South African medics have been at pains to point out not many patients have needed oxygen, much less ventilation. So what treatment are they getting? Are the government thinking through how to rapidly increase throughout for that treatment?
You mean re-opening the nightingales with very thin staffing ratios to act as triage centres for people who don't need more serious treatment?
Anyway, there is a major city that has already been through this and has cases declining. No sign of health care collapse and excess death was lower than the national average.
Big rise in cases was exactly what everyone expected and doesn;t change anything.
Waits for @Malmesbury 's London Hospital admissions chart so you can eat your words.
My post is about Johannesburg where cases are now falling - hospitalisations and deaths still rising, but not at a rate with a chance of getting anywhere near previous levels. And that's with far less vaccine cover than us.
Slight problem with that is that I don't trust the data from South Africa...
What's really stupid is we wasted 10 days from the JCVI decision to Monday to get people queuing up and until today to get rid of the 15 minute observation period. That will have cost us 5m additional booster doses done. There was just such a huge amount of complacency around the booster programme and sadly lots of people are going to pay the price for it.
I agree. Feels like a more somber assessment from you having come down with it yourself. Meanwhile Professor Tim Spector told the today program that Omicrom symptoms are "headaches, sore throat, runny nose, fatigue and sneezing."
Yep. Got all them. Don't feel brilliant. But Monday's PCR was negative and a LF this lunchtime also negative. Then again Mrs RP displayed similar symptoms at the start and daily negative LFs until she showed positive and symptoms exploded in severity.
Huzzah
Hope she's feeling better soon! I'm just going to keep going as always, yesterday was shitty but today (actually at about 2am last night) I suddenly felt a lot better. I'm not sure why either, clearly I've still got the virus. Just keep doing those LFTs, it will show up eventually, even just a faint line like my wife's (as opposed to mine which is a very obvious one).
The position in the conservative party is surreal from my point of view as I want to see Boris replaced, but not with someone who sides with the rebels who I disagree with so then I have to take Boris's side and just cannot start to understand why the rebels could not foresee that yesterday's proposals were not only proportionate, but also has the full support of the vast majority of the public
I expect tonight's press conference will be very worrying for ordinary voters and will highlight just how politically naive those 126 noes were yesteday including the lib dems and greens
Have you seen whan the SA doctor said in July about Covid (Delta) and what she says now.(Omicron)
Unless we are a different breed than South Africans Omicron has much milder effects than Delta.
She is a Doctor, she has experienced both waves, she knows what she is talking about.
She is one opinion and not from our own scientists actually dealing with it here in the UK
I just checked into a chichi Shoreditch hotel. Put luggage down and sprawled on bed.
The digital radio at the bedside suddenly piped up with some kind of covid prayer. Lord, grant your people peace. Radio 3 apparently.
Is this how the world ends?
Didn't they say that the words guaranteed to strike fear into people from the radio are: "and now for the premier of a new work by a young British composer..."
Ed Sheeran ?
I was thinking more Radio 3.
R4 comedy is far more of a threat to intelligent life.
‘Wuhan lab leak 'now the most likely origin of Covid', MPs told Dr Alina Chan says there is also a risk that Covid-19 is an engineered virus By Sarah Knapton, SCIENCE EDITOR 15 December 2021 • 12:46pm
A laboratory leak is now the more likely origin of Covid, MPs have heard, because after two years of searching an animal host has never been found.’
78,610 cases......I presume 100k will be breeched by end of the week.
The usual suspects will be ramping up the pressure to cancel Christmas.
Well, what do you think?
No further restrictions needed? Everything going fine?
What would you do? You have been asked this repeatedly but if you have answered I must have missed it.
Tell us what restrictions you favour.
As I said and you were apparently unable to understand (or perhaps read), whatever it takes to try to prevent the NHS collapsing and people dying without medical care.
Are you saying that we shouldn't try to prevent the NHS collapsing? By implication that seems to be the opinion of many here.
OK we're getting there. So no one is allowed to die of Covid. Is that what you're after? How would you achieve that.
The tortuous way this troll avoids a) saying what he would do and/or b) putting his money where his very big sanctimonious mouth is is truly breathtaking.
Is @Chris a troll? The vast majority of the public would agree with him and disagree with you?
Agree with what? It's impossible to get him to explain his position.
Italy has just closed its borders to everyone unless you’re vaxxed AND tested. Inc EU citizens
Not sure of the point of this now. OMICRON THE DESPOILER is everywhere. Certainly in Europe. You might buy yourself 12 hours of grace but at a huge cost in human hassle and bureaucracy
I just checked into a chichi Shoreditch hotel. Put luggage down and sprawled on bed.
The digital radio at the bedside suddenly piped up with some kind of covid prayer. Lord, grant your people peace. Radio 3 apparently.
Is this how the world ends?
Didn't they say that the words guaranteed to strike fear into people from the radio are: "and now for the premier of a new work by a young British composer..."
Ed Sheeran ?
I was thinking more Radio 3.
R4 comedy is far more of a threat to intelligent life.
I just checked into a chichi Shoreditch hotel. Put luggage down and sprawled on bed.
The digital radio at the bedside suddenly piped up with some kind of covid prayer. Lord, grant your people peace. Radio 3 apparently.
Is this how the world ends?
Didn't they say that the words guaranteed to strike fear into people from the radio are: "and now for the premier of a new work by a young British composer..."
Ed Sheeran ?
I was thinking more Radio 3.
R4 comedy is far more of a threat to intelligent life.
Jeez you're not kidding. Weds/Thurs 6.30pm have got to be the most depressing 30mins of radio output.
Then again I heard some Beeb bod say how they knew it wasn't all good and they were just trying it out.
What's really stupid is we wasted 10 days from the JCVI decision to Monday to get people queuing up and until today to get rid of the 15 minute observation period. That will have cost us 5m additional booster doses done. There was just such a huge amount of complacency around the booster programme and sadly lots of people are going to pay the price for it.
I agree. Feels like a more somber assessment from you having come down with it yourself. Meanwhile Professor Tim Spector told the today program that Omicrom symptoms are "headaches, sore throat, runny nose, fatigue and sneezing."
Yep. Got all them. Don't feel brilliant. But Monday's PCR was negative and a LF this lunchtime also negative. Then again Mrs RP displayed similar symptoms at the start and daily negative LFs until she showed positive and symptoms exploded in severity.
Huzzah
Hope she's feeling better soon! I'm just going to keep going as always, yesterday was shitty but today (actually at about 2am last night) I suddenly felt a lot better. I'm not sure why either, clearly I've still got the virus. Just keep doing those LFTs, it will show up eventually, even just a faint line like my wife's (as opposed to mine which is a very obvious one).
Did you do / are you going to do a PCR? I guess there’s no point…
What's really stupid is we wasted 10 days from the JCVI decision to Monday to get people queuing up and until today to get rid of the 15 minute observation period. That will have cost us 5m additional booster doses done. There was just such a huge amount of complacency around the booster programme and sadly lots of people are going to pay the price for it.
I agree. Feels like a more somber assessment from you having come down with it yourself. Meanwhile Professor Tim Spector told the today program that Omicrom symptoms are "headaches, sore throat, runny nose, fatigue and sneezing."
Yep. Got all them. Don't feel brilliant. But Monday's PCR was negative and a LF this lunchtime also negative. Then again Mrs RP displayed similar symptoms at the start and daily negative LFs until she showed positive and symptoms exploded in severity.
Huzzah
Hope she's feeling better soon! I'm just going to keep going as always, yesterday was shitty but today (actually at about 2am last night) I suddenly felt a lot better. I'm not sure why either, clearly I've still got the virus. Just keep doing those LFTs, it will show up eventually, even just a faint line like my wife's (as opposed to mine which is a very obvious one).
I'm awaiting Malmesbury's 1-10 scale graphic for Covid.
6.5 out of 10 on the oh shit scale last time? What do you reckon a 7 today?
He's in a bind like Boris. He needs to raise it to show he's on top of things. But if he does he'll really annoy his backbenchers, ie the PB "It's much ado about nothing" crowd.
You are completely wrong. The important thing in any panic is to Remain British. Now where's the gin?.....
The big event today is Macron's 2 hours-long taped interview that will be in prime-time on the biggest TV channel. Other candidates are furious and denounce what they see as unfairly occupying tv space (obviously they will not get the same opportunity). Maronists counter that the president is not yet a candidate and will just discuss his accomplishments as president without campaigning... The discussions regarding a potential left-wing primary are getting nowhere. Thus some are pushing for other candidates to come in the race such as Christiane Taubira (former Justice Minister under Hollande, famous for giving her name to the gay-marriage law and treated as an icon by the left-wing press as a woman from french Guyana). Opinion Way included her in theit poll and she got 2%.
I think the French Presidential election could be surprisingly entertaining.
From a "good for Britain" point of view, it's not clear that any of the leading candidates are great. Macron loves a contrived crisis. Pecresse accused the EU of being soft on Britain. Le Pen is ultimately statist. And Zemmour thinks that the D Day landings were an Anglo Saxon invasion of France.
We have a trade deal with the EU now though and France has never been our closest ally anyway, indeed it is probably our least close ally of any G7 nation.
Pecresse is probably closest to Boris ideologically all things being equal, except on the EU where Zemmour is probably closer to him (albeit otherwise a French nationalist). Le Pen had some things in common with Boris in terms of appealing to the Redwall type voter but maybe less so now
I don't think that Boris is closer to Draghi or Scholz than to Macron. Indeed those three are quite close and seem to share a dislike of BoJo.
Salvini is also part of the Italian government as are Forza Italia now and both are closer to Boris than Macron or Draghi. The French government is all En Marche.
Scholz may not be a huge Boris fan but he will still not be as grandstanding anti British as Macron
South African medics have been at pains to point out not many patients have needed oxygen, much less ventilation. So what treatment are they getting? Are the government thinking through how to rapidly increase throughout for that treatment?
You mean re-opening the nightingales with very thin staffing ratios to act as triage centres for people who don't need more serious treatment?
Anyway, there is a major city that has already been through this and has cases declining. No sign of health care collapse and excess death was lower than the national average.
Big rise in cases was exactly what everyone expected and doesn;t change anything.
Waits for @Malmesbury 's London Hospital admissions chart so you can eat your words.
My post is about Johannesburg where cases are now falling - hospitalisations and deaths still rising, but not at a rate with a chance of getting anywhere near previous levels. And that's with far less vaccine cover than us.
Slight problem with that is that I don't trust the data from South Africa...
In the Summer SA had a full severe lockdown and hospitals ran out of oxygen, all beds were full etc etc.. SA doctors saying over and over how terrible the situation was.
Now no lockdown, very limited restrictions, no pressure on hospitals, many many Doctors saying omicron is completely different, cases coming down in the epicentre.
What's really stupid is we wasted 10 days from the JCVI decision to Monday to get people queuing up and until today to get rid of the 15 minute observation period. That will have cost us 5m additional booster doses done. There was just such a huge amount of complacency around the booster programme and sadly lots of people are going to pay the price for it.
I agree. Feels like a more somber assessment from you having come down with it yourself. Meanwhile Professor Tim Spector told the today program that Omicrom symptoms are "headaches, sore throat, runny nose, fatigue and sneezing."
Yep. Got all them. Don't feel brilliant. But Monday's PCR was negative and a LF this lunchtime also negative. Then again Mrs RP displayed similar symptoms at the start and daily negative LFs until she showed positive and symptoms exploded in severity.
Huzzah
Hope she's feeling better soon! I'm just going to keep going as always, yesterday was shitty but today (actually at about 2am last night) I suddenly felt a lot better. I'm not sure why either, clearly I've still got the virus. Just keep doing those LFTs, it will show up eventually, even just a faint line like my wife's (as opposed to mine which is a very obvious one).
Did you do / are you going to do a PCR? I guess there’s no point…
Yeah got some coming in the post. No available slots within 30 miles of where we live.
Italy has just closed its borders to everyone unless you’re vaxxed AND tested. Inc EU citizens
Not sure of the point of this now. OMICRON THE DESPOILER is everywhere. Certainly in Europe. You might buy yourself 12 hours of grace but at a huge cost in human hassle and bureaucracy
It’s here. That’s all there is to it
A combination of messaging the seriousness and avoid the charge of doing nothing, I suspect. Agree it's all too late for omi though.
What's really stupid is we wasted 10 days from the JCVI decision to Monday to get people queuing up and until today to get rid of the 15 minute observation period. That will have cost us 5m additional booster doses done. There was just such a huge amount of complacency around the booster programme and sadly lots of people are going to pay the price for it.
I agree. Feels like a more somber assessment from you having come down with it yourself. Meanwhile Professor Tim Spector told the today program that Omicrom symptoms are "headaches, sore throat, runny nose, fatigue and sneezing."
Yep. Got all them. Don't feel brilliant. But Monday's PCR was negative and a LF this lunchtime also negative. Then again Mrs RP displayed similar symptoms at the start and daily negative LFs until she showed positive and symptoms exploded in severity.
Huzzah
Hope she's feeling better soon! I'm just going to keep going as always, yesterday was shitty but today (actually at about 2am last night) I suddenly felt a lot better. I'm not sure why either, clearly I've still got the virus. Just keep doing those LFTs, it will show up eventually, even just a faint line like my wife's (as opposed to mine which is a very obvious one).
She's on the mend, thanks. When you say "keep going as always" I assume that doesn't mean going out and being a personal super-spreader?
We're going to smash through into six figures per day and perhaps even with a 2 as first digit. That's a lot of people who have to lockdown whether the government makes it mandatory or not...
78,610 cases......I presume 100k will be breeched by end of the week.
The usual suspects will be ramping up the pressure to cancel Christmas.
Well, what do you think?
No further restrictions needed? Everything going fine?
What would you do? You have been asked this repeatedly but if you have answered I must have missed it.
Tell us what restrictions you favour.
As I said and you were apparently unable to understand (or perhaps read), whatever it takes to try to prevent the NHS collapsing and people dying without medical care.
Are you saying that we shouldn't try to prevent the NHS collapsing? By implication that seems to be the opinion of many here.
OK we're getting there. So no one is allowed to die of Covid. Is that what you're after? How would you achieve that.
The tortuous way this troll avoids a) saying what he would do and/or b) putting his money where his very big sanctimonious mouth is is truly breathtaking.
Is @Chris a troll? The vast majority of the public would agree with him and disagree with you?
Yes and the vast majority (70% IIRC) would like extra taxes on "wealthier Britons". Just not I presume themselves.
But fine. We are @Chris. But what is his plan that everyone agrees with.
Well far be it for me to answer for @Chris but when he says "do whatever it takes" to keep the NHS going I assume he is talking about anything up to and including another full, national lockdown?
Now I don't necessarily agree as I don't see why Omicron would be that bad based on the reports from South Africa, but it's certainly a valid POV and one with which outside PB, the PCP, GB News etc, you would probably find majority support from the public so... it's a bit much to call him a troll surely?
Sky News saying nothing to see this evening, it is just Boris asking Witty to do the slides. They claim it is laying the groundwork for further restrictions in the future.
Blink twice Chris if you are having to back Boris against your will.....
Spoke to three people on work calls this week so far who say “yeah I have covid right now, feel alright. Scratchy throat. Will have some time off next week anyway”.
You do understand that even without vaccination 99% survive COVID-19? You do realise how meaningless "spoke to three people and they were OK" is?
And yet we've wasted two years battling Covid-19 when we don't have a 200 year average life expectancy.
If we'd just had fewer than 1% not survive Covid19 from May last year that'd be fewer deaths than we've had in the past 21 months of almost perpetual restrictions. Many haven't seen relatives for two years now, to fight a disease that over 99% survive according to your own logic?
Its ridiculous. Restrictions were iffy pre-vaccinations, but to have restrictions on a doubly or triply-jabbed population is beyond outrageous. All of those vulnerable to the virus should have been jabbed three times by now already.
Restrictions now are utterly unacceptable and its remarkable only Tory backbenchers seem to have grasped this.
The big event today is Macron's 2 hours-long taped interview that will be in prime-time on the biggest TV channel. Other candidates are furious and denounce what they see as unfairly occupying tv space (obviously they will not get the same opportunity). Maronists counter that the president is not yet a candidate and will just discuss his accomplishments as president without campaigning... The discussions regarding a potential left-wing primary are getting nowhere. Thus some are pushing for other candidates to come in the race such as Christiane Taubira (former Justice Minister under Hollande, famous for giving her name to the gay-marriage law and treated as an icon by the left-wing press as a woman from french Guyana). Opinion Way included her in theit poll and she got 2%.
I think the French Presidential election could be surprisingly entertaining.
From a "good for Britain" point of view, it's not clear that any of the leading candidates are great. Macron loves a contrived crisis. Pecresse accused the EU of being soft on Britain. Le Pen is ultimately statist. And Zemmour thinks that the D Day landings were an Anglo Saxon invasion of France.
We have a trade deal with the EU now though and France has never been our closest ally anyway, indeed it is probably our least close ally of any G7 nation.
Pecresse is probably closest to Boris ideologically all things being equal, except on the EU where Zemmour is probably closer to him (albeit otherwise a French nationalist). Le Pen had some things in common with Boris in terms of appealing to the Redwall type voter but maybe less so now
I don't think that Boris is closer to Draghi or Scholz than to Macron. Indeed those three are quite close and seem to share a dislike of BoJo.
The world and his wife seem to share a dislike of Bojo. I wonder why they don’t seem to warm to the lying and treacherous vagrant?
78,610 cases......I presume 100k will be breeched by end of the week.
The usual suspects will be ramping up the pressure to cancel Christmas.
Well, what do you think?
No further restrictions needed? Everything going fine?
what would you do Chris?
I would do what the scientific advisers no doubt advised, and take measures to try to prevent the NHS from collapsing and many people dying without any medical care.
What's really stupid is we wasted 10 days from the JCVI decision to Monday to get people queuing up and until today to get rid of the 15 minute observation period. That will have cost us 5m additional booster doses done. There was just such a huge amount of complacency around the booster programme and sadly lots of people are going to pay the price for it.
I agree. Feels like a more somber assessment from you having come down with it yourself. Meanwhile Professor Tim Spector told the today program that Omicrom symptoms are "headaches, sore throat, runny nose, fatigue and sneezing."
Yep. Got all them. Don't feel brilliant. But Monday's PCR was negative and a LF this lunchtime also negative. Then again Mrs RP displayed similar symptoms at the start and daily negative LFs until she showed positive and symptoms exploded in severity.
Huzzah
So the evidence to date suggests that the symptoms are much closer to all the other coronaviruses that are flying around than to the much more virulent strains that we have experienced during the pandemic? Isn't this where Covid 19 was always going to end up - as just another cold/flu bug that we all suffer from from time to time? I'm not seeing the evidence that it is any more harmful than this. Of course, such evidence may arise, and if that is the case then restrictions may become justifiable. I see no evidence that we are at that point.
South African medics have been at pains to point out not many patients have needed oxygen, much less ventilation. So what treatment are they getting? Are the government thinking through how to rapidly increase throughout for that treatment?
You mean re-opening the nightingales with very thin staffing ratios to act as triage centres for people who don't need more serious treatment?
Anyway, there is a major city that has already been through this and has cases declining. No sign of health care collapse and excess death was lower than the national average.
Big rise in cases was exactly what everyone expected and doesn;t change anything.
Waits for @Malmesbury 's London Hospital admissions chart so you can eat your words.
My post is about Johannesburg where cases are now falling - hospitalisations and deaths still rising, but not at a rate with a chance of getting anywhere near previous levels. And that's with far less vaccine cover than us.
Slight problem with that is that I don't trust the data from South Africa...
The position in the conservative party is surreal from my point of view as I want to see Boris replaced, but not with someone who sides with the rebels who I disagree with so then I have to take Boris's side and just cannot start to understand why the rebels could not foresee that yesterday's proposals were not only proportionate, but also has the full support of the vast majority of the public
I expect tonight's press conference will be very worrying for ordinary voters and will highlight just how politically naive those 126 noes were yesteday including the lib dems and greens
Have you seen whan the SA doctor said in July about Covid (Delta) and what she says now.(Omicron)
Unless we are a different breed than South Africans Omicron has much milder effects than Delta.
She is a Doctor, she has experienced both waves, she knows what she is talking about.
She is one opinion and not from our own scientists actually dealing with it here in the UK
Two posts here that kinda demonstrate the pompous snobbery some have about SA. Professor Robert Dingwall was referencing this in the Telegraph today.
And as mentioned on the other thread there's no doubt cases are skyrocketing but we just ran out of LFT tests this week ffs that surely also indicates larger amounts of testing.
You don't believe the growth rate is real?
If you did, would it concern you at all? Could you put it together with a way in which the hospitals could possibly cope with this?
I believe cases have grown but also that the amount of testing has grown also. Do you think that might mean reported cases grow also simply dependent upon the testing.
Plus what is your plan. Very interested to hear.
You're talking drivel. The number of tests in the last week is up by 15% on the previous week. The growth rate of Omicron is estimated as a doubling every 2-3 days. And that is quite believable if it has the same intrinsic transmissibility as Delta, and the amount of immune escape indicated by the antibody testing. To suggest that's not really happening is the feeblest evasion.
And I can't make it any clearer. What's necessary is to do WHATEVER IS NECESSARY to control the rate of growth so that the NHS can cope with this, rather than leaving people to die without medical care. That is simple common sense.
DO YOU DISAGREE? DO YOU DISAGREE? DO YOU DISAGREE?
I disagree. Cases aren't relevant. What are relevant are hospitalisations and/or deaths.
"Cases aren't relevant."
They are, and they are not. If the aim is to stop the NHS collapsing, then waiting until you get large numbers of hospitalisations is too late due to the lag: by the time you introduce measures, you have a week or two of infections coming through, as we have seen previously in this pandemic.
Therefore whilst cases are not directly relevant, they're the best measure of what will happen. Now, hopefully Omicron is mild for many more people than Delta. But assuming that - or the extent of its mildness - is a massive gamble for the government.
Cases are relevant - over 50s is where the shit is flying towards the fan is. Then it hits the fan and becomes hospitalisations.
Case numbers are shit for inter country comparisons. But they are good at detecting *changes* in a country or region.
‘Wuhan lab leak 'now the most likely origin of Covid', MPs told Dr Alina Chan says there is also a risk that Covid-19 is an engineered virus By Sarah Knapton, SCIENCE EDITOR 15 December 2021 • 12:46pm
A laboratory leak is now the more likely origin of Covid, MPs have heard, because after two years of searching an animal host has never been found.’
Isn't that what she's been arguing since April - why the "Well well well" ?
(I can't read the paywalled piece - is there new evidence ?)
No.
We still don't know. Indeed, the only actual new evidence is that the paper in Nature tracking the very first cases.
And we will probably never know for sure.
There’s tons of new evidence over the last 3 months (I’ve given up showing it to PB-ers coz most of you either don’t understand it or don’t want to understand it)
The one big revelation in that Telegraph article is Richard ‘the Lancet’ Horton, who published the original ‘lab leak is racist conspiracy’ letter now claims he was unaware that Daszak was corruptly compromised, he says it took him a year to realise that Daszak was linked to Wuhan and should therefore recuse and shouldn’t have signed the letter. A year. For fucks sake. Really? And what about the 49,000 other signatories on the letter who were also linked to Wuhan and the lab?
Meanwhile Horton finallly admits that ‘yes, lab leak is a very plausible hypothesis and must be investigated’. Such a shame his magazine spent so much effort trying to stop it being investigated then, isn’t it?
It is is one of the greatest and most grotesque scientific conspiracies of all time. Even if lab leak is not ever proven, the cover-up is now absolutely unquestionable. Horrific lies were told.
What's really stupid is we wasted 10 days from the JCVI decision to Monday to get people queuing up and until today to get rid of the 15 minute observation period. That will have cost us 5m additional booster doses done. There was just such a huge amount of complacency around the booster programme and sadly lots of people are going to pay the price for it.
I agree. Feels like a more somber assessment from you having come down with it yourself. Meanwhile Professor Tim Spector told the today program that Omicrom symptoms are "headaches, sore throat, runny nose, fatigue and sneezing."
Yep. Got all them. Don't feel brilliant. But Monday's PCR was negative and a LF this lunchtime also negative. Then again Mrs RP displayed similar symptoms at the start and daily negative LFs until she showed positive and symptoms exploded in severity.
Huzzah
Hope she's feeling better soon! I'm just going to keep going as always, yesterday was shitty but today (actually at about 2am last night) I suddenly felt a lot better. I'm not sure why either, clearly I've still got the virus. Just keep doing those LFTs, it will show up eventually, even just a faint line like my wife's (as opposed to mine which is a very obvious one).
She's on the mend, thanks. When you say "keep going as always" I assume that doesn't mean going out and being a personal super-spreader?
We're going to smash through into six figures per day and perhaps even with a 2 as first digit. That's a lot of people who have to lockdown whether the government makes it mandatory or not...
Nah, just keep on keeping on, or at least not dying. In isolation until the Xmas Eve, organised a Waitrose delivery for Friday and another one for Tuesday, was lucky to get slots I think
Yeah undoubtedly, the 300-400k cases per day seemed like the kind of figure that made sense given how infectious Omicron is that's about 5m people infected at one time, or 1/13 of the nation.
Spoke to three people on work calls this week so far who say “yeah I have covid right now, feel alright. Scratchy throat. Will have some time off next week anyway”.
You do understand that even without vaccination 99% survive COVID-19? You do realise how meaningless "spoke to three people and they were OK" is?
And yet we've wasted two years battling Covid-19 when we don't have a 200 year average life expectancy.
If we'd just had fewer than 1% not survive Covid19 from May last year that'd be fewer deaths than we've had in the past 21 months of almost perpetual restrictions. Many haven't seen relatives for two years now, to fight a disease that over 99% survive according to your own logic?
Its ridiculous. Restrictions were iffy pre-vaccinations, but to have restrictions on a doubly or triply-jabbed population is beyond outrageous. All of those vulnerable to the virus should have been jabbed three times by now already.
Restrictions now are utterly unacceptable and its remarkable only Tory backbenchers seem to have grasped this.
They are clearly unacceptable to you but all the evidence is thay are acceptable to and indeed expected by, the majority of the population.
Prediction: The worse the numbers are the more stridently you will squeal against measures that increasingly look sensible.
Italy has just closed its borders to everyone unless you’re vaxxed AND tested. Inc EU citizens
Not sure of the point of this now. OMICRON THE DESPOILER is everywhere. Certainly in Europe. You might buy yourself 12 hours of grace but at a huge cost in human hassle and bureaucracy
It’s here. That’s all there is to it
Are you now one of the only posters on PB not to be suffering covid in this Omicron wave Leon? Kinda ironic like? 🙂
There’s a lot of it about. Maybe the government should do something.
New @IndependentSage statement: Omicron is doubling so fast that sheer numbers will v likely outweigh any advantage of reduced severity (if it exists). To prevent NHS being overwhelmed in a few weeks & for a safer Xmas we need to act now. Not next week, not after Xmas, now. 1/2
We are calling for an immediate *10 day* circuit break to protect NHS & enable safer mixing over Xmas (25-28 December).
Reassess over Xmas to see what is needed then, when much more info available. Situation changing so fast, can't plan far ahead.
Sky News saying nothing to see this evening, it is just Boris asking Witty to do the slides. They claim it is laying the groundwork for further restrictions in the future.
Blink twice Chris if you are having to back Boris against your will.....
Isn't there a code signal with your fingers you are suppose to use if you are being abused?
And as mentioned on the other thread there's no doubt cases are skyrocketing but we just ran out of LFT tests this week ffs that surely also indicates larger amounts of testing.
You don't believe the growth rate is real?
If you did, would it concern you at all? Could you put it together with a way in which the hospitals could possibly cope with this?
I believe cases have grown but also that the amount of testing has grown also. Do you think that might mean reported cases grow also simply dependent upon the testing.
Plus what is your plan. Very interested to hear.
You're talking drivel. The number of tests in the last week is up by 15% on the previous week. The growth rate of Omicron is estimated as a doubling every 2-3 days. And that is quite believable if it has the same intrinsic transmissibility as Delta, and the amount of immune escape indicated by the antibody testing. To suggest that's not really happening is the feeblest evasion.
And I can't make it any clearer. What's necessary is to do WHATEVER IS NECESSARY to control the rate of growth so that the NHS can cope with this, rather than leaving people to die without medical care. That is simple common sense.
DO YOU DISAGREE? DO YOU DISAGREE? DO YOU DISAGREE?
I disagree. Cases aren't relevant. What are relevant are hospitalisations and/or deaths.
They're rather necessary if you want to work out hospitalisation and/or mortality rates for the infection.
This is the fundamental question, to which we do not know the answer.
In our highly vaccinated (and with a decent number of boosters) country, what is the hospitalization rate for Omicron. There are encouraging signs from South Africa, especially regarding the number of people on oxygen. But we don't know yet.
Sky News saying nothing to see this evening, it is just Boris asking Witty to do the slides. They claim it is laying the groundwork for further restrictions in the future.
Blink twice Chris if you are having to back Boris against your will.....
Hmm, misquote. He didn't say that. What he actually said was "if you were cynical you might think they were laying the groundwork for further restrictions in the future" – which is not the same thing at all!
78,610 cases......I presume 100k will be breeched by end of the week.
The usual suspects will be ramping up the pressure to cancel Christmas.
Well, what do you think?
No further restrictions needed? Everything going fine?
What would you do? You have been asked this repeatedly but if you have answered I must have missed it.
Tell us what restrictions you favour.
As I said and you were apparently unable to understand (or perhaps read), whatever it takes to try to prevent the NHS collapsing and people dying without medical care.
Are you saying that we shouldn't try to prevent the NHS collapsing? By implication that seems to be the opinion of many here.
What does "the NHS collapsing" even look like? We're already cancelling and/or delaying its services by the bucketload. Wait times for A&E are what, 24 hours in some places? You could argue it already has.
You could. But I think it means something more lurid. Eg care not available for emergencies. Very sick people being turned away. A chaotic catastrophe rather than a (just about) managed crisis.
I wonder if the sharp escalation in Covid numbers will lead to a short 'in times of war' rally for the government, and N Shropshire will become a comfortable Con hold?
78,610 cases......I presume 100k will be breeched by end of the week.
The usual suspects will be ramping up the pressure to cancel Christmas.
Well, what do you think?
No further restrictions needed? Everything going fine?
What would you do? You have been asked this repeatedly but if you have answered I must have missed it.
Tell us what restrictions you favour.
As I said and you were apparently unable to understand (or perhaps read), whatever it takes to try to prevent the NHS collapsing and people dying without medical care.
Are you saying that we shouldn't try to prevent the NHS collapsing? By implication that seems to be the opinion of many here.
OK we're getting there. So no one is allowed to die of Covid. Is that what you're after? How would you achieve that.
The tortuous way this troll avoids a) saying what he would do and/or b) putting his money where his very big sanctimonious mouth is is truly breathtaking.
Is @Chris a troll? The vast majority of the public would agree with him and disagree with you?
Agree with what? It's impossible to get him to explain his position.
Frankly, the fact that you people keep saying that is simply an admission of your fundamental dishonesty.
How can I make it any clearer? WE MUST DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO PREVENT THE NHS COLLAPSING AND BEING UNABLE TO GIVE PEOPLE MEDICAL CARE
It's a simple, fundamental political choice. If people disagree, they should have the honesty to say so. The fact that they have so much difficulty in doing so speaks volumes.
‘Wuhan lab leak 'now the most likely origin of Covid', MPs told Dr Alina Chan says there is also a risk that Covid-19 is an engineered virus By Sarah Knapton, SCIENCE EDITOR 15 December 2021 • 12:46pm
A laboratory leak is now the more likely origin of Covid, MPs have heard, because after two years of searching an animal host has never been found.’
Isn't that what she's been arguing since April - why the "Well well well" ?
(I can't read the paywalled piece - is there new evidence ?)
No.
We still don't know. Indeed, the only actual new evidence is that the paper in Nature tracking the very first cases.
And we will probably never know for sure.
There’s tons of new evidence over the last 3 months (I’ve given up showing it to PB-ers coz most of you either don’t understand it or don’t want to understand it)
The one big revelation in that Telegraph article is Richard ‘the Lancet’ Horton, who published the original ‘lab leak is racist conspiracy’ letter now claims he was unaware that Daszak was corruptly compromised, he says it took him a year to realise that Daszak was linked to Wuhan and should therefore recuse and shouldn’t have signed the letter. A year. For fucks sake. Really? And what about the 49,000 other signatories on the letter who were also linked to Wuhan and the lab?
Meanwhile Horton finallly admits that ‘yes, lab leak is a very plausible hypothesis and must be investigated’. Such a shame his magazine spent so much effort trying to stop it being investigated then, isn’t it?
It is is one of the greatest and most grotesque scientific conspiracies of all time. Even if lab leak is not ever proven, the cover-up is now absolutely unquestionable. Horrific lies were told.
That's quick for Horton, considering it took twelve years for him to retract the Wakefield paper.
78,610 cases......I presume 100k will be breeched by end of the week.
The usual suspects will be ramping up the pressure to cancel Christmas.
Well, what do you think?
No further restrictions needed? Everything going fine?
What would you do? You have been asked this repeatedly but if you have answered I must have missed it.
Tell us what restrictions you favour.
As I said and you were apparently unable to understand (or perhaps read), whatever it takes to try to prevent the NHS collapsing and people dying without medical care.
Are you saying that we shouldn't try to prevent the NHS collapsing? By implication that seems to be the opinion of many here.
OK we're getting there. So no one is allowed to die of Covid. Is that what you're after? How would you achieve that.
The tortuous way this troll avoids a) saying what he would do and/or b) putting his money where his very big sanctimonious mouth is is truly breathtaking.
Is @Chris a troll? The vast majority of the public would agree with him and disagree with you?
Yes and the vast majority (70% IIRC) would like extra taxes on "wealthier Britons". Just not I presume themselves.
But fine. We are @Chris. But what is his plan that everyone agrees with.
Well far be it for me to answer for @Chris but when he says "do whatever it takes" to keep the NHS going I assume he is talking about anything up to and including another full, national lockdown?
Now I don't necessarily agree as I don't see why Omicron would be that bad based on the reports from South Africa, but it's certainly a valid POV and one with which outside PB, the PCP, GB News etc, you would probably find majority support from the public so... it's a bit much to call him a troll surely?
My own view and I don't say it lightly is that he is very worried and is ranting on PB to reassure himself. A bit like @Leon. Who catastrophises and is reassured when everyone says it will all be ok. Even if it might not!
But "whatever it takes" first is a big ask and second to what end and for how long. We have Covid, we have Omicron. It is not going to fizzle out on its own unless presumably it has infected everyone. IANAvirologist but a full lockdown surely just means delaying the inevitable.
Chris said no one should die without medical treatment but at what point do we say that that is in danger. How clear should we keep the NHS and for how long.
I wonder if the sharp escalation in Covid numbers will lead to a short 'in times of war' rally for the government, and N Shropshire will become a comfortable Con hold?
I doubt it, if anything the people will blame the government for not rolling out booster earlier/faster because we've been told for weeks that booster are the only way out.
‘Wuhan lab leak 'now the most likely origin of Covid', MPs told Dr Alina Chan says there is also a risk that Covid-19 is an engineered virus By Sarah Knapton, SCIENCE EDITOR 15 December 2021 • 12:46pm
A laboratory leak is now the more likely origin of Covid, MPs have heard, because after two years of searching an animal host has never been found.’
Isn't that what she's been arguing since April - why the "Well well well" ?
(I can't read the paywalled piece - is there new evidence ?)
No.
We still don't know. Indeed, the only actual new evidence is that the paper in Nature tracking the very first cases.
And we will probably never know for sure.
There’s tons of new evidence over the last 3 months (I’ve given up showing it to PB-ers coz most of you either don’t understand it or don’t want to understand it)
The one big revelation in that Telegraph article is Richard ‘the Lancet’ Horton, who published the original ‘lab leak is racist conspiracy’ letter now claims he was unaware that Daszak was corruptly compromised, he says it took him a year to realise that Daszak was linked to Wuhan and should therefore recuse and shouldn’t have signed the letter. A year. For fucks sake. Really? And what about the 49,000 other signatories on the letter who were also linked to Wuhan and the lab?
Meanwhile Horton finallly admits that ‘yes, lab leak is a very plausible hypothesis and must be investigated’. Such a shame his magazine spent so much effort trying to stop it being investigated then, isn’t it?
It is is one of the greatest and most grotesque scientific conspiracies of all time. Even if lab leak is not ever proven, the cover-up is now absolutely unquestionable. Horrific lies were told.
That's not actual evidence. That's somebody regretting supporting a compromised invidual.
Actual evidence would be something tying it to the lab.
Go on, post something actually tying it to the lab.
(As an aside, I agree that the lab leak - given the proximity of the initial outbreak - is the most likely scenario. But the reality is that the only thing that would settle this one way or another would be (a) some evidence from the lab, say a disgruntled staffer who leaves the country and speaks out; or (b) finding a non-bat zoonotic origin. Otherwise, we're left in limbo, with it being more probable than not that it is a lab leak, but no actual evidence either way.)
And as mentioned on the other thread there's no doubt cases are skyrocketing but we just ran out of LFT tests this week ffs that surely also indicates larger amounts of testing.
You don't believe the growth rate is real?
If you did, would it concern you at all? Could you put it together with a way in which the hospitals could possibly cope with this?
I believe cases have grown but also that the amount of testing has grown also. Do you think that might mean reported cases grow also simply dependent upon the testing.
Plus what is your plan. Very interested to hear.
You're talking drivel. The number of tests in the last week is up by 15% on the previous week. The growth rate of Omicron is estimated as a doubling every 2-3 days. And that is quite believable if it has the same intrinsic transmissibility as Delta, and the amount of immune escape indicated by the antibody testing. To suggest that's not really happening is the feeblest evasion.
And I can't make it any clearer. What's necessary is to do WHATEVER IS NECESSARY to control the rate of growth so that the NHS can cope with this, rather than leaving people to die without medical care. That is simple common sense.
DO YOU DISAGREE? DO YOU DISAGREE? DO YOU DISAGREE?
I disagree. Cases aren't relevant. What are relevant are hospitalisations and/or deaths.
"Cases aren't relevant."
They are, and they are not. If the aim is to stop the NHS collapsing, then waiting until you get large numbers of hospitalisations is too late due to the lag: by the time you introduce measures, you have a week or two of infections coming through, as we have seen previously in this pandemic.
Therefore whilst cases are not directly relevant, they're the best measure of what will happen. Now, hopefully Omicron is mild for many more people than Delta. But assuming that - or the extent of its mildness - is a massive gamble for the government.
Cases are relevant - over 50s is where the shit is flying towards the fan is. Then it hits the fan and becomes hospitalisations.
Case numbers are shit for inter country comparisons. But they are good at detecting *changes* in a country or region.
Cases are irrelevant.
Cases reached a trough at the start of November with the midterm holidays and have been rising ever since for the past six weeks. Yet six weeks after cases have been rising the deaths are still falling.
Its worth remembering that while cases have been rising so have vaccinations. All the vulnerable should have had three jabs now. So cases should be milder whether Delta or Omicron because immunity will be better. More cases in a more vaccinated population can mean fewer deaths and hospitalisations, not more.
Cases can only go so far. With the vulnerable having had three jabs and everyone else coming forward for a third now too, why should we give a shit about cases?
- Cases rising. London and Scotland, very strongly - see regional R. In London this is beginning to reach down into the older, more vulnerable groups. This is very regional, the North East is seeing cases flat - Hospitalisations rising. Very strongly in London. - Deaths flat.
Wasn’t there a General Merkin?
Perhaps the government could hire him to conceal their cock ups?
78,610 cases......I presume 100k will be breeched by end of the week.
The usual suspects will be ramping up the pressure to cancel Christmas.
Well, what do you think?
No further restrictions needed? Everything going fine?
What would you do? You have been asked this repeatedly but if you have answered I must have missed it.
Tell us what restrictions you favour.
As I said and you were apparently unable to understand (or perhaps read), whatever it takes to try to prevent the NHS collapsing and people dying without medical care.
Are you saying that we shouldn't try to prevent the NHS collapsing? By implication that seems to be the opinion of many here.
OK we're getting there. So no one is allowed to die of Covid. Is that what you're after? How would you achieve that.
The tortuous way this troll avoids a) saying what he would do and/or b) putting his money where his very big sanctimonious mouth is is truly breathtaking.
Is @Chris a troll? The vast majority of the public would agree with him and disagree with you?
Agree with what? It's impossible to get him to explain his position.
Frankly, the fact that you people keep saying that is simply an admission of your fundamental dishonesty.
How can I make it any clearer? WE MUST DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO PREVENT THE NHS COLLAPSING AND BEING UNABLE TO GIVE PEOPLE MEDICAL CARE
It's a simple, fundamental political choice. If people disagree, they should have the honesty to say so. The fact that they have so much difficulty in doing so speaks volumes.
I am merely asking you to define what you would do, now, in terms of practical steps.
Imagine you are PM, you have a 5pm press conference, what restrictions are you going to impose?
Sky News saying nothing to see this evening, it is just Boris asking Witty to do the slides. They claim it is laying the groundwork for further restrictions in the future.
Blink twice Chris if you are having to back Boris against your will.....
Hmm, misquote. He didn't say that. What he actually said was "if you were cynical you might think they were laying the groundwork for further restrictions in the future" – which is not the same thing at all!
South African medics have been at pains to point out not many patients have needed oxygen, much less ventilation. So what treatment are they getting? Are the government thinking through how to rapidly increase throughout for that treatment?
You mean re-opening the nightingales with very thin staffing ratios to act as triage centres for people who don't need more serious treatment?
Anyway, there is a major city that has already been through this and has cases declining. No sign of health care collapse and excess death was lower than the national average.
Big rise in cases was exactly what everyone expected and doesn;t change anything.
Waits for @Malmesbury 's London Hospital admissions chart so you can eat your words.
My post is about Johannesburg where cases are now falling - hospitalisations and deaths still rising, but not at a rate with a chance of getting anywhere near previous levels. And that's with far less vaccine cover than us.
Slight problem with that is that I don't trust the data from South Africa...
In the Summer SA had a full severe lockdown and hospitals ran out of oxygen, all beds were full etc etc.. SA doctors saying over and over how terrible the situation was.
Now no lockdown, very limited restrictions, no pressure on hospitals, many many Doctors saying omicron is completely different, cases coming down in the epicentre.
And you don't trust SA data?
The "patients on oxygen" stats are by far the most encouraging part of the SA data. Because those are the most serious cases, and that there are relatively few of them is extremely positive.
78,610 cases......I presume 100k will be breeched by end of the week.
The usual suspects will be ramping up the pressure to cancel Christmas.
Well, what do you think?
No further restrictions needed? Everything going fine?
What would you do? You have been asked this repeatedly but if you have answered I must have missed it.
Tell us what restrictions you favour.
As I said and you were apparently unable to understand (or perhaps read), whatever it takes to try to prevent the NHS collapsing and people dying without medical care.
Are you saying that we shouldn't try to prevent the NHS collapsing? By implication that seems to be the opinion of many here.
OK we're getting there. So no one is allowed to die of Covid. Is that what you're after? How would you achieve that.
The tortuous way this troll avoids a) saying what he would do and/or b) putting his money where his very big sanctimonious mouth is is truly breathtaking.
Is @Chris a troll? The vast majority of the public would agree with him and disagree with you?
Agree with what? It's impossible to get him to explain his position.
Frankly, the fact that you people keep saying that is simply an admission of your fundamental dishonesty.
How can I make it any clearer? WE MUST DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO PREVENT THE NHS COLLAPSING AND BEING UNABLE TO GIVE PEOPLE MEDICAL CARE
It's a simple, fundamental political choice. If people disagree, they should have the honesty to say so. The fact that they have so much difficulty in doing so speaks volumes.
78,610 cases......I presume 100k will be breeched by end of the week.
The usual suspects will be ramping up the pressure to cancel Christmas.
Well, what do you think?
No further restrictions needed? Everything going fine?
What would you do? You have been asked this repeatedly but if you have answered I must have missed it.
Tell us what restrictions you favour.
As I said and you were apparently unable to understand (or perhaps read), whatever it takes to try to prevent the NHS collapsing and people dying without medical care.
Are you saying that we shouldn't try to prevent the NHS collapsing? By implication that seems to be the opinion of many here.
OK we're getting there. So no one is allowed to die of Covid. Is that what you're after? How would you achieve that.
The tortuous way this troll avoids a) saying what he would do and/or b) putting his money where his very big sanctimonious mouth is is truly breathtaking.
Is @Chris a troll? The vast majority of the public would agree with him and disagree with you?
Agree with what? It's impossible to get him to explain his position.
Frankly, the fact that you people keep saying that is simply an admission of your fundamental dishonesty.
How can I make it any clearer? WE MUST DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO PREVENT THE NHS COLLAPSING AND BEING UNABLE TO GIVE PEOPLE MEDICAL CARE
It's a simple, fundamental political choice. If people disagree, they should have the honesty to say so. The fact that they have so much difficulty in doing so speaks volumes.
But you still haven't outlined any specific measures, just a generalised bit it rhetoric. What specific measures are we talking about here? Lockdown? Economic shutdown? For how long? How do we keep shelves stocked? Will the government send around the ration van? What are you specifically saying needs to be done?
OT - "This [Chesham and Amersham] proved to be my biggest political betting gamble win ever." - Mike Smithson
Coming from OGH, that is VERY impressive. So what was your 2nd-best - Obama 2008?
FYI (and BTW) yours truly scored something of a coup, by correctly forecasting that Seattle citycouncilmember Kshama Sawant would survive the attempt to recall her from office in this month's (very) special election. Which she has - at the moment by margin of just 309 votes out of over 40k counted so far, with only a few hundred ballots remaining to count.
Final results will be certified Friday, and that will be that UNLESS a recount is requested by the losing side. Which IMHO would be pointless, given the margin AND the tightness of King County's ballot processing & tabulation systems. And expensive, at deposit of 25-cents for every ballot recounted, which for the whole kit & caboodle would be over $10k. But (in some quarters anyway) hope springs eternal!
78,610 cases......I presume 100k will be breeched by end of the week.
The usual suspects will be ramping up the pressure to cancel Christmas.
Well, what do you think?
No further restrictions needed? Everything going fine?
What would you do? You have been asked this repeatedly but if you have answered I must have missed it.
Tell us what restrictions you favour.
As I said and you were apparently unable to understand (or perhaps read), whatever it takes to try to prevent the NHS collapsing and people dying without medical care.
Are you saying that we shouldn't try to prevent the NHS collapsing? By implication that seems to be the opinion of many here.
OK we're getting there. So no one is allowed to die of Covid. Is that what you're after? How would you achieve that.
The tortuous way this troll avoids a) saying what he would do and/or b) putting his money where his very big sanctimonious mouth is is truly breathtaking.
Is @Chris a troll? The vast majority of the public would agree with him and disagree with you?
Agree with what? It's impossible to get him to explain his position.
Frankly, the fact that you people keep saying that is simply an admission of your fundamental dishonesty.
How can I make it any clearer? WE MUST DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO PREVENT THE NHS COLLAPSING AND BEING UNABLE TO GIVE PEOPLE MEDICAL CARE
It's a simple, fundamental political choice. If people disagree, they should have the honesty to say so. The fact that they have so much difficulty in doing so speaks volumes.
What if that causes hardship to people in other ways?
The position in the conservative party is surreal from my point of view as I want to see Boris replaced, but not with someone who sides with the rebels who I disagree with so then I have to take Boris's side and just cannot start to understand why the rebels could not foresee that yesterday's proposals were not only proportionate, but also has the full support of the vast majority of the public
I expect tonight's press conference will be very worrying for ordinary voters and will highlight just how politically naive those 126 noes were yesteday including the lib dems and greens
Have you seen whan the SA doctor said in July about Covid (Delta) and what she says now.(Omicron)
Unless we are a different breed than South Africans Omicron has much milder effects than Delta.
She is a Doctor, she has experienced both waves, she knows what she is talking about.
She is one opinion and not from our own scientists actually dealing with it here in the UK
In July she gave an interview about how terrible the Delta wave was with descriptions of the patients she was seeing.
Now she has described the current patients she is seeing with Omicron.
These are not opinions. These are real world happenings.
She is from Gauteng which was the start of Omicron, in fact she discovered it.
Cases are now dropping there and the nature of the patients she is seeing have not changed.
Sky News saying nothing to see this evening, it is just Boris asking Witty to do the slides. They claim it is laying the groundwork for further restrictions in the future.
Blink twice Chris if you are having to back Boris against your will.....
Hmm, misquote. He didn't say that. What he actually said was "if you were cynical you might think they were laying the groundwork for further restrictions in the future" – which is not the same thing at all!
I'm cynical :-)
Sure, but you shouldn't misquote him because the two quotes have a different sense.
And as mentioned on the other thread there's no doubt cases are skyrocketing but we just ran out of LFT tests this week ffs that surely also indicates larger amounts of testing.
You don't believe the growth rate is real?
If you did, would it concern you at all? Could you put it together with a way in which the hospitals could possibly cope with this?
I believe cases have grown but also that the amount of testing has grown also. Do you think that might mean reported cases grow also simply dependent upon the testing.
Plus what is your plan. Very interested to hear.
You're talking drivel. The number of tests in the last week is up by 15% on the previous week. The growth rate of Omicron is estimated as a doubling every 2-3 days. And that is quite believable if it has the same intrinsic transmissibility as Delta, and the amount of immune escape indicated by the antibody testing. To suggest that's not really happening is the feeblest evasion.
And I can't make it any clearer. What's necessary is to do WHATEVER IS NECESSARY to control the rate of growth so that the NHS can cope with this, rather than leaving people to die without medical care. That is simple common sense.
DO YOU DISAGREE? DO YOU DISAGREE? DO YOU DISAGREE?
I disagree. Cases aren't relevant. What are relevant are hospitalisations and/or deaths.
"Cases aren't relevant."
They are, and they are not. If the aim is to stop the NHS collapsing, then waiting until you get large numbers of hospitalisations is too late due to the lag: by the time you introduce measures, you have a week or two of infections coming through, as we have seen previously in this pandemic.
Therefore whilst cases are not directly relevant, they're the best measure of what will happen. Now, hopefully Omicron is mild for many more people than Delta. But assuming that - or the extent of its mildness - is a massive gamble for the government.
Cases are relevant - over 50s is where the shit is flying towards the fan is. Then it hits the fan and becomes hospitalisations.
Case numbers are shit for inter country comparisons. But they are good at detecting *changes* in a country or region.
Cases are irrelevant.
Cases reached a trough at the start of November with the midterm holidays and have been rising ever since for the past six weeks. Yet six weeks after cases have been rising the deaths are still falling.
Its worth remembering that while cases have been rising so have vaccinations. All the vulnerable should have had three jabs now. So cases should be milder whether Delta or Omicron because immunity will be better. More cases in a more vaccinated population can mean fewer deaths and hospitalisations, not more.
Cases can only go so far. With the vulnerable having had three jabs and everyone else coming forward for a third now too, why should we give a shit about cases?
Wrong.
In the older groups, more cases will mean more hospitalisations. There are enough un-vaxed, older people out there to fuck the hospitals up, if enough cases happen in a short enough period of time.
In addition, vaccinating have massively weakened the CHR - not eliminated it. Hence seeing double and triple taxed people in hospitals.
The position in the conservative party is surreal from my point of view as I want to see Boris replaced, but not with someone who sides with the rebels who I disagree with so then I have to take Boris's side and just cannot start to understand why the rebels could not foresee that yesterday's proposals were not only proportionate, but also has the full support of the vast majority of the public
I expect tonight's press conference will be very worrying for ordinary voters and will highlight just how politically naive those 126 noes were yesteday including the lib dems and greens
Have you seen whan the SA doctor said in July about Covid (Delta) and what she says now.(Omicron)
Unless we are a different breed than South Africans Omicron has much milder effects than Delta.
She is a Doctor, she has experienced both waves, she knows what she is talking about.
She is one opinion and not from our own scientists actually dealing with it here in the UK
In July she gave an interview about how terrible the Delta wave was with descriptions of the patients she was seeing.
Now she has described the current patients she is seeing with Omicron.
These are not opinions. These are real world happenings.
She is from Gauteng which was the start of Omicron, in fact she discovered it.
Cases are now dropping there and the nature of the patients she is seeing have not changed.
Please tell me how these facts are opinions?
Why do we have to lock down and not South Africa, or France? Is it some mistake we have made?
And as mentioned on the other thread there's no doubt cases are skyrocketing but we just ran out of LFT tests this week ffs that surely also indicates larger amounts of testing.
You don't believe the growth rate is real?
If you did, would it concern you at all? Could you put it together with a way in which the hospitals could possibly cope with this?
I believe cases have grown but also that the amount of testing has grown also. Do you think that might mean reported cases grow also simply dependent upon the testing.
Plus what is your plan. Very interested to hear.
You're talking drivel. The number of tests in the last week is up by 15% on the previous week. The growth rate of Omicron is estimated as a doubling every 2-3 days. And that is quite believable if it has the same intrinsic transmissibility as Delta, and the amount of immune escape indicated by the antibody testing. To suggest that's not really happening is the feeblest evasion.
And I can't make it any clearer. What's necessary is to do WHATEVER IS NECESSARY to control the rate of growth so that the NHS can cope with this, rather than leaving people to die without medical care. That is simple common sense.
DO YOU DISAGREE? DO YOU DISAGREE? DO YOU DISAGREE?
I disagree. Cases aren't relevant. What are relevant are hospitalisations and/or deaths.
They're rather necessary if you want to work out hospitalisation and/or mortality rates for the infection.
Not really. If the aim is to "protect the NHS" the only metric is hospital utilisation. Otherwise the aim is not simply to protect the NHS, but something more.
But to project hospitalizations you have to apply an estimated hospitalization rate for Omicron to the projected number of cases of Omicron. Therefore you have to be concerned with cases.
78,610 cases......I presume 100k will be breeched by end of the week.
The usual suspects will be ramping up the pressure to cancel Christmas.
Well, what do you think?
No further restrictions needed? Everything going fine?
What would you do? You have been asked this repeatedly but if you have answered I must have missed it.
Tell us what restrictions you favour.
As I said and you were apparently unable to understand (or perhaps read), whatever it takes to try to prevent the NHS collapsing and people dying without medical care.
Are you saying that we shouldn't try to prevent the NHS collapsing? By implication that seems to be the opinion of many here.
OK we're getting there. So no one is allowed to die of Covid. Is that what you're after? How would you achieve that.
The tortuous way this troll avoids a) saying what he would do and/or b) putting his money where his very big sanctimonious mouth is is truly breathtaking.
Is @Chris a troll? The vast majority of the public would agree with him and disagree with you?
Agree with what? It's impossible to get him to explain his position.
Frankly, the fact that you people keep saying that is simply an admission of your fundamental dishonesty.
How can I make it any clearer? WE MUST DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO PREVENT THE NHS COLLAPSING AND BEING UNABLE TO GIVE PEOPLE MEDICAL CARE
It's a simple, fundamental political choice. If people disagree, they should have the honesty to say so. The fact that they have so much difficulty in doing so speaks volumes.
The people to a certain extent have made their choice. They aren't too bothered. Otherwise a party which promised to spend £XXXXX on the NHS would have swept to power. Opinion polls would be 100-0 in favour of it.
Take away the mask mandates for example and I'm guessing 5-10% of people would wear masks. People also will self-regulate their behaviour so that if they're worried they won't go out so they are already acting on their own risk assessments.
We have all asked what you would do but you decline to answer.
And we do read all of your posts so no need to shout.
78,610 cases......I presume 100k will be breeched by end of the week.
The usual suspects will be ramping up the pressure to cancel Christmas.
Well, what do you think?
No further restrictions needed? Everything going fine?
What would you do? You have been asked this repeatedly but if you have answered I must have missed it.
Tell us what restrictions you favour.
As I said and you were apparently unable to understand (or perhaps read), whatever it takes to try to prevent the NHS collapsing and people dying without medical care.
Are you saying that we shouldn't try to prevent the NHS collapsing? By implication that seems to be the opinion of many here.
OK we're getting there. So no one is allowed to die of Covid. Is that what you're after? How would you achieve that.
The tortuous way this troll avoids a) saying what he would do and/or b) putting his money where his very big sanctimonious mouth is is truly breathtaking.
Is @Chris a troll? The vast majority of the public would agree with him and disagree with you?
Agree with what? It's impossible to get him to explain his position.
Frankly, the fact that you people keep saying that is simply an admission of your fundamental dishonesty.
How can I make it any clearer? WE MUST DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO PREVENT THE NHS COLLAPSING AND BEING UNABLE TO GIVE PEOPLE MEDICAL CARE
It's a simple, fundamental political choice. If people disagree, they should have the honesty to say so. The fact that they have so much difficulty in doing so speaks volumes.
Well get your booster then if you want to protect the NHS and the economy!!
I just checked into a chichi Shoreditch hotel. Put luggage down and sprawled on bed.
The digital radio at the bedside suddenly piped up with some kind of covid prayer. Lord, grant your people peace. Radio 3 apparently.
Is this how the world ends?
"Give unto us thy servants that peace which the world cannot give."
Choral Evensong. The absolute pinnacle of the art of the Anglican tradition. Broadcast every week on R3 (Wednesday afternoon and Sunday afternoon), but taking place in cathedrals and college chapels every evening throughout the year.
It can be breathtakingly moving even if you're not at all religious. Next time you're in a cathedral city at 4.30 or so, pop in. The service takes about 45 minutes and there's very little congregational participation - just a few parts of the liturgy said by the whole congregation. Most of it (preces & responses, psalm, canticles, anthem) is the choir. The canticles are often the star of the show: a setting for (usually) choir and organ of the same two prayers, the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis. Herbert Howells' setting for Gloucester Cathedral could perhaps be the most beautiful piece of music I've ever heard.
And as mentioned on the other thread there's no doubt cases are skyrocketing but we just ran out of LFT tests this week ffs that surely also indicates larger amounts of testing.
You don't believe the growth rate is real?
If you did, would it concern you at all? Could you put it together with a way in which the hospitals could possibly cope with this?
I believe cases have grown but also that the amount of testing has grown also. Do you think that might mean reported cases grow also simply dependent upon the testing.
Plus what is your plan. Very interested to hear.
You're talking drivel. The number of tests in the last week is up by 15% on the previous week. The growth rate of Omicron is estimated as a doubling every 2-3 days. And that is quite believable if it has the same intrinsic transmissibility as Delta, and the amount of immune escape indicated by the antibody testing. To suggest that's not really happening is the feeblest evasion.
And I can't make it any clearer. What's necessary is to do WHATEVER IS NECESSARY to control the rate of growth so that the NHS can cope with this, rather than leaving people to die without medical care. That is simple common sense.
DO YOU DISAGREE? DO YOU DISAGREE? DO YOU DISAGREE?
I disagree. Cases aren't relevant. What are relevant are hospitalisations and/or deaths.
"Cases aren't relevant."
They are, and they are not. If the aim is to stop the NHS collapsing, then waiting until you get large numbers of hospitalisations is too late due to the lag: by the time you introduce measures, you have a week or two of infections coming through, as we have seen previously in this pandemic.
Therefore whilst cases are not directly relevant, they're the best measure of what will happen. Now, hopefully Omicron is mild for many more people than Delta. But assuming that - or the extent of its mildness - is a massive gamble for the government.
Cases are relevant - over 50s is where the shit is flying towards the fan is. Then it hits the fan and becomes hospitalisations.
Case numbers are shit for inter country comparisons. But they are good at detecting *changes* in a country or region.
Cases are irrelevant.
Cases reached a trough at the start of November with the midterm holidays and have been rising ever since for the past six weeks. Yet six weeks after cases have been rising the deaths are still falling.
Its worth remembering that while cases have been rising so have vaccinations. All the vulnerable should have had three jabs now. So cases should be milder whether Delta or Omicron because immunity will be better. More cases in a more vaccinated population can mean fewer deaths and hospitalisations, not more.
Cases can only go so far. With the vulnerable having had three jabs and everyone else coming forward for a third now too, why should we give a shit about cases?
Wrong.
In the older groups, more cases will mean more hospitalisations. There are enough un-vaxed, older people out there to fuck the hospitals up, if enough cases happen in a short enough period of time.
In addition, vaccinating have massively weakened the CHR - not eliminated it. Hence seeing double and triple taxed people in hospitals.
BiB: Fuck them. If they die, that's natural selection, survival of the fittest. Let them claim their Darwin Award on their way out of this mortal coil.
But for the overwhelming majority of older people they'll have had three jabs. So after three jabs the virus will be considerably less risky than after just two.
The position in the conservative party is surreal from my point of view as I want to see Boris replaced, but not with someone who sides with the rebels who I disagree with so then I have to take Boris's side and just cannot start to understand why the rebels could not foresee that yesterday's proposals were not only proportionate, but also has the full support of the vast majority of the public
I expect tonight's press conference will be very worrying for ordinary voters and will highlight just how politically naive those 126 noes were yesteday including the lib dems and greens
Have you seen whan the SA doctor said in July about Covid (Delta) and what she says now.(Omicron)
Unless we are a different breed than South Africans Omicron has much milder effects than Delta.
She is a Doctor, she has experienced both waves, she knows what she is talking about.
She is one opinion and not from our own scientists actually dealing with it here in the UK
In July she gave an interview about how terrible the Delta wave was with descriptions of the patients she was seeing.
Now she has described the current patients she is seeing with Omicron.
These are not opinions. These are real world happenings.
She is from Gauteng which was the start of Omicron, in fact she discovered it.
Cases are now dropping there and the nature of the patients she is seeing have not changed.
Please tell me how these facts are opinions?
It is upto our scientists to recommend to our government action needed not for us to delegate it to South Africa's medics
Chris Whitty has put a health warning on South Africa evidence live just now
The position in the conservative party is surreal from my point of view as I want to see Boris replaced, but not with someone who sides with the rebels who I disagree with so then I have to take Boris's side and just cannot start to understand why the rebels could not foresee that yesterday's proposals were not only proportionate, but also has the full support of the vast majority of the public
I expect tonight's press conference will be very worrying for ordinary voters and will highlight just how politically naive those 126 noes were yesteday including the lib dems and greens
Have you seen whan the SA doctor said in July about Covid (Delta) and what she says now.(Omicron)
Unless we are a different breed than South Africans Omicron has much milder effects than Delta.
She is a Doctor, she has experienced both waves, she knows what she is talking about.
She is one opinion and not from our own scientists actually dealing with it here in the UK
In July she gave an interview about how terrible the Delta wave was with descriptions of the patients she was seeing.
Now she has described the current patients she is seeing with Omicron.
These are not opinions. These are real world happenings.
She is from Gauteng which was the start of Omicron, in fact she discovered it.
Cases are now dropping there and the nature of the patients she is seeing have not changed.
Please tell me how these facts are opinions?
It is upto our scientists to recommend to our government action needed not for us to delegate it to South Africa's medics
I agree but the evidence from SA is being ignored.
Did we ignore the evidence from Italy in Feb 2020 or India in April 2021 ?
What's really stupid is we wasted 10 days from the JCVI decision to Monday to get people queuing up and until today to get rid of the 15 minute observation period. That will have cost us 5m additional booster doses done. There was just such a huge amount of complacency around the booster programme and sadly lots of people are going to pay the price for it.
I agree. Feels like a more somber assessment from you having come down with it yourself. Meanwhile Professor Tim Spector told the today program that Omicrom symptoms are "headaches, sore throat, runny nose, fatigue and sneezing."
Yep. Got all them. Don't feel brilliant. But Monday's PCR was negative and a LF this lunchtime also negative. Then again Mrs RP displayed similar symptoms at the start and daily negative LFs until she showed positive and symptoms exploded in severity.
Huzzah
Hope she's feeling better soon! I'm just going to keep going as always, yesterday was shitty but today (actually at about 2am last night) I suddenly felt a lot better. I'm not sure why either, clearly I've still got the virus. Just keep doing those LFTs, it will show up eventually, even just a faint line like my wife's (as opposed to mine which is a very obvious one).
She's on the mend, thanks. When you say "keep going as always" I assume that doesn't mean going out and being a personal super-spreader?
We're going to smash through into six figures per day and perhaps even with a 2 as first digit. That's a lot of people who have to lockdown whether the government makes it mandatory or not...
Nah, just keep on keeping on, or at least not dying. In isolation until the Xmas Eve, organised a Waitrose delivery for Friday and another one for Tuesday, was lucky to get slots I think
Yeah undoubtedly, the 300-400k cases per day seemed like the kind of figure that made sense given how infectious Omicron is that's about 5m people infected at one time, or 1/13 of the nation.
Repeated "moron" comments because of me saying pretty much what you are now feels like a lifetime ago
I've been saying for days that we won't need lockdown or rules of 6 or any of that bollocks if the infection rate is as bad as they are increasingly saying. So many of us will be out of circulation that whole chunks of the economy will take a big hit. We already have lots of cancellations of Christmas nights out. "Due to scaremongering" was the accusation - seems to be increasingly clear that its people getting sick and cancelling (and I have cancelled two nights out on consecutive weekends).
Hospital admissions only got up to the 13th on an English Region basis
Yes, it will be 7-10 days before we know how severe an effect this has on hospitals. 20k Delta cases per day would result in 300-400 people going to hospital per day and it's clear that 20k isn't where Omicron will settle, the growth rate is still increasing.
78,610 cases......I presume 100k will be breeched by end of the week.
The usual suspects will be ramping up the pressure to cancel Christmas.
Well, what do you think?
No further restrictions needed? Everything going fine?
What would you do? You have been asked this repeatedly but if you have answered I must have missed it.
Tell us what restrictions you favour.
As I said and you were apparently unable to understand (or perhaps read), whatever it takes to try to prevent the NHS collapsing and people dying without medical care.
Are you saying that we shouldn't try to prevent the NHS collapsing? By implication that seems to be the opinion of many here.
OK we're getting there. So no one is allowed to die of Covid. Is that what you're after? How would you achieve that.
The tortuous way this troll avoids a) saying what he would do and/or b) putting his money where his very big sanctimonious mouth is is truly breathtaking.
Is @Chris a troll? The vast majority of the public would agree with him and disagree with you?
Agree with what? It's impossible to get him to explain his position.
He’s been quite clear: “whatever it takes”,
So everyone should be locked into their homes for ever to avoid stressing the NHS
78,610 cases......I presume 100k will be breeched by end of the week.
The usual suspects will be ramping up the pressure to cancel Christmas.
Well, what do you think?
No further restrictions needed? Everything going fine?
What would you do? You have been asked this repeatedly but if you have answered I must have missed it.
Tell us what restrictions you favour.
As I said and you were apparently unable to understand (or perhaps read), whatever it takes to try to prevent the NHS collapsing and people dying without medical care.
Are you saying that we shouldn't try to prevent the NHS collapsing? By implication that seems to be the opinion of many here.
OK we're getting there. So no one is allowed to die of Covid. Is that what you're after? How would you achieve that.
The tortuous way this troll avoids a) saying what he would do and/or b) putting his money where his very big sanctimonious mouth is is truly breathtaking.
Is @Chris a troll? The vast majority of the public would agree with him and disagree with you?
Agree with what? It's impossible to get him to explain his position.
Frankly, the fact that you people keep saying that is simply an admission of your fundamental dishonesty.
How can I make it any clearer? WE MUST DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO PREVENT THE NHS COLLAPSING AND BEING UNABLE TO GIVE PEOPLE MEDICAL CARE
It's a simple, fundamental political choice. If people disagree, they should have the honesty to say so. The fact that they have so much difficulty in doing so speaks volumes.
But you still haven't outlined any specific measures, just a generalised bit it rhetoric. What specific measures are we talking about here? Lockdown? Economic shutdown? For how long? How do we keep shelves stocked? Will the government send around the ration van? What are you specifically saying needs to be done?
Oh, for God's sake I don't believe you're really such a fool that you can't understand plain English.
The position in the conservative party is surreal from my point of view as I want to see Boris replaced, but not with someone who sides with the rebels who I disagree with so then I have to take Boris's side and just cannot start to understand why the rebels could not foresee that yesterday's proposals were not only proportionate, but also has the full support of the vast majority of the public
I expect tonight's press conference will be very worrying for ordinary voters and will highlight just how politically naive those 126 noes were yesteday including the lib dems and greens
Have you seen whan the SA doctor said in July about Covid (Delta) and what she says now.(Omicron)
Unless we are a different breed than South Africans Omicron has much milder effects than Delta.
She is a Doctor, she has experienced both waves, she knows what she is talking about.
She is one opinion and not from our own scientists actually dealing with it here in the UK
In July she gave an interview about how terrible the Delta wave was with descriptions of the patients she was seeing.
Now she has described the current patients she is seeing with Omicron.
These are not opinions. These are real world happenings.
She is from Gauteng which was the start of Omicron, in fact she discovered it.
Cases are now dropping there and the nature of the patients she is seeing have not changed.
Please tell me how these facts are opinions?
It is upto our scientists to recommend to our government action needed not for us to delegate it to South Africa's medics
I agree but the evidence from SA is being ignored.
Did we ignore the evidence from Italy in Feb 2020 or India in April 2021 ?
It has actually been directly referred to by Chris Whitty j7st now with a health warning and a detailed explanation
I just checked into a chichi Shoreditch hotel. Put luggage down and sprawled on bed.
The digital radio at the bedside suddenly piped up with some kind of covid prayer. Lord, grant your people peace. Radio 3 apparently.
Is this how the world ends?
"Give unto us thy servants that peace which the world cannot give."
Choral Evensong. The absolute pinnacle of the art of the Anglican tradition. Broadcast every week on R3 (Wednesday afternoon and Sunday afternoon), but taking place in cathedrals and college chapels every evening throughout the year.
It can be breathtakingly moving even if you're not at all religious. Next time you're in a cathedral city at 4.30 or so, pop in. The service takes about 45 minutes and there's very little congregational participation - just a few parts of the liturgy said by the whole congregation. Most of it (preces & responses, psalm, canticles, anthem) is the choir. The canticles are often the star of the show: a setting for (usually) choir and organ of the same two prayers, the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis. Herbert Howells' setting for Gloucester Cathedral could perhaps be the most beautiful piece of music I've ever heard.
"Lighten our darkness we beseech thee O Lord, and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night."
When heard in an empty dark cathedral on a winter's evening, possibly the most spine tingling prayer out there.
I did evensong 6 days a week for 4 years as a chorister. One of the finest rituals to be found in this land.
The position in the conservative party is surreal from my point of view as I want to see Boris replaced, but not with someone who sides with the rebels who I disagree with so then I have to take Boris's side and just cannot start to understand why the rebels could not foresee that yesterday's proposals were not only proportionate, but also has the full support of the vast majority of the public
I expect tonight's press conference will be very worrying for ordinary voters and will highlight just how politically naive those 126 noes were yesteday including the lib dems and greens
Have you seen whan the SA doctor said in July about Covid (Delta) and what she says now.(Omicron)
Unless we are a different breed than South Africans Omicron has much milder effects than Delta.
She is a Doctor, she has experienced both waves, she knows what she is talking about.
She is one opinion and not from our own scientists actually dealing with it here in the UK
In July she gave an interview about how terrible the Delta wave was with descriptions of the patients she was seeing.
Now she has described the current patients she is seeing with Omicron.
These are not opinions. These are real world happenings.
She is from Gauteng which was the start of Omicron, in fact she discovered it.
Cases are now dropping there and the nature of the patients she is seeing have not changed.
Please tell me how these facts are opinions?
It is upto our scientists to recommend to our government action needed not for us to delegate it to South Africa's medics
Chris Whitty has put a health warning on South Africa evidence live just now
But that’s the only evidence anyone’s got.
Unless Jonathan Van Tam can rustle up one of his Hong Kong contacts again.
The position in the conservative party is surreal from my point of view as I want to see Boris replaced, but not with someone who sides with the rebels who I disagree with so then I have to take Boris's side and just cannot start to understand why the rebels could not foresee that yesterday's proposals were not only proportionate, but also has the full support of the vast majority of the public
I expect tonight's press conference will be very worrying for ordinary voters and will highlight just how politically naive those 126 noes were yesteday including the lib dems and greens
Have you seen whan the SA doctor said in July about Covid (Delta) and what she says now.(Omicron)
Unless we are a different breed than South Africans Omicron has much milder effects than Delta.
She is a Doctor, she has experienced both waves, she knows what she is talking about.
She is one opinion and not from our own scientists actually dealing with it here in the UK
In July she gave an interview about how terrible the Delta wave was with descriptions of the patients she was seeing.
Now she has described the current patients she is seeing with Omicron.
These are not opinions. These are real world happenings.
She is from Gauteng which was the start of Omicron, in fact she discovered it.
Cases are now dropping there and the nature of the patients she is seeing have not changed.
Please tell me how these facts are opinions?
Why do we have to lock down and not South Africa, or France? Is it some mistake we have made?
The position in the conservative party is surreal from my point of view as I want to see Boris replaced, but not with someone who sides with the rebels who I disagree with so then I have to take Boris's side and just cannot start to understand why the rebels could not foresee that yesterday's proposals were not only proportionate, but also has the full support of the vast majority of the public
I expect tonight's press conference will be very worrying for ordinary voters and will highlight just how politically naive those 126 noes were yesteday including the lib dems and greens
Have you seen whan the SA doctor said in July about Covid (Delta) and what she says now.(Omicron)
Unless we are a different breed than South Africans Omicron has much milder effects than Delta.
She is a Doctor, she has experienced both waves, she knows what she is talking about.
She is one opinion and not from our own scientists actually dealing with it here in the UK
In July she gave an interview about how terrible the Delta wave was with descriptions of the patients she was seeing.
Now she has described the current patients she is seeing with Omicron.
These are not opinions. These are real world happenings.
She is from Gauteng which was the start of Omicron, in fact she discovered it.
Cases are now dropping there and the nature of the patients she is seeing have not changed.
Please tell me how these facts are opinions?
It is upto our scientists to recommend to our government action needed not for us to delegate it to South Africa's medics
I agree but the evidence from SA is being ignored.
Did we ignore the evidence from Italy in Feb 2020 or India in April 2021 ?
It has actually been directly referred to by Chris Whitty j7st now with a health warning and a detailed explanation
@Chris would you cancel Christmas right now? Because that's the only thing that will come even close to stopping this.
Also - I simply don't understand why we haven't cut off all ties with China and closed all these stupid labs (including here - see foot and mouth).
They absolutely fucked it with this thing. Why aren't we angrier?
Plenty of people are already cancelling Christmas without being told to - I know several people who have told their families not to come, and cross-household parties are being postponed all over the place. Others are doing the opposite - preserving a Christmas family meal by seeing as few people as possible before then.
Necessary, exaggerated? Who knows. But you can't blame people for being cautious if they want to.
Did Witty really just bat away South Africa’s experience of low hospitalisations as being irrelevant on the basis that they had really good immunity from prior waves?
Comments
If it is the end of the world, there are many far worse soundtracks.
We still don't know. Indeed, the only actual new evidence is that the paper in Nature tracking the very first cases.
And we will probably never know for sure.
Not sure of the point of this now. OMICRON THE DESPOILER is everywhere. Certainly in Europe. You might buy yourself 12 hours of grace but at a huge cost in human hassle and bureaucracy
It’s here. That’s all there is to it
Then again I heard some Beeb bod say how they knew it wasn't all good and they were just trying it out.
I guess there’s no point…
The hospitals might be getting busy by Boxing Day.
I don't think that Boris is closer to Draghi or Scholz than to Macron. Indeed those three are quite close and seem to share a dislike of BoJo.
Salvini is also part of the Italian government as are Forza Italia now and both are closer to Boris than Macron or Draghi. The French government is all En Marche.
Scholz may not be a huge Boris fan but he will still not be as grandstanding anti British as Macron
Now no lockdown, very limited restrictions, no pressure on hospitals, many many Doctors saying omicron is completely different, cases coming down in the epicentre.
And you don't trust SA data?
We're going to smash through into six figures per day and perhaps even with a 2 as first digit. That's a lot of people who have to lockdown whether the government makes it mandatory or not...
Now I don't necessarily agree as I don't see why Omicron would be that bad based on the reports from South Africa, but it's certainly a valid POV and one with which outside PB, the PCP, GB News etc, you would probably find majority support from the public so... it's a bit much to call him a troll surely?
Blink twice Chris if you are having to back Boris against your will.....
If we'd just had fewer than 1% not survive Covid19 from May last year that'd be fewer deaths than we've had in the past 21 months of almost perpetual restrictions. Many haven't seen relatives for two years now, to fight a disease that over 99% survive according to your own logic?
Its ridiculous. Restrictions were iffy pre-vaccinations, but to have restrictions on a doubly or triply-jabbed population is beyond outrageous. All of those vulnerable to the virus should have been jabbed three times by now already.
Restrictions now are utterly unacceptable and its remarkable only Tory backbenchers seem to have grasped this.
Case numbers are shit for inter country comparisons. But they are good at detecting *changes* in a country or region.
The one big revelation in that Telegraph article is Richard ‘the Lancet’ Horton, who published the original ‘lab leak is racist conspiracy’ letter now claims he was unaware that Daszak was corruptly compromised, he says it took him a year to realise that Daszak was linked to Wuhan and should therefore recuse and shouldn’t have signed the letter. A year. For fucks sake. Really? And what about the 49,000 other signatories on the letter who were also linked to Wuhan and the lab?
Meanwhile Horton finallly admits that ‘yes, lab leak is a very plausible hypothesis and must be investigated’. Such a shame his magazine spent so much effort trying to stop it being investigated then, isn’t it?
It is is one of the greatest and most grotesque scientific conspiracies of all time. Even if lab leak is not ever proven, the cover-up is now absolutely unquestionable. Horrific lies were told.
Yeah undoubtedly, the 300-400k cases per day seemed like the kind of figure that made sense given how infectious Omicron is that's about 5m people infected at one time, or 1/13 of the nation.
Prediction: The worse the numbers are the more stridently you will squeal against measures that increasingly look sensible.
There’s a lot of it about. Maybe the government should do something.
New @IndependentSage statement:
Omicron is doubling so fast that sheer numbers will v likely outweigh any advantage of reduced severity (if it exists). To prevent NHS being overwhelmed in a few weeks & for a safer Xmas we need to act now. Not next week, not after Xmas, now. 1/2
We are calling for an immediate *10 day* circuit break to protect NHS & enable safer mixing over Xmas (25-28 December).
Reassess over Xmas to see what is needed then, when much more info available. Situation changing so fast, can't plan far ahead.
https://independentsage.org/emergency-statement-on-omicron-15-december-2021/ 2/2
https://twitter.com/chrischirp/status/1471160020595322887?s=20
I fucking love the oboe.
In our highly vaccinated (and with a decent number of boosters) country, what is the hospitalization rate for Omicron. There are encouraging signs from South Africa, especially regarding the number of people on oxygen. But we don't know yet.
We will, however, start to know fairly shortly.
How can I make it any clearer? WE MUST DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO PREVENT THE NHS COLLAPSING AND BEING UNABLE TO GIVE PEOPLE MEDICAL CARE
It's a simple, fundamental political choice. If people disagree, they should have the honesty to say so. The fact that they have so much difficulty in doing so speaks volumes.
But "whatever it takes" first is a big ask and second to what end and for how long. We have Covid, we have Omicron. It is not going to fizzle out on its own unless presumably it has infected everyone. IANAvirologist but a full lockdown surely just means delaying the inevitable.
Chris said no one should die without medical treatment but at what point do we say that that is in danger. How clear should we keep the NHS and for how long.
Who, where, what?
Also - I simply don't understand why we haven't cut off all ties with China and closed all these stupid labs (including here - see foot and mouth).
They absolutely fucked it with this thing. Why aren't we angrier?
Actual evidence would be something tying it to the lab.
Go on, post something actually tying it to the lab.
(As an aside, I agree that the lab leak - given the proximity of the initial outbreak - is the most likely scenario. But the reality is that the only thing that would settle this one way or another would be (a) some evidence from the lab, say a disgruntled staffer who leaves the country and speaks out; or (b) finding a non-bat zoonotic origin. Otherwise, we're left in limbo, with it being more probable than not that it is a lab leak, but no actual evidence either way.)
Cases reached a trough at the start of November with the midterm holidays and have been rising ever since for the past six weeks. Yet six weeks after cases have been rising the deaths are still falling.
Its worth remembering that while cases have been rising so have vaccinations. All the vulnerable should have had three jabs now. So cases should be milder whether Delta or Omicron because immunity will be better. More cases in a more vaccinated population can mean fewer deaths and hospitalisations, not more.
Cases can only go so far. With the vulnerable having had three jabs and everyone else coming forward for a third now too, why should we give a shit about cases?
Perhaps the government could hire him to conceal their cock ups?
Imagine you are PM, you have a 5pm press conference, what restrictions are you going to impose?
It's a fairly simple question.
Coming from OGH, that is VERY impressive. So what was your 2nd-best - Obama 2008?
FYI (and BTW) yours truly scored something of a coup, by correctly forecasting that Seattle citycouncilmember Kshama Sawant would survive the attempt to recall her from office in this month's (very) special election. Which she has - at the moment by margin of just 309 votes out of over 40k counted so far, with only a few hundred ballots remaining to count.
Final results will be certified Friday, and that will be that UNLESS a recount is requested by the losing side. Which IMHO would be pointless, given the margin AND the tightness of King County's ballot processing & tabulation systems. And expensive, at deposit of 25-cents for every ballot recounted, which for the whole kit & caboodle would be over $10k. But (in some quarters anyway) hope springs eternal!
Now she has described the current patients she is seeing with Omicron.
These are not opinions. These are real world happenings.
She is from Gauteng which was the start of Omicron, in fact she discovered it.
Cases are now dropping there and the nature of the patients she is seeing have not changed.
Please tell me how these facts are opinions?
THERE IS NO SECOND WAVE (C) Autumn 2020.
In the older groups, more cases will mean more hospitalisations. There are enough un-vaxed, older people out there to fuck the hospitals up, if enough cases happen in a short enough period of time.
In addition, vaccinating have massively weakened the CHR - not eliminated it. Hence seeing double and triple taxed people in hospitals.
But I wonder why the BBC have President Assad signing it?
Take away the mask mandates for example and I'm guessing 5-10% of people would wear masks. People also will self-regulate their behaviour so that if they're worried they won't go out so they are already acting on their own risk assessments.
We have all asked what you would do but you decline to answer.
And we do read all of your posts so no need to shout.
Choral Evensong. The absolute pinnacle of the art of the Anglican tradition. Broadcast every week on R3 (Wednesday afternoon and Sunday afternoon), but taking place in cathedrals and college chapels every evening throughout the year.
It can be breathtakingly moving even if you're not at all religious. Next time you're in a cathedral city at 4.30 or so, pop in. The service takes about 45 minutes and there's very little congregational participation - just a few parts of the liturgy said by the whole congregation. Most of it (preces & responses, psalm, canticles, anthem) is the choir. The canticles are often the star of the show: a setting for (usually) choir and organ of the same two prayers, the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis. Herbert Howells' setting for Gloucester Cathedral could perhaps be the most beautiful piece of music I've ever heard.
But for the overwhelming majority of older people they'll have had three jabs. So after three jabs the virus will be considerably less risky than after just two.
Chris Whitty has put a health warning on South Africa evidence live just now
What Omicron hospitalisation rate is required to trigger it?
Did we ignore the evidence from Italy in Feb 2020 or India in April 2021 ?
I've been saying for days that we won't need lockdown or rules of 6 or any of that bollocks if the infection rate is as bad as they are increasingly saying. So many of us will be out of circulation that whole chunks of the economy will take a big hit. We already have lots of cancellations of Christmas nights out. "Due to scaremongering" was the accusation - seems to be increasingly clear that its people getting sick and cancelling (and I have cancelled two nights out on consecutive weekends).
So everyone should be locked into their homes for ever to avoid stressing the NHS
Don't waste my time.
Are you, is what I'm really asking, doing a 'Len Goodman in the early rounds of Strictly' number on us?
Just free advertising for him with a by-election due?
He didn't when the news was bad from other countries.
When heard in an empty dark cathedral on a winter's evening, possibly the most spine tingling prayer out there.
I did evensong 6 days a week for 4 years as a chorister. One of the finest rituals to be found in this land.
She was only on TV - EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR A YEAR.
Obviously no bias in the Scottish media though.
Unless Jonathan Van Tam can rustle up one of his Hong Kong contacts again.
Necessary, exaggerated? Who knows. But you can't blame people for being cautious if they want to.