Some remarkable figures there - 40% of 2019 Con voters say they are not fit for office...
Starmer still getting only lukewarm support, just looking good compared with Johnson's rating. But I agree with the comment on a previous thread that a lot of the poor "doing well" ratings will melt away if he's objectively doing much better in the polls.
The clinical director Jason Leitch pointed out the attack rate of Omicron was that if 100 people were in the room and there was a single case, at least 50 people would get it.
If this is the level of transmission, no lockdown etc will stop it.
If that is true I don’t see how they can do anything BUT lock us all down very hard. Every office, shop, pub, cafe, house party, dinner party, church service, mosque prayer, concert, is a superspreader
So why haven’t they gone straight to Hard Lockdown?
1. They fear the terrible economic and social damage before Xmas and they are praying for a miracle on “mildness”
2. They now accept lockdowns aren’t enough. It’s here and it will hit us all
Calm yourself.
Can we all take a step back from the repeated "Leon is hysterical" stuff. Based on the reported figures we are in deep shit. That isn't me trying to justify or even welcome another lockdown (as suggested on the last thread) - we do not want that.
But it is what it is, and in the harsh light of day we're facing a meltdown in the NHS. If we do get this Tsunami of cases it doesn't matter that Omicron is no worse than or even milder than Delta - the sheer numbers infected skyrockets hospitalisation or death.
So what do we do? I think I agree with the comments that a lockdown isn't going to contain it - not that we can realistically hope to implement one even if wanted.
Either way, I am off to that London tomorrow. Drink and party. Whilst we still can.
Not yet we're not. We might be but we're not now. We are in fact a long way from that. Let us see how it progresses. As for Leon (and you? Hadn't noticed), would it be helpful if I said Omicron isn't going to affect us in any way whatsoever and there will be precisely no impact on health or NHS services.
Would be ridiculous, right? Because as it stands we don't know what it will do. Will its seeming increased transmissability overwhelm its supposed mildness, or vice versa we just don't know so indulging Leon's hysteria is bad for his health to start with and adds precisely nothing to the debate.
But we DO know. We now have lots of data. The evidence for immune escape is unquestioned. The evidence for greater admissibility is unquestioned. The evidence for mildness v virulence is out there but fiercely disputed
Sure if you want to twiddle your thumbs and talk about something else, to make yourself feel better, knock yourself out
But this is a site for political and general speculation and we will speculate on the ongoing global health crisis, the worst in a century, now clearly entering an ominous new phase
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
If it hits 800k a day then it hits 800k a day. That's 5.6 million people a week. Within a couple of months everyone has had it and life goes on because that's over and done with.
That's the only way to get through this now. It hits however it hits, the NHS copes as well as it can, vaccines do as much as they can, and anyone who dies is mourned but life goes on.
"Life goes on"
Well, yes. Except for those who die, obviously. They've gone on to your nirvanic ultimate freedom ...
What is your 18-month plan?
I don't have one. But if you were to ask me, if we have to, we should buy time. The more time we have, the more people vaxed. The more people boostered. The more treatment drugs we will have. The greater capability we will have to beat this sod. But only if we have to. I am not wedded to the idea of restrictions and lockdowns; neither am I wedded to ignoring the deaths that may occur if we try to go on as normal.
Hopefully Omicron won't be as bad as feared; there's even a possibility it might be relatively 'good' (if its effects are nowhere near as bad as Delta). But we cannot rely on that.
So what's your 18-month plan?
I'll say one thing: I'm blooming glad I don't have to make these decisions.
My 18-month plan is to do sod all. The virus hits whoever it hits we treat anyone we have the capacity to treat, we bury or cremate anyone who dies and life goes on.
We don't need more time to get more people vaccinated, everyone's already been vaccinated who wants to be. The vulnerable should have all been offered their booster by now too. If some antivaxxers get it and die then that's on them. If some of the vulnerable get it despite three jabs and die, then that's just the natural end of their life.
No restrictions, just live as best as we can.
You don't seem to comprehend that life doesn't go on for the thousands/tens of thousands/hundreds of thousands of extra people who die for your freedom.
By that logic we should all stop driving because people die in road accidents.
So I've spoken to a former Vote Leave staffer who knows people who work(ed) for Boris Johnson and others.
The restrictions have been brought in for a couple of reasons.
1) People are going to see family and friends for Christmas, this way they'll be cautious so Christmas won't be the superspreader event.
2) Boris Johnson and others are convinced that given the sheer number of unjabbed and not thrice jabbed the NHS will be overwhelmed this winter. Not just overwhelmed but the NHS will collapse under that sheer weight. The PM and party that oversees the collapse of the NHS will be out of power for decades, like the winter of discontent on speed.
(There are a few other reasons, but minor on their own, but cumulatively...)
If it really is 100 people in a room, 1 has Omicron, 50 get Omicron, I am not sure if that is your reasoning that the proposed plans will ensure this doesn't happen.
I think he might go for the full lockdown.
The only issue is furlough,
If that happens, I imagine Brady will give himself a hernia trying to pick up his postbag. And of course, what will the public reaction be?
Boris stuck between a rock and hard place.
Lets hope that Omicron actually it isn't all that bad and vaccines still do the business.
The public like WFH or being paid to stay at home, they'll love it.
I'm sure if you asked people with children whether they would like schools closed you would get a different view. There are six year olds who have spent a third of their life under some kind of restrictions and the threat of more to come.
You don't need to convince me, my youngest struggled with lockdown a lot last year.
August 2020 as we were preparing him for a return to school he was refusing to leave the house, not even go into the garden, because he was convinced he'd get Covid-19 and kill his grandparents.
A six/seven year old shouldn't have to deal with that.
Ditto my daughters. They hate lockdown; one of them is, I fear, permanently damaged by it. I HATE LOCKDOWN
No one on here apart from, maybe, a few selfish introverted freaks actually wants another lockdown. Lockdowns are HIDEOUS and inhuman
But the reality is dawning that one form of lockdown, or another, is probably coming. Denying this is futile
And the tragedy is that, once you acknowledge that more restrictions are a'coming (because it's much easier to say "let the Covidiots die" in the abstract than to actually let them die) then the evidence is that it's better not to hang around, but buckle up and hunker down. If a nation waits, it ends up locking down harder for longer overall. And more people die.
It's a painful, expensive, miserable way to buy time. But right now, that might be what we need.
Buy time for what?
We've done vaccines. What are we buying time for?
Well in theory March/April for omicron specific vaccines.
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
.
Well said Nick.
For once I am actually on the Government's side, they were right to put restrictions in and they acted quickly. They have my credit for that.
They can put what restrictions they like out, I and many others are just going to stick two fingers up and ignore them. Tesco's today less than 40% mask wearing I would estimate. All those going restrictions are popular look at polls are ignoring that what people do and what they say are often different.
But there's not much you can do if they shutter all non essential business. No pubs, caffs, restos. I guess you can have sneaky parties in your friends' houses, but you might be surprised how many of your friends will be scared and say No
It is human psychology. The contagion of fear
It must be difficult living on your own because you have no sense of perspective. And I don't make light of that at all.
But in the social world I can tell you that very few people are scared in that way.
Why I am inviting 20 people to my bungalow this very Saturday for some medium sweet white wine, cheese cubes, and a vol au vent. None has cancelled despite my asking if they were happy to come.
Regarding the effects of repeated lockdowns on young children.
I know I am going to be accused of being callous here but I can't help thinking of my Mum, who was born in 1937 in Islington (when it was a slum).
By the time she was nine she had been evacuated (twice) to live with strangers, bombed out, been to six(!) different, or should I say indifferent, schools, lived on poverty rations, next to no posessions, hand-me-down clothes, etc. etc.
She and her cohort who had suffered similarly all survived and most became functioning adults, parents, grandparents etc.
Were kids tougher then?
American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has long talked about this. How over-protection is having a negative effect on young people ability to deal with uncomfortable events.
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
How about go fuck yourself.
There's a start without asterisks.
I think I have made my views quite clear and I am grateful that you should have responded to me after telling me you were going to ignore me. I can also live with you not responding to me.
Haven't you got some mice in Xinjiang to save?
Calm
Down
I'm perfectly calm. Sanctimonious meta-commentators ("If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.") irritate the fuck out of me, however.
Glad to hear you are calm. As I said on another post NOBODY wants more lockdown and more Covid and more health / life / business disasters. And the numbers with Omicron might not make sense trying to impose them - will it stop what TSE's contacts said? And would this government be able to get people to listen even if it did.
We all need to take a breath and abandon our previous defensive positions. When the facts change, change your mind. What you or I want doesn't matter. What we're going to get will likely fuck everyone off. Best that we all stop tearing chunks off each other for something outside of anyone's control.
The previous positions we have is that everyone suffered severely throughout lockdown.
So now we have something new in front of us which none of us know much about. Hence my point to Leon to about his we are all doomed posts. They serve no purpose and all we can do is wait and see. Is all I've ever said.
Understood. And what we know is that the medical powers that be need until at least next week to model this one out. They said that at the start if this week, so we know that things being announced this week are a bit premature. However, whats also clear is that the work in progress data looks worse and worse as the days go on and the data builds and models.
If you aren't concerned by the doubling in a week (and accelerating) stat or the 50% of people in contact get infected model then will anything alarm you?
As I said in a post earlier even Philip will voluntarily lock himself and his family down if the TSE's mates scenario plays out.
Regarding the effects of repeated lockdowns on young children.
I know I am going to be accused of being callous here but I can't help thinking of my Mum, who was born in 1937 in Islington (when it was a slum).
By the time she was nine she had been evacuated (twice) to live with strangers, bombed out, been to six(!) different, or should I say indifferent, schools, lived on poverty rations, next to no posessions, hand-me-down clothes, etc. etc.
She and her cohort who had suffered similarly all survived and most became functioning adults, parents, grandparents etc.
Crumbs it is febrile on here today. Normally rational posters on all sides accusing others of things they never said. Hysterical calls to CALM DOWN! When @Leon is the one doing the "well on the one hand...but on the other" bit, we know summat is up. And. I think we all, deep down know what it is.
Boris is in the shit. Possibly terminally. What will he reach for? What he always does. Something to please the focus groups. This time his Party might not wear it. But he might have to risk it. My money is on Plan C. Announced after Hof C rises on Tuesday.
Nice of you to notice I am actually the voice of sweet soothing reason, however I think your point is nonsense
This Omicron panic is not being stirred to help Boris. Listen to the scientists. Listen to Sturgeon: why is she telling Scots not to have Christmas, and warning them clearly of further lockdowns, does she want to distract from partygate?
It is pure coincidence. A lot of very bad news has arrived, re Omicron. at the same time as Boris is mired in scandal. Does it help him? Maybe, maybe not. But this is not causal
So I've spoken to a former Vote Leave staffer who knows people who work(ed) for Boris Johnson and others.
The restrictions have been brought in for a couple of reasons.
1) People are going to see family and friends for Christmas, this way they'll be cautious so Christmas won't be the superspreader event.
2) Boris Johnson and others are convinced that given the sheer number of unjabbed and not thrice jabbed the NHS will be overwhelmed this winter. Not just overwhelmed but the NHS will collapse under that sheer weight. The PM and party that oversees the collapse of the NHS will be out of power for decades, like the winter of discontent on speed.
(There are a few other reasons, but minor on their own, but cumulatively...)
If it really is 100 people in a room, 1 has Omicron, 50 get Omicron, I am not sure if that is your reasoning that the proposed plans will ensure this doesn't happen.
I think he might go for the full lockdown.
The only issue is furlough,
If that happens, I imagine Brady will give himself a hernia trying to pick up his postbag. And of course, what will the public reaction be?
Boris stuck between a rock and hard place.
Lets hope that Omicron actually it isn't all that bad and vaccines still do the business.
The public like WFH or being paid to stay at home, they'll love it.
I'm sure if you asked people with children whether they would like schools closed you would get a different view. There are six year olds who have spent a third of their life under some kind of restrictions and the threat of more to come.
You don't need to convince me, my youngest struggled with lockdown a lot last year.
August 2020 as we were preparing him for a return to school he was refusing to leave the house, not even go into the garden, because he was convinced he'd get Covid-19 and kill his grandparents.
A six/seven year old shouldn't have to deal with that.
Ditto my daughters. They hate lockdown; one of them is, I fear, permanently damaged by it. I HATE LOCKDOWN
No one on here apart from, maybe, a few selfish introverted freaks actually wants another lockdown. Lockdowns are HIDEOUS and inhuman
But the reality is dawning that one form of lockdown, or another, is probably coming. Denying this is futile
So SA does not have a lockdown because hospitals are not overwhelmed at all yet we have a full lockdown in the UK?
More good news:
Dr Joe Phaala (SA Health Minister) says it now appears that, like previous variants, omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children.
“Early data from hospital surveillance, also reports from public and private hospitals, indicate that admissions are largely in children admitted for other reasons, and then tested positive and for very short durations.”
Are you posting the SA stuff because you think we're on opposite sides, that you can prove us wrong? Read your last post - Omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children. If that is how it plays here that is truly fantastic news.
Do you think we are on the opposite side of this debate to you? That we want death and chaos and destruction? Its the *opposite*. My 10 year old daughter had Covid last weekend. She burned (mid 38s), was delirious, scared, broken. It was grim to watch. So if the SA experience shows that other parents will not have to watch their own infected kids go from grim to dead, that is bloody brilliant.
As I have said a few times, we all need to drop this adversarial shit.
Im sorry I just don't understand the panic thats happening, when the evidence from SA shows that there is no need.
If SA hospitals were full of people on oxygen then yes there would be a need to panic, but they are not.
SA is not in a panic and they are 3-4 weeks ahead of us and they have no plans for any restrictions.
We’re over 2 weeks from South Africa’s initial announcement and of course they didn’t find it immediately. Given the silly R rate of this variant and the apparently shorter incubation period, one would think that if we get to next weekend without any major health crisis in SA then the most extreme predictions still aired on here and elsewhere can be put to bed.
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
.
Well said Nick.
For once I am actually on the Government's side, they were right to put restrictions in and they acted quickly. They have my credit for that.
They can put what restrictions they like out, I and many others are just going to stick two fingers up and ignore them. Tesco's today less than 40% mask wearing I would estimate. All those going restrictions are popular look at polls are ignoring that what people do and what they say are often different.
But there's not much you can do if they shutter all non essential business. No pubs, caffs, restos. I guess you can have sneaky parties in your friends' houses, but you might be surprised how many of your friends will be scared and say No
It is human psychology. The contagion of fear
It must be difficult living on your own because you have no sense of perspective. And I don't make light of that at all.
But in the social world I can tell you that very few people are scared in that way.
Why I am inviting 20 people to my bungalow this very Saturday for some medium sweet white wine, cheese cubes, and a vol au vent. None has cancelled despite my asking if they were happy to come.
I have a very active social life, normally. Lots of friends. But yes I see them outside my flat, in pubs, restaurants, around the world, anywhere
So I am not happy about another lockdown, esp in winter, it was fucking shit last time, and worse for my kids
But I am the one with the calm perspective here. You veer between "all we can do is wait and see" and then screaming "fuck off" to Nick Palmer and calling everyone "hysterical C*nts". I know you are frightened more than you can admit, because you are not the sort to admit weakness. That must be tough, too
Regarding the effects of repeated lockdowns on young children.
I know I am going to be accused of being callous here but I can't help thinking of my Mum, who was born in 1937 in Islington (when it was a slum).
By the time she was nine she had been evacuated (twice) to live with strangers, bombed out, been to six(!) different, or should I say indifferent, schools, lived on poverty rations, next to no posessions, hand-me-down clothes, etc. etc.
She and her cohort who had suffered similarly all survived and most became functioning adults, parents, grandparents etc.
Were kids tougher then?
They probably were. A lot of them were working by 14 so they had to grow up fast. On the other hand, I think it is well recognised that things like evacuation and the long absence of fathers led to a lot of undiagnosed trauma. Our kids did OK during lockdown, but the youngest who was less able to socialise remotely definitely suffered - she even got a little tic in her eye for a while. I felt very sorry for her.
Have I missed some data today about how severe omicron is? Or a sudden spike in hospitalisation in the UK? I think people have gone mad. We have a well vaccinated population that has also been exposed to lots of covid (mostly delta). Most people will not get very ill. We are NOT back in December 2020, with a totally unvaccinated population.
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
How about go fuck yourself.
There's a start without asterisks.
I think I have made my views quite clear and I am grateful that you should have responded to me after telling me you were going to ignore me. I can also live with you not responding to me.
Haven't you got some mice in Xinjiang to save?
Calm
Down
I'm perfectly calm. Sanctimonious meta-commentators ("If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.") irritate the fuck out of me, however.
Glad to hear you are calm. As I said on another post NOBODY wants more lockdown and more Covid and more health / life / business disasters. And the numbers with Omicron might not make sense trying to impose them - will it stop what TSE's contacts said? And would this government be able to get people to listen even if it did.
We all need to take a breath and abandon our previous defensive positions. When the facts change, change your mind. What you or I want doesn't matter. What we're going to get will likely fuck everyone off. Best that we all stop tearing chunks off each other for something outside of anyone's control.
The previous positions we have is that everyone suffered severely throughout lockdown.
So now we have something new in front of us which none of us know much about. Hence my point to Leon to about his we are all doomed posts. They serve no purpose and all we can do is wait and see. Is all I've ever said.
Understood. And what we know is that the medical powers that be need until at least next week to model this one out. They said that at the start if this week, so we know that things being announced this week are a bit premature. However, whats also clear is that the work in progress data looks worse and worse as the days go on and the data builds and models.
If you aren't concerned by the doubling in a week (and accelerating) stat or the 50% of people in contact get infected model then will anything alarm you?
As I said in a post earlier even Philip will voluntarily lock himself and his family down if the TSE's mates scenario plays out.
We are back to cases. Let's keep a close eye on hospitalisations. Now of course if there are zillions of cases then a smaller percentage of hospitalisations will be a lot of hospitalisations. Thing is we just don't know. Nor does anyone else.
@NerysHughes keeps on posting stats from SA and I have no idea whether they should give us hope or are a red herring. Neither does anyone else and to try to extrapolate a trend with hugely noisy literally single digit sample sizes is bonkers.
The clinical director Jason Leitch pointed out the attack rate of Omicron was that if 100 people were in the room and there was a single case, at least 50 people would get it.
If this is the level of transmission, no lockdown etc will stop it.
If that is true I don’t see how they can do anything BUT lock us all down very hard. Every office, shop, pub, cafe, house party, dinner party, church service, mosque prayer, concert, is a superspreader
So why haven’t they gone straight to Hard Lockdown?
1. They fear the terrible economic and social damage before Xmas and they are praying for a miracle on “mildness”
2. They now accept lockdowns aren’t enough. It’s here and it will hit us all
Calm yourself.
Can we all take a step back from the repeated "Leon is hysterical" stuff. Based on the reported figures we are in deep shit. That isn't me trying to justify or even welcome another lockdown (as suggested on the last thread) - we do not want that.
But it is what it is, and in the harsh light of day we're facing a meltdown in the NHS. If we do get this Tsunami of cases it doesn't matter that Omicron is no worse than or even milder than Delta - the sheer numbers infected skyrockets hospitalisation or death.
So what do we do? I think I agree with the comments that a lockdown isn't going to contain it - not that we can realistically hope to implement one even if wanted.
Either way, I am off to that London tomorrow. Drink and party. Whilst we still can.
Not yet we're not. We might be but we're not now. We are in fact a long way from that. Let us see how it progresses. As for Leon (and you? Hadn't noticed), would it be helpful if I said Omicron isn't going to affect us in any way whatsoever and there will be precisely no impact on health or NHS services.
Would be ridiculous, right? Because as it stands we don't know what it will do. Will its seeming increased transmissability overwhelm its supposed mildness, or vice versa we just don't know so indulging Leon's hysteria is bad for his health to start with and adds precisely nothing to the debate.
But we DO know. We now have lots of data. The evidence for immune escape is unquestioned. The evidence for greater admissibility is unquestioned. The evidence for mildness v virulence is out there but fiercely disputed
Sure if you want to twiddle your thumbs and talk about something else, to make yourself feel better, knock yourself out
But this is a site for political and general speculation and we will speculate on the ongoing global health crisis, the worst in a century, now clearly entering an ominous new phase
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
If it hits 800k a day then it hits 800k a day. That's 5.6 million people a week. Within a couple of months everyone has had it and life goes on because that's over and done with.
That's the only way to get through this now. It hits however it hits, the NHS copes as well as it can, vaccines do as much as they can, and anyone who dies is mourned but life goes on.
"Life goes on"
Well, yes. Except for those who die, obviously. They've gone on to your nirvanic ultimate freedom ...
What is your 18-month plan?
I don't have one. But if you were to ask me, if we have to, we should buy time. The more time we have, the more people vaxed. The more people boostered. The more treatment drugs we will have. The greater capability we will have to beat this sod. But only if we have to. I am not wedded to the idea of restrictions and lockdowns; neither am I wedded to ignoring the deaths that may occur if we try to go on as normal.
Hopefully Omicron won't be as bad as feared; there's even a possibility it might be relatively 'good' (if its effects are nowhere near as bad as Delta). But we cannot rely on that.
So what's your 18-month plan?
I'll say one thing: I'm blooming glad I don't have to make these decisions.
My 18-month plan is to do sod all. The virus hits whoever it hits we treat anyone we have the capacity to treat, we bury or cremate anyone who dies and life goes on.
We don't need more time to get more people vaccinated, everyone's already been vaccinated who wants to be. The vulnerable should have all been offered their booster by now too. If some antivaxxers get it and die then that's on them. If some of the vulnerable get it despite three jabs and die, then that's just the natural end of their life.
No restrictions, just live as best as we can.
Nice of you to sign off on a proper burial or cremation for everyone who succumbs. I was going to slag off your 'plan' as both brainless and heartless before I saw that bit. The Good Lord is in the detail sometimes.
So I've spoken to a former Vote Leave staffer who knows people who work(ed) for Boris Johnson and others.
The restrictions have been brought in for a couple of reasons.
1) People are going to see family and friends for Christmas, this way they'll be cautious so Christmas won't be the superspreader event.
2) Boris Johnson and others are convinced that given the sheer number of unjabbed and not thrice jabbed the NHS will be overwhelmed this winter. Not just overwhelmed but the NHS will collapse under that sheer weight. The PM and party that oversees the collapse of the NHS will be out of power for decades, like the winter of discontent on speed.
(There are a few other reasons, but minor on their own, but cumulatively...)
If it really is 100 people in a room, 1 has Omicron, 50 get Omicron, I am not sure if that is your reasoning that the proposed plans will ensure this doesn't happen.
I think he might go for the full lockdown.
The only issue is furlough,
If that happens, I imagine Brady will give himself a hernia trying to pick up his postbag. And of course, what will the public reaction be?
Boris stuck between a rock and hard place.
Lets hope that Omicron actually it isn't all that bad and vaccines still do the business.
The public like WFH or being paid to stay at home, they'll love it.
I'm sure if you asked people with children whether they would like schools closed you would get a different view. There are six year olds who have spent a third of their life under some kind of restrictions and the threat of more to come.
You don't need to convince me, my youngest struggled with lockdown a lot last year.
August 2020 as we were preparing him for a return to school he was refusing to leave the house, not even go into the garden, because he was convinced he'd get Covid-19 and kill his grandparents.
A six/seven year old shouldn't have to deal with that.
Ditto my daughters. They hate lockdown; one of them is, I fear, permanently damaged by it. I HATE LOCKDOWN
No one on here apart from, maybe, a few selfish introverted freaks actually wants another lockdown. Lockdowns are HIDEOUS and inhuman
But the reality is dawning that one form of lockdown, or another, is probably coming. Denying this is futile
So SA does not have a lockdown because hospitals are not overwhelmed at all yet we have a full lockdown in the UK?
More good news:
Dr Joe Phaala (SA Health Minister) says it now appears that, like previous variants, omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children.
“Early data from hospital surveillance, also reports from public and private hospitals, indicate that admissions are largely in children admitted for other reasons, and then tested positive and for very short durations.”
So I've spoken to a former Vote Leave staffer who knows people who work(ed) for Boris Johnson and others.
The restrictions have been brought in for a couple of reasons.
1) People are going to see family and friends for Christmas, this way they'll be cautious so Christmas won't be the superspreader event.
2) Boris Johnson and others are convinced that given the sheer number of unjabbed and not thrice jabbed the NHS will be overwhelmed this winter. Not just overwhelmed but the NHS will collapse under that sheer weight. The PM and party that oversees the collapse of the NHS will be out of power for decades, like the winter of discontent on speed.
(There are a few other reasons, but minor on their own, but cumulatively...)
If it really is 100 people in a room, 1 has Omicron, 50 get Omicron, I am not sure if that is your reasoning that the proposed plans will ensure this doesn't happen.
I think he might go for the full lockdown.
The only issue is furlough,
If that happens, I imagine Brady will give himself a hernia trying to pick up his postbag. And of course, what will the public reaction be?
Boris stuck between a rock and hard place.
Lets hope that Omicron actually it isn't all that bad and vaccines still do the business.
The public like WFH or being paid to stay at home, they'll love it.
I'm sure if you asked people with children whether they would like schools closed you would get a different view. There are six year olds who have spent a third of their life under some kind of restrictions and the threat of more to come.
You don't need to convince me, my youngest struggled with lockdown a lot last year.
August 2020 as we were preparing him for a return to school he was refusing to leave the house, not even go into the garden, because he was convinced he'd get Covid-19 and kill his grandparents.
A six/seven year old shouldn't have to deal with that.
Absolutely and I really feel for him. It must be awful, unbelievably so.
The government imo has contributed greatly (I will stop short of saying intentionally) to the anxiety and mental health damage of millions of people for largely political reasons. ie they have thought about how it will all "play" rather than the totality of peoples' mental, physical health.
It can't go on. I don't want one person to die that shouldn't die but we simply cannot have the continued shadow of these restrictions or the threat of them.
Absolutely. We are are perennially either under restrictions or threatened by them. That's an impossible way to live. And my best wishes to @TheScreamingEagles 's son. The effect of this on the young is tragic, for a virus that barely affects them.
We're back to how a government keeps order and provides basic services. TSE's contacts said the government have seen figures where the NHS collapses. Lets play the scenario - Omipox is everywhere, surgeries and hospitals have people dying in the carpark. People would take matters into their own hands - you seriously saying you Philip, TOPPING et al will be carrying on as if life is normal?
This is why SAGE had a psychologist on it. They need to understand how people will behave. And I don't think for one second that anyone is imposing restrictions for shits and giggles, not on this scale.
You keep implying that I and others have a semi over all this, that we are practically cheering on the ending of normal life and the imposition of hell. We really truly are not - the difference is that we are prepared to suffer it if we have to, knowing that if we don't we will all end up doing so anyway.
Eh? I wasn't referring to you in my post if that's what you mean. Those people know who they are without my having to name them.
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
.
Well said Nick.
For once I am actually on the Government's side, they were right to put restrictions in and they acted quickly. They have my credit for that.
They can put what restrictions they like out, I and many others are just going to stick two fingers up and ignore them. Tesco's today less than 40% mask wearing I would estimate. All those going restrictions are popular look at polls are ignoring that what people do and what they say are often different.
But there's not much you can do if they shutter all non essential business. No pubs, caffs, restos. I guess you can have sneaky parties in your friends' houses, but you might be surprised how many of your friends will be scared and say No
It is human psychology. The contagion of fear
It must be difficult living on your own because you have no sense of perspective. And I don't make light of that at all.
But in the social world I can tell you that very few people are scared in that way.
Why I am inviting 20 people to my bungalow this very Saturday for some medium sweet white wine, cheese cubes, and a vol au vent. None has cancelled despite my asking if they were happy to come.
Have I missed some data today about how severe omicron is? Or a sudden spike in hospitalisation in the UK? I think people have gone mad. We have a well vaccinated population that has also been exposed to lots of covid (mostly delta). Most people will not get very ill. We are NOT back in December 2020, with a totally unvaccinated population.
Professor Pantsdown has a new model. Says NHS could collapse under weight of 2x hospitalisations as worst wave.
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
.
Well said Nick.
For once I am actually on the Government's side, they were right to put restrictions in and they acted quickly. They have my credit for that.
They can put what restrictions they like out, I and many others are just going to stick two fingers up and ignore them. Tesco's today less than 40% mask wearing I would estimate. All those going restrictions are popular look at polls are ignoring that what people do and what they say are often different.
But there's not much you can do if they shutter all non essential business. No pubs, caffs, restos. I guess you can have sneaky parties in your friends' houses, but you might be surprised how many of your friends will be scared and say No
It is human psychology. The contagion of fear
It must be difficult living on your own because you have no sense of perspective. And I don't make light of that at all.
But in the social world I can tell you that very few people are scared in that way.
Why I am inviting 20 people to my bungalow this very Saturday for some medium sweet white wine, cheese cubes, and a vol au vent. None has cancelled despite my asking if they were happy to come.
Do you have little pickled onions, bts of pineapple, and cocktail sticks, and some Black Forst Gateau? I'm fascinated.
Have I missed some data today about how severe omicron is? Or a sudden spike in hospitalisation in the UK? I think people have gone mad. We have a well vaccinated population that has also been exposed to lots of covid (mostly delta). Most people will not get very ill. We are NOT back in December 2020, with a totally unvaccinated population.
Professor Pantsdown has a new model. Says NHS could collapse under weight of 2x hospitalisations as worst wave.
I'm sure if you choose the right input variables you can get that outcome.
Johnson's approval rating also plummets to a net -40 with FocalData. That is the level at which leaders should start getting really worried. For reference, a par score midterm is around -30 to -25.
I'm surprised by the CricViz Live Win Probability in the cricket.
Simply, how can Draw be 19%?
The chance of rain is small. And even if there is some, it will likely only have a modest impact. And the days can run long if they lose 30 minutes.
England is still 60-odd behind, with two wickets down.
For a draw to happen, England has to amass a total that Australia doesn't bother chasing, which means they need to get to a lead of 250-300, and Australia only has two (maybe two and a half) sessions to get there. That means they need to bat until midway through the morning on the fifth day. That's almost four more sessions, scoring at a decent run rate. And then Australia has to not be bowled out.
Regarding the effects of repeated lockdowns on young children.
I know I am going to be accused of being callous here but I can't help thinking of my Mum, who was born in 1937 in Islington (when it was a slum).
By the time she was nine she had been evacuated (twice) to live with strangers, bombed out, been to six(!) different, or should I say indifferent, schools, lived on poverty rations, next to no posessions, hand-me-down clothes, etc. etc.
She and her cohort who had suffered similarly all survived and most became functioning adults, parents, grandparents etc.
Were kids tougher then?
I guess they always had lots of other kids to play and mix with. It's the social isolation of lockdown that makes it so hard, and makes comparisons with WWII odious. I can read my Grandad's autobiography about WWII, and there's so much there about the other people he spent time with - he met my Grandma, fell in love and married her during the course of the war for example - and that's very different to being forced to stay at home, and not seeing anyone from outside your household, except when trying to keep your distance from dog-walkers in the park.
Regarding the effects of repeated lockdowns on young children.
I know I am going to be accused of being callous here but I can't help thinking of my Mum, who was born in 1937 in Islington (when it was a slum).
By the time she was nine she had been evacuated (twice) to live with strangers, bombed out, been to six(!) different, or should I say indifferent, schools, lived on poverty rations, next to no posessions, hand-me-down clothes, etc. etc.
She and her cohort who had suffered similarly all survived and most became functioning adults, parents, grandparents etc.
Have I missed some data today about how severe omicron is? Or a sudden spike in hospitalisation in the UK? I think people have gone mad. We have a well vaccinated population that has also been exposed to lots of covid (mostly delta). Most people will not get very ill. We are NOT back in December 2020, with a totally unvaccinated population.
Professor Pantsdown has a new model. Says NHS could collapse under weight of 2x hospitalisations as worst wave.
I recall other models over the summer for the re-opening that were a long way from the outcome.
Regarding the effects of repeated lockdowns on young children.
I know I am going to be accused of being callous here but I can't help thinking of my Mum, who was born in 1937 in Islington (when it was a slum).
By the time she was nine she had been evacuated (twice) to live with strangers, bombed out, been to six(!) different, or should I say indifferent, schools, lived on poverty rations, next to no posessions, hand-me-down clothes, etc. etc.
She and her cohort who had suffered similarly all survived and most became functioning adults, parents, grandparents etc.
Were kids tougher then?
Can I offer an opinion. I'm a year younger than your Mum, lived in significantly better conditions and wasn't evacuated. The rations were what 'they' said they were; everyone had the same. I recall bombs though; a house in the next road to our school was bombed, and one or two children from school killed, and we saw 'doodle-bugs' from the playground.
I suggest that the difference between then and now is that we went out to school; I recall getting the bus three, or was it four, stops with half a dozen other small boys, all playing out together 'playtime. After school we came home and played out on 'the field'. We weren't locked in our houses.
Have I missed some data today about how severe omicron is? Or a sudden spike in hospitalisation in the UK? I think people have gone mad. We have a well vaccinated population that has also been exposed to lots of covid (mostly delta). Most people will not get very ill. We are NOT back in December 2020, with a totally unvaccinated population.
Professor Pantsdown has a new model. Says NHS could collapse under weight of 2x hospitalisations as worst wave.
I'm sure if you choose the right input variables you can get that outcome.
It is clear from Sturgeon and Drakefords press conferences they have been briefed it is going to be bad. Now if the modellers are wrong (again) that's a different matter.
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
.
Well said Nick.
For once I am actually on the Government's side, they were right to put restrictions in and they acted quickly. They have my credit for that.
They can put what restrictions they like out, I and many others are just going to stick two fingers up and ignore them. Tesco's today less than 40% mask wearing I would estimate. All those going restrictions are popular look at polls are ignoring that what people do and what they say are often different.
But there's not much you can do if they shutter all non essential business. No pubs, caffs, restos. I guess you can have sneaky parties in your friends' houses, but you might be surprised how many of your friends will be scared and say No
It is human psychology. The contagion of fear
It must be difficult living on your own because you have no sense of perspective. And I don't make light of that at all.
But in the social world I can tell you that very few people are scared in that way.
Why I am inviting 20 people to my bungalow this very Saturday for some medium sweet white wine, cheese cubes, and a vol au vent. None has cancelled despite my asking if they were happy to come.
It must be difficult being so stupid. And I don't make light of that at all.
Regarding the effects of repeated lockdowns on young children.
I know I am going to be accused of being callous here but I can't help thinking of my Mum, who was born in 1937 in Islington (when it was a slum).
By the time she was nine she had been evacuated (twice) to live with strangers, bombed out, been to six(!) different, or should I say indifferent, schools, lived on poverty rations, next to no posessions, hand-me-down clothes, etc. etc.
She and her cohort who had suffered similarly all survived and most became functioning adults, parents, grandparents etc.
Were kids tougher then?
"all survived"
Well thank goodness for that. People digest experiences and if we are talking percentages I'm willing to bet that a non-trivial proportion of those wartime children were badly damaged.
I still think back, for example, to the Protect and Survive era, which I lived through, as being deeply anxiety-inducing.
But if we are comparing this virus to wartime Britain then that is of course in itself imo a less relevant comparison.
So I've spoken to a former Vote Leave staffer who knows people who work(ed) for Boris Johnson and others.
The restrictions have been brought in for a couple of reasons.
1) People are going to see family and friends for Christmas, this way they'll be cautious so Christmas won't be the superspreader event.
2) Boris Johnson and others are convinced that given the sheer number of unjabbed and not thrice jabbed the NHS will be overwhelmed this winter. Not just overwhelmed but the NHS will collapse under that sheer weight. The PM and party that oversees the collapse of the NHS will be out of power for decades, like the winter of discontent on speed.
(There are a few other reasons, but minor on their own, but cumulatively...)
If it really is 100 people in a room, 1 has Omicron, 50 get Omicron, I am not sure if that is your reasoning that the proposed plans will ensure this doesn't happen.
I think he might go for the full lockdown.
The only issue is furlough,
If that happens, I imagine Brady will give himself a hernia trying to pick up his postbag. And of course, what will the public reaction be?
Boris stuck between a rock and hard place.
Lets hope that Omicron actually it isn't all that bad and vaccines still do the business.
The public like WFH or being paid to stay at home, they'll love it.
I'm sure if you asked people with children whether they would like schools closed you would get a different view. There are six year olds who have spent a third of their life under some kind of restrictions and the threat of more to come.
You don't need to convince me, my youngest struggled with lockdown a lot last year.
August 2020 as we were preparing him for a return to school he was refusing to leave the house, not even go into the garden, because he was convinced he'd get Covid-19 and kill his grandparents.
A six/seven year old shouldn't have to deal with that.
Ditto my daughters. They hate lockdown; one of them is, I fear, permanently damaged by it. I HATE LOCKDOWN
No one on here apart from, maybe, a few selfish introverted freaks actually wants another lockdown. Lockdowns are HIDEOUS and inhuman
But the reality is dawning that one form of lockdown, or another, is probably coming. Denying this is futile
So SA does not have a lockdown because hospitals are not overwhelmed at all yet we have a full lockdown in the UK?
More good news:
Dr Joe Phaala (SA Health Minister) says it now appears that, like previous variants, omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children.
“Early data from hospital surveillance, also reports from public and private hospitals, indicate that admissions are largely in children admitted for other reasons, and then tested positive and for very short durations.”
Are you posting the SA stuff because you think we're on opposite sides, that you can prove us wrong? Read your last post - Omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children. If that is how it plays here that is truly fantastic news.
Do you think we are on the opposite side of this debate to you? That we want death and chaos and destruction? Its the *opposite*. My 10 year old daughter had Covid last weekend. She burned (mid 38s), was delirious, scared, broken. It was grim to watch. So if the SA experience shows that other parents will not have to watch their own infected kids go from grim to dead, that is bloody brilliant.
As I have said a few times, we all need to drop this adversarial shit.
Im sorry I just don't understand the panic thats happening, when the evidence from SA shows that there is no need.
If SA hospitals were full of people on oxygen then yes there would be a need to panic, but they are not.
SA is not in a panic and they are 3-4 weeks ahead of us and they have no plans for any restrictions.
What panic? Currently the medical powers that be are gathering the data and modelling the scenarios. Right now they are saying that they don't know enough for panic. But the more data they get (from SA and here and everywhere else) the worse it looks and the bigger the impact on the NHS.
I know you aren't suggesting that the medics here are just making it up because they think lockdown is fun. But what are you suggesting? It can't be that the medics are wrong because they have all the data and experience and training and you have what you have read on Google.
I'm surprised by the CricViz Live Win Probability in the cricket.
Simply, how can Draw be 19%?
The chance of rain is small. And even if there is some, it will likely only have a modest impact. And the days can run long if they lose 30 minutes.
England is still 60-odd behind, with two wickets down.
For a draw to happen, England has to amass a total that Australia doesn't bother chasing, which means they need to get to a lead of 250-300, and Australia only has two (maybe two and a half) sessions to get there. That means they need to bat until midway through the morning on the fifth day. That's almost four more sessions, scoring at a decent run rate. And then Australia has to not be bowled out.
That has to be a 5-10% chance, not a 19% one.
CricViz model is rubbish. The fall of one wicket can regularly have those percentages alter to a ridiculous extent, when its a sport where every ball can be a wicket, so the model should be "smoothing" out the possibilities of such, instead it is regularly a cliff edge.
So I've spoken to a former Vote Leave staffer who knows people who work(ed) for Boris Johnson and others.
The restrictions have been brought in for a couple of reasons.
1) People are going to see family and friends for Christmas, this way they'll be cautious so Christmas won't be the superspreader event.
2) Boris Johnson and others are convinced that given the sheer number of unjabbed and not thrice jabbed the NHS will be overwhelmed this winter. Not just overwhelmed but the NHS will collapse under that sheer weight. The PM and party that oversees the collapse of the NHS will be out of power for decades, like the winter of discontent on speed.
(There are a few other reasons, but minor on their own, but cumulatively...)
If it really is 100 people in a room, 1 has Omicron, 50 get Omicron, I am not sure if that is your reasoning that the proposed plans will ensure this doesn't happen.
I think he might go for the full lockdown.
The only issue is furlough,
If that happens, I imagine Brady will give himself a hernia trying to pick up his postbag. And of course, what will the public reaction be?
Boris stuck between a rock and hard place.
Lets hope that Omicron actually it isn't all that bad and vaccines still do the business.
The public like WFH or being paid to stay at home, they'll love it.
I'm sure if you asked people with children whether they would like schools closed you would get a different view. There are six year olds who have spent a third of their life under some kind of restrictions and the threat of more to come.
You don't need to convince me, my youngest struggled with lockdown a lot last year.
August 2020 as we were preparing him for a return to school he was refusing to leave the house, not even go into the garden, because he was convinced he'd get Covid-19 and kill his grandparents.
A six/seven year old shouldn't have to deal with that.
Ditto my daughters. They hate lockdown; one of them is, I fear, permanently damaged by it. I HATE LOCKDOWN
No one on here apart from, maybe, a few selfish introverted freaks actually wants another lockdown. Lockdowns are HIDEOUS and inhuman
But the reality is dawning that one form of lockdown, or another, is probably coming. Denying this is futile
So SA does not have a lockdown because hospitals are not overwhelmed at all yet we have a full lockdown in the UK?
More good news:
Dr Joe Phaala (SA Health Minister) says it now appears that, like previous variants, omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children.
“Early data from hospital surveillance, also reports from public and private hospitals, indicate that admissions are largely in children admitted for other reasons, and then tested positive and for very short durations.”
Are you posting the SA stuff because you think we're on opposite sides, that you can prove us wrong? Read your last post - Omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children. If that is how it plays here that is truly fantastic news.
Do you think we are on the opposite side of this debate to you? That we want death and chaos and destruction? Its the *opposite*. My 10 year old daughter had Covid last weekend. She burned (mid 38s), was delirious, scared, broken. It was grim to watch. So if the SA experience shows that other parents will not have to watch their own infected kids go from grim to dead, that is bloody brilliant.
As I have said a few times, we all need to drop this adversarial shit.
Im sorry I just don't understand the panic thats happening, when the evidence from SA shows that there is no need.
If SA hospitals were full of people on oxygen then yes there would be a need to panic, but they are not.
SA is not in a panic and they are 3-4 weeks ahead of us and they have no plans for any restrictions.
The elephant in the room. I sense that the South Africans are becoming increasingly frustrated that nobody seems to be listening to them. They might be wrong, of course, or they might be ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra .
Regarding the effects of repeated lockdowns on young children.
I know I am going to be accused of being callous here but I can't help thinking of my Mum, who was born in 1937 in Islington (when it was a slum).
By the time she was nine she had been evacuated (twice) to live with strangers, bombed out, been to six(!) different, or should I say indifferent, schools, lived on poverty rations, next to no posessions, hand-me-down clothes, etc. etc.
She and her cohort who had suffered similarly all survived and most became functioning adults, parents, grandparents etc.
Were kids tougher then?
You have absolutely no way of knowing that "her cohort...all survived, nor of what their lives were like for the ones that did. I mean, how could you? There is for starters a ton of evidence of serious abuse of evacuee children
So I've spoken to a former Vote Leave staffer who knows people who work(ed) for Boris Johnson and others.
The restrictions have been brought in for a couple of reasons.
1) People are going to see family and friends for Christmas, this way they'll be cautious so Christmas won't be the superspreader event.
2) Boris Johnson and others are convinced that given the sheer number of unjabbed and not thrice jabbed the NHS will be overwhelmed this winter. Not just overwhelmed but the NHS will collapse under that sheer weight. The PM and party that oversees the collapse of the NHS will be out of power for decades, like the winter of discontent on speed.
(There are a few other reasons, but minor on their own, but cumulatively...)
If it really is 100 people in a room, 1 has Omicron, 50 get Omicron, I am not sure if that is your reasoning that the proposed plans will ensure this doesn't happen.
I think he might go for the full lockdown.
The only issue is furlough,
If that happens, I imagine Brady will give himself a hernia trying to pick up his postbag. And of course, what will the public reaction be?
Boris stuck between a rock and hard place.
Lets hope that Omicron actually it isn't all that bad and vaccines still do the business.
The public like WFH or being paid to stay at home, they'll love it.
I'm sure if you asked people with children whether they would like schools closed you would get a different view. There are six year olds who have spent a third of their life under some kind of restrictions and the threat of more to come.
You don't need to convince me, my youngest struggled with lockdown a lot last year.
August 2020 as we were preparing him for a return to school he was refusing to leave the house, not even go into the garden, because he was convinced he'd get Covid-19 and kill his grandparents.
A six/seven year old shouldn't have to deal with that.
Ditto my daughters. They hate lockdown; one of them is, I fear, permanently damaged by it. I HATE LOCKDOWN
No one on here apart from, maybe, a few selfish introverted freaks actually wants another lockdown. Lockdowns are HIDEOUS and inhuman
But the reality is dawning that one form of lockdown, or another, is probably coming. Denying this is futile
So SA does not have a lockdown because hospitals are not overwhelmed at all yet we have a full lockdown in the UK?
More good news:
Dr Joe Phaala (SA Health Minister) says it now appears that, like previous variants, omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children.
“Early data from hospital surveillance, also reports from public and private hospitals, indicate that admissions are largely in children admitted for other reasons, and then tested positive and for very short durations.”
Are you posting the SA stuff because you think we're on opposite sides, that you can prove us wrong? Read your last post - Omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children. If that is how it plays here that is truly fantastic news.
Do you think we are on the opposite side of this debate to you? That we want death and chaos and destruction? Its the *opposite*. My 10 year old daughter had Covid last weekend. She burned (mid 38s), was delirious, scared, broken. It was grim to watch. So if the SA experience shows that other parents will not have to watch their own infected kids go from grim to dead, that is bloody brilliant.
As I have said a few times, we all need to drop this adversarial shit.
Im sorry I just don't understand the panic thats happening, when the evidence from SA shows that there is no need.
If SA hospitals were full of people on oxygen then yes there would be a need to panic, but they are not.
SA is not in a panic and they are 3-4 weeks ahead of us and they have no plans for any restrictions.
Nor do I. It’s really odd. I think it’s just another example of the power of narrative.
When Delta arrived in the spring with massive transmissibility increases and in the shadow of a very sharp and deadly epidemic in India, the fear factor was several steps below this one.
I spoke to a colleague in Cape Town this morning. No panic there, though he was stocking up on wine ahead of another feared booze ban.
Regarding the effects of repeated lockdowns on young children.
I know I am going to be accused of being callous here but I can't help thinking of my Mum, who was born in 1937 in Islington (when it was a slum).
By the time she was nine she had been evacuated (twice) to live with strangers, bombed out, been to six(!) different, or should I say indifferent, schools, lived on poverty rations, next to no posessions, hand-me-down clothes, etc. etc.
She and her cohort who had suffered similarly all survived and most became functioning adults, parents, grandparents etc.
Were kids tougher then?
You have absolutely no way of knowing that "her cohort...all survived, nor of what their lives were like for the ones that did. I mean, how could you? There is for starters a ton of evidence of serious abuse of evacuee children
Keir Starmer, Labour's finest leader since Tony Blair
Its a small field. You are very passionate about Labour. That's clear. I think you need to to temper your optimism a bit. Mid term, and the conservatives will not be going into 2024 with Johnson as leader. So far Starmer has not had any scrutiny of what Labour would do with power. Thats fine, no party likes to have the information out there this far out from an election. But at some point, that scrutiny does come. He will need credible politcies. I hope he has them, as no question the country needs the Tories out of power. Once again, too long in government has allowed the arrogance and greed to overcome the need for common sense and decency. Its not all Tories of course, but too many of them.
I'm surprised by the CricViz Live Win Probability in the cricket.
Simply, how can Draw be 19%?
The chance of rain is small. And even if there is some, it will likely only have a modest impact. And the days can run long if they lose 30 minutes.
England is still 60-odd behind, with two wickets down.
For a draw to happen, England has to amass a total that Australia doesn't bother chasing, which means they need to get to a lead of 250-300, and Australia only has two (maybe two and a half) sessions to get there. That means they need to bat until midway through the morning on the fifth day. That's almost four more sessions, scoring at a decent run rate. And then Australia has to not be bowled out.
Have I missed some data today about how severe omicron is? Or a sudden spike in hospitalisation in the UK? I think people have gone mad. We have a well vaccinated population that has also been exposed to lots of covid (mostly delta). Most people will not get very ill. We are NOT back in December 2020, with a totally unvaccinated population.
Professor Pantsdown has a new model. Says NHS could collapse under weight of 2x hospitalisations as worst wave.
I'm sure if you choose the right input variables you can get that outcome.
I have the best model. I am 100% certain that it covers the actual outcome.
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
How about go fuck yourself.
There's a start without asterisks.
I think I have made my views quite clear and I am grateful that you should have responded to me after telling me you were going to ignore me. I can also live with you not responding to me.
Haven't you got some mice in Xinjiang to save?
Calm
Down
I'm perfectly calm. Sanctimonious meta-commentators ("If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.") irritate the fuck out of me, however.
Glad to hear you are calm. As I said on another post NOBODY wants more lockdown and more Covid and more health / life / business disasters. And the numbers with Omicron might not make sense trying to impose them - will it stop what TSE's contacts said? And would this government be able to get people to listen even if it did.
We all need to take a breath and abandon our previous defensive positions. When the facts change, change your mind. What you or I want doesn't matter. What we're going to get will likely fuck everyone off. Best that we all stop tearing chunks off each other for something outside of anyone's control.
The previous positions we have is that everyone suffered severely throughout lockdown.
So now we have something new in front of us which none of us know much about. Hence my point to Leon to about his we are all doomed posts. They serve no purpose and all we can do is wait and see. Is all I've ever said.
Understood. And what we know is that the medical powers that be need until at least next week to model this one out. They said that at the start if this week, so we know that things being announced this week are a bit premature. However, whats also clear is that the work in progress data looks worse and worse as the days go on and the data builds and models.
If you aren't concerned by the doubling in a week (and accelerating) stat or the 50% of people in contact get infected model then will anything alarm you?
As I said in a post earlier even Philip will voluntarily lock himself and his family down if the TSE's mates scenario plays out.
We are back to cases. Let's keep a close eye on hospitalisations. Now of course if there are zillions of cases then a smaller percentage of hospitalisations will be a lot of hospitalisations. Thing is we just don't know. Nor does anyone else.
@NerysHughes keeps on posting stats from SA and I have no idea whether they should give us hope or are a red herring. Neither does anyone else and to try to extrapolate a trend with hugely noisy literally single digit sample sizes is bonkers.
It isn't true to say "neither does anyone else". Nobody on here thats for sure. But the global medical community taking all the data and doing the models? They know enough to be backing away slowly saying "we all need to be very careful"
Going off how on its knees many hospitals already are and how mentally and physically broken many doctors and nurses already are, is the suggestion that their big bosses are falsely shrieking and wailing for no reason because thats good for the functioning of their facilities and their teams?
Have I missed some data today about how severe omicron is? Or a sudden spike in hospitalisation in the UK? I think people have gone mad. We have a well vaccinated population that has also been exposed to lots of covid (mostly delta). Most people will not get very ill. We are NOT back in December 2020, with a totally unvaccinated population.
The way people are behaving is as though we are facing a new novel virus outbreak, rather than a variant of an existing virus. Especially given we now have good lab evidence that with enough pre exposure, the majority will still have sterilising immunity. And judging from South Africa, every reason to be optimistic that the wider immune response in the real world will keep hospitalisations below 2020.
The real question people should be asking, is why after +£1trill being borrowed/printed over the last two years, apparently the only arrow in the government’s arsenal after vaccines is NPI, rather than a new model of structuring and staffing the treatment for infectious disease to allow higher surge throughout of patients.
I'm surprised by the CricViz Live Win Probability in the cricket.
Simply, how can Draw be 19%?
The chance of rain is small. And even if there is some, it will likely only have a modest impact. And the days can run long if they lose 30 minutes.
England is still 60-odd behind, with two wickets down.
For a draw to happen, England has to amass a total that Australia doesn't bother chasing, which means they need to get to a lead of 250-300, and Australia only has two (maybe two and a half) sessions to get there. That means they need to bat until midway through the morning on the fifth day. That's almost four more sessions, scoring at a decent run rate. And then Australia has to not be bowled out.
That has to be a 5-10% chance, not a 19% one.
England batted well today, if with an element of luck. I agree on the needing to bat well into the 13th session (at least) but that's not *too* unreasonable, particularly with two batsmen who've already made 70-80. I don't think that's a 1-in-20 event; I'd put it at 10-12%.
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
.
Well said Nick.
For once I am actually on the Government's side, they were right to put restrictions in and they acted quickly. They have my credit for that.
They can put what restrictions they like out, I and many others are just going to stick two fingers up and ignore them. Tesco's today less than 40% mask wearing I would estimate. All those going restrictions are popular look at polls are ignoring that what people do and what they say are often different.
But there's not much you can do if they shutter all non essential business. No pubs, caffs, restos. I guess you can have sneaky parties in your friends' houses, but you might be surprised how many of your friends will be scared and say No
It is human psychology. The contagion of fear
It must be difficult living on your own because you have no sense of perspective. And I don't make light of that at all.
But in the social world I can tell you that very few people are scared in that way.
Why I am inviting 20 people to my bungalow this very Saturday for some medium sweet white wine, cheese cubes, and a vol au vent. None has cancelled despite my asking if they were happy to come.
I have a very active social life, normally. Lots of friends. But yes I see them outside my flat, in pubs, restaurants, around the world, anywhere
So I am not happy about another lockdown, esp in winter, it was fucking shit last time, and worse for my kids
But I am the one with the calm perspective here. You veer between "all we can do is wait and see" and then screaming "fuck off" to Nick Palmer and calling everyone "hysterical C*nts". I know you are frightened more than you can admit, because you are not the sort to admit weakness. That must be tough, too
LOL.
I shouted at Nick because of this shitshow line: "If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother."
For which he can fuckety fuck right off and can do any time of the year virus or no virus. Patronising mouse rather than human saving c*nt.
Other than that no I am not scared. I am intrigued at the dynamics and see the damage, say, another lockdown or even the threat of another lockdown does to people, not least on this site.
But as I noted earlier, I also understand perfectly well why you catastrophise the virus and I am more than happy to be the "don't be hysterical" voice you so clearly need.
I'm surprised by the CricViz Live Win Probability in the cricket.
Simply, how can Draw be 19%?
The chance of rain is small. And even if there is some, it will likely only have a modest impact. And the days can run long if they lose 30 minutes.
England is still 60-odd behind, with two wickets down.
For a draw to happen, England has to amass a total that Australia doesn't bother chasing, which means they need to get to a lead of 250-300, and Australia only has two (maybe two and a half) sessions to get there. That means they need to bat until midway through the morning on the fifth day. That's almost four more sessions, scoring at a decent run rate. And then Australia has to not be bowled out.
That has to be a 5-10% chance, not a 19% one.
CricViz model is rubbish. The fall of one wicket can regularly have those percentages alter to a ridiculous extent, when its a sport where every ball can be a wicket, so the model should be "smoothing" out the possibilities of such, instead it is regularly a cliff edge.
I don't think its that far off the mark. Get through the first hour and new ball and likely we would be level with 8 wickets in hand. Recall 2010 at the same ground. The wicket is not the same as the first day. Its not impossible to amass 500 from here, and set 250+ to win on the last day. There is a chance of rain.
I think Aus will win. I will not be suprised to wake up tomorrow to defeat already. Early wickets, limp to a lead of 70-80, knocked off by Warner. But the draw is a valid chance.
The clinical director Jason Leitch pointed out the attack rate of Omicron was that if 100 people were in the room and there was a single case, at least 50 people would get it.
If this is the level of transmission, no lockdown etc will stop it.
If that is true I don’t see how they can do anything BUT lock us all down very hard. Every office, shop, pub, cafe, house party, dinner party, church service, mosque prayer, concert, is a superspreader
So why haven’t they gone straight to Hard Lockdown?
1. They fear the terrible economic and social damage before Xmas and they are praying for a miracle on “mildness”
2. They now accept lockdowns aren’t enough. It’s here and it will hit us all
Calm yourself.
Can we all take a step back from the repeated "Leon is hysterical" stuff. Based on the reported figures we are in deep shit. That isn't me trying to justify or even welcome another lockdown (as suggested on the last thread) - we do not want that.
But it is what it is, and in the harsh light of day we're facing a meltdown in the NHS. If we do get this Tsunami of cases it doesn't matter that Omicron is no worse than or even milder than Delta - the sheer numbers infected skyrockets hospitalisation or death.
So what do we do? I think I agree with the comments that a lockdown isn't going to contain it - not that we can realistically hope to implement one even if wanted.
Either way, I am off to that London tomorrow. Drink and party. Whilst we still can.
Not yet we're not. We might be but we're not now. We are in fact a long way from that. Let us see how it progresses. As for Leon (and you? Hadn't noticed), would it be helpful if I said Omicron isn't going to affect us in any way whatsoever and there will be precisely no impact on health or NHS services.
Would be ridiculous, right? Because as it stands we don't know what it will do. Will its seeming increased transmissability overwhelm its supposed mildness, or vice versa we just don't know so indulging Leon's hysteria is bad for his health to start with and adds precisely nothing to the debate.
But we DO know. We now have lots of data. The evidence for immune escape is unquestioned. The evidence for greater admissibility is unquestioned. The evidence for mildness v virulence is out there but fiercely disputed
Sure if you want to twiddle your thumbs and talk about something else, to make yourself feel better, knock yourself out
But this is a site for political and general speculation and we will speculate on the ongoing global health crisis, the worst in a century, now clearly entering an ominous new phase
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
If it hits 800k a day then it hits 800k a day. That's 5.6 million people a week. Within a couple of months everyone has had it and life goes on because that's over and done with.
That's the only way to get through this now. It hits however it hits, the NHS copes as well as it can, vaccines do as much as they can, and anyone who dies is mourned but life goes on.
"Life goes on"
Well, yes. Except for those who die, obviously. They've gone on to your nirvanic ultimate freedom ...
What is your 18-month plan?
I don't have one. But if you were to ask me, if we have to, we should buy time. The more time we have, the more people vaxed. The more people boostered. The more treatment drugs we will have. The greater capability we will have to beat this sod. But only if we have to. I am not wedded to the idea of restrictions and lockdowns; neither am I wedded to ignoring the deaths that may occur if we try to go on as normal.
Hopefully Omicron won't be as bad as feared; there's even a possibility it might be relatively 'good' (if its effects are nowhere near as bad as Delta). But we cannot rely on that.
So what's your 18-month plan?
I'll say one thing: I'm blooming glad I don't have to make these decisions.
My 18-month plan is to do sod all. The virus hits whoever it hits we treat anyone we have the capacity to treat, we bury or cremate anyone who dies and life goes on.
We don't need more time to get more people vaccinated, everyone's already been vaccinated who wants to be. The vulnerable should have all been offered their booster by now too. If some antivaxxers get it and die then that's on them. If some of the vulnerable get it despite three jabs and die, then that's just the natural end of their life.
No restrictions, just live as best as we can.
You don't seem to comprehend that life doesn't go on for the thousands/tens of thousands/hundreds of thousands of extra people who die for your freedom.
By that logic we should all stop driving because people die in road accidents.
No.
If you use that analogy, it's like Philip wants the freedom to drive a supercharged tank the wrong way down a motorway. We spend a fortune in trying to reduce road deaths, restricting people's freedom to (for instance) use a mobile whilst driving.
In addition, road deaths generally don't undergo rapid exponential growth...
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
.
Well said Nick.
For once I am actually on the Government's side, they were right to put restrictions in and they acted quickly. They have my credit for that.
They can put what restrictions they like out, I and many others are just going to stick two fingers up and ignore them. Tesco's today less than 40% mask wearing I would estimate. All those going restrictions are popular look at polls are ignoring that what people do and what they say are often different.
But there's not much you can do if they shutter all non essential business. No pubs, caffs, restos. I guess you can have sneaky parties in your friends' houses, but you might be surprised how many of your friends will be scared and say No
It is human psychology. The contagion of fear
It must be difficult living on your own because you have no sense of perspective. And I don't make light of that at all.
But in the social world I can tell you that very few people are scared in that way.
Why I am inviting 20 people to my bungalow this very Saturday for some medium sweet white wine, cheese cubes, and a vol au vent. None has cancelled despite my asking if they were happy to come.
No pineapple or pickled onions even
It takes too long to put the pineapple chunks on the toothpicks with the cheese. Otherwise of course yes.
Have I missed some data today about how severe omicron is? Or a sudden spike in hospitalisation in the UK? I think people have gone mad. We have a well vaccinated population that has also been exposed to lots of covid (mostly delta). Most people will not get very ill. We are NOT back in December 2020, with a totally unvaccinated population.
The way people are behaving is as though we are facing a new novel virus outbreak, rather than a variant of an existing virus. Especially given we now have good lab evidence that with enough pre exposure, the majority will still have sterilising immunity. And judging from South Africa, every reason to be optimistic that the wider immune response in the real world will keep hospitalisations below 2020.
The real question people should be asking, is why after +£1trill being borrowed/printed over the last two years, apparently the only arrow in the government’s arsenal after vaccines is NPI, rather than a new model of structuring and staffing the treatment for infectious disease to allow higher surge throughout of patients.
THat second para is a fair point, but is there capacity for reorganization given the backlog of non-covid treatment? Remember many, many hospital buildings were sold off and tiny new ones built under PFI to a much lower total capacity.
Little seems to have been said about the mindset of anyone organising a Number 10 party in the sense it's such a trivial thing that why would anyone want to take the risk of it becoming public for such a tiny upside.
It's like a multi-millionaire stealing a packet of fruit pastilles. Why on earth would they bother?
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
.
Well said Nick.
For once I am actually on the Government's side, they were right to put restrictions in and they acted quickly. They have my credit for that.
They can put what restrictions they like out, I and many others are just going to stick two fingers up and ignore them. Tesco's today less than 40% mask wearing I would estimate. All those going restrictions are popular look at polls are ignoring that what people do and what they say are often different.
Yes, I was in Asda this lunchtime and would estimate only around 40-50% mask-wearing (some social groups notably less so than others).
But the rules/requests as proposed are so nuts that the public won't take them seriously anyway: work at home / party with your mates down the pub. How is that in any way consistent. Sure we know why the govt wants it like that - so it doesn't have to bail out businesses again - but it's not saying that (and can't), so the face-value advice makes no sense.
If Labour had any nous, they'd pick up on all that and say they'll only back new restrictions if they're consistent and come with support for those who'll be hit by them. Force the government to choose between probable defeat or jumping to Labour's tune.
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
.
Well said Nick.
For once I am actually on the Government's side, they were right to put restrictions in and they acted quickly. They have my credit for that.
They can put what restrictions they like out, I and many others are just going to stick two fingers up and ignore them. Tesco's today less than 40% mask wearing I would estimate. All those going restrictions are popular look at polls are ignoring that what people do and what they say are often different.
But there's not much you can do if they shutter all non essential business. No pubs, caffs, restos. I guess you can have sneaky parties in your friends' houses, but you might be surprised how many of your friends will be scared and say No
It is human psychology. The contagion of fear
It must be difficult living on your own because you have no sense of perspective. And I don't make light of that at all.
But in the social world I can tell you that very few people are scared in that way.
Why I am inviting 20 people to my bungalow this very Saturday for some medium sweet white wine, cheese cubes, and a vol au vent. None has cancelled despite my asking if they were happy to come.
It must be difficult being so stupid. And I don't make light of that at all.
You and Leon, eh? Who'd have thought it. Two peas in a pod, cerebrally speaking.
Now, our bet!! What are the terms. 800k cases/day by when and how much for the bet?
And some more of my finely balanced commentary, to calm you all down
First the bad news from the UK
"UK may have highest or close to highest level immunity of any country in the world result of very high vaccine acceptance & a lot of transmission (running a hot epidemic see below) & yet now omicron doubling every 2d. Impact of omicron in less immune populations a huge concern"
The image of Topping running around his bungalow in his grey Asda Y fronts telling everyone to "stop being fucking hysterical" as he then swears and spits at Nick Palmer, the councillor for Godalming, is one I shall treasure for the rest of time, or Covid, whichever ends sooner.
Who would have thought a few years ago that we'd be in the same trench, fingering our rifles nervously as we eye the oncoming rampaging Topping?
So I've spoken to a former Vote Leave staffer who knows people who work(ed) for Boris Johnson and others.
The restrictions have been brought in for a couple of reasons.
1) People are going to see family and friends for Christmas, this way they'll be cautious so Christmas won't be the superspreader event.
2) Boris Johnson and others are convinced that given the sheer number of unjabbed and not thrice jabbed the NHS will be overwhelmed this winter. Not just overwhelmed but the NHS will collapse under that sheer weight. The PM and party that oversees the collapse of the NHS will be out of power for decades, like the winter of discontent on speed.
(There are a few other reasons, but minor on their own, but cumulatively...)
If it really is 100 people in a room, 1 has Omicron, 50 get Omicron, I am not sure if that is your reasoning that the proposed plans will ensure this doesn't happen.
I think he might go for the full lockdown.
The only issue is furlough,
If that happens, I imagine Brady will give himself a hernia trying to pick up his postbag. And of course, what will the public reaction be?
Boris stuck between a rock and hard place.
Lets hope that Omicron actually it isn't all that bad and vaccines still do the business.
The public like WFH or being paid to stay at home, they'll love it.
I'm sure if you asked people with children whether they would like schools closed you would get a different view. There are six year olds who have spent a third of their life under some kind of restrictions and the threat of more to come.
You don't need to convince me, my youngest struggled with lockdown a lot last year.
August 2020 as we were preparing him for a return to school he was refusing to leave the house, not even go into the garden, because he was convinced he'd get Covid-19 and kill his grandparents.
A six/seven year old shouldn't have to deal with that.
Ditto my daughters. They hate lockdown; one of them is, I fear, permanently damaged by it. I HATE LOCKDOWN
No one on here apart from, maybe, a few selfish introverted freaks actually wants another lockdown. Lockdowns are HIDEOUS and inhuman
But the reality is dawning that one form of lockdown, or another, is probably coming. Denying this is futile
So SA does not have a lockdown because hospitals are not overwhelmed at all yet we have a full lockdown in the UK?
More good news:
Dr Joe Phaala (SA Health Minister) says it now appears that, like previous variants, omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children.
“Early data from hospital surveillance, also reports from public and private hospitals, indicate that admissions are largely in children admitted for other reasons, and then tested positive and for very short durations.”
Are you posting the SA stuff because you think we're on opposite sides, that you can prove us wrong? Read your last post - Omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children. If that is how it plays here that is truly fantastic news.
Do you think we are on the opposite side of this debate to you? That we want death and chaos and destruction? Its the *opposite*. My 10 year old daughter had Covid last weekend. She burned (mid 38s), was delirious, scared, broken. It was grim to watch. So if the SA experience shows that other parents will not have to watch their own infected kids go from grim to dead, that is bloody brilliant.
As I have said a few times, we all need to drop this adversarial shit.
Im sorry I just don't understand the panic thats happening, when the evidence from SA shows that there is no need.
If SA hospitals were full of people on oxygen then yes there would be a need to panic, but they are not.
SA is not in a panic and they are 3-4 weeks ahead of us and they have no plans for any restrictions.
The elephant in the room. I sense that the South Africans are becoming increasingly frustrated that nobody seems to be listening to them. They might be wrong, of course, or they might be ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra .
In fairness, the Americans seem to be taking the SA data more seriously. Maybe the panic is a UK thing.
I'm surprised by the CricViz Live Win Probability in the cricket.
Simply, how can Draw be 19%?
The chance of rain is small. And even if there is some, it will likely only have a modest impact. And the days can run long if they lose 30 minutes.
England is still 60-odd behind, with two wickets down.
For a draw to happen, England has to amass a total that Australia doesn't bother chasing, which means they need to get to a lead of 250-300, and Australia only has two (maybe two and a half) sessions to get there. That means they need to bat until midway through the morning on the fifth day. That's almost four more sessions, scoring at a decent run rate. And then Australia has to not be bowled out.
That has to be a 5-10% chance, not a 19% one.
England batted well today, if with an element of luck. I agree on the needing to bat well into the 13th session (at least) but that's not *too* unreasonable, particularly with two batsmen who've already made 70-80. I don't think that's a 1-in-20 event; I'd put it at 10-12%.
Morning session is key. Get through that with zero to one more wickets down and a 50 run lead and they’ll start to believe the game capable of being saved. Hopefully Root and Malan had a nice lucozade and an early night.
Little seems to have been said about the mindset of anyone organising a Number 10 party in the sense it's such a trivial thing that why would anyone want to take the risk of it becoming public for such a tiny upside.
It's like a multi-millionaire stealing a packet of fruit pastilles. Why on earth would they bother?
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
.
Well said Nick.
For once I am actually on the Government's side, they were right to put restrictions in and they acted quickly. They have my credit for that.
They can put what restrictions they like out, I and many others are just going to stick two fingers up and ignore them. Tesco's today less than 40% mask wearing I would estimate. All those going restrictions are popular look at polls are ignoring that what people do and what they say are often different.
But there's not much you can do if they shutter all non essential business. No pubs, caffs, restos. I guess you can have sneaky parties in your friends' houses, but you might be surprised how many of your friends will be scared and say No
It is human psychology. The contagion of fear
It must be difficult living on your own because you have no sense of perspective. And I don't make light of that at all.
But in the social world I can tell you that very few people are scared in that way.
Why I am inviting 20 people to my bungalow this very Saturday for some medium sweet white wine, cheese cubes, and a vol au vent. None has cancelled despite my asking if they were happy to come.
It must be difficult being so stupid. And I don't make light of that at all.
Oh dear. What an unpleasant troll you are. Desist.
I'm surprised by the CricViz Live Win Probability in the cricket.
Simply, how can Draw be 19%?
The chance of rain is small. And even if there is some, it will likely only have a modest impact. And the days can run long if they lose 30 minutes.
England is still 60-odd behind, with two wickets down.
For a draw to happen, England has to amass a total that Australia doesn't bother chasing, which means they need to get to a lead of 250-300, and Australia only has two (maybe two and a half) sessions to get there. That means they need to bat until midway through the morning on the fifth day. That's almost four more sessions, scoring at a decent run rate. And then Australia has to not be bowled out.
That has to be a 5-10% chance, not a 19% one.
CricViz model is rubbish. The fall of one wicket can regularly have those percentages alter to a ridiculous extent, when its a sport where every ball can be a wicket, so the model should be "smoothing" out the possibilities of such, instead it is regularly a cliff edge.
I don't think its that far off the mark. Get through the first hour and new ball and likely we would be level with 8 wickets in hand. Recall 2010 at the same ground. The wicket is not the same as the first day. Its not impossible to amass 500 from here, and set 250+ to win on the last day. There is a chance of rain.
I think Aus will win. I will not be suprised to wake up tomorrow to defeat already. Early wickets, limp to a lead of 70-80, knocked off by Warner. But the draw is a valid chance.
That is by far the likeliest scenario.
My point is that it isn't a one in three chance that England bats until the midway through the first season on Monday. Which is basically required for either the draw or England win scenarios.
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
.
Well said Nick.
For once I am actually on the Government's side, they were right to put restrictions in and they acted quickly. They have my credit for that.
They can put what restrictions they like out, I and many others are just going to stick two fingers up and ignore them. Tesco's today less than 40% mask wearing I would estimate. All those going restrictions are popular look at polls are ignoring that what people do and what they say are often different.
But there's not much you can do if they shutter all non essential business. No pubs, caffs, restos. I guess you can have sneaky parties in your friends' houses, but you might be surprised how many of your friends will be scared and say No
It is human psychology. The contagion of fear
It must be difficult living on your own because you have no sense of perspective. And I don't make light of that at all.
But in the social world I can tell you that very few people are scared in that way.
Why I am inviting 20 people to my bungalow this very Saturday for some medium sweet white wine, cheese cubes, and a vol au vent. None has cancelled despite my asking if they were happy to come.
I have a very active social life, normally. Lots of friends. But yes I see them outside my flat, in pubs, restaurants, around the world, anywhere
So I am not happy about another lockdown, esp in winter, it was fucking shit last time, and worse for my kids
But I am the one with the calm perspective here. You veer between "all we can do is wait and see" and then screaming "fuck off" to Nick Palmer and calling everyone "hysterical C*nts". I know you are frightened more than you can admit, because you are not the sort to admit weakness. That must be tough, too
LOL.
I shouted at Nick because of this shitshow line: "If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother."
For which he can fuckety fuck right off and can do any time of the year virus or no virus. Patronising mouse rather than human saving c*nt.
Other than that no I am not scared. I am intrigued at the dynamics and see the damage, say, another lockdown or even the threat of another lockdown does to people, not least on this site.
But as I noted earlier, I also understand perfectly well why you catastrophise the virus and I am more than happy to be the "don't be hysterical" voice you so clearly need.
Again, you are the quivering little boy at boarding school, taught to hide his fear. I'm right, aren't I?
Little seems to have been said about the mindset of anyone organising a Number 10 party in the sense it's such a trivial thing that why would anyone want to take the risk of it becoming public for such a tiny upside.
It's like a multi-millionaire stealing a packet of fruit pastilles. Why on earth would they bother?
My take is this. They have been working around the clock for months on end. I wouldn't be surprised if a culture of them having regular piss up after hours on a Friday has sprung up (especially when pubs closed). Evidence of this, apparently the "awards". This was a weekly joke thing.
And then Boris has given the nudge nudge wink wink to have big booze up for Christmas.
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
How about go fuck yourself.
There's a start without asterisks.
I think I have made my views quite clear and I am grateful that you should have responded to me after telling me you were going to ignore me. I can also live with you not responding to me.
Haven't you got some mice in Xinjiang to save?
Calm
Down
I'm perfectly calm. Sanctimonious meta-commentators ("If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.") irritate the fuck out of me, however.
Glad to hear you are calm. As I said on another post NOBODY wants more lockdown and more Covid and more health / life / business disasters. And the numbers with Omicron might not make sense trying to impose them - will it stop what TSE's contacts said? And would this government be able to get people to listen even if it did.
We all need to take a breath and abandon our previous defensive positions. When the facts change, change your mind. What you or I want doesn't matter. What we're going to get will likely fuck everyone off. Best that we all stop tearing chunks off each other for something outside of anyone's control.
The previous positions we have is that everyone suffered severely throughout lockdown.
So now we have something new in front of us which none of us know much about. Hence my point to Leon to about his we are all doomed posts. They serve no purpose and all we can do is wait and see. Is all I've ever said.
Understood. And what we know is that the medical powers that be need until at least next week to model this one out. They said that at the start if this week, so we know that things being announced this week are a bit premature. However, whats also clear is that the work in progress data looks worse and worse as the days go on and the data builds and models.
If you aren't concerned by the doubling in a week (and accelerating) stat or the 50% of people in contact get infected model then will anything alarm you?
As I said in a post earlier even Philip will voluntarily lock himself and his family down if the TSE's mates scenario plays out.
We are back to cases. Let's keep a close eye on hospitalisations. Now of course if there are zillions of cases then a smaller percentage of hospitalisations will be a lot of hospitalisations. Thing is we just don't know. Nor does anyone else.
@NerysHughes keeps on posting stats from SA and I have no idea whether they should give us hope or are a red herring. Neither does anyone else and to try to extrapolate a trend with hugely noisy literally single digit sample sizes is bonkers.
It isn't true to say "neither does anyone else". Nobody on here thats for sure. But the global medical community taking all the data and doing the models? They know enough to be backing away slowly saying "we all need to be very careful"
Going off how on its knees many hospitals already are and how mentally and physically broken many doctors and nurses already are, is the suggestion that their big bosses are falsely shrieking and wailing for no reason because thats good for the functioning of their facilities and their teams?
Are there enough data for the "global medical community" to know?
And of course hospitals are on their knees. Look at that great (dreadful) Graun front page montage each one saying for the past X years how the NHS was in crisis.
But we as a nation have decided we don't want to fund the NHS to that level. And also, we have shown by our deeds in not wearing masks if not forced to, that we don't want to wear masks and therefore are "comfortable" with the current strike rate of Covid.
Now that might change. We will have to wait and see.
The clinical director Jason Leitch pointed out the attack rate of Omicron was that if 100 people were in the room and there was a single case, at least 50 people would get it.
If this is the level of transmission, no lockdown etc will stop it.
If that is true I don’t see how they can do anything BUT lock us all down very hard. Every office, shop, pub, cafe, house party, dinner party, church service, mosque prayer, concert, is a superspreader
So why haven’t they gone straight to Hard Lockdown?
1. They fear the terrible economic and social damage before Xmas and they are praying for a miracle on “mildness”
2. They now accept lockdowns aren’t enough. It’s here and it will hit us all
Calm yourself.
Can we all take a step back from the repeated "Leon is hysterical" stuff. Based on the reported figures we are in deep shit. That isn't me trying to justify or even welcome another lockdown (as suggested on the last thread) - we do not want that.
But it is what it is, and in the harsh light of day we're facing a meltdown in the NHS. If we do get this Tsunami of cases it doesn't matter that Omicron is no worse than or even milder than Delta - the sheer numbers infected skyrockets hospitalisation or death.
So what do we do? I think I agree with the comments that a lockdown isn't going to contain it - not that we can realistically hope to implement one even if wanted.
Either way, I am off to that London tomorrow. Drink and party. Whilst we still can.
Not yet we're not. We might be but we're not now. We are in fact a long way from that. Let us see how it progresses. As for Leon (and you? Hadn't noticed), would it be helpful if I said Omicron isn't going to affect us in any way whatsoever and there will be precisely no impact on health or NHS services.
Would be ridiculous, right? Because as it stands we don't know what it will do. Will its seeming increased transmissability overwhelm its supposed mildness, or vice versa we just don't know so indulging Leon's hysteria is bad for his health to start with and adds precisely nothing to the debate.
But we DO know. We now have lots of data. The evidence for immune escape is unquestioned. The evidence for greater admissibility is unquestioned. The evidence for mildness v virulence is out there but fiercely disputed
Sure if you want to twiddle your thumbs and talk about something else, to make yourself feel better, knock yourself out
But this is a site for political and general speculation and we will speculate on the ongoing global health crisis, the worst in a century, now clearly entering an ominous new phase
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
If it hits 800k a day then it hits 800k a day. That's 5.6 million people a week. Within a couple of months everyone has had it and life goes on because that's over and done with.
That's the only way to get through this now. It hits however it hits, the NHS copes as well as it can, vaccines do as much as they can, and anyone who dies is mourned but life goes on.
"Life goes on"
Well, yes. Except for those who die, obviously. They've gone on to your nirvanic ultimate freedom ...
What is your 18-month plan?
I don't have one. But if you were to ask me, if we have to, we should buy time. The more time we have, the more people vaxed. The more people boostered. The more treatment drugs we will have. The greater capability we will have to beat this sod. But only if we have to. I am not wedded to the idea of restrictions and lockdowns; neither am I wedded to ignoring the deaths that may occur if we try to go on as normal.
Hopefully Omicron won't be as bad as feared; there's even a possibility it might be relatively 'good' (if its effects are nowhere near as bad as Delta). But we cannot rely on that.
So what's your 18-month plan?
I'll say one thing: I'm blooming glad I don't have to make these decisions.
My 18-month plan is to do sod all. The virus hits whoever it hits we treat anyone we have the capacity to treat, we bury or cremate anyone who dies and life goes on.
We don't need more time to get more people vaccinated, everyone's already been vaccinated who wants to be. The vulnerable should have all been offered their booster by now too. If some antivaxxers get it and die then that's on them. If some of the vulnerable get it despite three jabs and die, then that's just the natural end of their life.
No restrictions, just live as best as we can.
I strongly sympathise with this position. But read @TSE's comment below. HMG is scared that the NHS will actually collapse, not just creak and strain. People will die in hospital carparks, morgues will need extra ovens, ambulances will shriek - in vain - through the night
What government will be able to resist total lockdown IF that happens? I can't see any PM having the brutal ruthlessness to say Fuck it, keep calm, go back to work. Can you?
Even tho that might well be the only long term option.
Also the government will have the new vaccines and therapies as a carrot to induce us to stay in our wardrobes. "Just three more months and we can let you out"
Some people aren't thinking straight imo. The same calculus as last time comes into play. If the NHS collapses, that's grisly health outcomes plus civil disorder, so either you do a managed lockdown or you have a chaotic one. Worst case isn't lockdown. Worst case is a lockdown that either doesn't work or doesn't hold or isn't even tried because it's futile.
You're the one who has been constantly saying There won't be a lockdown. I'm the one saying Bollocks, look at the logic, there probably will
I might well be wrong on that but it's not the point I'm making. What I'm saying is that as we await clarity on Omicron The Utter Utter Bastard the worst case outcome - hence what I fear the most - is that it's beyond lockdown territory and therefore we're looking at the health & financial catastrophe we thought we'd avoided via the previous lockdowns and our vaccines. I'm making this point in response to those who seem to have lockdown itself as their greatest fear. This, as I say, strikes me as rather irrational. I mean, what do YOU fear the most, another lockdown or NHS collapse and societal breakdown?
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
.
Well said Nick.
For once I am actually on the Government's side, they were right to put restrictions in and they acted quickly. They have my credit for that.
They can put what restrictions they like out, I and many others are just going to stick two fingers up and ignore them. Tesco's today less than 40% mask wearing I would estimate. All those going restrictions are popular look at polls are ignoring that what people do and what they say are often different.
Yes, I was in Asda this lunchtime and would estimate only around 40-50% mask-wearing (some social groups notably less so than others).
But the rules/requests as proposed are so nuts that the public won't take them seriously anyway: work at home / party with your mates down the pub. How is that in any way consistent. Sure we know why the govt wants it like that - so it doesn't have to bail out businesses again - but it's not saying that (and can't), so the face-value advice makes no sense.
If Labour had any nous, they'd pick up on all that and say they'll only back new restrictions if they're consistent and come with support for those who'll be hit by them. Force the government to choose between probable defeat or jumping to Labour's tune.
Regarding the effects of repeated lockdowns on young children.
I know I am going to be accused of being callous here but I can't help thinking of my Mum, who was born in 1937 in Islington (when it was a slum).
By the time she was nine she had been evacuated (twice) to live with strangers, bombed out, been to six(!) different, or should I say indifferent, schools, lived on poverty rations, next to no posessions, hand-me-down clothes, etc. etc.
She and her cohort who had suffered similarly all survived and most became functioning adults, parents, grandparents etc.
Were kids tougher then?
You have absolutely no way of knowing that "her cohort...all survived, nor of what their lives were like for the ones that did. I mean, how could you? There is for starters a ton of evidence of serious abuse of evacuee children
He did say 'survive' and 'most'.
Depending what you mean by cohort. I would have no way in the world of knowing whether every child my respective parents had ever met by the age of 7 was still alive at 16, nor, of the ones that did, whether they really functioned or just faked it
I'm surprised by the CricViz Live Win Probability in the cricket.
Simply, how can Draw be 19%?
The chance of rain is small. And even if there is some, it will likely only have a modest impact. And the days can run long if they lose 30 minutes.
England is still 60-odd behind, with two wickets down.
For a draw to happen, England has to amass a total that Australia doesn't bother chasing, which means they need to get to a lead of 250-300, and Australia only has two (maybe two and a half) sessions to get there. That means they need to bat until midway through the morning on the fifth day. That's almost four more sessions, scoring at a decent run rate. And then Australia has to not be bowled out.
That has to be a 5-10% chance, not a 19% one.
Yes, it seems high, but on TMS they were citing some stats that showed the batting average on days 4-5 at the Gabba was the second highest of all Test grounds with a decent number of recent matches, only five wickets fell on the third day. England have a poor record in terms of batting collapses recently, but it wouldn't be outrageous for England to still be batting by the end of day 4 - and Root tends to be a cautious captain with his declarations.
If the pitch is now much easier to bat on then even England's number 9 can occupy the crease for a decent length of time. Of course, my trust in the team's batting form is such that I expect a couple of wickets to fall before the new ball is taken, and matters to deteriorate thereafter, but I think the record at the ground is one reason why a draw is given a higher probability then you'd think.
The Omicron variant has the potential to “very substantially overwhelm the NHS” and cause up to 10,000 hospitalisations a day if it is as virulent as Delta, according to a leading scientist who helped shape Britain’s coronavirus lockdown strategy.
Prof Neil Ferguson, a mathematical epidemiologist from Imperial College London, said the UK was already experiencing a “very explosive wave of infection” from the new variant. This could lead to “quite an explosive wave of hospitalisations,” depending on the severity of disease caused by Omicron.
But Ferguson said: “Even the best case scenarios involve several-fold more admissions per day than we’re getting at the moment – we are at about 700 right now.”
The stark figure of 10,000 hospitalisations a day is more than double the current highest level, with 4,582 admissions on 12 January this year.
Does anybody seriously believe this nonsense? I mean, seriously? We have been sitting at roughly 50k cases a day for the last couple of months. Until recently the number of admissions was drifting down slowly and the number in hospital fell by about 2k over a lengthy period of time.
When you look at those being infected now (very much weighted to the younger cohort, many of them children), the much, much lower risk of needing medical care in that cohort, the number who have already been infected and the speed of the booster program my guess is that:
The number of admissions will rise slowly but not exceed 1k a day. The number in hospital will also rise slowly but will not exceed 10k. Of course even these numbers will have serious knock on implications for the NHS but I do not believe we will reach a crisis point, north Italy style.
We shall see. But this almost childish reliance on exponential growth with so little consideration of how this is actually going to operate in the real world started to piss me off over a year ago and I find it remarkable that it is still going on.
The image of Topping running around his bungalow in his grey Asda Y fronts telling everyone to "stop being fucking hysterical" as he then swears and spits at Nick Palmer, the councillor for Godalming, is one I shall treasure for the rest of time, or Covid, whichever ends sooner.
Who would have thought a few years ago that we'd be in the same trench, fingering our rifles nervously as we eye the oncoming rampaging Topping?
Yes. Covid is like the English Civil War. "The world turned upside down"
And now I must go do some work. I am still. allegedly, going to Ibiza on Sunday. Who knows if it will happen.
So I've spoken to a former Vote Leave staffer who knows people who work(ed) for Boris Johnson and others.
The restrictions have been brought in for a couple of reasons.
1) People are going to see family and friends for Christmas, this way they'll be cautious so Christmas won't be the superspreader event.
2) Boris Johnson and others are convinced that given the sheer number of unjabbed and not thrice jabbed the NHS will be overwhelmed this winter. Not just overwhelmed but the NHS will collapse under that sheer weight. The PM and party that oversees the collapse of the NHS will be out of power for decades, like the winter of discontent on speed.
(There are a few other reasons, but minor on their own, but cumulatively...)
If it really is 100 people in a room, 1 has Omicron, 50 get Omicron, I am not sure if that is your reasoning that the proposed plans will ensure this doesn't happen.
I think he might go for the full lockdown.
The only issue is furlough,
If that happens, I imagine Brady will give himself a hernia trying to pick up his postbag. And of course, what will the public reaction be?
Boris stuck between a rock and hard place.
Lets hope that Omicron actually it isn't all that bad and vaccines still do the business.
The public like WFH or being paid to stay at home, they'll love it.
I'm sure if you asked people with children whether they would like schools closed you would get a different view. There are six year olds who have spent a third of their life under some kind of restrictions and the threat of more to come.
You don't need to convince me, my youngest struggled with lockdown a lot last year.
August 2020 as we were preparing him for a return to school he was refusing to leave the house, not even go into the garden, because he was convinced he'd get Covid-19 and kill his grandparents.
A six/seven year old shouldn't have to deal with that.
Ditto my daughters. They hate lockdown; one of them is, I fear, permanently damaged by it. I HATE LOCKDOWN
No one on here apart from, maybe, a few selfish introverted freaks actually wants another lockdown. Lockdowns are HIDEOUS and inhuman
But the reality is dawning that one form of lockdown, or another, is probably coming. Denying this is futile
And the tragedy is that, once you acknowledge that more restrictions are a'coming (because it's much easier to say "let the Covidiots die" in the abstract than to actually let them die) then the evidence is that it's better not to hang around, but buckle up and hunker down. If a nation waits, it ends up locking down harder for longer overall. And more people die.
It's a painful, expensive, miserable way to buy time. But right now, that might be what we need.
Buy time for what?
We've done vaccines. What are we buying time for?
We're nowhere near having done vaccines. We've done them up to 2 doses for only 81% of those aged 12+, less than half of whom have so far had the booster, and for none of the primary school superspreaders under 12. Yet the Government seems incapable of doing more than repeat what has not worked for the other 19% who are the cause of all the problems, namely just asking nicely for them to reconsider as if that's going to make any difference now.
What annoys me about the Plan B half-measures is that, rather than tackle the idiots who choose not to do the right thing, the Government continues to announce measures which impact uniformly on the whole population. Just about the only thing that anti-vaxxers are going to have to differently is to take a lateral flow test each time they go to a football match etc. How is that going to drive up vaccination rates?
There should be fiscal carrots and sticks at work, and restrictions on the unvaccinated that others don't have to suffer, allowing those that choose to do the right thing to get on with pretty well their normal lives
Regarding the effects of repeated lockdowns on young children.
I know I am going to be accused of being callous here but I can't help thinking of my Mum, who was born in 1937 in Islington (when it was a slum).
By the time she was nine she had been evacuated (twice) to live with strangers, bombed out, been to six(!) different, or should I say indifferent, schools, lived on poverty rations, next to no posessions, hand-me-down clothes, etc. etc.
She and her cohort who had suffered similarly all survived and most became functioning adults, parents, grandparents etc.
Were kids tougher then?
You have absolutely no way of knowing that "her cohort...all survived, nor of what their lives were like for the ones that did. I mean, how could you? There is for starters a ton of evidence of serious abuse of evacuee children
Have a look at Edinburgh Uni's work on the Lothian Birth Cohorts. Fascinating.
And I knew people post-war who'd been evacuated. Some kept in touch for years, most were glad to get home. I can recall, dimly, an attitude of dealing with a common enemy and we all, adults and children were expected to 'do our bit'. I have to admit that most of my wartime memories are of 'winning' I'm not old enough to remember the really dark days, although I do recall sleeping in a Morrison shelter, aster box which was designed to save us the house crashed down on us. And I do remember the sound of bombers, and I can still be startled by the sound of an air raid siren, at, for example the Chatham Dockyard experience. I went about four years ago; first time I heard the siren I looked round for a shelter!
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
How about go fuck yourself.
There's a start without asterisks.
I think I have made my views quite clear and I am grateful that you should have responded to me after telling me you were going to ignore me. I can also live with you not responding to me.
Haven't you got some mice in Xinjiang to save?
Calm
Down
I'm perfectly calm. Sanctimonious meta-commentators ("If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.") irritate the fuck out of me, however.
Glad to hear you are calm. As I said on another post NOBODY wants more lockdown and more Covid and more health / life / business disasters. And the numbers with Omicron might not make sense trying to impose them - will it stop what TSE's contacts said? And would this government be able to get people to listen even if it did.
We all need to take a breath and abandon our previous defensive positions. When the facts change, change your mind. What you or I want doesn't matter. What we're going to get will likely fuck everyone off. Best that we all stop tearing chunks off each other for something outside of anyone's control.
The previous positions we have is that everyone suffered severely throughout lockdown.
So now we have something new in front of us which none of us know much about. Hence my point to Leon to about his we are all doomed posts. They serve no purpose and all we can do is wait and see. Is all I've ever said.
Understood. And what we know is that the medical powers that be need until at least next week to model this one out. They said that at the start if this week, so we know that things being announced this week are a bit premature. However, whats also clear is that the work in progress data looks worse and worse as the days go on and the data builds and models.
If you aren't concerned by the doubling in a week (and accelerating) stat or the 50% of people in contact get infected model then will anything alarm you?
As I said in a post earlier even Philip will voluntarily lock himself and his family down if the TSE's mates scenario plays out.
We are back to cases. Let's keep a close eye on hospitalisations. Now of course if there are zillions of cases then a smaller percentage of hospitalisations will be a lot of hospitalisations. Thing is we just don't know. Nor does anyone else.
@NerysHughes keeps on posting stats from SA and I have no idea whether they should give us hope or are a red herring. Neither does anyone else and to try to extrapolate a trend with hugely noisy literally single digit sample sizes is bonkers.
It isn't true to say "neither does anyone else". Nobody on here thats for sure. But the global medical community taking all the data and doing the models? They know enough to be backing away slowly saying "we all need to be very careful"
Going off how on its knees many hospitals already are and how mentally and physically broken many doctors and nurses already are, is the suggestion that their big bosses are falsely shrieking and wailing for no reason because thats good for the functioning of their facilities and their teams?
I seem to recall quite a lot of calling for restrictions from NHS bosses over the last few months.
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
.
Well said Nick.
For once I am actually on the Government's side, they were right to put restrictions in and they acted quickly. They have my credit for that.
They can put what restrictions they like out, I and many others are just going to stick two fingers up and ignore them. Tesco's today less than 40% mask wearing I would estimate. All those going restrictions are popular look at polls are ignoring that what people do and what they say are often different.
But there's not much you can do if they shutter all non essential business. No pubs, caffs, restos. I guess you can have sneaky parties in your friends' houses, but you might be surprised how many of your friends will be scared and say No
It is human psychology. The contagion of fear
It must be difficult living on your own because you have no sense of perspective. And I don't make light of that at all.
But in the social world I can tell you that very few people are scared in that way.
Why I am inviting 20 people to my bungalow this very Saturday for some medium sweet white wine, cheese cubes, and a vol au vent. None has cancelled despite my asking if they were happy to come.
It must be difficult being so stupid. And I don't make light of that at all.
Oh dear. What an unpleasant troll you are. Desist.
God no let him at it. As I said, people need PB to fulfil a psychological need and @Chris seems to be one of those. Very happy for him to vent on here and at me.
I would like him to respond on the bet I have offered but will have to wait for that.
So I've spoken to a former Vote Leave staffer who knows people who work(ed) for Boris Johnson and others.
The restrictions have been brought in for a couple of reasons.
1) People are going to see family and friends for Christmas, this way they'll be cautious so Christmas won't be the superspreader event.
2) Boris Johnson and others are convinced that given the sheer number of unjabbed and not thrice jabbed the NHS will be overwhelmed this winter. Not just overwhelmed but the NHS will collapse under that sheer weight. The PM and party that oversees the collapse of the NHS will be out of power for decades, like the winter of discontent on speed.
(There are a few other reasons, but minor on their own, but cumulatively...)
If it really is 100 people in a room, 1 has Omicron, 50 get Omicron, I am not sure if that is your reasoning that the proposed plans will ensure this doesn't happen.
I think he might go for the full lockdown.
The only issue is furlough,
If that happens, I imagine Brady will give himself a hernia trying to pick up his postbag. And of course, what will the public reaction be?
Boris stuck between a rock and hard place.
Lets hope that Omicron actually it isn't all that bad and vaccines still do the business.
The public like WFH or being paid to stay at home, they'll love it.
I'm sure if you asked people with children whether they would like schools closed you would get a different view. There are six year olds who have spent a third of their life under some kind of restrictions and the threat of more to come.
You don't need to convince me, my youngest struggled with lockdown a lot last year.
August 2020 as we were preparing him for a return to school he was refusing to leave the house, not even go into the garden, because he was convinced he'd get Covid-19 and kill his grandparents.
A six/seven year old shouldn't have to deal with that.
Ditto my daughters. They hate lockdown; one of them is, I fear, permanently damaged by it. I HATE LOCKDOWN
No one on here apart from, maybe, a few selfish introverted freaks actually wants another lockdown. Lockdowns are HIDEOUS and inhuman
But the reality is dawning that one form of lockdown, or another, is probably coming. Denying this is futile
So SA does not have a lockdown because hospitals are not overwhelmed at all yet we have a full lockdown in the UK?
More good news:
Dr Joe Phaala (SA Health Minister) says it now appears that, like previous variants, omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children.
“Early data from hospital surveillance, also reports from public and private hospitals, indicate that admissions are largely in children admitted for other reasons, and then tested positive and for very short durations.”
Are you posting the SA stuff because you think we're on opposite sides, that you can prove us wrong? Read your last post - Omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children. If that is how it plays here that is truly fantastic news.
Do you think we are on the opposite side of this debate to you? That we want death and chaos and destruction? Its the *opposite*. My 10 year old daughter had Covid last weekend. She burned (mid 38s), was delirious, scared, broken. It was grim to watch. So if the SA experience shows that other parents will not have to watch their own infected kids go from grim to dead, that is bloody brilliant.
As I have said a few times, we all need to drop this adversarial shit.
Im sorry I just don't understand the panic thats happening, when the evidence from SA shows that there is no need.
If SA hospitals were full of people on oxygen then yes there would be a need to panic, but they are not.
SA is not in a panic and they are 3-4 weeks ahead of us and they have no plans for any restrictions.
The elephant in the room. I sense that the South Africans are becoming increasingly frustrated that nobody seems to be listening to them. They might be wrong, of course, or they might be ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra .
On this page there is a 1 hour 40 minute briefing by various Doctors and the SA Health Minister today on the current situation in SA. Absolutely no sign of panic at all, the stats on hospitals are amazing given how long Omicron has been in SA. The lady from 43 minutes onwards is most enlightening, there is hardly anyone in hospital with just Covid and oxygen is hardly being used.
If we go back to March 2020, our peak had passed before the lockdown happened by about a week, deaths peaked at 1122 in early April. Remember our first case was not discovered until the 29/1/2020 and Omicron is far more transmissable than Alpha. If Omicron was in anyway as serious as Alpha then SA would be seeing huge rises in Oxygen dependant patients and huge numbers of deaths. None of this is happening at all.
So I've spoken to a former Vote Leave staffer who knows people who work(ed) for Boris Johnson and others.
The restrictions have been brought in for a couple of reasons.
1) People are going to see family and friends for Christmas, this way they'll be cautious so Christmas won't be the superspreader event.
2) Boris Johnson and others are convinced that given the sheer number of unjabbed and not thrice jabbed the NHS will be overwhelmed this winter. Not just overwhelmed but the NHS will collapse under that sheer weight. The PM and party that oversees the collapse of the NHS will be out of power for decades, like the winter of discontent on speed.
(There are a few other reasons, but minor on their own, but cumulatively...)
If it really is 100 people in a room, 1 has Omicron, 50 get Omicron, I am not sure if that is your reasoning that the proposed plans will ensure this doesn't happen.
I think he might go for the full lockdown.
The only issue is furlough,
If that happens, I imagine Brady will give himself a hernia trying to pick up his postbag. And of course, what will the public reaction be?
Boris stuck between a rock and hard place.
Lets hope that Omicron actually it isn't all that bad and vaccines still do the business.
The public like WFH or being paid to stay at home, they'll love it.
I'm sure if you asked people with children whether they would like schools closed you would get a different view. There are six year olds who have spent a third of their life under some kind of restrictions and the threat of more to come.
You don't need to convince me, my youngest struggled with lockdown a lot last year.
August 2020 as we were preparing him for a return to school he was refusing to leave the house, not even go into the garden, because he was convinced he'd get Covid-19 and kill his grandparents.
A six/seven year old shouldn't have to deal with that.
Ditto my daughters. They hate lockdown; one of them is, I fear, permanently damaged by it. I HATE LOCKDOWN
No one on here apart from, maybe, a few selfish introverted freaks actually wants another lockdown. Lockdowns are HIDEOUS and inhuman
But the reality is dawning that one form of lockdown, or another, is probably coming. Denying this is futile
And the tragedy is that, once you acknowledge that more restrictions are a'coming (because it's much easier to say "let the Covidiots die" in the abstract than to actually let them die) then the evidence is that it's better not to hang around, but buckle up and hunker down. If a nation waits, it ends up locking down harder for longer overall. And more people die.
It's a painful, expensive, miserable way to buy time. But right now, that might be what we need.
Buy time for what?
We've done vaccines. What are we buying time for?
We're nowhere near having done vaccines. We've done them up to 2 doses for only 81% of those aged 12+, less than half of whom have so far had the booster, and for none of the primary school superspreaders under 12. Yet the Government seems incapable of doing more than repeat what has not worked for the other 19% who are the cause of all the problems, namely just asking nicely for them to reconsider as if that's going to make any difference now.
What annoys me about the Plan B half-measures is that, rather than tackle the idiots who choose not to do the right thing, the Government continues to announce measures which impact uniformly on the whole population. Just about the only thing that anti-vaxxers are going to have to differently is to take a lateral flow test each time they go to a football match etc. How is that going to drive up vaccination rates?
There should be fiscal carrots and sticks at work, and restrictions on the unvaccinated that others don't have to suffer, allowing those that choose to do the right thing to get on with pretty well their normal lives
You can't penalise the unvaccinated.
Because of the higher numbers of ethnic minorities among them.
Who wants to be in charge of the "No X" policy at the pub?
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
.
Well said Nick.
For once I am actually on the Government's side, they were right to put restrictions in and they acted quickly. They have my credit for that.
They can put what restrictions they like out, I and many others are just going to stick two fingers up and ignore them. Tesco's today less than 40% mask wearing I would estimate. All those going restrictions are popular look at polls are ignoring that what people do and what they say are often different.
But there's not much you can do if they shutter all non essential business. No pubs, caffs, restos. I guess you can have sneaky parties in your friends' houses, but you might be surprised how many of your friends will be scared and say No
It is human psychology. The contagion of fear
It must be difficult living on your own because you have no sense of perspective. And I don't make light of that at all.
But in the social world I can tell you that very few people are scared in that way.
Why I am inviting 20 people to my bungalow this very Saturday for some medium sweet white wine, cheese cubes, and a vol au vent. None has cancelled despite my asking if they were happy to come.
I have a very active social life, normally. Lots of friends. But yes I see them outside my flat, in pubs, restaurants, around the world, anywhere
So I am not happy about another lockdown, esp in winter, it was fucking shit last time, and worse for my kids
But I am the one with the calm perspective here. You veer between "all we can do is wait and see" and then screaming "fuck off" to Nick Palmer and calling everyone "hysterical C*nts". I know you are frightened more than you can admit, because you are not the sort to admit weakness. That must be tough, too
LOL.
I shouted at Nick because of this shitshow line: "If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother."
For which he can fuckety fuck right off and can do any time of the year virus or no virus. Patronising mouse rather than human saving c*nt.
Other than that no I am not scared. I am intrigued at the dynamics and see the damage, say, another lockdown or even the threat of another lockdown does to people, not least on this site.
But as I noted earlier, I also understand perfectly well why you catastrophise the virus and I am more than happy to be the "don't be hysterical" voice you so clearly need.
Again, you are the quivering little boy at boarding school, taught to hide his fear. I'm right, aren't I?
Yes Leon you are right. It is all just bravado and I am terrified.
I appreciate that it makes people feel better if they think that others are faring worse than themselves.
Whereas I only want people on PB to be happy and if this is your route to happiness can I just say that right now I am sobbing and am typing from under the kitchen table.
I'm surprised by the CricViz Live Win Probability in the cricket.
Simply, how can Draw be 19%?
The chance of rain is small. And even if there is some, it will likely only have a modest impact. And the days can run long if they lose 30 minutes.
England is still 60-odd behind, with two wickets down.
For a draw to happen, England has to amass a total that Australia doesn't bother chasing, which means they need to get to a lead of 250-300, and Australia only has two (maybe two and a half) sessions to get there. That means they need to bat until midway through the morning on the fifth day. That's almost four more sessions, scoring at a decent run rate. And then Australia has to not be bowled out.
That has to be a 5-10% chance, not a 19% one.
CricViz model is rubbish. The fall of one wicket can regularly have those percentages alter to a ridiculous extent, when its a sport where every ball can be a wicket, so the model should be "smoothing" out the possibilities of such, instead it is regularly a cliff edge.
I don't think its that far off the mark. Get through the first hour and new ball and likely we would be level with 8 wickets in hand. Recall 2010 at the same ground. The wicket is not the same as the first day. Its not impossible to amass 500 from here, and set 250+ to win on the last day. There is a chance of rain.
I think Aus will win. I will not be suprised to wake up tomorrow to defeat already. Early wickets, limp to a lead of 70-80, knocked off by Warner. But the draw is a valid chance.
That is by far the likeliest scenario.
My point is that it isn't a one in three chance that England bats until the midway through the first season on Monday. Which is basically required for either the draw or England win scenarios.
Rob - how does 19% = 1 in three? Whats the Eng win chance?
And some more of my finely balanced commentary, to calm you all down
First the bad news from the UK
"UK may have highest or close to highest level immunity of any country in the world result of very high vaccine acceptance & a lot of transmission (running a hot epidemic see below) & yet now omicron doubling every 2d. Impact of omicron in less immune populations a huge concern"
The FT graph is required reading. Not only is omicron producing milder outcomes – it's producing significantly milder outcomes. (It's not clear, as ever, whether that is due to intrinsic benignity or greater immunity, or both)
I'm surprised by the CricViz Live Win Probability in the cricket.
Simply, how can Draw be 19%?
The chance of rain is small. And even if there is some, it will likely only have a modest impact. And the days can run long if they lose 30 minutes.
England is still 60-odd behind, with two wickets down.
For a draw to happen, England has to amass a total that Australia doesn't bother chasing, which means they need to get to a lead of 250-300, and Australia only has two (maybe two and a half) sessions to get there. That means they need to bat until midway through the morning on the fifth day. That's almost four more sessions, scoring at a decent run rate. And then Australia has to not be bowled out.
That has to be a 5-10% chance, not a 19% one.
Yes, it seems high, but on TMS they were citing some stats that showed the batting average on days 4-5 at the Gabba was the second highest of all Test grounds with a decent number of recent matches, only five wickets fell on the third day. England have a poor record in terms of batting collapses recently, but it wouldn't be outrageous for England to still be batting by the end of day 4 - and Root tends to be a cautious captain with his declarations.
If the pitch is now much easier to bat on then even England's number 9 can occupy the crease for a decent length of time. Of course, my trust in the team's batting form is such that I expect a couple of wickets to fall before the new ball is taken, and matters to deteriorate thereafter, but I think the record at the ground is one reason why a draw is given a higher probability then you'd think.
So I've spoken to a former Vote Leave staffer who knows people who work(ed) for Boris Johnson and others.
The restrictions have been brought in for a couple of reasons.
1) People are going to see family and friends for Christmas, this way they'll be cautious so Christmas won't be the superspreader event.
2) Boris Johnson and others are convinced that given the sheer number of unjabbed and not thrice jabbed the NHS will be overwhelmed this winter. Not just overwhelmed but the NHS will collapse under that sheer weight. The PM and party that oversees the collapse of the NHS will be out of power for decades, like the winter of discontent on speed.
(There are a few other reasons, but minor on their own, but cumulatively...)
If it really is 100 people in a room, 1 has Omicron, 50 get Omicron, I am not sure if that is your reasoning that the proposed plans will ensure this doesn't happen.
I think he might go for the full lockdown.
The only issue is furlough,
If that happens, I imagine Brady will give himself a hernia trying to pick up his postbag. And of course, what will the public reaction be?
Boris stuck between a rock and hard place.
Lets hope that Omicron actually it isn't all that bad and vaccines still do the business.
The public like WFH or being paid to stay at home, they'll love it.
I'm sure if you asked people with children whether they would like schools closed you would get a different view. There are six year olds who have spent a third of their life under some kind of restrictions and the threat of more to come.
You don't need to convince me, my youngest struggled with lockdown a lot last year.
August 2020 as we were preparing him for a return to school he was refusing to leave the house, not even go into the garden, because he was convinced he'd get Covid-19 and kill his grandparents.
A six/seven year old shouldn't have to deal with that.
Ditto my daughters. They hate lockdown; one of them is, I fear, permanently damaged by it. I HATE LOCKDOWN
No one on here apart from, maybe, a few selfish introverted freaks actually wants another lockdown. Lockdowns are HIDEOUS and inhuman
But the reality is dawning that one form of lockdown, or another, is probably coming. Denying this is futile
And the tragedy is that, once you acknowledge that more restrictions are a'coming (because it's much easier to say "let the Covidiots die" in the abstract than to actually let them die) then the evidence is that it's better not to hang around, but buckle up and hunker down. If a nation waits, it ends up locking down harder for longer overall. And more people die.
It's a painful, expensive, miserable way to buy time. But right now, that might be what we need.
Buy time for what?
We've done vaccines. What are we buying time for?
We're nowhere near having done vaccines. We've done them up to 2 doses for only 81% of those aged 12+, less than half of whom have so far had the booster, and for none of the primary school superspreaders under 12. Yet the Government seems incapable of doing more than repeat what has not worked for the other 19% who are the cause of all the problems, namely just asking nicely for them to reconsider as if that's going to make any difference now.
What annoys me about the Plan B half-measures is that, rather than tackle the idiots who choose not to do the right thing, the Government continues to announce measures which impact uniformly on the whole population. Just about the only thing that anti-vaxxers are going to have to differently is to take a lateral flow test each time they go to a football match etc. How is that going to drive up vaccination rates?
There should be fiscal carrots and sticks at work, and restrictions on the unvaccinated that others don't have to suffer, allowing those that choose to do the right thing to get on with pretty well their normal lives
You can't penalise the unvaccinated.
Because of the higher numbers of ethnic minorities among them.
Who wants to be in charge of the "No X" policy at the pub?
I can. You wouldn't believe how utterly colourblind my Fuck the lot of em policy is.
So I've spoken to a former Vote Leave staffer who knows people who work(ed) for Boris Johnson and others.
The restrictions have been brought in for a couple of reasons.
1) People are going to see family and friends for Christmas, this way they'll be cautious so Christmas won't be the superspreader event.
2) Boris Johnson and others are convinced that given the sheer number of unjabbed and not thrice jabbed the NHS will be overwhelmed this winter. Not just overwhelmed but the NHS will collapse under that sheer weight. The PM and party that oversees the collapse of the NHS will be out of power for decades, like the winter of discontent on speed.
(There are a few other reasons, but minor on their own, but cumulatively...)
If it really is 100 people in a room, 1 has Omicron, 50 get Omicron, I am not sure if that is your reasoning that the proposed plans will ensure this doesn't happen.
I think he might go for the full lockdown.
The only issue is furlough,
If that happens, I imagine Brady will give himself a hernia trying to pick up his postbag. And of course, what will the public reaction be?
Boris stuck between a rock and hard place.
Lets hope that Omicron actually it isn't all that bad and vaccines still do the business.
The public like WFH or being paid to stay at home, they'll love it.
I'm sure if you asked people with children whether they would like schools closed you would get a different view. There are six year olds who have spent a third of their life under some kind of restrictions and the threat of more to come.
You don't need to convince me, my youngest struggled with lockdown a lot last year.
August 2020 as we were preparing him for a return to school he was refusing to leave the house, not even go into the garden, because he was convinced he'd get Covid-19 and kill his grandparents.
A six/seven year old shouldn't have to deal with that.
Ditto my daughters. They hate lockdown; one of them is, I fear, permanently damaged by it. I HATE LOCKDOWN
No one on here apart from, maybe, a few selfish introverted freaks actually wants another lockdown. Lockdowns are HIDEOUS and inhuman
But the reality is dawning that one form of lockdown, or another, is probably coming. Denying this is futile
So SA does not have a lockdown because hospitals are not overwhelmed at all yet we have a full lockdown in the UK?
More good news:
Dr Joe Phaala (SA Health Minister) says it now appears that, like previous variants, omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children.
“Early data from hospital surveillance, also reports from public and private hospitals, indicate that admissions are largely in children admitted for other reasons, and then tested positive and for very short durations.”
Are you posting the SA stuff because you think we're on opposite sides, that you can prove us wrong? Read your last post - Omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children. If that is how it plays here that is truly fantastic news.
Do you think we are on the opposite side of this debate to you? That we want death and chaos and destruction? Its the *opposite*. My 10 year old daughter had Covid last weekend. She burned (mid 38s), was delirious, scared, broken. It was grim to watch. So if the SA experience shows that other parents will not have to watch their own infected kids go from grim to dead, that is bloody brilliant.
As I have said a few times, we all need to drop this adversarial shit.
Im sorry I just don't understand the panic thats happening, when the evidence from SA shows that there is no need.
If SA hospitals were full of people on oxygen then yes there would be a need to panic, but they are not.
SA is not in a panic and they are 3-4 weeks ahead of us and they have no plans for any restrictions.
The elephant in the room. I sense that the South Africans are becoming increasingly frustrated that nobody seems to be listening to them. They might be wrong, of course, or they might be ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra .
On this page there is a 1 hour 40 minute briefing by various Doctors and the SA Health Minister today on the current situation in SA. Absolutely no sign of panic at all, the stats on hospitals are amazing given how long Omicron has been in SA. The lady from 43 minutes onwards is most enlightening, there is hardly anyone in hospital with just Covid and oxygen is hardly being used.
If we go back to March 2020, our peak had passed before the lockdown happened by about a week, deaths peaked at 1122 in early April. Remember our first case was not discovered until the 29/1/2020 and Omicron is far more transmissable than Alpha. If Omicron was in anyway as serious as Alpha then SA would be seeing huge rises in Oxygen dependant patients and huge numbers of deaths. None of this is happening at all.
I'm surprised by the CricViz Live Win Probability in the cricket.
Simply, how can Draw be 19%?
The chance of rain is small. And even if there is some, it will likely only have a modest impact. And the days can run long if they lose 30 minutes.
England is still 60-odd behind, with two wickets down.
For a draw to happen, England has to amass a total that Australia doesn't bother chasing, which means they need to get to a lead of 250-300, and Australia only has two (maybe two and a half) sessions to get there. That means they need to bat until midway through the morning on the fifth day. That's almost four more sessions, scoring at a decent run rate. And then Australia has to not be bowled out.
That has to be a 5-10% chance, not a 19% one.
Yes, it seems high, but on TMS they were citing some stats that showed the batting average on days 4-5 at the Gabba was the second highest of all Test grounds with a decent number of recent matches, only five wickets fell on the third day. England have a poor record in terms of batting collapses recently, but it wouldn't be outrageous for England to still be batting by the end of day 4 - and Root tends to be a cautious captain with his declarations.
If the pitch is now much easier to bat on then even England's number 9 can occupy the crease for a decent length of time. Of course, my trust in the team's batting form is such that I expect a couple of wickets to fall before the new ball is taken, and matters to deteriorate thereafter, but I think the record at the ground is one reason why a draw is given a higher probability then you'd think.
Again, calm yourself. Let's suppose you and Chris are right. 800k cases a day shortly. So what's the plan. We can't eradicate so let's lock down. And wait. And guess what, the virus will wait so when we unlock ka-pow! It hits us and we get the 800k cases/day.
We really have to trust (yes, I mean hope) the vaccines do their job and the NHS can cope.
I really don't see an unlocking point if we lockdown now. Beth Rigby got it right. And hysterical ****s like you lead the govt to believe they have the people on their side.
Thank god for Steve Baker et al.
"Again, calm yourself....hysterical ****s like you...". Make up your mind - do you want a calm discussion or a screaming match? I lean to being cautious, but I'm open to debating what measures actually help most with impact on society as little as possible. If I see a post with abuse and asterisks I just skip it, as I assume you just need to vent.
I've therefore not bothered to understand your argument. But currently I think we don't know enough about Omicron, so we also don't know what the best strategy to protect the NHS is. Give everyone boosters? Lock down through the winter? Relax as it's mild? We don't know.
It's therefore sensible to err on the safe side until we know more (wfh, masks, vaxports, no large events) without going totally overboard as we had to last year (no meals or family contact at all). If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother.
.
Well said Nick.
For once I am actually on the Government's side, they were right to put restrictions in and they acted quickly. They have my credit for that.
They can put what restrictions they like out, I and many others are just going to stick two fingers up and ignore them. Tesco's today less than 40% mask wearing I would estimate. All those going restrictions are popular look at polls are ignoring that what people do and what they say are often different.
But there's not much you can do if they shutter all non essential business. No pubs, caffs, restos. I guess you can have sneaky parties in your friends' houses, but you might be surprised how many of your friends will be scared and say No
It is human psychology. The contagion of fear
It must be difficult living on your own because you have no sense of perspective. And I don't make light of that at all.
But in the social world I can tell you that very few people are scared in that way.
Why I am inviting 20 people to my bungalow this very Saturday for some medium sweet white wine, cheese cubes, and a vol au vent. None has cancelled despite my asking if they were happy to come.
It must be difficult being so stupid. And I don't make light of that at all.
Oh dear. What an unpleasant troll you are. Desist.
God no let him at it. As I said, people need PB to fulfil a psychological need and @Chris seems to be one of those. Very happy for him to vent on here and at me.
I would like him to respond on the bet I have offered but will have to wait for that.
Its like the chap at football who rants and raves at the players for 90 minutes, gets it all out of his system and then is fine for the next week. The key thing is not to take anything posted on here personally, even if its intended that way...
So I've spoken to a former Vote Leave staffer who knows people who work(ed) for Boris Johnson and others.
The restrictions have been brought in for a couple of reasons.
1) People are going to see family and friends for Christmas, this way they'll be cautious so Christmas won't be the superspreader event.
2) Boris Johnson and others are convinced that given the sheer number of unjabbed and not thrice jabbed the NHS will be overwhelmed this winter. Not just overwhelmed but the NHS will collapse under that sheer weight. The PM and party that oversees the collapse of the NHS will be out of power for decades, like the winter of discontent on speed.
(There are a few other reasons, but minor on their own, but cumulatively...)
If it really is 100 people in a room, 1 has Omicron, 50 get Omicron, I am not sure if that is your reasoning that the proposed plans will ensure this doesn't happen.
I think he might go for the full lockdown.
The only issue is furlough,
If that happens, I imagine Brady will give himself a hernia trying to pick up his postbag. And of course, what will the public reaction be?
Boris stuck between a rock and hard place.
Lets hope that Omicron actually it isn't all that bad and vaccines still do the business.
The public like WFH or being paid to stay at home, they'll love it.
I'm sure if you asked people with children whether they would like schools closed you would get a different view. There are six year olds who have spent a third of their life under some kind of restrictions and the threat of more to come.
You don't need to convince me, my youngest struggled with lockdown a lot last year.
August 2020 as we were preparing him for a return to school he was refusing to leave the house, not even go into the garden, because he was convinced he'd get Covid-19 and kill his grandparents.
A six/seven year old shouldn't have to deal with that.
Ditto my daughters. They hate lockdown; one of them is, I fear, permanently damaged by it. I HATE LOCKDOWN
No one on here apart from, maybe, a few selfish introverted freaks actually wants another lockdown. Lockdowns are HIDEOUS and inhuman
But the reality is dawning that one form of lockdown, or another, is probably coming. Denying this is futile
So SA does not have a lockdown because hospitals are not overwhelmed at all yet we have a full lockdown in the UK?
More good news:
Dr Joe Phaala (SA Health Minister) says it now appears that, like previous variants, omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children.
“Early data from hospital surveillance, also reports from public and private hospitals, indicate that admissions are largely in children admitted for other reasons, and then tested positive and for very short durations.”
Are you posting the SA stuff because you think we're on opposite sides, that you can prove us wrong? Read your last post - Omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children. If that is how it plays here that is truly fantastic news.
Do you think we are on the opposite side of this debate to you? That we want death and chaos and destruction? Its the *opposite*. My 10 year old daughter had Covid last weekend. She burned (mid 38s), was delirious, scared, broken. It was grim to watch. So if the SA experience shows that other parents will not have to watch their own infected kids go from grim to dead, that is bloody brilliant.
As I have said a few times, we all need to drop this adversarial shit.
Im sorry I just don't understand the panic thats happening, when the evidence from SA shows that there is no need.
If SA hospitals were full of people on oxygen then yes there would be a need to panic, but they are not.
SA is not in a panic and they are 3-4 weeks ahead of us and they have no plans for any restrictions.
The elephant in the room. I sense that the South Africans are becoming increasingly frustrated that nobody seems to be listening to them. They might be wrong, of course, or they might be ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra .
On this page there is a 1 hour 40 minute briefing by various Doctors and the SA Health Minister today on the current situation in SA. Absolutely no sign of panic at all, the stats on hospitals are amazing given how long Omicron has been in SA. The lady from 43 minutes onwards is most enlightening, there is hardly anyone in hospital with just Covid and oxygen is hardly being used.
If we go back to March 2020, our peak had passed before the lockdown happened by about a week, deaths peaked at 1122 in early April. Remember our first case was not discovered until the 29/1/2020 and Omicron is far more transmissable than Alpha. If Omicron was in anyway as serious as Alpha then SA would be seeing huge rises in Oxygen dependant patients and huge numbers of deaths. None of this is happening at all.
On the other hand, no less than 20% of South African health workers are off with covid...
And some more of my finely balanced commentary, to calm you all down
First the bad news from the UK
"UK may have highest or close to highest level immunity of any country in the world result of very high vaccine acceptance & a lot of transmission (running a hot epidemic see below) & yet now omicron doubling every 2d. Impact of omicron in less immune populations a huge concern"
A 2.5d doubling time of a virus that doesn't cause severe symptoms in people with some kind of prior immunity isn't a huge deal. As I've said time and again - the biggest danger of Omicron is for countries that have got low vaccination rates, low natural immunity or both.
What we need to know is the severity of Omicron in people with immunity from prior infection, two doses of vaccine and three doses of vaccine. Those are the three major groups in this country. Again, and I'm basing this on known data from European Omicron outbreaks, the symptoms presented in all of these groups are more than manageable, likely because of t-cells and b-cells seeing almost no efficacy dilution vs antibodies which may have significant efficacy dilution. In SA it is highly likely they reached some level of herd immunity with Beta and Delta so it could be the case that their previous infections plus whatever vaccinations they had are the reason there hasn't been a huge explosion in hospitalisations despite the clearly huge explosion in cases and it's been long enough for that to feed into the hospitalisation funnel.
I think everyone is overreacting to transmissibility being higher for Omicron and that it escapes antibody based immunity to a large degree. It doesn't escape t-cell and b-cell based immunity, not even for the spike which is where the majority of the mutations are. That would explain why people get Omicron but don't get severe symptoms, their immune systems have already been trained by vaccines and prior infections.
I'm surprised by the CricViz Live Win Probability in the cricket.
Simply, how can Draw be 19%?
The chance of rain is small. And even if there is some, it will likely only have a modest impact. And the days can run long if they lose 30 minutes.
England is still 60-odd behind, with two wickets down.
For a draw to happen, England has to amass a total that Australia doesn't bother chasing, which means they need to get to a lead of 250-300, and Australia only has two (maybe two and a half) sessions to get there. That means they need to bat until midway through the morning on the fifth day. That's almost four more sessions, scoring at a decent run rate. And then Australia has to not be bowled out.
That has to be a 5-10% chance, not a 19% one.
Yes, it seems high, but on TMS they were citing some stats that showed the batting average on days 4-5 at the Gabba was the second highest of all Test grounds with a decent number of recent matches, only five wickets fell on the third day. England have a poor record in terms of batting collapses recently, but it wouldn't be outrageous for England to still be batting by the end of day 4 - and Root tends to be a cautious captain with his declarations.
If the pitch is now much easier to bat on then even England's number 9 can occupy the crease for a decent length of time. Of course, my trust in the team's batting form is such that I expect a couple of wickets to fall before the new ball is taken, and matters to deteriorate thereafter, but I think the record at the ground is one reason why a draw is given a higher probability then you'd think.
I still think its unlikely the test will even go into day 5. I think the new ball is very likely to prove decisive and that Australia will have a relatively small total to knock off which they will in double quick time. But I am delighted that England have shown today that they are not complete pushovers and will not just roll over.
Like @rcs1000 I am struggling to see a draw in any viable scenario. Maybe they got Ferguson to model it for them.
So I've spoken to a former Vote Leave staffer who knows people who work(ed) for Boris Johnson and others.
The restrictions have been brought in for a couple of reasons.
1) People are going to see family and friends for Christmas, this way they'll be cautious so Christmas won't be the superspreader event.
2) Boris Johnson and others are convinced that given the sheer number of unjabbed and not thrice jabbed the NHS will be overwhelmed this winter. Not just overwhelmed but the NHS will collapse under that sheer weight. The PM and party that oversees the collapse of the NHS will be out of power for decades, like the winter of discontent on speed.
(There are a few other reasons, but minor on their own, but cumulatively...)
If it really is 100 people in a room, 1 has Omicron, 50 get Omicron, I am not sure if that is your reasoning that the proposed plans will ensure this doesn't happen.
I think he might go for the full lockdown.
The only issue is furlough,
If that happens, I imagine Brady will give himself a hernia trying to pick up his postbag. And of course, what will the public reaction be?
Boris stuck between a rock and hard place.
Lets hope that Omicron actually it isn't all that bad and vaccines still do the business.
The public like WFH or being paid to stay at home, they'll love it.
I'm sure if you asked people with children whether they would like schools closed you would get a different view. There are six year olds who have spent a third of their life under some kind of restrictions and the threat of more to come.
You don't need to convince me, my youngest struggled with lockdown a lot last year.
August 2020 as we were preparing him for a return to school he was refusing to leave the house, not even go into the garden, because he was convinced he'd get Covid-19 and kill his grandparents.
A six/seven year old shouldn't have to deal with that.
Ditto my daughters. They hate lockdown; one of them is, I fear, permanently damaged by it. I HATE LOCKDOWN
No one on here apart from, maybe, a few selfish introverted freaks actually wants another lockdown. Lockdowns are HIDEOUS and inhuman
But the reality is dawning that one form of lockdown, or another, is probably coming. Denying this is futile
So SA does not have a lockdown because hospitals are not overwhelmed at all yet we have a full lockdown in the UK?
More good news:
Dr Joe Phaala (SA Health Minister) says it now appears that, like previous variants, omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children.
“Early data from hospital surveillance, also reports from public and private hospitals, indicate that admissions are largely in children admitted for other reasons, and then tested positive and for very short durations.”
Are you posting the SA stuff because you think we're on opposite sides, that you can prove us wrong? Read your last post - Omicron is not causing severe respiratory symptoms in children. If that is how it plays here that is truly fantastic news.
Do you think we are on the opposite side of this debate to you? That we want death and chaos and destruction? Its the *opposite*. My 10 year old daughter had Covid last weekend. She burned (mid 38s), was delirious, scared, broken. It was grim to watch. So if the SA experience shows that other parents will not have to watch their own infected kids go from grim to dead, that is bloody brilliant.
As I have said a few times, we all need to drop this adversarial shit.
Im sorry I just don't understand the panic thats happening, when the evidence from SA shows that there is no need.
If SA hospitals were full of people on oxygen then yes there would be a need to panic, but they are not.
SA is not in a panic and they are 3-4 weeks ahead of us and they have no plans for any restrictions.
What panic? Currently the medical powers that be are gathering the data and modelling the scenarios. Right now they are saying that they don't know enough for panic. But the more data they get (from SA and here and everywhere else) the worse it looks and the bigger the impact on the NHS.
I know you aren't suggesting that the medics here are just making it up because they think lockdown is fun. But what are you suggesting? It can't be that the medics are wrong because they have all the data and experience and training and you have what you have read on Google.
Panic, heres one of many, and this guy is an "expert".
Comments
Starmer still getting only lukewarm support, just looking good compared with Johnson's rating. But I agree with the comment on a previous thread that a lot of the poor "doing well" ratings will melt away if he's objectively doing much better in the polls.
But in the social world I can tell you that very few people are scared in that way.
Why I am inviting 20 people to my bungalow this very Saturday for some medium sweet white wine, cheese cubes, and a vol au vent. None has cancelled despite my asking if they were happy to come.
If you aren't concerned by the doubling in a week (and accelerating) stat or the 50% of people in contact get infected model then will anything alarm you?
As I said in a post earlier even Philip will voluntarily lock himself and his family down if the TSE's mates scenario plays out.
469,479 booster vaccinations in 🇬🇧 yesterday (420,910 the previous Thursday)
🏴 396,278
🏴 39,155
🏴 20,937
NI 13,109
So I am not happy about another lockdown, esp in winter, it was fucking shit last time, and worse for my kids
But I am the one with the calm perspective here. You veer between "all we can do is wait and see" and then screaming "fuck off" to Nick Palmer and calling everyone "hysterical C*nts". I know you are frightened more than you can admit, because you are not the sort to admit weakness. That must be tough, too
Large Labour lead, will it be 10 points?
Our kids did OK during lockdown, but the youngest who was less able to socialise remotely definitely suffered - she even got a little tic in her eye for a while. I felt very sorry for her.
We are NOT back in December 2020, with a totally unvaccinated population.
@NerysHughes keeps on posting stats from SA and I have no idea whether they should give us hope or are a red herring. Neither does anyone else and to try to extrapolate a trend with hugely noisy literally single digit sample sizes is bonkers.
Keir Starmer, Labour's finest leader since Tony Blair
https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/1469331461954326539
https://twitter.com/focaldataHQ/status/1469327797013430280
Simply, how can Draw be 19%?
The chance of rain is small. And even if there is some, it will likely only have a modest impact. And the days can run long if they lose 30 minutes.
England is still 60-odd behind, with two wickets down.
For a draw to happen, England has to amass a total that Australia doesn't bother chasing, which means they need to get to a lead of 250-300, and Australia only has two (maybe two and a half) sessions to get there. That means they need to bat until midway through the morning on the fifth day. That's almost four more sessions, scoring at a decent run rate. And then Australia has to not be bowled out.
That has to be a 5-10% chance, not a 19% one.
I suggest that the difference between then and now is that we went out to school; I recall getting the bus three, or was it four, stops with half a dozen other small boys, all playing out together 'playtime. After school we came home and played out on 'the field'. We weren't locked in our houses.
Well thank goodness for that. People digest experiences and if we are talking percentages I'm willing to bet that a non-trivial proportion of those wartime children were badly damaged.
I still think back, for example, to the Protect and Survive era, which I lived through, as being deeply anxiety-inducing.
But if we are comparing this virus to wartime Britain then that is of course in itself imo a less relevant comparison.
I know you aren't suggesting that the medics here are just making it up because they think lockdown is fun. But what are you suggesting? It can't be that the medics are wrong because they have all the data and experience and training and you have what you have read on Google.
When Delta arrived in the spring with massive transmissibility increases and in the shadow of a very sharp and deadly epidemic in India, the fear factor was several steps below this one.
I spoke to a colleague in Cape Town this morning. No panic there, though he was stocking up on wine ahead of another feared booze ban.
England HAVE not England HAS
FFS Robert.
Going off how on its knees many hospitals already are and how mentally and physically broken many doctors and nurses already are, is the suggestion that their big bosses are falsely shrieking and wailing for no reason because thats good for the functioning of their facilities and their teams?
The real question people should be asking, is why after +£1trill being borrowed/printed over the last two years, apparently the only arrow in the government’s arsenal after vaccines is NPI, rather than a new model of structuring and staffing the treatment for infectious disease to allow higher surge throughout of patients.
I shouted at Nick because of this shitshow line: "If you think this is wrong, and are willing to put your view calmly, I'll read it with interest. Otherwise, don't bother."
For which he can fuckety fuck right off and can do any time of the year virus or no virus. Patronising mouse rather than human saving c*nt.
Other than that no I am not scared. I am intrigued at the dynamics and see the damage, say, another lockdown or even the threat of another lockdown does to people, not least on this site.
But as I noted earlier, I also understand perfectly well why you catastrophise the virus and I am more than happy to be the "don't be hysterical" voice you so clearly need.
I think Aus will win. I will not be suprised to wake up tomorrow to defeat already. Early wickets, limp to a lead of 70-80, knocked off by Warner. But the draw is a valid chance.
If you use that analogy, it's like Philip wants the freedom to drive a supercharged tank the wrong way down a motorway. We spend a fortune in trying to reduce road deaths, restricting people's freedom to (for instance) use a mobile whilst driving.
In addition, road deaths generally don't undergo rapid exponential growth...
It's like a multi-millionaire stealing a packet of fruit pastilles. Why on earth would they bother?
Now, our bet!! What are the terms. 800k cases/day by when and how much for the bet?
First the bad news from the UK
"UK may have highest or close to highest level immunity of any country in the world result of very high vaccine acceptance & a lot of transmission (running a hot epidemic see below) & yet now omicron doubling every 2d. Impact of omicron in less immune populations a huge concern"
https://twitter.com/JeremyFarrar/status/1469310116331720705?s=20
But here, the good news from SA:
"Considerably less Omicron wave hospitalizations and deaths in South Africa is more than welcome news, no matter how it occurs
https://ft.com/content/87c0f31a-ed75-4306-adec-fbf9b323315d"
https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1469305157687013379?s=20
(7-9 december fieldwork, changes compared to mid november)
Macron 24 (-1)
Pecresse 19 (+10)
Le Pen 17 (-1.5)
Zemmour 12 (-2.5)
Melenchon 10 (+1.5)
Jadot 6 (-1)
Hidalgo 3 (-2)
Dupont-Aignan 2.5 (-1.5)
All others 6.5 (-2)
2nd round
Macron 51 / Pecresse 49
(also tested : Macron 58 / Le Pen 42)
My point is that it isn't a one in three chance that England bats until the midway through the first season on Monday. Which is basically required for either the draw or England win scenarios.
And then Boris has given the nudge nudge wink wink to have big booze up for Christmas.
And of course hospitals are on their knees. Look at that great (dreadful) Graun front page montage each one saying for the past X years how the NHS was in crisis.
But we as a nation have decided we don't want to fund the NHS to that level. And also, we have shown by our deeds in not wearing masks if not forced to, that we don't want to wear masks and therefore are "comfortable" with the current strike rate of Covid.
Now that might change. We will have to wait and see.
If the pitch is now much easier to bat on then even England's number 9 can occupy the crease for a decent length of time. Of course, my trust in the team's batting form is such that I expect a couple of wickets to fall before the new ball is taken, and matters to deteriorate thereafter, but I think the record at the ground is one reason why a draw is given a higher probability then you'd think.
When you look at those being infected now (very much weighted to the younger cohort, many of them children), the much, much lower risk of needing medical care in that cohort, the number who have already been infected and the speed of the booster program my guess is that:
The number of admissions will rise slowly but not exceed 1k a day.
The number in hospital will also rise slowly but will not exceed 10k.
Of course even these numbers will have serious knock on implications for the NHS but I do not believe we will reach a crisis point, north Italy style.
We shall see. But this almost childish reliance on exponential growth with so little consideration of how this is actually going to operate in the real world started to piss me off over a year ago and I find it remarkable that it is still going on.
And now I must go do some work. I am still. allegedly, going to Ibiza on Sunday. Who knows if it will happen.
Later!
What annoys me about the Plan B half-measures is that, rather than tackle the idiots who choose not to do the right thing, the Government continues to announce measures which impact uniformly on the whole population. Just about the only thing that anti-vaxxers are going to have to differently is to take a lateral flow test each time they go to a football match etc. How is that going to drive up vaccination rates?
There should be fiscal carrots and sticks at work, and restrictions on the unvaccinated that others don't have to suffer, allowing those that choose to do the right thing to get on with pretty well their normal lives
Do you have a link to this photo
And I knew people post-war who'd been evacuated. Some kept in touch for years, most were glad to get home.
I can recall, dimly, an attitude of dealing with a common enemy and we all, adults and children were expected to 'do our bit'. I have to admit that most of my wartime memories are of 'winning' I'm not old enough to remember the really dark days, although I do recall sleeping in a Morrison shelter, aster box which was designed to save us the house crashed down on us. And I do remember the sound of bombers, and I can still be startled by the sound of an air raid siren, at, for example the Chatham Dockyard experience. I went about four years ago; first time I heard the siren I looked round for a shelter!
I seem to recall quite a lot of calling for restrictions from NHS bosses over the last few months.
I would like him to respond on the bet I have offered but will have to wait for that.
Time for Starmer’s team to start making some low level connections with her people.
https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/coronavirus-all-the-latest-news-about-covid-19-in-south-africa-and-the-world-20200312
If we go back to March 2020, our peak had passed before the lockdown happened by about a week, deaths peaked at 1122 in early April. Remember our first case was not discovered until the 29/1/2020 and Omicron is far more transmissable than Alpha. If Omicron was in anyway as serious as Alpha then SA would be seeing huge rises in Oxygen dependant patients and huge numbers of deaths. None of this is happening at all.
Because of the higher numbers of ethnic minorities among them.
Who wants to be in charge of the "No X" policy at the pub?
I appreciate that it makes people feel better if they think that others are faring worse than themselves.
Whereas I only want people on PB to be happy and if this is your route to happiness can I just say that right now I am sobbing and am typing from under the kitchen table.
48,908 vs 43,888
I think you are looking at Thursday figure.
3m
just the most perfect tweet
The FT graph is required reading. Not only is omicron producing milder outcomes – it's producing significantly milder outcomes. (It's not clear, as ever, whether that is due to intrinsic benignity or greater immunity, or both)
This is why I love this site. Thanks
Edit: it's paywalled.
The key thing is not to take anything posted on here personally, even if its intended that way...
https://mg.co.za/coronavirus-essentials/2021-12-09-alarm-as-almost-20-of-south-africas-healthcare-workers-contract-covid/?s=09
What we need to know is the severity of Omicron in people with immunity from prior infection, two doses of vaccine and three doses of vaccine. Those are the three major groups in this country. Again, and I'm basing this on known data from European Omicron outbreaks, the symptoms presented in all of these groups are more than manageable, likely because of t-cells and b-cells seeing almost no efficacy dilution vs antibodies which may have significant efficacy dilution. In SA it is highly likely they reached some level of herd immunity with Beta and Delta so it could be the case that their previous infections plus whatever vaccinations they had are the reason there hasn't been a huge explosion in hospitalisations despite the clearly huge explosion in cases and it's been long enough for that to feed into the hospitalisation funnel.
I think everyone is overreacting to transmissibility being higher for Omicron and that it escapes antibody based immunity to a large degree. It doesn't escape t-cell and b-cell based immunity, not even for the spike which is where the majority of the mutations are. That would explain why people get Omicron but don't get severe symptoms, their immune systems have already been trained by vaccines and prior infections.
Like @rcs1000 I am struggling to see a draw in any viable scenario. Maybe they got Ferguson to model it for them.
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-omicron-variant-as-bad-news-as-you-can-possibly-get-for-christmas-leading-scientist-says-12491001