UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
That's exactly the kind of talent you need. Most fusion power research has been run and developed by weapons scientists - some former and some more current. They are, after all, the people who get to play with workable fusion reactions.....
I know (though we haven't played with workable fusion reactions for quite a while). It just struck me as amusing.
The hydrocodes we share with the Americans are summation of a long history of viable fusion reactions (all the way back to the George shot). With those, you can play with a fusion reaction (virtually) up to some quite interesting densities and temperatures (highest in the universe)
Not to mention cultural evolution. I had never heard of those things and poked about in the net and came up with this, erm, interesting marketing approach - positively social darwinian in its economic competition. No idea if any of it is true, though.
A chap I came across, who dealt in old military vehicles, said that quite a lot of them needed serious remediation for the dials. The T-72 (IIRC) had a huge rev counter for the engine which was x inches across and covered in radium paint.
Apparently there were a couple of outfits that he'd send the dials off to, they'd scrape all the radium paint off, recycle it (radium is valuable), and paint it with a safe luminescent paint.
Pity the FAA of the 1940s-50s didn't do that when they did their best to recreate their local equivalent of the monazite beaches of Goa on the shore of the Firth of Forth!
That sort of thing is a real problem in tech museums. I know chaps who are involved in such things and they have to be very careful with cockpit instruments in aircraft.
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
He’s not a charlatan. He DOES have a tendency to alarmism and pessimism, hence my calling him ‘Dr Death’
He also gets scoops and insights, and sometimes sees a bigger picture before many others
One of the biggest lessons of Covid is: do not exclude data or opinion ‘just because’. Read the optimists and the pessimists, read the zero-covidians and the anti-vaxxers, read everything and treat it all with proper skepticism. That’s the only way to stay sane but also get a grasp of the sitch
He is a charlatan. He misrepresents data and posts Tweets like that deliberately appealing to emotion saying those who have taken another line have "endangered" others. You post him for the same reason he posts like this - to attract attention. Eric Topol posted the same news in a far more measured way but he's not as exciting.
Yep. Leon’s on a journey toward Plato-level hysteria.
On a journey? He's planted a flag and is busy building defence fortifications. That island is HIS.
Yes, I regard hyperbole and hysteria the same way China regards the South China Sea
UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
I did my PhD with him. Utter tosser.
Was it his science or his character that was objectionable ?
Well, maybe I was being a bit harsh. He wasn't a bad student - not the brightest, but not the worst either. He wasn't a particularly likeable character, but what we finally fell out over was his taking a job at AWE and complete lack of consideration for any ethical issues. My missus couldn't stand him or his missus.
He evidently made a good go of it though. Strange to see his name here.
Ruth Davidson is making a big mistake appearing as apologist for Boris Johnson. It's pretty well known what happens if you hitch your wagon to an incontinent horse. She had a reasonable future once
They remain on track for ~9100 admissions this week. A +25% increase from the previous week,
Deaths look like they will be ~400 but bigger error bars around that. This will be under a doubling breaking the streak.
Ventilator use remains steady at 2.5%
Would be genuinely interested in what your backdating adjusted says about Gauteng?
As far as I can tell you can't get historical hospital admission data split by province but applying the national lag model to Gauteng numbers gives
..drumroll..
~2900 admissions which is 100 DOWN BABY on last weeks figures (current admissions for Gauteng for last week are 3117 but I'm taking Wednesday the following week as the reference point and they were approx 3000 then)
BUT obviously I'm producing a provincial breakdown based of national data reporting so increase the error bars around everything I said.
They remain on track for ~9100 admissions this week. A +25% increase from the previous week,
Deaths look like they will be ~400 but bigger error bars around that. This will be under a doubling breaking the streak.
Ventilator use remains steady at 2.5%
Would be genuinely interested in what your backdating adjusted says about Gauteng?
As far as I can tell you can't get historical hospital admission data split by province but applying the national lag model to Gauteng numbers gives
..drumroll..
~2900 admissions which is 100 DOWN BABY on last weeks figures (current admissions for Gauteng for last week are 3117 but I'm taking Wednesday the following week as the reference point and they were approx 3000 then)
BUT obviously I'm producing a provincial breakdown based of national data reporting so increase the error bars around everything I said.
Not sure if this covers what you'd need, but the daily PDFs under the dashboard give cumulative admissions to date by province, as well as a daily admissions number (which is much lower than the movement in cumulative each day).
Presumably with much lower testing, a big driver of backdating is just testing people as they're admitted, which would again tie up with suggests they've got lots of incidental cases in the numbers, again helping to explain why the severity measures look so good.
You are talking to a man that constructed an Alaskan postal vote model by transcribing hundreds of numbers from dozens of PDFs by hand.
I don't think I have the will to do that kind of thing again. I think it's safe enough to say that that Gauteng will be either close to or peaked this week and that's good enough for me.
UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
I did my PhD with him. Utter tosser.
Was it his science or his character that was objectionable ?
Well, maybe I was being a bit harsh. He wasn't a bad student - not the brightest, but not the worst either. He wasn't a particularly likeable character, but what we finally fell out over was his taking a job at AWE and complete lack of consideration for any ethical issues. My missus couldn't stand him or his missus.
He evidently made a good go of it though. Strange to see his name here.
Tbh, that sounds like your problem not his.
Edit, don't mean that in a horrible way, just that he was obviously ok with the ethics of working in nuclear weapons. This is also why PB is great, random little insights unavailable anywhere else on the internet.
"You, the media, should be focusing on policy," says the man who dangled on a zip wire waving union jacks.
Not just that.
The idea of Boris Johnson, yes that Boris Johnson, the one who reminisces about his days as a Brussels Hack, chucking stones and enjoying the sound of broken glass...
... the idea that that Boris Johnson is suffering from an unhelpful media is utterly karmic and very very funny.
Ruth Davidson is making a big mistake appearing as apologist for Boris Johnson. It's pretty well known what happens if you hitch your wagon to an incontinent horse. She had a reasonable future once
Eh? Not like her at all to be an apologist for him. And I can't see this in the Graun report
'The former Scottish Conservatives leader, Ruth Davidson, told BBC Radio 4’s World at One that the prime minister was “drinking in the last chance saloon” after being “put on warning by his MPs”.
MPs “are looking for him after Christmas to come back with a programme for government to sharpen up the operation at No 10, to stop having all of these own goals and burning political capital”, she said.
MPs were “looking for a bit of bloody grip to be exerted,” Baroness Davidson said, adding that “ if they see that they might hold off, but I mean, I think the prime minister has been put on warning by his MPs”.
When asked if there was a successor to Boris Johnson, she acknowledged “there’s not a natural successor”.,[... but wnt on to big up Sunak et aliis]
Not to mention cultural evolution. I had never heard of those things and poked about in the net and came up with this, erm, interesting marketing approach - positively social darwinian in its economic competition. No idea if any of it is true, though.
A chap I came across, who dealt in old military vehicles, said that quite a lot of them needed serious remediation for the dials. The T-72 (IIRC) had a huge rev counter for the engine which was x inches across and covered in radium paint.
Apparently there were a couple of outfits that he'd send the dials off to, they'd scrape all the radium paint off, recycle it (radium is valuable), and paint it with a safe luminescent paint.
Pity the FAA of the 1940s-50s didn't do that when they did their best to recreate their local equivalent of the monazite beaches of Goa on the shore of the Firth of Forth!
That sort of thing is a real problem in tech museums. I know chaps who are involved in such things and they have to be very careful with cockpit instruments in aircraft.
Times change - just like asbestos insulation in ships..... Once you had blokes sloping the cement in from buckets, while smoking. The cigarettes probably had asbestos in the filters...
Some of the soviet stuff was really wild apparently - they had no regard for costs for some areas. User Radium paint like it was going out of style.
A friend bought a military watch in Moscow in the 90s. Few dollars. Ran like shit, so he took it to a watch maker friend. Who told him that it was the movement stolen out of a high end Swiss watch from the 60s. Complete with x number of jewels fro bearings. But it had been slapped together and never regulated... So, he tuned it up and it ran to seconds per week....
UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
I did my PhD with him. Utter tosser.
Was it his science or his character that was objectionable ?
Well, maybe I was being a bit harsh. He wasn't a bad student - not the brightest, but not the worst either. He wasn't a particularly likeable character, but what we finally fell out over was his taking a job at AWE and complete lack of consideration for any ethical issues. My missus couldn't stand him or his missus.
He evidently made a good go of it though. Strange to see his name here.
That's quite an incredible post from you: it makes you sound like the utter tosser, not him.
They remain on track for ~9100 admissions this week. A +25% increase from the previous week,
Deaths look like they will be ~400 but bigger error bars around that. This will be under a doubling breaking the streak.
Ventilator use remains steady at 2.5%
Would be genuinely interested in what your backdating adjusted says about Gauteng?
As far as I can tell you can't get historical hospital admission data split by province but applying the national lag model to Gauteng numbers gives
..drumroll..
~2900 admissions which is 100 DOWN BABY on last weeks figures (current admissions for Gauteng for last week are 3117 but I'm taking Wednesday the following week as the reference point and they were approx 3000 then)
BUT obviously I'm producing a provincial breakdown based of national data reporting so increase the error bars around everything I said.
Not sure if this covers what you'd need, but the daily PDFs under the dashboard give cumulative admissions to date by province, as well as a daily admissions number (which is much lower than the movement in cumulative each day).
Presumably with much lower testing, a big driver of backdating is just testing people as they're admitted, which would again tie up with suggests they've got lots of incidental cases in the numbers, again helping to explain why the severity measures look so good.
You are talking to a man that constructed an Alaskan postal vote model by transcribing hundreds of numbers from dozens of PDFs by hand.
I don't think I have the will to do that kind of thing again. I think it's safe enough to say that that Gauteng will be either close to or peaked this week and that's good enough for me.
Indeed, so if admissions peaked somewhere around end of last week, early this week, we should just be 3-7 days from the total number of beds occupied declining, which will then also match up with peak deaths.
Ruth Davidson is making a big mistake appearing as apologist for Boris Johnson. It's pretty well known what happens if you hitch your wagon to an incontinent horse. She had a reasonable future once
I didn’t hear the interview that way. Listen to what she said, she was actually scathing about the risible leadership he has inflicted on our country.
UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
I did my PhD with him. Utter tosser.
Was it his science or his character that was objectionable ?
Well, maybe I was being a bit harsh. He wasn't a bad student - not the brightest, but not the worst either. He wasn't a particularly likeable character, but what we finally fell out over was his taking a job at AWE and complete lack of consideration for any ethical issues. My missus couldn't stand him or his missus.
He evidently made a good go of it though. Strange to see his name here.
Yes, weird coincidence - but confirms the observation that nothing escapes the purview of PB. We often talk a great deal of rubbish (I know I do), but some of it is interesting.
UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
I did my PhD with him. Utter tosser.
Was it his science or his character that was objectionable ?
Well, maybe I was being a bit harsh. He wasn't a bad student - not the brightest, but not the worst either. He wasn't a particularly likeable character, but what we finally fell out over was his taking a job at AWE and complete lack of consideration for any ethical issues. My missus couldn't stand him or his missus.
He evidently made a good go of it though. Strange to see his name here.
Tbh, that sounds like your problem not his.
Edit, don't mean that in a horrible way, just that he was obviously ok with the ethics of working in nuclear weapons. This is also why PB is great, random little insights unavailable anywhere else on the internet.
A massive shot of hopium to prepare for the festive season...
Death rates in the Omicron wave ~2/3 down on previous COVID-19 waves throughout age groups. Results look solid. To what extent caused by Omicron less virulent and/or higher pop immunisation remains to be disentangled.
Given that proportionally Ventilator use is 1/5th of what it was in previous waves it would be pretty distressing if death rates were anything other than hugely reduced.
Why are you so sure about that?
This disease has lead times Initial Illness -> Possibly Hospitalisation -> Possibly Ventilation -> Possibly Death
Given the timescales that Omicron has been around and the previous time frames it took before Ventilation was needed we simply cannot talk accurately about Hospital and other numbers yet.
It may look like omicron results in fewer serious illnesses but I wouldn't want say that's definite yet.
A massive shot of hopium to prepare for the festive season...
Death rates in the Omicron wave ~2/3 down on previous COVID-19 waves throughout age groups. Results look solid. To what extent caused by Omicron less virulent and/or higher pop immunisation remains to be disentangled.
Given that proportionally Ventilator use is 1/5th of what it was in previous waves it would be pretty distressing if death rates were anything other than hugely reduced.
Why are you so sure about that?
This disease has lead times Initial Illness -> Possibly Hospitalisation -> Possibly Ventilation -> Possibly Death
Given the timescales that Omicron has been around and the previous time frames it took before Ventilation was needed we simply cannot talk accurately about Hospital and other numbers yet.
It may look like omicron results in fewer serious illnesses but I wouldn't want say that's definite yet.
There is reasonable reason to believe that Omicron will accelerate the time to serious disease over delta. There will still be lags, but probably shorter than previous waves.
???
Omicron results in earlier sickness because it seemingly attacks the throat first rather than the lungs. While that covers the initial illness it doesn't tell us anything about what happens if the body doesn't fight the illness and the illness progresses.
I think it does. Infectivity is quicker because the viral replication is quicker. Note also in SA (U know, I know) hospital times are reduced on previous waves.
Time will tell, but I'm pretty sure we are not facing the apocalypse.
Have I said we are facing the apocalypse - I haven't and I don't think we are.
What I'm not doing, however, as other people are, is use random data from elsewhere to paint a story that may not be accurate. I'm merely reporting on things I can provide valid links and science behind while others are posting theories that may or may not end up being true.
If Omicron is indeed milder than delta that’s great news. But not necessarily great enough to avoid ‘the apocalypse’
Do we yet know if you can have omicron and delta simultaneously? I’ve seen that suggested, not yet seen it refuted. That would be truly awful
Hopefully just a horrible twist that never arrives. As we end another long, grisly year, the idea of things getting even worse is nearly unbearable
I read the suggestion that the number of Omicron mutations resulted from co-infection and RNA transfer between the parent COVID strain (is it beta or Delta ethnicity? - don't recall) and the 229E endemic sniffle strain.
And that this has allowed Omicron to thrive in the upper lungs where it can replicate and from which it can reinfect quicker, but also makes it milder.
We've had, all through the pandemic saying there's no reason to presume an infection would get milder naturally, unless it confers an advantage. Here is the advantage, an evolutionary reason for mildness beyond your host being able to walk around.
Ignoring the real day to day for a moment, researchers are going to have so much material with which to look at prior pandemics here - they will see anew in the curves they have when and where new variants arise, when the milder strains arise. The advancement in understanding is going to be phenomenal.
Sure, this flavour is in fact milder, which is good, but I don't see a trade off. It *in fact* tends to replicate in the upper airways and leave the lungs alone but there is no particular reason that was more likely to happen than it getting more virulent everywhere.
Viruses that harm the hosts tend to not thrive and for very good reason, either the host dies off (killing the virus) or the host reacts in a way that harms the virus.
Some people have claimed that because there's billions of humans, that there's no evolutionary advantage for mildness, but that's not true. Humanity will react calmer to a milder virus, which allows it to spread more. Humanity will shelter or try to reduce the spread of a more virulent virus.
A more virulent virus would lead to more virulent restrictions.
If Omicron is milder then people with Omicron are going to interact more allowing it to spread more. That's an evolutionary advantage.
If a variant had occurred before Omicron with the same infectiousness but three times the fatality rate, it would have been equally widespread before we had time to work it out. It's highly unlikely that the evolutionary process you postulate exists in this case. The strong scientific consensus is that as disease viruses evolve, their virulence (in terms of damage to the host) is pretty well random.
Because evolution and viruses are not able to project into the future and imagine how their hosts will respond. The argument "if x then y, y is bad for reproduction, therefore not x" is definitely NOT how evolution works.
Philip is right to the extent that human intervention has clearly become a factor in viral evolution (cf Smallpox...). But the idea that a small difference in fatality rate, which shows up weeks after the initial viral spread, in something as rapidly reproducing as Covid, would make any difference, is unrealistic.
Its not at all unrealistic.
Lets spin the question on its head. We've had a lot of talks about Omicron being milder but that "half the risk with twice as many people ..." etc
But lets imagine that if instead it being half the risk it was considered to be twice as deadly.
Do you really think that if this virus were more spreadable and twice as deadly as Delta per person that we'd have no difference in restrictions? Had the reports been that this virus were twice as deadly as Delta per person then much tougher restrictions would be in place already.
Omicron has factored in the chance of a Lockdown and decided to go easy on us so as to avoid that?
Hmm, I think you've taken your antiLockdown sentiments a bit far now. It's one thing to project them onto all the people deserting Johnson - but onto the virus?
No! 🤦♂️
Individual mutations are random. They could randomly make it more dangerous or less.
"Survival of the fittest" ensures which mutations thrive and which don't.
A mutation that made the virus twice as deadly per person and twice as likely to be infected would end up seeing countries back in lockdown until an adjusted vaccine were available. It would also make people more afraid, so less likely to mingle out of their own free will. So therefore the virus will spread less...
Such intervention would also make every other variant spread less. There is no comparative disadvantage from that intervention, as I pointed out to you. And given the infectiousness of the virus - "until an adjusted vaccine were available" doesn't come in to it.
There is a comparative disadvantage.
Let's say there's two equally transmissible versions of the virus, let's call them X-ray and Yankee variants. Both equally transmissible but the X-ray variant is much less deadly and the Yankee variant is much more deadly. Both variants give high cross immunity.
People in communities where X-ray is dominant would act more relaxed allowing it to spread further and faster.
People in communities where Yanke is dominant would become afraid and reduce contact.
As a result X-ray would find it much easier to spread. Despite having the same transmissibility rates.
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
No evidence it's less severe is of course rubbish.
They didn't find any in their tiny data sample. There's plenty of evidence from other sources. It may turn out to be confounded, but there's indisputably evidence for it being milder.
Hmm. There is ‘some’ evidence for it being milder IN SOUTH AFRICA
Which, as we all now know, is a very different Petri dish to an advanced but older western nation with high vax levels
Like everyone, I’m praying that it IS milder, everywhere. But we just dunno yet.
It’s worth noting that the source of doctor death’s tweet is John Burn Murdoch on the FT, consistently one of the most intelligent, measured and insightful journalists throughout the pandemic
Yes, there is some evidence it's milder in South Africa. Than delta was in South Africa. For all age groups.
So I'm not sure how us being massively better vaccinated than them makes that questionable. Either it's equally dangerous but we're better vaccinated - in which case great, we'll have an even bigger improvement. Or it's inherantly milder, even better.
UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
I did my PhD with him. Utter tosser.
Was it his science or his character that was objectionable ?
Well, maybe I was being a bit harsh. He wasn't a bad student - not the brightest, but not the worst either. He wasn't a particularly likeable character, but what we finally fell out over was his taking a job at AWE and complete lack of consideration for any ethical issues. My missus couldn't stand him or his missus.
He evidently made a good go of it though. Strange to see his name here.
Tbh, that sounds like your problem not his.
Edit, don't mean that in a horrible way, just that he was obviously ok with the ethics of working in nuclear weapons. This is also why PB is great, random little insights unavailable anywhere else on the internet.
Nuclear weapons have killed less people than katanas - a single, very specialised form of sword. Katanas get practically worshipped by some idiots. And they were the symbol of a particularly hard and repressive feudal culture.
Putting aside the mask (there is a food bag there, so I imagine they will say he was eating).
I am fascinated by how lax so many world leaders have consistently been over COVID. Do you think Putin or Xi is getting on public transport....where as Biden is consistently maskless in big crowds. Presidents have these teams of bodyguards, bullet proof vests and cars etc...but he is an old man, right in the firing line for COVID, and yet he wanders around like no issue.
UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
I did my PhD with him. Utter tosser.
Was it his science or his character that was objectionable ?
Well, maybe I was being a bit harsh. He wasn't a bad student - not the brightest, but not the worst either. He wasn't a particularly likeable character, but what we finally fell out over was his taking a job at AWE and complete lack of consideration for any ethical issues. My missus couldn't stand him or his missus.
He evidently made a good go of it though. Strange to see his name here.
Tbh, that sounds like your problem not his.
Edit, don't mean that in a horrible way, just that he was obviously ok with the ethics of working in nuclear weapons. This is also why PB is great, random little insights unavailable anywhere else on the internet.
Ah, yeah, you're probably right - all water under the bridge now.
We were students together and actually friends for a while, though nobody else seemed to like him very much. The thing about his taking the job at AWE wasn't so much that he was OK with the ethics; it was the fact that it simply didn't seem to occur to him to consider the ethics. Nobody else in the group would have considered working for AWE at the time.
Putting aside the mask (there is a food bag there, so I imagine they will say he was eating).
I am fascinated by how lax so many world leaders have consistently been over COVID. Do you think Putin or Xi is getting on public transport....where as Biden is consistently maskless in big crowds. Where as Presidents have these teams of bodyguards, bullet proof vests and cars etc...
Revealed preference/opinion. Same as the parties. Covid isn't actually deadly enough to be personally scary for most people.
UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
I did my PhD with him. Utter tosser.
Was it his science or his character that was objectionable ?
Well, maybe I was being a bit harsh. He wasn't a bad student - not the brightest, but not the worst either. He wasn't a particularly likeable character, but what we finally fell out over was his taking a job at AWE and complete lack of consideration for any ethical issues. My missus couldn't stand him or his missus.
He evidently made a good go of it though. Strange to see his name here.
Tbh, that sounds like your problem not his.
Edit, don't mean that in a horrible way, just that he was obviously ok with the ethics of working in nuclear weapons. This is also why PB is great, random little insights unavailable anywhere else on the internet.
Ah, yeah, you're probably right - all water under the bridge now.
We were students together and actually friends for a while, though nobody else seemed to like him very much. The thing about his taking the job at AWE wasn't so much that he was OK with the ethics; it was the fact that it simply didn't seem to occur to him to consider the ethics. Nobody else in the group would have considered working for AWE at the time.
Sounds better than Oppenheimer, who as General Groves noted, desperately wanted to be in charge of creating nuclear weapons so that he could feel bad about it.
A massive shot of hopium to prepare for the festive season...
Death rates in the Omicron wave ~2/3 down on previous COVID-19 waves throughout age groups. Results look solid. To what extent caused by Omicron less virulent and/or higher pop immunisation remains to be disentangled.
Given that proportionally Ventilator use is 1/5th of what it was in previous waves it would be pretty distressing if death rates were anything other than hugely reduced.
Why are you so sure about that?
This disease has lead times Initial Illness -> Possibly Hospitalisation -> Possibly Ventilation -> Possibly Death
Given the timescales that Omicron has been around and the previous time frames it took before Ventilation was needed we simply cannot talk accurately about Hospital and other numbers yet.
It may look like omicron results in fewer serious illnesses but I wouldn't want say that's definite yet.
A massive shot of hopium to prepare for the festive season...
Death rates in the Omicron wave ~2/3 down on previous COVID-19 waves throughout age groups. Results look solid. To what extent caused by Omicron less virulent and/or higher pop immunisation remains to be disentangled.
Given that proportionally Ventilator use is 1/5th of what it was in previous waves it would be pretty distressing if death rates were anything other than hugely reduced.
Why are you so sure about that?
This disease has lead times Initial Illness -> Possibly Hospitalisation -> Possibly Ventilation -> Possibly Death
Given the timescales that Omicron has been around and the previous time frames it took before Ventilation was needed we simply cannot talk accurately about Hospital and other numbers yet.
It may look like omicron results in fewer serious illnesses but I wouldn't want say that's definite yet.
There is reasonable reason to believe that Omicron will accelerate the time to serious disease over delta. There will still be lags, but probably shorter than previous waves.
???
Omicron results in earlier sickness because it seemingly attacks the throat first rather than the lungs. While that covers the initial illness it doesn't tell us anything about what happens if the body doesn't fight the illness and the illness progresses.
I think it does. Infectivity is quicker because the viral replication is quicker. Note also in SA (U know, I know) hospital times are reduced on previous waves.
Time will tell, but I'm pretty sure we are not facing the apocalypse.
Have I said we are facing the apocalypse - I haven't and I don't think we are.
What I'm not doing, however, as other people are, is use random data from elsewhere to paint a story that may not be accurate. I'm merely reporting on things I can provide valid links and science behind while others are posting theories that may or may not end up being true.
If Omicron is indeed milder than delta that’s great news. But not necessarily great enough to avoid ‘the apocalypse’
Do we yet know if you can have omicron and delta simultaneously? I’ve seen that suggested, not yet seen it refuted. That would be truly awful
Hopefully just a horrible twist that never arrives. As we end another long, grisly year, the idea of things getting even worse is nearly unbearable
I read the suggestion that the number of Omicron mutations resulted from co-infection and RNA transfer between the parent COVID strain (is it beta or Delta ethnicity? - don't recall) and the 229E endemic sniffle strain.
And that this has allowed Omicron to thrive in the upper lungs where it can replicate and from which it can reinfect quicker, but also makes it milder.
We've had, all through the pandemic saying there's no reason to presume an infection would get milder naturally, unless it confers an advantage. Here is the advantage, an evolutionary reason for mildness beyond your host being able to walk around.
Ignoring the real day to day for a moment, researchers are going to have so much material with which to look at prior pandemics here - they will see anew in the curves they have when and where new variants arise, when the milder strains arise. The advancement in understanding is going to be phenomenal.
Sure, this flavour is in fact milder, which is good, but I don't see a trade off. It *in fact* tends to replicate in the upper airways and leave the lungs alone but there is no particular reason that was more likely to happen than it getting more virulent everywhere.
Viruses that harm the hosts tend to not thrive and for very good reason, either the host dies off (killing the virus) or the host reacts in a way that harms the virus.
Some people have claimed that because there's billions of humans, that there's no evolutionary advantage for mildness, but that's not true. Humanity will react calmer to a milder virus, which allows it to spread more. Humanity will shelter or try to reduce the spread of a more virulent virus.
A more virulent virus would lead to more virulent restrictions.
If Omicron is milder then people with Omicron are going to interact more allowing it to spread more. That's an evolutionary advantage.
If a variant had occurred before Omicron with the same infectiousness but three times the fatality rate, it would have been equally widespread before we had time to work it out. It's highly unlikely that the evolutionary process you postulate exists in this case. The strong scientific consensus is that as disease viruses evolve, their virulence (in terms of damage to the host) is pretty well random.
Because evolution and viruses are not able to project into the future and imagine how their hosts will respond. The argument "if x then y, y is bad for reproduction, therefore not x" is definitely NOT how evolution works.
Philip is right to the extent that human intervention has clearly become a factor in viral evolution (cf Smallpox...). But the idea that a small difference in fatality rate, which shows up weeks after the initial viral spread, in something as rapidly reproducing as Covid, would make any difference, is unrealistic.
Its not at all unrealistic.
Lets spin the question on its head. We've had a lot of talks about Omicron being milder but that "half the risk with twice as many people ..." etc
But lets imagine that if instead it being half the risk it was considered to be twice as deadly.
Do you really think that if this virus were more spreadable and twice as deadly as Delta per person that we'd have no difference in restrictions? Had the reports been that this virus were twice as deadly as Delta per person then much tougher restrictions would be in place already.
Do you think if that were the case it would make any difference at all to the eventual prevalence of the variant (as opposed to slowing its spread) ? The restrictions, of course, would have a similar suppressive effect on the less virulent/infectious variants.
Yes I do. In that scenario we'd have had much tougher restrictions imposed on anyone in contact with that, red list would have been maintained. If it spread twice as fast and was twice as deadly per person then there would almost certainly be another lockdown.
Because its milder there's no lockdown despite its faster spread.
So evolution is working in real time. Humanity tolerates milder viruses.
Evo in real time? That's exciting news! I couldn't quite reach the top of the tree this morning to pop the angel on. Longer arm tomorrow, methinks.
Well I don't know when evolution is supposed to happen other than in real time? Viral replication is some many orders of magnitude faster than human replication. We are seeing evolution in real time - we are now on omicron, many changes on from original covid.
Besides - you are referencing Lamarck, a much mocked figure now (unfairly - epigenetics IS the inheritance of acquired characteristics. See Dutch wartime babies...)
The virus in this pandemic timeframe going milder so we don't do lockdowns? I'll take some convincing.
Simon Jenkins: [Parliament] has had a terrible year. MPs have been revealed as paid lobbyists. Many are moonlighting. Corruption allegations are rife. During lockdown the old chamber seemed tired and stilted. MPs found to their surprise that they could vote – and even speak – electronically from home, and no one noticed any difference. The Lords survived yet another bought peerages scandal, its 783-strong membership apparently past all shame.
The reality is that parliament is a weak not a strong institution. It lacks leadership or the confidence to reform itself. Like an archaic church, it takes refuge in precedent and tradition. There is never the right time to reform.
Lockdown has shown that upheaval and disruption can challenge old ways. Much of education can be performed online without formal lectures. So can the courts of law. Office work need not be shoehorned into a long commute and an eight-hour day. We can now shop at the touch of a button. I know of no one whose work and thus life has not been altered by coronavirus. This may be bad for some, but for others the cloud can have a silver lining. Those others should include parliament.
UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
I did my PhD with him. Utter tosser.
Was it his science or his character that was objectionable ?
Well, maybe I was being a bit harsh. He wasn't a bad student - not the brightest, but not the worst either. He wasn't a particularly likeable character, but what we finally fell out over was his taking a job at AWE and complete lack of consideration for any ethical issues. My missus couldn't stand him or his missus.
He evidently made a good go of it though. Strange to see his name here.
Tbh, that sounds like your problem not his.
Edit, don't mean that in a horrible way, just that he was obviously ok with the ethics of working in nuclear weapons. This is also why PB is great, random little insights unavailable anywhere else on the internet.
Ah, yeah, you're probably right - all water under the bridge now.
We were students together and actually friends for a while, though nobody else seemed to like him very much. The thing about his taking the job at AWE wasn't so much that he was OK with the ethics; it was the fact that it simply didn't seem to occur to him to consider the ethics. Nobody else in the group would have considered working for AWE at the time.
Thinking back on that situation, does it now occur to you that maybe he was okay with it but didn't want to say because of the last sentence of what you just said? It strikes me as unlikely that anyone would go into weapons research without making the ethics calculation.
Marina Hyde: Like me, you probably cannot BELIEVE that after hubris comes nemesis. If only there’d been some clue to this in all that Ancient Greek stuff Boris Johnson is forever wanging on about.
This morning, North Shropshire has fallen to the Liberal Democrats with the third-biggest swing against the Tories since 1945, with the many, many rule-breaking Christmas parties held last year by Johnson’s people turning out to be a nuclear issue on the doorstep. What can you say? I strongly recommend laughing over spilt milk.
UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
I did my PhD with him. Utter tosser.
Was it his science or his character that was objectionable ?
Well, maybe I was being a bit harsh. He wasn't a bad student - not the brightest, but not the worst either. He wasn't a particularly likeable character, but what we finally fell out over was his taking a job at AWE and complete lack of consideration for any ethical issues. My missus couldn't stand him or his missus.
He evidently made a good go of it though. Strange to see his name here.
Tbh, that sounds like your problem not his.
Edit, don't mean that in a horrible way, just that he was obviously ok with the ethics of working in nuclear weapons. This is also why PB is great, random little insights unavailable anywhere else on the internet.
Ah, yeah, you're probably right - all water under the bridge now.
We were students together and actually friends for a while, though nobody else seemed to like him very much. The thing about his taking the job at AWE wasn't so much that he was OK with the ethics; it was the fact that it simply didn't seem to occur to him to consider the ethics. Nobody else in the group would have considered working for AWE at the time.
Perhaps, just perhaps, he had considered the ethics, had made his decision, and didn't want to be insulted and an argument with you?
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
No evidence it's less severe is of course rubbish.
They didn't find any in their tiny data sample. There's plenty of evidence from other sources. It may turn out to be confounded, but there's indisputably evidence for it being milder.
Hmm. There is ‘some’ evidence for it being milder IN SOUTH AFRICA
Which, as we all now know, is a very different Petri dish to an advanced but older western nation with high vax levels
Like everyone, I’m praying that it IS milder, everywhere. But we just dunno yet.
It’s worth noting that the source of doctor death’s tweet is John Burn Murdoch on the FT, consistently one of the most intelligent, measured and insightful journalists throughout the pandemic
Yes, there is some evidence it's milder in South Africa. Than delta was in South Africa. For all age groups.
So I'm not sure how us being massively better vaccinated than them makes that questionable. Either it's equally dangerous but we're better vaccinated - in which case great, we'll have an even bigger improvement. Or it's inherantly milder, even better.
A lot of people seem to have got themselves into the mindset that any form of optimism, or encouraging evidence, is a sign of complacency and must be ignored or ridiculed. I think there is a big "don't jinx it" level of superstition out there, understandably. For the same reason I dared not offer any optimistic prediction on the by-election last night but convinced myself it was clearly going to be a comfortable Tory hold.
There is a political element too, among opponents of the government. Boris has so successfully come to associate himself with British boosterism and any sense that the country is doing well, that a whole class of commentators sees it as anathema that anything good can happen in here. That to imply Omicron might be a bit milder based on data from South Africa means you are pro-Tory and most probably a Brexiteer. As a woke Liberal remoaner who is nonetheless highly sceptical about future lockdowns and cautiously optimistic about the data coming out of SA this politicisation of what should be neutral science is depressing. And from my own side too.
The worst elements - the millenarians for want of a better word - are increasingly describing Covid in biblical terms, as a moral destroyer sent to punish us for our libertarian sins, and they are sounding increasingly anti-vax about it. In the rush to deny any form of optimism or complacency about Omicron they are literally filling Twitter with statements that vaccines don't work, going so far as telling us SA is different from Britain or the US because they have more natural immunity rather than vaccination. It's increasingly like a morbid Covid version of the horseshoe theory.
Simon Jenkins: [Parliament] has had a terrible year. MPs have been revealed as paid lobbyists. Many are moonlighting. Corruption allegations are rife. During lockdown the old chamber seemed tired and stilted. MPs found to their surprise that they could vote – and even speak – electronically from home, and no one noticed any difference. The Lords survived yet another bought peerages scandal, its 783-strong membership apparently past all shame.
The reality is that parliament is a weak not a strong institution. It lacks leadership or the confidence to reform itself. Like an archaic church, it takes refuge in precedent and tradition. There is never the right time to reform.
Lockdown has shown that upheaval and disruption can challenge old ways. Much of education can be performed online without formal lectures. So can the courts of law. Office work need not be shoehorned into a long commute and an eight-hour day. We can now shop at the touch of a button. I know of no one whose work and thus life has not been altered by coronavirus. This may be bad for some, but for others the cloud can have a silver lining. Those others should include parliament.
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
No evidence it's less severe is of course rubbish.
They didn't find any in their tiny data sample. There's plenty of evidence from other sources. It may turn out to be confounded, but there's indisputably evidence for it being milder.
Hmm. There is ‘some’ evidence for it being milder IN SOUTH AFRICA
Which, as we all now know, is a very different Petri dish to an advanced but older western nation with high vax levels
Like everyone, I’m praying that it IS milder, everywhere. But we just dunno yet.
It’s worth noting that the source of doctor death’s tweet is John Burn Murdoch on the FT, consistently one of the most intelligent, measured and insightful journalists throughout the pandemic
Yes, there is some evidence it's milder in South Africa. Than delta was in South Africa. For all age groups.
So I'm not sure how us being massively better vaccinated than them makes that questionable. Either it's equally dangerous but we're better vaccinated - in which case great, we'll have an even bigger improvement. Or it's inherantly milder, even better.
I love this "some" evidence stuff. Every single SA Doctor who is interviewed says that it is milder and completely different to Delta.
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
No evidence it's less severe is of course rubbish.
They didn't find any in their tiny data sample. There's plenty of evidence from other sources. It may turn out to be confounded, but there's indisputably evidence for it being milder.
Hmm. There is ‘some’ evidence for it being milder IN SOUTH AFRICA
Which, as we all now know, is a very different Petri dish to an advanced but older western nation with high vax levels
Like everyone, I’m praying that it IS milder, everywhere. But we just dunno yet.
It’s worth noting that the source of doctor death’s tweet is John Burn Murdoch on the FT, consistently one of the most intelligent, measured and insightful journalists throughout the pandemic
Yes, there is some evidence it's milder in South Africa. Than delta was in South Africa. For all age groups.
So I'm not sure how us being massively better vaccinated than them makes that questionable. Either it's equally dangerous but we're better vaccinated - in which case great, we'll have an even bigger improvement. Or it's inherantly milder, even better.
I think @MaxPB posted the suggestion that prior infection is the best at protecting against omicron, especially when combined with vaccination. I think this could be a good thing for our kids, as so many of them have had delta in the last few months. Its possible that our vaccination wall, while good, especially with boosters, is not better than actually having vasts numbers catching and recovering from delta.
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
No evidence it's less severe is of course rubbish.
They didn't find any in their tiny data sample. There's plenty of evidence from other sources. It may turn out to be confounded, but there's indisputably evidence for it being milder.
Hmm. There is ‘some’ evidence for it being milder IN SOUTH AFRICA
Which, as we all now know, is a very different Petri dish to an advanced but older western nation with high vax levels
Like everyone, I’m praying that it IS milder, everywhere. But we just dunno yet.
It’s worth noting that the source of doctor death’s tweet is John Burn Murdoch on the FT, consistently one of the most intelligent, measured and insightful journalists throughout the pandemic
Yes, there is some evidence it's milder in South Africa. Than delta was in South Africa. For all age groups.
So I'm not sure how us being massively better vaccinated than them makes that questionable. Either it's equally dangerous but we're better vaccinated - in which case great, we'll have an even bigger improvement. Or it's inherantly milder, even better.
Hmm
We have a very different age profile, and a very different pattern of prior infection. Against that we don’t have SA’s awful HIV issue, we are wealthier, much more vaxxed
There are too many variables to say with certainty that Omicron will be milder than Delta in UK/EU/USA. Neither can we say what the outcome will be even if it is milder, given the vastly increased transmissibility. There IS some hopeful early evidence from SA that apocalypse will be avoided
I honestly think that’s as far as you can go. Beyond that it’s all predisposition - optimist, pessimist, paranoid, fearful, etc
3,201 additional confirmed cases of the #Omicron variant of COVID-19 have been reported across the UK. Confirmed Omicron cases in the UK now total 14,909.
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
No evidence it's less severe is of course rubbish.
They didn't find any in their tiny data sample. There's plenty of evidence from other sources. It may turn out to be confounded, but there's indisputably evidence for it being milder.
Hmm. There is ‘some’ evidence for it being milder IN SOUTH AFRICA
Which, as we all now know, is a very different Petri dish to an advanced but older western nation with high vax levels
Like everyone, I’m praying that it IS milder, everywhere. But we just dunno yet.
It’s worth noting that the source of doctor death’s tweet is John Burn Murdoch on the FT, consistently one of the most intelligent, measured and insightful journalists throughout the pandemic
Yes, there is some evidence it's milder in South Africa. Than delta was in South Africa. For all age groups.
So I'm not sure how us being massively better vaccinated than them makes that questionable. Either it's equally dangerous but we're better vaccinated - in which case great, we'll have an even bigger improvement. Or it's inherantly milder, even better.
Hmm
We have a very different age profile, and a very different pattern of prior infection. Against that we don’t have SA’s awful HIV issue, we are wealthier, much more vaxxed
There are too many variables to say with certainty that Omicron will be milder than Delta in UK/EU/USA. Neither can we say what the outcome will be even if it is milder, given the vastly increased transmissibility. There IS some hopeful early evidence from SA that apocalypse will be avoided
I honestly think that’s as far as you can go. Beyond that it’s all predisposition - optimist, pessimist, paranoid, fearful, etc
Did you see this morning's study from SA showing 2/3 lower mortality (and 91% lower hospitalisation) broken down across all age groups including the elderly?
UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
I did my PhD with him. Utter tosser.
Was it his science or his character that was objectionable ?
Well, maybe I was being a bit harsh. He wasn't a bad student - not the brightest, but not the worst either. He wasn't a particularly likeable character, but what we finally fell out over was his taking a job at AWE and complete lack of consideration for any ethical issues. My missus couldn't stand him or his missus.
He evidently made a good go of it though. Strange to see his name here.
Tbh, that sounds like your problem not his.
Edit, don't mean that in a horrible way, just that he was obviously ok with the ethics of working in nuclear weapons. This is also why PB is great, random little insights unavailable anywhere else on the internet.
Ah, yeah, you're probably right - all water under the bridge now.
We were students together and actually friends for a while, though nobody else seemed to like him very much. The thing about his taking the job at AWE wasn't so much that he was OK with the ethics; it was the fact that it simply didn't seem to occur to him to consider the ethics. Nobody else in the group would have considered working for AWE at the time.
Thinking back on that situation, does it now occur to you that maybe he was okay with it but didn't want to say because of the last sentence of what you just said? It strikes me as unlikely that anyone would go into weapons research without making the ethics calculation.
Possibly, but he did seem completely taken aback that anybody would see anything wrong with it. He had a very nationalist outlook (a bit like our own Philip Thomson) and there was little love lost between him and, particularly, the foreign students in the group.
UK researchers have analysed the likely impact that a Covid booster shot will have on Omicron and say it could provide around 85% protection against severe illness.
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
No evidence it's less severe is of course rubbish.
They didn't find any in their tiny data sample. There's plenty of evidence from other sources. It may turn out to be confounded, but there's indisputably evidence for it being milder.
Hmm. There is ‘some’ evidence for it being milder IN SOUTH AFRICA
Which, as we all now know, is a very different Petri dish to an advanced but older western nation with high vax levels
Like everyone, I’m praying that it IS milder, everywhere. But we just dunno yet.
It’s worth noting that the source of doctor death’s tweet is John Burn Murdoch on the FT, consistently one of the most intelligent, measured and insightful journalists throughout the pandemic
Yes, there is some evidence it's milder in South Africa. Than delta was in South Africa. For all age groups.
So I'm not sure how us being massively better vaccinated than them makes that questionable. Either it's equally dangerous but we're better vaccinated - in which case great, we'll have an even bigger improvement. Or it's inherantly milder, even better.
Hmm
We have a very different age profile, and a very different pattern of prior infection. Against that we don’t have SA’s awful HIV issue, we are wealthier, much more vaxxed
There are too many variables to say with certainty that Omicron will be milder than Delta in UK/EU/USA. Neither can we say what the outcome will be even if it is milder, given the vastly increased transmissibility. There IS some hopeful early evidence from SA that apocalypse will be avoided
I honestly think that’s as far as you can go. Beyond that it’s all predisposition - optimist, pessimist, paranoid, fearful, etc
You can take the age profile off your list as a factor - the differences to prior waves are consistent across all ages.
I really can't see how we wouldn't have had SAGE resignation flounces about lack of lockdown by now if they didn't also think it's going to be milder (whether inherantly, or due to vaccines) because it's very obvious there's going to be A LOT of cases.
Understandable that they wouldn't want to say it in public and undermine the scary message, but their actions make no sense otherwise.
UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
I did my PhD with him. Utter tosser.
Was it his science or his character that was objectionable ?
Well, maybe I was being a bit harsh. He wasn't a bad student - not the brightest, but not the worst either. He wasn't a particularly likeable character, but what we finally fell out over was his taking a job at AWE and complete lack of consideration for any ethical issues. My missus couldn't stand him or his missus.
He evidently made a good go of it though. Strange to see his name here.
Tbh, that sounds like your problem not his.
Edit, don't mean that in a horrible way, just that he was obviously ok with the ethics of working in nuclear weapons. This is also why PB is great, random little insights unavailable anywhere else on the internet.
Ah, yeah, you're probably right - all water under the bridge now.
We were students together and actually friends for a while, though nobody else seemed to like him very much. The thing about his taking the job at AWE wasn't so much that he was OK with the ethics; it was the fact that it simply didn't seem to occur to him to consider the ethics. Nobody else in the group would have considered working for AWE at the time.
Thinking back on that situation, does it now occur to you that maybe he was okay with it but didn't want to say because of the last sentence of what you just said? It strikes me as unlikely that anyone would go into weapons research without making the ethics calculation.
The only nuclear weapons researcher in the village....
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
No evidence it's less severe is of course rubbish.
They didn't find any in their tiny data sample. There's plenty of evidence from other sources. It may turn out to be confounded, but there's indisputably evidence for it being milder.
Hmm. There is ‘some’ evidence for it being milder IN SOUTH AFRICA
Which, as we all now know, is a very different Petri dish to an advanced but older western nation with high vax levels
Like everyone, I’m praying that it IS milder, everywhere. But we just dunno yet.
It’s worth noting that the source of doctor death’s tweet is John Burn Murdoch on the FT, consistently one of the most intelligent, measured and insightful journalists throughout the pandemic
Yes, there is some evidence it's milder in South Africa. Than delta was in South Africa. For all age groups.
So I'm not sure how us being massively better vaccinated than them makes that questionable. Either it's equally dangerous but we're better vaccinated - in which case great, we'll have an even bigger improvement. Or it's inherantly milder, even better.
I think @MaxPB posted the suggestion that prior infection is the best at protecting against omicron, especially when combined with vaccination. I think this could be a good thing for our kids, as so many of them have had delta in the last few months. Its possible that our vaccination wall, while good, especially with boosters, is not better than actually having vasts numbers catching and recovering from delta.
We will see.
Interesting and actually @MaxPB did you manage to get an answer on how great a difference there was between those levels.
Ruth Davidson is making a big mistake appearing as apologist for Boris Johnson. It's pretty well known what happens if you hitch your wagon to an incontinent horse. She had a reasonable future once
I didn’t hear the interview that way. Listen to what she said, she was actually scathing about the risible leadership he has inflicted on our country.
She was absolutely superb, and coruscating on Boris without going outside the bounds of what a politician can say about a leader of his or her own party. What a pity that she didn't end up as Conservative Party leader and PM. (Yes, I know all the reasons why that wasn't likely, but still.)
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
So the South African reports about Omicron that make the disease look "milder" are because of things like the previous variants having already killed vulnerable people in earlier waves, those cases which are reinfections having some immunity now, and that there is now a part of the population there that has been vaccinated since those earlier waves.
So it's not a case of the disease being any milder, but that the environment and circumstances in which virus is operating have changed the outcomes compared to what would happen in an earlier wave.
Which means you really, really do not want an unvaccinated or poorly vaccinated population being hit by Omicron as your first significant wave of infection.
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
So the South African reports about Omicron that make the disease look "milder" are because of things like the previous variants having already killed vulnerable people in earlier waves, those cases which are reinfections having some immunity now, and that there is now a part of the population there that has been vaccinated since those earlier waves.
So it's not a case of the disease being any milder, but that the environment and circumstances in which virus is operating have changed the outcomes compared to what would happen in an earlier wave.
Which means you really, really do not want an unvaccinated or poorly vaccinated population being hit by Omicron as your first significant wave of infection.
Australia and South Korea seeing significant cases now...I don't know if it is the big O or Delta.
UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
I did my PhD with him. Utter tosser.
I've had a tour of (parts of) AWE, courtesy of a former colleague who worked there (PhD student I did my PhD with at the same institution and a supervisor in common, different fields, some similar techniques). When he worked there he swung us a field trip visit for an undergraduate class our supervisor was taking and I went along as an extra 'adult'. Strictest security I've ever undergone to get into anywhere, which is kind of reassuring, I guess.
I also wrote some software for AWE, for a bomb*. Not sure how morally compromised/how much of a tosser that makes me I'm atoning by being an epidemiologist trying to improve health outcomes so fewer people die an untimely death
*should clarify that perhaps - for a bomb calorimiter, in a study funded by AWE. Nothing to do with nukes, though maybe they had some nefarious purposes for the results. I just wrote the software to analyse the data, didn't know about the funder at the time, but I don't think it would have made me unwilling.
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
No evidence it's less severe is of course rubbish.
They didn't find any in their tiny data sample. There's plenty of evidence from other sources. It may turn out to be confounded, but there's indisputably evidence for it being milder.
Hmm. There is ‘some’ evidence for it being milder IN SOUTH AFRICA
Which, as we all now know, is a very different Petri dish to an advanced but older western nation with high vax levels
Like everyone, I’m praying that it IS milder, everywhere. But we just dunno yet.
It’s worth noting that the source of doctor death’s tweet is John Burn Murdoch on the FT, consistently one of the most intelligent, measured and insightful journalists throughout the pandemic
Yes, there is some evidence it's milder in South Africa. Than delta was in South Africa. For all age groups.
So I'm not sure how us being massively better vaccinated than them makes that questionable. Either it's equally dangerous but we're better vaccinated - in which case great, we'll have an even bigger improvement. Or it's inherantly milder, even better.
I think @MaxPB posted the suggestion that prior infection is the best at protecting against omicron, especially when combined with vaccination. I think this could be a good thing for our kids, as so many of them have had delta in the last few months. Its possible that our vaccination wall, while good, especially with boosters, is not better than actually having vasts numbers catching and recovering from delta.
We will see.
Interesting and actually @MaxPB did you manage to get an answer on how great a difference there was between those levels.
Yes, I did, wrote it up earlier in this post somewhere!
UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
I did my PhD with him. Utter tosser.
Was it his science or his character that was objectionable ?
Well, maybe I was being a bit harsh. He wasn't a bad student - not the brightest, but not the worst either. He wasn't a particularly likeable character, but what we finally fell out over was his taking a job at AWE and complete lack of consideration for any ethical issues. My missus couldn't stand him or his missus.
He evidently made a good go of it though. Strange to see his name here.
Tbh, that sounds like your problem not his.
Edit, don't mean that in a horrible way, just that he was obviously ok with the ethics of working in nuclear weapons. This is also why PB is great, random little insights unavailable anywhere else on the internet.
Ah, yeah, you're probably right - all water under the bridge now.
We were students together and actually friends for a while, though nobody else seemed to like him very much. The thing about his taking the job at AWE wasn't so much that he was OK with the ethics; it was the fact that it simply didn't seem to occur to him to consider the ethics. Nobody else in the group would have considered working for AWE at the time.
Why not? It sounds like it could be a very good place to work and ethically they were helping defend the country so people could live in safety. Unless you're a CND unilateral disarmament zealot I fail to see what ethics issues there are?
Did you see my question to you earlier on schools? This seems to be spreading like wildfire amongst young adults, but unless I've missed something there seems to be very little anecdotal reporting of it spreading rapidly through schools?
Considering how easily its supposed to spread, why aren't all the children in the country getting it and bringing it home to their parents? Given how easily it replicates shouldn't it be ripping through schools right now? There doesn't seem to be much reporting that it is?
Is it possible that it is, but its not getting reported?
Anecdotally, it's ripping through schools. Just been talking to my PhD student. Her kids are at home with positive tests after it ripped through their school's Year 7. Another friend, kids got it at school and gave it to the parents. But that is just anecdote.
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
No evidence it's less severe is of course rubbish.
They didn't find any in their tiny data sample. There's plenty of evidence from other sources. It may turn out to be confounded, but there's indisputably evidence for it being milder.
Hmm. There is ‘some’ evidence for it being milder IN SOUTH AFRICA
Which, as we all now know, is a very different Petri dish to an advanced but older western nation with high vax levels
Like everyone, I’m praying that it IS milder, everywhere. But we just dunno yet.
It’s worth noting that the source of doctor death’s tweet is John Burn Murdoch on the FT, consistently one of the most intelligent, measured and insightful journalists throughout the pandemic
Yes, there is some evidence it's milder in South Africa. Than delta was in South Africa. For all age groups.
So I'm not sure how us being massively better vaccinated than them makes that questionable. Either it's equally dangerous but we're better vaccinated - in which case great, we'll have an even bigger improvement. Or it's inherantly milder, even better.
Hmm
We have a very different age profile, and a very different pattern of prior infection. Against that we don’t have SA’s awful HIV issue, we are wealthier, much more vaxxed
There are too many variables to say with certainty that Omicron will be milder than Delta in UK/EU/USA. Neither can we say what the outcome will be even if it is milder, given the vastly increased transmissibility. There IS some hopeful early evidence from SA that apocalypse will be avoided
I honestly think that’s as far as you can go. Beyond that it’s all predisposition - optimist, pessimist, paranoid, fearful, etc
You can take the age profile off your list as a factor - the differences to prior waves are consistent across all ages.
I really can't see how we wouldn't have had SAGE resignation flounces about lack of lockdown by now if they didn't also think it's going to be milder (whether inherantly, or due to vaccines) because it's very obvious there's going to be A LOT of cases.
Understandable that they wouldn't want to say it in public and undermine the scary message, but their actions make no sense otherwise.
Their actions make total sense if some of them believe Omicron is so infectious no feasible lockdown can stop it, and the social, economic and psychological costs of imposing some largely-pointless lockdown are therefore unjustifiable
I’m pretty sure that’s what some of them believe. This thing is ridiculously transmissible. We just have to brace - and hope that it fizzles out quick, as SEEMS to be happening in Gauteng
On the other hand, the actions of other governments - Germany, France, Denmark, now Ireland - governments who have their own excellent scientists, do reveal fear in the highest echelons, despite the data from SA
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
No evidence it's less severe is of course rubbish.
They didn't find any in their tiny data sample. There's plenty of evidence from other sources. It may turn out to be confounded, but there's indisputably evidence for it being milder.
Hmm. There is ‘some’ evidence for it being milder IN SOUTH AFRICA
Which, as we all now know, is a very different Petri dish to an advanced but older western nation with high vax levels
Like everyone, I’m praying that it IS milder, everywhere. But we just dunno yet.
It’s worth noting that the source of doctor death’s tweet is John Burn Murdoch on the FT, consistently one of the most intelligent, measured and insightful journalists throughout the pandemic
Yes, there is some evidence it's milder in South Africa. Than delta was in South Africa. For all age groups.
So I'm not sure how us being massively better vaccinated than them makes that questionable. Either it's equally dangerous but we're better vaccinated - in which case great, we'll have an even bigger improvement. Or it's inherantly milder, even better.
I think @MaxPB posted the suggestion that prior infection is the best at protecting against omicron, especially when combined with vaccination. I think this could be a good thing for our kids, as so many of them have had delta in the last few months. Its possible that our vaccination wall, while good, especially with boosters, is not better than actually having vasts numbers catching and recovering from delta.
We will see.
Interesting and actually @MaxPB did you manage to get an answer on how great a difference there was between those levels.
Yes, I did, wrote it up earlier in this post somewhere!
Ah thanks I'll take a look. TL;DR? What's the one line summary.
UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
I did my PhD with him. Utter tosser.
I've had a tour of (parts of) AWE, courtesy of a former colleague who worked there (PhD student I did my PhD with at the same institution and a supervisor in common, different fields, some similar techniques). When he worked there he swung us a field trip visit for an undergraduate class our supervisor was taking and I went along as an extra 'adult'. Strictest security I've ever undergone to get into anywhere, which is kind of reassuring, I guess.
I also wrote some software for AWE, for a bomb*. Not sure how morally compromised/how much of a tosser that makes me I'm atoning by being an epidemiologist trying to improve health outcomes so fewer people die an untimely death
*should clarify that perhaps - for a bomb calorimiter, in a study funded by AWE. Nothing to do with nukes, though maybe they had some nefarious purposes for the results. I just wrote the software to analyse the data, didn't know about the funder at the time, but I don't think it would have made me unwilling.
Please don't quote that comment! I'm busy furiously back-pedalling from it. Anyway, it's all a bit hypocritical of me, given that I worked for the MoD for a while in my younger and more naïve days!
Did you see my question to you earlier on schools? This seems to be spreading like wildfire amongst young adults, but unless I've missed something there seems to be very little anecdotal reporting of it spreading rapidly through schools?
Considering how easily its supposed to spread, why aren't all the children in the country getting it and bringing it home to their parents? Given how easily it replicates shouldn't it be ripping through schools right now? There doesn't seem to be much reporting that it is?
Is it possible that it is, but its not getting reported?
Anecdotally, it's ripping through schools. Just been talking to my PhD student. Her kids are at home with positive tests after it ripped through their school's Year 7. Another friend, kids got it at school and gave it to the parents. But that is just anecdote.
My sister has also just had a positive PCR test apparently and is isolating, fortunately she is double jabbed and has had her booster.
UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
I did my PhD with him. Utter tosser.
I've had a tour of (parts of) AWE, courtesy of a former colleague who worked there (PhD student I did my PhD with at the same institution and a supervisor in common, different fields, some similar techniques). When he worked there he swung us a field trip visit for an undergraduate class our supervisor was taking and I went along as an extra 'adult'. Strictest security I've ever undergone to get into anywhere, which is kind of reassuring, I guess.
I also wrote some software for AWE, for a bomb*. Not sure how morally compromised/how much of a tosser that makes me I'm atoning by being an epidemiologist trying to improve health outcomes so fewer people die an untimely death
*should clarify that perhaps - for a bomb calorimiter, in a study funded by AWE. Nothing to do with nukes, though maybe they had some nefarious purposes for the results. I just wrote the software to analyse the data, didn't know about the funder at the time, but I don't think it would have made me unwilling.
Please don't quote that comment! I'm busy furiously back-pedalling from it. Anyway, it's all a bit hypocritical of me, given that I worked for the MoD for a while in my younger and more naïve days!
What's happened here is you have gone in for a big flying two footed challenge and injured yourself.
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
No evidence it's less severe is of course rubbish.
They didn't find any in their tiny data sample. There's plenty of evidence from other sources. It may turn out to be confounded, but there's indisputably evidence for it being milder.
Hmm. There is ‘some’ evidence for it being milder IN SOUTH AFRICA
Which, as we all now know, is a very different Petri dish to an advanced but older western nation with high vax levels
Like everyone, I’m praying that it IS milder, everywhere. But we just dunno yet.
It’s worth noting that the source of doctor death’s tweet is John Burn Murdoch on the FT, consistently one of the most intelligent, measured and insightful journalists throughout the pandemic
Yes, there is some evidence it's milder in South Africa. Than delta was in South Africa. For all age groups.
So I'm not sure how us being massively better vaccinated than them makes that questionable. Either it's equally dangerous but we're better vaccinated - in which case great, we'll have an even bigger improvement. Or it's inherantly milder, even better.
I think @MaxPB posted the suggestion that prior infection is the best at protecting against omicron, especially when combined with vaccination. I think this could be a good thing for our kids, as so many of them have had delta in the last few months. Its possible that our vaccination wall, while good, especially with boosters, is not better than actually having vasts numbers catching and recovering from delta.
We will see.
Interesting and actually @MaxPB did you manage to get an answer on how great a difference there was between those levels.
Yes, I did, wrote it up earlier in this post somewhere!
Ah thanks I'll take a look. TL;DR? What's the one line summary.
Three doses good, 2-3 people in 1000 exposed people hospitalised, two doses not good, as many as 20 people in 1000 exposed people hospitalised. It's because of the cumulative effect of fewer infections and better protections from hospitalisation among the infected.
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
No evidence it's less severe is of course rubbish.
They didn't find any in their tiny data sample. There's plenty of evidence from other sources. It may turn out to be confounded, but there's indisputably evidence for it being milder.
Hmm. There is ‘some’ evidence for it being milder IN SOUTH AFRICA
Which, as we all now know, is a very different Petri dish to an advanced but older western nation with high vax levels
Like everyone, I’m praying that it IS milder, everywhere. But we just dunno yet.
It’s worth noting that the source of doctor death’s tweet is John Burn Murdoch on the FT, consistently one of the most intelligent, measured and insightful journalists throughout the pandemic
Yes, there is some evidence it's milder in South Africa. Than delta was in South Africa. For all age groups.
So I'm not sure how us being massively better vaccinated than them makes that questionable. Either it's equally dangerous but we're better vaccinated - in which case great, we'll have an even bigger improvement. Or it's inherantly milder, even better.
Hmm
We have a very different age profile, and a very different pattern of prior infection. Against that we don’t have SA’s awful HIV issue, we are wealthier, much more vaxxed
There are too many variables to say with certainty that Omicron will be milder than Delta in UK/EU/USA. Neither can we say what the outcome will be even if it is milder, given the vastly increased transmissibility. There IS some hopeful early evidence from SA that apocalypse will be avoided
I honestly think that’s as far as you can go. Beyond that it’s all predisposition - optimist, pessimist, paranoid, fearful, etc
You can take the age profile off your list as a factor - the differences to prior waves are consistent across all ages.
I really can't see how we wouldn't have had SAGE resignation flounces about lack of lockdown by now if they didn't also think it's going to be milder (whether inherantly, or due to vaccines) because it's very obvious there's going to be A LOT of cases.
Understandable that they wouldn't want to say it in public and undermine the scary message, but their actions make no sense otherwise.
Their actions make total sense if some of them believe Omicron is so infectious no feasible lockdown can stop it, and the social, economic and psychological costs of imposing some largely-pointless lockdown are therefore unjustifiable
I’m pretty sure that’s what some of them believe. This thing is ridiculously transmissible. We just have to brace - and hope that it fizzles out quick, as SEEMS to be happening in Gauteng
On the other hand, the actions of other governments - Germany, France, Denmark, now Ireland - governments who have their own excellent scientists, do reveal fear in the highest echelons, despite the data from SA
Perhaps, but the idea that even the arseholes riding 2 horses in SAGE and bullshitSAGE have given up on lockdown as a saviour if they really think the NHS is likely to collapse... not buying it. They'd love nothing more than a front page resignation letter about how Boris is trying to kill everyone.
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
No evidence it's less severe is of course rubbish.
They didn't find any in their tiny data sample. There's plenty of evidence from other sources. It may turn out to be confounded, but there's indisputably evidence for it being milder.
Hmm. There is ‘some’ evidence for it being milder IN SOUTH AFRICA
Which, as we all now know, is a very different Petri dish to an advanced but older western nation with high vax levels
Like everyone, I’m praying that it IS milder, everywhere. But we just dunno yet.
It’s worth noting that the source of doctor death’s tweet is John Burn Murdoch on the FT, consistently one of the most intelligent, measured and insightful journalists throughout the pandemic
Yes, there is some evidence it's milder in South Africa. Than delta was in South Africa. For all age groups.
So I'm not sure how us being massively better vaccinated than them makes that questionable. Either it's equally dangerous but we're better vaccinated - in which case great, we'll have an even bigger improvement. Or it's inherantly milder, even better.
I think @MaxPB posted the suggestion that prior infection is the best at protecting against omicron, especially when combined with vaccination. I think this could be a good thing for our kids, as so many of them have had delta in the last few months. Its possible that our vaccination wall, while good, especially with boosters, is not better than actually having vasts numbers catching and recovering from delta.
We will see.
Interesting and actually @MaxPB did you manage to get an answer on how great a difference there was between those levels.
Yes, I did, wrote it up earlier in this post somewhere!
Ah thanks I'll take a look. TL;DR? What's the one line summary.
Did you see my question to you earlier on schools? This seems to be spreading like wildfire amongst young adults, but unless I've missed something there seems to be very little anecdotal reporting of it spreading rapidly through schools?
Considering how easily its supposed to spread, why aren't all the children in the country getting it and bringing it home to their parents? Given how easily it replicates shouldn't it be ripping through schools right now? There doesn't seem to be much reporting that it is?
Is it possible that it is, but its not getting reported?
Anecdotally, it's ripping through schools. Just been talking to my PhD student. Her kids are at home with positive tests after it ripped through their school's Year 7. Another friend, kids got it at school and gave it to the parents. But that is just anecdote.
My sister has also just had a positive PCR test apparently and is isolating, fortunately she is double jabbed and has had her booster.
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
No evidence it's less severe is of course rubbish.
They didn't find any in their tiny data sample. There's plenty of evidence from other sources. It may turn out to be confounded, but there's indisputably evidence for it being milder.
Hmm. There is ‘some’ evidence for it being milder IN SOUTH AFRICA
Which, as we all now know, is a very different Petri dish to an advanced but older western nation with high vax levels
Like everyone, I’m praying that it IS milder, everywhere. But we just dunno yet.
It’s worth noting that the source of doctor death’s tweet is John Burn Murdoch on the FT, consistently one of the most intelligent, measured and insightful journalists throughout the pandemic
Yes, there is some evidence it's milder in South Africa. Than delta was in South Africa. For all age groups.
So I'm not sure how us being massively better vaccinated than them makes that questionable. Either it's equally dangerous but we're better vaccinated - in which case great, we'll have an even bigger improvement. Or it's inherantly milder, even better.
I think @MaxPB posted the suggestion that prior infection is the best at protecting against omicron, especially when combined with vaccination. I think this could be a good thing for our kids, as so many of them have had delta in the last few months. Its possible that our vaccination wall, while good, especially with boosters, is not better than actually having vasts numbers catching and recovering from delta.
We will see.
Interesting and actually @MaxPB did you manage to get an answer on how great a difference there was between those levels.
Yes, I did, wrote it up earlier in this post somewhere!
Ah thanks I'll take a look. TL;DR? What's the one line summary.
Get triple jabbed.
Got to hope that 80-85% estimate against hospitalisation turns out to be true / under-estimates.
Ruth Davidson is making a big mistake appearing as apologist for Boris Johnson. It's pretty well known what happens if you hitch your wagon to an incontinent horse. She had a reasonable future once
I didn’t hear the interview that way. Listen to what she said, she was actually scathing about the risible leadership he has inflicted on our country.
She was absolutely superb, and coruscating on Boris without going outside the bounds of what a politician can say about a leader of his or her own party. What a pity that she didn't end up as Conservative Party leader and PM. (Yes, I know all the reasons why that wasn't likely, but still.)
Possibly the best lay ever when she was betting favourite for next Con leader.
The Ruth Davidson project was an empty bad of vacuous nothing supported by kids gloves treatment by her former BBC and media colleagues.
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
No evidence it's less severe is of course rubbish.
They didn't find any in their tiny data sample. There's plenty of evidence from other sources. It may turn out to be confounded, but there's indisputably evidence for it being milder.
Hmm. There is ‘some’ evidence for it being milder IN SOUTH AFRICA
Which, as we all now know, is a very different Petri dish to an advanced but older western nation with high vax levels
Like everyone, I’m praying that it IS milder, everywhere. But we just dunno yet.
It’s worth noting that the source of doctor death’s tweet is John Burn Murdoch on the FT, consistently one of the most intelligent, measured and insightful journalists throughout the pandemic
Yes, there is some evidence it's milder in South Africa. Than delta was in South Africa. For all age groups.
So I'm not sure how us being massively better vaccinated than them makes that questionable. Either it's equally dangerous but we're better vaccinated - in which case great, we'll have an even bigger improvement. Or it's inherantly milder, even better.
I think @MaxPB posted the suggestion that prior infection is the best at protecting against omicron, especially when combined with vaccination. I think this could be a good thing for our kids, as so many of them have had delta in the last few months. Its possible that our vaccination wall, while good, especially with boosters, is not better than actually having vasts numbers catching and recovering from delta.
We will see.
Interesting and actually @MaxPB did you manage to get an answer on how great a difference there was between those levels.
Yes, I did, wrote it up earlier in this post somewhere!
Ah thanks I'll take a look. TL;DR? What's the one line summary.
Three doses good, 2-3 people in 1000 exposed people hospitalised, two doses not good, as many as 20 people in 1000 exposed people hospitalised. It's because of the cumulative effect of fewer infections and better protections from hospitalisation among the infected.
So, cases and deaths last week reflected Delta's spread and our current immunity level against that. Omicron has to be gauged in terms of where we are now.
The profile changes are (with some fag packet stuff):
1. Omicron spreads faster -> higher cases -> higher Hospitalisations -> higher deaths like for like.
Let's say 10x cases = 10x deaths
2. Split of cases: a bigger proportion of Omicron cases are going to be in the protected rather than unprotected
OK, so you go from the unimmunised having half the cases, to the immunised getting 90% of cases -> 0.2x death rate
3. But, changing the proportion of vaccinated to unvaccinated getting also changes the age profile, since kids are heavily unvaccinated -> 4x death rate
4. Omicron is innately milder (I think confirmed now) -> lower deaths like for like -> 0.4x death rate (tbc from SA next excess mortality which should clarify the large noise : signal still in their data).
5. Immune escape -> reduction in vaccination protection -> increased relative severity in the vaccinated case for case (i.e. severity increases by a bigger factor than cases do) - 2x death rate (note: a UK factor less relevant to SA)
6. Additional vaccination to counter immune escape -> caveat, gains from booster vaccination of the oldest are already substantially, but not entirely, banked in the current figures -> booster vaccination in younger people banks smaller gains -> 0.66x death rate.
So, this fag packet data says for 10x the cases (would equate to 7m people, 10% of population getting it in peak week) 4x the deaths of now (would equate to 3-4k dying in the peak week)
But the range of multipliers here means you can come up with a lot of different outcomes quite reasonably.
UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
I did my PhD with him. Utter tosser.
I've had a tour of (parts of) AWE, courtesy of a former colleague who worked there (PhD student I did my PhD with at the same institution and a supervisor in common, different fields, some similar techniques). When he worked there he swung us a field trip visit for an undergraduate class our supervisor was taking and I went along as an extra 'adult'. Strictest security I've ever undergone to get into anywhere, which is kind of reassuring, I guess.
I also wrote some software for AWE, for a bomb*. Not sure how morally compromised/how much of a tosser that makes me I'm atoning by being an epidemiologist trying to improve health outcomes so fewer people die an untimely death
*should clarify that perhaps - for a bomb calorimiter, in a study funded by AWE. Nothing to do with nukes, though maybe they had some nefarious purposes for the results. I just wrote the software to analyse the data, didn't know about the funder at the time, but I don't think it would have made me unwilling.
Please don't quote that comment! I'm busy furiously back-pedalling from it. Anyway, it's all a bit hypocritical of me, given that I worked for the MoD for a while in my younger and more naïve days!
What's happened here is you have gone in for a big flying two footed challenge and injured yourself.
More of an emotional overreaction. The point is that we were actually friends, and it is true that he didn't have many friends. His taking a job at AWE without even appearing to consider the ethics of it seemed like a betrayal of our friendship at the time (and everyone else was then saying - see, we told you what an arse he is). I'd forgotten all about him until his name popped up here.
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
Could it be "90% only suffer mild symptoms" all over again....
Who the fuck do we believe?
On the one hand the data from SA seems to show this variant is all ass and no spank, yet we have UK scientists and German politicians saying we face unprecedented horrors
It's because SA has a lot of pre-existing natural immunity while the UK and Germany have lesser two, one or zero dose immunity. For the UK that situation is rapidly changing for key older groups with the booster programme reaching the oldies, in Germany they have millions of older people with no vaccines and no natural immunity. Omicron will find them where Delta may not have.
Germany also short of vaccines. Their booster programme was scheduled to take until March. Apparently they are looking to buy up some Eastern European antivaxxer countries "excess".
When this hits Eastern Europe like Bulgaria, with hardly any vaccinations, going to be a shit show.
I would take German vaccine "shortages" with a massive pinch of salt. I would be surprised if there were any serious shortages. There are lots of Moderna doses going spare - most of the booster shots around here are Moderna this week. Maybe if you insist on having a Pfizer booster (why?), you might have to look around a bit more to get an appointment right now. Like you say they will probably buy up unused nearly out-of-date stocks from other EU countries. But actual shortages is more spin than anything likely to happen. Lauterbach wants to have enough vaccines available to have a general vaccine mandate in the spring, and maybe have a little dig at the previous government for letting stocks run "low".
What yesterday shows is that a large proportion of natural Conservatives think Boris needs at least a kick up the arse. A free shot. The Bishop Brennan By-election.
It's not as if the Government is going to fall today, is it?
As I told my MP the other night, my own take is that Boris has failed to grow into the role of being PM. He has remained the Prince Hal of Henry IV Part 1 - happy to faff around with Falstaff and Pistol and Doll Tearsheet. He has not become the steely King Henry V, distancing himself with "I know thee not, old man...." of Part 2.
I'd like to think that without Covid - nationally and personally - Boris would have made some serious steps towards a coherent levelling up. He might yet get lucky - with the UK getting through Omicron far better than mainland Europe. But I think it unlikely - France for example is boosting a million a day, well ahead of us. So it probably means 2022 is when we do have a new PM, who looks more like she/he belongs in Number 10. Or at least makes the effort to seem like they are trying to grow into the role.
I believe it was actually Henry IV who said that to Falstaff, not Henry V
No, you are wrong.
He's right. Henry IV is Hal's dad, the Bolingbroke of Richard II.
He dies a couple of scenes before the line is said. It's said by Prince Hal / Henry V
Yes, I know (see the other Hal quote in my previous reply). I just misread badly misread HYUFD's comment.
Well not according to this version anyway, even if it is wrong
...but sweet Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant being as he is, oh Jack Falstaff, banish not him from Harry’s company, banish plump Jack and banish all the world
Looks to be a typo online. Who'd have thought it? It has to be Henry 5th - thats the whole point of the scene. He is distancing himself from Falstaff, like @CorrectHorseBattery has done from Corbyn...
That’s right. I thought that too.
The clip, fine film it is, play written by actor, film directed by actors, featuring actors, the result is acting, comes across a little bit Black Adder simply because Adder is pastiche of Shakespeare played at uni isn’t it? 🙂
Two further points, someone up thread made one about the point of this relationship in the play is how the King must distance himself from wastrels like Falstaff. I like that.
And the political allegory we are trying to make? Having heard the chimes of midnight, the Conservative Party must now distance themselves from their wastrel Falstaff to move on?
I was up for the chimes of 0430 and I still don’t feel very well 🤢
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
Could it be "90% only suffer mild symptoms" all over again....
Who the fuck do we believe?
On the one hand the data from SA seems to show this variant is all ass and no spank, yet we have UK scientists and German politicians saying we face unprecedented horrors
It's because SA has a lot of pre-existing natural immunity while the UK and Germany have lesser two, one or zero dose immunity. For the UK that situation is rapidly changing for key older groups with the booster programme reaching the oldies, in Germany they have millions of older people with no vaccines and no natural immunity. Omicron will find them where Delta may not have.
Germany also short of vaccines. Their booster programme was scheduled to take until March. Apparently they are looking to buy up some Eastern European antivaxxer countries "excess".
When this hits Eastern Europe like Bulgaria, with hardly any vaccinations, going to be a shit show.
I would take German vaccine "shortages" with a massive pinch of salt. I would be surprised if there were any serious shortages. There are lots of Moderna doses going spare - most of the booster shots around here are Moderna this week. Maybe if you insist on having a Pfizer booster (why?), you might have to look around a bit more to get an appointment right now. Like you say they will probably buy up unused nearly out-of-date stocks from other EU countries. But actual shortages is more spin than anything likely to happen. Lauterbach wants to have enough vaccines available to have a general vaccine mandate in the spring, and maybe have a little dig at the previous government for letting stocks run "low".
It's possible he wants to create scarcity to get people queuing up for fear of having to wait until Easter.
I'd be shocked if Germany wasn't able to source vaccines to get all the boosters done by the end of Jan. I'm sure the UK would do a swap deal on Pfizer, we'll probably have 20-25m leftover from our purchases.
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
No evidence it's less severe is of course rubbish.
They didn't find any in their tiny data sample. There's plenty of evidence from other sources. It may turn out to be confounded, but there's indisputably evidence for it being milder.
Hmm. There is ‘some’ evidence for it being milder IN SOUTH AFRICA
Which, as we all now know, is a very different Petri dish to an advanced but older western nation with high vax levels
Like everyone, I’m praying that it IS milder, everywhere. But we just dunno yet.
It’s worth noting that the source of doctor death’s tweet is John Burn Murdoch on the FT, consistently one of the most intelligent, measured and insightful journalists throughout the pandemic
Yes, there is some evidence it's milder in South Africa. Than delta was in South Africa. For all age groups.
So I'm not sure how us being massively better vaccinated than them makes that questionable. Either it's equally dangerous but we're better vaccinated - in which case great, we'll have an even bigger improvement. Or it's inherantly milder, even better.
A lot of people seem to have got themselves into the mindset that any form of optimism, or encouraging evidence, is a sign of complacency and must be ignored or ridiculed. I think there is a big "don't jinx it" level of superstition out there, understandably. For the same reason I dared not offer any optimistic prediction on the by-election last night but convinced myself it was clearly going to be a comfortable Tory hold.
There is a political element too, among opponents of the government. Boris has so successfully come to associate himself with British boosterism and any sense that the country is doing well, that a whole class of commentators sees it as anathema that anything good can happen in here. That to imply Omicron might be a bit milder based on data from South Africa means you are pro-Tory and most probably a Brexiteer. As a woke Liberal remoaner who is nonetheless highly sceptical about future lockdowns and cautiously optimistic about the data coming out of SA this politicisation of what should be neutral science is depressing. And from my own side too.
The worst elements - the millenarians for want of a better word - are increasingly describing Covid in biblical terms, as a moral destroyer sent to punish us for our libertarian sins, and they are sounding increasingly anti-vax about it. In the rush to deny any form of optimism or complacency about Omicron they are literally filling Twitter with statements that vaccines don't work, going so far as telling us SA is different from Britain or the US because they have more natural immunity rather than vaccination. It's increasingly like a morbid Covid version of the horseshoe theory.
SA is very different to the UK. Just as South Korea is, or Peru, or New Zealand, or Russia. It is not some anti-Boris Remainer pro-lockdown conspiracy to be properly cautious about the encouraging data from Pretoria, and what it might mean for London
For a start I voted for Boris, I’m a Leaver, and I fear and loathe lockdowns. I desperately want this plague over and some of my old life back, I want my friends and family to be safe and well, I want my girls to grow up in a world that isn’t terrified of disease
But Covid has consistently surprised on the downside. Every time we think we’ve beaten it, the fucker returns.
Being open but wary in regards to good news is entirely justified. Indeed it is the only sane approach
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
Could it be "90% only suffer mild symptoms" all over again....
Who the fuck do we believe?
On the one hand the data from SA seems to show this variant is all ass and no spank, yet we have UK scientists and German politicians saying we face unprecedented horrors
It's because SA has a lot of pre-existing natural immunity while the UK and Germany have lesser two, one or zero dose immunity. For the UK that situation is rapidly changing for key older groups with the booster programme reaching the oldies, in Germany they have millions of older people with no vaccines and no natural immunity. Omicron will find them where Delta may not have.
Germany also short of vaccines. Their booster programme was scheduled to take until March. Apparently they are looking to buy up some Eastern European antivaxxer countries "excess".
When this hits Eastern Europe like Bulgaria, with hardly any vaccinations, going to be a shit show.
I would take German vaccine "shortages" with a massive pinch of salt. I would be surprised if there were any serious shortages. There are lots of Moderna doses going spare - most of the booster shots around here are Moderna this week. Maybe if you insist on having a Pfizer booster (why?), you might have to look around a bit more to get an appointment right now. Like you say they will probably buy up unused nearly out-of-date stocks from other EU countries. But actual shortages is more spin than anything likely to happen. Lauterbach wants to have enough vaccines available to have a general vaccine mandate in the spring, and maybe have a little dig at the previous government for letting stocks run "low".
It's possible he wants to create scarcity to get people queuing up for fear of having to wait until Easter.
Max just read your long version. That is excellent thanks - both in content (ie get jabbed/have had an infection) and that you put it on here. Much appreciated.
Got to hope that 85% estimate against hospitalisation turns out to be true.
Yes, but I think we can be pretty confident on that. The Imperial College study (using UK data) estimates vaccine efficiency against Omicron (for symptomatic infection) of between 0% and 20% for two-doses of AZ and between 55% and 80% for two doses + booster. This is consistent with other estimates and the lab experiments. Given that all the experts think that protection against severe illness should be better, the central case must be that the triple jabbed should be well protected.
Obviously all this is still very preliminary, so should be treated with some caution.
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
Could it be "90% only suffer mild symptoms" all over again....
Who the fuck do we believe?
On the one hand the data from SA seems to show this variant is all ass and no spank, yet we have UK scientists and German politicians saying we face unprecedented horrors
It's because SA has a lot of pre-existing natural immunity while the UK and Germany have lesser two, one or zero dose immunity. For the UK that situation is rapidly changing for key older groups with the booster programme reaching the oldies, in Germany they have millions of older people with no vaccines and no natural immunity. Omicron will find them where Delta may not have.
Germany also short of vaccines. Their booster programme was scheduled to take until March. Apparently they are looking to buy up some Eastern European antivaxxer countries "excess".
When this hits Eastern Europe like Bulgaria, with hardly any vaccinations, going to be a shit show.
I would take German vaccine "shortages" with a massive pinch of salt. I would be surprised if there were any serious shortages. There are lots of Moderna doses going spare - most of the booster shots around here are Moderna this week. Maybe if you insist on having a Pfizer booster (why?), you might have to look around a bit more to get an appointment right now. Like you say they will probably buy up unused nearly out-of-date stocks from other EU countries. But actual shortages is more spin than anything likely to happen. Lauterbach wants to have enough vaccines available to have a general vaccine mandate in the spring, and maybe have a little dig at the previous government for letting stocks run "low".
It's possible he wants to create scarcity to get people queuing up for fear of having to wait until Easter.
Max just read your long version. That is excellent thanks - both in content (ie get jabbed/have had an infection) and that you put it on here. Much appreciated.
No worries, just remember this is modelled data so it's predictive rather than based on observation though he's pretty good at what he does. I mean his model pre-dates the Imperial study saying exactly the same on Omicron severity probably being the same as Delta so that's already real world validation.
UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
I did my PhD with him. Utter tosser.
I've had a tour of (parts of) AWE, courtesy of a former colleague who worked there (PhD student I did my PhD with at the same institution and a supervisor in common, different fields, some similar techniques). When he worked there he swung us a field trip visit for an undergraduate class our supervisor was taking and I went along as an extra 'adult'. Strictest security I've ever undergone to get into anywhere, which is kind of reassuring, I guess.
I also wrote some software for AWE, for a bomb*. Not sure how morally compromised/how much of a tosser that makes me I'm atoning by being an epidemiologist trying to improve health outcomes so fewer people die an untimely death
*should clarify that perhaps - for a bomb calorimiter, in a study funded by AWE. Nothing to do with nukes, though maybe they had some nefarious purposes for the results. I just wrote the software to analyse the data, didn't know about the funder at the time, but I don't think it would have made me unwilling.
Please don't quote that comment! I'm busy furiously back-pedalling from it. Anyway, it's all a bit hypocritical of me, given that I worked for the MoD for a while in my younger and more naïve days!
What's happened here is you have gone in for a big flying two footed challenge and injured yourself.
⚠️BREAKING—Imperial College study finds #Omicron could be **just as severe** as the Delta strain, according to early findings from researchers at Imperial College London.
➡️All those who said “it’s mild” need to think about how many they have endangered. ft.com/content/489316…
No evidence it's less severe is of course rubbish.
They didn't find any in their tiny data sample. There's plenty of evidence from other sources. It may turn out to be confounded, but there's indisputably evidence for it being milder.
Hmm. There is ‘some’ evidence for it being milder IN SOUTH AFRICA
Which, as we all now know, is a very different Petri dish to an advanced but older western nation with high vax levels
Like everyone, I’m praying that it IS milder, everywhere. But we just dunno yet.
It’s worth noting that the source of doctor death’s tweet is John Burn Murdoch on the FT, consistently one of the most intelligent, measured and insightful journalists throughout the pandemic
Yes, there is some evidence it's milder in South Africa. Than delta was in South Africa. For all age groups.
So I'm not sure how us being massively better vaccinated than them makes that questionable. Either it's equally dangerous but we're better vaccinated - in which case great, we'll have an even bigger improvement. Or it's inherantly milder, even better.
A lot of people seem to have got themselves into the mindset that any form of optimism, or encouraging evidence, is a sign of complacency and must be ignored or ridiculed. I think there is a big "don't jinx it" level of superstition out there, understandably. For the same reason I dared not offer any optimistic prediction on the by-election last night but convinced myself it was clearly going to be a comfortable Tory hold.
There is a political element too, among opponents of the government. Boris has so successfully come to associate himself with British boosterism and any sense that the country is doing well, that a whole class of commentators sees it as anathema that anything good can happen in here. That to imply Omicron might be a bit milder based on data from South Africa means you are pro-Tory and most probably a Brexiteer. As a woke Liberal remoaner who is nonetheless highly sceptical about future lockdowns and cautiously optimistic about the data coming out of SA this politicisation of what should be neutral science is depressing. And from my own side too.
The worst elements - the millenarians for want of a better word - are increasingly describing Covid in biblical terms, as a moral destroyer sent to punish us for our libertarian sins, and they are sounding increasingly anti-vax about it. In the rush to deny any form of optimism or complacency about Omicron they are literally filling Twitter with statements that vaccines don't work, going so far as telling us SA is different from Britain or the US because they have more natural immunity rather than vaccination. It's increasingly like a morbid Covid version of the horseshoe theory.
SA is very different to the UK. Just as South Korea is, or Peru, or New Zealand, or Russia. It is not some anti-Boris Remainer pro-lockdown conspiracy to be properly cautious about the encouraging data from Pretoria, and what it might mean for London
For a start I voted for Boris, I’m a Leaver, and I fear and loathe lockdowns. I desperately want this plague over and some of my old life back, I want my friends and family to be safe and well, I want my girls to grow up in a world that isn’t terrified of disease
But Covid has consistently surprised on the downside. Every time we think we’ve beaten it, the fucker returns.
Being open but wary in regards to good news is entirely justified. Indeed it is the only sane approach
UK fusion power company celebrates recruitment from the ... thermonuclear weapons sector.
We’re pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Randewich has joined our Scientific Advisory Board. Professor Randewich is currently Executive Director, Engineering and Science at AWE, which is responsible for the UK Deterrent.. https://twitter.com/FLFusion/status/1471764524655120389
I did my PhD with him. Utter tosser.
I've had a tour of (parts of) AWE, courtesy of a former colleague who worked there (PhD student I did my PhD with at the same institution and a supervisor in common, different fields, some similar techniques). When he worked there he swung us a field trip visit for an undergraduate class our supervisor was taking and I went along as an extra 'adult'. Strictest security I've ever undergone to get into anywhere, which is kind of reassuring, I guess.
I also wrote some software for AWE, for a bomb*. Not sure how morally compromised/how much of a tosser that makes me I'm atoning by being an epidemiologist trying to improve health outcomes so fewer people die an untimely death
*should clarify that perhaps - for a bomb calorimiter, in a study funded by AWE. Nothing to do with nukes, though maybe they had some nefarious purposes for the results. I just wrote the software to analyse the data, didn't know about the funder at the time, but I don't think it would have made me unwilling.
Please don't quote that comment! I'm busy furiously back-pedalling from it. Anyway, it's all a bit hypocritical of me, given that I worked for the MoD for a while in my younger and more naïve days!
Probably doesn't matter unless you're planning on becoming a candidate for $party in the next election. Then you'll have to disown the comments, say they reflect a younger, foolish self, you no longer hold those views, you apologise for any offence caused and - of course - you have nothing against tossers anyway
Comments
https://www.sepa.org.uk/regulations/radioactive-substances/dalgety-bay/
That sort of thing is a real problem in tech museums. I know chaps who are involved in such things and they have to be very careful with cockpit instruments in aircraft.
He evidently made a good go of it though. Strange to see his name here.
Scottish deaths reported 7 today, 19 last week.
Rather curious and likely meaningless, but welcome nonetheless.
I don't think I have the will to do that kind of thing again. I think it's safe enough to say that that Gauteng will be either close to or peaked this week and that's good enough for me.
Edit, don't mean that in a horrible way, just that he was obviously ok with the ethics of working in nuclear weapons. This is also why PB is great, random little insights unavailable anywhere else on the internet.
The idea of Boris Johnson, yes that Boris Johnson, the one who reminisces about his days as a Brussels Hack, chucking stones and enjoying the sound of broken glass...
... the idea that that Boris Johnson is suffering from an unhelpful media is utterly karmic and very very funny.
'The former Scottish Conservatives leader, Ruth Davidson, told BBC Radio 4’s World at One that the prime minister was “drinking in the last chance saloon” after being “put on warning by his MPs”.
MPs “are looking for him after Christmas to come back with a programme for government to sharpen up the operation at No 10, to stop having all of these own goals and burning political capital”, she said.
MPs were “looking for a bit of bloody grip to be exerted,” Baroness Davidson said, adding that “ if they see that they might hold off, but I mean, I think the prime minister has been put on warning by his MPs”.
When asked if there was a successor to Boris Johnson, she acknowledged “there’s not a natural successor”.,[... but wnt on to big up Sunak et aliis]
Some of the soviet stuff was really wild apparently - they had no regard for costs for some areas. User Radium paint like it was going out of style.
A friend bought a military watch in Moscow in the 90s. Few dollars. Ran like shit, so he took it to a watch maker friend. Who told him that it was the movement stolen out of a high end Swiss watch from the 60s. Complete with x number of jewels fro bearings. But it had been slapped together and never regulated... So, he tuned it up and it ran to seconds per week....
BoJo literally caught breaking the law
We often talk a great deal of rubbish (I know I do), but some of it is interesting.
Let's say there's two equally transmissible versions of the virus, let's call them X-ray and Yankee variants. Both equally transmissible but the X-ray variant is much less deadly and the Yankee variant is much more deadly. Both variants give high cross immunity.
People in communities where X-ray is dominant would act more relaxed allowing it to spread further and faster.
People in communities where Yanke is dominant would become afraid and reduce contact.
As a result X-ray would find it much easier to spread. Despite having the same transmissibility rates.
So I'm not sure how us being massively better vaccinated than them makes that questionable. Either it's equally dangerous but we're better vaccinated - in which case great, we'll have an even bigger improvement. Or it's inherantly milder, even better.
I am fascinated by how lax so many world leaders have consistently been over COVID. Do you think Putin or Xi is getting on public transport....where as Biden is consistently maskless in big crowds. Presidents have these teams of bodyguards, bullet proof vests and cars etc...but he is an old man, right in the firing line for COVID, and yet he wanders around like no issue.
We were students together and actually friends for a while, though nobody else seemed to like him very much. The thing about his taking the job at AWE wasn't so much that he was OK with the ethics; it was the fact that it simply didn't seem to occur to him to consider the ethics. Nobody else in the group would have considered working for AWE at the time.
The reality is that parliament is a weak not a strong institution. It lacks leadership or the confidence to reform itself. Like an archaic church, it takes refuge in precedent and tradition. There is never the right time to reform.
Lockdown has shown that upheaval and disruption can challenge old ways. Much of education can be performed online without formal lectures. So can the courts of law. Office work need not be shoehorned into a long commute and an eight-hour day. We can now shop at the touch of a button. I know of no one whose work and thus life has not been altered by coronavirus. This may be bad for some, but for others the cloud can have a silver lining. Those others should include parliament.
This morning, North Shropshire has fallen to the Liberal Democrats with the third-biggest swing against the Tories since 1945, with the many, many rule-breaking Christmas parties held last year by Johnson’s people turning out to be a nuclear issue on the doorstep. What can you say? I strongly recommend laughing over spilt milk.
There is a political element too, among opponents of the government. Boris has so successfully come to associate himself with British boosterism and any sense that the country is doing well, that a whole class of commentators sees it as anathema that anything good can happen in here. That to imply Omicron might be a bit milder based on data from South Africa means you are pro-Tory and most probably a Brexiteer. As a woke Liberal remoaner who is nonetheless highly sceptical about future lockdowns and cautiously optimistic about the data coming out of SA this politicisation of what should be neutral science is depressing. And from my own side too.
The worst elements - the millenarians for want of a better word - are increasingly describing Covid in biblical terms, as a moral destroyer sent to punish us for our libertarian sins, and they are sounding increasingly anti-vax about it. In the rush to deny any form of optimism or complacency about Omicron they are literally filling Twitter with statements that vaccines don't work, going so far as telling us SA is different from Britain or the US because they have more natural immunity rather than vaccination. It's increasingly like a morbid Covid version of the horseshoe theory.
We will see.
We have a very different age profile, and a very different pattern of prior infection. Against that we don’t have SA’s awful HIV issue, we are wealthier, much more vaxxed
There are too many variables to say with certainty that Omicron will be milder than Delta in UK/EU/USA. Neither can we say what the outcome will be even if it is milder, given the vastly increased transmissibility. There IS some hopeful early evidence from SA that apocalypse will be avoided
I honestly think that’s as far as you can go. Beyond that it’s all predisposition - optimist, pessimist, paranoid, fearful, etc
Just the life-size bag of wind.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59696499
Fingers and toes crossed....
Instead, the complaints from voters pointed to a wider dissatisfaction with the prime minister
@guardian piece
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/17/tories-johnson-lost-north-shropshire-mps-voters
You can take the age profile off your list as a factor - the differences to prior waves are consistent across all ages.
I really can't see how we wouldn't have had SAGE resignation flounces about lack of lockdown by now if they didn't also think it's going to be milder (whether inherantly, or due to vaccines) because it's very obvious there's going to be A LOT of cases.
Understandable that they wouldn't want to say it in public and undermine the scary message, but their actions make no sense otherwise.
So it's not a case of the disease being any milder, but that the environment and circumstances in which virus is operating have changed the outcomes compared to what would happen in an earlier wave.
Which means you really, really do not want an unvaccinated or poorly vaccinated population being hit by Omicron as your first significant wave of infection.
I also wrote some software for AWE, for a bomb*. Not sure how morally compromised/how much of a tosser that makes me
*should clarify that perhaps - for a bomb calorimiter, in a study funded by AWE. Nothing to do with nukes, though maybe they had some nefarious purposes for the results. I just wrote the software to analyse the data, didn't know about the funder at the time, but I don't think it would have made me unwilling.
AJ and Kai are out of Strictly.
I’m pretty sure that’s what some of them believe. This thing is ridiculously transmissible. We just have to brace - and hope that it fizzles out quick, as SEEMS to be happening in Gauteng
On the other hand, the actions of other governments - Germany, France, Denmark, now Ireland - governments who have their own excellent scientists, do reveal fear in the highest echelons, despite the data from SA
Guessing AJ isn't Anthony Joshua then? No idea who he and Kai are.
The Ruth Davidson project was an empty bad of vacuous nothing supported by kids gloves treatment by her former BBC and media colleagues.
The profile changes are (with some fag packet stuff):
1. Omicron spreads faster -> higher cases -> higher Hospitalisations -> higher deaths like for like.
Let's say 10x cases = 10x deaths
2. Split of cases: a bigger proportion of Omicron cases are going to be in the protected rather than unprotected
OK, so you go from the unimmunised having half the cases, to the immunised getting 90% of cases -> 0.2x death rate
3. But, changing the proportion of vaccinated to unvaccinated getting also changes the age profile, since kids are heavily unvaccinated -> 4x death rate
4. Omicron is innately milder (I think confirmed now) -> lower deaths like for like -> 0.4x death rate (tbc from SA next excess mortality which should clarify the large noise : signal still in their data).
5. Immune escape -> reduction in vaccination protection -> increased relative severity in the vaccinated case for case (i.e. severity increases by a bigger factor than cases do) - 2x death rate
(note: a UK factor less relevant to SA)
6. Additional vaccination to counter immune escape -> caveat, gains from booster vaccination of the oldest are already substantially, but not entirely, banked in the current figures -> booster vaccination in younger people banks smaller gains -> 0.66x death rate.
So, this fag packet data says for 10x the cases (would equate to 7m people, 10% of population getting it in peak week) 4x the deaths of now (would equate to 3-4k dying in the peak week)
But the range of multipliers here means you can come up with a lot of different outcomes quite reasonably.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/rugby-union/59702167
RACCCCCISTEEE....
All this hobnobbing with nuclear weapons engineers..
The clip, fine film it is, play written by actor, film directed by actors, featuring actors, the result is acting, comes across a little bit Black Adder simply because Adder is pastiche of Shakespeare played at uni isn’t it? 🙂
Two further points, someone up thread made one about the point of this relationship in the play is how the King must distance himself from wastrels like Falstaff. I like that.
And the political allegory we are trying to make? Having heard the chimes of midnight, the Conservative Party must now distance themselves from their wastrel Falstaff to move on?
I was up for the chimes of 0430 and I still don’t feel very well 🤢
I'd be shocked if Germany wasn't able to source vaccines to get all the boosters done by the end of Jan. I'm sure the UK would do a swap deal on Pfizer, we'll probably have 20-25m leftover from our purchases.
For a start I voted for Boris, I’m a Leaver, and I fear and loathe lockdowns. I desperately want this plague over and some of my old life back, I want my friends and family to be safe and well, I want my girls to grow up in a world that isn’t terrified of disease
But Covid has consistently surprised on the downside. Every time we think we’ve beaten it, the fucker returns.
Being open but wary in regards to good news is entirely justified. Indeed it is the only sane approach
Obviously all this is still very preliminary, so should be treated with some caution.
Imperial College paper here:
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-49-Omicron/