I suspect not. Once the chill blast of omi hits full-force in January, I reckon HMG will succumb to the pressure to tighten things further.
I hope I am wrong.
I think we’re past that. Restrictions were only ever a temporary emergency measure, to be used in extremis. Omi will be familiar to us by January - it will have lost the terror factor of the unknown and exotic. I get the feeling that people across the political spectrum have finally come to some consensus that it’s time to get back to a more normal situation.
It’s not easy, and it feels like tempting fate: like reducing the terrorist threat from imminent to severe, or whatever the terminology is, but as with terrorism nobody wants to live in a permanent state of emergency.
"I get the feeling that people across the political spectrum have finally come to some consensus"
I wonder whether the various parties are starting to seriously pick up in their focus groups that the voting public have reached the point where they accept no more or little more can be done and we have to live with it.
Yep, he's completely buggered. What chance does he have when even his friends like the Telegraph and Big G start ganging up on him? None.
@Big_G_NorthWales manages the contortions required to vote for the donkey in the blue rosette every time. He is very flexible for his years.
A year ago I would have said that Big G was one of the most respected, likeable and liked posters on PB.
A year is a long time in blogland.
Oh, I have no problem with him being likeable. It is the pretence of objective criticism that irks me. He is like an older version of the Essex Tankie.
I've been looking at Linkedin. People are going mad over COVID. People virtue signalling to their professional network about going in to self solation over Christmas. A QC was berating one of his (unidentified) juniors for being a sceptical about vaccines when they were having a debate on the subject. Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad. Just don't say anything at all about it in a professional context, ever; as nothing good can come of it and only embarrassment and humiliation will follow.
- “Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad.”
Spot on.
Exhibit A: Big G making a tit of himself over “Drakefool” (sic)
You see, read and hear a lot of absolute shite from people you assumed were reasonably intelligent. It confirms my suspicion, reinforced by decades of experience, that an awful lot of intelligent people are not clever, whereas a lot of people with supposedly low intelligence are in fact extremely clever. One of the reasons the modern obsession with qualifications (secondary and tertiary) is time and energy pissed up the wall.
PB is full of absolute nonsense about Covid19. It is very obviously being used as a proxy for deeper political arguments. My advice would be to just shut up about it for a while. It really is very, very, very boring. And you all look like complete tits.
Problem is though if we don't say anything and JRM/Gove are still saying the experts know nothing, then who is actually driving the bus? Tiger Woods?
Those particular lunatics are in charge of the asylum for at least another two years. Their majority is solid and they can do what they like. Once they’re gone, and they will be at the next UK GE, society must ensure that we are never again governed by such a bunch of malevolent, incompetent, corrupt clowns.
Bide your time and in the words of The Bard, nurse your wrath to keep it warm.
And pray to your maker that there are still enough reasonably competent civil servants in Whitehall to minimise the impact damage of the driverless bus.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
I've been looking at Linkedin. People are going mad over COVID. People virtue signalling to their professional network about going in to self solation over Christmas. A QC was berating one of his (unidentified) juniors for being a sceptical about vaccines when they were having a debate on the subject. Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad. Just don't say anything at all about it in a professional context, ever; as nothing good can come of it and only embarrassment and humiliation will follow.
- “Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad.”
Spot on.
Exhibit A: Big G making a tit of himself over “Drakefool” (sic)
You see, read and hear a lot of absolute shite from people you assumed were reasonably intelligent. It confirms my suspicion, reinforced by decades of experience, that an awful lot of intelligent people are not clever, whereas a lot of people with supposedly low intelligence are in fact extremely clever. One of the reasons the modern obsession with qualifications (secondary and tertiary) is time and energy pissed up the wall.
PB is full of absolute nonsense about Covid19. It is very obviously being used as a proxy for deeper political arguments. My advice would be to just shut up about it for a while. It really is very, very, very boring. And you all look like complete tits.
That (the supposedly 'clever' being anything but in reality) is what I've been saying for a while too. In the end, on Covid, there are limitations to what we can know; and limitations on what we can do to control the virus, as the 'new variant' episode confirms. And this is what drives supposedly clever people mad. They want to know what is beyond the scope of human knowledge and demonstrate superhuman powers of prediction which have no basis in reality. Other less educated people simply accept the situation is uncertain and keep an open mind about it, like dealing with an illness.
The German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce has written to the Lithuanian government warning that German investors may close their plants in the country unless a "constructive solution to restore Lithuanian-Chinese economic relations" is found
Germany really are a mercantilist nation. Shameful.
To be fair this is a chamber of commerce ie an industry group not the government. Still, what with this and Nordstream2 there does seem to be a degree of realpolitik gone mad in some corners of the German economy.
The Nordstream debate is interesting, as it's a wedge between the new German government partners. It's built, ready to use, and would help dampen the soaring gas price. Everyone agrees that if Russia actually attacked Ukraine then it shouldn't be opened for a long time, if ever. The SPD and CDU are in favour of opening it if they don't, the Greens are against, both because they don't like gas (fossil fuel) and they don't like Russia (and do like Ukraine). Not sure what the FDP thinks - does anyone know?
The obvious deal to be done is for Putin to stop willy-waving and the pipeline to open after a few months, after which it becomes a profitable lever to restrain Putin from a return to willy-waving. I think that's what will happen in the end, but Putin is populist enough to be unpredictable.
Putin doesn’t care about profits.
Nordstream 2 absolutely fucks Ukraine.
It allows Russia to bypass them and cut off the transit fees.
It will be a strategic calamity for the West.
But Gerhard Schroeder and other German politicians are richer than they were.
Nordstream 2 fucks the Ukrainians, and I get that.
But you are equally asking German consumers to accept higher priced gas, because it includes transit fees, solely to benefit the Ukrainians.
Irrespective, the big news - driven no doubt by Putin turning the screws - is that two LNG import terminal projects in Germany are now going to be built. Germany's dependence on Russian gas - with Nordstream 2 or without it - will diminish, because for the first time it will be able to directly import LNG from the US, Australia or elsewhere.
Indeed, the law of unintended consequences is that a whole host of LNG projects have been greenlighted in the last few months. The most important of these is that Mozambique LNG is now actually going to happen. (If the Russians had waited another six or twelve months it might have gotten permanently shelved. Now, it is not inconceivable the first cargoes flow in 2024. I suspect there will be no shortage of European buyers for the gas. Amazing to think that six months ago, everyone thought it was dead.)
Any idea why these sorts of projects weren't built after 2014?
I don't know why people persist with the myth that Christmas has anything to do with a baby two thousand years ago.
I know, it’s the same at Easter. You can be perfectly happy eating chocolate mini eggs and using a few days off to redecorate the spare room, yet these annoying killjoys keep trying to bring religion into it.
The funny thing is that feasts, getting drunk and merriment are infinitely more "traditional" for Christmas than blathering on about a baby or a Church.
Norse Yule and Roman Saturnalia predate the adoption of the holiday by the Church by about a thousand years. Its always been a holiday about eating and drinking far too much, its what our Norse and Roman ancestors would have been doing.
I don't know why people persist with the myth that Christmas has anything to do with a baby two thousand years ago.
I know, it’s the same at Easter. You can be perfectly happy eating chocolate mini eggs and using a few days off to redecorate the spare room, yet these annoying killjoys keep trying to bring religion into it.
Personally I think we need to take Easter back to its pagan roots. I am sick of it being perverted by all these recent add ons about crucifixions and caves.
It would be nice if schools could educate people about the real histories of holidays. There is some historical evidence to show that 25 December was a holiday to celebrity a birthday, but it was celebrating the birth of the Zoroastrian sun god Mithra not a baby.
The interconnections of a Persian sun god [as perceived by the Romans], Roman traditions and the Norse traditions all form a fascinating history of the festival we now know as Christmas and the traditions of food, merriment, drink and gifts etc that go with that have been celebrated now for well over two and a half thousand years.
Except for when the Puritans tried and failed to cancel it. So that brings cancel culture into the conversation too.
Well, schools won’t educate children on that version of it if they tell ‘the true story’ because although popular among online atheists that particular claim is totally untrue.
This is probably the most accessible explanation as to why (it also explains why claims about a link to Yule are unfounded):
German import prices rose by 3.0% in November and by 24.7% on a year ago. (Analysts had expected 1.1% and 22.3%.)
A lot of younger people won’t even remember inflation. They are about to learn a fundamental economic lesson the hard way.
Just as well the UK government hasn’t borrowed too much.
Oh!
Just as well the UK government is keeping prices down by retaining membership of the biggest single market on the planet.
Oh!
Just as well households haven’t over-borrowed and gambled money they don’t have on the stock markets. Oh!
The list of extremely hard lessons about to be learned is very long.
I agree that no one under 50 remembers real inflation and the problems that it brings. The effect on equities is less clear, so I am remaining invested. It was a major bear market in the Seventies but I think it more likely to reach inflation figures of the Eighties.
I don’t think the effect on equities is unclear at all. We are loooong overdue a severe “correction”, and inflation will just make the fall even worse.
I’d love to be proved wrong, as I still have far too much invested in equities myself, despite a long process of slowly getting into other asset types.
If the markets really are about to tumble, where does one take refuge? Cash seem like a silly answer. (It might not be.) Genuinely curious.
I've been looking at Linkedin. People are going mad over COVID. People virtue signalling to their professional network about going in to self solation over Christmas. A QC was berating one of his (unidentified) juniors for being a sceptical about vaccines when they were having a debate on the subject. Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad. Just don't say anything at all about it in a professional context, ever; as nothing good can come of it and only embarrassment and humiliation will follow.
- “Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad.”
Spot on.
Exhibit A: Big G making a tit of himself over “Drakefool” (sic)
You see, read and hear a lot of absolute shite from people you assumed were reasonably intelligent. It confirms my suspicion, reinforced by decades of experience, that an awful lot of intelligent people are not clever, whereas a lot of people with supposedly low intelligence are in fact extremely clever. One of the reasons the modern obsession with qualifications (secondary and tertiary) is time and energy pissed up the wall.
PB is full of absolute nonsense about Covid19. It is very obviously being used as a proxy for deeper political arguments. My advice would be to just shut up about it for a while. It really is very, very, very boring. And you all look like complete tits.
Problem is though if we don't say anything and JRM/Gove are still saying the experts know nothing, then who is actually driving the bus? Tiger Woods?
Those particular lunatics are in charge of the asylum for at least another two years. Their majority is solid and they can do what they like. Once they’re gone, and they will be at the next UK GE, society must ensure that we are never again governed by such a bunch of malevolent, incompetent, corrupt clowns.
Bide your time and in the words of The Bard, nurse your wrath to keep it warm.
And pray to your maker that there are still enough reasonably competent civil servants in Whitehall to minimise the impact damage of the driverless bus.
Visions of sensible civil servants calmly singing the lord is my shepherd guiding us toward 2024, I almost feel hope
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
I don't know why people persist with the myth that Christmas has anything to do with a baby two thousand years ago.
I know, it’s the same at Easter. You can be perfectly happy eating chocolate mini eggs and using a few days off to redecorate the spare room, yet these annoying killjoys keep trying to bring religion into it.
Personally I think we need to take Easter back to its pagan roots. I am sick of it being perverted by all these recent add ons about crucifixions and caves.
It would be nice if schools could educate people about the real histories of holidays. There is some historical evidence to show that 25 December was a holiday to celebrity a birthday, but it was celebrating the birth of the Zoroastrian sun god Mithra not a baby.
The interconnections of a Persian sun god [as perceived by the Romans], Roman traditions and the Norse traditions all form a fascinating history of the festival we now know as Christmas and the traditions of food, merriment, drink and gifts etc that go with that have been celebrated now for well over two and a half thousand years.
Except for when the Puritans tried and failed to cancel it. So that brings cancel culture into the conversation too.
I wonder who was there to record Mithra's birth on 25th December? All this stuff is made up anyway so it doesn't really matter in the end which religion has overwritten the previous one. I like to see it as a way to celebrate the passing of the shortest day of the year and that Spring will be on the way.
Oh absolutely that's what its about. That's what its always been about.
Its just amusing when people bemoan feasting and drinking and gift giving etc as not being "the true meaning" of the holiday.
They literally are "the true meaning" and have been for about two and a half thousand years at least, minus the puritan era.
When the Church adopted Saturnalia as the birth of Jesus, society kept all the Pagan festivities which have largely passed through to today, despite the best wishes of the Puritans to stamp them out.
It’s funny how non-believers feel the need to denigrate other people’s faith.
It suggests a certain lack of confidence
I'm an agnostic, but I have the greatest respect for the moral teachings of Jesus, and envy those blessed with the certainty of belief*.
* Belief meaning certainty of either the existence or non-existence of God.
I'm agnostic too, but IMO it's important for agnostics and atheists to know about religion as well - if only because it matters to others.
I'd argue my little 'un's school (state) is teaching religion rather well. There are Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs in his year, but no Jews to our knowledge. After our 2K run the other day, we were walking home and he told me about the history of Hanukkah and the Maccabees. I knew none of this, and he loved the story and the history. I love it when my son teaches me things!
We then got into a conversation about why some kids might not want people to know their religion, particularly in certain countries. His reaction: "That's stupid!".
"Updated vaccine effectiveness analysis shows mRNA boosters beginning to wane from one month (week 5-9) for Omicron, and as low as 30-50% effective from 10 weeks post-booster."
Moderna and Pfizer need to crack on and make a Omicron version.
Those are extremely disappointing results. I frankly wonder if it is worth organising and funding a mass vaccination for the country for so little gain. At most we should perhaps have done the must vulnerable groups.
We definitely need a step change in performance before we do this again. Not sure about focusing on Omicron thought. Delta had 3-4 months in the sun and we are already a month into Omicron's reign.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
I'd have thought if you're fit and healthy 3 would be enough till next year. Certainly of this type - if a far superior polyvalent vaccine is developed it'll probably be worth getting
I don't know why people persist with the myth that Christmas has anything to do with a baby two thousand years ago.
I know, it’s the same at Easter. You can be perfectly happy eating chocolate mini eggs and using a few days off to redecorate the spare room, yet these annoying killjoys keep trying to bring religion into it.
The funny thing is that feasts, getting drunk and merriment are infinitely more "traditional" for Christmas than blathering on about a baby or a Church.
Norse Yule and Roman Saturnalia predate the adoption of the holiday by the Church by about a thousand years. Its always been a holiday about eating and drinking far too much, its what our Norse and Roman ancestors would have been doing.
I don't know why people persist with the myth that Christmas has anything to do with a baby two thousand years ago.
I know, it’s the same at Easter. You can be perfectly happy eating chocolate mini eggs and using a few days off to redecorate the spare room, yet these annoying killjoys keep trying to bring religion into it.
Personally I think we need to take Easter back to its pagan roots. I am sick of it being perverted by all these recent add ons about crucifixions and caves.
It would be nice if schools could educate people about the real histories of holidays. There is some historical evidence to show that 25 December was a holiday to celebrity a birthday, but it was celebrating the birth of the Zoroastrian sun god Mithra not a baby.
The interconnections of a Persian sun god [as perceived by the Romans], Roman traditions and the Norse traditions all form a fascinating history of the festival we now know as Christmas and the traditions of food, merriment, drink and gifts etc that go with that have been celebrated now for well over two and a half thousand years.
Except for when the Puritans tried and failed to cancel it. So that brings cancel culture into the conversation too.
Well, schools won’t educate children on that version of it if they tell ‘the true story’ because although popular among online atheists that particular claim is totally untrue.
This is probably the most accessible explanation as to why (it also explains why claims about a link to Yule are unfounded):
Blog name is a bit 'Farage's truth for remainers' or an O'Brien one 'best about brexit'
As you would have found and you bothered to look, it’s run by an atheist…one who happens to find the hypocrisy of his fellow atheists in making false claims to attack Christians while attacking Christians for making false claims very irritating.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
What's changed is the pernicious threat that all of this is only possible at the whim of some tiny virus or civil servant; and that the freedom to do what we once took for granted might be rescinded at any moment. That is the most poisonous thing about this not-quite-normality. Things are looking good today. But not five days ago we were expecting some sort of New Year lockdown (again, blame this on the virus itself or the unseen civil servant according to taste), Christmas hung in the balance, and indeed in three out of four of our constituent nations multiple plans were indeed cancelled. The overall trajectory is certainly, currently in the right direction. But we've a long way to go before we can once again blithely assume we are free.
I've been looking at Linkedin. People are going mad over COVID. People virtue signalling to their professional network about going in to self solation over Christmas. A QC was berating one of his (unidentified) juniors for being a sceptical about vaccines when they were having a debate on the subject. Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad. Just don't say anything at all about it in a professional context, ever; as nothing good can come of it and only embarrassment and humiliation will follow.
- “Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad.”
Spot on.
Exhibit A: Big G making a tit of himself over “Drakefool” (sic)
You see, read and hear a lot of absolute shite from people you assumed were reasonably intelligent. It confirms my suspicion, reinforced by decades of experience, that an awful lot of intelligent people are not clever, whereas a lot of people with supposedly low intelligence are in fact extremely clever. One of the reasons the modern obsession with qualifications (secondary and tertiary) is time and energy pissed up the wall.
PB is full of absolute nonsense about Covid19. It is very obviously being used as a proxy for deeper political arguments. My advice would be to just shut up about it for a while. It really is very, very, very boring. And you all look like complete tits.
Problem is though if we don't say anything and JRM/Gove are still saying the experts know nothing, then who is actually driving the bus? Tiger Woods?
Those particular lunatics are in charge of the asylum for at least another two years. Their majority is solid and they can do what they like. Once they’re gone, and they will be at the next UK GE, society must ensure that we are never again governed by such a bunch of malevolent, incompetent, corrupt clowns.
Bide your time and in the words of The Bard, nurse your wrath to keep it warm.
And pray to your maker that there are still enough reasonably competent civil servants in Whitehall to minimise the impact damage of the driverless bus.
Visions of sensible civil servants calmly singing the lord is my shepherd guiding us toward 2024, I almost feel hope
To me a politician or a civil servant is still an arrogant fool until he is proved otherwise.
I don't know why people persist with the myth that Christmas has anything to do with a baby two thousand years ago.
I know, it’s the same at Easter. You can be perfectly happy eating chocolate mini eggs and using a few days off to redecorate the spare room, yet these annoying killjoys keep trying to bring religion into it.
Personally I think we need to take Easter back to its pagan roots. I am sick of it being perverted by all these recent add ons about crucifixions and caves.
It would be nice if schools could educate people about the real histories of holidays. There is some historical evidence to show that 25 December was a holiday to celebrity a birthday, but it was celebrating the birth of the Zoroastrian sun god Mithra not a baby.
The interconnections of a Persian sun god [as perceived by the Romans], Roman traditions and the Norse traditions all form a fascinating history of the festival we now know as Christmas and the traditions of food, merriment, drink and gifts etc that go with that have been celebrated now for well over two and a half thousand years.
Except for when the Puritans tried and failed to cancel it. So that brings cancel culture into the conversation too.
I wonder who was there to record Mithra's birth on 25th December? All this stuff is made up anyway so it doesn't really matter in the end which religion has overwritten the previous one. I like to see it as a way to celebrate the passing of the shortest day of the year and that Spring will be on the way.
Oh absolutely that's what its about. That's what its always been about.
Its just amusing when people bemoan feasting and drinking and gift giving etc as not being "the true meaning" of the holiday.
They literally are "the true meaning" and have been for about two and a half thousand years at least, minus the puritan era.
When the Church adopted Saturnalia as the birth of Jesus, society kept all the Pagan festivities which have largely passed through to today, despite the best wishes of the Puritans to stamp them out.
It’s funny how non-believers feel the need to denigrate other people’s faith.
It suggests a certain lack of confidence
I'm an agnostic, but I have the greatest respect for the moral teachings of Jesus, and envy those blessed with the certainty of belief*.
* Belief meaning certainty of either the existence or non-existence of God.
I'm agnostic too, but IMO it's important for agnostics and atheists to know about religion as well - if only because it matters to others.
I'd argue my little 'un's school (state) is teaching religion rather well. There are Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs in his year, but no Jews to our knowledge. After our 2K run the other day, we were walking home and he told me about the history of Hanukkah and the Maccabees. I knew none of this, and he loved the story and the history. I love it when my son teaches me things!
We then got into a conversation about why some kids might not want people to know their religion, particularly in certain countries. His reaction: "That's stupid!".
I missed a few threads. Did Leon end up having a true spiritual experience after his jungle juice as many do, or did he interpret it as a manifestation of his own subconscious?
Interesting that “Black” is capitalised while “white” is not. Suggests the latter is a description and the former a category. Which is revealing about the way the author thinks.
Or it may just be a typo…
It's most likely down to autocorrect, which I have noticed favours this stylistic choice for reasons I don't fully understand.
The German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce has written to the Lithuanian government warning that German investors may close their plants in the country unless a "constructive solution to restore Lithuanian-Chinese economic relations" is found
Germany really are a mercantilist nation. Shameful.
To be fair this is a chamber of commerce ie an industry group not the government. Still, what with this and Nordstream2 there does seem to be a degree of realpolitik gone mad in some corners of the German economy.
The Nordstream debate is interesting, as it's a wedge between the new German government partners. It's built, ready to use, and would help dampen the soaring gas price. Everyone agrees that if Russia actually attacked Ukraine then it shouldn't be opened for a long time, if ever. The SPD and CDU are in favour of opening it if they don't, the Greens are against, both because they don't like gas (fossil fuel) and they don't like Russia (and do like Ukraine). Not sure what the FDP thinks - does anyone know?
The obvious deal to be done is for Putin to stop willy-waving and the pipeline to open after a few months, after which it becomes a profitable lever to restrain Putin from a return to willy-waving. I think that's what will happen in the end, but Putin is populist enough to be unpredictable.
Putin doesn’t care about profits.
Nordstream 2 absolutely fucks Ukraine.
It allows Russia to bypass them and cut off the transit fees.
It will be a strategic calamity for the West.
But Gerhard Schroeder and other German politicians are richer than they were.
Nordstream 2 fucks the Ukrainians, and I get that.
But you are equally asking German consumers to accept higher priced gas, because it includes transit fees, solely to benefit the Ukrainians.
Irrespective, the big news - driven no doubt by Putin turning the screws - is that two LNG import terminal projects in Germany are now going to be built. Germany's dependence on Russian gas - with Nordstream 2 or without it - will diminish, because for the first time it will be able to directly import LNG from the US, Australia or elsewhere.
Indeed, the law of unintended consequences is that a whole host of LNG projects have been greenlighted in the last few months. The most important of these is that Mozambique LNG is now actually going to happen. (If the Russians had waited another six or twelve months it might have gotten permanently shelved. Now, it is not inconceivable the first cargoes flow in 2024. I suspect there will be no shortage of European buyers for the gas. Amazing to think that six months ago, everyone thought it was dead.)
Any idea why these sorts of projects weren't built after 2014?
Lots of projects were built post 2014.
But there was a massive change that happened between 2006 and 2018. In 2006, everyone thought the US would be an importer of natural gas. LNG import terminals were build in the US to import gas from Australia, PNG, Nigeria and the Middle East, because US natural gas was going to run out, and they'd need to import it from abroad.
And then it turned out the US had almost limitless supplies of gas. And US LNG import terminals were - over the course of a decade - changed to export ones*. This led to the cancellation of a bunch of projects around the world, because instead of the US being a customer, it was a competitor.
The gas market was pretty stable for a long time: there were lots of long term contracts, and a growing spot market.
But throughout all this, US natural gas (shale gas) was the swing producer. More demand? More drilling in the Marcellus. Less demand? Drilling dries up.
When Covid hit, the US rig count collapsed. It fell perhaps 70% in the course of six months.
And people who worked on rigs got other jobs.
This means that even though pricing of gas has rebounded, there are rigs without roughnecks. Prices are high for natural gas, but people haven't returned to work in dusty Texas towns, because they can earn good money doing other things.
That's changing. Indeed, by April next year, I'd wager the US will be producing 120bn/cf of gas per day. And they'll be exporting a lot of that. But there's an inevitable lag time between prices being high and the market responding.
* Not all, there's still a completely unused LNG import terminal in the US.
I don't know why people persist with the myth that Christmas has anything to do with a baby two thousand years ago.
I know, it’s the same at Easter. You can be perfectly happy eating chocolate mini eggs and using a few days off to redecorate the spare room, yet these annoying killjoys keep trying to bring religion into it.
Personally I think we need to take Easter back to its pagan roots. I am sick of it being perverted by all these recent add ons about crucifixions and caves.
It would be nice if schools could educate people about the real histories of holidays. There is some historical evidence to show that 25 December was a holiday to celebrity a birthday, but it was celebrating the birth of the Zoroastrian sun god Mithra not a baby.
The interconnections of a Persian sun god [as perceived by the Romans], Roman traditions and the Norse traditions all form a fascinating history of the festival we now know as Christmas and the traditions of food, merriment, drink and gifts etc that go with that have been celebrated now for well over two and a half thousand years.
Except for when the Puritans tried and failed to cancel it. So that brings cancel culture into the conversation too.
I wonder who was there to record Mithra's birth on 25th December? All this stuff is made up anyway so it doesn't really matter in the end which religion has overwritten the previous one. I like to see it as a way to celebrate the passing of the shortest day of the year and that Spring will be on the way.
Oh absolutely that's what its about. That's what its always been about.
Its just amusing when people bemoan feasting and drinking and gift giving etc as not being "the true meaning" of the holiday.
They literally are "the true meaning" and have been for about two and a half thousand years at least, minus the puritan era.
When the Church adopted Saturnalia as the birth of Jesus, society kept all the Pagan festivities which have largely passed through to today, despite the best wishes of the Puritans to stamp them out.
It’s funny how non-believers feel the need to denigrate other people’s faith.
It suggests a certain lack of confidence
I'm an agnostic, but I have the greatest respect for the moral teachings of Jesus, and envy those blessed with the certainty of belief*.
* Belief meaning certainty of either the existence or non-existence of God.
I'm agnostic too, but IMO it's important for agnostics and atheists to know about religion as well - if only because it matters to others.
I'd argue my little 'un's school (state) is teaching religion rather well. There are Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs in his year, but no Jews to our knowledge. After our 2K run the other day, we were walking home and he told me about the history of Hanukkah and the Maccabees. I knew none of this, and he loved the story and the history. I love it when my son teaches me things!
We then got into a conversation about why some kids might not want people to know their religion, particularly in certain countries. His reaction: "That's stupid!".
I missed a few threads. Did Leon end up having a true spiritual experience after his jungle juice as many do, or did he interpret it as a manifestation of his own subconscious?
I assume Leon's religion would be polytheistic - or at least allow for multiple manifestations of a single, wrathful and capricious, deity.
I don't know why people persist with the myth that Christmas has anything to do with a baby two thousand years ago.
I know, it’s the same at Easter. You can be perfectly happy eating chocolate mini eggs and using a few days off to redecorate the spare room, yet these annoying killjoys keep trying to bring religion into it.
Personally I think we need to take Easter back to its pagan roots. I am sick of it being perverted by all these recent add ons about crucifixions and caves.
It would be nice if schools could educate people about the real histories of holidays. There is some historical evidence to show that 25 December was a holiday to celebrity a birthday, but it was celebrating the birth of the Zoroastrian sun god Mithra not a baby.
The interconnections of a Persian sun god [as perceived by the Romans], Roman traditions and the Norse traditions all form a fascinating history of the festival we now know as Christmas and the traditions of food, merriment, drink and gifts etc that go with that have been celebrated now for well over two and a half thousand years.
Except for when the Puritans tried and failed to cancel it. So that brings cancel culture into the conversation too.
I wonder who was there to record Mithra's birth on 25th December? All this stuff is made up anyway so it doesn't really matter in the end which religion has overwritten the previous one. I like to see it as a way to celebrate the passing of the shortest day of the year and that Spring will be on the way.
Oh absolutely that's what its about. That's what its always been about.
Its just amusing when people bemoan feasting and drinking and gift giving etc as not being "the true meaning" of the holiday.
They literally are "the true meaning" and have been for about two and a half thousand years at least, minus the puritan era.
When the Church adopted Saturnalia as the birth of Jesus, society kept all the Pagan festivities which have largely passed through to today, despite the best wishes of the Puritans to stamp them out.
It’s funny how non-believers feel the need to denigrate other people’s faith.
It suggests a certain lack of confidence
I'm an agnostic, but I have the greatest respect for the moral teachings of Jesus, and envy those blessed with the certainty of belief*.
* Belief meaning certainty of either the existence or non-existence of God.
I'm agnostic too, but IMO it's important for agnostics and atheists to know about religion as well - if only because it matters to others.
I'd argue my little 'un's school (state) is teaching religion rather well. There are Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs in his year, but no Jews to our knowledge. After our 2K run the other day, we were walking home and he told me about the history of Hanukkah and the Maccabees. I knew none of this, and he loved the story and the history. I love it when my son teaches me things!
We then got into a conversation about why some kids might not want people to know their religion, particularly in certain countries. His reaction: "That's stupid!".
As an agnostic I've started my sons learning about religion (none going on at school as yet) by buying him an illustrated book about Greek myths, which we dip in to and out of occasionally, along with a similar book about world history. I guess the bible will be covered at school in due course.
One slightly heartening aspect of the past week is the revelation of how much people value Christmas day. Mamy people have deprived themselves almost everything else over Christmas in order to safeguard Christmas Day itself. What we value most of all, it appears, is each other. Despite the jokes, the eye rolls, the understatement, what we want is to physically be with our family on Christmas Day. Presents delivered by post and a zoom call absolutely not cut it. It is Important in a way we can't fully articulate or even understand but which we demonstrate quite clearly by our actions and preferences. In our post-religious society, we may no longer believe in God or any of the rituals associated with him. But good grief do we believe in Christmas, with a religious devotion.
The German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce has written to the Lithuanian government warning that German investors may close their plants in the country unless a "constructive solution to restore Lithuanian-Chinese economic relations" is found
Germany really are a mercantilist nation. Shameful.
To be fair this is a chamber of commerce ie an industry group not the government. Still, what with this and Nordstream2 there does seem to be a degree of realpolitik gone mad in some corners of the German economy.
The Nordstream debate is interesting, as it's a wedge between the new German government partners. It's built, ready to use, and would help dampen the soaring gas price. Everyone agrees that if Russia actually attacked Ukraine then it shouldn't be opened for a long time, if ever. The SPD and CDU are in favour of opening it if they don't, the Greens are against, both because they don't like gas (fossil fuel) and they don't like Russia (and do like Ukraine). Not sure what the FDP thinks - does anyone know?
The obvious deal to be done is for Putin to stop willy-waving and the pipeline to open after a few months, after which it becomes a profitable lever to restrain Putin from a return to willy-waving. I think that's what will happen in the end, but Putin is populist enough to be unpredictable.
Putin doesn’t care about profits.
Nordstream 2 absolutely fucks Ukraine.
It allows Russia to bypass them and cut off the transit fees.
It will be a strategic calamity for the West.
But Gerhard Schroeder and other German politicians are richer than they were.
Nordstream 2 fucks the Ukrainians, and I get that.
But you are equally asking German consumers to accept higher priced gas, because it includes transit fees, solely to benefit the Ukrainians.
Irrespective, the big news - driven no doubt by Putin turning the screws - is that two LNG import terminal projects in Germany are now going to be built. Germany's dependence on Russian gas - with Nordstream 2 or without it - will diminish, because for the first time it will be able to directly import LNG from the US, Australia or elsewhere.
Indeed, the law of unintended consequences is that a whole host of LNG projects have been greenlighted in the last few months. The most important of these is that Mozambique LNG is now actually going to happen. (If the Russians had waited another six or twelve months it might have gotten permanently shelved. Now, it is not inconceivable the first cargoes flow in 2024. I suspect there will be no shortage of European buyers for the gas. Amazing to think that six months ago, everyone thought it was dead.)
Any idea why these sorts of projects weren't built after 2014?
Lots of projects were built post 2014.
But there was a massive change that happened between 2006 and 2018. In 2006, everyone thought the US would be an importer of natural gas. LNG import terminals were build in the US to import gas from Australia, PNG, Nigeria and the Middle East, because US natural gas was going to run out, and they'd need to import it from abroad.
And then it turned out the US had almost limitless supplies of gas. And US LNG import terminals were - over the course of a decade - changed to export ones*. This led to the cancellation of a bunch of projects around the world, because instead of the US being a customer, it was a competitor.
The gas market was pretty stable for a long time: there were lots of long term contracts, and a growing spot market.
But throughout all this, US natural gas (shale gas) was the swing producer. More demand? More drilling in the Marcellus. Less demand? Drilling dries up.
When Covid hit, the US rig count collapsed. It fell perhaps 70% in the course of six months.
And people who worked on rigs got other jobs.
This means that even though pricing of gas has rebounded, there are rigs without roughnecks. Prices are high for natural gas, but people haven't returned to work in dusty Texas towns, because they can earn good money doing other things.
That's changing. Indeed, by April next year, I'd wager the US will be producing 120bn/cf of gas per day. And they'll be exporting a lot of that. But there's an inevitable lag time between prices being high and the market responding.
* Not all, there's still a completely unused LNG import terminal in the US.
Is this possibly one reason why Putin is pressuring the Ukraine now? His window of opportunity may be narrow?
Risky, if so. It would mean the negative fallout from any military action (and there would be plenty) would coincide with a collapse in the economy
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The only way Trump doesn't 'win' in 2024 is he is primaried against DeSantis who uses vaccines as a wedge issue. I have yet to hear of any other compelling scenario where he is not President in 2025.
Biden is a shambling reminder of the finitude of the human experience. He is a mummy at this point.
I don't know why people persist with the myth that Christmas has anything to do with a baby two thousand years ago.
I know, it’s the same at Easter. You can be perfectly happy eating chocolate mini eggs and using a few days off to redecorate the spare room, yet these annoying killjoys keep trying to bring religion into it.
Personally I think we need to take Easter back to its pagan roots. I am sick of it being perverted by all these recent add ons about crucifixions and caves.
It would be nice if schools could educate people about the real histories of holidays. There is some historical evidence to show that 25 December was a holiday to celebrity a birthday, but it was celebrating the birth of the Zoroastrian sun god Mithra not a baby.
The interconnections of a Persian sun god [as perceived by the Romans], Roman traditions and the Norse traditions all form a fascinating history of the festival we now know as Christmas and the traditions of food, merriment, drink and gifts etc that go with that have been celebrated now for well over two and a half thousand years.
Except for when the Puritans tried and failed to cancel it. So that brings cancel culture into the conversation too.
I wonder who was there to record Mithra's birth on 25th December? All this stuff is made up anyway so it doesn't really matter in the end which religion has overwritten the previous one. I like to see it as a way to celebrate the passing of the shortest day of the year and that Spring will be on the way.
Oh absolutely that's what its about. That's what its always been about.
Its just amusing when people bemoan feasting and drinking and gift giving etc as not being "the true meaning" of the holiday.
They literally are "the true meaning" and have been for about two and a half thousand years at least, minus the puritan era.
When the Church adopted Saturnalia as the birth of Jesus, society kept all the Pagan festivities which have largely passed through to today, despite the best wishes of the Puritans to stamp them out.
It’s funny how non-believers feel the need to denigrate other people’s faith.
It suggests a certain lack of confidence
I'm an agnostic, but I have the greatest respect for the moral teachings of Jesus, and envy those blessed with the certainty of belief*.
* Belief meaning certainty of either the existence or non-existence of God.
I'm agnostic too, but IMO it's important for agnostics and atheists to know about religion as well - if only because it matters to others.
I'd argue my little 'un's school (state) is teaching religion rather well. There are Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs in his year, but no Jews to our knowledge. After our 2K run the other day, we were walking home and he told me about the history of Hanukkah and the Maccabees. I knew none of this, and he loved the story and the history. I love it when my son teaches me things!
We then got into a conversation about why some kids might not want people to know their religion, particularly in certain countries. His reaction: "That's stupid!".
I missed a few threads. Did Leon end up having a true spiritual experience after his jungle juice as many do, or did he interpret it as a manifestation of his own subconscious?
I think he discovered there is a God, and His names is SeanT. His holy books are a little odd though, particularly the early ones, with dramatic changes in tone. Firstly the date-and-shag everyone phase; then the weird prophet Knox, and finally the mystical symbolism of lighthouse and twins.
Although it still makes more sense than the bible...
The only way Trump doesn't 'win' in 2024 is he is primaried against DeSantis who uses vaccines as a wedge issue. I have yet to hear of any other compelling scenario where he is not President in 2025.
Biden is a shambling reminder of the finitude of the human experience. He is a mummy at this point.
Or he has a medical issue in the next three years.
Statistically, that has to be at least a one-in-four chance.
German import prices rose by 3.0% in November and by 24.7% on a year ago. (Analysts had expected 1.1% and 22.3%.)
A lot of younger people won’t even remember inflation. They are about to learn a fundamental economic lesson the hard way.
Just as well the UK government hasn’t borrowed too much.
Oh!
Just as well the UK government is keeping prices down by retaining membership of the biggest single market on the planet.
Oh!
Just as well households haven’t over-borrowed and gambled money they don’t have on the stock markets.
Oh!
The list of extremely hard lessons about to be learned is very long.
One and a half out of three right.
Probably worth a C, May be a B- if I am feeling generous
I’ll take that! Nice to know that an alumnus of Strathclyde Business School doesn’t talk total gibberish on the topic of economics.
Out of interest, and to improve my scoring rate, where did I lose my one and a half points?
The linkage between household borrowing and stock market gambling - households are over leveraged but relatively few in the UK invest in equities (half a mark)
Pricing is about globalisation - specifically cheap goods from Asia - and the unwinding of that is driving inflation (it’s also a thing in China, btw). The linkage with the EU is marginal at best. (no marks)
"Updated vaccine effectiveness analysis shows mRNA boosters beginning to wane from one month (week 5-9) for Omicron, and as low as 30-50% effective from 10 weeks post-booster."
Moderna and Pfizer need to crack on and make a Omicron version.
Those are extremely disappointing results. I frankly wonder if it is worth organising and funding a mass vaccination for the country for so little gain. At most we should perhaps have done the must vulnerable groups.
We definitely need a step change in performance before we do this again. Not sure about focusing on Omicron thought. Delta had 3-4 months in the sun and we are already a month into Omicron's reign.
Blimey, 2 typos in 4 lines. Definitely need more coffee.
I've been looking at Linkedin. People are going mad over COVID. People virtue signalling to their professional network about going in to self solation over Christmas. A QC was berating one of his (unidentified) juniors for being a sceptical about vaccines when they were having a debate on the subject. Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad. Just don't say anything at all about it in a professional context, ever; as nothing good can come of it and only embarrassment and humiliation will follow.
- “Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad.”
Spot on.
Exhibit A: Big G making a tit of himself over “Drakefool” (sic)
You see, read and hear a lot of absolute shite from people you assumed were reasonably intelligent. It confirms my suspicion, reinforced by decades of experience, that an awful lot of intelligent people are not clever, whereas a lot of people with supposedly low intelligence are in fact extremely clever. One of the reasons the modern obsession with qualifications (secondary and tertiary) is time and energy pissed up the wall.
PB is full of absolute nonsense about Covid19. It is very obviously being used as a proxy for deeper political arguments. My advice would be to just shut up about it for a while. It really is very, very, very boring. And you all look like complete tits.
Problem is though if we don't say anything and JRM/Gove are still saying the experts know nothing, then who is actually driving the bus? Tiger Woods?
Those particular lunatics are in charge of the asylum for at least another two years. Their majority is solid and they can do what they like. Once they’re gone, and they will be at the next UK GE, society must ensure that we are never again governed by such a bunch of malevolent, incompetent, corrupt clowns.
Bide your time and in the words of The Bard, nurse your wrath to keep it warm.
And pray to your maker that there are still enough reasonably competent civil servants in Whitehall to minimise the impact damage of the driverless bus.
Visions of sensible civil servants calmly singing the lord is my shepherd guiding us toward 2024, I almost feel hope
To me a politician or a civil servant is still an arrogant fool until he is proved otherwise.
Nevil Norway.
Tbf it wasn't the civil servants who insisted on taking the R101 to India before it was ready, complete with heavy rolled up carpet loose inside the hull where it could fall to one end and help destabilise the airship.
I don't know why people persist with the myth that Christmas has anything to do with a baby two thousand years ago.
I know, it’s the same at Easter. You can be perfectly happy eating chocolate mini eggs and using a few days off to redecorate the spare room, yet these annoying killjoys keep trying to bring religion into it.
Personally I think we need to take Easter back to its pagan roots. I am sick of it being perverted by all these recent add ons about crucifixions and caves.
It would be nice if schools could educate people about the real histories of holidays. There is some historical evidence to show that 25 December was a holiday to celebrity a birthday, but it was celebrating the birth of the Zoroastrian sun god Mithra not a baby.
The interconnections of a Persian sun god [as perceived by the Romans], Roman traditions and the Norse traditions all form a fascinating history of the festival we now know as Christmas and the traditions of food, merriment, drink and gifts etc that go with that have been celebrated now for well over two and a half thousand years.
Except for when the Puritans tried and failed to cancel it. So that brings cancel culture into the conversation too.
I wonder who was there to record Mithra's birth on 25th December? All this stuff is made up anyway so it doesn't really matter in the end which religion has overwritten the previous one. I like to see it as a way to celebrate the passing of the shortest day of the year and that Spring will be on the way.
Oh absolutely that's what its about. That's what its always been about.
Its just amusing when people bemoan feasting and drinking and gift giving etc as not being "the true meaning" of the holiday.
They literally are "the true meaning" and have been for about two and a half thousand years at least, minus the puritan era.
When the Church adopted Saturnalia as the birth of Jesus, society kept all the Pagan festivities which have largely passed through to today, despite the best wishes of the Puritans to stamp them out.
It’s funny how non-believers feel the need to denigrate other people’s faith.
It suggests a certain lack of confidence
I'm an agnostic, but I have the greatest respect for the moral teachings of Jesus, and envy those blessed with the certainty of belief*.
* Belief meaning certainty of either the existence or non-existence of God.
I rather like Christianity's place as part of the smorgasbord of Christmas. Not a part I much dabble in myself, but I like that people who like it do. Also, I like: Dickensian scenes of snowy churches. Most Christmas carols. The pleasant and familiar rhythms of the Christmas story. Bells. The message of hope in unpropitous circumstances. The theme of goodwill to all men.
Personally, I'm a confirmed atheist, but that doesn't mean there aren't bits of Christianity I can't enjoy.
My facebook-friend-vicar usually posts lengthily at this time of year on the subject of how we've got the Christmas Story all wrong and the circumstances actually weren't small and unpromising and humble but great and triumphant, and God had provided the best entrance into the world possible for his son/himself; I often think that while he knows more theology than anyone else I might know, and he might technically be right, he is missing at least some aspects of the story's cultural significance beyond Christianity. But that's a separate point entirely.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
I'm in Scotland, remember. But I suppose I agree.
Just don't take young people for granted. The pandemic response depends on us doing our bit, and a lot of us are close to telling our masters to piss off.
The German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce has written to the Lithuanian government warning that German investors may close their plants in the country unless a "constructive solution to restore Lithuanian-Chinese economic relations" is found
Germany really are a mercantilist nation. Shameful.
To be fair this is a chamber of commerce ie an industry group not the government. Still, what with this and Nordstream2 there does seem to be a degree of realpolitik gone mad in some corners of the German economy.
The Nordstream debate is interesting, as it's a wedge between the new German government partners. It's built, ready to use, and would help dampen the soaring gas price. Everyone agrees that if Russia actually attacked Ukraine then it shouldn't be opened for a long time, if ever. The SPD and CDU are in favour of opening it if they don't, the Greens are against, both because they don't like gas (fossil fuel) and they don't like Russia (and do like Ukraine). Not sure what the FDP thinks - does anyone know?
The obvious deal to be done is for Putin to stop willy-waving and the pipeline to open after a few months, after which it becomes a profitable lever to restrain Putin from a return to willy-waving. I think that's what will happen in the end, but Putin is populist enough to be unpredictable.
Putin doesn’t care about profits.
Nordstream 2 absolutely fucks Ukraine.
It allows Russia to bypass them and cut off the transit fees.
It will be a strategic calamity for the West.
But Gerhard Schroeder and other German politicians are richer than they were.
Nordstream 2 fucks the Ukrainians, and I get that.
But you are equally asking German consumers to accept higher priced gas, because it includes transit fees, solely to benefit the Ukrainians.
Irrespective, the big news - driven no doubt by Putin turning the screws - is that two LNG import terminal projects in Germany are now going to be built. Germany's dependence on Russian gas - with Nordstream 2 or without it - will diminish, because for the first time it will be able to directly import LNG from the US, Australia or elsewhere.
Indeed, the law of unintended consequences is that a whole host of LNG projects have been greenlighted in the last few months. The most important of these is that Mozambique LNG is now actually going to happen. (If the Russians had waited another six or twelve months it might have gotten permanently shelved. Now, it is not inconceivable the first cargoes flow in 2024. I suspect there will be no shortage of European buyers for the gas. Amazing to think that six months ago, everyone thought it was dead.)
Nah I’m asking Germans to accept higher prices to preserve Germany’s strategic flexibility and an independent Ukraine. That’s the sort of call the government should make - while at the same time looking to other sources such as LNG.
Otherwise they are weakening their position for a handful of silver
Anyway, good morning everyone. Up at 6 with #1 daughter this morning, as every Christmas Eve, to collect the turkey. Queue outside the butcher only about 10 minutes - welcome contrast to the hour of last year's queue (some people queued for over 4 hours). All down to limitations on numbers in the shop being lifted apparently. I reckon they were taking about £100 per minute, and will probably do so for the 9 hours they are open. Quite eye-popping for a business of that size.
I don't know why people persist with the myth that Christmas has anything to do with a baby two thousand years ago.
I know, it’s the same at Easter. You can be perfectly happy eating chocolate mini eggs and using a few days off to redecorate the spare room, yet these annoying killjoys keep trying to bring religion into it.
Personally I think we need to take Easter back to its pagan roots. I am sick of it being perverted by all these recent add ons about crucifixions and caves.
It would be nice if schools could educate people about the real histories of holidays. There is some historical evidence to show that 25 December was a holiday to celebrity a birthday, but it was celebrating the birth of the Zoroastrian sun god Mithra not a baby.
The interconnections of a Persian sun god [as perceived by the Romans], Roman traditions and the Norse traditions all form a fascinating history of the festival we now know as Christmas and the traditions of food, merriment, drink and gifts etc that go with that have been celebrated now for well over two and a half thousand years.
Except for when the Puritans tried and failed to cancel it. So that brings cancel culture into the conversation too.
I wonder who was there to record Mithra's birth on 25th December? All this stuff is made up anyway so it doesn't really matter in the end which religion has overwritten the previous one. I like to see it as a way to celebrate the passing of the shortest day of the year and that Spring will be on the way.
Oh absolutely that's what its about. That's what its always been about.
Its just amusing when people bemoan feasting and drinking and gift giving etc as not being "the true meaning" of the holiday.
They literally are "the true meaning" and have been for about two and a half thousand years at least, minus the puritan era.
When the Church adopted Saturnalia as the birth of Jesus, society kept all the Pagan festivities which have largely passed through to today, despite the best wishes of the Puritans to stamp them out.
It’s funny how non-believers feel the need to denigrate other people’s faith.
It suggests a certain lack of confidence
I'm an agnostic, but I have the greatest respect for the moral teachings of Jesus, and envy those blessed with the certainty of belief*.
* Belief meaning certainty of either the existence or non-existence of God.
I rather like Christianity's place as part of the smorgasbord of Christmas. Not a part I much dabble in myself, but I like that people who like it do. Also, I like: Dickensian scenes of snowy churches. Most Christmas carols. The pleasant and familiar rhythms of the Christmas story. Bells. The message of hope in unpropitous circumstances. The theme of goodwill to all men.
Personally, I'm a confirmed atheist, but that doesn't mean there aren't bits of Christianity I can't enjoy.
My facebook-friend-vicar usually posts lengthily at this time of year on the subject of how we've got the Christmas Story all wrong and the circumstances actually weren't small and unpromising and humble but great and triumphant, and God had provided the best entrance into the world possible for his son/himself; I often think that while he knows more theology than anyone else I might know, and he might technically be right, he is missing at least some aspects of the story's cultural significance beyond Christianity. But that's a separate point entirely.
I don't know why people persist with the myth that Christmas has anything to do with a baby two thousand years ago.
I know, it’s the same at Easter. You can be perfectly happy eating chocolate mini eggs and using a few days off to redecorate the spare room, yet these annoying killjoys keep trying to bring religion into it.
Personally I think we need to take Easter back to its pagan roots. I am sick of it being perverted by all these recent add ons about crucifixions and caves.
It would be nice if schools could educate people about the real histories of holidays. There is some historical evidence to show that 25 December was a holiday to celebrity a birthday, but it was celebrating the birth of the Zoroastrian sun god Mithra not a baby.
The interconnections of a Persian sun god [as perceived by the Romans], Roman traditions and the Norse traditions all form a fascinating history of the festival we now know as Christmas and the traditions of food, merriment, drink and gifts etc that go with that have been celebrated now for well over two and a half thousand years.
Except for when the Puritans tried and failed to cancel it. So that brings cancel culture into the conversation too.
I wonder who was there to record Mithra's birth on 25th December? All this stuff is made up anyway so it doesn't really matter in the end which religion has overwritten the previous one. I like to see it as a way to celebrate the passing of the shortest day of the year and that Spring will be on the way.
Oh absolutely that's what its about. That's what its always been about.
Its just amusing when people bemoan feasting and drinking and gift giving etc as not being "the true meaning" of the holiday.
They literally are "the true meaning" and have been for about two and a half thousand years at least, minus the puritan era.
When the Church adopted Saturnalia as the birth of Jesus, society kept all the Pagan festivities which have largely passed through to today, despite the best wishes of the Puritans to stamp them out.
It’s funny how non-believers feel the need to denigrate other people’s faith.
It suggests a certain lack of confidence
I'm an agnostic, but I have the greatest respect for the moral teachings of Jesus, and envy those blessed with the certainty of belief*.
* Belief meaning certainty of either the existence or non-existence of God.
I'm agnostic too, but IMO it's important for agnostics and atheists to know about religion as well - if only because it matters to others.
I'd argue my little 'un's school (state) is teaching religion rather well. There are Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs in his year, but no Jews to our knowledge. After our 2K run the other day, we were walking home and he told me about the history of Hanukkah and the Maccabees. I knew none of this, and he loved the story and the history. I love it when my son teaches me things!
We then got into a conversation about why some kids might not want people to know their religion, particularly in certain countries. His reaction: "That's stupid!".
Add the fact that the UK (or England at least) is a post-mediaeval theocracy with distinct impacts on politics, and one does have to know about religion. Vide Mr Johnson on boosters this morning, come to think of it; but really it is more to do with the way in which the legitimacy of the monarchy, and therefore the entire constitution, has been founded on some sort of divine right.
German import prices rose by 3.0% in November and by 24.7% on a year ago. (Analysts had expected 1.1% and 22.3%.)
A lot of younger people won’t even remember inflation. They are about to learn a fundamental economic lesson the hard way.
Just as well the UK government hasn’t borrowed too much.
Oh!
Just as well the UK government is keeping prices down by retaining membership of the biggest single market on the planet.
Oh!
Just as well households haven’t over-borrowed and gambled money they don’t have on the stock markets. Oh!
The list of extremely hard lessons about to be learned is very long.
I agree that no one under 50 remembers real inflation and the problems that it brings. The effect on equities is less clear, so I am remaining invested. It was a major bear market in the Seventies but I think it more likely to reach inflation figures of the Eighties.
I don’t think the effect on equities is unclear at all. We are loooong overdue a severe “correction”, and inflation will just make the fall even worse.
I’d love to be proved wrong, as I still have far too much invested in equities myself, despite a long process of slowly getting into other asset types.
If the markets really are about to tumble, where does one take refuge? Cash seem like a silly answer. (It might not be.) Genuinely curious.
We’ve just predicted
- a correction - A third bull run - A apocalyptic crash - A lost decade
Based on the Fed and the Treasury having become populist.
I've been looking at Linkedin. People are going mad over COVID. People virtue signalling to their professional network about going in to self solation over Christmas. A QC was berating one of his (unidentified) juniors for being a sceptical about vaccines when they were having a debate on the subject. Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad. Just don't say anything at all about it in a professional context, ever; as nothing good can come of it and only embarrassment and humiliation will follow.
- “Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad.”
Spot on.
Exhibit A: Big G making a tit of himself over “Drakefool” (sic)
You see, read and hear a lot of absolute shite from people you assumed were reasonably intelligent. It confirms my suspicion, reinforced by decades of experience, that an awful lot of intelligent people are not clever, whereas a lot of people with supposedly low intelligence are in fact extremely clever. One of the reasons the modern obsession with qualifications (secondary and tertiary) is time and energy pissed up the wall.
PB is full of absolute nonsense about Covid19. It is very obviously being used as a proxy for deeper political arguments. My advice would be to just shut up about it for a while. It really is very, very, very boring. And you all look like complete tits.
Problem is though if we don't say anything and JRM/Gove are still saying the experts know nothing, then who is actually driving the bus? Tiger Woods?
Those particular lunatics are in charge of the asylum for at least another two years. Their majority is solid and they can do what they like. Once they’re gone, and they will be at the next UK GE, society must ensure that we are never again governed by such a bunch of malevolent, incompetent, corrupt clowns.
Bide your time and in the words of The Bard, nurse your wrath to keep it warm.
And pray to your maker that there are still enough reasonably competent civil servants in Whitehall to minimise the impact damage of the driverless bus.
Visions of sensible civil servants calmly singing the lord is my shepherd guiding us toward 2024, I almost feel hope
To me a politician or a civil servant is still an arrogant fool until he is proved otherwise.
Nevil Norway.
Tbf it wasn't the civil servants who insisted on taking the R101 to India before it was ready, complete with heavy rolled up carpet loose inside the hull where it could fall to one end and help destabilise the airship.
No, and Shute admitted later that he was rather overly dogmatic on this point.
It was however their fault that (a) the specifications were so badly drawn up, ignoring what should have been some fairly obvious lessons from the R38 disaster and (b) a certificate of airworthiness was issued despite no safety checks having been completed.
Interesting that “Black” is capitalised while “white” is not. Suggests the latter is a description and the former a category. Which is revealing about the way the author thinks.
Or it may just be a typo…
It's most likely down to autocorrect, which I have noticed favours this stylistic choice for reasons I don't fully understand.
Yep - I included that in “typo” in my thinking for simplicity
That looks like the old open-air museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground - in which case that's the sample T-34 sent to the USA by the Soviets during the war, I think.
That looks like the old open-air museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground - in which case that's the sample T-34 sent to the USA by the Soviets during the war, I think.
Car park of the Theydon Bois Conservative Club.
When it's underway, do you get a lot of sabres rattling?
The German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce has written to the Lithuanian government warning that German investors may close their plants in the country unless a "constructive solution to restore Lithuanian-Chinese economic relations" is found
Germany really are a mercantilist nation. Shameful.
To be fair this is a chamber of commerce ie an industry group not the government. Still, what with this and Nordstream2 there does seem to be a degree of realpolitik gone mad in some corners of the German economy.
The Nordstream debate is interesting, as it's a wedge between the new German government partners. It's built, ready to use, and would help dampen the soaring gas price. Everyone agrees that if Russia actually attacked Ukraine then it shouldn't be opened for a long time, if ever. The SPD and CDU are in favour of opening it if they don't, the Greens are against, both because they don't like gas (fossil fuel) and they don't like Russia (and do like Ukraine). Not sure what the FDP thinks - does anyone know?
The obvious deal to be done is for Putin to stop willy-waving and the pipeline to open after a few months, after which it becomes a profitable lever to restrain Putin from a return to willy-waving. I think that's what will happen in the end, but Putin is populist enough to be unpredictable.
Putin doesn’t care about profits.
Nordstream 2 absolutely fucks Ukraine.
It allows Russia to bypass them and cut off the transit fees.
It will be a strategic calamity for the West.
But Gerhard Schroeder and other German politicians are richer than they were.
Nordstream 2 fucks the Ukrainians, and I get that.
But you are equally asking German consumers to accept higher priced gas, because it includes transit fees, solely to benefit the Ukrainians.
Irrespective, the big news - driven no doubt by Putin turning the screws - is that two LNG import terminal projects in Germany are now going to be built. Germany's dependence on Russian gas - with Nordstream 2 or without it - will diminish, because for the first time it will be able to directly import LNG from the US, Australia or elsewhere.
Indeed, the law of unintended consequences is that a whole host of LNG projects have been greenlighted in the last few months. The most important of these is that Mozambique LNG is now actually going to happen. (If the Russians had waited another six or twelve months it might have gotten permanently shelved. Now, it is not inconceivable the first cargoes flow in 2024. I suspect there will be no shortage of European buyers for the gas. Amazing to think that six months ago, everyone thought it was dead.)
Nah I’m asking Germans to accept higher prices to preserve Germany’s strategic flexibility and an independent Ukraine. That’s the sort of call the government should make - while at the same time looking to other sources such as LNG.
Otherwise they are weakening their position for a handful of silver
There is a small cost to achieve strategic resilience that the West hasn’t been willing to pay for decades, due to the transactional nature of its politics. It’s highly disturbing to me. I would make it my number one policy objective. The trouble is, there’s not many votes in it. Because the public has been fed a fairy tale that History Ended, the West won and human progress can only go forwards. In a globalised world, it also requires the nationalisation or quasi nationalisation of chunks of industry, which everyone has been taught is always wrong.
The German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce has written to the Lithuanian government warning that German investors may close their plants in the country unless a "constructive solution to restore Lithuanian-Chinese economic relations" is found
Germany really are a mercantilist nation. Shameful.
To be fair this is a chamber of commerce ie an industry group not the government. Still, what with this and Nordstream2 there does seem to be a degree of realpolitik gone mad in some corners of the German economy.
The Nordstream debate is interesting, as it's a wedge between the new German government partners. It's built, ready to use, and would help dampen the soaring gas price. Everyone agrees that if Russia actually attacked Ukraine then it shouldn't be opened for a long time, if ever. The SPD and CDU are in favour of opening it if they don't, the Greens are against, both because they don't like gas (fossil fuel) and they don't like Russia (and do like Ukraine). Not sure what the FDP thinks - does anyone know?
The obvious deal to be done is for Putin to stop willy-waving and the pipeline to open after a few months, after which it becomes a profitable lever to restrain Putin from a return to willy-waving. I think that's what will happen in the end, but Putin is populist enough to be unpredictable.
Putin doesn’t care about profits.
Nordstream 2 absolutely fucks Ukraine.
It allows Russia to bypass them and cut off the transit fees.
It will be a strategic calamity for the West.
But Gerhard Schroeder and other German politicians are richer than they were.
Nordstream 2 fucks the Ukrainians, and I get that.
But you are equally asking German consumers to accept higher priced gas, because it includes transit fees, solely to benefit the Ukrainians.
Irrespective, the big news - driven no doubt by Putin turning the screws - is that two LNG import terminal projects in Germany are now going to be built. Germany's dependence on Russian gas - with Nordstream 2 or without it - will diminish, because for the first time it will be able to directly import LNG from the US, Australia or elsewhere.
Indeed, the law of unintended consequences is that a whole host of LNG projects have been greenlighted in the last few months. The most important of these is that Mozambique LNG is now actually going to happen. (If the Russians had waited another six or twelve months it might have gotten permanently shelved. Now, it is not inconceivable the first cargoes flow in 2024. I suspect there will be no shortage of European buyers for the gas. Amazing to think that six months ago, everyone thought it was dead.)
Nah I’m asking Germans to accept higher prices to preserve Germany’s strategic flexibility and an independent Ukraine. That’s the sort of call the government should make - while at the same time looking to other sources such as LNG.
Otherwise they are weakening their position for a handful of silver
There is a small cost to achieve strategic resilience that the West hasn’t been willing to pay for decades, due to the transactional nature of its politics. It’s highly disturbing to me. I would make it my number one policy objective. The trouble is, there’s not many votes in it. Because the public has been fed a fairy tale that History Ended, the West won and human progress can only go forwards. In a globalised world, it also requires the nationalisation or quasi nationalisation of chunks of industry, which everyone has been taught is always wrong.
Another example is the reluctance of certain libertarians to shield the food and farmingt sector from total free marketry post-Brexit - heaven help the UK if this happens and a crisis comes along.
Mr. Moonshine, the myth of victory and everlasting peace and progress is the brand of complacency that led to endless infighting and the enervation of virtue in the Western Roman Empire.
It is intriguing to consider a world in which Majorian wasn't betrayed by Ricimer and the Western Empire lasted. Because* both halves would still exist today.
Edited extra bit: *perhaps. That's quite the typo.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
That looks like the old open-air museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground - in which case that's the sample T-34 sent to the USA by the Soviets during the war, I think.
Car park of the Theydon Bois Conservative Club.
When it's underway, do you get a lot of sabres rattling?
More the driver using the mallet provided on the gear lever when he wants to go up one.
Interesting that “Black” is capitalised while “white” is not. Suggests the latter is a description and the former a category. Which is revealing about the way the author thinks.
Or it may just be a typo…
Oh, I thought we were looking at the video about Joe Manchin.
That looks like the old open-air museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground - in which case that's the sample T-34 sent to the USA by the Soviets during the war, I think.
Car park of the Theydon Bois Conservative Club.
When it's underway, do you get a lot of sabres rattling?
More the driver using the mallet provided on the gear lever when he wants to go up one.
I don't know why people persist with the myth that Christmas has anything to do with a baby two thousand years ago.
I know, it’s the same at Easter. You can be perfectly happy eating chocolate mini eggs and using a few days off to redecorate the spare room, yet these annoying killjoys keep trying to bring religion into it.
Personally I think we need to take Easter back to its pagan roots. I am sick of it being perverted by all these recent add ons about crucifixions and caves.
It would be nice if schools could educate people about the real histories of holidays. There is some historical evidence to show that 25 December was a holiday to celebrity a birthday, but it was celebrating the birth of the Zoroastrian sun god Mithra not a baby.
The interconnections of a Persian sun god [as perceived by the Romans], Roman traditions and the Norse traditions all form a fascinating history of the festival we now know as Christmas and the traditions of food, merriment, drink and gifts etc that go with that have been celebrated now for well over two and a half thousand years.
Except for when the Puritans tried and failed to cancel it. So that brings cancel culture into the conversation too.
I wonder who was there to record Mithra's birth on 25th December? All this stuff is made up anyway so it doesn't really matter in the end which religion has overwritten the previous one. I like to see it as a way to celebrate the passing of the shortest day of the year and that Spring will be on the way.
Oh absolutely that's what its about. That's what its always been about.
Its just amusing when people bemoan feasting and drinking and gift giving etc as not being "the true meaning" of the holiday.
They literally are "the true meaning" and have been for about two and a half thousand years at least, minus the puritan era.
When the Church adopted Saturnalia as the birth of Jesus, society kept all the Pagan festivities which have largely passed through to today, despite the best wishes of the Puritans to stamp them out.
It’s funny how non-believers feel the need to denigrate other people’s faith.
It suggests a certain lack of confidence
I'm an agnostic, but I have the greatest respect for the moral teachings of Jesus, and envy those blessed with the certainty of belief*.
* Belief meaning certainty of either the existence or non-existence of God.
I rather like Christianity's place as part of the smorgasbord of Christmas. Not a part I much dabble in myself, but I like that people who like it do. Also, I like: Dickensian scenes of snowy churches. Most Christmas carols. The pleasant and familiar rhythms of the Christmas story. Bells. The message of hope in unpropitous circumstances. The theme of goodwill to all men.
Personally, I'm a confirmed atheist, but that doesn't mean there aren't bits of Christianity I can't enjoy.
My facebook-friend-vicar usually posts lengthily at this time of year on the subject of how we've got the Christmas Story all wrong and the circumstances actually weren't small and unpromising and humble but great and triumphant, and God had provided the best entrance into the world possible for his son/himself; I often think that while he knows more theology than anyone else I might know, and he might technically be right, he is missing at least some aspects of the story's cultural significance beyond Christianity. But that's a separate point entirely.
I'm an atheist/agnostic but I love Christmas, including the explicitly Christian parts of it. The story of a baby born to redeem humanity, his lowly beginnings in a stable, his message of love and peace is a powerful package and I think one with much to teach us whether we believe in God or not. Like a Christmas tree, Christmas has accumulated all kinds of baubles and accoutrements over the centuries - the story of Jesus's birth, the pagan festivities that preceeded it, Dickens's Christmas stories, Christmas trees and father Christmas (surely pagan remnants), advent windows, the various food traditions, Christmas stockings, Slade and the Pogues and all the other cheesy popular music, Strictly and other Christmas telly, time with family and each family's own traditions... It really is a wonderful time of year.
I don't know why people persist with the myth that Christmas has anything to do with a baby two thousand years ago.
I know, it’s the same at Easter. You can be perfectly happy eating chocolate mini eggs and using a few days off to redecorate the spare room, yet these annoying killjoys keep trying to bring religion into it.
Personally I think we need to take Easter back to its pagan roots. I am sick of it being perverted by all these recent add ons about crucifixions and caves.
It would be nice if schools could educate people about the real histories of holidays. There is some historical evidence to show that 25 December was a holiday to celebrity a birthday, but it was celebrating the birth of the Zoroastrian sun god Mithra not a baby.
The interconnections of a Persian sun god [as perceived by the Romans], Roman traditions and the Norse traditions all form a fascinating history of the festival we now know as Christmas and the traditions of food, merriment, drink and gifts etc that go with that have been celebrated now for well over two and a half thousand years.
Except for when the Puritans tried and failed to cancel it. So that brings cancel culture into the conversation too.
I wonder who was there to record Mithra's birth on 25th December? All this stuff is made up anyway so it doesn't really matter in the end which religion has overwritten the previous one. I like to see it as a way to celebrate the passing of the shortest day of the year and that Spring will be on the way.
Oh absolutely that's what its about. That's what its always been about.
Its just amusing when people bemoan feasting and drinking and gift giving etc as not being "the true meaning" of the holiday.
They literally are "the true meaning" and have been for about two and a half thousand years at least, minus the puritan era.
When the Church adopted Saturnalia as the birth of Jesus, society kept all the Pagan festivities which have largely passed through to today, despite the best wishes of the Puritans to stamp them out.
It’s funny how non-believers feel the need to denigrate other people’s faith.
It suggests a certain lack of confidence
I'm an agnostic, but I have the greatest respect for the moral teachings of Jesus, and envy those blessed with the certainty of belief*.
* Belief meaning certainty of either the existence or non-existence of God.
I rather like Christianity's place as part of the smorgasbord of Christmas. Not a part I much dabble in myself, but I like that people who like it do. Also, I like: Dickensian scenes of snowy churches. Most Christmas carols. The pleasant and familiar rhythms of the Christmas story. Bells. The message of hope in unpropitous circumstances. The theme of goodwill to all men.
Personally, I'm a confirmed atheist, but that doesn't mean there aren't bits of Christianity I can't enjoy.
My facebook-friend-vicar usually posts lengthily at this time of year on the subject of how we've got the Christmas Story all wrong and the circumstances actually weren't small and unpromising and humble but great and triumphant, and God had provided the best entrance into the world possible for his son/himself; I often think that while he knows more theology than anyone else I might know, and he might technically be right, he is missing at least some aspects of the story's cultural significance beyond Christianity. But that's a separate point entirely.
Oh my. That's it entirely. At least, that's been it ever since I had kids. Started with some wry smiles at the start, but was sobbing like a baby at the end.
I've been looking at Linkedin. People are going mad over COVID. People virtue signalling to their professional network about going in to self solation over Christmas. A QC was berating one of his (unidentified) juniors for being a sceptical about vaccines when they were having a debate on the subject. Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad. Just don't say anything at all about it in a professional context, ever; as nothing good can come of it and only embarrassment and humiliation will follow.
- “Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad.”
Spot on.
Exhibit A: Big G making a tit of himself over “Drakefool” (sic)
You see, read and hear a lot of absolute shite from people you assumed were reasonably intelligent. It confirms my suspicion, reinforced by decades of experience, that an awful lot of intelligent people are not clever, whereas a lot of people with supposedly low intelligence are in fact extremely clever. One of the reasons the modern obsession with qualifications (secondary and tertiary) is time and energy pissed up the wall.
PB is full of absolute nonsense about Covid19. It is very obviously being used as a proxy for deeper political arguments. My advice would be to just shut up about it for a while. It really is very, very, very boring. And you all look like complete tits.
Problem is though if we don't say anything and JRM/Gove are still saying the experts know nothing, then who is actually driving the bus? Tiger Woods?
Those particular lunatics are in charge of the asylum for at least another two years. Their majority is solid and they can do what they like. Once they’re gone, and they will be at the next UK GE, society must ensure that we are never again governed by such a bunch of malevolent, incompetent, corrupt clowns.
Bide your time and in the words of The Bard, nurse your wrath to keep it warm.
And pray to your maker that there are still enough reasonably competent civil servants in Whitehall to minimise the impact damage of the driverless bus.
Visions of sensible civil servants calmly singing the lord is my shepherd guiding us toward 2024, I almost feel hope
To me a politician or a civil servant is still an arrogant fool until he is proved otherwise.
Nevil Norway.
Tbf it wasn't the civil servants who insisted on taking the R101 to India before it was ready, complete with heavy rolled up carpet loose inside the hull where it could fall to one end and help destabilise the airship.
No, and Shute admitted later that he was rather overly dogmatic on this point.
It was however their fault that (a) the specifications were so badly drawn up, ignoring what should have been some fairly obvious lessons from the R38 disaster and (b) a certificate of airworthiness was issued despite no safety checks having been completed.
Yesterday I ran down a 'Shute Lane' in Northstowe (a new town being built on the site of the old Oakington airfield. Like here in Cambourne, some of the streets have aviation-related names: "Pathfinder Way", "Stirling Road", "Wellington Road".
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
The German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce has written to the Lithuanian government warning that German investors may close their plants in the country unless a "constructive solution to restore Lithuanian-Chinese economic relations" is found
Germany really are a mercantilist nation. Shameful.
To be fair this is a chamber of commerce ie an industry group not the government. Still, what with this and Nordstream2 there does seem to be a degree of realpolitik gone mad in some corners of the German economy.
The Nordstream debate is interesting, as it's a wedge between the new German government partners. It's built, ready to use, and would help dampen the soaring gas price. Everyone agrees that if Russia actually attacked Ukraine then it shouldn't be opened for a long time, if ever. The SPD and CDU are in favour of opening it if they don't, the Greens are against, both because they don't like gas (fossil fuel) and they don't like Russia (and do like Ukraine). Not sure what the FDP thinks - does anyone know?
The obvious deal to be done is for Putin to stop willy-waving and the pipeline to open after a few months, after which it becomes a profitable lever to restrain Putin from a return to willy-waving. I think that's what will happen in the end, but Putin is populist enough to be unpredictable.
Putin doesn’t care about profits.
Nordstream 2 absolutely fucks Ukraine.
It allows Russia to bypass them and cut off the transit fees.
It will be a strategic calamity for the West.
But Gerhard Schroeder and other German politicians are richer than they were.
Nordstream 2 fucks the Ukrainians, and I get that.
But you are equally asking German consumers to accept higher priced gas, because it includes transit fees, solely to benefit the Ukrainians.
Irrespective, the big news - driven no doubt by Putin turning the screws - is that two LNG import terminal projects in Germany are now going to be built. Germany's dependence on Russian gas - with Nordstream 2 or without it - will diminish, because for the first time it will be able to directly import LNG from the US, Australia or elsewhere.
Indeed, the law of unintended consequences is that a whole host of LNG projects have been greenlighted in the last few months. The most important of these is that Mozambique LNG is now actually going to happen. (If the Russians had waited another six or twelve months it might have gotten permanently shelved. Now, it is not inconceivable the first cargoes flow in 2024. I suspect there will be no shortage of European buyers for the gas. Amazing to think that six months ago, everyone thought it was dead.)
Nah I’m asking Germans to accept higher prices to preserve Germany’s strategic flexibility and an independent Ukraine. That’s the sort of call the government should make - while at the same time looking to other sources such as LNG.
Otherwise they are weakening their position for a handful of silver
There is a small cost to achieve strategic resilience that the West hasn’t been willing to pay for decades, due to the transactional nature of its politics. It’s highly disturbing to me. I would make it my number one policy objective. The trouble is, there’s not many votes in it. Because the public has been fed a fairy tale that History Ended, the West won and human progress can only go forwards. In a globalised world, it also requires the nationalisation or quasi nationalisation of chunks of industry, which everyone has been taught is always wrong.
Another example is the reluctance of certain libertarians to shield the food and farmingt sector from total free marketry post-Brexit - heaven help the UK if this happens and a crisis comes along.
For a country with an import dependency on food, it’s a dereliction of duty not to have built a long term strategic nutrition reserve. It could be easily achieved by outsourcing it to the supermarkets and providing free financing for the increased working capital requirement / capex for the storage facilities. We could live our whole lives and people would wonder why we needed it. Equally an extraneous event could happen at any time and it might be the difference between maintaining order in society or seeing it quickly turn to dust.
Mr. Moonshine, the myth of victory and everlasting peace and progress is the brand of complacency that led to endless infighting and the enervation of virtue in the Western Roman Empire.
It is intriguing to consider a world in which Majorian wasn't betrayed by Ricimer and the Western Empire lasted. Because* both halves would still exist today.
Edited extra bit: *perhaps. That's quite the typo.
If the Western empire had persisted, how long would it have taken them to have a space programme? Not much technologically happened for about 1200 years after it fell and then it too just a few centuries.
I don't know why people persist with the myth that Christmas has anything to do with a baby two thousand years ago.
I know, it’s the same at Easter. You can be perfectly happy eating chocolate mini eggs and using a few days off to redecorate the spare room, yet these annoying killjoys keep trying to bring religion into it.
Personally I think we need to take Easter back to its pagan roots. I am sick of it being perverted by all these recent add ons about crucifixions and caves.
It would be nice if schools could educate people about the real histories of holidays. There is some historical evidence to show that 25 December was a holiday to celebrity a birthday, but it was celebrating the birth of the Zoroastrian sun god Mithra not a baby.
The interconnections of a Persian sun god [as perceived by the Romans], Roman traditions and the Norse traditions all form a fascinating history of the festival we now know as Christmas and the traditions of food, merriment, drink and gifts etc that go with that have been celebrated now for well over two and a half thousand years.
Except for when the Puritans tried and failed to cancel it. So that brings cancel culture into the conversation too.
I wonder who was there to record Mithra's birth on 25th December? All this stuff is made up anyway so it doesn't really matter in the end which religion has overwritten the previous one. I like to see it as a way to celebrate the passing of the shortest day of the year and that Spring will be on the way.
Oh absolutely that's what its about. That's what its always been about.
Its just amusing when people bemoan feasting and drinking and gift giving etc as not being "the true meaning" of the holiday.
They literally are "the true meaning" and have been for about two and a half thousand years at least, minus the puritan era.
When the Church adopted Saturnalia as the birth of Jesus, society kept all the Pagan festivities which have largely passed through to today, despite the best wishes of the Puritans to stamp them out.
It’s funny how non-believers feel the need to denigrate other people’s faith.
It suggests a certain lack of confidence
I'm an agnostic, but I have the greatest respect for the moral teachings of Jesus, and envy those blessed with the certainty of belief*.
* Belief meaning certainty of either the existence or non-existence of God.
I rather like Christianity's place as part of the smorgasbord of Christmas. Not a part I much dabble in myself, but I like that people who like it do. Also, I like: Dickensian scenes of snowy churches. Most Christmas carols. The pleasant and familiar rhythms of the Christmas story. Bells. The message of hope in unpropitous circumstances. The theme of goodwill to all men.
Personally, I'm a confirmed atheist, but that doesn't mean there aren't bits of Christianity I can't enjoy.
My facebook-friend-vicar usually posts lengthily at this time of year on the subject of how we've got the Christmas Story all wrong and the circumstances actually weren't small and unpromising and humble but great and triumphant, and God had provided the best entrance into the world possible for his son/himself; I often think that while he knows more theology than anyone else I might know, and he might technically be right, he is missing at least some aspects of the story's cultural significance beyond Christianity. But that's a separate point entirely.
I'm an atheist/agnostic but I love Christmas, including the explicitly Christian parts of it. The story of a baby born to redeem humanity, his lowly beginnings in a stable, his message of love and peace is a powerful package and I think one with much to teach us whether we believe in God or not. Like a Christmas tree, Christmas has accumulated all kinds of baubles and accoutrements over the centuries - the story of Jesus's birth, the pagan festivities that preceeded it, Dickens's Christmas stories, Christmas trees and father Christmas (surely pagan remnants), advent windows, the various food traditions, Christmas stockings, Slade and the Pogues and all the other cheesy popular music, Strictly and other Christmas telly, time with family and each family's own traditions... It really is a wonderful time of year.
I'd argue that Dickens and the Victorians as a whole have much more influence over the way the majority celebrate Christmas than Christianity. So many of our traditions were created, or changed, during that period. Christmas cards, for instance; the rise of Father Christmas; turkey instead of goose (and the role of a Christmas Carol in that).
That doesn't mean we should forget the religious aspects of it, though.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
And yet, people are avoiding seeing each other so as not to be forced to isolate on Christmas Day.
The German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce has written to the Lithuanian government warning that German investors may close their plants in the country unless a "constructive solution to restore Lithuanian-Chinese economic relations" is found
Germany really are a mercantilist nation. Shameful.
To be fair this is a chamber of commerce ie an industry group not the government. Still, what with this and Nordstream2 there does seem to be a degree of realpolitik gone mad in some corners of the German economy.
The Nordstream debate is interesting, as it's a wedge between the new German government partners. It's built, ready to use, and would help dampen the soaring gas price. Everyone agrees that if Russia actually attacked Ukraine then it shouldn't be opened for a long time, if ever. The SPD and CDU are in favour of opening it if they don't, the Greens are against, both because they don't like gas (fossil fuel) and they don't like Russia (and do like Ukraine). Not sure what the FDP thinks - does anyone know?
The obvious deal to be done is for Putin to stop willy-waving and the pipeline to open after a few months, after which it becomes a profitable lever to restrain Putin from a return to willy-waving. I think that's what will happen in the end, but Putin is populist enough to be unpredictable.
Putin doesn’t care about profits.
Nordstream 2 absolutely fucks Ukraine.
It allows Russia to bypass them and cut off the transit fees.
It will be a strategic calamity for the West.
But Gerhard Schroeder and other German politicians are richer than they were.
Nordstream 2 fucks the Ukrainians, and I get that.
But you are equally asking German consumers to accept higher priced gas, because it includes transit fees, solely to benefit the Ukrainians.
Irrespective, the big news - driven no doubt by Putin turning the screws - is that two LNG import terminal projects in Germany are now going to be built. Germany's dependence on Russian gas - with Nordstream 2 or without it - will diminish, because for the first time it will be able to directly import LNG from the US, Australia or elsewhere.
Indeed, the law of unintended consequences is that a whole host of LNG projects have been greenlighted in the last few months. The most important of these is that Mozambique LNG is now actually going to happen. (If the Russians had waited another six or twelve months it might have gotten permanently shelved. Now, it is not inconceivable the first cargoes flow in 2024. I suspect there will be no shortage of European buyers for the gas. Amazing to think that six months ago, everyone thought it was dead.)
Nah I’m asking Germans to accept higher prices to preserve Germany’s strategic flexibility and an independent Ukraine. That’s the sort of call the government should make - while at the same time looking to other sources such as LNG.
Otherwise they are weakening their position for a handful of silver
There is a small cost to achieve strategic resilience that the West hasn’t been willing to pay for decades, due to the transactional nature of its politics. It’s highly disturbing to me. I would make it my number one policy objective. The trouble is, there’s not many votes in it. Because the public has been fed a fairy tale that History Ended, the West won and human progress can only go forwards. In a globalised world, it also requires the nationalisation or quasi nationalisation of chunks of industry, which everyone has been taught is always wrong.
Another example is the reluctance of certain libertarians to shield the food and farmingt sector from total free marketry post-Brexit - heaven help the UK if this happens and a crisis comes along.
For a country with an import dependency on food, it’s a dereliction of duty not to have built a long term strategic nutrient reserve. It could be easily achieved by outsourcing it to the supermarkets and providing free financing for the increased working capital requirement / capex for the storage facilities. We could live our whole lives and people would wonder why we needed it. Equally an extraneous event could happen at any time and it might be the difference between maintaining order in society or seeing it quickly turn to dust.
Indeed, and a particularly odd piece of neglect by the ruling Brexiter faction given their frequent referencing of WW2 and Churchill - who was more frightened by that very issue of import dependency than anything else, at least when it came to the Battle of the Atlantic.
There used to be food reserves into the 1950s and 1960s, I believe,though some at least of that was for after the Bomb dropped.
I've been looking at Linkedin. People are going mad over COVID. People virtue signalling to their professional network about going in to self solation over Christmas. A QC was berating one of his (unidentified) juniors for being a sceptical about vaccines when they were having a debate on the subject. Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad. Just don't say anything at all about it in a professional context, ever; as nothing good can come of it and only embarrassment and humiliation will follow.
- “Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad.”
Spot on.
Exhibit A: Big G making a tit of himself over “Drakefool” (sic)
You see, read and hear a lot of absolute shite from people you assumed were reasonably intelligent. It confirms my suspicion, reinforced by decades of experience, that an awful lot of intelligent people are not clever, whereas a lot of people with supposedly low intelligence are in fact extremely clever. One of the reasons the modern obsession with qualifications (secondary and tertiary) is time and energy pissed up the wall.
PB is full of absolute nonsense about Covid19. It is very obviously being used as a proxy for deeper political arguments. My advice would be to just shut up about it for a while. It really is very, very, very boring. And you all look like complete tits.
Problem is though if we don't say anything and JRM/Gove are still saying the experts know nothing, then who is actually driving the bus? Tiger Woods?
Those particular lunatics are in charge of the asylum for at least another two years. Their majority is solid and they can do what they like. Once they’re gone, and they will be at the next UK GE, society must ensure that we are never again governed by such a bunch of malevolent, incompetent, corrupt clowns.
Bide your time and in the words of The Bard, nurse your wrath to keep it warm.
And pray to your maker that there are still enough reasonably competent civil servants in Whitehall to minimise the impact damage of the driverless bus.
Visions of sensible civil servants calmly singing the lord is my shepherd guiding us toward 2024, I almost feel hope
To me a politician or a civil servant is still an arrogant fool until he is proved otherwise.
Nevil Norway.
Tbf it wasn't the civil servants who insisted on taking the R101 to India before it was ready, complete with heavy rolled up carpet loose inside the hull where it could fall to one end and help destabilise the airship.
No, and Shute admitted later that he was rather overly dogmatic on this point.
It was however their fault that (a) the specifications were so badly drawn up, ignoring what should have been some fairly obvious lessons from the R38 disaster and (b) a certificate of airworthiness was issued despite no safety checks having been completed.
Yesterday I ran down a 'Shute Lane' in Northstowe (a new town being built on the site of the old Oakington airfield. Like here in Cambourne, some of the streets have aviation-related names: "Pathfinder Way", "Stirling Road", "Wellington Road".
Did they resist the tempation to go with "No Highway?"
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
Some of the hysteria about "lockdown" has almost been pitiful.
We have never been locked down in the UK. At its worst I was outside running every day and going to the shop for supplies. Being allowed out of your home is not lockdown. Ask the people in places like Dubai what lockdown is really like...
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
And yet, people are avoiding seeing each other so as not to be forced to isolate on Christmas Day.
But that's their choice.
You seem to be blaming the government for your friends inability to do a small amount of research.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
LFTs might be free but supplies are thin on the ground, even if Boris says there are full warehouses.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
It was telling at my son’s school that at one point this term, absences were between 30-50% due to covid in the only two year groups required to frequently test. The younger kids had barely anyone off at all, despite having covided siblings and teachers. It’s a warning sign of what might happen if evidence of regular LFTs becomes embedded in society more generally.
I've been looking at Linkedin. People are going mad over COVID. People virtue signalling to their professional network about going in to self solation over Christmas. A QC was berating one of his (unidentified) juniors for being a sceptical about vaccines when they were having a debate on the subject. Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad. Just don't say anything at all about it in a professional context, ever; as nothing good can come of it and only embarrassment and humiliation will follow.
- “Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad.”
Spot on.
Exhibit A: Big G making a tit of himself over “Drakefool” (sic)
You see, read and hear a lot of absolute shite from people you assumed were reasonably intelligent. It confirms my suspicion, reinforced by decades of experience, that an awful lot of intelligent people are not clever, whereas a lot of people with supposedly low intelligence are in fact extremely clever. One of the reasons the modern obsession with qualifications (secondary and tertiary) is time and energy pissed up the wall.
PB is full of absolute nonsense about Covid19. It is very obviously being used as a proxy for deeper political arguments. My advice would be to just shut up about it for a while. It really is very, very, very boring. And you all look like complete tits.
Problem is though if we don't say anything and JRM/Gove are still saying the experts know nothing, then who is actually driving the bus? Tiger Woods?
Those particular lunatics are in charge of the asylum for at least another two years. Their majority is solid and they can do what they like. Once they’re gone, and they will be at the next UK GE, society must ensure that we are never again governed by such a bunch of malevolent, incompetent, corrupt clowns.
Bide your time and in the words of The Bard, nurse your wrath to keep it warm.
And pray to your maker that there are still enough reasonably competent civil servants in Whitehall to minimise the impact damage of the driverless bus.
Visions of sensible civil servants calmly singing the lord is my shepherd guiding us toward 2024, I almost feel hope
To me a politician or a civil servant is still an arrogant fool until he is proved otherwise.
Nevil Norway.
Tbf it wasn't the civil servants who insisted on taking the R101 to India before it was ready, complete with heavy rolled up carpet loose inside the hull where it could fall to one end and help destabilise the airship.
No, and Shute admitted later that he was rather overly dogmatic on this point.
It was however their fault that (a) the specifications were so badly drawn up, ignoring what should have been some fairly obvious lessons from the R38 disaster and (b) a certificate of airworthiness was issued despite no safety checks having been completed.
Yesterday I ran down a 'Shute Lane' in Northstowe (a new town being built on the site of the old Oakington airfield. Like here in Cambourne, some of the streets have aviation-related names: "Pathfinder Way", "Stirling Road", "Wellington Road".
Did they resist the tempation to go with "No Highway?"
It'd be brave to go with "Yorkshire Farm Girls" ...
From 'Slide Rule": "The lads were what one would expect, straight from the plough, but the girls were an eye-opener. They were brutish and uncouth, filthy in appearance and in habits ... these girls straight off the farms were the lowest types that I have ever seen in England, and incredibly foul-mouthed ... we had to employ a welfare worker to look after them because promiscuous intercourse was going on merrily in every dark corner ... as the job approached completion ... we were able to get rid of the most jungly types."
(I wonder if Shute had any connection with Oakington or the Pathfinders?)
Mr. Moonshine, in Stargate: SG-1, they encounter a race of humans who essentially have no Dark Age and have far more advanced technology as a result.
The absence of dislocated economic and political authority could've led to developments in interesting ways. The Romans had concrete (primary building material in the Colosseum) but the knowledge of it was lost for over a thousand years.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
Some of the hysteria about "lockdown" has almost been pitiful.
We have never been locked down in the UK. At its worst I was outside running every day and going to the shop for supplies. Being allowed out of your home is not lockdown. Ask the people in places like Dubai what lockdown is really like...
We should send you into schools and universities so you can tell the students that they are just being hysterical.
The German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce has written to the Lithuanian government warning that German investors may close their plants in the country unless a "constructive solution to restore Lithuanian-Chinese economic relations" is found
Germany really are a mercantilist nation. Shameful.
To be fair this is a chamber of commerce ie an industry group not the government. Still, what with this and Nordstream2 there does seem to be a degree of realpolitik gone mad in some corners of the German economy.
The Nordstream debate is interesting, as it's a wedge between the new German government partners. It's built, ready to use, and would help dampen the soaring gas price. Everyone agrees that if Russia actually attacked Ukraine then it shouldn't be opened for a long time, if ever. The SPD and CDU are in favour of opening it if they don't, the Greens are against, both because they don't like gas (fossil fuel) and they don't like Russia (and do like Ukraine). Not sure what the FDP thinks - does anyone know?
The obvious deal to be done is for Putin to stop willy-waving and the pipeline to open after a few months, after which it becomes a profitable lever to restrain Putin from a return to willy-waving. I think that's what will happen in the end, but Putin is populist enough to be unpredictable.
Putin doesn’t care about profits.
Nordstream 2 absolutely fucks Ukraine.
It allows Russia to bypass them and cut off the transit fees.
It will be a strategic calamity for the West.
But Gerhard Schroeder and other German politicians are richer than they were.
Nordstream 2 fucks the Ukrainians, and I get that.
But you are equally asking German consumers to accept higher priced gas, because it includes transit fees, solely to benefit the Ukrainians.
Irrespective, the big news - driven no doubt by Putin turning the screws - is that two LNG import terminal projects in Germany are now going to be built. Germany's dependence on Russian gas - with Nordstream 2 or without it - will diminish, because for the first time it will be able to directly import LNG from the US, Australia or elsewhere.
Indeed, the law of unintended consequences is that a whole host of LNG projects have been greenlighted in the last few months. The most important of these is that Mozambique LNG is now actually going to happen. (If the Russians had waited another six or twelve months it might have gotten permanently shelved. Now, it is not inconceivable the first cargoes flow in 2024. I suspect there will be no shortage of European buyers for the gas. Amazing to think that six months ago, everyone thought it was dead.)
Nah I’m asking Germans to accept higher prices to preserve Germany’s strategic flexibility and an independent Ukraine. That’s the sort of call the government should make - while at the same time looking to other sources such as LNG.
Otherwise they are weakening their position for a handful of silver
There is a small cost to achieve strategic resilience that the West hasn’t been willing to pay for decades, due to the transactional nature of its politics. It’s highly disturbing to me. I would make it my number one policy objective. The trouble is, there’s not many votes in it. Because the public has been fed a fairy tale that History Ended, the West won and human progress can only go forwards. In a globalised world, it also requires the nationalisation or quasi nationalisation of chunks of industry, which everyone has been taught is always wrong.
Another example is the reluctance of certain libertarians to shield the food and farmingt sector from total free marketry post-Brexit - heaven help the UK if this happens and a crisis comes along.
For a country with an import dependency on food, it’s a dereliction of duty not to have built a long term strategic nutrient reserve. It could be easily achieved by outsourcing it to the supermarkets and providing free financing for the increased working capital requirement / capex for the storage facilities. We could live our whole lives and people would wonder why we needed it. Equally an extraneous event could happen at any time and it might be the difference between maintaining order in society or seeing it quickly turn to dust.
Indeed, and a particularly odd piece of neglect by the ruling Brexiter faction given their frequent referencing of WW2 and Churchill - who was more frightened by that very issue of import dependency than anything else, at least when it came to the Battle of the Atlantic.
There used to be food reserves into the 1950s and 1960s, I believe,though some at least of that was for after the Bomb dropped.
Yes, though it is odd that Churchill never gave Coastal Command any Lancasters, preferring to bomb cows and cabbages, and later civilians.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
Some of the hysteria about "lockdown" has almost been pitiful.
We have never been locked down in the UK. At its worst I was outside running every day and going to the shop for supplies. Being allowed out of your home is not lockdown. Ask the people in places like Dubai what lockdown is really like...
We should send you into schools and universities so you can tell the students that they are just being hysterical.
I'm alright, Jack.
??? My eldest is at university. In no way are they locked down. They were in the pub last night. What are you foaming on about?
Mr. Moonshine, in Stargate: SG-1, they encounter a race of humans who essentially have no Dark Age and have far more advanced technology as a result.
The absence of dislocated economic and political authority could've led to developments in interesting ways. The Romans had concrete (primary building material in the Colosseum) but the knowledge of it was lost for over a thousand years.
Ken Macleod's 'The Restoration Game' begins with a vignette of a centurion leading a squad of Imperial marines on Mars 2248 AUC. And then explores the alternative history thing.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
And if you are you are then imprisoned in your home for a week to ten days for a sniffle, even if you're feeling fit and healthy.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
And if you are you are then imprisoned in your home for a week to ten days for a sniffle, even if you're feeling fit and healthy.
Yes. Because most people aren't the kind of Total Phil that thinks infecting all and sundry is a good idea.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
Some of the hysteria about "lockdown" has almost been pitiful.
We have never been locked down in the UK. At its worst I was outside running every day and going to the shop for supplies. Being allowed out of your home is not lockdown. Ask the people in places like Dubai what lockdown is really like...
Oh bollocks.
That's like saying that a prisoner on a six month sentence in a light security jail has never been imprisoned because ask someone in a gulag with hard, forced manual labour and a life sentence what imprisonment is really like.
We were locked down. That others were locked down even harder doesn't change that.
We mustn't allow the lockdown lovers to reinterpret society so that only a complete and total abandonment of our civil liberties classes as lockdown and everything lighter than that is A-OK.
I've been looking at Linkedin. People are going mad over COVID. People virtue signalling to their professional network about going in to self solation over Christmas. A QC was berating one of his (unidentified) juniors for being a sceptical about vaccines when they were having a debate on the subject. Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad. Just don't say anything at all about it in a professional context, ever; as nothing good can come of it and only embarrassment and humiliation will follow.
- “Covid is a bit like the new Brexit: don't talk about it, you will turn in to an idiot and it will make you go mad.”
Spot on.
Exhibit A: Big G making a tit of himself over “Drakefool” (sic)
You see, read and hear a lot of absolute shite from people you assumed were reasonably intelligent. It confirms my suspicion, reinforced by decades of experience, that an awful lot of intelligent people are not clever, whereas a lot of people with supposedly low intelligence are in fact extremely clever. One of the reasons the modern obsession with qualifications (secondary and tertiary) is time and energy pissed up the wall.
PB is full of absolute nonsense about Covid19. It is very obviously being used as a proxy for deeper political arguments. My advice would be to just shut up about it for a while. It really is very, very, very boring. And you all look like complete tits.
Problem is though if we don't say anything and JRM/Gove are still saying the experts know nothing, then who is actually driving the bus? Tiger Woods?
Those particular lunatics are in charge of the asylum for at least another two years. Their majority is solid and they can do what they like. Once they’re gone, and they will be at the next UK GE, society must ensure that we are never again governed by such a bunch of malevolent, incompetent, corrupt clowns.
Bide your time and in the words of The Bard, nurse your wrath to keep it warm.
And pray to your maker that there are still enough reasonably competent civil servants in Whitehall to minimise the impact damage of the driverless bus.
Visions of sensible civil servants calmly singing the lord is my shepherd guiding us toward 2024, I almost feel hope
To me a politician or a civil servant is still an arrogant fool until he is proved otherwise.
Nevil Norway.
Tbf it wasn't the civil servants who insisted on taking the R101 to India before it was ready, complete with heavy rolled up carpet loose inside the hull where it could fall to one end and help destabilise the airship.
No, and Shute admitted later that he was rather overly dogmatic on this point.
It was however their fault that (a) the specifications were so badly drawn up, ignoring what should have been some fairly obvious lessons from the R38 disaster and (b) a certificate of airworthiness was issued despite no safety checks having been completed.
Yesterday I ran down a 'Shute Lane' in Northstowe (a new town being built on the site of the old Oakington airfield. Like here in Cambourne, some of the streets have aviation-related names: "Pathfinder Way", "Stirling Road", "Wellington Road".
Did they resist the tempation to go with "No Highway?"
It'd be brave to go with "Yorkshire Farm Girls" ...
From 'Slide Rule": "The lads were what one would expect, straight from the plough, but the girls were an eye-opener. They were brutish and uncouth, filthy in appearance and in habits ... these girls straight off the farms were the lowest types that I have ever seen in England, and incredibly foul-mouthed ... we had to employ a welfare worker to look after them because promiscuous intercourse was going on merrily in every dark corner ... as the job approached completion ... we were able to get rid of the most jungly types."
(I wonder if Shute had any connection with Oakington or the Pathfinders?)
His company Airspeed produced the Oxford - produced in quantity and used for training bomber crews in WW2.
The German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce has written to the Lithuanian government warning that German investors may close their plants in the country unless a "constructive solution to restore Lithuanian-Chinese economic relations" is found
Germany really are a mercantilist nation. Shameful.
To be fair this is a chamber of commerce ie an industry group not the government. Still, what with this and Nordstream2 there does seem to be a degree of realpolitik gone mad in some corners of the German economy.
The Nordstream debate is interesting, as it's a wedge between the new German government partners. It's built, ready to use, and would help dampen the soaring gas price. Everyone agrees that if Russia actually attacked Ukraine then it shouldn't be opened for a long time, if ever. The SPD and CDU are in favour of opening it if they don't, the Greens are against, both because they don't like gas (fossil fuel) and they don't like Russia (and do like Ukraine). Not sure what the FDP thinks - does anyone know?
The obvious deal to be done is for Putin to stop willy-waving and the pipeline to open after a few months, after which it becomes a profitable lever to restrain Putin from a return to willy-waving. I think that's what will happen in the end, but Putin is populist enough to be unpredictable.
Putin doesn’t care about profits.
Nordstream 2 absolutely fucks Ukraine.
It allows Russia to bypass them and cut off the transit fees.
It will be a strategic calamity for the West.
But Gerhard Schroeder and other German politicians are richer than they were.
Nordstream 2 fucks the Ukrainians, and I get that.
But you are equally asking German consumers to accept higher priced gas, because it includes transit fees, solely to benefit the Ukrainians.
Irrespective, the big news - driven no doubt by Putin turning the screws - is that two LNG import terminal projects in Germany are now going to be built. Germany's dependence on Russian gas - with Nordstream 2 or without it - will diminish, because for the first time it will be able to directly import LNG from the US, Australia or elsewhere.
Indeed, the law of unintended consequences is that a whole host of LNG projects have been greenlighted in the last few months. The most important of these is that Mozambique LNG is now actually going to happen. (If the Russians had waited another six or twelve months it might have gotten permanently shelved. Now, it is not inconceivable the first cargoes flow in 2024. I suspect there will be no shortage of European buyers for the gas. Amazing to think that six months ago, everyone thought it was dead.)
Nah I’m asking Germans to accept higher prices to preserve Germany’s strategic flexibility and an independent Ukraine. That’s the sort of call the government should make - while at the same time looking to other sources such as LNG.
Otherwise they are weakening their position for a handful of silver
There is a small cost to achieve strategic resilience that the West hasn’t been willing to pay for decades, due to the transactional nature of its politics. It’s highly disturbing to me. I would make it my number one policy objective. The trouble is, there’s not many votes in it. Because the public has been fed a fairy tale that History Ended, the West won and human progress can only go forwards. In a globalised world, it also requires the nationalisation or quasi nationalisation of chunks of industry, which everyone has been taught is always wrong.
Another example is the reluctance of certain libertarians to shield the food and farmingt sector from total free marketry post-Brexit - heaven help the UK if this happens and a crisis comes along.
For a country with an import dependency on food, it’s a dereliction of duty not to have built a long term strategic nutrient reserve. It could be easily achieved by outsourcing it to the supermarkets and providing free financing for the increased working capital requirement / capex for the storage facilities. We could live our whole lives and people would wonder why we needed it. Equally an extraneous event could happen at any time and it might be the difference between maintaining order in society or seeing it quickly turn to dust.
Indeed, and a particularly odd piece of neglect by the ruling Brexiter faction given their frequent referencing of WW2 and Churchill - who was more frightened by that very issue of import dependency than anything else, at least when it came to the Battle of the Atlantic.
There used to be food reserves into the 1950s and 1960s, I believe,though some at least of that was for after the Bomb dropped.
Yes, though it is odd that Churchill never gave Coastal Command any Lancasters, preferring to bomb cows and cabbages, and later civilians.
Was that actually Churchill's decision? (I think CC did get some Lancasters, powered by a different engine because bomber command didn't want them.)
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
And if you are you are then imprisoned in your home for a week to ten days for a sniffle, even if you're feeling fit and healthy.
Yes. Because most people aren't the kind of Total Phil that thinks infecting all and sundry is a good idea.
They are responsible even if you are not.
Most people are willing to go out if they have the sniffles.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
Some of the hysteria about "lockdown" has almost been pitiful.
We have never been locked down in the UK. At its worst I was outside running every day and going to the shop for supplies. Being allowed out of your home is not lockdown. Ask the people in places like Dubai what lockdown is really like...
Oh bollocks.
That's like saying that a prisoner on a six month sentence in a light security jail has never been imprisoned because ask someone in a gulag with hard, forced manual labour and a life sentence what imprisonment is really like.
We were locked down. That others were locked down even harder doesn't change that.
We mustn't allow the lockdown lovers to reinterpret society so that only a complete and total abandonment of our civil liberties classes as lockdown and everything lighter than that is A-OK.
We shouldn't let people who don't care how many people have to die for *their* freedom to reinterpret society, either.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
Some of the hysteria about "lockdown" has almost been pitiful.
We have never been locked down in the UK. At its worst I was outside running every day and going to the shop for supplies. Being allowed out of your home is not lockdown. Ask the people in places like Dubai what lockdown is really like...
Oh bollocks.
That's like saying that a prisoner on a six month sentence in a light security jail has never been imprisoned because ask someone in a gulag with hard, forced manual labour and a life sentence what imprisonment is really like.
We were locked down. That others were locked down even harder doesn't change that.
We mustn't allow the lockdown lovers to reinterpret society so that only a complete and total abandonment of our civil liberties classes as lockdown and everything lighter than that is A-OK.
We shouldn't let people who don't care how many people have to die for *their* freedom to reinterpret society, either.
Everyone has to die.
Unless you've discovered immortality when I wasn't looking.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
And if you are you are then imprisoned in your home for a week to ten days for a sniffle, even if you're feeling fit and healthy.
Yes. Because most people aren't the kind of Total Phil that thinks infecting all and sundry is a good idea.
They are responsible even if you are not.
Most people are willing to go out if they have the sniffles.
Quite reasonably too.
Not with Covid they're not. I believe the appropriate phrase is "oh bollocks"
You are not - and never will be - anything other than a tiny supposedly libertarian voice singing the song of Piers Corbyn.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
And if you are you are then imprisoned in your home for a week to ten days for a sniffle, even if you're feeling fit and healthy.
Yes. Because most people aren't the kind of Total Phil that thinks infecting all and sundry is a good idea.
They are responsible even if you are not.
Most people are willing to go out if they have the sniffles.
Quite reasonably too.
Not with Covid they're not. I believe the appropriate phrase is "oh bollocks"
You are not - and never will be - anything other than a tiny supposedly libertarian voice singing the song of Piers Corbyn.
How would you know most people are not, when its never been legal to do so?
You also claimed most people liked masks but when it was legal to not wear one, most people didn't.
I fully expect the requirement to stay at home to be dropped next year and when it is, I expect only a minority will stay at home with the sniffles.
I doubt whether BJ will leave before the next General Election. Which suits me just fine. He's completely incompetent and things will continue to be chaotic with regular, repeated, mistakes.
They don't really have anyone obvious who could win the next General Election. And for all his incompetence I still fear Boris Johnson at the ballot box. His lying is down to such a fine art that people might still be fooled.
I've been catching up with Alastair Meeks' columns, notably the current one on Johnson's successor. Bewilderingly he seems to have only 7 followers. I suggest that most people here would enjoy them (unless they dislike long analyses):
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
And if you are you are then imprisoned in your home for a week to ten days for a sniffle, even if you're feeling fit and healthy.
Yes. Because most people aren't the kind of Total Phil that thinks infecting all and sundry is a good idea.
They are responsible even if you are not.
Most people are willing to go out if they have the sniffles.
Quite reasonably too.
Not with Covid they're not. I believe the appropriate phrase is "oh bollocks"
You are not - and never will be - anything other than a tiny supposedly libertarian voice singing the song of Piers Corbyn.
How would you know most people are not, when its never been legal to do so?
You also claimed most people liked masks but when it was legal to not wear one, most people didn't.
I fully expect the requirement to stay at home to be dropped next year and when it is, I expect only a minority will stay at home with the sniffles.
Just to remind you - Covid is a serious disease, quite apart from the mortality. Remember Long Covid. There is an apposite piece just out in the Graun:
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
Some of the hysteria about "lockdown" has almost been pitiful.
We have never been locked down in the UK. At its worst I was outside running every day and going to the shop for supplies. Being allowed out of your home is not lockdown. Ask the people in places like Dubai what lockdown is really like...
Some of us were locked down properly: we were told not to leave our homes except for medical treatment for about three months.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
And if you are you are then imprisoned in your home for a week to ten days for a sniffle, even if you're feeling fit and healthy.
Yes. Because most people aren't the kind of Total Phil that thinks infecting all and sundry is a good idea.
They are responsible even if you are not.
Most people are willing to go out if they have the sniffles.
Quite reasonably too.
Not with Covid they're not. I believe the appropriate phrase is "oh bollocks"
You are not - and never will be - anything other than a tiny supposedly libertarian voice singing the song of Piers Corbyn.
How would you know most people are not, when its never been legal to do so?
You also claimed most people liked masks but when it was legal to not wear one, most people didn't.
I fully expect the requirement to stay at home to be dropped next year and when it is, I expect only a minority will stay at home with the sniffles.
Just to remind you - Covid is a serious disease, quite apart from the mortality. Remember Long Covid. There is an apposite piece just out in the Graun:
The German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce has written to the Lithuanian government warning that German investors may close their plants in the country unless a "constructive solution to restore Lithuanian-Chinese economic relations" is found
Germany really are a mercantilist nation. Shameful.
To be fair this is a chamber of commerce ie an industry group not the government. Still, what with this and Nordstream2 there does seem to be a degree of realpolitik gone mad in some corners of the German economy.
The Nordstream debate is interesting, as it's a wedge between the new German government partners. It's built, ready to use, and would help dampen the soaring gas price. Everyone agrees that if Russia actually attacked Ukraine then it shouldn't be opened for a long time, if ever. The SPD and CDU are in favour of opening it if they don't, the Greens are against, both because they don't like gas (fossil fuel) and they don't like Russia (and do like Ukraine). Not sure what the FDP thinks - does anyone know?
The obvious deal to be done is for Putin to stop willy-waving and the pipeline to open after a few months, after which it becomes a profitable lever to restrain Putin from a return to willy-waving. I think that's what will happen in the end, but Putin is populist enough to be unpredictable.
Putin doesn’t care about profits.
Nordstream 2 absolutely fucks Ukraine.
It allows Russia to bypass them and cut off the transit fees.
It will be a strategic calamity for the West.
But Gerhard Schroeder and other German politicians are richer than they were.
Nordstream 2 fucks the Ukrainians, and I get that.
But you are equally asking German consumers to accept higher priced gas, because it includes transit fees, solely to benefit the Ukrainians.
Irrespective, the big news - driven no doubt by Putin turning the screws - is that two LNG import terminal projects in Germany are now going to be built. Germany's dependence on Russian gas - with Nordstream 2 or without it - will diminish, because for the first time it will be able to directly import LNG from the US, Australia or elsewhere.
Indeed, the law of unintended consequences is that a whole host of LNG projects have been greenlighted in the last few months. The most important of these is that Mozambique LNG is now actually going to happen. (If the Russians had waited another six or twelve months it might have gotten permanently shelved. Now, it is not inconceivable the first cargoes flow in 2024. I suspect there will be no shortage of European buyers for the gas. Amazing to think that six months ago, everyone thought it was dead.)
Nah I’m asking Germans to accept higher prices to preserve Germany’s strategic flexibility and an independent Ukraine. That’s the sort of call the government should make - while at the same time looking to other sources such as LNG.
Otherwise they are weakening their position for a handful of silver
There is a small cost to achieve strategic resilience that the West hasn’t been willing to pay for decades, due to the transactional nature of its politics. It’s highly disturbing to me. I would make it my number one policy objective. The trouble is, there’s not many votes in it. Because the public has been fed a fairy tale that History Ended, the West won and human progress can only go forwards. In a globalised world, it also requires the nationalisation or quasi nationalisation of chunks of industry, which everyone has been taught is always wrong.
Another example is the reluctance of certain libertarians to shield the food and farmingt sector from total free marketry post-Brexit - heaven help the UK if this happens and a crisis comes along.
For a country with an import dependency on food, it’s a dereliction of duty not to have built a long term strategic nutrient reserve. It could be easily achieved by outsourcing it to the supermarkets and providing free financing for the increased working capital requirement / capex for the storage facilities. We could live our whole lives and people would wonder why we needed it. Equally an extraneous event could happen at any time and it might be the difference between maintaining order in society or seeing it quickly turn to dust.
Indeed, and a particularly odd piece of neglect by the ruling Brexiter faction given their frequent referencing of WW2 and Churchill - who was more frightened by that very issue of import dependency than anything else, at least when it came to the Battle of the Atlantic.
There used to be food reserves into the 1950s and 1960s, I believe,though some at least of that was for after the Bomb dropped.
Yes, though it is odd that Churchill never gave Coastal Command any Lancasters, preferring to bomb cows and cabbages, and later civilians.
Was that actually Churchill's decision? (I think CC did get some Lancasters, powered by a different engine because bomber command didn't want them.)
Coastal Command got Liberators because Bomber Command did not want them. I don't think they ever got Lancasters, though I can't be bothered to check at 9am on Christmas Eve. (There was more but I was mysteriously logged out while replying.)
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
Some of the hysteria about "lockdown" has almost been pitiful.
We have never been locked down in the UK. At its worst I was outside running every day and going to the shop for supplies. Being allowed out of your home is not lockdown. Ask the people in places like Dubai what lockdown is really like...
Some of us were locked down properly: we were told not to leave our homes except for medical treatment for about three months.
Shielding? Yes my parents were the same. But certain groups being told they need to stay home to stay safe from Phil isn't the same as everyone being locked in with the army enforcing it.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
And if you are you are then imprisoned in your home for a week to ten days for a sniffle, even if you're feeling fit and healthy.
Yes. Because most people aren't the kind of Total Phil that thinks infecting all and sundry is a good idea.
They are responsible even if you are not.
Most people are willing to go out if they have the sniffles.
Quite reasonably too.
If I were to stay at home every time I had a cold I would be off for most of each winter.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
Some of the hysteria about "lockdown" has almost been pitiful.
We have never been locked down in the UK. At its worst I was outside running every day and going to the shop for supplies. Being allowed out of your home is not lockdown. Ask the people in places like Dubai what lockdown is really like...
Oh bollocks.
That's like saying that a prisoner on a six month sentence in a light security jail has never been imprisoned because ask someone in a gulag with hard, forced manual labour and a life sentence what imprisonment is really like.
We were locked down. That others were locked down even harder doesn't change that.
We mustn't allow the lockdown lovers to reinterpret society so that only a complete and total abandonment of our civil liberties classes as lockdown and everything lighter than that is A-OK.
We shouldn't let people who don't care how many people have to die for *their* freedom to reinterpret society, either.
Everyone has to die.
Unless you've discovered immortality when I wasn't looking.
I suspect not. Once the chill blast of omi hits full-force in January, I reckon HMG will succumb to the pressure to tighten things further.
I hope I am wrong.
I think we’re past that. Restrictions were only ever a temporary emergency measure, to be used in extremis. Omi will be familiar to us by January - it will have lost the terror factor of the unknown and exotic. I get the feeling that people across the political spectrum have finally come to some consensus that it’s time to get back to a more normal situation.
It’s not easy, and it feels like tempting fate: like reducing the terrorist threat from imminent to severe, or whatever the terminology is, but as with terrorism nobody wants to live in a permanent state of emergency.
"I get the feeling that people across the political spectrum have finally come to some consensus"
I wonder whether the various parties are starting to seriously pick up in their focus groups that the voting public have reached the point where they accept no more or little more can be done and we have to live with it.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
Some of the hysteria about "lockdown" has almost been pitiful.
We have never been locked down in the UK. At its worst I was outside running every day and going to the shop for supplies. Being allowed out of your home is not lockdown. Ask the people in places like Dubai what lockdown is really like...
Oh bollocks.
That's like saying that a prisoner on a six month sentence in a light security jail has never been imprisoned because ask someone in a gulag with hard, forced manual labour and a life sentence what imprisonment is really like.
We were locked down. That others were locked down even harder doesn't change that.
We mustn't allow the lockdown lovers to reinterpret society so that only a complete and total abandonment of our civil liberties classes as lockdown and everything lighter than that is A-OK.
We shouldn't let people who don't care how many people have to die for *their* freedom to reinterpret society, either.
Everyone has to die.
Unless you've discovered immortality when I wasn't looking.
I think you should know that since the birth of humanity people have had quite strong feelings about the timing of when they have to die.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
And if you are you are then imprisoned in your home for a week to ten days for a sniffle, even if you're feeling fit and healthy.
Yes. Because most people aren't the kind of Total Phil that thinks infecting all and sundry is a good idea.
They are responsible even if you are not.
Most people are willing to go out if they have the sniffles.
Quite reasonably too.
Not with Covid they're not. I believe the appropriate phrase is "oh bollocks"
You are not - and never will be - anything other than a tiny supposedly libertarian voice singing the song of Piers Corbyn.
How would you know most people are not, when its never been legal to do so?
You also claimed most people liked masks but when it was legal to not wear one, most people didn't.
I fully expect the requirement to stay at home to be dropped next year and when it is, I expect only a minority will stay at home with the sniffles.
Just to remind you - Covid is a serious disease, quite apart from the mortality. Remember Long Covid. There is an apposite piece just out in the Graun:
I've been catching up with Alastair Meeks' columns, notably the current one on Johnson's successor. Bewilderingly he seems to have only 7 followers. I suggest that most people here would enjoy them (unless they dislike long analyses):
His choice of pictures is careless and when reading the first lines, my first thoughts are that bears do not have tails and those are not lambs. You need to join Medium to follow the Meeksmeister but not to read his columns, or look at the pictures, sfaict.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
Some of the hysteria about "lockdown" has almost been pitiful.
We have never been locked down in the UK. At its worst I was outside running every day and going to the shop for supplies. Being allowed out of your home is not lockdown. Ask the people in places like Dubai what lockdown is really like...
Oh bollocks.
That's like saying that a prisoner on a six month sentence in a light security jail has never been imprisoned because ask someone in a gulag with hard, forced manual labour and a life sentence what imprisonment is really like.
We were locked down. That others were locked down even harder doesn't change that.
We mustn't allow the lockdown lovers to reinterpret society so that only a complete and total abandonment of our civil liberties classes as lockdown and everything lighter than that is A-OK.
We shouldn't let people who don't care how many people have to die for *their* freedom to reinterpret society, either.
Everyone has to die.
Unless you've discovered immortality when I wasn't looking.
I think you should know that since the birth of humanity people have had quite strong feelings about the timing of when they have to die.
Think about all the epic poems, hymns and novels that have been written about the people who have been commanded to lay down their lives in sacrifice to a total Phil.
"You shall die so I don't have to wear a mask" is the foundation stone of western Christendom.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
And if you are you are then imprisoned in your home for a week to ten days for a sniffle, even if you're feeling fit and healthy.
Yes. Because most people aren't the kind of Total Phil that thinks infecting all and sundry is a good idea.
They are responsible even if you are not.
Most people are willing to go out if they have the sniffles.
Quite reasonably too.
Not with Covid they're not. I believe the appropriate phrase is "oh bollocks"
You are not - and never will be - anything other than a tiny supposedly libertarian voice singing the song of Piers Corbyn.
How would you know most people are not, when its never been legal to do so?
You also claimed most people liked masks but when it was legal to not wear one, most people didn't.
I fully expect the requirement to stay at home to be dropped next year and when it is, I expect only a minority will stay at home with the sniffles.
Just to remind you - Covid is a serious disease, quite apart from the mortality. Remember Long Covid. There is an apposite piece just out in the Graun:
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
Some of the hysteria about "lockdown" has almost been pitiful.
We have never been locked down in the UK. At its worst I was outside running every day and going to the shop for supplies. Being allowed out of your home is not lockdown. Ask the people in places like Dubai what lockdown is really like...
Some of us were locked down properly: we were told not to leave our homes except for medical treatment for about three months.
Ah, yes. The good old days. PBers will no doubt have fond memories of my weekly tales of putting the bins out.
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
And yet, people are avoiding seeing each other so as not to be forced to isolate on Christmas Day.
But that's their choice.
You seem to be blaming the government for your friends inability to do a small amount of research.
I think we're at cross purposes. My point is that people are not going out in case they catch covid, not because they fear covid but because they would then have to miss Christmas Day, which they value highly, due to the need nor to socialise while infectious. My guess is that after Christmas when there is no longer one big day to protect, socialising will increase. Why avoid NYE when you have no plans in early Jan anyway?
Difficult decision ahead in terms of whether to give a 4th vaccine with the immunity of the booster waning after 10 weeks.
Do we start giving out a 4th jab in the New Year particularly aimed at the over 60s, those vulnerable and those who work in healthcare settings who had their boosters back in October and November. This is what Israel is starting to do right now and we have followed their lead often during this pandemic.
Or do we wait for an Omicron designed vaccine from Pfizer, Moderna et al.
The worry is that Omicron is mainly affecting the young right now as the vaccine wall from the booster is protecting older people and those vulnerable. But the vaccine could be about to wane for millions of people in the demographic groups in which we don't know what Omicron's real severity is. Look at the research including the Scotland study, not enough data when it comes to people over 65 and how they fare with Omicron.
Get Christmas out at the way first but the government needs to be on the ball with this in the new year.
Hang on:
In an individual, vaccine efficacy (ignoring for a moment different variants) is *always* changing.
During the initial post injection period, antibody response rises and rises... then after a certain point, it starts to slowly decline.
So (lazily using efficacy number), you might have someone who has 60% protection against symptomatic Delta at the point of booster. Over the following - say - three weeks that will rise to 95% or so. It will then start to wane at a rate of (say) 1.5% per week. (Not 1.5 percentage points, 1.5%.)
That means it'll take eight to nine months before you get back to the efficacy pre-booster.
The question - therefore - is "at what efficacy level do you think you need to boost protection again?"
80% against hospitalisation? 75%?
What's the figure?
More important, perhaps, are:
-supply (though this never seems to be an issue ) -public sentiment
As pointed out below, it doesn't seem like we will ever reach herd immunity due to re-infection. In the minds of many young people, myself included, the social contract was that restrictions would ease as boosters were delivered.
Hibs fans and, weirdly, Roddy Dunlop both pointed this breach out yesterday. What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?
You won't find me cycling out to the Royal Highland show in the rain again to get jab number 4.
"What's the point in 3, 4, 5 jabs for young people if we make no progress towards normality?"
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
Dunno how things differ in California but it certainly doesn’t feel 90% normal here.
Yes, but that's not due to government diktat: that's due to people changing their behaviour.
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The behavioural changes I’ve seen are nothing to do with worry about getting sick but worry about being told to isolate at home for a sniffle. And that’s a direct consequence of government diktat.
LFTs are free.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
And if you are you are then imprisoned in your home for a week to ten days for a sniffle, even if you're feeling fit and healthy.
Yes. Because most people aren't the kind of Total Phil that thinks infecting all and sundry is a good idea.
They are responsible even if you are not.
Most people are willing to go out if they have the sniffles.
Quite reasonably too.
Not with Covid they're not. I believe the appropriate phrase is "oh bollocks"
You are not - and never will be - anything other than a tiny supposedly libertarian voice singing the song of Piers Corbyn.
How would you know most people are not, when its never been legal to do so?
You also claimed most people liked masks but when it was legal to not wear one, most people didn't.
I fully expect the requirement to stay at home to be dropped next year and when it is, I expect only a minority will stay at home with the sniffles.
Just to remind you - Covid is a serious disease, quite apart from the mortality. Remember Long Covid. There is an apposite piece just out in the Graun:
Comments
Bide your time and in the words of The Bard, nurse your wrath to keep it warm.
And pray to your maker that there are still enough reasonably competent civil servants in Whitehall to minimise the impact damage of the driverless bus.
Are you living in some parallel universe?
Normality is 90% back.
Yeah, we have to wear masks on public transport, and in shops. There's the stupid dance on the way to the bathrooms with putting on the mask.
But other than that... well, what's changed?
I’d love to be proved wrong, as I still have far too much invested in equities myself, despite a long process of slowly getting into other asset types.
If the markets really are about to tumble, where does one take refuge? Cash seem like a silly answer. (It might not be.) Genuinely curious.
I'd argue my little 'un's school (state) is teaching religion rather well. There are Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs in his year, but no Jews to our knowledge. After our 2K run the other day, we were walking home and he told me about the history of Hanukkah and the Maccabees. I knew none of this, and he loved the story and the history. I love it when my son teaches me things!
We then got into a conversation about why some kids might not want people to know their religion, particularly in certain countries. His reaction: "That's stupid!".
We definitely need a step change in performance before we do this again. Not sure about focusing on Omicron thought. Delta had 3-4 months in the sun and we are already a month into Omicron's reign.
Certainly of this type - if a far superior polyvalent vaccine is developed it'll probably be worth getting
Things are looking good today. But not five days ago we were expecting some sort of New Year lockdown (again, blame this on the virus itself or the unseen civil servant according to taste), Christmas hung in the balance, and indeed in three out of four of our constituent nations multiple plans were indeed cancelled.
The overall trajectory is certainly, currently in the right direction. But we've a long way to go before we can once again blithely assume we are free.
Nevil Norway.
But there was a massive change that happened between 2006 and 2018. In 2006, everyone thought the US would be an importer of natural gas. LNG import terminals were build in the US to import gas from Australia, PNG, Nigeria and the Middle East, because US natural gas was going to run out, and they'd need to import it from abroad.
And then it turned out the US had almost limitless supplies of gas. And US LNG import terminals were - over the course of a decade - changed to export ones*. This led to the cancellation of a bunch of projects around the world, because instead of the US being a customer, it was a competitor.
The gas market was pretty stable for a long time: there were lots of long term contracts, and a growing spot market.
But throughout all this, US natural gas (shale gas) was the swing producer. More demand? More drilling in the Marcellus. Less demand? Drilling dries up.
When Covid hit, the US rig count collapsed. It fell perhaps 70% in the course of six months.
And people who worked on rigs got other jobs.
This means that even though pricing of gas has rebounded, there are rigs without roughnecks. Prices are high for natural gas, but people haven't returned to work in dusty Texas towns, because they can earn good money doing other things.
That's changing. Indeed, by April next year, I'd wager the US will be producing 120bn/cf of gas per day. And they'll be exporting a lot of that. But there's an inevitable lag time between prices being high and the market responding.
* Not all, there's still a completely unused LNG import terminal in the US.
In our post-religious society, we may no longer believe in God or any of the rituals associated with him. But good grief do we believe in Christmas, with a religious devotion.
Risky, if so. It would mean the negative fallout from any military action (and there would be plenty) would coincide with a collapse in the economy
People stop going out when they worry. It's why diseases have these curious waves.
The only way Trump doesn't 'win' in 2024 is he is primaried against DeSantis who uses vaccines as a wedge issue. I have yet to hear of any other compelling scenario where he is not President in 2025.
Biden is a shambling reminder of the finitude of the human experience. He is a mummy at this point.
Although it still makes more sense than the bible...
Statistically, that has to be at least a one-in-four chance.
Pricing is about globalisation - specifically cheap goods from Asia - and the unwinding of that is driving inflation (it’s also a thing in China, btw). The linkage with the EU is marginal at best. (no marks)
Dickensian scenes of snowy churches.
Most Christmas carols.
The pleasant and familiar rhythms of the Christmas story.
Bells.
The message of hope in unpropitous circumstances.
The theme of goodwill to all men.
Personally, I'm a confirmed atheist, but that doesn't mean there aren't bits of Christianity I can't enjoy.
My facebook-friend-vicar usually posts lengthily at this time of year on the subject of how we've got the Christmas Story all wrong and the circumstances actually weren't small and unpromising and humble but great and triumphant, and God had provided the best entrance into the world possible for his son/himself; I often think that while he knows more theology than anyone else I might know, and he might technically be right, he is missing at least some aspects of the story's cultural significance beyond Christianity. But that's a separate point entirely.
Just don't take young people for granted. The pandemic response depends on us doing our bit, and a lot of us are close to telling our masters to piss off.
Otherwise they are weakening their position for a handful of silver
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=drinking+white+wine+in+the+sun&docid=607989918451266885&mid=D17CCE00B4A80E330D22D17CCE00B4A80E330D22&view=detail&FORM=VIRE
- a correction
- A third bull run
- A apocalyptic crash
- A lost decade
Based on the Fed and the Treasury having become populist.
It was however their fault that (a) the specifications were so badly drawn up, ignoring what should have been some fairly obvious lessons from the R38 disaster and (b) a certificate of airworthiness was issued despite no safety checks having been completed.
It is intriguing to consider a world in which Majorian wasn't betrayed by Ricimer and the Western Empire lasted. Because* both halves would still exist today.
Edited extra bit: *perhaps. That's quite the typo.
That's it entirely.
At least, that's been it ever since I had kids.
Started with some wry smiles at the start, but was sobbing like a baby at the end.
You have a sniffle, you spend 5 minutes and check if you have Covid and are infectious.
That doesn't mean we should forget the religious aspects of it, though.
There used to be food reserves into the 1950s and 1960s, I believe,though some at least of that was for after the Bomb dropped.
We have never been locked down in the UK. At its worst I was outside running every day and going to the shop for supplies. Being allowed out of your home is not lockdown. Ask the people in places like Dubai what lockdown is really like...
You seem to be blaming the government for your friends inability to do a small amount of research.
It was telling at my son’s school that at one point this term, absences were between 30-50% due to covid in the only two year groups required to frequently test. The younger kids had barely anyone off at all, despite having covided siblings and teachers. It’s a warning sign of what might happen if evidence of regular LFTs becomes embedded in society more generally.
From 'Slide Rule":
"The lads were what one would expect, straight from the plough, but the girls were an eye-opener. They were brutish and uncouth, filthy in appearance and in habits ... these girls straight off the farms were the lowest types that I have ever seen in England, and incredibly foul-mouthed ... we had to employ a welfare worker to look after them because promiscuous intercourse was going on merrily in every dark corner ... as the job approached completion ... we were able to get rid of the most jungly types."
(I wonder if Shute had any connection with Oakington or the Pathfinders?)
The absence of dislocated economic and political authority could've led to developments in interesting ways. The Romans had concrete (primary building material in the Colosseum) but the knowledge of it was lost for over a thousand years.
I'm alright, Jack.
They are responsible even if you are not.
That's like saying that a prisoner on a six month sentence in a light security jail has never been imprisoned because ask someone in a gulag with hard, forced manual labour and a life sentence what imprisonment is really like.
We were locked down. That others were locked down even harder doesn't change that.
We mustn't allow the lockdown lovers to reinterpret society so that only a complete and total abandonment of our civil liberties classes as lockdown and everything lighter than that is A-OK.
Quite reasonably too.
Unless you've discovered immortality when I wasn't looking.
You are not - and never will be - anything other than a tiny supposedly libertarian voice singing the song of Piers Corbyn.
You also claimed most people liked masks but when it was legal to not wear one, most people didn't.
I fully expect the requirement to stay at home to be dropped next year and when it is, I expect only a minority will stay at home with the sniffles.
If the Conservatives do replace him I hope they choose someone like Liz Truss who is, apparently, in pole position. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/liz-truss-new-iron-lady-7l5m3nflm
They don't really have anyone obvious who could win the next General Election. And for all his incompetence I still fear Boris Johnson at the ballot box. His lying is down to such a fine art that people might still be fooled.
https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/next-1c587c0a44f8
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/23/omicron-covid-19-long-hauler
bodily fluidsliberty. He's as bad as Piers Corbyn.Meet the new Phil, same as the old Phil.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59758549
In England Guildford, Reading, Middlesbrough and Northampton look the most sensible options.
We're all going to get Covid sooner or later, its endemic. Get your vaccine and live your life.
"You shall die so I don't have to wear a mask" is the foundation stone of western Christendom.
Piers Corbyn is unhinged and tells deranged untruths to deny Covid or the vaccinations.
I don't deny Covid. I'm OK to live with it. That's entirely different.
My guess is that after Christmas when there is no longer one big day to protect, socialising will increase. Why avoid NYE when you have no plans in early Jan anyway?