Reflection on the pandemic: questions about the authorities' response.

It was in the Yahoo News article you linked yesterday and posted this exact paragraph from it:

"People working in social care reported the highest prevalence of long Covid among employment groups (5.3%), followed by health care employees (4.4%) and civil servants and local government staff (4.2%)."

It lumped together all civil servants and local gov staff but my general points apply to that grouping also.

The composition of the groups need to be looked at for factors likely to be significant such as working through lockdowns, interaction with the public, age breakdown, disabilities.

No you are the one who is not comparing like with like because you are repeating the same miscomparison as the Daily Telegraph article.

The figure you have quoted for civil servants alone appears to be from an internal civil service survey. Not an ONS one. It cites two different figures for civil service of 10.8% long covid versus 7.4% long covid affecting their day to day lives.

The figure of 3.3% for the general population is from the ONS survey and that is the one the Yahoo News article covers.

Two entirely different surveys.

Given that the ONS survey actually provides a figure of 4.2% for "civil servants and local government employees" it is clear that is the relevant figure that should be compared to the general population figure of 3.3%. Which is why I used it.

And the most plausible reason why there was such a difference of 10.8% versus 3.3% is... it is not valid to compare the figures across surveys.

So the basis for your entire line of argument about civil servants having "double the risk" is very dubious.

I would add it appears that the Daily Telegraph, aware of the ONS survey, made a deliberate decision to not reference its figure for civil servants / local government employees but still used its figure for the general population. In my view that was deliberately done to create deceptive figures for comparison. They have an agenda.

Having had the misrepresentation of data from 2 different surveys in the article by the Telegraph, clearly shown by a poster who has access to both of those links (remember I said I could not comment on its detail because it was behind a paywall?) are you still trying to argue your case with this same data, without at the very least accepting that what I and Odyssey have said about that paper's agenda being true?

I don't think you can call others out on anything until you yourself show a bit of integrity in the discussion now, can you?

The misrepresentation is in the Daily Telegraph article which presents figures from two entirely different surveys as directly comparable. You repeat their misleading comparison here.

The civil service figure is NOT from the same source as the figure for the general population (ONS).

This misleading comparison is all the more glaring given the ONS survey includes a breakdown by occupation groups.

It seems plausible this was done by the Telegraph for agenda reasons as they seek to downplay covid and/or take a dig at the (cliched Guardian reading) civil service and speaks to their lack of journalistic integrity.

Point of order: Nowhere did I write anything directly or indirectly questioning their competence. So I have no idea why these questions appear to be directed at me.

Nowhere did I question their competence merely the alignment / compatibility of the separate surveys they conducted. 

I would certainly question the competence and integrity of the Daily Telegraph journalist to make comparisons from data collected in different surveys conducted by different bodies and to draw conclusions from thst.

Finally if thats how you want to describe them, then the surveys by these 'competent' bodies show long covid having a real impact on quality of life and health in people of all ages. Different surveys conducted under a different basis may come to different figures but that impact is manifest.

Which is the main point I have been making in terms of long covid and how the pandemic was responded to. The impact of covid infections is not just in the short term of the active infection.

These surveys reinforce that so they are good additions to the discussion when taken on their own merits.

Together with the other studies cited they give the lie to the sneers and sarcastic jibes in media and social media directed at long covid and by extension those suffering its debilitating and ddisabling effects.

You should probably ask the ONS to explain the data to you as it is obvious you won't accept any answer from me. The figure for any survey is only as accurate as the constraints of the survey itself, and how it is conducted and based on what data set.

You could start by asking the ONS if they think it is reasonable to compare across two different surveys - an internal one for an organisation, and one of the general population. Again, the ONS survey was not run on the same basis as the civil servant one (an internal one run for their own employees) so your comparison with teaches is misleading.

You could also ask ONS to explain: 

If the Long Covid % for civil servants alone is approx 10%;

And in their study the occupation group of "civil servants and local government employees" was at 4.2%;

What is the Long Covid % for local government employees? 

And if this figure is mathematically possible?

They are the Office of National Statistics. I'm sure they get queries like this all the time on their statistics.

Or you could come back to us when you've done the maths yourself and realised how misleading it was for the Daily Telegraph to side by side compare figures from two surveys run on a different basis.

What's the Cabinet Office figure for the general population?

Without that, you are fundamentally not in a position to say that it is significantly higher in the civil service than in the general population. So yes, it is refuted.

The two surveys cannot be directly compared - unless you got that answer from the ONS?

The surveys were run on different basis, on different dates and may have involved different phrasings in questions and other differences which could confound direct comparison of results.

The ONS survey which has a figure both for the general population and for an occupation group including civil servants does not show a significantly higher figure.

All that I have been arguing is that it is not valid to directly compare two different surveys, all the more so when the ONS survey includes a figure for civil servants in an occupation group.

You are the one citing exact percentages for long covid not me -> so I have no idea why you are addressing these questions to me given you seem to want an answer to this civil service question, but won't accept any input to it from anyone else on the thread. Myself and goldengirl suggested several plausible (to us) reasons such as demographics, and composition of the civil service to explain why they might have a higher incidence than the general population as per the ONS survey. I suggest the ONS if you want to dig deeper into the figures.

I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the figures, within the margin of error \ inherent constraints of the surveys and the context of the exact questions asked and population surveyed.

As for who else - this is the World Health Organisation:

 The WHO estimates that 10% to 20% of survivors have been left with mid- and long-term symptoms such as fatigue, breathlessness and cognitive dysfunction. Women are more likely to suffer from the condition.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/oct/12/long-covid-who-tedros-adhanom-ghebreyesus

The terminology is all over the place here.

The verdict on lockdowns or restrictions? Totally unclear. What figures relate to each?

Is this a lockdown or a restriction?

• Mask mandates, which most countries avoided in Spring 2020, reduced mortality by 18.7 per cent, particularly mandates in workplaces; and
• School closures resulted in a between 2.5 per cent and 6.2 per cent mortality reduction.
• Business closures reduced mortality by 7.5 per cent;

And more:

Based on specific NPIs, we estimate that the average lockdown in Europe and the United States in the spring of 2020 reduced COVID-19 mortality by 10.7 per cent.

How is that a negligible effect?

And why is this being published by an Economic think tank?

In November 2022, the funding transparency website Who Funds You? rated the Institute as E, the lowest transparency rating (rating goes from A to E).

Ah now we see... none of these are experts in public health.

The researchers were economists not epidemiologists or public health experts... On reading the paper, Adam Kucharski, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, spoke of “half-baked methods”.

At the time, Dr Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, distanced the school from the work, saying it was not a peer-reviewed scientific study and that “serious questions” had been raised about its methodology. He also corrected a potential misunderstanding: the study did not compare lockdowns with doing nothing.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/05/revised-report-on-impact-of-covid-lockdowns-leaves-unanswered-questions

I see the UK Covid inquiry continues at pace. Interesting that the UK is so keen to review and analyse its performance while Ireland has no interest whatsoever in learning from its mistakes.

Of course we all know the real reason the government want to pretend it never happened, its because they don't want to have to face up to the damage they did. Imagine how inconvenient it would be to their narrative if a medical officer said anything like this:

They were told at the time that they were destroying the lives of children, god forbid they get reminded of that pesky fact now.

You have taken her statements out of context.

You left out where she also said:

 "I still think we should have locked down, although a week earlier. But during that we should have thought do we need to further?”

Also, covid and long covid can damage and destroy children's lives. That's another pesky fact you left out.

What research or evidence have you got on covid destroying children's lives? Have you figures on how many children have long covid?