Member Info for Olpps

As for the media, the mainstream definitely whips up a frenzy over little things (and I hate it) but on the flip side, alternative media often undersells the risks, manipulates the statistics to see what they want and aren't fact checked. This goes for so called you tube experts too (the guy in this video is a doctor of education and former nurse, not a medical doctor, statistician or epidemiologist). I get why people want to use alternative media when the establishment can be so intrustworthy, and I'm not knocking people for not being able to do the research themselves directly (I struggle when outside my own expertise as well and I do it for a living!) but I'm just saying everyone had an agenda, not just mainstream.
Not a clap back, just correcting some bad stats with more accurate ones. Anyway, I'm off to work so enjoy your day all!

Hey kick,
You haven't missed any, haven't really post much as though I read the board, not for much of value to say on sticks, lol.
You're right the pandemic seems to be coming to an end, and thank f**k for that! Looking forward to my cine shares going up and my stress levels back down. Plus hopefully some research funding will start heading back to cancer research so I can get a longer term contract rather than to covid, hahaha.

As for the data, the "average age of death" is covid being 82.5 is on fact not just disputable, its false that is the average life expectancy for a male in UK average over last 3 years. Depending if u use mean or median, and if you look at males or female s, average age of covid death ranges from 78.6 (mean male age) to 85 (female median age). https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/averageageofthosewhohaddiedwithcovid19

Secondly, just because the disease is more deadly to the elderly, doesn't mean it cannot affect the young. Indeed, due to higher vaccine uptake in the vulnerable groups, around 1 in 4 covid deaths were in under 65s in the Omicron wave. https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/16/what-do-we-know-about-people-who-died-covid-uk

Thirdly, as for myocarditis and pericarditis, there isn't a"large number" of people getting it. This is hype by the media and you tube "experts". Israel, with the highest level of surveillance of the population as was agreed for them getting advanced access to the vaccine, vaccinated around 5 million people and reported under 200 cases. That's an increase of 1 in 25000, or 0.004%. Compared with several studies of US athletes who caught actual covid, where they found an increased incidence of carditis of 0.31-3%. So even with the heart issue, the risk is higher from catching covid than from getting the vaccine. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccination-myocarditis-and-pericarditis-information-for-healthcare-professionals/information-for-healthcare-professionals-on-myocarditis-and-pericarditis-following-covid-19-vaccination
And all of this overlooks the effects of long covid in young people. My sister is young and active, but since catching covid she's become allergic to several foods so severely she now needs and epipen for when she eats out and has been to A and E 3 times while waiting for an allergy panel. She had no allergies or history of anaphylaxis before and this has been brought on by her infection. But people like this, and the life changing results (she's also struggling to pass her fitness test for work, 1 year on from recovery, as lung function isn't back to full yet) aren't factored in when you only ask average age at death. There isn't a "long vaccine" however, as vaccine side effects all seem to resolve within days to weeks (for myocarditis).

Yet another video from this guy demonstrating his poor use of statistics and selective focus.
1). For cancers he uses excess deaths before adjustments, for covid he looks only at numbers where there were no other comorbitidies. This isn't a like for like comparison. We know this raises their risk profile (youre not gonna die from obesity, but obesity plus covid, more likely to die: you can't just say it isn't a covid death as the guy also had obesity/asthma etc).
2). For life expectancies he uses a 3 year average (2018-2020), only 1 third of which includes covid, then says it isn't much of a change (no ****, 2 3rds of the data had no covid present)
3). He makes no correction for cancer deaths that have covid. How many of the excess cancer patients died due to missed treatment and how many die as cancer makes them vulnerable to covid which they then catch and die from? Without teasing these factors apart, the figures cannot be compared.
I can't be bothered to list the rest. It's just sloppy work to confirm his own point and have a catchy "gotcha" moment, which isn't real.

To each their own Robin, but having had ryvita before, I think personally I'd prefer to just fast longer inbetween biscuits that have ryvita regularly, haha

I've seen a lot of rubbish in this board, including insane valuations from derampers and medically inaccurate nonsense from links posted, but even I have my limits... Ryvita a biscuit? We have to draw the line somewhere! Chocolate bourbons all the way!

Pretty good talk about the latest data. If people don't know the ZOE study, they are London University based, running since start of pandemic, and do very good deep dives into more data than media cover on a weekly basis.
https://youtu.be/CIGC310hPoI

Exapt, that's exactly why I don't like Dr John. Infection isn't nature's vaccine: it's the thing you're trying to prevent as it a). Can kill you, b). Can spread to more vulnerable people if it won't kill you and c). Provides weaker and shorter lived immunity than the vaccine. I'm reminded of this xkcd comic:
https://xkcd.com/2557/

OK, NOW I'm getting cautiously optimistic that this could be our last winter with near lockdown... Will still read full paper when published though.
https://www.cityam.com/deadly-delta-disappearing-christmas-comes-early-as-multiple-covid-studies-in-uk-confirm-south-africa-findings-omicron-is-mildest-coronavirus-variant-so-far/

Have no idea I'm afraid. I'd need more data than I have access to to even hazard a guess (how many ppl taking lateral flows when feeling fine, what fraction if them come back positive, ratio of symptomatic to asymptomatic presentations for this strain, ratio of Omicron to delta etc.)

I will say the ZOE study is looking into this and I've thought they had good estimates in the past.

The high death rates are what would happen IF we did nothing to stop it. That's why work from home advised, people start limiting their contacts, masks in public places brought back, isolation rules change etc. The high death rates not materialising isn't a bug in the modelling, its the whole bl**dy point of the modelling! That's like if I'm driving towards a cliff edge , so I hit the breaks and you say "but you aren't falling off a cliff, why did you break? You're fine idiot!". If we wait for the deaths to be here it is too late. If we act to stop them and do so successfully you say it was an overreaction.

"while Omicron seems milder overall, the UKHSA has found it is not necessarily mild enough to avoid large numbers of hospitalizations."

Great to hear it is milder so less total deaths if everyone infected, but avoiding everyone being infected all at once and overwhelming NHS has always been goal more than avoiding everyone getting infected full stop (UK modelling was attacked at start of pandemic by European advisors who said we were wrong for assuming covid cannot be eradicated globally in our models). So great news for keeping total deaths down, but not the slam dunk "it's milder so we don't need restrictions" I hear all the time.

This guy is a retired nurse instructor and is a doctor due to PhD in education rather than research PhD or medical training. I've mentioned many errors in his videos in other threads. Generally nice bloke, and clear spoken, but misunderstands several points regarding the pandemic, so wouldn't swap whitty or epidemiologists for him.
Engaging videos though.

Also yes, both sides use science statistics to push an agenda and spread fear and it ****es me off. I try to always stick to what the science says, and band chat to others what I think personally, what I expect from scientific intuition, what is predicted (and limitations) from modelling, and what is known from experiments. Best I can do.

Unfortunately contradicting studies are very common in medicine. This is part of the process of honest reporting and the way statistics work: sometimes there aren't enough numbers to get high confidence results, but u want to publish what you have so it isn't wasted. Then eventually someone does a meta analysis where they take the results from smaller studies and add them together to get the statistics we need. For some things we have good statistics (links between obesity and heart issues can be backed by studies of literally millions of people over decades) but for others we are still building the needed numbers (what percentage of patients infected with Omicron variant of covid end up in hospital or dead? How effective are vaccines with boosters at stopping hospitalisation?). For the questions with lower statistical power so far, we give best estimates based on best data at the time. Undortunately science doesn't work as quickly or convincingly as in movies, but the more data we get the more likely we are to be right.

So some studies will always conflict, even if done perfectly and repoeteded honestly and impartially, which is why before you start ANY new research you do a literature review, not to find individual papers and studies but to find the wider shape of the field and where the weight of the evidence points. This puts individual results in context. Then, if u see 4 out of 5 studies find an increase and one finds a decrease, you assume the 1 decrease was a statistical fluke, not that the 4 increases are a conspiracy against the little guy... Unless you're like Dr Peter McCollough.

*I won't comment further as this not my area of expertise, though I am more qualified than a cardiologist to comment, I'm still not enough to be comfortable.

Sorry so many typos, was rage typing as really upsetting when guys like this get a platform to scare the uneducated into doing dangerous things, risking their health and whole economy!

Somanyquestions - hadn't heard of him but just looked up his claims and background. This isn't an edge case at all : guy is talking utter b*llocks. Again, may not be his fault per we as he is a cardiologist so not trained on immune system at biomolecular level, but then why on earth comment so confidently!!

Factually, rather than opinion:
1). Spike protein does make immune system attack cells that present it, but this is not how mRNA vaccines work, as they are designed for uptake by the dendritic cells of immune system, bypassing the infection of healthy cells stage. Even if spike protein were expressed by small number of healthy cells, spike protein recognition is precisely choreographed and will not lead to auto iune disease u less the person is already predisposed to this. I won't comment further as this not my area of whiteout, though I am more ualifjed than a cardiologist to comment, I'm still not enough.
2). There is no way in which the vaccines make our cells a "virus of sorts" : this is just absurd as viruses have properties that CANNOT be replicated by a cell due to their size. This is like saying a tenent makes a house a bike of sorts : it's completely meaningless.
3). He claims the mRNA from vaccine lasts several months in body, unlike other mRNA which lasts seconds : neither is accurate as this mRNA, like all mRNA, lasts hours to days.
4). He claims mRNA vaccines have been around for decades but never injected into hmans before: in fact it was fine in 2008 or even earlier if you allow different vectors.
5). He says you are more likely to die of vaccine than injections, this is plain wrong, nothing else to say except he can look up stats but clearly doesn't. Like UK stats on vaccination and covid, which he misrepresented to a US audience.
6). He says you cannot be reinfected: u can (I have personally had it twice)
7). He says natural immunity is as good as vaccine induced immunity: despite multiple studies saying it is not.

I could honestly go on and on with this guy but not wasting my time (which I could be using to do actual research) debunking his bullsh*t. He has absolutely no idea what he is talking about, which would be fine if he didn't use his credentials as a cardiologist to make people think he does! Shame we can't filter him irl!

Still on peer review, he complains about lead author being a student and assumes this means that the student was organising the other scientists. This isn't how publication authorship works. Lead authors are those who contributed most to the paper being realised, in the case of a literature review like this, probably due to them doing the actual writing up of the paper. The person who organises the work, and supervises it, is the LAST author named on the paper. Everyone in the helps, but what matters are first and last authorship. It is also very common for students (PhD students I mean) to write papers : his surprise at this is astounding! ANY PhD student who doesn't have papers published whilst still a student risks not passing their viva and becoming a scientific doctor! I had 5 papers published, presented at conferences and was selected to give 2 talks at CERN, all whilst a PhD student. You are expected to become an expert BEFORE they pass u as a research doctor, and my team has recruited undergraduates and masters students who have written papers as well. I am there not at all surprised this person was a student, nor does it undermine the validity of the work as he implies, nor bring anything else into disrepute. And most importantly AGAIN, this is not an argument in the merit of the article in question, so why mention it? This annoys me most about him as telling me someone is "an established researcher" or "a student" before you discuss their work makes me suspicious of your motivation. I know established researchers who made dumb mistakes and students who have made brilliant discoveries... It doesn't matter as much as people outside research think.

My final comment is he seems to place a lot of stock on case studies (medical approach) over statistical studies, giving a distorted view of vaccine risks which is dangerous as a public communicator. That said, he does say he believes vaccines work and we should get them, so again I assume this is due to medical over research background.

So in summary, seems like a nice guy, trying genuinely to help, and on many videos his explanations are clear and accessible to lay people and helpful. But where he is contradicting media outlets (and the scientists who speak on them) I'd take what he says with a pinch of salt! I notice I'm not only one in comment section with an apparent science background who is getting annoyed/frustrated at what he is saying that is wrong either, but I've tried to be more balanced and evidence based than most YouTube comment posts, lol.

Sorry for another double long post, just trying to be helpful and if you're recommending him, you should know.

Kickthepuss - just to say I've looked at a few more videos from that you tube channel and want to make following comment (worth noting if you're referring people to watch him).

His channel bio says his training is as a nurse and his history is in training nurses. This makes sense as more medical practice background than research background as I suspected.

Have watched a couple of his videos and some good but also some very questionable issues.

Good is his ability to explain complex issues in easy way. His education background is clear and his manner of explaining is very friendly and welcome, funny and engaging.

HOWEVER, he has several misunderstanding of the peer review process, publishing conventions and cellular biology, which are all understandable from a non research background (and are actually VERY common in the medical doctors with no research experience or placements). In 1 of his videos I watched this led him to make significant mistakes so I'll correct them here.

In the ivermectin video where he was arguing with having been fact checked, he first complained that the fact checker was a journalist, which is totally irrelevant as 1). The quality of the argument is independent of the person bringing it and 2). Journalists often reach out to scientists or doctors when doing fact checks, and I know charities they may have contacted where scientists volunteer to help make sure science is communicated correctly where possible. Mistakes still happen, but these points are irrelevant.
Anyway, in that video he says ivermectin and Pfizer drug ARE same mode of action as they both use protease inhibitors, whereas fact checkers said this does not make them the same. The fact checker is right: there are hundreds of not thousands of different proteases that could be targeted, so saying 2 drugs are the same mechanism as they both inhibit proteases is like saying all antibiotics are same mechanism, as they all interact with bacteria. I don't think it's malicious, his understanding of more recent cell biology is just insufficient.
He also complains about it being called a horse medicine, but the issue with this was specifically that people were buying the horse version of it, which is the wrong dose and not suitable for humans. Again, whilst humans and horses both use syringes, if the public were having a wave of buying horse syringes and ending up in hospital, a warning about "horse syringes" would be appropriate, and pointing out syringes are also for people would just be unhelpful from a public communication perspective.

Then there's him misunderstanding peer review. His claim that a peer reviewed article means we can get millions or tens of millions of doctor's opinions on it is not accurate: peer review guarantees 2-5 experts agreed with it (excluding pay to publish journals), and most people who disagree will just ignore it, not publically comment either in support or against. That's just not how peer review works.

Cheers kick: was a good night and as always, glad to help. Sorry for the rambling posts to those not interested. Night all!

Exapt - unless resurrections have become common, death rate can't have reduced 110% as that would mean negative deaths. I'll assume that was a typo on your part, but your posts have had a few unreliable stats.