On the 11 th of Jan this year 4.1% of 12+ people had had a first dose.
We have 45.6% triple jabbed at this point. The situations are completely different.
They say every time it's different but it doesn't seem very different.
Cases going through the roof and people are dying.
So much for "vaccines will get us out".
Oh fuck off you misery. So far one 70 year old anti Vaxxer has died of omicron. One person, who could have been saved by vaccination but choose to believe bullshit on the internet. Get real for fucks sake.
I think Covid generally is not just turning out to be a human pandemic, it'll be endemic within every other mammalian species in the world in a few years I think.
BREAKING: Outbreak Management Team recommends "strict lockdown" in the Netherlands to slow the spread of Omicron - RTL
They've been on curfew for weeks. Now it worsens
This is why Whitty was the closest to panic we have seen earlier this week. He saw what was coming and its bad.
Let him panic then, let the Dutch panic as well if they need to. The Tory party needs to hold Boris on the path of no more restrictions or dump him. Omicron is the tsunami in the distance and the Dutch are closing the window because they think it might save them. It won't.
Whitty wasn't panicking at all, but the Dutch certainly need to panic. Their booster programme has barely started. Starting from here, which they shouldn't be, they absolutely should be locking down hard whilst they try to catch up on the boosters.
Yes, I don't understand why any European country isn't doing what Boris did at the start of this week and simply throwing the doors open. There's 7 proper days left in the year where any significant numbers could be done. All 7 will need to be 100% capacity everywhere in Europe to avert some of this disaster.
I think my friend has earned himself a pretty good year end bonus btw because the Imperial vaccine efficacy data matches exactly to his model which he produced about 10 days ago.
That 3 doses against Omicron is as effective as 2 doses against Delta, that it produces an incredibly high level of protection against severe disease and death, and that Omicon doesn't bugger your lungs as bad as Delta.....
We are so fucked. The death rate this January will make last January look like a stroll in the park. And there is really nothing we can do about it other than vax like crazy and try to bring forward the anti virials.
It's no less severe if you compare two people with naive immune systems being infected with each variant. But we have loads of immunity against severe illness from the vaccines, and in many cases from prior infection, so the overall impact is going to be substantially less.
Sorry even that looks like being wrong. Scientific data linked on this thread suggests it is in fact milder.
I think Covid generally is not just turning out to be a human pandemic, it'll be endemic within every other mammalian species in the world in a few years I think.
There has been quite an epidemic of contagious cough in dogs in my area.
BREAKING: Outbreak Management Team recommends "strict lockdown" in the Netherlands to slow the spread of Omicron - RTL
They've been on curfew for weeks. Now it worsens
This is why Whitty was the closest to panic we have seen earlier this week. He saw what was coming and its bad.
Let him panic then, let the Dutch panic as well if they need to. The Tory party needs to hold Boris on the path of no more restrictions or dump him. Omicron is the tsunami in the distance and the Dutch are closing the window because they think it might save them. It won't.
I agree that lockdown measures seem unlikely to have a big impact on the spread of Omicron. It is just too infectious.
Good.
Let lockdown fail, that'd be the best way out of this nightmare.
Lockdown is doing more damage than the virus now. A variant that kills lockdowns for good would be a blessing.
How is "Lockdown... doing more damage than the virus now"?
We don't have a lockdown.
Even measures like closing nightclubs and returning to Social Distancing are not lockdowns.
A lockdown is a stay at home order with enforcement and non essential shops closed. That is not going to happen, though I suspect a lot will lock themselves down.
No. There are degrees of lockdown
Did we have a lockdown in the UK in Jan-March 2021? You bet we did. Who would deny it. All non essential shops shut, all hospitality, pretty much everything. Brutal. That was definitely a LOCKDOWN
And yet some had it even worse, eg with outside exercise literally forbidden without a permit - which was checked. France, Spain, Italy all - arguably - had even more severe lockdowns than us
So lockdown is a spectrum not a single state. Once we accept that we can properly analyse where we are.
Right now the UK is in a very mild lockdown, so mild it might not even be a lockdown at all, but it is tightening, and self-fulfilling when you look at central London tonight
Once you start formally shuttering pubs, cinemas and theatres at 8pm like Ireland today, then yes that is definitely a form of lockdown. And so on
We are so fucked. The death rate this January will make last January look like a stroll in the park. And there is really nothing we can do about it other than vax like crazy and try to bring forward the anti virials.
It's no less severe if you compare two people with naive immune systems being infected with each variant. But we have loads of immunity against severe illness from the vaccines, and in many cases from prior infection, so the overall impact is going to be substantially less.
That is one side of the equation and it is a positive one. The negative side is that we are going to get 6 months worth of Delta type infections in less than 6 weeks. And that is going to be a problem.
I remember when the vaccines were going to send cases to zero
The US figure will be higher when all its data is in, not that it makes much difference.
The vaccines were sending the number of Alpha cases to zero, and three doses would have been enough to send the number of Delta cases to zero, but it's clear now that the evolution of the virus is too quick for a vaccine to eradicate it in this way. Maybe a nasal spray vaccine would do so, not sure. But that's not a disaster, because the vaccines still protect us from severe illness.
It's true that some people will die of Covid, just as some people have always died from colds, or flu, or pneumonia, but the numbers will not be so high that they put society at risk.
We are so fucked. The death rate this January will make last January look like a stroll in the park. And there is really nothing we can do about it other than vax like crazy and try to bring forward the anti virials.
I dunno, I tend to the gloomy/restrictive side but I don't think we've got enough evidence yet. They're giving it a "not proven", as you say up there not saying it's just as bad, only that they don't yet know.
Moreover, the triple-jabbed seem relatively safe (75% or so). I wouldn't mingle unnecessarily but I wouldn't despair either.
I'm sorry Nick, it's not 75%, it's a 93-95% reduction in severe symptoms. I'll do the calculation as many times as necessary.
If Omicron attacks 1000 unvaccinated people it seems to infect all 1000, it the presents severe symptoms in around 70 and kills about 10. If Omicron attacks 1000 triple jabbed it will infect about 300, present severe symptoms in around 3 or 4 and kill around 0.5.
Those are the numbers of VE based on a study of actual Omicron infections in the UK. 26m people have had three doses and we're probably going to add another 10m to that cohort in the next 7 days. The worry, as my friend's model seems to have correctly predicted earlier this week, is two dose and single dose people with no prior infection, that's a huge number of people.
But the demographics of those people - two or fewer vaccinations - is quite young. Some of them could get very sick but not a high percentage.
I see that Simon Case has had to recuse himself from the inquiry he was mean to lead. Oh dear, never mind.
It might be easier to ask which government department was NOT having a party.
Still, if Sue Gray falls foul of the same problem and they're looking for an independent investigator ....
As for Sunak saying that there is currently adequate support for hospitality, what planet is he on?
How on earth is retrospective recusal acceptable for such a senior figure. Should be resigning in disgrace if he accepted the lead of an investigation he knew he was a valid subject of interest in.
BREAKING: Outbreak Management Team recommends "strict lockdown" in the Netherlands to slow the spread of Omicron - RTL
They've been on curfew for weeks. Now it worsens
This is why Whitty was the closest to panic we have seen earlier this week. He saw what was coming and its bad.
Let him panic then, let the Dutch panic as well if they need to. The Tory party needs to hold Boris on the path of no more restrictions or dump him. Omicron is the tsunami in the distance and the Dutch are closing the window because they think it might save them. It won't.
I agree that lockdown measures seem unlikely to have a big impact on the spread of Omicron. It is just too infectious.
Good.
Let lockdown fail, that'd be the best way out of this nightmare.
Lockdown is doing more damage than the virus now. A variant that kills lockdowns for good would be a blessing.
Lockdown can't be doing any damage at all now. Haven't you noticed we aren't in one?
In some countries that was definitely the case, not unlocking after vaccines reached as many as who wanted them was an error repeated everywhere in Europe. Their current lockdowns across Europe are partly because they failed to build a big wall of natural immunity in the summer and autumn among their unvaccinated.
That Omicron is no less severe than Delta is why there's a lot of panic across Europe, viruses become more benign over time because we build up immunity through infections and vaccines. In the UK and, for example, SA there is far, far more natural immunity alongside vaccine immunity that helps to dilute the next variant and the next one and the next one until COVID becomes a background disease like flu or even the common cold.
Haha The Telegraph is having some fun. Picture of Johnson looking like a suspect in 'no comment' mode, with the caption "Boris Johnson met with officers of the Metropolitan Police... yesterday".
On the 11 th of Jan this year 4.1% of 12+ people had had a first dose.
We have 45.6% triple jabbed at this point. The situations are completely different.
They say every time it's different but it doesn't seem very different.
Cases going through the roof and people are dying.
So much for "vaccines will get us out".
Vaccines have got us out.
You're miserable and looking for reasons for failure because you think a failed country would be good for your politics. Its sad really.
I have a bit more sympathy for CHB than you do.
Individually, yes, vaccines have worked wonders. Even with the level of escape seen with Omicron, members of the population who are vaccinated are at hugely lower risk of serious illness and death than those who haven't.
Systemically, the situation is much more difficult. As we have all appreciated for a long time, vaccines are not 100% effective - and, what's much worse, we have a substantial population of refusers to cope with. So long as the disease finds the remaining vulnerable and all those refusers quickly enough then, even if the proportion of infected who develop serious disease is greatly reduced, it's still enough to threaten to sink the hospitals and put us all back on the lockdown treadmill all over again.
This doom loop is, therefore, only going to be broken when the virus becomes too infectious for NPIs to adequately contain. Omicron may, of course, be that variant, but we just don't know yet. No likely Government, no matter how bad the economic situation gets, seems likely to possess the will either to allow the disease to run its course so long as they think that lockdowns stand a chance of stopping it, or to try to foil it properly through vaccination by bringing the refusers to heel.
So, unless the super-transmissible variant that ends this crisis also turns out to be fortuitously mild, it seems as if we'll either end up with the healthcare system tottering and a corpse mountain in the next few weeks, or we'll be forced to endure umpteen disastrous lockdown cycles, waiting for years for the virus to evolve and work its way through more and more of the population - with no guarantee that there won't, ultimately, be a corpse mountain at the end of the process, anyway. You can understand why this might engender despair.
I see that Simon Case has had to recuse himself from the inquiry he was mean to lead. Oh dear, never mind.
It might be easier to ask which government department was NOT having a party.
Still, if Sue Gray falls foul of the same problem and they're looking for an independent investigator ....
As for Sunak saying that there is currently adequate support for hospitality, what planet is he on?
How on earth is retrospective recusal acceptable for such a senior figure. Should be resigning in disgrace if he accepted the lead of an investigation he knew he was a valid subject of interest in.
I remember when the vaccines were going to send cases to zero
The US figure will be higher when all its data is in, not that it makes much difference.
The vaccines were sending the number of Alpha cases to zero, and three doses would have been enough to send the number of Delta cases to zero, but it's clear now that the evolution of the virus is too quick for a vaccine to eradicate it in this way. Maybe a nasal spray vaccine would do so, not sure. But that's not a disaster, because the vaccines still protect us from severe illness.
It's true that some people will die of Covid, just as some people have always died from colds, or flu, or pneumonia, but the numbers will not be so high that they put society at risk.
Thanks at least not for shouting me down, I appreciate that.
Thank you for not implying that I was lying about cases and vaccines.
I was shouted down in March 2020 and at the end of last year.
I am sorry that I don't share the optimistic view of many here - but things don't look good.
Let's hope and pray I am wrong.
Noones shouting. But you’re ignoring all evidence apart from the snippets that fit your perverse lust for doomsday. Fly to South Africa and have a nice holiday in the sun, spend some time talking to the people there who are not even thinking about covid. It will do you some good.
How about we pretend we are doing something by saying rule of 6 and paying nightclubs to stay shut?
That will do as far as WE MUST DO SOMETHING?
But it won't stop there, it's like giving sharks a bit of blood, they don't go away and think "yeah that was enough" they want the kill. The scientists think they can put the UK into a permanent state of lockdown, they need to be told to sit down and shut the fuck up.
I see that Simon Case has had to recuse himself from the inquiry he was mean to lead. Oh dear, never mind.
It might be easier to ask which government department was NOT having a party.
Still, if Sue Gray falls foul of the same problem and they're looking for an independent investigator ....
As for Sunak saying that there is currently adequate support for hospitality, what planet is he on?
It looks as if these 'parties' were widespread across the civil service and I would suggest probably across many organisations whose staff were at their desks
My daughter has just said that one of her North Wales offices had a party this week and 24 of the staff have gone down with covid/omicron whilst my daughter who contracted it a month ago is still struggling
In a family chat we have all decided to cancel all social activity and remain entirely in our bubble to protect Christmas Day as best as we can
I really am disappointed with Rishi and he needs to step up and provide small business help, and as for Boris he looks terrible and his mps need to remove him
I was shouted down in March 2020 and at the end of last year.
I am sorry that I don't share the optimistic view of many here - but things don't look good.
Let's hope and pray I am wrong.
Noones shouting. But you’re ignoring all evidence apart from the snippets that fit your perverse lust for doomsday. Fly to South Africa and have a nice holiday in the sun, spend some time talking to the people there who are not even thinking about covid. It will do you some good.
I can't fly anywhere, I am literally self isolating
BREAKING: Outbreak Management Team recommends "strict lockdown" in the Netherlands to slow the spread of Omicron - RTL
They've been on curfew for weeks. Now it worsens
This is why Whitty was the closest to panic we have seen earlier this week. He saw what was coming and its bad.
Let him panic then, let the Dutch panic as well if they need to. The Tory party needs to hold Boris on the path of no more restrictions or dump him. Omicron is the tsunami in the distance and the Dutch are closing the window because they think it might save them. It won't.
I agree that lockdown measures seem unlikely to have a big impact on the spread of Omicron. It is just too infectious.
Good.
Let lockdown fail, that'd be the best way out of this nightmare.
Lockdown is doing more damage than the virus now. A variant that kills lockdowns for good would be a blessing.
How is "Lockdown... doing more damage than the virus now"?
We don't have a lockdown.
Even measures like closing nightclubs and returning to Social Distancing are not lockdowns.
A lockdown is a stay at home order with enforcement and non essential shops closed. That is not going to happen, though I suspect a lot will lock themselves down.
No. There are degrees of lockdown
Did we have a lockdown in the UK in Jan-March 2021? You bet we did. Who would deny it. All non essential shops shut, all hospitality, pretty much everything. Brutal. That was definitely a LOCKDOWN
And yet some had it even worse, eg with outside exercise literally forbidden without a permit - which was checked. France, Spain, Italy all - arguably - had even more severe lockdowns than us
So lockdown is a spectrum not a single state. Once we accept that we can properly analyse where we are.
Right now the UK is in a very mild lockdown, so mild it might not even be a lockdown at all, but it is tightening, and self-fulfilling when you look at central London tonight
Once you start formally shuttering pubs, cinemas and theatres at 8pm like Ireland today, then yes that is definitely a form of lockdown. And so on
We haven't got a lockdown. We have people wearing masks on public transport and in shops. That is the extent of it.
BREAKING: Outbreak Management Team recommends "strict lockdown" in the Netherlands to slow the spread of Omicron - RTL
They've been on curfew for weeks. Now it worsens
This is why Whitty was the closest to panic we have seen earlier this week. He saw what was coming and its bad.
Let him panic then, let the Dutch panic as well if they need to. The Tory party needs to hold Boris on the path of no more restrictions or dump him. Omicron is the tsunami in the distance and the Dutch are closing the window because they think it might save them. It won't.
I agree that lockdown measures seem unlikely to have a big impact on the spread of Omicron. It is just too infectious.
Good.
Let lockdown fail, that'd be the best way out of this nightmare.
Lockdown is doing more damage than the virus now. A variant that kills lockdowns for good would be a blessing.
I don't know what mad person would wish for a lock down, certainly not me. When it's going to destroy my mental health which is already in a fragile state. Yet people keep repeating this accusation that I want one.
On the 11 th of Jan this year 4.1% of 12+ people had had a first dose.
We have 45.6% triple jabbed at this point. The situations are completely different.
They say every time it's different but it doesn't seem very different.
Cases going through the roof and people are dying.
So much for "vaccines will get us out".
Vaccines have got us out.
You're miserable and looking for reasons for failure because you think a failed country would be good for your politics. Its sad really.
I have a bit more sympathy for CHB than you do.
Individually, yes, vaccines have worked wonders. Even with the level of escape seen with Omicron, members of the population who are vaccinated are at hugely lower risk of serious illness and death than those who haven't.
Systemically, the situation is much more difficult. As we have all appreciated for a long time, vaccines are not 100% effective - and, what's much worse, we have a substantial population of refusers to cope with. So long as the disease finds the remaining vulnerable and all those refusers quickly enough then, even if the proportion of infected who develop serious disease is greatly reduced, it's still enough to threaten to sink the hospitals and put us all back on the lockdown treadmill all over again.
This doom loop is, therefore, only going to be broken when the virus becomes too infectious for NPIs to adequately contain. Omicron may, of course, be that variant, but we just don't know yet. No likely Government, no matter how bad the economic situation gets, seems likely to possess the will either to allow the disease to run its course so long as they think that lockdowns stand a chance of stopping it, or to try to foil it properly through vaccination by bringing the refusers to heel.
So, unless the super-transmissible variant that ends this crisis also turns out to be fortuitously mild, it seems as if we'll either end up with the healthcare system tottering and a corpse mountain in the next few weeks, or we'll be forced to endure umpteen disastrous lockdown cycles, waiting for years for the virus to evolve and work its way through more and more of the population - with no guarantee that there won't, ultimately, be a corpse mountain at the end of the process, anyway. You can understand why this might engender despair.
If we have a corpse mountain of antivaxxers at the end of this then we should bury or cremate those corpses and move on.
Its not the worst thing in the world. I have more sympathy for those businesses being destroyed by social distancing than I have for an antivaxxer that dies.
It's time to round up the anti vaxxers and put them in camps. Enough
They are the ones who will put us in Total Bastard Lockdown until June. Fuck them. Fuck their stupid little fucking conspiracy theories. Fuck it if they are green or ethnic or young or old or silly or whatever. Lock them up. Make them pay for what they are doing
I see that Simon Case has had to recuse himself from the inquiry he was mean to lead. Oh dear, never mind.
It might be easier to ask which government department was NOT having a party.
Still, if Sue Gray falls foul of the same problem and they're looking for an independent investigator ....
As for Sunak saying that there is currently adequate support for hospitality, what planet is he on?
How on earth is retrospective recusal acceptable for such a senior figure. Should be resigning in disgrace if he accepted the lead of an investigation he knew he was a valid subject of interest in.
Could be interpreted as possible collusion to deflect, if not outright pervert, the course of justice, or at least accountability?
I don't know what mad person would wish for a lock down, certainly not me. When it's going to destroy my mental health which is already in a fragile state. Yet people keep repeating this accusation that I want one.
I hope, hope, I am wrong.
It sounds like probably a good idea to give PB a rest? As people are going to be posting all sorts of stats, claims, counter-claims over the next couple of weeks. If you find them particular disturbing / worrisome, might be best to give the tippy tappy a miss.
BREAKING: Outbreak Management Team recommends "strict lockdown" in the Netherlands to slow the spread of Omicron - RTL
They've been on curfew for weeks. Now it worsens
This is why Whitty was the closest to panic we have seen earlier this week. He saw what was coming and its bad.
Let him panic then, let the Dutch panic as well if they need to. The Tory party needs to hold Boris on the path of no more restrictions or dump him. Omicron is the tsunami in the distance and the Dutch are closing the window because they think it might save them. It won't.
I agree that lockdown measures seem unlikely to have a big impact on the spread of Omicron. It is just too infectious.
Good.
Let lockdown fail, that'd be the best way out of this nightmare.
Lockdown is doing more damage than the virus now. A variant that kills lockdowns for good would be a blessing.
How is "Lockdown... doing more damage than the virus now"?
We don't have a lockdown.
Even measures like closing nightclubs and returning to Social Distancing are not lockdowns.
A lockdown is a stay at home order with enforcement and non essential shops closed. That is not going to happen, though I suspect a lot will lock themselves down.
No. There are degrees of lockdown
Did we have a lockdown in the UK in Jan-March 2021? You bet we did. Who would deny it. All non essential shops shut, all hospitality, pretty much everything. Brutal. That was definitely a LOCKDOWN
And yet some had it even worse, eg with outside exercise literally forbidden without a permit - which was checked. France, Spain, Italy all - arguably - had even more severe lockdowns than us
So lockdown is a spectrum not a single state. Once we accept that we can properly analyse where we are.
Right now the UK is in a very mild lockdown, so mild it might not even be a lockdown at all, but it is tightening, and self-fulfilling when you look at central London tonight
Once you start formally shuttering pubs, cinemas and theatres at 8pm like Ireland today, then yes that is definitely a form of lockdown. And so on
We haven't got a lockdown. We have people wearing masks on public transport and in shops. That is the extent of it.
Standby 1922. Letters incoming tomorrow evening following PM broadcast locking us down?
Seriously though, I still think it is 3rd Jan for lockdown.
That would be entirely pointless. My guess is that the ONS survey will show that about 20% of people in London have Covid in the week ending 2nd January.
It's time to round up the anti vaxxers and put them in camps. Enough
They are the ones who will put us in Total Bastard Lockdown until June. Fuck them. Fuck their stupid little fucking conspiracy theories. Fuck it if they are green or ethnic or young or old or silly or whatever. Lock them up. Make them pay for what they are doing
I'm sort of surprised we haven't got to the stage of just openly throwing money at unvaccinated people to get jabbed, literally bribing them. Maybe it pays for itself in the long run if you keep your economy open more, I dunno.
BREAKING: Outbreak Management Team recommends "strict lockdown" in the Netherlands to slow the spread of Omicron - RTL
They've been on curfew for weeks. Now it worsens
This is why Whitty was the closest to panic we have seen earlier this week. He saw what was coming and its bad.
Let him panic then, let the Dutch panic as well if they need to. The Tory party needs to hold Boris on the path of no more restrictions or dump him. Omicron is the tsunami in the distance and the Dutch are closing the window because they think it might save them. It won't.
I agree that lockdown measures seem unlikely to have a big impact on the spread of Omicron. It is just too infectious.
Good.
Let lockdown fail, that'd be the best way out of this nightmare.
Lockdown is doing more damage than the virus now. A variant that kills lockdowns for good would be a blessing.
I hear that's Omicron's thinking too.
Why are you being silly suggesting that a virus is sentient?
Anyway. I'm out of all quarantine tomorrow. One of the unexpected joys has been the total absence of a TV. Do I want to watch anything on TV or Netflix? I haven't for 10 days. No films. Nothing. The peace and quiet has been blissful.
It's time to round up the anti vaxxers and put them in camps. Enough
They are the ones who will put us in Total Bastard Lockdown until June. Fuck them. Fuck their stupid little fucking conspiracy theories. Fuck it if they are green or ethnic or young or old or silly or whatever. Lock them up. Make them pay for what they are doing
The thing is, even if they now get worried, its too late for them. One jab doesn't touch the surface against Omicron. You need your 3 jabs.
Anyway. I'm out of all quarantine tomorrow. One of the unexpected joys has been the total absence of a TV. Do I want to watch anything on TV or Netflix? I haven't for 10 days. No films. Nothing. The peace and quiet has been blissful.
Was that by choice? Tonight watched the latest Grand Tour - a reminder of what the BBC lost over a row about dinner.
Anyway. I'm out of all quarantine tomorrow. One of the unexpected joys has been the total absence of a TV. Do I want to watch anything on TV or Netflix? I haven't for 10 days. No films. Nothing. The peace and quiet has been blissful.
What, your the putter-web talking on PB, but you didn't watch any tv / netflix / youtube?
BREAKING: Outbreak Management Team recommends "strict lockdown" in the Netherlands to slow the spread of Omicron - RTL
They've been on curfew for weeks. Now it worsens
This is why Whitty was the closest to panic we have seen earlier this week. He saw what was coming and its bad.
Let him panic then, let the Dutch panic as well if they need to. The Tory party needs to hold Boris on the path of no more restrictions or dump him. Omicron is the tsunami in the distance and the Dutch are closing the window because they think it might save them. It won't.
I agree that lockdown measures seem unlikely to have a big impact on the spread of Omicron. It is just too infectious.
Good.
Let lockdown fail, that'd be the best way out of this nightmare.
Lockdown is doing more damage than the virus now. A variant that kills lockdowns for good would be a blessing.
How is "Lockdown... doing more damage than the virus now"?
We don't have a lockdown.
Even measures like closing nightclubs and returning to Social Distancing are not lockdowns.
A lockdown is a stay at home order with enforcement and non essential shops closed. That is not going to happen, though I suspect a lot will lock themselves down.
No. There are degrees of lockdown
Did we have a lockdown in the UK in Jan-March 2021? You bet we did. Who would deny it. All non essential shops shut, all hospitality, pretty much everything. Brutal. That was definitely a LOCKDOWN
And yet some had it even worse, eg with outside exercise literally forbidden without a permit - which was checked. France, Spain, Italy all - arguably - had even more severe lockdowns than us
So lockdown is a spectrum not a single state. Once we accept that we can properly analyse where we are.
Right now the UK is in a very mild lockdown, so mild it might not even be a lockdown at all, but it is tightening, and self-fulfilling when you look at central London tonight
Once you start formally shuttering pubs, cinemas and theatres at 8pm like Ireland today, then yes that is definitely a form of lockdown. And so on
We haven't got a lockdown. We have people wearing masks on public transport and in shops. That is the extent of it.
Describing it as lockdown is nonsense.
Whatever. I have successfully proved to you that lockdown is a spectrum
We had a lockdown last winter, did we not? You would not deny this
Then what did they do in Hubei, when they stapled people into apartments and entire neighborhoods were in house arrest? With food delivered by drone? That too was surely a lockdown, only yet more austere and horrible
So there are degrees of lockdown. We can dispute the minutiae, not the facts
Shuttered hospitality and legal limits on social mixing is enough to constitute "lockdown"
At what point do we drop the requirement for the infected to isolate ? That's the real biggie for Gov'ts.
We are essentially already there. Because most people who test positive on a LFT and have mild symptoms won’t be following up with a PCR only to suffer the cascade of phone calls from the trackntrace stasi. They’ll stay at home until they feel ok and the responsible ones will wait until they test negative again.
It's time to round up the anti vaxxers and put them in camps. Enough
They are the ones who will put us in Total Bastard Lockdown until June. Fuck them. Fuck their stupid little fucking conspiracy theories. Fuck it if they are green or ethnic or young or old or silly or whatever. Lock them up. Make them pay for what they are doing
Tbh, there's only about 3m unvaccinated and non-immune in the country. The real fault here is the wankers in the JCVI who dragged their feet on the booster programme in the summer to force politicians to give our vaccine doses away (imagine if they'd won and we didn't have the doses available to use?). It also lays with Boris who should have set the target of having all adults boosted by today and crafted the policies of gaps between doses etc... around that target. It's criminal that we have 35m doses of Pfizer and Moderna in the fridge and 18m people waiting to be boosted.
PS He agreed with my theorizing that if omicron is now an upper rather than lower respiratory tract infection (which, along with the higher virus reproduction rates in the bronchi leading to higher shedded viral loads, helps explain why it is way more transmissible), then that is consistent with expecting it to be a less severe illness than previous variants.
Meaning to ask you did you ever come across Julian Robinson? Had lunch with his sister last weekend
Julian Perry Robinson?
That’s him
Yep. Met him first in 1980. He and Matt Meselson were somewhat my mentors on CBW issues. Matt wrote a reference for my EB1 visa for the US. Julian offered, but the letters were better from US citizens.
PS Truly one of the sweetest humans ever to grace the planet. It was a huge loss to the arms control community when COVID took him last year. He was the first person I knew to die of this scourge.
Anyway. I'm out of all quarantine tomorrow. One of the unexpected joys has been the total absence of a TV. Do I want to watch anything on TV or Netflix? I haven't for 10 days. No films. Nothing. The peace and quiet has been blissful.
Was that by choice? Tonight watched the latest Grand Tour - a reminder of what the BBC lost over a row about dinner.
Anyway. I'm out of all quarantine tomorrow. One of the unexpected joys has been the total absence of a TV. Do I want to watch anything on TV or Netflix? I haven't for 10 days. No films. Nothing. The peace and quiet has been blissful.
Was that by choice? Tonight watched the latest Grand Tour - a reminder of what the BBC lost over a row about dinner.
It was more a row about Jeremy Clarkson punching a colleague in the face, to be fair.
I wonder how many other countries have turned how many LFT you can take in a day into a national past time?
My tonsils are raw.
The lfts we are getting are nose swab only. Much, mich more palletable.
Surely much more of a risk of a false negative against Omicron though. AIUI it is found in the throat and larynx but not so much in the nasal passages and the lungs.
Anyway. I'm out of all quarantine tomorrow. One of the unexpected joys has been the total absence of a TV. Do I want to watch anything on TV or Netflix? I haven't for 10 days. No films. Nothing. The peace and quiet has been blissful.
Was that by choice? Tonight watched the latest Grand Tour - a reminder of what the BBC lost over a row about dinner.
I found it a bit weird, in the sense of its was a decent old style Top Gear, but that isn't what they have been doing....it was in some ways disappointing as the "specials" are supposed to be kinda well special....no super exotic location, with some epic road trip.
I think that is the problem with the Grand Tour, it doesn't really know what it is. Where as Clarkson's Farm was great, because it was a very clear what sort of show it was trying to be.
I see that Simon Case has had to recuse himself from the inquiry he was mean to lead. Oh dear, never mind.
It might be easier to ask which government department was NOT having a party.
Still, if Sue Gray falls foul of the same problem and they're looking for an independent investigator ....
As for Sunak saying that there is currently adequate support for hospitality, what planet is he on?
How on earth is retrospective recusal acceptable for such a senior figure. Should be resigning in disgrace if he accepted the lead of an investigation he knew he was a valid subject of interest in.
Could be interpreted as possible collusion to deflect, if not outright pervert, the course of justice, or at least accountability?
Hard to see him staying in his current job. Another one caught by Johnsons negative midas touch.
It's time to round up the anti vaxxers and put them in camps. Enough
They are the ones who will put us in Total Bastard Lockdown until June. Fuck them. Fuck their stupid little fucking conspiracy theories. Fuck it if they are green or ethnic or young or old or silly or whatever. Lock them up. Make them pay for what they are doing
I'm sort of surprised we haven't got to the stage of just openly throwing money at unvaccinated people to get jabbed, literally bribing them. Maybe it pays for itself in the long run if you keep your economy open more, I dunno.
Because that is an insane policy. You are incentivising people to be sefish stupid c*nts and not get the vax, in the expectation that HMG will bribe them with ££ in the end. After the rest of us have done our civic duty???? And my tax shilling pays for this?!! FUCK OFF
Make the anti vaxxers suffer, one way or another. Enuff
BREAKING: Outbreak Management Team recommends "strict lockdown" in the Netherlands to slow the spread of Omicron - RTL
They've been on curfew for weeks. Now it worsens
This is why Whitty was the closest to panic we have seen earlier this week. He saw what was coming and its bad.
Let him panic then, let the Dutch panic as well if they need to. The Tory party needs to hold Boris on the path of no more restrictions or dump him. Omicron is the tsunami in the distance and the Dutch are closing the window because they think it might save them. It won't.
Whitty wasn't panicking at all, but the Dutch certainly need to panic. Their booster programme has barely started. Starting from here, which they shouldn't be, they absolutely should be locking down hard whilst they try to catch up on the boosters.
Yes, I don't understand why any European country isn't doing what Boris did at the start of this week and simply throwing the doors open. There's 7 proper days left in the year where any significant numbers could be done. All 7 will need to be 100% capacity everywhere in Europe to avert some of this disaster.
I think my friend has earned himself a pretty good year end bonus btw because the Imperial vaccine efficacy data matches exactly to his model which he produced about 10 days ago.
BREAKING: Outbreak Management Team recommends "strict lockdown" in the Netherlands to slow the spread of Omicron - RTL
They've been on curfew for weeks. Now it worsens
This is why Whitty was the closest to panic we have seen earlier this week. He saw what was coming and its bad.
Let him panic then, let the Dutch panic as well if they need to. The Tory party needs to hold Boris on the path of no more restrictions or dump him. Omicron is the tsunami in the distance and the Dutch are closing the window because they think it might save them. It won't.
I agree that lockdown measures seem unlikely to have a big impact on the spread of Omicron. It is just too infectious.
Good.
Let lockdown fail, that'd be the best way out of this nightmare.
Lockdown is doing more damage than the virus now. A variant that kills lockdowns for good would be a blessing.
How is "Lockdown... doing more damage than the virus now"?
We don't have a lockdown.
Even measures like closing nightclubs and returning to Social Distancing are not lockdowns.
A lockdown is a stay at home order with enforcement and non essential shops closed. That is not going to happen, though I suspect a lot will lock themselves down.
No. There are degrees of lockdown
Did we have a lockdown in the UK in Jan-March 2021? You bet we did. Who would deny it. All non essential shops shut, all hospitality, pretty much everything. Brutal. That was definitely a LOCKDOWN
And yet some had it even worse, eg with outside exercise literally forbidden without a permit - which was checked. France, Spain, Italy all - arguably - had even more severe lockdowns than us
So lockdown is a spectrum not a single state. Once we accept that we can properly analyse where we are.
Right now the UK is in a very mild lockdown, so mild it might not even be a lockdown at all, but it is tightening, and self-fulfilling when you look at central London tonight
Once you start formally shuttering pubs, cinemas and theatres at 8pm like Ireland today, then yes that is definitely a form of lockdown. And so on
We've never had a lockdown. The only people locked down were those who were shielding. Three months going no further than the front gate. That is lockdown.
BREAKING: Outbreak Management Team recommends "strict lockdown" in the Netherlands to slow the spread of Omicron - RTL
They've been on curfew for weeks. Now it worsens
This is why Whitty was the closest to panic we have seen earlier this week. He saw what was coming and its bad.
Let him panic then, let the Dutch panic as well if they need to. The Tory party needs to hold Boris on the path of no more restrictions or dump him. Omicron is the tsunami in the distance and the Dutch are closing the window because they think it might save them. It won't.
I agree that lockdown measures seem unlikely to have a big impact on the spread of Omicron. It is just too infectious.
Good.
Let lockdown fail, that'd be the best way out of this nightmare.
Lockdown is doing more damage than the virus now. A variant that kills lockdowns for good would be a blessing.
Lockdown can't be doing any damage at all now. Haven't you noticed we aren't in one?
Philip is on this occasion taking a global rather than purely national view. Good to see.
I was shouted down in March 2020 and at the end of last year.
I am sorry that I don't share the optimistic view of many here - but things don't look good.
Let's hope and pray I am wrong.
People are disagreeing with you. Not shouting you down
Engage and convince them you are right
I've literally been told to fuck off.
Charles your pathetic biases are showing again, conversing with you is a complete waste of time
Apologies for the course language. I’m aware of your mental health issues. In my defence your posting is repetitive and totally negative, missing the full picture. I don’t know why you are ignoring data on this very thread, but doing so is incredibly irritating.
I wonder how many other countries have turned how many LFT you can take in a day into a national past time?
My tonsils are raw.
My nose needs a break, I'm tracking the progress of the virus every morning with LFTs. The nasal swabs are horrible.
Do you mind if I ask why?
What are you tracking? I thought they just displayed positive or not positive (which can be a false negative), if you know you've tested positive then do you mind if I ask what you're tracking?
We are so fucked. The death rate this January will make last January look like a stroll in the park. And there is really nothing we can do about it other than vax like crazy and try to bring forward the anti virials.
It's no less severe if you compare two people with naive immune systems being infected with each variant. But we have loads of immunity against severe illness from the vaccines, and in many cases from prior infection, so the overall impact is going to be substantially less.
That is one side of the equation and it is a positive one. The negative side is that we are going to get 6 months worth of Delta type infections in less than 6 weeks. And that is going to be a problem.
Well, then it depends on the details. If we get the infections at a rate that is four times as fast, then the impact is the same if the severity is four times less. I think the health service can survive us being a little way on the wrong side of that balance.
I really do think that we are going to be okay. The changes in restrictions that we have had to date have been astonishingly slight, given how rapidly Omicron spreads. This must be because there is confidence that the vaccine effectiveness against severe infection will hold.
It's time to round up the anti vaxxers and put them in camps. Enough
They are the ones who will put us in Total Bastard Lockdown until June. Fuck them. Fuck their stupid little fucking conspiracy theories. Fuck it if they are green or ethnic or young or old or silly or whatever. Lock them up. Make them pay for what they are doing
I'm sort of surprised we haven't got to the stage of just openly throwing money at unvaccinated people to get jabbed, literally bribing them. Maybe it pays for itself in the long run if you keep your economy open more, I dunno.
Because that is an insane policy. You are incentivising people to be sefish stupid c*nts and not get the vax, in the expectation that HMG will bribe them with ££ in the end. After the rest of us have done our civic duty???? And my tax shilling pays for this?!! FUCK OFF
Make the ant vaxxers suffer, one way or another. Enuff
If there is to be financial incentives it should be taxation of anti-vaxxers.
Starting with making them pay for any hospital costs.
Anyway. I'm out of all quarantine tomorrow. One of the unexpected joys has been the total absence of a TV. Do I want to watch anything on TV or Netflix? I haven't for 10 days. No films. Nothing. The peace and quiet has been blissful.
What, your the putter-web talking on PB, but you didn't watch any tv / netflix / youtube?
Had a few music vids on YouTube. But that was for the tunes. Absolutely never felt the urge no. Had footy and occasionally news on the radio. That's it. Family are watching Terminator. Can't think of anything I'd less like to do. Has really made me realise I watch stuff cos other folk have it on. Will really try to be aware and not do this.
Anyway. I'm out of all quarantine tomorrow. One of the unexpected joys has been the total absence of a TV. Do I want to watch anything on TV or Netflix? I haven't for 10 days. No films. Nothing. The peace and quiet has been blissful.
Was that by choice? Tonight watched the latest Grand Tour - a reminder of what the BBC lost over a row about dinner.
Never once felt like it, no.
Fair play. Apparently BBC is now more repeats than new anyway...
I was shouted down in March 2020 and at the end of last year.
I am sorry that I don't share the optimistic view of many here - but things don't look good.
Let's hope and pray I am wrong.
People are disagreeing with you. Not shouting you down
Engage and convince them you are right
I've literally been told to fuck off.
Charles your pathetic biases are showing again, conversing with you is a complete waste of time
Apologies for the course language. I’m aware of your mental health issues. In my defence your posting is repetitive and totally negative, missing the full picture. I don’t know why you are ignoring data on this very thread, but doing so is incredibly irritating.
To be quite honest I've missed it, if you're happy to post the links again I'll have a read.
Anyway. I'm out of all quarantine tomorrow. One of the unexpected joys has been the total absence of a TV. Do I want to watch anything on TV or Netflix? I haven't for 10 days. No films. Nothing. The peace and quiet has been blissful.
Was that by choice? Tonight watched the latest Grand Tour - a reminder of what the BBC lost over a row about dinner.
I found it a bit weird, in the sense of its was a decent old style Top Gear, but that isn't what they have been doing....it was in some ways disappointing as the "specials" are supposed to be kinda well special....no super exotic location, with some epic road trip.
I think that is the problem with the Grand Tour, it doesn't really know what it is. Where as Clarkson's Farm was great, because it was a very clear what sort of show it was trying to be.
I thought the Scottish Grand Tour was rather good - funny and clever. And sometimes hilarious. It helped that they finally accepted that the whole thing is contrived, and staged, and then they just got on with the jokes and the insights. That got rid of the awkward *scripted* quality - by paradoxically admitting it is all scripted
Anyway. I'm out of all quarantine tomorrow. One of the unexpected joys has been the total absence of a TV. Do I want to watch anything on TV or Netflix? I haven't for 10 days. No films. Nothing. The peace and quiet has been blissful.
Was that by choice? Tonight watched the latest Grand Tour - a reminder of what the BBC lost over a row about dinner.
It was more a row about Jeremy Clarkson punching a colleague in the face, to be fair.
I know - comic underplaying of the situation from me. But even so - I doubt clarkson is the only talent to throw a tantrum.
I wonder how many other countries have turned how many LFT you can take in a day into a national past time?
My tonsils are raw.
My nose needs a break, I'm tracking the progress of the virus every morning with LFTs. The nasal swabs are horrible.
Do you mind if I ask why?
What are you tracking? I thought they just displayed positive or not positive (which can be a false negative), if you know you've tested positive then do you mind if I ask what you're tracking?
With LFTs you basically get a rough estimate of your viral load based on the test line opacity, mine was really opaque on Wednesday, today it's not as bad, tomorrow hopefully it will be almost gone. My wife's is really faint now.
I wonder how many other countries have turned how many LFT you can take in a day into a national past time?
My tonsils are raw.
My nose needs a break, I'm tracking the progress of the virus every morning with LFTs. The nasal swabs are horrible.
Still two stripes?
The test line is less opaque, I think by tomorrow it will be gone.
The night will come soon when you’ll think, “you know what I’m over this. Am gonna have a beer.” Ignore that inner voice. For at least another three days!
My own thought, echoing what many other PBers have noted, it that most folks in Europe, US and other western-oriented countries, are focused right now on Christmas or similar. That is, on being able to celebrate this in some way with family and (maybe) close friends. In ways not possible or advisable in 2020.
Obviously not everyone is of that mindset. For example, many younger people plus those skeptical about vax, COVID, Omicon or God-knows-what. But even many of these are moderating the behavior at least somewhat, even if just in reaction to the cautions of others (such as party & even cancellations).
After December 25, who knows? My guess is plenty will let their hair down on New Years, more than in 2021. But fewer than expected a few months ago. And 2022 is a Brave New World, certainly with respect to what Omicron and its successors may or may not bring.
Comments
It might be easier to ask which government department was NOT having a party.
Still, if Sue Gray falls foul of the same problem and they're looking for an independent investigator ....
As for Sunak saying that there is currently adequate support for hospitality, what planet is he on?
Guardian front page is here, what embargo?
I was shouted down in March 2020 and at the end of last year.
I am sorry that I don't share the optimistic view of many here - but things don't look good.
Let's hope and pray I am wrong.
Seriously though, I still think it is 3rd Jan for lockdown.
Should have embargo'd longer and re-done it, they appear to be a day late and a dollar short with old news.
Did we have a lockdown in the UK in Jan-March 2021? You bet we did. Who would deny it. All non essential shops shut, all hospitality, pretty much everything. Brutal. That was definitely a LOCKDOWN
And yet some had it even worse, eg with outside exercise literally forbidden without a permit - which was checked. France, Spain, Italy all - arguably - had even more severe lockdowns than us
So lockdown is a spectrum not a single state. Once we accept that we can properly analyse where we are.
Right now the UK is in a very mild lockdown, so mild it might not even be a lockdown at all, but it is tightening, and self-fulfilling when you look at central London tonight
Once you start formally shuttering pubs, cinemas and theatres at 8pm like Ireland today, then yes that is definitely a form of lockdown. And so on
The vaccines were sending the number of Alpha cases to zero, and three doses would have been enough to send the number of Delta cases to zero, but it's clear now that the evolution of the virus is too quick for a vaccine to eradicate it in this way. Maybe a nasal spray vaccine would do so, not sure. But that's not a disaster, because the vaccines still protect us from severe illness.
It's true that some people will die of Covid, just as some people have always died from colds, or flu, or pneumonia, but the numbers will not be so high that they put society at risk.
That will do as far as WE MUST DO SOMETHING?
@BritainElects
·
2m
Westminster voting intention:
LAB: 38% (-1)
CON; 34% (+1)
LDEM: 10% (+1)
GRN: 4% (-)
via
@SavantaComRes
, 16 Dec
Chgs. w/ 10 Dec
ComRes have Tories/LDs gaining ground and SKS losing ground in last 7 days
Then look at deaths.
That Omicron is no less severe than Delta is why there's a lot of panic across Europe, viruses become more benign over time because we build up immunity through infections and vaccines. In the UK and, for example, SA there is far, far more natural immunity alongside vaccine immunity that helps to dilute the next variant and the next one and the next one until COVID becomes a background disease like flu or even the common cold.
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1471960959396757504?s=20
Individually, yes, vaccines have worked wonders. Even with the level of escape seen with Omicron, members of the population who are vaccinated are at hugely lower risk of serious illness and death than those who haven't.
Systemically, the situation is much more difficult. As we have all appreciated for a long time, vaccines are not 100% effective - and, what's much worse, we have a substantial population of refusers to cope with. So long as the disease finds the remaining vulnerable and all those refusers quickly enough then, even if the proportion of infected who develop serious disease is greatly reduced, it's still enough to threaten to sink the hospitals and put us all back on the lockdown treadmill all over again.
This doom loop is, therefore, only going to be broken when the virus becomes too infectious for NPIs to adequately contain. Omicron may, of course, be that variant, but we just don't know yet. No likely Government, no matter how bad the economic situation gets, seems likely to possess the will either to allow the disease to run its course so long as they think that lockdowns stand a chance of stopping it, or to try to foil it properly through vaccination by bringing the refusers to heel.
So, unless the super-transmissible variant that ends this crisis also turns out to be fortuitously mild, it seems as if we'll either end up with the healthcare system tottering and a corpse mountain in the next few weeks, or we'll be forced to endure umpteen disastrous lockdown cycles, waiting for years for the virus to evolve and work its way through more and more of the population - with no guarantee that there won't, ultimately, be a corpse mountain at the end of the process, anyway. You can understand why this might engender despair.
Thank you for not implying that I was lying about cases and vaccines.
I hope you are right in your predictions
My daughter has just said that one of her North Wales offices had a party this week and 24 of the staff have gone down with covid/omicron whilst my daughter who contracted it a month ago is still struggling
In a family chat we have all decided to cancel all social activity and remain entirely in our bubble to protect Christmas Day as best as we can
I really am disappointed with Rishi and he needs to step up and provide small business help, and as for Boris he looks terrible and his mps need to remove him
Maybe there is a story brewing which will be held back for some reason for tomorrow night?
Describing it as lockdown is nonsense.
(Incidentally the comments on the Telegraph article for which that poll was conducted are absolutely damning for Johnson.)
I hope, hope, I am wrong.
Its not the worst thing in the world. I have more sympathy for those businesses being destroyed by social distancing than I have for an antivaxxer that dies.
They are the ones who will put us in Total Bastard Lockdown until June. Fuck them. Fuck their stupid little fucking conspiracy theories. Fuck it if they are green or ethnic or young or old or silly or whatever. Lock them up. Make them pay for what they are doing
I wonder if @bigjohnowls had this much faith in polls when JC was leading Labour?
That's the real biggie for Gov'ts.
One of the unexpected joys has been the total absence of a TV.
Do I want to watch anything on TV or Netflix? I haven't for 10 days. No films. Nothing. The peace and quiet has been blissful.
https://mobile.twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1471941692962099212
Engage and convince them you are right
Spring will be my guess,
We had a lockdown last winter, did we not? You would not deny this
Then what did they do in Hubei, when they stapled people into apartments and entire neighborhoods were in house arrest? With food delivered by drone? That too was surely a lockdown, only yet more austere and horrible
So there are degrees of lockdown. We can dispute the minutiae, not the facts
Shuttered hospitality and legal limits on social mixing is enough to constitute "lockdown"
Charles your pathetic biases are showing again, conversing with you is a complete waste of time
PS Truly one of the sweetest humans ever to grace the planet. It was a huge loss to the arms control community when COVID took him last year. He was the first person I knew to die of this scourge.
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1471967249716199424?s=20
I think that is the problem with the Grand Tour, it doesn't really know what it is. Where as Clarkson's Farm was great, because it was a very clear what sort of show it was trying to be.
Make the anti vaxxers suffer, one way or another. Enuff
Those numbers can likely be doubled to get those with acquired immunity.
As you say the situations are completely different.
What are you tracking? I thought they just displayed positive or not positive (which can be a false negative), if you know you've tested positive then do you mind if I ask what you're tracking?
I really do think that we are going to be okay. The changes in restrictions that we have had to date have been astonishingly slight, given how rapidly Omicron spreads. This must be because there is confidence that the vaccine effectiveness against severe infection will hold.
Starting with making them pay for any hospital costs.
Minimum charge £1000 per day.
Absolutely never felt the urge no.
Had footy and occasionally news on the radio. That's it.
Family are watching Terminator. Can't think of anything I'd less like to do.
Has really made me realise I watch stuff cos other folk have it on. Will really try to be aware and not do this.
Many thanks
Shame if they have gone backwards from that
Obviously not everyone is of that mindset. For example, many younger people plus those skeptical about vax, COVID, Omicon or God-knows-what. But even many of these are moderating the behavior at least somewhat, even if just in reaction to the cautions of others (such as party & even cancellations).
After December 25, who knows? My guess is plenty will let their hair down on New Years, more than in 2021. But fewer than expected a few months ago. And 2022 is a Brave New World, certainly with respect to what Omicron and its successors may or may not bring.
Home by Xmas 2022? Perhaps.
I don’t really care, but am curious as to why.