problems, untreated strokes. Admissions for heart attacks have halved. The attacks are still happening, but people aren't going to hospital. Long term this will damage the heart irreparably.
We can't go on doing this.

100% agreeing with this.

[Suff]

But sod that. WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE! That is what the media wants us to believe.

Indeed.

Sorry thought I'd linked the article. Too late to go back and get it now, time to end the day.

[cromwell]

Oh tremendous.
We've now got another slogan - "lampshade".
Deaths won't be as high as the first wave but they will go on for longer, apparently.
Which will be used to lock us all down at Christmas.
Meanwhile Sweden has had 6,000 covid deaths.
Professor Halfwit Lockdown-Ferguson predicted they would have 85,000!

As they have gone completely against his advice permit me to doubt how much of an "expert" he and the rest of the SAGE gang are.

[Workingman]

Ah, but we'll all be saved - experts and MPs have a plan: the weather forecast.

The new weather, pollen counts, UV checks and coronavirus bulletins will ensure that we are all kept up to date.

Seriously, that is what is being proposed. The weather forecast will not only give us weather updates, as well as pollen counts and UV numbers, it will also give us figures for coronavirus cases and deaths - locally and nationally.

Imagine the lovely Carol: "A low from the west will bring both high winds and rain to parts.......... meanwhile coronavirus cases are set to rise here and here, but elsewhere deaths will be stable for this time of year. Enjoy your weekend."

Life gets more like living in a Monty Python sketch by the day.