Speaking to Sky News, Labour's shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said it was "unconscionable" that France and the UK government were "engaging in a blame game while children drown off our coastline".
She said her party would work with international partners to "open up safe and legal routes" for refugees in order "to pull the rug out from under the business model that these smugglers currently rely on".
My biggest worry over Labour was them opening up the flood gates on immigration and now they confirm they're doing it. And if this is just the stuff they are saying out loud, imagine what else they will do in office. I really wanted to vote against Boris in the next election, but not at the cost of bad immigration decisions that will last decades.
That's a weird interpretation of Nandy's sensible comments. There's nothing in what she says that suggests any 'floodgate' opening. She's merely pointing out the truth: the Channel crossings are mainly a consequence of an absence of legal routes for genuine asylum seekers.
Interesting that out of 61 positive patients off that plane only 13 had Omicron. It suggests Delta still has some mojo.
Bear in mind SA had extremely low case numbers until a few weeks ago which would be good news for a new variant trying to make a name for itself. So if they are now rising rapidly, and a large proportion are Delta, then maybe the growth advantage Omicron has isn’t so big after all.
As far as I can see there’s not much point panicking until we see vaccine efficacy stats against severe illness. If those hold up, then I think it’s as you were. If not then we need to get those repurposed jabs fast tracked.
But Omicron is already 80% of new cases in SA in surveyed region.....it took delta months to reach that versus Kent variant in any sample.
It’s also basically mindboggling that a quarter of a plane of SA passengers all had Covid of some flavour. Suggests it is way more prevalent there than their stats assert
Of course it is.....very few countries test enough, most it is really just picking up serious cases where people need to see a doctor. Where as the UK we are gold plating it with a million tests a day, adding to the numbers even though who were totally unaware they had it. So when you start to see 10,000 daily cases in many countries you know it is rife.
Interesting that out of 61 positive patients off that plane only 13 had Omicron. It suggests Delta still has some mojo.
Bear in mind SA had extremely low case numbers until a few weeks ago which would be good news for a new variant trying to make a name for itself. So if they are now rising rapidly, and a large proportion are Delta, then maybe the growth advantage Omicron has isn’t so big after all.
As far as I can see there’s not much point panicking until we see vaccine efficacy stats against severe illness. If those hold up, then I think it’s as you were. If not then we need to get those repurposed jabs fast tracked.
How many were on that plane ?
Because whatever it was 61 would be a far higher proportion than what South Africa as a whole is supposed to currently have.
Its 61 from 600 sample.
600? A 747? Or a massive airbus? Or two planes?
Fair enough. Still 10% positive. Implies millions of active cases in SA
It's not that much of a stretch to see the Tories losing 50 seats although I struggle to see a Labour led gvt as Starmer is only around 30% in the best PM rating.
Breaking: The Dutch #RIVM has confirmed 13 #Omicron cases out of the 61 positives. #coronavirus #Corona
That’s 13 cases of OMICRON THE MIGHTY on just one flight to Europe. How many flights have come from Southern Africa to Europe, N America, Asia, in the last week or so? There must be a few thousand cases seeded worldwide
It depends how it impacts vaccinated populations. Does it put significantly more people in hospitals and morgues? If it doesn't, it's a blip not a gamechanger.
That's true for countries like the UK or Israel which have very high levels of vaccine and natural immunity but a really big disaster for somewhere like Germany which has got reasonably good vaccine immunity but very low levels of natural immunity. I just had a look and ~89% of UK adults have had the vaccine plus a further 5-8% having natural immunity. In Germany that's about ~80% and 2-3% among adults. That leaves a huge, huge number of people that could very rapidly need hospital treatment.
The LSHTM has done some really solid modeling on this recently, essentially looking into this scenario of a very, very highly transmissive variant that doesn't necessarily evade existing immunity. The UK could see 0.06% of the entire population require hospital treatment within a few weeks, that's 40k people and almost 3k people arriving in hospital everyday, vaccinated and unvaccinated. That's about the same as the highest rate we've ever had, it will lead to a reduction of healthcare provision across the nation for two to three months. Let's look at Germany in that model, the LSHTM say that 0.6% (10x the UK number) could turn up at hospitals in the same timeframe, that's 500k people potentially requiring hospital treatment within a two/three week timeframe. That could be 25k people per day showing up at hospital. I have no idea what that even looks like, my brain can't even compute the idea of it.
Rudolph Steiner has a lot to answer for.
The big question there is: can OMICRON break thru natural immunity? Can it reinfect people who’ve had Alpha, Delta, etc?
WHO thinks this is possible, which is not good for the UK, as we are relying on that wall of natural immunity built over the summer
We shall soon see
The WHO also said the same for Beta and it didn't turn out to be the case. Anyway, I've got lunch and drinks with a bunch of senior pharma research scientists, I'm sure they'll have more answers than either of us.
Breaking: The Dutch #RIVM has confirmed 13 #Omicron cases out of the 61 positives. #coronavirus #Corona
That’s 13 cases of OMICRON THE MIGHTY on just one flight to Europe. How many flights have come from Southern Africa to Europe, N America, Asia, in the last week or so? There must be a few thousand cases seeded worldwide
It depends how it impacts vaccinated populations. Does it put significantly more people in hospitals and morgues? If it doesn't, it's a blip not a gamechanger.
That's true for countries like the UK or Israel which have very high levels of vaccine and natural immunity but a really big disaster for somewhere like Germany which has got reasonably good vaccine immunity but very low levels of natural immunity. I just had a look and ~89% of UK adults have had the vaccine plus a further 5-8% having natural immunity. In Germany that's about ~80% and 2-3% among adults. That leaves a huge, huge number of people that could very rapidly need hospital treatment.
The LSHTM has done some really solid modeling on this recently, essentially looking into this scenario of a very, very highly transmissive variant that doesn't necessarily evade existing immunity. The UK could see 0.06% of the entire population require hospital treatment within a few weeks, that's 40k people and almost 3k people arriving in hospital everyday, vaccinated and unvaccinated. That's about the same as the highest rate we've ever had, it will lead to a reduction of healthcare provision across the nation for two to three months. Let's look at Germany in that model, the LSHTM say that 0.6% (10x the UK number) could turn up at hospitals in the same timeframe, that's 500k people potentially requiring hospital treatment within a two/three week timeframe. That could be 25k people per day showing up at hospital. I have no idea what that even looks like, my brain can't even compute the idea of it.
Rudolph Steiner has a lot to answer for.
The big question there is: can OMICRON break thru natural immunity? Can it reinfect people who’ve had Alpha, Delta, etc?
WHO thinks this is possible, which is not good for the UK, as we are relying on that wall of natural immunity built over the summer
We shall soon see
For a chap who recognises, rightly, that the impact of Omicron is pure speculation at the moment, you ain't half doing a lot of speculating.
You have noticed the title of the site. What is betting if not speculation, with money attached
Breaking: The Dutch #RIVM has confirmed 13 #Omicron cases out of the 61 positives. #coronavirus #Corona
That’s 13 cases of OMICRON THE MIGHTY on just one flight to Europe. How many flights have come from Southern Africa to Europe, N America, Asia, in the last week or so? There must be a few thousand cases seeded worldwide
It depends how it impacts vaccinated populations. Does it put significantly more people in hospitals and morgues? If it doesn't, it's a blip not a gamechanger.
That's true for countries like the UK or Israel which have very high levels of vaccine and natural immunity but a really big disaster for somewhere like Germany which has got reasonably good vaccine immunity but very low levels of natural immunity. I just had a look and ~89% of UK adults have had the vaccine plus a further 5-8% having natural immunity. In Germany that's about ~80% and 2-3% among adults. That leaves a huge, huge number of people that could very rapidly need hospital treatment.
The LSHTM has done some really solid modeling on this recently, essentially looking into this scenario of a very, very highly transmissive variant that doesn't necessarily evade existing immunity. The UK could see 0.06% of the entire population require hospital treatment within a few weeks, that's 40k people and almost 3k people arriving in hospital everyday, vaccinated and unvaccinated. That's about the same as the highest rate we've ever had, it will lead to a reduction of healthcare provision across the nation for two to three months. Let's look at Germany in that model, the LSHTM say that 0.6% (10x the UK number) could turn up at hospitals in the same timeframe, that's 500k people potentially requiring hospital treatment within a two/three week timeframe. That could be 25k people per day showing up at hospital. I have no idea what that even looks like, my brain can't even compute the idea of it.
Rudolph Steiner has a lot to answer for.
The big question there is: can OMICRON break thru natural immunity? Can it reinfect people who’ve had Alpha, Delta, etc?
WHO thinks this is possible, which is not good for the UK, as we are relying on that wall of natural immunity built over the summer
We shall soon see
The WHO also said the same for Beta and it didn't turn out to be the case. Anyway, I've got lunch and drinks with a bunch of senior pharma research scientists, I'm sure they'll have more answers than either of us.
Breaking: The Dutch #RIVM has confirmed 13 #Omicron cases out of the 61 positives. #coronavirus #Corona
That’s 13 cases of OMICRON THE MIGHTY on just one flight to Europe. How many flights have come from Southern Africa to Europe, N America, Asia, in the last week or so? There must be a few thousand cases seeded worldwide
It depends how it impacts vaccinated populations. Does it put significantly more people in hospitals and morgues? If it doesn't, it's a blip not a gamechanger.
Yes, the evidence so far is that Omicron is only bad news for the non double vaccinated in terms of potential hospitalisation and death, certainly that is true for the young.
Even the older double vaccinated should be protected from it according to most scientists estimations once they have had their boosters which most over 70s now have had
What it certainly does mean is that we need to get on with double vaxxing our younger people as a matter of urgency. Action this day as Boris's hero used to say.
To come back to an earlier point I made - at what stage will the government consider compulsory vaccinations ? Can't be far off if this is as bad as some fear.
They won't do it unless they're absolutely desperate. Can you imagine how much screaming there will be if they go down the route of punitive fines as in Austria, and it takes about five minutes for somebody to crunch the numbers and work out that they're being disproportionately inflicted upon black people with low incomes?
Yes.
But - how many of those vote Tory?
Given a choice between kicking a lot of Labour voters and having his own voters suffer due to pressure on the NHS and restrictions on the wider population, given his extremely factional, even transactional approach I wouldn't go bail for Johnson holding out.
The answer has always been no vaccination then no hospital treatment.
Nope. That is callous and sets a horrific precedent for other life choices. The answer (if there has to be one) is to dis/incentivise through the tax system.
Its callous to delay the non-covid medical treatment of others because hospitals are wasting their resources on anti-vaxxers.
But I'd be quite happy to financially dis-incentivise anti-vaxxers firstly through their tax codes and secondly through charging them for any medical treatment they receive.
To save an unvaccinated person from a horrible death by Covid is not a waste of NHS resources.
I saw something with Laurence Fox in it for the first time the other day - He was playing Lord Palmerston in Victoria. I can see why people dislike him, thoroughly cocksure and smarmy
I went through a period of trying to feel sorry for Lozza as there is something pitiful about him, but back to thinking he deserves all the pelters he gets.
I'd not seen Richard Tice before that video from Bexley - have the far right found a post-Farage leader who is actually coherent and sane? (Though the obsession with boilers was a bit worrying.)
Tice is CEO of an asset management group worth £500 million.
As if that tells you anything about him other than that he is degenerate, antisocial fuckpiece.
Interesting that out of 61 positive patients off that plane only 13 had Omicron. It suggests Delta still has some mojo.
Bear in mind SA had extremely low case numbers until a few weeks ago which would be good news for a new variant trying to make a name for itself. So if they are now rising rapidly, and a large proportion are Delta, then maybe the growth advantage Omicron has isn’t so big after all.
As far as I can see there’s not much point panicking until we see vaccine efficacy stats against severe illness. If those hold up, then I think it’s as you were. If not then we need to get those repurposed jabs fast tracked.
How many were on that plane ?
Because whatever it was 61 would be a far higher proportion than what South Africa as a whole is supposed to currently have.
Its 61 from 600 sample.
600? A 747? Or a massive airbus? Or two planes?
Fair enough. Still 10% positive. Implies millions of active cases in SA
Interesting that out of 61 positive patients off that plane only 13 had Omicron. It suggests Delta still has some mojo.
Bear in mind SA had extremely low case numbers until a few weeks ago which would be good news for a new variant trying to make a name for itself. So if they are now rising rapidly, and a large proportion are Delta, then maybe the growth advantage Omicron has isn’t so big after all.
As far as I can see there’s not much point panicking until we see vaccine efficacy stats against severe illness. If those hold up, then I think it’s as you were. If not then we need to get those repurposed jabs fast tracked.
How many were on that plane ?
Because whatever it was 61 would be a far higher proportion than what South Africa as a whole is supposed to currently have.
Its 61 from 600 sample.
600 people who presumably produced some evidence of an LFT before they were allowed to alight. Jeez. The systems are a joke.
Interesting that out of 61 positive patients off that plane only 13 had Omicron. It suggests Delta still has some mojo.
Bear in mind SA had extremely low case numbers until a few weeks ago which would be good news for a new variant trying to make a name for itself. So if they are now rising rapidly, and a large proportion are Delta, then maybe the growth advantage Omicron has isn’t so big after all.
As far as I can see there’s not much point panicking until we see vaccine efficacy stats against severe illness. If those hold up, then I think it’s as you were. If not then we need to get those repurposed jabs fast tracked.
How many were on that plane ?
Because whatever it was 61 would be a far higher proportion than what South Africa as a whole is supposed to currently have.
Its 61 from 600 sample.
600 people who presumably produced some evidence of an LFT before they were allowed to alight. Jeez. The systems are a joke.
Breaking: The Dutch #RIVM has confirmed 13 #Omicron cases out of the 61 positives. #coronavirus #Corona
That’s 13 cases of OMICRON THE MIGHTY on just one flight to Europe. How many flights have come from Southern Africa to Europe, N America, Asia, in the last week or so? There must be a few thousand cases seeded worldwide
If its anything like as infectious as the preliminary reports indicate it will be 90%+ of all cases everywhere within a month. At which point travel bans are completely superfluous.
I know many people think travel bans are a slam dunk but I'm not sure they add much value unless backed up by a rigorous test, trace & isolate regime.
It can buy you a little bit of time, probably no more than a couple of weeks. Whether that is worth doing is dependent upon whether you have a cunning plan of what to do with those 2 weeks. If you don't, its pointless.
Our plan, such as it is, seems to be to give as many boosters as possible, double vax more school kids and pray that our hospitals empty out a bit more before they start filling up again. Every little helps, as the saying goes, but I am not seeing anything in that which is not very much at the margins.
Isn't the plan simply to give out more shots? Time definitely helps there, it would be ~5million more.
Well, it works if the boosters improve your defences but even that is not clear for the new variant yet. Of course if it would be better to tweak the boosters giving out so many of the old ones may prove to be a mistake.
Adjusting and manufacturing new vaccines takes a lot of time, boosting with the original ones offers huge protection, and it seems likely at this stage that they will continue to offer a good defence against severe disease against the new variant, even if it's more transmissible and might even be better at causing reinfections.
Of course it's right to press on with the boosters. It would be insane not to. If there's a need for an adjusted vaccine then it can be rolled out as fourth shots next Spring.
Interesting that out of 61 positive patients off that plane only 13 had Omicron. It suggests Delta still has some mojo.
Bear in mind SA had extremely low case numbers until a few weeks ago which would be good news for a new variant trying to make a name for itself. So if they are now rising rapidly, and a large proportion are Delta, then maybe the growth advantage Omicron has isn’t so big after all.
As far as I can see there’s not much point panicking until we see vaccine efficacy stats against severe illness. If those hold up, then I think it’s as you were. If not then we need to get those repurposed jabs fast tracked.
But Omicron is already 80% of new cases in SA in surveyed region.....it took delta months to reach that versus Kent variant in any sample.
Doesn’t chime with anything like the 500% advantage being touted by some.
That plus founder effects in a low prevalence population, and the fact it’s almost certainly been around for longer than a few weeks, and I’m not buying (yet) this idea it’s got some kind of superhuman power.
R0 of endemic COVs is apparently around 7. Immune evasion seems like the most likely reason for outperformance, but so far that’s in a quite unusual population with low vax take up, partial immunity from natural infection, high HIV levels, and history of a previous epidemic of a variant (Beta) that never really took hold elsewhere.
I saw something with Laurence Fox in it for the first time the other day - He was playing Lord Palmerston in Victoria. I can see why people dislike him, thoroughly cocksure and smarmy
I went through a period of trying to feel sorry for Lozza as there is something pitiful about him, but back to thinking he deserves all the pelters he gets.
I'd not seen Richard Tice before that video from Bexley - have the far right found a post-Farage leader who is actually coherent and sane? (Though the obsession with boilers was a bit worrying.)
Tice is CEO of an asset management group worth £500 million.
As if that tells you anything about him other than that he is degenerate, antisocial fuckpiece.
I disagree with that assessment. You missed out 'greedy.'
The danger of reading too much into the next election based upon what has happened in the past few elections is the small sample size makes things seem significant when they aren't. Classic xkcd applies.
There have been 5 occasions since universal suffrage in 1918 when a PM faced a general election after more than 10 years of his party in power (which is the key stat to look at rather than just how many times the Tories have won a majority of seats).
Those were 1945, 1964, 1992, 1997 and 2010. It is hardly that small a sample size and in 4 out of 5 of them the PM lost and the one who won, Major in 1992 still lost 40 seats. If Boris lost 40 seats on current boundaries it would be a hung parliament in 2023/24
Five is a tiny sample size.
You could toss a balanced coin on five occasions and happen to get 4 heads and 1 tail. If you do, what are the odds that you get a head next time?
The evidence is 80% for change and 100% for loss of seats.
In fact go to almost any western democracy and there is normally a change of government after one party has been in power after 10 years. That is just the natural electoral cycle, otherwise you are heading to a one party state if one party stays in power for decades
Again a sample size of five is not "evidence" for anything.
If you have a fair coin and toss it five times, then what are your odds of getting exactly one tail or exactly one head? The answer may surprise you.
There are 32 possible combinations from five coin tosses. Five of those combinations have 1 tail and five of those combinations have only 1 head. So the probability of getting only one head or tail from a fair coin is 10/32 or 31.25%
Only having one of five in a sample is not statistically significant for anything.
I saw something with Laurence Fox in it for the first time the other day - He was playing Lord Palmerston in Victoria. I can see why people dislike him, thoroughly cocksure and smarmy
I went through a period of trying to feel sorry for Lozza as there is something pitiful about him, but back to thinking he deserves all the pelters he gets.
I'd not seen Richard Tice before that video from Bexley - have the far right found a post-Farage leader who is actually coherent and sane? (Though the obsession with boilers was a bit worrying.)
Tice is CEO of an asset management group worth £500 million.
As if that tells you anything about him other than that he is degenerate, antisocial fuckpiece.
Yes, well you are obviously not his target audience so why would he care what you think of him? He does not need your vote. It is Leave voters and Tory 2019 voters he is targeting
The danger of reading too much into the next election based upon what has happened in the past few elections is the small sample size makes things seem significant when they aren't. Classic xkcd applies.
There have been 5 occasions since universal suffrage in 1918 when a PM faced a general election after more than 10 years of his party in power (which is the key stat to look at rather than just how many times the Tories have won a majority of seats).
Those were 1945, 1964, 1992, 1997 and 2010. It is hardly that small a sample size and in 4 out of 5 of them the PM lost and the one who won, Major in 1992 still lost 40 seats. If Boris lost 40 seats on current boundaries it would be a hung parliament in 2023/24
Five is a tiny sample size.
You could toss a balanced coin on five occasions and happen to get 4 heads and 1 tail. If you do, what are the odds that you get a head next time?
The evidence is 80% for change and 100% for loss of seats.
In fact go to almost any western democracy and there is normally a change of government after one party has been in power after 10 years. That is just the natural electoral cycle, otherwise you are heading to a one party state if one party stays in power for decades
Again a sample size of five is not "evidence" for anything.
If you have a fair coin and toss it five times, then what are your odds of getting exactly one tail or exactly one head? The answer may surprise you.
There are 32 possible combinations from five coin tosses. Five of those combinations have 1 tail and five of those combinations have only 1 head. So the probability of getting only one head or tail from a fair coin is 10/32 or 31.25%
Only having one of five in a sample is not statistically significant for anything.
Yes well if you want to think the Tories will be in power for 100 years without ever losing an election because there is limited sample size of governments facing re election after 10 years that is up to you.
I am as Tory as anyone on here but even I recognise you can only stretch the elastic of time in power so far in a democracy
Interesting that out of 61 positive patients off that plane only 13 had Omicron. It suggests Delta still has some mojo.
Bear in mind SA had extremely low case numbers until a few weeks ago which would be good news for a new variant trying to make a name for itself. So if they are now rising rapidly, and a large proportion are Delta, then maybe the growth advantage Omicron has isn’t so big after all.
As far as I can see there’s not much point panicking until we see vaccine efficacy stats against severe illness. If those hold up, then I think it’s as you were. If not then we need to get those repurposed jabs fast tracked.
How many were on that plane ?
Because whatever it was 61 would be a far higher proportion than what South Africa as a whole is supposed to currently have.
Its 61 from 600 sample.
600 people who presumably produced some evidence of an LFT before they were allowed to alight. Jeez. The systems are a joke.
It’s also, potentially, good news
If 10% of SA has active Covid, that’s 6 million cases. The fact that their hospitals aren’t collapsing suggests an awful lot of it is either mild or asymptomatic
Perhaps Covid really is evolving into a sniffle, as we have all hoped these long 20 months past
Breaking: The Dutch #RIVM has confirmed 13 #Omicron cases out of the 61 positives. #coronavirus #Corona
That’s 13 cases of OMICRON THE MIGHTY on just one flight to Europe. How many flights have come from Southern Africa to Europe, N America, Asia, in the last week or so? There must be a few thousand cases seeded worldwide
If its anything like as infectious as the preliminary reports indicate it will be 90%+ of all cases everywhere within a month. At which point travel bans are completely superfluous.
I know many people think travel bans are a slam dunk but I'm not sure they add much value unless backed up by a rigorous test, trace & isolate regime.
It can buy you a little bit of time, probably no more than a couple of weeks. Whether that is worth doing is dependent upon whether you have a cunning plan of what to do with those 2 weeks. If you don't, its pointless.
Our plan, such as it is, seems to be to give as many boosters as possible, double vax more school kids and pray that our hospitals empty out a bit more before they start filling up again. Every little helps, as the saying goes, but I am not seeing anything in that which is not very much at the margins.
Isn't the plan simply to give out more shots? Time definitely helps there, it would be ~5million more.
Well, it works if the boosters improve your defences but even that is not clear for the new variant yet. Of course if it would be better to tweak the boosters giving out so many of the old ones may prove to be a mistake.
Adjusting and manufacturing new vaccines takes a lot of time, boosting with the original ones offers huge protection, and it seems likely at this stage that they will continue to offer a good defence against severe disease against the new variant, even if it's more transmissible and might even be better at causing reinfections.
Of course it's right to press on with the boosters. It would be insane not to. If there's a need for an adjusted vaccine then it can be rolled out as fourth shots next Spring.
I am not saying otherwise. I just think that there is a risk. We can't be giving people vaccines every other month. I had my booster 10 days ago. Any tweaking for me is the best part of 6 months away.
Interesting that out of 61 positive patients off that plane only 13 had Omicron. It suggests Delta still has some mojo.
Bear in mind SA had extremely low case numbers until a few weeks ago which would be good news for a new variant trying to make a name for itself. So if they are now rising rapidly, and a large proportion are Delta, then maybe the growth advantage Omicron has isn’t so big after all.
As far as I can see there’s not much point panicking until we see vaccine efficacy stats against severe illness. If those hold up, then I think it’s as you were. If not then we need to get those repurposed jabs fast tracked.
How many were on that plane ?
Because whatever it was 61 would be a far higher proportion than what South Africa as a whole is supposed to currently have.
Its 61 from 600 sample.
600 people who presumably produced some evidence of an LFT before they were allowed to alight. Jeez. The systems are a joke.
No they're not. Jokes are funny.
Someone will get into trouble by posting the prices for faked results for travel tests in various parts of the world.
I saw something with Laurence Fox in it for the first time the other day - He was playing Lord Palmerston in Victoria. I can see why people dislike him, thoroughly cocksure and smarmy
I went through a period of trying to feel sorry for Lozza as there is something pitiful about him, but back to thinking he deserves all the pelters he gets.
I'd not seen Richard Tice before that video from Bexley - have the far right found a post-Farage leader who is actually coherent and sane? (Though the obsession with boilers was a bit worrying.)
Tice is CEO of an asset management group worth £500 million. He is a successful businessman, not just a Far Right ranter whatever else you may think of him and he does not need the money from being an MP if he was elected therefore.
He has also shifted RefUK to be a largely libertarian, anti lockdown, low tax, small government party rather than just a vehicle against immigration post Brexit, making it more respectable for mainstream right voters to consider if they think Boris is too statist and authoritarian
Strange how there's a big overlap between anti-lockdown and anti-migrant sentiment but there does seem to be.
Speaking to Sky News, Labour's shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said it was "unconscionable" that France and the UK government were "engaging in a blame game while children drown off our coastline".
She said her party would work with international partners to "open up safe and legal routes" for refugees in order "to pull the rug out from under the business model that these smugglers currently rely on".
My biggest worry over Labour was them opening up the flood gates on immigration and now they confirm they're doing it. And if this is just the stuff they are saying out loud, imagine what else they will do in office. I really wanted to vote against Boris in the next election, but not at the cost of bad immigration decisions that will last decades.
That's a weird interpretation of Nandy's sensible comments. There's nothing in what she says that suggests any 'floodgate' opening. She's merely pointing out the truth: the Channel crossings are mainly a consequence of an absence of legal routes for genuine asylum seekers.
It’s a convenient interpretation. Asylum claims are down significantly over the last few years.
Funnily enough they tend to go up and down with levels of conflict and repression abroad. Plenty of that about as always, but less than at the height of the Arab Spring, Syrian conflict or ISIS surge.
The danger of reading too much into the next election based upon what has happened in the past few elections is the small sample size makes things seem significant when they aren't. Classic xkcd applies.
There have been 5 occasions since universal suffrage in 1918 when a PM faced a general election after more than 10 years of his party in power (which is the key stat to look at rather than just how many times the Tories have won a majority of seats).
Those were 1945, 1964, 1992, 1997 and 2010. It is hardly that small a sample size and in 4 out of 5 of them the PM lost and the one who won, Major in 1992 still lost 40 seats. If Boris lost 40 seats on current boundaries it would be a hung parliament in 2023/24
Five is a tiny sample size.
You could toss a balanced coin on five occasions and happen to get 4 heads and 1 tail. If you do, what are the odds that you get a head next time?
The evidence is 80% for change and 100% for loss of seats.
In fact go to almost any western democracy and there is normally a change of government after one party has been in power after 10 years. That is just the natural electoral cycle, otherwise you are heading to a one party state if one party stays in power for decades
Again a sample size of five is not "evidence" for anything.
If you have a fair coin and toss it five times, then what are your odds of getting exactly one tail or exactly one head? The answer may surprise you.
There are 32 possible combinations from five coin tosses. Five of those combinations have 1 tail and five of those combinations have only 1 head. So the probability of getting only one head or tail from a fair coin is 10/32 or 31.25%
Only having one of five in a sample is not statistically significant for anything.
Yes well if you want to think the Tories will be in power for 100 years without ever losing an election because there is limited sample size of governments facing re election after 10 years that is up to you.
I am as Tory as anyone on here but even I recognise you can only stretch the elastic of time in power so far in a democracy
I never said the Tories will be in power for 100 years, but a sample size of one out of five is not statistically significant for anything. That's just basic mathematics and statistics.
I saw something with Laurence Fox in it for the first time the other day - He was playing Lord Palmerston in Victoria. I can see why people dislike him, thoroughly cocksure and smarmy
Weird, I'd seen that and not placed that it was him at all. I thought he was pretty good in it, though the character was a smarmy dick.
Speaking to Sky News, Labour's shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said it was "unconscionable" that France and the UK government were "engaging in a blame game while children drown off our coastline".
She said her party would work with international partners to "open up safe and legal routes" for refugees in order "to pull the rug out from under the business model that these smugglers currently rely on".
My biggest worry over Labour was them opening up the flood gates on immigration and now they confirm they're doing it. And if this is just the stuff they are saying out loud, imagine what else they will do in office. I really wanted to vote against Boris in the next election, but not at the cost of bad immigration decisions that will last decades.
That's a weird interpretation of Nandy's sensible comments. There's nothing in what she says that suggests any 'floodgate' opening. She's merely pointing out the truth: the Channel crossings are mainly a consequence of an absence of legal routes for genuine asylum seekers.
And that she's correct to point out - however, how much has she said about how robust Labour intends to be about sifting the refugees from the economic migrants? And, very importantly, has any indication been given that Labour would put a cap on the numbers of refugees and asylum seekers accepted each year?
The world is replete with failed states, totalitarian states and simply illiberal states from which hundreds of millions of people could make a plausible case for asylum. And that's before we get to the tremendous question of how many people will end up attempting to flee havoc induced by climate change. We can't take in limitless numbers, and the electorate doesn't want limitless numbers.
If Labour can't provide plausible reassurance that it isn't in favour of letting in every single hard luck case then voters will draw the obvious conclusion: namely, that if it thinks, looks and acts like an open borders party, it is one.
I saw something with Laurence Fox in it for the first time the other day - He was playing Lord Palmerston in Victoria. I can see why people dislike him, thoroughly cocksure and smarmy
I went through a period of trying to feel sorry for Lozza as there is something pitiful about him, but back to thinking he deserves all the pelters he gets.
I'd not seen Richard Tice before that video from Bexley - have the far right found a post-Farage leader who is actually coherent and sane? (Though the obsession with boilers was a bit worrying.)
Tice is CEO of an asset management group worth £500 million. He is a successful businessman, not just a Far Right ranter whatever else you may think of him and he does not need the money from being an MP if he was elected therefore.
He has also shifted RefUK to be a largely libertarian, anti lockdown, low tax, small government party rather than just a vehicle against immigration post Brexit, making it more respectable for mainstream right voters to consider if they think Boris is too statist and authoritarian
Strange how there's a big overlap between anti-lockdown and anti-migrant sentiment but there does seem to be.
Dont think there is at all. I am very anti lockdown but voted REMAIN and would personally scrap all border controls or aim to do so in a number of years - Its why the last 4 years of politics has been especially depressing for me with Brexit and lockdowns/facemask fetishes
I saw something with Laurence Fox in it for the first time the other day - He was playing Lord Palmerston in Victoria. I can see why people dislike him, thoroughly cocksure and smarmy
I went through a period of trying to feel sorry for Lozza as there is something pitiful about him, but back to thinking he deserves all the pelters he gets.
I'd not seen Richard Tice before that video from Bexley - have the far right found a post-Farage leader who is actually coherent and sane? (Though the obsession with boilers was a bit worrying.)
Tice is CEO of an asset management group worth £500 million. He is a successful businessman, not just a Far Right ranter whatever else you may think of him and he does not need the money from being an MP if he was elected therefore.
He has also shifted RefUK to be a largely libertarian, anti lockdown, low tax, small government party rather than just a vehicle against immigration post Brexit, making it more respectable for mainstream right voters to consider if they think Boris is too statist and authoritarian
Strange how there's a big overlap between anti-lockdown and anti-migrant sentiment but there does seem to be.
I think it’s simply tribal. I am increasingly anti-lockdown now we are all vaccinated and also a socially liberal pro migration remainer, but that feels an uncomfortable place to be when my fellow travellers on Twitter seem to have discovered a taste for public health authoritarianism.
In other countries it’s sometimes the right, sometimes the left or centre, who are the lockdown sceptics. I think it all depends on political context.
I yearn for the glory days of the 80s and 90s when the puritans and authoritarians were right wing and the lefties were more hedonistic.
Interesting that out of 61 positive patients off that plane only 13 had Omicron. It suggests Delta still has some mojo.
Bear in mind SA had extremely low case numbers until a few weeks ago which would be good news for a new variant trying to make a name for itself. So if they are now rising rapidly, and a large proportion are Delta, then maybe the growth advantage Omicron has isn’t so big after all.
As far as I can see there’s not much point panicking until we see vaccine efficacy stats against severe illness. If those hold up, then I think it’s as you were. If not then we need to get those repurposed jabs fast tracked.
But Omicron is already 80% of new cases in SA in surveyed region.....it took delta months to reach that versus Kent variant in any sample.
Doesn’t chime with anything like the 500% advantage being touted by some.
That plus founder effects in a low prevalence population, and the fact it’s almost certainly been around for longer than a few weeks, and I’m not buying (yet) this idea it’s got some kind of superhuman power.
R0 of endemic COVs is apparently around 7. Immune evasion seems like the most likely reason for outperformance, but so far that’s in a quite unusual population with low vax take up, partial immunity from natural infection, high HIV levels, and history of a previous epidemic of a variant (Beta) that never really took hold elsewhere.
Beta didn't take hold because delta out competed it....but all the experiments showed.current vavccines are poor against beta and reinfect is high. Even if Omicron is only a bit more infectious than Delta, so that it can outcompete, reinfection and vaccine escape are potential massive problems. Then if it is measles infectious plus all the other elements, that is why the world governments are shitting themselves, in a way they didn't over Beta or the similar Brazilian variant that had equivalent Beta mutations.
Speaking to Sky News, Labour's shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said it was "unconscionable" that France and the UK government were "engaging in a blame game while children drown off our coastline".
She said her party would work with international partners to "open up safe and legal routes" for refugees in order "to pull the rug out from under the business model that these smugglers currently rely on".
My biggest worry over Labour was them opening up the flood gates on immigration and now they confirm they're doing it. And if this is just the stuff they are saying out loud, imagine what else they will do in office. I really wanted to vote against Boris in the next election, but not at the cost of bad immigration decisions that will last decades.
Sir Keir pledged, in his campaign to be elected leader, to "Defend Free Movement" - I was thinking how he could get round it. Maybe give out visa's for every job?
Actually, he has broken the pledge - his spokesman says it "no longer stands"
I saw something with Laurence Fox in it for the first time the other day - He was playing Lord Palmerston in Victoria. I can see why people dislike him, thoroughly cocksure and smarmy
I went through a period of trying to feel sorry for Lozza as there is something pitiful about him, but back to thinking he deserves all the pelters he gets.
I'd not seen Richard Tice before that video from Bexley - have the far right found a post-Farage leader who is actually coherent and sane? (Though the obsession with boilers was a bit worrying.)
Tice is CEO of an asset management group worth £500 million. He is a successful businessman, not just a Far Right ranter whatever else you may think of him and he does not need the money from being an MP if he was elected therefore.
He has also shifted RefUK to be a largely libertarian, anti lockdown, low tax, small government party rather than just a vehicle against immigration post Brexit, making it more respectable for mainstream right voters to consider if they think Boris is too statist and authoritarian
Strange how there's a big overlap between anti-lockdown and anti-migrant sentiment but there does seem to be.
Dont think there is at all. I am very anti lockdown but voted REMAIN and would personally scrap all border controls or aim to do so in a number of years - Its why the last 4 years of politics has been especially depressing for me with Brexit and lockdowns/facemask fetishes
Glad I’m not alone. It’s a lonely political niche at the moment.
Speaking to Sky News, Labour's shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said it was "unconscionable" that France and the UK government were "engaging in a blame game while children drown off our coastline".
She said her party would work with international partners to "open up safe and legal routes" for refugees in order "to pull the rug out from under the business model that these smugglers currently rely on".
My biggest worry over Labour was them opening up the flood gates on immigration and now they confirm they're doing it. And if this is just the stuff they are saying out loud, imagine what else they will do in office. I really wanted to vote against Boris in the next election, but not at the cost of bad immigration decisions that will last decades.
That's a weird interpretation of Nandy's sensible comments. There's nothing in what she says that suggests any 'floodgate' opening. She's merely pointing out the truth: the Channel crossings are mainly a consequence of an absence of legal routes for genuine asylum seekers.
It’s a convenient interpretation. Asylum claims are down significantly over the last few years.
Funnily enough they tend to go up and down with levels of conflict and repression abroad. Plenty of that about as always, but less than at the height of the Arab Spring, Syrian conflict or ISIS surge.
Asylum claims to UK reach highest level in nearly 20 years
Interesting that out of 61 positive patients off that plane only 13 had Omicron. It suggests Delta still has some mojo.
Bear in mind SA had extremely low case numbers until a few weeks ago which would be good news for a new variant trying to make a name for itself. So if they are now rising rapidly, and a large proportion are Delta, then maybe the growth advantage Omicron has isn’t so big after all.
As far as I can see there’s not much point panicking until we see vaccine efficacy stats against severe illness. If those hold up, then I think it’s as you were. If not then we need to get those repurposed jabs fast tracked.
How many were on that plane ?
Because whatever it was 61 would be a far higher proportion than what South Africa as a whole is supposed to currently have.
Its 61 from 600 sample.
600 people who presumably produced some evidence of an LFT before they were allowed to alight. Jeez. The systems are a joke.
It’s also, potentially, good news
If 10% of SA has active Covid, that’s 6 million cases. The fact that their hospitals aren’t collapsing suggests an awful lot of it is either mild or asymptomatic
Perhaps Covid really is evolving into a sniffle, as we have all hoped these long 20 months past
I suspect that the 600 on the 2 planes coming to Europe are not a standardised sample of the population. They are likely to be more mobile, prone to meeting in oh so important business meetings, more likely to be able to afford to go to expensive large events etc.
But it is important to remember that the vast majority who get this virus do not get that ill. Many will not even notice.
Interesting that out of 61 positive patients off that plane only 13 had Omicron. It suggests Delta still has some mojo.
Bear in mind SA had extremely low case numbers until a few weeks ago which would be good news for a new variant trying to make a name for itself. So if they are now rising rapidly, and a large proportion are Delta, then maybe the growth advantage Omicron has isn’t so big after all.
As far as I can see there’s not much point panicking until we see vaccine efficacy stats against severe illness. If those hold up, then I think it’s as you were. If not then we need to get those repurposed jabs fast tracked.
How many were on that plane ?
Because whatever it was 61 would be a far higher proportion than what South Africa as a whole is supposed to currently have.
Its 61 from 600 sample.
600 people who presumably produced some evidence of an LFT before they were allowed to alight. Jeez. The systems are a joke.
You could until 4 days ago get on a plane by showing evidence of 2 x vaccs, at least to fly UK - Portugal and Spain - UK. I know ZA isn't very thoroughly vaxxed but I am guessing the flying-to-London demographic is disproportionately so. So lots of them may not have had a test, they are 2 x vaxxed and that hasn't protected them
I saw something with Laurence Fox in it for the first time the other day - He was playing Lord Palmerston in Victoria. I can see why people dislike him, thoroughly cocksure and smarmy
I went through a period of trying to feel sorry for Lozza as there is something pitiful about him, but back to thinking he deserves all the pelters he gets.
I'd not seen Richard Tice before that video from Bexley - have the far right found a post-Farage leader who is actually coherent and sane? (Though the obsession with boilers was a bit worrying.)
Tice is CEO of an asset management group worth £500 million. He is a successful businessman, not just a Far Right ranter whatever else you may think of him and he does not need the money from being an MP if he was elected therefore.
He has also shifted RefUK to be a largely libertarian, anti lockdown, low tax, small government party rather than just a vehicle against immigration post Brexit, making it more respectable for mainstream right voters to consider if they think Boris is too statist and authoritarian
Strange how there's a big overlap between anti-lockdown and anti-migrant sentiment but there does seem to be.
Dont think there is at all. I am very anti lockdown but voted REMAIN and would personally scrap all border controls or aim to do so in a number of years - Its why the last 4 years of politics has been especially depressing for me with Brexit and lockdowns/facemask fetishes
Glad I’m not alone. It’s a lonely political niche at the moment.
yes no one championing the cause! You might have though the Lib dems would have but not sure they understand the word liberal
Incidentally @HYUFD with the fair coin tossed five times, if you include the possibility of no heads and no tails too . . . then the odds of getting the same result at least four times out of five is 12/32 or 37.5% and that's with a fair coin.
"Given that mid-term polls and leader ratings are of no value whatsoever..."
I think they are of use, when you compare them to previous mid term polls - Running them through Electoral Calculus as if they were the result is where they are of no value whatsoever
Speaking to Sky News, Labour's shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said it was "unconscionable" that France and the UK government were "engaging in a blame game while children drown off our coastline".
She said her party would work with international partners to "open up safe and legal routes" for refugees in order "to pull the rug out from under the business model that these smugglers currently rely on".
My biggest worry over Labour was them opening up the flood gates on immigration and now they confirm they're doing it. And if this is just the stuff they are saying out loud, imagine what else they will do in office. I really wanted to vote against Boris in the next election, but not at the cost of bad immigration decisions that will last decades.
That's a weird interpretation of Nandy's sensible comments. There's nothing in what she says that suggests any 'floodgate' opening. She's merely pointing out the truth: the Channel crossings are mainly a consequence of an absence of legal routes for genuine asylum seekers.
And that she's correct to point out - however, how much has she said about how robust Labour intends to be about sifting the refugees from the economic migrants? And, very importantly, has any indication been given that Labour would put a cap on the numbers of refugees and asylum seekers accepted each year?
The world is replete with failed states, totalitarian states and simply illiberal states from which hundreds of millions of people could make a plausible case for asylum. And that's before we get to the tremendous question of how many people will end up attempting to flee havoc induced by climate change. We can't take in limitless numbers, and the electorate doesn't want limitless numbers.
If Labour can't provide plausible reassurance that it isn't in favour of letting in every single hard luck case then voters will draw the obvious conclusion: namely, that if it thinks, looks and acts like an open borders party, it is one.
I'm pretty confident that Starmer et al will make absolutely sure that Labour doesn't think, look or act like an open borders party at the next GE. There's a huge gap, though, between being a party that has a humane asylum policy and an open borders policy.
Speaking to Sky News, Labour's shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said it was "unconscionable" that France and the UK government were "engaging in a blame game while children drown off our coastline".
She said her party would work with international partners to "open up safe and legal routes" for refugees in order "to pull the rug out from under the business model that these smugglers currently rely on".
My biggest worry over Labour was them opening up the flood gates on immigration and now they confirm they're doing it. And if this is just the stuff they are saying out loud, imagine what else they will do in office. I really wanted to vote against Boris in the next election, but not at the cost of bad immigration decisions that will last decades.
That's a weird interpretation of Nandy's sensible comments. There's nothing in what she says that suggests any 'floodgate' opening. She's merely pointing out the truth: the Channel crossings are mainly a consequence of an absence of legal routes for genuine asylum seekers.
It’s a convenient interpretation. Asylum claims are down significantly over the last few years.
Funnily enough they tend to go up and down with levels of conflict and repression abroad. Plenty of that about as always, but less than at the height of the Arab Spring, Syrian conflict or ISIS surge.
Asylum claims to UK reach highest level in nearly 20 years
Interesting that out of 61 positive patients off that plane only 13 had Omicron. It suggests Delta still has some mojo.
Bear in mind SA had extremely low case numbers until a few weeks ago which would be good news for a new variant trying to make a name for itself. So if they are now rising rapidly, and a large proportion are Delta, then maybe the growth advantage Omicron has isn’t so big after all.
As far as I can see there’s not much point panicking until we see vaccine efficacy stats against severe illness. If those hold up, then I think it’s as you were. If not then we need to get those repurposed jabs fast tracked.
But Omicron is already 80% of new cases in SA in surveyed region.....it took delta months to reach that versus Kent variant in any sample.
Doesn’t chime with anything like the 500% advantage being touted by some.
That plus founder effects in a low prevalence population, and the fact it’s almost certainly been around for longer than a few weeks, and I’m not buying (yet) this idea it’s got some kind of superhuman power.
R0 of endemic COVs is apparently around 7. Immune evasion seems like the most likely reason for outperformance, but so far that’s in a quite unusual population with low vax take up, partial immunity from natural infection, high HIV levels, and history of a previous epidemic of a variant (Beta) that never really took hold elsewhere.
Beta didn't take hold because delta out competed it....but all the experiments showed.current vavccines are poor against beta and reinfect is high. Even if Omicron is only a bit more infectious than Delta, so that it can outcompete, reinfection and vaccine escape are potential massive problems. Then if it is measles infectious plus all the other elements, that is why the world governments are shitting themselves, in a way they didn't over Beta or the similar Brazilian variant that had equivalent Beta mutations.
They did shit themselves over Beta and Brazil. Only a few months ago our geographer general Raab was putting France on the amber list because of Beta infections in “the French region of La Reunion”.
No evidence this variant is more infectious in a naive population, but plenty to suggest it has immune evasion properties. That puts it in a similar category to Beta. Maybe best we keep encouraging Delta to spread and outcompete it.
I saw something with Laurence Fox in it for the first time the other day - He was playing Lord Palmerston in Victoria. I can see why people dislike him, thoroughly cocksure and smarmy
I went through a period of trying to feel sorry for Lozza as there is something pitiful about him, but back to thinking he deserves all the pelters he gets.
I'd not seen Richard Tice before that video from Bexley - have the far right found a post-Farage leader who is actually coherent and sane? (Though the obsession with boilers was a bit worrying.)
Tice is CEO of an asset management group worth £500 million. He is a successful businessman, not just a Far Right ranter whatever else you may think of him and he does not need the money from being an MP if he was elected therefore.
He has also shifted RefUK to be a largely libertarian, anti lockdown, low tax, small government party rather than just a vehicle against immigration post Brexit, making it more respectable for mainstream right voters to consider if they think Boris is too statist and authoritarian
Strange how there's a big overlap between anti-lockdown and anti-migrant sentiment but there does seem to be.
Dont think there is at all. I am very anti lockdown but voted REMAIN and would personally scrap all border controls or aim to do so in a number of years - Its why the last 4 years of politics has been especially depressing for me with Brexit and lockdowns/facemask fetishes
Glad I’m not alone. It’s a lonely political niche at the moment.
I saw an interview with Tice last week, in Bexley. He said he speaks with Farage every day. It would be interesting if Farage made a comeback, that might render all polling to date worthless.
6 months before the last GE he was leader of the party leading the polls
Speaking to Sky News, Labour's shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said it was "unconscionable" that France and the UK government were "engaging in a blame game while children drown off our coastline".
She said her party would work with international partners to "open up safe and legal routes" for refugees in order "to pull the rug out from under the business model that these smugglers currently rely on".
My biggest worry over Labour was them opening up the flood gates on immigration and now they confirm they're doing it. And if this is just the stuff they are saying out loud, imagine what else they will do in office. I really wanted to vote against Boris in the next election, but not at the cost of bad immigration decisions that will last decades.
That's a weird interpretation of Nandy's sensible comments. There's nothing in what she says that suggests any 'floodgate' opening. She's merely pointing out the truth: the Channel crossings are mainly a consequence of an absence of legal routes for genuine asylum seekers.
It’s a convenient interpretation. Asylum claims are down significantly over the last few years.
Funnily enough they tend to go up and down with levels of conflict and repression abroad. Plenty of that about as always, but less than at the height of the Arab Spring, Syrian conflict or ISIS surge.
Asylum claims to UK reach highest level in nearly 20 years
Interesting that out of 61 positive patients off that plane only 13 had Omicron. It suggests Delta still has some mojo.
Bear in mind SA had extremely low case numbers until a few weeks ago which would be good news for a new variant trying to make a name for itself. So if they are now rising rapidly, and a large proportion are Delta, then maybe the growth advantage Omicron has isn’t so big after all.
As far as I can see there’s not much point panicking until we see vaccine efficacy stats against severe illness. If those hold up, then I think it’s as you were. If not then we need to get those repurposed jabs fast tracked.
How many were on that plane ?
Because whatever it was 61 would be a far higher proportion than what South Africa as a whole is supposed to currently have.
Its 61 from 600 sample.
600 people who presumably produced some evidence of an LFT before they were allowed to alight. Jeez. The systems are a joke.
You could until 4 days ago get on a plane by showing evidence of 2 x vaccs, at least to fly UK - Portugal and Spain - UK. I know ZA isn't very thoroughly vaxxed but I am guessing the flying-to-London demographic is disproportionately so. So lots of them may not have had a test, they are 2 x vaxxed and that hasn't protected them
This 600 went to Belgium. We didn't even test the 600 who came here at the same time.
Speaking to Sky News, Labour's shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said it was "unconscionable" that France and the UK government were "engaging in a blame game while children drown off our coastline".
She said her party would work with international partners to "open up safe and legal routes" for refugees in order "to pull the rug out from under the business model that these smugglers currently rely on".
My biggest worry over Labour was them opening up the flood gates on immigration and now they confirm they're doing it. And if this is just the stuff they are saying out loud, imagine what else they will do in office. I really wanted to vote against Boris in the next election, but not at the cost of bad immigration decisions that will last decades.
That's a weird interpretation of Nandy's sensible comments. There's nothing in what she says that suggests any 'floodgate' opening. She's merely pointing out the truth: the Channel crossings are mainly a consequence of an absence of legal routes for genuine asylum seekers.
It’s a convenient interpretation. Asylum claims are down significantly over the last few years.
Funnily enough they tend to go up and down with levels of conflict and repression abroad. Plenty of that about as always, but less than at the height of the Arab Spring, Syrian conflict or ISIS surge.
Asylum claims to UK reach highest level in nearly 20 years
Surely distorted by the 17k we took out of Afghanistan?
I’m still surprised by the stat as was pretty sure I heard the opposite on Radio 4 a couple of days ago. But may be apples and oranges (perhaps it was the numbers trying to enter Britain illegally from Calais).
Interesting that out of 61 positive patients off that plane only 13 had Omicron. It suggests Delta still has some mojo.
Bear in mind SA had extremely low case numbers until a few weeks ago which would be good news for a new variant trying to make a name for itself. So if they are now rising rapidly, and a large proportion are Delta, then maybe the growth advantage Omicron has isn’t so big after all.
As far as I can see there’s not much point panicking until we see vaccine efficacy stats against severe illness. If those hold up, then I think it’s as you were. If not then we need to get those repurposed jabs fast tracked.
How many were on that plane ?
Because whatever it was 61 would be a far higher proportion than what South Africa as a whole is supposed to currently have.
Its 61 from 600 sample.
600 people who presumably produced some evidence of an LFT before they were allowed to alight. Jeez. The systems are a joke.
It’s also, potentially, good news
If 10% of SA has active Covid, that’s 6 million cases. The fact that their hospitals aren’t collapsing suggests an awful lot of it is either mild or asymptomatic
Perhaps Covid really is evolving into a sniffle, as we have all hoped these long 20 months past
I suspect that the 600 on the 2 planes coming to Europe are not a standardised sample of the population. They are likely to be more mobile, prone to meeting in oh so important business meetings, more likely to be able to afford to go to expensive large events etc.
But it is important to remember that the vast majority who get this virus do not get that ill. Many will not even notice.
Sure, but the numbers are still curious
I agree the sample is unrepresentative - but it won’t be totally unrepresentative.
Let’s say 3m Saffers have the bug on these numbers. Classical Covid is meant to hospitalise ~10%, put 2% in ICU, and kill 1%
SA “should have” 300,000 in hospital, 60,000 on ventilators and 30,000 corpses. It doesn’t. Nowhere near
Of course that breakdown is only of those poorly enough to get tested. Yet still an odd anomaly
Breaking: The Dutch #RIVM has confirmed 13 #Omicron cases out of the 61 positives. #coronavirus #Corona
That’s 13 cases of OMICRON THE MIGHTY on just one flight to Europe. How many flights have come from Southern Africa to Europe, N America, Asia, in the last week or so? There must be a few thousand cases seeded worldwide
If its anything like as infectious as the preliminary reports indicate it will be 90%+ of all cases everywhere within a month. At which point travel bans are completely superfluous.
I know many people think travel bans are a slam dunk but I'm not sure they add much value unless backed up by a rigorous test, trace & isolate regime.
It can buy you a little bit of time, probably no more than a couple of weeks. Whether that is worth doing is dependent upon whether you have a cunning plan of what to do with those 2 weeks. If you don't, its pointless.
Our plan, such as it is, seems to be to give as many boosters as possible, double vax more school kids and pray that our hospitals empty out a bit more before they start filling up again. Every little helps, as the saying goes, but I am not seeing anything in that which is not very much at the margins.
Isn't the plan simply to give out more shots? Time definitely helps there, it would be ~5million more.
Well, it works if the boosters improve your defences but even that is not clear for the new variant yet. Of course if it would be better to tweak the boosters giving out so many of the old ones may prove to be a mistake.
Adjusting and manufacturing new vaccines takes a lot of time, boosting with the original ones offers huge protection, and it seems likely at this stage that they will continue to offer a good defence against severe disease against the new variant, even if it's more transmissible and might even be better at causing reinfections.
Of course it's right to press on with the boosters. It would be insane not to. If there's a need for an adjusted vaccine then it can be rolled out as fourth shots next Spring.
I am not saying otherwise. I just think that there is a risk. We can't be giving people vaccines every other month. I had my booster 10 days ago. Any tweaking for me is the best part of 6 months away.
Indeed we can't, but developing and then manufacturing any adjusted vaccines is going to take months anyway. Pfizer were suggesting that it'd take 100 days to adjust, mass manufacture and ship any doses (and these kinds of promises frequently prove to be optimistic,) then there's no guarantee that large quantities would instantaneously be available to Britain. And even when the vaccines did start turning up, the first recipients would be those who were top priority for the current round of boosters - for whom two months have already passed since they received them.
In short, if Pfizer do elect to develop an Omicron-specific booster then people won't end up getting them until more than six months after the current round of boosters anyway - and I don't imagine that any of the other vaccine developers will be significantly faster. So there's no point in any delay in the hope of something better turning up in the next few weeks.
Speaking to Sky News, Labour's shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said it was "unconscionable" that France and the UK government were "engaging in a blame game while children drown off our coastline".
She said her party would work with international partners to "open up safe and legal routes" for refugees in order "to pull the rug out from under the business model that these smugglers currently rely on".
My biggest worry over Labour was them opening up the flood gates on immigration and now they confirm they're doing it. And if this is just the stuff they are saying out loud, imagine what else they will do in office. I really wanted to vote against Boris in the next election, but not at the cost of bad immigration decisions that will last decades.
The difficulty with labelling people as "refugees" or "economic migrants" or whatever is that people don't, when you find out their stories, easily fall into these categories.
Take one of the young women who drowned this week. A Kurd, engaged to someone already living in Britain, who had been living and working in Germany for 4 years. Then she pays a trafficker to put her on an unsafe boat in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world on a freezing winter night.
A refugee? Not if the story that she had been living and working in Germany for 4 years is true. Desperate? Apparently so. But I would like to know more about why she chose this route and not a more official route. It is an awful tragedy certainly. But it would be better if people like her were simply treated as people who want to live in Britain and have to apply in the normal legal way from Germany rather than be treated as refugees or castigated as evil migrants. We should I think state that all applications should be made from the country in which you are living not in Britain. And that seeking to get into Britain illegally will stymie any legal application no matter how worthy.
Speaking to Sky News, Labour's shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said it was "unconscionable" that France and the UK government were "engaging in a blame game while children drown off our coastline".
She said her party would work with international partners to "open up safe and legal routes" for refugees in order "to pull the rug out from under the business model that these smugglers currently rely on".
My biggest worry over Labour was them opening up the flood gates on immigration and now they confirm they're doing it. And if this is just the stuff they are saying out loud, imagine what else they will do in office. I really wanted to vote against Boris in the next election, but not at the cost of bad immigration decisions that will last decades.
That's a weird interpretation of Nandy's sensible comments. There's nothing in what she says that suggests any 'floodgate' opening. She's merely pointing out the truth: the Channel crossings are mainly a consequence of an absence of legal routes for genuine asylum seekers.
It’s a convenient interpretation. Asylum claims are down significantly over the last few years.
Funnily enough they tend to go up and down with levels of conflict and repression abroad. Plenty of that about as always, but less than at the height of the Arab Spring, Syrian conflict or ISIS surge.
Asylum claims to UK reach highest level in nearly 20 years
It is with great sadness that on behalf of the Williams family, the team can confirm the death of Sir Frank Williams CBE, Founder and Former Team Principal of Williams Racing, at the age of 79. https://twitter.com/WilliamsRacing/status/1464962458582462464
I saw something with Laurence Fox in it for the first time the other day - He was playing Lord Palmerston in Victoria. I can see why people dislike him, thoroughly cocksure and smarmy
I went through a period of trying to feel sorry for Lozza as there is something pitiful about him, but back to thinking he deserves all the pelters he gets.
I'd not seen Richard Tice before that video from Bexley - have the far right found a post-Farage leader who is actually coherent and sane? (Though the obsession with boilers was a bit worrying.)
Tice is CEO of an asset management group worth £500 million. He is a successful businessman, not just a Far Right ranter whatever else you may think of him and he does not need the money from being an MP if he was elected therefore.
He has also shifted RefUK to be a largely libertarian, anti lockdown, low tax, small government party rather than just a vehicle against immigration post Brexit, making it more respectable for mainstream right voters to consider if they think Boris is too statist and authoritarian
Strange how there's a big overlap between anti-lockdown and anti-migrant sentiment but there does seem to be.
Dont think there is at all. I am very anti lockdown but voted REMAIN and would personally scrap all border controls or aim to do so in a number of years - Its why the last 4 years of politics has been especially depressing for me with Brexit and lockdowns/facemask fetishes
Glad I’m not alone. It’s a lonely political niche at the moment.
yes no one championing the cause! You might have though the Lib dems would have but not sure they understand the word liberal
There are plenty of members so minded, but it’s just not a profitable policy position at the moment.
Speaking to Sky News, Labour's shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said it was "unconscionable" that France and the UK government were "engaging in a blame game while children drown off our coastline".
She said her party would work with international partners to "open up safe and legal routes" for refugees in order "to pull the rug out from under the business model that these smugglers currently rely on".
My biggest worry over Labour was them opening up the flood gates on immigration and now they confirm they're doing it. And if this is just the stuff they are saying out loud, imagine what else they will do in office. I really wanted to vote against Boris in the next election, but not at the cost of bad immigration decisions that will last decades.
The difficulty with labelling people as "refugees" or "economic migrants" or whatever is that people don't, when you find out their stories, easily fall into these categories.
Take one of the young women who drowned this week. A Kurd, engaged to someone already living in Britain, who had been living and working in Germany for 4 years. Then she pays a trafficker to put her on an unsafe boat in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world on a freezing winter night.
A refugee? Not if the story that she had been living and working in Germany for 4 years is true. Desperate? Apparently so. But I would like to know more about why she chose this route and not a more official route. It is an awful tragedy certainly. But it would be better if people like her were simply treated as people who want to live in Britain and have to apply in the normal legal way from Germany rather than be treated as refugees or castigated as evil migrants. We should I think state that all applications should be made from the country in which you are living not in Britain. And that seeking to get into Britain illegally will stymie any legal application no matter how worthy.
So often with these stories there is some omission of crucial details.
Interesting that out of 61 positive patients off that plane only 13 had Omicron. It suggests Delta still has some mojo.
Bear in mind SA had extremely low case numbers until a few weeks ago which would be good news for a new variant trying to make a name for itself. So if they are now rising rapidly, and a large proportion are Delta, then maybe the growth advantage Omicron has isn’t so big after all.
As far as I can see there’s not much point panicking until we see vaccine efficacy stats against severe illness. If those hold up, then I think it’s as you were. If not then we need to get those repurposed jabs fast tracked.
But Omicron is already 80% of new cases in SA in surveyed region.....it took delta months to reach that versus Kent variant in any sample.
Doesn’t chime with anything like the 500% advantage being touted by some.
That plus founder effects in a low prevalence population, and the fact it’s almost certainly been around for longer than a few weeks, and I’m not buying (yet) this idea it’s got some kind of superhuman power.
R0 of endemic COVs is apparently around 7. Immune evasion seems like the most likely reason for outperformance, but so far that’s in a quite unusual population with low vax take up, partial immunity from natural infection, high HIV levels, and history of a previous epidemic of a variant (Beta) that never really took hold elsewhere.
Beta didn't take hold because delta out competed it....but all the experiments showed.current vavccines are poor against beta and reinfect is high. Even if Omicron is only a bit more infectious than Delta, so that it can outcompete, reinfection and vaccine escape are potential massive problems. Then if it is measles infectious plus all the other elements, that is why the world governments are shitting themselves, in a way they didn't over Beta or the similar Brazilian variant that had equivalent Beta mutations.
They did shit themselves over Beta and Brazil. Only a few months ago our geographer general Raab was putting France on the amber list because of Beta infections in “the French region of La Reunion”.
No evidence this variant is more infectious in a naive population, but plenty to suggest it has immune evasion properties. That puts it in a similar category to Beta. Maybe best we keep encouraging Delta to spread and outcompete it.
No...what our stupid government do with the silly travel list, where they put countries on and off it every other week, isn't the same as the basically every western government all acting within a day of one another. We haven't had that sort of reaction, even at the start or over Delta, certainly not over Beta or the Brazilian variant most similar to Beta.
Clearly all their scientific advisors are extremely worried. Now they might all be wrong, but we haven't seen this sort of reaction during the whole pandemic, where every major government acts in a very similar way basically at the same time.
Breaking: The Dutch #RIVM has confirmed 13 #Omicron cases out of the 61 positives. #coronavirus #Corona
That’s 13 cases of OMICRON THE MIGHTY on just one flight to Europe. How many flights have come from Southern Africa to Europe, N America, Asia, in the last week or so? There must be a few thousand cases seeded worldwide
It depends how it impacts vaccinated populations. Does it put significantly more people in hospitals and morgues? If it doesn't, it's a blip not a gamechanger.
That's true for countries like the UK or Israel which have very high levels of vaccine and natural immunity but a really big disaster for somewhere like Germany which has got reasonably good vaccine immunity but very low levels of natural immunity. I just had a look and ~89% of UK adults have had the vaccine plus a further 5-8% having natural immunity. In Germany that's about ~80% and 2-3% among adults. That leaves a huge, huge number of people that could very rapidly need hospital treatment.
The LSHTM has done some really solid modeling on this recently, essentially looking into this scenario of a very, very highly transmissive variant that doesn't necessarily evade existing immunity. The UK could see 0.06% of the entire population require hospital treatment within a few weeks, that's 40k people and almost 3k people arriving in hospital everyday, vaccinated and unvaccinated. That's about the same as the highest rate we've ever had, it will lead to a reduction of healthcare provision across the nation for two to three months. Let's look at Germany in that model, the LSHTM say that 0.6% (10x the UK number) could turn up at hospitals in the same timeframe, that's 500k people potentially requiring hospital treatment within a two/three week timeframe. That could be 25k people per day showing up at hospital. I have no idea what that even looks like, my brain can't even compute the idea of it.
Rudolph Steiner has a lot to answer for.
What's the Rudolph Steiner bit about ?
Wiki says he was an Austrian philosopher.
Steiner Schools. Anthroposophy (sp?).
Weird Teutonic holistic educational philosophy obsessed with colours, stories and ancient sun-demons, with a dash of racism in the mix
Not keen on orthodox mass medicine
Steiner goes wider than that - also at the root of movements like Biodynamic Farming, and folding into what are called Deep Green philosophies where the tendency can be to give Gaia a personality.
That kind of thing. Fits in well with new age and neo-pagan beliefs.
Breaking: The Dutch #RIVM has confirmed 13 #Omicron cases out of the 61 positives. #coronavirus #Corona
That’s 13 cases of OMICRON THE MIGHTY on just one flight to Europe. How many flights have come from Southern Africa to Europe, N America, Asia, in the last week or so? There must be a few thousand cases seeded worldwide
It depends how it impacts vaccinated populations. Does it put significantly more people in hospitals and morgues? If it doesn't, it's a blip not a gamechanger.
Yes, the evidence so far is that Omicron is only bad news for the non double vaccinated in terms of potential hospitalisation and death, certainly that is true for the young.
Even the older double vaccinated should be protected from it according to most scientists estimations once they have had their boosters which most over 70s now have had
What it certainly does mean is that we need to get on with double vaxxing our younger people as a matter of urgency. Action this day as Boris's hero used to say.
To come back to an earlier point I made - at what stage will the government consider compulsory vaccinations ? Can't be far off if this is as bad as some fear.
They won't do it unless they're absolutely desperate. Can you imagine how much screaming there will be if they go down the route of punitive fines as in Austria, and it takes about five minutes for somebody to crunch the numbers and work out that they're being disproportionately inflicted upon black people with low incomes?
Yes.
But - how many of those vote Tory?
Given a choice between kicking a lot of Labour voters and having his own voters suffer due to pressure on the NHS and restrictions on the wider population, given his extremely factional, even transactional approach I wouldn't go bail for Johnson holding out.
The answer has always been no vaccination then no hospital treatment.
Nope. That is callous and sets a horrific precedent for other life choices. The answer (if there has to be one) is to dis/incentivise through the tax system.
Its callous to delay the non-covid medical treatment of others because hospitals are wasting their resources on anti-vaxxers.
But I'd be quite happy to financially dis-incentivise anti-vaxxers firstly through their tax codes and secondly through charging them for any medical treatment they receive.
To save an unvaccinated person from a horrible death by Covid is not a waste of NHS resources.
And if two other people die because NHS resources are being used on anti-vaxxers ?
Either the NHS is using resources on anti-vaxxers instead of on other patients or its continual whine about being 'overrun with anti-vaxxers' is a lie to shift blame from its own failings.
Speaking to Sky News, Labour's shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said it was "unconscionable" that France and the UK government were "engaging in a blame game while children drown off our coastline".
She said her party would work with international partners to "open up safe and legal routes" for refugees in order "to pull the rug out from under the business model that these smugglers currently rely on".
My biggest worry over Labour was them opening up the flood gates on immigration and now they confirm they're doing it. And if this is just the stuff they are saying out loud, imagine what else they will do in office. I really wanted to vote against Boris in the next election, but not at the cost of bad immigration decisions that will last decades.
The difficulty with labelling people as "refugees" or "economic migrants" or whatever is that people don't, when you find out their stories, easily fall into these categories.
Take one of the young women who drowned this week. A Kurd, engaged to someone already living in Britain, who had been living and working in Germany for 4 years. Then she pays a trafficker to put her on an unsafe boat in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world on a freezing winter night.
A refugee? Not if the story that she had been living and working in Germany for 4 years is true. Desperate? Apparently so. But I would like to know more about why she chose this route and not a more official route. It is an awful tragedy certainly. But it would be better if people like her were simply treated as people who want to live in Britain and have to apply in the normal legal way from Germany rather than be treated as refugees or castigated as evil migrants. We should I think state that all applications should be made from the country in which you are living not in Britain. And that seeking to get into Britain illegally will stymie any legal application no matter how worthy.
I'm a bit suspicious that these applications are being ruled on in Lunar House. Is Priti working on the cunning idea that all successful applications have to be personally delivered to the moon?
It is with great sadness that on behalf of the Williams family, the team can confirm the death of Sir Frank Williams CBE, Founder and Former Team Principal of Williams Racing, at the age of 79. https://twitter.com/WilliamsRacing/status/1464962458582462464
The danger of reading too much into the next election based upon what has happened in the past few elections is the small sample size makes things seem significant when they aren't. Classic xkcd applies.
There have been 5 occasions since universal suffrage in 1918 when a PM faced a general election after more than 10 years of his party in power (which is the key stat to look at rather than just how many times the Tories have won a majority of seats).
Those were 1945, 1964, 1992, 1997 and 2010. It is hardly that small a sample size and in 4 out of 5 of them the PM lost and the one who won, Major in 1992 still lost 40 seats. If Boris lost 40 seats on current boundaries it would be a hung parliament in 2023/24
Five is a tiny sample size.
You could toss a balanced coin on five occasions and happen to get 4 heads and 1 tail. If you do, what are the odds that you get a head next time?
The evidence is 80% for change and 100% for loss of seats.
In fact go to almost any western democracy and there is normally a change of government after one party has been in power after 10 years. That is just the natural electoral cycle, otherwise you are heading to a one party state if one party stays in power for decades
Again a sample size of five is not "evidence" for anything.
If you have a fair coin and toss it five times, then what are your odds of getting exactly one tail or exactly one head? The answer may surprise you.
There are 32 possible combinations from five coin tosses. Five of those combinations have 1 tail and five of those combinations have only 1 head. So the probability of getting only one head or tail from a fair coin is 10/32 or 31.25%
Only having one of five in a sample is not statistically significant for anything.
Yes well if you want to think the Tories will be in power for 100 years without ever losing an election because there is limited sample size of governments facing re election after 10 years that is up to you.
I am as Tory as anyone on here but even I recognise you can only stretch the elastic of time in power so far in a democracy
I agree that it wouldn't be "normal", but it can exist if there is some cause for it. In Scotland perma-SNP rule is the result of ~45% support for Independence - not enough to achieve independence and move on, but enough to keep the SNP in government if supporters of Independence prioritise it above other issues.
The same might happen at Westminster. If, for example, the voters were to believe that a Labour-led government would take Britain back into the EU, either openly or by stealth, then the Tories would likely retain sufficient support from Leavers to keep them in government, until Labour managed to persuade the voters otherwise. This is not wholly implausible, because there are doubtless many Remainers who are not reconciled to the status quo, and would want Labour to campaign to rejoin.
That's the sort of scenario that could produce indefinite Conservative government at Westminster. There may be others.
Speaking to Sky News, Labour's shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said it was "unconscionable" that France and the UK government were "engaging in a blame game while children drown off our coastline".
She said her party would work with international partners to "open up safe and legal routes" for refugees in order "to pull the rug out from under the business model that these smugglers currently rely on".
My biggest worry over Labour was them opening up the flood gates on immigration and now they confirm they're doing it. And if this is just the stuff they are saying out loud, imagine what else they will do in office. I really wanted to vote against Boris in the next election, but not at the cost of bad immigration decisions that will last decades.
That's a weird interpretation of Nandy's sensible comments. There's nothing in what she says that suggests any 'floodgate' opening. She's merely pointing out the truth: the Channel crossings are mainly a consequence of an absence of legal routes for genuine asylum seekers.
It’s a convenient interpretation. Asylum claims are down significantly over the last few years.
Funnily enough they tend to go up and down with levels of conflict and repression abroad. Plenty of that about as always, but less than at the height of the Arab Spring, Syrian conflict or ISIS surge.
Asylum claims to UK reach highest level in nearly 20 years
Surely distorted by the 17k we took out of Afghanistan?
How many have we actually taken from Hong Kong?
Don't know.
What is very obvious is that we could find as many as we wanted who were eligible for asylum in the Syrian refugee camps in a heart beat if we had any desire at all to do so.
The danger of reading too much into the next election based upon what has happened in the past few elections is the small sample size makes things seem significant when they aren't. Classic xkcd applies.
There have been 5 occasions since universal suffrage in 1918 when a PM faced a general election after more than 10 years of his party in power (which is the key stat to look at rather than just how many times the Tories have won a majority of seats).
Those were 1945, 1964, 1992, 1997 and 2010. It is hardly that small a sample size and in 4 out of 5 of them the PM lost and the one who won, Major in 1992 still lost 40 seats. If Boris lost 40 seats on current boundaries it would be a hung parliament in 2023/24
Five is a tiny sample size.
You could toss a balanced coin on five occasions and happen to get 4 heads and 1 tail. If you do, what are the odds that you get a head next time?
The evidence is 80% for change and 100% for loss of seats.
In fact go to almost any western democracy and there is normally a change of government after one party has been in power after 10 years. That is just the natural electoral cycle, otherwise you are heading to a one party state if one party stays in power for decades
Again a sample size of five is not "evidence" for anything.
If you have a fair coin and toss it five times, then what are your odds of getting exactly one tail or exactly one head? The answer may surprise you.
There are 32 possible combinations from five coin tosses. Five of those combinations have 1 tail and five of those combinations have only 1 head. So the probability of getting only one head or tail from a fair coin is 10/32 or 31.25%
Only having one of five in a sample is not statistically significant for anything.
Yes well if you want to think the Tories will be in power for 100 years without ever losing an election because there is limited sample size of governments facing re election after 10 years that is up to you.
I am as Tory as anyone on here but even I recognise you can only stretch the elastic of time in power so far in a democracy
I agree that it wouldn't be "normal", but it can exist if there is some cause for it. In Scotland perma-SNP rule is the result of ~45% support for Independence - not enough to achieve independence and move on, but enough to keep the SNP in government if supporters of Independence prioritise it above other issues.
The same might happen at Westminster. If, for example, the voters were to believe that a Labour-led government would take Britain back into the EU, either openly or by stealth, then the Tories would likely retain sufficient support from Leavers to keep them in government, until Labour managed to persuade the voters otherwise. This is not wholly implausible, because there are doubtless many Remainers who are not reconciled to the status quo, and would want Labour to campaign to rejoin.
That's the sort of scenario that could produce indefinite Conservative government at Westminster. There may be others.
I just want a centre left government that will respect the position of the public on immigration and sovereignty and be sensible economically. It's not that hard. If they did I would vote for them almost every time. But, other than the economics bit, they refuse to do it. There's this massive blind spot on "the vulnerable" where they don't understand that being soft and nice for those immediately visible can actually be worse overall.
Speaking to Sky News, Labour's shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said it was "unconscionable" that France and the UK government were "engaging in a blame game while children drown off our coastline".
She said her party would work with international partners to "open up safe and legal routes" for refugees in order "to pull the rug out from under the business model that these smugglers currently rely on".
My biggest worry over Labour was them opening up the flood gates on immigration and now they confirm they're doing it. And if this is just the stuff they are saying out loud, imagine what else they will do in office. I really wanted to vote against Boris in the next election, but not at the cost of bad immigration decisions that will last decades.
That's a weird interpretation of Nandy's sensible comments. There's nothing in what she says that suggests any 'floodgate' opening. She's merely pointing out the truth: the Channel crossings are mainly a consequence of an absence of legal routes for genuine asylum seekers.
I agree that safe and legal routes are better than unsafe, dangerous options. But the point which she misses is that there is no numerical limit on the number of genuine asylum seekers a country has to accept. So if you do open up safe and legal routes you do potentially open yourself up to a significant increase in numbers. And if that number is potentially unlimited - or very large - see, for instance, the number languishing in refugee camps in Lebanon and Turkey, what does Labour say in answer to the questions:
1. Will you place any numerical limits on the number who will be allowed in via safe and legal routes? 2. If yes, what is that number and how is it consistent with Britain's obligations under various international treaties? 3. If no, will you accept everyone who is deemed to be eligible for asylum? 4. If yes to question 3, how will you ensure that the burden as well as the benefits of this increase and change in population will be fairly shared by all parts and of and classes in the country?
Labour didn't really have credible answers on this when it came to FoM. It needs to have them in relation to asylum seekers.
My view is that it would be more honest to treat them all as migrants and have an honest conversation with voters about who is let in, why and the costs/benefits of doing so. And at the same time making it clear to potential migrants that their desire to live in Britain is not the determining factor and not all who want this will get it.
In the absence of any sort of honesty we will go from muddle to fierce noises to inadequate enforcement to emotional spasms and back again, based on whatever pictures make the front pages of newspapers. It is a mess.
Interesting that out of 61 positive patients off that plane only 13 had Omicron. It suggests Delta still has some mojo.
Bear in mind SA had extremely low case numbers until a few weeks ago which would be good news for a new variant trying to make a name for itself. So if they are now rising rapidly, and a large proportion are Delta, then maybe the growth advantage Omicron has isn’t so big after all.
As far as I can see there’s not much point panicking until we see vaccine efficacy stats against severe illness. If those hold up, then I think it’s as you were. If not then we need to get those repurposed jabs fast tracked.
But Omicron is already 80% of new cases in SA in surveyed region.....it took delta months to reach that versus Kent variant in any sample.
Doesn’t chime with anything like the 500% advantage being touted by some.
That plus founder effects in a low prevalence population, and the fact it’s almost certainly been around for longer than a few weeks, and I’m not buying (yet) this idea it’s got some kind of superhuman power.
R0 of endemic COVs is apparently around 7. Immune evasion seems like the most likely reason for outperformance, but so far that’s in a quite unusual population with low vax take up, partial immunity from natural infection, high HIV levels, and history of a previous epidemic of a variant (Beta) that never really took hold elsewhere.
Beta didn't take hold because delta out competed it....but all the experiments showed.current vavccines are poor against beta and reinfect is high. Even if Omicron is only a bit more infectious than Delta, so that it can outcompete, reinfection and vaccine escape are potential massive problems. Then if it is measles infectious plus all the other elements, that is why the world governments are shitting themselves, in a way they didn't over Beta or the similar Brazilian variant that had equivalent Beta mutations.
They did shit themselves over Beta and Brazil. Only a few months ago our geographer general Raab was putting France on the amber list because of Beta infections in “the French region of La Reunion”.
No evidence this variant is more infectious in a naive population, but plenty to suggest it has immune evasion properties. That puts it in a similar category to Beta. Maybe best we keep encouraging Delta to spread and outcompete it.
No...what our stupid government do with the silly travel list, where they put countries on and off it every other week, isn't the same as the basically every western government all acting within a day of one another. We haven't had that sort of reaction, even at the start or over Delta, certainly not over Beta or the Brazilian variant most similar to Beta.
Clearly all their scientific advisors are extremely worried. Now they might all be wrong, but we haven't seen this sort of reaction during the whole pandemic, where every major government acts in a very similar way basically at the same time.
Yes, it’s not the evidence that is alarming (it’s obscure), it is the reaction of people who see all the evidence unobscured - who are talking to their scientific & ministerial counterparts across the world.
It reminds me of early Wuhan. What got me worried there was not the disease itself but the way the Chinese reacted. Putting 60m people in hard quarantine. Stapling families into apartments. The Chinese had access to the best data and they were crapping themselves
The immediate global spasm over Omicron is eerily similar. Of course it still might be a mad global crapping-of-pants, and hysterical panic. But hmmm
Speaking to Sky News, Labour's shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said it was "unconscionable" that France and the UK government were "engaging in a blame game while children drown off our coastline".
She said her party would work with international partners to "open up safe and legal routes" for refugees in order "to pull the rug out from under the business model that these smugglers currently rely on".
My biggest worry over Labour was them opening up the flood gates on immigration and now they confirm they're doing it. And if this is just the stuff they are saying out loud, imagine what else they will do in office. I really wanted to vote against Boris in the next election, but not at the cost of bad immigration decisions that will last decades.
That's a weird interpretation of Nandy's sensible comments. There's nothing in what she says that suggests any 'floodgate' opening. She's merely pointing out the truth: the Channel crossings are mainly a consequence of an absence of legal routes for genuine asylum seekers.
It’s a convenient interpretation. Asylum claims are down significantly over the last few years.
Funnily enough they tend to go up and down with levels of conflict and repression abroad. Plenty of that about as always, but less than at the height of the Arab Spring, Syrian conflict or ISIS surge.
Asylum claims to UK reach highest level in nearly 20 years
Surely distorted by the 17k we took out of Afghanistan?
How many have we actually taken from Hong Kong?
My cousin is still there (with his wife and two children). My Dad is very concerned for them, I think his wife doesn't qualify for the British scheme. So my Dad has been trying to get us all Austrian citizenship (on account of his Viennese mother) so that they would have residency rights in EU countries (other than Austria). But there seem to be problems with the paperwork.
Speaking to Sky News, Labour's shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said it was "unconscionable" that France and the UK government were "engaging in a blame game while children drown off our coastline".
She said her party would work with international partners to "open up safe and legal routes" for refugees in order "to pull the rug out from under the business model that these smugglers currently rely on".
My biggest worry over Labour was them opening up the flood gates on immigration and now they confirm they're doing it. And if this is just the stuff they are saying out loud, imagine what else they will do in office. I really wanted to vote against Boris in the next election, but not at the cost of bad immigration decisions that will last decades.
Is this interview on video?
From the above, LN is playing "plague on all your houses games", whilst trying to sound above the fray.
That does not seem to me a fair representation of BY sending M. Macron a reasonable letter. and Macron throwing another tantrum.
I would say that M Macron has started his manoeuvrings to get French positinos adopted as EU positions in Q1Q1 of 2022. No idea how that will go.
Labour Lord David Blunkett has claimed BBC Radio 4 is forgetting its key audience and spending too much time focusing on its own presenters.
The former home secretary, 74, said he remained a supporter of the BBC but said Radio 4 was shooting itself in the foot with 'miserable' programmes droning on about 'identity politics'.
Breaking: The Dutch #RIVM has confirmed 13 #Omicron cases out of the 61 positives. #coronavirus #Corona
That’s 13 cases of OMICRON THE MIGHTY on just one flight to Europe. How many flights have come from Southern Africa to Europe, N America, Asia, in the last week or so? There must be a few thousand cases seeded worldwide
It depends how it impacts vaccinated populations. Does it put significantly more people in hospitals and morgues? If it doesn't, it's a blip not a gamechanger.
Yes, the evidence so far is that Omicron is only bad news for the non double vaccinated in terms of potential hospitalisation and death, certainly that is true for the young.
Even the older double vaccinated should be protected from it according to most scientists estimations once they have had their boosters which most over 70s now have had
What it certainly does mean is that we need to get on with double vaxxing our younger people as a matter of urgency. Action this day as Boris's hero used to say.
To come back to an earlier point I made - at what stage will the government consider compulsory vaccinations ? Can't be far off if this is as bad as some fear.
They won't do it unless they're absolutely desperate. Can you imagine how much screaming there will be if they go down the route of punitive fines as in Austria, and it takes about five minutes for somebody to crunch the numbers and work out that they're being disproportionately inflicted upon black people with low incomes?
Yes.
But - how many of those vote Tory?
Given a choice between kicking a lot of Labour voters and having his own voters suffer due to pressure on the NHS and restrictions on the wider population, given his extremely factional, even transactional approach I wouldn't go bail for Johnson holding out.
The answer has always been no vaccination then no hospital treatment.
Nope. That is callous and sets a horrific precedent for other life choices. The answer (if there has to be one) is to dis/incentivise through the tax system.
Its callous to delay the non-covid medical treatment of others because hospitals are wasting their resources on anti-vaxxers.
But I'd be quite happy to financially dis-incentivise anti-vaxxers firstly through their tax codes and secondly through charging them for any medical treatment they receive.
To save an unvaccinated person from a horrible death by Covid is not a waste of NHS resources.
If it costs the life of someone else who doesn't get treated because the hospital is full of unvaxxed covid victims then yes it is a total and utter waste of time
Speaking to Sky News, Labour's shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said it was "unconscionable" that France and the UK government were "engaging in a blame game while children drown off our coastline".
She said her party would work with international partners to "open up safe and legal routes" for refugees in order "to pull the rug out from under the business model that these smugglers currently rely on".
My biggest worry over Labour was them opening up the flood gates on immigration and now they confirm they're doing it. And if this is just the stuff they are saying out loud, imagine what else they will do in office. I really wanted to vote against Boris in the next election, but not at the cost of bad immigration decisions that will last decades.
That's a weird interpretation of Nandy's sensible comments. There's nothing in what she says that suggests any 'floodgate' opening. She's merely pointing out the truth: the Channel crossings are mainly a consequence of an absence of legal routes for genuine asylum seekers.
And that she's correct to point out - however, how much has she said about how robust Labour intends to be about sifting the refugees from the economic migrants? And, very importantly, has any indication been given that Labour would put a cap on the numbers of refugees and asylum seekers accepted each year?
The world is replete with failed states, totalitarian states and simply illiberal states from which hundreds of millions of people could make a plausible case for asylum. And that's before we get to the tremendous question of how many people will end up attempting to flee havoc induced by climate change. We can't take in limitless numbers, and the electorate doesn't want limitless numbers.
If Labour can't provide plausible reassurance that it isn't in favour of letting in every single hard luck case then voters will draw the obvious conclusion: namely, that if it thinks, looks and acts like an open borders party, it is one.
I'm pretty confident that Starmer et al will make absolutely sure that Labour doesn't think, look or act like an open borders party at the next GE. There's a huge gap, though, between being a party that has a humane asylum policy and an open borders policy.
Labour didn't act like an open borders party in 1997 either but they very quickly put in place policies to transform our demographics just a year later. This Labour Party is already signifying to their base they will do things to expand immigration: more refugees, no income minimum for arranged marriages etc. I don't trust them any more. If they put in place the equivalent to Gordon Brown's match Tory spending levels on immigration I will vote for them. If not, I will be reluctantly crossing the Tory box on my election paper.
Interesting that out of 61 positive patients off that plane only 13 had Omicron. It suggests Delta still has some mojo.
Bear in mind SA had extremely low case numbers until a few weeks ago which would be good news for a new variant trying to make a name for itself. So if they are now rising rapidly, and a large proportion are Delta, then maybe the growth advantage Omicron has isn’t so big after all.
As far as I can see there’s not much point panicking until we see vaccine efficacy stats against severe illness. If those hold up, then I think it’s as you were. If not then we need to get those repurposed jabs fast tracked.
But Omicron is already 80% of new cases in SA in surveyed region.....it took delta months to reach that versus Kent variant in any sample.
Doesn’t chime with anything like the 500% advantage being touted by some.
That plus founder effects in a low prevalence population, and the fact it’s almost certainly been around for longer than a few weeks, and I’m not buying (yet) this idea it’s got some kind of superhuman power.
R0 of endemic COVs is apparently around 7. Immune evasion seems like the most likely reason for outperformance, but so far that’s in a quite unusual population with low vax take up, partial immunity from natural infection, high HIV levels, and history of a previous epidemic of a variant (Beta) that never really took hold elsewhere.
Beta didn't take hold because delta out competed it....but all the experiments showed.current vavccines are poor against beta and reinfect is high. Even if Omicron is only a bit more infectious than Delta, so that it can outcompete, reinfection and vaccine escape are potential massive problems. Then if it is measles infectious plus all the other elements, that is why the world governments are shitting themselves, in a way they didn't over Beta or the similar Brazilian variant that had equivalent Beta mutations.
They did shit themselves over Beta and Brazil. Only a few months ago our geographer general Raab was putting France on the amber list because of Beta infections in “the French region of La Reunion”.
No evidence this variant is more infectious in a naive population, but plenty to suggest it has immune evasion properties. That puts it in a similar category to Beta. Maybe best we keep encouraging Delta to spread and outcompete it.
No...what our stupid government do with the silly travel list, where they put countries on and off it every other week, isn't the same as the basically every western government all acting within a day of one another. We haven't had that sort of reaction, even at the start or over Delta, certainly not over Beta or the Brazilian variant most similar to Beta.
Clearly all their scientific advisors are extremely worried. Now they might all be wrong, but we haven't seen this sort of reaction during the whole pandemic, where every major government acts in a very similar way basically at the same time.
Yes, it’s not the evidence that is alarming (it’s obscure), it is the reaction of people who see all the evidence unobscured - who are talking to their scientific & ministerial counterparts across the world.
It reminds me of early Wuhan. What got me worried there was not the disease itself but the way the Chinese reacted. Putting 60m people in hard quarantine. Stapling families into apartments. The Chinese had access to the best data and they were crapping themselves
The immediate global spasm over Omicron is eerily similar. Of course it still might be a mad global crapping-of-pants, and hysterical panic. But hmmm
That implies a level of knowledge and foresight among the likes of SAGE and their overseas counterparts which history suggests isn’t always rock solid.
I’m not sure anyone knows enough yet, and some applying if precautionary principle probably makes sense, but the panic doesn’t feel very rational to me.
I saw something with Laurence Fox in it for the first time the other day - He was playing Lord Palmerston in Victoria. I can see why people dislike him, thoroughly cocksure and smarmy
I went through a period of trying to feel sorry for Lozza as there is something pitiful about him, but back to thinking he deserves all the pelters he gets.
I'd not seen Richard Tice before that video from Bexley - have the far right found a post-Farage leader who is actually coherent and sane? (Though the obsession with boilers was a bit worrying.)
Tice is CEO of an asset management group worth £500 million. He is a successful businessman, not just a Far Right ranter whatever else you may think of him and he does not need the money from being an MP if he was elected therefore.
He has also shifted RefUK to be a largely libertarian, anti lockdown, low tax, small government party rather than just a vehicle against immigration post Brexit, making it more respectable for mainstream right voters to consider if they think Boris is too statist and authoritarian
Strange how there's a big overlap between anti-lockdown and anti-migrant sentiment but there does seem to be.
Dont think there is at all. I am very anti lockdown but voted REMAIN and would personally scrap all border controls or aim to do so in a number of years - Its why the last 4 years of politics has been especially depressing for me with Brexit and lockdowns/facemask fetishes
You're clearly not part of such an overlap - and hats off - but I do detect it. Seems if ever I unluck across a high voltage Twitter Emitter of the 'live strong live free' line I find they're also of a 'sink them boats!' disposition. This latter presented as Tough Love, Aussie Style, of course, not as bloodlust. Well not usually.
Interesting that out of 61 positive patients off that plane only 13 had Omicron. It suggests Delta still has some mojo.
Bear in mind SA had extremely low case numbers until a few weeks ago which would be good news for a new variant trying to make a name for itself. So if they are now rising rapidly, and a large proportion are Delta, then maybe the growth advantage Omicron has isn’t so big after all.
As far as I can see there’s not much point panicking until we see vaccine efficacy stats against severe illness. If those hold up, then I think it’s as you were. If not then we need to get those repurposed jabs fast tracked.
How many were on that plane ?
Because whatever it was 61 would be a far higher proportion than what South Africa as a whole is supposed to currently have.
Its 61 from 600 sample.
600 people who presumably produced some evidence of an LFT before they were allowed to alight. Jeez. The systems are a joke.
It’s also, potentially, good news
If 10% of SA has active Covid, that’s 6 million cases. The fact that their hospitals aren’t collapsing suggests an awful lot of it is either mild or asymptomatic
Perhaps Covid really is evolving into a sniffle, as we have all hoped these long 20 months past
I suspect that the 600 on the 2 planes coming to Europe are not a standardised sample of the population. They are likely to be more mobile, prone to meeting in oh so important business meetings, more likely to be able to afford to go to expensive large events etc.
But it is important to remember that the vast majority who get this virus do not get that ill. Many will not even notice.
Sure, but the numbers are still curious
I agree the sample is unrepresentative - but it won’t be totally unrepresentative.
Let’s say 3m Saffers have the bug on these numbers. Classical Covid is meant to hospitalise ~10%, put 2% in ICU, and kill 1%
SA “should have” 300,000 in hospital, 60,000 on ventilators and 30,000 corpses. It doesn’t. Nowhere near
Of course that breakdown is only of those poorly enough to get tested. Yet still an odd anomaly
Unless it is so contagious that 58 of the 60 caught it while on the flight...
Interesting that out of 61 positive patients off that plane only 13 had Omicron. It suggests Delta still has some mojo.
Bear in mind SA had extremely low case numbers until a few weeks ago which would be good news for a new variant trying to make a name for itself. So if they are now rising rapidly, and a large proportion are Delta, then maybe the growth advantage Omicron has isn’t so big after all.
As far as I can see there’s not much point panicking until we see vaccine efficacy stats against severe illness. If those hold up, then I think it’s as you were. If not then we need to get those repurposed jabs fast tracked.
How many were on that plane ?
Because whatever it was 61 would be a far higher proportion than what South Africa as a whole is supposed to currently have.
Its 61 from 600 sample.
600 people who presumably produced some evidence of an LFT before they were allowed to alight. Jeez. The systems are a joke.
It’s also, potentially, good news
If 10% of SA has active Covid, that’s 6 million cases. The fact that their hospitals aren’t collapsing suggests an awful lot of it is either mild or asymptomatic
Perhaps Covid really is evolving into a sniffle, as we have all hoped these long 20 months past
An awful lot of all covid is mild / asymptomatic - indeed the vast majority of it is. The problem has always been that it can trigger severe symptoms in the ageing, infirm and unlucky.
I saw something with Laurence Fox in it for the first time the other day - He was playing Lord Palmerston in Victoria. I can see why people dislike him, thoroughly cocksure and smarmy
Weird, I'd seen that and not placed that it was him at all. I thought he was pretty good in it, though the character was a smarmy dick.
Worth pointing out that quite a few of Palmerstons contemporaries thought he was cocksure and smarmy, so it might just be... acting.
Breaking: The Dutch #RIVM has confirmed 13 #Omicron cases out of the 61 positives. #coronavirus #Corona
That’s 13 cases of OMICRON THE MIGHTY on just one flight to Europe. How many flights have come from Southern Africa to Europe, N America, Asia, in the last week or so? There must be a few thousand cases seeded worldwide
It depends how it impacts vaccinated populations. Does it put significantly more people in hospitals and morgues? If it doesn't, it's a blip not a gamechanger.
Yes, the evidence so far is that Omicron is only bad news for the non double vaccinated in terms of potential hospitalisation and death, certainly that is true for the young.
Even the older double vaccinated should be protected from it according to most scientists estimations once they have had their boosters which most over 70s now have had
What it certainly does mean is that we need to get on with double vaxxing our younger people as a matter of urgency. Action this day as Boris's hero used to say.
To come back to an earlier point I made - at what stage will the government consider compulsory vaccinations ? Can't be far off if this is as bad as some fear.
They won't do it unless they're absolutely desperate. Can you imagine how much screaming there will be if they go down the route of punitive fines as in Austria, and it takes about five minutes for somebody to crunch the numbers and work out that they're being disproportionately inflicted upon black people with low incomes?
Yes.
But - how many of those vote Tory?
Given a choice between kicking a lot of Labour voters and having his own voters suffer due to pressure on the NHS and restrictions on the wider population, given his extremely factional, even transactional approach I wouldn't go bail for Johnson holding out.
The answer has always been no vaccination then no hospital treatment.
Nope. That is callous and sets a horrific precedent for other life choices. The answer (if there has to be one) is to dis/incentivise through the tax system.
Its callous to delay the non-covid medical treatment of others because hospitals are wasting their resources on anti-vaxxers.
But I'd be quite happy to financially dis-incentivise anti-vaxxers firstly through their tax codes and secondly through charging them for any medical treatment they receive.
To save an unvaccinated person from a horrible death by Covid is not a waste of NHS resources.
And if two other people die because NHS resources are being used on anti-vaxxers ?
Either the NHS is using resources on anti-vaxxers instead of on other patients or its continual whine about being 'overrun with anti-vaxxers' is a lie to shift blame from its own failings.
It is using scarce resource on treating Covid patients - many of whom aren't vaccinated - and this is a big part of why the system is stressed. But this isn't to say resource is being wasted. How is saving the life of an unvaccinated young Covid sufferer a waste of effort? Their life isn't worth saving because they've fallen prey to antivaxx crap, have an irrational needle phobia, are thick and lazy, or whatever? That's a rather crass sentiment imo.
Morocco is also suspending maritime passenger transport with France
"Le Maroc a décidé de suspendre le transport maritime de passagers avec la France à partir de dimanche soir, en raison de la recrudescence de l'épidémie de Covid-19, a indiqué un responsable au ministère du Transport #AFP"
The doors are being shut across the world, we may not see them reopened in our lifetime
I am trying to work out which is more dull, the world bore draw due to super computer championship of Chess or the Beatles documentary.
Dunno. Does the Beatles documentary consist of exactly the same piece of footage repeated fourteen times?
Does the incomplete chorus of the same song being tootled on a guitar inbetween Paul McCartney ordering this lunch count?
Depends on what else (if anything) happens and how often this is repeated. One would need to see the Beatles documentary to offer a truly informed opinion. And no, I'm not volunteering.
NB Chess championship game three ends in a draw. I'm shocked.
I saw something with Laurence Fox in it for the first time the other day - He was playing Lord Palmerston in Victoria. I can see why people dislike him, thoroughly cocksure and smarmy
I went through a period of trying to feel sorry for Lozza as there is something pitiful about him, but back to thinking he deserves all the pelters he gets.
I'd not seen Richard Tice before that video from Bexley - have the far right found a post-Farage leader who is actually coherent and sane? (Though the obsession with boilers was a bit worrying.)
Tice is CEO of an asset management group worth £500 million. He is a successful businessman, not just a Far Right ranter whatever else you may think of him and he does not need the money from being an MP if he was elected therefore.
He has also shifted RefUK to be a largely libertarian, anti lockdown, low tax, small government party rather than just a vehicle against immigration post Brexit, making it more respectable for mainstream right voters to consider if they think Boris is too statist and authoritarian
Strange how there's a big overlap between anti-lockdown and anti-migrant sentiment but there does seem to be.
Dont think there is at all. I am very anti lockdown but voted REMAIN and would personally scrap all border controls or aim to do so in a number of years - Its why the last 4 years of politics has been especially depressing for me with Brexit and lockdowns/facemask fetishes
You're clearly not part of such an overlap - and hats off - but I do detect it. Seems if ever I unluck across a high voltage Twitter Emitter of the 'live strong live free' line I find they're also of a 'sink them boats!' disposition. This latter presented as Tough Love, Aussie Style, of course, not as bloodlust. Well not usually.
It is hardly an astonishing insight that people who don't like big government don't like the government closing everything and locking people in their houses! Almost all the lockdown/vaccine sceptics I know run their own businesses, almost all the people I know who are ok with lockdown and vaccinations work for a company
I am trying to work out which is more dull, the world bore draw due to super computer championship of Chess or the Beatles documentary.
Dunno. Does the Beatles documentary consist of exactly the same piece of footage repeated fourteen times?
Does the incomplete chorus of the same song being tootled on a guitar inbetween Paul McCartney ordering this lunch count?
Depends on what else (if anything) happens and how often this is repeated. One would need to see the Beatles documentary to offer a truly informed opinion. And no, I'm not volunteering.
NB Chess championship games three ends in a draw. I'm shocked.
After 30 mins of that, I am not going to watch the other 8hrs to find out if something interesting happens.
Breaking: The Dutch #RIVM has confirmed 13 #Omicron cases out of the 61 positives. #coronavirus #Corona
That’s 13 cases of OMICRON THE MIGHTY on just one flight to Europe. How many flights have come from Southern Africa to Europe, N America, Asia, in the last week or so? There must be a few thousand cases seeded worldwide
It depends how it impacts vaccinated populations. Does it put significantly more people in hospitals and morgues? If it doesn't, it's a blip not a gamechanger.
Yes, the evidence so far is that Omicron is only bad news for the non double vaccinated in terms of potential hospitalisation and death, certainly that is true for the young.
Even the older double vaccinated should be protected from it according to most scientists estimations once they have had their boosters which most over 70s now have had
What it certainly does mean is that we need to get on with double vaxxing our younger people as a matter of urgency. Action this day as Boris's hero used to say.
To come back to an earlier point I made - at what stage will the government consider compulsory vaccinations ? Can't be far off if this is as bad as some fear.
They won't do it unless they're absolutely desperate. Can you imagine how much screaming there will be if they go down the route of punitive fines as in Austria, and it takes about five minutes for somebody to crunch the numbers and work out that they're being disproportionately inflicted upon black people with low incomes?
Yes.
But - how many of those vote Tory?
Given a choice between kicking a lot of Labour voters and having his own voters suffer due to pressure on the NHS and restrictions on the wider population, given his extremely factional, even transactional approach I wouldn't go bail for Johnson holding out.
The answer has always been no vaccination then no hospital treatment.
Nope. That is callous and sets a horrific precedent for other life choices. The answer (if there has to be one) is to dis/incentivise through the tax system.
Its callous to delay the non-covid medical treatment of others because hospitals are wasting their resources on anti-vaxxers.
But I'd be quite happy to financially dis-incentivise anti-vaxxers firstly through their tax codes and secondly through charging them for any medical treatment they receive.
To save an unvaccinated person from a horrible death by Covid is not a waste of NHS resources.
And if two other people die because NHS resources are being used on anti-vaxxers ?
Either the NHS is using resources on anti-vaxxers instead of on other patients or its continual whine about being 'overrun with anti-vaxxers' is a lie to shift blame from its own failings.
It is using scarce resource on treating Covid patients - many of whom aren't vaccinated - and this is a big part of why the system is stressed. But this isn't to say resource is being wasted. How is saving the life of an unvaccinated young Covid sufferer a waste of effort? Their life isn't worth saving because they've fallen prey to antivaxx crap, have an irrational needle phobia, are thick and lazy, or whatever? That's a rather crass sentiment imo.
Beacause, in the example give you, two other people die as a result of the resources focused on the antivaxxer
That is grotesquely unfair
Covid is imposing brutally hard choices, this may in the end be one of them. No vax, no treatment
Morocco is also suspending maritime passenger transport with France
"Le Maroc a décidé de suspendre le transport maritime de passagers avec la France à partir de dimanche soir, en raison de la recrudescence de l'épidémie de Covid-19, a indiqué un responsable au ministère du Transport #AFP"
The doors are being shut across the world, we may not see them reopened in our lifetime
That's disappointing. I was expecting to live beyond the first half of 2022.
I am totally unaware of the history of this period. The only Labour split I was aware of was the SDP one.
Ydoethur will know far more than I, but suffice to say that the first Labour PM in history ending up expelled from Labour is pretty amusing. Ex-Leaders seem to reputationally struggle, apart from Attlee maybe?.
Apparently 1931 was the last GE not held on a thursday, and since the Tories got 470 seats perhaps they should have let the 2019 GE take place on a different day as the opposition attempt to do (for reasons I really cannot recall).
I am trying to work out which is more dull, the world bore draw due to super computer championship of Chess or the Beatles documentary.
Dunno. Does the Beatles documentary consist of exactly the same piece of footage repeated fourteen times?
Does the incomplete chorus of the same song being tootled on a guitar inbetween Paul McCartney ordering this lunch count?
Depends on what else (if anything) happens and how often this is repeated. One would need to see the Beatles documentary to offer a truly informed opinion. And no, I'm not volunteering.
NB Chess championship game three ends in a draw. I'm shocked.
I don't see the point of human chess championships now we know that computers can play the game better, more elegantly, more cleverly and creatively
It's a bit like favouring the Paralympics over the Olympics
I saw something with Laurence Fox in it for the first time the other day - He was playing Lord Palmerston in Victoria. I can see why people dislike him, thoroughly cocksure and smarmy
I went through a period of trying to feel sorry for Lozza as there is something pitiful about him, but back to thinking he deserves all the pelters he gets.
I'd not seen Richard Tice before that video from Bexley - have the far right found a post-Farage leader who is actually coherent and sane? (Though the obsession with boilers was a bit worrying.)
Tice is CEO of an asset management group worth £500 million. He is a successful businessman, not just a Far Right ranter whatever else you may think of him and he does not need the money from being an MP if he was elected therefore.
He has also shifted RefUK to be a largely libertarian, anti lockdown, low tax, small government party rather than just a vehicle against immigration post Brexit, making it more respectable for mainstream right voters to consider if they think Boris is too statist and authoritarian
Strange how there's a big overlap between anti-lockdown and anti-migrant sentiment but there does seem to be.
Dont think there is at all. I am very anti lockdown but voted REMAIN and would personally scrap all border controls or aim to do so in a number of years - Its why the last 4 years of politics has been especially depressing for me with Brexit and lockdowns/facemask fetishes
Glad I’m not alone. It’s a lonely political niche at the moment.
I saw something with Laurence Fox in it for the first time the other day - He was playing Lord Palmerston in Victoria. I can see why people dislike him, thoroughly cocksure and smarmy
I went through a period of trying to feel sorry for Lozza as there is something pitiful about him, but back to thinking he deserves all the pelters he gets.
I'd not seen Richard Tice before that video from Bexley - have the far right found a post-Farage leader who is actually coherent and sane? (Though the obsession with boilers was a bit worrying.)
Tice is CEO of an asset management group worth £500 million. He is a successful businessman, not just a Far Right ranter whatever else you may think of him and he does not need the money from being an MP if he was elected therefore.
He has also shifted RefUK to be a largely libertarian, anti lockdown, low tax, small government party rather than just a vehicle against immigration post Brexit, making it more respectable for mainstream right voters to consider if they think Boris is too statist and authoritarian
Strange how there's a big overlap between anti-lockdown and anti-migrant sentiment but there does seem to be.
Dont think there is at all. I am very anti lockdown but voted REMAIN and would personally scrap all border controls or aim to do so in a number of years - Its why the last 4 years of politics has been especially depressing for me with Brexit and lockdowns/facemask fetishes
Glad I’m not alone. It’s a lonely political niche at the moment.
Morocco is also suspending maritime passenger transport with France
"Le Maroc a décidé de suspendre le transport maritime de passagers avec la France à partir de dimanche soir, en raison de la recrudescence de l'épidémie de Covid-19, a indiqué un responsable au ministère du Transport #AFP"
The doors are being shut across the world, we may not see them reopened in our lifetime
FFS, stop being so bloody hysterical.
I usually find your posts interesting, but you are absolutely addicted to attention: you get it by spreading hyperbole and panic.
Morocco is also suspending maritime passenger transport with France
"Le Maroc a décidé de suspendre le transport maritime de passagers avec la France à partir de dimanche soir, en raison de la recrudescence de l'épidémie de Covid-19, a indiqué un responsable au ministère du Transport #AFP"
The doors are being shut across the world, we may not see them reopened in our lifetime
That's disappointing. I was expecting to live beyond the first half of 2022.
Not with OMICRON, THE KING OF VIRUSES, FOR IT IS HE
The way Morocco is reacting (et al), I reckon they will tell is in about a week that OMICRON THE KING OF ETC ETC has a CFR of 80-90%, and a R number of 329, meaning everyone in the world will be dead or on a ventilator by Boxing Day
I am trying to work out which is more dull, the world bore draw due to super computer championship of Chess or the Beatles documentary.
Dunno. Does the Beatles documentary consist of exactly the same piece of footage repeated fourteen times?
Does the incomplete chorus of the same song being tootled on a guitar inbetween Paul McCartney ordering this lunch count?
Depends on what else (if anything) happens and how often this is repeated. One would need to see the Beatles documentary to offer a truly informed opinion. And no, I'm not volunteering.
NB Chess championship game three ends in a draw. I'm shocked.
I don't see the point of human chess championships now we know that computers can play the game better, more elegantly, more cleverly and creatively
It's a bit like favouring the Paralympics over the Olympics
Or bothering with the 100m when we have sports cars, or the high jump when we have aeroplanes, or darts when we have Kalashnikovs, or .......
Comments
Fair enough. Still 10% positive. Implies millions of active cases in SA
Of course it's right to press on with the boosters. It would be insane not to. If there's a need for an adjusted vaccine then it can be rolled out as fourth shots next Spring.
That plus founder effects in a low prevalence population, and the fact it’s almost certainly been around for longer than a few weeks, and I’m not buying (yet) this idea it’s got some kind of superhuman power.
R0 of endemic COVs is apparently around 7. Immune evasion seems like the most likely reason for outperformance, but so far that’s in a quite unusual population with low vax take up, partial immunity from natural infection, high HIV levels, and history of a previous epidemic of a variant (Beta) that never really took hold elsewhere.
If you have a fair coin and toss it five times, then what are your odds of getting exactly one tail or exactly one head? The answer may surprise you.
There are 32 possible combinations from five coin tosses. Five of those combinations have 1 tail and five of those combinations have only 1 head. So the probability of getting only one head or tail from a fair coin is 10/32 or 31.25%
Only having one of five in a sample is not statistically significant for anything.
I am as Tory as anyone on here but even I recognise you can only stretch the elastic of time in power so far in a democracy
If 10% of SA has active Covid, that’s 6 million cases. The fact that their hospitals aren’t collapsing suggests an awful lot of it is either mild or asymptomatic
Perhaps Covid really is evolving into a sniffle, as we have all hoped these long 20 months past
Funnily enough they tend to go up and down with levels of conflict and repression abroad. Plenty of that about as always, but less than at the height of the Arab Spring, Syrian conflict or ISIS surge.
The world is replete with failed states, totalitarian states and simply illiberal states from which hundreds of millions of people could make a plausible case for asylum. And that's before we get to the tremendous question of how many people will end up attempting to flee havoc induced by climate change. We can't take in limitless numbers, and the electorate doesn't want limitless numbers.
If Labour can't provide plausible reassurance that it isn't in favour of letting in every single hard luck case then voters will draw the obvious conclusion: namely, that if it thinks, looks and acts like an open borders party, it is one.
In other countries it’s sometimes the right, sometimes the left or centre, who are the lockdown sceptics. I think it all depends on political context.
I yearn for the glory days of the 80s and 90s when the puritans and authoritarians were right wing and the lefties were more hedonistic.
Actually, he has broken the pledge - his spokesman says it "no longer stands"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59414460
But it is important to remember that the vast majority who get this virus do not get that ill. Many will not even notice.
1/5 isn't statistical proof for anything.
I think they are of use, when you compare them to previous mid term polls - Running them through Electoral Calculus as if they were the result is where they are of no value whatsoever
No evidence this variant is more infectious in a naive population, but plenty to suggest it has immune evasion properties. That puts it in a similar category to Beta. Maybe best we keep encouraging Delta to spread and outcompete it.
6 months before the last GE he was leader of the party leading the polls
I agree the sample is unrepresentative - but it won’t be totally unrepresentative.
Let’s say 3m Saffers have the bug on these numbers. Classical Covid is meant to hospitalise ~10%, put 2% in ICU, and kill 1%
SA “should have” 300,000 in hospital, 60,000 on ventilators and 30,000 corpses. It doesn’t. Nowhere near
Of course that breakdown is only of those poorly enough to get tested. Yet still an odd anomaly
In short, if Pfizer do elect to develop an Omicron-specific booster then people won't end up getting them until more than six months after the current round of boosters anyway - and I don't imagine that any of the other vaccine developers will be significantly faster. So there's no point in any delay in the hope of something better turning up in the next few weeks.
Take one of the young women who drowned this week. A Kurd, engaged to someone already living in Britain, who had been living and working in Germany for 4 years. Then she pays a trafficker to put her on an unsafe boat in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world on a freezing winter night.
A refugee? Not if the story that she had been living and working in Germany for 4 years is true. Desperate? Apparently so. But I would like to know more about why she chose this route and not a more official route. It is an awful tragedy certainly. But it would be better if people like her were simply treated as people who want to live in Britain and have to apply in the normal legal way from Germany rather than be treated as refugees or castigated as evil migrants. We should I think state that all applications should be made from the country in which you are living not in Britain. And that seeking to get into Britain illegally will stymie any legal application no matter how worthy.
https://twitter.com/WilliamsRacing/status/1464962458582462464
Clearly all their scientific advisors are extremely worried. Now they might all be wrong, but we haven't seen this sort of reaction during the whole pandemic, where every major government acts in a very similar way basically at the same time.
That kind of thing. Fits in well with new age and neo-pagan beliefs.
Either the NHS is using resources on anti-vaxxers instead of on other patients or its continual whine about being 'overrun with anti-vaxxers' is a lie to shift blame from its own failings.
The same might happen at Westminster. If, for example, the voters were to believe that a Labour-led government would take Britain back into the EU, either openly or by stealth, then the Tories would likely retain sufficient support from Leavers to keep them in government, until Labour managed to persuade the voters otherwise. This is not wholly implausible, because there are doubtless many Remainers who are not reconciled to the status quo, and would want Labour to campaign to rejoin.
That's the sort of scenario that could produce indefinite Conservative government at Westminster. There may be others.
What is very obvious is that we could find as many as we wanted who were eligible for asylum in the Syrian refugee camps in a heart beat if we had any desire at all to do so.
1. Will you place any numerical limits on the number who will be allowed in via safe and legal routes?
2. If yes, what is that number and how is it consistent with Britain's obligations under various international treaties?
3. If no, will you accept everyone who is deemed to be eligible for asylum?
4. If yes to question 3, how will you ensure that the burden as well as the benefits of this increase and change in population will be fairly shared by all parts and of and classes in the country?
Labour didn't really have credible answers on this when it came to FoM. It needs to have them in relation to asylum seekers.
My view is that it would be more honest to treat them all as migrants and have an honest conversation with voters about who is let in, why and the costs/benefits of doing so. And at the same time making it clear to potential migrants that their desire to live in Britain is not the determining factor and not all who want this will get it.
In the absence of any sort of honesty we will go from muddle to fierce noises to inadequate enforcement to emotional spasms and back again, based on whatever pictures make the front pages of newspapers. It is a mess.
It reminds me of early Wuhan. What got me worried there was not the disease itself but the way the Chinese reacted. Putting 60m people in hard quarantine. Stapling families into apartments. The Chinese had access to the best data and they were crapping themselves
The immediate global spasm over Omicron is eerily similar. Of course it still might be a mad global crapping-of-pants, and hysterical panic. But hmmm
From the above, LN is playing "plague on all your houses games", whilst trying to sound above the fray.
That does not seem to me a fair representation of BY sending M. Macron a reasonable letter. and Macron throwing another tantrum.
I would say that M Macron has started his manoeuvrings to get French positinos adopted as EU positions in Q1Q1 of 2022. No idea how that will go.
The former home secretary, 74, said he remained a supporter of the BBC but said Radio 4 was shooting itself in the foot with 'miserable' programmes droning on about 'identity politics'.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10250905/Right-Radio-4-needs-stop-taking-core-audience-granted-says-Lord-Blunkett.html
Sounds like what Nick Palmer would call a far right individual these days. Hard to believe he was big part of the socialist republic of Sheffield.
I’m not sure anyone knows enough yet, and some applying if precautionary principle probably makes sense, but the panic doesn’t feel very rational to me.
1931 518 615 84.2%
Whatever the Tories did in 1931 they should try doing again.
Someone who got 35 more years of life than could reasonably have been expected, after that horrific crash.
I hope he's running in heaven along with Ginny.
I am totally unaware of the history of this period. The only Labour split I was aware of was the SDP one.
"Le Maroc a décidé de suspendre le transport maritime de passagers avec la France à partir de dimanche soir, en raison de la recrudescence de l'épidémie de Covid-19, a indiqué un responsable au ministère du Transport #AFP"
The doors are being shut across the world, we may not see them reopened in our lifetime
NB Chess championship game three ends in a draw. I'm shocked.
That is grotesquely unfair
Covid is imposing brutally hard choices, this may in the end be one of them. No vax, no treatment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Government_(1931)
Apparently 1931 was the last GE not held on a thursday, and since the Tories got 470 seats perhaps they should have let the 2019 GE take place on a different day as the opposition attempt to do (for reasons I really cannot recall).
It's a bit like favouring the Paralympics over the Olympics
Where is this Chess Championship available?
I usually find your posts interesting, but you are absolutely addicted to attention: you get it by spreading hyperbole and panic.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-10250285/Russell-Brand-pours-money-pub-comedian-wife-Laura-snap-16th-Century-inn.html
The way Morocco is reacting (et al), I reckon they will tell is in about a week that OMICRON THE KING OF ETC ETC has a CFR of 80-90%, and a R number of 329, meaning everyone in the world will be dead or on a ventilator by Boxing Day
Enjoy that turkey