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The Tories get their best voting poll for more than three weeks – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited November 2021 in General
imageThe Tories get their best voting poll for more than three weeks – politicalbetting.com

Given what has happened in British politics over the last few weeks I find it remarkable that back in August one of the best bets that I was recommending was that LAB would get a polling lead of some sort by the end of the year. Then such a possibility seemed so remote but how things have changed. When I made that bet with Smarkets I was talking about the possibility of an outlier.

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Nu
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    WE ARE THE PB-ERS THAT SAY NU
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,600
    edited November 2021
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,173
    edited November 2021
    (FPT)

    Leon said:

    Another variant, another winter of lockdown, another spike in deaths, another vaccine, and on and on it goes, forever and ever until the death knell of a doomed and blacknened universe sounds across the empty void

    China might have killed the world

    *eyes gin*

    Let's assume for a moment that China started this, either deliberately or by accident*...

    Maybe they have done us all a big favour?

    There was always going to be a pandemic like this at some point. We are *very* lucky that the IFR for Covid is sub 1%; it could have been >30%. That would have threatened civilisation as we know it.

    One has to hope that the long term fall-out of Covid will be much better plans for the control and containment of future pandemics.

    (*FWIW I think <5% chance it was deliberate; 40-50% human created but accidental; c. 50% natural)</p>
    Yes, still mired in uncertainty - quite a bit of which is due to Chinese obfuscation, and some just plain scientific uncertainty.
    One recent piece of news was a reported link between bat virus samples from Laos and the Wuhan lab, which I was previously unaware of.

    As for the 'favour', no.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,331
    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Pretty bloody ropey after my Moderna booster jab. Seriously sore and frozen arm, general malaise and fatigue. Much worse than AZ, which caused a tiny bit of tenderness in the shoulder...

    That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID.
    I am now near-certain that I did have Covid way back in January 2020, caught in Thailand. That's what Public Health England thought, that's why they sent me to be tested in UCLH, tho a SNAFU prevented any actual test

    It would also explain why I haven't caught Covid since, despite taking many risks in recent months: pubs, bars, restaurants, planes, the works
    "That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID."

    Is it? First I've heard of that idea.
    Yes it has been punted before, by proper scientists, tho there are also other explanations, ofc
    Hey, my Chemistry degree still just about qualifies me as a "proper scientist" just not a practicing one.
    You never lose the scientific training.
    You know a junior asked me earlier this year whether or not I thought my degree was useful, I was going to say "not really" as always but actually after having a short think about it, I think it is pretty useful. Not the chemistry because fuck that noise, but the methodology of being a scientist and being open to any and all criticism of a theory, idea or model. I think a lot of our more public scientists, especially those in iSAGE, seem to have forgotten that a big part of science is having regular retrospectives on current theories vs real life data. It's something I've noticed myself doing over the course of this pandemic, go back on old ideas and make sure they are still relevant.

    Too many of the public scientific advisors aren't doing that exercise right now. Just today I read that some SAGE scientists are calling for the immediate implementation of plan b, despite there being not very much evidence to support that. They're stuck in a timeloop of a political agenda that lockdown measures are the only way to combat this. I'm sure when Germany, France and other major European countries go into a full lockdown in two weeks those same voices will condemn the government as irresponsible and callous for not doing the same here and in the process completely ignore the available real world data on infection rates, testing and hospitalisation.
    Agree - and it can have very real world consequences - take the AIDS pandemic - no one had to explain to Thatcher the horrors of exponential growth in an infection - something the current incumbent seemed to have difficulty getting his head around.

    Favourite observations on science "Many a grand beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact" (yes, iSAGE, I'm looking at you - and these aren't "single" facts but whole battalions of them.)

    And of the French (which may be playing a part in the NI problems) - "it's all very well it working in practice - but does it work in theory?" I fear the EU are hung up on the theory of the integrity of the single market, ignoring the practical solutions and the ramifications of their absolutism.
    I mentioned before (I believe) a chap who accidentally disproved his own PhD right at the end, and presented the evidence at his viva.

    I would have given him his PhD and a Professorship to boot - *that* was True Science.
    I missed your earlier posting did he get his PhD?
    No - but they fudged it into a research grant of some kind to let him continue along the new line of enquiry.

    Which I thought was shit solution.
    Awwwww! That's ****ing outrageous. If his skills at research were good enough to build up a hypothesis, test it and write it up - and with the self-critical assessment to dump it - and to have a grant on top -then he had amply fulfilled the criteria for a PhD.
    Some of the greatest science has come from people carefully and exactly getting the result they didn't want.

    I always thought that Michelson–Morley should have got a Nobel.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    I know we mustn't panic, but this ain't great. An informative and perturbing thread. Lots of experts - not all iSAGE nutters - seem concerned. eg the head of Wellcome

    "What is the potential impact of the new B.1.1.529 #COVID19 variant?
    @rjlessells
    :
    1. It's relatively simple to detect some B.1.1.529 cases, as it's possible to use PCR tests to do this in some cases
    2. B.1.1.529 = has many mutations across different parts of the virus"


    https://twitter.com/miamalan/status/1463846528578109444?s=20
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,355
    HYUFD said:
    Kantar though has been kind to Tory ratings, hence I think why header calls it outlier?

    14 to 19 Oct Kantar had it
    39% 34% 8
    23-27 Sept
    43% 30% 11


    So the take out from sequence really is Labour eating into lead, Kantar finding more Labour voters each time they poll? So not really an outlier from other pollsters who start from different places.

    Or maybe I am a newbie and haven’t a clue 🤷‍♀️
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,193

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Pretty bloody ropey after my Moderna booster jab. Seriously sore and frozen arm, general malaise and fatigue. Much worse than AZ, which caused a tiny bit of tenderness in the shoulder...

    That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID.
    I am now near-certain that I did have Covid way back in January 2020, caught in Thailand. That's what Public Health England thought, that's why they sent me to be tested in UCLH, tho a SNAFU prevented any actual test

    It would also explain why I haven't caught Covid since, despite taking many risks in recent months: pubs, bars, restaurants, planes, the works
    "That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID."

    Is it? First I've heard of that idea.
    Yes it has been punted before, by proper scientists, tho there are also other explanations, ofc
    Hey, my Chemistry degree still just about qualifies me as a "proper scientist" just not a practicing one.
    You never lose the scientific training.
    You know a junior asked me earlier this year whether or not I thought my degree was useful, I was going to say "not really" as always but actually after having a short think about it, I think it is pretty useful. Not the chemistry because fuck that noise, but the methodology of being a scientist and being open to any and all criticism of a theory, idea or model. I think a lot of our more public scientists, especially those in iSAGE, seem to have forgotten that a big part of science is having regular retrospectives on current theories vs real life data. It's something I've noticed myself doing over the course of this pandemic, go back on old ideas and make sure they are still relevant.

    Too many of the public scientific advisors aren't doing that exercise right now. Just today I read that some SAGE scientists are calling for the immediate implementation of plan b, despite there being not very much evidence to support that. They're stuck in a timeloop of a political agenda that lockdown measures are the only way to combat this. I'm sure when Germany, France and other major European countries go into a full lockdown in two weeks those same voices will condemn the government as irresponsible and callous for not doing the same here and in the process completely ignore the available real world data on infection rates, testing and hospitalisation.
    Agree - and it can have very real world consequences - take the AIDS pandemic - no one had to explain to Thatcher the horrors of exponential growth in an infection - something the current incumbent seemed to have difficulty getting his head around.

    Favourite observations on science "Many a grand beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact" (yes, iSAGE, I'm looking at you - and these aren't "single" facts but whole battalions of them.)

    And of the French (which may be playing a part in the NI problems) - "it's all very well it working in practice - but does it work in theory?" I fear the EU are hung up on the theory of the integrity of the single market, ignoring the practical solutions and the ramifications of their absolutism.
    I mentioned before (I believe) a chap who accidentally disproved his own PhD right at the end, and presented the evidence at his viva.

    I would have given him his PhD and a Professorship to boot - *that* was True Science.
    I missed your earlier posting did he get his PhD?
    No - but they fudged it into a research grant of some kind to let him continue along the new line of enquiry.

    Which I thought was shit solution.
    Awwwww! That's ****ing outrageous. If his skills at research were good enough to build up a hypothesis, test it and write it up - and with the self-critical assessment to dump it - and to have a grant on top -then he had amply fulfilled the criteria for a PhD.
    Some of the greatest science has come from people carefully and exactly getting the result they didn't want.

    I always thought that Michelson–Morley should have got a Nobel.
    And recognising and publicising it rather than sweeping it under the carpet.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,147
    Off topic: I've just listened to a speech by Doug Specht about the zoning of London and, in particular, the new Nine Elms development and Northern Line extension. This is well worth a read:

    https://camri.ac.uk/blog/articles/the-northern-line-extension-a-challenge-for-mapmakers-and-for-social-equality/

    Battersea Riverside now has its own Underground line, very little social housing, and has been placed squarely within Zone 1 by Transport for London (TFL). What more could the developers have asked for? Through their elegant solution to zoning, the Tube map’s cartographers have managed to conceal the politics behind these decisions, making this new area appear as if it has always belonged in Zone 1. In doing so, they have pushed up the profits of the developers who managed to avoid having to build more affordable housing.

    Although not responsible for generating the circumstances that allowed the developers to lobby the Council, the Tube map has still managed to legitimise the outcomes. Like any map, its aesthetics conceals its politics.


    I studied some cartography at university and find it quite good fun. Maps are inherently political and can be very powerful.
  • There were over 100 cases of C1.2 in South Africa in Sept. The story was headlines in The New York Times. Lot of fear and damage ensued. Then it disappeared. Think we have to be cautious.

    https://twitter.com/lynne_ogilvy/status/1463895804775747589?s=20
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,193
    Dead cat bounce?

    But the lastest poll or Labour's brief spell in ascendency? Hard to tell.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,600
    edited November 2021
    tlg86 said:

    Off topic: I've just listened to a speech by Doug Specht about the zoning of London and, in particular, the new Nine Elms development and Northern Line extension. This is well worth a read:

    https://camri.ac.uk/blog/articles/the-northern-line-extension-a-challenge-for-mapmakers-and-for-social-equality/

    Battersea Riverside now has its own Underground line, very little social housing, and has been placed squarely within Zone 1 by Transport for London (TFL). What more could the developers have asked for? Through their elegant solution to zoning, the Tube map’s cartographers have managed to conceal the politics behind these decisions, making this new area appear as if it has always belonged in Zone 1. In doing so, they have pushed up the profits of the developers who managed to avoid having to build more affordable housing.

    Although not responsible for generating the circumstances that allowed the developers to lobby the Council, the Tube map has still managed to legitimise the outcomes. Like any map, its aesthetics conceals its politics.


    I studied some cartography at university and find it quite good fun. Maps are inherently political and can be very powerful.

    Not much use if there is a tube strike like will occur tomorrow and you cannot access it anyway
    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/tube-strike-london-why-tfl-victoria-northern-piccadilly-jubilee-line-b967597.html
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,193
    On science, you kind of need one arsehole independently minded person in the room who doesn't give a shit and asks the obvious questions where everyone else has assumed an answer.

    I've had experience of many of these people in steering committees, advisory boards etc and they're great. Often, to be fair, it's a clinician or a retired scientist, or both.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,669
    Leon said:

    I know we mustn't panic, but this ain't great. An informative and perturbing thread. Lots of experts - not all iSAGE nutters - seem concerned. eg the head of Wellcome

    "What is the potential impact of the new B.1.1.529 #COVID19 variant?
    @rjlessells
    :
    1. It's relatively simple to detect some B.1.1.529 cases, as it's possible to use PCR tests to do this in some cases
    2. B.1.1.529 = has many mutations across different parts of the virus"


    https://twitter.com/miamalan/status/1463846528578109444?s=20

    Well put Mainwairing.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Pretty bloody ropey after my Moderna booster jab. Seriously sore and frozen arm, general malaise and fatigue. Much worse than AZ, which caused a tiny bit of tenderness in the shoulder...

    That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID.
    I am now near-certain that I did have Covid way back in January 2020, caught in Thailand. That's what Public Health England thought, that's why they sent me to be tested in UCLH, tho a SNAFU prevented any actual test

    It would also explain why I haven't caught Covid since, despite taking many risks in recent months: pubs, bars, restaurants, planes, the works
    "That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID."

    Is it? First I've heard of that idea.
    Yes it has been punted before, by proper scientists, tho there are also other explanations, ofc
    Hey, my Chemistry degree still just about qualifies me as a "proper scientist" just not a practicing one.
    You never lose the scientific training.
    You know a junior asked me earlier this year whether or not I thought my degree was useful, I was going to say "not really" as always but actually after having a short think about it, I think it is pretty useful. Not the chemistry because fuck that noise, but the methodology of being a scientist and being open to any and all criticism of a theory, idea or model. I think a lot of our more public scientists, especially those in iSAGE, seem to have forgotten that a big part of science is having regular retrospectives on current theories vs real life data. It's something I've noticed myself doing over the course of this pandemic, go back on old ideas and make sure they are still relevant.

    Too many of the public scientific advisors aren't doing that exercise right now. Just today I read that some SAGE scientists are calling for the immediate implementation of plan b, despite there being not very much evidence to support that. They're stuck in a timeloop of a political agenda that lockdown measures are the only way to combat this. I'm sure when Germany, France and other major European countries go into a full lockdown in two weeks those same voices will condemn the government as irresponsible and callous for not doing the same here and in the process completely ignore the available real world data on infection rates, testing and hospitalisation.
    Agree - and it can have very real world consequences - take the AIDS pandemic - no one had to explain to Thatcher the horrors of exponential growth in an infection - something the current incumbent seemed to have difficulty getting his head around.

    Favourite observations on science "Many a grand beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact" (yes, iSAGE, I'm looking at you - and these aren't "single" facts but whole battalions of them.)

    And of the French (which may be playing a part in the NI problems) - "it's all very well it working in practice - but does it work in theory?" I fear the EU are hung up on the theory of the integrity of the single market, ignoring the practical solutions and the ramifications of their absolutism.
    I mentioned before (I believe) a chap who accidentally disproved his own PhD right at the end, and presented the evidence at his viva.

    I would have given him his PhD and a Professorship to boot - *that* was True Science.
    I missed your earlier posting did he get his PhD?
    No - but they fudged it into a research grant of some kind to let him continue along the new line of enquiry.

    Which I thought was shit solution.
    Awwwww! That's ****ing outrageous. If his skills at research were good enough to build up a hypothesis, test it and write it up - and with the self-critical assessment to dump it - and to have a grant on top -then he had amply fulfilled the criteria for a PhD.
    Some of the greatest science has come from people carefully and exactly getting the result they didn't want.

    I always thought that Michelson–Morley should have got a Nobel.
    Einstein claimed that he was unaware of Michelson–Morley when he wrote the Special Relativity paper, and worked it all out from Clerk Maxwell's equations
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,355

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Pretty bloody ropey after my Moderna booster jab. Seriously sore and frozen arm, general malaise and fatigue. Much worse than AZ, which caused a tiny bit of tenderness in the shoulder...

    That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID.
    I am now near-certain that I did have Covid way back in January 2020, caught in Thailand. That's what Public Health England thought, that's why they sent me to be tested in UCLH, tho a SNAFU prevented any actual test

    It would also explain why I haven't caught Covid since, despite taking many risks in recent months: pubs, bars, restaurants, planes, the works
    "That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID."

    Is it? First I've heard of that idea.
    Yes it has been punted before, by proper scientists, tho there are also other explanations, ofc
    Hey, my Chemistry degree still just about qualifies me as a "proper scientist" just not a practicing one.
    You never lose the scientific training.
    You know a junior asked me earlier this year whether or not I thought my degree was useful, I was going to say "not really" as always but actually after having a short think about it, I think it is pretty useful. Not the chemistry because fuck that noise, but the methodology of being a scientist and being open to any and all criticism of a theory, idea or model. I think a lot of our more public scientists, especially those in iSAGE, seem to have forgotten that a big part of science is having regular retrospectives on current theories vs real life data. It's something I've noticed myself doing over the course of this pandemic, go back on old ideas and make sure they are still relevant.

    Too many of the public scientific advisors aren't doing that exercise right now. Just today I read that some SAGE scientists are calling for the immediate implementation of plan b, despite there being not very much evidence to support that. They're stuck in a timeloop of a political agenda that lockdown measures are the only way to combat this. I'm sure when Germany, France and other major European countries go into a full lockdown in two weeks those same voices will condemn the government as irresponsible and callous for not doing the same here and in the process completely ignore the available real world data on infection rates, testing and hospitalisation.
    Agree - and it can have very real world consequences - take the AIDS pandemic - no one had to explain to Thatcher the horrors of exponential growth in an infection - something the current incumbent seemed to have difficulty getting his head around.

    Favourite observations on science "Many a grand beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact" (yes, iSAGE, I'm looking at you - and these aren't "single" facts but whole battalions of them.)

    And of the French (which may be playing a part in the NI problems) - "it's all very well it working in practice - but does it work in theory?" I fear the EU are hung up on the theory of the integrity of the single market, ignoring the practical solutions and the ramifications of their absolutism.
    I mentioned before (I believe) a chap who accidentally disproved his own PhD right at the end, and presented the evidence at his viva.

    I would have given him his PhD and a Professorship to boot - *that* was True Science.
    I missed your earlier posting did he get his PhD?
    No - but they fudged it into a research grant of some kind to let him continue along the new line of enquiry.

    Which I thought was shit solution.
    Awwwww! That's ****ing outrageous. If his skills at research were good enough to build up a hypothesis, test it and write it up - and with the self-critical assessment to dump it - and to have a grant on top -then he had amply fulfilled the criteria for a PhD.
    Some of the greatest science has come from people carefully and exactly getting the result they didn't want.

    I always thought that Michelson–Morley should have got a Nobel.
    Bicycle day! 😵‍💫

    From actually looking for something for bad chests?
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 38,959

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Pretty bloody ropey after my Moderna booster jab. Seriously sore and frozen arm, general malaise and fatigue. Much worse than AZ, which caused a tiny bit of tenderness in the shoulder...

    That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID.
    I am now near-certain that I did have Covid way back in January 2020, caught in Thailand. That's what Public Health England thought, that's why they sent me to be tested in UCLH, tho a SNAFU prevented any actual test

    It would also explain why I haven't caught Covid since, despite taking many risks in recent months: pubs, bars, restaurants, planes, the works
    "That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID."

    Is it? First I've heard of that idea.
    Yes it has been punted before, by proper scientists, tho there are also other explanations, ofc
    Hey, my Chemistry degree still just about qualifies me as a "proper scientist" just not a practicing one.
    You never lose the scientific training.
    You know a junior asked me earlier this year whether or not I thought my degree was useful, I was going to say "not really" as always but actually after having a short think about it, I think it is pretty useful. Not the chemistry because fuck that noise, but the methodology of being a scientist and being open to any and all criticism of a theory, idea or model. I think a lot of our more public scientists, especially those in iSAGE, seem to have forgotten that a big part of science is having regular retrospectives on current theories vs real life data. It's something I've noticed myself doing over the course of this pandemic, go back on old ideas and make sure they are still relevant.

    Too many of the public scientific advisors aren't doing that exercise right now. Just today I read that some SAGE scientists are calling for the immediate implementation of plan b, despite there being not very much evidence to support that. They're stuck in a timeloop of a political agenda that lockdown measures are the only way to combat this. I'm sure when Germany, France and other major European countries go into a full lockdown in two weeks those same voices will condemn the government as irresponsible and callous for not doing the same here and in the process completely ignore the available real world data on infection rates, testing and hospitalisation.
    Agree - and it can have very real world consequences - take the AIDS pandemic - no one had to explain to Thatcher the horrors of exponential growth in an infection - something the current incumbent seemed to have difficulty getting his head around.

    Favourite observations on science "Many a grand beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact" (yes, iSAGE, I'm looking at you - and these aren't "single" facts but whole battalions of them.)

    And of the French (which may be playing a part in the NI problems) - "it's all very well it working in practice - but does it work in theory?" I fear the EU are hung up on the theory of the integrity of the single market, ignoring the practical solutions and the ramifications of their absolutism.
    I mentioned before (I believe) a chap who accidentally disproved his own PhD right at the end, and presented the evidence at his viva.

    I would have given him his PhD and a Professorship to boot - *that* was True Science.
    I missed your earlier posting did he get his PhD?
    No - but they fudged it into a research grant of some kind to let him continue along the new line of enquiry.

    Which I thought was shit solution.
    Awwwww! That's ****ing outrageous. If his skills at research were good enough to build up a hypothesis, test it and write it up - and with the self-critical assessment to dump it - and to have a grant on top -then he had amply fulfilled the criteria for a PhD.
    Some of the greatest science has come from people carefully and exactly getting the result they didn't want.

    I always thought that Michelson–Morley should have got a Nobel.
    Quite, though in the specific context of a PhD it's the training of 'carefully and exactly getting a result' that is the primary thing. Having something to publish is a very good supplement. But without demonstrable research skills ...

    It was always a worry when I did my own PhD whether the data I could get on the topic I had selected was going to last me 3-4 years. Not that I need have worried, but I can sympathise with people whose topics just went to mush (metaphorically, but it did happen).
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    81,000 at Twickenham 5 days ago. Maybe too late.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,259
    On the London tube, there's an announcement every few minutes that "you must wear a face covering over your mouth and nose". About 50% of passengers are taking no notice of this announcement, and enforcement is non-existent. What's the point of it in that case?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,331
    IshmaelZ said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Pretty bloody ropey after my Moderna booster jab. Seriously sore and frozen arm, general malaise and fatigue. Much worse than AZ, which caused a tiny bit of tenderness in the shoulder...

    That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID.
    I am now near-certain that I did have Covid way back in January 2020, caught in Thailand. That's what Public Health England thought, that's why they sent me to be tested in UCLH, tho a SNAFU prevented any actual test

    It would also explain why I haven't caught Covid since, despite taking many risks in recent months: pubs, bars, restaurants, planes, the works
    "That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID."

    Is it? First I've heard of that idea.
    Yes it has been punted before, by proper scientists, tho there are also other explanations, ofc
    Hey, my Chemistry degree still just about qualifies me as a "proper scientist" just not a practicing one.
    You never lose the scientific training.
    You know a junior asked me earlier this year whether or not I thought my degree was useful, I was going to say "not really" as always but actually after having a short think about it, I think it is pretty useful. Not the chemistry because fuck that noise, but the methodology of being a scientist and being open to any and all criticism of a theory, idea or model. I think a lot of our more public scientists, especially those in iSAGE, seem to have forgotten that a big part of science is having regular retrospectives on current theories vs real life data. It's something I've noticed myself doing over the course of this pandemic, go back on old ideas and make sure they are still relevant.

    Too many of the public scientific advisors aren't doing that exercise right now. Just today I read that some SAGE scientists are calling for the immediate implementation of plan b, despite there being not very much evidence to support that. They're stuck in a timeloop of a political agenda that lockdown measures are the only way to combat this. I'm sure when Germany, France and other major European countries go into a full lockdown in two weeks those same voices will condemn the government as irresponsible and callous for not doing the same here and in the process completely ignore the available real world data on infection rates, testing and hospitalisation.
    Agree - and it can have very real world consequences - take the AIDS pandemic - no one had to explain to Thatcher the horrors of exponential growth in an infection - something the current incumbent seemed to have difficulty getting his head around.

    Favourite observations on science "Many a grand beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact" (yes, iSAGE, I'm looking at you - and these aren't "single" facts but whole battalions of them.)

    And of the French (which may be playing a part in the NI problems) - "it's all very well it working in practice - but does it work in theory?" I fear the EU are hung up on the theory of the integrity of the single market, ignoring the practical solutions and the ramifications of their absolutism.
    I mentioned before (I believe) a chap who accidentally disproved his own PhD right at the end, and presented the evidence at his viva.

    I would have given him his PhD and a Professorship to boot - *that* was True Science.
    I missed your earlier posting did he get his PhD?
    No - but they fudged it into a research grant of some kind to let him continue along the new line of enquiry.

    Which I thought was shit solution.
    Awwwww! That's ****ing outrageous. If his skills at research were good enough to build up a hypothesis, test it and write it up - and with the self-critical assessment to dump it - and to have a grant on top -then he had amply fulfilled the criteria for a PhD.
    Some of the greatest science has come from people carefully and exactly getting the result they didn't want.

    I always thought that Michelson–Morley should have got a Nobel.
    Einstein claimed that he was unaware of Michelson–Morley when he wrote the Special Relativity paper, and worked it all out from Clerk Maxwell's equations
    I think he also said that if they hadn't published, Relativity wouldn't have been looked at.. that they opened the way for him.
  • 47,240 (9.5%) 147 deaths (-14.8%) 745 admissions (-11.4)
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,355

    HYUFD said:
    Kantar though has been kind to Tory ratings, hence I think why header calls it outlier?

    14 to 19 Oct Kantar had it
    39% 34% 8
    23-27 Sept
    43% 30% 11


    So the take out from sequence really is Labour eating into lead, Kantar finding more Labour voters each time they poll? So not really an outlier from other pollsters who start from different places.

    Or maybe I am a newbie and haven’t a clue 🤷‍♀️
    And although I am a golden yellow girl, I don’t know if header is right about movement to libdems, over the sequence of these three Kantor polls they haven’t really gone anywhere?

    Unless I can’t interpret polls as well as all experts on here?
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,101

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Pretty bloody ropey after my Moderna booster jab. Seriously sore and frozen arm, general malaise and fatigue. Much worse than AZ, which caused a tiny bit of tenderness in the shoulder...

    That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID.
    I am now near-certain that I did have Covid way back in January 2020, caught in Thailand. That's what Public Health England thought, that's why they sent me to be tested in UCLH, tho a SNAFU prevented any actual test

    It would also explain why I haven't caught Covid since, despite taking many risks in recent months: pubs, bars, restaurants, planes, the works
    "That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID."

    Is it? First I've heard of that idea.
    Yes it has been punted before, by proper scientists, tho there are also other explanations, ofc
    Hey, my Chemistry degree still just about qualifies me as a "proper scientist" just not a practicing one.
    You never lose the scientific training.
    You know a junior asked me earlier this year whether or not I thought my degree was useful, I was going to say "not really" as always but actually after having a short think about it, I think it is pretty useful. Not the chemistry because fuck that noise, but the methodology of being a scientist and being open to any and all criticism of a theory, idea or model. I think a lot of our more public scientists, especially those in iSAGE, seem to have forgotten that a big part of science is having regular retrospectives on current theories vs real life data. It's something I've noticed myself doing over the course of this pandemic, go back on old ideas and make sure they are still relevant.

    Too many of the public scientific advisors aren't doing that exercise right now. Just today I read that some SAGE scientists are calling for the immediate implementation of plan b, despite there being not very much evidence to support that. They're stuck in a timeloop of a political agenda that lockdown measures are the only way to combat this. I'm sure when Germany, France and other major European countries go into a full lockdown in two weeks those same voices will condemn the government as irresponsible and callous for not doing the same here and in the process completely ignore the available real world data on infection rates, testing and hospitalisation.
    Agree - and it can have very real world consequences - take the AIDS pandemic - no one had to explain to Thatcher the horrors of exponential growth in an infection - something the current incumbent seemed to have difficulty getting his head around.

    Favourite observations on science "Many a grand beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact" (yes, iSAGE, I'm looking at you - and these aren't "single" facts but whole battalions of them.)

    And of the French (which may be playing a part in the NI problems) - "it's all very well it working in practice - but does it work in theory?" I fear the EU are hung up on the theory of the integrity of the single market, ignoring the practical solutions and the ramifications of their absolutism.
    I mentioned before (I believe) a chap who accidentally disproved his own PhD right at the end, and presented the evidence at his viva.

    I would have given him his PhD and a Professorship to boot - *that* was True Science.
    I missed your earlier posting did he get his PhD?
    No - but they fudged it into a research grant of some kind to let him continue along the new line of enquiry.

    Which I thought was shit solution.
    Awwwww! That's ****ing outrageous. If his skills at research were good enough to build up a hypothesis, test it and write it up - and with the self-critical assessment to dump it - and to have a grant on top -then he had amply fulfilled the criteria for a PhD.
    Some of the greatest science has come from people carefully and exactly getting the result they didn't want.

    I always thought that Michelson–Morley should have got a Nobel.
    Albeit their experiment was 14 years before the first Nobel prize was awarded.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 38,959

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Pretty bloody ropey after my Moderna booster jab. Seriously sore and frozen arm, general malaise and fatigue. Much worse than AZ, which caused a tiny bit of tenderness in the shoulder...

    That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID.
    I am now near-certain that I did have Covid way back in January 2020, caught in Thailand. That's what Public Health England thought, that's why they sent me to be tested in UCLH, tho a SNAFU prevented any actual test

    It would also explain why I haven't caught Covid since, despite taking many risks in recent months: pubs, bars, restaurants, planes, the works
    "That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID."

    Is it? First I've heard of that idea.
    Yes it has been punted before, by proper scientists, tho there are also other explanations, ofc
    Hey, my Chemistry degree still just about qualifies me as a "proper scientist" just not a practicing one.
    You never lose the scientific training.
    You know a junior asked me earlier this year whether or not I thought my degree was useful, I was going to say "not really" as always but actually after having a short think about it, I think it is pretty useful. Not the chemistry because fuck that noise, but the methodology of being a scientist and being open to any and all criticism of a theory, idea or model. I think a lot of our more public scientists, especially those in iSAGE, seem to have forgotten that a big part of science is having regular retrospectives on current theories vs real life data. It's something I've noticed myself doing over the course of this pandemic, go back on old ideas and make sure they are still relevant.

    Too many of the public scientific advisors aren't doing that exercise right now. Just today I read that some SAGE scientists are calling for the immediate implementation of plan b, despite there being not very much evidence to support that. They're stuck in a timeloop of a political agenda that lockdown measures are the only way to combat this. I'm sure when Germany, France and other major European countries go into a full lockdown in two weeks those same voices will condemn the government as irresponsible and callous for not doing the same here and in the process completely ignore the available real world data on infection rates, testing and hospitalisation.
    Agree - and it can have very real world consequences - take the AIDS pandemic - no one had to explain to Thatcher the horrors of exponential growth in an infection - something the current incumbent seemed to have difficulty getting his head around.

    Favourite observations on science "Many a grand beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact" (yes, iSAGE, I'm looking at you - and these aren't "single" facts but whole battalions of them.)

    And of the French (which may be playing a part in the NI problems) - "it's all very well it working in practice - but does it work in theory?" I fear the EU are hung up on the theory of the integrity of the single market, ignoring the practical solutions and the ramifications of their absolutism.
    I mentioned before (I believe) a chap who accidentally disproved his own PhD right at the end, and presented the evidence at his viva.

    I would have given him his PhD and a Professorship to boot - *that* was True Science.
    I missed your earlier posting did he get his PhD?
    No - but they fudged it into a research grant of some kind to let him continue along the new line of enquiry.

    Which I thought was shit solution.
    Awwwww! That's ****ing outrageous. If his skills at research were good enough to build up a hypothesis, test it and write it up - and with the self-critical assessment to dump it - and to have a grant on top -then he had amply fulfilled the criteria for a PhD.
    Some of the greatest science has come from people carefully and exactly getting the result they didn't want.

    I always thought that Michelson–Morley should have got a Nobel.
    Albeit their experiment was 14 years before the first Nobel prize was awarded.
    Were they both still alive? You can't attend a Nobel ceremony through a ouija board.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,798
    Pulpstar said:

    Nu Covid, new danger.

    And just like New Labour, nu COVID has folk simultaneously panicking for their lives whilst insisting everything will be exactly the same.
    Often the same people
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,147

    47,240 (9.5%) 147 deaths (-14.8%) 745 admissions (-11.4)

    47240?

    https://live.staticflickr.com/8041/8027207884_3e3fc17aa5_b.jpg
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Pretty bloody ropey after my Moderna booster jab. Seriously sore and frozen arm, general malaise and fatigue. Much worse than AZ, which caused a tiny bit of tenderness in the shoulder...

    That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID.
    I am now near-certain that I did have Covid way back in January 2020, caught in Thailand. That's what Public Health England thought, that's why they sent me to be tested in UCLH, tho a SNAFU prevented any actual test

    It would also explain why I haven't caught Covid since, despite taking many risks in recent months: pubs, bars, restaurants, planes, the works
    "That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID."

    Is it? First I've heard of that idea.
    Yes it has been punted before, by proper scientists, tho there are also other explanations, ofc
    Hey, my Chemistry degree still just about qualifies me as a "proper scientist" just not a practicing one.
    You never lose the scientific training.
    You know a junior asked me earlier this year whether or not I thought my degree was useful, I was going to say "not really" as always but actually after having a short think about it, I think it is pretty useful. Not the chemistry because fuck that noise, but the methodology of being a scientist and being open to any and all criticism of a theory, idea or model. I think a lot of our more public scientists, especially those in iSAGE, seem to have forgotten that a big part of science is having regular retrospectives on current theories vs real life data. It's something I've noticed myself doing over the course of this pandemic, go back on old ideas and make sure they are still relevant.

    Too many of the public scientific advisors aren't doing that exercise right now. Just today I read that some SAGE scientists are calling for the immediate implementation of plan b, despite there being not very much evidence to support that. They're stuck in a timeloop of a political agenda that lockdown measures are the only way to combat this. I'm sure when Germany, France and other major European countries go into a full lockdown in two weeks those same voices will condemn the government as irresponsible and callous for not doing the same here and in the process completely ignore the available real world data on infection rates, testing and hospitalisation.
    Agree - and it can have very real world consequences - take the AIDS pandemic - no one had to explain to Thatcher the horrors of exponential growth in an infection - something the current incumbent seemed to have difficulty getting his head around.

    Favourite observations on science "Many a grand beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact" (yes, iSAGE, I'm looking at you - and these aren't "single" facts but whole battalions of them.)

    And of the French (which may be playing a part in the NI problems) - "it's all very well it working in practice - but does it work in theory?" I fear the EU are hung up on the theory of the integrity of the single market, ignoring the practical solutions and the ramifications of their absolutism.
    I mentioned before (I believe) a chap who accidentally disproved his own PhD right at the end, and presented the evidence at his viva.

    I would have given him his PhD and a Professorship to boot - *that* was True Science.
    I missed your earlier posting did he get his PhD?
    No - but they fudged it into a research grant of some kind to let him continue along the new line of enquiry.

    Which I thought was shit solution.
    Awwwww! That's ****ing outrageous. If his skills at research were good enough to build up a hypothesis, test it and write it up - and with the self-critical assessment to dump it - and to have a grant on top -then he had amply fulfilled the criteria for a PhD.
    Some of the greatest science has come from people carefully and exactly getting the result they didn't want.

    I always thought that Michelson–Morley should have got a Nobel.
    Albeit their experiment was 14 years before the first Nobel prize was awarded.
    Were they both still alive? You can't attend a Nobel ceremony through a ouija board.
    d. 1931 and 23 respectively
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,755

    47,240 (9.5%) 147 deaths (-14.8%) 745 admissions (-11.4)

    Hospital numbers are now down to 7,641. which is two thousand below the level on 1st November.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,628
    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    P'uh...leese.

    There's always a good reason to panic.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 38,959
    IshmaelZ said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Pretty bloody ropey after my Moderna booster jab. Seriously sore and frozen arm, general malaise and fatigue. Much worse than AZ, which caused a tiny bit of tenderness in the shoulder...

    That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID.
    I am now near-certain that I did have Covid way back in January 2020, caught in Thailand. That's what Public Health England thought, that's why they sent me to be tested in UCLH, tho a SNAFU prevented any actual test

    It would also explain why I haven't caught Covid since, despite taking many risks in recent months: pubs, bars, restaurants, planes, the works
    "That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID."

    Is it? First I've heard of that idea.
    Yes it has been punted before, by proper scientists, tho there are also other explanations, ofc
    Hey, my Chemistry degree still just about qualifies me as a "proper scientist" just not a practicing one.
    You never lose the scientific training.
    You know a junior asked me earlier this year whether or not I thought my degree was useful, I was going to say "not really" as always but actually after having a short think about it, I think it is pretty useful. Not the chemistry because fuck that noise, but the methodology of being a scientist and being open to any and all criticism of a theory, idea or model. I think a lot of our more public scientists, especially those in iSAGE, seem to have forgotten that a big part of science is having regular retrospectives on current theories vs real life data. It's something I've noticed myself doing over the course of this pandemic, go back on old ideas and make sure they are still relevant.

    Too many of the public scientific advisors aren't doing that exercise right now. Just today I read that some SAGE scientists are calling for the immediate implementation of plan b, despite there being not very much evidence to support that. They're stuck in a timeloop of a political agenda that lockdown measures are the only way to combat this. I'm sure when Germany, France and other major European countries go into a full lockdown in two weeks those same voices will condemn the government as irresponsible and callous for not doing the same here and in the process completely ignore the available real world data on infection rates, testing and hospitalisation.
    Agree - and it can have very real world consequences - take the AIDS pandemic - no one had to explain to Thatcher the horrors of exponential growth in an infection - something the current incumbent seemed to have difficulty getting his head around.

    Favourite observations on science "Many a grand beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact" (yes, iSAGE, I'm looking at you - and these aren't "single" facts but whole battalions of them.)

    And of the French (which may be playing a part in the NI problems) - "it's all very well it working in practice - but does it work in theory?" I fear the EU are hung up on the theory of the integrity of the single market, ignoring the practical solutions and the ramifications of their absolutism.
    I mentioned before (I believe) a chap who accidentally disproved his own PhD right at the end, and presented the evidence at his viva.

    I would have given him his PhD and a Professorship to boot - *that* was True Science.
    I missed your earlier posting did he get his PhD?
    No - but they fudged it into a research grant of some kind to let him continue along the new line of enquiry.

    Which I thought was shit solution.
    Awwwww! That's ****ing outrageous. If his skills at research were good enough to build up a hypothesis, test it and write it up - and with the self-critical assessment to dump it - and to have a grant on top -then he had amply fulfilled the criteria for a PhD.
    Some of the greatest science has come from people carefully and exactly getting the result they didn't want.

    I always thought that Michelson–Morley should have got a Nobel.
    Albeit their experiment was 14 years before the first Nobel prize was awarded.
    Were they both still alive? You can't attend a Nobel ceremony through a ouija board.
    d. 1931 and 23 respectively
    Thanks, so not a reason.
  • MaffewMaffew Posts: 235

    47,240 (9.5%) 147 deaths (-14.8%) 745 admissions (-11.4)

    Cases are also only about 1k up on Thursday last week.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 59,942
    edited November 2021

    HYUFD said:
    Kantar though has been kind to Tory ratings, hence I think why header calls it outlier?

    14 to 19 Oct Kantar had it
    39% 34% 8
    23-27 Sept
    43% 30% 11


    So the take out from sequence really is Labour eating into lead, Kantar finding more Labour voters each time they poll? So not really an outlier from other pollsters who start from different places.

    Or maybe I am a newbie and haven’t a clue 🤷‍♀️
    And although I am a golden yellow girl, I don’t know if header is right about movement to libdems, over the sequence of these three Kantor polls they haven’t really gone anywhere?

    Unless I can’t interpret polls as well as all experts on here?
    I would suggest that the Paterson misjudgement has seen the conservatives drop in the polls and probably at present they are near enough level

    Boris is having a nightmare but Starmer is not impressing

    Indeed his comment today that as a prosecutor he would have had the smugglers arrested last week is astonishing considering they came into France from Germany and we therefore have no jurisdiction and France was aware of the plot
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,101
    Farooq said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    81,000 at Twickenham 5 days ago. Maybe too late.
    If it was anything like the Australia game the week before that would have been 81,000 England fans; not an Aussie to be seen.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,331
    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    P'uh...leese.

    There's always a good reason to panic.
    If we are going to have a panic -

    1) What kind of biscuits are we serving?
    2) Who will stay behind to fold the tables and chairs, afterwards?
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    edited November 2021
    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The thing is, we can't close the border every single time a new variant pops up. As for delta, in all honesty the way it's worked out is that the early seeding of delta in the UK has probably made our exit wave 3-4x the size it would otherwise have been. I'm yet to be convinced this wasn't a good thing for the UK. As you can see from the incoming data we're seeing nothing like the take off that the rest of Europe is seeing. That delta seeded exit wave has fortified our level population immunity.

    A lot of this is based on random luck, in some sense we were pretty lucky to get delta early in the spring and summer rather than late summer and autumn, in another we were also sensible to reopen and be damned.

    Anyway, I'm still not convinced that there is any reason to panic, variants will come and go, I just can't bring myself to get worked up about them, mainly because it will take a quite some doing to outcompete the new delta subvariant that is slowly making its way through the country. Delta was our nightmare, now it might turn our to be our way out of this.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,331
    UK cases by specimen date

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  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,331
    UK cases by specimen date and scaled to 100K

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  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,331
    UK Local R

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  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,331
    Case summary

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  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,331
    Hospitals

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  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,331
    Deaths

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  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,259
    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The thing is, we can't close the border every single time a new variant pops up. As for delta, in all honesty the way it's worked out is that the early seeding of delta in the UK has probably made our exit wave 3-4x the size it would otherwise have been. I'm yet to be convinced this wasn't a good thing for the UK. As you can see from the incoming data we're seeing nothing like the take off that the rest of Europe is seeing. That delta seeded exit wave has fortified our level population immunity.

    A lot of this is based on random luck, in some sense we were pretty lucky to get delta early in the spring and summer rather than late summer and autumn, in another we were also sensible to reopen and be damned.

    Anyway, I'm still not convinced that there is any reason to panic, variants will come and go, I just can't bring myself to get worked up about them, mainly because it will take a quite some doing to outcompete the new delta subvariant that is slowly making its way through the country. Delta was our nightmare, now it might turn our to be our way out of this.
    No but we should have closed the borders immediately at the start of the pandemic. We locked down the domestic population but allowed flights to continue. I can't think of a logical reason for doing that.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,608
    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The logic of your approach is that we want people to stop catching Covid. We don't. At least not until the flu season gets going. The more who catch it right now the better. Right now, we can cope. The fall in hospitalisations over a period of over 2 weeks now shows that. A more infective variant of Covid is, on this logic, exactly what the doctor ordered.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,331
    Age related data

    image
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  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    Andy_JS said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The thing is, we can't close the border every single time a new variant pops up. As for delta, in all honesty the way it's worked out is that the early seeding of delta in the UK has probably made our exit wave 3-4x the size it would otherwise have been. I'm yet to be convinced this wasn't a good thing for the UK. As you can see from the incoming data we're seeing nothing like the take off that the rest of Europe is seeing. That delta seeded exit wave has fortified our level population immunity.

    A lot of this is based on random luck, in some sense we were pretty lucky to get delta early in the spring and summer rather than late summer and autumn, in another we were also sensible to reopen and be damned.

    Anyway, I'm still not convinced that there is any reason to panic, variants will come and go, I just can't bring myself to get worked up about them, mainly because it will take a quite some doing to outcompete the new delta subvariant that is slowly making its way through the country. Delta was our nightmare, now it might turn our to be our way out of this.
    No but we should have closed the borders immediately at the start of the pandemic. We locked down the domestic population but allowed flights to continue. I can't think of a logical reason for doing that.
    It was to "protect the economy" I believe. Which, looking back, was insanely stupid
  • South African cases in the JHU data show a big spike on Nov 23. This is likely to be a simple artifact or an error, rather than the number of cases detected that day. For now, we've removed that data point from the 7-day average on our charts. (Issue: https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/issues/4950)

    https://twitter.com/redouad/status/1463901190845083664?s=20
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,331
    COVID summary

    No change.

    Down - Cases in the older groups, hospitalisations, deaths
    Up - cases in the younger groups. Especially in the unvaccinated children
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,608
    On topic I am not sure whether this is a genuine outlier or simply a house effect since Kantor have generally given good polling numbers to the Tories. But it is almost certainly not the current position where Labour holds a small lead.
  • DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The logic of your approach is that we want people to stop catching Covid. We don't. At least not until the flu season gets going. The more who catch it right now the better. Right now, we can cope. The fall in hospitalisations over a period of over 2 weeks now shows that. A more infective variant of Covid is, on this logic, exactly what the doctor ordered.
    Not if it causes more serious illness by evading the vax to some extent.

    Shut the border to SA now.
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 3,842
    edited November 2021


    UK cases by specimen date and scaled to 100K

    What I find most remarkable about these is how evenly spread the virus has now become in the last couple of months.

    There's no horrible hotspots and no areas with nothing.

    Another piece of evidence that where we are in this has moved on.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700

    South African cases in the JHU data show a big spike on Nov 23. This is likely to be a simple artifact or an error, rather than the number of cases detected that day. For now, we've removed that data point from the 7-day average on our charts. (Issue: https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/issues/4950)

    https://twitter.com/redouad/status/1463901190845083664?s=20

    Pretty startling error. Case load out by an order of magnitude!

    Hopefully good news
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Andy_JS said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The thing is, we can't close the border every single time a new variant pops up. As for delta, in all honesty the way it's worked out is that the early seeding of delta in the UK has probably made our exit wave 3-4x the size it would otherwise have been. I'm yet to be convinced this wasn't a good thing for the UK. As you can see from the incoming data we're seeing nothing like the take off that the rest of Europe is seeing. That delta seeded exit wave has fortified our level population immunity.

    A lot of this is based on random luck, in some sense we were pretty lucky to get delta early in the spring and summer rather than late summer and autumn, in another we were also sensible to reopen and be damned.

    Anyway, I'm still not convinced that there is any reason to panic, variants will come and go, I just can't bring myself to get worked up about them, mainly because it will take a quite some doing to outcompete the new delta subvariant that is slowly making its way through the country. Delta was our nightmare, now it might turn our to be our way out of this.
    No but we should have closed the borders immediately at the start of the pandemic. We locked down the domestic population but allowed flights to continue. I can't think of a logical reason for doing that.
    Yes, that was the most idiotic decision this government came up with and that's a pretty long a storied list. We're now in a different phase of the pandemic and border closures should for variants seem unnecessary. If the variant completely evades the vaccine then we're all fucked for another 6 months anyway while we wait for Pfizer, Moderna and AZ to retool their existing vaccines.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    South African cases in the JHU data show a big spike on Nov 23. This is likely to be a simple artifact or an error, rather than the number of cases detected that day. For now, we've removed that data point from the 7-day average on our charts. (Issue: https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/issues/4950)

    https://twitter.com/redouad/status/1463901190845083664?s=20

    So a panic over nothing? I wonder how the NYTimes will blame the UK plague island for it tomorrow.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,355
    edited November 2021

    HYUFD said:
    Kantar though has been kind to Tory ratings, hence I think why header calls it outlier?

    14 to 19 Oct Kantar had it
    39% 34% 8
    23-27 Sept
    43% 30% 11


    So the take out from sequence really is Labour eating into lead, Kantar finding more Labour voters each time they poll? So not really an outlier from other pollsters who start from different places.

    Or maybe I am a newbie and haven’t a clue 🤷‍♀️
    And although I am a golden yellow girl, I don’t know if header is right about movement to libdems, over the sequence of these three Kantor polls they haven’t really gone anywhere?

    Unless I can’t interpret polls as well as all experts on here?
    I would suggest that the Paterson misjudgement has seen the conservatives drop in the polls and probably at present they are near enough level

    Boris is having a nightmare but Starmer is not impressing

    Indeed his comment today that as a prosecutor he would have had the smugglers arrested last week is astonishing considering they came into France from Germany and we therefore have no jurisdiction and France was aware of the plot
    Thank you. I agree. You are spot on. It’s about comparing like for like polls isn’t it as different pollsters start from different places, have different methods. Our shared feeling Big G is that overall it’s about level, or Labour marginally ahead? And the drift has been with Labour for a while, but accelerated early November - but is it just booing the boss whilst remaining loyal club fans?

    If I am right about analysing sequence from same poster, how is the header finding movement from Tory to libdem?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,608

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The logic of your approach is that we want people to stop catching Covid. We don't. At least not until the flu season gets going. The more who catch it right now the better. Right now, we can cope. The fall in hospitalisations over a period of over 2 weeks now shows that. A more infective variant of Covid is, on this logic, exactly what the doctor ordered.
    Not if it causes more serious illness by evading the vax to some extent.

    Shut the border to SA now.
    Pointless. If it is more infective it will become the dominant variant until the next one comes along. If it does then it will come here (assuming it isn't already). We would be better looking carefully at whether the boosters can be tweaked to better defend against it.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,355

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Pretty bloody ropey after my Moderna booster jab. Seriously sore and frozen arm, general malaise and fatigue. Much worse than AZ, which caused a tiny bit of tenderness in the shoulder...

    That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID.
    I am now near-certain that I did have Covid way back in January 2020, caught in Thailand. That's what Public Health England thought, that's why they sent me to be tested in UCLH, tho a SNAFU prevented any actual test

    It would also explain why I haven't caught Covid since, despite taking many risks in recent months: pubs, bars, restaurants, planes, the works
    "That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID."

    Is it? First I've heard of that idea.
    Yes it has been punted before, by proper scientists, tho there are also other explanations, ofc
    Hey, my Chemistry degree still just about qualifies me as a "proper scientist" just not a practicing one.
    You never lose the scientific training.
    You know a junior asked me earlier this year whether or not I thought my degree was useful, I was going to say "not really" as always but actually after having a short think about it, I think it is pretty useful. Not the chemistry because fuck that noise, but the methodology of being a scientist and being open to any and all criticism of a theory, idea or model. I think a lot of our more public scientists, especially those in iSAGE, seem to have forgotten that a big part of science is having regular retrospectives on current theories vs real life data. It's something I've noticed myself doing over the course of this pandemic, go back on old ideas and make sure they are still relevant.

    Too many of the public scientific advisors aren't doing that exercise right now. Just today I read that some SAGE scientists are calling for the immediate implementation of plan b, despite there being not very much evidence to support that. They're stuck in a timeloop of a political agenda that lockdown measures are the only way to combat this. I'm sure when Germany, France and other major European countries go into a full lockdown in two weeks those same voices will condemn the government as irresponsible and callous for not doing the same here and in the process completely ignore the available real world data on infection rates, testing and hospitalisation.
    Agree - and it can have very real world consequences - take the AIDS pandemic - no one had to explain to Thatcher the horrors of exponential growth in an infection - something the current incumbent seemed to have difficulty getting his head around.

    Favourite observations on science "Many a grand beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact" (yes, iSAGE, I'm looking at you - and these aren't "single" facts but whole battalions of them.)

    And of the French (which may be playing a part in the NI problems) - "it's all very well it working in practice - but does it work in theory?" I fear the EU are hung up on the theory of the integrity of the single market, ignoring the practical solutions and the ramifications of their absolutism.
    I mentioned before (I believe) a chap who accidentally disproved his own PhD right at the end, and presented the evidence at his viva.

    I would have given him his PhD and a Professorship to boot - *that* was True Science.
    I missed your earlier posting did he get his PhD?
    No - but they fudged it into a research grant of some kind to let him continue along the new line of enquiry.

    Which I thought was shit solution.
    Awwwww! That's ****ing outrageous. If his skills at research were good enough to build up a hypothesis, test it and write it up - and with the self-critical assessment to dump it - and to have a grant on top -then he had amply fulfilled the criteria for a PhD.
    Some of the greatest science has come from people carefully and exactly getting the result they didn't want.

    I always thought that Michelson–Morley should have got a Nobel.
    Bicycle day! 😵‍💫

    From actually looking for something for bad chests?
    I am having a drop of wine waiting for my other half to come home, but you should know what I mean, I am making Lucy’d (sic) sense.

    Lucy in the sky, with diamonds is apparently a painting by a primary school child!

    Yes. And Ebenezer Goode was a Methodist too
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,173
    Selebian said:

    On science, you kind of need one arsehole independently minded person in the room who doesn't give a shit and asks the obvious questions where everyone else has assumed an answer.

    I've had experience of many of these people in steering committees, advisory boards etc and they're great. Often, to be fair, it's a clinician or a retired scientist, or both.

    Not just science.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The thing is, we can't close the border every single time a new variant pops up. As for delta, in all honesty the way it's worked out is that the early seeding of delta in the UK has probably made our exit wave 3-4x the size it would otherwise have been. I'm yet to be convinced this wasn't a good thing for the UK. As you can see from the incoming data we're seeing nothing like the take off that the rest of Europe is seeing. That delta seeded exit wave has fortified our level population immunity.

    A lot of this is based on random luck, in some sense we were pretty lucky to get delta early in the spring and summer rather than late summer and autumn, in another we were also sensible to reopen and be damned.

    Anyway, I'm still not convinced that there is any reason to panic, variants will come and go, I just can't bring myself to get worked up about them, mainly because it will take a quite some doing to outcompete the new delta subvariant that is slowly making its way through the country. Delta was our nightmare, now it might turn our to be our way out of this.
    No but we should have closed the borders immediately at the start of the pandemic. We locked down the domestic population but allowed flights to continue. I can't think of a logical reason for doing that.
    Yes, that was the most idiotic decision this government came up with and that's a pretty long a storied list. We're now in a different phase of the pandemic and border closures should for variants seem unnecessary. If the variant completely evades the vaccine then we're all fucked for another 6 months anyway while we wait for Pfizer, Moderna and AZ to retool their existing vaccines.
    But that is why we should close the border. If the variant evades the vaccine we want to fend it off as long as possible, giving the boffins time to tweak the vax and/or develop antivirals (hurry up Pfizer!)

    Why not buy us a fortnight or a month with one simple measure? Close the border. Redlist southern Africa
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,739
    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The thing is, we can't close the border every single time a new variant pops up. As for delta, in all honesty the way it's worked out is that the early seeding of delta in the UK has probably made our exit wave 3-4x the size it would otherwise have been. I'm yet to be convinced this wasn't a good thing for the UK. As you can see from the incoming data we're seeing nothing like the take off that the rest of Europe is seeing. That delta seeded exit wave has fortified our level population immunity.

    A lot of this is based on random luck, in some sense we were pretty lucky to get delta early in the spring and summer rather than late summer and autumn, in another we were also sensible to reopen and be damned.

    Anyway, I'm still not convinced that there is any reason to panic, variants will come and go, I just can't bring myself to get worked up about them, mainly because it will take a quite some doing to outcompete the new delta subvariant that is slowly making its way through the country. Delta was our nightmare, now it might turn our to be our way out of this.
    Not rushing to close borders due to super risk aversion can be viewed as the international dimension to 'living with Covid'. Just as, domestically, it means not continually locking down to try and squash the disease out of sight. IMO, a big focus should be on vaccinating countries that atm are lacking it.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,173
    IshmaelZ said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Pretty bloody ropey after my Moderna booster jab. Seriously sore and frozen arm, general malaise and fatigue. Much worse than AZ, which caused a tiny bit of tenderness in the shoulder...

    That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID.
    I am now near-certain that I did have Covid way back in January 2020, caught in Thailand. That's what Public Health England thought, that's why they sent me to be tested in UCLH, tho a SNAFU prevented any actual test

    It would also explain why I haven't caught Covid since, despite taking many risks in recent months: pubs, bars, restaurants, planes, the works
    "That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID."

    Is it? First I've heard of that idea.
    Yes it has been punted before, by proper scientists, tho there are also other explanations, ofc
    Hey, my Chemistry degree still just about qualifies me as a "proper scientist" just not a practicing one.
    You never lose the scientific training.
    You know a junior asked me earlier this year whether or not I thought my degree was useful, I was going to say "not really" as always but actually after having a short think about it, I think it is pretty useful. Not the chemistry because fuck that noise, but the methodology of being a scientist and being open to any and all criticism of a theory, idea or model. I think a lot of our more public scientists, especially those in iSAGE, seem to have forgotten that a big part of science is having regular retrospectives on current theories vs real life data. It's something I've noticed myself doing over the course of this pandemic, go back on old ideas and make sure they are still relevant.

    Too many of the public scientific advisors aren't doing that exercise right now. Just today I read that some SAGE scientists are calling for the immediate implementation of plan b, despite there being not very much evidence to support that. They're stuck in a timeloop of a political agenda that lockdown measures are the only way to combat this. I'm sure when Germany, France and other major European countries go into a full lockdown in two weeks those same voices will condemn the government as irresponsible and callous for not doing the same here and in the process completely ignore the available real world data on infection rates, testing and hospitalisation.
    Agree - and it can have very real world consequences - take the AIDS pandemic - no one had to explain to Thatcher the horrors of exponential growth in an infection - something the current incumbent seemed to have difficulty getting his head around.

    Favourite observations on science "Many a grand beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact" (yes, iSAGE, I'm looking at you - and these aren't "single" facts but whole battalions of them.)

    And of the French (which may be playing a part in the NI problems) - "it's all very well it working in practice - but does it work in theory?" I fear the EU are hung up on the theory of the integrity of the single market, ignoring the practical solutions and the ramifications of their absolutism.
    I mentioned before (I believe) a chap who accidentally disproved his own PhD right at the end, and presented the evidence at his viva.

    I would have given him his PhD and a Professorship to boot - *that* was True Science.
    I missed your earlier posting did he get his PhD?
    No - but they fudged it into a research grant of some kind to let him continue along the new line of enquiry.

    Which I thought was shit solution.
    Awwwww! That's ****ing outrageous. If his skills at research were good enough to build up a hypothesis, test it and write it up - and with the self-critical assessment to dump it - and to have a grant on top -then he had amply fulfilled the criteria for a PhD.
    Some of the greatest science has come from people carefully and exactly getting the result they didn't want.

    I always thought that Michelson–Morley should have got a Nobel.
    Einstein claimed that he was unaware of Michelson–Morley when he wrote the Special Relativity paper, and worked it all out from Clerk Maxwell's equations
    He always was a clever bugger.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The logic of your approach is that we want people to stop catching Covid. We don't. At least not until the flu season gets going. The more who catch it right now the better. Right now, we can cope. The fall in hospitalisations over a period of over 2 weeks now shows that. A more infective variant of Covid is, on this logic, exactly what the doctor ordered.
    Not if it causes more serious illness by evading the vax to some extent.

    Shut the border to SA now.
    I'm sorry, that's an absolutely massive leap you've taken. Firstly there's no evidence that the varian evades vaccines, there's also no evidence that it has higher severity. We simply can no longer live in fear of every single variant that comes and goes. If you want to go down the border closure route then you really do need to do it like NZ and close it to everyone, not one or two countries.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 59,942
    edited November 2021

    HYUFD said:
    Kantar though has been kind to Tory ratings, hence I think why header calls it outlier?

    14 to 19 Oct Kantar had it
    39% 34% 8
    23-27 Sept
    43% 30% 11


    So the take out from sequence really is Labour eating into lead, Kantar finding more Labour voters each time they poll? So not really an outlier from other pollsters who start from different places.

    Or maybe I am a newbie and haven’t a clue 🤷‍♀️
    And although I am a golden yellow girl, I don’t know if header is right about movement to libdems, over the sequence of these three Kantor polls they haven’t really gone anywhere?

    Unless I can’t interpret polls as well as all experts on here?
    I would suggest that the Paterson misjudgement has seen the conservatives drop in the polls and probably at present they are near enough level

    Boris is having a nightmare but Starmer is not impressing

    Indeed his comment today that as a prosecutor he would have had the smugglers arrested last week is astonishing considering they came into France from Germany and we therefore have no jurisdiction and France was aware of the plot
    Thank you. I agree. You are spot on. It’s about comparing like for like polls isn’t it as different pollsters start from different places, have different methods. Our shared feeling Big G is that overall it’s about level, or Labour marginally ahead? And the drift has been with Labour for a while, but accelerated early November - but is it just booing the boss whilst remaining loyal club fans?

    If I am right about analysing sequence from same poster, how is the header finding movement from Tory to libdem?
    I am not an expert on polls, I leave that to others, but to be honest I just cannot understand why labour are not out of sight with all that is going on

    I would add I do not bet, so polls while interesting are not really relevant to the next GE in 23/24
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,355

    HYUFD said:
    Kantar though has been kind to Tory ratings, hence I think why header calls it outlier?

    14 to 19 Oct Kantar had it
    39% 34% 8
    23-27 Sept
    43% 30% 11


    So the take out from sequence really is Labour eating into lead, Kantar finding more Labour voters each time they poll? So not really an outlier from other pollsters who start from different places.

    Or maybe I am a newbie and haven’t a clue 🤷‍♀️
    And although I am a golden yellow girl, I don’t know if header is right about movement to libdems, over the sequence of these three Kantor polls they haven’t really gone anywhere?

    Unless I can’t interpret polls as well as all experts on here?
    From the sequence of last three Kantors “a CON to LD swing”?

    If I am right this swing isn’t obvious to me, surely the psephologically pebble counting narrative in the header is a bit sloppy, and we should expect better from this site?
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The thing is, we can't close the border every single time a new variant pops up. As for delta, in all honesty the way it's worked out is that the early seeding of delta in the UK has probably made our exit wave 3-4x the size it would otherwise have been. I'm yet to be convinced this wasn't a good thing for the UK. As you can see from the incoming data we're seeing nothing like the take off that the rest of Europe is seeing. That delta seeded exit wave has fortified our level population immunity.

    A lot of this is based on random luck, in some sense we were pretty lucky to get delta early in the spring and summer rather than late summer and autumn, in another we were also sensible to reopen and be damned.

    Anyway, I'm still not convinced that there is any reason to panic, variants will come and go, I just can't bring myself to get worked up about them, mainly because it will take a quite some doing to outcompete the new delta subvariant that is slowly making its way through the country. Delta was our nightmare, now it might turn our to be our way out of this.
    No but we should have closed the borders immediately at the start of the pandemic. We locked down the domestic population but allowed flights to continue. I can't think of a logical reason for doing that.
    Yes, that was the most idiotic decision this government came up with and that's a pretty long a storied list. We're now in a different phase of the pandemic and border closures should for variants seem unnecessary. If the variant completely evades the vaccine then we're all fucked for another 6 months anyway while we wait for Pfizer, Moderna and AZ to retool their existing vaccines.
    But that is why we should close the border. If the variant evades the vaccine we want to fend it off as long as possible, giving the boffins time to tweak the vax and/or develop antivirals (hurry up Pfizer!)

    Why not buy us a fortnight or a month with one simple measure? Close the border. Redlist southern Africa
    The process is a minimum of 6 months to design, test, trial and ramp up manufacturing of a new variant buster vaccine, plus a minimum of 3 months to get 50m doses out there. Our best case scenario is 9 months from detecting a vaccine evading variant to getting everyone vaccinated. I don't see what two weeks buys us, we're going to be locked down for 6-8 months of it, that is simply unavoidable. The nation has decided that not letting old people die is more important than freedom when they die at a rate of more than 300-400 per day, less than that seems to be an acceptable loss of life for freedom.
  • MikeSmithsonMikeSmithson Posts: 7,382
    edited November 2021

    HYUFD said:
    Kantar though has been kind to Tory ratings, hence I think why header calls it outlier?

    14 to 19 Oct Kantar had it
    39% 34% 8
    23-27 Sept
    43% 30% 11


    So the take out from sequence really is Labour eating into lead, Kantar finding more Labour voters each time they poll? So not really an outlier from other pollsters who start from different places.

    Or maybe I am a newbie and haven’t a clue 🤷‍♀️
    And although I am a golden yellow girl, I don’t know if header is right about movement to libdems, over the sequence of these three Kantor polls they haven’t really gone anywhere?

    Unless I can’t interpret polls as well as all experts on here?
    I would suggest that the Paterson misjudgement has seen the conservatives drop in the polls and probably at present they are near enough level

    Boris is having a nightmare but Starmer is not impressing

    Indeed his comment today that as a prosecutor he would have had the smugglers arrested last week is astonishing considering they came into France from Germany and we therefore have no jurisdiction and France was aware of the plot
    Thank you. I agree. You are spot on. It’s about comparing like for like polls isn’t it as different pollsters start from different places, have different methods. Our shared feeling Big G is that overall it’s about level, or Labour marginally ahead? And the drift has been with Labour for a while, but accelerated early November - but is it just booing the boss whilst remaining loyal club fans?

    If I am right about analysing sequence from same poster, how is the header finding movement from Tory to libdem?
    There is a 3.7% CON to LD swing which on current boundaries sees CON losing 11 seats to the LDs on a UNS

  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    MaxPB said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The logic of your approach is that we want people to stop catching Covid. We don't. At least not until the flu season gets going. The more who catch it right now the better. Right now, we can cope. The fall in hospitalisations over a period of over 2 weeks now shows that. A more infective variant of Covid is, on this logic, exactly what the doctor ordered.
    Not if it causes more serious illness by evading the vax to some extent.

    Shut the border to SA now.
    I'm sorry, that's an absolutely massive leap you've taken. Firstly there's no evidence that the varian evades vaccines, there's also no evidence that it has higher severity. We simply can no longer live in fear of every single variant that comes and goes. If you want to go down the border closure route then you really do need to do it like NZ and close it to everyone, not one or two countries.
    If it does evade vaccines and cause more severe disease - a huge IF I grant you - then the pressure to close the borders with Africa will become overwhelming very quickly, and the UKG will do it, just 2 weeks too late to have any effect. As usual

    No one is suggesting we go into lockdown, but it seems pretty simple to close a border with an area of the world which is not economically crucial to us. it is tough on SA and Botswana but this virus is a bitch

    It will be interesting to see how EU governments react. Especially Holland
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,331

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Pretty bloody ropey after my Moderna booster jab. Seriously sore and frozen arm, general malaise and fatigue. Much worse than AZ, which caused a tiny bit of tenderness in the shoulder...

    That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID.
    I am now near-certain that I did have Covid way back in January 2020, caught in Thailand. That's what Public Health England thought, that's why they sent me to be tested in UCLH, tho a SNAFU prevented any actual test

    It would also explain why I haven't caught Covid since, despite taking many risks in recent months: pubs, bars, restaurants, planes, the works
    "That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID."

    Is it? First I've heard of that idea.
    Yes it has been punted before, by proper scientists, tho there are also other explanations, ofc
    Hey, my Chemistry degree still just about qualifies me as a "proper scientist" just not a practicing one.
    You never lose the scientific training.
    You know a junior asked me earlier this year whether or not I thought my degree was useful, I was going to say "not really" as always but actually after having a short think about it, I think it is pretty useful. Not the chemistry because fuck that noise, but the methodology of being a scientist and being open to any and all criticism of a theory, idea or model. I think a lot of our more public scientists, especially those in iSAGE, seem to have forgotten that a big part of science is having regular retrospectives on current theories vs real life data. It's something I've noticed myself doing over the course of this pandemic, go back on old ideas and make sure they are still relevant.

    Too many of the public scientific advisors aren't doing that exercise right now. Just today I read that some SAGE scientists are calling for the immediate implementation of plan b, despite there being not very much evidence to support that. They're stuck in a timeloop of a political agenda that lockdown measures are the only way to combat this. I'm sure when Germany, France and other major European countries go into a full lockdown in two weeks those same voices will condemn the government as irresponsible and callous for not doing the same here and in the process completely ignore the available real world data on infection rates, testing and hospitalisation.
    Agree - and it can have very real world consequences - take the AIDS pandemic - no one had to explain to Thatcher the horrors of exponential growth in an infection - something the current incumbent seemed to have difficulty getting his head around.

    Favourite observations on science "Many a grand beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact" (yes, iSAGE, I'm looking at you - and these aren't "single" facts but whole battalions of them.)

    And of the French (which may be playing a part in the NI problems) - "it's all very well it working in practice - but does it work in theory?" I fear the EU are hung up on the theory of the integrity of the single market, ignoring the practical solutions and the ramifications of their absolutism.
    I mentioned before (I believe) a chap who accidentally disproved his own PhD right at the end, and presented the evidence at his viva.

    I would have given him his PhD and a Professorship to boot - *that* was True Science.
    I missed your earlier posting did he get his PhD?
    No - but they fudged it into a research grant of some kind to let him continue along the new line of enquiry.

    Which I thought was shit solution.
    Awwwww! That's ****ing outrageous. If his skills at research were good enough to build up a hypothesis, test it and write it up - and with the self-critical assessment to dump it - and to have a grant on top -then he had amply fulfilled the criteria for a PhD.
    Some of the greatest science has come from people carefully and exactly getting the result they didn't want.

    I always thought that Michelson–Morley should have got a Nobel.
    Bicycle day! 😵‍💫

    From actually looking for something for bad chests?
    I am having a drop of wine waiting for my other half to come home, but you should know what I mean, I am making Lucy’d (sic) sense.

    Lucy in the sky, with diamonds is apparently a painting by a primary school child!

    Yes. And Ebenezer Goode was a Methodist too
    I like this StreamOfConciousnessDrunkPosting.

    Much better than the fighty stuff we get in the late evening.
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,774
    R at 1.03 for 20/11 vs 13/11. I think the progressive chill in the air will put another 0.05 on R, but there are straws in the wind the next few days will send R lower, so we may end up in the same place in a week or so. Also depends a bit on whether 5-9s are continuing exponential and become more dominant in the numbers or whether their curve has passed the inflection - not seen the daily graphs for a few days.

    Can't see with Delta where else a serious new upward trend might come from and think hospitals and deaths are firmly set downwards until New Year.

    Agree with Max that an evolution on Beta does not necessarily displace Delta, I think the hints of a milder sub-variant could end up more credible for the UKs immunity position: from a covid evolution pov, to spread well from a smaller host like a young child you simply have be able to operate your lifecycle well with fewer virus particles to spread.

    I'd still have the low cost bits of plan B on reserve in case a few cycles of R 1.2 kick in or in case deaths trend up, but having been in favour of a dab on the brakes last month, I'm more comfortable with waiting and seeing now and expect the important stats to improve.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The thing is, we can't close the border every single time a new variant pops up. As for delta, in all honesty the way it's worked out is that the early seeding of delta in the UK has probably made our exit wave 3-4x the size it would otherwise have been. I'm yet to be convinced this wasn't a good thing for the UK. As you can see from the incoming data we're seeing nothing like the take off that the rest of Europe is seeing. That delta seeded exit wave has fortified our level population immunity.

    A lot of this is based on random luck, in some sense we were pretty lucky to get delta early in the spring and summer rather than late summer and autumn, in another we were also sensible to reopen and be damned.

    Anyway, I'm still not convinced that there is any reason to panic, variants will come and go, I just can't bring myself to get worked up about them, mainly because it will take a quite some doing to outcompete the new delta subvariant that is slowly making its way through the country. Delta was our nightmare, now it might turn our to be our way out of this.
    No but we should have closed the borders immediately at the start of the pandemic. We locked down the domestic population but allowed flights to continue. I can't think of a logical reason for doing that.
    Yes, that was the most idiotic decision this government came up with and that's a pretty long a storied list. We're now in a different phase of the pandemic and border closures should for variants seem unnecessary. If the variant completely evades the vaccine then we're all fucked for another 6 months anyway while we wait for Pfizer, Moderna and AZ to retool their existing vaccines.
    But that is why we should close the border. If the variant evades the vaccine we want to fend it off as long as possible, giving the boffins time to tweak the vax and/or develop antivirals (hurry up Pfizer!)

    Why not buy us a fortnight or a month with one simple measure? Close the border. Redlist southern Africa
    The process is a minimum of 6 months to design, test, trial and ramp up manufacturing of a new variant buster vaccine, plus a minimum of 3 months to get 50m doses out there. Our best case scenario is 9 months from detecting a vaccine evading variant to getting everyone vaccinated. I don't see what two weeks buys us, we're going to be locked down for 6-8 months of it, that is simply unavoidable. The nation has decided that not letting old people die is more important than freedom when they die at a rate of more than 300-400 per day, less than that seems to be an acceptable loss of life for freedom.
    But you forget the Pfizer anti-viral cavalry. They aim to start mass production at the end of the year. If this drug is as good as it seems (God willing) then there IS a reason to ward off Nu for a few weeks. That delay could save many lives

    Of course this is all speculation, at the mo
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    First snow of the season here today
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,543
    HYUFD said:

    tlg86 said:

    Off topic: I've just listened to a speech by Doug Specht about the zoning of London and, in particular, the new Nine Elms development and Northern Line extension. This is well worth a read:

    https://camri.ac.uk/blog/articles/the-northern-line-extension-a-challenge-for-mapmakers-and-for-social-equality/

    Battersea Riverside now has its own Underground line, very little social housing, and has been placed squarely within Zone 1 by Transport for London (TFL). What more could the developers have asked for? Through their elegant solution to zoning, the Tube map’s cartographers have managed to conceal the politics behind these decisions, making this new area appear as if it has always belonged in Zone 1. In doing so, they have pushed up the profits of the developers who managed to avoid having to build more affordable housing.

    Although not responsible for generating the circumstances that allowed the developers to lobby the Council, the Tube map has still managed to legitimise the outcomes. Like any map, its aesthetics conceals its politics.


    I studied some cartography at university and find it quite good fun. Maps are inherently political and can be very powerful.

    Not much use if there is a tube strike like will occur tomorrow and you cannot access it anyway
    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/tube-strike-london-why-tfl-victoria-northern-piccadilly-jubilee-line-b967597.html
    What happens when, in the modern world, there’s a Tube strike but no-one notices it - because, for some weird reason, the City has Work From Home plans in place and no business gets lost by the strike.
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,641

    COVID summary

    No change.

    Down - Cases in the older groups, hospitalisations, deaths
    Up - cases in the younger groups. Especially in the unvaccinated children

    Tests performed 9% higher than same day last week.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The thing is, we can't close the border every single time a new variant pops up. As for delta, in all honesty the way it's worked out is that the early seeding of delta in the UK has probably made our exit wave 3-4x the size it would otherwise have been. I'm yet to be convinced this wasn't a good thing for the UK. As you can see from the incoming data we're seeing nothing like the take off that the rest of Europe is seeing. That delta seeded exit wave has fortified our level population immunity.

    A lot of this is based on random luck, in some sense we were pretty lucky to get delta early in the spring and summer rather than late summer and autumn, in another we were also sensible to reopen and be damned.

    Anyway, I'm still not convinced that there is any reason to panic, variants will come and go, I just can't bring myself to get worked up about them, mainly because it will take a quite some doing to outcompete the new delta subvariant that is slowly making its way through the country. Delta was our nightmare, now it might turn our to be our way out of this.
    No but we should have closed the borders immediately at the start of the pandemic. We locked down the domestic population but allowed flights to continue. I can't think of a logical reason for doing that.
    Yes, that was the most idiotic decision this government came up with and that's a pretty long a storied list. We're now in a different phase of the pandemic and border closures should for variants seem unnecessary. If the variant completely evades the vaccine then we're all fucked for another 6 months anyway while we wait for Pfizer, Moderna and AZ to retool their existing vaccines.
    But that is why we should close the border. If the variant evades the vaccine we want to fend it off as long as possible, giving the boffins time to tweak the vax and/or develop antivirals (hurry up Pfizer!)

    Why not buy us a fortnight or a month with one simple measure? Close the border. Redlist southern Africa
    The process is a minimum of 6 months to design, test, trial and ramp up manufacturing of a new variant buster vaccine, plus a minimum of 3 months to get 50m doses out there. Our best case scenario is 9 months from detecting a vaccine evading variant to getting everyone vaccinated. I don't see what two weeks buys us, we're going to be locked down for 6-8 months of it, that is simply unavoidable. The nation has decided that not letting old people die is more important than freedom when they die at a rate of more than 300-400 per day, less than that seems to be an acceptable loss of life for freedom.
    But you forget the Pfizer anti-viral cavalry. They aim to start mass production at the end of the year. If this drug is as good as it seems (God willing) then there IS a reason to ward off Nu for a few weeks. That delay could save many lives

    Of course this is all speculation, at the mo
    Hmm, the mechanism of the anti-virals would probably make a vaccine evading variant also able to evade the three or four anti-viral candidates out there.

    I honestly think a fully vaccine evading variant would be a massive disaster but we would also know very quickly because countries would record lots of breakthrough cases, there's little to no evidence of this so far for this variant.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The thing is, we can't close the border every single time a new variant pops up. As for delta, in all honesty the way it's worked out is that the early seeding of delta in the UK has probably made our exit wave 3-4x the size it would otherwise have been. I'm yet to be convinced this wasn't a good thing for the UK. As you can see from the incoming data we're seeing nothing like the take off that the rest of Europe is seeing. That delta seeded exit wave has fortified our level population immunity.

    A lot of this is based on random luck, in some sense we were pretty lucky to get delta early in the spring and summer rather than late summer and autumn, in another we were also sensible to reopen and be damned.

    Anyway, I'm still not convinced that there is any reason to panic, variants will come and go, I just can't bring myself to get worked up about them, mainly because it will take a quite some doing to outcompete the new delta subvariant that is slowly making its way through the country. Delta was our nightmare, now it might turn our to be our way out of this.
    No but we should have closed the borders immediately at the start of the pandemic. We locked down the domestic population but allowed flights to continue. I can't think of a logical reason for doing that.
    Yes, that was the most idiotic decision this government came up with and that's a pretty long a storied list. We're now in a different phase of the pandemic and border closures should for variants seem unnecessary. If the variant completely evades the vaccine then we're all fucked for another 6 months anyway while we wait for Pfizer, Moderna and AZ to retool their existing vaccines.
    But that is why we should close the border. If the variant evades the vaccine we want to fend it off as long as possible, giving the boffins time to tweak the vax and/or develop antivirals (hurry up Pfizer!)

    Why not buy us a fortnight or a month with one simple measure? Close the border. Redlist southern Africa
    The process is a minimum of 6 months to design, test, trial and ramp up manufacturing of a new variant buster vaccine, plus a minimum of 3 months to get 50m doses out there. Our best case scenario is 9 months from detecting a vaccine evading variant to getting everyone vaccinated. I don't see what two weeks buys us, we're going to be locked down for 6-8 months of it, that is simply unavoidable. The nation has decided that not letting old people die is more important than freedom when they die at a rate of more than 300-400 per day, less than that seems to be an acceptable loss of life for freedom.
    But you forget the Pfizer anti-viral cavalry. They aim to start mass production at the end of the year. If this drug is as good as it seems (God willing) then there IS a reason to ward off Nu for a few weeks. That delay could save many lives

    Of course this is all speculation, at the mo
    Hmm, the mechanism of the anti-virals would probably make a vaccine evading variant also able to evade the three or four anti-viral candidates out there.

    I honestly think a fully vaccine evading variant would be a massive disaster but we would also know very quickly because countries would record lots of breakthrough cases, there's little to no evidence of this so far for this variant.
    Yes, if it can be detected by simple PCR tests then it SURELY would be cropping up in the UK, EU, etc. Yet it isn't, as far as we know. So that means it is NOT seeded widely across Europe - yet

    I still think this is a good enough reason to close the border. We will know very soon
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,628
    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The thing is, we can't close the border every single time a new variant pops up. As for delta, in all honesty the way it's worked out is that the early seeding of delta in the UK has probably made our exit wave 3-4x the size it would otherwise have been. I'm yet to be convinced this wasn't a good thing for the UK. As you can see from the incoming data we're seeing nothing like the take off that the rest of Europe is seeing. That delta seeded exit wave has fortified our level population immunity.

    A lot of this is based on random luck, in some sense we were pretty lucky to get delta early in the spring and summer rather than late summer and autumn, in another we were also sensible to reopen and be damned.

    Anyway, I'm still not convinced that there is any reason to panic, variants will come and go, I just can't bring myself to get worked up about them, mainly because it will take a quite some doing to outcompete the new delta subvariant that is slowly making its way through the country. Delta was our nightmare, now it might turn our to be our way out of this.
    No but we should have closed the borders immediately at the start of the pandemic. We locked down the domestic population but allowed flights to continue. I can't think of a logical reason for doing that.
    Yes, that was the most idiotic decision this government came up with and that's a pretty long a storied list. We're now in a different phase of the pandemic and border closures should for variants seem unnecessary. If the variant completely evades the vaccine then we're all fucked for another 6 months anyway while we wait for Pfizer, Moderna and AZ to retool their existing vaccines.
    But that is why we should close the border. If the variant evades the vaccine we want to fend it off as long as possible, giving the boffins time to tweak the vax and/or develop antivirals (hurry up Pfizer!)

    Why not buy us a fortnight or a month with one simple measure? Close the border. Redlist southern Africa
    The process is a minimum of 6 months to design, test, trial and ramp up manufacturing of a new variant buster vaccine, plus a minimum of 3 months to get 50m doses out there. Our best case scenario is 9 months from detecting a vaccine evading variant to getting everyone vaccinated. I don't see what two weeks buys us, we're going to be locked down for 6-8 months of it, that is simply unavoidable. The nation has decided that not letting old people die is more important than freedom when they die at a rate of more than 300-400 per day, less than that seems to be an acceptable loss of life for freedom.
    But you forget the Pfizer anti-viral cavalry. They aim to start mass production at the end of the year. If this drug is as good as it seems (God willing) then there IS a reason to ward off Nu for a few weeks. That delay could save many lives

    Of course this is all speculation, at the mo
    Hmm, the mechanism of the anti-virals would probably make a vaccine evading variant also able to evade the three or four anti-viral candidates out there.

    I honestly think a fully vaccine evading variant would be a massive disaster but we would also know very quickly because countries would record lots of breakthrough cases, there's little to no evidence of this so far for this variant.
    With the retrovirals, they're quite broad spectrum aren't they?
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    One of the other reason to not impose economic sanctions like border closure on countries that detect new variants is because they will do what most of Europe has done and stop sequencing. It's happened to the UK a few times (unnecessarily too) and it's been annoying then and I'd hope the government was clear headed enough to see the consequences of closing the border to the country that detects variants first, though not necessarily where they originate from or where the variant is most present.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,628
    MaxPB said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The logic of your approach is that we want people to stop catching Covid. We don't. At least not until the flu season gets going. The more who catch it right now the better. Right now, we can cope. The fall in hospitalisations over a period of over 2 weeks now shows that. A more infective variant of Covid is, on this logic, exactly what the doctor ordered.
    Not if it causes more serious illness by evading the vax to some extent.

    Shut the border to SA now.
    I'm sorry, that's an absolutely massive leap you've taken. Firstly there's no evidence that the varian evades vaccines, there's also no evidence that it has higher severity. We simply can no longer live in fear of every single variant that comes and goes. If you want to go down the border closure route then you really do need to do it like NZ and close it to everyone, not one or two countries.
    Spot on.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 38,959

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Pretty bloody ropey after my Moderna booster jab. Seriously sore and frozen arm, general malaise and fatigue. Much worse than AZ, which caused a tiny bit of tenderness in the shoulder...

    That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID.
    I am now near-certain that I did have Covid way back in January 2020, caught in Thailand. That's what Public Health England thought, that's why they sent me to be tested in UCLH, tho a SNAFU prevented any actual test

    It would also explain why I haven't caught Covid since, despite taking many risks in recent months: pubs, bars, restaurants, planes, the works
    "That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID."

    Is it? First I've heard of that idea.
    Yes it has been punted before, by proper scientists, tho there are also other explanations, ofc
    Hey, my Chemistry degree still just about qualifies me as a "proper scientist" just not a practicing one.
    You never lose the scientific training.
    You know a junior asked me earlier this year whether or not I thought my degree was useful, I was going to say "not really" as always but actually after having a short think about it, I think it is pretty useful. Not the chemistry because fuck that noise, but the methodology of being a scientist and being open to any and all criticism of a theory, idea or model. I think a lot of our more public scientists, especially those in iSAGE, seem to have forgotten that a big part of science is having regular retrospectives on current theories vs real life data. It's something I've noticed myself doing over the course of this pandemic, go back on old ideas and make sure they are still relevant.

    Too many of the public scientific advisors aren't doing that exercise right now. Just today I read that some SAGE scientists are calling for the immediate implementation of plan b, despite there being not very much evidence to support that. They're stuck in a timeloop of a political agenda that lockdown measures are the only way to combat this. I'm sure when Germany, France and other major European countries go into a full lockdown in two weeks those same voices will condemn the government as irresponsible and callous for not doing the same here and in the process completely ignore the available real world data on infection rates, testing and hospitalisation.
    Agree - and it can have very real world consequences - take the AIDS pandemic - no one had to explain to Thatcher the horrors of exponential growth in an infection - something the current incumbent seemed to have difficulty getting his head around.

    Favourite observations on science "Many a grand beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact" (yes, iSAGE, I'm looking at you - and these aren't "single" facts but whole battalions of them.)

    And of the French (which may be playing a part in the NI problems) - "it's all very well it working in practice - but does it work in theory?" I fear the EU are hung up on the theory of the integrity of the single market, ignoring the practical solutions and the ramifications of their absolutism.
    I mentioned before (I believe) a chap who accidentally disproved his own PhD right at the end, and presented the evidence at his viva.

    I would have given him his PhD and a Professorship to boot - *that* was True Science.
    I missed your earlier posting did he get his PhD?
    No - but they fudged it into a research grant of some kind to let him continue along the new line of enquiry.

    Which I thought was shit solution.
    Awwwww! That's ****ing outrageous. If his skills at research were good enough to build up a hypothesis, test it and write it up - and with the self-critical assessment to dump it - and to have a grant on top -then he had amply fulfilled the criteria for a PhD.
    Some of the greatest science has come from people carefully and exactly getting the result they didn't want.

    I always thought that Michelson–Morley should have got a Nobel.
    Bicycle day! 😵‍💫

    From actually looking for something for bad chests?
    I am having a drop of wine waiting for my other half to come home, but you should know what I mean, I am making Lucy’d (sic) sense.

    Lucy in the sky, with diamonds is apparently a painting by a primary school child!

    Yes. And Ebenezer Goode was a Methodist too
    I like this StreamOfConciousnessDrunkPosting.

    Much better than the fighty stuff we get in the late evening.
    Yes, at 9.30 PB can resemble the street outside a 1950s Gorbals pub as the punters get chucked out. And hours to wait yet till the milkman comes so one can make up some electric soup with the gas from the lights in the closes.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The thing is, we can't close the border every single time a new variant pops up. As for delta, in all honesty the way it's worked out is that the early seeding of delta in the UK has probably made our exit wave 3-4x the size it would otherwise have been. I'm yet to be convinced this wasn't a good thing for the UK. As you can see from the incoming data we're seeing nothing like the take off that the rest of Europe is seeing. That delta seeded exit wave has fortified our level population immunity.

    A lot of this is based on random luck, in some sense we were pretty lucky to get delta early in the spring and summer rather than late summer and autumn, in another we were also sensible to reopen and be damned.

    Anyway, I'm still not convinced that there is any reason to panic, variants will come and go, I just can't bring myself to get worked up about them, mainly because it will take a quite some doing to outcompete the new delta subvariant that is slowly making its way through the country. Delta was our nightmare, now it might turn our to be our way out of this.
    No but we should have closed the borders immediately at the start of the pandemic. We locked down the domestic population but allowed flights to continue. I can't think of a logical reason for doing that.
    Yes, that was the most idiotic decision this government came up with and that's a pretty long a storied list. We're now in a different phase of the pandemic and border closures should for variants seem unnecessary. If the variant completely evades the vaccine then we're all fucked for another 6 months anyway while we wait for Pfizer, Moderna and AZ to retool their existing vaccines.
    But that is why we should close the border. If the variant evades the vaccine we want to fend it off as long as possible, giving the boffins time to tweak the vax and/or develop antivirals (hurry up Pfizer!)

    Why not buy us a fortnight or a month with one simple measure? Close the border. Redlist southern Africa
    The process is a minimum of 6 months to design, test, trial and ramp up manufacturing of a new variant buster vaccine, plus a minimum of 3 months to get 50m doses out there. Our best case scenario is 9 months from detecting a vaccine evading variant to getting everyone vaccinated. I don't see what two weeks buys us, we're going to be locked down for 6-8 months of it, that is simply unavoidable. The nation has decided that not letting old people die is more important than freedom when they die at a rate of more than 300-400 per day, less than that seems to be an acceptable loss of life for freedom.
    But you forget the Pfizer anti-viral cavalry. They aim to start mass production at the end of the year. If this drug is as good as it seems (God willing) then there IS a reason to ward off Nu for a few weeks. That delay could save many lives

    Of course this is all speculation, at the mo
    Hmm, the mechanism of the anti-virals would probably make a vaccine evading variant also able to evade the three or four anti-viral candidates out there.

    I honestly think a fully vaccine evading variant would be a massive disaster but we would also know very quickly because countries would record lots of breakthrough cases, there's little to no evidence of this so far for this variant.
    With the retrovirals, they're quite broad spectrum aren't they?
    It's a protease inhibitor, so I guess it would stop the step after infection during the initial replication process. So yeah, actually you're right I think they wouldn't see much if any efficacy dilution from spike protein mutations, it would need to be mutations in the replication process to evade the anti-virals.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,355

    HYUFD said:
    Kantar though has been kind to Tory ratings, hence I think why header calls it outlier?

    14 to 19 Oct Kantar had it
    39% 34% 8
    23-27 Sept
    43% 30% 11


    So the take out from sequence really is Labour eating into lead, Kantar finding more Labour voters each time they poll? So not really an outlier from other pollsters who start from different places.

    Or maybe I am a newbie and haven’t a clue 🤷‍♀️
    And although I am a golden yellow girl, I don’t know if header is right about movement to libdems, over the sequence of these three Kantor polls they haven’t really gone anywhere?

    Unless I can’t interpret polls as well as all experts on here?
    I would suggest that the Paterson misjudgement has seen the conservatives drop in the polls and probably at present they are near enough level

    Boris is having a nightmare but Starmer is not impressing

    Indeed his comment today that as a prosecutor he would have had the smugglers arrested last week is astonishing considering they came into France from Germany and we therefore have no jurisdiction and France was aware of the plot
    Thank you. I agree. You are spot on. It’s about comparing like for like polls isn’t it as different pollsters start from different places, have different methods. Our shared feeling Big G is that overall it’s about level, or Labour marginally ahead? And the drift has been with Labour for a while, but accelerated early November - but is it just booing the boss whilst remaining loyal club fans?

    If I am right about analysing sequence from same poster, how is the header finding movement from Tory to libdem?
    There is a 3.7% CON to LD swing which on current boundaries sees CON losing 11 seats to the LDs on a UNS

    Thank you. But my pebble counting produces line on a graph through last three Kantor numbers for Lib Dem’s which would be basically horizontal, whilst Conservatives stay on 39 for the last two? Does that make sense, I am working out swing from just 3 Kantor polls from sequence. We might both be right if you though are relating this Kantor to the GE? Not like a recent swing, which I may have mistakenly sensed from the header writing up this poll?

    Overall from all posters it’s a basically horizontal line for Libdems right through the eh in ten, would you agree? Which you then calculate as swing from Tory to libdem from GE?

    It’s been stuck like that quite a while though is my point? Would it help libdems move up if voters could name the leader and a libdem policy?

    Would it help libdem poll ratings if Ed Davey had a celebrity affair, maybe with Gemma Collins? Or a three in a bed with both Konnie Huq and Charlie Brooker?

    Who do you think Ed Davey should have affair with that most helps the libdems?
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,355

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Pretty bloody ropey after my Moderna booster jab. Seriously sore and frozen arm, general malaise and fatigue. Much worse than AZ, which caused a tiny bit of tenderness in the shoulder...

    That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID.
    I am now near-certain that I did have Covid way back in January 2020, caught in Thailand. That's what Public Health England thought, that's why they sent me to be tested in UCLH, tho a SNAFU prevented any actual test

    It would also explain why I haven't caught Covid since, despite taking many risks in recent months: pubs, bars, restaurants, planes, the works
    "That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID."

    Is it? First I've heard of that idea.
    Yes it has been punted before, by proper scientists, tho there are also other explanations, ofc
    Hey, my Chemistry degree still just about qualifies me as a "proper scientist" just not a practicing one.
    You never lose the scientific training.
    You know a junior asked me earlier this year whether or not I thought my degree was useful, I was going to say "not really" as always but actually after having a short think about it, I think it is pretty useful. Not the chemistry because fuck that noise, but the methodology of being a scientist and being open to any and all criticism of a theory, idea or model. I think a lot of our more public scientists, especially those in iSAGE, seem to have forgotten that a big part of science is having regular retrospectives on current theories vs real life data. It's something I've noticed myself doing over the course of this pandemic, go back on old ideas and make sure they are still relevant.

    Too many of the public scientific advisors aren't doing that exercise right now. Just today I read that some SAGE scientists are calling for the immediate implementation of plan b, despite there being not very much evidence to support that. They're stuck in a timeloop of a political agenda that lockdown measures are the only way to combat this. I'm sure when Germany, France and other major European countries go into a full lockdown in two weeks those same voices will condemn the government as irresponsible and callous for not doing the same here and in the process completely ignore the available real world data on infection rates, testing and hospitalisation.
    Agree - and it can have very real world consequences - take the AIDS pandemic - no one had to explain to Thatcher the horrors of exponential growth in an infection - something the current incumbent seemed to have difficulty getting his head around.

    Favourite observations on science "Many a grand beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact" (yes, iSAGE, I'm looking at you - and these aren't "single" facts but whole battalions of them.)

    And of the French (which may be playing a part in the NI problems) - "it's all very well it working in practice - but does it work in theory?" I fear the EU are hung up on the theory of the integrity of the single market, ignoring the practical solutions and the ramifications of their absolutism.
    I mentioned before (I believe) a chap who accidentally disproved his own PhD right at the end, and presented the evidence at his viva.

    I would have given him his PhD and a Professorship to boot - *that* was True Science.
    I missed your earlier posting did he get his PhD?
    No - but they fudged it into a research grant of some kind to let him continue along the new line of enquiry.

    Which I thought was shit solution.
    Awwwww! That's ****ing outrageous. If his skills at research were good enough to build up a hypothesis, test it and write it up - and with the self-critical assessment to dump it - and to have a grant on top -then he had amply fulfilled the criteria for a PhD.
    Some of the greatest science has come from people carefully and exactly getting the result they didn't want.

    I always thought that Michelson–Morley should have got a Nobel.
    Bicycle day! 😵‍💫

    From actually looking for something for bad chests?
    I am having a drop of wine waiting for my other half to come home, but you should know what I mean, I am making Lucy’d (sic) sense.

    Lucy in the sky, with diamonds is apparently a painting by a primary school child!

    Yes. And Ebenezer Goode was a Methodist too
    I like this StreamOfConciousnessDrunkPosting.

    Much better than the fighty stuff we get in the late evening.
    Thank you. You are welcome.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The thing is, we can't close the border every single time a new variant pops up. As for delta, in all honesty the way it's worked out is that the early seeding of delta in the UK has probably made our exit wave 3-4x the size it would otherwise have been. I'm yet to be convinced this wasn't a good thing for the UK. As you can see from the incoming data we're seeing nothing like the take off that the rest of Europe is seeing. That delta seeded exit wave has fortified our level population immunity.

    A lot of this is based on random luck, in some sense we were pretty lucky to get delta early in the spring and summer rather than late summer and autumn, in another we were also sensible to reopen and be damned.

    Anyway, I'm still not convinced that there is any reason to panic, variants will come and go, I just can't bring myself to get worked up about them, mainly because it will take a quite some doing to outcompete the new delta subvariant that is slowly making its way through the country. Delta was our nightmare, now it might turn our to be our way out of this.
    No but we should have closed the borders immediately at the start of the pandemic. We locked down the domestic population but allowed flights to continue. I can't think of a logical reason for doing that.
    Yes, that was the most idiotic decision this government came up with and that's a pretty long a storied list. We're now in a different phase of the pandemic and border closures should for variants seem unnecessary. If the variant completely evades the vaccine then we're all fucked for another 6 months anyway while we wait for Pfizer, Moderna and AZ to retool their existing vaccines.
    But that is why we should close the border. If the variant evades the vaccine we want to fend it off as long as possible, giving the boffins time to tweak the vax and/or develop antivirals (hurry up Pfizer!)

    Why not buy us a fortnight or a month with one simple measure? Close the border. Redlist southern Africa
    The process is a minimum of 6 months to design, test, trial and ramp up manufacturing of a new variant buster vaccine, plus a minimum of 3 months to get 50m doses out there. Our best case scenario is 9 months from detecting a vaccine evading variant to getting everyone vaccinated. I don't see what two weeks buys us, we're going to be locked down for 6-8 months of it, that is simply unavoidable. The nation has decided that not letting old people die is more important than freedom when they die at a rate of more than 300-400 per day, less than that seems to be an acceptable loss of life for freedom.
    But you forget the Pfizer anti-viral cavalry. They aim to start mass production at the end of the year. If this drug is as good as it seems (God willing) then there IS a reason to ward off Nu for a few weeks. That delay could save many lives

    Of course this is all speculation, at the mo
    Hmm, the mechanism of the anti-virals would probably make a vaccine evading variant also able to evade the three or four anti-viral candidates out there.

    I honestly think a fully vaccine evading variant would be a massive disaster but we would also know very quickly because countries would record lots of breakthrough cases, there's little to no evidence of this so far for this variant.
    Yes, if it can be detected by simple PCR tests then it SURELY would be cropping up in the UK, EU, etc. Yet it isn't, as far as we know. So that means it is NOT seeded widely across Europe - yet

    I still think this is a good enough reason to close the border. We will know very soon
    But we'd need to close it to everyone and put managed quarantine in place for people who return. It's not feasible. One of the reasons we have all got reason to be fucked off at China is because they covered up the severity of what was happening in Yunan for months. They kept all of their flights running and pretended that COVID was just another kind of flu localised to Wuhan. The rest of the world was caught completely unaware when it turned out that, no, this wasn't some extraordinary flu variant, it was a full blown novel virus that was killing 30% of people over 80 and hospitalising 1 in 10 over 50s. That dishonesty cost the whole world time to prepare and defend itself from what was coming. We didn't even have the option of border closures in November and December because China simply didn't tell us.

    SA are doing the right thing by being honest with what's happening and we need to weigh up whether stopping flights is necessary before pulling the trigger. If we have evidence that this is an evading variant then yes, maybe we can close the border, but probably to the whole world while we figure out just how bad it is and get AZ/Ox working on a new vaccine and give them all of the money to get it done ASAP. If there's no evidence of it imposing economic sanctions on honesty will just mean people stop being honest, just as China did at the beginning of all this.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,259
    Whenever things seem to be getting better vis-a-vis Covid-19, a new variant turns up.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,259

    HYUFD said:
    Kantar though has been kind to Tory ratings, hence I think why header calls it outlier?

    14 to 19 Oct Kantar had it
    39% 34% 8
    23-27 Sept
    43% 30% 11


    So the take out from sequence really is Labour eating into lead, Kantar finding more Labour voters each time they poll? So not really an outlier from other pollsters who start from different places.

    Or maybe I am a newbie and haven’t a clue 🤷‍♀️
    And although I am a golden yellow girl, I don’t know if header is right about movement to libdems, over the sequence of these three Kantor polls they haven’t really gone anywhere?

    Unless I can’t interpret polls as well as all experts on here?
    I would suggest that the Paterson misjudgement has seen the conservatives drop in the polls and probably at present they are near enough level

    Boris is having a nightmare but Starmer is not impressing

    Indeed his comment today that as a prosecutor he would have had the smugglers arrested last week is astonishing considering they came into France from Germany and we therefore have no jurisdiction and France was aware of the plot
    Why aren't Labour/Starmer doing better? Probably one word. Woke.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The thing is, we can't close the border every single time a new variant pops up. As for delta, in all honesty the way it's worked out is that the early seeding of delta in the UK has probably made our exit wave 3-4x the size it would otherwise have been. I'm yet to be convinced this wasn't a good thing for the UK. As you can see from the incoming data we're seeing nothing like the take off that the rest of Europe is seeing. That delta seeded exit wave has fortified our level population immunity.

    A lot of this is based on random luck, in some sense we were pretty lucky to get delta early in the spring and summer rather than late summer and autumn, in another we were also sensible to reopen and be damned.

    Anyway, I'm still not convinced that there is any reason to panic, variants will come and go, I just can't bring myself to get worked up about them, mainly because it will take a quite some doing to outcompete the new delta subvariant that is slowly making its way through the country. Delta was our nightmare, now it might turn our to be our way out of this.
    No but we should have closed the borders immediately at the start of the pandemic. We locked down the domestic population but allowed flights to continue. I can't think of a logical reason for doing that.
    Yes, that was the most idiotic decision this government came up with and that's a pretty long a storied list. We're now in a different phase of the pandemic and border closures should for variants seem unnecessary. If the variant completely evades the vaccine then we're all fucked for another 6 months anyway while we wait for Pfizer, Moderna and AZ to retool their existing vaccines.
    But that is why we should close the border. If the variant evades the vaccine we want to fend it off as long as possible, giving the boffins time to tweak the vax and/or develop antivirals (hurry up Pfizer!)

    Why not buy us a fortnight or a month with one simple measure? Close the border. Redlist southern Africa
    The process is a minimum of 6 months to design, test, trial and ramp up manufacturing of a new variant buster vaccine, plus a minimum of 3 months to get 50m doses out there. Our best case scenario is 9 months from detecting a vaccine evading variant to getting everyone vaccinated. I don't see what two weeks buys us, we're going to be locked down for 6-8 months of it, that is simply unavoidable. The nation has decided that not letting old people die is more important than freedom when they die at a rate of more than 300-400 per day, less than that seems to be an acceptable loss of life for freedom.
    But you forget the Pfizer anti-viral cavalry. They aim to start mass production at the end of the year. If this drug is as good as it seems (God willing) then there IS a reason to ward off Nu for a few weeks. That delay could save many lives

    Of course this is all speculation, at the mo
    Hmm, the mechanism of the anti-virals would probably make a vaccine evading variant also able to evade the three or four anti-viral candidates out there.

    I honestly think a fully vaccine evading variant would be a massive disaster but we would also know very quickly because countries would record lots of breakthrough cases, there's little to no evidence of this so far for this variant.
    With the retrovirals, they're quite broad spectrum aren't they?
    It's a protease inhibitor, so I guess it would stop the step after infection during the initial replication process. So yeah, actually you're right I think they wouldn't see much if any efficacy dilution from spike protein mutations, it would need to be mutations in the replication process to evade the anti-virals.
    In which case it might be worth closing the borders with SA to buy a few weeks. As the antivirals are arriving en masse in early 2022


    This woman is usually level headed. That she is concerned, is concerning


    "You’re hearing about the new variant? B.1.1.529, soon to be Nu? Yes, the early signals are genuinely worrying. (This isn’t true for many; it is for this one. Dismissing this one isn’t wise.) It’s now spreading in a poor and poorly-vaccinated area. The world needs to step up."

    https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1463917444381216768?s=20
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,851
    OT. Interesting story about UK loans to bogus and non existent companies........


    https://www.cityam.com/millions-dished-out-to-inactive-or-new-companies-under-covid-loan-scheme/
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,774
    Effect of variants at this stage:

    Full immunity evasion: Essentially a new, different pandemic. This is usually caused by a new zoonotic introduction, not simply the evolution of an existing strain in humans.

    Partial immunity evasion: better at infecting immune people. Since they have some immunity, they get a cold. And next time a milder cold. A few more unvaccinated die each time. This will happen. It IS the endemic endgame, not a setback.

    More transmissible variant: since R0 is already high and tricky to raise by much, moves the theoretical herd immunity level by only a couple of percent and then likely only causes a couple of week's damage before we end up as close to herd immunity as we were before and Rt bends back down. Very quickly gets outcompeted by the partial immune evasion variant. This is what SA variant would do if it outcompetes Delta.

    More kid friendly variant: Rips through schools and gets us close to herd immunity. Ultimately replaced by the partial immune evasion variant.

  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The thing is, we can't close the border every single time a new variant pops up. As for delta, in all honesty the way it's worked out is that the early seeding of delta in the UK has probably made our exit wave 3-4x the size it would otherwise have been. I'm yet to be convinced this wasn't a good thing for the UK. As you can see from the incoming data we're seeing nothing like the take off that the rest of Europe is seeing. That delta seeded exit wave has fortified our level population immunity.

    A lot of this is based on random luck, in some sense we were pretty lucky to get delta early in the spring and summer rather than late summer and autumn, in another we were also sensible to reopen and be damned.

    Anyway, I'm still not convinced that there is any reason to panic, variants will come and go, I just can't bring myself to get worked up about them, mainly because it will take a quite some doing to outcompete the new delta subvariant that is slowly making its way through the country. Delta was our nightmare, now it might turn our to be our way out of this.
    No but we should have closed the borders immediately at the start of the pandemic. We locked down the domestic population but allowed flights to continue. I can't think of a logical reason for doing that.
    Yes, that was the most idiotic decision this government came up with and that's a pretty long a storied list. We're now in a different phase of the pandemic and border closures should for variants seem unnecessary. If the variant completely evades the vaccine then we're all fucked for another 6 months anyway while we wait for Pfizer, Moderna and AZ to retool their existing vaccines.
    But that is why we should close the border. If the variant evades the vaccine we want to fend it off as long as possible, giving the boffins time to tweak the vax and/or develop antivirals (hurry up Pfizer!)

    Why not buy us a fortnight or a month with one simple measure? Close the border. Redlist southern Africa
    The process is a minimum of 6 months to design, test, trial and ramp up manufacturing of a new variant buster vaccine, plus a minimum of 3 months to get 50m doses out there. Our best case scenario is 9 months from detecting a vaccine evading variant to getting everyone vaccinated. I don't see what two weeks buys us, we're going to be locked down for 6-8 months of it, that is simply unavoidable. The nation has decided that not letting old people die is more important than freedom when they die at a rate of more than 300-400 per day, less than that seems to be an acceptable loss of life for freedom.
    But you forget the Pfizer anti-viral cavalry. They aim to start mass production at the end of the year. If this drug is as good as it seems (God willing) then there IS a reason to ward off Nu for a few weeks. That delay could save many lives

    Of course this is all speculation, at the mo
    Hmm, the mechanism of the anti-virals would probably make a vaccine evading variant also able to evade the three or four anti-viral candidates out there.

    I honestly think a fully vaccine evading variant would be a massive disaster but we would also know very quickly because countries would record lots of breakthrough cases, there's little to no evidence of this so far for this variant.
    Yes, if it can be detected by simple PCR tests then it SURELY would be cropping up in the UK, EU, etc. Yet it isn't, as far as we know. So that means it is NOT seeded widely across Europe - yet

    I still think this is a good enough reason to close the border. We will know very soon
    But we'd need to close it to everyone and put managed quarantine in place for people who return. It's not feasible. One of the reasons we have all got reason to be fucked off at China is because they covered up the severity of what was happening in Yunan for months. They kept all of their flights running and pretended that COVID was just another kind of flu localised to Wuhan. The rest of the world was caught completely unaware when it turned out that, no, this wasn't some extraordinary flu variant, it was a full blown novel virus that was killing 30% of people over 80 and hospitalising 1 in 10 over 50s. That dishonesty cost the whole world time to prepare and defend itself from what was coming. We didn't even have the option of border closures in November and December because China simply didn't tell us.

    SA are doing the right thing by being honest with what's happening and we need to weigh up whether stopping flights is necessary before pulling the trigger. If we have evidence that this is an evading variant then yes, maybe we can close the border, but probably to the whole world while we figure out just how bad it is and get AZ/Ox working on a new vaccine and give them all of the money to get it done ASAP. If there's no evidence of it imposing economic sanctions on honesty will just mean people stop being honest, just as China did at the beginning of all this.
    Yes, I see that argument. If we punish them for honesty, they will start lying.

    And yet, saving British lives and the British economy has to be the primary concern of HMG. It's a pretty intense and tight judgement call
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Andy_JS said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    In the real world the R rate in England may have just dipped below 1, with the whole economy open, schools open and everyone socialising indoors because it's fucking freezing out.

    I'm going to wait and see what this new variant brings, right now it feels like headless chickens panicking about not very much. Lets all remember one of the mega advantages that delta has is its very high R rate and it has outcompeted all other variants to a very large degree and the subvariant is thought to be 15-20% more transmissive and is outcompeting delta.

    Did you see that Nu can be detected by PCR tests? That's how they spotted it in SA

    This is mildly encouraging, because surely it would have been detected in the UK, Holland, etc, if it was here in great numbers

    Should stop flights from Africa, however. No great economic damage, a necessary precaution
    Yes, I saw. One of the interesting things about SA is that their viral lineage is mostly derived from Beta because they were cut off from the rest of the world for so long. The majority of South Africans got their derived immunity from Beta or vaccines. There's a pretty good chance that this übervariant is actually much less competitive than delta the same as a lot of the other variants that we've seen from SA.

    As I said, there's no reason to panic, firstly because it won't make any difference and secondly because there's no reason to believe that this will outcompete delta or the new delta subvariant for hosts.

    I'm also unsure that closing the border will make any difference, it's probable that we already have cases of this in the UK and all across Europe. The only way to stop this will be to introduce managed quarantine for all inbound travellers within a few days. I don't see that as feasible or useful.

    This kind of stuff is going to happen a lot over the next few months and years, some new variant or other will cause blue ticks to panic, everyone else will get on with their lives. The best thing to do it block it all out.
    This is a rare occasion where I disagree with you on Covid. We didn't close the border with India quick enough, and we seeded Delta liberally

    It's common sense to learn from that and now shut the border with SA/Botswana, and so on. Just in case

    If Nu is a real worry, then that might buy us a precious few days or weeks where we can prepare, if Nu is a teacup-storm, then no great harm has been done

    The thing is, we can't close the border every single time a new variant pops up. As for delta, in all honesty the way it's worked out is that the early seeding of delta in the UK has probably made our exit wave 3-4x the size it would otherwise have been. I'm yet to be convinced this wasn't a good thing for the UK. As you can see from the incoming data we're seeing nothing like the take off that the rest of Europe is seeing. That delta seeded exit wave has fortified our level population immunity.

    A lot of this is based on random luck, in some sense we were pretty lucky to get delta early in the spring and summer rather than late summer and autumn, in another we were also sensible to reopen and be damned.

    Anyway, I'm still not convinced that there is any reason to panic, variants will come and go, I just can't bring myself to get worked up about them, mainly because it will take a quite some doing to outcompete the new delta subvariant that is slowly making its way through the country. Delta was our nightmare, now it might turn our to be our way out of this.
    No but we should have closed the borders immediately at the start of the pandemic. We locked down the domestic population but allowed flights to continue. I can't think of a logical reason for doing that.
    Yes, that was the most idiotic decision this government came up with and that's a pretty long a storied list. We're now in a different phase of the pandemic and border closures should for variants seem unnecessary. If the variant completely evades the vaccine then we're all fucked for another 6 months anyway while we wait for Pfizer, Moderna and AZ to retool their existing vaccines.
    But that is why we should close the border. If the variant evades the vaccine we want to fend it off as long as possible, giving the boffins time to tweak the vax and/or develop antivirals (hurry up Pfizer!)

    Why not buy us a fortnight or a month with one simple measure? Close the border. Redlist southern Africa
    The process is a minimum of 6 months to design, test, trial and ramp up manufacturing of a new variant buster vaccine, plus a minimum of 3 months to get 50m doses out there. Our best case scenario is 9 months from detecting a vaccine evading variant to getting everyone vaccinated. I don't see what two weeks buys us, we're going to be locked down for 6-8 months of it, that is simply unavoidable. The nation has decided that not letting old people die is more important than freedom when they die at a rate of more than 300-400 per day, less than that seems to be an acceptable loss of life for freedom.
    But you forget the Pfizer anti-viral cavalry. They aim to start mass production at the end of the year. If this drug is as good as it seems (God willing) then there IS a reason to ward off Nu for a few weeks. That delay could save many lives

    Of course this is all speculation, at the mo
    Hmm, the mechanism of the anti-virals would probably make a vaccine evading variant also able to evade the three or four anti-viral candidates out there.

    I honestly think a fully vaccine evading variant would be a massive disaster but we would also know very quickly because countries would record lots of breakthrough cases, there's little to no evidence of this so far for this variant.
    With the retrovirals, they're quite broad spectrum aren't they?
    It's a protease inhibitor, so I guess it would stop the step after infection during the initial replication process. So yeah, actually you're right I think they wouldn't see much if any efficacy dilution from spike protein mutations, it would need to be mutations in the replication process to evade the anti-virals.
    In which case it might be worth closing the borders with SA to buy a few weeks. As the antivirals are arriving en masse in early 2022


    This woman is usually level headed. That she is concerned, is concerning


    "You’re hearing about the new variant? B.1.1.529, soon to be Nu? Yes, the early signals are genuinely worrying. (This isn’t true for many; it is for this one. Dismissing this one isn’t wise.) It’s now spreading in a poor and poorly-vaccinated area. The world needs to step up."

    https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1463917444381216768?s=20
    That last part of the tweet is why I'm not worried, it's spreading in a poorly vaccinated area. I'm sure the blue ticks think this will get the like and retweet count up, panic and doom mongering tends to do that and she's right that we should step up vaccination of the developing world, that's not evidence of vaccine or immunity evasion. In fact the fact that this is spreading in areas with low levels of vaccination is probably a pretty good sign that it is susceptible to vaccines and the bleeding heart blue ticks are using this to push their global vaccine/anti-patent agenda and if/when this one turns out to be nothing they will move onto "well the next one could be really bad, nationalise Pfizer and give away all the vaccines for free!!!!".
  • LeonLeon Posts: 45,700
    Pro_Rata said:

    Effect of variants at this stage:

    Full immunity evasion: Essentially a new, different pandemic. This is usually caused by a new zoonotic introduction, not simply the evolution of an existing strain in humans.

    Partial immunity evasion: better at infecting immune people. Since they have some immunity, they get a cold. And next time a milder cold. A few more unvaccinated die each time. This will happen. It IS the endemic endgame, not a setback.

    More transmissible variant: since R0 is already high and tricky to raise by much, moves the theoretical herd immunity level by only a couple of percent and then likely only causes a couple of week's damage before we end up as close to herd immunity as we were before and Rt bends back down. Very quickly gets outcompeted by the partial immune evasion variant. This is what SA variant would do if it outcompetes Delta.

    More kid friendly variant: Rips through schools and gets us close to herd immunity. Ultimately replaced by the partial immune evasion variant.

    Interesting

    Surely we also need to know if prior infection with Delta (or Beta etc) gives some or total immunity to Nu?

    If we can all get a nasty Covid all over again, then we are in a pickle. If not, probably not

    The South Africans are certainly reacting like scalded cats, but they have been traumatised by Covid before...
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,600
    edited November 2021
    Continuing an awful set of polls for Scottish Nationalists today.

    'Should Scotland remain in the UK or leave the UK Voting Intention:

    Remain: 53% (+1)
    Leave: 37% (-2)
    Undecideds: 10% (+1)

    Undecideds Excluded:

    Remain: 59% (+2)
    Leave: 41% (-2)

    Via
    @Survation
    , On 18-22 November,
    Changes w/ 31 August-1 September.'

    https://twitter.com/electpoliticsuk/status/1463908773530120192?s=20
  • GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 20,673
    Oh, Con are back in the lead are they? But, but, but what about Pepper Piggate???? ;)
  • HYUFD said:

    Continuing an awful set of polls for Scottish Nationalists today.

    'Should Scotland remain in the UK or leave the UK Voting Intention:

    Remain: 53% (+1)
    Leave: 37% (-2)
    Undecideds: 10% (+1)

    Undecideds Excluded:

    Remain: 59% (+2)
    Leave: 41% (-2)

    Via
    @Survation
    , On 18-22 November,
    Changes w/ 31 August-1 September.'

    https://twitter.com/electpoliticsuk/status/1463908773530120192?s=20

    There's a reason why Sturgeon isn't rushing to have an IndyRef 👍
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,341
    Nigelb said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    MaxPB said:

    Leon said:

    Pretty bloody ropey after my Moderna booster jab. Seriously sore and frozen arm, general malaise and fatigue. Much worse than AZ, which caused a tiny bit of tenderness in the shoulder...

    That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID.
    I am now near-certain that I did have Covid way back in January 2020, caught in Thailand. That's what Public Health England thought, that's why they sent me to be tested in UCLH, tho a SNAFU prevented any actual test

    It would also explain why I haven't caught Covid since, despite taking many risks in recent months: pubs, bars, restaurants, planes, the works
    "That's a sign that you've probably previously had COVID."

    Is it? First I've heard of that idea.
    Yes it has been punted before, by proper scientists, tho there are also other explanations, ofc
    Hey, my Chemistry degree still just about qualifies me as a "proper scientist" just not a practicing one.
    You never lose the scientific training.
    You know a junior asked me earlier this year whether or not I thought my degree was useful, I was going to say "not really" as always but actually after having a short think about it, I think it is pretty useful. Not the chemistry because fuck that noise, but the methodology of being a scientist and being open to any and all criticism of a theory, idea or model. I think a lot of our more public scientists, especially those in iSAGE, seem to have forgotten that a big part of science is having regular retrospectives on current theories vs real life data. It's something I've noticed myself doing over the course of this pandemic, go back on old ideas and make sure they are still relevant.

    Too many of the public scientific advisors aren't doing that exercise right now. Just today I read that some SAGE scientists are calling for the immediate implementation of plan b, despite there being not very much evidence to support that. They're stuck in a timeloop of a political agenda that lockdown measures are the only way to combat this. I'm sure when Germany, France and other major European countries go into a full lockdown in two weeks those same voices will condemn the government as irresponsible and callous for not doing the same here and in the process completely ignore the available real world data on infection rates, testing and hospitalisation.
    Agree - and it can have very real world consequences - take the AIDS pandemic - no one had to explain to Thatcher the horrors of exponential growth in an infection - something the current incumbent seemed to have difficulty getting his head around.

    Favourite observations on science "Many a grand beautiful theory has been destroyed by a single ugly fact" (yes, iSAGE, I'm looking at you - and these aren't "single" facts but whole battalions of them.)

    And of the French (which may be playing a part in the NI problems) - "it's all very well it working in practice - but does it work in theory?" I fear the EU are hung up on the theory of the integrity of the single market, ignoring the practical solutions and the ramifications of their absolutism.
    I mentioned before (I believe) a chap who accidentally disproved his own PhD right at the end, and presented the evidence at his viva.

    I would have given him his PhD and a Professorship to boot - *that* was True Science.
    I missed your earlier posting did he get his PhD?
    No - but they fudged it into a research grant of some kind to let him continue along the new line of enquiry.

    Which I thought was shit solution.
    Awwwww! That's ****ing outrageous. If his skills at research were good enough to build up a hypothesis, test it and write it up - and with the self-critical assessment to dump it - and to have a grant on top -then he had amply fulfilled the criteria for a PhD.
    Some of the greatest science has come from people carefully and exactly getting the result they didn't want.

    I always thought that Michelson–Morley should have got a Nobel.
    Einstein claimed that he was unaware of Michelson–Morley when he wrote the Special Relativity paper, and worked it all out from Clerk Maxwell's equations
    He always was a clever bugger.
    James Clerk Maxwell deserves much wider recognition IMO. More of the modern world is built on his shoulders than Einstein's, IMO.
This discussion has been closed.