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.
I believe Root and Malan are still partying at Brisbane's hottest nightclub, Prohibition. The Aussies seem to really love them, and have been buying them drinks all night.
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.
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.
I don't think its needed for the England win scenario. We'll possibly be level on score about 1 hour into the morning session tonight (that sounds weird to say). If we can bat through until say about an hour left of the final session overnight and then Australia go in chasing a 4th innings total of about 200 and we take a couple of wickets at the end of Day 4 then that would leave a rather evenly poised Test going into the final day.
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.
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.
I don't think its needed for the England win scenario. We'll possibly be level on score about 1 hour into the morning session tonight (that sounds weird to say). If we can bat through until say about an hour left of the final session overnight and then Australia go in chasing a 4th innings total of about 200 and we take a couple of wickets at the end of Day 4 then that would leave a rather evenly poised Test going into the final day.
@SamCoatesSky: Asked whether Dominic Cummings’ claim the PM knew about the Dec 18 2020 Xmas party (because he wd have walked from Cabinet Office Covid briefing to his flat takes him past the press office where alleged event took place) PM’s spokesman says it would not be right to comment
@Dominic2306: I did not say that Sam - I said IF he was in building, THEN he wd have seen as he walks past there to get to flat... But maybe he was up to something else that night...
They will, of course, eventually rules that the madcap Texas scheme is unconstitutional (otherwise liberal states might try something similar with guns) - but they're not going to inject it in the meantime, as for now it stops most abortions happening, which suits their ideological preferences.
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.
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".
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 am quite happy to penalise the unvaccinated.
The unvaxxed are the equivalent of Max Verstappen eating a Hawaiian pizza on Christmas Eve watching Die Hard.
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...
Indeed.
And now like Leon, I have to be off. Not together, sadly.
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...
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 am quite happy to penalise the unvaccinated.
The unvaxxed are the equivalent of Max Verstappen eating a Hawaiian pizza on Christmas Eve watching Die Hard.
Do you consider Home Alone to be a Christmas movie?
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...
That the SA health system is holding up well, despite one in five staff being off with Covid is highly suggestive that (a) it's incredibly infectious, but (b) most Omicron cases are relatively mild.
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'll answer, even though I suspect you are not serious.
Pay people for every jab they get. Maybe £20 a shot. Withdraw child benefit from those who are due a jab but choose not to have one for either themselves or any of their children (subject to medical exemptions.)
The two amounts set so that the the total amount of the carrot paid out equals the total amount raised from the stick.
Those already fully vaccinated would be unaffected (at least until they get their 4th jab well into next year.)
Some of the unvaccinated would do the right thing and receive money. They're not being penalised.
Others of the unvaccinated, the hard liners and the idiots, would choose to do the wrong think and lose a significant amount of money. It's their choice to penalise themselves. And it would still be a small proportion of the billions they're costing the country by their intransigence.
Overall, that's not penalising anyone. It's giving them a financial incentive to choose.
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.
That is a very interesting video – thanks for posting it.
Knives to be stuck in to Boris after they're absolubtely trollied in North Shropshire perhaps ?
Tories at 33/34 in all the last 4 polls now. Opinium to come.
And all their problems come from totally unforced errors. I talked to another parent on the way back from school; he has a young child with Downs. He said he is totally fed up with Covid, and was spitting blood at the party and the 'smirking'.
Pay people for every jab they get. Maybe £20 a shot.
Entirely doable.
We're on the ONS covid testing programme. Every month they come and take a PCR test and an antigen blood test. In return we get £25 of vouchers usable at a whole bunch of places.
@SamCoatesSky: Asked whether Dominic Cummings’ claim the PM knew about the Dec 18 2020 Xmas party (because he wd have walked from Cabinet Office Covid briefing to his flat takes him past the press office where alleged event took place) PM’s spokesman says it would not be right to comment
@Dominic2306: I did not say that Sam - I said IF he was in building, THEN he wd have seen as he walks past there to get to flat... But maybe he was up to something else that night...
I've been pondering if Boris had an alibi that he can't use in public in case Carrie hears of it.
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 am quite happy to penalise the unvaccinated.
The unvaxxed are the equivalent of Max Verstappen eating a Hawaiian pizza on Christmas Eve watching Die Hard.
Do you consider Home Alone to be a Christmas movie?
Yes, because it was released in December and the plot is intrinsically linked to Christmas.
Die Hard was released in July and the story could work easily well at any time of the year.
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".
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?
Treat it like smoking.
You want to smoke? Well you can't come in here. You want to remain unvaccinated?... Well you can't come in here either.
@SamCoatesSky: Asked whether Dominic Cummings’ claim the PM knew about the Dec 18 2020 Xmas party (because he wd have walked from Cabinet Office Covid briefing to his flat takes him past the press office where alleged event took place) PM’s spokesman says it would not be right to comment
@Dominic2306: I did not say that Sam - I said IF he was in building, THEN he wd have seen as he walks past there to get to flat... But maybe he was up to something else that night...
I've been pondering if Boris had an alibi that he can't use in public in case Carrie hears of it.
I thought somebody looked at his diary for the day and he was away from Downing Street during the day (in Derby), but returned to London in the evening.
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.
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.
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 am quite happy to penalise the unvaccinated.
The unvaxxed are the equivalent of Max Verstappen eating a Hawaiian pizza on Christmas Eve watching Die Hard.
Die Hard IS definitely a Christmas movie according to its writer, Steven E de Souza. But of course TSE knows best
SAGE: "preliminary modelling suggests that without any changes to measures in place, the number of hospitalisations from Omicron may reach 1,000 per day or higher in England by the end of the year (and still be increasing at that point)." https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1469342174345105415
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...
That the SA health system is holding up well, despite one in five staff being off with Covid is highly suggestive that (a) it's incredibly infectious, but (b) most Omicron cases are relatively mild.
The video is well worth watching – some serious professionals interviewed and some interesting data.
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.
What panic? Specifically. Even after presenting the work in progress of infections doubling every 2.3 days and a transmission rate through the roof, the powers that be are far from panic. Indeed Sturgeon answered why we aren't imposing restrictions now with "do what you're doing but do it safely". That isn't panic.
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
The superspreaders in primary schools was part of the plan. It must have been. We know the covid risk to the very young is extremely low (so much so that the vaccine is possibly worse), and presumably a wave passing through primaries this term will have been modelled. It gets a lot of cases out of the way before the winter, and delivers protection for the children. Hence why there've been only token restrictions in primary schools that experience cases.
Of course, the government can't say as much openly.
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'll answer, even though I suspect you are not serious.
Pay people for every jab they get. Maybe £20 a shot. Withdraw child benefit from those who are due a jab but choose not to have one for either themselves or any of their children (subject to medical exemptions.)
The two amounts set so that the the total amount of the carrot paid out equals the total amount raised from the stick.
Those already fully vaccinated would be unaffected (at least until they get their 4th jab well into next year.)
Some of the unvaccinated would do the right thing and receive money. They're not being penalised.
Others of the unvaccinated, the hard liners and the idiots, would choose to do the wrong think and lose a significant amount of money. It's their choice to penalise themselves. And it would still be a small proportion of the billions they're costing the country by their intransigence.
Overall, that's not penalising anyone. It's giving them a financial incentive to choose.
You're suggesting paying £60 to the people who are so far unvaccinated and nowt to those who've already had their 3 jabs?
SAGE: "preliminary modelling suggests that without any changes to measures in place, the number of hospitalisations from Omicron may reach 1,000 per day or higher in England by the end of the year (and still be increasing at that point)." https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1469342174345105415
So obvious SAGE has been pushing for much more significant measures, probably another lockdown. Witty statement of "the cabinet signed off on Plan B" was clear indication this isn't my decision.
Somewhere recently I saw a stat that each winter around 30% of the entire population is infected with flu. That makes sense based on flu IFR of 0.05-0.1% as this would mean deaths of 10-20k per winter, which is what we tend to get.
If Omicron infects a similar number of people over the next 3 months then that will equate to daily infections of 200k, thus reported cases of probably around 100k.
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...
That the SA health system is holding up well, despite one in five staff being off with Covid is highly suggestive that (a) it's incredibly infectious, but (b) most Omicron cases are relatively mild.
(c) their health service is seriously overstaffed.
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 am quite happy to penalise the unvaccinated.
The unvaxxed are the equivalent of Max Verstappen eating a Hawaiian pizza on Christmas Eve watching Die Hard.
Do you consider Home Alone to be a Christmas movie?
Yes, because it was released in December and the plot is intrinsically linked to Christmas.
Die Hard was released in July and the story could work easily well at any time of the year.
Christmas films are simply not released in July.
Not so, because the only reason Rickman and his villainous team choose Christmas Eve is because they expect the building to be empty. There is a major plot hole in that a Christmas party is being staged on Christmas Eve, which the scriptwriters weakly try to explain away by function of it being a Japanese bank. The audience is asked to suspend its disbelief for that, and most do, but it came to trouble me as a flaw years many years later.
- Cases up. Steady in the over 50s.. - Admissions up, in the 18-84 range. 85+ rather flat (England only data) - Deaths have stopped falling - looks to have flattened out.
Somewhere recently I saw a stat that each winter around 30% of the entire population is infected with flu. That makes sense based on flu IFR of 0.05-0.1% as this would mean deaths of 10-20k per winter, which is what we tend to get.
If Omicron infects a similar number of people over the next 3 months then that will equate to daily infections of 200k, thus reported cases of probably around 100k.
If most like him do so there will be more rather than less people wanting to go to these places because they will become far safer venues, free of the unvaccinated most likely to infect us. And it will be a lot easier to get tickets for the Wolves as all the anti-vaxxers put their season ticket seats up for resale.
He is a even more of an idiot though, because he seems to be unaware that all he has to do to continue as an anti-vaxxer and get around this is to take a lateral flow test each time.
@SamCoatesSky: Asked whether Dominic Cummings’ claim the PM knew about the Dec 18 2020 Xmas party (because he wd have walked from Cabinet Office Covid briefing to his flat takes him past the press office where alleged event took place) PM’s spokesman says it would not be right to comment
@Dominic2306: I did not say that Sam - I said IF he was in building, THEN he wd have seen as he walks past there to get to flat... But maybe he was up to something else that night...
I've been pondering if Boris had an alibi that he can't use in public in case Carrie hears of it.
I thought somebody looked at his diary for the day and he was away from Downing Street during the day (in Derby), but returned to London in the evening.
I would be annoyed if someone had a party in my house and didn't invite me!
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.
What panic? Specifically. Even after presenting the work in progress of infections doubling every 2.3 days and a transmission rate through the roof, the powers that be are far from panic. Indeed Sturgeon answered why we aren't imposing restrictions now with "do what you're doing but do it safely". That isn't panic.
I'm not talking about Wee Niki! I'm talking about the public – cancelling Christmas parties left, right and centre in the face of government guidance. I realise that this doesn't apply to you, and I hope you have a fantastic weekend down here and thoroughly enjoy yourself sir.
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 am quite happy to penalise the unvaccinated.
The unvaxxed are the equivalent of Max Verstappen eating a Hawaiian pizza on Christmas Eve watching Die Hard.
Do you consider Home Alone to be a Christmas movie?
Yes, because it was released in December and the plot is intrinsically linked to Christmas.
Die Hard was released in July and the story could work easily well at any time of the year.
Christmas films are simply not released in July.
World War 2 movies like Saving Private Ryan are simply not released in 1998? Or Dunkirk in 2017?
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.
They ought not to be aspiring to Draw imo after a morning session like 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
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
The superspreaders in primary schools was part of the plan. It must have been. We know the covid risk to the very young is extremely low (so much so that the vaccine is possibly worse), and presumably a wave passing through primaries this term will have been modelled. It gets a lot of cases out of the way before the winter, and delivers protection for the children. Hence why there've been only token restrictions in primary schools that experience cases.
Of course, the government can't say as much openly.
It's simply not true to say the vaccine risk - for young kids - is worse.
Part of the problem is that estimates of the danger of each were predicated on the disease having largely disappeared, and therefore the certainty of a very small chance (i.e. getting the vaccine) was being compared to a small chance of getting the disease times by a larger chance of the disease killing (or hospitalising) you.
With Covid rampant in schools, the numbers change.
And a surprisingly large number of children have died (or been hospitalisaed) in the UK from Covid, and that's despite not everyone having caught the disease.
I think the US has this right: vaccinated down to five.
SAGE: "preliminary modelling suggests that without any changes to measures in place, the number of hospitalisations from Omicron may reach 1,000 per day or higher in England by the end of the year (and still be increasing at that point)." https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1469342174345105415
So obvious SAGE has been pushing for much more significant measures, probably another lockdown. Witty statement of "the cabinet signed off on Plan B" was clear indication this isn't my decision.
Just a question of what day the lockdown starts now to be honest. Next Monday or New Year's day.
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 am quite happy to penalise the unvaccinated.
The unvaxxed are the equivalent of Max Verstappen eating a Hawaiian pizza on Christmas Eve watching Die Hard.
Do you consider Home Alone to be a Christmas movie?
Yes, because it was released in December and the plot is intrinsically linked to Christmas.
Die Hard was released in July and the story could work easily well at any time of the year.
Christmas films are simply not released in July.
Not so, because the only reason Rickman and his villainous team choose Christmas Eve is because they expect the building to be empty. There is a major plot hole in that a Christmas party is being staged on Christmas Eve, which the scriptwriters weakly try to explain away by function of it being a Japanese bank. The audience is asked to suspend its disbelief for that, and most do, but it came to trouble me as a flaw years many years later.
Welcome to the party, listeners. On this very special festive bonus episode of Script Apart, we’re celebrating the holidays the only way we know how: with a deep dive into the writing of Die Hard, courtesy of none other than the film’s co-writer, Steven E De Souza. Yes, it’s a Christmas film. In fact, for countless fans around the world, Die Hard is the Christmas movie: a touching yuletide tale of family reconciliation, that just so happens to feature a tonne of explosions.
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 am quite happy to penalise the unvaccinated.
The unvaxxed are the equivalent of Max Verstappen eating a Hawaiian pizza on Christmas Eve watching Die Hard.
Do you consider Home Alone to be a Christmas movie?
Yes, because it was released in December and the plot is intrinsically linked to Christmas.
Die Hard was released in July and the story could work easily well at any time of the year.
Christmas films are simply not released in July.
Do you consider Miracle on 34th Street to be a Christmas movie?
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...
That the SA health system is holding up well, despite one in five staff being off with Covid is highly suggestive that (a) it's incredibly infectious, but (b) most Omicron cases are relatively mild.
(c) their health service is seriously overstaffed.
Time for Starmer’s team to start making some low level connections with her people.
Looking good for her and I'm on at 10s - smugerooni city.
Interesting. Not that it should matter – but it does, particularly in France – she looks every inch the stylised version of French womanhood. A run-off between her and Macron would be very exciting I dare say.
SAGE: "preliminary modelling suggests that without any changes to measures in place, the number of hospitalisations from Omicron may reach 1,000 per day or higher in England by the end of the year (and still be increasing at that point)." https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1469342174345105415
So obvious SAGE has been pushing for much more significant measures, probably another lockdown. Witty statement of "the cabinet signed off on Plan B" was clear indication this isn't my decision.
Just a question of what day the lockdown starts now to be honest. Next Monday or New Year's day.
If I had to guess, SAGE want it now, Boris will wait until the New Year. And Graham Brady announces shortly after he needs an operation for a hernia after he picked up his postbag.
@SamCoatesSky: Asked whether Dominic Cummings’ claim the PM knew about the Dec 18 2020 Xmas party (because he wd have walked from Cabinet Office Covid briefing to his flat takes him past the press office where alleged event took place) PM’s spokesman says it would not be right to comment
@Dominic2306: I did not say that Sam - I said IF he was in building, THEN he wd have seen as he walks past there to get to flat... But maybe he was up to something else that night...
I've been pondering if Boris had an alibi that he can't use in public in case Carrie hears of it.
I thought somebody looked at his diary for the day and he was away from Downing Street during the day (in Derby), but returned to London in the evening.
I would be annoyed if someone had a party in my house and didn't invite me!
If most like him do so there will be more rather than less people wanting to go to these places because they will become far safer venues, free of the unvaccinated most likely to infect us. And it will be a lot easier to get tickets for the Wolves as all the anti-vaxxers put their season ticket seats up for resale.
He is a even more of an idiot though, because he seems to be unaware that all he has to do to continue as an anti-vaxxer and get around this is to take a lateral flow test each time.
Apart from it wont just be the unvaccinated that boycott. My local pubs have been left in no doubt they ever ask me for a vaxport or to sign in then they can forget ever having my business ever again. Same with the restaurants I frequent.
It is time frankly for civil disobedience to these measures and from what I have seen at least in my town people are pretty much ignoring it. In fact we had a company wide call this morning where the CEO said we are not putting out an announcement you must all work from home. The offices will be open and if you want to go in you can, if you prefer to work from home you can
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...
That the SA health system is holding up well, despite one in five staff being off with Covid is highly suggestive that (a) it's incredibly infectious, but (b) most Omicron cases are relatively mild.
(c) their health service is seriously overstaffed.
I don't find that very plausible!
Is there a health service ANYWHERE that is over-staffed?
I've always considered it a Christmas classic and my all time favourite Christmas movie (well the remake starring Richard Attenborough).
But according to TSE I'm guessing this is no longer to be classed as a Christmas movie as it was released in May. Or is May OK, but July is off limits?
I've always considered it a Christmas classic and my all time favourite Christmas movie (well the remake starring Richard Attenborough).
But according to TSE I'm guessing this is no longer to be classed as a Christmas movie as it was released in May. Or is May OK, but July is off limits?
Can't we move on to something less contentious... like Brexit?
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 am quite happy to penalise the unvaccinated.
The unvaxxed are the equivalent of Max Verstappen eating a Hawaiian pizza on Christmas Eve watching Die Hard.
Do you consider Home Alone to be a Christmas movie?
Yes, because it was released in December and the plot is intrinsically linked to Christmas.
Die Hard was released in July and the story could work easily well at any time of the year.
Christmas films are simply not released in July.
Do you consider Miracle on 34th Street to be a Christmas movie?
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 am quite happy to penalise the unvaccinated.
The unvaxxed are the equivalent of Max Verstappen eating a Hawaiian pizza on Christmas Eve watching Die Hard.
If only he would confine himself to such relatively innocuous behaviour.
I've always considered it a Christmas classic and my all time favourite Christmas movie (well the remake starring Richard Attenborough).
But according to TSE I'm guessing this is no longer to be classed as a Christmas movie as it was released in May. Or is May OK, but July is off limits?
Dunkirk can't be a WW2 film because TSE will point out to you it was released in 2017!
SAGE: "preliminary modelling suggests that without any changes to measures in place, the number of hospitalisations from Omicron may reach 1,000 per day or higher in England by the end of the year (and still be increasing at that point)." https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1469342174345105415
But by then it will have replaced Delta, so there will be no Delta hospitalisations coming through. We are currently coping with ~800 hospitalisations a day, so that doesn't sound like a disaster
Knives to be stuck in to Boris after they're absolubtely trollied in North Shropshire perhaps ?
Tories at 33/34 in all the last 4 polls now. Opinium to come.
What we want is one from Shropshire N. I'm tempted to agree with those who think a national Labour revival will cost the LD's the seat.
While all PBers and the bubble have heard the instruction from nowhere that the LDs are the challenger in NS even though Labour came second last time, is there any evidence that the voters are aware of this? What is wrong with the idea that Labour are value?
- Cases up. Steady in the over 50s.. - Admissions up, in the 18-84 range. 85+ rather flat (England only data) - Deaths have stopped falling - looks to have flattened out.
If there was a near fully loaded A320 crashing somewhere in the UK every day of the week, and the crashes were largely avoidable if advice had been properly followed, would they be so sanguine about it? No.
Would they still do nothing to take on those responsible for the cause of most of the crashes? No.
So why aren't they taking on the vaccine refuseniks?
Knives to be stuck in to Boris after they're absolubtely trollied in North Shropshire perhaps ?
When was the last time a party fell by 7% between one poll and the company's next?
Again HY is proved foolish to try and rely upon polls taken immediately during or after a breaking story.
Still not a 10% Starmer lead then. Though having said that if photos emerge of Boris at one of these parties then he would have to go, likely replaced by Sunak
Not so, because the only reason Rickman and his villainous team choose Christmas Eve is because they expect the building to be empty.
No, they expected the management team to be there.
I am planning on all the Christmas parties being cancelled and everyone working from home. Then I and my crack team of socially diverse ex-terrorists will break into the Bank of England and steal all the gold.
A highly trained sniper team will kill anyone not wearing a shirt or barefoot anywhere near the operation, of course.
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
The superspreaders in primary schools was part of the plan. It must have been. We know the covid risk to the very young is extremely low (so much so that the vaccine is possibly worse), and presumably a wave passing through primaries this term will have been modelled. It gets a lot of cases out of the way before the winter, and delivers protection for the children. Hence why there've been only token restrictions in primary schools that experience cases.
Of course, the government can't say as much openly.
It's simply not true to say the vaccine risk - for young kids - is worse.
Part of the problem is that estimates of the danger of each were predicated on the disease having largely disappeared, and therefore the certainty of a very small chance (i.e. getting the vaccine) was being compared to a small chance of getting the disease times by a larger chance of the disease killing (or hospitalising) you.
With Covid rampant in schools, the numbers change.
And a surprisingly large number of children have died (or been hospitalisaed) in the UK from Covid, and that's despite not everyone having caught the disease.
I think the US has this right: vaccinated down to five.
Totally agree with this. The dithering and ambivalence of the JVCI on this was bizarre. The comparative risk and reward were not even in the same order of magnitude. Whilst it was true the benefit was more modest than for older cohorts the health benefit was clear, let alone the reduction in the disruption of education.
I fear, once again, a significant number on that committee were of the view that these jabs should be going into third world arms rather than ours. Just as they seemed to think about the boosters. Its a morally justifiable point of view but it is not their job. The Saj was absolutely right to give them a lot less leeway this time around.
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
The superspreaders in primary schools was part of the plan. It must have been. We know the covid risk to the very young is extremely low (so much so that the vaccine is possibly worse), and presumably a wave passing through primaries this term will have been modelled. It gets a lot of cases out of the way before the winter, and delivers protection for the children. Hence why there've been only token restrictions in primary schools that experience cases.
Of course, the government can't say as much openly.
It's simply not true to say the vaccine risk - for young kids - is worse.
Part of the problem is that estimates of the danger of each were predicated on the disease having largely disappeared, and therefore the certainty of a very small chance (i.e. getting the vaccine) was being compared to a small chance of getting the disease times by a larger chance of the disease killing (or hospitalising) you.
With Covid rampant in schools, the numbers change.
And a surprisingly large number of children have died (or been hospitalisaed) in the UK from Covid, and that's despite not everyone having caught the disease.
I think the US has this right: vaccinated down to five.
The JCVI based their risk estimate on 5% of children getting COVID, or something equally ridiculous.
Knives to be stuck in to Boris after they're absolubtely trollied in North Shropshire perhaps ?
Tories at 33/34 in all the last 4 polls now. Opinium to come.
What we want is one from Shropshire N. I'm tempted to agree with those who think a national Labour revival will cost the LD's the seat.
I keep thinking that 50/1 Labour in NS is bonkers. Or is it me that's bonkers?
Labour are still putting quite a bit of effort into the seat, judging from the volume of e-mails I'm receiving on where to campaign.
But I still think Labour is unlikely to stay in double % figures, and that the LDs will win. People will vote for the party seen as best able to stick the final knife into Johnson.
Knives to be stuck in to Boris after they're absolubtely trollied in North Shropshire perhaps ?
When was the last time a party fell by 7% between one poll and the company's next?
Again HY is proved foolish to try and rely upon polls taken immediately during or after a breaking story.
Still not a 10% Starmer lead then. Though having said that if photos emerge of Boris at one of these parties then he would have to go, likely replaced by Sunak
I think if you are being honest you are coming to terms that Boris is no longer an asset and time for the 55 letters to go in or at the very least for the 1922 to visit him and ask that he considers his position
This is unsustainable
And finally with Rishi in place I would rejoin and we would be in the same place
At least he knows who his friends are... The former president was fixated on the fact that while the likes of Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Russia's Vladimir Putin held off — “they felt the election was rigged," Trump claimed — Netanyahu acknowledged Biden's win.
Comments
@SamCoatesSky:
Asked whether Dominic Cummings’ claim the PM knew about the Dec 18 2020 Xmas party (because he wd have walked from Cabinet Office Covid briefing to his flat takes him past the press office where alleged event took place) PM’s spokesman says it would not be right to comment
@Dominic2306:
I did not say that Sam - I said IF he was in building, THEN he wd have seen as he walks past there to get to flat... But maybe he was up to something else that night...
LAB: 41% (+2)
CON: 33% (-7)
LDEM: 7% (+1)
GRN: 6% (+2)
Knives to be stuck in to Boris after they're absolubtely trollied in North Shropshire perhaps ?
Supreme court rules Texas abortion providers can sue over ban but won’t stop law
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/dec/10/supreme-court-texas-abortion-ban-law
They will, of course, eventually rules that the madcap Texas scheme is unconstitutional (otherwise liberal states might try something similar with guns) - but they're not going to inject it in the meantime, as for now it stops most abortions happening, which suits their ideological preferences.
The unvaxxed are the equivalent of Max Verstappen eating a Hawaiian pizza on Christmas Eve watching Die Hard.
And now like Leon, I have to be off. Not together, sadly.
That the SA health system is holding up well, despite one in five staff being off with Covid is highly suggestive that (a) it's incredibly infectious, but (b) most Omicron cases are relatively mild.
Pay people for every jab they get. Maybe £20 a shot. Withdraw child benefit from those who are due a jab but choose not to have one for either themselves or any of their children (subject to medical exemptions.)
The two amounts set so that the the total amount of the carrot paid out equals the total amount raised from the stick.
Those already fully vaccinated would be unaffected (at least until they get their 4th jab well into next year.)
Some of the unvaccinated would do the right thing and receive money. They're not being penalised.
Others of the unvaccinated, the hard liners and the idiots, would choose to do the wrong think and lose a significant amount of money. It's their choice to penalise themselves. And it would still be a small proportion of the billions they're costing the country by their intransigence.
Overall, that's not penalising anyone. It's giving them a financial incentive to choose.
It was hard to disagree with him.
We're on the ONS covid testing programme. Every month they come and take a PCR test and an antigen blood test. In return we get £25 of vouchers usable at a whole bunch of places.
Die Hard was released in July and the story could work easily well at any time of the year.
Christmas films are simply not released in July.
Im not an expert at all, watch the video from SA. Omicron is in full effect there. What happens there will happen here.
You want to smoke? Well you can't come in here.
You want to remain unvaccinated?... Well you can't come in here either.
https://www.scriptapart.com/episodes/episode-17-die-hard-steven-e-de-souza-interview
still be increasing at that point)."
https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1469342174345105415
Of course, the government can't say as much openly.
I can see that going down well.
https://twitter.com/UKCovid19Stats/status/1469337624599048196?s=20
Somewhere recently I saw a stat that each winter around 30% of the entire population is infected with flu. That makes sense based on flu IFR of 0.05-0.1% as this would mean deaths of 10-20k per winter, which is what we tend to get.
If Omicron infects a similar number of people over the next 3 months then that will equate to daily infections of 200k, thus reported cases of probably around 100k.
- Cases up. Steady in the over 50s..
- Admissions up, in the 18-84 range. 85+ rather flat (England only data)
- Deaths have stopped falling - looks to have flattened out.
2010 reverse
If most like him do so there will be more rather than less people wanting to go to these places because they will become far safer venues, free of the unvaccinated most likely to infect us. And it will be a lot easier to get tickets for the Wolves as all the anti-vaxxers put their season ticket seats up for resale.
He is a even more of an idiot though, because he seems to be unaware that all he has to do to continue as an anti-vaxxer and get around this is to take a lateral flow test each time.
Part of the problem is that estimates of the danger of each were predicated on the disease having largely disappeared, and therefore the certainty of a very small chance (i.e. getting the vaccine) was being compared to a small chance of getting the disease times by a larger chance of the disease killing (or hospitalising) you.
With Covid rampant in schools, the numbers change.
And a surprisingly large number of children have died (or been hospitalisaed) in the UK from Covid, and that's despite not everyone having caught the disease.
I think the US has this right: vaccinated down to five.
Welcome to the party, listeners. On this very special festive bonus episode of Script Apart, we’re celebrating the holidays the only way we know how: with a deep dive into the writing of Die Hard, courtesy of none other than the film’s co-writer, Steven E De Souza. Yes, it’s a Christmas film. In fact, for countless fans around the world, Die Hard is the Christmas movie: a touching yuletide tale of family reconciliation, that just so happens to feature a tonne of explosions.
It is time frankly for civil disobedience to these measures and from what I have seen at least in my town people are pretty much ignoring it. In fact we had a company wide call this morning where the CEO said we are not putting out an announcement you must all work from home. The offices will be open and if you want to go in you can, if you prefer to work from home you can
Would you say London is suddenly putting on s strong showing in the caselympics after a very quiet Autumn?
I've always considered it a Christmas classic and my all time favourite Christmas movie (well the remake starring Richard Attenborough).
But according to TSE I'm guessing this is no longer to be classed as a Christmas movie as it was released in May. Or is May OK, but July is off limits?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59606793
No 10 'gathering' it is then.
Again HY is proved foolish to try and rely upon polls taken immediately during or after a breaking story.
Would they still do nothing to take on those responsible for the cause of most of the crashes? No.
So why aren't they taking on the vaccine refuseniks?
A highly trained sniper team will kill anyone not wearing a shirt or barefoot anywhere near the operation, of course.
I fear, once again, a significant number on that committee were of the view that these jabs should be going into third world arms rather than ours. Just as they seemed to think about the boosters. Its a morally justifiable point of view but it is not their job. The Saj was absolutely right to give them a lot less leeway this time around.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/full-list-the-plan-b-tory-rebels
But I still think Labour is unlikely to stay in double % figures, and that the LDs will win. People will vote for the party seen as best able to stick the final knife into Johnson.
Hmmm, but...
Vaccine protection against mild symptomatic disease from Omicron may be substantially reduced, new data suggests.
The UK Health Security Agency says there is evidence that boosters show good effectiveness, "although with some reduction compared to Delta".
This is unsustainable
And finally with Rishi in place I would rejoin and we would be in the same place
JUST IN: Trump accuses Netanyahu of disloyalty: "F--k him"
https://twitter.com/axios/status/1469171153130254339
At least he knows who his friends are...
The former president was fixated on the fact that while the likes of Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Russia's Vladimir Putin held off — “they felt the election was rigged," Trump claimed — Netanyahu acknowledged Biden's win.
Excellent.