Why would they (and why/how are they able to) include common cold and hayfever symptoms as "covid" symptoms?
It's not accidental as they did it. So were they told to do it, or did they do so based on advice? If so, in each case, by whom?
As far as I recall the main symptoms of serious covid per the NHS are fever and persistent cough.
What's the purpose behind the difference between counting/collating "cases" in the way the zoe app has been reconfigured to do?
Why would they (and why/how are they able to) include common cold and hayfever symptoms as "covid" symptoms?
it's because are quite similar to covid19 at least at first . There are many ways to do that, one way is to accept that measurements of all kinds contain noise. After that it is usually necessary to estimate the degree of noise and remove it.
were they told to do it, or did they do so based on advice? If so, in each case, by whom?
why are you asking the internet? Do you think the internet knows?
What's the purpose behind the difference between counting/collating "cases" in the way the zoe app has been reconfigured to do?
That question is meaningless.
@coronanationstreet If you watch the Zoe videos/Tim Spectors the most "common" symptoms in the new variants, especially in vaccinated is a runny nose and sneezing. They were campaigning for the government to broaden the list of symptoms to include those.
The app is self-reporting symptoms and they decided to include this new VERY broad list. ( https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/covid-estimates-updated-vaccine ) Ultimately it means people reporting hayfever or any other respiratory virus now probably has symptoms for Zoe to class as SARs2.
When dealing with a self-reported symptom study, broadening the symptoms to include those very common ones this time of year is going to introduce huge amounts of false positives.
That was only 1 change though. The methodology reworking last week has doubled most areas of the country overnight and the trend in many places is up despite ONS and daily figures showing a decline in those areas.
https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/covid-estimates-updated-vaccine is where its discussed. Basically they saw a plateau, reworked it and created a rise again. The justification and validation seems to be completely missing from the documentation.
Specifically the broad symptom "newly sick" category they mention might be causing it.
I used to have a lot of faith in Zoe for predicting the daily trends by 7-10 days. Now i really dont have any. Lots of arbitrary changes with no real validation or justification.
@splattt thanks that's interesting. I suppose what I was getting at is who decides what symptoms are for a symptom checker, even if those adding symptoms have tested positive (is that how it works?) presumably it's possible to test positive and also have hayfever in March/April/May/June. Isn't it akin to asking leading questions to ask the public to say what symptoms they have and then attribute them to covid?
They have different symptoms for no dose/1 dose/2 doses which i guess they can get as people can enter symptoms and test results in.
Enough correlation they class it as a symptom.
What they're arguing now is in a vaccinated person, the symptoms are akin to a cold/hayfever (ie other words, a bog standard respiratory distress or infection triggered immune response). This isn't surprising at all as they do now have what is effective a mild respiratory virus (ie a form of cold).
That bit of their working is fine by me. It makes sense.
The problem now is they've expanded those new, milder symptoms into their list for "you likely have covid" which means anyone with any form of mild respiratory infection or immune response for any disease or allergy is now also going to qualify as having covid. This skews their figures.
In other words, their test-free symptomatic reporting is now going to find it impossible to differentiate between actual SARs2 and any other common infection or allergy so the numbers produced are now meaningless.
Remember Zoe doesn't base its active cases on tests at all - its self reporting symptomatic. It does accept tests but thats not the main driver.
I had hayfever a while back so just entered the symptoms into the app. On both occasions it emailed me suggesting i want to get a test. I didn't obviously but i guess my symptoms (runny nose, fever, slight headache, slight sore throat) ticked enough boxes for me to be classed as an active case.
Vaccination and the reduction of specific symptoms may have rendered Zoes entire app and methodology almost useless now.
What they're arguing now is in a vaccinated person, the symptoms are akin to a cold/hayfever (ie other words, a bog standard respiratory distress or infection triggered immune response). This isn't surprising at all as they do now have what is effective a mild respiratory virus (ie a form of cold).
There is evidence to suggest that vaccination gives rise to anti-bodies in the blood specific to the spike that reduce viral replication (and hence slimits severe disease) wheras actual infection gives rise to more generic antibodies, in the mucus membranes that target any protein in the coronavirus, and hence more completely stop the virus. The upshot is that vaccination still allows the virus to thrive in the mucus membranes and give rise to mild cold like symptoms. At least that is how I understand things, and that the best immunity arises in those vaccinted and then subsequently infected. This appears to be at the base of current government policy, which is to let it rip, for a bit sinc e the vast majority will wind up both vaccinated and infected, in the best possible state of immunity.
There's a lot more to it than mucosal immunity though.
We're showing levels of memory,T and other cells waning rapidly after vaccination but not at all after infection.
Also natural is going to produce antibodies for everything not just the spike protein so likely be far more resistant to variants AND far more able to respond rapidly and swamp any infection.
"Mild cold like symptoms" isnt to do with where the infection is - the symptoms are still histamines and other signs of a standard immune response to any infection.
FWIW Israeli data showed the chances of infection was 13x lower in a "had covid" group than "double vaccinated but hasnt" group.
PHE figures show reinfections at only about 1.2% too.
