Member Info for Olpps

*"is a bit suspicious" , not "is not suspicious", sorry

I don't know him, haven't seen enough of his work, though this isn't first time I've seen a bid of his and thought "well thats a bit over simplified to the point of being a boy misleading". Data was a bit hard to find for this one so could just be mistake, and equally I could be wrong or ignorant of something here. I assume he's a medical doctor whilst I'm a research doctor : different skill sets. But from what I see of the data, I can't fathom claiming Omicron is less severe from this study: I would not allow that claim to stand as a reviewer without statistical test between Omicron and delta AND original and delta, in lung tissue. Its not suspicious authors did this for bronchi but only Omicron vs original for lung, but again, may be innocent (thought it was clear from gratis). Then again, I have reputation as a thorough reviewer ??.

Link I promised to data : https://www.med.hku.hk/en/news/press/20211215-omicron-sars-cov-2-infection

Now for my opinion on future as investors and citizens. Hesitate to comment on investing as not my area of expertise, but personally I can see a short sharp "fire break" lockdown being needed (2/3 weeks so data can be gathered before too late to course correct) end of this year or very early next year, or a transition to work from home and home schooling briefly, depending how winter goes. Personally I think this would be very survivable for cine if we can just push past Christmas, though an annoying bump in the road. I remain invested here for that reason.

Larger picture, Omicron is SO much more infectious that it will be everywhere soon. I hope new Pfizer and moderna jabs for Omicron specifically (which would also cover some key beta and delta mutations) should be around from March and provide a strong enough, specific immunity to effectively end most pandemic measures in UK (due to our high vaccine uptake rates combined with antivaxxers getting some more limited resistance from natural infection, or dying of it or becoming so ill they take vvaccine:Omicron spreads so fast it's coming. The risk will remain of new variants until vaccines are globally available, especially as natural infection with Omicron may be possible multiple times, however I am hopeful that vaccine production improvements, and significant surpluses of original strain vaccines, will make this achievable, IF we can reduce disastrous and dangerous misinformation from spreading in developing world too. Fortunately many poorer countries have lower vaccine hesitancy, as they see the toll of diseases when not vaxed.

So overall I am cautiously optimistic about the share, and as for a citizen I am a scientist at heart, so will accept whatever reality is situation is, not pretend this will be the end of it when the high transmission rates also mean high variation rates.

Kickthepuss- my response to that video. First off, guy is great at explaining things clearly, however I am a bit annoyed as what he is summarising here is a press release, not the original data (below) or paper online (not available). He noted its not peer reviewed yet, which means all results have big tentative on them. That said, a lot of Omicron data is hitting headlines before per review, so not much option and that's not his fault. So, let's go.

I'm looking at the video and raw data as I would if i was reviewing it : so really probing to see how robust it is. This is therefore a bit of an aggressive response, but that's a good peer review litmus. It's also a bit technical and assumes u watched the video u linked me. Skip next paragraph for headline conclusions.

The work appears to be both interesting and relevant, though the ex vivo study has several limitations. Some of which were mentioned, but an important one missed is that in the patient the bronchi cillia form part of the Mucosal elevator to clear the lungs, so a severe infection that disabled the elevator (common in respiratory infections) could lead to poor drainage and so build up of fluids in alveoli, even if viral replication there is lower. This would also allow viral particles to be carried down from bronchi to alveoli, meaning different replication rates may not be as important at implied to disease course. In particular, I note from the actual data the work is based on (link below) that delta also showed less replication in the lung tissue than the original strain, yet we saw no drop off in severity with delta compared with original. Statistical significance is only calculated for original vs Omicron, not delta vs original or delta vs Omicron, which seems like an oversight here.

In conclusion, the work presented (that is currently available to see) appears to reliably show an increased transmissiblity, but does not lead to a conclusion of reduced severity. If Omicron severity is lower, the proposed mechanism of reduced viral replication in alveoli is questionable given the similar change seen in delta that did not lead to lower severity. The paper purposes a mechanism for lower disease severity, but does not establish this here.

Hi Kickthepuss, happy to give it a watch and opinion. Will do later tonight as off to mum's birthday party. Living with covid: all took lateral flows beforehand, but still going out. Not lockdown atm at least.

Sunday figures are always lower. 7 day moving average is what u need to look at as it accounts for this. Are u saying its down in daily or weekly figures?

Schools closing will be great for easing pressure as they're massive hot-spot for transmission, but doubt this has worked into daily figures yet as schools closed so soon. Looking forward to that easing though, especially as wife is a teacher.

As for NHS not being overwhelmed, I hope it stays that way but think it's too early to say it's been dodged. 2 weeks post infection peak for hospital peak remember.

To be clear on the South Africa point, its not that it is untrue as Omicron is NOT less deadly, its that its untrue because the data is currently insufficient to make the assessment either way.

Havr to disagree. This guy is an oncologist (cancer doctor) and not an epidemiologist. Medical doctors are fantastic at what they do but they are not statisticians by any stretch and have no training in statistical modelling.
The guy's first complaint is that policy is being made by unelected officials because the public are deciding to listen to Christ Witty over the PM (his argument). If this is true, that isn't policy being made, it's people listening to a medical expert over a politician and making up their own minds.
Our PM didn't go to a light touch plan B in November when Sage suggested it, then did a rash Plan B, too late, to distract from his party's parties last year. The PM has lost touch with the science, so u can't blame the public for listening to an expert.
His second, and long, gripe is that members of the public choosing to cancel plans damages the economy, and whitty should have thought of that before giving his opinion. This would actually be a bigger scandal if whitty, or any public servant, intentionally lied to people about their view in the data to serve a political agenda. Whitty avoided question from BBC about what he would do and side stepped several direct prompts to say we should lockdown, and instead said people should "be responsible" and that he trusted the public to do so ( a position he repeated in the parliamentary science Committee the next day).
His final point is that Omicron is less severe based on hospital numbers in South Africa. This has been explained multiple times to not be accurate, as again by Whitty at the briefing if he was listening, and even if it were true is only one part of the picture.
I hope Omicron is less lethal, to offset its increased transmission, but claiming it is 70 times more transmissible (which I think is over statement) but less lethal so overall balances out is to commit 2 errors: significantly underestimating the effect of exponential (again) and failing to account for how changed transmission rates affect lags in the data.
I want cinemas to stay open and I want to learn to live with virus, but when learning to live with it the emphasis is on the LEARNING : things have changed and will be for a while so there are new normals. Many people say learn to live with it and mean ignore it, and they are very different things.

Seconded. Without u guys in the mix I think I would have sold yesterday. Dreaded this mornings open and didn't sleep well but all in all its holding higher than close, am I'm starting to be more optimistic for a future with a reduced average holding that should be easier to reach profit from... Fingers crossed.

Maybe someone can help point out where I'm wrong if I'm wrong. I spend more time keeping up with work than shares I'll admit.

Way I see it: we traded between ~40 and ~120 with court case hanging over us, at current debt levels. Court case claim was for 2 billion, so 1 billion award is equal to if markets priced in a 50% chance of losing the full amount. So is there any reason to assume, beyond the short term shock of the ruling, that this share couldn't trade up to least half of that range, say 40 - 60? Am I missing something? I've brought my average down to 41p today but now on WAY heavier than I planned so hoping to take some money back before too long.
My aim was to get this to 200 over next year or 2, and that seems less likely now but do people think could be doable in longer window, say 3 or 4 year's or so I need to wake up here? Not asking for advice, know noone has a crystal ball here (even the amazing pawelbeck) but would like opinions of people who might know more about this than me.

Sold other holdings to bring average her down from 80 to 59, and may have done so too soon it seems as price dropped more for my buy in. Gutting that just yesterday I added £1500 from (now depleted) savings as though 45 was a bargain! Really annoyed decision came before spiderman as wasn't expecting til January, but as others have said, health more important (and mine right now is contingent on avoiding stress so may be checking in less regularly til Jan).
Hoping some great spidey news can bring the price up a bit: markets can have short memories so hoping the appeal allows us to rise on good news in the mean time.... Gut punch morning though.

*right not to listen

He's done well being right so good for him. Others were right or to listen though as he offered no convincing reason. Some board said risex some said drop: someone was gonna be right but seems to me either he had inside tips he wasn't sharing or dumb luck : first with Omicron, then with stupidly early court case decision. Broken clocks and all that...

If the aim was to 0ut cineplex in position they would have been in had merger happened, you'd think the judge would make allowance for the pandemic which devasted business. Not much synergy happening on closed cinemas!

Oh well, in deep on this one so just have to hope it recovers now.

U were right with three options:
3. They're just here to gloat at other's misfortune.

Hi Fun.

The only thing you might be missing is that the pills are antivirals which slow viral replication only while you're taking the pills (more accurately for 2r-48 hours after last pill usually). So if everyone took one today, 3 days from now we'd all have zero benefit from them, so this isn't viable to prevent infections, just to treat them. In contrast, if we all vaccinated today, we'd be protected for months to years from now.

Hope that helps, and yes, with vaccines this is a game changer, just can't replace them.

Hi Fun,

I can give you my thinking on it which is that asymptomatic people will not be taking antivirals as they won't know to. The number of asymptomatics in the population is estimated based on a combination of random sampling (e.g. testing 10000 "healthy" people and seeing how many test positive) and extrapolation from symptomatic infections (e.g. If we know from larger studies that 1 in 4 infected people have symptoms, we can multiply number of symptomatic sufferers by 4 to estimate level of infections total). So the only way to cover everyone is to get everyone taking the pills at the same time, regardless of symptoms, which poses problems in cost, logistics and compliance (expect the antivaxxers to equally be anti pill).
As for mild cases, in richer countries we may get to point where we can send out courses to anyone who tests positive, but this is unlikely to work in lower income countries due to either infrastructure (many rural communities without regular medical access), gaps in testing (national surveillance programs don't exist everywhere) or cost (USA bought 10 million courses for $5.29 billion = $529 per course.).

For those reasons I expect pill to work alongside vaccines rather than to replace them. To be very clear though, pull is a big boost to saving lives and reducing hospital ICU usage, which are the major issues with covid, so is a massive positive step forwards, as is the news that it works on all known variants!

My point was more about variants, which don't need to make you sick to occur, just to spread. Stopping these requires vaccines to reduce the total number of viral particle replicating within a population as a whole by making more people's immune systems able to defeat the virus before it can spread.

Merck was 30% according to above article with risks of birth defects. Totally different to Pfizer one though which looks very exciting indeed!

Hi @saihaj. Pills are excellent news and will indeed help reopen economies if deaths can be managed and hospital stays shortened.
Just to say it cannot replace vaccines however and we still need to get them to lower income countries, as the pill won't be given to asymptomatic people or probably even mild cases, which is most infections, who could host the virus and allow it to mutate, which generates new variants. Vaccines are needed for their long effect in reducing the pool of hosts who can incubate the virus and lead to variants at the population level. The pill prevents sickness and death for the worst affected on an individual level.

A disclaimer that I do not research on this field, but @gavinship I will try to give an educated response to your 70% question as you keep asking it.

The 70-75% is from a study on almost 500-600 people (I forget which) so whilst not 100% accurate, is a good indicator of relatively robust protection. This is the protection against symptomatic infection, not hospitalisation or death, which we still believe will be much higher protection.

The % reflects both the affinity of the antibodies for their (now mutated) target, the sensitivity of the t-cells to the same (more so with AZ jab) and the overlap between each person's active antibody repertoire and the virus.

In terms of how long it wil last: previous jabs dropped from 92% to 64% protection over 6 months, with the drop being slow at first. HOWEVER, part of the rationale for a 6 month booster, which was planned before covid, is that one way your immune system assesses threats is by the interval between serious exposures. We give adjuvant in the vaccine which look to our bodies like a scream from the immune system that the trivial material we inject is actually a lethal threat, which makes the response stronger from the severity assessment system. We repeat this after several weeks to activate a response from the interval assessment system (these aren't the names of the systems, just the concept). A booster at 6 months, after immunity wanes, SHOULD make the immune system think it shouldn't have dropped antibodies so quickly, so extend the protection longer. How long? Who knows. I've heard estimates of 5 years but equally if serious enough the body could extend it to lifetime, we just don't know. This is one reason UK fairing better at the moment they think: 12 week interval compared with 3 week interval between first 2 doses leaned more into the interval system.

Again, not researching this as my main field, just my undergraduate degree talking, but hope this helps.