Thread by @danielgoyal

This Week In Covid.

1. To the surprise of pretty much no sane person, another wave of Covid took hold this week. On the flip-side, the 5th (or is it 6th?) wave in two years served another dose of reality...

#TheWeekInCovid

...to the paper-thin ‘seasonality’ argument. Hang in there, it may be right one day. As they say, even a biased scientist is right twice a day….or is it a ‘broken watch’…or a ‘broken record’?

2. Either way, after two years of being repeatedly wrong about (1) mass infection - turns out getting an infection to prevent an infection wasnt such a good idea -, (2) herd immunity - seems high school textbooks were right all along and viruses can mutate -,

and (3) the idea that if you act late you somehow preserve the economy - who knew confidence and employees are so important to economic recovery? -, we can all expect there to be absolutely no apologies anytime soon.

3. Although,…a number of governments have managed to switch from a ‘who not to save’ fatalism - where the policy seemed to be rationing care to the over 65s -, to one of complete denial and minimisation.

4. Care is of course still rationed under Phase 2 of the pandemic strategy - ‘ignore Covid’. It’s just that now EVERYONE has limited access to healthcare.

5. Despite the surges in cases, hospitalisations and deaths, some political leaders are doubling down, with a

move straight from the Super-Nanny playbook: the more attention you give SARS2 the worse it behaves. They seemed to forget the part where you have to reinforce good behaviour else you end up with a much bigger pain in the ass later on.

6. The “Omicron is like the Flu” cult continues to gain more followers, despite being based on no scientific findings at all. It seems telling a weary public a dangerous virus isn’t that dangerous is quite well received.

7. Now, with only a handful of journalists seemingly capable of fact-checking the scientific facts, editors can finally move on to ‘proper’ news.

8. And our beleaguered political elite are probably just grateful not to have to sit through clinical epidemiology presentations and then try and pretend they understood it, so they could appear to be informed on what they were going to ignore anyway.

9. So, tell the people what they want to hear and, it seems, you can do whatever you like. In other unrelated news, vaccination rates continue to plummet - somewhat of an issue when following a vaccine-only approach!

10. There is some good news this week. The daily number of Covid deaths reported to the WHO has fallen. From 50K deaths a few weeks ago to 32K this week. For context, this is more than die each day of breast, bowel and prostate cancer COMBINED; higher than any other...

...infectious disease on the planet, and keeps Covid as one of the world’s top five killers. Indeed, Globally, Covid is currently killing more than the combined total of TB, HIV, Malaria, Flu and all the diseases listed as High Consequence Infectious Diseases! I know, I know,..

...it’s just a wee cold. I best move on or I might be accused of calling for a lockdown or challenging the human right to not wear a mask.

11. More good news, vaccines have not turned anyone into zombies or slaves of the state yet. We are still waiting to see what are the full

...long-term consequences of Covid - diabetes just joined the list this week, alongside neuropsychiatric disorders, thrombosis, and cardiovascular disease. The Long Covid group are rapidly becoming a significant voting demographic - expect some pandering without substance soon.

12. The UK made global news this week as about a week after PM Johnson declares victory over Covid and announces an end to all state PROTECTIONS because "Covid isn’t increasing ICU admissions", another surge of infections batters the UK... and yes, ICU admissions rise. So do...

...hospitalisations, deaths, staff absences, student absences, and inflation (although the last one may be due to sabotaging acting trade routes to keep Britain great!).

13. The US have their own problems, with reports leaked that show political spin doctors are advising...

President Biden to claim victory over ‘beating Covid’. No doubt he inherited an utter sh!tshow from Trump, but given one month ago they had the highest peak in hospital admissions and the second highest peak in deaths since the pandemic began I expect Biden would struggle ...

...to keep a straight face while claiming victory. They may ask Johnson for some tips on how to sell a steaming pile of manure to the public.

14. As scientists - the ones actually kicking Covid’s ass - are sidelined, politicians, journalists and big business look to anyone...

...else to reinforce the delusion that the pandemic is over. Expect philosophy and metaphysics students to be holding all press conferences in the future, to discuss probability theory, `alternate universes’ and the question “what is reality anyway”..

15. On a serious note, there have been huge strides forward. Vaccines continue to hold out over severe disease.

16. While we lost one of our antibody treatments this week due to resistance to the variant of the Omicron variant, BA.2 - it just doesn’t work against Omicron -,..

..we still have impressive treatments, eligible to high risk patients.

17. 10s of thousands of scientists continue to work towards eliminating Covid through the next generation of vaccines. Although might be a problem if the public don't trust the politicians recommending them.

While many a politician remains slave to the 24-hour news cycle, we are free to exercise basic precautions of vaccinations, masking, reducing indoor social gatherings in unventilated spaces, and voting for leaders who actually give a sh!t about the people they represent.
END.