A full 1.6% of the population (including the ineligible) received some kind of vaccine dose yesterday, that's got to be some kind of record, 1.8% of those eligible got a first, second or booster dose. It just goes to show what a big advertising and public outreach campaign can do.
Finland bans the sale of booze in bars and restaurants, after 5pm, for 3 weeks
I’ve experienced a Finnish winter. OMG the darkness. It makes London in late January look cheerful
And now no bars in which to morosely and silently gulp your vodka, deep into the frigid night…
brrr
Excess deaths will be down though.
Maybe
Finnish joke:
A Swede and a Finn get together for a drink. For three hours they sit across a bare table, silently necking vodka. Saying nothing. Finally the Swede gets bored and says “so, how are you?”
The Finn glares back, and says
“For fuck sake, are we here to drink or to talk?”
I worked there once for a month. I was told on several occasions that a prime way of death was the necking of buckets of vodka and beer, before or during a sauna, which was then followed immediately by jumping into the cold water of a lake.
Looking very much like peak of infections in London was the 15th. Hospitalisations rising strongly in London, as you would expect: you'd expect the peak in hospitalisations to be, what, a week after peak for infections - which is today. Hospitalisations in the UK in general flat.
On that basis then Boris may have to introduce a new tier with tighter restrictions and expanded vaxports specifically for London after Christmas. He can leave the rest of England as it is now.
That was he also avoids annoying anti lockdown voters in seats the Tories need to hold outside London (London largely Labour now anyway)
Moderna-ed this morning. Very slightly sore arm but nothing really noticeable yet. The good burghers of our little town may yet get me playing the carols on Christmas Eve with both hands and pedals…
Lucky you. Have slept a chunk of this afternoon, arm feels like its been punched, head feels like its data bus has been disconnected from my body.
My moderna booster knocked me out for the best part of two days. Good news is you should be up and about by Christmas eve if that happens though.
Looking very much like peak of infections in London was the 15th. Hospitalisations rising strongly in London, as you would expect: you'd expect the peak in hospitalisations to be, what, a week after peak for infections - which is today. Hospitalisations in the UK in general flat.
Today saw London's highest every By Reporting Date figure so far. I don't think we can say the 15th was the peak just yet.
Looking very much like peak of infections in London was the 15th. Hospitalisations rising strongly in London, as you would expect: you'd expect the peak in hospitalisations to be, what, a week after peak for infections - which is today. Hospitalisations in the UK in general flat.
On that basis then Boris may have to introduce a new tier with tighter restrictions and expanded vaxports specifically for London after Christmas. He can leave the rest of England as it is now.
That was he also avoids annoying anti lockdown voters in seats the Tories need to hold outside London (London largely Labour now anyway)
No, that's daft - London will clearly be past the peak by then. Also, if you're viewing this through the politics prism, applying different rules to different parts of the country is a recipe for voter anger.
South Africa at the height of the pandemic was at Level 5 restrictions. Even with Omicron it has now made the decision to stay at Level 1. Omicron levels are now falling in Gauteng Province. Hospitalisations are finding patients don't require oxygen or ventilation.
Boris may yet get out of jail - if he was shown not to have panicked in the face of the advice from the wobbly scientists.
I'd rather we focused on the London data rather than SA. Should that be positive, hats off to Johnson's genius.
London hospital admissions for covid (not excluding incidentals, but excluding people who caught covid whilst in hospital so were already there for something else) -
128 126 117 120 147 157 155 164 157 168
that's for the 10th to the 19th of December.
Pretty paltry rise and even that is likely driven by incidentals as much as real covid illness.
Mechnical ventilation for Covid in London from 10th to 21st of Dec -
201 199 197 203 194 195 199 208 201 210 206 201
Unchanged.
Why then are mainland Europe, Scotland and Wales panicking unnecessarily, along with the majority of reputable scientists, oh, and Javid?
A genuine rhetorical question, I am not requesting an answer.
Ok then, I’ll give you an answer that you didn’t ask for. It’s the precautionary principle in action. Taking action probably will reduce the spread, although I’d argue Christmas and human nature is already doing that. Other nations in the U.K. have taken the view that this is better on the whole than the damage that restrictions impose. That’s a judgement. They may be right. In England currently the decision is that there isn’t enough data to be sure that restrictions are needed. It’s possible that we won’t know until too late. But like weather forecasts, it’s not a good idea to call a result until we actually know who was right.
Finland bans the sale of booze in bars and restaurants, after 5pm, for 3 weeks
I’ve experienced a Finnish winter. OMG the darkness. It makes London in late January look cheerful
And now no bars in which to morosely and silently gulp your vodka, deep into the frigid night…
brrr
Excess deaths will be down though.
Maybe
Finnish joke:
A Swede and a Finn get together for a drink. For three hours they sit across a bare table, silently necking vodka. Saying nothing. Finally the Swede gets bored and says “so, how are you?”
The Finn glares back, and says
“For fuck sake, are we here to drink or to talk?”
I worked there once for a month. I was told on several occasions that a prime way of death was the necking of buckets of vodka and beer, before or during a sauna, which was then followed immediately by jumping into the cold water of a lake.
I’ve done that! You go into a snowbound forest. At night. You step naked into a sauna and drink vats of beer and vodka. Then at 9pm someone goes out and smashes a hole in the ice on the lake, and you jump in - and out again, very quickly
It occurred to me at the time it had to be dangerous. But the endorphin high afterwards is phenomenal
Looking very much like peak of infections in London was the 15th. Hospitalisations rising strongly in London, as you would expect: you'd expect the peak in hospitalisations to be, what, a week after peak for infections - which is today. Hospitalisations in the UK in general flat.
On that basis then Boris may have to introduce a new tier with tighter restrictions and expanded vaxports specifically for London after Christmas. He can leave the rest of England as it is now.
That was he also avoids annoying anti lockdown voters in seats the Tories need to hold outside London (London largely Labour now anyway)
Looking very much like peak of infections in London was the 15th. Hospitalisations rising strongly in London, as you would expect: you'd expect the peak in hospitalisations to be, what, a week after peak for infections - which is today. Hospitalisations in the UK in general flat.
Today saw London's highest every By Reporting Date figure so far. I don't think we can say the 15th was the peak just yet.
5% of Acre Lane MSOA with confirmed covid in a week !
Talking of HMQ, London Bridge has a lorra bearing on Johnson's future.
The prospect of him clowning around at HM'S funeral...😱
He could do serious, once. His press conference at the start of the pandemic was pretty good, and better than most of his immediate predecessors would have done. Maybe those days are past now. Hopefully it's something we won't have to find out - though presumably someone currently in the HoC will have to do the speech at HMQ's funeral. Which is a slightly dispiriting thought.
For me his best performance was his video when he'd just survived Covid. A man still clearly weak but back on the job and seemingly speaking from the heart. That was the one and only time I felt I was listening to a person not a persona.
It does look like the London growth rate has topped out, the doubling time is now getting longer rather than shorter. With Xmas and NY I expect the number of cases to go down by quite some margin which will again help hold restrictions off for another week by which point we will be almost all the way through the booster programme and pretty fortified against Omicron for January.
Looking very much like peak of infections in London was the 15th. Hospitalisations rising strongly in London, as you would expect: you'd expect the peak in hospitalisations to be, what, a week after peak for infections - which is today. Hospitalisations in the UK in general flat.
Today saw London's highest every By Reporting Date figure so far. I don't think we can say the 15th was the peak just yet.
5% of Acre Lane MSOA with confirmed covid in a week !
6.5% of 25-29 year olds in Lambeth with Covid over the week. And that's just the detected cases.
- Boosters. 12.2 Million left to do in Scotland and England. - Cases. Rising sharply across all regions. Nearly all the growth is in the sub 50s groups. London R is now falling
- Admissions. Rising slowly. - Deaths - still falling.
- Boosters. 12.2 Million left to do in Scotland and England. - Cases. Rising sharply across all regions. Nearly all the growth is in the sub 50s groups. London R is now falling
- Admissions. Rising slowly. - Deaths - still falling.
London Falling sounds like it should be a Clash song.
It does look like the London growth rate has topped out, the doubling time is now getting longer rather than shorter. With Xmas and NY I expect the number of cases to go down by quite some margin which will again help hold restrictions off for another week by which point we will be almost all the way through the booster programme and pretty fortified against Omicron for January.
Thread on the imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine. It looks like a WWI situation, where, having mobilised, the two choices are fight or put yourself at a permanent disadvantage. The difference is that this time around, there’s only one country - and one person - responsible.
https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1473362849871368195 75% of Russia’s total battalion tactical groups have been moved. Artillery, air defense units, tanks, APCs, bridge-laying equipment, mine clearers, armored excavators, engineering equipment, refueling, huge amount of logistics, etc. Follow @RALee85 for details
The narrative has been that England is the gambler and the Scots and Welsh playing safe.
As the hard data starts to come in, is this narrative about to be turned on its head?
I think your narrative is faulty.
Scotland, Wales and NI may well be over- cautious. Johnson has still thrown the dice and hoped for the best. If he wins it is down to lady luck. It he doesn't win people might die who otherwise wouldn't have died.
(I hope he wins, I am just saying the mechanics behind the win are very dodgy.)
The left usually likes to be the ones saying poverty kills. This time however no amount of economic damage due to unecessary restrictions seems to count at all. Think how many future hospitals, sure start centres, etc etc are not getting built and run every time we casually spend another billion or 10, just in case.
I don't dispute any of that. I may be centrist scum, but the last thing I want to see, save for people dying unnecessarily are lockdowns. Sensible precautions however I am all for.
During the end of this year's earlier lockdowns I was accused of being a lazy-arsed pussy for my caution. Yet I was out and about working and mixing it with the hoi poloi whilst PB Steve Baker style keyboard warriors were banging away with their hard man rhetoric from the hermitically sealed safety of their Mum's basements.
There's a tendency of some in debate to equate support of lockdown with a liking for it and an indifference to its costs. There could well be people like that but not many. It certainly doesn't follow.
Or indeed that restrictions = lockdown. Some of the posting here is on the verge of seeing a Pekinese and going all screamy about Hounds of the Baskervilles.
Yes, that too. Lockdown gets used as shorthand for ANY measures, therefore loses its utility.
My rule of thumb is that a bar on indoor mixing = lockdown. If you are getting told your friends and family are not allowed to be in your house, that's lockdown. If pubs are being shut, that's lockdown. Rule of 6 (of how I hate that phrase!) in a pub is borderline. If you're being told to wear a mask to go to a shop, that's not lockdown, or stand 2m apart, or do the mask dance to go to the toilet, or use a one way system in a shopping centre - well there's a word for all that but it isn't lockdown.
I'd be a bit more stringent on the household mixing point. If it's law not guidance that's lockdowny. Not really policed in any case, though, so I probably still wouldn't count it. But on the whole, yes, fair enough, if shops and pubs are closed and there's rules on who you can see, you can call that 'lockdown' and I won't be coming down on you like a whirling dervish.
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex could be called as witness in Prince Andrew's sex case.
Virginia Giuffre's lawyer says Duchess can be 'counted on to tell the truth' but said he is unlikely to depose the Queen 'out of respect'
The Duchess of Sussex could be called as a witness in the civil suit against Prince Andrew brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
David Boies, the lawyer representing Ms Giuffre, told the Daily Beast that the Duchess of Sussex “is somebody we can count on to tell the truth”.
Mr Boies said there are three reasons she may be deposed: “One; she is in the U.S. so we have jurisdiction over her.”
“Two; she is somebody who obviously, at least for a period of time, was a close associate of Prince Andrew and hence is in a position to perhaps have seen what he did, and perhaps if not to have seen what he did to have heard people talk about it. Because of her past association with him, she may very well have important knowledge, and will certainly have some knowledge.”
“Three; she is somebody who we can count on to tell the truth. She checks all three boxes.”
Mr Boies stressed that no final decision had been made on who he would depose, stating that the Duchess is just “one of the people we are considering”.
Looking very much like peak of infections in London was the 15th. Hospitalisations rising strongly in London, as you would expect: you'd expect the peak in hospitalisations to be, what, a week after peak for infections - which is today. Hospitalisations in the UK in general flat.
On that basis then Boris may have to introduce a new tier with tighter restrictions and expanded vaxports specifically for London after Christmas. He can leave the rest of England as it is now.
That was he also avoids annoying anti lockdown voters in seats the Tories need to hold outside London (London largely Labour now anyway)
Surely you’re not suggesting that restrictions should be based on political, rather than medical, considerations?
Thread on the imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine. It looks like a WWI situation, where, having mobilised, the two choices are fight or put yourself at a permanent disadvantage. The difference is that this time around, there’s only one country - and one person - responsible.
https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1473362849871368195 75% of Russia’s total battalion tactical groups have been moved. Artillery, air defense units, tanks, APCs, bridge-laying equipment, mine clearers, armored excavators, engineering equipment, refueling, huge amount of logistics, etc. Follow @RALee85 for details
Putin really is a total arse.
Other than the whole nukes thing, it would be a great time for China to invade Russia...
Looking very much like peak of infections in London was the 15th. Hospitalisations rising strongly in London, as you would expect: you'd expect the peak in hospitalisations to be, what, a week after peak for infections - which is today. Hospitalisations in the UK in general flat.
On that basis then Boris may have to introduce a new tier with tighter restrictions and expanded vaxports specifically for London after Christmas. He can leave the rest of England as it is now.
That was he also avoids annoying anti lockdown voters in seats the Tories need to hold outside London (London largely Labour now anyway)
No, that's daft - London will clearly be past the peak by then. Also, if you're viewing this through the politics prism, applying different rules to different parts of the country is a recipe for voter anger.
Quite. And if the government has got it wrong, they aren’t going to improve things (other than cosmetically) by acting too late. By delaying it until after Xmas, the choice has effectively been made. It could be the right one, and I very much hope it is.
Just saw the JCVI news. FFS. Liberal handwriting and British exceptionalism at its worst. How long are our children going to have to endure disrupted education?
What's the JCVI news? Something on vaccinating younger children?
They’ve said most under 12s are not getting jabbed
How many of them have had the lurgy already? Must be 80%+
Mind you, how sure are they that variant Pi / Omega / Orion won't affect children badly?
It is odd, SAGE seem to come up with every possible scenario of doom, whereas JCVI seem to plan for everything staying as it is at this instant.
No, it's the Andromeda strain that will get the children
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex could be called as witness in Prince Andrew's sex case.
Virginia Giuffre's lawyer says Duchess can be 'counted on to tell the truth' but said he is unlikely to depose the Queen 'out of respect'
The Duchess of Sussex could be called as a witness in the civil suit against Prince Andrew brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
David Boies, the lawyer representing Ms Giuffre, told the Daily Beast that the Duchess of Sussex “is somebody we can count on to tell the truth”.
Mr Boies said there are three reasons she may be deposed: “One; she is in the U.S. so we have jurisdiction over her.”
“Two; she is somebody who obviously, at least for a period of time, was a close associate of Prince Andrew and hence is in a position to perhaps have seen what he did, and perhaps if not to have seen what he did to have heard people talk about it. Because of her past association with him, she may very well have important knowledge, and will certainly have some knowledge.”
“Three; she is somebody who we can count on to tell the truth. She checks all three boxes.”
Mr Boies stressed that no final decision had been made on who he would depose, stating that the Duchess is just “one of the people we are considering”.
But she didn't know him at the time of the allegations, did she?
Surely hearsay is inadmissible, so unless she witnessed it herself (unlikely given timeframes and, well, everything),on what basis could she be called?
Not getting involved in this case thanks, but on the subject of hearsay, as a general rule hearsay is not admissible as evidence against a defendant, but an important exception is hearsay evidence of what the defendant himself said about what he himself did.
So, for example in an English criminal case a policeman gives evidence of what the defendant X said about the doings of himself. This is evidence against X. But if the defendants are X and Y, what X said to the the policeman about what Y is NOT evidence against Y unless and until X repeats it in court as X and Y dish each other in a cutthroat defence.
There are a few other exceptions too. And in recent years it has widened a bit to include sometimes hearsay accounts of what witness Z said about defendant W before the witness got intimidated out of repeating it in court.
- Boosters. 12.2 Million left to do in Scotland and England. - Cases. Rising sharply across all regions. Nearly all the growth is in the sub 50s groups. London R is now falling
- Admissions. Rising slowly. - Deaths - still falling.
London Falling sounds like it should be a Clash song.
Or the end of an ill-starred 2 decades of American occupation as they pull out and the Ukips retake control of the capital in a manner so swift it stuns the world.
Finland bans the sale of booze in bars and restaurants, after 5pm, for 3 weeks
I’ve experienced a Finnish winter. OMG the darkness. It makes London in late January look cheerful
And now no bars in which to morosely and silently gulp your vodka, deep into the frigid night…
brrr
Excess deaths will be down though.
Maybe
Finnish joke:
A Swede and a Finn get together for a drink. For three hours they sit across a bare table, silently necking vodka. Saying nothing. Finally the Swede gets bored and says “so, how are you?”
The Finn glares back, and says
“For fuck sake, are we here to drink or to talk?”
I worked there once for a month. I was told on several occasions that a prime way of death was the necking of buckets of vodka and beer, before or during a sauna, which was then followed immediately by jumping into the cold water of a lake.
I’ve done that! You go into a snowbound forest. At night. You step naked into a sauna and drink vats of beer and vodka. Then at 9pm someone goes out and smashes a hole in the ice on the lake, and you jump in - and out again, very quickly
It occurred to me at the time it had to be dangerous. But the endorphin high afterwards is phenomenal
I just did the company's works sauna (every office has one they say) and the beer. No lake for me.
It does look like the London growth rate has topped out, the doubling time is now getting longer rather than shorter. With Xmas and NY I expect the number of cases to go down by quite some margin which will again help hold restrictions off for another week by which point we will be almost all the way through the booster programme and pretty fortified against Omicron for January.
If that is true then great. As we do not have the Omicron data update for today we simply cannot make any claims yet.
Finland bans the sale of booze in bars and restaurants, after 5pm, for 3 weeks
I’ve experienced a Finnish winter. OMG the darkness. It makes London in late January look cheerful
And now no bars in which to morosely and silently gulp your vodka, deep into the frigid night…
brrr
Excess deaths will be down though.
Maybe
Finnish joke:
A Swede and a Finn get together for a drink. For three hours they sit across a bare table, silently necking vodka. Saying nothing. Finally the Swede gets bored and says “so, how are you?”
The Finn glares back, and says
“For fuck sake, are we here to drink or to talk?”
I worked there once for a month. I was told on several occasions that a prime way of death was the necking of buckets of vodka and beer, before or during a sauna, which was then followed immediately by jumping into the cold water of a lake.
Attended a conference in Tampere (volunteer organisation, not work). Night out with some locals. I have never felt so ill the morning after (and this was when I was in mid-20s). Missed my planned train to Helsinki. Got a later one feeling very ill. Also vividly recall seeing an axe embedded in a car windscreen on the walk home from the night out. Certain that I didn't imagine that. Quite a night.
It does look like the London growth rate has topped out, the doubling time is now getting longer rather than shorter. With Xmas and NY I expect the number of cases to go down by quite some margin which will again help hold restrictions off for another week by which point we will be almost all the way through the booster programme and pretty fortified against Omicron for January.
If that is true then great. As we do not have the Omicron data update for today we simply cannot make any claims yet.
I think we have to assume that the majority of cases in London are Omicron. The growth rate vs Delta was already sending Delta to extinction.
BREAKING New #Omicron study in Scotland and it looks like good news. ‘Early national data suggests that Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation when compared to Delta.’ Experts from Edinburgh & Strathclyde Uni.
Scottish study so appears to be showing the reduction is inherant to Omicron rather than just vaccination given delta came along post our initial roll out.
We'll add that to the apparently imaginary pile of evidence Omicron is milder.
- Boosters. 12.2 Million left to do in Scotland and England. - Cases. Rising sharply across all regions. Nearly all the growth is in the sub 50s groups. London R is now falling
- Admissions. Rising slowly. - Deaths - still falling.
London Falling sounds like it should be a Clash song.
Or the end of an ill-starred 2 decades of American occupation as they pull out and the Ukips retake control of the capital in a manner so swift it stuns the world.
The Ukips wouldn't dare to come anywhere near London, too many forriners.
Just saw the JCVI news. FFS. Liberal handwriting and British exceptionalism at its worst. How long are our children going to have to endure disrupted education?
What's the JCVI news? Something on vaccinating younger children?
They’ve said most under 12s are not getting jabbed
How many of them have had the lurgy already? Must be 80%+
Mind you, how sure are they that variant Pi / Omega / Orion won't affect children badly?
It is odd, SAGE seem to come up with every possible scenario of doom, whereas JCVI seem to plan for everything staying as it is at this instant.
No, it's the Andromeda strain that will get the children
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex could be called as witness in Prince Andrew's sex case.
Virginia Giuffre's lawyer says Duchess can be 'counted on to tell the truth' but said he is unlikely to depose the Queen 'out of respect'
The Duchess of Sussex could be called as a witness in the civil suit against Prince Andrew brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
David Boies, the lawyer representing Ms Giuffre, told the Daily Beast that the Duchess of Sussex “is somebody we can count on to tell the truth”.
Mr Boies said there are three reasons she may be deposed: “One; she is in the U.S. so we have jurisdiction over her.”
“Two; she is somebody who obviously, at least for a period of time, was a close associate of Prince Andrew and hence is in a position to perhaps have seen what he did, and perhaps if not to have seen what he did to have heard people talk about it. Because of her past association with him, she may very well have important knowledge, and will certainly have some knowledge.”
“Three; she is somebody who we can count on to tell the truth. She checks all three boxes.”
Mr Boies stressed that no final decision had been made on who he would depose, stating that the Duchess is just “one of the people we are considering”.
But she didn't know him at the time of the allegations, did she?
Surely hearsay is inadmissible, so unless she witnessed it herself (unlikely given timeframes and, well, everything),on what basis could she be called?
Not getting involved in this case thanks, but on the subject of hearsay, as a general rule hearsay is not admissible as evidence against a defendant, but an important exception is hearsay evidence of what the defendant himself said about what he himself did.
So, for example in an English criminal case a policeman gives evidence of what the defendant X said about the doings of himself. This is evidence against X. But if the defendants are X and Y, what X said to the the policeman about what Y is NOT evidence against Y unless and until X repeats it in court as X and Y dish each other in a cutthroat defence.
There are a few other exceptions too. And in recent years it has widened a bit to include sometimes hearsay accounts of what witness Z said about defendant W before the witness got intimidated out of repeating it in court.
Thanks. I can hardly imagine Andrew and Meghan having detailed discussions about the whole Epstein thing, and particularly not conversations in which Andrew made self-incriminating comments about any aspects relevant to the court case.
BREAKING New #Omicron study in Scotland and it looks like good news. ‘Early national data suggests that Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation when compared to Delta.’ Experts from Edinburgh & Strathclyde Uni.
Scottish study so appears to be showing the reduction is inherant to Omicron rather than just vaccination given delta came along post our initial roll out.
We'll add that to the apparently imaginary pile of evidence Omicron is milder.
That's bloody brilliant, a 2/3rds reduction before vaccines or other immunity is massive. If only the politicians had been given the data for this scenario they would be able to make the decisions already.
I was just idly browsing on twitter and saw a Clarkson cryptic one "302 if you know you know", probably a reference to some tractor model or something. Quite a few replies have said 'ceefax football!' and posted an image.
I'm not sure why this one caught my eye, but I now really want to know the football story behind "Monk falls into sewer, hit with pie"!!
I actually think the Labour score on the latest YouGov poll (36%) is pretty disappointing, with the Tory score down as low as 30%.
However, my disappointment is tempered by seeing LD/Greens on a combined 20%; I don't think many of them will go (back) to Tories. So if I were a Tory I'd be pretty anxious.
My reluctantly held but oft propounded theory of a high floor to Con support - due to Brexit and Culture War issues - has been holed below the waterline. I wave it goodbye with head a little clearer and a heart much lightened.
YouGov consistently has a higher Green score than anyone else - who knows why! It shows 9% of 2019 Labour voters shifting to them - but I'd think a chunk of those will return in marginal Con-Lab seats. I know several in SW Surrey who was they'll vote Green as CStarmer is too centrist for them, but they all but one say they'd vote Labour in a marginal.
The drop in Tory share in Scotland in recent polls is particularly striking - as Stuart speculates, this may be tactical unwind from Lab/Lib voters going home. The North seems to have swung more than most back to Labour, too, though I'm not sure if the YouGov regions exactly match those in 2019 election surveys.
All that said, I'm amused by the change of mood from "Is Labour finished forever?" a few months ago to "Is Labour's win inevitable?" now. The Tories are finally deep in mid-term trouble, but I'm not counting any chickens yet.
Tick tock, eh, Nick?
Don’t be silly ping, chickens go cluck. Clocks go tock.
Lol
It was in reference to the run up to the 2015 election, when @NickPalmer used to respond to every labour poll lead, winding up the pbtories with “tick tock” - as we all know, the poll lead evaporated and the tories got an unexpected majority leaving Nick with more than a little egg on his face…
BREAKING New #Omicron study in Scotland and it looks like good news. ‘Early national data suggests that Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation when compared to Delta.’ Experts from Edinburgh & Strathclyde Uni.
Scottish study so appears to be showing the reduction is inherant to Omicron rather than just vaccination given delta came along post our initial roll out.
We'll add that to the apparently imaginary pile of evidence Omicron is milder.
That's bloody brilliant, a 2/3rds reduction before vaccines or other immunity is massive. If only the politicians had been given the data for this scenario they would be able to make the decisions already.
Yep, given we know 50k delta cases a day only gets us to about 1/8th of the hospital admissions we hit last January, we can afford to go way higher than current case levels without getting in to deep water.
BREAKING New #Omicron study in Scotland and it looks like good news. ‘Early national data suggests that Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation when compared to Delta.’ Experts from Edinburgh & Strathclyde Uni.
Scottish study so appears to be showing the reduction is inherant to Omicron rather than just vaccination given delta came along post our initial roll out.
We'll add that to the apparently imaginary pile of evidence Omicron is milder.
Again, I get the precautionary principle on this. But we need to be ready to jump out of restrictions as fast as we dived in.
If this isn't disproved by boxing day then Sturgeon and Drakeford must reverse their position.
BREAKING New #Omicron study in Scotland and it looks like good news. ‘Early national data suggests that Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation when compared to Delta.’ Experts from Edinburgh & Strathclyde Uni.
Scottish study so appears to be showing the reduction is inherant to Omicron rather than just vaccination given delta came along post our initial roll out.
We'll add that to the apparently imaginary pile of evidence Omicron is milder.
That's good news; just need not to have more than 3x as many cases and the hospitals will do no worse than with delta. . Which is the other factor.
We are about to get the perfect Omicron experiment in realtime.
It'll cost the antivaxxers dearly. Quite literally with the US health system.
With days to go before Christmas, Americans are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Of reworking plans to adapt to the latest virus risks. Of searching for at-home tests and not finding them. Of wondering whether, after two years of avoiding Covid-19, or surviving it, or getting vaccinated and maybe even boosted, Omicron is the variant they inevitably catch.
A sense of dread about Omicron’s rapid spread — the fastest of any variant yet — has swept through the Northeast and Upper Midwest, which were already swamped with Delta variant cases and hospitalizations.
BREAKING New #Omicron study in Scotland and it looks like good news. ‘Early national data suggests that Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation when compared to Delta.’ Experts from Edinburgh & Strathclyde Uni.
Scottish study so appears to be showing the reduction is inherant to Omicron rather than just vaccination given delta came along post our initial roll out.
We'll add that to the apparently imaginary pile of evidence Omicron is milder.
So that’s strong real world evidence from
South Africa New York City Alberta Ontario London Denmark
and now
Scotland
that it’s milder. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say: it’s milder
BREAKING New #Omicron study in Scotland and it looks like good news. ‘Early national data suggests that Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation when compared to Delta.’ Experts from Edinburgh & Strathclyde Uni.
Scottish study so appears to be showing the reduction is inherant to Omicron rather than just vaccination given delta came along post our initial roll out.
We'll add that to the apparently imaginary pile of evidence Omicron is milder.
That's good news; just need not to have more than 3x as many cases and the hospitals will do no worse than with delta. . Which is the other factor.
Well not necessarily, this is a pre-immunity reduction. We have got ~31m people boostered in the UK, the reduction in severity will be huge and starting from a much lower base. The ability to absorb cases could be a lot higher than we had with Delta.
BREAKING New #Omicron study in Scotland and it looks like good news. ‘Early national data suggests that Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation when compared to Delta.’ Experts from Edinburgh & Strathclyde Uni.
Scottish study so appears to be showing the reduction is inherant to Omicron rather than just vaccination given delta came along post our initial roll out.
We'll add that to the apparently imaginary pile of evidence Omicron is milder.
That's good news; just need not to have more than 3x as many cases and the hospitals will do no worse than with delta. . Which is the other factor.
Peak delta hospitalisations was around 1000 in September, vs over 4000 the NHS coped with last Jan. So we can afford to go to 6 or 9 times delta levels without a problem if this holds true. Fits entirely with experience in South Africa.
BREAKING New #Omicron study in Scotland and it looks like good news. ‘Early national data suggests that Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation when compared to Delta.’ Experts from Edinburgh & Strathclyde Uni.
Scottish study so appears to be showing the reduction is inherant to Omicron rather than just vaccination given delta came along post our initial roll out.
We'll add that to the apparently imaginary pile of evidence Omicron is milder.
That's good news; just need not to have more than 3x as many cases and the hospitals will do no worse than with delta. . Which is the other factor.
Peak delta hospitalisations was around 1000 in September, vs over 4000 the NHS coped with last Jan. So we can afford to go to 6 or 9 times delta levels without a problem if this holds true. Fits entirely with experience in South Africa.
I'm not sure the NHS really coped with 4K in anything but the very short term. But thanks for the point. Crossed fingers.
BREAKING New #Omicron study in Scotland and it looks like good news. ‘Early national data suggests that Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation when compared to Delta.’ Experts from Edinburgh & Strathclyde Uni.
Scottish study so appears to be showing the reduction is inherant to Omicron rather than just vaccination given delta came along post our initial roll out.
We'll add that to the apparently imaginary pile of evidence Omicron is milder.
So that’s strong real world evidence from
South Africa New York City Alberta Ontario London Denmark
and now
Scotland
that it’s milder. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say: it’s milder
Yes and when the next set of projections come out from SAGE they will have no choice but to use this variable in their model input rather than the assumption that it's identical to Delta. If they do the latter the politicians will, once again, ignore their modelled data and wait for actual data. Already we've potentially gone from 600-6000 deaths per day to 200-2000 deaths per day with just this single change. With the correct vaccine efficacy input it could be an additional two thirds reduction, so moving down to 67-667 deaths per day.
North Lab 42% Con 26% Midlands/Wales Lab 40% Con 32% London Lab 53% Con 22% Rest of South Con 40% Lab 29% Scotland SNP 47% Lab 22% Con 13%
(YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1790 adults in GB Fieldwork: 19th - 20th December 2021)
The Midlands/Wales is the key swing region and largely in line with the national polls, if the Tories regain the lead nationally they will regain the lead in the Midlands.
London and Scotland did not vote Tory even in 2019, the Tories can still win while losing most of the North and the South still has a comfortable Tory lead.
The more people get their boosters, already up to half of adults and the more we avoid further restrictions the quicker there will be some swingback to the blues
I was just idly browsing on twitter and saw a Clarkson cryptic one "302 if you know you know", probably a reference to some tractor model or something. Quite a few replies have said 'ceefax football!' and posted an image.
I'm not sure why this one caught my eye, but I now really want to know the football story behind "Monk falls into sewer, hit with pie"!!
Think that is a pro Huddersfield, anti Leeds spoof mock up. Garry Monk was the Leeds manager...
BREAKING New #Omicron study in Scotland and it looks like good news. ‘Early national data suggests that Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation when compared to Delta.’ Experts from Edinburgh & Strathclyde Uni.
Scottish study so appears to be showing the reduction is inherant to Omicron rather than just vaccination given delta came along post our initial roll out.
We'll add that to the apparently imaginary pile of evidence Omicron is milder.
That's good news; just need not to have more than 3x as many cases and the hospitals will do no worse than with delta. . Which is the other factor.
Peak delta hospitalisations was around 1000 in September, vs over 4000 the NHS coped with last Jan. So we can afford to go to 6 or 9 times delta levels without a problem if this holds true. Fits entirely with experience in South Africa.
I'm not sure the NHS really coped with 4K in anything but the very short term. But thanks for the point. Crossed fingers.
Built in to Omicron spreading much quicker is that the rise to a peak, and fall from a peak will both be MUCH quicker than previous waves, so even an equal sized peak (which based on this study, would require around 600k recorded cases per day), the actual strain on the NHS will be lower.
Looking very much like peak of infections in London was the 15th. Hospitalisations rising strongly in London, as you would expect: you'd expect the peak in hospitalisations to be, what, a week after peak for infections - which is today. Hospitalisations in the UK in general flat.
On that basis then Boris may have to introduce a new tier with tighter restrictions and expanded vaxports specifically for London after Christmas. He can leave the rest of England as it is now.
That was he also avoids annoying anti lockdown voters in seats the Tories need to hold outside London (London largely Labour now anyway)
Surely you’re not suggesting that restrictions should be based on political, rather than medical, considerations?
In this case the political and medical evidence for Boris coincide, London is his weakest region in England and hospitalisation rates are highest in London too
BREAKING New #Omicron study in Scotland and it looks like good news. ‘Early national data suggests that Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation when compared to Delta.’ Experts from Edinburgh & Strathclyde Uni.
Scottish study so appears to be showing the reduction is inherant to Omicron rather than just vaccination given delta came along post our initial roll out.
We'll add that to the apparently imaginary pile of evidence Omicron is milder.
So that’s strong real world evidence from
South Africa New York City Alberta Ontario London Denmark
and now
Scotland
that it’s milder. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say: it’s milder
Looking very much like peak of infections in London was the 15th. Hospitalisations rising strongly in London, as you would expect: you'd expect the peak in hospitalisations to be, what, a week after peak for infections - which is today. Hospitalisations in the UK in general flat.
On that basis then Boris may have to introduce a new tier with tighter restrictions and expanded vaxports specifically for London after Christmas. He can leave the rest of England as it is now.
That was he also avoids annoying anti lockdown voters in seats the Tories need to hold outside London (London largely Labour now anyway)
Surely you’re not suggesting that restrictions should be based on political, rather than medical, considerations?
In this case the political and medical evidence for Boris coincide, London is his weakest region in England and hospitalisation rates are highest in London too
The city that he won two elections in found out how terrible he was before everyone else did
"In Spain, unlike in France, they do not celebrate Napoleon."
No-one should 'celebrate' Napoleon. A great man who killed hundreds of thousands of his own people in his quest for his own glory, only to lose it all.
A full 1.6% of the population (including the ineligible) received some kind of vaccine dose yesterday, that's got to be some kind of record, 1.8% of those eligible got a first, second or booster dose. It just goes to show what a big advertising and public outreach campaign can do.
Don't forget the role played by scary model output
BREAKING New #Omicron study in Scotland and it looks like good news. ‘Early national data suggests that Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation when compared to Delta.’ Experts from Edinburgh & Strathclyde Uni.
Scottish study so appears to be showing the reduction is inherant to Omicron rather than just vaccination given delta came along post our initial roll out.
We'll add that to the apparently imaginary pile of evidence Omicron is milder.
So that’s strong real world evidence from
South Africa New York City Alberta Ontario London Denmark
and now
Scotland
that it’s milder. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say: it’s milder
LMAO. That's not 'going out on a limb'; that's a numpty who loves to run round the village telling everyone that the wolf is coming, who was too eager to pronounce that the new variant would bring 'the end of times' and is now desperately trying to reverse ferret, long after some of us put our money on the optimistic scenario way back...
BREAKING New #Omicron study in Scotland and it looks like good news. ‘Early national data suggests that Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation when compared to Delta.’ Experts from Edinburgh & Strathclyde Uni.
Scottish study so appears to be showing the reduction is inherant to Omicron rather than just vaccination given delta came along post our initial roll out.
We'll add that to the apparently imaginary pile of evidence Omicron is milder.
That's good news; just need not to have more than 3x as many cases and the hospitals will do no worse than with delta. . Which is the other factor.
Peak delta hospitalisations was around 1000 in September, vs over 4000 the NHS coped with last Jan. So we can afford to go to 6 or 9 times delta levels without a problem if this holds true. Fits entirely with experience in South Africa.
Yes, and that was in a largely unvaccinated population, we're now in a position where 46% of the country has had three doses and 70% of the country has had at least two. That will bring a further reduction in case average severity. That SAGE range for deaths and hospitalisations could be overestimated by a factor of 8-10. The politicians were right to tell the scientists to go back and redo their sums.
BREAKING New #Omicron study in Scotland and it looks like good news. ‘Early national data suggests that Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation when compared to Delta.’ Experts from Edinburgh & Strathclyde Uni.
Scottish study so appears to be showing the reduction is inherant to Omicron rather than just vaccination given delta came along post our initial roll out.
We'll add that to the apparently imaginary pile of evidence Omicron is milder.
and then vaccination/boostering will do its job on top.
so expect cases to remain quite high - because none of the restrictions being implemented will work as well as promised - but more decoupling of all the later measures from them.
Looking very much like peak of infections in London was the 15th. Hospitalisations rising strongly in London, as you would expect: you'd expect the peak in hospitalisations to be, what, a week after peak for infections - which is today. Hospitalisations in the UK in general flat.
Today saw London's highest every By Reporting Date figure so far. I don't think we can say the 15th was the peak just yet.
This week, young people will be taking Omicron from London to towns around the UK for Christmas. I would expect that London will be (relatively) deserted next week, and so case numbers will peak around... errr... now.
The question is whether they rocket again as people return in January.
BREAKING New #Omicron study in Scotland and it looks like good news. ‘Early national data suggests that Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of COVID-19 hospitalisation when compared to Delta.’ Experts from Edinburgh & Strathclyde Uni.
Scottish study so appears to be showing the reduction is inherant to Omicron rather than just vaccination given delta came along post our initial roll out.
We'll add that to the apparently imaginary pile of evidence Omicron is milder.
That's good news; just need not to have more than 3x as many cases and the hospitals will do no worse than with delta. . Which is the other factor.
Terrible news for SAGE modellers, undertakers and pension providers, great news for everyone else.
The narrative has been that England is the gambler and the Scots and Welsh playing safe.
As the hard data starts to come in, is this narrative about to be turned on its head?
I think your narrative is faulty.
Scotland, Wales and NI may well be over- cautious. Johnson has still thrown the dice and hoped for the best. If he wins it is down to lady luck. It he doesn't win people might die who otherwise wouldn't have died.
(I hope he wins, I am just saying the mechanics behind the win are very dodgy.)
Caution is waiting for the evidence to make a decision, which is what Johnson has done.
Scotland, Wales and NI have thrown all caution to the wind and jumped headfirst into restrictions without any proof that they're required.
If you are thinking of removing someone's civil liberties then the only acceptable grounds to do so is it has been proven to be necessary beyond all reasonable doubt. "The precautionary principle" is just complete bollocks, would you kill or incarcerate a suspected serial killer whom you've got no evidence is actually the killer on "the precautionary principle" or would you gather the evidence first?
Destroying lives and livelihoods by stripping away liberties, on a hunch that it might be necessary, is the real gamble. Waiting until you know it is necessary is doing only what is necessary, when it is necessary.
Surely not another ploy by Johnson
Changing the names of his bots so it looks like he's freshened things up.....
It's funny how the old "COVID is rising, quick close the nightclubs" thing keeps coming back around.
If only we didn't have nightclubs then perhaps we'd all be back to normal. Of course.
I'm not saying they don't result in the spread of covid, just that they seem particularly scapegoated as doing so.
And they are rumoured to be full of people enjoying themselves!
But nightclubs are full of young people who are only fit to work to pay NI to pay for old peoples’s care! I didn’t die in the war so that young people can enjoy themselves!
Finland bans the sale of booze in bars and restaurants, after 5pm, for 3 weeks
I’ve experienced a Finnish winter. OMG the darkness. It makes London in late January look cheerful
And now no bars in which to morosely and silently gulp your vodka, deep into the frigid night…
brrr
Excess deaths will be down though.
Maybe
Finnish joke:
A Swede and a Finn get together for a drink. For three hours they sit across a bare table, silently necking vodka. Saying nothing. Finally the Swede gets bored and says “so, how are you?”
The Finn glares back, and says
“For fuck sake, are we here to drink or to talk?”
I've heard variations on that joke, usually involving a mökki (log cabin), and usually said to be of Swedish origin (about the Finns).
Looking very much like peak of infections in London was the 15th. Hospitalisations rising strongly in London, as you would expect: you'd expect the peak in hospitalisations to be, what, a week after peak for infections - which is today. Hospitalisations in the UK in general flat.
On that basis then Boris may have to introduce a new tier with tighter restrictions and expanded vaxports specifically for London after Christmas. He can leave the rest of England as it is now.
That was he also avoids annoying anti lockdown voters in seats the Tories need to hold outside London (London largely Labour now anyway)
Surely you’re not suggesting that restrictions should be based on political, rather than medical, considerations?
In this case the political and medical evidence for Boris coincide, London is his weakest region in England and hospitalisation rates are highest in London too
The city that he won two elections in found out how terrible he was before everyone else did
To be fair to Boris he is the only Tory alive to have won a London wide election and a UK general election overall majority
Looking very much like peak of infections in London was the 15th. Hospitalisations rising strongly in London, as you would expect: you'd expect the peak in hospitalisations to be, what, a week after peak for infections - which is today. Hospitalisations in the UK in general flat.
On that basis then Boris may have to introduce a new tier with tighter restrictions and expanded vaxports specifically for London after Christmas. He can leave the rest of England as it is now.
That was he also avoids annoying anti lockdown voters in seats the Tories need to hold outside London (London largely Labour now anyway)
Surely you’re not suggesting that restrictions should be based on political, rather than medical, considerations?
In this case the political and medical evidence for Boris coincide, London is his weakest region in England and hospitalisation rates are highest in London too
The city that he won two elections in found out how terrible he was before everyone else did
Took em long enough - two elections! Glad your now negative. Did your Pcr turn up?
Comments
That was he also avoids annoying anti lockdown voters in seats the Tories need to hold outside London (London largely Labour now anyway)
Also, if you're viewing this through the politics prism, applying different rules to different parts of the country is a recipe for voter anger.
It occurred to me at the time it had to be dangerous. But the endorphin high afterwards is phenomenal
😡😡😡
If only we didn't have nightclubs then perhaps we'd all be back to normal. Of course.
I'm not saying they don't result in the spread of covid, just that they seem particularly scapegoated as doing so.
North Lab 42% Con 26%
Midlands/Wales Lab 40% Con 32%
London Lab 53% Con 22%
Rest of South Con 40% Lab 29%
Scotland SNP 47% Lab 22% Con 13%
(YouGov/The Times; Sample Size: 1790 adults in GB Fieldwork: 19th - 20th December 2021)
- Boosters. 12.2 Million left to do in Scotland and England.
- Cases. Rising sharply across all regions. Nearly all the growth is in the sub 50s groups. London R is now falling
- Admissions. Rising slowly.
- Deaths - still falling.
It looks like a WWI situation, where, having mobilised, the two choices are fight or put yourself at a permanent disadvantage. The difference is that this time around, there’s only one country - and one person - responsible.
https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1473362849871368195
75% of Russia’s total battalion tactical groups have been moved. Artillery, air defense units, tanks, APCs, bridge-laying equipment, mine clearers, armored excavators, engineering equipment, refueling, huge amount of logistics, etc. Follow @RALee85 for details
Putin really is a total arse.
Snooks now living down in Bristol sounds a bit like that, cracks me up 🙂
We are about to get the perfect Omicron experiment in realtime.
And if the government has got it wrong, they aren’t going to improve things (other than cosmetically) by acting too late. By delaying it until after Xmas, the choice has effectively been made.
It could be the right one, and I very much hope it is.
So, for example in an English criminal case a policeman gives evidence of what the defendant X said about the doings of himself. This is evidence against X. But if the defendants are X and Y, what X said to the the policeman about what Y is NOT evidence against Y unless and until X repeats it in court as X and Y dish each other in a cutthroat defence.
There are a few other exceptions too. And in recent years it has widened a bit to include sometimes hearsay accounts of what witness Z said about defendant W before the witness got intimidated out of repeating it in court.
Labour 9 ahead of Tories in Scotland?
Some years since we saw that.
Woops
@LicenseesAssoc
·
4h
@mrjamesob
grant value is "up to" based on rateable value most will get either £2.7k or £4k
https://twitter.com/NicholaKane_/status/1473691333168668678
Scottish study so appears to be showing the reduction is inherant to Omicron rather than just vaccination given delta came along post our initial roll out.
We'll add that to the apparently imaginary pile of evidence Omicron is milder.
I'm not sure why this one caught my eye, but I now really want to know the football story behind "Monk falls into sewer, hit with pie"!!
It was in reference to the run up to the 2015 election, when @NickPalmer used to respond to every labour poll lead, winding up the pbtories with “tick tock” - as we all know, the poll lead evaporated and the tories got an unexpected majority leaving Nick with more than a little egg on his face…
Cluck cluck, indeed!
If this isn't disproved by boxing day then Sturgeon and Drakeford must reverse their position.
With days to go before Christmas, Americans are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Of reworking plans to adapt to the latest virus risks. Of searching for at-home tests and not finding them. Of wondering whether, after two years of avoiding Covid-19, or surviving it, or getting vaccinated and maybe even boosted, Omicron is the variant they inevitably catch.
A sense of dread about Omicron’s rapid spread — the fastest of any variant yet — has swept through the Northeast and Upper Midwest, which were already swamped with Delta variant cases and hospitalizations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/22/us/omicron-virus-worry-dread.html
South Africa
New York City
Alberta
Ontario
London
Denmark
and now
Scotland
that it’s milder. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say: it’s milder
200th anniversary of Napoleon.
"In Spain, unlike in France, they do not celebrate Napoleon."
London and Scotland did not vote Tory even in 2019, the Tories can still win while losing most of the North and the South still has a comfortable Tory lead.
The more people get their boosters, already up to half of adults and the more we avoid further restrictions the quicker there will be some swingback to the blues
Garry Monk was the Leeds manager...
The 100 days is archetypical.
Sobering.
so expect cases to remain quite high - because none of the restrictions being implemented will work as well as promised - but more decoupling of all the later measures from them.
The question is whether they rocket again as people return in January.
Changing the names of his bots so it looks like he's freshened things up.....
(I realise it has probably already been posted.)
Glad your now negative. Did your Pcr turn up?