A single university researcher tweeted that their “science WhatsApp groups were buzzing” and that they “didn’t understand the details” but thought that people should “mask up”. COVID rates have increased recently, but they do tend to fluctuate, and they remain at low levels, relatively speaking, compared to even 3 months ago. This article is clickbait, pure and simple.
If so, then don’t just look at the positive tests but at the graph that shows tests performed. Positive tests goes up but tests performed is relatively the same. That tells you it is a real increase in positivity. It could be the start of another big peak, or not. Time will tell, but you’d think going through the last years one should pay attention to such statistics. Because if you start taking measures only when you are back to 100.000+ cases a day you are a bit too late.
I “admit” committed is funny because that’s what COVID and all of the “I did my own research” hoopla has made me feel like. That I’ve been committed to an insane asylum with all of the loonies spreading their theories justifying their behavior without impunity thereby making COVID more deadly as it lasts longer given such time to continuously mutate…
Okay, I’m looking - it clearly is going up and down in cycles but progressively the peaks are smoothing out. Can you explain the need for a stronger response now than we had in March? Are we just going to just go insane every 3 months and declare “omg, covid is back!” because a seasonal disease has peaks and troughs?
No, because if hysteria would be an appropriate response it wouldn’t be hysteria. The good news is: no one is calling for hysteria, there’s just a recommendation to wear masks.
I’m not saying that there isn’t an increase in cases of COVID, I’m sure there are - it’s just that it is still such a small number of cases that it doesn’t matter. The big spikes we had originally in 2020 and 2021 will not reoccur. There are little bumps here and there but nothing significant.
You mean to tell me that we’re looking at this chart:
and we’re meant to be concerned about the growth of COVID? We need to chill out, seriously.
Right back at you. Please show me where I am not “chill” here? There is one person who is not chill and its certainly not me.
You can still choose to wear a mask or not, theres no law yet or is there? So just don’t, I guess?
The smaller bumps by the way occur because people kept getting vaccines and boosters. How does that look like where you are? When was the last time you got a shot or a booster? From the sound of it a while ago.
I don’t have a problem with wearing a mask, honestly I’d like to see it become more commonplace in flu season. But I do have a problem with the article being total bullshit. The source is complete bunk, there’s nothing special about the data trend that I can see, there’s no official guidance from SAGE or anyone notable that we should be wearing masks, just some random Twitter user. So why make that headline? For clicks, clearly, right?
This is really harmful stuff because it means if there genuinely IS a reason to wear masks again then it’s harder to get that message out because of all the noise - I’m reminded of the boy who cried wolf story. It’s also anxiety-inducing and just harmful for people’s mental health.
I’m interested for your source about the boosters/vaccines thing - I have taken every vaccine/booster I’ve been offered but the last one was a year ago I think and I haven’t been offered one since, and it seems like the bumps occur every three months, which seems far too frequently to coincide with booster rollouts - my guess was that the virus was seasonal like the flu, but if you have a source for that I’d love to be proven wrong because it sounds very interesting.
BTW, I didn’t mean to imply that you, personally, weren’t chill - it was more of a general statement aimed towards everyone in the comments, but I wrote it poorly, so apologies for that, you’ve been completely level-headed.
Clearly there’s no medical reason AGAINST wearing a mask, that’s never the argument. Masks aren’t going to make things worse, obviously. They will definitely reduce infection rates and it’s sensible to wear them. However, I don’t think there’s a particularly compelling reason to encourage everyone to wear masks everywhere they go anymore since transmission has dropped dramatically and remains fairly low. I think the guidance should be, if you’re not feeling well, stay home, or wear a mask if you must go out.
it’s just that it is still such a small number of cases that it doesn’t matter.
To the best of my knowledge there is no meaningful surveillance in the USA or EU. Some places are still doing wastewater testing but it’s difficult to make solid determinations from wastewater.
This is an article about the UK. I don’t have a strong understanding of what the situation is like anywhere else, but in the UK, the numbers are quite low.
Is there still surveillance in the UK? Afaik Wales is still doing wastewater testing, but I’m not aware of any other systematic surveillance being conducted now.
in England, yeah, there is - it’s not as good as it once was and it’s getting dialled back more and more, but we still have some reporting & surveillance - you can see the dashboard here.
If I’m reading that right they did 30k tests and got 6k positives, about 17%. I would consider that enough infection going around to be very concerned. Am I misunderstanding those numbers?
Well, most people wouldn’t get tested unless they have a reason to, e.g. displaying symptoms, so that skews the numbers significantly - there’s no broad testing happening anymore, really. Number of infections per 100k population is a more interesting metric - I was curious and put together a line graph of that over the last 12 months.
I think the little uptick that we’re seeing recently, is just seemingly part of the pattern of steadily reducing number of cases - there’s a little bump, followed by a drop. I’m not sure what causes the pattern, though.
Anyways, the more in-depth reports have lots of information, one I think is particularly interesting is for google trends in COVID symptoms - that hasn’t really increased recently. In general, cases, hospitalisations, deaths, and positivity (i.e. the number of tests coming back as positive) are significantly lower now than they were.
You know you can follow the tweet to learn more about the author, right?
That “random person” is Trisha Greenhalgh - Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford.
Here’s an excerpt from her Oxford Uni profile: Trish is the author of over 400 peer-reviewed publications and 16 textbooks. She was awarded the OBE for Services to Medicine by Her Majesty the Queen in 2001, made a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences in 2014, and elected an International Fellow of the US Academy of Medicine in 2021. She is also a Fellow of the UK Royal College of Physicians, Royal College of General Practitioners, Faculty of Clinical Informatics and Faculty of Public Health. https://www.phc.ox.ac.uk/team/trish-greenhalgh
That’s a really good point, thanks. I will revise my comment, but I still think that the article’s headline is massively misleading - it’s still a single individual, whom openly admits to not knowing the details, and suggest wearing masks as a precaution in high-risk scenarios. I think my entire argument was poorly made, to be fair, but I think it still has merit.
“Not knowing the details” is part of scientific endeavour. If we already knew the details there would be no need for science in the first place. We should not hold it against her.
Your idiocy is astounding and it’s a miracle your bloodline hasn’t been wiped out yet by natural selection. This article is a warning against complacency and an effort to prevent a second covid crisis. Idiots like you are for a huge part to blame why the first one was so devestating so shut the fuck up and stick to your esotheric yoga group for middle aged women on facebook.
I’d be very happy to address your concerns, if you can point out my errors then I’d gladly address them. Personally, I don’t think “idiots like [me]” are in any way responsible for the damage of COVID - it was entirely the failure of the state to properly address the pandemic. Personally, I have received four doses of the vaccine, always wore a mask in public and encouraged other people to do so. But I am scientifically literate and media aware and I know scare journalism when I see it. I didn’t intend for my comment to upset anyone, but you really must open your eyes to the reality - journalists are sucking desperately at the teat of getting clicks, and COVID was a huge story that has dried up, so they’ll bite literally anything to bring that back into the press.
I like your disdain for journalists and capitalism and the state but sometimes stories stick around for a long time because they’re actually still on-going. Pandemics usually have multiple cycles. There usually isn’t just one big spread and that’s it. The fact that the state f’ed up the response to the initial wave just makes more waves more likely.
Journos are wrong a lot but not 100% of the time just like 95% lol
Yeah, for sure, I get that pandemics happen in waves, I just don’t buy that there’s going to be another surge like we saw in 2022. It just doesn’t make sense, there would have to be some superspreader event the likes of which we have never seen - and we already had all of the insane amount of everyone flooding back into the airports for the summer holidays. If it was going to have a resurgence, it would have been then, I think.
I think that as long as its still spreading pretty regularly, which it is, I know its not the same as in 2022 but there is still spread happening in lots of places. As long as thats happening theres a chance of mutation and if someone with a bad mutation goes to an airport or a sports event that could trigger a surge at any moment. Its impossible to predict this stuff so I understand being skeptical of headlines especially because media always fucks up science stories. But like I said with the spread and mutations happening we don’t know when but its likely that there will be spikes or surges at some point and that means preventable deaths and thats bad. Its not as bad as we’ve seen before but still bad.
Yeah, exactly, that’s what bothers me - the risk exists, and the more that media spreads this kind of sensationist shit, the more likely that when a new variant does cause a surge in infections, people will ignore those headlines and that guidance because they’ve been desensitised.
I think the only disconnect we have is that I think different people will take this story in different ways. Some of the people in this thread I think are in the minority that is very worried about covid and the real effects its having on them or their loved ones and to them this article isn’t sensationalist.
Generally I agree with you though, most people will take an article like this as proof that the media is always full of shit and fearmongering for money and that feeling isn’t unfounded.
I think the NHS could save a lot more lives if they got funded properly. The government has been working to dismantle the NHS for years so it can be privatised. We need to be angry with the state and capitalism, not with our fellow working class people who are struggling to make ends meet.
A single university researcher tweeted that their “science WhatsApp groups were buzzing” and that they “didn’t understand the details” but thought that people should “mask up”. COVID rates have increased recently, but they do tend to fluctuate, and they remain at low levels, relatively speaking, compared to even 3 months ago. This article is clickbait, pure and simple.
You mean this data? https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
If so, then don’t just look at the positive tests but at the graph that shows tests performed. Positive tests goes up but tests performed is relatively the same. That tells you it is a real increase in positivity. It could be the start of another big peak, or not. Time will tell, but you’d think going through the last years one should pay attention to such statistics. Because if you start taking measures only when you are back to 100.000+ cases a day you are a bit too late.
and patients committed
I “admit” committed is funny because that’s what COVID and all of the “I did my own research” hoopla has made me feel like. That I’ve been committed to an insane asylum with all of the loonies spreading their theories justifying their behavior without impunity thereby making COVID more deadly as it lasts longer given such time to continuously mutate…
Okay, I’m looking - it clearly is going up and down in cycles but progressively the peaks are smoothing out. Can you explain the need for a stronger response now than we had in March? Are we just going to just go insane every 3 months and declare “omg, covid is back!” because a seasonal disease has peaks and troughs?
No, because if hysteria would be an appropriate response it wouldn’t be hysteria. The good news is: no one is calling for hysteria, there’s just a recommendation to wear masks.
This is the article’s source for “recommendation to wear masks”
A single tweet from a university researcher. And yet, we have a sensationalist headline about it.
I’m not saying that there isn’t an increase in cases of COVID, I’m sure there are - it’s just that it is still such a small number of cases that it doesn’t matter. The big spikes we had originally in 2020 and 2021 will not reoccur. There are little bumps here and there but nothing significant.
You mean to tell me that we’re looking at this chart:
and we’re meant to be concerned about the growth of COVID? We need to chill out, seriously.
Right back at you. Please show me where I am not “chill” here? There is one person who is not chill and its certainly not me.
You can still choose to wear a mask or not, theres no law yet or is there? So just don’t, I guess?
The smaller bumps by the way occur because people kept getting vaccines and boosters. How does that look like where you are? When was the last time you got a shot or a booster? From the sound of it a while ago.
I don’t have a problem with wearing a mask, honestly I’d like to see it become more commonplace in flu season. But I do have a problem with the article being total bullshit. The source is complete bunk, there’s nothing special about the data trend that I can see, there’s no official guidance from SAGE or anyone notable that we should be wearing masks, just some random Twitter user. So why make that headline? For clicks, clearly, right?
This is really harmful stuff because it means if there genuinely IS a reason to wear masks again then it’s harder to get that message out because of all the noise - I’m reminded of the boy who cried wolf story. It’s also anxiety-inducing and just harmful for people’s mental health.
I’m interested for your source about the boosters/vaccines thing - I have taken every vaccine/booster I’ve been offered but the last one was a year ago I think and I haven’t been offered one since, and it seems like the bumps occur every three months, which seems far too frequently to coincide with booster rollouts - my guess was that the virus was seasonal like the flu, but if you have a source for that I’d love to be proven wrong because it sounds very interesting.
BTW, I didn’t mean to imply that you, personally, weren’t chill - it was more of a general statement aimed towards everyone in the comments, but I wrote it poorly, so apologies for that, you’ve been completely level-headed.
this proves you don’t understand what you’re talking about at all. there was never a compelling reason to stop masking according to the data. period.
Clearly there’s no medical reason AGAINST wearing a mask, that’s never the argument. Masks aren’t going to make things worse, obviously. They will definitely reduce infection rates and it’s sensible to wear them. However, I don’t think there’s a particularly compelling reason to encourage everyone to wear masks everywhere they go anymore since transmission has dropped dramatically and remains fairly low. I think the guidance should be, if you’re not feeling well, stay home, or wear a mask if you must go out.
that’s nice. it’s also tantamount to covid denial, so you can just take it and shove it right back up your ass where it came from.
It isn’t even slightly close to COVID denial. You are overreacting, I’m sorry, but that’s the reality.
To the best of my knowledge there is no meaningful surveillance in the USA or EU. Some places are still doing wastewater testing but it’s difficult to make solid determinations from wastewater.
This is an article about the UK. I don’t have a strong understanding of what the situation is like anywhere else, but in the UK, the numbers are quite low.
Is there still surveillance in the UK? Afaik Wales is still doing wastewater testing, but I’m not aware of any other systematic surveillance being conducted now.
in England, yeah, there is - it’s not as good as it once was and it’s getting dialled back more and more, but we still have some reporting & surveillance - you can see the dashboard here.
If I’m reading that right they did 30k tests and got 6k positives, about 17%. I would consider that enough infection going around to be very concerned. Am I misunderstanding those numbers?
Well, most people wouldn’t get tested unless they have a reason to, e.g. displaying symptoms, so that skews the numbers significantly - there’s no broad testing happening anymore, really. Number of infections per 100k population is a more interesting metric - I was curious and put together a line graph of that over the last 12 months.
I think the little uptick that we’re seeing recently, is just seemingly part of the pattern of steadily reducing number of cases - there’s a little bump, followed by a drop. I’m not sure what causes the pattern, though.
Anyways, the more in-depth reports have lots of information, one I think is particularly interesting is for google trends in COVID symptoms - that hasn’t really increased recently. In general, cases, hospitalisations, deaths, and positivity (i.e. the number of tests coming back as positive) are significantly lower now than they were.
You know you can follow the tweet to learn more about the author, right?
That “random person” is Trisha Greenhalgh - Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford.
Here’s an excerpt from her Oxford Uni profile:
Trish is the author of over 400 peer-reviewed publications and 16 textbooks. She was awarded the OBE for Services to Medicine by Her Majesty the Queen in 2001, made a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences in 2014, and elected an International Fellow of the US Academy of Medicine in 2021. She is also a Fellow of the UK Royal College of Physicians, Royal College of General Practitioners, Faculty of Clinical Informatics and Faculty of Public Health.
https://www.phc.ox.ac.uk/team/trish-greenhalgh
Her Google Scholar profile shows that her work has been cited almost 95,000 times in other research papers.
https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?sortby=pubdate&hl=en&user=8KQwEGcAAAAJ&view_op=list_works
That’s a really good point, thanks. I will revise my comment, but I still think that the article’s headline is massively misleading - it’s still a single individual, whom openly admits to not knowing the details, and suggest wearing masks as a precaution in high-risk scenarios. I think my entire argument was poorly made, to be fair, but I think it still has merit.
deleted by creator
Definitely a them problem because it’s not a problem over here where I am
Top marks for reading comprehension, yes, my difficulty to explain my argument is my problem. Thank you for your support.
deleted by creator
“Not knowing the details” is part of scientific endeavour. If we already knew the details there would be no need for science in the first place. We should not hold it against her.
Your idiocy is astounding and it’s a miracle your bloodline hasn’t been wiped out yet by natural selection. This article is a warning against complacency and an effort to prevent a second covid crisis. Idiots like you are for a huge part to blame why the first one was so devestating so shut the fuck up and stick to your esotheric yoga group for middle aged women on facebook.
I’d be very happy to address your concerns, if you can point out my errors then I’d gladly address them. Personally, I don’t think “idiots like [me]” are in any way responsible for the damage of COVID - it was entirely the failure of the state to properly address the pandemic. Personally, I have received four doses of the vaccine, always wore a mask in public and encouraged other people to do so. But I am scientifically literate and media aware and I know scare journalism when I see it. I didn’t intend for my comment to upset anyone, but you really must open your eyes to the reality - journalists are sucking desperately at the teat of getting clicks, and COVID was a huge story that has dried up, so they’ll bite literally anything to bring that back into the press.
I like your disdain for journalists and capitalism and the state but sometimes stories stick around for a long time because they’re actually still on-going. Pandemics usually have multiple cycles. There usually isn’t just one big spread and that’s it. The fact that the state f’ed up the response to the initial wave just makes more waves more likely.
Journos are wrong a lot but not 100% of the time just like 95% lol
Yeah, for sure, I get that pandemics happen in waves, I just don’t buy that there’s going to be another surge like we saw in 2022. It just doesn’t make sense, there would have to be some superspreader event the likes of which we have never seen - and we already had all of the insane amount of everyone flooding back into the airports for the summer holidays. If it was going to have a resurgence, it would have been then, I think.
I think that as long as its still spreading pretty regularly, which it is, I know its not the same as in 2022 but there is still spread happening in lots of places. As long as thats happening theres a chance of mutation and if someone with a bad mutation goes to an airport or a sports event that could trigger a surge at any moment. Its impossible to predict this stuff so I understand being skeptical of headlines especially because media always fucks up science stories. But like I said with the spread and mutations happening we don’t know when but its likely that there will be spikes or surges at some point and that means preventable deaths and thats bad. Its not as bad as we’ve seen before but still bad.
Yeah, exactly, that’s what bothers me - the risk exists, and the more that media spreads this kind of sensationist shit, the more likely that when a new variant does cause a surge in infections, people will ignore those headlines and that guidance because they’ve been desensitised.
I think the only disconnect we have is that I think different people will take this story in different ways. Some of the people in this thread I think are in the minority that is very worried about covid and the real effects its having on them or their loved ones and to them this article isn’t sensationalist.
Generally I agree with you though, most people will take an article like this as proof that the media is always full of shit and fearmongering for money and that feeling isn’t unfounded.
Removed by mod
Its for yor benefit. And NHS actually saves lives.
I think the NHS could save a lot more lives if they got funded properly. The government has been working to dismantle the NHS for years so it can be privatised. We need to be angry with the state and capitalism, not with our fellow working class people who are struggling to make ends meet.