On @MaxPB 's earlier comments re: benefits and entitlement: the focus should be on the high rate of working poverty in the UK, rather than for those out of work, particular when compared with Scandinavian countries.
The solution, mooted often here, is going to be a big reform to the earnings taper rate on UC and the marginal rate of tax. It's tricky though - UC serves to subsidise employers at the mo, and reducing the taper will not help. There is also the underlying problem of low productivity.
On the NHS: this is a classic moral hazard problem. The optics of punishing those overweight (over 60% of us!) doesn't work. How easy would it be to provide a £100 per annum tax refund to those with BMI 25?
That is indeed the problem with the UK system. It encourages bad behaviour - not by the low paid or unemployed but by business. Pay workers less than a living wage and expect the Government to make up the difference.
In Norway the minimum wage is around £17 an hour for cleaning staff.
I was involved when Brown introduced working tax credits, the predecessor to that part of UC. The argument for them is this. Say you're unemployed and your skill levels are low, so you're getting £X a week in JSA and no employer really wants you at minimum wage level £Y. Why not give the employer something like £X towards employing you for a while? The cost to the taxpayer is zero as they'd otherwise pay you £X to do nothing. The business is delighted to get you for a mere £Y-£X. And you're getting £Y-£X more per week, and you're back in the workforce, used to the habit of working regularly again and with luck learning new skills.
In the long term, we'd like employers to create jobs for lower-skilled staff with higher wages, as in Norway, and the market will tend to nudge that along, as we're seeing with some unpopular jobs now, from care workers to parking wardens to lorry drivers. But in the short term, to get people off UC, there's a good case for it - and it does require a generous taper to be attractive.
I see there's to be an interdenominational service to mark a century of Partition in N. Ireland. HM Queen and Johnson will be present, but not the Irish President. Can't help feeling this isn't a good idea.
It is a good idea. If Michael D Higgins wants to refuse his invitation to commemorate the 100 year centenary of NI (which also of course created the Irish Free State which became the Irish Republic he is now president of) to make a political point and have a sulk that is up to him
As I said, I'm not at all sure. What we now know as N.Ireland was created as a response to a 'quasi' revolution fostered by a small religious minority and encouraged by divisive politicians in England, and as a consequence of different economic treatment of said religious minority.
It's been a cause of at least simmering hostility ever since.
Well I am sure. If President Higgins wants to throw a tantrum tough, he was sent an invitiation, if he refused it why should we care?
Northern Ireland was created to respect the wishes of the majority Protestant and Unionist population of the province who wanted to stay part of the UK and anyone who disrespects that is a traitor to the UK as far as I am concerned
First 'traitor' of the day. Will it be the last?!
Ooh. Can I be added to the list. Nothing to celebrate about the creation of a nasty little statelet which proceeded to oppress its Catholic citizens.
Well no surprise there then, you would probably have given the Falklands away free to Argentina in 1982 too
COVID numbers look bad at the moment, Its depressing and I understand the calls for Lockdown/passports or other restrictions, But:
Ironic as this sounds numbers are so high that they cant stay this high for long. in particular I am taking about 10-14 Year olds. in the Office for nautical statistics weekly COVID servery, where they go out and test a random group of people across age range and geography to get an pitcher of what is actually happening, in the last week, which is the week ending 9 October, 8.1% of 10-14 Year olds had COVID, 8.1% that's not a typo, link here:
At that rate 12 weeks and 3 days and the whole cohort while have had it, and if you are interested 12 weeks and 3 days means 28th December. but its not going to be like that for 4 reasons:
1) That rate will not hold steady for 12 weeks, its already gone up, which brings that date forward,
2) Many many kids have already had it which again brings it forward.
3) The dammed delayed Vaccine roll out for dins is at last happening if terribly showily, it will again bring it forward.
4) We will never get to 100% 99% maybe, but not quite 100%
The last 2 of those are pretty small, but the first 2 will have a big effect. so when will be get to the HIT, I don't know, but maybe soon, if 8.1% had it week ending 9 October, and last week was more than that, and this week seems to be even larger then a quarter of all that age group have had it in 3 weeks, maybe more than a quarter. we could have gone form 50& to 80%.
I figure, from the unsophisticated method of taking the ONS surveys and adding up the estimated fraction that were catching it every day (and scaling for the pre-ONS survey days by using hospitalisations as a metric for infections on the assumption that the infection hospitality rate would have been quite similar throughout the first six months or so) that 50%-70% of 11-17s have to have had the virus already.
If they have it for an average of about 11 days, and the rate has continued to increase, we're probably pretty close to that number ticking up by 1% per day at the moment.
Brown is too low there. He should be top on this one. Look how he coordinated the global response to the bank crash. The GLOBAL response, note.
He'd have struggled with selling it to a sceptical nation though. What you really want is a League if National Heroes-
Thatch for the science and being decisive. Major for humanity and concern for the struggling. Blair for the motivational speeches. Brown for the money. Cameron for tucking the nation up and making them feel safe. May for the rules.
Johnson can go and do some colouring in or something.
Whoops, I briefly misread the third word on your Cameron entry. Or did you mistype?
I see there's to be an interdenominational service to mark a century of Partition in N. Ireland. HM Queen and Johnson will be present, but not the Irish President. Can't help feeling this isn't a good idea.
It is a good idea. If Michael D Higgins wants to refuse his invitation to commemorate the 100 year centenary of NI (which also of course created the Irish Free State which became the Irish Republic he is now president of) to make a political point and have a sulk that is up to him
As I said, I'm not at all sure. What we now know as N.Ireland was created as a response to a 'quasi' revolution fostered by a small religious minority and encouraged by divisive politicians in England, and as a consequence of different economic treatment of said religious minority.
It's been a cause of at least simmering hostility ever since.
Well I am sure. If President Higgins wants to throw a tantrum tough, he was sent an invitiation, if he refused it why should we care?
Northern Ireland was created to respect the wishes of the majority Protestant and Unionist population of the province who wanted to stay part of the UK and anyone who disrespects that is a traitor to the UK as far as I am concerned
First 'traitor' of the day. Will it be the last?!
Ooh. Can I be added to the list. Nothing to celebrate about the creation of a nasty little statelet which proceeded to oppress its Catholic citizens.
Well no surprise there then, you would probably have given the Falklands away free to Argentina in 1982 too
Mate. Calm down a bit. Take a walk round the block and come back refreshed.
On @MaxPB 's earlier comments re: benefits and entitlement: the focus should be on the high rate of working poverty in the UK, rather than for those out of work, particular when compared with Scandinavian countries.
The solution, mooted often here, is going to be a big reform to the earnings taper rate on UC and the marginal rate of tax. It's tricky though - UC serves to subsidise employers at the mo, and reducing the taper will not help. There is also the underlying problem of low productivity.
On the NHS: this is a classic moral hazard problem. The optics of punishing those overweight (over 60% of us!) doesn't work. How easy would it be to provide a £100 per annum tax refund to those with BMI 25?
That is indeed the problem with the UK system. It encourages bad behaviour - not by the low paid or unemployed but by business. Pay workers less than a living wage and expect the Government to make up the difference.
In Norway the minimum wage is around £17 an hour for cleaning staff.
I was involved when Brown introduced working tax credits, the predecessor to that part of UC. The argument for them is this. Say you're unemployed and your skill levels are low, so you're getting £X a week in JSA and no employer really wants you at minimum wage level £Y. Why not give the employer something like £X towards employing you for a while? The cost to the taxpayer is zero as they'd otherwise pay you £X to do nothing. The business is delighted to get you for a mere £Y-£X. And you're getting £Y-£X more per week, and you're back in the workforce, used to the habit of working regularly again and with luck learning new skills.
In the long term, we'd like employers to create jobs for lower-skilled staff with higher wages, as in Norway, and the market will tend to nudge that along, as we're seeing with some unpopular jobs now, from care workers to parking wardens to lorry drivers. But in the short term, to get people off UC, there's a good case for it - and it does require a generous taper to be attractive.
I think there is a cost to the taxpayer. Employers that are currently offering the minimum wage for some jobs would be more than happy to further reduce that wage and allow UC to pick up the slack.
49,139 positive COVID cases and a further 179 deaths in the latest 24-hour period
This is where the usual suspects will insist that most or all of these are deaths "with covid" that would otherwise have happened anyway. Because an average of 1 in 1890 of the UK population, hugely skewed towards children, would expect to have 150+ deaths per day, wouldn't they?
Some very simple sums show it isn't the case.
Exactly. Yet some intelligent and mathematically adept people come out with the line, still.
I did assume for a long while that the denialism was down to straightforward fear and inability to accept a painful reality.
But a friend pointed out something else recently: a virus cannot be argued with, cannot be pressured, cannot be fired, cannot have public sentiment whipped up against it, cannot be voted out, and cannot be blamed.
If you can decide that a person was responsible, then they can be argued with, pressured, fired, have public opinion whipped up against them, voted out, and certainly be blamed.
There is therefore a big psychological draw to finding some way of blaming a person. If you accept that the virus is the key issue and that things like restrictions do the job - who can you blame? Who can you put pressure on? If it's the virus, it doesn't care. If, though, you can find a way to rationalise that it's NOT the virus but the Government/modellers/SAGE/other scientists and it was lockdown and restrictions that were the problem and not covid, then it's psychologically easier.
I don't know how much truth there may be to that, but it did make me stop and think.
Whilst I agree with you, I'd appreciate it if you'd acknowledge that vaccines have changed the game. Sure, deaths due to COVID among the vaccinated will be knocking off life, but it will be nowhere near the same as when we weren't vaccinated.
Oh, absolutely. We'd be in a very different place without them.
We're looking at covid being maybe 2-3 times as deadly as influenza for all ages for those vaccinated (versus 20-30x for the unvaccinated). It still causes a significant problem because when it's rampant, it would also end up infecting the majority of the population and doing so in a few months (vice about a quarter to a third for an influenza outbreak).
So, with the vaxxed, we're looking at a situation about 5-10x as bad as a bad seasonal influenza outbreak. Which can cause considerable damage and unacceptable pressure on hospitals - but in comparison to last year, it's not even in the same league, let alone division.
Add to that the data from the booster shots looking like they reduce danger/deadliness by over a further factor of ten, and when the booster rollout is done, we're done.
As it stands, thanks to the vaccines, we actually only need to reduce R by about 20% to hit stability until the booster rollout is done. Could have been done by vaxxing all the teens (and should have been done by now).
Or maybe masking and encouraging WFH until the booster programme is out might be enough. Certainly no need for a hard lockdown, in my considered opinion.
Absolute worst-case I can see would be a 4-5 week return to Step 3 of the roadmap, but I suspect the masks/WFH would probably do the trick. It'll take us 4-5 weeks to see the benefit of a much accelerated teen jabs/booster jabs programme, so that should see us emerge from it.
You're overthinking this. By all accounts (literally every doctor I know) the people with severe COVID are unvaccinated or very old and already in death's waiting room. Suggesting NPIs to halt those deaths seems unwise given the economic hit it entails.
I see there's to be an interdenominational service to mark a century of Partition in N. Ireland. HM Queen and Johnson will be present, but not the Irish President. Can't help feeling this isn't a good idea.
It is a good idea. If Michael D Higgins wants to refuse his invitation to commemorate the 100 year centenary of NI (which also of course created the Irish Free State which became the Irish Republic he is now president of) to make a political point and have a sulk that is up to him
As I said, I'm not at all sure. What we now know as N.Ireland was created as a response to a 'quasi' revolution fostered by a small religious minority and encouraged by divisive politicians in England, and as a consequence of different economic treatment of said religious minority.
It's been a cause of at least simmering hostility ever since.
Well I am sure. If President Higgins wants to throw a tantrum tough, he was sent an invitiation, if he refused it why should we care?
Northern Ireland was created to respect the wishes of the majority Protestant and Unionist population of the province who wanted to stay part of the UK and anyone who disrespects that is a traitor to the UK as far as I am concerned
First 'traitor' of the day. Will it be the last?!
Ooh. Can I be added to the list. Nothing to celebrate about the creation of a nasty little statelet which proceeded to oppress its Catholic citizens.
Well no surprise there then, you would probably have given the Falklands away free to Argentina in 1982 too
You are just continuing to make a fool of yourself
I see there's to be an interdenominational service to mark a century of Partition in N. Ireland. HM Queen and Johnson will be present, but not the Irish President. Can't help feeling this isn't a good idea.
It is a good idea. If Michael D Higgins wants to refuse his invitation to commemorate the 100 year centenary of NI (which also of course created the Irish Free State which became the Irish Republic he is now president of) to make a political point and have a sulk that is up to him
As I said, I'm not at all sure. What we now know as N.Ireland was created as a response to a 'quasi' revolution fostered by a small religious minority and encouraged by divisive politicians in England, and as a consequence of different economic treatment of said religious minority.
It's been a cause of at least simmering hostility ever since.
Well I am sure. If President Higgins wants to throw a tantrum tough, he was sent an invitiation, if he refused it why should we care?
Northern Ireland was created to respect the wishes of the majority Protestant and Unionist population of the province who wanted to stay part of the UK and anyone who disrespects that is a traitor to the UK as far as I am concerned
First 'traitor' of the day. Will it be the last?!
Ooh. Can I be added to the list. Nothing to celebrate about the creation of a nasty little statelet which proceeded to oppress its Catholic citizens.
Well no surprise there then, you would probably have given the Falklands away free to Argentina in 1982 too
You are just continuing to make a fool of yourself
COVID numbers look bad at the moment, Its depressing and I understand the calls for Lockdown/passports or other restrictions, But:
Ironic as this sounds numbers are so high that they cant stay this high for long. in particular I am taking about 10-14 Year olds. in the Office for nautical statistics weekly COVID servery, where they go out and test a random group of people across age range and geography to get an pitcher of what is actually happening, in the last week, which is the week ending 9 October, 8.1% of 10-14 Year olds had COVID, 8.1% that's not a typo, link here:
At that rate 12 weeks and 3 days and the whole cohort while have had it, and if you are interested 12 weeks and 3 days means 28th December. but its not going to be like that for 4 reasons:
1) That rate will not hold steady for 12 weeks, its already gone up, which brings that date forward,
2) Many many kids have already had it which again brings it forward.
3) The dammed delayed Vaccine roll out for dins is at last happening if terribly showily, it will again bring it forward.
4) We will never get to 100% 99% maybe, but not quite 100%
The last 2 of those are pretty small, but the first 2 will have a big effect. so when will be get to the HIT, I don't know, but maybe soon, if 8.1% had it week ending 9 October, and last week was more than that, and this week seems to be even larger then a quarter of all that age group have had it in 3 weeks, maybe more than a quarter. we could have gone form 50& to 80%.
The last panic about cases we had was just before the numbers started falling unexpectedly in the summer.
I reckon this panic about cases is also kicking in just before the numbers start falling.
It might be next week during half term, or it might even be the end of this week. There doesn't seem to be much transmission between vaccinated groups so once the children have all had it we'll lose a lot of the reservoir of infection.
It is interesting that the last spike was mostly caused by older children and young adults but this time that group has tracked in a similar way to all the other age groups.
On @MaxPB 's earlier comments re: benefits and entitlement: the focus should be on the high rate of working poverty in the UK, rather than for those out of work, particular when compared with Scandinavian countries.
The solution, mooted often here, is going to be a big reform to the earnings taper rate on UC and the marginal rate of tax. It's tricky though - UC serves to subsidise employers at the mo, and reducing the taper will not help. There is also the underlying problem of low productivity.
On the NHS: this is a classic moral hazard problem. The optics of punishing those overweight (over 60% of us!) doesn't work. How easy would it be to provide a £100 per annum tax refund to those with BMI 25?
That is indeed the problem with the UK system. It encourages bad behaviour - not by the low paid or unemployed but by business. Pay workers less than a living wage and expect the Government to make up the difference.
In Norway the minimum wage is around £17 an hour for cleaning staff.
I was involved when Brown introduced working tax credits, the predecessor to that part of UC. The argument for them is this. Say you're unemployed and your skill levels are low, so you're getting £X a week in JSA and no employer really wants you at minimum wage level £Y. Why not give the employer something like £X towards employing you for a while? The cost to the taxpayer is zero as they'd otherwise pay you £X to do nothing. The business is delighted to get you for a mere £Y-£X. And you're getting £Y-£X more per week, and you're back in the workforce, used to the habit of working regularly again and with luck learning new skills.
In the long term, we'd like employers to create jobs for lower-skilled staff with higher wages, as in Norway, and the market will tend to nudge that along, as we're seeing with some unpopular jobs now, from care workers to parking wardens to lorry drivers. But in the short term, to get people off UC, there's a good case for it - and it does require a generous taper to be attractive.
The problem is the implementation led to a roughly 100% taper in Browns system.
It's now a roughly 75% taper with UC. Better but still atrocious.
The taper is anything but generous.
Also of course combining that system with free movement within Europe meant we ended up paying UC to people who were not claiming unemployment benefits because they weren't unemployed in the UK. Instead they've come to work for a minimum wage job.
The point of vaccination is to resume normal life, not as a pretext to impose social ostracism on those with the temerity to decline them.
And yes, yes, I have been double-vaccinated and encourage others to do likewise. But the insanity we're seeing in Italy/France where, it seems, those without their papers are cut adrift from work and society is wholly unacceptable.
Letting fear make you ready and willing to throw away the freedom to simply go about your business without presenting papers is not something I think conducive to good policy.
There are also other steps that could be taken, such as resuming social distancing.
Social distancing is another no. It’s not a benign restriction. It means no team sports, half full stadiums, no dancing or parties. It is deeply abhorrent - anathema to the Social Animal.
I see there's to be an interdenominational service to mark a century of Partition in N. Ireland. HM Queen and Johnson will be present, but not the Irish President. Can't help feeling this isn't a good idea.
It is a good idea. If Michael D Higgins wants to refuse his invitation to commemorate the 100 year centenary of NI (which also of course created the Irish Free State which became the Irish Republic he is now president of) to make a political point and have a sulk that is up to him
As I said, I'm not at all sure. What we now know as N.Ireland was created as a response to a 'quasi' revolution fostered by a small religious minority and encouraged by divisive politicians in England, and as a consequence of different economic treatment of said religious minority.
It's been a cause of at least simmering hostility ever since.
Well I am sure. If President Higgins wants to throw a tantrum tough, he was sent an invitiation, if he refused it why should we care?
Northern Ireland was created to respect the wishes of the majority Protestant and Unionist population of the province who wanted to stay part of the UK and anyone who disrespects that is a traitor to the UK as far as I am concerned
First 'traitor' of the day. Will it be the last?!
Ooh. Can I be added to the list. Nothing to celebrate about the creation of a nasty little statelet which proceeded to oppress its Catholic citizens.
Well no surprise there then, you would probably have given the Falklands away free to Argentina in 1982 too
You are just continuing to make a fool of yourself
They are severely misnamed. They take decades to learn how to do what the other teeth manage in six months, and even then they often arrive at slightly the wrong destination. Stupid teeth would be more accurate.
Sympathies as I know from personal experience just how painful that can be
Sympathies to Ms Free as well.
As an aside, having three wisdom teeth removed at once is a happy memory to me. It occurred a short time after Mrs J and I got together, and her reaction to the op - I was put full under - made me realise she was a keeper. ;)She was, and is lovely.
I doubt I've ever done anything to make her think I'm a keeper ...
I see there's to be an interdenominational service to mark a century of Partition in N. Ireland. HM Queen and Johnson will be present, but not the Irish President. Can't help feeling this isn't a good idea.
It is a good idea. If Michael D Higgins wants to refuse his invitation to commemorate the 100 year centenary of NI (which also of course created the Irish Free State which became the Irish Republic he is now president of) to make a political point and have a sulk that is up to him
As I said, I'm not at all sure. What we now know as N.Ireland was created as a response to a 'quasi' revolution fostered by a small religious minority and encouraged by divisive politicians in England, and as a consequence of different economic treatment of said religious minority.
It's been a cause of at least simmering hostility ever since.
Well I am sure. If President Higgins wants to throw a tantrum tough, he was sent an invitiation, if he refused it why should we care?
Northern Ireland was created to respect the wishes of the majority Protestant and Unionist population of the province who wanted to stay part of the UK and anyone who disrespects that is a traitor to the UK as far as I am concerned
First 'traitor' of the day. Will it be the last?!
Ooh. Can I be added to the list. Nothing to celebrate about the creation of a nasty little statelet which proceeded to oppress its Catholic citizens.
Well no surprise there then, you would probably have given the Falklands away free to Argentina in 1982 too
Mate. Calm down a bit. Take a walk round the block and come back refreshed.
On the subject of treatment for COVID patients my wife and a lot of my European friends are quite scathing about how UK society operates. In their view (and correctly, IMO) the UK has tried to create a society without consequences for poor decisions. Decide not to get the vaccine? Don't worry the NHS will still give you treatment, even at the exclusion of others. Decide to not look after your weight, don't worry the NHS will give you free diabetes drugs and quarterly checkups to tell you to stop being so fat but don't worry about listening to the doctors, we'll give you the drugs for free either way.
It extends to other areas too, had too many kids and can't afford it on your low wages? Don't worry we've got tax credits for that, need a bigger property for all those kids you can't afford? Great we'll give you housing benefit for that bit too. Oh you don't like your job? Don't worry about it guys, just quit and we'll give you unemployment benefits plus a myriad of top ups to ensure the kids you could already couldn't afford aren't neglected and we'll top up your housing benefits too so the landlord doesn't evict you. Wait, you never want to work again? It's ok, there's no time limit to benefits! You can sit there and do nothing all day if you want and we don't mind.
You get the picture. People make stupid decisions and the state has decided its role is to protect people from their own stupid choices.
If you think free health care is the cause of obesity then you'd have some job explaining the US. And whatever we are doing to encourage people to have kids clearly isn't enough, with births down 4% in 2020 and the fertility rate at 1.58, the lowest on record (and no, that's not because of Covid).
Agree on obesity & free health care. On the birth rate I think it is fair to say that some that part of the problem is some who are above benefit level but not financially comfortable have fewer kids than they might otherwise choose to, and that is particularly down to housing costs. It is unsurprising that this causes some resentment, and that we should look for a better balance than the status quo.
Anyone above benefits level can afford to have kids. Yes, it may be a struggle, but it's doable. My parents were permanently skint when I was a kid, and I had a brilliant childhood. Not denying there's a housing crisis. But having a family is much more important than being financially comfortable, IMO.
Whether they can, or should do is not really the question for society, that is for individuals. If many of them feel they can't or shouldn't have a replacement level of kids there is a big problem that society needs to look at.
I agree. I would like to see the whole of society reoriented to support children and families, with more family friendly work places, better funded schools, more subsidised childcare and higher child benefit. I take the Whitney Houston view on children. The only point I am making is that people who wait until they have amassed a certain amount of money before having children shouldn't resent others, including those who receive support from the state, who are willing to just get on with it.
Again, perhaps they shouldn't resent it, but some of them do and that is very understandable.
If we are only allowed to comment on opinions that we think are not only wrong but also impossible to understand then we'll be reduced to discussing why some people like Love Actually.
The film does deliver a good debate as to which is the very worst scene. My submission would be where the bloke is stood on Keira Knightley's doorstep holding up a series of soppy, overwrought proclamations of love on placards. Is that a homage to Dylan? Possibly, but I don't care if it is. It's very bad.
Personally I would go for any and every scene that had Martine McCutcheon in it.
Good call. There is quality in the film and that is the Emma Thompson story and character. Woman realizes her husband of many many years is cheating, which makes her feel sad and foolish and as if her life has been a joke. It's realistic and poignant, and seems to belong in a different movie.
The film is just a series of male fantasies strung together.
Yes, it sort of is. And it's relentlessly trite. However the Thompson storyline does stand out for me as NOT trite. I go with one star (from 5) instead of none solely for this reason.
Brown is too low there. He should be top on this one. Look how he coordinated the global response to the bank crash. The GLOBAL response, note.
Hahahaha
HAHAHA
No, he is right. Brown did galvanise the international response to the GFC. Major and Blair had BSE and foot and mouth but nothing on this scale. So for the pandemic, Brown for Labour. Possibly Boris, despite the many missteps, for the Conservatives. Yes, Mrs Thatcher did come good over AIDS but would she have been so keen to open the spending taps? Churchill was not an option but "We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be."
49,139 positive COVID cases and a further 179 deaths in the latest 24-hour period
This is where the usual suspects will insist that most or all of these are deaths "with covid" that would otherwise have happened anyway. Because an average of 1 in 1890 of the UK population, hugely skewed towards children, would expect to have 150+ deaths per day, wouldn't they?
Some very simple sums show it isn't the case.
Exactly. Yet some intelligent and mathematically adept people come out with the line, still.
I did assume for a long while that the denialism was down to straightforward fear and inability to accept a painful reality.
But a friend pointed out something else recently: a virus cannot be argued with, cannot be pressured, cannot be fired, cannot have public sentiment whipped up against it, cannot be voted out, and cannot be blamed.
If you can decide that a person was responsible, then they can be argued with, pressured, fired, have public opinion whipped up against them, voted out, and certainly be blamed.
There is therefore a big psychological draw to finding some way of blaming a person. If you accept that the virus is the key issue and that things like restrictions do the job - who can you blame? Who can you put pressure on? If it's the virus, it doesn't care. If, though, you can find a way to rationalise that it's NOT the virus but the Government/modellers/SAGE/other scientists and it was lockdown and restrictions that were the problem and not covid, then it's psychologically easier.
I don't know how much truth there may be to that, but it did make me stop and think.
Whilst I agree with you, I'd appreciate it if you'd acknowledge that vaccines have changed the game. Sure, deaths due to COVID among the vaccinated will be knocking off life, but it will be nowhere near the same as when we weren't vaccinated.
Oh, absolutely. We'd be in a very different place without them.
We're looking at covid being maybe 2-3 times as deadly as influenza for all ages for those vaccinated (versus 20-30x for the unvaccinated). It still causes a significant problem because when it's rampant, it would also end up infecting the majority of the population and doing so in a few months (vice about a quarter to a third for an influenza outbreak).
So, with the vaxxed, we're looking at a situation about 5-10x as bad as a bad seasonal influenza outbreak. Which can cause considerable damage and unacceptable pressure on hospitals - but in comparison to last year, it's not even in the same league, let alone division.
Add to that the data from the booster shots looking like they reduce danger/deadliness by over a further factor of ten, and when the booster rollout is done, we're done.
As it stands, thanks to the vaccines, we actually only need to reduce R by about 20% to hit stability until the booster rollout is done. Could have been done by vaxxing all the teens (and should have been done by now).
Or maybe masking and encouraging WFH until the booster programme is out might be enough. Certainly no need for a hard lockdown, in my considered opinion.
Absolute worst-case I can see would be a 4-5 week return to Step 3 of the roadmap, but I suspect the masks/WFH would probably do the trick. It'll take us 4-5 weeks to see the benefit of a much accelerated teen jabs/booster jabs programme, so that should see us emerge from it.
You're overthinking this. By all accounts (literally every doctor I know) the people with severe COVID are unvaccinated or very old and already in death's waiting room. Suggesting NPIs to halt those deaths seems unwise given the economic hit it entails.
Most recent four weeks on record, serious illness resulting in hospitalisation by age group and vaccination status (they don't add up completely because single jabbed and only-double-jabbed-a-few-days-ago make up the balance):
And the potential need isn't for the unvaxxed. Personally, I'd say sod them. The problem is that their insistence on relying on natural immunity invariably expires the moment they get seriously ill and they go to unnatural hospitals and take up unnatural beds and require the attention of doctors and nurses giving them unnatural drugs (sometimes experimental) and unnatural ICU support.
Which screws things up for literally everyone else.
A&E unavailability, ambulances stacked outside the hospital unable to unload patients, longer and longer waits for everything - the potential for much of the NHS being unavailable to everyone else is the risk.
If the unvaxxed would have the courage of their convictions and quietly expire at home, we'd be fine.
The point of vaccination is to resume normal life, not as a pretext to impose social ostracism on those with the temerity to decline them.
And yes, yes, I have been double-vaccinated and encourage others to do likewise. But the insanity we're seeing in Italy/France where, it seems, those without their papers are cut adrift from work and society is wholly unacceptable.
Letting fear make you ready and willing to throw away the freedom to simply go about your business without presenting papers is not something I think conducive to good policy.
There are also other steps that could be taken, such as resuming social distancing.
I would personally go for WFH, some mask wearing and social distancing to try and reduce the spread. These things can all be easily adopted with negligible economic and social cost. Some people will carry on going to restaurants, bars etc and that is their choice; but the above measures would reduce the spread of the virus in the general population.
That is 'Plan B'. This "vaccine passports" thing is getting undue focus from both ends imo. It's neither the solution to living with covid nor some slippery slope to a gestapo society. I'm against fwiw, it fails the cost/benefit test unless done properly and we wouldn't do it properly.
The problem is that the urge to create a centralised ID database is absolutely irresistable for any government. And once it is there, it will never, ever, be removed.
@HYUFD must be a fiendishly clever creation of our much lamented and departed fiction writer @SeanT.
Probably a character in some new dystopian thriller involving Catalonia, Scotland and now Antrim. Not quite sure where Epping Forest fits in. Perhaps it is where all the DNA tests for people visiting their overseas families are stored.
But it has to be the explanation. Surely. I refuse to believe that a real person could talk such utter shite about Ireland. (And Scotland. And Spain.) There again he is - apparently - a member of the Tory party. So that might explain it.
Comments
Mouth still hurts like hell.
Feeling very sorry for myself.
In the long term, we'd like employers to create jobs for lower-skilled staff with higher wages, as in Norway, and the market will tend to nudge that along, as we're seeing with some unpopular jobs now, from care workers to parking wardens to lorry drivers. But in the short term, to get people off UC, there's a good case for it - and it does require a generous taper to be attractive.
If they have it for an average of about 11 days, and the rate has continued to increase, we're probably pretty close to that number ticking up by 1% per day at the moment.
You've got yourself into a bit of a hole here.
Maybe think before you post
I reckon this panic about cases is also kicking in just before the numbers start falling.
It might be next week during half term, or it might even be the end of this week. There doesn't seem to be much transmission between vaccinated groups so once the children have all had it we'll lose a lot of the reservoir of infection.
It is interesting that the last spike was mostly caused by older children and young adults but this time that group has tracked in a similar way to all the other age groups.
It's now a roughly 75% taper with UC. Better but still atrocious.
The taper is anything but generous.
Also of course combining that system with free movement within Europe meant we ended up paying UC to people who were not claiming unemployment benefits because they weren't unemployed in the UK. Instead they've come to work for a minimum wage job.
As an aside, having three wisdom teeth removed at once is a happy memory to me. It occurred a short time after Mrs J and I got together, and her reaction to the op - I was put full under - made me realise she was a keeper. ;)She was, and is lovely.
I doubt I've ever done anything to make her think I'm a keeper ...
https://mpani.org/
Whatever the cost may be.
And the potential need isn't for the unvaxxed. Personally, I'd say sod them. The problem is that their insistence on relying on natural immunity invariably expires the moment they get seriously ill and they go to unnatural hospitals and take up unnatural beds and require the attention of doctors and nurses giving them unnatural drugs (sometimes experimental) and unnatural ICU support.
Which screws things up for literally everyone else.
A&E unavailability, ambulances stacked outside the hospital unable to unload patients, longer and longer waits for everything - the potential for much of the NHS being unavailable to everyone else is the risk.
If the unvaxxed would have the courage of their convictions and quietly expire at home, we'd be fine.
NEW THREAD
Probably a character in some new dystopian thriller involving Catalonia, Scotland and now Antrim. Not quite sure where Epping Forest fits in. Perhaps it is where all the DNA tests for people visiting their overseas families are stored.
But it has to be the explanation. Surely. I refuse to believe that a real person could talk such utter shite about Ireland. (And Scotland. And Spain.) There again he is - apparently - a member of the Tory party. So that might explain it.
The point I was making to the person in question is that illiberal measures always sound good. Until one of your "in" groups gets hit by them.
A year from now, 10, they'll swing back to the belief that they can make people...better. And I do not hold to that.