My best to worst hierarchy of the options is as below:
1. Restrictions. 2. Short Lockdown. 3. Mandatory vaccination (via vaxports). 4. Long Lockdown.
Hopefully 1 will be sufficient.
If we go lockdown route, it won't be short. It will be 2 months minimum.
And it will be because case numbers have got out of control and it takes time to get them down, plus the temptation from the influencers is always just another couple of weeks.
The hard lockdown will be 2-3 months. The tail end, with the gradual lifting of restrictions, will take us all the way into Summer, just like last time. A catastrophe.
Again more reports of milder, but much younger people in hospital. Now is it the later means the former, or just that the later aren't vaccinated or that really just a mild variant.
It's astoundingly good news, just 6 Covid patients in 17 hospitals being ventilated
Can you explain the discrepancy between your constant stream of good Omicron news and the barage of reports on modelling which anticipates between 25,000 and 75,000 dead in England by April as reported on BBC News among others?
FWIW I hope you are correct and the BBC source is wrong.
We have a older population so I expect we will fare worse than SA, how much worse depends on how the boosters hold up.
My guess is it's not that much milder, maybe by a Midge's Dick less severe, what's skewing what we are seeing in SA is its much younger population at play.
We also don't have 25% of adults HIV positive. The UK and SA aren't comparable at all.
Just occurred that "Number 1 Superguy" Hong Kong Phooey was a pun on Hong Kong Flu. Can't work out if that is an insight, or I was dim to not have figured it out before. Brain fog.
Again more reports of milder, but much younger people in hospital. Now is it the later means the former, or just that the later aren't vaccinated or that really just a mild variant.
It's astoundingly good news, just 6 Covid patients in 17 hospitals being ventilated
Can you explain the discrepancy between your constant stream of good Omicron news and the barage of reports on modelling which anticipates between 25,000 and 75,000 dead in England by April as reported on BBC News among others?
FWIW I hope you are correct and the BBC source is wrong.
25,000 dead by spring is not remotely alarming. At the moment we are averaging 150 dead a day. Times by 100 days and that's 15,000. So Omicron only needs to nudge it up a bit (and remember it will get worse in deep winter anyway) and you hit 25,000
One thing during this pandemic is that people have lost any sort of wider proportionality of just how many people die each day in a population of 65+ million people. 100 people dying a day from a disease is not usually even worth more than a few sentences on page 28 of the newspapers in relation to an article talking about better funding
Yes, 25,000 dead over an entire winter would be a rather bad flu season, which might make a headline once or twice - 22,000 died of flu in 2017-18. Yet I don't recall the entire nation shutting down
I'm sort of guessing that's because you weren't around then.
You think I am 2 years old? I understand I can seem youthfully excitable at times, but still
Apologies - I thought your comment was about the flu pandemic in the early 20th Century. I'll go stand in the corner.
Edit: Apologies too to @dixiedean who posted a like perhaps with the same misapprehension, but surely relying on me not to be quite the blithering idiot
Something a bit more cheering. A boffin who predicted US Covid deaths very accurately early on, and was also unpopularly pessimistic about variants, is more upbeat about Omicron. Reckons it is probably mild, maybe very mild
Caveat: he also admits he knows even less about this disease then he did a year ago, which is a pretty big pinch of salt
Otherwise there is almost nothing about Omicron on the CNN website. @moonshine is right. It is absent from much international media, even tho it dominates ours. Why is this?
Maybe it is just timing. Omicron has arrived here first (thanks to our many international links, and better sequencing) so we are alerted first. Also, lots of other countries - esp Europe - are still focused on Delta, and their own battles with that
But look at Le Monde. It's not even talking about Delta. Poignantly, for those Scot Nats and Remoaners who believe we think constantly about them while they are barely aware of us, its most read story is about Boris Johnson's party, and one of its main stories if the Brexit fishing squabble. They are obsessed
The UK seems to have got itself into a complete nonsense panic with Omicron. So far there's little to no evidence that it hospitalised any significant number of vaccinated or naturally immune people. The modellers are just randomly inputting numbers into their shit models to get the desired outcome of lockdown forever.
I genuinely can't work out if we have lost our minds, or we are on the ball, and the rest of the world does not realise what is about to happen
I think that those at the top have taken a proportionate response. Increase some low level mitigation’s and ramp boosters as fast as possible. There is no panic at that level. As I think others are suggesting it’s likely lockdown talk is partly to get public compliance, but also media management to move on from the parties. On PB, on the other hand, there are many posters who really fear a new lockdown, and have let their fear of such cloud their judgement of what is likely to happen. No doubt some will say I am too optomistic, but I just cannot see the whole panoply of furlough, closed hospitality etc being deployed again. On what we should do, the Times editorial is strong on suggesting tighter measures must target the unvaccinated. Restrict their lives, not those who have done the right thing for society. Hard to disagree.
A very large fraction of the population, especially those aged between about 40 and 70, have been double jabbed with AZ - which, it transpires, is completely useless at protecting you against infection. At the rate that this expands, the very large fraction of us that can't obtain a Pfizer booster for weeks (my appointment is for the 29th, I daren't cancel it and try to get anything sooner because there probably aren't any slots left, so I'm basically down to going to a walk-in centre early next week and praying they've got sufficient supply) might as well resign ourselves to catching it.
A sufficiently large number of cases (even if Omicron is somewhat less harmful than Delta) = too many hospital patients = lockdown.
Omicron has now been with us for a little while, and the boffins will be looking very closely at the hospitalisation data as it comes in. If the explosion in cases and the percentage of infections leading to hospitalisation are both large enough, we've had it.
Given the preliminary findings about the transmissibility of Omicron and that so many of us are completely defenceless against infection, an explosion in cases seems inevitable - so it's all on how many of us get really sick. My own confidence on that front has collapsed. I'm not certain a lockdown announcement is coming next Saturday, but I think it quite likely. And once they do it, we know how that plays out. We'll be under house arrest for months and months and months.
I’d be careful about the 2x AZ being useless. Very limited data, huge confidence intervals (below zero FFS, so making infection more likely...). I’m not sure how many in that population are still waiting for the booster. I’m not, the wife is. It looks like omicron genuinely is giving mild outcomes. The lockdown triggers are not cases, it’s the hospitalisation and death, and 2xAZ will protect here.
At the end of the day neither of us know what will happen. I’ve not seen anything yet to make me thing the worst outcomes are that likely. Lots of cases. Lots of people a bit rough then fine. If we weren’t testing, we would probably not even notice.
What do I think of Pecresse? Don’t know enough about her but seems reasonably competent, and fairly traditionally conservative.
Can she beat Macron? Yes, I think she can.
Are the French ready to elect a lady pres? Yes, they’ve had a female PM before and plenty of presidential challengers in recent years.
I think there is a good chance with her entry that Macron gets booted out in the first round. In fact, it is easy to see a repeat of what happened in the LR run-off that saw Pecresse of the four top candidates (Macron, Pecresse, Le Pen and Zemmour) coming very close in first round votes and Macron to go out this way.
My question would be are the French ready for five more years of essentially much the same agenda under a different name. Pecresse is not a radical change, she would be asking for plus ca change with a few tweaks. I think that gets her home in a run-off with Macron (where there are many people who detest Macron and would vote for whoever opposed him), I'm not sure if it came down to Pecresse vs Le Pen or Pecresse vs Zemmour - I think in the latter case she would just about win, in the former I think she would lose.
I think you're exaggerating how 'radical' Mme Le Pen is. The reason that Zemmour has been able to rise is because the FN is not a particularly radical party any more. It's dumped most of its Euroscepticism, and become a fairly centrist party, with the exception of two policies. Firstly, it seems to think that the reason that France's economy has struggled is because the government hasn't been active enough in directing things. Secondly, it wants a lot less Muslim immigration. And - of course - it believes that the central government should have more power.
Now, Mme Le Pen speaks to a lot of people who have gotten left behind by globalisation. And I have a lot of time for her. But the idea that the French state is insufficiently interventionist is for the birds. The one thing I liked about Macron was his willingness to say to people: "the French government can't keep unprofitable industries alive for ever."
Were Le Pen to win, what would happen? Well, there'd be restrictions on Muslim immigration. And they'd be some fights with the EU over state aid. But the EU would mostly be relieved that she now appears to support the Euro, and isn't going to pull it apart, so they'd probably follow the path of least resistance.
And France would get more state subsidy of industry, paid for by taxing those businesses which were actually economic.
So, PB brains trust. I've had two letters and a txt now in last couple of weeks asking me to book a booster as I am eligible and "our records show you have not had the vaccination booster".
I had my booster at GP a month ago.
Is this just a case of everyone is getting letters regardless or do they have my vax status incorrect?
In which case I may have problem if vaxports includes must have the booster.
One of the symptoms of omicron is false recall.
You jest: but when I had viral meningitis a few years back, it played silly bu**ers with my short-term memory for about a year. I'm still unsure whether my memory's back where it was.
Now, as far as I'm aware Covid doesn't infect the brain in the same way meningitis can, but viruses can cause problems with memory.
Have I said this before?
Indeed. Last Friday to Tuesday is a total blank now for me.
The FO is not fit for purpose as evidenced in the select committee last week
Cutting headcount by 20% seems unlikely to help that. There's lots of room for savings though -> hire more locals abroad and be less generous with all the perks (free rent abroad, extra holiday allowances, free flights etc.)
You'll get no-one of quality applying if your remove free rent abroad. You are already asking two-career households to effectively forego one career, and to maintain a house in London. The extra holiday allowance is to allow diplomats to spend at least some time in the UK so they continue to know the country they represent. The Dutch used to have separate Foreign Office and Diplomatic personnel, with the former permanently in the Hague and the latter serving permanently abroad until that led to Ambassadors who were representing what the NL was 30 years ago (and policy-makers who had little clue of the outside world).
Again, how do you recruit quality personnel without free rent oversees, travel to maintain family ties, and time to spend in the country you are representing?
Under Blair, the FCO core diplomatic personnel was slashed by over 50%. It lost is surge capacity. It now functions in permanent crisis mode. I think the NHS is finding out how damaging that is as an MO.
FPT -> agree you shouldn't completely remove rent free, but would argue there should be a contribution from staff. People can double/triple their income from doing an overseas posting, renting out their place back home etc.
As for recruiting quality people, foreign office is a dream posting, they get oodles of applicants every year. No shortage of quality people who want to work there.
Again more reports of milder, but much younger people in hospital. Now is it the later means the former, or just that the later aren't vaccinated or that really just a mild variant.
It's astoundingly good news, just 6 Covid patients in 17 hospitals being ventilated
Can you explain the discrepancy between your constant stream of good Omicron news and the barage of reports on modelling which anticipates between 25,000 and 75,000 dead in England by April as reported on BBC News among others?
FWIW I hope you are correct and the BBC source is wrong.
25,000 dead by spring is not remotely alarming. At the moment we are averaging 150 dead a day. Times by 100 days and that's 15,000. So Omicron only needs to nudge it up a bit (and remember it will get worse in deep winter anyway) and you hit 25,000
One thing during this pandemic is that people have lost any sort of wider proportionality of just how many people die each day in a population of 65+ million people. 100 people dying a day from a disease is not usually even worth more than a few sentences on page 28 of the newspapers in relation to an article talking about better funding
Yes, 25,000 dead over an entire winter would be a rather bad flu season, which might make a headline once or twice - 22,000 died of flu in 2017-18. Yet I don't recall the entire nation shutting down
It's mainly about hospitals though. Double the deaths but half the hospital demand would be less of a problem than half the deaths and double the hospital demand.
"This antipathy to Big Tech isn’t confined to the screen. In the realm of fiction, its most dogged opponent is probably the American novelist Dave Eggers, who has just published The Every, the hefty sequel to his 2013 bestseller The Circle. Eggers has called smartphones “technological crack” and compared our relationship with technology to “being in a relationship with a very controlling, needy, obsessive person. You’re never free; you’re always paranoid. You’re simultaneously on a leash and under a microscope”."
My best to worst hierarchy of the options is as below:
1. Restrictions. 2. Short Lockdown. 3. Mandatory vaccination (via vaxports). 4. Long Lockdown.
Hopefully 1 will be sufficient.
If we go lockdown route, it won't be short. It will be 2 months minimum.
And it will be because case numbers have got out of control and it takes time to get them down, plus the temptation from the influencers is always just another couple of weeks.
The hard lockdown will be 2-3 months. The tail end, with the gradual lifting of restrictions, will take us all the way into Summer, just like last time. A catastrophe.
I think the temptation will be for that, but the Tory Party won't let Boris do that this time. But if we do go down the lockdown route (and I think we are being set up for it), one month isn't enough, so I can see Jan-Feb being lockdown or something akin to it with WFH, pubs closed, rule of 6, etc.
Again more reports of milder, but much younger people in hospital. Now is it the later means the former, or just that the later aren't vaccinated or that really just a mild variant.
It's astoundingly good news, just 6 Covid patients in 17 hospitals being ventilated
Can you explain the discrepancy between your constant stream of good Omicron news and the barage of reports on modelling which anticipates between 25,000 and 75,000 dead in England by April as reported on BBC News among others?
FWIW I hope you are correct and the BBC source is wrong.
25,000 dead by spring is not remotely alarming. At the moment we are averaging 150 dead a day. Times by 100 days and that's 15,000. So Omicron only needs to nudge it up a bit (and remember it will get worse in deep winter anyway) and you hit 25,000
One thing during this pandemic is that people have lost any sort of wider proportionality of just how many people die each day in a population of 65+ million people. 100 people dying a day from a disease is not usually even worth more than a few sentences on page 28 of the newspapers in relation to an article talking about better funding
Yes, 25,000 dead over an entire winter would be a rather bad flu season, which might make a headline once or twice - 22,000 died of flu in 2017-18. Yet I don't recall the entire nation shutting down
There was a terrible flu pandemic in 1968/69. Most people I've spoken to who were around at that time can't even remember it, including someone who was working in health care at the time.
Yes, exactly, which is my prediction last night of Omicron taking out ~49,000 people over the winter is hardly alarmist. It's a REALLY REALLY bad flu season, but no more than that
What is worrying is the number of people who will get moderately ill and need hospital, but no more, and the many millions who will get mildly sick and need a week in bed, thus scuppering the economy
When it comes to infectivity Omicron is definitely WAY WORSE than the flu
Again more reports of milder, but much younger people in hospital. Now is it the later means the former, or just that the later aren't vaccinated or that really just a mild variant.
It's astoundingly good news, just 6 Covid patients in 17 hospitals being ventilated
Can you explain the discrepancy between your constant stream of good Omicron news and the barage of reports on modelling which anticipates between 25,000 and 75,000 dead in England by April as reported on BBC News among others?
FWIW I hope you are correct and the BBC source is wrong.
25,000 dead by spring is not remotely alarming. At the moment we are averaging 150 dead a day. Times by 100 days and that's 15,000. So Omicron only needs to nudge it up a bit (and remember it will get worse in deep winter anyway) and you hit 25,000
One thing during this pandemic is that people have lost any sort of wider proportionality of just how many people die each day in a population of 65+ million people. 100 people dying a day from a disease is not usually even worth more than a few sentences on page 28 of the newspapers in relation to an article talking about better funding
Yes, 25,000 dead over an entire winter would be a rather bad flu season, which might make a headline once or twice - 22,000 died of flu in 2017-18. Yet I don't recall the entire nation shutting down
There was a terrible flu pandemic in 1968/69. Most people I've spoken to who were around at that time can't even remember it, including someone who was working in health care at the time.
Yes, my Mum recalls that she and her mother were both really quite ill with the Hong Kong flu in Christmas 1968. My Grandfather ended up having to organise the Christmas dinner etc. But she'd forgotten all about it until a neighbour mentioned it.
I don't think anyone who suffered through it, whether they got ill or not, is going to be forgetting the Age of Covid in a hurry. Even if we would really like to.
Again more reports of milder, but much younger people in hospital. Now is it the later means the former, or just that the later aren't vaccinated or that really just a mild variant.
It's astoundingly good news, just 6 Covid patients in 17 hospitals being ventilated
Can you explain the discrepancy between your constant stream of good Omicron news and the barage of reports on modelling which anticipates between 25,000 and 75,000 dead in England by April as reported on BBC News among others?
FWIW I hope you are correct and the BBC source is wrong.
We have a older population so I expect we will fare worse than SA, how much worse depends on how the boosters hold up.
My guess is it's not that much milder, maybe by a Midge's Dick less severe, what's skewing what we are seeing in SA is its much younger population at play.
We also don't have 25% of adults HIV positive. The UK and SA aren't comparable at all.
What effect does HIV positivity have on Covid-19?
Comprised immune system.
But I mean is that from day one, or does it take years before that effect is noticed?
Yes, incidence in HIV positive patients is higher and severity is higher too, the hospitalisation rate is significantly higher because they have got no real natural immune system to fight off the virus.
My best to worst hierarchy of the options is as below:
1. Restrictions. 2. Short Lockdown. 3. Mandatory vaccination (via vaxports). 4. Long Lockdown.
Hopefully 1 will be sufficient.
If we go lockdown route, it won't be short. It will be 2 months minimum.
And it will be because case numbers have got out of control and it takes time to get them down, plus the temptation from the influencers is always just another couple of weeks.
The hard lockdown will be 2-3 months. The tail end, with the gradual lifting of restrictions, will take us all the way into Summer, just like last time. A catastrophe.
But that means many months of furlough, which we simply cannot afford. This time the Treasury will fight
My best to worst hierarchy of the options is as below:
1. Restrictions. 2. Short Lockdown. 3. Mandatory vaccination (via vaxports). 4. Long Lockdown.
Hopefully 1 will be sufficient.
If we go lockdown route, it won't be short. It will be 2 months minimum.
And it will be because case numbers have got out of control and it takes time to get them down, plus the temptation from the influencers is always just another couple of weeks.
The hard lockdown will be 2-3 months. The tail end, with the gradual lifting of restrictions, will take us all the way into Summer, just like last time. A catastrophe.
I think the temptation will be for that, but the Tory Party won't let Boris do that this time. But if we do go down the lockdown route (and I think we are being set up for it), one month isn't enough, so I can see Jan-Feb being lockdown or something akin to it with WFH, pubs closed, rule of 6, etc.
The size of the Tory rebellion matters naught. Enough of the Government's MPs are on side to get any amount of Covid crap through the Commons with the backing of Labour, which seems to be quite enthusiastic about locking us up for life and throwing away the key.
Lockdown from next weekend until the end of March. More Covid crap until July or August. About three months off, new variant, and we start all over again. Rinse and repeat.
It is quite remarkable in my mind but just to repeat what I have been saying for a while now, most recently last night.
My attitude to all the main parties has long been one of a plague on all your houses. But with a long standing philosophical bias against Labour and socialism in general even of the Lib Dem kind. This has meant that whilst I have not been able to vote for the Tories for the past 2 decades at the same time I have always deep down been relieved when they won rather than Labour and fearful when they lost.
Since Johnson and Starmer became the opposing leaders that has changed. Even in the 2019 election, whilst I couldn't vote Tory, at the same time I genuinely feared a Corbyn Government. Now that has gone completely. I am sure that as I am relatively comfortable a Labour administration would not be good for me personally and I am still very opposed to many of their more 'progressive' ideas. But I no longer fear them. I genuinely never thought there would come a day when I would be welcoming the fact that Labour were ahead of the Tories. I am today.
Welcome to the dark side.
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
Again more reports of milder, but much younger people in hospital. Now is it the later means the former, or just that the later aren't vaccinated or that really just a mild variant.
It's astoundingly good news, just 6 Covid patients in 17 hospitals being ventilated
Can you explain the discrepancy between your constant stream of good Omicron news and the barage of reports on modelling which anticipates between 25,000 and 75,000 dead in England by April as reported on BBC News among others?
FWIW I hope you are correct and the BBC source is wrong.
25,000 dead by spring is not remotely alarming. At the moment we are averaging 150 dead a day. Times by 100 days and that's 15,000. So Omicron only needs to nudge it up a bit (and remember it will get worse in deep winter anyway) and you hit 25,000
One thing during this pandemic is that people have lost any sort of wider proportionality of just how many people die each day in a population of 65+ million people. 100 people dying a day from a disease is not usually even worth more than a few sentences on page 28 of the newspapers in relation to an article talking about better funding
Yes, 25,000 dead over an entire winter would be a rather bad flu season, which might make a headline once or twice - 22,000 died of flu in 2017-18. Yet I don't recall the entire nation shutting down
There was a terrible flu pandemic in 1968/69. Most people I've spoken to who were around at that time can't even remember it, including someone who was working in health care at the time.
That’s fifty years ago, so hardly surprising. And there’s been no flu pandemic near that size since. If we had one that large today, it would certainly be news.
My best to worst hierarchy of the options is as below:
1. Restrictions. 2. Short Lockdown. 3. Mandatory vaccination (via vaxports). 4. Long Lockdown.
Hopefully 1 will be sufficient.
If we go lockdown route, it won't be short. It will be 2 months minimum.
And it will be because case numbers have got out of control and it takes time to get them down, plus the temptation from the influencers is always just another couple of weeks.
The hard lockdown will be 2-3 months. The tail end, with the gradual lifting of restrictions, will take us all the way into Summer, just like last time. A catastrophe.
I think the temptation will be for that, but the Tory Party won't let Boris do that this time. But if we do go down the lockdown route (and I think we are being set up for it), one month isn't enough, so I can see Jan-Feb being lockdown or something akin to it with WFH, pubs closed, rule of 6, etc.
The size of the Tory rebellion matters naught. Enough of the Government's MPs are on side to get any amount of Covid crap through the Commons with the backing of Labour, which seems to be quite enthusiastic about locking us up for life and throwing away the key.
Lockdown from next weekend until the end of March. More Covid crap until July or August. About three months off, new variant, and we start all over again. Rinse and repeat.
It is not happening. Voters now oppose closing pubs and restaurants 49% to 31% and oppose too restrictions on households meeting indoors.
My best to worst hierarchy of the options is as below:
1. Restrictions. 2. Short Lockdown. 3. Mandatory vaccination (via vaxports). 4. Long Lockdown.
Hopefully 1 will be sufficient.
If we go lockdown route, it won't be short. It will be 2 months minimum.
And it will be because case numbers have got out of control and it takes time to get them down, plus the temptation from the influencers is always just another couple of weeks.
The hard lockdown will be 2-3 months. The tail end, with the gradual lifting of restrictions, will take us all the way into Summer, just like last time. A catastrophe.
But that means many months of furlough, which we simply cannot afford. This time the Treasury will fight
It probably won't, not once the SAGE models have hit them.
Most likely they'll go back to the markets and attempt to borrow another £200bn or £300bn. But if they think they can't afford to support businesses, or no-one will lend them more money, then they won't attempt to veto the lockdown. They'll burn the businesses to save the hospitals.
My best to worst hierarchy of the options is as below:
1. Restrictions. 2. Short Lockdown. 3. Mandatory vaccination (via vaxports). 4. Long Lockdown.
Hopefully 1 will be sufficient.
If we go lockdown route, it won't be short. It will be 2 months minimum.
And it will be because case numbers have got out of control and it takes time to get them down, plus the temptation from the influencers is always just another couple of weeks.
The hard lockdown will be 2-3 months. The tail end, with the gradual lifting of restrictions, will take us all the way into Summer, just like last time. A catastrophe.
But that means many months of furlough, which we simply cannot afford. This time the Treasury will fight
And the rest of the world won't do it either, the UK will be alone on this Omicron panic while everyone else just gets on with life. This is a confected nonsense to get the public focussed on something other than the PM and his mates living it up while they condemned us all to lockdown last year.
Anyways. The advice from me is GET YOUR BLOODY BOOSTER ASAP! Of the 4 cases, one was boostered. The other 3 of us were right on the 6 months or thereabouts limit. Two of us had bookings to get the jab the week we got it. The other one was in the process of thinking about sorting it. Don't be like him my friends.
For those that can't get an immediate slot, definitely try other postcodes that surround where you live. I have found in the past who moving out of one "zone" to another got me a booking sooner and the vaccine centre not actually been any further away than the ones that were being suggested when I put in my actual postcode.
When you go to manage an existing appointment (as I booked mine what feels like yonks ago now), it only gives you alternative centres nearby; I don't think I could re-enter a postcode.
Not much availability around here; we're getting boostered in Cambridge on Thursday; noting else around (even offering me Saffron Walden) until the 22nd.
Hmmm that's odd. When I got my second shot, I was travelling around for business and not only did I search a load of different postcodes, I cancelled my original booking and rebooked in a totally different part of the country as my plans had changed.
I'm going into the manage an existing booking section. It gives you a list of options, and at the bottom there is a button to click if you really want to cancel.
It seems you cancelled first; if so, that probably allows you to enter a postcode.
Obvs I didn't, as none were earlier than the booking.
Yes, that initial screen is just telling you if there is an option for something sooner in your "region". I am fairly sure if you just cancel and not immediately rebook, you can then re-enter a different postcode.
I know it's quite a way from you but Colchester Football Ground (not on a Sat, obvs.) doesn't seem that busy.
My best to worst hierarchy of the options is as below:
1. Restrictions. 2. Short Lockdown. 3. Mandatory vaccination (via vaxports). 4. Long Lockdown.
Hopefully 1 will be sufficient.
If we go lockdown route, it won't be short. It will be 2 months minimum.
And it will be because case numbers have got out of control and it takes time to get them down, plus the temptation from the influencers is always just another couple of weeks.
The hard lockdown will be 2-3 months. The tail end, with the gradual lifting of restrictions, will take us all the way into Summer, just like last time. A catastrophe.
I think the temptation will be for that, but the Tory Party won't let Boris do that this time. But if we do go down the lockdown route (and I think we are being set up for it), one month isn't enough, so I can see Jan-Feb being lockdown or something akin to it with WFH, pubs closed, rule of 6, etc.
The size of the Tory rebellion matters naught. Enough of the Government's MPs are on side to get any amount of Covid crap through the Commons with the backing of Labour, which seems to be quite enthusiastic about locking us up for life and throwing away the key.
Lockdown from next weekend until the end of March. More Covid crap until July or August. About three months off, new variant, and we start all over again. Rinse and repeat.
It is not happening. Voters now oppose closing pubs and restaurants 49% to 31% and restrictions on households meeting indoors.
Tory MPs would also vote down any lockdown and no confidence any Tory PM who tried to do one. Vaxports are as far as we will go
I wish I could share your confidence; however, we have been here before, haven't we? A number of continental European countries have already resorted to lockdowns. And, whilst our vaccination rates are better than most of the countries that have brought back severe restrictions, it now transpires that the main shield used to defend most of the middle aged and elderly - whilst (we hope) remaining fairly effective against severe disease - offers no defence against infection.
My best to worst hierarchy of the options is as below:
1. Restrictions. 2. Short Lockdown. 3. Mandatory vaccination (via vaxports). 4. Long Lockdown.
Hopefully 1 will be sufficient.
If we go lockdown route, it won't be short. It will be 2 months minimum.
And it will be because case numbers have got out of control and it takes time to get them down, plus the temptation from the influencers is always just another couple of weeks.
The hard lockdown will be 2-3 months. The tail end, with the gradual lifting of restrictions, will take us all the way into Summer, just like last time. A catastrophe.
I think the temptation will be for that, but the Tory Party won't let Boris do that this time. But if we do go down the lockdown route (and I think we are being set up for it), one month isn't enough, so I can see Jan-Feb being lockdown or something akin to it with WFH, pubs closed, rule of 6, etc.
The size of the Tory rebellion matters naught. Enough of the Government's MPs are on side to get any amount of Covid crap through the Commons with the backing of Labour, which seems to be quite enthusiastic about locking us up for life and throwing away the key.
Lockdown from next weekend until the end of March. More Covid crap until July or August. About three months off, new variant, and we start all over again. Rinse and repeat.
It is not happening. Voters now oppose closing pubs and restaurants 49% to 31% and restrictions on households meeting indoors.
Tory MPs would also vote down any lockdown and no confidence any Tory PM who tried to do one. Vaxports are as far as we will go
I wish I could share your confidence; however, we have been here before, haven't we? A number of continental European countries have already resorted to lockdowns. And, whilst our vaccination rates are better than most of the countries that have brought back severe restrictions, it now transpires that the main shield used to defend most of the middle aged and elderly - whilst (we hope) remaining fairly effective against severe disease - offers no defence against infection.
These are not promising circumstances.
You keep saying no protection. I doubt it’s true. Limited data, plus mainly older population (by necessity to give the time).
My best to worst hierarchy of the options is as below:
1. Restrictions. 2. Short Lockdown. 3. Mandatory vaccination (via vaxports). 4. Long Lockdown.
Hopefully 1 will be sufficient.
If we go lockdown route, it won't be short. It will be 2 months minimum.
And it will be because case numbers have got out of control and it takes time to get them down, plus the temptation from the influencers is always just another couple of weeks.
By short I mean 4 to 6 weeks. And by long 3 months plus. But as I say, I think the most likely outcome is a longish period of Restrictions short of Lockdown.
What I find interesting is the idea of (effective) mandatory vaccination through use of vaxports for accessing normal life. Will that tool be reached for before Lockdown? Or as an alternative to it? Or as a supplement to it? Or not at all? It's hard to read that one.
To get on board, you need to fill in a new Covid safety form online. This requires a vaxport - fine, easy, the NHS app. This also requires a Spanish Health Pass - slightly tricker, but takes a few minutes of confusing faff, but done now
But THEN they ask you for a Passenger Locator Form. Something you literally cannot fill in until 2 days before you RETURN to the UK. I only fly OUT tomorrow, back midweek
WTF is this madness? Has anyone encountered it and solved it?
Yes, I’ve done this to the Balearics with BA. It’s really unclear what to do, but the simple rule is if you go on the BA app/site 48 hours from departure from Spain the app should point you the right way. Don’t bother with the third party app (I can’t remember its name) - it doesn’t work and serves only to add to the needless confusion,
It is quite remarkable in my mind but just to repeat what I have been saying for a while now, most recently last night.
My attitude to all the main parties has long been one of a plague on all your houses. But with a long standing philosophical bias against Labour and socialism in general even of the Lib Dem kind. This has meant that whilst I have not been able to vote for the Tories for the past 2 decades at the same time I have always deep down been relieved when they won rather than Labour and fearful when they lost.
Since Johnson and Starmer became the opposing leaders that has changed. Even in the 2019 election, whilst I couldn't vote Tory, at the same time I genuinely feared a Corbyn Government. Now that has gone completely. I am sure that as I am relatively comfortable a Labour administration would not be good for me personally and I am still very opposed to many of their more 'progressive' ideas. But I no longer fear them. I genuinely never thought there would come a day when I would be welcoming the fact that Labour were ahead of the Tories. I am today.
Welcome to the dark side.
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
LOL. Thank you. I know we still disagree on the issue of Brexit which I am still a big fan of but I should also point out that I have never supported nor voted for Johnson. I am happy to have clowns writing newspaper columns and appearing on topical comedy programmes but prefer them not to be anywhere near the levers of power - not even as MPs. (Although I realise many of them are clowns apart from Johnson). Corbyn was more frightening for me because he didn't appear to be a clown. If I have to be governed by evil authoritarian pricks I would actually rather they were incompetent at it.
If she can get to the second round Pécresse is definitely electable. Strangely it's easier for her to win the presidency than get into round 2. Macron will definitely get one of the two slots; Le Pen will probably get the other despite the current polls. If that happens Macron will almost certainly win the presidency.
Ugly for Tory voters and supporters. But that was clearly the case a week or so ago.
I'm sure that the political landscape has entirely shifted. Boris has managed a political earthquake - unfortunately against him. Of course some aspects of this aren't his fault, and the opposition are making hay everywhere and in some aspects it's too much.
2024 (and it must now be 2024) will be an interesting year.
It is quite remarkable in my mind but just to repeat what I have been saying for a while now, most recently last night.
My attitude to all the main parties has long been one of a plague on all your houses. But with a long standing philosophical bias against Labour and socialism in general even of the Lib Dem kind. This has meant that whilst I have not been able to vote for the Tories for the past 2 decades at the same time I have always deep down been relieved when they won rather than Labour and fearful when they lost.
Since Johnson and Starmer became the opposing leaders that has changed. Even in the 2019 election, whilst I couldn't vote Tory, at the same time I genuinely feared a Corbyn Government. Now that has gone completely. I am sure that as I am relatively comfortable a Labour administration would not be good for me personally and I am still very opposed to many of their more 'progressive' ideas. But I no longer fear them. I genuinely never thought there would come a day when I would be welcoming the fact that Labour were ahead of the Tories. I am today.
Welcome to the dark side.
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
LOL. Thank you. I know we still disagree on the issue of Brexit which I am still a big fan of but I should also point out that I have never supported nor voted for Johnson. I am happy to have clowns writing newspaper columns and appearing on topical comedy programmes but prefer them not to be anywhere near the levers of power - not even as MPs. (Although I realise many of them are clowns apart from Johnson). Corbyn was more frightening for me because he didn't appear to be a clown. If I have to be governed by evil authoritarian pricks I would actually rather they were incompetent at it.
You're one of the few reasonable Brexiteers I've ever spoken to
It is quite remarkable in my mind but just to repeat what I have been saying for a while now, most recently last night.
My attitude to all the main parties has long been one of a plague on all your houses. But with a long standing philosophical bias against Labour and socialism in general even of the Lib Dem kind. This has meant that whilst I have not been able to vote for the Tories for the past 2 decades at the same time I have always deep down been relieved when they won rather than Labour and fearful when they lost.
Since Johnson and Starmer became the opposing leaders that has changed. Even in the 2019 election, whilst I couldn't vote Tory, at the same time I genuinely feared a Corbyn Government. Now that has gone completely. I am sure that as I am relatively comfortable a Labour administration would not be good for me personally and I am still very opposed to many of their more 'progressive' ideas. But I no longer fear them. I genuinely never thought there would come a day when I would be welcoming the fact that Labour were ahead of the Tories. I am today.
Welcome to the dark side.
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
LOL. Thank you. I know we still disagree on the issue of Brexit which I am still a big fan of but I should also point out that I have never supported nor voted for Johnson. I am happy to have clowns writing newspaper columns and appearing on topical comedy programmes but prefer them not to be anywhere near the levers of power - not even as MPs. (Although I realise many of them are clowns apart from Johnson). Corbyn was more frightening for me because he didn't appear to be a clown. If I have to be governed by evil authoritarian pricks I would actually rather they were incompetent at it.
You're one of the few reasonable Brexiteers I've ever spoken to
You need to get out more. There's plenty out there.
It won't go mad yet. Very roughly, the number of reported cases that are actually Omicron may have risen from 2500 to a little over 3000 if it is, say, doubling every 3 days, so that would only contribute a rise of 500.
The numbers are still dominated by Delta and it is still a big part of the change in the numbers. The Omicron signal will become dominant as it becomes dominant.
My best to worst hierarchy of the options is as below:
1. Restrictions. 2. Short Lockdown. 3. Mandatory vaccination (via vaxports). 4. Long Lockdown.
Hopefully 1 will be sufficient.
If we go lockdown route, it won't be short. It will be 2 months minimum.
And it will be because case numbers have got out of control and it takes time to get them down, plus the temptation from the influencers is always just another couple of weeks.
The hard lockdown will be 2-3 months. The tail end, with the gradual lifting of restrictions, will take us all the way into Summer, just like last time. A catastrophe.
But that means many months of furlough, which we simply cannot afford. This time the Treasury will fight
And the rest of the world won't do it either, the UK will be alone on this Omicron panic while everyone else just gets on with life. This is a confected nonsense to get the public focussed on something other than the PM and his mates living it up while they condemned us all to lockdown last year.
My best to worst hierarchy of the options is as below:
1. Restrictions. 2. Short Lockdown. 3. Mandatory vaccination (via vaxports). 4. Long Lockdown.
Hopefully 1 will be sufficient.
If we go lockdown route, it won't be short. It will be 2 months minimum.
And it will be because case numbers have got out of control and it takes time to get them down, plus the temptation from the influencers is always just another couple of weeks.
The hard lockdown will be 2-3 months. The tail end, with the gradual lifting of restrictions, will take us all the way into Summer, just like last time. A catastrophe.
I think the temptation will be for that, but the Tory Party won't let Boris do that this time. But if we do go down the lockdown route (and I think we are being set up for it), one month isn't enough, so I can see Jan-Feb being lockdown or something akin to it with WFH, pubs closed, rule of 6, etc.
The size of the Tory rebellion matters naught. Enough of the Government's MPs are on side to get any amount of Covid crap through the Commons with the backing of Labour, which seems to be quite enthusiastic about locking us up for life and throwing away the key.
Lockdown from next weekend until the end of March. More Covid crap until July or August. About three months off, new variant, and we start all over again. Rinse and repeat.
It is not happening. Voters now oppose closing pubs and restaurants 49% to 31% and oppose too restrictions on households meeting indoors.
It is quite remarkable in my mind but just to repeat what I have been saying for a while now, most recently last night.
My attitude to all the main parties has long been one of a plague on all your houses. But with a long standing philosophical bias against Labour and socialism in general even of the Lib Dem kind. This has meant that whilst I have not been able to vote for the Tories for the past 2 decades at the same time I have always deep down been relieved when they won rather than Labour and fearful when they lost.
Since Johnson and Starmer became the opposing leaders that has changed. Even in the 2019 election, whilst I couldn't vote Tory, at the same time I genuinely feared a Corbyn Government. Now that has gone completely. I am sure that as I am relatively comfortable a Labour administration would not be good for me personally and I am still very opposed to many of their more 'progressive' ideas. But I no longer fear them. I genuinely never thought there would come a day when I would be welcoming the fact that Labour were ahead of the Tories. I am today.
Welcome to the dark side.
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
LOL. Thank you. I know we still disagree on the issue of Brexit which I am still a big fan of but I should also point out that I have never supported nor voted for Johnson. I am happy to have clowns writing newspaper columns and appearing on topical comedy programmes but prefer them not to be anywhere near the levers of power - not even as MPs. (Although I realise many of them are clowns apart from Johnson). Corbyn was more frightening for me because he didn't appear to be a clown. If I have to be governed by evil authoritarian pricks I would actually rather they were incompetent at it.
You're one of the few reasonable Brexiteers I've ever spoken to
I do realise I have a set of beliefs which don't really conform to most of the usual trends. I also do try (and generally fail) to be as Socratic as possible in my outlook. Assume that you are probably wrong, probably don't know anywhere near as much as you should and are probably surrounded by people who are brighter than you are. Much of that outlook has come from my time on PB and I like to think it has helped both to make me less arrogant and to crystallise my own core beliefs a little more.
It won't go mad yet. Very roughly, the number of reported cases that are actually Omicron may have risen from 2500 to a little over 3000 if it is, say, doubling every 3 days, so that would only contribute a rise of 500.
The numbers are still dominated by Delta and it is still a big part of the change in the numbers. The Omicron signal will become dominant as it becomes dominant.
To get on board, you need to fill in a new Covid safety form online. This requires a vaxport - fine, easy, the NHS app. This also requires a Spanish Health Pass - slightly tricker, but takes a few minutes of confusing faff, but done now
But THEN they ask you for a Passenger Locator Form. Something you literally cannot fill in until 2 days before you RETURN to the UK. I only fly OUT tomorrow, back midweek
WTF is this madness? Has anyone encountered it and solved it?
Yes, I’ve done this to the Balearics with BA. It’s really unclear what to do, but the simple rule is if you go on the BA app/site 48 hours from departure from Spain the app should point you the right way. Don’t bother with the third party app (I can’t remember its name) - it doesn’t work and serves only to add to the needless confusion,
It is quite remarkable in my mind but just to repeat what I have been saying for a while now, most recently last night.
My attitude to all the main parties has long been one of a plague on all your houses. But with a long standing philosophical bias against Labour and socialism in general even of the Lib Dem kind. This has meant that whilst I have not been able to vote for the Tories for the past 2 decades at the same time I have always deep down been relieved when they won rather than Labour and fearful when they lost.
Since Johnson and Starmer became the opposing leaders that has changed. Even in the 2019 election, whilst I couldn't vote Tory, at the same time I genuinely feared a Corbyn Government. Now that has gone completely. I am sure that as I am relatively comfortable a Labour administration would not be good for me personally and I am still very opposed to many of their more 'progressive' ideas. But I no longer fear them. I genuinely never thought there would come a day when I would be welcoming the fact that Labour were ahead of the Tories. I am today.
Welcome to the dark side.
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
LOL. Thank you. I know we still disagree on the issue of Brexit which I am still a big fan of but I should also point out that I have never supported nor voted for Johnson. I am happy to have clowns writing newspaper columns and appearing on topical comedy programmes but prefer them not to be anywhere near the levers of power - not even as MPs. (Although I realise many of them are clowns apart from Johnson). Corbyn was more frightening for me because he didn't appear to be a clown. If I have to be governed by evil authoritarian pricks I would actually rather they were incompetent at it.
You're one of the few reasonable Brexiteers I've ever spoken to
I do realise I have a set of beliefs which don't really conform to most of the usual trends. I also do try (and generally fail) to be as Socratic as possible in my outlook. Assume that you are probably wrong, probably don't know anywhere near as much as you should and are probably surrounded by people who are brighter than you are. Much of that outlook has come from my time on PB and I like to think it has helped both to make me less arrogant and to crystallise my own core beliefs a little more.
Exactly the same outlook I have. I always assume that you are probably wrong
Ugly for Tory voters and supporters. But that was clearly the case a week or so ago.
I'm sure that the political landscape has entirely shifted. Boris has managed a political earthquake - unfortunately against him. Of course some aspects of this aren't his fault, and the opposition are making hay everywhere and in some aspects it's too much.
2024 (and it must now be 2024) will be an interesting year.
I certainly don't share the doom-laden analysis of some on here.
According to the Government dashboard (so it must be true), 22,500,000 have had their booster vaccination leaving 24 million who have had two vaccinations but not the booster, a further four and a half million who have only had one dose and an unknown number (x) who are completely unvaccinated.
Reading the papers this morning, the issue seems to be the original two doses provides little or no protection against Omicron especially after 3-4 months so the rush to get the booster vaccinations into those who only had their second vaccination fairly recently.
At 400,000 per day it's going to take 60 days to get through all those who have only had two vaccinations so far so that's into February.
Now, we may accept the blissful optimism of @NerysHughes as being valid but that doesn't seem to be the message the Government is hearing or understanding. Even if a vanishingly small number of those 28 and a half million plus x require hospitalisation that's still going to put pressure on ICUs, oxygen, NHS staff etc and that's before we deal with the normal winter round of sprains, falls, respiratory problems etc.
The logic of trying to reduce inter-personal contact to mitigate or slow transmission of Omicron seems valid to this observer as is the public clamour to get the booster vaccinations into as many of the population as possible as quickly as possible.
As I said earlier, the "mood" I'm detecting is people's fears of Omicron aren't predicated on their own health situation - few believe it's that serious but catching it and the isolation required would ruin whatever Christmas plans people have and if it's a choice between seeing the loved ones/family on Christmas Day and missing the work Christmas party, the party is going to lose every time.
That's not what hospitality wants to hear but the regimen of isolation imposed on those either infected by or in close contact with someone infected means there will be a degree of voluntary hibernation especially from next week onward.
It is quite remarkable in my mind but just to repeat what I have been saying for a while now, most recently last night.
My attitude to all the main parties has long been one of a plague on all your houses. But with a long standing philosophical bias against Labour and socialism in general even of the Lib Dem kind. This has meant that whilst I have not been able to vote for the Tories for the past 2 decades at the same time I have always deep down been relieved when they won rather than Labour and fearful when they lost.
Since Johnson and Starmer became the opposing leaders that has changed. Even in the 2019 election, whilst I couldn't vote Tory, at the same time I genuinely feared a Corbyn Government. Now that has gone completely. I am sure that as I am relatively comfortable a Labour administration would not be good for me personally and I am still very opposed to many of their more 'progressive' ideas. But I no longer fear them. I genuinely never thought there would come a day when I would be welcoming the fact that Labour were ahead of the Tories. I am today.
Welcome to the dark side.
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
LOL. Thank you. I know we still disagree on the issue of Brexit which I am still a big fan of but I should also point out that I have never supported nor voted for Johnson. I am happy to have clowns writing newspaper columns and appearing on topical comedy programmes but prefer them not to be anywhere near the levers of power - not even as MPs. (Although I realise many of them are clowns apart from Johnson). Corbyn was more frightening for me because he didn't appear to be a clown. If I have to be governed by evil authoritarian pricks I would actually rather they were incompetent at it.
You're one of the few reasonable Brexiteers I've ever spoken to
I do realise I have a set of beliefs which don't really conform to most of the usual trends. I also do try (and generally fail) to be as Socratic as possible in my outlook. Assume that you are probably wrong, probably don't know anywhere near as much as you should and are probably surrounded by people who are brighter than you are. Much of that outlook has come from my time on PB and I like to think it has helped both to make me less arrogant and to crystallise my own core beliefs a little more.
Exactly the same outlook I have. I always assume that you are probably wrong
Oh that hurt You see we can find something to agree on after all.
It won't go mad yet. Very roughly, the number of reported cases that are actually Omicron may have risen from 2500 to a little over 3000 if it is, say, doubling every 3 days, so that would only contribute a rise of 500.
The numbers are still dominated by Delta and it is still a big part of the change in the numbers. The Omicron signal will become dominant as it becomes dominant.
Sorry not to reassure you today.
Oh I’m not reassured, don’t worry. I fully expect omicron to dominate very soon and infect millions. Enough that HMG will at least consider lockdown. What I don’t know is the severity of the variant. In somewhere like the UK
Again more reports of milder, but much younger people in hospital. Now is it the later means the former, or just that the later aren't vaccinated or that really just a mild variant.
It's astoundingly good news, just 6 Covid patients in 17 hospitals being ventilated
Can you explain the discrepancy between your constant stream of good Omicron news and the barage of reports on modelling which anticipates between 25,000 and 75,000 dead in England by April as reported on BBC News among others?
FWIW I hope you are correct and the BBC source is wrong.
25,000 dead by spring is not remotely alarming. At the moment we are averaging 150 dead a day. Times by 100 days and that's 15,000. So Omicron only needs to nudge it up a bit (and remember it will get worse in deep winter anyway) and you hit 25,000
One thing during this pandemic is that people have lost any sort of wider proportionality of just how many people die each day in a population of 65+ million people. 100 people dying a day from a disease is not usually even worth more than a few sentences on page 28 of the newspapers in relation to an article talking about better funding
Yes, 25,000 dead over an entire winter would be a rather bad flu season, which might make a headline once or twice - 22,000 died of flu in 2017-18. Yet I don't recall the entire nation shutting down
I've got ONS saying 1598 deaths from influenza in 2018.
Ugly for Tory voters and supporters. But that was clearly the case a week or so ago.
I'm sure that the political landscape has entirely shifted. Boris has managed a political earthquake - unfortunately against him. Of course some aspects of this aren't his fault, and the opposition are making hay everywhere and in some aspects it's too much.
2024 (and it must now be 2024) will be an interesting year.
Long way to go yet
Yes, but I really think Boris has opened the floodgates to the left. Thank god there's someone reasonable at the helm for Labour. I really would have been packing my bags if Corbyn was still leader.
One, just one, decent press conference or speech or PMQs from Boris... however he's not managed that for many months.
Brown is clearly the worst PM ever, but Boris is really trying to dig himself in at the bottom.
Again more reports of milder, but much younger people in hospital. Now is it the later means the former, or just that the later aren't vaccinated or that really just a mild variant.
It's astoundingly good news, just 6 Covid patients in 17 hospitals being ventilated
Can you explain the discrepancy between your constant stream of good Omicron news and the barage of reports on modelling which anticipates between 25,000 and 75,000 dead in England by April as reported on BBC News among others?
FWIW I hope you are correct and the BBC source is wrong.
25,000 dead by spring is not remotely alarming. At the moment we are averaging 150 dead a day. Times by 100 days and that's 15,000. So Omicron only needs to nudge it up a bit (and remember it will get worse in deep winter anyway) and you hit 25,000
One thing during this pandemic is that people have lost any sort of wider proportionality of just how many people die each day in a population of 65+ million people. 100 people dying a day from a disease is not usually even worth more than a few sentences on page 28 of the newspapers in relation to an article talking about better funding
Yes, 25,000 dead over an entire winter would be a rather bad flu season, which might make a headline once or twice - 22,000 died of flu in 2017-18. Yet I don't recall the entire nation shutting down
I've got ONS saying 1598 deaths from influenza in 2018.
Edit: in England and Wales
That's like arguing people aren't dying from covid, they die from pneumonia or organ failure after contracting covid
Everybody in the UK talks about flu deaths as including those with pneumonia after getting flu. Its 25-30k most years.
It is quite remarkable in my mind but just to repeat what I have been saying for a while now, most recently last night.
My attitude to all the main parties has long been one of a plague on all your houses. But with a long standing philosophical bias against Labour and socialism in general even of the Lib Dem kind. This has meant that whilst I have not been able to vote for the Tories for the past 2 decades at the same time I have always deep down been relieved when they won rather than Labour and fearful when they lost.
Since Johnson and Starmer became the opposing leaders that has changed. Even in the 2019 election, whilst I couldn't vote Tory, at the same time I genuinely feared a Corbyn Government. Now that has gone completely. I am sure that as I am relatively comfortable a Labour administration would not be good for me personally and I am still very opposed to many of their more 'progressive' ideas. But I no longer fear them. I genuinely never thought there would come a day when I would be welcoming the fact that Labour were ahead of the Tories. I am today.
Welcome to the dark side.
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
LOL. Thank you. I know we still disagree on the issue of Brexit which I am still a big fan of but I should also point out that I have never supported nor voted for Johnson. I am happy to have clowns writing newspaper columns and appearing on topical comedy programmes but prefer them not to be anywhere near the levers of power - not even as MPs. (Although I realise many of them are clowns apart from Johnson). Corbyn was more frightening for me because he didn't appear to be a clown. If I have to be governed by evil authoritarian pricks I would actually rather they were incompetent at it.
You're one of the few reasonable Brexiteers I've ever spoken to
You need to get out more. There's plenty out there.
I don't doubt it - and I wasn't trying to imply there weren't many. I do think though that like the Remain side, the worst are the loudest.
I don't know if you're a Brexiteer but you're a reasonable chap too
My best to worst hierarchy of the options is as below:
1. Restrictions. 2. Short Lockdown. 3. Mandatory vaccination (via vaxports). 4. Long Lockdown.
Hopefully 1 will be sufficient.
If we go lockdown route, it won't be short. It will be 2 months minimum.
And it will be because case numbers have got out of control and it takes time to get them down, plus the temptation from the influencers is always just another couple of weeks.
The hard lockdown will be 2-3 months. The tail end, with the gradual lifting of restrictions, will take us all the way into Summer, just like last time. A catastrophe.
But that means many months of furlough, which we simply cannot afford. This time the Treasury will fight
It probably won't, not once the SAGE models have hit them.
Most likely they'll go back to the markets and attempt to borrow another £200bn or £300bn. But if they think they can't afford to support businesses, or no-one will lend them more money, then they won't attempt to veto the lockdown. They'll burn the businesses to save the hospitals.
Your posts read well but you and reason have parted company on this topic.
Again more reports of milder, but much younger people in hospital. Now is it the later means the former, or just that the later aren't vaccinated or that really just a mild variant.
It's astoundingly good news, just 6 Covid patients in 17 hospitals being ventilated
Can you explain the discrepancy between your constant stream of good Omicron news and the barage of reports on modelling which anticipates between 25,000 and 75,000 dead in England by April as reported on BBC News among others?
FWIW I hope you are correct and the BBC source is wrong.
25,000 dead by spring is not remotely alarming. At the moment we are averaging 150 dead a day. Times by 100 days and that's 15,000. So Omicron only needs to nudge it up a bit (and remember it will get worse in deep winter anyway) and you hit 25,000
One thing during this pandemic is that people have lost any sort of wider proportionality of just how many people die each day in a population of 65+ million people. 100 people dying a day from a disease is not usually even worth more than a few sentences on page 28 of the newspapers in relation to an article talking about better funding
Yes, 25,000 dead over an entire winter would be a rather bad flu season, which might make a headline once or twice - 22,000 died of flu in 2017-18. Yet I don't recall the entire nation shutting down
I've got ONS saying 1598 deaths from influenza in 2018.
Edit: in England and Wales
Influenza death figures are estimated. People are not routinely tested for it even when symptomatic.
It is quite remarkable in my mind but just to repeat what I have been saying for a while now, most recently last night.
My attitude to all the main parties has long been one of a plague on all your houses. But with a long standing philosophical bias against Labour and socialism in general even of the Lib Dem kind. This has meant that whilst I have not been able to vote for the Tories for the past 2 decades at the same time I have always deep down been relieved when they won rather than Labour and fearful when they lost.
Since Johnson and Starmer became the opposing leaders that has changed. Even in the 2019 election, whilst I couldn't vote Tory, at the same time I genuinely feared a Corbyn Government. Now that has gone completely. I am sure that as I am relatively comfortable a Labour administration would not be good for me personally and I am still very opposed to many of their more 'progressive' ideas. But I no longer fear them. I genuinely never thought there would come a day when I would be welcoming the fact that Labour were ahead of the Tories. I am today.
Welcome to the dark side.
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
LOL. Thank you. I know we still disagree on the issue of Brexit which I am still a big fan of but I should also point out that I have never supported nor voted for Johnson. I am happy to have clowns writing newspaper columns and appearing on topical comedy programmes but prefer them not to be anywhere near the levers of power - not even as MPs. (Although I realise many of them are clowns apart from Johnson). Corbyn was more frightening for me because he didn't appear to be a clown. If I have to be governed by evil authoritarian pricks I would actually rather they were incompetent at it.
You're one of the few reasonable Brexiteers I've ever spoken to
I do realise I have a set of beliefs which don't really conform to most of the usual trends. I also do try (and generally fail) to be as Socratic as possible in my outlook. Assume that you are probably wrong, probably don't know anywhere near as much as you should and are probably surrounded by people who are brighter than you are. Much of that outlook has come from my time on PB and I like to think it has helped both to make me less arrogant and to crystallise my own core beliefs a little more.
I've definitely had the idea that I am a natural social democrat confirmed by my time on PB, falling down a rabbit hole during the Corbyn years has allowed me to return to my moderate home. And that is where I think much of the country are to be honest.
I'd for what it's worth, vote to stay out of the EU now but I am a big believer in the EEA model.
It is quite remarkable in my mind but just to repeat what I have been saying for a while now, most recently last night.
My attitude to all the main parties has long been one of a plague on all your houses. But with a long standing philosophical bias against Labour and socialism in general even of the Lib Dem kind. This has meant that whilst I have not been able to vote for the Tories for the past 2 decades at the same time I have always deep down been relieved when they won rather than Labour and fearful when they lost.
Since Johnson and Starmer became the opposing leaders that has changed. Even in the 2019 election, whilst I couldn't vote Tory, at the same time I genuinely feared a Corbyn Government. Now that has gone completely. I am sure that as I am relatively comfortable a Labour administration would not be good for me personally and I am still very opposed to many of their more 'progressive' ideas. But I no longer fear them. I genuinely never thought there would come a day when I would be welcoming the fact that Labour were ahead of the Tories. I am today.
Welcome to the dark side.
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
LOL. Thank you. I know we still disagree on the issue of Brexit which I am still a big fan of but I should also point out that I have never supported nor voted for Johnson. I am happy to have clowns writing newspaper columns and appearing on topical comedy programmes but prefer them not to be anywhere near the levers of power - not even as MPs. (Although I realise many of them are clowns apart from Johnson). Corbyn was more frightening for me because he didn't appear to be a clown. If I have to be governed by evil authoritarian pricks I would actually rather they were incompetent at it.
You're one of the few reasonable Brexiteers I've ever spoken to
I do realise I have a set of beliefs which don't really conform to most of the usual trends. I also do try (and generally fail) to be as Socratic as possible in my outlook. Assume that you are probably wrong, probably don't know anywhere near as much as you should and are probably surrounded by people who are brighter than you are. Much of that outlook has come from my time on PB and I like to think it has helped both to make me less arrogant and to crystallise my own core beliefs a little more.
You're an enigma, Richard. I find it hard to call your view on anything until I see it in writing. Quite unusual.
@Richard_Tyndall I really do think we need to move on from Brexit though, we've left and most have accepted it. I really wish certain people would stop needlessly bringing up what people voted for and said prior to GE19 when it clearly changed the balance in the country and Parliament. It just seems so self-defeating
It is quite remarkable in my mind but just to repeat what I have been saying for a while now, most recently last night.
My attitude to all the main parties has long been one of a plague on all your houses. But with a long standing philosophical bias against Labour and socialism in general even of the Lib Dem kind. This has meant that whilst I have not been able to vote for the Tories for the past 2 decades at the same time I have always deep down been relieved when they won rather than Labour and fearful when they lost.
Since Johnson and Starmer became the opposing leaders that has changed. Even in the 2019 election, whilst I couldn't vote Tory, at the same time I genuinely feared a Corbyn Government. Now that has gone completely. I am sure that as I am relatively comfortable a Labour administration would not be good for me personally and I am still very opposed to many of their more 'progressive' ideas. But I no longer fear them. I genuinely never thought there would come a day when I would be welcoming the fact that Labour were ahead of the Tories. I am today.
Welcome to the dark side.
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
LOL. Thank you. I know we still disagree on the issue of Brexit which I am still a big fan of but I should also point out that I have never supported nor voted for Johnson. I am happy to have clowns writing newspaper columns and appearing on topical comedy programmes but prefer them not to be anywhere near the levers of power - not even as MPs. (Although I realise many of them are clowns apart from Johnson). Corbyn was more frightening for me because he didn't appear to be a clown. If I have to be governed by evil authoritarian pricks I would actually rather they were incompetent at it.
You're one of the few reasonable Brexiteers I've ever spoken to
I do realise I have a set of beliefs which don't really conform to most of the usual trends. I also do try (and generally fail) to be as Socratic as possible in my outlook. Assume that you are probably wrong, probably don't know anywhere near as much as you should and are probably surrounded by people who are brighter than you are. Much of that outlook has come from my time on PB and I like to think it has helped both to make me less arrogant and to crystallise my own core beliefs a little more.
You're an enigma, Richard. I find it hard to call your view on anything until I see it in writing. Quite unusual.
Richard is one of the finest contributors to this site.
To get on board, you need to fill in a new Covid safety form online. This requires a vaxport - fine, easy, the NHS app. This also requires a Spanish Health Pass - slightly tricker, but takes a few minutes of confusing faff, but done now
But THEN they ask you for a Passenger Locator Form. Something you literally cannot fill in until 2 days before you RETURN to the UK. I only fly OUT tomorrow, back midweek
WTF is this madness? Has anyone encountered it and solved it?
Search google for UK Government Passenger Locator Form. It’s on a .gov.Uk site.
I think there is a link to it on one of the dozens of emails ba spams you with
It is quite remarkable in my mind but just to repeat what I have been saying for a while now, most recently last night.
My attitude to all the main parties has long been one of a plague on all your houses. But with a long standing philosophical bias against Labour and socialism in general even of the Lib Dem kind. This has meant that whilst I have not been able to vote for the Tories for the past 2 decades at the same time I have always deep down been relieved when they won rather than Labour and fearful when they lost.
Since Johnson and Starmer became the opposing leaders that has changed. Even in the 2019 election, whilst I couldn't vote Tory, at the same time I genuinely feared a Corbyn Government. Now that has gone completely. I am sure that as I am relatively comfortable a Labour administration would not be good for me personally and I am still very opposed to many of their more 'progressive' ideas. But I no longer fear them. I genuinely never thought there would come a day when I would be welcoming the fact that Labour were ahead of the Tories. I am today.
Welcome to the dark side.
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
LOL. Thank you. I know we still disagree on the issue of Brexit which I am still a big fan of but I should also point out that I have never supported nor voted for Johnson. I am happy to have clowns writing newspaper columns and appearing on topical comedy programmes but prefer them not to be anywhere near the levers of power - not even as MPs. (Although I realise many of them are clowns apart from Johnson). Corbyn was more frightening for me because he didn't appear to be a clown. If I have to be governed by evil authoritarian pricks I would actually rather they were incompetent at it.
You're one of the few reasonable Brexiteers I've ever spoken to
I do realise I have a set of beliefs which don't really conform to most of the usual trends. I also do try (and generally fail) to be as Socratic as possible in my outlook. Assume that you are probably wrong, probably don't know anywhere near as much as you should and are probably surrounded by people who are brighter than you are. Much of that outlook has come from my time on PB and I like to think it has helped both to make me less arrogant and to crystallise my own core beliefs a little more.
You're an enigma, Richard. I find it hard to call your view on anything until I see it in writing. Quite unusual.
Richard is one of the finest contributors to this site.
It is quite remarkable in my mind but just to repeat what I have been saying for a while now, most recently last night.
My attitude to all the main parties has long been one of a plague on all your houses. But with a long standing philosophical bias against Labour and socialism in general even of the Lib Dem kind. This has meant that whilst I have not been able to vote for the Tories for the past 2 decades at the same time I have always deep down been relieved when they won rather than Labour and fearful when they lost.
Since Johnson and Starmer became the opposing leaders that has changed. Even in the 2019 election, whilst I couldn't vote Tory, at the same time I genuinely feared a Corbyn Government. Now that has gone completely. I am sure that as I am relatively comfortable a Labour administration would not be good for me personally and I am still very opposed to many of their more 'progressive' ideas. But I no longer fear them. I genuinely never thought there would come a day when I would be welcoming the fact that Labour were ahead of the Tories. I am today.
Welcome to the dark side.
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
LOL. Thank you. I know we still disagree on the issue of Brexit which I am still a big fan of but I should also point out that I have never supported nor voted for Johnson. I am happy to have clowns writing newspaper columns and appearing on topical comedy programmes but prefer them not to be anywhere near the levers of power - not even as MPs. (Although I realise many of them are clowns apart from Johnson). Corbyn was more frightening for me because he didn't appear to be a clown. If I have to be governed by evil authoritarian pricks I would actually rather they were incompetent at it.
You're one of the few reasonable Brexiteers I've ever spoken to
I do realise I have a set of beliefs which don't really conform to most of the usual trends. I also do try (and generally fail) to be as Socratic as possible in my outlook. Assume that you are probably wrong, probably don't know anywhere near as much as you should and are probably surrounded by people who are brighter than you are. Much of that outlook has come from my time on PB and I like to think it has helped both to make me less arrogant and to crystallise my own core beliefs a little more.
I've definitely had the idea that I am a natural social democrat confirmed by my time on PB, falling down a rabbit hole during the Corbyn years has allowed me to return to my moderate home. And that is where I think much of the country are to be honest.
I'd for what it's worth, vote to stay out of the EU now but I am a big believer in the EEA model.
I suspect almost all posters here see themselves as natural social democats, however the definition as to what that means is tricky.
It is quite remarkable in my mind but just to repeat what I have been saying for a while now, most recently last night.
My attitude to all the main parties has long been one of a plague on all your houses. But with a long standing philosophical bias against Labour and socialism in general even of the Lib Dem kind. This has meant that whilst I have not been able to vote for the Tories for the past 2 decades at the same time I have always deep down been relieved when they won rather than Labour and fearful when they lost.
Since Johnson and Starmer became the opposing leaders that has changed. Even in the 2019 election, whilst I couldn't vote Tory, at the same time I genuinely feared a Corbyn Government. Now that has gone completely. I am sure that as I am relatively comfortable a Labour administration would not be good for me personally and I am still very opposed to many of their more 'progressive' ideas. But I no longer fear them. I genuinely never thought there would come a day when I would be welcoming the fact that Labour were ahead of the Tories. I am today.
Welcome to the dark side.
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
LOL. Thank you. I know we still disagree on the issue of Brexit which I am still a big fan of but I should also point out that I have never supported nor voted for Johnson. I am happy to have clowns writing newspaper columns and appearing on topical comedy programmes but prefer them not to be anywhere near the levers of power - not even as MPs. (Although I realise many of them are clowns apart from Johnson). Corbyn was more frightening for me because he didn't appear to be a clown. If I have to be governed by evil authoritarian pricks I would actually rather they were incompetent at it.
You're one of the few reasonable Brexiteers I've ever spoken to
You need to get out more. There's plenty out there.
Personally, I prefer to be an unreasonable remoaner....
My best to worst hierarchy of the options is as below:
1. Restrictions. 2. Short Lockdown. 3. Mandatory vaccination (via vaxports). 4. Long Lockdown.
Hopefully 1 will be sufficient.
If we go lockdown route, it won't be short. It will be 2 months minimum.
And it will be because case numbers have got out of control and it takes time to get them down, plus the temptation from the influencers is always just another couple of weeks.
The hard lockdown will be 2-3 months. The tail end, with the gradual lifting of restrictions, will take us all the way into Summer, just like last time. A catastrophe.
I think the temptation will be for that, but the Tory Party won't let Boris do that this time. But if we do go down the lockdown route (and I think we are being set up for it), one month isn't enough, so I can see Jan-Feb being lockdown or something akin to it with WFH, pubs closed, rule of 6, etc.
The size of the Tory rebellion matters naught. Enough of the Government's MPs are on side to get any amount of Covid crap through the Commons with the backing of Labour, which seems to be quite enthusiastic about locking us up for life and throwing away the key.
Lockdown from next weekend until the end of March. More Covid crap until July or August. About three months off, new variant, and we start all over again. Rinse and repeat.
It is not happening. Voters now oppose closing pubs and restaurants 49% to 31% and restrictions on households meeting indoors.
Tory MPs would also vote down any lockdown and no confidence any Tory PM who tried to do one. Vaxports are as far as we will go
I wish I could share your confidence; however, we have been here before, haven't we? A number of continental European countries have already resorted to lockdowns. And, whilst our vaccination rates are better than most of the countries that have brought back severe restrictions, it now transpires that the main shield used to defend most of the middle aged and elderly - whilst (we hope) remaining fairly effective against severe disease - offers no defence against infection.
These are not promising circumstances.
As far as I can see it only 1 western nation, the Netherlands, is considering another lockdown. Many have mandatory vaxports for clubs and large events, cinemas and theatres, restaurants and bars and a few like Germany and Austria are moving to mandatory vaccination. However not full lockdown again
It is quite remarkable in my mind but just to repeat what I have been saying for a while now, most recently last night.
My attitude to all the main parties has long been one of a plague on all your houses. But with a long standing philosophical bias against Labour and socialism in general even of the Lib Dem kind. This has meant that whilst I have not been able to vote for the Tories for the past 2 decades at the same time I have always deep down been relieved when they won rather than Labour and fearful when they lost.
Since Johnson and Starmer became the opposing leaders that has changed. Even in the 2019 election, whilst I couldn't vote Tory, at the same time I genuinely feared a Corbyn Government. Now that has gone completely. I am sure that as I am relatively comfortable a Labour administration would not be good for me personally and I am still very opposed to many of their more 'progressive' ideas. But I no longer fear them. I genuinely never thought there would come a day when I would be welcoming the fact that Labour were ahead of the Tories. I am today.
Welcome to the dark side.
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
LOL. Thank you. I know we still disagree on the issue of Brexit which I am still a big fan of but I should also point out that I have never supported nor voted for Johnson. I am happy to have clowns writing newspaper columns and appearing on topical comedy programmes but prefer them not to be anywhere near the levers of power - not even as MPs. (Although I realise many of them are clowns apart from Johnson). Corbyn was more frightening for me because he didn't appear to be a clown. If I have to be governed by evil authoritarian pricks I would actually rather they were incompetent at it.
You're one of the few reasonable Brexiteers I've ever spoken to
You need to get out more. There's plenty out there.
Personally, I prefer to be an unreasonable remoaner....
These terms really need to die out. Criticising Brexit or praising it should be treated just as any other policy
Campbell thinks omicron could be the way out of the pandemic. Something which many of us hoped might be the case when it emerged a fortnight ago. Is it the US cavalry or a mirage?
Again more reports of milder, but much younger people in hospital. Now is it the later means the former, or just that the later aren't vaccinated or that really just a mild variant.
It's astoundingly good news, just 6 Covid patients in 17 hospitals being ventilated
Can you explain the discrepancy between your constant stream of good Omicron news and the barage of reports on modelling which anticipates between 25,000 and 75,000 dead in England by April as reported on BBC News among others?
FWIW I hope you are correct and the BBC source is wrong.
25,000 dead by spring is not remotely alarming. At the moment we are averaging 150 dead a day. Times by 100 days and that's 15,000. So Omicron only needs to nudge it up a bit (and remember it will get worse in deep winter anyway) and you hit 25,000
One thing during this pandemic is that people have lost any sort of wider proportionality of just how many people die each day in a population of 65+ million people. 100 people dying a day from a disease is not usually even worth more than a few sentences on page 28 of the newspapers in relation to an article talking about better funding
Yes, 25,000 dead over an entire winter would be a rather bad flu season, which might make a headline once or twice - 22,000 died of flu in 2017-18. Yet I don't recall the entire nation shutting down
I've got ONS saying 1598 deaths from influenza in 2018.
Edit: in England and Wales
You don’t does them reading ting too gud
‘Public Health England estimates that across the 2017/18 flu season there were around 22,000 deaths associated with flu in England.’
Here’s a fact check on this. Some have wrongly claimed 64,000 died
@Richard_Tyndall I really do think we need to move on from Brexit though, we've left and most have accepted it. I really wish certain people would stop needlessly bringing up what people voted for and said prior to GE19 when it clearly changed the balance in the country and Parliament. It just seems so self-defeating
Yep agree completely on not judging people on how they voted before. I think perhaps though I would disagree that Brexit is over (although that is not exactly what you said). We might have left but the form of our future relationships and of how we run our country are still all to be decided. We need adults in the room for that and seem, with a few notable exceptions, to be severely lacking them in Government right now.
Ugly for Tory voters and supporters. But that was clearly the case a week or so ago.
I'm sure that the political landscape has entirely shifted. Boris has managed a political earthquake - unfortunately against him. Of course some aspects of this aren't his fault, and the opposition are making hay everywhere and in some aspects it's too much.
2024 (and it must now be 2024) will be an interesting year.
I don't think at all that it must be 2024. If the Tories gang up to get rid of Johnson, the successor will probably get a short term boost from a thankful electorate, much the same as Major initially got a boost in 1990 and 1991 for getting rid of Thatcher before the lead fell back later in 1991 and 1992.
That doesn't mean that the Tories can't win in 2024 under a new leader, just as Major did in 1992, but the odds would probably be better for them under a new leader in late 2022 or 2023, so the chances of an early election have in my view gone up with the rocketing odds that Johnson will go early. The only real spanner in that argument is that they'll do better under new boundaries.
Something a bit more cheering. A boffin who predicted US Covid deaths very accurately early on, and was also unpopularly pessimistic about variants, is more upbeat about Omicron. Reckons it is probably mild, maybe very mild
Caveat: he also admits he knows even less about this disease then he did a year ago, which is a pretty big pinch of salt
Otherwise there is almost nothing about Omicron on the CNN website. @moonshine is right. It is absent from much international media, even tho it dominates ours. Why is this?
Maybe it is just timing. Omicron has arrived here first (thanks to our many international links, and better sequencing) so we are alerted first. Also, lots of other countries - esp Europe - are still focused on Delta, and their own battles with that
But look at Le Monde. It's not even talking about Delta. Poignantly, for those Scot Nats and Remoaners who believe we think constantly about them while they are barely aware of us, its most read story is about Boris Johnson's party, and one of its main stories if the Brexit fishing squabble. They are obsessed
The UK seems to have got itself into a complete nonsense panic with Omicron. So far there's little to no evidence that it hospitalised any significant number of vaccinated or naturally immune people. The modellers are just randomly inputting numbers into their shit models to get the desired outcome of lockdown forever.
I genuinely can't work out if we have lost our minds, or we are on the ball, and the rest of the world does not realise what is about to happen
I think that those at the top have taken a proportionate response. Increase some low level mitigation’s and ramp boosters as fast as possible. There is no panic at that level. As I think others are suggesting it’s likely lockdown talk is partly to get public compliance, but also media management to move on from the parties. On PB, on the other hand, there are many posters who really fear a new lockdown, and have let their fear of such cloud their judgement of what is likely to happen. No doubt some will say I am too optomistic, but I just cannot see the whole panoply of furlough, closed hospitality etc being deployed again. On what we should do, the Times editorial is strong on suggesting tighter measures must target the unvaccinated. Restrict their lives, not those who have done the right thing for society. Hard to disagree.
A very large fraction of the population, especially those aged between about 40 and 70, have been double jabbed with AZ - which, it transpires, is completely useless at protecting you against infection. At the rate that this expands, the very large fraction of us that can't obtain a Pfizer booster for weeks (my appointment is for the 29th, I daren't cancel it and try to get anything sooner because there probably aren't any slots left, so I'm basically down to going to a walk-in centre early next week and praying they've got sufficient supply) might as well resign ourselves to catching it.
A sufficiently large number of cases (even if Omicron is somewhat less harmful than Delta) = too many hospital patients = lockdown.
Omicron has now been with us for a little while, and the boffins will be looking very closely at the hospitalisation data as it comes in. If the explosion in cases and the percentage of infections leading to hospitalisation are both large enough, we've had it.
Given the preliminary findings about the transmissibility of Omicron and that so many of us are completely defenceless against infection, an explosion in cases seems inevitable - so it's all on how many of us get really sick. My own confidence on that front has collapsed. I'm not certain a lockdown announcement is coming next Saturday, but I think it quite likely. And once they do it, we know how that plays out. We'll be under house arrest for months and months and months.
You can rebook before you definitively cancel. They’ve changed that on the system
Yes, the SA to SA comparison for Delta vs Omicron is actually very welcome news. It's a proper like for like comparison, not the spurious idea of overlaying SA to the UK.
My best to worst hierarchy of the options is as below:
1. Restrictions. 2. Short Lockdown. 3. Mandatory vaccination (via vaxports). 4. Long Lockdown.
Hopefully 1 will be sufficient.
If we go lockdown route, it won't be short. It will be 2 months minimum.
And it will be because case numbers have got out of control and it takes time to get them down, plus the temptation from the influencers is always just another couple of weeks.
The hard lockdown will be 2-3 months. The tail end, with the gradual lifting of restrictions, will take us all the way into Summer, just like last time. A catastrophe.
But that means many months of furlough, which we simply cannot afford. This time the Treasury will fight
It probably won't, not once the SAGE models have hit them.
Most likely they'll go back to the markets and attempt to borrow another £200bn or £300bn. But if they think they can't afford to support businesses, or no-one will lend them more money, then they won't attempt to veto the lockdown. They'll burn the businesses to save the hospitals.
Your posts read well but you and reason have parted company on this topic.
That might not be entirely unfair. We have been here before, I can see the next lockdown coming, I'm one of life's natural pessimists, and giving vent to frustrations is part of my coping mechanism.
FWIW I was trying very hard to be optimistic about this situation until recently. I managed to successfully convince myself for a while, even after the wretched virus mutated again, that the Government wouldn't make us live through a repeat of last Winter because it couldn't afford the cost. Certainly before Omicron it looked like things genuinely weren't going at all badly.
But now? Massive wave of cases looks highly likely, accompanied by a pile of catastrophic models being shoved under ministers' noses. Unless Omicron is substantially milder than Delta, that predicates in favour of much more severe restrictions, and we know from the last time around how reluctant the authorities are to let go of them once they're imposed.
It is quite remarkable in my mind but just to repeat what I have been saying for a while now, most recently last night.
My attitude to all the main parties has long been one of a plague on all your houses. But with a long standing philosophical bias against Labour and socialism in general even of the Lib Dem kind. This has meant that whilst I have not been able to vote for the Tories for the past 2 decades at the same time I have always deep down been relieved when they won rather than Labour and fearful when they lost.
Since Johnson and Starmer became the opposing leaders that has changed. Even in the 2019 election, whilst I couldn't vote Tory, at the same time I genuinely feared a Corbyn Government. Now that has gone completely. I am sure that as I am relatively comfortable a Labour administration would not be good for me personally and I am still very opposed to many of their more 'progressive' ideas. But I no longer fear them. I genuinely never thought there would come a day when I would be welcoming the fact that Labour were ahead of the Tories. I am today.
Welcome to the dark side.
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
LOL. Thank you. I know we still disagree on the issue of Brexit which I am still a big fan of but I should also point out that I have never supported nor voted for Johnson. I am happy to have clowns writing newspaper columns and appearing on topical comedy programmes but prefer them not to be anywhere near the levers of power - not even as MPs. (Although I realise many of them are clowns apart from Johnson). Corbyn was more frightening for me because he didn't appear to be a clown. If I have to be governed by evil authoritarian pricks I would actually rather they were incompetent at it.
You're one of the few reasonable Brexiteers I've ever spoken to
I do realise I have a set of beliefs which don't really conform to most of the usual trends. I also do try (and generally fail) to be as Socratic as possible in my outlook. Assume that you are probably wrong, probably don't know anywhere near as much as you should and are probably surrounded by people who are brighter than you are. Much of that outlook has come from my time on PB and I like to think it has helped both to make me less arrogant and to crystallise my own core beliefs a little more.
I've definitely had the idea that I am a natural social democrat confirmed by my time on PB, falling down a rabbit hole during the Corbyn years has allowed me to return to my moderate home. And that is where I think much of the country are to be honest.
I'd for what it's worth, vote to stay out of the EU now but I am a big believer in the EEA model.
100% agree with you. If we had listened to some of the saner voices after Brexit that is where we would have ended up.
It is quite remarkable in my mind but just to repeat what I have been saying for a while now, most recently last night.
My attitude to all the main parties has long been one of a plague on all your houses. But with a long standing philosophical bias against Labour and socialism in general even of the Lib Dem kind. This has meant that whilst I have not been able to vote for the Tories for the past 2 decades at the same time I have always deep down been relieved when they won rather than Labour and fearful when they lost.
Since Johnson and Starmer became the opposing leaders that has changed. Even in the 2019 election, whilst I couldn't vote Tory, at the same time I genuinely feared a Corbyn Government. Now that has gone completely. I am sure that as I am relatively comfortable a Labour administration would not be good for me personally and I am still very opposed to many of their more 'progressive' ideas. But I no longer fear them. I genuinely never thought there would come a day when I would be welcoming the fact that Labour were ahead of the Tories. I am today.
Welcome to the dark side.
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
LOL. Thank you. I know we still disagree on the issue of Brexit which I am still a big fan of but I should also point out that I have never supported nor voted for Johnson. I am happy to have clowns writing newspaper columns and appearing on topical comedy programmes but prefer them not to be anywhere near the levers of power - not even as MPs. (Although I realise many of them are clowns apart from Johnson). Corbyn was more frightening for me because he didn't appear to be a clown. If I have to be governed by evil authoritarian pricks I would actually rather they were incompetent at it.
You're one of the few reasonable Brexiteers I've ever spoken to
You need to get out more. There's plenty out there.
I don't doubt it - and I wasn't trying to imply there weren't many. I do think though that like the Remain side, the worst are the loudest.
I don't know if you're a Brexiteer but you're a reasonable chap too
I'm not a Brexiter, I'm quite against it. But I don't like the way people allow it to define them and mould their opinions about other things. And if someone is wrong (in my view) about one policy area then they might still be right about something else, and vice versa.
This is not a controversial view, I know, but one that deserves a more vocal and robust defence. Centrists of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but the fundamentalists on either side.
So, PB brains trust. I've had two letters and a txt now in last couple of weeks asking me to book a booster as I am eligible and "our records show you have not had the vaccination booster".
I had my booster at GP a month ago.
Is this just a case of everyone is getting letters regardless or do they have my vax status incorrect?
In which case I may have problem if vaxports includes must have the booster.
I'm getting a text nearly every day from my local surgery urging me to have a booster jab.
I had a booster jab about 3 months ago.
Thanks. That helps reassure. The letter though comes from main NHS who should have a proper record.
I think next week I will get them to send me the covid pass on paper and see what that says.
So, PB brains trust. I've had two letters and a txt now in last couple of weeks asking me to book a booster as I am eligible and "our records show you have not had the vaccination booster".
I had my booster at GP a month ago.
Is this just a case of everyone is getting letters regardless or do they have my vax status incorrect?
In which case I may have problem if vaxports includes must have the booster.
I had exactly the same situation with incorrect letters and texts having had the booster a month ago. I phoned 119. The bloke who answered said that he had had loads of the same phone call today and there was clearly something wrong in the system.
When I asked for a paper Covid Pass it also came through with just the first two vaccinations recorded, no booster. 119 said that that was normal for now, systems hadn't yet been updated to record the booster on anyones printed pass, in contrast to the App (which I haven't yet downloaded but I am assured shows me having had the booster.)
It is quite remarkable in my mind but just to repeat what I have been saying for a while now, most recently last night.
My attitude to all the main parties has long been one of a plague on all your houses. But with a long standing philosophical bias against Labour and socialism in general even of the Lib Dem kind. This has meant that whilst I have not been able to vote for the Tories for the past 2 decades at the same time I have always deep down been relieved when they won rather than Labour and fearful when they lost.
Since Johnson and Starmer became the opposing leaders that has changed. Even in the 2019 election, whilst I couldn't vote Tory, at the same time I genuinely feared a Corbyn Government. Now that has gone completely. I am sure that as I am relatively comfortable a Labour administration would not be good for me personally and I am still very opposed to many of their more 'progressive' ideas. But I no longer fear them. I genuinely never thought there would come a day when I would be welcoming the fact that Labour were ahead of the Tories. I am today.
Welcome to the dark side.
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
LOL. Thank you. I know we still disagree on the issue of Brexit which I am still a big fan of but I should also point out that I have never supported nor voted for Johnson. I am happy to have clowns writing newspaper columns and appearing on topical comedy programmes but prefer them not to be anywhere near the levers of power - not even as MPs. (Although I realise many of them are clowns apart from Johnson). Corbyn was more frightening for me because he didn't appear to be a clown. If I have to be governed by evil authoritarian pricks I would actually rather they were incompetent at it.
You're one of the few reasonable Brexiteers I've ever spoken to
I do realise I have a set of beliefs which don't really conform to most of the usual trends. I also do try (and generally fail) to be as Socratic as possible in my outlook. Assume that you are probably wrong, probably don't know anywhere near as much as you should and are probably surrounded by people who are brighter than you are. Much of that outlook has come from my time on PB and I like to think it has helped both to make me less arrogant and to crystallise my own core beliefs a little more.
You're an enigma, Richard. I find it hard to call your view on anything until I see it in writing. Quite unusual.
I would like to claim that it is because of some deep understanding beyond the wit of mortal man. But mostly it is because I haven't really thought stuff through in terms of its implications and practicalities until I actually come to write it down. I have a set of core beliefs but how they translate into words and deeds is often contradictory. I am as surprised as everyone else at some of the conclusions.
I think I see from inside the windows how confusion can often be mistaken for depth.
Yes, the SA to SA comparison for Delta vs Omicron is actually very welcome news. It's a proper like for like comparison, not the spurious idea of overlaying SA to the UK.
It is quite remarkable in my mind but just to repeat what I have been saying for a while now, most recently last night.
My attitude to all the main parties has long been one of a plague on all your houses. But with a long standing philosophical bias against Labour and socialism in general even of the Lib Dem kind. This has meant that whilst I have not been able to vote for the Tories for the past 2 decades at the same time I have always deep down been relieved when they won rather than Labour and fearful when they lost.
Since Johnson and Starmer became the opposing leaders that has changed. Even in the 2019 election, whilst I couldn't vote Tory, at the same time I genuinely feared a Corbyn Government. Now that has gone completely. I am sure that as I am relatively comfortable a Labour administration would not be good for me personally and I am still very opposed to many of their more 'progressive' ideas. But I no longer fear them. I genuinely never thought there would come a day when I would be welcoming the fact that Labour were ahead of the Tories. I am today.
Welcome to the dark side.
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
LOL. Thank you. I know we still disagree on the issue of Brexit which I am still a big fan of but I should also point out that I have never supported nor voted for Johnson. I am happy to have clowns writing newspaper columns and appearing on topical comedy programmes but prefer them not to be anywhere near the levers of power - not even as MPs. (Although I realise many of them are clowns apart from Johnson). Corbyn was more frightening for me because he didn't appear to be a clown. If I have to be governed by evil authoritarian pricks I would actually rather they were incompetent at it.
You're one of the few reasonable Brexiteers I've ever spoken to
You need to get out more. There's plenty out there.
I don't doubt it - and I wasn't trying to imply there weren't many. I do think though that like the Remain side, the worst are the loudest.
I don't know if you're a Brexiteer but you're a reasonable chap too
I'm not a Brexiter, I'm quite against it. But I don't like the way people allow it to define them and mould their opinions about other things. And if someone is wrong (in my view) about one policy area then they might still be right about something else, and vice versa.
This is not a controversial view, I know, but one that deserves a more vocal and robust defence. Centrists of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but the fundamentalists on either side.
I completely agree with this.
As I pointed out a few times before, there seems to be a real misunderstanding by a few of what this new Tory coalition really wants. I am not convinced it is pro the Rishi Sunak model of economics, nor the Truss. I'm also not of the view they're anti lockdowns or anti-vaxers yet some people seem to think they are, which I think is very insulting.
The Tory coalition to me seems to be fundamentally at odds with itself - and we are seeing it now begin to collapse back the bedrock of 29% (1997)
Comments
Human Immunodeficiency Virus
People who have AIDS are immune suppressed.
Can't work out if that is an insight, or I was dim to not have figured it out before.
Brain fog.
Edit: Apologies too to @dixiedean who posted a like perhaps with the same misapprehension, but surely relying on me not to be quite the blithering idiot
At the end of the day neither of us know what will happen. I’ve not seen anything yet to make me thing the worst outcomes are that likely.
Lots of cases. Lots of people a bit rough then fine. If we weren’t testing, we would probably not even notice.
Now, Mme Le Pen speaks to a lot of people who have gotten left behind by globalisation. And I have a lot of time for her. But the idea that the French state is insufficiently interventionist is for the birds. The one thing I liked about Macron was his willingness to say to people: "the French government can't keep unprofitable industries alive for ever."
Were Le Pen to win, what would happen? Well, there'd be restrictions on Muslim immigration. And they'd be some fights with the EU over state aid. But the EU would mostly be relieved that she now appears to support the Euro, and isn't going to pull it apart, so they'd probably follow the path of least resistance.
And France would get more state subsidy of industry, paid for by taxing those businesses which were actually economic.
As for recruiting quality people, foreign office is a dream posting, they get oodles of applicants every year. No shortage of quality people who want to work there.
"This antipathy to Big Tech isn’t confined to the screen. In the realm of fiction, its most dogged opponent is probably the American novelist Dave Eggers, who has just published The Every, the hefty sequel to his 2013 bestseller The Circle. Eggers has called smartphones “technological crack” and compared our relationship with technology to “being in a relationship with a very controlling, needy, obsessive person. You’re never free; you’re always paranoid. You’re simultaneously on a leash and under a microscope”."
https://unherd.com/2021/12/why-satire-gave-up-on-politics/
What is worrying is the number of people who will get moderately ill and need hospital, but no more, and the many millions who will get mildly sick and need a week in bed, thus scuppering the economy
When it comes to infectivity Omicron is definitely WAY WORSE than the flu
I don't think anyone who suffered through it, whether they got ill or not, is going to be forgetting the Age of Covid in a hurry. Even if we would really like to.
https://www.aidsmap.com/about-hiv/covid-19-and-coronavirus-people-living-hiv
"@BritainElects
LAB: 40% (+3)
CON: 32% (-1)
LDEM: 8% (-1)
GRN: 7% (-)
REFUK: 7% (+1)
via @YouGov
, 09 - 10 Dec
Chgs. w/ 09 Dec"
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1469607640892383234
Lockdown from next weekend until the end of March. More Covid crap until July or August. About three months off, new variant, and we start all over again. Rinse and repeat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2022_French_presidential_election#Macron_vs._Pécresse
I arrived at that point some years ago and even (briefly) considered voting for Corbyn, not because Corbyn was any use but simply because it was blindingly obvious to me that Boris was an utter prick surrounded by incompetents.
132 dead
839 admits
It's not going mad
And there’s been no flu pandemic near that size since. If we had one that large today, it would certainly be news.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10297923/Women-deserting-Boris-Johnson-Poll-shows-two-thirds-voters-dont-trust-PM.html
Tory MPs would also vote down any lockdown and no confidence any Tory PM who tried to do one. Vaxports are as far as we will go
Most likely they'll go back to the markets and attempt to borrow another £200bn or £300bn. But if they think they can't afford to support businesses, or no-one will lend them more money, then they won't attempt to veto the lockdown. They'll burn the businesses to save the hospitals.
These are not promising circumstances.
What I find interesting is the idea of (effective) mandatory vaccination through use of vaxports for accessing normal life. Will that tool be reached for before Lockdown? Or as an alternative to it? Or as a supplement to it? Or not at all? It's hard to read that one.
Good luck and enjoy your trip.
I'm sure that the political landscape has entirely shifted. Boris has managed a political earthquake - unfortunately against him. Of course some aspects of this aren't his fault, and the opposition are making hay everywhere and in some aspects it's too much.
2024 (and it must now be 2024) will be an interesting year.
Thats pretty mad.
"Thank you for any enjoyment you may have unintentionally caused."
The numbers are still dominated by Delta and it is still a big part of the change in the numbers. The Omicron signal will become dominant as it becomes dominant.
Sorry not to reassure you today.
Good.
They are the backbone of Britain and should never, ever be closed again.
I certainly don't share the doom-laden analysis of some on here.
According to the Government dashboard (so it must be true), 22,500,000 have had their booster vaccination leaving 24 million who have had two vaccinations but not the booster, a further four and a half million who have only had one dose and an unknown number (x) who are completely unvaccinated.
Reading the papers this morning, the issue seems to be the original two doses provides little or no protection against Omicron especially after 3-4 months so the rush to get the booster vaccinations into those who only had their second vaccination fairly recently.
At 400,000 per day it's going to take 60 days to get through all those who have only had two vaccinations so far so that's into February.
Now, we may accept the blissful optimism of @NerysHughes as being valid but that doesn't seem to be the message the Government is hearing or understanding. Even if a vanishingly small number of those 28 and a half million plus x require hospitalisation that's still going to put pressure on ICUs, oxygen, NHS staff etc and that's before we deal with the normal winter round of sprains, falls, respiratory problems etc.
The logic of trying to reduce inter-personal contact to mitigate or slow transmission of Omicron seems valid to this observer as is the public clamour to get the booster vaccinations into as many of the population as possible as quickly as possible.
As I said earlier, the "mood" I'm detecting is people's fears of Omicron aren't predicated on their own health situation - few believe it's that serious but catching it and the isolation required would ruin whatever Christmas plans people have and if it's a choice between seeing the loved ones/family on Christmas Day and missing the work Christmas party, the party is going to lose every time.
That's not what hospitality wants to hear but the regimen of isolation imposed on those either infected by or in close contact with someone infected means there will be a degree of voluntary hibernation especially from next week onward.
But no one knows this
Edit: in England and Wales
https://twitter.com/shabirmadh/status/1469391684563877891?s=21
One, just one, decent press conference or speech or PMQs from Boris... however he's not managed that for many months.
Brown is clearly the worst PM ever, but Boris is really trying to dig himself in at the bottom.
Everybody in the UK talks about flu deaths as including those with pneumonia after getting flu. Its 25-30k most years.
I don't know if you're a Brexiteer but you're a reasonable chap too
I'd for what it's worth, vote to stay out of the EU now but I am a big believer in the EEA model.
Hope you are well, Phil
SA has 7x fold lower proportion of population over 75 than UK. Who account for ~70% of deaths and ~60% of hospitalisation in recent weeks here.
https://twitter.com/DevanSinha/status/1469681743619928074?t=MSaZL8xwCslMcSdWo5yxLQ&s=19
‘Data from Denmark puts in fairly close to Delta. 21 hospitalized with Omicron now.’
https://twitter.com/mozfart/status/1469716944613949440?s=21
DYOR
I think there is a link to it on one of the dozens of emails ba spams you with
Is it the US cavalry or a mirage?
‘Public Health England estimates that across the 2017/18 flu season there were around 22,000 deaths associated with flu in England.’
Here’s a fact check on this. Some have wrongly claimed 64,000 died
https://fullfact.org/online/october-2020-flu-covid-pandemic/
That doesn't mean that the Tories can't win in 2024 under a new leader, just as Major did in 1992, but the odds would probably be better for them under a new leader in late 2022 or 2023, so the chances of an early election have in my view gone up with the rocketing odds that Johnson will go early. The only real spanner in that argument is that they'll do better under new boundaries.
AGAIN.
The South Africans are confident because they are comparing omicron outcomes to delta outcomes IN SOUTH AFRICA.
They are not comparing them to some far flung land with entirely different demographics.
Why is this so hard to grasp?
FWIW I was trying very hard to be optimistic about this situation until recently. I managed to successfully convince myself for a while, even after the wretched virus mutated again, that the Government wouldn't make us live through a repeat of last Winter because it couldn't afford the cost. Certainly before Omicron it looked like things genuinely weren't going at all badly.
But now? Massive wave of cases looks highly likely, accompanied by a pile of catastrophic models being shoved under ministers' noses. Unless Omicron is substantially milder than Delta, that predicates in favour of much more severe restrictions, and we know from the last time around how reluctant the authorities are to let go of them once they're imposed.
But I don't like the way people allow it to define them and mould their opinions about other things. And if someone is wrong (in my view) about one policy area then they might still be right about something else, and vice versa.
This is not a controversial view, I know, but one that deserves a more vocal and robust defence. Centrists of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but the fundamentalists on either side.
I think next week I will get them to send me the covid pass on paper and see what that says.
What is wrong with these people?
I genuinely pity them.
Break time!
Smells like a way to force people to get the app.
I think I see from inside the windows how confusion can often be mistaken for depth.
As I pointed out a few times before, there seems to be a real misunderstanding by a few of what this new Tory coalition really wants. I am not convinced it is pro the Rishi Sunak model of economics, nor the Truss. I'm also not of the view they're anti lockdowns or anti-vaxers yet some people seem to think they are, which I think is very insulting.
The Tory coalition to me seems to be fundamentally at odds with itself - and we are seeing it now begin to collapse back the bedrock of 29% (1997)