Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
At least if the dreaded Covid hits me now, I can still say I've done the equivalent of one run a day this year...
Nice. I assume that means more than one run on some days. Any particular reason for that?
I prefer to do one long run and get it over with. But I did do a handful of multiple days.
On one day I did three runs. I did a ten-miler in the dark one Sunday this autumn, then got home for breakfast. Mrs J was feeling unwell, so I did the junior Parkrun with the little 'un. Whilst there, I met Mrs J's friend. They were meant to be running together, and she asked me to run instead. So I did another four miles after the Parkrun with her. Three runs in a morning: 10 miles, 1.2 miles, and 4 miles.
But I didn't count the park run in my official stats. It was too short...
What distance is the long run?
How many miles/KM are you running a week?
FX: checks...
I think that I've run at least one 10K run every day since the end of June. Aside from one 1-miler, the shortest run I've recorded this year is 3.5 miles.
(There are some runs I do not record; I've just done a 2K with the little 'un; I don't record those on the 'sheet.)
I don't have weekly figures (I'd need to alter my Excel spreadsheet...), but my highest month was July, at 302 miles, or a smidgen ten miles a day.
Very impressive. Well done, perhaps get a marathon or a half on the calendar for next year?
You should get onto Strava friend
I've uploaded the runs on Strava (unpaid for), just so I can find places other people run in my area of interest using their groovy heatmaps. If you'd like to see the madness, PM me.
I use Garmin for my main data storage and munging.
Another Garmin fan, I love my Fenix 6X
Mrs J and I swear by them. They're very good for the task. My only problem is that the strap eventually breaks: then again, I do put it through a lot of punishment....
Mine is a Forerunner 230 (sans heart-rate monitor; I use a strap).
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
Its when you are admitted to hospital for something completely different, but they test you and find you have COVID.
Covid is a Corbynista's dream to control everyone's lives and perfect for that close friend of Jeremy Corbyn, Mark Drakeford
I understand the precautionary principle on this variant but I think we need to take a step back and reflect a bit.
We have no solid evidence that this is going to cause us a significant issue, though there is a chance. Strong guidance to give the Government/NHS/SAGE time to react seems sensible, and people have taken that on board.
Fining people for expressing basic freedoms over a 'maybe' is too far. At this point in the pandemic there has to be some red lines which you cross only when you're 90% sure.
I know it’s an unpopular view, but the UK government are really to be commended on the way they’ve handled the imposition of what are pretty much unprecedented restrictions.
Elsewhere in the world, governments have submitted to civil service authoritarianism, with papers required to go to the shops, and a lack of support for businesses affected by the restrictions. Many places will never give up on the tracking apps, for as long as they can get away with it.
Yes - the UK government (and specifically that part of it which relates to England) have been significantly less awful than almost everywhere else in the developed world.
Yes, it’s been awful everywhere, it’s a damn pandemic, and those with experience only of the UK/England system often won’t realise just how much worse things are elsewhere.
On the other hand, they also don't seem to realise how much more draconian measures have been in the UK than in a lot of other places.
Since July that hasn't been the case. Sadly Boris bottled it on plan b, but hopefully the Cabinet has forced the situation and pushed back hard on another lockdown.
Indeed, the reason I so vehemently opposed Plan B was in no small part because it was bloody useless and once that step was taken people would be immediately demanding more, which is precisely what happened. People who claim "oh its only ..." keep salami slicing away our freedoms. Well no more.
Yes, look at how quickly the national conversation moved from plan b to plan b not being enough. That was alarming for the likes of us who want to preserve as much normality as possible but I'm a little bit confident now that the Tory party plus Cabinet dissent will carry us into the new year at which point it's either too late for restrictions or they aren't necessary.
The "lockdown just in case" mentality is really very prevalent among the public sector bods who are setting the agenda in government. I think "freedom in theory" or "lockdown to preserve our freedoms we've gained" is also the prevailing view.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school. I notice you did not send your kids to a sink school the bright but poor have little choice but to go to!
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
I am absolutely minted and our kids go to the local comp (it is an academy but most secondaries in London are). Rated good not outstanding. Plenty of other parents similar to us, judging from how posh some of our kids' friends talk. House prices are high it's true but that's more because they're nice houses. But half the housing in the catchment, I'm guessing, is social housing so it's far from true that most of the kids at the school have bought their way in somehow. Proportion of minorities and with English as an additional language much higher than average; those on pupil premium broadly average. If actual GCSE grades match the predictions after my eldest's mocks I'll be very happy, but let's see in June.
So still a good school not a crap school even then. If however you live on a council estate and your local comp is inadequate or requires improvement you would have no choice but to attend it even if you were bright enough to get into a grammar school.
Middle class parents however would move to the catchment area of a Good or Outstanding school even if more expensive. Or else start going to church more regularly to gets their children into an Outstanding church school
Most comps are rated good or outstanding. Those that aren't need to be improved. Most gifted working class kids didn't pass the 11 plus when we had grammars, plenty of average middle class kids did. Secondary moderns, where most working class kids went, were often dreadful schools. Very few parents want to see them brought back. Let's focus on improving standards and find a way of breaking the culture of low expectations that affects too many kids, not try to resurrect the failed, divisive policies of the past. I think I'm done on this subject, my substandard comprehensive-schooled brain is growing weary!
No, most gifted working class kids with high IQs easily passed the 11 plus, a few average middle class pupils may also have scraped a pass but that did not hold back high iq working class pupils.
Now if you are poor but high IQ avoiding a requires improvement or inadequate school is a lottery dependent on where your parents live. You would almost certainly have got into a grammar though whereever you lived.
If you are middle class though your parents will buy your education either via private schools or the catchment area of good or outstanding schools. Or they will go to church more regularly for a vicar's reference for a top church school
Why are you continuing to post bullshit without any evidence to back it up when multiple posters have provided examples that show your ideas to be completely and utterly incorrect?
They haven't, they have just used ideological anecdote which I ideologically disagree with.
Plenty on here like Richard Tyndall and Pagan agree with me on grammars
Nope Richard Tyndall posted something that Cookie then showed to be completely regional as I had already argued.
You were making the absurd argument that selective grammars should not select on exam result but solely on catchment area.
In which case they become no different to the best comprehensives which select mainly on house price anyway
Your lack of reading comprehension skills demonstrate that you definitely aren't bright enough to go to a grammar school.
My argument was that the pass mark should be set to ensure the brightest x% of the children in the catchment area of the school are selected and not x-y% with y% coming from children outside the school's catchment area.
BTW all I am arguing for is the conservative approach i.e. how it used to be prior to roughly 1990/91 when academies first appeared and Grammar schools left local authority control.
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
i.e. someone hospitalised with a broken leg, who when tested, turns out to also have covid, but didn't know it. If 10% of London is infected with covid, the number of these will be not insignificant.
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
Like in today's data, where 1/3rd of London covid 'admissions' are people who have already been in hospital for at least 7 days for something else.
Covid is a Corbynista's dream to control everyone's lives and perfect for that close friend of Jeremy Corbyn, Mark Drakeford
I understand the precautionary principle on this variant but I think we need to take a step back and reflect a bit.
We have no solid evidence that this is going to cause us a significant issue, though there is a chance. Strong guidance to give the Government/NHS/SAGE time to react seems sensible, and people have taken that on board.
Fining people for expressing basic freedoms over a 'maybe' is too far. At this point in the pandemic there has to be some red lines which you cross only when you're 90% sure.
I know it’s an unpopular view, but the UK government are really to be commended on the way they’ve handled the imposition of what are pretty much unprecedented restrictions.
Elsewhere in the world, governments have submitted to civil service authoritarianism, with papers required to go to the shops, and a lack of support for businesses affected by the restrictions. Many places will never give up on the tracking apps, for as long as they can get away with it.
Yes - the UK government (and specifically that part of it which relates to England) have been significantly less awful than almost everywhere else in the developed world.
Yes, it’s been awful everywhere, it’s a damn pandemic, and those with experience only of the UK/England system often won’t realise just how much worse things are elsewhere.
On the other hand, they also don't seem to realise how much more draconian measures have been in the UK than in a lot of other places.
Since July that hasn't been the case. Sadly Boris bottled it on plan b, but hopefully the Cabinet has forced the situation and pushed back hard on another lockdown.
Indeed, the reason I so vehemently opposed Plan B was in no small part because it was bloody useless and once that step was taken people would be immediately demanding more, which is precisely what happened. People who claim "oh its only ..." keep salami slicing away our freedoms. Well no more.
Yes, look at how quickly the national conversation moved from plan b to plan b not being enough. That was alarming for the likes of us who want to preserve as much normality as possible but I'm a little bit confident now that the Tory party plus Cabinet dissent will carry us into the new year at which point it's either too late for restrictions or they aren't necessary.
The "lockdown just in case" mentality is really very prevalent among the public sector bods who are setting the agenda in government. I think "freedom in theory" or "lockdown to preserve our freedoms we've gained" is also the prevailing view.
As a society there is going to need to be some serious clear narratives and education going forward e.g. 100-150 deaths a day of a disease isn't that large, especially if we start to strip out the extremely old vulnerable people who would have died of anything and bloody antivaxxers.
The public primed now to keep seeing these daily figures and going ohhhh 150 thats up, that's a lot. 450 people a day die of a heart attack in the UK.
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
i.e. someone hospitalised with a broken leg, who when tested, turns out to also have covid, but didn't know it. If 10% of London is infected with covid, the number of these will be not insignificant.
1/3rd of today's London admissions figure already confirmed incidental, with the other 2/3rds very suspect but we'll have to wait to see on Thursday.
Case number at *only* 90k remains Good News. That increasing numbers of people are voluntarily withdrawing themselves from opportunities to get infected is having an impact.
As always the challenge is how - if - we can pull that down fairly quickly. Establishing a new daily base of 90k would not be good even if we avoid the mega spike in the worst case scenarios.
Covid is a Corbynista's dream to control everyone's lives and perfect for that close friend of Jeremy Corbyn, Mark Drakeford
I understand the precautionary principle on this variant but I think we need to take a step back and reflect a bit.
We have no solid evidence that this is going to cause us a significant issue, though there is a chance. Strong guidance to give the Government/NHS/SAGE time to react seems sensible, and people have taken that on board.
Fining people for expressing basic freedoms over a 'maybe' is too far. At this point in the pandemic there has to be some red lines which you cross only when you're 90% sure.
I know it’s an unpopular view, but the UK government are really to be commended on the way they’ve handled the imposition of what are pretty much unprecedented restrictions.
Elsewhere in the world, governments have submitted to civil service authoritarianism, with papers required to go to the shops, and a lack of support for businesses affected by the restrictions. Many places will never give up on the tracking apps, for as long as they can get away with it.
Yes - the UK government (and specifically that part of it which relates to England) have been significantly less awful than almost everywhere else in the developed world.
Yes, it’s been awful everywhere, it’s a damn pandemic, and those with experience only of the UK/England system often won’t realise just how much worse things are elsewhere.
On the other hand, they also don't seem to realise how much more draconian measures have been in the UK than in a lot of other places.
No, the UK's measures have not been draconian (relatively speaking).
It was actually argued the UK weren't been strict enough...remember places like France it was "papers please" if you wanted to leave home (and this was allowed only under very strict criteria, food and medicine basically) and there was no travel outside a very small area. Lots of countries you couldn't even go out to exercise.
Sure, some places were stricter, some less strict. Just objecting to the idea that the *everywhere* else had stricter measures. Or that tracking apps are compulsory or even often used in many places.
I regard rules telling you not to leave your house unless it's for reasons x, y, or z as very draconian. We haven't had them here in NRW - except for an 11pm 5am curfew in May. Or a law making it illegal to leave the country without an approved reason I also regard as very extreme.
And passing a law effectively criminalising protest while people are distracted.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school. I notice you did not send your kids to a sink school the bright but poor have little choice but to go to!
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
I am absolutely minted and our kids go to the local comp (it is an academy but most secondaries in London are). Rated good not outstanding. Plenty of other parents similar to us, judging from how posh some of our kids' friends talk. House prices are high it's true but that's more because they're nice houses. But half the housing in the catchment, I'm guessing, is social housing so it's far from true that most of the kids at the school have bought their way in somehow. Proportion of minorities and with English as an additional language much higher than average; those on pupil premium broadly average. If actual GCSE grades match the predictions after my eldest's mocks I'll be very happy, but let's see in June.
So still a good school not a crap school even then. If however you live on a council estate and your local comp is inadequate or requires improvement you would have no choice but to attend it even if you were bright enough to get into a grammar school.
Middle class parents however would move to the catchment area of a Good or Outstanding school even if more expensive. Or else start going to church more regularly to gets their children into an Outstanding church school
Most comps are rated good or outstanding. Those that aren't need to be improved. Most gifted working class kids didn't pass the 11 plus when we had grammars, plenty of average middle class kids did. Secondary moderns, where most working class kids went, were often dreadful schools. Very few parents want to see them brought back. Let's focus on improving standards and find a way of breaking the culture of low expectations that affects too many kids, not try to resurrect the failed, divisive policies of the past. I think I'm done on this subject, my substandard comprehensive-schooled brain is growing weary!
No, most gifted working class kids with high IQs easily passed the 11 plus, a few average middle class pupils may also have scraped a pass but that did not hold back high iq working class pupils.
Now if you are poor but high IQ avoiding a requires improvement or inadequate school is a lottery dependent on where your parents live. You would almost certainly have got into a grammar though whereever you lived.
If you are middle class though your parents will buy your education either via private schools or the catchment area of good or outstanding schools. Or they will go to church more regularly for a vicar's reference for a top church school
Why are you continuing to post bullshit without any evidence to back it up when multiple posters have provided examples that show your ideas to be completely and utterly incorrect?
They haven't, they have just used ideological anecdote which I ideologically disagree with.
Plenty on here like Richard Tyndall and Pagan agree with me on grammars
Nope Richard Tyndall posted something that Cookie then showed to be completely regional as I had already argued.
You were making the absurd argument that selective grammars should not select on exam result but solely on catchment area.
In which case they become no different to the best comprehensives which select mainly on house price anyway
Your reading comprehension skills demonstrate that you definitely aren't bright enough to go to a grammar school.
My argument was that the pass mark should be set to ensure the brightest x% of the children in the catchment area of the school are selected and not x-y% with y% coming from children outside the school's catchment area.
So effectively you want to deny a grammar school place to a pupil slightly outside its catchment area even though that pupil got a higher mark on the 11 or 13 plus than a pupil within the catchment area? That rather defeats the point of grammar schools which are based on entrance on academic merit not house price or vicar's reference as the best comprehensive or academies are
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school. I notice you did not send your kids to a sink school the bright but poor have little choice but to go to!
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
I am absolutely minted and our kids go to the local comp (it is an academy but most secondaries in London are). Rated good not outstanding. Plenty of other parents similar to us, judging from how posh some of our kids' friends talk. House prices are high it's true but that's more because they're nice houses. But half the housing in the catchment, I'm guessing, is social housing so it's far from true that most of the kids at the school have bought their way in somehow. Proportion of minorities and with English as an additional language much higher than average; those on pupil premium broadly average. If actual GCSE grades match the predictions after my eldest's mocks I'll be very happy, but let's see in June.
So still a good school not a crap school even then. If however you live on a council estate and your local comp is inadequate or requires improvement you would have no choice but to attend it even if you were bright enough to get into a grammar school.
Middle class parents however would move to the catchment area of a Good or Outstanding school even if more expensive. Or else start going to church more regularly to gets their children into an Outstanding church school
Most comps are rated good or outstanding. Those that aren't need to be improved. Most gifted working class kids didn't pass the 11 plus when we had grammars, plenty of average middle class kids did. Secondary moderns, where most working class kids went, were often dreadful schools. Very few parents want to see them brought back. Let's focus on improving standards and find a way of breaking the culture of low expectations that affects too many kids, not try to resurrect the failed, divisive policies of the past. I think I'm done on this subject, my substandard comprehensive-schooled brain is growing weary!
No, most gifted working class kids with high IQs easily passed the 11 plus, a few average middle class pupils may also have scraped a pass but that did not hold back high iq working class pupils.
Now if you are poor but high IQ avoiding a requires improvement or inadequate school is a lottery dependent on where your parents live. You would almost certainly have got into a grammar though whereever you lived.
If you are middle class though your parents will buy your education either via private schools or the catchment area of good or outstanding schools. Or they will go to church more regularly for a vicar's reference for a top church school
Why are you continuing to post bullshit without any evidence to back it up when multiple posters have provided examples that show your ideas to be completely and utterly incorrect?
They haven't, they have just used ideological anecdote which I ideologically disagree with.
Plenty on here like Richard Tyndall and Pagan agree with me on grammars
Nope Richard Tyndall posted something that Cookie then showed to be completely regional as I had already argued.
You were making the absurd argument that selective grammars should not select on exam result but solely on catchment area.
In which case they become no different to the best comprehensives which select mainly on house price anyway
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school. I notice you did not send your kids to a sink school the bright but poor have little choice but to go to!
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
I am absolutely minted and our kids go to the local comp (it is an academy but most secondaries in London are). Rated good not outstanding. Plenty of other parents similar to us, judging from how posh some of our kids' friends talk. House prices are high it's true but that's more because they're nice houses. But half the housing in the catchment, I'm guessing, is social housing so it's far from true that most of the kids at the school have bought their way in somehow. Proportion of minorities and with English as an additional language much higher than average; those on pupil premium broadly average. If actual GCSE grades match the predictions after my eldest's mocks I'll be very happy, but let's see in June.
So still a good school not a crap school even then. If however you live on a council estate and your local comp is inadequate or requires improvement you would have no choice but to attend it even if you were bright enough to get into a grammar school.
Middle class parents however would move to the catchment area of a Good or Outstanding school even if more expensive. Or else start going to church more regularly to gets their children into an Outstanding church school
Most comps are rated good or outstanding. Those that aren't need to be improved. Most gifted working class kids didn't pass the 11 plus when we had grammars, plenty of average middle class kids did. Secondary moderns, where most working class kids went, were often dreadful schools. Very few parents want to see them brought back. Let's focus on improving standards and find a way of breaking the culture of low expectations that affects too many kids, not try to resurrect the failed, divisive policies of the past. I think I'm done on this subject, my substandard comprehensive-schooled brain is growing weary!
No, most gifted working class kids with high IQs easily passed the 11 plus, a few average middle class pupils may also have scraped a pass but that did not hold back high iq working class pupils.
Now if you are poor but high IQ avoiding a requires improvement or inadequate school is a lottery dependent on where your parents live. You would almost certainly have got into a grammar though whereever you lived.
If you are middle class though your parents will buy your education either via private schools or the catchment area of good or outstanding schools. Or they will go to church more regularly for a vicar's reference for a top church school
Why are you continuing to post bullshit without any evidence to back it up when multiple posters have provided examples that show your ideas to be completely and utterly incorrect?
They haven't, they have just used ideological anecdote which I ideologically disagree with.
Plenty on here like Richard Tyndall and Pagan agree with me on grammars
Nope Richard Tyndall posted something that Cookie then showed to be completely regional as I had already argued.
You were making the absurd argument that selective grammars should not select on exam result but solely on catchment area.
In which case they become no different to the best comprehensives which select mainly on house price anyway
I think Eek was arguing (I certainly am) that selective grammars should select almost solely from within their catchment. So Trafford grammar schools would be attended by children from Trafford; Lincolnshire grammar schools only by children from Lincolnshire - and so on. But can select which children from those authorities to offer places to.
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
i.e. someone hospitalised with a broken leg, who when tested, turns out to also have covid, but didn't know it. If 10% of London is infected with covid, the number of these will be not insignificant.
Nevertheless, this puts other patients at risk and the staff too, through contagion. So it's not entirely benign, obviously. And some of those other people will have conditions that don't go well with a dose of covid.
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
Someone that comes in for non-Covid reasons (ie broken arm) and happens to test positive for COVID at the same time so counts as a 'admission with COVID'
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
i.e. someone hospitalised with a broken leg, who when tested, turns out to also have covid, but didn't know it. If 10% of London is infected with covid, the number of these will be not insignificant.
Nevertheless, this puts other patients at risk and the staff too, through contagion. So it's not entirely benign, obviously. And some of those other people will have conditions that don't go well with a dose of covid.
No doubt, though it doesn't necessarily increase overall bed occupancy vs what would otherwise have been the case.
Is anybody going to stick there neck out and predict todays UK Case numbers?
The case numbers will make headlines, but it's the London hospital numbers that will make destiny.
I wonder what the threshold for action they've set on the London hospital admissions. We expect them to continue up, but how high would they conclude was problematic?
And how closely are they able to separate out the 'with' covid vs 'because' covid which is what really matters? I know that they publish this data weekly, but daily observation of this and (when available) length of stay are the really critical pieces of information as I see it.
That doesn't matter too much, because given a decent estimate of the infection rate in the area you can estimate how many you'd expect to have admitted "with" rather than "because" and incorporate that into your threshold number.
So why not make it a condition of supporting the government's plan b measures? I mean Labour could literally have claimed £2bn for businesses as their measure, the government would simply have had to agree given the scope of rebellion in their own party.
Perhaps, but different issue. I merely intended to point out the laziness of so many on here in asserting that Labour has been quiet on the issue of support for businesses (and individuals who have to isolate). They haven't. It's fake news.
Honestly, a letter is window dressing compared to the opportunity to force the government into supporting their amendment for support cash. It was an error for Starmer to wave through the plan b measures without getting money for businesses in return and now the chancellor is able to take credit for it. Just as Boris is a bit useless, I think Labour are as well. Blair would never have let an opportunity like that go to waste. He'd have got the money and had the media dub it "Labour's Christmas Bonus" or something like that.
I think not. What would have happened - and this is why Starmer refrained - is the government would have refused to play ball, said the 2 issues shouldn't be coupled, and tabled Plan B. Labour would then have been faced with a choice of caving and backing it (weak) or voting it down, in which case - "Labour playing politics with people's lives!"
Starmer is playing Covid well and has done from the onset. He's pissed off some libertarian types and antilockdowners, most of whom aren't going to vote Labour in any event, but the core project is to convince a critical mass of the apolitical floating voters of England that Labour are a solid, trustworthy proposition. He's getting there with this, helped enormously by Johnson's implosion.
No, the government would have caved. Plain and simple. They were far too invested in plan b by the time it got to a vote and the scale of the Tory rebellion was known to be larger than the Tory majority. The money was there for the taking and coupling it to plan b made a lot of sense, especially since it's happened anyway.
"We can only support a plan b that has a plan b for British hospitality" lovely soundbite.
It's a fine enough soundbite but that's as good as it would have got for Labour. The govt wouldn't have caved. The politics of that would have been awful for them. They'd have refused to couple the 2 things and put Labour in a bad place. Starmer knew this, I'm sure, hence chose the "Labour can be trusted not to play politics with public health" line.
Btw, I'm not saying I agree or disagree with plan B, or with bailing the hospitality sector, I'm just talking about the politics of it. Starmer's playing things well.
Today's Tuesday figure really does start to feel like behaviour change has suppressed Omicron. Being a Tuesday should have been much higher.
Will we even see a 100k reporting day?
Again, I thought there was a backlog as the numbers seemed wrong. But looking at addition day, there is a bit of stretch out - 3.7k cases added to 16th, but the biggest additions are 19th (45.7k) then 20th (22.5k), then 18th (10.8k) and that doesn't seem an unusual mix to me.
So, I think it goes in the direction that (a) Omicron is relatively low R rate, (b) but is very short generation time, so (c) suppression below 1 hasn't been that hard to achieve.*
* The converse would be to note that Boris Johnson's DNA has an R rate of 3.5-4.0 (7 or 8 kids that are half his), but with an average generation time of 40+ years, so the world isn't entirely filled with Boris Johnson's DNA yet. Omicron is pulling the exact opposite trick.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school. I notice you did not send your kids to a sink school the bright but poor have little choice but to go to!
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
I am absolutely minted and our kids go to the local comp (it is an academy but most secondaries in London are). Rated good not outstanding. Plenty of other parents similar to us, judging from how posh some of our kids' friends talk. House prices are high it's true but that's more because they're nice houses. But half the housing in the catchment, I'm guessing, is social housing so it's far from true that most of the kids at the school have bought their way in somehow. Proportion of minorities and with English as an additional language much higher than average; those on pupil premium broadly average. If actual GCSE grades match the predictions after my eldest's mocks I'll be very happy, but let's see in June.
So still a good school not a crap school even then. If however you live on a council estate and your local comp is inadequate or requires improvement you would have no choice but to attend it even if you were bright enough to get into a grammar school.
Middle class parents however would move to the catchment area of a Good or Outstanding school even if more expensive. Or else start going to church more regularly to gets their children into an Outstanding church school
Most comps are rated good or outstanding. Those that aren't need to be improved. Most gifted working class kids didn't pass the 11 plus when we had grammars, plenty of average middle class kids did. Secondary moderns, where most working class kids went, were often dreadful schools. Very few parents want to see them brought back. Let's focus on improving standards and find a way of breaking the culture of low expectations that affects too many kids, not try to resurrect the failed, divisive policies of the past. I think I'm done on this subject, my substandard comprehensive-schooled brain is growing weary!
No, most gifted working class kids with high IQs easily passed the 11 plus, a few average middle class pupils may also have scraped a pass but that did not hold back high iq working class pupils.
Now if you are poor but high IQ avoiding a requires improvement or inadequate school is a lottery dependent on where your parents live. You would almost certainly have got into a grammar though whereever you lived.
If you are middle class though your parents will buy your education either via private schools or the catchment area of good or outstanding schools. Or they will go to church more regularly for a vicar's reference for a top church school
Why are you continuing to post bullshit without any evidence to back it up when multiple posters have provided examples that show your ideas to be completely and utterly incorrect?
They haven't, they have just used ideological anecdote which I ideologically disagree with.
Plenty on here like Richard Tyndall and Pagan agree with me on grammars
Nope Richard Tyndall posted something that Cookie then showed to be completely regional as I had already argued.
You were making the absurd argument that selective grammars should not select on exam result but solely on catchment area.
In which case they become no different to the best comprehensives which select mainly on house price anyway
Your reading comprehension skills demonstrate that you definitely aren't bright enough to go to a grammar school.
My argument was that the pass mark should be set to ensure the brightest x% of the children in the catchment area of the school are selected and not x-y% with y% coming from children outside the school's catchment area.
So effectively you want to deny a grammar school place to a pupil slightly outside its catchment area even though that pupil got a higher mark on the 11 or 13 plus than a pupil within the catchment area? That rather defeats the point of grammar schools which are based on entrance on academic merit not house price or vicar's reference as the best comprehensive or academies are
No it doesn't.
1) house prices aren't an issue in Buckinghamshire. you can't tell me that High Wycombe is more expensive than Uxbridge or Rickmansworth / Pinner / Harrow is cheaper than Chesham.
2) If you want to live in an area with Grammar schools go and create them - we have a Tory Government with an 80 seat majority, why aren't they creating them.
Case number at *only* 90k remains Good News. That increasing numbers of people are voluntarily withdrawing themselves from opportunities to get infected is having an impact.
As always the challenge is how - if - we can pull that down fairly quickly. Establishing a new daily base of 90k would not be good even if we avoid the mega spike in the worst case scenarios.
Why not?
If its a flat 90k and that's not overwhelming the NHS then that would be great, until the virus finishes burning through everyone.
Exponential growth is bad. Flat with no growth isn't a problem. Why are you so opposed to flat?
Covid is a Corbynista's dream to control everyone's lives and perfect for that close friend of Jeremy Corbyn, Mark Drakeford
I understand the precautionary principle on this variant but I think we need to take a step back and reflect a bit.
We have no solid evidence that this is going to cause us a significant issue, though there is a chance. Strong guidance to give the Government/NHS/SAGE time to react seems sensible, and people have taken that on board.
Fining people for expressing basic freedoms over a 'maybe' is too far. At this point in the pandemic there has to be some red lines which you cross only when you're 90% sure.
I know it’s an unpopular view, but the UK government are really to be commended on the way they’ve handled the imposition of what are pretty much unprecedented restrictions.
Elsewhere in the world, governments have submitted to civil service authoritarianism, with papers required to go to the shops, and a lack of support for businesses affected by the restrictions. Many places will never give up on the tracking apps, for as long as they can get away with it.
Yes - the UK government (and specifically that part of it which relates to England) have been significantly less awful than almost everywhere else in the developed world.
Yes, it’s been awful everywhere, it’s a damn pandemic, and those with experience only of the UK/England system often won’t realise just how much worse things are elsewhere.
On the other hand, they also don't seem to realise how much more draconian measures have been in the UK than in a lot of other places.
No, the UK's measures have not been draconian (relatively speaking).
It was actually argued the UK weren't been strict enough...remember places like France it was "papers please" if you wanted to leave home (and this was allowed only under very strict criteria, food and medicine basically) and there was no travel outside a very small area. Lots of countries you couldn't even go out to exercise.
Sure, some places were stricter, some less strict. Just objecting to the idea that the *everywhere* else had stricter measures. Or that tracking apps are compulsory or even often used in many places.
I regard rules telling you not to leave your house unless it's for reasons x, y, or z as very draconian. We haven't had them here in NRW - except for an 11pm 5am curfew in May. Or a law making it illegal to leave the country without an approved reason I also regard as very extreme.
And passing a law effectively criminalising protest while people are distracted.
I would say that England have always urged on the side of less draconian end of the scale of things we have seen. Not just the rules, but actual enforcement. Obviously not Swedish approach, but even the "lockdown", it was still fairly lax.
Yes there were the odd story in the media of some police man getting over zealous about 3 on a park bench, but in general there really wasn't that strict enforcement. As long as you weren't obviously taking the absolute piss and claiming yes I am still exercising 12hrs after I started you were left alone or no officer its not a 100 person house party, its my "support" bubble, you could bend the rules plenty.
The reasons you could leave your home were fairly wide, mask wearing has all sorts of exemptions, etc. We always allowed under the law protests.
On topic, when the ratings go this negative then there is usually no comeback.
I suspect Boris Johnson will be safe until May's elections, the last time they were held it was a tie between Labour and the Tories, Any Lab lead in NESV should lead to Tory losses, the bigger the lead, the more losses.
I suspect the Lib Dems may also help create a carnage for the blue meanies.
Haven't you just rejoined the party you are calling meanies?
I've been calling them the Blue Meanies for years, as a joke at the expense of lefties who think Tories are evil and that Labour have a higher moral purpose.
ooh, have you rejoined the Tories Eagles? Presumably because you have a view on Boris's successor - who do you favour?
Has to be Hunt once more.
Doubt he'll make the final two. I have it down as Rishi vs the CRG candidate.
Rishi is going to fall short.
That's interesting information, Liz Truss stolen his base?
My expectation is that the leadership contest will be preceded by a cost of living crisis which is going to tarnish Sunak's popularity.
I thought you were just dissing his height with your comment!
Economic woes are not likely to favour the chancellor, it's true.
Still looking good that case numbers may have plateaued. Case numbers have been pretty level for 6 days now so reasonably sure we are no longer seeing exponential growth. A million cases a day looking increasingly unlikely.
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
i.e. someone hospitalised with a broken leg, who when tested, turns out to also have covid, but didn't know it. If 10% of London is infected with covid, the number of these will be not insignificant.
1/3rd of today's London admissions figure already confirmed incidental, with the other 2/3rds very suspect but we'll have to wait to see on Thursday.
that sounds reassuring, but where are you getting that number from?
Case number at *only* 90k remains Good News. That increasing numbers of people are voluntarily withdrawing themselves from opportunities to get infected is having an impact.
As always the challenge is how - if - we can pull that down fairly quickly. Establishing a new daily base of 90k would not be good even if we avoid the mega spike in the worst case scenarios.
Not necessarily, if 90k cases per day with few to no restrictions and with no increase in hospitalisations is where we end up I'm not sure it makes any difference. 9k, 90k or 900k what matters is the hospitalisation funnel.
My Wife’s had 2 x AZ, 2 x Moderna and now the Dr has said she’s likely had Covid in the past too. She’s sending an application in to join The Avengers.
Case number at *only* 90k remains Good News. That increasing numbers of people are voluntarily withdrawing themselves from opportunities to get infected is having an impact.
As always the challenge is how - if - we can pull that down fairly quickly. Establishing a new daily base of 90k would not be good even if we avoid the mega spike in the worst case scenarios.
Not necessarily, if 90k cases per day with few to no restrictions and with no increase in hospitalisations is where we end up I'm not sure it makes any difference. 9k, 90k or 900k what matters is the hospitalisation funnel.
I'd go further than you, if you can have 90k going into the natural immunity funnel with the same hospitalisation funnel as used to be 9k then that is an entirely good thing.
The more we can get through the natural immunity funnel, without breaching the hospitalisation funnel, the better.
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
i.e. someone hospitalised with a broken leg, who when tested, turns out to also have covid, but didn't know it. If 10% of London is infected with covid, the number of these will be not insignificant.
1/3rd of today's London admissions figure already confirmed incidental, with the other 2/3rds very suspect but we'll have to wait to see on Thursday.
that sounds reassuring, but where are you getting that number from?
Scroll down to daily hospital data and download. The file breaks down admissions by type and category 3 excludes cases diagnosed in existing long term patients. Much more relevant measure for new bed pressure and much flatter trend than the headline.
Obviously plenty of the admissions left will also be incidental, but we only get that broken out at a beds occupied level each week.
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
i.e. someone hospitalised with a broken leg, who when tested, turns out to also have covid, but didn't know it. If 10% of London is infected with covid, the number of these will be not insignificant.
1/3rd of today's London admissions figure already confirmed incidental, with the other 2/3rds very suspect but we'll have to wait to see on Thursday.
Don't know the exact numbers but that is a factor, yes. A chunk of the hospital cases are patients in for something else, I understand. So if you see "100 new hospitalizations" a mental image of 100 people being taken in for Covid is not accurate.
Boosters - 13 million to go in England and Scotland, 5.6 million in the 40+
Cases - a complex situation. R in London is beginning to turn down (rate of increase slowing). Other regions are starting to take off (see the individual regional cases graphs).
The age split is clearly seen here
Hospitalisations - rising slowly. This seems to be due to the age split referenced above - big case rises are mostly in the younger groups at the moment.
So why not make it a condition of supporting the government's plan b measures? I mean Labour could literally have claimed £2bn for businesses as their measure, the government would simply have had to agree given the scope of rebellion in their own party.
Perhaps, but different issue. I merely intended to point out the laziness of so many on here in asserting that Labour has been quiet on the issue of support for businesses (and individuals who have to isolate). They haven't. It's fake news.
Honestly, a letter is window dressing compared to the opportunity to force the government into supporting their amendment for support cash. It was an error for Starmer to wave through the plan b measures without getting money for businesses in return and now the chancellor is able to take credit for it. Just as Boris is a bit useless, I think Labour are as well. Blair would never have let an opportunity like that go to waste. He'd have got the money and had the media dub it "Labour's Christmas Bonus" or something like that.
I think not. What would have happened - and this is why Starmer refrained - is the government would have refused to play ball, said the 2 issues shouldn't be coupled, and tabled Plan B. Labour would then have been faced with a choice of caving and backing it (weak) or voting it down, in which case - "Labour playing politics with people's lives!"
Starmer is playing Covid well and has done from the onset. He's pissed off some libertarian types and antilockdowners, most of whom aren't going to vote Labour in any event, but the core project is to convince a critical mass of the apolitical floating voters of England that Labour are a solid, trustworthy proposition. He's getting there with this, helped enormously by Johnson's implosion.
No, the government would have caved. Plain and simple. They were far too invested in plan b by the time it got to a vote and the scale of the Tory rebellion was known to be larger than the Tory majority. The money was there for the taking and coupling it to plan b made a lot of sense, especially since it's happened anyway.
"We can only support a plan b that has a plan b for British hospitality" lovely soundbite.
Well, except for all the (mistaken) talk of the rebellion bleeding away to 20/30 MPs... Bit of a gamble either way. I think Starmer called it right because people hate it when politicians play politics. Of course, the secret is that politicians are usually, if not always, playing politics. The trick is to play while looking like you're not playing. On that measure, Starmer did well and got to play (as PhilipThompson said) at not playing politics.
My Wife’s had 2 x AZ, 2 x Moderna and now the Dr has said she’s likely had Covid in the past too. She’s sending an application in to join The Avengers.
I didn't know they were giving out 4th jabs yet? My elderly folks will be in that category, but haven't had them yet.
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
Its when you are admitted to hospital for something completely different, but they test you and find you have COVID.
It doesn't necessarily mean it is benign. Anaesthesia even in asymptomatic cases greatly increases the risk of death. An asymptomatic covid in a hip fracture patient is quite risky for example.
Still looking good that case numbers may have plateaued. Case numbers have been pretty level for 6 days now so reasonably sure we are no longer seeing exponential growth. A million cases a day looking increasingly unlikely.
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
Its when you are admitted to hospital for something completely different, but they test you and find you have COVID.
It doesn't necessarily mean it is benign. Anaesthesia even in asymptomatic cases greatly increases the risk of death. An asymptomatic covid in a hip fracture patient is quite risky for example.
Never said it was. It was just asked what incidental meant.
It seems less than ideal to get such a nasty virus when you are possibly already sick with something else. Just like norovirus kills a load of hospitalised people after they picked it up while on the wards.
I imagine going forward this is going to be an ongoing issue for a long time to come in hospitals, where like norovirus etc have been problematic, that COVID transmission among sick patients will be as well.
My Wife’s had 2 x AZ, 2 x Moderna and now the Dr has said she’s likely had Covid in the past too. She’s sending an application in to join The Avengers.
I didn't know they were giving out 4th jabs yet? My elderly folks will be in that category, but haven't had them yet.
They are for immunocompromised. Some people have even more as if they were engaged in a trial, they can then get a routine one afterwards.
He is there for two purposes: 1) To Get Brexit Done. That's done. Tick. Leave the details to someone else. 2) Keep Corbyn out. Tick. done.
Following that, there's levelling up. But that's rather more complex, and somewhat tricky for a man who doesn't like detail. So Boris has said 'levelling up' many times and even appointed a minister for it. So that's done. Tick.
I'd say he's done all he needs to.
Are you saying he was all along just a tool?
No, I'm saying he's achieved everything he really wants or needs or knows how to. He doesn't have a grand plan of how he would like to see Britain - a bit freer perhaps, a bit less woke. But without really thinking through the details of how this might be brought about or who the winners and losers would be. I don't think this is necessarily a negative. Tony Blair didn't really reshape Britain and did pretty well. Macmillan (who Boris most reminds me of) was in the job for things which were fun, and dislike those parts which were 'a bore'. Not having a grand plan isn't a drawback. And I certainly don't think he was a tool of some shadowy cabal.
On the positive side of his leger, he kept Corbyn out (you think the last two years were bad - imagine the pandemic with Jeremy in charge); he Got Brexit Done (you may not like this, and you may not like the details, but the fact it happened at all was a success by his criteria - he put an end to the drift of 2016-2019), he put in place a team which acquired a lot of vaccines (would Starmer have done this? He'd definitely have gone down the European route) and he lifted lockdown later than I would like but earlier than they did on the continent and earlier than Labour would have done. I simply don't believe Labour would have been any more ept at pandemic management and in most cases would have been worse.
Many people loathe him so much they will not see any positive. There have been positives.
But these positives are now not enough to justify him staying in place. He flouts his own rules, administers chaotically, says yes to everyone, has the opinions of the last person he spoke to and has no grasp of detail (none of which is that much of a surprise to us, even those of us who preferred him to the alternative.)
Time for the Conservative Party to find someone else.
Today's Tuesday figure really does start to feel like behaviour change has suppressed Omicron. Being a Tuesday should have been much higher.
Will we even see a 100k reporting day?
Again, I thought there was a backlog as the numbers seemed wrong. But looking at addition day, there is a bit of stretch out - 3.7k cases added to 16th, but the biggest additions are 19th (45.7k) then 20th (22.5k), then 18th (10.8k) and that doesn't seem an unusual mix to me.
So, I think it goes in the direction that (a) Omicron is relatively low R rate, (b) but is very short generation time, so (c) suppression below 1 hasn't been that hard to achieve.*
* The converse would be to note that Boris Johnson's DNA has an R rate of 3.5-4.0 (7 or 8 kids that are half his), but with an average generation time of 40+ years, so the world isn't entirely filled with Boris Johnson's DNA yet. Omicron is pulling the exact opposite trick.
The figures create problems for everyone. If voluntary "lockdown" (we have never been locked down in this country...) is stopping the exponential spike then it makes the case for formalising it. If its a lack of testing capacity and we're going to see a catch-up explosion then it makes the case for more restrictions. With *only* 90k cases as the current stabilised level, and Christmas weekend to come along with positive tests from the people infected who haven't had symptoms yet, it's likely to go pop just as they make their decision.
Would have been far better if we had seen a huuuuuuge spike which inevitably would top out and collapse back downward. The "attack the science" commentators might want to consider that the exponential forecast would be better for no formal restrictions than this. Because the last thing we want is "lockdown".
My Wife’s had 2 x AZ, 2 x Moderna and now the Dr has said she’s likely had Covid in the past too. She’s sending an application in to join The Avengers.
I didn't know they were giving out 4th jabs yet? My elderly folks will be in that category, but haven't had them yet.
They are for immunocompromised. Some people have even more as if they were engaged in a trial, they can then get a routine one afterwards.
Yes I know...my elderly parents are immunocompromised. That is why I was asking if that roll out had begun yet, as they will be due them. Or if it was 4 jabs because of a vaccine trial.
Still looking good that case numbers may have plateaued. Case numbers have been pretty level for 6 days now so reasonably sure we are no longer seeing exponential growth. A million cases a day looking increasingly unlikely.
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school. I notice you did not send your kids to a sink school the bright but poor have little choice but to go to!
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
I am absolutely minted and our kids go to the local comp (it is an academy but most secondaries in London are). Rated good not outstanding. Plenty of other parents similar to us, judging from how posh some of our kids' friends talk. House prices are high it's true but that's more because they're nice houses. But half the housing in the catchment, I'm guessing, is social housing so it's far from true that most of the kids at the school have bought their way in somehow. Proportion of minorities and with English as an additional language much higher than average; those on pupil premium broadly average. If actual GCSE grades match the predictions after my eldest's mocks I'll be very happy, but let's see in June.
So still a good school not a crap school even then. If however you live on a council estate and your local comp is inadequate or requires improvement you would have no choice but to attend it even if you were bright enough to get into a grammar school.
Middle class parents however would move to the catchment area of a Good or Outstanding school even if more expensive. Or else start going to church more regularly to gets their children into an Outstanding church school
Most comps are rated good or outstanding. Those that aren't need to be improved. Most gifted working class kids didn't pass the 11 plus when we had grammars, plenty of average middle class kids did. Secondary moderns, where most working class kids went, were often dreadful schools. Very few parents want to see them brought back. Let's focus on improving standards and find a way of breaking the culture of low expectations that affects too many kids, not try to resurrect the failed, divisive policies of the past. I think I'm done on this subject, my substandard comprehensive-schooled brain is growing weary!
No, most gifted working class kids with high IQs easily passed the 11 plus, a few average middle class pupils may also have scraped a pass but that did not hold back high iq working class pupils.
Now if you are poor but high IQ avoiding a requires improvement or inadequate school is a lottery dependent on where your parents live. You would almost certainly have got into a grammar though whereever you lived.
If you are middle class though your parents will buy your education either via private schools or the catchment area of good or outstanding schools. Or they will go to church more regularly for a vicar's reference for a top church school
Why are you continuing to post bullshit without any evidence to back it up when multiple posters have provided examples that show your ideas to be completely and utterly incorrect?
They haven't, they have just used ideological anecdote which I ideologically disagree with.
Plenty on here like Richard Tyndall and Pagan agree with me on grammars
Nope Richard Tyndall posted something that Cookie then showed to be completely regional as I had already argued.
You were making the absurd argument that selective grammars should not select on exam result but solely on catchment area.
In which case they become no different to the best comprehensives which select mainly on house price anyway
Your reading comprehension skills demonstrate that you definitely aren't bright enough to go to a grammar school.
My argument was that the pass mark should be set to ensure the brightest x% of the children in the catchment area of the school are selected and not x-y% with y% coming from children outside the school's catchment area.
So effectively you want to deny a grammar school place to a pupil slightly outside its catchment area even though that pupil got a higher mark on the 11 or 13 plus than a pupil within the catchment area? That rather defeats the point of grammar schools which are based on entrance on academic merit not house price or vicar's reference as the best comprehensive or academies are
No it doesn't.
1) house prices aren't an issue in Buckinghamshire. you can't tell me that High Wycombe is more expensive than Uxbridge or Rickmansworth / Pinner / Harrow is cheaper than Chesham.
2) If you want to live in an area with Grammar schools go and create them - we have a Tory Government with an 80 seat majority, why aren't they creating them.
Yes it does.
1) House prices are an issue in comprehensive areas as the best schools are in the areas with the most expensive catchment areas. They are less an issue in Bucks and surrounding areas as admission to grammars is based on academic merit not house price.
2) I would have no problem creating more if we had won a majority on a manifesto like we had in 2017 to expand grammars nationwide. Otherwise we could have ballots to open new ones as you now can ballot to close grammars. In Tory controlled local authorities with grammars like Kent of course new satellite grammars are being created eg in Sevenoaks
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
Its when you are admitted to hospital for something completely different, but they test you and find you have COVID.
It doesn't necessarily mean it is benign. Anaesthesia even in asymptomatic cases greatly increases the risk of death. An asymptomatic covid in a hip fracture patient is quite risky for example.
Never said it was. It was just asked what incidental meant.
It seems less than ideal to get such a nasty virus when you are possibly already sick with something else. Just like norovirus kills a load of hospitalised people after they picked it up while on the wards.
I imagine going forward this is going to be an ongoing issue for a long time to come in hospitals, where like norovirus etc have been problematic, that COVID transmission among sick patients will be as well.
Nosocomial infections has long been one of the biggest (top 10) causes of death in the US.
Today's Tuesday figure really does start to feel like behaviour change has suppressed Omicron. Being a Tuesday should have been much higher.
Will we even see a 100k reporting day?
Again, I thought there was a backlog as the numbers seemed wrong. But looking at addition day, there is a bit of stretch out - 3.7k cases added to 16th, but the biggest additions are 19th (45.7k) then 20th (22.5k), then 18th (10.8k) and that doesn't seem an unusual mix to me.
So, I think it goes in the direction that (a) Omicron is relatively low R rate, (b) but is very short generation time, so (c) suppression below 1 hasn't been that hard to achieve.*
* The converse would be to note that Boris Johnson's DNA has an R rate of 3.5-4.0 (7 or 8 kids that are half his), but with an average generation time of 40+ years, so the world isn't entirely filled with Boris Johnson's DNA yet. Omicron is pulling the exact opposite trick.
One thing that will have affected todays numbers will be, that schools have closed for Christmas so are not being tested, A week ago at least, 4% of kids had COVID, but only 1.4% of adults, so kids will have made up a big Proportion of total 'cases'
[snip]. If voluntary "lockdown" (we have never been locked down in this country...) is stopping the exponential spike then it makes the case for formalising it.
No it absolutely doesn't. If anything, the reverse is true.
The thing about 'voluntary lockdown' is that we can judge risk ourselves, make our own decisions.
My Wife’s had 2 x AZ, 2 x Moderna and now the Dr has said she’s likely had Covid in the past too. She’s sending an application in to join The Avengers.
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
Its when you are admitted to hospital for something completely different, but they test you and find you have COVID.
It doesn't necessarily mean it is benign. Anaesthesia even in asymptomatic cases greatly increases the risk of death. An asymptomatic covid in a hip fracture patient is quite risky for example.
Thank you. I’ve had a few operations, so your post made me think.
A friend of mine whose a Buddhist refused any injections when she had her teeth done. She wanted to transcend dental medication.
Today's Tuesday figure really does start to feel like behaviour change has suppressed Omicron. Being a Tuesday should have been much higher.
Will we even see a 100k reporting day?
Again, I thought there was a backlog as the numbers seemed wrong. But looking at addition day, there is a bit of stretch out - 3.7k cases added to 16th, but the biggest additions are 19th (45.7k) then 20th (22.5k), then 18th (10.8k) and that doesn't seem an unusual mix to me.
So, I think it goes in the direction that (a) Omicron is relatively low R rate, (b) but is very short generation time, so (c) suppression below 1 hasn't been that hard to achieve.*
* The converse would be to note that Boris Johnson's DNA has an R rate of 3.5-4.0 (7 or 8 kids that are half his), but with an average generation time of 40+ years, so the world isn't entirely filled with Boris Johnson's DNA yet. Omicron is pulling the exact opposite trick.
The figures create problems for everyone. If voluntary "lockdown" (we have never been locked down in this country...) is stopping the exponential spike then it makes the case for formalising it. If its a lack of testing capacity and we're going to see a catch-up explosion then it makes the case for more restrictions. With *only* 90k cases as the current stabilised level, and Christmas weekend to come along with positive tests from the people infected who haven't had symptoms yet, it's likely to go pop just as they make their decision.
Would have been far better if we had seen a huuuuuuge spike which inevitably would top out and collapse back downward. The "attack the science" commentators might want to consider that the exponential forecast would be better for no formal restrictions than this. Because the last thing we want is "lockdown".
A huge spike would lead to a lockdown.
And if voluntary is working there's absolutely no reason to go for formal, none at all.
A flattened sombrero at 90k per day could be perfect. If Omicron is really half as virulent as Delta, then that's only like having 45k in the past which we were able to handle, so now we'd have twice as many people as we were before getting through the natural immunity funnel. The more the merrier so long as we can handle it.
If the assertion/estimation buy the heath sectary at the week end is correct, then for very identified cases there are in reality 6 cases in total, the about 35% of that age group have it!!
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
i.e. someone hospitalised with a broken leg, who when tested, turns out to also have covid, but didn't know it. If 10% of London is infected with covid, the number of these will be not insignificant.
Nevertheless, this puts other patients at risk and the staff too, through contagion. So it's not entirely benign, obviously. And some of those other people will have conditions that don't go well with a dose of covid.
No doubt, though it doesn't necessarily increase overall bed occupancy vs what would otherwise have been the case.
But it reduces the staff and therefore the number of functioning beds.
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
i.e. someone hospitalised with a broken leg, who when tested, turns out to also have covid, but didn't know it. If 10% of London is infected with covid, the number of these will be not insignificant.
Nevertheless, this puts other patients at risk and the staff too, through contagion. So it's not entirely benign, obviously. And some of those other people will have conditions that don't go well with a dose of covid.
No doubt, though it doesn't necessarily increase overall bed occupancy vs what would otherwise have been the case.
But it reduces the staff and therefore the number of functioning beds.
Maybe the staff should have all got their vaccine?
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
i.e. someone hospitalised with a broken leg, who when tested, turns out to also have covid, but didn't know it. If 10% of London is infected with covid, the number of these will be not insignificant.
Nevertheless, this puts other patients at risk and the staff too, through contagion. So it's not entirely benign, obviously. And some of those other people will have conditions that don't go well with a dose of covid.
No doubt, though it doesn't necessarily increase overall bed occupancy vs what would otherwise have been the case.
But it reduces the staff and therefore the number of functioning beds.
That's a different issue and related to government policy on isolation rather than any intrinsic issue with the hospitalisation rate.
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
i.e. someone hospitalised with a broken leg, who when tested, turns out to also have covid, but didn't know it. If 10% of London is infected with covid, the number of these will be not insignificant.
Nevertheless, this puts other patients at risk and the staff too, through contagion. So it's not entirely benign, obviously. And some of those other people will have conditions that don't go well with a dose of covid.
No doubt, though it doesn't necessarily increase overall bed occupancy vs what would otherwise have been the case.
But it reduces the staff and therefore the number of functioning beds.
Maybe the staff should have all got their vaccine?
You should surely know by now that the vaccines don't work completely. Even having say 10% of the staff off is an issue.
Actually, we don't know how well for sure they work with Omicron yet in a UK context, especially in intensive infectious areas, do we?
Still looking good that case numbers may have plateaued. Case numbers have been pretty level for 6 days now so reasonably sure we are no longer seeing exponential growth. A million cases a day looking increasingly unlikely.
Oh FFS. How long have we been doing this. Cases number are flat over week by reporting date. JFC.
Yes, but... In volatile circumstances like these by the time we can see that we've plateau'd from the WoW figures we'll be long past the plateau. We need to read the runes of the daily figures at least a little bit. FWIW, my reading is that cases are still rising nationally but that the rise is slowing i.e. we are no longer exponentiating. That'd based on the WoW increase in cases by date reported being less today than yesterday.
That's a pretty unreliable metric. But it's the best we've got in the short term.
My guess: by NYE, it'll be clear that the peak in cases by day of test was about the 22nd/23rd.
You're right about case numbers being flat over the week. But there are snippets we can read into the variations.
Today's Tuesday figure really does start to feel like behaviour change has suppressed Omicron. Being a Tuesday should have been much higher.
Will we even see a 100k reporting day?
Again, I thought there was a backlog as the numbers seemed wrong. But looking at addition day, there is a bit of stretch out - 3.7k cases added to 16th, but the biggest additions are 19th (45.7k) then 20th (22.5k), then 18th (10.8k) and that doesn't seem an unusual mix to me.
So, I think it goes in the direction that (a) Omicron is relatively low R rate, (b) but is very short generation time, so (c) suppression below 1 hasn't been that hard to achieve.*
* The converse would be to note that Boris Johnson's DNA has an R rate of 3.5-4.0 (7 or 8 kids that are half his), but with an average generation time of 40+ years, so the world isn't entirely filled with Boris Johnson's DNA yet. Omicron is pulling the exact opposite trick.
The figures create problems for everyone. If voluntary "lockdown" (we have never been locked down in this country...) is stopping the exponential spike then it makes the case for formalising it. If its a lack of testing capacity and we're going to see a catch-up explosion then it makes the case for more restrictions. With *only* 90k cases as the current stabilised level, and Christmas weekend to come along with positive tests from the people infected who haven't had symptoms yet, it's likely to go pop just as they make their decision.
Would have been far better if we had seen a huuuuuuge spike which inevitably would top out and collapse back downward. The "attack the science" commentators might want to consider that the exponential forecast would be better for no formal restrictions than this. Because the last thing we want is "lockdown".
A huge spike would lead to a lockdown.
And if voluntary is working there's absolutely no reason to go for formal, none at all.
A flattened sombrero at 90k per day could be perfect. If Omicron is really half as virulent as Delta, then that's only like having 45k in the past which we were able to handle, so now we'd have twice as many people as we were before getting through the natural immunity funnel. The more the merrier so long as we can handle it.
Its ideal if you want swathes of the economy shut down because so many people are sick. Not being in hospital doesn't mean remotely fit to work. I know you will say "they should go on normally" but happily almost everyone who isn't you disagrees.
If the assertion/estimation buy the heath sectary at the week end is correct, then for very identified cases there are in reality 6 cases in total, the about 35% of that age group have it!!
I was wondering what the positivity rate was for that group... if it's anything below 7% then presumably they've all been tested over the last 7 days!
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school. I notice you did not send your kids to a sink school the bright but poor have little choice but to go to!
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
I am absolutely minted and our kids go to the local comp (it is an academy but most secondaries in London are). Rated good not outstanding. Plenty of other parents similar to us, judging from how posh some of our kids' friends talk. House prices are high it's true but that's more because they're nice houses. But half the housing in the catchment, I'm guessing, is social housing so it's far from true that most of the kids at the school have bought their way in somehow. Proportion of minorities and with English as an additional language much higher than average; those on pupil premium broadly average. If actual GCSE grades match the predictions after my eldest's mocks I'll be very happy, but let's see in June.
So still a good school not a crap school even then. If however you live on a council estate and your local comp is inadequate or requires improvement you would have no choice but to attend it even if you were bright enough to get into a grammar school.
Middle class parents however would move to the catchment area of a Good or Outstanding school even if more expensive. Or else start going to church more regularly to gets their children into an Outstanding church school
Most comps are rated good or outstanding. Those that aren't need to be improved. Most gifted working class kids didn't pass the 11 plus when we had grammars, plenty of average middle class kids did. Secondary moderns, where most working class kids went, were often dreadful schools. Very few parents want to see them brought back. Let's focus on improving standards and find a way of breaking the culture of low expectations that affects too many kids, not try to resurrect the failed, divisive policies of the past. I think I'm done on this subject, my substandard comprehensive-schooled brain is growing weary!
No, most gifted working class kids with high IQs easily passed the 11 plus, a few average middle class pupils may also have scraped a pass but that did not hold back high iq working class pupils.
Now if you are poor but high IQ avoiding a requires improvement or inadequate school is a lottery dependent on where your parents live. You would almost certainly have got into a grammar though whereever you lived.
If you are middle class though your parents will buy your education either via private schools or the catchment area of good or outstanding schools. Or they will go to church more regularly for a vicar's reference for a top church school
Why are you continuing to post bullshit without any evidence to back it up when multiple posters have provided examples that show your ideas to be completely and utterly incorrect?
They haven't, they have just used ideological anecdote which I ideologically disagree with.
Plenty on here like Richard Tyndall and Pagan agree with me on grammars
Nope Richard Tyndall posted something that Cookie then showed to be completely regional as I had already argued.
You were making the absurd argument that selective grammars should not select on exam result but solely on catchment area.
In which case they become no different to the best comprehensives which select mainly on house price anyway
Your reading comprehension skills demonstrate that you definitely aren't bright enough to go to a grammar school.
My argument was that the pass mark should be set to ensure the brightest x% of the children in the catchment area of the school are selected and not x-y% with y% coming from children outside the school's catchment area.
So effectively you want to deny a grammar school place to a pupil slightly outside its catchment area even though that pupil got a higher mark on the 11 or 13 plus than a pupil within the catchment area? That rather defeats the point of grammar schools which are based on entrance on academic merit not house price or vicar's reference as the best comprehensive or academies are
No it doesn't.
1) house prices aren't an issue in Buckinghamshire. you can't tell me that High Wycombe is more expensive than Uxbridge or Rickmansworth / Pinner / Harrow is cheaper than Chesham.
2) If you want to live in an area with Grammar schools go and create them - we have a Tory Government with an 80 seat majority, why aren't they creating them.
Yes it does.
1) House prices are an issue in comprehensive areas as the best schools are in the areas with the most expensive catchment areas. They are less an issue in Bucks and surrounding areas as admission to grammars is based on academic merit not house price.
2) I would have no problem creating more if we had won a majority on a manifesto like we had in 2017 to expand grammars nationwide. Otherwise we could have ballots to open new ones as you now can ballot to close grammars. In Tory controlled local authorities with grammars like Kent of course new satellite grammars are being created eg in Sevenoaks
On 1 - this is a conversation about Grammar schools because you side tracked the conversation that way.
We know the issue with Comprehensive schools but you decided to shift the conversation away from comprehensive schools towards Grammar schools and it's only 30 odd posts later that you are returning to the starting point which was good comprehensive schools have an issue that requires selection or random lotteries to fix.
[snip]. If voluntary "lockdown" (we have never been locked down in this country...) is stopping the exponential spike then it makes the case for formalising it.
No it absolutely doesn't. If anything, the reverse is true.
The thing about 'voluntary lockdown' is that we can judge risk ourselves, make our own decisions.
Absolutely and Drakeford making it a criminal offence to work in the office rather than at home if you can work from home is a warning to all of us just what a lefty world looks like
Today's Tuesday figure really does start to feel like behaviour change has suppressed Omicron. Being a Tuesday should have been much higher.
Will we even see a 100k reporting day?
Again, I thought there was a backlog as the numbers seemed wrong. But looking at addition day, there is a bit of stretch out - 3.7k cases added to 16th, but the biggest additions are 19th (45.7k) then 20th (22.5k), then 18th (10.8k) and that doesn't seem an unusual mix to me.
So, I think it goes in the direction that (a) Omicron is relatively low R rate, (b) but is very short generation time, so (c) suppression below 1 hasn't been that hard to achieve.*
* The converse would be to note that Boris Johnson's DNA has an R rate of 3.5-4.0 (7 or 8 kids that are half his), but with an average generation time of 40+ years, so the world isn't entirely filled with Boris Johnson's DNA yet. Omicron is pulling the exact opposite trick.
The figures create problems for everyone. If voluntary "lockdown" (we have never been locked down in this country...) is stopping the exponential spike then it makes the case for formalising it. If its a lack of testing capacity and we're going to see a catch-up explosion then it makes the case for more restrictions. With *only* 90k cases as the current stabilised level, and Christmas weekend to come along with positive tests from the people infected who haven't had symptoms yet, it's likely to go pop just as they make their decision.
Would have been far better if we had seen a huuuuuuge spike which inevitably would top out and collapse back downward. The "attack the science" commentators might want to consider that the exponential forecast would be better for no formal restrictions than this. Because the last thing we want is "lockdown".
A huge spike would lead to a lockdown.
And if voluntary is working there's absolutely no reason to go for formal, none at all.
A flattened sombrero at 90k per day could be perfect. If Omicron is really half as virulent as Delta, then that's only like having 45k in the past which we were able to handle, so now we'd have twice as many people as we were before getting through the natural immunity funnel. The more the merrier so long as we can handle it.
Its ideal if you want swathes of the economy shut down because so many people are sick. Not being in hospital doesn't mean remotely fit to work. I know you will say "they should go on normally" but happily almost everyone who isn't you disagrees.
You disagree because you're still in denial of the fact that we will all get this. You're still operating under the delusion that this can and will go away. You've got about as much chance of that working as pastors who try to "pray away the gay".
We need to learn to live with the virus, the sooner the better.
[snip]. If voluntary "lockdown" (we have never been locked down in this country...) is stopping the exponential spike then it makes the case for formalising it.
No it absolutely doesn't. If anything, the reverse is true.
The thing about 'voluntary lockdown' is that we can judge risk ourselves, make our own decisions.
Absolutely and Drakeford making it a criminal offence to work in the office rather than at home if you can work from home as a warning to all of us just what a lefty world looks like
It should condemned across the board
BUt when known lefty Boris Johnson instituted a similar rule, that was OK?
Today's Tuesday figure really does start to feel like behaviour change has suppressed Omicron. Being a Tuesday should have been much higher.
Will we even see a 100k reporting day?
Again, I thought there was a backlog as the numbers seemed wrong. But looking at addition day, there is a bit of stretch out - 3.7k cases added to 16th, but the biggest additions are 19th (45.7k) then 20th (22.5k), then 18th (10.8k) and that doesn't seem an unusual mix to me.
So, I think it goes in the direction that (a) Omicron is relatively low R rate, (b) but is very short generation time, so (c) suppression below 1 hasn't been that hard to achieve.*
* The converse would be to note that Boris Johnson's DNA has an R rate of 3.5-4.0 (7 or 8 kids that are half his), but with an average generation time of 40+ years, so the world isn't entirely filled with Boris Johnson's DNA yet. Omicron is pulling the exact opposite trick.
The figures create problems for everyone. If voluntary "lockdown" (we have never been locked down in this country...) is stopping the exponential spike then it makes the case for formalising it. If its a lack of testing capacity and we're going to see a catch-up explosion then it makes the case for more restrictions. With *only* 90k cases as the current stabilised level, and Christmas weekend to come along with positive tests from the people infected who haven't had symptoms yet, it's likely to go pop just as they make their decision.
Would have been far better if we had seen a huuuuuuge spike which inevitably would top out and collapse back downward. The "attack the science" commentators might want to consider that the exponential forecast would be better for no formal restrictions than this. Because the last thing we want is "lockdown".
A huge spike would lead to a lockdown.
And if voluntary is working there's absolutely no reason to go for formal, none at all.
A flattened sombrero at 90k per day could be perfect. If Omicron is really half as virulent as Delta, then that's only like having 45k in the past which we were able to handle, so now we'd have twice as many people as we were before getting through the natural immunity funnel. The more the merrier so long as we can handle it.
Its ideal if you want swathes of the economy shut down because so many people are sick. Not being in hospital doesn't mean remotely fit to work. I know you will say "they should go on normally" but happily almost everyone who isn't you disagrees.
You disagree because you're still in denial of the fact that we will all get this. You're still operating under the delusion that this can and will go away. You've got about as much chance of that working as pastors who try to "pray away the gay".
We need to learn to live with the virus, the sooner the better.
For me, you mean the entire population of this country who isn't you. No matter how many times you say the same thing, people are not knowingly going to go out to infect other people, because they are not cnuts.
Still looking good that case numbers may have plateaued. Case numbers have been pretty level for 6 days now so reasonably sure we are no longer seeing exponential growth. A million cases a day looking increasingly unlikely.
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
i.e. someone hospitalised with a broken leg, who when tested, turns out to also have covid, but didn't know it. If 10% of London is infected with covid, the number of these will be not insignificant.
Nevertheless, this puts other patients at risk and the staff too, through contagion. So it's not entirely benign, obviously. And some of those other people will have conditions that don't go well with a dose of covid.
No doubt, though it doesn't necessarily increase overall bed occupancy vs what would otherwise have been the case.
But it reduces the staff and therefore the number of functioning beds.
That's a different issue and related to government policy on isolation rather than any intrinsic issue with the hospitalisation rate.
Oh, certainly, but it is one that has to be considered as well, not least because it helps breach that policy (can't now divide patients cleanly into those in for covid and in for e.g. cancer). A hospital is in any case just as that much closer to saturation with x per cent of its staff off as it is with x per cent of its normal high intensity beds filled.
[snip]. If voluntary "lockdown" (we have never been locked down in this country...) is stopping the exponential spike then it makes the case for formalising it.
No it absolutely doesn't. If anything, the reverse is true.
The thing about 'voluntary lockdown' is that we can judge risk ourselves, make our own decisions.
Absolutely and Drakeford making it a criminal offence to work in the office rather than at home if you can work from home is a warning to all of us just what a lefty world looks like
It should condemned across the board
Does seem rather up their with his oven glove sales ban.
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
Its when you are admitted to hospital for something completely different, but they test you and find you have COVID.
It doesn't necessarily mean it is benign. Anaesthesia even in asymptomatic cases greatly increases the risk of death. An asymptomatic covid in a hip fracture patient is quite risky for example.
Never said it was. It was just asked what incidental meant.
It seems less than ideal to get such a nasty virus when you are possibly already sick with something else. Just like norovirus kills a load of hospitalised people after they picked it up while on the wards.
I imagine going forward this is going to be an ongoing issue for a long time to come in hospitals, where like norovirus etc have been problematic, that COVID transmission among sick patients will be as well.
Yes, indeed. It has a real problem controlling ward outbreaks before and Omicron will be more so.
Bit of take off in the London hospitalisations but no take off in patients on ventilation at all which could be a sign that a lot of the additional London admissions are incidental. I think that report comes out every Thursday and will be very, very key in knowing what kind of danger Omicron presents.
At least 50% are incidental
What do you mean by an incidental hospitalisation? "Not all that serious" or something more specific?
Its when you are admitted to hospital for something completely different, but they test you and find you have COVID.
It doesn't necessarily mean it is benign. Anaesthesia even in asymptomatic cases greatly increases the risk of death. An asymptomatic covid in a hip fracture patient is quite risky for example.
Never said it was. It was just asked what incidental meant.
It seems less than ideal to get such a nasty virus when you are possibly already sick with something else. Just like norovirus kills a load of hospitalised people after they picked it up while on the wards.
I imagine going forward this is going to be an ongoing issue for a long time to come in hospitals, where like norovirus etc have been problematic, that COVID transmission among sick patients will be as well.
Nosocomial infections has long been one of the biggest (top 10) causes of death in the US.
There's nosocomial and there's nosocomial. I mean a 25 year old skateboarder with a broken leg and a 70 year old cancer patient might both pick up a Covid infection whilst in hospital but the situation is wildly different for them.
[snip]. If voluntary "lockdown" (we have never been locked down in this country...) is stopping the exponential spike then it makes the case for formalising it.
No it absolutely doesn't. If anything, the reverse is true.
The thing about 'voluntary lockdown' is that we can judge risk ourselves, make our own decisions.
Absolutely and Drakeford making it a criminal offence to work in the office rather than at home if you can work from home as a warning to all of us just what a lefty world looks like
It should condemned across the board
BUt when known lefty Boris Johnson instituted a similar rule, that was OK?
Some excellent post on the last thread guys. I mean really good.
Re poor Comprehensives in deprived areas I agree, but this is probably a lot more to do with the issues of the area than anything else. The answer certainly isn't going back to Secondary Moderns.
I see @HYUFD is continuing to compare stats on Grammar schools to Comprehensives and ignoring the samples are completely different because the Grammar has selected.
If you lived in a deprived area 50 years ago you could go to a grammar school if intelligent.
Now your only choice would be a comprehensive likely to be a secondary modern in all but name if you do not have wealthy parents who can send you to private school
That doesn't answer the point.
It does. Unless you live in a wealthy suburb or rural area (or go to a comprehensive or academy where admission is based on church attendance) comprehensives are often just renamed secondary moderns effectively.
@MikeSmithson is correct. It doesn't answer the point. As usual you just raise another point and don't address the point raised. It is a moving target.
Re your point on living in a poor area and being able to go to a grammar, this is very naïve. What actually happens is the middle class and well off in surrounding areas get tutored for the test and fill the spaces. The bright kids in the poor areas don't and they still don't get in by and large.
I lived in a relatively poor large village with 2 primary schools. Only one boy got into the boys grammar school and no girls to the girls grammar school. And that boy dropped out. I have no memory of even taking a test let alone getting tutored. After O levels a whole bunch of replaced those that had dropped out. The system is crap at selection and selecting at 11 is far too soon.
There are limits on how much you can tutor for 11+ and 13+ tests which are designed to test raw iq not subject knowledge as such. Indeed very often even a few bright kids from council estates got into grammar schools even without tutors and then onto Oxbridge or other top universities and professional careers. That path is not open to them to the same extent now if they live in a deprived area and just get sent to the local very average, if that, comp.
If you were well off and had a kid who was not so bright and would not pass the 11 or 13+ you could still send them private however and still do. Most wealthy parents did not send their children to secondary moderns and do not send their children to comprehensives and certainly not comprehensives or academies which are any less than Outstanding. So the rich generally don't use comprehensives anyway while the bright but poor no longer have the opportunities grammars provided. Most grammars of course also have entries at sixth form level too
a) You can tutor for IQ tests very easily. Not sure where you got it that it was difficult. There are lots of techniques.
b) In between our posts I have been chopping wood and did a rough mental calculation of how many should have got into the grammar school from my village all other things being equal (I know how many classes there were, the size of them, the fact that our village was a 3 member ward and how many councillors there were in the borough). The answer is about 25. There was 1 and he dropped out. If that doesn't give you an idea of the disparity between poor and middle class areas nothing will.
c) If you think the well off don't send their children to Comprehensives you live in a different world. I live in a well off area now. I am wealthy by most peoples measure as are most of the people I know. Nearly all use the local comprehensive, which I grant you is good, but that is not what you were saying.
d) Moving to a Grammar at sixth form is too late. The damage has been done. Many won't go who should. Many who were at the Grammar who shouldn't have been have dropped out.
Select by subject on an ongoing basis throughout the child's education.
a) You can't. IQ test results are in part based on genetics, they are difficult to tutor for unlike subject knowledge based exams.
b) And all of them would likely have gone to a sink comprehensive otherwise, at least 1 still got to a grammar.
c) If the wealthy send their kids to a comp it will only be an Outstanding comp they have bought their kids admission to by buying a house in its catchment area, meaning there are well above average house prices for that catchment area. You buy a place at an Outstanding comp or academy much like you buy a place at private school effectively or else you go to church more regularly to get a vicar's reference for a top church school. I notice you did not send your kids to a sink school the bright but poor have little choice but to go to!
d) Sixth form entry for A levels and top university is fine for late developers
I am absolutely minted and our kids go to the local comp (it is an academy but most secondaries in London are). Rated good not outstanding. Plenty of other parents similar to us, judging from how posh some of our kids' friends talk. House prices are high it's true but that's more because they're nice houses. But half the housing in the catchment, I'm guessing, is social housing so it's far from true that most of the kids at the school have bought their way in somehow. Proportion of minorities and with English as an additional language much higher than average; those on pupil premium broadly average. If actual GCSE grades match the predictions after my eldest's mocks I'll be very happy, but let's see in June.
So still a good school not a crap school even then. If however you live on a council estate and your local comp is inadequate or requires improvement you would have no choice but to attend it even if you were bright enough to get into a grammar school.
Middle class parents however would move to the catchment area of a Good or Outstanding school even if more expensive. Or else start going to church more regularly to gets their children into an Outstanding church school
Most comps are rated good or outstanding. Those that aren't need to be improved. Most gifted working class kids didn't pass the 11 plus when we had grammars, plenty of average middle class kids did. Secondary moderns, where most working class kids went, were often dreadful schools. Very few parents want to see them brought back. Let's focus on improving standards and find a way of breaking the culture of low expectations that affects too many kids, not try to resurrect the failed, divisive policies of the past. I think I'm done on this subject, my substandard comprehensive-schooled brain is growing weary!
No, most gifted working class kids with high IQs easily passed the 11 plus, a few average middle class pupils may also have scraped a pass but that did not hold back high iq working class pupils.
Now if you are poor but high IQ avoiding a requires improvement or inadequate school is a lottery dependent on where your parents live. You would almost certainly have got into a grammar though whereever you lived.
If you are middle class though your parents will buy your education either via private schools or the catchment area of good or outstanding schools. Or they will go to church more regularly for a vicar's reference for a top church school
Why are you continuing to post bullshit without any evidence to back it up when multiple posters have provided examples that show your ideas to be completely and utterly incorrect?
They haven't, they have just used ideological anecdote which I ideologically disagree with.
Plenty on here like Richard Tyndall and Pagan agree with me on grammars
Nope Richard Tyndall posted something that Cookie then showed to be completely regional as I had already argued.
You were making the absurd argument that selective grammars should not select on exam result but solely on catchment area.
In which case they become no different to the best comprehensives which select mainly on house price anyway
Your reading comprehension skills demonstrate that you definitely aren't bright enough to go to a grammar school.
My argument was that the pass mark should be set to ensure the brightest x% of the children in the catchment area of the school are selected and not x-y% with y% coming from children outside the school's catchment area.
So effectively you want to deny a grammar school place to a pupil slightly outside its catchment area even though that pupil got a higher mark on the 11 or 13 plus than a pupil within the catchment area? That rather defeats the point of grammar schools which are based on entrance on academic merit not house price or vicar's reference as the best comprehensive or academies are
No it doesn't.
1) house prices aren't an issue in Buckinghamshire. you can't tell me that High Wycombe is more expensive than Uxbridge or Rickmansworth / Pinner / Harrow is cheaper than Chesham.
2) If you want to live in an area with Grammar schools go and create them - we have a Tory Government with an 80 seat majority, why aren't they creating them.
Yes it does.
1) House prices are an issue in comprehensive areas as the best schools are in the areas with the most expensive catchment areas. They are less an issue in Bucks and surrounding areas as admission to grammars is based on academic merit not house price.
2) I would have no problem creating more if we had won a majority on a manifesto like we had in 2017 to expand grammars nationwide. Otherwise we could have ballots to open new ones as you now can ballot to close grammars. In Tory controlled local authorities with grammars like Kent of course new satellite grammars are being created eg in Sevenoaks
On 1 - this is a conversation about Grammar schools because you side tracked the conversation that way.
We know the issue with Comprehensive schools but you decided to shift the conversation away from comprehensive schools towards Grammar schools and it's only 30 odd posts later that you are returning to the starting point which was good comprehensive schools have an issue that requires selection or random lotteries to fix.
Academic selection is fine with me, an ideological conservative, as is school choice and education vouchers.
One size fits all bog standard comprehensives are fine with you, an ideological leftwinger, including using bussing and random lotteries to fix. That means moving half the pupils from a good school to a bad school and from a bad school to a good school which will likely just end up making the good schools worse
Today's Tuesday figure really does start to feel like behaviour change has suppressed Omicron. Being a Tuesday should have been much higher.
Will we even see a 100k reporting day?
Again, I thought there was a backlog as the numbers seemed wrong. But looking at addition day, there is a bit of stretch out - 3.7k cases added to 16th, but the biggest additions are 19th (45.7k) then 20th (22.5k), then 18th (10.8k) and that doesn't seem an unusual mix to me.
So, I think it goes in the direction that (a) Omicron is relatively low R rate, (b) but is very short generation time, so (c) suppression below 1 hasn't been that hard to achieve.*
* The converse would be to note that Boris Johnson's DNA has an R rate of 3.5-4.0 (7 or 8 kids that are half his), but with an average generation time of 40+ years, so the world isn't entirely filled with Boris Johnson's DNA yet. Omicron is pulling the exact opposite trick.
Remember Wednesday is the big day for cases (murder Tuesday but sicky Wednesday). I'd expect to see us comfortably over 100k tomorrow. Anything less than 100k would be an absolute triumph and show that the corner was being turned.
Today's Tuesday figure really does start to feel like behaviour change has suppressed Omicron. Being a Tuesday should have been much higher.
Will we even see a 100k reporting day?
Again, I thought there was a backlog as the numbers seemed wrong. But looking at addition day, there is a bit of stretch out - 3.7k cases added to 16th, but the biggest additions are 19th (45.7k) then 20th (22.5k), then 18th (10.8k) and that doesn't seem an unusual mix to me.
So, I think it goes in the direction that (a) Omicron is relatively low R rate, (b) but is very short generation time, so (c) suppression below 1 hasn't been that hard to achieve.*
* The converse would be to note that Boris Johnson's DNA has an R rate of 3.5-4.0 (7 or 8 kids that are half his), but with an average generation time of 40+ years, so the world isn't entirely filled with Boris Johnson's DNA yet. Omicron is pulling the exact opposite trick.
The figures create problems for everyone. If voluntary "lockdown" (we have never been locked down in this country...) is stopping the exponential spike then it makes the case for formalising it. If its a lack of testing capacity and we're going to see a catch-up explosion then it makes the case for more restrictions. With *only* 90k cases as the current stabilised level, and Christmas weekend to come along with positive tests from the people infected who haven't had symptoms yet, it's likely to go pop just as they make their decision.
Would have been far better if we had seen a huuuuuuge spike which inevitably would top out and collapse back downward. The "attack the science" commentators might want to consider that the exponential forecast would be better for no formal restrictions than this. Because the last thing we want is "lockdown".
A huge spike would lead to a lockdown.
And if voluntary is working there's absolutely no reason to go for formal, none at all.
A flattened sombrero at 90k per day could be perfect. If Omicron is really half as virulent as Delta, then that's only like having 45k in the past which we were able to handle, so now we'd have twice as many people as we were before getting through the natural immunity funnel. The more the merrier so long as we can handle it.
Its ideal if you want swathes of the economy shut down because so many people are sick. Not being in hospital doesn't mean remotely fit to work. I know you will say "they should go on normally" but happily almost everyone who isn't you disagrees.
You disagree because you're still in denial of the fact that we will all get this. You're still operating under the delusion that this can and will go away. You've got about as much chance of that working as pastors who try to "pray away the gay".
We need to learn to live with the virus, the sooner the better.
For me, you mean the entire population of this country who isn't you. No matter how many times you say the same thing, people are not knowingly going to go out to infect other people, because they are not cnuts.
No, not the entire population of the country who isn't me. I'm fully expecting to get the virus myself one day and as I've said I put my trust in the vaccines. I've had my three jabs, now when I get it it, I get it. I don't especially care when I get it.
People may not knowingly go out to infect others, but we should ASAP get into a position where people can unknowingly do so (because they're asymptomatic and not testing) and then after that it needs to be a personal choice whether people go out as opposed to a matter of law.
I've been out with a cough or a cold before and its never seemed weird to do so. Covid will ultimately need to become in the same bracket as that.
Still looking good that case numbers may have plateaued. Case numbers have been pretty level for 6 days now so reasonably sure we are no longer seeing exponential growth. A million cases a day looking increasingly unlikely.
My Wife’s had 2 x AZ, 2 x Moderna and now the Dr has said she’s likely had Covid in the past too. She’s sending an application in to join The Avengers.
I didn't know they were giving out 4th jabs yet? My elderly folks will be in that category, but haven't had them yet.
She got an early booster in the States when she was home visiting her parents and has just taken up the NHS’s kind offer for a second…
Today's Tuesday figure really does start to feel like behaviour change has suppressed Omicron. Being a Tuesday should have been much higher.
Will we even see a 100k reporting day?
Again, I thought there was a backlog as the numbers seemed wrong. But looking at addition day, there is a bit of stretch out - 3.7k cases added to 16th, but the biggest additions are 19th (45.7k) then 20th (22.5k), then 18th (10.8k) and that doesn't seem an unusual mix to me.
So, I think it goes in the direction that (a) Omicron is relatively low R rate, (b) but is very short generation time, so (c) suppression below 1 hasn't been that hard to achieve.*
* The converse would be to note that Boris Johnson's DNA has an R rate of 3.5-4.0 (7 or 8 kids that are half his), but with an average generation time of 40+ years, so the world isn't entirely filled with Boris Johnson's DNA yet. Omicron is pulling the exact opposite trick.
The figures create problems for everyone. If voluntary "lockdown" (we have never been locked down in this country...) is stopping the exponential spike then it makes the case for formalising it. If its a lack of testing capacity and we're going to see a catch-up explosion then it makes the case for more restrictions. With *only* 90k cases as the current stabilised level, and Christmas weekend to come along with positive tests from the people infected who haven't had symptoms yet, it's likely to go pop just as they make their decision.
Would have been far better if we had seen a huuuuuuge spike which inevitably would top out and collapse back downward. The "attack the science" commentators might want to consider that the exponential forecast would be better for no formal restrictions than this. Because the last thing we want is "lockdown".
A huge spike would lead to a lockdown.
And if voluntary is working there's absolutely no reason to go for formal, none at all.
A flattened sombrero at 90k per day could be perfect. If Omicron is really half as virulent as Delta, then that's only like having 45k in the past which we were able to handle, so now we'd have twice as many people as we were before getting through the natural immunity funnel. The more the merrier so long as we can handle it.
Its ideal if you want swathes of the economy shut down because so many people are sick. Not being in hospital doesn't mean remotely fit to work. I know you will say "they should go on normally" but happily almost everyone who isn't you disagrees.
You disagree because you're still in denial of the fact that we will all get this. You're still operating under the delusion that this can and will go away. You've got about as much chance of that working as pastors who try to "pray away the gay".
We need to learn to live with the virus, the sooner the better.
For me, you mean the entire population of this country who isn't you. No matter how many times you say the same thing, people are not knowingly going to go out to infect other people, because they are not cnuts.
No, not the entire population of the country who isn't me. I'm fully expecting to get the virus myself one day and as I've said I put my trust in the vaccines. I've had my three jabs, now when I get it it, I get it. I don't especially care when I get it.
People may not knowingly go out to infect others, but we should ASAP get into a position where people can unknowingly do so (because they're asymptomatic and not testing) and then after that it needs to be a personal choice whether people go out as opposed to a matter of law.
I've been out with a cough or a cold before and its never seemed weird to do so. Covid will ultimately need to become in the same bracket as that.
Yes, the entire population who isn't you. Nobody is going out knowingly whilst sick with Covid. It is not "a cough and a cold".
Today's Tuesday figure really does start to feel like behaviour change has suppressed Omicron. Being a Tuesday should have been much higher.
Will we even see a 100k reporting day?
Again, I thought there was a backlog as the numbers seemed wrong. But looking at addition day, there is a bit of stretch out - 3.7k cases added to 16th, but the biggest additions are 19th (45.7k) then 20th (22.5k), then 18th (10.8k) and that doesn't seem an unusual mix to me.
So, I think it goes in the direction that (a) Omicron is relatively low R rate, (b) but is very short generation time, so (c) suppression below 1 hasn't been that hard to achieve.*
* The converse would be to note that Boris Johnson's DNA has an R rate of 3.5-4.0 (7 or 8 kids that are half his), but with an average generation time of 40+ years, so the world isn't entirely filled with Boris Johnson's DNA yet. Omicron is pulling the exact opposite trick.
The figures create problems for everyone. If voluntary "lockdown" (we have never been locked down in this country...) is stopping the exponential spike then it makes the case for formalising it. If its a lack of testing capacity and we're going to see a catch-up explosion then it makes the case for more restrictions. With *only* 90k cases as the current stabilised level, and Christmas weekend to come along with positive tests from the people infected who haven't had symptoms yet, it's likely to go pop just as they make their decision.
Would have been far better if we had seen a huuuuuuge spike which inevitably would top out and collapse back downward. The "attack the science" commentators might want to consider that the exponential forecast would be better for no formal restrictions than this. Because the last thing we want is "lockdown".
A huge spike would lead to a lockdown.
And if voluntary is working there's absolutely no reason to go for formal, none at all.
A flattened sombrero at 90k per day could be perfect. If Omicron is really half as virulent as Delta, then that's only like having 45k in the past which we were able to handle, so now we'd have twice as many people as we were before getting through the natural immunity funnel. The more the merrier so long as we can handle it.
Its ideal if you want swathes of the economy shut down because so many people are sick. Not being in hospital doesn't mean remotely fit to work. I know you will say "they should go on normally" but happily almost everyone who isn't you disagrees.
You disagree because you're still in denial of the fact that we will all get this. You're still operating under the delusion that this can and will go away. You've got about as much chance of that working as pastors who try to "pray away the gay".
We need to learn to live with the virus, the sooner the better.
For me, you mean the entire population of this country who isn't you. No matter how many times you say the same thing, people are not knowingly going to go out to infect other people, because they are not cnuts.
No, not the entire population of the country who isn't me. I'm fully expecting to get the virus myself one day and as I've said I put my trust in the vaccines. I've had my three jabs, now when I get it it, I get it. I don't especially care when I get it.
People may not knowingly go out to infect others, but we should ASAP get into a position where people can unknowingly do so (because they're asymptomatic and not testing) and then after that it needs to be a personal choice whether people go out as opposed to a matter of law.
I've been out with a cough or a cold before and its never seemed weird to do so. Covid will ultimately need to become in the same bracket as that.
Do you think you could please take a little bell with you to tinkle? I really hate being sneezed on by people who come out with all their bugs.
Today's Tuesday figure really does start to feel like behaviour change has suppressed Omicron. Being a Tuesday should have been much higher.
Will we even see a 100k reporting day?
Again, I thought there was a backlog as the numbers seemed wrong. But looking at addition day, there is a bit of stretch out - 3.7k cases added to 16th, but the biggest additions are 19th (45.7k) then 20th (22.5k), then 18th (10.8k) and that doesn't seem an unusual mix to me.
So, I think it goes in the direction that (a) Omicron is relatively low R rate, (b) but is very short generation time, so (c) suppression below 1 hasn't been that hard to achieve.*
* The converse would be to note that Boris Johnson's DNA has an R rate of 3.5-4.0 (7 or 8 kids that are half his), but with an average generation time of 40+ years, so the world isn't entirely filled with Boris Johnson's DNA yet. Omicron is pulling the exact opposite trick.
The figures create problems for everyone. If voluntary "lockdown" (we have never been locked down in this country...) is stopping the exponential spike then it makes the case for formalising it. If its a lack of testing capacity and we're going to see a catch-up explosion then it makes the case for more restrictions. With *only* 90k cases as the current stabilised level, and Christmas weekend to come along with positive tests from the people infected who haven't had symptoms yet, it's likely to go pop just as they make their decision.
Would have been far better if we had seen a huuuuuuge spike which inevitably would top out and collapse back downward. The "attack the science" commentators might want to consider that the exponential forecast would be better for no formal restrictions than this. Because the last thing we want is "lockdown".
A huge spike would lead to a lockdown.
And if voluntary is working there's absolutely no reason to go for formal, none at all.
A flattened sombrero at 90k per day could be perfect. If Omicron is really half as virulent as Delta, then that's only like having 45k in the past which we were able to handle, so now we'd have twice as many people as we were before getting through the natural immunity funnel. The more the merrier so long as we can handle it.
Its ideal if you want swathes of the economy shut down because so many people are sick. Not being in hospital doesn't mean remotely fit to work. I know you will say "they should go on normally" but happily almost everyone who isn't you disagrees.
You disagree because you're still in denial of the fact that we will all get this. You're still operating under the delusion that this can and will go away. You've got about as much chance of that working as pastors who try to "pray away the gay".
We need to learn to live with the virus, the sooner the better.
For me, you mean the entire population of this country who isn't you. No matter how many times you say the same thing, people are not knowingly going to go out to infect other people, because they are not cnuts.
There will come a day when policy changes to no longer require isolation of people with a positive test result, simply COVID is endemic and we can't be in a situation where we pay people to sit at home with the sniffles. How can you square that with what you're saying? Or are you suggesting that COVID should forever be a special case disease that we treat differently to every other one?
My Wife’s had 2 x AZ, 2 x Moderna and now the Dr has said she’s likely had Covid in the past too. She’s sending an application in to join The Avengers.
I didn't know they were giving out 4th jabs yet? My elderly folks will be in that category, but haven't had them yet.
She got an early booster in the States when she was home visiting her parents and has just taken up the NHS’s kind offer for a second…
I presumed it was going to be something like that or that your other half worked for the NHS and extremely vulnerable.
My elderly parents will be getting a 4th jab and my father is very near the head of the queue for all vaccinations so far.
Today's Tuesday figure really does start to feel like behaviour change has suppressed Omicron. Being a Tuesday should have been much higher.
Will we even see a 100k reporting day?
Again, I thought there was a backlog as the numbers seemed wrong. But looking at addition day, there is a bit of stretch out - 3.7k cases added to 16th, but the biggest additions are 19th (45.7k) then 20th (22.5k), then 18th (10.8k) and that doesn't seem an unusual mix to me.
So, I think it goes in the direction that (a) Omicron is relatively low R rate, (b) but is very short generation time, so (c) suppression below 1 hasn't been that hard to achieve.*
* The converse would be to note that Boris Johnson's DNA has an R rate of 3.5-4.0 (7 or 8 kids that are half his), but with an average generation time of 40+ years, so the world isn't entirely filled with Boris Johnson's DNA yet. Omicron is pulling the exact opposite trick.
The figures create problems for everyone. If voluntary "lockdown" (we have never been locked down in this country...) is stopping the exponential spike then it makes the case for formalising it. If its a lack of testing capacity and we're going to see a catch-up explosion then it makes the case for more restrictions. With *only* 90k cases as the current stabilised level, and Christmas weekend to come along with positive tests from the people infected who haven't had symptoms yet, it's likely to go pop just as they make their decision.
Would have been far better if we had seen a huuuuuuge spike which inevitably would top out and collapse back downward. The "attack the science" commentators might want to consider that the exponential forecast would be better for no formal restrictions than this. Because the last thing we want is "lockdown".
A huge spike would lead to a lockdown.
And if voluntary is working there's absolutely no reason to go for formal, none at all.
A flattened sombrero at 90k per day could be perfect. If Omicron is really half as virulent as Delta, then that's only like having 45k in the past which we were able to handle, so now we'd have twice as many people as we were before getting through the natural immunity funnel. The more the merrier so long as we can handle it.
Its ideal if you want swathes of the economy shut down because so many people are sick. Not being in hospital doesn't mean remotely fit to work. I know you will say "they should go on normally" but happily almost everyone who isn't you disagrees.
You disagree because you're still in denial of the fact that we will all get this. You're still operating under the delusion that this can and will go away. You've got about as much chance of that working as pastors who try to "pray away the gay".
We need to learn to live with the virus, the sooner the better.
For me, you mean the entire population of this country who isn't you. No matter how many times you say the same thing, people are not knowingly going to go out to infect other people, because they are not cnuts.
No, not the entire population of the country who isn't me. I'm fully expecting to get the virus myself one day and as I've said I put my trust in the vaccines. I've had my three jabs, now when I get it it, I get it. I don't especially care when I get it.
People may not knowingly go out to infect others, but we should ASAP get into a position where people can unknowingly do so (because they're asymptomatic and not testing) and then after that it needs to be a personal choice whether people go out as opposed to a matter of law.
I've been out with a cough or a cold before and its never seemed weird to do so. Covid will ultimately need to become in the same bracket as that.
Yes, the entire population who isn't you. Nobody is going out knowingly whilst sick with Covid. It is not "a cough and a cold".
They're not currently because its against the law.
Drop the law and some people will go out with it and I see nothing wrong with that.
Comments
Mine is a Forerunner 230 (sans heart-rate monitor; I use a strap).
The "lockdown just in case" mentality is really very prevalent among the public sector bods who are setting the agenda in government. I think "freedom in theory" or "lockdown to preserve our freedoms we've gained" is also the prevailing view.
My argument was that the pass mark should be set to ensure the brightest x% of the children in the catchment area of the school are selected and not x-y% with y% coming from children outside the school's catchment area.
BTW all I am arguing for is the conservative approach i.e. how it used to be prior to roughly 1990/91 when academies first appeared and Grammar schools left local authority control.
But yes the idea of exponential to infinite and beyond doesn't work outside of Buzz Lightyear toys. As some of us have said all along.
If 10% of London is infected with covid, the number of these will be not insignificant.
The public primed now to keep seeing these daily figures and going ohhhh 150 thats up, that's a lot. 450 people a day die of a heart attack in the UK.
As always the challenge is how - if - we can pull that down fairly quickly. Establishing a new daily base of 90k would not be good even if we avoid the mega spike in the worst case scenarios.
I regard rules telling you not to leave your house unless it's for reasons x, y, or z as very draconian. We haven't had them here in NRW - except for an 11pm 5am curfew in May.
Or a law making it illegal to leave the country without an approved reason I also regard as very extreme.
And passing a law effectively criminalising protest while people are distracted.
Btw, I'm not saying I agree or disagree with plan B, or with bailing the hospitality sector, I'm just talking about the politics of it. Starmer's playing things well.
Will we even see a 100k reporting day?
Again, I thought there was a backlog as the numbers seemed wrong. But looking at addition day, there is a bit of stretch out - 3.7k cases added to 16th, but the biggest additions are 19th (45.7k) then 20th (22.5k), then 18th (10.8k) and that doesn't seem an unusual mix to me.
So, I think it goes in the direction that (a) Omicron is relatively low R rate, (b) but is very short generation time, so (c) suppression below 1 hasn't been that hard to achieve.*
* The converse would be to note that Boris Johnson's DNA has an R rate of 3.5-4.0 (7 or 8 kids that are half his), but with an average generation time of 40+ years, so the world isn't entirely filled with Boris Johnson's DNA yet. Omicron is pulling the exact opposite trick.
1) house prices aren't an issue in Buckinghamshire. you can't tell me that High Wycombe is more expensive than Uxbridge or Rickmansworth / Pinner / Harrow is cheaper than Chesham.
2) If you want to live in an area with Grammar schools go and create them - we have a Tory Government with an 80 seat majority, why aren't they creating them.
Westminster Voting Intention:
LAB: 38% (+3)
CON: 30% (-6)
LDM: 10% (-1)
GRN: 10% (+2)
REF: 7% (+4)
via @FindoutnowUK, 14-15 Dec
(Changes with 1 Dec)
If its a flat 90k and that's not overwhelming the NHS then that would be great, until the virus finishes burning through everyone.
Exponential growth is bad. Flat with no growth isn't a problem. Why are you so opposed to flat?
Yes there were the odd story in the media of some police man getting over zealous about 3 on a park bench, but in general there really wasn't that strict enforcement. As long as you weren't obviously taking the absolute piss and claiming yes I am still exercising 12hrs after I started you were left alone or no officer its not a 100 person house party, its my "support" bubble, you could bend the rules plenty.
The reasons you could leave your home were fairly wide, mask wearing has all sorts of exemptions, etc. We always allowed under the law protests.
https://twitter.com/Metadoc/status/1473326596224397316?s=20
The more we can get through the natural immunity funnel, without breaching the hospitalisation funnel, the better.
Scroll down to daily hospital data and download. The file breaks down admissions by type and category 3 excludes cases diagnosed in existing long term patients. Much more relevant measure for new bed pressure and much flatter trend than the headline.
Obviously plenty of the admissions left will also be incidental, but we only get that broken out at a beds occupied level each week.
Boosters - 13 million to go in England and Scotland, 5.6 million in the 40+
Cases - a complex situation. R in London is beginning to turn down (rate of increase slowing). Other regions are starting to take off (see the individual regional cases graphs).
The age split is clearly seen here
Hospitalisations - rising slowly. This seems to be due to the age split referenced above - big case rises are mostly in the younger groups at the moment.
Deaths - are still falling. Rather steadily.
It seems less than ideal to get such a nasty virus when you are possibly already sick with something else. Just like norovirus kills a load of hospitalised people after they picked it up while on the wards.
I imagine going forward this is going to be an ongoing issue for a long time to come in hospitals, where like norovirus etc have been problematic, that COVID transmission among sick patients will be as well.
I don't think this is necessarily a negative. Tony Blair didn't really reshape Britain and did pretty well. Macmillan (who Boris most reminds me of) was in the job for things which were fun, and dislike those parts which were 'a bore'. Not having a grand plan isn't a drawback.
And I certainly don't think he was a tool of some shadowy cabal.
On the positive side of his leger, he kept Corbyn out (you think the last two years were bad - imagine the pandemic with Jeremy in charge); he Got Brexit Done (you may not like this, and you may not like the details, but the fact it happened at all was a success by his criteria - he put an end to the drift of 2016-2019), he put in place a team which acquired a lot of vaccines (would Starmer have done this? He'd definitely have gone down the European route) and he lifted lockdown later than I would like but earlier than they did on the continent and earlier than Labour would have done. I simply don't believe Labour would have been any more ept at pandemic management and in most cases would have been worse.
Many people loathe him so much they will not see any positive. There have been positives.
But these positives are now not enough to justify him staying in place. He flouts his own rules, administers chaotically, says yes to everyone, has the opinions of the last person he spoke to and has no grasp of detail (none of which is that much of a surprise to us, even those of us who preferred him to the alternative.)
Time for the Conservative Party to find someone else.
Would have been far better if we had seen a huuuuuuge spike which inevitably would top out and collapse back downward. The "attack the science" commentators might want to consider that the exponential forecast would be better for no formal restrictions than this. Because the last thing we want is "lockdown".
1) House prices are an issue in comprehensive areas as the best schools are in the areas with the most expensive catchment areas. They are less an issue in Bucks and surrounding areas as admission to grammars is based on academic merit not house price.
2) I would have no problem creating more if we had won a majority on a manifesto like we had in 2017 to expand grammars nationwide. Otherwise we could have ballots to open new ones as you now can ballot to close grammars. In Tory controlled local authorities with grammars like Kent of course new satellite grammars are being created eg in Sevenoaks
The thing about 'voluntary lockdown' is that we can judge risk ourselves, make our own decisions.
A friend of mine whose a Buddhist refused any injections when she had her teeth done. She wanted to transcend dental medication.
And if voluntary is working there's absolutely no reason to go for formal, none at all.
A flattened sombrero at 90k per day could be perfect. If Omicron is really half as virulent as Delta, then that's only like having 45k in the past which we were able to handle, so now we'd have twice as many people as we were before getting through the natural immunity funnel. The more the merrier so long as we can handle it.
Actually, we don't know how well for sure they work with Omicron yet in a UK context, especially in intensive infectious areas, do we?
In volatile circumstances like these by the time we can see that we've plateau'd from the WoW figures we'll be long past the plateau. We need to read the runes of the daily figures at least a little bit.
FWIW, my reading is that cases are still rising nationally but that the rise is slowing i.e. we are no longer exponentiating. That'd based on the WoW increase in cases by date reported being less today than yesterday.
That's a pretty unreliable metric. But it's the best we've got in the short term.
My guess: by NYE, it'll be clear that the peak in cases by day of test was about the 22nd/23rd.
You're right about case numbers being flat over the week. But there are snippets we can read into the variations.
We know the issue with Comprehensive schools but you decided to shift the conversation away from comprehensive schools towards Grammar schools and it's only 30 odd posts later that you are returning to the starting point which was good comprehensive schools have an issue that requires selection or random lotteries to fix.
It should condemned across the board
We need to learn to live with the virus, the sooner the better.
Are data scientists those who never die – they just get broken down by age?
The PM says there will be no new covid restrictions BEFORE Christmas:
After looking at data today Boris Johnson said: "We don’t think today that there is enough evidence to justify any tougher measures before Christmas."
BUT - that could changed Boxing Day onwards
https://twitter.com/thejonnyreilly/status/1473337639755468804
One size fits all bog standard comprehensives are fine with you, an ideological leftwinger, including using bussing and random lotteries to fix. That means moving half the pupils from a good school to a bad school and from a bad school to a good school which will likely just end up making the good schools worse
People may not knowingly go out to infect others, but we should ASAP get into a position where people can unknowingly do so (because they're asymptomatic and not testing) and then after that it needs to be a personal choice whether people go out as opposed to a matter of law.
I've been out with a cough or a cold before and its never seemed weird to do so. Covid will ultimately need to become in the same bracket as that.
My elderly parents will be getting a 4th jab and my father is very near the head of the queue for all vaccinations so far.
The pandemic has revealed a darkly authoritarian side to expertise
By Matthew Crawford"
https://unherd.com/2021/12/how-science-has-been-corrupted-2/
Drop the law and some people will go out with it and I see nothing wrong with that.