AdamR28

I find the diversity we are showing here in interpreting the same information pretty fascinating! Humans are an interesting bunch I have got a bit lost with the thread and I need to 'leave' again, but I will leave some more info / personal experiences which maybe help explain my 'weird' opinions on Covid and life, then disappear again and leave you in peace. Covid stuff: We have a WhatsApp group with my school mates in, 8 people in total. Between us, we know of 9 people who have had serious and immediate reactions to Covid jabs. The mildest of the 'severe reactions' we encountered was instant vomiting of blood (while still at the Covid jab centre), the worst has been a blood clot which lodged in the brain and left the person in a coma (within a week). Since coming round this 54 year old person has lost significant bodily function and is no longer able to eat. If 8 of us know 9 people who have been pretty significantly affected, I am struggling to believe the official government figures. Another friend works at Sainsburys in a team of 30 people. 4 of them, 13%, following their Covid jabs, began to feel weird and visited the doctors. They were found to have abnormal heart rhythm. I am not saying the Covid jab definitely caused this, because they may well have had it earlier, but for them to get 25-60 years through life and not notice anything previously seems strange. (The UKs average rate of abnormal heart rhythm is under 3%.) Also it begs the question, how many others have begun a strange medical condition and not had it checked out. Which brings me onto my own mother. 70 years old, smoker for 50 years, one lung removed through a TB-like disease, twice cancer survivor, obese, eats terribly, does no exercise, can't even walk across a room without panting. Yet she got Covid and survived. Had her first jab, went for her second a few weeks later, and had it refused because she mentioned - in passing - that a weird swelling had appeared in her leg since the first jab. The swelling is still being investigated but nobody seems to be considering it may have been linked to her jab. Again, how many other similar cases are there. (On the same subject, my mum has not once been offered lifestyle or healthy eating advice throughout all of her health complication consultancies, it has always been a drug or treatment. She now lives her life bouncing from hospital appointment to specialist to scan and back. She truly is 'in the system'. Same deal with my friend who has a Grade 2 brain tumour, no mention of any alternative treatments, however he then went on to research things himself and made the same progress as the medical profession without the nasty side effects and he is generally healthier overall to boot.) The chance of dying from Covid in your mid 30s-early 40s is reported to be approx 1 in 1000. This takes into account all previous health complications, etc. Therefore an ACTUALLY healthy persons chance of death (not a 'healthy' person as reported by the news, who has two chins and a BMI of about 35, example: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-55788914.amp) is going to be less than this. Given the above personal experience, I am not going to risk the jab without further reliable, independent, long term data. The chance of death for a 35-44 year old male going about their life as normal is higher than the chance of dying from Covid: http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html - so I still don't get why the world is losing its shit over Covid. General stuff: The rate of cancer prevalence (and other diseases) is increasing alarmingly. However, humans aren't evolving at anywhere near this rate. So we must be doing something to ourselves to cause this. The medical profession isn't a philanthropic endeavour. It also isn't a magic bullet. Too many people look to it for solutions. Thalidomide had a half life of only 5-7 hours and still managed to cause some pretty severe issues: https://www.google.com/search?q=thalidamide&oq=thalidamide&aqs=chrome..69i57.3955j0j9&client=ms-android-samsung-gs-rev1&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8 Stay healthy all!

He has a lot of great info on his website, looks to be brilliant one-stop resource: https://letstalkcancer.life/resources/

Exactly the prognosis my friend's brother was given - zero chance of beating it, and a very short lifespan, so they didn't offer any treatment at all. Gotta be worth a shot!

Very sorry to hear about this Mike. A friends brother, with the same grade of tumour (or perhaps worse?) was refused treatment on the NHS because he had such a poor prognosis, but went vegan and it has now disappeared. Not saying the two are linked but... Worth a shot.

That is seriously awesome news!

I know BMI isn't perfect but... It's surprising how 'normal' obese looks nowadays...

I know I said I wouldn't post in here any more but... couldn't help myself as I'm obviously quite passionate about this (more than I realised). Perhaps driven by a few recent experiences with friends, who have come to me with health issues and we've looked at what they eat. With a few changes we've made massive progress within a couple of weeks. Anyway... Its weird how the US data appears to be so different to the UK (appreciate deaths and hospitalizations aren't the same thing, but a ~4 fold increase is wildly different to 29). Our Covid death numbers are still pretty insignificant compared with other diseases related to old age and obesity, even using the skewed "within 28 days of a positive test" thing (how many of the below 33 people got Covid while in hospital being treated for something else they were going to die of anyway?). Table from data on the ONS website. No idea why its included, Covid shouldn't even be on here as its meant to be a Top 10! I think I'll still take my chances on this one, given the relative and absolute likelihood of a transmissible health issue for myself and others (unless the next big thing will be that we all need to get a special experimental jab to prevent transmission of alzheimers ). On a similar note, this morning I looked at some nutritional info for a pub we were due to go and eat at this weekend. I said a while back that i thought obesity was the real pandemic - I can now see why so many people are overweight / obese, and the ONS data shows that obesity related deaths kill far more than anything else (with plain old age still a firm second). https://marstons-menu.azureedge.net//media/jbxjfynx/signature-may-launch-nutritionals-21.pdf A relatively healthy-sounding vegetable soup starter, a veggie burger main, plus a dessert and 2 pints... that's a 3000+ calorie meal... gross. We are missing a huge opportunity here to educate people about their lifestyle, allowing them to make better choices and keep themselves healthier for longer. Prevention is always better than cure. In childcare for example, it has been shown that £9s worth of disruptive behaviour as an adult costs £1 of to rectify as a child. Imagine what would happen - long term - if we spent all the money used in developing the Covid jab and cajoling people to take it, on food and lifestyle education instead? I would wager a huge amount more lives 'saved' (inverted commas because IMO you can't save a life, only prolong it, because we are all going to die sometime) and a better quality of life for longer too.

Ha! 35-40% of people have been shown to be naturally asymptomatic, even without a Covid jab, due to already having suitable antibodies present.

What a beaut! Love all the small details.

^^ This!

Ah... didn't twig you'd fitted bigger wheels!

Darwin was right, though.

Beaut! No need for a gravel bike I reckon, that looks brilliant.

I'm a bit out of touch with drivetrains, sorry, last bike with gears came complete and since then they've all been singlespeed! Mix and match like Dave mentioned is probably the way to go given availability of parts at the moment. Don't rule out 2nd hand and 9 or 10 speed either.

Materials fault with the Hope one, very rare (never seen it before).

32 up front and something like 11-42 at the rear works well.

660mm I think...

My thoughts / experience: Trialtech / Jitsie pads are the best by miles. MT7s work well when new, then develop issues over time. Slightly more power than a Hope. Hopes wear in rather than wearing out, you can get spares if you need (rarely). More resistant to crashes / knocks. MT5 virtually same performance as MT7 but better value.

Hope

Mark - gotcha about the PCR / lat flow tests. As far as I can work out you take a lateral flow test first, and then a PCR test in an attempt to confirm that result? I guess my point is why do we use the rapid tests at all, when they aren't accurate. (Edit: I guess a positive result on a lateral flow makes you 'cautious' and take a PCR, if you didn't bother with the lateral flow at all you might never know that you potentially had the virus... That makes sense now). I think I have also figured out why PCR tests are not being used to end self-isolation, because again they are inaccurate in the case of negative results (false negatives up to 29% - eg. if the first test is negative, in up to 29% of cases repeat testing gives a positive): https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/369/bmj.m1808.full.pdf As far as I can figure out, asymtomatic people will still have the virus 'particles' (for want of a better word) but already have the antigens available to produce the antibodies to prevent the virus from causing harm, hence should still test positive (but then again with no symptoms, I guess you are less likely to go and get tested). Perhaps wrong there! Interesting point about breast cancer screening. My thoughts around stuff like this are definitely unusual, and my opinion of the medical profession as a whole is gradually decreasing, but I do see that what they do is remarkable and can 'save' lives - inverted commas because I don't believe you can ever 'save' a life, only prolong it, because death is the only certainty that we have. The quality of life that many people experience after serious medical interventions is debatable, so that leads me to question the validity and motives of such processes. Anyway, back to breast cancer... Roundabout story but a few people close to me are definitely seriously affected by what I would call health anxiety - either living their lives bouncing from one test result to another, or have spent considerable time worrying about an 'abnormal' test result, or both. To me, quality of life holds more importance than length of life, so while I appreciate that regular testing (of all sorts) can 'save' lives, what is the cost of that? https://www.komen.org/breast-cancer/screening/mammography/accuracy/ - "After 10 yearly mammograms, the chance of having a false positive is about 50-60 percent" Cervical cancer is another one - regular screening encouraged, but lots of false positives and worried people. The actual percentage of cervical cancer prevalence is hovering around 0.7%, but "A long-term cohort study of 3,406 HPV-negative women who had annual Pap smears for 5 years found a 14.4% rate of false-positive cytology that resulted in unnecessary interventions and treatments" - https://www.karger.com/Article/Fulltext/365059 If people spent their time eating properly and doing exercise instead of having tests and worrying about whatever the results might throw up, would that be better at preventing cancer? Hard to say, but that's what I plan to do - while still being mindful that I will probably get cancer or another life-ending disease at some stage. If I can make as small an impact as realistically possible on the planet until that point, then bugger off and leave the space and resources for someone else to enter the world, then happy days. I guess the above links back to Covid, in that I think we should just crack on (and have from the start). It is a disease created by nature to remove the weakest of our species, because we are too numerous. It's not going away, and so far the average age of a UK Covid death has been 80.3, with an average life expectancy of 81.3 - we've ruined 18 months' worth of life already so I'd say we're into negative equity with that badboy. The amount of people down the bowls club (yes, I play crown green bowls ) who have completely changed (aged years) since I last saw them, and have said they feel pretty miserable now, is well over half. Bowing out of this thread now...

I can't remember where exactly now, but here's another, older link I just found. The reported accuracy seems to be dropping with further studies, from what I've seen: https://www.cochrane.org/CD013705/INFECTN_how-accurate-are-rapid-tests-diagnosing-covid-19 "Using summary results for SD Biosensor STANDARD Q, if 1000 people with symptoms had the antigen test, and 50 (5%) of them really had COVID-19: - 53 people would test positive for COVID-19. Of these, 9 people (17%) would not have COVID-19 (false positive result). - 947 people would test negative for COVID-19. Of these, 6 people (0.6%) would actually have COVID-19 (false negative result). In people with no symptoms of COVID-19 the number of confirmed cases is expected to be much lower than in people with symptoms. Using summary results for SD Biosensor STANDARD Q in a bigger population of 10,000 people with no symptoms, where 50 (0.5%) of them really had COVID-19: - 125 people would test positive for COVID-19. Of these, 90 people (72%) would not have COVID-19 (false positive result). - 9,875 people would test negative for COVID-19. Of these, 15 people (0.2%) would actually have COVID-19 (false negative result)." Haven't personally done the maths on that badboy, but I can see how that averages out to approx half given the 72% false positives in one of the 'variations'. In regards to the incubation period, I get the 10 or 14 day thing. My logical brain says that if the virus is present there has to be a way to detect it via a test (else our bodies wouldn't be able to detect it, rendering our immune systems useless, and therefore vaccines too), so why can't we do that to prevent or reduce isolation periods. Is it that a virus is completely undetectable until it has incubated? Or is it that the current tests can't do that? And if they can't, why are we carrying out testing? I clearly don't understand fully but this seems to indicate the virus is present at all stages. https://www.eurogentec.com/en/inside-the-sars-cov-2-live-cycle (Edit: I guess the study above makes a case for NOT testing after a ping, because the false positive rates being so high would lead to more people than necessary having to isolate)

Glad its working out Mark! That is some serious fuel economy

Makes sense, thanks Mark! In which case why not test at days 2 and 5, for example, and if both are negative you can crack on. Though if you can fool the PCR test with any acidic liquid, and they are now saying its barely better than 50% accurate, it all seems a bit pointless.

My take on that... Kids finished school for summer (approx 2 weeks ago). Human factor: Nobody is going to get a test if they aren't told to (by school, for example) or they don't have symptoms (remember, nearly 40% of people are asymptomatic, even without the vaccine). So: Number of tests being carried out dropping off since 2 weeks ago: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/testing Therefore: Number of 'positive cases' drops, due to a combination of the above. Other ponderings: 1) I still don't understand why a negative test doesn't over-ride a 'ping' from the NHS app. Unless the tests are not accurate enough to be relied upon... https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/accuracy-of-rapid-covid-test-may-be-lower-than-previously-suggested/ 2) The UK is carrying out about 1m tests a day and reporting under 50k positive results (<5%). With a test inaccuracy of higher than 5%, how can any of this be trusted?

More antibodies gives better viral protection, who knew My guess: 5th jab onwards will be payable, when the general population have been scared into thinking they'll die from whatever the latest variant is. A good link about viruses in general, with explanations in layman's terms: https://www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/viruswars/viruses.php#antibodiesstrikeback